of concern, excite in them a quite contrary one. In the, tragedy of Macbeth, the other night, when the lady who is conscious of the crime of murdering the king, feems utterly aftonished at the news, and makes an exclamation at it; instead of the indignation which is natural to the occafion, that expreffion is received with a loud laugh they were as merry when a criminal was ftabbed. It is certainly an occafion of rejoicing when the wicked are feized in their designs; but I think it is not fuch a triumph as is exerted by laughter. You may generally obferve, that the appetites are fooner moved than the paffions: a fly expreflion which alludes to bawdry, puts a whole row into a pleasing fmirk; when a good fentence that describes an inward fentiment of the foul, is received with the greateft coldnefs and indifference. A correfpondent of mine, upon this fubject, has divided the female part of the audience, and accounts for their prepoffeffions against this reasonable delight in the following manner. The prude, fays he, as fhe acts always in contradiction, fo fhe is gravely fullen at a comedy, and extravagantly gay at a tragedy. The coquette is fo much taken up with throwing her eyes around the audience, and confidering the effect of them, that she cannot be expected to obferve the actors but as they are her rivals, and take off the obfervation of the men from herself. Befides thefe fpecies of women, there are the Examples, or the first of the mode : thefe are to be fuppofed too well acquainted with what the actor is going to fay to be moved at it. After these one might mention a certain flippant fet of females who are mimics, and are wonderfully diverted with the conduct of all the people around them, and are fpectators only of the audience. But what is of all the moft to be lamented, is the lofs of a party whom it would be worth preferving in their right fenfes upon all occafions, and thefe are those whom we may indifferently call the innocent or the unaffected. You may fometimes fee one of thefe fenfibly touched with a well-wrought incident; but then the is immediately fo impertinently obferved by the men, and frowned at by fome infenfible fuperior of her own fex, that she is afhamed, and loses the enjoyment of the most laudable concern, pity. Thus the whole audience is afraid of letting fall a tear, and thun as a’ weakness the best and worthiest part of our fenfe. SIR, AS you are one that doth not only pretend to re'form, but effect it amongst people of any fenfe; makes me (who am one of the greatest of your admirers) give you this trouble to defire you will fettle the me'thod of us females knowing when one another is in town: for they have now got a trick of never fending to their acquaintance when they first come; and if one does not vifit them within the week which they stay at home, it is a mortal quarrel. Now, dear Mr. SPEC, either command them to put it in the advertisement of your paper, which is generally read by our fex, or elfe order them to breathe their faucy footmen, who are good for nothing else, by fending them to tell all their acquaintance. If you think to print this, pray put it in a better ftile, as to the fpelling part. The town is now filling every day, and it cannot be deferred, because people take advantage of one another by this means and break off acquaintance, and are rude therefore pray put this in your paper as foon as you can poffibly, to prevent any future mifcarriages. of this nature. I am, as I ever shall be, ་ · ་ • Dear SPEC, • Your moft obedient humble fervant, MARY MEANWELL. Pray settle what is to be a proper notification of a perfon's being in town, and how that differs according to people's quality.' Mr. SPECTATOR, October the 20th. I HAVE been out of town, fo did not meet with your paper dated September the 28th, wherein you, to my heart's defire, expofe that curfed vice of infnaring poor young girls, and drawing them from their friends. I affure you without flattery it has faved a 'prentice of mine from ruin; and in token of gratitude as well as for the benefit of my family, I have put it in a frame and glass, and hung it behind my counter. I 'fhall take care to make my young ones read it every morning to fortify them against fuch pernicious raf'cals. I know not whether what you writ was matter of fact, or your own invention; but this I will take my oath on, the first part is so exactly like what happened to my 'prentice, that had I read your paper then, I should have taken your method to have fecured a villain. Go on and profper. "Your most obliged humble servant.” Mr. SPECTATOR, WITHOUT raillery, I defire you to infert this, • word for word in your next, as you value a lover's prayers. You fee it is an hue and cry after a stray heart, with the marks and blemishes under-written, which whoever fhall bring to you, shall receive sa⚫tisfaction. Let me beg of you not to fail, as you remember the paffion you had for her to whom you. lately ended a paper. "Noble, generous, great and good, Panting, trembling, fighing, dying, Equal measures ftill it beats; "Whoe'er shall wear it, it will fmart her, T. N° 209. Tuesday, October 30. Γυναικὸς ἐδὲ χρῆμ' ἀνὴρ ληίζεται Εσθλῆς ἄμεινον οὐδὲ ῥίγιον κακῆς SIMONIDES. Of earthly goods the beft, is a good wife; THERE are no authors I am more pleafed with, than those who fhew human nature in a variety of views, and defcribe the feveral ages of the world in their dif ferent manners. A reader cannot be more rationally entertained, than by comparing the virtues and vices of his own times with thofe which prevailed in the times of his forefathers; and drawing a parallel in his mind between his own private character, and that of other perfons, whether of his own age, or of the ages that went before him. The contemplation of mankind under these changeable colours, is apt to fhame us out of any particular vice, or animate us to any particular virtue; to make us pleafed or difpleafed with ourselves in the most proper points, to clear our minds of prejudice and prepoffeffion, and rectify that narrowness of temper which inclines us to think amifs of those who differ from ourselves. If we look into the manners of the moft remote ages of the world, we discover human nature in her fimplicity; and the more we come downward towards our own times, may obferve her hiding herself in artifices and refinements, polished infenfibly out of her original plainnefs, and at length intirely loft under form and ceremony, and what we call good-breeding. Read the accounts of men and women as they are given us by the most ancient writers, both facred and profane, and you would think you were reading the hiftory of another species. Aniong the writers of antiquity, there are none who inftruct us more openly in the manners of their refpective times in which they lived, than thofe who have employed themfelves in fatire, under what drefs foever it pro may appear; as there are no other authors whofe vince it is to enter fo directly into the ways of men, and fet their miscarriages in fo ftrong a light. Simonides, a poet famous in his generation, is, I think, author of the oldeft fatire that is now extant; and, as fome fay, of the firft that was ever written. This poet flourished about four hundred years after the fiege of Troy; and fhews, by his way of writing, the fimplicity, or rather coarseness of the age in which he lived. I have taken notice, in my hundred and fixty-firft fpeculation, that the rule of obferving what the French call the Bienfeance, in an allufion, has been found out of latter years; and that the ancients, provided there was a likeness in their fimilitudes, did not much trouble themselves about the decency of the comparifon. The fatire or iambics of Simonides, with which I fhall entertain my readers in the prefent paper, are a remarkable inftance of what I formerly advanced. The fubject of this fatire is woman. He defcribes the fex in their feveral characters, which he derives to them from a fanciful fuppofition raised upon the doctrine of pre-existence. He tells us, that the gods formed the fouls of women out of thofe feeds and principles which compofe feveral kinds of animals and elements; and that their good or bad. difpofitions arife in them according as fuch and fuch feeds and principles predominate in their conftitutions. I have tranflated the author very faithfully, and if not word for word, which our language would not bear, at leaft fo as to comprehend every one of his fentiments, without adding any thing of my own, I have already apologized for this author's want of delicacy, and must further premife, that the following fatire affects only: fome of the lower part of the fex, and not those who have been refined by a polite education, which was not fo common in the age of this poet. "In the beginning God made the fouls of woman"kind out of different materials, and in a separate state. "from their bodies. "The fouls of one kind of women were formed out. "of those ingredients which compofe a fwine. A woman of this make is a flut in her house and a glutton. 66 ་ |
