What, the magnanimous Alexander in tears?--cry, baby, put its finger in its eye, it shall have another globe, round as an orange, pretty moppet! Mister Adams----'odso, I honour your coat--pray do us the favour to read to us that sermon, which you lent to Mistress Slipshod--the twenty and second in your portmanteau there--on Female Incontinence--the same--it will come in most irrelevantly and impertinently seasonable to the time of the day. Good Master Raymund Lully, you look wise. Pray correct that error.---- Duns, spare your definitions. I must fine you a bumper, or a paradox. We will have nothing said or done syllogistically this day. Remove those logical forms, waiter, that no gentleman break the tender shins of his apprehension stumbling across them. Master Stephen, you are late.--Ha! Cokes, is it you?--Aguecheek, my dear knight, let me pay my devoir to you.--Master Shallow, your worship's poor servant to command.--Master Silence, I will use few words with you.--Slender, it shall go hard if I edge not you in somewhere.--You six will engross all the poor wit of the company to-day.--I know it, I know it. Ha! honest R----,[19] my fine old Librarian of Ludgate, time out of mind, art thou here again? Bless thy doublet, it is not over-new, threadbare as thy stories:--what dost thou flitting about the world at this rate?--Thy customers are extinct, defunct, bed-rid, have ceased to read long ago.--Thou goest still among them, seeing if, peradventure, thou canst hawk a volume or two.--Good Granville S----,[20] thy last patron, is flown. [Footnote 19: Ramsay.] [Footnote 20: Granville Sharp.] King Pandion, he is dead, All thy friends are lapt in lead.-- Nevertheless, noble R----, come in, and take your seat here, between Armado and Quisada: for in true courtesy, in gravity, in fantastic smiling to thyself, in courteous smiling upon others, in the goodly ornature of well-apparelled speech, and the commendation of wise sentences, thou art nothing inferior to those accomplished Dons of Spain. The spirit of chivalry forsake me for ever, when I forget thy singing the song of Macheath, which declares that he might be _happy with either_, situated between those two ancient spinsters--when I forget the inimitable formal love which thou didst make, turning now to the one, and now to the other, with that Malvolian smile--as if Cervantes, not Gay, had written it for his hero; and as if thousands of periods must revolve, before the mirror of courtesy could have given his invidious preference between a pair of so goodly-propertied and meritorious-equal damsels. * * * *