utton, exhilarating cordials, books, pictures,
the opportunities of seeing foreign countries, independence, heart's
ease, a man's own time to himself, are not _muck_--however we may be
pleased to scandalise with that appellation the faithful metal that
provides them for us.

VII.--OF TWO DISPUTANTS, THE WARMEST IS GENERALLY IN THE WRONG

Our experience would lead us to quite an opposite conclusion. Temper,
indeed, is no test of truth; but warmth and earnestness are a proof
at least of a man's own conviction of the rectitude of that which
he maintains. Coolness is as often the result of an unprincipled
indifference to truth or falsehood, as of a sober confidence in a
man's own side in a dispute. Nothing is more insulting sometimes than
the appearance of this philosophic temper. There is little Titubus,
the stammering law-stationer in Lincoln's Inn--we have seldom known
this shrewd little fellow engaged in an argument where we were not
convinced he had the best of it, if his tongue would but fairly have
seconded him. When he has been spluttering excellent broken sense
for an hour together, writhing and labouring to be delivered of the
point of dispute--the very gist of the controversy knocking at his
teeth, which like some obstinate iron-grating still obstructed its
deliverance--his puny frame convulsed, and face reddening all over at
an unfairness in the logic which he wanted articulation to expose, it
has moved our gall to see a smooth portly fellow of an adversary, that
cared not a button for the merits of the question, by merely laying
his hand upon the head of the stationer, and desiring him to be _calm_
(your tall disputants have always the advantage), with a provoking
sneer carry the argument clean from him in the opinion of all the
bystanders, who have gone away clearly convinced that Titubus must
have been in the wrong, because he was in a passion; and that Mr.----,
meaning his opponent, is one of the fairest, and at the same time one
of the most dispassionate arguers breathing.

VIII.--THAT VERBAL ALLUSIONS ARE NOT WIT, BECAUSE THEY WILL NOT BEAR A
TRANSLATION

The same might be said of the wittiest local allusions. A custom is
sometimes as difficult to explain to a foreigner as a pun. What would
become of a great part of the wit of the last age, if it were tried by
this test? How would certain topics, as aldermanity, cuckoldry, have
sounded to a Terentian auditory, though Terence himself had been alive