is a blackamoor turned outside in. his skin is fair, but his lining is utter dark; his eyes are like shotten stars,—mere jellies; or like mock-painted windows since the tax upon daylight: what his mind’s eye can be, is yet a mystery with the learned, or if he hath a mental capacity at all—for, “out of sight is out of mind.”

wherever he stands, he is antipodean, with his midnight to your noon. the brightest sunshine serves only to make him the gloomier object; like a dark house at a general illumination. when he stirs, it is like a venetian blind, being pulled up and down by a string; he is a human kettle tied to a dog’s tail, and with much of the same tin twang in his tone. with botanists he is a species of solanum, or night-shade, whereof the berries

[pg 29]

are in his eyes;—amongst painters he is only contemned, for his ignorance of clare-obscure; but by musicians marvelled at for playing, ante-sight, on an invisible fiddle. he stands against a wall with his two blank orbs, like a figure in high relief, howbeit but seldom relieved; and though he is fond of getting pence, yet he is confessedly blind to his own interest.

a misguided man.

in his religion he is a materialist, putting no faith but in things palpable. in politics, no visionary; in his learning a smatterer, his knowledge of all being superficial; in his age a child, being yet in leading-strings; in his life immortal, for death may lengthen his night, but can put no end to his days; in his courage, heroic, for he winks at no danger; in his pretensions humble, confessing that he is nothing, even in his own eyes; in his malady hopeless, for eyes of looking-glass would not

[pg 30]

help him to see. to conclude—he is pitied by the rich, relieved by the poor, oppressed by the beadle, and horse-whipped by the fox-hunter, for not giving the view holloa!