“What an admirable picture that is in Mr. Robinson’s window in Bond Street. It is a splendid piece of workmanship. Don’t you think so?”
“A bad sky—very bad! Cold as winter. That trunk of a tree on the right is as stiff and formal as a sign-post. It spoils the whole picture.”
“Then you don’t like it?”
“There are a few good points in it; but it is full of faults.”
“The Rev. Mr. Benson, of Queen’s-road Church, is, in my judgment, an eloquent and powerful preacher. Don’t you think so, Mr. Pepper?”
“Well, as you ask me so pointedly, I am free to say that I think him a very good preacher on the whole. But, you know, he is far from perfect. I have again and again perceived his false logic, his weak metaphors, and his unsound expositions. Still, he is passable, and you may go a long way before you hear a better.”
Thus the censor meets you in every topic which you introduce in conversation.
“All seems infected that the infected spy,
And all seems yellow to the jaundiced eye.”
If you ask reasons for his censures, he cannot give you any, excepting one similar in kind to the following:—
“I do not like you, Doctor Fell,
The reason why I cannot tell;
But I do not like you, Doctor Fell.”