Note 40 — Chapter VI

Greatest poet.] Great is sometimes a positive, sometimes a figurative term—as we say a great man, a great mountain, or when speaking of the Doctor, great man mountain—having no allusion here to the mountain which brought forth a mouse. When, however, we speak of the Doctor as a great man or great poet, we mean to be understood that he is some six feet six inches high—three feet across the shoulders, nine round the paunch—that he weighs about half a ton, and is withal most clumsily hung together.