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 picador. Holmes would have been over his head and behind his back, and stabbing him on the flank with all manner of ingenious analogies, and with squibs and crackers of fancy, instead of meeting the massive charge face to face. To invent an imaginary conversation between the two is altogether beyond my powers, and I can only hope that it is taking place somewhere in Elysium. Holmes's most peculiar excellence is foreshadowed in a passage which Boswell quotes from Barrow's sermons as applicable to Wilkes. 'Facetiousness,' as Barrow says, among other things, 'raiseth admiration as signifying a nimble sagacity of apprehension, a special felicity of invention, a vivacity of spirit and reach of wit more than vulgar; it seeming to argue a rare quickness of parts, that one can fetch in remote conceits applicable; a notable skill that he can dexterously accommodate them to the purpose before him; together with a lively briskness of humour, not apt to damp those sportful flashes of imagination. Where in Aristotle—' but there I had better stop. Barrow probably knew Holmes as pre-existing in one of the ancestors who transmitted to him the power of 'fetching in remote conceits.' The Autocrat might suggest a series