'London, Nov. 1712. but little to her. Her women will represent to me that she is inconsolable by reason 'MR. SPECTATOR,-You are always of my unkindness, and beg me with tears ready to receive any useful hint or propoto caress her, and let her sit down by me; sal, and such, I believe, you will think one but I shall still remain inexorable, and will that may put you in a way to employ the turn my back upon her all the first night. most idle part of the kingdom: I mean that Her mother will then come and bring her part of mankind who are known by the daughter to me, as I am seated upon my name of the women's men, or beaux, &c. sofa. The daughter, with tears in her eyes, Mr. Spectator, you are sensible these pretty will fling herself at my feet, and beg of me gentlemen are not made for any manly emto receive her into my favour. Then will ployments, and for want of business are I, to imprint in her a thorough veneration often as much in the vapours as the ladies. for my person, draw up my legs and spurn Now what I propose is this, that since her from me with my foot, in such a man-knotting is again in fashion, which has been ner that she shall fall down several paces from the sofa.' Alnaschar was entirely swallowed up in this chimerical vision, and could not forbear acting with his foot what he had in his thoughts; so that unluckily striking his basket of brittle ware, which was the foundation of all his grandeur, he kicked his glasses to a great distance from him into the street, and broke them into ten thousand pieces. O. No. 536.] Friday, November 14, 1712. Dryden. found a very pretty amusement, that you will recommend it to these gentlemen as something that may make them useful to the ladies they admire. And since it is not inconsistent with any game, or other diversion, for it may be done in the play-house, in their coaches, at the tea-table, and in short, in all places where they come for the sake of the ladies, (except at church; be pleased to forbid it there to prevent mistakes,) it will be easily complied with. It is besides an employment that allows, as we see by the fair-sex, of many graces, which will make the beaux more readily come into it; it shows a white hand and a diamond ring to great advantage; it leaves the eyes at full liberty to be employed as before, as also the thoughts and the tongue. In short, it seems in every respect so proAs I was the other day standing in my per, that it is needless to urge it farther, bookseller's shop, a pretty young thing, by speaking of the satisfaction these male about eighteen years of age, stepped out of knotters will find, when they see their work her coach, and, brushing by me, beckoned mixed up in a fringe, and worn by the fair the man of the shop to the farther end of lady for whom and with whom it was done. his counter, where she whispered some-Truly, Mr. Spectator, I cannot but be thing to him, with an attentive look, and at the same time presented him with a letter: after which, pressing the end of her fan upon his hand, she delivered the remaining part of her message, and withdrew. I observed, in the midst of her discourse, that she flushed and cast an eye upon me over her shoulder, having been informed by my bookseller that I was the man with the P. S. The sooner these fine gentlemen short face whom she had so often read of. Upon her passing by me, the pretty bloom-are set to work the better; there being at ing creature smiled in my face, and drop- this time several fine fringes, that stay only ped me a courtesy. She scarce gave me time to return her salute, before she quitted the shop with an easy scuttle, and stepped again into her coach, giving the footmen directions to drive where they were bid. Upon her departure, my bookseller gave me a letter superscribed, To the ingenious Spectator,' which the young lady had desired him to deliver into my own hands, 'MR. SPECTATOR,-Since you have lateand to tell me, that the speedy publication ly, to so good purpose, enlarged upon conof it would not only oblige herself but a jugal love, it is to be hoped you will diswhole tea-table of my friends. I opened it courage every practice that rather proceeds therefore with a resolution to publish it, from a regard to interest than to happiness. whatever it should contain, and am sure Now you cannot but observe, that most of if any of my male readers will be so se- our fine young ladies readily fall in with verely critical as not to like it, they would the direction of the graver sort, to retain have been as well pleased with it as myself, in their service, by some small encouragehad they seen the face of the pretty scribe. Iment, as great a number as they can of pleased I have hit upon something that for more hands.' I shall in the next place present my reader with the description of a set of men who are common enough in the world, though I do not remember that I have yet taken notice of them, as they are drawn in the following letter. supernumerary and insignificant fellows, |pectations they were born: that by conwhich they use like whifflers, and commonly call "shoeing-horns."-These are never designed to know the length of the foot, but only, when a good offer comes, to whet and spur him up to the point. Nay, it is the opinion of that grave lady, madam Matchwell, that it is absolutely convenient for every prudent family to have several of these implements about the house to clap on as occasion serves; and that every spark ought to produce a certificate of his being a shoeing-horn before he be admitted as a shoe. A certain lady whom I could name, if it was necessary, has at present more shoeing-horns of all sizes, countries, and colours in her service, than ever she had new shoes in her life. I have known a woman make use of a shoeing-horn for several years, and finding him unsuccessful in that function, convert him at length into a shoe. I am mistaken if your friend, Mr. William Honeycomb, was not a cast shoeing-horn before his late marriage. As for myself, I must frankly declare to you, that I have been an errant shoeing-horn for above these twenty years. I served my first mistress in that capacity above five of the number, before she was shod. I confess, though she had many who made their application to her, I always thought myself the best shoe in her shop; and it was not until a month before her marriage that I discovered what I was. This had like to have broke my heart, and raised such suspicions in me, that I told the next I made love to, upon receiving some unkind usage from her, that I began to look upon myself as no more than her shoeing-horn. Upon which, my dear, who was a coquette in her nature, told me I was hypochondriacal, and I might as well look upon myself to be an egg, or a pipkin. But in a very short time after she gave me to know that I was not mistaken in myself. It would be tedious to you to recount the life of an unfortunate shoeing-horn, or I might entertain you with a very long and melancholy relation of my sufferings. Upon the whole, I think, sir, it would very well become a man in your post, to determine in what cases a woman may be allowed with honour to make use of a shoeing-horn, as also to declare whether a maid on this side five-and-twenty, or a widow, who has not been three years in that state, may be granted such a privilege, with other difficulties which will naturally occur to you upon that subject. I am, sir, with the most profound veneration, yours, &c.' O. sidering what is worthy of them, they may be withdrawn from mean pursuits, and encouraged to laudable undertakings. This is turning nobility into a principle of virtue, and making it productive of merit, as it is understood to have been originally a reward of it. "It is for the like reason, I imagine, that you have in some of your speculations asserted to your readers the dignity of human nature. But you cannot be insensible that this is a controverted doctrine; there are authors who consider human nature in a very different view, and books of maxims have been written to show the falsity of all human virtues.* The reflections which are made on this subject usually take some tincture from the tempers and characters of those that make them. Politicians can resolve the most shining actions among men into artifice and design; others, who are soured by discontent, repulses, or ill-usage, are apt to mistake their spleen for philosophy; men of profligate lives, and such as find themselves incapable of rising to any distinction among their fellow-creatures, are for pulling down all appearances of merit which seem to upbraid them; and satirists describe nothing but deformity. From all these hands we have such draughts of mankind, as are represented in those burlesque pictures which the Italians call caricaturas; where the art consists in preserving, amidst distorted proportions and aggravated features, some likeness of the person, but in such a manner as to transform the most agreeable beauty into the most odious monster. 'SIR,-It has been usual to remind persons of rank, on great occasions in life, of 'It is very disingenuous to level the best of mankind with the worst, and for the faults of particulars to degrade the whole species. Such methods tend not only to remove a man's good opinion of others, but to destroy that reverence for himself, which is a great guard of innocence, and a spring of virtue. "It is true indeed, that there are surprising mixtures of beauty and deformity, of wisdom and folly, virtue and vice, in the human make: such a disparity is found among numbers of the same kind; and every individual in some instances, or at some times, is so unequal to himself, that man seems to be the most wavering and inconsistent being in the whole creation. So that the question in morality concerning the dignity of our nature may at first sight appear like some difficult questions in natural philosophy, in which the arguments on both sides seem to be of equal strength. But, as I began with considering this point as it relates to action, I shall here borrow an admirable reflection from monsieur Paschal, which I think sets it in its proper light. *This is an allusion to the Reflections et Maximes their race and quality, and to what ex-Morales de M. le Duc de la Rochefoucault. "It is of dangerous consequence," says the soul while in a mortal body lives, but he, to represent to man how near he is to when departed out of it dies: or that its the level of beasts, without showing him at consciousness is lost when it is discharged the same time his greatness. It is likewise out of an unconscious habitation. But when dangerous to let him see his greatness with-it is freed from all corporeal alliance, then out his meanness. It is more dangerous yet to leave him ignorant of either; but very beneficial that he should be made sensible of both." Whatever imperfections we may have in our nature, it is the business of religion and virtue to rectify them, as far as is consistent with our present state. In the mean time it is no small encouragement to generous minds to consider, that we shall put them all off with our mortality. That sublime manner of salutation with which the Jews approach their kings, I am naturally led by this reflection to a subject I have already touched upon in a former letter, and cannot without pleasure call to mind the thought of Cicero to this purpose, in the close of his book concerning old age. Every one who is acquainted with his writings will remember that the elder Cato is introduced in that discourse as the speaker, and Scipio and Lelius as his auditors. This venerable person is represented looking forward as it were from the verge of extreme old age into a future state, and rising into a contemplation on the unperishable part of his nature, and its existence after death. I shall collect part of his discourse. And as you have formerly offered some arguments for the soul's immortality, agreeable both to reason and the Christian doctrine, I believe your readers will not be displeased to see how the same great truth shines in the pomp of Roman eloquence. "This (says Cato) is my firm persuasion, that since the human soul exerts itself with so great activity; since it has such a remembrance of the past, such a concern for the future; since it is enriched with so many arts, sciences, and discoveries; it is impossible but the being which contains all these must be immortal." it truly exists. Farther, since the human frame is broken by death, tell us what becomes of its parts? It is visible whether the materials of other beings are translated; namely, to the source from whence they had their birth. The soul alone, neither present nor departed, is the object of our eyes.' Thus Cyrus. But to proceed:-"No one shall persuade me, Scipio, that your worthy father or your grandfathers Paulus and Africanus, or Africanus his father or uncle, or many other excellent men whom I need not name, performed so many actions to be remembered by posterity, without being sensible that futurity was their right. And, if I may be allowed an old man's privilege so to speak of myself, do you think I would have endured the fatigue of so many wearisome days and nights, both at home and abroad, if I imagined that the same boundary which is set to my life must terminate my glory? Were it not more desirable to have worn out my days in ease and tranquillity, free from labour and without emulation? But, I know not how, my soul has always raised itself, and looked forward on futurity, in this view and expectation, that when it shall depart out of life it shall then live for ever; and if this were not true, that the mind is immortal, the soul of the most worthy would not, above all others, have the strongest impulse to glory. "What besides this is the cause that the wisest men die with the greatest equanimity, the ignorant with the greatest concern? Does it not seem that those minds which have the most extensive views foresee they are removing to a happier condition, which those of a narrow sight do not perceive? I, for my part, am transported with the hope of seeing your ancestors: whom I have honoured and loved; and am earnestly desirous of meeting not only those excellent persons whom I have known, but those too of whom I have heard and read, and of whom I myself have written; nor would I be detained from so pleasing a journey. O happy day, when I shall escape from this crowd, this heap of pollution, and be admitted to that 'The elder Cyrus, just before his death, divine assembly of exalted spirits! when I is represented by Xenophon speaking after shall go not only to those great persons I this manner: "Think not, my dearest chil- have named, but to my Cato, my son, than #dren, that when I depart from you I shall whom a better man was never born, and be no more: but remember, that my soul, whose funeral rites I myself performed, even while I lived among you, was invisible whereas he ought rather to have attended to you: yet by my actions you were sensible mine. Yet has not his soul deserted me, it existed in this body. Believe it therefore but, seeming to cast back a look on me, is existing still, though it be still unseen. How quickly would the honours of illustrious men perish after death, if their souls performed nothing to preserve their fame! For my own part, I never could think that gone before to those habitations to which it was sensible I should follow him. And though I might appear to have borne my loss with courage, I was not unaffected with it; but I comforted myself in the assurance, that it would not be long before we should until we had worked up ourselves to such meet again and be divorced no more. "Ia pitch of complaisance, that when the am, sir, &c.' dinner was to come in we inquired the name of every dish, and hoped it would be no offence to any in company, before it was admitted. When we had sat down, this No. 538.] Monday, November 17, 1712. civility among us turned the discourse from -Ultra eatables to other sorts of aversions; and the eternal cat, which plagues every conversaHor. Sat. i. Lib. 2. 1. tion of this nature, began then to engross the subject. One had sweated at the sight To launch beyond all bounds. of it, another had smelled it out as it lay SURPRISE is so much the life of stories, concealed in a very distant cupboard; and that every one aims at it who endeavours to he who crowned the whole set of these please by telling them. Smooth delivery, stories, reckoned up the number of times an elegant choice of words, and a sweet ar- in which it had occasioned him to swoon rangement, are all beautifying graces, but away. 'At last,' says he, 'that you may not the particulars in this point of conversa- all be satisfied of my invincible aversion to tion which either long command the atten- a cat, I shall give an unanswerable instance. tion, or strike with the violence of a sudden As I was going through a street of London, passion, or occasion the burst of laughter where I never had been until then, I felt a which accompanies humour. I have some- general damp and faintness all over me, times fancied that the mind is in this case which I could not tell how to account for, like a traveller who sees a fine seat in haste; until I chanced to cast my eyes upwards, he acknowledges the delightfulness of a and found that I was passing under a walk set with regularity, but would be un-sign-post on which the picture of a cat was easy if he were obliged to pace it over, when the first view had let him into all its beauties from one end to the other. However, a knowledge of the success which stories will have when they are attended with a turn of surprise, as it has happily made the characters of some, so has it also been the ruin of the characters of others. There is a set of men who outrage truth, instead of affecting us with a manner in telling it; who overleap the line of probability that they may be seen to move out of the common road; and endeavour only to make their hearers stare by imposing upon them with a kind of nonsense against the philosophy of nature, or such a heap of wonders told upon their own knowledge, as it is not likely one man should have ever met with. hung." The extravagance of this turn in the way of surprise, gave a stop to the talk we had been carrying on. Some were silent because they doubted, and others because they were conquered in their own way; so that the gentleman had an opportunity to press the belief of it upon us, and let us see that he was rather exposing himself than ridiculing others. I must freely own that I did not all this while disbelieve every thing that was said; but yet I thought some in the company had been endeavouring who should pitch the bar farthest; that it had for some time been a measuring cast, and at last my friend of the cat and sign-post had thrown beyond them all. I then considered the manner in which I have been led to this observation by a this story had been received, and the possicompany into which I fell accidentally.bility that it might have passed for a jest The subject of antipathies was a proper upon others, if he had not laboured against field wherein such false surprisers might himself. From hence, thought I, there expatiate, and there were those present are two ways which the well-bred world who appeared very fond to show it in its generally takes to correct such a practice, full extent of traditional history. Some of when they do not think fit to contradict it them, in a learned manner, offered to our flatly. consideration the miraculous powers which The first of these is a general silence, the effluviums of cheese have over bodies which I would not advise any one to interwhose pores are disposed to receive them pret in his own behalf. It is often the effect in a noxious manner; others gave an ac- of prudence in avoiding a quarrel, when count of such who could indeed bear the they see another drive so fast that there is sight of cheese, but not the taste; for which no stopping him without being run against; they brought a reason from the milk of and but very seldom the effect of weakness their nurses. Others again discoursed, in believing suddenly. The generality of without endeavouring at reasons, concern-mankind are not so grossly ignorant, as ing an unconquerable aversion which some stomachs have against a joint of meat when it is whole, and the eager inclination they have for it when, by its being cut up, the shape which had affected them is altered. From hence they passed to eels,then to parsnips, and so from one aversion to another, some overbearing spirits would persuade themselves; and if the authority of a character or a caution against danger make us suppress our opinions, yet neither of these are of force enough to suppress our thoughts of them. If a man who has endeavoured to amuse his company with improbabilities you are against yourself; the laugh of the company runs against you; the censuring world is obliged to you for that triumph which you have allowed them at your own expense; and truth, which you have injured, has a near way of being revenged on you, when by the bare repetition of your story you become a frequent diversion for the public. could but look into their minds, he would | others entertain concerning you. In short, find that they imagine he lightly esteems of their sense when he thinks to impose upon them, and that he is less esteemed by them for his attempt in doing so. His endeavour to glory at their expense becomes a ground of quarrel, and the scorn and indifference with which they entertain it begins the immediate punishment: and indeed (if we should even go no farther) silence, or a negligent indifference, has a deeper way of wounding than opposition, because opposition proceeds from an anger that has a sort of generous sentiment for the adversary mingling along with it, while it shows that there is some esteem in your mind for him: in short, that you think him worth while to contest with. But silence, or a negligent indifference, proceeds from anger, mixed with a scorn that shows another he is thought by you too contemptible to be regarded. The other method which the world has taken for correcting this practice of false surprise, is to overshoot such talkers in their own bow, or to raise the story with 'MR. SPECTATOR,-The other day, walking in Pancras church-yard, I thought of your paper wherein you mention epitaphs, and am of opinion this has a thought in it worth being communicated to your readers. "Here innocence and beauty lies, whose breath farther degrees of impossibility, and set up No. 539.] Tuesday, November 18, 1712. for a voucher to them in such a manner as must let them see they stand detected. Thus I have heard a discourse was once managed upon the effects of fear. One of the company had given an account how it had turned his friend's hair pay in a night, while the terrors of a ship.reck encompassed him. Another, taking the hint from hence, began, upon his own knowledge, to enlarge his instances of the like nature to such a number, that it was not probable he could ever have met with them: and as he still grounded these upon different causes for the sake of variety, it might seem at last, from his share of the conversation, almost impossible that any one who can feel the passion of fear, should all his life escape so common an effect of it. By this time some of the company grew negligent, or desirous to contradict him; but one rebuked the rest with an appearance of severity, and with the known old story in his head, assured them he did not scruple to believe that the fear of any thing can make a man's hair gray, since he knew one whose periwig had suffered so by it. Thus he stopped the talk, and made them easy. Thus is the same method taken to bring us to shame, which we fondly take to increase our character. It is indeed a kind of mimickry, by which another puts on our air of conversation to show us to ourselves. He seems to look ridiculous before you, that you may remember how near a resemblance you bear to him; or that you may know that he will not lie under the imputation of believing you. Then it is that you are struck dumb immediately with a conscientious shame for what you have been saying. Then it is that you are inwardly grieved at the sentiments which you cannot but perceive VOL. II. 40 Heteroclita sunto.—Quæ Genus. Be they heteroclites. MR. SPECTATOR,-I am a young widow of good fortune and family, and just come to town; where I find I have clusters of pretty fellows come already to visit me, some dying with hopes, others with fears, though they never saw me. Now, what I would beg of you would be to know whether I may venture to use these pert fellows with the same freedom as I did my country acquaintance. I desire your leave to use them as to me shall seem meet, without imputation of a jilt; for since I make declaration that not one of them shall have me, I think I ought to be allowed the liberty of insulting those who have the vanity to believe it is in their power to make me break that resolution. There are schools for learning to use foils, frequented by those who never design to fight; and this useless way of aiming at the heart, without design to wound it on either side, is the play with which I am resolved to divert myself. The man who pretends to win, I shall use him like one who comes into a fencing-school to pick a quarrel. I hope upon this foundation you will give me the free use of the natural and artificial force of my eyes, looks, and gestures. As for verbal promises, I will make none, but shall have no mercy on the conceited interpreters of glances and motions. I am particularly skilled in the downcast eye, and the recovery into a sudden full aspect and away again, as you may have seen sometimes practised by us country beauties beyond all that you have observed in courts and cities. Add to this, sir, that I have a ruddy heedless look, which covers_artifice the best of any thing. Though I can dance |