When, for instance, Tom's repulsed battalions of
rhetoric fled from his mamma's fire, a few words of apt sneer or
encouragement on Wood's part would bring the fight round again; or
when Mr. Hayes's fainting squadrons of abuse broke upon the stubborn
squares of Tom's bristling obstinacy, it was Wood's delight to rally
the former, and bring him once more to the charge. A great share
had this man in making those bad people worse. Many fierce words
and bad passions, many falsehoods and knaveries on Tom's part, much
bitterness, scorn, and jealousy on the part of Hayes and Catherine,
might be attributed to this hoary old tempter, whose joy and
occupation it was to raise and direct the domestic storms and
whirlwinds of the family of which he was a member. And do not let
us be accused of an undue propensity to use sounding words, because
we compare three scoundrels in the Tyburn Road to so many armies,
and Mr. Wood to a mighty field-marshal. My dear sir, when you have
well studied the world--how supremely great the meanest thing in
this world is, and how infinitely mean the greatest--I am mistaken
if you do not make a strange and proper jumble of the sublime and
the ridiculous, the lofty and the low.
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