Your very humble servant, 'T. B.' tion you have of hot-cockles; as also, whether tal, whether bleeding upon an altar, stuck with you think that questions and commands, mot- darts, or held in the hand of a Cupid, has altoes, similies, and cross-purposes have not ways been looked upon as talismanic in dismore mirth and wit in them than those public tresses of this nature. I am acquainted with diversions which are grown so very fashiona- many a brave fellow, who carries his mistress ble among us. If you would recommend to in the lid of his snuff-box, and by that expe our wives and daughters, who read your pa-dient has supported himself under the absence pers with a great deal of pleasure, some of of a whole campaign. For my own part, I those sports and pastimes that may be practis- have tried all these remedies, but never found ed within doors, and by the fire-side, we who so much benefit from any as from a ring, in are masters of families should be hugely oblig- which my mistress's hair is plaited together ed to you. I need not tell you that I would have very artificially in a kind of true-lover's knot. these sports and pastimes not only merry but As I have received great benefit from this innocent; for which reason I have not men- secret, I think myself obliged to communicate tioned either whisk or lanterloo, nor indeed it to the public for the good of my fellow subso much as one-and-thirty. After having jects. I desire you will add this letter as an communicated to you my request upon this appendix to your consolations upon absence, subject, I will be so free as to tell you how and am, my wife and I pass away these tedious winter evenings with a great deal of pleasure. Though she be young and handsome, and good-huI shall conclude this paper with a letter moured to a miracle, she does not care for gadding abroad like others of her sex. There from an university gentleman, occasioned by is a very friendly man, a colonel in the army, my last Tuesday's paper, wherein I gave some whom I am mightily obliged to for his civilities, account of the great feuds which happened that comes to see me almost every night; for formerly in those learned bodies, between the he is not one of those giddy young fellows that modern Greeks and Trojans. cannot live out of a play-house. When we are together, we very often make a party of Blind'This will give you to understand, that there man's Buff, which is a sport I like the better, is at present in the society whereof I am a because there is a good deal of exercise in it. member, a very considerable body of Trojans, The colonel and I are blinded by turns, and you who, upon a proper occasion, would not fail would laugh your heart out to see what pains to declare ourselves. In the mean while we my dear takes to hoodwink us so that it is im- do all we can to annoy our enemies by stratapossible for us to see the least glimpse of light. gem, and are resolved by the first opportunity The poor colonel sometimes hits his nose against to attack Mr. Joshua Barnes, whom we look a post, and makes us die with laughing. I have generally the good luck not to hurt myself, but am very often above half an hour before I can catch either of them; for you must know we hide ourselves up and down in corners, that we may have the more sport. I only give you this hint as a sample of such innocent diversions as I would have you recommend: and am, Most esteemed sir, "Your ever loving friend, SIR, upon as the Achilles of the opposite party. As for myself, I have had the reputation ever since I came from school, of being a trusty Trojan, and am resolved never to give quarter to the smallest particle of Greek, wherever I chance to meet it. It is for this reason I take it very ill of you, that you sometimes hang out Greek colours at the head of your paper, and sometimes give a word of the enemy even in the body of it. When I meet with any thing of this nature, I throw down your speculations The following letter was occasioned by my upon the table, with that form of words which last Thursday's paper upon the absence of lo- we make use of when we declare war upon an vers, and the methods therein mentioned of author, making such absence supportable. " SIR " TIMOTHY DOODLE.' peril. C. Græcum est, non potest legi. TROILUS.' Among the several ways of consolation future abstain from any such hostilities at your 'I give you this hint, that you may for the which absent lovers make use of while their souls are on that state of departure, which you say is death in love, there are some very material ones that have escaped your notice. Among these, the first and most received is a No. 246.] Wednesday, December 12, 1711. crooked shilling, which has administered great comfort to our forefathers, and is still made use of on this occasion with very good effect| in most parts of her majesty's dominions. There are some, I know, who think a crown piece cut into two equal parts, and preserved by the distant lovers, is of more sovereign virtue than the former. But since opinions are divided in this particular, why may not the same persons make use of both? The figure of a heart, whether cut in stone or cast in me. Οὐκ ἄρα σοί γε παδὴρ εν ιππότα Πηλεύς, Οὐδὲ Θέτις μήτηρ, γλαυκὴ δε σ' ετικΓε θάλασσα, Πέτραι τ' ηλίβατοι, ὅτι τοι νόος έσιν απηνής. Hom. Iliad xvi. 33. No amorous hero ever gave thee birth, Poge. MR. SPECTATOR, Biberius Mero. The same Diodorus also re'As your paper is part of the equipage of lates of Caligula, predecessor to Nero, that his the tea-table, I conjure you to print what I nurse used to moisten the nipples of her breast now write to you; for I have no other way to frequently with blood, to make Caligula take communicate what I have to say to the fair- the better hold of them; which, says Diodorus sex on the most important circumstance of was the cause that made him so blood-thirsty life, even "the care of children." I do not and cruel all his life-time after, that he not understand that you profess your paper is only committed frequent murder by his own always to consist of matters which are only to hand, but likewise wished that all human kind entertain the learned and polite, but that it wore but one neck that he might have the may agree with your design to publish some pleasure to cut it off. Such like degeneracies which may tend to the information of mankind astonish the parents, who not knowing after in general; and when it does so, you do more whom the child can take, see one inclined to than writing wit and humour. Give me leave stealing, another to drinking, cruelty stupidithen to tell you, that of all the abuses that ty; yet all these are not minded. Nay, it is ever you have as yet endeavoured to reform, easy to demonstrate, that a child, although it certainly not one wanted so much your assist- be born from the best of parents, may be corance as the abuse in nursing of children. It rupted by an ill-tempered nurse. How many is unmerciful to see, that a woman endowed children do we see daily brought into fits, conwith all the perfections and blessings of nature sumptions, rickets, &c. merely by sucking their can, as soon as she is delivered, turn off her nurses when in a passion or fury? But indeed innocent, tender, and helpless infant, and give almost any disorder of the nurse is a disorder it up to a woman that is (ten thousand to one) to the child, and few nurses can be found in neither in health nor good condition, neither this town but what labour under some distemsound in mind nor body, that has neither ho- per or other. The first question that is genenour nor reputation, neither love nor pity for rally asked a young woman that wants to be a the poor babe, but more regard for the money nurse, why she should be a nurse to other peothan for the whole child, and never will take ple's children, is answered, by her having an farther care of it than what by all the encour-ill husband, and that she must make shift to agement of money and presents she is forced live. I think now this very answer is enough to; like Æsop's earth, which would not nurse to give any body a shock if duly considered; the plant of another ground, although never for an ill husband may, or ten to one if he does so much improved, by reason that plant was not, bring home to his wife an ill distemper, not of its own production. And since another's or at least vexation and disturbance. Besides child is no more natural to a nurse than a plant as she takes the child out of mere necessity, to a strange and different ground, how can it her food will be accordingly, or else very coarse be supposed that the child should thrive; and at best; whence proceeds an ill connected and if it thrives, must it not imbibe the gross hu- coarse food for the child; for as the blood, so mours and qualities of the nurse, like a plant is the milk; and hence I am very well assured in a different ground, or like a graft upon a proceeds the scurvy, the evil, and many other different stock? Do not we observe, that a distempers. I beg of you, for the sake of the lamb sucking a goat changes very much its na- many poor infants that may and will be saved ture, nay even its skin and wool into the goat by weighing this case seriously, to exhort the kind? The power of a nurse over a child, people with the utmost vehemence, to let the by infusing into it with her milk her qualities children-suck their own mothers, both for the and disposition, is sufficiently and daily ob- benefit of mother and child. For the general served. Hence came that old saying concern- argument, that a mother is weakened by giving an ill-natured and malicious fellow, that "he ing suck to her children, is vain and simple. had imbibed his malice with his nurse's milk, or I will maintain that the mother grows stronger that some brute or other had been his nurse." by it, and will have her health better than she Hence Romulus and Remus were said to have would have otherwise. She will find it the been nursed by a wolf; Telephus, the son of Hercules by a hind; Pelias the son of Neptune by a mare: and Ægisthus by a goat; not that they had actually sucked such creatures, as some simpletons have imagined, but that their nurses had been of such a nature and temper, and infused such into them. greatest cure and preservative for the vapours and future miscarriages, much beyond any other remedy whatsoever. Her children will be like giants, whereas otherwise they are but living shadows, and like 'unripe fruit; and certainly if a woman is strong enough to bring forth a child, she is beyond all doubt strong Many instances may be produced from enough to nurse it afterwards. It grieves me good authorities and daily experience, that to observe and consider how many poor chil. children actually suck in the several passions dren are daily ruined by careless nurses; and and depraved inclinations of their nurses, yet how tender ought they to be to a poor inas anger, malice, fear, melancholy, sadness, desire, and aversion. This Diodorus, lib. 2. witnesses, when he speaks, saying, that Nero the emperor's nurse had been very much addicted to drinking; which habit Nero received from his nurse, and was so very particular in this, that the people took so much notice of it, as instead of Tiberius Nero, they called him fant, since the least hurt or blow, especially upon the head, may make it senseless, stupid, or otherwise miserable for ever! 'But I cannot well leave this subject as yet; for it seems to me very unnatural, that a woman that has fed a child as part of herself for nine months, should have no desire to nurse it farther, when brought to light and before her eyes, and when by its cry it implores her as- invention, and copiousness of expression, will sistance and the office of a mother. Do not they enlarge upon every little slip in the behathe very cruelest of brutes tend their young viour of another? With how many different cirones with all the care and delight imaginable? cumstances, and with what variety of phrases, How can she be called a mother that will not will they tell over the same story? I have known nurse her young ones? The earth is called the an old lady make an unhappy marriage the mother of all things, not because she produces subject of a month's conversation. She blamed but because she maintains and nurses what the bride in one place; pitied her in another; she produces. The generation of the Infant laughed at her in a third, wondered at her in is the effect of desire, but the care of it argues a fourth; was angry with her in a fifth; and, in virtue and choice. I am not ignorant but that short, wore out a pair of coach-horses in expressthere are some cases of necessity, where a mo-ing her concern for her. At length, after havther cannot give suck, and then out of two ing quite exhausted the subject on this side, evils the least must be chosen; but there are she made a visit to the new-married pair, praiso very few, that I am sure in a thousand there sed the wife for the prudent choice she had is hardly one real instance; for if a woman made, told her the unreasonable reflections does but know that her husband can spare which some malicious people had cast upon her, about three or six shillings a week extraordi- and desired that they might be better acquainnary, (although this is but seldom considered) ted. The censure and approbation of this kind she certainly, with the assistance of her gos- of women are therefore only to be considered as sips, will soon persuade the good man to send helps to discourse. the child to nurse, and easily impose upon him by pretending indisposition. This cruelty is supported by fashion, and nature gives place 'Sir, to custom. Hesiod. Ἐκ ςομάτων ηδεία A third kind of female orators may be comprehended under the word gossips. Mrs. Fiddle-Faddle is perfectly accomplished in this sort of eloquence; she launches out into descriptions of christenings, runs divisions upon an head-dress, knows every dish of meat that is served up in her neighbourhood, and entertains her company a whole afternoon together with the wit of her little boy, before he is able to speak. The coquette may be looked upon as a fourth kind of female orator. To give herself the larger field for discourse, she hates WE are told by some ancient authors, that and loves in the same breath, talks to her lapSocrates was instructed in eloquence by a wo-dog or parrot, is uneasy in all kinds of weaman whose name, if I am not mistaken, was ther, and in every part of the room. She Aspasia. I have inded very often looked up- has false quarrels and feigned obligations to on that art as the most proper for the female all the men of her acquaintance; sighs when sex, and I think the universities would do well to consider whether they should not fill the rhetoric chairs with she professors. It has been said in the praise of some men that they could talk whole hours together upon any thing; but it must be owned to the honour of the other sex, that there are many among them who can talk whole hours together upon nothing. I have known a woman branch out into a long extempore dissertation upon the edging of a petticoat, and chide her servant for breaking a china cup, in all the figures of rhetoric. she is not sad, and laughs when she is not merry. The coquette is in particular a great mistress of that part of oratory which is called action, and indeed seems to speak for no other purpose, but as it gives her an opportunity of stirring a limb, or varying a feature, of glancing her eyes, or playing with her fan. As for newsmongers, politicians, mimics, story-tellers, with other characters of that nature which give birth to loquacity, they are as commonly found among the men as the women; for which reason I shall pass them over in silence. I have often been puzzled to assign a cause why women should have this talent of a ready utterance in so much greater perfection than men. I have sometimes fancied that they have not a retentive power or the faculty of Were women permitted to plead in courts of judicature, I am persuaded they would carry the eloquence of the bar to greater heights than it has yet arrived at. If any one doubt this, let him but be present at those debates which frequently arise among the ladies of the British suppressing their thoughts, as men have, but fishery. that they are necessiated to speak every thing The first kind therefore of female orators they think; and if so, it would perhaps furwhich I shall take notice of, are those who are nish a very strong argument to the Cartesians employed in stirring up the passions; a part of for the supporting of their doctrine that the rhetoric in which Socrates his wife had perhaps soul always thinks. But as several are of made a greater proficiency than his above men- opinion that the fair-sex are not altogether tioned teacher. strangers to the art of dissembling and conThe second kind of female orators are those cealing their thoughts, I have been forced to who deal in invectives, and who are commonly relinquish that opinion, and have therefore known by the name of the censorious. The endeavoured to seek after some better reason. imaginnation and elocution of this set of rheto- In order to it, a friend of mine, who is an exricians is wonderful. With what a fluency of cellent anatomist, has promised me by the first VOL. I. 41 Tull. Off. 1. 16. It is a principal point of duty, to assist another most, when he stands most in need of assistance. opportunity to dissect a woman's tongue, and No. 248.] Friday, December 14, 1711. to examine whether there may not be in it certain juices which render it so wonderfully ita ei potissimùm opitulari. Hoc maximè officii est, ut quisque maximè opis indigeat, valuable or flippant, or whether the fibres of it may not be made up of a finer or more pliant thread; or whether there are not in it some! particular muscles which dart it up and down by such sudden glances and vibrations; or whether in the last place, there may not be certain undiscovered channels running from the head and the heart to this little instrument of loquacity, and conveying into it a perpetual affluency of animal spirits. Nor must I omit the reason which Hudibras has given, why those who can talk on trifles speak with the greatest fluency; namely, that the tongue is a race-horse, which runs the faster the lesser weight it carries. Which of these reasons soever may be looked upon as the most probable, I think the Irishman's thought was very natural, who, after some hours' conversation with a female orator, told her, that he believed her tongue was very glad when she was asleep, for that it had not a moment's rest all the while she was awake. That excellent old ballad of The Wanton Wife of Bath, has the following remarkable lines: The blade had cut THERE are none who deserve superiority over others in the esteem of mankind, who do not make it their endeavour to be beneficial to society; and who upon all occasions which their circumstances of life can administer, do not take a certain unfeigned pleasure in conferring benefits of one kind or other. Those whose great talents and high birth have placed them in conspicuous stations of life are indispensably obliged to exert some noble inclinations for the service of the world, or else such advantages become misfortunes, and shade and privacy are a more eligible portion. Where opportunities and inclinations are given to the same person, we sometimes see sublime instances of virtue, which so dazzle our imagi nations, that we look with scorn on all which in lower scenes of life we may ourselves be able to practise. But this is a vicious way of thinking; and it bears some spice of romantic madness, for a man to imagine that he must grow ambitious, or seek adventures, to be able to do great actions. It is in every man's power in the world who is above mere poverty, not only to do things worthy, but heroic. The great foundation of civil virtue is self-denial; and there is no one above the necessities of life, but has opportunities of exercising that noble quality, and doing as much as his circumstances will bear for the ease and convenience of other men; and he who does more than ordinary men practise upon such occasions as occur in his life, deserves the value of his friends, as if he had done enterprises which are usually attended with the highest glory. Men of public spirit differ rather in their circumstances than their virtue; and the man who does all he can, in a low station, is more a hero than he who omits any worthy action he is able to accomplish in a great one. It is not many years ago since Lapirius, in wrong of his elder brother, came to a great estate by gift of his father, by reason of the dissolute If a tongue would be talking without a mouth, what could it have done when it had behaviour of the first-born. Shame and conall its organs of speech, and accomplices of trition reformed the life of the disinherited sound about it? might here mention the youth, and he became as remarkable for his story of the Pippin Woman, had I not some good qualities as formerly for his errors. reason to look upon it as fabulous.* La I must confess I am so wonderfully charmed pirius, who observed his brother's amend ment, sent him on a new-year's day in the morning the following letter: HONOURED BROTHER, with the music of this little instrument, that I would by no means discourage it. All that I aim at by this dissertation is, to cure it of several disagreeable notes, and in particular of 'I enclose to you the deeds whereby my those little jarrings and dissonances which father gave me this house and land. Had he arise from anger, censoriousness, gossiping. lived till now, he would not have bestowed it and coquetry. In short, I would always have in that manner; he took it from the man you it tuned by good-nature, truth, discretion, were, and I restore it to the man you are. and sincerity. C. The crackling crystal yields, she sinks, she dies; 'I am, Sir, pursuit of hazardous actions for the good of and allowing him his expenses at the charge others, at the same time gratifying their of the society. One of our kings,* said my passion for glory; so do worthy minds in the friend, carried his royal inclination a little too domestic way of life deny themselves many far, and there was a committee ordered to advantages, to satisfy a generous benevolence, look into the management of his treasury. which they bear to their friends oppressed Among other things it appeared, that his mawith distresses and calamities. Such natures (jesty walking incog. in the cloister, had overone may call stores of Providence, which are heard a poor man say to another, 'Such a actuated by a secret celestial influence to un- small sum would make me the happiest man dervalue the ordinary gratifications of wealth, in the world.' The king, out of his royal to give comfort to an heart loaded with afflic-compassion, privately inquired into his charaction, to save a falling family, to preserve a ter, and finding him a proper object of charity, branch of trade in their neighbourhood, to sent him the money. When the committee give work to the industrious, preserve the por- read the report, the house passed his accounts tion of the helpless infant, and raise the head with a plaudite without farther examination, of the mourning father. People whose hearts upon the recital of this article in them; are wholly bent towards pleasure, or intent For making a man happy ....... 1. 10 0 0. upon gain, never hear of the noble occurrences among men of industry and humanity. It would look like a city romance, to tell them No. 249.] Saturday, December 15, 1711. Γέλως ακαιρος εν βροῖοῖς δεινὸν κακον. Frag. Vet Poet. of the generous merchant, who the other day sent this billet to an eminent trader under difficulties to support himself, in whose fall many hundreds besides himself had perished: but because I think there is more spirit and true gallantry in it than in any letter I have| ever read from Strephon to Phillis, I shall in-not been treated on by others, I throw togesert it even in the mercantile honest style in which it was sent : 'SIR, ther my reflections on it without any order or method, so that they may appear rather in the looseness and freedom of an essay, than in the regularity of a set discourse. It is after this manner that I shall consider laughter and ridicule in my present paper. Man is the merriest species of the creation, all above and below him are serious. He sees things in a different light from other beings, and finds his mirth arising from objects that perhaps cause something like pity or displeasure in higher natures. Laughter is indeed a very good counterpoise to the spleen; and it seems but reasonable that we should be capable of receiving joy from what is no real good to us, since we can receive grief from what is 'I have heard of the casualties which have involved you in extreme distress at this time; and knowing you to be a man of great goodnature, industry, and probity, have resolved to stand by you Be of good cheer; the bearer brings with him five thousand pounds, and has my order to answer your drawing as much more on my account. I did this in haste, for fear I should come too late for your relief; but you may value yourself with me to the sum of fifty thousand pounds; for I can very cheerfully run the hazard of being so much less rich than I am now, to save an honest no real evil. man whom I love.* "Your friend and servant, 'w. s.' I have in my forty-seventh paper raised a speculation on the notion of a modern philosopher, who describes the first motive of laughter to be a secret comparison which we I think there is somewhere in Montaigne make between ourselves and the persons we mention made of a family-book, wherein all laugh at; or, in other words, that satisfaction the occurrences that happened from one ge- which we receive from the opinion of some neration of that house to another were re-pre-eminence in ourselves, when we see the corded. Were there such a method in the absurdities of another, or when we reflect on families which are concerned in this genero-any past absurdities of our own. This seems sity, it would be an hard task for the greatest to hold in most cases, and we may observe in Europe to give in their own, an instance of that the vainest part of mankind are the most a benefit better placed, or conferred with a addicted to this passion. more graceful air. It has been heretofore I have read a sermon of a conventual in the urged how barbarous and inhuman is any un-church of Rome, on those words of the wise just step made to the disadvantage of a trader; man, I said of Laughter, it is mad; and of and by how much such an act towards him is detestable, by so much an act of kindness towards him is laudable. I remember to have heard a bencher of the Temple tell a story of a tradition in their house, where they had formerly a custom of choosing kings for such a season, The merchant involved in distress by casualties was one Mr. Moreton, a linen-draper; and the generous merehant, here so justly celebrated, was Sir William Scawen. Mirth, what does it?" Upon which he laid it down as a point of doctrine, that laughter was the effect of original sin, and that Adam could not laugh before the fall. This king, it is said, was beau Nash, master of the ceremonies at Bath. In king William's time he was a student in the Temple. His biographer says, though he was much given to gambling, he was very liberal, and numerous instances are recorded of his benevolence. † Hobbes. |