eful discoveries are sometimes made by
accidental and small beginnings, I came to the knowledge of the most
epidemic ill of this sort, by falling into a coffee-house where I saw my
friend the upholsterer,[284] whose crack[285] towards politics I have
heretofore mentioned. This touch in the brain of the British subject is
as certainly owing to the reading newspapers, as that of the Spanish
worthy above mentioned to the reading works of chivalry. My
contemporaries the novelists[286] have, for the better spinning out
paragraphs, and working down to the end of their columns, a most happy
art in saying and unsaying, giving hints of intelligence, and
interpretations of indifferent actions, to the great disturbance of the
brains of ordinary readers. This way of going on in the words, and
making no progress in the sense, is more particularly the excellence of
my most ingenious and renowned fellow-labourer, the _Postman_[287]; and
it is to this talent in him that I impute the loss of my upholsterer's
intellects. That unfortunate tradesman has for years past been the chief
orator in ragged assemblies, and the reader in alley coffee-houses. He
was yesterday surrounded by an audience of that sort, among whom I sat
unobserved through the favour of a cloud of tobacco, and saw him with
the _Postman_ in his hand, and all the other papers safe under his left
elbow. He was intermixing remarks, and reading the Paris article of May
30, which says that "it is given out that an express arrived this day,
with advice, that the armies were so near in the plain of Lens, that
they cannonaded each other." ("Ay, ay, here we shall have sport.") "And
that it was highly probable the next express would bring us an account
of an engagement." ("They are welcome as soon as they please.") "Though
some others say, that the same will be put off till the 2nd or 3rd of
June, because the Marshal Villars expects some further reinforcements
from Germany, and other parts, before that time." ("What-a-pox does he
put it off for? Does he think our horse is not marching up at the same
time? But let us see what he says further.") "They hope that Monsieur
Albergotti,[288] being encouraged by the presence of so great an army,
will make an extraordinary defence." ("Why then I find, Albergotti is
one of those that love to have a great many on their side. Nay, I'll say
that for this paper, he makes the most natural inferences of any of them
all.") "The Elector of Bavaria bein