[117] I once heard a freemason observe, that this droning disciple of Morpheus, and the heavy politician on the opposite side, were the Jachin and Boaz of the lodge.
[118] On the top of a shop-bill, which contains a list of Doctor ——, I forget his name's, wonderful and surprising cures, performed by elixir of——, I don't know what, this descendant of Sangrado has inserted a wooden print, which displays a reduced copy of his sign. It exhibits a half-length of much such a person as our antiquated beau, with his hand in precisely the same situation. This our quack very emphatically denominates the sign of the headache.
[119] Those gentlemen who wish to enjoy
"The feast of reason and the flow of soul,"
would find some use in adopting the old threadbare adage, "Not more than the Muses, nor fewer than the Graces." Poor Mortimer the painter, whose convivial talents were hardly to be paralleled, had such a dislike to large companies, that he used to say, "If he invited the twelve apostles to supper, he would certainly take two evenings to receive them, six being a sufficient number, be the society ever so good."
[120] The preacher is said to be intended for a portrait of a Doctor Desaguliers.
[121] Our clerk carries every appearance of being the schoolmaster of the hamlet. He has much of that surly, tyrannic dignity which frequently accompanies the character. One of these gentlemen, in a village distant from the capital, having a disagreement with a neighbouring yeoman, the farmer, in his wrath, called him an overbearing Turk, and an insignificant beast. Our haughty Holofernes was irritated beyond description; his rage choked his utterance: he stalked home, and wrote a poetical epistle to the rustic, beginning with the lines which follow:—
"God not a beast did make, but me a man;
And not a Turk, but a true Christian;
And by His grace I am a schoolmaster;