A third member of this “Symposium” was perhaps superior to those who have
been already mentioned, in intellectual endowment. He has written the
circumstances of his early life with such a dignified simplicity, that
it is only necessary here to observe, that by the momentum of talent
alone, directed by discretion and sound judgment, he rose from the very
humblest station in life to an honourable and merited independence. He
was an excellent scholar, and had superintended the education of a young
nobleman with the highest credit to himself, and advantage to his pupil.
He afterwards accompanied him to the Continent, where he successfully
availed himself of the opportunities of his situation, to enlarge his own
stores of knowledge, as well as those of the individual under his care
and direction.
Of his first productions of a literary kind, nothing perhaps is known,
except by himself, and a very few; but at the period before us, he had
already, by the common acknowledgements of scholars, greatly adorned
the literature of his country. His primary distinction was a sort of
intuitive acuteness, which enabled him instantly to penetrate into the
real characters of those with whom he communicated, and to discern
the merits and defects of whatever was submitted to his perusal. This
acuteness, aided by a very strong judgment, gave him perhaps a particular
bias to criticism and to satire.
By one of his performances of this kind, he effectually put an
extinguisher upon a gaudy and meretricious taste, which, for too long
a period, had been permitted to intrude upon the regions of poetry,
and fraudulently under the guise of polish and softness, to substitute
sound for sense, tinsel for gold, and a profusion of false and garish
metaphors, for the best and truest embellishments of the art. Day after
day, even to fastidiousness, was the public nauseated with epistles,
odes, and sonnets, and canzonettas, under the signatures of Rosa,
Matilda, Laura, Yenda, and a hundred others. The honest indignation and
energy of this writer’s Satiric Muse, swept all these cobwebs away, and
they were visible no more.
By the fierce resentment of one of these offended parties, remarkable for
the licentiousness of his sentiments, and the indiscriminate abuse which
he scattered every where around him, our satirist was once involved in
a perilous, but whimsical predicament. The culprit felt so poignant by
the lash, which had been applied to his shoulders, that after brooding
over his wounds, in sullen, silent malignity, he determined upon taking
personal vengeance. He was led to this, from the mistaken apprehension,
that courage was proportioned to stature, and that a little body must
necessarily be the depository of a pusillanimous spirit. He, however,
found himself most egregiously mistaken.
Armed with “a dagger and a pall,” in other words with a bludgeon and
surtout, he contrived to watch the satirist to his bookseller’s shop,
which he was known to frequent regularly at a certain hour of the
morning. As soon as he had seen his foe enter, the exasperated poetaster
followed him in, and immediately, without a word of warning, in the most
base and cowardly manner, attempted to strike his adversary on the head.
But he reckoned without his host. The little man seeing what he was
about, caught his uplifted arm with one hand, and with the other actively
wrested the bludgeon from his grasp, which he managed with so much
dexterity and force upon his dastardly adversary, that the tables were
turned, and the assailant was fairly beaten out of the shop, with marks
of his discomfiture, which he carried for a long time afterwards manifest
on his visage.
Few things have been more extensively circulated than the satirical poem,
alluded to above. It passed through various editions, and still retains
the reputation it deserves. This effusion, which was limited to sonnet
writers, makers of odes, and Dilettanti scribblers of that class, was
succeeded by an attack managed with no less ability and skill, on certain
theatrical productions of similar tendency and character, which for a
long time usurped an undue possession of the stage. This met with the
same favourable reception from the public, and was productive of equally
good consequences.
But the “_magnum opus_” of this distinguished personage, is one that will
perish only with the language. It is one which occupied the thoughts of
his earliest years, and was progressively completed, in the full maturity
of his talents. It combines all the extensive and essential qualities of
deep erudition, acute criticism, sound observation, and exquisite taste.
In the character in which he is here introduced, namely, as a member of
the Symposium, it is impossible to conceive any thing more unassuming,
mild, and agreeable, than his manner and conversation. Never impatient of
contradiction, never dogmatical in his arguments, he always improved the
“olla podrida” of the meeting, without taking any merit from the flavour
of the sauces, which he himself contributed to the mess.
When the Sexagenarian retired from the world, the same personage was
still employed in the same honourable and useful pursuits, which had
occupied the whole of his life, and which had more peculiarly in view the
interest of literature, and the cause of truth.
At whatever point, and by whatever means, the evil disposed, were
exercising their machinations against what he conceived to be the honest
fame, and real interest of his country, wherever subtlety and artifice
were employed, by misrepresentations, to mislead, or by fallacies to
attempt imposition on the public, there was his vigilance prepared to
detect, and his firmness resolved to check any effectual operation of the
mischief. He obtained the meed he merited, “_laudari a laudatis_.”
Non quisquam fruitur veris odoribus
Hyblæos latebris nec spoliat favos,
Si fronti caveat, si timeat rubos,
Armat spina rosas, mella tegunt apes.