Or, it is possible, may it please your worships, that I—I for the matter of that am a little te—te—tipsy, or so.—But as there may perhaps be, as it were, now and then, one of your Right Worshipful Fraternity, who has been in a similar predicament se—se ipse, I hope I shall receive your worships’ permission to stagger on with a jug full of gas in my noddle, at least, through a stanza or two.

[8]

I’m fall’n! fall’n! fall’n! down, flat! flat! flat!

See Dryden’s Feast of Alexander, where one king Darius has a terrible tumble down, beautifully described by half a dozen “fallens.” But I think the Persian monarch did not after all, fall quite so flat as Doctor Caustic.

[9]

And women to hysteric fits.

See the lamentable case of the Lady, page 16th of Dr Beddoes’s pamphlet, who, taking a drop too much of this panacea, fell into hysterical fits, &c.

[10]

Besides a shoal of learned Dutchmen.

Boerhaave, Steno, De Graff, Swammerdam, Zimmerman, cum multis aliis. By the by, gentlemen, this epithet shoal is not always to be taken in a shallow sense; but when applied to such deep fellows, must be considered as noun of multitude, as we say a shoal of herrings.