n to subsist after a peace:
every one remembers the shifts they were driven to in the reign of King
Charles II., when they could not furnish out a single paper of news,
without lighting up a comet in Germany, or a fire in Moscow. There
scarce appeared a letter without a paragraph on an earthquake. Prodigies
were grown so familiar, that they had lost their name, as a great poet
of that age has it. I remember Mr. Dyer,[228] who is justly looked upon
by all the fox-hunters in the nation as the greatest statesman our
country has produced, was particularly famous for dealing in whales;
insomuch that in five months' time (for I had the curiosity to examine
his letters on that occasion) he brought three into the mouth of the
river Thames, besides two porpoises and a sturgeon. The judicious and
wary Mr. I. Dawks[229] hath all along been the rival of this great
writer, and got himself a reputation from plagues and famines, by which,
in those days, he destroyed as great multitudes as he has lately done by
the sword. In every dearth of news, Grand Cairo was sure to be
unpeopled.

It being therefore visible, that our society will be greater sufferers
by the peace than the soldiery itself; insomuch that the _Daily
Courant_[230] is in danger of being broken, my friend Dyer of being
reformed, and the very best of the whole band of being reduced to
half-pay; might I presume to offer anything in the behalf of my
distressed brethren, I would humbly move, that an appendix of proper
apartments furnished with pen, ink, and paper, and other necessaries of
life should be added to the Hospital of Chelsea,[231] for the relief of
such decayed news-writers as have served their country in the wars; and
that for their exercise, they should compile the annals of their
brother-veterans, who have been engaged in the same service, and are
still obliged to do duty after the same manner.

I cannot be thought to speak this out of an eye to any private interest;
for, as my chief scenes of action are coffee-houses, play-houses, and my
own apartment, I am in no need of camps, fortifications, and fields of
battle, to support me; I don't call out for heroes and generals to my
assistance. Though the officers are broken, and the armies disbanded, I
shall still be safe as long as there are men or women, or politicians,
or lovers, or poets, or nymphs, or swains, or cits, or courtiers in
being.

[Footnote 218: It is very possible that the first article in th