lienate their ideas from the single subject that occupied
them, was gradually taking place, and overturning the fabric of the
understanding by wrenching it all on one side. Alderman Wood has, I
should suppose, talked of nothing but the Queen in all companies for the
last six months. Happy Alderman Wood! Some persons have got a definition
of the verb, others a system of short-hand, others a cure for typhus
fever, others a method for preventing the counterfeiting of bank-notes,
which they think the best possible, and indeed the only one. Others in
leaving you to add a fourth. A man who has been in Germany will
sometimes talk of nothing but what is German: a Scotchman always
leads the discourse to his own country. Some descant on the Kantean
philosophy. There is a conceited fellow about town who talks always and
everywhere on this subject. He wears the Categories round his neck like
a pearl-chain: he plays off the names of the primary and transcendental
qualities like rings on his fingers. He talks of the Kantean system
while he dances; he talks of it while he dines; he talks of it to his
children, to his apprentices, to his customers. He called on me to
convince me of it, and said I was only prevented from becoming a
complete convert by one or two prejudices. He knows no more about it
than a pikestaff. Why then does he make so much ridiculous fuss about
it? It is not that he has got this one idea in his head, but that he has
got no other. A dunce may talk on the subject of the Kantean philosophy
with great impunity: if he opened his lips on any other he might be
found out. A French lady who had married an Englishman who said little,
excused him by saying, 'He is always thinking of Locke and Newton.'
This is one way of passing muster by following in the suite of great
names!--A friend of mine, whom I met one day in the street, accosted
me with more than usual vivacity, and said, 'Well, we're selling, we're
selling!' I thought he meant a house. 'No,' he said, 'haven't you seen
the advertisement in the newspapers? I mean five and twenty copies of
the Essay.' This work, a comely, capacious quarto on the most abstruse
metaphysics, had occupied his sole thoughts for several years, and he
concluded that I must be thinking of what he was. I believe, however, I
may say I am nearly the only person that ever read, certainly that ever
pretended to understand it. It is an original and most ingenious work,
nearly as incomprehensible as i