which feather, living or dying, he durst not mount in the plumage of his
cap.


FOOTNOTES

[1] Even Pope, with all his natural and reasonable interest in
aristocratic society, could not shut his eyes to the fact that a jest in
_his_ mouth became twice a jest in a lord's. But still he failed to
perceive what I am here contending for, that if the jest happened to miss
fire, through the misfortune of bursting its barrel, the consequences
would be far worse for the lord than the commoner. There _is_, you see, a
blind sort of compensation.

[2] Mr. Schlosser, who speaks English, who has read rather too much
English for any good that he has turned it to, and who ought to have a
keen eye for the English version of his own book, after so much reading
and study of it, has, however, overlooked several manifest errors. I do
not mean to tax Mr. Davison with, general inaccuracy. On the contrary, he
seems wary, and in most cases successful as a dealer with the
peculiarities of the German. But several cases of error I detect without
needing the original: they tell their own story. And one of these I here
notice, not only for its own importance, but out of love to Schlosser, and
by way of nailing his guarantee to the counter--not altogether as a bad
shilling, but as a light one. At p. 5 of vol. 2, in a foot-note, which is
speaking of Kant, we read of his _attempt to introduce the notion of
negative greatness into Philosophy. Negative greatness!_ What strange
bird may _that_ be? Is it the _ornithorynchus paradoxus_? Mr. Schlosser
was not wide awake _there_. The reference is evidently to Kant's essay
upon the advantages of introducing into philosophy the algebraic idea of