ent of his hearing, so long as that
was beaten upon; and I could at present name a friend of mine, who
though he be exceedingly thick of hearing, by applying a straight stick
of what length soever, provided it touch the instrument and his ear,
does perfectly and with great pleasure hear every tune that is played:
all which, with many more, will flow into your excellent work, whilst
the argument puts me in mind of one Tom Whittal, a student of Christ
Church, who would needs maintain, that if a hole could dexterously be
bored through the skull to the brain in the midst of the forehead, a man
might both see and hear and smell without the use of any other organs;
but you are to know, that this learned problematist was brother to him,
who, preaching at St. Mary's, Oxford, took his text out of the history
of Balaam, Numb. xxii., "Am I not thine ass?" Dear Sir, pardon this
rhapsody of,

Sir, your, &c.

FOOTNOTES:

[98] Some 400 pages from and to him in the most compendious edition.

[99] He thought, writing to Lord Spencer about 1690, that we have "few
tolerable letters of our own country" excepting--and that only in a
fashion--those of Bacon, Donne and Howell.

[100] "_Odorumque canum vis_--as Lucretius expresses it"--perhaps
requires a note. Evelyn ought to have known his Lucretius, the first
book of which he translated and which he was only prevented from
completing by some foolish scruples which Jeremy Taylor wisely but
vainly combated. And Lucretius is fond of _vis_ as meaning "quality" or
"faculty." But Evelyn almost certainly was thinking also, more or less,
of Virgil's "odora canum vis," _Aen._ iv. 132.

DOROTHY OSBORNE (1627-1695)

This very delightful lady--who became the wife of Sir
William Temple, famous in political and literary history,
and, by so doing or being, mistress of the household in
which Swift lived, suffered, but met Stella--was the
daughter of Sir Peter Osborne, one of the stoutest of
Royalists who, as Governor of Guernsey, held its Castle
Cornet for years against the rebels. Whether she was (in
1627) born there--her father had been made _Lieutenant_
Governor six years earlier--is not known and has been
thought unlikely: but the present writer (who has danced,
and played whist within its walls) hopes she was. When we
come to know her she was living at Chicksands in
Bedfordshire and hoping to marry Temple, though the cou