TO MR. GAY.
WHEN my lord Peterborow, in the queen's time, went abroad upon his embassies, the ministry told me, that he was such a vagrant, they were forced to write at him by guess, because they knew not where to write to him. This is my case with you; sometimes in Scotland, sometimes at Hamwalks, sometimes God knows where. You are a man of business, and not at leisure for insignificant correspondence. It was I got you the employment of being my lord duke's premier ministre: for his grace having heard how good a manager you were of my revenue, thought you fit to be entrusted with ten talents. I have had twenty times a strong inclination to spend a summer near Salisbury downs, having rid over them more than once, and with a young parson of Salisbury reckoned twice the stones of Stonehenge, which are either ninety-two or ninety-three. I desire to present my most humble acknowledgments to my lady duchess in return of her civility. I hear an ill thing, that she is matre pulchra filia pulchrior: I never saw her since she was a girl, and would be angry she should excel her mother, who was long my principal goddess. I desire you will tell her grace, that the ill management of forks is not to be helped when they are only bidential, which happens in all poor houses, especially those of poets; upon which account a knife was absolutely necessary at Mr. Pope's, where it was morally impossible, with a bidential fork, to convey a morsel of beef, with the incumbrance of mustard and turnips, into your mouth at
