purpose, upon an object of charity whom he | of Job. It is the account which that holy has met with in the street; and afterwards man gives of his behaviour in the days of pass his evening in a coffee-house, or at a his prosperity, and if considered only as a friend's fire-side, with much greater satis- human composition, is a finer picture of a faction to himself, than he could have re- charitable and good-natured man than is to ceived from the most exquisite entertain-be met with in any other author. ments of the theatre. By these means he is generous without impoverishing himself, and enjoys his estate by making it the property of others.

There are few men so cramped in their private affairs, who may not be charitable after this manner, without any disadvantage to themselves, or prejudice to their families. It is but sometimes sacrificing a diversion or convenience to the poor, and turning the usual course of our expenses into a better channel. This is, I think, not only the most prudent and convenient, but the most meritorious piece of charity, which we can put in practice. By this method, we in some measure share the necessities of the poor at the same time that we relieve them, and make ourselves not only their patrons, but their fellow-sufferers.

Sir Thomas Brown, in the last part of his Religio Medici, in which he describes his charity in several heroic instances, and with a noble heat of sentiment, mentions that verse in the Proverbs of Solomon, He that giveth to the poor, lendeth to the Lord: "There is more rhetoric in that one sentence," says he, "than in a library of sermons; and indeed, if those sentences were understood by the reader, with the same emphasis as they are delivered by the author, we needed not those volumes of instructions, but might be honest by an epitome."

'O that I were as in months past, as in the days when God preserved me: When his candle shined upon my head, and when by his light I walked through darkness: When the Almighty was yet with me; when my children were about me: When I washed my steps with butter, and the rock poured out rivers of oil.

"When the ear heard me, then it blessed me; and when the eye saw me, it gave witness to me. Because I delivered the poor that cried, and the fatherless, and him that had none to help him. The blessing of him that was ready to perish came upon me, and I caused the widow's heart to sing for joy. I was eyes to the blind, and feet was I to the lame: I was a father to the poor, and the cause which I knew not I searched out. Did not I weep for him that was in trouble? was not my soul grieved for the poor? Let me be weighed in an even balance, that God may know mine integrity. If I did despise the cause of my manservant or of my maid-servant when they contended with me, what then shall I do when God riseth up? and when he visiteth, what shall I answer him? Did not he that made me in the womb, make him? and did not one fashion us in the womb? If I have withheld the poor from their desire, or have caused the eyes of the widow to fail: Or have eaten my morsel myself alone, and the fatherless hath not eaten thereof;

This passage in scripture is indeed won-If I have seen any perish for want of clothderfully persuasive; but I think the same thought is carried much farther in the New Testament, where our Saviour tells us in a most pathetic manner, that he shall hereafter regard the clothing of the naked, the feeding of the hungry, and the visiting of the imprisoned, as offices done to himself, and reward them accordingly. Pursuant to those passages in holy scripture, I have somewhere met with the epitaph of a charitable man, which has very much pleased I cannot recollect the words, but the sense of it is to this purpose: What I spent I lost; what I possessed is left to others; what I gave away remains with me.§

ing, or any poor without covering: If his loins have not blessed me, and if he were not warmed with the fleece of my sheep: If I have lifted up my hand against the fatherless, when I saw my help in the gate; then let mine arm fall from my shoulderblade, and mine arm be broken from the bone. If I have rejoiced at the destruction of him that hated me, or lifted up myself when evil found him: (Neither have I suffered my mouth to sin, by wishing a curse to his soul.) The stranger did not lodge in the street; but I opened my doors to the traveller. If my land cry against me, or that the furrows likewise therefore comSince I am thus insensibly engaged in sa- plain: If I have eaten the fruits thereof cred writ, I cannot forbear making an ex-without money, or have caused the owners tract of several passages which I have thereof to lose their life; let thistles grow always read with great delight in the book instead of wheat, and cockle instead of

me.

*Prov. xix. 17.

† Brown's Rel. Medici, Part II. Sect. 13. f. 1659. p. 2.

1 Mat. xxv. 31, et seqq.

barley.'il

L.

The epitaph alluded to is (or was) in St. George's No. 178.] Monday, September 24, 1711. Church, at Doncaster in Yorkshire, and runs in old English thus:

How now, who is heare?
I Robin of Doncasteare
And Margaret my feare

That I spent, that I had:
That I gave, that I have;
That I left, that I lost.
A. D. 1579.
Quoth Robertus Byrks, who in this world did reign
threescore years and seven, and yet lived not one,

Comis in uxorem

Civil to his wife.

Hor. Lib. 2. Ep. ii. 133.
Pope.

I CANNOT defer taking notice of this letter. 'MR. SPECTATOR,-I am but too good a Job xxix. 2. &c, xxx, 25, &c, xxxi. 6, &c, passim.

I had it in my thoughts, before I received the letter of this lady, to consider this dreadful passion in the mind of a woman: and the smart she seems to feel does not abate the inclination I had to recommend to husbands a more regular behaviour, than to give the love them, nay whose torments would be Imost exquisite of torments to those who abated if they did not love them.

judge of your paper of the 15th instant, | am answered only: That I expose my own which is a master-piece; I mean that of reputation and sense if I appear jealous. I jealousy: but I think it unworthy of you to wish, good sir, you would take this into speak of that torture in the breast of a man, serious consideration, and admonish husand not to mention also the pangs of it in bands and wives, what terms they ought to the heart of a woman. You have very ju- keep towards each other. Your thoughts diciously, and with the greatest penetration on this important subject will have the imaginable, considered it as woman is the greatest reward, that which descends on creature of whom the diffidence is raised: such as feel the sorrows of the afflicted. but not a word of a man, who is so unmer- Give me leave to subscribe myself, your ciful as to move jealousy in his wife, and unfortunate humble servant, not care whether she is so or not. It is pos'CELINDA.' sible you may not believe there are such tyrants in the world; but, alas, I can tell you of a man who is ever out of humour in his wife's company, and the pleasantest man in the world every where else; the greatest sloven at home when he appears to none but his family, and most exactly welldressed in all other places. Alas, sir, is it of course, that to deliver one's self wholly into a man's power without possibility of It is wonderful to observe how little is appeal to any other jurisdiction but his own made of this inexpressible injury, and how reflections, is so little an obligation to a gen- easily men get into a habit of being least tleman, that he can be offended and fall agrecable, where they are most obliged to into a rage, because my heart swells tears be so. But this subject deserves a distinct into my eyes when I see him in a cloudy mood? I pretend to no succour, and hope speculation, and I shall observe for a day for no relief but from himself; and yet he or two the behaviour of two or three happy that has sense and justice in every thing tend to make a system of conjugal morality. pairs I am acquainted with, before I preelse, never reflects, that to come home only I design in the first place to go a few miles to sleep off an intemperance, and spend all the time he is there as if it were a punish-meet one who practises all the parts of a out of town, and there I know where to ment, cannot but give the anguish of a jeal-fine gentleman in the duty of an husband. ous mind. He always leaves his home as When he was a bachelor much business if he were going to court, and returns as if made him particularly negligent in his hahe were entering a jail. I could add to this, bit; but now there is no young lover living that from his company and his usual disso exact in the care of his person. One who course, he does not scruple being thought asked, Why he was so long washing his an abandoned man, as to his morals. Your mouth, and so delicate in the choice and own imagination will say enough to you wearing of his linen? was answered, “Beconcerning the condition of me his wife; cause there is a woman of merit obliged to and I wish you would be so good as to re-receive me kindly, and I think it incumpresent to him, for he is not ill-natured, bent upon me to make her inclination go and reads you much, that the moment I hear the door shut after him, I throw myalong with her duty. self upon my bed, and drown the child he is so fond of with my tears, and often frighten it with my cries; that I curse my being; that I run to my glass all over bathed in sorrows, and help the utterance of my inward anguish by beholding the gush of my own calamities as my tears fall from my eyes. This looks like an imagined picture to tell you, but indeed this is one of my pastimes. Hitherto I have only told you the general temper of my mind, but how shall I give you an account of the distraction of it? Could you but conceive how cruel I am one moment in my resentment, and at the en'HUSBAND, Stay more at home. I know suing minute, when I place him in the con- where you visited at seven of the clock on dition my anger would bring him to, how Thursday evening. The colonel, whom you compassionate; it would give you some no-charged me to see no more, is in town. tion how miserable I am, and how little I deserve it. When I remonstrate with the greatest gentleness that is possible against unhandsome appearances, and that married persons are under particular rules; when he is in the best humour to receive this, I

to

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If a man would give himself leave to think, he would not be so unreasonable as live in commerce together; or hope that expect debauchery and innocence could flesh and blood is capable of so strict an allegiance as that a fine woman must go on to improve herself till she is as good and impassive as an angel, only to preserve fidedesires me for her sake to end one of my lity to a brute and a satyr. The lady who papers with the following letter, I am persuaded, thinks such a perseverance very impracticable.

T. 'MARTHA HOUSEWIFE,'

No. 179.] Tuesday, September 25, 1711,

Centuriæ seniorum agitant expertia frugis:
Celsi prætereunt austera poemata Rhamns.

Omne tullt punctum qui miscuit utile dulci,
Lectorem delectando, pariterque monendo.
Hor. Ars Poet. v. 341.

Old age is only fond of moral truth,
Lectures too grave disgust aspiring youth;
But he who blends instruction with delight,
Wins every reader, nor in vain shall write.-P.
I MAY cast my readers under two general
divisions, the mercurial and the saturnine.
The first are the gay part of my disciples;
who require speculations of wit and humour,
the others are those of a more solemn and
sober turn, who find no pleasure but in pa-
pers of morality and sound sense. The
former call every thing that is serious, stu-
pid; the latter look upon every thing as im-
pertinent that is ludicrous. Were I always
grave, one half of my readers would fall off
from me: were I always merry, I should
lose the other. I make it therefore my en-
deavour to find out entertainments of both
kinds, and by that means, perhaps, consult
the good of both, more than I should do, did
I always write to the particular taste of
either. As they neither of them know what
I proceed upon, the sprightly reader, who
takes up my paper in order to be diverted,
very often finds himself engaged unawares
in a serious and profitable course of think-
ing; as, on the contrary, the thoughtful
man, who perhaps may hope to find some-
thing solid, and full of deep reflection, is
very often insensibly betrayed into a fit of
mirth. In a word, the reader sits down to
my entertainment without knowing his bill
of fare, and has therefore at least the plea-
sure of hoping there may be a dish to his
palate.

If what I have here said does not recommend, it will at least excuse, the variety of my speculations. I would not willingly laugh but in order to instruct, or if I sometimes fail in this point, when my mirth ceases to be instructive, it shall never cease to be innocent. A scrupulous conduct in this particular, has, perhaps, more merit in it than the generality of readers imagine; did they know how many thoughts occur in a point of humour, which a discreet author in modesty suppresses; how many strokes of raillery present themselves, which could not fail to please the ordinary taste of mankind, but are stifled in their birth by reason of some remote tendency which they carry in them to corrupt the minds of those who read them; did they know how many glances of ill-nature are industriously avoided for fear of doing injury to the reputation of another, they would be apt to think kindly of those writers who endeavour to make themselves diverting without being immoral. One may apply to these authors that passage in Waller:

Poets lose half the praise they would have got, Were it but known what they discreetly blot. with all the above-mentioned liberties, it As nothing is more easy than to be a wit, requires some genius and invention to appear such without them.

What I have here said is not only in regard to the public, but with an eye to my the following letter, which I have castrated particular correspondent, who has sent me in some places upon these considerations:

I must confess, were I left to myself, I 'SIR,-Having lately seen your discourse should rather aim at instructing than divert-upon a match of grinning, I cannot forbear ing; but if we will be useful to the world, we must take it as we find it. Authors of professed severity discourage the looser part of mankind from having any thing to do with their writings. A man must have virtue in him, before he will enter upon the reading of a Seneca or an Epictetus. The very title of a moral treatise has something in it austere and shocking to the careless and inconsiderate.

giving you an account of a whistling match, which with many others, I was entertained with about three years since at the Bath. The prize was a guinea, to be conferred upon the ablest whistler, that is, on him who could whistle clearest, and go through his tune without laughing, to which at the same time he was provoked by the antick postures of a merry-andrew, who was to stand upon the stage and play his tricks in For this reason several unthinking per- the eye of the performer. There were three sons fall in my way, who would give no competitors for the guinea. The first was attention to lectures delivered with a reli-a ploughman of a very promising aspect; gious seriousness or a philosophic gravity. They are ensnared into sentiments of wisdom and virtue when they do not think of it; and if by that means they arrive only at such a degree of consideration as may dispose them to listen to more studied and elaborate discourses, I shall not think my speculations useless. I might likewise observe, that the gloominess in which sometimes the minds of the best men are involved, very often stands in need of such little incitements to mirth and laughter, as are apt to disperse melancholy, and put our faculties in good humour. To which some will add, that the British climate, more than any other makes entertainments of this nature in a manner necessary.

his features were steady, and his muscles composed in so inflexible a stupidity, that upon his first appearance every one gave the guinea for lost. The pickled herring however found the way to shake him; for upon his whistling a country jig, this unlucky wag danced to it with such variety of distortions and grimaces, that the countryman could not forbear smiling upon him, and by that means spoiled his whistle and lost the prize.

"The next that mounted the stage was an under-citizen of the Bath, a person remarkable among the inferior people of that place for his great wisdom, and his broad band. He contracted his mouth with much gravity, and that he might dispose his mind to

be more serious than ordinary, began the tune of The Children in the Wood. He went through part of it with good success, when on a sudden the wit at his elbow, who had appeared wonderfully grave and attentive for some time, gave him a touch upon the left shoulder, and stared him in the face with so bewitching a grin, that the whistler relaxed his fibres into a kind of simper, and at length burst out into an open laugh. The third who entered the lists was a footman, who in defiance of the merry-andrew and all his arts, whistled a Scotch tune, and an Italian sonata, with so settled a countenance that he bore away the prize, to the great admiration of some hundreds of persons, who, as well as myself, were present at this trial of skill. Now, sir, I humbly conceive, whatever you have determined of the grinners, the whistlers ought to be encouraged, not only as their art is practised without distortion, but as it improves country music, promotes gravity, and teaches ordinary people to keep their countenances, if they see any thing ridiculous in their betters: besides that it seems an entertainment very particularly adapted to the Bath, as it is usual for a rider to whistle to his horse when he would make his water pass. I am, sir, &c.

'POSTSCRIPT.

greatest conqueror of our age, till her majesty's armies had torn from him so many of his countries, and deprived him of the fruit of all his former victories. For my own part, if I were to draw his picture, I should be for taking him no lower than to the peace of Ryswick, just at the end of his triumphs, and before his reverse of fortune: and even then I should not forbear thinking his ambition had been vain, and unprofitable to himself and his people.

'As for himself, it is certain he can have gained nothing by his conquests, if they have not rendered him master of more subjects, more riches, or greater power. What I shall be able to offer upon these heads, I resolve to submit to your consideration.

'To begin then with his increase of subjects. From the time he came of age, and has been a manager for himself, all the people he had acquired were such only as he had reduced by his wars, and were left in his possession by the peace; he had conquered not above one-third part of Flanders, and consequently no more than onethird part of the inhabitants of that province.

'About one hundred years ago the houses in that country were all numbered, and by a just computation the inhabitants of all sorts could not then exceed 750,000 souls. And if any man will consider the desolation by almost perpetual wars, the numerous

After having despatched these two important points of grinning and whistling, I armies that have lived almost ever since at hope you will oblige the world with some discretion upon the people, and how much reflections upon yawning, as I have seen it of their commerce has been removed for practised on a twelfth-night, among other Christmas gambols, at the house of a very little reason to imagine that their numbers more security to other places, he will have worthy gentleman, who always entertains have since increased; and therefore with his tenants at that time of the year. They one-third part of that province that prince yawn for a Cheshire cheese, and begin can have gained no more than one-third about midnight, when the whole company part of the inhabitants, or 250,000 new subis disposed to be drowsy. He that yawns jects, even though it should be supposed widest, and at the same time so naturally they were all contented to live still in their as to produce the most yawns among the spectators, carries home the cheese. If you to a new master. native country, and transfer their allegiance

handle this subject as you ought, I question The fertility of this province, its connot but your paper will set half the king-venient situation for trade and commerce, dom a-yawning, though I dare promise you its capacity for furnishing employment and it will never make any body fall asleep.'

L.

subsistence to great numbers, and the vast armies that have been maintained here, make it credible that the remaining twothirds of Flanders are equal to all his other

No. 180.] Wednesday, September 26, 1711. conquests; and consequently by all, he can

-Delirant reges, plectuntur Achivi.
Hor. Lib. 1. Ep. ii. 14.
The monarch's folly makes the people rue.-P.

not have gained more than 750,000 new subjects, men, women, and children, especially if a deduction shall be made of such as have retired from the conqueror, to live under their old masters.

THE following letter has so much weight and good sense, that I cannot forbear insert'It is time now to set his loss against his ing it, though it relates to a hardened sinner whom have very little hopes of re-profit, and to show for the new subjects he forming, viz. Lewis XIV. of France.

had acquired, how many old ones he had lost in the acquisition. I think that in his 'MR. SPECTATOR,-Amidst the variety wars he has seldom brought less into the of subjects of which you have treated, I field in all places than 200,000 fighting could wish it had fallen in your way, to ex-men, besides what have been left in garripose the vanity of conquests. This thought sons: and I think the common computation would naturally lead one to the French is, that of an army, at the end of a camking, who has been generally esteemed the paign, without sieges or battles, scarce four

fifths can be mustered of those that came | Lewis? This the immortal man, the tout into the field at the beginning of the year. His wars at several times, until the last peace, have held about twenty years; and if 40,000 yearly lost, or a fifth part of his armies, are to be multiplied by twenty, he cannot have lost less than 800,000 of his old subjects, and all able-bodied men; a greater number than the new subjects he had acquired.

may reap the whole harvest? Parsimony No. 181.] Thursday, September 27, 1711.

and frugality must be strangers to such a people; for will any man save to-day, what His lacrymis vitam damus, et miserescimus ultro. he has reason to fear will be taken from Virg. Æn. ii. 145. him to-morrow? And where is the enMov'd by these tears, we pity and protect. couragement for marrying? Will any man I AM more pleased with a letter that is think of raising children, without any as-filled with touches of nature than of wit. surance of clothing for their backs, or so The following one is of this kind; much as food for their bellies? And thus by his fatal ambition, he must have lessened the number of his subjects, not only by slaughter and destruction; but by preventing their very births, he has done as much as was possible towards destroying posterity