ner to a man; and she knows no comfort | hearing, the young lady will support what but that common one to all in her condition, we say by her testimony, that I never saw the pleasure of interrupting the amours her but that once in my whole life. Dear of others. It is impossible but you must sir, do not omit this true relation, nor think it have seen several of these volunteers in too particular; for there are crowds of formalice, who pass their whole time in the lorn coquettes who intermingle themselves most laborious way of life in getting intelli- with our ladies, and contract familiarities gence, running from place to place with out of malice, and with no other design new whispers, without reaping any other but to blast the hopes of lovers, the expecbenefit but the hopes of making others as tation of parents, and the benevolence of unhappy as themselves. Mrs. Jane hap-kindred. I doubt not but I shall be, sir, pened to be at a place where I, with many your most obliged humble servant,

others well acquainted with my passion for Belinda, passed a Christmas evening. There was among the rest, a young lady,

She

'CLEANTHES.'

'E. S.'

The correspondent is desired to say which cheek the offender turned to him.

ADVERTISEMENT.

From the Parish-vestry, Jan. 9. 'All ladies who come to church in the new-fashioned hoods, are desired to be there before divine service begins, lest they divert the attention of the congregation.

T.

Notandi sunt tibi mores.

RALPH.'

Hor. Ars Poet. v. 156

"Will's Coffee-house, Jan. 10. 'SIR,-The other day entering a room so free in mirth, so amiable in a just re-adorned with the fair sex, I offered, afserve that accompanied it; I wrong her to ter the usual manner, to each of them a call it a reserve, but there appeared in her a mirth or cheerfulness which was not a for-kiss; but one, more scornful than the rest, bearance of more immoderate joy, but the turned her cheek. I did not think it proper natural appearance of all which could flow to take any notice of it until I had asked from a mind possessed of a habit of inno- your advice. Your humble servant, cence and purity. I must have utterly forgot Belinda to have taken no notice of one who was growing up to the same womanly virtues which shine to perfection in her, had I not distinguished one who seemed to promise to the world the same life and conduct with my faithful and lovely Belinda. When the company broke up, the fine young thing permitted me to take care of her home. Mrs. Jane saw my particular regard to her, and was informed of my attending her to her father's house. came early to Belinda the next morning, and asked her, "If Mr. Such-a-one had No. 273.] Saturday, January 12, 1711-12. been with her?" "No." "If Mr. Such-aone's lady?" "No." "Nor your cousin Such-a-one?" "No."-"Lord," says Mrs. Jane, "what is the friendship of women?Nay, they may well laugh at it.-And did no one tell you any thing of the behaviour of your lover, Mr. What-d'ye-call, last night? But perhaps it is nothing to you that he is to be married to young Mrs. on Tuesday next?" Belinda was here ready to die with rage and jealousy. Then Mrs. Jane goes on: "I have a young kinsman who is a clerk to a great conveyancer, who shall show you the rough draught of the marriage settlement. The world says, her father gives him two thousand pounds more than he could have with you." I went in"I nocently to wait on Belinda as usual, but was not admitted; I writ to her, but my letter was sent back unopened. Poor Betty, her maid, who is on my side, has been here just now blubbering, and told me the whole matter. She says she did not think I could be so base; and that she is now so odious to her mistress for having so often spoke well of me, that she dare not mention me more. All our hopes are placed in having these circumstances fairly represented in the Spectator, which Betty says she dare not but bring up as soon as it is brought in; and has promised when you have broke the ice to own this was laid between us, and when I can come to a

Note well the manners. HAVING examined the action of Paradise Lost, let us in the next place consider the This is Aristotle's method of conactors. sidering, first the fable, and secondly the manners; or, as we generally call them in English, the fable and the characters.

Homer has excelled all the heroic poets that ever wrote in the multitude and variety of his characters. Every god that is admitted into his poem, acts a part which would have been suitable to no other deity. His princes are as much distinguished by their manners, as by their dominions; and even those among them, whose characters seem wholly made up of courage, differ from one another as to the particular kinds of courage in which they excel. In short there is scarce a speech or action in the Iliad, which the reader may not ascribe to the person who speaks or acts, without seeing his name at the head of it.

Homer does not only outshine all other poets in the variety, but also in the novelty of his characters. He has introduced among his Grecian princes a person who had lived thrice the age of man, and conversed with Theseus, Hercules, Polyphemus, and the first race of heroes. His principal actor is the son of a goddess, not to mention the off spring of other deities, who have likewise a

place in his poems, and the venerable Trojan prince, who was the father of so many king's and heroes. There is in these several characters of Homer, a certain dignity as well as novelty, which adapts them in a more peculiar manner to the nature of an heroic poem. Though, at the same time, to give them the greater variety, he has described a Vulcan, that is a buffoon, among his gods, and a Thersites among his mortals.

Virgil falls infinitely short of Homer in the characters of his poem, both as to their variety and novelty. Eneas is indeed a perfect character; but as for Achates, though he is styled the hero's friend, he does nothing in the whole poem which may deserve that title. Gyas, Mnestheus, Sergestus, and Cloanthus, are all of them men of the same stamp and character:

-Fortemque Gyan, fortemque Cloanthum.

Virgil has indeed admitted Fame as an actress in the Æneid, but the part she acts is very short, and none of the most admired circumstances in that divine work. We find in mock-heroic poems, particularly in the Dispensary, and the Lutrin, several allegorical persons of this nature, which are very beautiful in those compositions, and may perhaps be used as an argument, that the authors of them were of opinion such characters might have a place in an epic work. For my own part I should be glad the reader would think so, for the sake of the poem I am now examining: and must further add, that if such empty unsubstantial beings may be ever made use of on this occasion, never were any more nicely imagined, and employed in more proper actions, than those of which I am now speaking.

Another principal actor in this poem is the great enemy of mankind. The part of There are, indeed, several natural inci- Ulysses in Homer's Odyssey is very much dents in the part of Ascanius; and that of admired by Aristotle, as perplexing that Dido cannot be sufficiently admired. I do not fable with very agreeable plots and intricasee any thing new or particular in Turnus. cies, not only by the many adventures in Pallas and Evander are remote copies of his voyage, and the subtilty of his beHector and Priam, as Lausus and Mezen-haviour, but by the various concealments tius are almost parallels to Pallas and and discoveries of his person in several Evander, The characters of Nisus and parts of that poem. But the crafty being I Euryalus are beautiful, but common. We must not forget the parts of Sinon, Camilla, and some few others, which are fine improvements on the Greek poet. In short, there is neither that variety nor novelty in the persons of the neid, which we meet with in those of the Iliad.

If we look into the characters of Milton, we shall find that he has introduced all the variety his fable was capable of receiving. The whole species of mankind was in two persons at the time to which the subject of his poem is confined. We have, however, four distinct characters in these two perWe see man and woman in the highest innocence and perfection, and in the most abject state of guilt and infirmity. The two last characters are, indeed, very common and obvious, but the two first are not only more magnificent, but more new than any characters either in Virgil or Homer, or indeed in the whole circle of

sons.

nature.

have now mentioned makes a much longer voyage than Ulysses, puts in practice many more wiles and stratagems, and hides himself under a greater variety of shapes and appearances, all of which are severally detected to the great delight and surprise of

the reader.

We may likewise observe with how much art the poet has varied several characters of the persons that speak in his infernal assembly. On the contrary, how has he represented the whole Godhead exerting itself towards man in its full benevolence under the threefold distinction of a Creator, a Redeemer, and a Comforter!

Nor must we omit the person of Raphael, who amidst his tenderness and friendship for man, shows such a dignity and condescension in all his speech and behaviour as are suitable to a superior nature. The angels are indeed as much diversified in Milton, and distinguished by their proper parts, reader will find nothing ascribed to Uriel, as the gods are in Homer or Virgil. The Gabriel, Michael, or Raphael, which is not in a particular manner suitable to their respective characters.*

Milton was so sensible of this defect in the subject of his poem, and of the few characters it would afford him, that he has brought into it two actors of a shadowy and fictitious nature, in the persons of Sin and There is another circumstance in the Death, by which means he has wrought principal actors of the Iliad and neid, into the body of his fable a very beautiful which gives a peculiar beauty to those two and well-invented allegory. But notwith-poems, and was therefore contrived with standing the fineness of this allegory may very great judgment. I mean the authors atone for it in some measure, I cannot think having chosen for their heroes, persons who that persons of such a chimerical existence were so nearly related to the people for are proper actors in an epic poem; because whom they wrote. Achilles was a Greek, there is not that measure of probability and Æneas the remote founder of Rome. annexed to them, which is requisite in writings of this kind as I shall show more at large hereafter.

The two last sentences are not in the original folio paper.

By this means heir countrymen (whom | parts of Milton s poem; and hope tha they principally propose to themselves for what I shall there advance, as well as what their readers) were particularly attentive I have already written, will not only serve to all the parts of their story, and sympa- as a comment upon Milton, but upon Aristhized with their heroes in all their ad-totle. L. ventures. A Roman could not but rejoice in the escapes, successes, and victories of Æneas, and be grieved at any defeats, mis- No. 274.] Monday, January 14, 1711 12. fortunes, or disappointments that befel him; as a Greek must have had the same regard for Achilles. And it is plain, that each of those poems have lost this great advantage, among those readers to whom their heroes are as strangers, or indifferent persons.

Audire est operæ pretium, procedere recte
Qui mochis non vultis-

Hor. Sat. ii. Lib. 1: 37.
All you, who think the city ne'er can thrive
Till every cuckold-maker's flay'd alive,
Attend.

Pope.

I HAVE Upon several occasions (that have

Milton's poem is admirable in this re-occurred since I first took into my thoughts spect, since it is impossible for any of its readers, whatever nation, country, or people he may belong to, not to be related to the persons who are the principal actors in it; but what is still infinitely more to its advantage, the principal actors in this poem are not only our progenitors, but our representatives. We have an actual interest in every thing they do, and no less than our utmost happiness is concerned, and lies at stake in all their behaviour.

6

I shall subjoin as a corollary to the foregoing remark, an admirable observation out of Aristotle, which has been very much misrepresented, in the quotations of some modern critics; If a man of perfect and consummate virtue falls into a misfortune, it raises our pity, but not our terror, because we do not fear that it may be our own case, who do not resemble the suffering person.' But, as that great philosopher adds, "if we see a man of virtue mixed with infirmities, fall into any misfortune, it does not only raise our pity but our terror; because we are afraid that the like misfortunes may happen to ourselves, who resemble the character of the suffering person.'

I shall take another opportunity to observe that a person of an absolute and consummate virtue should never be introduced in tragedy, and shall only remark in this place, that the foregoing observation of Aristotle, though it may be true in other occasions, does not hold in this; because in the present case, though the persons who fall into misfortune are of the most perfect and consummate virtue, it is not to be considered as what may possibly be, but what actually is our own case; since we are embarked with them on the same bottom, and must be partakers of their happiness or misery.

In this, and some other very few instances, Aristotle's rules for epic poetry (which he had drawn from his reflections upon Homer) cannot be supposed to quadrate exactly with the heroic poems which have been made since his time; since it is plain his rules would still have been more perfect, could he have perused the Æneid, which was made some hundred years after his death.

In my next, I shall go through other

the present state of fornication) weighed
with myself in behalf of guilty females, the
impulses of flesh and blood, together with
the arts and gallantries of crafty men; and
reflect with some scorn that most part of
what we in our youth think gay and polite,
is nothing else but a habit of indulging a
pruriency that way. It will cost some la-
bour to bring people to so lively a sense of
this, as to recover the manly modesty in
the behaviour of my men readers, and the
bashful grace in the faces of my women;
but in all cases which come into debate,
there are certain things previously to be
done before we can have a true light into
the subject matter: therefore it will, in the
first place, be necessary to consider the
impotent wenchers and industrious hags,
who are supplied with, and are constantly
supplying, new sacrifices to the devil of
lust. You are to know, then, if you are so
happy as not to know it already, that the
great havock which is made in the habita
tions of beauty and innocence, is committed
by such as can only lay waste and not en-
joy the soil. When you observe the pre-
sent state of vice and virtue, the offenders
are such as one would think should have no
impulse to what they are pursuing; as in
business, you see sometimes fools pretend
to be knaves, so in pleasure, you will find
old men set up for wenchers. This latter
sort of men are the great basis and fund of
iniquity in the kind we are speaking of; you
shall have an old rich man often receive
scrawls from the several quarters of the
town, with descriptions of the new wares
in their hands, if he will please to send
This in-
word when he will be waited on.
terview is contrived, and the innocent is
brought to such indecencies as from time
to time banish shame and raise desire.
With these preparatives the hags break
their wards by little and little, until they
are brought to lose all apprehensions of
what shall befal them in the possession of
younger men. It is a common postscript of
a hag to a young fellow whom she invites
to a new woman, She has, I assure you,
seen none but old Mr. Such-a-one.
pleases the old fellow that the nymph is
brought to him unadorned, and from his
bounty she is accommodated with enough to

It

dress ner for other lovers. This is the most • MY LORD,—I having a great esteem for ordinary method of bringing beauty and your honour, and a better opinion of you poverty into the possession of the town: but than of any of the quality, makes me acthe particular cases of kind keepers, skilful quaint you of an affair that I hope will pimps, and all others who drive a separate oblige you to know. I have a niece that trade, and are not in the general society or came to town about a fortnight ago. Her commerce of sin, will require distinct con- parents being lately dead, she came to me sideration. At the same time that we are expecting to have found me in so good a thus severe on the abandoned, we are to condition as to set her up in a milliner's represent the case of others with that shop. Her father gave fourscore pound mitigation as the circumstances demand. with her for five years: her time is out, Calling names does no good; to speak worse and she is not sixteen: as pretty a black of any thing than it deserves, does only gentlewoman as ever you saw; a little take off from the credit of the accuser, and woman, which I know your lordship likes; has implicitly the force of an apology in the well shaped, and as fine a complexion for behalf of the person accused. We shall, red and white as ever I saw; I doubt not but therefore, according as the circumstances your lordship will be of the same opinion. differ, vary our appellations of these crimi- She designs to go down about a month nals: those who offend only against them- hence, except I can provide for her, which selves, and are not scandals to society, but I cannot at present. Her father was one out of deference to the sober part of the with whom all he had died with him, so world, have so much good left in them as there is four children left destitute: so if to be ashamed, must not be huddled in the your lordship thinks proper to make an apcommon word due to the worst of women; pointment where I shall wait on you with but regard is to be had to their circum- my niece, by a line or two, I stay for your stances when they fell, to the uneasy per- answer; for I have no place fitted up since plexity under which they lived under sense-I left my house, fit to entertain your honour. less and severe parents; to the importunity of poverty; to the violence of a passion in its beginning well grounded, and all other alleviations which make unhappy women resign the characteristic of their sex, modesty. To do otherwise than this, would be to act like a pedantic Stoic, who thinks all crimes alike, and not like an impartial Spectator, who looks upon them with all the circumstances that diminish or enhance the guilt. I am in hopes, if this subject be well pursued, women will hereafter from their infancy be treated with an eye to their future state in the world; and not have their No. 275.] Tuesday, January 15, 1711-12. tempers made too untractable from an improper sourness, or pride, or too complying from familiarity or forwardness contracted at their own houses. After these hints on this subject, I shall end this paper with the following genuine letter; and desire all who think they may be concerned in future speculations on this subject, to send in what they have to say for themselves for some incidents in their lives, in order to have proper allowances made for their conduct.

Jan. 5, 1711-12. 'MR. SPECTATOR,-The subject of your yesterday's paper, is of so great importance, and the thorough handling of it may be so very useful to the preservation of many an innocent young creature, that I think every one is obliged to furnish you with what lights he can to expose the pernicious arts and practices of those unnatural women called bawds. In order to this, the end osed is sent to you, which is verbatim the copy of a letter written by a pawd of figure in this town to a noble lord. I have concealed the names of both, my intention being not to expose the persons but the thing. I am, sir, your humble servant.'

I told her she should go with me to see a gentleman, a very good friend of mine; so I desire you to take notice of my letter, by reason she is ignorant of the ways of the town. My lord, I desire if you meet us to come alone; for upon my word and honour you are the first that I ever mentioned her to. So I remain your lordship's most hum ble servant to command.

'I beg of you to burn it when you've read it.' T.

tribus Anticyris caput insanabile-
Hor. Ars Poet. v. 300.

A head, no hellebore can cure.

I was yesterday engaged in an assembly of virtuosos, where one of them produced many curious observations which he had lately made in the anatomy of a human body. Another of the company communicated to us several wonderful discoveries which he had also made on the same subject, by the help of very fine glasses. This gave birth to a great variety of uncommon remarks, and furnished discourse for the remaining part of the day.

The different opinions which were started on this occasion presented to my imagination so many new ideas, that by mixing with those which were already there, they employed my fancy all the last night, and composed a very wild extravagant dream.

I was invited, methought, to the dissection of a beau's head, and a coquette's heart, which were both of them laid on a table before us. An imaginary operator opened the first with a great deal of nicety, which upon a cursory and superficial view, appeared like the head of another man;

but upon applying our glasses to it, we made a very odd discovery, namely, that what we looked upon as brains, were not such in reality, but a heap of strange materials wound up in that shape and texture, and packed together with wonderful art in the several cavities of the skull. For, as Homer tells us, that the blood of the gods is not real blood, but only something like it; so we found that the brain of a beau was not real brain, but only something like it.

must have been entirely deprived of the faculty of blushing.

The os cribriforme was exceedingly stuffed, and in some places damaged with snuff. We could not but take notice in particular of that small muscle which is not often discovered in dissections, and draws the nose upward when it expresses the contempt which the owner of it has, upon seeing any thing he does not like, or hearing any thing he does not understand. Ineed not tell my learned reader, this is that muscle which performs the motion so often mentioned by the Latin poets, when they talk of a man's cocking his nose, or playing the rhi

The pineal gland, which many of our modern philosophers suppose to be the seat of the soul, smelt very strong of essence and orange-flower water, and was encom-noceros. passed with a kind of horny substance, cut into a thousand little faces or mirrors, which were imperceptible to the naked eye, insomuch that the soul, if there had been any here, must have been always taken up in contemplating her own beauties.

We observed a large antrum or cavity in the sinciput, that was filled with ribands, lace, and embroidery, wrought together in a most curious piece of net-work, the parts of which were likewise imperceptible to the naked eye. Another of these antrums or cavities was stuffed with invisible billetdoux, love-letters, pricked dances, and other trumpery of the same nature. In another we found a kind of powder, which set the whole company a sneezing, and by the scent discovered itself to be right Spanish. The several other cells were stored with commodities of the same kind, of which it would be tedious to give the reader an exact inventory.

There was a large cavity on each side of the head, which I must not omit. That on the right side was filled with fictions, flatteries, and falsehoods, vows, promises, and protestations; that on the left with oaths and imprecations. There issued out a duct from each of these cells, which ran into the root of the tongue, where both joined together, and passed forward in one common duct to the tip of it. We discovered several little roads or canals running from the ear into the brain, and took particular care to trace them out through their several passages. One of them extended itself to a bundle of sonnets and little musical instruments. Others ended in several bladders, which were filled either with wind or froth. But the large canal entered into a great cavity of the skull, from whence there went another canal into the tongue. This great cavity was filled with a kind of spongy substance, which the French anatömists call galimatias, and the English,

nonsense.

The skins of the forehead were extremely tough and thick, and what very much surprised us, had not in them any single bloodvessel that we were able to discover, either with or without our glasses; from whence we concluded, that the party when alive

We did not find any thing very remarkable in the eye, saving only, that the musculi amatorii, or, as we may translate it into English, the ogling muscles, were very much worn and decayed with use; whereas, on the contrary, the elevator, or the muscle which turns the eye towards heaven, did not appear to have been used at all.

I have only mentioned in this dissection such new discoveries as we were able to make, and have not taken any notice of those parts which are to be met with in common heads. As for the skull, the face, and indeed the whole outward shape and figure of the head, we could not discover any difference from what we observe in We were informthe heads of other men. ed that the person to whom this head belonged, had passed for a man above five and thirty years: during which time he eat and drank like other people, dressed well, talked loud, laughed frequently, and on particular occasions had acquitted himself tolerably at a ball or an assembly; to which one of the company added that a certain knot of ladies took him for a wit. He was cut off in the flower of his age by the blow of a paring-shovel, having been surprised by an eminent citizen, as he was tendering some civilities to his wife.

When we had thoroughly examined this head with all its apartments, and its several kinds of furniture, we put up the brain, such as it was, into its proper place, and laid it aside under a broad piece of scarlet cloth, in order to be prepared, and kept in a great repository of dissections; our operator telling us that the preparation would not be so difficult as that of another brain, for that he had observed several of the little pipes and tubes which ran through the brain were already filled with a kind of mercurial substance, which he looked upon to be true quicksilver.

He applied himself in the next place tc the coquette's heart, which he likewise laid open with great dexterity. There occurred to us many particulars in this dissection: but being unwilling to burden my reader's memory too much, I shall reserve this subject for the speculation of another day.

L