where all the other beauties are present, the work appears dry and insipid, if this single one be wanting. It has something in t like creation. It bestows a kind of exstence, and draws up to the reader's view several objects which are not to be found in being. It makes additions to nature, and gives greater variety to God's works. In a word, it is able to beautify and adorn the most illustrious scenes in the universe, or co fill the mind with more glorious shows and apparitions than can be found in any part of it.

We have now discovered the several Originals of those pleasures that gratify the acy; and here, perhaps, it would not be very difficult to cast under their proper heads those contrary objects, which are apt o fill it with distaste and terror; for the magination is as liable to pain as pleasure. When the brain is hurt by any accident, or the mind disordered by dreams or sickness, the fancy is overrun with wild dismal ideas, and terrified with a thousand hideous monsters of its own framing.

Eumenidum veluti demens videt agmina Pentheus,
Et solem geminum, et duplices se ostendere Thebas:
Aut Agamemnonius scenis agitatus Orestes,
Armatam facibus matrem et serpentibus atris
Cum fugit, ultricesque sedent in limine dira.

Virg. Æn. 469.

Like Pentheus, when distracted with his fear,
He saw two suns, and double Thebes appear;
Or mad Orestes, when his mother's ghost
Fall in his face infernal torches tost,
And shook her snaky locks: he shuns the sight,
Flies o'er the stage, surpris'd with mortal fright;
The furies guard the door, and intercept his flight.

Dryden. There is not a sight in nature so mortifyng as that of a distracted person, when his magination is troubled, and his whole soul disordered and confused. Babylon in ruins s not so melancholy a spectacle. But to quit so disagreeable a subject, I shall only Consider, by way of conclusion, what an nfinite advantage this faculty gives an alnighty Being over the soul of man, and how great a measure of happiness or misery we are capable of receiving from the imagi

nation only.

he

ture the soul through this single faculty, as
might suffice to make the whole heaven or
hell of any finite being.

[This essay on the Pleasures of the Iina-
gination having been published in separate
papers, I shall conclude it with a table of
the principal contents of each paper. *]
0.

No. 422.]

Friday, July 4, 1712.

Hæc scripsi non otii abundantia, sed amoris ergate.
Tull. Epist.

I have written this not out of the abundance of lei.
sure,
but of my affection towards you.

I Do not know any thing which gives
greater disturbance to conversation, than
the false notion which people have of rail-
lery. It ought certainly to be the first point
to be aimed at in society, to gain the good-
will of those with whom you converse; the
way to that is, to show you are well inclined
towards them. What then can be more
absurd, than to set up for being extremely
sharp and biting, as the term is, in your
expressions to your familiars? A man who
has no good quality but courage, is in a very
ill way towards making an agreeable figure
in the world, because that which he has
superior to other people cannot be exerted
without raising himself an enemy. Your
gentleman of a satirical vein is in the like
condition. To say a thing which perplexes
the heart of him you speak to, or brings
blushes into his face, is a degree of murder;
and it is, I think, an unpardonable offence
to show a man you do not care whether he
is pleased or displeased. But won't you
then take a jest? Yes: but pray let it be a
jest. It is no jest to put me, who am so
unhappy as to have an utter aversion to
speaking to more than one man at a time,
under a necessity to explain myself in much
company, and reducing me to shame and
derision, except I perform what my in-
firmity of silence disables me to do.

with that quality without which a man can Callisthenes had great wit accompanied We have already seen the influence that have no wit at all-a sound judgment. This one man has over the fancy of another, and gentleman rallies the best of any man I with what ease he conveys into it a variety know: for he forms his ridicule upon a cirof imagery: how great a power then may cumstance which you are in your heart not We suppose lodged in Him who knows all unwilling to grant him; to wit, that you are ways of affecting the imagination, who guilty of an excess in something which is an infuse what ideas he pleases, and fill in itself laudable. He very well understands hose ideas with terror and delight to what what you would be, and needs not fear your legree he thinks fit! He can excite images anger for declaring you are a little too much n the mind without the help of words, and that thing. The generous will bear being nake scenes rise up before us, and seem reproached as lavish, and the valiant as present to the eye, without the assistance rash, without being provoked to resentof bodies or exterior objects. He can trans-ment against their monitor. What has been ort the imagination with such beautiful said to be a mark of a good writer will fall and glorious visions as cannot possibly enter in with the character of a good companion. nto our present conceptions, or haunt it The good writer makes his reader better with such ghastly spectres and apparitions

s would make us hope for annihilation, and *These contents are printed all together in the origi hink existence no better than a curse. Inal folio. at the end of No. 421; but are in this edition short, he can so exquisitely ravish or tor-ginnings of the veral papers.

VOL. II.

20

arranged in their proper places, and placed at the be

should, are commonly brought forth even in company of men of distinction. They do not thrust with the skill of fencers, but cut up with the barbarity of butchers. It is methinks, below the character of men of humanity and good manners to be capable of mirth while there is any of the company in pain and disorder. They who have the true taste of conversation, enjoy themselves

pleased with himself, and the agreeable | Allusions to past follies, hints which revive man makes his friends enjoy themselves, what a man has a mind to forget for ever, rather than him, while he is in their com- and desires that all the rest of the world pany. Callisthenes does this with inimitable pleasantry. He whispered a friend the other day, so as to be overheard by a young officer, who gave symptoms of cocking upon the company, "That gentleman has very much the air of a general officer.' The youth immediately put on a composed behaviour, and behaved himself suitably to the conceptions he believed the company had of him. It is to be allowed that Cal-in communication of each other's excellisthenes will make a man run into impertinent relations to his own advantage, and express the satisfaction he has in his own dear self, till he is very ridiculous: but in this case the man is made a fool by his own consent, and not exposed as such whether he will or no. I take it, therefore, that to make raillery agreeable, a man must either not know he is rallied, or think never the worse of himself if he sees he is.

lencies, and not in a triumph over their imperfections. Fortius would have been reckoned a wit, if there had never been a fool in the world: he wants not foils to be a beauty, but has that natural pleasure in observing perfection in others, that his own faults are overlooked out of gratitude by all his acquaintance.

After these several characters of men who succeed or fail in raillery, it may not Acetus is of a quite contrary genius, and is be amiss to reflect a little farther what one more generally admired than Callisthenes, takes to be the most agreeable kind of it; but not with justice. Acetus has no regard and that to me appears when the satire is to the modesty or weakness of the person directed against vice, with an air of con he rallies; but if his quality or humility tempt of the fault, but no ill-will to the gives him any superiority to the man he criminal. Mr. Congreve's Doris is a masterwould fall upon, he has no mercy in mak-piece of this kind. It is the character of a ing the onset. He can be pleased to see his best friends out of countenance, while the laugh is loud in his own applause. His raillery always puts the company into little divisions and separate interests, while that of Callisthenes cements it, and makes every man not only better pleased with himself, but also with all the rest in the conversation.

woman utterly abandoned; but her impu dence, by the finest piece of raillery, is made only generosity.

To rally well, it is absolutely necessary that kindness must run through all you say; and you must ever preserve the character of a friend to support your pretensions to be free with a man. Acetus ought to be banished human society, because he raises his mirth upon giving pain to the person upon whom he is pleasant. Nothing but the malevolence which is too general towards those who excel could make his company tolerated; but they with whom he converses are sure to see some man sacrificed wherever he is admitted; and all No. the credit he has for wit is owing to the gratification it gives to other men's ill-na

ture.

Peculiar therefore is her way,
Whether by nature taught
I shall not undertake to say,
Or by experience bought;

'For who o'ernight obtain'd her grace,
She can next day disown,
And stare upon the strange man's face,
As one she ne'er had known.

'So well she can the truth disguise,
Such artful wonder frame,
The lover or distrusts his eyes,

Or thinks 'twas all a dream.

'Some censure this as lewd or low,
Who are to bounty blind;
But to forget what we bestow,
Bespeaks a noble mind."

423.] Saturday, July 5, 1712.

-Nuper idoneus.

Once fit myself.

T.

Hor. Od. xxvi. Lib. 3 L

Minutius has a wit that conciliates a man's love, at the same time that it is ex- I LOOK upon myself as a kind of guardian erted against his faults. He has an art of to the fair, and am always watchful to ob keeping the person he rallies in counte-serve any thing which concerns their inter nance, by insinuating that he himself is est. The present paper shall be employed guilty of the same imperfection. This he in the service of a very fine young woman does with so much address, that he seems and the admonitions I give her may not be rather to bewail himself, than fall upon his unuseful to the rest of her sex. Gloriana friend. shall be the name of the heroine in to-day's It is really monstrous to see how unac-entertainment; and when I have told you countably it prevails among men, to take that she is rich, witty, young, and beauti the liberty of displeasing each other. One ful, you will believe she does not want ad would think sometimes that the conten-mirers. She has had, since she came t tion is, who shall be most disagreeable. town, about twenty-five of those lovers wh

ade their addresses by way of jointure | to you the other day was a contrivance to ad settlement: these come and go with remark your resentment. When you saw eat indifference on both sides; and as the billet subscribed Damon, and turned eautiful as she is, a line in a deed has had away with a scornful air, and cried "imception enough against it to outweigh the pertinence!" you gave hopes to him that stre of her eyes, the readiness of her un- shuns you, without mortifying him that erstanding, and the merit of her general languishes for you. aracter. But among the crowd of such ol adorers, she has two who are very siduous in their attendance. There is mething so extraordinary and artful in eir manner of application, that I think it t common justice to alarm her in it. I ve done it in the following letter:

tween them, and can occasionally rebound
her love and hatred from one to the other,
in such a manner as to keep her at a dis-
tance from all the rest of the world, and
cast lots for the conquest.

N. B. I have many other secrets which
concern the empire of love; but I consider,
that, while I alarm my women, I instruct
T.
my men.

No.424.] Monday, July 7, 1712.
Est Ulubris, animus si te non deficit æquus.

Hor. Ep. xi. Lib. 1. 30.

'Tis not the place disgust or pleasure brings:
From our own mind our satisfaction springs.

'London, June 24.
'MR. SPECTATOR,-A man who has it
in his power to choose his own company,
would certainly be much to blame, should
he not, to the best of his judgment, take
such as are of a temper most suitable to his
own; and where that choice is wanting, or
where a man is mistaken in his choice,
and yet under a necessity of continuing in
the same company, it will certainly be his
interest to carry himself as easily as pos-

with which he treats his neighbours, and every one, even the meanest of his own family! and yet how seldom imitated! In stead of which we commonly meet with ill-natured expostulations, noise, and chidings.-And this I hinted, because the humour and disposition of the head is what chiefly influences all the other parts of a family.

'An agreement and kind correspondence between friends and acquaintance is the greatest pleasure of life. This is an undoubted truth; and yet any man who judges from the practice of the world will be almost persuaded to believe the contrary for how can we suppose people should so industrious to make themselves uneasy! What can engage them to entertain and foment jealousies of one another upon every or the least occasion? Yet so it is, there are people who (as it should seem) delight in being troublesome and vexatious, who (as Tully speaks) Mira sunt alacritate ad litigandum, have a certain cheerfulness in wrangling. And thus it happens, that there are very few families in which there are not feuds and animosities; though it is every one's interest, there more particu larly, to avoid them, because there (as I In this I am sensible I do but repeat would willingly hope) no one gives another what has been said a thousand times, at uneasiness without feeling some share of which however I think nobody has any it. But I am gone beyond what I designed, title to take exception, but they who never and had almost forgot what I chiefly pr failed to put this in practice.-Not to use posed: which was, barely to tell any longer preface, this being the season hardly we, who pass most of our time in of the year in which great numbers of all town, dispense with a long vacation in the sorts of people retire from this place of country, how uneasy we grow to ourselves, business and pleasure to country solitude, and to one another, when our conversation I think it not improper to advise them to is confined; insomuch that, by Michaeltake with them as great a stock of good-mas, it is odds but we come to downright humour as they can; for though a country squabbling, and make as free with one an life is described as the most pleasant of all others, and though it may in truth be so, yet it is so only to those who know how to enjoy leisure and retirement.

sible.

As for those who cannot live without the constant helps of business or company, let them consider, that in the country there is no Exchange, there are no playhouses, no variety of coffee-houses, nor many of those other amusements which serve here as so many reliefs from the repeated occurrences in their own families; but that there the greatest part of their time must be spent within themselves, and consequently it behoves them to consider how agreeable it will be to them before they leave this dear town.

you

how

other to our faces as we do with the rest of the world behind their backs. After I have told you this, I am to desire that you would now and then give us a lesson of good-humour, a family-piece, which, since we are all very fond of you, I hope may have some influence upon us.

are a col

'After these plain observations, give me leave to give you a hint of what a set of company of my acquaintance, who are now of gone into the country, and have the use an absent nobleman's seat, have settled among themselves, to avoid the inconve niences above mentioned. They lection of ten or twelve of the same good inclination towards each other, but of very different talents and inclinations: from hence they hope that the variety of their temper will only create variety of pleasures. But as there always will arise, among the same people, either for want of diversity of ob jects, or the like causes, a certain satiety hich may grow into ill-humour or discon is such a one as you there describe your tent, there is a large wing of the house friend, who cannot therefore (I mean as which they design to employ in the nature to his domestic character,) be too often re- of an infirmary. Whoever says a peevish commended to the imitation of others. How thing, or acts any thing which betrays amiable is that affability and benevolence sourness or indisposition to company, is im

I remember, Mr. Spectator, we were very well entertained last year with the advices you gave us from Sir Roger's country-seat; which I the rather mention, because it is almost impossible not to live pleasantly, where the master of the family

BOULDER DRSITY OF COLOGNA LACE