Yet if I were to explain to you the circumstance that has so
endeared it to me, you would only smile. Had I not better then keep it
to myself, and let it serve me to brood over, from here to yonder craggy
point, and from thence onward to the far-distant horizon? I should be
but bad company all that way, and therefore prefer being alone. I have
heard it said that you may, when the moody fit comes on, walk or ride on
by yourself, and indulge your reveries. But this looks like a breach of
manners, a neglect of others, and you are thinking all the time that you
ought to rejoin your party. "Out upon such half-faced fellowship," say
I. I like to be either entirely to myself, or entirely at the disposal
of others; to talk or be silent, to walk or sit still, to be sociable
or solitary. I was pleased with an observation of Mr. Cobbett's that "he
thought it a bad French custom to drink our wine with our meals, and
that an Englishman ought to do only one thing at a time." So I cannot
talk and think, or indulge in melancholy musing and lively conversation
by fits and starts.
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