6 with me:' but I would have him to know, that I can look beyond his wires, and know very well the whole trick of his art; and that it is only by these wires that the eye of the fpectator is cheated, and hindered from feeing that there is a thread on one of punch's chops, which draws it up, and lets it fall, at the difcretion of the faid Powel, who ftands behind and plays him, and makes him speak faucily of his betters. He! to pretend to make prologues against me! -But a man never behaves himself with decency in his own cafe; therefore I fhall command my-self, and never trouble me farther with this little fellow, who is himself but a tall puppet, and has not brains enough to make even wood speak as it ought to do: and I, that have heard the groaning board, can despise all that his puppets shall be able to speak as long as they live. But, Ex quovis ligno non fit Mercurius. Every log of wood will not make a Mercury.' He has pretended to write to me alfo from the Bath, and fays, he thought to have deferred giving me an answer until he came to his books; but that my writings might do well with the waters: which are pert expreffions that become a fchoolboy, better than one that is to teach others: and when I have faid a civil thing to him, he cries, Oh! I thank you for that I am your humble fervant for that. Ah! Mr. Powel, thefe fmart civilities will never run down men of learning: I know well enough your design is to have all men automata, like your puppets; but the world is grown too wise, and can look through these thin devices. I know your defign to make a reply to this; but be fure you stick clofe to my words; for if you bring me into difcourfes concerning the government of your puppets, I must tell you, I neither am, nor have been, nor will be, at leisure, to answer you. It is really a burning fhame this man fhould be tolerated in abufing the world with fuch reprefentations of things: but his parts decay, and he is not. much more alive than Partridge. From From my own Apartment, July 14. I MUST beg pardon of my readers, that for this time I have, I fear, huddled up my difcourfe, having been very bufy in helping an old friend of mine out of town. He has a very good eftate, is a man of wit; but he has been three years abfent from town, and cannot bear a jest; for which reafon I have, with fome pains, convinced him, that he can no more live here than if he were a downright bankrupt. He was fo fond of dear London, that he began to fret only inwardly; but being unable to laugh and be laughed at, I took a place in the northern coach for him and his family; and hope he is got to-night safe from all fnecrers in his own parlour. St. James's Coffee-boufe, July 20. THIS morning we received by exprefs the agreeable news of the furrender of the town of Tournay on the twenty-eighth inftant, N. S. The place was affaulted at the attacks of general Schuylemberg, and that of general Lottum, at the fame time. The action at both those parts of the town was very obftinate, and the allies loft a confiderable number at the beginning of the difpute; but the fight was continued with fo great bravery, that the enemy obferving our men to be mafters of all the pofts which were neceffary for a general attack, beat the Chamade, and hottages were received from the town, and others fent from the befiegers, in order to come to a formal capitulation for the furrender of the place. We have alfo this day received advice, that fir John Leak, who lies off Dunkirk, had intercepted feveral fhips laden with corn. from the Baltic; and that the Dutch privateers had fallen in with others, and carried them into Holland. The French letters advise, that the young fon to the duke of Anjou lived but eight days NO NO. 45. SATURDAY, JULY 23, 1709, Credo pudicitiam Saturno rege moratam In terris Juv. Sat. vi. ver. 1. In Saturn's reign, at nature's early birth, White's Chocolate-house, July 22. THE other day I took a walk a mile or two out of town, and ftrolling wherever chance led me, I was infenfibly carried into a by-road, along which was a very agreeable quickfet, of an extraordinary height, which furrounded a very delicious feat and garden. From one angle of the hedge, I heard a voice cry, Sir, firThis raised my curiofity, and I heard the fame voice fay, but in a gentle tone, Come forward, come forward. I did fo, and one through the hedge called me by my name, and bid me go on to the left, and I should be admitted to vifit an old acquaintance in diftrefs. The laws of knight-errantry made me obey the fummons without hesitation; and I was let in at the back-gate of a lovely houfe by a maid-fervant, who carried me from room to room until I came into a gallery; at the end of which, I faw a fine lady dreffed in the moft fumptuous habit, as if the were going to a ball, but with the most abject and difconfolate forrow in her face that I ever beheld. As I came near, the burst into tears, and cried, Sir, do not you know the unhappy Teraminta? I foon recollected her whole perfon: But, faid I, Madam, the fimplicity of drefs, in which I have ever feen you at your good father's houfe, and the cheerfulness of countenance with which you always appeared, are fo unlike the fashion and temper you are now in, that I did not eafily recover the memory of you. Your habit was then decent and modeft, your looks ferene and beautiful: VOL. I. whence N whence then this unaccountable change? Nothing can fpeak fo deep a forrow as your prefent afpect: yet your drefs is made for jollity and revelling. It is, faid fle, an unfpeakable pleasure to meet with one I know, and to bewail myself to any that is not an utter ftranger to humanity. When friend your my father died, he left me to a wide world, with no defence against the infults of fortune; but rather, a thousand fnares to intrap me in the dangers to which youth and innocence are expofed, in an age wherein honour and virtue are become mere words, and ufed only as they ferve to betray those who understand them in their native fenfe, and obey them as the guides and motives of their being. The wickedeft of all men living, the abandoned Decius, who has no knowledge of any good art or purpose of human life, but as it tends to the fatisfaction of his appetites, had opportunities of frequently feeing and entertaining me at a houfe where mixed company boarded, and where he placed himself for the bafe intention which he has fince brought to pass. Decius faw enough in me to raise his brutal defires, and my circumftances gave him hopes of accomplishing them, But all the glittering expectations he could lay before me, joined by my private terrors of poverty itself, could not for fome months prevail upon me; yet, however I hated his intention, I ftill had a fecret fatisfaction in his courtship, and always expofed myfelf to his folicitations. See here the bane of our sex! let the flattery be never fo apparent, the flatterer never fo ill thought of, his praifes are ftill agreeable, and we contribute to our own deceit. I was therefore ever fond of all opportunities and pretences of being in his company. In a word, I was at laft ruined by him, and brought to this place, where I have been ever fince immured; and from the fatal day after my fall from innocence, my worthipper became my mafter and my tyrant. Thus you fee me habited in the most gorgeous manner, not in honour of me as a woman he loves, but as this attire charms his own eye, and urges him to repeat the gratification he takes in me, as the fervant of his brutish lufts • lufts and appetites. I know not where to fly for redress; but am here, pining away life in the folitude and feverity of a nun, but the confcience and guilt of an harlot. I live in this lewd practice with a religious awe of my minister of darkness, upbraided with the fupport I receive from him, for the ineftimable poffeffion of youth, of innocence, of honour, and of conscience. I see, fir, my difcourfe grows painful to you; all I beg of you is, to paint it in fo ftrong colours, as to let Decius fee I am difcovered to be in his poffeffion, that I may be turned out of this detestable scene of regular iniquity, and either think no more, or fin no more. If your writings have the good effect of gaining my enlargement, I promise you I will atone for this unhappy step, by preferring an innocent laborious poverty to all the guilty affluence the -world can offer me. Will's Coffee-house, July 21. To fhew that I do not bear an irreconcileable hatred to iny mortal enemy, Mr. Powel at Bath, I do his function the honour to publish to the world, that plays reprefented by puppets are permitted in our universities, and that fort of drama is not wholly thought unworthy the critique of learned heads; but as I have been converfant rather with the greater ode, as I think the critics call it, I must be fo humble as to make a request to Mr. Powel, and defire him to apply his thoughts to anfwering the difficulties with which my kinfman, the author of the following letter, feems to be embarraffed. To my honoured kinfinan, ISAAC BICKERSTAFF, Efq. DEAR COUSIN, HAD the family of the Beadleftaffs, whereof I, though unworthy, am one, known of your being lately at Oxon, we had in our own name, and in the univerfity's, as it is our office, made you a compliment: but your fhort stay here robbed us of an opportunity of N 2 paying |