r got home,
he solaced himself with Bruscambille after the manner in which, 'tis ten
to one, your worship solaced yourself with your first mistress--that is,
from morning even unto night: which, by-the-bye, how delightful soever
it may prove to the inamorato--is of little or no entertainment at
all to by-standers.--Take notice, I go no farther with the simile--my
father's eye was greater than his appetite--his zeal greater than his
knowledge--he cool'd--his affections became divided--he got hold
of Prignitz--purchased Scroderus, Andrea Paraeus, Bouchet's Evening
Conferences, and above all, the great and learned Hafen Slawkenbergius;
of which, as I shall have much to say by-and-bye--I will say nothing
now.

Chapter 2.XXIX.

Of all the tracts my father was at the pains to procure and study in
support of his hypothesis, there was not any one wherein he felt a more
cruel disappointment at first, than in the celebrated dialogue between
Pamphagus and Cocles, written by the chaste pen of the great and
venerable Erasmus, upon the various uses and seasonable applications of
long noses.--Now don't let Satan, my dear girl, in this chapter, take
advantage of any one spot of rising ground to get astride of your
imagination, if you can any ways help it; or if he is so nimble as to
slip on--let me beg of you, like an unback'd filly, to frisk it, to
squirt it, to jump it, to rear it, to bound it--and to kick it, with
long kicks and short kicks, till like Tickletoby's mare, you break a
strap or a crupper, and throw his worship into the dirt.--You need not
kill him.--

--And pray who was Tickletoby's mare?--'tis just as discreditable and
unscholar-like a question, Sir, as to have asked what year (ab. urb.
con.) the second Punic war broke out.--Who was Tickletoby's mare!--Read,
read, read, read, my unlearned reader! read--or by the knowledge of the
great saint Paraleipomenon--I tell you before-hand, you had better throw
down the book at once; for without much reading, by which your reverence
knows I mean much knowledge, you will no more be able to penetrate the
moral of the next marbled page (motley emblem of my work!) than the
world with all its sagacity has been able to unravel the many opinions,
transactions, and truths which still lie mystically hid under the dark
veil of the black one.

(two marble plates)

Chapter 2.XXX.

'Nihil me paenitet hujus nasi,' quoth Pamphagus;--that is--'My nose has
been the making of