mpetitions, factions, and debates of mankind. When I read the
several dates of the tombs, of some that died yesterday, and some six
hundred years ago, I consider that great day when we shall all of us
be contemporaries, and make our appearance together.

II

WILL HONEYCOMB AND HIS MARRIAGE[116]

My friend Will Honeycomb values himself very much upon what he calls
the knowledge of mankind, which has cost him many disasters in his
youth; for Will reckons every misfortune that he has met with among
the women, and every encounter among the men, as parts of his
education, and fancies he should never have been the man he is, had he
not broke windows, knocked down constables, disturbed honest people
with his midnight serenades, and beat up Phryne'e quarters, when he
was a young fellow. The engaging in adventures of this nature, Will
calls the studying of mankind, and terms this knowledge of the town,
the knowledge of the world. Will ingenuously confesses, that for half
his life his head ached every morning with reading of men over night;
and at present comforts himself under sundry infirmities with the
reflection that without them he could not have been acquainted with
the gallantries of the age. This Will looks upon as the learning of a
gentleman, and regards all other kinds of science as the
accomplishments of one whom he calls a scholar, a bookish man, or a
philosopher.

For these reasons Will shines in a mixed company, where he has the
discretion not to go out of his depth, and has often a certain way of
making his real ignorance appear a seeming one. Our club, however, has
frequently caught him tripping, at which times they never spare him.
For as Will often insults us with the knowledge of the town, we
sometimes take our revenge upon him by our knowledge of books.

He was last week producing two or three letters which he writ in his
youth to a coquette lady. The raillery of them was natural, and well
enough for a mere man of the town; but very unluckily, several of the
words were wrong spelt. Will laughed this off at first as well as he
could; but finding himself pushed on all sides, and especially by the
Templar, he told us with a little passion that he never liked pedantry
in spelling, and that he spelt like a gentleman and not like a
scholar: upon this Will had recourse to his old topic of showing the
narrow-spiritedness, the pride and ignorance, of pedants; which he
carried so far, that, upon my retirin