Part 22

who has written with some success--As I had read one or two of his performances, which gave me pleasure, I was glad of this opportunity to know his person; but his discourse and deportment destroyed all the impressions which his writings had made in his favour. He took upon him to decide dogmatically upon every subject, without deigning to shew the least cause for his differing from the general opinions of mankind, as if it had been our duty to acquiesce in the ipse dixit of this new Pythagoras. He rejudged the characters of all the principal authors, who had died within a century of the present time; and, in this revision, paid no sort of regard to the reputation they had acquired--Milton was harsh and prosaic; Dryden, languid and verbose; Butler and Swift without humour; Congreve, without wit; and Pope destitute of any sort of poetical merit--As for his contemporaries, he could not bear to hear one of them mentioned with any degree of applause--They were all dunces, pedants, plagiaries, quacks, and impostors; and you could not name a single performance, but what was tame, stupid, and insipid. It must be owned, that this writer had nothing to charge his conscience with, on the side of flattery; for I understand, he was never known to praise one line that was written, even by those with whom he lived on terms of good fellowship. This arrogance and presumption, in depreciating authors, for whose reputation the company may be interested, is such an insult upon the understanding, as I could not bear without wincing. I desired to know his reasons for decrying some works, which had afforded me uncommon pleasure; and, as demonstration did not seem to be his talent, I dissented from his opinion with great freedom. Having been spoiled by the deference and humility of his hearers, he did not bear contradiction with much temper; and the dispute might have grown warm, had it not been interrupted by the entrance of a rival bard, at whose appearance he always quits the place--They are of different cabals, and have been at open war these twenty years--If the other was dogmatical, this genius was declamatory: he did not discourse, but harangue; and his orations were equally tedious and turgid. He too pronounces ex cathedra upon the characters of his contemporaries; and though he scruples not to deal out praise, even lavishly, to the lowest reptile in Grubstreet who will either flatter him in private, or mount the public rostrum as his panegyrist, he damns all the other writers of the age, with the utmost insolence and rancour--One is a blunderbuss, as being a native of Ireland; another, a half-starved louse of literature, from the banks of the Tweed; a third, an ass, because he enjoys a pension from the government; a fourth, the very angel of dulness, because he succeeded in a species of writing in which this Aristarchus had failed; a fifth, who presumed to make strictures upon one of his performances, he holds as a bug in criticism, whose stench is more offensive than his sting--In short, except himself and his myrmidons, there is not a man of genius or learning in the three kingdoms. As for the success of those, who have written without the pale of this confederacy, he imputes it entirely to want of taste in the public; not considering, that to the approbation of that very tasteless public, he himself owes all the consequence he has in life. Those originals are not fit for conversation. If they would maintain the advantage they have gained by their writing, they should never appear but upon paper--For my part, I am shocked to find a man have sublime ideas in his head, and nothing but illiberal sentiments in his heart--The human soul will be generally found most defective in the article of candour--I am inclined to think, no mind was ever wholly exempt from envy; which, perhaps, may have been implanted, as an instinct essential to our nature. I am afraid we sometimes palliate this vice, under the spacious name of emulation. I have known a person remarkably generous, humane, moderate, and apparently self-denying, who could not hear even a friend commended, without betraying marks of uneasiness; as if that commendation had implied an odious comparison to his prejudice, and every wreath of praise added to the other’s character, was a garland plucked from his own temples. This is a malignant species of jealousy, of which I stand acquitted in my own conscience. Whether it is a vice, or an infirmity, I leave you to inquire. There is another point, which I would much rather see determined; whether the world was always as contemptible, as it appears to me at present?--If the morals of mankind have not contracted an extraordinary degree of depravity, within these thirty years, then must I be infected with the common vice of old men, difficilis, querulus, laudator temporis acti; or, which is more probable, the impetuous pursuits and avocations of youth have formerly hindered me from observing those rotten parts of human nature, which now appear so offensively to my observation. We have been at court, and ‘change, and every where; and every where we find food for spleen, and subject for ridicule--My new servant, Humphry Clinker, turns out a great original: and Tabby is a changed creature--She has parted with Chowder; and does nothing but smile, like Malvolio in the play--I’ll be hanged if she is not acting a part which is not natural to her disposition, for some purpose which I have not yet discovered. With respect to the characters of mankind, my curiosity is quite satisfied: I have done with the science of men, and must now endeavour to amuse myself with the novelty of things. I am, at present, by a violent effort of the mind, forced from my natural bias; but this power ceasing to act, I shall return to my solitude with redoubled velocity. Every thing I see, and hear, and feel, in this great reservoir of folly, knavery, and sophistication, contributes to inhance the value of a country life, in the sentiments of Yours always, MATT. BRAMBLE LONDON, June 2. To Mrs MARY JONES, at Brambleton-hall. DEAR MARY JONES, Lady Griskin’s botler, Mr Crumb, having got ‘squire Barton to frank me a kiver, I would not neglect to let you know how it is with me, and the rest of the family. I could not rite by John Thomas, for because he went away in a huff, at a minutes’ warning. He and Chowder could not agree, and so they fitt upon the road, and Chowder bitt his thumb, and he swore he would do him a mischief, and he spoke saucy to mistress, whereby the squire turned him off in gudgeon; and by God’s providence we picked up another footman, called Umphry Klinker; a good sole as ever broke bread; which shews that a scalded cat may prove a good mouser, and a hound be staunch, thof he has got narro hare on his buttocks; but the proudest nose may be bro’t to the grinestone, by sickness and misfortunes. 0 Molly! what shall I say of London? All the towns that ever I beheld in my born-days, are no more than Welsh barrows and crumlecks to this wonderful sitty! Even Bath itself is but a fillitch, in the naam of God--One would think there’s no end of the streets, but the land’s end. Then there’s such a power of people, going hurry skurry! Such a racket of coxes! Such a noise, and haliballoo! So many strange sites to be seen! O gracious! my poor Welsh brain has been spinning like a top ever since I came hither! And I have seen the Park, and the paleass of Saint Gimses, and the king’s and the queen’s magisterial pursing, and the sweet young princes, and the hillyfents, and pye bald ass, and all the rest of the royal family. Last week I went with mistress to the Tower, to see the crowns and wild beastis; and there was a monstracious lion, with teeth half a quarter long; and a gentleman bid me not go near him, if I wasn’t a maid; being as how he would roar, and tear, and play the dickens--Now I had no mind to go near him; for I cannot abide such dangerous honeymils, not I--but, mistress would go; and the beast kept such a roaring and bouncing, that I tho’t he would have broke his cage and devoured us all; and the gentleman tittered forsooth; but I’ll go to death upon it, I will, that my lady is as good a firchin, as the child unborn; and, therefore, either the gentleman told a fib, or the lion oft to be set in the stocks for bearing false witness agin his neighbour; for the commandment sayeth, Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour. I was afterwards of a party at Sadler’s-wells, where I saw such tumbling and dancing upon ropes and wires, that I was frightened and ready to go into a fit--I tho’t it was all inchantment; and, believing myself bewitched, began for to cry--You knows as how the witches in Wales fly upon broom-sticks: but here was flying without any broom-stick, or thing in the varsal world, and firing of pistols in the air, and blowing of trumpets, and swinging, and rolling of wheel-barrows upon a wire (God bless us!) no thicker than a sewing-thread; that, to be sure, they must deal with the devil!--A fine gentleman, with a pig’s-tail, and a golden sord by his side, come to comfit me, and offered for to treat me with a pint of wind; but I would not stay; and so, in going through the dark passage, he began to shew his cloven futt, and went for to be rude: my fellow-sarvant, Umphry Klinker, bid him be sivil, and he gave the young man a dowse in the chops; but, I fackins, Mr Klinker wa’n’t long in his debt--with a good oaken sapling he dusted his doublet, for all his golden cheese toaster; and, fipping me under his arm, carried me huom, I nose not how, being I was in such a flustration--But, thank God! I’m now vaned from all such vanities; for what are all those rarities and vagaries to the glory that shall be revealed hereafter? O Molly! let not your poor heart be puffed up with vanity. I had almost forgot to tell you, that I have had my hair cut and pippered, and singed, and bolstered, and buckled, in the newest fashion, by a French freezer--Parley vow Francey--Vee madmansell--I now carries my head higher than arrow private gentlewoman of Vales. Last night, coming huom from the meeting, I was taken by lamp-light for an iminent poulterer’s daughter, a great beauty--But as I was saying, this is all vanity and vexation of spirit--The pleasures of London are no better than sower whey and stale cyder, when compared to the joys of the new Gerusalem. Dear Mary Jones! An please God when I return, I’ll bring you a new cap, with a turkey-shell coom, and a pyehouse sermon, that was preached in the Tabernacle; and I pray of all love, you will mind your vriting and your spilling; for, craving your pardon, Molly, it made me suet to disseyffer your last scrabble, which was delivered by the hind at Bath--0, voman! voman! if thou had’st but the least consumption of what pleasure we scullers have, when we can cunster the crabbidst buck off hand, and spell the ethnitch vords without lucking at the primmer. As for Mr Klinker, he is qualified to be a clerk to a parish--But I’ll say no more--Remember me to Saul--poor sole! it goes to my hart to think she don’t yet know her letters--But all in God’s good time--It shall go hard, but I will bring her the A B C in gingerbread; and that, you nose, will be learning to her taste. Mistress says, we are going a long gurney to the North; but go where we will, I shall ever be, Dear Mary Jones, Yours with true infection WIN. JENKINS LONDON, June 3. To Sir WATKIN PHILLIPS, of Jesus college, Oxon. DEAR WAT, I mentioned in my last, my uncle’s design of going to the duke of N--‘s levee; which design has been executed accordingly. His grace has been so long accustomed to this kind of homage, that though the place he now fills does not imply the tenth part of the