the history picture of a fan in so gallant a manner as he addresses it. But see the letters. of Westminster to the city of London, within the said hours. You are therefore not to depart from your observatory at the end of Devereux-court during the said space of each day, but to observe the be- 'MR. SPECTATOR,-It is now almost haviour of all persons who are suddenly three months since I was in town about transported from tramping on pebbles to some business; and the hurry of it being sit at ease in chariots, what notice they over, I took a coach one afternoon, and take of their foot acquaintance, and send drove to see a relation, who married about I found me the speediest advice, when they are six years ago a wealthy citizen. guilty of overlooking, turning from, or ap- her at home, but her husband gone to the pearing grave and distant to, their old Exchange, and expected back within an friends. When man and wife are in the hour at the farthest. After the usual salutasame coach, you are to see whether they tions of kindness, and a hundred questions appear pleased or tired with each other, about friends in the country, we sat down and whether they carry the due mean in to piquet, played two or three games, and the eye of the world, between fondness and drank tea. I should have told you that this coolness. You are carefully to behold all such was my second time of seeing her since as shall have addition of honour or riches, marriage; but before, she lived at the same and report whether they preserve the town where I went to school; so that the countenance they had before such addition. plea of a relation, added to the innocence As to persons on foot, you are to be atten- of my youth, prevailed upon her good-hutive whether they are pleased with their mour to indulge me in a freedom of concondition, and are dressed suitable to it; versation as often, and oftener, than the but especially to distinguish such as appear strict discipline of the school would allow discreet, by a low-heel shoe, with the de- of. You may easily imagine, after such an cent ornament of a leather garter: to write acquaintance, we might be exceeding merry down the names of such country gentlemen without any offence; as in calling to mind as, upon the approach of peace, have left how many inventions I have been put to in the hunting for the military cock of the deluding the master, how many hands hat; of all who strut, make a noise, and forged for excuses, how many times been swear at the drivers of coaches to make sick in perfect health; for I was then never haste, when they see it is impossible they sick but at school, and only then because should pass; of all young gentlemen in out of her company. We had whiled away coach-boxes, who labour at a perfection in three hours after this manner, when I found what they are sure to be excelled by the it past five; and not expecting her husband meanest of the people. You are to do all would return until late, rose up, and told that in you lies that coaches and passengers her I should go early next morning for the She kindly answered she was give way according to the course of busi- country. ness, all the morning in term-time, towards afraid it would be long before she saw me Westminster, the rest of the year towards again; so, I took my leave, and parted. the Exchange. Upon these directions, toge-Now, sir, I had not been got home a fortther with other secret articles herein en- night, when I received a letter from a closed, you are to govern yourself, and give neighbour of theirs, that ever since that advertisement thereof to me, at all con-fatal afternoon the lady has been most invenient and spectatorial hours, when men of business are to be seen. Hereof you are not to fail. Given under my seal of office, T. "THE SPECTATOR.' I AM SO tender of my women-readers, that I cannot defer the publication of any thing which concerns their happiness or quiet. The repose of a married woman is consulted in the first of the following letters, and the felicity of a maiden lady in the second. I call it a felicity to have the addresses of an agreeable man; and I think I have not any where seen a prettier application of a poetical story than that of his, in making the tale of Cephalus and Procris VOL. II. 38 humanly treated, and the husband publicly stormed that he was made a member of too numerous a society. He had, it seems, listened most of the time my cousin and I were together. As jealous ears always hear double, so he heard enough to make him mad; and as jealous eyes always see through magnifying glasses, so he was certain it could not be I whom he had seen, a beardless stripling, but fancied he saw a gay gentleman of the temple, ten years older than myself; and for that reason, I presume, durst not come in, nor take any notice when I went out. He is perpetually asking his wife if she does not think the time long (as she said she should) until she see her cousin again. Pray, sir, what can be done in this case? I have writ to him to assure him I was at his house all that afternoon expecting to see him. His answer is, it is only a trick of hers, and that he neither can nor The parting kiss I find will believe me. mightily nettles him, and confirms him in all his errors. Ben Jonson, as I remember, 'The unfortunate wife, taking the word air to be the name of a woman, began to move among the bushes; and the husband, believing it a deer, threw his javelin, and killed her. This history, painted on a fan, which I presented to a lady, gave occasion makes a foreigner, in one of his comedies, he was so much in the forest, that his lady "admire the desperate valour of the bold suspected he was pursuing some nymph, English, who let out their wives to all en- under the pretence of following a chase counters." The general custom of saluta- more innocent. Under this suspicion she tion should excuse the favour done me, or hid herself among the trees, to observe his you should lay down rules when such dis- motions. While she lay concealed, her tinctions are to be given or omitted. You husband, tired with the labour of hunting, cannot imagine, sir, how troubled I am for came within her hearing. As he was faintthis unhappy lady's misfortune, and beg ing with heat, he cried out, "Aura veni!” you would insert this letter, that the hus-"Oh, charming air, approach!" band may reflect upon this accident coolly. It is no small matter, the ease of a virtuous woman for her whole life. I know she will conform to any regularities (though more strict than the common rules of our country require) to which his particular temper shall incline him to oblige her. This ac-to my growing poetical. cident puts me in mind how generously Pisistratus, the Athenian tyrant, behaved himself on a like occasion, when he was instigated by his wife to put to death a young gentleman, because, being passionately fond of his daughter, he had kissed her in public, as he met her in the street. "What," said he, "shall we do to those who are our enemies, if we do thus to those who are our friends?" I will not trouble you much longer, but am exceedingly concerned lest this accident may cause a virtuous lady to lead a miserable life with a husband who has no grounds for his jealousy but what I have faithfully related, and ought to be reckoned none. It is to be feared too, if at last he sees his mistake, yet people will be as slow and unwilling in disbelieving scandal as they are quick and forward in believing it. I shall endeavour to enliven this plain honest letter with Ovid's relation about Cybele's image. The ship wherein it was aboard was stranded at the mouth of the Tiber, and the men were unable to move it, until Claudia, a virgin, but suspected of unchastity, by a slight pull hauled it in. The story is told in the fourth book of the Fasti. "Parent of gods, (began the weeping fair,) 'MR. SPECTATOR,-You will oblige a languishing lover, if you will please to print the enclosed verses in your next paper. If you remember the Metamorphoses, you know Procris, the fond wife of Cephalus, is said to have made her husband, who delighted in the sports of the wood, a present of an unerring javelin. In process of time "Come, gentle air!" the Æolian shepherd said, sex. No. 528.] Wednesday, November 5, 1712. that Augustus, upon his return to Rome at | lascivious manner which all our young genthe end of a war, received complaints that tlemen use in public, and examine our eyes too great a number of the young men of with a petulancy in their own which is a quality were unmarried. The emperor downright affront to modesty. A disdainful thereupon assembled the whole equestrian look on such an occasion is returned with a order; and, having separated the married countenance rebuked, but by averting their from the single, did particular honours to eyes from the woman of honour and dethe former; but he told the latter, that is cency to some flippant creature, who will, to say, Mr. Spectator, he told the bache- as the phrase is, be kinder. I must set lors, That their lives and actions had been down things as they come into my head, so peculiar, that he knew not by what name without standing upon order. Ten thousand to call them; not by that of men, for they to one but the gay gentleman who stared, performed nothing that was manly; not by at the same time, is a housekeeper; for you that of citizens, for the city might perish must know they are got into a humour of notwithstanding their care; nor by that of late of being very regular in their sins; and Romans, for they designed to extirpate the a young fellow shall keep his four maids Roman name. Then, proceeding to show and three footmen with the greatest gravity his tender care and hearty affection for his imaginable. There are no less than six of people, he farther told them, that their these venerable housekeepers of my accourse of life was of such pernicious conse- quaintance. This humour among young quence to the glory and grandeur of the men of condition is imitated by all the world Roman nation, that he could not choose but below them, and a general dissolution* of tell them, that all other crimes put together manners arises from this one source of could not equalize theirs, for they were libertinism, without shame or reprehension guilty of murder, in not suffering those to in the male youth. It is from this one founbe born which should proceed from them; tain that so many beautiful helpless young of impiety, in causing the names and ho- women are sacrificed and given up to lewdnours of their ancestors to cease; and of ness, shame, poverty, and disease. It is to sacrilege, in destroying their kind, which this also that so many excellent young woproceed from the immortal gods, and hu- men, who might be patterns of conjugal man nature, the principal thing consecrated affection, and parents of a worthy race, to them: therefore, in this respect, they pine under unhappy passions for such as dissolved the government in disobeying its have not attention to observe, or virtue laws; betrayed their country, by making it enough to prefer them to their common barren and waste; nay, and demolished wenches. Now, Mr. Spectator, I must be their city, in depriving it of inhabitants. free to own to you that I myself suffer a And he was sensible that all this proceeded tasteless insipid being, from a consideration not from any kind of virtue or abstinence, I have for a man who would not, as he said but from a looseness and wantonness which in my hearing, resign his liberty, as he calls ought never to be encouraged in any civil it, for all the beauty and wealth the whole government. There are no particulars sex is possessed of. Such calamities as these dwelt upon that let us into the conduct of would not happen, if it could possibly be these young worthies, whom this great brought about, that by fining bachelors as emperor treated with so much justice and papists, convicts, or the like, they were indignation; but any one who observes what distinguished to their disadvantage from the passes in this town may very well frame to rest of the world, who fall in with the meahimself a notion of their riots and debauche-sures of civil society. Lest you should think ries all night, and their apparent prepara-I speak this as being, according to the tions for them all day. It is not to be doubted senseless rude phrase, a malicious old maid, but these Romans never passed any of their I shall acquaint you I am a woman of contime innocently but when they were asleep, dition, not now three-and-twenty, and have and never slept but when they were weary had proposals from at least ten different and heavy with excesses, and slept only to men, and the greater number of them have prepare themselves for the repetition of upon the upshot refused me. Something or them. If you did your duty as a Spectator, other is always amiss when the lover takes you would carefully examine into the num- to some new wench. A settlement is easily ber of births, marriages, and burials; and excepted against; and there is very little when you had deducted out of your deaths recourse to avoid the vicious part of our all such as went out of the world without youth, but throwing oneself away upon marrying, then cast up the number of both some lifeless blockhead, who, though he is sexes born within such a term of years last without vice, is also without virtue." Nowpast; you might, from the single people de-a-days we must be contented if we can get parted, make some useful inferences or guesses how many there are left unmarried, and raise some useful scheme for the amendment of the age in that particular. I have not patience to proceed gravely on this abominable libertinism; for I cannot but reflect, as I am writing to you, upon a certain creatures which are not bad; good are not to be expected. Mr. Spectator, I sat near you the other day, and think I did not displease your spectatorial eye-sight; which I shall be a better judge of when I see whe *Dissoluteness. ther you take notice of these evils your own T. No. 529.] Thursday, November 6, 1712. Singula quæque locum teneant sortita decenter. Hor. Ars Poet. v. 92. Let every thing have its due place.-Roscommon. UPON the hearing of several late disputes concerning rank and precedence, I could not forbear amusing myself with some observations, which I have made upon the learned world, as to this great particular. By the learned world, I here mean at large, all those who are in any way concerned in works of literature, whether in the writing, printing, or repeating part. To begin with the writers: I have observed that the author of a folio, in all companies and conversations, sets himself above the author of a quarto; the author of a quarto above the author of an octavo; and so on, by a gradual descent and subordination, to an author in twenty-fours. This distinction is so well observed, that in an assembly of the learned, I have seen a folio writer place himself in an elbow chair, when the author of a duodecimo has, out of a just deference to his superior quality, seated himself upon a squab. In a word, authors are usually ranged in company after the same manner as their works are upon a shelf. The most minute pocket author hath beneath him the writers of all pamphlets, or works that are only stitched. As for the pamphleteer, he takes place of none but the authors of single sheets, and of that fraternity who publish their labours on certain days, or on every day in the week. I do not find that the precedency among the individuals in this latter class of writers is yet settled. For my own part, I have had so strict a regard to the ceremonial which prevails in the learned world, that I never presumed to take place of a pamphleteer, until my daily papers were gathered into those two first volumes which have already appeared. After which, I naturally jumped over the heads not only of all pamphleteers, but of every octavo writer in Great Britain that had written but one book. I am also informed by my bookseller, that six octavos have at all times been looked upon as an equivalent to a folio; which I take notice of, the rather because I would not have the learned world surprised, if, after the publication of half a dozen volumes, I take my place accordingly. When my scattered forces are thus rallied, and reduced into regular bodies, I flatter myself that I shall make no despicable figure at the head of them. Whether these rules, which have been received time out of mind in the commonwealth of letters, were not originally established with an eye to our paper manufacture, I shall leave to the discussion of others; and shall only remark farther in this place, that all printers and booksellers take the wall of one another according to the above-mentioned merits of the authors to whom they respectively belong. I come now to that point of precedency which is settled among the three learned professions by the wisdom of our laws. I need not here take notice of the rank which is allotted to every doctor in each of these professions, who are all of them, though not so high as knights, yet a degree above 'squires; this last order of men, being the illiterate body of the nation, are consequently thrown together in a class below the three learned professions. I mention this for the sake of several rural 'squires, whose reading does not rise so high as to The present State of England, and who are often apt to usurp that precedency which, by the laws of their country, is not due to them. Their want of learning, which has planted them in this station, may in some measure extenuate their misdemeanor; and our professors ought to pardon them when they offend in this particular, considering that they are in a state of ignorance, or, as we usually say, do not know their right hand from their left. There is another tribe of persons who are retainers to the learned world, and who regulate themselves upon all occasions by several laws peculiar to their body; I mean the players or actors of both sexes. Among these it is a standing and uncontroverted principle, that a tragedian always takes place of a comedian; and it is very well known the merry drolls who make us laugh are always placed at the lower end of the table, and in every entertainment give way to the dignity of the buskin. It is a stage maxim,Once a king, and always a king.' For this reason it would be thought very absurd in Mr. Bullock, notwithstanding the height and gracefulness of his person, to sit at the right hand of a hero, though he were but five foot high. The same distinction is observed among the ladies of the theatre. Queens and heroines preserve their rank in private conversation, while those who are waiting-women and maids of honour upon the stage keep their distance also behind the scenes. I shall only add that by a parity of reason, all writers of tragedy look upon it as their due to be seated, served, or saluted, before comic writers: those who deal in tragi-comedy usually taking their seats between the authors of either side. There has been a long dispute for precedency between the tragic and heroic poets. Aristotle would have the latter yield the pas to the former; but Mr. Dryden, and many others, would never submit to this decision. Burlesque writers pay the same deference to the heroic, as comic writers to their serious | thought very pretty company. But let us hear what he says for himself. brothers in the drama. By this short table of laws order is kept up, and distinction preserved, in the whole republic of letters. O. No. 530.] Friday, November 7, 1712. Sic visum Veneri; cui placet impares Hor. Od. xxxiii. Lib. 1. 10. Thus Venus sports; the rich, the base, Unlike in fortune and in face, To disagreeing love provokes; When cruelly jocose, She ties the fatal noose, And binds unequals to the brazen yokes.-Creech. 'MY WORTHY FRIEND,-I question not but you, and the rest of my acquaintance, wonder that I, who have lived in the smoke and gallantries of the town for thirty years together, should all on a sudden grow fond of a country life. Had not my dog of a steward ran away as he did, without making up his accounts, I had still been immersed in sin and sea-coal. But since my late forced visit to my estate, I am so pleased with it, that I am resolved to live and die upon it. I am every day abroad among my acres, and can scarce forbear filling my letters with breezes, shades, flowers, meadows, and purling streams. The simplicity of manners, which I have heard you so Ir is very usual for those who have been often speak of, and which appears here in severe upon marriage, in some part or perfection, charms me wonderfully. As other of their lives, to enter into the frater- an instance of it I must acquaint you, and nity which they have ridiculed, and to see by your means the whole club, that I have their raillery return upon their own heads. lately married one of my tenant's daughI scarce ever knew a woman-hater that did ters. She is born of honest parents; and not, sooner or later, pay for it. Marriage, though she has no portion, she has a great which is a blessing to another man, falls upon deal of virtue. The natural sweetness and such a one as a judgment. Mr. Congreve's innocence of her behaviour, the freshness Old Bachelor is set forth to us with much of her complexion, the unaffected turn of wit and humour, as an example of this her shape and person, shot me through kind. In short, those who have most dis- and through every time I saw her, and did tinguished themselves by railing at the sex more execution upon me in grogram than in general, very often make an honourable the greatest beauty in town or court had amends, by choosing one of the most worth-ever done in brocade. In short, she is such less persons of it for a companion and yokefellow. Hymen takes his revenge in kind on those who turn his mysteries into ridicule. a one as promises me a good heir to my estate; and if by her means I cannot leave to my children what are falsely called the gifts of birth, high titles, and alliances, I hope to convey to them the more real and valuable gifts of birth-strong bodies, and healthy constitutions. As for your fine women, I need not tell thee that I know them. I have had my share in their graces; but no more of that. It shall be my business hereafter to live the life of an honest man, and to act as becomes the master of a family. I question not but I shall draw upon me the raillery of the town, and be treated to the tune of, The Marriage-hater Matched;'* but I am prepared for it. I have been as witty upon others in my time. To tell thee truly, I saw such a tribe of fashionable young fluttering coxcombs shot up, that I did not think my post of an homme de ruelle any longer tenable. I felt a certain stiff My friend Will Honeycomb, who was so unmercifully witty upon the women, in a couple of letters which I lately communicated to the public, has given the ladies ample satisfaction by marrying a farmer's daughter; a piece of news which came to our club by the last post. The templar is very positive that he has married a dairymaid: but Will, in his letter to me on this occasion, sets the best face upon the matter that he can, and gives a more tolerable account of his spouse. I must confess I suspected something more than ordinary, when upon opening the letter I found that Will was fallen off from his former gayety, having changed 'Dear Spec,' which was his usual salute at the beginning of the letter, into My worthy Friend,' and sub-ness in my limbs, which entirely destroyed scribed himself in the latter end, at full length, William Honeycomb. In short, the gay, the loud, the vain Will Honeycomb, who had made love to every great fortune that has appeared in town for above thirty years together, and boasted of favours from ladies whom he had never seen, is at length wedded to a plain country girl. His letter gives us the picture of a converted rake. The sober character of the husband is dashed with the man of the town, and enlivened with those little cant phrases which have made my friend Will often the jauntiness of air I was once master of. Besides, for I may now confess my age to thee, I have been eight-and-forty above these twelve years. Since my retirement into the country will make a vacancy in the club, I could wish you would fill up my place with my friend Tom Dapperwit. He has an infinite deal of fire, and knows the *The name of one of Tom Durfey's miserable come dies. It was Dogget's excellent performance of a character in this play, that first drew the eyes of the public upon him, and marked him out as an actor of superior talents. |