You
cannot judge of their merits, they are no countrymen of yours.'
'True,' replied Baretti, 'and you should learn by the same rule to
speak very cautiously about Brutus and Mark Antony; they are my
countrymen, and I must have their characters tenderly treated by
foreigners.'
"Baretti could not endure to be called, or scarcely thought, a
foreigner, and indeed it did not often occur to his company that he
was one; for his accent was wonderfully proper, and his language
always copious, always nervous, always full of various allusions,
flowing too with a rapidity worthy of admiration, and far beyond the
power of nineteen in twenty natives. He had also a knowledge of the
solemn language and the gay, could be sublime with Johnson, or
blackguard with the groom; could dispute, could rally, could quibble,
in our language. Baretti has, besides, some skill in music, with a
bass voice, very agreeable, besides a falsetto which he can manage so
as to mimic any singer he hears. I would also trust his knowledge of
painting a long way. These accomplishments, with his extensive power
over every modern language, make him a most pleasing companion while
he is in good humour; and his lofty consciousness of his own
superiority, which made him tenacious of every position, and drew him
into a thousand distresses, did not, I must own, ever disgust me,
till he began to exercise it against myself, and resolve to reign in
our house by fairly defying the mistress of it. Pride, however,
though shocking enough, is never despicable, but vanity, which he
possessed too, in an eminent degree, will sometimes make a man near
sixty ridiculous.
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