Question

I reckon it was all on account of that blarsted Jack working me up. Which is the correct interpretation of this line? Jack had forced the narrator to work on difficult tasks. Jack and the narrator had had an argument. Jack had been talking to the narrator about Mary. Jack had played a prank on the narrator.

Answer 1

That praises are without reason lavished on the dead, and that the honours due only to excellence are paid to antiquity, is a complaint likely to be always continued by those, who, being able to add nothing to truth, hope for eminence from the heresies of paradox; or those, who, being forced by disappointment upon consolatory expedients, are willing to hope from posterity what the present age refuses, and flatter themselves that the regard which is yet denied by envy, will be at last bestowed by time.