In the latter, a physician and a boy enter into conversation; and when the boy has, as we should say, chaffed his senior pretty freely, the doctor testily observes: “Thou art a rare child for thy wit; but I fear thou wilt prove like a summer apple, soon ripe, soon rotten; thou art so full of wit now, that I fear thou wilt have little when thou art old.” “Then,” said the boy, “I gather by your words that you had a good wit when you were young!” The students of _Sheridaniana_ will recognise a familiar acquaintance here in a strange dress. [Illustration] [Illustration] CHAPTER X. AFFILIATION OF STORIES--PARALLEL ILLUSTRATIONS--THE LITERARY CLUB--REYNOLDS, JOHNSON, AND GARRICK--TWO TUDOR JEST-BOOKS--EUROPEAN GRAFTS ON ORIENTAL ORIGINALS--MARTIN ELGINBROD--PARSON HOBART--THE “BRAVO OF VENICE.” But it must not be supposed that those who have interested themselves in the manufacture of these agreeable diversions made any rule of waiting for the objects of appropriation to grow old. The account of Dr. Parr mistaking his saturated wig, as it dried at the fire, for _rothe gothe_, was equally narrated and believed of his contemporary Dr. Farmer; and that about Bishop Watson and the Old Cock at Windermere is nothing more than a re-issue, with a change in the bill, of the Duke of Cumberland and the Original Old Grey Ass. It demanded in neither case the possession of archæological insight to detect the double paternity; for the two versions and the two men were living nearly abreast. Where a certain type is before the world as a model, it seldom fails to multiply itself with trivial variations. Take, for example, three articles from sources dated between 1640 and 1790; the same thing, too, is recorded of Sydney Smith:-- “‘That fellow,’ “A man being “A man was said Cyrano de rallied by Louis asked by his Bergerac to a XIV. on his friend when friend, ‘is always bulk, which the he last saw in one’s King told him his jolly comrade way, and always had increased ----? insolent. The from want of ‘Oh,’ said he, dog is conscious exercise, ‘Ah, ‘I called on that he is so fat sir,’ said he, him yesterday that it would ‘what would at his lodgings, take an honest your Majesty and there man more than have me do? I found him a day to give I have already sitting all him a thorough walked three round a table beating.’” times round the by himself.’” Duc D’Aumont this morning.’”