SIR FRETFUL PLAGIARY.
Ha! ha! ha!—very pleasant!
SNEER.
Nay, that you are so unlucky as not to have the skill even to steal with taste:—but that you glean from the refuse of obscure volumes, where more judicious plagiarists have been before you; so that the body of your work is a composition of dregs and sentiments—like a bad tavern’s worst wine.
SIR FRETFUL PLAGIARY.
Ha! ha!
SNEER.
In your more serious efforts, he says, your bombast would be less intolerable, if the thoughts were ever suited to the expression; but the homeliness of the sentiment stares through the fantastic encumbrance of its fine language, like a clown in one of the new uniforms!
SIR FRETFUL PLAGIARY.
Ha! ha!
SNEER.
That your occasional tropes and flowers suit the general coarseness of your style, as tambour sprigs would a ground of linsey-woolsey; while your imitations of Shakspeare resemble the mimicry of Falstaff’s page, and are about as near the standard as the original.
SIR FRETFUL PLAGIARY.
Ha!
SNEER.
In short, that even the finest passages you steal are of no service to you; for the poverty of your own language prevents their assimilating; so that they lie on the surface like lumps of marl on a barren moor, encumbering what it is not in their power to fertilize!
SIR FRETFUL PLAGIARY.
[After great agitation.] Now, another person would be vexed at this!
SNEER.
Oh! but I wouldn’t have told you—only to divert you.