Is it necessary to challenge, what no one will be absurd enough to give--a contradiction to so acknowledged a truth? Or is it necessary to state to the fashionable reader, that whatever may be the degree of Sir Joseph's boasted falshood, it cannot surpass the fairness of his complexion? The position, therefore, is what logicians call convertible: nothing can equal his falshood but his fairness; nothing his fairness but his falshood.--Incomparable!
Proceeding to a description of his eloquence, he says,
A sty of pigs, though all at once it squeaks, Means not so much as MAWBEY when he speaks; And his'try says, he never yet had bred A pig with such a voice or such a head! Except, indeed, when he essays to joke; And then his wit is truly pig-in-poke.
Describing Sir Joseph's acquisitions as a scholar, the author adds,
His various knowledge I will still maintain, He is indeed a knowing man in grain.
Some commentators have invidiously suggested, that the last line of this couplet should be printed thus,
assigning as their reason, that the phrase in grain evidently alludes to bran, with which Sir Joseph's little grunting commonwealth is supported; and for the discreet and prudent purchase of which our worthy baronet is famous.
Our author concludes his description of this great senator with the following distich:
Such adaptation ne'er was seen before, His trade a hog is, and his wit--a boar.
It has been proposed to us to amend the spelling: of the last word, thus, _bore_; this improvement, however, as it was called, we reject as a calumny.
Where the beauty of a passage is pre-eminently striking as above, we waste not criticism in useless efforts at emendation.
The writer goes on. He tells you he cannot quit this history of wits, without saying something of another individual; whom, however, he describes as every way inferior to the two last-mentioned, but who, nevertheless, possesses some pretensions to a place in the ROLLIAD. The individual alluded to, is Mr. GEORGE SELWYN. The author describes him as a man possessed of
A plenteous magazine of retail wit Vamp'd up at leisure for some future hit; Cut for suppos'd occasions, like the trade, Where old new things for every shape are made! To this assortment, well prepar'd at home, No human chance unfitted e'er can come; No accident, however strange or queer, But meets its ready well-kept comment here. --The wary beavers thus their stores increase, And spend their winter on their summer's grease.