Ebbw Vale claret
Sir: My due pleasure at the reappearance within your broadsheet of August 7 of a polemick by the learned doctor Mercurious anent the disturbances in Balliol College which the Watch quelled severely, was alasl downcast by the relation of myself as "a rich man of the middle sort." In truth he must have listened overmuch to cronies in that coll, whom he affects to condemn, else he would hear that I have but a modest unretainered estate, and can barely afford my quotidian claret and playhousegoings. There is good Whig precedent for inducing one's bankers to show owing 'em monies, but it ill behoves me to do the like. Yet my fellow Clerks are already asking me for the loan of guineas. To have one's heir made the sole scapegoat for actions of his fraternals is hard for a parent, but to be falsely elevated above one's station is harder.
With great truth and regard, Yours to serve you Ff. Siluris ' Solva,' Ebbw Vale, Mon,
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