Then Alexander’s Feast—the little harpies have been at that too, and it is defiled. Poor Collins’ Ode to the Passions, on and off the stage, is torn to very tatters.
The Seven Ages of Man, and “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women in it”—gone to destruction.
The quality of mercy is strained, and is no longer twice blest.
We turn with disgust from “angels and ministers of grace.” Adam’s morning hymn has lost the freshness of its charm. The bores have got into Paradise—scaled Heaven itself! and defied all the powers of Milton’s hell. Such Belials and Molochs as we have heard!
It is absolutely shocking to perceive how immortal genius is in the power of mortal stupidity! Johnson, a champion of no mean force, stood forward in his day, and did what his single arm could do, to drive the little bores from the country church-yard.
“Could not the pretty dears repeat together?” had, however, but a momentary effect. Though he knocked down the pair that had attempted to stand before him, they got up again, or one down, another came on. To this hour they are at it.
What can be done against a race of beings not capable of being touched even by ridicule? What can we hope when the infant bore and his trainers have stood against the incomparable humour of “Thinks I to myself?”
In time—and as certainly as the grub turns in due season into the winged plague who buzzes and fly-blows—the little reciting bore turns into the dramatic or theatric acting, reading, singing, recitative—and finally into the everlasting-quotation-loving bore—Greek, Latin, and English.
The everlasting quotation-lover doats on the husks of learning. He is the infant reciting bore in second childishness. We wish in vain that it were in mere oblivion. From the ladies’ tea-tables the Greek and Latin quoting bores were driven away long ago by the Guardian and the Spectator, and seldom now translate for the country gentlewomen. But the mere English quotation-dealer, a mortal tiresome creature! still prevails, and figures still in certain circles of old blues, who are civil enough still to admire that wonderful memory of his which has a quotation ready for every thing you can say—He usually prefaces or ends his quotations with—“As the poet happily says,” or, “as Nature’s sweetest woodlark justly remarks;” or, “as the immortal Milton has it.”
To prevent the confusion and disgrace consequent upon such mistakes, and for the general advantage of literature, in reclaiming, if possible, what has gone to the bores, it might be a service to point out publicly such quotations as are now too common to be admitted within the pale of good taste.