thout a servant standing by to prompt him,
and was at the same time so weak that he could scarce go upright, yet he
thought he might adventure to accept a challenge to a duel, because he
kept at home some lusty, sturdy fellows, whose strength he relied upon
instead of his own.

[Illustration: 202]

It is almost needless to insist upon the several professors of arts and
sciences, who are all so egregiously conceited, that they would sooner
give up their title to an estate in lands, than part with the reversion
of their wits: among these, more especially stage-players, musicians,
orators, and poets, each of which, the more of duncery they have, and
the more of pride, the greater is their ambition: and how notoriously
soever dull they be, they meet with their admirers; nay, the more
silly they are the higher they are extolled; Folly (as we have before
intimated) never failing of respect and esteem. If therefore every one,
the more ignorant he is, the greater satisfaction he is to himself, and
the more commended by others, to what purpose is it to sweat and toil in
the pursuit of true learning, which shall cost so many gripes and
pangs of the brain to acquire, and when obtained, shall only make the
laborious student more uneasy to himself, and less acceptable to others?

As nature in her dispensation of conceited-ness has dealt with private
persons, so has she given a particular smatch of self-love to each
country and nation. Upon this account it is that the English challenge
the prerogative of having the most handsome women, of the being most
accomplished in the skill of music, and of keeping the best tables: the
Scotch brag of their gentility, and pretend the genius of their native
soil inclines them to be good disputants: the French think themselves
remarkable for complaisance and good breeding: the Sorbonists of Paris
pretend before any others to have made the greatest proficiency in
polemic divinity: the Italians value themselves for learning and
eloquence; and, like the Grecians of old, account all the world
barbarians in respect of themselves; to which piece of vanity the
inhabitants of Rome are more especially addicted, pretending themselves
to be owners of all those heroic virtues, which their city so many ages
since was deservedly famous for. The Venetians stand upon their birth
and pedigree. The Grecians pride themselves in having been the first
inventors of most arts, and in their country being famed for the p