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We are both good-humoured fellows, who rather seek to enjoy what is going forward than to maintain our dignity as lions; and we have both seen the world too widely and too well not to contemn in our souls the imaginary consequence of literary people, who walk with their noses in the air, and remind me always of the fellow whom Johnson met in an alehouse, and who called himself "the great Twalmley inventor of the floodgate iron for smoothing linen."
He adorned an art, he endeavoured at eminence, and he inoffensively enjoyed the pleasure of his own superiority. He could also have defended himself by the example of Aeneas, who, introducing himself, said: 'Sum pius Aeneas ..... ... fama super aethera notus. Aeneid, i. 378. I fear that Twalmley met with the neglect that so commonly befalls inventors. In the Gent.
The great Twalmley might have justified himself by The Rambler, No. 9: 'Every man, from the highest to the lowest station, ought to warm his heart and animate his endeavours with the hopes of being useful to the world, by advancing the art which it is his lot to exercise; and for that end he must necessarily consider the whole extent of its application, and the whole weight of its importance.... Every man ought to endeavour at eminence, not by pulling others down, but by raising himself, and enjoy the pleasure of his own superiority, whether imaginary or real, without interrupting others in the same felicity. All this is what Twalmley did.
What the great TWALMLEY was so proud of having invented, was neither more nor less than a kind of box-iron for smoothing linen. 'Hic manus ob patriam pugnando vulnera passi, Quique sacerdotes casti, dum vita manebat, Quique pii vates et Phoebo digna locuti, Inventas aut qui vitam excoluere per artes. Aeneid, vi. 660.
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