I Mr. Spectator, Have loft fo much time already, that I de fire, upon the receipt hereof, you would fit down immediately and give me your anfwer. And I would know of you whether a pretender of mine really loves me. As well as I can I will describe his manners. When he fees me he is always talking of constancy, 'but vouchsafes to vifit me but once a fortnight, and then is always in haste to be gone. When I am fick, I hear, he says he is mightily concerned, but neither comes nor sends, because, as he tells his acquaintance with a figh, he • does not care to let me know all the power I ? have over him, and how impossible it is for him to live without me. When he leaves the town he writes once in fix weeks, defires to hear from me, complains of the torment of abfence, speaks of flames, tortures, languishings, and ecstafies. He has the cant of an impatient lover, but keeps the pace of a lukeYou know I must not go fafter than he does, and to move at this rate is as tedious as counting a great clock. But you are to know he is rich, and my mother says as he is flow he is fure; he will love me long, if he love me little: but I appeal to you whether he loves at all. warm one. Mr. Spectator, Have been delighted with nothing more I through the whole course of yourgrings than the substantial account you lately gave of wit, and I could wish you would take some ⚫ other opportunity to express further the corrupt taste the age is run into; which I am chiefly apt to attribute to the prevalency of a few popular authors, whose merit in some respects has given a fanction to their faults in others. Thus the imitators of Milton seem to place all the excellency of that fort of writing either in the uncouth or antique words, or something else which was highly vicious, though pardonfable, in that great man. The admirers of what we call point, or turn, look upon it as the particular happiness to which Cowley, Ovid, and others, owe their reputation, and therefore imitate them only in such instances; what is just, proper and natural does not feem to be the question with them, but by what means a quaint antithesis may be brought about, how one word may be made to look two ways, and what will be the consequence of a forced allusion. Now, though such authors appear to me to resemble those who 'make themselves fine, instead of heing well dressed, or graceful; yet the mischief is, that ' these beauties in them, which I call blemishes, ' are thought to proceed from luxuriance of fan cy, and overflowing of good sense: in one ' word, they have the character of being too witty: but if you would acquaint the world they are not witty at all, you would, among many others, oblige, • Sir, 'SIR, Your most benevolent reader, R. D.' Am a young woman, and reckoned pretty, I therefore you will pardon me that I trouble you to decide a wager between me and a coufin ' of mine, who is always contradicting one be'cause he understands Latin. Pray, Sir, is Dimple spelt with a fingle or a double pe ، I am, Sir, Your very humble servant, 'Betty Santer. 'Pray, Sir, direct thus, To the Kind Querist, and leave it at Mr. Lillie's, for I do not care to be known in the thing at all. I am, Sir, again your humble servant,' AST night as I was walking in the park, I met a couple of friends; pr'ythee Jack, fays one of them, let us go drink a glass of ' wine, for I am fit for nothing else. This put ' me upon reflecting on the many miscarriages • which happen in conversation over wine, when men go to the bottle to remove such humours as it only stirs up and awakens. This I could not attribute more to any thing than to the 'humour of putting company upon others ' which men do not like themselves. Pray, Sir, declare in your papers, that he who is a trou⚫ blesome companion to himself, will not be an ' agreeable one to others. Let people reason ' themselves into good-humour, before they impose themselves upon their friends. Pray, Sir, be as eloquent as you can upon this subject, and do human life so much good, as to argue ' powerfully, that it is not every one that can ، swallow who is fit to drink a glass of wine. Your most humble servant." upon the behaviour of fome of the female gamesters. I have observed ladies, who in all other re• fpects are gentle, good humoured, and the very pinks of good-breeding; who as foon as the. ombre-table is called for, and fet down to their * business, are immediately tranfmigrated into the veriest wafps in nature. You must know I keep my temper, and win their money; but am out of countenance to cake it, it makes them so very uneasy. Be pleased, dear Sir, to intract them to lose with a better grace, and you will oblige Mr. Spectator Y Yours, Rachel Pafto. OUR kindness to Eleonora, in one of your papers, has given me encouragement to do myself the honour of writing to you. The great regard you have so often expreffed for the inftruction and improvement of < our fex, will, I hope, in your own opinion, fufficiently excufe me from making any apology for the impertinence of this letter. The great defire I have to embellish my mind with fome of those graces which you say are fo becoming, and which you affert reading helps us to, has made me uneafy until I am put in a capacity of attaining them: this, Sir, I shall never think myfelf in, until you shall be pleased to * recommend fome author or authors to my pe rufal. • I thought indeed, when I first caft myeye on Eleonora's letter, that I should have had no occafion for reguefting it of you, but to my, very great concern, I found on the perufal of that Spectator, I was entirely disappointed, * and am as much at a lofs how to make use of my time for that end as ever. Pray, Sir, oblige me at least with one fcene, as you were pleased to entertain Eleonora with your prologue. I write to you not only my own sentiments, but alfo thofe of feveral others of my acquaintance, who are as little pleased with the ordinary man ner of spending one's time as myself: and if a fervent defire aster knowledge, and a great fenfe of our present ignorance, may be thought a good prefage and earnest of improvement, you may look upon your time you shall bestow in anfvwering this request not thrown away to no purpore. And I cannot but add, that unless you have a particular and more than ordi ⚫nary regard for Eleonora, have a better title to your favour than the; fmce I do do not content myfelf with tea-table reading of your papers, but it is my entertainment very often • when alone in my closet. To shew you I am ▲ capable of improvement, and hate flattery, I acknowledge I do not like fome of your papers, but even there I am readier to call in queftion my own shallow understanding than • Mr. Spectator's profound judgment. I am, Sir, your already, and in hopes of being more your, obliged fervant, N the present emptiness of the town, I have several applications from the lower parts of the players, to admit fuffering to pass for acting. They in very obliging terms defire me to let a fall on the ground, a ftumble, or a good flap on the back, be reckoned a jest. These gambols I shall tolerate for a feason, because I hope the evil cannot continue longer than until the people of condition and taste return to town. The method, fome time ago, was to entertain that part of the audience, who have no faculty above eye-fight, with rope-dancers and tumblers; which was a way difcreet enough, because it prevented confufion, and diftinguished fuch as could shew all the postures which the body is capable of, from those who were to reprefent all the paffions to which the mind is subject. But though this was prudently fettled, corporeal and intellectual actors ought to be kept at a still wider distance than to appear on the fame ftage at all: for which reason I must proposę fome methods for the improvement of the beargarden, by difmiffing all bodily actors to that quarter. In cases of greater moment, where men appear in public, the consequence and importance of the thing can bear them out. And though a pleader or preacher is hoarfe or aukward, the weight of the matter commands respect and attention; but in the theatrical speaking, if the performer is not exactly proper and graceful, he is utterly ridiculous. In cases where there is little elfe expected, but the pleasure of the ears and eyes, the leaft dimination of that pleafure is the highest offence. In acting, barely to perform the part is commendable, but to be the leaft out is contemptible. To avoid these difficulties and delicacies, I am informed, that while I was out of town, the actors have flown in the air, and played such pranks, and run such hazards, that none but the servants of the are-office, tilers and masons, could have been able to perform the like. The author of the following letter, it seems, has been of the audi. ence at one of these entertainments, and has accordingly complained to me upon it; but I think he has been to the utmost degree severè against what is exceptionable in the play he mentions, without dwelling so much as he might have done on the author's most excellent talent of humour. The pleziant pictures he has drawn of life, should have been more kindly mentioned, at the fame time that he banithes his witches, who are too dull devils to be attacked with fo much warmth. ، ، him; den Johnfon was almost lamed; young Bullock narrowly faved his neck; the audience was aftonished, and an old acquaintance of mine, a person of worth, whom I would have bowed to in the pit, at two yards distance did not know me. 'If you were what the country people reported you, a white witch, I could have withed you had been there to have exercised that rabble of broomsticks, with which we were haunted for above three hours. I could have • allowed them to fet Clod in the tree, to have feared the sportsinen, plagued the justice, and * employed honest Teague with his holy water. This was the proper use of them in comedy, if the author had stopped here; but I cannot conceive what relation the facrifice of the black lamb, and the ceremonies of their worship to the devil, have to the business of mirth and • humour. 6 *'preffions. These things fall under a province you have partly pursued already, and therefore demand 'your animadversion, for the regulating so noble an entertainment as that of the stage. It were ' to be wished that all who write for it hereafter ' would raise their genius, by the ambition of pleasing people of the best understanding; and, leave others who shew nothing of the human ' species but risibility, to feek their diversion as the bear-garden, or some other privileged place where reason and good-manners have no right to difturb them. August 8, 1711. T I am, &c. 'The gentleman who writ this play, and has drawn fome characters in it very justly, appears ' to have been mifled in his witchcraft by an unwary following the inimitable Shakespear. The incantations in Macbeth have a folemnity admirably adapted to the occafion of that Tragedy, and fill the mind with a fuitable horror; N° 142. MONDAY, AUGUST 13. befides, that the witches are a part of the story itself, as we find it very particularly re- -Irrupta tenet copula lated in Hector Boetius, from whom he seems to have taken it. This therefore is a proper machine where the business is dark, horrid and bloody; but is extremely foreign from the affair of Comedy. Subjects of this kind, which ⚫ are in themseives disagreeable, can at no time • become entertaining, but by paffing through an imagination like Shakespear's to form them; * for which reason Mr. Dryden would not allow even Beaumont and Fletcher capable of imitat ✔ ing him. "But Shakespear's magic could not copy'd be, "Within that circle none durst walk but he.' I should not, however, have troubled you with these remarks, if there were not fontething elfe in this Comedy, which wants to be exorcifed more than the witches: I mean the freedom of fome passages, which I should have ' overlooked, if I had not observed that those jefts can raise the loudest mirth, though they are painful to right sense, and an outrage upon • modesty. We must attribute such liberties to the tafte ' of that age, but indeed by such representati ons a poet sacrifices the best part of his au dience to the worst; and, as one would think, neglects the boxes, to write to the orange • wenches. ، ، 'I must not conclude until I have taken notice of the moral with which this comedy ends. The two young ladies having given a notable example of outwitting those who had a right ' in the difpofal of them, and marrying with "Defign whate'er we will, We are to fuppofe that the gallants are men • of merit, but if they had been rakes, the excuse inight have ferved as well. Hans Carvel's * wife was of the same principle, but has ex. 2 HOR. Od. 13. 1. 1. V. 18. They equal move In an unbroken yoke of faithful love. T GLANVIL HE following letters being genuine, and the images of a worthy paffion, I am willing to give the old lady's admonition to myself, and the representation of her own happiness, place in my writings. • Mr. Spectator, August 9, 1711 AM now in the fixty-feventh year of my age, and read you with approbation; but methinks you do not strike at the root of the greatest evil in life, which is the falfe notion ⚫ of gallantry in love. It is, and has long been, upon a very ill foot; but I who have been a ⚫ wife forty years, and was bred in a way that has made me ever fince very happy, fee through the folly of it. In a word, Sir, when I was 'a young woman, all who avoided the vices ' of the age, were very carefully educated, and all fartastical objects were turned out of our fight. The tapestry hangings, with the great and venerable fimplicity of the scripture stories, had better effects than now the loves of Venus and Adonis, or Bacchus and Ariadne in your fine present prints. The gentleman I am.married to made love to me in rapture, but it was the rapture of a Christian and a man of honour, not a romantic hero or a whining coxcomb: this put our life upon a right basis. To give you an idea of our regard one to another, I inclose to you several of his letters, writ forty years ago, when my lover; and one writ the other day, after so many years cohabitation. ، ، every good angel in your attendance. To have my thoughts ever fixed on you, to live in con'stant fear of every accident to which human 'life is liable, and to fend up my hourly prayers ' to avert them from you; I say, Madam, thus ' to think, and thus to fuffer, is what I do for her who is in pain at my approach, and calls 'all my tender forrow impertinence. You are ' now before my eyes, my eyes that are ready to ' flow with tenderness, but cannot give relief ' to my gushing heart, that dictates what I am now faying, and yearns to tell you all its achings. How art thou, oh my foul, stolen from thyself! My books are blank paper, and my ' friends intruders. I have no hope of quiet ' but from your pity; to grant it, would make more for your triumph. To give pain is the tyranny, to make happy the true empire of beauty. If you would confider aright, you ' would find an agreeable change in difmissing the attendance of a flave, to receive the com• plaisance of a companion. I bear the former * in hopes of the latter condition: as I live in < chains without murmuring at the power which inflicts them, so I could enjoy freedom without • forgetting the mercy that gave it. ८ 'Madam, I am Your most devoted, most obedient servant." • Though I made him no declarations in his • favour, you fee he had hopes of me when he • writ this in the month following.' ، ، ، • Madam, B September 3, 1671. EFORE the light this morning dawned upon the earth, I waked, and lay in expectation of its return, not that it could give any new sense of joy to me, but as I hoped it ' would bless you with its chearful face, after a quiet which I wished you last night. If my prayers are heard, the day appeared with all the influence of a merciful Creator upon your person and actions. Let others, my lovely charmer, talk of a blind being that disposes their hearts, I contemn their low images of 'love. I have not a thought which relates to you, that I cannot with confidence befeech the all-feeing Power to bless me in. May he 'direct you all in your steps, and reward your 'innocence, your santity of manners, your pru'dent youth, and becoming piety, with the continuance of his grace and protection! This is an unusual language to ladies; but you have a mind elevated above the giddy notions of a • sex infnared by flattery, and misled by a false and short adoration into a folid and long contempt. Beauty, my fairest creature, palls in < the poffeffion, but I love also your mind; your foul is as dear to me as my own; and if the advantages of a liberal education, some knowledge, and as much contempt of the world, ⚫ joined with the endeavours towards a life of strict virtue and religion, can qualify me to raise new ideas in a breast so well difpofed as yours is, our days will pass away with joy; and old age, instead of introducing melancholy • prospects of decay, give us hope of eternal youth in a better life. I have but few minutes from the duty of my employment to write in, and without time to read over what I have ' writ, therefore beseech you to pardon the first ' hints of my mind, which I have expressed in so • little order. 'I am, dearest creature, Your most obedient, most devoted fervant." 'The two next were written after the day for ' our marriage was fixed." 'MADAM, I September, 25, 1671. T is the hardest thing in the world to be in love, and yet attend business: as for me, 'all that speak to me find me out, and 1 muft 'lock myself up, or other people will do it for ' me. A gentleman asked me this morning ' what news from Holland, and I answered, she is exquifitely handsome. Another desired to 'know when I had been last at Windfor, I re'plied, She designs to go with me. Pr'ythee 'allow me at least to kiss your hand before the 'appointed day, that my mind may be in some 'composure. Methinks I could write a volume ' to you, but all the language on earth would fail in faying how much, and with what difinterested paffion, 6 Dear Creature, Seven in the morning. EXT to the influence of Heaven, I am. to thank you that I fee the returning day ' with pleasure. To país my evenings in so sweet a conversation, and have the esteem of a woman of your merit, has in it a particularity of happiness no more to be expressed than returned. But I am, my lovely creature, con' tented to be on the obliged fide, and to employ 'all my days in new endeavours to convince you and all the world of the sense I have of your condescension in choofing, but I am forced to write from a coffeehouse where I am attending about business. There is a dirty crowd of busy faces all around me talking of money, while all my ambition, 'all my wealth is love: love which animates my heart, sweetens my humour, enlarges my soul, and affects every action of my life. It is to my lovely charmer I owe that many noble ideas are continually affixed to my words and actions: it is the natural effect of that generous paffion to create in the admirer fome similitude of the object admired; thus, my dear, am I every day to improve from so sweet a compa'nion. Look up, my fair one, to that Heaven which made thee such, and join with me to • implore its influence on our tender innocent hours, and beseech the author of love to bless the rites he has ordained, and mingle with our happiness a just sense of our tranfient condition and a refignation to his will, which only can regulate our minds to a steady endeavour ⚫ to please him and each other. I am, for ever, your faithful servant. I will not trouble you with more letters at this time, but if you saw the poor withered hand which sends you these minutes, I am sure you • will smile to think there is one who is so gal lant as to speak of it still as so welcome a prefent, after forty years poffeffion of the woman whom he writes to.' < Madam, June 23, 1711. Heartily beg your pardon for my omiffion to write yesterday. It was no failure of my tender regard for you; but having been very • much perplexed in my thoughts on the subject ' of my last, made me determine to suspend speaking of it until I came myself. But, my lovely creature, know it is not in the power of age, or < misfortune, or any other accident which hangs over human life, to take from me the pleasing esteem I have for you, or the memory of the bright figure you appeared in when you gave your hand and heart to, minds at ease. That infipid state wherein neither are in vigour, is not to be accounted any part of our portion of being. When we are in the fatiffaction of fome innocent pleasure, or pursuit of some laudable design, we are in the poffeflion of life, of human life. Fortune will give us difappointments enough, and nature is attended with infirmities enough, without our adding to the unhappy fide of our account by our spleen or ill-humour. Poor Cottilus, among so many real evils, a chronical distemper and a narrow fortune, is never heard to complain: that equal spirit of his, which any man may have, that, like him, will conquer pride, vanity and affectation, and follow nature, is not to be broken, because it has no points to contend for. To be anxious for nothing but what nature demands as necessary, if it is not the way to an estate, is the way to what men aim at by getting an estate. This temper will preserve health in the body, as well as tranquility in the mind. Cottilus fees the world in an hurry, with the fame scorn that a fober person fees a man drunk. Had he been contented with what he ought to have been, how could, says he, such a one have met with such a disappointment? If another had valued his mistress for what he ought to have loved her, he had not been in her power : if her virtue had a part of his passion, her levity Mar. Epig. 70. 1. 6. had been his cure; the could not then have been To breathe, is not to live; but to be well. ८ T • Madam, your most grateful husband, No 143. TUESDAY, AUGUST 14. Non eft vivere fed valere vita. I T is an unreasonable thing some men expect of their acquaintance. They are ever complaining that they are out of order, or difpleased, or they know not how, and are so far from letting that be a reason for retiring to their own homes, that they make it their argument for coming into company. What has any body to do with accounts of a man's being indisposed but his physician? If a man laments in company, where the rest are in humour enough to enjoy themselves, he should not take it ill if a servant is ordered to present him with a porringer of caudle or poffetdrink, by way of admonition that he go home to bed. That part of life which we ordinarily understand by the word conversation, is an indulgence, to the fociable part of our make; and should incline us to bring our proportion of good-will or good-humour among the friends we meet with, and not to trouble them with relations which must of neceffity oblige them to a real or feigned affliction. Cares, distresses, diseases, uneasinesses, and diflikes of our own, are by no means to be obtruded upon our friends. If we would confider how little of this viciffitude of motion and rest, which we call life, is spent with fatisfaction, we should be more tender of our friends, than to bring them little forrows which do not belong to them. There is no real life, but chearful life; therefore Valetudinarians should be sworn before they enter into company, not to say a word of themselves until the meeting breaks up. It is not here pretended, that we should be always fitting with chaplets of flowers round our heads, or be crowned with rofes in order to make our entertainment agreeable to us; but if, as it is usually observed, they who resolve to be merry, seldom are so; it will be much more unlikely for us to be well pleased, if they are admitted who are always complaining they are fad. Whatever we do we should keep up the chearfulness of our spirits, and never let them fink below an inclination at least to be well-pleased: the way to this, is to keep our bodies in exercise, our falfe and amiable at the fame time. Since we cannot promise ourselves constant health, let us endeavour at such a temper as may be our best support in the decay of it. Uranius has arrived at that compofure of soul, and wrought himself up to such a neglect of every thing with which the generality of mankind is enchanted, that nothing but acute pains can give him disturbance, and against those too he will tell his intimate friends he has a secret which gives him prefent ease. Uranius is so thoroughly perfuaded of another life, and endeavours so sincerely to secure an interest in it, that he looks upon pain but as a quickening of his pace to an home, where he shall be better provided for than in his present apartment. Instead of the melancholy views which others are apt to give themselves, he will tell you that he has forgot he is mortal, nor will he think of himself as fuch. He thinks at the time of his birth he entered into an eternal being; and the short article of death he will not allow an interruption of life; fince that moment is not of half the duration as is his ordinary fleep. Thus is his being one uniform and confiftent series of chearful diverfions, and moderate cares, without fear or hope of futurity. Health to him is more than pleasure to another man, and fickness less affecting to him than indisposition is to others. I must confefs, if one does not regard life after this manner, none but idiots can pass it away with any tolerable patience. Take a fine lady who is of a delicate frame, and you may observe from the hour she rises a certain weariness of all that pafles about her. I know more than one who is much too nice to be quite alive. They are fick of fuch strange frightful people that they meet; one is so aukward, and another so difagreeable, that it looks like a penance to breathe the fame air with them. You see this is so very true, that a great part of ceremony and good-breeding among the ladies turns upon their uneasiness; and I will undertake, if the how-d'ye servants of our women were to make a weekly bill of fickness, as the parishclerks do of mortality, you would not find in an Aa account |