[24]. Bishop Atterbury. Francis Atterbury (1662–1732), Bishop of Rochester, Jacobite and controversialist, and correspondent of Pope and Swift. See also vol. VIII. Lectures on the English Comic Writers, p. 14.
Intus et in cute. Persius, Sat. III. 30.
The New Eloise. Rousseau’s Nouvelle Héloïse (1760), Sixième Partie, Lettre XII.
ESSAY III. ON THE CONVERSATION OF AUTHORS
From The London Magazine, ‘Table Talk, III.,’ Sep. 20, 1820, signed ‘T., Winterslow Hut,’ vol. 2. The footnote which follows was not reprinted from the Magazine. The Essay was also published as ‘Table Talk, V.’ The New Monthly Magazine, No. 24, Vol. 5, 1822. See the Essay ‘On Persons one would wish to have seen.’
‘Of all persons spouters at Debating Societies are the most intolerable and troublesome as acquaintance. They have a constant desire to hear themselves talk, and never know what any one else wishes to hear. They talk incessantly, and say nothing. They are loud, offensive, and common-place. They try to get the ear of the company as they get the ear of the Chair, which, having got, they will not let go. They bait some unpretending individual (as if it was a case-hardened antagonist) with gross and vapid assurance, and turn a drawing-room into a bear-garden. They have all the prolixity and unwieldiness of authorship, without any of the solidity, and have all the ambition of orators to shine, without the ability, the excuse, or the inclination on the part of others to attend to them. I know one of this class in particular who has no more business in any party of ladies and gentlemen, with his splay-foot manners and long train of awkward speeches, than the Dragon of Wantley.’
[25]. And of his port. Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, 69.
He is one that cannot make a good leg. The Return from Parnassus, II. 6. See vol. V., Lectures on the Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth, p. 284.
Tull’s Husbandry. New Horse-hoing Husbandry, or an Essay on the Principles of Tillage and Vegetation; wherein is shewn a sort of Vineyard Culture into the Corn Fields, in order to increase their Product, and diminish the Common Expense by Instruments described in the Cuts. By Jethro Tull (1733). The Fourth edition contained an Introduction by William Cobbett. See also vol. VI., Table Talk, p. 102 and note.
The Philosopher of Botley. William Cobbett (1762–1835), who settled at Botley, Hampshire, in the early years of the nineteenth century.