pretty coquette to whom it belonged; while, with the coxcombry then in
fashion, he sprinkled the long curls that touched his shoulders with a
fragrant shower from a bottle of jessamine water upon the
counter,--"right; saw you ever such an eye? Have you snuff of the true
scent, my beauty--foh! this is for the nostril of a Welsh
parson--choleric and hot, my beauty,--pulverized horse-radish,--why, it
would make a nose of the coldest constitution imaginable sneeze like a
washed school-boy on a Saturday night.--Ah, this is better, my princess:
there is some courtesy in this snuff; it flatters the brain like a
poet's dedication. Right, Devereux, right, there is something
infectious in the atmosphere; one catches good humour as easily as if it
were cold. Shall we stroll on?--/my/ Clelia is on the other side of the
Exchange.--You were speaking of the play-writers: what a pity that our
Ethereges and Wycherleys should be so frank in their gallantry that the
prudish public already begins to look shy on them. They have a world of
wit!"

"Ay," said I; "and, as my good uncle would say, a world of knowledge of
human nature, namely, of the worst part of it. But they are worse than
merely licentious: they are positively villanous; pregnant with the most
redemptionless /scoundrelism/,--cheating, lying, thieving, and fraud;
their humour debauches the whole moral system; they are like the
Sardinian herb,--they make you laugh, it is true, but they poison you in
the act. But who comes here?"

"Oh, honest Coll!--Ah, Cibber, how goes it with you?"

The person thus addressed was a man of about the middle age, very
grotesquely attired, and with a periwig preposterously long. His
countenance (which, in its features, was rather comely) was stamped with