There was a large mirror in
the room, on which he remarked, 'that he thought his friends were
grown uncommonly assiduous in coming to see _him_, but he soon
discovered that they only came to _see themselves_.' Jones's phrase of
'_tumultuous passions_,' and the whole scene, had put him into such
good humour, that I verily believe that I owed to it a portion of his
good graces.
"When at Newstead, somebody by accident rubbed against one of his
white silk stockings, one day before dinner; of course the gentleman
apologised. 'Sir,' answered Matthews, 'it may be all very well for
you, who have a great many silk stockings, to dirty other people's;
but to me, who have only this _one pair_, which I have put on in
honour of the Abbot here, no apology can compensate for such
carelessness; besides, the expense of washing.' He had the same sort
of droll sardonic way about every thing. A wild Irishman, named F----,
one evening beginning to say something at a large supper at Cambridge,
Matthews roared out 'Silence!' and then, pointing to F----, cried out,
in the words of the oracle, '_Orson is endowed with reason_.' You may
easily suppose that Orson lost what reason he had acquired, on hearing
this compliment. When H---- published his volume of poems, the
Miscellany (which Matthews _would_ call the '_Miss-sell-any_'), all
that could be drawn from him was, that the preface was 'extremely like
_Walsh_.' H---- thought this at first a compliment; but we never could
make out what it was,[82] for all we know of _Walsh_ is his Ode
to King William, and Pope's epithet of '_knowing Walsh_.
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