which was the feigned name of the Frenchman that writ his journey to Paris. They pretend to suspect me, so I talk freely of it, and put them out of their play. Lord treasurer calls me now Dr. Martin, because martin[1] is a sort of a swallow, and so is a swift. When he and I came last Monday from Windsor, we were reading all the signs[2] on the road. He is a pure trifler; tell the bishop of Clogher so. I made him make two lines in verse for the Bell and Dragon, and they were rare bad ones. I suppose Dilly is with you by this time: what could his reason be of leaving London, and not owning it? 'Twas plaguy silly. I believe his natural inconstancy made him weary; I think he is the king of inconstancy. I staid with lord treasurer till ten; we had five lords and three commoners. Go to ombre, sirrahs.
12. Mrs. Vanhomrigh has changed her lodging as well as I. She found she had got with a bawd, and removed: I dined with her to day; for though she boards, her landlady does not dine with her. I am grown a mighty lover of herrings; but they are much smaller here than with you. In the afternoon I visited an old major general, and eat six oysters; then sat an hour with Mrs. Colledge, the joiner's daughter that was hanged; it was the joiner was hanged, and not his daughters with Thompson's wife, a magistrate. There was the famous Mrs. Floyd of Chester, who, I
- ↑ From this pleasantry of my lord Oxford, the appellative Martinus Scriblerus took its rise.
- ↑ See Swift's imitations of Horace, lib. ii, sat. 6, where he gives an account of what sort of tattle entertained my lord Oxford and him upon the road to Windsor; and among other whims, how, as the chariot passed along,
They gravely try'd to read the lines
Writ underneath the country signs.
