he
commentators.'

Where are we to find better sense, or much better English?

In the pleasant art of chaffing an author Johnson has hardly an equal. De
Quincey too often overdoes it. Macaulay seldom fails to excite sympathy
with his victim. In playfulness Mr. Arnold perhaps surpasses the Doctor,
but then the latter's playfulness is always leonine, whilst Mr. Arnold's
is surely, sometimes, just a trifle kittenish. An example, no doubt a
very good one, of Johnson's humour must be allowed me. Soame Jenyns, in
his book on the _Origin of Evil_, had imagined that, as we have not only
animals for food, but choose some for our diversion, the same privilege
may be allowed to beings above us, 'who may deceive, torment, or destroy
us for the ends only of their own pleasure.'

On this hint writes our merry Doctor as follows:

'I cannot resist the temptation of contemplating this analogy, which I
think he might have carried farther, very much to the advantage of his
argument. He might have shown that these "hunters, whose game is
man," have many sports analogous to our own. As we drown whelps or
kittens, they amuse themselves now and then with sinking a ship, and
stand round the fields of Blenheim, or the walls of Prague, as we
encircle a cockpit. As we shoot a bird flying, they take a man in the
midst of his business or pleasure, and knock him down with an
apoplexy. Some of them perhaps are virtuosi, and delight in the
operations of an asthma, as a human philosopher in the effects of the
air-pump. Many a merry bout have these frolick beings at the
vicissitudes of an ague, and good sport it is to see a man tumble with
an epilepsy, and revive and tumble again, and all this he knows not
why. The paroxysms of the gout and stone must undoubtedly make high
mirth, especially if the play be a little diversified with the
blunders and puzzles of the blind and deaf. . . . One sport the merry
malice of these beings has found means of enjoying, to which we have
nothing equal or similar. They now and then catch a mortal, proud of
his parts, and flattered either by the submission of those who court
his kindness, or the notice of those who suffer him to court theirs. A
head thus prepared for the reception of false opinions, and the
projection of vain designs, they easily fill with idle notions till,
in time, they make their plaything an author; their first di