SIR, 1 Ia am a young woman, and reckoned pretty, therefore you'll pardon me that I trouble you to decide a wager between me and a coufin of mine, who is always contradicting one because he understands Latin. Pray, Sir, is dimple spelt with a fingle or a double ? I am, SIR, ་ Your very bumble fervant, Betty Santer. Pray, Sir, direct thus, To the kind Querist, and leave it at Mr. Lillie's, for I don't care to be known in the thing at all. I am, Sir, again Your humble fervant. Mr. SPECTATOR, I Muft needs tell you there are feveral of your papers I do not much like. You are often so nice there is no enduring you, and fo learned there is no understanding you. What have you to do with our petticoats? Your bumble fervant, Mr. SPECTATOR, Parthenope. AST night as I was walking in the park, I met a couple of friends; Pr'ythee Jack, fays one of them, let us go drink a glass of wine, for I am fit for nothing elfe. This put me upon reflecting on the many miscar riages which happen in conversations over wine, when men go to the bottle to remove fuch humours as it only firs up and awakens. This I could not attribute more to any thing than to the humour of putting company upon others which men do not like themselves. Pray, Sir, declare in your papers, that he who is a trou'blesome companion to himself, will not be an agreeable one to others. Let people reafon themfelves into goodhumour, before they impofe themselves upon their friends. Pray, Sir, be as eloquent as you can upon this fubject, and do human life fo much good, as to argue powerfully, that it is not every one that can swallow who is fit to drink a glass of wine. SIR, This morning caft my eye upon your paper concern Iing the expence of time. You are very obliging to the women, especially thofe who are not young and paft gallantry, by touching fo gently upon gaming: Therefore I hope you do not think it wrong to employ a little leifure time in that diverfion; but I should be glad to hear you fay fomething upon the behaviour of fome of the female gamefters. • I have obferved ladies, who in all other refpects are gentle, good-humoured, and the very pinks of goodbreeding; who as foon as the ombre table is called for, and fet down to their bufinefs, are immediately trans migrated into the vericit wafps in nature. You must know I keep my temper, and win their · money; but am out of countenance to take it, it makes them fo very uneafy. Be pleafed, dear Sir, to inftruct ⚫ them to lofe with a better grace, and you will oblige Mr. SPECTATOR, OUR kindness to Eleonora, in one of your papers, Yhus given me encouragement to do myself, the honour of writing to you. The great regard you have ⚫fo often expreffed for the inftruction and improvement ⚫ of our fex, will, I hope, in your own opinion, fufficiently excufe me from making any apology for the ⚫ impertinence of this letter. The great defire I have to • embellish my mind with fome of thofe graces which you fay are fo becoming, and which you affert reading helps us to, has made me uneafy till I am put in a capacity of attaining them: This, Sir, I fhall never think myself in, till you fhall be pleafed to recommend fome author or authors to my perufal. I thought indeed, when I first caft my eye on Eleo• nora's letter, that I should have had no occasion for requefting it of you; but to my very great concern, I found on the perufal of that Spectator, I was entirely. difappointed, and am as much at a lofs how to make ufe of my time for that end as ever. Pray, Sir, oblige me at least with one scene, as you were pleased to enter*tain Eleonora with your prologue. I write to you not "only only my own fentiments, but alfo thofe of feveral others of my acquaintance, who are as little pleased ⚫ with the ordinary manner of spending one's time as myfelf: And if a fervent defire after knowledge, and a great fenfe of our prefent ignorance, may be thought a good prefage and earneft of improvement, you may look upon your time you fhall beflow in anfwering this request not thrown-away to no purpose. And I can't ⚫ but add, that unless you have a particular and more than 'ordinary regard for Eleonora, I have a better title to your favour than fhe; fince I do not content myself with tea-table reading of your papers, but it is my entertainment very often when alone in my closet. To fhew you I am capable of improvement, and hate flattery, I acknowledge I do not like fome of your papers; but even there I am readier to call in queftion my own fhallow understanding than Mr. SPECTATOR'S profound judgment. I am, Sir, your already (and in hopes of being more your) obliged fervant, PARTHENIA.. This laft letter is written with fo urgent and ferious an air, that I cannot but think it incumbent upon me to comply with her commands, which I fhall do very fuddenly. T N the prefent emptinefs of the town, I have feveral applications from the lower parts of the players, to ad mit fuffering to pafs for acting. They in very oblig ing terms defire me to let a fall on the ground, a ftumble, or a good flap on the back, be reckoned a jeft. Thefe gambols K 5 gambols I fhall tolerate for a feafon, because I hope the evil cannot continue longer than till the people of condition and tafte return to town. The method, fome time ago, was to entertain that part of the audience, who have no faculty above eyefight, with rope-dancers and tumblers; which was a way difcrect enough, because it prevented confufion, and diftinguished fuch as could fhew all the poftures which the body is capable of, from those who were to reprefent all the paffions to which the mind is fubject. But tho' this was prudently fettled, corporeal and intellectual actors ought to be kept at a ftill wider diftance than to appear on the fame flage at all: For which reason I must propose fome methods for the improvement of the Bear-Garden, by difmiffing all bodily actors to that quarter. In cafes of greater moment, where men appear in publick, the confequence and importance of the thing can bear them out. And tho' a pleader or preacher is hoarfe or aukward, the weight of the matter commands refpect and attention; but in theatrical speaking, if the performer is not exactly proper and graceful, he is utterly ridiculous. In cafes where there is little else expected, but the pleasure of the ears and eyes, the leaft diminution of that pleasure is the higheft offence. In acting, barely to perform the part is not commendable, but to be the leaft out is contemptible. To avoid thefe difficulties and delicacies, I an informed, that while I was out of town, the actors have flown in the air, and played fuch pranks, and run fuch hazards, that none but the fervants of the re-office, tilers and masons, could have been able to perform the like. The author of the following letter, it feems, has been of the audience at one of these entertainments, and has accordingly complained to me upon it; but I think he has been to the molt degree fevere against what is exceptionable in the play he mentions, without dwelling fo much as he might have done on the author's most excellent talent of humour. The pleafant pictures he has drawn of life, fhould have been more kindly mentioned, at the fame time that he banishes bis witches, who are too dull devils to be attacked with fo much warmth. . Mr. Mr. SPECTATOR, PON a report that Moll White had followed 'you to town, and was to act a part in the Lan• cafbire-Witches, I went laft week to fee that play. It ⚫ was my fortune to fit next to a country justice of the peace, a neighbour (as he faid) of Sir ROGER's, who pretended to fhew her to us in one of the dances There was witchcraft enough in the entertainment almost to incline me to believe him; Ben Johnson was almoft lamed; young Bullock narrowly faved his neck; the audience was aftonished, and an old acquaintance of mine, a perfon of worth, whom I would • have bowed to in the pit, at two yards diftance did · not know me. If you were what the country people reported you, a white witch, I could have wished you had been there to have exercised that rebel of broomsticks, with which we were haunted for above three hours. I could. have allowed them to fet Clod in the tree, to have fcared the fportfmen, plagued the juftice, and employed honeft Teague with his holy water.. This was the proper ufe of them in comedy, if the author had ftopped here; but I cannot conceive what relation the 'facrifice of the Black Lamb, and the ceremonies of their worship to the Devil, have to the business of mirth and humour. The gentleman who writ this play, and has drawn fome characters in it very juftly, appears to have been mifled in his witchcraft by an unwary following the inimitable Shakespeare. The incantations in Macbeth have a folemnity admirably adapted to the occafion of that tragedy, and fill the mind with a fuitable horror; befides, that the witches are a part of the ftory itself, as we find it very particularly related in "Hector Boetius, from whom he feems to have taken it. This therefore is a proper inachine where the bufinefs is dark, horrid, and bloody; but is tremely foreign from the affair of comedy. Subjects of this kind, which are in themfelves difagreeable, can at no time become entertaining, but by paffing through an imagination like Shakespeare's to form them; for which reafon Mr. Dryden would not: K. 6 "allow |