PART III so that by intendment of law he may come to his wife, and his wife hath issue, no proof is to be admitted to to prove the child a bastard, unless there is an apparent impossibility that the husband should be the father of it. If the husband is but eight years old, then such issue is a bastard, though born within marriage; but if the issue is born within a day after marriage, be tween parties of full age, when the husband is under no apparent impossibility, the child is legitimate, and supposed to be the child of the husband.

V. 603. More wretched than an ancient villain.] Villanage was an ancient tenure, by which the tenants were obliged to perform the most abject and slavish services for their lords.

legal

V. 613. legal cuckold.] One that has proved himself such upon a legal trial against the adulterer, in order to recover damages. Dr. Grey says, "The story is well known of an old woman, who, hearing a young fellow call his dog cuckold, said to him, are you not ashamed to call a dog by a Christian's name." In the Earl of Strafford's Collection of Letters and Dispatches, we meet with the following story, told in a letter from the Reverend Mr. Garrard to the Earl. "Sir Gervas Clifton was in town this last term, and will be again in candlemas term. His old friend and yours, Sir Edmund Bacon, meeting him here, asked him whether he should marry again, he said yes: A young one or an old? Sir Gervas said, he had traded with old flesh long enough, now he was for a breach; Sir Edmund replied, bidding him remember, that horn work stood ever nearest the breach."

V. 615-6. A law that most unjustly yokes

All John of Stiles to Joans of Nokes.] Two fictitious names, only made use of by young lawyers in stating cases. These imaginary persons have been so long set at variance by the gentlemen of the long robe, that at length they grew weary of being involuntary opponents, and agreed to join in this humourous petition to the Spectator.

"The humble Petition of John of Nokes and John of Stiles, sheweth,

"That your petitioners have had causes depending in Westminster Hall above five hundred years; and that we despair of ever seeing them brought to an issue: That your petitioners have not been involved in these law-suits by any litigious temper of their own, but by the instigation of contentious persons: That the young lawyers in our inns of court are continually setting us together by the ears, and think they do us no hurt, because they plead for us without a fee: That many of the gentlemen of the robe have no other clients in the world besides us two: That when they have nothing else to do, they make us plaintiffs and defendants, though they were never retained by either of us: That they traduce, condemn, or acquit us, without any manner of regard to our reputation and good names in the world. Your petitioners therefore humbly pray that you will put an end to the controversies which have been so long depending between us, and that our enmity may not endure from generation to generation, it being our resolution to live hereafter as becometh men of peaceable dispositions." Spectator, No. 577. V. 627-8. While nothing else but rem în re

Can set the proudest wretches free.] Divorces, by the custom of the law of England, are never granted except in cases of absolute adultery. Dr. Grey, in his note upon this passage, says, we have an instance to the contrary in the poor cavalier corporal, (see Tatler, No. 164,) who being condemned to die, wrote this letter to his wife the day before he expected to suffer, thinking it would come to hand the day after his execution.

"Dear Wife,

"Hoping you are in good health, as I am at this present writing, this is to let you know, that yesterday, between the hours of eleven and twelve, I was hanged, drawn, and quartered. I died very penitently, and VOL. II.

K

every body thought my case very hard. Remember me kindly to my poor fatherless children. "Your's, till death,

"W. B."

"It so happened, that this honest fellow was relieved by a party of his friends, and had the satisfaction to see all the rebels hanged who had been his enemies. I must not omit a circumstance which exposed him to raillery his whole life after. Before the arrival of the next post, which would have set all things clear, his wife was married to a second husband, who lived in the peaceable possession of her; and the corporal, who. was a man of plain understanding, did not care to stir in the matter, as knowing that she had the news of his death under his own hand, which she might have produced upon occasion."

V. 631-2. As spiders never seek the fly,

But leave him of himself t' apply.] There is a great deal of humour in this simile. The spider, after he has spuń his web, retires to his hole, or to some place where he is out of sight, and leaves the event to chance: and the fly that is entangled in the cobweb may be said to be so through its own inadvertence, since it is in its own choice whether it came there or not. This is exactly the case with marriage; it is a thing which people may either consent to, or refuse; and if it proves unhappy, they have the more to reproach themselves with, in as much as it was a matter of their own election.

V. 637.whom death would not depart.] Alluding to the several reviews of the Common Prayer before the last, where it stands, till death us depart; and then altered, till death us do part.

V. 639-40. Like Indian widows, gone to bed

In flaming curtains of the dead.] The practice of Indian widows burning themselves on the same funeral pile with their deceased husbands, is of the most remote antiquity, and so well authenticated, that there is not the slightest doubt of the fact. Mr. Hodges, who saw a woman commit herself to the pile, in the

neighbourhood of Benares, in the year 1781, gives the following particulars of the dreadful ceremony, which very nearly agree with what other writers have written on the same subject. Upon repairing to the spot, (says he, Travels in India. p. 81,) on the bank of the river where the ceremony was to take place, I found the body of a man on a bier, and covered over with linen, already brought down and laid at the edge of the river. At this time, about ten in the morning, only a few people were assembled, who appeared destitute of feeling at the catastrophe that was to take place; I may even say, that they displayed the most perfect apathy and indif ference. After waiting a considerable time, the wife appeared, attended by the Brahmins, and music, with some few relations. The procession was slow and solemn; the victim moved with a steady and firm step; and apparently with a perfect composure of countenance, approached close to the body of her husband, where for some time they halted. She then addressed those who were near her with composure, and without the least trepidation of voice or change of colour. She held in her left hand a cocoa-nut, in which was a red colour mixed up, and dipping in it the forefinger of her right hand, she maked those near her, to whom she wished to show the last act of attention. As at this time I happened to stand close to her, she observed me attentively, and with the colour marked me on the forehead. She might be about twenty-four or five years of age, a time of life when the bloom of beauty has generally fled the cheek in India: but she still preserved a sufficient share to prove, that she must have been handsome: her figure was small but elegantly turned, and the form of her hands and arms was particularly beautiful. Her dress was a loose robe of white flowing drapery, which extended from her head to her feet. The place of sacrifice was higher up on the bank of the river, a hundred yards or more from the spot where we now stood. The pile was composed of dry branches, leaves, and rushes, with a door on one side, and arched and covered on the top: by the side of the door stood

PART III. a man with a lighted brand. From the time the woman appeared to the taking up the body to convey it to the pile, might occupy a space of half an hour, which was employed in prayer with the Brahmins, in attentions to those who stood near her, and conversation with her relations. When the body was taken up she followed close to it, attended by the chief Brahmin; and when it was deposited in the pile, shre bowed to all around her, and entered it without speaking. The moment she entered, the door was closed; the fire was put to the combustibles, which instantly flamed, and immense quantities of dried wood and other matters were thrown upon it. This last part of the ceremony was accompanied with the shouts of the multitude, who now became numerons, and the whole seemed a mass of confused rejoicing."

V. 647. For as the Pythagorean soul.] Alluding to the doctrine of transmigration, which Pythagoras learnt from the philosophers of India. According to Sir William Jones, and others, the Brahmins of the present day teach the doctrine of transmigration, and hold, that the soul of a man who has lived virtuously in this life, is admitted at his death to the regions of celestial happiness, and having there enjoyed for an immensity of years the reward of his good actions, he is born again, until after repeated births he becomes purified from all taints and corruptions contracted in a sublunary state of existence, and is at length absorbed in the Divine Essence. On the contrary, those who have provoked "the Divine displeasure by their crimes, are delivered mp at their deaths to a variety of punishments, according to the magnitude of their offences; and afterwards are born again with the bodies of vegetables, insects, ravenous animals, or men of the lowest cast, in proportion to the nature of their several transgressions. Thus the slayer of a Brahmin, according to the heightening or palliating circumstances of his crime, must enter the body of a boar, a dog, an ass, a camel, a goat, a sheep,a stag, a chandala, or Puccassa (persons of the lowest casts): and a priest who has drunk spirituous liquors, migrates into the forms of a larger or smaller