house, who deals mightily in antique scandal; my disputant has laid him twenty pieces upon a point of history, to wit, that Cæsar never lay with Cato's sister, as is scandalously reported by some people. 'There are several of this sort of fellows in town, who wager themselves into statesmen, historians, geographers, mathematicians, and every other art, when the persons with whom they talk have not wealth equal to their learning. I beg of you to prevent in these youngsters, this compendious way to wisdom, which costs other people so much time and pains; and you will oblige " MR. SPECTATOR, Your humble servant.' Coffee-house near the Temple, HERE'S a young gentleman that sings operatunes or whistles in a full house. Pray let him know that he has no right to act here as if he were in an empty room. Be pleased to divide the spaces of a public room, and certify whistlers, singers, and common orators, that are heard farther than their portion of the room comes to, that the law is open, and that there is an equity which will relieve us from such as interrupt us in our lawful discourse, as much as against such who stop us on the road. I take these persons, Mr. Spectator, to be such trespassers as the officer in your stage, coach, and am of the same sentiment with counsellor Ephraim. It is true the young man is rich, and, as the vulgar say, needs not care for any body; but sure that is no authority for him to go whistle where he pleases, I am, SIR, your most humble servant. P. S. I have chambers in the Temple, and here are students that learn upon the hautboy; pray de sire the benchers, that all lawyers who are proficients in wind-music may lodge to the Thames.' 'MR. SPECTATOR, WE are a company of young women who pass our time very much together, and obliged by the mercenary humour of the men to be as mercenarily inclined as they are. There visits among us an old bachelor whom each of us has a mind to. The fellow is rich, and knows he may have any of us, therefore is particular to none, but excessively ill-bred. His pleasantry consists in romping, he snatches kisses by surprise, puts his hands in our necks, tears our fans, robs us of ribbands, forces letters out of our hands, looks into any of our papers, and a thousand other rudenesses. Now what I will desire of you is, to acquaint him, by printing this, that if he does not marry one of us very suddenly, we have all agreed, the next time he pretends to be merry, to affront him, and use him like a clown as he is. In the name of the sisterhood I take my leave of you, and am, as they all are, Your constant reader and well-wisher.' 6 MR. SPECTATOR, 'I AND several others of your female readers have conformed ourselves to your rules, even to our very dress. There is not one of us but has reduced our outward petticoat to its ancient sizeable circumference, though indeed we retain still a quilted one underneath; which makes us not altogether unconformable to the fashion; but it is on condition Mr. Spectator extends not his censure so far. But we find you men secretly approve our practice, by · imitating our pyramidical form. The skirt of your fashionable coats forms as large a circumference as our petticoats; as these are set out with whalebone, so are those with wire, to increase and sustain the bunch of fold that hangs down on each side; and the hat, I perceive, is decreased in just proportion to our head-dresses. We make a regular figure, but I defy your mathematics to give name to the form you appear in. Your architecture is mere gothic, and betrays a worse genius than ours; therefore if you are partial to your own sex, I shall be less than I am now T. Your humble servant.' N° 146. FRIDAY, AUGUST 17, 171. Nemo vir magnus sine aliquo afflatu divino unquam fuit. TULL. No man was ever great without some degree of inspiration. We know the highest pleasure our minds are capable of enjoying with composure, when we read sublime thoughts communicated to us by men of great genius and eloquence. Such is the entertainment we meet with in the philosophic parts of Cicero's writings. Truth and good sense have there so charming a dress, that they could hardly be more agreeably represented with the addition of poetical fiction, and the power of numbers. This ancient author, and a modern one, have fallen into my hands within these few days; and the impressions they have left upon me have at the present quite spoiled me for a merry fellow. The modern is that admirable writer the author of The Theory of the Earth. The subjects with which I have lately been entertained in them both bear a near affinity; they are upon inquiries into hereafter, and the thoughts of the latter seem to me to be raised above those of the former, in proportion to his advantages of scripture and revelation. If I had a mind to it, I could not at present talk of any thing else; therefore I shall translate a passage in the one, and transcribe a paragraph out of the other, for the speculation of this day. Cicero tells us*, that Plato reports Socrates, upon receiving his sentence, to have spoken to his judges in the following manner: I HAVE great hopes, O my judges, that it is infinitely to my advantage that I am sent to death: for it must of necessity be, that one of these two things must be the consequence. Death must take away all these senses, or convey me to another life. If all sense is to be taken away, and death is no more than that profound sleep without dreams, in which we are sometimes buried, oh, heavens! how desirable it is to die! How many days do we know in life preferable to such a state? But if it be true that death is but a passage to places which they who lived before us do now inhabit, how much still happier is it to go from those who call themselves judges to appear before those that really are such; before Minos, Radamanthus, acus, and Triptolemus, and to meet men who have lived with justice and truth? Is this, do you think, no happy journey? Do you think it nothing to speak with Orpheus, Musæus, Homer, and Hesiod? I would, indeed, suffer many deaths to enjoy these things. With what particular delight should I talk to Palamedes, Ajax, and others, who like me have suffered by the iniquity of their judges. I should examine the wisdom of that Tusculan Question, lib. 1. great prince, who carried such mighty forces against Troy; and argue with Ulysses and Sisyphus upon difficult points, as I have in conversation here, without being in danger of being condemned. But let not those among you who have pronounced me an innocent man be afraid of death. No harm can arrive at a good man, whether dead or living; his affairs are always under the direction of the gods; nor will I believe the fate which is allotted to me myself this day to have arrived by chance; nor have I aught to say either against my judges or accusers, but that they thought they did me an injury.——But I detain you too long, it is time that I retire to death, and you to your affairs of life; which of us has the better is known to the gods, but to no mortal man.' The divine Socrates is here represented in a figure worthy his great wisdom and philosophy, worthy the greatest mere man that ever breathed. But the modern discourse is written upon a subject no less than the dissolution of nature itself. Oh how glorious is the old age of that great man, who has spent his time in such contemplations as has made this being, what only it should be, an education for heaven! He has, according to the lights of reason and revelation, which seemed to him clearest, traced the steps of Omnipotence. He has with a celestial ambition, as far as it is consistent with humility and devotion, examined the ways of Providence, from the creation to the dissolution of the visible world. pleasing must have been the speculation, to observe Nature and Providence move together, the physical and moral world march the same pace: to observe paradise and eternal spring the seat of innocence, troubled seasons and angry skies the portion of wickedness and vice. When this admirable author has reviewed all that has past, or is to come, which How |