d out one pound
five shillings for a Strabo and Aristophanes, and I have now got books
enough to make me another shelf, and I will have more, or it shall cost
me a fall; and so as we came back, we drank a flask of right French wine
at Ben Tooke's chamber; and when I got home, Mrs. Vanhomrigh sent me
word her eldest daughter(4) was taken suddenly very ill, and desired I
would come and see her. I went, and found it was a silly trick of Mrs.
Armstrong,(5) Lady Lucy's sister, who, with Moll Stanhope, was visiting
there: however, I rattled off the daughter.

3. To-day I went and dined at Lady Lucy's, where you know I have not
been this long time. They are plaguy Whigs, especially the sister
Armstrong, the most insupportable of all women, pretending to wit,
without any taste. She was running down the last Examiner,(6) the
prettiest I had read, with a character of the present Ministry.--I left
them at five, and came home. But I forgot to tell you, that this morning
my cousin Dryden Leach, the printer, came to me with a heavy complaint,
that Harrison the new Tatler had turned him off, and taken the last
Tatler's printers again. He vowed revenge; I answered gravely, and so he
left me, and I have ordered Patrick to deny me to him from henceforth:
and at night comes a letter from Harrison, telling me the same thing,
and excused his doing it without my notice, because he would bear all
the blame; and in his Tatler of this day(7) he tells you the story, how
he has taken his old officers, and there is a most humble letter from
Morphew and Lillie to beg his pardon, etc.(8) And lastly, this morning
Ford sent me two letters from the Coffee-house (where I hardly ever go),
one from the Archbishop of Dublin, and t'other from--Who do you think
t'other was from?--I'll tell you, because you are friends; why, then it
was, faith, it was from my own dear little MD, N.10. Oh, but will not
answer it now, no, noooooh, I'll keep it between the two sheets; here it
is, just under; oh, I lifted up the sheet and saw it there: lie still,
you shan't be answered yet, little letter; for I must go to bed, and
take care of my head.

4. I avoid going to church yet, for fear of my head, though it has been
much better these last five or six days, since I have taken Lady Kerry's
bitter. Our frost holds like a dragon. I went to Mr. Addison's, and
dined with him at his lodgings; I had not seen him these three weeks, we
are grown common acquaintance; yet what have