temper which inclines us to think amiss of those who differ from us. If we look into the manners of the most remote ages of the world, we discover human nature in her simplicity; and the more we come downward towards our own times, may observe her hiding herself in artifices and refinements, polished insensibly out of her original plainness, and at length entirely lost under form and ceremony, and (what we cali) good-breeding. Read the accounts of men and women as they are given us by the most ancient writers, both sacred and profane, and you would think you were reading the history of another species. Among the writers of antiquity, there are none who instruct us more openly in the manners of their respective times in which they lived, than those who have employed themselves in satire, under what dress soever it may appear; as there are no other anthors whose province it is to enter so directly into the ways of men, and set their miscarriages in so strong a light. I particles. These are what we commonly call scolds who imitate the animals out of which they were taken, that are always busy and barking, that snarl at every one who comes in their way, and live in perpetual clamour. The fourth kind of women were made out of the earth. These are your sluggards, who pass away their time in indolence and ignorance, hover over the fire a whole winter, and apply themselves with alacrity to no kind of business but eating. "The fifth species of females were made out of the sea. These are women of variable, uneven teinpers, sometimes all storm and tempest, sometimes all calm and sunshine. The stranger who sees one of these in her smiles and smoothness, would cry her up for a miracle of good-humour; but on a sudden her looks and her words are changed, she is nothing but fury and outrage, noise and hurricane. "The sixth species were made up of the ingredi. ents which compose an ass, or a beast of burden. These are naturally exceeding slothful, but, upon the husband's exerting his authority, will live upon hard fare, and do every thing to please him. They are however far from being averse to venereal pleasures, and seldom refuse a male companion. that they fly in the face of their husband when he approaches them with conjugal endearments. This species of women are likewise subject to little thefts, cheats, and pilferings. "The mare with a flowing mane, which was never broke to any servile toil and labour, composed an eighth species of women. These are they who have little regard for their husbands, who pass away their time in dressing, bathing, and perfuming; who throw their hair into the nicest curls, and trick it up with the fairest flowers and garlands. A woman of this species is a very pretty thing for a stranger to look upon, but very detrimental to the owner, unless it be a king or a prince who takes a fancy to such a toy. Simonides, a poet famous in his generation, is, think, author of the oldest satire that is now extant; and, as some say, of the first that was ever written. This poet who flourished about four hundred years after the siege of Troy, shows, by his way of writing, the The cat furnished materials for a seventh species simplicity, or rather coarseness, of the age in which of women, who are of a melancholy, froward, unamihe lived. I have taken notice, in my hundred-and-able nature, and so repugnant to the offers of love sixty-first speculation, that the rule of observing what the French call the Bienséance in an allusion, has been found out of latter years; and that the ancients, provided there was a likeness in their similitudes, did not much trouble themselves about the decency of the comparison. The satires or iambics of Simonides, with which I shall entertain my readers in the present paper, are a remarkable instance of what I formerly advanced. The subject of this satire is woman. He describes the sex in their several characters, which he derives to them from a fanciful supposition raised upon the doctrine of pre-existence. He tells us that the gods formed the souls of women out of those seeds and principles which compose several kinds of animals and elements; and that their good or bad dispositions arise in them according as "The ninth species of females were taken out of such and such seeds and principles predominate in the ape. These are such as are both ugly and illtheir constitutions. I have translated the author natured, who have nothing beautiful in themselves, very faithfully, and if not word for word (which our and endeavour to detract from or ridicule every language would not bear), at least so as to compre-thing which appears so in others. hend every one of his sentiments, without adding "The tenth and last species of women were made any thing of my own. I have already apologized for this author's want of delicacy, and must further premise, that the following satire affects only some of the lower part of the sex, and not those who have been refined by a polite education, which was not so common in the age of this poet. "In the beginning God made the souls of womankind out of different materials, and in a separate state from their bodies. "The souls of one kind of women were formed cnt of those ingredients which compose a swine. A woman of this make is a slut in her house and a glutton at her table. She is uncleanly in her person, a slattern in her dress, and her family is no better than a dunghill. A second sort of female soul was formed out of the same materials that enter into the composition of a fox. Such a one is what we call a notable discerning woman, who has an insight into every thing whether it be good or bad. In this species of females there are some virtuous and some vicious. “ A third kind of women were made up of canine out of the bee; and happy is the man who gets such a one for his wife. She is altogether faultless and unblameable. Her family flourishes and improves by her good management. She loves her husband, and is beloved by him. She brings him a race of beautiful and virtuous children. She distinguishes herself among her sex. She is surrounded with graces. She never sits among the loose tribe of women, nor passes away her time with them in wanton discourses. She is full of virtue and prudence, and is the best wife that Jupiter can bestow on man." I shall conclude these iambics with the motto of this paper, which is a fragment of the same author. "A man cannot possess any thing that is better than a good woman, nor any thing that is worse than a bad one." As the poet has shown a great penetration in this diversity of female characters, he has_avoided the fault which Juvenal and Monsieur Boileau are guilty of, the former in his sixth, and the other in his last satire, where they have endeavoured to expose the sex in general, without doing justice to the valuable part of it. Such levelling satires are "Now let us consider what happens to us when of no use to the world; and for this reason I have we arrive at these imaginary points of rest. Do we often wondered how the French author above men-stop our motion and sit down satisfied in the settletioned, who was a man of exquisite judgment, and ment we have gained? or are we not removing the a lover of virtue, could think human nature a proper boundary, and marking out new points of rest, to subject for satire in another of his celebrated pieces, which we press forward with the like eagerness, and which is called the Satire upon Man. What vice which cease to be such as fast as we attain them? or frailty can a discourse correct, which censures Our case is like that of a traveller upon the Alps, the whole species alike, and endeavours to show by who should fancy that the top of the next bill must some superficial strokes of wit, that brutes are the end his journey, because it terminates his prospect; more excellent creatures of the two? A satire but he no sooner arrives at it, than he sees new -should expose nothing but what is corrigible, and ground and other hills beyond it, and continues to make a due discrimination between those who are, travel on as before. and those who are not, the proper objects of it.-L. "SIR, "TO THE SPECTATOR. "I AM fully persuaded that one of the best springs of generous and worthy actions, is the having generous and worthy thoughts of ourselves. Whoever has a mean opinion of the dignity of his nature, will act in no higher a rank than he has allotted himself in his own estimation. If he considers his being as circumscribed by the uncertain term of a few years, his designs will be contracted into the same narrow span he imagines is to bound his existence. How can he exalt his thoughts to any thing great and noble, who only believes that after a short turn on the stage of this world, he is to sink into oblivion, and to lose his consciousness for ever? "For this reason I am of opinion, that so useful and elevated a contemplation as that of the soul's immortality cannot be resumed too often. There is not a more improving exercise to the human mind, than to be frequently reviewing its own great privileges and endowments; nor a more effectual means to awaken in us an ambition raised above low objects and little pursuits, than to value ourselves as heirs of eternity. "It is a very great satisfaction to consider the best and wisest of mankind in all nations and ages, asserting as with one voice this their birthright, and to find it ratified by an express revelation. At the same time if we turn our thoughts inward upon ourselves, we may meet with a kind of secret sense concurring with the proofs of our own immortality. "You have, in my opinion, raised a good presumptive argument from the increasing appetite the mind has to knowledge, and to the extending its own faculties, which cannot be accomplished, as the more restrained perfection of lower creatures may, in the limits of a short life. I think another probable conjecture may be raised from our appetite to duration itself, and from a reflection on our progress through the several stages of it. We are complaining,' as you observed in a former speculation, of the shortness of life, and yet are perpetually hurrying over the parts of it, to arrive at certain little settlements or imaginary points of rest, which are dispersed up and down in it." • Mean. "This is so plainly every man's condition in life, that there is no one who has observed any thing, but may observe, that as fast as his time wears away, his appetite to something future remains. The use therefore I would make of it is, that since Nature (as some love to express it) does nothing in vain, or to speak properly, since the Author of our being has planted no wandering passion in it, no desire which has not its object, futurity is the proper object of the passion so constantly exercised about it: and this restlessness in the present, this assigning ourselves over to further stages of duration, this successive grasping at somewhat still to come, appears to me (whatever it may be to others) as a mind of man has of its own immortality. kind of instinct, or natural symptom, which the "I take it at the same time for granted, that the immortality of the soul is sufficiently established by other arguments: and, if so, this appetite, which otherwise would be very unaccountable and absurd, seems very reasonable, and adds strength to the conclusion. But I am amazed when I consider there are creatures capable of thought, who, in spite of every argument, can form to themselves a sullen satisfaction in thinking otherwise. There is something so pitifully mean in the inverted ambition of that man who can hope for annihilation, and please himself to think that his whole fabric shall one day crumble into dust, and mix with the mass of inanímate beings, that it equally deserves our admiration and pity. The mystery of such men's unbelief is not hard to be penetrated; and indeed amounts to nothing more than a sordid hope that they shall not be immortal, because they dare not be so. and gives me occasion to say further, that as worthy "This brings me back to my first observation, actions spring from worthy thoughts, so worthy actions. But the wretch who has degraded himself thoughts are likewise the consequence of worthy below the character of immortality, is very willing to resign his pretensions to it, and to substitute in its room a dark negative happiness in the extinction of his being. "The admirable Shakspeare has given us a strong image of the unsupported condition of such a person in his last minutes, in the second part of King Henry concerned in the murder of the good Duke Humphry, the Sixth, where Cardinal Beaufort, who had been is represented on his death-bed. After some short confused speeches, which show an imagination disturbed with guilt, just as he is expiring, King Henry, standing by him full of compassion, says, Lord Cardinal! if thou thinkest on heaven's bliss, "The despair which is here shown, without a word or action on the part of a dying person, is beyond what can be painted by the most forcible expressions whatever. "I shall not pursue this thought further, but only add, that as annihilation is not to be had with a wish, so it is the most abject thing in the world to wish it. What are honour, fame, wealth, or power, when compared with the generous expectation of a being without end, and a happiness adequate to that being? "I shall trouble you no further; but with a certain gravity which these thoughts have given me, II reflect upon some things people say of you (as they will of all men who distinguish themselves), which I hope are not true, and wish you as good a man as you are an author. T. "I am, Sir, your most obedient, humble Servant, "T. D. No. 211.] THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 1711. Pictis meminerit nos jocari fabulis.-PHDR. 1. 1. Prol. Let it be remembered that we sport in fabled stories. HAVING lately translated the fragment of an old poet, which describes womankind under several characters, and supposes them to have drawn their different manners and dispositions from those animals and elements out of which he tells us they were compounded; I had some thoughts of giving the sex their revenge, by laying together in another paper the many vicious characters which prevail in the male world, and showing the different ingredients that go to the making up of such different humours and constitutions. Horace has a thought which is something akin to this, when, in order to excuse himself to his mistress for an invective which he had written against her, and to account for that unreasonable fury with which the heart of man is often transported, he tells us that, when Prometheus made his man of clay, in the kneading up of the heart, he seasoned it with some furious particles of the lion. But upon turning this plan to and fro in my thoughts, I observed so many unaccountable humours in man, that I did not know out of what animals to fetch them. Male souls are diversified with so many characters, that the world has not variety of materials sufficient to furnish out their different tempers and inclinations. creation, with all its animals and elements, would not be large enough to supply their several extravagancies. The From tenement to tenement is toss'd, To please the taste of glutton appetite: Or from a beast dislodge a brother's mind. Plato, in the vision of Eurus the Armenian, which may possibly make the subject of a future speculation, records some beautiful transmigrations; as that the soul of Orpheus, who was musical, melancholy, and a woman-hater, entered into a swan; the soul of Ajax, which was all wrath and fierceness, into a lion; the soul of Agamemnon, that was rapacious and imperial, into an eagle; and the soul of Thersites, who was a mimic and a buffoon, into a monkey. Mr. Congreve, in a prologue to one of his comedies, has touched upon this doctrine with great humour: Thus Aristotle's soul of old that was, May now be damn'd to animate an ass; I shall fill up this paper with some letters which following correspondents will show, what I there my last Tuesday's speculation has produced. My observed, that the speculation of that day affects only the lower part of the sex. "From my house in the Strand, October 3, 1711. "MR. SPECTATOR, "Upon reading your Tuesday's paper, I find by bee. My shop, or, if you please to call it so, my several symptoms in my constitution that I am a cell, is in that great hive of females which goes by the name of the New Exchange; where I am daily employed in gathering together a little stock of gain from the finest flowers about the town, I mean the ladies and the beaux. I have a numerous tion I am able. But, Sir, it is my misfortune to be swarm of children, to whom I give the best educamarried to a drone, who lives upon what I get, without bringing any thing into the common stock. Now, Sir, as on the one hand I take care not to I would not have him look upon me as a humblebehave myself towards him like a wasp, so likewise bee; for which reason I do all I can to put him upon laying up provisions for a bad day, and fre and negligence may bring upon us in our old age. quently represent to him the fatal effects his sloth I must beg that you will join with me in your good advice upon this occasion, and you will for ever "SIR, Instead therefore of pursuing the thought of Simanides, I shall observe, that as he has exposed the vicious part of women from the doctrine of preexistence, some of the ancient philosophers have in a manner satirized the vicious part of the human species in general, from a notion of the soul's postexistence, if I may so call it; and that as Simon-oblige ides describes brutes entering into the composition of women, others have represented human souls as entering into brutes. This is commonly termed the doctrine of transmigration, which supposes that human souls, upon their leaving the body, become the souls of such kinds of brutes as they most resemble in their manners; or, to give an account of it as Mr. Dryden has described it, in his translation of Pythagoras's speech in the fifteenth book of Ovid, where that philosopher dissuades his hearers from eating flesh: Thus all things are but alter'd, nothing dies. And here and there th' unbodied spirit flies: By time, or force, or sickness dispossess'd, And lodges where it lights, in bird or beast; Or hunts without till ready limbs it find, And actuates those according to their kind: SPECTATCK-Nos. 31 & 32. "Your humble Servant, She Piccadilly, October 31, 1711. those fillies who are described in the old poet with "I am joined in wedlock for my sins to one of that hard name you gave us the other day. has a flowing mane, and a skin as soft as silk. But, Sir, she passes half her life at her glass, and almost ruins me in ribands. For my own part, I am a plain handicraft man, and in danger of breaking by her laziness and expensiveness. Pray, master, tell me in your next paper, whether I may not expect of her so much drudgery as to take care of her family, and curry her hide in case of refusal. "Your loving Friend, "BARNABY BRITTLE." R 66 "MR. SPECTATOR, Cheapside, October 30. "I am mightily pleased with the humour of the cat; be so kind as to enlarge upon that subject. "Yours till death, "JOSIAH HENPECK. "P. S. You must know I am married to a grimalkin." was all the world to her, and she thought she ought to be all the world to me. If,' said she, my dear loves me as much as I love him, he will never be tired of my company.' This declaration was followed by my being denied to all my acquaintance; and it very soon came to that pass, that to give an answer at the door, before my face, the servants would ask her whether I was within or not; and she would answer no, with great fondness, and tell "SIR, Wapping, October 31, 1711. me I was a good dear. I will not enumerate more "Ever since your Spectator of Tuesday last came little circumstances, to give you a livelier sense of into our family, my husband is pleased to call me my condition; but tell you in general, that from his Oceana, because the foolish old poet that you such steps as these at first, I now live the life of a have translated says, that the souls of some women are prisoner of state; my letters are opened, and I have made of sea-water. This, it seems, has encouraged not the use of pen, ink, and paper, but in her premy sauce-box to be witty upon me. When I am sence. I never go abroad, except she sometimes angry, he cries, 'Pr'ythee, my dear, be calm; when takes me with her in her coach to take the air, if it I chide one of my servants, Pr'ythee, child, do may be called so, when we drive, as we generally not bluster.' He had the impudence about an do, with the glasses up. I have overheard my servhour ago to tell me, that he was a seafaring man, ants lament my condition, but they dare not bring and must expect to divide his life between storm me messages without her knowledge, because they and sunshine. When I bestir myself with any doubt my resolution to stand by them. In the spirit in my family, it is high sea' in his house; midst of this insipid way of life, an old acquaintance and when I sit still without doing any thing, his of mine, Tom Meggot, who is a favourite with her, affairs forsooth are windbound.' When I ask him and allowed to visit me in her company because he whether it rains, he makes answer, It is no mat- sings prettily, has roused me to rebel, and conveyed ter, so that it be fair weather within doors.' In his intelligence to me in the following manner: My short, Sir, I cannot speak my mind freely to him, wife is a great pretender to music, and very ignorant but I either swell or rage, or do something that is of it; but far gone in the Italian taste. Tom goes not fit for a civil woman to hear. Pray, Mr. Spec- to Armstrong, the famous fine writer of music, and tator, since you are so sharp upon other women, let desires him to put this sentence of Tully in the scale us know what materials your wife is made of, if you of an Italian air, and write it out for my spouse have one. I suppose you would make us a parcel from him. An ille mihi Liber cui mulier imperat? of poor-spirited, tame, insipid creatures; but, Sir, I Cui leges imponit, præscribit, jubet, vetat quod videtur? would have you to know, we have as good passions Qui nihil imperanti negare, nihil recusare audet? in us as yourself, and that a woman was never de- Poscit? dandum est. Vocat? veniendum. Ejicit? signed to be a milk-sop. L. "MARTHA TEMPEST." No. 212.] FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 1711. Colla jugo, liber sum dic age- HOR. 2 Sat vii. 9. "MR. SPECTATOR abeundum. Minitatur? extimiscendum. Does he live like a gentleman who is commanded by a woman? He to whom she gives law, grants and denies what she pleases? who can neither deny her any thing she asks, or refuse to do any thing she commands ?' "To be short, my wife was extremely pleased with it; said the Italian was the only language for music; and admired how wonderfully tender the sentiment was, and how pretty the accent is of that language; with the rest that is said by rote on that "I NEVER look upon my dear wife, but I think occasion. Mr. Meggot is sent for to sing this air, of the happiness Sir Roger de Coverley enjoys, in which he performs with mighty applause; and my having such a friend as you to expose in proper wife is in ecstasy, on the occasion, and glad to find, colours the cruelty and perverseness of his mistress. by my being so much pleased, that I was at last I have very often wished you visited in our family, come into the notion of the Italian: 'for,' said she, and were acquainted with my spouse; she would 'it grows upon one when one once comes to know afford you, for some months at least, matter enough a little of the language; and pray, Mr. Megget, for one Spectator a week. Since we are not so sing again those notes, Nihil Imperanti negare, nikil happy as to be of your acquaintance, give me leave recusare. You may believe I was not a little deto represent to you our present circumstances as lighted with my friend Tom's expedient to alarm well as I can in writing. You are to know, then, me, and in obedience to his summons I give all this that I am not of a very different constitution from story thus at large; and I am resolved, when this Nathaniel Henroost, whom you have lately recorded appears in the Spectator, to declare for myself. The in your speculations; and have a wife who makes a manner of the insurrection I contrive by your more tyrannical use of the knowledge of my easy means, which shall be no other than that Tom Megtemper than that lady ever pretended to. We had got, who is at our tea-table every morning, shall rear not been a month married, when she found in me a it to us; and if my dear can take the hint, and say certain pain to give offence, and an indolence that not one word, but let this be the beginning of a new made me bear little inconveniences rather than dis-life without further explanation, it is very well; for pute about them. From this observation it soon came to pass, that if I offered to go abroad, she would get between me and the door, kiss me, and say she could not part with me; then down again I sat. In a day or two after this first pleasant step towards confining me, she declared to me, that I as soon as the Spectator is read out, I shall, without more ado, call for the coach, name the hour when I shall be at home, if I come at all: if I do not, they may go to dinner. If my spouse only swells and says nothing, Tom and I go out together, and all is well, as I said before; but if she begins to command a moral virtue into practice. We have therefore," says he, " enlarged the sphere of our duty, and made many things, which are in themselves indifferent, a part of our religion, that we may have more occasions of showing our love to God, and in all the circumstances of life, by doing something to please him." Monsieur St. Evremond has endeavoured to palliate the superstitions of the Roman Catholic religion with the same kind of apology, where he pre No. 213.] SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 1711. tends to consider the different spirits of the Papists -Mens sibi conscia recti.-VIRG. Æn. i. 608. A good intention. and the Calvinists, as to the great points wherein they disagree. He tells us, that the former are actIr is the great art and secret of Christianity, if I their expressions of duty and devotion towards the uated by love, and the other by fear; and that in may use that phrase, to manage our actions to the Supreme Being, the former seem particularly carebest advantage, and to direct them in such a man-ful to do every thing which may possibly please him, ner that every thing we do may turn to account at and the other to abstain from every thing which that great day, when every thing we have done will may possibly displease him. be set before us. In order to give this consideration its full weight, we may cast all our actions under the division of such as are in themselves either good, evil, or indifferent. If we divide our intentions after the same manner and consider them with regard to our actions, we may discover that great art and secret of religion which I have here mentioned. A good intention, joined to a good action, gives it its proper force and efficacy; joined to an evil action, extenuates its malignity, and in some cases takes it wholly away; and joined to an indifferent action, turns it to a virtue, and makes it meritorious as far as human actions can be so. which both the Jew and the Roman Catholic would But notwithstanding this plausible reason with excuse their respective superstitions, it is certain there is something in them very pernicious to man. kind, and destructive to religion; because the injunction of superfluous ceremonies makes such actions duties, as were before indifferent, and by that cult than it is in its own nature, betrays many into means renders religion more burdensome and diffisins of omission which they could not otherwise be guilty of, and fixes the mind of the vulgar to the shadowy, unessential points, instead of the more weighty and more important matters of the law. In the next place, to consider in the same man-place in the great point we are recommending; for This zealous and active obedience however takes ner the influence of an evil intention upon our if, instead of prescribing to ourselves indifferent actactions. An evil intention perverts the best of actions as duties, we apply a good intention to all our ions, and makes them, in reality, what the fathers with a witty kind of zeal have termed the virtues of the heathen world, so many shining sins. It destroys the innocence of an indifferent action, and gives an evil action all possible blackness and horror, or, in the emphatical language of sacred writ, makes" sin exceeding sinful."+ If, in the last place, we consider the nature of an indifferent intention, we shall find that it destroys the merit of a good action; abates, but never takes away, the malignity of an evil action; and leaves an indifferent action in its natural state of indifference. It is therefore of unspeakable advantage to possess our minds with an habitual good intention, and to aim all our thoughts, words, and actions at some laudable end, whether it be the glory of our Maker, the good of mankind, or the benefit of our own souls. This is a sort of thrift or good husbandry in moral life, which does not throw away any single action, but makes every one go as far as it can. It multiplies the means of salvation, increases the number of our virtues and diminishes that of our vices. most indifferent actions, we make our very existence one continued act of obedience, we turn our diversions and amusements to our eternal advantage, and are pleasing Him (whom we are made to please) in all the circumstances and occurrences of life. It is this excellent frame of mind, this holy officiis recommended to us by the apostle in that uncommon ousness (if I may be allowed to call it such), which precept wherein he directs us to propose to ourselves the glory of our Creator in all our most indifferent actions," whether we eat or drink, or whatsoever we do."* an habitual good intention as that which I have A person, therefore, who is possessed with such been here speaking of, enters upon no single circumstance of life, without considering it as wellpleasing to the great Author of his being, conformable to the dictates of reason, suitable to human nawhich Providence has placed him. He lives in a ture in general, or to that particular station in perpetual sense of the Divine Presence, regards himself as acting, in the whole course of his existence, under the observation and inspection of There is something very devout, though not so his thoughts, who knows his "down-sitting and his that Being, who is privy to all his motions and all solid, in Acosta's answer to Limborch, who objects uprising, who is about his path, and about his bed, to him, the multiplicity of ceremonies in the Jewish and spieth out all his ways."+ In a word, he rereligion, as washings, dresses, meats, purgations, members that the eye of his Judge is always upon and the like. The reply which the Jew makes upon him, and in every action he reflects that he is doing this occasion, is, to the best of my remembrance, as what is commanded or allowed by him who will follows: "There are not duties enough," says he, hereafter either reward or punish it. This was the "in the essential parts of the law, for a zealous and character of those holy men of old, who, in that active obedience. Time, place, and person are re-beautiful phrase of Scripture, are said to have quisite, before you have an opportunity of putting" walked with God."‡ • Splendida peccata. + Rom. vii. 13. * 1 Cor. x. 31. ↑ Psalm cxxxix. 2, 3. ¡ Gen. v. 22. vis 9. |
