ll submit
to be hectored out of his right to think, and to speak as he thinks, by
one who has nothing but his own dictatorial self-conceit to show as his
authority, perhaps backed with a pretentious influence coming from a
subordinate official position that he holds in Church or State?

Even when the dogmatist possesses that amount of intelligence and
position which legitimately place him above most of the company into
which he may go, he is seldom or ever welcomed as an acceptable
conversationalist. But when he is a man below mediocre--a pedant--he is
insupportable.

Were it required to state what are the causes of the fault of this
talker, they might be summed up in two words--_ignorance and pride_. The
man who assumes to himself authority over other people's thought and
speech must indeed possess a large measure of these qualities. He must
estimate his powers at the highest value, and set down those of others
at the lowest. He is wise in his own conceit, and in others foolish. He
occupies a position which has been usurped by the stretch of his
self-importance, and from which he should be summarily deposed by the
unanimous vote of pure wisdom and sound intelligence.

Cowper, in speaking of this talker, thus describes him:--

"Where men of judgment creep and feel their way,
The positive pronounce without dismay;
Their want of light and intellect supplied
By sparks absurdity strikes out of pride.
Without the means of knowing right from wrong,
They always are decisive, clear, and strong;
Where others toil with philosophic force,
Their nimble nonsense takes a shorter course;
Flings at your head conviction in the lump,
And gains remote conclusions at a jump;
Their own defect invisible to them,
Seen in another, they at once condemn;
And, though self-idolised in every case,
Hate their own likeness in a brother's face.
The cause is plain, and not to be denied,
The proud are always most provoked by pride;
Few competitions but engender spite,
And those the most where neither has a right."

XXV.

_THE ALTILOQUENT._

"With words of learned length and thundering sound."
GOLDSMITH.

This is a talker not content to speak in words plain and simple, such as
common sense teaches and requires. He talks as though learning and
greatness in conversation consisted in fine words run together as beads
on a string. You would infer