 laugh at it. -- But did you ever see in the whole course of your lives
such a ridiculous business as this has made of it? -- Why, 'tis as miserable a
sight as a sow with one ear; and there is just as much sense and symmetry in the
one, as in the other: - do, - pray, get off your seats, only to take a view of
it. -- Now would any man who valued his character a straw, have turned a piece
of work out of his hand in such a condition? -- nay, lay your hands upon your
hearts, and answer this plain question, Whether this one single knob which now
stands here like a blockhead by itself, can serve any purpose upon earth, but to
put one in mind of the want of the other; -- and let me further ask, in case the
chair was your own, if you would not in your consciences think, rather than be
as it is, that it would be ten times better without any knob at all.
    Now these two knobs -- or top ornaments of the mind of man, which crown the
whole entablature, - being, as I said, wit and judgment, which of all others, as
I have proved it, are the most needful, - the most priz'd, -- the most
calamitous to be without, and consequently the hardest to come at, -- for all
these reasons put together, there is not a mortal amongst us, so destitute of a
love of good fame or feeding, -- or so ignorant of what will do him good
therein, - who does not wish and stedfastly resolve in his own mind, to be, or
to be thought at least master of the one or the other, and indeed of both of
them, if the thing seems any way feasible, or likely to be brought to pass.
    Now your graver gentry having little or no kind of chance in aiming at the
one, - unless they laid hold of the other, -- pray what do you think would
become of them? - Why, Sirs, in spight of all their gravities, they must e'en
have been contented to have gone with their insides naked: - this was not to be
borne, but by an effort of philosophy not to be supposed in the case we are
upon, -- so that no one could well have been angry with them, had they been
satisfied with what little they could have snatched up and secreted under their
cloaks and great perrywigs,
