[334] Horace's words are, "Invenias etiam disjecti membra poetæ."
[335] Perhaps Peter Anthony Motteux (1660-1718), dramatist and
translator of Rabelais and "Don Quixote." In a letter in No. 288 of the
_Spectator_, Motteux spoke of himself as "an author turned dealer," and
described the goods in his warehouse in Leadenhall Street. In No. 552,
Steele gave a glowing account of his friend's "spacious warehouses,
filled and adorned with tea, china, and Indian wares."
[336] _Cf._ the account of Tom Spindle in No. 47.
[337] See No. 104.
[338] "Hamlet," act i. sc. 2.
No. 107. [STEELE.
From _Tuesday, Dec. 13_, to _Thursday, Dec. 15, 1709_.
----Ah miser,
Quanta laborabas Charybdi
Digne puer meliore flammâ!
HOR., 1 Od. xxvii. 18.
_Sheer Lane, Dec. 14._
About four this afternoon, which is the hour I usually put myself in
readiness to receive company, there entered a gentleman who I believed
at first came upon some ordinary question; but as he approached nearer
to me, I saw in his countenance a deep sorrow, mixed with a certain
ingenuous complacency that gave me a sudden good-will towards him.
He stared, and betrayed an absence of thought as he was going to
communicate his business to me. But at last, recovering himself, he
said, with an air of great respect, "Sir, it would be an injury to your
knowledge in the occult sciences, to tell you what is my distress;
I dare say, you read it in my countenance: I therefore beg your
advice to the most unhappy of all men." Much experience has made me
particularly sagacious in the discovery of distempers, and I soon saw
that his was love. I then turned to my commonplace book, and found his
case under the word "coquette"; and reading over the catalogue which
I have collected out of this great city of all under that character,
I saw at the name of Cynthia his fit came upon him. I repeated the
name thrice after a musing manner, and immediately perceived his
pulse quicken two-thirds; when his eyes, instead of the wildness with
which they appeared at his entrance, looked with all the gentleness
imaginable upon me, not without tears. "O sir!" said he, "you know
not the unworthy usage I have met with from the woman my soul dotes
on. I could gaze at her to the end of my being; yet when I have done
so, for some time past I have found her eyes fixed on another. She is
now two-and-twenty, in the full tyranny of her charms, which she once
acknowledged she rejoiced in, only as they made her choice of me, out
of a crowd of admirers, the more obliging. But in the midst of this
happiness, so it is, Mr. Bickerstaff, that young Quicksett, who is
just come to town, without any other recommendation than that of being
tolerably handsome, and excessively rich, has won her heart in so
shameless a manner, that she dies for him. In a word, I would consult
you, how to cure myself of this passion for an ungrateful woman, who
triumphs in her falsehood, and can make no man happy, because her own
satisfaction consists chiefly in being capable of giving distress. I
know Quicksett is at present considerable with her for no other reason
but that he can be without her, and feel no pain in the loss. Let me
therefore desire you, sir, to fortify my reason against the levity of
an inconstant, who ought only to be treated with neglect." All this
time I was looking over my receipts, and asked him if he had any good
winter boots. "Boots, sir!" said my patient. I went on: "You may easily
reach Harwich in a day, so as to be there when the packet goes off."
"Sir," said the lover, "I find you design me for travelling; but alas!
I have no language; it will be the same thing to me as solitude, to be
in a strange country. I have," continued he, sighing, "been many years
in love with this creature, and have almost lost even my English, at
least to speak such as anybody else does. I asked a tenant of ours, who
came up to town the other day with rent, whether the flowery mead near
my father's house in the country had any shepherd in it. I have called
a cave a grotto these three years, and must keep ordinary company, and
frequent busy people for some time, before I can recover my common
words." I smiled at his raillery upon himself, though I well saw it
came from a heavy heart. "You are," said I, "acquainted, to be sure,
with some of the general officers; suppose you made a campaign?" "If I
did," said he, "I should venture more than any man there, for I should
be in danger of starving; my father is such an untoward old gentleman,
that he would tell me he found it hard enough to pay his taxes towards
the war, without making it more expensive by an allowance to me. With
all this, he is as fond as he is rugged, and I am his only son."
I looked upon the young gentleman with much tenderness, and not like a
physician, but a friend; for I talked to him so largely, that if I had
parcelled my discourse into distinct prescriptions, I am confident I
gave him two hundred pounds' worth of advice. He heard me with great
attention, bowing, smiling, and showing all other instances of that
natural good-breeding which ingenuous tempers pay to those who are
elder and wiser than themselves. I entertained him to the following
purpose. "I am sorry, sir, that your passion is of so long a date, for
evils are much more curable in their beginnings; but at the same time
must allow, that you are not to be blamed, since your youth and merit
has been abused by one of the most charming, but the most unworthy,
sort of women, the coquettes. A coquette is a chaste jilt, and differs
only from a common one, as a soldier, who is perfect in exercise, does
from one that is actually in service. This grief, like all other, is
to be cured only by time; and although you are convinced this moment,
as much as you will be ten years hence, that she ought to be scorned
and neglected, you see you must not expect your remedy from the force
of reason. The cure then is only in time, and the hastening of the cure
only in the manner of employing that time. You have answered me as to
travel and a campaign, so that we have only Great Britain to avoid her
in. Be then yourself, and listen to the following rules, which only can
be of use to you in this unaccountable distemper, wherein the patient
is often averse even to his recovery. It has been of benefit to some
to apply themselves to business; but as that may not lie in your way,
go down to your estate, mind your fox-hounds, and venture the life
you are weary of over every hedge and ditch in the country. These are
wholesome remedies; but if you can have resolution enough, rather stay
in town, and recover yourself even in the town where she inhabits.
Take particular care to avoid all places where you may possibly meet
her, and shun the sight of everything which may bring her to your
remembrance; there is an infection in all that relates to her: you'll
find, her house, her chariot, her domestics, and her very lap-dog, are
so many instruments of torment. Tell me seriously, do you think you
could bear the sight of her fan?" He shook his head at the question,
and said, "Ah! Mr. Bickerstaff, you must have been a patient, or you
could not have been so good a physician." "To tell you truly," said
I, "about the thirtieth year of my age, I received a wound that has
still left a scar in my mind, never to be quite worn out by time or
philosophy.
"The means which I found the most effectual for my cure, were
reflections upon the ill-usage I had received from the woman I loved,
and the pleasure I saw her take in my sufferings.
"I considered the distress she brought upon me the greatest that could
befall a human creature, at the same time that she did not inflict this
upon one who was her enemy, one that had done her an injury, one that
had wished her ill; but on the man who loved her more than any else
loved her, and more than it was possible for him to love any other
person.
"In the next place, I took pains to consider her in all her
imperfections; and that I might be sure to hear of them constantly,
kept company with those her female friends who were her dearest and
most intimate acquaintance.
"Among her highest imperfections, I still dwelt upon her baseness of
mind and ingratitude, that made her triumph in the pain and anguish of
the man who loved her, and of one who in those days (without vanity be
it spoken) was thought to deserve her love.
"To shorten my story, she was married to another, which would have
distracted me had he proved a good husband; but to my great pleasure,
he used her at first with coldness, and afterwards with contempt. I
hear he still treats her very ill; and am informed, that she often says
to her woman, 'This is a just revenge for my falsehood to my first
love: what a wretch am I, that might have been married to the famous
Mr. Bickerstaff.'"
My patient looked upon me with a kind of melancholy pleasure, and told
me, he did not think it was possible for a man to live to the age I now
am of, who in his thirtieth year had been tortured with that passion in
its violence. "For my part," said he, "I can neither eat, drink, nor
sleep in it; nor keep company with anybody, but two or three friends
who are in the same condition."
"There," answered I, "you are to blame; for as you ought to avoid
nothing more than keeping company with yourself, so you ought to be
particularly cautious of keeping company with men like yourself. As
long as you do this, you do but indulge your distemper.
"I must not dismiss you without further instructions. If possible,
transfer your passion from the woman you are now in love with, to
another; or if you cannot do that, change the passion itself into
some other passion; that is, to speak more plainly, find out some
other agreeable woman:[339] or if you can't do this, grow covetous,
ambitious, litigious; turn your love of woman into that of profit,
preferment, reputation; and for a time, give up yourself entirely to
the pursuit.
"This is a method we sometimes take in physic, when we turn a desperate
disease into one we can more easily cure."
He made little answer to all this, but crying out, "Ah, sir!" for his
passion reduced his discourse to interjections.
"There is one thing added, which is present death to a man in your
condition, and therefore to be avoided with the greatest care and
caution: that is, in a word, to think of your mistress and rival
together, whether walking, discoursing, dallying--" "The devil!" he
cried out, "who can bear it?" To compose him, for I pitied him very
much, "The time will come," said I, "when you shall not only bear it,
but laugh at it. As a preparation to it, ride every morning an hour at
least with the wind full in your face. Upon your return, recollect
the several precepts which I have now given you, and drink upon them a
bottle of spa-water. Repeat this every day for a month successively,
and let me see you at the end of it." He was taking his leave, with
many thanks, and some appearance of consolation in his countenance,
when I called him back to acquaint him, that I had private information
of a design of the coquettes to buy up all the true spa-water in town;
upon which he took his leave in haste, with a resolution to get all
things ready for entering upon his regimen the next morning.