the fuperficial parts of life than the folid and substantial bleffings of it. A girl who has been trained up in this kind of conversation, is in danger of every embroidered coat that comes in her way. A pair of fringed gloves may be her ruin. In a word, lace and ribbons, filver and gold galloons, with the like glittering gew-gaws, are so many lures to women of weak minds or low educations, and when artificially displayed, are able to fetch down the most airy coquette from the wildest of her flights and rambles. True happiness is of a retired nature, and an enemy to pomp and noise; it arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one's felf; and, in the next, from the friendship and converfation of a few select companions; it loves shade and folitude, and naturally haunts groves and fountains, fields and meadows: in short, it feels every thing it wants within itself, and receives no addition from multitudes of witnesses and spectators. On the contrary, false happiness loves to be in a crowd, and to draw the eyes of the world upon her. She does not receive any fatisfaction from the applauses which she gives herself, but from the adıniration which the raises in others. She flourishes in courts and palaces, theatres and affemblies, and has no existence but when she is looked upon. Aurelia, though a woman of great quality, delights in the privacy of a country life, and passes away a great part of her time in her own walks and gardens. Her hufband, who is her bosom friend and companion in her folitudes, has been in love with her ever since he knew her. They both abound with good sense, confummate virtue, and a mutual esteem; and are a perpetual entertainment to one another. Their family is under so 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 sometimes 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 servants, and are become the envy, or rather the delight, of all that know them. this How How different to this is the life of Fulvia! the con fiders her husband as her steward, and looks upon difcretion and good housewifry as little domestic virtues, unbecoming a Woman of Quailty. She thinks life lost in her own family, and fancies herself out of the world when she is not in the Ring, the Play-house, or the Drawing-room; the lives in a perpetual motion of body, and restlessness 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, modeft, and retired life, a poorspirited 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 the grows contemptible by being confpicuous. I cannot conclude my paper, without observing, that Virgil has very finely touched upon this female paffion for drefs and show, in the character of Camilla; who, though she seems to have shaken off all the other weaknesses of her fex, is still 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 clasp, and his " head was covered with an helmet of the fame thining "metal." The Amazon immediately fingled out this well-dressed warrior, being feized with a woman's long. ing for the pretty trappings that he was adorned with: - Totumque incauta per agmen Fæmineo prædæ & fpoliorum ardebat amore.. Æn. xi. ver. 782.. This heedless pursuit after these glittering, trifles, the poet (by a nice concealed moral) represents to have been the destruction of his female hero. C Monday N° 16. Monday, March 19. Quod verum atque decens curo & rogo, & omnis in boc fum. What right, what true, what fit we justly call, POPE. I HAVE received a letter, defiring me to be very fatirical 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 seen at the Rainbow Coffee-house in Fleet-street; a third sends me an heavy complaint against fringed Gloves. To be brief, there is scarce an ornament of either sex which one or other of my correspondents has not inveigh'd againft with some bitterness, and recommended to my obfervation. I must therefore, once for all, inform my 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 sentiments that give birth to all thofe little extravagancies which appear in their outward dress and behaviour. Foppish 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 therefore, as I have faid, apply my remedies to the first seeds and principles of an affected dress, 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 fmall 66 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 physician; the one might be employed in healing those blotches and tumours which break out in the body, while the other is sweetening the blood and rectifying the constitution. To speak truly, the young people of both fexes are so wonderfully apt to shoot out into long fwords or sweeping trains, bushy head-dresses, or full-bottom'd perriwigs, with several 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 correspondents 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 rashly and without advice. There is another set of correfpondents to whom I must address myself in the second place; I mean such as fill their letters with private fcandal 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 compofed by those who scarce know how to write. By the last post 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 on course that it brings me some account of a fallen virgin, a faithless wife, or an amorous widow. I must therefore inform these my correfpondents, that it is not my design to be a publisher of intrigues and cuckoldoms, or to bring little infamous stories out of their present 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 ufage I can receive from others, to make an example of any particular criminal. In short, I have fo 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 expose; and shall confider confider the crime as it appears in a species, not as it is circumstanced in an individual. I think it was Caligula who wished the whole ciry of Rome had but one neck, that he might behead them at a blow. I shall 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 neceffity, they are not exposed to this temp tation. In the next place, I must apply myself to my party correspondents, 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 opposite to him that writes the letter. About two days fince I was reproached with an old Grecian 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 extinguish 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 surprising 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 best assistance in the working of them up for a public entertainment. |