His vanity
even relished this incense; and, though his reason could not help
despising those that offered it, not one of them was sent away
unowned by his munificence. He began to think himself, in good
earnest, that superior genius which their flattery had described;
he cultivated acquaintance with the wits of fashion, and even composed
in secret a number of bon-mots, which he uttered in company as the
impromptus of his imagination. In this practice, indeed, he imitated
some of the most renowned geniuses of the age, who, if the truth were
known, have laboured in secret, with the sweat of their brows, for
many a repartee which they have vended as the immediate production
of fancy and expression. He was so successful in this exercise of
his talents, that his fame actually came in competition with that
great man who had long sat at the helm of wit; and, in a dialogue
that once happened between them, on the subject of a corkscrew,
wherein the altercation was discharged, according to Bayes, slap
for slap, dash for dash, our hero was judged to have the better
of his lordship, by some of the minor satellites, that commonly
surround and reflect the rays of such mighty luminaries.
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