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wife is told her husband is jealous, her simplicity makes her incapable of believing it, and say, after such circumstances as would drive another woman into distraction,

I think the sun when he was born
Drew all such humours from him.

This opinion of him is so just, that his noble and tender heart beats itself to pieces before he can affront her with the mention of his jealousy; and owns, this suspicion has blotted out all the sense of glory and happiness which before it was possessed with, when he laments himself in the warm allusions of a mind accustomed to entertainments so very different from the pangs of jealousy and revenge. How moving is his sorrow, when he cries out as follows!

I had been happy, if the gen'ral camp,
Pioneers and all, had tasted her sweet body,
So I had nothing known. Oh now! for ever
Farewel the tranquil mind! Farewel content!
Farewel the plumed troops, and the big wars
That make ambition virtue! Oh farewel!
Farewel the neighing steed, and the shrill trump,
The spirit-stirring drum, th' ear piercing fife,
The royal banner, and all quality,

Pride, pomp and circumstance, of glorious war!
And, oh ye mortal engines! whose rude throats
Th' immortal Jove's dread clamours counterfeit,
Farewel! Othello's occupation's gone.

I believe I may venture to say, there is not in any other part of Shakspeare's works more strong and lively pictures of nature than in this. I shall therefore steal incog, to see it, out of curiosity to observe how Wilks and Cibber touch those places where Betterton and Sandford so very highly excelled. But now I am got into discourse of acting, with which I am so professedly pleased, I shall conclude this paper

with a note I have just received from the two ingenious friends, Mr. Penkethman, and Mr. Bullock.

"SIR,

"FINDING by your paper, No. LXXXII. that 66 you are drawing parallels between the greatest ac"tors of the age; as you have already begun with "Mr. Wilks and Mr. Cibber, we desire you would "do the same justice to your humble servants.

"WILLIAM BULLOCK,

"WILLIAM PENKETHMAN."

For the information of posterity, I shall comply with this letter, and set these two great men in such a light as Sallust has placed his Cato and Cæsar.

Mr. William Bullock and Mr. William Penkethman are of the same agc, profession and sex. They both distinguish themselves in a very particular manner under the discipline of the crab-tree, with this only difference, that Mr. Bullock has the more agreeable squall, and Mr. Penkethman the more graceful shrug. Penkethman devours a cold chick with great applause; Bullock's talent lies chiefly in asparagus. Penkethman is very dexterous at conveying himself under a table; Bullock is no less active at jumping over a stick. Mr. Penkethman has a great deal of money, but Mr. Bullock is the taller man.

No. CLXXXIX. SATURDAY, JUNE 24.

Est in juvencis, est in equis patrum
Virtus; nec imbellem feroces

Progenerant aquila columbam.

HOR.

From my own Apartment, June 23.

HAVING lately turned my thoughts upon the considerations of the behaviour of parents to children in the great affair of marriage, I took much delight in turning over a bundle of letters which a gentleman's steward in the country had sent me some time ago. This parcel is a collection of letters written by the children of the family (to which he belongs) to their father, and contain all the little passages of their lives, and the new ideas they received as their years advanced. There is in them an account of their diversions as well as their exercises; and what I thought very remarkable, is, that two sons of that family, who now make considerable figures in the world, gave omens of that sort of character which they now bear, in the first rudiments of thought which they shew in their letters. Were one to point out a method of education, one could not, methinks, frame one more pleasing or improving than this; where the children. get an habit of communicating their thoughts and inclinations to their best friend with so much freedom, that he can form schemes for their future life and conduct from an observation of their tempers, and by that means be early enough in chusing their way of life, to make them forward in some art or science at an age when others have not determined what profession to follow. As to the persons concerned in this packet I am speaking of, they have given great proofs of the force of this conduct of their father in the effect it has had upon their lives and manners. The elder, who is a scholar, shews from his infancy a propensity

to polite studies, and has made a suitable progress in literature; but his learning is so well woven into his mind, that from the impressions of it, he seems rather to have contracted an habit of life, than manner of discourse. To his books he seems to owe a good economy in his affairs, and a complacency in his manners, though in others that way of education has commonly a quite different effect. The epistles of the other son are full of accounts of what he thought most remarkable in his reading. He sends his father for news the last noble story he had read. I observe, he is particularly touched with the conduct of Codrus, who plotted his own death, because the oracle had said, if he were not killed, the enemy should prevail over his country. Many other incidents in his little letters give omens of a soul capable of generous undertakings; and what makes it the more particular is, that this gentleman had, in the present war, the honour and happiness of doing an action for which only it was worth coming into the world. Their father is the most intimate friend they have, and they always consult him rather than any other, when any error has happened in their conduct through youth and inadvertency. The behaviour of this gentleman to his sons, has made his life pass away with the pleasure of a second youth; for as the vexations which men receive from their children hasten the approach of age, and double the force of years; so the comforts which they reap from them, are balm to all other sorrows, and disappoint the injuries of time. Parents of children repeat their lives in their offspring, and their sufferings and enjoyments as much as if they regarded their own proper persons. But it is generally so far otherwise, that the common race of squires in this kingdom use their sons as persons that are waiting only for their funerals, and spies upon their health and happiness; as indeed they are by their own making them such. In cases where a man

takes the liberty after this manner to reprehend others, it is commonly said, let him look at home. I am sorry to own it; but there is one branch of the house of the Bickerstaffs, who have been as erroneous in their conduct this way as any other family whatsoever. The head of this branch is now in town, and has brought up with him his son and daughter (who are all the children he has) in order to be put some way into the world, and see fashions. They are both very ill-bred cubs; and having lived together from their infancy without knowledge of the distinctions and decencies that are proper to be paid to each other's sex, they squabble like two brothers. The father is one of those who knows no better, than that all pleasure is debauchery, and imagines, when he sees a man become his estate, that he will certainly spend it. This branch are a people who never had among them one man eminent either for good or ill; however, have all along kept their heads just above water, not by a prudent and regular economy, but by expedients in the matches they have made into their house. When one of the family has, in the pursuit of foxes and in the entertainment of clowns run out the third part of the value of his estate, such a spendthrift has dressed up his eldest son, and married what they call a good fortune, who has supported the father as a tyrant over them, during his life, in the same house or neighbourhood. The son in succession has just taken the same method to keep up his dignity, till the mortgages he has eat and drank himself into, have reduced him to the necessity of sacrificing his son also, in imitation of his progenitor. This had been for many generations the whole that had happened in the family of Sam. Bickerstaff, till the time of my present cousin Samuel, the father of the young people we have just now spoken of.

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