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Page 17
between two persons so extremely jealous of their honour would
most certainly have produced very dreadful consequences, was
happily concluded.
Mr. Wild was indeed a little interested in this affair, as he
himself had set the gentleman to work, and had received the
greatest part of the booty: and as to Mr. Snap's deposition in his
favour, it was the usual height to which the ardour of that worthy
person's friendship too frequently hurried him. It was his
constant maxim that he was a pitiful fellow who would stick at a
little rapping [Footnote: Rapping is a cant word for perjury.] for
his friend.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
IN WHICH THE HISTORY OF GREATNESS IS CONTINUED.
Matters being thus reconciled, and the gaming over, from reasons
before hinted, the company proceeded to drink about with the
utmost chearfulness and friendship; drinking healths, shaking
hands, and professing the most perfect affection for each other.
All which were not in the least interrupted by some designs which
they then agitated in their minds, and which they intended to
execute as soon as the liquor had prevailed over some of their
understandings. Bagshot and the gentleman intending to rob each
other; Mr. Snap and Mr. Wild the elder meditating what other
creditors they could find out to charge the gentleman then in
custody with; the count hoping to renew the play, and Wild, our
hero, laying a design to put Bagshot out of the way, or, as the
vulgar express it, to hang him with the first opportunity. But
none of these great designs could at present be put in execution,
for, Mr. Snap being soon after summoned abroad on business of
great moment, which required likewise the assistance of Mr. Wild
the elder and his other friend, and as he did not care to trust to
the nimbleness of the count's heels, of which he had already had
some experience, he declared he must LOCK UP for that evening.
Here, reader, if them pleasest, as we are in no great haste, we
will stop and make a simile. As when their lap is finished, the
cautious huntsman to their kennel gathers the nimble-footed
hounds, they with lank ears and tails slouch sullenly on, whilst
he, with his whippers-in, follows close at their heels, regardless
of their dogged humour, till, having seen them safe within the
door, he turns the key, and then retires to whatever business or
pleasure calls him thence; so with lowring countenance and
reluctant steps mounted the count and Bagshot to their chamber, or
rather kennel, whither they were attended by Snap and those who
followed him, and where Snap, having seen them deposited, very
contentedly locked the door and departed. And now, reader, we
will, in imitation of the truly laudable custom of the world,
leave these our good friends to deliver themselves as they can,
and pursue the thriving fortunes of Wild, our hero, who, with that
great aversion to satisfaction and content which is inseparably
incident to great minds, began to enlarge his views with his
prosperity: for this restless, amiable disposition, this noble
avidity which increases with feeding, is the first principle or
constituent quality of these our great men; to whom, in their
passage on to greatness, it happens as to a traveller over the
Alps, or, if this be a too far-fetched simile, to one who travels
westward over the hills near Bath, where the simile was indeed
made. He sees not the end of his journey at once; but, passing on
from scheme to scheme, and from hill to hill, with noble
constancy, resolving still to attain the summit on which he hath
fixed his eve, however dirty the roads may be through which he
struggles, he at length arrives----at some vile inn, where he
finds no kind of entertainment nor conveniency for repose. I
fancy, reader, if thou hast ever travelled in these roads, one
part of my simile is sufficiently apparent (and, indeed, in all
these illustrations, one side is generally much more apparent than
the other); but, believe me, if the other doth not so evidently
appear to thy satisfaction, it is from no other reason than
because thou art unacquainted with these great men, and hast not
had sufficient instruction, leisure, or opportunity, to consider
what happens to those who pursue what is generally understood by
GREATNESS: for surely, if thou hadst animadverted, not only on the
many perils to which great men are daily liable while they are in
their progress, but hadst discerned, as it were through a
microscope (for it is invisible to the naked eye), that diminutive
speck of happiness which they attain even in the consummation of
their wishes, thou wouldst lament with me the unhappy fate of
these great men, on whom nature hath set so superior a mark, that
the rest of mankind are born for their use and emolument only, and
be apt to cry out, "It is pity that THOSE for whose pleasure and
profit mankind are to labour and sweat, to be hacked and hewed, to
be pillaged, plundered, and every war destroyed, should reap so
LITTLE advantage from all the miseries they occasion to others."
For my part, I own myself of that humble kind of mortals who
consider themselves born for the behoof of some great man or
other, and could I behold his happiness carved out of the labour
and ruin of a thousand such reptiles as myself I might with
satisfaction exclaim, Sic, sic juvat: but when I behold one GREAT
MAN starving with hunger and freezing with cold, in the midst of
fifty thousand who are suffering the same evils for his diversion;
when I see another, whose own mind is a more abject slave to his
own greatness, and is more tortured and racked by it, than those
of all his vassals; lastly, when I consider whole nations rooted
out only to bring tears into the eyes of a GREAT MAN, not indeed
because he hath extirpated so many, but because he had no more
nations to extirpate, then truly I am almost inclined to wish that
Nature had spared us this her MASTERPIECE, and that no GREAT MAN
had ever been born into the world.
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