for our end of the town by their ability in the exercises of Bacchus, and measure their time and merit by liquid weight, and power of drinking.  Hogshead is a prettier fellow than Culverin by two quarts, and Culverin than Musket by a full pint.  It is to be feared, Hogshead is so often too full, and Culverin overloaded, that Musket will be the only lasting “very” pretty fellow of the three.[263] A third sort of this denomination are such as, by very daring adventures in love, have purchased to themselves renown and new names; as, Joe Carry, for his excessive strength and vigour; Tom Drybones, for his generous loss of youth and health; and Cancrum, for his meritorious rottenness.  These great and leading spirits are proposed to all such of our British youth as would arrive at perfection in these different kinds; and if their parts and accomplishments were well imitated, it is not doubted but that our nation would soon excel all others in wit and arts, as they already do in arms.

N.B.—­The gentleman who stole Betty Pepin,[264] may own it, for he is allowed to be a “very” pretty fellow.

#But we must proceed to the explanation of other terms in our writings.#

To know what a Toast is in the country, gives as much perplexity as she herself does in town:  and, indeed, the learned differ very much upon the original of this word, and the acceptation of it among the moderns.  However, it is by all agreed to have a joyous and cheerful import.  A toast in a cold morning, heightened by nutmeg, and sweetened with sugar, has for many ages been given to our rural dissenters of justice, before they entered upon causes, and has been of great and politic use to take off the severity of their sentences; but has indeed been remarkable for one ill effect, that it inclines those who use it immoderately, to speak Latin, to the admiration, rather than information, of an audience.  This application of “a toast” makes it very obvious, that the word may, without a metaphor, be understood as an apt name for a thing which raises us in the most sovereign degree.  But many of the wits of the last age will assert, that the word, in its present sense, was known among them in their youth, and had its rise from an accident at the town of Bath, in the reign of King Charles II.  It happened, that on a public day a celebrated beauty of those times was in the Cross Bath, and one of the crowd of her admirers took a glass of the water in which the fair one stood, and drank her health to the company.  There was in the place a gay fellow, half fuddled, who offered to jump in, and swore, though he liked not the liquor, he would have the toast.  He was opposed in his resolution; yet this whim gave foundation to the present honour which is done to the lady we mention in our liquors, who has ever since been called a “toast.”  Though this institution had so trivial a beginning, it is now elevated into a formal order; and that happy virgin who is received and drank to at their meetings,