ve
those logical forms, waiter, that no gentleman break the tender shins
of his apprehension stumbling across them.

Master Stephen, you are late.--Ha! Cokes, is it you?--Aguecheek, my
dear knight, let me pay my devoir to you.--Master Shallow, your
worship's poor servant to command.--Master Silence, I will use few
words with you.--Slender, it shall go hard if I edge not you in
somewhere.--You six will engross all the poor wit of the company
to-day.--I know it, I know it.

Ha! honest R----,[19] my fine old Librarian of Ludgate, time out of
mind, art thou here again? Bless thy doublet, it is not over-new,
threadbare as thy stories:--what dost thou flitting about the world at
this rate?--Thy customers are extinct, defunct, bed-rid, have ceased
to read long ago.--Thou goest still among them, seeing if,
peradventure, thou canst hawk a volume or two.--Good Granville
S----,[20] thy last patron, is flown.

[Footnote 19: Ramsay.]

[Footnote 20: Granville Sharp.]

King Pandion, he is dead,
All thy friends are lapt in lead.--

Nevertheless, noble R----, come in, and take your seat here, between
Armado and Quisada: for in true courtesy, in gravity, in fantastic
smiling to thyself, in courteous smiling upon others, in the goodly
ornature of well-apparelled speech, and the commendation of wise
sentences, thou art nothing inferior to those accomplished Dons of
Spain. The spirit of chivalry forsake me for ever, when I forget thy
singing the song of Macheath, which declares that he might be _happy
with either_, situated between those two ancient spinsters--when I
forget the inimitable formal love which thou didst make, turning now
to the one, and now to the other, with that Malvolian smile--as if
Cervantes, not Gay, had written it for his hero; and as if thousands
of periods must revolve, before the mirror of courtesy could have
given his invidious preference between a pair of so goodly-propertied
and meritorious-equal damsels. * * * *

To descend from these altitudes, and not to protract our Fools'
Banquet beyond its appropriate day,--for I fear the second of April is
not many hours distant--in sober verity I will confess a truth to
thee, reader. I love a _Fool_--as naturally, as if I were of kith and
kin to him. When a child, with child-like apprehensions, that dived
not below the surface of the matter, I read those _Parables_--not
guessing at their involved wisdom--I had more yearnings towards that
simple architect