Your Provost[14] is a coxcomb. Stella is a
good girl for not being angry when I tell her of spelling;
I see none wrong in this. God Almighty be praised
that your disorder lessens; it increases my hopes
mightily that they will go off. And have you
been plagued with the fear of the plague? never mind
those reports; I have heard them five hundred times.
Replevi? Replevin, simpleton, ’tis Dingley
I mean; but it is a hard word, and so I’ll excuse
it. I stated Dingley’s accounts in my
last. I forgot Catherine’s sevenpenny dinner.
I hope it was the beef-steaks; I’ll call and
eat them in spring; but Goody Stoyte must give me
coffee, or green tea, for I drink no bohea. Well,
ay, the pamphlet; but there are some additions to
the fourth edition; the fifth edition was of four
thousand, in a smaller print, sold for sixpence.
Yes, I had the twenty-pound bill from Parvisol:
and what then? Pray now eat the Laracor apples;
I beg you not to keep them, but tell me what they are.
You have had Tooke’s bill in my last.
And so there now, your whole letter is answered.
I tell you what I do; I lay your letter before me,
and take it in order, and answer what is necessary;
and so and so. Well, when I expected we were
all undone, I designed to retire for six months, and
then steal over to Laracor; and I had in my mouth
a thousand times two lines of Shakespeare, where Cardinal
Wolsey says,
“A weak old man,
battered with storms of state,
Is come to lay
his weary bones among you."[15]
I beg your pardon; I have cheated you all this margin,
I did not perceive it; and I went on wider and wider
like Stella; awkward sluts; she writes so
so, there:[16] that’s as like as
two eggs a penny.—“A weak old man,”
now I am saying it, and shall till to-morrow.—The
Duke of Marlborough says there is nothing he now desires
so much as to contrive some way how to soften Dr.
Swift. He is mistaken; for those things that
have been hardest against him were not written by
me. Mr. Secretary told me this from a friend
of the Duke’s; and I’m sure now he is
down, I shall not trample on him; although I love
him not, I dislike his being out.—Bernage
was to see me this morning, and gave some very indifferent
excuses for not calling here so long. I care
not twopence. Prince Eugene did not dine with
the Duke of Marlborough on Sunday, but was last night
at Lady Betty Germaine’s assemblee, and a vast
number of ladies to see him. Mr. Lewis and I
dined with a private friend. I was this morning
to see the Duke of Ormond, who appointed me to meet
him at the Cockpit at one, but never came. I
sat too some time with the Duchess. We don’t
like things very well yet. I am come home early,
and going to be busy. I’ll go write.