Page:Modern literature (1804 Volume 1).djvu/11

 knowledge of him, or his qualifications, I must be surprized, if in having drawn such a general and common character, I should be charged with intending to expose that individual person. I may, afterwards, be able to account for the supposition: but the food of vanity is notoriety; and a frivolous egotist, by representing himself as of sufficient consequence to be satirized, will very readily fancy he rises in importance, and will pretend, in every party, to complain of the attack, while his whole purpose is to make himself the subject of talk. "Vanity, and vanity of vanities all is vanity."

More than half a dozen were mentioned as the models of Doctor Vampus, the ignorant, boasting, hawking and peddling master of an academy. To no one person, I am convinced, the whole of that character could apply; but I am equally convinced, many parts of it