fects. Such an easy companion as this either now and then throws out a little flattery, or lets a man silently flatter himself in his superiority to him. If you take notice, there is hardly a rich man in the world, who has not such a led friend of small consideration, who is a darling for his insignificancy. It is a great ease to have one in our own shape a species below us, and who, without being lifted in our service, is by nature of our retinue. These dependents are of excellent use on a rainy day, or when a man has not a mind to dress; or to exclude solitude, when one has neither a mind to that or to company. There are of this good-natured order, who are so kind as to divide themselves, and do these good offices to many. Five or six of them visit a whole quarter of the town, and exclude the spleen, without fees, from the families they frequent. If they do not prescribe physic, they can be company when you take it. Very great benefactors to the rich, or those whom they call people at their ease, are your persons of no consequence. I have known some of them, by the help of a little cunning, make delicious flatterers. They know the course of the town, and the general characters of persons: by this means they will sometimes tell the most agreeable falsehoods imaginable. They will acquaint you, that such a one of a quite contrary party said, "That though you were engaged in different interests, yet he had the greatest respect for your good sense and address." When one of these has a little cunning, he passes his time in the utmost satisfaction to himself and his friends: for his position, is never to report or speak a displeasing thing to his friend. As for letting him go on in an error, he knows, advice against them is the office of persons of greater talents and less discretion.

The Latin word for a flatterer, assentator, implies no more than a person that barely consents; and indeed such a one, if a man were able to purchase or maintain him, cannot be bought too dear. Such a one never contradicts you; but gains upon you, not by a fulsome way of commending you in broad terms, but liking whatever you propose or utter; at the same time, is ready to beg your pardon, and gainsay you, if you chance to speak ill of yourself. An old lady is very seldom without such a companion as this, who can recite the names of all her lovers, and the matches refused by her in the days when she minded such vanities, as she is pleased to call them, though she so much approves the mention of them. It is to be noted, that a woman's flatterer is generally elder than herself;

her years serving at once to recommend her patroness's age, and to add weight to her complaisance in all other particulars.

We gentlemen of small fortunes are extremely necessitous in this particular. I have indeed one who smokes with me often; but his parts are so low, that all the incense he does me is to fill his pipe with me, and to be out at just as many whiffs as I take. This is all the praise or assent that he is capable of; yet there are more hours when I would rather be in his company, than in that of the brightest man I know. It would be an hard matter to give an account of this inclination to be flattered; but if we go to the bottom of it, we shall find, that the pleasure in it is something like that of receiving money which lay out. Every man thinks he has an estate of reputation, and is glad to see one that will bring any of it home to him. It is no matter how dirty a bag it is conveyed to him in, or by how clownish a messenger, so the money be good. All that we want, to be pleased with flattery, is to believe that the man is sincere who gives it us. It is by this one accident, that absurd creatures often out-run the most skilful in this art. Their want of ability is here an advantage; and their bluntness, as it is the seeming effect of sincerity, is the best cover to artifice.

Terence introduces a flatterer talking to a coxcomb, whom he cheats out of a livelihood; and a third person on the stage makes on him this pleasant remark, "This fellow has an art of making fools madmen." The love of flattery is, indeed, sometimes the weakness of a great mind; but you see it also in persons, who otherwise discover no manner of relish of any thing above mere sensuality. These latter it sometimes improves; but always debases the former. A fool is in himself the object of pity, until he is flattered. By the force of that, his stupidity is raised into affectation, and he becomes of dignity enough to be ridiculous. I remember a droll, that upon one's saying, "The times are so ticklish, that there must great care be taken what one says in conversation"; answered with an air of surliness and honesty, "If people will be free, let them be so in the manner that I am, who never abuse a man but to his face." He had no reputation for saying dangerous truths; therefore when it was repeated, "You abuse a man but to his face?" "Yes," says he, "I flatter him."

It is indeed the greatest of injuries to flatter any but the unhappy, or such as are displeased with themselves for some infirmity. In this latter case we have a member of our club, who, when Sir Jeffery

falls asleep, wakens him with snoring. This makes Sir Jeffery hold up for some moments the longer to see there are men younger than himself among us, who are more lethargic than he is.

When flattery is practised upon any other consideration, it is the most abject thing in nature; nay, I cannot think of any character below the flatterer, except he that envies him. You meet with fellows, prepared to be as mean as possible in their condescensions and expressions; but they want persons and talents to rise up to such a baseness. As a coxcomb is a fool of parts, so is a flatterer a knave of parts.

The best of this order, that I know, is one who disguises it under a spirit of contradiction or reproof. He told an arrant driveller the other day, that he did not care for being in company with him, because he heard he turned his absent friends into ridicule. And upon lady Autumn's disputing with him about something that happened at the Revolution, he replied with a very angry tone, "Pray, madam, give me leave to know more of a thing in which I was actually concerned, than you who were then in your nurse's arms."

ON ADVERTISEMENTS

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 1710. [ADDISON.]

No. 224.

Materiam superabat opus.

OVID. Met. ii. 5.

The matter equall'd not the artist's skill.

'T is my custom, in a dearth of news, to entertain myself with

all our public prints. These I consider as accounts of news from the little world, in the same manner that the foregoing parts of the paper are from the great. If in one we hear that a sovereign prince is fled from this capital city, in the other we hear of a tradesman who hath shut up his shop, and run away. If in one we find the victory of a general, in the other we see the desertion of a private soldier. I must confess I have a certain weakness in my temper, that is often very much affected by these little domestic occurrences,

and have frequently been caught with tears in my eyes over a melancholy advertisement.

But to consider this subject in its most ridiculous lights, advertisements are of great use to the vulgar. First of all, as they are instruments of ambition. A man that is by no means big enough for the Gazette, may easily creep into the advertisements; by which means we often see an apothecary in the same paper of news with a plenipotentiary, or a running-foot-man with an ambassador. An advertisement from Piccadilly goes down to posterity with an article from Madrid, and John Bartlett of Goodman's-fields is celebrated in the same paper with the emperor of Germany. Thus the fable tells us, that the wren mounted as high as the eagle, by getting upon his back.

A second use which this sort of writings hath been turned to of late years, has been the management of controversy; insomuch that above half the advertisements one meets with now-a-days are purely polemical. The inventors of "Strops for razors" have written against one another this way for several years, and that with great bitterness; as the whole argument pro and con in the case of "the morning gown" is still carried on after the same manner. I need not mention the several proprietors of Dr. Anderson's pills; nor take notice of the many satirical works of this nature so frequently published by Dr. Clark, who has had the confidence to advertise upon that learned knight, my very worthy friend, Sir William Read: but I shall not interpose in their quarrel: Sir William can give him his own in advertisements, that, in the judgment of the impartial, are as well penned as the doctor's.

The third and last use of these writings is to inform the world, where they may be furnished with almost every thing that is necessary for life. If a man has pains in his head, colics in his bowels, or spots in his cloaths, he may here meet with proper cures and remedies. If a man would recover a wife or a horse that is stolen or strayed; if he wants new sermons, electuaries, asses' milk, or anything else, either for his body or his mind; this is the place to look for them in.

The great art in writing advertisements, is the finding out a proper method to catch the reader's eye, without which a good thing may pass over unobserved, or be lost among commissions of bankrupts. Asterisks and hands were formerly of great use for this purpose. Of late years the N. B. has been much in fashion,

as also little cuts and figures, the invention of which we must ascribe to the author of spring-trusses. I must not here omit the blind Italian character, which, being scarce legible, always fixes and detains the eye, and gives the curious reader something like the satisfaction of prying into a secret.

But the great skill in an advertiser is chiefly seen in the style which he makes use of. He is to mention "the universal esteem, or general reputation," of things that were never heard of. If he is a physician or astrologer, he must change his lodgings frequently; and, though he never saw any body in them besides his own family, give public notice of it, "for the information of the nobility and gentry." Since I am thus usefully employed in writing criticisms on the works of these diminutive authors, I must not pass over in silence an advertisement, which has lately made its appearance, and is written altogether in a Ciceronian manner. It was sent to me, with five shillings, to be inserted among my advertisements; but as it is a pattern of good writing in this way, I shall give it a place in the body of my paper.

"The highest compounded spirit of lavender, the most glorious, if the expression may be used, enlivening scent and flavour that can possibly be, which so raptures the spirits, delights the gust, and gives such airs to the countenance, as are not to be imagined but by those that have tried it. The meanest sort of the thing is admired by most gentlemen and ladies; but this far more, as by far it exceeds it, to the gaining among all a more than common esteem. It is sold, in neat flint bottles fit for the pocket, only at the golden Key in Wharton's court, near Holbourn-bars, for three shillings and six-pence, with directions."

At the same time that I recommend the several flowers in which this spirit of lavender is wrapped up, if the expression may be used, I cannot excuse my fellow-labourers for admitting into their papers several uncleanly advertisements, not at all proper to appear in the works of polite writers. Among these I must reckon the "Carminative Wind-expelling Pills." If the doctor had called them only his Carminative Pills, he had been as cleanly as one could have wished; but the second word entirely destroys the decency of the first. There are other absurdities of this nature so very gross, that I dare not mention them; and shall therefore dismiss this subject with a public admonition to Michael Parrot, That he do not presume any more to mention a certain worm he knows of,