This extraordinary letter, and message that accompanied (86: 5) it, made me very curious to know the character and quality[48] of the gentleman who sent them, which I found to be as follows. Will Wimble is younger brother to a baronet, and descended of the ancient family of the Wimbles. He is now between forty and fifty, but, being (10) bred to no business and born to no estate, he generally lives with his elder brother as superintendent of his game. He hunts[49] a pack of dogs better than any man in the country, and is very famous for finding out a hare. He is extremely well versed in all the little handicrafts of an (15) idle man; he makes a may-fly[50] to a miracle, and furnishes the whole country with angle-rods. As he is a good-natured, officious fellow, and very much esteemed upon account of his family, he is a welcome guest at every house, and keeps up a good correspondence among all (20) the gentlemen about him. He carries a tulip-root in his pocket from one to another, or exchanges a puppy between a couple of friends that live perhaps in the opposite sides of the county. Will is a particular favourite of all the young heirs, whom he frequently obliges with a net that (25) he has weaved, or a setting-dog that he has made[51] himself. He now and then presents a pair of garters of his own knitting to their mothers or sisters, and raises a great deal of mirth among them by inquiring, as often as he meets them, how they wear. These gentleman-like manufactures and obliging little humours make Will the darling (87: 5) of the country. [48] Rank. [49] _I.e_. hunts with. [50] An artificial fly for fishing. [51] _I.e_. trained. Sir Roger was proceeding in the character of him, when he saw him make up to us with two or three hazel twigs in his hand that he had cut in Sir Roger's woods, as he came through them, in his way to the house. I was (10) very much pleased to observe on one side the hearty and sincere welcome with which Sir Roger received him, and on the other, the secret joy which his guest discovered at sight of the good old knight. After the first salutes were over, Will desired Sir Roger to lend him one of his servants (15) to carry a set of shuttlecocks he had with him in a little box to a lady that lived about a mile off, to whom it seems he had promised such a present for above this half year. Sir Roger's back was no sooner turned but honest Will began to tell me of a large cock-pheasant (20) that he had sprung in one of the neighbouring woods, with two or three other adventures of the same nature. Odd and uncommon characters are the game that I look for and most delight in; for which reason I was as much pleased with the novelty of the person that talked to me as (25) he could be for his life with the springing of a pheasant, and therefore listened to him with more than ordinary attention.