Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

man was, methought, what created him | following letters and petition are made up good-will from his present equality with of proper sentiments on this occasion. the mob about him. Add to this, that he was not so much a gentleman, as not, at the same time that he called himself such, to use as rough methods for his defence as his antagonist. The advantage of his having good friends, as his master expressed it, was not lazily urged; but he showed himself superior to the coachman in the personal qualities of courage and actity, to confirm that of his being well allied, before his birth was of any service to him.

'MR. SPECTATOR,-I am a servant to an old lady who is governed by one she calls her friend; who is so familiar an one, that she takes upon her to advise her without being called to it, and makes her uneasy with all about her. Pray, sir, be pleased to give us some remarks upon voluntary counsellors; and let these people know that to give any body advice, is to say to that person, "I am your betters." Pray, sir, If one might moralize from this silly as near as you can, describe that eternal story, a man would say, that whatever ad- flirt and disturber of families, Mrs. Tapervantages of fortune, birth, or any other ty, who is always visiting, and putting peogood, people possess above the rest of the ple in a way as they call it. If you can make world, they should show collateral emi-her stay at home one evening, you will be a nences besides those distinctions; or those general benefactor to all the ladies' women distinctions will avail only to keep up com- in town, and particularly to your loving mon decencies and ceremonies, and not to friend, SUSAN CIVIL.' preserve a real place of favour or esteem in the opinion and common sense of their fellow creatures.

"THOMAS SMOKY.'

'MR. SPECTATOR,-I am a footman, and live with one of those men, each of whom The folly of people's procedure, imagin-is said to be one of the best humoured men ing that nothing more is necessary than in the world, but that he is passionate. property and superior circumstances to Pray be pleased to inform them, that he support them in distinction, appears in no who is passionate, and takes no care to way so much as in the domestic part of command his hastiness, does more injury to life. It is ordinary to feed their humours into his friends and servants in one half hour, unnatural excrescences, if I may so speak, than whole years can atone for. This masand make their whole being a wayward ter of mine, who is the best man alive in and uneasy condition, for want of the ob- common fame, disobliges somebody every vious reflection, that all parts of human life day he lives: and strikes me for the next is a commerce. It is not only paying wages, thing I do, because he is out of humour at and giving commands, that constitutes a it. If these gentlemen knew that they do master of a family; but prudence, equal all the mischief that is ever done in conbehaviour, with readiness to protect and versation, they would reform; and I who cherish them, is what entitles a man to that have been a spectator of gentlemen at dincharacter in their very hearts and senti- ner for many years, have seen that indisments. It is pleasant enough to observe, cretion does ten times more mischief than that men expect from their dependants, ill-nature. But you will represent this betfrom their sole motive of fear, all the good ter than your abused humble servant, effects which a liberal education, and affluent fortune, and every other advantage, cannot produce in themselves. A man will have his servant just, diligent, sober, and chaste, for no other reasons but the terror of losing his master's favour, when all the laws divine and human cannot keep him whom he serves within bounds, with relation to any one of those virtues. But both in great and ordinary affairs, all superiority which is not founded on merit and virtue, is supported only by artifice and stratagem. Thus you see flatterers are the agents in families of humourists, and those who govern themselves by any thing but reason. Make-bates, distant relations, poor kinsmen, and indigent followers, are the fry which support the economy of an humoursome rich man. He is eternally whispered with intelligence of who are true or false to him in matters of no consequence, and he maintains twenty friends to defend him against the insinuations of one who would perhaps cheat him of an old coat.

I shall not enter into farther speculation upon this subject at present, but think the

To the Spectator. •The humble Petition of JOHN STEWARD, ROBERT BUTLER, HARRY COOK, and ABIGAIL CHAMBERS, in behalf of themselves and their relations belonging to and dispersed in the several services of most of the great families within the cities of London and Westminster;

Showeth,

"That in many of the families in which your petitioners live and are employed, the several heads of them are wholly unacquainted with what is business, and are very little judges when they are well or ill used by us your said petitioners.

"That for want of such skill in their own affairs; and by indulgence of their own laziness and pride, they continually keep about them certain mischievous animals called spies.

'That whenever a spy is entertained, the peace of that house is from that moment banished.

That spies never give an account of

good services, but represent our mirth and the genealogies of great families were often freedom by the words wantonness and dis-drawn up in the shape of trees, had taken order. a fancy to dispose of his own illegitimate issue in a figure of the same kind:

That in all families where there are spies, there is a general jealousy and misanderstanding.

'That the masters and mistresses of such houses live in continual suspicion of their ingenuous and true servants, and are given up to the management of those who are false and perfidious.

-Nec longum tempus et ingens
Exiit ad cœlum ramis felicibus arbos,
Miraturque novas frondes, et non sua poma
Virg. Georg. ii. 80.

And in short space the laden boughs arise, With happy fruit advancing to the skies; The mother plant admires the leaves unknown Of alien trees, and apples not her own.-Dryden. That such masters and mistresses who The trunk of the tree was marked with entertain spies, are no longer more than cyphers in their own families; and that we his own name, Will Maple. Out of the your petitioners are with great disdain side of it grew a large barren branch, inobliged to pay all our respect, and expect scribed Mary Maple, the name of his unell our maintenance from such spies. happy wife. The head was adorned with Your petitioners therefore most hum-five huge boughs. On the bottom of the bly pray, that you would represent the premises to all persons of condition; and your petitioners, as in duty bound, shall for ever pray,' &c.

No. 203.] Tuesday, October 23, 1711.

Phoebe pater, si das hujus mihi nominis usum
Nec falsa Clymene culpam sub imagine celat;
Pignora da, genitor-
Ovid. Met. ii. 38.

Illustrious parent! if I yet may claim
The name of son, O rescue me from shame;
My mother's truth confirm; all doubt remove,
By tender pledges of a father's love.

first was written in capital characters Kate Cole, who branched out into three sprigs, viz. William, Richard, and Rebecca. Sal Twiford gave birth to another bough, that shot up into Sarah, Tom, Will, and Frank. The third arm of the tree had only a single infant on it, with a space left for a second; the parent from whom it sprung being near her time when the author took this ingenious device into his head. The two other great boughs were very plentifully loaden with fruit of the same kind; besides which there were many ornamental branches that did not bear. In short, a more flourishing tree never came out of the herald's office.

THERE is a loose tribe of men whom I have not yet taken notice of, that ramble What makes this generation of vermin into all the corners of this great city, in so very prolific, is the indefatigable diliorder to seduce such unfortunate females gence with which they apply themselves as fall into their walks. These abandoned to their business. A man does not undergo profligates raise up issue in every quarter of more watchings and fatigues in a camthe town, and very often, for a valuable paign, than in the course of a vicious amour. consideration, father it upon the church-As it is said of some men, that they make warden. By this means there are several married men who have a little family in most of the parishes of London and Westminster, and several bachelors who are undone by a charge of children.

their business their pleasure, these sons of darkness may be said to make their pleasure their business. They might conquer their corrupt inclinations with half the pains they are at in gratifying them.

Nor is the invention of these men less to be admired than their industry and vigilance. There is a fragment of Apollodorus the comic poet (who was contemporary with Menander) which is full of humour, as follows: Thou mayest shut up thy doors,' says he, with bars and bolts. It will be impossible for the blacksmith to make them so fast, but a cat and a whoremaster will find a way through them.' In a word, there is no head so full of stratagems as that of a libidinous man.

When a man once gives himself this liberty of preying at large, and living upon the common, he finds so much game in a populous city, that it is surprising to consider the numbers which he sometimes propagates. We see many a young fellow who is scarce of age, that could lay his claim to the jus trium liberorum, or the privileges which were granted by the Roman laws, to all such as were fathers of three children. Nay, I have heard a rake, who was not quite five-and-twenty, declare himself the father of a seventh son, and Were I to propose a punishment for this very prudently determine to breed him up infamous race of propagators, it should be a physician. In short, the town is full of to send them, after the second or third of these young patriarchs, not to mention | fence, into our American colonies, in order several battered beaux, who like heed- to people those parts of her majesty's less spendthrifts that squander away their dominions where there is a want of inhaestates before they are masters of them, bitants, and, in the phrase of Diogenes, to have raised up their whole stock of chil-plant men.' Some countries punish this dren before marriage.

I must not here omit the particular whim of an impudent libertine, that had a little smattering of heraldry; and observing how

crime with death; but I think such a banishment would be sufficient, and might turn this generative faculty to the advantage of the public.

In the mean time, until these gentlemen | tinual anxiety for my future fortune, and may be thus disposed of, I would earnestly under a great unhappiness in losing the exhort them to take care of those unfortu-sweet; conversation and friendly advice of nate creatures whom they have brought my parents; so that I cannot look upon myinto the world by these indirect methods, self otherwise than as a monster, strangely and to give their spurious children such an sprung up in nature, which every one is education as may render them more virtu- ashamed to own, ous than their parents. This is the best atonement they can make for their own crimes, and indeed the only method that is left them to repair their past miscarriages. I would likewise desire them to consider, whether they are not bound in common humanity, as well as by all the obligations of religion and nature, to make some provision for those whom they have not only given life to, but entailed upon them, though very unreasonably, a degree of shame and disgrace. And here I cannot but take notice of those depraved notions which prevail among us, and which must have taken rise from our natural inclination to favour a vice to which we are so very prone, namely, that bastardy and cuckoldom should be looked upon as reproaches; and that the ignominy which is only due to lewdness and falsehood, should fall in so unreasonable a manner upon the persons who are innocent.

I have been insensibly drawn into this discourse by the following letter, which is drawn up with such a spirit of sincerity, that I question not but the writer of it has represented his case in a true and genuine light.

SIR,I am one of those people who by the general opinion of the world are counted both infamous and unhappy.

*My father is a very eminent man in this kingdom, and one who bears considerable offices in it. I am his son, but my misfortune is, that I dare not call him father, nor he without shame own me as his issue, I being illegitimate, and therefore deprived of that endearing tenderness and unparalleled satisfaction which a good man finds in the love and conversation of a parent. Neither have I the opportunities to render him the duties of a son, he having always carried himself at so vast a distance, and with such superiority towards me, that by long use I have contracted a timorousness when before him, which hinders me from declaring my own necessities, and giving him to understand the inconveniences I undergo.

It is my misfortune to have been neither bred a scholar, a soldier, nor to any kind of ousiness, which renders me entirely incapable of making provision for myself without his assistance; and this creates a continual uneasiness in my mind, fearing I shall in time want bread; my father, if I may so call him, giving me but very faint assurances of doing any thing for me.

*

"I have nitherto lived somewhat like a gentleman, and it would be very hard for me to labour for my living. I am in con

"I am thought to be a man of some natural parts, and by the continual reading what you have offered the world, become an admirer thereof, which has drawn me to make this confession; at the same time hoping, if any thing herein shall touch you with a sense of pity, you would then allow me the favour of your opinion thereupon; as also what part I, being unlawfully born, may claim of the man's affection who begot me, and how far in your opinion I am to be thought his son, or he acknowledged as my father. Your sentiments and advice herein will be a great consolation and satisfaction to, sir, your admirer, &c. C.

'W. B.'

No. 204.] Wednesday, October 24, 1711.
Urit grata protervitas,

Et vultus nimium lubricus aspici.
Hor. Lib. 1. Od. xix. 7.

Her face too dazzling for the sight,
Her winning coyness fires my soul,
I feel a strange delight.

I AM not at all displeased that I am become the courier of love, and that the distressed in that passion convey their complaints to each other by my means. The following letters have lately come to my hands, and shall have their place. with great willingness. As to the reader's entertainment, he will, I hope, forgive the inserting such particulars as to him may perhaps seem frivolous, but are to the persons who wrote them of the highest consequence. I shall not trouble you with the prefaces, compliments, and apologies made to me before each epistle when it was desired to be inserted; but in general they tell me, that the persons to whom they are addressed have intimations, by phrases and allusions in them, from whence they

came.

• To the Sothades.

The word, by which I address you, gives you, who understand Portuguese,* a

*The following is Mr. Chalmers's excellent definition of the meaning of this significant word.

written Sothades) signifies the most refined, most ten "The Portuguese word Saudades (here inaccurately der and ardent desires for something absent, accompanied with a solicitude and anxious regard, which cannot be expressed by one word in any other language. Saudade,' say the dictionaries, 'significa, Finissimo sentimiento del bien ansente, com desco de posseerlo." Hence, the word Saudades comprehends every good compliment that can be paid to another. So, if a perwish and Muitas Sausades is the highest wish and

son is observed to be melancholy, and is asked 'What ails him?' if he answers, Tenho Sausades, it is understood to mean, I am under the most refined torment for the absence of my love; or from being absent from my country' &c."

'SIR,-There were other gentlemen nearer, and I know no necessity you were under to take up that flippant creature's fan, last night; but you shall never touch a stick of mine more, that's pos.

"PHILLIS."

lively image of the tender regard I have for | Since you have the secret at last, which I you. The Spectator's late letter from Sta-am sure you should never have known but tira gave me the hint to use the same by inadvertency, what my eyes said was method of explaining myself to you. I am true. But it is too soon to confirm it with not affronted at the design your late beha- my hand, therefore shall not subscribe my viour discovered you had in your addresses | name. to me; but I impute it to the degeneracy of the_age, rather than your particular fault. As I aim at nothing more than being yours, I am willing to be a stranger to your name, your fortune, or any figure which your wife might expect to make in the world, provided my commerce with you is not to be a guilty one. I resign gay dress, the pleasures of visits, equipage, plays, balls, and operas, for that one satisfaction of having you for ever mine. I am willing you shall industriously conceal the only cause of triumph which I can know in this life. I wish only to have it my duty, as well as my inclination, to study your happiness. If this has not the effect this letter seems to aim at, you are to understand that I had a mind to be rid of you, and took the readiest way to pall you with an offer of what you would never desist pursuing while you received ill usage. Be a true man; be my slave while you doubt me, and neglect me when you think I love you. I defy you to find out what is your present circumstance with me; but I know while I can keep this suspense, I am your admired, BELINDA.'

[graphic]
[ocr errors]

• MADAM,—It is a strange state of mind a man is in, when the very imperfections of a woman he loves turns into excellences and advantages. I do assure you, I am very much afraid of venturing upon you. I now like you in spite of my reason, and think it an ill circumstance to owe one's happiness to nothing but infatuation. I can see you ogle all the young fellows who look at you, and observe your eye wander after new conquests every moment you are in a public place; and yet there is such a beauty in all your looks and gestures, that I cannot but admire you in the very act of endeavouring to gain the hearts of others. My condition is the same with that of the lover in the Way of the World. I have studied your faults so long, that they are become as familiar to me, and I like them as well as I do my own. Look to it, madam, and consider whether you think this gay behaviour will appear to me as amiable when an husband, as it does now to me a lover. Things are so far advanced, that we must proceed; and I hope you will lay to heart, that it will be becoming in me to appear still your lover, but not in you to be still my mistress. Gaiety in the matrimonial life is graceful in one sex, but exceptionable in the other. As you improve these little hints, you will ascertain the happiness or uneasiness of, madam, your most obedient, most humble

servant,

'SIR,-When I sat at the window, and you at the other end of the room by my cousin, I saw you catch me looking at you.

[ocr errors]

• To Colonel R――s in Spain. 'Before this can reach the best of hu bands and the fondest lover, those tender names will be of no more concern to me. The indisposition in which you, to obey the dictates of your honour and duty, left me, has increased upon me; and I am acquainted by my physicians I cannot live a week longer. At this time my spirits fail me; and it is the ardent love I have for you that carries me beyond my strength, and enables me to tell you, the most painful thing in the prospect of death is, that I must part with you. But let it be a comfort to you, that I have no guilt hangs upon me, no unrepented folly that retards me; but I pass away my last hours in reflection upon the happiness we have lived in together, and in sorrow that it is so soon to have an end. criminal, that methinks there is a kind of This is a frailty which I hope is so far from piety in being so unwilling to be separated from a state which is the institution of hea ven, and in which we have lived according to its laws. As we know no more of the next life, but that it will be an happy one to the good, and miserable to the wicked, why may we not please ourselves at least to alleviate the difficulty of resigning this being, in imagining that we shall have a sense of what passes below, and may possibly be employed in guiding the steps of those with whom we walked with innocence when mortal? Why may not I hope to go on in my usual work, and, though unknown to you, be assistant in all the conflicts of your mind? Give me leave to say to you, O best of men, that I cannot figure to myself a greater happiness than in such an employment. To be present at all the adventures to which human life is exposed, to administer slumber to thy eyelids in the agonies of a fever, to cover thy beloved face in the day of battle, to go with thee a guardian angel incapable of wound or pain, where I have longed to attend thee when a weak, a fearful woman: these, my dear, are the thoughts with which I warm mv poor languid heart. But indeed I am not capable, under my present weakness, of bearing the strong agonies of mind I fall into, when I form to myself the grief you will be in, upon your first hearing of my departure. I will not dwell upon this, be cause your kind and generous heart will be but the more afflicted, the more the person

for whom you lament offers you consolation. I plain that those your discourses are calcu My last breath will, if I am myself, expire in a prayer for you. I shall never see thy face again. Farewell for ever. T.

No. 205.] Thursday, October 25, 1711.
Decipimur specie recti-
Deluded by a seeming excellence.

Hor. Ars Poet. v. 25.
Roscommon.

lated for none but the fashionable part of womankind, and for the use of those who are rather indiscreet than vicious. But, sir, there is a sort of prostitutes in the lower part of our sex, who are a scandal to us, and very well deserve to fall under your censure. I know it would debase your paper too much to enter into the behaviour of those female libertines; but as your remarks WHEN I meet with any vicious charac-on some part of it would be doing a justice ter, that is not generally known, in order to several women of virtue and honour, to prevent its doing mischief, I draw it at whose reputations suffer by it, I hope you length; and set it up as a scarecrow; by will not think it improper to give the pubwhich means I do not only make an exam-lic some accounts of this nature. You must ple of the person to whom it belongs, but give warning to all her majesty's subjects, that they may not suffer by it. Thus, to change the allusion, I have marked out several of the shoals and quicksands of life, and am continually employed in discovering those which are still concealed; in order to keep the ignorant and unwary from running upon them. It is with this intention that I publish the following letter, which brings to light some secrets of this nature.

know, sir, I am provoked to write you this letter, by the behaviour of an infamous woman, who, having passed her youth in a most shameless state of prostitution, is now one of those who gain their livelihood by seducing others that are younger than themselves, and by establishing a criminal commerce between the two sexes. Among several of her artifices to get money, she frequently persuades a vain young fellow, that such a woman of quality, or such a celebrated toast, entertains a secret passion for him, and wants nothing but an opportunity of revealing it. Nay, she has gone so far as to write letters in the name of a woman of figure, to borrow money of one of these foolish Roderigo's, which she has afterwards appropriated to her own use. In the mean time, the person who has lent the money, has thought a lady under obligations to him, who scarce knew his name; and wondered at her ingratitude, when he has been with her, that she has not owned the favour, though at the same time he was too much of a man of honour to put her in mind of it.

'MR. SPECTATOR,-There are none of your speculations which I read over with greater delight than those which are designed for the improvement of our sex. You have endeavoured to correct our unreasonable fears and superstitions, in your seventh and twelfth papers; our fancy for equipage, in your fifteenth; our love of puppet-shows, in your thirty-first; our notions of beauty, in your thirty-third; our inclination for romances, in your thirty-seventh; our passion for French fopperies, in your forty-fifth; our manhood and party zeal, in your fifty-seventh; our abuse of dancing, in your sixty-sixth and sixty-seventh; our "When this abandoned baggage meets levity, in your hundred and twenty-eighth; with a man who has vanity enough to give our love of coxcombs, in your hundred and credit to relations of this nature, she turns fifty-fourth, and hundred and fifty-seventh; him to very good account by repeating our tyranny over the hen-peckt, in your praises that were never uttered, and dehundred and seventy-sixth. You have de- livering messages that were never sent. As scribed the Pict in your forty-first; the Idol the house of this shameless creature is frein your seventy-third; the Demurrer, in your quented by several foreigners, I have heard eighty-ninth; the Salamander, in your hun-of another artifice, out of which she often dred and ninety-eighth. You have likewise taken to pieces our dress, and represented to us the extravagances we are often guilty of in that particular. You have fallen upon our patches, in your fiftieth and eighty-first; our commodes, in your ninety-eighth; our fans, in your hundred and second; our riding-habits, in your hundred and fourth; our hoop-petticoats, in your hundred and twenty-seventh; besides a great many little blemishes which you have touched upon in your several other papers, and in those many letters that are scattered up and down your works. At the same time we must own that the compliments you pay our sex are innumerable, and that those very faults which you represent in us, are neither black in themselves, nor, as you own, universal among us. But, sir, it is

raises money. The foreigner sighs after some British beauty, whom he only knows by fame; upon which she promises, if he can be secret, to procure him a meeting. The stranger, ravished at his good fortune, gives her a present, and in a little time is introduced to some imaginary title; for you must know that this cunning purveyor has her representatives upon this occasion of some of the finest ladies in the kingdom. By this means, as I am informed, it is usual enough to meet with a German count in foreign countries, that shall make his boasts of favours he has received from women of the highest ranks, and the most unblemished characters. Now, sir, what safety is there for a woman's reputation, when a lady may be thus prostituted as it were by proxy, and be reputed an unchaste woman; as the

« AnteriorContinuar »