tion of his design, I should have prevented his publishing nonsense; nor should any knight in England have put my relation at the bottom of the leaf as a postcript, when, after all, it appears Greenhat has been the more popular man. There is here such open contradiction, and clumsy art to palliate the matter, and prove to the people, that the freedom of election is safer when laid out in coals then strong drink, that I can turn this only to a religious use, and admire the dispensation of things; for if these fellows were as wise as they are rich, where would be our liberty? This reminds me of a memorable speech made to a city almost in the same latitude with Westminster: When I think of your wisdom, I admire your wealth; when I think of your wealth, I admire your wisdom.' I can assure the young lady, the gentleman is in the trammels of love: how else would he make his superscription so much longer than his billet? He superscribes ; 'To the younger of the two ladies in mourning (who sat in the hindmost seat of the middle box at Mr. Winstanley's water-works + on Tuesday was fortnight, and had with them a brother, or some acquaintance that was as careless of that pretty creature as a brother; which seeming brother ushered them to their coach) with great respect. Present.' • A speech of queen Elizabeth to the citizens of London. Winstanley's mathematical water theatre stood at the lower end of Piccadilly, distinguishable by a windmill at гор. MADAM, 'I have a very good estate, and wish myself your husband: let me know by this way where you live; for I shall be miserable until we live together. ALEXANDER LANDLORD.' This is the modern way of bargain and sale; a certain short-hand writing, in which laconic elder brothers are very successful. All my fear is, that the nymph's elder sister is unmarried ; if she is, we are undone: but perhaps the careless fellow was her husband, and then she will let us go on. From my own Apartment, September 28. The following letter has given me a new sense of the nature of my writings. I have the deepest regard to conviction, and shall never act against it. However, I do not yet understand what good man he thinks I have injured: but his epistle has such weight in it, that I shall always have respect for his admonition, and desire the continuance of it. I am not conscious that I have spoke any faults a man may not mend if he pleases. 'When I read your paper of Thursday, I was surprised to find mine of the thirteenth inserted at large; I never intended myself or you a second trouble of this kind, believing I had sufficiently pointed out the man you had injured, and that by this time you were convinced that silence would be the best answer: but finding your reflections are such as naturally call for a reply, I take this way of doing it; and, in the first place, return you thanks for the compliment made me of my seeming sense and worth. I do assure you, I shall always endeavour to convince mankind of the latter, though I have no pretence to the former. But to come a little nearer, I observe you put yourself under a very severe restriction, even the laying down the Tatler for ever, if I can give you an instance, wherein you have injured any good man, or pointed out any thing which is not the true object of raillery. 'I must confess, Mr. Bickerstaff, if the making a man guilty of vices that would shame the gallows, be the best method to point at the true object of raillery, I have, until this time, been very ignorant; but if it be so, I will venture to assert one thing, and lay it down as a maxim, even to the Staffian race, viz. That that method of pointing ought no more to be throat who suffer by it; because I take both pursued, than those people ought to cut your to be murder, and the law is not in every private man's hands to execute: but indeed, sir, were you the only person would suffer by the Tatler's discontinuance, I have malice enough to punish you in the manner you prescribe; but I am not so great an enemy to the town their clergy. Pardon me, good Mr. Bickerstaff, for the tediousness of this epistle, and believe it is not from self-conviction I have taken up so much of your time, or my own; but supposing you mean all your lucubrations should tend to the good of mankind, I may the easier hope your pardon, being, sir, Yours, &c.' Grecian Coffee-house, September 29. or my own pleasures as to wish it; nor that you would lay aside lashing the reigning vices, so long as you keep to the true spirit of satire without descending to rake into characters below its dignity; for, as you well observe, there is something very terrible in unjustly attacking men in a way that may prejudice their honour or fortune; and, indeed, where crimes are enor mous, the delinquent deserves little pity, yet the reporter may deserve less: and here I am This evening I thought fit to notify to the naturally led to that celebrated author of literati of this house, and by that means to all "The whole Duty of Man," who hath set the world, that on Saturday the fifteenth of this matter in a true light in his treatise " Of October next ensuing, I design to fix my first the Government of the Tongue;" where, speak-table of fame; and desire, that such as are acing of uncharitable truths, he says, a disco- quainted with the characters of the twelve mos very of this kind serves not to reclaim, but famous men that have ever appeared in the enrage the offender, and precipitate him into world, would send in their lists, or name any further degrees of ill. Modesty and fear of one man for that table, assigning also his place shame is one of those natural restraints which at it before that time, upon pain of having such the wisdom of heaven has put upon mankind; his man of fame postponed, or placed too high and he that once stumbles, may yet, by a check for ever. I shall not, upon any application of that bridle, recover again: but when by a whatever, alter the place which upon that day public detection he is fallen under that infamy I shall give to any of these worthies. But, he feared, he will then be apt to discard all whereas, there are many who take upon them caution, and to think he owes himself the ut- to admire this hero, or that author, upon semost pleasures of vice, as the price of his re- cond hand, I expect each subscriber should putation. Nay, perhaps he advances farther, underwrite his reason for the place he allots and sets up for a reversed sort of fame, by being his candidate. eminently wicked, and he who before was but The thing is of the last consequence; for a clandestine disciple becomes a doctor of im- we are about settling the greatest point that piety," &c. This sort of reasoning, sir, most ever has been debated in any age; and I shall certainly induced our wise legislators very take precautions accordingly. Let every man lately to repeal that law which put the stamp who votes, consider, that he is now going to of infamy in the face of felons: therefore, you give away that, for which the soldier gave up had better give an act of oblivion to your de- his rest, his pleasure, and his life; the scholar linquents, at least for transportation, than to resigned his whole series of thought, his midcontinue to mark them in so notorious a man-night repose, and his morning slumbers. In a ner. I cannot but applaud your designed at- word, he is, as I may say, to be judge of that tempt of "raising merit from obscurity, cele-after-life, which noble spirits prefer to their brating virtue in distress, and attacking vice in another method, by setting innocence in a proper light." Your pursuing these noble themes will make a greater advance to the reformation you seem to aim at, than the method you have hitherto taken, by putting mankind beyond the power of retrieving themselves, or, indeed, to think it possible. But if, after all your endeavours in this new way, there should then remain any hardened impenitents, you must even give them up to the rigour of the law, as delinquents not within the benefit of Dr. Nash, in his History of Worcestershire,' vol. i. p. 352, has taken much pains to discover the author of this celebrated book; which has been ascribed to no less than eight different writers; viz. to Abraham Woodhead, Obadiah Walker, Bp. Fell, Bp. Chapple, Dr. Allestree, Dr. Henchman, Mr. Fulman, and lady Pakington. Dr. Nash inclines to ascribe the book to lady Pakington, though amply and materially corrected by Bp. Fell, between whom and that lady there subsisted a long and uni terrupted correspondence. The first edition of it appeared in 1654. It has been supposed, that the grandson of lady Pakington was the original of the character of sir Roger de Coverley, in the Spectator. very real beings. I hope I shall be forgiven, therefore, if I make some objections against their jury, as they shall occur to me. The whole of the number by whom they are to be tried are to be scholars. I am persuaded also, that Aristotle will be put up by all of that class of men. However, in behalf of others, such as wear the livery of Aristotle, the two famous universities are called upon, on this occasion; but I except the men of Queen's, Exeter, and Jesus Colleges, in Oxford, who are not to be electors, because he shall not be crowned from an implicit faith in his writings, but receive his honour from such judges as shall allow him to be censured. Upon this election, as I was just now going to say, I banish all who think and speak after others to concern themselves in it. For which reason, all illiterate distant admirers are forbidden to corrupt the voices, by sending, according to the new mode, any poor student's coals and candles for their votes in behalf of such worthies as they pretend to esteem. All newswriters are also excluded, because they consider with the greatest modesty: he has very much A woman that will give herself liberties, s it is a report which gives foundation | that was the gentleman's name) is a man of to the filling up their rhapsodies, and not as it extraordinary vigour and industry, accompanied is the emanation or consequence of good and evil actions. These are excepted against as justly as butchers in case of life and death: their familiarity with the greatest names takes off the delicacy of their regard, as dealing in blood makes the Lanii less tender of spilling it. St. James's Coffee-house, September 28. Letters from Lisbon of the twenty-fifth instant, N. S. speak of a battle which has been fought near the river Cinca, in which general Staremberg had overthrown the army of the duke of Anjou. The persons who send this, excuse their not giving particulars, because they believed an account must have arrived here before we could hear from them. They had advices from different parts, which concurred in the circumstances of the action; after which, the army of his catholic majesty advanced as far as Fraga, and the enemy retired to Saragossa. There are reports, that the duke of Anjou was in the engagement; but letters of good authority say, that prince was on the road towards the camp when he received the news of the defeat of his troops. We promise ourselves great consequences from such an advantage obtained by so accomplished a general as Staremberg; who, among the men of this present age, is esteemed the third in military fame and reputation. No. 75.] Saturday, October 1, 1709. Quicquid agunt homines P. nostri est farrago libelli. Juv. Sat. i. 85, 86. Whate'er men do, or say, or think, or dream, Our motley paper seizes for its theme. From my own Apartment, September 30. I AM called off from public dissertations by a domestic affair of great importance, which is no less than the disposal of my sister Jenny for life. The girl is a girl of great merit, ana pleasing conversation; but I, being born of my father's first wife, and she of his third, she converses with me rather like a daughter than a sister. I have, indeed, told her, that if she kept her honour, and behaved herself in such a manner as became the Bickerstaffs, I would get her an agreeable man for her husband; which was a promise I made her after reading a passage in Pliny's Epistles.' That polite author had been employed to find out a consort for his friend's daughter, and gives the following character of the man he had pitched upon. Aciliano plurimum vigoris et industriæ quanquam in maxima verecundia: est illi fucies liberalis, multo sanguine, multo rubore, suffusa: est ingenua totius corporis pulchritudo, et quidam senatorius decor, quæ ego nequaquam arbitror negligenda: debet enim hoc castitati puellarum quasi præmium dari. 'Acilianus (for We have, in the genealogy of our house, the descriptions and pictures of our ancestors from the time of king Arthur; in whose days there was one of my own name, a knight of his round table, and known by the name of sir Isaac Bickerstaff. He was low of stature, and of a very swarthy complexion, not unlike a Portuguese Jew. But he was more prudent than men of that height usually are, and would often communicate to his friends his design of lengthening and whitening his posterity. His eldest son, Ralph, for that was his name, was for this reason married to a lady who had little else to recommend her, but that she was very tall and very fair. The issue of this match, with the help of high shoes, made a tolerable figure in the next age; though the complexion of the family was obscure until the fourth generation from that marriage. From which time, until the reign of William the Conqueror, the females of our house were famous for their needlework and fine skins. In the male line, there happened an unlucky accident in the reign of Richard III. the eldest son of Philip, then chief of the family, being born with a hump-back and very high nose. This was the more astonishing, because none of his forefathers ever had such a blemish; nor indeed was there any in the neighbourhood of that make, except the butler, who was noted for round shoulders, and a Roman nose: what made the nose the less ex usable, was, the remarkable smallness of his eves. These several defects were mended by succeeding .natches; une eyes were open in the next generation, and the hump fell in a century and a half: but the greatest difficulty was, how to reduce the nose; which I do not find was accomplished until about the middle nothing of the skill of dress, or making her of the reign of Henry VII. or rather the begin-person agreeable. It would make you laugh ting of that of Henry VIII. to see me often, with my spectacles on, lacing her stays; for she is so very a wit, that she understands no ordinary thing in the world. But, while our ancestors were thus taken up in cultivating the eyes and nose, the face of the Bickerstaffs fell down insensibly into chin; which was not taken notice of, their thoughts being so much employed upon the more noble features, until it became almost too long to be remedied. But, length of time, and successive care in our alliances, have cured this also, and reduced our faces into that tolerable oval, which we enjoy at present. I would not be tedious in this discourse, but cannot but observe, that our race suffered very much about three bundred years ago, by the marriage of one of our heiresses with an eminent courtier, who gave us spindleshanks, and cramps in our bones; insomuch, that we did not recover our health and legs until sir Walter Bickerstaff married Maud the milk-maid, of whom the then garter king-at-arms, a facetious person, said pleasantly enough, that she had spoiled our blood, but mended our constitutions.' After this account of the effect our prudent choice of matches has had upon our persons and features, I cannot but observe, that there are daily instances of as great changes made by marriage upon men's minds and humours. One might wear any passion out of a family by culture, as skilful gardeners blot a colour out of a tulip that hurts its beauty. One might produce an affable temper out of a shrew, by grafting the mild upon the choleric; or raise a jack-pudding from a prude, by inoculating mirth and melancholy. It is for want of care in the disposing of our children, with regard to our bodies and minds, that we go into a house and see such different complexions and humours in the same race and family. But to me it is as plain as a pikestaff, from what mixture it is, that this daughter silently lours, the other steals a kind look at you, a third is exactly well behaved, a fourth a splenetic, and the fifth a coquette. In this disposal of my sister, I have chosen, with an eye to her being a wit, and provided that the bridegroom be a man of a sound and excellent judgment, who will seldom mind what she says when she begins to harangue : for Jenny's only imperfection is an admiration of her parts, which inclines her to be a little, but a very little, sluttish; and you are ever to remark, that we are apt to cultivate most, and bring into observation, what we think most excellent in ourselves, or most capable of improvement. Thus, my sister, instead of consulting her glass and her toilet for an hour and a half after her private devotions, sits with her nose full of snuff, and a man's night-cap on her head, reading plays and romances. Her wit she thinks her distinction: therefore knows For this reason, I have disposed of her to a man of business, who will soon let her see, that to be well dressed, in good humour, and cheerful in the command of her family, are the arts and sciences of female life. I could. have bestowed her upon a fine gentleman, who extremely admired her wit, and would have given her a coach and six: but I found it absolutely necessary to cross the strain; for had they met, they had entirely been rivals in discourse, and in continual contention for the superiority of understanding, and brought forth critics, pedants, or pretty good poets. As it is, I expect an offspring fit for the habitation of the city, town, or country; creatures that are docile and tractable in whatever we put them to. To convince men of the necessity of taking this method, let any one, even below the skill of an astrologer, behold the turn of faces he meets as soon as he passes Cheapside Conduit, and you see a deep attention and a certain unthinking sharpness in every countenance. They look attentive, but their thoughts are engaged on mean purposes. To me it is very apparent, when I see a citizen pass by, whether his head is upon woollen, silks, iron, sugar, indigo, or stocks. Now, this trace of thought, appears or lies hid in the race for two or three generations. I know at this time, a person of a vast estate, who is the immediate descendant of a fine gentleman, but the great grandson of a broker, in whom his ancestor is now revived. He is a very honest gentleman in his principles, but cannot for his blood talk fairly: he is heartily sorry for it; but he cheats by constitution, and over-reaches by instinct. The happiness of the man who marries my sister will be, that he has no faults to correct in her but her own, a little bias of fancy, or particularity of manners, which grew in herself, and can be amended by her. From such an untainted couple, we can hope to have our family rise to its ancient splendour of face, air, countenance, manner, and shape, without discovering the produce of ten nations in one house. Obadiah Greenhat says, he never comes into any company in England, but he distinguishes the different nations of which we are composed.' There is scarce such a living creature as a true Briton. We sit down, indeed, all friends, acquaintance, and neighbours; but after two bottles, you see a Dane start up and swear, The kingdom is his own.' A Saxon drinks up the whole quart, and swears 'He will dispute that with him.' A Norman tells them both, 'He will assert his liberty' and a · ties. Welchman cries, 'They are all foreigners and my friend can take it ill if I am negligent a.so No. 76.] Tuesday, October 4, 1709. Quicquid agunt homines There is Euphusius, with all the good qua lities in the world, deserves well of nobody that universal good-will which is so strong in him, exposes him to the assault of every invader upon his time, his conversation, and his property. His diet is butcher's-meat, his wenches are in plain pinners and Norwich crapes, his dress like other people, his income -nostri est farrago libelli. Juv. Sat. i. 85, 86. great; and yet has he seldom a guinea at com Whatever good is done, whatever ill- From my own Apartment, October 3. It is a thing very much to be lamented, that a man must use a certain cunning to caution people against what it is their interest to avoid. All men will allow, that it is a great and heroic work to correct men's errors, and, at the price of being called a common enemy, to go on in being a common friend' to my fellow-subjects and citizens. But I am forced in this work to revolve the same thing in ten thousand lights, and cast them in as many forms, to come at men's minds and affections, in order to lead the innocent in safety, as well as disappoint the artifices of betrayers. Since, therefore, I can make no impression upon the offending side, I shall turn my observations upon the offended; that is to say, I must whip my children for going into bad company, instead of railing at bad company for ensnaring my children. The greatest misfortunes men fall into, arise from themselves; and that temper, which is called very often, though with great injustice, good-nature,is the source of a numberless train of evils. For which reason, we are to take this as a rule, that no action is commendable which is not voluntary; and we have made this a maxim: 'That a man who is commonly called good-natured, is hardly to be thanked for any thing he does, because half that is acted about him is done rather by his sufferance than approbation.' It is generally laziness of disposition, which chooses rather to let things pass the worst way, than to go through the pain of examination. It must be confessed, such a one has so great a benevolence in him, that he bears a thousand uneasinesses rather than he will incommode others: nay, often, when he has just reason to be offended, chooses rather to sit down with a small injury, than bring it into reprehension, out of pure compassion to the offender. Such a person has it usually said of him, 'He is no man's enemy but his own;' which is, in effect, saying, he is a friend to every man but himself and his friends: for, by a natural consequence of his neglecting himself, he either incapacitates himself to be another's friend, or makes others cease to be his. If I take no care of my own affairs, no man that is mand. From these easy gentlemen, are collected estates by servants or gamesters; which latter fraternity are excusable, when we think of this clan, who seem born to be their prey. All, therefore, of the family of Acteon, are tc take notice, that they are hereby given up to the brethern of the Industry, with this reserve only, that they are to be marked as stricken deer, not for their own sakes, but to preserve the herd from following them, and coming within the scent. I am obliged to leave this important subject, without telling whose quarters are severed, who has the humbles, who the haunch, and who the sides, of the last stag that was pulled down; but this is only deferred in hopes my deer will make their escape without more admonitions or examples, of which they have had, in mine and the town's opinion, too great a plenty. I must, I say, at present go to other matters of moment. White's Chocolate-house, October 3. The lady has answered the letter of Mr. Alexander Landlord, which was published on Thursday last, but in such a manner as I do not think fit to proceed in the affair; for she has plainly told him, that love is her design, but marriage her aversion. Bless me! what is this age come to, that people can think to make a pimp of an astronomer! I shall not promote such designs, but shall leave her to find out her admirer, while I speak to another case sent to me by a letter of September the thirtieth, subscribed Lovewell Barebones, where the author desires me to suspend my care of the dead, until I have done something for the dying. His case is, that the lady he loves is ever accompanied by a kinswoman, one of those gay, cunning women, who prevent all the love which is not addressed to themselves. This creature takes upon her in his mistress's presence to ask him, 'Whether Mrs. Florimel' (that is the cruel one's name) ‘is not very handsome?' upon which he looks silly then they both laugh out, and she will tell him, 'That Mrs. Florimel had an equal passion for him, but desired him not to expect the first time to be admitted in private; but that now he was at liberty before her only, who was her |