other of my life have come slap upon me from the shortness of my nose,
and no other cause, that I am conscious of.--Tell me, Slawkenbergius!
what secret impulse was it? what intonation of voice? whence came it?
how did it sound in thy ears?--art thou sure thou heard'st it?--which
first cried out to thee--go--go, Slawkenbergius! dedicate the labours of
thy life--neglect thy pastimes--call forth all the powers and faculties
of thy nature--macerate thyself in the service of mankind, and write a
grand Folio for them, upon the subject of their noses.

How the communication was conveyed into Slawkenbergius's sensorium--so
that Slawkenbergius should know whose finger touch'd the key--and whose
hand it was that blew the bellows--as Hafen Slawkenbergius has been dead
and laid in his grave above fourscore and ten years--we can only raise
conjectures.

Slawkenbergius was play'd upon, for aught I know, like one of
Whitefield's disciples--that is, with such a distinct intelligence, Sir,
of which of the two masters it was that had been practising upon his
instrument--as to make all reasoning upon it needless.

--For in the account which Hafen Slawkenbergius gives the world of his
motives and occasions for writing, and spending so many years of his
life upon this one work--towards the end of his prolegomena, which
by-the-bye should have come first--but the bookbinder has most
injudiciously placed it betwixt the analytical contents of the book, and
the book itself--he informs his reader, that ever since he had arrived
at the age of discernment, and was able to sit down cooly, and consider
within himself the true state and condition of man, and distinguish the
main end and design of his being;--or--to shorten my translation, for
Slawkenbergius's book is in Latin, and not a little prolix in this
passage--ever since I understood, quoth Slawkenbergius, any thing--or
rather what was what--and could perceive that the point of long noses
had been too loosely handled by all who had gone before;--have I
Slawkenbergius, felt a strong impulse, with a mighty and unresistible
call within me, to gird up myself to this undertaking.

And to do justice to Slawkenbergius, he has entered the list with a
stronger lance, and taken a much larger career in it than any one
man who had ever entered it before him--and indeed, in many respects,
deserves to be en-nich'd as a prototype for all writers, of voluminous
works at least, to model their books by--for