the Island within a Month or two after the dropping of your Paper.  But among all the Letters which are come to my hands, there is none so handsomely written as the following one, which I am the more pleased with, as it is sent me from Gentlemen who belong to a Body which I shall always Honour, and where (I cannot speak it without a secret Pride) my Speculations have met with a very kind Reception.  It is usual for Poets, upon the publishing of their Works, to print before them such Copies of Verses as have been made in their Praise.  Not that you must imagine they are pleased with their own Commendations, but because the elegant Compositions of their Friends should not be lost.  I must make the same Apology for the Publication of the ensuing Letter, in which I have suppressed no Part of those Praises that are given my Speculations with too lavish and good-natured an Hand; though my Correspondents can witness for me, that at other times I have generally blotted out those Parts in the Letters which I have received from them.

[O.]

  Oxford, Nov. 25.

  Mr. SPECTATOR,

’In spight of your Invincible Silence you have found out a Method of being the most agreeable Companion in the World:  That kind of Conversation which you hold with the Town, has the good Fortune of being always pleasing to the Men of Taste and Leisure, and never offensive to those of Hurry and Business.  You are never heard, but at what Horace calls dextro tempore, and have the Happiness to observe the politick Rule, which the same discerning Author gave his Friend, when he enjoin’d him to deliver his Book to Augustus.

    ‘Si validus, si laetus erit, si denique poscet.’

’You never begin to talk, but when People are desirous to hear you; and I defy any one to be out of humour till you leave off.  But I am led unawares into Reflections, foreign to the original Design of this Epistle; which was to let you know, that some unfeigned Admirers of your inimitable Papers, who could, without any Flattery, greet you with the Salutation used to the Eastern Monarchs, viz. O Spec, live for ever, have lately been under the same Apprehensions, with Mr. Philo-Spec; that the haste you have made to dispatch your best Friends portends no long Duration to your own short Visage.  We could not, indeed, find any just Grounds for Complaint in the Method you took to dissolve that venerable Body:  No, the World was not worthy of your Divine.  WILL.  HONEYCOMB could not, with any Reputation, live single any longer.  It was high time for the TEMPLAR to turn himself to Coke:  And Sir ROGER’s dying was the wisest thing he ever did in his Life.  It was, however, matter of great Grief to us, to think that we were in danger of losing so Elegant and Valuable an Entertainment.  And we could not, without Sorrow, reflect that we were likely to have nothing to interrupt our Sips in a Morning, and to