city, and set sail at the time he told you; I really wished you had laid hold of that opportunity, for you had then been in Ireland the next day; besides, as it is credibly reported, the captain had a bottle or two of excellent claret in his cabin. You would not then have had the plague of that little smoky room at Holyhead[1]; but, considering it was there you lost your giddiness, we have great reason to praise smoky rooms for the future, and prescribe them in like cases to our friends. The maid of the house writes us word, that, while you were there, you were busy for ten days together writing continually; and that, as Wat drew nearer and nearer to Ireland, he blundered more and more. By a scrap of paper left in this smoky room, it seemed as if the book you were writing was a most lamentable account of your travels; and really, had there been any wine in the house, the place would not have been so irksome. We were farther told, that you set out, were driven back again by a storm, and lay in the ship all night. After the next setting sail, we were in great concern about you, because the weather grew very tempestuous: when, to my great
- ↑ When the dean was there, waiting for a wind, one Weldon, an old seafaring man, sent him a letter, that he had found out the longitude, and would convince him of it; to which the dean answered in writing, that, if he had found it out, he must apply to the lords of the admiralty, of whom perhaps one might be found who knew something of navigation, of which he was totally ignorant; and that he never knew but two projectors, one of whom (meaning his own uncle Godwin) ruined himself and family, and the other hanged himself; and desired him to desist, lest one or other might happen to him. In vol. VII, p. 361, are some verses by the dean, written on the window of the inn whilst he was detained at Holyhead.
