not have the learned world surprised, if, after the publication of half-a-dozen volumes, I take my place accordingly. When my scattered forces are thus rallied, and reduced into regular bodies, I flatter myself that I shall make no despicable figure at the head of them.

Whether these rules, which have been received time out of mind in the commonwealth of letters, were not originally estab lished with an eye to our paper manufacture, I shall leave to the discussion of others, and shall only remark further in this place, that all printers and booksellers take the wall of one another, according to the above-mentioned merits of the authors to whom they respectively belong.

I come now to that point of precedency which is settled among the three learned professions,' by the wisdom of our laws. I need not here take notice of the rank which is allotted to every doctor in each of these professions, who are all of them, though not so high as knights, yet a degree above squires; this last order of men being the illiterate body of the nation, are consequently thrown together into a class below the three learned professions. I mention this for the sake of several rural squires, whose reading does not rise so high as to the present state of England, and who are often apt to usurp that precedency which by the laws of their country is not due to them. Their want of learning, which has planted them in this station, may in some measure extenuate their misdemeanour; and our professors ought to pardon them when they offend in this particular, considering that they are in a state of ignorance, or, as we usually say, do not know their right-hand from their left.

There is another tribe of persons who are retainers to the

In some universities, that of Dublin in particular, they have doctors of music, who take rank after the doctors of the three learned professions, and above esquires.-C.

learned world, and who regulate themselves upon all occasions by several laws peculiar to their body. I mean the players or actors of both sexes. Among these it is a standing and uncontroverted principle, that a tragedian always takes place of a comedian; and it is very well known the merry drolls who make us laugh are always placed at the lower end of the table, and in every entertainment give way to the dignity of the buskin. It is a stage maxim, 'Once a king, and always a king.' For this reason it would be thought very absurd in Mr. Bullock, notwithstanding the height and gracefulness of his person, to sit at the right-hand of a hero, though he were but five-foot high. The same distinction is observed among the ladies of the theatre.

Queens and heroines preserve their rank in private conversation, while those who are waiting women and maids of honour upon the stage, keep their distance also behind the scenes.

I shall only add, that by a parity of reason, all writers of tragedy look upon it as their due to be seated, served, or saluted, before comic-writers: those who deal in tragi-comedy usually taking their seats between the authors of either side. There has been a long dispute for precedency between the tragic and heroic poets. Aristotle would have the latter yield the pas to the former, but Mr. Dryden and many others would never submit to this decision. Burlesque writers pay the same deference to the heroic, as comic writers to their serious brothers in the drama.

By this short table of laws, order is kept up, and distinction preserved in the whole republic of letters.

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No. 530. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 7.

Sic visum Veneri; cui placet impares
Formas atque animos sub juga ahenea
Sævo mittere cum jocc.

HOR. 1 Od. xxxiii. 10.

Thus Venus sports; the rich, the base,

Unlike in fortune, and in face,

To disagreeing love provokes;
When cruelly jocose,

She ties the fatal noose,

And binds unequals to the brazen yokes.

CREECH.

Ir is very usual for those who have been severe upon marriage, in some part or other of their lives to enter into the fraternity which they have ridiculed, and to see their raillery return upon their own heads. I scarce ever knew a woman-hater that did not, sooner or later, pay for it. Marriage, which is a blessing to another man, falls upon such an one as a judgment. Mr. Congreve's Old Bachelor is set forth to us with much wit and humour, as an example of this kind. In short, those who have most distinguished themselves by railing at the sex in general, very often make an honourable amends, by chusing one of the most worthless persons of it, for a companion and yoke-fellow. Hymen takes his revenge in kind, on those who turn his mysteries into ridicule.

My friend Will Honeycomb, who was so unmercifully witty upon the women, in a couple of letters, which I lately communicated to the public, has given the ladies ample satisfaction by marrying a farmer's daughter; a piece of news which came to our club by the last post. The Templer is very positive that he has married a dairy-maid: but Will in his letter to me on this occasion, sets the best face upon the matter that he can, and gives a more tolerable account of his spouse I must confess I

suspected something more than ordinary, when upon opening the letter I found that Will was fallen off from his former gaiety, having changed Dear Spec. which was his usual salute at the beginning of the letter, into My worthy Friend, and subscribed himself in the latter end of it at full length William Honeycomb. In short, the gay, the loud, the vain Will Honeycomb, who had made love to every great fortune that has appeared in town for above thirty years together, and boasted of favours from ladies whom he had never seen, is at length wedded to a plain country girl.

His letter gives us the picture of a converted rake. The sober character of the husband is dashed with the man of the town, and enlivened with those little cant-phrases which have made my friend Will often thought very pretty company. But let us hear what he says for himself.

"My worthy Friend,

"I question not but you, and the rest of my acquaintance, wonder that I who have lived in the smoke and gallantries of the town for thirty years together, should all on a sudden grow fond of a country life. Had not my dog of a steward run away as he did, without making up his accounts, I had still been immersed in sin and sea-coal. But since my late forced visit to my estate, I am so pleased with it, that I am resolved to live and die upon it. I am every day abroad among my acres, and can scarce forbear filling my letter with breezes, shades, flowers, meadows, and purling streams. The simplicity of manners, which I have heard you so often speak of, and which appears here in perfection, charms me wonderfully. As an instance of it, I must acquaint you, and by your means, the whole club, that I have lately married one of my tenant's daughters. She is born of honest parents, and though she has no portion, she has a great deal of vir

wards: which, if it be probable, we have reason then to be persuaded, that there are far more species of creatures above us, than there are beneath; we being in degrees of perfection much more remote from the infinite Being of God, than we are from the lowest state of Being, and that which approaches nearest to nothing. And yet of all those distinct species, we have no clear distinct ideas.'

In this system of Being, there is no creature so wonderful in its nature, and which so much deserves our particular attention, as man, who fills up the middle space between the animal and intellectual nature, the visible and invisible world, and is that link in the chain of beings which has been often termed the Nexus utriusque Mundi. So that he, who in one respect being associ ated with angels and arch-angels, may look upon a Being of infinite perfection as his father, and the highest order of spirits as his brethren, may in another respect say to corruption, "Thou art my father, and to the worm, thou art my mother and my sister."

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No. 523. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 30.

Nunc angur Apollo,

Nunc Lycia sortes, nunc et Jove missus ab ipso
Interpres divûm fert horrida jussa per auras.
Scilicet is superis labor-

VIRG. iv. 376.

Now Lycian lots, and now the Delian God,
Now Hermes is employ'd from Jove's abode,
To warn him hence; as if the peaceful state
Of heav'nly pow'rs were touch'd with human fate!

DRYDEN.

I AM always highly delighted with the discovery of any rising genius among my countrymen. For this reason I have read over, with great pleasure, the late miscellany published by Mr. Pope,