s, and books, nicely enough to satisfy Dr. Johnson,
the Bolt-Courtier must have been a very leech of verjuice. There is a
passage in one of his letters to Pope,--I cannot just now put my hand
upon it,--in which he suggests, in rather coarse language, the subject
of "The Beggar's Opera" as a capital subject for their common friend,
Gay. And yet one can barely suppress a sigh at all this luxury of
levity, when he remembers that dreadful "_Ubi saeva indignatio ulterius
cor lacerare nequit_," and reflects upon the hope deferred which vented
itself in that stinging couplet,--

"In every court the parallel will hold; And kings, like private folks,
are bought and sold."

I remember a hack-writer,--and of such, I am afraid, is too exclusively
my literary kingdom,--who classified the vices which Swift smote so
fearfully in "The Voyage to the Houyhnhnms"; and the curious catalogue
contained "avarice, fraud, cheating, violence, rapine, extortion,
cruelty, oppression, tyranny, rancor, envy, malice, detraction,
hatred, revenge, murder, bribery, corruption, pimping, lying, perjury,
subornation, treachery, ingratitude, gaming, flattery, drunkenness,
gluttony, luxury, vanity, effeminacy, cowardice, pride, impudence,
hypocrisy, infidelity, blasphemy, idolatry, and innumerable other vices,
many of them the notorious characteristics of the bulk of humankind."
Delightful catalogue! How odd, indeed, that a man with such work to do
should not have sported with Amaryllis, or played with the tangles of
Neaera's hair,--should not have worn well-anointed love-locks and snowy
linen,--should, on the other hand, have bared his brawny arm, and sent
the hissing flail down swiftly upon the waled and blistered back of
Sham! How much better would it have been, if he had written a history,
in twelve elephantine volumes, of the rise, culmination, and decay of
the Empire of Barataria, which we would have gone to prison, the rack,
and the drop, with rapture rather than read!

How low seems Fielding, with his pot-house heroes, Tom Jones, Squire
Western, and Jonathan Wild, when we contrast them with the elegant,
cleanly-polished, and extremely proper Sir Charles Grandison! What a
coarse drab is Molly Seagrim, when juxtaposited with the princess of all
prudes, the indomitably virtuous Pamela! How childish was it of Cowper
to sing of sofas, poultry, rabbits, orchards, meadows, and barnyards!
How much more nobly employed was John Dryden in manufacturing a
bra