that such as are acquainted with the characters of the twelve most famous men that have ever appeared in the world would send in their lists, or name any one man for that table, assigning also his place at it before that time, upon pain of having such his man of fame postponed, or placed too high for ever. I shall not, upon any application whatsoever, alter the place which upon that day I shall give to any of these worthies. But whereas there are many who take upon them to admire this hero or that author, upon second hand, I expect each subscriber should underwrite his reason for the place he allots his candidate.

In a

The thing is of the last consequence; for we are about settling the greatest point that has ever been debated in any age; and I shall take precautions accordingly. Let every man who votes, consider that he is now going to give away that for which the soldier gave up his rest, his pleasure, and his life; the scholar resigned his whole series of thought, his midnight repose, and his morning slumbers. word, he is, as I may say, to be judge of that afterlife, which noble spirits prefer to their very real beings. I hope I shall be forgiven, therefore, if I make some objections against their jury, as they shall occur to me. The whole of the number by whom they are to be tried, are to be scholars. I am persuaded also that Aristotle will be put up by all of that class of men. However, in behalf of others, such as wear the livery of Aristotle, the two famous

m Dans le traité de variâ Aristotelis fortunâ in Academiâ Parisiense, imprimé à la Haye, en 1656, Mr. de Launoy recuellit grand nombre de singularités sur les divers jugemens qu'on a portés d'Aristotele en France, et dans l'usage des universités. Il a raison de dire dans l'introduction, est notabilis res, atque ut admiratione, sic et curiositate digna; que l'affaire est bien remarquable, et ne mérite pas moins d'admiration que de curiosité. Le N. P.

n

universities are called upon on this occasion; but I except the men of Queen's, Exeter, and Jesus' colleges, in Oxford, who are not to be electors, because he shall not be crowned from an implicit faith in his writings, but receive his honour from such judges as shall allow him to be censured. Upon this election, as I was just now going to say, I banish all who think and speak after others to concern themselves in it. For which reason all illiterate distant admirers are forbidden to corrupt the voices, by sending, according to the new mode, any poor students coals and candles for their votes in behalf of

such worthies as they pretend to esteem. All newswriters are also excluded, because they consider faine, as it is, a report which gives foundation to the filling up their rhapsodies, and not, as it is, the emanation or consequence of good and evil actions. These are excepted against as justly as butchers in case of life and death their familiarity with the greatest names takes off the delicacy of their regard, as dealing in blood makes the Lanii less tender of spilling it.

ST. JAMES'S COFFEE-HOUSE, SEPTEMBER 28. LETTERS from Lisbon of the 25th instant N. S. speak of a battle which has been fought near the

n' On voit dans l'Historia et Antiquit. Univers. Oxon. d'Ant. Wood, tom. ii. p. 42, que les lecteurs en philosophie naturelle sont obligés, par les statuts, d'expliquer la physique d'Aristote, ses livres du ciel, et du monde; ceux des météores, ou ses parva naturalia, ou ses livres de l'ame, de même que ceux de la génération et de la corruption. Quant à la philosophie morale, on voit à la page suivante de la même Histoire que les statutes veulent aussi que l'on expliqué l'éthique, la politique, et l'œconomique du même Aristote.' Le N. P.

• Je ne connois pas assez l'histoire secrette de l'université d'Oxford, pour savoir ce que a engagé l'auteur à donner singulierement cette exclusion desobligeante aux trois colleges qu'il nommé.' Le N. P.

They were obliged by the statutes of those colleges to keep to Aristotle for their texts.

P See Tatler, No. 73. The article addressed to the electors of an alderman for the ward of Queenhithe.

river Cinca, in which general Staremberg had overthrown the army of the duke of Anjou. The persons who send this, excuse their not giving particulars, because they believed an account must have arrived here before we could hear from them. They had advices from different parts, which concurred in the circumstances of the action; after which the army of his catholic majesty advanced as far as Fraga, and the enemy retired to Saragossa. There are reports, that the duke of Anjou was in the engagement; but letters of good authority say, that prince was on the road towards the camp when he received the news of the defeat of his troops. We promise ourselves great consequences from such an advantage obtained by so accomplished a general as Staremberg; who, among the men of this present age, is esteemed the third in military fame and reputation.

FROM MY OWN APARTMENT, SEPTEMBER 30.

I AM called off from public dissertations by a domestic affair of great importance, which is no less than the

* ADDISON'S and STEELE'S.-Dr. Philip Nicholls not only ascribes this paper to Swift; but seems to affirm that Swift was the author of all the numbers in the Tatler, at least in the second volume of it, ascribed to Jenny Distaff, or relative to her, which he collectively calls The History of Jenny Distaff.' It appears necessary to transcribe a long passage, in order to anticipate objection, and to enable the reader to judge of the propriety of assigning this paper to Addison and Steele.

Swift met with another mortification this year (1700) in the marriage of his sister, who happened to yoke herself to a man in trade; an unpar

disposal of my sister Jenny for life. The girl is a girl of great merit and pleasing conversation; but I being

donable offence (says lord Orrery) in Swift's eye.' If the inverted commas were intended to indicate quotation, they ought not to have ended, as they do here, but to have been continued where he tells us that this marriage seemed to interrupt those ambitious views which Swift had long since formed;-that he grew even outrageous at the thoughts of being brother-in-law to a tradesman, although her uncles and all her friends and relations consented to the match, and thought the man's fortune, character, and situation suitable for her in every respect;-that he utterly refused all reconciliation with his sister, and would not even listen to the intreaties of his mother, who came over to Ireland under the strongest hopes of pacifying his anger, &c. After giving lord Orrery's relation of this fact, with some additions of his own, for which there is no occasion here, the biographer proceeds as follows, entirely in his own words:

While this incident was fresh in my mind, I took up the second volume of the Tatler, and turning over the History of Jenny Distaff, felt the delight those papers had formerly given me greatly heightened. I had considered them as prodigious efforts of surprising wit and humour, brats of an uncommonly-turned brain; but they now seemed to be the dictates of the author's heart. Mr. Pope somewhere tells Swift, that he had a desperate hand at dashing out a character by great strokes. Pope's Works,' vol. iv. part 3, page 103, edit. 1742. Here we discover the true source of that peculiar talent, si vis me flere, dolendum est primum tibi. Swift's real dolor on this subject was as much stronger than that of ordinary men, as his descriptions are more striking than those of any other genius.' Biograph. Britan. art. Swift, p. 3862. note N.

6

6

The reader will make his own remarks, and form his own judgment on the preceding passage; this writer is only obliged to observe, that he can find no ground to support the opinion it contains. He does not clearly conceive what papers the Doctor meant to claim for the subject of his biography; but he is clearly of opinion that this paper was not a brat of Swift's uncommonly-turned brain,' that the great strokes' of the character it describes were not dashed out by his desperate hand;' and that it was never intended to express the dictates or the dolor of that author's heart.'

Steele owns that he was indebted, for the fictitious name under which he published these lucubrations, to Swift, the first doubtless who printed under the appellation of Isaac Bickerstaff; and Mrs. Fenton was certainly Swift's only sister. We are moreover informed, that although this assumed name was rather singular, and the surname not very common, there was in reality a person in London about this time, who bore them both. Nevertheless there is not any ground to doubt, that Isaac Bickerstaff, esq. was merely an ideal personage, and that the character and sisterhood of Jenny Distaff were equally imaginary.

Dr. Nicholls admits that Swift's sister was married to Fenton nine years before the date of this Tatler, in which there is not the remotest allusion

born of my father's first wife, and she of his third, she converses with me rather like a daughter than a sister. I have indeed told her, that if she kept her honour, and behaved herself in such a manner as became the Bickerstaffs, I would get her an agreeable man for her husband; which was a promise I made her after reading a passage in Pliny's 'Epistles'.' That polite author had been employed to find out a consort for his friend's daughter, and gives the following character of the man he had pitched upon : Aciliano plurimum vigoris & industriæ quanquam in maxima verecundia: est illi facies liberalis, multo sanguine, multo rubore, suffusa: est ingenua totius corporis pulchritudo, et quidam senatorius decor, quæ ego nequaquam arbitror negligenda: debet enim hoc castitati puellarum quasi præmium dari. • Acilianus (for that was the gentleman's name) is a man of extraordinary vigour and industry, accompanied with the greatest modesty: he has very much of the gentleman, with a lively colour and flush of health in his aspect. His whole person is finely turned, and speaks him a man of quality; which are qualifications that, I think, ought by no means to be over-looked; and should be bestowed on a daughter as the reward of her chastity.'

A woman that will give herself liberties, need not put her parents to so much trouble; for if she does

that this writer can discover, either to the marriage of Mrs. Fenton, or indeed to any circumstance upon record of her character or story, in which there seems to have been nothing remarkable.

The assignment of this paper to Addison and Steele is thought to rest on the most unexceptionable authority.

In the list mentioned in the preceding note on Tatler, No. 52. which was written, and delivered with Steele's own hand to Mr. Tickell, this number was marked as written by Addison and Steele in conjunction. It is accordingly inserted by that gentleman, with this intimation, in his first edition of Addison's Works,' 1721, 4to. vol. ii. page 191.

r C. Plin. Cæc. Sec. Epistolæ.' Lib. i. ep. xiv. Jun. Maurico.