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tioned letter, and the copy of a deputation
which I have given to my trusty friend,
Mr. John Sly; wherein he is charged to
notify to me all that is necessary for my
arimadversion upon the delinquents men-
tioned by my correspondent, as well as all
others described in the said deputation.

To the Spectator General of Great
Britain.

would but give them two or three touches with your own pen, though you might not perhaps prevail with them to desist entirely from their meditations, yet I doubt not but you would at least preserve them from being public spectacles of folly in our streets. I say two or three touches with your own pen; for I have already observed, Mr. Spec, that those Spectators which are so prettily laced down the sides with little

'I grant it does look a little familiar, but I c's, how instinctive soever they may be, do

must call you

not carry with them that authority as the others. I do again therefore desire, that for DEAR DUMB,-Being got again to the the sake of their dear necks, you would befarther end of the Widow's coffee-house, I stow one penful of your own ink upon them. shall from hence give you some account of I know you are loath to expose them; and the behaviour of our hackney-coachmen it is, I must confess, a thousand pities that since my last. These indefatigable gentle-any young gentleman who is come of honest men, without the least design, I dare say, parents should be brought to public shame. of self-interest or advantage to themselves, And indeed I should be glad to have them do still ply as volunteers day and night for handled a little tenderly at the first, but if the good of their country. I will not trouble fair means will not prevail, there is then you with enumerating many particulars, no other way to reclaim them but by makbut I must by no means omit to inform you ing use of some wholesome severities; and of an infant about six feet high, and be-I think it is better that a dozen or two of tween twenty and thirty years of age, who such good-for-nothing fellows should be was seen in the arms of a hackney-coach-made examples of, than that the reputaman, driving by Will's coffee-house in Co- tion of some hundreds of as hopeful young vent-garden, between the hours of four and gentlemen as myself should suffer through five in the afternoon of that very day their folly. It is not, however, for me to wherein you published a memorial against direct you what to do; but, in short, if our them. This impudent young cur, though coachmen will drive on this trade, the very he could not sit in a coach-box without first of them that I do find meditating in holding, yet would venture his neck to bid the street, I shall make bold to "take the defiance to your spectatorial authority, or number of his chambers,"* together with to any thing that you countenanced. Who a note of his name, and despatch them to he was I know not, but I heard this relation you, that you may chastise him at your this morning from a gentleman who was an own discretion. I am, dear Spec, for ever eye witness of this his impudence; and I your's, MOSES GREENBAG, was willing to take the first opportunity to 'Esq. if you please. inform you of him, as holding it extremely requisite that you should nip him in the 'P. S. Tom Hammercloth, one of our bud. But I am myself most concerned for coachmen, is now pleading at the bar at my fellow-templars, fellow-students, and the other end of the room, but has a little fellow-labourers in the law, I mean such of too much vehemence, and throws out his them as are dignified and distinguished un- arms too much to take his audience, with der the denomination of hackney-coach- a good grace.' men. Such aspiring minds have these ambitious young men, that they cannot enjoy themselves out of a coach-box. It is, however, an unspeakable comfort to me that I can now tell you that some of them are grown so bashful as to study only in the night time, or in the country. The other night I spied one of our young gentlemen very diligent at his lucubrations in Fleet Street; and, by the way, I should be under some concern, lest this hard student should one time or other crack his brain with studying, but that I am in hopes nature has taken care to fortify him in proportion to the great undertakings he was designed for. Another of my fellow-templars on Thursday last was getting up into his study at the bottom of Gray's-Inn-Lane, in order, I suppose, to contemplate in the fresh air. Now, sir, my request is, that the great modesty of these two gentlemen may be recorded as a pattern to the rest; and if you

To my loving and well-beloved John Sly, haberdasher of hats, and tobacconist, between the cities of London and Westminster.

Whereas frequent disorders, affronts, indignities, omissions, and trespasses, for which there are no remedies by any form of law, but which apparently disturb and disquiet the minds of men, happen near the place of your residence; and that you are, as well by your commodious situation, as the good parts with which you are endowed, properly qualified for the observation of the said offences; I do hereby authorize and depute you, from the hours of nine in the morning until four in the afternoon, to keep a strict eye upon all persons and things that are conveyed in coaches, carried in carts, or walk on foot, from the city of London to the city of Westminster, or from the city * An allusion to the number of a hackney-coach.

of Westminster to the city of London, | the history picture of a fan in so gallant a within the said hours. You are therefore manner as he addresses t. But see the not to depart from your observatory at the letters. end of Devereux-court during the said space of each day, but to observe the be- 'MR. SPECTATOR,-It is now almost haviour of all persons who are suddenly three months since I was in town about transported from tramping on pebbles to some business; and the hurry of it being sit at ease in chariots, what notice they over, I took a coach one afternoon, and take of their foot acquaintance, and send drove to see a relation, who married about me the speediest advice, when they are six years ago a wealthy citizen. I found guilty of overlooking, turning from, or ap- her at home, but her husband gone to the pearing grave and distant to, their old Exchange, and expected back within an friends. When man and wife are in the hour at the farthest. After the usual salutasame coach, you are to see whether they tions of kindness, and a hundred questions appear pleased or tired with each other, about friends in the country, we sat down and whether they carry the due mean in to piquet, played two or three games, and the eye of the world, between fondness and drank tea. I should have told you that this coolness. You are carefully to behold all such was my second time of seeing her since as shall have addition of honour or riches, marriage; but before, she lived at the same and report whether they preserve the town where I went to school; so that the countenance they had before such addition. plea of a relation, added to the innocence As to persons on foot, you are to be atten- of my youth, prevailed upon her good-hutive whether they are pleased with their mour to indulge me in a freedom of concondition, and are dressed suitable to it; versation as often, and oftener, than the but especially to distinguish such as appear strict discipline of the school would allow discreet, by a low-heel shoe, with the de- of. You may easily imagine, after such an cent ornament of a leather garter: to write acquaintance, we might be exceeding merry down the names of such country gentlemen without any offence; as in calling to mind as, upon the approach of peace, have left how many inventions I have been put to in the hunting for the military cock of the deluding the master, how many hands hat; of all who strut, make a noise, and forged for excuses, how many times been swear at the drivers of coaches to make sick in perfect health; for I was then never haste, when they see it is impossible they sick but at school, and only then because should pass; of all young gentlemen in out of her company. We had whiled away coach-boxes, who labour at a perfection in three hours after this manner, when I found what they are sure to be excelled by the it past five; and not expecting her husband meanest of the people. You are to do all would return until late, rose up, and told that in you lies that coaches and passengers her I should go early next morning for the give way according to the course of busi- country. She kindly answered she was ness, all the morning in term-time, towards afraid it would be long before she saw me Westminster, the rest of the year towards again; so, I took my leave, and parted. the Exchange. Upon these directions, toge- Now, sir, I had not been got home a fortther with other secret articles herein en-night, when I received a letter from a closed, you are to govern yourself, and give advertisement thereof to me, at all convenient and spectatorial hours, when men of business are to be seen. Hereof you are not to fail. Given under my seal of office.numerous a society. He had, it seems, lisT. "THE SPECTATOR.'

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I AM SO tender of my women-readers, that I cannot defer the publication of any thing which concerns their happiness or quiet. The repose of a married woman is consulted in the first of the following letters, and the felicity of a maiden lady in the second. I call it a felicity to have the addresses of an agreeable man; and I think I have not any where seen a prettier application of a poetical story than that of his, in making the tale of Cephalus and Procris VOL. II.

38

neighbour of theirs, that ever since that fatal afternoon the lady has been most inhumanly treated, and the husband publicly stormed that he was made a member of too

tened most of the time my cousin and I were together. As jealous ears always hear double, so he heard enough to make him mad; and as jealous eyes always see through magnifying glasses, so he was certain it could not be I whom he had seen, a beardless stripling, but fancied he saw a gay gentleman of the temple, ten years older than myself; and for that reason, I presume, durst not come in, nor take any notice when I went out. He is perpetually asking his wife if she does not think the time long (as she said she should) until she see her cousin again. Pray, sir, what can be done in this case? I have writ to him to assure him I was at his house all that afternoon expecting to see him. His answer is, it is only a trick of hers, and that he neither can nor will believe me. The parting kiss I find mightily nettles him, and confirms him in all his errors. Ben Jonson, as I remember,

makes a foreigner, in one of his comedies, | he was so much in the forest, that his lady "admire the desperate valour of the bold suspected he was pursuing some nymph, English, who let out their wives to all en- under the pretence of following a chase The general custom of saluta-more innocent. Under this suspicion she hid herself among the trees, to observe his motions. While she lay concealed, her husband, tired with the labour of hunting, came within her hearing. As he was fainting with heat, he cried out, "Aura veni!”

counters."
tion should excuse the favour done me, or
you should lay down rules when such dis-
tinctions are to be given or omitted. You
cannot imagine, sir, how troubled I am for
this unhappy lady's misfortune, and beg
you would insert this letter, that the hus-"Oh, charming air, approach!"
band may reflect upon this accident coolly.
It is no small matter, the ease of a virtuous
woman for her whole life. I know she will
conform to any regularities (though more
strict than the common rules of our country
require) to which his particular temper
shall incline him to oblige her. This ac-
cident puts me in mind how generously
Pisistratus, the Athenian tyrant, behaved
himself on a like occasion, when he was
instigated by his wife to put to death a young
gentleman, because, being passionately fond
of his daughter, he had kissed her in public,
as he met her in the street. "What," said
he, "shall we do to those who are our ene-
mies, if we do thus to those who are our
friends?" I will not trouble you much
longer, but am exceedingly concerned lest
this accident inay cause a virtuous lady to
lead a miserable life with a husband who
has no grounds for his jealousy but what I
have faithfully related, and ought to be
reckoned none. It is to be feared too, if at
last he sees his mistake, yet people will be
as slow and unwilling in disbelieving scan-
dal as they are quick and forward in believ-
ing it. I shall endeavour to enliven this
plain honest letter with Ovid's relation
about Cybele's image. The ship wherein
it was aboard was stranded at the mouth
of the Tiber, and the men were unable to
move it, until Claudia, a virgin, but sus-
pected of unchastity, by a slight pull hauled
it in. The story is told in the fourth book
of the Fasti.

'The unfortunate wife, taking the word air to be the name of a woman, began to move among the bushes; and the husband, believing it a deer, threw his javelin, and killed her. This history, painted on a fan, which I presented to a lady, gave occasion to my growing poetical.'

"Come, gentle air!" the Æolian shepherd said,
While Procris panted in the secret shade;
"Come, gentle air," the fairer Delia cries,
While at her feet the swain expiring lies.
Lo! the glad gales o'er all her beauties stray,
Breathe on her lips, and in her bosom play.
In Delia's hand this toy is fatal found,
Nor did that fabled dart more surely wound.
Both gifts destructive to the givers prove,
Alike both lovers fall by those they love:
Yet guiltless too this bright destroyer lives,
At random wounds, nor knows the wound she gives;
She views the story with attentive eyes,
And pities Procris, while her lover dies.

"Parent of gods, (began the weeping fair,)
Reward or punish, but oh! hear my prayer:
If lewdness e'er defil'd my virgin bloom,
From heav'n with justice I receive my doom:
But if my honour yet has known no stain,
Thou, goddess, thou my innocence maintain;
Thou, whom the nicest rules of goodness sway'd,
Vouchsafe to follow an unblemish'd maid."
She spoke and touch'd the cord with glad surprise,
(The truth was witness'd by ten thousand eyes)
The pitying goddess easily comply'd,
Follow'd in triumph, and adorn'd her guide;
While Claudia, blushing still for past disgrace,
March'd silent on, with a slow solemn pace:
Nor yet from some was all distrust remov'd,
Though heav'n such virtue by such wonders prov'd.
I am, sir, your very humble servant.
'PHILAGNOTES.'

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MR. SPECTATOR,-You will oblige a languishing lover, if you will please to print the enclosed verses in your next paper. If you remember the Metamorphoses, you know Procris, the fond wife of Cephalus, is said to have made her husband, who delighted in the sports of the wood, a present of an unerring javelin. In process of time

sex.

No. 528.] Wednesday, November 5, 1712.
Dum potuit, solita gemitum virtute repressit.
Ovid, Met. ix. 165.
With wonted fortitude she bore the smart,
And not a groan confess'd her burning heart.-Gay.
'MR. SPECTATOR,-I who now write t
you am a woman loaded with injuries; and
the aggravation of my misfortune is, that
they are such which are overlooked by the
generality of mankind; and, though the
most afflicting imaginable, not regarded a
such in the general sense of the world.
have hid my vexation from all mankind;
but having now taken pen, ink, and paper,
am resolved to unbosom myself to you, and
lay before you what grieves me and all the
You have very often mentioned par-
ticular hardships done to this or that lady;
but methinks you have not, in any one
speculation, directly pointed at the partial
freedom men take, the unreasonable con-
finement women are obliged to, in the only
circumstance in which we are necessarily
to have a commerce with them, that of
love. The case of celibacy is the great evil
of our nation; and the indulgence of the
vicious conduct of men in that state, with
the ridicule to which women are exposed,
though ever so virtuous, if long unmarried,
is the root of the greatest irregularities of
this nation. To show you, sir, that (though
you never have given us the catalogue of a
lady's library, as you promised) we read
books of our own choosing, I shall insert on
this occasion a paragraph or two out of
Echard's Roman History. In the 44th page
of the second volume, the author observes

lascivious manner which all our young gentlemen use in public, and examine our eyes with a petulancy in their own which is a downright affront to modesty. A disdainful look on such an occasion is returned with a countenance rebuked, but by averting their eyes from the woman of honour and decency to some flippant creature, who will, as the phrase is, be kinder. I must set down things as they come into my head, without standing upon order. Ten thousand to one but the gay gentleman who stared, at the same time, is a housekeeper; for you must know they are got into a humour of late of being very regular in their sins; and a young fellow shall keep his four maids and three footmen with the greatest gravity imaginable. There are no less than six of these venerable housekeepers of my acquaintance. This humour among young men of condition is imitated by all the world below them, and a general dissolution* of manners arises from this one source of libertinism, without shame or reprehension in the male youth. It is from this one fountain that so many beautiful helpless young women are sacrificed and given up to lewd

that Augustus, upon his return to Rome at | the end of a war, received complaints that too great a number of the young men of quality were unmarried. The emperor thereupon assembled the whole equestrian order; and, having separated the married from the single, did particular honours to the former; but he told the latter, that is to say, Mr. Spectator, he told the bachelors, That their lives and actions had been so peculiar, that he knew not by what name to call them; not by that of men, for they performed nothing that was manly; not by that of citizens, for the city might perish notwithstanding their care; nor by that of Romans, for they designed to extirpate the Roman name. Then, proceeding to show his tender care and hearty affection for his people, he farther told them, that their course of life was of such pernicious consequence to the glory and grandeur of the Roman nation, that he could not choose but tell them, that all other crimes put together could not equalize theirs, for they were guilty of murder, in not suffering those to be born which should proceed from them; of impiety, in causing the names and honours of their ancestors to cease; and ofness, shame, poverty, and disease. It is to sacrilege, in destroying their kind, which this also that so many excellent young woproceed from the immortal gods, and hu- men, who might be patterns of conjugal man nature, the principal thing consecrated affection, and parents of a worthy race, to them: therefore, in this respect, they pine under unhappy passions for such as dissolved the government in disobeying its have not attention to observe, or virtue laws; betrayed their country, by making it enough to prefer them to their common barren and waste; nay, and demolished wenches. Now, Mr. Spectator, I must be their city, in depriving it of inhabitants. free to own to you that I myself suffer a And he was sensible that all this proceeded tasteless insipid being, from a consideration not from any kind of virtue or abstinence, I have for a man who would not, as he said but from a looseness and wantonness which in my hearing, resign his liberty, as he calls ought never to be encouraged in any civil it, for all the beauty and wealth the whole government. There are no particulars sex is possessed of. Such calamities as these dwelt upon that let us into the conduct of would not happen, if it could possibly be these young worthies, whom this great brought about, that by fining bachelors as emperor treated with so much justice and papists, convicts, or the like, they were indignation; but any one who observes what distinguished to their disadvantage from the passes in this town may very well frame to rest of the world, who fall in with the meahimself a notion of their riots and debauche-sures of civil society. Lest you should think ries all night, and their apparent prepara-I speak this as being, according to the tions for them all day. It is not to be doubted senseless rude phrase, a malicious old maid, but these Romans never passed any of their I shall acquaint you I am a woman of contime innocently but when they were asleep, dition, not now three-and-twenty, and have and never slept but when they were weary had proposals from at least ten different and heavy with excesses, and slept only to men, and the greater number of them have prepare themselves for the repetition of upon the upshot refused me. Something or them. If you did your duty as a Spectator, other is always amiss when the lover takes you would carefully examine into the num- to some new wench. A settlement is easily ber of births, marriages, and burials; and excepted against; and there is very little when you had deducted out of your deaths recourse to avoid the vicious part of our all such as went out of the world without youth, but throwing oneself away upon marrying, then cast up the number of both some lifeless blockhead, who, though he is sexes born within such a term of years last without vice, is also without virtue." Nowpast; you might, from the single people de-a-days we must be contented if we can get parted, make some useful inferences or creatures which are not bad; good are not guesses how many there are left unmarried, to be expected. Mr. Spectator, I sat near and raise some useful scheme for the amend-you the other day, and think I did not disment of the age in that particular. I have please your spectatorial eye-sight; which I not patience to proceed gravely on this shall be a better judge of when I see whe abominable libertinism; for I cannot but refect, as I am writing to you, upon a certain

Dissoluteness.

ther you take notice of these evils your own
way, or print this memorial dictated from
the disdainful heavy heart of, sir, your most
obedient humble servant,
T.

RACHEL WELLADAY.'

received time out of mind in the commonwealth of letters, were not originally established with an eye to our paper manufacture, I shall leave to the discussion of others; and shall only remark farther in this place, that all printers and booksellers take the wall of one another according to the above-mentioned merits of the authors

No. 529.] Thursday, November 6, 1712. to whom they respectively belong.

Singula quæque locum teneant sortita decenter.

Hor. Ars Poet. v. 92. Let every thing have its due place.-Roscommon. UPON the hearing of several late disputes concerning rank and precedence, I could not forbear amusing myself with some observations, which I have made upon the learned world, as to this great particular. By the learned world, I here mean at large, all those who are in any way concerned in works of literature, whether in the writing, printing, or repeating part. To begin with the writers: I have observed that the author of a folio, in all companies and conversations, sets himself above the author of a quarto; the author of a quarto above the author of an octavo; and so on, by a gradual | descent and subordination, to an author in twenty-fours. This distinction is so well observed, that in an assembly of the learned, I have seen a folio writer place himself in an elbow chair, when the author of a duodecimo has, out of a just deference to his superior quality, seated himself upon a squab. In a word, authors are usually ranged in company after the same manner as their works are upon a shelf.

The most minute pocket author hath beneath him the writers of all pamphlets, or works that are only stitched. As for the pamphleteer, he takes place of none but the authors of single sheets, and of that fraternity who publish their labours on certain days, or on every day in the week. I do not find that the precedency among the individuals in this latter class of writers is yet settled..

For my own part, I have had so strict a regard to the ceremonial which prevails in the learned world, that I never presumed to take place of a pamphleteer, until my daily papers were gathered into those two first volumes which have already appeared. After which, I naturally jumped over the heads not only of all pamphleteers, but of every octavo writer in Great Britain that had written but one book. I am also informed by my bookseller, that six octavos have at all times been looked upon as an equivalent to a folio; which I take notice of, the rather because I would not have the learned world surprised, if, after the publication of half a dozen volumes, I take my place accordingly. When my scattered forces are thus rallied, and reduced into regular bodies, I flatter myself that I shall make no despicable figure at the head of

them.

Whether these rules, which have been

I come now to that point of precedency which is settled among the three learned professions by the wisdom of our laws. I need not here take notice of the rank which is allotted to every doctor in each of these professions, who are all of them, though not so high as knights, yet a degree above 'squires; this last order of men, being the illiterate body of the nation, are conse quently thrown together in a class below the three learned professions. I mention this for the sake of several rural 'squires, whose reading does not rise so high as to The present State of England, and who are often apt to usurp that precedency which, by the laws of their country, is not due to them. Their want of learning, which has planted them in this station, may in some measure extenuate their misdemeanor; and our professors ought to pardon them when they offend in this particular, considering that they are in a state of ignorance, or, as we usually say, do not know their right hand from their left.

There is another tribe of persons who are retainers to the learned world, and who regulate themselves upon all occasions by several laws peculiar to their body; I mean the players or actors of both sexes. Among these it is a standing and uncontroverted principle, that a tragedian always takes place of a comedian; and it is very well known the merry drolls who make us laugh are always placed at the lower end of the table, and in every entertainment give way to the dignity of the buskin. It is a stage maxim, Once a king, and always a king.' For this reason it would be thought very absurd in Mr. Bullock, notwithstanding the height and gracefulness of his person, to sit at the right hand of a hero, though he were but five foot high. The same distinction is observed among the ladies of the theatre. Queens and heroines preserve their rank in private conversation, while those who are waiting-women and maids of honour upon the stage keep their distance also behind the scenes.

I shall only add that by a parity of reason, all writers of tragedy look upon it as their due to be seated, served, or saluted, before comic writers: those who deal in tragi-comedy usually taking their seats between the authors of either side. There has been a long dispute for precedency between the tragic and heroic poets. Aristotle would have the latter yield the pas to the former; but Mr. Dryden, and many others, would never submit to this decision. Burlesque writers pay the same deference to

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