’Tis, however, within the purview of the Wise and the common observation of the Judicious, that things are not always as they seem!

GRANDOLPH, at an early epoch in his Apprenticeship, did found a sort of Comradeny or Free Company, which, from the number of its constituent items, came to be intituled The Fourth Party, in the which ARTHUR modestly took subordinate place, with unobtrusive ease and languid resignation.  This Party did push matters in the Craft with a high hand and a talkative tongue.  For as the ingenious Earl of SHAFTESBURY saith in his Soliloquy, “Company is an extreme provocative to Fancy, and, like a hot bed in gardening, is apt to make our Imaginations sprout too fast.”

That GRANDOLPH was obnoxious to this charge of “sprouting too fast” may seem made manifest by the sequel.  He indeed pushed himself into the front place by dint of copious verbosity, and militant oppugnancy.  But (as the same SHAFTESBURY saith) where, instead of Controul, Debate, or Argument, the chief exercise of the wit consists in uncontroulable Harangues and Reasonings, which must neither be questioned nor contradicted; there is great danger lest the Party, thro’ this habit, shou’d suffer much by Cruditys, Indigestions, Choler, bile, and particularly by a certain tumour, or flatulency, which renders him, of all men, the least liable to apply the wholesome regimen of self-practice.  ’Tis no wonder if such quaint practitioners grow to an enormous size of Absurdity, whilst they continue the reverse of that practice, by which alone we correct the Redundancy of Humours, and chasten the exuberance of Conceit and Fancy.

Whether this particular “quaint practitioner” (our Idle Apprentice, GRANDOLPH) plagued “the Party” too much with his “Cruditys, Choler,” &c., or whether he found himself unable to correct his own “Redundancy of Humours,” certain it is that, at the very Pinnacle of Promise, and Height of Achievement, GRANDOLPH broke his indentures of Apprenticeship, and ran away!

And now, indeed, came the Opportunity of the true Industrious Apprentice, the hitherto calm and languid-looking, but, in verity, valorous, and vigilant, and virile ARTHTUR.  Whereof, to be sure, he made abundant use, burgeoning forth into full blossom with astonishing suddenness, seizing Opportunity by the forelock with manly promptitude, and gaining golden opinions from all sorts of people; so that, after brief probation, he slipped, by general acclaim, into that very premier place so strangely, suddenly, and intempestively abdicated by the Idle Apprentice, GRANDOLPH.