intolerable entrails; to be fat and greasy; as poor as Job, and as slanderous as Satan_”;—Take him away, he merits not a fair trial; he is too offensive to be turned, too odious to be touched. I grant, indeed, that the subject of our lecture is not without his infirmity; “_He cuts three inches on the ribs, he was short-winded_,” and his breath possibly not of the sweetest. “_He had the gout_,” or something worse, “_which played the rogue with his great toe._”—But these considerations are not to the point; we shall conceal, as much as may be, these offences; our business is with his _heart_ only, which, as we shall endeavour to demonstrate, lies in the right place, and is firm and sound, notwithstanding a few indications to the contrary.—As for you, _Mrs._ MONTAGUE, I am grieved to find that _you_ have been involved in a popular error; so much you must allow me to say;—for the rest, I bow to your genius and your virtues: You have given to the world a very elegant composition; and I am told your manners and your mind are yet more pure, more elegant than your book. _Falstaff_ was too gross, too infirm, for your inspection; but if you durst have looked nearer, you would not have found Cowardice in the number of his infirmities.—We will try if we cannot redeem him from this universal censure.—Let the venal corporation of authors duck _to the golden fool_, let them shape their sordid quills to the mercenary ends of unmerited praise, or of baser detraction;—_old Jack_, though deserted by princes, though censured by an ungrateful world, and persecuted from age to age by Critic and Commentator, and though never rich enough to hire one literary prostitute, shall find a Voluntary defender; and that too at a time when the whole body of the _Nabobry_ demands and requires defence; whilst their ill-gotten and almost untold gold feels loose in their unassured grasp, and whilst they are ready to shake off portions of the enormous heap, that they may the more securely clasp the remainder.—But not to digress without end,—to the candid, to the chearful, to the elegant reader we appeal; our exercise is much too light for the sour eye of strict severity; it professes amusement only, but we hope of a kind more rational than the History of Miss _Betsy_, eked out with the Story of Miss _Lucy_, and the Tale of Mr. _Twankum_: And so, in a leisure hour, and with the good natured reader, it may be hoped, to friend, we return, with an air as busy and important as if we were engaged in the grave office of measuring the _Pyramids_, or settling the antiquity of _Stonehenge_, to converse with this jovial, this fat, this roguish, this frail, but, I think, _not cowardly_ companion.