act of self-denial has gained this worthy member of the commonwealth a great reputation.  Some lawgivers have departed from their abodes for ever, and commanded the observation of their laws till their return; others have used other artifices to fly the applause of their merit; but this person shuns glory with greater address, and has, by giving his engine his own name, made it obscene to speak of him more.  However, he is ranked among, and received by the modern wits, as a great promoter of gallantry and pleasure.  But I fear, pleasure is less understood in this age, which so much pretends to it, than in any since the creation.  It was admirably said of him who first took notice, that (res est severa voluptas) there is a certain severity in pleasure.  Without that, all decency is banished; and if reason is not to be present at our greatest satisfactions, of all the races of creatures, the human is the most miserable.  It was not so of old; when Virgil describes a wit, he always means a virtuous man; and all his sentiments of men of genius are such as show persons distinguished from the common level of mankind; such as placed happiness in the contempt of low fears, and mean gratifications:  fears, which we are subject to with the vulgar; and pleasures, which we have in common with beasts.  With these illustrious personages, the wisest man was the greatest wit; and none was thought worthy of that character, unless he answered this excellent description of the poet: 

    Qui—­metus omnes et inexorabile fatum
    Subjecit pedibus, strepitumque Acherontis avari.[207]

St. James’s Coffee-house, May 13.

We had this morning advice, that some English merchant-ships, convoyed by the Bristol of fifty-four guns, were met with by a part of Mons. du Guy Trouin’s squadron, who engaged the convoy.  That ship defended itself till the English merchants got clear of the enemy, but being disabled was herself taken.  Within few hours after, my Lord Dursley[208] came up with part of his squadron and engaging the French, retook the Bristol (which being very much shattered, sunk), and took the Glorieux, a ship of forty-four guns, as also a privateer of fourteen.  Before this action, his lordship had taken two French merchant-men; and had, at the despatch of these advices, brought the whole safe into Plymouth.

[Footnote 205:  Probably William Oliver, M.D., F.R.S., who published a Dissertation on Bath waters, and cold baths, in 1709 (Flying Post, Feb. 10 to 12, 1709).  Sir John Floyer’s “Inquiry into the right Use and Abuses of the Hot, Cold, and Temperate Baths in England, &c.,” appeared in 1697.]