Note 114 — Chapter XXXIX · MAINCHANCE VILLA

This illustration of the old fable of the mouse and the mountain falls short of an exhibition in the Honourable House, on the 29th of January 1817; when Mr. Canning, amidst a tremendous denunciation of the parliamentary reformers, and a rhetorical chaos of storms, whirlwinds, rising suns, and twilight assassins, produced in proof of his charges—Spence’s Plan! which was received with an éclat of laughter on one side, and shrugs of surprise, disappointment, and disapprobation on the other. I can find but one parallel for the Right Honourable Gentleman’s dismay:

So having said, awhile he stood, expecting

Their universal shout and high applause

To fill his ear; when contrary he hears

On all sides, from innumerable tongues,

A dismal universal hiss, the sound

Of public scorn.—Paradise Lost, x. 504.

This Spencean chimaera, which is the very foolishness of folly, and which was till lately invisible to the naked eye of the political entomologist, has since been subjected to a lens of extraordinary power, under which, like an insect in a microscope, it has appeared a formidable and complicated monster, all bristles, scales, and claws, with a ‘husk about it like a chestnut’: horridus, in jaculis et pelle Libystidis ursae!