2.  It has rained all day with a continuendo, and I went in a chair to dine with Mrs. Van; always there in a very rainy day.  But I made a shift to come back afoot.  I live a very retired life, pay very few visits, and keep but very little company; I read no newspapers.  I am sorry I sent you the Examiner, for the printer is going to print them in a small volume:  it seems the author is too proud to have them printed by subscription, though his friends offered, they say, to make it worth five hundred pounds to him.  The Spectators are likewise printing in a larger and a smaller volume, so I believe they are going to leave them off, and indeed people grow weary of them, though they are often prettily written.  We have had no news for me to send you now towards the end of my letter.  The Queen has the gout a little:  I hoped the Lord Treasurer would have had it too, but Radcliffe told me yesterday it was the rheumatism in his knee and foot; however, he mends, and I hope will be abroad in a short time.  I am told they design giving away several employments before the Parliament sits, which will be the thirteenth instant.  I either do not like, or not understand this policy; and if Lord Treasurer does not mend soon, they must give them just before the session.  But he is the greatest procrastinator in the world.

3.  A fine day this, and I walked a pretty deal.  I stuffed the Secretary’s pockets with papers, which he must read and settle at Hampton Court, where he went to-day, and stays some time.  They have no lodgings for me there, so I can’t go, for the town is small, chargeable, and inconvenient.  Lord Treasurer had a very ill night last night, with much pain in his knee and foot, but is easier to-day.—­And so I went to visit Prior about some business, and so he was not within, and so Sir Andrew Fountaine made me dine to-day again with Mrs. Van, and I came home soon, remembering this must go to-night, and that I had a letter of MD’s to answer.  O Lord, where is it? let me see; so, so, here it is.  You grudge writing so soon.  Pox on that bill! the woman would have me manage that money for her.  I do not know what to do with it now I have it:  I am like the unprofitable steward in the Gospel:  I laid it up in a napkin; there thou hast what is thine own, etc.  Well, well, I know of your new Mayor.  (I’ll tell you a pun:  a fishmonger owed a man two crowns; so he sent him a piece of bad ling and a tench, and then said he was paid:  how is that now? find it out; for I won’t tell it you:  which of you finds it out?) Well, but as I was saying, what care I for your Mayor?  I fancy Ford may tell Forbes right about my returning to Ireland before Christmas, or soon after.  I’m sorry you did not go on with your story about Pray God you be John; I never heard it in my life, and wonder what it can be.—­Ah, Stella, faith, you leaned upon your Bible to think what to say when you writ that.  Yes, that story of the Secretary’s making me an example is true;