"DEAR DOCTOR,--I know not if you remember the giant in Rabelais, who swallowed every morning a windmill to breakfast, and at last was choked upon a pound of melted butter, hot from an oven. I am going to compare myself to that giant. I think nothing of despatching a quarto in fifteen or eighteen months, but am not able to compose a letter once in two years; and am very industrious to keep up a correspondence with posterity, whom I know nothing about, and who, probably, will concern themselves very little about me, while I allow myself to be forgot by my friends, whom I value and regard. However, it is some satisfaction that I can give you an account of my silence, with which I own I reproach myself. I have now brought down my History to the death of Charles the First: and here I intend to pause for some time; to read, and think, and correct; to look forward and backward; and to adopt the most moderate and most reasonable sentiments on all subjects. I am sensible that the history of the two first Stuarts will be most agreeable to the Tories; that of the two last to the Whigs; but we must endeavour to be above any regard either to Whigs or Tories. "Having thus satisfied your curiosity--for I will take it for granted that your curiosity extends towards me--I must now gratify my own. I was very anxious to hear that you had been molested with some disorders this summer. I was told that you expected they would settle into a fit of the gout. It is lucky where that distemper overtakes a man in his chariot: we foot-walkers make but an awkward figure with it. I hope nobody has the impertinence to say to you, Physician, cure thyself. All the world allows that privilege to the gout, that it is not to be cured: it is itself a physician; and, of course, sometimes cures and sometimes kills. I fancy one fit of the gout would much increase your stock of interjections, and render that part of speech, which in common grammars is usually the most barren, with you more copious than either nouns or verbs.