No, 24.] THE SPECTATOR. comic genius can censure him for talking their reproaches, and consequently that When Julius Cæsar was lampooned by Catullus, he invited him to a supper, and treated him with such a generous civility, that he made the poet his friend ever after. Cardinal Mazarine gave the same kind of treatment to the learned Quillet, who had reflected upon his eminence in a famous Latin poem. The cardinal sent for him, and after some kind expostulations upon what he had written, assured him of his esteem, and dismissed him with a promise of the next good abbey that should fall, which he accordingly conferred upon him a few months after. This had so good an effect upon the author, that he dedicated the second edition of his book to the cardinal, after having expunged the passages which had given him offence. Sextus Quintus was not of so generous and forgiving a temper. Upon his being made pope, the statue of Pasquin was one night dressed in a very dirty shirt, with an excuse written under it, that he was forced to wear foul linen, because his laundress was made a princess. This was a reflection upon the pope's sister, who, before the promotion of her brother, was in these mean circumstances that Pasquin represented her. As this pasquinade made a great noise in Rome, the pope offered a considerable sum of money to any person that should discover the author of it. The author relying upon his holiness's generosity, as also on some private overtures which he had received from him, made the discovery himself; upon which the pope gave him the reward he had promised, but at the same time to disable the satirist for the future, ordered his tongue to be cut out, and both his hands to be chopped off. Aretine is too trite an instance. Every one knows that all the kings of Europe were his tributaries. Nay, there is a letter of his extant, in which he makes his boasts that he had laid the Sophi of Persia under contribution. Though in the various examples which I have here drawn together, these several great men behaved themselves very differently towards the wits of the age who had reproached them; they all of them plainly showed that they were very sensible of *Peter Aretine, commonly called the Scourge of Princes, infamous for his writings, died in 1556. 7 As this week is in a manner set apart and dedicated to serious thoughts, I shall indulge myself in such speculations as may not be altogether unsuitable to the season; and in the mean time, as the settling in ourselves a charitable frame of mind is a work very proper for the time, I have in this paper endeavoured to expose that particufar breach of charity which has been generally overlooked by divines, because they are but few who can be guilty of it. C. No. 24.] Wednesday, March 28, 1711. Accurrit quidam notus mihi nomine tantum ; THERE are in this town a great number of insignificant people, who are by no means ing, and shows to every one that will come in and pay; but then he is the only actor. Why should people miscal things? If his is allowed to be a concert, why may not mine be a lecture? However, sir, I submit it to you, and am, Sir, your most obedient &c. THOMAS KIMBOW.' fit for the better sort of conversation, and | because so many impertinents will break yet have an impertinent ambition of ap-in upon me, and come without appointpearing with those to whom they are not ment? Clinch of Barnet has a nightly meetwelcome. If you walk in the Park, one of them will certainly join with you, though you are in company with ladies! If you drink a bottle they will find your haunts. What makes such fellows the more burdensome is, that they neither offend nor please so far as to be taken notice of for either. It is, I presume, for this reason, that my correspondents are willing by my means to be rid of them. The two follow- You and I were pressed against each ing letters are writ by persons who suffer other last winter in a crowd, in which unby such impertinence. A worthy old bach-easy posture we suffered together for alelor, who sets in for a dose of claret every night, at such an hour, is teased by a swarm of them; who, because they are sure of room and good fire, have taken it in their heads to keep a sort of club in his company; though the sober gentleman himself is an utter enemy to such meetings. 'MR. SPECTATOR, The aversion I for some years have had to clubs in general, gave me a perfect relish for your speculation on that subject; but I have since been extremely mortified, by the malicious world's ranking me amongst the supporters of such impertinent assemblies. I beg leave to state my case fairly; and that done, I shall expect redress from your judicious pen. 'GOOD SIR, most half an hour. I thank you for all your civilities ever since, in being of my the other day you pulled off your hat to me acquaintance wherever you meet me. But in the Park, when I was walking with my mistress. She did not like your air, and said she wondered what strange fellows I was acquainted with. Dear sir, consider it is as much as my life is worth, if she should think we were intimate: therefore I earnestly entreat you for the future to take no manner of notice of, Sir, your obliged humble servant, "WILL FASHION.' A like impertinence is also very troublesome to the superior and more intelligent part of the fair sex. It is, it seems, a great inconvenience, that those of the meanest capacities will pretend to make visits, though indeed they are qualified rather to add to the furniture of the house (by filling an empty chair) than to the conversation they come into when they visit. A friend of mine hopes for redress in this case, by the publication of her letter in my paper; which she thinks those she would be rid of will take to themselves. It seems to be written with an eye to one of those pert, giddy, unthinking girls, who, upon the recommendation only of an agreeable person, and a fashionable air, take themselves to be upon a level with women of the greatest merit: MADAM, I am, sir, a bachelor of some standing, and a traveller; my business, to consult my own humour, which I gratify without controlling other people's: I have a room and a whole bed to myself; and I have a dog, a fiddle, and a gun; they please me, and injure no creature alive. My chief meal is a supper, which I always make at a tavern. I am constant to an hour, and not ill-humoured; for which reasons though I invite nobody, I have no sooner supped, than I have a crowd about me of that sort of good company that know not whither else to go. It is true every man pays his share; yet as they are intruders, I have an undoubted right to be the only speaker, or at least the loudest; which I maintain, and that to the great emolument of my audience. I some- I take this way to acquaint you with times tell them their own in pretty free what common rules and forms would language; and sometimes divert them with never permit me to tell you otherwise; to merry tales, according as I am in humour. wit, that you and I, though equals in qualI am one of those who live in taverns to a ity and fortune, are by no means suitable great age, by a sort of regular intempe- companions. You are, it is true, very pretrance; I never go to bed drunk, but always ty, can dance, and make a very good figure flustered; I wear away very gently; am in a public assembly; but, alas, madam, apt to be peevish, but never angry. Mr. you must go no further; distance and siSpectator, if you have kept various com-lence are your best recommendations, pany, you know there is in every tavern in town some old humourist or other, who is master of the house as much as he that keeps it. The drawers are all in awe of nim; and all the customers who frequent his company, yield him a sort of comical obedience. I do not know but I may be such a fellow as this myself. But I appeal to you, whether this is to be called a club, therefore let me beg of you never to make me any more visits. You come in a literal sense to see one, for you have nothing to say. I do not say this, that I would by any means lose your acquaintance; but I would keep it up with the strictest forms of goodbreeding. Let us pay visits, but never see one another. If, you will be so good as to deny yourself always to me, I shall return No. 25.] THE SPECTATOR. the obligation, by giving the same orders are very well acquainted with that gentle- 'MARY TUESDAY. 'P. S. I subscribe myself by the name of the day I keep, that my supernumerary friends may know who I am.' ADVERTISEMENT. To prevent all mistakes that may happen among gentlemen of the other end of the town, who come but once a week to St. James's coffee-house, either by miscalling the servants, or requiring such things from them as are not properly within their respective provinces; this is to give notice, that Kidney, keeper of the bookdebts of the outlying customers, and observer of those who go off without paying, having resigned that employment, is succeeded by John Sowton; to whose place of enterer of messages and first coffee-grinder, WilR. liam Bird is promoted; and Samuel Burdock comes as shoe-cleaner in the room of the said Bird. No. 25.] Thursday, March 29, 1711. -Egrescitque medendo. Virg. Æn. xii. 46. And sickens by the very means of health. THE following letter will explain itself, and needs no apology. 'SIR-I am one of that sickly tribe who are commonly known by the name of valetudinarians; and do confess to you, that I first contracted this ill habit of body, or rather of mind, by the study of physic. I no sooner began to peruse books of this nature, but I found my pulse was irregular; and scarce ever read the account of any disease that I did not fancy myself afflicted with. Dr. Sydenham's learned treatise of fevers threw me into a lingering hectic, which hung upon me all the while I was reading that excellent piece. I then applied myself to the study of several authors, who have written upon phthisical distempers, and by that means fell into a consumption; till at length, growing very fat, I was in a manner shamed out of that imagination. Not long after this I found in myself all the symptoms of the gout, except pain; but was cured of it by a treatise upon the gravel, written by a very ingenious author, who, (as it is usual for physicians to convert one distemper into another) eased me of the gout by giving me the stone. I at length studied myself into a complication of distempers; but, accidently taking into my hand that ingenious discourse written by Sanctorius, I was resolved to direct myself by a scheme of rules, which I had collected from his observations. The learned world 'Having provided myself with this chair, I used to study, eat, drink, and sleep in it; insomuch that I may be said, for these last I compute myself, when I am in full health, three years, to have lived in a pair of scales. to be precisely two hundred weight, falling short of it about a pound after a day's fast, and exceeding it as much after a very full meal; so that it is my continual employment to trim the balance between these two volatile pounds in my constitution. In my ordinary meals I fetch myself up to two hundred weight and half a pound; and if, after having dined, I find myself fall short of it, I drink just so much small beer, or eat such a quantity of bread, as is sufficient to make me weight. In my greatest excesses I do not transgress more than the other half pound; which, for my health's sake, I do the first Monday in every month. As soon as I find myself duly poised after dinner, I walk till I have perspired five ounces and four scruples; and when I discover, by my chair, that I am so far reduced, I fall to my books, and study away three ounces more. As for the remaining parts of the pound, I keep no account of them. I do not dine and sup by the clock, but by my chair; for when that informs me my pound of food is exhausted, In my days I conclude myself to be hungry, and lay in another with all diligence. of abstinence I lose a pound and a half, and on solemn fasts am two pounds lighter than on the other days in the year. 'I allow myself, one night with another, a quarter of a pound of sleep, within a few grains more or less; and if, upon my rising, I find that I have not consumed my whole quantity, I take out the rest in my chair. Upon an exact calculation of what I expended and received the last year, which I always register in a book, I find the medium to be two hundred weight, so that I cannot discover that I am impaired one And yet, sir, notwithstanding this ounce in my health during a whole twelvemonth. my great care to ballast myself equally every day, and to keep my body in its proper poise, so it is, that I find myself in a sick and languishing condition. My complexion is grown very sallow, my pulse low, and my body hydropical. Let me, therefore, beg you, sir, to consider me as your patient, and to give me more certain rules to walk by than those I have already "Your humble servant.' observed, and you will very much oblige fields, as he thought the nature of the soil No. 26.] Friday, March 30, 1711. This letter puts me in mind of an Italian epitaph, written on the monument of a valetudinarian: Stavo ben, ma per star meglio, sto qui' which it is impossible to translate. The fear of death often proves mortal, and sets people on methods to save their lives, which infallibly destroy them. This is a reflection made by some historians, upon observing that there are many more thousands killed in a flight, than in a battle; and may be applied to those multitudes of imaginary sick persons that break their constitutions by physic, and throw themselves into the arms of death, by endeavouring to escape it. This method is not only dangerous, but below the practice of a reasonable creature. To consult the preservation of life, as the only end of it, to make our health our business, to engage in no action that is not part of a regimen, or course of physic; are pur-To story'd ghosts, and Pluto's house below. Creech. poses so abject, so mean, so unworthy human nature, that a generous soul would WHEN I am in a serious humour, I very rather die than submit to them. Besides that a continual anxiety for life vitiates all the relishes of it, and casts a gloom over the whole face of nature; as it is impossible we should take delight in any thing that we are every moment afraid of losing. Pallida mors æquo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas, often walk by myself in Westminster Abbey; where the gloominess of the place, and the use to which it is applied, with the solemnity of the building, and the condition of the people who lie in it, are apt to fill the mind with a kind of melancholy, or rather thoughtfulness, that is not disagreeable.. I yesterday passed a whole afternoon in the church-yard, the cloisters, and the church, amusing myself with the tombstones and inscriptions that I met with in those several regions of the dead. Most of them recorded nothing else of the buried person, but that he was born upon one day, and died upon another; the whole I do not mean, by what I have here said, that I think any one to blame for taking due care of their health. On the contrary, as cheerfulness of mind, and capacity for business, are in a great measure the effects of a well-tempered constitution, a man cannot be at too much pains to cultivate and preserve it. But this care, which we are prompted to, not only by common sense, but by duty and instinct, should never en-history of his life being comprehended in gage us in groundless fears, melancholy apprehensions, and imaginary distempers, which are natural to every man who is more anxious to live, than how to die. In short, the preservation of life should be only a secondary concern, and the direction of it our principal. If we have this frame of mind, we shall take the best means to preserve life, without being over solicitous about the event; and shall arrive at that point of felicity which Martial has mentioned as the perfection of happiness, of neither fearing nor wishing for death. those two circumstances that are common to all mankind. I could not but look upon these registers of existence, whether of brass or marble, as a kind of satire upon the departed persons; who had left no other memorial of them but that they were born, and that they died. They put me in mind of several persons mentioned in the battles of heroic poems, who have sounding names given them, for no other reason but that they may be killed, and are celebrated for nothing but being knocked on the head. Γλαύκον τε, Μέδοντα TS, Θερσιλόχου το Hom. Glaucumque, Medontaque, Thersilochumque.'-Virg. 'Glaucus, and Mcdon, and Thersilochus.' In answer to the gentleman, who tempers his health by ounces and by scruples, and instead of complying with those natural solicitations of hunger and thirst, drowsiness The life of these men is finely described or love of exercise, governs himself by the in holy writ by the path of an arrow,* prescriptions of his chair, I shall tell him a which is immediately closed up and lost. short fable. Jupiter, says the mythologist, to reward the piety of a certain country-tained myself with the digging of a grave; Upon my going into the church, I enterman, promised to give him whatever he and saw in every shovel-full of it that was would ask. The countryman desired that thrown up, the fragment of a bone or skull he might have the management of the wea-intermixt with a kind of fresh mouldering ther in his own estate. He obtained his request, and immediately distributed rain, snow, and sunshine among his several * The following translation, however, may give an English reader some idea of the Italian epitaph: 'I was well, but striving to be better, I am here.' earth that some time or other had a place in the composition of an human body. Upon this I began to consider with myself, confused together under the pavement what innumerable multitudes of people lay of that ancient cathedral; how men and . matter. women, friends and enemies, priests and sol- | the repository of our English kings for the diers, monks and prebendaries, were crum- contemplation of another day, when I shall bled amongst one another, and blended find my mind disposed for so serious an together in the same common mass; how amusement. I know that entertainments. beauty, strength, and youth, with old age, of this nature are apt to raise dark and disweakness, and deformity, lay undistin- mal thoughts in timorous minds, and gloomy guished, in the same promiscuous heap of imaginations; but for my own part, though I am always serious, I do not know what it is to be melancholy; and can therefore take a view of nature, in her deep and solemn scenes, with the same pleasure as in her most gay and delightful ones. By this means I can improve myself with those objects, which others consider with terror. When I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of envy dies in me; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tomb of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for those whom we must quickly follow. When I see kings lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the holy men that divided the world with their contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the little competitions, factions, and debates of mankind. When I read the several dates of the tombs, of some that died yesterday, and some six hundred years ago, I consider that great day when we shall all of us be con-, temporaries, and make our appearance together. C. After having thus surveyed this great magazine of mortality, as it were in the lump, I examined it more particularly by the accounts which I found on several of the monuments which are raised in every quarter of that ancient fabric. Some of them were covered with such extravagant epitaphs, that if it were possible for the dead person to be acquainted with them, he would blush at the praises which his friends have bestowed upon him. There are others so excessively modest, that they deliver the character of the person departed in Greek or Hebrew, and by that means are not understood once in a twelvemonth. In the poetical quarter, I found there were poets who had no monuments, and monuments which had no poets. I observed, indeed, that the present war had filled the church with many of these uninhabited monuments, which had been erected to the memory of persons whose bodies were perhaps buried in the plains of Blenheim, or in the bosom of the ocean. Ut nox longa, quibus mentitur amica, diesque IMITATED. I could not but be very much delighted with several modern epitaphs, which are written with great elegance of expression and justness of thought, and therefore do honour to the living as well as to the dead. As a foreigner is very apt to conceive an No. 27.] Saturday, March 31, 1711. idea of the ignorance or politeness of a nation from the turn of their public monuments and inscriptions, they should be submitted to the perusal of men of learning and genius before they are put in execution. Sir Cloudesly Shovel's monument has very often given me great offence. Instead of the brave rough English admiral, which was the distinguishing character of that plain, gallant man, he is represented on his tomb by the figure of a beau, dressed in a long periwig, and reposing himself upon velvet cushions, under a canopy of state. The inscription is answerable to the monument: for instead of celebrating the many remarkable actions he had performed in the service of his country, it acquaints us only with the manner of his death, in which it was impossible for him to reap any honour. The Dutch, whom we are apt to despise for want of genius, show an infinitely greater taste of antiquity and politeness in their buildings and works of this nature, than what we meet with in those of our own country. The monuments of their admirals, which have been erected at the public expense, represent them like themselves, and are adorned with rostral crowns and naval ornaments, with beautiful festoons of sea-weed, shells, and coral. But to return to our subject. I have left Long as to him, who works for debt, the day; Pope. THERE is scarce a thinking man in the world, who is involved in the business of it, but lives under a secret impatience of the hurry and fatigue he suffers, and has formed a resolution to fix himself, one time or other, in such a state as is suitable to the end of his being. You hear men every day, in conversation, profess, that all the honour, power, and riches, which they propose to themselves, cannot give satisfaction enough to reward them for half the anxiety they undergo in the pursuit or possession of |