up on his pofteriors, and at last dejected me with a headlong precipitation into a muddy ditch, and then, with an incredible acceleration of velocity, vertiginated along the arable, impregnated with a grain, which in England feeds the horfes, but in Scotland supports the people*. Annihilation and existence were now so nearly equiponderant, that they lay in the trepidations of the balance. I risqued a fubaqueous voyage*, a total interruption of reciprocal respiration, a † comminution of life, in a curt, a forisfamiliation out of the universe. But our poet's powers of commiferation being aroused at such a com. passionable object as I then exhibited, fuffered not his ardour for a reciprocation of pleasures and multiplying stipulations to preponderate over his feelings of humanity. He hied with all the ardour of folicitude to deliver me from those stagnated waters of collected impurity, where a frigorifick torpor had already begun to encroach on my veins ‡. He stoop'd fublimes, and at last reinstated me, and when my powers of observation were refufcitated, exhibited an unusual appearance to my view. A ruddy plenilunar refplendent countenance, a vigorous athletick herculean form, arrayed in a rusty black coat, and dirty buck-fkin breeches. Sensible of the univerfality of * The above is the definition given of oats by Lexiphanes in his very facetious dictionary, and is, no doubt, intended by him for a farcasm against the Scotch; a people he is said to hold in high contempt, and, in my opinion, very justly too, for most of them, I have been told, are his great admirers, and so much his very humble servants, that they think it even an honour to be abused by him. For my own part, the more I study this exalted genius, the more I am forced to admire him. For instance, one should naturally expect wit and humour in periodical Essays, Novels, and Romances; but read his Ramblers and Rasselas, you meet with nothing like it, nothing but what he calleth, stern philofophy, dolorous declamation, and dictatorial instruction: whereas confult his dictionary, and there you have it with a vengeance. In short, he is author of the first witty dictionary that ever was heard of. This, however, is not all. Befides being witty and facetious, 'tis also national, personal, political, and patriotical; in a word, every thing but what it ought to be. For proof of which, befide the aforesaid article of oats, confult his definitions of Excife, Favourite, Gazetteer, Penfion, Penfioner, Revolution, &c. dations * Ram. No. 109. Ram. No. 108. Elem. of Criticifm. † See Nouradin, the merchant's, dying address to his fon Almamoulin. Ramb. Vol. 3. p. 80. § Pleaf. Imag. B. 2. L. 268. the cause of my present infelicities, I roufed up all my particular powers of dolorous declamation, and warbled my groans with uncommon elegance and energy*. I effufed the following ejaculation against the whole species of nymphs who enjoy a perpetual fufceptibility of occafionaldelight†. "May Lais, Thais, Limas, Lupa, Succuba, Quadrantaria, Obolaria, Euriole, Sthenio, Medusa, Erinnys, Megæra and Tyfiphone-May all these, and all fuch ladies, whether fick or found, high or low, of blood and title, or ditch and dunghill, natives, foreign or infernal-May this glorious group of Torrismond's angels, these Gorgons, furies, harpies, leaches, Syrens, centaur-making Syrens! paid or unpaid, keeping or kept, on fire or quenched, genevaed or citroned, in closet or cellar, in tavern, bagnio, brothel, roundhouse, Bridewell, or Newgate.-Oh may they cease, from this hour to sing or dance, fmile or frown, please or plague, pray or fwear, our British, unbritish youth, manhood or age, out of their fenfes, * Ramb. No. 109. Ramb. No. 111. health, health, estates, reputation, human nature, and hopes of heaven ! " And these enchantresses laying aside their spells, may the bewitched of GreatBritain recover their pristine form, as Circe's herd, at the prayer of Ulysses. At the touch of my disenchanting pen, may they leap out of their hides for joy; and laying hold on their long-deserted definition of man, reason and two legs, walk uprightly for the future. "Rejoice with me, my friend! for do I dream, or didst thou not observe? Didst thou not hear? Intonuit levum. As the dark cloud which caused it is vanished, and a flood of light rushes in; so shall it fare with thee; I see thy dawning reason, I fee the break of my moral day. And what I fee, I shall relate; and what I relate, tho' strange, let no man disbelieve*. "Concluding thus my ejaculation, the bard rejoined. Ah! what, my friend, has private life to do With things of publicnature? Why to view * This rant of inimitable nonsense, contained in the above three paragraphs, is taken word for word from a celebrated modern. Vid. Centaur not fabulous. Would you, thus cruellythose scenes unfold, Which without pain and horror to behold, Must eitherspeak me more or less than man; Which friends may pardon, but I never cans. "Having thus reciprocally rhapsodized, we disparted. The bard retired behind the umbrageous hedge, finally to accomplish his interrupted repercussions of communicated pleasures ||. As for myself, I was compelled to ambulate to Highgate, in order to evaporate the humidity of my habiliments, and contemper the malignity of frigorifick torpor with culinary irradiations. The Carevanferay to which my erratick steps were accidentally conducted, was the emblematical sign of fecundity and confequential cuckoldom at Highgate. There, according to the wonted modes and formaHities of the manfion, I became obligated by a double facramental stipulation: in the first place, never to imbibe small beer, whilft I could acquire convival ale, unless the former were endued with higherpowers of sensitive gratification. In the next place, § Vid. Churchill's Conference. |