and I are blinded by turns, and you would laugh your heart out to see what pains my dear takes to hoodwink, us, so that it is impossible for us to see the least glimpse of light. The poor colonel sometimes hits his nose against a post, and makes us die with laughing. I have generally the good luck not to hurt myself, but am very often above half an hour before I can catch either of them; for you must know we hide ourselves up and down in corners, that we may have the more sport. I only give you this hint as a sample of such innocent diversions as I would have you recommend; and am, "Most esteemed sir, Your ever loving friend, "TIMOTHY DOODLE." The following letter was occasioned by my last Thursday's paper upon the absence of lovers, and the methods therein mentioned of making such absence supportable. “SIR, Among the several ways of consolation which absent lovers make use of while their souls are in that state of departure which you say is death in love, there are some very material ones that have escaped your notice. Among these, the first and most received is a crooked shilling, which has administered great comfort to our forefathers, and is still made use of on this occasion with very good effect in most parts of her Majesty's dominions. There are some, I know, who think a crown piece cut into two equal parts, and preserved by the distant lovers, is of more sovereign virtue than the former. But since opinions are divided in this particular, why may not the same persons make use of both? The figure of a heart, whether cut in stone or cast in metal, whether bleeding upon an altar, stuck with darts, or held in the hand of a Cupid, has always been looked upon as talismanic in distresses of this nature. I am acquainted with many a brave fellow, who carries his mistress in the lid of his snuff-box, and by that experience has supported himself under the absence of a whole campaign. For my own part, I have tried all these remedies, but never found so much benefit from any as from a ring, in which my mistress's hair is platted together very artificially in a kind of true-lover's knot. As I have received great benefit from this secret, I think myself obliged to communicate it to the public, for the good of my fellow-subjects. I desire you will add this letter as an appendix to your consolations upon absence, and am "Your very humble servant, T. B." I shall conclude this paper with a letter from an university gentleman, occasioned by my last Tuesday's paper, wherein I gave some account of the great feuds which happened formerly in those learned bodies, between the modern Greeks and Trojans. "SIR, This will give you to understand, that there is at present in the society whereof I am a member, a very considerable body of Trojans, who, upon a proper occasion, would not fail to declare ourselves. In the mean while we do all we can to annoy our enemies by stratagem, and are resolved, by the first opportunity, to attack Mr. Joshua Barnes, whom we look upon as the Achilles of the opposite party. As for myself, I have had the reputation, ever since I came from school, of being a trusty Trojan, and am resolved never to give quarter to the smallest particle of Greek, wherever I chance to meet it. It is for this reason I take it very ill of you, that you sometimes hang out Greek colours at the head of your paper, and sometimes give a word of the enemy even in the body of it. When I meet with anything of this nature, I throw down your speculations upon the table; with that form of words which we make use of when we declare war upon an author, Græcum est, non potest legi. I give you this hint, that you may for the future abstain from any such hostilities at your péril. "TROILUS." No. 247. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 13. —Τῶν δ ̓ ἀκάματος ρέει αὐδὴ Ἐκ στομάτων ἡδεῖα HES. WE are told by some ancient authors, that Socrates was instructed in eloquence by a woman, whose name, if I am not mistaken, was Aspasia. I have, indeed, very often looked upon that art as the most proper for the female sex, and I think the universities would do well to consider whether they should not fill their rhetoric chairs with she-professors. It has been said in the praise of some men, that they could talk whole hours together upon anything; but it must be owned to the honour of the other sex, that there are many among them who can talk whole hours together upon nothing. I have known a woman branch out into a long extempore dissertation upon the edging of a petticoat, and chide her servant for breaking a china cup in all the figures of rhetoric. Were women admitted to plead in courts of judicature, I am persuaded they would carry the eloquence of the bar to greater heights than it has yet arrived at. If any one doubts this, let him but be present at those debates which frequently arise among the ladies of the British fishery. The first kind, therefore, of female orators which I shall take notice of, are those who are employed in stirring up the passions, a part of rhetoric in which Socrates his wife had perhaps made a greater proficiency than his above-mentioned teacher. The second kind of female orators are those who deal in invectives, and who are commonly known by the name of the censorious. The imagination and elocution of this set of rhetoricians is wonderful. With what a fluency of invention, and copiousnesss of expression, will they enlarge upon every little slip in the behaviour of another! With how many different circumstances, and with what variety of phrases, will they tell over the same story! I have known an old lady make an unhappy marriage the subject of a month's conversation. She blamed the bride in one place; pitied her in another; laughed at her in a third; wondered at her in a fourth; was angry with her in a fifth; and in short, wore out a pair of coach-horses in expressing her concern for her. At length, after having quite exhausted the subject on this side, she made a visit to the new-married pair, praised the wife for the prudent choice she had made, told her the unreasonable reflections which some malicious people had cast upon her, and desired that they might be better acquainted. The censure and approbation of this kind of women are therefore only to be considered as helps to discourse. A third kind of female orators may be comprehended un der the word Gossips. Mrs. Fiddle Faddle is perfectly accomplished in this sort of eloquence; she launches out into descriptions of christenings, runs divisions upon an headdress, knows every dish of meat that is served up in her neighbourhood, and entertains her company a whole afternoon together with the wit of her little boy, before he is able to speak. The coquette may be looked upon as a fourth kind of female orator. To give herself the larger field for discourse, she hates and loves in the same breath, talks to her lap-dog or parrot, is uneasy in all kinds of weather, and in every part of the room: she has false quarrels and feigned obligations to all the men of her acquaintance; sighs when she is not sad, and laughs when she is not merry. The coquette is in particular a great mistress of that part of oratory which is called action, and indeed seems to speak for no other purpose, but as it gives her an opportunity of stirring a limb, or varying a feature, of glancing her eyes, or playing with her fan. As for news-mongers, politicians, mimics, story-tellers, with other characters of that nature, which give birth to loquacity, they are as commonly found among the men as the women; for which reason I shall pass them over in silence. I have been often puzzled to assign a cause why women should have this talent of a ready utterance in so much greater perfection than men. I have sometimes fancied that they have not a retentive power, the faculty of suppressing their thoughts, as men have, but that they are necessitated to speak everything they think; and if so, it would perhaps furnish a very strong argument to the Cartesians, for the supporting of their doctrine, that the soul always thinks. But as several are of opinion that the fair sex are not altogether strangers to the arts of dissembling, and concealing their thoughts, I have been forced to relinquish that opinion, and have, therefore, endeavoured to seek after some better reason. In order to it, a friend of mine, who is an excellent anatomist, has promised me by the first opportunity to dissect a woman's tongue, and to examine whether there may not be in it certain juices which render it so wonderfully voluble or flippant, or whether the fibres of it may not be made up of a finer or more pliant thread, or whether there are not in it some particular muscles, which dart it up and down by such sudden glances and vibrations; or whether, in the last place, there may not be certain undiscovered channels running from the head and the heart, to this little instrument of loquacity, and conveying into it a perpetual affluence of animal spirits. Nor must I omit the reason which Hudibras has given, why those who can talk on trifles speak with the greatest fluency; namely, that the tongue is like a race-horse, which runs the faster the lesser weight it carries. Which of these reasons soever may be looked upon as the most probable, I think the Irishman's thought was very natural, who, after some hours' conversation with a female orator, told her, that he believed her tongue was very glad when she was asleep, for that it had not a moment's rest all the while she was awake. That excellent old ballad of the "Wanton Wife of Bath" has the following remarkable lines: I think, quoth Thomas, women's tongues And Ovid, though in the description of a very barbarous circumstance, tells us, that when the tongue of a beautiful female was cut out, and thrown upon the ground, it could not forbear muttering even in that posture: -Comprehensam forcipe linguam Abstulit ense fero. Radix micat ultima linguæ. Palpitat. If a tongue would be talking without a mouth, what could it have done when it had all its organs of speech, and accomplices of sound, about it? I might here mention the story of the pippin-woman, had not I some reason to look upon it as fabulous. I must confess I am so wonderfully charmed with the music of this little instrument, that I would by no means discourage it. All that I aim at by this dissertation is, to cure it of several disagreeable notes, and in particular of those little jarrings and dissonances which arise from anger, censoriousness, gossiping, and coquetry. In short, I would have it always tuned by good-nature, truth, discretion, and sincerity. |