I don't speak now of literary men who value themselves above LAMB,
DICKENS, and THACKERAY, rolled into one; nor of artists who sneer at
TITIAN; nor of actors who hold GARRICK to be absurdly overrated. Space
would fail me, and patience you. But let me just for a brief moment
call to your mind ROLAND PRETTYMAN. Upon my soul, I think ROLAND the
most empty-headed fribble, the most affected coxcomb, and the most
conceited noodle in the whole world. He was decently good-looking
once, and he had a pretty knack of sketching in water-colours.
But oh, the huge, distorted, overweening conceit of the man! I have
seen him lying full length on a couch, waving a scented handkerchief
amongst a crowd of submissive women, who were grovelling round him,
while he enlarged in his own pet jargon on the surpassing merits
of his latest unpublished essay, or pointed out the beauties of the
trifling pictures which were the products of his ineffective brush.
He will never accomplish anything, and yet to the end of his life,
I fancy, he will have his circle of toadies and flatterers who will
pretend to accept him as the evangelist of a glorious literary and
artistic gospel. For unfortunately he is as rich as he is impudent
and incompetent.
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