I received your last, for which I return you my hearty thanks, and am entirely of your opinion, that old birds are not to be caught with chaff; I find, Sir, you are a great admirer of old proverbs, and I commend you for it, for a great deal of morality and wholsome knowledge is to be pick’d out of them: besides, Sir, they are like the Common law of _England_, and derive their authority from usage and custom. Now I am talking of proverbs, there is one comes into my head at present, which I desire you to ruminate or chew the cud upon. In short, ’tis _Birds of a feather flock together_, which is effectually and literally fulfill’d when an attorney and a pickpocket are in the same company. I am likewise of opinion, worthy Sir, that what you say of _Aristotle_’s making none of the best figures in _Westminster-hall_, may be true; for how can that plodding animal call’d a philosopher, expect civil quarter from the sons of noise and clamour? But by the by, Sir, I must take the freedom to tell you, that some of his friends here take it very ill, that you the black guard of _Westminster-hall_ will not take his word for a groat. Sir, that diminutive contemptible piece of money a groat, Sir, three of which go to the making up of that important sum, denominated by the vulgar a shilling. Is it not very barbarous and inhuman, that _Aristotle_, formerly tutor to the greatest monarch in the universe, (when I say the greatest monarch in the universe, I neither mean _Bajazet_, nor _Tamerlane_, nor _Scanderberg_, nor _Pipin_, nor yet the _French_ king, but _Alexander the great_) whose _ipse dixit_ would have formerly gone more current than our present _Exchequer_ notes, or _Malt_ tickets, in any tavern, inn, or victualling-house, between the _Hellespont_ and the _Ganges_, for a thousand pounds upon occasion: is it not barbarous and inhuman, I say, that this same _Aristotle_ should not be trusted for a groat in _Westminster-hall_? That language one would hardly have expected either from _Goth_, _Vandal_, or _Hun_, but much less from a person of your civility and learning.