would probable have been a beauty; but for the valleys of the
Thames she was perhaps a little too much to the taste of Solomon,
and had a nose which rather too prominently suggested the idea of
the tower of Lebanon, which looked towards Damascus.

In a village in the vicinity of the Castle was the vicarage of the
Reverend Doctor Folliott, a gentleman endowed with a tolerable
stock of learning, an interminable swallow, and an indefatigable
pair of lungs. His pre-eminence in the latter faculty gave
occasion to some etymologists to ring changes on his name, and to
decide that it was derived from Follis Optimus, softened through an
Italian medium into Folle Ottimo, contracted poetically into
Folleotto, and elided Anglice into Folliott, signifying a first-
rate pair of bellows. He claimed to be descended lineally from the
illustrious Gilbert Folliott, the eminent theologian, who was a
Bishop of London in the twelfth century, whose studies were
interrupted in the dead of night by the Devil, when a couple of
epigrams passed between them, and the Devil, of course, proved the
smaller wit of the two.

This reverend gentleman, being both learned and jolly, became by
degrees an indispensable ornament to the new squire's table. Mr.
Crotchet himself was eminently jolly, though by no means eminently
learned. In the latter respect he took after the great majority of
the sons of his father's land; had a smattering of many things, and
a knowledge of none; but possessed the true northern art of making
the most of his intellectual harlequin's jacket, by keeping the
best patches always bright and prominent.