mounts into a general officer, marries a fine lady, and is master of a good estate, before they come to explain upon him. What gives most

arises from pure nature, and the colonel can account for his success no more than those by whom he succeeds. For these causes and considerations, I pronounce him a true woman's man, and in the first degree A very Pretty Fellow.'

Your majesty will observe, I do not bring against you a railing accusation; but, as you are a strict professor of religion, I beseech your majesty to stop the effusion of blood, by receiv-delight to me in this observation is, that all this ing the opportunity which presents itself for the preservation of your distressed people. Be no longer so infatuated, as to hope for renown from murder and violence: but consider that the great day will come, in which this world and all its glory shall change in a moment; when nature shall sicken, and the earth and sea give up the bodies committed to them, to appear before the last tribunal. Will it then, O king! be an answer for the lives of millions, who have fallen by the sword, 'They perished for my glory? That day will come on, and one like it is immediately approaching: injured nations advance towards thy habitation: vengeance has begun its march, which is to be diverted only by the penitence of the oppressor. Awake, O monarch, from thy lethargy! disdain the abuses thou hast received: pull down the statue which calls thee immortal: be truly great: tear thy purple, and put on sack-way, it is fit to remark, that there are people of cloth. I am, thy generous enemy,

No. 24.]

ISAAC BICKERSTAFF.

Saturday, June 4, 1709.

In my paper of the twenty-eighth of the last month, I mentioned several characters which want explanation to the generality of readers: among others I spoke of a Pretty Fellow. I have received a kind admonition in a letter, to take care that I do not omit to show also what is meant by a Very Pretty Fellow, which is to be allowed as a character by itself, and a person exalted above the other by a peculiar sprightliness; as one who, by a distinguishing vigour, outstrips his companions, and has thereby deserved and obtained a particular appellation or nick-name of familiarity. Some have this distinction from the fair-sex, who are so generous as to take into their protection such as are laughed at by the men, and place them for that reason in degrees of favour.

The chief of this sort is colonel Brunett, who is a man of fashion, because he will be so; and practises a very janty way of behaviour, because he is too careless to know when he offends, and too sanguine to be mortified if he did know it. Thus the colonel has met with a town ready to receive him, and cannot possibly see why he should not make use of their favour, and set himself in the first degree of conversation. Therefore he is very successfully loud among the wits, and familiar among the ladies, and dissolute among the rakes. Thus he is admitted in one place because he is so in another; and every man treats Brunett well, not out of his particular esteem for him, but in respect to the opinion of others. It is to me a solid pleasure to see the world thus mistaken on the good natured side; for it is ten to one but the colonel

The next to a man of this universal genius, is one who is peculiarly formed for the service of the ladies, and his merit chiefly is to be of no consequence. I am indeed a little in doubt, whether he ought not rather to be called a very Happy, than a very Pretty Fellow? for he is admitted at all hours: all he says or does, which would offend in another, are passed over in him; and all actions and speeches which please, doubly please if they come from him: no one wonders or takes notice when he is wrong; but all admire him when he is in the right.-By the

But,

better sense than these, who endeavour at this
character; but they are out of nature; and
though, with some industry, they get the cha-
racters of fools, they cannot arrive to be very,
seldom to be merely Pretty Fellows.'
where nature has formed a person for this sta-
tion amongst men, he is gifted with a peculiar
genius for success, and his very errors and ab.
surdities contribute to it; this felicity attending
him to his life's end: for it being in a manner
necessary that he should be of no consequence,
he is as well in old age as youth; and I know a
man, whose son has been some years a 'Pretty
Fellow,' who is himself at this hour a very
Pretty Fellow.

One must move tenderly in this place, for we are now in the ladies' lodgings, and speaking of such as are supported by their influence and favour; against which there is not, neither ought there to be, any dispute or obscrvation. But when we come into more free air, one may talk a little more at large.

Give me leave then to mention three, whom I do not doubt but we shall see make considerable figures; and these are such as for their Bacchanalian performances must be admitted into this order. They are three brothers lately landed from Holland: as yet, indeed, they have not made their public entry, but lodge and converse at Wapping. They have merited already on the water-side particular titles: the first is called Hogshead; the second, Culverin; and the third, Musquet. This fraternity is preparing for our end of the town by their ability in the exercises of Bacchus, and measure their time and merit by liquid weight, and power of drinking. Hogshead is a prettier Fellow than Culverin, by two quarts; and Culverin than Musquet, by a full pint. It is to be feared Hogshead is so often too full, and Culverin overloaded, that Musquet will be the only lasting Very Pretty Fellow of the three.

A third sort of this denomination is such as, by very daring adventures in love, have purchased to themselves renown and new names; as Jo Carry, for his excessive strength and vigour; Tom Drybones, for his generous loss of

youth and health; and Cancrum, for his meri- | diamond is to show her, that her value is ima

torious rottenness.

These great and leading spirits are proposed to all such of our British youth as would arrive at perfection in these different kinds; and if their parts and accomplishments were well imitated, it is not doubted but that our nation would soon excel all others in wit and arts, as they already do in arms.

N. B. The gentleman who stole Betty Pepin*may own it, for he is allowed to be A very Pretty Fellow.'

But we must proceed to the explanation of other terms in our writings.

To know what a toast is in the country, gives as much perplexity as she herself does in town: and indeed the learned differ very much upon the original of this word, and the acceptation of it among the moderns. However, it is by all agreed to have a joyous and cheerful import. A toast in a cold morning, heightened by nutmeg, and sweetened with sugar, has for many ages been given to our rural dispensers of justice, before they entered upon causes, and has been of great and politic use to take off the severity of their sentences; but has indeed been remark. able for one ill effect, that it inclines those who use it immoderately to speak Latin, to the admiration rather than information of an audience. This application of a toast makes it very obvious that the word may, without a metaphor, be understood as an apt name for a thing which raises us in the most sovereign degree. But many of the wits of the last age will assert that the word, in its present sense, was known among them in their youth, and had its rise from an accident at the town of Bath, in the reign of king Charles the Second.

It happened that, on a public day, a celebrated beauty of those times was in the Cross Bath, and one of the crowd of her admirers took a glass of the water in which the fair one stood, and drank her health to the company. There was in the place a gay fellow half fuddled, who offered to jump in, and swore, though he liked not the liquor, he would have the toast. He was opposed in his resolution; yet this whim gave foundation to the present honour which is done to the lady we mention in our liquors, who has ever since been called a toast.

ginary; and that of the glass to acquaint her, that her condition is frail, and depends on the hand which holds her. This wise design admonishes her, neither to over-rate or depreciate her charms; as well considering and applying, that it is perfectly according to the humour and taste of the company, whether the toast is eaten, or left as an offal.

The foremost of the whole rank of toasts, and the most undisputed in their present empire, are Mrs. Gatty and Mrs. Frontlet: the first an agreeable, the second an awful beauty. These ladies are perfect friends, out of a knowledge, that their perfections are too different to stand in competition. He that likes Gatty can have no relish for so solemn a creature as Frontlet; and an admirer of Frontlet will call Gatty a maypole girl. Gatty for ever smiles upon you; and Frontlet disdains to see you smile. Gatty's love is a shining quick flame; Frontlet's, a slow wasting fire. Gatty likes the man that diverts her; Frontlet, him who adores her. Gatty always improves the soil in which she travels; Frontlet lays waste the country. Gatty does not only smile, but laughs at her lover; Frontlet not only looks serious, but frowns at him. All the men of wit (and coxcombs their followers) are professed servants of Gatty: the politicians and pretenders give solemn worship to Frontlet. Their reign will be best judged of by its duration. Frontlet will never be chosen more; and Gatty's a toast for life.

St. James's Coffee-house, June 3.

Letters from Hamburg of the seventh instant, N. S. inform us, that no art or cost is omitted to make the stay of his Danish majesty at Dresden agreeable; but there are various speculations upon the interview between king Augustus and that prince, many putting politic constructions upon his Danish majesty's arrival at a time when his troops are marching out of Hungary, with orders to pass through Saxony, where it is given out, that they are to be recruited. It is said also, that several Polish senators have invited king Augustus to return into Poland. His majesty of Sweden, according to the same advices, has passed the Nieper without any oppoThough this institution had so trivial a be-sition from the Muscovites, and advances with ginning, it is now elevated into a formal order; and that happy virgin, who is received and drunk to at their meetings, has no more to do in this life but to judge and accept of the first good offer. The manner of her inauguration is much like that of the choice of a doge in Venice: it is performed by balloting; and when she is so chosen, she reigns indisputably for that ensuing year; but must be elected a-new to prolong her empire a moment beyond it. When she is regularly chosen, her name is written with a diamond on a drinking-glass. The hieroglyphic of the

all possible expedition towards Volhinia, where he proposes to join king Stanislaus and general Crassau.

We hear from Bern of the first instant, N. S. that there is not a province in France, from whence the court is not apprehensive of receiv ing accounts of public commotions, occasioned by the want of corn. The general diet of the thirteen cantons is assembled at Baden, but have not yet entered upon business, so that the affair of Tockenburgh is yet at a stand.

Letters from the Hague, dated the eleventh instant, N. S. advise, that monsieur Rouille hav*The kept mistress of a knight of the shire nearing acquainted the ministers of the allies, that Brentford, who squandered his estate on women, and

in contested elections.

his master had refused to ratify the prelimi naries of a treaty adjusted with monsieur Torcy,

It was the fashion of the time, to inscribe verses thus to the reigning beauties. Several of these sprightly productions, on the toasting glasses of the Kit-cat bers of that ingenious society, may be seen in Nichols's Club, by the Lords Halifax, Wharton, Lansdowne, and Select Collection of Miscellany Poems,' vol. v. pp. 168. Carbury, by Mr. Maynwaring, and other poetical mem-178, 276.

9

set out for Paris on Sunday morning. The same day the foreign ministers met a committee of the states-general, where monsieur Van Hessen opened the business upon which they were assembled, and in a very warm discourse, laid before them the conduct of France in the late negotiations, representing the abject manner in which she had laid open her own distresses, that reduced her to a compliance with the demands of all the allies, and her meanness in receding from those points to which monsieur Torcy had consented. The respective ministers of each potentate of the alliance severally expressed their resentment of the faithless behaviour of the French, and gave each other mutual assurances of the constancy and resolution of their principals, to proceed with the utmost vigour against the common enemy. His grace the duke of Marlborough set out from the Hague on the afternoon of the ninth, and lay that night at Rotterdam, from whence, at four the next morning, he proceeded towards Antwerp, with a design to reach Ghent the next day. All the troops in the Low Countries are in motion towards the general rendezvous between the Scheld and the Lis; the whole army will be formed on the twelfth instant; and it is said, that on the fourteenth, they will advance towards the enemy's country. In the mean time the marshal de Villars has assembled the French forces between Lens, La Bassce, and Douay. Yesterday morning sir John Norris, with the squadron under his command, sailed from the

Downs for Holland.

From my own Apartment, June 3.

I have the honour of the following letter from a gentleman whom I receive into my family, and order the heralds at arms to enroll him accordingly.

MR. BICKERSTAFF,-Though you have excluded me the honour of your family, yet I have ventured to correspond with the same great persons as yourself, and have wrote this post to the king of France; though I am in a manner unknown in his country, and have not been seen there these many months:

TO LEWIS LE GRAND.

Though in your country I'm unknown,
Yet, sir, I must advise you:

Of late so poor and mean you're grown,
That all the world despise you.

Here vermin eat your majesty,

There meagre subjects stand unfed: What surer signs of poverty,

Than many lice and little bread?

most passionate terms, wherein she laments the A letter from a young lady, written in the misfortune of a gentleman, her lover, who was lately wounded in a duel, has turned my thoughts to that subject, and inclined me to examine into the causes which precipitate men into so fatal a folly. And as it has been proposed to treat of subjects of gallantry in the article from hence, and no one point in nature is more proper to be considered by the company who frequent this place than that of duels, it is worth our consideration to examine into this chimerical groundless humour, and to lay every other thought aside, until we have stripped it of all its false pretences to credit and reputation amongst men.

But I must confess, when I consider what I all the endless crowd of men of honour who will am going about, and run over in my imagination be offended at such a discourse; I am undertaking, methinks, a work worthy an invulnerable hero in romance, rather than a private gentleman with a single rapier: but as I am pretty nature of man, and know of a truth that all men well acquainted by great opportunities with the fight against their will, the danger vanishes, and resolution rises upon this subject. For this reason, I shall talk very freely on a custom which all men wish exploded, though no man has courage enough to resist it.

But there is one unintelligible word, which I fear will extremely perplex my dissertation, and I confess to you I find very hard to explain, which is the term satisfaction.' An honest country gentleman had the misfortune to fall into company with two or three modern men of honour, where he happened to be very ill-treated; and one of the company, being conscious of his offence, sends a note to him in the morning, and tells him, he was ready to give him satisfaction.

This is fine doing,' says the plain fellow; 'last night he sent me away cursedly out of humour, and this morning he fancies it would be a satisfaction to be run through the body.'

As the matter at present stands, it is not to do handsome actions denominates a man of honour; it is enough if he dares to defend ill ones. Thus you often see a common sharper in competition with a gentleman of the first rank; though all mankind is convinced, that a fighting gamester is only a pick-pocket with the courage of a highwayman. One cannot with any patience reflect on the unaccountable jum. ble of persons and things in this town and nation, which occasions very frequently, that a brave man falls by a hand below that of a common hangman, and yet his executioner escapes the clutches of the hangman for doing it. I shall therefore hereafter consider, how the bravest men in other ages and nations have behaved themselves upon such incidents as we decide by BREAD THE STAFF OF LIFE.' combat; and show, from their practice, that this

Then, sir, the present minute choose,
Our armies are advanced:
Those terms you at the Hague refuse,
At Paris won't be granted.

Consider this, and Dunkirk raze,

And Anna's title own;

Send one pretender out to graze,
And call the other home.

A

Your humble servant,

resentment neither has its foundation from true | rage him to further trespasses.' He looked reason or solid fame; but is an imposture, made plaguy sour at me. His son soon after sent up of cowardice, falsehood, and want of understand- a paper of verses, forsooth, in print, on the last ing. For this work, a good history of quarrels public occasion; upon which, he is convinced would be very edifying to the public, and I ap- the boy has parts, and a lad of spirit is not to ply myself to the town for particulars and cir- be too much cramped in his maintenance, lest cumstances within their knowledge, which may he take ill courses. Neither father nor son can serve to embellish the dissertation with proper ever since endure the sight of me. cuts. Most of the quarrels I have ever known, have proceeded from some valiant coxcomb's persisting in the wrong, to defend some prevailing folly, and preserve himself from the ingenuousness of owning a mistake.

By this means it is called giving a man satisfaction,' to urge your offence against him with your sword; which puts me in mind of Peter's order to the keeper, in 'The Tale of a Tub: if you neglect to do all this, damn you and your generation for ever: and so we bid you heartily farewell.' If the contradiction in the very terms of one of our challenges were as well explained and turned into downright English, would it not run after this manner?

'SIR-Your extraordinary behaviour last night, and the liberty you were pleased to take with me, makes me this morning give you this, to tell you, because you are an ill-bred puppy, I will meet you in Hyde-park an hour hence; and because you want both breeding and humanity, I desire you would come with a pistol in your hand, on horseback, and endeavour to shoot me through the head, to teach you more manners. If you fail of doing me this pleasure, I shall say, you are a rascal, on every post in town: and so, sir, if you will not injure me more, I shall never forgive what you have done already. Pray, sir, do not fail of getting every thing ready; and you will infinitely oblige, sir, your most obedient humble servant, &c.'

From my own Apartment, June 6.

Among the many employments I am necessarily put upon by my friends, that of giving advice is the most unwelcome to me; and, indeed I am forced to use a little art in the manner; for some people will ask counsel of you, when they have already acted what they tell you is still under deliberation. I had almost lost a very good friend the other day, who came to know how I liked his design to marry such a lady? I answered, By no means; and I must be positive against it, for very solid reasons, which are not proper to be communicated.' 'Not proper to be communicated!' said he, with a grave air, I will know the bottom of this.' I saw him moved, and knew from thence he was already determined; therefore evaded it by saying, To tell you the truth, dear Frank, of all the women living I would have her myself." Isaac,' said he thou art too late, for we have been both one these two months.'

I learned this caution by a gentleman's consulting me formerly about his son. He railed at his damned extravagance, and told me, in a very little time he would beggar him by the exorbitant bills which came from Oxford every quarter. Make the rogue bite upon the bridle,' said I; 'pay none of his bills; it will but encou

These sort of people ask opinions only out of the fulness of their heart on the subject of their perplexity, and not from a desire of information.

There is nothing so easy as to find out which opinion the man in doubt has a mind to; therefore the sure way is, to tell him that is certainly to be chosen. Then you are to be very clear and positive; leave no handle for scruple. Bless me! sir, there is no room for a question! This rivets you into his heart; for you at once applaud his wisdom, and gratify his inclination. However, I had too much bowels to be insincere to a man who came yesterday to know of me, with which of two eminent men in the city he should place his son? their names are Paulo and Avaro. This gave me much debate with my self, because not only the fortune of the youth, but his virtue also dependeth upon this choice. The men are equally wealthy; but they differ in the use and application of their riches, which you immediately see upon entering their doors. The habitation of Paulo has at once the air of a nobleman and a merchant. You see the servants act with affection to their master, and satisfaction in themselves: the master meets you with an open countenance, full of benevo lence and integrity: your business is despatched with that confidence and welcome which always accompany honest minds: his table is the image of plenty and generosity, supported by justice and frugality. After we had dined here, our affair was to visit Avaro: out comes an awk. ward fellow, with a careful countenance; 'Sir, would you speak with my master? may I crave your name?' After the first preamble, he leads us into a noble solitude, a great house that seemed uninhabited; but from the end of the spacious hall moves towards us Avaro, with a suspicious aspect, as if he had believed us thieves; and, as for my part, I approached him as if I knew him a cut-purse. We fell into discourse of his noble dwelling, and the great estate all the world knew he had to enjoy in it: and I, to plague him, began to commend Paulo's way of living. Paulo,' answered Avaro, ‘is a very good man; but we, who have smaller estates, must cut our coat according to our cloth.'.

Nay,' says I, 'every man knows his own circumstances best; you are in the right, if you have not wherewithal.' He looked very sour; for it is, you must know, the utmost vanity of a mean-spirited rich man to be contradicted when he calls himself poor. But I resolved to vex him, by consenting to all he said; the main design of which was, that he would have us find out, he was one of the wealthiest men in London, and lived like a beggar. We left him, and took a turn on the Exchange. My friend was ravished with Avaro: 'this,' said he, 'is certainly a sure man.' I contradicted him with much warmth, and summed up their different characters as well as I could. This Paulo,' said I,