There is no man who loves his bottle or his mistress, in a manner so very abandoned, as not to be capable of relishing an agreeable character, that is no way a slave to either of those pursuits. A man that is temperate, generous, valiant, chaste, faithful, and honest, may, at the same time, have wit, humour, mirth, good-breeding, and gallantry. While he exerts these latter qualities, twenty occasions might be invented to shew he is mas ter of the other noble virtues. Such characters would smite and reprove the heart of a man of sense, when he is given up to his pleasures. He would see he has been mistaken all this while, and be convinced that a sound constitution and an innocent mind, are the true ingredients for becoming, and enjoying life. All men of true taste would call a man of wit, who should turn his ambition this way, a friend and benefactor to his country; but I am at a loss what name they would give him, who makes use of his capacity for contrary pur poses. STEELE, R. No. 52. MONDAY, APRIL 30, 1711. Omnes ut tecum meritis pro talibus annos VIRG. Æn. i. ver. 78. To crown thy worth, she shall be ever thine, AN ingenious correspondent, like a sprightly wife, will always have the last word. I did not think my last letter to the deformed fraternity would have occasioned any answer, especially since I had promised them so sudden a visit: but as they think they cannot shew too great a veneration for my person, they have already sent me up an answer. As to the proposal of a marriage between myself and the matchless Hecatissa, I have but one objection to it; which is, that all the society will expect to be acquainted with her; and who can be sure of keeping a woman's heart long, where she I am the more alarmed at may have so much choice? this, because the lady seems particularly smitten with men of their make. I believe I shall set my heart upon her; and think never the worse of my mistress for an epigram a smart fellow writ, as he thought, against her; it does but the more recommend her to me. At the same time I can not but discover that his malice is stolen from Martial: Tacta places, audita places, si non videare Whilst in the dark on thy soft hand I hung, YOUR letter to us we have received, as a signal mark of your favour and brotherly affection. We shall be heartily glad to see your short face in Oxford: and since the wisdom of our legislature has been immortalized in your speculations, and our personal deformities in some sort by you recorded to all posterity; we hold ourselves in gratitude bound to receive, with the highest respect, all such persons as for their ordinary merit you shall think fit, from time to time, to recommend unto the board. As for the Pictish damsel, we have an easy chair prepared at the upper end of the table; which we doubt not but she will grace with a very hideous aspect, and better become the seat in the native and unaffected uncomeliness of her person, than with all the superficial airs of the pencil, which (as you have very ingeniously observed) vanish with a breath, and the most innocent adorer may deface the shrine with a salu tation; and, in the literal sense of our poets, snatch and imprint his balmy kisses, and devour her melting lips. In short, the only faces of the Pictish kind that will endure the weather, must be of Dr. Carbuncle's dye; though his, in truth, has cost him a world the painting; but then he boasts with Zeuxes, In æternitatem pingo: and oft jocosely tells the fair ones, would they acquire colours that would stand kissing, they must no longer paint, but drink for a complexion: a maxim that in this our age has been pursued with no ill success; and has been as admirable in its effects, as the famous cosmetic mentioned in the Postman, and invented by the renowned British Hippocrates of the pestle and mortar; making the party, after a due course, rosy, hale, and airy; and the best and most approved receipt now extant for the fever of the spirits. But to return to our female candidate, who I understand is returned to herself, and will no longer hang out false colours; as she is the first of her sex that has done us so great an honour, she will certainly, in a very short time, both in prose and verse, be a lady of the most celebrated deformity now living; and meet with admirers here as frightful as herself. But, being a longheaded gentlewoman, I am apt to imagine she has some farther design than you have yet penetrated; and perhaps has more mind to the Spectator than any of his fraternity, as the person of all the world she could like for a paramour; and, if so, really I cannot but applaud her choice; and should be glad if it might lie in my power, to affect an amicable accommodation betwixt two faces of such different extremes, as the only possible expedient to mend the breed, and rectify the physiognomy of the family on both sides. And again, as she is a lady of a very fluent elocution, you need not fear that your first child will be born dumb, which otherwise you might have some reason to be apprehensive of. To be plain with you, I can see nothing shocking in it; for though she has not a face like a John-apple, yet, as a late friend of mine, who at sixty-five ventured on a lass of fifteen, very frequently, in the remaining five years of his life, gave me to understand, that, as old as he then seemed, when they were first married he and his spouse could make but fourscore; so may Madam Hecatissa very justly allege hereafter, that, as long-visaged as she may then be thought, upon their wedding-day Mr. Spectator and she had but half an ell of face betwixt them: and this my very worthy predecessor, Mr. Serjeant Chin, always maintained to be no more than the true oval proportion between man and wife. But as this may be a new thing to you, who have hitherto had no expectations from women, I shall allow you what time think fit to consider on it; not without some hope of seeing at last your thoughts here you upon subjoined to mine, and which is an honour much desired by, The following letter has not much in it, but, as it is written in my own praise, I cannot from my heart suppress it. · SIR, You proposed in your Spectator of last Tuesday, Mr. Hobbs's hypothesis for solving that very odd phanomenon of laughter. You have made the hypothesis valuable by espousing it yourself; for had it continued Mr. Hobbs's nobody would have minded it. Now here this perplexed case arises. A certain company laughed very heartily upon the reading of that very paper of yours; and the truth of it is, he must be a man of more than ordinary constancy that could stand it out against so much comedy, and not do as we did. Now there are few men in the world so far lost to all good sense, as to look upon you to be a man in a state of folly "inferior to himself." Pray then how do you justify your hypothesis of laughter? Your most humble, Thursday, the 26th of the month of fools. < SIR, you Q. R. In answer to your letter, I must desire you to recol lect yourself; and you will find, that when did me the honour to be so merry over my paper, you laughed at the idiot, the German courtier, the gaper, the merryandrew, the haberdasher, the biter, the butt, and not at Your humble servant, STEELE. THE SPECTATOR.' R. NA * See No. 47. No. 53. TUESDAY, MAY 1, 1711. -Aliquando bonus dormitat Homerus. HOR. Ars Poet. ver. 359. Homer himself hath been observ'd to nod. ROSCOMMON. My correspondents grow so numerous, that I cannot avoid frequently inserting their applications to me. Mr. SPECTATOR, I AM glad I can inform you, that your endeavours to adorn that sex, which is the fairest part of the visible creation, are well received, and like to prove not unsuc cessful. The triumph of Daphne over her sister Lætitia* has been the subject of conversation at several teatables where I have been present; and I have observed the fair circle not a little pleased to find you considering them as reasonable creatures, and endeavouring to banish that Mahometan custom, which had too much prevailed even in this island, of treating women as if they had no souls. I must do them the justice to say, that there seems to be nothing wanting to the finishing of these lovely pieces of human nature, besides the turning and applying their ambition properly, and the keeping them up to a sense of what is their true merit. Epictetus, that plain honest philosopher, as little as he had of gallantry, appears to have understood them, as well as the polite St. Evremont, and has hit this point very luckily. "When young women," says he, "arrive at a certain age, they hear themselves called Mistresses, and are made to believe, that their only business is to please the men: they immediately begin to dress, and place all their hopes in the adorning of their persons; it is therefore," continues he, "worth the while to endeavour by all means to make them sensible, that the honour paid to them is only upon account of their conducting themselves with virtue, modesty, and discretion." * See NO. 33. |