Page images
PDF
EPUB

made a very elegant waterman, and have shined at the Temple stairs, though he can get no business in the house.

'I have known a corn-cutter, who with a right education would have been an excellent physician.

To descend lower, are not our streets filled with sagacious draymen, and politicians in liveries? We have several tailors of six foot high, and meet with many a broad pair of shoulders that are thrown away upon a barber, when perhaps at the same time we see a pigmy porter reeling under a burden, who might have managed a needle with much dexterity, or have snapped his fingers with great ease to himself, and advantage to the public.

The Spartans, though they acted with the spirit which I am here speaking of, carried it much further than what I propose. Among them it was not lawful for the father himself to bring up his children after his own fancy. As soon as they were seven years old, they where all listed in several companies, and disciplined by the public. The old men were spectators of their performances, who often raised quarrels among them, and set them at strife with one another, that by those early discoveries they might see how their several talents lay, and, without any regard to their quality, disposed of them accordingly, for the service of the commonwealth. By this means Sparta soon became the mistress of Greece, and famous through the whole world for her civil and military discipline.

'If you think this letter deserves a place among your speculations, I may perhaps trouble you with some other thoughts on the same subject. 'I am, &c.'

X.

[blocks in formation]

'I GIVE you this trouble in order to propose myself to you as an assistant in the weighty cares which you have thought fit to undergo for the public good. I am a very great lover of women, that is to say, honestly; and as it is natural to study what one likes, I have industriously applied myself to understand them. The present circumstance relating to them is, that I think there wants under you, as Spectator, a person to be distinguished and vested in the power and quality of a censor on marriages. I lodge at the Temple, and know, by seeing women come hither, and afterwards observing them conducted by their counsel to judges' chambers, that there is a custom in case of making conveyance of a wife's estate, that she is carried to a judge's apartment, and left alone with him, to be examined in private, whether she has not been frightened or sweetened by her spouse into the act she is going to do, or whether it is of her own free will. Now if this be a method founded upon reason and equity, why should there not be also a proper officer for examining such as are entering into the state of matrimony, whether they are forced by parents on one side, or moved by interest only on the other, to come together, and bring forth

[blocks in formation]

such awkward heirs as are the product of half love and constrained compliances? There is nobody, though I say it myself, would be fitter for this office than I am : for I am an ugly fellow, of great wit and sagacitý. My father was an hale country 'squire, my mother a witty beauty of no fortune. The match was made by consent of my mother's parents against her own, and I am the child of the rape on the wedding night; so that I am as healthy and as homely as my father, but as sprightly and agreeable as my mother. It would be of great ease to you, if you would use me under you, that matches might be better regulated for the future, and we might have no more children of squabbles. I shall not reveal all my pretensions until I receive your answer; and am,

SIR,

Your most humble servant,
MULES PALFREY.'

'MR. SPECTATOR,

"I AM one of those unfortunate men within the city-walls, who am married to a woman of quality, but her temper is something different from that of Lady Anvil. My lady's whole time and thoughts are spent in keeping up to the mode both in apparel and furniture. All the goods in my house have been changed tree times in seven years. I have had seven children by her: and by our marriage-articles she was to have her apartment new furnished as often as she lay-in.— Nothing in our house is useful but that which is fashionable; my pewter holds out generally half a year, my plate a full twelve-month; chairs are not fit to sit in that were made two years since, nor beds fit for any thing but to sleep in, that have stood up above that time. My dear is of opinion

that an old-fashioned grate consumes coals, but gives no heat. If she drinks out of glasses of last year she cannot distinguish wine from smallbeer. Oh, dear sir, you may guess all the rest. Yours.

'P. S. I could bear even all this, if I were not obliged also to eat fashionably. I have a plain stomach, and have a constant loathing of whatever comes to my own table; for which reason I dine at the chop-house three days in a week; where the good company wonders they never see you of late. I am sure, by your unprejudiced discourses, you love broth better than soup.'

< MR. SPECTATOR,

Will's, Feb. 19.

'You may believe you are a person as I am one of

much talked of as any man in town. your best friends in this house, and have laid a wager, you are so candid a man and so honest a fellow, that you will print this letter, though it is in recommendation of a new paper called The Historian. I have read it carefully, and find it written with skill, good sense, modesty, and fire. You must allow the town is kinder to you than you deserve; and I doubt not but you have so much sense of the world's change of humour, and instability of all human things, as to understand, that the only way to preserve favour is to communicate it to others with good-nature and judgment. You are so generally read, that what you speak of will be read. This with men of sense and taste, is all that is wanting to recommend The Historian.

I am, SIR,

Your daily advocate,

READER GENTLE.'

I was very much surprised this morning that any one should find out my lodging, and know it so well, as to come directly to my closet door, and knock at it, to give me the following letter. When I came out I opened it, and saw, by a very strong pair of shoes and a warm coat the bearer had on, that he walked all the way to bring it to me, though dated from York. My misfortune is that I cannot talk, and I found the messenger had so much of me, that he could think better than speak. He had, I observed, a polite discerning, hid under a shrewd rusticity. He delivered the paper with a Yorkshire tone and a town leer.

" MR. SPECTATOR,

'THE privilege you have indulged John Trot has proved of very bad consequence to our illustrious assembly, which, besides the many excellent maxims it is founded upon, is remarkable for the extraordinary decorum always observed in it. One instance of which is, that the carders (who are always of the first quality) never begin to play until the French dances are finished, and the country dances begin: but John Trot having now got your commission in his pocket, (which every one here has a profound respect for) has the assurance to set up for a minuetdancer. Not only so, but he has brought down upon us the whole body of the Trots, which are very numerous, with their auxiliaries the hobblers and the skippers, by which means the time is so much wasted, that, unless we break all rules of government, it must redound to the utter subversion of the brag table, the discreet members of which value time, as Fribble's wife does her pin-money. We are pretty well assured that your indulgence to Trot was only in relation to

« PreviousContinue »