FOOTNOTES:
[10] Pebbles, it is scarcely necessary to say, are colourless.
[11] This gentleman stormed most lustily when made aware of the trick which had been practised upon him, and threatened legal exposure to the “professional optician.” But this course is seldom resorted to, the dupes recollecting that, while they publish the swindler’s villainy, they give us but an indifferent idea of their own discernment, beside the uncertainty and incongruity ever attendant upon Law, thus quaintly sketched by Bentham;—“If a man give you a black eye, you make him pay for it, but if he put your eye out, you get nothing; and whatever is taken from him goes nominally to the queen—really to John Stokes or Jack Nokes who have no concern at all in the matter. If a man kill your pig, you get the value of it, but if he kill your wife or your child, you get nothing—if any thing is got out of him it goes to a stranger, as before. A man sets your house on fire, if by misfortune, you receive amends, if through malice, you receive nothing.”
CHAPTER VI.
“See, arm’d with great authority, they come,
And with great names and numbers strike us dumb;
Reason and common sense to names must fall,
And strength of argument’s no strength at all.”—Dodsley.
I will now produce a few specimens of Puffing Advertisements, which will show how sounding words are senselessly strung together to give an air of importance to their originators, and leave my readers to judge for themselves how far the public ought to be influenced by them. The orthography (?) of these puffs is, in every way worthy of the authors of them. They are given pure.
PUFF, No. 1.
Improved Eye Preservers, patronized by the Faculty of the Eye Infirmaries for Cataract, and other improved glasses.
Mr. —— optician to the Queen,[12] Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Kent, &c. sole Inventor of Optical Glasses, ground and shaded on the Exact[13] Principle. Mr. —— has been for twenty-five years a manufacturer, who has devoted his study with time to bring this branch to perfection. Mr. —— has been earnestly solicited to pay a short visit for a limited period. He has the honour to announce his arrival from the London, Bristol, and Edinburgh Optical Establishments.
Spectacles for far and near distances, for those who have a full eye, ground in a peculiar manner.