Thirdly, and lastly, When you run in any one’s debt, ’tis my counsel, and I give it you for nothing, that you would take care to see the party satisfy’d in good current money, for fear a wicked Moabite should compel you to it, which, between friends, will not be much for your reputation. As this is the last letter you are like to receive from me, I make it once more my request to you to observe the contents of it: for I am not at leisure to trifle any longer with you: otherwise a stone-doublet is the word, and wars must ensue, which every good christian ought to prevent, if it lies in his power. I am, unless you give me further provocation,
P. S. Your old friend the widow, is sorry to hear you have made so familiar with her, as to call her being in question; as likewise that of her Griffin and Red Lion. As for your love, having no occasion for it at present, she desires you to bestow it elsewhere; but is resolv’d, notwithstanding all your learned quirks and quiddities, to get her five pounds again; and when she has it in her pocket, for your sake she’ll never trust it with a logician, that would ergo her out of what is her own.
ANSWER IV.
I Received your last, for which I return you my hearty thanks, and am entirely of your opinion, that old birds are not to be caught with chaff; I find, Sir, you are a great admirer of old proverbs, and I commend you for it, for a great deal of morality and wholsome knowledge is to be pick’d out of them: besides, Sir, they are like the Common law of England, and derive their authority from usage and custom. Now I am talking of proverbs, there is one comes into my head at present, which I desire you to ruminate or chew the cud upon. In short, ’tis Birds of a feather flock together, which is effectually and literally fulfill’d when an attorney and a pickpocket are in the same company.
I am likewise of opinion, worthy Sir, that what you say of Aristotle’s making none of the best figures in Westminster-hall, may be true; for how can that plodding animal call’d a philosopher, expect civil quarter from the sons of noise and clamour? But by the by, Sir, I must take the freedom to tell you, that some of his friends here take it very ill, that you the black guard of Westminster-hall will not take his word for a groat. Sir, that diminutive contemptible piece of money a groat, Sir, three of which go to the making up of that important sum, denominated by the vulgar a shilling. Is it not very barbarous and inhuman, that Aristotle, formerly tutor to the greatest monarch in the universe, (when I say the greatest monarch in the universe, I neither mean Bajazet, nor Tamerlane, nor Scanderberg, nor Pipin, nor yet the French king, but Alexander the great) whose ipse dixit would have formerly gone more current than our present Exchequer notes, or Malt tickets, in any tavern, inn, or victualling-house, between the Hellespont and the Ganges, for a thousand pounds upon occasion: is it not barbarous and inhuman, I say, that this same Aristotle should not be trusted for a groat in Westminster-hall? That language one would hardly have expected either from Goth, Vandal, or Hun, but much less from a person of your civility and learning.
But alas! Sir, Ætas parentum pejor avis; we live in the fag-end of a most degenerate ungrateful age, that has no regard to Greek or Latin. Oh tempora & mores! was the complaint of a great virtuoso two thousand years ago, which we have but too much reason to renew now. Oh, Aristotle, Aristotle! that I should ever live to see thy venerable name in so much contempt, that any one belonging to Westminster-hall, should have the impudence to say, he will not trust thee for a groat! Ultra Sauromatas fugere hinc libet. I dare swear, that even in Muscovy and Poland, none of the most hospitable countries in the world, thou mayst at any time take a good dinner and a gallon of brandy upon thy Entilechia and Actus perspecui, and yet in Westminster-Hall, the most enlighten’d hall of the most enlighten’d city of Christendom, thy ipse dixit in so much vogue formerly with the Thomists and Scotists, the Nominalists and Realists, should not pass for a groat! So much, Sir, by way of answer, to Aristotle and Westminster-Hall, ipse dixit, and a groat.
What you say in a following paragraph concerning the wicked Moabite and the Stone Doublet, is very picquant and ingenious: for, Sir, reading Mr. Hobbs’s chapter about Concatenation of Thought, I find there is a great connection between the Moabite and Stone doublet; and some of the modern itineraries inform us, that stone doublets are in mighty request with the people of those countries to this very day; and the physical reason they assign for it, is, because stone doublets are very refrigerating and alexpharmick, which undoubtedly is a great refreshment in so hot a climate, as that where the wicked Moabite lived.
But, Sir, in lieu of the advice, which, out of your great bounty and liberality, you were pleas’d to give me for nothing, be pleas’d to accept of the following character, which I give myself the trouble to transcribe out of an ancient MS. in the Cotton-Library, suppos’d to be written by the famous Junius, who for his great skill in the oriental languages, acquir’d the sirname of Patricius; and this character, unless I am mistaken in my mathematicks, will give you a lively idea of a certain beast you may perhaps be acquainted with.
An attorney is one that lives by the undoing of his neighbours, as surgeons do by broken heads and claps, and like judges that always bring rain with them to the assizes, is sure to bring mischief with him wherever he comes. He’s an animal bred up by the corruption of the law, nurs’d up in discord and contention, and has a particular cant to himself, by which he terrifies the poor country people who worship him as the Indians do the devil, for fear he should mischief ’em. He is a constant resorter to fairs and markets, and has a knack to improve the least quarrel into a law-suit. He talks as familiarly of my lord chief justice as if he had known him from his cradle, and threatens all that incur his displeasure with leading them a jaunt to Westminster-hall. If his advice be ask’d upon the most insignificant trifle, he nods his head, twirls his pen in his ear, and cries ’twill bear a noble action; and when he has empty’d the poor wretch’s pocket, advises him to make up the matter, drink a merry cup with his adversary, and be friends. He affects to be thought a man of business, and quotes statutes as fiercely, as if he had read over Keble and got him by heart. The catchpole is his constant companion, by the same token they are as necessary to one another, as a midwife to a bawd, or an apothecary to a grave physician. While he lives, he is a perpetual persecutor of all the country about him; but fattens by being cursed, as they say camomile grows by being trod upon. At last, the devil serves an execution upon his person, hurries him to his own quarters, in whose clutches I leave him.