law to practise, as his wife had given
by institution,--he cheerfully paid the fees for the ordinary's licence
himself, amounting in the whole, to the sum of eighteen shillings and
four pence; so that betwixt them both, the good woman was fully invested
in the real and corporal possession of her office, together with all its
rights, members, and appurtenances whatsoever.

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 1.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 lit