Dick, who has more vivacity than
judgment, tried more than once to enliven the conversation;
sometimes making an effort at wit, sometimes letting off a pun,
and sometimes discharging a conundrum; nay, at length he started
a dispute upon the hackneyed comparison betwixt blank verse and
rhyme, and the professors opened with great clamour; but, instead
of keeping to the subject, they launched out into tedious
dissertations on the poetry of the ancients; and one of them, who
had been a school-master, displayed his whole knowledge of
prosody, gleaned from Disputer and Ruddiman. At last, I ventured
to say, I did not see how the subject in question could be at all
elucidated by the practice of the ancients, who certainly had
neither blank verse nor rhyme in their poems, which were measured
by feet, whereas ours are reckoned by the number of syllables --
This remark seemed to give umbrage to the pedant, who forthwith
involved himself in a cloud of Greek and Latin quotations, which
nobody attempted to dispel -- A confused hum of insipid
observations and comments ensued; and, upon the whole, I never
passed a duller evening in my life -- Yet, without all doubt, some
of them were men of learning, wit, and ingenuity.
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