minuet to admiration, and accompanies the airs in the Beggar's opera on his flute in their original tafte: He is alfo a playhouse critic of no mean pretenfions, for he remembers Mrs. Woffington, and Quin and Mrs. Cibber; and when the players come to town, Billy is greatly looked up to, and has been known to lead a clap, where nobody but himself could find a reason for clapping at all. When his vanity is in the cue, Billy Bachelor can talk to you of his amours, and upon occafion stretch the truth to fave his credit; particularly in accounting for a certain old lameness in his knee-pan, which fome, who are in the fecret, know was got by being kicked out of a coffee-houfe, but which to the world at large he afferts was incurred by leaping out of a window to fave a lady's reputation, and escape the fury of an enraged husband.

Dr. Pyeball is a dignitary of the church, and a mighty proficient in the belles lettres: He tells you Voltaire was a man of fome fancy and had a knack of writing, but he bids you beware of his principles, and doubts if he had any more christianity than Pontius Pilate: He has wrote an epigram against a certain contemporary hiftorian, which cuts him up at a ftroke. By a happy jargon of profeffional phrafes with a kind

of

of Socratic mode of arguing, he has fo bamboozled the dons of the cathedral as to have effected a total revolution in their church music, making Purcell, Crofts and Handel give place to a quaint, quirkish ftile, little less capricious than if the organift was to play cotillons and the dean and chapter dance to them. The doctor is a mighty admirer of those ingenious publications, which are intitled The flowers of the several authors they are selected from; this short cut to Parnaffus not only faves him a great deal of round-about riding, but supplies him with many an apt couplet for off-hand quotations, in which he is very expert and has besides a clever knack of weaving them into his pulpit effays (for I will not call them sermons) in much the fame way as Tiddy-Doll stuck plumbs on his short pigs and his long pigs and his pigs with a curley tail. By a proper fprinkling of these spiritual nofegays, and the recommendation of a foft infinuating addrefs, doctor Pyeball is universally cried up as a very pretty genteel preacher, one who understands the politeness of the pulpit and does not furfeit well-bred people with more religion than they have ftomachs for. Amiable Mifs Pen Tabby is one of his warmeft admirers, and declares Doctor Pyeball in his

gown

gown and caflock is quite the man of fashion: The ill-natured world will have it the has contemplated him in other fituations with equal approbation.

Elegant Mrs. Dainty is another ornament of this charming coterie : She is feparated from her husband, but the eye of malice never spied a fpeck upon her virtue; his manners were infupportable; fhe, good lady, never gave him the leaft provocation, for fhe was always fick and moftly confined to her chamber in nursing a delicate conftitution: Noifes racked her head; company fhook her nerves all to pieces; in the country fhe could not live, for country doctors and apothecaries knew nothing of her case; in London fhe could not fleep, unless the whole ftreet was littered with ftraw. Her husband was a man of no refinement; all the fine feelings of the human heart were heathen Greek to him; he loved his friend, had no quarrel with his bottle, and, coming from his club one night a little flustered, his horrid dalliances threw Mrs. Dainty into ftrong hysterics, and the covenanted truce being now broken, fhe kept no further terms with him and they feparated. It was a step of abfolute neceffity, for the declares her life could no otherwise have been faved; his boisterous familiarities

familiarities would have been her death. She now leads an uncontaminated life, fupporting a feeble frame by medicine, fipping her tea with her dear quiet friends every evening, chatting over the little news of the day, fighing charitably when the hears any evil of her kind neighbours, turning off her femme-de-chambre once a week or thereabouts, fondling her lap-dog, who is a dear sweet pretty creature and so sensible, and taking the air now and then on a pillion behind faithful John, who is fo careful of her, and fo handy, and at the fame time one of the ftouteft, handfomeft, beft-limbed lads in all England.

Sir Hugo Fitz-Hugo is a decayed baronet of a family fo very antient, that they have long fince worn out the estate that supported them: Sir Hugo knows his own dignity none the less, and keeps a little fnivelling boy, who can scarce move under the load of worfted lace, that is plaistered down the edges and seams of his livery: He leaves a vifiting card at your door, stuck as full of emblems as an American paper dollar. Sir Hugo abominates a tradesman; his olfactory nerves are tortured with the scent of a grocer, or a butcher, quite across the way, and as for a tallow-chandler he can wind him to the very

end

end of the street; thefe are people, whofe vifits he cannot endure; their very bills turn his ftomach upside down. Sir Hugo inveighs against modern, manners as feverely as Cato would against French cookery; he notes down omiffions in punctilio as a merchant does bills for protesting; and in cold weather Sir Hugo is of fome ufe, for he fuffers no man to turn his back to the fire and screen it from the company who fit round: He holds it for a folecism in good-breeding for any man to touch a lady's hand without his glove: This as a general maxim Mifs Pen Tabby agrees to, but doubts whether there are not some cases when it may waved: He anathematizes the herefy of a gentleman's fitting at the head of a lady's table, and contends that the honours of the upper difh are the unalienable rights of the mistress of the family: In fhort, Sir Hugo Fitz-Hugo has more pride about him than he knows how to difpofe of, and yet cannot find in his heart to bestow one atom of it upon honesty: From the world he merits no other praise but that of having lived fingle all his life, and, being the last of his. family; at his decease the Fitz-Hugos will be extinct.

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