I Good Mr PERT, WILL allow you nothing till you refolve me the following question. Pray what's the reafon that 'while you only talk now upon Wednesdays, Fridays, and Mondays, you pretend to be a greater tatler, than ' when you spoke every day as you formerly used to do? If this be your plunging out of your taciturnity, pray let the length of your fpeeches compenfate for the fcarcenefs of them. I am, Good Mr PERT, Your Admirer, If you will be long enough for me, N° 582. Wednesday, August 28. Tenet infanabile multos Scribendi cacoethes Juv. Sat. 7. v. 51. The curfe of writing is an endless itch. TH Charles Dryden. HERE is a certain diftemper, which is mentioned neither by Galen nor Hippocrates, nor to be met with in the London Difpenfary. Juvenal, in the motto of my paper, terms it a cacoethes; which is a hard word for a difeafe called in plain English, the itch of writing. This cacoethes is as epidemical as the fmall-pox, there being very few who are not feized with it fome time or other in their lives. There is, however, this difference in these two diftempers, that the first, after having indifpofed you for a time, never returns again; whereas this I am speaking of, when it is once got into the blood, feldom comes out of it. The British nation is very much. afflicted with this malady, and though very many remedies have been applied to perfons infected with it, few of them have ever proved fuccefsful. Some have been cauterized with fatires and lampoons, but have received little or no benefit from them; others have had their heads fastened for an hour together between a cleft board, which is made ufe of as a cure for the disease when it appears in its greatest malignity. There is indeed one kind of this malady which has been fometimes removed, like the biting of a Tarantula, with the found of a musical inftrument, which is commonly known by the name of a Catcall. But if you have a patient of this kind under your care, you may affure yourself there is no other way of recovering him effectually, but by forbidding him the use of pen, ink, and paper. BUT to drop the allegory before I have tired it out, there is no fpecies of fcribblers more offenfive, and more incurable than your periodical writers, whofe works return upon the public on certain days, and at stated times. We have not the confolation in the perufal of these authors, which we find at the reading of all others, namely, that we are fure if we have but patience we may come to the end of their labours. I have often admired an humorous faying of Diogenes, who reading a dull author to feveral of his friends, when every one began to be tired, finding he was almost come to a blank leaf at the end of it, cried, Courage, lads, I fee land. On the contrary, our progrefs through that kind of writers I am now speaking of, is never at an end. One day makes work for another, we do not know when to promife ourfelves reft. IT is a melancholy thing to confider, that the art of printing, which might be the greatest bleffing to mankind, fhould prove detrimental to us, and that it should be made ufe of to scatter prejudice and ignorance through a people, inftead of conveying to them truth and knowledge. I was lately reading a very whimsical treatise, intitled, William Ramfay's Vindication of Aftrology. This profound author, among many myftical paffages, has the following one. 'The abfence of the fun is not the cause ⚫ of night, forafmuch as his light is fo great that it may illuminate the earth all over at once as clear as broad day; but there are tenebrificous and dark stars, by whose influence night is brought on, and which do ray out darknefs darkness and obfcurity upon the earth, as the fun does light.' I CONSIDER Writers in the fame view this fage aftrologer does the heavenly bodies. Some of them are stars that scatter light, as others do darkness. I could mention several authors who are tenebrificous stars of the first magnitude, and point out a knot of gentlemen who have been dull in confort, and may be looked upon as a dark conftellation. The nation has been a great while benighted with feveral of these antiluminaries. I fuffered them to ray out their darkness as long as I was able to endure it, till at length I came to a refolution of rifing upon them, and hope in a little time to drive them quite out of the British hemisphere. N° 583.. Friday, Auguft 20. Ipfe thymum pinofque ferens de montibus altis, Virg. Georg. 4. V. 112. With his own hand, the guardian of the bees, E VERY ftation of life has duties which are proper to it. Those who are determined by choice to any particular kind of bufinefs, are indeed more happy than › those who are determined by neceffity, but both are under an equal obligation of fixing on employments, which may be either useful to themfelves, or beneficial to others; no one of the fons of Adam ought to think himself exempt from that labour and industry, which were denouneed to our first parent, and in him to all his pofterity. Thofe to whom birth or fortune may feem to make fuch an application unneceffary, ought to find out fome calling or profeffion for themselves, that they may not lie as a burden on the species, and be the only useless parts of the creation. MANY of our country gentlemen in their bufy hours apply themselves wholly to the chafe, or to fome other diverfion which they find in the fields and woods. This gave occafion to one of our most eminent English writers to reprefent every one of them as lying under a kind of curfe pronounced to them in the words of Goliah, I will give thee to the fowls of the air, and to the beafts of the field. THOUGH exercises of this kind, when indulged with moderation, may have a good influence both on the mind and body, the country affords many other amusements of a more noble kind. AMONG thefe I know none more delightful in itself, and beneficial to the public, than that of planting. I could mention a nobleman whofe fortune has placed him in feveral parts of England, and who has always left thefe vifible marks behind him, which fhew he has been there: he never hired a house in his life, without leaving all about it the feeds of wealth, and beftowing legacies on the pofterity of the owner. Had all the gentlemen of England made the fame improvements upon their eftates, our whole country would have been at this time as one great garden. Nor ought fuch an employment to be looked upon as too inglorious for men of the highest rank. There have been heroes in this art, as well as in others. are told in particular of Cyrus the Great, that he planted all the Leffer Afia. There is indeed fomething truly magnificent in this kind of amufement: it gives a nobler air to feveral parts of nature; it fills the earth with a variety of beautiful fcenes, and has fomething in it like creation. For this reafon the pleasure of one who plants is fomething like that of a poet, who, as Ariftotle observes, is more delighted with his productions than any other writer or artist whatsoever. We PLANTATIONS have one advantage in them which is not to be found in most other works, as they give a pleafure of a more lafting date, and continually improve in the eye of the planter. When you have finished a building ΟΙ or any other undertaking of the like nature, it immediately decays upon your hands; you fee it brought to the utmost point of perfection, and from that time hastening to its ruin. On the contrary, when you have finished your plantations, they are still arriving at greater degrees of perfection as long as you live, and appear more delightful in every fucceeding year, than they did in the foregoing. BUT I do not only recommend this art to men of eftates as a pleafing amufement, but as it is a kind of virtuous employment, and may therefore be inculcated by moral. motives; particularly from the love which we ought to have for our country, and the regard which we ought to bear to our pofterity. As for the first, I need only mention what is frequently obferved by others, that the increafe of forest-trees does by no means bear a proportion to the destruction of them, infomuch that in a few ages the nation may be at a lofs to fupply itself with timber fufficient for the fleets of England. I know when a man talks of pofterity in matters of this nature, he is looked upon with an eye of ridicule by the cunning and selfish part of mankind. Moft people are of the humour of an old fellow of a college, who, when he was preffed by the fociety to come into fomething that might redound to the good of their fucceffors, grew very peevish; We are always doing,' fays he, fomething for pofterity, but I would fain fee pofterity do fomething for us.' 6 BUT I think men are inexcufable who fail in a duty of this nature, fince it is so easily discharged. When a man confiders that the putting a few twigs into the ground, is doing good to one who will make his appearance in the world about fifty years hence, or that he is perhaps making one of his own defcendants eafy or rich, by fo inconfiderable an expenfe; if he finds himfelf averse to it, he must conclude that he has a poor and bafe heart, void of all generous principles and love to mankind. THERE is one confideration, which may very much enforce what I have here faid. Many honeft minds that are naturally difpofed to do good in the world, and become beneficial to mankind, complain within themselves that they have not talents for it. This therefore is a good office, which is fuited to the meanest capacities, and which may |