SOLEMN BLOCKHEADS.
Reading edition
“Eh! qui ne connoit pas la gravité des sots.” Chenier.
Last night I met Mr. —— at Lord A——’s. What a solemn blockhead! Unluckily for him, he has precisely that sort of learning, which draws out fools from their obscurity, and drives them from the secure asylum of their insignificance, to a public exhibition of their inefficiency. Still, such men get on! and, under the present system, make their way to place, and power, and endowment.
For the last twenty years, there was scarcely an instance of a man of very superior genius, or of great intellectual strength, being employed in the public offices of the greatest nation of the earth. A few shrewd, acute clerks worked their way into the subordinate places in the state; but the moment they were found to be too shrewd for their masters, they were got rid of.
There is nothing so fearful as a nation becoming more enlightened than its government. Of such elements was the French revolution composed.