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----, 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----, thy last
patron, is flown.

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, * * * * *