'GOOD SIR, 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 ing, and shows to every one that will come of them will certainly join with you, though in and pay; but then he is the only actor. you are in company with ladies! If you Why should people miscal things? If his is drink a bottle they will find your haunts. allowed to be a concert, why may not mine What makes such fellows the more bur-¡be a lecture? However, sir, I submit it to densome is, that they neither offend nor you, and am, Sir, your most obedient &c. please so far as to be taken notice of for THOMAS KIMBOW. 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 most half an hour. I thank you for all night, at such an hour, is teased by a your civilities ever since, in being of my swarm of them; who, because they are acquaintance wherever you meet me. But sure of room and good fire, have taken it the other day you pulled off your hat to me in their heads to keep a sort of club in his in the Park, when I was walking with my company; though the sober gentleman mistress. She did not like your air, and himself is an utter enemy to such meetings. 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, '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. '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, commendation only of an agreeable person, giddy, unthinking girls, who, upon the reand 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 the obligation, by giving the same orders to my servants. When accident makes us meet at a third place, we may mutually lament the misfortune of never finding one another at home, go in the same party to a benefit play, and smile at each other, and put down glasses as we pass in our coaches. Thus we may enjoy as much of each other's friendship as we are capable: for there are some people who are to be known only by sight, with which sort of friendship I hope you will always honour, Madam, your most obedient humble servant, '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. are very well acquainted with that gentleman's invention; who, for the better carrying on his experiments, contrived a certain mathematical chair, which was so artificially hung upon springs, that it would weigh any thing as well as a pair of scales. By this means he discovered how many ounces of his food passed by perspiration, what quantity of it was turned into nourishment, and how much went away by the other channels and distributions of nature. 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 three years, to have lived in a pair of scales. I compute myself, when I am in full health, 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 To prevent all mistakes that may happen among gen- full meal; so that it is my continual emtlemen of the other end of the town, who come but ployment to trim the balance between once a week to St. James's coffee-house, either by mis- these two volatile pounds in my constitucalling the servants, or requiring such things from them as are not properly within their respective provinces: tion. In my ordinary meals I fetch mythis is to give notice, that Kidney, keeper of the book-self up to two hundred weight and half a debts 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. William Bird is promoted; and Samuel Burdock comes as shoe-cleaner in the room of the said Bird. R. No. 25.] Thursday, March 29, 1711. 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 THE following letter will explain itself, am so far reduced, I fall to my books, and and needs no apology. 'SIR-I am one of that sickly toe 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 vey fat, I was in a manner shamed out of that imagination. Not long after this I found in myself all th 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. 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, ccidently taking into my hand that ingenious discourse written by Sanctorius, I was resolved to direct myself by a scher..e of rules, which I had collected from his observations. The learned world As for the study away three ounces more. '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 ounce in my health during a whole twelvemonth. And yet, sir, notwithstanding this 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 observed, and you will very much oblige "Your humble servant.' 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 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. 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 engage 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. Pallida mors æquo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas, WHEN I am in a serious humour, I very 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 history of his life being comprehended in 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 τε, Θερσίλοχον τε.-Hom. Glaucumque, Medontaque, Thersilochumque.'—Virg. 'Glaucus, and Mcdon, and Thersilochus.' The life of these men is finely described in holy writ by the path of an arrow," which is immediately closed up and lost. 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 or love of exercise, governs himself by the prescriptions of his chair, I shall tell him a short fable. Jupiter, says the mythologist, Upon my going into the church, I enterto reward the picty of a certain country-tained myself with the digging of a grave; man, promised to give him whatever he would ask. The countryman desired that he might have the management of the weather 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.' and saw in every shovel-full of it that was thrown up, the fragment of a bone or skull intermixt with a kind of fresh mouldering earth that some time or other had a place in the composition of an human body. Upon this I began to consider with myself, what innumerable multitudes of people lay confused together under the pavement 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 After having thus surveyed this great is to be melancholy; and can therefore take magazine of mortality, as it were in the a view of nature, in her deep and solemn lump, I examined it more particularly by scenes, with the same pleasure as in her the accounts which I found on several of most gay and delightful ones. By this the monuments which are raised in every means I can improve myself with those obquarter of that ancient fabric. Some of jects, which others consider with terror, them were covered with such extravagant When I look upon the tombs of the great, epitaphs, that if it were possible for the every emotion of envy dies in me; when I dead person to be acquainted with them, read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every he would blush at the praises which his inordinate desire goes out; when I meet friends have bestowed upon him. There with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, are others so excessively modest, that they my heart melts with compassion; when I deliver the character of the person depart- see the tomb of the parents themselves, I ed in Greek or Hebrew, and by that means consider the vanity of grieving for those are not understood once in a twelvemonth. whom we must quickly follow. When I In the poetical quarter, I found there were see kings lying by those who deposed them, poets who had no monuments, and monu- when I consider rival wits placed side by ments which had no poets. I observed, in-side, or the holy men that divided the world deed, 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. 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 contemporaries, and make our appearance together. C. 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 them. While men are in this temper | live. The station I am in furnishes me with (which happens very frequently) how inconsistent are they with themselves? They are wearied with the toil they bear, but cannot find in their hearts to relinquish it; retirement is what they want, but they cannot betake themselves to it. While they pant after shade and covert, they still affect to appear in the most glittering scenes of life. Sure this is but just as reasonable as if a man should call for more lights, when he has a mind to go to sleep. Since then it is certain that our own hearts deceive us in the love of the world, and that we cannot command ourselves enough to resign it, though we every day wish ourselves disengaged from its allurements, let us not stand upon a formal taking of leave, but wean ourselves from them while we are in the midst of them. daily opportunities of this kind; and the 'SIR,-I am entirely convinced of the truth of what you were pleased to say to told me then of the silly way I was in; but me, when I was last with you alone. You you told me so, as I saw you loved me, otherwise I could not obey your commands in letting you know my thoughts so sin It is certainly the general intention of the greater part of mankind to accomplish this work, and live according to their own approbation, as soon as they possibly can. But since the duration of life is so uncertain, and that has been a common topic of discourse ever since there was such a thing as life it-cerely as I do at present. I know "the self, how is it possible that we should defer a moment the beginning to live according to the rules of reason? The man of business has ever some one creature, for whom I resign so much of my then the trifler has something in her so uncharacter," is all that you said of her; but designing and harmless, that her guilt in one kind disappears by the comparison of her innocence in another. Will ycu, virMust dear Chloe be called by the hard tuous man, allow no alteration of offences? men? I keep the solemn promise I made name you pious people give to common wo point to carry, and then he tells himself he will bid adieu to all the vanity of ambition. The man of pleasure resolves to take his leave at least, and part civilly with his mistress; but the ambitious man is entangled every moment in a fresh pursuit, and the lover sees new charms in the object he fan-you in writing to you the state of my mind, cied he could abandon. It is therefore a fan- deavour to get the better of this fondness, after your kind admonition; and will entastical way of thinking, when we promise which makes me so much her humble serourselves an alteration in our conduct from change of place, and difference of circum- vant, that I am almost ashamed to subscribe myself yours, T. D.' stances; the same passions will attend us wherever we are, till they are conquered, and we can never live to our satisfaction in the deepest retirement, unless we are capable of living so, in some measure, amidst the noise and business of the world. I have ever thought men were better known by what could be observed of them from a perusal of their private letters, than any other way. My friend the clergyman, the other day, upon serious discourse with him concerning the danger of procrastination, gave me the following letters from persons with whom he lives in great friendship and intimacy, according to the good breeding and good sense of his character. The first is from a man of business, who is his convert: the second from one of whom he conceives good hopes: the third from one who is in no state at all, but carried one way and another by starts. 'SIR, I know not with what words to express to you the sense I have of the high obligation you have laid upon me, in the penance you enjoined me of doing some good or other to a person of worth every day I 'SIR,-There is no state of life so anxious as that of a man who does not live according to the dictates of his own reason. It will seem odd to you, when I assure you that my love of retirement first of all brought me to court; but this will be no riddle, when I acquaint you that I placed myself here with a design of getting so much money as might enable me to purchase a handsome retreat in the country. At present my circumstances enable me, and my duty prompts me to pass away the remaining part of my life in such a retirement as I at first proposed to myself; but to my great misfortune I have entirely lost the relish of it, and should now return to the country with greater reluctance than I at first came to court. I am so unhappy, as to know that what I am fond of are trifles, and that what I neglect is of the greatest importance; in short, I find a contest in my own mind between reason and fashion. I remember you once told me, that I might live in the world and out of it, at the same time. Let me beg of you to explain this paradox more at large to me, that I may conform my life, if |