joint-stool in the very lowest place at the idolaters; but that from the time of pub- R. 'P. S. I have sacrificed my necklace to put into the public lottery against the common enemy. And last Saturday, about three o'clock in the afternoon, I began to patch indifferently on both sides of my No. 88.] Monday, June 11, 1711. face.' 'London, June 7, 1711. 'MR. SPECTATOR,-Upon reading your late dissertation concerning Idols, I cannot but complain to you that there are, in six or seven places of this city, coffee-houses kept by persons of that sisterhood. These idols sit and receive all day long the adoration of the youth within such and such districts. I know in particular, goods are not entered as they ought to be at the customhouse, nor law-reports perused at the Temple, by reason of one beauty who detains the young merchants too long, near 'Change, and another fair one who keeps the students at her house when they should be at study. It would be worth your while to see how the idolaters alternately offer incense to their idols, and what heart-burnings arise in those who wait for their turn to receive kind aspects from those little thrones, which all the company, but these lovers, call the bars. I saw a gentleman turn as pale as ashes, because an idol turned the sugar in a tea-dish for his rival, and carelessly called the boy to serve him, with a "Sirrah! why don't you give the gentleman the box to please himself?" Certain it is, that a very hopeful young man was taken with leads in his pockets below the bridge, where he intended to drown himself, because his idol would wash the dish in which she had just drank tea, before she would let him use it. I am, sir, a person past being amorous, and do not give this information out of envy or jealousy, but I am a real sufferer by it. These lovers take any thing for tea and coffee; I saw one yesterday surfeit to make his court, and all his rivals, at the same time, loud in the commendation of liquors that went against every body in the room that was not in love. While these young fellows resign their stomachs with their hearts, and drink at the idol in this manner, we who come to do business, or talk politics, are utterly poisoned. They have also drams for those who are more enamoured than ordinary; and it is very common for such as are too low in constitution to ogle the idol upon the strength of tea, to fluster themselves with warmer liquors: thus all pretenders advance, as fast as they can, to a fever, or a diabetes. I must repeat to you, that I do not look with an evil eye upon the profit of the idols, or the diversions of the lovers; what I hope from this remonstrance, is only that we plain people may not be served as if we were Quid domini faciant, audent cum talia fures? Virg. Ecl. iii. 16. 'What will not masters do when servants thus presume?' 'May 30, 1711. 'MR. SPECTATOR,-I have no small value for your endeavours to lay before the world what may escape their observation, and yet highly conduces to their service.. You have, I think, succeeded very well on many subjects; and seem to have been conversant in very different scenes of life. But in the considerations of mankind, as a Spectator, you should not omit circumstances which relate to the inferior part of the world, any more than those which concern the greater. There is one thing in particular which I wonder you have not touched upon, and that is the general corruption of manners in the servants of Great Britain. I am a man that have travelled and seen many nations, but have for seven years last past resided constantly in London, or within twenty miles of it. In this time I have contracted a numerous acquaintance among the best sort of people, and have hardly found one of them happy in their servants. This is matter of great astonishment to foreigners, and all such as have visited foreign countries; especially since we cannot but observe, that there is no part of the world where servants have those privileges and advantages as in England. They have no where else such plentiful_diet, large wages, or indulgent liberty. There is no place where they labour less, and yet where they are so little respectful, more wasteful, more negligent, or where they so frequentTo this I attrily change their masters, bute, in a great measure, the frequent robberies and losses which we suffer on the That high road and in our own houses. of this kind is, that a careless groom of indeed which gives me the present thought mine has spoiled me the prettiest pad in the world, with only riding him ten miles; and I assure you, if I were to make a register of all the horses I have known thus abused by negligence of servants, the number would mount a regiment. I wish you would give us your observations, that we may know how to treat these rogues, or that we masters may enter into measures to reform them. Pray give us a speculation in general about servants, and you make Yours, me 'PHILO-BRITANNICUS. 'P. S. Pray do not omit the mention of grooms in particular.' This honest gentleman, who is so desirous that I should write a satire upon grooms, has a great deal of reason for his resentment; and I know no evil which touches all mankind so much as this of the misbehaviour of servants. that there were no such thing as rule and distinction among us. The next place of resort, wherein the servile world are let loose, is at the entrance of Hyde Park, while the gentry are at the ring. Hither people bring their lackeys out The complaint of this letter runs wholly of state, and here it is that all they say at upon men-servants; and I can attribute the their tables, and act in their houses, is licentiousness which has at present pre- communicated to the whole town. There vailed among them, to nothing but what an are men of wit in all conditions of life; and hundred before me have ascribed it to, the mixing with these people at their diversions, custom of giving board-wages. This one I have heard coquettes and prudes as well instance of false economy is sufficient to de- rallied, and insolence and pride exposed bauch the whole nation of servants, and (allowing for their want of education) with makes them as it were but for some part as much humour and good sense, as in the of their time in that quality. They are politest companies. It is a general observaeither attending in places where they meet tion, that all dependents run in some meaand run into clubs, or else if they wait at sure into the manners and behaviour of taverns, they eat after their masters, and those whom they serve. You shall frereserve their wages for other occasions. quently meet with lovers and men of inFrom hence it arises, that they are but in a trigue among the lackeys as well as at lower degree what their masters them- White's or in the side-boxes. I remember selves are; and usually affect an imitation some years ago an instance of this kind. A of their manners; and you have in liveries, footman to a captain of the guards used frebeaux, fops, and coxcombs, in as high per- quently, when his master was out of the fection as among people that keep equi- way, to carry on amours and make assignapages. It is a common humour among the tions in his master's clothes. The fellow retinue of people of quality, when they are had a very good person, and there are very in their revels, that is, when they are out many women that think no further than the of their master's sight, to assume in a hu- outside of a gentleman: besides which, he morous way the names and titles of those was almost as learned a man as the colonel whose liveries they wear. By which means himself: I say, thus qualified, the fellow characters and distinctions become so fa- could scrawl billet-doux so well, and furmiliar to them, that it is to this, among nish a conversation on the common topics, other causes, one may impute a certain in- that he had, as they call it, a great deal of It happened solence among our servants, that they take good business on his hands. no notice of any gentleman, though they one day, that coming down a tavern stairs know him ever so well, except he is an ac-in his master's fine guard-coat with a wellquaintance of their master's. dressed woman masked, he met the colonel My obscurity and taciturnity leave me at coming up with other company; but with a liberty, without scandal, to dine, if I think ready assurance he quitted his lady, came fit, at a common ordinary, in the meanest up to him and said, Sir, I know you have as well as the most sumptuous house of too much respect for yourself to cane me entertainment.-Falling in the other day at in this honourable habit. But you see there a victualling-house near the house of peers, is a lady in the case, and I hope on that I heard the maid come down and tell the score also you will put off your anger till I After a landlady at the bar, that my lord bishop have told you all another time.' swore he would throw her out at window, little pause the colonel cleared up his counif she did not bring up more mild beer, and tenance, and with an air of familiarity whisthat my lord duke would have a double pered his man apart, Sirrah, bring the mug of purl. My surprise was increased, lady with you to ask pardon for you;' then in hearing loud and rustic voices speak and aloud, 'Look to it, Will, I'll never forgive answer to each other upon the public affairs, you else.' The fellow went back to his by the names of the most illustrious of our mistress, and telling her, with a loud voice nobility; till of a sudden one came running and an oath, that was the honestest fellow in, and cried the house was rising. Down in the world, conveyed her to a hackneycame all the company together and away! coach. The alehouse was immediately filled with But the many irregularities committed by clamour, and scoring one mug to the mar-servants in the places above-mentioned, as quis of such a place, oil and vinegar to such well as in the theatres, of which masters an earl, three quarts to my new lord for are generally the occasions, are too various wetting his title, and so forth. It is a thing not to need being resumed on another occatoo notorious to mention the crowds of ser- sion. vants, and their insolence, near the courts of justice, and the stairs towards the supreme assembly, where there is a universal mockery of all order, such riotous clamour and licentious confusion, that one would think the whole nation lived in jest, and No. 89.] Tuesday, June 12, 1711. -Petite hinc, juvenesque senesque Jam cras hesternum consumpsimus; ecce aliud cras Pers. From thee both old and young, with profit learn Corn. Unhappy he who does this work adjourn, Pers. But is one day of ease too much to borrow? of two and twenty, and dodged with me above thirty years. I have loved her till she is grown as grey as a cat, and am with much ado become the master of her person, such as it is at present. She is however in my eye a very charming old woman. We often lament that we did not marry sooner, but she has nobody to blame for it but herself. You know very well that she would never think of me whilst she had a tooth in her head. I have put the date of my passion, anno amoris trigesimo primo, instead of a posy on my wedding ring. expect you should send me a congratulatory letter, or, if you please, an epithalamium upon this occasion. Mrs. Martha's and yours eternally, SAM HOPEWELL.' In order to banish an evil out of the world, that does not only produce great uneasiness to private persons, but has also a very bad influence on the public, I shall endeavour to show the folly of demurrage, from two or three reflections which I earnestly recommend to the thoughts of my fair readers. before the flood, a lady might sacrifice half a century to a scruple, and be two or three ages in demurring. Had she nine hundred years good, she might hold out to the conversion of the Jews before she thought fit to be prevailed upon. But, alas! she ought to play her part in haste, when she considers that she is suddenly to quit the stage, and make room for others. As my correspondents upon the subject of love are very numerous, it is my design, if possible, to range them under several heads, and address myself to them at different times. The first branch of them, to whose service I shall dedicate this paper, are those that have to do with women of dilatory tempers, who are for spinning out the time of courtship to an immoderate length, without being able either to close with their lovers, or to dismiss them. I have many letters by me filled with_comFirst of all, I would have them seriously plaints against this sort of women. In one think on the shortness of their time. Life of them no less a man than a brother of the is not long enough for a coquette to play all coif tells me, that he began his suit vicesimo her tricks in. A timorous woman drops into nono Caroli secundi, before he had been a her grave before she has done deliberating. twelve-month at the Temple; that he pro-Were the age of man the same that it was secuted it for many years after he was called to the bar; that at present he is a sergeant at law; and notwithstanding he hoped that matters would have been long since brought to an issue, the fair one still demurs.I am so well pleased with this gentleman's phrase, that I shall distinguish this sect of women by the title of Demurrers. I find by another letter from one that calls himself Thyrsis, that his mistress has been demurring above these seven years. But among all my plaintiffs of this nature, I most pity the unfortunate Philander, a man of a constant passion and plentiful fortune, who sets forth that the timorous and irresolute Sylvia has demurred till she is past childbearing. Strephon appears by his letter to be a very choleric lover, and irrecoverably smitten with one that demurs out of self-reserve for another opportunity. interest. He tells me with great passion that she has bubbled him out of his youth; that she drilled him on to five and fifty, and that he verily believes she will drop him in his old age, if she can find her account in another. I shall conclude this narrative with a letter from honest Sam Hopewell, a very pleasant fellow, who it seems has at last married a demurrer. I must only premise, that Sam, who is a very good bottlecompanion, has been the diversion of his friends, upon account of his passion, ever since the year one thousand six hundred and eighty-one. DEAR SIR,-You know very well my passion for Mrs. Martha, and what a dance she has led me. She took me out at the age In the second place, I would desire my female readers to consider, that as the term of life is short, that of beauty is much shorter. The finest skin wrinkles in a few years, and loses the strength of its colourings so soon, that we have scarce time to admire it. I might embellish this subject with roses and rainbows, and several other ingenious conceits, which I may possibly There is a third consideration which I would likewise recommend to a demurrer, and that is the great danger of her falling in love when she is about threescore, if she cannot satisfy her doubts and scruples before that time. There is a kind of latter spring, that sometimes gets into the blood of an old woman, and turns her into a very odd sort of an animal. I would therefore have the demurrer consider what a strange figure she will make, if she chances to get over all difficulties, and comes to a final resolution in that unseasonable part of her life. I would not however be understood, by any thing I have here said, to discourage that natural modesty in the sex, which renders a retreat from the first approaches of after the body is cast off and thrown aside. As an argument to confirm this their doctrine, they observe, that a lewd youth who goes on in a continued course of voluptuousness, advances by degrees into a libidinous old man; and that the passion survives in the mind when it is altogether dead in the body; nay, that the desire grows more violent, and (like all other habits) gathers a lover both fashionable and graceful. All that I intend is, to advise them, when they are prompted by reason and inclination, to demur only out of form, and so far as decency requires. A virtuous woman should reject the first offer of marriage, as a good man does that of a bishopric; but I would advise neither the one nor the other to persist in refusing what they secretly approve. I would in this particular propose the ex-strength by age at the same time that it ample of Eve to all her daughters, as Milton has represented her in the following passage, which I cannot forbear transcribing entire, though only the twelve last lines are to my present purpose. The rib he form'd and fashion'd with his hands: She disappear'd, and left me dark: I wak'd I, overjoy'd, could not forbear aloud: "This turn hath made amends: thou hast fulfill'd Of all thy gifts, nor enviest. I now see She heard me thus, and though divinely brought, Paradise Lost, viii. 469-511. No. 90.] Wednesday, June 13, 1711. -Magnus sine viribus ignis Incassum furit has no power of executing its own purposes. If, say they, the soul is the most subject to these passions at a time when it has the least instigations from the body, we may well suppose she will still retain them when she is entirely divested of it. The very substance of the soul is festered with them, the gangrene is gone too far to be ever cured; the inflammation will rage to all eternity. In this therefore, (say the Platonists,) consists the punishment of a voluptuous man after death. He is tormented with desires which it is impossible for him to gratify; solicited by a passion that has neither objects nor organs adapted to it. He lives in a state of invincible desire and impotence, and always burns in the pursuit of what he always despairs to possess It is for this reason (says Plato) that the souls of the dead appear frequently in cemeteries, and hover about the places where their bodies are buried, as still hankering after their old brutal pleasures, and desiring again to enter the body that gave them an opportunity of fulfilling them. Some of our most eminent divines have made use of this Platonic notion, so far as it regards the subsistence of our passions after death, with great beauty and strength of reason. Plato indeed carries the thought very far when he grafts upon it his opinion of ghosts appearing in places of burial. Though I must confess, if one did believe that the departed souls of men and women wandered up and down these lower regions, and entertained themselves with the sight of their species, one could not devise a more proper hell for an impure spirit than that which Plato has touched upon. he attempted to drink it. The ancients seem to have drawn such • In all the rage of impotent desire, a state of torments in the description of They feel a quenchless flame, a fruitless fire.' Tantalus, who was punished with the rage THERE is not, in my opinion, a consi- of an eternal thirst, and set up to the chin deration more effectual to extinguish inor-in water that fled from his lips whenever dinate desires in the soul of man, than the notions of Plato and his followers upon that subject. They tell us, that every passion which has been contracted by the soul during her residence in the body, remains with her in a separate state; and that the soul in the body, or out of the body, differs no more than the man does from himself when he is in his house, or in open air. When therefore the obscene passions in particular have once taken root, and spread themselves in the soul, they cleave to her inseparably, and remain in her for ever, Virgil who has cast the whole system of Platonic philosophy, so far as it relates to the soul of man, into beautiful allegories, in the sixth book of his Eneid gives us the punishment of a voluptuary after death, not unlike that which we are here speaking of: -Lucent genealibus altis Aurea fulcra toris, epulæque ante ora paratæ They lie below on golden beds display'd, That I may a little alleviate the severity of this my speculation (which otherwise may lose me several of my polite readers,) I shall translate a story that has been quoted upon another occasion by one of the most learned men of the present age, as I find it in the original. The reader will see it is not foreign to my present subject, and I dare say will think it a lively representation of a person lying under the torments of such a kind of tantalism, or Platonic hell, as that which we have now under consideration. Monsieur Pontignan, speaking of a loveadventure that happened to him in the country, gives the following account of it. * When I was in the country last summer, I was often in company with a couple of charming women, who had all the wit and beauty one could desire in female companions, with a dash of coquetry, that from time to time gave me a great many agreeable torments. I was, after my way, in love with both of them, and had such frequent opportunities of pleading my passions to them when they were asunder, that I had reason to hope for particular favours from each of them. As I was walking one evening in my chamber with nothing about me but my night-gown, they both came into my room, and told me they had a very pleasant trick to put upon a gentleman that was in the same house, provided I would bear a part in it. Upon this they told me such a plausible story, that I laughed at their contrivance, and agreed to do whatever they should require of me. They immediately began to swaddle me up in my night gown, with long pieces of linen, which they folded about me till they had wrapt me in above an hundred yards of swathe. My arms were pressed to my sides, and my legs closed together by so many wrappers one over another, that I looked like an Ægyptian mummy. As I stood bolt upright upon one end in this antique figure, one of the ladies burst out a laughing. "And now, Pontignan," says she, intend to perform the promise that we find you have extorted from each of us. You have often asked the favour of us, and I dare say you are a better bred cavalier than to refuse to go to bed with two ladies that desire it of you." After having stood a fit of laughter, I begged them to uncase me, and do with me what they pleased. "No, no," said they, "we like you very well as you are;" and upon that ordered me to be carried to one of their houses, and put to bed in all my swaddles. The room was lighted up on all sides: and I was laid very decently between a pair of 66 we *This is a paraphrase of a story in the "Academie Galante," a little book printed at Paris in 1682. sheets, with my head (which was indeed the only part I could move) upon a very high pillow: this was no sooner done, but my two female friends came into bed to me in their finest night-clothes. You may easily guess at the condition of a man that saw a couple of the most beautiful women in the world undrest and abed with him, without being able to stir hand or foot. Í begged them to release me, and struggled all I could to get loose, which I did with so much violence, that about midnight they both leaped out of the bed, crying out they were undone. But seeing me safe, they took their posts again, and renewed their raillery. Finding all my prayers and endeavours were lost, I composed myself as well as I could, and told them, that if they would not unbind me, I would fall asleep between them, and by that means disgrace them for ever. But alas! this was impossible; could I have been disposed to it, they would have prevented me by several little ill-natured caresses and endearments which they bestowed upon me. As much devoted as I am to woman-kind, I would not pass such another night to be master of the whole sex. My reader will doubtless be curious to know what became of me the next morning. Why truly my bedfellows left me an hour before day, and told me, if I would be good and lie still, they would send somebody to take me up as soon as it was time for me to rise. Accordingly about nine o'clock in the morning an old woman came to unswathe me. I bore all this very patiently, being resolved to take my revenge of my tormentors, and to keep no measures with them as soon as I was at liberty; but upon asking my old woman what was become of the two ladies, she told me she believed they were by that time within sight of Paris, for that they went away in a coach and six before five o'clock in the morning.' L. No. 91.] Thursday, June 14, 1711. -They rush into the flame; Dryden. THOUGH the subject I am now going upon would be much more properly the foundation of a comedy, I cannot forbear inserting the circumstance which pleased me in the account a young lady gave me of the loves of a family in town, which shall be nameless; or rather, for the better sound and elevation of the history, instead of Mr. and Mrs. Such-a-one, I shall call them by feigned names. Without further preface, you are to know, that within the liberties of the city of Westminster lives the Lady Honoria, a widow about the age of forty, of a healthy constitution, gay temper, and elegant person. She dresses a |