But there was one prepossession, which I confess to have parted with, much to my regret: I mean the opinion of that native honesty and simplicity of manners, which I had always imagined to be inherent in country people. I soon observed it was with them and us, as they say of animals; that every species at land has one to resemble it at sea; for it was easy to discover the seeds and principles of every vice and folly that one meets with in the more known world, though shooting up in different forms. I took a fancy, out of the several inhabitants round, to furnish the camp, the bar, and the Exchange, and some certain chocolate and coffee-houses, with exact parallels to what, in many instances, they already produce. There was a drunken quarrelsome smith, whom I have a hundred times fancied at the head of a troop of dragoons. A weaver, within two doors of my kinsman, was perpetually setting neighbours together by the ears. I lamented to see how his talents were misplaced, and imagined what a figure he might make in Westminster-hall. Goodman Crop, of Compton farm, wants nothing but a plum and a gold chain, to qualify him for the government of the city. My kinsman's stable-boy was a gibing companion, that would always have his jest. He would often put cowitch in the maid's bed, pull stools from under folks, and lay a coal upon their shoes when they were asleep. He was at last turned off for some notable piece of roguery; and, when I came away, was loitering among the alehouses, Bless me, thought I, what a prodigious wit would this have been with us! I could have matched all the sharpers between St James's and Covent Garden, with a notable fellow in the same neighbourhood (since hanged for picking pockets at fairs), could he have had the advantages

of their education. So nearly are the corruptions of the country allied to those of the town, with no farther difference than what is made by another turn of thought and method of living!

THE TATLER, No. V.

Laceratque, trahitque

Molle pecus.

VIRG.

SATURDAY, JANUARY 27, 1710-11.

AMONG other services I have met with from some critics, the cruellest for an old man is, that they will not let me be at quiet in my bed, but pursue me to my very dreams. I must not dream but when they please, nor upon long continued subjects, however visionary in their own natures, because there is a manifest moral quite through them, which to produce as a dream is improbable and unnatural. The pain I might have had from this objection, is prevented, by considering they have missed another, against which I should have been at a loss to defend myself. They might have asked me whether the dreams I publish can properly be called lucubrations, which is the name I have given to all my papers, whether in volumes or half sheets: so manifest a contradiction in terninis, that I wonder no sophister ever thought of

it. But the other is a cavil. I remember, when I was a boy at school, I have often dreamed out the whole passages of a day; that I rode a journey, baited, supped, went to bed, and rose next morning and I have known young ladies, who could dream a whole texture of adventures in one night, large enough to make a novel. In youth the imagination is strong, not mixed with cares, nor tinged with those passions that most disturb and confound it: such as avarice, ambition, and many others. Now, as old men are said to grow children again, so, in this article of dreaming, I am returned to my childhood. My imagination is at full ease, without care, avarice, or ambition to clog it; by which, among many others, I have this advantage, of doubling the small remainder of my time, and living four and twenty hours in the day. However, the dream I am now going to relate, is as wild as can well be imagined, and adapted to please these refiners upon sleep, without any moral that I can discover.

"It happened, that my maid left on the table in my bedchamber one of her storybooks (as she calls them) which I took up, and found full of strange impertinence, fitted to her taste and condition; of poor servants who came to be ladies, and serving men of low degree who married king's daughters. Among other things, I met this sage observation, That a lion would never hurt a true virgin. With this medley of nonsense in my fancy, I went to bed, and dreamed that a friend waked me in the morning, and proposed for pastime to spend a few hours in seeing the parish lions, which he had not done since he came to town; and because they showed but once a week, he would not miss the opportunity. I said I would humour

him; although, to speak the truth, I was not fond of those cruel spectacles; and, if it were not so ancient a custom, founded (as I had heard) upon the wisest maxims, I should be apt to censure the inhumanity of those who introduced it."

All this will be a riddle to the waking reader, until I discover the scene my imagination had formed upon this maxim, That a lion would never hurt a true virgin. "I dreamed, that by a law of immemorial time, a he lion was kept in every parish at the common charge, and in a place provided adjoining to the churchyard; that before any one of the fair sex was married, if she affirmed herself to be a virgin, she must on her wedding day, and in her wedding clothes, perform the ceremony of going alone into the den, and stay an hour with the lion, let loose and kept fasting four and twenty hours on purpose. At a proper height above the den were convenient galleries for the relations and friends of the young couple, and open to all spectators. No maiden was forced to offer herself to the lion; but, if she refused, it was a disgrace to marry her, and every one might have liberty of calling her a whore. And methought it was as usual a diversion to see the parish lions, as with us to go to a play or an opera. And it was reckoned convenient to be near the church, either for marrying the virgin, if she escaped the trial, or for burying her bones, when the lion had devoured the rest, as he constantly did."

To go on therefore with the dream: "We called first (as I remember) to see St Dunstan's lion: but we were told they did not show to-day. From thence we went to that of Covent Garden, which, to my great surprise, we found as lean as a skeleton, when I expected quite the contrary; but the keeper said it was no wonder at all, because the

poor beast had not got an ounce of woman's flesh since he came into the parish. This amazed me more than the other, and I was forming to myself a mighty veneration for the ladies in that quarter of the town, when the keeper went on, and said he wondered the parish would be at the charge of maintaining a lion for nothing. Friend (said I), do you call it nothing to justify the virtue of so many ladies; or has your lion lost his distinguishing faculty? can there be any thing more for the honour of your parish, than that all the ladies married in your church were pure virgins? That is true (said he), and the doctor knows it to his sorrow; for there has not been a couple married in our church since his worship came among us. The virgins hereabouts are too wise to venture the claws of the lion; and, because nobody will marry them, have all entered into a vow of virginity; so that in proportion we have much the largest nunnery in the whole town. This manner of ladies entering into a vow of virginity, because they were not virgins, I easily conceived; and my dream told me, that the whole kingdom was full of nunneries plentifully stocked from the same reason.

"We went to see another lion, where we found much company met in the gallery. The keeper told us we should see sport enough, as he called it; and in a little time we saw a young beautiful lady put into the den, who walked up toward the lion with all imaginable security in her countenance, and looked smiling upon her lover and friends in the gallery; which I thought nothing extraordinary, because it was never known that any lion had been mistaken. But, however, we were all disappointed, for the lion lifted up his right paw, which was the fatal sign, and advancing forward, seized her by the arm, and began to