None of the meaner kind, I dare aver."
[122] These moping birds, being the worshippers of darkness consecrated to dulness, closing their eyes against the light, and holding their silent, solitary reign in old buildings which are seldom trodden by human feet, are with great propriety placed in this church.
The cross on an escutcheon in one of the windows is there placed to the memory of the learned and Reverend Ebenezer Muzz; who, his epitaph declareth, after "painfullie labouring in this vineyard for one and fortie years, now sleepeth with his fathers."
[123] An hour-glass is still placed on some of the pulpits in the provinces. Daniel Burgess, of whimsical memory, never preached without one, and he frequently saw it out three times during one sermon. In a discourse which he once delivered at the conventicle in Russel Court, against drunkenness, some of his hearers began to yawn at the end of the second glass. But Daniel was not to be silenced by a yawn; he turned his timekeeper, and altering the tone of his voice, desired they would be patient a while longer, for he had much more to say upon the sin of drunkenness: "therefore," added he, "my friends and brethren, we will have another glass,—and then!"
[124] Doctor Arbuthnot, Mr. Pope, and the Dean, have united their talents to expose the anti-climax, and selected innumerable conceits from the ponderous works of Sir Richard Blackmore and others. They have unkindly neglected their friend Gay; and yet Blackmore's mowing the beard is not much worse than Gay's shaving the grass:
"When the fresh spring in all her state is crown'd,
And high luxuriant grass o'erspreads the ground,
The lab'rer with the bending scythe is seen
Shaving the surface of the waving green;
Of all her native pride disrobes the land,