4

tainly carry me off one time or other. Freeland's father and mine have been upon treaty without consulting me; and Cynthio has been eternally watching my eyes, without approaching me, my friends, my maid, or any one about me: he hopes to get me, I believe, as they say the rattle-snake does the squirrel, by staring at me until I drop into his mouth. Freeland demands me for a jointure, which he thinks deserves me; Cynthio thinks nothing high enough to be my value: Freeland therefore will take it for no obligation to have me; and Cynthio's idea of me is what will vanish by knowing me better. Familiarity will equally turn the veneration of the one, and the indifference of the other, into contempt. I will stick therefore to my old maxim, to have that sort of man, who can have no greater views than what are in my power to give him possession of. The utmost of my dear Frisk's ambition is, to be thought a man of fashion; and therefore has been so much in mode, as to resolve upon me, because the whole town likes me. Thus I choose rather a man who loves me because others do, than one who approves me on his own judgment. He that judges for himself in love will often change his opinion; but he that follows the sense of others must be constant, as long as a woman can make advances. The visits I make, the entertainments I give, and the addresses I receive will be all arguments for me with a man of Frisk's secondhand genius; but would be so many bars to my happiness with any other man. However, since Frisk can wait, I shall enjoy a summer or two longer, and remain a single woman, in the sublime pleasure of being followed and admired; which nothing can equal, except that of being beloved by you.

' I am, &c.'

Will's Coffee-house, May 30.

My chief business here this evening was, to speak to my friends in behalf of honest Cave Underhill, who has been a comic for three generations: my father admired him extremely when he was a boy. There is certainly nature excellently represented in his manner of action; in which he ever avoided that general fault in players, of doing too much. It must be confessed, he has not the merit of some ingenious persons now on the stage, of adding to his authors; for the actors were so dul in the last age, that many of them have gone out of the world, without having ever spoke one word of their own in the theatre. Poor Cave is so mortified, that he quibbles, and tells you he pretends only to act a part fit for a man who has one foot in the grave, viz. a grave-digger3. All admirers of true comedy, it is hoped, will have the gratitude to be present on the last day of his acting,

1 See N° 20.-Colley Cibber says, 'Underhill was a correct and natural comedian; his particular excellence was in characters that may be called still-life, I mean the stiff, the heavy, and the stupid; to these he gave the exactest and most expressive colours; and in some of them looked as if it were not in the power of human passions to alter a feature of him. A countenance of wood could not be more fixed than his, when the blockhead of a character required it: his face was full and long; from his crown to the end of his nose, was the shorter half of it, so that the disproportion of his lower features, when soberly composed, threw him into the most lumpish, moping mortal, that ever made beholders merry! not but at other times he could be wakened into spirit equally ridiculous.'

In this character (in Shakspeare's Hamlet) he was particularly admired.

who, if he does not happen to please them, will have it even then to say, that it is his first offence.

But there is a gentleman here, who says he has it from good hands, that there is actually a subscription made by many persons of wit and quality, for the encouragement of new comedies. This design will very much contribute to the improvement and diversion of the town: but as every man is most concerned for himself, I, who am of a saturnine and melancholy complexion, cannot but murmur, that there is not an equal invitation to write tragedies; having by me, in my book of common places, enough to enable me to finish a very sad one by the fifth of the next month. I have the farewell of a general, with a truncheon in his hand, dying for love, in six lines. I have the principles of a politician (who does all the mischief in the play), together with his declaration on the vanity of ambition in his last moments, expressed in a page and an half. I have all my oaths ready, and my similies want nothing but application. I will not pretend to give you an account of the plot, it being the same design upon which all tragedies have been writ for several years last past; and from the beginning of the first scene, the frequenters of the house may know as well as the author, when the battle is to be fought, the lady to yield, and the hero proceed to his wedding and coronation. Besides these advantages which I have in readiness, I have an eminent tragedian very much my friend, who shall come in and go through the whole five acts, without troubling me for one sentence, whether he is to kill or be killed, love or be loved, win battles or lose them, or whatever other tragical performance I shall please to assign

him.

From my own Apartment, May 30.

I HAVE this day received a letter, subscribed Fidelia, that gives me an account of an inchantment under which a young lady suffers, and desires my help to exorcise her from the power of the sorcerer. Her lover is a rake of sixty; the lady a virtuous woman of twenty-five: her relations are to the last degree afflicted, and amazed at this irregular passion: their sorrow I know not how to remove, but can their astonishment; for there is no spirit in woman half so prevalent as that of contradiction, which is the sole cause of her perseverance. Let the whole family go dressed in a body, and call the bride to-morrow morning to her nuptials, and I will undertake the inconstant will forget her lover in the midst of all his aches. But if this expedient does not succeed, I must be so just to the young lady's distinguishing sense, as to applaud her choice. A fine young woman, at last, is but what is due from fate to an honest fellow, who has suffered so unmercifully by the sex; and I think we cannot enough celebrate her heroic virtue, who ́(like the patriot that ended a pestilence by plunging himself into a gulph) gives herself up to gorge that dragon which has devoured so many virgins before her.

A letter directed To Isaac Bickerstaff, esquire, astrologer and physician in ordinary to her majesty's subjects of Great Britain, with respect,' is come to hand.

Quicquid agunt homines

N° 23. THURSDAY, JUNE 2, 1709.

nostri est farrago libelli.

JUV. Sat. i, 85, 86.

Whatever good is done, whatever ill

By human kind, shall this collection fill.

THE

White's Chocolate-house, May 31.

HE generality of mankind are so very fond of this world, and of staying in it, that a man cannot have eminent skill in any one art, but they will, in spite of his teeth, make him a physician also, that being the science the worldlings have most need of. I pretended, when I first set up, to astronomy only; but, I am told, I have deep skill in medicine. I am applied to now by a gentleman for my advice in behalf of his wife, who, upon the least matrimonial difficulty, is excessively troubled with fits, and can bear no manner of passion without falling into immediate convulsions. I must confess it is a case I have known before, and remember the party was recovered by certain words pronounced in the midst of the fit, by the learned doctor who performed the cure. These ails have usually their beginning from the affections of the mind: therefore you must have patience to let me give you an instance, whereby you may discern the cause of the distemper, and then proceed in cure as follows:

A fine town lady was married to a gentleman of ancient descent in one of the counties of Great Britain, who had good-humour to a weakness, and was