A Trip to Scarborough; and, The Critic

by Richard Brinsley Sheridan

PUFF.
Even the auctioneers now—the auctioneers, I say—though the rogues have lately got some credit for their language—not an article of the merit theirs: take them out of their pulpits, and they are as dull as catalogues!—No, sir; ’twas I first enriched their style—’twas I first taught them to crowd their advertisements with panegyrical superlatives, each epithet rising above the other, like the bidders in their own auction rooms! From me they learned to inlay their phraseology with variegated chips of exotic metaphor: by me too their inventive faculties were called forth:—yes, sir, by me they were instructed to clothe ideal walls with gratuitous fruits—to insinuate obsequious rivulets into visionary groves—to teach courteous shrubs to nod their approbation of the grateful soil; or on emergencies to raise upstart oaks, where there never had been an acorn; to create a delightful vicinage without the assistance of a neighbour; or fix the temple of Hygeia in the fens of Lincolnshire!

DANGLE.
I am sure you have done them infinite service; for now, when a gentleman is ruined, he parts with his house with some credit.

SNEER.
Service! if they had any gratitude, they would erect a statue to him; they would figure him as a presiding Mercury, the god of traffic and fiction, with a hammer in his hand instead of a caduceus.—But pray, Mr. Puff, what first put you on exercising your talents in this way?

PUFF.
Egad, sir, sheer necessity!—the proper parent of an art so nearly allied to invention. You must know, Mr. Sneer, that from the first time I tried my hand at an advertisement, my success was such, that for some time after I led a most extraordinary life indeed!

SNEER.
How, pray?

PUFF.
Sir, I supported myself two years entirely by my misfortunes.

SNEER.
By your misfortunes!

PUFF.
Yes, sir, assisted by long sickness, and other occasional disorders: and a very comfortable living I had of it.

SNEER.
From sickness and misfortunes! You practised as a doctor and an attorney at once?

PUFF.
No, egad; both maladies and miseries were my own.