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as insignificants. But I am going to desire | cent. This and the like circumstances, your farther favour of our harmless bro- which carry with them the most valuable therhood, and hope you will show in a true regards of human life, may be mentioned light the unmarried hen-pecked, as well as for our long-suffering; but in the case of you have done justice to us, who submit gallants, they swallow ill usage from one to to the conduct of our wives. I am very par- whom they have no obligation, but from ticularly acquainted with one who is under a base passion, which it is mean to indulge, entire submission to a kind girl, as he calls and which it would be glorious to overher; and though he knows I have been come. witness both to the ill usage he has receiv- These sort of fellows are very numeed from her, and his inability to resist her rous, and some have been conspicuously tyranny, he still pretends to make a jest such, without shame; nay, they have carof me for a little more than ordinary obse- ried on the jest in the very article of death, quiousness to my spouse. No longer than and, to the diminution of the wealth and hapTuesday last he took me with him to visit piness of their families, in bar of those hohis mistress; and having, it seems, been a nourably near to them, have left immense little in disgrace before, thought by bring-wealth to their paramours. What is this ing me with him she would constrain her- but being a cully in the grave! Sure this self, and insensibly fall into general dis- is being hen-pecked with a vengeance! course with him; and so he might break But, without dwelling upon these less frethe ice, and save himself all the ordinary quent instances of eminent cullyism, what compunctions and mortifications she used is there so common as to hear a fellow to make him suffer before she would be re- curse his fate that he cannot get rid of a conciled, after any act of rebellion on his passion to a jilt, and quote a half line out part. When we came into the room, we of a miscellany poem to prove his weakwere received with the utmost coldness; ness is natural? If they will go on thus, I and when he presented me as Mr. Such-a-have nothing to say to it; but then let them one, his very good friend, she just had pa- not pretend to be free all this while, and tience to suffer my salutation; but when he laugh at us poor married patients. himself, with a very gay air, offered to follow me, she gave him a thundering box on the ear, called him a pitiful poor-spirited wretch-how durst he see her face? His wig and hat fell on different parts of the floor. She seized the wig too soon for him to recover it, and, kicking it down stairs, threw herself into an opposite room, pulling the door after her by force, that you would have thought the hinges would have given way. We went down you must think, with no very good countenances; and, as we were driving home together, he confessed to me, that her anger was thus highly raised, because he did not think fit to fight a gentleman who had said she was what she was: "but," says he, "a kind letter or two, or fifty pieces, will put her in humour again." I asked him why he did not part with her: he answered, he loved her with all the tenderness imaginable, and she had too many charms to be abandoned for a little quickness of spirit. Thus does this illegitimate hen-pecked overlook the hussy's having no regard to his very life and fame, in putting him upon an infamous dispute about her reputation: yet has he the confidence to laugh at me, because I obey my poor dear in keeping out of harm's way, and not staying too late from my own family, to pass through the hazards of a town full of ranters and debauchees. You that are a philosopher, should urge in our behalf, that, when we bear with a froward woman, our patience is preserved, in consideration that a breach with her might be a dishonour to children who are descended from us, and whose concern makes us tolerate a thousand frailties, for fear they should redound dishonour upon the innoVOL. II.

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I have known one wench in this town carry a haughty dominion over her lovers so well, that she has at the same time been kept by a sea-captain in the Straits, a merchant in the city, a country gentleman in Hampshire, and had all her correspondences managed by one whom she kept for her own uses. This happy man (as the phrase is) used to write very punctually, every post, letters for the mistress to transcribe. He would sit in his night-gown and slippers, and be as grave giving an account, only changing names, that there was nothing in those idle reports they had heard of such a scoundrel as one of the other lovers was; and how could he think she could condescend so low, after such a fine gentleman as each of them? For the same epistle said the same thing to, and of, every one of them. And so Mr. Secretary and his lady went to bed with great order.

'To be short, Mr. Spectator, we husbands shall never make the figure we ought in the imaginations of young men growing up in the world, except you can bring it about that a man of the town shall be as infamous a character as a woman of the town. But, of all that I have met with in my time, commend me to Betty Duall: she is the wife of a sailor, and the kept mistress of a man of quality; she dwells with the latter during the seafaring of the former. The husband asks no questions, sees his apartments furnished with riches not his, when he comes into port, and the lover is as joyful as a man arrived at his haven, when the other puts to sea. Betty is the most eminently victorious of any of her sex, and ought to stand recorded the only woman of the age in which she lives, who

has possessed at the same time two abused, and two contented-' T.

No. 487.] Thursday, September 18, 1712.

-Cum prostrata sopore

Urget membra quies, et mens sine pondere ludit.
Petr.

While sleep oppresses the tir'd limbs, the mind Plays without weight, and wantons unconfin'd. THOUGH there are many authors who have written on dreams, they have generally considered them only as revelations of what has already happened in distant parts of the world, or as presages of what is to happen in future periods of time.

I shall consider this subject in another light, as dreams may give us some idea of the great excellency of a human soul, and some intimations of its independency on

matter.

In the first place, our dreams are great instances of that activity which is natural to the human soul, and which is not in the power of sleep to deaden or abate. When the man appears to be tired and worn out with the labours of the day, this active part in his composition is still busied and unwearied. When the organs of sense want their due repose and necessary reparations, and the body is no longer able to keep pace with that spiritual substance to which it is united, the soul exerts herself in her several faculties, and continues in action until her partner is again qualified to bear her company. In this case dreams look like the relaxations and amusements of the soul, when she is disencumbered of her machine, her sports, and recreations, when she has laid her charge asleep.

genious author gives an account of himself in his dreaming and his waking thoughts. 'We are somewhat more than ourselves in our sleeps, and the slumber of the body seems to be but the waking of the soul. It is the ligation of sense, but the liberty of reason; and our waking conceptions do not match the fancies of our sleeps. At my nativity my ascendant was the watery sign of Scorpius: I was born in the planetary hour of Saturn, and I think I have a piece of that leaden planet in me. I am no way facetious, nor disposed for the mirth and galliardise of company; yet in one dream I can compose a whole comedy, behold the action, apprehend the jests, and laugh myself awake at the conceits thereof. Were my memory as faithful as my reason is then fruitful, I would never study but in my dreams; and this time also would I choose for my devotions; but our grosser memories have then so little hold of our abstracted understandings, that they forget the story, and can only relate to our awaked souls a confused and broken tale of that that has passed. Thus it is observed that men sometimes, upon the hour of their departure, do speak and reason above themselves; for then the soul, beginning to be freed from the ligaments of the body, begins to reason like herself, and to discourse in a strain above mortality.'

We may likewise observe, in the third place, that the passions affect the mind with greater strength when we are asleep than when we are awake. Joy and sorrow give us more vigorous sensations of pain or pleasure at this time than any other. Devotion likewise, as the excellent author above mentioned has hinted, is in a very In the second place, dreams are an in- particular manner heightened and inflamstance of that agility and perfection which ed, when it rises in the soul at a time that is natural to the faculties of the mind, when the body is thus laid at rest. Every man's they are disengaged from the body. The experience will inform him in this matter, soul is clogged and retarded in her opera- though it is very probable that this may tions, when she acts in conjunction with a happen differently in different constitutions. companion that is so heavy and unwieldy I shall conclude this head with the two folin its motion. But in dreams it is wonder-lowing problems, which I shall leave to ful to observe with what a sprightliness and the solution of my reader. Supposing a alacrity she exerts herself. The slow of man always happy in his dreams, and mispeech make unpremeditated harangues, serable in his waking thoughts, and that or converse readily in languages that they his life was equally divided between them; are but little acquainted with. The grave whether would he be more happy or miseabound in pleasantries, the dull in repar-rable? Were a man a king in his dreams, tees and points of wit. There is not a more painful action of the mind than invention; yet in dreams it works with that ease and activity that we are not sensible of, when the faculty is employed. For instance, I believe every one some time or other, dreams that he is reading papers, books, or letters; in which case the invention prompts so readily, that the mind is imposed upon, and mistakes its own suggestions for the compositions of another.

I shall, under this head, quote a passage out of the Religio Medici,* in which the in*By Sir T. Brown, M. D. author of the curious book on "Vulgar Errors," which appeared in folio, in 1646.

and a beggar awake, and dreamt as consequentially, and in as continued unbroken schemes, as he thinks when awake; whether would he be in reality a king or a beggar; or, rather, whether he would not be both?

There is another circumstance, which methinks gives us a very high idea of the nature of the soul, in regard to what passes in dreams. I mean that innumerable multitude and variety of ideas which then arise in her. Were that active and watchful being only conscious of her own existence at such a time, what a painful solitude would our hours of sleep be! Were the soul

sensible of her being alone in her sleeping moments, after the same manner that she is sensible of it while awake, the time would hang very heavy on her, as it often actually does when she dreams that she is in such a solitude.

-Semperque relinqui
Sola sibi, semper longam incomitata videtur
Ire viam-

Virg. En. iv. 466. -She seems alone

To wander in her sleep through ways unknown,
Guideless and dark.-Dryden.

But this observation I only make by the way. What I would here remark, is that wonderful power in the soul, of producing her own company on these occasions. She converses with numberless beings of her own creation, and is transported into ten thousand scenes of her own raising. She is herself the theatre, the actor, and the beholder. This puts me in mind of a saying which I am infinitely pleased with, and which Plutarch ascribes to Heraclitus, that all men whilst they are awake are in one common world; but that each of them, when he is asleep, is in a world of his own. The waking man is conversant in the world of nature: when he sleeps he retires to a private world that is particular to himself. There seems something in this consideration that intimates to us natural grandeur and perfection in the soul, which is rather to be admired than explained.

I must not omit that argument for the excellency of the soul which I have seen quoted out of Tertullian, namely, its power of divining in dreams. That several such divinations have been made, none can question, who believes the holy writings, or who has but the least degree of a common historical faith; there being innumerable instances of this nature in several authors both ancient and modern, sacred and profane. Whether such dark presages, such visions of the night, proceed from any latent power in the soul, during this her state of abstraction, or from any communication with the Supreme Being, or from any operation of subordinate spirits, has been a great dispute among the learned; the matter of fact is, I think, incontestible, and has been looked upon as such by the greatest writers, who have been never suspected either of superstition or enthusiasm.

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I FIND, by several letters which I re ceive daily, that many of my readers would be better pleased to pay three half-pence for my paper than two pence. The ingenious T. W. tells me that I have deprived him of the best part of his breakfast; for that, since the rise of my paper, he is forced every morning to drink his dish of coffee by itself, without the addition of the Spectator, that used to be better than lace to it. Eugenius informs me, very obligingly, that he never thought he should have disliked any passage in my paper, but that of late there have been two words in every one of them which he could heartily wish left out, viz. 'Price Two Pence.' I have a letter from a soap-boiler, who condoles with me very affectionately upon the necessity we both lie under of setting a high price on our commodities since the late tax has been laid upon them, and desiring me, when I write next on that subject, to speak a word or two upon the present duties on Castile soap. But there is none of these my correspondents, who writes with a greater turn of good sense, and elegance of expression, than the generous Philomedes, who advises me to value every Spectator at sixpence, and promises that he himself will engage for above a hundred of his acquaintance, who shall take it in at that price.

Letters from the female world are likewise come to me, in great quantities, upon the same occasion; and, as I naturally bear a great deference to this part of our species, I am very glad to find that those who approve my conduct in this particular are much more numerous than those who condemn it. A large family of daughters have drawn me up a very handsome remonstrance, in which they set forth that their father having refused to take in the Spectator, since the additional price was set upon it, they offered him unanimously to bate him the article of bread and butter in the

I do not suppose that the soul in these instances is entirely loose and unfettered from the body; it is sufficient if she is not so far sunk and immersed in matter, nor entangled and perplexed in her operations with such motions of blood and spirits, as when she actuates the machine in its waking hours. The corporeal union is slack-tea-table account, provided the Spectator ened enough to give the mind more play. The soul seems gathered within herself, and recovers that spring which is broke and weakened, when she operates more in concert with the body.

The speculations I have here made, if they are not arguments, they are at least

might be served up to them every morning as usual. Upon this the old gentleman, being pleased. it seems, with their desire of improving themselves, has granted them the continuance both of the Spectator and their bread and butter, having given particular orders that the tea-table shall be set

forth every morning with its customary | poet laureat should not be over-looked, bill of fare, and without any manner of de- which shows the opinion he entertains of falcation. I thought myself obliged to your paper, whether the notion he promention this particular, as it does honour ceeds upon be true or false. I make bold to this worthy gentleman; and if the young to convey it to you, not knowing if it has lady Lætitia, who sent me this account, yet come to your hands.' will acquaint me with his name, I will insert it at length in one of my papers, if he desires it.

I should be very glad to find out any expedient that might alleviate the expense which this my paper brings to any of my readers; and in order to it, must propose two points to their consideration. First, that if they retrench any of the smallest particular in their ordinary expense, it will easily make up the half-penny a day which we have now under consideration. Let a lady sacrifice but a single riband to her morning studies, and it will be sufficient: let a family burn but a candle a night less than their usual number, and they may take in the Spectator without detriment to their private affairs.

ON THE SPECTATOR.

Nasceris

BY MR. TATE.
-Aliusque et idem

Hor. Carm. Sæc. 10.

You rise another and the same.

When first the Tatler to a mute was turn'd,
Great Britain for her censor's silence mourn'd;
Robb'd of his sprightly beams, she wept the night,
Till the Spectator rose and blaz'd as bright.
So the first man the sun's first setting view'd,
And sigh'd till circling day his joys renew'd.

Yet, doubtful how that second sun to name,
Whether a bright successor, or the same.
So we; but now from this suspense are freed,
Since all agree, who both with judgment read,
'Tis the same sun, and does himself succeed.

0.

No. 489.] Saturday, September 20, 1712.
Βαθυρρείτας μεγα σθένος Ωκεανοιο. Homer.]
The mighty force of ocean's troubled flood.
'SIR,-Upon reading your essay con-
cerning the Pleasures of the Imagination,
I find among the three sources of those
pleasures which you have discovered, that
greatness is one. This has suggested to me
the reason why, of all objects that I have
ever seen, there is none which affects my
imagination so much as the sea, or ocean. I
cannot see the heavings of this prodigious
bulk of waters, even in a calm, without a
very pleasing astonishment; but when it is
worked up in a tempest, so that the hori-
zon on every side is nothing but foaming
billows and floating mountains, it is impos-

In the next place, if my readers will not go to the price of buying my papers by retail, let them have patience, and they may buy them in the lump without the burden of a tax upon them. My speculations, when they are sold single, like cherries upon the stick, are delights for the rich and wealthy: after some time they come to market in greater quantities, and are every ordinary man's money. The truth of it is, they have a certain flavour at their first appearance, from several accidental circumstances of time, place, and person, which they may lose if they are not taken early; but, in this case, every reader is to consider, whether it is not better for him to be half a year behind-hand with the fash-sible to describe the agreeable horror that ionable and polite part of the world, than rises from such a prospect. A troubled to strain himself beyond his circumstances. ocean, to a man who sails upon it, is, I My bookseller has now about ten thousand think, the biggest object that he can see in of the third and fourth volumes, which he motion, and consequently gives his imagiis ready to publish, having already dis-nation one of the highest kinds of pleasure posed of as large an edition both of the first and second volumes. As he is a person whose head is very well turned to his business, he thinks they would be a very proper present to be made to persons at christenings, marriages, visiting days, and the like joyful solemnities, as several other books are frequently given at funerals. He has printed them in such a little portable volume, that many of them may be ranged together upon a single plate; and is of opinion, that a salver of Spectators would be as acceptable an entertainment to the ladies as a salver of sweet-meats.

I shall conclude this paper with an epigram lately sent to the writer of the Spectator, after having returned my thanks to the ingenious author of it.

'SIR,-Having heard the following epigram very much commended, I wonder that it has not yet had a place in any of your papers; I think the suffrage of our

that can arise from greatness. I must confess it is impossible for me to survey this world of fluid matter without thinking on the hand that first poured it out, and made a proper channel for its reception. Such an object naturally raises in my thoughts the idea of an Almighty Being, and convinces me of his existence as much as a metaphysical demonstration. The imagination prompts the understanding, and, by the greatness of the sensible object, produces in it the idea of a being who is neither circumscribed by time nor space.

As I have made several voyages upon the sea, I have often been tossed in storms, and on that occasion have frequently reflected on the descriptions of them in ancient poets. I remember Longinus highly recommends one in Homer, because the poet has not amused himself with little fancies upon the occasion, as authors of an inferior genius, whom he mentions, had done, but because he has gathered together

Whilst, in the confidence of prayer
My soul took hold on thee.

VII.

"For though in dreadful whirls we hung
High on the broken wave,

I knew thou wert not slow to hear,
Nor impotent to save.

VIII.

"The storm was laid, the winds retir'd,
Obedient to thy will;

The sea that roar'd at thy command,
At thy command was still.

IX.

those circumstances which are the most apt to terrify the imagination, and which really happen in the raging of a tempest. It is for the same reason that I prefer the following description of a ship in a storm, which the psalmist has made, before any other I have ever met with. "They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters; these see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep. For he commandeth and raiseth the stormy wind, which lifteth up the waters thereof. They mount up to the heaven, they go down again to the depths, their soul is melted because of trouble. They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wit's end. Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, and he bringeth them out of their distresses. He maketh the storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are still. Then they are glad, because they be quiet, so he bringeth them unto their No. 490.] Monday, September 22, 1712. desired haven."*

By the way; how much more comfortable, as well as rational, is this system of the psalmist, than the pagan scheme in Virgil and other poets, where one deity is represented as raising a storm, and another as laying it! Were we only to consider the sublime in this piece of poetry, what can be nobler than the idea it gives us of the Supreme Being thus raising a tumult among the elements, and recovering them out of their confusion; thus troubling and becalming nature?

Great painters do not only give us landscapes of gardens, groves, and meadows, but very often employ their pencils upon sea-pieces. I could wish you would follow their example. If this small sketch may deserve a place among your works, I shall accompany it with a divine ode made by a gentleman upon the conclusion of his travels.

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"In midst of dangers, fears, and death,
Thy goodness I'll adore,
And praise thee for thy mercies past,
And humbly hope for more.

X.

"My life, if thou preserv'st my life,
Thy sacrifice shall be;

And death, if death must be my doom,
Shall join my soul to thee."

Domus et placens uxor.-Hor. Od. xiv. Lib. 2. 21.
Thy house and pleasing wife.-Creech.

I HAVE very long entertained an ambition to make the word wife the most agreeable and delightful name in nature. If it be not so in itself all the wiser part of mankind, from the beginning of the world_to this day, has consented in an error. But our unhappiness in England has been, that a few loose men of genius for pleasure, have turned it all to the gratification of ungoverned desires, in despite of good sense, form, and order; when in truth, any satisfaction beyond the boundaries of reason is but a step towards madness and folly. But is the sense of joy and accomplishment of desire no way to be indulged or attained? And have we appetites given us not to be at all gratified? Yes, certainly. Marriage is an institution calculated for a constant scene of delight, as much as our being is capable of. Two persons, who have chosen each other out of all the species, with design to be each other's mutual comfort and entertainment, have in that action bound themselves to be good-humoured, affable, discreet, forgiving, patient, and joyful, with respect to each other's frailties and perfections, to the end of their lives. The wiser of the two (and it always happens one of them is such) will, for her or his own sake, keep things from outrage with the utmost sanctity. When this union is thus preserved, (as I have often said) the most indifferent circumstance administers delight: their condition is an endless source of new gratifications. The married man can say, If I am unacceptable to all the world beside, there is one whom I entirely love, that will receive me with joy and transport, and think herself obliged to double her kindness and caresses of me from the gloom with which she sees me overcast. I need not dissemble the sorrow of my heart to be agreeable there; that very sorrow quickens her affection,'

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