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man whose fortune is plentiful, shows an ease in his countenance, and confidence in his behaviour, which he that is under wants and difficulties cannot assume. It is thus with the state of the mind; he that governs his thoughts with the everlasting rules of reason and sense, must have something so inexpressibly graceful in his words and actions, that every circumstance must become him. The change of persons or things around him does not at all alter his situation, but he looks disinterested in the occurrences with which others are o distracted, because the greatest purpose of his life is to maintain an indifference both to it and all its enjoyments. In a word, to be a fine gentleman is to be a generous and a brave man. What can make a man so much in constant good humour, and shine, as we call it, than to be supported by what can never fail him, and to believe that whatever happens to him was the best thing that could possibly befal him, or else he on whom it depends would not have permitted it to have befallen him at all!

Spectator, No. 75.]

[May 26, 1711.

20

No. 63. On Decayed Men of Pleasure; and other Correspondence.

Singula de nobis anni prædantur euntes.-HOR. Ep. ii. 2. 55.

'MR. SPECTATOR,

'I am now in the sixty-fifth year of my age, and having been the greater part of my days a man of pleasure, the decay of my faculties is a stagnation of my life. But how is it, Sir, that my appetites are increased upon me with the loss of power to gratify them? I write this like a criminal, to warn people to enter upon what reformation they please to make in themselves in their youth, and not expect they shall be capable of it from a fond opinion some have often in their mouths, that if we do not leave our desires, they will leave us. It is far otherwise; I am now as vain in my dress, and as flippant, if I see a pretty 30 woman, as when in my youth I stood upon a bench in the pit to survey the whole circle of beauties. The folly is so extrava

gant with me, and I went on with so little check of my desires or resignation of them, that I can assure you, I very often, merely to entertain my own thoughts, sit with my spectacles on, writing love-letters to the beauties that have been long since in their graves. This is to warm my heart with the faint memory of delights which were once agreeable to me: but how much happier would my life have been now, if I could have looked back on any worthy action done for my country? if I had laid out that which I profused" in luxury and wantonness, in acts of Io generosity or charity? I have lived a bachelor to this day; and instead of a numerous offspring, with which in the regular ways of life I might possibly have delighted myself, I have only to amuse myself with the repetition of old stories and intrigues which no one will believe I ever was concerned in. I do not know whether you have ever treated of it or not; but you cannot fall on a better subject, than that of the art of growing old. In such a lecture you must propose, that no one set his heart upon what is transient: the beauty grows wrinkled while we are yet gazing at her. The witty man sinks into a humourist im20 perceptibly, for want of reflecting that all things around him are in a flux, and continually changing: thus he is in the space of ten or fifteen years surrounded by a new set of people, whose manners are as natural to them as his delights, method of thinking, and mode of living, were formerly to him and his friends. But the mischief is, he looks upon the same kind of error which he himself was guilty of with an eye of scorn, and with that sort of ill-will which men entertain against each other for different opinions. Thus a crazy constitution and an uneasy mind is fretted with vexatious passions for young men's doing foolishly 30 what it is folly to do at all. Dear Sir, this is my present state of mind; I hate those I should laugh at, and envy those I contemn. The time of youth and vigorous manhood, passed the way in which I have disposed of it, is attended with these consequences; but to those who live and pass away life as they ought, all parts of it are equally pleasant; only the memory of good and worthy actions is a feast which must give a quicker relish to the soul than ever it could possibly taste in the highest enjoyments or jollities of youth. As for me, if I sit down in my great chair and begin to ponder, the vagaries of a child 40 are not more ridiculous than the circumstances which are heaped

up in my memory; fine gowns, country dances, ends of tunes, interrupted conversations, and midnight quarrels, are what must necessarily compose my soliloquy. I beg of you to print this, that some ladies of my acquaintance, and my years, may be persuaded to wear warm night-caps this cold season; and that my old friend Jack Tawdry may buy him a cane, and not creep with the air of a strut. I must add to all this, that if it were not for one pleasure, which I thought a very mean one until of very late years, I should have no one great satisfaction left; but if I To live to the tenth of March, 1714, and all my securities are good, I shall be worth fifty thousand pounds.

'I am, Sir,

'Your most humble Servant,

'JACK AFTERDAY.'

'MR. SPECTATOR,

'You will infinitely oblige a distressed lover, if you will insert in your very next paper the following letter to my mistress. You must know, I am not a person apt to despair, but she has got an odd humour of stopping short unaccountably, and as she 20 herself told a confidante of hers, she has cold fits. These fits shall last her a month or six weeks together; and as she falls into them without provocation, so it is to be hoped she will return from them without the merit of new services. But life and love will not admit of such intervals, therefore pray let her be admonished as follows:

'MADAM,

'I love you and I honour you: therefore pray do not tell me of waiting until decencies, until forms, until humours, are consulted and gratified. If you have that happy constitution as to be in30 dolent for ten weeks together, you should consider that all that while I burn in impatiences and fevers; but still you say it will be time enough, though I and you too grow older while we are yet talking". Which do you think the most reasonable, that you should alter a state of indifference for happiness, and that to oblige me or I live in torment, and that to lay no manner of obligation on you? While I indulge your insensibility I am doing nothing; if you favour my passion, you are bestowing

P

bright desires, gay hopes, generous cares, noble resolutions, and transporting raptures upon,

'MR. SPECTATOR,

'Madam,

'Your most devoted humble Servant.'

'Here is a gentlewoman lodges in the same house with me, that I never did any injury to in my whole life; and she is always railing at me to those that she knows will tell me of it. Do not you think she is in love with me? or would you have me 10 break my mind yet, or not?

'MR. SPECTATOR,

'Your Servant,

'T. B.'

'I am a footman in a great family, and am in love with the house-maid. We were all at hot-cockles " last night in the hall these holidays; when I lay down and was blinded, she pulled off her shoe, and hit me with the heel such a rap, as almost broke my head to pieces. Pray, Sir, was this love or spite ?'-T.

Spectator, No. 260.]

[December 28, 1711.

20

No. 64. On Levity; Letters of Lydia and Mary Home.

Σεμνὸς ἔρως ἀρετῆς, ὁ δὲ κυπρίδος ἄχος ὀφέλλει.

When I consider the false impressions which are received by the generality of the world, I am troubled at none more than a certain levity of thought, which many young women of quality have entertained, to the hazard of their characters, and the certain misfortune of their lives. The first of the following letters may best represent the faults I would now point at; and the answer to it, the temper of mind in a contrary character.

'MY DEAR HARRIOT,

'If thou art she, but oh how fallen, how changed, what an apostate how lost to all that is gay and agreeable! To be married I find is to be buried alive; I cannot conceive it more

dismal to be shut up in a vault to converse with the shades of my ancestors, than to be carried down to an old manor-house in the country, and confined to the conversation of a sober husband, and an awkward chamber-maid. For variety I suppose you may entertain yourself with madam in her grogram gown", the spouse of your parish vicar, who has by this time, I am sure, well furnished you with receipts for making salves and possets, distilling cordial waters, making syrups, and applying poultices.

'Blest solitude! I wish thee joy, my dear, of thy loved retirement, which indeed you would persuade me is very agreeable, and different enough from what I have here described; but, child, I am afraid thy brains are a little disordered with romances and novels. After six months' marriage to hear thee talk of love, and paint the country scenes so softly, is a little extravagant; one would think you lived the lives of sylvan deities, or roved among the walks of paradise, like the first happy pair. But pray thee leave these whimsies, and come to town in order to live and talk like other mortals. However, as I am extremely interested in your reputation, I would willingly give you a little good advice at your first appearance under the character of a married woman. It is a little insolent in me, perhaps, to advise a matron; but I am so afraid you will make so silly a figure as a fond wife, that I cannot help warning you not to appear in any public places with your husband, and never to saunter about St. James's-park together: if you presume to enter the Ring at Hyde-park" together, you are ruined for ever : nor must you take the least notice of one another, at the playhouse, or opera, unless you would be laughed at for a very ⇒ loving couple, most happily paired in the yoke of wedlock. I would recommend the example of an acquaintance of ours to your imitation; she is the most negligent and fashionable wife in the world; she is hardly ever seen in the same place with her husband, and if they happen to meet, you would think them perfect strangers; she never was heard to name him in his absence, and takes care he shall never be the subject of any discourse that she has a share in. I hope you will propose this lady as a pattern, though I am very much afraid you will be so silly as to think Portia, etc. Sabine and Roman wives, much o brighter examples. I wish it may never come into your head to

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