Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 17.djvu/339

Rh of my Church History, — if his flux be over — you may also speak to the gentleman, who lies by him in the flock bed, my index-maker.

"The cook's wife in Buckingham court; bid her bring along with her the similes, that were lent her for her next new play.

"Call at Budge row for the gentleman, you used to go to in the cockloft; I have taken away the ladder, but his landlady has it in keeping.

"I don't much care if you ask at the Mint for the old beetlebrowed critick, and the purblind poet at the alley over against St. Andrew's, Holborn. But this as you have time."

All these gentlemen appeared at the hour appointed in Mr. Curll's dining-room, two excepted; one of whom was the gentleman in the cockloft, his landlady being out of the way, and the Gradus ad Parnassum taken down; the other happened to be too closely watched by the bailiffs.

They no sooner entered the room, but all of them showed in their behaviour some suspicion of each other; some turning away their heads with an air of contempt: others squinting with a leer, that showed at once fear and indignation, each with a haggard abstracted mien, the lively picture of scorn, solitude, and short commons. So when a keeper feeds his hungry charge of vultures, panthers, and of Libyan leopards, each eyes his fellow with a fiery glare: high hung, the bloody liver tempts their maw. Or as a housewife stands before her pales, surrounded by her geese; they fight, they hiss, they cackle, beat their wings, and down is scattered as the winter's snow, for a poor