both abound with good fenfe, confummate virtue, and a mutual esteem; and are a perpetual entertainment to one another. Their family is under fo regular an economy, in its hours of devotion and repast, employment and diverfion, that it looks like a little commonwealth within itself. They often go into company, that they may return with the greater delight to one another; and fometimes live in town, not to enjoy it so properly as to grow weary of it, that they may renew in themselves the relish of a country life. By this means they are happy in each other, beloved by their children, adored by their fervants, and are become the envy, or rather the delight, of all that know them. a How different to this is the life of Fulvia! the confiders her husband as her steward, and looks upon difcretion and good housewifery as little domeftic virtues, unbecoming a woman of quality. She thinks life loft in her own family, and fancies herself out of the world when she is not in the ring, the play-house, or the drawingroom; the lives in perpetual motion of body and reftlessness of thought, and is never easy in any one place, when she thinks there is more company in another. The miffing of an opera the first night, would be more afflicting to her than the death of a child. She pities all the valuable part of her own fex, and calls every woman of a prudent, modest, and retired life, a poor-fpirited unpolished creature. What a mortification would it be to Fulvia, if she knew that her fetting herself to view is but expofing herself, and that she grows contemptible by being confpicuous ! I cannot conclude my paper without obferving, that Virgil has very finely touched upon this female paffion for dress and show, in the character of Camilla; who, though the feems to have thaken off all the other weakneffes of her fex, is ftill described as a woman in this particular. The poet tells us, that after having made a great flaughter of the enemy, the unfortunately caft her eye on a Trojan who wore an embroidered tunic, a beautiful coat of mail, with a mantle of the finest purple. "A golden bow," says he, "hung upon his shoulder; " his garment was buckled with a golden clafp, and his "head G2 "head was covered with an helmet of the same shining "metal." The Amazon immediately singled out this well-dreffed warrior, being feized with a woman's longing for the pretty trappings that he was adorned with: Totumque incauta per agmen Fæmineo prædæ & fpoliorum ardebat amore. Æn. This heedless pursuit after these glittering trifles, the poet (by a nice concealed moral) represents to have been the deftruction of his female hero. C No. XVI. MONDAY, MARCH 19. Quod verum atque decens curo & rogo, & omnis in hoc fum. What right, what true, what fit we justly call, HOR. POP E. I HAVE received a letter, defiring me to be very fati rical upon the little muff that is now in fashion; another informs me of a pair of filver garters buckled below the knee, that have been lately feen at the Rainbow Coffee-house, in Fleet-ftreet; a third fends me an heavy complaint againft fringed gloves. To be brief, there is scarce an ornament of either fex which one or other of my correfpondents has not inveighed against with fome bitternefs, and recommended to my obfervation. I must therefore, once for all, inform iny readers, that it is not my intention to fink the dignity of this my paper with reflections upon red heels or top-knots; but rather to enter into the paffions of mankind, and to correct those depraved fentiments that give birth to all those little extravagancies which appear in their outward dress and behaviour. Foppith and fantastic ornaments are only indications of vice, not criminal in themselves: Extinguish vanity in the mind, and you naturally retrench the little fuperfluities of garniture and equipage: The bloffoms will fall of themselves when the root that nourishes them is destroyed. I shall I shall therefore, as I have faid, apply my remedies to the first feeds and principles of an affected drefs, without defcending to the dress itself; though at the fame time I must own, that I have thoughts of creating an officer under me, to be entituled, "The cenfor of small wares," and of allotting him one day in a week for the execution of fuch his office. An operator of this nature might act under me with the fame regard as a furgeon to a phyfician; the one might be employed in healing those blotches and tumours which break out in the body, while the other is fweetening the blood and rectifying the constitution. To speak truly, the young people of both sexes are so wonderfully apt to shoot out into long fwords or fiweeping trains, bushy head-dresses, or fullbottomed perriwigs, with feveral other incumbrances of dress, that they stand in need of being pruned very frequently, left they should be oppreffed with ornaments, and over-run with the luxuriance of their habits. I am much in doubt whether I should give the preference to a quaker that is trimmed close and almost cut to the quick, or to a beau that is loaden with fuch a redundance of excrefcences. I must therefore defire my correfpondents to let me know how they approve my project, and whether they think the erecting of fuch a petty cenforship may not turn to the emolument of the public; for I would not do any thing of this nature rafhly and without advice. There is another set of correfpondents to whom I must address myself in the fecond place; I mean fuch as fill their letters with private scandal and black accounts of particular persons and families. The world is fo full of ill-nature, that I have lampoons fent me by people who cannot spell, and fatires composed by those who scarce know how to write. By the laft poft in particular, I received a packet of scandal which is not legible; and have a whole bundle of letters in womens hands that are full of blots and calumnies, infomuch, that when I fee the name Cælia, Phillis, Paftora, or the like, at the bottom of a scrawl, I conclude of course that it brings me fome account of a fallen virgin, a faithless wife, or an amorous widow. G3 widow. I must therefore inform these my correspondents, that it is not my design to be a publisher of intrigues and cuckoldons, or to bring little infamous stories out of their prefent lurking-holes into broad day-light. If I attack the vicious, I shall only fet upon them in a body; and will not be provoked, by the worst usage I can receive from others, to make an example of any particular criminal. In short, I have so much of a Drawcanfir in me, that I shall pass over a fingle foe to charge whole armies. It is not Lais nor Silenus, but the harlot and the drunkard, whom I shall endeavour to expofe; and shall confider the crime as it appears in a fpecies, not as it is circumftanced in an individual. I think it was Caligula who wished the whole city of Rome had but one neck, that he might behead them at a blow. I thall do, out of humanity, what that emperor would have done in the cruelty of his temper, and aim every stroke at a collective body of offenders. At the fame time, I am very fenfible that nothing spreads a paper like private calumny and defamation; but as my fpeculations are not under this neceflity, they are not exposed to this temptation. In the next place, I must apply myself to my partycorrefpondents, who are continually teazing me to take notice of one another's proceedings. How often am I asked by both fides, if it is poffible for me to be an unconcerned spectator of the rogueries that are committed by the party which is oppofite to him that writes the letter. About two days fince I was reproached with an old Greeian law that forbids any man to stand as a neuter, or a looker-on in the divifions of his country. However, as I am very fenfible my paper would lose its whole effect, should it run into the outrages of a party, I shall take care to keep clear of every thing which looks that way. If I can any way affuage private inflammations, or allay public ferments, I shall apply myself to it with my utmost endeavours; but will never let my heart reproach me with having done any thing towards increasing those feuds and animofities that extinguith religion, deface government, and make a nation miferable. What I have faid under the three foregoing heads will, I am afraid, very much retrench the number of my correfpondents: I shall therefore acquaint my reader, that if he has started any hint which he is not able to pursue, if he has met with any furprising story which he does not know how to tell, if he has difcovered any epidemical vice which has escaped my observation, or has heard of any uncommon virtue which he would defire to publish; in short, if he has any materials that can furnish out an innocent diversion, I shall promife him my beft affistance in the working of them up for a public entertainment. This paper my reader will find was intended for an anfwer to a multitude of correspondents; but I hope he will pardon ine if I fingle out one of them in particular, who has made me fo very humble a request, that I cannot forbear complying with it. • Sir, To the Spectator. March 15, 1710-11. IAM at present so unfortunate, as to have nothing to do but to mind my own business; and therefore beg ' of you that you will be pleased to put me into fome ' small post under you. I obferve that you have appointed your printer and publisher to receive letters and advertisements for the city of London; and shall think myfelf very much honoured by you, if you will appoint me to take in letters and advertisements for the city of Weftininfter, and the duchy of Lancaster. Though I cannot promife to fill fuch an employment with fufficient abilities, I will endeavour to make up with industry and fidelity what I want in parts and genius, • I am, • Sir, ' Your most obedient servant, C CHARLES LILLIE.' No. XVII. |