Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches — Volume 2Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
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Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches — Volume 2
Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
English essays
We have, in violation of our usual practice, transcribed Mr Sadler's
title-page from top to bottom, motto and all. The parallel implied
between the Essay on the Human Understanding and the Essay on
Superfecundity is exquisitely laughable. We can match it, however, with
mottoes as ludicrous. We remember to have heard of a dramatic piece,
entitled "News from Camperdown," written soon after Lord Duncan's
victory, by a man once as much in his own good graces as Mr Sadler is,
and now as much forgotten as Mr Sadler will soon be, Robert Heron. His
piece was brought upon the stage, and damned, "as it is phrased," in
the second act; but the author, thinking that it had been unfairly and
unjustly "run down," published it, in order to put his critics to shame,
with this motto from Swift: "When a true genius appears in the world,
you may know him by this mark--that the dunces are all in confederacy
against him." We remember another anecdote, which may perhaps be
acceptable to so zealous a churchman as Mr Sadler. A certain Antinomian
preacher, the oracle of a barn, in a county of which we do not think it
proper to mention the name, finding that divinity was not by itself a
sufficiently lucrative profession, resolved to combine with it that of
dog-stealing. He was, by ill-fortune, detected in several offences of
this description, and was in consequence brought before two justices,
who, in virtue of the powers given them by an act of parliament,
sentenced him to a whipping for each theft. The degrading punishment
inflicted on the pastor naturally thinned the flock; and the poor man
was in danger of wanting bread. He accordingly put forth a handbill
solemnly protesting his innocence, describing his sufferings, and
appealing to the Christian charity of the public; and to his pathetic
address he prefixed this most appropriate text: "Thrice was I beaten
with rods.--St Paul's Epistle to the Corinthians." He did not perceive
that, though St Paul had been scourged, no number of whippings, however
severe, will of themselves entitle a man to be considered as an apostle.
Mr Sadler seems to us to have fallen into a somewhat similar error. He
should remember that, though Locke may have been laughed at, so has Sir
Claudius Hunter; and that it takes something more than the laughter of
all the world to make a Locke.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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