words and actions, exacts the highest esteem from

a

all who have the honour to know you, and a winning condescension to all subordinate to you, made business a pleasure to those who executed it under you, at the same time that it heightened her Majesty's favour to all who had the happiness of having it conveyed through your hands: Secretary of State, in the interests of mankind, joined with that of his fellow-subjects, accomplished with a great facility and elegance in all the modern as well as ancient languages, was a happy and proper member of a Ministry, by whose services your sovereign and country are in so high and flourishing a condition, as makes all other princes and potentates powerful or inconsiderable in Europe, as they are friends or enemies to Great Britain. The importance of those great events which happened during that administration, in which your Lordship bore so important a charge, will be acknowledged as long as time shall endure; I shall not therefore attempt to rehearse those illustrious passages, but give this application a more private and particular turn, in desiring your Lordship would continue your favour and patronage to me, as you are a gentleman of the most polite literature, and perfectly accomplished in the knowledge of books and men, which makes

it necessary to beseech your indulgence to the following leaves, and the author of them: who is, with the greatest truth and respect,

MY LORD,

Your Lordship's

Obliged, obedient, and

Humble Servant,

THE SPECTATOR.

Quod nunc ratio est, impetus ante fuit.

-OVID, Rem. Amor. 10.

EWARE of the Ides of March,' said the Roman Augur to Julius Cæsar: 'Beware of the month of May,' says the British Spectator to his fair countrywomen. The caution of the first was unhappily neglected, and Cæsar's confidence cost him his life. I am apt to flatter myself that my pretty readers had much more regard to the advice I gave them,' since I have yet received very few accounts of any notorious trips made in the last month.

But though I hope for the best, I shall not pronounce too positively on this point until I have 1 See No. 365.

seen forty weeks well over, at which period of time, as my good friend Sir Roger has often told me, he has more business as a Justice of Peace among the dissolute young people in the country than at any other season of the year.

Neither must I forget a letter which I received near a fortnight since from a lady, who, it seems, could hold out no longer, telling me she looked upon the month as then out, for that she had all along reckoned by the New Style.

On the other hand, I have great reason to believe, from several angry letters which have been sent to me by disappointed lovers, that my advice has been of very signal service to the fair sex, who, according to the old proverb, were forewarned, forearmed.

One of these gentlemen tells me that he would have given me an hundred pounds rather than I should have published that paper, for that his mistress, who had promised to explain herself to him about the beginning of May, upon reading that discourse told him that she would give him her answer in June.

Thyrsis acquaints me, that when he desired Sylvia to take a walk in the fields, she told him the Spectator had forbidden her.

Another of my correspondents, who writes himself Mat. Meager, complains, that whereas he constantly used to breakfast with his mistress upon chocolate, going to wait upon her the first of May, he found his usual treat very much changed for the worse, and has been forced to feed ever since upon green tea.

As I begun this critical season with a caveat to the ladies, I shall conclude it with a congratulation,

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