While the company were expecting the thanks of Mr. Curll for these demonftrations of their zeal, a whole pile of Sir Richard's Essays on a fudden fell on his head; the shock of which in an instant brought back his delirium. He immediately rofe up, overturned the close-ftoll, and befh-t the Efays (which may probably occafion a fecond edition); then without putting up his breeches, in a moft furious tone he thus broke out to his books, which his diftempered imagination reprefented to him as alive, coming down from their shelves, fluttering their leaves, and flapping their covers at him.

Now G-d damn all folios, quartos, octavos, and duodecimos! ungrateful varlets that you are, who have fo long taken up my house without paying for your lodging! Are you not the beggarly brood of fumbling journeymen! born in garrets among lice and cobwebs, nurfed up on gray peas, bullocks liver, and porters ale? Was not the first light you faw, the farthing candle I paid for? Did you not come before your time into dirty fheets of brown paper?-And have not I clothed you in double royal, lodged you handsomely on decent fhelves, laced your backs with gold, equipped you with fplendid titles, and fent you into the world with the names of perfons of quality? Muft I be always plagued with you? Why flutter ye your leaves and flap your covers at me? Damn ye all, ye wolves in fheeps cloathing; rags ye were, and to rags ye fhall return. Why hold you forth your texts to

me,

me, ye paltry sermons? Why cry ye,-at every word to me, ye bawdy poems?-To my fhop at Tunbridge ye fhall go, by G-, and thence be drawn like the reft of your predeceffors, bit by bit, to the passagehouse; for in this present emotion of my bowels, how do I compaffionate those who have great need, and nothing to wipe their breech with?

Having faid this, and at the fame time recollecting that his own was yet unwiped, he abated of his fury, and with great gravity applied to that function the unfinished sheets of the conduct of the Earl of Nottingham.

A ftrange but true RELATION how Mr. EDMUND CURLL, of Fleet-ftreet, Stationer, out of an extraordinary Defire of Lucre, went into 'Change-alley, and was converted from the Christian Religion by certain eminent Jews; and how he was circumcised, and initiated into their Mysteries.

A

VARICE (as Sir Richard, in the third page of his Effays, hath elegantly observed) is an inordinate impulfe of the foul towards the amaffing or heaping together a fuperfluity of wealth, without the least regard of applying it to its proper uses.

And how the mind of man is poffeffed with this vice, may be seen every day both in the city and fuburbs thereof. It has been always esteemed by Plato, Puffendorff, and Socrates, as the darling vice of old age: but now our young men are turned usurers and stockjobbers; and, instead of lufting after the real wives and daughters of our rich citizens, they covet nothing but their money and estates. Strange change of vice! when the concupifcence of youth is converted into the covetousness of age, and thofe appetites are now become VENAL, which should be VENEREAL.

In the first place, let us fhew you how many of the ancient worthies and heroes of antiquity have

been

been undone and ruined by this deadly fin of avarice.

I fhall take the liberty to begin with Brutus, that noble Roman. Does not Etian inform us, that he received fifty broad piéces for the affaffination of that renowned Emperor Julius Cæfar, who fell a facrifice to the Jews, as Sir Edmund Bury Godfrey did to the Papists?

Did not Themistocles let in the Goths and Vandals. into Carthage for a fum of money, where they barbarously put out the other eye of the famous Hannibal ? as Herodotus hath it in his ninth book upon the Roman medals.

Even the great Cato (as the late Mr. Addison hath very well obferved), though otherwife a gentleman of good fenfe, was not unfullied by this pecuniary contagion; for he fold Athens to Artaxerxes Longimanus for a hundred rix-dollars, which in our money will. amount to two talents and thirty feftertii, according to Mr. Demoivre's calculation. See Hefiod in his feventh. chapter of Feafts and Festivals.

Actuated by the fame diabolical spirit of gain, Sylla the Roman Conful fhot Alcibiades the Senator with a pistol, and robbed him of several bank-bills and 'chequernotes to an immenfe value; for which he came to an untimely end, and was denied Chriftian burial. Hence comes the proverb, Incidat in Syllam.

To come near to our own times, and give you one modern instance, though well known, and often quoted

by historians, viz. Echard, Dionyfius Halicarnaffeus, Virgil, Horace, and others: It is that, I mean, of the famous Godfrey of Bulloigne, one of the great heroes of the holy war, who robbed Cleopatra Queen of Egypt of a diamond necklace, ear-rings, and a Tompion's gold watch (which was given her by Mark Anthony); all these things were found in Godfrey's breeches pocket, when he was killed at the fiege of Damafcus.

Who then can wonder, after fo many great and illuftrious examples, that Mr. Edmund Curll the stationer should renounce the Chriftian religion for the Mammon of unrighteousness, and barter his precious faith for the filthy profpect of lucre in the present fluctuation of Stocks?

It having been observed to Mr. Curll, by fome of his ingenious authors, (who I fear are not over-charged with any religion), what immense fums the Jews had got by bubbles", &c. he immediately turned his mind from the business, in which he was educated, but thrived little, and refolved to quit his fhop for 'Changealley. Whereupon falling into company with the Jews at their club at the fign of the Crofs in Cornhill,

they

h Bubble was a name given to all the extravagant projects, for which fubfcriptions were raised, and negotiated at vaft premiums in 'Change-alley, in the year 1720. A name which alluded to their production by the ferment of the South-fea, and not to their splendor, emptiness, and inutility; for it did not become a name of reproach in this cafe, till time completed the metaphor and the bubble broke.