I approve the fable and application, with this refinement upon it.  For parties do not only split a nation, but every individual among them, leaving each but half their strength, and wit, and honesty, and good nature; but one eye and ear for their sight and hearing, and equally lopping the rest of the senses:  Where parties are pretty equal in a state, no man can perceive one bad quality in his own, or good one in his adversaries.  Besides, party being a dry disagreeable subject, it renders conversation insipid or sour, and confines invention.  I speak not here of the leaders, but the insignificant crowd of followers in a party, who have been the instruments of mixing it in every condition and circumstance of life.  As the zealots among the Jews bound the law about their foreheads, and wrists, and hems of their garments; so the women among us have got the distinguishing marks of party in their muffs, their fans, and their furbelows.  The Whig ladies put on their patches in a different manner from the Tories.[4] They have made schisms in the playhouse, and each have their particular sides at the opera:  and when a man changes his party, he must infallibly count upon the loss of his mistress.  I asked a gentleman the other day, how he liked such a lady? but he would not give me his opinion till I had answered him whether she were a Whig or a Tory.  Mr.——­[5] since he is known to visit the present m[inist]ry, and lay some time under a suspicion of writing the “Examiner,” is no longer a man of wit; his very poems have contracted a stupidity many years after they were printed.

Having lately ventured upon a metaphorical genealogy of Merit, I thought it would be proper to add another of Party, or rather, of Faction, (to avoid mistake) not telling the reader whether it be my own or a quotation, till I know how it is approved; but whether I read or dreamed it, the fable is as follows.

“Liberty, the daughter of Oppression, after having brought forth several fair children, as Riches, Arts, Learning, Trade, and many others, was at last delivered of her youngest daughter, called Faction; whom Juno, doing the office of the midwife, distorted in its birth, out of envy to the mother, from whence it derived its peevishness and sickly constitution.  However, as it is often the nature of parents to grow most fond of their youngest and disagreeablest children, so it happened with Liberty, who doted on this daughter to such a degree, that by her good will she would never suffer the girl to be out of her sight.  As Miss Faction grew up, she became so termagant and froward, that there was no enduring her any longer in Heaven.  Jupiter gave her warning to be gone; and her mother rather than forsake her, took the whole family down to earth.  She landed at first in Greece, was expelled by degrees through all the Cities by her daughter’s ill-conduct; fled afterwards to Italy, and being banished thence, took shelter among the Goths, with whom she passed into most parts