posed and circumstantiated, and if he were so made for power without a capacity of giving jealousy, he would be also glorious without the possibility of receiving disgrace. This humility and this importance must make his glory immortal.

wish you would take some other opportunity to express further the corrupt taste the age has run into; which I am chiefly apt to attribute to the prevalency of a few popular authors, whose merit in some respects has given a sanction to their faults in others. Thus the imitators of Milton seem to place all the excellency of that sort

These thoughts are apt to draw me beyond the usual length of this paper; but if I could suppose such rhapsodies could out-of writing either in the uncouth or antique live the common fate of ordinary things, I would say these sketches and faint images of glory were drawn in August, 1711, when John Duke of Marlborough made that memorable march wherein he took the French lines without bloodshed. T.

No. 140.]

Friday, August 10, 1711.

Animum curis nunc huc, nunc dividit illuc. Virg. Æn. iv. 285. This way and that the anxious mind is torn.

words, or something else which was highly vicious, though pardonable in that great man. The admirers of what we call point, or turn, look upon it as the particular happiness to which Cowley, Ovid, and others, owe their reputation, and therefore endeavour to imitate them only in such instances. What is just, proper, and natural, does not seem to be the question with them, but by what means a quaint antithesis may be brought about, how one word may be made to look two ways, and what will be the consequence of a forced allusion. Now though such authors appear to me to resemble those who make themselves fine, instead of being well-dressed, or graceful; yet the mischief is, that these beauties in them, which I call blemishes, are thought to proceed from luxuriance of fancy, and overread-flowing of good sense. In one word, they have the character of being too witty: but if you would acquaint the world they are not witty at all, you would, among many others, oblige, sir, your most benevolent reader, R. D.'

WHEN I acquaint my reader, that I have many other letters not yet acknowledged, I believe he will own, what I have a mind he should believe, that I have no small charge upon me, but am a person of some consequence in this world. I shall therefore employ the present hour only in ing petitions in the order as follows,

'BETTY SAUNTER.'

'Pray, sir, direct thus, "To the kind Querist," and leave it at Mr. Lillie's, for I do not care to be known in the thing at all. I am, sir, again, your humble servant.'

'MR. SPECTATOR,-I have lost so much time already, that I desire, upon the receipt hereof, you will sit down immediately and give me your answer. And I would know of you whether a pretender of mine ed pretty; therefore you will pardon me 'SIR,-I am a young woman, and reckonreally loves me. As well as I can I will that I trouble you to decide a wager bedescribe his manners. When he sees me is always talking of constancy, but vouch-tween me and a cousin of mine, who is alsafes to visit me but once a fortnight, and ways contradicting one because he underthen he is always in haste to be gone. with a single or a double p? I am, sir, stands Latin: pray, sir, is Dimple spelt When I am sick, I hear he says he is mightily concerned, but neither comes nor sends, your very humble servant, because, as he tells his acquaintance with a sigh, he does not care to let me know all the power I have over him, and how impossible it is for him to live without me. When he leaves the town he writes once in six weeks, desires to hear from me, complains of the torment of absence, speaks of flames, tortures, languishings, and ecsta-you there are several of your papers I do sies. He has the cant of an impatient lover, is no enduring you; and so learned, there is no not much like. You are often so nice, there but keeps the pace of a lukewarm one. You know I must not go faster than he understanding you. What have you to do does, and to move at this rate is as tedious with our petticoats? Your humble servant, as counting a great clock. But you are to know he is rich, and my mother says, as he is slow he is sure; he will love me long if he love me little: but I appeal to you whether he loves at all. Your neglected humble servant, LYDIA NOVELL.'

All these fellow's who have money are extremely saucy and cold; pray, sir, tell

them of it.'

MR. SPECTATOR,—I have been delighted with nothing more through the whole course of your writings than the substantial account you lately gave of wit, and I could

'MR. SPECTATOR,-I must needs tell

66

'PARTHENOPE.'

'MR. SPECTATOR,-Last night, as I was walking in the Park, I met a couple of friends. Pr'ythee, Jack," says one of them, "let us go drink a glass of wine, for I am fit for nothing else." This put me upon reflecting on the many miscarriages which happen in conversations over wine, when men go to the bottle to remove such humours as it only stirs up and awakens. This I could not attribute more to any thing than to the humour of putting company upon others which men do not like themselves. Pray, sir, declare in your

vant.

papers, that he who is a troublesome com- | sent ignorance, may be thought a good panion to himself, will not be an agreeable presage and earnest of improvement, you one to others. Let people reason them- may look upon your time you shall bestow selves into good humour, before they im- in answering this request not thrown away pose themselves upon their friends. Pray, to no purpose. And I cannot but add, sir, be as eloquent as you can upon this that unless you have a particular and more subject, and do human life so much good, than ordinary regard for Leonora, I have as to argue powerfully, that it is not every a better title to your favour than she: since one that can swallow who is fit to drink I do not content myself with tea-table reada glass of wine. Your most humble ser- ing of your papers, but it is my entertainment very often when alone in my closet. ‹ SIR,—I this morning cast my eye upon and hate flattery, I acknowledge I do not To show you I am capable of improvement, your paper concerning the expence of time. like some of your papers; but even there I You are very obliging to the women, espe-am readier to call in question my own shalcially those who are not young and past low understanding than Mr. Spectator's gallantry, by touching so gently upon gam- profound judgment. I am sir, your already ing: therefore I hope you do not think it wrong to employ a little leisure time in that (and in hopes of being more your) obliged PARTHENIA. diversion; but I should be glad to hear you say something upon the behaviour of some of the female gamesters.

servant,

This last letter is written with so urgent and serious an air, that I cannot but think it incumbent upon me to comply with her commands, which I shall do very suddenly.

T.

'I have observed ladies, who in all other respects are gentle, good-humoured, and the very pinks of good-breeding; who as soon as the ombre-table is called for and sit down to their business, are immediately transmigrated into the veriest wasps in No. 141.] Saturday, August 11, 1711.

nature.

You must know I keep my temper, and win their money; but am out of countenance to take it, it makes them so very uneasy. Be pleased, dear sir, to instruct them to lose with a better grace, and you will oblige, Yours,

RACHEL BASTO.'

'MR. SPECTATOR,-Your kindness to Leonora, in one of your papers, has given me encouragement to do myself the honour of writing to you. The great regard you have so often expressed for the instruction and improvement of our sex will I hope, in your own opinion, sufficiently excuse me from making any apology for the impertinence of this letter. The great desire I have to embellish my mind with some of those graces which you say are so becoming, and which you assert reading helps us to, has made me uneasy until I am put in a capacity of attaining them. This, sir, I shall never think myself in, until you shall be pleased to recommend some author or authors to my perusal.

IN the present emptiness of the town, I have several applications from the lower part of the players, to admit suffering to pass for acting. They in very obliging terms desire me to let a fall on the ground, a stumble, or a good slap on the back, be reckoned a jest. These gambols I shall tolerate for a season, because I hope the evil cannot continue longer than until the people of condition and taste return to town. The method some time ago, was to entertain that part of the audience, who have no faculty above eye-sight, with ropedancers and tumblers; which was a way discreet enough, because it prevented confusion, and distinguished such as could show all the postures which the body is capable of, from those who were to represent all the passions to which the mind is subject. But though this was prudently settled, corporeal and intellectual actors ought to be kept at a still wider distance than to appear on the same stage at all: for which reason I must propose some methods for the improvement of the beargarden, by dismissing all bodily actors to that quarter.

'I thought, indeed, when I first cast my eye on Leonora's letter, that I should have had no occasion for requesting it of you; but, to my very great concern, I found on the perusal of that Spectator, I was entirely disappointed, and am as much at a loss how to make use of my time for that end as ever. Pray, sir, oblige me at least In cases of greater moment, where men with one scene, as you were pleased to en- appear in public, the consequence and imtertain Leonora with your prologue. Iportance of the thing can bear them out. write to you not only my own sentiments, | And though a pleader or preacher is hoarse but also those of several others of my ac- or awkward, the weight of their matter quaintance, who are as little pleased with commands respect and attention; but in the ordinary manner of spending one's time theatrical speaking, if the performer is not as myself; and if a fervent desire after exactly proper and graceful, he is utterly knowledge, and a great sense of our pre-ridiculous. In cases where there is little

else expected, but the pleasure of the ears occasion of that tragedy, and fill the mind and eyes, the least diminution of that plea-with a suitable horror; besides that the sure is the highest offence. In acting, witches are a part of the story itself, as we barely to perform the part is not com- find it very particularly related in Hector mendable, but to be the least out is con- Boetius, from whom he seems to have taken temptible. To avoid these difficulties and it. This therefore is a proper machine, delicacies, I am informed, that while I was where the business is dark, horrid, and out of town, the actors have flown into the bloody; but is extremely foreign from the air, and played such pranks, and run such affair of comedy. Subjects of this kind, hazards, that none but the servants of the which are in themselves disagreeable, can fire-office, tilers, and masons, could have at no time become entertaining, but by been able to perform the like.* The author passing through an imagination like Shakof the following letter, it seems, has been of speare's to form them; for which reason the audience at one of these entertainments, Mr. Dryden would not allow even Beauand has accordingly complained to me upon mont and Fletcher capable of imitating it; but I think he has been to the utmost him. degree severe against what is exceptionable in the play he mentions, without dwelling so much as he might have done on the author's most excellent talent of humour. The pleasant pictures he has drawn of life should have been more kindly mentioned, at the same time that he banishes his witches, who are too dull devils to be at

tacked with so much warmth.

"But Shakspeare's magic could not copied be: Within that circle none durst walk but he." 'I should not, however, have troubled you with these remarks, if there were not something else in this comedy, which wants to be exorcised more than the witches: I I should have overlooked, if I had not obmean the freedom of some passages, which served that those jests can raise the loudest mirth, though they are painful to right sense, and an outrage upon modesty.

'MR. SPECTATOR,-Upon a report that Moll White had followed you to town, and was to act a part in the Lancashire Witches, "We must attribute such liberties to the I went last week to see that play. It was taste of that age: but indeed by such remy fortune to sit next to a country justice presentations a poet sacrifices the best part of the peace, a neighbour (as he said) of of his audience to the worst; and, as one Sir Roger's, who pretended to show her to would think, neglects the boxes, to write us in one of the dances. There was witch-to the orange-wenches. craft enough in the entertainment almost to incline me to believe him; Ben Johnson was almost lame; young Bullock† narrowly saved his neck; the audience was astonished, and an old acquaintance of mine, a person of worth, whom I would have bowed to in the pit, at two yards' distance did not

know me.

'If you were what the country-people reported you, a white witch, I could have wished you had been there to have exorcised that rabble of broomsticks, with which we were haunted for above three hours. I could have allowed them to set Clod in the tree, to have scared the sportsmen, plagued the justice, and employed honest Teague with his holy water. This was the proper use of them in comedy, if the author had stopped here; but I cannot conceive what relation the sacrifice of the black lamb, and the ceremonies of their worship to the devil, have to the business of mirth and humour.

'I must not conclude till I have taken notice of the moral with which this comedy ends. The two young ladies having given a notable example of out-witting those who had a right in the disposal of them, and marrying without consent of parents, one of the injured parties, who is easily reconciled, winds up all with this remark,

-Design whate'er we will,

There is a fate which over-rules us still."§

'We are to suppose that the gallants are men of merit, but if they had been rakes, the excuse might have served as well. Hans Carvel's wife was of the same principle, but has expressed it with a delicacy which shows she is not serious in her excuse, but in a sort of humorous philosophy turns off the thought of her guilt, and says,

"That if weak women go astray, Their stars are more in fault than they." "This no doubt is a full reparation, and dismisses the audience with very edifying impressions.

The gentleman who writ this play, and has drawn some characters in it very justly, appears to have been misled in his witch-have partly pursued already, and therefore These things fall under a province you craft by an unwary following the inimitable Shakspeare. The incantations in Macbeth have a solemnity admirably adapted to the

*Alluding to Shadwell's comedy of the Lancashire Witches, which being considered a party play, had a good run at this time. It was advertised for the very night in which this Number is dated.

The names of two actors then upon the stage. Different incidents in the play of the Lancashire Witches.

demands your animadversion, for the regulating so noble an entertainment as that of the stage. It were to be wished, that all who write for it hereafter would raise their

genius by the ambition of pleasing people of the best understanding; and leave others, who show nothing of the human species but

§ The concluding distich of Shadwell's play.

risibility, to seek their diversion at the is all my attention broken! my books are bear-garden, or some other privileged place, where reason and good manners have no right to disturb them. August 8, 1711.

T.

I am, &c.'

No. 142.] Monday, August 13, 1711.

Irrupta tenet copula Hor. Lib. 1. Od. xiii. 33.
Whom love's unbroken bond unites.

THE following letters being genuine, and the images of a worthy passion, I am willing to give the old lady's admonition to myself, and the representation of her own happiness, a place in my writings.

August 9, 1711.

blank paper, and my friends intruders. I have no hope of quiet but from your pity. To grant it would make more for your triumph. To give pain is the tyranny, to make happy the true empire of beauty. If you would consider aright, you would find an agreeable change in dismissing the attendance of a slave, to receive the complaisance of a companion. I bear the former in hopes of the latter condition. As I live in chains without murmuring at the power dom without forgetting the mercy that gave which inflicts them, so I could enjoy freeit. I am, Madam, your most devoted, most obedient servant.

Though I made him no declarations in his favour, you see he had hopes of me when he writ this in the month following.

'MR. SPECTATOR,-I am now in the sixty-seventh year of my age, and read you September 3, 1671. with approbation; but methinks you do not "MADAM,-Before the light this morning strike at the root of the greatest evil in life, dawned upon the earth, I awaked, and lay which is the false notion of gallantry in love. in expectation of its return, not that it could It is, and has long been, upon a very ill give any new sense of joy to me, but as I foot; but I who have been a wife forty hoped it would bless you with its cheerful years, and was bred up in a way that has face, after a quiet which I wished you last made me ever since very happy, see night. If my prayers are heard, the day through the folly of it. In a word, sir, appeared with all the influence of a merciful when I was a young woman, all who Creator upon your person and actions. Let avoided the vices of the age were very others, my lovely charmer, talk of a blind carefully educated, and all fantastical ob- being that disposes their hearts, I contemn jects were turned out of our sight. The their low images of love. I have not a tapestry-hangings, with the great and ve thought which relates to you, that I cannerable simplicity of the scripture stories, not with confidence beseech the All-seeing had better effects than now the loves of Power to bless me in. May he direct you Venus and Adonis, or Bacchus and Ariadne, in all your steps, and reward your innoin your fine present prints. The gentle-cence, your sanctity of manners, your pruman I am married to, made love to me in dent youth, and becoming piety, with the rapture, but it was the rapture of a Chris- continuance of his grace and protection. tian and a man of honour, not a romantic This is an unusual language to ladies; but hero or a whining coxcomb. This put our you have a mind elevated above the giddy life upon a right basis. To give you an notions of a sex insnared by flattery and idea of our regard one to another, I enclose misled by a false and short adoration into a to you several of his letters writ forty years solid and long contempt. Beauty, my fairest ago, when my lover; and one writ the other creature, palls in the possession, but I love day, after so many years cohabitation. also your mind: your soul is as dear to me ANDROMACHE.' as my own; and if the advantages of a liberal education, some knowledge, and as much contempt of the world, joined with the endeavours towards a life of strict virtue and religion, can qualify me to raise new ideas in a breast so well disposed as your's is, our days will pass away with joy; and old age, instead of introducing melancholy prospects of decay, give us hope of eternal youth in a better life. I have but few minutes from the duty of my employment to write in, and without time to read over what I have writ, therefore beseech you to pardon the first hints of my mind, which I have expressed in so little order. I am, dearest creature, your most obedient most devoted servant.

"Your servant,

'August 7, 1671. "MADAM,—If my vigilance, and ten thousand wishes for your welfare and repose, could have any force, you last night slept in security, and had every good angel in your attendance. To have my thoughts ever fixed on you, to live in constant fear of every accident to which human life is liable, and to send up my hourly prayers to avert them from you: I say, madam, thus to think, and thus to suffer, is what I do for her who is in pain at my approach, and calls all my tender sorrow impertinence. You are now before my eyes, my eyes that are ready to flow with tenderness, but cannot give relief to my gushing heart, that dictates what I am now saying, and yearns to tell you all its achings. How art thou, oh my soul, stolen from thyself! how

* This and the following letters in this Number are

all genuine, having been written by Sir Richard Steele, to Miss Scurlock, afterwards Lady Steele.-See Steele's Letters, Vol. II.

The two next were written after the at this time, but if you saw the poor withday of our marriage was fixed.

"September 25, 1671.

ered hand which sends you these minutes, I am sure you will smile to think that there is one who is so gallant as to speak of it "MADAM,-It is the hardest thing in still as so welcome a present, after forty the world to be in love, and yet attend bu-years' possession of the woman whom he siness. As for me, all that speak to me writes to, find me out, and I must lock myself up, or other people will do it for me. A gentleman asked me this morning, 'What news from Holland,' and 1 answered, She is exquisitely handsome.' Another desired to know when I had been last at Windsor. I replied, 'She designs to go with me.' Pr'ythee, allow me at least to kiss your hand before the appointed day, that my mind may be in some composure. Methinks could write a volume to you, but all the language on earth would fail in saying how much, and with what disinterested passion, I am ever your's."

"June 23, 1711. “MADAM,—I heartily beg your pardon for my omission to write yesterday. It was no failure of my tender regard for you; but having been very much perplexed in my thoughts on the subject of my last, made me determine to suspend speaking of it until I came myself. But my lovely creature, know it is not in the power of age, or misfortune, or any other accident which hangs over human life, to take from me the pleasing esteem I have for you, or the memory of the bright figure you appeared in, when your gave your hand and heart to, Madam, your most grateful husband, and obedient servant. T.

Tuesday, August 14, 1711. Non est vivere, sed valere, vita.

'Sept. 30, 1671, 7 in the morning. "DEAR CREATURE,-Next to the influence of heaven, I am to thank you that I see the returning day with pleasure. To pass my evenings in so sweet a conversa- No. 143.] tion, and have the esteem of a woman of your merit, has in it à peculiarity of happiness no more to be expressed than returned. But I am, my lovely creature contented to be on the obliged side, and to employ all my days in new endeavours to convince you and all the world of the sense I have of your condescension in choosing, Madam, your most faithful, most obedient humble servant."

'He was, when he writ the following letter, as agreeable and pleasant a man as any in England.

"October 20, 1671. "MADAM,-I beg pardon that my paper is not finer, but I am forced to write from a coffee-house where I am attending about business. There is a dirty crowd of busy faces all around me talking of money, while all my ambition, all my wealth, is love; love, which animates my heart, sweetens my humour, enlarges my soul, and affects every action of my life. It is to my lovely charmer, I owe that many noble ideas are continually affixed to my words and actions: it is the natural effect of that generous passion to create in the admirers some similitude of the object admired; thus my dear am I every day to improve from so sweet a companion. Look up, my fair one, to that heaven which made thee such, and join with me to implore its influence on our tender innocent hours, and beseech the author of love to bless the rites he has ordained, and mingle with our happiness a just sense of our transient condition, and a resignation to his will, which only can regulate our minds to a steady endeavour to please him and each other. I am, for ever, your

faithful servant."

'I will not trouble you with more letters

Martial, Epig. lxx. 6.

For life is only life, when blest with health. Ir is an unreasonable thing some men expect of their acquaintance. They are ever complaining that they are out of order, or displeased, or they know not how, and are so far from letting that be a reason for retiring to their own homes, that they make it their argument for coming into company. What has any body to do with accounts of a man's being indisposed but his physician? If a man laments in company, where the rest are in humour enough to enjoy themselves, he should not take it ill if a servant is ordered to present him with a porringer of caudle or posset-drink, by way of admonition that he go home to bed. That part of life which we ordinarily understand by the word conversation, is an indulgence to the sociable part of our make; and should incline us to bring our proportion of good-will or good-humour among the friends we meet with, and not to trouble them with relations which must of necessity oblige them to a real or feigned affliction. Cares, distresses, diseases, uneasinesses, and dislikes of our own, are by no means to be obtruded upon our friends. If we would consider how little of this vicissitude of motion and rest, which we call life, is spent with satisfaction, we should be more tender of our friends, than to bring them little sorrows which do not belong to

them.

There is no real life but cheerful life; therefore valetudinarians should be sworn, before they enter into company, not to say a word of themselves until the meeting breaks up. It is not here pretended, that we should be always sitting with chaplets of flowers round our heads, or be

crowned with roses in order to make our