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• Mr. Spectator,

THE project in yours of the 11th instant, of furthering the correspondence and knowledge of that considerable part of mankind, the trading world, cannot but be highly commendable. Good lectures to

young traders may have very good effects on their conduct; but beware you propagate no false notions of trade; let none of your correspondents impose on the world, by putting forth base methods in a good light, and glazing them over with improper terms. I would have no means of profit set for copies to others, but such as are laudable in themselves. Let not noise be called industry, nor impudence courage. Let not good fortune be imposed on the world for good management, nor poverty be called folly; impute not always bankruptcy to extravagance, nor an estate to foresight: niggardliness is not good husbandry, nor generosity profusion.

Honestus is a well meaning and judicious trader, hath substantial goods, and trades with his own stock, husbands his money to the best advantage, without taking all advantages of the necessities of his workmen, or grinding the face of the poor. Fortunatus

is stocked with ignorance, and consequently with selfopinion; the quality of his goods cannot but be suitable to that of his judgment. Honestus pleases discerning people, and keeps their custom by good usage; makes modest profit by modest means, to the decent support of his family whilst Fortunatus, blustering always, pushes on, promising much, and performing little; with obsequiousness offensive to people of sense, strikes at all, catches much the greater part; raises a considerable fortune by imposition on others, to the discouragement and ruin of those who trade in the same way.

'I give here but loose hints, and beg you to be very circumspect in the province you have now undertaken: if vou perform it successfully, it will be a very great

good; for nothing is more wanting, than that mechanic industry were set forth with the freedom and greatness of mind which ought always to accompany a man of a liberal education.

Your humble servant,

From my shop under the Royal Exchange, July 14.

• Mr. Spectator,

R. C.'

NOTWITHSTANDING the repeated cen sures that your spectatorial wisdom has passed upon people more remarkable for impudence than wit, there are yet some remaining, who pass with the giddy part of mankind for sufficient sharers of the latter, who have nothing but the former qualifications to recommend them. Another timely animadversion is absolutely necessary; be pleased therefore once for all to let these gentlemen know, that there is neither mirth nor good-humour in hooting a young fellow out of countenance; nor that it will ever constitute a wit, to conclude a tart piece of buffoonery with a "what makes you blush?" Pray please to inform them again, that to speak what they know is shocking, proceeds from ill-nature and a sterility of brain; especially when the subject will not admit of raillery, and their discourse has no pretension to satire but what is in their design to disoblige. I should be very glad too if you would take notice, that a daily repetition of the same overbearing insolence is yet more insupportable, and a confirmation of very extraordinary dulness. The sudden publication of this may have an effect upon a notorious offender of this kind, whose reformation would redound very much to the satisfaction and quiet of

( Your most humble servant,

F. B.'

No. CCCCXLIV. WEDNESDAY, JULY 30.

Parturiunt montes...........

The mountain labours, and is brought to-bed.

HOR.

IT gives me much despair in the design of reforming the world by my speculations, when I find there always arise, from one generation to another, successive cheats and bubbles, as naturally as beasts of prey, and those which are to be their food. There is hardly a man in the world, one would think, so ignorant, as not to know that the ordinary quack doctors, who publish their abilities in little brown billets, distributed to all who pass by, are to a man impostors and murderers; yet such is the credulity of the vulgar, and the impudence of these professors, that the affair still goes on, and new promises of what was never done before, are made every day. What aggravates the jest is, that even this promise has been made as long as the memory of man can trace it, and yet nothing performed, and yet still prevails. As I was passing along to-day, a paper given into my hand by a fellow without a nose, tells us as follows, what good news is come to town; to wit, that there is now a certain cure for the French disease, by a gentleman just come from his travels.

In Russel-Court, over against the Cannon-Ball, at the Surgeon's arms, in Drury-Lane, is lately come from his travels a surgeon, who hath practised surgery and physic both by sea and land these twentyfour years. He, by the blessing, cures the yellow'jaundice, green-sickness, scurvy, dropsy, surfeits, long sea-voyages, campaigns, and women's miscarriages, lying-in, &c. as some people that has been lame these thirty years can testify, in short, he

'cureth all diseases incident to men, women or chil'dren.'

If a man could be so indolent as to look upon this havoc of the human species which is made by vice and ignorance, it would be a good ridiculous work to comment upon the declaration of this accomplished traveller. There is something unaccountably taking among the vulgar in those who come from a great way off. Ignorant people of quality, as many there are of such, dote excessively this way; many instances of which every man will suggest to himself, without my enumeration of them. The ignorants of lower order, who cannot, like the upper ones, be profuse of their money to those recommended by coming from a distance, are no less complaisant than the others, for they venture their lives for the same admiration.

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The doctor is lately come from his travels, and has practised both by sea and land, and therefore cures the green sickness, long sea-voyages, cam'paigns, and lying-in.' Both by sea and land?....I will not answer for the distempers called sea-voyages and campaigns;' but I dare say, those of green-sickness and lying-in' might be as well taken care of if the doctor staid a-shore. But the art of managing mankind, is only to make them stare a little, to keep up their astonishment, to let nothing be familiar to them, but ever to have something in their sleeve, in which they must think you are deeper than they are. There is an ingenious fellow, a barber, of my acquaintance, who besides his broken fiddle and a dried sea monster, has a twine-cord, strained with two nails, at each end, over his window, and the words, rainy, dry, wet,' and so forth, written to denote the weather, according to the rising or falling of the cord. We very great scholars are not apt to wonder at this: but I observed a very honest fellow, a chance customer, who sat in the chair before me to be shaved, fix his eye upon this miraculous performance during the operation upon

his chin and face. When those and his head also were cleared of all incumbrances and excrescences, he looked at the fish, then at the fiddle, still grubling in his pockets, and casting his eye again at the twine, and the words writ on each side; then altered his mind as to farthings, and gave my friend a silver sixpence. The business, as I said, is to keep up the amazement; and if my friend had only the skeleton and kit, he must have been contented with a less payment. But the doctor we were talking of, adds to his long voyages, the testimony of some people that has been thirty years lame. When I received my paper, a sagacious fellow took one at the same time, and read until he came to the thirty years confinement of his friends, and went off very well convinced of the doctor's sufficiency. You have many of these prodigious persons, who have had some extraordinary accident at their birth, or a great disaster in some part of their lives. Any thing, however foreign from the business the people want of you, will convince them of your ability in that you profess. There is a doctor in Mouse-Alley, near Wapping, who sets up for curing cataracts upon the credit of having, as his bill sets forth, lost an eye in the emperor's service. His patients come in upon this, and he shews his muster-roll, which confirms that he was in his imperial majesty's troops; and he puts out their eyes with great success. Who would believe that a man should be a doctor for the cure of bursten children, by declaring that his father and grandfather were born bursten? But Charles Ingoltson, next door to the Harp in Barbican, has made a pretty penny by that asseveration. The generality go upon their first conception, and think no further; all the rest is granted. They take it, that there is something uncommon in you, and give you credit for the rest. You may be sure it is upon that I go, when sometimes, let it be to the purpose or not, I keep a latin sentence in my

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