She being therefore my antient acquaintance and friend, and one for whom I profess to have a very great value, desir’d me to write a few lines to you, which accordingly I have done, and by her order I request you, as being a person of great civility and candour, to tell the aforesaid gentleman, (whom as I am informed you may see every morning in the year, if you have a looking-glass in your room, which I will in charity suppose) that she expects to have the five pounds supradict within a fortnight at farthest, and then all will be well: otherwise she must be forc’d, in her own defence, to employ the secular arm, anglicè, a baliff or catchpole, and put the abovemention’d person into lobb’s pound.
Now, Sir, having a great regard to mother university, (of which I might have been an unworthy member, had not my uncle——) and likwise being desirous to prevent farther effusion of christian money, I make it my humble request to you to speak to the aforesaid gentleman, that he would send me the sum of five pounds with all expedition; and in so doing you will in a most particular manner oblige,
Sir,
Your most humble tho’
unknown Servant,
W. H.
From my Chambers
in Clifford’s-Inn.
ANSWER I.
To Mr. W. H. Attorney at Law, at his Chambers in Clifford’s-Inn
Worthy Sir,
YEsterday morning, about eight of the clock precisely, the sun being newly entred into Sagittarius, and the wind standing at south-east by east; which corner, as the learned abbot Joachimus Trithemius, in his elaborate treatise, intitled, Eurus Enucleatus, tells us, is a certain prognostick of droughts and hot weather; I was smoaking a pipe of tobacco, and reading Erasmus’s Moriæ Encomium of the Basil edition, printed by Frobenius, who, you know, Sir, married Christopber Plantin’s cook-maid, when to my great surprize, the post-boy brought me a letter from one W. H. who pretends to date it from his chambers in Clifford’s-Inn; tho’ as far as I can judge of the beast by his stile and way of writing, he ought to have a room no where but in the brick-house in Moorfields.
For, Sir, the author of it, and I desire you to tell him so much from me, seems to rave, and in his raving fit disgorges old buckram Apophthegms and ends of Latin stolen out of Lycosthenes; and in short, at the expence of other folks, throws his thread-bare quotations about him like a madman, as you will soon perceive, if you’ll give yourself the trouble to read what follows.