truth by those who keep general conversation. Which character is the more extraordinary, in falling to a person of so much knowledge, wit, and vivacity, qualities that are used to create envy, and consequently censure ; and must be rather imputed to her great modesty, gentle behaviour, and inoffensiveness, than to her superior virtues.

Although her knowledge, from books and company, was much more extensive than usually falls to the share of her sex; yet she was so far from making a parade of it, that her female visitants, on their first acquaintance, who expected to discover it by what they call hard words and deep discourse, would be sometimes disappointed, and say, "They found she was like other women." But wise men, through all her modesty, whatever they discoursed on, could easily observe that she understood them very well, by the judgment shown in her observations, as well as in her questions.

BONS MOTS DE STELLA.

A LADY of my intimate acquaintance both in England and Ireland, in which last kingdom she lived from the eighteenth year of her age, twenty-six years, had the most and finest accomplishments of any person I ever knew of either sex. It was observed by all her acquaintance, that she never failed in company to say the best thing that was said, whoever was by; yet her companions were usually persons of the best understanding in the kingdom. Some of us, who were her nearest friends, lamented that we never wrote down her remarks, and what the French call bons mots. I will recollect as many as I can remember.

We were diverting ourselves at a play called "What is it like ?" One person is to think, and the rest, without knowing the thing, to say what it is like. The thing thought on was the spleen;, she had said it was like an oyster, and gave her reason immediately, because it is removed by taking steel inwardly.

Dr. Sheridan, who squandered more than he could afford, took out his purse as he sat by the fire, and found it was very hot; she said the reason was, that his money burned in his pocket.

She called to her servants to know what ill smell was in the kitchen; they answered, they were making matches: Well, said she, I have heard matches were made in heaven, but by the brimstone one would think they were made in hell.

After she had been eating some sweet thing, a little of it happened to stick on her lips; a gentleman told her of it, and offered to lick it off: she said, no, sir, I thank you, I have a tongue of my own.

In the late king's time, a gentleman asked Jervas the painter, where he lived in London? he answered, next door to the king, for his house was near St. James's. The other wondering how that could be ; she said, You mistake Mr. Jervas, for he only means next door to the sign of a king.

A gentleman who had been very silly and pert in her company, at last began to grieve at remembering the loss of a child lately dead. A bishop sitting by comforted him; that he should be easy, because the child was gone to heaven. No, my lord, said she, that is it which most grieves him, because he is sure never to see his child there.

Having seen some letters writ by a king in a very large hand, and some persons wondering at them, she.

said it confirmed the old saying, That kings had long hands.

Dr. Sheridan, famous for punning, intending to sell a bargain, said, he had made a very good pun. Somebody asked, what it was? He answered, my a-. The other taking offence, she insisted the doctor was in the right, for every body knew that punning was his blind side.

When she was extremely ill, her physician said, Madam, you are near the bottom of the hill, but we will endeavour to get you up again. She answered, Doctor, I fear I shall be out of breath before I get up to the top.

A dull parson talking of a very smart thing, said to another parson as he came out of the pulpit, he was hammering a long time, but could not remember the jest; she being impatient, said, I remember it very well, for I was there, and the words were these: Sir, you have been blundering at a story this half hour, and can neither make head nor tail of it.

A very dirty clergyman of her acquaintance, who affected smartness and repartee, was asked by some of the company how his nails came to be so dirty? He was at a loss; but she solved the difficulty, by saying, the doctor's nails grew dirty by scratching himself.

A quaker apothecary sent her a vial corked; it had a broad brim, and a label of paper about its neck. "What is that," said she, "my apothecary's son ?" The ridiculous resemblance, and the suddenness of the question, set us all a laughing.

THE ANSWER

OF THE RIGHT HONOURABLE WILLIAM PULTENEY, ESQ. TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE SIR ROBERT WALPOLE.*

SIR,

October 15, 1730.

A PAMPHLET was lately sent me, entitled, "A Letter from the Right Honourable Sir R. W. to the Right Honourable W. P. Esq; occasioned by the little Invectives on the King, her Majesty, and all the Royal Family." By these initial letters of our names, the world is to understand that you and I must be meant. Although the letter seems to require an answer, yet because it appears to be written rather in the style and manner used by some of your pensioners, than your own, I shall allow you the liberty to think the same of this answer, and leave the public to determine which of the two actors can better personate their principals. That frigid and fustian way of haranguing wherewith your representer begins, continues, and ends his declamation, I shall leave to the critics in eloquence and propriety to descant on; because it adds nothing to the weight of your accusations, nor will my defence be one grain the better by exposing its puerilities.

I shall therefore only remark upon this particular, that the frauds and corruptions in most other arts and sciences, as law, physic, (I shall proceed no farther,) are usually much more plausibly defended, than in that of politics; whether it be, that, by a kind of fatality, the vindication of a corrupt minister is always left, to the

* Written by Dr. Swift. F.

management of the meanest and most prostitute writers; or whether it be, that the effects of a wicked or unskilful administration, are more public, visible, pernicious, and universal: Whereas the mistakes in other sciences are often matters that affect only speculation; or at worst, the bad consequences fall upon few and private persons. A nation is quickly sensible of the miseries it feels, and little comforted by knowing what account it turns to by the wealth, the power, the honours conferred on those who sit at the helm, or the salaries paid to their penmen; while the body of the people is sunk into poverty and despair. A Frenchman in his wooden shoes may, from the vanity of his nation, and the constitution of that government, conceive some imaginary pleasure in boasting the grandeur of his monarch, in the midst of his own slavery: but a freeborn Englishman, with all his loyalty, can find little satisfaction at a minister overgrown in wealth and power, from the lowest degree of want and contempt; when that power and wealth are drawn from the bowels and blood of the nation, for which every fellow subject is a sufferer, except the great man himself, his family, and his pensioners. I mean such a minister (if there has ever been such a one) whose whole management has been a continued link of ignorance, blunders, and mistakes in every article, beside that of enriching and aggrandizing himself.

For these reasons the faults of men, who are most trusted in public business, are, of all others, the most difficult to be defended. A man may be persuaded into a wrong opinion, wherein he has small concern: but no oratory can have the power over a sober man, against the conviction of his own senses and therefore, as I take it, the money thrown away on such advocates, might be more prudently spared, and kept in such a minister's own pocket, than lavished in hiring a corpo