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. 'There is nothing,' said he, '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.'

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.

N° 90. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 1709.

Amoto quæramus seria ludo.-HOR. 1. Sat. i. 27.
Let us now

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

Will's Coffee-house, November 4.

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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 agree

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 Æneid of Virgil.

able 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, a hundred and three epigrams, fifty odes, and ninetyone 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 good-nature, rightly applied, can thoroughly accomplish this great end, provided they have always a real and constant love to work upon. But this subject 1 shall treat more at large in the history of my married sister, and in the mean time shall conclude my reflection 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 shew 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.

6

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 son of the goddess Prudence, and inherited many of his mother's virtues. After a full entertainment, he retired into the garden of Jupiter, which was hung with a great variety of ambrosial fruits, and seems to have been a very proper retreat for such a guest. In the mean time, an unhappy female called Poverty, having heard of this great feast, repaired to it, in hopes of finding relief. The first place she lights upon was Jupiter's garden, which generally stands open to people of all conditions. Poverty enters, and by chance finds the god Plenty asleep in it. She was immediately fired with his charms, laid herself down by his side, and managed matters so well, that she conceived a child by him. The world was very much in suspense upon the occasion, and could not imagine to themselves what would be the nature of an infant that was to have its original from two such parents. At the last, the child appears; and who should it be but Love? This infant grew up, and proved in all his behaviour, what he really was, a compound of opposite beings. As he is the son of Plenty, who was the offspring of Prudence, he is subtle, intriguing, full of stratagems and devices; as the son of Poverty, he is fawning, begging, serenading, delighting to lie at a threshold, or beneath a window. By the father, he is audacious, full of hopes, conscious of merit, and therefore quick of resentment. By the mother, he is doubtful, timorous, mean-spirited, fearful of offending, and abject in submissions. In the

same hour you may see him transported with raptures, talking of immortal pleasures, and appearing satisfied as a god; and immediately after, as the mortal mother prevails in his composition, you behold him pining, languishing, despairing, dying.'

I have been always wonderfully delighted with fables, allegories, and the like inventions, which the politest and the best instructors of mankind have always made use of. They take off from the severity of instruction, and enforce it at the same time that they conceal it. The supposing Love to be conceived immediately after the birth of Beauty; the parentage of Plenty; and the inconsistency of this passion with itself so naturally derived to it, are great masterstrokes in this fable; and if they fell into good hands, might furnish out a more pleasing canto than any in Spenser.

From my own Apartment, November 4.

I came home this evening in a very pensive mood; and, to divert me, took up a volume of Shakspeare, where I chanced to cast my eye upon a part in the tragedy of Richard the III. which filled my mind with a very agreeable horror. It was the scene in which that bold but wicked prince is represented as sleeping in his tent, the night before the battle in which he fell. The poet takes that occasion to set before him, in a vision, a terrible assembly of apparitions, the ghosts of all those innocent persons whom he is said to have murdered. Prince Edward, Henry VI., the Duke of Clarence, Rivers, Gray, and Vaughan; Lord Hastings, the two young Princes, sons to Edward IV., his own wife, and the Duke of Buckingham, rise up in their blood before him, beginning their speeches with that dreadful salutation,

Let me sit heavy on thy soul to-morrow;' and concluding with that dismal sentence, 'Despair and die.'