do you lie in one gallery, as in an hospital?  What! you are afraid of losing in Dublin the acquaintance you have got in Wexford, and chiefly the Bishop of Raphoe,[20] an old, doting, perverse coxcomb?  Twenty at a time at breakfast.  That is like five pounds at a time, when it was never but once.  I doubt, Madam Dingley, you are apt to lie in your travels, though not so bad as Stella; she tells thumpers, as I shall prove in my next, if I find this receives encouragement.- -So Dr. Elwood says there are a world of pretty things in my works.  A pox on his praises! an enemy here would say more.  The Duke of Buckingham would say as much, though he and I are terribly fallen out; and the great men are perpetually inflaming me against him:  they bring me all he says of me, and, I believe, make it worse out of roguery.—­No, ’tis not your pen is bewitched, Madam Stella, but your old scrawling, splay-foot pot-Hooks, S, S,[21] ay that’s it:  there the s, s, s, there, there, that’s exact.  Farewell, etc.

Our fine weather is gone; and I doubt we shall have a rainy journey to-day.  Faith, ’tis shaving-day, and I have much to do.  When Stella says her pen was bewitched, it was only because there was a hair in it.  You know, the fellow they call God-help-it had the same thoughts of his wife, and for the same reason.  I think this is very well observed, and I unfolded the letter to tell you it.

Cut off those two notes above; and see the nine pounds indorsed, and receive the other; and send me word how my accounts stand, that they may be adjusted by Nov. 1.[22] Pray be very particular; but the twenty pounds I lend you is not to be included:  so make no blunder.  I won’t wrong you, nor you shan’t wrong me; that is the short.  O Lord, how stout Presto is of late!  But he loves MD more than his life a thousand times, for all his stoutness; tell them that; and that I’ll swear it, as hope saved, ten millions of times, etc. etc.

I open my letter once more, to tell Stella that if she does not use exercise after her waters, it will lose all the effects of them:  I should not live if I did not take all opportunities of walking.  Pray, pray, do this, to oblige poor Presto.

LETTER 30.

Windsor, Sept. 8, 1711.

I made the coachman stop, and put in my twenty-ninth at the post-office at two o’clock to-day, as I was going to Lord Treasurer, with whom I dined, and came here by a quarter-past eight; but the moon shone, and so we were not in much danger of overturning; which, however, he values not a straw, and only laughs when I chide at him for it.  There was nobody but he and I, and we supped together, with Mr. Masham, and Dr. Arbuthnot, the Queen’s favourite physician, a Scotchman.  I could not keep myself awake after supper, but did all I was able to disguise it, and thought I came off clear; but, at parting, he told me I had got my nap already.  It is now one o’clock; but he loves sitting up late.