C’est la qui fait peur aux esprits de ce tems,Qui tout blancs au dehors, sont tout noirs au dedans.Ils tremblent qu’un censeur, que sa verve encourage,Ne vienne en ses ecrits demasquer leur visage,Et fouillant dans leurs mœurs en tout liberté,N’aille du fonds du puits tirer la verité.CHAPTER XXII.
C’est la qui fait peur aux esprits de ce tems,Qui tout blancs au dehors, sont tout noirs au dedans.Ils tremblent qu’un censeur, que sa verve encourage,Ne vienne en ses ecrits demasquer leur visage,Et fouillant dans leurs mœurs en tout liberté,N’aille du fonds du puits tirer la verité.
C’est la qui fait peur aux esprits de ce tems,Qui tout blancs au dehors, sont tout noirs au dedans.Ils tremblent qu’un censeur, que sa verve encourage,Ne vienne en ses ecrits demasquer leur visage,Et fouillant dans leurs mœurs en tout liberté,N’aille du fonds du puits tirer la verité.
C’est la qui fait peur aux esprits de ce tems,Qui tout blancs au dehors, sont tout noirs au dedans.Ils tremblent qu’un censeur, que sa verve encourage,Ne vienne en ses ecrits demasquer leur visage,Et fouillant dans leurs mœurs en tout liberté,N’aille du fonds du puits tirer la verité.
C’est la qui fait peur aux esprits de ce tems,
Qui tout blancs au dehors, sont tout noirs au dedans.
Ils tremblent qu’un censeur, que sa verve encourage,
Ne vienne en ses ecrits demasquer leur visage,
Et fouillant dans leurs mœurs en tout liberté,
N’aille du fonds du puits tirer la verité.
A third member of this “Symposium” was perhaps superior to those who have been already mentioned, in intellectual endowment. He has written the circumstances of his early life with such a dignified simplicity, that it is only necessary here to observe, that by the momentum of talent alone, directed by discretion and sound judgment, he rose from the very humblest station in life to an honourable and merited independence. He was an excellent scholar, and had superintended the education of a young nobleman with the highest credit to himself, and advantage to his pupil. He afterwards accompanied him to the Continent, where he successfully availed himself of the opportunities of his situation, to enlarge his own stores of knowledge,as well as those of the individual under his care and direction.
Of his first productions of a literary kind, nothing perhaps is known, except by himself, and a very few; but at the period before us, he had already, by the common acknowledgements of scholars, greatly adorned the literature of his country. His primary distinction was a sort of intuitive acuteness, which enabled him instantly to penetrate into the real characters of those with whom he communicated, and to discern the merits and defects of whatever was submitted to his perusal. This acuteness, aided by a very strong judgment, gave him perhaps a particular bias to criticism and to satire.
By one of his performances of this kind, he effectually put an extinguisher upon a gaudy and meretricious taste, which, for too long a period, had been permitted to intrude upon the regions of poetry, and fraudulently under the guise of polish and softness, to substitute sound for sense, tinsel for gold, and a profusion of false and garish metaphors, for the best and truest embellishments of the art. Day after day, even to fastidiousness, was the public nauseated with epistles, odes, and sonnets, and canzonettas, under the signatures of Rosa, Matilda, Laura, Yenda, and a hundred others. The honest indignation and energy of this writer’s Satiric Muse, swept all these cobwebs away, and they were visibleno more.
By the fierce resentment of one of these offended parties, remarkable for the licentiousness of his sentiments, and the indiscriminate abuse which he scattered every where around him, our satirist was once involved in a perilous, but whimsical predicament. The culprit felt so poignant by the lash, which had been applied to his shoulders, that after brooding over his wounds, in sullen, silent malignity, he determined upon taking personal vengeance. He was led to this, from the mistaken apprehension, that courage was proportioned to stature, and that a little body must necessarily be the depository of a pusillanimous spirit. He, however, found himself most egregiously mistaken.
Armed with “a dagger and a pall,” in other words with a bludgeon and surtout, he contrived to watch the satirist to his bookseller’s shop, which he was known to frequent regularly at a certain hour of the morning. As soon as he had seen his foe enter, the exasperated poetaster followed him in, and immediately, without a word of warning, in the most base and cowardly manner, attempted to strike his adversary on the head. But he reckoned without his host. The little man seeing what he was about, caught his uplifted arm with one hand, and with the other actively wrested the bludgeon from his grasp, which he managed with so much dexterityand force upon his dastardly adversary, that the tables were turned, and the assailant was fairly beaten out of the shop, with marks of his discomfiture, which he carried for a long time afterwards manifest on his visage.
Few things have been more extensively circulated than the satirical poem, alluded to above. It passed through various editions, and still retains the reputation it deserves. This effusion, which was limited to sonnet writers, makers of odes, and Dilettanti scribblers of that class, was succeeded by an attack managed with no less ability and skill, on certain theatrical productions of similar tendency and character, which for a long time usurped an undue possession of the stage. This met with the same favourable reception from the public, and was productive of equally good consequences.
But the “magnum opus” of this distinguished personage, is one that will perish only with the language. It is one which occupied the thoughts of his earliest years, and was progressively completed, in the full maturity of his talents. It combines all the extensive and essential qualities of deep erudition, acute criticism, sound observation, and exquisite taste.
In the character in which he is here introduced, namely, as a member of the Symposium, it is impossible to conceive any thing more unassuming,mild, and agreeable, than his manner and conversation. Never impatient of contradiction, never dogmatical in his arguments, he always improved the “olla podrida” of the meeting, without taking any merit from the flavour of the sauces, which he himself contributed to the mess.
When the Sexagenarian retired from the world, the same personage was still employed in the same honourable and useful pursuits, which had occupied the whole of his life, and which had more peculiarly in view the interest of literature, and the cause of truth.
At whatever point, and by whatever means, the evil disposed, were exercising their machinations against what he conceived to be the honest fame, and real interest of his country, wherever subtlety and artifice were employed, by misrepresentations, to mislead, or by fallacies to attempt imposition on the public, there was his vigilance prepared to detect, and his firmness resolved to check any effectual operation of the mischief. He obtained the meed he merited, “laudari a laudatis.”