meaning, so keen upon biting the whole world, and making
bubbles at his exit. Sir Thomas added, that he would have bought twelve
shillings a year of him, but that he feared there was some trick in it,
and believed him already dead: "What!" says that knight, "is Mr.
Partridge, whom I met just now going on both his legs firmer than I can,
allowed to be quite dead; and shall Africanus, without one limb that can
do its office, be pronounced alive?" What heightened the tragi-comedy of
this market for annuities was, that the observation of it provoked
Monoculus[368] (who is the most eloquent of all men) to many excellent
reflections, which he spoke with the vehemence and language both of a
gamester and an orator. "When I cast," said that delightful speaker, "my
eye upon thee, thou unaccountable Africanus, I cannot but call myself as
unaccountable as thou art; for certainly we were born to show what
contradictions nature is pleased to form in the same species. Here am I,
able to eat, to drink, to sleep, and do all acts of nature, except
begetting my like; and yet by an unintelligible force of spleen and
fancy, I every moment imagine I am dying. It is utter madness in thee to
provide for supper; for I'll bet you ten to one, you don't live till
half an hour after four; and yet I am so distracted as to be in fear
every moment, though I'll lay ten to three, I drink three pints of burnt
claret at your funeral three nights hence. After all, I envy thee; thou
who dying hast no sense of death, art happier than one in health
that[369] always fears it." The knight had gone on, but that a third man
ended the scene by applauding the knight's eloquence and philosophy, in
a laughter too violent for his own constitution, as much as he mocked
that of Africanus and Monoculus.

St. James's Coffee-house, July 1.

This day arrived three mails from Holland, with advices relating to the
posture of affairs in the Low Countries, which say, that the Confederate
army extends from Luchin, on the causeway between Tournay and Lisle, to
Epain near Mortagne on the Scheldt. The Marshal Villars remains in his
camp at Lens; but it is said, he detached ten thousand men under the
command of the Chevalier de Luxembourg, with orders to form a camp at
Crepin on the Haine, between Conde and St. Guillain, where he is to be
joined by the Elector of Bavaria with a body of troops, and after their
conjunction, to attempt to march into Brabant. But they write from
Brus