resents a pleasing
resistance to the opposed tooth. You understand me--these delicate
subjects are necessarily obscure.

But it has a third flavor of its own, perfectly distinct from Cod or
Turbot, which it must be owned may to some not injudicious palates
render it acceptable--but to my unpractised tooth it presented rather a
crude river-fish-flavor, like your Pike or Carp, and perhaps like them
should have been tamed & corrected by some laborious & well chosen
sauce. Still I always suspect a fish which requires so much of
artificial settings-off. Your choicest relishes (like nature's
loveliness) need not the foreign aid of ornament, but are when unadorned
(that is, with nothing but a little plain anchovy & a squeeze of lemon)
then adorned the most. However, I shall go to Brighton again next
Summer, and shall have an opportunity of correcting my judgment, if it
is not sufficiently informed. I can only say that when Nature was
pleased to make the John Dory so notoriously deficient in outward graces
(as to be sure he is the very Rhinoceros of fishes, the ugliest dog that
swims, except perhaps the Sea Satyr, which I never saw, but which they
say is terrible), when she formed him with so few external advantages,
she might have bestowed a more elaborate finish in his parts internal, &
have given him a relish, a sapor, to recommend him, as she made Pope a
Poet to make up for making him crooked.

I am sorry to find that you have got a knack of saying things which are
not true to shew your wit. If I had no wit but what I must shew at the
expence of my virtue or my modesty, I had as lieve be as stupid as * * *
at the Tea Warehouse. Depend upon it, my dear Chambers, that an ounce of
integrity at our death-bed will stand us in more avail than all the wit
of Congreve or... For instance, you tell me a fine story about Truss,
and his playing at Leamington, which I know to be false, because I have
advice from Derby that he was whipt through the Town on that very day
you say he appeared in some character or other, for robbing an old woman
at church of a seal ring. And Dr. Parr has been two months dead. So it
won't do to scatter these untrue stories about among people that know
any thing. Besides, your forte is not invention. It is _judgment_,
particularly shown in your choice of dishes. We seem in that instance
born under one star. I like you for liking hare. I esteem you for
disrelishing minced veal. Liking is too cold a word.--I lo