There is besides, I think, something wonderfully beautiful, and very apt to affect the reader's imagination, in this ancient prophecy or report in heaven, concerning the creation of man. Nothing could show more the dignity of the species, than I need not mention to the reader the beautiful this tradition which ran of them before their exis- circumstance in the last part of this quotation. He tence. They are represented to have been the talk will likewise observe how naturally the three per of heaven before they were created. Virgil, in compliment to the Roman commonwealth, makes sons concerned in this allegory are tempted by oce the heroes of it appear in their state of pre-exis-ther, and how properly Sin is made the portress of common interest to enter into a confederacy toge tence; but Milton does a far greater honour to mankind in general, as he gives us a glimpse of them

"I hope you will not think it any manner of disrespect to your person or merit, that the intended nuptials between us are interrupted. My father says he has a much better offer for me than you can make, and has ordered me to break off the treaty between us. haved myself with all suitable regard to you, but as If it had proceeded, I should have beit is, I beg we may be strangers for the future. Adieu.

66 ' LYDIA. "This great indifference on this subject, and the mercenary motives for making alliances, is what I

No. 310.] MONDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1711-12. think lies naturally before you, and I beg of you to

give me your thoughts upon it. My answer to Lydia was as follows, which I hope you will approve: for you are to know the woman's family affect a wonderful ease on these occasions, though they expect it should be painfully received on the man's side :66 MADAM,

of your house so well, that I always took care to be "I have received yours, and knew the prudence ready to obey your commands, though they should be to see you no more. Pray give my service to all the good family. Adieu.

and report the common usages on such treaties, with
The censor of marriage to consider this letter,
how many pounds or acres are generally esteemed
sufficient reason for preferring a new to an old pre-
tender; with his opinion what is proper to be deter-
mined in such cases for the future.
let. 1.

"There is an elderly person lately left off business and settled in our town, in order, as he thinks, to retire from the world; but he has brought with him such an inclination for tale-bearing, that he disturbs both himself and all our neighbourhood. Notwithstanding this frailty, the honest gentleman

is so happy as to have no enemy: at the same time are cross-barred; she is not permitted to go out of he has not one friend who will venture to acquaint house but with her keeper, who is a staid relation of him with his weakness. It is not to be doubted, but my own; I have likewise forbid her the use of pen if this failing were set in a proper light, he would and ink, for this twelvemonth last past, and do not quickly perceive the indecency and evil conse-suffer a band-box to be carried into her room before quences of it. Now, Sir, this being an infirmity it has been searched. Notwithstanding these prewhich I hope may be corrected, and knowing that cautions, I am at my wit's end for fear of any sudhe pays much deference to you, I beg that when den surprise. There were, two or three nights ago, you are at leisure to give us a speculation on gos- some fiddles heard in the street, which I am afraid siping, you would think of my neighbour. You portend me no good; not to mention a tall Irishwill hereby oblige several who will be glad to find a man, that has been seen walking before my house reformation in their gray-haired friend: and how more than once this winter. My kinswoman likebecoming will it be for him, instead of pouring forth wise informs me, that the girl has talked to her twice words at all adventures, to set a watch before the or thrice of a gentleman in a fair wig, and that she door of his mouth, to refrain his tongue, to check loves to go to church more than ever she did in her its impetuosity, and guard against the sallies of that life. She gave me the slip about a week ago, upon little pert, forward, busy person; which, under a which my whole house was in alarm. I iminesober conduct, might prove a useful member of so-diately dispatched a hue and cry after her to the ciety! In compliance with those intimations, I have taken the liberty to make this address to you.

"I am, Sir, your most obscure Servant, "PHILANTHROPOS." "MR. SPECTATOR,

"This is to petition you in behalf of myself and many more of your gentle readers, that at any time when you may have private reasons against letting us know what you think yourself, you would be pleased to pardon us such letters of your correspondent as seem to be of no use but to the printer.

"It is further our humble request, that you would substitute advertisements in the place of such epistles; and that in order hereunto Mr. Buckley may be authorized to take up of your zealous friend Mr. Charles Lillie, any quantity of words he shall from time to time have occasion for.

"The many useful parts of knowledge which may be communicated to the public this way will, we hope, be a consideration in favour of your petitioners. "And your Petitioners," &c.

Note. That particular regard be had to this petition; and the papers marked letter R. may be carefully examined for the future.-T.

No. 298.] TUESDAY, FEB. 26, 1711-12.
Nec Veneris pharetris macer est, aut lampade fervet;
Inde faces ardent, veniunt a dote sagittæ.
Juv. Sat. vi. 137.
He sighs, adores, and courts her ev'ry hour:

Change, to her mantua-maker, and to the young ladies that visit her; but after above an hour's search she returned of herself, having been taking a walk, as she told me, by Rosamond's pond. I have hereupon turned off her woman, doubled her guards, and given new instructions to my relation, who, to give her her due, keeps a watchful eye over all her motions. This, Sir, keeps me in a perpetual anxiety, and makes me very often watch when my daughter sleeps, as I am afraid she is even with me in her turn. Now, Sir, what I would desire of you is, to represent to this fluttering tribe of young fellows, who are for making their fortunes by these indirect means, that stealing a man's daughter for the sake of her portion is but a kind of a tolerated robbery; and that they make but a poor amends to the father, whom they plunder after this manner, by going to bed with his child. Dear Sir, be speedy in your thoughts upon this subject, that, if pos sible, they may appear before the disbanding of

the army.

"I am, Sir,

"Your most humble Servant,
"TIM. WATCH WELL."

Themistocles, the great Athenian general, being asked whether he would rather choose to marry his daughter to an indigent man of merit, or to a worthless man of an estate, replied, that he should prefer a man without an estate to an estate without a man. The worst of it is, our modern fortune-hunters are

Who wou'd not do as much for such a dower?-DRYDEN. those who turn their heads that way, because they

"MR. SPECTATOR,

are good for nothing else. If a young fellow finds he can make nothing of Coke and Littleton, he provides himself with a ladder of ropes, and by that means very often enters upon the premises.

The same art of scaling has been likewise practised with good success by many military engineers. Stratagems of this nature make parts and industry superfluous, and cut short the way to riches.

"I AM amazed that, among all the variety of characters with which you have enriched your speculations, you have never given us a picture of those audacious young fellows among us who commonly go by the name of the fortune-stealers. You must know, Sir, I am one who live in a continual apprehension of this sort of people, that lie in wait, Nor is vanity a less motive than idleness to this day and night, for our children, and may be con- kind of mercenary pursuit. A fop, who admires sidered as a kind of kidnappers within the law. I his person in a glass, soon enters into a resolution am the father of a young heiress, whom I begin to of making his fortune by it, not questioning but that ook upon as marriageable, and who has looked upon every woman that falls in his way will do him as herself as such for above these six years. She is much justice as he does himself. When an heiress now in the eighteenth year of her age. The fortune- sees a man throwing particular graces into his ogle, hunters have already cast their eyes upon her, and or talking loud within her hearing, she ought to take care to plant themselves in her view whenever look to herself; but if withal she observes a pair of she appears in any public assembly. I have myself red heels, a patch, or any other particularity in his caught a young jackanapes, with a pair of silver-dress, she cannot take too much care of her person. fringed gloves in the very fact. You must know, These are baits not to be trifled with, charms that Sir, I have kept her as a prisoner of state ever have done a world of execution, and made their since she was in her teens. Her chamber-windows way into hearts which have been thought impreg

nable. The force of a man with these qualifications is so well known, that I am credibly informed there are several female undertakers about the 'Change, who, upon the arrival of a likely man out of the neighbouring kingdom, will furnish him with a proper dress from head to foot, to be paid for at a double price on the day of marriage.

present condition, and thoughtless of the mutability of fortune. Fortune is a term which we must use in such discourses as these, for what is wrought by the unseen hand of the Disposer of all things. But methinks the disposition of a mind which is truly great, is that which makes misfortunes and sorrows little when they befal ourselves, great and lamentWe must, however, distinguish between fortune-able when they befal other men. The most unparbunters and fortune-stealers. The first are those donable malefactor in the world going to his death, assiduous gentlemen who employ their whole lives and bearing it with composure, would win the pity in the chase, without ever coming at the quarry. of those who should behold him; and this not beSaffenus has combed and powdered at the ladies for cause his calamity is deplorable, but because he thirty years together; and taken his stand in a seems himself not to deplore it. We suffer for him side-box, until he has grown wrinkled under their who is less sensible of his own misery, and are ineyes. He is now laying the same snares for the clined to despise him who sinks under the weight of present generation of beauties, which he practised his distresses. On the other hand, without any on their mothers. Cottilus, after having made his touch of envy, a temperate and well-governed mind applications to more than you meet with in Mr. looks down on such as are exalted with success, with Cowley's ballad of mistresses, was at last smitten a certain shame for the imbecility of human nature, with a city lady of 20,0001. sterling; but died of that can so far forget how liable it is to calamity as old age before he could bring matters to bear. Nor to grow giddy with only the suspense of sorrow, must I here omit my worthy friend Mr. Honey-which is the portion of all men. He, therefore, comb, who has often told us in the club, that for twenty years successively, upon the death of a childless rich man, he immediately drew on his boots, called for his horse, and made up to the widow. When he is rallied upon his ill success, Will, with his usual gaiety, tells us, that he always found her pre-engaged.

Widows are indeed the great game of your fortune-hunters. There is scarce a young fellow in the town, of six foot high, that has not passed in review before one or other of these wealthy relicts. Hudibras's Cupid, who

took his stand

Upon a widow's® jointure land,"

is daily employed in throwing darts, and kindling fames. But as for widows, they are such a subtle generation of people, that they may be left to their own conduct: or if they make a false step in it, they are answerable for it to nobody but themselves. The young innocent creatures who have no knowledge and experience of the world, are those whose safety I would principally consult in this speculation. The stealing of such a one should, in my opinion, be as punishable as a rape. Where there is no judgment there is no choice; and why the inveigling a woman before she is come to years of discretion should not be as criminal as the seducing of her before she is ten years old, I am at a loss to comprehend.-L.

No. 312] WEDNESDAY, FEB. 27, 1711-12. Quod huic officium, quæ laus, quod decus erit tanti, quod adipisci eum dolore corporis velit, qui dolorem summium malum sibi persuaserit? Quam porro quis ignominiam, quam turpitudinem non pertulerit, ut effugiat dolorem, si id summum malum esse decreverit?-TULL

who turns his face from the unhappy man, who will not look again when his eye is cast upon modest sorrow, who shuns affliction like a contagion, does but pamper himself up for a sacrifice, and contract in himself a greater aptitude to misery by attempting to escape it. A gentleman, where I happened to be last night, fell into a discourse which I thought showed a good discerning in him. He took notice, that whenever men have looked into their heart for the idea of true excellence in human nature, they have found it to consist in suffering after a right manner, and with a good grace. Heroes are always drawn bearing sorrows, struggling with adversities, undergoing all kinds of hardships, and having, in culties and dangers. The gentleman went on to the service of mankind, a kind of appetite to diffiobserve that it is from this secret sense of the high merit which there is in patience under calamities, that the writers of romances, when they attempt to furnish out characters of the highest excellence, ransack nature for things terrible; they raise a new. creation of monsters, dragons, and giants; where the danger ends, the hero ceases: when he has won an empire, or gained his mistress, the rest of his story is not worth relating. My friend carried his discourse so far as to say, that it was for higher beings than men to join happiness and greatness in the same idea; but that in our condition we have no conception of superlative excellence, or heroism, but as it is surrounded with a shade of distress.

give ourselves, to be prepared for the ill events and It is certainly the proper education, we should accidents we are to meet with in a life sentenced to be a scene of sorrow; but instead of this expectation, we soften ourselves with prospects of constant delight, and destroy in our minds the seeds of fortiWhat duty, what praise, or what honour will he think worth tude and virtue, which should support us in hours of enduring bodily pain for, who has persuaded himself that anguish. The constant pursuit of pleasure has in pain is the chief evil? Nay, to what ignominy, to what it something insolent and improper for our being. baseness, will he not stoop, to avoid pain, if he has deter-There is a pretty sober liveliness in the Ode of

mained it to be the chief evil?

It is a very melancholy reflection, that men are usually so weak, that it is absolutely necessary for them to know sorrow and pain, to be in their right senses. Prosperous people (for happy there are none) are hurried away with a fond sense of their

The name of the widow here alluded to was Tomson. See Grey's edit of Hudibras, vol. i. part. i. canto iii. p. 212, 213.

Horace to Delius, where he tells him, loud mirth, or immoderate sorrow, inequality of behaviour either in adversity or prosperity, are alike ungraceful in man that is born to die. Moderation in both circumstances is peculiar to generous minds. Men of that sort ever taste the gratifications of health, and all other advantages of life, as if they were liable to part with them, and when bereft of them, resign them with a greatness of mind which shows they

T.

"J. O."

know their value and duration. The contempt of let us know who gave him his scarf, he speaks a pleasure is a certain preparatory for the contempt of parenthesis to the Almighty. Bless, as I am in pain. Without this, the mind is, as it were, taken duty bound to pray, the right-honourable the counsuddenly by an unforeseen event; but he that has tess;' is not that as much as to say, Bless her, for always, during health and prosperity, been absti-thou knowest I am her chaplain? nent in his satisfactions, enjoys, in the worst of dif"Your humble Servant, ficulties, the reflection, that his anguish is not aggravated with the comparison of past pleasures which upbraid his present condition. Tully tells us a story after Pompey, which gives us a good taste of the pleasant manner the men of wit and philosophy had in old times, of alleviating the distresses of life by the force of reason and philosophy. Pompey, when he came to Rhodes, had a curiosity to visit the famous philosopher Possidonius; but finding him in his sick bed, he bewailed the misfortune that

he should not hear a discourse from him: "But you may," answered Possidonius; and immediately entered into the point of stoical philosophy, which says, pain is not an evil. During the discourse, upon every puncture he felt from his distemper, he smiled and cried out, Pain, pain, be as impertiDent and troublesome as you please, I shall never own that thou art an evil."

"MR. SPECTATOR,

No.313.1 THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 1711-12.
Exigite ut mores teneros ceu pollice ducat,

Ut si quis cera vultum facitJuv. Sat. vii. 227.
Bid him besides his daily pains employ,
To form the tender manners of the boy,

And work him, like a waxen babe, with art,

To perfect symmetry in ev'ry part.—CH. DRYDEN. mendation than by telling my readers that it comes I SHALL give the following letter no other recomfrom the same hand with that of last Thursday.

"SIR,

"I send you, according to my promise, some further thoughts on the education of youth, in which I intended to discuss that famous question, Whether the education at a public school, or under a private tutor, is to be preferred?'

"It is certain from Suetonius, that the Romans thought the education of their children a business properly belonging to the parents themselves; and Plutarch, in the Life of Marcus Cato, tells us, that as soon as his son was capable of learning, Cato would suffer nobody to teach him but himself, though he had a servant named Chilo, who was an excelgrammarian, and who taught a great many other youths.

"Having seen in several of your papers a con"As some of the greatest men in most ages have cern for the honour of the clergy, and their doing been of very different opinions in this matter, I every thing as becomes their character, and parti- shall give a short account of what I think may be cularly performing the public service with a due zeal best urged on both sides, and afterward leave every and devotion; I am the more encouraged to lay be-person to determine for himself. fore them, by your means, several expressions used by some of them in their prayers before sermon, which I am not well satisfied in. As their giving some titles and epithets to great men, which are indeed due to them in their several ranks and stations, but not properly used, I think, in our prayers. Is it not contradiction to say, illustrious, right reverend, and right honourable poor sinners? These distinc-lent tions are suited only to our state here, and have no place in heaven; we see they are omitted in the liturgy; which, I think, the clergy should take for their pattern in their own forms of devotion. There is another expression which I would not mention, but that I have heard it several times before a learned congregation, to bring in the last petition of the prayer in these words, O let not the Lord "Mr. Locke, in his celebrated treatise of educa be angry, and I will speak but this once;' as if tion, confesses that there are inconveniences to be there was no difference between Abraham's inter-feared on both sides: If,' says he, 'I keep my son ceding for Sodom, for which he had no warrant, as at home, he is in danger of becoming my young we can find, and our asking those things which we master; if I send him abroad, it is scarce possible are required to pray for; they would therefore have to keep him from the reigning contagion of rudemuch more reason to fear his anger if they did not ness and vice. He will perhaps be more innocent make such petitions to him. There is another at home, but more ignorant of the world, and more pretty fancy. When a young man has a mind to sheepish when he comes abroad.' However, as this

In the original publication of this paper in folio, there was the following passage, left out when the papers were printed

in volumes in 1712:

[Another expression which I take to be improper, is this, "the whole race of mankind," when they pray for all men; for race signifies lincage or descent; and if the race of mankind may be used for the present generation (though, I think. not very fitly), the whole race takes in all from the beginning to the end of the world. I don't remember to have met with that expression, in their sense, any where but in the old version of Psalm xiv. which those men, I suppose, have but little esteem for. And some, when they have prayed for all schools and nurseries of good learning, and true religion, especially the two universities, add these words, Grant that from them,

and all other places dedicated to thy worship and service, may come forth such persons," &c. But what do they mean by all other places? It seems to me, that this is either a tautology, as being the same with all schools and nurseries before ex

pressed, or else it runs too far: for there are several places dedicated to the divine service, which cannot properly be intended here.-Spectator in folio.

"On the contrary, the Greeks seemed more inclined to public schools and seminaries.

66

A private education promises, in the first place, virtue and good breeding; a public school, manly assurance, and an early knowledge in the ways of the world.

learned author asserts that virtue is much more difand that vice is a more stubborn, as well as a more ficult to be obtained than a knowledge of the world, dangerous fault than sheepishness, he is altogether for a private education; and the more so, because he does not see why a youth, with right management, might not attain the same assurance in his father's house, as at a public school. To this end, he advises parents to accustom their sons to whatever strange faces come to the house: to take them with them when they visit their neighbours, and to engage them in conversation with men of parts and breeding.

"It may be objected to this method, that conver less it be a conversation with such as are in some sation is not the only thing necessary; but that unmeasure their equals in parts and years, there can