The officers were all of them at least six feet high, and
made three rows of very proper men; but the common soldiers, who
filled up the spaces between the officers, were such dwarfs,
cripples, and scarecrows, that one could hardly look upon them
without laughing. There were behind the acrostics two or three
files of chronograms, which differed only from the former as their
officers were equipped, like the figure of Time, with an hour-glass
in one hand, and a scythe in the other, and took their posts
promiscuously among the private men whom they commanded.
In the body of the temple, and before the very face of the deity,
methought I saw the phantom of Tryphiodorus, the lipogrammatist,
engaged in a ball with four-and-twenty persons, who pursued him by
turns through all the intricacies and labyrinths of a country dance,
without being able to overtake him.
Observing several to be very busy at the western end of the temple,
I inquired into what they were doing, and found there was in that
quarter the great magazine of rebuses. These were several things of
the most different natures tied up in bundles, and thrown upon one
another in heaps like fagots. You might behold an anchor, a night-
rail, and a hobby-horse bound up together.
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