the possession of the whole. Uneasy persons, who cannot possess their own minds, vent their spleen upon all who depend upon them; which, I think, is expressed in a lively manner in the following

letters :

'SIR,

August 2, 1711.

'I HAVE read your Spectator of the 3rd of the last month,' and wish I had the happiness of being preferred to serve so good a master as Sir Roger. The character of my master is the very reverse of that good and gentle knight's. All his directions are given, and his mind revealed by way of contraries: as when anything is to be remembered, with a peculiar cast of face he cries, "Be sure to forget now." If I am to make haste back, "Don't come these two hours; be sure to call by the way upon some of your companions." Then another excellent way of his is, if he sets me anything to do, which he knows must necessarily take up half a day, he calls ten times in a quarter of an hour to know whether I have done yet. This is his manner, and the same perverseness runs through all his actions, according as the circumstances vary. Besides all this, he is so suspicious, that he submits himself to the drudgery of a spy. He is as unhappy himself as he makes his servants: he is constantly watching us, and we differ no more in pleasure and liberty than as a jailer and a prisoner. He lays traps for faults, and no sooner makes a discovery, but falls into such language, as I am more ashamed of for coming from him, than for being directed to me. This, sir, is a short sketch of a master I have served

1 No. 107.

upwards of nine years; and though I have never wronged him, I confess my despair of pleasing him has very much abated my endeavour to do it. If you will give me leave to steal a sentence out of my master's Clarendon," I shall tell you my case in a word, "Being used worse than I deserved, I cared less to deserve well than I had done." I am,

SIR,

Your humble Servant,

'DEAR Mr. SPECTER,

RALPH VALET.'

I AM the next thing to a lady's woman, and am under both my lady and her woman. I am so used by them both, that I should be very glad to see them in the Specter. My lady herself is of no mind in the world, and for that reason her woman is of twenty minds in a moment. My lady is one that never knows what to do with herself; she pulls on and puts off everything she wears twenty times before she resolves upon it for that day. I stand at one end of the room, and reach things to her woman. When my lady asks for a thing, I hear and have half brought it, when the woman meets me in the middle of the room to receive it, and at that instant she says no, she will not have it. Then I go back, and her woman comes up to her, and by this time she will have that, and two or three things more, in an instant; the woman and I run to each other; I am loaded and delivering the things to her, when my lady says she wants none of all these things, and we are the dullest creatures in the world, and she the unhappiest woman living, for she shan't be dressed in any time. Thus we stand not knowing what to

do, when our good lady with all the patience in the world tells us, as plain as she can speak, that she will have temper because we have no manner of understanding, and begins again to dress, and see if we can find out of ourselves what we are to do. When she is dressed she goes to dinner, and after she has disliked everything there, she calls for the coach, then commands it in again, and then she will not go out at all, and then will go too, and orders the chariot. Now, good Mr. Specter, I desire you would, in the behalf of all who serve froward ladies, give out in your paper that nothing can be done without allowing time for it, and that one cannot be back again with what one was sent for if one is called back before one can go a step for that they want. And if you please let them know that all mistresses are as like as all servants.

I am,

Your loving Friend,

PATIENCE GIDDY.'

These are great calamities; but I met the other day, in the Five Fields 1 towards Chelsea, a pleasanter tyrant than either of the above represented. A fat fellow was puffing on in his open waistcoat, a boy of fourteen in a livery carrying after him his cloak, upper coat, hat, wig, and sword. The poor lad was ready to sink with the weight, and could

1 Fields through which the King's Road' ran. They are now covered by Eaton Square, Belgrave Square, and the neighbouring streets. Cf. Tatler, No. 34: I fancied I could give you an immediate description of this village [Chelsea], from the Five Fields, where the robbers lie in wait, to the coffee-house [Don Saltero's], where the literati sit in council.'

not keep up with his master, who turned back every half furlong and wondered what made the lazy young dog lag behind.

There is something very unaccountable that people cannot put themselves in the condition of the persons below them when they consider the commands they give. But there is nothing more common than to see a fellow (who, if he were reduced to it, would not be hired by any man living) lament that he is troubled with the most worthless dogs in nature.

It would, perhaps, be running too far out of common life to urge that he who is not master of himself and his own passions, cannot be a proper master of another. Equanimity in a man's own words and actions will easily diffuse itself through his whole family. Pamphilio has the happiest household of any man I know, and that proceeds from the human regard he has to them in their private persons, as well as in respect that they are his servants. If there be any occasion wherein they may in themselves be supposed to be unfit to attend their master's concerns, by reason of an attention to their own, he is so good as to place himself in their condition. I thought it very becoming in him when at dinner the other day he made an apology for want of more attendants. He said: One of my footmen is gone to the wedding of his sister, and the other I don't expect to wait, because his father died but two days ago.'

T.

No. 138. Wednesday, August 8, 1711

Ο

[STEELE.

Utitur in re non dubia testibus non necessariis.

-TULL.

NE meets now and then with persons who are extremely learned and knotty in expounding clear cases. Tully' tells us of an author that spent some pages to prove that generals could not perform the great enterprises which have made them so illustrious if they had not had men. He asserted also, it seems, that a minister at home, no more than a commander abroad, could do anything without other men were his instruments and assistants. On this occasion he produces the example of Themistocles, Pericles, Cyrus, and Alexander himself, whom he denies to have been capable of effecting what they did except they had been followed by others. It is pleasant enough to see such persons contend without opponents, and triumph without victory.

The author above mentioned by the orator is placed for ever in a very ridiculous light, and we meet every day in conversation such as deserve the same kind of renown for troubling those with whom they converse with the like certainties. The persons that I have always thought to deserve the highest admiration in this kind are your ordinary storytellers, who are most religiously careful of keeping to the truth in every particular circumstance of a narration, whether it concern the main end or not. A gentleman whom I had the honour to be in com

1 On Rhetorical Invention.'