vertisement thereof to me, at all convenient and spectatorial hours, when men of business are to be seen. Hereof you are not to fail. Given under my seal of office. T. THE SPECTAtor.

N° 527. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 1712.

Facilè invenies et pejorem, et pejùs moratam ;
Meliorem neque tu reperies, neque sol videt.

PLAUTUS in Stichor.

You will easily find a worse woman; a better the sun never shone

I

upon.

AM so tender of my women-readers, that I cannot defer the publication of any thing which concerns their happiness or quiet. The repose of a married woman is consulted in the first of the following letters, and the felicity of a maiden lady in the second. I call it a felicity to have the addresses of an agreeable man; and I think I have not any where seen a prettier application of a poetical story than that of his, in making the tale of Cephalus and Procris the history picture of a fan in so gallant a manner as he addresses it. But see the letters :

"MR. SPECTATOR,

"It is now almost three months since I was in town about some business; and the hurry of it being over, I took coach one afternoon, and drove to see a relation, who married about six years ago a wealthy citizen. I found her at home, but her husband gone to the Exchange, and expected back within an hour at the farthest. After the usual salutations of kindness, and a hundred questions about friends in the country, we sat down to piquet, played two or three games, and drank tea. I should have told you that this was my second time of seeing her since her marriage; but before, she lived at the same town where I went to school; so that the plea of a relation, added to the innocence of my youth, prevailed upon her good humour to indulge me in a freedom of conversation, as often, and oftener, than the strict discipline of the school would allow of. You may easily imagine, after such an acquaintance, we might be exceeding merry without any offence; as in calling to mind how many inventions I have been put

to in deluding the master, how many hands forged for excuses, how many times been sick in perfect health; for I was then never sick but at school, and only then because out of her company. We had wiled away three hours after this manner, when I found it past five; and, not expecting her husband would return until late, rose up, and told her I should go early next morning for the country. She kindly answered she was afraid it would be long before she saw me again; so, I took my leave, and parted. Now, Sir, I had not been got home a fortnight, when I received a letter from a neighbour of theirs, that ever since that fatal afternoon the lady had been most inhumanly treated, and the husband publicly stormed that he was made a member of too numerous a society. He had, it seems, listened most of the time my cousin and I were together. As jealous ears always hear double, so he heard enough to make him mad; and as jealous eyes always see through magnifying glasses, so he was certain it could not be I whom he had seen, a beardless stripling, but fancied he saw a gay gentleman of the Temple, ten years older than myself; and for that reason, I presume, durst not come in, nor take any notice when I went out. He is perpetually asking his wife if she does not think the time long (as she said she should) until she see her cousin again. Pray, Sir, what can be done in this case? I have writ to him to assure him I was at his house all that afternoon expecting to see him. His answer is, it is only a trick of hers, and that he neither can nor will believe me. parting kiss I find mightily nettles him; and confirms him in all his errors. Ben Jonson, as I remember, makes a foreigner, in one of his comedies, 'admire the desperate valour of the bold English, who let out their wives to all encounters.' The general custom of salutation should excuse the favour done me, or you should lay down rules when such distinctions are to be given or omitted. You cannot imagine, Sir, how troubled I am for this unhappy lady's misfortune, and beg you would insert this letter, that the husband may reflect upon this accident coolly. It is no small matter, the ease of a virtuous woman for her whole life. I know she will conform to any regularities (though more strict than the common rules of our country require) to which his particular temper shall incline him

The

to oblige her. This accident puts me in mind how gene-
rously Pisistratus, the Athenian tyrant, behaved himself
on a like occasion, when he was instigated by his wife to
put to death a young gentleman, because, being passion-
ately fond of his daughter, he had kissed her in public, as
he met her in the street. What,' said he,' shall we do to
those who are our enemies, if we do thus to those who
are our friends?' I will not trouble you much longer,
but am exceedingly concerned lest this accident
may cause
a virtuous lady to lead a miserable life with a husband
who has no grounds for his jealousy but what I have
faithfully related, and ought to be reckoned none. It is
to be feared, too, if at last he sees his mistake, yet people
will be as slow and unwilling in disbelieving scandal, as
they are quick and forward in believing it. I shall en-
deavour to enliven this plain honest letter with Ovid's re-
lation about Cybele's image. The ship wherein it was
aboard was stranded at the mouth of the Tiber, and the
men were unable to move it, until Claudia, a virgin, but
suspected of unchastity, by a slight pull hauled it in. The
story is told in the fourth book of the Fasti.

'Parent of Gods,' began the weeping fair,
Reward or punish, but oh! hear my prayer:
If lewdness e'er defil'd my virgin bloom,
From heaven with justice I receive my doom:
But if my honour yet has known no stain,
Thou, goddess, thou my innocence maintain :
Thou, whom the nicest rules of goodness sway'd,
Vouchsafe to follow an unblemish'd maid.'

She spoke, and touch'd the chord with glad surprise,
(The truth was witness'd by ten thousand eyes)
The pitying goddess easily comply'd,
Follow'd in triumph, and adorn'd her guide;
While Claudia, blushing still for past disgrace,
March'd silent on, with a slow solemn pace :
Nor yet from some was all distrust remov'd,
Though heaven such virtue by such wonders prov'd.
"I am, Sir, your very humble servant,
"PHILAGNOTES."

"MR. SPECTATOR,

"You will oblige a languishing lover if you will please to print the enclosed verses in your next paper. If you remember the Metamorphoses, you know Procris, the fond wife of Cephalus is said to have made her husband, who

delighted in the sports of the wood, a present of an unnerring javelin. In process of time he was so much in the forest, that his lady suspected he was pursuing some nymph, under the pretence of following a chase more innocent. Under this suspicion, she hid herself among the trees, to observe his motions. While she lay concealed, her husband, tired with the labour of hunting, came within her hearing. As he was fainting with heat, he cried out, Aura veni! Oh! charming air, approach!'

"The unfortunate wife, taking the word air to be the name of a woman, began to move among the bushes; and the husband, believing it a deer, threw his javelin and killed her. This history painted on a fan, which I presented to a lady, gave occasion to my growing poetical. 'Come, gentle air!' the Æolian shepherd said, While Procris panted in the secret shade; Come, gentle air,' the fairer Delia cries, While at her feet her swain expiring lies. Lo! the glad gales o'er all her beauties stray, Breathe on her lips, and in her bosom play. In Delia's hand this toy is fatal found, Nor did that fabled dart more surely wound. Both gifts destructive to the givers prove, Alike both lovers fall by those they love : Yet guiltless, too, this bright destroyer lives,

At random wounds, nor knows the wounds she gives;
She views the story with attentive eyes,

And pities Procris, while her lover dies."

N° 528. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 1712.

Dum potuit, solita gemitum virtute repressit.

OVID, Met. ix. 165.

With wonted fortitude she bore the smart,

And not a groan confess'd her burning heart.-GAY.

"MR. SPECTATOR,

WHO now write to you am a woman loaded with in

"I juries; and the aggravation of my misfortune is, that

they are such which are overlooked by the generality of mankind; and, though the most afflicting imaginable, not regarded as such in the general sense of the world. I have hid my vexation from all mankind; but having now taken pen, ink, and paper, am resolved to unbosom myself to

you, and lay before you what grieves me and all the sex. You have very often mentioned particular hardships done to this or that lady; but methinks you have not, in any one speculation, directly pointed at the partial freedom men take, the unreasonable confinement women are obliged to, in the only circumstance in which we are necessarily to have a commerce with them, that of love. The case of celibacy is the great evil of our nation; and the indulgence of the vicious conduct of men in that state, with the ridicule to which women are exposed, though never so virtuous, if long unmarried, is the root of the greatest irregularities of this nation. To shew you, Sir, that (though you never have given us the catalogue of a lady's library, as you promised) we read good books of our own choosing, I shall insert on this occasion a paragraph or two out of Echard's Roman History. In the 44th page of the second volume, the author observes that Augustus, upon his return to Rome at the end of a war, received complaints that too great a number of the young men of quality were unmarried. The emperor thereupon assembled the whole equestrian order; and having separated the married from the single, did particular honours to the former; but he told the latter, that is to say, Mr. Spectator, he told the bachelors, that their lives and actions had been so peculiar, that he knew not by what name to call them; not by that of men, for they performed nothing that was manly; not by that of citizens, for the city might perish notwithstanding their care; nor by that of Romans, for they designed to extirpate the Roman name. Then, proceeding to shew his tender care and hearty affection for his people, he farther told them, that their course of life was of such pernicious consequence to the glory and grandeur of the Roman nation, that he could not choose but tell them, that all other crimes put together could not equalize theirs, for they were guilty of murder in not suffering those to be born which should proceed from them; of impiety, in causing the names and honours of their ancestors to cease; and of sacrilege, in destroying their kind which proceed from the immortal gods, and human nature, the principal thing consecrated to them: therefore, in this respect, they dissolved the government in disobeying its laws; betrayed their country by making it barren and waste; nay, and de