This is very natural
and human, but, like so many very natural and human things, very
silly. Tillotson and the rest need not, after all, be pitied for our
neglect of them. They either know nothing about it, or are above such
terrene trifles. Let us keep our pity for the seething mass of divines
who were not elegantly verbose, and had no fun or glory while they
lasted. And let us keep a specially large portion for one whose lot
was so much worse than merely undistinguished. If that nameless curate
had not been at the Thrales' that day, or, being there, had kept the
silence that so well became him, his life would have been drab enough,
in all conscience. But at any rate an unpromising career would not
have been nipped in the bud. And that is what in fact happened, I'm
sure of it. A robust man might have rallied under the blow. Not so our
friend. Those who knew him in infancy had not expected that he would
be reared. Better for him had they been right. It is well to grow up
and be ordained, but not if you are delicate and very sensitive, and
shall happen to annoy the greatest, the most stentorian and roughest
of contemporary personages. `A Clergyman' never held up his head or
smiled again after the brief encounter recorded for us by Boswell. He
sank into a rapid decline.
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