'MR. SPECTATOR,-1 was last night to visit a lady whom I much esteem, and always took for my friend; but met with so very different a reception from what I expected, that I cannot help applying myself to you on this occasion. In the room of that civility and familiarity I used to be treated with by her, an affected strangeness in her looks, and coldness in her behaviour, plainly told me I was not the welcome guest which the regard and tenderness she has often expressed for me gave me reason to flatter myself to think I was. Sir, this is certainly a great fault, and I assure you a very common one; therefore I hope you will think it a fit subject for some part of a Spectator. Be pleased to acquaint us how we must behave ourselves towards this valetudinary friendship, subject to so many heats and colds; and you will oblige, sir, your humble servant, MIRANDA.' • SIR,—I cannot forbear acknowledging the delight your late Spectators on Saturdays have given me; for they are written in the honest spirit of criticism, and called to my mind the following four lines I had read long since in a prologue to a play called Julius Cæsar,* which has deserved a better fate. The verses are addressed to the little critics: Show your small talent, and let that suffice ye; WE are generally so much pleased with any little accomplishments, either of body or mind, which have once made us remarkable in the world, that we endeavour to persuade ourselves it is not in the power of time to rob us of them. We are eternally pursuing the same methods which first procured us the applauses of mankind. It is from this notion that an author writes on, though he is come to dotage; without ever considering that his memory is impaired, and that he hath lost that life, and those spirits, which formerly raised his fancy, and fired his imagination. The same folly hinders a man from submitting his behaviour to his age, and makes Clodius, who was a celebrated dancer at five-andtwenty, still love to hobble in a minuet, though he is past threescore. It is this, * A tragedy, by William Alexar der, Earl of Stirling, printed in 1629. in a word, which fills the town with elderly fops and superannuated coquettes. Canidia, a lady of this latter species, passed by me yesterday in a coach. Canidia was a haughty beauty of the last age, and was followed by crowds of adorers, whose passions only pleased her, as they gave her opportunities of playing the tyrant. She then contracted that awful cast of the eye and forbidding frown, which she has not yet laid aside, and has still all the insolence of If she now beauty without its charms. attracts the eyes of any beholders, it is only by being remarkably ridiculous; even her own sex laugh at her affectation; and the men, who always enjoy an ill-natured pleasure in seeing an imperious beauty humbled and neglected, regard her with the same satisfaction that a free nation sees a tyrant in disgrace. Will Honeycomb, who is a great admirer of the gallantries in King Charles the Seletter written by a wit of that age to his cond's reign, lately communicated to me a mistress, who it seems was a lady of Canidia's humour; and though I do not always this letter so well, that I took a copy of it, approve of my friend Will's taste, I liked with which I shall here present my reader: • To Chloe. 'MADAM,—Since my waking thoughts have never been able to influence you in my favour, I am resolved to try whether my dreams can make any impression on you. To this end I shall give you an account of a very odd one which my fancy presented to me last night, within a few hours after I left you. 'Methought I was unaccountably conveyed into the most delicious place mine eyes ever beheld: it was a large valley divided by a river of the purest water I had ever seen. The ground on each side of it rose by an easy ascent, and was covered with flowers of an infinite variety, which, as they were reflected in the water, doubled the beauties of the place, or rather formed an imaginary scene more beautiful than the real. On each side of the river was a range of lofty trees, whose boughs were loaded with almost as many birds as leaves. Every tree was full of harmony. 'I had not gone far in this pleasant valley, when I perceived that it was terminated by a most magnificent temple. The structure was ancient and regular. On the top of it was figured the god Saturn, in the same shape and dress that the poets usually re present Time. 'As I was advancing to satisfy my curiosity by a nearer view, I was stopped by an object far more beautiful than any 1 had before discovered in the whole place. I fancy, madam, you will easily guess that this could hardly be any thing but yourself; in reality it was so; you lay extended on the flowers by the side of the river, so that your hands, which were thrown in a negligent which seems too extraordinary to be with out a meaning. I am, madam, with the greatest passion, your most obedient, most X. humble servant, &c.' posture, almost touched the water. Your eyes were closed; but if your sleep deprived me of the satisfaction of seeing them, it left me at leisure to contemplate several other charms which disappear when your eyes are open. I could not but admire the tranquillity you slept in, especially when I con- No. 302.] Friday, February 15, 1711-12. sidered the uneasiness you produce in so many others. 'While I was wholly taken up in these reflections, the doors of the temple flew open with a very great noise, and lifting up my eyes, I saw two figures, in human shape, coming into the valley. Upon a nearer survey, I found them to be Youth and Love. The first was encircled with a kind of purple light, that spread a glory over all the place, the other held a flaming torch in his hand. I could observe, that all the way as they came towards us, the colours of the flowers appeared more lively, the trees shot out in blossoms, the birds threw themselves into pairs and serenaded them as they passed: the whole face of nature glowed with new beauties. They were no sooner arrived at the place where you lay, than they seated themselves on each side of you. On their approach methought I saw a new bloom arise in your face, and new charms diffuse themselves over your whole person. You appeared more than mortal; but, to my great surprise, continued fast asleep, though the two deities made several gentle efforts to awaken you. After a short time, Youth, (displaying a pair of wings, which I had not before taken notice of,) flew off. Love still remained, and holding the torch which he had in his hand before your face, you still appeared as beautiful as ever. The glaring of the light in your eyes at length awakened you, when to my great surprise, instead of acknowledging the favour of the deity, you frowned upon him, and struck the torch out of his hand into the river. The god, after having regarded you with a look that spoke at once his pity and displeasure, flew away. Immediately a kind of gloom overspread the whole place. At the same time I saw a hideous spectre enter at one end of the valley. His eyes were sunk into his head, his face was pale and withered, and his skin puckered up in wrinkles. As he walked on the sides of the bank the river froze, the flowers faded, the trees shed their blossoms, the birds dropped from off the boughs, and fell dead at his feet. By these marks I knew him to be Old Age. You were seized with the utmost horror and amazement at his approach. You endeavoured to have fled, but the phantom caught you in his arms. You may easily guess at the change you suffered in this embrace. For my own part, though I am still too full of the dreadful idea, I will not shock you with a description of it. I was so startled at the sight, that my sleep immediately left me, and I found myself awake, at leisure to consider of a dream -Lachrymæque decoræ, Gratior et pulchro veniens in corpore virtus. Virg. Æn. v. 343. Becoming sorrows, and a virtuous mind More lovely, in a beauteous form enshrin'd. I READ what I give for the entertainment of this day with a great deal of pleasure, and publish it just as it came to my hands. I shall be very glad to find there are many guessed at for Emilia. 'MR. SPECTATOR,-If this paper has the good fortune to be honoured with a place in your writings, I shall be the more pleased, because the character of Emilia is not an because the character of Emilia is not an imaginary but a real one. I have industriously obscured the whole by the addition of one or two circumstances of no consequence, that the person it is drawn from might still be concealed; and that the writer of it might not be in the least suspected, and for some other reasons, I chose not to give it in the form of a letter; but if, besides the faults of the composition, there be any thing in it more proper for a correspondent than the Spectator himself to write, I submit it other model you think fit. I am, sir, your to your better judgment, to receive any very humble servant." There is nothing which gives one so pleasing a prospect of human nature, as the contemplation of wisdom and beauty: the latter is the peculiar portion of that sex which is therefore called fair: but the happy concurrence of both these excellences in the same person, is a character too celestial to be frequently met with Beauty is an over-weening self-sufficient thing, careless of providing itself any more substantial ornaments; nay, so little does it consult its own interests, that it too often defeats itself, by betraying that innocence which renders it lovely and desirable. As therefore virtue makes a beautiful woman appear more beautiful, so beauty makes a virtuous woman really more virtuous. Whilst I am considering these two perfections gloriously united in one person, I can not help representing to my mind the image of Emilia. Who ever beheld the charming Emilia without feeling in his breast at once the glow of love, and the tenderness of virtuous friendship? The unstudied graces of her behaviour, and the pleasing accents of her tongue, insensibly draw you on to wish for a nearer enjoyment of them, but even her smiles carry in them a silent reproof of the impulses of licentious love. Thus, though the attractives of her beauty play almost irresistibly upon you, and create desire, you ought not to be concealed, but should be set out to the view and imitation of the world; for how amiable does virtue appear, thus, as it were, made visible to us, in so fair an example! immediately stand corrected not by the | me by the prevailing brightness of her virseverity, but the decency of her virtue. tues. So rare a pattern of female excellence That sweetness and good-humour, which is so visible in her face, naturally diffuses itself into every word and action: a man must be a savage, who, at the sight of Emilia, is not more inclined to do her good, than gratify himself. Her person as it is thus studiously embellished by nature, thus adorned with unpremeditated graces, is a fit lodging for a mind so fair and lovely: there dwell rational piety, modest hope, and cheerful resignation. Many of the prevailing passions of mankind do undeservedly pass under the name of religion; which is thus made to express itself in action, according to the nature of the constitution in which it resides; so that were we to make a judgment from appearances, one would imagine religion in some is little better than sullenness and reserve, in many fear, in others the despondings of a melancholy complexion, in others the formality of insignificant unaffecting observances, in others severity, in others ostentation. In Emilia it is a principle founded in reason, and enlivened with hope; it does not break forth into irregular fits and sallies of devotion, but is a uniform and consistent tenour of action: it is strict without severity, compassionate without weakness; it is the perfection of that good-humour which proceeds from the understanding, not the effect of an easy constitution. By a generous sympathy in nature, we feel ourselves disposed to mourn when any of our fellow-creatures are afflicted: but injured innocence and beauty in distress is an object that carries in it something inexpressibly moving: it softens the most manly heart with the tenderest sensations of love and compassion, until at length it confesses its humanity, and flows out into tears. Were I to relate that part of Emilia's life which has given her an opportunity of exerting the heroism of Christianity, it would make too sad, too tender a story; but when I consider her alone in the midst of her distresses, looking beyond this gloomy vale of affliction and sorrow, into the joys of heaven and immortality, and when I see her in conversation thoughtless and easy, as if she were the most happy creature in the world, I am transported with admiration. Surely never did such a philosophic soul inhabit such a beauteous form! For beauty is often made a privilege against thought and reflection; it laughs at wisdom, and will not abide the gravity of its instructions. Were I able to represent Emilia's virtues in their proper colours, and their due proportions, love or flattery might perhaps be thought to have drawn the picture larger than life; but as this is but an imperfect draught of so excellent a character, and as I cannot, I will not hope to have any interest in her person, all that I can say of her is but impartial praise, extorted from Honoria's disposition is of a very different turn: her thoughts are wholly bent upon conquests and arbitrary power. That she has some wit and beauty nobody denies, and therefore has the esteem of all her acquaintance as a woman of an agreeable person and conversation; but (whatever her husband may think of it) that is not sufficient for Honoria: she waives that title to respect as a mean acquisition, and demands veneration in the right of an idol; for this reason her natural desire of life is continually checked with an inconsistent fear of wrinkles and old age. Emilia cannot be supposed ignorant of her personal charms, though she seems to be so; but she will not hold her happiness upon so precarious a tenure, whilst her mind is adorned with beauties of a more exalted and lasting nature. When in the full bloom of youth and beauty we saw her surrounded with a crowd of adorers, she took no pleasure in slaughter and destruction, gave no false deluding hopes which might increase the torments of her disappointed lovers; but having for some time given to the decency of a virgin coyness, and examined the merit of their several pretensions, she at length gratified her own, by resigning herself to the ardent passion of Bromius. Bromius was then master of many good qualities and a moderate fortune, which was soon after unexpectedly increased to a plentiful estate. This for a good while proved his misfortune, as it furnished his unexperienced age with the opportunities of evil company, and a sensual life. He might have longer wandered in the labyrinths of vice and folly, had not Emilia's prudent conduct won him over to the government of his reason. Her ingenuity has been constantly employed in humanizing his passions, and refining his pleasures. She has showed him by her own example, that virtue is consistent with decent freedoms, and good humour, or rather that it cannot subsist without them. Her good sense readily instructed her, that a silent example, and an easy unrepining behaviour, will always be more persuasive than the severity of lectures and admonitions; and that there is so much pride interwoven into the make of human nature, that an obstinate man must only take the hint from another, and then be left to advise and correct himself. Thus by an artful train of management, and unseen persuasions, having at first brought him not to dislike, and at length to be pleased with that which otherwise he would not have bore to hear of, she then knew how to press and secure this advantage, by approving it as his thought, and seconding it as his proposal. By this means she has gained an interest in some of his leading passions, and made them accessary to his reformation. There is another particular of Emilia's conduct which I cannot forbear mentioning: to some, perhaps, it may at first sight appear but a trifling inconsiderable circumstance: but, for my part, I think it highly worthy of observation, and to be recommended to the consideration of the fair sex. I have often thought wrapping-gowns and dirty linen, with all that huddled economy of dress which passes under the general name of a mob,' the bane of conjugal love, and one of the readiest means imaginable to alienate the affection of a husband, especially a fond one. I have heard some ladies, who have been surprised by company in such a dishabille, apologize for it after this manner: Truly, I am ashamed to be caught in this pickle: but my husband and I were sitting all alone by ourselves, and I did not expect to see such good company.'-This, by the way, is a fine compliment to the good man, which it is ten to one but he returns in dogged answers and a churlish behaviour, without knowing what it is that puts him out of humour. Some choose the clearest light, And boldly challenge the most piercing eye. I HAVE seen, in the works of a modern philosopher, a map of the spots in the sun. My last paper of the faults and blemishes in Milton's Paradise Lost may be considered as a piece of the same nature. To pursue the allusion: as it is observed, that among the bright parts of the luminous body abovementioned, there are some which glow more intensely, and dart a stronger light than others; so, notwithstanding I have already shown Milton's poem to be very beautiful in general, I shall now proceed to take no tice of such beauties as appear to me more exquisite than the rest. Milton has proposed the subject of his poem in the following verses: Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit These lines are, perhaps, as plain, sim ple, and unadorned, as any of the whole poem, in which particular the author has conformed himself to the example of Ho mer, and the precept of Horace. Emilia's observation teaches her, that as His invocation to a work, which turns in little inadvertencies and neglects cast a a great measure upon the creation of the blemish upon a great character; so the ne- world, is very properly made to the Muse glect of apparel, even among the most inti- who inspired Moses in those books from mate friends, does insensibly lessen their whence our author drew his subject, and regards to each other, by creating a fami- to the Holy Spirit who is therein repre liarity too low and contemptible. She un-sented as operating after a particular manderstands the importance of those things ner in the first production of nature. This which the generality account trifles; and considers every thing as a matter of consequence, that has the least tendency towards keeping up or abating the affection of her husband; him she esteems as a fit object to employ her ingenuity in pleasing, because he is to be pleased for life. By the help of these, and a thousand other nameless arts, which it is easier for her to practise than for another to express, by the obstinacy of her goodness and unprovoked submission, in spite of all her afflictions and ill usage, Bromius is become a man of sense and a kind husband, and Emilia a happy wife. Ye guardian angels, to whose care heaven has intrusted its dear Emilia, guide her still forward in the paths of virtue, defend her from the insolence and wrongs of this undiscerning world: at length when we must no more converse with such purity on earth, lead her gently hence, innocent and unreprovable, to a better place, where, by an easy transition from what she now is, she may shine forth an angel of light. T. No. 303. Saturday, Feb. 16, 1711-12. -Volet hæc sub luce videri, whole exordium rises very happily into noble language and sentiments, as I think the transition to the fable is exquisitely beautiful and natural. The nine days' astonishment, in which the angels lay entranced after their dreadful overthrow and fall from heaven, before they could recover either the use of thought or speech, is a noble circumstance, and very finely imagined. The division of hell into seas of fire, and into firm ground impregnated with the same furious element, with that particular circumstance of the exclusion of Hope from those infernal regions, are instances of the same great and fruitful invention. The thoughts in the first speech and description of Satan, who is one of the principal actors in this poem, are wonderfully proper to give us a full idea of him. His pride, envy, and revenge, obstinacy, de spair, and impenitence, are all of them very artfully interwoven. In short, his first speech is a complication of all those passions which discover themselves separately in several other of his speeches in the poem. The whole part of this great enemy of mankind is filled with such incidents as are very apt to raise and terrify the reader's imagi nation. Of this nature, in the book now before us, is his being the first that awakens out of the general trance, with his posture | whom he had involved in the same guilt on the burning lake, his rising from it, and and ruin with himself: the description of his shield and spear: Thus Satan talking to his nearest mate, Forthwith upright he rears from off the pool In billows, leave i' th' midst a horrid vale. His pond'rous shield Ethereal temper, massy, large and round, To which we may add his call to the fallen angels that lay plunged and stupified in the sea of fire: He call'd so loud, that all the hollow deep But there is no single passage in the whole poem worked up to a greater sublimity, than that wherein his person is described in those celebrated lines: We shall be free! th' Almighty hath not built Amidst those impieties which this enraged spirit utters in other places of the poem, the author has taken care to introduce none that is not big with absurdity, and incapable of shocking a religious reader; his words, as the poet himself describes them, bearing only a semblance of worth, not substance.' He is likewise with great art described as owning his adversary to be Almighty. Whatever perverse interpretation he puts on the justice, mercy, and other attributes of the Supreme Being, he frequently confesses his omnipotence, that being the perfection he was forced to allow him, and the only consideration which could support his pride under the shame of his defeat. Nor must I here omit that beautiful cir- | cumstance of his bursting out into tears, upon his survey of those innumerabl spirits He now prepar'd To speak; whereat their doubled ranks they bend, The catalogue of evil spirits has abun dance of learning in it, and a very agreeable turn of poetry, which rises in a great measure from its describing the places where they were worshipped, by those beautiful marks of rivers so frequent among the ancient poets. The author had doubtless in this place Homer's catalogue of ships, and Virgil's list of warriors, in his view. The characters of Moloch and Belial prepare the reader's mind for their respective speeches and behaviour in the second and sixth book. The account of Thammuz is finely romantic, and suitable to what we read among the ancients of the worship which was paid to that idol: Thammuz came next behind, Whose annual wound in Lebanon allur'd The reader will pardon me if I insert as a note on this beautiful passage, the account given us by the late ingenious Mr. Maundrell of this ancient piece of worship, and probably the first occasion of such a superstition. We came to a fair large river--doubtless the ancient river Adonis, so famous for the idolatrous rites performed here in lamentation of Adonis. We had the fortune to see what may be supposed to be the occasion of that opinion which Lucian relates concerning this river, viz. That this stream, at certain seasons of the year, especially about the feast of Adonis, is of a bloody colour; which the heathens looked upon as proceeding from a kind of sympathy in the river for the death of Adonis, who was killed by a wild boar in the mountains, out of which this stream rises. Something like this we saw actually come to pass; for the water was stained to a surprising redness; and, as we observed in travelling, had discoloured the sea a great way into a reddish hue, occasioned doubtless by a sort of mi nium, or red earth, washed into the river by the violence of the rain, and not by any stain from Adonis's blood. The passage in the catalogue, explaining the manner how spirits transform themselves by contraction or enlargement of their dimensions, is introduced with great judgment, to make way for several surpris ing accidents in the sequel of the poem. There follows one at the very end of the first book, which is what the French critics call marvellous, but at the same time pro |