The Man of Feeling | Page 3

But
One is ashamed to be pleased with the works of one knows not whom.

CHAPTER XI
{16}--ON BASHFULNESS.--A CHARACTER.--HIS OPINION ON
THAT SUBJECT

There is some rust about every man at the beginning; though in some
nations (among the French for instance) the ideas of the inhabitants,
from climate, or what other cause you will, are so vivacious, so
eternally on the wing, that they must, even in small societies, have a
frequent collision; the rust therefore will wear off sooner: but in Britain
it often goes with a man to his grave; nay, he dares not even pen a hic
jacet to speak out for him after his death.
"Let them rub it off by travel," said the baronet's brother, who was a
striking instance of excellent metal, shamefully rusted. I had drawn my
chair near his. Let me paint the honest old man: 'tis but one passing
sentence to preserve his image in my mind.
He sat in his usual attitude, with his elbow rested on his knee, and his
fingers pressed on his cheek. His face was shaded by his hand; yet it

was a face that might once have been well accounted handsome; its
features were manly and striking, a dignity resided on his eyebrows,
which were the largest I remember to have seen. His person was tall
and well-made; but the indolence of his nature had now inclined it to
corpulency.
His remarks were few, and made only to his familiar friends; but they
were such as the world might have heard with veneration: and his heart,
uncorrupted by its ways, was ever warm in the cause of virtue and his
friends.
He is now forgotten and gone! The last time I was at Silton Hall, I saw
his chair stand in its corner by the fire-side; there was an additional
cushion on it, and it was occupied by my young lady's favourite lap dog.
I drew near unperceived, and pinched its ears in the bitterness of my
soul; the creature howled, and ran to its mistress. She did not suspect
the author of its misfortune, but she bewailed it in the most pathetic
terms; and kissing its lips, laid it gently on her lap, and covered it with
a cambric handkerchief. I sat in my old friend's seat; I heard the roar of
mirth and gaiety around me: poor Ben Silton! I gave thee a tear then:
accept of one cordial drop that falls to thy memory now.
"They should wear it off by travel."--Why, it is true, said I, that will go
far; but then it will often happen, that in the velocity of a modern tour,
and amidst the materials through which it is commonly made, the
friction is so violent, that not only the rust, but the metal too, is lost in
the progress.
"Give me leave to correct the expression of your metaphor," said Mr.
Silton: "that is not always rust which is acquired by the inactivity of the
body on which it preys; such, perhaps, is the case with me, though
indeed I was never cleared from my youth; but (taking it in its first
stage) it is rather an encrustation, which nature has given for purposes
of the greatest wisdom."
"You are right," I returned; "and sometimes, like certain precious
fossils, there may be hid under it gems of the purest brilliancy."
"Nay, farther," continued Mr. Silton, "there are two distinct sorts of
what we call bashfulness; this, the awkwardness of a booby, which a
few steps into the world will convert into the pertness of a coxcomb;
that, a consciousness, which the most delicate feelings produce, and the
most extensive knowledge cannot always remove."

From the incidents I have already related, I imagine it will be
concluded that Harley was of the latter species of bashful animals; at
least, if Mr. Silton's principle is just, it may be argued on this side; for
the gradation of the first mentioned sort, it is certain, he never attained.
Some part of his external appearance was modelled from the company
of those gentlemen, whom the antiquity of a family, now possessed of
bare 250 pounds a year, entitled its representative to approach: these
indeed were not many; great part of the property in his neighbourhood
being in the hands of merchants, who had got rich by their lawful
calling abroad, and the sons of stewards, who had got rich by their
lawful calling at home: persons so perfectly versed in the ceremonial of
thousands, tens of thousands, and hundreds of thousands (whose
degrees of precedency are plainly demonstrable from the first page of
the Complete Accomptant, or Young Man's Best Pocket Companion)
that a bow at church from them to such a man as Harley would have
made the