NUMBER XXVIII.
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 1710-11.
Inultus ut tu riseris Cotyttia?
Shall you Cotytto's feasts deride,
Yet safely triumph in your pride?
[In answer to the Letter to the Examiner.]
ALTHOUGH I have wanted leisure to acknowledge the honour of a letter you were pleased to write to me about six months ago; yet I have been very careful in obeying some of your commands, and am going on as fast as I can with the rest. I wish you had thought fit to have conveyed them to me by a more private hand than that of the printing house: for, although I was pleased with a pattern of style and spirit which I proposed to imitate, yet I was sorry the world should be a witness how far I fell short in both.
I am afraid you did not consider what an abundance of work you have cut out for me; neither am I at all comforted by the promise you are so kind to make, that when I have performed my task, DWalpole among the living, and even Volpone shall feel some remorse. How the gentleman in his grave may have kept his countenance, I cannot inform you, having no acquaintance at all with the sexton; but for the other two, I take leave to assure you, there have not yet appeared the least signs of blush-
n shall blush in his grave among the dead,