imaginary
situation of a cross-examining Pleader. He may comment, in a vein of
agreeable irony, upon the profession, the manner of life, the look,
dress, or even the name, of the witness he is examining: when he has
raised a contemptuous opinion of him in the minds of the Court, he may
proceed to draw answers from him capable of a ludicrous turn; and he may
carve and garble these to his own liking.

This mode of proceeding you will find most practicable in Poetry, where
the boldness of the image or the delicacy of thought (for which the
Reader's mind was prepared in the original) will easily be made to appear
extravagant, or affected, if judiciously singled out, and detached from
the group to which it belongs. Again, since much depends upon the rhythm
and the terseness of expression (both of which are sometimes destroyed by
dropping a single word, or transposing a phrase), I have known much
advantage arise from _not_ quoting in the form of a literal extract: but
giving a brief summary in prose, of the contents of a poetical passage;
and interlarding your own language, with occasional phrases of the Poem
marked with inverted commas.

These, and a thousand other little expedients, by which the arts of
Quizzing and Banter flourish, practice will soon teach you. If it should
be necessary to transcribe a dull passage, not very fertile in topics of
humour and raillery; you may introduce it as a "favourable specimen of
the Author's manner."

Few people are aware of the powerful effects of what is philosophically
termed Association. Without any positive violation of truth, the whole
dignity of a passage may be undermined by contriving to raise some vulgar
and ridiculous notions in the mind of the reader: and language teems with
examples of words by which the same idea is expressed, with the
difference only that one excites a feeling of respect, the other of
contempt. Thus you may call a fit of melancholy, "the sulks"; resentment,
"a pet"; a steed, "a nag"; a feast, "a junketing"; sorrow and affliction,
"whining and blubbering". By transferring the terms peculiar to one state
of society, to analogous situations and characters in another, the same
object is attained. "A Drill Serjeant" or "a Cat and Nine Tails" in the
Trojan War, "a Lesbos smack putting into the Piraeus," "the Penny Post of
Jerusalem," and other combinations of the like nature which, when you have
a little indulged in that vein of thought, will readily suggest