ce as was Sir
Fopling's periwig of old,[187] upon the stage--the hammer is upon the
desk!--The company begin to increase and close their ranks; and the
din of battle will shortly be heard. Let us keep these seats. Now,
tell me who is yonder strange looking gentleman?

[Footnote 187: See Warburton's piquant note, in Mr. Bowles's
edition of _Pope's Works_, vol. v., p. 116. "This remarkable
_periwiy_ [Transcriber's Note: periwig] (says he) usually
made its entrance upon the stage in a sedan chair, brought
in by two chairmen with infinite approbation of the
audience." The _snuff-box_ of Mr. L. has not a less imposing
air; and when a high-priced book is balancing between 15_l._
and 20_l._ it is a fearful signal of its reaching an
additional sum, if Mr. L. should lay down his hammer, and
delve into this said crumple-horned snuff-box!]

"'Tis MUSTAPHA, a vender of books. Consuetudine invalescens, ac veluti
callum diuturna cogitatione obducens,[188] he comes forth, like an
alchemist from his laboratory, with hat and wig 'sprinkled with
learned dust,' and deals out his censures with as little ceremony as
correctness. It is of no consequence to him by whom positions are
advanced, or truth is established; and he hesitates very little about
calling Baron Heinecken a Tom fool, or ---- a shameless impostor. If
your library were as choice and elegant as Dr. H----'s he would tell
you that his own disordered shelves and badly coated books presented
an infinitely more precious collection; nor must you be at all
surprised at this--for, like Braithwait's Upotomis,

'Though weak in judgment, in opinion strong;'

or, like the same author's Meilixos,

'Who deems all wisdom treasur'd in his pate,'

our book-vender, in the catalogues which he puts forth, shews himself
to be 'a great and bold carpenter of words;'[189] overcharging the
description of his own volumes with tropes, metaphors, flourishes, and
common-place authorities; the latter of which one would think had but
recently come under his notice, as they had been already before the
public in various less ostentatious forms."

[Footnote 188: The curious reader may see the entire caustic
passage in Spizelius's _Infelix Literatus_, p. 435.]

[Footnote 189: _Coryat's Crudities_, vol. i., sign. (b. 5.)
edit. 1776.]

PHIL. Are you then an enemy to booksellers, or to their catalogues
when interlaced with