"It is, methinks, a low and degrading | divisions, not only of this great city, but of idea of that sex, which was created to re- the whole kingdom. My readers too have fine the joys, and soften the cares of hu- the satisfaction to find that there is no rank manity, by the most agreeable participa- or degrees among them who have not their tion, to consider them merely as objects of representative in this club, and that there sight. This is abridging them of their na- is always somebody present who will take tural extent of power, to put them upon a care of their respective interests, that nolevel with their pictures at Kneller's. How thing may be written or published to the much nobler is the contemplation of beau- prejudice or infringement of their just ty, heightened by virtue, and commanding rights and privileges. our esteem and love, whilst it draws our I last night sat very late in company with observation! How faint and spiritless are this select body of friends, who entertained the charms of a coquette, when compared me with several remarks which they and with the real loveliness of Sophronia's in- others had made upon these my speculanocence, piety, good-humour, and truth; tions, as also with the various success which virtues which add a new softness to her they had met with among their several sex, and even beautify her beauty! That ranks and degrees of readers. Will Honeyagreeableness which must otherwise have comb told me, in the softest manner he appeared no longer in the modest virgin, is could that there were some ladies (but for now preserved in the tender mother, the your comfort, says Will, they are not those prudent friend, and the faithful wife. Co- of the most wit) that were offended at the lours artfully spread upon canvass may en- liberties I had taken with the opera and tertain the eye, but not affect the heart; the puppet-show; that some of them were and she who takes no care to add to the na-likewise very much surprised, that I should tural graces of her person any excelling qualities, may be allowed still to amuse, as a picture, but not to triumph as a beauty. When Adam is introduced by Milton, describing Eve in Paradise, and relating to the angel the impressions he felt upon seeing her at her first creation, he does not represent her like a Grecian Venus, by her shape or features, but by the lustre of her mind which shone in them, and gave them their power of charming: "Grace was in all her steps, heav'n in her eye, In all her gestures dignity and love!" 'Without this irradiating power, the proudest fair-one ought to know, whatever her glass may tell her to the contrary, that her most perfect features are uninformed and dead. I cannot better close this moral, than by a short epitaph written by Ben Jonson with a spirit which nothing could inspire but such an object as I have been describing. "Underneath this stone doth lie I am, Sir, your most humble servant, 'R. B.' R. No. 34.] Monday, April 9, 1711. -parcit Cognatis maculis similis feraJuv. Sat. xv. 159. From spotted skins the leopard does refrain. Tate. THE club of which I am a member, is very luckily composed of such persons as are engaged in different ways of life, and deputed as it were out of the most conspicuous classes of mankind. By this means I am furnished with the greatest variety of hints and materials, and know every thing that passes in the different quarters and think such serious points as the dress and equipage of persons of quality, proper subjects for raillery. He was going on when Sir Andrew Freeport took him up short, and told him that the papers he hinted at, had done great good in the city, and that all their wives and daughters were the better for them; and further added, that the whole city thought themselves very much obliged to me for declaring my generous intentions to scourge vice and folly as they appear in a multitude, without condescending to be a publisher of particular intrigues and cuckoldoms. In short,' says Sir Andrew, ‘if you avoid that foolish beaten road of falling upon aldermen and citizens, and employ your pen upon the vanity and luxury of courts, your paper must needs be of general use. Upon this my friend the Templar told Sir Andrew, that he wondered to hear a man of his sense talk after that manner; that the city had always been the province for satire, and that the wits of King Charles's time jested upon nothing else during his whole reign. He then showed, by the example of Horace, Juvenal, Boileau, and the best writers of every age, that the follies of the stage and court had never been accounted too sacred for ridicule, how great soever the persons might But after all," be that patronized them. says he, I think your raillery has made too great an excursion, in attacking several persons of the inns of court; and I do not believe you can show me any precedent for your behaviour in that particular.' My good friend, Sir Roger de Coverly, who had said nothing all this while, began his speech with a Pish! and told us, that he wondered to see so many men of sense, so very serious upon fooleries. good friend,' says he, attack every one that deserves it; I would only advise you, 6 'Let our Mr. Spectator,' applying himself to me, This debate, which was held for the good to take care how you meddle with coun-of mankind, put me in mind of that which try squires. They are the ornaments of the Roman triumvirate were formerly enthe English nation; men of good heads and gaged in for their destruction. Every man sound bodies! and, let me tell you, some at first stood hard for his friend, till they of them take it ill of you, that you mention found that by this means they should spoil fox-hunters with so little respect.' their proscription; and at length, making a sacrifice of all their acquaintance and relations, furnished out a very decent execution. Captain Sentry spoke very sparingly on this occasion. What he said was only to commend my prudence in not touching upon the army, and advised me to continue to act discreetly in that point. But by this time I found every subject of my speculations was taken away from me, by one or other of the club: and began to think myself in the condition of the good man that had one wife who took a dislike to his grey hairs, and another to his black, till by their picking out what each of them had an aversion to, they left his head altogether bald and naked. Having thus taken my resolution to march on boldly in the cause of virtue and good sense, and to annoy their adversaries in whatever degree or rank of men they may be found, I shall be deaf for the future to all the remonstrances that shall be made to me on this account. If Punch grows extravagant, I shall reprimand him very freely: if the stage becomes a nursery of folly and impertinence, I shall not be afraid to animadvert upon it. In short, if I meet with any thing in city, court or country, that shocks modesty or good manners, I shall use my utmost endeavours to make an example of it. I must, however, entreat every particular person who does me the honour to be a reader of this paper, never to think himself, or any one of his friends or enemies, aimed at in what is said; for I promise him, never to draw a faulty character which does not fit at least a thousand people, or to publish a single paper, that is not written in the spirit of benevolence, and with a love of mankind, C. While I was thus musing with myself, my worthy friend the clergyman, who, very luckily for me, was at the club that night, undertook my cause. He told us, that he wondered any order of persons should think themselves too considerable to be advised. That it was not quality, but innocence, which exempted men from reproof. That vice and folly ought to be attacked wherever they could be met with, and especially when they were placed in high and conspicuous stations of life. He further added, that my paper would only serve to aggravate the pains of poverty, if it chiefly exposed those who are already depressed, and in some measure turned into No. 35.] Tuesday, April 10, 1711. ridicule, by the meanness of their conditions and circumstances. He afterwards proceeded to take notice of the great use this paper might be of to the public, by reprehending those vices which are too trivial for the chastisement of the law, and too fantas-in which authors are more apt to miscarry tical for the cognizance of the pulpit. He then advised me to prosecute my undertaking with cheerfulness, and assured me, that whoever might be displeased with me, I should be approved by all those whose praises do honour to the persons on whom they are bestowed, The whole club pay a particular deference to the discourse of this gentleman, and are drawn into what he says, as much by the candid ingenuous manner with which he delivers himself, as by the strength of argument and force of reason which he makes use of. Will Honeycomb immediately agreed that what he had said was right; and that, for his part, he would not insist upon the quarter which he had demanded for the ladies. Sir Andrew gave up the city with the same frankness. The Templar would not stand out, and was followed by Sir Roger and the Captain; who all agreed that I should be at liberty to carry the war into what quarter I pleased; provided I continued to combat with criminals in a body, and to assault the vice without hurting the person. Mart. Risu inepto res ineptior nulla est." than in works of humour, as there is none certain regularity of thought which must discover the writer to be a man of sense, at the same time that he appears altogether given up to caprice. For my part, when I read the delirious mirth of an unskilful author, I cannot be so barbarous as to divert myself with it, but am rather apt to pity the man, than to laugh at any thing he writes. The deceased Mr. Shadwell, who had himself a great deal of the talent which I am treating of, represents an empty rake, in one of his plays, as very much surprised to hear one say, that breaking of windows was not humour; and I question not but several English readers will be as much startled to hear me affirm, that many of those raving incoherent pieces, which are often spread among us under odd chimerical titles, are rather the offsprings of a distempered brain than works of humour. It is indeed much easier to describe what is not humour, than what is; and very difficult to define it otherwise than as Cowley has done wit, by negatives. Were I to give my own notions of it, I would deliver them after Plato's manner, in a kind of allegory, and by supposing Humour to be a person, deduce to him all his qualifications, according to the following genealogy. Truth was the founder of the family, and the father of Good Sense. Good Sense was the father of Wit, who married a lady of collateral line called Mirth, by whom he had issue Humour. Humour therefore being the youngest of this illustrious family, and descended from parents of such different dispositions, is very various and unequal in his temper; sometimes you see him putting on grave looks and a solemn habit, sometimes airy in his behaviour and fantastic in his dress; insomuch that at different times he appears as serious as a judge, and as jocular as a Merry-Andrew. But as he has a great deal of the mother in his constitution, whatever mood he is in, he never fails to make his company laugh. But since there is an impostor abroad, who takes upon him the name of this young gentleman, and would willingly pass for him in the world, to the end that wellmeaning persons may not be imposed upon by cheats, I would desire my readers, when they meet with this pretender, to look into his parentage, and to examine him strictly, whether or no he be remotely allied to Truth, and lineally descended from Good Sense; if not, they may conclude him a counterfeit. They may likewise distinguish him by a loud and excessive laughter, in which he seldom gets his company to join with him. For as True Humour generally looks serious, while every body laughs about him; False Humour is always laughing, whilst every body about him looks serious. I shall only add, if he has not in him a mixture of both parents, that is, if he would pass for the offspring of Wit without Mirth, or Mirth without Wit, you may conclude him to be altogether spurious and a cheat. The impostor of whom I am speaking, descends originally from Falsehood, who was the mother of Nonsense, who was brought to bed of a son called Frenzy, who married one of the daughters of Folly, commonly known by the name of Laughter, on whom he begot that monstrous infant of which I have been speaking. I shall set down at length the genealogical table of False Humour, and, at the same time, place under it the genealogy of True Humour, that the reader may at one view behold their different pedigrees and relations: Falsehood. Nonsense. Frenzy. Laughter. Truth. Good Sense. Wit.Mirth. Humour. I might extend the allegory, by mentioning several of the children of False Humour, who are more in number than the sands of the sea, and might in particular enumerate the many sons and daughters which he has begot in this island. But as this would be a very invidious task, I shall only observe in general, that False Humour differs from the True, as a monkey does from a man. First of all, He is exceedingly given to little apish tricks and buffooneries. Secondly, He so much delights in mimickry, that it is all one to him whether he exposes by it vice and folly, luxury and avarice; or on the contrary, virtue and wisdom, pain and poverty. Thirdly, He is wonderfully unlucky, insomuch that he will bite the hand that feeds him, and endeavour to ridicule both friends and foes indifferently. For having but small talents, he must be merry where he can, not where he should. Fourthly, Being entirely void of reason, he pursues no point, either of morality or instruction, but is ludicrous only for the sake of being so. Fifthly, Being incapable of any thing but mock representations, his ridicule is always personal, and aimed at the vicious man, or the writer; not at the vice, or the writing. I have here only pointed at the whole species of false humourists; but as one of my principal designs in this paper is to beat down that malignant spirit, which discovers itself in the writings of the present age, I shall not scruple, for the future, to single out any of the small wits, that infest the world with such compositions as are ill-natured, immoral, and absurd. This is the only exception which I shall make to the general rule I have prescribed myself, of attacking multitudes, since every honest man ought to look upon himself as in a natural state of war with the libelle. the sex. And as this is a subject of a very nice nature, I shall desire my correspondents to give me their thoughts upon it. C. Cupias non placuisse nimis.-Mart. ty, and is still a very lovely woman. She has been a widow for two or three years, and being unfortunate in her first marriage, has taken a resolution never to venture upon a second. She has no children to take care of, and leaves the management of her estate to my good friend Sir Roger. But as the No. 38.] Friday, April 13, 1711. mind naturally sinks into a kind of lethargy, and falls asleep, that is not agitated by some favourite pleasures and pursuits, Leonora has turned all the passions of her sex A LATE Conversation which I fell into, into a love of books and retirement. She gave me an opportunity of observing a great converses chiefly with men (as she has deal of beauty in a very handsome woman, often said herself) but it is only in their and as much wit in an ingenious man, turnwritings; and admits of very few male vi- ed into deformity in the one, and absurdity sitants, except my friend Sir Roger, whom in the other, by the mere force of affectashe hears with great pleasure, and without tion. The fair one had something in her scandal. As her reading has lain very person, upon which her thoughts were fixmuch among romances, it has given her aed, that she attempted to show to advantage very particular turn of thinking, and discovers itself even in her house, her gardens, and her furniture. Sir Roger has entertained me an hour together with a description of her country seat, which is situated in a kind of wilderness, about a hundred miles distant from London, and looks like a little enchanted palace. The rocks about her are shaped into artificial grottos covered with woodbines and jasmines. The woods are cut into shady walks, twisted into bowers, and filled with cages of turtles. The springs are made to run among pebbles, and by that means taught to murmur very agreeably. They are likewise collected into a beautiful lake that is inhabited by a couple of swans, and empties itself by a little rivulet which runs through a green meadow, and is known in the family by the name of 'The Purling Stream.' The knight likewise tells me, that this lady preserves her game better than any of the gentlemen in the country, not (says Sir Roger) that she sets so great a value upon her partridges and pheasants, as upon her larks and nightingales. For she says that every bird which is killed in her ground, will spoil a concert, and that she shall certainly miss him the next year. When I think how oddly this lady is improved by learning, I look upon her with a mixture of admiration and pity. Amidst these innocent entertainments which she has formed to herself, how much more valuable does she appear than those of her sex, who employ themselves in diversions that are less reasonable though more in fashion? What improvements would a woman have made, who is so susceptible of impressions from what she reads, had she been guided to such books as have a tendency to enlighten the understanding and rectify the passions, as well as to those which are of a little more use than to divert the imagination? But the manner of a lady's employing herself usefully in reading, shall be the subject of another paper, in which I design to recommend such particular books as may be proper for the improvement of in every look, word, and gesture. The gentleman was as diligent to do justice to his fine parts, as the lady to her beauteous form. You might see his imagination on the stretch to find out something uncommon, and what they call bright, to entertain her, while she writhed herself into as many different postures to engage him. When she laughed, her lips were to sever at a greater distance than ordinary, to show her teeth; her fan was to point to something at a distance, that in the reach she may discover the roundness of her arm; then she is utterly mistaken in what she saw, falls back, smiles at her own folly, and is so wholly discomposed, that her tucker is to be adjusted, her bosom exposed, and the whole woman put into new airs and graces. While she was doing all this, the gallant had time to think of something very pleasant to say next to her, or make some unkind observation on some other lady to feed her vanity. These unhappy effects of affectation, naturally led me to look into that strange state of mind which so generally discolours the behaviour of most people we meet with. The learned Dr. Burnet, in his 'Theory of the Earth,' takes occasion to observe, that every thought is attended with a consciousness and representativeness; the mind has nothing presented to it but what is immediately followed by a reflection of conscience, which tells you whether that which was so presented is graceful or unbecoming. This act of the mind discovers itself in the gesture, by a proper behaviour in those whose consciousness goes no further than to direct them in the just progress of their present state or action; but betrays an interruption in every second thought, when the consciousness is employed in too fondly approving a man's own conceptions; which sort of consciousness is what we call affectation. As the love of praise is implanted in our bosoms as a strong incentive to worthy actions, it is a very difficult task to get above a desire of it for things that should be wholly indifferent. Women whose hearts are fixed upon the pleasure they have in the consciousness that they are the objects of love and admiration, are ever changing the air of their countenances, and altering the attitude of their bodies, to strike the hearts of their beholders with new sense of their beauty. The dressing part of our sex, whose minds are the same with the sillier part of the other, are exactly in the like uneasy condition to be regarded for a welltied cravat, a hat cocked with an uncommon briskness, a very well-chosen coat, or other instances of merit, which they are impatient to see unobserved. The wild havock affectation makes in that part of the world which should be most polite, is visible wherever we turn our eyes: it pushes men not only into impertinences in conversation, but also in their premeditated speeches. At the bar it torments the bench, whose business it is to cut off all superfluities in what is spoken before it by the practitioner, as well as several little pieces of injustice which arise from the law itself. I have seen it make a man run from the purpose before a judge, who was, when at the bar himself, so close and logical a pleader, that with all the pomp of eloquence in his power, he never spoke word too much. It might be borne, even here; but it often ascends the pulpit itself; and the declaimer in that sacred place, is frequently so impertinently witty, speaks of the last day itself with so many quaint phrases, that there is no man who understands raillery but must resolve to sin no more. Nay, you may behold him sometimes in prayer, for a proper delivery of the great truths he is to utter, humble himself with so very-well turned phrases, and mention his own unworthiness in a way so very becoming, that the air of the pretty gentleman is preserved, under the lowliness of the preacher. I shall end this with a short letter I writ the other day to a very witty man, overrun with the fault I am speaking of: This apparent affectation, arising from an ill-governed consciousness, is not so much to be wondered at in such loose and trivial minds as these: but when we see it reign in characters of worth and distinction, it is what we cannot but lament, not without some indignation. It creeps into the heart of the wise man as well as that of the coxcomb. When you see a man of sense look about for applause, and discover an itching inclination to be commended; lay traps for a little incense, even from those whose opinion he values in nothing but his own favour; who is safe against this weakness? or who knows whether he is guilty of it or not? The best way to get clear of such a light fondness for applause, is to take all possible care to throw off the love of it upon occasions that are not in themselves laudable, but as it appears 'DEAR SIR,-I spent some time with we hope for no praise from them. Of this you the other day, and must take the libernature are all graces in men's persons, ty of a friend to tell you of the unsufferable dress, and bodily deportment, which will affectation you are guilty of in all you say naturally be winning and attractive if we and do. When I gave you a hint of it, think not of them, but lose their force in pro- you asked me whether a man is to be cold portion to our endeavour to make them such. to what his friends think of him? No, but When our consciousness turns upon the praise is not to be the entertainment of main design of life, and our thoughts are every moment. He that hopes for it must employed upon the chief purpose either in be able to suspend the possession of it till business or pleasure, we shall never betray proper periods of life, or death itself. If an affectation, for we cannot be guilty of it: you would not rather be commended than but when we give the passion for praise an be praise-worthy, contemn_little_merits; unbridled liberty, our pleasure in little and allow no man to be so free with you, perfections robs us of what is due to us for as to praise you to your face. Your vanity great virtues, and worthy qualities. How by this means will want its food. At the many excellent speeches and honest actions same time your passion for esteem will be are lost, for want of being indifferent where be more fully gratified; men will praise you we ought? Men are oppressed with regard in their actions: where you now receive one to their way of speaking and acting, instead compliment, you will then receive twenty of having their thoughts bent upon what civilities. Till then you will never have they should do or say; and by that means of either, further than, Sir, your humble bury a capacity for great things, by their servant. fear of failing in indifferent things. This, perhaps, cannot be called affectation; but it has some tincture of it, at least so far, as No. 39.] Saturday, April 14, 1711. It is only from a thorough disregard to himself in such particulars, that a man can act with a laudable sufficiency: his heart is fixed upon one point in view; and he commits no errors, because he thinks nothing an error but what deviates from that intention, R. Multa fero, ut placem genus irritabile vatum. As a perfect tragedy is the noblest production of human nature, so it is capable *This seems to be intended as a compliment to Chancellor Cowper. |