These last words, you must know, were not according to the old form in which such licences, faculties, and powers usually ran, which in like cases had heretofore been granted to the sisterhood. But it was according to a neat _Formula_ of _Didius_ his own devising, who having a particular turn for taking to pieces, and new framing over again, all kind of instruments in that way, not only hit upon this dainty amendment, but coaxed many of the old licensed matrons in the neighbourhood, to open their faculties afresh, in order to have this wham-wham of his inserted. I own I never could envy _Didius_ in these kinds of fancies of his: --But every man to his own taste. --Did not Dr. _Kunastrokius_, that great man, at his leisure hours, take the greatest delight imaginable in combing of asses tails, and plucking the dead hairs out with his teeth, though he had tweezers always in his pocket? Nay, if you come to that, Sir, have not the wisest of men in all ages, not excepting _Solomon_ himself, --have they not had their HOBBY-HORSES; --their running horses, --their coins and their cockle-shells, their drums and their trumpets, their fiddles, their pallets, --their maggots and their butterflies? --and so long as a man rides his HOBBY-HORSE peaceably and quietly along the King’s highway, and neither compels you or me to get up behind him, --pray, Sir, what have either you or I to do with it? CHAPTER VIII --_De gustibus non est disputandum_; --that is, there is no disputing against HOBBY-HORSES; and for my part, I seldom do; nor could I with any sort of grace, had I been an enemy to them at the bottom; for happening, at certain intervals and changes of the moon, to be both fidler and painter, according as the fly stings: --Be it known to you, that I keep a couple of pads myself, upon which, in their turns, (nor do I care who knows it) I frequently ride out and take the air; --though sometimes, to my shame be it spoken, I take somewhat longer journies than what a wise man would think altogether right. --But the truth is, --I am not a wise man; --and besides am a mortal of so little consequence in the world, it is not much matter what I do: so I seldom fret or fume at all about it: Nor does it much disturb my rest, when I see such great Lords and tall Personages as hereafter follow; --such, for instance, as my Lord A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, and so on, all of a row, mounted upon their several horses; --some with large stirrups, getting on in a more grave and sober pace; ----others on the contrary, tucked up to their very chins, with whips across their mouths, scouring and scampering it away like so many little party-coloured devils astride a mortgage, --and as if some of them were resolved to break their necks. ----So much the better--say I to myself; --for in case the worst should happen, the world will make a shift to do excellently well without them; and for the rest, ----why ----God speed them----e’en let them ride on