"'SQUIRE BICKERSTAFF,[1]
"Finding your advice and censure to have a good effect, I desire your
admonition to our vicar and schoolmaster, who in his preaching to his
auditors, stretches his jaws so wide, that instead of instructing youth,
it rather frightens them: likewise in reading prayers, he has such a
careless loll, that people are justly offended at his irreverent posture;
besides the extraordinary charge they are put to in sending their
children to dance, to bring them off of those ill gestures. Another evil
faculty he has, in making the bowling-green his daily residence, instead
of his church, where his curate reads prayers every day. If the weather
is fair, his time is spent in visiting; if cold or wet, in bed, or at
least at home, though within 100 yards of the church. These, out of many
such irregular practices, I write for his reclamation: but two or three
things more before I conclude; to wit, that generally when his curate
preaches in the afternoon, he sleeps sotting in the desk on a hassock.
With all this, he is so extremely proud, that he will go but once to the
sick, except they return his visit."
[Footnote 1: This letter is dated as from Will's Coffee-house, September
20. [T.S.]]