o has lately published an
advertisement, with several scurrilous terms in it, that do by no means
become a dead man to give. It is my departed friend, John Partridge,
who concludes the advertisement of his next year's almanack with the
following note:

"Whereas it has been industriously given out by Bickerstaff, Esquire,
and others, to prevent the sale of this year's almanack, that John
Partridge is dead: this may inform all his loving countrymen, that he is
still living in health, and they are knaves that reported it otherwise.

"J. P."

*****

From my own Apartment, November 25.

I have already taken great pains to inspire notions of honour and virtue
into the people of this kingdom, and used all gentle methods imaginable,
to bring those who are dead in idleness, folly, and pleasure, into life,
by applying themselves to learning, wisdom, and industry. But, since
fair means are ineffectual, I must proceed to extremities, and shall
give my good friends, the Company of Upholders, full power to bury all
such dead as they meet with, who are within my former descriptions of
deceased persons. In the meantime the following remonstrance of that
corporation I take to be very just.

"WORTHY SIR,

"Upon reading your Tatler of Saturday last, by which we received
the agreeable news of so many deaths, we immediately ordered in a
considerable quantity of blacks, and our servants have wrought night and
day ever since to furnish out the necessaries for these deceased. But so
it is, Sir, that of this vast number of dead bodies that go putrifying
up and down the streets, not one of them has come to us to be buried.
Though we should be loth to be any hindrance to our good friends the
physicians, yet we cannot but take notice what infection Her Majesty's
subjects are liable to from the horrible stench of so many corpses. Sir,
we will not detain you; our case in short is this: Here are we embarked
in this undertaking for the public good. Now, if people should be
suffered to go on unburied at this rate, there is an end of the
usefullest manufactures and handicrafts of the kingdom; for where will
be your sextons, coffin-makers, and plumbers? What will become of your
embalmers, epitaph-mongers, and chief-mourners? We are loth to drive
this matter any farther, though we tremble at the consequences of it;
for if it shall be left to every dead man's discretion not to be buried
till he sees his time, no man can