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'MARY COMFIT.

If I observe he cannot speak, I'll give him time to recover himself, and ask him

how he does,'

Mile-End-Green, March 6, 1711-12. | sometimes a partridge, or a quail, or a 'MR. SPECTATOR,-Here is a young wheatear, or the pestle of a lark, were man walks by our door every day about the cheerfully purchased; nay, I could be condusk of the evening. He looks up at my tented though I were to feed her with window, as if to see me; and if I steal_to- green peas in April, or cherries in May. wards it to peep at him, he turns another But with the babe she now goes, she is way, and looks frightened at finding what turned girl again, and fallen to eating of he was looking for. The air is very cold; chalk, pretending it will make the child's and pray let him know, that if he knocks at skin white; and nothing will serve her but the door he will be carried to the parlour I must bear her company, to prevent its fire, and I will come down soon after, and having a shade of my brown. In this, howgive him an opportunity to break his mind. ever, I have ventured to deny her. No 'I am, sir, your most humble servant, longer ago than yesterday, as we were I coming to town, she saw a parcel of crows so heartily at breakfast upon a piece of horse-flesh, that she had an invincible desire to partake with them, and (to my infinite surprise) begged the coachman to cut her off a slice, as if it were for himself, which the fellow did; and as soon as she came home, she fell to it with such an appetite, that she seemed rather to devour than eat it. What her next sally will be I cannot guess, but, in the mean time, my request to you is, that if there be any way to come at these wild unaccountable rovings of imagination by reason and argument, you would speedily afford us your assistance. This exceeds the grievance of pinmoney; and I think in every settlement there ought to be a clause inserted, that the father should be answerable for the longings of his daughter. But I shall impatiently expect your thoughts in this matter; and am, sir, your most obliged and most faithful humble servant, T. B. 'Let me know whether you think the next child will love horses as much as Molly does china-ware.'

DEAR SIR,-I beg you to print this without delay, and by the first opportunity give us the natural causes of longing in women; or put me out of fear that my wife will one time or other be delivered of something as monstrous as any thing that has yet appeared to the world; for they say the child is to bear a resemblance of what was desired by the mother. I have been married upwards of six years, have had four children, and my wife is now big with the fifth. The expenses she has put me to, in procuring what she has longed for during her pregnancy with them, would not only have handsomely defrayed the charges of the month, but of their education too: her fancy being so exorbitant for the first year or two, as not to confine itself to the usual objects of eatables and drinkables, but running out after equipages and furniture, and the like extravagances. To trouble you only with a few of them: when she was with child of Tom, my eldest son, she came home one day just fainting, and told me she had been visiting a relation, whose No. 327.] Saturday, March 15, 1711-12.

husband had made her a present of a chariot and a stately pair of horses; and that she was positive she could not breathe a week longer, unless she took the air in the fellow to it of her own within that time. This, rather than lose an heir, I readily complied with. Then the furniture of her best room must be instantly changed, or she should mark the child with some of the frightful figures in the old fashioned tapestry. Well, the upholsterer was called, and her longing saved that bout. When she went with Molly she had fixed her mind upon a new set of plate, and as much china as would have furnished an Indian shop: these also I cheerfully granted, for fear of being father to an Indian pagod. Hitherto I found her demands rose upon every concession; and had she gone on, I had been ruined: but by good fortune, with her third, which was Peggy, the height of her imagination came down to the corner of a venison pasty, and brought her once even upon her knees to gnaw off the ears of a pig from the spit. The gratifications of her palate were easily preferred to those of her vanity; and

-Major rerum mihi nascitur ordo.

T.

Virg. n. vii. 43.
A larger scene of action is display'd.-Dryden.
the evil spirit practised upon Eve as she
WE were told in the foregoing book, how
lay asleep, in order to inspire her with
The author, who shows a wonderful art
thoughts of vanity, pride, and ambition.
throughout his whole poem, in preparing
the reader for the several occurrences that
arise in it, founds, upon the above-men-
tioned circumstance, the first part of the
fifth book. Adam, upon his awaking, finds
Eve still asleep, with an unusual discom-
posure in her looks. The posture in which
he regards her is described with a tender-
ness not to be expressed, as the whisper
with which he awakens her is the softest
that ever was conveyed to a lover's ear.

His wonder was, to find unwaken'd Eve
With tresses discompos'd, and glowing cheek,
As through unquiet rest: he on his side
Leaning half-rais'd, with looks of cordial love
Hung over her enamour'd, and beheld
Beauty, which, whether waking or asleep,
Shot forth peculiar graces: then, with voice
Mild as when Zephyrus on Flora breathes,

fler hand soft touching, whisper'd thus: 'Awake,
My fairest, my espous'd, my latest found,
Heaven's last best gift, my ever new delight!
Awake: the morning shines, and the fresh field
Calls us; we lose the prime, to mark how spring
Our tender plants, how blows the citron grove,
What drops the myrrh, and what the balmy reed,
How nature paints her colours, how the bee
Sits on the bloom, extracting liquid sweet.'

Such whispering wak'd her, but with startled eye
On Adam, whom embracing, thus she spake:
'O soul, in whom my thoughts find all repose,
My glory, my perfection! glad I see
Thy face, and morn return'd-

.

I cannot but take notice, that Milton, in the conferences between Adam and Eve, had his eye very frequently upon the book of Canticles, in which there is a noble spirit of eastern poetry, and very often not unlike what we meet with in Homer, who is generally placed near the age of Solomon. I think there is no question but the poet in the preceding speech remembered those two passages which are spoken on the like occasion, and filled with the same pleasing images of nature.

My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away! for, lo! the winter is past, the rain is over and gone, the flowers appear on the earth, the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land. The fig-tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grapes give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away!

Come, my beloved! let us go forth into the field, let us get up early to the vineyards, let us see if the vine flourish, whether the tender grapes appear, and the pomegranates bud forth.'

His preferring the garden of Eden to that -Where the sapient king

Heid dalliance with his fair Egyptian spouse, shows that the poet had this delightful scene in his mind.

Eve's dream is full of those high conceits engendering pride, which, we are told, the devil endeavoured to instil into her. Of this kind is that part of it where she fancies herself awakened by Adam in the following beautiful lines:

Why sleep'st thou, Eve? Now is the pleasant time,

The cool, the silent, save where silence yields
To the night-warbling bird, that now awake
Tunes sweetest his love-labour'd song: now reigns
Full-orb'd the moon, and with more pleasing light
Shadowy sets off the face of things. In vain,
If none regard. Heav'n wakes with all his eyes,
Whom to behold but thee, nature's desire,
In whose sight all things joy, with ravishment,
Attracted by thy beauty still to gaze.'

An injudicious poet would have made Adam talk through the whole work in such sentiments as these; but flattery and falsehood are not the courtship of Milton's Adam, and could not be heard by Eve in her state of innocence, excepting only in a dream produced on purpose to taint her imagination. Other vain sentiments of the same kind, in this relation of her dream, will be obvious to every reader. Though the catastrophe of the poem is finely pre

saged on this occasion, the particulars of it are so artfully shadowed, that they do not anticipate the story which follows in the ninth book. I shall only add, that though the vision itself is founded upon truth, the circumstances of it are full of that wildness and inconsistency which are natural to a dream. Adam, conformable to his superior character for wisdom, instructs and comforts Eve upon this occasion:

So cheer'd he his fair spouse, and she was cheer'd,
But silently a gentle tear let fall
From either eye, and wiped them with her hair;
Two other precious drops, that ready stood
Each in their crystal sluice, he, ere they fell,
Kiss'd, as the gracious signs of sweet remorse
And pious awe, that fear'd to have offended.

The morning hymn is written in imitation of one of those psalms where, in the overflowings of gratitude and praise, the psalmist calls not only upon the angels, but upon the most conspicuous parts of the inanimate creation, to join with him in extolling their

common Maker. Invocations of this nature fill the mind with glorious ideas of God's works, and awaken that divine enthusiasm which is so natural to devotion. But if this calling upon the dead parts of nature is at all times a proper kind of worship, it was in a peculiar manner suitable to our first parents, who had the creation fresh upon their minds, and had not seen the various dispensations of Providence, nor consequently could be acquainted with those many topics of praise which might afford matter to the devotions of their posterity. I need not remark the beautiful spirit of poetry which runs through this whole hymn, nor the holiness of that resolution with which it concludes.

Having already mentioned those speeches which are assigned to the persons in this poem, I proceed to the description which the poet gives of Raphael. His departure from before the throne, and his flight through the choirs of angels, is finely imagined." As Milton every where fills his poem with circumstances that are marvelfous and astonishing, he describes the gate of heaven as framed after such a manner that it opened of itself upon the approach of the angel who was to pass through it.

-Till at the gate

Of heav'n arriv'd, the gate self pen'd wide,
On golden hinges turning, as, by work
Divine, the sovereign Architect had fram'd.

The poet here seems to have regarded two or three passages in the 18th Iliad, as that in particular where, speaking of Vulcan, Homer says that he had made twenty tripods running on golden wheels; which, upon occasion, might go of themselves to the assembly of the gods, and, when there was no more use for them, return again after the same manner. Scaliger has rallied Homer very severely upon this point, as M. Dacier has endeavoured to defend it. I will not pretend to determine whether, in this particular of Homer, the marvellous

does not lose sight of the probable. As the miraculous workmanship of Milton's gates is not so extraordinary as this of the tripods, so I am persuaded he would not have mentioned it, had he not been supported in it by a passage in the Scripture which speaks of wheels in heaven that had life in them, and moved of themselves, or stood still, in conformity with the cherubims, whom they accompanied.

There is no question but Milton had this circumstance in his thoughts; because in the following book he describes the chariot of the Messiah with living wheels, according to the plan in Ezekiel's vision:

-Forth rush'd with whirlwind sound
The chariot of paternal Deity,

Flashing thick flames, wheel within wheel undrawn,
Itself instinct with spirit.-

I question not but Bossu, and the two Daciers, who are for vindicating every thing that is censured in Homer, by something parallel in holy writ, would have been very well pleased had they thought of confronting Vulcan's tripods with Ezekiel's wheels.

with the figure of Eve ministering at the table; are circumstances which deserve to be admired.

Raphael's behaviour is every way suitable to the dignity of his nature, and to that character of a sociable spirit with which the author has so judiciously introduced him. He had received instructions to converse with Adam, as one friend converses with another, and to warn him of the enemy, who was contriving his destruction: accordingly, he is represented as sitting down at table with Adam, and eating of the fruits of Paradise. The occasion naturally leads him to his discourse on the food of angels. After having thus entered into conversation with man upon more in different subjects, he warns him of his obe dience, and makes a natural transition to the history of that angel who was employed in the circumvention of our first parents.

Had I followed Monsieur Bossu's method in my first paper on Milton, I should have dated the action of Paradise Lost from the beginning of Raphael's speech in this book, as he supposes the action of the Æneid to begin in the second book of that poem. I could allege many reasons for my drawing the action of the Æneid rather from its immediate beginning in the first book, than from its remote beginning in the second; and show why I have considered the sacking of Troy as an episode, according to the common acceptation of that word. But as this would be a dry unentertaining piece of criticism, and perhaps unnecessary to those who have read my first paper, I shall Whichsoever of the not enlarge upon it.

Raphael's descent to the earth, with the figure of his person, is represented in very lively colours. Several of the French, Italian, and English poets, have given a loose to their imaginations in the description of angels; but I do not remember to have met with any so finely drawn, and so conformable to the notions which are given of them in Scripture, as this in Milton. After having set him forth in all his heavenly plumage, and represented him as alighted upon the earth, the poet concludes his description with a circumstance which is alto-notions be true, the unity of Milton's acgether new, and imagined with the greatest tion is preserved according to either of strength of fancy. them; whether we consider the fall of man in its immediate beginning, as proceeding from the resolutions taken in the infernal council, or, in its more remote beginning, as proceeding from the first revolt of the angels in heaven. The occasion which Milton assigns for this revolt, as it is founded on hints in holy writ, and on the opinion of some great writers, so it was the most proPer that the poet could have made use of.

-Like Maia's son he stood,

And shook his plumes, that heavenly fragrance fill'd
The circuit wide-

Raphael's reception of the guardian angels, his passing through the wilderness of sweets, his distant appearance to Adam, have all the graces that poetry is capable of bestowing. The author afterwards gives us a particular description of Eve in her domestic employments:

So saying, with despatchful looks in haste
She turns, on hospitable thoughts intent,
What choice to choose for delicacy best,
What order, so contriv'd, as not to mix
Tastes, not well join'd, inelegant, but bring
Taste after taste, upheld with kindliest change;
Bestirs her then, &c.

Though in this, and other parts of the same book, the subject is only the housewifery of our first parent, it is set off with so many pleasing images and strong expressions, as make it none of the least agreeable parts in this divine work.

The natural majesty of Adam, and, at the same time, his submissive behaviour to the superior being who had vouchsafed to be his guest; the solemn hail' which the angel bestows upon the mother of mankind,

The revolt in heaven is described with great force of imagination, and a fine variety of circumstances. The learned reader cannot but be pleased with the poet's imitation of Homer in the last of the following lines:

At length into the limits of the north
They came, and Satan took his royal seat
High on a hill, far blazing, as a mount
Rais'd on a mount, with pyramids and tow'rs
From diamond quarries hewn, and rocks of gold,
The palace of great Lucifer, (so call
That structure in the dialect of men
Interpreted.)-

Homer mentions persons and things, which, he tells us, in the language of the gods are called by different names from those they go by in the language of men. Milton has imitated him with his usual judgment in this particular place, wherein

So spake the seraph Abdiel, faithful found
Among the faithless, faithful only he;
Among innumerable false, unmov'd,
Unshaken, unseduc'd unterrify'd;
His loyalty he kept, his love, his zeal:

Nor number nor example with him wrought
To swerve from truth, or change his constant
Though single. From amidst them forth he pass'd,
Long way thro' hostile scorn, which he sustain'd
Superior, nor of violence fear'd aught;
And with retorted scorn his back he turn'd

he has likewise the authority of scripture | make no question, you will come over to to justify him. The part of Abdiel, who mine. You are not to imagine I find fault was the only spirit that in this infinite host that she either possesses or takes delight in of angels preserved his allegiance to his the exercises of those qualifications I just Maker, exhibits to us a noble moral of re- now mentioned; it is the immoderate fondligious singularity. The zeal of the sera-ness she has to them that I lament, and phim breaks forth in a becoming warmth that what is only designed for the innocent of sentiments and expressions, as the cha- amusement and recreation of life is become racter which is given us of him denotes the whole business and study of hers. The that generous scorn and intrepidity which six months we are in town, (for the year is attends heroic virtue. The author doubt- equally divided between that and the counless designed it as a pattern to those who try,) from almost break of day till noon, live among mankind in their present state the whole morning is laid out in practising of degeneracy and corruption: with her several masters; and to make up the losses occasioned by her absence in summer, every day in the week their attendance is required; and, as they are all people eminent in their professions, their skill and time must be recompensed acmind,cordingly. So, how far these articles extend, I leave you to judge. Limning, one would think, is no expensive diversion; but, as she manages the matter, it is a very considerable addition to her disbursements; which you will easily believe, when you know she paints fans for all her female acquaintance, and draws all her relations' pictures, in miniature: the first must be mounted by nobody but Colmar, and the other set by nobody but Charles Mather.* What follows is still much worse than the former; for, as I told you, she is a great artist at her needle, it is incredible what sums she expends in embroidery; for, besides what is appropriated to her personal use as mantuas, petticoats, stomachers, handkerchiefs, purses, pin-cushions, and working aprons, she keeps four French protestants continually employed in making divers pieces of superfluous furniture, as quilts, toilets, hangings for closets, beds, window-curtains, easy chairs, and tabourets: nor have I any hopes of ever reclaiming her from this extravagance, while she obstinately persists in thinking it a notable piece of good housewifery, because they are made at home, and she has had some share in the performance. There would

On those proud tow`re to swift destruction doom'd.
L.

No. 328.] Monday, March 17, 1711-12.

Nullum me a labore reclinat otium.

Hor. Epod. xvii. 24.
Day chases night, and night the day,
But no relief to me convey.

Duncombe.

MR. SPECTATOR,-As I believe that this is the first complaint that ever was made to you of this nature, so you are the first person I ever could prevail upon my self to lay it before. When I tell you I have a healthy, vigorous constitution, a plentiful estate, no inordinate desires, and am married to a virtuous lovely woman, who neither wants wit nor good-nature, and by whom I have a numerous offspring to perpetuate my family, you will naturally conclude me a happy man. But notwithstanding these promising appearances, I am so far from it, that the prospect of being ruined and undone by a sort of extravagance, which of late years is in a less de-be no end of relating to you the particulars of gree crept into every fashionable family, the annual charge, in furnishing her storedeprives me of all the comforts of my life, room with a profusion of pickles and preand renders me the most anxious, misera- serves; for she is not contented with having ble man on earth. My wife, who was the every thing, unless it be done every way, only child and darling care of an indulgent in which she consults an hereditary book mother, employed her early years in learn- of receipts: for her female ancestors have ing all those accomplishments we generally been always famed for good house-wifery, understand by good breeding and polite one of whom is made immortal by giving education. She sings, dances, plays on the her name to an eye-water, and two sorts of lute, and harpsichord, paints prettily, is a puddings. I cannot undertake to recites all perfect mistress of the French tongue, her medicinal preparations, as salves, sereand has made a considerable progress in cloths, powders, confects, cordials, ratafia, Italian. She is besides excellently skilled in persico, orange-flower, and cherry-brandy, all domestic sciences, as preserving, pick-together with innumerable sorts of simple ling, pastry, making wines of fruits of our waters. But there is nothing I lay so much own growth, embroidering, and needle- to my heart as that detestable catalogue of works of every kind. Hitherto, you will counterfeit wines, which derive their names be apt to think, there is very little cause of from the fruits, herbs, or trees, of whose complaint; but suspend your opinion till I have further explained myself, and then, I

* A well-known toyman in Fleet-street at the time

juices they are chiefly compounded. They readings, and the like, is what in all ages are loathsome to the taste, and pernicious persons extremely wise and learned have to the health; and as they seldom survive had in great veneration. For this reason I the year, and then are thrown away, under cannot but rejoice at the following epistle, a false pretence of frugality, I may affirm which lets us into the true author of the they stand me in more than if I entertained letter to Mrs. Margaret Clark, part of all our visitors with the best burgundy and which I did myself the honour to publish champaign. Coffee, chocolate, and green in a former paper. I must confess I do not imperial, peco, and bohea teas, seem to be naturally affect critical learning; but findtrifles; but when the proper appurtenances ing myself not so much regarded as I am of the tea-table are added, they swell the apt to flatter myself I may deserve from account higher than one would imagine. I some professed patrons of learning, I could cannot conclude without doing her justice not but do myself the justice to show I am in one article; where her frugality is so re- not a stranger to such erudition as they markable, I must not deny her the merit smile upon, if I were duly encouraged. of it; and that is in relation to her children, However, this is only to let the world see who are all confined, both boys and girls, what I could do: and shall not give my to one large room in the remotest part of reader any more of this kind, if he will forthe house, with bolts on the doors and bars give the ostentation I show at present. to the windows, under the care and tuition. of an old woman, who had been dry nurse to her grandmother. This is their residence all the year round; and as they are never allowed to appear, she prudently thinks it needless to be at any expense in apparel or learning. Her eldest daughter to this day would have neither read nor wrote, if it had not been for the butler, who, being the son of a country attorney, has taught her such a hand as is generally used for engrossing bills in Chancery. By this time I have sufficiently tired your patience with my domestic grievances; which I hope you will agree could not well be contained in a narrower compass, when you consider what a paradox I undertook to maintain in the beginning of my epistle, and which manifestly appears to be but too melancholy a truth. And now I heartily wish the relation I have given of my misfortunes may be of use and benefit to the public. By the example I have set before them, the truly virtuous wives may learn to avoid those errors which. have so unhappily misled mine, and which are visibly these three; First, in mistaking the proper objects of her esteem, and fixing her affections upon such things as are only the trappings and decorations of her sex: Secondly, in not distinguishing what becomes the different stages of life. And, lastly, the abuse and corruption of some excellent qualities, which, if circumscribed within just bounds, would have been the blessing and prosperity of her family; but by a vicious extreme, are like to be the bane and destruction of it.'

T.

'March 13, 1711-12. 'SIR,-Upon reading your paper of yesterday, I took the pains to look out a copy I had formerly taken, and remembered to be very like your last letter: comparing them, I found they were the very same; and have, underwritten, sent you that part of it which you say was torn off. I hope you will insert it, that posterity may know it was Gabriel Bullock that made love ir that natural style of which you seem to be fond. But to let you see I have other manuscripts in the same way, I have sent you inclosed three copies, faithfully taken by my own hand from the originals, which were wrote by a Yorkshire gentleman of a good estate, to madam Mary, and an uncle of hers, a knight very well known by the most ancient gentry in that and several other counties of Great Britain. I have exactly followed the form and spelling. I have been credibly informed that Mr. William Bullock, the famous comedian, is the descendant of this Gabriel, who begot Mr. William Bullock's great-grandfather, on the body of the above-mentioned Mrs. Margaret Clark. As neither Speed, nor Baker, nor Selden, take notice of it, I will not pretend to be positive; but desire that the letter may be reprinted, and what is here recovered may be in Italics. I am, sir, your daily reader.'

To her I very much respect, Mrs. Margaret Clark.

'Lovely, and oh that I could write loving, Mrs. Margaret Clark, I pray you let affection excuse presumption. Having been so happy as to enjoy the sight of your sweet No. 328.*] Monday, March 17, 1711-12. countenance and comely body sometimes

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when I had occasion to buy treacle or li-
quorish powder at the apothecary's shop,
I am so enamoured with you, that I can no
more keep close my flaming desire to be-
And I am the more
come your servant.
bold now to write to your sweet self, be-
cause I am now my own man, and may
match where I please; for my father is
aken away; and now I am come to my

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