variety. By this means every one of my readers that they were to make their appearance in is sure some time or other to find a subject the world, breaks his method for the sake of that pleases him, and almost every paper has Augustus, whom he singles out immediately some particular set of men for its advocates. after having mentioned Romulus, as the most Instead of seeing the number of my papers illustrious person who was to rise in that emevery day increasing, they would quickly lie aspire which the other had founded. He was a drug upon my hands, did not I take care to keep up the appetite of my guests, and quicken it from time to time by something new and unexpected. In short, I endeavour to treat my reader in the same manner as Eve does the angel in that beautiful description of Milton: So saying, with despatchful looks in baste Fifth Book. If by this method I can furnish out a Splendidu farrago, according to the compliment lately paid me in a fine poem, published among the exercises of the last Oxford act, I have gained the end which I proposed to myself. In my yesterday's paper, I showed how the actions of our ancestors and forefathers should excite us to every thing that is great and virtuous. I shall here observe, that a regard to our posterity, and those who are to descend from us, ought to have the same kind of influence on a generous mind. A noble soul would rather die than commit an action that should make his children blush when he is in his grave, and be looked upon as a reproach to those who shall live a hundred years after him. On the contrary, nothing can be a more pleasing thought to a man of eminence, than to consider that his posterity, who lie many removes from him, shall make their boasts of his virtues, and be honoured for his sake. Virgil represents this consideration as an incentive of glory to Æneas, when after having shown him the race of heroes who were to descend from him, Anchises adds with a noble warmth, Et dubitamus adhuc virtutem extendere factis ? Dryden. Since I have mentioned this passage in Virgil, where Æneas was entertained with the view of his great descendants, I cannot forbear observing a particular beauty, which I do not know that any one has taken notice of. The list which he has there drawn up was in general to do honour to the Roman name, but more particularly to compliment Augustus. For this reason Anchises, who shows Æneas most of the rest of his descendants in the same order impatient to describe his posterity raised to the utmost pitch of glory, and therefore passes over all the rest to come at this great man, whom by this means he implicitly represents as making the most conspicuous figure among them. By this artifice the poet did not only give his emperor the greatest praise he could bestow upon him; but hindered his reader from drawing a parallel which would have been disadvantageous to him, had he been celebrated in his proper place, that is, after Pompey and Cæsar, who each of them eclipsed the other in military glory. Though there have been finer things spoken of Augustus than of any other man, all the wits of his age having tried to outrival one another on that subject; he never received a compliment, which, in my opinion, can be compared, for sublimity of thought, to that which the poet here makes him. The English reader may see a faint shadow of it in Mr. Dryden's translation, for the original is inimitable. But next behold the youth of form divine, I could show out of other poets the same kind of vision as this in Virgil, wherein the chief persons of the poem have been enter tained with the sight of those who were to descend from them: but instead of that, I shall conclude with a rabbinical story which has in it the oriental way of thinking, and is therefore very amusing. Adam, say the rabbins, a little after his creation, was presented with a view of all those souls who were to be united to human bodies, and take their turn after him upon the earth. Among others the vision set before him the soul of David. Our great ancestor was transported | lated of this generous animal. Your romance at the sight of so beautiful an apparition; but to his unspeakable grief was informed, that it was not to be conversant among men the space of one year. This youth (the blissful vision of a day) Adam, to procure a longer life for so fine a piece of human nature, begged that three-score and ten years (which he heard would be the age of man in David's time) might be taken out of his own life, and added to that of David. Accordingly, say the rabbins, Adam falls short of a thousand years, which was to have been the complete term of his life, by just so many years as make up the life of David. Adam having lived nine hundred and thirty years, and David seventy. This story was invented to show the high opinion which the rabbins entertained of this man after God's own heart, whom the prophet, who was his own contemporary, could not mention without rapture, where he records the last poetical composition of David, of David, the son of Jesse, of the man who was raised up on high, of the anointed of the God of Jacob, of the sweet psalmist of Israel.' No. 139.] Thursday, August 20, 1713. prisca fides facto, sed fama perennis. Dryden. writers are likewise a set of men whose authority I shall build upon very little in this case. They all of them are born with a particular antipathy to lions, and give them no more quarter than they do giants, wherever they chance to meet them. There is not one of the seven champions, but when he has nothing else to do, encounters with a lion, and you may be sure always gets the better of him. In short, a knight errant lives in a perpetual state of enmity with this noble creature, and hates him more than all things upon the earth, except a dragon. Had the stories recorded of them by these writers been true, the whole species would have been destroyed before now. After having thus renounced all fabulous authorities, I shall lated of him by Aulus Gellius, and extracted begin my memoirs of the lion with a story reundoubted veracity. It is the famous story of by him out of Dion Cassius, a historian of for the sake of my learned reader, who needs Androcles the Roman slave, which I premise 50 no farther in it, if he has read it already. Androcles was the slave of a noble Roman who was proconsul of Afric. guilty of a fault, for which his master would have put him to death, had not he found an opportunity to escape out of his hands, and fled into the deserts of Numidia. As he was wandering among the barren sands, and almost dead with heat and hunger, he saw a cave in the side of a rock, He went into it, and finding at the farther end of it a place to sit down upon, rested there for some time. At length, to his great surprise, a huge overgrown lion entered at the mouth of the cave, and seeing a man at the upper end of it, immediately made towards him. Androcles gave himself 'MOST VENERABLE NESTOR, for gone; but the lion, instead of treating him 'I FIND that every body is very much de- as he expected, laid his paw upon his lap, and lighted with the voice of your lion. His roar- with a complaining kind of voice fell a licking ings against the tucker have been most melo- his hand. Androcles, after having recovered dious and emphatical. It is to be hoped, that himself a little from the fright he was in, obthe ladies will take warning by them, and not served the lion's paw to be exceedingly swelled provoke him to greater outrages; for I ob- by a large thorn that stuck in it. He immeserve, that your lion, as you yourself have told diately pulled it out, and by squeezing the paw us, is made up of mouth and paws. For my very gently made a great deal of corrupt matown part, I have long considered with myself ter run out of it, which probably freed the lion how I might express my gratitude to this noble from the great anguish he had felt some time animal that has so much the good of our country before. The lion left him upon receiving this at his heart. After many thoughts on this good office from him, and soon after returned subject, I have at length resolved to do honour with a fawn which he had just killed. This to him, by compiling a history of his species, he laid down at the feet of his benefactor, and and extracting out of all authors whatever may went off again in pursuit of his prey. Anredound to his reputation. In the prosecution drocles, after having sodden the flesh of it by of this design, I shall have no manner of regard the sun, subsisted upon it until the lion had to what Æsop has said upon the subject, whom supplied him with another. He lived many I look upon to have been a republican, by the days in this frightful solitude, the lion catering unworthy treatment which he often gives to for him with great assiduity. Being tired at the king of beasts, and whom, if I had time, length with this savage society, he was reI could convict of falsehood and forgery, in solved to deliver himself up into his masters almost every matter of fact which he has re-hands, and suffer the worst effects of his dis cedes that of Virgo, by which, says he, is signified the natural love and friendship the lion bears to virginity; and not only to virginity, but to such matrons likewise as are pure and unspotted; from whence he foretells the good influence which the roarings of my lion are likely to have over the female world, for the purifying of their behaviour, and bettering of their manners. He then proceeds to inform me, that in the most exact astrological schemes, the lion is observed to affect, in a more particular manner, the legs and the neck, as well as to allay the power of the scorpion in those parts which are allotted to that fiery constellation. From hence he very naturally prognosticates, that my lion will meet with great success in the attacks he has made on the untuckered stays and short petticoat; and that, in a few months, there will not be a female bosom or ankle uncovered in Great Britain. He concludes, that by the rules of his art he foresaw five years ago, that both the pope and myself should about this time unite our endeavours in this particular, and that sundry mutations and revolutions would happen in the female dress. pleasure, rather than be thus driven out from to calculate the nativity of the lion. This mankind. His master, as was customary for mysterious philosopher acquaints me, that the the proconsul of Afric, was at that time get-sign of Leo in the heavens immediately preting together a present of all the largest lions that could be found in the country, in order to send them to Rome, that they might furnish out a show to the Roman people. Upon his poor slave's surrendering himself into his hands, he ordered him to be carried away to Rome as soon as the lions were in readiness to be sent, and that for his crime he should be exposed to fight with one of the lions in the amphitheatre, as usual, for the diversion of the people. This was all performed accordingly. Androcles, after such a strange run of fortune, was now in the area of the theatre amidst thousands of spectators, expecting every moment when his antagonist would come out upon him. At length a huge monstrous lion leaped out from the place where he had been kept hungry for the show. He advanced with great rage to wards the man, but on a sudden, after having regarded him a little wistfully, fell to the ground, and crept towards his feet with all the signs of blandishment and caress. Androcles, after a short pause, discovered that it was his old Numidian friend, and immediately renewed his acquaintance with him. Their mutual congratulations were very surprising to the beholders, who, upon hearing an account of the whole matter from Androcles, ordered him to be pardoned, and the lion to be given up into his possession. Androcles returned at Rome the civilities which he had received from him in the deserts of Afric. Dion Cassius says, that he himself saw the man leading the lion about the streets of Rome, the people every where gathering about them, and repeating to one another, "Hic est leo hospes hominis, hic est homo medicus leonis." This is the lion who was the man's host, this is the man who was the lion's physician." No. 140.] Friday, August 21, 1713. quibus incendi jam frigidus ævo Laomedontiades, vel Nestoris hernia possit. Juv. Sat. vi. 324. A sight, might thaw old Priam's frozen age, I HAVE lately received a letter from an astrologer in Moorfields, which I have read with great satisfaction. He observes to me, that my lion at Button's coffee-house was very luckily erected in the very month when the sun was in Leo. He further adds, that upon conversing with the above-mentioned Mr. Button, whose other name he observes is Daniel (a good omen still with regard to the non, his cohabitant,) he had discovered the very hour in which the said lion was set up; and that by the help of other lights, which he had received from the said Mr. Button, he had been enabled I have another letter by me from a person of a more volatile and airy genius, who finding this great propension in the fair sex to go uncovered, and thinking it impossible to reclaim them entirely from it, is for compounding the matter with them, and finding out a middle expedient between nakedness and clothing. He proposes, therefore, that they should imitate their great-grandmothers, the Briths or Picts, and paint the parts of their bodies which are uncovered with such figures as shall be most to their fancy. The bosom of the coquette, says he, may bear the figure of a Cupid, with a bow in his hand, and his arrow upon the string. The prude might have a Pallas, with a shield and gorgon's head. In short, by this method, he thinks every woman might make very agreeable discoveries of herself, and at the same time show us what she would be at. But by my correspondent's good leave, I can by no means consent to spoil the skin of my pretty countrywomen. They could find no colours half so charming as those which are natural to them; and though, like the old Picts, they painted the sun itself upon their bodies, they would still change for the worse, and conceal something more beautiful than what they exhibited. I shall therefore persist in my first design, and endeavour to bring about the reformation in neck and legs, which I have so long aimed at. Let them but raise their stays and let down their petticoats, and I have done. However, as I will give them space to consider of it, I design this for the last time that my lion shall I must not dismiss this letter without declaring myself a good protestant, as I hint in the subscribing part of it. This I think necessary to take notice of, lest I should be accused by an author of unexampled stupidity, for corresponding with the head of the Romish church. written a letter to the pope upon it, in order to encourage him in his present good intentions, and that we may act by con ert in this matter. Here follows the copy of ay letter. To Pope Clement the Eighth, N for Iron. side, greeting. DEAR BROTHER, a 'I have heard with great satisfaction, that you have forbidden your priests to confess any woman who appears before them without tucker, in which you please me well. I do agree with you, that it is impossible for the good man to discharge his office as he ought, who gives an ear to those alluring penitents that discover their hearts and necks to him at the same time. I am labouring as much as in me lies to stir up the same spirit of modesty among the women of this island, and should be glad we might assist one another in so good a work. In order to it, I desire that you would send me over the length of a Roman lady's neck, as it stood before your late prohibition. We have some here who have necks of one, two, and three foot in length; some that have necks which reach down to their middles, and indeed, Some who may be said to be all neck, and no body. I hope, at the same time you observe the stays of your female subjects, that you have also an eye to their petticoats, which rise in this island daily. When the petticoat reaches Frange, miser, calamos, vigilataque prælia dele, Let flames on your unlucky papers prey Ch. Dryden. elegant sermon against the scorner, as it im'WIT,' saith the bishop of Rochester in his plies a certain uncommon reach and vivacity be employed in the search of truth, and very of thought, is an excellent talent, very fit to it. I shall take leave to carry this observation capable of assisting us to discern and embrace farther into common life, and remark, that it is a faculty, when properly directed, very fit to recommend young persons to the favour of such patrons, as are generously studious to promote the interest of politeness, and the honour of their country. I am therefore much grieved authors whom I have taken under my guarto hear the frequent complaints of some rising dianship. Since my circumstances will not allow me to give them due encouragement, I and make them a present of my advice. I must take upon me the person of a philosopher, would not have any poet whatsoever, who is not born to five hundred a year, deliver himself up to wit, but as it is subservient to the im provement of his fortune. This talent is useful in all professions, and should be considered not as a wife, but as an attendant. Let them take an old man's word; the desire of fame grows languid in a few years, and thoughts of ease and convenience erase the fairy images of ceeded both in fame and fortune, look back on the petty trifles of their youth with some regret, when their minds are turned to more exalted and useful speculations. This is admirably expressed in the following lines, by an author † whom I have formerly done justice to on the account of his pastoral poems. but to the knee, and the stays fall to the fifth rib (which I hear is to be the standard of each, as it has been lately settled in a junto of the sex), I will take care to send you one of either sort, which I advertise you of beforehand, that you may not compute the stature of our En-glory and honour. Even those who have sucglish women from the length of their garments. In the mean time I have desired the master of a vessel, who tells me that he shall touch at Civita Vecchia, to present you with a certain female machine which, I believe, will puzzle your infallibility to discover the use of it. Not to keep you in suspense, it is what we call in this country a hooped petticoat. I shall only beg of you to let me know, whether you find any garment of this nature among all the relies of your female saints, and in particular, whether it was ever worn by any of your twenty thousand virgin martyrs. 'Yours, usque ad aras, In search of wisdom, far from wit I fly; The writer of the Exaniner is here alluded to. 'I now found myself at liberty, and notwithstanding the opposition of a great many rivals, I won and enjoyed Polyhymnia. Our amour A passage which happened to me some years ago confirmed several maxims of frugality in my mind. A woollen-draper of my acquaintance, remarkable for his learning and good-was known to the whole country, and all whi nature, pulled out his pocket-book, wherein he showed me at the one end several well-chosen mottos, and several patterns of cloth at the other.-I, like a well-bred man, praised both sorts of goods; whereupon he tore out the mottos, and generously gave them to me: but, with great prudence, put up the patterns in his pocket again. saw, extolled the beauty of my mistress, and pronounced me happy in the possession of so many charms. We lived in great splendour and gayety, I being persuaded that high living was necessary to keep up my reputation, and the beauty of my mistress; from whom I had daily expectations given me of a post in the government, or some lavish present from the great men of our commonwealth. I was so proud of my partner, that I was perpetually bringing company to see her, and was a little tiresome to my acquaintance, by talking continually of her several beauties. She herself had a most exalted conceit of her charms, and often invited the ladies to ask their opinions of her dress; which if they disapproved in any parti cular, she called them a pack of envious insipid things, and ridiculed them in all com I am sensible that any accounts of my own secret history can have but little weight with young men of sanguine expectations. I shall therefore take this opportunity to present my wards with the history of an ancient Greek poet, which was sent me from the library of Fez, and is to be found there in the end of a very ancient manuscript of Homer's works which was brought by the barbarians from Constantinople. The name of the poet is torn out, nor have the critics yet determined it. Ipanies. She had a delicate set of teeth, which have faithfully translated part of it, and desire that it may be diligently perused by all men who design to live by their wits. appeared most to advantage when she was angry; and therefore she was very often in a passion. By this imprudent behaviour, when we had run out of our money, we had no living soul to befriend us; and every body cried out, it was a judgment upon me for being a slave to such a proud minx, such a conceited bussy. I loved her passionately, and exclaimed against a blind and injudicious world. Besides I had several children by her, and was likely still to have more; for I always thought the youngest the most beautiful. I must not forget that a certain great lord offered me a considerable sum in my necessity, to have the reputation of fathering one of them; but I rejected his offer with disdain. In order to support ber family and vanities, she carried me to Athens; where she put me upon a hundred pranks to get money. Sometimes she drest me in an antique robe, and placed a diadem on my head, and made me gather a mob about me by talking in a blustering tone, and unintelligible language. Sometimes she made me foam at the mouth, roll my eyes, invoke the gods, and act a sort of madness which the Athenians call the Pindarism. At another time she put a 'I was born at the foot of a certain mountain in Greece called Parnassus, where the country is remarkably delicious. My mother, while she was with child of me longed for laurel leaves; and as I lay in my cradle, a swarm of bees settled about my mouth, without doing me any injury. These were looked upon as presages of my being a great man; and the early promises I gave of a quick wit, and lively fancy, confirmed the high opinion my friends had conceived of me. It would be an idle tale to relate the trifling adventures of my youth, until I arrived at my twentieth year. It was then that the love I bore to a beautiful young virgin, with whom I had innocently and familiarly conversed from my childhood, became the public talk of our village. I was so taken up with my passion, that I entirely neglected all other affairs: and though the daughter of Machaon the physician, and a rich heiress, the daughter of a famous Grecian orator, were offered me in marriage, I peremp torily refused both the matches, and rashly vowed to live and die with the lovely Poly-sheep-hook into my hand, and drove me round hymnia. In vain did my parents remonstrate to me, that the tradition of her being descended from the gods was too poor a portion for one of my narrow fortunes; that except her fine green-house and garden, she had not one foot of land; and though she should gain the lawsuit about the summit of Parnassus, (which yet had many pretenders to it) that the air was so bleak there, and the ground so barren, that it would certainly starve the possessor. I fear my obstinacy in this particular broke my mother's heart, who died a short time after, and was soon followed by my father. my garret, calling it the plains of Arcadia When these projects failed, she gave out, with good success, that I was an old astrologer; after that a dumb man; and last of all sbe made me pass for a lion. 'It may seem strange, that after so tedious a slavery, I should ever get my freedom. But so it happened, that during the three last transformations, I grew acquainted with the lady Sophia, whose superior charms cooled my passion for Polyhymnia; insomuch that some envious dull fellows gave it out, my mistress had jilted and left me. But the slanders of |