How exquisitely, now (for this is one of the rare occasions in which
a man is permitted to praise himself), is established hereby an
unexpected bond of linked sweetness long drawn out between things
which had, ere they came beneath the magic touch of genius, no more
to do with each other than this book has with the Stock Exchange. Who
would have dreamed of travelling from the Tabard in Southwark to the
last new singer, _via_ Exeter-hall and the lilies of the valley, and
touching en passant on to cardinal virtues and an Irish Viscount? But
see; given only a little impudence, and less logic, and hey presto!
the thing is done; and all that remains to be done is to dilate (as
the Rev. Dionysius O'Blareaway would do at this stage of the process)
upon the moral question which has been so cunningly raised, and to
inquire, firstly,--how the virtues of meekness and humility could be
predicated of Frederick Augustus St. Just, Viscount Scoutbush and
Baron Torytown, in the peerage of Ireland; and secondly,--how those
virtues were called into special action by his questionably wise
attachment to a new actress, to whom he had never spoken a word in his
life.
First, then, "Little Freddy Scoutbush," as his compeers irreverently
termed him, was, by common consent of her Majesty's Guards, a "good
fellow." Whether the St. James' Street definition of that adjective
be the perfect one or not, we will not stay to inquire; but in the
Guards' club-house it meant this: that Scoutbush had not an enemy in
the world, because he deserved none; that he lent, and borrowed not;
gave, and asked not again; envied not; hustled not; slandered not;
never bore malice, never said a cruel word, never played a dirty
trick, would hear a fellow's troubles out to the end, and if he could
not counsel, at least would not laugh at them, and at all times and
in all places lived and let live, and was accordingly a general
favourite.
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