"There is a Miltonic greatness about the man!" he exclaimed, throwing his eyes to the ceiling, in the contemplation of a visionary demigod. "A vastness, a massiveness, an incomprehensible--eh, eh?--ah, I can't exactly tell what, that places him far above all other writers."
"Every man to his taste," insinuated Mr. Blewitt; "but I certainly like what I can understand best. Now I don't understand Beethoven; but I _can_ understand Mozart, or Weber, or Haydn."
"It is very well if you do!" retorted the violoncellist, reflecting probably on the recent specimen Mr. Blewitt had given of his powers. "It is more than everybody does, I can tell you."
"Od, gentlemen, but it's grand music onyhow, and exceeding justice you have done it, if I may speak my mind. But ye ken, I'm no great shakes of a judge."
This was the opinion volunteered by Mr. Cheesham, who saw the musicians were giving symptoms of that tendency to discord for which they are proverbial, and threw out a sop to their vanity, which at once restored them to order. As he said himself, Mr. Cheesham was no great judge of music, nor, indeed, of any of the fine arts. He had read little, and thought less; and yet, since he had become independent of the world, he was fond of assuming an air of knowledge, that was exceedingly amusing. There was nothing, for instance, that he liked better to be talking about than history; and, nevertheless, that Hannibal was killed at the battle of Drumclog, and Julius Cæsar beheaded by Henry the Eighth, were facts which he would probably have had no hesitation in admitting, upon any reasonable representation.
By this time, Mr. Stukeley had joined the party, and was going his rounds, chatting, laughing, quizzing, and prosing, according to the different characters of the people whom he talked with. When he reached Mr. Cheesham, he found him in earnest conversation with Mr. Lilylipz, regarding the ruins of Tinglebury, an abbey not far from Potterwell, of which the architecture was pronounced, by Mr. Lilylipz, to be "_suttinly_ transcandent beyond anythin_k_. It is of that pure Græco-Gothic, which was brought over by William the Conqueror, and went out with the Saxons."
Stukeley encouraged the conversation, drawing out the presumptuous ignorance of Mr. Lilylipz, and the rusty nomeanings of the parent Cheesham into strong relief.