of temper which inclines us to think amiss of those who differ from us. If we look into the manners of the most remote ages of the world, we discover human nature in her simplicity; and the more we come downward towards our own times, may observe her hiding herself in artifices and refinements, polished insensibly out of her original plainness, and at length entirely lost under form and ceremony, and (what we call) good-breeding. Read the accounts of men and women as they are given us by the most ancient writers, both sacred and profane, and you would think you were reading the history of another species. Among the writers of antiquity there are none who instruct us more openly in the manners of their respective times in which they lived, than those who have employed themselves in satire, under what dress soever it may appear; as there are no other authors whose province it is to enter so directly into the ways of men, and set their miscarriages in so strong a light. The souls of one kind of women were formed out of those ingredients which compose a swine. A woman of this make is a slut in her house and a glutton at her table. She is uncleanly in her person, a slattern in her dress, and her family is no better than a dung-hill. "A second sort of female soul was formed out of the same materials that enter into the composition of a fox. Such a one is what we call a notable discerning woman, who has an insight into every thing whether it be good or bad. In this species of females there are some virtuous and some vicious. A third kind of women were made up of canine particles. These are what we commonly call scolds, who imitate the animals out of which they were taken, that are always busy and barking, that snarl at every one who comes in their way, and live in perpetual clamour. The fourth kind of women were made out of the earth. These are your sluggards, who pass away their time in indolence and ignorance, hover over the fire a whole winter, and apply themselves with alacrity to no kind of business but eating. sudden her looks and words are changed; she is nothing but fury and outrage, noise and hurricane. 'The sixth species were made up of the ingredients which compose an ass, or a beast of burden. These are naturally exceeding slothful, but upon the husband's exerting his authority, will live upon hard fare, and do every thing to please him. They are, however, far from being averse to venereal pleasure, and seldom refuse a Simonides, a poet famous in his generation, is, I think, author of the oldest satire that is now extant; and, as some say, of the first that was ever written. This poet flourished about four hundred years after 'The fifth species of females were made the siege of Troy; and shows, by his way out of the sea. These are women of variaof writing, the simplicity, or rather coarse- ble uneven tempers, sometimes all storm ness, of the age in which he lived. I have and tempest, sometimes all calm and suntaken notice in my hundred and sixty-first shine. The stranger who sees one of these speculation, that the rule of observing what in her smiles and smoothness would cry her the French call the Bienseance in an allu-up for a miracle of good humour; but on a sion, has been found out of later years; and that the ancients, provided there was a likeness in their similitudes, did not much trouble themselves about the decency of the comparison. The satire or iambics of Simonides, with which I shall entertain my readers in the present paper, are a remarkable instance of what I formerly advanced. The subject of this satire is woman. He describes the sex in their several characters, which he derives to them from a fanciful supposition raised upon the doc-male companion. trine of pre-existence. He tells us that "The cat furnished materials for a seventh the gods formed the souls of women out of those seeds and principles which compose several kinds of animals and elements; and that their good or bad dispositions arise in them according as such and such seeds and principles predominate in their constitutions. I have translated the author very faithfully, and if not word for word, (which our language would not bear,) at least so as to comprehend every one of his sentiments, without adding any thing of my own. I have already apologised for this author's want of delicacy, and must further premise, that the following satire affects only some of the lower part of the sex, and not those who have been refined by a polite education, which was not so common in the age of this poet. In the beginning God made the souls of womankind out of different materials, and in a separate state from their bodies. species of women, who are of a melancholy, froward, unamiable nature, and so repugnant to the offers of love, that they fly in the face of their husband when he approaches them with conjugal endearments. This species of women are likewise subject to little thefts, cheats, and pilferings. "The mare with a flowing mane, which was never broke to any servile toil and labour, composed an eighth species of women. These are they who have little regard for their husbands, who pass away their time in dressing, bathing, and perfuming; who throw their hair into the nicest curls, and trick it up with the fairest flowers and garlands. A woman of this species is a very pretty thing for a stranger to look upon, but very detrimental to the owner, unless it be a king or a prince who takes a fancy to such a toy. The ninth species of females were taken out of the ape. These are such as are both ugly and ill-natured, who have nothing beautiful in themselves, and endeavour to detract from or ridicule every thing which appears so in others. The tenth and last species of women were made out of the bee; and happy is the man who gets such a one for his wife. She is altogether faultless and unblameable. Her family flourishes and improves by her good management. She loves her husband, and is beloved by him. She brings him a race of beautiful and virtuous children. She distinguishes herself among her sex. She is surrounded with graces. She never sits among the loose tribe of women, nor passes away her time with them in wanton discourses. She is full of virtue and prudence, and is the best wife that Jupiter can bestow on man. I shall conclude these iambics with the motto of this paper, which is a fragment of the same author; A man cannot possess any thing that is better than a good woman, nor any thing that is worse than a bad one. As the poet has shown a great penetration in his diversity of female characters, he has avoided the fault which Juvenal and Monsieur Boileau are guilty of, the former in his sixth, and the other in his last satire, where they have endeavoured to expose the sex in general, without doing justice to the valuable part of it. Such levelling satires are of no use to the world; and for this reason I have often wondered how the French author above-mentioned, who was a man of exquisite judgment, and a lover of virtue, could think human nature a proper subject for satire in another of his celebrated pieces, which is called The Satire upon Man. What vice or frailty can a discourse correct, which censures the whole species alike, and endeavours to show by some superficial strokes of wit, that brutes are the most excellent creatures of the two? A satire should expose nothing but what is corrigible, and make a due discrimination between those who are, and those who are not the proper objects of it. L. uncertain term of a few years, his designs will be contracted into the same narrow span he imagines is to bound his existence. How can he exalt his thoughts to any thing great and noble, who only believes that, after a short turn on the stage of this world, he is to sink into oblivion, and to lose his consciousness for ever? For this reason I am of opinion, that so useful and elevated a contemplation as that of the soul's immortality cannot be resumed too often. There is not a more improving exercise to the human mind, than to be frequently reviewing its own great privileges and endowments; nor a more effectual means to awaken in us an ambition raised above low objects and little pursuits, than to value ourselves as heirs of eternity. 'It is a very great satisfaction to consider the best and wisest of mankind in all nations and ages, asserting as with one voice this their birthright, and to find it ratified by an express revelation. At the same time if we turn our thoughts inward upon ourselves, we may meet with a kind of secret sense concurring with the proofs of our own immortality. 'You have, in my opinion, raised a good presumptive argument from the increasing appetite the mind has to knowledge, and to the extending its own faculties, which can. not be accomplished, as the more restrained perfection of lower creatures may, in the limits of a short life. I think another probable conjecture may be raised from our appetite to duration itself, and from a reflection on our progress through the several stages of it. "We are complaining," as you observed in a former speculation, "of the shortness of life, and yet are perpetually hurrying over the parts of it, to arrive at certain little settlements or imaginary points of rest, which are dispersed up and down in it." 'Now let us consider what happens to us when we arrive at these imaginary points of rest. Do we stop our motion and sit down satisfied in the settlement we have gained? or are we not removing the boundary, and marking out new points of rest, to which we press forward with the like eagerness, and which cease to be such as fast as we attain them? Our case is like that of a traveller upon the Alps, who should fancy that the top of the next hill must end his journey, because it terminates his prospect; but he no sooner arrives at it, than he sees new ground and other hills beyond it, and continues to travel on as be fore. "This is so plainly every man's condition in life, that there is no one who has observed any thing, but may observe, that as fast as his time wears away, his appetite to something future remains. The use therefore I would make of it is, that since nature (as some love to express it,) does nothing in vain, or, to speak properly, since the Author of our being has planted no wan given me, I reflect upon some things people say of you, (as they will of men who distinguish themselves,) which I hope are not true, and wish you as good a man as you are an author. I am, sir, your most obedient humble servant, T. D.' dering passion in it, no desire which has not | a certain gravity which these thoughts have its object, futurity is the proper object of the passion so constantly exercised about it; and this restlessness in the present, this assigning ourselves over to farther stages of duration, this successive grasping at somewhat still to come, appears to me (whatever it may to others,) as a kind of instinct or natural symptom which the mind of man has of its own immortality. ‘I take it at the same time for granted, that the immortality of the soul is sufficiently established by other arguments: and if so, this appetite, which otherwise would be very unaccountable and absurd, seems very reasonable, and adds strength to the conclusion. But I am amazed when I consider there are creatures capable of thought, who in spite of every argument, can form to themselves a sullen satisfaction in thinking otherwise. There is something so pitifully mean in the inverted ambition of that man who can hope for annihilation, and please himself to think that his whole fabric shall one day crumble into dust, and mix with the mass of inanimate beings, that it equally deserves our admiration and pity. The mystery of such men's unbelief is not hard to be penetrated; and indeed amounts to nothing more than a sordid hope that they shall not be immortal, because they dare not be so. T. No. 211.] Thursday, November 1, 1711. Fictis meminerit nos jocari fabulis. Phædr. Lib. 1. Prol. Let it be remembered that we sport in fabled stories HAVING lately translated the fragment of an old poet, which describes womankind under several characters, and supposes them to have drawn their different manners and dispositions from those animals and elements out of which he tells us they were the sex their revenge, by laying together compounded; I had some thoughts of giving in another paper the many vicious characters which prevail in the male world, and showing the different ingredients that go to and constitutions. Horace has a thought the making up of such different humours which is something akin to this, when in order to excuse himself to his mistress, for an invective which he had written against her, and to account for that unreasonable fury with which the heart of man is often transported, he tells us that, when Prome This brings me back to my first observation, and gives me occasion to say fur-theus made his man of clay, in the kneadther, that as worthy actions spring from worthy thoughts, so worthy thoughts are likewise the consequence of worthy actions. But the wretch who has degraded himself below the character of immortality, is very willing to resign his pretensions to it, and to substitute in its room a dark negative happiness in the extinction of his being. The admirable Shakspeare has given us a strong image of the unsupported condition of such a person in his last minutes, in the second part of King Henry the Sixth, where Cardinal Beaufort, who had been concerned in the murder of good Duke Humphrey, is represented on his death-bed. After some short confused speeches, which show an imagination disturbed with guilt, just as he is expiring, King Henry, standing by him full of compassion, says, "Lord Cardinal! if thou think'st on heaven's bliss, Hold up thy hand, make signal of that hope!He dies, and makes no sign!". The despair which is here shown, without a word or action on the part of a dying person, is beyond what could be painted by the most forcible expressions whatever. "I shall not pursue this thought farther, but only add, that as annihilation is not to be had with a wish, so it is the most abject thing in the world to wish it. What are honour, fame, wealth, or power, when compared with the generous expectation of a being without end, and a happiness adequate to that being? "I shall trouble you no farther; but with ing up of the heart, he seasoned it with some furious particles of the lion. But upon turning this plan to and fro in my thoughts, observed so many unaccountable humours in man, that I did not know out of what animals to fetch them. Male souls are dianimals to fetch them. Male souls are diworld has not variety of materials sufficient versified with so many characters, that the to furnish out their different tempers and inclinations. The creation, with all its animals and elements, would not be large enough to supply their several extravagances. Instead therefore of pursuing the thought of Simonides, I shall observe, that as he has exposed the vicious part of women from the doctrine of pre-existence, some of the an rized the vicious part of the human species cient philosophers have in a manner satiin general, from a notion of the soul's postexistence, if I may so call it; and that as Simonides describes brutes entering into the composition of women, others have represented human souls as entering into brutes. This is commonly termed the doctrine of transmigration, which supposes that human souls, upon their leaving the body, become the souls of such kinds of brutes as they most resemble in their manners; or, to give an account of it as Mr. Dryden has described in his translation of Pythagoras's speech in the fifteenth book of Ovid, where that philosopher dissuades his hearers from eating flesh: Thus all things are but alter'd, nothing dies, mane, and a skin as soft as silk. But, sir, she passes half her life at her glass, and almost ruins me in ribands. For my own part, I am a plain handicraft man, and in danger of breaking by her laziness and expensiveness. Pray, master, tell me in your next paper whether I may not expect of her so much drudgery as to take care of her family, and curry her hide in case of refusal. Your loving friend, By time, or force, or sickness dispossess'd, And lodges where it lights, in bird or beast; Or hunts without till ready limbs it find, And actuates those according to their kind; From tenement to tenement is toss'd, The soul is still the same, the figure only lost. Then let not piety be put to flight, To please the taste of glutton appetite; But suffer inmate souls,secure to dwell, Lest from their seats your parents you expel; With rapid hunger feed upon your kind, Or from a beast dislodge a brother's mind. 'BARNABY BRITTLE.' Plato, in the vision of Erus the Armenian, which I may possibly make the sub'Cheapside, Oct. 30. ject of a future speculation, records some • MR. SPECTATOR,-I am mightily pleasbeautiful transmigrations; as that the souled with the humour of the cat; be so kind of Orpheus, who was musical, melancholy, as to enlarge upon that subject. Yours till and a woman-hater, entered into a swan; JOSIAH HENPECK. the soul of Ajax, which was all wrath and 'P. S. You must know I am married to a fierceness, into a lion; the soul of Agamemnon, that was rapacious and imperial, into an eagle; and the soul of Thersites, who was a mimic and a buffoon, into a monkey. Mr. Congreve, in a prologue to one of his comedies, has touched upon this doctrine with great humour: Thus Aristotle's soul of old that was, I shall fill up this paper with some letters which my last Tuesday's speculation has produced. My following correspondents will show, what I there observed, that the speculation of that day affects only the lower part of the sex. | death, grimalkin' 'Wapping, Oct. 31, 1711. 'SIR,-Ever since your Spectator of Tuesday last came into our family, my husband is pleased to call me his Oceana, because the foolish old poet that you have translated says, that the souls of some women are made of sea-water. This it seems has encouraged my sauce-box to be witty upon me. When I am angry, he cries, him whether it rains, he makes answer, Pr'ythee, my dear, be calm;" when Í chide one of my servants, "Pr'ythee, child, do not bluster." He had the impudence about an hour ago to tell me, that he was a seafaring man, and must expect to divide his life between storm and sunshine. When I bestir myself with any spirit in my family, From my house in the Strand, Oct. 30. it is "high sea" in his house; and when MR. SPECTATOR,-Upon reading your sit still without doing any thing, his affairs Tuesday's paper, I find by several symp-forsooth are "wind-bound." When I ask toms in my constitution that I am a bee. My shop, or if you please to call it so, my cell, is in that great hive of females which goes by the name of the New Exchange; where I am daily employed in gathering together a little stock of gain from the finest flowers about the town, I mean the ladies and the beaux. I have a numerous swarm of children, to whom I give the best education I am able. But, sir, it is my misfortune to be married to a drone, who lives upon what I get, without bringing any thing into the common stock. Now, sir, as on the one hand I take care not to behave myself towards him like a wasp, so likewise I would not have him look on me as an humble-bee; for which reason I do all I can to put him upon laying up provisions for a bad day, No. 212.] Friday, November 2, 1711. and frequently represent to him the fatal effects his sloth and negligence may bring upon us in our old age. I must beg that you will join with me in your good advice upon this occasion, and you will for ever oblige your humble servant, 'MELISSA.' 'Piccadilly, Oct. 31, 1711. 'SIR,-I am joined in wedlock for my sins to one of those fillies who are described in the old poet with that hard name you gave us the other day. She has a flowing MARTHA TEMPEST.' -Eripe turpi Colla jugo, liber, liber sum, dic ageHor. Lib. 2. Sat. vii. 92. -Loose thy neck from this ignoble chain, And boldly say thou'rt free. Creech. 'MR. SPECTATOR,-I never look upon my dear wife, but I think of the happiness Sir Roger de Coverley enjoys, in having such a friend as you to expose in proper colours the cruelty and perverseness of his mistress. I have very often wished you visited in our family, and were acquainted man? He to whom she gives law, grants and denies what she pleases? who can neither deny her any thing she asks, or refuse to do any thing she commands?” To be short, my wife was extremely pleased with it; said the Italian was the only language for music; and admired how wonderfully tender the sentiment was, and how pretty the accent is of that language; with the rest that is said by rote on that occasion. Mr. Meggot is sent for to sing this air, which he performs with mighty applause; and my wife is in ecstacy on the occasion, and glad to find, by my being so much pleased, that I was at last come into the notion of the Italian; "for," said she, to know a little of the language; and pray, Mr. Meggot, sing again those notes, Nihil imperanti negare, nihil recusare." You may believe I was not a little delighted with my friend Tom's expedient to alarm me, and in obedience to his summons I gave all this story thus at large; and I am resolved when this appears in the Spectator, to declare for myself. The manner of the insurrection I contrive by your means, which shall be no other than that Tom Meggot who is at our tea-table every morning, shall read it to us; and if my dear, can take the hint, and say not one word, but let this be the beginning of a new life without farther explanation, it is very well; for as soon as the Spectator is read out, I shall, without more ado, call for the coach, name the hour when I shall be at home, if I come at all; if I do not, they may go to dinner. If my spouse only swells and says nothing, Tom and I go out together, and all is well, as I said before; but if she begins to command or expostulate, you shall in my next to you receive a full account of her resistance and submission, for submit the dear thing must to sir, your most obedient humble servant. 'ANTHONY FREEMAN. with my spouse; she would afford you, for some months at least, matter enough for one Spectator a week. Since we are not so happy as to be of your acquaintance, give me leave to represent to you our present circumstances as well as I can in writing. You are to know then that I am not of a very different constitution from Nathaniel Henroost, whom you have lately recorded in your speculations; and have a wife who makes a more tyrannical use of the knowledge of my easy temper than that lady ever pretended to. We had not been a month married, when she found in me a certain pain to give offence, and an indolence, that made me bear little inconveniences rather than dispute about them."it grows upon one when one once comes From this observation it soon came to pass, that if I offered to go abroad, she would get between me and the door, kiss me, and say she could not part with me; then down again I sat. In a day or two after this first pleasant step towards confining me, she declared to me, that I was all the world to her, and she thought she ought to be all the world to me. "If," said she, "my dear loves me as much as I love him, he will never be tired of my company. "This declaration was followed by my being denied to all my acquaintance; and it very soon came to that pass, that to give an answer at the door, before my face, the servants would ask her whether I was within or not; and she would answer no, with great fondness, and tell me I was a good dear. I will not enumerate more little circumstances to give you a livelier sense of my condition; but tell you in general, that from such steps as these at first, I now live the life of a prisoner of state; my letters are opened, and I have not the use of pen, ink, and paper, but in her presence. I never go abroad, except she sometimes takes me with her in her coach to take the air, if it may be called so, when we drive, as we generally do, with the glasses up. I have overheard my servants lament my condition, but they dare not bring me messages without her knowledge, because they doubt my resolution to stand by them. In the midst of this insipid No. 213.] Saturday, November 3, 1711. way of life, an old acquaintance of mine, Tom Meggot, who is a favourite with her, and allowed to visit me in her company because he sings prettily, has roused me to rebel, and conveyed his intelligence to me in the following manner: My wife is a great pretender to music, and very ignorant of it; but far gone in the Italian taste. Tom goes to Armstrong, the famous fine writer of music, and desires him to put this sentence of Tully in the scale of an Italian air, and write it out for my spouse from him. An In order to give this consideration its full ille mihi liber cui mulier imperat? Cui leges weight, we may cast all our actions under imponit, præscribit, jubet, vetat quod vide- the division of such as are in themselves tur? Qui nihil imperanti negare, nihil re- either good, evil, or indifferent. If we divide cusare audet? Poscit? dandum est. Vocat? our intentions after the same manner, and veniendum. Ejicit? abeundum. Minita- consider them with regard to our actions, tur? extimescendum. "Does he live like we may discover that great art and secret a gentleman who is commanded by a wo-of religion which I have here mentioned desire this may be in your very next.' -Mens sibi conscia recti. Virg. En. i. 608. A good intention. Ir is the great art and secret of Christianity, if I may use that phrase, to manage our actions to the best advantage, and direct them in such a manner that every thing we do may turn to account at that great day when every thing we have done will be set before us. |