"This business of importance o'er,
And madam almost dressed by four,
The footman, in his usual phrase,
Comes up with 'Madam, dinner stays.'"
[247] See Lucian's "Judicium Vocalium." Such words as σήμερον and σὺκον afterwards came to be spelled τήμερον and τὺκον.
[248] Coal carried by sea from the colliery, as was then the case with all the coal used in London. In the country wood was burned; and Will Honeycomb, after his marriage to a farmer's daughter, said that had his steward not run away, he would still have been "immersed in sin and sea-coal" in London, with its smoke and gallantries (Spectator, No. 530).
[249] Implied.
[250] "Paradise Lost," v. 1.
[No. 264. [Steele.]
From Thursday, Dec. 14, to Saturday Dec. 16, 1710.
Favete linguis.——Hor., 3 Od. i. 2.
From my own Apartment, Dec. 15.
Boccalini[251] in his "Parnassus," indicts a laconic writer for speaking that in three words which he might have said in two, and sentences him for his punishment to read over all the works of Guicciardin.[252] This Guicciardin is so very prolix and circumstantial in his writings, that I remember our countryman Dr. Donne, speaking of that majestic and concise manner in which Moses has described the creation of the world, adds that "if such an author as Guicciardin were to have written on such a subject, the world itself would not have been able to have contained the books that gave the history of its creation."[253]