I entirely agree with the amiable and unfortunate Lesbia, that an insult upon a woman in her circumstances is as infamous in a man, as a tame behaviour when the lie or a buffet is given: which truth I shall beg leave of her to illustrate by the following observation.

It is a mark of cowardice passively to forbear resenting an 'affront, the resenting of which would lead a man into danger; it is no less a sign of cowardice to affront a creature that hath not power to avenge itself. Whatever name therefore this ungenerous man may bestow on the helpless lady he hath injured, I shall not scruple to give him, in return for it, the appellation of coward.

was surprised to find it open, and a glimmering light in the church. He had the courage to advance towards the light; but was terribly startled at the sight of a woman in white, who ascended from a grave with a bloody knife in her hand. The phantom marched up to him, and asked him what he did there. He told her the truth, without reserve, believing that he had met a ghost; upon which she spoke to him in the following manner: 'Stranger, thou art in my power: I am a murderer as thou art. Know then that I am a nun of a noble family. A base perjured man undid me, and boasted of it. I soon had him despatched; but not content with the murder, I have bribed the sexton to let me enter his grave, and have now plucked out his false heart from his body; and thus I use a traitor's heart.' At these words she tore it in pieces and trampled it under her feet.

A man that can so far descend from his dignity, as to strike a lady, can never recover his reputation with either sex, because no provocation is thought strong enough to justify such treatment from the powerful towards the weak. In the circumstances in which poor Lesbia is situat- No. 612.] Wednesday, October 27, 1714. ed, she can appeal to no man whatsoever to avenge an insult more grievous than a blow. If she could open her mouth, the base man knows that a husband, a brother, a generous friend, would die to see her righted.

A generous mind, however enraged against an enemy, feels its resentments sink and vanish away when the object of its wrath falls into its power. An estranged friend, filled with jealousy and discontent towards a bosom acquaintance, is apt to overflow with tenderness and remorse, when a creature that was once dear to him undergoes any misfortune. What name then shall we give to his ingratitude, (who forgetting the favours he solicited with eagerness, and received with rapture) can insult the miseries that he himself caused, and make sport with the pain to which he owes his greatest pleasure? There is but one being in the creation whose province it is to practise upon the imbecilities of frail creatures, and triumph in the woes which his own artifices brought about; and we well know those who follow his example

will receive his reward.

Leaving my fair correspondent to the direction of her own wisdom and modesty; and her enemy, and his mean accomplices, to the compunction of their own hearts; I shall conclude this paper with a memorable instance of revenge, taken by a Spanish lady upon a guilty lover, which may serve to show what violent effects are wrought by the most tender passion, when soured into hatred; and may deter the young and unwary from unlawful love. The story, however romantic it may appear, I have heard affirmed for a truth.

Murranum hic, atavos et avorum antiqua sonantem
Nomina, per regesque actum genus omne Latinos,
Præcipitem scopulo, atque ingentis turbine saxi
Excutit effunditque solo- Virg. Æn. xii. 529.
Murranus, boasting of his blood, that springs
From a long royal race of Latin kings,
Is by the Trojan from his chariot thrown,
Crush'd with the weight of an unwieldy stone.

Dryden.

IT is highly laudable to pay respect to men who are descended from worthy ancestors, not only out of gratitude to those who have done good to mankind, but as it is an encouragement to others to follow their example. But this is an honour to be received, not demanded, by the descendants of great men; and they who are apt to remind us of their ancestors only put us upon making comparisons to their own disadvantage. There is some pretence for boasting of wit, beauty, strength, or wealth, because the communication of them may give pleasure or profit to others; but we can have no merit, nor ought we to claim any respect, because our fathers acted well, whether we would or no.

The following letter ridicules the folly I have mentioned in a new, and I think, not disagreeable light,

'MR. SPECTATOR,-Were the genealogy of every family preserved, there would probably be no man valued or despised on account of his birth. There is scarce a beggar in the streets, who would not find himself lineally descended from some great man; nor any one of the highest title, who would not discover several base and indigent persons among his ancestors. It would be a pleasant entertainment to see one pedigree of men appear together, under the Not many years ago an English gentle- same characters they bore when they acted man, who, in a rencounter by night in the their respective parts among the living. streets of Madrid, had the misfortune to Suppose, therefore, a gentleman, full of his kill his man, fled into a church-porch for illustrious family, should in the same mansanctuary. Leaning against the door, helner Virgil makes Æneas look over his de

scendants, see the whole line of his pro-ing sheep. The expectations of my good genitors pass in review before his eyes- cousin were wonderfully raised by a marc with how many varying passions would he into the family of a knight; but und behold shepherds and soldiers, statesmen tunately for us this branch proved barren and artificers, princes and beggars, walk in on the other hand, Margery the milk-i the procession of five thousand years! How being twined round a bough, it flourished would his heart sink or flutter at the seve out into so many shoots, and bent with s ral sports of fortune, in a scene so diversi- much fruit, that the old gentleman was fied with rags and purple, handicraft tools quite out of countenance. To comimt me and sceptres, ensigns of dignity, and em- under this disgrace, he singled out a brach blems of disgrace! And how would his ten times more fruitful than the or, fears and apprehensions, his transports and which he told me he valued more than er mortifications, succeed one another, as the in the tree, and bade me be of good g line of his genealogy appeared bright or fort. This enormous bough was a graf obscure! of a Welsh heiress, with so many AD'S upon it, that it might have made a le grove by itself. From the trunk of the pede grec, which was chiefly composed & lbourers and shepherds, arose a huge spend of farmers: this was branched out intɔ̃vecman, and ended in a sheriff of the county, who was knighted for his good service to the crown in bringing up an address. Sereral of the names that seemed to disparage the family, being looked upon as mistakes, were lopped off as rotten or withered; as, on the contrary, no small number appear ing without any titles, my cousin, to supply the defects of the manuscript, added eng. at the end of each of them.

In most of the pedigrees hung up in old mansion-houses, you are sure to find the first in the catalogue a great statesman, or a soldier with an honourable commission. The honest artificer that begot him, and all his frugal ancestors before him, are torn off from the top of the register; and you are not left to imagine that the noble founder of the family ever had a father. Were we to trace many boasted lines farther backwards, we should lose them in a mob of tradesmen, or a crowd of rustics, without hope of seeing them emerge again: not unlike the old Appian way, which, after having run many miles in length, loses itself in a bog.

I lately made a visit to an old country gentleman, who is very far gone in this sort of family madness. I found him in his study perusing an old register of his family, which he had just then discovered as it was branched out in the form of a tree, upon a skin of parchment. Having the honour to have some of his blood in my veins, he permitted me to cast my eyes over the boughs of this venerable plant; and asked my advice in the reforming of some of the superfluous branches.

This tree, so pruned, dressed and cultivated, was, within a few days, transplanted into a large sheet of vellum, and placed in the great hall, where it attracts the veneration of his tenants every Sunday morning, while they wait until his worship is rear to go to church; wondering that a man who had so many fathers before him should I be made a knight, or at least a justice of the peace.'

No. 613.]

As

Friday, October 29, 1714 We passed slightly over three or four of our immediate forefathers, whom we Stadiis florentem ignobilis eti. Virg. Georg in 368 knew by tradition, but were soon stopped Affecting studies of less noisy praise-Dryim. by an alderman of London, who I perceived made my kinsman's heart go pit-a-pat. It is reckoned a piece of ill-bročne fr His confusion increased when he found the one man to engross the whole talk to him alderman's father to be a grazier; but he self. For this reason, since I keep three recovered his fright upon seeing justice of visiting-days in the week, I am catt pow the quorum at the end of his titles. Things and then to let my friends put in a wed. went on pretty well as we threw cur eves There are several advantages hereoccasionally over the tree, when unfor- cruing both to my readers and myse tunately he perceived a merchant-tailor first, young and modest writers have perched on a bough, who was said greatly portunity of getting into print; acin, thi to have increased the estate; he was just town enjoys the pleasures of variet going to cut him off if he had not seen gent. posterity will see the humour of the prese after the name of his son; who was record-age, by the help of these lights late pri ed to have mortgaged one of the manors his and domestic life. The benefits I rec honest father had purchased. A weaver, from thence are such as these: I gain me who was burnt for his religion in the reign time for future speculations: pick up tits of queen Mary, was pruned away without which I improve for the public good; give mercy; as was likewise a yeoman, who advice; redress grievances; and, by died of a fall from his own cart. But great ing commodious spaces between the several was our triumph in one of the blood who letters that I print, furnish out a Spectator, was beheaded for high treason: which ne- with little labour and great ostentation vertheless was not a little allayed by another] 'MR. SPECTATOR-I was mightily plea of our ancestors who was hanged for steal-ed with your speculation of Friday. Your

sentiments are noble, and the whole worked | man who has a heart one degree softer than
up in such a manner as cannot but strike
upon every reader. But give me leave to
make this remark; that while you write so
pathetically on contentment, and a retired
life, you sooth the passion of melancholy,
and depress the mind from actions truly
glorious. Titles and honours are the re-
ward of virtue; we therefore ought to be
affected with them; and though light minds
are too much puffed up with exterior pomp,
yet I cannot see why it is not as truly phi-
losophical to admire the glowing ruby, or
the sparkling green of an emerald, as the
fainter and less permanent beauties of a
rose or a myrtle. If there are men of extra-
ordinary capacities, who lie concealed from
the world, I should impute it to them as a
blot in their characters, did not I believe it
owing to the meanness of their fortune ra-
ther than of their spirit. Cowley, who tells
the story of Aglaus with so much pleasure,
was no stranger to courts, nor insensible of
praise.

"What shall I do to be for ever known,

And make the age to come my own?"

was the result of a laudable ambition. It
was not until after frequent disappoint-
ments that he termed himself the melan-
choly Cowley; and he praised solitude when
he despaired of shining in a court. The
soul of man is an active principle. He,
therefore, who withdraws himself from the
scene before he has played his part, ought|
to be hissed off the stage, and cannot be
deemed virtuous, because he refuses to an-
swer his end. I must own I am fired with
an honest ambition to imitate every illus-
trious example. The battles of Blenheim
and Ramilies have more than once made
me wish myself a soldier. And, when I
have seen those actions so nobly celebrated
by our poets, I have secretly aspired to be
one of that distinguished class. But in vain
I wish, in vain I pant with the desire of ac-
tion. I am chained down in obscurity, and
the only pleasure I can take is in seeing so
many brighter geniuses join their friendly
lights to add to the splendour of the throne.
Farewell, then, dear Spec, and believe me
to be with great emulation, and no envy,
your professed admirer,

'WILL HOPELESS.'

Middle-Temple, Oct. 26, 1714.
'SIR,-Though you have formerly made
eloquence the subject of one or more of
your papers, I do not remember that you
ever considered it as possessed by a set of
people, who are so far from making Quin-
tilian's rules their practice, that, I dare
say for them, they never heard of such an
author, and yet are no less masters of it
than Tully or Demosthenes among the an-
cients, or whom you please among the mo-
derns. The persons I am speaking of are
our common beggars about this town; and,
that what I say is true, I appeal to any
VOL. II.

52

a stone. As for my part, who do not pre-
tend to more humanity than my neighbours,
I have oftentimes gone from my chambers
with money in my pocket, and returned to
them not only pennyless, but destitute of a
farthing, without bestowing of it any other
way than on these seeming objects of pity.
In short, I have seen more eloquence in a
look from one of these despicable creatures
than in the eye of the fairest she I ever
saw, yet no one a greater admirer of that
sex than myself. What I have to desire of
you is, to lay down some directions in order
to guard against these powerful orators, or
else I know nothing to the contrary but I
must myself be forced to leave the profes-
sion of the law, and endeavour to get the
qualifications necessary to that more profit-
able one of begging. But, in whichsoever
of these two capacities I shine, I shall al-
ways desire to be your constant reader, and
ever will be your most humble servant,
'J. B.'

SIR,-Upon reading a Spectator last week, where Mrs. Fanny Fickle submitted the choice of a lover for life to your decisive determination, and imagining I might claim the favour of your advice in an affair of the like, but much more difficult nature, I called for pen and ink, in order to draw the characters of seven humble servants, whom I have equally encouraged for some time. But, alas! while I was reflecting on the agreeable subject, and contriving an advantageous description of the dear person I was most inclined to favour, I happened to look into my glass. The sight of the smallpox, out of which I am just recovered, tor mented me at once with the loss of my captivating arts and my captives. The confusion I was in, on this unhappy, unseasonable discovery, is inexpressible. Believe me, sir, I was so taken up with the thoughts of your fair correspondent's case, and so intent on my own design, that I fancied myself as triumphant in my conquests as ever.

'Now, sir, finding I was incapacitated to amuse myself on that pleasing subject, I resolved to apply myself to you, or your casuistical agent, for advice in my present circumstances. I am sensible the tincture of my skin, and the regularity of my features, which the malice of my late illness has altered, are irrecoverable; yet do not despair but that that loss by your assistance, may, in some measure, be repairable, if you will please to propose a way for the recovery of one only of my fugitives.

One of them is in a more particular manner beholden to me than the rest; he, for some private reasons, being desirous to be a lover incognito, always addressed me with a billet-doux, which I was so careful of in my sickness, that I secured the key of my love magazine under my head, and, hearing a noise of opening a lock in my chamber, endangered my life by getting out

of bed, to prevent, if it had been attempted, the discovery of that amour.

promise of marriage to Philander, made during her husband's life?

Q. Whether Sempronia, having faithfully given a promise to two several persons during the last sickness of her husband. is not thereby left at liberty to choose which of them she pleases, or to reject them both for the sake of a new lover?

'Cleora asks me, whether she be chéged to continue single according to a vow made to her husband at the time of his presenting her with a diamond necklace; she bong mformed by a very pretty young fellow, of a good conscience, that such vows are in their nature sinful?

I have formerly made use of all those artifices which our sex daily practise over yours, to draw, as it were, undesignedly, the eyes of a whole congregation to my pew; I have taken a pride in the number of admirers at my afternoon levee; but am now quite another creature. I think, could I regain the attractive influence I once had, if I had a legion of suitors, I should never be ambitious of entertaining more than one. I have almost contracted an antipathy to the trifling discourses of impertinent lovers; though I must needs own I have thought it very odd of late to hear gentlemen, instead Another inquires, whether she hath wt of their usual complaisances, fall into dis-the right of widowhood, to dispose of her putes before me of politics, or else weary self to a gentleman of great merit, wi me with the tedious repetition of how presses very hard; her husband being irrethankful I ought to be, and satisfied with coverably gone in a consumption? my recovery out of so dangerous a distemper: this, though I am very sensible of the blessing, yet I cannot but dislike, because such advice from them rather seems to insult than comfort me, and reminds me too much of what I was: which melancholy consideration I cannot yet perfectly surmount, but hope your sentiments on this head will make it supportable.

To show you what a value I have for your dictates, these are to certify the persons concerned, that unless one of them returns to his colours, if I may so call them now, before the winter is over, I will voluntarily confine myself to a retirement, where I will punish them all with my needle. I will be revenged on them by decyphering them on a carpet, humbly begging admittance, myself scornfully refusing it. If you disapprove of this, as savouring too much of malice, be pleased to acquaint me with a draught you like better, and it shall be faithfully performed, by the unfortunate 'MONIMIA.'

-Were I not resolved against the yoke
Of hapless marriage; never to be curs'd
With second love, so fatal was the first,
To this one error I might yield again.-Dryden.
THE following account hath been trans-
mitted to me by the love casuist.

'An unreasonable creature hath the crefidence to ask, whether it be proper for her to marry a man who is younger than her eldest son?

A scrupulous well-spoken matron, who gives me a great many good words, only doubts whether she is not obliged, in cone science, to shut up her two marriageable daughters, until such time as she hath comfortably disposed of herself?

'Sophronia, who seems by her phrase and spelling to be a person of condition, sets forth, that whereas she hath a great estate, and is but a woman, she desires to be informed whether she would not do prudestly to marry Camillus, a very idle tall young fellow, who hath no fortune of his own, and consequently hath nothing else to do but to manage hers?'

Before I speak of widows, I cannot bet observe one thing, which I do not know how to account for; a widow is always more sought after than an old maid of the same age. It is common enough among ordinary people, for a stale virgin to set up a shop in a place where she is not known; where the large thumb-ring, supposed to be given by her husband, quickly recommends her to some wealthy neighbour, who takes a liking to the jolly widow, that would have overlooked the venerable spinster.

The truth of it is, if we look into this set of women, we find, according to the different characters or circumstances wherein they are left, that widows may be divided into those who raise love and those who raise compassion.

husband, and the care of her children; to which may be added a third, arising out of the former, such a prudent conduct as may do honour to both.

But, not to ramble from this subject, there are two things in which consists chiefly the 'MR. SPECTATOR,—Having in some for-glory of a widow-the love of her deceased mer papers taken care of the two states of virginity and marriage, and being willing that all people should be served in their turn, I this day draw out my drawer of widows, where I met with several cases, to each whereof I have returned satisfactory answers by the post. The cases are as follow:

A widow possessed of all these three qualities makes not only a virtuous but sublime character.

There is something so great and so gener'Q. Whether Amoret be bound by alous in this state of life, when it is accom