The fourth professor is to teach the whole art of political characters and hieroglyphics; and to the end that they may be perfect also in this practice, they are not to send a note to one another (though it be but to borrow a Tacitus or a Machiavel) which is not written in cipher. Their fifth professor, it is thought, will be chosen out of the society of Jesuits, and is to be well read in the controversies of probable doctrines, mental reservation, and the rights of princes. This learned man is to instruct them in the grammar, syntax, and construing part of Treaty Latin; how to distinguish between the spirit and the letter, and likewise demonstrate how the same form of words may lay an obligation upon any prince in Europe, different from that which it lays upon his most Christian Majesty. He is likewise to teach them the art of finding Baws, loop-holes, and evasions in the most solemn compacts, and particularly a great rabbinical secret, revived of late years by the fraternity of Jesuits, namely, that contradictory interpretations of the same article may both of them be true and valid. When our statesmen are sufficiently improved by these several instructors, they are to receive their last polishing from one who is to act among them as master of the ceremonies. This gentleman is to give them lectures upon the important points of the elbowchair and the stair-head, to instruct them in the different situations of the right hand, and to furnish them with bows and inclinations of all sizes, measures, and proportions. In short, this professor is to give the society their stiffening, and infuse into their manners that beautiful political starch, which may qualify them for levees, conferences, visits, and make them shine in what vulgar minds are apt to look apon as trifles. I have not yet heard any further particulars, which are to be observed in this society of unfledged statesmen; but I must confess, had I a son of five-andtwenty, that should take it into his head at that age to set up for a politician, I think I should go near to disinherit him for a blockhead. Besides, I should be apprehensive lest the same arts which are to enable him to negotiate between potentates, might a little infect his ordinary behaviour between man and man. There is no question but these young Machiavels will in a little time turn their college upside down with plots and stratagems, and lay as many schemes to circumvent one another in a frog or a salad, as they may hereafter put in practice to overreach a neighbouring prince or state. We are told that the Spartans, though they punished theft in the young men when it was discovered, will deserve our serious consideration, especially if we remember that our country is more famous for producing men of integrity than statesmen; and that, on the contrary, French truth and British policy make a conspicuous figure in nothing: as the Earl of Rochester has very well observed in his admirable poem upon that barren subject.-L. No. 306.] WEDNESDAY, FEB. 20, 1711-12. What beauty, or what chastity, can bear "MR. SPECTATOR, "I WRITE this to communicate to you a misfo tune which frequently happens, and therefore deserves a consolatory discourse on the subject. I was within this half-year in the possession of as much beauty and as many lovers as any young lady in England. But my admirers have left me, and I cannot complain of their behaviour. I have within that time had the small-pox: and this face, which (according to many amorous epistles which I have by me) was the seat of all that is beautiful in woman, is now disfigured with scars. It goes to the very soul of me to speak what I really think of my face; and though I think I did not over-rate my beauty while I had it, it has extremely advanced in its value with me, now it is lost. There is one circum stance which makes my case very particular; the ugliest fellow that ever pretended to me, was and is most in my favour, and he treats me at present the most unreasonably. If you could make him return an obligation which he owes me, in liking a person that is not amiable. But there is, I fear, no possibility of making passion move by the rules of reason and gratitude. But say what you can to one who has survived herself, and knows not how to act in a new being. My lovers are at the feet of my rivals, my rivals are every day bewailing me, and I cannot enjoy what I am, by reason of the distracting reflection upon what I was. Consider the woman I was did not die of old age, but I was taken off in the prime of youth, and according to the course of nature may have forty years after-life to come. I have nothing of myself left which I like, but that I am, Sir, your most humble Servant, "PARTHENISSA." When Louis of France had lost the battle of Ralooked upon it as honourable if it succeeded. Pro-milies, the addresses to him at that time were full vided the conveyance was clean and unsuspected, a of his fortitude, and they turned his misfortune to youth might afterwards boast of it. This, say the his glory; in that, during his prosperity, he could historians, was to keep them sharp, and to hinder never have manifested his heroic constancy under them from being imposed upon, either in their pub-distresses, and so the world had lost the most emilie or private negotiations. Whether any such re-nent part of his character. Parthenissa's condition laxations of morality, such little jeux d'esprit, ought not to be allowed in this intended seminary of politicians, I shall leave to the wisdom of their founder. In the mean time, we have fair warning given us by this doughty body of statesmen; and as Sylla saw many Mariuses in Cæsar, so I think we may discover many Toreys in this college of academicians. Whatever we think of ourselves, I am afraid neither our Smyrna nor St. James's will be a match for it. Our coffee-houses are, indeed, very good institutions; but whether or no these our British schools of polities may furnish out as able envoys and secretaries as an academy that is set apart for that purpose, gives her the same opportunity: and to resign conquests is a task as difficult in a beauty as a hero. In the very entrance upon this work she must burn all her love-letters; or since she is so candid as not to call her lovers, who follow her no longer, unfaithful, it would be a very good beginning of a new life from that of a beauty, to send them back to those who writ them, with this honest inscription, "Articles of a marriage treaty broken off by the smallpox." I have known but one instance where a matter of this kind went on after a like misfortune, where the lady, who was a woman of spirit, writ this billet to her lover :— ways of being uneasy and displeased; and this happens for no reason in the world, but that poor Liddy knows she has no such thing as a certain negligence that is so becoming; that there is not I know not what in her air; and that if she talks like a fool, there is no one will say, "Well! I know not what it is, but every thing pleases when she speaks it." Ask any of the husbands of your great beauties, and they will tell you that they hate their wives nine hours of every day they pass together. There is such a particularity for ever affected by them that they are encumbered with their charms in all they say or do. They pray at public devotions as they are beauties. They converse on ordinary occasions as they are beauties. Ask Belinda what it is o'clock, and she is at a stand whether so great a beauty should answer you. In a word, I think, instead of offering to administer consolation to Parthenissa, I should congratulate her metamorphosis; and however she thinks she was not the least insolent in the prosperity of her charms, she was enough so to find she may make herself a much more agreeable creature in her present adversity. The en deavour to please is highly promoted by a consciousness that the approbation of the person you would be agreeable to, is a favour you do not deserve; for in this case assurance of success is the most certain way to disappointment. Good-nature will always supply the absence of beauty, but beauty cannot long supply the absence of good-nature. "MADAM, POSTSCRIPT. February 18. If Parthenissa can now possess her own mind and think as little of her beauty as she ought to have done when she had it, there will be no great diminution of her charms; and if she was formerly affected too much with them, an easy behaviour will more than make up for the loss of them. Take the whole sex together, and you find those who have the strongest possession of men's hearts are not eminent for their beauty. You see it often happen that those who engage men to the greatest violence, are such as those who are strangers to them would take to be remarkably defective for that end. The fondest lover I know, said to me one day in a crowd of women at an entertainment of music, "You have often heard me talk of my beloved; that woman there," continued he, smiling, when he had fixed my "is her very picture." The lady he showed me was by much the least remarkable for beauty of any in the whole assembly; but having my curiosity extremely raised, I could not keep my eyes off her. Her eyes at last met mine, and with a sudden surprise she looked round her to see who No. 307.] THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 1711-12. near her was remarkably handsome that I was gazing at. This little act explained the secret. She did not understand herself for the object of love, and therefore she was so. The lover is a very honest plain man; and what charmed him was a person that goes along with him in the cares and joys of life, not taken up with herself, but sincerely attentive, with a ready and cheerful mind, to accompany him in either. eye, I can tell Parthenissa for her comfort, that the beauties, generally speaking, are the most impertinent and disagreeable of women. An apparent desire of admiration, a reflection upon their own merit, and a precise behaviour in their general conduct, are almost inseparable accidents in beauties. All you obtain of them, is granted to importunity and solicitation for what did not deserve so much of your time, and you recover from the possession of it as out of a dream. me not disoblige you, but you must explain yourself "I have yours of this day, wherein you twice bid further, before I know what to do. T. "Your most obedient Servant, Versate diu, quid ferre recusent, ROSCOMMON. I AM SO well pleased with the following letter, that I am in hopes it will not be a disagreeable present to the public: SIR, Though I believe none of your readers more admire your agreeable manner of working up trifles than myself, yet as your speculations are now swelling into volumes, and will in all probability pass down to future ages, methinks I would have no single subject in them, wherein the general good of mankind is concerned, left unfinished. "I have a long time expected with great impatience that you would enlarge upon the ordinary You are ashamed of the vagaries of fancy which mistakes which are committed in the education of so strangely misled you, and your admiration of a our children. I the more easily flattered mysel. beauty, merely as such, is inconsistent with a toler- that you would one time or other resume this conable reflection upon yourself. The cheerful good-sideration, because you tell us that your 168th humoured creatures, into whose heads it never entered that they could make any man unhappy, are the persons formed for making men happy. There is Miss Liddy can dance a jig, raise paste, write a good hand, keep an account, give a reasonable answer, and do as she is bid; while her eldest sister, Madam Martha, is out of humour, has the spleen, learns by reports of people of higher quality new paper was only composed of a few broken hints; but finding myself hitherto disappointed, I have ventured to send you my own thoughts on this subject. "I remember Pericles, in his famous oration at the funeral of those Athenian young men who perished in the Samian expedition, has a thought very much celebrated by several ancient critics, namely, that the loss which the commonwealth been tried at several parts of learning, was upon suffered by the destruction of its youth, was like the point of being dismissed as a hopeless blockthe loss which the year would suffer by the destruc- head, until one of the fathers took it into his head tion of the spring. The prejudice which the public to make an essay of his parts in geometry, which, sustains from a wrong education of children, is an it seems, hit his genius so luckily, that he afterevil of the same nature, as it in a manner starves ward became one of the greatest mathematicians of posterity, and defrauds our country of those per- the age. It is commonly thought that the sagacity sons, who, with due care, might make an eminent of these fathers, in discovering the talent of a figure in their respective posts of life. young student, has not a little contributed to the figure which their order has made in the world. "I have seen a book written by Juan Huartes, a Spanish physician, entitled Examen de Ingenios, wherein he lays it down as one of his first positions, that nothing but nature can qualify a man for learning; and that without a proper temperament for the particular art or science which he studies, his utmost pains and application, assisted by the ablest masters, will be to no purpose. "He illustrates this by the example of Tully's son Marcus. "Cicero, in order to accomplish his son in that sort of learning which he designed him for, sent him to Athens, the most celebrated academy at that time in the world, and where a vast concourse, out of the most polite nations, could not but furnish the young gentleman with a multitude of great examples and accidents that might insensibly have instructed him in his designed studies. He placed him under the care of Cratippus, who was one of the greatest philosophers of the age, and as if all the books which were at that time written had not been sufficient for his use, he composed others on purpose for him: notwithstanding all this, history informs us that Marcus proved a mere blockhead, and that nature (who, it seems, was even with the son for her prodigality to the father) rendered him incapable of improving by all the rules of eloquence, the precepts of philosophy, his own endeavours, and the most refined conversation in Athens. This author therefore proposes, that there should be certain triers or examiners appointed by the state, to inspect the genius of every particular boy, and to allot him the part that is most suitable to his natural talents. "Plato in one of his dialogues tells us, that Socrates, who was the son of a midwife, used to say, that as his mother, though she was very skilful in her profession, could not deliver a woman unless she was first with child, so neither could he himself raise knowledge out of a mind where nature had not planted it. "Accordingly, the method this philosopher took, of instructing his scholars by several interrogatories or questions, was only helping the birth, and bringing their own thoughts to light. "The Spanish doctor above mentioned, as his speculations grew more refined, asserts that every kind of wit has a particular science corresponding to it, and in which alone it can be truly excellent. As to those geniuses, which may seem to have an equal aptitude for several things, he regards them as so many unfinished pieces of nature wrought off in haste. "How different from this manner of education is that which prevails in our own country! where nothing is more usual than to see forty or fifty boys of several ages, tempers, and inclinations, ranged together in the same class, employed upon the same authors, and enjoined the same tasks! Whatever their natural genius may be, they are all to be made poets, historians, and orators alike. They are all obliged to have the same capacity, to bring in the same tale of verse, and to furnish out the same portion of prose. Every boy is bound to have as good a memory as the captain of the form. To be brief, instead of adapting studies to the particular genius of a youth, we expect from the young man, that he should adapt his genius to his studies. This, I must confess, is not so much to be imputed to the instructor as to the parent, who will never be brought to believe, that his son is not capable of performing as much as his neighbour's, and that he may not make him whatever he has a mind to. "If the present age is more laudable than those which have gone before it in any single particular, it is in that generous care which several well-disposed persons have taken in the education of poor children: and as in these charity-schools there is no place left for the overweening fondness of a parent, the directors of them would make them beneficial to the public, if they considered the precept which I have been thus long inculcating. They might easily, by well examining the parts of those under their inspection, make a just distribution of them into proper classes and divisions, and allot to them this or that particular study, as their genius qualifies them for professions, trades, handicrafts, or service, by sea or land. "How is this kind of regulation wanting in the three great professions! "Dr. South, complaining of persons who took upon them holy orders, though altogether unqualified for the sacred function, says somewhere, that many a man runs his head against a pulpit, who might have done his country excellent service at the plough-tail. "In like manner many a lawyer, who makes but an indifferent figure at the bar, might have made a very elegant waterman, and have shined at the Temple stairs, though he can get no business in the house. "I have known a corn-cutter, who with a right education would have been an excellent physician. "To descend lower, are not our streets filled with "There are indeed but very few to whom nature sagacious draymen, and politicians in liveries? We has been so unkind, that they are not capable of have several tailors of six foot high, and meet with shining in some science or other. There is a cer- many a broad pair of shoulders that are thrown tain bias towards knowledge in every mind, which away upon a barber, when perhaps at the same time may be strengthened and improved by proper ap-we see a pigmy porter reeling under a burden, who plications. "The story of Clavius is very well known. He was entered in a college of Jesuits, and after having Christopher Clavius, a geometrician and astronomer, author of five volumes in folio, who died at Rome in 1612, aged 75. might have managed a needle with much dexterity, or have snapped his fingers with great ease to himself, and advantage to the public. "The Spartans, though they acted with the spirit which I am here speaking of, carried it much further than what I propose. Among them it was not lawful for the father himself to bring up his children after his own fancy. As soon as they were seven years old, they were all listed in several companies, and disciplined by the public. The old men were spectators of their performances, who often raised quarrels among them, and set them at strife with one another, that by those early discoveries they might see how their several talents lay, and, without any regard to their quality, disposed of them accordingly, for the service of the commonwealth. By this means, Sparta soon became the mistress of Greece, and famous through the whole world for her civil and military discipline. "If you think this letter deserves a place among your speculations, I may perhaps trouble you with some other thoughts on the same subject. X. I am," &c. No. 308.] FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1711-12. Fronte petet Lalage maritum.-HOR. Od. 5. lib. ii. ver. 15. Her love, nor blush to own her flame-CREECH. "MR. SPECTATOR, but her temper is somewhat different from that of Lady Anvil. My lady's whole time and thoughts are spent in keeping up to the mode both in apparel and furniture. All the goods in my house have been changed three times in seven years. I have had seven children by her: and by our marriage articles she was to have her apartment new furnished as often as she lay in. Nothing in our house is useful but that which is fashionable; my pewter holds out generally half a year, my plate a full twelvemonth; chairs are not fit to sit in that were made two years since, nor beds fit for any thing but to sleep in, that have stood up above that time. My dear is of opinion that an old fashioned grate consumes coals, but gives no heat. If she drinks out of glasses of last year she cannot distinguish wine from small-beer. Oh, dear Sir, you may guess all Yours. the rest. "P. S. I could bear even all this, if I were not obliged also to eat fashionably. I have a plain stomach, and have a constant loathing of whatever comes to my own table; for which reason I dine at the chop-house three days in a week; where the good company wonders they never see you of late. I am sure, by your unprejudiced discourses, you love broth better than soup." "MR. SPECTATOR, Will's, Feb. 19. a person as much I am one of your have laid a wager, judgment. You are so generally read, that what you speak of will be read. This with men of sense and taste, is all that is wanting to recommend The Historian. "I am, Sir, your daily Advocate, "I GIVE you this trouble in order to propose myself to you as an assistant in the weighty cares which you have thought fit to undergo for the public good. I am a very great lover of women, that is to say, talked of as any man in town. You may believe you are honestly; and as it is natural to study what one likes, I have industriously applied myself to under- best friends in this house, and and so honest a fellow, that stand them. The present circumstance relating to you are so candid a man, them is, that I think there wants under you, as dation of a newspaper called The Historian. I have you will print this letter, though it is in recommenSpectator, a person to be distinguished and vested read it carefully, and find it written with skill, good in the power and quality of a censor on marriages. I lodge at the Temple, and know, by seeing women sense, modesty, and fire. You must allow the town come hither, and afterward observing them con- but you have so much sense of the world's change is kinder to you than you deserve; and I doubt not ducted by their counsel to judges' chambers, that of humour, and instability of all human things, as there is a custom in case of making conveyance of a wife's estate, that she is carried to a judge's apart-is to communicate it to others with good-nature and to understand, that the only way to preserve favour ment, and left alone with him, to be examined in private, whether she has not been frightened or sweetened by her spouse into the act she is going to do, or whether it is of her own free will. Now, if this be a method founded upon reason and equity, why should there not be also a proper officer for examining such as are entering into the state of matrimony, whether they are forced by parents on one side, or moved by interest only on the other, to come together, and bring forth such awkward heirs as are the product of half love and constrained compliances? There is nobody, though I say it myself, would be fitter for this office than I am: for I am an ugly fellow, of great wit and sagacity. My father was a hale country 'squire, my mother a witty beauty of no fortune. The match was made by consent of my mother's parents against her own, and I am the child of the rape on the wedding night; so that I am as healthy and as homely as my father, but as sprightly and agreeable as my mother. It would be of great ease to you, if you would use me under you, that matches might be better regulated for the future, and we might have no more children of squabbles. I shall not reveal all my pretensions until I receive your answer: and am, Sir, "Your most humble Servant, "MR. SPECTATOR, "READER GENTLE." I was very much surprised this morning that any one should find out my lodging, and know it so well as to come directly to my closet-door, and knock at it, to give me the following letter. When I came out I opened it, and saw, by a very strong pair of shoes and a warm coat the bearer had on, that he walked all the way to bring it me, though dated from York. My misfortune is that I cannot talk, and I found the messenger had so much of me, that he could think better than speak. He had, I observed, a polite discerning, hid under a shrewd rusticity. He delivered the paper with a Yorkshire tone and a town leer. "MR. SPECTATOR, "The privilege you have indulged John Trot has proved of very bad consequence to our illustrious assembly, which, besides the many excellent maxims it is founded upon, is remarkable for the extraordinary decorum observed in it. One instance of which is, that the carders (who are always of the first quality) never begin to play until the French dances are finished, and the country dances begin; but John Trot having now got your commission in his pocket (which every one here has a profound respect for) has the assurance to set up for a minuet-dancer. Not only so, but he has brought down upon us the whole body of the Trots, which are very numerous, with their auxiliaries the hobblers and the skippers, by which means the time is so much wasted, that, unless we break all rules of government, it must redound to the utter subversion of the brag-table, the discreet members of which value time, as Fribble's wife does her pin-money. We are pretty well assured that your indulgence to Trot was only in relation to country dances; however, we have deferred issuing an order of council upon the premises, hoping to get you to join with us, that Trot, nor any of his clan, presume for the future to dance any but country dances, unless a hornpipe upon a festival day. If you will do this, you will oblige a great many ladies, and particularly your most humble Servant, "York, Feb. 16. "ELIZ. SWEEPSTAKES." "I never meant any other than that Mr. Trot should confine himself to country dances. And I further direct, that he shall take out none but his own relations according to their nearness of blood, but any gentlewoman may take out him. "London, Feb. 21. T. "THE SPECTATOR." No. 309.] SATURDAY, FEB. 23, 1711-12. VIRG. Æn. vi. ver. 264. Ye realms, yet unreveal'd to human sight, described in the first book as besmeared with the It may be worth while to observe, that Milton has represented this violent impetuous spirit, who is hurried on by such precipitate passions, as the first that rises in the assembly to give his opinion upon their present posture of affairs. Accordingly he declares himself abruptly for war, and appears incensed at his companions for losing so much time as even to deliberate upon it. All his sentiments are rash, audacious and desperate. Such as that of arming themselves with their tortures, and turning their punishments upon him who inflicted them. No, let us rather choose, Arm'd with hell flames and fury, all at once Against the tort'rer; when to meet the noise Of his almighty engine he shall hear His preferring annihilation to shame or misery is also highly suitable to his character; as the comfort he draws from their disturbing the peace of heaven, that if it be not victory it is revenge, is a senti ment truly diabolical, and becoming the bitterness of this implacable spirit.. I HAVE before observed in general, that the persons whom Milton introduces into his poem always discover such sentiments and behaviour as are in a peculiar manner conformable to their respective characters. Every circumstance in their speeches and Belial is described in the first book as the idol of actions is with great justice and delicacy adapted the lewd and luxurious. He is in the second book, to the persons who speak and act. As the poet very pursuant to that description, characterized as timomuch excels in this consistency of his characters, I rous and slothful; and if we look into the sixth shall beg leave to consider several passages of the book, we find him celebrated in the battle of angels second book in this light. That superior greatness for nothing but that scoffing speech which he makes and mock-majesty which is ascribed to the prince to Satan, on their supposed advantage over the of the fallen angels, is admirably preserved in the enemy. As his appearance is uniform, and of abeginning of this book. His opening and closing piece, in these three several views, we find his senthe debate; his taking on himself that great entertiments in the infernal assembly every way conformprise, at the thought of which the whole infernal assembly trembled; his encountering the hideous phantom who guarded the gates of hell, and appeared to him in all his terrors; are instances of that proud and daring mind which could not brook submission, even to Omnipotence ! Satan was now at hand, and from his seat The same boldness and intrepidity of behaviour discovers itself in the several adventures which he meets with, during his passage through the regions of unformed matter, and particularly in his address to those tremendous powers who are described as presiding over it. The part of Moloch is likewise, in all its circumstances, full of that fire and fury which distinguish this spirit from the rest of the fallen angels. He is SPECTATOR.-Nos. 45 & 46. able to his character. Such are his apprehensions of a second battle, his horrors of annihilation, his preferring to be miserable, rather than "not to be." I need not observe, that the contrast of thought in this speech, and that which precedes it, gives an agreeable variety to the debate. Mammon's character is so fully drawn in the first book, that the poet adds nothing to it in the second. We were before told, that he was the first who taught mankind to ransack the earth for gold and silver, and that he was the architect of Pandamo. nium, or the infernal palace, where the evil spirits were to meet in council. His speech in this book is every way suitable to so depraved a character. How proper is that reflection of their being unable to taste the happiness of heaven, were they actually there, in the mouth of one, who, while he was in heaven, is said to have had his mind dazzled with the outward pomps and glories of the place, and to have been more intent on the riches of the pavement |