The meaning of these two verses are, (for why should not I interpret my Latin to you, as well as you have taken the freedom to explain your’s to me?) that London is not so barbarous and unpolish’d a place, but that Apollo, and the nine Muses may find as hospitable a reception there, as with you in the university.
But, Sir, I have no time to lose, tho’ you have. The widow is pressing for her money, the Term draws on apace, and I must know your answer one way or other. Therefore let me desire you in your next, not to ramble from the point in hand, but to keep to the text. Once in your life take Martial’s advice, Dic aliquid de tribus capellis; here’s Latin for you again; but the advice is good and seasonable. Once more leave off flourishing and come immediately to business, that I may know what measures to take.
I am,
Yours, as you use me,
W.H.
ANSWER II.
SIR,
YOU charge me with want of manners in the University. Now to convince you that your accusation is groundless, frivolous and vexatious, I will take no notice of the scurrilous reflections in your letter, but, as you desire me, fall immediately to business.
To sum them up in a few lines what you have bestow’d so many upon, you tell me that a certain gentleman of my acquaintance, meaning myself, I suppose, whom in your excess of charity, you believe to have a looking-glass in his chamber, and a great deal of the like stuff, borrow’d five pounds last April of one Rebecca Blackman, widow, and spinster, living at the sign of the Griffin and Red-lion in Shoe-lane, and has not paid her as he promis’d. Now, Sir, if I make it appear to you that there is no such a thing as a widow in rerum natura, or a Griffin, or a Red-lion; that Shoe-lane is an equivocal word; and that ’tis impossible for a man that lives under the evangelical dispensation to owe any such heathenish sum as five pounds; I hope you’ll be brought to knock under the table, and own that you have given me and yourself a great deal of unnecessary trouble.
First of all, I affirm, assert and maintain, that there is no such thing as a widow in the universe; and thus I prove it. A widow is one that laments and grieves for the loss of her husband; but how can you or any man in London know that a woman really grieves? for shedding of tears, and wearing of crape, are not sure signs of grief; consequently then how can you be sure there is any such thing as a widow? And if so, are not you an insufferable coxcomb to palm a widow upon a stranger, that never did you any harm? Well, but suppose it were possible for a man to know that a woman really grieves for the loss of her husband, which proposition, let me tell you, Heroboord Burgersdicius, and the whole stream of the Dutch commentators and Peleponnesian divines positively deny; how shall we be able to find out this monster, and tell where the place of her abode is? Why, say you, she lives at the sign of the Griffin and Red Lion in Shoe-lane? Bless us! what a sad thing it is to be troubled with a distemper’d brain! Imprimis, a Griffin is a new ens rationis, only devis’d by the imagination, and is no where to be found, no not in the deserts of Arabia, or the vast forests of Afric; altho’ Afric, Sir, ever since the time of Eratosthenes and Strabo, has been said continually to produce some new monster: and as for a Red Lion, I defy you and all the attornies in the kingdom to shew me one. Theophrastus, Ælian, Dionysius, Harmogistus de miraculis, Perogunius de brutis, Philopemen junior de robusta natura, and a hundred more of worth and credit, whom I have read, and you never heard nam’d, either in Westminster-hall, or Westminster-abbey. But since these are pagan authors, it may be you will pretend they ought to have no weight with a christian, and I know you will be damn’d before you will allow of any thing against your own mammon; therefore I shall proceed to give you more modern accounts of what has been remark’d in the most natural places for to expect monsters in, and yet the devil of a Red Lion do they mention. Don Gonsales gives us a particular of all the wonders, miracles and strange things in the habitable part of the moon; Mandevil’s Travels, Piuto’s and de la Val’s, the most fabulous of the poets, the most lying pilgrims and extravagant historians, never dar’d to have the impudence to impose so much upon mankind as to assert the being of a Red Lion.
Now if human reason, experience in so many places, and no proof any where can have place, as it ought to do with a lawyer, I hope here are enough to convince you of your error; but if nothing under ocular demonstration will satisfy you, and you are not at leisure to turn over so many volumes, let me request you, worthy Sir, to take a step to the tower, and if you don’t find what I say to be true, I promise you here under my hand to give you a hundred pounds, bonæ & legalis monetæ Angliæ, the next time I meet you.
However, for peace sake, let us once admit, that Griffins and Red Lions, are real things, and no fictions of the brain, as Smeglesius hath evidently prov’d it, in what street or square, or lane, or alley, is the abovemention’d Mrs. Rebecca Blackman to be found? Oh, cry you in Shoe-lane. Come Sir, Shoe-lane is a fallacy which you must not pretend to put upon a man that has taken his own degrees, and writes himself A. M. don’t you know, that dolus latet in universalibus? Whatever lane people walk in they must certaintly wear out shoe-leather; and in whatever lane they wear out shoe-leather, that lane, in propriety of speech, deserves and may challenge the name of Shoe-lane; consequently then, every lane, not only in London, but in all his majesty’s dominions, where the subjects of England walk, and wear out shoe-leather, may properly be call’d Shoe-lane. Judge then whether ever I shall be able to find out the true place where this widow lives by the equivocal description you have given of it. As for my Major, I defy you or any of your brethren in wicked parchment, to find out the least hole in it. My Minor is as plain as the sun at noon-day; and you may as well run your head against a brick-wall, as pretend to attack it; and then the consequence must be good of course. I would take this opportunity to shew the falshood and vanity of the remaining part of your letter; but the bell-rings for supper: however, I shall take care to do it next post; at which time you may certainly expect to hear farther from