Thus far as to my studies. It will be expected I should in the next place give some account of my life. I shall therefore, for the satisfaction of the present age, and the benefit of posterity, present the world with the following abridgement of it.

It is remarkable, that I was bred by hand, and eat nothing but milk until I was a twelve-month old; from which time, to the eighth year of my age, I was observed to delight in pudding and potatoes; and indeed I retain a benevolence for that sort of food to this day. I do not remember that I distinguished myself in any thing at those years, but by my great skill at taw, for which I was so barbarously used, that it has ever since given me an aversion to gaming. In my twelfth year, I suffered very much for two or three false concords. At fifteen I was sent to the university, and stayed there for some time; but a drum passing by, being a lover of music, I inlisted myself for a soldier. As years came on, I began to examine things, and grew discontented at the times. This made me quit the sword, and take to the study of the occult sciences, in which I was so wrapped up, that Oliver Cromwell had been buried, and taken up again, five years before I heard he was dead. This gave me first the reputation of a conjurer, which has been of great disadvantage to me ever since, and kept me out of all public employments. The greater part of my later years has been divided between Dick's coffee-house, the Trumpet in Sheer-lane, and my own lodgings.

From my own Apartment, November 2.

The evil of unseasonable visits has been complained of to me with much vehemence by persons of both sexes; and I am desired to consider this very important circumstance, that men may know how to regulate their conduct in an affair which concerns

N° &9. no less than life itself. For to a rational creature, it is almost the same cruelty to attack his life, by robbing him of so many moments of his time, or so many drops of his blood. The author of the following letter has a just delicacy in this point, and hath put it into a very good light:

"MR. BICKERSTAFF,

matter.

October 29.

"I am very much afflicted with the gravel, which makes me sick and peevish. I desire to know of you if it be reasonable that any of my acquaintance should take advantage over me at this time, and afflict me with long visits, because they are idle, and I am confined. Pray, Sir, reform the town in this Men never consider whether the sick person be disposed for company, but make their visits to humour themselves. You may talk upon this topic, so as to oblige all persons afflicted with chronical distempers, among which I reckon visits. Do not think me a sour man, for I love conversation and my friends; but I think one's most intimate friend may be too familiar, and that there are such things as unseasonable wit, and painful mirth."

It is with some so hard a thing to employ their time, that it is a great good fortune when they have a friend indisposed, that they may be punctual in perplexing him, when he is recovered enough to be in that state which cannot be called sickness or health; when he is too well to deny company, and too ill to receive them. It is no uncommon case, if a man is of any figure or power in the world, to be congratulated into a relapse.

Will's Coffee-house, November 2.

I was very well pleased this evening, to hear a gentleman express a very becoming indignation against a practice, which I myself have been very

much offended at. "more ridiculous, than for an actor to insert words of his own in the part he is to act, so that it is impossible to see the poet for the player. You will have Penkethman and Bullock helping out Beaumont and Fletcher. It puts me in mind," continued he, "of a collection of antique statues which I once saw in a gentleman's possession, who employed a neighbouring stone-cutter to add noses, ears, arms, or legs, to the maimed works of Phidias or Praxiteles. You may be sure, this addition disfigured the statues much more than time had. I remember Venus, that, by the nose he had given her, looked like mother Shipton; and a Mercury, with a pair of legs that seemed very much swelled with the dropsy."

"There is nothing," said he,

I thought the gentleman's observation very proper, and he told me I had improved his thought, in mentioning on this occasion those wise commentators who had filled up the hemistichs of Virgil *; particularly that notable poet, who, to make the Eneid more perfect,, carried on the story of Lavinia's wedding. If the proper officer will not condescend to take notice of these absurdities, I shall myself, as a censor of the people, animadvert upon such proceedings.

A gentleman of distinction in Aquitain, called by the writer on whose authority this note is given, Joannes de Peyrarede, filled up the hemistichs, or half verses, in the Eneid of Virgil.

N° 90, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 1709.

Amoto quæramus seria ludo.

Let us now

HOR. I. Sat. i. 27.

With graver air our serious theme pursue,
And yet preserve our moral full in view.

FRANCIS.

Will's Coffee-house, November 4.

THE passion of love happened to be the subject of discourse between two or three of us at the table of the poets this evening; and, among other observations, it was remarked, "that the same sentiment on this passion had run through all languages and nations." Memmius, who has a very good taste,

fell into a little sort of dissertation on this occasion. It is," said he, "remarkable, that no passion has been treated, by all who have touched upon it, with the same bent of design but this. The poets, the moralists, the painters, in all their descriptions, allegories, and pictures, have represented it as a soft torment, a bitter sweet, a pleasing pain, or an agreeable distress; and have only expressed the same thought in a different manner."

The joining of pleasure and pain together in such devices, seems to me the only pointed thought I ever read which is natural; and it must have proceeded from its being the universal sense and experience of mankind, that they have all spoken of it in the same manner. I have, in my own reading, remarked an hundred and three epigrams, fifty

odes, and ninety-one sentences, tending to this sole purpose.

It is certain, there is no other passion which does produce such contrary effects in so great a degree. But this may be said for love, that if you strike it out of the soul, life would be insipid, and our being but half animated. Human nature would sink into deadness and lethargy, if not quickened with some active principle; and as, for all others, whether ambition, envy, or avarice, which are apt to possess the mind in the absence of this passion, it must be allowed that they have greater pains, without the compensation of such exquisite pleasures as those we find in love. The great skill is to heighten the satisfactions, and deaden the sorrows of it; which has been the end of many of my labours, and shall continue to be so, for the service of the world in general, and in particular of the fair sex, who are always the best or the worst part of it. It is pity that a passion, which has in it a capacity of making life happy, should not be cultivated to the utmost advantage. Reason, prudence, and goodnature, rightly applied, can thoroughly accomplish this great end, provided they have always a real and constant love to work upon. But this subject I shall treat more at large in the history of my married sister, and in the mean time shall conclude my reflexion on the pains and pleasures which attend this passion, with one of the finest allegories which I think I have ever read. It is invented by the divine Plato, and, to show the opinion he himself had of it, ascribed by him to his admired Socrates, whom he represents as discoursing with his friends, and giving the history of love in the following manner.

"At the birth of Beauty," says he, "there was a great feast made, and many guests invited. Among the rest, was the god Plenty, who was the