Dr. Middleton is dead—­not killed by Mr. Ashton—­but of a decay that came Upon him at once.  The Bishop of London(162) will perhaps make a jubilee(163) for his death, and then We shall draw off some Of your crowds of travellers.  Tacitus Gordon(164) died the same day; he married the widow of Trenchard(165) (with whom he wrote Cato’s letters,) at the same time that Dr. Middleton married her companion.  The Bishop of Durham (Chandler),(166) another great writer of controversy, is dead too, immensely rich; he is succeeded by Butler(167) of Bristol, a metaphysic author, much patronized by the late Queen; she never could make my father read his book, and -which she Certainly did not understand herself:  he told her his religion was fixed, and that he did not want to change Or improve it.  A report is come of the death of the King of Portugal, and of the young Pretender; but that I don’t believe.

I have been in town for a day or two, and heard no conversation but about M’Lean, a fashionable highwayman, who is just taken, and who robbed me among others; as Lord Eglinton, Sir Thomas Robinson, Of Vienna, Mrs. Talbot, etc.  He took an odd booty from the Scotch Earl, a blunderbuss, which lies very formidably upon the justice’s table.  He was taken by selling a laced waistcoat to a pawnbroker, who happened to carry it to the very man who had just sold the lace.  His history is very Particular, for he confesses every thing, and is so little of a hero that he cries and begs, and I believe, if Lord Eglinton had been in any luck, might have been robbed of his own blunderbuss.  His father was an Irish Dean; his brother is a Calvinist minister in great esteem at the Hague.  He himself was a grocer, but losing a wife that he loved extremely about two years ago, and by whom he has one little girl, he quitted his business with two hundred pounds in his pocket, which he soon spent, and then took to the road with only one companion, Plunket, a journeyman apothecary, my other friend, whom he has impeached, but who is not taken.  M’Lean had a lodging in St. James’s Street, over against White’s, and another at Chelsea; Plunket one in Jermyn Street; and their faces are as known about St. James’s as any gentleman’s who lives in that quarter, and who perhaps goes upon the road too.  M’Lean had a quarrel at Putney bowling-green two months ago with an officer, whom he challenged for disputing his rank; but the captain declined, till M’Lean should produce a certificate of his nobility, which he has just received.  If he had escaped a month longer, he might have heard of Mr. Chute’s genealogic expertness, and come hither to the college of Arms for a certificate.  There was a wardrobe of clothes, three-and-twenty purses, and the celebrated blunderbuss found at his lodgings, besides a famous kept mistress.  As I conclude he will suffer, and wish him no ill, I don’t care to have his idea, and am almost single in not having been to see him.  Lord Mountford,