O Slawkenbergius! thou faithful analyzer of my Disgrazias —thou sad foreteller of so many of the whips and short turns which in one stage or other of my life have come slap upon me from the shortness of my nose, and no other cause, that I am conscious of.—Tell me, Slawkenbergius! what secret impulse was it? what intonation of voice? whence came it? how did it sound in thy ears?⸺art thou sure thou heard’st it?⸺which first cried out to thee⸻go⸻go, Slawkenbergius! dedicate the labours of thy life⸺neglect thy pastimes⸻call forth all the powers and faculties of thy nature⸺macerate thyself in the service of mankind, and write a grand folio for them, upon the subject of their noses.
How the communication was conveyed into Slawkenbergius’s sensorium⸺so that Slawkenbergius should know whose finger touch’d the key—and whose hand it was that blew the bellows⸺as Hafen Slawkenbergius has been dead and laid in his grave above fourscore and ten years⸻we can only raise conjectures.
Slawkenbergius was play’d upon, for aught I know, like one of Whitefield’s disciples⸺that is, with such a distinct intelligence, Sir, of which of the two masters it was that had been practising upon his instrument ⸻as to make all reasoning upon it needless.
⸻For in the account which Hafen Slawkenbergius gives the world of his motives and occasions for writing, and spending so many years of his life upon this one work—towards the end of his prolegomena, which by the by should have come first⸺but the bookbinder has most injudiciously placed it betwixt the analytical contents of the book, and the book itself—he informs his reader, that ever since he had arrived at the age of discernment, and was able to sit