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It charms the eyes-to wakefulness; and quickens the mental faculties at every turn. Cr. Enough, Lycinus: behold your convert! My eyes and ears are opened. When next you go to the theatre, remember to take a seat for me next your own. I too would issue from those doors a wiser man. Lycinus. Lexiphanes. Sopolis Ly. What, our exquisite with his essay? Lex.

He is a clever man; he has taken many a helpless semi-lunatic like you in hand and dosed him into sanity. Good day, Sopolis. Lexiphanes here is a friend of mine, you know. Now I want you to undertake his case; he is afflicted with a delirious affection of the vocal organs, and I fear a complete breakdown. Pray take measures to cure him. Lex.

Lycinus, I shall now leave him in your charge; teach him better ways, and tell him what are the right words to use. Ly. I will, Sopolis; and thank you for clearing the way. Now, Lexiphanes, listen to me. If you want sincere commendations upon your style, and success with popular audiences, give a wide berth to that sort of stuff.

And thou, Lexiphanes, comest thou, or tarriest here? 'Its a thousand years, quoth I, 'till I bathe; for I am in no comfort, with sore posteriors from my mule-saddle. Trod the mule-man as on eggs, yet kept his beast a-moving. And when I got to the farm, still no peace for the wicked. I found the hinds shrilling the harvest-song, and there were persons burying my father, I think it was.

Providentially, here is an emetic I had just mixed for a bilious patient; here, Lexiphanes, drink it off; the other man can wait; let us purge you of this vocal derangement, and get you a clean bill of health. Come along, down with it; you will feel much easier. Lex. I know not what you would be at, you and Lycinus, with your drenches; I fear me you are more like to end than mend my speech. Ly.

Ly. Thanks, Lexiphanes; enough of drink and reading. I assure you I am full beyond my capacity as it is; if I do not succeed in quickly unloading my stomach of what you have put into it, there is not a doubt I shall go raving mad under the intoxication of your exuberant verbosity.

And now open your ears to my charming; adder me no adders. Ly. Go ahead; I am no Adam, nor Eve either. Lex. Have an eye to my conduct of the discourse, whether it be fair in commencement, fair in speech, fair in diction, fair in nomenclature. Ly. Oh, we know what to expect from Lexiphanes. But come, begin. Lex.

COLMAN, in his Prose on several occasions, has A Letter from LEXIPHANES ; containing Proposals for a Glossary or Vocabulary of the Vulgar Tongue: intended as a Supplement to a larger DICTIONARY. It is evidently meant as a sportive sally of ridicule on Johnson, whose style is thus imitated, without being grossly overcharged: