soon; for I dined with the printer, and he tells me they have sold off half the third.  Mrs. Perceval[6] and her daughter have been in town these three weeks, which I never heard till to-day; and Mrs. Wesley[7] is come to town too, to consult Dr. Radcliffe.  The Whigs are resolved to bring that pamphlet into the House of Lords to have it condemned, so I hear.  But the printer will stand to it, and not own the author; he must say he had it from the penny-post.  Some people talk as if the House of Lords would do some peevish thing, for the Whigs are now a great majority in it; our Ministers are too negligent of such things:  I have never slipped giving them warning; some of them are sensible of it; but Lord Treasurer stands too much upon his own legs.  I fancy his good fortune will bear him out in everything; but in reason I should think this Ministry to stand very unsteady; if they can carry a peace, they may hold; I believe not else.

4.  Mr. Secretary sent to me to-day to dine with him alone; but we had two more with us, which hindered me doing some business.  I was this morning with young Harcourt, secretary to our Society, to take a room for our weekly meetings; and the fellow asked us five guineas a week only to have leave to dine once a week; was not that pretty? so we broke off with him, and are to dine next Thursday at Harcourt’s (he is Lord Keeper’s son).  They have sold off above half the third edition, and answers are coming out:  the Dutch Envoy refused dining with Dr. Davenant,[8] because he was suspected to write it:  I have made some alterations in every edition, and it has cost me more trouble, for the time, since the printing, than before.  ’Tis sent over to Ireland, and I suppose you will have it reprinted.

5.  They are now printing the fourth edition, which is reckoned very extraordinary, considering ’tis a dear twelvepenny book, and not bought up in numbers by the party to give away, as the Whigs do, but purely upon its own strength.  I have got an under spur-leather to write an Examiner again,[9] and the Secretary and I will now and then send hints; but we would have it a little upon the Grub Street, to be a match for their writers.  I dined with Lord Treasurer to-day at five:  he dined by himself after his family, and drinks no claret yet, for fear of his rheumatism, of which he is almost well.  He was very pleasant, as he is always:  yet I fancied he was a little touched with the present posture of affairs.  The Elector of Hanover’s Minister here has given in a violent memorial against the peace, and caused it to be printed.  The Whig lords are doing their utmost for a majority against Friday, and design, if they can, to address the Queen against the peace.  Lord Nottingham,[10] a famous Tory and speech-maker, is gone over to the Whig side:  they toast him daily, and Lord Wharton says, It is Dismal (so they call him from his looks) will save England at last.  Lord Treasurer was hinting as if he wished a ballad was made on him, and I will get up one against to-morrow.[11] He gave me a scurrilous printed paper of bad verses on himself, under the name of the English Catiline, and made me read them to the company.  It was his birthday, which he would not tell us, but Lord Harley whispered it to me.