t, although
really believing in the probability of the attorney's having at least
found his way to Australia, I had no satisfaction in thinking of that
result. I knew my friend to be the very perfection of a scamp. And in
the running account between us, (I mean, in the ordinary sense, as to
money,) the balance could not be in _his_ favour; since I, on receiving
a sum of money, (considerable in the eyes of us both,) had transferred
pretty nearly the whole of it to _him_, for the purpose ostensibly held
out to me (but of course a hoax) of purchasing certain law "stamps;" for
he was then pursuing a diplomatic correspondence with various Jews who
lent money to young heirs, in some trifling proportion on my own
insignificant account, but much more truly on the account of Lord
A----t, my young friend. On the other side, he had given to me simply
the reliques of his breakfast-table, which itself was hardly more than a
relique. But in this he was not to blame. He could not give to me what
he had not for himself, nor sometimes for the poor starving child whom I
now suppose to have been his illegitimate daughter. So desperate was the
running fight, yard-arm to yard-arm, which he maintained with creditors
fierce as famine and hungry as the grave; so deep also was his horror (I
know not for which of the various reasons supposable) against falling
into a prison, that he seldom ventured to sleep twice successively in
the same house. That expense of itself must have pressed heavily in
London, where you pay half-a-crown at least for a bed that would cost
only a shilling in the provinces. In the midst of his knaveries, and
what were even more shocking to my remembrance, his confidential
discoveries in his rambling conversations of knavish _designs_, (not
always pecuniary,) there was a light of wandering misery in his eye at
times, which affected me afterwards at intervals when I recalled it in
the radiant happiness of nineteen, and amidst the solemn tranquillities
of Oxford. That of itself was interesting; the man was worse by far than
he had been meant to be; he had not the mind that reconciles itself to
evil. Besides, he respected scholarship, which appeared by the deference
he generally showed to myself, then about seventeen; he had an interest
in literature; _that_ argues something good; and was pleased at any
time, or even cheerful, when I turned the conversation upon books; nay,
he seemed touched with emotion, when I quoted some sen