manuals of devotion, nor of scorching their
faces with books of housewifery. Florilla
desires to know if there are any books writ-
ten against prudes, and entreats me, if
there are, to give them a place in my li-
brary. Plays of all sorts have their several
advocates: All for Love, is mentioned in
above fifteen letters; Sophonisba, or Han- No. 93.] Saturday, June 16, 1711.
nibal's Overthrow, in a dozen; The Inno-
cent Adultery is likewise highly approved
of; Mithridates, King of Pontus, has many
friends; Alexander the Great and Aureng-
zebe have the same number of voices; but
Theodosius, or the Force of Love, carries
it from all the rest.

would lead astray weak minds by their false
pretences to wit and judgment, humour and
gallantry, I shall not fail to lend the best
light I am able to the fair sex for the con-
tinuation of these their discoveries.

I should, in the last place, mention such books as have been proposed by men of learning, and those who appear competent judges of this matter, and must here take occasion to thank A. B. whoever it is that conceals himself under these two leters, for his advice upon this subject. But as I find the work I have undertaken to be very difficult, I shall defer the executing of it till I am further acquainted with the thoughts of my judicious contemporaries, and have time to examine the several books they offer to me: being resolved, in an affair of this moment, to proceed with the greatest

caution.

In the meanwhile, as I have taken the ladies under my particular care, I shall make it my business to find out in the best authors, ancient and modern, such passages as may be for their use, and endeavour to accommodate them as well as I can to their taste; not questioning but that the valuable part of the sex will easily pardon me, if from time to time I laugh at those little vanities and follies which appear in the behaviour of some of them, and which are more proper for ridicule than a serious censure. Most books being calculated for male readers, and generally written with an eye to men of learning, makes a work of this nature the more necessary; besides, I am the more encouraged, because I flatter myself that I see the sex daily improving by these my speculations. My fair readers are already deeper scholars than the beaux. I could name some of them who talk much better than several gentleman that make a figure at Will's; and as I frequently receive letters from the fine ladies and pretty fellows, I cannot but observe that the former are superior to the others, not only in the sense but in the spelling. This cannot but have a good effect upon the female world, and keep them from being charmed by those empty coxcombs that have hitherto been admired among the women, though laughed at among the men.

I am credibly informed that Tom Tattle passes for an impertinent fellow, that Will Trippet begins to be smoked, and that Frank Smoothly himself is within a month of a coxcomb, in case I think fit to continue this paper. For my part, as it is my business in some measure to detect such as

-Spatio brevi

L.

Spem longam reseces; dum loquimur, fugerit invida
Ætas; carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.
Hor. Lib. 1. Od. xi. 6.

Thy lengthen'd hopes with prudence bound
Proportion'd to the flying hour:
While thus we talk in careless case,

The envious moments wing their flight;
Instant the fleeting pleasure seize,

Nor trust to-morrow's doubtful light.

Francis.

WE all of us complain of the shortness of time, saith Seneca, and yet have much more than we know what to do with. Our lives, says he, are spent either in doing nothing at all, or in doing nothing to the purpose, or in doing nothing that we ought to do. We are always complaining our days are few, and acting as though there would be no end of them. That noble philosopher has described our inconsistency with ourselves in this particular, by all those various turns of expression and thought which are peculiar to his writings. I often consider mankind as wholly inconsistent with itself in a point that bears some affinity to the former. Though we seem grieved at the shortness of life in general, we are wishing every period of it at an end. The minor longs to be at age, then to be a man of business, then to make up an estate, then to arrive at honours, then to retire. Thus although the whole life is allowed by every one to be short, the several divisions of it appear long and tedious. We are for lengthening our span in general, but would fain contract the parts of which it is composed. The usurer would be very well satisfied to have all the time annihilated that lies between the present moment and the next quarter-day. The politician would be contented to lose three years in his life, could he place things in the posture which he fancies they will stand in after such a revolution of time. The lover would be glad to strike out of his existence all the moments that are to pass away before the happy meeting. Thus, as fast as our time runs, we should be very glad in most part of our lives that it ran much faster than it does. Several hours of the day hang upon our hands, nay, we wish away whole years; and travel through time as through a country filled with many wild and empty wastes, which we would fain hurry over, that we may arrive at those several little settlements or imaginary points of rest which are dispersed up and down in it.

If we divide the life of most men into twenty parts, we shall find that at least nineteen of them are mere gaps and chasms,

which are neither filled with pleasure nor | dead, and perhaps employs even the twenbusiness. I do not however include in this tieth to his ruin or disadvantage? But becalculation the life of those men who are in cause the mind cannot be always in its a perpetual hurry of affairs, but of those fervours, nor strained up to a pitch of vironly who are not always engaged in scenes tue, it is necessary to find out proper emof action; and I hope I shall not do an un-ployments for it in its relaxations. acceptable piece of service to these persons, if I point out to them certain methods for the filling up their empty spaces of life. The methods I shall propose to them are

as follow.

The next method therefore that I would propose to fill up our time, should be useful and innocent diversions. I must confess I think it is below reasonable creatures to be altogether conversant in such diversions as The first is the exercise of virtue, in the are merely innocent, and have nothing else most general acceptation of the word. That to recommend them, but that there is no particular scheme which comprehends the hurt in them. Whether any kind of gamSocial virtues, may give employment to the ing has even thus much to say for itself, I most industrious temper, and find a man in shall not determine; but I think it very business more than the most active station wonderful to see persons of the best sense in life. To advise the ignorant, relieve the passing away a dozen hours together in needy, comfort the afflicted, are duties that shuffling and dividing a pack of cards, with fall in our way almost every day of our no other conversation but what is made up lives. A man has frequent opportunities of a few game phrases, and no other ideas of mitigating the fierceness of a party; of but those of black or red spots ranged todoing justice to the character of a deserv-gether in different figures. Would not a ing man; of softening the envious, quieting man laugh to hear any one of this species the angry, and rectifying the prejudiced; complaining that life is short? which are all of them employments suited to a reasonable nature, and bring great satisfaction to the person who can busy himself in them with discretion.

The stage might be made a perpetual source of the most noble and useful entertainments, were it under proper regulations.

But the mind never unbends itself so agreeably as in the conversation of a wellchosen friend. There is indeed no blessing of life that is in any way comparable to the enjoyment of a discreet and virtuous friend. It eases and unloads the mind, clears and improves the understanding, engenders thoughts and knowledge, animates virtue and good resolutions, soothes and allays the passions, and finds employment for most of the vacant hours of life.

There is another kind of virtue that may find employment for those retired hours in which we are altogether left to ourselves, and destitute of company and conversation; I mean that intercourse and communication which every reasonable creature ought to maintain with the great Author of his being. The man who lives under an habitual sense of the divine presence keeps up a perpetual cheerfulness of temper, and enjoys every moment the satisfaction of thinking himself in company with his dearest and best of friends The time never lies heavy upon him; it is impossible for him to be alone. His thoughts and passions are the most busied at such hours when those of other men are the most unactive. He no sooner steps out of the world but his heart burns There are many other useful amusewith devotion, swells with hope, and tri-ments of life which one would endeavour umphs in the consciousness of that presence which every where surrounds him; or on the contrary, pours out its fears, its sorrows, its apprehensions, to the great supporter of his existence.

I have here only considered the necessity of a man's being virtuous, that he may have something to do; but if we consider further, that the exercise of virtue is not only an amusement for the time it lasts, but that its influence extends to those parts of our existence which lie beyond the grave, and that our whole eternity is to take its colour from those hours which we here employ in virtue or in vice, the argument redoubles upon us, for putting in practice this method of passing away our time.

When a man has but a little stock to improve, and has opportunities of turning it all to good account, what shall we think of him if he suffers nineteen parts of it to lie

Next to such an intimacy with a particular person, one would endeavour after a more general conversation with such as are able to entertain and improve those with whom they converse, which are qualifications that seldom go asunder.

to multiply, that one might on all occasions have recourse to something, rather than suffer the mind to lie idle, or run adrift with any passions that chance to rise in it.

A man that has a taste of music, painting, or architecture, is like one that has another sense, when compared with such as have no relish of those arts. The florist, the planter, the gardener, the husbandman, when they are only as accomplishments to the man of fortune, are great reliefs to a country life, and many ways useful to these who are possessed of them.

But of all the diversions of life, there is none so proper to fill up its empty spaces as the reading of useful and entertaining authors. But this I shall only touch upon, because it in some measure interferes with the third method, which I shall propose in another paper, for the employment of our dead unactive hours, and which I shall only

mention in general to be the pursuit of subjects, or by entertaining a quick and knowledge.

We might carry this thought further, and consider a man as, on one side, shorten- *This story is not to be found in the Alcoran, nor ing his time by thinking on nothing, or but can I meet with any life of the prophet where it is told a few things; so on the other, as lengthen-Critical History of the Belief of the Eastern Nations, in these words; there is something like it in Simon's ing it, by employing his thoughts on many but it is less particular.

No. 95.] Tuesday, June 19, 1711.

L.

craft; but at length, knowing it was in vain | beautiful and spacious landscape divided to be angry, he set himself to think on pro-into delightful gardens, green meadows, per methods for getting a livelihood in this fruitful fields, and can scarce cast his eye strange country. Accordingly he applied on a single spot of his possessions, that is himself to some people whom he saw at not covered with some beautiful plant or work in a neighbouring wood: these peo-flower. ple conducted him to a town that stood at a little distance from the wood, where after some adventures, he married a woman of great beauty and fortune. He lived with this woman so long, that he had by her seven sons and seven daughters. He was afterwards reduced to great want, and forced to think of plying in the streets as a porter for his livelihood. One day as he was walking alone by the sea-side, being seized with many melancholy reflections upon his former and his present state of life, which had raised a fit of devotion in him, he threw off his clothes with a design to wash himself, according to the custom of the Mahometans, before he said his prayers.

After his first plunge into the sea, he no

sooner raised his head above the water but he found himself standing by the side of the tub, with the great men of his court about him, and the holy man at his side. He immediately upbraided his teacher for having sent him on such a course of adventures, and betrayed him into so long a state of misery and servitude; but was wonderfully surprised when he heard that the state he talked of was only a dream and a delusion; that he had not stirred from the place where he then stood; and that he had only dipped his head into the water, and immediately taken it out again.

The Mahometan doctor took this occasion of instructing the sultan, that nothing was impossible with God; and that He, with whom a thousand years are but as one day, can, if he pleases, make a single day, nay, a single moment, appear to any of his creatures as a thousand years.

I shall leave my reader to compare these eastern fables with the notions of those two great philosophers whom I have quoted in this paper; and shall only, by way of application, desire him to consider how we may extend life beyond its natural dimensions, by applying ourselves diligently to the pursuits of knowledge.

The hours of a wise man are lengthened by his ideas, as those of a fool are by his passions. The time of the one is long, because he does not know what to do with it; so is that of the other, because he distinguishes every moment of it with useful or amusing thoughts; or, in other words, because the one is always wishing it away, and the other always enjoying it.

How different is the view of past life, in the man who is grown old in knowledge and wisdom, from that of him who is grown old in ignorance and folly! The latter is like the owner of a barren country, that fills his eve with the prospect of naked hills and plains, which produce nothing either profitable or ornamental; the other beholds a

Curæ leves loquuntur, ingentes stupent.--Seneca Trag
Light sorrows loose the tongue, but great enchain.—P

HAVING read the two following letters with much pleasure, I cannot but think the good sense of them will be as agreeable to the town as any thing I could say either on the topics they treat of, or any other; they both allude to former papers of mine, and I do not question but the first, which is upon inward mourning, will be thought the production of a man who is well acquainted manly temper, which is above the relief of with the generous yearnings of distress in a subject I shall defer till another occasion. tears. A speculation of my own on that

The second letter is from a lady of a mind as great as her understanding. There is perhaps something in the beginning of it which I ought in modesty to conceal; but I have so much esteem for this correspon dent, that I will not alter a tittle of what she writes, though I am thus scrupulous at the price of being ridiculous.

'MR. SPECTATOR,-I was very well pleased with your discourse upon general mourning, and should be obliged to you if you would enter into the matter more deeply, and give us your thoughts upon the common sense the ordinary people have of the demonstrations of grief, who prescribe rules and fashions to the most solemn affliction; such as the loss of the nearest relations and dearest friends. You cannot go to visit a sick friend, but some impertinent waiter about him observes the muscles of your face, as strictly as if they were prognostics of his death or recovery. If he happens to be taken from you, you are immediately surrounded with numbers of these spectators, who expect a melancholy shrug of your shoulders, a pathetical shake of your head, and an expressive distortion of your face, to measure your affection and value for the deceased. But there is nothing, on these occasions, so much in their favour as immoderate weeping. As all their passions are superficial, they imagine the seat of love and friendship to be placed visibly in the eyes. They judge what stock of kindness you had for the living, by the quantity of tears you pour out for the dead; so that if one body wants that quantity of saltwater another abounds with, he is in great danger of being thought insensible or illnatured. They are strangers to friendship whose grief happens not to be moist enough to wet such a parcel of handkerchiefs. But experience has told us, nothing is so

fallacious as this outward sign of sorrow; and the natural history of cur bodies will teach us that this flux of the eyes, this faculty of weeping, is peculiar only to some constitutions. We observe in the tender bodies of children, when crossed in their little wills and expectations, how dissolvable they are into tears. If this were what grief is in men, nature would not be able to support them in the excess of it for one moment. Add to this observation, how quick is their transition from this passion to that of their joy! I will not say we see often, in the next tender things to children, tears shed without much grieving. Thus it is common to shed tears without much sorrow, and as common to suffer much sorrow without shedding tears. Grief and weeping are indeed frequent companions: but, I believe, never in their highest excesses. As laughter does not proceed from profound joy, so neither does weeping from profound sorrow. The sorrow which appears so easily at the eyes, cannot have pierced deeply into the heart. The heart distended with grief, stops all the passages for tears or lamentations.

"Now, sir, what I would incline you to in all this is, that you would inform the shallow critics and observers upon sorrow, that true affliction labours to be invisible, that it is a stranger to ceremony, and that it bears in its own nature a dignity much above the little circumstances which are affected under the notion of decency. You must know, sir, I have lately lost a dear friend, for whom I have not yet shed a tear, and for that reason your animadversions on that subject would be the more acceptable to, sir, your most humble servant,

'B. D.'

than the beaux, and that you could name some of them that talk much better than several gentlemen that make a figure at Will's. This may possibly be, and no great compliment, in my opinion, even supposing your comparison to reach Tom's and the Grecian. Surely you are too wise to think that the real commendation of a woman. Were it not rather to be wished we improved in our own sphere, and approved ourselves better daughters, wives, mothers, and friends?

I cannot but agree with the judicious trader in Cheapside (though I am not at all prejudiced in his favour) in recommending the study of arithmetic; and must dissent even from the authority which you mention, when it advises the making of our sex scholars. Indeed a little more philosophy, in order to the subduing our passions to our reason, might be sometimes serviceable, and a treatise of that nature I should approve of, even in exchange for Theodosius, or the Force of Love; but as I well know you want not hints, I will proceed no further than to recommend the Bishop of Cambray's Education of a Daughter, as it is translated into the only language I have any knowledge of, though perhaps very much to its disadvantage. I have heard it objected against that piece, that its instructions are not of general use, but only fitted for a great lady; but I confess I am not of that opinion; for I do not remember that there are any rules laid down for the expenses of a woman, in which particular only I think a gentlewoman ought to differ froin a lady of the best fortune, or highest quality, and not in their principles of justice, gratitude, sincerity, prudence, or modesty. I ought perhaps to make an apology for this long epistle; but as I rather believe you a friend to sincerity, than ceremony, shall only assure you I am, sir, your humble servant,

T.

'ANNABELLA.'

Amicum

Mancipium domino, et frugi

'June the 15th. 'MR. SPECTATOR,-As I hope there are but few who have so little gratitude as not to acknowledge the usefulness of your pen, and to esteem it a public benefit; so I am sensible, be that as it will, you must nevertheless find the secret and incomparable No. 96.] Wednesday, June 20, 1711. pleasure of doing good, and be a great sharer in the entertainment you give. I acknowledge our sex to be much obliged, and I hope improved by your labours, and even your intentions more particularly for our service. If it be true, as it is sometimes said, that our sex have an influence on the other, your paper may be yet a more general good. Your directing us to reading, is certainly the best means to our instruction; but I think, with you, caution in that particular very useful, since the improvement of our understandings may, or may not, be of service to us, according as it is managed. It has been thought we are not generally so ignorant as ill-taught, or that our sex does not so often want wit, judgment, or knowledge, as the right application of them. You are so well-bred, as to say your fair readers are already deeper scholars

Hor. Lib. 2. Sat. vii. 2. -The faithful servant, and the true.-Creech. MR. SPECTATOR,-I have frequently read your discourse upon servants, and as I am one myself, have been much offended, that in that variety of forms wherein you considered the bad, you found no place to mention the good. There is however one observation of yours I approve, which is, "That there are men of wit and good sense among all orders of men, and that servants report most of the good or ill which is spoken of their masters.' That there are men of sense who live in servitude, I have the vanity to say I have felt to my woful experience. You attribute very justly the source of our general iniquity to board