lf
was the other day sent to by a man with a title, whom I had never seen,
desiring the favour that I would dine with him and half a dozen of his
select friends. I found afterwards, the footman had told my maid below
stairs, that my lord having a mind to be merry, had resolved right or
wrong to send for honest Isaac. I was sufficiently provoked with the
message; however I gave the fellow no other answer, than that "I believed
he had mistaken the person, for I did not remember that his lord had ever
been introduced to me." I have reason to apprehend that this abuse hath
been owing rather to a meanness of spirit in men of parts, than to the
natural pride or ignorance of their patrons. Young students coming up
to town from the places of their education, are dazzled with the grandeur
they everywhere meet, and making too much haste to distinguish their
parts, instead of waiting to be desired and caressed, are ready to pay
their court at any rate to a great man, whose name they have seen in a
public paper, or the frontispiece of a dedication. It has not always been
thus: wit in polite ages has ever begot either esteem or fear. The hopes
of being celebrated, or the dread of being stigmatized, procured an
universal respect and awe for the persons of such as were allowed to have
the power of distributing fame or infamy where they pleased. Aretine had
all the princes of Europe his tributaries, and when any of them had
committed a folly that laid them open to his censure, they were forced by
some present extraordinary to compound for his silence; of which there is
a famous instance on record. When Charles the Fifth had miscarried
in his African expedition, which was looked upon as the weakest
undertaking of that great Emperor, he sent Aretine[4] a gold chain, who
made some difficulty of accepting it, saying, "It was too small a present
in all reason for so great a folly." For my own part, in this point I
differ from him, and never could be prevailed upon, by any valuable
consideration to conceal a fault or a folly since I first took the
censorship upon me.

Having long considered with my self the ill application that some make of
their talents, I have this day erected a Court of Alienation, by the
statutes of which the next a kin is empowered to _beg_ the parts and
understanding of any such person as can be proved, either by embezzling,
making a wrong use, or no use at all of the said parts and understanding,
not to know the true