e lifted
up his voice and wept sore.

The curates, meantime, sat and sipped their wine, a liquor of
unpretending vintage, moderately enjoyed. Mr. Malone, indeed, would much
rather have had whisky; but Mr. Donne, being an Englishman, did not keep
the beverage. While they sipped they argued, not on politics, nor on
philosophy, nor on literature--these topics were now, as ever, totally
without interest for them--not even on theology, practical or doctrinal,
but on minute points of ecclesiastical discipline, frivolities which
seemed empty as bubbles to all save themselves. Mr. Malone, who
contrived to secure two glasses of wine, when his brethren contented
themselves with one, waxed by degrees hilarious after his fashion; that
is, he grew a little insolent, said rude things in a hectoring tone, and
laughed clamorously at his own brilliancy.

Each of his companions became in turn his butt. Malone had a stock of
jokes at their service, which he was accustomed to serve out regularly
on convivial occasions like the present, seldom varying his wit; for
which, indeed, there was no necessity, as he never appeared to consider
himself monotonous, and did not at all care what others thought. Mr.
Donne he favoured with hints about his extreme meagreness, allusions to
his turned-up nose, cutting sarcasms on a certain threadbare chocolate
surtout which that gentleman was accustomed to sport whenever it rained
or seemed likely to rain, and criticisms on a choice set of cockney
phrases and modes of pronunciation, Mr. Donne's own property, and
certainly deserving of remark for the elegance and finish they
communicated to his style.

Mr. Sweeting was bantered about his stature--he was a little man, a mere
boy in height and breadth compared with the athletic Malone; rallied on
his musical accomplishments--he played the flute and sang hymns like a
seraph, some young ladies of his parish thought; sneered at as "the
ladies' pet;" teased about his mamma and sisters, for whom poor Mr.
Sweeting had some lingering regard, and of whom he was foolish enough
now and then to speak in the presence of the priestly Paddy, from whose
anatomy the bowels of natural affection had somehow been omitted.

The victims met these attacks each in his own way: Mr. Donne with a
stilted self-complacency and half-sullen phlegm, the sole props of his
otherwise somewhat rickety dignity; Mr. Sweeting with the indifference
of a light, easy disposition, which never profe