in us. drunken fellows, it tends only to make vice the number 134. On the contrary, I have in themselves, as they think, pleasant and been told of a certain zealous dissenter humorous, and at the same time nauseous who being a great enemy to popery, and I shall, sir, hereafter, from time to believing that bad men are the most fortime give you the names of these wretches tunate in this world, will lay two to one on who pretend to enter our houses merely as the number 666 against any other number, Spectators. Those men think it wit to use because, says he, it is the number of the us ill: pray tell them, however worthy we beast. Several would prefer the number are of such treatment, it is unworthy them 12,000 before any other, as it is the number to be guilty of it towards us. Pray, sir, of the pounds in the great prize. In short, take notice of this, and pity the oppressed: some are pleased to find their own age in I wish we could add to it, the innocent.' their number; some that have got a number which makes a pretty appearance in the cyphers; and others, because it is the same number that succeeded in the last lottery. Each of these upon no other grounds, thinks he stands fairest for the great lot, and that he is possessed of what may not be improperly called the golden number.' No 191.] Tuesday, October 9, 1711. κλον ονειρεν. T. Hom. Il. ii. 6. -Deluding vision of the night. Pope. SOME ludicrous schoolmen have put the case, that if an ass were placed between two bundles of hay, which affected his senses equally on each side, and tempted him in the very same degree, whether it would be possible for him to eat of either. They generally determine this question to the disadvantage of the ass, who they say would starve in the midst of plenty, as not having a single grain of free-will, to determine him more to the one than to the other. The bundle of hay on either side striking his sight and smell in the same proportion, would keep him in perpetual suspense, like the two magnets, which travellers have told us, are placed one of them in the roof, and the other in the floor of Mahomet's burying-place at Mecca, and by that means say they, pull the impostor's iron coffin with such an equal attraction, that it hangs in the air between both of them. As for the ass's behaviour in such nice circumstances, whether he would starve sooner than violate his neutrality to the two bundles of hay, I shall not presume to determine; but only take notice of the conduct of our own species in the same perplexity. When a man has a mind to venture his money in a lottery, every figure of it appears equally alluring, and as likely to succeed as any of its fel. lows. They all of them have the same pretensions to good-luck, stand upon the same foot of competition, and no manner of reason can be given why a man should prefer one to the other before the lottery is drawn. In this case therefore caprice very often acts in the place of reason, and forms to itself some groundless imaginary motive, where real and substantial ones are want ing. I know a well-meaning man that is very well pleased to risk his good-fortune upon the number 1711, because it is the year of our Lord. I am acquainted with a tacker* that would give a good deal for These principles of election are the pastimes and extravagances of human reason, which is of so busy a nature, that it will be exerting itself in the meanest trifles, and working even when it wants materials The wisest of men are sometimes acted by such unaccountable motives, as the life of the fool and the superstitious is guided by nothing else. I am surprised that none of the fortunetellers, or, as the French call them, the Diseurs de bonne Avanture, who publish their bills in every quarter of the town, have turned our lotteries to their advantage. Did any of them set up for a caster of for tunate figures, what might he not get by his pretended discoveries and predictions? I remember among the advertisements in the Post-Boy of September the 27th, I was surprised to see the following one: 'This is to give notice, that ten shillings over and above the market-price, will be given for the ticket in the 1,500,000l. lottery, No. 132, by Nath. Cliff, at the Bible and Three Crowns in Cheapside. ' ter of speculation to coffee-house theorists This advertisement has given great matMr. Cliff's principles and conversation have been canvassed upon this occasion, and various conjectures made why he should thus set his heart upon No. 132. I have exbroken them into fractions, extracted the amined all the powers in those numbers, square and cube root, divided and multiplied them all ways, but could not arrive at the secret until about three days ago, when I received the following letter from an unknown hand; by which I find that Mr. Nath. Cliff is only the agent, and not the principal in this advertisement. 'MR. SPECTATOR,-I am the person that lately advertised I would give ten shillings more than the current price for the ticket No. 132 in the lottery now drawing; which In 1704 a bill was brought into the House of Commons against occasional conformity; and in order to make it pass the lords, from whom much opposition was expected, it was proposed to tack it to a money-bill. but 250 being against it, the motion was overruled, and This was violently opposed; and after a warm discus- the bill committed unclogged. sion, it was put to the vote, when 134 were for tucking: | † See Revelations, ch. xiii. 18. Actuated. -Uno ore omnes omnia -All the world With one accord said all good things, and prais'd Colman. is a secret which I have communicated to No. 192.] Wednesday, October 10, 1711. humble servant, P. S. Dear Spec, if I get the 12,000 pound, I'll make thee a handsome present.' His I STOOD the other day, and beheld a father sitting in the middle of a room with a large family of children about him; and methought I could observe in his countenance different motions of delight, as he turned his eye towards the one and the other of them. The man is a person moderate in his designs for their preferment and welfare: and as he has an easy fortune, he is not solicitous to make a great one. eldest son is a child of a very towardly disposition, and as much as the father loves him, I dare say he will never be a knave to improve his fortune. I do not know any man who has a juster relish of life than the person I am speaking of, or keeps a better After having wished my correspondent guard against the terrors of want, or the Good luck, and thanked him for his intended hopes of gain. It is usual in a crowd of chilindness, I shall for this time dismiss the dren, for the parent to name out of his own subject of the lottery, and only observe, that flock all the great officers of the kingdom. he greatest part of mankind are in some There is something so very surprising in egree guilty of my friend Gosling's ex- the parts of a child of a man's own, that ravagance. We are apt to rely upon future there is nothing too great to be expected prospects, and become really expensive from his endowments. I know a good wowhile we are only rich in possibility. We man who has but three sons, and there is, Live up to our expectations, not to our pos- she says, nothing she expects with more essions, and make a figure proportionable certainty, than that she shall see one of what we may be, not what we are. We them a bishop, the other a judge, and the trun our present income, as not doubting third a court-physician. The humour is, disburse ourselves out of the profits of that any thing which can happen to any ome future place, project, or reversion that man's child, is expected by every man for we have in view. It is through this temper his own. But my friend, whom I was going f mind, which is so common among us, to speak of, does not flatter himself with hat we see tradesmen break, who have such vain expectations, but has his eye net with no misfortunes in their business; more upon the virtue and disposition of his nd men of estates reduced to poverty, who children, than their advancement or wealth. ave never suffered from losses or repairs, Good habits are what will certainly imnants, taxes, or law-suits. In short, it is prove a man's fortune and reputation; but, his foolish, sanguine temper, this depend on the other side, affluence of fortune will g upon contingent futurities, that occa- not as probably produce good affections of ons romantic generosity, chimerical gran- the mind. eur, senseless ostentation, and generally nds in beggary and ruin. The man who ill live above his present circumstances, great danger of living in a little time uch beneath them; or, as the Italian proerb runs, The man who lives by hope, ill die by hunger." It should be an indispensable rule in life, contract our desires to our present contion, and, whatever may be our expectaons, to live within the compass of what e actually possess. It will be time enough enjoy an estate when it comes into our unds; but if we anticipate our good fortune shall lose the pleasure of it when it aryes, and may possibly never possess what have so foolishly counted upon. L. in i. e. reimburse. It is very natural for a man of a kind disposition, to amuse himself with the promises his imagination makes to him of the future condition of his children, and to represent to himself the figure they shall bear in the world after he has left it. When his prospects of this kind are agreeable, his fondness gives as it were a longer date to his own life; and the survivorship of a worthy man in his son, is a pleasure scarce inferior to the hopes of the continuance of his own life. That man is happy who can believe of his own son, that he will escape the follies and indiscretions of which he himself was guilty, and pursue and improve every thing that was valuable in him. The continuance of his virtue is much more to be regarded than that of his life; but it is the most lamentable of all reflections, to think that the heir of a man's fortune is such a tune, so that no one ever obliged one of one as will be a stranger to his friends, them, who had not the obligation multiplied alienated from the same interests, and a in returns from them all. promoter of every thing which he himself disapproved. An estate in possession of such a successor to a good man, is worse than laid waste; and the family of which he is the head, is in a more deplorable condition than that of being extinct. meets with are regarded only as they con cern him in the relation he has to another. A man's very honour receives a new value to him, when he thinks that when he is in his grave, it will be had in remembrance that such an action was done by such an one's father. Such considerations sweeten the old man's evening, and his soliloquy de lights him when he can say to himself, No man can tell my child, his father was either unmerciful, or unjust. My son shall meet many a man who shall say to him, I was obliged to thy father; and be my child a friend to his child for ever. It is the most beautiful object the eyes of man can behold, to see a man of worth and his son live in an entire unreserved corre spondence. The mutual kindness and af fection between them, give an inexpressible satisfaction to all who know them. It is a When I visit the agreeable seat of my sublime pleasure which increases by the honoured friend Ruricola, and walk from participation. It is as sacred as friendship, room to room revolving many pleasing oc- as pleasurable as love, and as joyful as recurrences, and the expressions of many just ligion. This state of mind does not only sentiments I have heard him utter, and see dissipate sorrow, which would be extreme the booby his heir in pain while he is doing without it, but enlarges pleasures which the honours of his house to the friend of his would otherwise be contemptible. The father, the heaviness it gives one is not to most indifferent thing has its force and be expressed. Want of genius is not to be beauty when it' is spoke by a kind father, imputed to any man, but want of humanity and an insignificant trifle has its weight is a man's own fault. The son of Ruricola when offered by a dutiful child. I know (whose life was one continued series of wor-not how to express it, but I think I may thy actions, and gentleman-like inclinations) call it a 'transplanted self-love. All the is the companion of drunken clowns, and enjoyments and sufferings which a man knows no sense of praise but in the flattery he receives from his own servants; his pleasures are mean and inordinate, his language base and filthy, his behaviour rough and absurd. Is this creature to be accounted the successor of a man of virtue, wit, and breeding? At the same time that I have this melancholy prospect at the house where I miss my old friend, I can go to a gentleman's not far off it, where he has a daughter who is the picture both of his body and mind, but both improved with the beauty and modesty peculiar to her sex. It is she who supplies the loss of her father to the world; she, without his name or fortune, is a truer memorial of him, than her brother who succeeds him in both. Such an offspring as the eldest son of my friend, perpetuates his father in the same manner as the appearance of his ghost would: it is indeed Ruricola, but it is Ruricola grown frightful. I know not to what to attribute the brutal turn which this young man has taken, except it may be to a certain severity and distance which his father used towards him, and might, perhaps, have occasioned a dislike to those modes of life, which were not made amiable to him by freedom and affability. We may promise ourselves that no such excrescence will appear in the family of the Cornelii, where the father lives with his sons like their eldest brother, and the sons converse with him as if they did it for no other reason but that he is the wisest man of their acquaintance. As the Cornelii* are eminent traders, their good correspondence with each other is useful to all that know them as well as to themselves: and their friendship, good-will, and kind offices are disposed of jointly as well as their for The allusion is supposed to be to the family of the Eyles's, who were merchants of distinction. Francis Eyles, the father, created baronet by George I. was a director of the East-India Company, and an alderman of London. His eldest son, Sir John Eyles, bart. was lord mayor in 1727; and another of his sons, Sir Joseph Eyles, knight, sheriff of London in 1725. It is not in the power of all men to leave illustrious names or great fortunes to their posterity, but they can very much conduce to their having industry, probity, valour, and justice. It is in every man's power to leave his son the honour of descending from a virtuous man, and add the blessings of heaven to whatever he leaves him. I shall end this rhapsody with a letter to an excellent young man of my acquaintance, who has lately lost a worthy father. 'DEAR SIR,-I know no part of life more impertinent than the office of administering consolation: I will not enter into it, for cannot but applaud your grief. The vir tuous principles you had from that excellent man, whom you have lost, have wrought in you as they ought, to make a youth of three and twenty incapable of comfort upon coming into possession of a great fortune. doubt not but you will honour his memory by a modest enjoyment of his estate; and scorn to triumph over his grave, by em ploying in riot, excess, and debauchery what he purchased with so much industry, prudence, and wisdom. This is the true way to show the sense you have of your loss, and to take away the distress of others upon the occasion. You cannot recall your father by your grief, but you may him to his friends by your conduct. T. revive 193.] Thursday, October 11, 1711. His lordship's palace view, whose portals proud, Warton, &c. kept in respect to all other passions and WHEN we look round us and behold the There are several ways of making this levee, as But we are now in the height of the affair, | ing an agreeable friend is punished in the and my lord's creatures have all had their very transgression; for a good companion whispers round to keep up the farce of the is not found in every room we go into. But thing, and the dumb-show is become more the case of love is of a more delicate nature, general. He casts his eye to that corner, and the anxiety is inexpressible, if every and there to Mr. Such-a-one; to the other, little instance of kindness is not reciprocal. 'And when did you come to town?' And There are things in this sort of commerce perhaps just before he nods to another; and which there are not words to express, and enters with him, 'But, sir, I am glad to see a man may not possibly know how to reyou, now I think of it.' Each of those are present what yet may tear his heart into happy for the next four-and-twenty hours; ten thousand tortures. To be grave to a and those who bow in ranks undistinguish- man's mirth, unattentive to his discourse, ed, and by dozens at a time, think they have or to interrupt either with something that very good prospects if they may hope to argues a disinclination to be entertained by arrive at such notices half a year hence. him, has in it something so disagreeable, The satirist says, there is seldom com- that the utmost steps which may be made mon sense in high fortune;* and one would in farther enmity cannot give greater torthink, to behold a levee, that the great were ment. The gay Corinna, who sets up for not only infatuated with their station, but an indifference and becoming heedlessness, also that they believed all below were gives her husband all the torment imaginseized too; else how is it possible they could able out of mere insolence, with this pethink of imposing upon themselves and culiar vanity, that she is to look as gay as others in such a degree, as to set up a levee a maid in the character of a wife. It is no for any thing but a direct farce? But such matter what is the reason of a man's grief, is the weakness of our nature, that when if it be heavy as it is. Her unhappy man men are a little exalted in their condition, is convinced that she means him no dishothey immediately conceive they have addi- nour, but pines to death because she will tional senses, and their capacities enlarged not have so much deference to him as to not only above other men, but above hu- avoid the appearance of it. The author man comprehension itself. Thus it is ordi- of the following letter is perplexed with an nary to see a great man attend one listening, injury that is in a degree yet less criminal, bow to one at a distance, and to call to a and yet the source of the utmost unhappithird at the same instant. A girl in newness. ribands is not more taken with herself, nor does she betray more apparent coquetries, 'MR. SPECTATOR,-I have read your pathan even a wise man in such a circum-pers which relate to jealousy, and desire stance of courtship. I do not know any thing that I ever thought so very distasteful as the affectation which is recorded of Cæsar; to wit, that he would dictate to three several writers at the same time. This was an ambition below the greatness and candour of his mind. He indeed (if any man had pretensions to greater faculties than any other mortal) was the person; but such a way of acting is childish, and inconsistent with the manner of our being. It appears from the very nature of things, that there cannot be any thing effectually despatched in the distraction of a public levee; but the whole seems to be a conspiracy of a set of servile slaves, to give up their own liberty to take away their patron's understanding. No. 194.] Friday, October 12, 1711. -Difficili bile tumet jecur. T. With jealous pangs my bosom swells. THE present paper shall consist of two letters which observe upon faults that are easily cured both in love and friendship. In the latter, as far as it merely regards conversation, the person who neglects visit Rarus enim ferme sensus communis in illa your advice in my case, which you will say is not common. I have a wife, of whose virtue I am not in the least doubtful; yet I cannot be satisfied she loves me, which gives me as great uneasiness as being faulty the other way would do. I know not whether I am not yet more miserable than in that case, for she keeps possession of my heart, without the return of her's. I would desire your observations upon that temper in some women, who will not condescend to convince their husbands of their innocence or their love, but are wholly negligent of what reflections the poor men make upon their conduct (so they cannot call it criminal,) when at the same time a little tenderness of behaviour, or regard to show an inclination to please them, would make them entirely at ease. Do not such women deserve all the misinterpretation which they neglect to avoid? Or are they not in the actual practice of guilt, who care not whether they are thought guilty or not? If my wife does the most ordinary thing, as visiting her sister, or taking the air with her mother, it is always carried with the air of a secret. Then she will sometimes tell a thing of no consequence, as if it was only want of memory made her conceal it before; and this only to dally with my anxiety. I have complained to her of this behaviour in the gentlest terms imaginable, and beseeched her not to use him, who de |