Juv., Sat. vii. 154.
From my own Apartment, Dec. 1.
When a man keeps a constant table, he may be allowed sometimes to serve up a cold dish of meat, or toss up the fragments of a feast into a ragout. I have sometimes, in a scarcity of provisions, been obliged to take the same kind of liberty, and to entertain my reader with the leavings of a former treat. I must this day have recourse to the same method, and beg my guests to sit down to a kind of Saturday's dinner. To let the metaphor rest, I intend to fill up this paper with a bundle of letters relating to subjects on which I have formerly treated, and have ordered my bookseller to print at the end of each letter the minutes with which I endorsed it, after the first perusal of it.
"To Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq.[217]
Nov, 22, 1710.
"Sir,
Dining yesterday with Mr. South British and Mr. William North Briton, two gentlemen who, before you ordered it otherwise,[218] were known by the names of Mr. English and Mr. William Scott. Among other things, the maid of the house (who in her time I believe may have been a North British warming-pan) brought us up a dish of North British collops. We liked our entertainment very well, only we observed the table-cloth, being not so fine as we could have wished, was North British cloth: but the worst of it was, we were disturbed all dinner-time by the noise of the children, who were playing in the paved court at North British hoppers; so we paid our North Briton sooner than we designed, and took coach to North Britain Yard, about which place most of us live. We had indeed gone afoot, only we were under some apprehensions lest a North British mist should wet a South British man to the skin.
"We think this matter properly expressed, according to the accuracy of the new style settled by you in one of your late papers. You will please to give your opinion upon it to,
"Sir,
"Your most humble Servants,
"J. S.
"M. P.
"N. R."