Greenwood and Hodgson 23.8.1823

Greenwood and Hodgson 23.8.1823



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	Westmorland Gazette, 23 August 1823:-
letter from A Subscriber to Hodgson
	(ADVERTISEMENT.) TO THE EDITOR OF THE KENDAL GAZETTE. SIR, - Mr. Greenwood's last letter is a strange compound, and shows the writer to be a man of peculiar inconsistency - for which he might be excused, were he not, in the midst of his absurdities, to make mention of that Being, the sound of whose name ought to make him tremble. Such a subject is ill adapted to the letter in which he speaks of "coarse slang," "cant phrases," his dispute with the "Guard of a Mail Coach," &c. He is desirous of identifying me with Mr. Hodgson: Mr. Hodgson is a respectable man, and I am not angry with him for making the comparison. But when he says our words are the same, he must have laboured under the influence of that sort of visionary delusion upon which he expatiates so transcendently. When his evasions, his preposterous pretensions and his sophistry, are exposed, he endeavours to wing his flight into the higher regions of the sublime - from the heights of which he falls with inglorious rapidity. Just so the Monster of the Deep, who, when pierced with the pointed barb, pours out his bellowings to the skies, and immediately sinks into fathomless abyss. Mr Greenwood calls me a rustic. Now I do not at all agree with him in the application of the term. I am a Westmorland man; consequently, in his eyes, a - rustic. I am a Subscriber to Mr. Hodgson's Map; therefore, in his opinion, a complete rustic. I have shewn him the folly of his endeavouring to monopolize the whole of public patronage; I am therefore a most consummate rustic. I have exposed his absurdities, prescribed to him antidotes, brill humour and a bad memory, shewn his egotism and bombast, made use of a few inconvenient interrogatories, &c, &c.; and for all these services of kindness, Mr. Greenwood most ungratefully calls me rustic. Mr. Greenwood is very prone to self-commendation, and talk as if he were the only enlightened and scientific character of the age" and, in speaking of himself, his imagination gets so inflated that his eyes become dim with the opiate soothings of self-satisfaction, and he altogether looses sight of his own better judgement. From the manner in which he speaks of his mathematical studies, a stranger would take him for a man, in figure resembling the lank student, who, wasting the midnight oil, intently pores with pende[d] nose, till the crowing of the cock, over the works of Euclid, Newton, Hutton, and other authors of mathematical fame. He may be ver[y s]tudious, no doubt, but his midnight ruminations [seems to agree] well with him. Instead of t[he student of] meagre form, solemn step, and [thoughtful] utterance, yon behold a man, M[r. Editor,] whose outward lineaments [and valourous] boastings forcibly remind me [of the] Jolly knight of Shakespeare. "He attempts to be witty about his diagrams; and though he may pride himself upon being a cunning kind of Yorkshire-man, I happen to know more about these diagrams of his than he supposes. Let him satisfy the doubts of the public with respect to the actual manner in which his unequalled establishment surveyed this county. To me it can afford no additional [info]rmation, being already aware of it. It is droll enough for Mr. Greenwood to talk of going beyond a[ny body's] conceptions - it only adds one more to [his o]ther sundry mistakes . He certainly speaks [of many] wonderful things; but [th]en he is not [the] only man who has dealt in the marvellous. They may achieve great things some day; so did the Knight of the Rueful Countenance; Mr. Greenwood may therefore express himself in the words of the adage = "There is nothing new under the sun." I will conclude by recommending to his perusal the following passage in Shakespeare: "I have touch'd the highest point of all my greatness; And from that full meridian of my glory I haste now to my setting. I shall fall, Like a bright exhalation in the evening, And no man shall see me more." A SUBSCRIBER To Hodgson's Map of Westmorland. Also in the Kendal Chronicle 23 August 1823.
	Summary from - A Subsciber to - the Editor, replying to C Greenwood

	ANONYMITY	I am not TH


	SURVEYING METHODS	CG talks a lot


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