jects the several talents of my fellow
guests were employed, I applied to my communicative friend Dick Ivy,
who gave me to understand that most of them were, or had been,
understrappers, or journeymen, to more creditable authors, for whom
they translated, collated, and compiled, in the business of
bookmaking; and that all of them had, at different times, laboured
in the service of our landlord, though they had now set up for
themselves in various departments of literature. Not only their
talents, but also their nations and dialects, were so various, that
our conversation resembled the confusion of tongues at Babel. We had
the Irish brogue, the Scotch accent, and foreign idiom, twanged off
by the most discordant vociferation; for as they all spoke together,
no man had any chance to be heard, unless he could bawl louder than
his fellows. It must be owned, however, there was nothing pedantic
in their discourse; they carefully avoided all learned
disquisitions, and endeavoured to be facetious; nor did their
endeavours always miscarry; some droll repartee passed, and much
laughter was excited; and if any individual lost his temper so far
as to transgress the bounds of decorum, he was effectually checked
by the master of the feast, who exerted a sort of paternal authority
over this irritable tribe.

"The most learned philosopher of the whole collection, who had been
expelled the university for atheism, has made great progress in a
refutation of Lord Bolingbroke's metaphysical works, which is said
to be equally ingenious and orthodox: but in the meantime, he has
been presented to the grand jury as a public nuisance for having
blasphemed in an alehouse on the Lord's Day. The Scotchman gives
lectures on the pronunciation of the English language, which he is
now publishing by subscription.

"The Irishman is a political writer, and goes by the name of My Lord
Potatoe. He wrote a pamphlet in vindication of a minister, hoping
his zeal would be rewarded with some place or pension; but finding
himself neglected in that quarter, he whispered about that the
pamphlet was written by the minister himself, and he published an
answer to his own production. In this he addressed the author under
the title of 'your lordship', with such so