3. [Which partly is suggested by the last remark.] That nearly all the
blockheads with whom I have at any time had the pleasure of conversing
upon the subject of style (and pardon me for saying that men of the most
sense are apt, upon two subjects, viz., poetry and style, to talk
_most_ like blockheads), have invariably regarded Swift's style not
as if _relatively_ good [_i.e. given_ a proper subject], but as if
_absolutely_ good--good unconditionally, no matter what the subject. Now,
my friend, suppose the case, that the Dean had been required to write a
pendant for Sir Walter Raleigh's immortal apostrophe to Death, or to many
passages that I will select in Sir Thomas Brown's 'Religio Medici,' and
his 'Urn-burial,' or to Jeremy Taylor's inaugural sections of his 'Holy
Living and Dying,' do you know what would have happened? Are you aware
what sort of ridiculous figure your poor bald Jonathan would have cut?
About the same that would be cut by a forlorn scullion or waiter from
a greasy eating-house at Rotterdam, if suddenly called away in vision to
act as seneschal to the festival of Belshazzar the king, before a thousand
of his lords.
Schlosser, after saying any thing right and true (and he really did say
the true thing about Swift's _essential_ irreligion), usually becomes
exhausted, like a boa-constrictor after eating his half-yearly dinner. The
boa gathers himself up, it is to be hoped for a long fit of dyspepsy, in
which the horns and hoofs that he has swallowed may chance to avenge the
poor goat that owned them.
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