He is an aggregate of many men, all of a certain
greatness. We may build up a conception of his powers if we mount
Rabelais upon Hudibras, lift him with the songfulness of Shelley, give
him a vein of Heinrich Heine, and cover him with the mantle of the
Anti-Jacobin, adding (that there may be some Irish in him) a dash of
Grattan, before he is in motion.
But such efforts at conceiving one great one by incorporation of minors
are vain, and cry for excuse. Supposing Wilkes for leading man in a
country constantly plunging into war under some plumed Lamachus, with
enemies periodically firing the land up to the gates of London, and a
Samuel Foote, of prodigious genius, attacking him with ridicule, I think
it gives a notion of the conflict engaged in by Aristophanes. This
laughing bald-pate, as he calls himself, was a Titanic pamphleteer, using
laughter for his political weapon; a laughter without scruple, the
laughter of Hercules. He was primed with wit, as with the garlic he
speaks of giving to the game-cocks, to make them fight the better.
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