fell into the finest pitty-patty air, forsooth, who have the Latin tongue, such as use to wonderfully out of countenance, tossing her make what they call golden verses. Comhead up and down, as she swam along the mend me also to those who have not brains body of the church. I, with several others enough for any of these exercises, and yet of the inhabitants, followed her out, and do not give up their pretensions to mirth. saw her hold up her fan to a hackney- These can slap you on the back unawares, coach at a distance, who immediately came laugh loud, ask you how you do with a up to her, and she whipping into it with twang on your shoulders, say you are dull great nimbleness, pulled the door with a to-day, and laugh a voluntary to put you in bowing mien, as if she had been used to a humour; not to mention the laborious way better glass. She said aloud, "You know among the miner poets, of making things where to go," and drove off. By this time come into such and such a shape, as that of the best of the congregation was at the an egg, a hand, an axe, or any thing that church-door, and I could hear some say, nobody had ever thought on before for that "A very fine lady;" others, "I'll warrant purpose, or which would have cost them a you she is no better than she should be:" great deal of pains to accomplish if they and one very wise old lady said she ought did. But all these methods, though they to have been taken up. Mr. Spectator, I are mechanical, and may be arrived at think this matter lies wholly before you: with the smallest capacity, do not serve an for the offence does not come under any honest gentleman who wants wit for his law, though it is apparent this creature ordinary occasions; therefore it is absolutely came among us only to give herself airs, necessary that the poor in imagination and enjoy her full swing in being admired. should save something which may be serI desire you may print this, that she may viceable to them at all hours, upon all combe confined to her own parish; for I can mon occurrences. That which we call assure you there is no attending any thing punning is therefore greatly affected by else in a place where she is a novelty. men of small intellects. These men need She has been talked of among us ever not be concerned with you for the whole since, under the name of "the phantom:" sentence; but if they can say a quaint thing, but I would advise her to come no more: or bring in a word which sounds like any for there is so strong a party made by the one word you have spoken to them, they women against her, that she must expect can turn the discourse, or distract you so they will not be excelled a second time in that you cannot go on, and by consequence, so outrageous a manner, without doing her if they cannot be as witty as you are, they some insult. Young women, who assume can hinder your being any wittier than they after this rate, and affect exposing them- are. Thus if you talk of a candle, he can selves to view in congregations at the other deal' with you; and if you ask him to help end of the town, are not so mischievous, you to some bread, a punster should think because they are rivalled by more of the same ambition, who will not let the rest of the company be particular: but in the name of the whole congregation where I was, I desire you to keep these agreeable disturbances out of the city, where sobriety of manners is still preserved, and all glaring and ostentatious behaviour, even in things laudable, discountenanced. I wish you may never see the phantom, and am, sir, your most humble servant, T.

RALPH WONDER.'

No. 504.] Wednesday, October 8, 1712.
Lepus tute es, et pulpamentum quæris.

Ter. Ean. Act iii. Sc. 1.

You are a hare yourself, and want dainties, forsooth. IT is a great convenience to those who want wit to furnish out a conversation, that there is something or other in all companies where it is wanted substituted in its stead, which, according to their taste, does the business as well. Of this nature is the agreeable pastime in country-halls of cross purposes, questions and commands, and the like. A little superior to these are those who can play at crambo, or cap verses. Then above them are such as can make verses, that is, rhyme; and among those

himself very ill-bred' if he did not; and if he is not as well-bred' as yourself, he hopes for 'grains' of allowance. If you do not understand that last fancy, you must recollect that bread is made of grain; and so they go on for ever, without possibility of being exhausted.

There are another kind of people of small faculties, who supply want of wit with want of breeding; and because women are both by nature and education more offended at any thing which is immodest than we men are, these are ever harping upon things they ought not to allude to, and deal mightily in double meanings. Every one's own observation will suggest instances enough of this kind, without my mentioning any; for down through all parts of the town or city your double meaners are dispersed up and where there are any to offend, in order to set off themselves. These men are mighty loud laughers, and held very pretty gentlemen with the sillier and unbred part of womankind. But above all already mentioned, or any who ever were, or ever can be in the world, the happiest and surest to be pleasant, are a sort of people whom we have not indeed lately heard much of, and those are your biters.'

A biter is one who tells you a thing you have no reason to disbelieve in itself, and

you.

perhaps has given you, before he bit you, no reason to disbelieve it for his saying it; and, if you give him credit, laughs in your face, and triumphs that he has deceived In a word, a biter is one who thinks you a fool, because you do not think him a knave. This description of him one may insist upon to be a just one; for what else but a degree of knavery is it, to depend upon deceit for what you gain of another, be it in point of wit, or interest, or any thing else?

for the future will ever be able to equal, though I heartily wish him the same occasion. It is a superstition with some surgeons who beg the bodies of condemned malefactors, to go to the gaol, and bargain for the carcase with the criminal himself. A good honest fellow did so last sessions, and was admitted to the condemned men on the morning wherein they died. The surgeon communicated his business, and fell into discourse with a little fellow, who refused twelve shillings, and insisted upon fifteen for his body. The fellow, who killed the officer of Newgate, very forwardly, and like a man who was willing to deal, told him, 'Look you, Mr. Surgeon, that little dry fellow, who has been half starved all his life, and is now half dead with fear, cannot answer your purpose. I have ever lived highly and freely, my veins are full, I have not pined in imprisonment; you see my crest swells to your knife; and after Jack Catch has done, upon my honour you will find me as sound as ever a bullock in any of the markets. Come, for twenty shillings I am your man.' Says the surgeon, Done, there is a guinea.' This witty rogue took the money, and as soon as he had it in his fist, cries, Bite; I am to be hung in chains.' T.

No. 505.] Thursday, October 9, 1712.

Non habeo denique nauci marsum augurem,

Sed superstitiosi vates, impudentesque harioli,

This way of wit is called 'biting,' by a 'metaphor taken from beasts of prey, which devour harmless and unarmed animals, and look upon them as their food wherever they meet them. The sharpers about town very ingeniously understood themselves to be to the undesigning part of mankind what foxes are to lambs, and therefore used the word biting, to express any exploit wherein they had over-reached any innocent and inadvertent man of his purse. These rascals of late years have been the gallants of the town, and carried it with a fashionable haughty air, to the discouragement of modesty, and all honest arts. Shallow fops, who are governed by the eye, and admire every thing that struts in vogue, took up from the sharpers the phrase of biting, and used it upon all occasions, either to disown any nonsensical stuff they should talk themselves, or evade the force of what was reasonably said by others. Thus, when one of these cunning creatures was entered into a debate with you, whether it was practicable Non vicanos aruspices, non de circo astrologos, in the present state of affairs to accomplish Non Isiacos conjectores, non interpretes somnium; such a proposition, and you thought he had Non enim sunt ii, aut scientia, aut arte divina, let fall what destroyed his side of the ques- Aut inertes, aut insani, aut quibus egestas imperat: tion, as soon as you looked with an earnest-Qui sui questus causa fictas suscitant sententias, ness ready to lay hold of it, he immediately cried, Bite,' and you were immediately to acknowledge all that part was in jest. They carry this to all the extravagance imaginable; and if one of these witlings knows any particulars which may give authority to what he says, he is still the more ingenious if he imposes upon your credulity. I remember a remarkable instance of this kind. There came up a shrewd young fellow to a plain young man, his countryman, and taking him aside with a grave concerned countenance, goes on at this rate: 'I see you here, and have you heard nothing out of Yorkshire?-You look so surprised, you could not have heard of it-and yet the particulars are such that it cannot be false: I am sorry I am got into it so far that I must tell you; but I know not but it may be for your service to know. On Tuesday last, just after dinner-you know his manner is to smoke-opening his box, your father fell down dead in an apoplexy.' The youth showed the filial sorrow which he oughtUpon which the witty man cried, Bite, there was nothing in all this.'

To put an end to this silly, pernicious, frivolous way at once, I will give the reader one late instance of a bite, which no biter VOL. II. 34

Qui sibi semitam non sapiunt, alteri monstrant viam,
Quibus divitias pollicentur, ab iis drachmam petunt:
De divitiis deducant drachmam, reddant cætera.

Ennius.

Augurs and soothsayers, astrologers,
Diviners, and interpreters of dreams,
I ne'er consult, and heartily despise:
Vain their pretence to more than human skill:
For gain, imaginary schemes they draw;
Wand'rers themselves, they guide another's steps;
And for poor sixpence promise countless wealth:
Let them, if they expect to be believed,
Deduct the sixpence, and bestow the rest.

THOSE who have maintained that men would be more miserable than beasts, were their hopes confined to this life only, among other considerations take notice that the latter are only afflicted with the anguish of the present evil, whereas the former are very often pained by the reflection on what is passed, and the fear of what is to come. This fear of any future difficulties or misfortunes is so natural to the mind, that were a man's sorrows and disquietudes summed up at the end of his life, it would generally be found that he had suffered more from the apprehension of such evils as never happened to him, than from those evils which had really befallen him. To this we may add, that among those evils which befall us, there are many which have

been more painful to us in the prospect, | been the habitation of some prophetic Phithan by their actual pressure. lomath; it having been usual, time out of mind, for all such people as have lost their wits to resort to that place, either for their cure or for their instruction.

This natural impatience to look into futurity, and to know what accidents may happen to us hereafter, has given birth to many ridiculous arts and inventions. Some found their prescience on the lines of a man's hand, others on the features of his face: some on the signatures which nature has impressed on his body, and others on his own hand-writing: some read men's fortunes in the stars, as others have searched after them in the entrails of beasts, or the flight of birds. Men of the best sense have been touched more or less with these groundless horrors and presages of futurity, upon surveying the most indifferent works of nature. Can any thing be more surprising than to consider Cicero,* who made the greatest figure at the bar and in the senate of the Roman Commonwealth, and at the same time outshined all the philosophers of antiquity in his library, and in his retirements, as busying himself in the college of augurs, and observing with a religious attention after what manner the chickens pecked the several grains of corn which were thrown to them.

Notwithstanding these follies are pretty well worn out of the minds of the wise and learned in the present age, multitudes of weak and ignorant persons are still slaves to them. There are numberless arts of prediction among the vulgar, which are too trifling to enumerate, and infinite observation of days, numbers, voices, and figures, which are regarded by them as portents and prodigies. In short, every thing prophesies to the superstitious man; there is scarce a straw, or a rusty piece of iron that lies in his way by accident.

It is not to be conceived how many wizzards, gipsies, and cunning men, are dispersed through all the counties and market-towns of Great Britain, not to mention the fortune-tellers and astrologers, who live very comfortably upon the curiosity of several well-disposed persons in the cities of London and Westminster.

'Moorfields, Oct. 4, 1712. 'MR. SPECTATOR,-Having long considered whether there be any trade wanted in this great city, after having surveyed very attentively all kinds of ranks and professions, I do not find in any quarter of the town an oneiro-critic, or, in plain English, an interpreter of dreams. For want of so useful a person, there are several good people who are very much puzzled in this particular, and dream a whole year together, without being ever the wiser for it. I hope I am pretty well qualified for this office, having studied by candle-light all the rules of art which have been laid down upon this subject. My great uncle by my wife's side was a Scotch highlander, and second-sighted. I have four fingers and two thumbs upon one hand, and was born on the longest night of the year. My Christian and surname begin and end with the same letters. I am lodged in Moorfields, in a house that for these fifty years has always been tenanted by a conjurer.

'If you had been in company, so much as myself, with ordinary women of the town, you must know that there are many of them who every day in their lives, upon seeing or hearing of any thing that is unexpected, cry, "My dream is out;" and cannot go to sleep in quiet the next night, until something or other has happened which has expounded the visions of the preceding one. There are others who are in very great pain for not being able to recover the circumstances of a dream, that made strong impressions upon them while it lasted. In short, sir, there are many whose waking thoughts are wholly employed on their sleeping ones. For the benefit therefore of this curious and inquisitive part of my fellow-subjects, I shall in the first place tell those persons what they dreamt of, who fancy they never dream at all. In the next place I shall make out any dream, upon hearing a single circumstance of it; and in the last place, I shall expound to them the good or bad fortune which such dreams portend. If they do not presage good luck, I shall desire nothing for my pains; not questioning at the same time, that those who consult me will be so reasonable as to afford me a moderate share out of any considerable estate, profit, or emolument, which I shall discover to them. I interpret to the poor for nothing, on condition that their names may be inserted in public advertisements, to attest the truth of such my interpretations. As for people of quality, or others who are indisposed, and do not care to come in person, I can interpret it is said of him, that he wondered how one augur could their dreams by seeing their water. I set aside one day in the week for lovers; and

Among the many pretended arts of divination, there is none which so universally amuses as that by dreams. I have indeed observed in a late speculation, that there have been sometimes, upon very extraordinary occasions, supernatural revelations made to certain persons by this means; but as it is the chief business of this paper to root out popular errors, I must endeavour to expose the folly and superstition of those persons, who, in the common and ordinary course of life, lay any stress upon things of so uncertain, shadowy, and chimerical a nature. This I cannot do more effectually than by the following letter, which is dated from a quarter of the town that has always

*This censure of Cicero seems to be unfounded: for

meet another without laughing in his face.

interpret by the great for any gentlewoman | France, the lady tells her that is a secret who is turned of sixty, after the rate of in dress she never knew before, and that half-a-crown per week, with the usual al-she was so unpolished an English woman, lowances for good luck. I have several as to resolve never to learn to dress even rooms and apartments fitted up at reasona- before her husband. ble rates, for such as have not conveniences for dreaming at their own houses.

Some small engagement at least in business, not only sets a man's talents in the fairest light, and allots him a part to act in which a wife cannot well intermeddle, but gives frequent occasion for those little absences, which, whatever seeming uneasiThe spirit of love has something so ex-ness they may give, are some of the best tremely fine in it, that it is very often dis- preservatives of love and desire.

turbed and lost, by some little accidents, The fair-sex are so conscious to themwhich the careless and unpolite never at-selves that they have nothing in them which tend to, until it is gone past recovery.

she had no notions of before. Lætitia is transported at having a new world thus opened to her, and hangs upon the man that gives her such agreeable informations. Erastus has carried this point still farther, as he makes her daily not only more fond of him, but infinitely more satisfied with herself. Erastus finds a justness or beauty in whatever she says or observes, that Lætitia herself was not aware of; and by his assistance she has discovered a hundred good qualities and accomplishments in herself, which she never before once dreamed of. Erastus, with the most artful complaisance in the world, by several remote hints, finds the means to make her say or propose almost whatever he has a mind to, which he always receives as her own discovery, and gives her all the reputation of it.

Erastus has a perfect taste in painting, and carried Lætitia with him the other day to see a collection of pictures. I sometimes visit this happy couple. As we were last week walking in the long gallery before dinner, I have lately laid out some money in paintings,' says Erastus: 'I bought that Venus and Adonis purely upon Lætitia's judgment; it cost me threescore guineas; and I was this morning offered a hundred for it.' I turned towards Lætitia, and saw her cheeks glow with pleasure, while at the same time she cast a look upon Erastus, the most tender and affectionate I ever beheld.

Flavilla married Tom Tawdry, she was taken with his laced-coat and rich swordknot; she has the mortification to see Tom despised by all the worthy part of his own sex. Tom has nothing to do after dinner, but to determine whether he will pare his nails at St. James's, White's, or his own house. He has said nothing to Flavilla since they were married which she might not have heard as well from her own woman. He however takes great care to keep up the saucy ill-natured authority of a husband. Whatever Flavilla happens to assert, Tom immediately contradicts with an oath by way of preface, and, 'My dear, I must tell you you talk most confoundedly silly.' Flavilla had a heart naturally as well disposed for all the tenderness of love as that of Lætitia; but as love seldom continues long after esteem, it is difficult to determine, at present whether the unhappy Flavilla hates or despises the person most whom she is obliged to lead her whole life

with.

X.

No. 507.] Saturday, October 11, 1712.
Defendit numerus, junctæque umbone phalanges.
Juv. Sat. ii. 46.
Preserv'd from shame by numbers on our side.
THERE is something very sublime, though
very fanciful, in Plato's description of the
Supreme Being; that truth is his body, and

light his shadow.' According to this definition, there is nothing so contradictory to his nature as error and falsehood. The Platonists have so just a notion of the Almighty's aversion to every thing which is false and erroneous, that they looked upon truth as no less necessary than virtue to qualify a human soul for the enjoyment of a separate state. For this reason, as they recommended moral duties to qualify and season the will for a future life, so they prescribed several contemplations and sciences to rectify the understanding. Thus Plato has called mathematical demonstrations the cathartics, or purgatives of the soul, as being the most proper means to cleanse it from error, and give it a relish of truth; which is the natural food and nourishment of the understanding, as virtue is the perfection and happiness of the will.

There are many authors who have shown wherein the malignity of a lie consists, and set forth in proper colours the heinousness of the offence. I shall here consider one particular kind of this crime, which has not been so much spoken to; I mean that abominable practice of party-lying. This vice is so very predominant among us at present, that a man is thought of no principle, who does not propagate a certain system of lies. The coffee-houses are supported by them, the press is choked with them, eminent authors live upon them. Our bottle conversation is so infected with them, that a party-lie is grown as fashionable an entertainment as a lively catch, or a merry story. The truth of it is, half the great talkers in the nation would be struck dumb were this fountain of discourse dried up. There is however one advantage resulting from this detestable practice: the very appearances of truth are so little regarded, that lies are at present discharged in the air, and begin to hurt nobody. When we hear a party-story from a stranger, we consider whether he is a whig or a tory that relates it, and immediately conclude they are words of course, in which the honest gentleman designs to recommend his zeal, without any concern for his veracity. A man is looked upon as bereft of common sense, that gives credit to the relations of party writers; nay, his own friends shake their heads at him, and consider him in no other light than an officious tool, or a wellmeaning idiot. When it was formerly the fashion to husband a lie, and trump it up in some extraordinary emergency, it generally did execution, and was not a little serviceable to the faction that made use of it; but at present every man is upon his guard: the artifice has been too often repeated to take effect.

I have frequently wondered to see men of probity, who would scorn to utter a falsehood for their own particular advantage, give so readily into a lie, when it is become the voice of their faction, notwithstanding they are thoroughly sensible of it as such.