Note 121 — HOGARTH ILLUSTRATED. (continued 2)
Reading edition
Our clerk carries every appearance of being the schoolmaster of the hamlet. He has much of that surly, tyrannic dignity which frequently accompanies the character. One of these gentlemen, in a village distant from the capital, having a disagreement with a neighbouring yeoman, the farmer, in his wrath, called him an overbearing Turk, and an insignificant beast. Our haughty Holofernes was irritated beyond description; his rage choked his utterance: he stalked home, and wrote a poetical epistle to the rustic, beginning with the lines which follow:—
"God not a beast did make, but me a man; And not a Turk, but a true Christian; And by His grace I am a schoolmaster; None of the meaner kind, I dare aver."