406 



ANNUAL REGISTER, 1794. 



clearest rensoning upon the distinc- 

 tions made by nature and education 

 betwixt man and man ; the cause of 

 their different colouis, and their so 

 sudden, or sometimes silent, lapses 

 from perfection to decay. His in- 

 formation now would be above all 

 times desirable, as we are yet much 

 perplexed concerning somo customs 

 of the old inhabitants of China ; 

 and it would be well for him, at his 

 leisure hours, to collate some ob- 

 scure passages of the Veidam with 

 the Edda, &c." When this topic 

 is exhausted, and others examined 

 in turn, and the friend finds out 

 that the gentleman passing by knew 

 the world only as a fruiterer in St. 

 James's Street is capable of know- 

 ing it — from repeatedly hearing the 

 debts, intrigues, connections, and 

 situations, of a few fashionable gen- 

 tlemen and ladies, he ends the dia- 

 logue in disgust, that a creature su- 

 perior, as he observes, in no mental 

 quahilcation to the chairman who 

 carries him home from his club of 

 an evening, should thus be celer 

 brated for so sublime a science as 

 knowledge of the world. 



Let me not close this article with- 

 out protesting that 1 never read the 

 dialogue in my life but once, above 

 thirty years ago, and that I only 

 quote the turn of it, and must not 

 be expected to remember woi'ds, or 

 even periods. My imitation would 

 he then too great a disgrace to his 

 name whom I was early instructed 

 to hold in the highest veneration : 

 the design was too striking to be 

 ever forgotten, and for the design 

 alone do I mean to be answerable ; 

 — it was done by mc merely to gra- 

 tify my recollection or past times 

 and studitb, whilst it served well 



enough besides to bring in our sy- 

 nonymy. 



Mr. Harris delighted mnch in 

 writing dialogues. Those at the end 

 of David Simj.le aw his, and ex- 

 quisite are they in their kind. There 

 are some in the world of h"s and 

 Floyer Sydenham's, both, I believe 

 which have never been printed cer- 

 tainly — perhaps never destroyed. 



To virest, to distort, la pervert. 



If meant of language naturally 

 enough follow the last article*, yet 

 will ignorance often shew powers of 

 this kind as plainly as science her- 

 self. Newspapers, magazines, and 

 other periodical publications, are 

 surprizingly skilful in the art oi dis- 

 torting metaphor, and perverting in 

 its turn every figure of grammar 

 and rhetoric ; nor would it be diffi- 

 cult to lurest all their common places 

 into a short passage by less violence 

 than they are daily doing to their 

 mother tongue, were we to say in 

 imitation of a herd of novel-writers, 

 Ricardo was a young fellow of fine 

 hopes, and made it his point to cut 

 a figure in the treasury line. His 

 uncle being a man who saw things 

 in a right liglit, undertook to pat 

 his boy upon as respectable a foot as 

 any of his young companions of the 

 same stamp 4 — on this head there- 

 fore, little more needs be understood, 

 than that Ricardo, under such cir- 

 cumstances, was very happy, and 

 soon drew aside the bright eyes of 

 Miss Julia, daughter to his uncle's 

 friend, a man of the same descrip-. 

 tion — a rough diamond, but who, 

 &c. Of such twisted, such dis- 

 torted, svich dislocated language, 

 every morair.g's literary hash pre^ 



* On vvranglinsr. 



sents 



