As La Fleur went the whole tour of France and Italy with me, and will be often upon the stage, I must interest the reader a little further in his behalf, by saying that I had never less reason to repent of the impulses which generally do determine me, than in regard to this fellow: he was a faithful, affectionate, simple soul as ever trudged after the heels of a philosopher; and notwithstanding his talents of drum-beating and spatterdash-making, which, though very good in themselves, happened to be of no great service to me, yet was I hourly recompensed by the festivity

of his temper; it supplied all. defects: I had a constant resource in his looks in all difficulties and distresses of my own (I was going to have added, of his too); but La Fleur was out of the reach of everything; for whether it was hunger or thirst, or cold or nakedness, or watchings, or whatever stripes of ill luck La Fleur met with in our journeyings, there was no index in his physiognomy to point them out by, he was eternally the same: so that if I am a piece of a philosopher, which Satan now and then puts it into my head I am, it always mortifies the pride of the conceit, by reflecting how much I owe to the complexional philosophy of this poor fellow, for shaming me into one of a better kind. With all this, La Fleur had a small cast of the coxcomb; but he seemed, at first sight, to be more a coxcomb of nature than of art; and before I had been three days in Paris with him, he seemed to be no coxcomb at all.

PHILOSOPHIA

FIDELITAS

THE next morning, La Fleur entering upon his employment, I delivered to him the key of my portmanteau, with an inventory of my half a dozen shirts and a silk pair of breeches; and bid him fasten all upon the chaise, get the horses put to, and desire the landlord to come in with his bill.

C'est un garçon de bonne fortune, said the landlord, pointing through the window to half a dozen wenches who had got round about La Fleur, and were most kindly taking their leave of him, as the postilion was leading out the horses. La Fleur kissed all their hands round and round again, and thrice he wiped his eyes, and thrice he promised he would bring them all pardons from Rome.

The young fellow, said the landlord, is beloved by all the town; and there is scarce a corner in Montreuil where the want of him will not be felt. He has but one misfortune in the world, continued he; he is always in love. I am heartily glad of it, said I; 'twill save me the trouble every night of putting my breeches under my head. In saying this, I was making not so much La Fleur's éloge as my own, having been in love with one princess or other almost all my life, and I hope I shall go on so till I die, being firmly persuaded, that if ever I do a mean action, it must be in some interval betwixt one passion and another whilst this interregnum lasts, I always perceive my heart locked up, I can scarce find in it to give misery a sixpence: and therefore I always get out of it as fast as I can; and the moment I am rekindled, I am all generosity and good-will again, and would do anything in the world, either for or with any one, if they will but satisfy me there is no sin in it.

But in saying this, surely I am commending the passion, not myself.

THE town of Abdera, notwithstanding Democritus lived there, trying all the powers of irony and laughter to reclaim it, was the vilest and most profligate town in all Thrace. What for poisons, conspiracies, and assassinations, libels, pasquinades, and tumults, there was no going there by day; 'twas worse by night.

Now, when things were at the worst, it came to pass, that the Andromeda of Euripides being represented at Abdera, the whole orchestra was delighted with it; but of all the passages which delighted them, nothing operated more upon their imaginations than the tender strokes of nature which the poet had wrought up in that pathetic speech of Perseus, O Cupid, prince