broken head, and the lofs of a fine fmoaked ham: the next morning John, having fome new nick-nacks to fhew his majefty, or her majefty, or his royal highness the prince of Wales, or the bishop, or fome body or other belonging to the family, took me along with him to the q's house. The q's houfe! fays one of my readers! come, don't put orator Henley upon us, and tell us over again, in ten thousand flat words, what you have done tolerably well in the title to your chapter in fifty; and there you have carried your readers to the q-'s house already.

Courteous reader, I thank you; if you had not spoke, I fhould never have minded what a blunder I committed, by fairly ending my chapter, before

before I begun it; but, as there's no great harm done yet, I'll proceed to another.

CHA P. XV.

The author parts from John.

WHET

HETHER John got a patent to fell moonshine, or a real patent-place (as feveral before him have done) for telling lies, I won't fay; but he returned home again with me ftill in his pocket.

John no fooner entered his fhop, but he began to throw up his nofe, and fnuff the wind, like a hound that thinks he fcents the diftant prey.John himself is a very fagacious hound,

hound, and enjoys all his fenfes in as high perfection as any four-legg'd hound in England, except the fense of (melling, and there indeed no twolegg'd dog ever pretended to vie with the four-legg'd race; however, I will venture to fay, that John's fenfe of smelling exceeded moft two-legg'd hounds; in confequence of which, this qualification directed him immediately to a drawer, where he unkennelled his ham-bone;-John had forgot it, which made him fleep fo well; -but, on fight of it,

"Infandum Regina jubes renovare dolorem.”

-you never beheld fuch a face as John made;-grief for the lofs of the ham, and revenge against the rats, joined to cook up fuch a strange mixture in his countenance, that he look

ed

ed exactly like the fign of the tyger : after ftanding in this pofture long enough to have made twenty women with child mifcarry, if they had been fo unfortunate as to have entered the fhop, John's philofophy at laft came to his aid, and softened his features into something resembling a human being; he then gave over ftaring at the bone, with both eyes fixt, like Hamlet on the Ghoft, and began to furvey the fleshy part with great attention, to try to make the best of a bad market. He had forgot to provide knives for his late long-tail'd guefts, and, therefore, ought not to have expected they would cut it very fmooth with their teeth; at leaft, if he did expect it, he was mistaken, for they had left it full of little cells finished in the rustic stile. After turning it over

and

and over, and over again, John call. ed for a fpoon, and fell to making fmooth the infide of the cells, which he did as dexterously, as if he had been polishing a filver pint mug; then, giving Betty charge to make as much pea-foup of it as would last two days, he bolted out of the door, and walked away in as great a hurry as if he had been a man-midwife.

The reafon of John's fudden and hafty perambulation, I could not devife; I kept pondering and pondering, and knocking along with John's pocket-book against his watch-chain, but could form no kind of guess what John was about; at laft he stopped at the great-wigg'd Mr. Aflafet's, the druggift; the man and the wig were both at home; the wig

and