, sportsmen as you think yourselves, you and Frank, after all,
whatever you both were when you went into the lake, you turned out two
_Johnny Raws_."

"Why, Master Rattlin," said the lady, "Mr --- uses you worse than the
sun--that did but scorch--but he roasts you."

"No wonder, madam, as he considers me _raw_," replied I.

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE.

REMINISCENCES--A FRIEND FOUND AND A LINE LOST--RALPH MAKES A NEW
ACQUAINTANCE AND A HEARTY SUPPER, BOTH OF WHICH DO HIM MUCH GOOD.

Openly admired abroad, and secretly cherished by a love, the more
intense because concealed, at home, the course of my days was as happy
as the improvement in the various branches of my education was rapid.
Nor was I wholly unnoticed by men who have since stood forward, honoured
characters, in the van of those who have so nobly upheld the fame of
England. The bard who began his career in the brightest fields of Hope,
and whose after-fame has so well responded to his auspicious
commencement, read many portions of my boyish attempts, and pronounced
them full of promise, and the author possessed of _nous_. It was the
term he himself used, and that is the only reason why I have recorded
it. Indeed, this deservedly great man was, in some sense, my
schoolfellow, for he came in the evening to learn French of Monsieur
Cherfeuil. He was then engaged to translate an epic, written by one of
the Buonapartes, into English verse. I believe that engagement never
was carried into effect, notwithstanding the erudite pains Mr --- took
to qualify himself to perform it successfully. No man could have
laboured more to make himself master of the niceties of the Gallic
idiom, and the right use of its very doubtful subjunctive.

At the time to which I allude, the inspired author wore a wig--not that
his then age required one. Perhaps, the fervid state of his brain, like
a hidden volcano, burnt up the herbage above--perhaps, his hair was
falling off from the friction of his laurels--perhaps growing
prematurely grey from the workings of his spirit; but without venturing
upon any more conjectures, we may safely come to the conclusion, that
the hair that God gave him did not please him so well as that which he
bought of the perruquiers. Since we cannot be satisfied with the
causes, we must be satisfied with the fact--he wore a wig; and, in the
distraction of mental perplexity, when Monsieur Cherfeuil was essaying
to get the poet out of the absent into the co