people of his own condition could make him, invitations to dine at different places, which he for the pleasure of helping the afflicted, sup- generally takes care to choose in such a manplying the needy, and befriending the neg- ner as not to seem inclined to the richer man. lected. The humourist keeps to himself All the young men respect him, and say he is much more than he wants, and gives a vast just the same man he was when they were refuse of his superfluities to purchase heaven, boys. He uses no artifice in the world, but and by freeing others from the temptations of makes use of men's designs upon him to get a worldly want, to carry a retinue with him maintainance out of them. This he carries on thither. by a certain peevishness, (which he acts very Of all men who affect living in a particular well) that no one would believe could possibly way, next to this admirable character, I am enter into the head of a poor fellow. His the most enamoured of Irus, whose condition mien, his dress, his carriage, and his lanwill not admit of such largesses, and who guage, are such, that you would be at a loss perhaps would not be capable of making to guess whether in the active part of his life them if it were. Irus, though he is now turn- he had been a sensible citizen, or scholar that ed of fifty, has not appeared in the world in knew the world. These are the great circumhis real character since-five-and-twenty, at stances in the life of Irus, and thus does he which age he ran out a small patrimony, pass away his days a stranger to mankind; spent some time after with rakes who had lived and at his death, the worst that will be said upon him. A course of ten years time pass- of him will be, that he got by every man who ed in all the little alleys, by-paths, and some- had expectatiuns from him, more than he had times open taverns and streets of this town, to leave him. gave Irus a perfect skill in judging of the in- I have an inclination to print the following clinations of mankind, and acting according-letters; for I have heard the author of them ly. He seriously considered he was poor, and has somewhere or other seen me, and by an the general horror which most men have of excellent faculty in mimickry my correspondall who are in that condition. Irus judged ents tell me he can assume my air, and give very rightly, that while he could keep his my taciturnity a slyness which diverts more poverty a secret, he should not feel the weight than any thing I could say if I were present. of it; he improved this thought into an affec- Thus I am glad my silence is atoned for to the tation of closeness and covetousness. Upon good company in town. He has carried his this one principle he resolved to govern his skill in imitation so far, as to have forged a future life; and in the thirty-sixth year of his letter from my friend Sir Roger in such a manage he repaired to Long-lane, and looked upon ner, that any one but I who am thoroughly several dresses which hung there deserted by acquainted with him, would have taken it for their first masters, and exposed to the pur-genuine. chase of the best bidder. At this place he MR. SPECTATOR, exchanged his gay shabbiness of clothes fit Having observed in Lily's grammar how for a much younger man, to warm ones that sweetly Bacchus and Apollo run in a verse; I would be decent for a much older one. Irus have (to preserve the amity between them) came out thoroughly equipped from head to called in Bacchus to the aid of my profession foot, with a little oaken cane, in the form of a of the theatre. So that while some people of substantial man that did not mind his dress, quality are bespeaking plays of me to be acted turned of fifty. He had at this time fifty pounds in ready money; and in this habit, houses against such a time; on such a day, and others, hogsheads for their am wholly emwith this fortune, he took his present lodging ployed in the agreeable service of wit and in St. John-street, at the mansion-house of a wine. Sir, I have sent you Sir Roger de Cotailor's widow, who washes, and can clear-verley's letter to me, which pray comply with starch his bands. From that time to this he in favour of the Bumper tavern. Be kind, for has kept the main stock, without alteration 'I am your admirer, though unknown, 'To Mr. Estcourt, At his house in Covent Garden. under or over to the value of five pounds. He you know a player's utmost pride is the apleft off all his old acquaintance to a man, and probation of the Spectator. all his arts of life, except the play of backgammon, upon which he has more than bore his charges. Irus has, ever since he came into this neighbourhood, given all the intimations he skilfully could of being a close hunks Coverly, Dec. 18, 1711. worth money: no body comes to visit him, OLD COMICAL ONE, he receives no letters, and tells his money 'The hogsheads of neat port came safe, morning and evening. He has from the public and have gotten thee good reputation in these papers a knowledge of what generally passes, parts; and I am glad to hear, that a fellow shuns all discourses of money, but shrugs his who has been laying out his money ever since shoulders when you talk of securities; he de- he was born, for the mere pleasure of wine, nies his being rich with the air which all do has bethought himself of joining profit and who are vain of being so. He is the oracle of pleasure together. Our sexton (poor man) a neighbouring justice of the peace, who having received strength from thy wine since meets him at the coffee-house; the hopes that his fit of the gout, is hugely taken with it: what he has must come to somebody, and that he says it is given by nature for the use of he has no heirs, have that effect wherever he families, and that no steward's table can be is known, that he has every day three or four without it; that it strengthens digestion, ex cludes surfeits, fevers, and physic; which projectors were all the last summer so taken up green wines of any kind cannot do. Pray get a with the improvement of their petticoats, that pure snug room, and I hope next term to help they had not time to attend to any thing else; fill your bumper with our people of the club; but having at length sufficiently adorned their but you must have no bells stirring when the lower parts, they now begin to turn their Spectator comes; I forebore ringing to dinner thoughts upon the other extremity, as well while he was down with me in the country. remembering the old kitchen proverb, that if Thank you for the little hams and Portugal you light the fire at both ends, the middle will onions; pray keep some always by you. You shift for itself.' know my supper is only good Cheshire cheese, best mustard, a golden pippin, attended with a pipe of John Sly's best. Sir Harry has stolen all your songs, and tells the story of the 5th of November to perfection. 6 Yours to serve you, ROGER DE COVERLEY.' 'We have lost old John since you were here.' No. 265.] Thursday, January 3, 1711-12. T. Dixerit é multis aliquis, quid virus in angues But some exclaim; what frenzy rules your mind? I am engaged in this speculation by a sight which I lately met with at the opera. As I was standing in the hinder part of a box, I took notice of a little cluster of women sitting together in the prettiest coloured hoods that I ever saw. One of them was blue, another yellow, and another philomot; the fourth was of a pink colour, and the fifth of a pale green. I looked with as much pleasure upon this little party-coloured assembly, as upon a bed of tulips, and did not know at first whether it might not be an embassy of Indian queens; but upon my going about into the pit, and taking them in front, I was immediately undeceived, and saw so much beauty in every face, that I found them all to be English. Such eyes and lips, cheeks and foreheads, could be the growth of no other country. The complexion of their faces hindered me from observing any farther the colour of their hoods, though I could easily perceive by that unspeakable satisfaction which ONE of the fathers, if I am rightly informed, appeared in their looks, that their own thoughts has defined a woman to be ov pózoσμov, an were wholly taken up on those pretty ornaanimal that delights in finery. I have already ments they wore upon their heads. treated of the sex in two or three papers, con- I am informed that this fashion spreads daily, formably to this definition; and have in par-insomuch that the Whig and Tory ladies begin ticular observed, that in all ages they have been already to hang out different colours and to more careful than the men to adorn that part show their principles in their head-dress. Nay, of the head which we generally call the outside. if I may believe my friend Will Honeycomb, This observation is so very notorious, that when in ordinary discourse we say a man has a fine head, a long head, or a good head, we express ourselves metaphorically, and speak in relation to his understanding; whereas when we say of a woman, she has a fine, a long, or a good head, we speak only in relation to her commode. Congreve. there is a certain old coquette of his acquaintance, who intends to appear very suddenly in a rainbow hood, like the Iris in Dryden's Virgil, not questioning but that among such a variety of colours she shall have a charm for every heart. My friend Will, who very much values himself upon his great insight into gallantry, tells It is observed among birds, that nature has me, that he can already guess at the humour lavished all her ornaments upon the male, who a lady is in by her hood, as the courtiers of very often appears in a most beautiful head-Morocco know the disposition of their present dress: whether it be a crest, a comb, a tuft of emperor by the colour of the dress which he feathers, or a natural little plume, erected like puts on. When Melesinda wraps her head in a kind of pinnacle on the very top of the head. flame colour, her heart is set upon execution. As nature on the contrary has poured out her When she covers it with purple, I would not, charms in the greatest abundance upon the says he, advise her lover to approach her; but female part of our species, so they are very as-if she appears in white, it is peace, and he may siduous in bestowing upon themselves the finest hand her out of her box with safety. garnitures of art. The peacock, in all his pride, does not display half the colours that appear in the garments of a British lady, when she is dressed either for a ball or a birth-day. The Will informs me likewise, that these hoods may be used as signals. Why else, says he, does Cornelia always put on a black hood when her husband is gone into the country? But to return to our female heads. Such are my friend Honeycomb's dreams of ladies have been for some time in a kind of gallantry. For my own part, I impute this moulting season with regard to that part of diversity of colours in the hoods to the divertheir dress, having cast great quantities of ri-sity of complexion in the faces of my pretty band, lace, and cambrick, and in some measure country women. Ovid, in his Art of Love, has reduced that part of the human figure to the beautiful globular form, which is natural to it. We have for a great while expected what kind of ornament would be substituted in the place of those antiquated commodes. Our female VOL. T. given some precepts as to this particular, though I find they are different from those which prevail among the moderns. He recommends a red striped silk to the pale complexion; white to the brown, and dark to the 44 fair. On the contrary, my friend Will, who begin with the consideration of poor and pub. pretends to be a greater master in this art lic whores. The other evening passing along than Ovid, tells me, that the palest features near Covent-garden, I was jogged on the elbow look the most agreeable in white sarsenet; that as I turned into the piazza, on the right hand a face which is overflushed appears to advan- coming out of James-street, by a slim young tage in the deepest scarlet; and that the dark-girl of about seventeen, who with a pert air est complexion is not a little alleviated by a asked me if I was for a pint of wine. I do not black hood. In short, he is for losing the know but I should have indulged my curiosity colour of the face in that of the hood, as a in having some chat with her, but that I am fire burns dimly, and a candle goes half out, informed the man of the Bumper knows me; in the light of the sun. 'This,' says he, 'your and it would have made a story for him not Ovid himself has hinted, where he treats of very agreeable to some part of my writings, these matters, when he tells us that the blue though I have in others so frequently said, that water-nymphs are dressed in sky-coloured gar-I am wholly unconcerned in any scene I am in ments; and that Aurora, who always appears but merely as a Spectator. This impediment in the light of the rising sun, is robed in being in my way, we stood under one of the saffron.' arches by twilight; and there I could observe as exact features as I had ever seen, the most agreeable shape, the finest neck and bosom; in a word, the whole person of a woman exquisitely beautiful. She affected te allure me with a forced wantonness in her look and air; but I saw it checked with hunger and cold: her eyes were wan and eager, her dress thin and tawdry, As I have nothing more at heart than the her mien genteel and childish. This strange honour and improvement of the fair-sex, I figure gave me much anguish of heart, and to cannot conclude this paper without an exhor-avoid being seen with her, I went away, but tation to the British ladies, that they would could not forbear giving her a crown. The poor excel the women of all other nations as much thing sighed, courtesied, and with a blessing exin virtue and good sense, as they do in beauty; which they may certainly do, if they will be as industrious to cultivate their minds, as they are to adorn their bodies. In the mean while I shall recommend to their most serious consideration the saying of an old Greek poet: Γυναικὶ κόσμος ὁ τρόπος, κ' οὐ χρυσία. Whether these his observations are justly grounded I cannot tell; but I have often known him, as we have stood together behind the ladies, praise or dispraise the complexion of a face which he never saw, from observing the colour of her hood, and [he] has been very seldom out in these his guesses. No. 266.] Friday, January 4, 1711-12. Id verò est, quod ego mihi puto palmarium, C. Ter. Eun. Act. v. Sc. 4. pressed with the utmost vehemence, turned from me. This creature is what they call 'newly come upon the town,' but who, falling, I sTM” pose, into cruel hands, was left in the first month from her dishonour, and exposed to pass through the hands and discipline of one of those hags of hell whom we call bawds. But lest I should grow too suddenly grave on this subject, and be myself outrageously good, I shall turn to a scene in one of Fletcher's plays, where this character is drawn, and the economy of whoredom most admirably described. The passage I would point to is in the third scene of the second act of The Humorous Lieutenant. Leucippe, who is agent for the king's lust, and bawds at the same time for the whole court, is very pleasantly introduced, reading her miThis I conceive to be my master-piece, that I have dis-nutes as a person of business, with two maids, covered how unexperienced youth may detect the arti- her under-secretaries, taking instructions at a fices of bad women, and by knowing them early, detest them for ever. table before her. Her women, both those under her present tutelage, and those which she No vice or wickedness which people fall is laying wait for, are alphabetically set down into from indulgence to desires which are na-in her book; and as she is looking over the lettural to all, ought to place them below the ter C in a muttering voice, as if between solicompassion of the virtuous part of the world; loquy and speaking out, she says, which indeed often makes me a little apt to suspect the sincerity of their virtue, who are too warmly provoked at other people's personal sins. The unlawful commerce of the sexes is of all others the hardest to avoid; and yet there is no one which you shall hear the rigider part of womankind speak of with so little mercy. It is very certain that a modest woman cannot abhor the breach of chastity too much; but pray let her hate it for herself, and only pity it in others. Will Honeycomb calls these over-offended ladies, the outrageously virtuous. I do not design to fall upon failures in general, with relation to the gift of chastity, but at present only enter upon that large field, and she is not fifteen they say; for her complexion- [ly: These creatures are very well instructed in the circumstances and manners of all who are any way related to the fair one whom they have a design upon. As Cloe is to be purchased with 350 crowns, and the father taken off with Cedite Romani scriptores, cedite Graii. Propert. El. 34. Lib. 2. 65. a pad; the merchant's wife next to her who | No. 267.] Saturday, January 5, 1711-12. abounds in plenty, is not to have downright money, but the mercenary part of her mind is engaged with a present of plate, and a little ambition. She is made to understand that it Give place, ye Roman, and ye Grecian wits. is a man of quality, who dies for her. The examination of a young girl for business, and THERE is nothing in nature so irksome as the crying down her value for being a slight general discourses, especially when they turn thing, together with every other circumstance chiefly upon words. For this reason I shall in the scene, are inimitably excellent, and have wave the discussion of that point which was the true spirit of comedy; though it were to started some years since, whether Milton's be wished the author had added a circum-Paradise Lost may be called an heroic poem ? stance which should make Lencippe's baseness Those who will not give it that title, may call more odious. it (if they please) a divine poem. It will be It must not be thought a digression from sufficient to its perfection, if it has in it all the my intended speculation, to talk of bawds in beauties of the highest kind of poetry; and as a discourse upon wenches; for a woman of for those who alledge it is not an heroic poem, the town is not thoroughly and properly such they advance no more to the diminution of it, without having gone through the education of than if they should say Adam is not Æneas, one of these houses. But the compassionate nor Eve Helen. case of very many is, that they are taken into I shall therefore examine it by the rules of such hands without any the least suspicion, epic poetry, and see whether it falls short of previous temptation, or admonition to what the Illiad or Eneid, in the beauties which are place they are going. The last week I went essential to that kind of writing. The first thing to an inn in the city to inquire for some pro- to be considered in an epic poem, is the fable, visions which were sent by a wagon out of which is perfect or imperfect, according as the the country; and as I waited in one of the action which it relates is more or less so. This boxes till the chamberlain had looked over his action should have three qualifications in it. parcels, I heard an old and a young voice re- First, it should be but one action. Secondly, peating the questions and responses of the it should be an entire action; and, Thirdly, hurch catechism. I thought it no breach of it should be a great action. To consider the od-manners to peep at a crevice, and look action of the Illiad, Æneid, and Paradise Lost, in at people so well employed; but who should in these three several lights: Homer, to preI see there but the most artful procuress in serve the unity of his action, hastens into the town, examining a most beautiful country-girl, midst of things, as Horace has observed. Had who had come up in the same wagon with he gone up to Leda's egg, or begun much later, my things, whether she was well educated, even at the rape of Helen, or the investing of could forbear playing the wanton with servants Troy, it is manifest that the story of the poem and idle fellows, of which this town, says she, would have been a series of several actions. is too full.' At the same time, whether she He therefore opens his poem with the discord knew enough of breeding, as that if a 'squire of his princes, and artfully interweaves, in the or a gentleman, or one that was her betters, several succeeding parts of it, an account of should give her a civil salute, she should cour- every thing material which relates to them, tesy and be humble nevertheless.' Her inno- and had passed before that fatal dissention. cent 'forsooths, yesses and't please you's, and After the same manner Æneas makes his first she would do her endeavour, moved the good appearance in the Tyrrhene seas, and within old lady to take her out of the hands of a coun-sight of Itally, because the action proposed to try bumpkin, her brother, and hire her for her be celebrated was that of his setting himself own maid. I staid till I saw them all march in Latium. But because it was necessary for out to take a coach; the brother loaded with a the reader to know what had happened to him great cheese, he prevailed upon her to take for in the taking of Troy, and in the preceding her civilities to his sister. This poor creature's parts of his voyage, Virgil makes his hero refate is not far off that of her's whom I spoke of late it by way of episode in the second and above; and it is not to be donbted, but after third books of the Eneid. The contents of she has been long enough a prey to lust, she both which books come before those of the will be delivered over to famine. The ironical first book in the thread of the story, though commendation of the industry and charity of for preserving this unity of action they follow these antiquated ladies, these directors of sin, them in the dispositien of the poem. Milton, after they can no longer commit it, makes up in imitation of these two great poets, opens the beauty of the inimitable dedication to the his Paradise Lost with an infernal council Plain-Dealer, and is a master-piece of raillery plotting the fall of man, which is the action on this vice. But to understand all the pur- he proposed to celebrate; and as for those lieus of this game the better, and to illustrate great actions, which preceded in point of time, this subject in future discourses, I must ven- the battle of the angels, and the creation of ture myself, with my friend Will, into the the world, (which would have entirely deshaunts of beauty and gallantry; from pam-troyed the unity of the principal action, had pered vice in the habitations of the wealthy, he related them in the same order that they to distressed indigent wickedness expelled the happened) he cast them into the fifth, sixth, harbours of the brothel. and seventh books, by way of episode to this noble poem. T. Aristotle himself allows, that Homer has together for the destruction of mankind, nothing to boast of as to the unity of his fable, which they effected in part, and would have though at the same time that great critic and completed, had not Omnipotence itself inphilosopher endeavours to palliate this imper- terposed. The principal actors are man in fection in the Greek poet, by imputing it in his greatest perfection, and woman in her some measure to the very nature of an epic highest beauty. Their enemies are fallen anpoem. Some have been of opinion, that the gels; the Messiah their friend, and the AlEneid also labours in this particular, and mighty their Protector. In short, every thing has episodes which may be looked upon as that is great in the whole circle of being, excrescences rather than as parts of the ac- whether within the verge of nature, or out of tion. On the contrary, the poem which we it, has a proper part assigned it in this admirhave now under our consideration, hath no able poem. other episodes than such as naturally arise from the subject, and yet is filled with such a multitude of astonishing incidents, that it gives us at the same time a pleasure of the greatest variety and of the greatest simplicity; uniform in its nature, though diversified in the execution. In poetry, as in architecture, not only the whole, but the principal members, and every part of them, should be great. I will not presume to say, that the book of games in the Eneid, or that in the Iliad, are not of this nature; nor to reprehend Virgil's simile of the top, and many other of the same kind in I must observe also, that as Virgil, in the the Iliad, as liable to any censure in this parpoem which was designed to celebrate the ticular; but I think we may say, without deoriginal of the Roman empire, has described rogating from those wonderful performances, the birth of its great rival, the Carthaginian that there is an unquestionable magnificence commonwealth; Milton, with the like art in in every part of Paradise Lost, and indeed a his poem on the fall of man, has related the fall much greater than could have been formed upof those angels who are his professed ene- on any pagan system. mies. Besides the many other beauties in But Aristotle, by the greatness of the action, such an episode, its running parallel with the does not only mean that it should be great in great action of the poem hinders it from break-its nature, but also in its duration, or in other ing the unity so much as another episode words, that it should have a due length in it, would have done, that had not so great an as well as what we properly call gre affinity with the principal subject. In short, The just measure of this kind of magne this is the same kind of beauty which the critics admire in the Spanish Friar, or The Double Discovery, where the two different plots look like counter-parts and copies of one another. he explains by the following similitude: An animal no bigger than a mite, cannot appear perfect to the eye, because the sight takes it in at once, and has only a confused idea of the whole, and not a distinct idea of all its parts; The second qualification required in the if, on the contrary, you should suppose an action of an epic poem, is, that it should be animal of ten thousand furlongs in length, the an entire action. An action is entire when it eye would be so filled with a single part of it, is complete in all its parts; or as Aristotle de- that it could not give the mind an idea of the scribes it, when it consists of a beginning, a whole. What these animals are to the eye, a middle, and an end. Nothing should go be- very short or a very long action would be to the fore it, be intermixed with it, or follow after it, memory. The first would be, as it were, lost that is not related to it. As, on the contrary, and swallowed up by it, and the other difficult no single step should be omitted in that just to be contained in it. Homer and Virgil have and regular process which it must be supposed shown their principal art in this particular; to take from its original to its consummation. the action of the Iliad, and that of the Æneid, Thus we see the anger of Achilles in its birth, were in themselves exceeding short, but are so its continuance, and effects; and Æneas's set-beautifully extended and diversified by the intlement in Italy carried on through all the vention of episodes, and the machinery of gods, oppositions in his way to it both by sea and with the like poetical ornaments, that they land. The action in Milton excels (I think) make up an agreeable story, sufficient to emboth the former in this particular; we see it ploy the memory without overcharging it. contrived in hell, executed upon earth, and Milton's action is enriched with such a variety punished by heaven. The parts of it are of circumstances, that I have taken as much told in the most distinct manner, and grow pleasure in reading the contents of his books, out of one another in the most natural me- as in the best invented story I ever met with. thod. It is possible, that the traditions, on which the The third qualification of an epic poem is Iliad and the Æneid were built, had more cirits greatness. The anger of Achilles was of cumstances in them than the history of the fall such consequence that it embroiled the kings of man, as it is related in scripture. Besides, of Greece, destroyed the heroes of Troy, and it was easier for Homer and Virgil to dash the engaged all the gods in factions. Eneas's truth with fiction, as they were in no danger settlement in Italy produced the Cæsars, and of offending the religion of their country by gave birth to the Roman empire. Milton's it. But as for Milton, he had not only a very subject was still greater than either of the few circumstances upon which to raise his poformer; it does not determine the fate of em, but was also obliged to proceed with the single persons or nations; but of a whole spe- greatest caution in every thing that he added cies. The united powers of hell are joined out of his own invention. And indeed, not |