ness and lying-in might be as well taken care of if the doctor stayed ashore. But the art of managing mankind is only to make them stare a little, to keep up their astonishment, to let nothing be familiar to them, but ever to have something in their sleeve, in which they must think you are deeper than they are. There is an ingenious fellow, a barber, of my acquaintance, who, besides his broken fiddle and a dried sea-monster, has a twine-cord, strained with two nails, at each end, over his window, and the words, 'rainy, dry, wet,' and so forth, written, to denote the weather, according to the rising, or falling of the cord. We very great scholars are not apt to wonder at this; but I observed a very honest fellow, a chance customer, who sat in the chair before me to be shaved, fix his eye upon this miraculous performance during the operation upon his chin and face. When those, and his head, also, were cleared of all incumbrances and excrescences, he looked at the fish, then at the fiddle, still grubbling in his pockets, and casting his eye again at the twine, and the words writ on each side; then altered his mind as to farthings, and gave my friend a silver sixpence. The business, as I said, is to keep up the amazement; and, if my friend had had only the skeleton and kit, he must have been contented with a less payment. But the doctor we were talking of, adds to his long voyages the testimony of some people "that has been thirty years lame." When I received my paper, a sagacious fellow took one at the same time, and read till he came to the thirty years' confinement of his friends, and went off very well convinced of the doctor's sufficiency. You have many of these prodigious persons, who have had some extraordinary accident at their birth, or a great disaster in some part of their lives. Any thing, however foreign from the business the people want of you, will convince them of your ability in that you profess. There is a doctor in Mouse-alley, near Wapping, who sets up for curing cataracts, upon the credit of having, as his bill sets forth, lost an eye in the emperor's service. His patients come in upon this, and he shows the musterroll, which confirms that he was in his imperial majesty's troops; and he puts out their eyes with great success. Who would believe that a man should be a doctor for the cure of bursten children, by declaring that his father and grandfather were both bursten? But Charles Ingoltson, next door to the Harp, in Barbican, has made a pretty penny by that asseveration. The generality go upon their first conception, and think no further; all the rest is granted. They take it, that there is something uncommon in you, and give you credit for the rest. You may be sure it is upon that I go, when sometimes, let it be to the purpose or not, I keep a Latin sentence in my front; and I was not a little pleased, when I observed one of my readers say, casting his eye on my twentieth paper, 'More Latin still? What a prodigious scholar is this man!' But as I have here taken much liberty with this learned doctor, I must make up all I have said, by repeating what he seems to be in earnest in, and honestly to promise to those who will not receive him as a great man - to wit, that from eight till twelve, and from two till six, he attends, for the good of the public, to bleed for three-pence.

T

No. 445. THURSDAY, JULY 31, 1712.

Tanti non es, ais: sapis, Luperce.

MART. EP. i. 118. ult.

You say, Lupercus, what I write
I'n't worth so much: you 're in the right.

THIS is the day on which many eminent authors will probably publish their last words. I am afraid that few of our weekly historians, who are men that, above all others, delight in war, will be able to subsist under the weight of a stamp,* and an approaching peace. A sheet of blank paper, that must have this new imprimatur clapped upon it, before it is qualified to communicate any thing to the public, will make its way in the world but very heavily. In short, the necessity of carrying a stamp, and the improbability of notifying a bloody battle, will, I am afraid, both concur to the sinking of those thin folios, which have, every other day, retailed to us the history of Europe for several years last past. A facetious friend of mine, who loves a pun, calls this present mortality among authors, 'The fall of the leaf.'

I remember, upon Mr. Baxter's death, there was published a sheet of very good sayings, inscribed, The last words of Mr. Baxter.' The title sold so great a number of these papers, that about a week after there came out a second sheet, inscribed, More last words of Mr. Baxter. In the same manner I have reason to think, that several ingenious writers, who have taken their leave of the public in farewell papers, will not give over so, but intend to appear again, though, perhaps, under another form, and with a different title. Be that as it will, it is my business, in this place, to give an account of my own intentions, and to acquaint my reader with the motives by which I act, in this great crisis of the republic of letters.

I have been long debating in my own heart, whether I should throw up my pen, as an author that is cashiered by the act of parliament, which is to operate within this four-and-twenty hours, or whether I should still persist in laying my speculations, from day to day, before the public. The argument which prevails with me most on the first side of the question, is, that I am informed by my bookseller he must raise the price of every single paper to two-pence, or that he shall not be able to pay the duty of it. Now, as I am very desirous my readers should have their learning as cheap as possible, it is with great difficulty that I comply with him in this particular.

However, upon laying my reasons together in the balance, I find that those who plead for the continuance of this work, have much the greater weight. For, in the first place, in recompense for the expense to which this will put my readers, it is to be hoped they may receive from every paper so much instruction as will be a very good equivalent. And, in order to this, I would not advise any one to take it in, who, after the perusal of it, does not find himself twopence the wiser or the better man for it; or who, upon examination, does not believe that he has had two-penny worth of mirth or instruction for his money.

But I must confess there is another motive which prevails with me more than the former. I consider that the tax on paper was given for the support of the government; and, as I have enemies who are apt to pervert every thing I do or say, I fear they would ascribe the laying down my paper, on such an occasion, to a spirit of malcontentedness, which I am resolved none shall ever justly upbraid me with. No, I shall glory in contributing my utmost to the public weal; and, if my country receives five or six pounds a-day by my labours, I shall be very well pleased to find myself so useful a member. It is a received maxim, that no honest man should enrich himself by methods that are prejudicial to the community in which he lives; and, by the same rule, I think we may pronounce the person to deserve very well of his countrymen, whose labours bring more into the public coffers, than into his own pocket.

Since I have mentioned the word enemies, I must explain myself so far as to acquaint my reader, that I mean only the insignificant party zealots on both sides; men of such poor narrow souls, that they are not capable of thinking on any thing but with an eye to whig or tory. During the course of this paper, I have been accused by these despicable wretches, of trimming, time-serving, personal reflection, secret satire, and the like. Now, though in these my compositions, it is visible to any reader of common sense that I consider nothing but my subject, which is always of an indifferent nature, how is it possible for me to write so clear of party, as not to lie open