eclipsed. Wherever I have afforded my salutary presence, fevers have ceased to burn, and agues to shake the human fabric. When an eloquent fit has been upon me, an apt gesture and proper cadence has animated each sentence, and gazing crowds have found their passions worked up into rage, or soothed into a calm. I am short, and not very well made; yet upon sight of a fine woman, I have stretched into proper stature, and killed with a good air and mien. These are the gay phantoms that dance before my waking eyes, and compose my day-dreams. I should be the most contented happy man alive, were the chimerical happiness which springs from the paintings of fancy less fleeting and transitory. But alas ! it is with grief of mind I tell you, the least breath of wind has often demolished my magnificent edifices, swept away my groves, and left no more trace of them than if they had never been. My exchequer has sunk and vanished by a rap on my door, the salutation of a friend has cost me a whole continent, and in the same moment I have been pulled by the sleeve, my crown has fallen from my head. The ill consequence of these reveries is inconceivably great, seeing the loss of imaginary possessions makes impressions of real woe. Besides, bad œconomy is visible and apparent in builders of invisible mansions. My tenants' advertisements of ruins and dilapidations often cast a damp on my spirits, even in the instant when the sun, in all his splendor, gilds my eastern palaces. Add to this the pensive drudgery in building, and constant grasping aerial trowels, distracts and shatters the mind, and the fond builder of Babels is often cursed with an incoherent diversity and confusion of thoughts. I do not know to whom I can more properly apply myself for relief from

this fantastical evil, than to yourself; whom I earnestly implore to accommodate me with a method how to settle my head, and cool my brain-pan. A dissertation on castle-building may not only be serviceable to myself, but all architects who display their skill in the thin element. Such a favour would oblige me to make my next soliloquy not contain the praises of my dear self, but of the Spectator, who shall, by complying with this, make me

'His obliged, humble servant,

N° 168. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 1711.

-Pectus præceptis format amicis.

HOR. Ep. i. 1. 2. ver. 128.

Forms the soft bosom with the gentlest art.

- POPE.

It would be arrogance to neglect the application of my correspondents so far, as not sometimes to insert their animadversions upon my paper; that of this day shall be therefore wholly composed of the hints which they have sent me.

" MR. SPECTATOR,

'I SEND you this to congratulate your late choice of a subject, for treating on which you deserve public thanks; I mean that on those licensed tyrants the school-masters. If you can disarm them of their rods, you will certainly have your old age reverenced

by all the young gentlemen of Great Britain who are now between seven and seventeen years. You may boast that the incomparably wise Quintilian and you are of one mind in this particular. "Si cui est (says he) mens tam illiberalis ut objurgatione non corrigatur, is etiam ad plagas, ut pessima quæque mancipia durabitur;" i. e. "If any child be of so disingenuous a nature, as not to stand corrected by reproof, he, like the very worst of slaves, will be hardened even against blows themselves." And afterwards "Pudet dicere in quæ probra nefandi homines isto cædendi jure abutantur;" i. e. "I blush to say how shamefully those wicked men abuse the power of correction."

'I was bred myself, Sir, in a very great school, of which the master was a Welshman, but certainly descended from a Spanish family, as plainly appeared from his temper as well as his name '. I leave you to judge what sort of a school-master a Welshman ingrafted on a Spaniard would make. So very dreadful had he made himself to me, that although it is above twenty years since I felt his heavy hand, yet still once a month at least I dream of him, so strong an impression did he make on my mind. It is a sign he has fully terrified me waking, who still continues to haunt me sleeping.

And yet I may say without vanity, that the business of the school was what I did without great difficulty; and I was not remarkably unlucky; and yet such was the master's severity, that once a month, or oftener, I suffered as much as would have 'satisfied the law of the land for a petty larceny.

Many a white and tender hand, which the fond mother had passionately kissed a thousand and a

Dr. Charles Roderick, provost of Eton-school.

thousand times, have I seen whipped till it was covered with blood; perhaps for smiling, or for going a yard and a half out of a gate, or for writing an o for an a, or an A for an o. These were our great faults! Many a brave and noble spirit has been there broken; others have run from thence and were never heard of afterwards. It is a worthy attempt to undertake the cause of distressed youth; and it is a noble piece of knight-errantry to enter the lists against so many armed pedagogues. It is pity but we had a set of men, polite in their behaviour and method of teaching, who should be put into a condition of being above flattering or fearing the parents of those they instruct. We might then possibly see learning become a pleasure, and children delighting themselves in that which now they abhor for coming upon such hard terms to them. What would be still a greater happiness arising from the care of such instructors, would be, that we should have no more pedants, nor any bred to learning who had not genius for it.

I am, with the utmost sincerity,

· MR. SPECTATOR,

Richmond, Sept. 5, 1711. I AM a boy of fourteen years of age, and have for this last year been under the tuition of a doctor of divinity, who has taken the school of this place under his care. From the gentleman's great tenderness to me and friendship to my father, I am very happy in learning my book with pleasure. We never leave off our diversions any farther than to salute him at hours of play when he pleases to look on. It is impossible

2 Dr. Nicholas Brady, co-adjutor with Tate in the new version of the Psalms.

for any of us to love our own parents better than we do him. He never gives any of us a harsh word, and we think it the greatest punishment in the world when he will not speak to any of us. My brother and I are both together inditing this letter. He is a year older than I am, but is now ready to break his heart that the doctor has not taken any notice of him these three days. If you please to print this he will see it, and, we hope, taking it for my brother's earnest desire to be restored to his favour, he will again smile upon

him.

• Your most obedient servant,

'T. S.'

MR. SPECTATOR,

You have represented several sorts of impertinents singly, I wish you would now proceed, and describe some of them in sets. It often happens in public assemblies, that a party who came thither together, or whose impertinencies are of an equal pitch, act in concert, and are so full of themselves as to give disturbance to all that are about them. Sometimes you have a set of whisperers, who lay their heads together in order to sacrifice every body within their observation; sometimes a set of laughers, that keep up an insipid mirth in their own corner, and by their noise and gestures shew they have no respect for the rest of the company. You frequently meet with these sets at the opera, the play, the water-works, and other public meetings, where their whole business is to draw off the attention of the spectators from the entertainment, and to fix it upon themselves; and it is to be observed, that the impertinence is ever loudest, when the set happens to be made up of three or four females who have got what you call a woman's man among them.