To exalt virtue, expose vice, promote truth, and help men to serious reflection, is my first moving cause and last directed. De Foe's Review, Preface. ----Oh that I dared To basket up the family of plagues That waste our vitals; peculation, sale Of honour, peijury, corruptiou, frauds By forgery, by subterfuge of law, By tricks and lies--- Then cast them, closely bundled, every brat At the right door! Cowper. "JUGLATOR REGIS." Strutt's Sports ---a most officious Drudge, His face and gown drawn out with the same budge, His pendant Pouch, which is both large and wide, Looks like a Letters-patent:------ He is as avful, as he had been sent From Moses with the eleventh commandement. Corbet's Poems, 1672, p. 3. [Illustration: 100] {092} BAGS.--_(a Scruple Balance.)_ -----'tis the veriest madness, to live poor, And die with _Bags_---- Gifford's Juvenal, Sat. xiv. Dubius is such a _scrupulous_ good man.-- Yes--you may catch him tripping, if you can! He would not, with a peremptory tone, Assert the nose upon his face his own. With hesitation, admirably slow, He humbly hopes--presumes--it may be so. Through constant dread of giving truth offence, He ties up all his hearers in suspense! His sole opinion, whatsoe'er befall, Cent'ring, at last, in having--none at all. Cowper. Well! he is a _nimble_ gentleman; set him upon Bankes, his horse, in a saddle rampant, and it is a great question, which part of the Centaur shews better tricks. {093} [Illustration: 101] A CROCODILE. Ladies and Gentlemen, I begin the Exhibition with the Crocodile, which is of the Lizard tribe ; yet, from his _facility of creeping through narrow and intricate ways,_ he has been classed among Serpents. * He has a monstrous appetite, his _swallow_ is immense, and his legs are placed _side_-ways. It is a vulgar error to suppose that he cannot _turn_; for, although he is in appearance very heavy, and his back is very strong, and proof against the hardest blows, yet he is so _pliable_, that he can _wheel_ round with the utmost facility. When in his haunt, and apparently torpid, he sometimes utters a piteous _whine_ of distress--almost human; _sheds tears_, and, attracting the unwary, suddenly darts upon a man, and gorges him with all he has. His _claws_ are very long and tenacious. If a victim eludes his grasp, he infallibly secures him by his fleet power. He is sometimes used for purposes of _state and show_, and his bags are much coveted for their _peculiar_ qualities. ** * By Linnaeus. ** Goldsmith's Animated Nature, v. 283. {094} [Illustration: 102]