Page:The Adventures of David Simple (1904).djvu/126

 with criticism, I will carry you to-morrow where you shall hear some of a quite different kind; for there are three sorts of criticks, the one I have already shewn you, who arrogantly set up their own opinions, though they know nothing, and would be ashamed of taking anything from another; and, as they cannot engage attention by the solidity of their sentiments, endeavour to procure it by the loudness of their voice, and to shun those they cannot confute. The second sort are a degree above them; have fixed in their minds that it is necessary for them to know everything; but, as they have something more sense than the former, they find out that they have no opinions of their own, and therefore make it their whole study to get into company with people of real understanding, and to pick up everything they hear among them. Of this treasure they are so generous, that they vent it in every company they go into, without distinction, by which means they impose on the undiscerning, and make them wonder at their knowledge and judgment; but there is an awkwardness and want of propriety in their way of speaking, which soon discover them to the discerning eye: for borrowed wit becomes the mouth as ill as borrowed clothes the body; and whoever has no delicate sentiments, nor refined thoughts of his own, makes as ill a figure in speaking them, as the most awkward country girl can do, dressed up in all the finery of a court lady. I remember a man of that sort, whom I once heard run through most of the famous authors, without committing any error, at least in my opinion; and yet there was something so preposterous in his delivery, something so like a schoolboy saying his lesson, it struck me with laughter and contempt, rather than with that admiration which he proposed to gain by it; but he has stuck himself on to a man of sense, whom he takes so