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over-liberal of his breath. He holds his hand out ready to receive
your penny, and immediately upon receipt withdraws to his former
occupations. Now is it not amazing to think the society of Warwick
Lane {136} should have no more concern for the recovery of so useful
a member, who, if one may judge from these appearances, would become
the greatest ornament to that illustrious body? Another student
struts up fiercely to your teeth, puffing with his lips, half
squeezing out his eyes, and very graciously holds out his hand to
kiss. The keeper desires you not to be afraid of this professor,
for he will do you no hurt; to him alone is allowed the liberty of
the ante-chamber, and the orator of the place gives you to
understand that this solemn person is a tailor run mad with pride.
This considerable student is adorned with many other qualities, upon
which at present I shall not further enlarge. . . . Hark in your
ear. . . . I am strangely mistaken if all his address, his motions,
and his airs would not then be very natural and in their proper
element.
I shall not descend so minutely as to insist upon the vast number of
beaux, fiddlers, poets, and politicians that the world might recover
by such a reformation, but what is more material, beside the clear
gain redounding to the commonwealth by so large an acquisition of
persons to employ, whose talents and acquirements, if I may be so
bold to affirm it, are now buried or at least misapplied. It would
be a mighty advantage accruing to the public from this inquiry that
all these would very much excel and arrive at great perfection in
their several kinds, which I think is manifest from what I have
already shown, and shall enforce by this one plain instance, that
even I myself, the author of these momentous truths, am a person
whose imaginations are hard-mouthed and exceedingly disposed to run
away with his reason, which I have observed from long experience to
be a very light rider, and easily shook off; upon which account my
friends will never trust me alone without a solemn promise to vent
my speculations in this or the like manner, for the universal
benefit of human kind, which perhaps the gentle, courteous, and
candid reader, brimful of that modern charity and tenderness usually
annexed to his office, will be very hardly persuaded to believe.
SECTION X.--A FARTHER DIGRESSION.
It is an unanswerable argument of a very refined age the wonderful
civilities that have passed of late years between the nation of
authors and that of readers. There can hardly pop out a play, a
pamphlet, or a poem without a preface full of acknowledgments to the
world for the general reception and applause they have given it,
which the Lord knows where, or when, or how, or from whom it
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