_Furet._ I happen’d not to be there; for you must know, there has been such a difference between those gentlemen and me, concerning a dictionary I have publish’d, that it came at last to a contentious law-suit; but what was laid on either side, only made the world laugh at both, and is not half so diverting as the epigram you made upon an, old lady that went to law with you: I think I still remember it.---- _Thou nauseous everlasting sow,_ _With phiz of bear, and shape of cow,_ _With eyes that in their sockets twinkle,_ _And forehead plow’d with many a wrinkle._ _With nose that runs like common-shore,_ _And breath that murders at twelvescore:_ _What! thou’rt resolv’d to give me war,_ _And trounce me at the noisy bar,_ _Though it reduces thee to eat,_ _Thy smock for want of cleanlier meat:_ _Agreed, old beldam! keep thy word,_ _’Twill soon reduce thee to eat a t----d._ _Scar._ May that be the fate of _Taleman_, _Charpentier_, and the rest of those reformers of the alphabet, and in a more especial manner of that thieving flattering rogue [54] _Despaux_, who has made a faithless poltron, a _Mars_, and a super-annuated lascivious adultress, a saint. So much for that ---- But give me some little account now of your clergy, I mean the great plump rogues, the hogs with mitres on their heads, and crosiers on their shoulders, those janizaries of antichrist. _Furet._ I know your meaning---- Never was nickname given with more justice to any society of men. In _Normandy_, and those parts they call all the minor clergy, as the fat monks, canons, abbots, _&c._ who are not mitred, _Jesus Christ_’s porkers; which distinction is not very fantastical, if we allow the other expression. But no more of those gentlemen, ’tis dangerous. _Scar._ Prithee, dear abbot, be not so mealy-mouth’d; when I was in the world, the greatest pleasure I had, was in attacking those gentleman’s vices, and exposing them to the hereticks, that still-born generation of vipers, as they call them, and therefore let us be free now; ’tis the only enjoyment we can have. Pray what says your _Monthly Mercury_ of those gentleman, whom the earth is more oblig’d to for bodies, than heaven for souls? _Furet._ Never fuller of who made such a man a cuckold, and who pox’d such a woman, as now; neither were ever the women half so impudent; no not in the reigns of _Caligula_ and _Nero_. Never was debauchery so much in fashion; nor never were the whores so often cover’d with purple. _Scar._ Is there not in your herd, such a thing as a tame gentle weather? or what _Virgil_ calls _Dux Gregis_? you understand me.