A wit with dunces, and a dunce with wits.—Dunciad.
This smart piece of antithesis Pope borrowed from Quinctilian, who says,—
Qui stultis eruditi videri volunt; cruditi stulti videntur.
Dr. Johnson also hurled this missile at Lord Chesterfield, calling him “A lord among wits, and a wit among lords.” The earl had offended the rugged lexicographer, whose barbarous manners in company Chesterfield holds up, in his Letters to his son, as things to be avoided.
Fair tresses man’s imperial race ensnare,
And beauty draws us with a single hair.—Pope: Rape of the Lock.
This has a strong affinity with a passage in Howell’s Letters:—
’Tis a powerful sex: they were too strong for the first, for the strongest, and for the wisest man that was: they must needs be strong, when one hair of a woman can draw more than a hundred pair of oxen.