remember you followed me one night from the playhouse; supposing you should carry me thither to-morrow night, and lead me into the front-box." This put us into a long field of discourse about the beauties, who were mothers to the present, and shined in the boxes twenty years ago. I told her I was glad she had transferred so many of her charms, and I did not question but her eldest daughter was within half a year of being a toast.

We were pleasing ourselves with this fantastical preferment of the young lady, when on a sudden we were alarmed with the noise of a drum, and immediately entered my little godson to give me a point of war. His mother, between laughing and chiding, would have put him out of the room; but I would not part with him so. I found, upon conversation with him, though he was a little noisy in his mirth, that the child had excellent parts, and was a great master of all the learning on the other side eight years old. I perceived him a very great historian in Æsop's Fables: but he frankly declared to me his mind, that he did not delight in that learning, because he did not believe they were true; for which reason I found he had very much turned his studies for about a twelvemonth past, into the lives and adventures of Don Belianis of Greece, Guy of Warwick, the Seven Champions, and other historians of that age. I could not but observe the satisfaction the father took in the forwardness of his son; and that these diversions might turn to some profit, I found the boy had made

remarks, which might be of service to him during the course of his whole life. He would tell you the mismanagements of John Hickathrift, find fault with the passionate temper in Bevis of Southampton, and love Saint George for being the champion of England; and by this means, had his thoughts insensibly moulded into the notions of discretion, virtue, and honor. I was extolling his accomplishments, when the mother told me, that the little girl who led me in this morning was in her way a better scholar than he: "Betty," says she, "deals chiefly in fairies and sprites; and sometimes in a winter night, will terrify the maids with her accounts, till they are afraid to go up to bed."

I sat with them till it was very late, sometimes in merry, sometimes in serious discourse with this particular pleasure, which gives the only true relish to all conversation, a sense that every one of us liked each other. I went home, considering the different conditions of a married life and that of a bachelor; and I must confess it struck me with a secret concern, to reflect, that whenever I go off, I shall leave no traces behind me. In this pensive mood I returned to my family; that is to say, to my maid, my dog, and my cat, who only can be the better or worse for what happens to me.

Nov. 17, 1709.

TATLER.]

No. 2.

[STEELE.

MR. BICKERSTAFF VISITS A FRIEND.

(Continued.)

Ut in vita, sic in studiis, pulcherrimum et humanissimum existimo, severitatem comitatemque miscere, ne illa in tristitiam, hæc in petulantiam procedat.-Piin.

I was walking about my chamber this morning in a very gay humor, when I saw a coach stop at my door, and a youth about fifteen alighting out of it, whom I perceived to be the eldest son of my bosom friend, that I gave some account of in my paper of the seventeenth of the last month. I felt a sensible

pleasure rising in me at the sight of him, my acquaintance having begun with his father when he was just such a stripling, and about that very age. When he came up to me, he took me by the hand, and burst out in tears. I was extremely moved, and immediately said, " Child, how does your father do?" He began to reply, "My mother -" but could not go on for weeping. I went down with him into the coach, and gathered out of him, that his mother was then doing, and that while the holy man was doing his last offices to her, he had taken that time to come and call me to his father who (he said) would certainly break his heart if I did not go and comfort him. The child's discretion in coming to me of his own head, anl the tenderness he

MR. BICKERSTAFF VISITS A FRIEND. 27

shewed for his parents, would have quite overpowered me, had I not resolved to fortify myself for the seasonable performances of those duties which I owed to my friend. As we were going, I could not but reflect upon the character of that excellent woman, and the greatness of his grief for the loss of one who has ever been the support to him under all other afflictions. "How," thought I," will he be able to bear the hour of her death, that could not, when I was lately with him, speak of a sickness, which was then past, without sorrow? We were now got pretty far into Westminster, and arrived at my friend's house. At the door of it I met Favonius, not without a secret satisfaction to find he had been there. I had formerly conversed with him at his house; and as he abounds with that sort of virtue and knowledge which makes religion beautiful, and never leads the conversation into the violence and rage of party disputes, I listened to him with great pleasure. Our discourse chanced to be upon the subject of death, which he treated with such a strength of reason, and greatness of soul, that instead of being terrible, it appeared to a mind rightly cultivated, altogether to be contemned, or rather to be desired. As I met him at the door, I saw in his face a certain glowing of grief and humanity, heightened with an air of fortitude and resolution, which, as I afterwards found, had such an irresistible force, as to suspend the pains of the dying, and the lamentations of the nearest friends who at

tended her. I went up directly to the room where she lay, and was met at the entrance by my friend, who, notwithstanding his thoughts had been composed a little before, at the sight of me turned away his face and wept. The little family of children renewed the expressions of their sorow according to their several ages and degrees of understanding. The eldest daughter was in tears, busied in attendance upon her mother; others were kneeling about the bedside: and what troubled me most was to see a little boy, who was too young to know the reason, weeping only because his sisters did. The only one in the room who seemed r signed and comforted was the dying person. At my approach to the bedside, she told me, with a low broken voice, "This is kindly done - Take care of your friend— Don't go from him." She had before taken leave of her husband and children, in a manner proper for so solemn a parting, and with a gracefulness peculiar to a woman of her character. My heart was torn in pieces to see the husband on one side suppressing and keeping down the swellings of his grief, for fear of disturbing her in her last moments; and the wife even at that time concealing the pains she endured, for fear of increasing his affliction. She kept her eyes upon him for some moments after she grew speechless, and soon after closed them forever. In the moment of her departure, my friend (who had thus far commanded himself) gave a deep groan, and fell into a swoon by her bedside. The dis