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.
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