36 



greve's fine ladies swears Mrs. Mincing, the wait- 

 ing maid, to secrecy, " upon an odd volume of 

 Messalina's Poems." Sir Dudley North, too, in- 

 forms us, (or is it his brother Roger ? but I mean 

 the Turkey merchant : ) — that at Constantinople 

 the respect for printed books is so great, that when 

 people are sick, they fancy that they can be read 

 into health again ; and if the Koran should not be 

 in the way, they will make a shift with a few verses 

 of the Bible, or a chapter or two of the Talmud, 

 or of any other book that comes first to hand, rather 

 than not read something. I think Sir Dudley says, 

 that he himself cured an old Turk of the toothache, 

 by administering a few pages of " Ovid's Metamor- 

 phoses;" and in an old receipt-book, we are di- 

 rected for the cure of a double tertian fever, " to 

 drink plentifully of cock-broth, and sleep with the 

 Second Book of the Iliad under the pillow." If, 

 instead of sleeping with it under the pillow, the 

 doctor had desired us to read the Second Book of 

 the Iliad in order that we might sleep, I should 

 have had some faith in his prescription myself. 



December 19. 

 During these last two days nothing very extra- 

 ordinary, or of sufficient importance to deserve 

 its being handed down to the latest posterity, has 

 occurred ; except that this morning a swinging 

 rope knocked my hat into the sea, and away it 

 sailed upon a voyage of discovery, like poor La 



