Ellis and the Women of England; to all schoolmasters,
from Doctor Hawtrey down to Mr. Squeers. I conjure up before me an awful
tribunal of youth and innocence, attended by its venerable instructors
(like the ten thousand red-cheeked charity-children in Saint Paul's),
sitting in judgment, and Gorgius pleading his cause in the midst. Out of
Court, out of Court, fat old Florizel! Beadles, turn out that bloated,
pimple-faced man!--If Gorgius MUST have a statue in the new Palace which
the Brentford nation is building, it ought to be set up in the Flunkeys'
Hall. He should be represented cutting out a coat, in which art he is
said to have excelled. He also invented Maraschino punch, a shoe-buckle
(this was in the vigour of his youth, and the prime force of his
invention), and a Chinese pavilion, the most hideous building in the
world. He could drive a four-in-hand very nearly as well as the Brighton
coachman, could fence elegantly, and it is said, played the fiddle well.
And he smiled with such irresistible fascination, that persons who were
introduced into his august presence became his victims, body and soul,
as a rabbit becomes the prey of a great big boa-constrictor.
I would wager that if Mr. Widdicomb were, by a revolution, placed on
the throne of Brentford, people would be equally fascinated by his
irresistibly majestic smile and tremble as they knelt down to kiss his
hand.
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