Secondly, that, according to Sancho's proverb, they want better bread than is made of wheat. They are not content with proofs or absolute demonstrations. They require you, like the witch of Endor, to raise Sir Philip from the grave, that they may cross-examine him.
Thirdly (and this is the fault of the able writer who unmasked Sir Philip), there happened to be the strongest argument that ever picked a Bramah-lock against the unknown writer of 'Junius'; apply this, and if it fits the wards, oh, Gemini! my dear friend, but you are right—righter—rightest; you have caught 'Junius' in a rabbit-snare.
Editor's Note.—De Quincey is guilty of a slight lapse of memory in reference to 'The Castle of Otranto' and Onuphrio Muralto. It was not in the first sentence of the preface, but on the title-page, that Walpole so plainly attributed the work to another. The original title-page, which, of course, was dropped out when it became known to all the world that Walpole was the author, read thus: 'The Castle of Otranto: a Story. Translated by William Marshall, Gent. From the original Italian of Onuphrio Muralto, Canon of the Church of St. Nicholas, at Otranto. London: printed for Thomas Lownds, in Fleet Street. 1765.'
FOOTNOTES:
[18] 'Six thousand per annum,' viz., on the authority of his own confession to Pinkerton.
XV. DANIEL O'CONNELL.
With a single view to the intellectual pretensions of Mr. O'Connell, let us turn to his latest General Epistle, dated from 'Conciliation Hall,' on the last day of October. This is no random, or (to use a pedantic term) perfunctory document; not a document is this to which indulgence is due. By its subject, not less than by its address, it stands forth audaciously as a deliberate, as a solemn, as a national state paper; for its subject is the future political condition of Ireland under the assumption of Repeal; for its address is, 'To the People of Ireland.' So placing himself, a writer has it not within his choice to play the fool; it is not within his competence to tumble or 'come aloft' or play antics as a mountebank; his theme binds him to decency, his audience to gravity. Speaking, though it be but by the windiest of fictions, to a nation, is not a man pledged to respectful language? speaking, though it is but by a chimera as wild as Repeal to a question of national welfare, a man is pledged to sincerity. Had he seven devils of mockery and banter within him, for that hour he must silence them all. The foul fiend must be rebuked, though it were Mahu and Bohu who should prompt him to buffoonery, when standing at the bar of nations.