within your own
waistcoats, dear brethren--YOU know in your hearts, which of your
ordinaire qualities you would pass off, and fain consider as first-rate
port. And why not you yourself, Mr. Preacher? says the congregation.
Dearly beloved, neither in or out of this pulpit do I profess to be
bigger, or cleverer, or wiser, or better than any of you. A short while
since, a certain Reviewer announced that I gave myself great pretensions
as a philosopher. I a philosopher! I advance pretensions! My dear
Saturday friend. And you? Don't you teach everything to everybody? and
punish the naughty boys if they don't learn as you bid them? You teach
politics to Lord John and Mr. Gladstone. You teach poets how to write;
painters, how to paint; gentlemen, manners; and opera-dancers, how
to pirouette. I was not a little amused of late by an instance of the
modesty of our Saturday friend, who, more Athenian than the Athenians,
and apropos of a Greek book by a Greek author, sat down and gravely
showed the Greek gentleman how to write his own language.

No, I do not, as far as I know, try to be port at all; but offer in
these presents, a sound genuine ordinaire, at 18s. per doz. let us say,
grown on my own hillside, and offered de bon coeur to those who will sit
down under my tonnelle, and have a half-hour's drink and gossip. It
is none of your hot porto, my friend. I know there is much better and
stronger liquor elsewhere. Some pronounce it sour: some say it is thin;
some that it has wofully lost its flavor. This may or may not be true.
There are good and bad years; years that surprise everybody; years of
which the produce is small and bad, or rich and plentiful. But if my tap
is not genuine it is naught, and no man should give himself the trouble
to drink it. I do not even say that I would be port if I could; knowing
that port (by which I would imply much stronger, deeper, richer, and
more durable liquor than my vineyard can furnish) is not relished by all
palates, or suitable to all heads. We will assume then, dear brother,
that you and I are tolerably modest people; and, ourselves being thus
out of the question, proceed to show how pretentious our neighbors are,
and how very many of them would be port if they could.

Have you never seen a small man from college placed amongst great folk,
and giving himself the airs of a man of fashion? He goes back to his
common room with fond reminiscences of Ermine Castle or Strawberry
Hall. He writ