Never had a Man, I suppose, in this Mortal World, ever so droll a master as this Bartholomew Pinchin, of Hampstead, Esquire. 'Tis Tame, and may be Offensive, for me to be so continually telling that he wrote himself down _Armiger_, after my Promise to forego for the future such recapitulation of his Title; but Mr. Pinchin was himself never tired of dubbing himself Esquire, and you could scarcely be five Minutes in his company without hearing of his Estate, and his Mamma, and his Right to bear Arms. I, who was by birth a Gentleman of Long Descent, could not forbear Smiling from time to time (in my Sleeve, be it understood, since I was a Servant at Wages to him) at his ridiculous Assumptions. And there are few things more Contemptible, I take it, than for a Man of really good Belongings, and whose Lineage is as old as Stonehenge (albeit, for Reasons best known to Himself, he permits his Pedigree to lie Perdu), to hear an Upstart of Yesterday Bragging and Swelling that he is come from this or from that, when we, who are of the true Good Stock, know very well, but that we are not so ill-mannered as to say so, that he is sprung from Nothing at all. I think that if the Heralds were to make their Journeys now, as of Yore, among the Country Churchyards, and hack out from the Headstones the sculptured cognizances of those having no manner of Right to them, the Stone-Masons about Hyde Park Corner would all make Fortunes from the orders that would be given to them for fresh Tombs. Not a mealy-mouthed Burgess now, whose great-grandfather sold stocking hose to my Lord Duke of Northumberland, but sets himself up for a Percy; not a supercilious Cit, whose Uncle married a cast-off waiting-woman from Arundel Castle, but vaunts himself on his alliance with the noble house of Howard; not a starveling Scrivener, whose ancestor, as the playwright has it, got his Skull cracked by John of Gaunt for crowding among the Marshalmen in the Tilt Yard, but must pertly Wink and Snigger, and say that the Dukedom of Lancaster would not be found extinct if the Right Heir chose to come Forward. Since that poor young Lord of the Lakes was attainted for his part in the Troubles of the 'Fifteen, and lost his head on Tower Hill (his vast Estates going to Greenwich Hospital), I am given to understand that every man in Cumberland or Westmoreland whose name happens to be Ratcliffe (I knew the late Mr. Charles Ratcliffe, that Suffered with a Red Feather in his Hat, very well), must give himself out to be titular Earl of Derwentwater, and Importune the Government to reverse the Attainder, and restore him the Lands of which the Greenwich Commissioners have gotten such a tight Hold; and as for Grandchildren of the by-blows of King Charles II., good lack! to hear them talk of the "Merry Monarch," and to see them draw up their Eyebrows into the Stuart Frown, one would think that every Player-Woman at the King's or the Duke's House had been as favoured in her time as Madam Eleanour Gwyn.