Mrs. Rosin was so very loud and public in her invectives against Boniface, that the parents of his mistress forbade the banns, and his match was prevented, which was the whole design of this deep stratagem. The father of Boniface brought his action of defamation, arrested the fiddler, and recovered damages. This was the distress from which he was relieved by the company; and the good husband's air, history, and jollity, upon his enlargement, gave occasion to very much mirth; especially when Will, finding he had friends to stand by him, proclaimed himself a cuckold by way of insult over the family of the Bonifaces. Here is a man of tranquillity without reading Seneca! What work had such an incident made among persons of distinction? The brothers and kindred of each side must have been drawn out, and hereditary hatreds entailed on the families as long as their very names remained in the world. Who would believe that Herod, Othello, and Will Rosin were of the same species?
There are quite different sentiments which reign in the parlour and the kitchen; and it is by the point of honour, when justly regulated and inviolably observed, that some men are superior to others, as much as mankind in general are to brutes. This puts me in mind of a passage in the admirable poem called the "Dispensary,"[333] where the nature of true honour is artfully described in an ironical dispraise of it:
_But e'er we once engage in honour's cause, First know what honour is, and whence it was. Scorned by the base, 'tis courted by the brave, The hero's tyrant, and the coward's slave. Born in the noisy camp, it lives on air; And both exists by hope and by despair. Angry whene'er a moment's ease we gain, And reconciled at our returns of pain. It lives when in death's arms the hero lies; But when his safety he consults, it dies. Bigoted to this idol, we disclaim Rest, health, and ease, for nothing but a name._
A very old fellow visited me to-day at my lodgings, and desired encouragement and recommendation from me for a new invention of knockers to doors, which he told me he had made, and professed to teach rustic servants the use of them. I desired him to show me an experiment of this invention; upon which he fixed one of his knockers to my parlour door. He then gave me a complete set of knocks, from the solitary rap of the dun and beggar to the thunderings of the saucy footman of quality, with several flourishes and rattlings never yet performed. He likewise played over some private notes, distinguishing the familiar friend or relation from the most modish visitor; and directing when the reserve candles are to be lighted. He has several other curiosities in this art. He waits only to receive my approbation of the main design. He is now ready to practise to such as shall apply themselves to him; but I have put off his public licence till next court day.