“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.