sensible of her being alone in her sleeping | strong intimations, not only of the excelmoments, after the same manner that she is sensible of it while awake, the time would hang very heavy on her, as it often actually does when she dreams that she is in such a solitude. -Semperque relinqui Sola sibi, semper longam incomitata videtur Ire viam Virg. En. iv. 466. -She seems alone To wander in her sleep through ways unknown, But this observation I only make by the way. What I would here remark, is that wonderful power in the soul, of producing her own company on these occasions. She converses with numberless beings of her own creation, and is transported into ten thousand scenes of her own raising. She is herself the theatre, the actor, and the beholder. This puts me in mind of a saying which I am infinitely pleased with, and which Plutarch ascribes to Heraclitus, that all men whilst they are awake are in one common world; but that each of them, when he is asleep, is in a world of his own. The waking man is conversant in the world of nature: when he sleeps he retires to a private world that is particular to himself. There seems something in this consideration that intimates to us natural grandeur and perfection in the soul, which is rather to be admired than explained. I must not omit that argument for the excellency of the soul which I have seen quoted out of Tertullian, namely, its power of divining in dreams. That several such divinations have been made, none can question, who believes the holy writings, or who has but the least degree of a common historical faith; there being innumerable instances of this nature in several authors both ancient and modern, sacred and profane. Whether such dark presages, such visions of the night, proceed from any latent power in the soul, during this her state of abstraction, or from any communication with the Supreme Being, or from any operation of subordinate spirits, has been a great dispute among the learned; the matter of fact is, I think, incontestible, and has been looked upon as such by the greatest writers, who have been never suspected either of superstition or enthusiasm. lency of the human soul, but of its independence on the body; and, if they do not prove, do at least confirm these two great points, which are established by many other reasons that are altogether unan swerable. O. I FIND, by several letters which I re ceive daily, that many of my readers would be better pleased to pay three half-pence for my paper than two pence. The ingenious T. W. tells me that I have deprived him of the best part of his breakfast; for that, since the rise of my paper, he is forced every morning to drink his dish of coffee by itself, without the addition of the Spectator, that used to be better than lace to it. Eugenius informs me, very obligingly, that he never thought he should have disliked any passage in my paper, but that of late there have been two words in every one of them which he could heartily wish left out, viz. Price Two Pence.' I have a letter from a soap-boiler, who condoles with me very affectionately upon the necessity we both lie under of setting a high price on our commodities since the late tax has been laid upon them, and desiring me, when I write next on that subject, to speak a word or two upon the present duties on Castile soap. But there is none of these my correspondents, who writes with a greater turn of good sense, and elegance of expression, than the generous Philomedes, who advises me to value every Spectator at sixpence, and promises that he himself will engage for above a hundred of his acquaintance, who shall take it in at that price. Letters from the female world are likewise come to me, in great quantities, upon the same occasion; and, as I naturally bear a great déference to this part of our species, I am very glad to find that those who approve my conduct in this particular are much more numerous than those who con I do not suppose that the soul in these demn it. A large family of daughters have instances is entirely loose and unfettered drawn me up a very handsome remon from the body; it is sufficient if she is not strance, in which they set forth that their so far sunk and immersed in matter, nor father having refused to take in the Specentangled and perplexed in her operations tator, since the additional price was set upon with such motions of blood and spirits, as it, they offered him unanimously to bate when she actuates the machine in its wak- him the article of bread and butter in the ing hours. The corporeal union is slack-tea-table account, provided the Spectator ened enough to give the mind more play. The soul seems gathered within herself, and recovers that spring which is broke and weakened, when she operates more in concert with the body. The speculations I have here made, if they are not arguments, they are at least might be served up to them every morning as usual. Upon this the old gentleman, being pleased, it seems, with their desire of improving themselves, has granted them the continuance both of the Spectator and their bread and butter, having given particular orders that the tea-table shall be set forth every morning with its customary I should be very glad to find out any ex- poet laureat should not be over-looked, which shows the opinion he entertains of your paper, whether the notion he proceeds upon be true or false. I make bold to convey it to you, not knowing if it has yet come to your hands.' Hor. Carm. Sec. 10. You rise another and the same. Yet, doubtful how that second sun to name, take in the Spectator without detriment to No. 489.] Saturday, September 20, 1712. their private affairs. Honer. Βαθυρρείται μεγα σθενος Ωκεανοιο. The mighty force of ocean's troubled flood. 'SIR,-Upon reading your essay concerning the Pleasures of the Imagination, I find among the three sources of those pleasures which you have discovered, that greatness is one. This has suggested to me the reason why, of all objects that I have ever seen, there is none which affects my imagination so much as the sea, or ocean. I cannot see the heavings of this prodigious bulk of waters, even in a calm, without a very pleasing astonishment; but when it is worked up in a tempest, so that the hori zon on every side is nothing but foaming billows and floating mountains, it is impos In the next place, if my readers will not go to the price of buying my papers by retail, let them have patience, and they may buy them in the lump without the burden of a tax upon them. My speculations, when they are sold single, like cherries upon the stick, are delights for the rich and wealthy: after some time they come to market in greater quantities, and are every ordinary man's money. The truth of it is, they have a certain flavour at their first appearance, from several accidental circumstances of time, place, and person, which they may lose if they are not taken early; but, in this case, every reader is to consider, whether it is not better for him to be half a year behind-hand with the fash-sible to describe the agreeable horror that ionable and polite part of the world, than to strain himself beyond his circumstances. My bookseller has now about ten thousand of the third and fourth volumes, which he is ready to publish, having already disposed of as large an edition both of the first and second volumes. As he is a person whose head is very well turned to his business, he thinks they would be a very proper present to be made to persons at christenings, marriages, visiting days, and the like joyful solemnities, as several other books are frequently given at funerals. He has printed them in such a little portable volume, that many of them may be ranged together upon a single plate; and is of opinion, that a salver of Spectators would be as acceptable an entertainment to the ladies as a salver of sweet-meats. I shall conclude this paper with an epigram lately sent to the writer of the Spectator, after having returned my thanks to A the ingenious author of it. SIR,-Having heard the following epigram very much commended, I wonder that it has not yet had a place in any of your papers; I think the suffrage of our rises from such a prospect. A troubled ocean, to a man who sails upon it, is, I think, the biggest object that he can see in motion, and consequently gives his imagi nation one of the highest kinds of pleasure that can arise from greatness. I must confess it is impossible for me to survey this world of fluid matter without thinking on the hand that first poured it out, and made a proper channel for its reception. Such an object naturally raises in my thoughts the idea of an Almighty Being, and convinces me of his existence as much as a metaphysical demonstration. The imagination prompts the understanding, and, by the greatness of the sensible object, produces in it the idea of a being who is neither cir cumscribed by time nor space. As I have made several voyages upon the sea, I have often been tossed in storms, and on that occasion have frequently reflected on the descriptions of them in an cient poets. I remember Longinus highly recommends one in Homer, because the poet has not amused himself with little fancies upon the occasion, as authors of an inferior genius, whom he mentions, had done, but because he has gathered together se circumstances which are the most to terrify the imagination, and which lly happen in the raging of a tempest. is for the same reason that I prefer the owing description of a ship in a storm, ich the psalmist has made, before any er I have ever met with. " They that go vn to the sea in ships, that do business great waters; these see the works of the rd, and his wonders in the deep. For he nmandeth and raiseth the stormy wind, ich lifteth up the waters thereof. They unt up to the heaven, they go down in to the depths, their soul is melted cause of trouble. They reel to and fro, stagger like a drunken man, and are at ir wit's end. Then they cry unto the rd in their trouble, and he bringeth them of their distresses. He maketh the rm a calm, so that the waves thereof = still. Then they are glad, because they quiet, so he bringeth them unto their ired haven."* By the way; how much more comforte, as well as rational, is this system of psalmist, than the pagan scheme in gil and other poets, where one deity is resented as raising a storm, and another laying it! Were we only to consider the lime in this piece of poetry, what can nobler than the idea it gives us of the preme Being thus raising a tumult among elements, and recovering them out of ir confusion; thus troubling and becalmnature? Great painters do not only give us landpes of gardens, groves, and meadows, Every often employ their pencils upon pieces. I could wish you would follow ir example. If this small sketch may serve a place among your works, I shall company it with a divine ode made by a tleman upon the conclusion of his travels. I. "How are thy servants blest, O Lord! How sure is their defence! Eternal wisdom is their guide, Their help Omnipotence. $IL. "In foreign realms and lands remote, Through burning climes I pass'd unhurt, III. IV. V. 'Confusion dwelt in ev'ry face, When waves on waves, and gulfs in gulfe VI. "Yet then from all my griefs, O Lord, Thy mercy set me free, P. cvii. 23, ct seq. No. Whilst, in the confidence of prayer, VII. "For though in dreadful whirls we hung I knew thou wert not slow to hear, VIII. "The storm was laid, the winds retir'd, The sea that roar'd at thy command, IX. "In midst of dangers, fears, and death, And praise thee for thy mercies past, X. "My life, if thou preserv'st my life, And death, if death must be my doom, 490.] Monday, September 22, 1712. Domus et placens uxor.-Hor. Od. xiv. Lib. 2. 21. Thy house and pleasing wife.-Creech. I HAVE very long entertained an ambition to make the word wife the most agreeable and delightful name in nature. If it be not so in itself all the wiser part of mankind, from the beginning of the world to this day, has consented in an error. But our unhappiness in England has been, that a few loose men of genius for pleasure, have turned it all to the gratification of ungoverned desires, in despite of good sense, form, and order; when in truth, any satisfaction beyond the boundaries of reason is but a step towards madness and folly. But is the sense of joy and accomplishment of desire no way to be indulged or attained? And have we appetites given us not to be at all gratified? Yes, certainly. Marriage is an institution calculated for a constant scene of delight, as much as our being is capable of. Two persons, who have chosen each other out of all the species, with design to be each other's mutual comfort and entertainment, have in that action bound themselves to be good-humoured, affable, discreet, forgiving, patient, and joyful, with respect to each other's frailties and perfections, to the end of their lives. The wiser of the two (and it always happens one of them is such) will, for her or his own sake, keep things from outrage with the utmost sanctity. When this union is thus preserv ed, (as I have often said) the most indifferent circumstance administers delight: their condition is an endless source of new gratifications. The married man can say, If I am unacceptable to all the world beside, there is one whom I entirely love, that will receive me with joy and transport, and think herself obliged to double her kindness and caresses of me from the gloom with which she sees me overcast. I need not dissemble the sorrow of my heart to be agreeable there; that very sorrow quickens her affection.' This passion towards each other, when I owe the following epigram, which I showed once well fixed, enters into the very consti- my friend Will Honeycomb in French, who tution, and the kindness flows as easily and has translated it as follows, without undersilently as the blood in the veins. When standing the original. I expect it will please this affection is enjoyed in the sublime de- the English better than the Latin reader. gree, unskilful eyes see nothing of it; but 'When my bright consort, now nor wife nor maid, when it is subject to be changed, and has Asham'd and wanton, of embrace afraid, Fled to the streams, the streams my fair betray'd; an allay in it that may make it end in disTo my fond eyes she all transparent stood; taste, it is apt to break into rage, or overShe blush'd; I smil'd at the slight covering flood. flow into fondness, before the rest of the Thus through the glass the lovely lily glows; world. Thus through the ambient gem shines forth the ru I saw new charms, and plung'd to seize my store, Kisses I snatch'd-the waves prevented more.' Uxander and Viramira are amorous and young, have been married these two years; yet do they so much distinguish each other in company, that in your conversation with the dear things, you are still put to a sort of cross-purposes. Whenever you address yourself in ordinary discourse to Viramira, she turns her head another way, and the answer is made to the dear Uxander. If you tell a merry tale, the application is still directed to her dear; and when she should commend you, she says to him, as if he had spoke it, That is, my dear, so pretty. This puts me in mind of what I have somewhere read in the admired memoirs of the famous Cervantes; where, while honest Sancho Panca is putting some necessary humble question concerning Rozinante, his supper, or his lodging, the knight of the sorrowful countenance is ever improving the harmless lowly hints of his squire to the poetical conceit, rapture, and flight, in contemplation of the dear dulcinea of his affections. On the other side, Dictamnus and Moria are ever squabbling; and you may observe them, all the time they are in company, in a state of impatience. As Uxander and Viramira wish you all gone, that they may be at freedom for dalliance; Dictamnus and Moria wait your absence, that they may speak their harsh interpretations on each other's words and actions, during the time you were with them. It is certain that the greater part of the evils, attending this condition of life, arises from fashion. Prejudice in this case is turned the wrong way; and, instead of expecting more happiness than we shall meet with in it, we are laughed into a prepossession, that we shall be disappointed if we hope for lasting satisfactions. With all persons who have made good sense the rule of action, marriage is de My friend would not allow that this lus cious account could be given of a wife, and therefore used the word consort; which, he learnedly said, would serve for a mistress as well, and give a more gentlemanly tum to the epigram. But, under favour of him and all other such fine gentlemen, I cannot be persuaded but that the passion a bride groom has for a virtuous young woman will, by little and little, grow into friendship, and then it has ascended to a higher pleasure than it was in its first fervour. Without this happens, he is a very unfortunate man who has entered into this state, and left the habitudes of life he might have enjoyed with a faithful friend. But when the wife proves capable of filling serious as well as joyous hours, she brings happiness unknown to friendship itself. Spenser speaks of each kind of love with great justice, and attri butes the highest praise to friendship; and indeed there is no disputing that point, but by making that friendship take its place between two married persons. 'Hard is the doubt, and difficult to deem, T. scribed as the state capable of the highest No. 491.] Tuesday, September 23, 1712 human felicity. Tully has epistles full of affectionate pleasure, when he writes to his wife or speaks of his children. But, above all the hints of this kind I have met with in writers of ancient date, I am pleased with an epigram of Martial, in honour of the beauty of his wife Cleopatra. Commentators say it was written the day after his wedding-night. When his spouse was retired to the bathing-room in the heat of the day, he, it seems, came in upon her when she was just going into the water. To her beauty and carriage on this occasion we Virg. Ex. iii. 38 A just reverse of fortune on him waits. It is common with me to run from ba to book to exercise my mind with m objects, and qualify myself for my daily bours. After an hour spent in this loite way of reading, something will remain be food to the imagination. The writing that please me most on such occasions stories, for the truth of which there is authority. The mind of man is naturally er of justice. And when we read a story | sion. This design had its desired effect; and the wife of the unfortunate Danvelt, the day before that which was appointed for his execution, presented herself in the hall of the governor's house; and, as he passed through the apartment, threw herself at his feet, and, holding his knees, beseeched his mercy. Rhynsault beheld her with a dissembled satisfaction; and, assuming an air of thought and authority, he bid her When Charles duke of Burgundy, sur- arise, and told her she must follow him to med The Bold, reigned over spacious his closet; and, asking her whether she minions now swallowed up by the power knew the hand of the letter he pulled out France, he heaped many favours and of his pocket, went from her, leaving this nours upon Claudius Rhynsault, a Ger- admonition aloud: If you will save your n, who had served him in his wars against husband, you must give me an account of insults of his neighbours. A great part all you know without prevarication: for Zealand was at that time in subjection every body is satisfied he was too fond of that dukedom. The prince himself was you to be able to hide from you the names person of singular humanity and justice. of the rest of the conspirators, or any other ynsault, with no other real quality than particulars whatsoever. He went to his rage, had dissimulation enough to pass closet, and soon after the lady was sent for on his generous and unsuspicious master to an audience. The servant knew his disa person of blunt honesty and fidelity, tance when matters of state were to be hout any vice that could bias him from debated; and the governor, laying aside the execution of justice. His highness, pre-air with which he had appeared in public, sessed to his advantage, upon the deuse of the governor of his chief town of aland, gave Rhynsault that command. was not long seated in that government fore he cast his eyes upon Sapphira, a man of exquisite beauty, the wife of ul Danvelt, a wealthy merchant of the y under his protection and government. ynsault was a man of a warm constitu, and violent inclination to women, and unskilled in the soft arts which win eir favour. He knew what it was to enjoy satisfactions which are reaped from the session of beauty, but was an utter anger to the decencies, honours, and deacies, that attend the passion towards m in elegant minds. However, he had much of the world, that he had a great re of the language which usually preupon the weaker part of that sex; and could with his tongue utter a passion h which his heart was wholly untouched. I was one of those brutal minds which be gratified with the violation of innoce and beauty, without the least pity, sion, or love, to that with which they so much delighted. Ingratitude is a e inseparable to a lustful man; and the session of a woman by him, who has no ught but allaying a passion painful to self, is necessarily followed by distaste aversion. Rhynsault, being resolved to complish his will on the wife of Danvelt, no arts untried to get into a familiarity her house; but she knew his character I disposition too well, not to shun all asions that might ensnare her into his versation. The governor, despairing of cess by ordinary means, apprehended imprisoned her husband, under prece of an information, that he was guilty correspondence with the enemies of the e to betray the town into their posses began to be the supplicant, to rally an affliction, which it was in her power easily to remove, and relieve an innocent man from his imprisonment. She easily perceived his intention; and bathed in tears, began to deprecate so wicked a design. Lust, like ambition, takes all the faculties of the mind and body into its service and subjection. Her becoming tears, her honest anguish, the wringing of her hands, and the many changes of her posture and figure in the vehemence of speaking, were but so many attitudes in which he beheld her beauty, and farther incentives of his desires. All humanity was lost in that one appetite, and he signified to her in so many plain terms, that he was unhappy till he had possessed her, and nothing less should be the price of her husband's life, and she must, before the following noon, pronounce the death, or enlargement, of Danvelt. After this notification, when he saw Sapphira enough again distracted, to make the subject of their discourse to common eyes appear different from what it was, he called servant's to conduct her to the gate. Loaded with insupportable affliction, she immediately repairs to her husband; and, having signified to his gaolers that she had a proposal to make to her husband from the governor, she was left alone with him, revealed to him all that had passed, and represented the endless conflict she was in between love to his person, and fidelity to his bed. It is easy to imagine the sharp affliction this honest pair was in upon such an incident, in lives not used to any but ordinary occurrences. The man was bridled by shame from speaking what his fear prompted, upon so near an approach of death; but let fall words that signified to her, he should not think her polluted, though she had not yet confessed to him that the governor had |