n you are to live that day, how must the stranger be misled, if it be
wrong spelled, as well as ill painted? I have a cousin now in town, who
has answered under Bachelor at Queen's College, whose name is Humphrey
Mopstaff (he is akin to us by his mother). This young man going to see a
relation in Barbican, wandered a whole day by the mistake of one letter;
for it was written, "This is the BEER," instead of "This is the BEAR."
He was set right at last, by inquiring for the house, of a fellow who
could not read, and knew the place mechanically, only by having been
often drunk there. But, in the name of goodness, let us make our
learning of use to us, or not. Was not this a shame, that a philosopher
should be thus directed by a cobbler? I'll be sworn, if it were known
how many have suffered in this kind by false spelling since the union,
this matter would not long lie thus. What makes these evils the more
insupportable, is, that they are so easily amended, and nothing done in
it. But it is so far from that, that the evil goes on in other arts as
well as orthography. Places are confounded, as well for want of proper
distinctions, as things for want of true characters. Had I not come by
the other day very early in the morning, there might have been mischief
done; for a worthy North Briton was swearing at Stocks Market,[220] that
they would not let him in at his lodgings; but I knowing the gentleman,
and observing him look often at the King on horseback, and then double
his oaths, that he was sure he was right, found he mistook that for
Charing Cross, by the erection of the like statue in each place. I
grant, private men may distinguish their abodes as they please; as one
of my acquaintance who lives at Marylebone, has put a good sentence of
his own invention upon his dwelling-place, to find out where he lives:
he is so near London, that his conceit is this, "The country in town;
or, the town in the country"; for you know, if they are both in one,
they are all one. Besides that, the ambiguity is not of great
consequence; if you are safe at the place, it is no matter if you do not
distinctly know where to say the place is. But to return to the
orthography of public places: I propose that every tradesman in the
cities of London and Westminster shall give me sixpence a quarter for
keeping their signs in repair, as to the grammatical part; and I will
take into my house a Swiss Count[221] of my acquaintance, who can
remember all the