g up a factitious reputation the
less on that account. The longer it is delayed and kept sacred from the
vulgar gaze, the more it swells into imaginary consequence; the labour
and care required for a work of this kind being immense;--and then there
are no faults in an unexecuted translation. The only impeccable writers
are those that never wrote. Another is an oracle on subjects of taste
and classical erudition, because (he says at least) he reads Cicero
once a year to keep up the purity of his Latinity. A third makes the
indecency pass for the depth of his researches and for a high gusto in
_virtu,_ till, from his seeing nothing in the finest remains of ancient
art, the world by the merest accident find out that there is nothing in
him. There is scarcely anything that a grave face with an impenetrable
manner will not accomplish, and whoever is weak enough to impose upon
himself will have wit enough to impose upon the public--particularly if
he can make it their interest to be deceived by shallow boasting, and
contrives not to hurt their self-love by sterling acquirements. Do you
suppose that the understood translation of Thucydides costs its supposed
author nothing? A select party of friends and admirers dine with
him once a week at a magnificent town mansion, or a more elegant and
picturesque retreat in the country. They broach their Horace and their
old hock, and sometimes allude with a considerable degree of candour to
the defects of works which are brought out by contemporary writers--the
ephemeral offspring of haste and necessity!

Among other things, the learned languages are a ready passport to this
sort of unmeaning, unanalysed reputation. They presently lift a man up
among the celestial constellations, the signs of the zodiac (as it were)
and third heaven of inspiration, from whence he looks down on those
who are toiling on in this lower sphere, and earning their bread by the
sweat of their brain, at leisure and in scorn. If the graduates in this
way condescend to express their thoughts in English, it is understood to
be _infra dignitatem_--such light and unaccustomed essays do not fit
the ponderous gravity of their pen--they only draw to advantage and
with full justice to themselves in the bow of the ancients. Their native
tongue is to them strange, inelegant, unapt, and crude. They 'cannot
command it to any utterance of harmony. They have not the skill.' This
is true enough; but you must not say so, under a h