ous through all parts of your life. Your averfion to any oftentatious arts of fetting to show those great fervices, which you have done the public, has not likeways a little contributed to that univerfal acknowledgment which is paid you by your coun.

try.

THE confideration of this part of your character, is that which hinders me from enlarging on those extraordinary talents, which have given you fo great a figure in the British fenate, as well as on that elegance and politeness which appeared in your more retired conversation. I should be unpardonable, if, after what I have faid, I should longer detain you with an address of this nature: I cannot, however, conclude it without owning those great obligations which you have laid upon,

SIR,

Your most obedient,

humble Servant,

The SPECTATOR.

THE

SPECTATOR.

No 170.

i

VOLUME THIRD.

Friday, September 14, 1711..

In amore hæc omnia infunt vitia: injuriæ,

Suspiciones, inimicitiæ, induciæ,

Bellum, pax rurfum-

V

TER. Eun. act. 1. sc. I.

All these inconveniences are incident to love: reproaches. jealousies, quarrels, reconcilements, war, and then peace,

UPoondooking

corre

over the letters of my female spondents, I find several from women complaining

of jealous husbands, and at the same time protesting their own innocence; and defiring my advice on this occafion. I shall therefore take this subject into my confideration; and the more willingly, because I find that the Marquis of Halifax, who in his advice to a daughter, has instrusted a wife how to behave herself towards a false, an intemperate, a choleric, a fullen, a covetous, or a filly husband, has not spoken one word of a jealous husband.

JEALOUSY is that pain which a man feels from the apprehension that he is not equally beloved by the perSon whom he intirely loves. Now because our inward paffions and inclinations can never make themselves visible, it is impoffible for a jealous man to be thoroughly cured of his fufpicions. His thoughts hang at best in a state ofdoubtfulness and uncertainty: and are never capable of receiving any fatisfaction on the advantageous fide; so that his inquiries are most successful when they discover nothing: his pleasure arises from his disappointments, and his life is spent in pursuit of a fecret that destroys his happiness if he chance to find it.

An ardent love is always a strong ingredient in this paffion; for the fame affection which stirs up the jealous man's defires, and gives the party beloved so beautiful a figure in his imagination, makes him believe the kindles the fame paffion in others, and appears as amiable to all beholders. And as jealoufy thus arifes from an extraordinary love, it is of so delicate a nature, that it scorns to take up with any thing less than an equal return of love. Not the warmest expreffions of affection, the foftest and most tender hypocrify, are able to give any fatisfaction, where we are not perfuaded that the affection is real, and the fatisfaction mutual. For the jealous man wishes himself a kind of deity to the perfon he loves: he would be the only pleasure of her fenfes, the employment of her thoughts; and is angry at every thing fue admires, or takes delight in, befides himsfelf.

PHÆDRIA's request to his mistress, upon his leav.. ing her for three days, is inimitably beautiful and natural. Cum milite islo præfens, absens ut fies: Dies noftesque me amens: me defideres : Me fomnies: me expectes: de me cogites: Me speres: me te oblečtes ; mecum tota fis: Meus fac fis poftremo animus, quando ego fum tuus.

TER. Eun. act. 1. fc. 2.

"When you are in company with that foldier, behave as " if you were absent: but continue to love me by day " and by night: want me; dream of me; expect me; "think of me; wish for me; delight in me; be wholly " with me; in short, be my very foul, as I am yours."

THE jealous man's disease is of fo malignant a nature, that it converts all it takes into its own nourishment. A cool behaviour sets him on the rack, and is interpreted as an instance of averfion or indifference; a fond one raifes his fufpicions, and looks too much like diffimulation and artifice. If the perfon he loves be chearful, her thoughts must be employed on another; and if fad, the is certainly thinking on himself. In short, there is no word or gesture so infignificant, but it gives him new hints, feeds his fufpicions, and furnishes him with fresh matters of dif covery: so that if we confider the effects of this paffion, one would rather think it proceeded from an inveterate ha

tred, than an excessive love; for certainly none can meet with more disquietude and uneasiness than a suspected wife, if we except the jealous husband.

BUT the great unhappiness of this paffion is, that it naturally tends to alienate the affection which it is so solicitous to engross; and that for these two reafons, because it lays too great a constraint on the words and actions of the fufpected person, and at the fame time shews you have no honourable opinion of her; both of which are strong motives to averfion.

Nor is this the worst effect of jealoufy; for it oftendraws after it a more fatal train of consequences, and makes the perfon you suspect, guilty of the very crimes you are so much afraid of. It is very natural for fuch who are treated ill and upbraided falfely, to find out an inti mate friend that will hear their complaints, condole their fufferings, and endeavour to footh and affuage their fecret resentments. Besides jealousy puts a woman often in mind of an ill thing that she would not otherwife perhaps have thought of, and fills her imagination with fuch an unlucky idea, as in time grows familiar, excites defire, and loses all the shame and horror which might at first attend it. Nor is it a wonder if the who fuffers wrongfully in a man's opinion of her, and has therefore nothing to forfeit in his esteem, refolves to give him reason for his fufpicions, and to enjoy the pleasure of the crime, fince the must undergo the ignominy. Such probably were the confiderations that directed the wife man in his advice to husbands; Be not jealous over the wife of thy bosom, and teach her not an evil leffon against thyself. Eccl.

AND here, among the other torments which this paffion produces, we may usually obferve that none are greater mourners than jealous men, when the perfon who provoked their jealousy is taken from them. Then it is that their love breaks out furioufly, and throws off all the mixtures of fufpicion which choked and fmother'd it before. The beautiful parts of the character rise upperinost in the jealous husband's memory, and upbraids him with the ill usage of so divine a creature as was once in his poffeffion: whilft all the little imperfections, that were before so uneasy to him, wear off from his remembrance, and shew themselves no more.

WE

We may fee by what has been faid, that jealousy takes the deepest root in-men of amorous dipofitions, and of these we may find three kinds who are most over run with it.

THE first are those who are confcious to themselves of an infirmity, whether it be weakness, old-age, deformity, ignorance, or the like. These men are so well acquainted with the unamiable part of themselves, that they have not the confidence to think they are really beloved; and are fo diftrustful of their own merits, that all fondness towards them puts them out of countenance, and looks like a jest upon their perfons. They grow fufpicious on their first looking in a glass, and are stung with jealousy at the fight of a wrinkle. A handsom fellow immediately alarms them, and every thing that looks young and gay turns their thoughts upon their wives.

A SECOND fort of men, who are most liable to this paffion, are those of cunning, wary, and distrustful tempers. It is a fault very justly found in hiftories composed by politicians, that they leave nothing to chance or humour, but are ftill for deriving every action from some plot and contrivance, for drawing up a perpetual scheme of caufes or events, and preferving a constant correfpondence between the camp and the council-table, And thus it happens in the affairs of love with men of too refined a thought.

They put a conftruction on a look, and find out a defign in a fimile; they give new fenfes and significations to words and actions; and are ever tormenting themselves with fancies of their own raising. They generally act in a disguise themfelves, and therefore mistake all outward shows and appearances for hyprocrify in others; so that I believe no men fee less of the truth and reality of things, than these great refiners upon incidents, who are so wonderfully fubtile and over-wife in their conceptions.

Now, what these men fancy they know of women by reflection, your lewd and vicious men believe they have learned by experience. They have seen the poor husband so mifled by tricks and artifices, and in the midst of his enquiries so loft and bewildered in a crooked intrigue, that they ftill fufpect an under-plot in every female action; and especially where they fee any resemblance in the behaviour of two perfons, are apt to fancy it proceeds from the same design in both. These men therefore