Hunters. I am now grown old, and hope you will. recommend me fo effectually, as that I may fay fomething before I go off the flage in which you will do a great act of charity to "Your most humble fervant, Mr. SPECTATOR, • WILLIAM SCRENE." UNDERSTANDING that Mr. Screne has writ to. you, and defired to be raised from dumb and still. parts; I defire, if you give him motion or speech, that · you would advance me in my way, and let me keep on in what I humbly prefume I am a mafter, to wit, in representing human and ftill life together. I have fe⚫veral times acted one of the finest flower-pots in the 'fame opera wherein Mr. Screne is a chair; therefore upon his promotion, request that I may fucceed him in. the hangings, with my hand in the orange-trees. Your humble fervant, • SIR, RALPH SIMPLE. Drury-Lane, March 24, 1710-11. SAW your friend the Templar this evening in the pit, and thought he looked very little pleafed with the representation of the mad fcene of the Pilgrim. I wish, Sir, you would do us the favour to animadvert frequently upon the false taste the town is in, with relation to plays as well as operas. It certainly requires · a degree of understanding to play justly; but fuch is · our condition, that we are to fufpend our reason to perform our parts. As to fcenes of madness, you know, Sir, there are noble inftances of this kind in Shakefpear; but then it is the disturbance of a noble mind, from generous and humane resentments; it is like that. grief which we have for the decease of our friends; it is no diminution, but a recommendation of human nature, that in fuch incidents paffion gets the better of reafon; and all we can think to comfort ourselves, is impotent against half what we feel. I will not mention that we had an idiot in the scene, and all the sense it is reprefented to have is that of luft. As for my'felf, who have long taken pains in perfonating the paf fions, I have to-night acted only an appetite. The part I play'd is thirit, but it is reprefented as written. rather by a dray-man than a poet. I come in with a tub about me, that tub hung with quart-pots, with a full gallon at my mouth. I am ashamed to tell you that I pleafed very much, and this was introduced as a madnels; but fure it was not human madness, for a mule or an ass may have been as dry as ever I was in my life. "I am, Sir, Mr. SPECTATOR, • Your most obedient and humble fervant.” From the Savoy in the Strand. IF you can read it with dry eyes, I give you this trouble to acquaint you, that I am the unfortunate king Latinus, and believe I am the first prince that dated from this palace fince John of Gaunt. Such is the uncertainty of all human greatness, that I, who lately never moved without a guard, am now preffed as a common foldier, and am to fail with the first fair wind against my brother Lewis of France. It is a very hard thing to put off a character which one has appeared in with applaufe; this I experienced fince the lofs of my diadem; for, upon quarrelling with another recruit, I fpoke my indignation out of my part in • recitativo; Moft audacious flave, "Dar'st thou an angry monarch's fury brave? • The words were no fooner out of my mouth, when a ferjeant knocked me down, and asked me if I had a • mind to mutiny, in talking things nobody understood. You fee, Sir, my unhappy circumftances; and if by your mediation you can procure a fubfidy for a prince (who never failed to make all that beheld him merry at < his appearance) you will merit the thanks of • Your friend, • The KING of LATIUM. "ADVERTISEMENT. "" FOR THE GOOD OF THE PUBLIC. "Within two doors of the Mafquerade lives an emi nent Italian Chirurgeon, arrived from the Carnival at " Venice, st "Venice, of great experience in private cures. Accom❝modations are provided, and perfons admitted in their mafquing habits. "He has cured fince his coming thither, in lefs than 66 a fortnight, four Scaramouches, a Mountebank Doctor. "" two Turkish Baflas, three Nuns, and a Morris-Dancer. "Venienti occurrite morbo. "N. B. Any perfon may agree by the great, and be 66 kept in repair by the year. The Doctor draws teeth "without pulling off your mafk." R N° 23 Tuesday, March 27. Sevit atrox Volfcens, nec teli confpicit ufquam VIRG. Æn. ix. 420. Fierce Volfcens foams with rage, and gazing round man. DRYDEN. HERE is nothing that more betrays a bafe unge man's reputation. Lampcons and fatires, that are written with wit and fpirit, are like poifoned darts, which not only inflict a wound, but make it incurable. For this reafon I am very much troubled when I fee the talents of humour and ridicule in the poffeffion of an ill-natured There cannot be a greater gratification to a barbarous and inhuman wit, than to ftir up forrow in the heart of a private perfon, to raife uneafinefs among near relations, and to expose whole families to derition, at the fame time that he remains unfeen and undiscovered. If, befides the accomplishments of being witty and illnatured, a man is vicious into the bargain, he is one of the most mifchievous creatures that can enter into a civil fociety. His fatire will then chiefly fall upon those who ought to be the most exempt from it. Virtue, merit, and and every thing that is praifeworthy, will be made the fubject of ridicule and buffoonry. It is impoffible to enumerate the evils which arife from these arrows that fly in the dark; and I know no other excufe that is or can be made for them, than that the wounds they give are only imaginary, and produce nothing more than a fecret fhame or forrow in the mind of the fuffering perfon. It must indeed be confefs'd, that a lampoon or fatire do not carry in them robbery or murder; but at the fame time, how many are there that would not rather lofe a confiderable fum of money, or even life itself, than be fet up as a mark of infamy and derifion? and in this cafe a man fhould confider, that an injury is not to be measured by the notions of him that gives, but of him who receives it. Those who can put the best countenance upon the outrages of this nature which are offered them, are not without their fecret anguish. I have often obferved a paffage in Socrates's behaviour at his death, in a light wherein none of the critics have confidered it. That excellent. man, entertaining his friends a little before he drank the bowl of poifon, with a difcourfe on the immortality of the foul, at his entering upon it, fays, that he does not believe any the moft comic genius can cenfure him for talking upon fuch a fubject at fuch a time. This paffage, I think, evidently glances upon Ariftophanes, who writ a comedy on purpose to ridicule the difcourfes of that divine philofopher. It has been obferved by many writers, that Socrates was fo little moved at this piece of buffoonry, that he was feveral times prefent at its being acted upon the ftage, and never expreffed the leaft refentment of it. But with fubmiffion, I think the remark I have here made fhews us, that this unworthy treatment made an impreffion upon his mind, though he had been too wife to difcover it. When Julius Cæfar was lampoon'd by Catullus, he invited him to a fupper, and treated him with fuch a generous civility, that he made the poet his friend ever after. Cardinal Mazarine gave the fame kind treatment to the learned Quillet, who had reflected upon his eminence in a famous Latin poem. The Cardinal fen: for him, and after fome kind expoftulations upon what he Ι had had written, affured him of his efteem, and difiniffed him with a promise of the next good abbey that should fall, which he accordingly conferred upon him in a few months after. This had fo good an effect upon the author, that he dedicated the fecond edition of his book to the Cardinal, after having expunged the paffages which had given him offence. Sextus Quintus was not of fo generous and forgiving a temper. Upon his being made Pope, the ftatue of Pafquin was one night dreffed in a very dirty fhirt, with an excufe written under it, that he was forced to wear foul linen, because his laundrefs was made a princefs. This was a reflection upon the Pope's fifter, who, before the promotion of her brother, was in thofe mean circumitances that Pafquin reprefented her. As this pafquinade made a great noife in Rome, the Pope offered a confiderable fum of money to any perfon that should discover the author of it. The author relying upon his Holiness's generofity, as alfo on fome private overtures which he bad received from him, made the discovery himself; upon which the Pope gave him the reward he had promifed, but at the fame time, to difable the fatirift for the future, ordered his tongue to be cut out, and both his hands to be chopped off. Aretine is too trite an instance. Every one knows that all the Kings in Europe were his tributaries. Nay, there is a letter of his extant, in which he makes his boasts that he had laid the Sophi of Persia under contribution. Though in the various examples which I have here drawn together, these feveral great men behaved themfelves very differently towards the wits of the age who had reproached them; they all of them plainly fhewed that they were very fenfible of their reproaches, and confequently that they received them as very great injuries. For my own part, I would never truft a man that I thought was capable of giving these fecret wounds; and cannot but think that he would hurt the perfon, whofe reputation he thus affaults, in his body or in his fortune, could he do it with the fame fecurity. There is indeed fomething very barbarous and inhuman in the ordinary fcribblers of lampoons. An innocent young lady fhall be expofed, for an unhappy feature. A fa |