Hints Toward an Essay on Conversation (c. 1713) [ Practices ]
… reception at the good tables; familiar and domestick with persons of the first quality, and usually sent for at every meeting to divert the company; against which I have no objection. You go there as to a farce or a puppetshow; your … he has undertaken, and we are to suppose he is paid for his day's work. I only quarrel, when in select and private meetings, where men of wit and learning are invited to pass an evening, this jester should be admitted to run over his …
Conversation | Audience
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