People that have an itch at scribbling generally entertain their visitors with their happy projects, high flights, and wonderful performances, therefore 'tis to be supposed this paper is in great measure the subject of many a drawing-room. My Lady Prudence Maxim thought 'twas exposing families too much, that now, truly, a lady could not be free and gamesome, write a Billet Doux, drink a glass of Ratafia, send her jewels out when cards run ill, or be seen in a Billet Doux, drink a glass of Hackney with her cousin the colonel, but the next morning the bawling fellow tells it to the whole town. Mrs. Callicoe disliked it for mentioning the pride of the city. Mrs. Saintly for abusing the dissenters, for they do not love silver spoons. Mrs. Orthodox said a clergyman had been drawn into it, an 'twas a burning shame. Mrs. Whinelove, who is so fond of plays that if she is not buried under the front-box she'll walk, wondered I could speak so irreverently of her darling Imoinda, but Mrs. Gaymond encouraged me to the last degree, laughed heartily at every character, and wished it had been ten times plainer, but protested, as she hoped to be saved, should anyone expose her in print, she'd be the death of them.

The major part of the world, who are the insipids, may term a paper this kind scurrilous, scandalous, and false, talk of it with an imaginable liberty, and affirm that the author has been drubbed, who perhaps can be even with those that say so. But the few wise, who are of the opinion that people are sooner ridiculed than preached out of their follies and that more may be learned out of some plays than out of some sermons, must allow, that a Tatler alarms the world into circumspection. And as pride, vanity and affectation furnish fit reproof, immorality and prophaneness are so strenuously exploded that the giddy sort gossip less for fear of being laughed at, and the libertines of the age sin more in private for fear of being abhorred. This discourse made my Lady Harriet Lovely hint to me to write a comedy, which was only opposed by Mrs. Cavil, who asserted that no woman ever yet turned poetess but lost her reputation by appearing at rehearsals, and conversing with Imoinda, Desdemona, and a maidenhood Amintor at my years, who expect compliments for promoting their own livelihood, and would immediately fright virtue from my drawing-room, by having the assurance to visit me; and that the treatment authors meet with from the players is too gross for a woman to bear, since at the getting up of so successful a comedy as The Busy Body, Sir Harry Wild-Air in great dudgeon flung his part into the pit for damned stuff, before the lady's face that wrote it. Upon the whole, my Lady Sneak proposed that I shouldn't appear in the matter, but give the enraged Sir Harry the whole profits of the play, and then let it have neither wit, plot, sense, turn or humor; he'd bully Capt. Brazen into a good opinion of it, fourscore pounds should be laid out in clothes, and she'd warrant a prodigious Third Night. But as I had the vanity to think could write tolerably well and could fill the boxes from my own drawing-room without the interest of the Duchess of Twangdillo, and I positively want a hundred pounds to print a folio book, called The History of Tatlers, I could not see the reason why Sir Harry Wild-Air should reap the benefits of my studies, and by exporting it to Ireland the nation should want money as well as corn.

At last it was agreed I should apply myself to Sergeant Kite, who is a person of prodigious integrity, values money no more than dirt, wand we proceeded to think of characters: Sir Harry and his associate are to be two walking gentlemen, and as they are both men of wit and judgment, I shall leave them to speak what they think proper; but, if they only move on and off, they are good figures, always well dressed, and more to be admired than Mrs. Salmon's Wax-Work. Pinkee is only to laugh, his face is jest enough to make the play go six nights, and Myn Heer Van Grin, was the best thought for him in the world; the famous Jubilee Dicky is to represent the figure of nobody, and Tallboy, who always will be a boy, shall have just such another part wrote for him; Captain Brazen, who is so fond of being in women's clothes, shall personate a finished coquet, one that jilts the men, rattles with the women, always upon the seeming trifles, though seriously grounded upon self-interest; Imoinda is to be a disdainful beauty, have a world of admirers, and use them all like dogs; Lady Betty Modish, a woman of quality, and play in her own clothes, and my Lady Bountiful, to talk of eating and drinking, admires a boiled pig and egg-sauce, and take a prodigious deal of snuff. The catastrophe of the play, is to be a marriage and a country dance, and Sgt. Kite, by way of epilogue, to sign a ballad of his own making; the act tunes must be melancholy and moving, to keep people from laughing too much, and if their comedy don't gain the prize the subscribers of it must expect their characters in this paper.

Now though I have no plot to my play, I have a moral to may tale, which is that people of quality who squander away money upon such trifles would gain a public reputation, a private satisfaction, and set a noble example to their inferiors, in bestowing it upon the distressed Palatines, or giving it to such officers in our fleets and armies as do not think they are paid enough for making sinecures of the posts they are possessed of.

*

The gentleman that gave me an invitation per penny post to come to his lodgings at Ham to have my throat cut may expect an answer to his letter at large in my next.

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