SIR FRETFUL PLAGIARY. No, quite the contrary! their abuse is, in fact, the best panegyric—I like it of all things. An author’s reputation is only in danger from their support. SNEER. Why, that’s true—and that attack, now, on you the other day— SIR FRETFUL PLAGIARY. What? where? DANGLE. Ay, you mean in a paper of Thursday: it was completely ill-natured, to be sure. SIR FRETFUL PLAGIARY. Oh so much the better.—Ha! Ha! Ha! I wouldn’t have it otherwise. DANGLE. Certainly it is only to be laughed at; for— SIR FRETFUL PLAGIARY. You don’t happen to recollect what the fellow said, do you? SNEER. Pray, Dangle—Sir Fretful seems a little anxious— SIR FRETFUL PLAGIARY. O Lud, no!—anxious!—not I—not the least.—I—but one may as well hear, you know. DANGLE. Sneer, do you recollect?—[_Aside to_ SNEER.] Make out something. SNEER. [_Aside to_ DANGLE.] I will.—[_Aloud_.] Yes, yes, I remember perfectly. SIR FRETFUL PLAGIARY. Well, and pray now—not that it signifies—what might the gentleman say? SNEER. Why, he roundly asserts that you have not the slightest invention or original genius whatever; though you are the greatest traducer of all other authors living. SIR FRETFUL PLAGIARY. Ha! ha! ha!—very good! SNEER. That as to comedy, you have not one idea of your own, he believes, even in your commonplace-book—where stray jokes and pilfered witticisms are kept with as much method as the ledger of the lost and stolen office. SIR FRETFUL PLAGIARY. Ha! ha! ha!—very pleasant! SNEER. Nay, that you are so unlucky as not to have the skill even to steal with taste:—but that you glean from the refuse of obscure volumes, where more judicious plagiarists have been before you; so that the body of your work is a composition of dregs and sentiments—like a bad tavern’s worst wine. SIR FRETFUL PLAGIARY. Ha! ha! SNEER. In your more serious efforts, he says, your bombast would be less intolerable, if the thoughts were ever suited to the expression; but the homeliness of the sentiment stares through the fantastic encumbrance of its fine language, like a clown in one of the new uniforms! SIR FRETFUL PLAGIARY. Ha! ha! SNEER. That your occasional tropes and flowers suit the general coarseness of your style, as tambour sprigs would a ground of linsey-woolsey; while your imitations of Shakspeare resemble the mimicry of Falstaff’s page, and are about as near the standard as the original. SIR FRETFUL PLAGIARY. Ha! SNEER. In short, that even the finest passages you steal are of no service to you; for the poverty of your own language prevents their assimilating; so that they lie on the surface like lumps of marl on a barren moor, encumbering what it is not in their power to fertilize! SIR FRETFUL PLAGIARY. [_After great agitation_.] Now, another person would be vexed at this! SNEER. Oh! but I wouldn’t have told you—only to divert you. SIR FRETFUL PLAGIARY. I know it—I am diverted.—Ha! ha! ha!—not the least invention!—Ha! ha! ha!—very good!—very good!