no one could come at him: but lie frequented a particular little coffee-bouse, where be triumphed over everybody at trick-track and back gammon. The way to pass his office well, was first to be insulted by him at one of those games in his leisure hours; for his vanity was to show that he was a man of pleasure as well as business. Next to this sort of insinuation, which is called in all places (from its taking its birth in the households of princes) making one's court, the most prevailing way is, by what better-bred people call a present, the vulgar a bribe I humbly conceive that such a thing is conveyed with more gallantry in a billet-doux that should be understood at the Bank, than in gross money: but as to stub born people, who are so surly as to accept of neither note nor cash, having formerly dabbled in chemistry, I can only say that one part of matter asks one thing, and another another, to make it fluent: but there is nothing but may be dissolved by a proper mean. Thus the virtue which is too obdurate for gold or paper, shall melt away very kindly in a liquid. The island of Barbadoes (a shrewd

Seople) manage all their appeals to Great Britain, by a skilful istribution of citron water* among the whisperers about men in power. Generous wines do every day prevail, and that in great points, where ten thousand times their value would have been rejected with indignation.

But to waive the enumeration of the sundry ways of applying by presents, bribes, management of people's passions and affections, in such a manner as it shall appear that the virtue of the best man is by one method or other corruptible; let us look out for some expedient to turn those passions and affections on the side of truth and honour. When a man has laid it down for a position, that parting with his integrity, in the minutest circumstance, is losing so much of his very self, self-love will become a virtue. By this means good and evil will be the only objects of dislike and approbation ; and he that injures any man, has effectually wounded the man of this turn as much as if the harm had been to himself. This seems to be the only expedient to arrive at an impartiality; and a man who follows the dictates of truth and right reason, may by artifice be led into error, but never can into guilt.

8TEBXE. T.

No. 395. TUESDAY, JUNE 3, 1712.

Quod nunc ratio e»t, impetus ante fuit. Ovid. Rem. Am. 1ft

'Tis reason now, 'twas appetite before.

' Beware of the Ides of March," said the Roman augur toJulias

* At that time known by the name of Barbadoes water.

Cssar: " Beware of the month of May," says the British SpecTator to his fair countrywomen. The caution of the first was unhappily neglected, and Caesar's confidence cost him his life. I *m apt to flatter myself that my pretty readers had much more regard to the advice I gave them,' since I have yet received very few iccounts of any notorious trips made in the last month.

But though I hope for the hest, I shall not pronounce too positively on this point, till I have seen fortv weeks well over, at which period of time, as my good friend Sir Roger has often told me, be has more business as a justice of peace, among the dissolute jotrag people in the country, than at any other season of the year.

Neither must I forget a letter which I received near a fortnight since from a lady, who, it seems, could bold out no longer, telling me she looked upon the month as then out, for that she had all along reckoned by the new style.

On the other hand, I have great reason to believe, from several •ngry letters which have been sent to me by disappointed lovers, that my advice has been of very signal service to the fair sex, who according to the old proverb, were " forewarned, forearmed."

One of these gentlemen tells me, that he would have given me an hundred pounds, rather than I should have published that paper; for that his mistress, who had promised to explain herself to him about the beginning of May, upon reading that discourse told him, that she would give him her answer in June.

Thyrsis acquaints me, that when he desired Sylvia to take a walk in the fields, she told him the Spectator had forbidden her.

Another of my correspondents, who writes himself Mat Meagre, complains that whereas he constantly used to breakfast with his mistress upon chocolate, going to wait upon her the first of May, he found his usual treat very much changed for the worse, and has been forced to feed ever since upon green tea.

As I begun this critical season with a caVeat to the ladies, I shall conclude it with a congratulation, and do most heartily wish them joy of their happy deliverance.

They may now reflect with pleasure on the dangers they have escaped, and look back with'as much satisfaction on the perils that threatened them, as their great grandmothers did formerly on the burning plough shares, after having passed through the ordeal trial. The instigations of the spring are now abated. The nightingale gives over " her love-labour'd song," as Milton phrases it; the blossoms are fallen, and the beds of flowers swept away by the scythe of the mower. I shall now allow my fair readers to return to their romances

•nd chocolate, provided they make use of them with moderation,

'ill about the middle of the month, when the sun shall have mude

• See No. 865.

some progress in the Crab. Nothing is more dangerous than too much confidence and security. The Trojans, who stood upon tbeir guard all the while the Grecians lay before their city, when they fancied the siege was raised, and the danger past, were the very next night burnt in their beds. I must also observe, that as in some climates there is a perpetual spring, so in some female constitutions there is a perpetual May. These are a kind of valetudinarians in chastity, whom I would continue in a constant diet. I cannot think these wholly out of danger, till they have looked upon the other sex at least five years through a pair of spectacles. Wnx Honeycomb has often assured me, that it is much easier to steal one of this species, when she has passed her grand climacteric, than to carry off an icy girl on this side five and twenty; and that a rake of his acquaintance, who had in vain endeavoured to gain the affections of a young lady of fifteen, had at last made his fortune by running away with her grandmother.

But as 1 do not design this speculation for the ever-greens of the sex, I shall again apply myself to those who would willingly listen to the dictates of reason and virtue, and can now hear me in cold blood. If there are any who have forfeited their innocence, they must now consider themselves under that melancholy view in which Chamont regards his sister, in those beautiful lines.— »

" Long she flourish'd,

Grew sweet to sense, and lovely to the eye :

Till at the last a cruel spoiler came,

Cropp'd this fair rose, and rifled all its sweetness,

Then cast it like a loathsome weed away."

On the contrary, she who has observed the timely cautions I gave her, and lived up to the rules of modesty, will now flourish like •' a rose in June," with all her virgin blushes and sweetness about her. I must, however, desire these last to consider, how shameful it would be for a general, who has made a successful campaign, to he surprised in his winter quarters. It would be no less dishonourable for a lady to lose, in any other mouth of the year, what she has been at the pains to preserve in May.

There is no charm in the female sex, that can supply the place of virtue. Without innocence, beauty is unlovely, and quality contemptible; good breeding degenerates into wantonness, and wit into impudence. It is observed, that all the virtues are represented by both painters and statuaries under female shapes; but if any one of them has a more particular title to that sex, it is modesty. I shall leave it to the divines to guard them against the opposite vice, as they may be overpowered by temptations. It is sufficient for mo to have warned them against it, as they may be lod astray by instinct.

I desire this paper may be read with more than ordinary atten tion, at all tea-tables within the cities of London and Westminster.

BUDGEX.L. . X.

No. 306. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 4, 1712.

Barbara, Celarent, Darii, Ferio, Baralipton.*

Having a great deal of business upon my hands at present, I shall beg the reader's leave to present him with a letter that I received about half a year ago from a gentleman of Cambridge, who styles himself Peter de Quir.f I have kept it by me some months; and, though I did not know at first what to make of it, upon my reading it over very frequently, I have at last discovered several conceits in it: I would not therefore have my reader discouraged if he does not take them at the first perusal.

" TO MR. SPECTATOR.

" Prom St John's College, Cambridge, Feb. 3, 1712. " Sir.

" The monopoly of puns in this university has been an immemorial privilege of the Johnians; J and we can't help resenting the late invasion of our ancient right as to that particular, by a little pretender to clenching in a neighbouring college, who in an application to you by way of letter, a while ago, styled himself Philohnme.§ Dear Sir, as you are by character a profest well-wisher to speculation, you will excuse a remark which this gentleman's passion for the brunette has suggested to a brother theorist: it is an offer towards a mechanical account of his lapse to punning, for he belongs to a set of mortals who value themselves upon an uncommon mastery in the more humaue and polite part of letters.

"A conquest by one of this species of females gives a very odd turn to the intellectuals of the captivated person, and very different from that way of thinking which a triumph from the eyes of another, more emphatically of the fair sex, does generally occasion. It filta the imagination with an assemblage of such ideas and pictares as are hardly anything but shade, such as night, the devil, **• These portraitures very near overpower the light of the understanding, almost benight the faculties, and give that melancholy

* A barbarous verse, invented by the logicians.

T The writer of this letter was the noted orator Henley.

t The students of St. John's College.

f The second letter in No. 286.

tincture to the most sanguino complexion, which this gentleman calls an inclination to he in a brown-study, and is usually attended with worse consequences, in case of a repulse. During this twilight of intellects, the patient is extremely apt, as love is the most witty passion in nature, to offer at some pert sallies now and then, by way of flourish, upon the amiable enchantress, and unfortunately stumbles upon that mongrel miscreated (to speak in Miltonic) kind of wit, vulgarly termed the pun. It would not be much amiss to

consult Dr. T W (who is certainly a very able projector,

and whose sysfem of divinity and spiritual mechanics obtains very much among the better part of our under-graduates) whether a general inter-marriage, enjoined by parlinment, between this sisterhood of the olive-beauties, and the fraternity of the people called Quakers, would not be a very serviceable expedient, and abate that overflow of light which shines within them so powerfully, that it dazzles their eyes, and dances them into a thousand vagaries of error and enthusiasm. These reflections may impart some Itglit towards a discovery of the origin of punning among us, and the foundation of its prevailing so long in this famous body. It is notorious, from the instance under consideration, that it must be owing chiefly to the use of brown jugs, muddy belch, and the fumes of a certain memorable place of rendezvous with us at meals, known by the name of Staincoat Hole: for the atmosphere of the kitchen, like the tail of a eomet, predominates least about the fire, but resides behind and fills the fragrant receptacle above mentioned. Besides, it is farther observable, that the delicate spirits among ua, who declare against these nauseous proceedings* sip tea. and put up for critic and amour, profess likewise an equal abhotrence for punning, the ancient innocent, diversion of this society. After all. Sir, though it may appear something absurd, that I seem to approach you with the air of an advocate for punning (you who have justified your censures of the practice in a set dissertation upou that subject).* yet I am confident you will think it abundantly atoned for by observing, that this humbler exercise may be as instrumental in diverting D9 from any innovating schemes ami hypotheses in wit, as dwelling upon honest orthodox logic would be in securing us from heresy in religion. Had Mr. \V—■— ss'st researches been confined within the bounds of Ramus, or Creckenthorp. that learned newsmonger might have acquiesced in what the holy oracles pronounced upon the deluge, like other Christians; and had the surprising Mr. L y J been content with the employment of refining upou Shakespeare's points and quibbles (for

* See No. 61. t Mr. William Whiston.

J Perhaps John Lacy, who altered Shakespeare's play of " Tho Taming of the Shrew." He was author of three other comedies, and a player who pleased Charles II. so much, that he had his picture painted in three of hu best characters.