you had not, much about the same time, made a sacrifice to us of a beau's skull.

'You may further, sir, please to remember, that not long since you attacked our hoods and commodes in such a manner, as, to use your own expression, made very many of us ashamed to show our heads. We must therefore beg leave to represent to you that we are in hopes, if you will please to make a due inquiry, the men in all ages would be found to have been little less whimsical in adorning that part than a ourselves. The different forms of their wigs, together with the various cocks of their hats, all flatter us in this opinion.

I had an humble servant last summer, who the first time he declared himself, was in a full-bottomed wig; but the day after, to my no small surprise, he accosted me in a thin natural one. I received him at this our second interview as a perfect stranger, but was extremely confounded when his speech discovered who he was. I resolved, therefore to fix his face in my memory for the future; but as I was walking in the Park the same evening, he appeared to me in one of those wigs that I think you call a night-cap, which had altered him more effectually than before. He afterwards played a couple of black riding-wigs upon me with the same success, and, in short, assumed a new face almost every day in the first month of his courtship.

I observed afterwards, that the variety of cocks into which he moulded his hat, had not a little contributed to his impositions

upon me.

upon the hat and feather; however, to wipe off the present imputation, and gratify my female correspondent, I shall here print a letter which I lately received from a man of mode, who seems to have a very extraordinary genius in his way.

'SIR,-I presume I need not inform you, that among men of dress it is a common phrase to say,

"Mr. Such-a-one has struck

bold stroke;" by which we understand, that he is the first man who has had courage when our tailors take measure of us, they enough to lead up a fashion. Accordingly, plain suit, or strike a bold stroke?" I think always demand "whether we will have a I may without vanity say, that I have struck strokes of any man in Great Britain. I was the first that struck the long pocket about two years since; I was likewise the author of the frosted button, which when I saw the town come readily into, being resolved to strike while the iron was hot, I produced the knotted cravat, and made a fair push much about the same time the scallop flap, for the silver-clocked stocking.

some of the boldest and most successful

modish jacket, or the coat with close A few months after I brought up the sleeves. I struck this at first in a plain Doily; but that failing, I struck it a second time in a blue camlet, and repeated the it took effect. There are two or three stroke in several kinds of cloth, until at last young fellows at the other end of the town who have always their eye upon me, and

Yet, as if all these ways were not suf-answer me stroke for stroke. I was once ficient to distinguish their heads, you must doubtless, sir, have observed, that great numbers of young fellows have, for several months last past, taken upon them to wear feathers.

'We hope, therefore, that these may, with as much justice, be called Indian princes, as you have styled a woman in a coloured hood an Indian queen; and that you will in due time take these airy gentlemen into consideration.

We the more earnestly beg that you would put a stop to this practice, since it has already lost us one of the most agreeable members of our society, who after having refused several good estates, and two titles, was lured from us last week by

a mixed feather.

I am ordered to present you with the respects of our whole company, and am, 'Sir, your very humble servant,

'DORINDA.'

'Note. The person wearing the feather, though our friend took him for an officer in the guards, has proved to be an errant linendraper."

I am not now at leisure to give my opinion

* Only an ensign in the train-bands, Spect. in folio,

so unwary as to mention my fancy in relaof these gentlemen, who was disingenuous tion to a new-fashioned surtout before one enough to steal my thought, and by that means prevented my intended stroke.

considerable innovations in the waistcoat; 'I have a design this spring to make very and have already begun with a coup d'essai upon the sleeves, which has succeeded

very well.

'I must further inform you, if you will at me, that it is my design to strike such a promise to encourage, or at least to connive stroke the beginning of the next month as shall surprise the whole town.

'I do not think it prudent to acquaint dress; but will only tell you, as a sample of you with all the particulars of my intended White's in a cherry-coloured hat. I took it, that I shall very speedily appear at this hint from the ladies' hoods, which I look upon as the boldest stroke that sex has struck for these hundred years last past. I am, sir, your most obedient, most humble servant, WILL SPRIGHTLY.'

Nor Hymen, nor the Graces here preside,
Nor Juno to befriend the blooming bride;
But fiends with fun`ral brands the process led,
And furies waited at the genial bed.-Croxal.

riages have as constant and regular a correspondence as the funeral-men have with vintners and apothecaries. All bachelors are under their immediate inspection: and my friend produced to me a report given in to their board, wherein an old uncle of mine, who came to town with me, and myself, were inserted, and we stood thus: the uncle smoky, rotten, poor; the nephew raw, but no fool; sound at present, very rich. My information did not end here; but my friend's advices are so good, that he could show me a copy of the letter sent to the young lady who is to have me; which I enclose to you:

"MADAM-This is to let you know that you are to be married to a beau that comes out on Thursday, six in the evening. Be at the Park. You cannot but know a virgin fop; they have a mind to look saucy, but are out of countenance. The board has denied him to several good families. I wish you joy. "CORINNĂ."

'MR. SPECTATOR, -You have given many hints in your papers to the disadvantage of persons of your own sex, who lay plots upon women. Among other hard words you have published the term "Male Coquettes," and have been very severe upon such as give themselves the liberty of a little dalliance of heart, and playing fast and loose between love and indifference, until perhaps an easy young girl is reduced to sighs, dreams, and tears, and languishes away her life for a careless coxcomb, who looks astonished, and wonders at such an effect from what in him was all but common civility. Thus you have treated the men who are irresolute in marriage; but if What makes my correspondent's case you design to be impartial, pray be so honest the more deplorable is, that, as I find by as to print the information I now give you the report from my censor of marriages, of a certain set of women who never coquet the friend he speaks of is employed by the for the matter, but, with a high hand, inquisition to take him in, as the phrase marry whom they please to whom they is. After all that is told him, he has inforplease. As for my part, I should not have mation only of one woman that is laid for concerned myself with them, but that I him, and that the wrong one; for the lady understand that I am pitched upon by them commissioners have devoted him to another to be married, against my will, to one I than the person against whom they have never saw in my life. It has been my mis- employed their agent his friend to alarm fortune, sir, very innocently, to rejoice in a him. The plot is laid so well about this plentiful fortune, of which I am master, to young gentleman, that he has no friend to bespeak a fine chariot, to give directions retire to, no place to appear in, or part of for two or three handsome snuff-boxes, and the kingdom to fly into, but he must fall as many suits of fine clothes; but before any into the notice, and be subject to the power of these were ready I heard reports of my of the inquisition. They have their emissabeing to be married to two or three differ-ries and substitutes in all parts of this united ent young women. Upon my taking notice kingdom. The first step they usually take, of it to a young gentleman who is often in is to find from a correspondence, by their my company, he told me smiling, I was in messengers and whisperers, with some dothe inquisition. You may believe I was not mestic of the bachelor, (who is to be hunted a little startled at what he meant, and into the toils they have laid for him,) what more so, when he asked me if I had be- are his manners, his familiarities, his good spoke any thing of late that was fine. I qualities, or vices; not as the good in him told him several; upon which he produced is a recommendation, or the ill a diminua description of my person, from the trades- tion, but as they affect to contribute to the men whom I had employed, and told me main inquiry, what estate he has in him. that they had certainly informed against When this point is well reported to the me. Mr. Spectator, whatever the world board, they can take in a wild roaring foxmay think of me, I am more coxcomb than hunter, as easily as a soft, gentle young fop fool, and I grew very inquisitive upon this of the town. The way is to make all places head, not a little pleased with the novelty. uneasy to him, but the scenes in which they My friend told me, there were a certain set have allotted him to act. His brother huntsof women of fashion, whereof the number men, bottle companions, his fraternity of of six made a committee, who sat thrice a fops, shall be brought into the conspiracy week, under the title of "The Inquisition against him. Then this matter is not laid on Maids and Bachelors." It seems, when-in so barefaced a manner before him as to ever there comes such an unthinking gay have it intimated, Mrs. Such-a-one would thing as myself to town, he must want all make him a very proper wife; but by the manner of necessaries, or be put into the force of their correspondence, they shall inquisition by the first tradesman he em- make it (as Mr. Waller said of the marploys. They have constant intelligence with riage of the dwarfs,) as impracticable to cane-shops, perfumers, toy-men, coach- have any woman besides her they design makers, and china-houses. From these him, as it would have been in Adam to several places these undertakers for mar-have refused Eve. The man named by

the commission for Mis. Such-a-one shall neither be in fashion, nor dare ever appear in company, should he attempt to evade their determination.

day at a neighbouring coffee-house, where we have what I may call a lazy club. We generally come in night-gowns, with our stockings about our heels, and sometimes but one on. Our salutation at entrance is a yawn and a stretch, and then without more ceremony we take our place at the lollingtable, where our discourse is, what I fear you would not read out, therefore shall not insert. But I assure you, sir, I heartily lament this loss of time, and am now resolved, (if possible, with double diligence,) to retrieve it, being effectually awakened by the arguments of Mr. Slack, out of the senseless stupidity that has so long possessed me. And to demonstrate that penitence accompanies my confessions, and constancy my resolutions, I have locked my door for a year, and desire you would let my companions know I am not within. I am with great respect, sir, your most obedient servant,

T.

'N. B.'

Nec satis est pulchra esse poemata, dulcia sunto.
Hor. Ars Poet. v. 99.

The female sex wholly govern domestic life; and by this means, when they think fit, they can sow dissensions between the dearest friends, nay, make father and son irreconcilable enemies, in spite of all the ties of gratitude on one part, and the duty of protection to be paid on the other. The ladies of the inquisition understand this perfectly well; and where love is not a motive to a man's choosing one whom they allot, they can with very much art insinuate stories to the disadvantage of his honesty or courage, until the creature is too much dispirited to bear up against a general ill reception, which he every where meets with, and in due time falls into their appointed wedlock for shelter. I have a long Îetter bearing date the fourth instant, which gives me a large account of the policies of this court; and find there is now before them a very refractory person who has escaped all their machinations for two No. 321.] Saturday, March 8, 1711-12. years last past; but they have prevented two successive matches which were of his own inclination; the one by a report that his mistress was to be married, and the very day appointed, wedding-clothes bought, and all things ready for her being given to another; the second time by insinuating to all his mistress's friends and acquaintance, that he had been false to several other women, and the like. The poor man is now reduced to profess he designs to lead a single life; but the inquisition give out to all his acquaintance, that nothing is intended but the gentleman's own welfare and happiness. When this is urged, he talks still more humbly, and protests he aims only at a life without pain or reproach; pleasure, honour, and riches, are things for which he has no taste. But notwithstanding all this, and what else he may defend himself with, as that the lady is too old or too young, of a suitable humour, or the quite contrary, and that it is impossible they can ever do other than wrangle from June to January, every body tells him all this is spleen, and he must have a wife; while all the members of the inquisition are unanimous in a certain woman for him, and they think they altogether are better able to judge than he, or any other private person whatsoever.

'Temple, March 3, 1711. 'SIR,-Your speculation this day on the subject of idleness has employed me ever since I read it, in sorrowful reflections on my having loitered away the term (or rather the vacation) of ten years in this place, and unhappily suffered a good chamber and study to lie idle as long. My books (except those I have taken to sleep upon,) have been totally neglected, and my Lord Coke and other venerable authors were never so slighted in their lives. I spend most of the

Tis not enough a poem's finely writ; It must affect and captivate the soul.-Roscommon. THOSE Who know how many volumes have been written on the poems of Homer and Virgil will easily pardon the length of my discourse upon Milton. The Paradise Lost is looked upon by the best judges, as the greatest production, or at least the noblest work of genius in our language, and therefore deserves to be set before an English reader in its full beauty, For this reason, though I have endeavoured to give a general idea of its graces and imperfections in my first six papers, I thought myself obliged to bestow one upon every book in particular. The first three books I have already despatched, and am now entering upon the fourth. I need not acquaint my reader that there are multitudes of beauties in this great author, especially in the descriptive parts of this poem, which I have not touched upon; it being my intention to point out those only which appear to me the most exquisite, or those which are not so obvious to ordinary readers. Every one that has read the critics who have written upon the Odyssey, the Iliad, and the Æneid, knows very well, that though they agree in their opinions of the great beauties in those poems, they have nevertheless each of them discovered several master-strokes, which have escaped the observation of the rest. In the same manner, I question not but any writer, who shall treat of this subject after me may find several beauties in Milton, which I have not taken notice of. I must likewise observe, that as the greatest masters of critical learning differ among one another, as to some particular points in an epic poem, I have

not bound myself scrupulously to the rules | forth into a speech that is softened with
which any one of them has laid down upon several transient touches of remorse and
that art, but have taken the liberty some- self-accusation: but at length he confirms
times to join with one, and sometimes with himself in impenitence, and in his design
another, and sometimes to differ from all of of drawing man into his own state of guilt
them, when I have thought that the reason and misery. This conflict of passions is
of the thing was on my side.
raised with a great deal of art, as the open-
ing of his speech to the sun is very bold
and noble:

We may conclude the beauties of the fourth book under three heads. In the first are those pictures of still-life, which we meet with in the description of Eden, Paradise, Adam's bower, &c. In the next are the machines, which comprehend the speeches and behaviour of the good and bad angels. (In the last is the conduct of Adam and Eve, who are the principal actors in the poem.

O thou, that with surpassing glory crown'd,<
Look'st from thy sole dominion like the god
Of this new world; at whose sight all the stars
Hide their diminish'd heads; to thee I call,
But with no friendly voice; and add thy name,
O sun! to tell thee how I hate thy beams,
That bring to my remembrance from what state
I fell, how glorious once above thy sphere.')

In the description of Paradise, the poet This speech is, I think, the finest that is has observed Aristotle's rule of lavishing ascribed to Satan in the whole poem. The all the ornaments of diction on the weak evil spirit afterwards proceeds to make his unactive parts of the fable, which are not discoveries concerning our first parents, supported by the beauty of sentiments and and to learn after what manner they may characters. Accordingly the reader may be best attacked. His bounding over the observe, that the expressions are more walls of Paradise: his sitting in the shape florid and elaborate in these descriptions, of a cormorant upon the tree of life, which than in most other parts of the poem. I stood in the centre of it, and overtopped all must further add, that though the draw-the other trees of the garden; his alighting ings of gardens, rivers, rainbows, and the like dead pieces of nature, are justly censured in an heroic poem, when they run out into an unnecessary length-the description of Paradise would have been faulty, had not the poet been very particular in it, not only as it is the scene of the principal action, but as it is requisite to give us an idea of that happiness from which our first parents fell. The plan of it is wonderfully beautiful, and formed upon the short sketch! which we have of it in holy writ. Milton's exuberance of imagination has poured forth such a redundancy of ornaments on this seat of happiness and innocence, that it would be endless to point out each par-shape of vultures. ticular.

I must not quit this head without further observing, that there is scarce a speech of Adam or Eve in the whole poem, wherein the sentiments and allusions are not taken from this their delightful habitation. The reader, during their whole course of action always finds himself in the walks of Paradise. In short, as the critics have remarked, that in those poems wherein shepherds are the actors, the thoughts ought always to take a tincture from the woods, fields, and rivers; so we may observe, that our first parents seldom lose sight of their happy station in any thing they speak or do; and, if the reader will give me leave to use the expression, that their thoughts are always 'paradisaical.'

among the herd of animals, which are so
beautifully represented as playing about
Adam and Eve; together with his trans-
forming himself into different shapes, in
order to hear their conversation; are cir-
cumstances that give an agreeable surprise
to the reader, and are devised with great
art, to connect that series of adventures in
which the poet has engaged this artificer
of fraud.

The thought of Satan's transformation
into a cormorant, and placing himself on the
tree of life, seems raised upon that passage
in the Iliad, where two deities are described
as perching on the top of an oak in the

His planting himself at the ear of Eve
under the form of a toad, in order to pro-
duce vain dreams and imaginations, is a
circumstance of the same nature; as his
starting up in his own form is wonderfully
fine, both in the literal description, and in
the moral which is concealed under it. His
answer upon his being discovered, and de-
manded to give an account of himself, is
conformable to the pride and intrepidity of
of his character:

Know ye not, then,' said Satan, fill'd with scorn,
Know ye not me! Ye knew me once no mate
For you, there sitting where you durst not soar:
Not to know me argues yourselves unknown,
The lowest of your throng-

Zephon's rebuke, with the influence it had on Satan, is exquisitely graceful and We are in the next place to consider the moral. Satan is afterwards led away to machines of the fourth book. Satan being Gabriel, the chief of the guardian angels, now within the prospect of Eden, and look-who kept watch in Paradise. His disdainful ing round upon the glories of the creation, is filled with sentiments different from those which he discovered whilst he was in hell. The place inspires him with thoughts more adapted to it. He reflects upon the happy condition from whence he fell, and breaks

behaviour on this occasion is so remarkable
a beauty, that the most ordinary reader
cannot but take notice of it. Gabriel's dis-
covering his approach at a distance is drawn
with great strength and liveliness of imagi-
nation:

-When Adam first of men

'Sole partner and sole part of all these joys,
Dearer thyself than all:-

But let us ever praise Him, and extol
His bounty, following our delightful task,

To prune these growing plants, and tend these flow'rs:
Which were it toilsome, yet with thee were sweet.'
To whom thus Eve reply'd. O thou, for whom
And from whom I was form'd, flesh of thy flesh,
And without whom am to no end, my guide
And head, what thou hast said is just and right.
For we to him indeed all praises owe
And daily thanks; I chiefly, who enjoy
So far the happier lot, enjoying thee,
Pre-eminent by so much odds, while thou
Like consort to thyself canst no where find.' &c.

The remaining part of Eve's speech, in which she gives an account of herself upon her first creation, and the manner in which she was brought to Adam, is, I think, as beautiful a passage as any in Milton, or perhaps in any other poet whatsoever. These passages are all worked off with so much art, that they are capable of pleasing the most delicate reader, without offending the most severe.

'That day I oft remember, when from sleep,' &c.