At six
precisely she makes my tea, and leaves me to drink it; and then
occurs an interval of time which most old bachelors find heavy on
their hands. The theatre is a good occasional resource,
especially if Will Murray acts, or a bright star of eminence
shines forth; but it is distant, and so are one or two public
societies to which I belong. Besides, these evening walks are
all incompatible with the elbow-chair feeling, which desires some
employment that may divert the mind without fatiguing the body.
Under the influence of these impressions, I have sometimes
thought of this literary undertaking. I must have been the
Bonassus himself to have mistaken myself for a genius; yet I have
leisure and reflections like my neighbours. I am a borderer,
also, between two generations, and can point out more, perhaps,
than others of those fading traces of antiquity which are daily
vanishing; and I know many a modern instance and many an old
tradition, and therefore I ask--
"What ails me, I may not as well as they
Rake up some threadbare tales, that mouldering lay
In chimney corners, wont by Christmas fires
To read and rock to sleep our ancient sires?
No man his threshold better knows, than I
Brute's first arrival and first victory,
Saint George's sorrel and his cross of blood,
Arthur's round board and Caledonian wood.
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