of whiff than with those of Bacchus, that talking spoils company. Every one endeavours to make himself as agreeable to society as he can: but it often happens, that those, who most aim at shining in conversation, over-shoot their mark. Though a man succeeds, he should not (as is frequently the cafe) engross the whole talk to himself; for that destroys the very effence of conversation, which is talking together. We should try to keep up conversation like a ball bandied to and fro from one to the other, rather than seize it all to ourselves, and drive it before us like a foot-ball. We should likewise be cautious to adapt the matter of our difcourse to our company; and not talk Greek before ladies, or of the last new furbelow to a meeting of country juftices. But nothing throws a more ridiculous air over our whole conversation, that certain peculiarities, easily acquired, but very difficultly conquered and discarded. In order to display these absurdities in a truer light, it is my present purpose to enumerate such of them, as are most commonly to be met with; and first to take notice of those buffoons in society, the Attitudinarians and Face-makers. These accompany every word with a peculiar grimace or gefture: they assent with a shrug, and contradict with a twifting of the neck; are angry by a wry mouth, and pleased in a caper of a minuet-step. They may be confidered as speaking harlequins; and their rules of eloquence are taken from the pofture-master. These should be condemned to converse only in dumb-shew with their own persons in the looking-glass; as well as the Smirkers and Smilers, who so prettily set off their faces, together with their words, by a je-ne-fçai-quoi between a grin and a dimple. With these we may likewife rank the affected tribe of Mimics, who are conftantly taking off the peculiar tone of voice or gesture of their acquaintance: though they are fuch wretched imitators, that (like bad painters) they are frequently forced to write the name under the picture, before we can discover any likeness. Next to those, whose elocution is abforbed in action, and who converse chiefly with their arms and legs, we may confider the profeffed Speakers. And first, the emphatical; who squeeze, and press, and ram down every fyllable with excessive vehemence and energy. These orators are remarkable for their diftinct elocution and force of expreffion: they dwell on the important particles of and the, and the fignificant conjunctive and; which they feem to hawk up, with much difficulty, out of their own throats, and to cram them, with no less pain, into the ears of their auditors. These should be fuffered only to fyringe (as it were) the ears of a deaf man, through an hearing-trumpet: though I must confess, that I am equally offended with the Whisperers or Low Speakers, who feem to fancy all their acquaintance deaf, and come up so close to you, that they may be faid to measure noies with you, and frequently overcome you with the full exhalations of a stinking breath. I would have these oracular gentry obliged to talk at a diftance through a speaking-trumpet, or apply their lips to the walls of a whisperinggallery. The Wits, who will not condescend to utter any thing but a bon mst, and the Whistlers or Tune-hummers, who rever articulate at all, may be joined very agreeably together in concert; and to these tinkling cymbals I would also add the founding brass, the Bawler, who enquires after your health with the bellowing of a towncrier. The Tatlers, whose pliable pipes are admirably adapted to the "foft parts of conversation," and sweetly "prattling out of fashion," make very pretty music trom a beautiful face and a female tongue; but from a rough manly voice and coarfe features, mere nonfenfe is as harsh and difonant as a jig from a hurdy-gurdy. The Swearers I have spoken of in a former paper; but the Half-fwearers, who split, and mince, and fritter their oaths into gaa's bud, ad's fish, and demme; the Gothic humbuggers, and those who "nick-name God's creatures," and call a man a cabbage, a crab, a queer cub, an odd fish, and an unaccountable muskin, should never come into company without an interpreter. But I will not tire my reader's patience by pointing out all the pests of conversation; nor dwell particularly on the Senfibles, who pronounce dogmatically on the most trivial points, and speak in sentences; the Wonderers, who are always wondering what o'clock it is, or wondering whether it will rain or no, or wondering when the moon changes; the Phraseologifts, who explain a thing by all that, or enter into particulars with this and that and t'other; and lastly, the Silent Men, who feem afraid of opening their mouths, left they should catch cold, and literally observe the precept cept of the gospel, by letting their conversation be only yea yea, and nay nay. The rational intercourse kept up by conversation, is one of our principal distinctions from brutes. We should therefore endeavour to turn this peculiar talent to our advantage, and confider the organs of speech as the instruments of understanding: we should be very careful not to use them as the weapons of vice, or tools of folly, and do our utmost to unlearn any trivial or ridiculous habits, which tend to lessen the value of such an ineftimable prerogative. It is, indeed, imagined by some philosophers, that even birds and beasts (though without the power of articulation) perfectly understand one another by the sounds they utter; and that dogs, cats, &c. have each a particular language to themselves, like different nations. Thus it may be supposed, that the nightingales of Italy have as fine an ear for their own native wood-notes, as any fignor or fignora for an Italian air; that the boars of Westphalia gruntle as expressively through the nose as the inhabitants in High-German; and that the frogs in the dykes of Holland croak as intelligibly as the natives jabber their Low-Dutch. However this may be, we may confider those, whose tongues hardly feem to be under the influence of reason, and do not keep up the proper conversation of human creatures, as imitating the language of different animals. Thus, for instance, the affinity between chatterers and monkeys, and praters and parrots, is too obvious not to occur at once: Grunters and growlers may be justly compared to hogs: Snarlers are curs, that continually shew their teeth, but never bite; and the spitfire paffionate are a fort of wild cats, that will not bear stroking, but will purr when they are pleased. Complainers are screech-owls; and story-tellers, always repeating the same dull note, are cuckoos. Poets that prick up their ears at their own hideous braying, are no better than asses: Critics in general are venomous ferpents, that delight in hiffing; and some of them, who have got by heart a few technical terms without knowing their meaning, are no other than magpies. Connoiffeur. §118. A Citizen's Country House described. Sir, I remember to have seen a little French novel giving an account of a citizen of Paris making an excursion into the country. He imagines himself about to un dertake a long voyage to some strange region, where the natives were as different from the inhabitants of his own city as the most distant nations. He accordingly takes boat, and is landed at a village about a league from the capital. When he is fet on shore, he is amazed to fee the people speak the fame language, wear the fame dress, and use the fame customs with himfelf. He, who had spent all his life within the fight of Pont Neuf, looked upon every one that lived out of Paris as a foreigner; and though the utmost extent of his travels was not three miles, he was as much furprized, as he would have been to meet with a colony of Frenchmen on the Terra Incognita. In your late paper on the amusements of Sunday, you have fet forth in what manner our citizens pass that day, which most of them devote to the country; but I wish you had been more particular in your descriptions of those elegant rural mansions, which at once shew the opulence and the taste of our principal merchants, mechanics, and artificers. I went last Sunday, in compliance with a most pressing invitation from a friend, to spend the whole day with him at one of these little feats, which he had fitted out for his retirement once a week from business. It is pleasantly situated about three miles from London, on the fide of a public road, from which it is separated by a dry ditch, over which is a little bridge, confifting of two narrow planks, leading to the house. From the lower part of the house there is no profpect; but from the garrets, indeed, one may fee two men hanging in chains on Kennington-common, with a diftant view of St. Paul's cupola enveloped in a cloud of smoke. I fet out in the morning with my friend's book-keeper, who was my guide. When I came to the house, I found my friend in a black velvet cap fitting at the door smoking: he welcomed me into the country; and after having made me observe the turnpike on my left, and the Golden Sheaf on my right, he conducted me into his house, where I was received by his lady, who made a thousand -apologies for being catched in such a dishabille. The hall (for so I was taught to call it) had its white wall almost hid by a curious collection of prints and paintings. On one side was a large map of London, a plan and elevation of the Mansion House, with several lesser views of the public buildings and cane. and halls: on the other, was the Death of the Stag, finely coloured by Mr. Overton: close by the parlour-door there hung a pair of stag's horns; over which there was laid across a red roccelo, and an amber-headed Over the chimney-piece was my friend's picture, who was drawn bolt upright in a full-bottomed perriwig, a laced cravat with the fringed ends appearing through a button-hole, a snuff-coloured velvet coat with gold buttons, a red velvet waistcoat trimmed with gold, one hand stuck in the bosom of his shirt, and the other holding out a letter with this fuperscription: "To Mr.-, common-council-man of Farringdon-ward without." My eyes were then directed to another figure in a scarlet gown, who I was informed was my friend's wife's great great uncle, and had been sheriff and knighted in the reign of king James the First. Madam her. felf filled up a pannel on the opposite fide, in the habit of a shepherdess, smelling to a nosegay, and stroking a ram with gilt horns. I was then invited by my friend to fee what he has pleased to call his garden, which was nothing more than a yard about thirty feet in length, and contained about a dozen little pots ranged on each fide with lilies and coxcombs, supported by some old laths painted green, with bowls of tobaccopipes on their tops. At the end of this garden he bade me take notice of a little fquare building furrounded with filleroy, which he told me an alderman of great taste had turned into a temple, by erecting fome battlements and spires of painted wood on the front of it: but concluded with a hint, that I might retire to it upon occafion. As the riches of a country are visible in the number of its inhabitants, and the elegance of their dwellings, we may venture to say that the present state of England is very flourishing and profperous; and if our taste for building encreases with our opulence, for the next century, we shall be able to boast of finer country-feats belonging to our shopkeepers, artificers, and other plebeians, than the most pompous defcriptions of Italy or Greece have ever recorded. We read, it is true, of country-feats belonging to Pliny, Hortenfius, Lucullus, and other Romans. They were Patricians of great rank and fortune: there can therefore be no doubt of the excellence of their villas. But who has ever read of a Chinesebridge belonging to an Attic tallow-chand $119. Humorous Scene between DENNIS the Critic (Satirically represented by SWIFT as mad) and the Doctor. Scene DENNIS's Garret. DENNIS, DOCTOR, NURSE, LINTOT the Bookfeller, and another Author. DENNIS. [Looking wife, and bringing out bis Words flowly and formally.] Beware, Doctor, that it fare not with you as it did with your predecessor, the famous Hippocrates, whom the mistaken citizens of Abdera fent for, in this very manner, to cure the philosopher Democritus. He returned full of admiration at the wifdom of the person whom he had fuppofed a lunatic. Behold, Doctor, it was thus that Aristotle himself, and all the great ancients, spent their days and nights wrapped up in criticism, and befet all round with their own writings. As for me, be assured, I have no disease besides a swelling in my legs, of which I say nothing, since your art may farther certify you. Doctor. Pray, Sir, how did you contract this swelling? Dennis. By criticifm. Doctor. By criticism! that's a distemper I have never heard nor read of. Dennis. Death, Sir! a distemper! it is no diftemper; but a noble art. I have fat fourteen hours a day at it: and are you a doctor, and don't know that there's a communication between the brain and the legs? Doctor. What made you fit so many hours, Sir? 1712. his madness. Alas! poor master will have his fits again. [Almost crying. Lintot. Fits! with a pox! a man may well have fits and swelled legs, that fits writing fourteen hours in a day. The Remarks, the Remarks, have brought all his complaints upon him. Doctor. The Remarks! what are they? Dennis. Death! have you never read my Remarks? I'll be hang'd if this niggardly bookfeller has advertised the book as it should have been. Lintot. Not advertise it, quoth'a! pox! I have laid out pounds after pounds in ad vertising. There has been as much done for the book as could be done for any book in Christendom. Doctor. We had better not talk of books, Sir, I am afraid they are the fuel that feed his delirium. Mention books no more. I defire a word in private with this gentleman. I fuppofe, Sir, you are his apothecary. Gent. Sir, I am his friend. Doctor. I doubt it not. What regimen Have you observed since he has been under your care? You remember, I suppose, the passage in Celfus, which says, " If the patient on the third day have an interval, "suspend the medicaments at night." Let fumigations be used to corroborate the brain. I hope you have upon no account promoted fternutation by hellebore. Gent. Sir, you mistake the matter quite. Doctor. What! an apothecary tell a physician he mistakes! you pretend to difpute my prescription! Pharmacopola componant. Medicus folus præfcribat. Fumigate him, I fay, this very evening, while he is relieved by an interval. Dennis. Death, Sir, do you take my friend for an apothecary! a man of genius and learning for an apothecary! Know, Sir, that this gentleman professes, like myfelf, the two noblest sciences in the universe, criticism and poetry. By the immortals, he himself is author of three whole paragraphs in my Remarks, had a hand in my Public Spirit, and affiited me in my defcription of the furies and infernal regions in my Appius. Lintot. He is an author. You mistake the gentleman, Doctor. He has been an author these twenty years, to his bookseller's knowledge, if to no one's else. Dennis. Is all the town in a combination? shall poetry fall to the ground? must our reputation in foreign countries be quite loft? O destruction! perdition! cursed opera! confounded opera *! as poetry once raised critics, so, when poetry fails, critics are overturned, and the world is no more. Doctor. He raves, he raves. He must be pinioned, he must be strait-waistcoated, that he may do no mischief. Dennis. ΟI am fick! I am fick to death! Doctor. That is a good symptom, a very good symptom. To be fick to death (says the modern theory) is Symptoma præclarum. When a patient is fenfible of his pain he is half-cured. Pray, Sir, of what are you fick ? Dennis. Of every thing. Of every thing. I am fick of the sentiments, of the diction, of the protafis, of the epitafis, and the catastrophe.-Alas! for the loft drama! the drama is no more! Nurse. If you want a dram, Sir, I will bring you a couple of penn'orths of gin in a minute. Mr. Lintot has drank the last of the noggin. Dennis. Oscandalous want! O shameful omiffion! By all the immortals, here is not the fhadow of a paripatia! no change of fortune in the tragedy ! Nurse. Pray, Sir, don't be uneasy about change. Give me the fixpence, and I'll get you change immediately at the ginshop next door. Doctor. Hold your peace, good woman. His fit increases. We must call for help. Mr. Lintot, a hold him, pray. [Doctor gets behind Lintot.] Lintot. Plague on the man! I am afraid he is really mad. And if he be, who the devil will buy the Remarks? I wish [Scratching his head] he had been besh-t, rather than I had meddled with his Remarks. Doctor. He must use the cold bath, and be cupped on the head. The symptoms seem desperate. Avicen says, " If learn" ing be mixed with a brain that is not of " a contexture fit to receive it, the brain " ferments till it be totally exhausted." We must endeavour to eradicate these indigefted ideas out of the pericranium, and to restore the patient to a competent knowledge of himself. Dennis. Caitiffs, stand off! unhand me, miscreants! [The Doctor, the Nurse, and Lintot, run out of the room in a hurry, and tumble down the garret-ftairs all together.] Is the man, whose labours are calculated * He wrote a treatise to prove, that the decay of public spirit proceeds from the Italian opera. to to bring the town to reason, mad? Is the man, who settles poetry on the basis of antiquity, mad? See Longinus in my right band, and Ariftotle in my left! [Calls after the Doctor, the Bookfeller, and the Nurse, from the top of the stairs.) I am the only man among the moderns, that supports the venerable ancients. And am I to be assaffinated? Shall a bookseller, who has lived upon my labours, take away that life to which he owes his support? (Goes into his garret, and shuts the door.] § 120. The two Bees. On a fine morning in May, two bees set forward in quest of honey; the one wife and temperate, the other careless and extravagant. They soon arrived at a garden enriched with aromatic herbs, the most fragrant flowers, and the most delicious fruits. They regaled themselves for a time on the various dainties that were spread before them: the one loading his thigh at intervals with provisions for the hive againft the distant winter; the other revelling in sweets, without regard to any thing but his present gratification. At length they found a wide-mouthed phial, that hung beneath the bough of a peachtree, filled with honey ready tempered, and exposed to their taste in the most alluring manner. The thoughtless epicure, spite of all his friend's remonftrances, plunged headlong into the vessel, refolving to indulge himself in all the pleasures of senfuality. The philosopher, on the other hand, fipped a little with caution; but being fufpicious of danger, flew off to fruits and flowers; where, by the moderation of his meals, he improved his relish for the true enjoyment of them. In the evening, however, he called upon his friend, to enquire whether he would return to the hive; but found him surfeited in sweets, which he was as unable to leave, as to enjoy. Clogged in his wings, enfeebled in his feet, and his whole frame totally enervated, he was but just able to bid his friend adieu, and to lament with his latest breath, that, though a taste of pleasure might quicken the relish of life, an unrestrained indulgence is inevitably deftruction. § 121. Pleasant Scene of Anger, and the Disappointment of it. There came into a bookseller's shop a very learned man, with an erect solemn air; who, though a person of great parts otherwise, is flow in understanding any thing which makes against himself. After he had turned over many volumes, faid the feller to him-Sir, you know I have long asked you to fend me back the first volume of French fermons I formerly lent you. Sir, faid the chapman, I have often looked for it, but cannot find it: it is certainly loft; and I know not to whom I lent it, it is so many years ago. Then, Sir, here is the other volume; I'll send you home that, and please to pay for both. My friend, replied he, can'st thou be so senseless, as not to know, that one volume is as imperfect in my library, as in your shop? Yes, Sir; but it is you have lost the first volume; and, to be short, I will be paid. Sir, answered the chapman, you are a young man; your book is loft; and learn, by this little lofs, to bear much greater adversities, which you must expect to meet with. Yes, Sir, I'll bear when I must; but I have not loft now, for I fay you have it, and shall pay me. Friend, you grow warm: I tell you, the book is loft; and I forefee, in the course even of a profperous life, that you will meet afflictions to make you mad, if you cannot bear this trifle. Sir, there is, in this cafe, no need of bearing, for you have the book. I say, Sir, I have not the book; but your passion will not let you hear enough to be informed that I have it not. Learn resignation betimes to the distresses of this life: nay, do not fret and fume; it is my duty to tell you that you are of an impatient spirit; and an impatient spirit is never without woe. Was ever any thing like this?-Yes, Sir, there have been many things like this. The loss is but a trifle; but your temper is wanton, and incapable of the least pain; therefore, let me advife you, be patient: the book is loft, but do not you, for that reason, lose yourself. Spetator. §122. Falstaff's Encomiums on Sack. A good sherris-sack hath a two-fold operation in it-It ascends me into the brain: dries me, there, all the foolish, dull, and crudy vapours which environ it; makes it apprehensive, quick, inventive; full of nimble, fiery, and delectable shapes, which, delivered over to the voice, the tongue, which is the birth, becomes excellent wit. _ The second property of your excellent sherris, is, the warming of the blood; which, before, cold and fettled, left the liver white and pale, which is the badge of pufillanimity and cowardice. But the sherris warms it, and makes it course from the inwards |