part of the French nation.
As neither his bodily nor mental faculties were very vigorous, his
childhood was remarkable only for a certain effeminate vivacity, which
continually displayed itself in such a noisy and insignificant
prattling, as was very tiresome and disagreeable to every body in the
house. When he grew older, he added to his former loquacity the most
passionate fondness for fine clothes; so that in the twelfth year of
his age, he became as complete a top as ever eyes beheld. He wore upon
his head a macaroni hat about the size of a small tea saucer; his coat,
which scarcely had any skirts to it, was of the most glaring colour he
could fix upon; and his hair, which was plaistered over with powder and
pomatum, was tied behind in a large club, which hung swagging upon his
shoulders like a soldier's knapsack. Thus elegantly dressed, he
strutted along the streets with a large stick in his hand about a foot
taller than himself, and a small cutteau de chasse by his side, which
he could handle with as much dexterity as his pen; an instrument in the
use of which he had made such a contemptible proficiency, that it
required as much acuteness to discover the meaning of his aukward
scrawl, as to explain the hieroglyphick characters of the ancient
Egyptians. What still increased the obscurity of every thing which
Monsieur _Fribble_ undertook the trouble of penning, was that,
excepting when he wrote his own name, he had a method of spelling which
was peculiar to himself. He was equally famous for his skill in the
useful science of numbers; for though, during the space of seven or
eight years, he devoted to it a considerable part of that lingering
time which he was forced to spare from his private diversions in school
hours, the sum total of his improvement was, that he was scarcely
capable of casting up the contents of a shoemaker's little bill. His
highest ambition was, in the first place, to furnish himself with a
large collection of complimentary phrases, which he had seldom
discretion enough to apply with any tolerable propriety; and, in the
next, to complete himself in the polite art of dancing, in which he so
far succeeded as to be able to skip about with the most regular
agility, though he never had a sufficient share of good sense to be
able to dance with gracefulness. Thus accomplished, he excited the
admiration of every silly coquette, and the envy of every fluttering
coxcomb; but by all young gentlemen and ladi