“I shall be ambitious to have it said of me, that I have brought Philosophy out of Closets and Libraries,Schools and Colleges, to dwell in Clubs and Assemblies, at Tea-tables, and in Coffee houses.” The Spectator 12th March 1711

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I am in a hearty mood this evening. On the advice of my Lord Chetwynd I sold my shares in the South Seas Company this very morning yet by noon their price was little more than nihil. In celebration of my good fortune, I partook of a most convivial luncheon at Will’s Coffee House. The conversation […]

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“The Scurvy (the only reigning disease in this Kingdom) when it is grown so bad, as to become scandalous, so as many People think it to be the POX”. William Salmon, Collectanea Medica, the Country Physician (London, 1703), p. 4

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My Lords and Gentlemen, In my Treatise, I will explain by giving examples how the Body Politick is infected by Scoundrels no less than the girls in Moll King’s House are infected by the Pox. The days recently past have provided more than one such example. Last week I met Mr Mordecai Benjamin at Bevis […]

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 ἢν δὲ πολλῷ ᾖ οὕτερος ἀγεννέστερος, προσπίπτων προσκυνέει τὸν ἕτερον. Herodotus, Histories, 1.134

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My Lords and Gentlemen, You will recall that in my last essay I recounted a joke told by some men of Upminster about the womenfolk of Essex. I had thought that I had done little more than to record the mores and disrespectful nature of the plebeian element of that countie. On the contrary, I have stirred […]

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