ep, eloquent
things in half a dozen half sentences as he does. His jests scald like
tears: and he probes a question with a play upon words. What a keen,
laughing, hair-brained vein of home-felt truth! What choice venom! How
often did we cut into the haunch of letters, while we discussed the haunch
of mutton on the table! How we skimmed the cream of criticism! How we got
into the heart of controversy! How we picked out the marrow of authors!
"And, in our flowing cups, many a good name and true was freshly
remembered." Recollect (most sage and critical reader) that in all this I
was but a guest! Need I go over the names? They were but the old
everlasting set--Milton and Shakespeare, Pope and Dryden, Steele and
Addison, Swift and Gay, Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, Richardson, Hogarth's
prints, Claude's landscapes, the Cartoons at Hampton-court, and all those
things, that, having once been, must ever be. The Scotch Novels had not
then been heard of: so we said nothing about them. In general, we were
hard upon the moderns. The author of the Rambler was only tolerated in
Boswell's Life of him; and it was as much as anyone could do to edge in a
word for Junius. L---- could not bear Gil Blas. This was a fault. I
remember the greatest triumph I ever had was in persuading him, after some
years' difficulty, that Fielding was better than Smollett. On one
occasion, he was for making out a list of persons famous in history that
one would wish to see again--at the head of whom were Pontius Pilate, Sir
Thomas Browne, and Dr. Faustus--but we black-balled most of his list! But
with what a gusto would he describe his favourite authors, Donne, or Sir
Philip Sidney, and call their most crabbed passages _delicious_! He tried
them on his palate as epicures taste olives, and his observations had a
smack in them, like a roughness on the tongue. With what discrimination he
hinted a defect in what he admired most--as in saying that the display of
the sumptuous banquet in Paradise Regained was not in true keeping, as the
simplest fare was all that was necessary to tempt the extremity of
hunger--and stating that Adam and Eve in Paradise Lost were too much like
married people. He has furnished many a text for C---- to preach upon.
There was no fuss or cant about him: nor were his sweets or his sours ever
diluted with one particle of affectation. I cannot say that the party at
L----'s were all of one description. There were honorary members,
lay-brothers