From my own Apartment, August 21. IN every party there are two sorts of men, the rigid and the supple. The rigid are an intractable race of mortals, who act upon principle, and will not, forsooth, fall into any measures that are not consistent with their received notions of honour. These are persons of a stubborn unpliant morality; that sullenly adhere to their friends when they are disgraced, and to their principles, though they are exploded. I shall therefore give up this stiff-necked generation to their own obstinacy, and turn my thoughts to the advantage of the supple, who pay their homage to places, and not persons; and, without enslaving themselves to any par. ticular scheme of opinions, are as ready to change their conduct in point of sentiment as of fashion. The well-disciplined part of a court are generally so perfect at their exercise, that you may see a whole assembly, from front to rear, face about at once to a new man of power, though at the same time, they turn their backs , upon him that brought them thither. The great hardship these complaisant members of society are under, seems to be the want of warning upon any approaching change or revolution; so that they are obliged in a hurry to tack about with every wind, and stop short in the midst of a full career, to the great surprise and derision of their beholders. When a man foresees a decaying ministry, he has leisure to grow a malecontent, reflect upon the present conduct, and, by gradual murmurs, fall off from his friends into a new party, by just steps and measures. For want of such notices, I have formerly known a very well-bred person refuse to return a bow of a man whom he thought in disgrace, that was next day made secretary of state; and another, who, after a long neglect of a minister, came to his levee, and made professions of zeal for his service the very day before he was turned out. magical liquor, presages all changes and revolutions in government, as the common glass does those of the weather. This Weather-glass is said to have been invented by Cardan,* and given by him as a present to his great countryman and contemporary, Machiaval; which, by the way, may serve to rectify a received error in chronology, that places one of these some years after the other. How or when it came into my hands, I shall desire to be excused, if I keep to myself; but so it is, that I have walked by it for the better part of a century to my safety at least, if not to my advantage; and have among my papers a register of all the changes that have happened in it from the middle of queen Elizabeth's reign. In the time of that princess it stood long as setiled fair. At the latter end of king James the First, it fell, to cloudy. It held several years after at stormy; insomuch, that at last, despairing of seeing any clear weather at home, I followed the royal exile, and some time after finding my glass rise, returned to my native country, with the rest of the loyalists. I was then in hopes to pass the remainder of my days in settled fair: but alas! during the greatest part of that reign, the English nation lay in a dead calmn, which, as it is usual, was followed by high winds and tempests, until of late years; in which, with unspeakable joy and satisfaction, I have seen our political weather returned to settled fair. I must only observe, that for all this last summer my glass has pointed at changeable. Upon the whole, I often apply to Fortun Eneas's speech to the Sibyl: -Non ulla laborum No frightful face of danger can be new: The mind foretells whatever comes to pass; A thoughtful mind is Fortune's weather-glass. The advantages which have accrued to those whom I have advised in their affairs, by virtue of this sort of prescience, have been very considerable. A nephew of mine, who has never put his money into the stocks, or taken it out, without my advice, has in a few years raised five hundred pounds to almost so many thouThis produces also unavoidable confusions sands. As for myself, who look upon riches to and mistakes in the descriptions of great men's consist rather in content than possessions, and parts and merits. That ancient Lyric M. D'Ur-measure the greatness of the mind rather by its fey, some years ago writ a dedication to a certain lord, in which he celebrated him for the greatest poet and critic of that age, upon a misinformation in Dyer's letter, that his noble patron was made lord chamberlain. In short, innumerable votes, speeches, and sermons, have been thrown away, and turned to no account, merely for want of due and timely intelligence. Nay, it has been known, that a panegyric has been half printed off, when the poet, upon the removal of the minister, has been forced to alter it into a satire. For the conduct therefore of such useful persons, as are ready to do their country service upon all occasions, I have an engine in my study, which is a sort of a Political Barometer, or, to speak more intelligibly, a State Weather. glass, that by the rising and falling of a certain tranquillity than its ambition, I have seldom used my glass to make my way in the world, but often to retire from it. This is a by-path to happiness, which was at first discovered to me by a most pleasing apophthegm of Pythagoras: When the winds,' says he, rise, worship the echo.' That great philosopher (whether to make his doctrines the more venerable, or to gild his precepts with the beauty of imagination, or to awaken the curiosity of his disciples, for I will not suppose, what is usually said, that he did it * Jerom Cardan, physician and an astrologer, the au thor of ten volumes in folio, was, in the opinion of Bayle, one of the greatest geniuses of his age. This strange man, who seems to have been much under the Power of superstition and, at times, not seldom, insane, was born at Pavia, September 24, 1501, and died at Rome, according to Thuanus, September 21, 1575. ་ to conceal his wisdom from the vulgar) has | pertinent takes upon him on all occasions to couched several admirable precepts in remote allusions, and mysterious sentences. By the winds in his apophthegm, are meant state hurricanes and popular tumults. When these rise,' says he, worship the echo;' that is, withdraw yourself from the multitude into descrts, woods, solitudes, or the like retirements, which are the usual habitations of the echo. No. 215.] Thursday, August 24, 1710. commend; and because mirth is agreeable, another thinks fit eternally to jest. I have of late received many packets of letters, complaining of these spreading evils. A lady who is lately arrived at the Bath acquaints me, there were in the stage-coach wherein she went down a common flatterer, and a common jester. These gentlemen were, she tells me, rivals in her favour; and adds, if there ever happened a case wherein of two persons one was not liked more than another, it was in that journey. They dif fered only in proportion to the degree of dislike between the nauseous and the insipid. Both From my own Apartment, August 23. these characters of men are born out of a barLYSANDER has writ to me out of the country, renness of imagination. They are never fools and tells me, after many other circumstances, by nature; but become such out of an impotent that he had passed a great deal of time with ambition of being, what she never intended much pleasure and tranquillity; until his hap- them, men of wit and conversation. I therefore piness was interrupted by an indiscreet flatterer, think fit to declare, that according to the known who came down into those parts to visit a re- laws of this land, a man may be a very honest lation. With the circumstances in which he gentleman, and enjoy himself and his friend, represents the matter, he had no small provoca- without being a wit; and I absolve all men from tion to be offended; for he attacked him in so taking pains to be such for the future. As the wrong a season, that he could not have any re- present case stands, is it not very unhappy that lish of pleasure in it; though, perhaps, at another Lysander must be attacked and applauded in a time it might have passed upon him without wood, and Corrina jolted and commended in a giving him much uneasiness. Lysander had, stage-coach; and this for no manner of reason, after a long satiety of the town, been so happy but because other people have a mind to show as to get to a solitude he extremely liked, and their parts? I grant indeed, if these people, as recovered a pleasure he had long discontinued, they have understanding enough for it, would that of reading. He was got to the bank of a confine their accomplishments to those of their rivulet, covered by a pleasing shade, and fanned own degree of talents, it were to be tolerated; by a soft breeze; which threw his mind into but when they are so insolent as to interrupt the that sort of composure and attention, in which meditations of the wise, the conversations of the a man, though with indolence, enjoys the utmost agreeable, and the whole behaviour of the moliveliness of his spirits, and the greatest strength dest, it becomes a grievance naturally in my of his mind at the same time. In this state, jurisdiction. Among themselves, I cannot only Lysander represents that he was reading Vir- overlook, but approve it. I was present the other gil's Georgics, when on a sudden the gentleman day at a conversation, where a man of this above-mentioned surprised him; and, without height of breeding and sense told a young wo any manner of preparation, falls upon him at man of the same form, To be sure, madam, once What! I have found you at last, after every thing must please that comes from a lady.' searching all over the wood! we wanted you at She answered, 'I know, sir, you are so much a cards after dinner; but you are much better em- gentleman, that you think so.' Why this was ployed. I have heard indeed that you are an very well on both sides; and it is impossible excellent scholar. But at the same time, is it that such a gentleman and lady should do other. not a little unkind to rob the ladies, who like you wise than think well of one another. These are so well, of the pleasure of your company? But but loose hints of the disturbances in human that is indeed the misfortune of you great scho-society, for which there is yet no remedy; but lars; you are seldom so fit for the world as those who never trouble themselves with books. Well, I see you are taken up with your learning there, and I will leave you.' Lysander says, he made him no answer, but took a resolution to complain to me. · I shall in a little time publish tables of respect and civility, by which persons may be instructed in the proper times and seasons, as well as at what degree of intimacy a man may be allowed to commend or rally his companions; the promiscuous license of which is, at present, far from being among the small errors in conver. sation. request to be immediately answered, lest the P. S. The following letter was left, with a artifices used against a lady in distress may come into common practice. It is a substantial affliction, when men govern themselves by the rules of good breeding, that by the very force of them they are subjected to the insolence of those, who either never will, or never can, understand them. The superficial part of mankind form to themselves little measures of behaviour from the outside of things. By the force of these narrow conceptions, they 'SIR,-My eldest sister buried her husband act among themselves with applause; and do about six months ago; and at his funeral, a gennot apprehend they are contemptible to those of tleman of more art than honesty, on the night higher understanding, who are restrained by of his interment, while she was not herself, but decencies above their knowledge from showing in the utmost agony of her grief, spoke to her a dislike. Hence it is, that because complai- of the subject of love. In that weakness and sance is a good quality in conversation, one im- I distraction which my sister was in, as one ready and those trifling rarities that furnish out the apartment of a virtuoso. There are some men whose heads are so oddly turned this way, that though they are utter strangers to the common occurrences of life. they are able to discover the sex of a cockle, or describe the generation of a mite, in all its circumstances. They are so little versed in the to fall is apt to lean on any body, he obtained her promise of marriage, which was according. ly consummated eleven weeks after. There is no afiliction comes alone, but one brings another. My sister is now ready to lie in. She humbly asks of you, as you are a friend to the sex, to let her know, who is the lawful father of this child, or whether she may not be relieved from this second marriage; considering it was pro-world, that they scarce know a horse from an mised under such circumstances as one may very well suppose she did not what she did voluntarily, but because she was helpless otherwise. She is advised something about engagements made in gaol, which she thinks the saine as to the reason of the thing. But, dear sir, she relies upon your advice, and gives you her service; as does your humble servant, REBECCA MIDRIFFE. The case is very hard; and I fear the plea she is advised to make, from the similitude of a man who is in duresse, will not prevail. But though I despair of remedy as to the mother, the law gives the child his choice of his father where the birth is thus legally ambiguous. To Isaac Bickerstaff, Esquire. The humble Petition of the Company of Linendrapers, residing within the liberty of Westminster, * SHOWETH,—That there has of late prevailed among the ladies so great an affectation of nakedness, that they have not only left the bosom wholly bare, but lowered their stays some inches below the former mode. That, in particular, Mrs. Arabella Overdo has not the least appearance of linen; and our best customers show but little above the small of their backs. That by this means your petitioners are in danger of losing the advantage of covering a ninth part of every woman of quality in Great Britain. Your Petitioners humbly offer the premises to your Indulgence's consideration, and shall ever, &c.' ox; but, at the same time, will tell you with a great deal of gravity, that a flea is a rhinoceros, and a snail a hermaphrodite. I have known one of these whimsical philosophers who has set a greater value upon a collection of spiders than he would upon a flock of sheep, and has sold his coat off his back to purchase a tarantula. I would not have a scholar wholly unacquainted with these secrets and curiosities of nature; but certainly the mind of man, that is capable of so much higher contemplations, should not be altogether fixed upon such mean and disproportioned objects. Observations of this kind are apt to alienate us too much from the knowledge of the world, and to make us serious upon trifles; by which means they expose philosophy to the ridicule of the witty, and contempt of the ignorant. In short, studies of this nature should be the diversions, relaxations, and amusements; not the care, business, and concern of life. It is indeed wonderful to consider, that there should be a sort of learned men, who are wholly employed in gathering together the refuse of nature, if I may call it so, and hoarding up in their chests and cabinets such creatures as others industriously avoid the sight of. One does not know how to mention some of the most precious parts of their treasure, without a kind of an apology for it. I have been shown a beetle valued at twenty crowns, and a toad at a hundred: but we must take this for a general rule, That whatever appears trivial or obscene in the common notions of the world, looks grave and philosophical in the eye of a virtuoso.' To show this humour in its perfection, I shall present my reader with the legacy of a certain virtuoso, who laid out a considerable estate in natural rarities and curiosities, which upon his Before I answer this Petition, I am inclined death-bed he bequeathed to his relations and to examine the offenders myself. friends, in the following words: From my own Apartment, August 25. NATURE is full of wonders; every atom is a standing miracle, and endowed with such qualities, as could not be impressed on it by a power and wisdom less than infinite. For this reason I would not discourage any searches that are made into the most minute and trivial parts of the creation. However, since the world abounds in the noblest fields of speculation, it is, methinks, the mark of a little genius, to be wholly Conversant among insects, reptiles, animalcules, · The Will of a Virtuoso. I, Nicholas Gimcrack, being in sound health of mind, but in great weakness of body, do by this my last will and testament bestow my worldly goods and chattels in manner following: Imprimis, To my dear wife, One drawer of shells, Item, To my daughter Elizabeth, My receipt for preserving dead caterpillars, Item, To my little daughter Fanny, And upon the birth of her first child, if she speaking things to her husband which gave me marries with her mother's consent, The nest of a humming-bird. much disturbance, and put me in mind of a character which I wonder I have so long omit Item, To my eldest brother, as an acknow-ted, and that is, an outrageous species of the ledgment for the lands he has vested in my son Charles, I bequeath My last year's collection of grasshoppers. Item, To his daughter Susanna, being his only child, I bequeath my English weeds pasted on royal paper, With my large folio of Indian cabbage. Item, To my learned and worthy friend doctor Johannes Elscrickius, professor in anatomy, and my associate in the studies of nature, as an eternal monument of my affection and friendship for him, I bequeath My rat's testicles, and Whale's pizzle, to him and his issue male; and in default of such issue in the said doctor Elscrickius, then to return to my executor and his heirs for ever. Having fully provided for my nephew Isaac, by making over to him some years since, A horned Scarabæus, The skin of a rattle-snake, and The mummy of an Egyptian king, I make no further provision for him in this my will. My eldest son John, having spoke disrespectfully of his little sister, whom I keep by me in spirits of wine, and in many other instances behaved himself undutifully towards me, I do disinherit, and wholly cut off from any part of this my personal estate, by giving him a single cockle-shell. To my second son Charles I give and bequeath all my flowers, plants, minerals, mosses, shells, pebbles, fossils, beetles, butterflies, caterpillars, grasshoppers, and vermin, not above specified; as also all my monsters, both wet and dry; making the said Charles whole and sole executor of this my last will and testament: he paying, or causing to be paid, the aforesaid legacies within the space of six months after my decease. And I do hereby revoke all other wills whatsoever by me formerly made. fair sex, which is distinguished by the term Scolds. The generality of women are by nature loquacious; therefore mere volubility of speech is not to be imputed to them, but should be considered with pleasure when it is used to express such passions as tend to sweeten or adorn conversation: but when through rage, females are vehement in their eloquence, nothing in the world has so ill an effect upon the features; for, by the force of it, I have seen the most amiable become the most deformed; and she that appeared one of the graces, immediately turned into one of the furies. I humbly conceive, the great cause of this evil may proceed from a false notion the ladies have of, what we call, a modest woman. They have too narrow a conception of this lovely character; and believe they have not at all forfeited their pretensions to it, provided they have no imputations on their chastity. But, alas! the young fellows know they pick out better women in the side-boxes, than many of those who pass upon the world and themselves for modest. such. Modesty never rages, never murmurs, never pouts; when it is ill-treated, it pines, it beseeches, it languishes. The neighbour I mention is one of your common modest women, that is to say, those who are ordinarily reckoned Her husband knows every pain in life with her but jealousy. Now, because she is clear in this particular, the man cannot say his soul is his own, but she cries: 'No modest woman is respected now-a-days.' What adds to the comedy in this case is, that it is very ordinary with this sort of women to talk in the language of distress; they will complain of the then the poor helpless creatures shall throw the forlorn wretchedness of their condition, and next thing they can lay their hands on at the person who offends them. Our neighbour was only saying to his wife, she went a little too fine,' when she immediately pulled his periwig off, and stamping it under her feet, wrung her hands, and said: never modest woman was so used.' These ladies of irresistible modesty are those who make virtue unamiable; not that they can be said to be virtuous, but as they live denomination of being such, men fear to meet without scandal; and being under the common their faults in those who are as agreeable as they are innocent. I take the Bully among men, and the Scold among women, to draw the foundation of their actions from the same defect in the mind. A Bully thinks honour consists wholly in being brave; and therefore has regard to no one rule of life if he preserves himself from the accusation of cowardice. The froward woman knows chastity to be the first merit in a woman; and therefore, since no one can call her one ugly name, she calls all mankind all the rest. These ladies, where their companions are so imprudent as to take their speeches for any other than exercises of their own lungs and their husbands' patience, gain by the force of being resisted, and flame with open fury, which is no way to be opposed but by being neglected; though at the same time human frailty makes it very hard, to relish the philosophy of contemning even frivolous reproach. There is a very pretty instance of this infirmity in the man of the best sense that ever was, no less a person than Adam himself. According to Milton's description of the first couple, as soon as they had fallen, and the turbulent passions of anger, hatred, and jealousy, first entered their breasts; Adam grew moody, and talked to his wife, as you may find it in the three hundred and fifty. ninth page, and ninth book of Paradise Lost, in the octavo edition, which out of heroics, and put into domestic style, would run thus: 'Madam, if my advices had been of any authority with you, when that strange desire of gadding possessed you this morning, we had still been happy; but your cursed vanity and opinion of your own conduct, which is certainly very wavering when it seeks occasions of being proved, has ruined both yourself and me, who trusted you.' Eve had no fan in her hand to ruffle, or tucker to pull down; but with a reproachful air she answered: 'Sir, do you impute that to my desire of gadding, which might have happened to yourself, with all your wisdom and gravity? The serpent spoke so excellently, and with so good a grace, that-Besides, what harm had I ever done him, that he should design me any? Was I to have been always at your side, I might as well have continued there, and been but your เ rib still but if I was so weak a creature as you thought me, why did you not interpose your sage authority more absolutely? You denied me going as faintly, as you say I resisted the serpent. Had not you been too easy, neither you nor I had now transgressed.' Adam replied, Why, Eve, hast thou the impudence to upbraid me as the cause of thy transgression for my indulgence to thee? Thus will it ever be with him, who trusts too much to woman. At the same time that she refuses to be governed, if she suffers by her obstinacy, she will accuse the man that shall leave her to herself."' tells her, showing herself, though to the devil, by whom the same vanity made her liable to be betrayed. I cannot, with all the help of science and astrology, find any other remedy for this evil, but what was the medicine in this first quarrel; which was, as appears in the next book, that they were convinced of their being both weak, but the one weaker than the other. If it were possible that the beauteous could but rage a little before a glass, and see their pretty countenances grow wild, it is not to be doubted but it would have a very good effect: but that would require temper; for lady Firebrand, upon observing her features swell when her maid vexed her the other day, stamped her dressing-glass under her feet. In this case, when one of this temper is moved, she is like a witch in an operation, and makes all things turn round with her. The very fabric is in a vertigo when she begins to charm. In an in-. stant, whatever was the occasion that moved her blood, she has such intolerable servants : Betty is so awkward, Tom cannot carry a message, and her husband has so little respect for her, that she, poor woman, is weary of this life, and was born to be unhappy. From my own Apartment, August 30. I CHANCED to rise very early one particular morning this summer, and took a walk into the country to divert myself among the fields and meadows, while the green was new, and the flowers in their bloom. As at this season of the year every lane is a beautiful walk, and every hedge full of nosegays; I lost myself with a great deal of pleasure among several thickets and bushes, that were filled with a great variety of birds, and an agreeable confusion of notes, which formed the pleasantest scene in the world to one who had passed a whole winter in noise and smoke. The freshness of the dews that lay upon every thing about me, with the cool breath of the morning, which inspired the birds with so many delightful instincts, created in me the same kind of animal pleasure, and made my heart overflow with such secret emotions of joy and satisfaction as are not to be described or accounted for. On this occasion I could not but reflect upon a beautiful simile Thus they in mutual accusation spent The fruitless hours, but neither self-condemning; And of their vain contest appeared no end. This, to the modern, will appear but a very faint piece of conjugal enmity; but you are to consider, that they were but just begun to be angry, and they wanted new words for expressing their new passions; but by her accusing him of letting her go, and telling him how good a speaker, and how fine a gentleman the devil was, we must reckon, allowing for the improvements of time, that she gave him the same provocation as if she had called him cuckold. The passionate and familiar terms, with which the same case repeated daily for so many thousand years has furnished the present generation, were not then in use; but the foundation of debate has ever been the same, a contention about their merit and wisdom. Our general mother was a beauty; and hearing there was another now in the world, could not forbear, as Adam in Milton: |