short of sight, but more of memory; a man ever in haste, a great
hatcher and breeder of business, and excellent at the famous art of
whispering nothing; a huge idolator of monosyllables and
procrastination, so ready to give his word to everybody that he
never keeps it; one that has forgot the common meaning of words, but
an admirable retainer of the sound; extremely subject to the
looseness, for his occasions are perpetually calling him away. If
you approach his grate in his familiar intervals, "Sir," says he,
"give me a penny and I'll sing you a song; but give me the penny
first" (hence comes the common saying and commoner practice of
parting with money for a song). What a complete system of court-
skill is here described in every branch of it, and all utterly lost
with wrong application! Accost the hole of another kennel, first
stopping your nose, you will behold a surly, gloomy, nasty, slovenly
mortal, raking in his own dung and dabbling in his urine. The best
part of his diet is the reversion of his own ordure, which expiring
into steams, whirls perpetually about, and at last reinfunds. His
complexion is of a dirty yellow, with a thin scattered beard,
exactly agreeable to that of his diet upon its first declination,
like other insects, who, having their birth and education in an
excrement, from thence borrow their colour and their smell. The
student of this apartment is very sparing of his words, but somewhat
over-liberal of his breath. He holds his hand out ready to receive
your penny, and immediately upon receipt withdraws to his former
occupations. Now is it not amazing to think the society of Warwick
Lane {136} should have no more concern for the recovery of so useful
a member, who, if one may judge from these appearances, would become
the greatest ornament to that illustrious body? Another student
struts up fiercely to your teeth, puffing with his lips, half
squeezing out his eyes, and very graciously holds out his hand to