n more kings and more postilions
than any man in Europe.... He was a man, as his friend said, who
would neither live nor die like any other mortal."

FROM THE EARL OF PETERBOROUGH TO POPE.

"You must receive my letter with a just impartiality, and give
grains of allowance for a gloomy or rainy day; I sink grievously
with the weather-glass, and am quite spiritless when oppressed with
the thoughts of a birthday or a return.

"Dutiful affection was bringing me to town, but undutiful laziness,
and being much out of order keep me in the country: however, if
alive, I must make my appearance at the birthday....

"You seem to think it vexatious that I shall allow you but one woman
at a time either to praise or love. If I dispute with you on this
point, I doubt, every jury will give a verdict against me. So, sir,
with a Mahometan indulgence, I allow you pluralities, the favourite
privileges of our Church.

"I find you don't mend upon correction; again I tell you you must
not think of women in a reasonable way; you know we always make
goddesses of those we adore upon earth; and do not all the good men
tell us we must lay aside reason in what relates to the Deity?

"... I should have been glad of anything of Swift's. Pray when you
write to him next, tell him I expect him with impatience, in a place
as odd and as out of the way as himself.

"Yours."

Peterborough married Mrs. Anastasia Robinson, the celebrated singer.

126 "Button had been a servant in the Countess of Warwick's family, who,
under the patronage of Addison, kept a coffee-house on the south
side of Russell Street, about two doors from Covent Garden. Here it
was that the wits of that time used to assemble. It is said that
when Addison had suffered any vexation from the Countess, he
withdrew the company from Button's house.

"From the coffee-house he went again to a tavern, where he often sat
late and drank too much wine."--DR. JOHNSON.

Will's coffee-house was on the west side of Bow Street, and "corner
of Russell Street". See _Handbook of London_.

127 "My acquaintance with Mr. Addison commenced in 1712: I liked him
then as well as I liked any man, and was very fond of his
conversation. It was very soon after that Mr. Addison advised me
'n