However, as it is our rigid intention in this work to portray _at length_
no episodical characters whatsoever, we can afford our readers but a
slight and rapid sketch of Bachelor Bill.

This personage was of Devonshire extraction. His mother had kept the
pleasantest public-house in town, and at her death Bill succeeded to her
property and popularity. All the young ladies in the neighbourhood of
Fiddler's Row, where he resided, set their caps at him: all the most
fashionable _prigs_, or _tobymen_, sought to get him into their set; and
the most crack _blowen_ in London would have given her ears at any time
for a loving word from Bachelor Bill. But Bill was a longheaded,
prudent fellow, and of a remarkably cautious temperament. He avoided
marriage and friendship; namely, he was neither plundered nor cornuted.
He was a tall, aristocratic _cove_, of a devilish neat address, and very
gallant, in an honest way, to the _blowens_. Like most single men,
being very much the gentleman so far as money was concerned, he gave
them plenty of "feeds," and from time to time a very agreeable _hop_.
His _bingo_ [Brandy] was unexceptionable; and as for his _stark-naked_
[Gin], it was voted the most brilliant thing in nature. In a very short
time, by his blows-out and his bachelorship,--for single men always
arrive at the apex of _haut ton_ more easily than married,--he became
the very glass of fashion; and many were the tight apprentices, even at
the west end of the town, who used to turn back in admiration of
Bachelor Bill, when of a Sunday afternoon he drove down his varment gig
to his snug little box on the borders of Turnham Green. Bill's
happiness was not, however, wholly without alloy. The ladies of
pleasure are always so excessively angry when a man does not make love
to them, that there is nothing they will not say against him; and the
fair matrons in the vicinity of Fiddler's Row spread all manner of
unfounded reports against poor Bachelor Bill. By degrees, however,--for,