can, upon occasion, enter into a dissertation on the precise meaning of a “Simplex munditiis.”  He also delights in a pun, and most especially in a Latin one; and when applied to for payment of paving-rate, never fails to reply “Paveant illi, non paveam ego!” which, though peradventure repeated for the twentieth time, still serves to sweeten the adieu between his purse and its contents.  He is also an amateur in etymologies and derivatives, and is sorry that the learned Selden’s solution of the origin of the term “gentleman” seems to include in it something not altogether complimentary to religion.  This is his only objection to it.  He speaks French; and his accent is, he flatters himself, an approximation to the veritable Parisian.  Modern novels he does not read, but has read “Waverley” and “Pelham.”

His library is not large, but select; and as he does not sit in it excepting very occasionally, the fire grate is a movable one, and can be turned at will from parlour to library and vice versa,—­a whim of his old acquaintance Dr. Trifle of Oxford.  In it are his library table and stuffed chair; a bust of Pitt and another of Cicero; a patent inkstand and silver pen; an atlas, and maps upon rollers; a crimson screen, an improved “Secretaire;” a barometer and a thermometer.  Upon the shelves may be found almost for certain Boswell’s Johnson; Encyclopaedia Britannica; Peptic Precepts and Cook’s Oracle; the Miseries of Human Life; Prideaux’ Connexion of the Old and New Testament; Dr. Pearson’s Culina Famulatrix Medecinae; Soame Jenyn’s Essays; the Farrier’s Guide; Selden’s Table-talk; Archbishop Tillotson’s Sermons; Henderson on Wines; Boscawen’s Horace; Croker’s Battles of Talavera and Busaco; Dictionary of Quotations; Lord Londonderry’s Peninsular Campaigns; the Art of Shaving, with directions for the management of the Razor; Todd’s Johnson’s Dictionary; Peacham’s Complete Gentleman; Harris’ Hermes; Roget on the Teeth; Memoirs of Pitt; Jokeby, a Burlesque on Rokeby; English Proverbs; Paley’s Moral Philosophy; Chesterfield’s Letters; Buchan’s Domestic Medicine; Debrett’s Peerage; Colonel Thornton’s Sporting Tour; Court Kalendar; the Oracle, or Three Hundred Questions explained and answered; Gordon’s Tacitus an Elzevir Virgil; Epistolae obscurorum virorum; Martial’s Epigrams; Tully’s Offices; and Henry’s Family Bible.

His general character for nicety is excellent, both in a moral and religious point of view:  and he holds himself to have done a questionable thing in looking into a number of Harriette Wilson, in which a gay quondam friend of his figured.  When he marries, the ceremony is performed by the Honourable and very Reverend the Dean of some place, to whom he claims a distant relationship.  He takes his wine in moderation; never bets, nor plays above guinea points, and always at whist.  He goes to church regularly; his pew is a square one, with green curtains.  He dines upon fish on Good Friday, and declines visiting during Passion week in mixed parties.  If he ever had any peccadilloes of any kind, they are buried in a cloud as snug as that which shrouded the pious Eneas when he paid his first visit to Queen Dido.