ther
sides. I've reckoned them.(53)

LETTER 6.

LONDON, Oct. 10, 1710.

So, as I told you just now in the letter I sent half an hour ago, I
dined with Mr. Harley to-day, who presented me to the Attorney-General,
Sir Simon Harcourt, with much compliment on all sides, etc. Harley told
me he had shown my memorial to the Queen, and seconded it very heartily;
and he desires me to dine with him again on Sunday, when he promises
to settle it with Her Majesty, before she names a Governor:(1) and I
protest I am in hopes it will be done, all but the forms, by that time;
for he loves the Church. This is a popular thing, and he would not have
a Governor share in it; and, besides, I am told by all hands, he has a
mind to gain me over. But in the letter I writ last post (yesterday) to
the Archbishop, I did not tell him a syllable of what Mr. Harley said to
me last night, because he charged me to keep it secret; so I would not
tell it to you, but that, before this goes, I hope the secret will be
over. I am now writing my poetical "Description of a Shower in London,"
and will send it to the Tatler.(2) This is the last sheet of a whole
quire I have written since I came to town. Pray, now it comes into my
head, will you, when you go to Mrs. Walls, contrive to know whether
Mrs. Wesley(3) be in town, and still at her brother's, and how she is
in health, and whether she stays in town. I writ to her from Chester,
to know what I should do with her note; and I believe the poor woman is
afraid to write to me: so I must go to my business, etc.

11. To-day at last I dined with Lord Mountrath,(4) and carried Lord
Mountjoy, and Sir Andrew Fountaine with me; and was looking over them
at ombre till eleven this evening like a fool: they played running ombre
half-crowns; and Sir Andrew Fountaine won eight guineas of Mr. Coote;(5)
so I am come home late, and will say but little to MD this night. I have
gotten half a bushel of coals, and Patrick, the extravagant whelp, had
a fire ready for me; but I picked off the coals before I went to bed. It
is a sign London is now an empty place, when it will not furnish me with
matter for above five or six lines in a day. Did you smoke in my last
how I told you the very day and the place you were playing at ombre? But
I interlined and altered a little, after I had received a letter from
Mr. Manley, that said you were at it in his house, while he was writing
to me; but without his help I guessed within one