It is
difficult to conceive where this heterogeneous mythological company
could have originally met, except at a _table d'hote_, like the six
kings in 'Candide'.
CHAPTER V
[5] _pensions_: 'PENSION. Pay given to a slave of state for treason to
his country.'--JOHNSON'S _Dictionary_.
CHAPTER VII
[6] _... of a beautiful day_: See Denys Montfort: _Histoire Naturelle
des Mollusques; Vues Generales_, pp. 37, 38. (P.) The second half of
this speech by Mr Asterias and the opening sentence of his previous
speech are a paraphrase from Montfort, pp. 37-9.
CHAPTER X
[7] _Mr Burke's graduated scale of the sublime_: There must be some
mistake in this, for the whole honourable band of gentlemen-pensioners
has resolved unanimously, that Mr Burke was a very sublime person,
particularly after he had prostituted his own soul, and betrayed his
country and mankind, for 1200_l_. a year: yet he does not appear to
have been a very terrible personage, and certainly went off with a
very small portion of human respect, though he contrived to excite,
in a great degree, the astonishment of all honest men. Our immaculate
laureate (who gives us to understand that, if he had not been purified
by holy matrimony into a mystical type, he would have died a virgin,)
is another sublime gentleman of the same genus: he very much
astonished some persons when he sold his birthright for a pot of sack;
but not even his _Sosia_ has a grain of respect for him, though,
doubtless, he thinks his name very terrible to the enemy, when he
flourishes his criticopoeticopolitical tomahawk, and sets up his
Indian yell for the blood of his old friends: but, at best, he is a
mere political scarecrow, a man of straw, ridiculous to all who know
of what materials he is made; and to none more so, than to those who
have stuffed him, and set him up, as the Priapus of the garden of the
golden apples of corruption.
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