Chapter LVIII: Book III: , chap, i, p. 326, line 19: for “Frank”, Thackeray by an (13)

_Valentine._—Oh, prayers will be said in empty churches at the usual
hours. Yet you will see such zealous faces behind counters, as if
religion were to be sold in every shop. Oh, things will go
methodically in the city, the clocks will strike twelve at noon, and
the horn’d herd buzz in the Exchange at two. Husbands and wives will
drive distinct trades, and care and pleasure separately occupy the
family. Coffee-houses will be full of smoke and stratagem. And the
cropt prentice that sweeps his master’s shop in the morning, may,
ten to one, dirty his sheets before night. But there are two things,
that you will see very strange; which are, wanton wives with their
legs at liberty, and tame cuckolds with chains about their necks.
But hold, I must examine you before I go further; you look
suspiciously. Are you a husband?

_Foresight._—I am married.

_Valentine._—Poor creature! Is your wife of Covent Garden _Parish_?

_Foresight._—No; St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields.

_Valentine._—Alas, poor man! his eyes are sunk, and his hands
shrivelled; his legs dwindled, and his back bow’d. Pray, pray, for a
metamorphosis—change thy shape, and shake off age; get the _Medea’s_
kettle and be boiled anew; come forth with lab’ring callous hands,
and chine of steel, and _Atlas’_ shoulders. Let Taliacotius trim the
calves of twenty chairmen, and make the pedestals to stand erect
upon, and look matrimony in the face. Ha, ha, ha! That a man should
have a stomach to a wedding supper, when the pidgeons ought rather
to be laid to his feet! ha, ha, ha!

_Foresight._—His frenzy is very high now, _Mr. Scandal_.

_Scandal._—I believe it is a spring-tide.

_Foresight._—Very likely—truly; you understand these matters. _Mr.
Scandal_, I shall be very glad to confer with you about these things
he has uttered. His sayings are very mysterious and hieroglyphical.

_Valentine._—Oh! why would _Angelica_ be absent from my eyes so
long?

_Jeremy._—She’s here, Sir.

_Mrs. Foresight._—Now, Sister!

_Mrs. Frail._—O Lord! what must I say?

_Scandal._—Humour him, Madam, by all means.

_Valentine._—Where is she? Oh! I see her; she comes, like Riches,
Health, and Liberty at once, to a despairing, starving, and
abandoned wretch. Oh—welcome, welcome!

_Mrs. Frail._—How d’ye, Sir? Can I serve you?

_Valentine._—Hark’ee—I have a secret to tell you. _Endymion_ and the
moon shall meet us on _Mount Latmos_, and we’ll be married in the
dead of night. But say not a word. _Hymen_ shall put his torch into
a dark lanthorn, that it may be secret; and Juno shall give her
peacock poppy-water, that he may fold his ogling tail; and Argus’s
hundred eyes be shut—ha! Nobody shall know, but _Jeremy._

_Mrs. Frail._—No, no; we’ll keep it secret; it shall be done
presently.

_Valentine._—The sooner the better. _Jeremy_, come
hither—closer—that none may overhear us. _Jeremy_, I can tell you
news; _Angelica_ is turned nun, and I am turning friar, and yet
we’ll marry one another in spite of the Pope. Get me a cowl and
beads, that I may play my part; for she’ll meet me two hours hence
in black and white, and a long veil to cover the project, and we
won’t see one another’s faces ’till we have done something to be
ashamed of, and then we’ll blush once for all....

_Enter_ TATTLE.

_Tattle._—Do you know me, _Valentine_?

_Valentine._—You!—who are you? No, I hope not.

_Tattle._—I am _Jack Tattle_, your friend.

_Valentine._—My friend! What to do? I am no married man, and thou
canst not lye with my wife; I am very poor, and thou canst not
borrow money of me. Then, what employment have I for a friend?

_Tattle._—Hah! A good open speaker, and not to be trusted with a
secret.

_Angelica._—Do you know me, _Valentine_?

_Valentine._—Oh, very well.

_Angelica._—Who am I?

_Valentine._—You’re a woman, one to whom Heaven gave beauty when it
grafted roses on a brier. You are the reflection of Heaven in a
pond; and he that leaps at you is sunk. You are all white—a sheet of
spotless paper—when you first are born; but you are to be scrawled
and blotted by every goose’s quill. I know you; for I loved a woman,
and loved her so long that I found out a strange thing: I found out
what a woman was good for.

_Tattle._—Ay! pr’ythee, what’s that?

_Valentine._—Why, to keep a secret.

_Tattle._—O Lord!

_Valentine._—Oh, exceeding good to keep a secret; for, though she
should tell, yet she is not to be believed.

_Tattle._—Hah! Good again, faith.

_Valentine._—I would have musick. Sing me the song that I
like.—CONGREVE, _Love for Love_.

There is a _Mrs. Nickleby_, of the year 1700, in Congreve’s comedy
of _The Double Dealer_, in whose character the author introduces
some wonderful traits of roguish satire. She is practised on by the
gallants of the play, and no more knows how to resist them than any
of the ladies above quoted could resist Congreve.

_Lady Plyant._—Oh, reflect upon the honour of your conduct! Offering
to pervert me [the joke is that the gentleman is pressing the lady
for her daughter’s hand, not for her own]—perverting me from the
road of virtue, in which I have trod thus long, and never made one
trip—not one _faux pas_. Oh, consider it; what would you have to
answer for, if you should provoke me to frailty! Alas! humanity is
feeble, Heaven knows! Very feeble, and unable to support itself.

_Mellefont._—Where am I? Is it day? and am I awake? Madam—

_Lady Plyant._—O Lord, ask me the question! I’ll swear I’ll deny
it—therefore don’t ask me; nay, you shan’t ask me, I swear I’ll deny
it. O Gemini, you have brought all the blood into my face; I warrant
I am as red as a turkey-cock; O fie, cousin Mellefont!

_Mellefont._—Nay, madam, hear me; I mean——

_Lady Plyant._—Hear you? No, no; I’ll deny you first, and hear you
afterwards. For one does not know how one’s mind may change upon
hearing—hearing is one of the senses, and all the senses are
fallible. I won’t trust my honour, I assure you; my honour is
infallible and uncomatable.

_Mellefont._—For heaven’s sake, madam——

_Lady Plyant._—Oh, name it no more. Bless me, how can you talk of
Heaven, and have so much wickedness in your heart? May be, you don’t
think it a sin. They say some of you gentlemen don’t think it a sin;
but still, my honour, if it were no sin ——. But, then, to marry my
daughter for the convenience of frequent opportunities—I’ll never
consent to that: as sure as can be, I’ll break the match.

_Mellefont._—Death and amazement! Madam, upon my knees——

_Lady Plyant._—Nay, nay, rise up; come, you shall see my good
nature. I know love is powerful, and nobody can help his passion.
’Tis not your fault; nor I swear, it is not mine. How can I help it,
if I have charms? And how can you help it, if you are made a
captive? I swear it is pity it should be a fault; but, my honour.
Well, but your honour, too—but the sin! Well, but the necessity. O
Lord, here’s somebody coming. I dare not stay. Well, you must
consider of your crime; and strive as much as can be against
it—strive, be sure; but don’t be melancholick—don’t despair; but
never think that I’ll grant you anything. O Lord, no: but be sure
you lay all thoughts aside of the marriage, for though I know you
don’t love Cynthia, only as a blind for your passion to me; yet it
will make me jealous. O Lord, what did I say? Jealous! No, I can’t
be jealous; for I must not love you; therefore don’t hope; but don’t
despair neither. They’re coming; I _must_ fly.—_The Double Dealer_,
act II, scene v, page 156.

70 “There seems to be a strange affectation in authors of appearing to
have done everything by chance. _The Old Bachelor_ was written for
amusement in the languor of convalescence. Yet it is apparently
composed with great elaborateness of dialogue, and incessant
ambition of wit.”—JOHNSON, _Lives of the Poets_.

71 “Among those by whom it (‘Will’s’) was frequented, Southerne and
Congreve were principally distinguished by Dryden’s friendship....
But Congreve seems to have gained yet farther than Southerne upon
Dryden’s friendship. He was introduced to him by his first play, the
celebrated _Old Bachelor_ being put into the poet’s hands to be
revised. Dryden, after making a few alterations to fit it for the
stage, returned it to the author with the high and just
commendation, that it was the best first play he had ever
seen.”—SCOTT’S _Dryden_, vol. i, p. 370.

72 It was in Surrey Street, Strand (where he afterwards died), that
Voltaire visited him, in the decline of his life.

The anecdote in the text, relating to his saying that he wished “to
be visited on no other footing than as a gentleman who led a life of
plainness and simplicity”, is common to all writers on the subject
of Congreve, and appears in the English version of Voltaire’s
_Letters concerning the English Nation_, published in London, 1733,
as also in Goldsmith’s _Memoir of Voltaire_. But it is worthy of
remark, that it does not appear in the text of the same Letters in
the edition of Voltaire’s _Œuvres Complètes_ in the _Panthéon
Littéraire_, Vol. v. of his works. (Paris, 1837.)

“Celui de tous les Anglais qui a porté le plus loin la gloire du
théâtre comique est feu M. Congreve. Il n’a fait que peu de pièces,
mais toutes sont excellentes dans leur genre.... Vous y voyez
partout le langage des honnêtes gens avec des actions de fripon; ce
qui prouve qu’il connaissait bien son monde, et qu’il vivait dans ce
qu’on appelle la bonne compagnie.”—VOLTAIRE, _Lettres sur les
Anglais_, Let. 19.

73 On the death of Queen Mary, he published a Pastoral—“The Mourning
Muse of Alexis.” Alexis and Menalcas sing alternately in the
orthodox way. The Queen is called PASTORA.

“I mourn PASTORA dead, let Albion mourn,
And sable clouds her chalky cliffs adorn,”

says Alexis. Among other phenomena, we learn that—

With their sharp nails themselves the Satyrs wound,
And tug their shaggy beards, and bite with grief the ground,—

(a degree of sensibility not always found in the Satyrs of that
period.... It continues—)

Lord of these woods and wide extended plains,
Stretch’d on the ground and close to earth his face,
Scalding with tears the already faded grass.

To dust must all that Heavenly beauty come?
And must Pastora moulder in the tomb?
Ah Death! more fierce and unrelenting far,
Than wildest wolves and savage tigers are;
With lambs and sheep their hunger is appeased,
But ravenous Death the shepherdess has seized.

This statement that a wolf eats but a sheep, whilst Death eats a
shepherdess; that figure of the “Great Shepherd”, lying speechless
on his stomach, in a state of despair which neither winds nor floods
nor air can exhibit, are to be remembered in poetry surely, and this
style was admired in its time by the admirers of the great Congreve!

In the “Tears of Amaryllis for Amyntas” (the young Lord Blandford,
the great Duke of Marlborough’s only son), Amaryllis represents
Sarah Duchess!

The tigers and wolves, nature and motion, rivers and echoes, come
into work here again. At the sight of her grief—

Tigers and wolves their wonted rage forgo,
And dumb distress and new compassion show,
Nature herself attentive silence kept,
_And motion seemed suspended while she wept_!

And Pope dedicated the _Iliad_ to the author of these lines—and
Dryden wrote to him in his great hand:

Time, place, and action may with pains be wrought,
But Genius must be born and never can be taught.
This is your portion, this your native store;
Heaven, that but once was prodigal before,
To SHAKESPEARE gave as much, she could not give him more.
Maintain your Post: that’s all the fame you need,
For ’tis impossible you should proceed;
Already I am worn with cares and age,
And just abandoning th’ ungrateful stage:
Unprofitably kept at Heaven’s expence,
I live a Rent-charge upon Providence:
But you whom every Muse and Grace adorn,
Whom I foresee to better fortune born,
Be kind to my remains, and oh defend
Against your Judgement your departed Friend!
Let not the insulting Foe my Fame pursue;
But shade those Lawrels which descend to You:
And take for Tribute what these Lines express;
You merit more, nor could my Love do less.

This is a very different manner of welcome to that of our own day.
In Shadwell, Higgons, Congreve, and the comic authors of their time,
when gentlemen meet they fall into each other’s arms, with “Jack,
Jack, I must buss thee”; or, “’Fore George, Harry, I must kiss thee,
lad”. And in a similar manner the poets saluted their brethren.
Literary gentlemen do not kiss now; I wonder if they love each other
better.

Steele calls Congreve “Great Sir” and “Great Author”; says
“Well-dressed barbarians knew his awful name”, and addresses him as
if he were a prince; and speaks of _Pastora_ as one of the most
famous tragic compositions.

74 “To Addison himself we are bound by a sentiment as much like
affection as any sentiment can be which is inspired by one who has
been sleeping a hundred and twenty years in Westminster Abbey....
After full inquiry and impartial reflection we have long been
convinced that he deserved as much love and esteem as can justly be
claimed by any of our infirm and erring race.”—MACAULAY.

“Many who praise virtue do no more than praise it. Yet it is
reasonable to believe that Addison’s profession and practice were at
no great variance; since, amidst that storm of faction in which most
of his life was passed, though his station made him conspicuous, and
his activity made him formidable, the character given him by his
friends was never contradicted by his enemies. Of those with whom
interest or opinion united him, he had not only the esteem but the
kindness; and of others, whom the violence of opposition drove
against him, though he might lose the love, he retained the
reverence.”—JOHNSON.

75 “Addison was perfect good company with intimates, and had something
more charming in his conversation than I ever knew in any other man;
but with any mixture of strangers, and sometimes only with one, he
seemed to preserve his dignity much, with a stiff sort of
silence.”—POPE (_Spence’s Anecdotes_).

76 “Milton’s chief talent, and indeed his distinguishing excellence
lies in the sublimity of his thoughts. There are others of the
modern, who rival him in every other part of poetry; but in the
greatness of his sentiments he triumphs over all the poets, both
modern and ancient, Homer alone excepted. It is impossible for the
imagination of man to disturb itself with greater ideas than those
which he has laid together in his first, second, and sixth
books.”—_Spectator_, No. 279.

“If I were to name a poet that is a perfect master in all these arts
of working on the imagination, I think Milton may pass for
one.”—Ibid., No. 417.

These famous papers appeared in each Saturday’s _Spectator_, from
January 19 to May 3, 1712. Besides his services to Milton, we may
place those he did to Sacred Music.

77 “Addison was very kind to me at first, but my bitter enemy
afterwards.”—POPE (_Spence’s Anecdotes_).

“ ‘Leave him as soon as you can,’ said Addison to me, speaking of
Pope; ‘he will certainly play you some devilish trick else: he has
an appetite to satire.’ ”—LADY WORTLEY MONTAGU (_Spence’s
Anecdotes_).

78 Lancelot Addison, his father, was the son of another Lancelot
Addison, a clergyman in Westmoreland. He became Dean of Lichfield
and Archdeacon of Coventry.

79 “The remark of Mandeville, who, when he had passed an evening in his
company, declared that he was ‘a parson in a tye-wig’, can detract
little from his character. He was always reserved to strangers, and
was not incited to uncommon freedom by a character like that of
Mandeville.”—JOHNSON, _Lives of the Poets_.

“Old Jacob Tonson did not like Mr. Addison: he had a quarrel with
him, and, after his quitting the secretaryship, used frequently to
say of him—‘One day or other you’ll see that man a bishop—I’m sure
he looks that way; and indeed I ever thought him a priest in his
heart.’ ”—POPE (_Spence’s Anecdotes_).

“Mr. Addison stayed above a year at Blois. He would rise as early as
between two and three in the height of summer, and lie abed till
between eleven and twelve in the depth of winter. He was untalkative
whilst here, and often thoughtful: sometimes so lost in thought,
that I have come into his room and stayed five minutes there before
he has known anything of it. He had his masters generally at supper
with him; kept very little company beside; and had no amour that I
know of; and I think I should have known it, if he had had
any.”—ABBÉ PHILIPPEAUX of Blois (_Spence’s Anecdotes_).

80 “His knowledge of the Latin poets, from Lucretius and Catullus down
to Claudian and Prudentius, was singularly exact and
profound.”—MACAULAY.

81 “Our country owes it to him, that the famous Monsieur Boileau first
conceived an opinion of the English genius for poetry, by perusing
the present he made him of the _Musae Anglicanae_.”—TICKELL (Preface
to _Addison’s Works_).

82 “It was my fate to be much with the wits; my father was acquainted
with all of them. _Addison was the best company in the world._ I
never knew anybody that had so much wit as Congreve.”—LADY WORTLEY
MONTAGU (_Spence’s Anecdotes_).

83 Mr. Addison To Mr. Wyche.

“DEAR SIR,

“My hand at present begins to grow steady enough for a letter, so
the properest use I can put it to is to thank ye honest gentleman
that set it a shaking. I have had this morning a desperate design in
my head to attack you in verse, which I should certainly have done
could I have found out a rhyme to rummer. But though you have
escaped for ye present, you are not yet out of danger, if I can a
little recover my talent at Crambo. I am sure, in whatever way I
write to you, it will be impossible for me to express ye deep sense
I have of ye many favours you have lately shown me. I shall only
tell you that Hambourg has been the pleasantest stage I have met
with in my travails. If any of my friends wonder at me for living so
long in that place, I dare say it will be thought a very good excuse
when I tell him Mr. Wyche was there. As your company made our stay
at Hambourg agreeable, your wine has given us all ye satisfaction
that we have found in our journey through Westphalia. If drinking
your health will do you any good, you may expect to be as long lived
as Methusaleh, or, to use a more familiar instance, as ye oldest hoc
in ye cellar. I hope ye two pair of legs that was left a swelling
behind us are by this time come to their shapes again. I can’t
forbear troubling you with my hearty respects to ye owners of them,
and desiring you to believe me always,

“Dear Sir,

“To Mr. Wyche, His Majesty’s Resident at Hambourg,
“May, 1703.”

—From the _Life of Addison_, by Miss Aikin, vol. i, p. 146.

84 It is pleasing to remember that the relation between Swift and
Addison was, on the whole, satisfactory, from first to last. The
value of Swift’s testimony, when nothing personal inflamed his
vision or warped his judgement, can be doubted by nobody.

“Sept. 10, 1710.—I sat till ten in the evening with Addison and
Steele.

“11.—Mr. Addison and I dined together at his lodgings, and I sat
with him part of this evening.

“18.—To-day I dined with Mr. Stratford at Mr. Addison’s retirement
near Chelsea.... I will get what good offices I can from Mr.
Addison.

“27.—To-day all our company dined at Will Frankland’s, with Steele
and Addison, too.

“29.—I dined with Mr. Addison,” &c.—_Journal to Stella._

Addison inscribed a presentation copy of his _Travels_ “To Dr.
Jonathan Swift, the most agreeable companion, the truest friend, and
the greatest genius of his age.”—SCOTT. From the information of Mr.
Theophilus Swift.

“Mr. Addison, who goes over first secretary, is a most excellent
person; and being my most intimate friend, I shall use all my credit
to set him right in his notions of persons and things.”—_Letters._

“I examine my heart, and can find no other reason why I write to you
now, besides that great love and esteem I have always had for you. I
have nothing to ask you either for my friend or for myself.”—Swift
to Addison (1717), SCOTT’S _Swift_, vol. xix, p. 274.

Political differences only dulled for a while their friendly
communications. Time renewed them; and Tickell enjoyed Swift’s
friendship as a legacy from the man with whose memory his is so
honourably connected.

85 “Addison usually studied all the morning; then met his party at
Button’s; dined there, and stayed five or six hours, and sometimes
far into the night. I was of the company for about a year, but found
it too much for me: it hurt my health, and so I quitted it.”—POPE
(_Spence’s Anecdotes_).

86 “When he returned to England (in 1702), with a meanness of
appearance which gave testimony of the difficulties to which he had
been reduced, he found his old patrons out of power, and was,
therefore, for a time, at full leisure for the cultivation of his
mind.”—JOHNSON, _Lives of the Poets_.

87 “Mr. Addison wrote very fluently; but he was sometimes very slow and
scrupulous in correcting. He would show his verses to several
friends; and would alter almost everything that any of them hinted
at as wrong. He seemed to be too diffident of himself; and too much
concerned about his character as a poet; or (as he worded it) too
solicitous for that kind of praise, which, God knows, is but a very
little matter after all!”—POPE (_Spence’s Anecdotes_).

88 “As to poetical affairs,” says Pope, in 1713, “I am content at
present to be a bare looker-on.... Cato was not so much the wonder
of Rome in his days, as he is of Britain in ours; and though all the
foolish industry possible has been used to make it thought a party
play, yet what the author once said of another may the most properly
in the world be applied to him on this occasion:—

“Envy itself is dumb—in wonder lost;
And factions strive who shall applaud him most.

“The numerous and violent claps of the Whig party on the one side of
the theatre were echoed back by the Tories on the other; while the
author sweated behind the scenes with concern to find their applause
proceeding more from the hands than the head.... I believe you have
heard that, after all the applauses of the opposite faction, my Lord
Bolingbroke sent for Booth, who played Cato, into the box, and
presented him with fifty guineas in acknowledgement (as he expressed
it) for defending the cause of liberty so well against a perpetual
dictator”—POPE’S “Letter to SIR W. TRUMBULL”.

_Cato_ ran for thirty-five nights without interruption. Pope wrote
the Prologue, and Garth the Epilogue.

It is worth noticing how many things in _Cato_ keep their ground as
habitual quotations, e.g.:—

“ ... big with the fate
Of Cato and of Rome.”
“’Tis not in mortals to command success,
But we’ll do more, Sempronius, we’ll deserve it.”
“Blesses his stars, and thinks it luxury.”
“I think the Romans call it Stoicism.”
“My voice is still for war.”
“When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway,
The post of honour is a private station.”

Not to mention:—

“The woman who deliberates is lost,”

And the eternal:—

“Plato, thou reasonest well,”

which avenges, perhaps, on the public their neglect of the play!

89 “The lady was persuaded to marry him on terms much like those on
which a Turkish princess is espoused—to whom the Sultan is reported
to pronounce, ‘Daughter, I give thee this man for thy slave.’ The
marriage, if uncontradicted report can be credited, made no addition
to his happiness; it neither found them, nor made them, equal....
Rowe’s ballad of _The Despairing Shepherd_ is said to have been
written, either before or after marriage, upon this memorable
pair.”—DR. JOHNSON.

“I received the news of Mr. Addison’s being declared Secretary of
State with the less surprise, in that I knew that post was almost
offered to him before. At that time he declined it, and I really
believe that he would have done well to have declined it now. Such a
post as that, and such a wife as the Countess, do not seem to be, in
prudence, eligible for a man that is asthmatic, and we may see the
day when he will be heartily glad to resign them both.”—LADY WORTLEY
MONTAGU to POPE. _Works_, Lord Wharncliffe’s ed., vol. ii, p. 111.

The issue of this marriage was a daughter, Charlotte Addison, who
inherited, on her mother’s death, the estate of Bilton, near Rugby,
which her father had purchased, and died, unmarried, at an advanced
age. She was of weak intellect.

Rowe appears to have been faithful to Addison during his courtship,
for his Collection contains “Stanzas to Lady Warwick, on Mr.
Addison’s going to Ireland”, in which her ladyship is called
“Chloe”, and Joseph Addison, “Lycidas”; besides the ballad mentioned
by the doctor, and which is entitled “Colin’s Complaint”. But not
even the interest attached to the name of Addison could induce the
reader to peruse this composition, though one stanza may serve as a
specimen:—

What though I have skill to complain—
Though the Muses my temples have crowned;
What though, when they hear my sweet strain,
The Muses sit weeping around.

Ah, Colin! thy hopes are in vain;
Thy pipe and thy laurel resign;
Thy false one inclines to a swain
Whose music is sweeter than thine.

90 One of the most humourous of these is the paper on Hoops, which, the
_Spectator_ tells us, particularly pleased his friend SIR ROGER:

“MR. SPECTATOR—

“You have diverted the town almost a whole month at the expense of
the country; it is now high time that you should give the country
their revenge. Since your withdrawing from this place, the fair sex
are run into great extravagances. Their petticoats, which began to
heave and swell before you left us, are now blown up into a most
enormous concave, and rise every day more and more; in short, sir,
since our women knew themselves to be out of the eye of the
SPECTATOR, they will be kept within no compass. You praised them a
little too soon, for the modesty of their headdresses; for as the
humour of a sick person is often driven out of one limb into
another, their superfluity of ornaments, instead of being entirely
banished, seems only fallen from their heads upon their lower parts.
What they have lost in height they make up in breadth, and, contrary
to all rules of architecture, widen the foundations at the same time
that they shorten the superstructure.

“The women give out, in defence of these wide bottoms, that they are
very airy and very proper for the season; but this I look upon to be
only a pretence and a piece of art, for it is well known we have not
had a more moderate summer these many years, so that it is certain
the heat they complain of cannot be in the weather; besides, I would
fain ask these tender-constitutioned ladies, why they should require
more cooling than their mothers before them?

“I find several speculative persons are of opinion that our sex has
of late years been very saucy, and that the hoop-petticoat is made
use of to keep us at a distance. It is most certain that a woman’s
honour cannot be better entrenched than after this manner, in circle
within circle, amidst such a variety of outworks and lines of
circumvallation. A female who is thus invested in whalebone is
sufficiently secured against the approaches of an ill-bred fellow,
who might as well think of Sir George Etheridge’s way of making love
in a tub as in the midst of so many hoops.

“Among these various conjectures, there are men of superstitious
tempers who look upon the hoop-petticoat as a kind of prodigy. Some
will have it that it portends the downfall of the _French_ king, and
observe, that the farthingale appeared in _England_ a little before
the ruin of the _Spanish_ monarchy. Others are of opinion that it
foretells battle and bloodshed, and believe it of the same
prognostication as the toil of a blazing star. For my part, I am apt
to think that it is a sign that multitudes are coming into the world
rather than going out of it,” &c. &c.—_Spectator_, No. 127.

91 “Mr. Addison has not had one epithalamium that I can hear of, and
must even be reduced, like a poorer and a better poet, Spenser, to
make his own.”—POPE’S _Letters_.

92 “I have observed that a reader seldom peruses a book with pleasure
till he knows whether the writer of it be a black or a fair man, of
a mild or a choleric disposition, married or a bachelor; with other
particulars of a like nature, that conduce very much to the right
understanding of an author. To gratify this curiosity, which is so
natural to a reader, I design this paper and my next as prefatory
discourses to my following writings; and shall give some account in
them of the persons that are engaged in this work. As the chief
trouble of compiling, digesting, and correcting will fall to my
share, I must do myself the justice to open the work with my own
history.... There runs a story in the family, that when my mother
was gone with child of me about three months, she dreamt that she
was brought to bed of a judge. Whether this might proceed from a
lawsuit which was then depending in the family, or my father’s being
a justice of the peace, I cannot determine; for I am not so vain as
to think it presaged any dignity that I should arrive at in my
future life, though that was the interpretation which the
neighbourhood put upon it. The gravity of my behaviour at my very
first appearance in the world, and all the time that I sucked,
seemed to favour my mother’s dream; for, as she has often told me, I
threw away my rattle before I was two months old, and would not make
use of my coral till they had taken away the bells from it.

“As for the rest of my infancy, there being nothing in it
remarkable, I shall pass it over in silence. I find that during my
nonage I had the reputation of a very sullen youth, but was always
the favourite of my schoolmaster, who used to say that _my parts
were solid and would wear well_. I had not been long at the
university before I distinguished myself by a most profound silence;
for during the space of eight years, excepting in the public
exercises of the college, I scarce uttered the quantity of an
hundred words; and, indeed, I do not remember that I ever spoke
three sentences together in my whole life....

“I have passed my latter years in this city, where I am frequently
seen in most public places, though there are not more than half a
dozen of my select friends that know me.... There is no place of
general resort wherein I do not often make my appearance; sometimes
I am seen thrusting my head into a round of politicians at Will’s,
and listening with great attention to the narratives that are made
in these little circular audiences. Sometimes I smoke a pipe at
Child’s, and whilst I seem attentive to nothing but the _Postman_,
overhear the conversation of every table in the room. I appear on
Tuesday night at St. James’s Coffee-house; and sometimes join the
little committee of politics in the inner room, as one who comes to
hear and improve. My face is likewise very well known at the
Grecian, the ‘Cocoa-Tree’, and in the theatres both of Drury Lane
and the Haymarket. I have been taken for a merchant upon the
Exchange for above these two years; and sometimes pass for a Jew in
the assembly of stock-jobbers at Jonathan’s. In short, wherever I
see a cluster of people, I mix with them, though I never open my
lips but in my own club.

“Thus I live in the world rather as a ‘_Spectator_’ of mankind than
as one of the species; by which means I have made myself a
speculative statesman, soldier, merchant, and artizan, without ever
meddling in any practical part in life. I am very well versed in the
theory of a husband or a father, and can discern the errors in the
economy, business, and diversions of others, better than those who
are engaged in them—as standers-by discover blots which are apt to
escape those who are in the game.... In short, I have acted, in all
the parts of my life, as a looker-on, which is the character I
intend to preserve in this paper.”—_Spectator_, No. 1.

93 “So effectually, indeed, did he retort on vice the mockery which had
recently been directed against virtue, that, since his time, the
open violation of decency has always been considered, amongst us,
the sure mark of a fool.”—MACAULAY.

94 “The Court was sat before Sir Roger came; but, notwithstanding all
the justices had taken their places upon the bench, they made room
for the old knight at the head of them; who for his reputation in
the country took occasion to whisper in the judge’s ear that _he was
glad his lordship had met with so much good weather in his circuit_.
I was listening to the proceedings of the Court with much attention,
and infinitely pleased with that great appearance and solemnity
which so properly accompanies such a public administration of our
laws; when, after about an hour’s sitting, I observed to my great
surprise, in the midst of a trial, that my friend Sir Roger was
getting up to speak. I was in some pain for him, till I found he had
acquitted himself of two or three sentences, with a look of much
business and great intrepidity.

“Upon his first rising; the Court was hushed, and a general whisper
ran among the country people that Sir Roger _was up_. The speech he
made was so little to the purpose, that I shall not trouble my
readers with an account of it, and I believe was not so much
designed by the knight himself to inform the Court, as to give him a
figure in my eyes, and to keep up his credit in the
country.”—_Spectator_, No. 122.

95 “Garth sent to Addison (of whom he had a very high opinion) on his
death-bed, to ask him whether the Christian religion was true.”—DR.
YOUNG (_Spence’s Anecdotes_).

“I have always preferred cheerfulness to mirth. The latter I
consider as an act, the former as an habit of the mind. Mirth is
short and transient, cheerfulness fixed and permanent. Those are
often raised into the greatest transports of mirth who are subject
to the greatest depression of melancholy: on the contrary,
cheerfulness, though it does not give the mind such an exquisite
gladness, prevents it from falling into any depths of sorrow. Mirth
is like a flash of lightning that breaks through a gloom of clouds,
and glitters for a moment; cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight
in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual
serenity.”—ADDISON, _Spectator_, p. 381.

96 The husband of the Lady Warwick who married Addison, and the father
of the young earl, who was brought to his stepfather’s bed to see
“how a Christian could die”. He was amongst the wildest of the
nobility of that day; and in the curious collection of Chap-Books at
the British Museum, I have seen more than one anecdote of the freaks
of the gay lord. He was popular in London, as such daring spirits
have been in our time. The anecdotists speak very kindly of his
practical jokes. Mohun was scarcely out of prison for his second
homicide, when he went on Lord Macclesfield’s embassy to the Elector
of Hanover, when Queen Anne sent the garter to H. E. Highness. The
chronicler of the expedition speaks of his lordship as an amiable
young man, who had been in bad company, but was quite repentant and
reformed. He and Macartney afterwards murdered the Duke of Hamilton
between them, in which act Lord Mohun died. This amiable baron’s
name was Charles, and not Henry, as a recent novelist has christened
him.

97 “Steele had the greatest veneration for Addison, and used to show
it, in all companies, in a particular manner. Addison, now and then,
used to play a little upon them; but he always took it well.”—POPE
(_Spence’s Anecdotes_).

“Sir Richard Steele was the best-natured creature in the world: even
in his worst state of health, he seemed to desire nothing but to
please and be pleased.”—DR. YOUNG (_Spence’s Anecdotes_).

98 The gaiety of his dramatic tone may be seen in this little scene
between two brilliant sisters, from his comedy, _The Funeral, or
Grief à la Mode_. Dick wrote this, he said, from “a necessity of
enlivening his character”, which, it seemed, the _Christian Hero_
had a tendency to make too decorous, grave, and respectable in the
eyes of readers of that pious piece.

[_Scene draws, and discovers_ LADY CHARLOTTE, _reading at a
table,_—LADY HARRIET, _playing at a glass, to and fro, and viewing
herself._]

_L. Ha._—Nay, good sister, you may as well talk to me [_looking at
herself as she speaks_] as you sit staring at a book which I know
you can’t attend.—Good Dr. Lucas may have writ there what he
pleases, but there’s no putting Francis, Lord Hardy, now Earl of
Brumpton, out of your head, or making him absent from your eyes. Do
but look on me, now, and deny it if you can.

_L. Ch._—You are the maddest girl [_smiling_].

_L. Ha._—Look ye, I knew you could not say it and forbear laughing
[_looking over Charlotte_].—Oh! I see his name as plain as you
do—F—r—a—n Fran,—c—i—s, cis, Francis, ’tis in every line of the
book.

_L. Ch._ [_rising_]—It’s in vain, I see, to mind anything in such
impertinent company—but granting ’twere as you say, as to my Lord
Hardy—’tis more excusable to admire another than oneself.

_L. Ha._—No, I think not,—yes, I grant you, than really to be vain
of one’s person, but I don’t admire myself—Pish! I don’t believe my
eyes to have that softness. [_Looking in the glass._] They an’t so
piercing: no, ’tis only stuff, the men will be talking.—Some people
are such admirers of teeth—Lord, what signifies teeth! [_Showing her
teeth._] A very black-a-moor has as white a set of teeth as I.—No,
sister, I don’t admire myself, but I’ve a spirit of contradiction in
me: I don’t know I’m in love with myself, only to rival the men.

_L. Ch._—Aye, but Mr. Campley will gain ground ev’n of that rival of
his, your dear self.

_L. Ha._—Oh, what have I done to you, that you should name that
insolent intruder? A confident, opinionative fop. No, indeed, if I
am, as a poetical lover of mine sighed and sung of both sexes,

The public envy and the public care,

I shan’t be so easily catched—I thank him—I want but to be sure, I
should heartily torment him by banishing him, and then consider
whether he should depart this life or not.

_L. Ch._—Indeed, sister, to be serious with you, this vanity in your
humour does not at all become you.

_L. Ha_.—Vanity! All the matter is, we gay people are more sincere
than you wise folks; all your life’s an art.—Speak you real.—Look
you there.—[_Hauling her to the glass._] Are you not struck with a
secret pleasure when you view that bloom in your look, that harmony
in your shape, that promptitude in your mien?

_L. Ch._—Well, simpleton, if I am at first so simple as to be a
little taken with myself, I know it a fault, and take pains to
correct it.

_L. Ha._—Pshaw! Pshaw! Talk this musty tale to old Mrs. Fardingale,
’tis tiresome for me to think at that rate.

_L. Ch._—They that think it too soon to understand themselves will
very soon find it too late.—But tell me honestly, don’t you like
Campley?

_L. Ha._—The fellow is not to be abhorred, if the forward thing did
not think of getting me so easily.—Oh, I hate a heart I can’t break
when I please.—What makes the value of dear china, but that ’tis so
brittle?—were it not for that, you might as well have stone mugs in
your closet.’—_The Funeral_, Oct. 2nd.

“We knew the obligations the stage had to his writings [Steele’s];
there being scarcely a comedian of merit in our whole company whom
his _Tatlers_ had not made better by his recommendation of
them.”—CIBBER.

99 “There is not now in his sight that excellent man, whom Heaven made
his friend and superior, to be at a certain place in pain for what
he should say or do. I will go on in his further encouragement. The
best woman that ever man had cannot now lament and pine at his
neglect of himself.”—STEELE [of himself]. _The Theatre_, No. 12,
Feb., 1719-20.

_ 100 The Funeral_ supplies an admirable stroke of humour,—one which
Sydney Smith has used as an illustration of the faculty in his
Lectures.

The undertaker is talking to his employés about their duty.

_Sable._—Ha, you!—A little more upon the dismal [_forming their
countenances_]; this fellow has a good mortal look,—place him near
the corpse: that wainscot-face must be o’ top of the stairs; that
fellow’s almost in a fright (that looks as if he were full of some
strange misery) at the end of the hall. So—But I’ll fix you all
myself. Let’s have no laughing now on any provocation. Look
yonder,—that hale, well-looking puppy! You ungrateful scoundrel, did
not I pity you, take you out of a great man’s service, and show you
the pleasure of receiving wages? _Did not I give you ten, then
fifteen, and twenty shillings a week to be sorrowful?—and the more I
give you I think the gladder you are!_

101 “From my own Apartment, Nov. 16.

“There are several persons who have many pleasures and
entertainments in their possession, which they do not enjoy; it is,
therefore, a kind and good office to acquaint them with their own
happiness, and turn their attention to such instances of their good
fortune as they are apt to overlook. Persons in the married state
often want such a monitor; and pine away their days by looking upon
the same condition in anguish and murmuring, which carries with it,
in the opinion of others, a complication of all the pleasures of
life, and a retreat from its inquietudes.

“I am led into this thought by a visit I made to an old friend who
was formerly my schoolfellow. He came to town last week, with his
family, for the winter; and yesterday morning sent me word his wife
expected me to dinner. I am, as it were, at home at that house, and
every member of it knows me for their well-wisher. I cannot, indeed,
express the pleasure it is to be met by the children with so much
joy as I am when I go thither. The boys and girls strive who shall
come first, when they think it is I that am knocking at the door;
and that child which loses the race to me runs back again to tell
the father it is Mr. Bickerstaff. This day I was led in by a pretty
girl that we all thought must have forgot me; for the family has
been out of town these two years. Her knowing me again was a mighty
subject with us, and took up our discourse at the first entrance;
after which, they began to rally me upon a thousand little stories
they heard in the country, about my marriage to one of my
neighbours’ daughters; upon which, the gentleman, my friend, said,
‘Nay; if Mr. Bickerstaff marries a child of any of his old
companions, I hope mine shall have the preference: there is Mrs.
Mary is now sixteen, and would make him as fine a widow as the best
of them. But I know him too well; he is so enamoured with the very
memory of those who flourished in our youth, that he will not so
much as look upon the modern beauties. I remember, old gentleman,
how often you went home in a day to refresh your countenance and
dress when Teraminta reigned in your heart. As we came up in the
coach, I repeated to my wife some of your verses on her.’ With such
reflections on little passages which happened long ago, we passed
our time during a cheerful and elegant meal. After dinner his lady
left the room, as did also the children. As soon as we were alone,
he took me by the hand: ‘Well, my good friend,’ says he, ‘I am
heartily glad to see thee; I was afraid you would never have seen
all the company that dined with you to-day again. Do not you think
the good woman of the house a little altered since you followed her
from the playhouse to find out who she was for me?’ I perceived a
tear fall down his cheek as he spoke, which moved me not a little.
But, to turn the discourse, I said, ‘She is not, indeed, that
creature she was when she returned me the letter I carried from you,
and told me, “She hoped, as I was a gentleman, I would be employed
no more to trouble her, who had never offended me; but would be so
much the gentleman’s friend as to dissuade him from a pursuit which
he could never succeed in.” You may remember I thought her in
earnest, and you were forced to employ your cousin Will, who made
his sister get acquainted with her for you. You cannot expect her to
be for ever fifteen.’ ‘Fifteen!’ replied my good friend. ‘Ah! you
little understand—you, that have lived a bachelor—how great, how
exquisite a pleasure there is in being really beloved! It is
impossible that the most beauteous face in nature should raise in me
such pleasing ideas as when I look upon that excellent woman. That
fading in her countenance is chiefly caused by her watching with me
in my fever. This was followed by a fit of sickness, which had like
to have carried me off last winter. I tell you, sincerely, I have so
many obligations to her that I cannot, with any sort of moderation,
think of her present state of health. But, as to what you say of
fifteen, she gives me every day pleasure beyond what I ever knew in
the possession of her beauty when I was in the vigour of youth.
Every moment of her life brings me fresh instances of her
complacency to my inclinations, and her prudence in regard to my
fortune. Her face is to me much more beautiful than when I first saw
it; there is no decay in any feature which I cannot trace from the
very instant it was occasioned by some anxious concern for my
welfare and interests. Thus, at the same time, methinks, the love I
conceived towards her for what she was, is heightened by my
gratitude for what she is. The love of a wife is as much above the
idle passion commonly called by that name, as the loud laughter of
buffoons is inferior to the elegant mirth of gentlemen. Oh, she is
an inestimable jewel! In her examination of her household affairs,
she shows a certain fearfulness to find a fault, which makes her
servants obey her like children; and the meanest we have has an
ingenuous shame for an offence not always to be seen in children in
other families. I speak freely to you, my old friend; ever since her
sickness, things that gave me the quickest joy before turn now to a
certain anxiety. As the children play in the next room, I know the
poor things by their steps, and am considering what they must do
should they lose their mother in their tender years. The pleasure I
used to take in telling my boy stories of battles, and asking my
girl questions about the disposal of her baby, and the gossipping of
it, is turned into inward reflection and melancholy.’

“He would have gone on in this tender way, when the good lady
entered, and, with an inexpressible sweetness in her countenance,
told us ‘she had been searching her closet for something very good,
to treat such an old friend as I was’. Her husband’s eyes sparkled
with pleasure at the cheerfulness of her countenance; and I saw all
his fears vanish in an instant. The lady observing something in our
looks which showed we had been more serious than ordinary, and
seeing her husband receive her with great concern under a forced
cheerfulness, immediately guessed at what we had been talking of;
and applying herself to me, said, with a smile, ‘Mr. Bickerstaff, do
not believe a word of what he tells you: I shall still live to have
you for my second, as I have often promised you, unless he takes
more care of himself than he has done since his coming to town. You
must know he tells me, that he finds London is a much more healthy
place than the country; for he sees several of his old acquaintances
and schoolfellows are here—_young fellows with fair, full-bottomed
periwigs_. I could scarce keep him this morning from going out
_open-breasted_.’ My friend, who is always extremely delighted with
her agreeable humour, made her sit down with us. She did it with
that easiness which is peculiar to women of sense; and to keep up
the good humour she had brought in with her, turned her raillery
upon me. ‘Mr. Bickerstaff, you remember you followed me one night
from the playhouse; suppose you should carry me thither to-morrow
night, and lead me in the front box.’ This put us into a long field
of discourse about the beauties who were the 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 of eight years old. I perceived him a
very great historian in _Aesop’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 of Don Bellianis 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 mismanagement of
John Hickerthrift, find fault with the passionate temper in Bevis of
Southampton, and loved St. George for being the champion of England;
and by this means had his thoughts insensibly moulded into the
notions of discretion, virtue, and honour. I was extolling his
accomplishments, when his mother told me, ‘that the little girl who
led me in this morning was, in her way, a better scholar than he.
Betty,’ said she, ‘deals chiefly in fairies and sprites; and
sometimes in a winter night will terrify the maids with her
accounts, until they are afraid to go up to bed.’

“I sat with them until 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 return to my family; that is to say, to my maid, my dog, my
cat, who only can be the better or worse for what happens to
me.”—_The Tatler._