After the lines already quoted, our dying drummer breaks out into the following wonderful apostrophe:
Approach, ye sophs, who, in your northern den, Wield, with both hands, your huge _didactic_ pen; Who, step by step, o'er _Pindus_' up-hill road, Drag slowly on your learning's pond'rous load: Though many a shock your perilous march encumbers, Ere the stiff prose can struggle into numbers; And you, at _comets' tails_, who fondly stare, And find a mistress in the _lesser bear_; And you, who, full with metaphysics fraught, Detect sensation starting into thought, And trace each sketch by Memory's hand design'd On that strange magic lantern call'd the MIND; And you, who watch each loit'ring empire's fate; Who heap up fact on fact, and date on date; Who count the threads that fill the mystic loom, Where patient vengeance wove the fate of Rome; Who tell that wealth unnerv'd her soldier's hand, } That Folly urg'd the fate by traitor's plann'd; } Or, that she fell--because she could not stand: } Approach, and view, in this capacious mind, Your scatter'd science in one mass combin'd: Whate'er tradition tells, or poets sing, Of giant-killing John, or John the King; Whate'er------
But we are apprehensive that our zeal has already hurried us too far, and that we have exceeded the just bounds of this paper. We shall therefore take some future opportunity of reverting to the character of this prodigious nobleman, who possesses, and deserves to possess, so distinguished a share in his master's confidence. Suffice it to say, that our author does full justice to every part of his character. He considers him as a walking warehouse of facts of all kinds, whether relating to history, astronomy, metaphysics, heraldry, fortifications, naval tactics, or midwifery; at the same time representing him as a kind of haberdasher of small talents, which he retails to the female part of his family, instructing them in the mystery of precedence, the whole art of scented pomatums, the doctrine of salves for broken heads, of putty for _broken windows_, &c. &c. &c.
We now return to the dying drummer, whom we left in the middle of his eulogy on the Marquis of Buckingham.
It being admitted, that the powers of the human mind depend on the number and association of our ideas, it is easy to shew that the illustrious Marquis is entitled to the highest rank in the scale of human intelligence. His mind possesses an unlimited power of inglutition, and his ideas adhere to each other with such tenacity, that whenever his memory is stimulated by any powerful interrogatory, it not only discharges a full answer to that individual question, but likewise such a prodigious flood of collateral knowledge, derived from copious and repeated infusions, as no common skull would be capable of containing. For these reasons, his Lordship's fitness for the department of the Admiralty, a department connected with the whole cyclopoedia of science, and requiring the greatest variety of talents and exertions, seems to be pointed out by the hand of Heaven;--it is likewise pointed out by the dying drummer, who describes in the following lines, the immediate cause of his nomination:--