We have received, by letters of the 18th instant from the camp before Tournay, an account, that we were in a fair prospect of being masters of the town within seven days after that date.  Our batteries had utterly overthrown those of the enemy.  On the 16th instant, N.S., General Schuylemburg had made a lodgment on the counterscarp of the Tenaille; which post was so weakly defended, that we lost but six men in gaining it.  So that there seems reason to hope, that the citadel will also be in the hands of the Confederates about the 6th of August, O.S.  These advices inform us further, that Marshal Villars had ordered large detachments to make motions towards Douay and Conde.  The swift progress of this siege has so much alarmed the other frontier towns of France, that they were throwing down some houses in the suburbs of Valenciennes, which they think may stand commodiously for the enemy in case that place should be invested.  The Elector of Cologne is making all imaginable haste to remove from thence to Rheims.

[Footnote 398:  See Nos. 28, 38.]

[Footnote 399:  Grub Street, Cripplegate (now Milton Street), became, towards the end of the seventeenth century, the abode of what Johnson calls “writers of small histories, dictionaries and temporary poems; whence any mean production is called Grub Street.”]

[Footnote 400:  Virgil, “Georgics,” iv. 86.]

[Footnote 401:  The Flying Post records that one Slaughterford was sentenced to death on July 2, 1709, for murdering his sweetheart.]

[Footnote 402:  See Nos. 24, 51.]

[Footnote 403:  See No. 14.]

[Footnote 404:  “As You Like It,” act ii. sc. 7.]

No. 42. [STEELE AND ADDISON.

From Thursday, July 14, to Saturday, July 16, 1709.

    Celebrare domestica facta.

* * * * *

From my own Apartment, July 15.

Looking over some old papers, I found a little treatise, written by my great-grandfather, concerning bribery, and thought his manner of treating that subject not unworthy my remark.  He there has a digression concerning a possibility, that in some circumstances a man may receive an injury, and yet be conscious to himself that he deserves it.  There are abundance of fine things said on the subject; but the whole wrapped up in so much jingle and pun (which was the wit of those times) that it is scarce intelligible; but I thought the design was well enough in the following sketch of the old gentleman’s poetry:  for in this case, where two are rivals for the same thing, and propose to attain it by presents, he that attempts the judge’s honesty, by making him offers of reward, ought not to complain when he loses his cause for a better bidder.  But the good old doggerel runs thus:[405]

    A poor man once a judge besought,
      To judge aright his cause,
    And with a pot of oil salutes
      This judger of the laws.