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"I shall not pursue this thought further, but only add, that as an annihilation is not to be had with a wish, so it is the most abject thing in the world to wish it. What are honour, fame, wealth, or power, when compared with the generous expectation of a being without end, and a happiness adequate to that being?

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I shall trouble you no further; but with a certain gravity which these thoughts have given me, I reflect upon some things people say of you, as they will of all men who distinguish themselves, which I hope are not true, and wish you as good a man as you are an author.

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"I am, SIR,

"Your most obedient humble servant,
"T. D."

No. 211. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 1711.

Fictis meminerit nos jocari fabulis.

PHÆDR. 1. Prol.

Let it be remembered that we sport in fabled stories.

HAVING lately translated the fragment of an old poet, which describes womankind under several characters, and supposes them to have drawn their different manners and dispositions from those animals and elements, out of which he tells us they were compounded, I had some thoughts of giving the sex their revenge, by laying together, in another the many vicious characters which prevail in the male world, and showing the different ingredients

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that go to the making up of such different humours and constitutions. Horace has a thought which is something akin to this, when, in order to excuse himself to his mistress, for an invective which he had written against her, and to account for that unreasonable fury with which the heart of man is often transported, he tells us, that, when Prometheus made his man of clay, in the kneading up of the heart he seasoned it with some furious particles of the lion. But upon turning this plan to and fro in my thoughts, I observed so many unaccountable humours in man, that I did not know out of what animals to fetch them. Male souls are diversified with so many characters, that the world has not variety of materials sufficient to furnish out their different tempers and inclinations. The creation, with all its animals and elements, would not be large enough to supply their several extravagances.

Instead, therefore, of pursuing the thought of Simonides, I shall observe, that as he has exposed the vicious part of women from the doctrine of pre-existence, some of the ancient philosophers have in a manner satirized the vicious part of the human species in general, from a notion of the soul's postexistence, if I may so call it; and that, as Simonides describes brutes entering into the composition of women, others have represented human souls as entering into brutes. This is commonly termed the doctrine of transmigration, which supposes that human souls, upon their leaving the body, become the souls of such kinds of brutes as they most resemble in their manners; or, to give an account of it as Mr. Dryden has described it, in his translation of Pythagoras's speech, in the fifteenth book of Ovid, where that philosopher dissuades his hearers from eating flesh:

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Thus all things are but alter'd, nothing dies,
And here and there th' unbodied spirit flies:
By time, or force, or sickness, dispossess'd,
And lodges where it lights, in bird or beast;

Or hunts without till ready limbs it find,
And actuates those according to their kind:
From tenement to tenement is toss'd,
The soul is still the same, the figure only lost.

Then let not piety be put to flight,

To please the taste of glutton appetite;
But suffer inmate souls secure to dwell,
Lest from their seats your parents you expel;
With rabid hunger feed upon your kind,
Or from a beast dislodge a brother's mind.

Plato, in the vision of Erus the Armenian, which may possibly make the subject of a future speculation, records some beautiful transmigrations; as that the soul of Orpheus, who was musical, melancholy, and a woman-hater, entered into a swan; the soul of Ajax, which was all wrath and fierceness, into a lion; the soul of Agamemnon, that was rapacious and imperial, into an eagle; and the soul of Thersites, who was a mimic and a buffoon, into a monkey.

Mr. Congreve, in a prologue to one of his comedies, has touched upon this doctrine with great hu

mour:

Thus Aristotle's soul of old that was,
May now be damn'd to animate an ass;
Or, in this very house, for aught we know,
Is doing painful penance in some beau.

I shall fill up this paper with some letters which my last Tuesday's speculation has produced. My following correspondents will show, what I there observed, that the speculation of that day affects only the lower part of the sex.

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"MR. SPECTATOR,

Upon reading your Tuesday's paper, I find, by several symptoms in my constitution, that I am a bee. My shop, or, if you please to call it so, my cell, is in that great hive of females which goes by the name of the New Exchange; where I am daily employed in gathering together a little stock of gain from the finest flowers about the town; I mean, the ladies and the beaux. I have a numerous swarm of children, to whom I give the best education I am able. But, Sir, it is my misfortune to be married to a drone, who lives upon what I get, without bringing any thing into the common stock. Now, Sir, as on the one hand I take care not to behave myself towards him like a wasp, so likewise I would not have him look upon me as an humble-bee; for which reason I do all I can to put him upon laying up provisions for a bad day, and frequently represent to him the fatal effects his sloth and negligence may bring upon us in our old age. I must beg that you will join with me in your good advice upon this occasion, and you will for ever oblige

"Your humble servant, MELISSA."

"From my house in the Strand, October 30, 1711.”

"SIR,

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"I AM joined in wedlock for my sins to one of those fillies who are described in the old poet with that hard name you gave us the other day. She has a flowing mane, and a skin as soft as silk. But, Sir, she passes half her life at her glass, and almost ruins me in ribands. For my own part, I am a plain handicraft man, and in danger of breaking by

her laziness and expensiveness. Pray, master, tell me, in

whether I next paper, your may not expect of her so much drudgery as to take care of her family, and curry her hide in case of refusal.

"Your loving friend,

66 BARNABY BRITTLE."

Piccadilly, October 31, 1711."

"" MR. SPECTATOR,

"I AM mightily pleased with the humour of the cat; be so kind as to enlarge upon that subject.

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"Yours till death,

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"P. S. You must know I am married to a grimalkin."

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66 SIR,

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"EVER since your Spectator of Tuesday last came into our family, my husband is pleased to call me his Oceana, because the foolish old poet that you have translated says, that the souls of some women are made of sea-water. This it seems has encouraged my sauce-box to be witty upon me. When am angry, he cries, Pr'ythee, my dear, be calm;' when I chide one of my servants, Pr'ythee, child, do not bluster.' He had the impudence about an hour ago to tell me, that he was a sea-faring man, and must expect to divide his life between storm and sunshine. When I bestir myself with any spirit in my family, it is high sea' in his house; and when I sit still without doing any thing, his affairs forsooth are windbound.' When I ask him whether it rains, he makes answer, It is no matter, so that it be fair weather within doors.' In short, Sir, I cannot speak my mind freely to him, but I either swell or rage, or do something that is not fit for a civil woman to hear. Pray, Mr. Spectator,

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