Page:Modern literature (1804 Volume 2).djvu/63

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Scribble tries originals, and often spends more time and pains in speaking, (for he is a great coffee-house declaimer,) or in writing paradoxical nonsense, than might by compilation furnish a good-looking fair book for his worthy friend Billy Nincompoop." "Who the devil is Billy Nincompoop?"—"An undertaker-general in the book-manufactory line. I shall give you some account of him another time: all I can now say is, that he has more journeymen at work than any mailer-manufacturer either at Birmingham or Manchester, and a great deal of work they do, and often very dirty work it is. Billy keeps a very sooty forge."

The youths now returned to breakfast; soon after they accompanied the ladies to the Steyne, and the sun being very warm, they retired into the library, where they found a tall corpulent divine, with his bib and apron,