"MR. SPECTATOR,

"Moorfiel.ls, October 4, 1712.

"HAVING long considered whether there be any trade wanting in this great city, after having surveyed very attentively all kinds of ranks and professions, I do not find, in any quarter of the town, an Oneirocritic, or, in plain English, an interpreter of dreams. For want of so useful a person, there are several good people who are very much puzzled in this particular, and dream a whole year together, without being ever the wiser for it. I hope I am pretty well qualified for this office, having studied by candlelight all the rules of art which have been laid down upon this subject. My great uncle, by my wife's side, was a Scotch Highlander, and second-sighted. I have four fingers and two thumbs upon one hand, and was born on the longest night of the year. My christian and surname begin and end with the same letters. I am lodged in Moorfields, in a house that for these fifty years has been always tenanted by a conjurer.

one.

"If you had been in company, so much as myself, with ordinary women of the town, you must know that there are many of them who, every day in their lives, upon seeing or hearing of any thing that is unexpected, cry, 'My dream is out;' and cannot go to sleep in quiet the next night, till something or other has happened, which has expounded the visions of the preceding There are others who are in very great pain for not being able to recover the circumstances of a dream, that made strong impressions upon them while it lasted. In short, sir, there are many whose waking thoughts are wholly employed on their sleeping ones. For the benefit, therefore, of this curious and inquisitive part of my fellow-subjects, I shall, in the first place, tell those persons what they dreamt of, who fancy they never dream at all. In the next place, I shall make out any dream, upon hearing a single circumstance of it; and, in the last place, shall

expound to them the good or bad fortune which such dreams portend. If they do not presage good luck, I shall desire nothing for my pains not questioning, at the same time, that those who consult me, will be so reasonable as to afford me a moderate share out of any considerable estate, profit, or emolument, which I shall thus discover to them. I interpret to the poor for nothing, on condition that their names may be inserted in public advertisements, to attest the truth of such my interpretations. As for people of quality, or others, who are indisposed, and do not care to come in person, I can interpret their dreams by seeing their water. I set aside one day in a week for lovers; and interpret by the great for any gentlewoman who is turned of sixty, after the rate of half a crown per week, with the usual allowances for good luck. I have several rooms and apartments fitted up, at reasonable rates, for such as have not conveniences for dreaming at their own houses.

Preserv'd from shame by numbers on our side.

THERE is something very sublime, though very fanciful, in Plato's description of the Supreme Being, that 'Truth is his body, and light his shadow.' According to this definition, there is nothing so contradictory to his nature, as error and falsehood. The Platonists have so just a notion of the Almighty's aversion to every thing which is false and erroneous, that they looked upon truth as no less necessary than virtue, to qualify a human

soul for the enjoyment of a separate state.

For this reason, as

they recommended moral duties to qualify and season the will for a future life, so they prescribed several contemplations and sciences to rectify the understanding. Thus Plato has called mathematical demonstrations the cathartics or purgatives of the soul, as being the most proper means to cleanse it from error, and to give it a relish of truth; which is the natural food and nourishment of the understanding, as virtue is the perfection and happiness of the will.

There are many authors who have shewn wherein the malignity of a lie consists, and set forth in proper colours the heinousness of the offence. I shall here consider one particular kind of this crime, which has not been so much spoken to; I mean that abominable practice of party-lying. This vice is so very predominant among us at present, that a man is thought of no principles, who does not propagate a certain system of lies. The coffee-houses are supported by them, the press is choked with them, eminent authors live upon them. Our bottle-conversation is so infected with them, that a party-lie, is grown as fashionable an entertainment, as a lively catch or a merry story: the truth of it is, half the great talkers in the nation would be struck dumb, were this fountain of discourse dried up. There is, however, one advantage resulting from this detestable practice; the very appearances of truth are so little regarded, that lies are at present discharged in the air, and begin to hurt nobody. When we hear a party-story from a stranger, we consider whether he is a Whig or a Tory that relates it, and immediately conclude they are words of course in which the honest gentleman designs to recommend his zeal, without any concern for his veracity. A man is looked upon as bereft of common sense, that gives credit to the relations of party-writers; nay, his own friends shake their heads at him, and consider him in no other light than as an officious

tool, or a well-meaning ideot. When it was formerly the fashion to husband a lie, and trump it up in some extraordinary emergency, it generally did execution, and was not a little serviceable to the faction that made use of it: but at present every man is upon his guard, the artifice has been too often repeated to take effect.

I have frequently wondered to see men of probity, who would scorn to utter a falsehood for their own particular advantage, give so readily into a lie when it is become the voice of their faction, notwithstanding they are thoroughly sensible of it as such. How is it possible for those who are men of honour in their persons, thus to become notorious liars in their party? If we look into the bottom of this matter, we may find, I think, three reasons for it, and at the same time discover the insufficiency of these rea sons to justify so criminal a practice.

In the first place, men are apt to think that the guilt of a lie, and consequently the punishment, may be very much diminished, if not wholly worn out, by the multitudes of those who partake in it. Though the weight of a falsehood would be too heavy for one to bear, it grows light in their imaginations, when it is shared among many. But in this case a man very much deceives himself; guilt, when it spreads through numbers, is not so properly divided as multiplied; every one is criminal in proportion to the offence which he commits, not to the number of those who are his companions in it. Both the crime and the penalty lie as heavy upon every individual of an offending multitude, as they would upon any single person, had none shared with him in the offence. In a word, the division of guilt is like that of matter; though it may not be separated into infinite portions, every portion shall have the whole essence of matter in it, and consist of as many parts as the whole did before it was divided.

But in the second place, though multitudes, who join in a lie,

cannot exempt themselves from the guilt, they may from the shame of it. The scandal of a lie is in a manner lost and annihilated, when diffused among several thousands; as a drop of the blackest tincture wears away and vanishes, when mixed and confused in a considerable body of water; the blot is still in it, but is not able to discover itself. This is certainly a very great motive to several party-offenders, who avoid crimes, not as they are prejudicial to their virtue, but to their reputation. It is enough to shew the weakness of this reason, which palliates guilt without removing it, that every man who is influenced by it declares himself in effect an infamous hypocrite, prefers the appearance of virtue to its reality, and is determined in his conduct neither by the dictates of his own conscience, the suggestions of true honour, nor the principles of religion.

The third and last great motive for men's joining in a popular falsehood, or, as I have hitherto called it, a party-lie, notwithstanding they are convinced of it as such, is the doing good to a cause which every party may be supposed to look upon as the most meritorious. The unsoundness of this principle has been' so often exposed, and is so universally acknowledged, that a man must be an utter stranger to the principles, either of natural religion or Christianity, who suffers himself to be guided by it. If a man might promote the supposed good of his country by the blackest calumnies and falsehoods, our nation abounds more in patriots than any other of the Christian world. When Pompey was desired not to set sail in a tempest that would hazard his life, 'It is necessary for me (says he) to sail, but it is not necessary for me to live:' every man should say to himself, with the

a Neither. The disjunctive "neither" is improperly used, when more than two things come under consideration. The author should either have left out "the suggestions of true honour," or, he should have said, "is not determined by the dictates of his own conscience, the suggestions of true honour, wr the principles of religion '—H.