H. B. Marriott Watson

“ We have no patience with this grey and serious spectre, with his grin sedate, with his mien austere, with his gait sanctimonious and exemplary. 'Out with him,' we cry, 'if he will not gibe;' and with one for his fellow he issues forth, a blank and moody ghost. ”

“ In this room shall be none but the gay and the glorious; God send the others to the pit! Thought pulls at his brows, Care weeps like a jade: let the unhandsome couple go match out of doors, out of sight, out of hearing. There is no favour we would require of Fortune but to commend us to the jocund, to withhold us from the sad. ”

“ A veteran mild-mannered acquaintance, he can work no harm upon us, for he taketh one by one, and as each goes another enters; the place empties not: it fills and refills; more cry for entrance at the windows. He hath no impression upon us; his jaws drop at our numbers; he winces from our vivacity; he has set himself the maddest task. Yea, and we use him despitefully. If he enter, he too must be gay; we will have none in our presence but is a jester. ”

“ He must come in to us with smiles for us, or we flout him. 'To your work,' we say, 'old Satan!' This Death has come to wear a face of the most grotesque importance; he has taken his office seriously and with pride, and is grown most deadly solemn. ”

“ This sober melancholy is no divine contrivance but a manufacture of the Devil, wherewith he would have us mock our human composition. We make no terms with Sorrow at our board; he turns in a rout at our menace, and we fall to scoffing at his flight. ”

“ Nay, there is none here but the roysterer, the free of heart, the quick of head, the heedless, the all-merry. To be wise, we say, is to be the fool of circumstance; let the mind run only upon the latest chuckle of your neighbour. A dull dog, we say, is a rebuke unto his Maker. ”

“ But he hath no terrors for us; for our goodly fellowship is immortal, and his presence is stale and intimate. He has endured upon us thus, this weak wreck of a mighty spirit, from the back of old Time; he has become a convivial fellow to us, so often do we see him in our cups. ”