the tone
to the company,--"Ha, Steele, whence come you? from the chapel or the
tavern?" and the speaker winked round the room as if he wished us to
participate in the pleasure of a good thing.

Mr. Steele drew up, seemingly a little affronted; but his good-nature
conquering the affectation of personal sanctity, which, at the time
I refer to, that excellent writer was pleased to assume, he contented
himself with nodding to the speaker, and saying,--

"All the world knows, Colonel Cleland, that you are a wit, and
therefore we take your fine sayings as we take change from an honest
tradesman,--rest perfectly satisfied with the coin we get, without
paying any attention to it."

"Zounds, Cleland, you got the worst of it there," cried a gentleman in a
flaxen wig. And Steele slid into a seat near my own.

Tarleton, who was sufficiently well educated to pretend to the character
of a man of letters, hereupon thought it necessary to lay aside the
"Flying Post," and to introduce me to my literary neighbour.

"Pray," said Colonel Cleland, taking snuff and swinging himself to and
fro with an air of fashionable grace, "has any one seen the new paper?"

"What!" cried the gentleman in the flaxen wig, "what! the 'Tatler's'
successor,--the 'Spectator'?"

"The same," quoth the colonel.

"To be sure; who has not?" returned he of the flaxen ornament. "People
say Congreve writes it."

"They are very much mistaken, then," cried a little square man with
spectacles; "to my certain knowledge Swift is the author."

"Pooh!" said Cleland, imperiously, "pooh! it is neither the one nor the
other; I, gentlemen, am in the secret--but--you take me, eh? One must
not speak well of one's self; mum is the word."

"Then," asked Steele, quietly, "we are to suppose that you, Colonel, are
the writer?"

"I never said so, Dicky; but the women will have it that I am," and the
colonel smoothed down his cravat.

"Pray, Mr. Addison, what say you?" cried the gentleman in the flaxen
wig; "are you for Congreve, Swift, or Colonel Cleland?" This was
addressed to a gentleman of a grave but rather prepossessing mien; who,
with eyes fixed upon the ground, was very quietly and to all appearance
very inattentively solacing himself with a pipe; without lifting his
eyes, this personage, then eminent, afterwards rendered immortal,
replied,

"Colonel Cleland must produce other witnesses to prove his claim to the
authorship of the 'Spectator:' the women, we well