CURIOSITIES:IN CASTLECOMER, there was a Mealy's auction, and in that auction there was a job-lot in a box, and in that box was a book of essays from The Tatler: or, The Lucubrations of Isaac Bickerstaff, by Sir Richard Steele and others, and in that volume was an entry for Saturday, July 15th, 1709, with this brilliant, magical and wonderful list.
"This is to give notice, that a magnificent palace with great variety of gardens, statues, and waterworks, may be bought cheap in Drury-lane, where there are likewise several castles to be disposed of, very delightfully situated; as also groves, woods, forests, fountains and country-seats, with very pleasant prospects on all sides of them! being the movables of Christopher Rich, esquire, who is breaking up house-keeping, and has many curious pieces of furniture to dispose of, which may be seen between the hours of six and 10 in the evening."
The inventory
Spirits of right Nantz brandy, for lambent flames and apparitions.
Three bottles and a half of lightning.
One shower of snow in the whitest French paper.
Two showers of the browner sort.
A sea consisting of a dozen large waves; the tenth bigger than the ordinary, and a little damaged.
A dozen and a half of clouds, trimmed with black, and well-conditioned.
A rainbow, a little faded.
A set of clouds after the French mode, streaked with lightning, and furbelowed.
A new moon, something decayed.
A pint of the finest Spanish wash, being all that is left of two hogsheads sent over last winter.
A coach very finely gilt and little used, with a pair of dragons, to be sold cheap.
A setting-sun, a penny-worth.
A basket-hilted sword, very convenient to carry milk in.
Roxana's night-gown.
The imperial robes of Xerxes, never worn but once.
A wild boar killed by Mrs. Tofts and Diocletian.
A mustard-bowl to make thunder with.
Six elbow chairs, very expert in country-dances, with six flower-pots for their partners.
The whiskers of a Turkish bassa.
A suit of clothes for a ghost, viz; a bloody shirt, a doublet curiously pinked, and a coat with three great eyelet-holes upon the breast.
Materials for dancing; as masques, castanets, and a ladder of 10 rounds.
Aurengezebe's scymitar, made by Will Brown in Piccadilly.
A plume of feathers, never used but by Oedipus and the earl of Essex.
There are also swords, halberds, sheep-hooks, cardinals' hats, turbans, drums, gallipots, a gibbet, a cradle, a rack, a cart-wheel, an altar, a helmet, a back-piece, a breast-plate, a bell, a tub, and a jointed-baby."
A process of elimination of contributors to The Tatlerin 1709 shows that the author of this phantasmagoria was William Congreve: dramatist, wit, and erstwhile pupil of Kilkenny grammar school and Trinity College Dublin. Magical realism, how are ye?