第33章 THE VOYAGE(21)

At about two miles distant from this parish lives that polite and good lady to whose kindness we were so much obliged.It is placed on a hill whose bottom is washed by the sea,and which from its eminence at top,commands a view of great part of the island as well as it does that of the opposite shore.This house was formerly built by one Boyce,who,from a blacksmith at Gosport,became possessed,by great success in smuggling,of forty thousand pound.With part of this he purchased an estate here,and,by chance probably,fixed on this spot for building a large house.Perhaps the convenience of carrying on his business,to which it is so well adapted,might dictate the situation to him.We can hardly,at least,attribute it to the same taste with which he furnished his house,or at least his library,by sending an order to a bookseller in London to pack him up five hundred pounds'worth of his handsomest books.They tell here several almost incredible stories of the ignorance,the folly,and the pride,which this poor man and his wife discovered during the short continuance of his prosperity;for he did not long escape the sharp eyes of the revenue solicitors,and was,by extents from the court of Exchequer,soon reduced below his original state to that of confinement in the Fleet.All his effects were sold,and among the rest his books,by an auction at Portsmouth,for a very small price;for the bookseller was now discovered to have been perfectly a master of his trade,and,relying on Mr.Boyce's finding little time to read,had sent him not only the most lasting wares of his shop,but duplicates of the same,under different titles.

His estate and house were purchased by a gentleman of these parts,whose widow now enjoys them,and who hath improved them,particularly her gardens,with so elegant a taste,that the painter who would assist his imagination in the composition of a most exquisite landscape,or the poet who would describe an earthly paradise,could nowhere furnish themselves with a richer pattern.

We left this place about eleven in the morning,and were again conveyed,with more sunshine than wind,aboard our ship.

Whence our captain had acquired his power of prophecy,when he promised us and himself a prosperous wind,I will not determine;it is sufficient to observe that he was a false prophet,and that the weathercocks continued to point as before.He would not,however,so easily give up his skill in prediction.He persevered in asserting that the wind was changed,and,having weighed his anchor,fell down that afternoon to St.Helen's,which was at about the distance of five miles;and whither his friend the tide,in defiance of the wind,which was most manifestly against him,softly wafted him in as many hours.

Here,about seven in the evening,before which time we could not procure it,we sat down to regale ourselves with some roasted venison,which was much better dressed than we imagined it would be,and an excellent cold pasty which my wife had made at Ryde,and which we had reserved uncut to eat on board our ship,whither we all cheerfully exulted in being returned from the presence of Mrs.Francis,who,by the exact resemblance she bore to a fury,seemed to have been with no great propriety settled in paradise.

Friday,July 24.--As we passed by Spithead on the preceding evening we saw the two regiments of soldiers who were just returned from Gibraltar and Minorca;and this day a lieutenant belonging to one of them,who was the captain's nephew,came to pay a visit to his uncle.He was what is called by some a very pretty fellow;indeed,much too pretty a fellow at his years;for he was turned of thirty-four,though his address and conversation would have become him more before he had reached twenty.In his conversation,it is true,there was something military enough,as it consisted chiefly of oaths,and of the great actions and wise sayings of Jack,and Will,and Tom of our regiment,a phrase eternally in his mouth;and he seemed to conclude that it conveyed to all the officers such a degree of public notoriety and importance that it entitled him like the head of a profession,or a first minister,to be the subject of conversation among those who had not the least personal acquaintance with him.This did not much surprise me,as I have seen several examples of the same;but the defects in his address,especially to the women,were so great that they seemed absolutely inconsistent with the behavior of a pretty fellow,much less of one in a red coat;and yet,besides having been eleven years in the army,he had had,as his uncle informed me,an education in France.This,I own,would have appeared to have been absolutely thrown away had not his animal spirits,which were likewise thrown away upon him in great abundance,borne the visible stamp of the growth of that country.The character to which he had an indisputable title was that of a merry fellow;so very merry was he that he laughed at everything he said,and always before he spoke.Possibly,indeed,he often laughed at what he did not utter,for every speech begun with a laugh,though it did not always end with a jest.There was no great analogy between the characters of the uncle and the nephew,and yet they seemed entirely to agree in enjoying the honor which the red-coat did to his family.This the uncle expressed with great pleasure in his countenance,and seemed desirous of showing all present the honor which he had for his nephew,who,on his side,was at some pains to convince us of his concurring in this opinion,and at the same time of displaying the contempt he had for the parts,as well as the occupation of his uncle,which he seemed to think reflected some disgrace on himself,who was a member of that profession which makes every man a gentleman.