“What, more buffoonery!” says the Honorable Fastidious Feeble-wit who condescends to act occasionally as Small Critic to the Court Journal:— “what, still more of this buffoonery!”
“Yes, Sir,—vous ne recevrez de moy, sur le commencement et milieu de celuy-cy mien chapitre que bouffonnerie; et toutesfois bouffonnerie qui porte quant à soy une philosophie et contemplation generale de la vanité de ce monde.”1
1 PASQUIER.
“More absurdities still!” says Lord Make-motion Ganderman, “more and more absurdities!”
“Aye, my Lord!” as the Gracioso says in one of Calderon's Plays,
¿sino digo lo que quiero,
de que me sirve ser loco?
“Aye, my Lord!” as the old Spaniard says in his national poesy, “mas, y mas, y mas, y mas,” more and more and more and more. You may live to learn what vaunted maxims of your political philosophy are nothing else than absurdities in masquerade; what old and exploded follies there are, which with a little vamping and varnishing pass for new and wonderful discoveries;
What a world of businesses
Which by interpretation are mere nothings!2
This you may live to learn. As for my absurdities, they may seem very much beneath your sapience; but when I say hæ nugæ seria ducunt, (for a trite quotation when well-set is as good as one that will be new to every body) let me add, my Lord, that it will be well both for you and your country, if your practical absurdities do not draw after them consequences of a very different dye!