And there’s something, which even distaste must respect,
In the self-taught example, that conquer’d neglect.
But not to insist on the recommendations
Of modesty, wit, and a small stock of patience,
My visit just now is to poets alone,
And not to small critics, however well known.”
So saying, he rang, to leave nothing in doubt,
And the sour little gentleman bless’d himself out.’
Thus painters write their names at Co. For this passage and the temperate and judicious note which accompanies it, it is no wonder that you put the author—of Rimini, in Newgate, without the Sheriff’s warrant. In order to give as favourable an impression of that poem as you could, you began your account of it by saying that it had been composed in Newgate, though you knew that it had not; but you also knew that the name of Newgate would sound more grateful to certain ears, to pour flattering poison into which is the height of your abject ambition. In this courtly inuendo which ushered in your wretched verbal criticism (it is the more disgusting to see such gross and impudent prevarication combined with such petty captiousness) you were guided not by a regard to truth, but to your own ends; and yet you say somewhere, very oracularly, out of contradiction to me, that ‘not to prefer the true to the agreeable, where they are inconsistent, is folly.’ You have mistaken the word: it is not folly, but knavery.[[78]]
4. You say you have no objection to my ‘praising my own chivalrous eloquence’; and I say that the insinuation is impertinent and untrue. The paper in which that phrase occurs is written by Mr. Hunt, as you know, and is an answer to some observations of mine on the poetical temperament in a preceding number On the Causes of Methodism. Mr. Hunt’s having taken upon him ‘to praise my chivalrous eloquence,’ without consulting you, appeared no doubt a great piece of presumption; and you punished me by magnifying this indiscretion into the enormity of my having praised myself. I might as well say that Mr. Canning had made a fulsome eulogy on his own private virtues and public principles in your dedication of the edition of Ben Jonson to him.—You say indeed in the last paragraph of your criticism that ‘you understand some of the papers to be by Mr. Hunt; that it is he who is the droll or merry fellow of the piece; who has shocked you by writing eternally about washerwomen, etc. but that you cannot stay to distinguish between us, and that we must divide our respective share of merit between ourselves.’ The share of merit in that work may indeed be so small that it is of little consequence who has the reversion of any part of it, but I will take care that a cat’s-paw shall not be put on the pannel of my quantum meruit, nor take measure of my capacity with a mechanic rule, marked by ignorance and servility, nor turn the scale of public opinion by throwing in false weights as he pleases, nor make both of us ridiculous, by attributing to each the peculiarities of the other, with whatever exaggerated interpretation he chuses to put upon them. By this transposition of persons, which is not a matter of indifference as you pretend, you gain this advantage which you have no right to gain. You can at any time apply to me or Mr. Hunt the obnoxious points in your account of either, and improve upon them, as it suits your purpose. By combining the extremes of individual character, you make a very strange and wilful compound of your own. It is the same person, and yet it is not one person but two persons, according to the critical creed you would establish, who is a merry fellow, and a sour Jacobin; who is all gaiety and all gloom; a person who rails at poets, and yet is himself a poet; a hater of cats, and of cat’s-paws;[[79]] a reviler of Mr. Pitt, and a panegyrist upon washerwomen. If, Sir, your friend, Mr. Hoppner, of whom, as you tell us[[80]] you discreetly said nothing, while he was struggling with obscurity, lest it should be imputed to the partiality of friendship, but whom you praised and dedicated to, as soon as he became popular, to shew your disinterestedness and deference to public opinion, if even this artist, whom you celebrate as a painter of flattering likenesses, had undertaken to unite in one piece the most striking features and characteristic expression of his and your common friends, had improved your lurking archness of look into Mr. Murray’s gentle, downcast obliquity of vision; had joined Mr. Canning’s drooping nose to Mr. Croker’s aspiring chin, the clear complexion (the splendida bilis) of the one, to the candid self-complacent aspect of the other; had forced into the same preposterous medley, the invincible hauteur and satanic pride of Mr. Pitt’s physiognomy, with the dormant meaning and admirable nonchalance of Lord Castlereagh’s features, the manly sleekness of Charles Long, and the monumental outline of John Kemble—what mortal would have owned the likeness!—I too, Sir, must claim the privilege of the principium individuationis, for myself as well as my neighbours; I will sit for no man’s picture but my own, and not to you for that; I am not desirous to play so many parts as Bottom, and as to his ass’s head which you would put upon my shoulders, it will do for you to wear the next time you shew yourself in Mr. Murray’s shop, or for your friend Mr. Southey to take with him, whenever he appears at Court.