of Job. It is the account which that holy man gives of his behaviour in the days of his prosperity, and if considered only as a human composition, is a finer picture of a charitable and good-natured man than is to purpose, upon an object of charity whom he has met with in the street; and afterwards pass his evening in a coffee-house, or at a friend's fire-side, with much greater satisfaction to himself, than he could have received from the most exquisite entertain-be met with in any other author. ments of the theatre. By these means he O that I were as in months past, as in is generous without impoverishing himself, the days when God preserved me: When and enjoys his estate by making it the pro-his candle shined upon my head, and when perty of others. by his light I walked through darkness: When the Almighty was yet with me; when my children were about me: When I washed my steps with butter, and the rock poured out rivers of oil. There are few men so cramped in their private affairs, who may not be charitable after this manner, without any disadvantage to themselves, or prejudice to their families. It is but sometimes sacrificing a diversion When the ear heard me, then it blessed or convenience to the poor, and turning theme; and when the eye saw me, it gave witusual course of our expenses into a better ness to me. Because I delivered the poor channel. This is, I think, not only the that cried, and the fatherless, and him that most prudent and convenient, but the most had none to help him. The blessing of him meritorious piece of charity, which we can that was ready to perish came upon me, put in practice. By this method, we in and I caused the widow's heart to sing for some measure share the necessities of the joy. I was eyes to the blind, and feet was poor at the same time that we relieve them, I to the lame: I was a father to the poor, and make ourselves not only their patrons, and the cause which I knew not I searched but their fellow-sufferers. out. Did not I weep for him that was in Sir Thomas Brown, in the last part of trouble? was not my soul grieved for the his Religio Medici, in which he describes poor? Let me be weighed in an even balhis charity in several heroic instances, and ance, that God may know mine integrity. with a noble heat of sentiment, mentions If I did despise the cause of my manthat verse in the Proverbs of Solomon, He servant or of my maid-servant when they that giveth to the poor, lendeth to the contended with me, what then shall I do Lord: "There is more rhetoric in that when God riseth up? and when he visiteth, one sentence," says he, "than in a library what shall I answer him? Did not he that of sermons; and indeed, if those sentences made me in the womb, make him? and were understood by the reader, with the did not one fashion us in the womb? If I same emphasis as they are delivered by the have withheld the poor from their desire, author, we needed not those volumes of in- or have caused the eyes of the widow to structions, but might be honest by an epi-fail: Or have eaten my morsel myself alone, tome."t and the fatherless hath not eaten thereof: This passage in scripture is indeed won-If I have seen any perish for want of clothderfully persuasive; but I think the same thought is carried much farther in the New Testament, where our Saviour tells us in a most pathetic manner, that he shall hereafter regard the clothing of the naked, the feeding of the hungry, and the visiting of the imprisoned, as offices done to himself, and reward them accordingly. Pursuant to those passages in holy scripture, I have somewhere met with the epitaph of a charitable man, which has very much pleased I cannot recollect the words, but the sense of it is to this purpose: What I spent I lost; what I possessed is left to others; what I gave away remains with me.§ ing, or any poor without covering: If his loins have not blessed me, and if he were not warmed with the fleece of my sheep: If I have lifted up my hand against the fatherless, when I saw my help in the gate; then let mine arm fall from my shoulderblade, and mine arm be broken from the bone. If I have rejoiced at the destruction of him that hated me, or lifted up myself when evil found him: (Neither have I suffered my mouth to sin, by wishing a curse to his soul.) The stranger did not lodge in the street; but I opened my doors to the traveller. If my land cry against me, or that the furrows likewise therefore comSince I am thus insensibly engaged in sa-plain: If I have eaten the fruits thereof cred writ, I cannot forbear making an ex-without money, or have caused the owners tract of several passages which I have thereof to lose their life; let thistles grow always read with great delight in the book instead of wheat, and cockle instead of me. * Prov. xix. 17. † Brown's Rel. Medici, Part II. Sect. 13. f. 1659. p. 2. Mat. xxv. 31, et seqq. barley.'ll L. The epitaph alluded to is (or was) in St. George's No. 178.] Monday, September 24, 1711. Church, at Doncaster in Yorkshire, and runs in old How now, who is heare? That I spent, that I had: Comis in uxorem Civil to his wife. Hor. Lib. 2. Ep. ii. 133. I CANNOT defer taking notice of this letter. 'MR. SPECTATOR,-I am but too good a Job xxix. 2. &c. xxx. 25, &c. xxxi. 6, &c. passim. judge of your paper of the 15th instant, I am answered only: That I expose my own which is a master-piece; I mean that of reputation and sense if I appear jealous. I jealousy: but I think it unworthy of you to wish, good sir, you would take this into speak of that torture in the breast of a man, serious consideration, and admonish husand not to mention also the pangs of it in bands and wives, what terms they ought to the heart of a woman. You have very ju- keep towards each other. Your thoughts diciously, and with the greatest penetration on this important subject will have the imaginable, considered it as woman is the greatest reward, that which descends on creature of whom the diffidence is raised: such as feel the sorrows of the afflicted. but not a word of a man, who is so unmer- Give me leave to subscribe myself, your ciful as to move jealousy in his wife, and unfortunate humble servant, not care whether she is so or not. It is posCELINDA.' sible you may not believe there are such I had it in my thoughts, before I received tyrants in the world; but, alas, I can tell the letter of this lady, to consider this dreadyou of a man who is ever out of humour in ful passion in the mind of a woman: and the his wife's company, and the pleasantest man smart she seems to feel does not abate the in the world every where else; the greatest inclination I had to recommend to husbands sloven at home when he appears to none but his family, and most exactly well- a more regular behaviour, than to give the dressed in all other places. Alas, sir, is it most exquisite of torments to those who of course, that to deliver one's self wholly abated if they did not love them. love them, nay whose torments would be into a man's power without possibility of It is wonderful to observe how little is appeal to any other jurisdiction but his own made of this inexpressible injury, and how reflections, is so little an obligation to a gen- easily men get into a habit of being least tleman, that he can be offended and fall agreeable, where they are most obliged to into a rage, because my heart swells tears be so. But this subject deserves a distinct into my eyes when I see him in a cloudy speculation, and I shall observe for a day mood? I pretend to no succour, and hope or two the behaviour of two or three happy for no relief but from himself; and yet he that has sense and justice in every thing pairs I am acquainted with, before I preelse, never reflects, that to come home only tend to make a system of conjugal morality. to sleep off an intemperance, and spend all out of town, and there I know where to I design in the first place to go a few miles the time he is there as if it were a punish-meet one who practises all the parts of a ment, cannot but give the anguish of a jeal-fine gentleman in the duty of an husband. ous mind. He always leaves his home as When he was a bachelor much business if he were going to court, and returns as if made him particularly negligent in his hahe were entering a jail. I could add to this, bit; but now there is no young lover living that from his company and his usual disso exact in the care of his person. One who course, he does not scruple being thought an abandoned man, as to his morals. Your asked, Why he was so long washing his mouth, and so delicate in the choice and own imagination will say enough to you wearing of his linen? was answered, "Beconcerning the condition of me his wife; and I wish you would be so good as to re-receive me kindly, and I think it incumcause there is a woman of merit obliged to present to him, for he is not ill-natured, bent upon me to make her inclination go and reads you much, that the moment I hear the door shut after him, I throw myalong with her duty." self upon my bed, and drown the child he is so fond of with my tears, and often frighten it with my cries; that I curse my being; that I run to my glass all over bathed in sorrows, and help the utterance of my inward anguish by beholding the gush of my own ca-legiance as that a fine woman must go on to lamities as my tears fall from my eyes. improve herself till she is as good and imThis looks like an imagined picture to tell passive as an angel, only to preserve fideyou, but indeed this is one of my pastimes. desires me for her sake to end one of my lity to a brute and a satyr. The lady who Hitherto I have only told you the general temper of my mind, but how shall I give papers with the following letter, I am peryou an account of the distraction of it? suaded, thinks such a perseverance very Could you but conceive how cruel I am one one impracticable. moment in my resentment, and at the ensuing minute, when I place him in the condition my anger would bring him to, how compassionate; it would give you some notion how miserable I am, and how little I deserve it. When I remonstrate with the greatest gentleness that is possible against unhandsome appearances, and that married No. 179.] Tuesday, September 25, 1711. Omne tullt punctum qui miscuit utile dulci, Old age is only fond of moral truth, Lectures too grave disgust aspiring youth; But he who blends instruction with delight, Wins every reader, nor in vain shall write.-P. I MAY cast my readers under two general divisions, the mercurial and the saturnine. The first are the gay part of my disciples; who require speculations of wit and humour, the others are those of a more solemn and sober turn, who find no pleasure but in papers of morality and sound sense. The former call every thing that is serious, stupid; the latter look upon every thing as impertinent that is ludicrous. Were I always grave, one half of my readers would fall off from me: were I always merry, I should lose the other. I make it therefore my endeavour to find out entertainments of both kinds, and by that means, perhaps, consult the good of both, more than I should do, did I always write to the particular taste of either. As they neither of them know what I proceed upon, the sprightly reader, who takes up my paper in order to be diverted, very often finds himself engaged unawares in a serious and profitable course of thinking; as, on the contrary, the thoughtful man, who perhaps may hope to find something solid, and full of deep reflection, is very often insensibly betrayed into a fit of mirth. In a word, the reader sits down to my entertainment without knowing his bill of fare, and has therefore at least the pleasure of hoping there may be a dish to his palate. If what I have here said does not recommend, it will at least excuse, the variety of my speculations. I would not willingly laugh but in order to instruct, or if I sometimes fail in this point, when my mirth ceases to be instructive, it shall never cease to be innocent. A scrupulous conduct in this particular, has, perhaps, more merit in it than the generality of readers imagine; did they know how many thoughts occur in a point of humour, which a discreet author in modesty suppresses; how many strokes of raillery present themselves, which could not fail to please the ordinary taste of mankind, but are stifled in their birth by reason, of some remote tendency which they carry in them to corrupt the minds of those who read them; did they know how many glances of ill-nature are industriously avoided for fear of doing injury to the reputation of another, they would be apt to think kindly of those writers who endeavour to make themselves diverting without being immoral. One may apply to these authors that passage in Waller: Poets lose half the praise they would have got, with all the above-mentioned liberties, it As nothing is more easy than to be a wit, requires some genius and invention to appear such without them. What I have here said is not only in regard to the public, but with an eye to my the following letter, which I have castrated particular correspondent, who has sent me in some places upon these considerations: I must confess, were I left to myself, I 'SIR,-Having lately seen your discourse should rather aim at instructing than divert-upon a match of grinning, I cannot forbear ing; but if we will be useful to the world, we must take it as we find it. Authors of professed severity discourage the looser part of mankind from having any thing to do with their writings. A man must have virtue in him, before he will enter upon the reading of a Seneca or an Epictetus. The very title of a moral treatise has something in it austere and shocking to the careless and inconsiderate. For this reason several unthinking persons fall in my way, who would give no attention to lectures delivered with a religious seriousness or a philosophic gravity. They are ensnared into sentiments of wisdom and virtue when they do not think of it; and if by that means they arrive only at such a degree of consideration as may dispose them to listen to more studied and elaborate discourses, I shall not think my speculations useless. I might likewise observe, that the gloominess in which some times the minds of the best men are involved, very often stands in need of such little incitements to mirth and laughter, as are apt to disperse melancholy, and put our faculties in good humour. To which some will add, that the British climate, more than any other makes entertainments of this nature in a manner necessary. giving you an account of a whistling match, which with many others, I was entertained with about three years since at the Bath. The prize was a guinea, to be conferred upon the ablest whistler, that is, on him who could whistle clearest, and go through his tune without laughing, to which at the same time he was provoked by the antick postures of a merry-andrew, who was to stand upon the stage and play his tricks in the eye of the performer. There were three competitors for the guinea. The first was a ploughman of a very promising aspect; his features were steady, and his muscles composed in so inflexible a stupidity, that upon his first appearance every one gave the guinea for lost. The pickled herring however found the way to shake him; for upon his whistling a country jig, this unlucky wag danced to it with such variety of distortions and grimaces, that the countryman could not forbear smiling upon him, and by that means spoiled his whistle and lost the prize. The next that mounted the stage was an under-citizen of the Bath, a person remarkable among the inferior people of that place for his great wisdom, and his broad band. He contracted his mouth with much gravity, and that he might dispose his mind tc No. 180.] THE SPECTATOR. be more serious than ordinary, began the greatest conqueror of our age, till her matune of The Children in the Wood. He jesty's armies had torn from him so many went through part of it with good success, when on a sudden the wit at his elbow, who had appeared wonderfully grave and attentive for some time, gave him a touch upon the left shoulder, and stared him in the face with so bewitching a grin, that the whistler relaxed his fibres into a kind of simper, and at length burst out into an open laugh. The third who entered the lists was a footman, who in defiance of the merry-andrew and all his arts, whistled a Scotch tune, and an Italian sonata, with so settled a countenance that he bore away the prize, to the great admiration of some hundreds of persons, who, as well as myself, were present at this To begin then with his increase of subtrial of skill. Now, sir, I humbly conceive, whatever you have determined of the grin- jects. From the time he came of age, and ners, the whistlers ought to be encouraged, has been a manager for himself, all the not only as their art is practised without people he had acquired were such only as distortion, but as it improves country mu- he had reduced by his wars, and were left sic, promotes gravity, and teaches ordinary in his possession by the peace; he had conpeople to keep their countenances, if they quered not above one-third part of Flansee any thing ridiculous in their betters: be- ders, and consequently no more than onesides that it seems an entertainment very third part of the inhabitants of that proparticularly adapted to the Bath, as it is usual for a rider to whistle to his horse when he would make his water pass, I am, sir, &c. THE following letter has so much weight 'It is time now to set his loss against his and good sense, that I cannot forbear inserting it, though it relates to a hardened sinner whom I have very little hopes of re-profit, and to show for the new subjects he had acquired, how many old ones he had forming, viz. Lewis XIV. of France. lost in the acquisition. I think that in his 'MR. SPECTATOR,-Amidst the variety wars he has seldom brought less into the of subjects of which you have treated, I field in all places than 200,000 fighting could wish it had fallen in your way, to ex-men, besides what have been left in garripose the vanity of conquests. This thought sons: and I think the common computation would naturally lead one to the French is, that of an army, at the end of a camking, who has been generally esteemed the paign, without sieges or battles, scarce four fifths can be mustered of those that came | Lewis? This the immortal man, the tout into the field at the beginning of the year. His wars at several times, until the last peace, have held about twenty years; and if 40,000 yearly lost, or a fifth part of his armies, are to be multiplied by twenty, he cannot have lost less than 800,000 of his old subjects, and all able-bodied men; a greater number than the new subjects he had acquired. 'But this loss is not all. Providence seems to have equally divided the whole mass of mankind into different sexes, that every woman may have her husband, and that both may equally contribute to the continuance of the species. It follows then, that for all the men that have been lost, as many women must have lived single, and it were but charity to believe, they have not done all the service they were capable of doing in their generation. In so long a course of years great part of them must have died, and all the rest must go off at last, without leaving any representatives behind. By this account he must have lost not only 800,000 subjects, but double that number, and all the increase that was reasonably to be expected from it. 'It is said in the last war there was a famine in his kingdom, which swept away two millions of his people. This is hardly credible. If the loss was only of one-fifth part of that sum, it was very great. But it is no wonder there should be famine, where so much of the people's substance is taken away for the king's use, that they have not sufficient left to provide against accidents; where so many of the men are taken from the plough to serve the king in his wars, and a great part of the tillage is left to the weaker hands of so many women and children. Whatever was the loss, it must undoubtedly be placed to the account of his ambition. 'And so must also the destruction or banishment of 3 or 400,000 of his reformed subjects; he could have no other reasons for valuing those lives so very cheap but only to recommend himself to the bigotry of the Spanish nation. How should there be industry in a country where all property is precarious? What subject will sow his land, that his prince puissant, or the almighty, as his flatterers have called him? Is this the man that is so celebrated for his conquests? For every subject he has acquired, has he not lost three that were his inheritance? Are not his troops fewer, and those neither so well fed, clothed, or paid, as they were formerly, though he has now so much greater cause to exert himself? and what can be the reason of all this, but that his revenue is a great deal less, his subjects are either poorer, or not so many to be plundered by constant taxes for his use? It is well for him he had found out a way to steal a kingdom; if he had gone on conquering as he did before, his ruin had been long since finished. This brings to my mind a saying of King Pyrrhus, after he had a second time beat the Romans in a pitched battle, and was complimented by his generals: "Yes," says he, "such another victory and I am quite undone." And since I have mentioned Pyrrhus I will end with a very good, though known, story of this ambitious madman. When he had shown the utmost fondness for his expedition against the Romans, Cyneas, his chief minister, asked him what he proposed to himself by this war? "Why," says Pyrrhus, "to conquer the Romans, and reduce all Italy to my obedience." "What then?" says Cyneas. "To pass over into Sicily," says Pyrrhus, "and then all the Sicilians must be our subjects." "And what does your majesty intend next?" "Why truly," says the king, "to conquer Carthage, and make myself master of all Africa." And what, sir," says the minister, "is to be the end of all your expeditions?" "Why then," says the king, "for the rest of our lives we will sit down to good wine." "How, sir," replied Cyneas, "to better than we have now before us? Have we not already as much as we can drink?" 'Riot and excess are not the becoming characters of princes; but if Pyrrhus and Lewis had debauched like Vitellius, they had been less hurtful to their people. Your humble servant, T. 'PHILARITHMUS.' may reap the whole harvest? Parsimony No. 181.] Thursday, September 27, 1711. and frugality must be strangers to such a people; for will any man save to-day, what he has reason to fear will be taken from him to-morrow? And where is the encouragement for marrying? Will any man think of raising children, without any assurance of clothing for their backs, or so much as food for their bellies? And thus by his fatal ambition, he must have lessened the number of his subjects, not only by slaughter and destruction; but by preventing their very births, he has done as much as was possible towards destroying posterity itself. Is this then the great, the invincible His lacrymis vitam damus, et miserescimus ultro. 'SIR,-Among all the distresses which happen in families, I do not remember that you have touched upon the marriage of children without the consent of their parents. I am one of these unfortunate per *The kingdom of Spain, seized by Louis XIV. in 1701. |