bearing on his left arm a shield, on which was engraven the image of victory, and in his right hand a branch of olive. His visage was at once so winning and so awful, that the shield and the olive seemed equally suitable to his genius.

the very traces of my late waking thoughts be- | gan to fade away, when I was cast by a sudden whirlwind upon an island, encompassed with a roaring and troubled sea, which shaked its very centre, and rocked its inhabitants as in a cradle. The islanders lay on their faces, without offer- When this illustrious person* touched on the ing to look up or hope for preservation; all her shore, he was received by the acclamations of harbours were crowded with mariners, and tall the people, and followed to the palace of the vessels of war lay in danger of being driven to heroine. No pleasure in the glory of her arms, pieces on her shores. Bless me!' said I, 'why or the acclamations of her applauding subjects, have I lived in such a manner, that the convul- were ever capable to suspend her sorrow for one sion of nature should be so terrible to me, when moment, till she saw the olive-branch in the I feel in myself that the better part of me is to hand of that auspicious messenger. At that sight, survive it? Oh! may that be in happiness!' as heaven bestows its blessings on the wants and A sudden shriek, in which the whole people on importunities of mortals, out of its native bounty, their faces joined, interrupted my soliloquy, and and not to increase its own power or honour, in turned my eyes and attention to the object that compassion to the world, the celestial mourner had given us that sudden start, in the midst of was then first seen to turn her regard to things an inconsolable and speechless affliction. Im- below; and, taking the branch out of the warmediately the winds grew calm, the waves sub-rior's hand, looked at it with much satisfaction, sided, and the people stood up, turning their faces upon a magnificent pile in the midst of the island. There we beheld a hero of a comely and erect aspect, but pale and languid, sitting under a canopy of state. By the faces and dumb sorrow of those who attended, we thought him in the article of death. At a distance sat a lady whose life seemed to hang upon the same thread with his; she kept her eyes fixed upon him, and seemed to smother ten thousand thousand name-resolution without rage, returned him the olive, less things, which urged her tenderness to clasp him in her arms; but her greatness of spirit overcame those sentiments, and gave her power to forbear disturbing his last moment; which immediately approached. The hero looked up with an air of negligence, and satiety of being, rather than of pain to leave it; and, leaning back his head, expired.

and spoke of the blessings of peace, with a voice and accent, such as that in which guardian spirits whisper to dying penitents assurances of happiness. The air was hushed, the multitude attentive, and all nature in a pause while she was speaking. But as soon as the messenger of peace had made some low reply, in which, methought, I heard the word Iberia, the heroine, assuming a more severe air, but such as spoke

and again veiled her face. Loud cries and clashing of arms immediately followed, which forced me from my charming vision, and drove me back to these mansions of care and sorrow.

Mr. Bickerstaff thanks Mr. Quarterstaff for his kind and instructive letter dated the twenty-sixth instant.

Saturday, April 30, 1709.

Quicquid agunt homines

-nostri est farrago libelli. Juv. Sat. i. 85, 86. Whate'er men do, or say, or think, or dream, Our motley paper seizes for its theme.

Will's Coffee-house, April 28.

P.

THIS evening we were entertained with The tion. In the character which gives name to Old Bachelor, a comedy of deserved reputathe play, there is excellently represented the

reluctance of a battered debauchee to come into

When the heroine, who sat at a distance, saw his last instant come, she threw herself at his No. 9.] feet, and, kneeling, pressed his hand to her lips, in which posture she continued, under the agony of an unutterable sorrow, until conducted from our sight by her attendants. That commanding awe, which accompanies the grief of great minds, restrained the multitude while in her presence; but as soon as she retired, they gave way to their distraction, and all the islanders called upon their deceased hero. To him, methought, they cried out, as to a guardian being; and I gathered from their broken accents, that it was he who had the empire over the ocean and its powers, by which he had long protected the trammels of order and decency; he neither the island from shipwreck and invasion. They languishes nor burns, but frets for love. The now give a loose to their moan, and think themselves exposed without hopes of human or divine with much spirit and wit, and the drama introgentlemen of more regular behaviour are drawn assistance. While the people ran wild, and ex-duced, by the dialogue of the first scene, with pressed all the different forms of lamentation, methought a sable cloud overshadowed the whole land, and covered its inhabitants with darkness; no glimpse of light appeared, except one ray from heaven upon the place in which the heroine now secluded herself from the world, with her eyes fixed on those abodes to which her consort was ascended. Methought a long period of time had passed away in mourning and in darkness, when a twilight began by degrees to enlighten the hemisphere; and, looking round me, I saw a boat rowed towards the shore, in which sat a personage adorned with warlike trophies,

of Fondlewife is a lively image of the unsea,
uncommon, yet natural conversation. The part
sonable fondness of age and impotence. But,
instead of such agreeable works as these, the
town has for half an age been tormented with
insects called Easy Writers, whose abilities Mr.
Wycherly one day described excellently well in
lows is called Easy Writing, which any one
one word: That,' says he, among these fel-

from Holland, with the preliminaries of a peace.
*About this time the duke of Marlborough returned

By Congreve. His first play, and first acted in 1693.

may easily write.' Such janty scribblers are
so justly laughed at for their sonnets on Phillis
and Chloris, and fantastical descriptions in them,
that an ingenious kinsman of mine, of the
family of the Staffs, Mr. Humphrey Wagstaff by
name, has, to avoid their strain, run into a way
perfectly new, and described things exactly as
they happen; he never forms fields, or nymphs,
or groves, where they are not; but makes the
incidents just as they really appear. For an
example of it: I stole out of his manuscript the
following lines; they are a description of the
morning, but of the morning in town; nay, of
the morning at this end of the town, where my
kinsman at present lodges :

Now hardly here and there an hackney coach
Appearing, showed the ruddy morn's approach:
Now Betty from her master's bed had flown,
And softly stole to discompose her own.
The slipshod 'prentice, from his master's door,
Had pared the street, and sprinkled round the floor;
Now Moll had whirled her mop with dext'rous airs;
Prepared to scrub the entry and the stairs.
The youth with broomy stumps began to trace
The kennel edge, where wheels had worn the place.
The small-coal man was heard with cadence deep,
Till drowned in shriller notes of chimney-sweep.
Duns at his lordship's gates began to meet;
And brick-dust Moll had screamed thro' half a street:
The turnkey now his flock returning sees,
Daly let out a' nights to steal for fees:
The watchful bailiffs take their silent stands;
And school-boys lag with satchels in their hands.

make use of; but will not encroach upon the above-mentioned adepts, or any other. At the same time, I shall take all the privileges I may, as an Englishman, and will lay hold of the late act of naturalization to introduce what I shall think fit from France. The use of that law may, I hope, be extended to people the polite world with new characters, as well as the kingdom itself with new subjects. Therefore an author of that nation, called La Bruyere, I shall make bold with on such occasions. The last person I read of in that writer was lord Timon. Timon, says my author, is the most generous of all men: but is so hurried away with that strong impulse of bestowing, that he confers benefits without distinction, and is munificent without laying obligations. For all the unworthy, who receive from him, have so little sense of this noble infirmity, that they look upon themselves rather as partners in a spoil, than partakers of a bounty. The other day, coming into Paris, I met Timon going out on horseback, attended only by one servant. It struck me with a sudden damp, to see a man of so excellent a disposition, and who understood making a figure so well, so much shortened in his retinue. But, passing by his house, I saw his great coach break to pieces before his door, and, by a strange enchantment, immediately turned into many different vehicles. The first was a very pretty chariot, into which All that I apprehend is, that dear Numps will stepped his lordship's secretary. The second be angry I have published these lines; not that was hung a little heavier; into that strutted the he has any reason to be ashamed of them, but which was entered by the butler. The rest of fat steward. In an instant followed a chaise, for fear of those rogues, the bane to all excellent the body and wheels were forthwith changed performances, the imitators. Therefore, before-into go-carts, and run away with by the nurses hand, I bar all descriptions of the evening; as a medley of verses signifying grey peas are now cried warm; that wenches now begin to amble round the passages of the play-house: or of noon; as, that fine ladies and great beaux are just yawning out of their beds, and windows in Pallmall, and so forth. I forewarn also all persons from encouraging any draughts after my cousin; and foretel any man who shall go about to imitate him, that he will be very insipid. The family-stock is embarked in this design, and we will not admit of counterfeits. Dr. Andersont and his heirs enjoy his pills; Sir William Read; has the cure of eyes, and monsieur Rossellis only can cure the gout. We pretend to none of these things; but to examine who and who are together, to tell any mistaken man he is not what he believes he is, to distinguish merit, and expose false pretences to it, is a liberty our family has by law in them, from an intermarriage with the daughter of Mr. Scoggin, the famous droll of the last century. This right I design to

and brats of the rest of the family. What makes these misfortunes in the affairs of Timon the more astonishing is, that he has better understanding than those who cheat him; so that a man knows not which more to wonder at, the indifference of the master, or the impudence of the servant.

White's Chocolate-house, April 29.

It is a matter of much speculation among the beaux and oglers, what it is that can have made so sudden a change, as has been of late observed, in the whole behaviour of Pastorella, who never sat still a moment until she was eighteen, which she has now exceeded by two months. Her aunt, who has the care of her, has not been always so rigid as she is at this present date; but and falsehood of man, that she resolved on all has so good a sense of the frailty of woman, manner of methods to keep Pastorella, if possible, in safety, against herself and all her admirers. At the same time the good lady knew by long experience, that a gay inclination, curbed too rashly, would but run to the greater excesses for that restraint; she therefore intended to watch her, and take some opportunity of engaging her insensibly in her own interests, without the anguish of an admonition. You are to know, then, that miss, with all her flirting and ogling, had also naturally a strong curiIt is said that the queen's oculist, though he was won-osity in her, and was the greatest eaves-dropper derfully successful, could neither read nor write. Rosselli, sufficiently known from the Romance of his ife, which was written by himself.

* Dr. Swift.

Anderson was a Scotch physician in the reigns of

Charles I. and Charles II.

"Henley would fain have me to go with Steele and Rowe, &c. to an invitation at Sir William Read's. Surely you have heard of him. He has been a mountebank, and is the queen's oculist; he makes admirable punch, and treats you in gold vessels. But I am engaged, and won't go ; neither indeed am I fond of the jaunt." April

11, 1711-Swift's Works, vol. xxii. p. 20.

| Scoggin was a buffoon in the reign of king James L

breathing. Parisatis (for so her prudent aunt is called) observed this humour, and retires one day to her closet, into which she knew Pastorella

place, he intends she shall be a cuckold; but | night is at St. James's coffee-house, where I expects, that he himself must live in perfect se- converse, yet never fall into a dispute on any curity from that tenor. He dwells a great while occasion; but leave the understanding I have, on instructions for her discreet behaviour, in passive of all that goes through it, without encase of his falsehood. I have not patience with tering into the business of life. And thus these unreasonable expectations, therefore turn madam, have I arrived by laziness, to what back to the treatise itself. Here, indeed, my others pretend to by philosophy, a perfect nebrother deduces all the revolutions among men glect of the world.' Sure, if our sex had the from the passion of love; and in his preface liberty of frequenting public houses and converanswers that usual observation against us, that sations, we should put these rivals of our faults there is no quarrel without a woman in it,' with and follies out of countenance. However, we a gallant assertion, that there is nothing else shall soon have the pleasure of being acquainted worth quarrelling for.' My brother is of a com- with them one way or other; for my brother plexion truly amorous; all his thoughts and ac- Isaac designs, for the use of our sex, to give the tions carry in them a tincture of that obliging exact characters of all the chief politicians, who inclination; and this turn has opened his eyes frequent any of the coffee-houses from St. James's to see, that we are not the inconsiderable crea- to the Exchange; but designs to begin with that tures which unlucky pretenders to our favour cluster of wise-heads, as they are found sitting would insinuate. He observes that no man be- every evening from the left side of the fire, at gins to make any tolerable figure until he sets the Smyrna, to the door. This will be of great out with the hopes of pleasing some one of us. service for us, and I have authority to promise No sooner he takes that in hand, but he pleases an exact journal of their deliberations; the pubevery one else by the bye. It has an immediate lication of which I am to be allowed for pin-moeffect upon his behaviour. There is colonel Ran-ney. In the meantime, I cast my eye upon a ter, who never spoke without an oath, until he new book, which gave me more pleasing entersaw the lady Betty Modish; now, never gives his tainment, being a sixth part of Miscellany Poems man an order, but it is 'Pray Tom, do it.' The published by Jacob Tonson,* which, I find, by drawers where he drinks, live in perfect happi- my brother's notes upon it, no way inferior to ness. He asked Will at the George the other the other volumes. There is, it seems, in this, day, how he did? Where he used to say, Damn a collection of the best pastorals that have hithit, it is so;' he now 'believes there is some mis-erto appeared in England; but among them, take; he must confess, he is of another opinion; none superior to that dialogue between Sylvia but, however, he will not insist.' and Dorinda, written by one of my own sex;† where all our little weaknesses are laid open in a manner more just, and with truer raillery, than ever man yet hit upon.

·

Every temper, except downright insipid, is to be animated and softened by the influence of beauty; but of this untractable sort is a lifeless handsome fellow that visits us, whom I have dressed at this twelvemonth; but he is as insensible of all the arts I use, as if he conversed all that time with his nurse. He outdoes our whole sex in all the faults our enemies impute to us; he has brought laziness into an opinion, and makes his indolence his philosophy: insomuch that no longer ago than yesterday in the evening he gave me this account of himself: I am, madam, perfectly unmoved at all that passes among men, and seldom give myself the fatigue of going among them; but when I do, I always appear the same thing to those whom I converse with. My hours of existence, or being awake, are from eleven in the morning to eleven at night; half of which I live to myself, in picking my teeth, washing my hands, paring my nails, and looking in the glass. The insignificancy of my manners to the rest of the world,† makes the laughers call me a Quidnunc, a phrase which I neither understand, nor shall ever inquire what they mean by it. The last of me each

There is probably an allusion here to the celebrated Mrs. Anne Oldfield and brigadier-general Churchill. Mrs. 0. played at this time inimitably well the character of Lady Betty Modish in the Careless Husband,' which the author, Mr. Cibber, acknowledges was not only written for her, but copied from her, so that she was both the player, and the original of the character. Biog. Brit. Art. Oldfield.

What follows is inserted as a farther specimen of the manner of the Annotator on the Tatler, and of the Bature of his remarks. See Tatler, Nos. 5, and 7. Nothing is more apropos, than to talk in a dialect that is not English of a phrase that is not sense.' Annotations on the Tazier, part i. p. 85.

Only this I now discern,

From the things thou'dst have me learn,
That womankind's peculiar joys
From past or present beauties rise.

But to reassume my first design, there cannot be a greater instance of the command of females, than in the prevailing charms of the heroine in the play, which was acted this night, called, All for Love; or The World well Lost.'t The enamoured Anthony resigns glory and power to the force of the attractive Cleopatra, whose charms were the defence of her diadem against a people otherwise invincible. It is so natural for women to talk of themselves, that it is to be hoped, all my own sex at least will pardon me, that I could fall into no other discourse. If we have their favour, we give ourselves very little anxiety for the rest of our readers. I believe I see a sentence of Latin in my brother's day-book of wit, which seems applicable on this occasion, and in contempt of the critics

Tristitiam et metus
Tradam protervis in mare Creticum
Potare ventis.
Hor. i. Od. xxvi. 2.
No boding fears shall break my rest,
Nor anxious cares invade my breast;

*Usually called 'Dryden's Collection.'

By Mrs. Elizabeth Singer, celebrated by Prior in many parts of his poems, and afterwards Mrs. Rowe. 1 By Dryden, first acted in the year 1678.

The humour of Mrs. Jenny Distaff's Latin quotation stands in need of some illustration. It rises out of the similarity between the words Cretecum and Criticum, which are sufficiently alike to mislead a lady unskilled in the Latin language, into this misapplication of the passage.

Letters from Naples of the sixteenth of April say, that the marquis de Prie's son was arrived there, with instructions from his father, to sig-nounced that sentence, and told him, he must nify to the viceroy the necessity his imperial majesty was under, of desiring an aid from that kingdom, for carrying on the extraordinary expenses of the war. On the fourteenth of the same month they made a review of the Spanish troops in that garrison, and afterwards of the marines; one part of whom will embark with those designed for Barcelona, and the rest are to be sent on board the galleys appointed to convoy provisions to that place.