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part of the French nation. As neither his bodily nor mental faculties were very vigorous, his childhood was remarkable only for a certain effeminate vivacity, which continually displayed itself in such a noisy and insignificant prattling, as was very tiresome and disagreeable to every body in the house. When he grew older, he added to his former loquacity the most passionate fondness for fine clothes; so that in the twelfth year of his age, he became as complete a top as ever eyes beheld. He wore upon his head a macaroni hat about the size of a small tea saucer; his coat, which scarcely had any skirts to it, was of the most glaring colour he could fix upon; and his hair, which was plaistered over with powder and pomatum, was tied behind in a large club, which hung swagging upon his shoulders like a soldier's knapsack. Thus elegantly dressed, he strutted along the streets with a large stick in his hand about a foot taller than himself, and a small cutteau de chasse by his side, which he could handle with as much dexterity as his pen; an instrument in the use of which he had made such a contemptible proficiency, that it required as much acuteness to discover the meaning of his aukward scrawl, as to explain the hieroglyphick characters of the ancient Egyptians. What still increased the obscurity of every thing which Monsieur _Fribble_ undertook the trouble of penning, was that, excepting when he wrote his own name, he had a method of spelling which was peculiar to himself. He was equally famous for his skill in the useful science of numbers; for though, during the space of seven or eight years, he devoted to it a considerable part of that lingering time which he was forced to spare from his private diversions in school hours, the sum total of his improvement was, that he was scarcely capable of casting up the contents of a shoemaker's little bill. His highest ambition was, in the first place, to furnish himself with a large collection of complimentary phrases, which he had seldom discretion enough to apply with any tolerable propriety; and, in the next, to complete himself in the polite art of dancing, in which he so far succeeded as to be able to skip about with the most regular agility, though he never had a sufficient share of good sense to be able to dance with gracefulness. Thus accomplished, he excited the admiration of every silly coquette, and the envy of every fluttering coxcomb; but by all young gentlemen and ladi
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