mistress.'' That's true,' replied my friend, "but her name is Flavia. I have,' continued he, 'in the second place, a collection of lampoons, calculated either for the Bath, Tunbridge, or any place where they drink waters, with blank spaces for the names of such person or persons as may be inserted in them on occasion. Thus much I have told only of what I have by me proceeding from love and malice. I have also at this time the sketch of a heroic poem upon the next peace: several, indeed, of the verses are either too long or too short, it being a rough 10 draught of my thoughts upon that subject.' I thereupon told him, 'That, as it was, it might probably pass for a very good Pindaric, and I believe I knew one who would be willing to deal with him for it upon that foot ".' 'I must tell you also,' said he, 'I have made a dedication to it, which is about four sides close written, that may serve any one that is tall, and understands Latin. I have further about fifty similes, that were never yet applied, besides three-and-twenty descriptions of the sun rising, that might be of great use to an epic poet. These are my more bulky commodities; besides which, I 20 have several small wares that I would part with at easy rates; as, observations upon life, and moral sentences, reduced into several couplets, very proper to close up acts of plays, and may be easily introduced by two or three lines of prose, either in tragedy or comedy. If I could find a purchaser curious in Latin poetry, I could accommodate him with two dozen of epigrams, which, by reason of a few false quantities, should come for little, or nothing.'

I heard the gentleman with much attention, and asked him, 'Whether he would break bulk, and sell his goods by retail, or 30 designed they should all go in a lump?' He told me, 'That he should be very loath to part them, unless it was to oblige a man of quality, or any person for whom I had a particular friendship.'-' My reason for asking,' said I, 'is, only because I know a young gentleman who intends to appear next spring in a new jingling chariot, with the figures of the nine muses on each side of it; and, I believe, would be glad to come into the world in verse.' We could not go on in our treaty, by reason of two or three critics that joined us. They had been talking, it seems, of the two letters which were found in the coffin, and 40 mentioned in one of my late lucubrations", and came with a

request to me, that I would communicate any others of them that were legible. One of the gentlemen was pleased to say that it was a very proper instance of a widow's constancy;' and said, 'he wished I had subjoined, as a foil to it, the following passage in Hamlet.' The young prince was not yet acquainted with all the guilt of his mother, but turns his thoughts on her sudden forgetfulness of his father, and the indecency of her hasty marriage:

That it should come to this!

But two months dead! nay, not so much, not two!
So excellent a king! that was, to this,

Hyperion to a satyr: so loving to my mother :
That he might not let e'en the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!
Must I remember? Why she would hang on him,
As if increase of appetite had grown

By what it fed on: and yet within a month!

Let me not think on't-Frailty, thy name is Woman!
A little month! or ere those shoes were old,
With which she followed my poor father's body,
Like Niobe, all tears, why she, even she,

O heaven! a brute, that wants discourse of reason,
Would have mourned longer-married with mine uncle!
My father's brother! but no more like my father,

Than I to Hercules. Within a month!

Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in her gauled eyes,
She married-O most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
It is not, nor it cannot come to, good.

But, break, my heart; for I must hold my tongue!

The several emotions of mind, and breaks of passion, in this speech, are admirable. He has touched every circumstance that aggravated the fact, and seemed capable of hurrying the thoughts of a son into distraction. His father's tenderness for his mother, expressed in so delicate a particular: his mother's fondness for his father, no less exquisitely described: the great and amiable figure of his dead parent drawn by a true filial piety: his disdain of so unworthy a successor to his bed; but, above all, the shortness of the time between his father's death and his mother's second marriage, brought together with so much disorder, make up as noble a part as any in that celebrated tragedy. The circumstance of time, I never could enough admire. The widowhood had lasted two months. This

is his first reflection; but, as his indignation rises, he sinks to scarce two months afterwards, into a month; and at last into a little month: but all this so naturally, that the reader accompanies him in the violence of his passion, and finds the time lessen insensibly, according to the different workings of his disdain. I have not mentioned the incest of her marriage, which is so obvious a provocation; but cannot forbear taking notice, that when his fury is at its height, he cries, 'Frailty, thy name is Woman!' as railing at the sex in general, rather than 10 giving himself leave to think his mother worse than others— Desiderantur multa.

Tatler, No. 106.]

[December 12, 1709.

No. 125. On Singularity: proposals for a receptacle for persons out of their wits.

Quem mala stultitia, et quæcunque inscitia veri
Cæcum agit: insanum Chrysippi porticus, et grex
Autumat; hæc populos, hæc magnos formula reges,
Excepto sapiente, tenet.-HOR. Sat. ii. 3. 43.

There is a sect of ancient philosophers, who, I think, have left more volumes behind them, and those better written, than any other of the fraternities in philosophy. It was a maxim of this sect, that all those who do not live up to the principles of reason and virtue are madmen. Every one who governs himself by these rules, is allowed the title of wise, and reputed to be in his senses and every one, in proportion as he deviates from them, is pronounced frantic and distracted. Cicero n 20 having chosen this maxim for his theme, takes occasion to argue from it very agreeably with Clodius, his implacable adversary, who had procured his banishment. 'A city,' says he, 'is an assembly distinguished into bodies of men, who are in possession of their respective rights and privileges, cast under proper subordinations, and in all its parts obedient to the rules of law and equity.' He then represents the government from whence he was banished, at a time when the consul, senate, and laws had lost their authority, as a commonwealth

of lunatics. For this reason, he regards his expulsion from Rome, as a man would, being turned out of Bedlam, if the inhabitants of it should drive him out of their walls as a person unfit for their community. We are, therefore, to look upon every man's brain to be touched, however he may appear in the general conduct of his life, if he has an unjustifiable singularity in any part of his conversation or behaviour, or if he swerves from right reason, however common his kind of madness may be, we shall not excuse him for its being epidemical; it being To our present design to clap up all such as have the marks of madness upon them, who are now permitted to go about the streets for no other reason but because they do no mischief in their fits. Abundance of imaginary great men are put in straw to bring them to a right sense of themselves. And is it not altogether as reasonable, that an insignificant man, who has an immoderate opinion of his merits, and a quite different notion of his own abilities from what the rest of the world entertain, should have the same care taken of him as a beggar who fancies himself a duke or a prince? Or why should a man, 20 who starves in the midst of plenty, be trusted with himself,

more than he who fancies he is an emperor in the midst of poverty? I have several women of quality in my thoughts, who set so exorbitant a value upon themselves, that I have often most heartily pitied them, and wished them for their recovery under the same discipline with the pewterer's wife. I find, by several hints in ancient authors, that when the Romans were in the height of power and luxury, they assigned out of their vast dominions an island called Anticyra", as an habitation for madmen. This was the Bedlam of the Roman empire, whither all 30 persons who had lost their wits used to resort from all parts of

the world in quest of them. Several of the Roman emperors were advised to repair to this island; but most of them, instead of listening to such sober counsels, gave way to their distraction, until the people knocked them on the head as despairing of their cure. In short, it was as usual for men of distempered brains to take a voyage to Anticyra in those days, as it is in ours for persons who have a disorder in their lungs to go to Montpelier ".

The prodigious crops of helleboren with which this whole 40 island abounded, did not only furnish them with incomparable

tea, snuff, and Hungary-water"; but impregnated the air of the country with such sober and salutiferous steams, as very much comforted the heads, and refreshed the senses of all that breathed in it. A discarded statesman, that, at his first landing appeared stark-staring mad, would become calm in a week's time; and, upon his return home, live easy and satisfied in his retirement. A moping lover would grow a pleasant fellow by that time he had rid thrice about the island; and a hair-brained rake, after a short stay in the country, go home 10 again a composed, grave, worthy gentleman.

I have premised these particulars before I enter on the main design of this paper, because I would not be thought altogether notional in what I have to say, and pass only for a projector in morality. I could quote Horace, and Seneca, and some other ancient writers of good repute, upon the same occasion; and make out by their testimony, that our streets are filled with distracted persons; that our shops and taverns, private and public houses, swarm with them; and that it is very hard to make up a tolerable assembly without a majority of them. 20 But what I have already said is, I hope, sufficient to justify the ensuing project, which I shall therefore give some account of without any further preface.

1. It is humbly proposed, that a proper receptacle, or habitation, be forthwith erected for all such persons as, upon due trial and examination, shall appear to be out of their wits.

2. That, to serve the present exigency, the college in Moorfields be very much extended at both ends; and that it be converted into a square, by adding three other sides to it.

3. That nobody be admitted into these three additional sides, 30 but such whose frenzy can lay no claim to an apartment in that row of building which is already erected.

4. That the architect, physician, apothecary, surgeon, keepers, nurses, and porters, be all and each of them cracked; provided that their frenzy does not lie in the profession or employment to which they shall severally and respectively be assigned.

N.B. It is thought fit to give the foregoing notice, that none may present himself here for any post of honour or profit, who is not duly qualified.

5. That over all the gates of the additional buildings, there be 40 figures placed in the same manner as over the entrance of the