MADAM, LETTER XXX. TO MRS. STEWARD. Thursday, Feb. 9th.—98 [-9]. For this time I must follow a bad example, and send you a shorter letter than your short one: you were hinder'd by dancers, and I am forc'd to dance attendance all this afternoon after a troublesome business, so soon as I have written this, and seal'd it. Onely I can assure you that your father and mother and all your relations are in health, or were yesterday, when I sent to enquire of their welfare.-On Tuesday night we had a violent wind, which blew down three of my chimneys, and dismantled all one side of my house, by throwing down the tiles. My neighbours, and indeed all the town, suffer'd more or less; and some were kill'd. The great trees in St. James's Park are many of them torn up from the roots; as they were before Oliver Cromwell's death," and the and in 1699 he spent full six weeks at the same house. Perhaps in that time he wrote two or three hundred verses of the volume afterwards published with the title of FABLES; but that probably was the utmost; for he himself has told us, that in his visits to the country his object was, to unweary himself, not to drudge. 6 In a small MS. Common-place book written by Archbishop Sancroft, (in the Bodleian Library, 64. Z. p. 125,) is the following entry : late Queen's but your father had no damage.-I sent my man for the present you design'd me; but he return'd empty-handed; for there was no such :: Sep. 3, 1658. The blustring tyrant, OLIVER, in a whirlwind left the world; dying, as he had lived, in a storm-buried at a greater charge than the greatest English Kings in the peaceablest times." Sancroft knew him well, and has painted him in his true colours, in an admirable covert satire, published anonymously in 1652, under the title of MODERN POCIES, taken from Machiavel, Borgia, and other choise Authors, by an eye-witnesse. The storm that preceded Cromwell's death is mentioned by several historians, and has been recorded in verse by Waller: but it is not equally well known that the death of another blusterer was attended with the same circumstance. "On the other side (says Dr. Tanner, afterwards Bishop of St. Asaph,) is a coeval note of an old MS. belonging to our cathedral, [Norwich] at the odd exit of the great Cardinal Wolsey, not mentioned, I think, in Cavendish, or any of the Historians; much like OLIVER'S wind. "Ad finem Annalium Bartholomæi Cotton, MS. in Bibl. Eccl. Cath. Norvic. habetur hæc notitia. Anno Xti 1530, nocte immediate sequente quartum diem Novembris, vehemens ventus quasi per totam Angliam accidebat; et die proximé sequente, quinto sc. die ejusdem mensis, circa horam primam post meridiem, captus erat Dns Thomas Wolsye, Cardinalis, in ædibus suis de Cahowe [1. Cawood] infra diocesin suam Eboracensem; et postea in itinere suo versus Londiniam vigiliâ Sti Andreæ prox. sequente apud Leycestriam moriebatur: quo die ventus quasi Gehennalis tunc fere per totam Angliam re-accidebat; cujus vehementiâ apud Leystoff man as Carter, a carrier, inning at the Bear and Ragged Staff in Smithfield, nor any one there ever heard of such a person; by which I ghess that some body has deceiv'd you with a counterfeited name. Yet my obligations are the same; and the favour shall be always own'd by, I HAVE reason to be pleas'd with writeing to you, because you are daily giveing me occasions to be infra dioc. Norwicensem, et alibi in diversis locis infra regnum Angliæ, multæ naves perierunt." Letter from Archdeacon Tanner to Dr. Arthur Charlett, August 11, 1709. Mss. Ballard. in Bibl. Bodl. iv. 52. 7 Our author sometimes spells his kinswoman's name Steward, and at others Stewart. I have followed the former mode, her husband's name being so written in the London Gazette, when he was appointed Sheriff of the county of Northampton; and Mrs. Steward, I have been informed, always adhered to that orthography. 8 pleas'd. The present which you made me this week, I have receiv'd; and it will be part of the treat I am to make to three of my friends about Tuesday next: my cousin Driden, of Chesterton, having been also pleas'd to add to it a turkey hen with eggs, and a good young goose; besides a very kind letter, and the news of his own good health, which I vallue more than all the rest; he being so noble a benefactor to a poor and so unundeserveing a kinsman, and one of another persuasion in matters of religion. Your enquiry of his welfare, and sending also mine, have at once oblig'd both him and me. I hope my good cousin Stewart will often visite him, especially before hunting goes out," to be a comfort to him in his sorrow for the loss of his deare brother,' who was a most extrordinary well-natur'd man, and much my friend. Exercise, I know, is my cousin Driden's life, and the oftner he goes out will be the better for his health.-We poor Catholiques daily expect a most severe Proclamation to come out against us; and at the same time are 2 John Driden, Esq. his cousin-german. › See our author's Epistle to this gentleman: With crowds attended of your ancient race, You seek the champagne sports or sylvan chace," &c. This severe Proclamation appeared in the London Gazette, No. 3476, Monday, March 6, 1698-9. It enjoined all Popish Recusants to remove to their respective places of abode; or if they had none, to the dwellings of satisfyed that the King is very unwilling to persecute us, considering us to be but an handfull, and those disarm'd; but the Archbishop of Canterbury is our heavy enemy, and heavy indeed he is in all respects. 3 3 This day was play'd a reviv'd comedy of Mr. Congreve's, call'd THE DOUBLE DEALER, which was never very takeing. In the play-bill was printed-"Written by Mr. Congreve; with severall expressions omitted." What kind of expressions those were, you may easily ghess, if you have seen the Monday's Gazette, wherein is the King's order for the reformation of the stage : but the printing : 4 their fathers or mothers; and not to remove five miles from thence and it charged the Lord-Mayor of London, and all other Justices of Peace, to put the statute 1 William and Mary, c. 9. for amoving papists ten miles from London and Westminster, into execution, by tendering them the declaration therein mentioned; and also another Act of William and Mary, for disarming papists. 3 Dr. Thomas Tennison, who succeeded to the See of Canterbury in 1694, on the death of Tillotson. He is thus sarcastically described by William Shippen, in FacTION DISPLAYED, a poem written a few years afterwards: "A pause ensued, till PATRIARCHO's grace "Was pleas'd to rear his huge unwieldy mass ; "A mass unanimated with a soul, "Or else he'd ne'er be made so vile a tool: |