6 to visit the several parts of the town, to see how | ed by one that came up towards us, to whom their interests in the world decay or flourish, every body made their compliments. He was and to purge themselves from the many false of the common height, and in his dress there imputations they daily meet with in the com- seemed to be great care to appear no way parmerce and conversation of men. You observed ticular, except in a certain exact and feat manVerisimilis frowned when he first saw me. ner of behaviour and circumspection. He was What he is provoked at is, that I told him one wonderfully careful that his shoes and clothes day, though he strutted and dressed with so should be without the least speck upon them; much ostentation, if he kept himself within his and seemed to think, that on such an accident own bounds, he was but a lackey, and wore depended his very life and fortune. There was only that gentleman's livery whom he is now hardly a man on the Exchange who had not a note with. This frets him to the heart; for you must upon him; and each seemed very well satisfied know, he has pretended a long time to set up that their money lay in his hands, without defor himself, and gets among a crowd of the manding payment. I asked Pacolet, what great more unthinking part of mankind, who take merchant that was, who was so universally adhim for a person of the first quality; though his dressed to, yet made too familiar an appearintroduction into the world was wholly owing ance to command that extraordinary deference? to his present companion.' Pacolet answered, This person is the demon or genius of credit; his name is Umbra. If you observe, he follows Alethes and Verisimilis at a distance; and indeed has no foundation for the figure he makes in the world, but that he is thought to keep their cash; though, at the same time, none who trust him would trust the others for a groat.' As the company rolled about, the three spectres were jumbled into one place: when they were so, and all thought there was an alliance between them, they immediately drew upon them the business of the whole Exchange. But their affairs soon increased to such an unwieldy bulk, that Alethes took his leave, and said, he would not engage further than he had an immediate fund to answer.' Verisimilis pretended, that though he had revenues large enough to go on his own bottom, yet it was below one of his family to condescend to trade in his own name;' therefore he also retired. I was extremely troubled to see the glorious mart of London left with no other guardian but him of credit. But Pacolet told me, that traders had nothing to do with the honour or conscience of their correspondents, provided they supported a general behaviour in the world, which could not hurt their credit or their purses: for, said he, you may, in this one tract of building of London and Westminster, see the imaginary motives on which the greatcst affairs move, as well as in rambling over the face of the earth. For though Alethes is the real governor, as well as legislator of mankind, he has very little business but to make up quarrels; and is only a general referce, to whom every man pretends to appeal, but is satisfied with his determinations no further than they promote his own interest. Hence it is, that the This encounter was very agreeable to me, and I was resolved to dog them, and desired Pacolet to accompany me. I soon perceived what he told me in the gesture of the persons; for, when they looked at each other in discourse, the well-dressed man suddenly cast down his eyes, and discovered that the other had a painful superiority over him. After some further discourse, they took leave. The plain gentleman went down towards Thames-street, in order to be present, at least, at the oaths taken at the custom-house; and the other made directly for the heart of the city. It is incredible how great a change there immediately appeared in the man of honour, when he got rid of his uneasy companion: he adjusted the cock of his hat a-new, settled his sword-knot, and had an appearance that attracted a sudden inclination for him and his interests in all who beheld him. For my part,' said I to Pacolet, I cannot but think you are mistaken in calling this person of the lower quality; for he looks much more like a gentleman than the other. Do not vou observe all eyes are upon him, as he advances? how each sex gazes at his stature, aspect, address, and motion? Pacolet only smiled and shaked his head; as leaving me to be convinced by my own further observation. We kept on our way after him until we came to Exchangealley, where the plain gentleman again came up to the other; and they stood together after the manner of eminent merchants, as if ready to receive application; but I could observe no man talk to either of them. The one was laughed at as a fop; and I heard many whispers against the other, as a whimsical sort of a fellow, and a great enemy to trade. They crossed Cornhill together, and came into the full Ex-soldier and the courtier model their actions acchange, where some bowed, and gave themselves airs in being known to so fine a man as Verisimilis, who, they said, had great interest in all prince's courts; and the other was taken notice of by several, as one they had seen somewhere long before. One more particularly said, he had formerly been a man of consideration in the world; but was so unlucky, that they who dealt with him, by some strange infatuation or other, had a way of cutting off their own bills, and were prodigiously slow in improving their stock. But as much as I was curious to observe the reception these gentlemen met with upon the Exchange, I could not help being interrupt cording to Verisimilis's manner, and the merchant according to that of Umbra. Among these men, honour and credit are not valuable possessions in themselves, or pursued out of a principle of justice; but merely as they are serviceable to ambition and to commerce. But the world will never be in any manner of order or tranquillity, until men are firmly convinced that conscience, honour, and credit, are all in one interest; and that, without the concurrence of the former, the latter are but impositions upon ourselves and others. The force these delusive words have, is not seen in the transactions of the busy world only, but they have also form of a satyr; of shape, part human, part bestial; to signify that the followers of it prostitute the reason of a man to pursue the appetites of a beast. This satyr is made to haunt the paths and coverts of the wood-nymphs and shepherdesses, to lurk on the banks of rivulets, and watch the purling streams, as the resorts of retired virgins; to show, that lawless desire tends chiefly to prey upon innocence, and has something so unnatural in it, that it hates its own make, and shuns the object it loved, as soon as it has made it like itself. Love, therefore, is a child that complains and bewails its inability to help itself, and weeps for assistance, without an immediate reflection or knowledge of the food it wants: Lust, a watchful thief, which seizes its prey, and lays snares for its own relief; and its principal object being innocent, it never robs but it murders at the same time. their tyranny over the fair sex. Were you to j On the other side, the sages figured Lust in the ask the unhappy Lais, what pangs of reflection preferring the consideration of her honour to her conscience has given her? she could tell you, that it has forced her to drink up half a gallon, this winter, of Tom Dassapas's potions: that she still pines away for fear of being a mother; and knows not but the moment she is such, she shall be a murderess: but if conscience had as strong a force upon the mind as honour, the first step to her unhappy condition had never been made; she had still been innocent as she is beautiful. Were men so enlightened and studious of their own good, as to act by the dictates of their reason and reflection, and not the opinion of others, conscience would be the steady ruler of human life; and the words truth, law, reason, equity, and religion, would be but synonymous terms for that only guide which makes us pass our days in our own favour and approbation.' No. 49.] Tuesday, August 2, 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. White's Chocolate-house, August 1. P. From this idea of a Cupid and a Satyr, we may settle our notions of these different desires, and accordingly rank their followers. Aspasia must, therefore, be allowed to be the first of the beauteous order of Love, whose unaffected freedom, and conscious innocence, give her the attendance of the graces in all her actions. That awful distance which we bear toward her in all our thoughts of her, and that cheerful familiarity with which we approach her, are certain instances of her being the truest object of love of any of her sex. In this accomplished lady, love THE imposition of honest names and words is the constant effect, because it is never the deupon improper subjects, has made so regular a sign. Yet, though her mien carries much more confusion among us, that we are apt to sit down invitation than command, to behold her is an with our errors, well enough satisfied with the immediate check to loose behaviour; and to love methods we are fallen into, without attempting her is a liberal education; for, it being the nato deliver ourselves from the tyranny under ture of all love to create an imitation of the bewhich we are reduced by such innovations. Of loved person in the lover, a regard for Aspasia all the laudable motives of human life, none naturally produces decency of manners, and have suffered so much in this kind, as love; un- good conduct of life in her admirers. If, thereder which revered name a brutal desire called fore, the giggling Leucippe could but see her lust, is frequently concealed and admitted; train of fops assembled, and Aspasia move by though they differ as much as a matron from a them, she would be mortified at the veneration prostitute, or a companion from a buffoon. Phi- with which she is beheld, even by Leucippe's lander the other day was bewailing this misfor-own unthinking equipage, whose passions have tune with much indignation, and upbraided me for having some time since quoted those excellent lines of the satirist: To an exact perfection they have brought The action love; the passion is forgot.' 'How could you,' said he, 'leave such a hint so coldly? How could Aspasia and Sempronia enter into your imagination at the same time, and you never declare to us the different receptions you gave them?' The figures which the ancient mythologists and poets put upon Love and Lust in their writings are very instructive. Love is a beauteous blind child, adorned with a quiver and a bow, which he plays with, and shoots around him, without design or direction; to intimate to us that the person beloved has no intention to give us the anxieties we meet with, but that the beauties of a worthy object are like the charms of a lovely infant; they cannot but attract your concern and fondness, though the child so regarded is as insensible of the value you put upon it, as it is that it deserves your benevolence. long taken leave of their understandings. As charity is esteemed a conjunction of the good qualities necessary to a virtuous man, so love is the happy composition of all the accomplishments that make a fine gentleman. The motive of a man's life is seen in all his actions; and such as have the beauteous boy for their inspirer, have a simplicity of behaviour, and a certain evenness of desire, which burns like the lamp of life in their bosoms; while they who are instigated by the satyr, are ever tortured by jealousies of the object of their wishes; often desire what they scorn, and as often consciously and knowingly embrace where they are mutually indifferent. Florio, the generous husband, and Limberham, the kind keeper, are noted examples of the different effects which these desires produce in the mind. Amanda, who is the wife of Florio, lives in the continual enjoyment of new instances of her husband's friendship, and sees it the end of all his ambition to make her life one series of pleasure and satisfaction; and Amanda's relish of the goods of life is all that makes them pleas ing to Florio: they behave themselves to each | air of fondness, and fall into the following reother, when present, with a certain apparent flection on his condition: benevolence, which transports above rapture; and they think of each other in absence with a confidence unknown to the highest friendship: their satisfactions are doubled, their sorrows lessened, by participation. On the other hand, Corinna,* who is the mistress of Limberham, lives in constant torment: her equipage is an old woman, who was what Corinna is now; and an antiquated footman, who was pimp to Limberham's father; and a chambermaid, who is Limberham's wench by fits, out of a principle of politics to make her jealous and watchful of Corinna. Under this guard, and in this conversation, Corinna lives in state; the furniture of her habitation, and her own gorgeous dress, make her the envy of all the strolling ladies in the town; but Corinna knows she herself is but part of Limberham's household-stuff, and is as capable of being disposed of elsewhere, as any other moveable. But while her keeper is persuaded by his spies, that no enemy has been within his doors since his last visit, no Persian prince was ever so magnificently bountiful: a kind look or falling tear is worth a piece of brocade, a sigh is a jewel, and a smile is a cupboard of plate. All this is shared between Corinna and her guard in his absence. With this great economy and industry does the unhappy Limberham, purchase the constant tortures of jealousy, the favour of spending his estate, and the opportunity of enriching one by whom he knows he is hated and despised. These are the ordinary and common evils which attend keepers; and Corinna is a wench but of common size of wickedness, were you to know what passes under the roof where the fair Messalina reigns with her humble adorer. Messalina is the professed mistress of mankind; she has left the bed of her husband, and her beauteous offspring, to give a loose to want of shame and fulness of desire. Wretched Nocturnes, her feeble keeper! How the poor creature fribbles in his gait, and skuttles from place to place, to despatch his necessary affairs in painful daylight, that he may return to the constant twilight preserved in that scene of wantonness, Messalina's bed-chamber! How does he, while he is absent from thence, consider in his imagination the breadth of his porter's shoulders, the spruce night-cap of his valet, the ready attendance of his butler! any of all whom he knows she admits, and professes to approve of. This, alas! is the gallantry, this the freedom of our fine gentlemen; for this they preserve their liberty, and keep clear of that bugbear, marriage. But he does not understand either vice or virtue, who will not allow, that life without the rules of morality is a wayward uneasy being, with snatches only of pleasure; but under the regulation of virtue, a reasonable and uniform habit of enjoyment. I have seen, in a play of old Haywood's, a speech at the end of an act, which touched this point with much spirit. He makes a married man in the play, upon some endearing occasion, look at his sponse with an The persons here alluded to under the names of Corinna and Limberham, were Mrs. Elizabeth Thomas, Junior, and Henry Cromwell, esquire. Oh marriage! happiest, easiest, safest state; Let debauchees and drunkards scorn thy rites.. Who, in their nauseous draughts and lust, profane Both thee and heaven, by whom thou wert ordained How can the savage call it loss of freedom, Thus to converse with, thus to gaze at A faithful, beauteous friend? Blush not, my fair-one, that thy love applauds thee, THE HISTORY OF ORLANDO THE FAIR. WHATEVER malicious men may say of our lucubrations, we have no design but to produce unknown merit, or place in a proper light the actions of our contemporaries who labour to distinguish themselves, whether it be by vice or virtue. For we shall never give accounts to the world of any thing, but what the lives and endeavours of the persons, of whom we treat, make. the basis of their fame and reputation. For this reason, it is to be hoped that our appearance is reputed a public benefit; and though certain persons may turn what we mean for panegyric into scandal, let it be answered once for all, that if our praises are really designed as raillery, such malevolent persons owe their safety from it, only to their being too inconsiderable for history. It is not every man who deals in ratsbane, or is unseasonably amorous, that can adorn story like Esculapius; nor every stock-jobber of the India company can assume the port, and personate the figure of Aurengeze be. My noble ancestor, Mr. Shakspeare, who was of the race of the Staffs, was not more fond of the memorable sir John Falstaff, than I am of those worthies; but the Latins have an admirable admonition expressed in three words, to wit, Ne quid nimis, which forbids my indulging myself on those delightful subjects, and calls me to do justice to others, who make no less figures in our generation; of such, the first and most renowned is that eminent hero and lover, Orlando,* the handsome, whose disappointments in love, in gallantry, and in war, have banished him from public view, and made him voluntarily enter into a confinement to which the ungrateful age would otherwise have forced him. Ten lustrat and * Robert Fielding, esq. cominonly known then by the name of beau Fielding, a handsoine and very comely gentleman, much distinguished in the 'Annals of Gallantry' at that time. †Ten lustra amount to half a century. A lustrum was undoubtedly a period of five years complete, and an olympiad of four. The fair with conscious majesty approv'd Fortune having now supplied Orlando with necessaries for his high taste of gallantry and pleasure, his equipage and economy had something in them more sumptuous and gallant than could be received in our degenerate age; therefore his figure, though highly graceful, appeared so exotic, that it assembled all the Britons under the age of sixteen, who saw his grandeur, to follow his chariot with shouts and acclamations; which he regarded with the contempt which great minds affect in the midst of applauses. I remember, I had the honour to see him one day stop, and call the youths about him to whom he spake as follows: 'Good bastards-Go to school, and do not lose your time in following my wheels: I am loth to hurt you, because I know not but you are all my own offspring: hark ye, you sirrah with the white hair, I am sure you are mine: there is half-a-crown. Tell your mother, this, with the half-crown I gave her when I got you, comes to five shillings. Thou hast cost me all that, and yet thou art good for nothing. Why, you young dogs, did you never see a man before?' Never such a one as you, noble general,' replied a truant from Westminster. Sirrah, I believe thee: there is a crown for thee. Drive on, coachman.' more are wholly past since Orlando first appear- | one; but that there is also an ambition in followed in the metropolis of this island; his descent ing the mighty persons you have favoured. noble, his wit humorous, his person charming. Where kings and heroes, as great as Alexander, But to none of these recommendatory advantages or such as could personate Alexander,* have was his title so undoubted, as that of his beauty. bowed, permit your general to lay his laurels.' His complexion was fair, but his countenance According to Milton; manly; his stature of the tallest, his shape the .* most exact: and though in all his limbs he had a proportion as delicate as we see in the works of the most skilful statuaries, his body had a strength and firmness little inferior to the marble of which such images are formed. This made Orlando the universal flame of all the fair sex; innocent virgins sighed for him, as Adonis; experienced widows, as Hercules. Thus did this figure walk alone the pattern and ornament of our species, but of course the envy of all who had the same passions without his superior merit and pretences to the favour of that enchanting creature, woman. However, the generous Orlando believed himself formed for the world, and not to be engrossed by any particular affection. He sighed not for Delia, for Chloris, for Chloe, for Betty, nor my lady, nor for the ready chamber-maid, nor distant baroness: woman was his mistress, and the whole sex his seraglio. His form was always irresistible: and if we consider, that not one of five hundred can bear the least favour from a lady without being exalted above himself; if also we must allow, that a smile from a side-box has made Jack Spruce half mad; we cannot think it wonderful that Orlando's repeated conquests touched his brain: so it certainly did, and Orlando became an enthusiast in love; and in all his address contracted something out of the ordinary course of breeding and civility. However, powerful as he was, he would still add to the advantages of his person, that of a profes- This vehicle, though sacred to love, was not sion which the ladies always favour, and imme-adorned with doves: such a hieroglyphic denoted diately commenced soldier. Thus equipped for too languishing a passion. Orlando, therefore, love and honour, our hero seeks distant climes gave the eagle,t as being of a constitution which and adventures, and leaves the despairing inclined him rather to seize his prey with talons, nymphs of Great Britain, to the courtships of than pine for it with murmurs. beaux and witlings till his return. His exploits in foreign nations and courts have not been regularly enough communicated unto us, to report them with that veracity which we profess in our narrations: but after many feats of arms (which those who were witnesses to them have suppressed out of envy, but which we have had faithfully related from his own mouth in our public streets) Orlando returns home full, but not loaded with years. Beaux born in his absence made it their business to decry his furniture, his dress, his manner; but all such rivalry he suppressed (as the philosopher did the sceptic, who argued there was no such thing as motion) by only moving. The beauteous Villaria,† who only was formed for his paramour, became the object of his affection. His first speech to her was as follows: MADAM,-It is not only that nature has made us two the most accomplished of each sex, and pointed to us to obey her dictates in becoming * Fielding embarked in the fortunes of king James II. who gave him the nomination of colouel, and for whom he raised a regiment in his native county of Warwick. † Barbara, daughter and heiress to William Villiers, lord viscount Grandison of the kingdom of Ireland. P From my own Apartment, August 2. I have received the following letter from Mr. Powel of Bath, who, I think, runs from the point between us; which I leave the whole world to judge. To Isaac Bickerstaff, Esquire. Bath, July 28. 'SIR,-Having a great deal of more advantageous business at present on my hands, I thought to have deferred answering your Tatler of the twenty-first instant until the company was gone and season over; but, having resolved not to regard any impertinences of your paper, except what relate particularly to me, I am the more easily induced to answer you, as I shall find time to do it. First, partly lest you should think yourself neglected, which I have reason to believe you would take heinously ill. Secondly, partly because it will increase my fame, and consequently my audience, when all the quality * An allusion to Goodman the player, who was one of the promiscuous train above-mentioned. The Fieldings give the Spread Eagle, as counts of the German Empire. shall see with how much wit and raillery I show | you-I do not care a farthing for you. Thirdly, partly because being without books, if I do not show much learning, it will not be imputed to my having none. I have travelled Italy, France, and Spain, and fully comprehended whatever any German artist in the world can do; yet cannot I imagine why you should endeavour to disturb the repose and plenty which, though unworthy, I enjoy at this place. It cannot be, that you take offence at my prologues and epilogues, which you are pleased to miscall foolish and abusive. No, no, until you give a better, I shall not forbear thinking that the true reason of your picking a quarrel with me was, because it is more agreeable to your principles, as well as more to the honour of your assured victory, to attack a governor. Mr. Isaac, Mr. Isaac, I can see into a mill-stone as far as another, as the saying is; you are for sowing the seeds of sedition and disobedience among my puppets, and your zeal for the good old cause would make you persuade Punch to pull the string from his chops, and not move his jaw when I have a mind he should harangue. Now, I appeal to all men, if this be not contrary to that unaccountable and uncontrollable dominion, which by the laws of nature I exercise over them; for all sorts of wood and wire were made for the use and benefit of man: I have, therefore, an unquestionable right to frame, fashion, and put them together as I please; and having made them what they are, my puppets are my property, and therefore my slaves; nor is there in nature any thing more just, than the homage which is paid by a less to a more excellent being; so that by the right, therefore, of a superior genius, I am their supreme moderator, although you would insinuate, agreeably to your levelling principles, that I am myself but a great puppet, and can therefore have but a co-ordinate jurisdiction with them. I suppose, I have now sufficiently made it appear, that I have a paternal right to keep a puppetshow, and this right I will maintain in my prologues on all occasions. And, therefore, if you write a defence of yourself against this my self-defence, I admonish you to keep within bounds; for every day will not be so propitious to you as the twentyninth of April; and perhaps my resentment may get the better of my generosity, and I may no longer scorn to fight one who is not my equal, with unequal weapons: there are such things as scandalums magnatums; therefore, take heed hereafter how you write such things as I cannot easily answer, for that will put me in a passion. I order you to handle only these two propositions, to which our dispute may be reduced: the first, whether I have not an absolute power, whenever I please, to light a pipe with one of Punch's legs, or warm my fingers with his whole carcass? the second, whether the devil would not be in Punch, should he by word or deed oppose my sovereign will and pleasure? and then, perhaps, I may, if I can find leisure for it, give you the trouble of a second letter. But if you intend to tell me of the original of puppet-shows: and the several changes and revolutions that have happened in them since And so, submitting myself to be tried by my ADVERTISEMENT. Proper cuts for the historical part of this paper, are now almost finished, by an engraver lately arrived from Paris, and will be sold at all the toy-shops in London and Westminster. FORTUNE being now propitious to the gay Orlando, he dressed, he spoke, he moved as a man might be supposed to do in a nation of pygmies, and had an equal value for our approbation or dislike. It is usual for those who profess a contempt for the world, to fly from it and live in obscurity; but Orlando, with a greater magna. nimity, contemned it, and appeared in it to tell them so. If, therefore, his exalted mien met with an unwelcome reception, he was sure al ways to double the cause which gave the distaste. You see our beauties affect a negligence in the ornament of their hair, and adjusting their headdresses, as conscious that they adorn whatever they wear. Orlando had not only this humour in common with other beauties, but also had a neglect whether things became him or not, in a world he contemned. For this reason, a noble particularity appeared in all his economy, furniture, and equipage. And to convince the present little race, how unequal all their measures were to Antediluvian, as he called himself, in respect of the insects which now appear for men, he sometimes rode in an open tumbril, of less size than ordinary, to show the largeness of his *See No. 50. p. 112. |