fome remedies; but if you can have refolution enough, rather stay in town, and recover yourself even in the town where fhe inhabits. Take particular care to avoid all places where you may poffibly meet her, and fhun the fight of everything which may bring her to your remembrance; there is an infection in all that relates to her: you'll find her house, her chariot, her domeftics, and her very lap-dog, are so many inftruments of torment. Tell me seriously, do you think you could bear the fight of her fan?" He shook his head at the quefton, and faid, "Ah! Mr. Bickerstaff, you must have been a patient, or you could not have been fo good a physician." "To tell you truly," faid I, "about the thirtieth year of my age, I received a wound that has still left a fcar in my mind, never to be quite worn out by time or philofophy.

"The means which I found the most effectual for my cure, were reflections upon the ill-ufage I had received from the woman I loved, and the pleasure I faw her take in my fufferings.

"I confidered the diftrefs fhe brought upon me the greatest that could befal a human creature; at the fame time that the did not inflict this upon one who was her enemy, one that had done her an injury, one that had wifhed her ill, but on the man who loved her more than any else loved her, and more than it was poffible for him to love any other person.

"In the next place, I took pains to confider her in all her imperfections; and that I might be fure to hear of them conftantly, kept company with those her female friends who were her dearest and most intimate acquaintance.

Among her highest imperfections, I still dwelt upon her baseness of mind and ingratitude, that made her triumph in the pain and anguish of the man who loved her, and of one who in those days (without vanity be it fpoken) was thought to deserve her love.

"To shorten my story, fhe was married to another, which would have distracted me, had he proved a good husband; but, to my great pleasure, he used her at firft with coldness and afterwards with contempt. I hear he still treats her very and am informed that the often says to her woman,This

il!;

is a just revenge for my falfehood to my first love: what a wretch am I, that might have been married to the famous Mr. Bickerstaff.""

My patient looked upon me with a kind of melancholy pleasure, and told me, he did not think it was poffible for a man to live to the age I am now of, who, in his thirtieth year, had been tortured with that paffion in its violence. "For my part," said he, "I can neither eat, drink, nor fleep in it; nor keep company with anybody but two or three friends who are in the fame condition."

"There," answered I, "you are to blame; for as you ought to avoid nothing more than keeping company with yourself, fo you ought to be particularly cautious of keeping company with men like yourself. As long as you do this, you do but indulge your diftemper.

If

'I must not difmifs you without further instructions. poffible, transfer your paffion from the woman you are now in love with to another; or if you cannot do that, change the paffion itself into fome other paffion, that is, to speak more plainly, find out fome other agreeable woman: or, if you cannot do this, grow covetous, ambitious, litigious; turn your love of woman into that of profit, preferment, reputation ; and, for a time, give up yourself entirely to the pursuit.

"This is a method we fometimes take in phyfic, when we turn a desperate disease into one we can more easily cure." He made me little anfwer to all this, but crying out, "Ah, fir!" for his paffion reduced his discourse to interjections.

"There is one thing," added I, "which is present death to a man in your condition, and therefore to be avoided with the greatest care and caution; that is, in a word, to think of your mistress and rival together, whether walking, difcourfing, dallying" "The devil!" he cried out, "who can bear it?" To compofe him, for I pitied him very much, “The time will come," faid I, "when you fhall not only bear it, but laugh at it. As a preparation to it, ride every morning an hour at least, with the wind full in your face. Upon your return, recollect the feveral precepts which I have now given

E

you, and drink upon them a bottle of fpaw water. Repeat this every day for a month fucceffively, and let me fee you at the end of it." He was taking his leave, with many thanks, and fome appearance of confolation in his countenance, when I called him back to acquaint him that I had private information of a defign of the coquets to buy up all the true fpaw water in town. Upon which he took his leave in hafte, with a refolution to get all things ready for entering upon his regimen the next morning.

Durate, & vofmet rebus fervate fecundis.

VIRG.

Hold out, and preferve yourfelves for Profperity.

HEN I look into the frame and conftitution of my own mind, there is no part of it which I obferve with greater fatisfaction, than that tenderness and concern which it bears for the

good and happiness of mankind. My own circumstances are indeed fo narrow and fcanty, that I should tafte but very little pleafure, could I receive it only from thofe enjoyments which are in my own poffeffion; but by this great tincture of humanity, which I find in all my thoughts and reflections, I am happier than any fingle perfon can be, with all the wealth, ftrength, beauty, and fuccefs, that can be conferred upon a mortal, if he only relishes fuch a proportion of these bleffings as is vefted in himself, and in his own private property. By this means, every man that does himself any real fervice, does me a kindness. I come in for my share in all the good that happens to a man of merit and virtue, and partake of many gifts of fortune and power that I was never born

to.

There is nothing in particular in which I fo much rejoice as the deliverance of good and generous fpirits out of dangers, difficulties, and diftreffes. And because the world does not

fupply inftances of this kind to furnish out fufficient entertainments for fuch a humanity and benevolence of temper, I have ever delighted in reading the hiftory of ages past, which draws together into a narrow compass the great occurrences and events that are but thinly fown in thofe tracts of time which lie within our own knowledge and obfervation. When I fee the life of a great man, who deserved well of his country, after having struggled through all the oppofitions of prejudice and envy, breaking out with luftre, and fhining forth in all the fplendour of fuccefs, I clofe my book, and am a happy man for a whole evening.

But fince in hiftory, events are of a mixed nature, and often happen alike to the worthlefs and the deserving, infomuch that we frequently fee a virtuous man dying in the midst of difappointments and calamities, and the vicious ending their days in profperity and peace; I love to amufe myself with the accounts I meet with in fabulous hiftories and fictions, for in this kind of writings we have always the pleasure of seeing vice punished and virtue rewarded: indeed, were we able to view a man in the whole circle of his existence, we should have the fatisfaction of seeing it close with happinets or misery, according to his proper merit: but though our view of him is interrupted by death before the finishing of his adventures (if I may speak), we may be sure that the conclufion and cataftrophe is altogether fuitable to his behaviour. On the contrary, the whole being of a man, confidered as a hero, or a knight errant, is comprehended within the limits of a poem or romance, and therefore always ends to our fatisfaction; so that inventions of this kind are like food and exercise to a good-natured difpofition, which they please and gratify at the same time that they nourish and strengthen. The greater the affliction is in which we see our favourites in these relations engaged, the greater is the pleasure we take in seeing them relieved.

Among the many feigned hiftories which I have met with in my reading, there is none in which the hero's perplexity is greater, and the winding out of it more difficult, than that in a French author whofe name I have forgot. It fo happens that the hero's mistress was the fifter of his most