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 thousands. As for myself, who
look upon riches to consist rather in content than possessions, and
measure the greatness of the mind rather by its 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
first discovered to me by a most pleasing apothegm 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 to conceal his wisdom from the vulgar) has couched several
admirable precepts in remote allusions and mysterious sentences. By the
winds in this apothegm, are meant State hurricanes and popular tumults.
"When these arise," says he, "worship the echo;" that is, withdraw
yourself from the multitude into deserts, woods, solitudes, or the like
retirements, which are the usual habitations of the echo.
FOOTNOTES:
[56] It is not unlikely that the account of a State weather-glass in
this paper is by Addison, who was the author of the description of an
ecclesiastical thermometer in No. 220.
[57] See Nos. 1, 11, and 43. The dedication was to the Second Part of
"Don Quixote," which D'Urfey addressed to Charles, Earl of Dorset, in
these lines:
"You have, my Lord, a patent from above,
And can monopolise both wit and love,
Inspired and blest by Heaven's peculiar care,
Adored by all the wise and all the fair;
To whom the world united give this due,
Best judge of men, and best of poets too."
[58] See No. 18.
[59] Jerome Cardan (1501-1576), physician and astrologer (see Professor
Henry Morley's "Life of Girolamo Cardano," 1854).
[60] Virgil, "Æneid," vi. 103.
=No. 215.= [STEELE.
From _Tuesday, Aug. 22_, to _Thursday, Aug. 24, 1710_.
_From my own Apartment, Aug. 23._
Lysander has written to me out of the country, and tells me, after
many other circumstances, that he had passed a great deal of time with
much pleasure and tranquillity, till his happiness was interrupted by
an indiscreet flatterer, who came down into those parts to visit a
relation. With the circumstances in which he represents the matter,
he had no small provocation to be offended, for he attacked him in so
wrong a season, that he could not have any relish of pleasure in it;
though, perhaps, at another time, it might have passed upon him without
giving him much uneasiness. Lysander had, after a long satiety of the
town, been so happy as to get to a solitude he extremely liked, and
recovered a pleasure he had long discontinued, that of reading. He was
got to the bank of a rivulet, covered by a pleasing shade, and fanned
by a soft breeze, which threw his mind into that sort of composure and
attention in which a man, though with indolence, enjoys the utmost
liveliness of his spirits, and the greatest strength of his mind at
the same time. In this state, Lysander represents that he was reading
Virgil's "Georgics"; when on a sudden the gentleman above-mentioned
surprised him, and, without any manner of preparation, falls upon him
at once. "What! I have found you out at last, after searching all over
the wood. We wanted you at cards after dinner, but you are much better
employed. I have heard indeed that you are an excellent scholar: but at
the same time, is it not a little unkind to rob the ladies, who like
you so well, of the pleasure of your company? But that is indeed the
misfortune of you great scholars, 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'll leave you." Lysander says,
he made him no answer, but took a resolution to complain to me.
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 act amongst themselves with applause, and do
not apprehend they are contemptible to those of higher understanding,
who are restrained by decencies above their knowledge from showing
a dislike. Hence it is, that because complaisance is a good quality
in conversation, one impertinent takes upon him on all occasions to
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 was 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 differed only in proportion to the degree of dislike
between the nauseous and the insipid. Both these characters of men
are born out of a barrenness of imagination. They are never fools by
nature, but become such out of an impotent ambition of being what she
never intended them, men of wit and conversation. I therefore think fit
to declare, that according to the known laws of this land, a man may
be a very honest gentleman, and enjoy himself and his friend, without
being a wit; and I absolve all men from taking pains to be such for
the future. As the present case stands, is it not very unhappy that
Lysander must be attacked and applauded in a wood, and Corinna jolted
and commended in a stage-coach; and this for no manner of reason, but
because other people have a mind to show their parts? I grant indeed,
if these people (as they have understanding enough for it) would
confine their accomplishments to those of their own degree of talents,
it were to be tolerated; but when they are so insolent as to interrupt
the meditations of the wife, the conversations of the agreeable, and
the whole behaviour of the modest, it becomes a grievance naturally in
my jurisdiction. Among themselves, I cannot only overlook, but approve
it. I was present the other day at a conversation, where a man of this
height of breeding and sense told a young woman of the same form, "To
be sure, madam, everything must please that comes from a lady." She
answered, "I know, sir, you are so much a gentleman that you think so."
Why, this is very well on both sides; and it is impossible that such
a gentleman and lady should do other than think well of one another.
These are but loose hints of the disturbances in human society, of
which there is yet no remedy; but 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
licence of which is at present far from being among the small errors in
conversation.
_P.S._--The following letter was left, with a request to be immediately
answered, lest the artifices used against a lady in distress may come
into common practice:
* * * * *
"SIR,
"My elder sister buried her husband about six months ago; and at his
funeral, a gentleman of more art than honesty, on the night of his
interment, while she was not herself, but in the utmost agony of her
grief, spoke to her of the subject of love. In that weakness and
distraction which my sister was in (as one ready to fall is apt to lean
on anybody), he obtained her promise of marriage, which was accordingly
consummated eleven weeks after. There is no affliction 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 promised 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 same 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 duress, 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, Esq.
"_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.[61]
"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."
Before I answer this petition, I am inclined to examine the offenders
myself.
FOOTNOTES:
[61] This mode, which originated in the reign of King Charles II.,
is shown in Sir Peter Lely's ladies; but Walpole says that Vandyck's
habits are those of the times, but Lely's are fantastic dresses.
The prevalence and dislike of this fashion occasioned in 1678 the
publication of a book translated from the French by Edward Cooke, under
the following title, "A Just and Reasonable Reprehension of Naked
Breasts and Shoulders, written by a grave and learned Papist."
Half a century after the _Tatler_, the "moulting of their clothes" by
ladies was again the subject of comment by the moral essayist. There
are several papers on the subject in the _World_ (Nos. 6, 21, 169,
&c.), in which it is remarked that it was the fashion to undress to go
abroad, and to dress when at home and not seeing company.
=No. 216.= [ADDISON.
From _Thursday, Aug. 24_, to _Saturday, Aug. 26, 1710_.
--Nugis addere pondus.--HOR., 1 Ep. xix. 42.
_From my own Apartment, Aug. 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, 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
world, that they scarce know a horse from an ox; but at the same
time will tell you, with a great deal of gravity, that a flea is a
rhinoceros, and a snail an 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 death-bed he
bequeathed to his relations and friends, in the following words:
_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 box of butterflies,
One drawer of shells,
A female skeleton,
A dried cockatrice.
_Item_, to my daughter Elizabeth,
My receipt for preserving dead caterpillars.
As also my preparations of winter May-dew, and embryo pickle.
_Item_, to my little daughter Fanny,
Three crocodile's eggs.
And upon the birth of her first child, if she marries with her mother's
consent,
The nest of a humming-bird.
_Item_, to my eldest brother, as an acknowledgment 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 Dr. Johannes Elscrikius,
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
Dr. Elscrikius, 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 rattlesnake, and
The mummy of an Egyptian king,
I make no further provision for him in this my will.
My eldest son John having spoken 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.[62]
ADVERTISEMENT.
Whereas an ignorant upstart in astrology has publicly endeavoured to
persuade the world, that he is the late John Partridge, who died the
28th of March 1708; these are to certify all whom it may concern, that
the true John Partridge was not only dead at that time, but continues
so to this present day.
Beware of counterfeits, for such are abroad.
FOOTNOTES:
[62] See No. 221.
=No. 217.= [STEELE.
From _Saturday, Aug. 26_, to _Tuesday, Aug. 29, 1710_.
Atque deos atque astra vocat crudelia mater.
VIRG., Eclog. v. 23.
_From my own Apartment, Aug. 28._
As I was passing by a neighbour's house this morning, I overheard the
wife of the family speak things to her husband which gave me much
disturbance, and put me in mind of a character which I wonder I have
so long omitted, and that is, an outrageous species of the 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[63] than many of those who pass
upon the world and themselves for modest.
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 as
are ordinarily reckoned such. Her husband knows every pain in life
with her but jealousy. Now because she is clear in this particular,
the man can't say his soul is his own, but she cries, "No modest woman
is respected nowadays." 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 forlorn wretchedness of their
condition, and then the poor helpless creatures shall throw the 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 without scandal;
and being under the common denomination of being such, men fear to meet
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
husband's 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 359th 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 advice 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,[64] 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 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 or 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 it will
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."
_Thus they in mutual accusation spent
The fruitless hours, but neither self-condemning:
And of their vain contest appeared no end._[65]
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
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 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 appeared in the next book, that they were convinced of
their being both weak, but 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
instant, whatever was the occasion that moved her blood, she has such
intolerable servants, Betty is so awkward, Tom can't 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.
_Desunt multa._
ADVERTISEMENT.
The season now coming on in which the town will begin to fill, Mr.
Bickerstaff gives notice, that from the 1st of October next, he will be
much wittier than he has hitherto been.[66]
FOOTNOTES:
[63] See No. 50.
[64] The tucker "ran in a small kind of ruffle round the uppermost
verge of the woman's stays, and by that means covered a great part of
the shoulders and bosom" (_Guardian_, No. 100). A tendency to abandon
the use of the tucker was the subject of Addison's satire (ibid., No.
109).
[65] "Paradise Lost," ix. 1187.
[66] "The Tatler, in his last, promises us that as the town fills he
will be wittier. I am sorry, for his sake, it has been empty so long.
I believe he will be shortly as good as his word, for his friends,
I hear, are coming from Ireland. I expect, too, some of my friends
from the same country; and as he is to be new-rigged out for a wit,
so I don't question but that there will from thence, too, come fresh
materials for an _Examiner_." (_Examiner_, No. 5.)
=No. 218.= [ADDISON.
From _Tuesday, Aug. 29_, to _Thursday, Aug. 31, 1710_.
Scriptorum chorus omnis amat nemus et fugit urbes.
HOR., 2 Ep. ii. 77.
_From my own Apartment, Aug. 30._