Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 4.djvu/390

382 vient : then small parties advancing with the same speed, and the same cry; and this foppery held for many hours, until the mareschal himself arrived. So here the bishop (as we find by his dedication to Mr. Churchill the bookseller) has for a long time sent warning of his arrival by advertisements in gazettes; and now his introduction advances to tell us again, monseigneur vient: in the mean time we must gape, and wait, and gaze, the Lord knows how long, and keep our spirits in some reasonable agitation, until his lordship's real self shall think fit to appear, in the habit of a folio.

I have seen the same sort of management at a puppetshow. Some puppets of little or no consequence appeared several times at the window, to allure the boys and the rabble: the trumpeter sounded often, and the doorkeeper cried a hundred times, until he was hoarse, that they were just going to begin; yet, after all, we were forced sometimes to wait an hour before Punch himself in person made his entry.

But why this ceremony among old acquaintance? The world and he have long known one another: let him appoint his hour, and make his visit, without troubling us all day with a succession of messages from his lackeys and pages.

With submission, these little arts of getting off an edition, do ill become any author above the size of Marten the surgeon. My lord tells us that many thousands of the two former parts of his history are in the kingdom; and now he perpetually tises