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For as
to the Bar, though it be compounded of the same matter and designed
for the same use, it cannot, however, be well allowed the honour of
a fourth, by reason of its level or inferior situation exposing it
to perpetual interruption from collaterals. Neither can the Bench
itself, though raised to a proper eminency, put in a better claim,
whatever its advocates insist on. For if they please to look into
the original design of its erection, and the circumstances or
adjuncts subservient to that design, they will soon acknowledge the
present practice exactly correspondent to the primitive institution,
and both to answer the etymology of the name, which in the
Phoenician tongue is a word of great signification, importing, if
literally interpreted, "The place of sleep," but in common
acceptation, "A seat well bolstered and cushioned, for the repose of
old and gouty limbs;" senes ut in otia tuta recedant {60}. Fortune
being indebted to them this part of retaliation, that as formerly
they have long talked whilst others slept, so now they may sleep as
long whilst others talk.
But if no other argument could occur to exclude the Bench and the
Bar from the list of oratorical machines, it were sufficient that
the admission of them would overthrow a number which I was resolved
to establish, whatever argument it might cost me; in imitation of
that prudent method observed by many other philosophers and great
clerks, whose chief art in division has been to grow fond of some
proper mystical number, which their imaginations have rendered
sacred to a degree that they force common reason to find room for it
in every part of Nature, reducing, including, and adjusting, every
genus and species within that compass by coupling some against their
wills and banishing others at any rate. Now, among all the rest,
the profound number THREE {61} is that which has most employed my
sublimest speculations, nor ever without wonderful delight. There
is now in the press, and will be published next term, a panegyrical
essay of mine upon this number, wherein I have, by most convincing
proofs, not only reduced the senses and the elements under its
banner, but brought over several deserters from its two great
rivals, SEVEN and NINE.
Now, the first of these oratorical machines, in place as well as
dignity, is the Pulpit. Of pulpits there are in this island several
sorts, but I esteem only that made of timber from the Sylva
Caledonia, which agrees very well with our climate. If it be upon
its decay, it is the better, both for conveyance of sound and for
other reasons to be mentioned by and by. The degree of perfection
in shape and size I take to consist in being extremely narrow, with
little ornament, and, best of all, without a cover; for, by ancient
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