and you shall be thought a very sensible man, if you were not too hot. As love and honour are the noblest motives of life; so the pretenders to them, without being animated by them, are the most contemptible of all sorts of pretenders. The unjust affectation of any thing that is laudof the thing we affect: thus, as love of one's country is the most glorious of all passions, to see the most ordinary tools in a nation give themselves airs that way, without any one good quality in their own life, has something in it romantic, yet not so ridiculous as odious. grows sharp. I shall take it kindly if you would able politicians. Thus the most barren invenorder him also to send me the papers as they tion shall find enough to say to make one apcome out. If there are no fresh pamphlets pub-pear an able man in the top coffee-houses. It lished, I compute that I shall know before the is but adding a certain vehemence in uttering end of next month what has been done in town yourself, let the thing you say be never so flat, to this day. If it were not for an ill custom lately introduced by a certain author, of talking Latin at the beginning of papers, matters would be in a much clearer light than they are: but, to our comfort, there are solid writers who are not guilty of this pedantry. The Postman writes like an angel. The Moderator is fine reading.able is ignominious in proportion to the worth It would do you no harm to read the Postboy with attention; he is very deep of late. He is instructive; but I confess a little satirical: a sharp pen! he cares not what he says. The Examiner is admirable, and is become a grave and substantial author. But, above all, I am at a loss how to govern myself in my judgment of those whose whole writings consist in interroga tories: and then the way of answering, by proposing questions as hard to them, is quite as extraordinary. As for my part, I tremble at these novelties; we expose, in my opinion, our affairs too much by it. You may be sure the French king will spare no cost to come at the reading of them. I dread to think if the fable of the blackbirds should fall into his hands. But I shall not venture to say more until I see you. In the mean time I am, &c. 'P. S. I take the Bender letter in the Examiner to be spurious.' This unhappy correspondent, whose fantastical loyalty to the king of Sweden has reduced him to this low condition of reason and fortune, would appear much more monstrous in his madness, did we not see crowds very little above his circumstances from the same cause,--a passion to politics. It is no unpleasant entertainment to consider the commerce even of the sexes interrupted by difference in state affairs. A wench and her gallant parted last week upon the words unlimited and passive: and there is such a jargon of terms got into the mouths of the very silliest of the women, that you cannot come into a room even among them, but you find them divided into Whig and Tory. What heightens the humour is, that all the hard words they know, they certainly suppose to be terms useful in the disputes of the partics. I came in this day where two were in very hot debate; and one of them proposed to me to explain to them what was the difference between circumcision and predestination. You may be sure I was at a loss; but they were too angry at each other to wait for my explanation, and proceeded to lay open the whole state of affairs, instead of the usual topics of dress, gallantry, and scandal. ADVERTISEMENT. 'Mr. Bickerstaff has received Sylvia's letter from the Bath, and his sister is set out thither. Tom Frontley, who is one of the guides for the town, is desired to bring her into company, and oblige her with a mention in his next lampoon.' No. 233.] Thursday, October 5, 1710. -Sunt certa piacula, quæ te Hor. 1 Ep. i. 36. 9 From my own Apartment, October 4. WHEN the mind has been perplexed with anx ious cares and passions, the best method of bringing it to its usual state of tranquillity is, as much as we possibly can, to turn our thoughts to the adversities of persons of higher consideration in virtue and merit than ourselves. By this means all the little incidents of our own lives, if they are unfortunate, seem to be the effect of justice upon our faults and indiscretions. When those whom we know to be excellent, and deserving of a better fate, are wretched, we cannot but resign ourselves, whom most of us know to merit a much worse state than that we are placed in. For such, and many other occasions, there is one admirable relation whch one might recommend for certain periods of one's life, to touch, comfort, and improve the heart of man. Tully says somewhere, the pleasures of a husbandman are next to those of a philosopher.' In like manner one may say, for methinks they bear the same proportion one to another, the pleasures of humanity are next to those of devotion. In both these latter satisfactions, there is a certain huI have often wondered how it should be pos-miliation which exalts the soul above its ordinary sible that this turn to politics should so univer-state. At the same time that it lessens our value sally prevail, to the exclusion of every other sub- of ourselves, it enlarges our estimation of others. jeet out of conversation; and, upon mature con- The history I am going to speak of, is that of sideration, find it is for want of discourse. Look Joseph in holy writ, which is related with such round you among all the young fellows you majestic simplicity, that all the parts of it strike meet, and you see those who have the least re- us with strong touches of nature and compaslish for books, company, or pleasure, though sion; and he must be a stranger to both, who they have no manner or qualities to make them can read it with attention, and not be oversucceed in those pursuits, shall make very pass-whelmed with the vicissitudes of joy and sorrow, I hope it will not be a profanation, to tell it one's own way here, that they, who may be unthinking enough to be more frequently readers of such papers as this, than of sacred writ, may be advertised, that the greatest pleasures the imagination can be entertained with are to be found there, and that even the style of the scriptures is more than human. Joseph, a beloved child of Israel, became invidious to his elder brethren, for no other reason but his superior beauty and excellence of body and mind, insomuch, that they could not bear his growing virtue, and let him live. They therefore conspire his death; but nature pleaded so strongly for him in the heart of one of them, that by his persuasion they determined rather to bury him in a pit, than be his immediate executioners with their own hands. When thus much was obtained for him, their minds still softened towards him, and they took the opportunity of some passengers to sell him into Egypt. Israel was persuaded by the artifice of his sons that the youth was torn to pieces by wild beasts, but Joseph was sold to slavery, and still exposed to new misfortunes, from the same cause as before, his beauty and his virtue. By a false accusation he was committed to prison; but in process of time delivered from it, in consideration of his wisdom and knowledge, and made the governor of Pharaoh's house. In this elevation of his fortune, his brothers were sent into Egypt, to buy necessaries of life, in a famine. As soon as they are brought into his presence, he beholds, but he beholds with compassion, the men who had sold him to slavery, approaching him with awe and reverence. While he was looking over his brethren, he takes a resolution to indulge himself in the pleasure of stirring their and his own affections, by keeping himself concealed, and examining into the circumstances of their family. For this end, with an air of severity, as a watchful minister to Pharaoh, he accuses them as spies, who are come into Egypt with designs against the state. This led them into the account which he wanted of them, the condition of their ancient father and little brother whom they had left behind them. When he had learned that his brother was living, he demands the bringing him to Egypt, as a proof of their veracity. But it would be a vain and empty endeavour to attempt laying this excellent representation of the passions of man in the same colours as they appear in the sacred writ, in any other manner, or almost any other words, than those made use of in the page itself. I am obliged, therefore, to turn my designed narration rather into a comment upon the several parts of that beautiful and passionate scene. When Joseph expects to see Benjamin, how natural and how forcible is the reflection, This affliction is come upon us, in that we saw the anguish of our brother's soul without pity! How moving must it be to Joseph to hear Reuben accuse the rest, that they would not hear what he pleaded in behalf of his innocence and distress! He turns from them, and weeps; but commands his passion so far as to give orders for binding one of them in the presence of the rest, while he at leisure observed their different sentiments and concern in their gesture and countenance. When Benjamin is demanded in bondage for stealing the cup, with what force, and what resignation does Judah address his brother! In what words shall I speak to my lord? with what confidence can I say any thing? Our guilt is but too apparent; we submit to our fate. We are my lord's servants, both we and he also with whom the cup is found.' When that is not accepted, how pathetically does he recapitu late the whole story! and, approaching nearer to Joseph, delivers himself as follows; which, if we fix our thoughts upon the relation between the pleader and the judge, it is impossible to read without tears: SIR,-Let me intrude so far upon you, even in the high condition in which you are, and the miscrable one in which you see me and my brethren, to inform you of the circumstances of us unhappy men that prostrate ourselves before you. When we were first examined by you, you enquired (for what reason my lord enquired we know not) but you enquired, whether we had not a father or a brother? We then acquainted you, that we had a father, an old man, who had a child of his old age, and had buried another son, whom he had by the same woman. You were pleased to command us to bring the child he had remaining down to you: we did so; and he has forfeited his liberty. But my father said to us, You know that my wife bare me two sons; one of them was torn in pieces; if mischief befall this also, it will bring my gray hairs with sorrow to the grave. Accept, therefore, oh my lord! me for your bondman; and let the lad return with his brethren, that I may not see the evil that shall come on my father.' Here Joseph's passion grew too great for further disguise, and he reveals himself with exclamations of transport and tenderness. After their recovery from their first astonishment, his brethren were scized with fear for the injuries they had done him; but how generously does he keep them in countenance, and make an apology for them: Be not angry with yourselves for selling me hither; call it not so, but think Providence sent me before you to preserve life!' It would be endless to go through all the beauties of this sacred narrative; but any one who shall read it, at an hour when he is disengaged from all other regards or interests than what arise from it, will feel the alternate passion of a father, a brother, and a son, so warm in him, that they will incline him to exert himself in such of those characters as happen to be his, much above the ordinary course of his life. No. 234.] Saturday, October 7, 1710. From my own Apartment, October 6. I HAVE reason to believe, that certain of my contemporaries have made use of an art I some time ago professed, of being often designedly dull; and for that reason shall not exert myself when I see them lazy. He that has so much to struggle with, as the man who pretends to cen sure others, must keep up his fire for an onset, and may be allowed to carry his arms a little carelessly upon an ordinary march. This paper therefore shall be taken up by my correspondents, two of which have sent me the two following plain, but sensible and honest letters, upon subjects no less important than those of Education and Devotion. 'SIR,-I am an old man retired from all acquaintance with the town, but what I have from your papers, not the worst entertainment of my solitude; yet being still a well wisher to my country, and the commonwealth of learning (à qua confiteor nullam ætatis meæ partem abhorruisse,) and hoping the plain phrase in writing that was current in my younger days would have lasted for my time, I was startled at the picture of modern politeness, transmitted by your ingenious correspondent, and grieved to see our sterling English language fallen into the hands of clippers and coiners. That mutilated epistle, consisting of hippo, rep's, and such like enormous curtailings, was a mortifying spectacle, but with the reserve of comfort to find this and other abuscs of our mother tongue so pathetically complained of, and to the proper person for redressing them, the Censor of Great Britain. which is a necessary consequence of our mismanagement in that province. For can any thing be more absurd than our way of proceeding in this part of literature? to push tender wits into the intricate mazes of grammar, and a Latin grammar? to learn an unknown art by an unknown tongue? to carry them a dark round-about way to let them in at a back-door? Whereas by teaching them first the grammar of their mother-tongue, so easy to be learned, their advance to the grammars of Latin and Greek would be gradual and easy; but our precipitate way of hurrying them over such a gulf, before we have built them a bridge to it, is a shock to their weak understandings, which they seldom, or very late, recover. In the mean time we wrong nature, and slander infants, who want neither capacity nor will to learn, until we put them upon service beyond their strength; and then indeed we balk them. "The liberal arts and sciences are all beautiful as the graces; nor has Grammar, the severe mother of all, so frightful a face of her own; it is the vizard put upon it that scares children. She is made to speak hard words, that to them sound like conjuring. Let her talk intelligibly, and they will listen to her. In this, I think, as on other accounts, we show ourselves true Britons, always overlooking 'He had before represented the deplorable our natural advantages. It has been the pracignorance that for several years past has reigned tice of the wisest nations to learn their own amongst our English writers, the great depravi-language by stated rules, to avoid the confusion ty of our taste, and continual corruption of our style. But, sir, before you give yourself the trouble of prescribing remedies for these distempers, which you own will require the greatest care and application, give me leave, having long had my eye upon these mischiefs, and thoughts exercised about them, to mention what I humbly conceive to be the cause of them, and in your friend Horace's words, Quo_fonte derivata clades in patriam populumque fluxit. 'I take our corrupt ways of writing to proceed from the mistakes and wrong measures in our common methods of education, which I always looked upon as one of our national grievances, and a singularity that renders us, no less than our situation, -Penitus toto divisos orbe Britannos. A race of men from all the world disjoin'd. Dryden. that would follow from leaving it to vulgar use. Our English tongue, says a learned man, is the most determinate in its construction, and reducible to the fewest rules; whatever language has less grammar in it, is not intelligible; and whatever has more, all that it has more is su perfluous; for which reasons he would have it made the foundation of learning Latin, and all other languages. To speak and write without absurdity the language of one's country is commendable in persons of all stations, and to some indispensably necessary; and to this purpose I would recommend, above all things, the having a grammar of our mother-tongue first taught in our schools, which would facilitate our youths learn. ing their Latin and Greek grammars, with spare time for arithmetic, astronomy, cosmography, history, &c. that would make them pass the spring of their life with profit and pleasure, that is now miserably spent in gram. This puts me upon consulting the most cele-matical perplexities. brated critics on that subject, to compare our practice with their precepts, and find where it was that we came short, or went wide. 'But here, methinks, I see the reader smile, and ready to ask me, as the lawyer did sexton Diego on his bequeathing rich legacies to the But after all I found our case required some poor of the parish, Where are these mighty thing more than these doctors had directed, and sums to be raised? Where is there such a gramthe principal defect of our English discipline to mar to be had? I will not answer as he did, lie in the initiatory part, which, although it" Even where your worship pleases." No, it needs the greatest care and skill, is usually left to the conduct of those blind guides, viz. Chance and Ignorance. 'I shall trouble you with but a single instance, pursuant to what your sagacious friend has said, that he could furnish you with a catalogue of English books, which would cost you a hundred pounds at first hand, wherein you could not find ten lines together of common grammar; is our good fortune to have such a grammar, with notes, now in the press, and to be published next term. I hear it is a chargeable work, and wish the publisher to have customers of all that have need of such a book; yet fancy that he cannot be much a sufferer, if it is only bought by all that have more need for it than they think they have. 'A certain author brought a poem to Mr. Cow- with a very good house in our neighbourhood, ley, for his perusal and judgment of the per- where there are three daughters of a very differformance, which he demanded at the next visitent character and genius. The eldest has a with a poetaster's assurance; and Mr. Cowley, with his usual modesty, desired that he would be pleased to look a little to the grammar of it. "To the grammar of it! what do you mean, sir, would you send me to school again?" "Why, Mr. H-, would it do you any harm ?" This put me on considering how this voyage of literature may be made with more safety and profit, expedition and delight; and at last, for completing so good a service, to request your directions in so deplorable a case; hoping that, as you have had compassion on our overgrown coxcombs in concerns of less consequence, you will exert your charity towards innocents, and vouchsafe to be guardian to the children and youth of Great Britain in this important affair of education, wherein mistakes and wrong measures have so often occasioned their aversion to books, that had otherwise proved the chief ornament and pleasure of their life. I am, with sincerest respect, sir, Yours, &c.' 'St. Clements, October 5. 'MR. BICKERSTAFF,-I observe, as the season begins to grow cold, so does people's devotion; insomuch, that instead of filling the churches, that united zeal might keep one warm there, one is left to freeze in almost bare walls by those who, in hot weather, are troublesome the contrary way. This, sir, needs a regulation that none but you can give to it, by causing those who absent themselves on account of weather only this winter-time, to pay the apothecaries' bills occasioned by coughs, catarrhs, and other distempers, contracted by sitting in empty scats. Therefore, to you I apply myself for redress, having gotten such a cold on Sunday was sevennight, that has brought me almost to your wor. ship's age from sixty, within less than a fortnight. I am, your worship's in all obedience, 'W. E.' No. 235.] From my own Apartment, October 9. AMONG those inclinations which are common to all men, there is none more unaccountable than that unequal love by which parents distinguish their children from each other. Sometimes vanity and self-love appear to have a share towards this effect; and in other instances I have been apt to attribute it to mere instinct but, however that is, we frequently see the child, that has been beholden to neither of these impulses in his parents, in spite of being neglected, snubbed, and thwarted at home, acquire a behaviour which makes him as agreeable to all the rest of the world, as that of every one else of their family is to each other. I fell into this way of thinking from an intimacy which I have great deal of wit and cunning; the second has good sense, but no artifice; the third has much vivacity, but little understanding. The first is a fine, but scornful woman; the second is not charming, but very winning; the third is no way commendable, but very desirable. The father of these young creatures was ever a great pretender to wit, the mother a woman of as much coquetry. This turn in the parents has biassed their affections towards their children. The old man supposes the eldest of his own genius; and the mother looks upon the youngest as herself renewed. By this means, all the lovers that approach the house are discarded by the father for not observing Mrs. Mary's wit and beauty; and by the mother, for being blind to the mien and air of Mrs. Biddy. Come never so many pretenders, they are not suspected to have the least thought of Mrs. Betty, the middle daughter. Betty, therefore, is mortified into a woman of a great deal of merit, and knows she must depend on that only for her advancement. The middlemost is thus the favourite of all her acquaintance, as well as mine; while the other two carry a certain insolence about them in all conversations, and expect the partiality which they meet with at home to attend them wherever they appear. So little do parents understand that they are, of all people, the least judges of their childrens' merit, that what they reckon such, is seldom any thing else but a repetition of their own faults and infirmities. There is, methinks, some excuse for being particular, when one of the offspring has any defect in nature. In this case, the child, if we may so speak, is so much the longer the child of its parents, and calls for the continuance of their care and indulgence from the slowness of its capacity, or the weakness of its body. But there is no enduring to see men enamoured only at the sight of their own impertinencies repeated, and to observe, as we may sometimes, that they have a secret dislike of their children for a degeneracy from their very crimes. Commend me to lady Goodly; she is equal to all her own children, but prefers them to those of all the world beside. My lady is a perfect hen in the care of her brood; she fights and squabbles with all that appear where they come, but is wholly unbiassed in dispensing her favours among them. It is no small pains she is at to defame all the young women in her neighbour. hood, by visits, whispers, intimations, and hearsays; all which she ends with thanking heaven, 'that no one living is so blessed with such obedient and well-inclined children as herself. Perhaps,' says she, 'Betty cannot dance like Mrs. Frontinet, and it is no great matter whether she does or not; but she comes into a room with a good grace; though she says it that should not, she looks like a gentlewoman. Then, if Mrs. Rebecca is not so talkative as the mighty wit Mrs. Clapper, yet she is discreet, she knows better what she says when she does speak. If her wit be slow, her tongue never runs before it.' This kind parent lifts up her eyes and hands in congratulation of her own good fortune, and is maliciously thankful that none of her girls are like any of her neighbours; but this preference of her own to all others is grounded upon an impulse of nature; while those, who like one before another of their own are so unpardonably unjust, that it could hardly be equalled in the children, though they preferred all the rest of the world to such parents. It is no unpleasant entertainment to see a ball at a dancingschool, and observe the joy of relations when the young ones, for whom they are concerned, are in motion. You need not be told whom the dancers belong to. At their first appearance, the passions of their parents are in their faces, and there is always a nod of approbation stolen at a good step or a graceful turn. Our next regards our friends and kindred claim; From my own Apartment, October 11. I FIND in the registers of my family, that the branch of the Bickerstaffs from which I am descended, came originally out of Ireland. This has given me a kind of natural affection for that country. It is therefore with pleasure that I see not only some of the greatest warriors, but also of the greatest wits, to be natives of that kingdom. The gentleman who writes the following letter is one of these last. The mat ter of fact contained in it is literally true, though the diverting manner in which it is told, may give it the colour of a fable. 'To Isaac Bickerstaff, Esquire, at his house in Great Britain. 'Dublin. I remember, among all my acquaintance, but one man whom I have thought to live with his children with equanimity and a good grace. He had three sons and one daughter, whom he bred with all the care imaginable, in a liberal and ingenuous way. I have often heard him say, he had the weakness to love one much better than the other, but that he took as much pains to correct that as any other criminal passion that could arise in his mind. His method was, to make it the only pretension in his children to his favour, to be kind to each other; and he would tell them, that he who was the best brother, he would reckon the best son.' This turned their thoughts into an emulation for the superiority in kind and tender affection towards each other. The boys behaved themselves very early with a manly friendship; and their sister, instead of the gross familiarities, and impertinent freedoms in behaviour usual in other houses, was always treated by them with as much complaisance as any other young lady of their acquaintance. It was an unspeakable pleasure to visit, or sit at a meal, in that family. I have often seen the old man's heart flow at his eyes with joy, upon occasions which would appear indifferent to such as were strangers to the turn of his mind; but a very slight accident, wherein he saw his children's good-will to one another, created in him the god-like pleasure of When the arts began to flourish in the reign loving them because they loved each other. This great command of himself, in hiding his first of King Charles II. and that great monarch had impulse to partiality, at last improved to a steady placed himself at the head of the Royal Society, justice towards them; and that, which at first to lead them forward into the discoveries of nawas but an expedient to correct his weakness,ture, it is said, that several proposals were laid Tatlers that you are a person curious in natural 'SIR,-Finding by several passages in your knowledge, I thought it would not be unaccept able to you to give you the following history of the migration of frogs into this country. There is an ancient tradition among the wild philoso phers of this kingdom, that the whole island wherein Whittington made his fortune, was by was once as much infested by frogs, as that mice. Insomuch, that it is said, Macdonald the First, could no more sleep, by reason of these Dutch nightingales, as they are called at Paris, than Pharaoh could when they croaked in his bed-chamber. It was in the reign of this great monarch, that St. Patrick arrived in Ireland, being as famous for destroying vermin as any rat-catcher of our times. If we may believe the tradition, he killed more in one day than a flock of storks could have done in a twelvemonth. From that time, for about five hundred years, there was not a frog to be heard in Irewhich in former ages had been so plentifully land, notwithstanding the bogs still remained, was afterwards the measure of his virtue. The truth of it is, those parents who are in. terested in the care of one child more than that of another, no longer deserve the name of parents, but are, in effect, as childish as their chil dren, in having such unreasonable and ungoverned inclinations. A father of this sort has degraded himself into one of his own offspring, for none but a child would take part in the pas sions of children. stocked with those inhabitants. before his majesty, for the importing of frogs into Ireland. In order to it, a virtuoso of known abilities was unanimously elected by the society, and intrusted with the whole management of that affair. For this end he took along with him a sound able-bodied frog, of a strong hale constitution, that had given proofs of his vigour by several leaps that he made before that learned body. They took ship, and sailed together until they came within sight of the hill of Howth, before the frog discovered any symptoms of being indisposed by his voyage: but, as the wind chopped about, and began to blow from the Irish coast, he grew sea-sick, or rather land-sick; for his learned companion ascribed it to the parti cles of the soil with which the wind was impregnated. He was confirmed in his conjecture, when, upon the wind's turning about, his fellowtraveller sensibly recovered, and continued in |