_Timothy Gimcrack_, doctor of the noble cockle-shell-fraternity, whose philosophy and learning lay so much under ground, that he had nothing of either to show above it, used to be troubled with strange unaccountable fits, and during the _paroxism_, would contrive new worlds, as boys build houses of cards, find a thousand faults with old _Moses_, make a hasty pudding of the universe, and drown it in a _Menstruum_ of his own inventing, and leave the best patient in the city, for a new gay-coated butterfly. I took out his brains, washed them in my _Aqua Intellectualis_, and if has since relaps’d, who may he thank, but his cursed _East-India_ correspondent, who addled his understanding a-new, with sending him the furniture of a _Chinese_ barber’s-shop. _Nehemiah Drowsy_, grocer and deputy of his ward, was so prodigiously afflicted with a lethargy, that his whole life was little better than a dream. He would sleep even while he was giving the account of his own pedigree, how from leathern breeches and nothing in them, he came to the vast fortune he now possesses. Nay, over the pious spouse of his bosom he has been often found asleep in an exercise which keeps all other mortals awake. By following my sage directions he’s so wonderfully alter’d for the better, that after a full dinner of roast-beef and pudding he can listen to a dull sermon at _Salters-Hall_, without so much as one yawn; nay, can hear his apprentice read two entire pages of _Wesley_’s heroic poem, and never makes a nod all the while. _The End of my Catalogue of_ CURES. But to come to affairs of a more publick concern, we are in a strange ferment here about the divided interests of the houses of _Austria_ and _Bourbon_. Our master following herein the policy of the _Jesuits_, or rather they following him, for we ought to give the devil his due, seems to incline most to the latter: however, if the _Spaniards_ and _French_ set up their horses no better in your world than they do with us, ’tis easy to predict that the unnatural conjuction of the two kingdoms will be soon shatter’d to pieces. Whenever they meet, there’s such roaring and swearing, and calling of names between them, that we expect every minute when they will go to loggerheads. ’Tis true some few of the dons that are lately arriv’d here, call’d _Lewis-le-Grand_ their protector, and are _Frenchify’d_ to a strange degree; but the rest of their countrymen call them a parcel of degenerate rascals, and are so violently bent against them, that unless _Pluto_ lock’d them up a nights in distinct apartments, we should have the devil and all to do with them.