In the fore-ground of this picture, a statesman turning the political wheel, like a brute, the wrong way round--against the stream of corruption--by Heaven!--instead of with it.
In this corner, a son of the divine Esculapius, writing a book against predestination; perhaps worse--feeling his patient's pulse, instead of his apothecary's--a brother of the Faculty in the back-ground upon his knees in tears--drawing the curtains of a mangled victim to beg his forgiveness;--offering a fee--instead of taking one.
In that spacious Hall, a coalition of the gown, from all the bars of it, driving a damn'd, dirty, vexatious cause before them, with all their might and main, the wrong way!--kicking it out of the great doors, instead of, in--and with such fury in their looks, and such a degree of inveteracy in their manner of kicking it, as if the laws had been originally made for the peace and preservation of mankind:--perhaps a more enormous mistake committed by them still--a litigated point fairly hung up;--for instance, Whether John o'Nokes his nose could stand in Tom o'Stiles his face, without a trespass, or not--rashly determined by them in five-and-twenty minutes, which, with the cautious pros and cons required in so intricate a proceeding, might have taken up as many months--and if carried on upon a military plan, as your honours know an Action should be, with all the stratagems practicable therein,--such as feints,--forced marches,--surprizes--ambuscades--mask-batteries, and a thousand other strokes of generalship, which consist in catching at all advantages on both sides--might reasonably have lasted them as many years, finding food and raiment all that term for a centumvirate of the profession.
As for the Clergy--No--if I say a word against them, I'll be shot.--I have no desire; and besides, if I had--I durst not for my soul touch upon the subject--with such weak nerves and spirits, and in the condition I am in at present, 'twould be as much as my life was worth, to deject and contrist myself with so bad and melancholy an account--and therefore 'tis safer to draw a curtain across, and hasten from it, as fast as I can, to the main and principal point I have undertaken to clear up--and that is, How it comes to pass, that your men of least wit are reported to be men of most judgment.--But mark--I say, reported to be--for it is no more, my dear Sirs, than a report, and which, like twenty others taken up every day upon trust, I maintain to be a vile and a malicious report into the bargain.
This by the help of the observation already premised, and I hope already weighed and perpended by your reverences and worships, I shall forthwith make appear.
I hate set dissertations--and above all things in the world, 'tis one of the silliest things in one of them, to darken your hypothesis by placing a number of tall, opake words, one before another, in a right line, betwixt your own and your reader's conception--when in all likelihood, if you had looked about, you might have seen something standing, or hanging up, which would have cleared the point at once--'for what hindrance, hurt, or harm doth the laudable desire of knowledge bring to any man, if even from a sot, a pot, a fool, a stool, a winter-mittain, a truckle for a pully, the lid of a goldsmith's crucible, an oil bottle, an old slipper, or a cane chair?'--Iam this moment sitting upon one. Will you give me leave to illustrate this affair of wit and judgment, by the two knobs on the top of the back of it?--they are fastened on, you see, with two pegs stuck slightly into two gimlet-holes, and will place what I have to say in so clear a light, as to let you see through the drift and meaning of my whole preface, as plainly as if every point and particle of it was made up of sun-beams.
I enter now directly upon the point.
--Here stands wit--and there stands judgment, close beside it, just like the two knobs I'm speaking of, upon the back of this self-same chair on which I am sitting.