Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 2.djvu/147

Rh their decline; for a certain lord came just from Paris with fifty yards of gold-lace upon his coat, exactly trimmed after the court-fashion of that month. In two days all mankind appeared closed up in bars of gold-lace : whoever durst peep abroad without his compliment of gold-lace, was as scandalous as a —— and as ill received among the women: what should our three knights do in this momentous affair? they had sufficiently strained a point already in the affair of shoulder-knots: upon recourse to the will, nothing appeared there, but altum silentium. That of the shoulder-knots was a loose, flying, circumstantial point; but this of gold-lace seemed too considerable an alteration without better warrant; it did aliquo modo essentiæ adhærere, and therefore required a positive precept. But about this time it fell out, that the learned brother aforesaid had read Aristotelis dialectica, and especially that wonderful piece de interpretatione which has the faculty of teaching its readers to find out a meaning in every thing but itself; like commentators on the revelations, who proceed prophets without understanding a syllable of the text. Brothers, said he, you are to be informed, that of wills duo sunt genera, nuncupatory and scriptory; that in the scriptory will here before us, there is no precept or mention about gold-lace, conceditur: but, si idem affirmetur de nuncupatorio, negatur. For, brothers, if you remember, we heard a fellow say, when we were boys,