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YOUR janty air, and easy motion, the volubility of your discourse, the fuddennefs of your laugh, the management of your fnuff-box, with the whiteness of your hands and teeth, (which have justly gained you the envy of the most polite part of the male world, and the love of the greatest beauties in the female) are intirely to be afcribed to your own perfonal genius and applica tion.

You are formed for thefe accomplishments by a happy turn of nature, and have finished yourfelf in them by the utmost improvements of art. A man that is defective in either of these qualifications (whatever may be the fecret ambition of his heart) muft never hope to make the figure you have done, among the fashionable part of his fpecies. It is therefore no wonder we fee fuch multitudes of afpiring young men fall fhort of you in all these beauties of your character, notwithstanding the study and practice of them is the whole business of their lives. But I need not tell you that the free and difengaged behaviour of a fine gentleman makes as many aukward beaux, as the eafiness of your favourite Waller hath made infipid poets.

AT present you are content to aim all your charms at your own fpoufe, without farther thought of mischief to any others of the fex. I know you had formerly a very great contempt for that pedantic race of mortals who call themselves philofophers; and yet, to your honour be it fpoken, there is not a fage of them all could have better acted up

to

to their precepts in one of the most important points of life: I mean in that generous difregard of popular opinion which you thewed fome years ago, when you chofe for your wife an obscure young woman, who doth not indeed pretend to an ancient family, but has certainly as many forefathers as any lady in the land, if she could but reç kon up their names.

I MUST Own I conceived very extraordinary hopes of you from the moment that you confeffed your age, and from eight and forty (where you had stuck so many years) very ingenuously stepped into your grand climacteric. Your deportment has fince been very venerable and becoming. If I am rightly informed, you make a regular appearance every quarter-feffions among your brothers of the quorum; and if things go on as they do, ftand fair for being a colonel of the militia. I am told that your time paffes away as agreeably in the amufements of a country life, as it ever did in the galantries of the town: And that you now take as much pleasure in the planting of young trees, as you did formerly in the cutting down of your old ones. In fhort, we hear from all hands that you are thoroughly reconciled to your dirty acres, and have not too much wit to look into your own estate.

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AFTER having fpoken thus much for my patron, I must take the privilege of an author in saying fomething of myself. I fhall therefore beg leave to add, that I have purposely omitted fetting those marks to the end of every paper, which appeared

in my former volumes, that you may have an op portunity of fhewing Mrs. Honeycomb the fhrewdnefs of your conjectures, by afcribing every fpeculation to its proper author: Though you know how often many profound critics in ftile and fentiments have very judiciously erred in this particular, before they were let into the fecret. I am,

SIR,

Your moft faithful

humble fervant,

The SPECTATOR.

THE

BOOKSELLER TO THE READER.

IN

N the fix hundred and thirty-fecond Spectator, the Reader will find an account of the rife of this eighth and laft volume.

I have not been able to prevail upon the feveral gentlemen who were concerned in this work to let me acquaint the world with their names.

Perhaps it will be unneceffary to inform the Reader, that no other papers, which have appeared under the title of Spectator, fince the clofing of this eighth volume, were written by any of those Gentlemen who had a hand in this or the former volumes.

THE

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