to the occasion, that expression is received with a loud laugh. They were as merry when a criminal was stabbed. It is certainly an occasion of rejoicing when the wicked are seized in their designs; but I think it is not such a triumph as is exerted by laughter. You may generally observe, that the appetites are sooner moved than the passions. A sly expression which alludes to bawdry, puts a whole row into a pleasing smirk; when a good sentence that describes an inward sentiment of the soul, is received with the greatest coldness and indifference. A correspondent of mine, upon this subject, has divided the female part of the audience, and accounts for their prepossessions against this reasonable delight, in the following manner: "The prude," says he, "as she acts always in contradiction, so she is gravely sullen at a comedy, and extravagantly gay at a tragedy. The coquette is so much taken up with throwing her eyes around the audience, and considering the effect of them, that she cannot be expected to observe the actors but as they are her rivals, and take off the observation of the men from herself. Beside these species of women, there are the examples, or the first of the mode. These are to be supposed too well acquainted with what the actor was going to say to be moved at it. After these one might mention a certain flippant set of females who are mimics, and are wonderfully diverted with the conduct of all the people around them, and are spectators only of the audience. But what is of all the most to be lamented, is the loss of a party whom it would be worth preserving in their right senses upon all occasions, and these are those whom we may indifferently call the innocent, or the unaffected. You may sometimes see one of these sensibly touched with a wellwrought incident; but then she is immediately so impertinently observed by the men, and frowned at by some insensibly superior of her own sex, that she is ashamed, and loses the enjoyment of the most laudable concern, pity. Thus the whole audience is afraid of letting fall a tear, and shun as a weakness the best and worthiest part of our sense." "SIR, "As you are one that doth not only pretend to reform, but effect it among people of any sense, makes me (who am one of the greatest of your admirers) give you this trouble to desire you will settle the method of us females knowing when one another is in town; for they have now got a trick of never sending to their acquaintance when they first come; and if one does not visit them within the week which they stay at home, it is a mortal quarrel. Now, dear Mr. Spec., either command them to put it in the advertisement of your paper, which is generally read by our sex, or else order them to breathe their saucy footmen (who are good for nothing else) by sending them to tell all their acquaintance. If you think to print this, pray put it into a better style as to the spelling part. The town is now filling every day, and it cannot be deferred, because people take advantage of one another by this means, and break off acquaintance, and are rude. Therefore pray put this in your paper as soon as you can possibly, to prevent any future miscarriages of this nature. I am, as I ever shall be, dear Spec., "Your most obedient, humble servant, "Pray settle what is to be a proper notification of a person's being in town, and how that differs according to people's quality." "MR. SPECTATOR, October 20. "I have been out of town, so did not meet with your paper, dated September the 28th, wherein you, to my heart's desire, exposed that cursed vice of ensnaring poor young girls, and drawing them from their friends. I assure you without flattery it has saved a 'prentice of mine from ruin; and in token of gratitude, as well as for the benefit of my family, I have put it in a frame and glass, and hung it behind my counter. I shall take care to make my young ones read it every morning, to fortify them against such pernicious rascals. I know not whether what you wrote was matter of fact, or your own invention; but this I will take my oath on, the first part is so exactly like what happened to my 'prentice, that had I read your paper then, I should have taken your method to have secured a villain. Go on and prosper. "Your most obliged humble servant." THERE are no authors I am more pleased with than those who show human nature in a variety of views, and describe the several ages of the world in their different manners. A reader cannot be more rationally entertained, than by comparing the virtues and vices of his own times with those which prevailed in the times of his forefathers; and drawing a parallel in his mind between his own private character, and that of other persons, whether of his own age, or of the ages that went before him. The contemplation of mankind under these changeable colors is apt to shame us out of any particular vice, or animate us to any particular virtue; to make us pleased or displeased with ourselves in the most proper points, to clear our minds of prejudice and prepossession, and to rectify that narrowness of temper which inclines us to think amiss of those who differ from us. If we look into the manners of the most remote ages of the world, we discover human nature in her simplicity; and the more we come downward toward our own times, may observe her hiding herself in artifices and refinements, polished insensibly out of her original plainness, and at length entirely lost under form and ceremony, and (what we call) good-breeding. Read the accounts of men and women as they are given us by the most ancient writers, both sacred and profane, and you would think you were reading the history of another species. Among the writers of antiquity, there are none who instruct us more openly in the manners of their respective times in which they lived, than but on a sudden her looks and her words are those who have employed themselves in satire, changed, she is nothing but fury and outrage, under what dress soever it may appear: as there noise and hurricane. are no other authors whose province it is to enter so directly into the ways of men, and set their miscarriages in so strong a light. Simonides, a poet famous in his generation, is, I think, author of the oldest satire that is now extant; and, as some say, of the first that was ever written. This poet, who flourished about four hundred years after the siege of Troy, shows by his way of writing, the simplicity, or rather coarseness, of the age in which he lived. I have taken notice, in my hundred-and-sixty-first speculation, that the rule of observing what the French call the Bienséance in an allusion, has been found out of latter years; and that the ancients, provided there was a likeness in their similitudes, did not much trouble themselves about the decency of the comparison. The satires or iambics of Simonides, with which I shall entertain my readers in the present paper, are a remarkable instance of what 1 formerly advanced. The subject of this satire is woman. He describes the sex in their several characters, which he derives to them from a fanciful supposition raised upon the doctrine of preexistence. He tells us that the gods formed the souls of women out of those seeds and principles which compose several kinds of animals and elements; and that their good or bad dispositions arise in them according as such and such seeds and principles predominate in their constitutions. I have translated the author very faithfully, and if not word for word (which our language would not bear), at least so as to comprehend every one of his sentiments, without adding anything of my own. I have already apologized for this author's want of delicacy, and must further premise, that the following satire affects only some of the lower part of the sex, and not those who have been refined by a polite education, which was not so common in the age of this poet. "In the beginning God made the souls of woman-kind out of different materials, and in a separate state from their bodies. "The souls of one kind of women were formed out of those ingredients which compose a swine. A woman of this make is a slut in her house and a glutton at her table. She is uncleanly in her person, a slattern in her dress, and her family is no better than a dunghill. "A second sort of female soul was formed out of the same materials that enter into the composition of a fox. Such a one is what we call a notable discerning woman, who has an insight into everything whether it be good or bad. In this species of females there are some virtuous and some vicious. "The sixth species were made up of the ingre dients which compose an ass, or a beast of bur den. These are naturally exceeding slothful, but, upon the husband's exerting his authority, will live upon hard fare, and do everything to please him. They are however far from being averse to venereal pleasures, and seldom refuse a male companion. 66 The cat furnished materials for a seventh species of women, who are of a melancholy, froward, unamiable nature, and so repugnant to the offers of love that they fly in the face of their husband when he approaches them with conjugal endear ments. This species of women are likewise subject to little thefts, cheats, and pilferings. "The mare with a flowing mane, which was never broke to any servile toil and labor, composed an eighth species of women. These are they who have little regard for their husbands, who pass away their time in dressing, bathing, and perfuming; who throw their hair into the nicest curls, and trick it up with the fairest flowers and garlands. A woman of this species is a very pretty thing for a stranger to look upon, but very detrimental to the owner, unless it be a king or a prince who takes a fancy to such a toy. "The ninth species of females were taken out of the ape. These are such as are both ugly and ill-natured, who have nothing beautiful in them selves, and endeavor to detract from or ridicule everything which appears so in others. "The tenth and last species of women were made out of the bee; and happy is the man who gets such a one for his wife. She is altogethe faultless and unblamable. Her family flourishe and improves by her good management. She loves her husband, and is beloved by him. She brings him a race of beautiful and virtuous chil dren. She distinguishes herself among her sex She is surrounded with graces. She never sit among the loose tribe of women, nor passes awa her time with them in wanton discourses. She full of virtue and prudence, and is the best wif that Jupiter can bestow on man." I shall conclude these iambics with the mott of this paper, which is a fragment of the sam author, "A man cannot possess anything that i better than a good woman, nor anything that i worse than a bad one.' "" "A third kind of women were made up of canine particles. These are what we commonly call scolds, who imitate the animals out of which they were taken, that are always busy and barking, that snarl at every one who comes in their way, and live in perpetual clamor. As the poet has shown a great penetration i this diversity of female characters, he has avoid ed the fault which Juvenal and Monsieur Boilea are guilty of, the former in his sixth, and th other in his last satire, where they have endeavo ed to expose the sex in general, without doir justice to the valuable part of it. Such levelin satires are of no use to the world; and for th reason I have often wondered how the Frenc author above-mentioned, who was a man of e quisite judgment, and a lover of virtue, cou think human nature a proper subject for satire another of his celebrated pieces, which is call the Satire upon Man. What vice or frailty can discourse correct, which censures the whole sp cies alike, and endeavors to show by some supe ficial strokes of wit, that brutes are the mo excellent creatures of the two? A satire shou expose nothing but what is corrigible, and ma a due discrimination between those who are a "The fourth kind of women were made out of the earth. These are your sluggards, who pass away their time in indolence and ignorance, hover over the fire a whole winter, and apply themselves with alacrity to no kind of business but eating. "The fifth species of females were made out of the sea. These are women of variable, uneven tempers, sometimes all storm and tempest, some-those who are not, the proper objects of it.—L. times all calm and sunshine. The stranger who sees one of these in her smiles and smoothness, would cry her up for a miracle of good-humor; No. 210.] WEDNESDAY, OCT. 31, 1711. Nescio quomodo inhæret in mentibus quasi sæculorum quo dam augurium futurorum: idque in maximis ingeniis altissimisque animis et existit maxiine, et apparet facillime. CIC., Tusc. Quæst. There is, I know not how, in minds a certain presage, as it were, of a future existence, this has the deepest root, and is most discoverable, in the greatest geniuses and most exalted souls. "TO THE SPECTATOR. "SIR, "I AM fully persuaded that one of the best springs of generous and worthy actions, is the having generous and worthy thoughts of ourselves. Whoever has a mean opinion of the dignity of his nature, will act in no higher a rank than he has allotted himself in his own estimation. If he considers his being as circumscribed by the uncertain term of a few years, his designs will be contracted into the same narrow span he imagines is to bound his existence. How can he exalt his thoughts to anything great and noble, who only believes that after a short turn on the stage of this world, he is to sink into oblivion, and to lose his consciousness forever? "For this reason I am of opinion, that so useful and elevated a contemplation as that of the soul's immortality cannot be resumed too often. There is not a more improving exercise to the human mind, than to be frequently reviewing its own great privileges and endowments; nor a more effectual means to awaken in us an ambition raised above low objects and little pursuits, than to value ourselves as heirs of eternity. "It is a very great satisfaction to consider the best and wisest of mankind in all nations and ages, asserting as with one voice this their birthright, and to find it ratified by an express revelation. At the same time if we turn our thoughts inward upon ourselves, we may meet with a kind of secret sense concurring with the proofs of our own immortality. "You have, in my opinion, raised a good presumptive argument from the increasing appetite the mind has to knowledge, and to the extending its own faculties, which cannot be accomplished, as the more restrained perfection of lower creatures may, in the limits of a short life. I think another probable conjecture may be raised from our appetite to duration itself, and from a reflection on our progress through the several stages of it. We are complaining,' as you observed in a former speculation, of the shortness of life, and yet are perpetually hurrying over the parts of it, to arrive at certain little settlements or imaginary points of rest, which are dispersed up and down in it.' • mains. The use therefore I would make of it is, that since Nature (as some love to express it) does nothing in vain, or to speak properly, since the Author of our being has planted no wandering passion in it, no desire which has not its object, futurity is the proper object of the passion so constantly exercised about it: and this restlessness in the present, this assigning ourselves over to further stages of duration, this successive grasping at somewhat still to come, appears to me (whatever it may be to others) as a kind of instinct, or natural symptom, which the mind of man has of its own immortality. "I take it at the same time for granted, that the immortality of the soul is sufficiently established by other arguments and, if so, this appetite, which otherwise would be very unaccountable and absurd, seems very reasonable, and adds strength to the conclusion. But I am amazed when I consider there are creatures capable of thought, who, in spite of every argument, can form to themselves a sullen satisfaction in thinking otherwise. There is something so pitifully mean in the inverted ambition of that man who can hope for annihilation, and please himself to think that his whole fabric shall one day crumble into dust, and mix with the mass of inanimate beings, that it equally deserves our admiration and pity. The mystery of such men's unbelief is not hard to be penetrated; and indeed amounts to nothing more than a sordid hope that they shall not be immortal, because they dare not be so. "This brings me back to my first observation, and gives me occasion to say further, that as worthy actions spring from worthy thoughts, so worthy thoughts are likewise the consequence of worthy actions. But the wretch who has degraded himself below the character of immortality, is very willing to resign his pretensions to it, and to substitute in its room a dark negative happiness in the extinction of his being. The admirable Shakspeare has given us a strong image of the unsupported condition of such a person in his last minutes, in the second part of King Henry the Sixth, where Cardinal Beaufort, who had been concerned in the murder of the good Duke Humphry, is represented on his death-bed. After some short confused speeches, which show an imagination disturbed with guilt, just as he is expiring, King Henry, standing by him full of compassion, says, "Now let us consider what happens to us when we arrive at these imaginary points of rest. Do we stop our motion and sit down satisfied in the settlement we have gained? or are we not removing the boundary, and marking out new points of rest, to which we press forward with the like eagerness, and which cease to be such as fast as we attain them? Our case is like that of a traveler upon the Alps, who should fancy that the top of the next hill must end his journey, because it terminates his prospect; but he no sooner arrives at it, than he sees new ground and other hills beyond it, and continues to travel on as before. "This is so plainly every man's condition in life, that there is no one who has observed anything, but may observe, that as fast as his time wears away, his appetite to something future re * Mean. Lord Cardinal! if thou thinkest on heaven's bliss, "The despair which is here shown, without a word or action on the part of a dying person, is beyond what can be painted by the most forcible expressions whatever. "I shall not pursue this thought further, but only add, that as annihilation is not to be had with a wish, so it is the most abject thing in the world to wish it. What are honor, fame, wealth, or power, when compared with the generous expectation of a being without end, and a happiness adequate to that being? "I shall trouble you no further; but with a certain gravity which these thoughts have given me, I reflect upon some things people say of you (as they will of all men who distinguish themselves), which I hope are not true, and wish you as good a man as you are an author. "I am, Sir, your most obedient, humble Servant, T. "T. D." No. 211.] THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 1711. Fictis meminerit nos jocari fabulis.—PHÆDR., 1. 1, Prol. Let it be remembered that we sport in fabled stories. HAVING lately translated the fragment of an old poet, which describes womankind under several characters, and supposes them to have drawn their different manners and dispositions from those animals and elements out of which he tells us they were compounded; I had some thoughts of giving the sex their revenge, by laying together in another paper the many vicious characters which prevail in the male world, and showing the different ingredients that go to the making up of such different humors and constitutions. Horace has a thought which is something akin to this, when, in order to excuse himself to his mistress for an invective which he had written against her, and to account for that unreasonable fury with which the heart of man is often transported, he tells us that, when Prometheus made his man of clay, in the kneading up of the heart, he seasoned it with some furious particles of the lion. But upon turning this plan to and fro in my thoughts, I observed so many unaccountable humors in man, that I did not know out of what animals to fetch them. Male souls are diversified with so many characters, that the world has not variety of materials sufficient to furnish out their different tempers and inclinations. The creation, with all its animals and elements, would not be large enough to supply their several extravagancies. Instead therefore, of pursuing the thought of Simonides, I shall observe, that as he has exposed the vicious part of women from the doctrine of pre-existence. some of the ancient philosophers have in a manner satirized the vicious part of the human species in general, from a notion of the soul's post-existence, if I may so call it and that as Simonides describes brutes entering into the composition of women, others have represented human souls as entering into brutes. This is commonly termed the doctrine of transmigration, which supposes that human souls, upon their leaving the body, become the souls of such kinds of brutes as they most resemble in their manners; or to give an account of it as Mr. Dryden has described it, in his translation of Pythagoras's speech in the fifteenth book of Ovid, where that philosopher dissuades his hearers from eating flesh : Thus all things are but alter'd, nothing dies, Plato, in the vision of Eurus the Armenian, which I may possibly make the subject of a future speculation, records some beautiful transmigrations; as that the soul of Orpheus, who was musical, melancholy, and a woman-hater, entered into a swan; the soul of Ajax, which was all wrath and fierceness, into a lion; the soul of Agamemnon, that was rapacious and imperial, into an eagle; and the soul of Thersites, who was a mimic and a buffoon, into a monkey. Mr. Congreve, in a prologue to one of his comedies, has touched upon this doctrine with great humor: Thus Aristotle's soul of old that was, May now be damn'd to animate an ass; Or in this very house, for aught we know, Is doing painful penance in some beau. I shall fill up this paper with some letters which my last Tuesday's speculation has produced. My following correspondents will show, what I there observed, that the speculation of that day affects only the lower part of the sex. "From my house in the Strand, October 3, 1711. MR. SPECTATOR, "Upon reading your Tuesday's paper, I find by several symptoms in my constitution that I am a bee. My shop, or, if you please to call it so, my cell, is in that great hive of females which goes by the name of the New Exchange; where I am daily employed in gathering together a little stock of gain from the finest flowers about the town, I mean the ladies and the beaux. I have a numerous swarm of children, to whom I give the best education I am able. But, Sir, it is my misfortune to be married to a drone, who lives upon what I get, without bringing anything into the common stock. Now, Sir, as on the one hand I take care not to behave myself toward him like a wasp, so likewise I would not have him look upon me as a humble bee; for which reason I do all I can to put him upon laying up provisions for a bad day, and frequently represent to him the fatal effects his sloth and negligence may bring upon us in our old age. I must beg that you will join with me in your good advice upon this occasion, and you will forever oblige " Your humble Servant, "MELISSA." "SIR, Piccadilly, October 31, 1711. "I am joined in wedlock for my sins to one of those fillies who are described in the old poet with that hard name you gave us the other day. She has a flowing mane, and a skin as soft as silk. But, Sir, she passes half her life at her glass, and almost ruins me in ribbons. For my own part, I am a plain handicraft man, and in danger of breaking by her laziness and expensive ness. Pray, master, tell me in your next paper whether I may not expect of her so much drudgery as to take care of her family, and curry her hide in case of refusal. "" 'Your loving Friend, "MR. SPECTATOR, "I am mightily pleased with the humor of the cat; be so kind as to enlarge upon that subject. "Yours till death, "JOSIAH HENPECK." "P. S. You must know I am married to a gri malkin." SIR, Wapping, October 31, 1711. "Ever since your Spectator of Tuesday las came into our family, my husband is pleased t call me his Oceana, because the foolish old po that you have translated says, that the souls o some women are made of sea-water. This, i seems, has encouraged my saucebox to be witt upon me. When I am angry, he cries, Prithee my dear, be calm; when I chide one of my se: vants, Prithee, child, do not bluster.' He ha the impudence about an hour ago to tell me, tha he was a seafaring man, and must expect to divid his life between storm and sunshine. When bestir myself with any spirit in my family, it i. to visit me in her company because he sings prettily, has roused me to rebel, and conveyed his intelligence to me in the following manner: My wife is a great pretender to music, and very ignorant of it; but far gone in the Italian taste. Tom goes to Armstrong, the famous fine writer of music, and desires him to put this sentence of Tully in the scale of an Italian air, and write it out for my spouse from him. An ille mihi Liber cui mulier imperat? Cui leges imponit, præscribit, jubet, vetat quod videtur? Qui nihil imperanti negare, nihil recusare audet? Poscit? dandum est. Vocat? veniendum. Ejicit? abeundum. Minitatur? extimiscendum. 'Does he live like a gentleman who is commanded by a woman? He to whom she gives law, grants and denies what she pleases? who can neither deny her anything she asks, or refuse to do anything she commands?' "To be short, my wife was extremely pleased with it; said the Italian was the only language for music; and admired how wonderfully tender the sentiment was, and how pretty the accent is of that language; with the rest that is said by rote on that occasion. Mr. Meggot is sent for to sing this air, which he performs with mighty applause; and my wife is in ecstasy, on the occasion, and glad to find, by my being so much pleased, that I was at last come into the notion of the Italian: 'for,' said she, 'it grows upon one when one once comes to know a little of the language; and pray, Mr. Meggot, sing again those notes, Nihil Imperanti negare, nihil recusare.' You may believe I was not a little delighted with my friend Tom's expedient to alarm me, and in obedíence to his summons I give all this story thus at large; and I am resolved, when this appears in the Spectator, to declare for myself. The manner of the insurrection I contrive by your means, which shall be no other than that Tom Meggot, who is at our tea-table every morning, shall read it to us; and if my dear can take the hint, and say not one word, but let this be the beginning of a new life without further explanation, it is very well; for as soon as the Spectator is read out, shall, without more ado, call for the coach, name the hour when I shall be at home, if I come at all; if I do not, they may go to dinner. If my spouse only swells and says nothing, Tom and Ĭ together, and all is well, as I said before; but if she begins to command or expostulate, you shall in my next to you receive a full account of her resistance and submission, for submit the dear thing must, to, go out 'high sea' in his house; and when I sit still without doing anything, his affairs forsooth are 'windbound. When I ask him whether it rains, he makes answer, 'It is no matter, so that it be fair weather within doors.' In short, Sir, I cannot speak my mind freely to him, but I either swell or rage, or do something that is not fit for a civil woman to hear. Pray, Mr. Spectator, since you are so sharp upon other women, let us know what materials your wife is made of, if you have one. I suppose you would make us a parcel of poor-spirited, tame, insipid creatures; but, Sir, I would have you to know, we have as good pas1 sions in us as yourself, and that a woman was never designed to be a milk-sop. "MARTHA TEMPEST." L. No. 212.] FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 1711. Colla jugo, liber sum dic age- HOR. 2 Sat. vii, 92. "MR. SPECTATOR, "I NEVER look upon my dear wife, but I think of the happiness Sir Roger de Coverley enjoys, in having such a friend as you to expose in proper colors the cruelty and perverseness of his mistress. I have very often wished you visited in our family, and were acquainted with my spouse; she would afford you, for some months at least, matter enough for one Spectator a week. Since we are not so happy as to be of your acquaintance, give me leave to represent to you our present circumstances as well as I can in writing. You are to know, then, that I am not of a very different constitution from Nathaniel Henroost, whom you have lately recorded in your speculations; and have a wife who makes a more tyrannical use of the knowledge of my easy temper than that lady ever pretended to. We had not been a month married, when she found in me a certain pain to give offense, and an indolence that made me bear little inconveniences rather than dispute about them. From this observation it soon came to pass, that if I offered to go abroad, she would get between me and the door, kiss me, and say she could not part with me; then down again I sat. In a day or two after this first pleasant step toward confining me, she declared to me, that I was all the world to her, and she thought she ought to be all the world to me. If,' said she, my dear loves me as much as I love him, he will never be tired of my company.' This declaration was followed by my being denied to all my acquaintance; and it very soon came to that pass, that to give an answer at the door, before my face, the servants would ask her whether I was within or not; and she would answer no, with great fondness, and tell me I was a good dear. I will not enumerate more little circumstances, to give you a livelier No. 213.] SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 1711. sense of my condition; but tell you in general, that from such steps as these at first, I now live the life of a prisoner of state; my letters are opened, and I have not the use of pen, ink, and paper, but in her presence. I never go abroad, except she sometimes takes me with her in her coach to take the air, if it may be called so, when we drive, as we generally do, with the glasses up. I have overheard my servants lament my condition, but they dare not bring me messages without her knowledge, because they doubt my resolution to stand by them. In the midst of this insipid way of life, an old acquaintance of mine, Tom Meggot, who is a favorite with her, and allowed "Sir, "Your most obedient, humble Servant, "P. S. I hope I need not tell you that I desire this may be in your very next." -Mens sibi conscia recti.-VIRG., Æn. i, 608. A good intention. Ir is the great art and secret of Christianity, if I may use that phrase, to manage our actions to the best advantage, and to direct them in such a manner that everything we do may turn to account at that great day, when everything we have done will be set before us. In order to give this consideration its full weight, we may cast all our actions under the division of such as are in themselves either good, evil, or indifferent. If we divide our intentions after the same manner and consider them with |
