prafses, he overthrows them all, by lamenting that, alas! they kept Easter at a wrong time of the year. So our doctor has every quality and virtue that can make a man amiable or useful; but alas! he has a sort of slouch in his walk! I pray God protect him, for he his an excellent christian, though not a catholic.

Are you altogether a country-gentleman, that I must address to you out of London, to the hazard of your losing this precious letter, which I will now conclude, although so much paper is left? I have an ill name, and therefore shall not subscribe it; but you will guess it comes from one who esteems and loves you about half as much as you deserve, I mean as much as he can. →→→→

3) TO THE COUNTESS OF SUfroly.

Madam,

Twickenham, Aug. 15, 1727.

I wish I were a young lord, and you were unmarried: I should

make you the best husband in the world, for I am ten times deafer than ever you were in your life; and instead of a poor pain in my face, I have a good substantial giddiness and head-ache. The best of it is, that, although we might lay our heads together, you could tell me no secrets that might not be heard five rooms distant. These disorders of mine, if they hold me as long as they used to do some years ago, will last as long as my leave of absence, which I shall not renew and then the Queen will have the misfortune not to see me, and I shall go back with the satisfaction never to have seen her since she was Queen, but when I kissed her hand. And, although she were a thousand Queens, I will not lose my privilege of never seeing her but when she commands it. I told my two landlords, that I would write you a love-letter; which I remember, you commanded me to do last year but I would not shew it to either of them. I am the greatest courtier and flatterer you have; because I try your good sense and taste more than all of them put together, which is the greatest compliment I could put upon you: and you have hitherto behaved yourself tolerably well under it; much better than your Mistress, if what a lady told me was true; that, talking with the Queen about me, her Majesty said, I was an odd sort of man. But I forgive her; for it is

and odd thing in an honest man to speak freely to princes. I will say another thing in your praise, that goodness would become you better than any person I know; and, for that very reason, there is nobody I wish to be good so much as yourself. I am, etc.

Peter

4) PETER *)

eter told his brothers **), he would have them to know that he was their elder, and consequently his fathers's sole heir; nay, a while after he would not allow them to call him brother, but Mr. Peter; and then he must be styled father Peter; and sometimes, my Lord Peter. To support this grandeur, which he soon began to consider could not be maintained without a better fond, than what he was born to: after much thought, he cast about at last to turn projector and virtuoso, wherein he so well succeeded, that many famous discoveries, projects and machines, which bear great vogue and practice at present in the world, are owing entirely to lord Peter's invention. I will deduce the best account I have been able to collect of the chief amongst them, without considering much the order they came out in; because, I think, authors are not well agreed as to that point.

I hope, when this treatise of mine shall be translated into foreign languages, (as I may without vanity affirm, that the labour of collecting, the faithfulness in recounting, and the great usefulness of the matter to the public, will amply deserve that justice) that the worthy members of the several academies abroad, especially those of France and Italy, will favourably accept these humble offers for the advancement of universal knowledge. I do also advertise the most reverend fathers, the eastern missionaries, that I havé, purely for their sakes, made use of such words and phrases, as will best admit an easy turn into any of the oriental languages, especially the Chinese. And so I proceed with great content of mind upon reflecting, how much emolument this whole globe of the earth is like to reap by my labours.

*) A Tale of a Tub, Sect. IV. Der Leser bemerkt leicht, dafs unter Peter bald die katholische Kirche, bald der Pabst zu verstehen ist. **) Martin and Jack, the church of England and the Protestant dissenters.

The first undertaking of lord Peter was to purchase a large continent *), lately said to have been discovered in terra australis incognita. This tract of land he bought at a very great penny-worth from the discoverers themselves, (though some pretended to doubt whether they had ever been there), and then retailed it into several cantons to certain dealers, who carried over colonies, but were all shipwrecked in the voyage. Upon which lord Peter sold the said continent to other customers again, and again, and again, and again with the same success.

The second project I shall mention, was his sovereign remedy for the worms, especially those in the spleen**). The patient was to eat nothing after supper for three nights: as soon as he went to bed, he was carefully to lie on one side, and when he grew weary, to turn upon the other: he must also duly confine his two eyes to the same object; and by no means break wind at both ends together, without manifest occasion. These prescriptions diligently observed, the worms would yoid insensibly by perspiration, ascending through the brain,

A third invention was the erecting of a whispering of fice ***) for the public good and ease of all such as are hypochondriacal, or troubled with the cholick; as likewise of all eves-droppers, physicians, midwives, small politicians, friends fallen out, repeating poets, lovers happy or in despair, bawds, privy-counsellors, pages, parasites and buffoons: in short, of all such as are in danger of bursting with too much wind. An ass's head+) was placed so conveniently, that the party affected might easily with his mouth accost either of the animal's ears, to which he was to apply close for a certain space, and by a fugitive faculty, peculiar to the ears of that animal, receive immediate benefit either by eructation, or expiration, or evomition.

Another very beneficial project of lord Peter's was an office of insurance tt) for tobacco-pipes, martyrs of the modern zeal, volumes of poetry, shadows, and rivers; that these, nor any of these, shall receive damage by fire. From whence our friendly societies, may plainly find them

*) Das Fegfeuer. **) Bufse und Absolution. ***) Ohrenbeichte. Der Kopf des Geistlichen. ††) Der Ablafskram für täfsliche Sünden.

selves to be only transcribers from this original; though the one and the other have been of great benefit to the undertakers, as well as of equal to the public.

Lord Peter was also held the original author of puppets and raree-shows *); the great usefulness whereof being so generally known, I shall not enlarge farther upon this particular,

men,

But another discovery, for which he was much renowned, was his famous universal pickle **). For having remarked how your common pickle, in use among house- wives, was of no farther benefit than to preserve dead flesh, and certain kinds of vegetables; Peter, with great cost as well as art, had contrived a pickle proper for houses, gardens, towns, men, wochildren, and cattle; wherein he could preserve them as sound as insects in amber. Now, this pickle to the taste, the smell, and the sight, appeared exactly the same, with what is in common service for beef, and butter, and herrings, and has been often that way applied with great success; but for its many sovereign virtues was a quite different thing. For Peter would put in a certain quantity of his powder pimperlimpinp***), after which it never failed of success. The operation was performed by spargefaction in a proper time of the moon, The patient, who was to be pickled, if it were a house, would infallibly be preserved from all spiders, rats and weazels; if the party affected were a dog, he should be exempt from mange, and madness, and hunger. It also infallibly took away all scabs and lice, and scald-heads from children, never hindering the patient from any duty, either at bed or board.

But of all Peter's rarities, he most valued a certain set of bulls†), whose race was by great fortune preserved in lineal descent from those, that guarded the golden- fleece, Though some who pretended to observe them curiously, doubted the breed hat not been kept entirely chaste; because they had degenerated from their ancestors in some qualities, and had acquired others very extraordinary, but a foreign mixtare. The bulls of Colchis are recorded to have brazen feet; but whether it happened by ill pasture and running, by an

*) Mönchsgaukeleien, Processionen, Altarputz u. s. w. **) Das Weihwasser. ***) Die Einsegnung des Weihwassers. †) Päbstliche Bullen

allay from invention of other parents, from stolen intrigues; whether a weakness in their progenitors had impaired the seminal virtue, or, by a decline necessary through a long course of time, the originals of nature being depraved in these latter sinful ages of the world; whatever was the cause, It is certain that lord Peter's bulls were extremely vitiated by the rust of time in the metal of their feet, which was now sunk into common lead *). However, the terrible roaring, peculiar to their lineage, was preserved: as likewise that faculty of breathing out fire **) from their nostrils: which notwithstanding many of their detractors took to be a feat of art, and to be nothing so terrible as it appeared; proceeding only from their usual course of diet, which was of squibs and crackers. However, they had two peculiar marks, which extremely distinguished them from the bulls of Jason and which I have not met together in the discription of any other monster, beside that in Horace:

Varias inducere plumas:

and

Atrum desinit in piscem***).

For these had fishes tails; yet upon occasion could outfly any bird in the air. Peter put these bulls upon several employs. Sometimes he would set them a roaring to fright naughty boys +), and make them quiet. Sometimes he would send them out upon errands of great importance; where it is wonderful to recount, and perhaps the cautious reader may think much to believe it; an appetitus sensibilis deriving itself through the whole family from their noble ancestors, guardians of the golden fleece, they continued so extremely fond a gold, that if Peter sent them abroad, though it were only upon a compliment, they would roar, and spit, and belch, and piss, and fart, and snivel out fire, and keep a perpetual coil, till you flung them a bit of gold; but then, pulveris exigui jactu, they would grow calm and quiet as lambs.

In

*) Das bleierne Siegel an den päbstlichen Bullen. **) Die Bannstrahlen der päbstlichen Bullen sind besonders uns Deutschen wohl bekannt. ***) Das erste ist der Charakterzug der päbstlichen Bullen, sich nach dem Wohlgefallen der Fürsten oder nach dem Interesse des Römischen Hofes mit verschiedenen bunten Federn zu schmücken und das andere spielt auf den Fischerring an, worunter die Bullen ausgestellt werden. †) Kaiser, Könige, Fürsten ete., die dem päbstlichen Interesse im Wege stehn.