Duns, spare your definitions. I must fine you a bumper, or a paradox.
We will have nothing said or done syllogistically this day. Remove
those logical forms, waiter, that no gentleman break the tender shins
of his apprehension stumbling across them.
Master Stephen, you are late.--Ha! Cokes, is it you?--Aguecheek, my
dear knight, let me pay my devoir to you.--Master Shallow, your
worship's poor servant to command.--Master Silence, I will use few
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----,[19] 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----,[20] thy last patron, is flown.
[Footnote 19: Ramsay.]
[Footnote 20: Granville Sharp.]
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. * * * *
To descend from these altitudes, and not to protract our Fools'
Banquet beyond its appropriate day,--for I fear the second of April is
not many hours distant--in sober verity I will confess a truth to
thee, reader. I love a _Fool_--as naturally, as if I were of kith and
kin to him. When a child, with child-like apprehensions, that dived
not below the surface of the matter, I read those _Parables_--not
guessing at their involved wisdom--I had more yearnings towards that
simple architect, that built his house upon the sand, than I
entertained for his more cautious neighbour; I grudged at the hard
censure pronounced upon the quiet soul that kept his talent;
and--prizing their simplicity beyond the more provident, and, to my
apprehension, somewhat _unfeminine_ wariness of their competitors--I
felt a kindliness, that almost amounted to a _tendre_, for those five
thoughtless virgins--I have never made an acquaintance since, that
lasted; or a friendship, that answered; with any that had not some
tincture of the absurd in their characters. I venerate an honest
obliquity of understanding. The more laughable blunders a man shall
commit in your company, the more tests he giveth you, that he
will not betray or overreach you. I love the safety which a
palpable hallucination warrants; the security, which a word out of
season ratifies. And take my word for this, reader, and say a fool
told it you, if you please, that he who hath not a dram of
folly in his mixture, had pounds of much worse matter in his
composition. It is observed, that "the foolisher the fowl or
fish--woodcocks,--dotterels,--cod's-heads, &c., the finer the flesh
thereof," and what are commonly the world's received fools, but such
whereof the world is not worthy? and what have been some of the
kindliest patterns of our species, but so many darlings of absurdity,
minions of the goddess, and her white boys?--Reader, if you wrest my
words beyond their fair construction, it is you, and not I, that are
the _April Fool_.
_Lamb._