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Updated: June 11, 2025
I can answer for its pleasing the few intelligent Frenchmen who may be there; as for the numskulls why, it would be no great misfortune if they were dissatisfied. I have some hope, nevertheless, that even the dunces among them may find something to admire. Besides, I have been careful not to neglect le premier coup d'archet; and that is sufficient.
Such, Pope, has been thy Fortune, such thy Doom. Collecting Cackle, Johnson condescends To interview the Drudges of your Friends. Though still your Courthope holds your merits high, And still proclaims your Poems poetry, Biographers, un-Boswell-like, have sneered, And Dunces edit him whom Dunces feared! They say; what say they? Not in vain You ask. To tell you what they say, behold my Task!
His visits were considered an honor, and raised considerably the literary character of those with whom he resided; for he spoke of dunces with the most dignified contempt, and the general impression was, that he would scorn even to avail himself of their hospitality.
Those poor dunces! Talk of being the last man, ah! what a pang it must be to be the last boy huge, misshapen, fourteen years of age, and "taken up" by a chap who is but six years old, and can't speak quite plain yet! Master Hulker is in that condition at Birch's. He is the most honest, kind, active, plucky, generous creature. He can do many things better than most boys.
"Nor is it suspected, in the smallest degree. My life on it, neither the reigning monarch, nor his confidential servants, are such arrant dunces, as to be guilty of so much weakness. No, this masterly move is intended to secure me, by creating a confidence that they think no generous-minded man would betray. It is a hook, delicately baited to catch a gudgeon, and not an order to watch a whale."
Was it knowledge of this passage, Master, or ignorance of everything else, that made certain of the common steadfast dunces of our days speak of thee as if thou hadst been a starveling, neglected poetaster, jealous forsooth, of Maitre Francoys Rabelais? See how ignorantly M. Fleury writes, who teaches French literature withal to them of Muscovy, and hath indited a Life of Rabelais.
It has, however, been a favourite fallacy with dunces in all times, that men of genius are unfitted for business, as well as that business occupations unfit men for the pursuits of genius. The unhappy youth who committed suicide a few years since because he had been "born to be a man and condemned to be a grocer," proved by the act that his soul was not equal even to the dignity of grocery.
The greatest achievements are not the work of senior wranglers and Balliol scholars: they have been accomplished by class-room dunces, like Clive and Wellington; by school idlers, such as Napoleon, Disraeli, Swift, and Newton; or by self-taught men like Stephenson, John Hunter, Livingstone, and Herschel.
All children are quick till they are set methodically to study; but Lucretia's quickness defied even that numbing ordeal, by which half of us are rendered dunces. Rapidity and precision in all the tasks set to her, in the comprehension of all the explanations given to her questions, evinced singular powers of readiness and reasoning. As she grew older, she became more reserved and thoughtful.
Oh, you men, if you read this, know that I am grieved to the bottom of my heart to allow you so much importance, but it would be both bad taste and bad tactics to decry your worth; the value of our enemies enhances our own. What credit is it to conquer dunces? Know, you who wear trousers, know that in me you have a foe.
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