Such adaptation ne’er was seen before,
His trade a hog is, and his wit—a boar.
It has been proposed to us to amend the spelling: of the last word, thus, bore; this improvement, however, as it was called, we reject as a calumny.
Where the beauty of a passage is pre-eminently striking as above, we waste not criticism in useless efforts at emendation.
The writer goes on. He tells you he cannot quit this history of wits, without saying something of another individual; whom, however, he describes as every way inferior to the two last-mentioned, but who, nevertheless, possesses some pretensions to a place in the ROLLIAD. The individual alluded to, is Mr. GEORGE SELWYN. The author describes him as a man possessed of
A plenteous magazine of retail wit
Vamp’d up at leisure for some future hit;
Cut for suppos’d occasions, like the trade,
Where old new things for every shape are made!
To this assortment, well prepar’d at home,
No human chance unfitted e’er can come;
No accident, however strange or queer,
But meets its ready well-kept comment here.
—The wary beavers thus their stores increase,
And spend their winter on their summer’s grease.
The whole of the above description will doubtless remind the classic reader of the following beautiful passage in the Tusculan Questions of Cicero: Nescio quomodo inhæret in mentibus quasi sæculorum quoddam augurium futurorum—idque in maximis ingeniis altissimisque animis existit maxime et apparet facillime. This will easily account for the system of previous fabrication so well known as the character of Mr. Selwyn’s jokes. Speaking of an accident that befel this gentleman in the wars, our author proceeds thus:
Of old, when men from fevers made escape,
They sacrific’d a cock to ÆSCULAPE:
Thus, Love’s hot fever now for ever o’er,
The prey of amorous malady no more,
SELWYN remembers what his tutor taught,
That old examples ever should be sought!
And, gaily grateful, to his surgeon cries,
“I’ve given to you the Ancient Sacrifice.”
The delicacy with which this historical incident is pourtrayed, would of itself have been sufficient to transmit our author’s merit to posterity: and with the above extract we shall finish the present number of our commentaries.
[1] See No. III.
[2] The Reverend Rowland Hill, brother of Sir Richard.