With which flows from a well taught and liberal mind. great respect to country sports, I may say, this gentleman could pass his time agreeably, if there were not a hare or a fox in his county. That calm and elegant satisfaction which the vulgar call melancholy is the true and proper delight of men of knowledge and virtue. What we take for diversion, which is a kind of forgetting ourselves, is but a mean way of entertainment, in comparison of that which is considering, knowing, and enjoying ourselves. The pleasures of ordinary people are in their passions; but the seat of this delight is in the reason and understanding. Such a frame of mind raises that sweet enthusiasm, which warms the imagination at the sight of every work of nature, and turns all round you into picture and landscape. I shall be ever proud of advices from this gentleman; for I profess writing news from the learned, as well as the busy world. As for my labours, which he is pleased to inquire after, if they can but wear one impertinence out of human life, destroy a single vice, or give a morning's cheerfulness to an honest mind; in short, if the world can be but one virtue the better, or in any degree less vicious, or receive from them the smallest addition to their innocent diversions, I shall not think my pains, or indeed my life, to have been spent in vain. Thus far as to my studies. It will be expected I should in the next place give some account of my life. I shall, therefore, for the satisfaction of the present age, and the benefit of posterity, present the world with the following abridgment of it. It is remarkable, that I was bred by hand, and eat nothing but milk until I was a twelvemonth old; from which time, to the eighth year of my age, I was observed to delight in pudding and potatoes; and indeed I retain a benevolence for that sort of food to this day. I do not remember that I distinguished myself in any thing at those years, but by my great skill at taw, for which I was so barbarously used, that it has ever since given me an aversion to gaming. In my twelfth year, I suffered very much for two or three false concords. At fifteen I was sent to the university, and stayed there for some time; but a drum passing by, being a lover of music, I enlisted myself for a soldier. As years came on, I began to examine things, This made me quit and grew discontented at the times. the sword, and take to the study of the occult sciences, in which I was so wrapped up, that Oliver Cromwell had been buried, and taken up again, five years before I heard he was dead. This gave me first the reputation of conjuror, which has been of great disadvantage to me ever since, and kept me out of all public employments. The greater part of my latter years has been divided between Dick's coffeehouse, the Trumpet in Sheer-lane, and my own lodgings. From my own Apartment, November 2. The evil of unseasonable visits has been complained of to me with much vehemence by persons of both sexes; and I am desired to consider this very important circumstance, that men may know how to regulate their conduct in an affair which concerns no less than life itself. For to a rational creature, it is almost the same cruelty to attack his life, by robbing him of so many moments of his time, or so many drops of his blood. The author of the following letter has a just delicacy in this point, and hath put it into a very good light: "MR. BICKERSTAFF, October 29. "I am very much afflicted with the gravel, which makes me sick and peevish. I desire to know of you if it be reasonable that any of my acquaintance should take advantage over me at this time, and afflict me with long visits, because they are idle, and I am confined. Pray, Sir, reform the town in this matter. Men never consider whether the sick person be disposed for company, but make their visits to humour themselves. You may talk upon this topic, so as to oblige all persons afflicted with chronical distempers, among which I reckon visits. Do not think me a sour man, for I love conversation and my friends; but I think one's most intimate friend may be too familiar, and that there are such things as unseasonable wit and painful mirth." It is with some so hard a thing to employ their time, that it is a great good fortune when they have a friend indisposed, that they may be punctual in perplexing him, when he is recovered enough to be in that state which can not be called sickness or health; when he is too well to deny company, and too ill to receive them. It is no uncom mon case, if a man is of any figure or power in the world, to be congratulated into a relapse. Will's Coffee-house, November 2. I was very well pleased this evening, to hear a gentleman express a very becoming indignation against a practice, which I myself have been very much offended at. "There is nothing," said he, "more ridiculous, than for an actor to insert words of his own in the part he is to act, so that it is impossible to see the poet for the player. You will have Penkethman and Bullock helping our Beaumont and Fletcher. It puts me in mind," continued he, “ of a collection of antique statues which I once saw in a gentleman's possession, who employed a neighbouring stonecutter to add noses, ears, arms, or legs, to the maimed works of Phidias or Praxiteles. You may be sure, this addition disfigured the statues much more than time had. I remember Venus, that, by the nose he had given her, looked like mother Shipton; and a Mercury, with a pair of legs that seemed very much swelled with the dropsy." I thought the gentleman's observation very proper, and he told me I had improved his thought, in mentioning on this occasion those wise commentators who had filled up the hemistichs of Virgil;* particularly that notable poet, who, to make the Æneid more perfect, carried on the story of Lavinia's wedding. If the proper officer will not condescend to take notice of these absurdities, I shall myself, as a censor of the people, animadvert upon such proceedings. * A gentleman of distinction in Aquitain, called by the writer, on whose authority this note is given, Joannes de Peyrarede, filled up the hemistichs, or half verses, in the Æneid of Virgil. No 90. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 1709. -Amoto quæramus seria ludo.-HOR. 1 Sat. i. 27. With graver air our serious theme pursue, And yet preserve our moral full in view.-FRANCIS. HE passion of love happened to be the subject of the poets this evening; and, among other observations, it was remarked, "that the same sentiment on this passion had run through all languages and nations." Memmius, who has a very good taste, fell into a little sort of dissertation on this occasion. "It is," said he, "remarkable, that no passion has been treated, by all who have touched upon it, with the same bent of design but this. The poets, the moralists, the painters, in all their descriptions, allegories, and pictures, have represented it as a soft torment, a bitter sweet, a pleasing pain, or an agreeable distress; and have only expressed the same thought in a different manner.' The joining of pleasure and pain together in such devices, seems to me the only pointed thought I ever read which is natural; and it must have proceeded from its being the universal sense and experience of mankind, that they have all spoken of it in the same manner. I have, in my own reading, remarked, a hundred and three epigrams, fifty odes, and ninety-one sentences, tending to this sole purpose. It is certain, there is no other passion which does produce such contrary effects in so great a degree. But this may be said for love, that if you strike it out of the soul, life would be insipid, and our being but half animated. Human nature would sink into deadness and lethargy, if not quickened with some active principle; and as for all others, whether ambition, envy, or avarice, which are apt to possess the mind in the absence of this passion, it must be allowed that they have greater pains, without the compensation of such exquisite pleasures as those we find in love. The great skill is to heighten the satisfactions, and deaden the sorrows of it; which has been the end of many of my labours, and shall continue to be so, for the service of the world in general, and in particular of the fair sex, who are always the best or the worst part of it. It is pity that a passion, which has in it a capacity of making life happy, should not be cultivated to the utmost advantage. Rea son, prudence, and good-nature, rightly applied, can thoroughly accomplish this great end, provided they have always a real and constant love to work upon. But this subject I shall treat more at large in the history of my married sister, and in the mean time shall conclude my reflection on the pains and pleasures which attend this passion, with one of the finest allegories which I think I have ever read. It is invented by the divine Plato, and, to shew the opinion he himself had of it, ascribed by him to his admired Socrates, whom he represents as discoursing with his friends, and giving the history of love in the following manner. "At the birth of Beauty," says he, "there was a great feast made, and many guests invited. Among the rest, was the god Plenty, who was the son of the goddess Prudence, and inherited many of his mother's virtues. After a full entertainment, he retired into the garden of Jupiter, which was hung with a great variety of ambrosial fruits, and seems to have been a very proper retreat for such a guest. In the mean time, an unhappy female called Poverty, having heard of this great feast, repaired to it, in hopes of finding relief. The first place she lights upon was Jupiter's garden, which generally stands open to people of all conditions. Poverty enters, and by chance finds the god Plenty asleep in it. She was immediately fired with his charms, laid herself down by his side, and managed matters so well, that she conceived a child by him. The world was very much in suspense upon the occasion, and could not imagine to themselves what would be the nature of an infant that was to have its original from two such parents. At the last, the child appears; and who should it be but Love? This infant grew up, and proved in all his behaviour, what he really was, a compound of opposite beings. As he is the son of Plenty, who was the offspring of Prudence, he is subtle, intriguing, full of stratagems and devices; as the son of Poverty, he is fawning, begging, serenading, delighting to lie at a threshold, or beneath a window. By the father, he is |