aughter, when one of
these commentators even points his attacks at the very name of his
adversary? According to Kuster, the name of Perizonius signifies a
_certain part_ of the human body. How is it possible, that with such a
name he could be right concerning the AEs grave? But does that of Kuster
promise a better thing, since it signifies a beadle; a man who drives
dogs out of churches?--What madness is this!"

Corneille, like our Dryden, felt the acrimony of literary irritation. To
the critical strictures of D'Aubignac it is acknowledged he paid the
greatest attention, for, after this critic's _Pratique du Theatre_
appeared, his tragedies were more artfully conducted. But instead of
mentioning the critic with due praise, he preserved an ungrateful
silence. This occasioned a quarrel between the poet and the critic, in
which the former exhaled his bile in several abusive epigrams, which
have, fortunately for his credit, not been preserved in his works.

The lively Voltaire could not resist the charm of abusing his
adversaries. We may smile when he calls a blockhead, a blockhead; a
dotard, a dotard; but when he attacks, for a difference of opinion, the
_morals_ of another man, our sensibility is alarmed. A higher tribunal
than that of criticism is to decide on the _actions_ of men.

There is a certain disguised malice, which some writers have most
unfairly employed in characterising a contemporary. Burnet called Prior,
_one Prior_. In Bishop Parker's History of his Own Times, an innocent
reader may start at seeing the celebrated Marvell described as an
outcast of society; an infamous libeller; and one whose talents were
even more despicable than his person. To such lengths did the hatred of
party, united with personal rancour, carry this bishop, who was himself
the worst of time-servers. He was, however, amply paid by the keen wit
of Marvell in "The Rehearsal Transposed," which may still be read with
delight, as an admirable effusion of banter, wit, and satire. Le Clerc,
a cool ponderous Greek critic, quarrelled with Boileau about a passage
in Longinus, and several years afterwards, in revising Moreri's
Dictionary, gave a short sarcastic notice of the poet's brother; in
which he calls him the elder brother of _him who has written the book
entitled, "Satires of Mr. Boileau Despreaux_!"--the works of the modern
Horace, which were then delighting Europe, he calls, with simple
impudence, "a book entitled Satires!"

The w