and do most heartily wish them joy of their happy deliverance.

They may now reflect with pleasure on the dangers they have escaped, and look back with as much satisfaction on their perils that threatened them, as their great-grandmothers did formerly on the burning ploughshares, after having passed through the ordeal trial. The instigations of the spring are now abated. The nightingale gives over her lovelaboured song, as Milton phrases it,' the blossoms are fallen, and the beds of flowers swept away by the scythe of the mower.

I shall now allow my fair readers to return to their romances and chocolate, provided they make use of them with moderation, until about the middle of the month, when the sun shall have made some progress in the Crab. Nothing is more dangerous than too much confidence and security. The Trojans, who stood upon their guard all the while the Grecians lay before their city, when they fancied the siege was raised and the danger past, were the very next night burnt in their beds. I must also observe, that as in some climates there is a perpetual spring, so in some female constitutions there is a perpetual May: these are a kind of valetudinarians in chastity, whom I would continue in a constant diet. I cannot think these wholly out of danger until they have looked upon the other sex at least five years through a pair of spectacles. Will Honeycomb has often assured me, that 'tis much easier to steal one of this species, when she is past her grand climacteric, than to carry off an icy girl on this side five-and-twenty; and that a rake of his acquaintance, who had in vain endeavoured to gain the affections 1 Paradise Lost,' v. 41.

of a young lady of fifteen, had at last made his fortune by running away with her grandmother.

But as I do not design this speculation for the evergreens of the sex, I shall again apply myself to those who would willingly listen to the dictates of reason and virtue, and can now hear me in cold blood. If there are any who have forfeited their innocence, they must now consider themselves under that melancholy view, in which Chamont regards his sister, in those beautiful lines:

-Long she flourished,

Grew sweet to sense, and lovely to the eye,
'Till at the last a cruel spoiler came,

Cropped this fair rose, and rifled all its sweetness,
Then cast it like a loathsome weed away.1

On the contrary, she who has observed the timely cautions I gave her, and lived up to the rules of modesty, will now flourish like a rose in June, with all her virgin blushes and sweetness about her. I must, however, desire these last to consider how shameful it would be for a general, who has made a successful campaign, to be surprised in his winter quarters. It would be no less dishonourable for a lady to lose, in any other month of the year, what she has been at the pains to preserve in May.

There is no charm in the female sex that can supply the place of virtue. Without innocence, beauty is unlovely and quality contemptible, good breeding degenerates into wantonness, and wit into impudence. It is observed, that all the virtues are represented by both painters and statuaries under female shapes; but if any one of them has a more particular title to that sex, it is modesty. I shall

1 Otway's 'Orphan,' act iv.

leave it to the divines to guard them against the opposite vice, as they may be overpowered by temptations; it is sufficient for me to have warned them against it, as they may be led astray by instinct.

I desire this paper may be read with more than ordinary attention, at all tea-tables within the cities of London and Westminster. X.

No. 396.

H

Wednesday, June 4, 1712

[STEELE.

Barbara, Celarent, Darii, Ferio, Baralipton.1 AVING a great deal of business upon my hands at present, I shall beg the reader's leave to present him with a letter that I received about half a year ago from a gentleman of Cambridge, who styles himself Peter de Quir. I

2

1 The old mnemonic verses designed to facilitate the recollection of the moods of the syllogism begin

Barbara, Celarent, Darii, Ferioque, prioris.'

2 This letter was by John Henley, commonly called 'Orator Henley.' Henley was at this time but twenty years old. He was born at Melton Mowbray in 1692, and entered St. John's College, Cambridge, in 1709. After obtaining his degree he was invited to take charge of the Grammar School in his native place, and raised it from decay. He published Esther, a Poem'; went to London; introduced action into pulpit oratory; missing preferment, gave lectures and orations, religious on Sundays and political on Wednesdays; was described by Pope in the Dunciad as the Zany of thy age,' and represented by Hogarth upon a scaffold, with a monkey by his side, saying Amen. He edited a paper

called the Hyp Doctor, in opposition to the Tory Craftsman, and once attracted to his oratory an audience of shoemakers, by announcing that he would teach a new and short way of making shoes; his way being to cut off the tops of boots. He died in 1756 (Morley).

have kept it by me some months, and though I did not know at first what to make of it, upon my reading it over very frequently I have at last discovered several conceits in it. I would not, therefore, have my reader discouraged if he does not take them at the first perusal.

'SIR,

'To Mr. SPECTATOR.

'From ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, February 3, 1712.

"THE monopoly of puns in this university has been an immemorial privilege of the Johnians; and we can't help resenting the late invasion of our ancient right as to that particular, by a little pretender to clenching in a neighbouring college who, in an application to you by way of letter, a while ago, styled himself Philobrune.1 Dear sir, as you are by character a professed well-wisher to speculation, you will excuse a remark which this gentleman's passion for the brunette has suggested to a brother theorist; 'tis an offer towards a mechanical account of his lapse to punning, for he belongs to a set of mortals who value themselves upon an uncommon mastery in the more humane and polite part of letters. A conquest by one of this species of females gives a very odd turn to the intellectuals of the captivated person, and very different from that way of thinking which a triumph from the eyes of another, more emphatically of the fair sex, does generally occasion. It fills the imagination with an assemblage of such ideas and pictures as are hardly anything but shade, such as night, the

1 See No. 286.

devil, &c. These portraitures very near overpower the light of the understanding, almost benight the faculties, and give that melancholy tincture to the most sanguine complexion, which this gentleman calls an inclination to be in a brown study, and is usually attended with worse consequences in case of a repulse. During this twilight of intellects, the patient is extremely apt, as love is the most witty passion in nature, to offer at some pert sallies now and then, by way of flourish, upon the amiable enchantress, and unfortunately stumbles upon that mongrel, miscreated (to speak in Miltonic) kind of wit vulgarly termed the pun. It would not be much amiss to consult Dr. T-— W1 (who is certainly a very able projector, and whose system of divinity and spiritual mechanics obtains very much among the better part of our undergraduates) whether a general intermarriage, enjoined by Parliament, between this sisterhood of the olive beauties and the fraternity of the people called Quakers, would not be a very serviceable expedient, and abate that overflow of light which shines within them so powerfully that it dazzles their eyes, and dances them into a thousand vagaries of error and enthusiasm. These reflections may impart some light towards a discovery of the origin of punning among us, and the foundation of its prevailing so

1

1 Percy suggests very doubtfully that this may mean Thomas Woolston, who was born in 1669, educated at Sydney College, Cambridge, published, in 1705, The Old Apology for the Truth against the Jews and Gentiles revived,' and afterwards was imprisoned and fined for levity in discussing sacred subjects. The text points to a medical theory of intermarriage. There were several physicians at the beginning of the eighteenth century whose initials were T. W., but probably Henley's Dr. T—— Ŵ— was a Doctor of Divinity of Cambridge.