ony.

"Certainly, however, it was an arduous hazard to the feelings of the
company to oppose in the slightest degree Dr. Johnson's opinions. His
stentor lungs; that combination of wit, humour, and eloquence, which
'could make the _worse_ appear the _better_ reason,' that sarcastic
contempt of his antagonist, never suppressed or even softened by the due
restraints of good breeding, were sufficient to close the lips in his
presence, of men who could have met him in fair argument, on _any_
ground, literary or political, moral or characteristic.

"Where Dr. Johnson was, Dr. Darwin had no chance of being heard, though
at least his equal in genius, his superior in science; nor, indeed, from
his impeded utterance, in the company of any overbearing declaimer; and
he was too intellectually great to be an humble listener to Johnson.
Therefore he shunned him on having experienced what manner of man he
was. The surly dictator felt the mortification, and revenged it by
_affecting_ to avow his disdain of powers too distinguished to be
objects of _genuine_ scorn.

"Dr. Darwin, in his turn, was not much more just to Dr. Johnson's
genius. He uniformly spoke of him in terms which, had they been
deserved, would have justified Churchill's 'immane Pomposo' as an
appellation of _scorn_; since if his person was huge, and his manners
pompous and violent, so were his talents vast and powerful, in a degree
from which only prejudice and resentment could withhold respect.

"Though Dr. Darwin's hesitation in speaking precluded his flow of
colloquial eloquence, it did not impede, or at all lessen, the force of
that conciser quality, _wit_. Of satiric wit he possessed a very
peculiar species. It was neither the dead-doing broadside of Dr.
Johnson's satire, nor the aurora borealis of Gray ... whose arch yet coy
and quiet fastidiousness of taste and feeling, as recorded by Mason,
glanced bright and cold through his conversation, while it seemed
difficult to define its nature; and while its effects were rather
_perceived_ than _felt_, exciting surprise more than mirth, and never
awakening the pained sense of being the object of its ridicule. That
unique in humorous verse, the Long Story, is a complete and beautiful
specimen of Gray's singular vein.

"Darwinian wit is not more easy to be defined; instances will best
convey an idea of its character to those who never conversed with its
possessor.

"Dr. Darwin was conversing with a brother botanist