acted what they tell you is still under deliberation. I had almost lost a very good friend the other day, who came to know how I liked his design to marry such a lady?' I answered, 'By no means; and I must be positive against it, for very solid reasons, which are not proper to communicate.' 'Not proper to communicate!' said he, with a grave air, 'I will know the bottom of this.' I saw him moved, and knew from thence he was already determined; therefore evaded it by saying, 'To tell you the truth, dear Frank, of all the women 10 living I would have her myself.' 'Isaac,' said he, 'thou art too late, for we have been both one these two months.'

I learned this caution by a gentleman's consulting me formerly about his son. He railed at his extravagance, and told me, 'in a very little time he would beggar him by the exorbitant bills which came from Oxford every quarter.? 'Make the rogue bite upon the bridle",' said I; 'pay none of his bills, it will but encourage him to further trespasses.' He looked plaguy sour at me. His son soon after sent up a paper of verses, forsooth, in print on the last public occasion; upon 20 which, he is convinced the boy has parts, and a lad of spirit is not to be too much cramped in his maintenance, lest he take ill courses. Neither father nor son can ever since endure the

sight of me.

These sort of people ask opinions only out of the fullness of their heart on the subject of their perplexity, and not from a desire of information.

There is nothing so easy as to find out which opinion the man in doubt has a mind to; therefore the sure way is, to tell him that is certainly to be chosen. Then you are to be very 3 clear and positive; leave no handle for scruple. 'Bless me! sir, there is no room for a question!' This rivets you into his heart; for you at once applaud his wisdom, and gratify his inclination. (However, I had too much bowels to be insincere to a man who came yesterday to know of me, with which of two eminent men in the city he should place his son? their names are Paulo and Avaro. This gave me much debate with myself, because not only the fortune of the youth, but his virtue also dependeth upon this choice. The men are equally wealthy; but they differ in the use and application of their riches, which riches) 40 you immediately see upon entering their doors.

The habitation of Paulo has at once the air of a nobleman and a merchant. You see the servants act with affection to their master, and satisfaction in themselves: the master meets you with an open countenance, full of benevolence and integrity: your business is despatched with that confidence and welcome which always accompany honest minds: his table is the image of plenty and generosity, supported by justice and frugality. After we had dined here, our affair was to visit Avaro out comes an awkward fellow, with a careful counte10 nance; 'Sir, would you speak with my master? may I crave your name?' After the first preamble, he leads us into a noble solitude, a great house that seemed uninhabited; but from the end of the spacious hall moves towards us Avaro, with a suspicious aspect, as if he had believed us thieves; and, as for my part, I approached him as if I knew him a cut-purse. We fell into discourse of his noble dwelling, and the great estate all the world knew he had to enjoy in it:)and I, to plague him, began to commend Paulo's way of living. 'Paulo,' answered Avaro, 'is a very good man; but we, who have 20 smaller estates, must cut our coat according to our cloth.' 'Nay,' says I, 'every man knows his own circumstances best; you are in the right, if you have not wherewithal.' He looked very sour; for it is, you must know, the utmost vanity of a mean-spirited rich man to be contradicted when he calls himself poor. But I resolved to vex him, by consenting to all he said; the main design of which was, that he would have us find out, he was one of the wealthiest men in London, and lived like a beggar. We left him, and took a turn on the Exchange. My friend was ravished with Avaro: 'this,' said 30 he, 'is certainly a sure man.' I contradicted him with much warmth, and summed up their different characters as well as I could. This Paulo,' said I, 'grows wealthy by being a common good; Avaro, by being a general evil: Paulo has the art, Avaro the craft of trade. When Paulo gains, all men he deals with are the better whenever Avaro profits, another certainly loses. In a word, Paulo is a citizen, and Avaro a cit.) I convinced my friend, and carried the young gentleman the next day to Paulo, where he will learn the way both to gain and enjoy a good fortune. And though I cannot say I have, by 40 keeping him from Avaro, saved him from the gallows, I have

prevented his deserving it every day he lives for with Paulo he will be an honest man, without being so for fear of the law; as with Avaro he would have been a villain within the protection of it.

Tatler, No. 25.]

[June 6, 1709.

No. 92. The Characters of a Rake and a Coquette.

:

Pacolet being gone a-strolling among the men of the sword, in order to find out the secret causes of the frequent disputes we meet with, and furnish me with materials for my treatise on duelling I have room left to go on in my information to my country readers, whereby they may understand the bright 10 people whose memoirs I have taken upon me to write. But in my discourse of the twenty-eighth of the last month, I omitted to mention the most agreeable of all bad characters, and that is, a Rake".

A Rake is a man always to be pitied; and if he lives, is one day certainly reclaimed; for his faults proceed not from choice or inclination, but from strong passions and appetites, which are in youth too violent for the curb of reason, good sense, good manners, and good-nature: all which he must have by nature and education, before he can be allowed to be, or to have been 20 of this order. He is a poor unwieldy wretch that commits faults out of the redundance of his good qualities. His pity and compassion make him sometimes a bubble" to all his fellows, let them be never so much below him in understanding. His desires run away with him through the strength and force of a lively imagination, which hurries him on to unlawful pleasures, before reason has power to come in to his rescue. Thus, with all the good intentions in the world to amendment, this creature sins on against heaven, himself, his friends, and his country, who all call for a better use of his talents. There is not a being 30 under the sun so miserable as this: he goes on in a pursuit he himself disapproves, and has no enjoyment but what is followed by remorse; no relief from remorse, but the repetition of his crime. It is possible I may talk of this person with too much

.

indulgence; but I must repeat it, that I think this a character which is the most the object of pity of any in the world. The man in the pangs of the stone, gout, or any acute distemper, is not in so deplorable a condition, in the eye of right sense, as he that errs and repents, and repents and errs on. The fellow with broken limbs justly deserves your alms for his impotent condition; but he that cannot use his own reason is in a much worse state; for you see him in miserable circumstances, with his remedy at the same time in his own possession, if he would, 10 or could use it. This is the cause that, of all ill characters, the Rake has the best quarter in the world; for when he is himself, and unruffled with intemperance, you see his natural faculties exert themselves, and attract an eye of favour towards his infirmities.

But if we look round us here, how many dull rogues are there, that would fain be what this poor man hates himself for? All the noise towards six in the evening is caused by his mimics and imitators. How ought men of sense to be careful of their actions, if it were merely from the indignation of seeing them20 selves ill-drawn by such little pretenders! Not to say he that leads is guilty of all the actions of his followers; and a Rake has imitators whom you would never expect should prove so. Second-hand vice, sure, of all is the most nauseous. There is hardly a folly more absurd, or which seems less to be accounted for (though it is what we see every day,) than that grave and honest natures give into this way, and at the same time have good sense, if they thought fit to use it; but the fatality (under which most men labour) of desiring to be what they are not, makes them go out of a method in which they might be received 30 with applause, and would certainly excel, into one, wherein they will all their lives have the air of strangers to what they aim at.

For this reason, I have not lamented the metamorphosis of any one I know so much as of Nobilis, who was born with sweetness of temper, just apprehension, and every thing else that might make him a man fit for his order. But instead of the pursuit of sober studies and applications, in which he would certainly be capable of making a considerable figure in the noblest assembly of men in the world; I say, in spite of that 40 good nature, which is his proper bent, he will say ill-natured

things aloud, put such as he was, and still should be, out of countenance, and drown all the natural good in him, to receive, an artificial ill character, in which he will never succeed; for Nobilis is no Rake. He may guzzle as much wine as he pleases; ... but he may as well drink water-gruel, and go twice a-day to church, for it will never do. I pronounce it again, Nobilis is no Rake. To be of that order, he must be vicious against his will, and not so by study or application. All 'Pretty Fellows' are also excluded to a man, as well as all inamoratoes, 10 or persons of the epicene gender, who gaze at one another in the presence of ladies. This class, of which I am giving you an account, is pretended to also by men of strong abilities in drinking; though they are such whom the liquor, not the conversation, keeps together. But blockheads may roar, fight, and stab, and be never the nearer; their labour is also lost; they want sense : they are no Rakes.

As a Rake among men is the man who lives in the constant abuse of his reason, so a Coquette among women is one who lives in continual misapplication of her beauty. The chief of 20 all whom I have the honour to be acquainted with, is pretty Mrs. Toss she is ever in practice of something which disfigures her, and takes from her charms, though all she does tends to a contrary effect. She has naturally a very agreeable voice and utterance, which she has changed for the prettiest lisp imaginable. She sees what she has a mind to see at half a mile distance; but poring with her eyes half shut at every one she passes by, she believes much more becoming. The Cupid on her fan and she have their eyes full on each other, all the time in which they are not both in motion. Whenever her eye 30 is turned from that dear object, you may have a glance, and your bow, if she is in humour, returned as civilly as you make it; but that must not be in the presence of a man of greater quality for Mrs. Toss is so thoroughly well-bred, that the chief person present has all her regards. And she who giggles at divine service, and laughs at her very mother, can compose herself at the approach of a man of a good estate. Tatler, No. 27.]

[June 9, 1709.