Of the like spirit too often is that implacable race of wits, against whom there is no defence but innocence, and philosophy:  Neither of which is likely to be at hand; and therefore the wounded have nowhere to fly for a cure, but to downright stupidity, a crazed head, or a profligate contempt of guilt and shame.

I am therefore sorry for that other miserable creature Traulus,[153] who although of somewhat a different species, yet seems very far to outdo even the genius of Pistorides, in that miscarrying talent of railing without consistency or discretion, against the most innocent persons, according to the present situation of his gall and spleen.  I do not blame an honest gentleman for the bitterest invectives against one to whom he professeth the greatest friendship; provided he acts in the dark, so as not to be discovered.  But in the midst of caresses, visits, and invitations, to run into the streets, or to as public a place, and without the least pretended excitement, sputter out the basest and falsest accusations; then to wipe his mouth, come up smiling to his friend, shake him by the hand, and tell him in a whisper, it was “all for his service;” this proceeding, I am bold to think a great failure in prudence; and I am afraid lest such a practitioner, with a body so open, so foul, and so full of sores, may fall under the resentment of an incensed political surgeon, who is not in much renown for his mercy upon great provocation:  who without waiting for his death, will flay, and dissect him alive, and to the view of mankind lay open all the disordered cells of his brain, the venom of his tongue, the corruption of his heart, and spots and flatuses of his spleen—­And all this for threepence.[154]

In such a case what a scene would be laid open! and to drop my metaphor what a character of our mistaking friend might an angry enemy draw and expose! particularizing that unnatural conjunction of vices and follies, so inconsistent with each other in the same breast:  Furious and fawning, scurrilous and flattering, cowardly and provoking, insolent and abject; most profligately false, with the strongest professions of sincerity, positive and variable, tyrannical and slavish.

I apprehend that if all this should be set out to the world by an angry Whig of the old stamp, the unavoidable consequence must be a confinement of our friend for some months more to his garret, and thereby depriving the public for so long a time, and in so important a juncture, of his useful talents in their service, while he is fed like a wild beast through a hole; but I hope with a special regard to the quantity and quality of his nourishment.

In vain would his excusers endeavour to palliate his enormities, by imputing them to madness:[155] Because, it is well known, that madness only operates by inflaming and enlarging the good or evil dispositions of the mind:  For the curators of Bedlam assure us, that some lunatics are persons of honour, truth, benevolence, and many other virtues, which appear in their highest ravings, although after a wild incoherent manner; while others on the contrary, discover in every word and action the utmost baseness and depravity of human minds; which infallibly they possessed in the same degree, although perhaps under a better regulation, before their entrance into that academy.