tion
of a free state; where, if you all mind your steps, you may go round and
round very jollily, with a motion pleasant to yourselves and those you
dance with: nay, if you put yourselves out, at the worst you only kick,
and are kicked, like friends and equals.

From my own Apartment, May 4.

Of all the vanities under the sun, I confess, that of being proud of
one's birth is the greatest. At the same time, since in this
unreasonable age, by the force of prevailing custom, things in which men
have no hand are imputed to them; and that I am used by some people, as
if Isaac Bickerstaff, though I write myself "Esquire," was nobody: to
set the world right in that particular, I shall give you my genealogy,
as a kinsman of ours has sent it me from the Heralds' Office. It is
certain, and observed by the wisest writers, that there are women who
are not nicely chaste, and men not severely honest in all families;
therefore let those who may be apt to raise aspersions upon ours, please
to give us as impartial an account of their own, and we shall be
satisfied. The business of heralds is a matter of so great nicety, that
to avoid mistakes, I shall give you my cousin's letter verbatim, without
altering a syllable.[176]

"DEAR COUSIN,

"Since you have been pleased to make yourself so famous of late, by your
ingenious writings, and some time ago by your learned Predictions: since
Partridge, of immortal memory, is dead and gone, who, poetical as he
was, could not understand his own poetry; and philomathical as he was,
could not read his own destiny: since the Pope, the King of France, and
great part of his Court, are either literally or metaphorically defunct:
since, I say, these things (not foretold by any one but yourself) have
come to pass after so surprising a manner; it is with no small concern I
see the original of the Staffian race so little known in the world as it
is at this time; for which reason, as you have employed your studies in
astronomy and the occult sciences, so I, my mother being a Welsh woman,
dedicated mine to genealogy, particularly that of our own family, which,
for its antiquity and number, may challenge any in Great Britain. The
Staffs are originally of Staffordshire, which took its name from them:
the first that I find of the Staffs was one Jacobstaff, a famous and
renowned astronomer, who by Dorothy his wife, had issue seven sons;
viz., Bickerstaff, Longstaff, Wagstaff, Quarterstaff, Whitestaff,
Falsta