others. In process of time this laudable distinction of the sorrowful was lost, and mourning is now worn by heirs and widows. You see nothing but magnificence and solemnity in the equipage of the relict, and an air of release from servitude in the pomp of a son who has lost a wealthy father. This fashion of sorrow is now become a generous part of the ceremonial between princes and sovereigns, who, in the language of all nations, are stiled brothers to each other, and put on the purple* upon the death of any potentate with whom they live in amity. Courtiers, and all who wish themselves such, are immediately seized with grief from head to foot upon this disaster to their prince; so that one may know by the very buckles of a gentleman-usher, what degree of friendship any deceased monarch maintained with the court to which he belongs. A good courtier's habit and behaviour is hieroglyphical on these occasions. He deals much in whispers, and you may see he dresses according to the best intelligence.

The general affectation among men, of appearing greater than they are, makes the whole world run into the habit of the court. You see the lady, who the day before was as various as a rainbow, upon the time appointed for beginning to mourn, as dark as a cloud. This humour does not prevail only on those whose fortunes can support any change in their equipage, nor on those only whose incomes demand the wantonness of new appearances; but on such also who have just enough to clothe them. An old acquaintance of mine, of ninety pounds a year, who has naturally the vanity of being a man of fashion deep at his heart, is very much put to it to bear the mortality of princes. He made a new black suit upon the death of the king of Spain, he turned

Royal and princely, mourners are clad in purple.

it for the king of Portugal, and he now keeps his chamber while it is scouring for the emperor.

He is a good œconomist in his extravagance, and makes only a fresh black button on his iron-grey suit for any potentate of small territories; he indeed adds his crape hat-band for a prince whose exploits he has admired in the Gazette. But whatever compliments may be made on these occasions, the true mourners are the mercers, silkmen, lacemen, and milliners. A prince of a merciful and royal disposition would reflect with great anxiety upon the prospect of his death, if he considered what numbers would be reduced to misery by that accident only. He would think it of moment enough to direct, that in the notification of his departure, the honour done to him might be restrained to those of the household of the prince to whom it should be signified. He would think a general mourning to be in a less degree the same ceremony which is practised in barbarous nations, of killing their slaves to attend the obsequies of their kings.

say

I had been wonderfully at a loss for many months together, to guess at the character of a man who came now and then to our coffee-house. He ever ended a news-paper with this reflection, Well, I see all the foreign princes are in good health.' If you asked, Pray, sir, what says the postman from Vienna?' He answered, Make us thankful, the German princes are all well.' What does he from Barcelona ?' 'He does not speak but that the country agrees very well with the new queen.' After very much enquiry, I found this man of universal loyalty was a wholesale dealer in silks and ribbons. way is, it seems, if he hires a weaver or workman, to have it inserted in his articles, that all this shall be well and truly performed, provided no foreign potentate shall depart this life within the time above

His

mentioned.' It happens in all public mournings that the many trades which depend upon our habits, are during that folly either pinched with present want, or terrified with the apparent approach of it. All the atonement which men can make for wanton expences (which is a sort of insulting the scarcity under which others labour) is, that the superfluities of the wealthy give supplies to the necessities of the poor; but instead of any other good arising from the affectation of being in courtly habits of mourning, all order seems to be destroyed by it; and the true honour which one court does to another on that occasion, loses its force and efficacy. When a foreign minister beholds the court of a nation (which flourishes in riches and plenty) lay aside upon the loss of his master, all marks of splendour and magnificence, though the head of such a joyful people, he will conceive a greater idea of the honour done to his master, than when he sees the generality of the people in the same habit. When one is afraid to ask the wife of a tradesman whom she has lost of her family; and after some preparation endeavours to know whom she mourns for; how ridiculous is it to hear her explain herself, That we have lost one of the house of Austria !' Princes are elevated so highly above the rest of mankind, that it is a presumptuous distinction to take a part in honours done to their memories, except we have authority for it, by being related in a particular manner to the court which pays the veneration to their friendship, and seems to express on such an occasion the sense of the uncertainty of human life in general, by assuming the habit of sorrow, though in the full possession of triumph and royalty.

R.

N° 65. TUESDAY, MAY 15, 1711.

-Demetri, teque, Tigelli

Discipularum inter jubeo plorare cathedras.

HOR. 1 Sat. x. 90.

Demetrius and Tigellius, know your place;

Go hence, and whine among the school-boy race.

AFTER having at large explained what wit is, and described the false appearances of it, all that labour seems but an useless enquiry, without some time be spent in considering the application of it. The seat of wit, when one speaks as a man of the town and the world, is the playhouse; I shall therefore fill this paper with reflections upon the use of it in that place. The application of wit in the theatre has as strong an effect upon the manners of our gentlemen, as the taste of it has upon the writings of our authors. It may, perhaps, look like a very presumptuous work, though not foreign from the duty of a Spectator, to tax the writings of such as have long had the general applause of a nation; but I shall always make reason, truth, and nature the measures of praise and dispraise; if those are for me, the generality of opinion is of no consequence against me; if they are against me, the general opinion cannot long support me.

Without further preface, I am going to look into some of our most applauded plays, and see whether they deserve the figure they at present bear in the imaginations of men, or not.

In reflecting upon these works, I shall chiefly dwell upon that for which each respective play is most celebrated. The present paper shall be employed upon

Sir Fopling Flutter*. The received character of this play is, that it is the pattern of genteel comedy. Dorimant and Harriot are the characters of greatest consequence, and if these are low and mean, the reputation of the play is very unjust.

I will take for granted, that a fine gentleman should be honest in his actions, and refined in his language. Instead of this, our hero in this piece is a direct knave in his designs, and a clown in his language. Bellair is his admirer and friend; in return for which, because he is forsooth a greater wit than his said friend, he thinks it reasonable to persuade him to marry a young lady, whose virtue, he thinks, will last no longer than till she is a wife, and then she cannot but fall to his share, as he is an irresistible fine gentleman. The falsehood to Mrs. Loveit, and the barbarity of triumphing over her anguish for losing him, is another instance of his honesty, as well as his good-nature. As to his fine language; he calls the orange-woman, who, it seems, is inclined to grow fat, An overgrown jade, with a flasket of guts before her;' and salutes her with a pretty phrase of, 'How now Double Tripe?' Upon the mention of a country-gentlewoman, whom he knows nothing of, (no one can imagine why) he will lay his life she is some awkward ill-fashioned country-toad, who not having above four dozen of hairs on her head, has adorned her baldness with a large white fruz, that she may look sparkishly in the fore-front of the king's box at an old play.' Unnatural mixture of senseless common-place.

As to the generosity of his temper, he tells his poor footman, If he did not wait better,' he would

*The Man of the Mode. Sir Fopling was Beau Hewit, son of Sir Thomas Hewit, of Pishiobury in Hertfordshire, bart.; and the author's own character was represented in Bellair.