that Augustus, upon his return to Rome at | lascivious manner which all our young genthe end of a war, received complaints that tlemen use in public, and examine our eyes too great a number of the young men of with a petulancy in their own which is a quality were unmarried. The emperor downright affront to modesty. A disdainful thereupon assembled the whole equestrian look on such an occasion is returned with a order; and, having separated the married countenance rebuked, but by averting their from the single, did particular honours to eyes from the woman of honour and dethe former; but he told the latter, that is cency to some flippant creature, who will, to say, Mr. Spectator, he told the bache- as the phrase is, be kinder. I must set lors, That their lives and actions had been down things as they come into my head, so peculiar, that he knew not by what name without standing upon order. Ten thousand to call them; not by that of men, for they to one but the gay gentleman who stared, performed nothing that was manly; not by at the same time, is a housekeeper; for you that of citizens, for the city might perish must know they are got into a humour of notwithstanding their care; nor by that of late of being very regular in their sins; and Romans, for they designed to extirpate the a young fellow shall keep his four maids Roman name. Then, proceeding to show and three footmen with the greatest gravity his tender care and hearty affection for his imaginable. There are no less than six of people, he farther told them, that their these venerable housekeepers of my accourse of life was of such pernicious conse- quaintance. This humour among young quence to the glory and grandeur of the men of condition is imitated by all the world Roman nation, that he could not choose but below them, and a general dissolution* of tell them, that all other crimes put together manners arises from this one source of could not equalize theirs, for they were libertinism, without shame or reprehension guilty of murder, in not suffering those to in the male youth. It is from this one founbe born which should proceed from them; tain that so many beautiful helpless young of impiety, in causing the names and ho- women are sacrificed and given up to lewdnours of their ancestors to cease; and of ness, shame, poverty, and disease. It is to sacrilege, in destroying their kind, which this also that so many excellent young woproceed from the immortal gods, and hu- men, who might be patterns of conjugal man nature, the principal thing consecrated affection, and parents of a worthy race, to them: therefore, in this respect, they pine under unhappy passions for such as dissolved the government in disobeying its have not attention to observe, or virtue laws; betrayed their country, by making it enough to prefer them to their_common barren and waste; nay, and demolished wenches. Now, Mr. Spectator, I must be their city, in depriving it of inhabitants. free to own to you that I myself suffer a And he was sensible that all this proceeded tasteless insipid being, from a consideration not from any kind of virtue or abstinence, I have for a man who would not, as he said but from a looseness and wantonness which in my hearing, resign his liberty, as he calls ought never to be encouraged in any civil it, for all the beauty and wealth the whole government. There are no particulars sex is possessed of. Such calamities as these dwelt upon that let us into the conduct of would not happen, if it could possibly be these young worthies, whom this great brought about, that by fining bachelors as emperor treated with so much justice and papists, convicts, or the like, they were indignation; but any one who observes what distinguished to their disadvantage from the passes in this town may very well frame to rest of the world, who fall in with the meahimself a notion of their riots and debauche-sures of civil society. Lest you should think ries all night, and their apparent prepara- I speak this as being, according to the tions for them all day. It is not to be doubted senseless rude phrase, a malicious old maid, but these Romans never passed any of their I shall acquaint you I am a woman of contime innocently but when they were asleep, dition, not now three-and-twenty, and have and never slept but when they were weary had proposals from a least ten different and heavy with excesses, and slept only to men, and the greater number of them have prepare themselves for the repetition of upon the upshot refused me. Something or them. If you did your duty as a Spectator, other is always amiss when the lover takes you would carefully examine into the num- to some new wench. A settlement is easily ber of births, marriages, and burials; and excepted against; and there is very little when you had deducted out of your deaths recourse to avoid the vicious part of our all such as went out of the world without youth, but throwing oneself away upon marrying, then cast up the number of both some lifeless blockhead, who, though he is sexes born within such a term of years last without vice, is also without virtue. Nowpast; you might, from the single people de-a-days we must be contented if we can get parted, make some useful inferences or creatures which are not bad; good are not guesses how many there are left unmarried, to be expected. Mr. Spectator, I sat near and raise some useful scheme for the amendment of the age in that particular. I have not patience to proceed gravely on this abominable libertinism; for I cannot but reflect, as I am writing to you, upon a certain you the other day, and think I did not displease your spectatorial eye-sight; which I shall be a better judge of when I see whe * Dissoluteness. :her you take notice of these evils your own I 'RACHEL WELLADAY.' received time out of mind in the common wealth of letters, were not originally esta. blished with an eye to our paper manufacture I shall leave to the discussion of others; and shall only remark farther in this place, that all printers and booksellers take the wall of one another according to the above-mentioned merits of the authors No, 529.] Thursday, November 6, 1712. to whom they respectively belong. Singula quæque locum teneant sortita decenter. Hor. Ars Poet. v. 92. Let every thing have its due place.-Roscommon. UPON the hearing of several late disputes concerning rank and precedence, I could not forbear amusing myself with some observations, which I have made upon the learned world, as to this great particular. By the learned world, I here mean at large, all those who are in any way concerned in works of literature, whether in the writing, printing, or repeating part. To begin with the writers: I have observed that the author of a folio, in all companies and conversations, sets himself above the author of a quarto; the author of a quarto above the author of an octavo; and so on, by a gradual descent and subordination, to an author in twenty-fours. This distinction is so well observed, that in an assembly of the learned, I have seen a folio writer place himself in an elbow chair, when the author of a duodecimo has, out of a just deference to his superior quality, seated himself upon a squab. In a word, authors are usually ranged in company after the same manner as their works are upon a shelf. The most minute pocket author hath beneath him the writers of all pamphlets, or works that are only stitched. As for the pamphleteer, he takes place of none but the authors of single sheets, and of that fraternity who publish their labours on certain days, or on every day in the week. I do not find that the precedency among the individuals in this latter class of writers is yet settled. For my own part, I have had so strict a regard to the ceremonial which prevails in the learned world, that I never presumed to take place of a pamphleteer, until my daily papers were gathered into those two first volumes which have already appeared. After which, I naturally jumped over the heads not only of all pamphleteers, but of every octavo writer in Great Britain that had written but one book. I am also informed by my bookseller, that six octavos have at all times been looked upon as an equivalent to a folio; which I take notice of, the rather because I would not have the learned world surprised, if, after the publication of half a dozen volumes, I take my place accordingly. When my scattered forces are thus rallied, and reduced into regular bodies, I flatter myself that I shall make`no despicable figure at the head of them. Whether these rules, which have been I come now to that point of precedency which is settled among the three learned professions by the wisdom of our laws. I need not here take notice of the rank which is allotted to every doctor in each of these professions, who are all of them, though not so high as knights, yet a degree above 'squires; this last order of men, being the illiterate body of the nation, are conse quently thrown together in a class below the three learned professions. I mention this for the sake of several rural 'squires, whose reading does not rise so high as to The present State of England, and who are often apt to usurp that precedency which, by the laws of their country, is not due to them. Their want of learning, which has planted them in this station, may in some measure extenuate their misdemeanor; and our professors ought to pardon them when they offend in this particular, considering that they are in a state of ignorance, or, as we usually say, do not know their right hand from their left. There is another tribe of persons who are retainers to the learned world, and who regulate themselves upon all occasions by several laws peculiar to their body; I mean the players or actors of both sexes. Among these it is a standing and uncontroverted principle, that a tragedian always takes place of a comedian; and it is very well known the merry drolls who make us laugh are always placed at the lower end of the table, and in every entertainment give way to the dignity of the buskin. It is a stage maxim, Once a king, and always a king. For this reason it would be thought very absurd in Mr. Bullock, notwithstanding the height and gracefulness of his person, to sit at the right hand of a hero, though he were but five foot high. The same distinction is observed among the ladies of the theatre. Queens and heroines preserve their rank in private conversation, while those who are waiting-women and maids of honour upon the stage keep their distance also behind the scenes. I shall only add that by a parity of reason, all writers of tragedy look upon it as their due to be seated, served, or saluted, before comic writers: those who deal in tragi-comedy.usually taking their seats between the authors of either side. There has been a long dispute for precedency between the tragic and heroic poets. Aristotle would have the latter yield the pas to the former; but Mr. Dryden, and many others, would never submit to this decision. Bur lesque writers pay the same deference to the heroic, as comic writers to their serious | thought very pretty company. But let us brothers in the drama. hear what he says for himself. By this short table of laws order is kept up, and distinction preserved, in the whole republic of letters. 0. No. 530.] Friday, November 7, 1712. Sic visum Veneri; cui placet impares Hor. Od. xxxiii. Lib. 1. 10. Thus Venus sports; the rich, the base, To disagreeing love provokes; When cruelly jocose, She ties the fatal noose, And binds unequals to the brazen yokes.-Creech. 'MY WORTHY FRIEND,-I question not but you, and the rest of my acquaintance, wonder that I, who have lived in the smoke and gallantries of the town for thirty years together, should all on a sudden grow fond of a country life. Had not my dog of a steward ran away as he did, without making up his accounts, I had still been immersed in sin and sea-coal. But since my late forced visit to my estate, I am so pleased with it, that I am resolved to live and die upon it. I am every day abroad among my acres, and can scarce forbear filling my letters with breezes, shades, flowers, meadows, and purling streams. The simplicity of manners, which I have heard you so It is very usual for those who have been often speak of, and which appears here in severe upon marriage, in some part or perfection, charms me wonderfully. As other of their lives, to enter into the frater- an instance of it I must acquaint you, and nity which they have ridiculed, and to see by your means the whole club, that I have their raillery return upon their own heads. lately married one of my tenant's daughI scarce ever knew a woman-hater that did ters. She is born of honest parents; and not, sooner or later, pay for it. Marriage, though she has no portion, she has a great which is a blessing to another man, falls upon deal of virtue. The natural sweetness and such a one as a judgment. Mr. Congreve's innocence of her behaviour, the freshness Old Bachelor is set forth to us with much of her complexion, the unaffected turn of wit and humour, as an example of this her shape and person, shot me through kind. In short, those who have most dis- and through every time I saw her, and did tinguished themselves by railing at the sex more execution upon me in grogram than in general, very often make an honourable the greatest beauty in town or court had amends, by choosing one of the most worth-ever done in brocade. In short, she is such less persons of it for a companion and yokefellow. Hymen takes his revenge in kind on those who turn his mysteries into ridicule. a one as promises me a good heir to my estate; and if by her means I cannot leave to my children what are falsely called the gifts of birth, high titles, and alliances, I My friend Will Honeycomb, who was so hope to convey to them the more real and unmercifully witty upon the women, in a valuable gifts of birth-strong bodies, and couple of letters which I lately communi- healthy constitutions. As for your fine wocated to the public, has given the ladies men, I need not tell thee that I know them. ample satisfaction by marrying a farmer's I have had my share in their graces; but daughter; a piece of news which came to no more of that. It shall be my business our club by the last post. The templar is hereafter to live the life of an honest man, very positive that he has married a dairy- and to act as becomes the master of a famaid: but Will, in his letter to me on this mily. I question not but I shall draw upon occasion, sets the best face upon the matter me the raillery of the town, and be treated that he can, and gives a more tolerable to the tune of, The Marriage-hater Matchaccount of his spouse. I must confess I ed;'* but I am prepared for it. I have been suspected something more than ordinary, as witty upon others, in my time. To tell when upon opening the letter I found that thee truly, I saw such a tribe of fashionable Will was fallen off from his former gayety, young fluttering coxcombs shot up, that I having changed 'Dear Spec,' which was did not think my post of an homme de ruelle his usual salute at the beginning of the any longer tenable. I felt a certain stiffletter, into My worthy Friend,' and sub-ness in my limbs, which entirely destroyed scribed himself in the latter end, at full length, William Honeycomb. In short, the gay, the loud, the vain Will Honeycomb, who had made love to every great fortune that has appeared in town for above thirty years together, and boasted of favours from ladies whom he had never seen, is at length wedded to a plain country girl. His letter gives us the picture of a converted rake. The sober character of the husband is dashed with the man of the town, and enlivened with those little cant phrases which have made my friend Will often the jauntiness of air I was once master of. Besides, for I may now confess my age to thee, I have been eight-and-forty above these twelve years. Since my retirement into the country will make a vacancy in the club, I could wish you would fill up my place with my friend Tom Dapper wit. He has an infinite deal of fire, and knows the town. For my own part, as I have said 'WILLIAM HONEYCOMB.' No. 531.] Saturday, November 8, 1712. Qui mare et terras, variisque mundum Unde nil majus generatur ipso; Who guides below and rules above, Supreme he singly fills the throne.—Creech. SIMONIDES being asked by Dionysius the tyrant what God was, desired a day's time to consider of it before he made his reply. When the day was expired he desired two days; and afterwards, instead of returning his answer, demanded still double the time to consider of it. This great poet and philosopher, the more he contemplated the nature of the Deity, found that he waded but the more out of his depth; and that he lost himself in the thought, instead of finding an end of it. to the Supreme Being, we enlarge every one of these with our own idea of infinity: and so putting them together, make our complex idea of God.' It is not impossible that there may be many kinds of spiritual perfection, besides those which are lodged in a human soul: but it is impossible that we should have the ideas of any kinds of perfection, except those of which we have some small rays and short imperfect strokes in ourselves. It would therefore be very high presumption to determine whether the Supreme Being has not many more attributes than those which enter into our conceptions of him. This is certain, that if there be any kind of spiritual perfection which is not marked out in a human soul, it belongs in its fulness to the divine nature. Several eminent philosophers have imagined that the soul, in her separate statc, may have new faculties springing up in her, which she is not capable of exerting during her present union with the body; and whether these faculties may not correspond with other attributes in the divine nature, and open to us hereafter new matter of wonder and adoration, we are altogether ignorant. This, as I have said before, we ought to acquiesce in, that the Sovereign Being, the great author of nature, has in him all possible perfection, as well in kind as in degree: to speak according to our methods of conceiving, I shall only add under this head, that when we have raised our notion of this Infinite Being as high as it is possible for the mind of man to go, it will fall infinitely short f what he really is. There is no end of his greatness.' The most exalted creature he has made is only capable of adoring it, none but himself can If we consider the idea which wise men, by the light of reason, have framed of the Divine Being, it amounts to this; that he has in him all the perfection of a spiritual nature. And since we have no notion of any kind of spiritual perfection but what we discover in our own souls, we join infinitude to each kind of these perfections, and what is a faculty in a human soul becomes an at-comprehend it. tribute in God. We exist in place and time; The advice of the son of Sirach is very the Divine Being fills the immensity of just and sublime in this light. By his space with his presence, and inhabits eter-word all things consist. We may speak nity. We are possessed of a little power and a little knowledge: the Divine Being is almighty and omniscient. In short, by adding infinity to any kind of perfection we enjoy, and by joining all these different kinds of perfection in one being, we form our idea of the great Sovereign of Nature. Though every one who thinks must have made this observation, I shall produce Mr. Locke's authority to the same purpose, out of his Essay on Human Understanding. 'If we examine the idea we have of the incomprehensible Supreme Being, we shall find that we come by it the same way; and that the complex ideas we have both of God and separate spirits, are made up of the simple ideas we receive from reflection: v. g. having, from what we experience in ourselves, got the ideas of existence and duration, of knowledge and power of pleasure and happiness, and of several other qualities and powers, which it is better to have than to be without: when we would frame an idea the most suitable we can much, and yet come short: wherefore in some he is all. How shall we be able to magnify him? for he is great above all his works. The Lord is terrible and very great; and marvellous in his power. When you glorify the Lord, exalt him as much as you can; for even yet will he far exceed. And when you exalt him, put forth all your strength, and be not weary; for you can never go far enough. Who hath seen him, that he might tell us? and who can magnify him as he is? There are yet hid greater things than these be, for we have seen but a few of his works." I have here only considered the Supreme Being by the light of reason and philosophy. If we would see him in all the wonders of his mercy, we must have recourse to revelation, which represents him to us not only as infinitely great and glorious, but as infinitely good and just in his dispensations towards man. But as this is the theory which falls under every one's consideration, though indeed it can never be sufficiently considered, I shall here only take notice of | No. 532.] Monday, November 10, 1712. that habitual worship and veneration which we ought to pay to this Almighty Being. We should often refresh our minds with the thought of him, and annihilate ourselves before him, in the contemplation of our own worthlessness, and of his transcendent excellency and perfection. This would imprint in our minds such a constant and uninterrupted awe and veneration as that which I am here recommending, and which is in reality a kind of incessant prayer, and reasonable humiliation of the soul before him who made it. This would effectually kill in us all the little seeds of pride, vanity, and self-conceit, which are apt to shoot up in the minds of such whose thoughts turn more on those comparative advantages which they enjoy over some of their fellow-creatures, than on that infinite distance which is placed between them and the supreme model of all perfection. It would likewise quicken our desires and endeavours of uniting ourselves to him by all the acts of religion and virtue. Such an habitual homage to the Supreme Being would, in a particular manner, Janish from among us that prevailing impiety of using his name on the most trivial occasions. I find the following passage in an excellent sermon, preached at the funeral of a gentleman who was an honour to his country, and a more diligent as well as successful inquirer into the works of nature than any other our nation has ever produced. He had the profoundest veneration for the great God of heaven and earth that I have ever observed in any person. The very name of God was never mentioned by him without a pause and a visible stop in his discourse; in which one, that knew him most particularly above twenty years, has told me that he was so exact, that he does not remember to have observed him once to fail in it.' -Fungor vice cotis, acutum I play the whetstone: useless and unfit Every one knows the veneration which was paid by the Jews to a name so great, wonderful, and holy. They would not let it enter even into their religious discourses. What can we then think of those who make use of so tremendous a name in the ordinary expressions of their anger, mirth, and most 'MR. SPECTATOR,-I was the other day impertinent passions? of those who admit it in company with five or six men of some into the most familiar questions and asser-learning: where, chancing to mention the tions, ludicrous phrases, and work of hu- famous verses which the emperor Adrian mour? not to mention those who violate it by solemn perjuries! It would be an affront spoke on his death-bed, they were all to reason to endeavour to set forth the hor- agreed that it was a piece of gayety unto reason to endeavour to set forth the hor-worthy that prince in those circumstances. ror and profaneness of such a practice. I could not but dissent from this opinion. The very mention of it exposes it suffi- Methinks it was by no means a gay but a ciently to those in whom the light of na- very serious soliloquy to his soul at the ture, not to say religion, is not utterly ex-point of his departure: in which sense I tinguished. naturally took these verses at my first read ing them, when I was very young, and be O. * See bishop Burnet's Sermon, preached at the funeral of the honourable Robert Boyle. + Addison. ↑ The Temple of Fame |