• 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 flage: in which you will do a great act of charity to

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• Your most humble servant,

Mr. SPECTATOR,

WILLIAM SCRENE."

NDERSTANDING that Mr. Screne has writ to

you,

and defired

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 prefume I am a master, to wit, in • representing human and still life together. I have fe• veral times acted one of the finest flower-pots in the * fame opera wherein Mr. Screne is a chair; therefore upon his promotion, request that I may fucceed him in

* the hangings, with my hand in the orange-trees.

८

'SIR,

• Your humble fervant,

RALPH SIMPLE.

Drury-Lane, March 24, 1710-11.

SAW your friend the Templar this evening in the

• 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 relation to plays as well as operas. It certainly requires a degree of understanding to play justly; but such 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 Shakefpear; but then it is the disturbance of a noble mind, ' from generous and humane resentments; 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 fuch incidents paffion gets the better of ' reason; and all we can think to comfort ourselves, is 'impotent against half what we feel. I will not men' tion that we had an idiot in the scene, and all the sense ' it is represented to have is that of luft. As for my' self, who have long taken pains in perfonating the paf

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fions, 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 quart-pots, with a 'full gallon at my mouth. I am ashamed 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 ass may have been as dry as ever I was in my life.

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'I am, Sir,

Your most obedient and humble servant."

Mr. SPECTATOR,

From the Savoy in the Strand.

I F 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 applause; this I experienced since ⚫ the lofs of my diadem; for, upon quarrelling with an* other recruit, I fpoke my indignation out of my part in

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recitativo;

Most audacious slave,

" Dar'it thou an angry monarch's fury brave?

• The words were no fooner out of my mouth, when a * ferjeant knocked me down, and asked me if I had a * mind to mutiny, in talking things nobody understood. • You fee, Sir, my unhappy circumstances; and if by

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your mediation you can procure a fubfidy for a prince * (who never failed to make all that beheld him merry at * his appearance) you will merit the thanks of

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• Your friend,

The KING OF LATIUM.

FOR THE GOOD OF THE PUBLIC.

Within two doors of the Masquerade lives an eminent Italian Chirurgeon, arrived from the Carnival at ** Venice,

"Venice, of great experience in private cures. Accom"modations are provided, and perfons admitted in their

masquing habits.

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He has cured fince his coming thither, in less than a fortnight, four Scaramouches, a Mountebank Doctor. two Turkish Baflas, three Nuns, and a Morris-Dancer.

"Venienti occurrite morbo.

"N. B. Any perfon may agree by the great, and be kept in repair by the year. The Doctor draws teeth

"k

" without pulling off your mafk."

N° 23 Tuesday, March 27.

R

Sævit atrox Volfcens, nec teli confpicit ufquam
Auctorem, nec quò fe ardens immittere poffit.

VIRG. Æn.ix. 420.

Fierce Volfcens foams with rage, and gazing round
Defery'd not him, who gave the fatal wound;
Nor knew to fix revenge.---

T

DRYDEN.

a base unge-

HERE is nothing that nerous fpirit, than the giving of fecret stabs to a man's reputation. Lampoons and fatires, that are written with wit and fpirit, are like poifoned 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 poffeffion of an ill-natured There cannot be a greater gratification to a barbarous and inhuman wit, than to itir up forrow in the heart of a private perfon, to raise uneafiness among near relations, and to expose whole families to derition, at the fame time that he remains unfeen and undifcovered. If, befides the accomplishments of being witty and illnatured, a man is vicious into the bargain, he is one of the most mischievous creatures that can enter into a civil fociety. His fatire will then chiefly fall upon those who ought to be the most exempt from it. Virtue, merit, and and every thing that is praiseworthy, will be made the fubject of ridicule and buffoonry. It is impoffible to enumerate the evils which arife 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 fuffering 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 lose a confiderable fum of money, or even life itself, than be fet up as a mark of infamy and derifion? 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 fecret anguish. I have often observed a paffage in Socrates'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, fays, that he does not believe any the most comic genius can cenfure him for talking upon fuch a fubject at such a time. This pafsage, 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 feveral times present at its being acted upon the stage, and never exprefled the leaft resentment of it. But with fubmiffion, I think the remark I have here made shews us, that this unworthy treatment made an impreffion upon his mind, though he had been too wife to discover it.

When Julius Cæfar was lampoon'd by Catullus, he invited him to a fupper, 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 expoftulations upon what he had

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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 fecond edition of his book to the Cardinal, after having expanged the passages which had given him offence.

Sextus Quintus was not of so generous and forgiving a temper. Upon his being made Pope, the statue of Pafquin 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 fifter, who, before the promotion of her brother, was in those mean circumstances that Pasquin reprefented her. As this pasquinade made a great noise in Rome, the Pope offered a confiderable fum of money to any perfon that should discover the author of it. The author relying upon his Holiness's generofity, as also on some private overtures which he bad 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 fatirift 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 boasts that he had laid the Sophi of Perfia 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 fenfible of their reproaches, and consequently 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, whose reputation he thus affaults, in his body or in his fortune, could he do it with the same security. There is indeed something very barbarous and inhuman in the ordinary fcribblers of lampoons. An innocent young lady shall be exposed, for an unhappy feature. A fa