berless. Upon a strict calculation, it is found that there has been a great exceeding of late years in the second division, several brevets having been granted for the converting of fubalterns into scarfofficers; infomuch that within my memory the price of lutestring is raised above two-pence in a yard. As for the fubalterns, they are not to be numbered. Should our clergy once enter into the corrupt practice of the laity, by the splitting of their freeholds, they would be able to carry most of the elections in England.

The body of the law is no less incumbered with superfluous members, that are like Virgil's army, which he tells us was so crouded, many of them had not room to use their weapons. This prodigious society of men may be divided into the litigious and peaceable. Under the first are comprehended all those who are carried down in coach-fulls to Westminster-Hall, every morning in term-time. Martial's description of this species of lawyers is full of humour :

Iras verba locant.

"Men that hire out their words and anger;" that are more or less paffionate according as they are paid for it, and allow their client a quantity antity of wrath proportionable to the fee which they

receive from him. I must however observe to the reader, that above three parts of those whom I reckon among the litigious are such as are only quarrelsome in their hearts, and have no opportunity of shewing their passion at the bar. Nevertheless, as they do not know what strifes may arife, they appear at the hall every day, that they may chew themselves in a readiness to enter the lifts, whenever there shall be occafion for them. The peaceable lawyers are, in the first place, many of the benchers of the several inns of court, who feem to be the dignitaries of the law, and are endowed with those qualifications of mind that accomplish a man rather for a ruler than a pleader. These men live peaceably in their habitations, eating once a day, and dancing once a year, for the honour of their respective societies. Another numberless branch of peaceable lawyers are those young men who, being placed at the inns of court in order to study the laws of their country, frequent the play-house more than Westminster-Hall, and are seen in all public afsemblies, except in a court of justice. I shall say nothing of those filent and busy multitudes that are employed within doors in the drawing-up of writings and conveyances; nor of those greater numbers that palliate their want of business with a pretence to fuch chamber-practice.

If, in the third place, we look into the profeffion of physic, we shall find a most formidable body of men; the fight of them is enough to make a man serious, for we may lay it down as a maxim, that when a nation abounds in physicians, it grows thin of people. Sir William Temple is very much puzzled to find out a reason why the northern hive, as he calls it, does not send out fuch prodigious fswarms, and over-run the world with Goths and Vandals, as it did formerly; but had that excellent author obferved that there were no students in physic among the subjects of Thor and Woden, and that this science very much flourishes in the north at present, he might have found a better folution for this difficulty than any of those he has made use of. This body of men in our own country may be described like the British army in Cæfar's time; some of them slay in cha

riots, and fome on foot. If the infantry do less execution than the charioteers, it is because they cannot be carried so soon into all quarters of the town, and dispatch so much business in so short a time. Besides this body of regular troops, there are stragglers, who, without being duly lifted and enrolled, do infinite mischief to those who are so unlucky as to fall into their hands.

There are, befides the abovementioned, innumerable retainers to physic, who, for want of other patients, amuse themselves with the stifling of cats in an air-pump, cutting up dogs alive, or impaling of insects upon the point of a needle for microscopical observations; besides those that are employed in the gathering of weeds, and the chase of butter-flies; not to mention the cockleshell-merchants and spider-catchers.

When I consider how each of these profeffions are crouded with multitudes that feek their livelihood in them, and how many men of merit there are in each of them, who may be rather faid to be of the science, than the profession; I very much wonder at the humour of parents, who will not rather choose to place their fons in a way of life where an honest industry cannot but thrive, than in stations where the greatest probity, learning, and good sense may miscarry. How many men are country-curates, that might have made themselves aldermen of London, by a right improvement of a smaller fum of money than what is usually laid out upon a learned education? A fober frugal perfon, of flender parts and a flow apprehenfion, might have thrived in trade, though he starves upon physic; as a man would be well enough pleased to buy filks of one, whom he would not venture to feel his pulfe. Vagellius is careful, studious, and obliging, but withal a little thick-skulled; he has not a fingle client, but might have had abundance of cuf tomers. The misfortune is, that parents take a liking to a particular profeffion, and therefore defire their fons may be of it; whereas, in fo great an affair of life, they should confider the genius and abilities of their children, more than their own inclinations.

It is the great advantage of a trading nation, that there are very few in it so dull and heavy, who may not be placed in stations of life, which may give them an opportunity of making their fortunes. A well-regulated commerce is not, like law, phyfic, or divinity, to be over-stocked with hands; but, on the contrary, flourishes by multitudes, and gives employment to all its profeffors. Fleets of merchant-men are so many squadrons of floating shops, that vend our wares and manufactures in all the markets of the world, and find out chapmen under both the tropics.

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them, one could not believe that such matters had really been exhibited. There is very little which concerns human life, or is a picture of nature, that is regarded by the greater part of the company. The understanding is dismissed from our entertainments. Our mirth is the laughter of fools, and our admiration the wonder of idiots; elfe such improbable, monstrous, and incoherent dreams could not go off as they do, not only without the utmost scorn and contempt, but even with the loudest applause and approbation. But the letters of my correspondents will represent this affair in a more lively manner than any difcourse of my own; I shall therefore give them to my reader with only this preparation, that they all come from players, and that the business of playing is now so managed, that you are not to be furprized when I say one or two of them are rational, others sensitive and vegetative actors, and others wholly inanimate. I shall not place these as I have named them, but as they have precedence in the opinion of their audi

ence.

Mr. SPECTATOR,

Y

OUR having been so humble as to take notice of the epistles of other animals. ' emboldens me, who am the wild boar that was ' killed by Mrs. Tofts, to represent to you, that < I think I was hardly used in not having the

part of the lion in Hydaspes given to me. It ' would have been but a natural step for me to ' have perfonated that noble creature, after having behaved myself to fatisfaction in the part abovementioned; but that of a lion is too great a character for one that never trod the stage before but upon two legs. As for the little resistance ' which I made, I hope it may be excused, when it is confidered that the dart was thrown at me by fo fair an hand. I must confess I had but 'just put on my brutality; and Camilla's charms were such, that beholding her erect mien, hear ing her charming voice, and aftonished with her graceful motion, I could not keep up to my af• fumed fierceness, but died like a man. I am,

Sir,

• Your most humble servant, THOMAS PRONE.' ;

Mr. SPECTATOR,

HIS is to let you understand, that the play. T house is a representation of the world in ⚫ nothing so much as in this particular, that no one rises in it according to his merit. I have acted feveral parts of houshold-stuff with great * applaufe for many years; I am one of the men in the hangings in the Emperor of the Moon; I ⚫ have twice performed the third chair in an English opera; and have rehearsed the pump in the Fortune-Hunters. I am now grown old, ⚫ and hope you will recommend me so effectually, as that I may fay fomething before I go off the stage: in which you will do a great act of charity to

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• Your most humble servant,

Mr. SPECTATOR.

WILLIAM SCRENE.'

you, and defired to be raifed from dumb and still parts; I defire, if you give him motion or speech, that you would advance me in * my way, and let me keep on in what I humbly

'SIR,

I

Your humble servant, RALPH SIMPLE.'

Drury-Lane, March 24, 1710-11.

Saw your friend the Templar this evening in the pit, and thought he looked very little pleased with the representation of the mad scene ' of the Pilgrim. I wish, Sir, you would do us the 'favour to animadvert frequently upon the false ' taste the town is in, with the relation to plays ' as well as operas. It certainly requires a degree ' of understanding to play justly; butsuch is our

condition, that we are to fufpend our reason to ' perform our parts. As to scenes of madness, you 'know, Sir, there are noble instances of this kind ' in Shakespear; but then it is the disturbance of ' a noble mind, from generous and humane re< sentments; it is like that grief which we have for the decease of our friends; it is no diminution, but a recommendation of human nature, that in such incidents passion gets the better of ' reason; and all we can think to comfort our' selves, is impotent against half what we feel. I ' will not mention that we had an idiot in the

scene, and all the sense it is represented to have • is that of luft. As for myself, who have long • taken pains in personating the paffions, I have to-night acted only an appetite. The part I 'play'd is thirst, but it is represented as written rather by a dray-man than a poet. I come in ' with a tub about me, that tub hung with quartpots, with a full gallon at my mouth. I am asha' med to tell you that I pleased very much, and this was introduced as a madness; but fure it was not human madness, for a mule or an afs ' may have been as dry as ever I was in my life,

Mr. SPECTATOR,

TF you can read it with dry eyes, I give you

this trouble to acquaint you, that I am the ' unfortunate king Latinus, and believe I am the first prince that dated from this palace since John of Gaunt. Such is the uncertainty of all human greatness, that I, who lately never moved ' without a guard, am now pressed as a common ' foldier, and am to fail with the first fair wind ' against my brother Lewis of France. It is a very hard thing to put off a character which ' one has appeared in with applaufe, this I experienced fince the lofs of my diadem: for, up-.. 'on quarrelling with another recruit, I spoke my indignation out of my part in recitativo;

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DRYDEN. base

HERE is nothing that more betrays a ungenerous spirit, than the giving of secret stabs to a man's reputation. Lampoons and fatires, that are written with wit and spirit, are like poisoned darts, which not only inflict a wound, but make it incurable. For this reason I am very much troubled when I fee the talents of humour and ridicule in the possession of an ill-natured man, There cannot be a greater gratification to a barbarous and inhuman wit, than to stir up forrow in the heart of a private person, to raise uneasiness among near relations, and to expose whole families to derision, at the same time that he remains unseen and undiscovered. If, besides the accomplishments of being witty and ill-natured, a man is vicious into the bargain, he is one of the most mischievous creatures that can enter into a civil society. His fatire will then chiefly fall upon those who ought to be the most exempt from it. Virtue, merit, and every thing that is praifeworthy, will be made the fubject of ridicule and buffoonry. It is impoffible to enumerate the evils which arise from these arrows that fly in the dark; and I know no other excuse that is or can be made for them, than that the wounds they give are only imaginary, and produce nothing more than a fecret shame or forrow in the mind of the suffering person. It must indeed be confefs'd, that a lampoon or fatire do not carry in them robbery or murder; but at the fame time, how many are there that would not rather lofe a confiderable fum of money, or even life itself, than be set up as a mark of infamy and derision? and in this cafe a man should confider, that an injury is not to be measured by the notions of him that gives, but of him who receives it,

Those who can put the best countenance upon the outrages of this nature which are offered them, are not without their secret anguish. I have often observed a passage in Socrate's behaviour at his death, in a light wherein none of the critics have confidered it. That excellent man, entertaining his friends a little before he drank the bowl of poifon, with a difcourse on the immortality of the foul, at his entering upon it, says, that he does not believe any the most comic genius can censure him for talking upon fuch a fubject at such a time. This passage, I think, evidently glances upon Ariftophanes, who writ a comedy on purpose to ridicule the discourses of that divine philosopher. It has been observed by many writers, that Socrates was so little moved at this piece of buffoonry, that he was several times present at its being acted upon the stage, and never expressed the least resentment of it. But with fubmiffion, I think the remark I have here made shews us, that this unworthy treatment made an impression upon his mind, though he had been too wise to discover it.

When Julius Cæfar was lampoon'd by Catullus, he invited him to a supper, and treated him with fuch a generous civility, that he made the poet his friend ever after. Cardinal Mazarine gave the fame kind treatment to the learned Quillet, who had reflected upon his eminence in a famous Latin poem. The Cardinal fent for him, and after some kind expostulations upon what he had written, assured him of his esteem, and dismissed him with a promise of the next good abbey that should fall, which he accordingly conferred upon him in a few months after. This had fo good an effect upon the author, that he dedicated the second edition of his book to the Cardinal, after having expunged the passageswhich had given him offence.

Sextus Quintus was not of so generous and forgiving a temper. Upon his being made Pope, the statue of Pasquin was one night dressed in a very dirty shirt, with an excuse written under it, that he was forced to wear foul linen, because his laundress was made a princess. This was a reflection upon the Pope's sister, who, before the promotion of her brother, was in those mean circumstanees that Pasquin represented her. As this pasquinade made a great noise in Rome, the Pope offered a considerable fum of money to any person that should discover the author of it. The author relying upon his Holiness's generofity, as also on some private overtures which he had received from him, made the discovery himself; upon which the Pope gave him the reward he had promised, but at the fame time, to disable the fatirst for the future, ordered his tongue to be cut out, and both his hands to be chopped off. Aretine is too trite an instance. Every one knows that all the Kings in Europe were his tributaries. Nay, there is a letter of his extant, in which he makes his boafts that he had laid the Sophi of Persia under contribution.

Though in the various examples which I have here drawn together, these several great men behaved themselves very differently towards the wits of the age who had reproached them; they all of them plainly shewed that they were very sensible of their reproaches, and confequently that they received them as very great injuries. For my own part, I would never trust a man that I thought was capable of giving these secret wounds; and cannot but think that he would hurt the perfon,

E 2

we were intimate; therefore I earnestly intreat you for the future to take no manner of notice of, ' Sir,

• Your obliged humble servant,

WILL, FASHION.'

A like impertinence is also very troublesome to the fuperior and more intelligent part of the fair sex. It is, it seems, a great inconvenience, that those of the meanest capacities will pretend to make visits, though indeed they are qualified rather to add too the furniture of the house, by filling an empty chair, than to the conversation they come into when they visit. A friend of mine hopes for redress in this case, by the publication of her letter in my paper; which she thinks those she would be rid of will take to themselves. It seems to be written with an eye to one of those pert giddy unthinking girls, who upon the recommendation only of an agreeable person, and a fashionable air, take themselves to be upon a level with women of the greatest merit.

I

Madam,

Take this way to acquaint you with what common rules and forms will never permit ' me to tell you otherwise; to wit, that you and I, though equals in quality and fortune, are by no means fuicable companions. You are, 'tis true, very pretty, can dance, and make a very • good figure in a public assembly; but alas, Madam, you must go no further'; distance and filence are your best recommendations; therefore let me beg of you never to make me any more vifits. You come in a literal sense to fee one, for you have nothing to say. I do not say this, that I would by any means lose your acquaintance; but I would keep it up with the ftrickest forms of good-breeding. Let us pay vifits, but never fee one another. If you will 'be so good as to deny yourself always to me, I 'shall return the obligation by giving the same 'ciders to my fervants. When accident makes us meet at a third place, we may mutually lament the misfortune of never finding one another at home, go in the fame party to a benefitplay, and fimile at each other, and put down glasses as we pass in our coaches. Thus we may enjoy as much of each other's friendship as we are capable: for there are some people who are to be known only by fight, with ' which fort of friendship I hope you will always 'honour,

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ADVERTISEMENT.

"To prevent all mistakes, that may happen "among gentlemen of the other end of the town, " who come but once a week to St. James's cof"fee-house, either by miscalling the servants, or "requiring such things from them as are not properly within their respective provinces; this is "to give notice, that Kidney, keeper of the " book-debts of the outlying customers, and ob"server of those who go off without paying, hav"ing refign'd that employment, is fucceeded by "John Sowton; to whose place of enterer of

" messages and first coffee-grinder, William Bird " is promoted; and Samuel Burdock comes as "shoe-cleaner in the room of the faid Bird." R

No. 25. THURSDAY, MARCH 29. -----Ægrefcitque medendo.

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VIRG. Æn. xii. 46.

And fickens by the very means of health. HE following letter will explain itself, and needs no apology.

'SIR,

I

AM one of that fickly tribe who are commonly known by the name of Valetudinarians; and do confefs to you, that I first con'tracted this ill habit of body, or rather of mind, ' by the study of physic. I no fooner began to ' peruse books of this nature, but I found my 'pulse was irregular; and scarce ever read the

account of any disease that I did not fancy my' self afflicted with. Doctor Sydenham's learned Treatise of Fevers threw me into a lingering hectic, which hung upon me all the while I was ' reading that excellent piece. I then applied ' myself to the study of several authors, who have ' written upon phthisfical distempers, and by that ' means fell into a consumption; till at length,

growing very fat, I was in a manner shamed ' out of that imagination. Not long after this I ' found in myself all the symptons of the gout, 'except pain; but was cured of it by a Treatise ' upon the Gravel, written by a very ingenious ' author, who (as it is usual for physicians to convert one distemper into another) eafed me of the gout by giving me the ftone. I at length ' studied myself into a complication of distempers; but accidentally taking into my hand 'that ingenious discourse written by Sanctorius,

of scales. By this means he discovered how many ounces of his food pass'd by perspiration, 'what quantity of it was turned into nourish'ment, and how much went away by the other channels and distributions of nature.

'Having provided myself with this chair, I ' used to study, eat, drink, and sleep in it; info'much that I may be faid, for these three last years, ' to have lived in a pair of scales. I compute my'self, when I am in full health, to pe precisely ' two hundred weight, falling short of it about a pound after a day's fast, and exceeding it as much after a very full meal; so that it is my ' continual employment to trim the balance be'tween these two volatile pounds in my confti

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