30.  I have drank Spa waters this two or three days; but they do not pass, and make me very giddy.  I an’t well; faith, I’ll take them no more.  I sauntered after church with the Provost to-day to see a library to be sold, and dined at five with Lord Orkney.  We still think there was malice in burning d’Aumont’s house.  I hear little Harrison[9] is come over; it was he I sent to Utrecht.  He is now Queen’s Secretary to the Embassy, and has brought with him the Barrier Treaty, as it is now corrected by us, and yielded to by the Dutch, which was the greatest difficulty to retard the peace.  I hope he will bring over the peace a month hence, for we will send him back as soon as possible.  I long to see the little brat, my own creature.  His pay is in all a thousand pounds a year, and they have never paid him a groat, though I have teased their hearts out.  He must be three or four hundred pounds in debt at least, the brat!  Let me go to bed, sollahs.—­Nite dee richar MD.

31.  Harrison was with me this morning:  we talked three hours, and then I carried him to Court.  When we went down to the door of my lodging, I found a coach waited for him.  I chid him for it; but he whispered me it was impossible to do otherwise; and in the coach he told me he had not one farthing in his pocket to pay it; and therefore took the coach for the whole day, and intended to borrow money somewhere or other.  So there was the Queen’s Minister entrusted in affairs of the greatest importance, without a shilling in his pocket to pay a coach!  I paid him while he was with me seven guineas, in part of a dozen of shirts he bought me in Holland.  I presented him to the Duke of Ormond, and several lords at Court; and I contrived it so that Lord Treasurer came to me and asked (I had Parnell by me) whether that was Dr. Parnell, and came up and spoke to him with great kindness, and invited him to his house.  I value myself upon making the Ministry desire to be acquainted with Parnell, and not Parnell with the Ministry.  His poem is almost fully corrected, and shall soon be out.  Here’s enough for to-day:  only to tell you that I was in the City with my printer to alter an Examiner about my friend Lewis’s story,[10] which will be told with remarks.  Nite MD.

Feb. 1.  I could do nothing till to-day about the Examiner, but the printer came this morning, and I dictated to him what was fit to be said, and then Mr. Lewis came, and corrected it as he would have it; so I was neither at church nor Court.  The Duke of Ormond and I dined at Lord Orkney’s.  I left them at seven, and sat with Sir Andrew Fountaine, who has a very bad sore leg, for which he designs to go to France.  Fais, here’s a week gone, and one side of this letter not finished.  Oh, but I write now but once in three weeks; iss, fais, this shall go sooner.  The Parliament is to sit on the third, but will adjourn for three or four days; for the Queen is laid up with the gout, and both Speakers out of order, though one of them, the Lord Keeper, is almost well.  I spoke to the Duke of Ormond a good deal about Ireland.  We do not altogether agree, nor am I judge enough of Irish affairs; but I will speak to Lord Treasurer to-morrow, that we three may settle them some way or other.  Nite sollahs both, rove Pdfr.