to three, I drink three pints of burnt claret at your funeral three nights hence.  After all, I envy thee; thou who dying hast no sense of death, art happier than one in health that[369] always fears it.”  The knight had gone on, but that a third man ended the scene by applauding the knight’s eloquence and philosophy, in a laughter too violent for his own constitution, as much as he mocked that of Africanus and Monoculus.

St. James’s Coffee-house, July 1.

This day arrived three mails from Holland, with advices relating to the posture of affairs in the Low Countries, which say, that the Confederate army extends from Luchin, on the causeway between Tournay and Lisle, to Epain near Mortagne on the Scheldt.  The Marshal Villars remains in his camp at Lens; but it is said, he detached ten thousand men under the command of the Chevalier de Luxembourg, with orders to form a camp at Crepin on the Haine, between Conde and St. Guillain, where he is to be joined by the Elector of Bavaria with a body of troops, and after their conjunction, to attempt to march into Brabant.  But they write from Brussels, that the Duke of Marlborough having it equally in his power to make detachments to the same parts, they are under no apprehensions from these reports for the safety of their country.  They further add from Brussels, that they have good authority for believing that the French troops under the conduct of Marshal de Bezons are retiring out of Spain.[370]

[Footnote 363:  Nichols argued that this and the two following numbers were by Addison. (1) At the end of No. 37 there is a list of errata for the preceding number.  It was Addison’s frequent practice to make verbal alterations in a preceding paper, and this Steele never did, except in rare cases, or where there was a positive mistake. (2) All the three papers are superscribed, as Addison’s often were, and appear upon the face of them, to be of the nature, and in the number of those, for which Steele stood sponsor, and was very patiently traduced and calumniated, as he acknowledges to Congreve, in the Dedication prefixed to “The Drummer.”  There is nothing in the style or manner of any of the three that appears incongruous with such a supposition; and the nature of their principal contents seems to support it.  They consist chiefly of pleasantries and oblique strokes, apparently on persons of fashion, in that age, of both sexes.  It appears from the Dedication to “The Drummer,” that Steele had Addison’s direct injunctions to hide papers which he never did declare to be Addison’s.  The case, in short, seems to be, that as, as Steele says, there are communications in the course of this work, which Addison’s modesty, so there are likewise others, which Addison’s prudence, “would never have admitted to come into daylight, but under such a shelter.”  According to the usual rule where there is uncertainty, Steele’s name is placed at the head of the papers in this edition.  Probably he was responsible in any case for part of the contents of each of these numbers.]