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No. 178. Monday, Sept. 24, 1711

I

[STEELE.

Comis in uxorem.-HOR., 2 Ep. ii. 133. CANNOT defer taking notice of this letter:

'Mr. SPECTATOR,

"I AM but too good a judge of your paper of the 15th instant, which is a masterpiece; I mean that of Jealousy: but I think it unworthy of you to speak of that torture in the breast of a man, and not to mention also the pangs of it in the heart of a woman. You have very judiciously, and with the greatest penetration imaginable, considered it as woman is the creature of whom the diffidence is raised; but not a word of a man who is so unmerciful as to move jealousy in his wife, and not care whether she is so or not. It is possible you may not believe there are such tyrants in the world; but alas I can tell you of a man who is ever out of humour in his wife's company, and the pleasantest man in the world everywhere else; the greatest sloven at home when he appears to none but his family, and most exactly well-dressed in all other places. Alas, sir, is it of course, that to deliver oneself wholly into a man's power without possibility of appeal to any other jurisdiction but to his own reflections, is so little an obligation to a gentleman that he can be offended and fall into a rage, because my heart swells tears into my eyes when I see him in a cloudy mood? I pretend to no

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succour, and hope for no relief but from himself; and yet he that has sense and justice in everything else, never reflects, that to come home only to sleep off an intemperance, and spend all the time he is there as if it were a punishment, cannot but give the anguish of a jealous mind. He always leaves his home as if he were going to court, and returns as if he were entering a gaol. I could add to this, that from his company and his usual discourse, he does not scruple being thought an abandoned man as to his morals. Your own imagination will say enough to you concerning the condition of me his wife; and I wish you would be so good as to represent to him, for he is not ill-natured and reads you much, that the moment I hear the door shut after him, I throw myself upon my bed, and drown the child he is so fond of with my tears, and often frighten it with my cries; that I curse my being; that I run to my glass all over-bathed in sorrows, and help the utterance of my inward anguish by beholding the gush of my own calamities as my tears fall from my eyes. This looks like an imagined picture to tell you, but indeed this is one of my pastimes. Hitherto I have only told you the general temper of my mind, but how shall I give you an account of the distraction of it? Could you but conceive how cruel I am one moment in my resentment, and, at the ensuing minute, when I place him in the condition my anger would bring him to, how compassionate; it would give you some notion how miserable I am, and how little I deserve it. When I remonstrate with the greatest gentleness that is possible against unhandsome appearances, and that married persons are under particular rules; when he is in the best humour to receive this, I am answered only, that I expose my own reputation and sense if I appear jealous.

I wish, good sir, you would take this into serious consideration, and admonish husbands and wives what terms they ought to keep towards each other. Your thoughts on this important subject will have the greatest reward, that which descends on such as feel the sorrows of the afflicted. Give me leave to subscribe myself,

Your unfortunate, humble Servant,
CELINDA.'

I had it in my thoughts, before I received the letter of this lady, to consider this dreadful passion in the mind of a woman; and the smart she seems to feel does not abate the inclination I had to recommend to husbands a more regular behaviour, than to give the most exquisite of torments to those who love them, nay, whose torment would be abated if they did not love them.

It is wonderful to observe how little is made of this inexpressible injury, and how easily men get into an habit of being least agreeable where they are most obliged to be so. But this subject deserves a distinct speculation, and I shall observe for a day or two the behaviour of two or three happy pair I am acquainted with before I pretend to make a system of conjugal morality. I design in the first place to go a few miles out of town, and there I know where to meet one who practises all the parts of a fine gentleman in the duty of an husband. When he was a bachelor much business made him particularly negligent in his habit; but now there is no young lover living so exact in the care of his person. One who asked why he was so long washing his mouth and so delicate in the choice and wearing of his linen, was answered, ' Because there is a woman of

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merit obliged to receive me kindly, and I think it incumbent upon me to make her inclination go along with her duty.'

If a man would give himself leave to think, he would not be so unreasonable as to expect debauchery and innocence could live in commerce together; or hope that flesh and blood is capable of so strict an allegiance, as that a fine woman must go on to improve herself till she is as good and impassive as an angel, only to preserve a fidelity to a brute and a satyr. The lady who desires me for her sake to end one of my papers with the following letter, I am persuaded thinks such a perseverance very impracticable:

'HUSBAND,

'STAY more at home. I know where you visited at seven o'clock on Thursday evening. The Colonel whom you charged me to see no more, is

in town.

T.

MARTHA HOUSEWIFE.'

No. 179. Tuesday, Sept. 25, 1711

I

[ADDISON.

Centuria seniorum agitant expertia frugis:
Celsi prætereunt austera poemata rhamnes.
Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci,
Lectorem delectando, pariterque monendo.

-HOR., Ars Poet. 341.

MAY cast my readers under two general divisions, the mercurial and the saturnine.

The

first are the gay part of my disciples, who require speculations of wit and humour; the others are

those of a more solemn and sober turn, who find no pleasure but in papers of morality and sound sense. The former call everything that is serious stupid; the latter look upon everything as impertinent that is ludicrous. Were I always grave one half of my readers would fall off from me; were I always merry I should lose the other. I make it therefore my endeavour to find out entertainments of both kinds, and by that means perhaps consult the good of both more than I should do did I always write to the particular taste of either. As they neither of them know what I proceed upon, the sprightly reader, who takes up my paper in order to be diverted, very often finds himself engaged unawares in a serious and profitable course of thinking; as, on the contrary, the thoughtful man, who perhaps may hope to find something solid and full of deep reflection, is very often insensibly betrayed into a fit of mirth. In a word, the reader sits down to my entertainment without knowing his bill of fare, and has therefore at least the pleasure of hoping there may be a dish to his palate.

I must confess, were I left to myself I should rather aim at instructing than diverting; but if we will be useful to the world, we must take it as we find it. Authors of professed severity discourage the looser part of mankind from having anything to do with their writings. A man must have virtue in him before he will enter upon the reading of a Seneca or an Epictetus. The very title of a moral treatise has something in it austere and shocking to the careless and inconsiderate.

For this reason several unthinking persons fall in my way, who would give no attention to lectures

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