Guy Mannering.

GUY MANNERING. 311
engaged as a kind of librarian, and whom he patronizes,
I believe, to show his defiance of the world's opinion.
Colonel MAannering seems to have formed a determination, that nothing shall be considered as ridiculous, so
long as it appertains to or is connected with him. I
remember in India he had picked up somewhere a little
inmongrel cur, with bandy legs, a long back, and huge
flapping ears. Of this uncouth creature he chose to
make a favourite, in despite of all taste and opinion; and
I remember one instance which he alleged, of what he
called Brown's petulance, was, that he had criticised
severely the crooked legs and drooping ears of Bingo.
On my word, MIatilda, I believe he nurses his high opinion of this most awkward of all pedants upon a similar
principle. He seats the creature at table, where he pronounces a grace that sounds like the scream of the man
in the square that used to cry mackerel,-flings his meat
down his throat by shovelfuls, like a dustman loading his
cart, and apparently without the most distant perception
of what he is swvallowving,-then bleats forth another
unnatural set of tones, by way of returning thanks, stalks
out of the room, and immerses himself among a parcel
of huge worm-eaten folios that are as uncouth as himself!
I could endure the creature well enough, had I any body
to laugh at him along with me; but Lucy Bertram, if I
but verge on the border of a jest affecting this same Mr.
Sampson, (such is the horrid man's horrid name,) looks
so piteous, that it deprives me of all spirit to proceed,
and my father knits his brow, flashes fire from his eye,
bites his lip, and says something that is extremely rude,
and uncomfortable to my feelings.
" It was not of this creature, however, that I meant to
speak to you-only that, being a good scholar in the