modern critics have attributed to the profound author this, the appropriate inconsistency of the character itself!
A second illustration.—Did Curio, the quondam patriot, reformer, and semi-revolutionist, abjure his opinions, and yell the foremost in the hunt of persecution against his old friends and fellow-philosophists, with a cold clear pre-determination, formed at one moment, of making 5000l. a-year by his apostacy?—I neither know nor care. Probably not. But this I know, that to be thought a man of consequence by his contemporaries, to be admitted into the society of his superiors in artificial rank, to excite the admiration of Lords, to live in splendor and sensual luxury, have been the objects of his habitual wishes. A flash of lightning has turned at once the polarity of the compass needle: and so, perhaps, now and then, but as rarely, a violent
