My motto, which I trust sir Isaac has also registered, is worthy of notice. Dr Darwin was much pleased with it, and, desirous to emulate my fame in the art of motto making, _made_ “OMNIA E CONCHIS.” But your worships will perceive that the doctor’s motto bears no comparison with mine, in point of erudition; as I prove myself versed in three languages; whereas he can boast of only one. Here it comes.
Ο ανθρωπος, or η γυνη Lacessit never me impune!!
This, my beautiful and appropriate motto, for the sake of accommodating those among your worships, who are not versed in the lore of Greece and Rome, and cannot afford to subsidize men of erudition to officiate for you in that department of science, I shall render into our vernacular idiom, as follows:
If I’m attack’d by man or trollop I’ll dose the knave with drastic jalap.
Lest the more critical and polite reader should complain, that in order to _let myself down_ to the level of your worshipful capacities, I have anglicized my sublime motto in too vulgar and colloquial a style, I shall take the liberty, politely, to parodize thereon, and, as lord Bacon says, “to bring it home to men’s business and bosoms;” that is, to make the application to that particular kind of gentry, against whom my hedgehog quills, aforesaid, are pointed _in terrorem_.
Ladies and gentlemen, REVIEWERS! You are a set of mischief brewers; A gang of scandalous backbiters, Who feast on us, poor murder’d writers. Now if you dare to throw the gauntlet, I tell you honestly I sha’n’t let Your impudences, with impunity, Impose in future on community. If you dare say that greater wit Than doctor Caustic ever writ; If you dare venture to suggest His every word is not the best; If you dare hint that Caustic’s noddle Is not improved from Homer’s model; If you dare _think_ he has not treble The inspiration of a Sybil; If you don’t seem to take delight In puffing him with all your might; If you don’t coin for him some proper lies To circulate through this metropolis, To give eclat to this edition Of his Poetical Petition; If you don’t sing the same tune o’er Which he himself has sung before, Ancients and moderns, altogether, Are but the shadow of a feather, Compared with Caustic, even as A puff of hydrogenous gas, He’ll hurl ye to old Davy’s grotto, As you’ll imagine from his motto.