downright affront to modesty. A disdainful look on
such an occasion is returned with a countenance re-
buked but by averting their eyes from the woman of
honour and decency, to some flippant creature who
will, as the phrase is, be kinder. I must set down
things as they come into my head, without standing
upon order. Ten thousand to one but the gay gentle-
man who stared, at the same time is a housekeeper;
for you must know they have got into a humour of
late of being very regular in their sins; and a young
fellow shall keep his four maids and three footmen
with the greatest gravity imaginable. There are no
less than six of these venerable housekeepers of my
acquaintance. This humour among young men of
condition is imitated by all the world below them,
and a general dissolution of manners arises from
this one source of libertinism, without shame or re-
prehension in the male youth. It is from this one
fountain that so many beautiful helpless young wo
men are sacrificed and given up to lewdness, shame,
poverty and disease. It is to this also that so many
excellent young women, who might be patterns of
conjugal affection, and parents of a worthy race,
pine under unhappy passions for such as have not
attention enough to observe, or virtue enough to
prefer, them to their common wenches. Now, Mr.
Spectator, I must be free to own to you, that I my-
self suffer a tasteless insipid being, from a couside-
ration I have for a man who would not, as he has
said in my hearing, resign his liberty, as he calls it,
for all the beauty and wealth the whole sex is pos-
sessed of. Such calamities as these would not hap-
pen, if it could possibly be brought about, that by
fining bachelors as Papists convict, or the like, they
were distinguished to their disadvantage from the
rest of the world, who fall in with the measures of
civil society. Lest you should think I speak this as
being, according to the senseless rude phrase, a ma-
licious old maid, I shall acquaint you I am a woman
of condition, not now three-and-twenty, and have
had proposals from at least ten different men, and
the greater number of them have upon the upshot
refused me. Something or other is always amiss
when the lover takes to some new wench. A set-
tlement is easily excepted against, and there is very
little recourse to avoid the vicious part of our youth,
but throwing one's self away upon some lifeless
blockhead, who, though he is without vice, is also
without virtue. Now-a-days we must be contented
if we can get creatures which are not bad; good are
not to be expected. Mr. Spectator, I sat near you
the other day, and think I did not displease your
spectatorial eye-sight; which I shall be a better
judge of when I see whether you take notice of
these evils your own way, or print this memorial
dictated from the disdainful heavy heart of,
"Sir, your most obedient humble Servant,
"RACHEL WELLADAY."

in which we are necessarily to have a commerce with them, that of love. The case of celibacy is the great evil of our nation; and the indulgence of the vicious conduct of men in that state, with the ridicule to which women are exposed, though never so virtuous, if long unmarried, is the root of the greatest irregularities of this nation. To show you, Sir, that (though you never have given us the catalogue of a lady's library, as you promised) we read good books of our own choosing, I shall insert on this occasion a paragraph or two out of Echard's Roman History. In the 14th page of the second volume, the author observes that Augustus, upon his return to Rome at the end of a war, received complaints that too great a number of the young men of quality were unmarried. The emperor thereupon assembled the whole equestrian order; and having separated the married from the single, did particular honours to the former; but he told the latter, that is to say, Mr. Spectator, he told the bachelors, that their lives and actions had been so peculiar, that he knew not by what name to call them; not by that of men, for they performed nothing that was manly; not by that of citizens, for the city might perish notwithstanding their care; nor by that of Romans, for they designed to extirpate the Roman name. Then, proceeding to show his tender care and hearty affection for his people, he further told them, that their course of life was of such pernicious consequence to the glory and grandeur of the Roman nation, that he could not choose but tell them, that all other crimes put together could not equalize theirs, for they were guilty of murder in not suffering those to be born which should proceed from them; of impiety, in causing the names and honours of their ancestors to cease; and of sacrilege, in destroying their kind which proceed from the immortal gods, and human nature, the principal thing consecrated to them: therefore, in this respect, they dissolved the government in disobeying its laws; betrayed their country by making it barren and waste; nay, and demolished their city, in depriving it of inhabitants. And he was sensible that all this proceeded not from any kind of virtue or abstinence, but from a looseness and wantonness which ought never to be er.couraged in any civil government. There are no particulars dwelt upon that let us into the conduct of these young worthies, whom this great emperor treated with so much justice and indignation; but any one who observes what passes in this town may very well frame to himself a notion of their riots and debaucheries all night, and their apparent preparations for them all day. It is not to be doubted but these Romans never passed any of their time innocently but when they were asleep, and never slept but when they were weary and heavy with excesses, and slept only to prepare themselves for the repetition of them. If you did your duty as a Spectator, you would carefully examine into the number of births, marriages, and burials; and when you have deducted out of your deaths all such as went out of the world without No. 529.] THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 1712.

marrying, then cast up the number of both sexes born within such a term of years last past; you might, from the single people departed, make some useful inferences or guesses how many there are left unmarried, and raise some useful scheme for the amendment of the age in that particular. I have not patience to proceed gravely on this abominable libertinism; for I cannot but reflect, as I am writing to you, upon a certain lascivious manner which all our young gentlemen use in public, and examine our eyes with a petulancy in their own which is a

т.

Singula quæque locum teneant sortita decenter.
HOR, Ars Poet. 22

Let every thing have its due place. RoscommoN.

UPON the hearing of several late disputes concerning rank and precedence, I could not forbear amusing myself with some observations which I have made upon the learned world, as to this great particular. By the learned world I here mean at large

605

all those who are any way concerned in works of li- to the learned world, and who regulate themselves terature, whether in the writing, printing, or repeat- upon all occasions by several laws peculiar to their ing part. To begin with the writers. I have ob- body; I mean the players or actors of both sexes.

served that the author of a folio, in all companies and conversations, sets himself above the author of a quarto; the author of a quarto above the author of an octavo; and so on, by a gradual descent and subordination, to an author in twenty-fours. This distinction is so well observed, that in an assembly of the learned, I have seen a folio writer place himself in an elbow-chair, when the author of a duodecimo has, out of a just deference to his superior quality, seated himself upon a squab. In a word, authors are usually ranged in company after the same manner as their works are upon a shelf.

The most minute pocket author hath beneath him the writers of all pamphlets, or works that are only stitched. As for the pamphleteer, he takes place of none but the authors of single sheets, and of that fraternity who publish their labours on certain days, or on every day of the week. I do not rind that the precedency among the individuals in this latter class of writers is yet settled.

For my own part, I have had so strict a regard to the ceremonial which prevails in the learned world, that I never presumed to take place of a pamphleteer, until my daily papers were gathered into

those

two first volumes which have

already appeared.

After which, I naturally jumped over the heads not only of all pamphleteers, but of every octavo writer in Great Britain that had written but one book. I am also informed by my bookseller, that six octavos have at all times been looked upon as an equivalent to a folio; which I take notice of the rather, because I would not have the learned world surprised if, after the publication of half a dozen volumes, I take my place accordingly. When my scattered forces are thus rallied, and reduced into regular bodies, I flatter myself that I shall make no despicable figure at the head of them.

Whether these rules, which have been received time out of mind in the commonwealth of letters, were not originally established with an eye to our paper manufacture, I shall leave to the discussion of others; and shall only remark further in this place, that all printers and booksellers take the wall of one another according to the above-mentioned merits of the authors to whom they respectively belong.

I come now to that point of precedency which is settled among the three learned professions by the wisdom of our laws. I need not here take notice of the rank which is allotted to every doctor in each of these professions, who are all of them, though not to high as knights, yet a degree above 'squires: 1 this last order of men, being the illiterate body of the nation, are consequently thrown together into a class, below the three learned professions. I mention this for the sake of several rural 'squires, whose reading does not rise so high as to The present State of England, and who are often apt to usurp that precedency which by the laws of their country is not due to them. Their want of learning, which has planted them in this station, may in some measure extenuate their misdemeanour; and our professors ought to pardon them when they offend in this particular, considering that they are in a state of ignorance, or, as we usually say, do not know their right hand from their left.

There is another tribe of persons who are retainers

In some Universities, that of Dublin in particular, they have doctors of music, who take rank after the doctors of the three learned professions, and above esquires.

Among these it is a standing and uncontroverted principle, that a tragedian always takes place of a comedian; and it is very well known the merry drolls who make us laugh are always placed at the lower end of the table, and in every entertainment give way to the dignity of the buskin. It is a stage maxim, "Once a king, and always a king." For this reason it would be thought very absurd in Mr. Bullock, notwithstanding the height and gracefulness of his person, to sit at the right hand of a hero, though he were but five foot high. The same dis tinction is observed among the ladies of the theatre. Queens and heroines preserve their rank in private conversation, while those who are waiting women and maids of honour upon the stage, keep their distance also behind the scenes.

I shall only add that, by a parity of reason, all writers of tragedy look upon it as their due to be seated, served, or saluted, before comic writers; those who deal in tragi-comedy usually taking their seats between the authors of either side. There has been a long dispute for precedeney between the tragic and heroic poets. Aristotle would have the latter yield the pas to the former; but Mr. Dryden, and many others, would never submit to this decision. Burlesque writers pay the same deference to the heroic, as comic writers to their serious brothers in the drama.

By this short table of laws order is kept up, and distinction preserved, in the whole republic of letters.-O.

No. 530.] FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 1712.
Sic visum Veneri; cui placet impares
Formas atque animos sub juga ahenea

Sævo mittere cum joco. Hor. 1 Od. xxxiii. 10.

Thus Venus sports; the rich, the base,
Unlike in fortune and in face,

To disagreeing love provokes;

When cruelly jocose,

She ties the fatal noose,

And binds unequals to the brazen yokes.-CREECH.

Ir is very usual for those who have been severe upon marriage, in some part or other of their lives, to enter into the fraternity which they have ridiculed, and to see their raillery return upon their own heads. I scarce ever knew a woman-hater that did not, sooner or later, pay for it. Marriage, which is a blessing to another man, falls upon such a one as a judgment. Mr. Congreve's Old Bachelor is set forth to us with much wit and humour, as an example of this kind. In short, those who have most distinguished themselves by railing at the sex in general, very often make an honourable amends, by choosing one of the most worthless persons of it for a companion and yokefellow. Hymen takes his revenge in kind on those who turn his mysteries into ridicule.

a farmer's

My friend Will Honeycomb, who was so unmercifully witty upon the women, in a couple of letters which I lately communicated to the public, has given the ladies ample satisfaction by marrying daughter; a piece of news which came to our club by the last post. The templar is very positive that he has married a dairy-maid: but Will, in his letter to me on this occasion, sets the best face upon the matter that he can, and gives a more tolerable account of his spouse. I must confess I suspected something more than ordinary, when upon opening

the letter I found that Will was fallen off from his former gaiety, having changed "Dear Spec.," which was his usual salute at the beginning of the letter, into "My worthy Friend," and subscribed himself at the latter end of it at full length William Honeycomb. In short, the gay, the loud, the vain Will Honeycomb, who had made love to every great fortune that has appeared in town for about thirty years No. 531.] SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 1712.

tion, as a prudent head of a family, a good husband, a careful father (when it shall so happen), and as "Your most sincere Friend,

0.

and humble Servant,
"WILLIAM HONEYCOMB.

:

together, and boasted of favours from ladies whom he had never seen, is at length wedded to a plain country girl.

His letter gives us the picture of a converted rake. The sober character of the husband is dashed with the man of the town, and enlivened with those little eant phrases, which have made my friend Will often thought very pretty company. But let us hear what he says for himself:

"MY WORTHY FRIEND,

Who guides below, and rules above,
The great Disposer, and the mighty King.
Than he none greater. hke lum none
That can be, is, or was;

Supreme he singly fills the throne. CREECH.

SIMONIDES being asked by Dionysius the tyrant what God was, desired a day's time to consider of it before he made his reply. When the day was expired he desired two days; and afterward, instead of returning his answer, demanded still double the time to consider of it. This great poet and philosopher, the more he contemplated the nature of the Deity, found that he waded but the more out of his depth; and that he lost himself in the thought, instead of finding an end to it.

If we consider the idea which wise men, by the light of reason, have framed of the Divine Being, it amounts to this; that he has in him all the per fection of a spiritual nature. And, since we have no notion of any kind of spiritual perfection but what we discover in our own souls, we join infinitude to each kind of these perfections, and what is a faculty in a human soul becomes an attribute in God. We exist in place and time; the Divine Being fills the immensity of space with his presence, and inhabits eternity. We are possessed of a little power and a little knowledge: The Divine Being is almighty and omniscient. In short, by adding infinity to any kind of perfection we enjoy, and by joining all these different kinds of perfection in one being, we form our idea of the great Sovereign of nature.

" I question not but you, and the rest of my acquaintance, wonder that I, who have lived in the smoke and gallantries of the town for thirty years together, should all on a sudden grow fond of a country life. Had not my dog of a steward ran away as he did without making up his accounts, I had still been immersed in sin and sea-coal. But since my late forced visit to my estate, I am so pleased with it, that I am resolved to live and die upon it. I am every day abroad among my aeres, and can scarce forbear filling my letter with breezes, shades, flowers, meadows, and purling streams. The simplicity of manners, which I have heard you so often speak of, and which appears here in perfection, charms me wonderfully. As an instance of it I must acquaint you, and by your means the whole club, that I have lately married one of my tenant's daughters. She is born of honest parents; and though she has no portion, she has a great deal of virtue. The natural sweetness and innocence of her behaviour, the freshness of her complexion, the unaffected turn of her shape and person, shot me through and through every time that I saw her, and did more execution upon me in grogram than the greatest beauty in town or court had ever done in brocade. In short, she is such a one as promises me a good heir to my estate; and if by her means I cannot leave to my children what are falsely called the gifts of birth, high titles, and alliances, I hope to convey to them the more real and valuable gifts of birth strong bodies and healthy constitutions. As for your fine women, I need not tell thee that I know them. I have had my share in their graces; but no more of that. It shall be my business hereafter to live the life of an honest man, and to act as becomes the master of a family. I question not but I shall draw upon me the raillery of the town, and be treated to the tune of, The Marriage-hater Matched; but I am prepared for it. I have been as witty upon others in my time. To tell thee truly, ble we can to the Supreme Being, we enlarge every I saw such a tribe of fashionable young fluttering one of these with our own idea of infinity; and so coxcombs shot up, that I did not think my post of an homme de ruelle any longer tenable. I felt a certain stiffness in my limbs, which entirely destroyed the jantiness of air I was once master of. Besides, for I may now confess my age to thee, I have been eight-and-forty above these twelve years, Since my retirement into the country will make a vacancy in the club, I could wish you would fill up my place with my friend Tom Dapperwit. He has an infinite deal of fire, and knows the town. For my own part, as I have said before, I shall endeavour to live hereafter suitable to a man in my sta

Though every one who thinks must have made this observation, I shall produce Mr. Locke's at thority to the same purpose, out of his Essay on Human Understanding: "If we examine the idea we have of the incomprehensible Supreme Being, we shall find that we come by it the same way; and that the complex ideas we have both of God and separate spirits, are made up of the simple ideas we receive from reflection; v. g. having, from what we experience in ourselves, got the ideas of existence and duration, of knowledge and power, of pleasure, and happiness, and of several other qualities and powers, which it is better to have than to be without; when we would frame an idea the most suita

putting them together make our complex idea of God."

It is not impossible that there may be many kinds of spiritual perfection, besides those which-are lodged in a human soul; but it is impossible that we should have ideas of any kinds of perfection, except those of which we have some small rays and short imperfect strokes in ourselves. It would therefore be a very high presumption to detersine whether the Supreme Being has not many more attributes than those which enter into our concep tions of him. This is certain, that if there be any kind of spiritual perfection which is not marked out in the human soul, it belongs in its fulness to the divine nature..

Several eminent philosophers have imagined that the soul, in her separate state, may have new faculties springing up in her, which she is not capable of exerting during her present union with the body; and whether these faculties may not correspond with other attributes in the divine nature, and open to us hereafter new matter of wonder and adoration, we are altogether ignorant. This, as I have said before, we ought to acquiesce in, that the Sovereign Being, the great Author of Nature, has in him all possible perfections, as well in kind as in degree: to speak according to our methods of conceiving, I shall only add under this head, that when we have raised our notion of this infinite Being as high as it is possible for the mind of man to go, it will fall in finitely short of what he really is. "There is no end of his greatness." The most exalted creature he has made is only capable of adoring it; none but himself can comprehend it.

man, who was an honour to his country, and a more diligent as well as successful inquirer into the works of nature than any other our nation has ever produced. "He had the profoundest veneration for the great God of heaven and earth that I have ever observed in any person. The very name of God was never mentioned by him without a pause and a visible stop in his discourse; in which one, that knew him most particularly above twenty years, has told me that he was so exact, that he does not remember to have observed him once to fail in it."

Every one knows the veneration which was paid by the Jews to a name so great, wonderful, and holy. They would not let it enter even into their religious discourses. What can we then think of those who make use of so temendous a name in the ordinary expressions of their anger, mirth, and most impertinent passions? of those who admit it into the most familiar questions and assertions, ludicrous phrases, and works of humour? not to mention those who violate it by solemn perjuries! It would be an affront to reason to endeavour to set forth the horror and profaneness of such a practice. The very mention of it exposes it sufficiently to those in whom the light of nature, not to say reli

The advice of the son of Sirach is very just and sublime in this light. "By his word all things consist. We may speak much, and yet come short: wherefore in sum he is all. How shall we be able to mag-gion, is not utterly extinguished.-O.

nify him? for he is great above all his works. The Lord is terrible and very great; and marvellous is his power. When you glorify the Lord, exalt him as much as you can: for even yet will he far exceed. And when you exalt him, put forth all your strength, and be not weary; for you can never go far enough. Who hath seen him, that he might tell us? and who can magnify him as he is? There are yet hid greater things than these be, for we have seen but a few of his works."

I have here only considered the Supreme Being by the light of reason and philosophy. If we would see him in all the wonders of his mercy, we must have recourse to revelation, which represents him to us not only as infinitely great and glorious, but as infinitely good and just in his dispensations towards man. But as this is a theory which falls under every one's consideration, though indeed it can never be sufficiently considered, I shall here only take notice of that habitual worship and veneration which we ought to pay to this Almighty Being. We should often refresh our minds with the thought of him, and

No. 532.] MONDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 1712.

-Fungor vice colis, acutum
Reddere quæ ferrum valet, exsors ipsa secandi
HOR. Ars Poet. ver. 304.

I play the whetstone; useless, and unfit
To cut myself, I sharpen other's wit. -CREECH.

Ir is a very honest action to be studious to produce other men's merit; and I make no scruple of saying, I have as much of this temper as any man in the world. It would not be a thing to be bragged of, but that it is what any man may be master of, who will take pains enough for it. Much observation of the unworthiness in being pained at the ex cellence of another, will bring you to a scorn of yourself for that unwillingness; and when you have got so far, you will find it a greater pleasure than you ever before knew to be zealous in promoting the fame and welfare of the praiseworthy. I do not speak this as pretending to be a mortified self-deny. ing man, but as one who has turned his ambition into a right channel. I claim to myself the merit of

annihilate ourselves before him, in the contempla- having extorted excellent productions ctions from a person tion of our own worthlessness, and of his transcen- of the greatest abilities, who would not have let them dant excellency and perfection. This would imprint appeared by any other means;† to have animated a in our minds such a constant and uninterrupted awe few young gentlemen into worthy pursuits, who will and veneration as that which I am here recommend- be a glory to our age; and at all times, and by all ing, and which is in reality a kind of incessant possible means in my power, undermined the inte

prayer, and reasonable humiliation of the soul before

him who made it.

rest of ignorance, vice, and folly, and attempted to substitute in their stead learning, piety, and good sense. It is from this honest heart that I find my. self honoured as a gentleman-usher to the arts and sciences. Mr. Tickell and Mr. Pope have, it seems, this idea of me. The former has writ me an excellent paper of verses, in praise, forsooth, of myself; and the other enclosed for my perusal an admirable poem, which I hope will shortly see the light. In the mean time I cannot suppress any thought of his, but insert this sentiment about the dying words of Adrian. I will not determine in the case he mentions; but have thus much to say in favour of his argument, that many of his own works, which I have seen, convince me that very pretty and very

See Bishop Burnet's sermon, preached at the funeral of the Honourable Robert Boyle. + Addison. The Temple of Fame.