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tions, that we may know how to treat these rogues, or that we masters may enter into measures to reform them. Pray give us a speculation in general about servants, and you make me

'Yours,

PHILO-BRITANNICUS.

'P.S. Pray do not omit the mention of grooms in particular.'

This honest gentleman, who is so desirous that I should write a satire upon grooms, has a great deal of reason for his resentment; and I know no evil which touches all mankind so 10 much as this of the misbehaviour of servants.

The complaint of this letter runs wholly upon men-servants; and I can attribute the licentiousness which has at present prevailed among them, to nothing but what a hundred before me have ascribed it to, the custom of giving board-wages. This one instance of false economy is sufficient to debauch the whole nation of servants, and makes them as it were but for some part of their time in that quality. They are either attending in places where they meet and run into clubs, or else, if they wait at taverns, they eat after their masters, and reserve 20 their wages for other occasions. From hence it arises, that they are but in a lower degree what their masters themselves are; and usually affect an imitation of their manners: and you have in liveries, beaux, fops, and coxcombs, in as high perfection as among people that keep equipages. It is a common humour among the retinue of people of quality, when they are in their revels—that is, when they are out of their masters' sight to assume in a humorous way the names and titles of those whose liveries they wear. By which means, characters and distinctions become so familiar to them, that it is to this, 30 among other causes, one may impute a certain insolence among our servants, that they take no notice of any gentleman, though they know him ever so well, except he is an acquaintance of their master.

My obscurity and taciturnity leave me at liberty, without scandal, to dine, if I think fit, at a common ordinary, in the meanest as well as the most sumptuous house of entertainment. Falling in the other day at a victualling-house near the house of peers, I heard the maid come down and tell the landlady at the bar, that my lord bishop swore he would throw her

out at window, if she did not bring up more mild beer, and that my lord duke would have a double mug of purl. My surprise was increased, in hearing loud and rustic voices speak and answer to each other upon the public affairs, by the names of the most illustrious of our nobility; till of a sudden one came running in, and cried the house was rising. Down came all the company together, and away! The alehouse was immediately filled with clamour, and scoring one mug to the marquis of such a place, oil and vinegar to such an earl, three quarts to 10 my new lord for wetting his title, and so forth. It is a thing too notorious to mention the crowd of servants, and their insolence, near the courts of justice, and the stairs towards the supreme assembly, where there is a universal mockery of all order, such riotous clamour and licentious confusion, that one would think the whole nation lived in jest, and that there were no such thing as rule and distinction among us.

The next place of resort, wherein the servile world are let loose, is at the entrance of Hyde-park, while the gentry are at the Ring". Hither people bring their lackeys out of state, and 20 here it is that all they say at their tables, and act in their houses, is communicated to the whole town. There are men of wit in all conditions of life; and mixing with these people at their diversions, I have heard coquettes and prudes as well rallied, and insolence and pride exposed (allowing for their want of education) with as much humour and good sense, as in the politest companies. It is a general observation, that all dependants run in some measure into the manners and behaviour of those whom they serve. You shall frequently meet with lovers and men of intrigue among the lackeys as well as 30 at White's" or in the side-boxes". I remember once some years ago an instance of this kind. A footman to a captain of the guards used frequently, when his master was out of the way, to carry on amours and make assignations in his master's clothes. The fellow had a very good person, and there were very many women who think no further than the outside of a gentleman : besides which, he was almost as learned a man as the colonel himself: I say, thus qualified, the fellow could scrawl billetsdoux so well, and furnish a conversation on common topics, that he had, as they call it, a great deal of good business on his 40 hands. It happened one day that, coming down a tavern

stairs, in his master's fine guard-coat, with a well-dressed woman masked, he met the colonel coming up with other company; but with a ready assurance he quitted his lady, came up to him, and said, 'Sir, I know you have too much respect for yourself to cane me in this honourable habit. But you see there is a lady in the case", and I hope on that score also you will put off your anger till I have told you all another time.' After a little pause the colonel cleared up his countenance, and with an air of familiarity whispered his man apart. 'Sirrah, bring 10 the lady with you to ask pardon for you:' then aloud, 'Look to it, Will, I'll never forgive you else.' The fellow went back to his mistress, and telling her, with a loud voice and an oath, That was the honestest fellow in the world, conveyed her to a hackney-coach.

But the many irregularities committed by servants in the places above-mentioned, as well as in the theatres, of which masters are generally the occasions, are too various not to need being resumed on another occasion.

Spectator, No. 88.]

[June 11, 1711.

No. 57. On Masters and Mistresses; Letters from Ralph Valet and Patience Giddy.

At hæc etiam servis semper libera fuerunt, timerent, gauderent, dolerent, suo potius quam alterius arbitrio.-TULL. Epist.

It is no small concern to me, that I find so many complaints 20 from the part of mankind whose portion it is to live in servitude, that those whom they depend upon will not allow them to be even as happy as their condition will admit of. There are, as these unhappy correspondents inform me, masters who are offended at a cheerful countenance, and think a servant is broke loose from them, if he does not preserve the utmost awe in their presence. There is one who says, if he looks satisfied his master asks him, 'What makes him so pert this morning?' if a little sour, 'Hark ye sirrah, are not you paid your wages?' The poor creatures live in the most extreme 30 misery together; the master knows not how to preserve respect,

nor the servant how to give it. It seems this person is of so sullen a nature that he knows but little satisfaction in the midst of a plentiful fortune, and secretly frets to see any appearance of content in one that lives upon the hundredth part of his income, who is unhappy in the possession of the whole. Uneasy persons, who cannot possess their own minds, vent their spleen upon all who depend upon them; which, I think, is expressed in a lively manner in the following letters :

'SIR, August 2, 1711. ΤΟ 'I have read your Spectator" of the third of the last month and wish I had the happiness of being preferred to serve so good a master as Sir Roger. The character of my master is the very reverse of that good and gentle knight's. All his directions are given, and his mind revealed by way of contraries: as when any thing is to be remembered, with a peculiar cast of face he cries, "Be sure to forget now." If I am to make haste back, “Do not come these two hours; be sure to call by the way upon some of your companions." Then another excellent way of his is, if he sets me any thing to do, which he 20 knows must necessarily take up half a day, he calls ten times in a quarter of an hour to know whether I have done yet. This is his manner; and the same perverseness runs through all his actions, according as the circumstances vary. Besides all this, he is so suspicious, that he submits himself to the drudgery of a spy. He is as unhappy himself as he makes his servants; he is constantly watching us, and we differ no more in pleasure and liberty than as a gaoler and a prisoner. He lays traps for faults; and no sooner makes a discovery, but falls into such language, as I am more ashamed of for coming 30 from him, than for being directed to me. This, Sir, is a short sketch of a master I have served upwards of nine years; and though I have never wronged him, I confess my despair of pleasing him has very much abated my endeavour to do it. If you will give me leave to steal a sentence out of my master's Clarendon, I shall tell you my case in a word, "being used worse than I deserved, I cared less to deserve well than I had done","

'I am, Sir, your humble servant,

'RALPH VALET.'

'DEAR MR. SPECTER,

'I am the next thing to a lady's woman, and am under both my lady and her woman. I am so used by them both, that I should be very glad to see them in the Specter. My lady herself is of no mind in the world, and for that reason her woman is of twenty minds in a moment. My lady is one that never knows what to do with herself; she pulls on and puts off every thing she wears twenty times before she resolves upon it for that day. I stand at one end of the room, and reach 10 things to her woman. When my lady asks for a thing, I hear, and have half brought it, when the woman meets me in the middle of the room to receive it, and at that instant she says, "No, she will not have it." Then I go back, and her woman comes up to her, and by this time she will have that and two or three things more in an instant. The woman and I run to each other; I am loaded and delivering the things to her, when my lady says she wants none of all these things, and we are the dullest creatures in the world, and she the unhappiest woman living, for she shall not be drest in any time. Thus 20 we stand, not knowing what to do, when our good lady, with all the patience in the world, tells us as plain as she can speak, that she will have temper because we have no manner of understanding; and begins again to dress, and see if we can find out, of ourselves, what we are to do. When she is dressed she goes to dinner, and after she has disliked every thing there, she calls for her coach, then commands it in again, and then she will not go out at all, and then will go, too, and orders the chariot. Now, good Mr. Specter, I desire you would, in the behalf of all who serve froward ladies, give out in your paper, 30 that nothing can be done without allowing time for it, and that one cannot be back again with what one was sent for, if one is called back before one can go a step for that they want. And if you please, let them know that all mistresses are as like as all servants.

'I am your loving friend,
'PATIENCE GIDDY.'

These are great calamities; but I met the other day in the Five fields, towards Chelsea, a pleasanter tyrant than either of the above represented. A fat fellow was puffing on in his

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