familiarity alone. When they are within observation they fret at each other's carriage and behaviour; when alone they revile each other's person and conduct. In company they are in a purgatory, when only together in a hell.

The happy marriage is, where two persons meet and voluntarily make choice of each other, without principally regarding or neglecting the circumstances of fortune or beauty. These may still love in spite of adversity or sickness: the former we may in some measure defend ourselves from, the other is the portion of our very make. When you have a true notion of this sort of passion, your humour of living great will vanish out of your imagination, and you will find love has nothing to do with state. Solitude, with the person beloved, has a pleasure, even in a woman's mind, beyond show or pomp. You are therefore to consider which of your lovers will like you best undressed, which will bear with you most when out of humour; and your way to this is to ask of yourself, which of them you value most for his own sake? and by that judge which gives the greater instances of his valuing you for yourself only.

"After you have expressed some sense of the humble approach of Florio, and a little disdain at Strephon's assurance in his address, you cry out, "What an unexceptionable husband could I make out of both!" It would therefore, methinks, be a good way to determine yourself. Take him in whom what you like is not transferable to another; for if you choose otherwise, there is no hopes your husband will ever have what you liked in his rival; but intrinsic qualities in one man may very probably purchase every thing that is adventitious in another. In plainer terms; he whom you take for his personal perfections will sooner arrive at the gifts of fortune

than he whom you take for the sake of his fortune attain to personal perfections. If Strephon is not as accomplished and agreeable as Florio, marriage to you will never make him so; but marriage to you may make Florio as rich as Strephon. Therefore to make a sure purchase, employ fortune upon certainties, but do not sacrifice certainties to fortune. 'I am, your most obedient humble servant.'

T.

N° 150. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 22, 1711.

Nil habet infelix paupertas durius in se

Quàm quòd ridiculos homines facit.

Juv. Sat. iii. 152.

Want is the scorn of every wealthy fool,
And wit in rags is turn'd to ridicule.
DRYDEN.

As I was walking in my chamber the morning before I went last into the country, I heard the hawkers with great vehemence crying about a paper, intitled The Ninety-nine Plagues of an Empty Purse. I had indeed some time before observed, that the orators of Grub-street had dealt very much in plagues. They have already published in the same month, The Plagues of Matrimony, The Plagues of a Single Life, The Nineteen Plagues of a Chambermaid, The Plagues of a Coachman, The Plagues of a Footman, and 'The Plague of Plagues.' The success these several plagues met with, probably gave occasion to the above-mentioned poem on an empty purse. However that be, the same noise so fre

quently repeated under my window, drew me insensibly to think on some of those inconveniences and mortifications which usually attend on poverty, and, in short, gave birth to the present speculation: for after my fancy had run over the most obvious and common calamities which mean fortunes are liable to, it descended to those little insults and contempts, which though they may seem to dwindle into nothing when a man offers to describe them, are perhaps in themselves more cutting and insupportable than the former. Juvenal with a great deal of humour and reason tells us, that nothing bore harder upon a poor man in his time, than the continual ridicule which his habit and dress afforded to the beaux of Rome:

Quid, quòd materiam præbet caususque jocorum
Omnibus hic idem; si fœda et scissa lacerna,
Si toga sordidula est, et ruptâ calceus alter
Pelle patet, vel si consuto vulnere crassum
Atque recens linum ostendit non una cicatrix.

Juv. Sat. iii. 147.

Add that the rich have still a gibe in store,
And will be monstrous witty on the poor;
For the torn surtout and the tatter'd vest,
The wretch and all his wardrobe are a jest;
The greasy gown sully'd with often turning,
Gives a good hint to say the man's in mourning;
Or if the shoe be ript, or patch is put,

He's wounded, see the plaster on his foot.
DRYDEN.

It is on this occasion that he afterwards adds the reflection which I have chosen for my motto:

Want is the scorn of every wealthy fool,

And wit in rags is turn'd to ridicule.

DRYDEN.

It must be confessed that few things make a man appear more despicable, or more prejudice his hear

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ers against what he is going to offer, than an awkward or pitiful dress; insomuch that I fancy, had Tully himself pronounced one of his orations with a blanket about his shoulders, more people would have laughed at his dress than have admired his eloquence. This last reflection made me wonder at a set of men, who, without being subjected to it by the unkindness of their fortunes, are contented to draw upon themselves the ridicule of the world in this particular. I mean such as take it into their heads, that the first regular step to be a wit is to commence a sloven. It is certain nothing has so much debased that, which must have been otherwise so great a character; and I know not how to account for it, unless it may possibly be in complaisance to those narrow minds who can have no notion of the same persons possessing different accomplishments; or that it is a sort of sacrifice which some men are contented to make to calumny, by allowing it to fasten on one part of their character, while they are endeavouring to establish another.

Yet however unaccountable this foolish custom is, I am afraid it could plead a long prescription; and probably gave too much occasion for the vulgar definition still remaining among us of a heathen philosopher.

I have seen the speech of a Terra-filius, spoke in King Charles the Second's reign; in which he describes two very eminent men, who were perhaps the greatest scholars of their age; and after having mentioned the intire friendship between them, concludes, that, 'they had but one mind, one purse, one chamber, and one hat.' The men of business were also infected with a sort of singularity little better than this. I have heard my father say, that a broad brimmed hat, short hair, and unfolded handkerchief, were in his time absolutely necessary to denote a

' notable man;' and that he had known two or three, who aspired to the character of ' ble,' wear shoe-strings with great success.

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To the honour of our present age it must be allowed, that some our greatest geniuses for wit and and business have almost intirely broke the neck of these absurdities.

Victor, after having dispatched the most important affairs of the commonwealth, has appeared at an assembly, where all the ladies have declared him the genteelest man in the company; and in Atticus*, though every way one of the greatest geniuses the age has produced, one sees nothing particular in his dress or carriage to denote his pretensions to wit and learning: so that at present a man may venture to cock up his hat, and wear a fashionable wig, without being taken for a rake or a fool.

The medium between a fop and a sloven is what a man of sense would endeavour to keep; yet I remember Mr. Osborn advises his son to appear in his habit rather above than below his fortune; and tells him that he will find a handsome suit of clothes always procures some additional respect. I have indeed myself observed that my banker ever bows lowest to me when I wear my full-bottomed wig; and writes me Mr.' or ' Esq.' according as he sees me dressed.

I shall conclude this paper with an adventure which I was myself an eye-witness of very lately.

I happened the other day to call in at a celebrated coffee-house near the Temple. I had not been there long when there came in an elderly man very meanly dressed, and sat down by me; he had a thread-bare loose coat on, which it was plain he wore to keep himself warm, and not to favour his under suit, *Probably Mr. Addison.

Advice to a Son, by Francis Osborn, Esq. parti. sec. 23.