Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 15.djvu/188

180 there (who writ the Dialogues des Morts, &c.) have sent letters to lord Pembroke, that the academy have, with the king's consent, chosen him one of their members, in the room of one who is lately dead. But the cautious gentleman has given me the letters to show my lord Dartmouth and Mr. St. John, our two secretaries, and let them see there is no treason in them; which I will do on Wednesday, when they come from Hampton court. The letters are very handsome, and it is a very great mark of honour and distinction to lord Pembroke. I hear the two French ministers are come over again about the peace; but I have seen nobody of consequence to know the truth. I dined to day with a lady of my acquaintance, who was sick, in her bedchamber, upon three herrings and a chicken; the dinner was my bespeaking. We begin now to have chesnuts and Seville oranges; have you the latter yet? 'Twas a terrible windy day, and we had processions in carts of the pope and the devil, and the butchers rang their cleavers; you know this is the fifth of November, popery and gunpowder.

6. Since I am used to this way of writing, I fancy I could hardly make out a long letter to MD without it. I think I ought to allow for every line taken up by telling you where I dined; but that will not be above seven lines in all, half a line to a dinner. Your Ingoldsby is going over, and they say here, he is to be made a lord. Here was I staying in my room till two this afternoon for that puppy sir Andrew Fountaine, who was to go with me into the city, and never came; and if I had not shot a dinner flying, with one Mr. Murray, I might have fasted, or gone to an alehouse. You never said one word of goody Stoyte in your letter; but I supoose these winter nights we shall hear