inordinate desires, and am married to a virtuous lovely woman, who neither wants wit nor goodnature, and by whom I have a numerous offspring to perpetuate my family, you will naturally conclude me a happy man. But notwithstanding these promising appearances, I am so far from it, that the prospect of being ruined and undone by a sort of extravagance, which of late years is in a less degree crept into every fashionable family, deprives me of all the comforts of my life, and renders me the most auxious, miserable man on earth. My wife, who was the only child and darling care of an indulgent mother, employed her early years in learning all those accomplishments we generally understand by good-breeding and polite education. She sings, dances, plays on the lute and harpsichord, paints prettily, is a perfect mistress of the French tongue, and has made considerable progress in Italian. She is besides excellently skilled in all domestic sciences, as preserving, pickling, pastry, making wines of fruits of our own growth, embroidering, and needleworks of every kind. Hitherto, you will be apt to think there is very little cause of complaint; but suspend your opinion till I have further explained myself, and then, I make no question, you will come over to mine. You are not to imagine I find fault that she either possesses or takes delight in the exercises of those qualifications I just now mentioned; 'tis the immoderate fondness she has to them that I lament, and that what is only designed for the innocent amusement and recreation of life is become the whole business and study of hers. The six months we are in town (for the year is equally divided between that and the country), from almost break of day till noon, the whole morning is laid out in practising with her several masters; and to make up the losses occasioned by her absence in

summer, every day in the week their attendance is required; aud as they are all people eminent in their professions, their skill and time must be recompensed accordingly. So how far these articles, extend, I leave you to judge. Limning, one would think, is no expensive diversion; but as she manages the matter, 'tis a very considerable addition to her disbursements, which you will easily believe, when you know she paints fans for all her female acquaintance, and draws all her relation's pictures in miniature: the first must be mounted by nobody but Colmar, and the other set by nobody but Charles Mather. What follows is still much worse than the former; for, as I told you she is a great artist at her needle, 'tis incredible what sums she expends in embroidery; for, besides what is appropriated to her personal use, as mantuas, petticoats, stomachers, hankerchiefs, purses, pin-cushions, and working-aprons, she keeps four French protestants continually employed in making divers pieces of superfluous furniture, as quilts, toilets, hangings for closets, beds, window-curtains, easy chairs, and tabourets; nor have I any hopes of ever reclaiming her from this extravagance, while she obstinately persists in thinking it a notable piece of good housewifery, because they are made at home, and she has had some share in the performance. There would be no end of relating to you the particulars of the annual charge, in furnishing her store-room with a profusion of pickles and preserves; for she is not contented with having every thing, unless it be done every way, in which she consults an hereditary book of receipts: for her female ancestors have been always famed for good housewifery, one of whom is made immortal, by giving her name to

* At the date of this paper, a noted toyman in Fleetstreet.

an eye-water and two sorts of puddings. I cannot undertake to recite all her medicinal preparations, as salves, sere-cloths, powders, confects, cordials, ratafia, persico, orange-flower, and cherrybrandy, together with innumerable sorts of simple waters. But there is nothing I lay so much to my heart as that detestable catalogue of counterfeit wines, which derive their names from the fruits, herbs or trees, of whose juices they are chiefly compounded. They are loathsome to the taste, and pernicious to the health; and as they seldom survive the year, and then are thrown away, under a false pretence of frugality, I may affirm they stand me in more than if I entertained all our visitors with the best burgundy and champaign. Coffee, chocolate, and green imperial, peco, and bohea teas, seem to be trifles; but when the proper appurtenances of the tea-table are added, they swell the account higher than one would imagine. . I cannot conclude without doing her justice in one article; where her frugality is so remarkable, I must not deny her the merit of it, and that is in relation to her children, who are all confined, both boys and girls, to one large room in the remotest part of the house, with bolts on the doors and bars to the windows, under the care and tuition of an old woman, who had been dry nurse to her grandmother. This is their residence all the year round; and, as they are never allowed, to appear, she prudently thinks it needless to be at any expense in apparel or learning. Her eldest daughter to this day would have neither read nor wrote, if it had not been for the butler, who, being the son of a country attorney, has taught her such a hand as is generally used for engrossing bills in Chancery. By this time I have sufficiently tired your patience with my domestic grievances: which I hope you will agree could

not well be contained in a narrower compass, when you consider what a paradox I undertook to maintain in the beginning of my epistle, and which manifestly appears to be but too melancholy a truth. And now I heartily wish the relation I have given of my misfortunes may be of use and benefit to the public. By the example I have set before them, the truly virtuous wives may learn to avoid these errors which have so unhappily misled mine, and which are visibly these three: First, in mistaking the proper objects of her esteem, and fixing her affections upon such things as are only the trappings and decorations of her sex. Secondly, in not distinguishing what becomes the different stages of life. And, lastly, the abuse and corruption of some excellent qualities, which, if circumscribed within just bounds, would have been the blessing and prosperity of her family; but, by a vicious extreme, are like to be the bane and destruction of it.'

T.

N° 328*. MONDAY, MARCH 17, 1711-12.

Delectata illa urbanitate tam stulta.

PETRON. ARB.

Delighted with unaffected plainness.

THAT useful part of learning which consists in emendations, knowledge of different readings, and

As many of our readers may be pleased to see, in puris naturalibus, the original paper in room of which the preceding number was very early substituted, and as this curiosity may now be inoffensively gratified, it is here faithfully reprinted from the copy in folio, in its order, marked as at first, No. 328,* only with the addition of an asterisk. It had the signature T. at the bottom; but see the desire annexed to the short letter in the following note, both which made the concluding part of No. 330 in the original publication of these papers in folio.

the like, is what in all ages persons extremely wise and learned have had in great veneration. For this reason I cannot but rejoice at the following epistle, which lets us into the true author of the letter to Mrs. Margaret Clark, part of which I did myself the honour to publish in a former paper. I must confess I do not naturally affect critical learning; but finding myself not so much regarded as I am apt to flatter myself I may deserve from some professed patrons of learning, I could not but do myself the justice to shew I am not a stranger to such erudition as they smile upon, if I were duly encouraged. However, this is only to let the world see what I could do; and shall not give my reader any more of this kind, if he will forgive the ostentation I shew at present.

SIR,

'March 13, 1711-12.

UPON reading your paper of yesterday, I took the pains to look out a copy I had formerly taken, and remembered to be very like your last letter comparing them, I found they were the very same; and have, underwritten, sent you that part of it which you say was torn off. I hope you will insert it, that posterity may know 'twas Gabriel Bullock that made love in that natural style of which you seem to be fond. But, to let you see I have other manuscripts in the same way, I have sent you inclosed three copies, faithfully taken by my own hand from the originals, which were wrote by a Yorkshire gentleman of a good estate to madam Mary, and an uncle of hers, a knight very well known by the most ancient gentry in that and several other counties of Great Britain. I have exactly followed the form and spelling. I have been credibly informed that Mr. William Bullock,