gh sense, and
unpolished parts, who do not love to hear themselves talk, but sometimes
break out with an agreeable bluntness, unexpected wit, and surly
pleasantries, to the no small diversion of their friends and companions.
In short, I look upon every sensible true-born Briton to be naturally a
bass-viol.

As for your rural wits, who talk with great eloquence and alacrity of
foxes, hounds, horses, quickset hedges, and six-bar gates, double
ditches, and broken necks, I am in doubt, whether I should give them a
place in the conversable world. However, if they will content themselves
with being raised to the dignity of hunting-horns, I shall desire for
the future that they may be known by that name.

I must not here omit the bagpipe species, that will entertain you from
morning to night with the repetition of the few notes, which are played
over and over, with the perpetual humming of a drone running underneath
them. These are your dull, heavy, tedious storytellers, the load and
burden of conversations, that set up for men of importance, by knowing
secret history, and giving an account of transactions, that whether they
ever passed in the world or not, does not signify a halfpenny to its
instruction, or its welfare. Some have observed, that the northern parts
of this island are more particularly fruitful in bagpipes.

There are so very few persons who are masters in every kind of
conversation, and can talk on all subjects, that I don't know whether
we should make a distinct species of them: nevertheless, that my scheme
may not be defective, for the sake of those few who are endowed with
such extraordinary talents, I shall allow them to be harpsichords, a
kind of music which every one knows is a concert by itself.

As for your passing-bells, who look upon mirth as criminal, and talk of
nothing but what is melancholy in itself, and mortifying to human
nature, I shall not mention them.

I shall likewise pass over in silence all the rabble of mankind that
crowd our streets, coffee-houses, feasts, and public tables. I cannot
call their discourse conversation, but rather something that is
practised in imitation of it. For which reason, if I would describe them
by any musical instrument, it should be by those modern inventions of
the bladder and string, tongs and key, marrow-bone and cleaver.

My reader will doubtless observe, that I have only touched here upon
male instruments, having reserved my female concert to another