_Mr Panscope._ The _authority_, sir, of all these great men, whose works, as well as the whole of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the entire series of the Monthly Review, the complete set of the Variorum Classics, and the Memoirs of the Academy of Inscriptions, I have read through from beginning to end, deposes, with irrefragable refutation, against your ratiocinative speculations, wherein you seem desirous, by the futile process of analytical dialectics, to subvert the pyramidal structure of synthetically deduced opinions, which have withstood the secular revolutions of physiological disquisition, and which I maintain to be transcendentally self-evident, categorically certain, and syllogistically demonstrable. _Squire Headlong._ Bravo! Pass the bottle. The very best speech that ever was made. _Mr Escot._ It has only the slight disadvantage of being unintelligible. _Mr Panscope._ I am not obliged, sir, as Dr Johnson observed on a similar occasion, to furnish you with an understanding. _Mr Escot._ I fear, sir, you would have some difficulty in furnishing me with such an article from your own stock. _Mr Panscope._ 'Sdeath, sir, do you question my understanding? _Mr Escot._ I only question, sir, where I expect a reply; which, from things that have no existence, I am not visionary enough to anticipate. _Mr Panscope._ I beg leave to observe, sir, that my language was perfectly perspicuous, and etymologically correct; and, I conceive, I have demonstrated what I shall now take the liberty to say in plain terms, that all your opinions are extremely absurd. _Mr Escot._ I should be sorry, sir, to advance any opinion that you would not think absurd. _Mr Panscope._ Death and fury, sir---- _Mr Escot._ Say no more, sir. That apology is quite sufficient. _Mr Panscope._ Apology, sir? _Mr Escot._ Even so, sir. You have lost your temper, which I consider equivalent to a confession that you have the worst of the argument. _Mr Panscope._ Lightning and devils! sir---- _Squire Headlong._ No civil war!--Temperance, in the name of Bacchus!--A glee! a glee! _Music has charms to bend the knotted oak._ Sir Patrick, you'll join? _Sir Patrick O'Prism._ Troth, with all my heart; for, by my soul, I'm bothered completely. _Squire Headlong._ Agreed, then; you, and I, and Chromatic. Bumpers! Come, strike up. Squire Headlong, Mr Chromatic, and Sir Patrick O'Prism, each holding a bumper, immediately vociferated the following GLEE A heeltap! a heeltap! I never could bear it! So fill me a bumper, a bumper of claret! Let the bottle pass freely, don't shirk it nor spare it, For a heeltap! a heeltap! I never could bear it! No skylight! no twilight! while Bacchus rules o'er us: No thinking! no shrinking! all drinking in chorus: Let us moisten our clay, since 'tis thirsty and porous: No thinking! no shrinking! all drinking in chorus! GRAND CHORUS