the true notions of it to be preserved, and how industrious should we be to encourage any impulses towards it? The Westminster schoolboy that said the other day he could not sleep or play for the colours in the Hall,' ought to be free from receiving a blow for ever.

But let us consider what is truly glorious, according to the author I have to-day quoted in the front of my paper. The perfection of glory, says Tully,2 consists in these three particulars: "That the people love us; that they have confidence in us; that being affected with a certain admiration towards us, they think we deserve honour.' This was spoken of greatness in a commonwealth: but if one were to form a notion of consummate glory under our constitution, one must add to the above-mentioned felicities a certain necessary inexistence and disrelish of all the rest without the prince's favour. He should, methinks, have riches, power, honour, command, glory; but riches, power, honour, command, and glory should have no charms, but as accompanied with the affection of his prince. He should, methinks, be popular because a favourite, and a favourite because popular. Were it not to make the character too imaginary, I would give him sovereignty over some foreign territory, and make him esteem that an empty addition without the kind regards of his own prince. One may merely have an idea of a man thus composed and circumstantiated, and if he were so made for power without an incapacity of giving jealousy, he would be also glorious without possibility of receiving disgrace. This humility and this importance must make his glory immortal.

1 Colours taken at Blenheim, and hung in Westminster Hall. 2 Cicero, First Philippic.

These thoughts are apt to draw me beyond the usual length of this paper, but if I could suppose such rhapsodies could outlive the common fate of ordinary things, I would say these sketches and faint images of glory were drawn in August 1711, when John Duke of Marlborough made that memorable march wherein he took the French lines without bloodshed.1

No. 140. Friday, August 10, 1711

T.

[STEELE.

-Animum curis nunc huc nunc dividit illuc.

-VIRG., Æn. iv. 285.

HEN I acquaint my reader that I have many

WHE other letters not yet acknowledged, I be

lieve he will own, what I have a mind he should believe, that I have no small charge upon me, but am a person of some consequence in this world. I shall therefore employ the present hour only in reading petitions, in the order as follows:

1 The writer (Philo Strategos') of a pamphlet called Churchill's Annals,' 1714, which was dedicated to The Englishman,' i.e. Steele, says, "In 1711 his Grace returned to Flanders, where he forced the French lines upon the Senset and the Scheld, which Mareschal Villars boasted were his ne plus ultra, with such conduct, speed, and secrecy as made a great noise in all the courts of Europe but ours, and is very completely celebrated by one of the duke's grateful countrymen, a person whose judgment is of more weight than all the united opinions of his Grace's enemies, I mean the ingenious author of the Spectator.' Marlborough's successful manœuvres enabled him to capture Bouchain, but he was not able to press forward into France, as he had intended.

'Mr. SPECTATOR,

'I HAVE lost so much time already that I desire,
upon the receipt hereof, you would sit down.
immediately and give me your answer. I would
know of you whether a pretender of mine really
loves me.
As well as I can I will describe his
manners. When he sees me he is always talking
of constancy, but vouchsafes to visit me but once
a fortnight, and then is always in haste to be gone.
When I am sick, I hear he says he is mightily con-
cerned, but neither comes nor sends, because, as he
tells his acquaintance with a sigh, he does not care
to let me know all the power I have over him, and
how impossible it is for him to live without me.
When he leaves the town he writes once in six
weeks; desires to hear from me; complains of the
torment of absence; speaks of flames, tortures, lan-
guishings, and ecstasies. He has the cant of an
impatient lover, but keeps the pace of a lukewarm
one. You know I must not go faster than he does,
and to move at this rate is as tedious as counting a
great clock. But you are to know he is rich, and
my mother says, 'As he is slow he is sure; he will
love me long if he love me little.' But I appeal to
you
whether he loves at all

Your neglected humble Servant,
LYDIA NOVELL.

'All these fellows who have money are extremely saucy and cold. Pray, sir, tell them of it.'

'Mr. SPECTATOR,

1

'I HAVE been delighted with nothing more through the whole course of your writings than the substantial account you lately gave of wit,1 and I could wish you would take some other opportunity to express further the corrupt taste the age is run into, which I am chiefly apt to attribute to the prevalency of a few popular authors, whose merit in some respects has given a sanction to their faults in others. Thus the imitators of Milton 2 seem to place all the excellence of that sort of writing either in the uncouth or antique words, or something else which was highly vicious, though pardonable in that great man. The admirers of what we call point, or turn, look upon it as the peculiar happiness to which Cowley, Ovid, and others owe their reputation, and, therefore, endeavour to imitate them only in such instances. What is just, proper, and natural does not seem to be the question with them, but by what means a quaint antithesis may be brought about; how one word may be made to look two ways, and what will be the consequence of a forced allusion. Now, though such authors appear to me to resemble those who make themselves fine instead of being well dressed or graceful. Yet the mischief is that these beauties in them, which I call blemishes, are thought to proceed from luxuriance of fancy and overflowing of good sense. In one word, they have the character of being too witty; but if you would acquaint the world they are not witty at all, you would, among many others, oblige, SIR,

Your most benevolent Reader,

1 Nos. 58 to 63. 2 Such as John Philips, in his

R. D.'

Cyder.'

'SIR,

'I AM a young woman and reckoned pretty, therefore you'll pardon me that I trouble you to decide a wager between me and a cousin of mine who is always contradicting one because he understands Latin. Pray, sir, is "Dimple" spelt with a single or double p?

I am, SIR,

Your very humble Servant,

BETTY SAUNTER.

'Pray, sir, direct thus: "To the Kind Querist," and leave it at Mr. Lillie's, for I don't care to be known in the thing at all. I am, Sir, again your humble Servant.'

'Mr. SPECTATOR,

'I MUST needs tell you there are several of your papers I do not much like. You are often so nice there is no enduring you, and so learned there is no understanding you. What have you to do with our petticoats?

Your humble Servant,

'Mr. SPECTATOR,

PARTHENOPE.'

'LAST night, as I was walking in the Park, I met a couple of friends. "Prithee, Jack," says one of them, "let us go drink a glass of wine, for I am fit for nothing else." This put me upon reflecting on the many miscarriages which happen in conversations over wine, when men go to the bottle to remove such humours as it only stirs up and awakens. This I could not attribute more to anything than to