gentlemen whom it would not be very safe to | Being the shortest member of the club, I am disoblige, I must insert the following remonstrance; and at the same time promise those of my correspondents who have drawn this upon themselves, to exhibit to the public any such answer as they shall think proper to make to it. 'MR. GUARDIAN, 'I was very much troubled to see the two letters which you lately published concerning the short club. You cannot imagine what airs all the little pragmatical fellows about us have given themselves since the reading of those papers. Every one cocks and struts upon it, and pretends to overlook us who are two foot higher than themselves. I met with one the other day who was at least three inches above five foot, which you know is the statutable measure of that club. This overgrown runt has struck off his heels, lowered his foretop, and contracted his figure, that he might be looked upon as a member of this new-erected society; nay, so far did his vanity carry him that he talked familiarly of Tom Tiptoe, and pretends to be an intimate acquaintance of Tim Tuck. For my part, I scorn to speak any thing to the diminution of these little creatures, and should not have minded them had they been still shuffled among the crowd. Shrubs and underwoods look well enough while they grow within the shades of oaks and cedars; but when these pigmies pretend to draw themselves out from the rest of the world, and form themselves into a body, it is time for us who are men of figure to look about us. If the ladies should once take a liking to such a diminutive race of lovers, we should, in a little time, see mankind epitomized, and the whole species in miniature; daisy roots* would grow a fashionable diet. In order therefore to keep our posterity from dwindling, and fetch down the pride of this aspiring race of upstarts, we have here instituted a tall club. 'As the short club consists of those who are under five foot, ours is to be composed of such as are above six. These we look upon as the two extremes and antagonists of the species; considering all those as neuters who fill up the middle space. When a man rises beyond six foot, he is a hypermeter, and may be admitted into the tall club. We have already chosen thirty members, the most sightly of all her majesty's subjects. We elected a president, as many of the ancients did their kings, by reason of his height, having only confirmed him in that station above us which nature had given him. He is a Scotch Highlander, and within an inch of a show. As for my own part, I am but a sesquipedal, having only six foot and a half of stature. appointed secretary. If you saw us all toge ther you would take us for the sons of Anak. Our meetings are held like the old gothic parliaments, sub dio, in open air; but we shall make an interest, if we can, that we may hold our assemblies in Westminster-hall when it is not term-time. I must add to the honour of our club, that it is one of our society who is now finding out the longitude. The device of our public seal is, a crane grasping a pigmy in his right foot. I know the short club value themselves very much upon Mr. Distich, who may possibly play some of his pentameters upon us, but if he does he shall certainly be answered in Alex. andrines. For we have a poet among us of a genius as exalted as his stature, and who is very well read in Longinus his treatise concerning the sublime.* Besides, I would have Mr. Distich consider, that if Horace was a short man, Musæus, who makes such a noble figure in Virgil's sixth Eneid, was taller by the head and shoulders than all the people of Elysium. I shall therefore confront his lepidissimum homuncionem (a short quotation, and fit for a member of their club) with one that is much longer, and therefore more suitable to a member of ours. "Quos circumfusos sic est affata Sibylla; Museum ante omnes: medium nam plurima turba "To these the Sibyl thus her speech address'd : 'If after all, this society of little men proceed as they bave begun, to magnify themselves, and lessen men of higher stature, we have resolved to make a detachment, some evening or other, that shall bring away their whole club in a pair of panniers, and imprison them in a cupboard which we have set apart for that use, until they have made a public recantation. As for the little bully, Tim Tuck, if he pretends to be choleric, we shall treat him like his friend little Dicky, and hang him upon a peg until he comes to himself. I have told you our design, and let their little Machiavel prevent it if he can. 'This is, sir, the long and the short of the matter, I am sensible I shall stir up a nest of wasps by it, but let them do their worst. I think that we serve our country by discouraging this little breed, and hindering it from coming into fashion. If the fair sex look upon us with an eye of favour, we shall make some attempts to lengthen out the human figure, and restore it to its ancient procerity. In the Leonard Welsted, whose translation of Longinus first Dasy roots, boiled in milk, are said to check the growth appeared in 1712. of puppies. + Musens. mean time we hope old age has not inclined | fashion came up. I nave followed it thus far you in favour of our antagonists; for I do assure you sir, we are all your high admirers, though none more than, Sir, yours, &c. No. 109.] Thursday, July 16, 1713. Pugnabat tunicâ sed tamen illa tegi. Ovid. Amor. Lib. 1. Eleg. v. 14. Yet still she strove her naked charms to hide. with the hazard of my life; and how much farther I must go, nobody knows, if your paper does not bring us relief. You may assure yourself that all the antiquated necks about town are very much obliged to you. Whatever fires and flames are concealed in our bosoms (in which perhaps we vie with the youngest of the sex) they are not sufficient to preserve us against the wind and weather. In taking so many old women under your care, you have been a real Guardian to us, and saved the life your humble servants and sisters.' I HAVE received many letters from persons of all conditions, in reference to my late dis-of many of your contemporaries. In short, we course concerning the tucker. Some of them all of us beg leave to subscribe ourselves, are filled with reproaches and invectives. A 'Most venerable Nestor, lady who subscribes herself Teraminta, bids me in a very pert manner mind my own affairs, and not pretend to meddle with their linen; for that they do not dress for an old fellow, who cannot see them without a pair of spectacles. Another, who calls herself Bubnelia, vents her passion in scurrilous terms; an old ninnyhammer, a dotard, a nincompoop, is the best language she can afford me. Florella, indeed, expostulates with me upon the subject, and only complains that she is forced to return a pair of stays which were made in the extremity of the fashion, that she might not be thought to encourage peeping. But if on the one side I have been used ill, (the common fate of all reformers) I have on the other side received great applauses and acknowledgments for what I have done, in having put a seasonable stop to this unaccountable humour of stripping, that was got among our British ladies. As I would much rather the world should know what is said to my praise, than to my disadvantage, I shall suppress what has been written to me by those who have reviled me on this occasion, and only publish those letters which approve my proceedings. 'SIR, 'I am to give you thanks in the name of half a dozen superannuated beauties, for your paper of the sixth instant. We all of us pass for women of fifty, and a man of your sense knows how many additional years are always to be thrown into female computations of this nature. We are very sensible that several young flirts about town had a design to cast us out of the fashionable world, and to leave us in the lurch by some of their late refinements, Two or three of them have been heard to say, that they would kill every old woman about town. In order to it, they began to throw off their clothes as fast as they could, and have played all those pranks which you have so seasonably taken notice of. We were forced to uncover, after them, being unwilling to give out so soon, and be regarded as veterans in the beau monde. Some of us have already caught our deaths by it. For my own part, I have not been without a cold ever since this foolish I am very well pleased with this approbation of my good sisters. I must confess I have always looked on the tucker to be the decus et tutamen,* the ornament and defence, of the female neck. My good old lady, the lady Lizard, condemned this fashion from the beginning, and has observed to me, with some concern, that her sex at the same time they are letting down their stays, are tucking up their petticoats, which grow shorter and shorter every day. The leg discovers itself in proportion with the neck. But I may possibly take another occasion of handling this extremity, it being my design to keep a watchful eye over every part of the female sex, and to regulate them In the mean time I shall from head to foot. fill up my paper with a letter which comes to me from another of my obliged correspondents. DEAR GUARDEE, 'This comes to you from one of those untuckered ladies whom you were so sharp upon on Monday was se'nnight. I think myself mightily beholden to you for the reprehension you then gave us. You must know I am a famous olive beauty. But though this complexion makes a very good face when there are a couple of black sparkling eyes set in it, it makes but a very indifferent neck. Your fair women, therefore, thought of this fashion to insult the olives and the brunetts. They know very well, that a neck of ivory does not make so fine a show as one of alabaster. It is for this reason, Mr. Ironside, that they are so liberal in their discoveries. We know very well, that a woman of the whitest neck in the world, is to you no more than a woman of snow; but Ovid, in Mr. Duke's translation of him, seems to look upon it with another eye, when he talks of Corinna, and mentions all artificial whitenings. Could you examine | Lee's Alexander discovers him to be a Cartesian many of these ladies who present you with such in the first page of Edipus: beautiful snowy chests, you would find they are not all of a piece. Good father Nestor, do not let us alone until you have shortened our necks, and reduced them to their ancient standard. For THE candour which Horace shows in the motto of my paper, is that which distinguishes a critic from a caviller. He declares that he is not offended with those little faults in a poetical composition, which may be imputed to inadvertency, or to the imperfection of human nature. The truth of it is, there can be no more a perfect work in the world, than a perfect man. To say of a celebrated piece, that there are faults in it, is in effect to say no more, than that the author of it was a man. this reason I consider every critic that attacks an author in high reputation, as the slave in the Roman triumph, who was to call out to the conqueror, Remember, sir, that you are a man.' I speak this in relation to the following letter, which criticises the works of a great poet, whose very faults have more beauty in them than the most elaborate compositions of many more correct writers. The remarks are very curious and just, and introduced by a compliment to the work of an author, who I am sure would not care for being praised at the expense of another's reputation. I must therefore desire my correspondent to excuse me, if I do not publish either the preface or conclusion of his letter, but only the critical part of it. ་ Our tragedy writers have been notoriously defective in giving proper sentiments to the persons they introduce. Nothing is more common than to hear a heathen talking of angels and devils, the joys of heaven, and the pains of hell, according to the Christian system. -The sun's sick too, • Shortly he'll be an earth" As Dryden's Cleomenes is acquainted with the Copernican hypothesis two thousand years before its invention. "I am pleas'd with my own work; Jove was not more 'I have now Mr. Dryden's Don Sebastian before me, in which I find frequent allusions to ancient history, and the old mythology of the heathen. It is not very natural to suppose a king of Portugal would be borrowing thoughts out of Ovid's Metamorphoses when he talked even to those of his own court; but to allude to these Roman fables when he talks to an emperor of Barbary, seems very extraordinary. But observe how he defies him out of the classics, in the following lines: "Why didst not thou engage me man to man, 'Almeyda at the same time is more booklearned than Don Sebastian. She plays a hydra upon the emperor that is full as good as the Gorgon. "O that I had the fruitful heads of hydra, That one might bourgeon where another fell! 'She afterwards, in allusion to Hercules, bids him " lay down the lion's skin, and take the distaff;" and in the following speech utters her passion still more learnedly. "No! were we join'd, even tho' it were in death, quainted with the Roman poets as well as either 'The emperor of Barbary shows himself acof his prisoners, and answers the foregoing speech in the same classic strain: "Serpent, I will engender poison with thee; Our offspring, like the seed of dragons' teeth, Shall issue arm'd, and fight themselves to death." 'Ovid seems to have been Muley Molock's favorite author, witness the lines that follow: "She still inexorable, still imperious And lond, as if, like Bacchus, born in thunder." 'I shall conclude my remarks on his part with that poetical complaint of his being in love, and leave my reader to consider how prettily it would sound in the mouth of an emperor of Morocco: "The god of love once more nas shot his fires Into my soul, and my whole heart receives him.” Muley Zeydan is as ingenious a man as his brother Muley Molock; as where he hints at the story of Castor and Pollux : "May we ne'er meet! For like the twins of Leda, when I mount, 'As for the mufti, we will suppose that he was bred up a scholar, and not only versed in the law of Mahomet, but acquainted with all kinds of polite learning. For this reason he is not at all surprised when Dorax calls him a Phaeton in one place, and in another tells him he is like Archimedes, 6 Bat here, some captain of the land or fleet, I AM very much concerned when I see young gentlemen of fortune and quality so wholly set upon pleasures and diversions, that they neglect all those improvements in wisdom and knowledge which may make them easy to themselves, and useful to the world. The greatest part of our British youth lose their figure, and grow out of fashion by that time they are five-and-twenty. As soon as the natural gayety and amiableness of the young man wears off, they have nothing left to recommend them, but lie by the rest of their lives among the lumber and refuse of the species. It sometimes happens, indeed, that for want of apply knowledge, they take up a book in their declining years, and grow very hopeful scholars by that time they are threescore. I must, therefore, earnestly press my readers, who are in the flower of their youth, to labour at those accomplishments which may set off their persons when their bloom is gone, and to lay in timely provisions for manhood and old age. In short, I would advise the youth of fifteen to be dressing up every day the man of fifty, or to consider how to make himself venerable at threescore. The mufti afterwards mentions Ximenes, Albornoz, and cardinal Wolsey by name. The poet seems to think he may make every person in his play know as much as himself, and talk as well as he could have done on the same occasion. At least I believe every reader willing themselves in due time to the pursuits of agree with me, that the above-mentioned sentiments, to which I might have added several others, would have been better suited to the court of Augustus, than that of Muley Molock. I grant they are beautiful in themselves, and much more so in that noble language which was peculiar to this great poet. I only observe that they are improper for the persons who make use of them. Dryden is, indeed, generally wrong in his sentiments. Let any one read the dialogue between Octavia and Cleopatra, and he will be amazed to hear a Roman lady's mouth filled with such obscene raillery. If the virtuous Octavia departs from her character, the loose Dolabella is no less inconsistent with himself, when, all of sudden, he drops the pagan, and talks in the sentiments of revealed religion. “ Heavcn has but Our sorrow for our sins, and then delights 'I might show several faults of the same nature in the celebrated Aureng Zebe. The impropriety of thoughts in the speeches of the great mogul and his empress has been generally censured. Take the sentiments out of the shining dress of words, and they would be too coarse for a scene in Billingsgate. Young men, who are naturally ambitious, would do well to observe how the greatest men of antiquity made it their ambition to excel all their contemporaries in knowledge. Julius Cæsar and Alexander, the most celebrated instances of human greatness, took a particular care to distinguish themselves by their skill in the arts and sciences. We have still extant several remains of the former, which justify the character given of him by the learned men of his own age. As for the latter, it is a known saying of his, 'that he was more obliged to Aristotle, who had instructed him, than to Philip, who had given him life and empire. There is a letter of his recorded by Plutarch, and Aulus Gelius, which he wrote to Aristotle upon hearing that he had published those leetures he had given him in private. This letter was written in the following words, at a time when he was in the height of his Persian conquests. 'Alexander to Aristotle, greeting. · You have not done well to publish your books of Select Knowledge; for what is there now in which I can surpass others, if those things which I bave been instructed in are communicated to every body? For my own part, I declare to you, I would rather exce others in knowledge than power. Farewell.' We see hy this letter, that the love of con quest was but the second ambition in Alexan-self long life, neither hast asked riches fo. Learning, by which I mean all useful knowledge, whether speculative or practical, is, in popular and mixt governments, the natural source of wealth and honour. If we look into most of the reigns from the conquest, we shall find that the favourites of each reign have been those who have raised themselves. The greatest men are generally the growth of that particular age in which they flourish. A superior capacity for business, and a more extensive knowledge, are the steps by which a new man often mounts to favour, and outshines the rest of his contemporaries. But when men are actually born to titles, it is almost impossible that they should fail of receiving an additional greatness, if they take care to accomplish themselves for it. The story of Solomon's choice does not only instruct us in that point of history, but furnishes out a very fine moral to us, namely, that he who applies his heart to wisdom, does at the same time take the most proper method for gaining long life, riches, and reputation, which are very often not only the rewards, but the effects of wisdom. As it is very suitable to my present subject, I shall first of all quote this passage in the words of sacred writ, and afterwards mention an allegory, in which this whole passage is represented by a famous French poet: not questioning but it will be very pleasing to such of iny readers as have a taste of fine writing. The French poet has shadowed this story in an allegory, of which he seems to have taken the hint from the fable of the three goddesses appearing to Paris, or rather from the vision of Hercules, recorded by Xenophon, where Pleasure and Virtue are represented as real persons making their court to the hero with all their several charms and allurements. Health, Wealth, Victory, and Honour are introduced successively in their proper emblems and characters, each of them spreading her temptations, and recommending herself to the young monarch's choice. Wisdom enters the last, and so captivates him with her appearance, that he gives himself up to her. Upon which she informs him, that those who appeared before her were nothing else but her equipage: and that since he had placed his heart upon Wisdom; Health, Wealth, Victory, and Honour, should always wait on her as her handmaids. No. 112.] Monday, July 20, 1713. udam Spernit humum fugiente pennâ. Hor. Lib. 3. Od. ii. 23. Creech. THE philosophers of king Charles his reign were busy in finding out the art of flying. The famous bishop Wilkins was so confident of success in it, that he says he does not question but in the next age it will be as usual to hear a man call for his wings when he is going a journey, as it is now to call for his boots. The humour so prevailed among the virtuosos of this reign, that they were actually making parties to go up to the moon together, and were more put to it in their thoughts how to meet with accommodations by the way, than how to get thither. Every one knows the story of the great lady who at the same time was building In Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by night: and God said, Ask what I shall give thee. And Solomon said, Thou hast showed unto thy servant David my father great mercy, according as he walked before thee in truth and in righteousness, and in uprightness of heart with thee, and thou hast kept for him this great kindness, that thou hast given him a son to sit on his throne, as it is this day. And now, O Lord my God, thou hast made thy servant king instead of David my father: and I am but a little child; I know not how to go out or come in. Give, therefore, thy servant an understanding heart to judge thy people, that I may discern between good and bad for who is able to judge this thy so great a people? And the speech pleased the The duchess of Newcastle objected to bishop Wilkins, Lord, that Solomon had asked this thing. the want of baiting places in the way to his new world; the bishop expe And God said unto him, Because thou hast ed his surprise that this objection should be made by a lady who had been all her life employed in asked this thing, and hast not asked for thy-building castles in the air. |