The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle Volume 2 Chapter 85

In which the young and ambitious Peregrine cultivates a reputation as both a wit and a patron among the fashionable literati, delighting in the arts of repartee and patronage while delighting in the gentle chiding of pretension and folly. He amuses himself further by orchestrating a clever trick upon solicitors and gradually finds himself entangled in the riotous and costly excesses of high society’s tavern debauches, despite his inward misgivings and resolves for sobriety.