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short, and told him, that the papers he hinted at had done great good in the city, and that all their wives and daughters were the better for them: and further added, that the whole city thought themselves very much obliged to me for declaring my generous intentions to scourge vice and folly as they appear in a multitude, without condescending to be a publisher of particular intrigues and cuckoldoms. In short, says Sir Andrew, if you avoid that foolish beaten road of falling upon aldermen and citizens, and employ your pen upon the vanity and luxury of courts, your paper must needs be of general use.

Upon this my friend the Templar told Sir Andrew, That he wondered to hear a man of his sense talk after that manner; that the city had always been the province for satire; and that the wits of king Charles's time jested upon nothing else during his whole reign. He then shewed, by the examples of Horace, Juvenal, Boileau, and the best writers of every age, that the follies of the stage and court had never been accounted too sacred for ridicule, how great soever the persons might be that patron · ized them. But after all, says he, I think your raillery has made too great an excursion, in attacking several persons of the inns of court; and I do not believe you can shew me any precedent for your behaviour in that particular.

My good friend Sir Roger de Coverley, who had said nothing all this while, began his speech with a pish! and told us, that he wondered to see so many men of sense so very serious upon fooleries. Let our good friends, said he, attack every one that deserves it: I would only advise you, Mr. Spectator, applying himself to me, to take care how you meddle with country squires: they are the ornaments of the English nation; men of good heads and sound bodies! and let me tell you, some of them take it ill that you mention foxhunters with so little respect. Captain Sentry spoke very sparingly on this occasion. What

of you,

VOL. V.-5

he said was only to commend my prudence in not touching upon the army, and advised me to continue to act discreetly in that point. By this time I found every subject of my speculations was taken away from me, by one or other of the club; and began to think myself in the condition of the good man that had one wife who took a dislike to his grey hairs, and another to his black, till by their picking out what each of them had an aversion to, thev left his head altogether bald and naked.

While I was thus musing with myself, my worthy friend the clergyman, who, very luckily for me, was at the club that night, undertook my cause. He told us, that he wondered any order of persons should think themselves too considerable to be advised: that it was not quality, but innocence, which exempted men from reproof that vice and folly ought to be attacked wherever they could be met with, and especially when they were placed in high and conspicuous stations of life. He further added, that my paper would only serve to aggravate the pains of poverty, if it chiefly exposed those who are already depressed, and in some measure turned into ridicule, by the meanness of their conditions and circumstances. He afterwards proceeded to take notice of the great use this paper might be to the public, by reprehending those vices which are too trivial for the chastise ment of the law, and too fantastical for the cognizance of the pul pit. He then advised me to prosecute my undertaking with cheerfulness, and assured me, that whoever might be displeased with me, I should be approved by all those whose praises do honour to the persons on whom they are bestowed.

The whole club pays a particular deference to the discourse of this gentleman, and are drawn into what he says, as much by the candid ingenious manner with which he delivers himself, as by the strength of argument and force of reason which he makes use of. Will. Honeycomb immediately agreed, that what he had said

was right; and that for his part, he would not insist upon the quarter which he had demanded for the ladies. Sir Andrew gave up the city with the same frankness. The Templer would not stand out and was followed by Sir Roger and the Captain: who all agreed that I should be at liberty to carry the war into what quarter I pleased; provided I continued to combat with criminals in a body, and to assault the vice without hurting the person.

This debate, which was held for the good of mankind, put me in mind of that which the Roman triumvirate were formerly engaged in, for their destruction. Every man at first stood hard for his friend, till they found that by this means they should spoil their proscription: and at length, making a sacrifice of all their acquaintance and relations, furnished out a very decent execution.

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Having thus taken my resolutions to march on boldly in the cause of virtue and good sense, and to annoy their adversaries in whatever degree or rank of men they may be found: I shall be deaf for the future to all the remonstrances that shall be made to me on this account. If Punch grows extravagant, I shall reprimand him very freely if the stage becomes a nursery of folly and impertinence, I shall not be afraid to animadvert upon it In short, if I meet with any thing in city, court, or country, that shocks modesty or good manners, I shall use my utmost endeavours to make an example of it. I must, however, entreat every particular person, who does me the honour to be a reader of this paper, never to think himself, or any one of his friends or enemies, aimed at in what is said: for I promise him, never to draw a faulty character which does not fit at least a thousand people; or to publish a single paper that is not written in the spirit of bene volence, and v ith a love to mankind. C.

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AMONG all kinds of writing, there is none in which aut are more apt to miscarry than in works of humour, as ther none in which they are more ambitious to excel. It is no imagination that teems with monsters, an head that is filled extravagant conceptions, which is capable of furnishing the w with diversions of this nature; and yet if we look into the ductions of several writers, who set up for men of humour, v wild irregular fancies, what unnatural distortions of thought we meet with? if they speak nonsense, they believe they talking humour; and when they have drawn together a sch of absurd inconsistent ideas, they are not able to read it ove themselves without laughing. These poor gentlemen endea to gain themselves the reputation of wits and humourists such monstrous conceits as almost qualify them for Bedlam; considering that humour should always lie under the chec reason, and that it requires the direction of the nicest judgm by so much the more as it indulges itself in the most bound freedoms. There is a kind of nature that is to be observe this sort of compositions, as well as in all other; and a cer regularity of thought which must discover the writer to be a of sense, at the same time that he appears altogether given u caprice. For my part, when I read the delirious mirth of unskilful author, I cannot be so barbarous as to divert my with it, but am rather apt to pity the man, than to laugh at thing he writes.

The deceased Mr. Shadwell,' who had himself a great deal of the talent which I am treating of, represents an empty rake, in one of his plays, as very much surprised to hear one say that breaking of windows was not humour; and I question not but several English readers will be as much startled to hear me affirm, that many of those raving incoherent pieces, which are often spread among us, under odd chimerical titles, are rather the offsprings of a distempered brain, than works of humour.

It is indeed much easier to describe what is not humour, than what is; and very difficult to define it otherwise than as Cowley has done wit, by negatives. Were I to give my own notions of it, I would deliver them after Plato's manner, in a kind of allegory, and by supposing Humour to be a person, deduce to him all his qualifications, according to the following genealogy: Truth was the founder of the family, and the father of Good Sense. Good Sense was the father of Wit, who married a lady of a collateral line called Mirth, by whom he had issue Humour. Humour therefore being the youngest of this illustrious family, and descended from parents of such different dispositions, is very various and unequal in his temper; sometimes you see him putting on grave looks and a solemn habit, sometimes airy in his behaviour, and fantastic in his dress insomuch that at different times he appears as serious as a judge, and as jocular as a merryandrew. But as he has a great deal of the mother in his consti tution, whatever mood he is in, he never fails to make his company laugh.

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But since there is an impostor abroad, who takes upon him the name of this young gentleman, and would willingly pass for him in the world; to the end that well-meaning persons may not

1 Thomas Shadwell. V. Dryden's Mac-Flecknoe.

"Shadwell alone my perfect image bears,
Mature in dulness from his tender years, &c.

G.

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