"_P.S._--I take the Bender letter in the _Examiner_ to be spurious."[127]
This unhappy correspondent, whose fantastical loyalty to the King of Sweden has reduced him to this low condition of reason and fortune, would appear much more monstrous in his madness, did we not see crowds very little above his circumstances from the same cause, a passion to politics.
It is no unpleasant entertainment to consider the commerce even of the sexes interrupted by difference in State affairs. A wench and her gallant parted last week upon the words "unlimited" and "passive": and there is such a jargon of terms got into the mouths of the very silliest of the women, that you cannot come into a room even among them, but you find them divided into Whig and Tory. What heightens the humour is, that all the hard words they know they certainly suppose to be terms useful in the disputes of the parties. I came in this day where two were in very hot debate, and one of them proposed to me to explain to them what was the difference between circumcision and predestination. You may be sure I was at a loss; but they were too angry at each other to wait for my explanation, but proceeded to lay open the whole state of affairs, instead of the usual topics of dress, gallantry, and scandal.
I have often wondered how it should be possible that this turn to politics should so universally prevail, to the exclusion of every other subject out of conversation; and upon mature consideration, find it is for want of discourse. Look round you among all the young fellows you meet, and you see those who have least relish for books, company, or pleasure, though they have no manner of qualities to make them succeed in those pursuits, shall make very passable politicians. Thus the most barren invention shall find enough to say to make one appear an able man in the top coffee-houses. It is but adding a certain vehemence in uttering yourself, let the thing you say be never so flat, and you shall be thought a very sensible man, if you were not too hot. As love and honour are the noblest motives of life; so the pretenders to them, without being animated by them, are the most contemptible of all sorts of pretenders. The unjust affectation of anything that is laudable, is ignominious in proportion to the worth of the thing we affect: thus, as love of one's country is the most glorious of all passions, to see the most ordinary tools in a nation give themselves airs that way, without any one good quality in their own life, has something in it romantic, yet not so ridiculous as odious.