[8] "It has been said. 'There are no English lives worth reading except
those of Players, who by the nature of the case have bidden Respectability
good-day.'"

In morals our friend--as might be expected _circa_ l730--is a
Freethinker and Deist. Tindal is his text-book: his breviary the _Fable
of the Bees_;--

T' Improve In Morals _Mandevil_ I read,
And _Tyndal's_ Scruples are my settled Creed.
I travell'd early, and I soon saw through
Religion all, e'er I was twenty-two.
Shame, Pain, or Poverty shall I endure,
When ropes or opium can my ease procure?
When money's gone, and I no debts can pay,
Self-murder is an honourable way.
As _Pasaran_ directs I'd end my life,
And kill myself, my daughter, and my wife.

He would, of course, have done nothing of the kind; nor, for the matter
of that, did his Piedmontese preceptor.[9]

Note:

[9] Count Passeran was a freethinking nobleman who wrote _A
Philosophical Discourse on Death_, in which he defended suicide, though
he refrained from resorting to it himself. Pope refers to him in the
_Epilogue to the Satires_, Dialogue i. 124:--