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Updated: May 3, 2025
Bickerstaff, don't believe a word of what he tells you. I shall still live to have you for my second, as I have often promised you, unless he takes more care of himself than he has done since his coming to town.
Johnson shunned to-night any discussion of the perplexed question of fate and free will, which I attempted to agitate. He honoured me with his company at dinner on the 16th of October, at my lodgings in Old Bond-street, with Sir Joshua Reynolds, Mr. Garrick, Dr. Goldsmith, Mr. Murphy, Mr. Bickerstaff, and Mr. Thomas Davies.
We have, in the genealogy of our house, the descriptions and pictures of our ancestors from the time of King Arthur, in whose days there was one of my own name, a knight of his round table, and known by the name of Sir Isaac Bickerstaff. He was low of stature, and of a very swarthy complexion, not unlike a Portuguese Jew.
Now, I doubt not but this villanous Squire has the impudence to assert that these are entirely strangers to him; he, good man! knoweth nothing of the matter! and honest ISAAC BICKERSTAFF, I warrant you! is more a man of honour than to be an accomplice with a pack of rascals that walk the streets on nights, and disturb good people in their beds.
"The humble petition of William Jingle, Coach-maker and Chair-maker, of the Liberty of Westminster: "TO ISAAC BICKERSTAFF, ESQUIRE, CENSOR OF GREAT BRITAIN: "Showeth, "That upon the late invention of Mrs. Catharine Cross-stitch, mantua-maker, the petticoats of ladies were too wide for entering into any coach or chair, which was in use before the said invention.
N.B.: There is now in the Press, my Appeal to the Learned; Or my general Invitation to all Astrologers, Divines, Physicians, Lawyers, Mathematicians, Philologers, and to the Literati of the whole World, to come and take their Places in the Common Court of Knowledge, and receive the Charge given in by me, against ISAAC BICKERSTAFF, Esq., that most notorious Impostor in Science and illiterate Pretender to the Stars; where I shall openly convict him of ignorance in his profession, impudence and falsehood in every assertion, to the great detriment and scandal of Astrology.
For God's sake, the night you receive this, take your pen in your hand and tell me something about yourself and myself, if you know anything that has happened. About Miss Reynolds, about Mr. Bickerstaff, my nephew, or anybody that you regard. I beg you will send to Griffin the bookseller to know if there be any letters left for me, and be so good as to send them to me at Paris.
This he did in a pamphlet that brought up to the war against one stronghold of superstition an effective battery of satire. This joke was running through the town when Steele began his "Tatler" on the 12th of April, 1709. Steele kept it going, and, in doing so, wrote once or twice in the character of Bickerstaff.
Pope compliments him with sometimes taking Cervantes' serious air " "I remember the passage," cries the author; "O thou, whatever title please thine ear, Dean, Drapier, Bickerstaff, or Gulliver; Whether you take Cervantes' serious air, Or laugh and shake in Rabelais' easy chair "
The lady observing something in our looks which showed we had been more serious than ordinary, and seeing her husband receive her with great concern under a forced cheerfulness, immediately guessed at what we had been talking of; and applying herself to me, said, with a smile, "Mr. Bickerstaff, do not believe a word of what he tells you.
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