The youth has some parts, some ideas: at least he has plenty of words. But his arrogance is insufferable. He does not scruple to interfere in the discourse, either with me, Sir Arthur, or the angelic Anna! Nay sets up for a reformer; and pretends to an insolent superiority of understanding and wisdom. Yet he was never so long from home before in his life; has seen nothing, but has read a few books, and has been permitted to converse with this all intelligent deity.
I cannot deny but that the pedagogue sometimes surprises me, with the novelty of his opinions; but they are extravagant. I have condescended, oftener than became me, to shew how full of hyperbole and paradox they were. Still he as constantly maintained them, with a kind of congruity that astonished me, and even rendered many of them plausible.
But, exclusive of his obstinacy, the rude, pot companion loquacity of the fellow is highly offensive. He has no sense of inferiority. He stands as erect, and speaks with as little embarrassment and as loudly as the best of us: nay boldly asserts that neither riches, rank, nor birth have any claim. I have offered to buy him a beard, if he would but turn heathen philosopher. I have several times indeed bestowed no small portion of ridicule upon him; but in vain. His retorts are always ready; and his intrepidity, in this kind of impertinence, is unexampled.
From some anecdotes which are told of him, I find he does not want personal courage; but he has no claim to chastisement from a gentleman. Petty insults he disregards; and has several times put me almost beyond the power of forbearance, by his cool and cutting replies. His oratory is always ready; cut, dry, and fit for use; and damned insolent oratory it frequently is.
The absurdity of his tenets can only be equalled by the effrontery with which they are maintained. Among the most ridiculous of what he calls first principles is that of the equality of mankind. He is one of your levellers! Marry! His superior! Who is he? On what proud eminence can he be found? On some Welsh mountain, or the pike of Teneriffe? Certainly not in any of the nether regions! What! Was not he the ass that brayed to Balaam? And is he not now Mufti to the mules? He will if he please! And if he please he will let it alone! Dispute his prerogative who dare! He derives from Adam; what time the world was all hail fellow well met! The savage, the wild man o' the woods is his true liberty boy; and the orang outang his first cousin. A Lord is a merry andrew, a Duke a jack pudding, and a King a tom fool: his name is man!
Then, as to property, 'tis a tragic farce; 'tis his sovereign pleasure to eat nectarines, grow them who will. Another Alexander, he; the world is all his own! Ay, and he will govern it as he best knows how! He will legislate, dictate, dogmatize; for who so infallible? What! Cannot Goliah crack a walnut?
As for arguments, it is but ask and have: a peck at a bidding, and a good double handful over. I own I thought I knew something; but no, I must to my horn book. Then, for a simile, it is sacrilege; and must be kicked out of the high court of logic! Sarcasm too is an ignoramus, and cannot solve a problem: Wit a pert puppy, who can only flash and bounce. The heavy walls of wisdom are not to be battered down by such popguns and pellets. He will waste you wind enough to set up twenty millers, in proving an apple is not an egg-shell; and that homo is Greek for a goose. Dun Scotus was a school boy to him. I confess, he has more than once dumbfounded me by his subtleties.—Pshaw!—It is a mortal murder of words and time to bestow them on him.
My sister is in correspondence with my new divinity. I thought proper to bestow a few gentle lashes on her, for a letter which she wrote to me, and which I mentioned in my first from Paris, insinuating her own superiority, and giving me to understand how fortunate it would be for the world should I but prove as consummate a paragon as herself. She richly deserved it, and yet I now wish I had forborne; for, if she have her sex's love of vengeance in her, she may injure me in the tenderest part. Never was woman so devoted to woman as Anna St. Ives is to Louisa. I should suspect any other of her sex of extravagant affectation; but her it is impossible to suspect: her manner is so peculiarly her own: and it comes with such unsought for energy, that there is no resisting conviction.
I have two or three times been inclined to write and ask Louisa's pardon. But, no; that pride forbids. She dare not openly profess herself my enemy? She may insinuate, and countermine; but I have a tolerably strong dependance on my own power over Anna. She is not blind. She is the first to feel and to acknowledge superior merit; and I think I have no reason to fear repulse from any woman, whose hand I can bring myself to ask.
One of Anna's greatest perfections, with me, is the ready esteem which she entertained for me, and her not being insensible to those qualities which I flatter myself I possess. Never yet did woman treat me with affected disdain, who did not at last repent of her coquetry.