be a full and satisfactory answer to all such | have by this admirable person been shown papers and pamphlets as have yet ap- to, and raised in, sir, your most humble peared against the Spectator. C. servant.' 'MR. SPECTATOR,-I am a country gentleman of a good plentiful estate, and live as No. 240.] Wednesday, December 5, 1711. the rest of my neighbours with great hos -Aliter non fit, Avite, liber. Mart. Ep. 17. Lib. 1. Of such materials, sir, are books composed. 'MR. SPECTATOR,-I am one of the most genteel trades in the city, and understand thus much of liberal education, as to have an ardent ambition of being useful to mankind, and to think that the chief end of being, as to this life. I had these good impressions given me from the handsome behaviour of a learned, generous, and wealthy man towards me, when I first began the world. Some dissatisfaction between me and my parents made me enter into it with less relish of business than I ought; and to turn off this uneasiness, I gave myself to criminal pleasures, some excesses, and a general loose conduct. I know not what the excellent man abovementioned saw in me, but he descended from the superiority of his wisdom and merit, to throw himself frequently into my company. This made me soon hope that I had something in me worth cultivating, and his conversation made me sensible of satisfactions in a regular way, which I had never before imagined. When he was grown familiar with me, he opened himself like a good angel, and told me he had long laboured to ripen me into a preparation to receive his friendship and advice, both which I should daily command, and the use of any part of his fortune, to apply the measures he should propose to me, for the improvement of my own. I assure you I cannot recollect the goodness and confusion of the good old man when he spoke to this purpose to me without melting into tears; but in a word, sir, I must hasten to tell you, that my heart burns with gratitude towards him, and he is so happy a man that it can never be in my power to return him his favours in kind, but I am sure I have made him the most agreeable satisfaction I could possibly, in being ready to serve others to my utmost ability, as far as is consistent with the prudence he prescribes to me. Dear Mr. Spectator, I do not owe to him only the good-will and esteem of my own relations, (who are people of distinction,) the present ease and plenty of my circumstances, but also the government of my passions, and regulation of my desires. I doubt not, sir, but in your imagination such virtues as these of my worthy friend, bear as great a figure as actions which are more glittering in the common estimation. What I would ask of you, is to give us a whole Spectator upon heroic virtue in common life, which may incite men to the same generous inclinations, as pitality. I have been ever reckoned among the ladies the best company in the world, and have access as a sort of favourite. İ never came in public but I saluted them, though in great assemblies, all around; where it was seen how genteelly I avoided hampering my spurs in their petticoats, whilst I moved amongst them; and on the other side how prettily they curtsied and received me standing in proper rows, and advancing as fast as they saw their elders, or their betters, despatched by me. But so it is, Mr. Spectator, that all our good breeding is of late lost, by the unhappy arrival of a courtier, or town gentleman, who came lately among us. This person whenever he came into a room made a profound bow, and fell back, then recovered with a soft air, and made a bow to the next, and so to one or two more, and then took the gross of the room, by passing them in a continual bow until he arrived at the person he thought proper particularly to entertain. This he did with so good a grace and assurance, that it is taken for the present fashion; and there is no young gentlewoman within several miles of this place has been kissed ever since his first appearance among us. We country gentlemen cannot begin again and learn these fine and reserved airs; and our conversation is at a stand, until we have your judgment for or against kissing by way of civility or salutation; which is impatiently expected by your friends of both sexes, but by none so much as your humble servant, 'RUSTIC SPRIGHTLY.' 'December 3, 1711. 'MR. SPECTATOR,-I was the other night at Philaster, where I expected to hear your famous trunk-maker, but was unhappily disappointed of his company, and saw another person who had the like ambition to distinguish himself in a noisy manner, partly by vociferation or talking loud, and partly by his bodily agility. This was a very lusty fellow, but withal a sort of beau, who getting into one of the side-boxes on the stage before the curtain drew, was disposed to show the whole audience his activity by leaping over the spikes: he passed from thence to one of the entering doors, where he took snuff with a tolerable good grace, displayed his fine clothes, made two or three feint passes at the curtain with his cane, then faced about and appeared at the other door. Here he affected to survey the whole house, bowed and smiled at random, and then showed his teeth, which were some of them indeed very white. After this he retired behind the curtain, and obliged us with several views of his person from every opening. During the time of acting, he appeared frequently in the prince's apartment, made one at the hunting-match, and was very forward in the rebellion.* If there were no injunctions to the contrary, yet this practice must be confessed to diminish the pleasure of the audience, and for that reason presumptuous and unwarrantable; but since her majesty's late command has made it criminal,† you have authority to take notice of it. Sir, your humble servant, 'CHARLES EASY.' T. No. 241.] Thursday, December 6, 1711. -Semperque relinqui Sola sibi, semper longam incomitata videtur 'MR. SPECTATOR,-Though you have considered virtuous love in most of its distresses, I do not remember that you have given us any dissertation upon the absence of lovers, or laid down any methods how they should support themselves under those long separations which they are sometimes forced to undergo. I am at present in this unhappy circumstance, having parted with the best of husbands, who is abroad in the service of his country, and may not possibly return for some years. His warm and generous affection while we were together, with the tenderness which he expressed to me at parting, make his absence almost insupportable. I think of him every moment of the day, and meet him every night in my dreams. Every thing I see puts me in mind of him. I apply myself with more than ordinary diligence to the care of his family and his estate; but this instead of relieving me, gives me but so many occasions of wishing for his return. I frequent the rooms where I used to converse with him, and not meeting him there, sit down in his chair and fall a weeping. I love to read the books he delighted in, and to converse with the persons whom he esteemed. I visit his picture a hundred times a day, and place myself over against it whole hours together. I pass a great part of my time in the walks where I used to lean upon his arm, and recollect in my mind the discourses which have there passed between us: I look over the several prospects and points of view which we used to survey together, fix my eye upon the objects which he has made me take notice of; and call to mind a thousand agreeable remarks which he has made on those occasions. I write to him by every conveyance, and contrary to other people, am always in good-humour when an east wind blows, because it seldom fails of bringing me a letter from him. Let me entreat you, sir, to give me your advice upon this occasion, and to let me know how I may relieve myself in this my widowhood. I am, sir, your most humble servant, 'ASTERIA.' Absence is what the poets call death in love, and has given occasion to abundance of beautiful complaints in those authors who have treated of this passion in verse. Ovid's Epistles are full of them. Otway's Monimia talks very tenderly upon this subject: -It was not kind To leave me like a turtle, here alone, To droop and mourn the absence of my mate. The consolations of lovers on these occasions are very extraordinary. Besides those mentioned by Asteria, there are many other motives of comfort which are made use of by absent lovers. I remember in one of Scudery's Romances a couple of honourable lovers agreed at their parting to set aside one half hour in the day to think of each other during a tedious absence. The romance tells us, that they both of them punctually observed the time thus agreed upon; and that whatever company or business they were engaged in, they left it abruptly as soon as the clock warned them to retire. The romance further adds, that the lovers expected the return of this stated hour with as much impatience as if it had been a real assignation, and enjoyed an imaginary happiness, that was almost as pleasing to them as what they would have found from a real meeting. It was an inexpressible satisfaction to these divided lovers to be assured that each was at the same time employed in the same kind of contemplation, and making equal returns of tenderness and affection. If I may be allowed to mention a more serious expedient for the alleviating of absence, I shall take notice of one which I have known two persons practise, who joined religion to that elegance of sentiments with which the passion of love generally inspires its votaries. This was, at the return of such an hour, to offer up a certain prayer for each other, which they had agreed upon before their parting. The husband, who is a man that makes a figure in the polite world, as well as in his own family, has often told me, that he could not have supported an absence of three years without this expedient. Strada, in one of his Prolusions, gives an account of a chimerical correspondence between two friends by the help of a certain loadstone, which had such virtue in it, that Lib. ii. prol. 6. if it touched two several needles, when one | yours concerning the misbehaviour of peoof the needles so touched began to move, the ple, who are necessarily in each other's other, though at never so great a distance, company in travelling, ought to have been moved at the same time, and in the same a lasting admonition against transgressions manner. He tells us, that the two friends of that kind. But I had the fate of your being each of them possessed of one of these quaker, in meeting with a rude fellow in a needles, made a kind of dial-plate, inscrib- stage-coach, who entertained two or three ing it with the four-and-twenty letters, in women of us (for there was no man besides the same manner as the hours of the day himself) with language as indecent as ever are marked upon the ordinary dial-plate. was heard upon the water. The impertiThey then fixed one of the needles on each nent observations which the coxcomb made of these plates in such a manner that it upon our shame and confusion were such, could move round without impediment, so that it is an unspeakable grief to reflect as to touch any of the four-and-twenty let- upon them. As much as you have declaimters. Upon their separating from one an- ed against duelling, I hope you will do us other into distant countries, they agreed to the justice to declare, that if the brute has withdraw themselves punctually into their courage enough to send to the place where closets at a certain hour of the day, and to he saw us all alight together to get rid of converse with one another by means of this him, there is not one of us but has a lover their invention. Accordingly when they who shall avenge the insult. It would cerwere some hundred miles asunder, each of tainly be worth your consideration, to look them shut himself up in his closet at the into the frequent misfortunes of this kind, time appointed, and immediately cast his to which the modest and innocent are exeye upon his dial-plate. If he had a mind posed, by the licentious behaviour of such to write any thing to his friend, he directed as are as much strangers to good-breeding his needle to every letter that formed the as to virtue. Could we avoid hearing what words which he had occasion for, making a we do not approve, as easily as we can seelittle pause at the end of every word or ing what is disagreeable, there were some sentence, to avoid confusion. The friend in consolation; but since in a box at a play, the meanwhile saw his own sympathetic in an assembly of ladies, or even in a pew needle moving of itself to every letter which at church, it is in the power of a gross coxthat of his correspondent pointed at. By this comb to utter what a woman cannot avoid means they talked together across a whole hearing, how miserable is her condition continent, and conveyed their thoughts to who comes within the power of such imone another in an instant over cities or pertinents? and how necessary is it to remountains, seas or deserts. peat invectives against such a behaviour? If the licentious had not utterly forgot what it is to be modest, they would know that offended modesty labours under one of the greatest sufferings to which human life can be exposed. If these brutes could reflect thus much, though they want shame, they would be moved by their pity, to abhor an impudent behaviour in the presence of the chaste and innocent. If you will oblige us with a Spectator on this subject, and procure it to be pasted against every stagecoach in Great Britain as the law of the journey, you will highly oblige the whole sex, for which you have professed so great an esteem; and in particular the two ladies my late fellow-sufferers, and, sir, your most humble servant, If Monsieur Scudery, or any other writer on romance, had introduced a necromancer, who is generally in the train of a knighterrant, making a present to two lovers of a couple of these above-mentioned needles, the reader would not have been a little pleased to have seen them corresponding with one another when they were guarded by spies and watches, or separated by castles and adventures. In the meanwhile, if ever this invention should be revived or put in practice, I would propose that upon the lover's dial-plate there should be written not only the fourand-twenty letters, but several entire words which have always a place in passionate epistles; as flames, darts, die, languish, absence, Cupid, heart, eyes, hang, drown, and the like. This would very much abridge the lover's pains in this way of writing a letter, as it would enable him to express the most useful and significant words with a single touch of the needle. No. 242.] Friday, December 7, 1711. C. Creditur, ex medio quia res arcessit, habere MR. SPECTATOR,-Your speculations do not so generally prevail over men's manners as I could wish. A former paper of REBECCA RIDINGHOOD.' 'MR. SPECTATOR,-The matter which I am now going to send you, is an unhappy story in low life, and will recommend itself, so that you must excuse the manner of expressing it. A poor idle drunken weaver in Spitalfields has a faithful laborious wife, who by her frugality and industry had laid by her as much money as purchased her a ticket in the present lottery. She had hid this very privately in the bottom of a trunk and had given her number to a friend and confidant, who had promised to keep the secret, and bring her news of the success. The poor adventurer was one day gone might think, several great philosophers, both ancient and modern, were of opinion, that both pleasure and pain were imaginary distinctions, and that there was no such thing as either in rerum natura. I have often heard them affirm that the fire was not hot; and one day when I, with the authority of an old fellow, desired one of them to put my blue cloak on my knees, she answered, "Sir, I will reach the cloak; but take notice, I do not do it as allowing your description; for it might as well be called yellow as blue; for colour is nothing but the various infractions of the rays of the sun." Miss Molly told me one day, that to say abroad, when her careless husband, sus- | that distemper, when my niece Kitty begpecting she had saved some money, searches ged leave to assure me, that whatever I every corner, till at length he finds this same ticket; which he immediately carries abroad, sells, and squanders away the money without the wife's suspecting any thing of the matter. A day or two after this, this friend, who was a woman, comes and brings the wife word, that she had a benefit of five hundred pounds. The poor creature overjoyed, flies up stairs to her husband, who was then at work, and desires him to leave his loom for that evening, and come and drink with a friend of his and her's below. The man received this cheerful invitation as bad husbands sometimes do, and after a cross word or two, told her he would not come. His wife with tenderness renew-snow was white, is allowing a vulgar error; ed her importunity, and at length said to him, "My love! I have within these few months, unknown to you, scraped together as much money as has bought us a ticket in the lottery, and now here is Mrs. Quick come to tell me, that it is come up this morning a five hundred pound prize." The husband replies immediately, "You lie, you slut, you have no ticket, for I have sold it." The poor woman upon this faints away in a fit, recovers, and is now run distracted. As she had no design to defraud her hus-is to be liable to its insults; and to tell us band, but was willing only to participate in his good fortune, every one pities her, but thinks her husband's punishment but just. This, sir, is a matter of fact, and would, if the persons and circumstances were greater, in a well-wrought play be called Beautiful Distress. I have only sketched it out with chalk, and know a good hand can make a moving picture with worse materials. Sir, &c.' 'MR. SPECTATOR,-I am what the world calls a warm fellow, and by good success in trade I have raised myself to a capacity of making some figure in the world; but no matter for that. I have now under my guardianship a couple of nieces, who will certainly make me run mad; which you will not wonder at, when I tell you they are female virtuosos, and during the three years and a half that I have had them under my care, they never in the least inclined their thoughts towards any one single part of the character of a notable woman. Whilst they should have been considering the proper ingredients for a sack-posset, you should hear a dispute concerning the magnetic virtue of the loadstone, or perhaps the pressure of the atmosphere. Their language is peculiar to themselves, and they scorn to express themselves, on the meanest trifles, with words that are not of a Latin derivation. But this were supportable still, would they suffer me to enjoy an uninterrupted ignorance; but unless I fall in with their abstracted ideas of things, (as they call them) I must not expect to smoke one pipe in quiet. In a late fit of the gout I complained of the pain of for as it contains a great quantity of nitrous particles, it might be more reasonably supposed to be black. In short, the young husseys would persuade me, that to believe one's eyes is a sure way to be deceived; and have often advised me, by no means to trust any thing so fallible as my senses. What I have to beg of you now is, to turn one speculation to the due regulation of female literature, so far at least as to make it consistent with the quiet of such whose fate it the difference between a gentleman that should make cheese-cakes and raise paste, and a lady that reads Locke, and understands the mathematics. In which you will extremely oblige your hearty friend and humble servant, T. 'ABRAHAM THRIFTY.' No. 243.] Saturday, December 8, 1711. Formam quidem ipsam, Marce fili, et tanquam faciem honesti vides; quæ si oculis cerneretur, mirabiles amores (ut ait Plato) excitaret sapientiæ. Tull. Offic. You see, my son Marcus, virtue as it were embodied, which, if it could be made the object of sight, would (as Plato says) excite in us a wonderful love of wisdom. I Do not remember to have read any discourse written expressly upon the beauty and loveliness of virtue, without considering it as a duty, and as the means of making us happy both now and hereafter. I design therefore this speculation as an essay upon that subject in which I shall consider virtue no farther than as it is in itself of an amiable nature, after having premised, that I understand by the word virtue such a general notion as is affixed to it by the writers of morality, and which by devout men generally goes under the name of religion, and by men of the world under the name of honour. Hypocrisy itself does great honour, or rather justice, to religion, and tacitly acknowledges it to be an ornament to human nature. The hypocrite would not be at so much pains to put on the appearance of virtue, if he did not know it was the most proper and effectual means to gain the love and esteem of mankind, We learn from Hierocles, it was a com- | views, and make her altogether lovely, are mon saying among the heathens, that the cheerfulness and good-nature. These genewise man hates nobody, but only loves the virtuous. rally go together, as a man cannot be agreeable to others who is not easy within himself. They are both very requisite in a virtuous mind, to keep out melancholy from the many serious thoughts it is engaged in, and to hinder its natural hatred of vice from souring into severity, and censoriousness. Tully has a very beautiful gradation of thoughts to show how amiable virtue is. We love a virtuous man,' says he, who lives in the remotest parts of the earth, though we are altogether out of the reach of his virtue, and can receive from it no If virtue is of this amiable nature, what manner of benefit. Nay, one who died se- can we think of those who can look upon veral ages ago, raises a secret fondness and it with an eye of hatred and ill-will, or can benevolence for him in our minds, when we suffer their aversion for a party to blot out read his story. Nay, what is still more, one all the merit of the person who is engaged who has been the enemy of our country, in it? A man must be excessively stupid, provided his wars were regulated by justice as well as uncharitable, who believes there and humanity, as in the instance of Pyrrhus,is no virtue but on his own side, and that whom Tully mentions on this occasion in opposition to Hannibal. Such is the natural beauty and loveliness of virtue. do with the points in dispute. Men of virtue, though of different interests ought to consider themselves as more nearly united with one another, than with the vicious part of mankind, who embark with them in the same civil concerns. We should bear the same love towards a man of honour who is a living antagonist, which Tully tells us in the forementioned passage, every one naturally does to an enemy that is dead. In short, we should esteem virtue though in a foe, and abhor vice though in a friend. there are not men as honest as himself who may differ from him in political principles. Men may oppose one another in some parStoicism, which was the pedantry of vir- ticulars, but ought not to carry their hatred tue, ascribes all good qualifications of what to those qualities which are of so amiable a kind soever to the virtuous man. Accord-nature in themselves, and have nothing to ingly Cato, in the character Tully has left of him, carries matters so far, that he would not allow any one but a virtuous man to be handsome. This indeed looks more like a philosophical rant than the real opinion of a wise man; yet this was what Cato very seriously maintained. In short, the Stoics thought they could not sufficiently represent the excellence of virtue, if they did not comprehend in the notion of it all possible perfections; and therefore did not only suppose, that it was transcendently beautiful in itself, but that it made the very body amiable, and banished every kind of deformity from the person in whom it resided. It is a common observation that the most abandoned to all sense of goodness, are apt to wish those who are related to them of a different character; and it is very observable, that none are more struck with the charms of virtue in the fair sex than those who by their very admiration of it are carried to a desire of ruining it. A virtuous mind in a fair body is indeed a fine picture in a good light, and therefore it is no wonder that it makes the beautiful sex all over charms. speak this with an eye to those cruel treatments which men of all sides are apt to give the characters of those who do not agree with them. How many persons of undoubted probity and exemplary virtue, on either side, are blackened and defamed? How many men of honour exposed to public obloquy and reproach? Those therefore who are either the instruments or abettors in such infernal dealings, ought to be looked upon as persons who make use of religion to promote their cause, not of their cause to promote religion. Judex et callidus audis. C. Hor. Lib. 2. Sat. vii. 101, A judge of painting you, a connoisseur. 'Covent Garden, Dec. 7. 'MR. SPECTATOR,-I cannot, without As virtue in general is of an amiable and No. 244.] Monday, December 10, 1711. lovely nature, there are some particular kinds of it which are more so than others, and these are such as dispose us to do good to mankind. Temperance and abstinence, faith and devotion, are in themselves perhaps as laudable as any other virtues: but those which make a man popular and be- a double injustice, forbear expressing to loved, are justice, charity, munificence, and, in short, all the good qualities that render us beneficial to each other. For this reason even an extravagant man, who has nothing else to recommend him but a false generosity, is often more beloved and esteemed than a person of a much more finished character, who is defective in this particular. The two great ornaments of virtue, which show her in the most advantageous you the satisfaction which a whole clan of virtuosos have received from those hints which you have lately given the town on the cartoons of the inimitable Raphael. It should methinks be the business of a Spectator to improve the pleasures of sight, and there cannot be a more immediate way to it than recommending the study and observation of excellent drawings and pictures, When I first went to view those of Raphael which you have celebrated, I must |