a certain celebrated
Scotsman, with an air of infinite disgust,--'that ugh!' (making a
guttural sound as if of execration) 'he (viz. the said Scotsman) was
so chicken-breasted.' I have been assured by the way, that Mr.
Coleridge was mistaken in the mere matter of fact: but supposing that
he were not, what a reason for a philosopher to build a disgust upon!
And Mr. Wordsworth, in or about the year 1820, in expressing the
extremity of his _Nil admirari_ spirit, declared that he would not go
ten yards out of his road to see the finest specimen of man
(intellectually speaking) that Europe had to show: and so far indeed I
do not quarrel with his opinion; but Mr. Wordsworth went on to say
that this indifference did _not_ extend itself to man considered
physically; and that he would still exert himself to a small extent
(suppose a mile or so) for the sake of seeing Belzoni. _That_ was the
case he instanced: and, as I understood him, not by way of a general
illustration for his meaning, but that he really felt an exclusive
interest in this particular man's _physics_. Now Belzoni was certainly
a good tumbler, as I have heard; and hopped well upon one leg, when
surmounted and crested by a pyramid of men and boys; and jumped
capitally through a hoop; and did all sorts of tricks in all sorts of
styles, not at all worse than any monkey, bear, or learned pig, that
ever exhibited in Great Britain. And I would myself have given a
shilling to have seen him fight with that cursed Turk that assaulted
him in the streets of Cairo; and would have given him a crown for
catching the circumcised dog by the throat and effectually taking the
conceit out of his Mahometan carcass: but then _that_ would have been
for the spectacle of the passions, which, in such a case, would have
been let loose: as to the mere animal Belzoni,--who after all was not
to be compared to Topham the Warwickshire man, that drew back by main
force a cart, and its driver, and a strong horse,--as to the mere
animal Belzoni, I say, and his bull neck, I would have much preferred
to see a real bull or the Darlington ox. The sum of the matter is
this: all men, even those who are most manly in their style of
thinking and feeling, in many things retain the childishness of their
childish years: no man thoroughly weeds himself of all. And this
particular mode of childishness is one of the commonest, into which
they fall the more readily from the force of sympathy, and because
they