letting her hooped petticoats fall with a and bring us sober girls into observation, lucky decency about her. I know she prac- there is no help for it; we must swim with tises this way of sitting down in her cham- the tide; the coquettes are too powerful a ber; and indeed she does it as well as you party for us. To look into the merit of a may have seen an actress fall down dead in regular and well behaved woman is a slow a tragedy. Not the least indecency in her thing. A loose trivial song gains the affecposture. If you have observed what pretty tions, when a wise homily is not attended carcasses are carried off at the end of a verse to. There is no other way but to make war at the theatre, it will give you a notion how upon them, or we must go over to them. Dulcissa plumps into a chair. Here is a As for my part, I will show all the world it little country girl that is very cunning, that is not for want of charms that I stand so makes her use of being young and unbred, long unasked; and if you do not take meaand outdoes the ensnarers, who are almost sures for the immediate redress of us rigids, twice her age. The air that she takes is to as the fellows call us, I can move with a come into company after a walk, and is speaking mien, can look significantly, can very successfully out of breath upon occa-lisp, can trip, can loll, can start, can blush, sion. Her mother is in the secret, and calls can rage, can weep, if I must do it, and can her romp, and then looks round to see what be frighted as agreeably as any she in Engyoung men stare at her. 'It would take up more than can come into one of your papers, to enumerate all the particular airs of the younger company in this place. But I cannot omit Dulceorella, whose manner is the most indolent imagin land. All which is humbly submitted to your spectatorial consideration, with all humility, by your most humble servant, MATILDA MOHAIR.' T. Qualem commendes etiam atque etiam adspice, ne mox Hor. Lib. 1. Ep. xviii. 76. Anon. IT is no unpleasant matter of speculation to consider the recommendatory epistles that pass round this town from hand to hand, and the abuse people put upon one another in that kind. It is indeed come to that pass, that, instead of being the testi able, but still as watchful of conquest as the No. 493.] Thursday, September 25, 1712. busiest virgin among us. She has a peculiar art of staring at a young fellow, till she sees she has got him, and inflamed him by so much observation. When she sees she has him, and he begins to toss his head upon it, she is immediately short-sighted, and labours to observe what he is at a distance, with her eyes half shut. Thus the captive that thought her first struck, is to make very near approaches, or be wholly disregarded. This artifice has done more execution than all the ogling of the rest of the women here, with the utmost variety of half glances, attentive heedlessnesses, child-mony of merit in the person recommended, ish inadvertencies, haughty contempts, or the true reading of a letter of this sort is, artificial oversights. After I have said thus The bearer hereof is so uneasy to me, that much of ladies among us who fight thus it will be an act of charity in you to take regularly, I am to complain to you of a set him off my hands; whether you prefer him of familiar romps, who have broken through or not, it is all one; for I have no manner of all common rules, and have thought of a kindness for him, or obligation to him or very effectual way of showing more charms his; and do what you please as to that.' As than all of us. These, Mr. Spectator, are negligent as men are in this respect, a point the swingers. You are to know these care- of honour is concerned in it; and there is less pretty creatures are very innocents nothing a man should be more ashamed of, again; and it is to be no matter what they than passing a worthless creature into the do for it is all harmless freedom. They get service or interests of a man who has never on ropes, as you must have seen the chil-injured you. The women indeed are a little dren, and are swung by their men visitants. too keen in their resentments to trespass The jest is, that Mr. Such-a-one can name the colour of Mrs. Such-a-one's stockings; and she tells him he is a lying thief, so he is, and full of roguery; and she will lay a wager, and her sister shall tell the truth if he says right, and he cannot tell what colour her garters are of. In this diversion there are very many pretty shrieks, not so much for fear of falling, as that their petticoats should untie; for there is a great care had to avoid improprieties; and the lover who swings the lady is to tie her clothes very close together with his hatband, before she admits him to throw up her heels. Now, Mr. Spectator, except you can note these wantonnesses in their beginnings, VOL. II. 32 often this way: but you shall sometimes know, that the mistress and the maid shall quarrel, and give each other very free language, and at last the lady shall be pacified to turn her out of doors, and give her a very good word to any body else. Hence it is that you see, in a year and a half's time, the same face a domestic in all parts of the town. Good-breeding and good-nature lead people in a great measure to this injustice: when suitors of no consideration will have confidence enough to press upon their superiors those in power are tender of speaking the exceptions they have against them, and are mortgaged into promises out of their impatience of importunity. In this him the word to alarm the watch; he had the impudence to tell me it was against the law. You that are married, and live one day after another the same way, and so on the whole week, I dare say will like him, and he will be glad to have his meat in due season. The fellow is certainly very honest. My service to your lady. Yours, J. T.' Now this was very fair dealing. Jack knew very well, that though the love of order made a man very awkward in his equipage, it was a valuable quality among the queer people who live by rule; and had too much good-sense and good-nature to let the fellow starve, because he was not fit to attend his vivacities. latter case, it would be a very useful in- | We were coming down Essex-street one quiry to know the history of recommenda- night a little flustered, and I was giving tions. There are, you must know, certain abettors of this way of torment, who make it a profession to manage the affairs of candidates. These gentlemen let out their impudence to their clients, and supply any defective recommendation, by informing how such and such a man is to be attacked. They will tell you, get the least scrap from Mr. Such-a-one, and leave the rest to them. When one of these undertakers has your business in hand, you may be sick, absent in town or country, and the patron shall be worried, or you prevail. I remember to have been shown a gentleman some years ago, who punished a whole people for their facility in giving their credentials. This person had belonged to a regiment which I shall end this discourse with a letter of did duty in the West Indies, and, by the recommendation from Horace to Claudius mortality of the place, happened to be Nero. You will see in that letter a slowcommanding officer in the colony. He op-ness to ask a favour, a strong reason for pressed his subjects with great frankness, till he became sensible that he was heartily hated by every man under his command. When he had carried his point to be thus detestable, in a pretended fit of dishumour, and feigned uneasiness of living where he found he was so universally unacceptable, he communicated to the chief inhabitants a design he had to return for England, provided they would give him ample testimonials of their approbation. The planters came into it to a man, and in proportion to his deserving the quite contrary, the words justice, generosity, and courage, were inserted in his commission, not omitting the general good liking of people of all conditions in the colony. The gentleman returns for England, and within a few months after came back to them their governor, on the strength of their own testimonials. Such a rebuke as this cannot indeed happen to easy recommenders, in the ordinary course of things from one hand to another; but how would a man bear to have it said to him, 'The person I took into confidence on the credit you gave him, has proved false, unjust, and has not answered any way the character you gave me of him?" I cannot but conceive very good hopes of that rake Jack Toper of the Temple, for an honest scrupulousness in this point. A friend of his meeting with a servant that had formerly lived with Jack, and having a mind to take him, sent to him to know what faults the fellow had, since he could not please such a careless fellow as he was. His answer was as follows: being unable to deny his good word any longer, and that it is a service to the person to whom he recommends, to comply with what is asked: all which are necessary circumstances, both in justice and good-breeding, if a man would ask so as to have reason to complain of a denial; and indeed a man should not in strictness ask otherwise. In hopes the authority of Horace, who perfectly understood how to live with great men, may have a good effect towards amending this facility in people of condition, and the confidence of those who apply to them without merit, I have translated the epistle. "To Claudius Nero. SIR,-Septimus, who waits upon you with this, is very well acquainted with the place you are pleased to allow me in your friendship. For when he beseeches me to recommend him to your notice in such a manner as to be received by you, who are delicate in the choice of your friends and domestics, he knows our intimacy, and understands my ability to serve him better than I do myself. I have defended myself against his ambition to be yours, as long as I possibly could; but fearing the imputation of hiding my power in you out of mean and selfish considerations, I am at last prevailed upon to give you this trouble. Thus, to avoid the appearance of a greater fault, I have put on this confidence. If you can forgive this transgression of modesty in behalf of a friend, receive this gentleman into your interests and friendship, and take it from me that he is an honest and a brave man.' T. No. 494.] Friday, September 26, 1712. Ægritudinem laudare, unan rem maxime detestabilem, quorum est tandem philosophorum? Cicero. What kind of philosophy is it to extol melancholy, the most detestable thing in nature? ABOUT an age ago it was the fashion in England for every one that would be and when completed. The whole examination was summed up with one short question, namely, whether he was prepared for death? The boy, who had been bred up by honest parents, was frighted out of his wits at the solemnity of the proceeding, and by the last dreadful interrogatory; so that, upon making his escape out of this house of mourning, he could never be brought a second time, to the examination, as not being able to go through the terrors of it. Notwithstanding this general form and outside of religion is pretty well worn out among us, there are many persons who, by a natural uncheerfulness of heart, mistaken notions of piety, or weakness of understanding, love to indulge this uncomfortable way of life, and give up themselves a prey to grief and melancholy. Superstitious fears and groundless scruples cut them off from the pleasures of conversation, and all those social entertainments, which are not only innocent, but laudable: as if mirth was made for reprobates, and cheerfulness of heart denied those who are the only persons that have a proper title to it. thought religious to throw as much sanctity as possible into his face, and in particular to abstain from all appearances of mirth and pleasantry, which were looked upon as the marks of a carnal mind. The saint was of a sorrowful countenance, and generally eaten up with spleen and melancholy. A gentleman, who was lately a great ornament to the learned world, has diverted me more than once with an account of the reception which he met with from a very famous independent minister, who was head of a colleget in those times. This gentleman was then a young adventurer in the republic of letters, and just fitted out for the university with a good cargo of Latin and Greek. His friends were resolved that he should try his fortune at an election which was drawing near in the college, of which the independent minister whom I have before mentioned was governor. The youth, according to custom, waited on him in order to be examined. He was received at the door by a servant who was one of that gloomy generation that were then in fashion. He conducted him with great silence and seriousness, to a long gallery, which was darkened at noon-day, and had Sombrius is one of these sons of sorrow. only a single candle burning in it. After a He thinks himself obliged in duty to be sad short stay in this melancholy apartment, and disconsolate. He looks on a sudden fit he was led into a chamber hung with black, of laughter as a breach of his baptismal where he entertained himself for some time vow. An innocent jest startles him like by the glimmering of a taper, until at blasphemy. Tell him of one who is adlength the head of the college came out to vanced to a title of honour, he lifts up his him from an inner room, with half a dozen hands and eyes: describe a public ceremonight-caps upon his head, and religious ny, he shakes his head; show him a gay horror in his countenance. The young man equipage, he blesses himself. All the little trembled: but his fears increased, when in- ornaments of life are pomps and vanities. stead of being asked what progress he had Mirth is wanton, and wit profane. He is made in learning, he was examined how he scandalized at youth for being lively, and abounded in grace. His Latin and Greek at childhood for being playful. He sits at stood him in little stead; he was to give an a christening, or marriage-feast, as at a fuaccount only of the state of his soul; whe-neral; sighs at the convulsion of a merry ther he was of the number of the elect; what was the occasion of the conversion, upon what day of the month, and hour of the day it happened; how it was carried on, The gentleman alluded to was Anthony Henley, Esq. son of Sir Robert Henley, of the Grange, in Hampshire. He was the intimate friend of the most consider able wits of the time, and is believed to have been an ample contributor to the Tatler. Dr. Garth entertained so high an opinion of him, that he dedicated his Dispensary to him "in terms which must lead the reader to form a very exalted idea of his virtues and accom plishments." Mr. Henley died in August, 1711. and Dr. Owen "the two Atlasses and Patriarchs of in story, and grows devout when the rest of the company grow pleasant. After all, Sombrius is a religious man, and would have behaved himself very properly, had he lived when christianity was under a goneral persecution. I would by no means presume to tax sur h characters with hypocrisy, as is done too frequently; that being a vice which I think none but He who knows the secrets of men's hearts should pretend to discover in another, where the proofs of it do not †This was Dr. Thomas Goodwin, S. T P. President amount to a demonstration. On the conof Magdalen College, Oxford, and one of the assembly trary, as there are many excellent persons of divines that sat at Westminster. Wood styles him who are weighed down by this habitual dependency." In the character prefixed to his works, sorrow of heart, they rather deserve our he is described as a man “much addicted to retirement compassion than our reproaches. I think, and deep contemplation: that he had been much ex- however, they would do well to consider he lived, and had a deep insight into the grace of God, whether such a behaviour does not deter and the covenant of grace." He attended Cromwell, men from a religious life, by representing his friend and patron, upon his death-bed, and was very it as an unsociable state, that extinguishes confident he would not die, from a supposed revelation communicated to him in prayer, but a few minutes be- all joy and gladness, darkens the face of nafore his death. When he found himself mistaken, in a ture, and destroys the relish of being itself. subsequent address to God, he exclaimed, "Thou hast I have, in former papers, shown how 1679, in the eightieth year of his age.-See Granger great a tendency there is to cheerfulness in religion, and how such a frame of mid is ercised in the controversies agitated in the age in which deceived us, and we were deceived." He died in Feb. vol. ii. not only the most lovely, but the most com- | race of people called Jews, many of whom mendable in a virtuous person. In short, I have met with in most of the considerable those who represent religion in so unami- towns which I have passed through in the able a light, are like the spies sent by course of my travels. They are, indeed, so Moses to make a discovery of the Land of disseminated through all the trading parts Promise, when by their reports they dis- of the world, that they are become the incouraged the people from entering upon it. struments by which the most distant nations Those who show us the joy, the cheerful- converse with one another, and by which ness, the good humour, that naturally mankind are knit together in a general corspring up in this happy state, are like the respondence. They are like the pegs and spies bringing along with them the clusters nails in a great building, which, though they of grapes, and delicious fruits, that might are but little valued in themselves, are abinvite their companions into the pleasant solutely necessary to keep the whole frame country which produced them. together. An eminent pagan writer* has made a That I may not fall into any common discourse to show that the atheist, who de-beaten tracks of observation, I shall consinies a God, does him less dishonour than der this people in three views: First, with the man who owns his being; but at the regard to their number; secondly, their same time believes him to be cruel, hard dispersion; and thirdly their adherence to to please, and terrible to human nature. their religion; and afterwards endeavour For my own part,' says he, 'I would ra- to show first, what natural reasons, and ther it should be said of me, that there secondly, what providential reasons, may was never any such man as Plutarch, than be assigned for these three remarkable that Plutarch was ill-natured, capricious, particulars. or inhuman.' If we may believe our logicians, man is distinguished from all other creatures by the faculty of laughter. He has a heart capable of mirth, and naturally disposed to it. It is not the business of virtue to extirpate the affections of the mind, but to regulate them. It may moderate and restrain, but was not designed to banish gladness from the heart of man. Religion contracts the circle of our pleasures, but leaves it wide enough for her votaries to expatiate in. The contemplation of the divine Being, and the exercise of virtue, are in their own nature, so far from excluding all gladness of heart, that they are perpetually sources of it. In a word, the true spirit of religion cheers, as well as composes, the soul; it banishes indeed all levity of behaviour, all vicious and dissolute mirth; but in exchange fills the mind with a perpetual serenity, uninterrupted cheerfulness, and an habitual inclination to please others, as well as to be pleased in itself. O. The Jews are looked upon by many to be as numerous at present, as they were formerly in the land of Canaan. This is wonderful, considering the dreadful slaughter made of them under some of the Roman emperors, which historians describe by the death of many hundred thousands in a war; and the innumerable massacres and persecutions they have undergone in Turkey, as well as in all Christian nations of the world. The rabbins, to express the great havoc which has been sometimes made of them, tell us, after their usual manner of hyperbole, that there were such torrents of holy blood shed, as carried rocks of a hundred yards in circumference above three miles into the sea. Their dispersion is the second remarkable particular in this people. They swarm over all the East, and are settled in the remotest parts of China. They are spread through most of the nations in Europe and Africa, and many families of them are established in the West Indies: not to mention whole nations bordering on PresterJohn's country, and some discovered in the No. 495.] Saturday, September 27, 1712. inner parts of America, if we may give any Duris ut ilex tonsa bipennibus Hor. Od. iv. Lib. 4. 57. And by their ruins they revive.—Anon. As I am one who, by my profession, am obliged to look into all kinds of men, there are none whom I consider with so much pleasure, as those who have any thing new or extraordinary in their characters or ways of living. For this reason I have often amused myself with speculations on the *Plut. Isp Adamoving. Plut. Opera, tom. i. p. 286. H. Steph. 1572, 12mo. credit to their own writers. Their firm adherence to their religion is no less remarkable than their numbers and dispersion, especially considering it as persecuted or contemned over the face of the whole earth. This is likewise the more remarkable, if we consider the frequent apostacies of this people, when they lived under their kings in the land of promise, and within sight of the temple. If in the next place we examine what may be the natural reasons of these three particulars which we find in the Jews, and which are not to be found in any other religion or people, I can, in the first place, attribute their numbers to nothing but their constant employment, their abstinence, their exemption from wars, and, above all, their frequent marriages; for they look on celibacy as an accursed state, and generally are married before twenty, as hoping the Messiah may descend from them. The dispersion of the Jews into all the nations of the earth, is the second remarkable particular of that people, though not so hard to be accounted for. They were always in rebellions and tumults while they had the temple and holy city in view, for which reason they have often been driven out of their old habitations in the land of promise. They have as often been banished out of most other places where they have settled, which must very much disperse and scatter a people, and oblige them to seek a livelihood where they can find it. Besides, the whole people is now a race of such merchants as are wanderers by profession, and, at the same time, are in most, if not all places, incapable of either lands or offices, that might engage them to make any part of the world their home. on the genius and temper of mankind, by considering the various bent and scope of our actions throughout the progress of life, have with great exactness allotted inclinations and objects of desire particular to every stage, according to the different circumstances of our conversation and fortune, through the several periods of it. Hence they were disposed easily to excuse those excesses which might possibly arise from a too eager pursuit of the affections more immediately proper to each state. They indulged the levity of childhood with tenderness, overlooked the gayety of youth with good-nature, tempered the forward ambition and impatience of ripened manhood with discretion, and kindly imputed the tenacious avarice of old men to their want of relish for any other enjoyment. Such allowances as these were no less advantageous to common society than obliging to particular persons; for, by maintaining a decency and regularity in the course of This dispersion would probably have lost life, they supported the dignity of human their religion, had it not been secured by nature, which then suffers the greatest viothe strength of its constitution: for they are lence when the order of things is inverted; to live all in a body, and generally within and in nothing is it more remarkably vilithe same enclosure; to marry among them-fied and ridiculous, than when feebleness selves, and to eat no meats that are not preposterously attempts to adorn itself killed or prepared their own way. This shuts them out from all table conversation, and the most agreeable intercourses of life; and, by consequence, excludes them from the most probable means of conversion. If, in the last place, we consider what providential reasons may be assigned for these three particulars, we shall find that their numbers, dispersion, and adherence to their religion, have furnished every age, and every nation of the world, with the strongest arguments for the Christian faith, not only as these very particulars are foretold of them, but as they themselves are the depositaries of these, and all the other prophecies, which tend to their own confusion. Their number furnishes us with a sufficient cloud of witnesses that attest the truth of the old Bible. Their dispersion spreads these witnesses through all parts of the world. The adherence to their religion makes their testimony unquestionable. Had the whole body of the Jews been converted to Christianity, we should certainly have thought all the prophecies of the Old Testament, that relate to the coming and history of our blessed Saviour, forged by Christians, and have looked upon them with the prophecies of the Sybils, as made many years after the events they tended to foretell. with that outward pomp and lustre, which serve only to set off the bloom of youth with better advantage. I was insensibly carried into reflections of this nature, by just now meeting Paulino (who is in his climacteric) bedecked with the utmost splendour of dress and equipage, and giving an unbounded loose to all manner of pleasure, whilst his only son is debarred all innocent diversion, and may be seen frequently solacing himself in the Mall with no other attendance than one antiquated servant of his father's for a companion and director. 'It is a monstrous want of reflection, that a man cannot consider, that when he cannot resign the pleasures of life in his decay of appetite and inclination to them, his son must have a much uneasier task to resist the impetuosity of growing desires. The skill therefore should methinks be, to let a son want no lawful diversion, in proportion to his future fortune, and the figure he is to make in the world. The first step towards virtue that I have observed, in young men of condition that have run into excesses, has been that they had a regard to their quality and reputation in the management of their vices. Narrowness in their circumstances has made many youths, to supply themselves as debauchees, commence cheats and rascals. The father who allows his son to the utmost ability avoids this latter evil, which as to the world is much greater than the former. But the contrary practice has prevailed so much among some men, that I have known them deny them what was merely necessary for education suitable to their quality. Poor young Antonio is a lamentable instance of |