 - As for his cotemporaries, he could not bear to hear
one of them mentioned with any degree of applause - They were all dunces,
pedants, plagiaries, quacks, and impostors; and you could not name a single
performance, but what was tame, stupid, and insipid. It must be owned, that this
writer had nothing to charge his conscience with, on the side of flattery; for,
I understand, he was never known to praise one line that was written, even by
those with whom he lived on terms of good-fellowship. This arrogance and
presumption, in depreciating authors, for whose reputation the company may be
interested, is such an insult upon the understanding, as I could not bear
without wincing.
    I desired to know his reasons for decrying some works, which had afforded me
uncommon pleasure; and, as demonstration did not seem to be his talent, I
dissented from his opinion with great freedom. Having been spoiled by the
deference and humility of his hearers, he did not bear contradiction with much
temper; and the dispute might have grown warm, had it not been interrupted by
the entrance of a rival bard, at whose appearance he always quits the place -
They are of different cabals, and have been at open war these twenty years - If
the other was dogmatical, this genius was declamatory: he did not discourse, but
harangue; and his orations were equally tedious and turgid. He too pronounces ex
cathedra upon the characters of his cotemporaries; and though he scruples not to
deal out praise, even lavishly, to the lowest reptile in Grubstreet who will
either flatter him in private, or mount the public rostrum as his panegyrist, he
damns all the other writers of the age, with the utmost insolence and rancour -
One is a blunderbuss, as being a native of Ireland; another, a half-starved
louse of literature, from the banks of the Tweed; a third, an ass, because he
enjoys a pension from the government; a fourth, the very angel of dullness;
because he succeeded in a species of writing in which this Aristarchus had
failed; a fifth, who presumed to make strictures upon one of his performances,
he holds as a bug in criticism, whose stench is more offensive than his sting -
In short, except himself and his myrmidons, there is not a man of genius or
learning in the three kingdoms. As for the success of those, who have written
without the pale of this confederacy, he imputes it entirely to want of taste in
the public; not considering, that to the approbation of
