of the concourse, laid about him with such dexterity and effect,
that the multitude was immediately dispersed, and he retired without
further molestation.

The same good fortune did not attend squire Crabshaw in his retreat. The
ludicrous singularity of his features, and the half-mown crop of hair
that bristled from one side of his countenance, invited some wags to make
merry at his expense; one of them clapped a furze-bush under the tail of
Gilbert, who, feeling himself thus stimulated a posteriori, kicked and
plunged, and capered in such a manner, that Timothy could hardly keep the
saddle. In this commotion he lost his cap and his periwig, while the
rabble pelted him in such a manner, that, before he could join his
master, he looked like a pillar, or rather a pillory of mud.

CHAPTER TEN

WHICH SHOWETH THAT HE WHO PLAYS AT BOWLS, WILL SOMETIMES MEET WITH
RUBBERS.

Sir Launcelot, boiling with indignation at the venality and faction of
the electors, whom he had harangued to so little purpose, retired with
the most deliberate disdain towards one of the gates of the town, on the
outside of which his curiosity was attracted by a concourse of people, in
the midst of whom stood Mr. Ferret, mounted upon a stool, with a kind of
satchel hanging round his neck, and a phial displayed in his right hand,
while he held forth to the audience in a very vehement strain of
elocution.

Crabshaw thought himself happily delivered when he reached the suburbs,
and proceeded without halting; but his master mingled with the crowd, and
heard the orator express himself to this effect:--

"Very likely you may undervalue me and my medicine, because I don't
appear upon a stage of rotten boards, in a shabby velvet coat, and
tie-periwig, with a foolish fellow in a motley coat, to make you laugh,
by making wry faces; but I scorn to use these dirty arts for engaging
your attention. These paltry tricks, ad captandum vulgus, can have no
effect but on idiots; and if you are idiots, I don't desire you should
be my customers. Take notice, I don't address you in the style of a
mountebank, or a High German doctor; and yet the kingdom is full of
mountebanks, empirics, and quacks. We have quacks in religion, quacks
in physic, quacks in law, quacks in politics, quacks in patriotism,
quacks in government--High German quacks, that have blistered, sweated,
bled, and purged the nation into an atrophy. But this is not all;
they have not only evac