of what they contain than those who give a loose to their desires. According to this rule, let there be equal age, equal wit, and equal good humour, in the woman of prudence and her of liberty; what stores has he to expect who takes the former? What refuse must he be contented with who chooses the latter? Well, but I sat down to write to you to vent my indignation against several pert creatures, who are addressed to and courted in this place, while poor I, and two or three like me, are wholly unregarded.

Every one of these affect gaining the hearts of your sex. This is generally attempted by a particular manner of carrying themselves with familiarity. Glycera has a dancing walk, and keeps time in her ordinary gait. Chloe, her sister, who is unwilling to interrupt her conquests, comes into the room before her with a familiar run. Dulcissa takes advantage of the approach of the winter, and has introduced a very pretty shiver, closing up her shoulders, and shrinking as she moves. All that are in this mode carry their fans between both hands before them. Dulcissa herself, who is the author of this air, adds the pretty run to it; and has also, when she is in very good humour, a taking familiarity in throwing herself into the lowest seat in the room, and letting her hooped petticoats fall with a lucky decency about her, I know she practises this way of sitting down in her chamber; and indeed she does it as well as you may have seen an actress fall down dead in a tragedy. Not the least indecency in her posture. If you have observed what pretty carcasses are carried off at the end of a verse at the theatre, it will give you a notion how Dulcissa plumps. into a chair. Here is a little country girl that is very cunning, that makes her use of being young and unbred, and outdoes the ensnarers, who are almost twice her age. The air that she takes is to come into company after a walk, and is very successfully out of breath upon occasion. Her mother is in the secret, and calls her romp, and then looks round to see what young men stare at her.

"It would take up more than can come into one of your papers, to enumerate all the particular airs of the younger company in this place. But I cannot omit Dulceorella, whose manner is the most indolent imaginable, but still as watchful of conquest as the busiest virgin among us. She has a peculiar art of staring at a young fellow, till she sees she has got him, and inflamed him by so much observation. When she sees she has him, and he begins to toss his head upon it, she is immediately short-sighted, and labours to observe what he is at a distance, with her eyes half shut Thus the captive that thought her first struck is to make very near approaches or be wholly disregarded. This artifice has done more execution than all the ogling of the rest of the women here, with the utmost variety of half glances, attentive heedlessnesses, childish inadvertencies, haughty contempts, or artificial

oversights. After I have said thus much of ladies among us who fight thus regularly, I am to complain to you of a set of familiar romps, who have broken through all common rules, and have thought of a very effectual way of showing more charms than all of us. These, MR. SPECTATOR, are the swingers. You are to know these careless pretty creatures are very innocents again: and it is to be no matter what they do, for it is all harmless freedom. They get on ropes, as you must have seen the children, and are swung by their men visitants. The jest is, that Mr Such-a-one can name the colour of Mrs. Such-a-one's stockings; and she tells him he is a lying thief, so he is, and full of roguery; and she will lay a wager, and her sister shall tell the truth if he says right, and he cannot tell what colour her garters are of. In this diversion there are very many pretty shrieks, not so much for fear of falling, as that their petticoats should untie; for there is a great care had to avoid improprieties; and the lover who swings the lady is to tie her clothes very close with his hatband, before she admits him to throw up her heels.

"Now, MR. SPECTATOR, except you can note these wantonnesses in their beginnings, and bring us sober girls into observation, there is no help for it; we must swim with the tide; the coquettes are too powerful a party for us. To look into the merit of a regular and well-behaved woman is a slow thing A loose trivial song gains the affections, when a wise homily is not attended to. There is no other way but to make war upon them, or we must go over to them. As for my part, I will show all the world it is not for want of charms that I stand so long unasked; and if you do not take measures for the immediate redress of us rigids, as the fellows call us, I can move with a speaking mien, can look significantly, can lisp, can trip, can loll, can start, can blush, can rage, can weep, if I must do it, and can be frighted as agreeably as any she in England. All which is humbly submitted to your spectatorial consideration, with all humility, by

66

Your most humble servant,
"MATILDA MOHAIR."

STEELE.

No. 493. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 1712.

Qualem commendes etiam atque etiam adspice, ne mox
Incutiant aliena tibi peccata pudorem.

T.

HOR. 1 EP. XVIII. 76.

Commend not, till a man is throughly known:
A rascal prais'd, you make his faults your own.

ANON.

Ir is no unpleasant matter of speculation to consider the recom

mendatory epistles that pass round this town from hand to hand, and the abuse people put upon one another in that kind. It is indeed come to that pass, that, instead of being the testimony of merit in the person recommended, the true reading of a letter of this sort is, "The bearer hereof is so uneasy to me, that it will be an act of charity in you to take him off my hands: whether you prefer him or not it is all one, for I have no manner of kindness for him, or obligation to him or his; and do what you please as to that." As negligent as men are in this respect, a point of honour is concerned in it; and there is nothing a man should be more ashamed of than passing a worthless creature into the service or interests of a man who has never injured you. The women indeed are a little too keen in their resentments to trespass often this way: but you shall sometimes know, that the mistress and the maid shall quarrel, and give each other very free language, and at last the lady shall be pacified to turn her out of doors, and give her a very good word to anybody else. Hence it is that you see, in a year and half's time, the same face a domestic in all parts of the town. Good breeding and good nature lead people in a great measure to this injustice: when suitors of no consideration will have confidence enough to press upon their superiors, those in power are tender of speaking the exceptions they have against them, and are mortgaged into promises out of their impatience of importunity. In this latter case it would be very useful inquiry to know the history of recommendations. There are, you must know, certain abettors of this way of torment, who make it a profession to manage the affairs of candidates. These gentlemen let out their impudence to their clients, and supply any defective recommendation, by informing how such and such a man is to be attacked. They will tell you, get the least scrap from Mr. Such-aone, and leave the rest to them. When one of these undertakers has your business in hand, you may be sick, absent in town or country, and the patron shall be worried, or you prevail. I remember to have been shown a gentleman some years ago, who punished a whole people for their facility, in giving their credentials. This person had belonged to a regiment which did duty in the West Indies, and by the mortality of the place happened to be commanding officer in the colony. He oppressed his subjects with great frankness, till he became sensible that he was heartily hated by every man under his command. When he had carried his point to be thus detestable, in a pretended fit of dishumour, and feigned uneasiness of living where he found he was so universally unacceptable, he communicated to the chief inhabitants a design he had to return to England, provided they would give him ample testimonials of their approbation. The planters came into it to a man, and in proportion to his deserving the quite contrary, the words justice, generosity, and courage, were inserted in his com

mission, not omitting the general good liking of people of all conditions in the colony. The gentleman returns to England, and within a few months after came back to them their governor, on the strength of their own testimonials.

Such a rebuke as this cannot indeed happen to easy recommenders, in the ordinary course of things from one hand to another; but how would a man bear to have it said to him, "The person I took into confidence on the credit you gave him has proved false, unjust, and has not answered any way the character you gave me of him?"

I cannot but conceive very good hopes of that rake Jack Toper of the Temple, for an honest scrupulousness in this point. A friend of his meeting with a servant that had formerly lived with Jack, and having a mind to take him, sent to him to know what faults the fellow had, since he could not please such a careless fellow as he was? His answer was as follows:

"SIR,

"THOMAS that lived with me was turned away because he was too good for me. You know I live in taverns; he is an orderly sober rascal, and thinks much to sleep in an entry until two in the morning. He told me one day, when he was dressing me, that he wondered I was not dead before now, since I went to dinner in the evening, and went to supper at two in the morning. We were coming down Essex-street one night a little flustered, and I was giving him the word to alarm the watch, he had the impudence to tell me it was against the law. You that are married, and live one day after another the same way, and so on the whole week, I dare say will like him, and he will be glad to have his meat in due season. The fellow is certainly very honest. My service to your lady. Yours,

"J. T."

Now this was very fair dealing. Jack knew very well that though the love of order made a man very awkward in his equipage, it was a valuable quality among the queer people who live by rule; and had too much good sense and good nature to let the fellow starve, because he was not fit to attend his vivacities.

I shall end this discourse with a letter of recommendation from Horace to Claudius Nero. You will see in that letter a slowness to ask a favour, a strong reason for being unable to deny his good word any longer, and that it is a service to the person to whom he recommends, to comply with what is asked: all which are necessary circumstances, both in justice and good breeding, if a man would ask so as to have reason to complain of a denial; and indeed a man should not in strictness ask otherwise. In hopes the authority of Horace, who perfectly understood how to live with

* Lib. i. 9.

great men, may have a good effect towards amending this facility in people of condition, and the confidence of those who apply to them without merit, I have translated the epistle.

"SIR,

"TO CLAUDIUS NERO.

"SEPTIMIUS, who waits upon you with this, is very well acquainted with the place you are pleased to allow me in your friendship. For when he beseeches me to recommend him to your notice, in such a manner as to be received by you, who are delicate in the choice of your friends and domestics, he knows our intimacy, and understands my ability to serve him better than I do myself. I have defended myself against his ambition to be yours as long as I possibly could; but fearing the imputation of hiding my power in you out of mean and selfish considerations, I am at last prevailed upon to give you this trouble. Thus, to avoid the appearance of a greater fault, I have put on this confidence. If you can forgive this transgression of modesty in behalf of a friend, receive this gentleman into your interests and friendship, and take it from me that he is an honest and a brave man." STEELE.

T.

No. 494. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 1712.

Egritudinem laudare, unam rem maxime detestabilem, quorum est tandem philosophorum?

CICERO.

What kind of philosophy is it, to extol melancholy, the most detestable thing in nature?

ABOUT an age ago it was the fashion in England, for every one that would be thought religious, to throw as much sanctity as possible into his face, and in particular to abstain from all appearances of mirth and pleasantry, which were looked upon as the marks of a carnal mind. The saint was of a sorrowful countenance, and generally eaten up with spleen and melancholy. A gentleman, who was lately a great ornament to the learned world, has diverted me more than once with an account of the reception which he met with from a very famous independent minister, who was head of a college in those times. This gentleman was then a young adventurer in the republic of letters, and just fitted out for the university with a good cargo of Latin and Greek. His friends

* Anthony Henley, Esq., who died in Aug. 1711.

+ This was Dr. Thomas Goodwin, president of Magdalen College in Oxford, and one of the assembly of divines who sat at Westminster. Dr. Goodwin attended his friend and patron Oliver Cromwell on his death-bed.