ners' Hall._

"_June 6_, 1709.

"SIR,

"Your paper of Saturday[276] has raised up in me a noble emulation, to
be recorded in the foremost rank of worthies therein mentioned; and if
any regard be had to merit or industry, I may hope to succeed in the
promotion, for I have omitted no toil or expense to be a proficient; and
if my friends do not flatter, they assure me, I have not lost my time
since I came to town. To enumerate but a few particulars; there's hardly
a coachman I meet with, but desires to be excused taking me, because he
has had me before. I have compounded two or three rapes; and let out to
hire as many bastards to beggars. I never saw above the first act of a
play: and as to my courage, it is well known, I have more than once had
sufficient witnesses of my drawing my sword both in tavern and
playhouse. Dr. Wall[277] is my particular friend; and if it were any
service to the public to compose the difference between Marten and
Sintilaer[278] the pearl-driller, I don't know a judge of more
experience than myself: for in that I may say with the poet,

"'_Quae regio in villa nostri non plena laboris?_'[279]

"I omit other less particulars, the necessary consequences of greater
actions. But my reason for troubling you at this present is, to put a
stop, if it may be, to an insinuating, increasing set of people, who
sticking to the letter of your treatise, and not to the spirit of it, do
assume the name of 'pretty fellows'; nay, and even get new names, as you
very well hint. Some of them I have heard calling to one another, as I
have sat at White's and St. James's, by the names of Betty, Nelly, and
so forth. You see them accost each other with effeminate airs: they have
their signs and tokens like freemasons: they rail at women-kind; receive
visits on their beds in gowns, and do a thousand other unintelligible
prettinesses that I cannot tell what to make of. I therefore heartily
desire you would exclude all this sort of animals.

"There is another matter I am foreseeing an ill consequence from, but
may be timely prevented by prudence; which is, that for the last
fortnight, prodigious shoals of volunteers have gone over to bully the
French, upon hearing the peace was just signing; and this is so true,
that I can assure you, all engrossing work about the Temple is risen
above 3_s_. in the pound for want of hands. Now as it is possible some
little alteration of affairs may have broken their measures, and tha