the history of John the Great, who, by his brave and heroic actions against men of large and athletic bodies, obtained the glorious appellation of the Giant-killer; that of an earl of Warwick, whose Christian name was Guy; the lives of Argalus and Parthenia; and above all, the history of those seven worthy personages, the Champions of Christendom. In all these, delight is mixed with instruction, and the reader is almost as much improved as entertained.

But I pass by these and many others, to mention two books lately published, which represent an admirable pattern of the amiable in either sex. The former of these, which deals in male virtue, was written by the great person himself, who lived the life he hath recorded, and is by many thought to have lived such a life only in order to write it. The other is communicated to us by an historian who borrows his lights, as the common method is, from authentic papers and records. The reader, I believe, already conjectures I mean the lives of Mr. Colley Cibber, and of Mrs. Pamela Andrews. How artfully doth the former, by insinuating that he escaped being promoted to the highest stations in church and state, teach us a contempt of worldly grandeur! how strongly doth he inculcate an absolute submission to our superiors! Lastly, how completely doth he arm us against so uneasy, so wretched a passion as the fear of shame! how clearly doth he expose the emptiness and vanity of that phantom, reputation!

What the female readers are taught by the memoirs of Mrs. Andrews, is so well set forth in the excellent essays or letters prefixed to the second and subsequent editions of that work, that it would be here a needless repetition. The authentic history with which I now present the public, is an instance of the great good that book is likely to do, and of the prevalence of examples which I have just observed: since it will appear that it was by keeping the excellent pattern of his sister's virtues before his eyes, that Mr. Joseph Andrews was chiefly enabled jo preserve his purity in the midst of such great temptations. 1 shall only add, that this character of male chastity, though doubtless as desirable and becoming in one part of the human species us in the other, is almost the only virtue which the great Apologist hath not given himself for the sake of giving the example to his readers.

CHAPTER II.

Of Mr. Joseph Andrews, his birth, parentage, education, and great endowments; with a word or two concerning ancestors.

MR. Joseph Andrews, the hero of our ensuing history, was esteemed to be the only son of Gaffer and Gammer Andrews, and brother to the illustrious Pamela, whose virtue is at present so famous. As to his ancestors, we have searched with great diligence, but little success; being unable to trace them farther than his great-grandfather, who, as an elderly person in the parish remembers to have heard his father say, was an excellent cudgel-player. Whether he had any ancestors before this, we must leave it to the opinion of our curious reader, finding nothing of sufficient certainty to rely on. However, we cannot omit inserting an epitaph which an ingenious friend of ours hath communicated:

Stay, traveller, for underneath this pew

Lies fast asleep that merry man Andrew,

When the last day's great sun shall gild the skies,
Then he shall from his tomb get up and rise.

Be merry while thou canst, for surely thou
Shalt shortly be as sad as he is now.

The words are almost out of the stone with antiquity. But it is needless to observe that Andrew here is wrote without an s, and is, besides, a christian name. My friend moreover conjectures this to have been the founder of that sect of laughing philosophers, since called Merry-Andrews.

To waive therefore a circumstance, which, though mentioned in conformity to the exact rules of biography, is not greatly material, I proceed to things of more consequence. Indeed, it is sufficiently certain, that he had as many ancestors as the best man living; and perhaps, if we look five or six hundred years backwards, might be related to some persons of very great figure at present, whose ancestors within half the last century are buried in as great obscurity. But suppose, for argument's sake, we should admit, that he had no ancestors at all, but had sprung up according to the modern phrase, out of a dung-hill, as the Athenians pretended they themselves did