this evening:  do you ever pun now?  Sometimes with the Dean, or Tom Leigh.[4] Prior puns very well.  Odso, I must go see His Excellency, ’tis a noble advancement:  but they could do no less, after sending him to France.  Lord Strafford is as proud as Hell, and how he will bear one of Prior’s mean birth on an equal character with him, I know not.  And so I go to my business, and bid you good-night.

21.  I was this morning busy with my printer:  I gave him the fifth sheet,[5] and then I went and dined with him in the City, to correct something, and alter, etc., and I walked home in the dusk, and the rain overtook me:  and I found a letter here from Mr. Lewis; well, and so I opened it; and he says the peace is past danger, etc.  Well, and so there was another letter enclosed in his:  well, and so I looked on the outside of this t’other letter.  Well, and so who do you think this t’other letter was from?  Well, and so I’ll tell you; it was from little MD, N.23, 23, 23, 23.  I tell you it is no more, I have told you so before:  but I just looked again to satisfy you.  Hie, Stella, you write like an emperor, a great deal together; a very good hand, and but four false spellings in all.  Shall I send them to you?  I am glad you did not take my correction ill.  Well, but I won’t answer your letter now, sirrah saucyboxes, no, no; not yet; just a month and three days from the last, which is just five weeks:  you see it comes just when I begin to grumble.

22.  Morning.  Tooke has just brought me Dingley’s money.  I will give you a note for it at the end of this letter.  There was half a crown for entering the letter of attorney; but I swore to stop that.  I’ll spend your money bravely here.  Morrow, dear sirrahs.—­At night.  I dined to-day with Sir Thomas Hanmer; his wife, the Duchess of Grafton,[6] dined with us:  she wears a great high head-dress, such as was in fashion fifteen years ago, and looks like a mad woman in it; yet she has great remains of beauty.  I was this evening to see Lord Harley, and thought to have sat with Lord Treasurer, but he was taken up with the Dutch Envoy and such folks; and I would not stay.  One particular in life here, different from what I have in Dublin, is, that whenever I come home I expect to find some letter for me, and seldom miss; and never any worth a farthing, but often to vex me.  The Queen does not come to town till Saturday.  Prior is not yet declared; but these Ministers being at Hampton Court, I know nothing; and if I write news from common hands, it is always lies.  You will think it affectation; but nothing has vexed me more for some months past, than people I never saw pretending to be acquainted with me, and yet speak ill of me too; at least some of them.  An old crooked Scotch countess, whom I never heard of in my life, told the Duchess of Hamilton[7] t’other day that I often visited her.  People of worth never do that; so that a man only gets the scandal