part ii

. sect. 9.]

[Footnote 332: "Second," in original editions.]

[Footnote 333: There is an apology for punning in No. 36 of the _Guardian_.]

[Footnote 334: Swift.]

No. 33. [STEELE.

By Mrs. JENNY DISTAFF, half-sister to Mr. BICKERSTAFF.

From _Thursday, June 23_, to _Saturday, June 25_, 1709.

* * * * *

From my own Apartment, June 23.

My brother has made an excursion into the country, and the work against Saturday lies upon me. I am very glad I have got pen and ink in my hand; for I have for some time longed for his absence, to give a right idea of things, which I thought he put in a very odd light, and some of them to the disadvantage of my own sex. It is much to be lamented, that it is necessary to make discourses, and publish treatises, to keep the horrid creatures, the men, within the rules of common decency. Turning over the papers of memorials or hints for the ensuing discourses, I find a letter subscribed by Mr. Truman.

"SIR,

"I am lately come to town, and have read your works with much pleasure. You make wit subservient to good principles and good manners. Yet, because I design to buy the _Tatlers_ for my daughters to read, I take the freedom to desire you, for the future, to say nothing about any combat between Alexander and Thalestris."[335]

This offence gives me occasion to express myself with the resentment I ought, on people who take liberties of speech before that sex of whom the honoured names of mother, daughter, and sister, are a part: I had liked to have named wife in the number; but the senseless world are so mistaken in their sentiments of pleasure, that the most amiable term in human life is become the derision of fools and scorners. My brother and I have at least fifty times quarrelled upon this topic. I ever argue, that the frailties of women are to be imputed to the false ornaments which men of wit put upon our folly and coquetry. He lays all the vices of men upon women's secret approbation of libertine characters in them. I did not care to give up a point; but now he is out of the way, I cannot but own I believe there is very much in what he asserted: for if you will believe your eyes, and own, that the wickedest and the wittiest of them all marry one day or other, is it possible to believe, that if a man thought he should be for ever incapable of being received by a woman of merit and honour, he would persist in an abandoned way, and deny himself the possibility of enjoying the happiness of well-governed desires, orderly satisfactions, and honourable methods of life? If our sex were wise, a lover should have a certificate from the last woman he served, how he was turned away, before he was received into the service of another: but at present any vagabond is welcome, provided he promises to enter into our livery. It is wonderful, that we will not take a footman without credentials from his last master; and in the greatest concern of life, we make no scruple of falling into a treaty with the most notorious offender in his behaviour against others. But this breach of commerce between the sexes, proceeds from an unaccountable prevalence of custom, by which a woman is to the last degree reproachable for being deceived, and a man suffers no loss of credit for being a deceiver. Since this tyrant humour has gained place, why are we represented in the writings of men in ill figures for artifice in our carriage, when we have to do with a professed impostor? When oaths, imprecations, vows, and adorations, are made use of as words of course, what arts are not necessary to defend us from such as glory in the breach of them? As for my part, I am resolved to hear all, and believe none of them; and therefore solemnly declare, no vow shall deceive me, but that of marriage: for I am turned of twenty, and being of a small fortune, some wit, and (if I can believe my lovers and my glass) handsome, I have heard all that can be said towards my undoing, and shall therefore, for warning sake, give an account of the offers that have been made me, my manner of rejecting them, and my assistances to keep my resolution. In the sixteenth year of my life, I fell into the acquaintance of a lady, extremely well known in this town for the quick advancement of her husband, and the honours and distinctions which her industry has procured him, and all who belong to her. This excellent body sat next to me for some months at church, and took the liberty (which she said her years and the zeal she had for my welfare gave her claim to) to assure me, that she observed some parts of my behaviour which would lead me into errors, and give encouragement to some to entertain hopes I did not think of. "What made you," said she, "look through your fan at that lord, when your eyes should have been turned upward, or closed in attention upon better objects?" I blushed, and pretended fifty odd excuses;--but confounded myself the more. She wanted nothing but to see that confusion, and goes on: "Nay, child, do not be troubled that I take notice of it, my value for you made me speak it; for though he is my kinsman, I have a nearer regard to virtue than any other consideration." She had hardly done speaking, when this noble lord came up to us, and took her hand to lead her to her coach. My head ran all that day and night on the exemplary carriage of this woman who could be so virtuously impertinent, as to admonish one she was hardly acquainted with. However, it struck upon the vanity of a girl that it may possibly be, his thoughts might have been as favourable of me, as mine were amorous of him, and as unlikely things as that have happened, if he should make me his wife. She never mentioned this more to me; but I still in all public places stole looks at this man, who easily observed my passion for him. It is so hard a thing to check the return of agreeable thoughts, that he became my dream, my vision, my food, my wish, my torment. That minister of darkness, the Lady Sempronia,[336] perceived too well the temper I was in, and would one day after evening service needs take me to the Park. When we were there, my lord passes by; I flushed into a flame. "Mrs. Distaff," said she, "you may very well remember the concern I was in upon the first notice I took of your regard to that lord, and forgive me, who had a tender friendship for your mother (now in her grave) that I am vigilant of your conduct." She went on with much severity, and after great solicitation, prevailed on me to go with her into the country, and there spend the ensuing summer out of the way of a man she saw I loved, and one whom she perceived meditated my ruin, by frequently desiring her to introduce him to me; which she absolutely refused, except he would give his honour that he had no other design but to marry me. To her country house a week or two after we went: there was at the farther end of her garden a kind of wilderness, in the middle of which ran a soft rivulet by an arbour of jessamine. In this place I usually passed my retired hours, and read some romantic or poetical tale till the close of the evening. It was near that time in the heat of summer, when gentle winds, soft murmurs of water, and notes of nightingales had given my mind an indolence, which added to that repose of soul, which twilight and the end of a warm day naturally throws upon the spirits. It was at such an hour, and in such a state of tranquillity I sat, when, to my unexpressible amazement, I saw my lord walking towards me, whom I knew not till that moment to have been in the country. I could observe in his approach the perplexity which attends a man big with design; and I had, while he was coming forward, time to reflect that I was betrayed; the sense of which gave me a resentment suitable to such a baseness: but when he entered into the bower where I was, my heart flew towards him, and, I confess, a certain joy came into my mind, with a hope that he might then make a declaration of honour and passion. This threw my eye upon him with such tenderness, as gave him power, with a broken accent, to begin. "Madam,--You will wonder--For it is certain, you must have observed--though I fear you will misinterpret the motives--But by Heaven, and all that's sacred! If you could--" Here he made a full stand. And I recovered power to say, "The consternation I am in you will not, I hope, believe--A helpless innocent maid--Besides that, the place--" He saw me in as great confusion as himself; which attributing to the same causes, he had the audaciousness to throw himself at my feet, and talk of the stillness of the evening; then ran into deifications of my person, pure flames, constant love, eternal raptures, and a thousand other phrases drawn from the images we have of heaven, which ill men use for the service of hell, were run over with uncommon vehemence. After which, he seized me in his arms: his design was too evident. In my utmost distress, I fell upon my knees--"My lord, pity me, on my knees--On my knees in the cause of virtue, as you were lately in that of wickedness. Can you think of destroying the labour of a whole life, the purpose of a long education, for the base service of a sudden appetite, to throw one that loves you, that dotes on you, out of the company and road of all that is virtuous and praiseworthy? Have I taken in all the instructions of piety, religion, and reason, for no other end, but to be the sacrifice of lust, and abandoned to scorn? Assume yourself, my lord, and do not attempt to vitiate a temple sacred to innocence, honour, and religion. If I have injured you, stab this bosom, and let me die, but not be ruined by the hand I love." The ardency of my passion made me incapable of uttering more; and I saw my lover astonished and reformed by my behaviour: when rushed in Sempronia. "Ha! Faithless, base man, could you then steal out of town, and lurk like a robber about my house for such brutish purposes?" My lord was by this time recovered, and fell into a violent laughter at the turn which Sempronia designed to give her villany. He bowed to me with the utmost respect: "Mrs. Distaff," said he, "be careful hereafter of your company"; and so retired. The fiend Sempronia congratulated my deliverance with a flood of tears. This nobleman has since very frequently made his addresses to me with honour, but I have as often refused them; as well knowing, that familiarity and marriage will make him, on some ill-natured occasion, call all I said in the arbour a theatrical action. Besides that, I glory in contemning a man who had thoughts to my dishonour. And if this method were the imitation of the whole sex, innocence would be the only dress of beauty; and all affectation by any other arts to please the eyes of men, would be banished to the stews for ever. The conquest of passion gives ten times more happiness than we can reap from the gratification of it; and she that has got over such a one as mine, will stand among beaux and pretty fellows, with as much safety as in a summer's day among grasshoppers and butterflies.

P.S.--I have ten millions of things more against men, if I ever get the pen again.

St. James's Coffee-house, June 24.

Our last advices from the Hague, dated the 28th instant, say, that on the 25th a squadron of Dutch men-of-war sailed out of the Texel to join Admiral Baker at Spithead. The 26th was observed as a day of fasting and humiliation, to implore a blessing on the arms of the Allies this ensuing campaign. Letters from Dresden are very particular in the account of the gallantry and magnificence in which that Court has appeared since the arrival of the King of Denmark. No day has passed in which public shows have not been exhibited for his entertainment and diversion: the last of that kind which is mentioned is a carousal, wherein many of the youth of the first quality, dressed in the most splendid manner, ran for the prize. His Danish Majesty condescended to the same; but having observed that there was a design laid to throw it in his way, passed by without attempting to gain it. The Court of Dresden was preparing to accompany his Danish Majesty to Potsdam, where the expectation of an interview of three kings had drawn together such multitudes of people, that many persons of distinction will be obliged to lie in tents as long as those Courts continue in that place.

[Footnote 335: See No. 31.]

[Footnote 336: See Sallust, "Bell. Catal." chap. 21. The person here referred to as Sempronia is said to be the same as the Madam d'Epingle elsewhere alluded to.]

No. 34. [STEELE.

By ISAAC BICKERSTAFF, Esq.

From _Saturday, June 25_, to _Tuesday, June 28, 1709._

* * * * *

White's Chocolate-house, June 25.

Having taken upon me to cure all the distempers which proceed from affections of the mind, I have laboured since I first kept this public stage, to do all the good I could possibly, and have perfected many cures at my own lodging; carefully avoiding the common method of mountebanks, to do their most eminent operations in sight of the people; but must be so just to my patients as to declare, they have testified under their hands their sense of my poor abilities, and the good I have done them, which I publish for the benefit of the world, and not out of any thoughts of private advantage. I have cured fine Mrs. Spy of a great imperfection in her eyes, which made her eternally rolling them from one coxcomb to another in public places, in so languishing a manner, that it at once lessened her own power, and her beholder's vanity. Twenty drops of my ink, placed in certain letters on which she attentively looked for half an hour, have restored her to the true use of her sight; which is, to guide, and not mislead us. Ever since she took this liquor, which I call Bickerstaff's Circumspection Water, she looks right forward, and can bear being looked at for half a day without returning one glance. This water has a peculiar virtue in it, which makes it the only true cosmetic or beauty wash in the world: the nature of it is such, that if you go to a glass, with design to admire your face, it immediately changes it into downright deformity. If you consult it only to look with a better countenance upon your friends, it immediately gives an alacrity to the visage, and new grace to the whole person. There is indeed a great deal owing to the constitution of the person to whom it is applied: it is in vain to give it when the patient is in the rage of the distemper; a bride in her first month, a lady soon after her husband's being knighted, or any person of either sex who has lately obtained any new good fortune or preferment, must be prepared some time before they use it. It has an effect upon others, as well as the patient, when it is taken in due form. Lady Petulant has by the use of it cured her husband of jealousy, and Lady Gad her whole neighbourhood of detraction. The fame of these things, added to my being an old fellow, makes me extremely acceptable to the fair sex. You would hardly believe me, when I tell you there is not a man in town so much their delight as myself. They make no more of visiting me, than going to Madam d'Epingle's.[337] There were two of them, namely, Damia and Clidamira (I assure you women of distinction) who came to see me this morning in their way to prayers, and being in a very diverting humour as (innocence always makes people cheerful) they would needs have me, according to the distinction of "pretty" and "very pretty" fellows, inform them if I thought either of them had a title to the "very pretty" among those of their own sex; and if I did, which was the more deserving of the two. To put them to the trial, "Look ye," said I, "I must not rashly give my judgment in matters of this importance; pray let me see you dance: I play upon the kit."[338] They immediately fell back to the lower end of the room (you may be sure they curtsied low enough to me): and began. Never were two in the world so equally matched, and both scholars to my namesake Isaac.[339] Never was man in so dangerous a condition as myself, when they began to expand their charms. "O! ladies, ladies," cried I, "not half that air, you'll fire the house." Both smiled; for by-the bye, there's no carrying a metaphor too far, when a lady's charms are spoken of. Somebody, I think, has called a fine woman dancing, a brandished torch of beauty.[340] These rivals moved with such an agreeable freedom, that you would believe their gesture was the necessary effect of the music, and not the product of skill and practice. Now Clidamira came on with a crowd of graces, and demanded my judgment with so sweet an air--and she had no sooner carried it, but Damia made her utterly forgot by a gentle sinking, and a rigadoon step.[341] The contest held a full half-hour; and I protest, I saw no manner of difference in their perfections, till they came up together, and expected my sentence. "Look ye, ladies," said I, "I see no difference in the least in your performance; but you Clidamira seem to be so well satisfied that I shall determine for you, that I must give it to Damia, who stands with so much diffidence and fear, after showing an equal merit to what she pretends to. Therefore, Clidamira, you are a 'pretty'; but, Damia, you are a 'very pretty' lady. For," said I, "beauty loses its force, if not accompanied with modesty. She that has a humble opinion of herself, will have everybody's applause, because she does not expect it; while the vain creature loses approbation through too great a sense of deserving it."

From my own Apartment, June 27.

Being of a very spare and hective constitution, I am forced to make frequent journeys of a mile or two for fresh air; and indeed by this last, which was no further than the village of Chelsea, I am farther convinced of the necessity of travelling to know the world. For as it is usual with young voyagers, as soon as they land upon a shore, to begin their accounts of the nature of the people, their soil, their government, their inclinations, and their passions, so really I fancied I could give you an immediate description of this village, from the Five Fields,[342] where the robbers lie in wait, to the coffee-house where the _literati_ sit in council. A great ancestor of ours by the mother's side, Mr. Justice Overdo (whose history is written by Ben Jonson),[343] met with more enormities by walking _incog._ than he was capable of correcting; and found great mortifications in observing also persons of eminence, whom he before knew nothing of. Thus it fared with me, even in a place so near the town as this. When I came into the coffee-house,[344] I had not time to salute the company, before my eye was diverted by ten thousand gimcracks round the room and on the ceiling. When my first astonishment was over, comes to me a sage of a thin and meagre countenance; which aspect made me doubt, whether reading or fretting had made it so philosophic: but I very soon perceived him to be of that sect which the ancients call Gingivistæ,[345] in our language, tooth-drawers. I immediately had a respect for the man; for these practical philosophers go upon a very rational hypothesis, not to cure, but take away the part affected. My love of mankind made me very benevolent to Mr. Salter, for such is the name of this eminent barber and antiquary. Men are usually, but unjustly, distinguished rather by their fortunes, than their talents, otherwise this personage would make a great figure in that class of men which I distinguish under the title of Odd Fellows. But it is the misfortune of persons of great genius, to have their faculties dissipated by attention to too many things at once. Mr. Salter is an instance of this: if he would wholly give himself up to the string,[346] instead of playing twenty beginnings to tunes, he might before he dies play "Roger de Caubly"[347] quite out. I heard him go through his whole round, and indeed I think he does play the "Merry Christ-Church Bells"[348] pretty justly; but he confessed to me, he did that rather to show he was orthodox, than that he valued himself upon the music itself. Or if he did proceed in his anatomy, why might not he hope in time to cut off legs, as well as draw teeth? The particularity of this man put me into a deep thought, whence it should proceed, that of all the lower order barbers should go farther in hitting the ridiculous, than any other set of men. Watermen brawl, cobblers sing; but why must a barber be for ever a politician, a musician, an anatomist, a poet, and a physician? The learned Vossus says,[349] his barber used to comb his head in iambics. And indeed in all ages, one of this useful profession, this order of cosmetic philosophers, has been celebrated by the most eminent hands. You see the barber in "Don Quixote,"[350] is one of the principal characters in the history, which gave me satisfaction in the doubt, why Don Saltero writ his name with a Spanish termination: for he is descended in a right line, not from John Tradescant,[351] as he himself asserts, but from that memorable companion of the Knight of Mancha. And I hereby certify all the worthy citizens who travel to see his rarities, that his double-barrelled pistols, targets, coats of mail, his sclopeta,[352] and sword of Toledo,[353] were left to his ancestor by the said Don Quixote, and by the said ancestor to all his progeny down to Don Saltero. Though I go thus far in favour of Don Saltero's great merit, I cannot allow a liberty he takes of imposing several names (without my licence) on the collections he has made, to the abuse of the good people of England; one of which is particularly calculated to deceive religious persons, to the great scandal of the well disposed, and may introduce heterodox opinions. He shows you a straw hat, which I know to be made by Madge Peskad, within three miles of Bedford; and tells you, it is Pontius Pilate's wife's chamber-maid's sister's hat. To my knowledge of this very hat, it may be added, that the covering of straw was never used among the Jews, since it was demanded of them to make bricks without it. Therefore this is really nothing, but under the specious pretence of learning and antiquity, to impose upon the world. There are other things which I cannot tolerate among his rarities; as, the china figure of a lady in the glass case; the Italian engine for the imprisonment of those who go abroad with it: both which I hereby order to be taken down, or else he may expect to have his letters patents for making punch superseded, be debarred wearing his muff next winter, or ever coming to London without his wife.[354] It may perhaps be thought I have dwelt too long upon the affairs of this operator; but I desire the reader to remember, that it is my way to consider men as they stand in merit, and not according to their fortune or figure; and if he is in a coffee-house at the reading hereof, let him look round, and he will find there may be more characters drawn in this account than that of Don Saltero; for half the politicians about him, he may observe, are, by their place in nature, of the class of tooth-drawers.

[Footnote 337: See p. 273, note.]

[Footnote 338: A small violin or fiddle. See No. 160.]

[Footnote 339: A dancing-master, who either was French, or pretended to be so. See No. 109.]

[Footnote 340: A song of Waller's begins:

"Behold the brand of beauty tost! See, how the motion doth dilate the flame!" (Dobson). ]

[Footnote 341: The rigadoon was a dance for two persons. Cf. _Guardian_, No. 154: "We danced a rigadoon together."]

[Footnote 342: On the site of Eaton and Belgrave Squares. See _Spectator_, No. 137: "The Five Fields towards Chelsea."]

[Footnote 343: In "Bartholomew Fair," act ii. sc. i. Overdo went to the Fair in disguise, and being mistaken for a cutpurse, was well beaten.]

[Footnote 344: Salter, a barber, opened a coffee-house in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, in 1695. Sir Harry Sloane, whose servant he had been, gave him some curiosities to start a museum. Others, including Admiral Munden and his fellow-officers, added to the collection, and the first catalogue appeared in 1729. The more startling curiosities were, of course, not genuine. The remains of the collection were sold in 1799 for about £50. A view of Salter's house will be found in Timbs' "Clubs and Club Life in London." Verses of a more or less coarse nature by Don Saltero appeared not unfrequently in the "British Apollo," in 1709.]

[Footnote 345: From "gingiva," the gum.]

[Footnote 346: Salter played very badly on the fiddle.]

[Footnote 347: "Sir Roger de Coverley," the famous country-dance tune.]

[Footnote 348: By Dr. Henry Aldrich, Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, where Steele matriculated.]

[Footnote 349: "De Poematum cantu, et viribus Rythmi," 1673.]

[Footnote 350: Master Nicholas. See "Don Quixote," chap. v.]

[Footnote 351: There were two John Tradescants (father and son) who collected objects of natural history. Their collection formed the foundation of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. The "Museum Tradescantianum: or, A Collection of Rarities preserved at South Lambeth, near London, by John Tradescant," contains interesting portraits of both John Tradescant, senior, and John Tradescant, junior, as well as a plate of the Tradescant arms.]

[Footnote 352: A sclopeta or sclopetta was a hand-gun used by Spaniards.]

[Footnote 353: Toledo was famous for its sword-blades.]

[Footnote 354: Salter had an old grey muff, which he clapped constantly to his nose, and by which he was distinguishable at the distance of a quarter of a mile. His wife was none of the best, being much addicted to scolding.-(Nichols.)]

No. 35. [STEELE.

From _Tuesday, June 28_, to _Thursday, June 30_, 1709.

* * * * *

Grecian Coffee-house, June 28.

There is a habit or custom which I have put my patience to the utmost stretch to have suffered so long, because several of my intimate friends are in the guilt; and that is, the humour of taking snuff, and looking dirty about the mouth by way of ornament. My method is to dive to the bottom of a sore before I pretend to apply a remedy. For this reason, I sat by an eminent story-teller and politician who takes half an ounce in five seconds, and has mortgaged a pretty tenement near the town, merely to improve and dung his brains with this prolific powder. I observed this gentleman the other day in the midst of a story diverted from it by looking at something at a distance, and I softly hid his box. But he returns to his tale, and looking for his box, he cries, "And so, sir--" Then when he should have taken a pinch, "As I was saying," says he--"Has nobody seen my box?" His friend beseeches him to finish his narration. Then he proceeds, "And so, sir--Where can my box be?" Then, turning to me, "Pray, sir, did you see my box?" "Yes, sir," said I, "I took it to see how long you could live without it." He resumes his tale; and I took notice, that his dulness was much more regular and fluent than before. A pinch supplied the place of, "As I was saying," "And so, sir"; and he went on currently enough in that style which the learned call the insipid. This observation easily led me into a philosophic reason for taking snuff, which is done only to supply with sensations the want of reflection. This I take to be an Ἕυρηκα [Heurêka], a nostrum; upon which I hope to receive the thanks of this board. For as it is natural to lift a man's hand to a sore, when you fear anything coming at you; so when a person feels his thoughts are run out, and has no more to say, it is as natural to supply his weak brain with powder at the nearest place of access, viz., the nostrils. This is so evident, that nature suggests the use according to the indigence of the persons who use this medicine, without being prepossessed with the force of fashion or custom. For example; the native Hibernians, who are reckoned not much unlike the ancient Bœotians, take this specific for emptiness in the head, in greater abundance than any other nation under the sun. The learned Sotus, as sparing as he is in his words, would be still more silent if it were not for this powder. But however low and poor the taking snuff argues a man to be in his own stock of thought, or means to employ his brains and his fingers, yet there is a poorer creature in the world than he, and this is a borrower of snuff; a fellow that keeps no box of his own, but is always asking others for a pinch. Such poor rogues put me always in mind of a common phrase among schoolboys when they are composing their exercise, who run to an upper scholar, and cry, "Pray give me a little sense." But of all things, commend me to the ladies who are got into this pretty help to discourse.[355] I have been this three years persuading Sagissa[356] to leave it off; but she talks so much, and is so learned, that she is above contradiction. However, an accident the other day brought that about, which my eloquence never could accomplish: she had a very pretty fellow in her closet, who ran thither to avoid some company that came to visit her. She made an excuse to go in to him for some implement they were talking of. Her eager gallant snatched a kiss; but being unused to snuff, some grains from off her upper lip made him sneeze aloud, which alarmed the visitants, and has made a discovery, that profound reading, very much intelligence, and a general knowledge of who and who's together, cannot fill up her vacant hours so much, but that she is sometimes obliged to descend to entertainments less intellectual.

White's Chocolate-house, June 29.

I know no manner of news for this place, but that Cynthio, having been long in despair for the inexorable Clarissa, lately resolved to fall in love the good old way of bargain and sale, and has pitched upon a very agreeable young woman.[357] He will undoubtedly succeed; for he accosts her in a strain of familiarity, without breaking through the deference that is due to woman whom a man would choose for his life. I have hardly ever heard rough truth spoken with a better grace than in this his letter.[358]

"MADAM,

"I writ to you on Saturday by Mrs. Lucy, and give you this trouble to urge the same request I made then, which was, that I may be admitted to wait upon you. I should be very far from desiring this, if it were a transgression of the most severe rules to allow it: I know you are very much above the little arts which are frequent in your sex, of giving unnecessary torments to their admirers; therefore hope, you'll do so much justice to the generous passion I have for you, as to let me have an opportunity of acquainting you upon what motives I pretend to your good opinion. I shall not trouble you with my sentiments, till I know how they will be received; and as I know no reason why difference of sex should make our language to each other differ from the ordinary rules of right reason, I shall affect plainness and sincerity in my discourse to you, as much as other lovers do perplexity and rapture. Instead of saying, 'I shall die for you,' I profess I should be glad to lead my life with you: you are as beautiful, as witty, as prudent, and as good-humoured, as any woman breathing; but I must confess to you, I regard all these excellences as you will please to direct them, for my happiness or misery. With me, madam, the only lasting motive to love is the hope of its becoming mutual. I beg of you to let Mrs. Lucy send me word when I may attend you. I promise you, I'll talk of nothing but indifferent things; though at the same time I know not how I shall approach you in the tender moment of first seeing you, after this declaration, of,

"Madam,

"Your most obedient,

"And most faithful

"Humble Servant, &c."

Will's Coffee-house, June 29.

Having taken a resolution when plays are acted next winter by an entire good company, to publish observations from time to time on the performance of the actors, I think it but just to give an abstract of the law of action, for the help of the less learned part of the audience, that they may rationally enjoy so refined and instructive a pleasure as a just representation of human life. The great errors in playing are admirably well exposed in Hamlet's direction to the actors[359] who are to play in his supposed tragedy; by which we shall form our future judgments on their behaviour, and for that reason you have the discourse as follows:

"Speak the speech as I pronounce it to you, trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lieve the town-crier had spoke my lines: nor do not saw the air too much with your hand thus; but use all gently: for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. Oh! it offends me to the soul, to see a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who (for the most part) are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb shows and noise. I could have such a fellow whipped for overdoing termagant: it out-Herods Herod. Be not too tame neither; but let your own discretion be your tutor: suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you overstep not the modesty of nature; for anything so overdone, is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was, and is, to hold as it were the mirror up to Nature; to show Virtue her own feature; scorn her own image; and the very age and body of the time its form and pressure. Now this overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve. The censures of which one, must, in your allowance, oversway a whole theatre of others. Oh! there be players, that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly (not to speak it profanely), that neither having the accent of Christian, Pagan, or Norman, have so strutted and bellowed, that I have thought some of Nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably. This should be reformed altogether; and let those that play your clowns, speak no more than is set down for them: for there be of them that will of themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too; though in the meantime, some necessary question of the play be then to be considered; that is villanous, and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it."

From my own Apartment, June 29.

It would be a very great obligation, and an assistance to my treatise upon Punning,[360] if any one would please to inform in what class, among the learned who play with words, to place the author of the following letter.[361]

"Sir,

"Not long since you were pleased to give us a chimerical account of the famous family of Staffs,[362] from whence I suppose you would insinuate, that it is the most ancient and numerous house in all Europe. But I positively deny that it is either; and wonder much at your audacious proceedings in this matter, since it is well known, that our most illustrious, most renowned, and most celebrated Roman family of Ix, has enjoyed the precedency to all others from the reign of good old Saturn. I could say much to the defamation and disgrace of your family; as, that your relations Distaff and Broomstaff were both inconsiderate mean persons, one spinning, the other sweeping the streets, for their daily bread. But I forbear to vent my spleen on objects so much beneath my indignation. I shall only give the world a catalogue of my ancestors, and leave them to determine which hath hitherto had, and which for the future ought to have, the preference.

"First then comes the most famous and popular Lady Meretrix, parent of the fertile family of Bellatrix, Lotrix, Netrix, Nutrix, Obstetrix, Famulatrix, Coctrix, Ornatrix, Sarcinatrix, Fextrix, Balneatrix, Portatrix, Saltatrix, Divinatrix, Conjectrix, Comtrix, Debitrix, Creditrix, Donatrix, Ambulatrix, Mercatrix, Adsectrix, Assectatrix, Palpatrix, Præceptrix, Pistrix.

"I am yours,

"ELIZ. POTATRIX."

St. James's Coffee-house, June 29.

Letters from Brussels of the 2nd of July, N.S., say, that the Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene having received advice, that the Marshal Villars had drawn a considerable body out of the garrison of Tournay to reinforce his army, marched towards that place, and came before it early in the morning of the 27th. As soon as they came into that ground, the Prince of Nassau was sent with a strong detachment to take post at St. Amand; and at the same time my Lord Orkney received orders to possess himself of Mortagne; both which were successfully executed; whereby we are masters of the Scheldt and the Scarp. Eight men were drawn out of each troop of dragoons and company of foot in the garrison of Tournay, to make up the reinforcement which was ordered to join Marshal Villars; but upon advice that the Allies were marching towards Tournay, they endeavoured to return into the town; but were intercepted by the Earl of Orkney, by whom that whole body was killed or taken. These letters add, that 1200 dragoons (each horseman carrying a foot-soldier behind him) were detached from Mons to throw themselves into Tournay; but upon appearance of a great body of horse of the Allies, retired towards Condé. We hear, that the garrison does not consist of more than 3500 men. Of the sixty battalions designed to be employed in this siege, seven [_sic_] are English, viz., two of Guards, and the regiments of Argyle, Temple, Evans and Meredith.

[Footnote 355: See Nos. 79, 140; and Swift's "Journal to Stella," Nov. 3, 1711. A correspondent begged the _Spectator_ (No. 344) to "take notice of an impertinent custom the women, the fine women, have lately fallen into, of taking snuff."]

[Footnote 356: It has been suggested that Steele here alludes to Mrs. De la Rivière Manley.]

[Footnote 357: Lord Hinchinbroke married Elizabeth, only daughter of Alexander Popham, Esq. See Nos. 1, 5, 22.]

[Footnote 358: This was one of Steele's own letters to Miss Scurlock. (See "Correspondence," 1809, vol. i. p. 93.) "Mrs. Lucy" is "Mrs. Warren" in the original.]

[Footnote 359: "Hamlet," act iii. sc. 2.]

[Footnote 360: See No. 32.]

[Footnote 361: This letter is printed in Scott's edition of Swift's works.]

[Footnote 362: See No. II.]

No. 36. [? STEELE.[363]

By Mrs. JENNY DISTAFF, half-sister to Mr. BICKERSTAFF.

From _Thursday, June 30_, to _Saturday, July 2_, 1709.

* * * * *

From our own Apartment, June 30.

Many affairs calling my brother into the country, the care of our intelligence with the town is left to me for some time; therefore you must expect the advices you meet with in this paper to be such as more immediately and naturally fall under the consideration of our sex: history therefore written by a woman, you will easily imagine to consist of love in all its forms, both in the abuse of, and obedience to that passion. As to the faculty of writing itself, it will not, it is hoped, be demanded, that style and ornament shall be so much consulted, as truth and simplicity; which latter qualities we may more justly pretend to beyond the other sex. While therefore the administration of our affairs is in my hands, you shall from time to time have an exact account of all false lovers, and their shallow pretences for breaking off; of all termagant wives who make wedlock a yoke; of men who affect the entertainments and manners suitable only to our sex, and women who pretend to the conduct of such affairs as are only within the province of men. It is necessary further to advertise the reader, that the usual places of resort being utterly out of my province or observation, I shall be obliged frequently to change the dates of places, as occurrences come into my way. The following letter I lately received from Epsom.[364]

Epsom, June 28.

"It is now almost three weeks since what you writ about happened in this place: the quarrel between my friends did not run so high as I find your accounts have made it. The truth of the fact you shall have very faithfully. You are to understand, that the persons concerned in this scene were, Lady Autumn, and Lady Springly:[365] Autumn is a person of good breeding, formality, and a singular way practised in the last age; and Lady Springly, a modern impertinent of our sex, who affects as improper familiarity, as the other does distance. Lady Autumn knows to a hair's-breadth where her place is in all assemblies and conversations; but Springly neither gives nor takes place of anybody, but understands the place to signify no more, than to have room enough to be at ease wherever she comes. Thus while Autumn takes the whole of this life to consist in understanding punctilio and decorum, Springly takes everything to be becoming which contributes to her ease and satisfaction. These heroines have married two brothers, both knights. Springly is the spouse of the elder, who is a baronet; and Autumn, being a rich widow, has taken the younger, and her purse endowed him with an equal fortune and knighthood of the same order. This jumble of titles, you need not doubt, has been an aching torment to Autumn, who took place of the other on no pretence, but her carelessness and disregard of distinction. This secret occasion of envy broiled long in the breast of Autumn; but no opportunity of contention on that subject happening, kept all things quiet till the accident, of which you demand an account.

"It was given out among all the gay people of this place, that on the 9th instant several damsels, swift of foot, were to run for a suit of head-clothes at the Old Wells. Lady Autumn on this occasion invited Springly to go with her in her coach to see the race. When they came to the place where the governor of Epsom and all his court of citizens were assembled, as well as a crowd of people of all orders, a brisk young fellow addresses himself to the younger of the ladies, viz., Springly, and offers her his service to conduct her into the music-room. Springly accepts the compliment, and is led triumphantly through the bowing crowd, while Autumn is left among the rabble, and has much ado to get back into her coach; but she did it at last: and as it is usual to see by the horses my lady's present disposition, she orders John to whip furiously home to her husband; where, when she enters, down she sits, began to unpin her hood, and lament her foolish fond heart to marry into a family where she was so little regarded, she that might--Here she stops; then rises up and stamps, and sits down again. Her gentle knight made his approaches with a supple beseeching gesture. 'My dear,' said he--'Tell me no dears,' replied Autumn; in the presence of the governor and all the merchants; 'What will the world say of a woman that has thrown herself away at this rate?' Sir Thomas withdrew, and knew it would not be long a secret to him; as well as that experience told him, he that marries a fortune, is of course guilty of all faults against his wife, let them be committed by whom they will. But Springly, an hour or two after, returns from the Wells, and finds the whole company together. Down she sat, and a profound silence ensued. You know a premeditated quarrel usually begins and works up with the words, 'Some people.' The silence was broken by Lady Autumn, who began to say, 'There are some people who fancy, that if some people--' Springly immediately takes her up; 'There are some people who fancy, if other people--' Autumn repartees, 'People may give themselves airs; but other people, perhaps, who make less ado, may be, perhaps, as agreeable as people who set themselves out more.' All the other people at the table sat mute, while these two people, who were quarrelling, went on with the use of the word 'people,' instancing the very accidents between them, as if they kept only in distant hints. 'Therefore,' says Autumn, reddening, 'there are some people who will go abroad in other people's coaches, and leave those, with whom they went, to shift for themselves; and if, perhaps, those people have married the younger brother, yet, perhaps, he may be beholden to those people for what he is.' Springly smartly answers, 'People may bring so much ill humour into a family, as people may repent their receiving their money'; and goes on--'Everybody is not considerable enough to give her uneasiness.' Upon this, Autumn comes up to her, and desired her to kiss her, and never to see her again; which her sister refusing, my lady gave her a box on the ear. Springly returns; 'Ay, ay,' said she, 'I knew well enough you meant me by your "some people,"' and gives her another on the other side. To it they went with most masculine fury: each husband ran in. The wives immediately fell upon their husbands, and tore periwigs and cravats. The company interposed; when (according to the slip-knot of matrimony, which makes them return to one another when any put in between) the ladies and their husbands fell upon all the rest of the company; and having beat all their friends and relations out of the house, came to themselves time enough to know, there was no bearing the jest of the place after these adventures, and therefore marched off the next day. It is said, the governor has sent several joints of mutton, and has proposed divers dishes very exquisitely dressed, to bring them down again. From his address and knowledge in roast and boiled, all our hopes of the return of this good company depend. I am,

"Dear Jenny,

"Your ready Friend

"And Servant,

"MARTHA TATLER."

White's Chocolate-house, June 30.

This day appeared here a figure of a person, whose services to the fair sex have reduced him to a kind of existence, for which there is no name. If there be a condition between life and death, without being absolutely dead or living, his state is that. His aspect and complexion in his robust days gave him the illustrious title of Africanus:[366] but it is not only from the warm climates in which he has served, nor from the disasters which he has suffered, that he deserves the same appellation with that renowned Roman; but the magnanimity with which he appears in his last moments, is what gives him the undoubted character of Hero. Cato stabbed himself, and Hannibal drank poison; but our Africanus lives in the continual puncture of aching bones and poisoned juices. The old heroes fled from torments by death, and this modern lives in death and torments, with a heart wholly bent upon a supply for remaining in them. An ordinary spirit would sink under his oppressions; but he makes an advantage of his very sorrow, and raises an income from his diseases. Long has this worthy been conversant in bartering, and knows, that when stocks are lowest, it is the time to buy. Therefore, with much prudence and tranquillity, he thinks, that now he has not a bone sound, but a thousand nodous parts for which the anatomists have not words, and more diseases than the College ever heard of, it is the only time to purchase an annuity for life. Sir Thomas[367] told me, it was an entertainment more surprising and pleasant than can be imagined, to see an inhabitant of neither world without hand to lift, or leg to move, scarce tongue to utter his meaning, so keen upon biting the whole world, and making bubbles at his exit. Sir Thomas added, that he would have bought twelve shillings a year of him, but that he feared there was some trick in it, and believed him already dead: "What!" says that knight, "is Mr. Partridge, whom I met just now going on both his legs firmer than I can, allowed to be quite dead; and shall Africanus, without one limb that can do its office, be pronounced alive?" What heightened the tragi-comedy of this market for annuities was, that the observation of it provoked Monoculus[368] (who is the most eloquent of all men) to many excellent reflections, which he spoke with the vehemence and language both of a gamester and an orator. "When I cast," said that delightful speaker, "my eye upon thee, thou unaccountable Africanus, I cannot but call myself as unaccountable as thou art; for certainly we were born to show what contradictions nature is pleased to form in the same species. Here am I, able to eat, to drink, to sleep, and do all acts of nature, except begetting my like; and yet by an unintelligible force of spleen and fancy, I every moment imagine I am dying. It is utter madness in thee to provide for supper; for I'll bet you ten to one, you don't live till half an hour after four; and yet I am so distracted as to be in fear every moment, though I'll lay ten to three, I drink three pints of burnt claret at your funeral three nights hence. After all, I envy thee; thou who dying hast no sense of death, art happier than one in health that[369] always fears it." The knight had gone on, but that a third man ended the scene by applauding the knight's eloquence and philosophy, in a laughter too violent for his own constitution, as much as he mocked that of Africanus and Monoculus.

St. James's Coffee-house, July 1.

This day arrived three mails from Holland, with advices relating to the posture of affairs in the Low Countries, which say, that the Confederate army extends from Luchin, on the causeway between Tournay and Lisle, to Epain near Mortagne on the Scheldt. The Marshal Villars remains in his camp at Lens; but it is said, he detached ten thousand men under the command of the Chevalier de Luxembourg, with orders to form a camp at Crepin on the Haine, between Condé and St. Guillain, where he is to be joined by the Elector of Bavaria with a body of troops, and after their conjunction, to attempt to march into Brabant. But they write from Brussels, that the Duke of Marlborough having it equally in his power to make detachments to the same parts, they are under no apprehensions from these reports for the safety of their country. They further add from Brussels, that they have good authority for believing that the French troops under the conduct of Marshal de Bezons are retiring out of Spain.[370]

[Footnote 363: Nichols argued that this and the two following numbers were by Addison. (1) At the end of No. 37 there is a list of errata for the preceding number. It was Addison's frequent practice to make verbal alterations in a preceding paper, and this Steele never did, except in rare cases, or where there was a positive mistake. (2) All the three papers are _superscribed_, as Addison's often were, and appear upon the face of them, to be of the nature, and in the number of those, for which Steele stood sponsor, and was very patiently traduced and calumniated, as he acknowledges to Congreve, in the Dedication prefixed to "The Drummer." There is nothing in the style or manner of any of the three that appears incongruous with such a supposition; and the nature of their principal contents seems to support it. They consist chiefly of pleasantries and oblique strokes, apparently on persons of fashion, in that age, of both sexes. It appears from the Dedication to "The Drummer," that Steele had Addison's direct injunctions to hide papers which he never did declare to be Addison's. The case, in short, seems to be, that as, as Steele says, there are communications in the course of this work, which Addison's modesty, so there are likewise others, which Addison's prudence, "would never have admitted to come into daylight, but under such a shelter." According to the usual rule where there is uncertainty, Steele's name is placed at the head of the papers in this edition. Probably he was responsible in any case for part of the contents of each of these numbers.]

[Footnote 364: Epsom was frequented for its mineral waters, and was also a favourite holiday resort. "At the Crown Coffee-house, behind the Royal Exchange, fresh Epsom water, with the rest of the purging waters, at 2d. per quart, and sold both winter and summer, and Epsom salt." (See "British Apollo," vol. iii. No. 15, 1710, and "Post Man," June 11, 1700.) "The New Wells at Epsom, with variety of raffling-shops, a billiard-table, and a bowling-green, and attended with a new set of music, are now open," &c. (_Flying Post_, Aug. 4-6, 1709.) The new Wells were opened on Easter Monday, 1709 (_Daily Courant_, April 23, 1709). We can form some idea of Epsom some years before, with its wells and bowling-green, from Shadwell's play, "Epsom Wells," 1673. See also No. 7.]

[Footnote 365: On July 8, 1709, Peter Wentworth wrote to Lord Raby: "I have not sent you the _Tatler_ of last Saturday, because I was told 'twas dull, but that persons judgement I shall take no more; for having since read it I think it diverting enough, the news from Epsom is almost matter of fact, wch makes the jest the better; the Ladys are city ladys, named Turners" ("Wentworth Papers," p. 93). This is confirmed by the MS. annotator mentioned in No. 4.]

[Footnote 366: "I like the description of Africanus, wch is Sir Scipio Hill ... Sir Scipio Hill with his new project of getting money occasions some diversion and talk at White's. You may have heard for this long while he was dieing of the ----; he now come abroad and look a divel, or at least a sad _memento mori_. He gives forescore guineas to receive ten guineas a quarter for his life, Sir James of the Peak is his agent, and runs about offering it all that will take. Boscowen has took it, and two or three more, who are of opinion he will not live a month. Those he had made his heirs does not approve of this whim, for he's resolved to dispose of all his ready money this way if he can find substantial fools enough to take it; but the crack begins to run as if he may live a great while for all he looks so ill, for he has recovered his voice to a miracle" (Peter Wentworth to Lord Raby, July 1 and 8, 1709; "Wentworth Papers," pp. 92-3).]

[Footnote 367: The waiter. See No. 16.]

[Footnote 368: Said to be Sir Humphrey Monoux, Bart., who was elected M.P. for Tavistock in 1728, and for Stockbridge in 1734. He succeeded to the baronetage in 1707, and died without issue in 1757.]

[Footnote 369: "Thou that hast no sense of death, art happier than one that" (folio; altered in Errata in No. 37).]

[Footnote 370: "This paper, with a blank leaf to write business on, may be had of J. Morphew, near Stationers'-hall" (folio).]

No. 37. [?STEELE.[371]

From _Saturday, July 2_, to _Tuesday, July 5_, 1709.

* * * * *

White's Chocolate-house, July 2.

It may be thought very unaccountable, that I,[372] who can never be supposed to go to White's, should pretend to talk to you of matters proper for, or in the style of, that place. But though I do not go to these public haunts, I receive visits from those who do; and for all they pretend so much to the contrary, they are as talkative as our sex, and as much at a loss to entertain the present company, without sacrificing the last, as we ourselves. This reflection has led me into the consideration of the use of speech; and made me look over in my memory all my acquaintance of both sexes, to know to which I may more justly impute the sin of superfluous discourse, with regard to conversation, and not entering into it as it respects religion. I foresee my acquaintance will immediately, upon starting this subject, ask me, how I shall celebrate Mrs. Alse Copswood,[373] the Yorkshire huntress, who is come to town lately, and moves as if she were on her nag, and going to take a five-bar gate; and is as loud as if she were following her dogs. I can easily answer that; for she is as soft as Damon, in comparison of her brother-in-law Tom Bellfrey,[374] who is the most accomplished man in this kingdom for all gentlemanlike activities and accomplishments. It is allowed, that he is a professed enemy to the Italian performers in music. But then for our own native manner, according to the customs and known usages of our island, he is to be preferred, for the generality of the pleasure he bestows, much above those fellows,[375] though they sing to full theatres. For what is a theatrical voice to that of a fox-hunter? I have been at a musical entertainment in an open field, where it amazed me to hear to what pitches the chief masters would reach. There was a meeting near our seat in Staffordshire, and the most eminent of all the counties of England were at it. How wonderful was the harmony between men and dogs! Robin Cartail of Bucks was to answer to Jowler; Mr. Tinbreast of Cornwall was appointed to open with Sweetlips, and Beau Slimber, a Londoner, undertook to keep up with Trips, a whelp just set in: Tom Bellfrey and Ringwood were coupled together, to fill the cry on all occasions, and be in at the death of the fox, hare, or stag; for which both the dog and the man were excellently suited, and loved one another, and were as much together as Banister and King. When Jowler first alarmed the field, Cartail repeated every note; Sweetlips' treble succeeded, and shook the wood; Tinbreast echoed a quarter of a mile beyond it. We were soon after all at a loss, till we rid up, and found Trips and Slimber at a default in half-notes: but the day and the tune was recovered by Tom Bellfrey and Ringwood, to the great joy of us all, though they drowned every other voice: for Bellfrey carries a note four furlongs, three rood, and six paces, farther than any other in England. But I fear the mention of this will be thought a digression from my purpose about speech: but I answer, No. Since this is used where speech rather should be employed, it may come into consideration in the same chapter: for Mr. Bellfrey being at a visit where I was, viz., his cousin's (Lady Dainty's) in Soho, was asked, what entertainments they had in the country? Now Bellfrey is very ignorant, and much a clown; but confident withal. In a word, he struck up a fox-chase: Lady Dainty's dog, Mr. Sippet, as she calls him, started and jumped out of his lady's lap, and fell a barking. Bellfrey went on, and called all the neighbouring parishes into the square. Never was woman in such confusion as that delicate lady. But there was no stopping her kinsman. A room full of ladies fell into the most violent laughter: my lady looked as if she was shrieking; Mr. Sippet in the middle of the room, breaking his heart with barking, but all of us unheard. As soon as Bellfrey became silent, up gets my lady, and takes him by the arm to lead him off: Bellfrey was in his boots. As she was hurrying him away, his spurs takes hold of her petticoat; his whip throws down a cabinet of china: he cries, "What! are your crocks rotten? Are your petticoats ragged? A man can't walk in your house for trincums." Every county of Great Britain has one hundred or more of this sort of fellows, who roar instead of speaking. Therefore if it be true, that we women are also given to greater fluency of words than is necessary, sure one that disturbs but a room or a family is more to be tolerated, than one who draws together parishes and counties, and sometimes (with an estate that might make him the blessing and ornament of the world around him) has no other view and ambition, but to be an animal above dogs and horses, without the relish of any one enjoyment, which is peculiar to the faculties of human nature. But I know it will here be said, that talking of mere country squires at this rate, is, as it were, to write against Valentine or Orson. To prove anything against the race of men, you must take them as they are adorned with education, as they live in Courts, or have received instructions in colleges.

But I was so full of my late entertainment by Mr. Bellfrey, that I must defer pursuing this subject to another day; and waive the proper observations upon the different offenders in this kind, some by profound eloquence, on small occasions, others by degrading speech upon great circumstances. Expect therefore to hear of the whisperer without business, the laugher without wit, the complainer without receiving injuries, and a very large crowd, which I shall not forestall, who are common (though not commonly observed) impertinents, whose tongues are too voluble for their brains, and are the general despisers of us women, though we have their superiors, the men of sense, for our servants.[376]

St. James's Coffee-house, July 4.

There has arrived no mail since our last; so that we have no manner of foreign news, except we were to give you, for such, the many speculations which are on foot concerning what was imported by the last advices. There are, it seems, sixty battalions and seventeen squadrons appointed to serve in the siege of Tournay; the garrison of which place consists but of eleven battalions and four squadrons. Letters of the 29th of the last month from Berlin have brought advice, that the Kings of Denmark, Prussia, and his Majesty Augustus, were within few days to come to an interview at Potsdam. These letters mention, that two Polish princes of the family of the Sapicha and Lubermirsky, lately arrived from Paris, confirm the reports of the misery in France for want of provisions, and give a particular instance of it, which is, that on the day Monsieur Rouillé returned to Court, the common people gathered in crowds about the Dauphin's coach, crying, "Peace and bread, bread and peace."

Mrs. Distaff has taken upon her, while she writes this paper, to turn her thoughts wholly to the service of her own sex, and to propose remedies against the greatest vexations attending female life. She has for this end written a small treatise concerning the second word, with an appendix on the use of a reply, very useful to all such as are married to persons either ill-bred or ill-natured. There is in this tract a digression for the use of virgins concerning the words, "I will."

A gentlewoman who has a very delicate ear, wants a maid who can whisper, and help her in the government of her family. If the said servant can clear-starch, lisp, and tread softly, she shall have suitable encouragement in her wages.

[Footnote 371: See note to No. 36.]

[Footnote 372: Jenny Distaff.]

[Footnote 373: The Jacobite Archbishop of York, Dr. John Sharpe, who died in 1713. See _Examiner_, vol. iv. No. 22.]

[Footnote 374: Dr. Blackall (1654-1716), who was made Bishop of Exeter in 1708.]

[Footnote 375: The French Prophets, from the Cevennes. Dr. Blackall's sermon against them was printed by order of the Queen.]

[Footnote 376: The following article appeared only in the folio issue:--

Will's Coffee-house, July 3.

A very ingenious gentleman was complaining this evening, that the players are grown so severe critics, that they would not take in his play, though it has as many fine things in it as any play that has been writ since the days of Dryden. He began his discourse about his play with a preface.

"There is," said he, "somewhat (however we palliate it) in the very frame and make of us, that subjects our minds to chagrin and irresolution on any emergency of time or place. The difficulty grows on our sickened imagination, under all the killing circumstances of danger and disappointment. This we see, not only in the men of retirement and fancy, but in the characters of the men of action; with this only difference, the coward sees the danger, and sickens under it; the hero, warmed by the difficulty, dilates, and rises in proportion to that, and in some sort makes use of his very fears to disarm it. A remarkable instance of this we have in the great Cæsar, when he came to the Rubicon, and was entering upon a part, perhaps, the most hazardous he ever bore (certainly the most ungrateful), a war with his countrymen. When his mind brooded over personal affronts, perhaps his anger burned with a desire of revenge. But when more serious reflections laid before him the hazard of the enterprise, with the dismal consequences which were likely to attend it, aggravated by a special circumstance, What figure it would bear in the world, or how be excused to posterity. What shall he do?--His honour, which was his religion, bids him arm; and he sounds the inclinations of his party, by this set speech:

#_CÆSAR_ to his Party at the Rubicon.#

Great Jove, attend, and thou my native soil, Safe in my triumphs, glutted in my spoil; Witness with what reluctance I oppose My arms to thine, secure of other foes. What passive breast can bear disgrace like mine? Traitor!--For this I conquered on the Rhine, Endured their ten years' drudgery in Gaul, Adjourned their fate, and saved the Capitol. I grew by every guilty triumph less; The crowd, when drunk with joy, their souls express, Impatient of the war, yet fear success. Brave actions dazzle with too bright a ray, Like birds obscene they chatter at the day; Giddy with rule, and valiant in debate, They throw the die of war, to save the state; And gods! to gild ingratitude with fame, Assume the patriot's, we the rebel's name. Farewell, my friends, your general forlorn, To your bare pity, and the public scorn, Must lay that honour and his laurel down, To serve the vain caprices of the gown; Exposed to all indignities, the brave Deserve of those they gloried but to save, To rods and axes!--No, the slaves can't dare Play with my grief, and tempt my last despair. This shall the honours which it won maintain, Or do me justice, ere I hug my chain."

The reason for cancelling this article when these papers were republished in octavo, is obvious; for, being printed by Steele, it would naturally be applied to the circumstances in which the Duke of Marlborough was at that time: "The Duke having his commission under the Great Seal, the order of the Queen was not sufficient to dissolve his power. His friends advised him to assemble, by his authority as general, all the troops in London, in the different squares, and to take possession of St. James's, and the person of the Queen. Oxford, apprised of this design, suddenly called together the Cabinet Council. Though he probably concealed his intelligence to prevent their fears, he told them of the necessity of superseding Marlborough under the Great Seal. This business was soon despatched. His dismission in form was sent to the Duke. The Earl of Oxford, no stranger to the character of Marlborough, knew that he would not act against law, by assembling the troops. The natural diffidence of his disposition had made him unfit for enterprises of danger, in a degree that furnished his enemies with insinuations against his personal courage."--(Macpherson's "State Papers," quoted by Nichols.)]

No. 38. [?STEELE.[377]

From _Tuesday, July 5_, to _Thursday, July 7, 1709._

* * * * *

From my own Apartment, July 6.

I find among my brother's papers the following letter verbatim, which I wonder how he could suppress so long as he has, since it was sent him for no other end, but to show the good effect his writings have already had upon the ill customs of the age.

"London, _June 23_.

"SIR,

"The end of all public papers ought to be the benefit and instruction, as well as the diversion of the readers: to which I see none so truly conducive as your late performances; especially those tending to the rooting out from amongst us that unchristianlike and bloody custom of duelling; which, that you have already in some measure performed, will appear to the public in the following no less true than heroic story.

"A noble gentleman of this city, who has the honour of serving his country as major in the train-bands, being at that general mart of stockjobbers called Jonathan's,[378] endeavouring to raise himself (as all men of honour ought) to the degree of colonel at least; it happened that he bought the 'bear'[379] of another officer, who, though not commissioned in the army, yet no less eminently serves the public than the other, in raising the credit of the kingdom, by raising that of the stocks. However, having sold the 'bear,' and words arising about the delivery, the most noble major, no less scorning to be outwitted in the coffee-house, than to run into the field, according to method, abused the other with the titles of, 'rogue,' 'villain,' 'bearskin-man,' and the like. Whereupon satisfaction was demanded, and accepted: so, forth the major marched, commanding his adversary to follow. To a most spacious room in the sheriff's house, near the place of quarrel, they come; where, having due regard to what you have lately published, they resolved not to shed one another's blood in that barbarous manner you prohibited; yet, not willing to put up affronts without satisfaction, they stripped, and in decent manner fought full fairly with their wrathful hands. The combat lasted a quarter of an hour; in which time victory was often doubtful, and many a dry blow was strenuously laid on by each side, till the major finding his adversary obstinate, unwilling to give him further chastisement, with most shrill voice cried out, 'I am satisfied, enough.' Whereupon the combat ceased, and both were friends immediately.

"Thus the world may see, how necessary it is to encourage those men who make it their business to instruct the people in everything necessary for their preservation. I am informed, a body of worthy citizens have agreed on an address of thanks to you for what you have writ on the foregoing subject, whereby they acknowledge one of their highly esteemed officers preserved from death.

"Your humble Servant,

"A. B."

I fear the word "bear" is hardly to be understood among the polite people; but I take the meaning to be, that one who ensures a real value upon an imaginary thing, is said to sell a "bear," and is the same thing as a promise among courtiers, or a vow between lovers. I have writ to my brother to hasten to town; and hope, that printing the letters directed to him, which I knew not how to answer, will bring him speedily; and therefore I add also the following:

"_July 5_, 1709.

"MR. BICKERSTAFF,

You having hinted a generous intention of taking under your consideration the whisperers without business, and laughers without occasion; as you tender the welfare of your country, I entreat you not to forget or delay so public-spirited a work. Now or never is the time. Many other calamities may cease with the war; but I dismally dread the multiplication of these mortals under the ease and luxuriousness of a settled peace, half the blessing of which may be destroyed by them. Their mistake lies certainly here, in a wretched belief, that their mimicry passes for real business, or true wit. Dear sir, convince them, that it never was, is, or ever will be, either of them; nor ever did, does, or to all futurity ever can, look like either of them; but that it is the most cursed disturbance in nature, which is possible to be inflicted on mankind, under the noble definition of a sociable creature. In doing this, sir, you will oblige more humble servants than can find room to subscribe their names."

White's Chocolate-house, July 6.

In pursuance of my last date from hence, I am to proceed on the accounts I promised of several personages among the men, whose conspicuous fortunes, or ambition in showing their follies, have exalted them above their fellows: the levity of their minds is visible in their every word and gesture, and there is not a day passes but puts me in mind of Mr. Wycherley's character of a coxcomb: "He is ugly all over with the affectation of the fine gentleman." Now though the women may put on softness in their looks, or affected severity, or impertinent gaiety, or pert smartness, their self-love and admiration cannot, under any of these disguises, appear so invincible as that of the men. You may easily take notice, that in all their actions there is a secret approbation, either in the tone of their voice, the turn of their body, or cast of their eye, which shows that they are extremely in their own favour. Take one of your men of business, he shall keep you half an hour with your hat off, entertaining you with his consideration of that affair you spoke of to him last, till he has drawn a crowd that observes you in this grimace. Then when he is public enough, he immediately runs into secrets, and falls a whispering. You and he make breaks with adverbs; as, "But however, thus far"; and then you whisper again, and so on, till they who are about you are dispersed, and your busy man's vanity is no longer gratified by the notice taken of what importance he is, and how inconsiderable you are; for your pretender to business is never in secret, but in public. There is my dear Lord Nowhere, of all men the most gracious and most obliging, the terror of all _valets-de-chambre_, whom he oppresses with good breeding, in inquiring for my good lord, and for my good lady's health. This inimitable courtier will whisper a privy councillor's lackey with the utmost goodness and condescension, to know when they next sit; and is thoroughly taken up, and thinks he has a part in a secret, if he knows that there is a secret. "What it is," he will whisper you, "that time will discover"; then he shrugs, and calls you back again--"Sir, I need not say to you, that these things are not to be spoken of--and hark you, no names, I would not be quoted." What adds to the jest is, that his emptiness has its moods and seasons, and he will not condescend to let you into these his discoveries, except he is in very good humour, or has seen somebody in fashion talk to you. He will keep his nothing to himself, and pass by and overlook as well as the best of them; not observing that he is insolent when he is gracious, and obliging when he is haughty. Show me a woman so inconsiderable as this frequent character. But my mind (now I am in) turns to many no less observable: thou dear Will Shoestring![380] I profess myself in love with thee: how shall I speak thee? How shall I address thee? How shall I draw thee? Thou dear outside! Will you be combing your wig,[381] playing with your box, or picking your teeth? Or choosest thou rather to be speaking; to be speaking for thy only purpose in speaking, to show your teeth? Rub them no longer, dear Shoestring: do not premeditate murder: do not for ever whiten: Oh! that for my quiet and his own they were rotten. But I will forget him, and give my hand to the courteous Umbra; he is a fine man indeed, but the soft creature bows below my apron-string before he takes it; but after the first ceremonies, he is as familiar as my physician, and his insignificancy makes me half ready to complain to him of all I would to my doctor. But he is so courteous, that he carries half the messages of ladies' ails in town to their midwives and nurses. He understands too the art of medicine as far as to the cure of a pimple or a rash. On occasions of the like importance, he is the most assiduous of all men living, in consulting and searching precedents from family to family; and then he speaks of his obsequiousness and diligence in the style of real services. If you sneer at him, and thank him for his great friendship, he bows, and says, "Madam, all the good offices in my power, while I have any knowledge or credit, shall be at your service." The consideration of so shallow a being, and the intent application with which he pursues trifles, has made me carefully reflect upon that sort of men we usually call an Impertinent: and I am, upon mature deliberation, so far from being offended with him, that I am really obliged to him; for though he will take you aside, and talk half an hour to you upon matters wholly insignificant with the most solemn air, yet I consider, that these things are of weight in his imagination, and he thinks he is communicating what is for my service. If therefore it be a just rule to judge of a man by his intention, according to the equity of good breeding, he that is impertinently kind or wise, to do you service, ought in return to have a proportionable place both in your affection and esteem; so that the courteous Umbra deserves the favour of all his acquaintance; for though he never served them, he is ever willing to do it, and believes he does it. But as impotent kindness is to be returned with all our abilities to oblige, so impotent malice is to be treated with all our force to depress it. For this reason Flyblow (who is received in all the families in town through the degeneracy and iniquity of their manners) is to be treated like a knave, though he is one of the weakest of fools: he has by rote, and at second-hand, all that can be said of any man of figure, wit, and virtue in town. Name a man of worth, and this creature tells you the worst passage of his life. Speak of a beautiful woman, and this puppy will whisper the next man to him, though he has nothing to say of her. He is a Fly that feeds on the sore part, and would have nothing to live on, if the whole body were in health. You may know him by the frequency of pronouncing the particle "but"; for which reason I never hear him spoke of with common charity, without using my "but" against him: for a friend of mine saying the other day, Mrs. Distaff has wit, good humour, virtue, and friendship, this oaf added, "'But' she is not handsome." Coxcomb! The gentleman was saying what I was, not what I was not.

St. James's Coffee-house, July 6.

The approaches before Tournay have been carried on with great success; and our advices from the camp before that place of the 11th instant say, that they had already made a lodgment on the glacis. Two hundred boats were come up the Scheldt with a heavy artillery and ammunition, which would be employed in dismounting the enemy's defences, and raised on the batteries the 15th. A great body of miners are summoned to the camp to countermine the works of the enemy. We are convinced of the weakness of the garrison, by a certain account, that they called a council of war, to consult whether it was not advisable to march into the citadel, and leave the town defenceless. We are assured, that when the Confederate army was advancing towards the camp of Marshal Villars, that general despatched a courier to his master with a letter, giving an account of their approach, which concluded with the following words: "The day begins to break, and your Majesty's army is already in order of battle. Before noon, I hope to have the honour of congratulating your Majesty on the success of a great action; and you shall be very well satisfied with the Marshal Villars."

It is to be noted, that when any part of this paper appears dull, there is a design in it.[382]

[Footnote 377: See note to No. 36.]

[Footnote 378: A coffee-house in Change Alley. See _Spectator_, No. 1, and Mrs. Centlivre's "Bold Stroke for a Wife."]

[Footnote 379: See No. 7.]

[Footnote 380: Sir William Whitlocke, Knt., Member for Oxon, Bencher of the Middle Temple. He is the learned knight mentioned in No. 43 (Percy). This is confirmed by the MS. annotator mentioned in a note to No. 4. Nichols explains that Whitlocke is called Will Shoestring, for his singularity in using shoe-strings, so long after the era of shoe-buckles, which commenced in the reign of Charles II., although ordinary people, and such as affected plainness in their garb, wore strings in their shoes after that time.]

[Footnote 381: "Combing the peruke, at the time when men of fashion wore large wigs, was even at public places an act of gallantry. The combs, for this purpose, were of a very large size, of ivory or tortoise-shell, curiously chased and ornamented, and were carried in the pocket as constantly as the snuff-box. At Court, on the Mall, and in the boxes, gentlemen conversed and combed their perukes "(Sir John Hawkins' "Hist, of Music," vol. iv. p. 447, note). Cf. Dryden's prologue to "Almanzor and Almahide":--

"But as when vizard mask appears in pit, Straight every man who thinks himself a wit, Perks up; and managing his comb with grace, With his white wig sets off his nut-brown face."

And "The Fortune Hunters," act i. sc. 2 (1689): "He looked, indeed, and sighed, and set his cravat-string, and sighed again, and combed his periwig: sighed a third time, and then took snuff, I guess to show the whiteness of his hand." See, too, Wycherley's "Love in a Wood," act iii. sc. 1:--

"DAPPERWIT. Let me prune and flounce my perruque a little for her; there's ne'er a young fellow in the town but will do as much for a mere stranger in the play-house.

"RANGER. A wit's wig has the privilege of being uncombed in the very play-house, or in the presence--

"DAPPERWIT. But not in the presence of his mistress; 'tis a greater neglect of her than himself; pray lend me your comb.... She comes, she comes; pray, your comb. (_Snatches_ RANGER'S _comb_.)"]

[Footnote 382: "Mrs. Distaff hath received the Dialogue dated Monday evening, which she has sent forward to Mr. Bickerstaff at Maidenhead: and in the meantime gives her service to the parties" (folio).]

No. 39. [STEELE.

By ISAAC BICKERSTAFF, Esq.

From _Thursday, July 7_, to _Saturday, July 9_, 1709.

* * * * *

Grecian Coffee-house, July 7.

As I am called forth by the immense love I bear to my fellow creatures, and the warm inclination I feel within me, to stem, as far as I can, the prevailing torrent of vice and ignorance; so I cannot more properly pursue that noble impulse, than by setting forth the excellence of virtue and knowledge in their native and beautiful colours. For this reason I made my late excursion to Oxford, where those qualities appear in their highest lustre, and are the only pretences to honour and distinction: superiority is there given in proportion to men's advancement in wisdom and learning; and that just rule of life is so universally received among those happy people, that you shall see an earl walk bareheaded to the son of the meanest artificer, in respect to seven years more worth and knowledge than the nobleman is possessed of. In other places they bow to men's fortunes, but here to their understandings. It is not to be expressed, how pleasing the order, the discipline, the regularity of their lives, is to a philosopher, who has, by many years' experience in the world, learned to contemn everything but what is revered in this mansion of select and well-taught spirits. The magnificence of their palaces, the greatness of their revenues, the sweetness of their groves and retirements, seem equally adapted for the residence of princes and philosophers; and a familiarity with objects of splendour, as well as places of recess, prepares the inhabitants with an equanimity for their future fortunes, whether humble or illustrious. How was I pleased when I looked round at St. Mary's, and could, in the faces of the ingenious youth, see ministers of state, chancellors, bishops, and judges. Here only is human life! Here only the life of man is a rational being! Here men understand and are employed in works worthy their noble nature. This transitory being passes away in an employment not unworthy a future state, the contemplation of the great decrees of Providence. Each man lives as if he were to answer the questions made to Job, "Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?... Who shut up the sea with doors, ... and said, Hitherto shalt thou come, and no further?"[383] Such speculations make life agreeable, make death welcome, But alas! I was torn from this noble society by the business of this dirty mean world, and the cares of fortune: for I was obliged to be in town against the 7th day of the term, and accordingly governed myself by my Oxford Almanack, and came last night; but find, to my great astonishment, that this ignorant town began the term on the 24th of the last month, in opposition to all the learning and astronomy of the famous university of which I have been speaking; according to which, the term certainly was to commence on the 1st instant.[384] You may be sure, a man who has turned his studies as I have, could not be mistaken in point of time; for knowing I was to come to town in term, I examined the passing moments very narrowly, and called an eminent astronomer to my assistance. Upon very strict observation we found, that the cold has been so severe this last winter (which is allowed to have a benumbing quality), that it retarded the earth in moving round from Christmas to this season full seven days and two seconds. My learned friend assured me further, that the earth had lately received a shog from a comet that crossed its vortex, which, if it had come ten degrees nearer us, had made us lose this whole term. I was indeed once of opinion, that the Gregorian computation was the most regular, as being eleven days before the Julian; but am now fully convinced, that we ought to be seven days after the chancellor and judges, and eighteen before the Pope of Rome; and that the Oxonian computation is the best of the three. These are the reasons which I have gathered from philosophy and nature; to which I can add other circumstances in vindication of the account of this learned body who published this almanack. It is notorious to philosophers, that joy and grief can hasten and delay time. Mr. Locke is of opinion, that a man in great misery may so far lose his measure, as to think a minute an hour; or in joy, make an hour a minute. Let us examine the present case by this rule, and we shall find, that the cause of this general mistake in the British nation, has been the great success of the last campaign, and the following hopes of peace. Stocks ran so high at the 'Change, that the citizens had gained three days of the courtiers; and we have indeed been so happy this reign, that if the University did not rectify our mistakes, we should think ourselves but in the second year of her present Majesty. It would be endless to enumerate the many damages that have happened by this ignorance of the vulgar. All the recognisances within the Diocese of Oxford have been forfeited, for not appearing on the first day of this fictitious term. The University has been nonsuited in their action against the booksellers for printing Clarendon in quarto. But indeed what gives me the most quick concern, is the case of a poor gentleman my friend, who was the other day taken in execution by a set of ignorant bailiffs. He should, it seems, have pleaded in the first week of term; but being a Master of Arts of Oxford, he would not recede from the Oxonian computation. He showed Mr. Broad the almanack, and the very day when the term began; but the merciless ignorant fellow, against all sense and learning, would hurry him away. He went indeed quietly enough; but he has taken exact notes of the time of arrest, and sufficient witnesses of his being carried into gaol; and has, by advice of the Recorder of Oxford, brought his action; and we doubt not but we shall pay them off with damages, and blemish the reputation of Mr. Broad. We have one convincing proof, which all that frequent the Courts of Justice are witnesses of: the dog that comes constantly to Westminster on the first day of the term, did not appear till the first day according to the Oxford Almanack; whose instinct I take to be a better guide than men's erroneous opinions, which are usually biased by interest. I judge in this case, as King Charles II. victualled his navy, with the bread which one of his dogs chose of several pieces thrown before him, rather than trust to the asseverations of the victuallers. Mr. Cowper,[385] and other learned counsel, have already urged the authority of this almanack, in behalf of their clients. We shall therefore go on with all speed in our cause; and doubt not, but Chancery will give at the end what we lost in the beginning, by protracting the term for us till Wednesday come se'nnight: and the University orator shall for ever pray, &c.

From my own Apartment, July 7.

The subject of duels[386] has, I find, been started with so good success, that it has been the frequent subject of conversation among polite men; and a dialogue of that kind has been transmitted to me verbatim, as follows. The persons concerned in it are men of honour, and experience in the manners of men, and have fallen upon the truest foundation, as well as searched the bottom, of this evil.

Mr. SAGE. If it were in my power, every man that drew his sword, unless in the Service, or purely to defend his life, person, or goods, from violence (I mean abstracted from all punctos or whims of honour) should ride the wooden horse in the Tilt Yard[387] for such first offence, for the second stand in the pillory, and for the third be prisoner in Bedlam for life.

Col. PLUME. I remember, that a rencounter or duel was so far from being in fashion among the officers that served in the Parliament army, that on the contrary, it was as disreputable, and as great an impediment to advancement in the Service, as being bashful in time of action.

Sir MARK. Yet I have been informed by some old Cavaliers, of famous reputation for brave and gallant men, that they were much more in mode among their party, than they have been during this last war.

Col. PLUME. That is true too, sir. Mr. SAGE. By what you say, gentlemen, one should think that our present military officers are compounded of an equal proportion of both those tempers; since duels are neither quite discountenanced, nor much in vogue.

Sir MARK. That difference of temper, in regard to duels, which appears to have been between the Court and Parliament-men of the sword, was not (I conceive) for want of courage in the latter, nor of a liberal education; because there were some of the best families in England engaged in that party; but gallantry and mode, which glitter agreeably to the imagination, were encouraged by the Court, as promoting its splendour; and it was as natural that the contrary party (who were to recommend themselves to the public for men of serious and solid parts) should deviate from everything chimerical.

Mr. SAGE. I have never read of a duel among the Romans; and yet their nobility used more liberty with their tongues than one may do now without being challenged.

Sir MARK. Perhaps the Romans were of opinion, that ill language, and brutal manners, reflected only on those who were guilty of them; and that a man's reputation was not at all cleared by cutting the person's throat who had reflected upon it: but the custom of those times had fixed the scandal in the action; whereas now it lies in the reproach.

Mr. SAGE. And yet the only sort of duel that one can conceive to have been fought upon motives truly honourable and allowable, was that between the Horatii and Curiatii.

Sir MARK. Colonel Plume, pray what was the method of single combat in your time among the Cavaliers? I suppose, that as the use of clothes continues, though the fashion of them has been mutable; so duels, though still in use, have had in all times their particular modes of performance.

Col. PLUME. We had no constant rule, but generally conducted our dispute and tilt according to the last that had happened between persons of reputation among the very top fellows for bravery and gallantry.

Sir MARK. If the fashion of quarrelling and tilting was so often changed in your time, Colonel Plume, a man might fight, yet lose his credit for want of understanding the fashion.

Col. PLUME. Why, Sir Mark, in the beginning of July, a man would have been censured for want of courage, or been thought indigent of the true notions of honour, if he had put up [with] words, which in the end of September following, one could not resent without passing for a brutal and quarrelsome fellow.

Sir MARK. But, Colonel, were duels or rencounters most in fashion in those days?

Col. PLUME. Your men of nice honour, sir, were for avoiding all censure of advantage which they supposed might be taken in a rencounter; therefore they used seconds, who were to see that all was upon the square, and make a faithful report of the whole combat; but in a little time it became a fashion for the seconds to fight, and I'll tell you how it happened.

Mr. SAGE. Pray do, Colonel Plume, and the method of a duel at that time, and give us some notion of the punctos upon which your nice men quarrelled in those days.

Col. PLUME. I was going to tell you, Mr. Sage, that one Cornet Modish had desired his friend, Captain Smart's, opinion in some affair, but did not follow it; upon which Captain Smart sent Major Adroit (a very topping fellow of those times) to the person that had slighted his advice. The Major never inquired into the quarrel, because it was not the manner then among the very topping fellows; but got two swords of an equal length, and then waited upon Cornet Modish, desiring him to choose his sword, and meet his friend Captain Smart. Cornet Modish came with his friend to the place of combat; there the principals put on their pumps, and stripped to their shirts, to show they had nothing but what men of honour carry about them, and then engaged.

Sir MARK. And did the seconds stand by, sir?

Col. PLUME. It was a received custom till that time; but the swords of those days being pretty long, and the principals acting on both sides upon the defensive, and the morning being frosty, Major Adroit desired that the other second, who was also a very topping fellow, would try a thrust or two only to keep them warm, till the principals had decided the matter, which was agreed to by Modish's second, who presently whipped Adroit through the body, disarmed him, and then parted the principals, who had received no harm at all.

Mr. SAGE. But was not Adroit laughed at?

Col. PLUME. On the contrary, the very topping fellows were ever after of opinion, that no man who deserved that character, could serve as a second, without fighting; and the Smarts and Modishes finding their account in it, the humour took without opposition.

Mr. SAGE. Pray, Colonel, how long did that fashion continue?

Col. PLUME, Not long neither, Mr. Sage; for as soon as it became a fashion, the very topping fellows thought their honour reflected upon, if they did not proffer themselves as seconds when any of their friends had a quarrel; so that sometimes there were a dozen of a side.

Sir MARK. Bless me! If that custom had continued, we should have been at a loss now for our very pretty fellows; for they seem to be the proper men to officer, animate, and keep up an army: but, pray, sir, how did that sociable manner of tilting grow out of mode?

Col. PLUME. Why, sir, I'll tell you; it was a law among the combatants, that the party which happened to have the first man disarmed or killed, should yield as vanquished; which some people thought might encourage the Modishes and Smarts in quarrelling, to the destruction of only the very topping fellows; and as soon as this reflection was started, the very topping fellows thought it an incumbrance upon their honour to fight at all themselves. Since that time, the Modishes and the Smarts, throughout all Europe, have extolled the French king's edict.

Sir MARK. Our very pretty fellows, whom I take to be the successors of the very topping fellows, think a quarrel so little fashionable, that they will not be exposed to it by another man's vanity, or want of sense.

Mr. SAGE. But, Colonel, I have observed in your account of duels, that there was a great exactness in avoiding all advantage that might possibly be between the combatants.

Col. PLUME. That's true, sir; for the weapons were always equal.

Mr. SAGE. Yes, sir; but suppose an active, adroit, strong man, had insulted an awkward, or a feeble, or an unpractised swordsman.

Col. PLUME. Then, sir, they fought with pistols.

Mr. SAGE. But, sir, there might be a certain advantage that way; for a good marksman will be sure to hit his man at twenty yards distance; and a man whose hand shakes (which is common to men that debauch in pleasures, or have not used pistols out of their holsters) won't venture to fire, unless he touches the person he shoots at. Now, sir, I am of opinion, that one can get no honour in killing a man (if one has it all rug,[388] as the gamesters say), when they have a trick to make the game secure, though they seem to play upon the square.

Sir MARK. In truth, Mr. Sage, I think such a fact must be murder in a man's own private conscience, whatever it may appear to the world.

Col. PLUME. I have known some men so nice, that they would not fight but upon a cloak without pistols.

Mr. SAGE. I believe a custom, well established, would outdo the Grand Monarch's edict.[389]

Sir MARK. And bullies would then leave off their long swords; but I don't find that a very pretty fellow can stay to change his sword, when he is insulted by a bully with a long diego,[390] though his own at the same time be no longer than a penknife; which will certainly be the case, if such little swords are in mode. Pray, Colonel, how was it between the hectors of your time and the very topping fellows?

Col. PLUME. Sir, long swords happened to be generally worn in those times.

Mr. SAGE. In answer to what you were saying, Sir Mark, give me leave to inform you, that your knights-errant (who were the very pretty fellows of those ancient times) thought they could not honourably yield, though they had fought their own trusty weapons to the stumps; but would venture as boldly with the page's leaden sword, as if it had been of enchanted metal. Whence I conceive, there must be a spice of romantic gallantry in the composition of that very pretty fellow.

Sir MARK. I am of opinion, Mr. Sage, that fashion governs a very pretty fellow; nature, or common sense, your ordinary persons, and sometimes men of fine parts.

Mr. SAGE. But what is the reason, that men of the most excellent sense and morals (in other points) associate their understandings with the very pretty fellows in that chimæra of a duel?

Sir MARK. There's no disputing against so great a majority.

Mr. SAGE. But there is one scruple (Colonel Plume) and I have done: don't you believe there may be some advantage even upon a cloak with pistols, which a man of nice honour would scruple to take?

Col. PLUME. Faith, I can't tell, sir; but since one may reasonably suppose, that (in such a case) there can be but one so far in the wrong as to occasion matters to come to that extremity, I think the chance of being killed should fall but on one; whereas by their close and desperate manner of fighting, it may very probably happen to both.

Sir MARK. Why, gentlemen, if they are men of such nice honour (and must fight), there will be no fear of foul play, if they threw up cross or pile[391] who should be shot.

[Footnote 383: Job xxxviii. 4, 8, 11.]

[Footnote 384: There was a difference between the University terms and the Law terms.]

[Footnote 385: Spencer Cowper (1669-1727), brother of Earl Cowper, and afterwards a judge of the Common Pleas. He was one of the managers of the impeachment of Sacheverell in 1710.]

[Footnote 386: See Nos. 25, 26, 29, 31, 38, 205.]

[Footnote 387: At Whitehall.]

[Footnote 388: _Cf._ "Wentworth Papers," p. 394: "June 29, 1714. The changes at Court does not go so rug as some people expected and gave out, that 'twas to be all intire Tory with the least seeming mixture of Whigs."]

[Footnote 389: See _Spectator_, No. 97.]

[Footnote 390: A sword. Don Diego was a familiar name for a Spaniard with both English and French writers in the seventeenth century. San Diego is a corruption of Santiago (St. James), the patron saint of Spain.]

[Footnote 391: A pillar, the design on one side of a coin, bearing on the other a cross. Swift says, "This I humbly conceive to be perfect boys' play; cross, I win, and pile, you lose."]

No. 40. [STEELE.

From _Saturday, July 9_, to _Tuesday, July 12_, 1709.

* * * * *

Will's Coffee-house, July 11.

Letters from the city of London give an account of a very great consternation that place is in at present, by reason of a late inquiry made at Guildhall, whether a noble person[392] has parts enough to deserve the enjoyment of the great estate of which he is possessed. The city is apprehensive that this precedent may go further than was at first imagined. The person against whom this inquisition is set up by his relations, is a peer of a neighbouring kingdom, and has in his youth made some few bulls, by which it is insinuated, that he has forfeited his goods and chattels. This is the more astonishing, in that there are many persons in the said city who are still more guilty than his lordship, and who, though they are idiots, do not only possess, but have also themselves acquired great estates, contrary to the known laws of this realm, which vests their possessions in the Crown. There is a gentleman of this coffee-house at this time exhibiting a bill in Chancery against his father's younger brother, who by some strange magic has arrived at the value of half a plum, as the citizens call a hundred thousand pounds; and in all the time of growing up to that wealth, was never known in any of his ordinary words or actions to discover any proof of reason. Upon this foundation my friend has set forth, that he is illegally master of his coffers, and has writ two epigrams to signify his own pretensions and sufficiency for spending that estate. He has inserted in his plea some things which I fear will give offence; for he pretends to argue, that though a man has a little of the knave mixed with the fool, he is nevertheless liable to the loss of goods; and makes the abuse of reason as just an avoidance of an estate as the total absence of it. This is what can never pass; but witty men are so full of themselves, that there is no persuading them; and my friend will not be convinced, but that upon quoting Solomon, who always used the word "fool" as a term of the same signification with "unjust," and makes all deviation from goodness and virtue to come under the notion of folly--I say, he doubts not, but by the force of this authority, let his idiot uncle appear never so great a knave, he shall prove him a fool at the same time. This affair led the company here into an examination of these points; and none coming here but wits, what was asserted by a young lawyer, that a lunatic is in the care of the Chancery, but a fool in that of the Crown, was received with general indignation. "Why that?" says old Renault. "Why that? Why must a fool be a courtier more than a madman? This is the iniquity of this dull age: I remember the time when it went on the mad side; all your top wits were scowrers,[393] rakes, roarers, and demolishers of windows. I remember a mad lord who was drunk five years together, and was the envy of that age, and is faintly imitated by the dull pretenders to vice and madness in this. Had he lived to this day, there had not been a fool in fashion in the whole kingdom." When Renault had done speaking, a very worthy man assumed the discourse: "This is," said he, "Mr. Bickerstaff, a proper argument for you to treat in your article from this place; and if you would send your Pacolet into all our brains, you would find, that a little fibre or valve, scarce discernible, makes the distinction between a politician and an idiot. We should therefore throw a veil upon those unhappy instances of human nature, who seem to breathe without the direction of reason and understanding, as we should avert our eyes with abhorrence from such as live in perpetual abuse and contradiction to these noble faculties. Shall this unfortunate man be divested of his estate, because he is tractable and indolent, runs in no man's debt, invades no man's bed, nor spends the estate he owes his children and his character; when one who shows no sense above him, but in such practices, shall be esteemed in his senses, and possibly may pretend to the guardianship of him who is no ways his inferior, but in being less wicked? We see old age brings us indifferently into the same impotence of soul, wherein nature has placed this lord. There is something very fantastical in the distribution of civil power and capacity among men. The law certainly gives these persons into the ward and care of the Crown, because that is best able to protect them from injuries, and the impositions of craft and knavery; that the life of an idiot may not ruin the entail of a noble house, and his weakness may not frustrate the industry or capacity of the founder of his family. But when one of bright parts, as we say, with his eyes open, and all men's eyes upon him, destroys those purposes, there is no remedy. Folly and ignorance are punished! Folly and guilt are tolerated! Mr. Locke has somewhere made a distinction between a madman and a fool:[394] a fool is he that from right principles makes a wrong conclusion; but a madman is one who draws a just inference from false principles. Thus the fool who cut off the fellow's head that lay asleep, and hid it, and then waited to see what he would say when he awakened and missed his headpiece, was in the right in the first thought, that a man would be surprised to find such an alteration in things since he fell asleep; but he was a little mistaken to imagine he could awake at all after his head was off. A madman fancies himself a prince; but upon his mistake, he acts suitably to that character; and though he is out in supposing he has principalities, while he drinks gruel, and lies in straw, yet you shall see him keep the port of a distressed monarch in all his words and actions. These two persons are equally taken into custody: but what must be done to half this good company, who every hour of their life are knowingly and wittingly both fools and madmen, and yet have capacities both of forming principles, and drawing conclusions, with the full use of reason?"

From my own Apartment, July 11.

This evening some ladies came to visit my sister Jenny; and the discourse, after very many frivolous and public matters, turned upon the main point among the women, the passion of love.[395] Sappho, who always leads on this occasion, began to show her reading, and told us, that Sir John Suckling and Milton had, upon a parallel occasion, said the tenderest things she had ever read. "The circumstance," said she, "is such as gives us a notion of that protecting part which is the duty of men in their honourable designs upon, or possession of, women. In Suckling's tragedy of 'Brennoralt' he makes the lover steal into his mistress's bedchamber, and draw the curtains; then, when his heart is full of her charms, as she lies sleeping, instead of being carried away by the violence of his desires into thoughts of a warmer nature, sleep, which is the image of death, gives this generous lover reflections of a different kind, which regard rather her safety than his own passion. For, beholding her as she lies sleeping, he utters these words:

_"So misers look upon their gold, Which, while they joy to see, they fear to lose: The pleasure of the sight scarce equalling The jealousy of being dispossessed by others. Her face is like the Milky Way i' th' sky, A meeting of gentle lights without name!

"Heavens I shall this fresh ornament of the world, These precious love-lines, pass with other common things Amongst the wastes of time? what pity 'twere!_[396]

"When Milton makes Adam leaning on his arm, beholding Eve, and lying in the contemplation of her beauty, he describes the utmost tenderness and guardian affection in one word:

"_Adam with looks of cordial love Hung over her enamoured._[397]

"This is that sort of passion which truly deserves the name of 'love,' and has something more generous than friendship itself; for it has a constant care of the object beloved, abstracted from its own interests in the possession of it." Sappho was proceeding on the subject, when my sister produced a letter sent to her in the time of my absence, in celebration of the marriage state, which is the condition wherein only this sort of passion reigns in full authority. The epistle is as follows:

"DEAR MADAM,

"Your brother being absent, I dare take the liberty of writing to you my thoughts of that state, which our whole sex either is or desires to be in: you'll easily guess I mean matrimony, which I hear so much decried, that it was with no small labour I maintained my ground against two opponents; but, as your brother observed of Socrates, I drew them into my conclusion from their own concessions; thus:

_"In marriage are two happy things allowed, A wife in wedding-sheets, and in a shroud. How can a marriage state then be accursed, Since the last day's as happy as the first?_

"If you think they were too easily confuted, you may conclude them not of the first sense, by their talking against marriage.

"Yours,

"MARIANA."

I observed Sappho began to redden at this epistle; and turning to a lady, who was playing with a dog she was so fond of as to carry him abroad with her; "Nay," says she, "I cannot blame the men if they have mean ideas of our souls and affections, and wonder so many are brought to take us for companions for life, when they see our endearments so triflingly placed: for, to my knowledge, Mr. Truman would give half his estate for half the affection you have shown to that Shock: nor do I believe you would be ashamed to confess, that I saw you cry, when he had the colic last week with lapping sour milk. What more could you do for your lover himself?" "What more!" replied the lady, "there is not a man in England for whom I could lament half so much." Then she stifled the animal with kisses, and called him, Beau, Life, Dear, Monsieur, Pretty Fellow, and what not, in the hurry of her impertinence. Sappho rose up; as she always does at anything she observes done, which discovers in her own sex a levity of mind, which renders them inconsiderable in the opinion of others.

St. James's Coffee-house, July 11.

Letters from the Hague of the 16th instant, N.S., say, that the siege of Tournay went on with all imaginable success; and that there has been no manner of stop given to the attempts of the Confederates since they undertook it, except that by an accident of firing a piece of ordnance, it burst, and killed fifteen or sixteen men. The French army is still in the camp of Lens, and goes on in improving their entrenchments. When the last advices came away, it was believed the town of Tournay would be in the hands of the Confederates by the end of this month. Advices from Brussels inform us, that they have an account of a great action between the malcontents in the Vivarez, and the French king's forces under the command of the Duke of Roquelaure, in which engagement there were eighteen hundred men killed on the spot. They add, that all sorts of people who are under any oppression or discontent do daily join the Vivarois; and that their present body of men in arms consisted of six thousand. This sudden insurrection has put the Court of France under great difficulties; and the king has given orders, that the main body of his troops in Spain shall withdraw into his own dominions, where they are to be quartered in such countries as have of late discovered an inclination to take up arms: the calamities of that kingdom being such, that the people are not by any means to be kept in obedience, except by the terror of military execution. What makes the distresses still greater, is, that the Court begins to be doubtful of their troops, some regiments in the action in the Cevennes having faced about against their officers; and after the battle was over, joined the malcontents. Upon receiving advice of this battle, the Duke of Berwick detached twelve battalions into those parts, and began to add new works to his entrenchments near Briançon, in order to defend his camp, after being weakened by sending so great a reinforcement into the Cevennes. Letters from Spain say, that the Duchess of Anjou was lately delivered of a second son. They write from Madrid of the 25th of June, that the blockade of Olivenza was continued; but acknowledge, that the late provisions which were thrown into the place, make them doubt whether they shall be masters of it this campaign; though it is at present so closely blocked up, that it appears impracticable to send in any more stores or succours. They are preparing with all expedition to repair the fortifications of Alicante, for the security of the kingdom of Valencia.

[Footnote 392: It appears from Luttrell's "Brief Relation," that in Feb. 1707, Commissioners sat in the Exchequer Room at Westminster to try whether Viscount Wenman, "aged 19, of £5000 per annum estate in Oxfordshire," were an idiot or not. On the 14th February the Commission was superseded. In June 1709, a new Commission passed the Great Seal for inquiring into the Viscount's idiocy, and on July 29 they found that he was no idiot. On July 12, Peter Wentworth wrote thus to Lord Raby: "The prosecution of Lord Wainman is now order'd again, upon wch the _Tatler_ is to day; the accation I am told is this, that last year when there was a stopt put to't 'twas upon the intercession lady Wainman the mother made to the Queen, and that she designed to marry her son, the fool, to Sir John Packington's daughter, 'twas then said that my Lady her self had married her Butler, wch the Queen desired her to tell the truth, and she did assure the Queen upon her word and honour,'twas false, and she never intended any such thing, but of late she has own her marriage to that same Butler, and put off the match with Sir John P----daughter, and married him to her husband's sister, wch they say the Queen is angry at and therefore this fresh prosecution is order'd" ("Wentworth Papers," p. 93). Lord Wenman, the fifth Viscount, was born in 1687, married Susannah, daughter of Seymour Wroughton, Esq., in 1709, and died in 1729. Lord Wenman's brother-in-law, Francis Wroughton, was also his father-in-law, for he had married, in 1699, as her third husband, the Viscount's mother, the Countess of Abingdon.]

[Footnote 393: The Scowrers and Roarers were the forerunners of the Mohocks of 1712. Shadwell wrote a play called "The Scowrers," and often alludes to the window-breakers of his time. See Gay's "Trivia," iii. 325:

"Who has not heard the Scowrer's midnight fame? Who has not trembled at the Mohock's name?" ]

[Footnote 394: "Essay concerning Human Understanding," chap. xii. sect. 14.]

[Footnote 395: See Nos. 6, 35.]

[Footnote 396: "Brennoralt," act iii.]

[Footnote 397: "Paradise Lost," iv. 12, 13.]

No. 41. [STEELE.

From _Tuesday, July 12_, to _Thursday, July 14_, 1709.

Celebrare domestica facta.

* * * * *

White's Chocolate-house, July 12.

There is no one thing more to be lamented in our nation, than their general affectation of everything that is foreign; nay, we carry it so far, that we are more anxious for our own countrymen when they have crossed the seas, than when we see them in the same dangerous condition before our eyes at home: else how is it possible, that on the 29th of the last month, there should have been a battle fought in our very streets of London, and nobody at this end of the town have heard of it? I protest, I, who make it my business to inquire after adventures, should never have known this, had not the following account been sent me enclosed in a letter. This, it seems, is the way of giving out of orders in the Artillery Company;[398] and they prepare for a day of action with so little concern, as only to call it, "An Exercise of Arms."

"An Exercise at Arms of the Artillery Company, to be performed on Wednesday, June 29, 1709, under the command of Sir Joseph Woolfe, Knight and Alderman, General; Charles Hopson, Esquire, present Sheriff, Lieutenant-General; Captain Richard Synge, Major; Major John Shorey, Captain of Grenadiers; Captain William Grayhurst, Captain John Buttler, Captain Robert Carellis, Captains.

"The body march from the Artillery Ground through Moorgate, Coleman Street, Lothbury, Broad Street, Finch Lane, Cornhill, Cheapside, St. Martin's, St. Anne's Lane, halt the pikes under the wall in Noble Street, draw up the firelocks facing the Goldsmiths' Hall, make ready and face to the left, and fire, and so ditto three times. Beat to arms, and march round the hall, as up Lad Lane, Gutter Lane, Honey Lane, and so wheel to the right, and make your salute to my lord, and so down St. Anne's Lane, up Aldersgate Street, Barbican, and draw up in Red Cross Street, the right at St. Paul's Alley in the rear. March off Lieutenant-General with half the body up Beech Lane: he sends a subdivision up King's Head Court, and takes post in it, and marches two divisions round into Red Lion Market, to defend that pass, and succour the division in King's Head Court, but keeps in White Cross Street, facing Beech Lane, the rest of the body ready drawn up. Then the General marches up Beech Lane, is attacked, but forces the division in the court into the market, and enters with three divisions while he presses the Lieutenant-General's main body; and at the same time, the three divisions force those of the revolters out of the market, and so all the Lieutenant-General's body retreats into Chiswell Street, and lodges two divisions in Grub Street; and as the General marches on, they fall on his flank, but soon made to give way; but having a retreating place in Red Lion Court, but could not hold it, being put to flight through Paul's Alley, and pursued by the General's grenadiers, while he marches up and attacks their main body, but are opposed again by a party of men as lay in Black Raven Court; but they are forced also to retire soon in the utmost confusion; and at the same time those brave divisions in Paul's Alley ply their rear with grenadiers, that with precipitation they take to the rout along Bunhill Row: so the General marches into the Artillery Ground, and being drawn up, finds the revolting party to have found entrance, and makes a show as if for a battle, and both armies soon engage in form, and fire by platoons."

Much might be said for the improvement of this system; which, for its style and invention, may instruct generals and their historians, both in fighting a battle, and describing it when it is over. These elegant expressions, "Ditto," "And so," "But soon," "But having," "But could not," "But are," "But they," "Finds the party to have found," &c., do certainly give great life and spirit to the relation. Indeed I am extremely concerned for the Lieutenant-General, who, by his overthrow and defeat, is made a deplorable instance of the fortune of war, and vicissitudes of human affairs. He, alas! has lost in Beech Lane and Chiswell Street, all the glory he lately gained in and about Holborn and St. Giles's. The art of subdividing first, and dividing afterwards, is new and surprising; and according to this method, the troops are disposed in King's Head Court and Red Lion Market: nor is the conduct of these leaders less conspicuous in their choice of the ground or field of battle. Happy was it, that the greatest part of the achievements of this day was to be performed near Grub Street,[399] that there might not be wanting a sufficient number of faithful historians, who being eye-witnesses of these wonders, should impartially transmit them to posterity: but then it can never be enough regretted, that we are left in the dark as to the name and title of that extraordinary hero who commanded the divisions in Paul's Alley; especially because those divisions are justly styled brave, and accordingly were to push the enemy along Bunhill Row, and thereby occasion a general battle. But Pallas appeared in the form of a shower of rain, and prevented the slaughter and desolation which were threatened by these extraordinary preparations.

_Hi motus animorum atque hæc certamina tanta Pulveris exigui jactu compressa quiescunt._[400]

Will's Coffee-house, July 13.

Some part of the company keep up the old way of conversation in this place, which usually turned upon the examination of nature, and an inquiry into the manners of men. There is one in the room so very judicious, that he manages impertinents with the utmost dexterity. It was diverting this evening to hear a discourse between him and one of these gentlemen. He told me before that person joined us, that he was a questioner, who, according to his description, is one who asks questions, not with a design to receive information, but an affectation to show his uneasiness for want of it. He went on in asserting, that there are crowds of that modest ambition, as to aim no farther than to demonstrate that they are in doubt. But by this time Will Why-not was sat down by us. "So, gentlemen," says he, "in how many days, think you, shall we be masters of Tournay? Is the account of the action of the Vivarois to be depended upon? Could you have imagined England had so much money in it, as you see it has produced? Pray, sirs, what do you think? Will the Duke of Savoy make an eruption into France? But," says he, "time will clear all these mysteries." His answer to himself gave me the altitude of his head, and to all his questions I thus answered very satisfactorily: "Sir, have you heard that this Slaughterford[401] never owned the fact for which he died? Have the newspapers mentioned that matter? But, pray, can you tell me what method will be taken to provide for these Palatines?[402] But this, as you say, time will clear." "Ay, ay," says he, and whispers me, "they will never let us into these things beforehand." I whispered him again, "We shall know it as soon as there is a proclamation." He tells me in the other ear, "You are in the right of it." Then he whispered my friend to know what my name was; then made an obliging bow, and went to examine another table. This led my friend and me to weigh this wandering manner in many other incidents, and he took out of his pockets several little notes or tickets to solicit for votes to employments: as, "Mr. John Taplash having served all offices, and being reduced to great poverty, desires your vote for singing clerk of this parish." Another "has had ten children, all whom his wife has suckled herself; therefore humbly desires to be a schoolmaster." There is nothing so frequent as this way of application for offices. It is not that you are fit for the place, but because the place would be convenient for you, that you claim a merit to it. But commend me to the great Kirleus,[403] who has lately set up for midwifery, and to help childbirth, for no other reason, but that he is himself the Unborn Doctor. The way is to hit upon something that puts the vulgar upon the stare, or that touches their compassion, which is often the weakest part about us. I know a good lady, who has taken her daughters from their old dancing-master, to place them with another, for no other reason, but because the new man has broke his leg, which is so ill set, that he can never dance more.

From my own Apartment, July 13.

As it is a frequent mortification to me to receive letters, wherein people tell me, without a name, they know I meant them in such and such a passage; so that very accusation is an argument, that there are such beings in human life, as fall under our description and our discourse, is not altogether fantastical and groundless. But in this case I am treated as I saw a boy was the other day, who gave out poxy bills: every plain fellow took it that passed by, and went on his way without further notice: at last came one with his nose a little abridged; who knocks the lad down, with a, "Why, you son of a w----e, do you think I am p----d?" But Shakespeare has made the best apology for this way of talking against the public errors: he makes Jaques, in the play called "As You Like It," express himself thus:

_Why, who cries out on pride, That can therein tax any private party? What woman in the city do I name, When that I say the city woman bears The cost of princes on unworthy shoulders? Who can come in and say that I mean her, When such a one as she, such is her neighbour? Or, what is he of basest function, That says his bravery is not on my cost? Thinking that I mean him, but therein suits His folly to the mettle of my speech. There then! How then? Then let me see wherein My tongue hath wronged him: if it do him right, Then he hath wronged himself: if he be free, Why then my taxing like a wild goose flies, Unclaimed of any man._[404]

St. James's Coffee-house, July 13.

We have received, by letters of the 18th instant from the camp before Tournay, an account, that we were in a fair prospect of being masters of the town within seven days after that date. Our batteries had utterly overthrown those of the enemy. On the 16th instant, N.S., General Schuylemburg had made a lodgment on the counterscarp of the Tenaille; which post was so weakly defended, that we lost but six men in gaining it. So that there seems reason to hope, that the citadel will also be in the hands of the Confederates about the 6th of August, O.S. These advices inform us further, that Marshal Villars had ordered large detachments to make motions towards Douay and Condé. The swift progress of this siege has so much alarmed the other frontier towns of France, that they were throwing down some houses in the suburbs of Valenciennes, which they think may stand commodiously for the enemy in case that place should be invested. The Elector of Cologne is making all imaginable haste to remove from thence to Rheims.

[Footnote 398: See Nos. 28, 38.]

[Footnote 399: Grub Street, Cripplegate (now Milton Street), became, towards the end of the seventeenth century, the abode of what Johnson calls "writers of small histories, dictionaries and temporary poems; whence any mean production is called Grub Street."]

[Footnote 400: Virgil, "Georgics," iv. 86.]

[Footnote 401: The _Flying Post_ records that one Slaughterford was sentenced to death on July 2, 1709, for murdering his sweetheart.]

[Footnote 402: See Nos. 24, 51.]

[Footnote 403: See No. 14.]

[Footnote 404: "As You Like It," act ii. sc. 7.]

No. 42. [STEELE AND ADDISON.

From _Thursday, July 14, to Saturday, July 16_, 1709.

Celebrare domestica facta.

* * * * *

From my own Apartment, July 15.

Looking over some old papers, I found a little treatise, written by my great-grandfather, concerning bribery, and thought his manner of treating that subject not unworthy my remark. He there has a digression concerning a possibility, that in some circumstances a man may receive an injury, and yet be conscious to himself that he deserves it. There are abundance of fine things said on the subject; but the whole wrapped up in so much jingle and pun (which was the wit of those times) that it is scarce intelligible; but I thought the design was well enough in the following sketch of the old gentleman's poetry: for in this case, where two are rivals for the same thing, and propose to attain it by presents, he that attempts the judge's honesty, by making him offers of reward, ought not to complain when he loses his cause for a better bidder. But the good old doggerel runs thus:[405]

_A poor man once a judge besought, To judge aright his cause, And with a pot of oil salutes This judger of the laws.

"My friend" quoth he, "thy cause is good": He glad away did trudge; Anon his wealthy foe did come Before this partial judge.

An hog well fed this churl presents, And craves a strain of law; The hog received, the poor man's right Was judged not worth a straw.

Therewith he cried, "O! partial judge, Thy doom has me undone; When oil I gave, my cause was good, But now to ruin run."

"Poor man" quoth he, "I thee forgot, And see thy cause of foil; An hog came since into my house, And broke thy pot of oil."_

Will's Coffee-house, July 15.

The discourse happened this evening to fall upon characters drawn in plays, and a gentleman remarked, that there was no method in the world of knowing the taste of an age, or period of time so good, as by the observations of the persons represented in their comedies. There were several instances produced, as Ben Jonson's bringing in a fellow smoking as a piece of foppery;[406] "But," said the gentleman who entertained us on this subject, "this matter is nowhere so observable as in the difference of the characters of women on the stage in the last age, and in this. It is not to be supposed that it was a poverty of genius in Shakespeare, that his women made so small a figure in his dialogues; but it certainly is, that he drew women as they then were in life; for that sex had not in those days that freedom in conversation; and their characters were only, that they were mothers, sisters, daughters, and wives. There were not then among the ladies, shining wits, politicians, virtuosas, free-thinkers, and disputants; nay, there was then hardly such a creature even as a coquette: but vanity had quite another turn, and the most conspicuous woman at that time of day was only the best housewife. Were it possible to bring into life an assembly of matrons of that age, and introduce the learned Lady Woodby into their company, they would not believe the same nation could produce a creature so unlike anything they ever saw in it. But these ancients would be as much astonished to see in the same age so illustrious a pattern to all who love things praiseworthy, as the divine Aspasia.[407] Methinks, I now see her walking in her garden like our first parent, with unaffected charms, before beauty had spectators, and bearing celestial conscious virtue in her aspect. Her countenance is the lively picture of her mind, which is the seat of honour, truth, compassion, knowledge, and innocence.

_There dwells the scorn of vice and pity too._

In the midst of the most ample fortune, and veneration of all that behold and know her, without the least affectation, she consults retirement, the contemplation of her own being, and that supreme power which bestowed it. Without the learning of schools, or knowledge of a long course of arguments, she goes on in a steady course of uninterrupted piety and virtue, and adds to the severity and privacy of the last age all the freedom and ease of this. The language and mien of a Court she is possessed of in the highest degree; but the simplicity and humble thoughts of a cottage, are her more welcome entertainments. Aspasia is a female philosopher, who does not only live up to the resignation of the most retired lives of the ancient sages, but also to the schemes and plans which they thought beautiful, though inimitable. This lady is the most exact economist, without appearing busy; the most strictly virtuous, without tasting the praise of it; and shuns applause with as much industry, as others do reproach. This character is so

## particular, that it will very easily be fixed on her only, by all that

know her: but I daresay, she will be the last that finds it out. But, alas! if we have one or two such ladies, how many dozens are there like the restless Poluglossa, who is acquainted with all the world but herself; who has the appearance of all, and possession of no one virtue: she has indeed in her practice the absence of vice; but her discourse is the continual history of it; and it is apparent, when she speaks of the criminal gratifications of others, that her innocence is only a restraint, with a certain mixture of envy. She is so perfectly opposite to the character of Aspasia, that as vice is terrible to her only as it is the object of reproach, so virtue is agreeable only as it is attended with applause.

St. James's Coffee-house, July 15.

It is now twelve o'clock at noon, and no mail come in; therefore I am not without hopes, that the town will allow me the liberty which my brother news-writers take, in giving them what may be for their information in another kind, and indulge me in doing an act of friendship, by publishing the following account of goods and movables.[408]

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 Ch----r R----ch,[409] Esq.; who is breaking up housekeeping, and has many curious pieces of furniture to dispose of, which may be seen between the hours of six and ten in the evening.

#The INVENTORY.#

Spirits of right Nantes 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 a browner sort.

A sea, consisting of a dozen large waves; the tenth bigger than 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 pennyworth.[410]

An imperial mantle, made for Cyrus the Great, and worn by Julius Cæsar, Bajazet, King Harry the Eighth, and Signior Valentin.[411]

A basket-hilt sword, very convenient to carry milk in.

Roxana's night-gown.

Othello's handkerchief.

The imperial robes of Xerxes, never worn but once.

A wild-boar, killed by Mrs. Tofts[412] and Dioclesian.

A serpent to sting Cleopatra.

A mustard-bowl to make thunder with.

Another of a bigger sort, by Mr. D----is's directions, little used.[413]

Six elbow-chairs, very expert in country-dances, with six flower-pots for their partners.

The whiskers of a Turkish bassa.

The complexion of a murderer in a band-box; consisting of a large piece of burnt cork, and a coal-black peruke.

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.

A bale of red Spanish wool.

Modern plots, commonly known by the name of trapdoors, ladders of ropes, vizard-masks, and tables with broad carpets over them.

Three oak cudgels, with one of crab-tree; all bought for the use of Mr. Pinkethman.

Materials for dancing; as masks, castanets, and a ladder of ten rounds.

Aurengezebe's scimitar, made by Will Brown in Piccadilly.

A plume of feathers, never used but by Oedipus and the Earl of Essex.

There are also swords, halberts, 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.[414]

These are the hard shifts we intelligencers are forced to; therefore our readers ought to excuse us, if a westerly wind blowing for a fortnight together, generally fills every paper with an order of battle; when we show our martial skill in each line, and, according to the space we have to fill, we range our men in squadrons and battalions, or draw out company by company, and troop by troop; ever observing, that no muster is to be made, but when the wind is in a cross point, which often happens at the end of a campaign, when half the men are deserted or killed. The _Courant_ is sometimes ten deep, his ranks close: the _Postboy_[415] is generally in files, for greater exactness; and the _Postman_ comes down upon you rather after the Turkish way, sword in hand, pell-mell, without form or discipline; but sure to bring men enough into the field; and wherever they are raised, never to lose a battle for want of numbers.

[Footnote 405: From George Whetstone's "English Mirror," 1586.]

[Footnote 406: See "Every Man out of his Humour," act ii. sc. 1.]

[Footnote 407: Lady Elizabeth Hastings, unquestionably one of the most accomplished and virtuous characters of the age in which she lived, was the daughter of Theophilus Hastings, the 7th Earl of Huntingdon, and of Elizabeth, eldest daughter and co-heiress to John Lewes, of Ledstone, in Yorkshire, Knt. and Bart. Her father succeeded to the honours and estate of the family, Feb. 13, 1655, and was in 1687 Lord Chief Justice, and Justice in Eyre of all the King's forests, &c., beyond Trent; Lord Lieutenant of the counties of Leicester and Derby; Captain of the Band of Gentlemen Pensioners, and of the Privy Council to King James II. He died suddenly at his lodgings in Charles Street, St. James's, May 13, 1701, and was succeeded in his honours and estate by his son, and her brother, Charles, who died unmarried, Feb. 22, 1704. Lady Elizabeth Hastings was born April 19, 1682, and died Dec. 22, 1739. It is said, with great probability, that since the commencement of the Christian era, scarce any age has produced a lady of such high birth and superior accomplishments, that was a greater blessing to many, or a brighter pattern to all. There is an admirable sketch of this illustrious lady's character, drawn soon after her death, in the tenth volume of the _Gentleman's Magazine_, p. 36, probably by Samuel Johnson. See also "An historical Character relating to the holy and exemplary Life of the Right Honourable the Lady Elisabeth Hastings, &c. By Thomas Barnard, A.M. Printed at Leeds, in 1742, 12mo" (Nichols).--Lady Elizabeth Hastings, who came into a fortune upon the death of her brother George, Earl of Huntingdon, settled at Ledstone House, where she was the Lady Bountiful of the neighbourhood. Her whole estate, however, is said to have been less than £3000 a year. The best of the clergy of the day were among her friends. She helped Berkeley in his Bermuda Mission scheme, and she befriended Miss Mary Astell. Ralph Thoresby, who visited her, was "extremely pleased with the most agreeable conversation of the pious and excellent Lady Elizabeth Hastings." ("Diary," ii. 82). She was one of the numerous eligible ladies that the friends of Lord Raby, afterwards Earl of Strafford, suggested to him as a suitable wife ("Wentworth Papers," pp. 29, 56). The character of Aspasia in this paper has been attributed to Congreve, on the ground, apparently, that he knew Lady Elizabeth Hastings' half-brother, Theophilus, afterwards Earl of Huntingdon. See No. 49, note.]

[Footnote 408: The remainder of this paper is by Addison; see Steele's Preface. Drury Lane Theatre was closed by an order of the Lord Chamberlain, as mentioned in No. 30.]

[Footnote 409: Christopher Rich.]

[Footnote 410: A bargain.]

[Footnote 411: Valentini Urbani sang in Italian in the opera of "Camilla," in 1707. His acting seems to have been better than his voice (Burney's "History of Music," iv. 208).]

[Footnote 412: See No. 20.]

[Footnote 413: John Dennis's unsuccessful tragedy of "Appius and Virginia" was produced in 1709. On that occasion he introduced a new method of making thunder (see "Dunciad," ii. 226), which was found useful by managers. Afterwards, when Dennis found his invention being used in "Macbeth," he exclaimed, "'Sdeath! that's my thunder. See how the fellows use me, they have silenced my tragedy, and they roar out my thunder" (Oldys, MS. notes on Langbaine).]

[Footnote 414: "Baby" was often used for "doll."]

[Footnote 415: See No. 18.]

No. 43. [STEELE.

From _Saturday, July 16_, to _Tuesday, July 19_, 1709.

Bene nummatum decorat suadela Venusque, HOR. 1 Ep. vi. 38.

* * * * *

White's Chocolate-house, July 18.

I write from hence at present to complain, that wit and merit are so little encouraged by people of rank and quality, that the wits of the age are obliged to run within Temple Bar for patronage. There is a deplorable instance of this in the case of Mr. D----y,[416] who has dedicated his inimitable comedy, called, "The Modern Prophets," to a worthy knight,[417] to whom, it seems, he had before communicated his plan, which was, to ridicule the ridiculous of our established doctrine. I have elsewhere celebrated the contrivance of this excellent drama; but was not, till I read the dedication, wholly let into the religious design of it. I am afraid it has suffered discontinuance at this gay end of the town, for no other reason but the piety of the purpose. There is however in this epistle the true life of panegyrical performance; and I do not doubt but, if the patron would part with it, I can help him to others with good pretensions to it; viz., of uncommon understanding, who would give him as much as he gave for it. I know perfectly well a noble person to whom these words (which are the body of the panegyric) would fit to a hair.

"Your easiness of humour, or rather your harmonious disposition, is so admirably mixed with your composure, that the rugged cares and disturbance that public affairs brings with it, which does so vexatiously affect the heads of other great men of business, &c. does scarce ever ruffle your unclouded brow so much as with a frown. And what above all is praiseworthy, you are so far from thinking yourself better than others, that a flourishing and opulent fortune, which by a certain natural corruption in its quality, seldom fails to infect other possessors with pride, seems in this case as if only providentially disposed to enlarge your humility.

"But I find, sir, I am now got into a very large field, where though I could with great ease raise a number of plants in relation to your merit of this plauditory nature; yet for fear of an author's general vice, and that the plain justice I have done you should, by my proceeding and others' mistaken judgment, be imagined flattery, a thing the bluntness of my nature does not care to be concerned with, and which I also know you abominate."

It is wonderful to see how many judges of these fine things spring up every day by the rise of stocks, and other elegant methods of abridging the way to learning and criticism. But I do hereby forbid all dedications to any persons within the city of London, except Sir Francis, Sir Stephen,[418] and the Bank, will take epigrams and epistles as value received for their notes; and the East India Companies accept of heroic poems for their sealed bonds. Upon which bottom, our publishers have full power to treat with the city in behalf of us authors, to enable traders to become patrons and Fellows of the Royal Society, as well as receive certain degrees of skill in the Latin and Greek tongues, according to the quantity of the commodities which they take off our hands.

Grecian Coffee-house, July 18.

The learned have so long laboured under the imputation of dryness and dulness in their accounts of their phenomena, that an ingenious gentleman of our society has resolved to write a system of philosophy in a more lively method, both as to the matter and language, than has been hitherto attempted. He read to us the plan upon which he intends to proceed. I thought his account, by way of fable of the worlds about us, had so much vivacity in it, that I could not forbear transcribing his hypothesis, to give the reader a taste of my friend's treatise, which is now in the press.[419]

"The inferior deities having designed on a day to play a game at football, knead together a numberless collection of dancing atoms into the form of seven rolling globes: and that nature might be kept from a dull inactivity, each separate particle is endued with a principle of motion, or a power of attraction, whereby all the several parcels of matter draw each other proportionately to their magnitudes and distances, into such a remarkable variety of different forms, as to produce all the wonderful appearances we now observe in empire, philosophy, and religion. To proceed; at the beginning of the game, each of the globes being struck forward with a vast violence, ran out of sight, and wandered in a straight line through the infinite spaces. The nimble deities pursue, breathless almost, and spent in the eager chase; each of them caught hold of one, and stamped it with his name; as, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, and so of the rest. To prevent this inconvenience for the future, the seven are condemned to a precipitation, which in our inferior style we call 'gravity.' Thus the tangential and centripetal forces, by their counter-struggle, make the celestial bodies describe an exact ellipsis."

There will be added to this an appendix, in defence of the first day of the term according to the Oxford Almanac,[420] by a learned knight of this realm, with an apology for the said knight's manner of dress; proving, that his habit, according to this hypothesis, is the true modern and fashionable; and that buckles are not to be worn, by this system, till the 10th of March, in the year 1714, which, according to the computation of some of our greatest divines, is to be the first year of the Millennium[421]; in which blessed age, all habits will be reduced to a primitive simplicity; and whoever shall be found to have persevered in a constancy of dress, in spite of all the allurements of profane and heathen habits, shall be rewarded with a never-fading doublet of a thousand years. All points in the system which are doubted, shall be attested by the knight's extemporary oath, for the satisfaction of his readers.

Will's Coffee-house, July 18.

We were upon the heroic strain this evening, and the question was, What is the True Sublime? Many very good discourses happened thereupon; after which a gentleman at the table, who is, it seems, writing on that subject, assumed the argument; and though he ran through many instances of sublimity from the ancient writers, said, he had hardly known an occasion wherein the true greatness of soul, which animates a general in

## action, is so well represented, with regard to the person of whom it was

spoken, and the time in which it was writ, as in a few lines in a modern poem: "there is," continued he, "nothing so forced and constrained, as what we frequently meet with in tragedies; to make a man under the weight of a great sorrow, or full of meditation upon what he is soon to execute, cast about for a simile to what he himself is, or the thing which he is going to act: but there is nothing more proper and natural than for a poet, whose business is to describe, and who is spectator of one in that circumstance when his mind is working upon a great image, and that the ideas hurry upon his imagination--I say, there is nothing so natural, as for a poet to relieve and clear himself from the burthen of thought at that time, by uttering his conception in simile and metaphor. The highest act of the mind of man, is to possess itself with tranquillity in imminent danger, and to have its thoughts so free, as to act at that time without perplexity. The ancient poets have compared this sedate courage to a rock that remains immovable amidst the rage of winds and waves; but that is too stupid and inanimate a similitude, and could do no credit to the hero. At other times they are all of them wonderfully obliged to a Lybian lion, which may give indeed very agreeable terrors to a description; but is no compliment to the person to whom it is applied: eagles, tigers, and wolves, are made use of on the same occasion, and very often with much beauty; but this is still an honour done to the brute, rather than the hero. Mars, Pallas, Bacchus, and Hercules, have each of them furnished very good similes in their time, and made, doubtless, a greater impression on the mind of a heathen, than they have on that of a modern reader. But the sublime image that I am talking of, and which I really think as great as ever entered into the thought of man, is in the poem called, 'The Campaign';[422] where the simile of a ministering angel sets forth the most sedate and the most active courage, engaged in an uproar of nature, a confusion of elements, and a scene of divine vengeance. Add to all, that these lines compliment the General and his Queen at the same time, and have all the natural horrors, heightened by the image that was still fresh in the mind of every reader.[423]

"_'Twas then great Marlborough's mighty soul was proved, That, in the shock of charging hosts unmoved, Amidst confusion, horror, and despair, Examined all the dreadful scenes of war; In peaceful thought the field of death surveyed, To fainting squadrons sent the timely aid, Inspired repulsed battalions to engage, And taught the doubtful battle where to rage. So when an angel by divine command, With rising tempests shakes a guilty land, Such as of late o'er pale Britannia past, Calm and serene he drives the furious blast; And, pleased the Almighty's orders to perform, Rides in the whirlwind, and directs the storm._

"The whole poem is so exquisitely noble and poetic, that I think it an honour to our nation and language." The gentleman concluded his critique on this work, by saying, that he esteemed it wholly new, and a wonderful attempt to keep up the ordinary ideas of a march of an army, just as they happened in so warm and great a style, and yet be at once familiar and heroic. Such a performance is a chronicle as well as a poem, and will preserve the memory of our hero, when all the edifices and statues erected to his honour are blended with common dust.

St. James's Coffee-house, July 18.

Letters from the Hague of the 23rd instant, N.S., say, that the Allies were so forward in the siege of Tournay, that they were preparing for a general assault, which, it was supposed, would be made within a few days. Deserters from the town gave an account, that the garrison was carrying their ammunition and provisions into the citadel, which occasioned a tumult among the inhabitants of the town. The French army had laid bridges over the Scarp, and made a motion as if they intended to pass that river; but though they are joined by the reinforcement expected from Germany, it was not believed they should make any attempt towards relieving Tournay. Letters from Brabant say, there has been a discovery made of a design to deliver up Antwerp to the enemy. The States of Holland have agreed to a general naturalisation of all Protestants who shall fly into their dominions; to which purpose, a proclamation was to be issued within few days.

They write from France, that the great misery and want under which that nation has so long laboured, has ended in a pestilence, which began to appear in Burgundy and Dauphiné. They add, that in the town of Mazon, three hundred persons had died in the space of ten days. Letters from Lille of the 24th instant advise, that great numbers of deserters came daily into that city, the most part of whom are dragoons. We are advised from France, that the Loire having overflowed its banks, hath laid the country under water for three hundred miles together.

[Footnote 416: See Nos. 1 and 11. In No. 29 of the _Guardian_ Steele accused the world of ingratitude in not properly "rewarding the jocose labours of my friend, Mr. Durfey"; and in No. 67 Addison urged the town to go to a performance at the theatre given for Durfey's benefit. "He has made the town merry, and I hope they will make him easy, so long as he stays among us."]

[Footnote 417: Sir William Scawen, a merchant who was knighted in 1692.]

[Footnote 418: Probably Sir Francis Child and Sir Stephen Evance, the bankers. The latter was ruined at the time of the South Sea mania. The following advertisement appeared in the _Postman_ for Jan. 1, 1709: "Lost or mislaid, some time the last summer, at Winchester House, in Chelsea, a gold snuff-box, a cypher graved on the cover, with trophies round it, and over the cypher these words, 'DD. Illust. Princ. Jac. Duci Ormond.' Whoever brings it to Sir Stephen Evance, at the Black Boy in Lombard Street, shall have ten guineas reward, and be asked no questions."]

[Footnote 419: This seems to be a banter upon Mr. Whiston's book intituled, "Prælectiones Physicæ Mathematicæ; sive Philosophia clarissimi Newtoni Mathematica illustrata, 1710"; wherein he explained the Newtonian philosophy, which now began to grow into vogue. Both Addison and Steele, however, very much befriended Whiston; and after his banishment from Cambridge, promoted a subscription for his astronomical lectures at Button's Coffee-house (Nichols).--See No. 251.]

[Footnote 420: See No. 39.]

[Footnote 421: Whiston had fixed that day for the destruction of Anti-Christ and the beginning of the Millennium.]

[Footnote 422: Written by Addison in 1705, in celebration of the victory at Blenheim.]

[Footnote 423: The great storm of November 1703 formed the subject of a volume published by Defoe in 1704.]

No. 44. [STEELE.

From _Tuesday, July 19_, to _Thursday, July 21_, 1709.

--Nullis amor est medicabilis herbis. OVID, Met. i. 523.

* * * * *

White's Chocolate-house, July 19.

This day, passing through Covent Garden, I was stopped in the Piazza by Pacolet, to observe what he called the "triumph of love and youth." I turned to the object he pointed at; and there I saw a gay gilt chariot drawn by fresh prancing horses; the coachman with a new cockade, and the lackeys with insolence and plenty in their countenances. I asked immediately, what young heir or lover owned that glittering equipage? But my companion interrupted: "Do not you see there the mourning Æsculapius?"[424] "The mourning!" said I. "Yes, Isaac," said Pacolet, "he is in deep mourning, and is the languishing hopeless lover of the divine Hebe, the emblem of youth and beauty. The excellent and learned sage you behold in that furniture, is the strongest instance imaginable, that love is the most powerful of all things. You are not so ignorant as to be a stranger to the character of Æsculapius, as the patron and most successful of all who profess the art of medicine. But as most of his operations are owing to a natural sagacity or impulse, he has very little troubled himself with the doctrine of drugs; but has always given Nature more room to help herself, than any of her learned assistants; and consequently has done greater wonders than is in the power of art to perform;[425] for which reason, he is half deified by the people; and has ever been justly courted by all the world, as if he were a seventh son. It happened, that the charming Hebe was reduced, by a long and violent fever, to the most extreme danger of death; and when all skill failed, they sent for Æsculapius. The renowned artist was touched with the deepest compassion to see the faded charms and faint bloom of Hebe; and had a generous concern in beholding a struggle, not between life, but rather between youth, and death. All his skill and his passion tended to the recovery of Hebe, beautiful even in sickness: but, alas! the unhappy physician knew not, that in all his care he was only sharpening darts for his own destruction. In a word, his fortune was the same with that of the statuary, who fell in love with the image of his own making; and the unfortunate Æsculapius is become the patient of her whom he lately recovered. Long before this disaster, Æsculapius was far gone in the unnecessary and superfluous amusements of old age, in increasing unwieldy stores, and providing, in the midst of an incapacity of enjoyment of what he had, for a supply of more wants than he had calls for in youth itself. But these low considerations are now no more, and love has taken place of avarice, or rather has become an avarice of another kind, which still urges him to pursue what he does not want. But behold the metamorphosis; the anxious mean cares of an usurer are turned into the languishments and complaints of a lover. 'Behold,' says the aged Æsculapius, 'I submit, I own, great Love, thy empire: pity, Hebe, the fop you have made: what have I to do with gilding but on pills? Yet, O fair! For thee I sit amidst a crowd of painted deities on my chariot, buttoned in gold, clasped in gold, without having any value for that beloved metal, but as it adorns the person, and laces the hat of thy dying lover. I ask not to live, O Hebe! Give me but gentle death: euthanasia, euthanasia, that is all I implore.'" When Æsculapius had finished his complaint, Pacolet went on in deep morals on the uncertainty of riches, with this remarkable exclamation; "O wealth! How impotent art thou! And how little dost thou supply us with real happiness, when the usurer himself can forget thee for the love of what is as foreign to his felicity as thou art?"

Will's Coffee-house, July 19.

The company here, who have all a delicate taste of theatrical representations, had made a gathering to purchase the movables of the neighbouring playhouse,[426] for the encouragement of one which is setting up in the Haymarket. But the proceedings at the auction (by which method the goods have been sold this evening) have been so unfair, that this generous design has been frustrated; for the Imperial Mantle made for Cyrus was missing, as also the Chariot and Two Dragons: but upon examination it was found, that a gentleman of Hampshire[427] had clandestinely bought them both, and is gone down to his country seat; and that on Saturday last he passed through Staines attired in that robe, and drawn by the said Dragons, assisted by two only of his own horses. This theatrical traveller has also left orders with Mr. Hall[428] to send the faded rainbow to the scourers, and when it comes home, to despatch it after him. At the same time C---- R----[429] Esq. is invited to bring down himself his Setting Sun, and be box-keeper to a theatre erected by this gentleman near Southampton. Thus there has been nothing but artifice in the management of this affair; for which reason I beg pardon of the town, that I inserted the inventory in my paper and solemnly protest, I knew nothing of this artful design of vending these rarities: but I meant only the good of the world in that and all other things which I divulge. And now I am upon this subject, I must do myself justice in relation to an article in a former paper, wherein I made mention of a person who keeps a puppet-show in the town of Bath;[430] I was tender of naming names, and only just hinted, that he makes larger promises, when he invites people to his dramatic representations, than he is able to perform: but I am credibly informed, that he makes a profane lewd jester, which he calls Punch, speak to the dishonour of Isaac Bickerstaff with great familiarity; and before all my learned friends in that place, takes upon him to dispute my title to the appellation of Esquire. I think I need not say much to convince all the world, that this Mr. Powell (for that is his name) is a pragmatical and vain person to pretend to argue with me on any subject. _Mecum certasse feretur_[431]; that is to say, it will be an honour to him to have it said he contended with me; but I would have him to know, that I can look beyond his wires, and know very well the whole trick of his art, and that it is only by these wires that the eye of the spectator is cheated, and hindered from seeing that there is a thread on one of Punch's chops, which draws it up, and lets it fall at the discretion of the said Powell, who stands behind and plays him, and makes him speak saucily of his betters. He! to pretend to make prologues against me! But a man never behaves himself with decency in his own case; therefore I shall command myself, and never trouble me further with this little fellow, who is himself but a tall puppet, and has not brains enough to make even wood speak as it ought to do: and I, that have heard the groaning board,[432] can despise all that his puppets shall be able to speak as long as they live. But, _Ex quovis ligno non fit Mercurius_[433]. He has pretended to write to me also from the Bath, and says, he thought to have deferred giving me an answer till he came to his books[434]; but that my writings might do well with the waters: which are pert expressions that become a schoolboy, better than one that is to teach others: and when I have said a civil thing to him, he cries, "Oh! I thank you for that--I am your humble servant for that."[435] Ah! Mr. Powell, these smart civilities will never run down men of learning: I know well enough your design is to have all men automata, like your puppets; but the world is grown too wise, and can look through these thin devices. I know you design to make a reply to this; but be sure you stick close to my words; for if you bring me into discourses concerning the government of your puppets, I must tell you, I neither am, nor have been, nor will be, at leisure to answer you. It is really a burning shame this man should be tolerated in abusing the world with such representations of things: but his parts decay, and he is not much more alive than Partridge.

From my own Apartment, July 14.

I must beg pardon of my readers that for this time I have, I fear, huddled up my discourse, having been very busy in helping an old friend of mine out of town. He has a very good estate, is a man of wit; but he had been three years absent from town, and cannot bear a jest; for which reason I have, with some pains, convinced him, that he can no more live here than if he were a downright bankrupt. He was so fond of dear London, that he began to fret only inwardly; but being unable to laugh and be laughed at, I took a place in the northern coach for him and his family; and hope he is got to-night safe from all sneerers in his own parlour.

St. James's Coffee-house, July 20.

This morning we received by express, the agreeable news of the surrender of the town of Tournay on the 28th instant, N.S. The place was assaulted at the attacks of General Schuylemburg, and that of General Lottum, at the same time. The action at both those parts of the town was very obstinate, and the Allies lost a considerable number at the beginning of the dispute; but the fight was continued with so great bravery, that the enemy observing that we were masters of all the posts which were necessary for a general attack, beat the chamade,[436] and hostages were received from the town, and others sent from the besiegers, in order to come to a formal capitulation for the surrender of the place. We have also this day received advice, that Sir John Leake, who lies off of Dunkirk, had intercepted several ships laden with corn from the Baltic; and that the Dutch privateers had fallen in with others, and carried them into Holland. The French letters advise, that the young son to the Duke of Anjou lived but eight days.

[Footnote 424: Dr. John Radcliffe, the physician (1650-1714), was disappointed in love when about sixty. The matter is referred to again in Nos. 46, 47, 50 and 67. Radcliffe became rich, but was considered to be a quack by many other doctors. "The last _Tatler_ is upon Dr. Ratclif who they say is desparately in love with Dutchess of Bolton, his passion runs so high as to declare he'll make her eldest son his heir, upon wch account they say the Duke of B---- is not at all alarm'd, but gives the Old amorist opportunity to make his Court, the Dr. lately gave the Dutchess and some other Ladys an entertainm' of musick upon the water, and a fine supper in the Barge" ("Wentworth Papers," p. 97). This identification of Hebe with the Duchess of Bolton is corroborated by the MS. annotator mentioned in a note to No. 4. According to another account she was a Miss Tempest, a maid of honour to the Queen. The writer of the article on Radcliffe in the "Biog. Britannica" says: "The lady, who made the doctor, at this advanced age, stand in need of a physician himself, was of great beauty, wealth, and quality; and too attractive not to inspire the coldest heart with the warmest sentiments. After he had made a cure of her, he could not but imagine, as naturally he might, that her ladyship would entertain a favourable opinion of him. But the lady, however grateful she might be for the care he had taken of her health, divulged the secret, and one of her confidants revealed it to Steele, who, on account of party, was so ill-natured as to write the ridicule of it in the _Tatler_" Radcliffe never married.]

[Footnote 425: I have a pamphlet called "The _Tatler's_ Character (July 21) of Æsculapius guessing diseases, without the knowledge of drugs; applied to the British Physicians and Surgeons: or, The difficult diseases of the Royal Family, Nobility and Gentry will never be understood and recover'd, when the populace are oppress'd and destroy'd by the Practising-Apothecaries and Empiricks confess'd by the College and Mr. Bernard the Surgeon. By a Consultation of Gentlemen of Quality." London, 8vo, 1709. The pamphlet contains some interesting remarks on the physicians, apothecaries and hospitals of the time. Mr. Bickerstaff is called "the most ingenious physician of our vices and follies."]

[Footnote 426: See No. 42.]

[Footnote 427: A friend of Nichols said, "I have seen somewhere, but cannot immediately refer to the book, an account of a theatre built at Southwick, in the county of Hants, by a Mr. Richard Norton, whose will is in the _Gentleman's Magazine_, 1733, p. 57. He is the person, I believe, who wrote a play called 'Pausanias' (1696). Cibber dedicated his first play to him." The MS. annotator mentioned in No. 4 also identifies the gentleman of Hampshire with "Mr. N----n."]

[Footnote 428: An auctioneer.]

[Footnote 429: Christopher Rich, the manager.]

[Footnote 430: Under the name of Powell, the puppet-show man, Steele attacked Dr. Blackall, Bishop of Exeter (see No. 37), who was engaged in a controversy with Benjamin Hoadly. In March 1709, Blackall preached before the Queen a sermon laying down the doctrine of passive obedience in its most extreme form, but in 1704 he had preached obedience limited by the laws of the State. Hoadly wrote against the sermon of 1709, and brought against the Bishop the sermon of 1704. The Bishop, angry at this mode of refutation, answered haughtily, and dwelt on the superiority of his rank as compared with that of Hoadly, then simply rector of a London parish. Bickerstaff here reproaches Blackall for the pride and rudeness of his answer, and then, under the guise of Powell, proprietor of the puppet-show, satirises the extreme doctrine of divine right taught by the Bishop, a doctrine which would make the subjects mere automata, to be moved only at the will of the prince.]

[Footnote 431: Ovid, "Met." xiii. 20.]

[Footnote 432: The following printed advertisement appeared in 1682: "At the sign of the wool-sack, in Newgate-market, is to be seen, a strange and wonderful thing, which is an elm-board, being touched with a hot iron, doth express itself, as if it were a man dying with groans, and trembling, to the great admiration of all the hearers. It hath been presented before the King and his nobles, and hath given great satisfaction. _Vivat Rex_."--(MSS. Sloan. 958.)]

[Footnote 433: "Ne e quovis ligno Mercurius fiat" is one of the proverbs in the "Adagia" of Erasmus. But its history, as originally from the Greek, is thus given in a note of Andr. Schottus, quoted by Gaisford in his "Parcemiographia Græci," p. 39, Ox. 1836:--"Illiud adagium ὀυκ ἐκ παντὸς ξύλου Ἕρμης ἂν γένοιτο [ouk ek pantòs zýlon Hermês àn génoito], quod a Pythagora primum profectum auctor est Apuleius 'Apol.'" [t. ii. p. 499] (Ed. Marshall, "Notes and Queries," March 26, 1887). See Apuleius, "Apologia," 476: "Non enim ex omni ligno, ut Pythagoras dicebat, debet Mercurius exsculpi."]

[Footnote 434: In the Bishop's answer to Hoadly's letter, 1709, there is this passage: "I have no books here; and being under these circumstances, I hope I may be excused, if, in citing Scripture, I should not always name chapter and verse, nor hit exactly upon the very words of the translation" (Lord Bishop of Exeter's Answer, &c., pp. 2 and 3).--"As to the _Tatlers_ relating to Powell's puppets, and the doctrines of passive obedience and absolute non-resistance, and to Bishop Blackall, I know it gave my father some uneasiness, that there is a reference to a fact, which, as he resolved himself never to take notice of, thinking it ungenerous, so he was sorry to see any friend of the cause had; which is, that the Bishop had said inadvertently, he was at Bath, and had not a Bible in his family. It is worth remarking, that all the arguments used by Powell about his power over Punch, 'lighting his pipe with one of his legs,' &c., are a good burlesque of those used by the advocates of non-resistance."--(Dr. John Hoadly.)]

[Footnote 435: The Bishop, after quoting a respectful expression of Hoadly's, says, "Your servant, sir, for that."]

[Footnote 436: A beat of the drum or sound of a trumpet, which summons the enemy to a parley. In _Spectator_, No. 165, Addison ridiculed the use of this and other French war terms by English writers.]

No. 45. [STEELE.

From _Thursday, July 21, to Saturday, July 23_, 1709.

Credo pudicitiam Saturno rege moratam In terris. Juv., Sat. vi. I.

* * * * *

White's Chocolate-house, July 22.

The other day I took a walk a mile or two out of town and strolling wherever chance led me, I was insensibly carried into a by-road, along which was a very agreeable quickset, of an extraordinary height, which surrounded a very delicious seat and garden. From one angle of the hedge, I heard a voice cry, "Sir, sir--" This raised my curiosity, and I heard the same voice say, but in a gentle tone, "Come forward, come forward." I did so, and one through the hedge called me by my name, and bade me go on to the left, and I should be admitted to visit an old acquaintance in distress. The laws of knight-errantry made me obey the summons without hesitation; and I was let in at the back gate of a lovely house by a maid-servant, who carried me from room to room, until I came into a gallery; at the end of which, I saw a fine lady dressed in the most sumptuous habit, as if she were going to a ball, but with the most abject and disconsolate sorrow in her face that I ever beheld. As I came near, she burst into tears, and cried, "Sir, do not you know the unhappy Teraminta?" I soon recollected her whole person: "But," said I, "madam, the simplicity of dress, in which I have ever seen you at your good father's house, and the cheerfulness of countenance with which you always appeared, are so unlike the fashion and temper you are now in, that I did not easily recover the memory of you. Your habit was then decent and modest, your looks serene and beautiful: whence then this unaccountable change? Nothing can speak so deep a sorrow as your present aspect; yet your dress is made for jollity and revelling." "It is," said she, "an unspeakable pleasure to meet with one I know, and to bewail myself to any that is not an utter stranger to humanity. When your friend my father died, he left me to a wide world, with no defence against the insults of fortune, but rather, a thousand snares to entrap me in the dangers to which youth and innocence are exposed, in an age wherein honour and virtue are become mere words, and used only as they serve to betray those who understand them in their native sense, and obey them as the guides and motives of their being. The wickedest of all men living, the abandoned Decius, who has no knowledge of any good art or purpose of human life, but as it tends to the satisfaction of his appetites, had opportunities of frequently seeing and entertaining me at a house where mixed company boarded, and where he placed himself for the base intention which he has since brought to pass. Decius saw enough in me to raise his brutal desires, and my circumstances gave him hopes of accomplishing them. But all the glittering expectations he could lay before me, joined by my private terrors of poverty itself, could not for some months prevail upon me; yet, however I hated his intention, I still had a secret satisfaction in his courtship, and always exposed myself to his solicitations. See here the bane of our sex! Let the flattery be never so apparent, the flatterer never so ill thought of, his praises are still agreeable and we contribute to our own deceit. I was therefore ever fond of all opportunities and pretences of being in his company. In a word, I was at last ruined by him, and brought to this place, where I have been ever since immured; and from the fatal day after my fall from innocence, my worshipper became my master and my tyrant. Thus you see me habited in the most gorgeous manner, not in honour of me as a woman he loves, but as this attire charms his own eye, and urges him to repeat the gratification he takes in me, as the servant of his brutish lusts and appetites. I know not where to fly for redress; but am here pining away life in the solitude and severity of a nun, but the conscience and guilt of a harlot. I live in this lewd practice with a religious awe of my minister of darkness, upbraided with the support I receive from him, for the inestimable possession of youth, of innocence, of honour, and of conscience. I see, sir, my discourse grows painful to you; all I beg of you is, to paint in so strong colours, as to let Decius see I am discovered to be in his possession, that I may be turned out of this detestable scene of regular iniquity, and either think no more, or sin no more. If your writings have the good effect of gaining my enlargement, I promise you I will atone for this unhappy step, by preferring an innocent laborious poverty, to all the guilty affluence the world can offer me."

Will's Coffee-house, July 21.

To show that I do not bear an irreconcilable hatred to my mortal enemy, Mr. Powell at Bath, I do his function the honour to publish to the world, that plays represented by puppets are permitted in our universities,[437] and that sort of drama is not wholly thought unworthy the critic of learned heads: but as I have been conversant rather with the greater Ode, as I think the critics call it, I must be so humble as to make a request to Mr. Powell, and desire him to apply his thoughts to answering the difficulties with which my kinsman, the author of the following letter, seems to be embarrassed.

#"_To my Honoured Kinsman, Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq._#

"DEAR COUSIN,

"Had the family of the Beadlestaffs,[438] whereof I, though unworthy, am one, known of your being lately at Oxon, we had in our own name, and in the Universities' (as it is our office), made you a compliment: but your short stay here robbed us of an opportunity of paying our due respects, and you of receiving an ingenious entertainment, with which we at present divert ourselves and strangers. A puppet-show at this time supplies the want of an Act.[439] And since the nymphs of this city are disappointed of a luscious music-speech, and the country ladies of hearing their sons or brothers speak verses; yet the vocal machines, like them, by the help of a prompter, say things as much to the benefit of the audience, and almost as properly their own. The licence of a Terræ-Filius[440] is refined to the well-bred satire of Punchinello. Now, Cousin Bickerstaff, though Punch has neither a French nightcap, nor long pockets, yet you must own him to be a pretty fellow, a 'very' pretty fellow: nay, since he seldom leaves the company, without calling, 'Son of a whore,' demanding satisfaction, and duelling, he must be owned a smart fellow too. Yet, by some indecencies towards the ladies, he seems to be of a third character, distinct from any you have yet touched upon. A young gentleman who sat next me (for I had the curiosity of seeing this entertainment), in a tufted gown, red stockings, and long wig (which I pronounce to be tantamount to red heels and a dangling cane[441]) was enraged when Punchinello disturbed a soft love-scene with his ribaldry. You would oblige us mightily by laying down some rules for adjusting the extravagant behaviour of this Almanzor[442] of the play, and by writing a treatise on this sort of dramatic poetry, so much favoured, and so little understood, by the learned world. From its being conveyed in a cart after the Thespian manner, all the parts being recited by one person, as the custom was before Æschylus, and the behaviour of Punch as if he had won the goal, you may possibly deduce its antiquity, and settle the chronology, as well as some of our modern critics. In its natural transitions, from mournful to merry; as, from the hanging of a lover, to dancing upon the rope; from the stalking of a ghost, to a lady's presenting you with a jig; you may discover such a decorum, as is not to be found elsewhere than in our tragi-comedies. But I forget myself; it is not for me to dictate: I thought fit, dear cousin, to give you these hints, to show you that the Beadlestaffs don't walk before men of letters to no purpose; and that though we do but hold up the train of arts and sciences, yet like other pages, we are now and then let into our ladies' secrets. I am,

"Your most

"Affectionate Kinsman,

"BENJAMIN BEADLESTAFF.

"From Mother Gourdon's, at Hedington,[443] near Oxon, _June 18_."

From my own Apartment, July 22.

I am got hither safe, but never spent time with so little satisfaction as this evening; for you must know, I was five hours with three Merry, and two Honest Fellows. The former sang catches; and the latter even died with laughing at the noise they made. "Well," says Tom Belfrey, "you scholars, Mr. Bickerstaff, are the worst company in the world." "Ay," says his opposite, "you are dull to-night; prithee be merry." With that I huzzaed, and took a jump across the table, then came clever upon my legs, and fell a-laughing. "Let Mr. Bickerstaff alone," says one of the Honest Fellows, "when he's in a good humour, he's as good company as any man in England." He had no sooner spoke, but I snatched his hat off his head, and clapped his upon my own, and burst out a-laughing again; upon which we all fell a-laughing for half an hour. One of the Honest Fellows got behind me in the interim, and hit me a sound slap on the back; upon which he got the laugh out of my hands, and it was such a twang on my shoulders, that I confess he was much merrier than I. I was half angry; but resolved to keep up the good humour of the company; and after holloing as loud as I could possibly, I drank off a bumper of claret, that made me stare again. "Nay," says one of the Honest Fellows, "Mr. Isaac is in the right, there is no conversation in this; what signifies jumping, or hitting one another on the back? Let's drink about." We did so from seven o'clock till eleven; and now I am come hither, and, after the manner of the wise Pythagoras, begin to reflect upon the passages of the day. I remember nothing, but that I am bruised to death; and as it is my way to write down all the good things I have heard in the last conversation to furnish my paper, I can from this only tell you my sufferings and my bangs. I named Pythagoras just now, and I protest to you, as he believed men after death entered into other species, I am now and then tempted to think other animals enter into men, and could name several on two legs, that never discover any sentiment above what is common with the species of a lower kind; as we see in these bodily wits whom I was with to-night, whose parts consist in strength and activity; but their boisterous mirth gives me great impatience for the return of such happiness as I enjoyed in a conversation last week. Among others in that company, we had Florio, who never interrupted any man living when he was speaking, or ever ceased to speak, but others lamented that he had done. His discourse ever arises from a fulness of the matter before him, and not from ostentation or triumph of his understanding; for though he seldom delivers what he need fear being repeated, he speaks without having that end in view; and his forbearance of calumny or bitterness, is owing rather to his good nature than his discretion; for which reason, he is esteemed a gentleman perfectly qualified for conversation, in whom a general goodwill to mankind takes off the necessity of caution and circumspection. We had at the same time that evening the best sort of companion that can be, a good-natured old man. This person meets in the company of young men, veneration for his benevolence, and is not only valued for the good qualities of which he is master, but reaps an acceptance from the pardon he gives to other men's faults: and the ingenuous sort of men with whom he converses, have so just a regard for him, that he rather is an example, than a check to their behaviour. For this reason, as Senecio never pretends to be a man of pleasure before youth, so young men never set up for wisdom before Senecio; so that you never meet, where he is, those monsters of conversation, who are grave or gay above their years. He never converses but with followers of nature and good sense, where all that is uttered is only the effect of a communicable temper, and not of emulation to excel their companions; all desire of superiority being a contradiction to that spirit which makes a just conversation, the very essence of which is mutual goodwill. Hence it is, that I take it for a rule, that the natural, and not the acquired man, is the companion. Learning, wit, gallantry, and good breeding, are all but subordinate qualities in society, and are of no value, but as they are subservient to benevolence, and tend to a certain manner of being or appearing equal to the rest of the company; for conversation is composed of an assembly of men, as they are men, and not as they are distinguished by fortune: therefore he that brings his quality with him into conversation, should always pay the reckoning; for he came to receive homage, and not to meet his friends--But the din about my ears from the clamour of the people I was with this evening, has carried me beyond my intended purpose, which was to explain upon the Order of Merry Fellows; but I think I may pronounce of them, as I heard good Senecio, with a spice of wit of the last age, say, viz. that a Merry Fellow is the Saddest Fellow in the world.

[Footnote 437: See No. 44. Blackall was a bishop; and the University of Oxford had declared publicly in his favour.]

[Footnote 438: See No. 11.]

[Footnote 439: A meeting for conferring degrees, when speeches, &c., are delivered.]

[Footnote 440: An undergraduate who made extempore speeches at the Act, often of a very satirical kind. Sometimes there were two _terræ filii_, who carried on a dialogue. In 1721, Amberst published a periodical with the title "Terræ-Filius: or, The Secret History of the University of Oxford," and these papers were reprinted in two volumes in 1726, with a curious engraving of the Theatre at Oxford, by Hogarth, as frontispiece.]

[Footnote 441: See No. 26.]

[Footnote 442: In an Essay "Of Heroic Plays," prefixed to his play, "Almanzor and Almahide; or, The Conquest of Granada," Dryden defended at length the character of Almanzor.]

[Footnote 443: This village is the scene of Dr. William King's play, "Joan of Hedington" ("Works," 1776, vol. iii. p. 16).]

No. 46. [STEELE.

From _Saturday, July 23_, to _Tuesday, July 26_, 1709.

Non bene conveniunt, nec in una sede morantur, Majestas et amor. OVID, Met. ii. 846.

* * * * *

White's Chocolate-house, July 25.

We see every day volumes written against that tyrant of human life called Love, and yet there is no help found against his cruelties, or barrier against the inroads he is pleased to make into the mind of man. After this preface, you will expect I am going to give particular instances of what I have asserted. That expectation cannot be raised too high for the novelty of the history, and manner of life, of the Emperor Aurengezebe,[444] who has resided for some years in the cities of London and Westminster, with the air and mien indeed of his imperial quality, but the equipage and appointment only of a private gentleman. This potentate, for a long series of time, appeared from the hour of twelve till that of two at a coffee-house near the 'Change, and had a seat (though without a canopy) sacred to himself, where he gave diurnal audiences concerning commerce, politics, tare and tret, usury and abatement, with all things necessary for helping the distressed, who were willing to give one limb for the better maintenance of the rest; or such joyous youths, whose philosophy is confined to the present hour, and were desirous to call in the revenue of next half-year to double the enjoyment of this. Long did this growing monarch employ himself after this manner: and as alliances are necessary to all great kingdoms, he took particularly the interests of Lewis XIV. into his care and protection. When all mankind were attacking that unhappy monarch, and those who had neither valour nor wit to oppose against him would be still showing their impotent malice by laying wagers in opposition to his interests, Aurengezebe ever took the part of his contemporary, and laid immense treasures on his side in defence of his important magazine of Toulon. Aurengezebe also had all this while a constant intelligence with India, and his letters were answered in jewels, which he soon made brilliant, and caused to be affixed to his imperial castor, which he always wears cocked in front, to show his defiance; with a heap of imperial snuff in the middle of his ample visage, to show his sagacity. The zealots for this little spot called Great Britain fell universally into this emperor's policies, and paid homage to his superior genius, in forfeiting their coffers to his treasury: but wealth and wisdom are possessions too solemn not to give weariness to active minds, without the relief (in vacant hours) of wit and love, which are the proper amusements of the powerful and the wise: this emperor therefore, with great regularity, every day at five in the afternoon, leaves his money-changers, his publicans, and little hoarders of wealth, to their low pursuits, and ascends his chariot to drive to Will's; where the taste is refined, and a relish given to men's possessions, by a polite skill in gratifying their passions and appetites. There it is that the emperor has learned to live and to love, and not, like a miser, to gaze only on his ingots or his treasures; but with a nobler satisfaction, to live the admiration of others, for his splendour and happiness in being master of them. But a prince is no more to be his own caterer in his love, than in his food; therefore Aurengezebe has ever in waiting two purveyors for his dishes, and his wenches for his retired hours, by whom the scene of his diversion is prepared in the following manner:

There is near Covent Garden a street known by the name of Drury, which, before the days of Christianity, was purchased by the Queen of Paphos, and is the only part of Great Britain where the tenure of vassalage is still in being. All that long course of building is under particular districts or ladyships, after the manner of lordships in other parts, over which matrons of known abilities preside, and have, for the support of their age and infirmities, certain taxes paid out of the rewards for the amorous labours of the young. This seraglio of Great Britain is disposed into convenient alleys and apartments, and every house, from the cellar to the garret, inhabited by nymphs of different orders, that persons of every rank may be accommodated with an immediate consort, to allay their flames, and partake of their cares. Here it is, that when Aurengezebe thinks fit to give a loose to dalliance, the purveyors prepare the entertainments; and what makes it more august is, that every person concerned in the interlude has his set part, and the prince sends beforehand word what he designs to say, and directs also the very answer which shall be made to him.

It has been before hinted, that this emperor has a continual commerce with India; and it is to be noted, that the largest stone that rich earth has produced, is in our Aurengezebe's possession.

But all things are now disposed for his reception. At his entrance into the seraglio, a servant delivers him his bever of state and love, on which is fixed this inestimable jewel as his diadem. When he is seated, the purveyors, Pandarus and Nuncio, marching on each side of the matron of the house, introduce her into his presence. In the midst of the room, they bow altogether to the diadem.

When the matron:

"Whoever thou art (as thy awful aspect speaks thee a man of power), be propitious to this mansion of love, and let not the severity of thy wisdom disdain, that by the representation of naked innocence, or pastoral figures, we revive in thee the memory at least of that power of Venus, to which all the wise and the brave are some part of their lives devoted." Aurengezebe consents by a nod, and they go out backward.

After this, an unhappy nymph, who is to be supposed just escaped from the hands of a ravisher, with her tresses dishevelled, runs into the room with a dagger in her hand, and falls before the emperor.

"Pity, oh! pity! whoever thou art, an unhappy virgin, whom one of thy train has robbed of her innocence; her innocence, which was all her portion--Or rather, let me die like the memorable Lucretia--" Upon which she stabs herself. The body is immediately examined after the manner of our coroners. Lucretia recovers by a cup of right Nantes; and the matron, who is her next relation, stops all process at law.

This unhappy affair is no sooner over, but a naked mad woman breaks into the room, calls for her duke, her lord, her emperor. As soon as she spies Aurengezebe, the object of all her fury and love, she calls for petticoats, is ready to sink with shame, and is dressed in all haste in new attire at his charge. This unexpected accident of the mad woman makes Aurengezebe curious to know, whether others who are in their senses can guess at his quality. For which reason the whole convent is examined one by one. The matron marches in with a tawdry country girl: "Pray, Winifred," says she, "who do you think that fine man with those jewels and pearls is?" "I believe," says Winifred, "it is our landlord. It must be the squire himself." The emperor laughs at her simplicity. "Go, fool," says the matron: then turning to the emperor, "Your greatness will pardon her ignorance!" After her, several others of different characters are instructed to mistake who he is in the same manner: then the whole sisterhood are called together, and the emperor rises, and cocking his hat, declares, he is the Great Mogul, and they his concubines. A general murmur goes through the assembly, and Aurengezebe certifying, that he keeps them for state rather than use, tells them, they are permitted to receive all men into their apartments; then proceeds through the crowd, among whom he throws medals shaped like half-crowns, and returns to his chariot.

This being all that passed the last day in which Aurengezebe visited the women's apartments, I consulted Pacolet concerning the foundation of such strange amusements in old age: to which he answered; "You may remember, when I gave you an account of my good fortune in being drowned on the thirtieth day of my human life, I told you of the disasters I should otherwise have met with before I arrived at the end of my stamen, which was sixty years. I may now add an observation to you, that all who exceed that period, except the latter part of it is spent in the exercise of virtue and contemplation of futurity, must necessarily fall into an indecent old age, because, with regard to all the enjoyments of the years of vigour and manhood, childhood returns upon them: and as infants ride on sticks, build houses in dirt, and make ships in gutters, by a faint idea of things they are to act hereafter; so old men play the lovers, potentates, and emperors, from the decaying image of the more perfect performances of their stronger years: therefore be sure to insert Æsculapius and Aurengezebe in your next bill of mortality of the metaphorically defunct."

Will's Coffee-house, July 24.

As soon as I came hither this evening, no less than ten people produced the following poem, which they all reported was sent to each of them by the penny post from an unknown hand. All the battle-writers in the room were in debate, who could be the author of a piece so martially written; and everybody applauded the address and skill of the author, in calling it a Postscript: it being the nature of a postscript to contain something very material which was forgotten, or not clearly expressed in the letter itself. Thus, the verses being occasioned by a march without beat of drum, and that circumstance being no ways taken notice of in any of the stanzas, the author calls it a postscript; not that it is a postscript, but figuratively, because it wants a postscript. Common writers, when what they mean is not expressed in the book itself, supply it by a preface; but a postscript seems to me the more just way of apology; because otherwise a man makes an excuse before the offence is committed. All the heroic poets were guessed at for its author; but though we could not find out his name, yet one repeated a couplet in "Hudibras" which spoke his qualifications:

_"I' th' midst of all this warlike rabble, Crowdero marched, expert and able"_[445]

The poem is admirably suited to the occasion: for to write without discovering your meaning, bears a just resemblance to marching without beat of drum.

#On the March to Tournay without Beat of Drum.#

#The Brussels POSTSCRIPT.#[446]

Could I with plainest words express That great man's wonderful address, His penetration, and his towering thought; It would the gazing world surprise, To see one man at all times wise, To view the wonders he with ease has wrought.

Refining schemes approach his mind, Like breezes of a southern wind, To temperate a sultry glorious day; Whose fannings, with an useful pride, Its mighty heat doth softly guide, And having cleared the air, glide silently away.

Thus his immensity of thought Is deeply formed, and gently wrought, His temper always softening life's disease; That Fortune, when she does intend To rudely frown, she turns his friend, Admires his judgment, and applauds his ease.

His great address in this design, Does now, and will for ever shine, And wants a Waller but to do him right: The whole amusement was so strong, Like fate he doomed them to be wrong, And Tournay's took by a peculiar sleight.

Thus, madam, all mankind behold Your vast ascendant, not by gold, But by your wisdom, and your pious life; Your aim no more than to destroy That which does Europe's ease annoy, And supersede a reign of shame and strife.

St. James's Coffee-house, July 24.

My brethren of the quill, the ingenious society of news-writers, having with great spirit and elegance already informed the world, that the town of Tournay capitulated on the 28th instant, there is nothing left for me to say, but to congratulate the good company here, that we have reason to hope for an opportunity of thanking Mr. Withers[447] next winter in this place, for the service he has done his country. No man deserves better of his friends than that gentleman, whose distinguishing character it is, that he gives his orders with the familiarity, and enjoys his fortune with the generosity, of a fellow-soldier. His Grace the Duke of Argyle had also an eminent part in the reduction of this important place. That illustrious youth[448] discovers the peculiar turn of spirit and greatness of soul which only make men of high birth and quality useful to their country; and considers nobility as an imaginary distinction, unless accompanied with the practice of those generous virtues by which it ought to be obtained. But[449] that our military glory is arrived at its present height, and that men of all ranks so passionately affect their share in it, is certainly owing to the merit and conduct of our glorious general; for as the great secret in chemistry, though not in nature, has occasioned many useful discoveries; and the fantastic notion of being wholly disinterested in friendship, has made men do a thousand generous actions above themselves; so, though the present grandeur and fame of the Duke of Marlborough is a station of glory to which no one hopes to arrive, yet all carry their actions to a higher pitch, by having that great example laid before them.

[Footnote 444: "Aurenzeb is Tom Colson, who never had any friendship with anybody but S'r Edward Seymour, who brought him into Parliament" (Peter Wentworth to Lord Raby, 29 July 1709; "Wentworth Papers," p. 97). Thomas Coulson was elected M.P. for Totnes, with Sir Edward Seymour, Bart., in 1698. He was re-elected in 1701, 1702, and in 1705. At the election of 1708, Sir Edward Seymour, previously member for Exeter, was elected for Totnes; but in 1710, Sir Edward having transferred himself to Great Bedwyn, Coulson again became member for Totnes. In 1715, Coulson's arrest was sought in the neighbourhood of Bristol for joining in the rising on behalf of the Pretender; see a letter of Addison's in Hist. MSS. Comm., Second Report, p. 250.]

[Footnote 445: "Hudibras,"