" No doubt they do: the
eccentricities of Hawser Trunnion, Esq., are exaggerated, and Pipes is
less subdued than Rattlin, though always delightful. But Trunnion
absolutely makes one laugh out aloud: whether he is criticising the
sister of Mr. Gamaliel Pickle in that gentleman's presence, at a
pot-house; or riding to the altar with his squadron of sailors, tacking
in an unfavourable gale; or being run away into a pack of hounds, and
clearing a hollow road over a waggoner, who views him with "unspeakable
terror and amazement." Mr. Winkle as an equestrian is not more entirely
acceptable to the mind than Trunnion. We may speak of "caricature," but
if an author can make us sob with laughter, to criticise him solemnly is
ungrateful.
Except Fielding occasionally, and Smollett, and Swift, and Sheridan, and
the authors of "The Rovers," one does not remember any writers of the
eighteenth century who quite upset the gravity of the reader. The scene
of the pedant's dinner after the manner of the ancients, does not seem to
myself so comic as the adventures of Trunnion, while the bride is at the
altar, and the bridegroom is tacking and veering with his convoy about
the fields. One sees how the dinner is done: with a knowledge of
Athenaeus, Juvenal, Petronius, and Horace, many men could have written
this set piece. But Trunnion is quite inimitable: he is a child of
humour and of the highest spirits, like Mr.
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