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attractions every time he saw her. When she observed Will irrevocably her slave, she began to use him as such, and after many steps towards such a cruelty, she at last utterly banished him. The unhappy lover strove in vain, by servile epistles, to revoke his doom; till at length he was forced to the last refuge, a round sum of money to her maid. This corrupt attendant placed him early in the morning behind the hangings in her mistress's dressing-room. He stood very conveniently to observe without being seen. The Pict begins the face she designed to wear that day; and I have heard him protest she had worked a full half hour before he knew her to be the same woman. As soon as he saw the dawn of that complexion for which he had so long languished, he thought fit to break from his concealment, repeating that of Cowley:

Th' adorning thee with so much art,

Is but a barb'rous skill:

'Tis like the pois'ning of a dart,

Too apt before to kill.

The Pict stood before him in the utmost confusion, with the prettiest smirk imaginable on the finished side of her face, pale as ashes on the other. Honeycomb seized all her gallipots and washes, and carried off his handkerchief full of brushes, scraps of Spanish wool, and vials of unguents. The lady went into the country; the lover was cured.

It is certain no faith ought to be kept with cheats; and an oath made to a Pict is of itself void. I would therefore exhort all the British ladies to single them out; nor do I know any but Lindamira who should be exempt from discovery; for

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her own complexion is so delicate, that she ought to be allowed the covering of it with paint, as a punishment for choosing to be the worst piece of art extant, instead of the master-piece of nature. As for my part, who have no expectations from women, and consider them only as they are part of the species, I do not half so much fear offending a beauty as a woman of sense; I shall therefore produce several faces which have been in public these many years and never appeared. It will be a very pretty entertainment in the playhouse (when I have abolished this custom), to see so many ladies; when they first lay it down, incog. in their own faces.

In the mean time, as a pattern for improving their charms, let the sex study the agreeable Statira. Her features are enlivened with the cheerfulness of her mind, and good humour gives an alacrity to her eyes. She is graceful without affecting an air, and unconcerned without appearing careless. Her having no manner of art in her mind, makes her want none in her person.

How like is this lady, and how unlike is a Pict, to that description Dr. Donne gives of his mistress?

-Her pure and eloquent blood

Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought
That one would almost say her body thought.

ADVERTISEMENT.

A young gentlewoman, of about nineteen years of age (bred in the family of a person of quality, lately deceased), who paints the finest flesh colour, wants a place, and is to be heard of at the house of Mynheer Grotesque, a Dutch painter in Barbi

can.

'N. B. She is also well-skilled in the draperypart, and puts on hoods, and mixes ribands, so as to suit the colours of the face with great art and success.'

R.

No. 42.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 18. By Addison.

Garganum mugire putes nemus, aut mare Tuscum;
Tanto cum strepitu ludi spectantur, et artes,
Divitiæque peregrina; quibus oblitus actor
Cum stetit in scena, concurrit dextera lævæ.
Dixit adhuc aliquid? Nil sanè. Quid placet ergo?
Lana tarentino violas imitata veneno.

IMITATED.

Loud as the wolves, on Orca's stormy steep,
Howl to the roarings of the northern deep:
Such is the shout, the long applauding note,
At Quin's high plume, or Oldfield's petticoat:
Or when from court a birth-day suit bestow'd,
Sinks the lost actor in the tawdry load
Booth enters-hark! the universal peal.-
But has he spoken?-Not a syllable-

HOR.

What shook the stage, and made the people stare,-
Cato's long wig, flow'r'd gown, and lacquer'd chair.

POPE.

ARISTOTLE has observed, that ordinary writers in tragedy endeavour to raise terror and pity in their audience, not by proper sentiments and expressions; but by the dresses and decorations of the stage. There is something of this kind very ridiculous in the English theatre. When the author has a mind to terrify us, it thunders; when he would make us melancholy the stage is darkened. But among all our tragic artifices, I am the most offended at those which are made use of to inspire

us with magnificent ideas of the persons that speak. The ordinary method of making a hero, is to clap a huge plume of feathers upon his head, which rises so very high, that there is often a greater length from his chin to the top of his head than to the sole of his foot. One would believe that we thought a great man and a tall man the same thing. This very much embarrasses the actor, who is forced to hold his neck extremely stiff and steady all the while he speaks; and notwithstanding any anxieties which he pretends for his mistress, his country, or his friends, one may see by his action, that his greatest care and concern is to keep the plume of feathers from falling off his head. For my own part, when I see a man uttering his complaints under such a mountain of feathers, I am apt to look upon him rather as an unfortunate lunatic than a distressed hero. As these superfluous ornaments upon the head make a great man, a princess generally receives her grandeur from those additional incumbrances that fall into her tail: I mean the broad sweeping train that follows her in all her motions, and finds constant employment for a boy who stands behind her to open and spread it to advantage. I do not know how others are affected at this sight, but I must confess my eyes are wholly taken up with the page's part; and as for the queen, I am not so attentive to any thing she speaks, as to the right adjusting of her train, lest it should chance to trip up her heels, or incommode her, as she walks to and fro upon the stage. It is, in my opinion, a very odd spectacle, to see a queen venting her passion in a disordered motion, and a little boy taking care all the while

that they do not ruffle the tail of her gown. The parts that the two persons act on the stage at the same time are very different: the princess is afraid lest she should incur the displeasure of the king her father, or lose the hero her lover, whilst her attendant is only concerned lest she should entangle her feet in her petticoat.

We are told that an ancient tragic poet, to move the pity of his audience for his exiled kings and distressed heroes, used to make the actors represent them in dresses and clothes that were threadbare and decayed. This artifice for moving pity seems as ill contrived as that we have been speaking of, to inspire us with a great idea of the persons introduced upon the stage. In short, I would have our conceptions raised by the dignity of thought and sublimity of expression, rather than by a train of robes or a plume of feathers.

Another mechanical method of making great men, and adding dignity to kings and queens, is to accompany them with halberts and battle-axes. Two or three shifters of scenes, with the two candle-snuffers, make up a complete body of guards upon the English stage; and by the addition of a few porters dressed in red coats, can represent above a dozen legions. I have sometimes seen a couple of armies drawn up together upon the stage, when the poet has been disposed to do honour to his generals. It is impossible for the reader's imagination to multiply twenty men into such prodigious multitudes, or to fancy that two or three hundred thousand soldiers are fighting in a room of forty or fifty yards in compass. Incidents of such a nature should be told, not represented.

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