long in this famous body. 'Tis notorious, from the instance under consideration, that it must be owing chiefly to the use of brown jugs, muddy belch, and the fumes of a certain memorable place of rendezvous with us at meals, known by the name of Staincoat Hole. For the atmosphere of the kitchen, like the tail of a comet, predominates least about the fire, but resides behind, and fills the fragrant receptacle above mentioned. Besides, it is farther observable that the delicate spirits among us, who declare against these nauseous proceedings, sip tea, and put up for critic and amour, profess likewise an equal abhorrency for punning, the ancient innocent diversion of this society. After all, sir, though it may appear something absurd that I seem to approach you with the air of an advocate for punning (you who have justified your censures of the practice in a set dissertation upon that that subject); yet I'm confident you'll think it abundantly atoned for by observing, that this humbler exercise may be as instrumental in diverting us from any innovating schemes and hypotheses in wit, as dwelling upon honest orthodox logic would be in securing us from heresy in religion. Had Mr. Wn's 2 researches been confined within

1 No. 61.

1

2 William Whiston, born 1667, educated at Tamworth School and Clare Hall, Cambridge, became a Fellow in 1693, and then chaplain to Bishop Moore. In 1696 he published his New Theory of the Earth, . . . wherein the creation of the world in six days, the universal deluge, and the general conflagration, as laid down in the Holy Scriptures, are shown to be perfectly agreeable to reason and philosophy.' In 1700 Whiston was invited to Cambridge, to act as deputy to Sir Isaac Newton, whom he succeeded in 1703 as Lucasian professor. For holding some unorthodox opinions as to the doctrines of the early Christians, he was, in 1710, deprived of his professorship, and banished from the university. He was a pious and learned man, who, although he was

3

the bounds of Ramus1 or Crakanthorpe, that learned newsmonger might have acquiesced in what the holy oracles pronounce upon the Deluge like other Christians; and had the surprising Mr. Ly been content with the employment of refining upon Shakespeare's points and quibbles (for which he must be allowed to have a superlative genius), and now and then penning a catch or a ditty, instead of inditing odes and sonnets, the gentlemen of the bon goût in the pit would never have been put to all that grimace in damning the frippery of state, the poverty and languor of thought, the unnatural wit, and inartificial structure of his dramas.

I am, SIR,

Your very humble Servant,

PETER DE QUIR.'

denied the Sacrament, did not suffer himself to be driven out of the Church of England till 1747. At last he established a small congregation, in his own house, in accordance with his own notion of primitive Christianity. He lived till 1752 (Morley). It does not appear why Whiston is called a newsmonger,' nor how his views upon the Deluge were heterodox. Dr. John Woodward had published, in 1695, An Essay towards a Natural History of the Earth, .. with an account of the universal deluge, and of the effects that it had upon the earth.'

1 Peter Ramus, the famous French professor, was killed in the massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day, 1572. He wrote much on philosophy and mathematics, and one of his first books was entitled Institutiones Dialectica.

2 Richard Crakanthorpe, D.D. (1567–1624), a Puritan divine, wrote, besides works of theological controversy, an Introductio ad Metaphysicam, 1619, and Logica libri quinque de prædicabilibus, pradicamentis, &c., 1622.

3 No satisfactory explanation of this allusion has been offered. The only dramatist whose name corresponds with the initials is John Lacy, the actor, who died in 1681. One of his plays, 'Sawny the Scot,' which was seen by Pepys in 1667, is a miserable adaptation of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew.' This

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N° 397.

As

Thursday, June 5, 1712

-Dolor ipse disertam
Fecerat-

[ADDISON.

-OVID, Met. xiii. 228.

S the Stoic philosophers discard all passions in general, they will not allow a wise man so much as to pity the afflictions of another. 'If thou seest thy friend in trouble,' says Epictetus,' 'thou mayst put on a look of sorrow, and condole with him, but take care that thy sorrow be not real.' The more rigid of this sect would not comply so far as to show even such an outward appearance of grief; but when one told them of any calamity that had befallen even the nearest of their acquaintance, would immediately reply, 'What is that to me?' If you aggravated the circumstances of the affliction, and showed how one misfortune was followed by another, the answer was still, 'All this may be true, but what is it to me?'

For my own part, I am of opinion, compassion does not only refine and civilise human nature, but has something in it more pleasing and agreeable than what can be met with in such an indolent happiness, such an indifference to mankind as that piece was reprinted in 1708, and was acted as late as 1725; but it is hardly probable that Henley would have referred in so marked a manner to a writer of very little importance even in his own day.

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1 Epictetus his Morals. Made English from the Greek by George Stanhope' (1694), chap. xxii. The reason given by Epictetus is that the thing which really afflicts your friend is not the accident itself which he laments (for others, under similar circumstances, are not equally afflicted), but merely the opinion which he has formed to himself concerning this accident.

in which the Stoics placed their wisdom. As love is the most delightful passion, pity is nothing else but love softened by a degree of sorrow: in short, it is a kind of pleasing anguish, as well as generous sympathy, that knits mankind together, and blends them in the same common lot.

Those who have laid down rules for rhetoric or poetry, advise the writer to work himself up, if if possible, to the pitch of sorrow which he endeavours to produce in others. There are none therefore who stir up pity so much as those who indite their own sufferings. Grief has a natural eloquence belonging to it, and breaks out in more moving sentiments than can be supplied by the finest imagination. Nature on this occasion dictates a thousand passionate things which cannot be supplied by art.

It is for this reason that the short speeches or sentences which we often meet with in histories, make a deeper impression on the mind of the reader than the most laboured strokes in a well-written tragedy. Truth and matter-of-fact sets the person actually before us in the one, whom fiction places at a greater distance from us in the other. I do not remember to have seen any ancient or modern story more affecting than a letter of Ann of Bologne, wife to King Henry the Eighth, and mother to Queen Elizabeth, which is still extant in the Cotton Library, as written by her own hand.

Shakespeare himself could not have made her talk in a strain so suitable to her condition and character. One sees in it the expostulations of a slighted lover, the resentments of an injured woman, and the sorrows of an imprisoned queen. I need not acquaint my reader that this princess was then under prosecution for disloyalty to the king's bed,

and that she was afterwards publicly beheaded upon the same account, though this prosecution was believed by many to proceed, as she herself intimates, rather from the King's love to Jane Seymour, than from any actual crime in Ann of Bologne.

Queen Ann Boleyn's Last Letter to King Henry. (Cotton Lib., Otho, c. 10.)

'SIR, 'YOUR grace's displeasure, and my imprisonment, are things so strange unto me, as what to write, or what to excuse, I am altogether ignorant. Whereas you send unto me (willing me to confess a truth, and so obtain your favour) by such an one, whom you know to be mine ancient professed enemy. sooner received this message by him, than I rightly conceived your meaning; and if, as you say, confessing a truth indeed may procure my safety, I shall with all willingness and duty perform your

command.

I no

'But let not your grace ever imagine, that your poor wife will ever be brought to acknowledge a fault where not so much as a thought thereof preceded. And to speak a truth, never prince had wife more loyal in all duty and in all true affection than you have ever found in Ann Boleyn; with which name and place I could willingly have contented myself, if God and your grace's pleasure had been so pleased. Neither did I at any time so far forget myself in my exaltation, or received queenship, but that I always looked for such an alteration as now I find; for the ground of my preferment being on no surer foundation than your grace's fancy, the least alteration I knew was fit and sufficient to draw that