Good Master Raymund Lully, you look wise.  Pray correct that error.—­

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——­, 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——­, thy last patron, is flown.

  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,