Fear not her telling of the violence you offer her; if fhe were even fo in⚫ difcreet as to reveal it, who will believe her? The court, the city, and all the world, are too much prepoffeffed in your favour, to give any credit to fuch a report. You may do any thing unpunished, when armed by the great reputation for wisdom, which you have acquired.' The unfortunate Barfifa was fo weak as to hearken to the enemy of mankind. He approached the princess, took her into his arms, and in a moment cancelled a virtue of an hundred years duration. He had no fooner perpetrated his crime, than a thousand avenging horrors haunted him night and day. He thus accosts the devil: Oh wretch,' fays he, it is thou which haft destroyed me! Thou haft encompaffed me for a whole age, and endeavoured to feduce me; and now at last thou haft gained thy end. Oh Santon!' anfwered the devil, do not reproach me with the pleasure thou hast enjoyed. Thou mayeft repent: but what is unhappy for thee is, that the princefs is impregnated, and thy fin will become public: thou wilt become the laughing- -ftock of thofe who admire and reverence thee at prefent, and the king will put thee to an ignominious death." Bariifa, terrified by this difcourfe, fays to the devil- What fhall I do to prevent the publication of my fhame The hermit, abandoned by God, purfuant to this advice, killed the princefs, buried her in a corner of the grotto, and the next day told the officers what the devil bid him fay. They made diligent enquiry for the king's daughter, but not being able to hear of her, they defpaired of finding her, when the devil told them that all their fearch for the princefs was vain; and relating what had paffed betwixt her and the Santon, he told them the place where he was interred. The officers immediately went to the grotto, feized Barfifa, and found the princefs's body in the place to which the devil had directed them; whereupon they took up the corpfe, and carried that and the Santon to the palace. When the king faw his daughter dead, and was informed of the whole event, he broke out into tears and bitter lamentations; and affembling the doctors, he laid the Santon's crime before them, and asked their advice how he fhould be punished. All the doctors condemned him to death, upon which the king ordered him to be hanged: accordingly, a gibbet was erected; the hermit went up the ladder, and when he was going to be turned off, the devil whispered in his ear thefe words: • Santon! if you will worship me, I will extricate you out of this difficulty, and tranfport you two thoufand leagues from hence, into a country where you 'fhall be reverenced by men, as much as To hinder the knowledge of your you were before this adventure.'-' I crime, you ought to commit a fresh am content,' fays Barfifa; deliver one, anfwered the devil: kill theme, and I will worship thee.'-' Give princess, bury her at the corner of the grotto; and when the king's messenger's come to-morrow, tell them you have cured her, and that she went ⚫ from the grotto very carly in the morning: they will believe you, and fearch for her all over the city and country; and the king her father will be in great pain for her, but after feveral vain fearches it will wear off.' I me first a sign of adoration,' replies the devil. Whereupon the Santon bowed his head, and faid- I give myself to you. The devil then raifing his voice, faid- O Barfifa, I am fatified; I have obtained what I defired:' and with thefe words, fpitting in his face, he difappeared; and the deluded Santon was hanged. N° CXLIX. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 1. Ν URATUR VESTIS AMORE TUE. YOUR VERY DRESS SHALL CAPTIVATE HIS HEART. Have, in a former Precaution, endeavoured to fhew the mechanism of an epic poem; and given the reader pre OVID. fcriptions whereby he may, without the fcarce ingredient of a genius, compofe the feveral parts of that great work." I shall now now treat of an affair of more general importance, and make dreis the fubject of the following paper. Drefs is grown of univerfal use in the conduct of life. Civilities and respect are only paid to appearance. It is a varnish that gives a luftre to every action, a pale par tout,' that introduces us into all polite affemblies, and the only certain method of making molt of the youth of our nation confpicuous. There was formerly an absurd notion among the men of letters, that to eftablish themselves in the character of wits, it was abfolutely neceffery to fhew a contempt of drefs. This injudicious affectation of theirs flattened all their converfation, took off the force of every expreffion, and incapacitated a female audience from giving attention to any thing they faid: while the man of drefs catches their eyes as well as ears, and at every ludicrous turn obtains a laugh of applaufe by way of compliment. I fhall lay down as an established maxim, which hath been received in all ages, that no perfon can drefs without a genius. A genius is never to be acquired by art, but is the gift of nature; it may be discovered even in infancy. Little Mafter will smile when you shake his plume of feathers before him, and thrust it's little knuckles in papa's full-bottom; Mifs will toy with her mother's Mechlin lace, and gaze on the gaudy colours of a fan; fhe fmacks her lips for a kifs at the appearance of a gentleman in embroidery, and is frighted at the indecency of the houfe-maid's blue apron: as the grows up, the drefs of her baby begins to be her care, and you will fee a genteel fancy' open itself in the ornaments of the little machine. We have a kind of sketch of drefs, if I may fo call it, among us, which, as the invention was foreign, is called a Difhabille: every thing is thrown on with a loofe and carclefs air; yet a genius difcovers itself even through this negligence of dress, just as you may fee the masterly hand of a painter in three or four swift ftrokes of the pencil. The most fruitful in geniufes is the French nation; we owe most of our janty fashions, now in vogue, to fome adept beau among them. Their ladies exert the whole fcope of their fancies upon every new petticoat; every head-drefs undergoes a change; and not a lady of genius will appear in the fame fhape two days together; fo that we may impute the fecity of geniufes in our cli mate to the ftagnation of fafhions. The ladies among us have a fuperior genius to the men; which have for fome years paft shot out in feveral exorbitant inventions for the greater confumption of our manufacture. While the men. have contented themfelves with the retrenchment of the hat, or the various fcallop of the pocket, the ladies have funk the head-drefs, inclofed themselves in the circumference of the hoop-petticoat; furbelows and flounces have been difpofed of at will, the ftays have been lowered behind, for the better difplaying the beauties of the neck; not to mention the various rolling of the fleeve, and thofe other nice circumstances of drefs upon which every lady employs her fancy at pleasure." The fciences of poetry and drefs have fo near an alliance to each other, that the rules of the one, with very little variation, may ferve for the other. As in a poem all the feveral parts of it must have a harmony with the whole; fo, to keep to the propriety of drefs, the coat, waitcoat, and breeches, muit be of the fame piece. As Ariftotle obliges all dramatic writers to a ftrict obfervance of time, place, and action, in order to compofe a juft work of this kind of poetry; so it is abfolutely neceffary for a perfon that applies himself to the ftudy of drefs, to have a ftrict regard to these three particulars. To begin with the time. What is more abfurd than the velvet gown in fummer? and what is more agreeable in the winter? The muff and fur are prepofterous in June, which are charmingly fupplied by the Turkey handkerchief and the fan. Every thing must be fuitable to the feafon; and there can be no propriety in drefs without a strict regard to time. You must have no lefs refpect to place. What gives a lady a more eafy air than the wrapping gown in the morning at the tea-table? The Bath countenances the men of drefs in fhowing themselves at the pump in their Indian night-gowns, without the leaft indecorum. Action is what gives the fpirit both to writing and drefs. Nothing appears graceful without action; the head, the arms, the legs, muit all confpire to giva PP a habit a habit a genteel air. What diftinguishes the air of the court from that of the country but action? A lady, by the careless tofs of her head, will fhew a fet of ribbands to advantage; by a pinch of fnuff judiciously taken will difplay the glittering ornament of her little finger; by the new-modelling her tucker, at one view prefent you with a fine-turned hand, and a rifing bofom. In order to be a proficient in action, I cannot fufficiently recommend the fcience of Dancing: this will give the feet an eafy gait, and the arms a gracefulness of motion. If a perfon have not a strict regard to thefe three above-mentioned rules of antiquity, the richest drefs will appear ftiff and affected, and the most gay habit fantaitical and tawdry. As different forts of poetry require a different tyle: the Elegy, tender and mournful, the Ode, gay and fprightly; the Epic, fublime, &c. fo muft the widow confefs her grief in the veil; the bride frequently makes her joy and exultation confpicuous in the filver brocade; and the plume and the scarlet dye is requifite to give the foldier a martial air. There is another kind of occafional drefs in ufe among the ladies; I mean the riding habit, which fome have not injudiciously filed the Hermaphroditical, by reafon of it's mafculine and feminine compofition; but I fhall rather chufe to call it the Pindaric, as it's first inflitution was at a Newmarket horferace, and as it is a mixture of the fubJimity of the epic with the ealy foftnefs of the ode. There fometimes arifes a great genius in drefs, who cannot content himself with merely copying from others, but will, as he fees occafion, frike out into the long pocket, flashed fleeve, or fomething particular in the difpofition of his lace, or the flourish of his embroidery. Such a perfon, like the mafters of other fciences, will show that he hath a manner of his own. On the contrary, there are some pretenders to drefs who fhine out but by halves; whether it be for want of genius or money. A dancing-matter of the lowest rank feldom fails of the fcarlet ftocking and the red heel; and fhows a particular refpect to the Leg and Foot, to which he owes his fubfiftence: when at the fame time perhaps all the fuperior ornament of his body is neglected. We may fay of these fort of dreffers what Horace fays of his patch-work poets Purpureus latè qui splendeat unus et alter -A few florid lines Others, who lay the ftrefs of beauty in their face, exert all their extravagance in the periwig, which is a kind of index of the mind; the full-bottom formally combed all before, denotes the lawyer and the politician; the smart tyewig, with the black ribband, fhews a man of fierceness of temper; and he that bur dens hi felf with a fuperfluity of white hair which flows down the back, and mantles in waving curls over the thoulders, is generally obferved to be lefs curious in the furniture of the inward receffes of the fcull, and lays himself open to the application of that cenfure which Milton applies to the fair-fex: of outward form Elaborate, of inward less exact. A lady of genius will give a genteel air to her whole drefs by a well-fancied fuit of knots, as a judicious writer gives a fpirit to a whole fentence by a fingle expreffion. As words grow old, and new ones enrich the language, fo there is a conftant fucceffion of drefs; the fringe fucceeds the lace, the stays fhorten or extend the wait, the ribband undergees divers variations, the head-drefs receives frequent rifes and falls every year; and, in fhort, the whole woman throughout, as curious obfervers of drefs have remarked, is changed from top to toe in the period of five years. A poet will now and then, to ferve his purpose, coin a word; fo will a lady of genius venture at an innovation in the fashion: but as Horace advises, that all new. minted words fhould have a Greek derivation to give them an indifputable authority, fo I would counfel all our improvers of fashion always to take the hint from France, which may as properly be called the fountain of drefs,' as Greece was of literature. Drefs may bear a parallel to poetry with refpect to moving the paflions. The greatest motive to Love, as daly experience shows us, is Drefs. I have known |