well as asserted--in more than one of the
letters I subsequently had from Mr. Clive, but it may serve to show the
ardent and impulsive disposition of this youth), by whom all beauties
of art and nature, animate or inanimate (the former especially), were
welcomed with a gusto and delight whereof colder temperaments are
incapable. The view of a fine landscape, a fine picture, a handsome
woman, would make this harmless young sensualist tipsy with pleasure. He
seemed to derive an actual hilarity and intoxication as his eye drank in
these sights; and, though it was his maxim that all dinners were good,
and he could eat bread and cheese and drink small beer with perfect
good-humour, I believe that he found a certain pleasure in a bottle of
claret, which most men's systems were incapable of feeling.

This springtime of youth is the season of letter-writing. A lad in high
health and spirits, the blood running briskly in his young veins, and
the world, and life, and nature bright and welcome to him, looks out,
perforce, for some companion to whom he may impart his sense of the
pleasure which he enjoys, and which were not complete unless a friend
were by to share it. I was the person most convenient for the young
fellow's purpose; he was pleased to confer upon me the title of friend
en titre, and confidant in particular; to endow the confidant in
question with a number of virtues and excellences which existed very
likely only in the lad's imagination; to lament that the confidant had
no sister whom he, Clive, might marry out of hand; and to make me a
thousand simple protests of affection and admiration, which are noted
here as signs of the young man's character, by no means as proofs of
the goodness of mine. The books given to the present biographer by "his
affectionate friend, Clive Newcome," still bear on the titlepages the
marks of that boyish hand and youthful fervour. He had a copy of Walter
Lorraine bound and gilt with such splendour as made the author blush for
his performance, which has since been seen at the bookstalls at a price
suited to the very humblest purses. He fired up and fought a newspaper
critic (whom Clive met at the Haunt one night) who had dared to write
an article in which that work was slighted; and if, in the course of
nature, his friendship has outlived that rapturous period, the kindness
of the two old friends, I hope, is not the less because it is no longer
romantic, and the days of white vellum and gi