Note 26 — Chapter VIII

I remember being once much amused with meeting, in a hot dusty day, between Blenheim and Oxford, some strolling Italians with a troop of dancing dogs, and a monkey in costume mounted on the back of one of them. He rode en cavalier, and kept his countenance with great gravity and decorum, and turned round with a certain look of surprise and resentment, that I, a foot-passenger, should seem to question his right to go on horseback. This seemed to me a fine piece of practical satire in the manner of Swift.