e would be no Objection to my
Lord's sometimes making one with us? and though I don't pretend to write
like you, yet all the Requisites to make a good Companion are not
confined to Poetry! No, Sir, even a Man's inoffensive Follies and
Blunders may sometimes have their Merits at the best Table; and in
those, I am sure, you won't pretend to vie with me: Why then may not my
Lord be as much in the Right, in his sometimes choosing _Colley_ to
laugh at, as at other times in his picking up _Sawney_, whom he can only
admire?

Thus far, then, I hope we are upon a par; for the Lord, you see, will
fit either of us.

As to the latter Charge, the _Whore_, there indeed, I doubt you will
have the better of me; for I must own, that I believe I know more of
_your_ whoring than you do of _mine_; because I don't recollect that
ever I made you the least Confidence of _my_ Amours, though I have been
very near an Eye-Witness of _Yours_----By the way, gentle Reader, don't
you think, to say only, _a Man has his Whore_, without some particular
Circumstances to aggravate the Vice, is the flattest Piece of Satyr that
ever fell from the formidable Pen of Mr. _Pope_? because (_defendit
numerus_) take the first ten thousand Men you meet, and I believe, you
would be no Loser, if you betted ten to one that every single Sinner of
them, one with another, had been guilty of the same Frailty. But as Mr.
_Pope_ has so particularly picked me out of the Number to make an
Example of: Why may I not take the same Liberty, and even single him out
for another to keep me in Countenance? He must excuse me, then, if in
what I am going to relate, I am reduced to make bold with a little
private Conversation: But as he has shewn no Mercy to _Colley_, why
should so unprovok'd an Aggressor expect any for himself? And if Truth
hurts him, I can't help it. He may remember, then (or if he won't I
will) when _Button_'s Coffee-house was in vogue, and so long ago, as
when he had not translated above two or three Books of _Homer_; there
was a late young Nobleman (as much his _Lord_ as mine) who had a good
deal of wicked Humour, and who, though he was fond of having Wits in his
Company, was not so restrained by his Conscience, but that he lov'd to
laugh at any merry Mischief he could do them: This noble Wag, I say, in
his usual _Gayete de Coeur_, with another Gentleman still in Being,
one Evening slily seduced the celebrated Mr. _Pope_ as a Wit, and myself
as a Laugher, to a ce