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maintain them without work, they can do no less in return than sing us "The merry Beggars."

This account is very dry in many parts, as only mentioning the name of the lover who leaped, the person he leaped for, and relating in short, that he was either cured, or killed, or maimed by the fall. It indeed gives the names of so many who died by it, that it would have looked like a bill of mortality, had I translated it at full length; I have therefore made an abridgment of it, and only extracted such particular passages as have something extraordinary, either in the case or in the cure, or in the fate of the person who is mentioned in it. After this short preface take the account as follows:

Battus, the son of Menalcas the Sicilian, leaped for Bombyca the musician: got rid of his passion with the loss of his right leg and arm, which were broken in the fall. Melissa, in love with Daphnis, very much bruised, but escaped with life.

What then? Am I against all acts of charity? God forbid! I know of no virtue in the gospel that is in more pathetic expressions recommended to our practice. "I was hungry and ye gave me no meat, thirsty and ye gave me no drink, naked and ye clothed me not, a stranger and ye took me not in, sick and in prison and ye visited me not." Our blessed Saviour treats the exercise or neglect of charity towards a poor man, as the performance or breach of this duty towards himself. I shall endeavour to obey the will of my lord and master: and therefore if an industrious man shall submit to the hardest labour and coarsest fare, rather than endure the shame of taking relief from the parish, or asking it in the street, that is the hungry, the thirsty, the naked; and I ought to believe, if any Cynisca, the wife of Eschines, being in man is come hither for shelter against per- love with Lycus; and Æschines her hussecution or oppression, this is the stranger, band being in love with Eurilla; (which had and I ought to take him in. If any country-made this married couple very uneasy to man of our own is fallen into the hands of infidels, and lives in a state of miserable captivity, this is the man in prison, and I should contribute to his ransom. I ought to give to an hospital of invalids, to recover as many useful subjects as I can: but I shall bestow none of my bounties upon an almshouse of idle people; and for the same reason I should not think it a reproach to me if I had withheld my charity from those common beggars. But we prescribe better rules than we are able to practise; we are ashamed not to give into the mistaken manners of our country: but at the same time, I cannot but think it a reproach worse than that of common swearing, that the idle and the abandoned are suffered in the name of heaven and all that is sacred to extort from christian and tender minds a supply to a profligate way of life, that is always to be supported, but never relieved.' Z.

No. 233.] Tuesday, November 27, 1711.
-Tanquam hæc sint nostri medicina furoris
Aut deus ille malis hominum mitescere discat.
Virg. Ecl. x. v. 60.

As if by these, my sufferings I could ease;
Or by my pains the god of love appease.-Dryden.
I SHALL in this paper discharge myself
of the promise I have made to the public,
by obliging them with a translation of the
little Greek manuscript, which is said to
have been a piece of those records that
were preserved in the temple of Apollo,
upon the promontory of Leucate. It is a
short history of the Lover's Leap, and is
inscribed, An account of persons, male
and female, who offered up their vows in
the temple of the Pythian Apollo in the
forty-sixth Olympiad, and leaped from the
promontory of Leucate into the Ionian Sea,
in order to cure themselves of the passion

of love.'

one another for several years) both the husband and the wife took the leap by consent; they both of them escaped, and have lived very happily together ever since.

Larissa, a virgin of Thessaly, deserted by Plexippus, after a courtship of three years; she stood upon the brow of the promontory for some time, and after having thrown down a ring, a bracelet, and a little picture, with other presents which she had received from Plexippus, she threw herself into the sea, and was taken up alive.

N. B. Larissa before she leaped made an offering of a silver Cupid in the temple of Apollo.

Simatha, in love with Daphnis the Myndian; perished in the fall.

Charixus, the brother of Sappho, in love with Rhodope the courtesan, having spent his whole estate upon her, was advised by his sister to leap in the beginning of his amour, but would not hearken to her until he was reduced to his last talent; being forsaken by Rhodope, at length resolved to take the leap. Perished in it.

Aridæus, a beautiful youth of Epirus, in love with Praxinoe, the wife of Thespis; escaped without damage, saving only that two of his fore-teeth were struck out and his nose a little flatted.

Cleora, a widow of Ephesus, being inconsolable for the death of her husband, was resolved to take this leap in order to get rid of her passion for his memory; but being arrived at the promontory, she there met with Dimachus the Milesian, and after a short conversation with him, laid aside the thoughts of her leap, and married him in the temple of Apollo.

N. B. Her widow's weeds are still seen hanging up in the western corner of the temple.

Olphis, the fisherman, having received a box on the ear from Thestylis the day be

fore, and being determined to have no more | Sappho, arrived at the promontory of Leuto do with her, leaped, and escaped with life.

Atalanta, an old maid, whose cruelty had several years before driven two or three despairing lovers to this leap; being now in the fifty-fifth year of her age, and in love with an officer of Sparta, broke her neck in the fall.

Hipparchus, being passionately fond of his own wife, who was enamoured of Bathyllus, leaped, and died of his fall; upon which his wife married her gallant.

Tettyx, the dancing-master, in love with Olympia, an Athenian matron, threw himself from the rock with great agility, but was crippled in the fall.

Diagoras, the usurer, in love with his cook-maid; he peeped several times over the precipice: but his heart misgiving him,

cate that very evening, in order to take the leap upon her account: but hearing that Sappho had been there before him, and that her body could be no where found, he very generously lamented her fall, and is said to have written his hundred and twenty-fifth ode upon that occasion.

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he went back and married her that evening. No. 234.] Wednesday, November 28, 1711.

Cinædus, after having entered his own name in the Pythian records, being asked the name of the person whom he leaped for, and being ashamed to discover it, he was set aside, and not suffered to leap.

Eunicia, a maid of Paphos, aged nineteen, in love with Eurybates. Hurt in the fall but recovered.

N. B. This was the second time of her leaping.

Hesperus, a young man of Tarentum, in love with his master's daughter. Drowned, the boats not coming in soon enough to his relief.

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You very often hear people, after a story has been told with some entertaining circumstances, tell it over again with particulars that destroy the jest, but give light into the truth of the narration. This sort of veracity, though it is impertinent, has something amiable in it, because it proceeds from the love of truth even in frivolous occasions. If such honest amendments Sappho the Lesbian, in love with Phaon, do not promise an agreeable companion, arrived at the temple of Apollo habited like they do a sincere friend; for which reason a bride in garments as white as snow. She one should allow them so much of our time, wore a garland of myrtle on her head, and if we fall into their company, as to set us carried in her hand the little musical in- right in matters that can do us no manner strument of her own invention. After hav- of harm, whether the facts be one way or ing sung an hymn to Apollo, she hung up the other. Lies which are told out of arroher garland on one side of his altar, and her gance and ostentation, a man should deharp on the other. She then tucked up her tect in his own defence, because he should vestments like a Spartan virgin, and amidst not be triumphed over. Lies which are thousands of spectators, who were anxious told out of malice he should expose, both for her safety, and offered up vows for her for his own sake and that of the rest of deliverance, marched directly forwards to mankind, because every man should rise the utmost summit of the promontory, against a common enemy: but the officious where after having repeated a stanza of liar, many have argued, is to be excused, her own verses, which we could not hear, because it does some man good, and no man she threw herself off the rock with such an hurt. The man who made more than orintrepidity as was never before observed in dinary speed from a fight in which the any who had attempted that dangerous Athenians were beaten, and told them they leap. Many who were present related, that had obtained a complete victory, and put they saw her fall into the sea, from whence the whole city into the utmost joy and exshe never rose again; though there were ultation, was checked by the magistrates others who affirmed that she never came to for this falsehood; but excused himself by the bottom of her leap, but that she was saying, 'O Athenians! am I your enemy changed into a swan as she fell, and that because I gave you two happy days?' This they saw her hovering in the air under that fellow did to a whole people what an acshape. But whether or no the whiteness quaintance of mine does every day he lives, and fluttering of her garments might not in some eminent degree, to particular perdeceive those who looked upon her, or sons. He is ever lying people into good whether she might not really be metamor-humour, and as Plato said it was allowable phosed into that musical and melancholy in physicians to lie to their patients to keep bird, is still a doubt among the Lesbians.

Alcæus, the famous lyric poet, who had for some time been passionately in love with

up their spirits, I am half doubtful whether my friend's behaviour is not as excusable. His manner is to express himself surprised

'I do not look upon the simplicity of this, and several odd inquiries with which I shall not trouble you, to be wondered at, much less can I think that our youths of fine wit, and enlarged understandings, have any reason to laugh. There is no necessity that every 'squire in Great Britain should know what the word free-thinker stands for;

at the cheerful countenance of a man whom | hood two days ago one of your gay gentlemen he observes diffident of himself; and gene- of the town, who being attended at his entry rally by that means make his lie a truth. with a servant of his own, besides a counHe will, as if he did not know any thing of tryman he had taken up for a guide, exthe circumstance, ask one whom he knows cited the curiosity of the village to learn at variance with another, what is the mean- whence and what he might be. The couning that Mr. Such-a-one, naming his ad- tryman (to whom they applied as most versary, does not applaud him with that easy of access) knew little more than that heartiness which formerly he has heard the gentleman came from London to travel him? He said, indeed,' continues he, I and see fashions, and was, as he heard say, would rather have that man for my friend a free-thinker. What religion that might than any man in England; but for an ene- be, he could not tell: and for his own part, my!-'This melts the person he talks if they had not told him the man was a to, who expected nothing but downwright free-thinker, he should have guessed, by raillery from that side. According as he his way of talking, he was little better sees his practice succeed, he goes to the than a heathen; excepting only that he had opposite party, and tells him, he cannot been a good gentleman to him, and made imagine how it happens that some people him drunk twice in one day, over and above know one another so little; You spoke what they had bargained for. with so much coldness of a gentleman who said more good of you, than, let me tell you, any man living deserves.' The success of one of these incidents was, that the next time one of the adversaries spied the other, he hems after him in the public street, and they must crack a bottle at the next tavern, that used to turn out of the other's way to avoid one another's eye-but it were much to be wished, that they shot. He will tell one beauty she was com- who value themselves upon that conceited mended by another, nay, he will say she title, were a little better instructed in what gave the woman he speaks to, the prefer- it ought to stand for; and that they would rence in a particular for which she herself not persuade themselves a man is really is admired. The pleasantest confusion ima- and truly a free-thinker, in any tolerable ginable is made through the whole town by sense, merely by virtue of his being an my friend's indirect offices. You shall have atheist, or an infidel of any other distinca visit returned after half a year's absence, tion. It may be doubted with good reason, and mutual railing at each other every whether there ever was in nature a more abday of that time. They meet with a thou-ject, slavish, and bigoted generation than sand lamentations for so long a separation, the tribe of beaux-esprits, at present so each party naming herself for the greatest prevailing in this island. Their pretension delinquent, if the other can possibly be so to be free-thinkers, is no other than rakes good as to forgive her, which she has no have to be free-livers, and savages to be reason in the world, but from the know- free-men; that is, they can think whatever ledge of her goodness, to hope for. Very they have a mind to, and give themselves often a whole train of railers of each side up to whatever conceit the extravagancy tire their horses in setting matters right of their inclination, or their fancy, shall which they have said during the war be- suggest; they can think as wildly as they tween the parties; and a whole circle of talk and act, and will not endure that their acquaintances are put into a thousand wit should be controlled by such formal pleasing passions and sentiments, instead of things as decency and common sense. the pangs of anger, envy, detraction, and duction, coherence, consistency, and all the malice. rules of reason they accordingly disdain, as too precise and mechanical for men of a liberal education.

De

The worst evil I ever observed this man's falsehood occasion, has been, that he turned detraction into flattery. He is well skilled This as far as I could ever learn from in the manners of the world, and by over- their writings, or my own observation, is a looking what men really are, he grounds true account of the British free-thinker. his artifices upon what they have a mind Our visitant here, who gave occasion to to be. Upon this foundation, if two distant this paper, has brought with him a new friends are brought together and the cement system of common sense, the particulars seems to be weak, he never rests until of which I am not yet acquainted with, but he finds new appearances to take off all will lose no opportunity of informing myremains of ill-will, and that by new mis-self whether it contains any thing worth understandings they are thoroughly reconciled.

Mr. Spectator's notice. In the mean time, sir, I cannot but think it would be for the To the Spectator. good of mankind, if you would take this subject into your consideration, and con'Devonshire, Nov. 14, 1711. vince the hopeful youth of our nation, that 'SIR,-There arrived in this neighbour-licentiousness is not freedom; or, if such a

paradox will not be understood, that a pre- | timed that the most judicious critic could judice towards atheism is not impartiality. I am, sir, your most humble servant,

T.

'PHILONOUS.'

never except against it. As soon as any shining thought is expressed in the poet, or any uncommon grace appears in the actor, he smites the bench or the wainscot. If the audience does not concur with him, he

No. 235.] Thursday, November 29, 1711. smites a second time: and if the audience

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is not yet awakened, looks round him with great wrath, and repeats the blow a third time, which never fails to produce the clap. He sometimes lets the audience begin the clap of themselves, and at the conclusion of their applause ratifies it with a single thwack.

He is of so great use to the play-house, that it is said, a former director of it, upon his not being able to pay his attendance by reason of sickness, kept one in pay to officiate for him until such time as he recovered; but the person so employed, though he laid about him with incredible violence, did it in such wrong places, that the audience soon found out that it was not their old friend the trunk-maker.

It has been remarked, that he has not yet exerted himself with vigour this season. He sometimes plies at the opera; and upon Nicolini's first appearance was said to have demolished three benches in the fury of his applause. He has broken half a dozen oaken plants upon Dogget,* and seldom goes away from a tragedy of Shakspeare, without leaving the wainscot extremely shattered.

It is observed, that of late years there has been a certain person in the upper gallery of the playhouse, who when he is pleased with any thing that is acted upon the stage, expresses his approbation by a loud knock upon the benches or the wainscot, which may be heard over the whole theatre. The person is commonly known by the name of the Trunk-maker in the upper gallery.' Whether it be that the blow he gives on these occasions resembles that which is often heard in the shops of such artisans, or that he was supposed to have been a real trunk-maker, who, after the finishing of his day's work, used to unbend his mind at these public diversions with his hammer in his hand, I cannot certainly tell. There are some, I know, who have been foolish enough to imagine it is a spirit which haunts the upper gallery, and from time to time makes those strange noises; and the rather, because he is observed to be louder than ordinary every time the ghost of Hamlet appears. Others have reported, In the meanwhile, I cannot but take nothat, it is a dumb man, who has chosen tice of the great use it is to an audience, this way of uttering himself when he is that a person should thus preside over their transported with any thing he sees or heads like the director of a concert, in orhears. Others will have it to be the play-der to awaken their attention, and beat time house thunderer, that exerts himself after this manner in the upper gallery when he has nothing to do upon the roof.

But having made it my business to get the best information I could in a matter of this moment, I find that the trunk-maker, as he is commonly called, is a large black man, whom nobody knows. He generally leans forward on a huge oaken plant with great attention to every thing that passes upon the stage. He never is seen to smile, but upon hearing any thing that pleases him, he takes up his staff with both hands, and lays it upon the next piece of timber that stands in his way with exceeding vehemence; after which he composes himself in his former posture, till such time as something new sets him again at work.

It has been observed, his blow is so well

The players do not only connive at his obstreperous approbation, but very cheerfully repair at their own cost whatever damages he makes. They once had a thought of erecting a kind of wooden anvil for his use, that should be made of a very sounding plank, in order to render his strokes more deep and mellow; but as this might not have been distinguished from the music of a kettle-drum, the project was laid aside.

to their applauses; or, to raise my simile, I have sometimes fancied the trunk-maker in the upper gallery to be like Virgil's ruler of the winds, seated upon the top of a mountain, who when he struck his sceptre upon the side of it, roused a hurricane, and set the whole cavern in an uproar. †

It is certain the trunk-maker has saved many a good play, and brought many a graceful actor into reputation, who would not otherwise have been taken notice of. It is very visible, as the audience is not a little

Thomas Dogget, a celebrated comic actor, many in 1721, leaving a legacy to provide a coat and badge years joint manager of Drury-lane Theatre. He died to be rowed for, from London Bridge to Chelsea, by six watermen yearly, on the first of August, the day of the accession of George I. There is a particular account of him in Cibber's Apology.

† Eneid, i. 85.

abashed, if they find themselves betrayed | dispositions are strangely averse to conjugal into a clap, when their friend in the upper friendship) but no one, I believe, is by his gallery does not come into it; so the actors own natural complexion prompted to tease do not value themselves upon the clap, but and torment another for no reason but being regard it as a mere brutum fulmen, or nearly allied to him. And can there be any empty noise, when it has not the sound of thing more base, or serve to sink a man so the oaken plant in it. I know it has been much below his own distinguishing characgiven out by those who are enemies to the teristic, (I mean reason,) than returning evil trunk-maker, that he has sometimes been for good in so open a manner, as that of bribed to be in the interest of a bad poet, or treating a helpless creature with unkinda vicious player; but this is a surmise which ness, who has had so good an opinion of has no foundation: his strokes are always him as to believe what he said relating to just, and his admonitions seasonable; he one of the greatest concerns of life, by dedoes not deal about his blows at random, livering her happiness in this world to his but always hits the right nail upon the head. care and protection? Must not that man be The inexpressible force wherewith he lays abandoned even to all manner of humanity, them on sufficiently shows the evidence and who can deceive a woman with appearances strength of his conviction. His zeal for a of affection and kindness, for no other end good author is indeed outrageous, and breaks but to torment her with more ease and audown every fence and partition, every board thority? Is any thing more unlike a gentleand plank, that stands within the expres- man than when his honour is engaged for sion of his applause. the performing his promises, because nothing but that can oblige him to it, to become afterwards false to his word, and be

happiness he but lately pretended was dearer to him than his own? Ought such a one to be trusted in his common affairs? or treated but as one whose honesty consisted only in his incapacity of being otherwise?

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As I do not care for terminating my thoughts in barren speculations, or in reports of pure matter of fact, without draw-alone the occasion of misery to one whose ing something from them for the advantage of my countrymen, I shall take the liberty to make an humble proposal, that whenever the trunk-maker shall depart this life, or whenever he shall have lost the spring of his arm by sickness, old age, infirmity, There is one cause of this usage no less or the like, some able-bodied critic should absurd than common, which takes place be advanced to this post, and have a com- among the more unthinking men; and that petent salary settled on him for life, to be is, the desire to appear to their friends free furnished with bamboos for operas, crab- and at liberty, and without those trammels tree cudgels for comedies, and oaken plants they have so much ridiculed. To avoid this for tragedy, at the public expense. And to they fly into the other extreme, and grow the end that this place should be always tyrants that they may seem masters. Bedisposed of according to merit, I would have cause an uncontrollable command of their none preferred to it, who has not given con- own actions is a certain sign of entire demivincing proofs both of a sound judgment, nion, they will not so much as recede from and a strong arm, and who could not, upon the government even in one muscle of their occasion, either knock down an ox, or write faces. A kind look they believe would be a comment upon Horace's Art of Poetry.fawning, and a civil answer yielding the In short, I would have him a due composition of Hercules and Apollo, and so rightly qualified for this important office, that the trunk-maker may not be missed by our posterity. C.

No. 236.] Friday, November 30, 1711.

–Dare jura maritis.-Hor. Ars Poet. v. 398. With laws connubial tyrants to restrain.

'MR. SPECTATOR,-You have not spoken in so direct a manner upon the subject of marriage, as that important case deserves. It would not be improper to observe upon the peculiarity in the youth of Great Britain of railing and laughing at that institution; and when they fall into it, from a profligate habit of mind, being insensible of the satisfaction in that way of life, and treating their wives with the most barbarous disrespect. 'Particular circumstances, and cast of temper, must teach a man the probability of mighty uneasiness in that state; (for unquestionably some there are whose very

superiority. To this we must attribute an austerity they betray in every action. What but this can put a man out of humour in his wife's company, though he is so dintinguishingly pleasant every where else? The bitterness of his replies, and the severity of his frowns to the tenderest of wives, clearly demonstrate that an ill-grounded fear of being thought too submissive, is at the bottom of this, as I am willing to call it, affected moroseness; but if it be such, only put on to convince his acquaintance of his entire dominion, let him take care of the consequence, which will be certain and worse than the present evil; his seeming indifference will by degrees grow into real contempt, and if it doth not wholly alienate the affections of his wife for ever from him, make both him and her more miserable than if it really did so.

However inconsistent it may appear, to be thought a well-bred person has no small share in this clownish behaviour. A discourse therefore relating to good-breeding towards a loving and a tender wife, would

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