fell, there were not above twenty words spoken during the first course; that upon serving up the second, one of the company was a quarter of an hour in telling them that the ducklings and asparagus were very good; and that another took up the same time in declaring himself of the same opinion. This jest did not, however, go off so well as the former; for one of the guests being a brave man, and fuller of resentment than he knew how to express, went out of the room, and sent the facetious inviter a challenge in writing, which, though it was afterwards dropped by the interposition of friends, put a stop to these ludicrous entertainments.

6 Now, Sir, I dare say you will agree with me, that as there is no moral in these jests they ought to be discouraged, and looked upon rather as pieces of unluckiness than wit. However as it is natural for one man to refine upon the thought of another; and impossible for any single person, how great soever his parts may be, to invent an art, and bring it to its utmost perfection; I shall here give you an account of an honest gentleman of my acquaintance, who upon hearing the character of the wit above mentioned, has himself assumed it, and endeavoured to convert it to the benefit of mankind. He invited half a dozen of his friends one day to dinner, who were each of them famous for inserting several redundant phrases in their discourse, as "D'ye hear me?-D'ye see-That is,-And so, Sir." Each of his guests making use of his particular elegance, appeared so ridiculous to his neighbour, that he could not but reflect upon hinself as appearing equally ridiculous to the rest of the company. By this means, before they had sat long together, every one, talking with the greatest circumspection, and carefully avoiding his favourite

expletive, the conversation was cleared of its redundancies, and had a greater quantity of sense, though less of sound in it.

'The same well-meaning gentleman took occasion, at another time, to bring together such of his friends as were addicted to a foolish habitual custom of swearing. In order to show them the absurdity of the practice, he had recourse to the invention above mentioned, having placed an amanuensis in a private part of the room. After the second bottle, when men open their minds without reserve, my honest friend began to take notice of the many sonorous but unnecessary words that had passed in his house since their sitting down at table, and how much good conversation they had lost by giving way to such superfluous phrases. What a tax,"

says he, "would they have raised for the poor, had we put the laws in execution upon one another!" Every one of them took this gentle reproof in good part; upon which he told them, that, knowing their conversation would have no secrets in it, he had ordered it to be taken down in writing, and, for the humour-sake would read it to them, if they pleased. There were ten sheets of it, which might have been reduced to two, had there not been those abominable interpolations I have before mentioned. Upon the reading of it in cold blood, it looked rather like a conference of fiends than of men. In short, every one trembled at himself upon hearing calmly what he had pronounced amidst the heat and inadvertency of discourse.

6 I shall only mention another occasion wherein he made use of the same invention to cure a dif ferent kind of men, who are the pests of all polite conversation, and murder time as much as either of the two former, though they do it more innocentlyI mean, that dull generation of story-tellers, My

friend got together about half a dozen of his acquaintance, who were infected with this strange malady. The first day one of them sitting down entered upon the siege of Namur, which lasted till four o'clock, their time of parting. The second day a North Briton took possession of the discourse, which it was impossible to get out of his hands so long as the company stayed together. The third day was engrossed after the same manner by a story of the same length. They at last began to reflect upon this barbarous way of treating one another, and by this means awakened out of that lethargy with which each of them had been seized for several years.

'As you have somewhere declared, that extraordinary and uncommon characters of mankind are the game which you delight in, and as I look upon you to be the greatest sportsman, or, if you please, the Nimrod among this species of writers, I thought this discovery would not be unacceptable to you. I am, Sir, &c.'

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particular paper. I have in the next place spoke of in this the censures which our author may incur under each of these heads, which I have confined to two papers, though I might have enlarged the number if I had been disposed to dwell on so ungrateful a subject. me ha I believe, however, that the severest reader will not find any little fault in heroic poetry, which this au thor has fallen into, that does not come under one those heads among which I have distributed his se veral blemishes. After having thus treated at large of Paradise Lost, I could not think it sufficient to have celebrated this poem in the whole without descending to particulars. I have therefore bestowed a paper upon each book, and endeavoured not only to prove that the poem is beautiful in general, but to point out its particular beauties; and, to determine wherein they consist, I have endeavoured to show how some passages are beautiful by being sublime, others by being soft, others by being natural; which of them are recommended by the passion, which by the moral, which by the sentiment, and which by the expression. I have likewise endeavoured to show how the genius of the poet shines by a happy inven tion, a distant allusion, or a judicious imitation; how he has copied or improved Homer or Virgil, and raises his own imaginations by the use which he has made of several poetical passages in Scripture. I might have inserted also several passages in Tasso, which our author has imitated: but, as I do not look upon Tasso to be a sufficient voucher, I would not perplex my reader with such quotations as might do more honour to the Italian than to the English poet. In short, I have endeavoured to particularise those innumerable kinds of beauty which it would be tedious to recapitulate, but which are essential to po etry, and which may be met with in the works of this great author. Had I thought, at my first engaging

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in this design, that it would have led me to so great length, I believe I should never have entered upon it; but the kind reception which it has met with among those whose judgment I have a value for, as well as the uncommon demands which my bookseller tells me have been made for these particular discourses, give me no reason to repent of the pains I have been at in composing them. L.

N° 370. MONDAY, MAY 5, 1712.

Totus mundus agit histrionem.

-All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players.

SHAKSPEARE.

MANY of my fair readers, as well as very gay and well-received persons of the other sex, are extremely perplexed at the Latin sentences at the head of my speculations. I do not know whether I ought not to indulge them with translations of each of them however, I have to-day taken down from at the top of the stage in Drury-lane a bit of Latin V which often stands in their view, and signifies, that 'The whole world acts the player.' It is certain that if we look all round us, and behold the differenț employments of mankind, you hardly see one who is do not, as the player is, in an assumed character. The lawyer who is vehement and loud in a cause wherein he know he has not the truth of the ques Intion on his side, is a player as to the personated part, but incomparably meaner than he as to the prostitution of himself for hire; because the plead, er's falsehood introduces injustice; the player feigns for no other end but to divert or instruct you. The

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