[24]. These fantastic poets are like a foolish ringer at Plymouth that Northcote tells the story of. He was proud of his ringing, and the boys who made a jest of his foible used to get him in the belfry, and ask him, ‘Well now, John, how many good ringers are there in Plymouth?’ ‘Two,’ he would say, without any hesitation. ‘Ay, indeed! and who are they?’—‘Why, first, there’s myself, that’s one: and—and’—‘Well, and who’s the other?’—‘Why there’s, there’s—Ecod, I can’t think of any other but myself.’ Talk we of one Master Launcelot. The story is of ringers: it will do for any vain, shallow, self-satisfied egotist of them all.
[25]. The celebrated Peter Pindar (Dr. Wolcot) first discovered and brought out the talents of the late Mr. Opie, the painter. He was a poor Cornish boy, and was out at work in the fields, when the poet went in search of him. ‘Well, my lad, can you go and bring me your very best picture?’ The other flew like lightning, and soon came back with what he considered as his masterpiece. The stranger looked at it, and the young artist, after waiting for some time without his giving any opinion, at length exclaimed eagerly, ‘Well, what do you think of it?’—‘Think of it?’ said Wolcot, ‘why I think you ought to be ashamed of it—that you who might do so well, do no better!’ The same answer would have applied to this artist’s latest performances, that had been suggested by one of his earliest efforts.
[26]. If two persons play against each other at any game, one of them necessarily fails.
[27]. Written at Winterslow Hut, January 18th–19th, 1821.
[28]. Webster’s Duchess of Malfi.
[29]. Shenstone and Gray were two men, one of whom pretended to live to himself, and the other really did so. Gray shrunk from the public gaze (he did not even like his portrait to be prefixed to his works) into his own thoughts and indolent musings; Shenstone affected privacy, that he might be sought out by the world; the one courted retirement in order to enjoy leisure and repose, as the other coquetted with it, merely to be interrupted with the importunity of visitors and the flatteries of absent friends.
[30]. ‘Plut. of Banishment. He compares those who cannot live out of their own country, to the simple people who fancied the moon of Athens was a finer moon than that of Corinth.
—Labentem cœlo quæ ducitis annum.
Virg. Georg.’
[31]. When Buonaparte left the Chamber of Deputies to go and fight his last fatal battle, he advised them not to be debating the forms of Constitutions when the enemy was at their gates. Benjamin Constant thought otherwise. He wanted to play a game at cat’s-cradle between the Republicans and Royalists, and lost his match. He did not care, so that he hampered a more efficient man than himself.