If my hypercritick is intractable, alledging, that two minutes and thirteen seconds are no more than two minutes and thirteen seconds,—when I have said all I can about them; and that this plea, though it might save me dramatically, will damn me biographically, rendering my book from this very moment, a professed ROMANCE, which, before, was a book apocryphal:——If I am thus pressed—I then put an end to the whole objection and controversy about it all at once,——by acquainting him, that _Obadiah_ had not got above threescore yards from the stable-yard, before he met with Dr. _Slop_;—and indeed he gave a dirty proof that he had met with him, and was within an ace of giving a tragical one too. Imagine to yourself;—but this had better begin a new chapter. C H A P. XXXIV IMAGINE to yourself a little squat, uncourtly figure of a Doctor _Slop_, of about four feet and a half perpendicular height, with a breadth of back, and a sesquipedality of belly, which might have done honour to a serjeant in the horse-guards. Such were the out-lines of Dr. _Slop_’s figure, which—if you have read _Hogarth_’s analysis of beauty, and if you have not, I wish you would;——you must know, may as certainly be caricatured, and conveyed to the mind by three strokes as three hundred. Imagine such a one,—for such, I say, were the outlines of Dr. _Slop_’s figure, coming slowly along, foot by foot, waddling thro’ the dirt upon the vertebræ of a little diminutive pony, of a pretty colour——but of strength,——alack!——scarce able to have made an amble of it, under such a fardel, had the roads been in an ambling condition.——They were not.——Imagine to yourself, _Obadiah_ mounted upon a strong monster of a coach-horse, pricked into a full gallop, and making all practicable speed the adverse way. Pray, Sir, let me interest you a moment in this description.