Sir MARK.  There’s no disputing against so great a majority.

Mr. SAGE.  But there is one scruple (Colonel Plume) and I have done:  don’t you believe there may be some advantage even upon a cloak with pistols, which a man of nice honour would scruple to take?

Col.  PLUME.  Faith, I can’t tell, sir; but since one may reasonably suppose, that (in such a case) there can be but one so far in the wrong as to occasion matters to come to that extremity, I think the chance of being killed should fall but on one; whereas by their close and desperate manner of fighting, it may very probably happen to both.

Sir MARK.  Why, gentlemen, if they are men of such nice honour (and must fight), there will be no fear of foul play, if they threw up cross or pile[391] who should be shot.

[Footnote 383:  Job xxxviii. 4, 8, 11.]

[Footnote 384:  There was a difference between the University terms and the Law terms.]

[Footnote 385:  Spencer Cowper (1669-1727), brother of Earl Cowper, and afterwards a judge of the Common Pleas.  He was one of the managers of the impeachment of Sacheverell in 1710.]

[Footnote 386:  See Nos. 25, 26, 29, 31, 38, 205.]

[Footnote 387:  At Whitehall.]

[Footnote 388:  Cf. “Wentworth Papers,” p. 394:  “June 29, 1714.  The changes at Court does not go so rug as some people expected and gave out, that ’twas to be all intire Tory with the least seeming mixture of Whigs.”]

[Footnote 389:  See Spectator, No. 97.]

[Footnote 390:  A sword.  Don Diego was a familiar name for a Spaniard with both English and French writers in the seventeenth century.  San Diego is a corruption of Santiago (St. James), the patron saint of Spain.]

[Footnote 391:  A pillar, the design on one side of a coin, bearing on the other a cross.  Swift says, “This I humbly conceive to be perfect boys’ play; cross, I win, and pile, you lose.”]

No. 40. [STEELE.

From Saturday, July 9, to Tuesday, July 12, 1709.

* * * * *

Will’s Coffee-house, July 11.

Letters from the city of London give an account of a very great consternation that place is in at present, by reason of a late inquiry made at Guildhall, whether a noble person[392] has parts enough to deserve the enjoyment of the great estate of which he is possessed.  The city is apprehensive that this precedent may go further than was at first imagined.  The person against whom this inquisition is set up by his relations, is a peer of a neighbouring kingdom, and has in his youth made some few bulls, by which it is insinuated, that he has forfeited his goods and chattels.  This is the more astonishing, in that there are many persons in the said city who are still more guilty than his lordship, and who, though they are idiots, do not only possess, but have also themselves acquired great estates, contrary to the known laws of this