The Patowmac Guardian, And Berkeley Advertiser

Mr. WILLIS,

In fulfilment of my promise, I attempt a few observations on your correspondent's transcendent composition; but to do justice to the subject, exceeds perhaps the powers of man. It is a first maxim laid down by a great poet, an elegant writer, and a judicious critic, that every literary performance should possess simplicity and unity of design. In this respect it ought to resemble an animal body, which nature's self has formed. The parts or members of which are not only complete in number, well shaped, and of a just and proportional size, but arranged in due order, placed in the most advantageous and graceful attitudes, and knit together by connections, the most simple, strong, and perspicuous. Your correspondent, however, blessed with a soaring genius, has disdained to tread the beaten tract, and obeying the impulse of a lofty soul, has favoured this thrice happy age with a model of composition truly new. It puts me in mind of a noted Limner, who, desirous to surprise if not astonish the world with sublimity and boldness of design, and to amaze it with some unparalleled stretches of genius, sat down to draw the portrait of a fine lady. The body of a female was no doubt formed by the happy strokes of his creative pencil, but above the shoulders arose the huge lengthy neck of a horse, bearing the diminutive head and tapering snout of a hog; to the slender waist, instead of a pair of elegant polished limbs, was appended the undivided scaly tail of a fish; and to the sides, in lieu of a brace of soft snowy arms, were affixed the dun-feathered pinions of a fowl. Overjoyed, however, to behold the rising form, so much the image of its maker's brain, the limner in a transport exposed it to public view, received the applause of kindred heads, but was shocked to hear the wiser part exclaim a monster. But quitting the contemplation of an ideal monster for that of a real one, I proceed to make the metamorphoses which this Proteus in composition has undergone. In the commencement of his piece, he displays the divine, quotes the sayings of the wise man, and forebodes a sermon. Another gentle transition becomes, the scriptural casuist, a conciliation of seeming contradictions: In a trice he is the moralist, and shrewdly observes that pride and self conceit are productive of ill manners--if the author has for once condescended to employ words in their usual meaning, experience will perhaps refute his philosophy. A proud man aspires to good manners for the sake of his pride, and self conceit prompts to a similar deportment, that self-importance may not suffer diminution. But the moralist is soon deposited as a snake throws off its scaly coat in spring, and the author becomes a humble supplicant, and in profound prostration solicits pardon of men for his compliance with the injunctions of heaven--No raving here.--But as the author's prefatory paragraph might have introduced Tom Jones, or a prayer book, with equal propriety as the subject to which the Printer has prefixed it, so his last five or six paragraphs might have graced the conclusion of any literary performance under the heavens as properly as the piece on which the author has bestowed them, as concluding decorations--to logic, a book of interrogatories, a pamphlet of abuse, a compilation for dictionaries, &c. &c. they are vastly more alluded than to politics. Amidst all the caperings of the brain however, the author has displayed in one part no small share of candor and good sense, which I cheerfully anticipate as symptoms of his convalescence. He promises a Billingsgate dictionary--an undertaking happily suited to his disposition, education, and capacity.-- Lucky for a country when talents are thus employed in occupations to which they are perfectly adapted. As to the singular case, the fluctuations of the author's brain are in it by much too tumultuous for me to attempt them; and as to the collection of words which he has thrown around a part of a sentence of my last address, they are to Z altogether unintelligible. He knows not by what name to call this performance, or what design to ascribe to it. It had been well if the author had baptized his brat, before it was sent into the world, or at least told the intention of its arrival. But it is probable that he considered them as too troublesome ceremonies for a thing which favours so rankly of the blackguard and the clown. This arrow was discharged with prodigious force, and levelled as the mistaken archer thought with a cautious aim, but alas! the mark was widely missed; not a hair of Z's coat was grazed--nor let the miss surprise--what could be expected of a roving jack-ass, and jaundiced too, but that he should take a false sight?

I now take leave of your correspondent, and all his past, present, and to come, wishing him every success in his promised undertaking.

Z.