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N° 582. Wednesday, August 18, 1714.

---Tenet infanabile multos Scribendi cacoethes-

Juv. Sat. vii. 51.

'The curfe of writing is an endless itch.'

TH

CH. DRYDEN.

HERE is a certain diftemper, which is mentioned neither by Galen nor Hippocrates, nor to be met with in the London Difpenfary. Juvenal, in the motto of my Paper, terms it a Cacoethes; which is a hard word for a disease called in plain English "The itch of

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writing." This Cacoethes is as epidemical as the small-pox, there being very few who are not feized with it fome time or other in their lives. There is, however, this difference in these two distempers, that the first, after having indifpofed you for a time, never returns again; whereas this I am fpeaking of, when it is once got into the blood, feldom comes out of it. The British nation is very much afflicted with this malady; and, though very many remedies have been applied to perfons infected with it, few of them have ever proved fuccefsful. Some have been cauterized with fatires and lampoons, but have received little or no benefit from them; others have had their heads faftened for an hour together between a cleft board, which is made ufe of as a cúre for the disease when it appears in its

greatest

greateft malignity*. There is indeed one kind of this malady which has been fometimes removed, like the biting of a Tarantula, with the found of a mufical inftrument, which is commonly known by the name of a cat-call. But if you have a patient of this kind under your care, you may affure yourself there is no other way of recovering him effectually, but by forbidding him the ufe of pen, ink, and paper.

But, to drop the allegory before I have tired it out, there is no fpecies of fcribblers more offenfive, and more incurable, than your periodical writers, whofe works return upon the public on certain days and at ftated times. We have not the confolation in the perufal of these authors which we find at the reading of all others, namely, that we are fure if we have but patience we may come to the end of their labours. I have often admired an humorous faying of Diogenes, who, reading a dull author to feveral of his friends, when every one began to be tired, finding he was almost come to a blank leaf at the end of it, cried, "Courage, lads, I fee land." On the contrary, our progrefs through that kind of writers I am now fpeaking of is never at an end. One day makes work for another-we do not know when to promife ourselves reft.

It is a melancholy thing to confider that the art of Printing, which might be the greatest bleffing to mankind, fhould prove detrimental to us, and that it fhould be made ufe of to scatter

VOL. VIII.

* Put in the pillory.
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prejudice

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prejudice and ignorance through a people, instead of conveying to them truth and knowledge.

I was lately reading a very whimsical treatise, entitled WILLIAM RAMSAY'S "Vindication of "Aftrology." This profound author, among many myftical paffages, has the following one: "The abfence of the fun is not the caufe of night, forafmuch as his light is fo great that "it may illuminate the earth all over at once as "clear as broad day; but there are tenebrificous "and dark stars, by whofe influence night is brought on, and which do ray out darkness "and obfcurity upon the earth as the fun does light."

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I confider writers in the fame view this fage aftrologer does the heavenly bodies. Some of them are stars that fcatter light as others do darkness. I could mention feveral authors who are tenebrificous ftars of the firft magnitude, and point out a knot of gentlemen, who have been dull in concert, and may be looked upon as a dark conftellation. The nation has been a great while benighted with feveral of thefe antiluminaries. I fuffered them to ray out their darkness as long as I was able to endure it, till at length I came to a refolution of rifing upon them, and hope in a little time to drive them quite out of the British hemifphere.

*BY ADDISON, on the authority of Mr. Thomas Tickell, who has afcertained ADDISON'S Papers in this volume, which was not lettered at the ends as the other volumes of the SPECTATOR originally were.

No. 583

N° 583. Friday, Auguft 20, 1714.

Ipfe thymum pinofque ferens de montibus altis,
Tecta ferat latè circum, cui talia curæ:
Ipfe labore manum duro terat; ipfe feraces
Figat humo plantas, & amicos irriget imbres.

VIRG. Georg. iv. 112.

With his own hand the guardian of the bees For flips of pines may fearch the mountain trees, And with wild thyme and fav'ry plant the plain, 'Till his hard horny fingers ache with pain; And deck with fruitful trees the fields around, And with refreshing waters drench the ground.' DRYDEN.

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VERY ftation of life has duties which are proper to it. Those who are determined by choice to any particular kind of bufinefs are indeed more happy than thofe who are determined by neceffity; but both are under an equal obligation of fixing on employments, which may be either useful to themselves or beneficial to others: no one of the fons of Adam ought to think himself exempt from that labour and induftry which were denounced to our first parent, and in him to all his pofterity. Thofe, to whom birth or fortune may feem to make fuch an application unneceffary, ought to find out fome calling or profeffion for themfelves, that they may not lie as a burden on the fpecies, and be the only useless parts of the creation.

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Many of our country gentlemen in their busy hours apply themfelves wholly to the chafe, or to fome other diverfion which they find in the fields and woods. This gave occafion to one of our most eminent English writers to represent every one of them as lying under a kind of curfe pronounced to them in the words of Goliah, "I will give thee to the fowls of the air, and "to the beafts of the field."

Though exercifes of this kind, when indulged with moderation, may have a good influence both on the mind and body, the country affords many other amufements of a more noble kind.

Among thefe I know none more delightful in itself, and beneficial to the public, than that of PLANTING. I could mention a nobleman whofe fortune has placed him in feveral parts of England, and who has always left thefe vifible marks behind him, which fhew he has been there: he never hired a house in his life, without leaving all about it the feeds of wealth, and beftowing legacies on the pofterity of the owner. Had all the gentlemen of England made the fame improvements upon their eftates, our whole country would have been at this time as one great garden. Nor ought fuch an employment to be looked upon as too inglorious for men of the highest rank. There have been heroes in this art, as well as in others. We are told in particular of Cyrus the Great, that he planted all the Leffer Afia. There is indeed fomething truly magnificent in this kind of amufement; it gives a nobler air to feveral parts of nature; it

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