is the Ambition which every one has of being thought in the Secret, and being look’d upon as a Man who has Access to greater People than one would imagine.  After having given you this Account of Peter Hush, I proceed to that virtuous Lady, the old Lady Blast, who is to communicate to me the private Transactions of the Crimp Table, with all the Arcana of the Fair Sex.  The Lady Blast, you must understand, has such a particular Malignity in her Whisper, that it blights like an Easterly Wind, and withers every Reputation that it breathes upon.  She has a particular Knack at making private Weddings, and last Winter married above five Women of Quality to their Footmen.  Her Whisper can make an innocent young Woman big with Child, or fill an healthful young Fellow with Distempers that are not to be named.  She can turn a Visit into an Intrigue, and a distant Salute into an Assignation.  She can beggar the Wealthy, and degrade the Noble.  In short, she can whisper Men Base or Foolish, Jealous or Ill-natured, or, if Occasion requires, can tell you the Slips of their Great Grandmothers, and traduce the Memory of honest Coachmen that have been in their Graves above these hundred Years.  By these and the like Helps, I question not but I shall furnish out a very handsome News-Letter.  If you approve my Project, I shall begin to whisper by the very next Post, and question not but every one of my Customers will be very well pleased with me, when he considers that every Piece of News I send him is a Word in his Ear, and lets him into a Secret.

Having given you a Sketch of this Project, I shall, in the next Place, suggest to you another for a Monthly Pamphlet, which I shall likewise submit to your Spectatorial Wisdom.  I need not tell you, Sir, that there are several Authors in France, Germany, and Holland, as well as in our own Country, who publish every Month, what they call An Account of the Works of the Learned, in which they give us an Abstract of all such Books as are printed in any Part of Europe.  Now, Sir, it is my Design to publish every Month, An Account of the Works of the Unlearned.  Several late Productions of my own Countrymen, who many of them make a very eminent Figure in the Illiterate World, Encourage me in this Undertaking.  I may, in this Work, possibly make a Review of several Pieces which have appeared in the Foreign Accounts above-mentioned, tho’ they ought not to have been taken Notice of in Works which bear such a Title.  I may, likewise, take into Consideration, such Pieces as appear, from time to time, under the Names of those Gentlemen who Compliment one another, in Publick Assemblies, by the Title of the Learned Gentlemen.  Our Party-Authors will also afford me a great Variety of Subjects, not to mention Editors, Commentators, and others, who are often Men of no Learning, or, what is as bad, of no Knowledge.  I shall not enlarge upon this Hint; but if you think any thing can be made of it, I shall set about it with all the Pains and Application that so useful a Work deserves.

  I am ever,