inftead of fear. It is no excufe for being mifchievous, that a man is mifchievous without malice; nor will it be thought an atonement, that the ill was done not to injure the party concerned, but to divert the indifferent. It is, methinks, a very great error, that we fhould not profess honefty in converfation, as much as in commerce. If we confider, that there is no greater misfortune than to be ill received; where we love the turning a man to ridicule among his friends, we rob him of greater enjoyments than he could have purchafed by his wealth; yet he that laughs at him would, perhaps, be the laft man who would hurt him in this cafe of lefs confequence. It has been faid, the hiftory of Don Quixote utterly deftroyed the fpirit of gallantry in the Spanish nation; and I believe we may fay much more truly, that the humour of ridicule has done as much injury to the true relish of company in England. Such fatisfactions as arife from the fecret comparison of ourselves to others, with relation to their inferior fortunes or merit, are mean and unworthy. The true and high ftate of converfation is, when men communicate their thoughts to each other upon fuch fubjects, and in such a manner, as would be pleasant if there were no fuch thing as folly in the world; for it is but a low condition of wit in one man, which depends upon folly in another. P. S. I was here interrupted by the receipt of my letters, among which is one from a lady, who is not a little offended at my tranflation of She the discourse between Adam and Eve. pretends to tell me my own, as the calls it, and quotes feveral paffages in my works, which tend to the utter difunion of man and wife. Her epiftle will best exprefs her. I have made an extract of it, and fhall infert the moft material paffages. I fuppofe you know we women are not too apt to forgive for which reason, before you concern yourself any farther with our fex, I would advise you to answer what is faid against you by those of your own. I inclose to you bufinefs enough, until you are ready for your promife of being witty. You must not expect to say what you please, without admitting others to take the fame liberty. Marry come up! you a Cenfor? Pray read over all thefe pamphlets, and these notes upon your Lucubrations; by that time you fhall hear farther. It is, I fuppofe, from fuch as you, that people learn to be cenforious, for which I and all our fex have an utter averfion; when once people come to take the liberty to wound reputations 2 This is the main body of the letter; but she bids me turn over, and there I find If you will draw Mrs. Cicely Trippet, according to the inclofed defcription, I will forgive you all.' y This seems to be a fneer at the ineffectual offers and propofals made by the new miniftry to draw Steele into their interefts, or to engage him to be filent. See Tatler, N° 214, introductory note. TO ISAAC BICKERSTAFF, Efquire. 'The humble Petition of Jofhua Fairlove of Stepney, 'SHEWETH, THAT your petitioner is a general lover, who for fome months last past has made it his whole business to frequent the by-paths and roads near his dwelling, for no other purpose but to hand fuch of the fair fex as are obliged to pass through them. That he has been at great expence for clean gloves to offer his hand with. That towards the evening he approaches near London, and employs himself as a convoy towards home. • Your Petitioner therefore most humbly prays, that for fuch his humble fervices he may be allowed the title of an Efquire.' Mr. Morphew has orders to carry the proper inftruments; and the Petitioner is hereafter to be writ to upon gilt paper, by the title of Joshua Fairlove, efquire. *** Whereas it has been induftriously reported that Dr. Herwig, who cures madness and moft diftempers by fympathy, has left England, and returned to Germany: This is to give notice, that he fill lives at Mr. Gagelman's, in Suffolk-ftreet, near Charing-crofs, about the middle of the ftreet, over-againft the green balcony. Poft-man, Feb. 4, 1701. See Tatler, N° 140, note. N° 220. Tuesday, September 5, 1710. ADDISON2, Infani faptens nomen ferat, æquus iniqui, Ultra quam fatis eft, virtutem fi petat ipfam. HOR. 1 Ep. vi. 15. Even virtue, when purfu'd with warmth extreme, FRANCIS. From my own Apartment, September 4. HAVING received many letters filled with compliments and acknowledgements for my late ufeful discovery of the political barometer, I fhall here communicate to the public an account of my ecclefiaftical thermometer, the latter giving as manifest prognostications of the changes and revolutions in church, as the former does of thofe in ftate; and both of them being abfolutely neceffary for every prudent fubject who is refolved to keep what he has, and get what he can. The church-thermometer, which I am now to treat of, is fuppofed to have been invented Addifon was unquestionably the author of this paper. Steele afcribes the defcription of the thermometer' to his principal auxiliary, in his preface to the laft volume of the Tatler. It was doubtlefs included in the lift of Addifon's papers, delivered by Steele to Mr. Thomas Tickell, as it is reprinted upon the authority of that lift in the edition of Addifon's Works' in 4to, vol. ii. p. 314. It is likewife marked as a paper of Addison in the MS notes of Chriftopher Byron, efq. communicated by J—n H————y. M. See Tatler, N° 74, note. See Tatler, No 214, note, and Tatler, No 228, adv. T in the reign of Henry the eighth, about the time when that religious prince put some to For the fame reafon given in a note on Tatler, N 214, a fimilar obfervation feems to be properly placed here. The author humouroufly dates the invention of his ecclefiaftical thermometer in the reign of king Henry VIII.; but this brutal man and odious tyrant was in his grave more than half a century before the difcovery of the common weather-glafs, ufed here in a lax fenfe, to denote both what is now called with fome impropriety the barometer, and alfo the thermometer, which accords as ill with its prefent name, and ought rather to be called a thermofcope, for it only indicates the changes of the heat and cold of the air; but an ufeful inftrument to measure the heat truly, and to determine precifely the proportion that one degree of it bears to another, has not yet been invented. Henry VIII. died in 1547; and Toricelli, who was doubtlefs the inventor of what is called the barometer, died in 1647. Toricelli certainly was not the inventor of any inftrument that was called a thermometer. For the honour of this invention pofthumous claims have been made by different writers: for Galileo, the mafter of Toricelli; for the ingenious Venetian, F. Paul Sarpi, and for Cornelius Drebbel. But San&torius, celebrated for his curious book on infenfible perfpiration, and the invention of the weighing chair, who lived about a century after king Henry VIII. claimed this difcovery for himfelf; and to this Paduan phyfician, Borelli and Malpighi, both of them Florentine academicians, afcribe it without referve. An attention to the principle on which the inftrument was originally conftructed, argues, to be fure, ingenuity. But the first thermometers were rude inconvenient things, and but ill adapted for the various purposes to which the modern inftruments fo called are advantageoufly applied. The liquor ufed in the first inftruments of this kind was fubject to evaporation, and they were affected by the varying weight of the incumbent atmosphere, fo that their indications of the different degrees of heat were always uncertain, and fometimes deceitful. The Florentine academicians greatly remedied these inconveniences, and fupplied fome of their defects, by conftructing them with fpirits inclofed in glafs tubes |