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'Thank you, Archbishop, I said; 'I feel as if I were receiving the pallium." On another occasion he drew a distinction between two writers, with neither of whom he sympathized. "Don't mistake me. One is a thinker and man of letters, the other is only a literary man. Erasmus was a man of letters; Gigadibs a literary man. A.B. is the incarnation of Gigadibs.
The old gang of criminals allied forces of disorder Corkran" the Slave of the Lamp smiled politely "McTurk" the Irishman scowled "and, of course, the unspeakable Beetle, our friend Gigadibs." Abanazar, the Emperor, and Aladdin had more or less of characters, and King passed them over. "Come forth, my inky buffoon, from behind yonder instrument of music!
I trust it will be taken as no breach of my past pledge to abstain from all intrusion on the sacred ground of Gigadibs and the Germans, if I venture to indicate a touch inserted by Shakespeare for no other perceptible or conceivable purpose than to obviate by anticipation the indomitable and ineradicable fallacy of criticism which would find the keynote of Hamlet's character in the quality of irresolution.
I am quite aware you need not explain that it was ostensibly not intended for my edification. I read it with laughter yes, with laughter. These paper pellets of inky boys still a boy we are, Master Gigadibs do not disturb my equanimity." "Wonder which it was," thought Beetle.
You supply, I presume, the doggerel for this entertainment. Esteem yourself to be, as it were, a poet?" "He's found one of 'em," thought Beetle, noting the flush on King's cheek-bone. "I have just had the pleasure of reading an effusion of yours to my address, I believe an effusion intended to rhyme. So so you despise me, Master Gigadibs, do you?
The members, however, did not take kindly to this suggestion in the present instance. The question passed unnoticed, while a severe-faced woman inquired, with an air of vast superiority, "I have understood that Bishop Blougram is intended as a portrait of Cardinal Wiseman; can any one tell me if Gigadibs is also a portrait?" "Oh, Lord!" muttered Fenton, half audibly.
And the answer is that through it we make acquaintance with one of Browning's most genial inventions the great Bishop himself, and that if Gigadibs were not present we could never have seen him at the particular angle at which he presents himself in his condescending play with truths and half-truths and quarter-truths, adapted to a smaller mind than his own.
"Don't drop oil all over my 'Fors' or I'll scrag you!" "Shut up, you you Irish Biddy! 'Tisn't your beastly 'Fors. It's one of mine." The book was a fat, brown-backed volume of the later Sixties, which King had once thrown at Beetle's head that Beetle might see whence the name Gigadibs came. Beetle had quietly annexed the book, and had seen several things.
He had launched many lampoons on an appreciative public ever since he discovered that it was possible to convey reproof in rhyme. In sign of his unruffled calm, King proceeded to tear Beetle, whom he called Gigadibs, slowly asunder. His wild flowers of speech King had an unpleasant tongue -restored him to good humor at the last.
But Browning's intellectual interest is great in seeing all that a Blougram can say for himself; and as a destructive piece of criticism directed against the position of a Gigadibs what he says may really be effective.
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