"Besides, I appeal to you, ladies [here Mr. Bickerstaff turned to his left hand], if these are not the little stings and thorns in life that make it more uneasy than its most substantial evils? Confess ingenuously, did you never lose a morning's devotions because you could not offer them up from the highest place of the pew? Have you not been in pain, even at a ball, because another has been taken out to dance before you? Do you love any of your friends so much as those that are below you? Or have you any favourites that walk on your right hand? You have answered me in your looks, I ask no more.
"I come now to the second part of my discourse, which obliges me to address myself in particular to the respective members of the court, in which I shall be very brief.
"As for you, gentlemen and ladies, my assistants and grand juries, I have made choice of you on my right hand, because I know you very jealous of your honour; and you on my left, because I know you very much concerned for the reputation of others; for which reason I expect great exactness and impartiality in your verdicts and judgments.
"I must in the next place address myself to you, gentlemen of the council: you all know, that I have not chosen you for your knowledge in the litigious parts of the law, but because you have all of you formerly fought duels, of which I have reason to think you have repented, as being now settled in the peaceable state of benchers. My advice to you is, only that in your pleadings you are short and expressive: to which end you are to banish out of your discourses all synonymous terms, and unnecessary multiplications of verbs and nouns. I do moreover forbid you the use of the words 'also' and 'likewise'; and must further declare, that if I catch any one among you, upon any pretence whatsoever, using the particle 'or,' I shall incessantly order him to be stripped of his gown, and thrown over the bar."
"This is a true copy.—Charles Lillie."
N.B.—The sequel of the proceedings of this day will be published on Tuesday next.[199]
FOOTNOTES:
[195] Tickell says that Steele assisted in this paper.
[196] See No. 250.
[197] Mary Astell (see Nos. 32 and 166).