sure it was the Bishop of London? because there is an elderly gentleman here that we give the same title to:  or did you fancy all this in your water, as others do strange things in their wine?  They say these waters trouble the head, and make people imagine what never came to pass.  Do you make no more of killing a Bishop? are these your Whiggish tricks?—­Yes, yes, I see you are in a fret.  O, faith, says you, saucy Presto, I’ll break your head; what, can’t one report what one hears, without being made a jest and a laughing-stock?  Are these your English tricks, with a murrain?  And Sacheverell will be the next Bishop?  He would be glad of an addition of two hundred pounds a year to what he has, and that is more than they will give him, for aught I see.  He hates the new Ministry mortally, and they hate him, and pretend to despise him too.  They will not allow him to have been the occasion of the late change; at least some of them will not:  but my Lord Keeper owned it to me the other day.  No, Mr. Addison does not go to Ireland this year:  he pretended he would; but he is gone to Bath with Pastoral Philips, for his eyes.—­So now I have run over your letter; and I think this shall go to-morrow, which will be just a fortnight from the last, and bring things to the old form again, after your rambles to Wexford, and mine to Windsor.  Are there not many literal faults in my letters?  I never read them over, and I fancy there are.  What do you do then? do you guess my meaning, or are you acquainted with my manner of mistaking?  I lost my handkerchief in the Mall to-night with Lord Radnor; but I made him walk with me to find it, and find it I did not.  Tisdall[26] (that lodges with me) and I have had no conversation, nor do we pull off our hats in the streets.  There is a cousin of his (I suppose,) a young parson, that lodges in the house too; a handsome, genteel fellow.  Dick Tighe[27] and his wife lodged over against us; and he has been seen, out of our upper windows, beating her two or three times:  they are both gone to Ireland, but not together; and he solemnly vows never to live with her.  Neighbours do not stick to say that she has a tongue:  in short, I am told she is the most urging, provoking devil that ever was born; and he a hot, whiffling[28] puppy, very apt to resent.  I’ll keep this bottom till to-morrow:  I’m sleepy.

25.  I was with the Secretary this morning, who was in a mighty hurry, and went to Windsor in a chariot with Lord Keeper; so I was not invited, and am forced to stay at home, but not at all against my will; for I could have gone, and would not.  I dined in the City with one of my printers, for whom I got the Gazette, and am come home early; and have nothing to say to you more, but finish this letter, and not send it by the bellman.  Days grow short, and the weather grows bad, and the town is splenetic, and things are so oddly contrived that I cannot be absent; otherwise I would go for a few days to Oxford, as I promised.—­They