I think not the two sisters.  Raymond writ to me that he intended to invite you to Trim.  Are you, have you, will you be there?  Won’t oo see pool Laratol?[5] Parvisol says I shall have no fruit.  Blasts have taken away all.  Pray observe the cherry-trees on the river-walk; but oo are too lazy to take such a journey.  If you have not your letters in due time for two months hence, impute it to my being tosticated between this and Windsor.  And pray send me again the state of ME’s money; for I will not look into your letter for it.  Poor Lord Winchelsea[6] is dead, to my great grief.  He was a worthy honest gentleman, and particular friend of mine:  and, what is yet worse, my old acquaintance, Mrs. Finch,[7] is now Countess of Winchelsea, the title being fallen to her husband, but without much estate.  I have been poring my eyes all this morning, and it is now past two afternoon, so I shall take a little walk in the Park.  Do you play at ombre still?  Or is that off by Mr. Stoyte’s absence, and Mrs. Manley’s grief?  Somebody was telling me of a strange sister that Mrs. Manley has got in Ireland, who disappointed you all about her being handsome.  My service to Mrs. Walls.  Farewell, deelest MD MD MD, FW FW FW, me me me me me.  Lele, logues both; rove poo Pdfr.

LETTER 52.[1]

Windsor, Sept. 15, 1712.

I never was so long without writing to MD as now, since I left them, nor ever will again while I am able to write.  I have expected from one week to another that something would be done in my own affairs; but nothing at all is, nor I don’t know when anything will, or whether ever at all, so slow are people at doing favours.  I have been much out of order of late with the old giddiness in my head.  I took a vomit for it two days ago, and will take another about a day or two hence.  I have eat mighty little fruit; yet I impute my disorder to that little, and shall henceforth wholly forbear it.  I am engaged in a long work, and have done all I can of it, and wait for some papers from the Ministry for materials for the rest; and they delay me, as if it were a favour I asked of them; so that I have been idle here this good while, and it happened in a right time, when I was too much out of order to study.  One is kept constantly out of humour by a thousand unaccountable things in public proceedings; and when I reason with some friends, we cannot conceive how affairs can last as they are.  God only knows, but it is a very melancholy subject for those who have any near concern in it.  I am again endeavouring, as I was last year, to keep people[2] from breaking to pieces upon a hundred misunderstandings.  One cannot withhold them from drawing different ways, while the enemy is watching to destroy both.  See how my style is altered, by living and thinking and talking among these people, instead of my canal and river-walk and willows.  I lose all my money