the
serious,--and the laughter of the light-hearted; all which he bore with
excellent tranquillity.--His character was,--he loved a jest in his
heart--and as he saw himself in the true point of ridicule, he would say
he could not be angry with others for seeing him in a light, in which he
so strongly saw himself: So that to his friends, who knew his foible
was not the love of money, and who therefore made the less scruple in
bantering the extravagance of his humour,--instead of giving the true
cause,--he chose rather to join in the laugh against himself; and as
he never carried one single ounce of flesh upon his own bones, being
altogether as spare a figure as his beast,--he would sometimes insist
upon it, that the horse was as good as the rider deserved;--that they
were, centaur-like,--both of a piece. At other times, and in other
moods, when his spirits were above the temptation of false wit,--he
would say, he found himself going off fast in a consumption; and, with
great gravity, would pretend, he could not bear the sight of a fat
horse, without a dejection of heart, and a sensible alteration in his
pulse; and that he had made choice of the lean one he rode upon, not
only to keep himself in countenance, but in spirits.

At different times he would give fifty humorous and apposite reasons for
riding a meek-spirited jade of a broken-winded horse, preferably to one
of mettle;--for on such a one he could sit mechanically, and meditate as
delightfully de vanitate mundi et fuga faeculi, as with the advantage of
a death's-head before him;--that, in all other exercitations, he could
spend his time, as he rode slowly along,--to as much account as in his
study;--that he could draw up an argument in his sermon,--or a hole
in his breeches, as steadily on the one as in the other;--that brisk
trotting and slow argumentation, like wit and judgment, were two
incompatible movements.--But that upon his steed--he could unite and
reconcile every thing,--he could compose his sermon--he could compose
his cough,--and, in case nature gave a call that way, he could likewise
compose himself to sleep.--In short, the parson upon such encounters
would assign any cause but the true cause,--and he withheld the true
one, only out of a nicety of temper, because he thought it did honour to
him.

But the truth of the story was as follows: In the first years of this
gentleman's life, and about the time when the superb saddle and bridle
were purchase