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history which more pleases me, than that which | sir, being by profession a mantua-maker, who is recorded in the life of Timoleon. This ex- am employed by the most fashionable ladies traordinary man was famous for referring all about town, I am admitted to them freely at all his successes to Providence. Cornelius Nepos hours; and seeing them both drest and undrest, acquaints us that he had in his house a private I think there is no person better qualified than chapel, in which he used to pay his devotions myself to serve you (if your honour pleases) in to the goddess who represented Providence the nature of a lioness. I am in the whole seamong the heathens. I think no man was ever cret of their fashion; and if you think fit to enmore distinguished by the deity whom he blind-tertain me in this character, I will have a conly worshipped, than the great person I am speaking of, in several occurrences of his life, but particularly in the following one which I shall relate out of Plutarch.

Three persons had entered into a conspiracy to assassinate Timoleon, as he was offering up his devotions in a certain temple. In order to it, they took their several stands in the most convenient places for their purpose. As they were waiting for an opportunity to put their design in execution, a stranger having observed one of the conspirators, fell upon him and slew him. Upon which, the other two, thinking their plot had been discovered, threw themselves at Timoleon's feet, and confessed the whole matter. This stranger, upon examination, was found to have understood nothing of the intended assassination; but having several years before had a brother killed by the conspirator, whom he here put to death, and having till now sought in vain for an opportunity of revenge, he chanced to meet the murderer in the temple, who had planted himself there for the above-mentioned purpose. Plutarch cannot forbear on this occasion, speaking with a kind of rapture on the schemes of Providence; which, in this particular, had so contrived it, that the stranger should, for so great a space of time, be debarred the means of doing justice to his brother, until by the same blow that revenged the death of one innocent man, he preserved the life of another,

For my own part, I cannot wonder that a man of Timoleon's religion, should have his intrepidity and firmness of mind; or that he should be distinguished by such a deliverance as I have here related.

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• To Nestor Ironside, Esquire.

MR. GUARDIAN,-I am a daily peruser of your papers. I have read over and over your discourse concerning the tucker; as likewise your paper of Thursday the sixteenth instant, in which you say it is your intention to keep a watchful eye over every part of the female sex, and to regulate them from head to foot. Now,

stant watch over them, and doubt not I shall send you from time to time such private intelligence, as you will find of use to you in your future papers.

'Sir, this being a new proposal, I hope you will not let me lose the benefit of it; but that you will first hear me roar before you treat with any body else. As a sample of my intended services, I give you this timely notice of an improvement you will shortly see in the exposing of the female chest, which, in defiance of your gravity, is going to be uncovered yet more and more; so that, to tell you truly, Mr. Ironside, I am in some fear lest my profession should in a little time become wholly unnecessary. I must here explain to you a small covering, if I may call it so, or rather an ornament for the neck, which you have not yet taken notice of. This consists of a narrow lace, or a small skirt of fine ruffled linen, which runs along the upper part of the stays before, and crosses the breasts, without rising to the shoulders; and being, as it were, a part of the tucker yet kept in use, is therefore, by a particular name, called the mo. desty-piece. Now sir, what I have to communicate to you at present is, that at a late meeting of the stripping ladies, in which were present several eminent toasts and beauties, it was resolved for the future to lay the modesty-piece wholly aside. It is intended at the same time to lower the stays considerably before, and nothing but the unsettled weather has hindered this design from being already put in execution. Some few indeed objected to this last improvement, but were overruled by the rest, who alleged it was their intention, as they ingeniously expressed it, to level their breast-works entirely, and to trust to no defence but their own virtue. I am sir, (if you please) your secret servant, LEONILLA FIGLEAF.'

'DEAR SIR, AS by name, and duty bound, I yesterday brought in a prey of paper for my patron's dinner; but by the forwardness of his paws, he seemed ready to put it into his own mouth, which does not enough resemble its prototypes, whose throats are open sepulchres. I assure you, sir, unless he gapes wider he will sooner be felt than heard. Witness my hand, 'JACKALL.'

'To Nestor Ironside, Esquire.

'SAGE NESTOR,-Lions being esteemed by naturalists the most generous of beasts, the noble and majestic appearance they make in poetry, wherein they so often represent the hero himself, made me always think that name very ill applied to a profligate set of men, at present going about seeking whom to devour; and though I cannot but acquiesce in your account of the derivation of that title to them, it is with great

satisfaction I hear you are about to restore them 1 subject of the last Thursday. I shall therefore to their former dignity, by producing one of that species so public spirited, as to roar for reformation of manners. "I will roar," says the clown in Shakspeare," that it will do any man's heart good to hear me; I will roar, that I will make the duke say, Let him roar again, let him roar again." Such success, and such applause, I do not question but your lion will meet with, whilst, like that of Sampson, his strength shall bring forth sweetness, and his entrails abound with honey.

give my reader a short account in prose of every poem which was produced in the learned assem. bly there described; and if he is thoroughly conversant in the works of those ancient authors, he will see with how much judgment every sub. ject is adapted to the poet who makes use of it, and with how much delicacy every particular poet's way of writing is characterised in the censure that is passed upon it. Lucan's repre sentative was the first who recited before that august assembly. As Lucan was a Spaniard, his poem does honour to that nation, which at the same time makes the romantic bravery in the hero of it more probable.

'At the same time that I congratulate with the republic of beasts upon this honour done to their king, I must condole with us poor mortals, who by distance of place are rendered incapable Alphonso was the governor of a town invested of paying our respects to him, with the same by the Moors. During the blockade they made assiduity as those who are ushered into his pre-his only son their prisoner, whom they brought sence by the discreet Mr. Button. Upon this account, Mr. Ironside, I am become a suitor to you, to constitute an outriding lion; or, if you please, a jackall or two, to receive and remit our homage in a more particular manner than is hitherto provided. As it is, our tenders of duty every now and then miscarry by the way; at least the natural self-love that makes us unwilling to think any thing that comes from us worthy of contempt, inclines us to believe sc. Methinks it were likewise necessary to specify, by what means a present from a fair hand may reach his brindled majesty; the place of his residence being very unfit for a lady's personal appearance. I am your most constant reader, and admirer,

'N. R.'

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poetarum veniet manus, auxilio quæ Sit mihiHor. Lib. 1. Sat. iv. 141.

A band of poets to my aid I'll call

THERE is nothing which more shows the want of taste and discernment in a writer than the decrying of any author in gross; especially of

an author who has been the admiration of multitudes, and that too in several ages of the world. This however is the general practice of all illiterate and undistinguishing critics. Because Homer and Virgil and Sophocles have been commended by the learned of all times, every scribbler who has no relish of their beauties, gives himself an air of rapture when he speaks of them. But as he praises these he knows not why, there are others whom he depreciates with the same vehemence, and upon the same account. We may see after what a different manner Strada proceeds in his judgment on the Latin poets; for I intend to publish in this paper a continuation of that prolusion which was the

before the walls, and exposed to his father's sight, threatening to put him to death if he did not immediately give up the town. The father tells them if he had a hundred sons he would rather see them all perish, than do an ill action, or betray his country. But,' says he, if you take a pleasure in destroying the innocent, you may do it if you please: behold a sword for your purpose.' Upon which he threw his sword from the wall, returned to his palace, and was able, at such a juncture, to sit down to the repast which was prepared for him. He was soon raised by the shouts of the enemy, and the cries of the besieged. Upon returning again to the walls, he saw his son lying in the pangs of death; but far from betraying any weakness at such a spectacle, he upbraids his friends for their sorrow, and returns to finish his repast.

Upon the recital of this story, which is exquisitely drawn up in Lucan's spirit and language, the whole assembly declared their opinion of Lucan in a confused murmur. The poem was praised or censured according to the prejudices which every one had conceived in favour or disadvantage of the author. These were so very great, that some had placed him, in their opinions, above the highest, and others beneath the lowest of the Latin poets. Most of them, however, agreed, that Lucan's genius was wonderfully great, but at the same time too haughty and headstrong to be governed by art, and that his style was like his genius, learned, bold, and lively, but withal too tragical and blustering. In a word, that he chose rather a great than a just reputation; to which they added, that he was the first of the Latin poets who de viated from the purity of the Roman language.

The representative of Lucretius told the assembly, that they should soon be sensible of the difference between a poet who was a native of Rome, and a stranger who had been adopted into it: after which he entered upon his subject, which I find exhibited to my hand in a specu lation of one of my predecessors.*

Strada, in the person of Lucretius, gives an account of a chimerical correspondence between two friends, by the help of a certain loadstone, which had such a virtue in it, that if it touched two several needles, when one of the needles so

* See Spectator, No. 241.

refined judgment, who ridiculed that infusion of foreign phrases with which he had corrupted the Latin tongue, and spoke with contempt of the equability of his numbers, that cloyed and satiated the ear for want of variety to which they likewise added, a frequent and unseasonable affectation of appearing sonorous and sublime.

:

The sequel of this prolusion shall be the work of another day.

No. 120.]

IF

Wednesday, July 29, 1713,

-Nothing lovelier can be found

In woman, than to study bousehold good,
And good works in her husband to promote.
Milton,

A BIT FOR THE LION.

touched began to move, the other, though at never | so great a distance, moved at the same time and in the same manner. He tells us, that two friends, being each of them possessed of one of these needles, made a kind of dial-plate, inscribing it with the four-and-twenty letters, in the same manner as the hours of the day are marked upon the ordinary dial-plate. Then they fixed one of the needles on each of these plates in such a manner that it could move round without impediment, so as to touch any of the four-andtwenty letters. Upon their separating from one another into distant countries, they agreed to withdraw themselves punctually into their closets at a certain hour of the day, and to converse with one another by means of this their invention. Accordingly, when they were some hundred miles asunder, each of them shut himself up in his closet at the time appointed, and immediately cast his eyes upon his dial-plate, 'SIR,-As soon as you have set up your uni If he had a mind to write any thing to his corn, there is no question but the ladies will friend, he directed his needle to every letter that make him push very furiously at the men; for formed the words which he had occasion for, which reason I think it is good to be beforehand making a little pause at the end of every word with them, and make the lion roar aloud at feor sentence to avoid confusion. The friend, in male irregularities. Among these, I wonder the mean while, saw his own sympathetic needle how their gaming Nas so long escaped your moving of itself to every letter which that of notice. You who converse with the sober fahis correspondent pointed at. By this means mily of the Lizards, are perhaps a stranger to they talked together across a whole continent, these viragos; but what would you say, should and conveyed their thoughts to one another in an you see the Sparkler shaking her elbow for a instant over cities or mountains, seas or deserts. whole night together, and thumping the table The whole audience were pleased with the with a dice-box? Or how would you like to artifice of the poet who represented Lucretius, hear the good widow lady herself returning to observing very well how he had laid asleep her house at midnight, and alarming the whole their attention to the simplicity of his style in street with a most enormous rap,, after having some verses, and to the want of harmony in sat up until that time at crimp or ombre? Sir, others, by fixing their minds to the novelty of I am the husband of one of these female gamehis subject, and to the experiment which he re-sters, and a great loser by it, both in my rest lated. Without such an artifice they were of opinion that nothing would have sounded more harsh than Lucretius's diction and numbers. But it was plain that the more learned part of the assembly were quite of another mind. These allowed that it was peculiar to Lucretius, above all other poets, to be always doing or teaching something, that no other style was so proper to teach in, or gave a greater pleasure to those who had a true relish for the Roman tongue. They added further, that if Lucretius had not been embarrassed with the difficulty of his matter, and a little led away by an affectation of antiquity, there could not have been any thing more perfect than his poem.

Claudian succeeded Lucretius, having chosen for his subject the famous contest between the nightingale and the lutanist, which every one is acquainted with, especially since Mr. Philips has so finely improved that hint in one of his pastorals.

and my pocket. As my wife reads your papers,
her and your humble servant.'
one upon this subject might be of use both to

I should ill deserve the name of Guardian, did I not caution all my fair wards against a practice which, when it runs to excess, is the most shameful, but one, that the female world can fall into. The ill consequences of it are more than can be contained in this paper. However, that I may proceed in method, I shall consider them; first, as they relate to the mind; secondly, as they relate to the body.

Could we look into the mind of a female gamester, we should see it full of nothing but trumps and mattadores. Her slumbers are haunted with kings, queens, and knaves. The day lies heavy upon her until the play season returns, when, for half a dozen hours together, all her faculties are employed in shuffling, cutting, dealing, and sorting out a pack of cards, and no ideas to be discovered in a soul which He had no sooner finished but the assembly calls itself rational, excepting little square rung with acclamations made in his praise. figures of painted and spotted paper. Was the His first beauty, which every one owned, was understanding, that divine part in our compothe great clearness and perspicuity which ap-sition, given for such a use? Is it thus that peared in the plan of his poem. Others were wonderfully charmed with the smoothness of his verse and the flowing of his numbers, in which there were none of those elisions and cuttings off so frequent in the works of other poets. There were several, however, of a more

we improve the greatest talent human nature is endowed with? What would a superior being think were he shown this intellectual faculty in a female gamester, and at the same time told, that it was by this she was distinguished from brutes, and allied to angels?

When our women thus fill their imaginations with pips and counters, I cannot wonder at the story I have lately heard of a new-born child that was marked with the five of clubs. Their passions suffer no less by this practice than their understandings and imaginations. What hope and fear, joy and anger, sorrow and discontent, break out all at once in a fair assembly upon so noble an occasion as that of turning up a card! Who can consider, without a secret indignation that all those affections of the mind which should be consecrated to their children, husbands, and parents, are thus vilely prostituted and thrown away upon a hand at loo! For my own part, I cannot but be grieved when I see a fine woman fretting and bleeding inwardly from such trivial motives; when I behold the face of an angel agitated and discomposed by the heart of a fury.

But there is still another case in which the body is more endangered than in the former. All play-debts must be paid in specie, or by an equivalent. The man that plays beyond his income pawns his estate; the woman must find out something else to mortgage when her pin. money is gone. The husband has his lands to dispose of, the wife her person. Now when the female body is once dipped, if the creditor be very importunate, I leave my reader to consider the consequences.

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IF

Thursday, July 30, 1713.

Hinc exaudiri gemitus, iræque leonum.
Virg. Æn. vii. 15.
Hence to our ear the roar of lions came.

ROARINGS OF THE LION.

Our minds are of such a make, that they naturally give themselves up to every diversion which they are much accustomed to; and we 'OLD NESTOR,-Ever since the first notice always find that play, when followed with assi- you gave of the erection of that useful monuduity, engrosses the whole woman. She quickly ment of yours in Button's coffee-house, I have grows uneasy in her own family, takes but lit- had a restless ambition to imitate the renowned tle pleasure in all the domestic innocent endear, London prentice, and boldly venture my hand ments of life, and grows more fond of Pam, down the throat of your lion. The subject of than of her husband. My friend Theophrastus, this letter is a relation of a club whereof I am the best of husbands and of fathers, has often member, and which has made a considerable complained to me, with tears in his eyes, of the noise of late. I mean the Silent Club. The late hours he is forced to keep if he would enjoy year of our institution is 1694, the number of his wife's conversation. 'When she returns to members twelve, and the place of our meeting me with joy in her face, it does not arise,' says is Dumb's-alley, in Holborn. We look upon he, from the sight of her husband, but from ourselves as the relics of the old Pythagoreans, the good luck she has had at cards. On the and have this maxim in common with them, contrary,' says he, 'if she has been a loser, I which is the foundation of our design, that am doubly a sufferer by it. She comes home" Talking spoils company.' The president of out of humour, is angry with every body, displeased with all I can do or say, and in reality for no other reason, but because she has been throwing away my estate,' What charming bed-fellows and companions for life are men likely to meet with, that choose their wives out of such women of vogue and fashion! What a race of worthies, what patriots, what heroes, must we expect from mothers of this make!

our society is one who was born deaf and dumb, and owes that blessing to nature, which, in the rest of us, is owing to industry alone. I find upon inquiry, that the greater part of us are married men, and such whose wives are remarkably loud at home. Hither we fly for refuge, and enjoy at once the two greatest and most valuable blessings, company and retire ment. When that eminent relation of yours, I come in the next place to consider the ill the Spectator, published his weekly papers, and consequences which gaming has on the bodies gave us that remarkable account of his silence of our female adventurers. It is so ordered that (for you must know, though we do not read, yet almost every thing which corrupts the soul de- we inspect all such useful essays) we seemed cays the body. The beauties of the face and unanimous to invite him to partake our secrecy, mind are generally destroyed by the same but it was unluckily objected, that he had just means. This consideration should have a par- then published a discourse of his at his own ticular weight with the female world, who were club, and had not arrived to that happy inactidesigned to please the eye and attract the re-vity of the tongue, which we expected from a gards of the other half of the species. Now man of his understanding. You will wonder, there is nothing that wears out a fine face like perhaps, how we managed this debate; but it the vigils of the card-table, and those cutting will be easily accounted for, when I tell you passions which naturally attend them. Hollow eyes, haggard looks, and pale complexions, are the natural indications of a female gamester. Her morning sleeps are not able to repair her midnight watchings. I have known a woman carried off half dead from bassette; and have many a time grieved to see a person of quality gliding by me in her chair at two o'clock in the morning, and looking like a spectre amidst a glare of flambeaux. In short, I never knew a thorough-paced female gamester hold her beauty two winters together,

that our fingers are as nimble, and as infallible interpreters of our thoughts, as other men's tongues are; yet even this mechanic eloquence is only allowed upon the weightiest occasions. We admire the wise institutions of the Turks, and other eastern nations, where all commands are performed by officious mutes; and we wonder that the polite courts of Christendom should come so far short of the majesty of barbarians. Ben Jonson has gained an eternal reputation among us by his play called the Silent Woman. Every member here is another Morose while

the club is sitting, but at home may talk as much and as fast as his family occasions require, without breach of statute. The advantages we find from this quaker-like assembly are many. We consider, that the understanding of man is liable to mistakes, and his will fond of contradictions; that disputes which are of no weight in themselves, are often very considerable in their effects. The disuse of the tongue is the only effectual remedy against these. All party concerns, all private scandal, all insults over another man's weaker reasons, must there be lost where no disputes arise. Another advantage which follows from the first (and which is very rarely to be met with) is, that we are all upon the same level in conversation. A wag of my acquaintance used to add a third, viz: that if ever we do debate, we are sure to have all our arguments at our fingers' ends. Of all Longinus's remarks, we are most enamoured with that excellent passage, where he mentions Ajax's silence as one of the noblest instances of the sublime; and (if you will allow me to be free with a namesake of yours) I should think that the everlasting story-teller, Nestor, had he been likened to the ass instead of our hero, he had suffered less by the comparison.

I have already described the practice and sentiments of this society, and shall but barely mention the report of the neighbourhood, that we are not only as mute as fishes, but that we drink like fishes too; that we are like the Welshman's owl, though we do not sing, we pay it off with thinking. Others take us for an assembly of disaffected persons; nay, their zeal to the government has carried them so far as to send, last week, a party of constables to surprise us. You may easily imagine how exactly we represented the Roman senators of old, sitting with majestic silence, and undaunted at the approach of an army of Gauls. If you approve of our undertaking, you need not declare it to the world; your silence shall be interpreted as consent given to the honourable body of mutes, and in particular to your humble servant, NED MUM.

P. S. We have had but one word spoken since the foundation, for which the member was expelled by the old Roman custom of bending back the thumb. He had just received the news of the battle of Hochstet, and being too impatient to communicate his joy, was unfortunately betrayed into a lapsus lingua. We acted on the principles of the Roman Manlius, and though we approved of the cause of his error as just, we condemned the effect, as a manifest violation of his duty.'

I never could have thought a dumb man would have roared so well out of iny lion's mouth. My next pretty correspondent, like Shakspeare's lion in Pyramus and Thisbe, roars as it were any nightingale.

'July 28, 1713.

MR. IRONSIDE, I was afraid at first you were only in jest, and had a mind to expose our nakedness for the diversion of the town; but since I see that you are in good earnest, and have infallibility of your side, I cannot forbear

returning my thanks to you for the care you take of us, having a friend who has promised me to give my letters to the lion, until we can communicate our thoughts to you through our own proper vehicle. Now you must know, dear sir, that if you do not take care to suppress this exorbitant growth of the female chest, all that is left of my waist must inevitably perish. It is at this time reduced to the depth of four inches, by what I have already made over to my neck. But if the stripping design, mentioned by Mrs. Figleaf yesterday, should take effect, sir, I dread to think what it will come to. In short, there is no help for it, my girdle and all must go. This is the naked truth of the matter. Have pity on me then, my dear Guardian, and preserve me from being so inhumanly exposed. I do assure you that I follow your precepts as much as a young woman can, who will live in the world without being laughed at. I have no hooped petticoat, and when I am a matron will wear broad tuckers whether you succeed or no. If the flying project takes, I intend to be the last in wings, being resolved in every thing to behave myself as becomes your most obedient ward.' IF

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THAT I may get out of debt with the public as fast as I can, I shall here give them the remaining part of Strada's criticism on the Latin work in the three papers numbered 115, 119, heroic poets. My readers may see the whole 122. Those who are acquainted with the authors themselves cannot but be pleased to see them so justly represented; and as for those who have never perused the originals, they may form a judgment of them from such accurate and ontertaining copies. The whole piece will show at least how a man of genius (and none else should call himself a critic) can make the driest art a pleasing amusement.

The Sequel of Strada's Prolusion.

count of the chryso-magnet, or of the loadstone The poet who personated Ovid, gives an acwhich attracts gold, after the same manner as

the common loadstone attracts iron. The author, that he might express Ovid's way of thinking, derives this virtue to the chryso-mag net from a poetical metamorphosis.

'As I was sitting by a well,' says he,' when I was a boy, my ring dropped into it, when immediately my father fastening a certain stone to the end of a line, let it down into the well. It no sooner touched the surface of the water, but the ring leaped up from the bottom, and clung to it in such a manner, that he drew it out like a fish. My father, seeing me wonder at the experiment, gave me the following account of it: When Deucalion and Pyrrha went

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