word leads a writer out of his road, and been pleased to lay it down as a maxin, makes him wander from his subject for a that nothing spoils a young fellow's fortune page together. I remember a young fel- so much as marrying early; and that no low of this turn, who, having said by chance man ought to think of wedlock until sixthat his mistress had a world of charms, and-twenty. Knowing his sentiments upon thereupon took occasion to consider her as this head, I thought it in vain to apply myone possessed of frigid and torrid zones, self to women of condition, who expect setand pursued her from one pole to the other. tlements; so that all my amours have I shall conclude this paper with a letter hitherto been with ladies who had no forwritten in that enormous style, which I tunes: but I know not how to give you so hope my reader hath by this time set his good an idea of me, as by laying before you heart against. The epistle hath hereto- the history of my life. fore received great applause; but after what hath been said, let any man commend it if he dare.

'I can very well remember, that at my school-mistress's, whenever we broke up, I was always for joining myself with the the first to make a party in the play of miss who lay-in, and was constantly one of Husband and Wife. This passion for being well with the females still increased as I advanced in years. At the dancing-school I contracted so many quarrels by struggling with my fellow-scholars for the partner I liked best, that upon a ball-night, before our mothers made their appearance, I was usually up to the nose in blood. My father, like a discreet man, soon removed me from this stage of softness to a school of discipline, where I learnt Latin and Greek. I underwent several severities in this place, until it was thought convenient to send me to the university: though to confess the truth, I should not have arrived so early at that seat of learning, but from the disco

'SIR,-After the many heavy lashes that have fallen from your pen, you may justly ink expect in return all the load that my can lay upon your shoulders. You have quartered all the foul language upon me that could be raked out of the air of Billinsgate, without knowing who I am, or whether I deserved to be cupped and sacrificed at this rate. I tell you, once for all, turn your eyes where you please, you shall never smell me out. Do you think that the panicks, which you sow about the parish, will ever build a monument to your glory? No, sir, you may fight these battles as long as you will, but when you come to balance the account you will find that you have been fishing in troubled waters, and that an ignis fatuus hath bewildered you, and that indeed you have built upon a sandy founda-very of an intrigue between me and my tion, and brought your hogs to a fair market. I am, sir, yours, &c.'

No. 596.] Monday, September 20, 1714.

Molle meum levibus cor est violabile telis. Ovid, Ep. xv. 79. Cupid's light darts my tender bosom move.-Pope. THE case of my correspondent, who sends me the following letter, has somewhat in it so very whimsical, that I know not how to I entertain my readers better than by laying

it before them.

master's housekeeper; upon whom I had employed my rhetoric so effectually, that, though she was a very elderly lady, I had almost brought her to consent to marry me. Upon my arrival at Oxford, I found logic so dry, that, instead of giving attention to the dead, I soon fell to addressing the living. My first amour was with a pretty girl whom I shall call Parthenope: her mother sold ale by the town-wall.

Being often caught there by the proctor, was forced at last, that my mistress's reputation might receive no blemish, to confess my addresses were honourable. Upon this I was immediately sent home; but Parthenope soon after marrying a shoe-maker, I was again suffered to return. My next affair was with my tailor's daughter, who deserted me for the sake of a young barber. Upon my complaining to one of my particular friends of this misfortune, the cruel wag made a mere jest of my calamity, and asked me, with a smile, where the needle should turn but to the pole?* After this I was deeply in love with a milliner, and at last with my bed-maker; upon which I was sent away, or, in the university phrase, rusticated for ever.

'Middle-Temple, Sept. 18. 'SIR,-I am fully convinced that there is not upon earth a more impertinent creature than an importunate lover. We are daily complaining of the severity of our fate to people who are wholly unconcerned in it: and hourly improving a passion, which we would persuade the world is the torment of our lives. Notwithstanding this reflection, sir, I cannot forbear acquainting you with my own case. You must know, then, sir, that even from my childhood, the most prevailing inclination I could perceive in myself was a strong desire to be in favour with the fair-sex. I am at present in the one-and-twentieth year of my age; and should have made choice of a she-bedfellow many years since, had not my father, who has a pretty good estate of his own getting, A pole was the common sign of a barber's shop. It and passes in the world for a prudent man, is now seldom seen in the metropolis.

'Upon my coming home, I settled to my studies so heartily, and contracted so great a reservedness by being kept from the company I most affected, that my father

thought he might venture me at the Tem- | to all manner of dangers for her sake and ple. safety. He desires in his postscript to know whether, from a constant success in them, he may not promise himself to succeed in her esteem at last.

No. 597.] Wednesday, September 22, 1714. and he could recollect nothing but an odd

handsome, rich, ingenious nobleman, when | of the audience were enjoying the benefit an impertinent tinker passing by forbid the of an excellent discourse, was losing her bans; and a hopeful youth who had been money and jewels to a gentleman at play, newly advanced to great honour and pre- until after a strange run of ill-luck she was ferment, was forced by a neighbouring cob- reduced to pawn three lovely pretty chilbler to resign all for an old song. It has dren for her last stake. When she had been represented to me, that those inconsi- thrown them away, her companion went derable rascals do nothing but go about dis-off, discovering himself by his usual tokens, solving of marriages, and spoiling of for- a cloven foot and a strong smell of brimtunes, impoverishing rich, and ruining stone, which last proved a bottle of spirits, great people, interrupting beauties in the which a good old lady applied to her nose, midst of their conquests, and generals in to put her in a condition of hearing the the course of their victories. A boisterous preacher's third head concerning time. peripatetic hardly goes through a street without waking half a dozen kings and princes, to open their shops or clean shoes, frequently transforming sceptres into paring-shovels, and proclamations into bills. I have by me a letter from a young statesman, who in five or six hours came to be emperor of Europe, after which he made war upon the Great Turk, routed him horse and foot, and was crowned lord of the universe in Constantinople: the conclusion of all his successes is, that on the 12th instant, about seven in the morning, his Imperial Majesty was deposed by a chimney- No. 598.] Friday, September 24, 1714.

sweeper.

On the other hand, I have epistolary testimonies of gratitude from many miserable people, who owe to this clamorous tribe frequent deliverances from great misfortunes. A small-coal-man, by waking one of these distressed gentlemen, saved him from ten years' imprisonment. An honest watchman, bidding aloud good-morrow to another, freed him from the malice of many potent enemies, and brought all their designs against him to nothing. A certain valetudinarian confesses he has often been cured of a sore-throat by the hoarseness of a carman, and relieved from a fit of the gout by the sound of old shoes. A noisy puppy, that plagued a sober gentleman all night long with his impertinence, was silenced by a cinder-wench with a word speaking.

If a man has no mind to pass abruptly from his imagined to his real circumstances, he may employ himself a while in that new kind of observation which my oneirocritical correspondent has directed him to make of himself. Pursuing the imagination through all its extravagances, whether in sleeping or waking, is no improper method of correcting and bringing it to act in subordination to reason, so as to be delighted only with such objects as will affect it with pleasure when it is never so cool and sedate.

MANKIND may be divided into the merry and the serious, who both of them make a very good figure in the species so long as they keep their respective humours from degenerating into the neighbouring extreme: there being a natural tendency in the one to a melancholy moroseness, and in the other to a fantastic levity.

The merry part of the world are very amiable, while they diffuse a cheerfulness through conversation at proper seasons and on proper occasions; but, on the contrary, a great grievance to society when they infect every discourse with insipid mirth, and turn into ridicule such subjects as are not suited to it. For though laughter is looked upon by the philosophers as the property of reason, the excess of it has been always considered as the mark of folly.

Instead, therefore, of suppressing this order of mortals, I would propose it to my readers to make the best advantage of their morning salutations. A famous Macedonian prince, for fear of forgetting himself in the midst of his good fortune, had a youth to wait on him every morning, and bid him remember that he was a man. A citizen, who is waked by one of these criers, may On the other side, seriousness has its regard him as a kind of remembrancer, beauty whilst it is attended with cheerfulcome to admonish him that it is time to re-ness and humanity, and does not come in turn to the circumstances he has overlooked all the night time, to leave off fancying himself what he is not, and prepare to act suitably to the condition he is really placed in.

People may dream on as long as they please, but I shall take no notice of any imaginary adventures that do not happen while the sun is on this side the horizon. For which reason I stifle Fritilla's dream at church last Sunday, who, while the rest

unseasonably to pall the good humour of those with whom we converse.

These two sets of men, notwithstanding they each of them shine in their respective characters, are apt to bear a natural aversion and antipathy to one another.

What is more usual than to hear men of serious tempers, and austere morals, enlarging upon the vanities and follies of the young and gay part of the species, while they look with a kind of horror upon such

pomps and diversions as are innocent in | I never took in my youth. Among others is themselves, and only culpable when they that of an afternoon's nap, which I fell into draw the mind too much?

I could not but smile upon reading a passage in the account which Mr. Baxter gives of his own life, wherein he represents it as a great blessing that in his youth he very narrowly escaped getting a place at

court.

in the fifty-fifth year of my age, and have continued for the three last years past. By this means I enjoy a double morning, and rise twice a day fresh to my speculations. It happens very luckily for me, that some of my dreams have proved instructive to my countrymen, so that I may be said to sleep, as well as to wake, for the good of the public. I was yesterday meditating on the account with which I have already en

It must indeed be confessed that levity of temper takes a man off his guard, and opens a pass to his soul for any temptation that assaults it. It favours all the ap-tertained my readers concerning the cave proaches of vice, and weakens all the resistance of virtue: for which reason a renowned statesman in queen Elizabeth's days, after having retired from court and public business, in order to give himself up to the duties of religion, when any of his old friends used to visit him, had still this word of advice in his mouth, 'be serious.'

An eminent Italian author of this cast of mind, speaking of the great advantage of a serious and composed temper, wishes very gravely, that for the benefit of mankind he had Trophonius's cave in his possession; which, says he, would contribute more to the reformation of manners than all the work houses and bridewells in Europe.

of Trophonius. I was no sooner fallen into my usual slumber, but I dreamed that this cave was put into my possession, and that I gave public notice of its virtue, inviting every one to it who had a mind to be a serious man for the remaining part of his life. Great multitudes immediately resorted to me. The first who made the experiment was a Merry-andrew, who was put into my hand by a neighbouring justice of peace, in order to reclaim him from that profligate kind of life. Poor Pickle-herring had not taken above one turn in it, when he came out of the cave, like a hermit from his cell, with a penitential look and a most rueful countenance. We have a very particular description I then put in a young laughing fop, and, of this cave in Pausanias, who tells us that watching for his return, asked him, with a it was made in the form of a huge oven, smile, how he liked the place? He replied, and had many particular circumstances, 'Pr’ythee, friend, be not impertinent;' and which disposed the person who was in it to stalked by me as grave as a judge. A be more pensive and thoughtful than or- citizen then desired me to give free ingress dinary; insomuch, that no man was ever and egress to his wife who was dressed in observed to laugh all his life after, who the gayest coloured ribands I had ever had once made his entry into this cave. It seen. She went in with a flirt of her fan was usual in those times, when any one and a smirking countenance, but came out carried a more than ordinary gloominess in with the severity of a vestal; and throwing his features, to tell him that he looked like from her several female gewgaws, told me, one just come out of Trophonius's cave. with a sigh, that she resolved to go into deep mourning, and to wear black all the rest of her life. As I had many coquettes recommended to me by their parents, their husbands, and their lovers, I let them in all at once, desiring them to divert themselves together, as well as they could, Upon their emerging again into day-light, you would have fancied my cave to have been a nunnery, and that you had seen a solemn procession of religious marching out, one behind another, in the most profound silence and the most exemplary decency. As I was very much delighted with so edifying a sight, there came towards me a great company of males and females, laughing, singing, and dancing, in such a manner, that I could hear them a great while before I saw them. Upon my asking their leader what brought them thither? they told me all at once that they were French Protestants lately arrived in Great Britain, and that finding themselves of too gay a humour for my country, they applied themselves to me in order to compose them for British conversation. I told them that, to oblige them, I would soon spoil their mirth; upon which I admitted a

On the other hand, writers of a more merry complexion have been no less severe on the opposite party; and have had one advantage above them, that they have attacked them with more turns of wit and humour.

After all, if a man's temper were at his own disposal, I think he would not choose to be of either of these parties; since the most perfect character is that which is formed out of both of them. A man would neither choose to be a hermit nor a buffoon; human nature is not so miserable, as that we should be always melancholy; nor so happy, as that we should be always merry. In a word, a man should not live as if there was no God in the world, nor, at the same time, as if there were no men in it.

No. 599.] Monday, September 27, 1714.

-Ubique

Luctus, ubique pavor.-Virg. Æn. ii. 369.
All parts resound with tumults, plaints, and fears.

Dryden.

IT has been my custom, as I grow old, to allow myself some little indulgences, which

patients walking by themselves in a very pensive and musing posture, so that the whole space seemed covered with philoso phers. I was at length resolved to go into the cave myself, and see what it was that had produced such wonderful effects upon the company; but as I was stooping at the re-entrance, the door being somewhat low, I gave such a nod in my chair that I awaked. After having recovered myself from my first startle, I was very well pleased at the accident which had befallen me, as net knowing but a little stay in the place might have spoiled my Spectators.