Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 18.djvu/199

Rh be allowed to have the truest taste of honour of all others. I have observed, these sort of people have generally a great propensity to roast beef; and it will be granted, that to sit even at the foot of the table next a surloin, which is a dish of dignity, and of old hereditary knighthood, is, in strictness of heraldry, more honourable than a place next the biggest plain country squire at the upper end; and I have often chosen it.

But to return from this useful digression: The noble personage aforementioned, who honoured me with his sentiments upon this abstruse point, must be allowed to have as good a local memory as any lord in the kingdom; and has never been known once to mistake, or forget, or recede from, that place of distinction which is due to him. He could settle the forms of a royal interment, and adjust the ceremonies of a coronation, if occasion were; and I must add, but that he has more honour than to be officious, he could have determined that late controverted point of an English bishop's place among ours, and had saved the house, had he been called upon, the trouble and delays of referring to the English precedents.

I say, his lordship (who is expert in heraldry, and as communicative of that useful knowledge as becomes noble spirits) has assured me, there is no notice taken in that science of any distinction of place for learned faculties; and for mechanical ones, such as appear on collar days, or riding the franchises , they