In order to contribute as far as I am able to it, I shall publish in respective papers whatever I think may conduce to the advancement of the conversation of gentlemen, the improvement of ladies, the wealth of traders, and the encouragement of artificers. The circumstance relating to those who excel in mechanicks, shall be considered with particular application. It is not to be immediately conceived by such as have not turned themselves to reflections of that kind, that Providence, to enforce and endear the necessity of social life, has given one man's hands to another man's head, and the carpenter, the smith, the joiner, are as immediately necessary to the mathematician, as my amanuensis will be to me, to write much fairer than I can myself. I am so well convinced of this truth, that I shall have a particular regard to mechanicks; and to shew my honour for them, I shall place at their head the painter. This gentleman is, as to the execution of his work, a mechanick; but as to his conception, his spirit, and design, he is hardly below even the poet, in liberal art. It will be from these considerations useful to make the world see, the affinity between all works which are beneficial to mankind is much nearer, than the illiberal arrogance of scholars will at all times allow. But I am from experience convinced of the importance of mechanick heads, and shall therefore take them all into my care, from Rowley, who is improving the globes of the earth and heaven in Fleet-street, to Bat. Pigeon,* the hair-cutter in the Strand. But it will be objected upon what pretensions I A shop was kept under this name, till very lately, almost opposite Arundel-street. take upon me to put in for the prochain ami, or nearest friend of all the world. How my head is accomplished for this employment towards the publick, from the long exercise of it in a private capacity, will appear by reading me the two or three next days with diligence and attention. There is no other paper in being which tends to this purpose. They are most of them histories, or advices of publick transactions; but as those representations affect the passions of my readers, I shall sometimes take care, the day after a foreign mail, to give them an account of what it has brought. The parties amongst us are too violent to make it possible to pass them by without observation. As to these matters, I shall be impartial, though I cannot be neuter: I am, with relation to the government of the church, a tory, with regard to the state, a whig. The charge of intelligence, the pain in compiling and digesting my thoughts in proper stile, and the like, oblige me to value my paper a half-penny above all other half-sheets.* And all persons who have any thing to communicate to me, are desired to direct their letters (postage-paid) to Nestor Ironside, esq. at Mr. Tonson's, in the Strand. I declare beforehand, that I will at no time be conversed with any other way than by letter: for as I am an ancient man, I shall find enough to do to give orders proper for their service, to whom I am by will of their parents Guardian, though I take that to be too narrow a scene for me to pass my whole life in. But I have got my Wards so well off my hands, and they are so able to act for themselves, that I have little to do but give an hint, and all that I desire to be amended is altered accordingly. My design upon the whole is no less than to make the pulpit, the bar, and the stage, all act in concert in the care of piety, justice, and virtue; for I am past all the regards of this life, and have nothing to manage with any person or party, but to deliver myself as becomes an old man with one foot in the grave, and one who thinks he is passing to eternity. All sorrows which can arrive at me are comprehended in the sense of guilt and pain; if I can keep clear of these two evils, I shall not be apprehensive of any other, Ambition, lust, envy, and revenge, are excrescences of the mind, which I have cut off long ago: but as they are excrescences which do not only deform, but also torment those on whom they grow, I shall do all I can to persuade all others to take the same measures for their cure which I have. N° 2. FRIDAY, MARCH 13, 1713. THE readiest way to proceed in my great undertaking, is to explain who I am myself that promise to give the town a daily half-sheet: I shall therefore enter into my own history, without losing any time in preamble. I was born in the year 1642, at a lone house within half a mile of the town of Brentford, in the county of Middlesex; my parents were of ability to bestow upon me a liberal edu cation, and of an humour to think that a great happiness even in a fortune which was but just enough to keep me above want. In my sixteenth year I was admitted a commoner of Magdalen-hall in Oxford. It was one great advantage, among many more, which men educated at our universities do usually enjoy above others, that they often contract friendships there, which are of service to them in all the parts of their future life. This good fortune happened to me; for during the time of my being an under-graduate, I became intimately acquainted with Mr. Ambrose Lizard, who was a fellow-commoner of the neighbouring college. I have the honour to be well known to Mr. Josiah Pullen,* of our hall above-mentioned; and attribute the florid old age I now enjoy to my constant morning-walks up Hedington-hill, in his cheerful company. If the gentleman be still living, I hereby give him my humble service. But as I was going to say, I contracted in my early youth an intimate friendship with young Mr. Lizard, of Northamptonshire. He was sent for a little before he was of bachelor's standing, to be married to Mrs. Jane Lizard, an heiress, whose father would have it so for the sake of the name. Mr. Ambrose knew nothing of it till he came to Lizard-hall, on Saturday night, saw the young lady at dinner the next day, and was married, by order of his father sir Ambrose, between eleven and twelve the Tuesday following. Some years after, when my friend came to be sir Ambrose himself, and finding upon proof of her, that he had lighted upon a good wife, he gave the curate who joined their hands the parsonage of Welt, not far off Wellinborough.+ My friend was married in the year 62, and every year following, for eighteen years *See Wood's Athenæ Oxon. Vol. II. p. 215. edit. 1691. + This is a mixture of truth and fiction! A. VOL. XVI. together, I left the college (except that year wherein My good friend,' said he, 'you may have observed that from the first moment I was in your company at Mr. Willis's chambers at University college, I ever after sought and courted you: that inclination towards you has improved from similitude of manners, if I may so say, when I tell you I have not observed in any man a greater candour and simplicity of mind than in yourself. You are a man that are not inclined to launch into the world, but prefer security and ease in a collegiate or single life, to going into the cares which necessarily attend a public character, or that of a master of a family. You see within, my son Marmaduke, my only child; I have a thousand anxieties upon me concerning him, the greater part of which I would transfer to you, and when I do so, I would make it in plain English worth your while.' He would not let me speak, but proceeded to inform me, that he had laid the whole scheme of his affairs upon that foundation. As soon as we went into the house, he gave me a bill upon his goldsmith* in London, of two thousand pounds, and told me with that he had purchased me, with all the talents I was master of, to be # A banker was called a goldsmith in 1713. |