What is that you say?  The Court was very full this morning, expecting Mr. Harley would be declared Earl of Oxford and have the Treasurer’s staff.  Mr. Harley never comes to Court at all; somebody there asked me the reason.  “Why,” said I, “the Lord of Oxford knows.”  He always goes to the Queen by the back stairs.  I was told for certain, you jackanapes, Lord Santry[2] was dead, Captain Cammock[3] assured me so; and now he’s alive again, they say; but that shan’t do:  he shall be dead to me as long as he lives.  Dick Tighe[4] and I meet, and never stir our hats.  I am resolved to mistake him for Witherington, the little nasty lawyer that came up to me so sternly at the Castle the day I left Ireland.  I’ll ask the gentleman I saw walking with him how long Witherington has been in town.

14.  I went to town to-day by water.  The hail quite discouraged me from walking, and there is no shade in the greatest part of the way.  I took the first boat, and had a footman my companion; then I went again by water, and dined in the City with a printer, to whom I carried a pamphlet in manuscript, that Mr. Secretary gave me.  The printer sent it to the Secretary for his approbation, and he desired me to look it over, which I did, and found it a very scurvy piece.  The reason I tell you so, is because it was done by your parson Slap, Scrap, Flap (what d’ye call him), Trapp,[5] your Chancellor’s chaplain.  ’Tis called A Character of the Present Set of Whigs, and is going to be printed, and no doubt the author will take care to produce it in Ireland.  Dr. Freind was with me, and pulled out a twopenny pamphlet just published, called The State of Wit,[6] giving a character of all the papers that have come out of late.  The author seems to be a Whig, yet he speaks very highly of a paper called the Examiner, and says the supposed author of it is Dr. Swift.  But above all things he praises the Tatlers and Spectators; and I believe Steele and Addison were privy to the printing of it.  Thus is one treated by these impudent dogs.  And that villain Curll[7] has scraped up some trash, and calls it Dr. Swift’s Miscellanies, with the name at large:  and I can get no satisfaction of him.  Nay, Mr. Harley told me he had read it, and only laughed at me before Lord Keeper and the rest.  Since I came home, I have been sitting with the Prolocutor, Dean Atterbury, who is my neighbour over the way, but generally keeps in town with his Convocation.  ’Tis late, etc.

15.  My walk to town to-day was after ten, and prodigiously hot.  I dined with Lord Shelburne, and have desired Mrs. Pratt, who lodges there, to carry over Mrs. Walls’s tea; I hope she will do it, and they talk of going in a fortnight.  My way is this:  I leave my best gown and periwig at Mrs. Vanhomrigh’s, then walk up the Pall Mall, through the Park, out at Buckingham House, and so to Chelsea a little beyond the church:  I set out about sunset, and get here in something less than