Oct. 1.  To-day I dined at Molesworth’s, the Florence Envoy; and sat this evening with my friend Darteneuf,[3] whom you have heard me talk of; the greatest punner of this town next myself.  Have you smoked the Tatler that I writ?[4] It is much liked here, and I think it a pure[5] one.  To-morrow I go with Delaval,[6] the Portugal Envoy, to dine with Lord Halifax near Hampton Court.[7] Your Manley’s brother, a Parliament-man here, has gotten an employment;[8] and I am informed uses much interest to preserve his brother:  and, to-day, I spoke to the elder Frankland to engage his father (Postmaster here); and I hope he will be safe, although he is cruelly hated by all the Tories of Ireland.  I have almost finished my lampoon, and will print it for revenge on a certain great person.[9] It has cost me but three shillings in meat and drink since I came here, as thin as the town is.  I laugh to see myself so disengaged in these revolutions.  Well, I must leave off, and go write to Sir John Stanley,[10] to desire him to engage Lady Hyde as my mistress to engage Lord Hyde[11] in favour of Mr. Pratt.[12]

2.  Lord Halifax was at Hampton Court at his lodgings, and I dined with him there with Methuen,[13] and Delaval, and the late Attorney-General.[14] I went to the Drawing-room before dinner (for the Queen was at Hampton Court), and expected to see nobody; but I met acquaintance enough.  I walked in the gardens, saw the cartoons of Raphael, and other things; and with great difficulty got from Lord Halifax, who would have kept me to-morrow to show me his house and park, and improvements.  We left Hampton Court at sunset, and got here in a chariot and two horses time enough by starlight.  That’s something charms me mightily about London; that you go dine a dozen miles off in October, stay all day, and return so quickly:  you cannot do anything like this in Dublin.[15] I writ a second penny post letter to your mother, and hear nothing of her.  Did I tell you that Earl Berkeley died last Sunday was se’nnight, at Berkeley Castle, of a dropsy?  Lord Halifax began a health to me to-day; it was the Resurrection of the Whigs, which I refused unless he would add their Reformation too and I told him he was the only Whig in England I loved, or had any good opinion of.

3.  This morning Stella’s sister[16] came to me with a letter from her mother, who is at Sheen; but will soon be in town, and will call to see me:  she gave me a bottle of palsy water,[17] a small one, and desired I would send it you by the first convenience, as I will; and she promises a quart bottle of the same:  your sister looked very well, and seems a good modest sort of girl.  I went then to Mr. Lewis, first secretary to Lord Dartmouth,[18] and favourite to Mr. Harley, who is to introduce me to-morrow morning.  Lewis had with him one Mr. Dyot,[19] a Justice of Peace, worth twenty thousand pounds, a Commissioner of the Stamp Office, and married to a sister of Sir Philip Meadows,[20] Envoy to the