ABSTRACT
Mr. Seymour, who was possessed of considerable talents, and great taste for literature, was brilliant in conversation. His person was elegant, and his manners frank and agreeable. He had a perfect knowledge of the world, and great penetration into character; but his ambition was boundless; and his constant aim was his own aggrandizement: he courted people of rank and influence with admirable address; and, under an appearance of infinite candour and plainness, was no common flatterer, who sets about his business in a clumsy way, and discovers his own secret. He had judgement enough to appreciate the understanding of others with nicety, and always began his operations like a wise general, by an attack on the weak side. Mr. Seymour lived in a continual plot against the rest of his species – he regarded men and women as puppets moved by various springs, which he understood perfectly how to govern, and which he could touch so skilfully, that wisdom was over-reached as well as folly. His schemes were crowned with success, and he obtained a considerable post under government: yet his pride and selfishness were still unsatisfied. He had married Miss Melbourne, whose person he did not admire, and whose character he disliked, because she had twenty thousand pounds. No man could talk with more energy of the virtues of generosity and disinterestedness than Mr. Seymour; and this not with an appearance of ostentation, but as if friendship and universal good-will were the genuine feelings of his soul. Yet, while he thus descanted on benevolence, he concealed a mind, the sole view of which was self-interest; and sometimes reminded those who knew his real character, of a swan gracefully expanding his plumes of purest whiteness to the winds, and carefully hiding his black feet beneath another element. Mr. Seymour possessed strong feelings, and his heart was capable of tenderness; but ambition, and long commerce with the world, had almost entirely blunted his sensibility; and, to the few persons for whom he still felt some affection, he would not have rendered any service, however essential to their interest, which could in the smallest possible degree ever interfere with his own. His friendship was only to be procured by bestowing favours upon him, or at least by not requiring any at his hands: to ask for such proofs of his regard was to forfeit it altogether. Every acquaintance he made was with some interested view: he had no associates among the companions of his youth, except those who, like himself, had been prosperous in the career of life: the unfortunate he left where misfortune had placed them, and shunned all intercourse with them carefully. He treated Mrs. Seymour with decent attention; but he was a man of gallantry, and made love 51 to every woman who had the attraction of youth and beauty; and Mrs. Seymour, when she thought the heroics would become her, acted a fit of jealousy admirably; complained in pathetic terms of his indifference; lamented her hard fate in not having met with a congenial soul, and in being subject to have her exquisite sensibility so cruelly wounded. From such complaints he fled with disgust and aversion, and took refuge in company, where he contributed too much to the general entertainment not to be received with pleasure.
