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'October 20.

'MR. SPECTATOR,-I have been out of town, so did not meet with your paper, dated September the 28th, wherein you, to my heart's desire, expose that cursed vice of ensnaring poor young girls, and drawing them from their friends. I assure you with

from ruin; and in token of gratitude, as well as for the benefit of my family, I have put it in a frame and glass, and hung it behind my counter. I shall take care to make my young ones read it every morning, to fortify them against such pernicious rascals. 1 know not whether what you writ was matter of fact, or your own invention; but this I will take my oath on, the first part is so exactly like what happened to my 'prentice, that had I read your paper then, 1 should have taken your method to have secured a villain. Go on and prosper. Your most obliged humble servant.'

this reasonable delight in the following manner: The prude,' says he, as she acts always in contradiction, so she is gravely sullen at a comedy, and extravagantly gay at a tragedy. The coquette is so much taken up with throwing her eyes around the audience, and considering the effect of them, that she cannot be expected to ob-out flattery it has saved a 'prentice of mine serve the actors but as they are her rivals, and take off the observation of the men from herself. Besides these species of women, there are the examples, or the first of the mode. These are to be supposed too well acquainted with what the actor was going to say to be moved at it. After these one might mention a certain flippant set of females who are mimics, and are wonderfully diverted with the conduct of all the people around them, and are spectators only of the audience. But what is of all the most to be lamented, is the loss of a party whom it would be worth preserving in their right senses upon all occasions, and these are those whom we may indifferently call the 'MR. SPECTATOR,-Without raillery, I innocent, or the unaffected. You may some-desire you to insert this word for word in times see one of these sensibly touched with your next, as you value a lover's prayers. a well-wrought incident; but then she is You see it is a hue and cry after a stray immediately so impertinently observed by heart, (with the marks and blemishes unthe men, and frowned at by some insensible derwritten;) which, whoever shall bring to superior of her own sex, that she is asham-you, shall receive satisfaction. Let me beg ed, and loses the enjoyment of the most of you not to fail, as you remember the laudable concern, pity. Thus the whole passion you had for her to whom you lately audience is afraid of letting fall a tear, and ended a paper: shun as a weakness the best and worthiest part of our sense.

'Noble, generous, great and good,
But never to be understood;
Fickle as the wind, still changing,
After every female ranging,

Panting, trembling, sighing, dying,
But addicted much to lying:

When the Syren songs repeats,

Equal measure still it beats;

Whoe'er shall wear it, it will smart her,
And whoe'er takes it, takes a tartar.'

T.

'SIR,-As you are one that doth not only pretend to reform, but affect it amongst people of any sense; makes me (who am one of the greatest of your admirers,) give you this trouble to desire you will settle the method of us females knowing when one another is in town: for they have now got a trick of never sending to their acquaintance when they first come; and if No. 209.] Tuesday, October 30, 1711.

one does not visit them within the week which they stay at home, it is a mortal quarrel. Now, dear Mr. Spec, either command them to put it in the advertisement of your paper, which is generally read by our sex, or else order them to breathe their saucy footmen (who are good for nothing else,) by sending them to tell all their acquaintance. If you think to print this, pray put it into a better style as to the spelling part. The town is now filling every day, and it cannot be deferred, because people take advantage of one another by this means, and break off acquaintance, and are rude. Therefore, pray put this in your paper as soon as you can possibly, to prevent any future miscarriages of this nature. I am, as I ever shall be, dear Spec, your most obedient humble servant,

'MARY MEANWELL.'

'Pray settle what is to be a proper notification of a person's being in town, and how that differs according to people's quality.'

Γυναικος ουδε χρημ' ανήρ ληίζεται
Εσύλης αμείνον, ουδε ριγιον κακης.-Simonides.
Of earthly goods, the best is a good wife;
A bad, the bitterest curse of human life.

THERE are no authors I am more pleased with than those who show human nature in a variety of views, and describe the several ages of the world in their different manners. A reader cannot be more rationally entertained, than by comparing the virtues and vices of his own times with those which prevailed in the times of his forefathers; and drawing a parallel in his mind between his own private character and that of other persons, whether of his own age or of the ages that went before him. The contemplation of mankind under these changeable colours is apt to shame us out of any particular vice, or animate us to any particular virtue; to make us pleased or displeased with ourselves in the most proper points, and to clear our minds of prejudice and prepossession, and rectify that narrowness

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of temper which inclines us to think amiss of those who differ from us.—

The souls of one kind of women were formed out of those ingredients which compose a swine. A woman of this make is a slut in her house and a glutton at her table. She is uncleanly in her person, a slattern in her dress, and her family is no better than a dung-hill.

'A second sort of female soul was formed

If we look into the manners of the most remote ages of the world, we discover human nature in her simplicity; and the more we come downward towards our own times, may observe her hiding herself in artifices and refinements, polished insensibly out of her original plainness, and at length en-out of the same materials that enter into tirely lost under form and ceremony, and (what we call) good-breeding. Read the accounts of men and women as they are given us by the most ancient writers, both sacred and profane, and you would think you were reading the history of another species.

Among the writers of antiquity there are none who instruct us more openly in the manners of their respective times in which they lived, than those who have employed themselves in satire, under what dress soever it may appear; as there are no other authors whose province it is to enter so directly into the ways of men, and set their miscarriages in so strong a light.

the composition of a fox. Such a one is what we call a notable discerning woman, who has an insight into every thing whether it be good or bad. In this species of females there are some virtuous and some vicious.

A third kind of women were made up of canine particles. These are what we commonly call scolds, who imitate the animals out of which they were taken, that are always busy and barking, that snarl at every one who comes in their way, and live in perpetual clamour.

The fourth kind of women were made out of the earth. These are your sluggards, who pass away their time in indolence and ignorance, hover over the fire a whole winter, and apply themselves with alacrity to no kind of business but eating.

"The fifth species of females were made out of the sea. These are women of varia

and tempest, sometimes all calm and sunshine. The stranger who sees one of these in her smiles and smoothness would cry her up for a miracle of good humour; but on a sudden her looks and words are changed; she is nothing but fury and outrage, noise and hurricane.

exerting his authority, will live upon hard fare, and do every thing to please him. They are, however, far from being averse to venereal pleasure, and seldom refuse a male companion.

Simonides, a poet famous in his generation, is, I think, author of the oldest satire that is now extant; and, as some say, of the first that was ever written. This poet flourished about four hundred years after the siege of Troy; and shows, by his way of writing, the simplicity, or rather coarse-ble uneven tempers, sometimes all storm ness, of the age in which he lived. I have taken notice in my hundred and sixty-first speculation, that the rule of observing what the French call the Bienseance in an allusion, has been found out of later years; and that the ancients, provided there was a likeness in their similitudes, did not much trouble themselves about the decency of The sixth species were made up of the the comparison. The satire or iambics of ingredients which compose an ass, or a Simonides, with which I shall entertain my beast of burden. These are naturally exreaders in the present paper, are a re-ceeding slothful, but upon the husband's markable instance of what I formerly advanced. The subject of this satire is woman. He describes the sex in their several characters, which he derives to them from a fanciful supposition raised upon the doctrine of pre-existence. He tells us that The cat furnished materials for a seventh the gods formed the souls of women out species of women, who are of a melancholy, of those seeds and principles which com-froward, unamiable nature, and so repugpose several kinds of animals and elements; and that their good or bad dispositions arise in them according as such and such seeds and principles predominate in their constitutions. I have translated the author very faithfully, and if not word for word, (which our language would not bear,) at least so as to comprehend every one of his sentiments, without adding any thing of my own. I have already apologised for this author's want of delicacy, and must further premise, that the following satire affects only some of the lower part of the sex, and not those who have been refined by a polite education, which was not so common in the age of this poet.

In the beginning God made the souls of womankind out of different materials, and in a separate state from their bodies.

nant to the offers of love, that they fly in the face of their husband when he approaches them with conjugal endearments. This species of women are likewise subject to little thefts, cheats, and pilferings.

'The mare with a flowing mane, which was never broke to any servile toil and labour, composed an eighth species of women. These are they who have little regard for their husbands, who pass away their time in dressing, bathing, and perfuming; who throw their hair into the nicest curls, and trick it up with the fairest flowers and garlands. A woman of this species is a very pretty thing for a stranger to look upon, but very detrimental to the owner, unless it be a king or a prince who takes a fancy to such a toy.

"The ninth species of females were taken

out of the ape. These are such as are both ugly and ill-natured, who have nothing beautiful in themselves, and endeavour to detract from or ridicule every thing which appears so in others.

The tenth and last species of women were made out of the bee; and happy is the man who gets such a one for his wife. She is altogether faultless and unblameable. Her family flourishes and improves by her good management. She loves her husband, and is beloved by him. She brings him a race of beautiful and virtuous children. She distinguishes herself among her sex. She is surrounded with graces. She never sits among the loose tribe of women, nor passes away her time with them in wanton discourses. She is full of virtue and prudence, and is the best wife that Jupiter can bestow on man.'

uncertain term of a few years, his designs will be contracted into the same narrow span he imagines is to bound his existence. How can he exalt his thoughts to any thing great and noble, who only believes that, after a short turn on the stage of this world, he is to sink into oblivion, and to lose his consciousness for ever?

For this reason I am of opinion, that so useful and elevated a contemplation as that of the soul's immortality cannot be resumed too often. There is not a more improving exercise to the human mind, than to be frequently reviewing its own great privileges and endowments; nor a more effectual means to awaken in us an ambition raised above low objects and little pursuits, than to value ourselves as heirs of eternity.

'It is a very great satisfaction to consider the best and wisest of mankind in all naI shall conclude these iambics with the tions and ages, asserting as with one voice motto of this paper, which is a fragment of this their birthright, and to find it ratified the same author; A man cannot possess by an express revelation. At the same time any thing that is better than a good woman, if we turn our thoughts inward upon ournor any thing that is worse than a bad one.' selves, we may meet with a kind of secret As the poet has shown a great penetra-sense concurring with the proofs of our own tion in his diversity of female characters, immortality. he has avoided the fault which Juvenal and Monsieur Boileau are guilty of, the former in his sixth, and the other in his last satire, where they have endeavoured to expose the sex in general, without doing justice to the valuable part of it. Such levelling satires are of no use to the world; and for this reason I have often wondered how the French author above-mentioned, who was a man of exquisite judgment, and a lover of virtue, could think human nature a proper subject for satire in another of his celebrated pieces, which is called The Satire upon Man. What vice or frailty can a discourse correct, which censures the whole species alike, and endeavours to show by some superficial strokes of wit, that brutes are the most excellent creatures of the two? A satire should expose nothing but what is corrigible, and make a due discrimination between those who are, and those who are not the proper objects of it.

L.

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'You have, in my opinion, raised a good presumptive argument from the increasing appetite the mind has to knowledge, and to the extending its own faculties, which cannot be accomplished, as the more restrained perfection of lower creatures may, in the limits of a short life. I think another probable conjecture may be raised from our appetite to duration itself, and from a reflection on our progress through the several stages of it. We are complaining," as you observed in a former speculation, "of the shortness of life, and yet are perpetually hurrying over the parts of it, to arrive at certain little settlements or imaginary points of rest, which are dispersed up and down in it."

'Now let us consider what happens to us when we arrive at these imaginary points of rest. Do we stop our motion and sit down satisfied in the settlement we have gained? or are we not removing the boundary, and marking out new points of rest, to which we press forward with the like eagerness, and which cease to be such as fast as we attain them? Our case is like that of a traveller upon the Alps, who should fancy that the top of the next hill must end his journey, because it terminates his prospect; but he no sooner arrives at it, than he sees new ground and other hills beyond it, and continues to travel on as be

fore.

"This is so plainly every man's condition in life, that there is no one who has observed any thing, but may observe, that as fast as his time wears away, his appetite to something future remains. The use therefore I would make of it is, that since nature (as some love to express it,) does nothing in vain, or, to speak properly, since the Author of our being has planted no wan

dering passion in it, no desire which has not its object, futurity is the proper object of the passion so constantly exercised about it; and this restlessness in the present, this assigning ourselves over to farther stages of duration, this successive grasping at somewhat still to come, appears to me (whatever it may to others,) as a kind of instinct or natural symptom which the mind of man has of its own immortality.

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No. 211.] Thursday, November 1, 1711.
Fictis meminerit nos jocari fabulis.

'I take it at the same time for granted, that the immortality of the soul is sufficiently Phædr. Lib. 1. Prol. established by other arguments: and if so, Let it be remembered that we sport in fabled stories this appetite, which otherwise would be very unaccountable and absurd, seems very of an old poet, which describes womankind HAVING lately translated the fragment reasonable, and adds strength to the conclusion. But I am amazed when I consider under several characters, and supposes them there are creatures capable of thought, who to have drawn their different manners and in spite of every argument, can form to dispositions from those animals and elethemselves a sullen satisfaction in thinking ments out of which he tells us they were otherwise. There is something so pitifully compounded; I had some thoughts of giving mean in the inverted ambition of that man the sex their revenge, by laying together who can hope for annihilation, and please in another paper the many vicious charachimself to think that his whole fabric shall ters which prevail in the male world, and one day crumble into dust, and mix with showing the different ingredients that go to the mass of inanimate beings, that it equally the making up of such different humours deserves our admiration and pity. The and constitutions. Horace has a thought mystery of such men's unbelief is not hard which is something akin to this, when in to be penetrated; and indeed amounts to order to excuse himself to his mistress, for nothing more than a sordid hope that they her, and to account for that unreasonable an invective which he had written against shall not be immortal, because they dare not be so. fury with which the heart of man is often This brings me back to my first ob- transported, he tells us that, when Promeservation, and gives me occasion to say fur-theus made his man of clay, in the kneadther, that as worthy actions spring from ing up of the heart, he seasoned it with worthy thoughts, so worthy thoughts are some furious particles of the lion. But upon likewise the consequence of worthy actions. turning this plan to and fro in my thoughts, But the wretch who has degraded himself I observed so many unaccountable humours below the character of immortality, is very in man, that I did not know out of what willing to resign his pretensions to it, and animals to fetch them. Male souls are dito substitute in its room a dark negative, world has not variety of materials sufficient versified with so many characters, that the happiness in the extinction of his being. to furnish out their different tempers and inclinations. The creation, with all its animals and elements, would not be large enough to supply their several extravagances.

The admirable Shakspeare has given us, a strong image of the unsupported condition of such a person in his last minutes, in the second part of King Henry the Sixth, where Cardinal Beaufort, who had been concerned, in the murder of good Duke Humphrey, is represented on his death-bed. After some short confused speeches, which show an imagination disturbed with guilt, just as he is expiring, King Henry, standing by him full of compassion, says,

"Lord Cardinal! if thou think'st on heaven's bliss,
Hold up thy hand, make signal of that hope!—
He dies, and makes no signTM-

The despair which is here shown, with out a word or action on the part of a dying person, is beyond what could be painted by the most forcible expressions whatever.

'I shall not pursue this thought farther, but only add, that as annihilation is not to be had with a wish, so it is the most abject thing in the world to wish it. What are honour, fame, wealth, or power, when compared with the generous expectation of a being without end, and a happiness adequate to that being?

"I shall trouble you no farther; but with

of Simonides, I shall observe, that as he has
Instead therefore of pursuing the thought
exposed the vicious part of women from the
doctrine of pre-existence, some of the an-
cient philosophers have in a manner sati-
rized the vicious part of the human species
in general, from a notion of the soul's post-
existence, if I may so call it; and that as
Simonides describes brutes entering into
represented human souls as entering into
the composition of women, others have
brutes. This is commonly termed the doc-
trine of transmigration, which supposes that
human souls, upon their leaving the body,
become the souls of such kinds of brutes as
they most resemble in their manners; or, to
give an account of it as Mr. Dryden has de-
scribed in his translation of Pythagoras's
speech in the fifteenth book of Ovid, where
that philosopher dissuades his hearers from
eating flesh:

Thus all things are but alter'd, nothing dies,
And here and there th` unbodied spirit dies:

mane, and a skin as soft as silk. But, sir, she passes half her life at her glass, and almost ruins me in ribands. For my own part, I am a plain handicraft man, and in danger of breaking by her laziness and expensiveness. Pray, master, tell me in your next paper whether I may not expect of her so much drudgery as to take care of her family, and curry her hide in case of refusal. Your loving friend,

By time, or force, or sickness dispossess'd, And lodges where it lights, in bird or beast; Or hunts without till ready limbs it find, And actuates those according to their kind; From tenement to tenement is toss'd, The soul is still the same, the figure only lost. Then let not piety be put to flight, To please the taste of glutton appetite; But suffer inmate souls secure to dwell, Lest from their seats your parents you expel; With rapid hunger feed upon your kind, Or from a beast dislodge a brother's mind. Plato, in the vision of Erus the ArmeBARNABY BRITTLE.' nian, which I may possibly make the sub'Cheapside, Oct. 30. ject of a future speculation, records some 'MR. SPECTATOR,—I am mightily pleasbeautiful transmigrations; as that the souled with the humour of the cat; be so kind of Orpheus, who was musical, melancholy, as to enlarge upon that subject. Yours till and a woman-hater, entered into a swan; JOSIAH HENPECK. the soul of Ajax, which was all wrath and fierceness, into a lion; the soul of Agamemnon, that was rapacious and imperial, into an eagle; and the soul of Thersites, who was a mimic and a buffoon, into a monkey. Mr. Congreve, in a prologue to one of his comedies, has touched upon this doctrine with great humour:

Thus Aristotle's soul of old that was,
May now be damn'd to animate an ass;
Or in this very house, for aught we know,
Is doing painful penance in some beau.

death,

'P. S. You must know I am married to a grimalkin.'

'Wapping, Oct. 31, 1711. 'SIR,-Ever since your Spectator of Tuesday last came into our family, my husband is pleased to call me his Oceana, because the foolish old poet that you have translated says, that the souls of some women are made of sea-water. This it seems has encouraged my sauce-box to be witty upon me. When I am angry, he cries,

I shall fill up this paper with some let-"Pr'ythee, my dear, be calm;" when I ters which my last Tuesday's speculation has produced. My following correspondents will show, what I there observed, that the speculation of that day affects only the lower part of the sex.

him whether it rains, he makes answer,
"It is no matter, so that it be fair weather
within doors." In short, sir, I cannot speak
my mind freely to him, but I either swell
or rage, or do something that is not fit for a
civil woman to hear. Pray, Mr. Spectator,
since you are so sharp upon other women,
let us know what materials your wife is
made of, if you have one. I suppose you
would make us a parcel of poor-spirited
tame insipid creatures; but, sir, I would
have you to know, we have as good pas-
sions in us as yourself, and that a woman
was never designed to be a milk-sop.
L.

chide one of my servants, "Pr'ythee, child, do not bluster." He had the impudence about an hour ago to tell me, that he was a seafaring man, and must expect to divide his life between storm and sunshine. When From my house in the Strand, Oct. 30. it is "high sea" in his house; and when i I bestir myself with any spirit in my family, MR. SPECTATOR,-Upon reading your sit still without doing any thing, his affairs Tuesday's paper, I find by several symp-forsooth are "wind-bound. "" When I ask toms in my constitution that I am a bee. My shop, or if you please to call it so, my cell, is in that great hive of females which goes by the name of the New Exchange; where I am daily employed in gathering together a little stock of gain from the finest Howers about the town, I mean the ladies and the beaux. I have a numerous swarm of children, to whom I give the best education I am able. But, sir, it is my misfortune to be married to a drone, who lives upon what I get, without bringing any thing into the common stock. Now, sir, as on the one hand I take care not to behave myself towards him like a wasp, so likewise I would not have him look on me as an humble-bee; for which reason I do all I can to put him upon laying up provisions for a bad day, No. 212.] Friday, November 2, 1711. and frequently represent to him the fatal effects his sloth and negligence may bring upon us in our old age. I must beg that you will join with me in your good advice upon this occasion, and you will for ever oblige your humble servant, MELISSA.'

'Piccadilly, Oct. 31, 1711. 'SIR,-I am joined in wedlock for my sins to one of those fillies who are described in the old poet with that hard name you gave us the other day. She has a flowing

MARTHA TEMPEST.'

-Eripe turpi
Colla jugo, liber, liber sum, dic age-

Hor. Lib. 2. Sat. vii. 92.
-Loose thy neck from this ignoble chain,
And boldly say thou'rt free.
Creech.
'MR. SPECTATOR,-I never look upon
my dear wife, but I think of the happiness
Sir Roger de Coverley enjoys, in having
such a friend as you to expose in proper
colours the cruelty and perverseness of his
mistress. I have very often wished you
visited in our family, and were acquainted

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