had they not been accompanied with that moderation in an high fortune, and that affability of manners, which are so conspicuous through all parts of your life. Your aversion to any ostentatious arts of setting to show those great services which you have done the public, has not likewise a little contributed to that universal acknowledgment which is paid you by your country.

The consideration of this part of your character, is that which hinders me from enlarging on those extraordinary talents which have given you so great a figure in the British senate, as well as in that elegance and politeness which appear in your more retired conversation. I should be unpardonable if, after what I have said, I should longer detain you with an address of this nature; I cannot, however, conclude it, without acknowledging those great obligations which have laid upon,

you

SIR,

Your most obedient,

Humble servant,

THE SPECTATOR.

THOUGH the subject I am now going upon would be much more properly the foundation of a comedy, I cannot forbear inserting the circumstances which pleased me in the account a young lady gave me of the loves of a family in town, which shall be nameless; or rather, for the better sound and elevation of the history, instead of Mr. and Mrs. Such-a-one, I shall call them by feigned names. Without farther preface, you are to know, that within the liberties of the city of Westminster lives the lady Honoria, a widow about the age of forty, of a healthy constitution, gay temper, and elegant person. She dresses a little too much like a girl, affects a childish fondness in the tone of her voice, sometimes a pretty sullenness in the leaning of her head, and now and then a downcast of her eyes on her fan. Neither her imagination nor her health would ever give her to know that she is turned of twenty; but that in the midst of these pretty softnesses, and airs of delicacy and attraction, she has a tall daughter within a fortnight of fifteen, who impertinently comes into the

room, and towers so much towards woman, that her mother is always checked by her presence, and every charm of Honoria droops at the entrance of Flavia. The agreeable Flavia would be what she is not, as well as her mother Honoria; but all their beholders are more partial to an affectation of what a person is growing up to, than of what has been already enjoyed, and is gone for ever. It is therefore allowed to Flavia to look forward, but not to Honoria to look back. Flavia is no way dependent on her mother with relation to her fortune, for which reason they live almost upon an equality in conversation; and as Honoria has given Flavia to understand, that it is ill-bred to be always calling mother, Flavia is as well pleased never to be called child. It happens, by this means, that these ladies are generally rivals in all places where they appear; and the words mother and daughter never pass between them but out of spite. Flavia one night at a play observing Honoria draw the eyes of several in the pit, called to a lady who sat by her, and bid her ask her mother to lend her her snuff-box for one moment. Another time, when a lover of Honoria was on his knees beseeching the favour to kiss her hand, Flavia, rushing into the room, kneeled down by him and asked blessing. Several of these contradictory acts of duty have raised between them such a coldness, that they generally converse when they are in mixed company by way of talking at one another, and not to one another. Honoria is ever complaining of a certain sufficiency in the young women of this age, who assume to themselves an authority of carrying all things before them as if they were possessors of the esteem of mankind, and all who were but a year before them in the world were neglected or deceased. Flavia,

upon such a provocation, is sure to observe, that there are people who can resign nothing, and know not how to give up what they know they cannot hold; that there are those who will not allow youth their follies, not because they are themselves past them, but because they love to continue in them. These beauties rival each other on all occasions, not that they have always had the same lovers, but each has kept up a vanity to show the other the charms of her lover. Dick Crastin and Tom Tulip, among many others, have of late been pretenders in this family: Dick to Honoria, Tom to Flavia. Dick is the only surviving beau of the last age, and Tom almost the only one that keeps up that order of men in this.

I wish I could repeat the little circumstances of a conversation of the four lovers with the spirit in which the young lady, I had my account from, represented it at a visit where I had the honour to be present; but it seems Dick Crastin, the admirer of Honoria, and Tom Tulip, the pretender to Flavia, were purposely admitted together by the ladies, that each might show the other that her lover had the superiority in the accomplishments of that sort of creature whom the sillier part of women call a fine gentleman. As this age has much more gross taste in courtship, as well as in every thing else, than the last had, these gentlemen are instances of it in their different manner of application. Tulip is ever making allusions to the vigour of his person, the sinewy force of his make; while Crastin professes a wary observation of the turns of his mistress's mind. Tulip gives himself the air of a resistless ravisher, Crastin practises that of a skilful lover. Poetry is the inseparable property of every man in love; and

as men of wit write verses on those occasions, the rest of the world repeat the verses of others. These servants of the ladies were used to imitate their manner of conversation, and allude to one another, rather than interchange discourse in what they said when they met. Tulip the other day seized his mistress's hand, and repeated out of Ovid's Art of Love,

''Tis I can in soft battles pass the night,

Yet rise next morning vigorous for the fight,
Fresh as the day, and active as the light.'

Upon hearing this, Crastin, with an air of deference, played Honoria's fan, and repeated,

'Sedley has that prevailing gentle art,
That can, with a resistless charm, impart
The loosest wishes to the chastest heart:
Raise such a conflict, kindle such a fire,
Between declining virtue and desire,

Till the poor vanquish'd maid dissolves away

In dreams all night, in sighs and tears all day.'i

When Crastin had uttered these verses with a tenderness which at once spoke passion and respect, Honoria cast a triumphant glance at Flavia, as exulting in the elegance of Crastin's courtship, and upbraiding her with the homeliness of Tulip's. Tulip understood the reproach, and in return began to applaud the wisdom of old amorous gentlemen, who turned their mistress's imagination as far as possible from what they had long themselves forgot, and ended his discourse with a sly commendation of the doctrine of Platonic love; at the same time he ran

These verses on Sir Charles Sedley are from Lord Rochester's Imitation of Horace, 1 Sat. x.