competition, and no manner of reason can be given why a man should prefer one to the other before the lottery is drawn. In this case therefore caprice very often acts in the place of reason, and forms to itself some groundless imaginary motive, where real and substantial ones are wanting. I know a wellmeaning man that is very well pleased to risk his good fortune upon the number 1711, because it is the year of our Lord. I am acquainted with a tacker that would give a good deal for the number 134.* On the contrary, I have been told of a certain zealous dissenter, who being a great enemy to popery, and believing that bad men are the most fortunate in this world, will lay two to one on the number 666 against any other number, because, says he, it is the number of the beast. Several would prefer the number 12,000 before any other, as it is the number of the pounds in the great prize. In short, some are pleased to find their own age in their number; some that have got a number which makes a pretty appearance in the ciphers; and others, because it is the same number that succeeded in the last lottery. Each of these, upon no other grounds, thinks he stands fairest for the great lot, and that he is possessed of what may not be improperly called "the golden number." These principles of election are the pastimes and extravagancies of human reason, which is of so busy a nature, that it will be exerting itself in the meanest trifles, and working even when it wants materials. The wisest of men are sometimes acted by such unaccountable motives, as the life of the fool and the superstitious is guided by nothing else. I am surprised that none of the fortune-tellers, or, as the French call them, the Diseurs de bonne Aventure, who publish their bills in every quarter of the town, have turned our lotteries to their advantage. Did any of them set up for a caster of fortunate figures, what might he not get by his pretended discoveries and predictions? I remember among the advertisements in the Post-Boy of September the 27th, I was surprised to see the following one: "This is to give notice, that ten shillings over and above the market price, will be given for the ticket in the 1,500,000. lottery, No. 132, by Nath. Cliff, at the Bible and Three Crowns in Cheapside." This advertisement has given great matter of speculation to coffee-house theorists. Mr. Cliff's principles and conversation have been canvassed upon this occasion, and various conjectures made why he should thus set his heart upon No. 132. I have examined all the powers in those numbers, broken them into fractions, extracted the square and cube root, divided and multiplied them all ways, but could not arrive at the secret until about three days ago, when I received the following letter from an unknown hand; by which I find that Mr. Nath. Cliff is only the agent, and not the principal, in this advertisement. "MR. SPECTATOR, "I am the person that lately advertised I would give ten shillings more than the current price for In the year 1704 a bill was brought into the house of commons against occasional conformity: and in order to make it pass through the house of lords, it was proposed to tack it to a money-bill. This occasioned warm debates, and at length it was put to the vote; when 134 were for tacking: but a large majority being against it, the motion was overruled, and the bill miscarried. In the Revelations. See ch. xiii. ver. 18. Alluding to the number so called in the Calendar. § Actuated the ticket No. 132 in the lottery now drawing which is a secret I have communicated to some friends, who rally me incessantly upon that account. You must know I have but one ticket, for which reason, and a certain dream I have lately had more than once, 1 resolved it should be the number 1 most approved. I am so positive that I have pitched upon the great lot, that I could almost lay all I am worth upon it. My visions are so frequent and strong upon this occasion, that I have not only possessed the lot, but disposed of the money which in all probability it will sell for. This morning in particular, I set up an equipage which I look upon to be the gayest in the town; the liveries are very rich, but not gaudy. I should be very glad to see a speculation or two upon lottery subjects, in which you would oblige all people concerned, and in particular, "Your most humble Servant, "GEORGE GOSLING. "P. S. Dear Spec, if I get the 12,000 pounds, I'll make thee a handsome present.” After having wished my correspondent good luck, and thanked him for his intended kindness, I shall for this time dismiss the subject of the lottery, and only observe, that the greatest part of mankind are in some degree guilty of my friend Gosling's extra vagance. We are apt to rely upon future prospects, and become really expensive while we are only rich in possibility. We live up to our expectations, not to our possessions, and make a figure proportionable to what we may be, not what we are. We outrun our present income, as not doubting to disburse ourselves out of the profits of some future place, project, or reversion that we have in view. It is through this temper of mind, which is so common among us, that we see tradesmen break, who have met with no misfortunes in their business; and men of estates reduced to poverty, who have never suffered from losses or repairs, tenants, taxes, or lawsuits. In short, it is this foolish sanguine temper, this depending upon contingent futurities, that occasions romantic generosity, chimerical grandeur, senseless ostentation, and generally ends in beggary and ruin. The man who will live above his present circumstances is in great danger of living in a little time much beneath them; or, as the Italian proverb ruus, "The man who lives by hope, will die by hunger." It should be an indispensable rule in life, to contract our desires to our present condition, and, whatever may be our expectations, to live within the compass of what we actually possess. It will be time enough to enjoy an estate when it comes into our hands; but if we anticipate our good for. tune, we shall lose the pleasure of it when it arrives, and may possibly never possess what we have so foolishly counted upon.-L. No. 192.] WEDNESDAY, OCT. 10. 1711. -Uno ore omnes omnia Bona dicere, et laudare fortunas meas, Qui gnatum haberem tali ingenio præditum TER. Andr. act. sc. 1 -All the world With one accord said all good things, and prais'd My happy fortunes, who possess a son So good, so liberally disposed.—— COLMAN. I STOOD the other day, and beheld a father sitting in the middle of a room with a large family of children about him: and methought I could ob Disburse seems to stand here for reimburse. serve in his countenance different motions of delight, as he turned his eye towards the one or the other of them. The man is a person moderate in his designs for their preferment and welfare; and as he has an easy fortune he is not solicitous to make a great one. His eldest son is a child of a very towardly disposition, and as much as the father loves him, I dare say he will never be a knave to improve his fortune. I do not know any man who has a juster relish of life than the person I am speaking of, or keeps a better guard against the terrors of want, or the hopes of gain. It is usual, in a crowd of children, for the parent to name out of his own flock all the great officers of the kingdom. There is something so very surprising in the parts of a child of a man's own, that there is nothing too great to be expected from his endowments. I know a good woman who has but three sons, and there is, she says, nothing she expected with more certainty, than that she shall see one of them a bishop, the other a judge, and the third a court-physician. The humour is, that any thing which can happen to any man's child, is expected by every man for his own. But my friend, whom I am going to speak of, does not flatter himself with such vain expectations, but has his eye more upon the virtue and disposition of his children than their advancement or wealth. Good habits are what will certainly improve a man's fortune and reputation; but, on the other side, affluence of fortune will not as probably produce good affections of the mind. It is very natural for a man of a kind disposition to amuse himself with the promises his imagination makes to him of the future condition of his children, and to represent to himself the figure they shall bear in the world after he has left it. When his prospects of this kind are agreeable, his fondness gives as it were a longer date to his own life; and the survivorship of a worthy man in his son, is a pleasure scarce inferior to the hopes of the continuance of his own life. That man is happy who can believe of his son, that he will escape the follies and indiscretions of which he himself was guilty, and pursue and improve every thing that was valuable in him. The continuance of his virtue is much more to be regarded than that of his life; but it is the most lamentable of all reflections, to think that the heir of a man's fortune, is such a one as will be a stranger to his friends, alienated from the same interests, and a promoter of every thing which he himself disapproved. An estate in possession of such a successor to a good man, is worse than laid waste; and the family, of which he is the head, is in a more deplorable condition than that of being extinct. When I visit the agreeable seat of my honoured friend Ruricola, and walk from room to room revolving many pleasing occurrences, and the expressions of many just sentiments I have heard him utter, and see the booby his heir in pain, while he is doing the honours of his house to the friend of his father, the heaviness it gives one is not to be expressed. Want of genius is not to be imputed to any man, but want of humanity is a man's own fault. The son of Ruricola (whose life was one continued series of worthy actions, and gentleman-like inclinations) is the companion of drunken clowns, and knows no sense of praise but in the flattery he receives from his own servants; his pleasures are mean and inordinate, his language base and filthy, his behaviour rough and absurd. Is this creature to be accounted the successor of a man of virtue, wit, and breeding? At the same time that I have this melancholy prospect at the house where I miss my old friend, I can go to a gentleman's not far off, where he has a daughter who is the picture both of his body and mind, but both improved with the beauty and modesty peculiar to her sex. It is she who supplies the loss of her father to the world; she, without his name or fortune, is a truer memorial of him, than her brother who succeeds him in both. Such an offspring as the eldest son of my friend perpetuates his father in the same manner as the appearance of his ghost would: it is indeed Ruricola, but it is Ruricola grown frightful. I know not to what to attribute the brutal turn which this young man has taken, except it may be to a certain severity and distance which his father used towards him, and might perhaps have occasioned a dislike to those modes of life, which were not made amiable to him by freedom and affability. We may promise ourselves that no such excrescence will appear in the family of the Cornelii, where the father lives with his sons like their eldest brother, and the sons converse with him as if they did it for no other reason but that he is the wisest man of their acquaintance. As the Cornelii* are eminent traders, their good correspondence with each other is useful to all that know them, as well as to themselves: and their friendship, good-will, and kind offices, are disposed of jointly as well as their fortune, so that no one ever obliged one of them, who had not the obligation multiplied in returns from them all. It is the most beautiful object the eyes of man can behold to see a man of worth and his son live in an entire unreserved correspondence. The mutual kindness and affection between them, give an inexpressible satisfaction to all who know them. It is a sublime pleasure which increases by the participation. It is as sacred as friendship, as pleasurable as love, and as joyful as religion. This state of mind does not only dissipate sorrow, which would be extreme without it, but enlarges pleasures which would otherwise be contemptible. The most indif ferent thing has its force and beauty when it is spoke by a kind father, and an insignificant trifle has its weight when offered by a dutiful child. I know not how to express it, but I think I may call it a "transplanted self-love." All the enjoyments and sufferings which a man meets with are regarded only as they concern him in the relation he has to another. A man's very honour receives a new value to him, when he thinks that, when he is in his grave, it will be had in remembrance that such an action was done by such a one's father. Such considerations sweeten the old man's evening, and his soliloquy delights him when he can say to himself, "No man can tell my child, his father was either unmerciful, or unjust. My son shall meet many a man who shall say to him, I was obliged to thy father; and be my child a friend to his child for ever.'" It is not in the power of all men to leave illustrious names or great fortunes to their posterity, but they can very much conduce to their having industry, probity, valour, and justice. It is in every man's power to leave his son the honour of descending from a virtuous man, and add the blessings of heaven to whatever he leaves him. I shall end this rhapsody with a letter to an excellent young man of my acquaintance, who has lately lost a worthy father. "DEAR SIR, "I know no part of life more impertinent than the office of administering consolation: I will not enter into it, for I cannot but applaud your grief. The virtuous principles you had froin that excellent, man, whom you have lost, have wrought in you as they ought, to make a youth of three-and-twenty incapable of comfort upon coming into possession of a great fortune. I doubt not but you will honour his memory by a modest enjoyment of his estate; and scorn to triumph over his grave, by employing in riot, excess, and debauchery, what he purchased with so much industry, prudence, and wisdom. This is the true way to show the sense you have of your loss, and to take away the distress of others upon the occasion. You cannot recall your father by your grief, but you may revive him to his friends by your conduct." T. No. 193.] THURSDAY, OCTOBER 11, 1711. In mighty and their slaves, very justly represented, might do so much good, as to incline the great to regard business rather than ostentation; and make the little know the use of their time too well to spend it in vain applications and addresses. The famous doctor in Moorfields, who gained so much reputation for his horary predictions, is said to have had in his parlour different ropes to little bells which hung in the room above stairs, where the doctor thought fit to be oraculous. If a girl had been deceived by her lover, one bell was pulled; and if a peasant had lost a cow, the servant rung another. This method was kept in respect to all other passions and concerns, and the skilful waiter below sifted the inquirer, and gave the doctor notice accordingly. The levée of a great man is laid after the same manner, and twenty whispers, false alarms, and private intimations, pass backward and forward from the porter, the valet, and the patron himself, before the gaping crew, who are to pay their court, are gathered together. When the scene is ready, the doors fly open and discover his lordship. There are several ways of making this first appearance. You may be either half-dressed, and washing yourself, which is indeed the most stately; but this way of opening is peculiar to military men, in whom there is something graceful in exposing themselves naked: but the politicians, or civil officers, have usually affected to be more reserved, and preserve a certain chastity of deportment. Whether it be hieroglyphical or not, this difference in the military and civil list, I will not say; but have ever understood the fact to be, that the close minister is buttoned up, and the brave officer open breasted on these occasions. WARTON, &c. WHEN we look round us, and behold the strange variety of faces and persons which fill the streets with business and hurry, it is no unpleasant amuse. However that is, I humbly conceive the business ment to make guesses at their different pursuits, of a levée is to receive the acknowledgments of a and judge by their countenances what it is that so multitude, that a man is wise, bounteous, valiant, anxiously engages their present attention. Of all and powerful. When the first shot of eyes is made, this busy crowd, there are none who would give a it is wonderful to observe how much submission the man inclined to such inquiries better diversion for patron's modesty can bear, and how much servitude his thoughts, than those whom we call good courtiers, the client's spirit can descend to. In the vast muland such as are assiduous at the levées of great men.tiplicity of business, and the crowd about him, my These worthies are got into a habit of being servile with an air, and enjoy a certain vanity in being known for understanding how the world passes. the pleasure of this they can rise early, go abroad sleek and well-dressed, with no other hope or purpose, but to make a bow to a man in court favour, and be thought, by some insignificant smile of his, not a little engaged in his interests and fortunes, It is wondrous, that a man can get over the natural existence and possession of his own mind so far as to take delight either in paying or receiving such cold and repeated civilities. But what maintains the humour is, that outward show is what most men pursue, rather than real happiness. Thus both the idol, and idolater, equally impose upon themselves in pleasing their imaginations this way. there are very many of her majesty's good subjects who are extremely uneasy at their own seats in the country, where all from the skies to the centre of the earth is their own, and have a mighty longing to shine in courts, or to be partners in the power of the world; I say, for the benefit of these, and others who hanker after being in the whisper with great men, and vexing their neighbours with the changes they would be capable of making in the appearance of a country sessions, it would not methinks be amiss to give an account of that market for preferment, a great man's levée. But as For aught I know, this commerce between the lord's parts are usually so great, that, to the astonishment of the whole assembly, he has something to say to every man there, and that so suitable to his capacity as any man may judge that it is not without talents men can arrive at great employments. I have known a great man ask a flag-officer, which way was the wind; a commander of horse the present price of oats: and a stock-jobber, at what discount such a fund was, with as much ease as if he had been bred to each of those several ways of life. Now this is extremely obliging; for at the same time that the patron informs himself of matters, he gives the person of whom he inquires an oppor tunity to exert himself. What adds to the pomp of those interviews is, that it is performed with the greatest silence and order imaginable. The patron is usually in the midst of the room, and some humble person gives him a whisper, which his lordship answers aloud, "It is well. Yes, I am of your opinion. Pray inform yourself further, you may be sure of my part in it." This happy man is dismissed, and my lord can turn himself to a business of a quite different nature, and off-hand give as good an answer as any great man is obliged to. For the chief point is to keep in generals; and if there be any thing offered that is particular, to be in haste. But we are now in the height of the affair, ano my lord's creatures have all had their whispers round to keep up the farce of the thing, and the dumb-gives her husband all the torment imaginable out of show is become more general. He casts his eye to that corner, and there to Mr. Such-a-one; to the other, "And when did you come to town?" And perhaps just before he nods to another; and enters with him, "But, Sir, I am glad to see you, now I think of it." Each of those are happy for the next four-and-twenty hours; and those who bow in ranks undistinguished, and by dozens at a time, think they have very good prospects if they may hope to arrive at such notices half a year hence. The satirist says, there is seldom common sense in high fortune; and one would think, to behold a levee, that the great were not only infatuated with their station, but also that they believed all below were seized too; else how is it possible they could think of imposing upon themselves and others in such a degree, as to set up a levée for any thing but a direct farce? But such is the weakness of our distasteful as the affectation which is recorded of writers at the same time. This was an ambition mere indolence, with this peculiar vanity, that she "I have read your papers which relate to jealousy, and desire your advice in my case, which you will I am not in the least doubtful; yet I cannot be say is not common. I have a wife, of whose virtue satisfied she loves me, which gives me as great uneasiness as being faulty the other way would do. know not whether I am not yet more miserable than in that case, for she keeps possession of my heart, without the return of hers. I would desire who will not condescend to convince their husbands your observations upon that temper in some women, of their innocence or their love, but are wholly negligent of what reflections the poor men make upon their conduct (so they cannot call it criminal), when at the same time a little tenderness of beha Do not nature, that when men are a little exalted in their condition, they immediately conceive they have additional senses, and their capacities enlarged not only above other men, but above human comprehension itself. Thus it is ordinary to see a great man attend one listening, bow to one at a distance, and call to a third at the same instant. A girl in new ribands is not more taken with herself, nor does she betray more apparent coquetries, than even a wise man in such a circumstance of courtship. Iviour, or regard to show an inclination to please do not know any thing that I ever thought so very such women deserve all the misinterpretation which them, would make them entirely at ease. tual practice of guilt, who care not whether they they neglect to avoid? Or are they not in the acare thought guilty or not? If my wife does the most ordinary thing, as visiting her sister, or taking the air of a secret. Then she will sometimes tell a the air with her mother, it is always carried with thing of no consequence, as if it was only want of to dally with my anxiety. I have complained to her memory made her conceal it before; and this only and beseeched her not to use him, who desired only of this behaviour in the gentlest terms imaginable, to live with her like an indulgent friend, as the most morose and unsociable husband in the world. It is no easy matter to describe our circumstance, but it is miserable with this aggravation, that it might be easily mended, and yet no remedy endeavoured. She reads you, and there a phrase or two in this letter which she will know came from me. If we enter into an explanation which may tend to our future quiet by your means, you shall have our joint thanks: in the mean time I am (as much as I can in this ambiguous condition be any thing), Sir, Cæsar; to wit, that he would dictate to three several below the greatness and candour of his mind. He indeed (if any man had pretensions to greater faculties than any other mortal) was the person; but such a way of acting is childish, and inconsistent with the manner of our being. It appears from the very nature of things, that there cannot be any thing effectually dispatched in the distraction of a public levée; but the whole seems to be a conspiracy of a set of servile slaves, to give up their own liberty to take away their patron's understanding. T. No. 194. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 12, 1711. Rarus enim ferme sensus communis in illa "MR. SPECTATOR, "Your humble Servant." "Give me leave to make you a present of a cha that of a man who treats his friend with the same racter not yet described in your papers, which is odd variety which a fantastical female tyrant prac ties towards her lover. I have for some time had a friendship with one of those mercurial persons. The rogue I know loves me, yet takes advantage of my fondness for him to use me as he pleases. We are by turns the best friends and greatest strangers imaginable. Sometimes you would think us inse parable; at other times he avoids me for a long time, yet neither he nor I know why. When we meet next by chance, he is amazed he has not seen me, is impatient for an appointment the same evening; and when I expect he would have kept it, I have known him slip away to another place; where he has sat reading the news, when there is no post; smoking his pipe, which he seldom cares for; and staring about him in company with whom he has had nothing to do, as if he wondered how he came there. "That I may state my case to you the more fully, I shall transcribe some short minutes I have taken of him in my almanac since last spring; for you must know there are certain seasons of the year, according to which, I will not say our friendship, but the enjoyment of it rises or falls. In March and April he was as various as the weather; in May and part of June, I found him the sprightliest fellow in the world: in the dog-days he was much upon the indolent; in September very agreeable, but very busy; and since the glass fell last to changeable, he has made three appointments with me, and broke them every one. However, I have good hopes of him this winter, especially if you will lend me your assistance to reform him, which will be a great ease and pleasure to, Sir, "Your most humble Servant." "October 9, 1711 T. No. 195.] SATURDAY, OCTOBER 13, 1711. herself in all her force and vigour; if exercise dis sipates a growing distemper, temperance starves it. Physic for the most part is nothing else but the substitute of exercise or temperance. Medicines are indeed absolutely necessary in acute distempers, that cannot wait the slow operations of these two great instruments of health; but did men live .n an habitual course of exercise and temperance, there could be but little occasion for them. Accordingly we find that those parts of the world are the most healthy, where they subsist by the chase; and that men lived longest when their lives were employed in hunting, and when they had little food besides what they caught. Blistering, cupping, bleeding, are seldom of use but to the idle and intemperate; as all those inward applications which are so much in practice among us, are for the most part nothing else but expedients to make luxury consistent with health. The apothecary is perpetually employed in countermining the cook and the vintner. It is said of Diogenes, that meeting a young man who was going to a feast, he took him up in the street and carried him to his own friends, as one who was running into imminent danger, had not he prevented him. What would that philosopher have said, had he been present at the gluttony of a modern meal? would not he have thought the master of a family mad, and have begged his servants to tie down his hands, had he seen him devour a fowl, fish, and flesh; swallow oil and vinegar, wines and spices; throw down salads of twenty different herbs, sauces of a hundred ingredients, confections and fruits of numberless sweets and flavours? What unnatural motions and counter-ferments must such a medley of intemperence produce in the body? For my part, when I behold a fashionable table set out in all its magnificence, I fancy that I see gouts and dropsies, fevers and lethargies, with other innumerable distempers, lying in ambuscade among the dishes. THERE is a story in the Arabian Nights Tales of a king who had long languished under an ill habit of body, and had taken abundance of remedies to no purpose. At length, says the fable, a physician cured him by the following method; he took a hollow ball of wood, and filled it with several drugs; after which he closed it up so artificially that nothing appeared. He likewise took a mall, and after having hollowed the handle, and that part which strikes the ball, he enclosed in them several drugs after the same manner as in the ball itself. He then ordered the sultan, who was his patient, to exercise himself early in the morning with these rightly prepared instruments, till such time as he should sweat; when, as the story goes, the virtue of the medicaments perspiring through the wood had so good an influence on the sultan's constitution, that they cured him of an indisposition which It is impossible to lay down any determinate rule all the compositions he had taken inwardly had for temperance, because what is luxury in one may not been able to remove. This eastern allegory is be temperance in another; but there are few that finely contrived to show us how beneficial bodily have lived any time in the world, who are not labour is to health, and that exercise is the most judges of their own constitutions, so far as to know effectual physic. I have described in my hundred what kinds and what proportions of food do best and fifteenth paper, from the general structure and agree with them. Were I to consider my readers mechanism of a human body, how absolutely necesas my patients, and to prescribe such a kind of tem sary exercise is for its preservation. I shall in this perance as is accommodated to all persons, and place recommend another great preservative of such as is particularly suitable to our climate and health, which in many cases produces the same way of living, I would copy the following rules of a effects as exercise, and may, in some measure, sup- very eminent physician. Make your whole repast ply its place, where opportunities of exercise are out of one dish. If you indulge in a second, avoid wanting. The preservative I am speaking of is drinking any thing strong until you have finished temperance, which has those particular advantages your meal; at the same time abstain from all sauces, above all other means of health, that it may be or at least such as are not the most plain and practised by all ranks and conditions, at any season, simple." A man could not be well guilty of glut or in any place. It is a kind of regimen into which tony, if he stuck to these few obvious and easy every man may put himself, without interruption to rules. In the first case there would be no variety business, expense of money, or loss of time. If of tastes to solicit his palate, and occasion excess; exercise throws off all superfluities, temperance nor in the second, any artificial provocatives to reprevents them; if exercise clears the vessels, tem- lieve satiety, and create a false appetite. Were I perance neither satiates nor overstrains them; if to prescribe a rule for drinking, it should be formed exercise raises proper ferments in the humours, and upon a saying quoted by Sir William Temple: promotes the circulation of the blood, temperance gives nature her full play, and enables her to exert Nature delights in the most plain and simple diet. Every animal, but man, keeps to one dish. Herbs are the food of this species, fish of that, and flesh of a third. Man falls upon every thing that comes in his way; not the smallest fruit or excrescence of the earth, scarce a berry or a mush- : room, can escape him. ་ Diog. Laert. Vita Philosoph. lib. vi. cap. 2. n 6. |