Whatever it is, it is within
his desert, for what is observed of some creatures that at the same time
they trade in productions three stories high, suckling the first, big
with the second, and clicketing for the third: a committee-man is the
counterpoint, his mischief is superfoetation, a certain scale of
destruction, for he ruins the father, beggars the son, and strangles the
hope of all posterity.
THE CHARACTER OF A DIURNAL-MAKER.
A diurnal-maker is the sub-almoner of history, Queen Mab's register, one
whom, by the same figure that a north country pedlar is a merchantman,
you may style an author. It is like overreach of language, when every
thin tinder-cloaked quack must be called a doctor; when a clumsy cobbler
usurps the attribute of our English peers, and is vamped a translator.
List him a writer and you smother Geoffrey in swabber-slops; the very
name of dabbler oversets him; he is swallowed up in the phrase, like Sir
S.L. [Samuel Luke] in a great saddle, nothing to be seen but the giddy
feather in his crown. They call him a Mercury, but he becomes the
epithet like the little negro mounted upon an elephant, just such
another blot rampant. He has not stuffings sufficient for the reproach
of a scribbler, but it hangs about him like an old wife's skin when the
flesh hath forsaken her, lank and loose. He defames a good title as well
as most of our modern noblemen; those wens of greatness, the body
politic's most peccant humours blistered into lords.
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