128 A LOGICAL DISQUISITION ON EXALTED GENIUS. 



ought to soar like eagles ! and although my indignation is the 

 greatest imaginable against them, I can wish the advocates of so 

 wicked and unfathomable a proposition of this heterodox opinion no 

 worse punishment than that of being made themselves to suffer 

 what they so typically recommend to others. 



I would not have you think, gentlemen contemporaries, that in 

 this "paper" I address you like an overgrown SENECA, preaching 

 poverty from his rich alcove : certainly not / advise you to nothing 

 but what I practise myself; for I wield my " rapier-pen " (the scabbard 

 lies on my sofa) with all the sober seriousness of the dear old author of 

 Rasselas without a ninety-ninth particle of his unequalled strength 

 of mind, and in the absence of the slightest approach to his intel- 

 lectual acumen; to mention any of the modern tribe, in just and 

 patriotic preference to Johnson, would be like looking for Wat 

 Tyler's Dr. Southey in his boat on the vast Atlantic Ocean, instead 

 of on the smooth unruffled surface of his lake at Keswick ; and I 

 venture to assert, too, that a high-minded man may soon discover, 

 that as some doctors' writings smell of the " library," mine smell of 

 the lamp. 



Whether my present endeavours may be crowned with success, or 

 otherwise, I shall not fling away my ** rapier," for it was one of the 

 family gifts of a long line of ancestry ; which, without the slightest 

 difficulty (indeed it would afford me infinite pleasure to inform the 

 first minister of state of my legitimate right and indisputable title 

 to possess and use it, ad libitum, during pleasure ; provided always, 

 nevertheless, &c.), I can trace as far back as the year Anno Dom. 

 1657, my near relationship to Richard Cromwell, the son of Oliver, 

 the lofty and high minded Oliver. I have every reason for believing, 

 that the identical "rapier" which I now wield at discretion, aloft, 

 in midway atmosphere, was the same which the renowned Oliver wore 

 at his side, when he made Durham a university, which occurred 

 on the 15th of May, 1657; on the Restoration, however, this grant 

 was abolished. I have only to add, brothers of Attica ! that my 

 name has undergone some corruption during its existence through 

 the dark ages ; and that although I am not one of those who think 

 there can be the real worth of 1000 sterling lore in a name, 

 yet if his majesty would graciously permit of it, I would, in justice to 

 my RAPIER, resume the primitive cognomen of my ancestors. 

 Gentlemen of the lofty habitations! my "rapier" is at your especial 

 service ; and I am Yours to command, 



COGNOMINIS CROMWELL. 



N. B. Much care should be taken in order to prevent those vul- 

 gar innovators from knowing that there is a river in Macedon as 

 well as a river in Wales ; for who knows how low a use they may 

 make of the " waters of inspiration" in their dark system of adul- 

 teration ? O lepidum diem ! 



