Page:Crotchet Castle - Peacock (1831).djvu/87

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THE PARTY.
75

given false characters, both for good and for evil: sticking at no art of misrepresentation, to clear out of the field of literature all who stood in the way of the interests of their own click. They have never allowed their own profound ignorance of any thing, (Greek, for instance,) to throw even an air of hesitation into their oracular decision on the matter. They set an example of profligate contempt for truth, of which the success was in proportion to the effrontery; and when their prosperity had filled the market with competitors, they cried out against their own reflected sin, as if they had never committed it, or were entitled to a monopoly of it. The latter, I rather think, was what they wanted.

MR. CROTCHET.

Hermitage, doctor?

THE REV. DR. FOLLIOTT.

Nothing better, sir. The father who first