Chromatic tortures soon would drive them thence,
Break all their naves, and fritter all their sense.
Whilst, on the other hand, he would not fail to be received with gratulation and applause by a hundred head of Aristotle’s friends.
All who for Attic phrase in Plato seek,
Or poach in Suidas for unlettered Greek.
This gentleman more than once appeared before the public as an author; but such a style, at least when he wrote in English, was never paralleled, except among the Houynhyms! There was much sound learning, sense, judgment, and knowledge, at the bottom, but so thick a cloud was suspended over the surface, that it was only here and there, at intervals, through partial fissures of light, that what was valuable and useful could be discerned. “It was like the gracious fooling when thou spakest of the Pigrogromitus, and of the Vapians passing the equinoctial of Quembus.”
Nobody was surely less qualified to be a biographical writer, for reasons above stated; he was unable to discern the real character, or to distinguish between the tinsel and embroidery of the courtier’s polish, and the real and solid substance and qualities of the man.
There was one other person well known to the Sexagenarian, to whom the above description will apply in so many particulars, that it is not impossible but a false application might be made.