the fair person remembered by each respective token. According to the representation of the matter from my letters, the company appear like so many players rehearsing behind the scenes; one is sighing and lamenting his destiny in beseeching terms, another declaring he will break his chain, and another in dumb show striving to express his passion by his gesture. It is very ordinary in the assembly for one of a sudden to rise and make a discourse concerning his passion in general, and describe the temper of his mind in such a manner as that the whole company shall join in the description and feel the force of it. In this case, if any man has declared the violence of his flame in more pathetic terms, he is made president for that night, out of respect to his superior passion.

We had some years ago in this town a set of people who met and dressed like lovers, and were distinguished by the name of the Fringe-Glove Club; but they were persons of such moderate intellects, even before they were impaired by their passion, that their irregularities could not furnish sufficient variety of folly to afford daily new impertinences, by which means that institution dropped. These fellows could express their passion in nothing but their dress, but the Oxonians are fantastical now they are lovers, in proportion to their learning and understanding before they became such. thoughts of the ancient poets on this agreeable frenzy are translated in honour of some modern beauty, and Chloris is won to-day by the same compliment that was made to Lesbia a thousand years

The

1 It is impossible to describe all the execution that was done by the shoulder-knot while that fashion prevailed, or to reckon up all the virgins that have fallen a sacrifice to a pair of fringed gloves' (Tatler, No. 151).

ago. But as far as I can learn, the patron of the club is the renowned Don Quixote. The adventures of that gentle knight are frequently mentioned in the society under the colour of laughing at the passion and themselves; but at the same time, though they are sensible of the extravagances of that unhappy warrior, they do not observe that to turn all the reading of the best and wisest writings into rhapsodies of love, is a frenzy no less diverting than that of the aforesaid accomplished Spaniard. A gentleman who, I hope, will continue his correspondence is lately admitted into the fraternity, and sent me the following letter:

'SIR,

'SINCE I find you take notice of clubs, I beg leave

to give you an account of one in Oxford which you have nowhere mentioned, and perhaps never heard of. We distinguish ourselves by the title of the Amorous Club, are all votaries of Cupid, and admirers of the fair sex. The reason that we are so little known in the world is the secrecy which we are obliged to live under in the university. Our constitution runs counter to that of the place wherein we live, for in love there are no doctors, and we all profess so high passion that we admit of no graduates in it. Our presidentship is bestowed according to the dignity of passion; our number is unlimited; and our statutes are like those of the Druids, recorded in our own breasts only, and explained by the majority of the company. A mistress, and a poem in her praise, will introduce any candidate. Without the latter no one can be admitted, for he that is not in love enough to rhyme is unqualified for our society. To speak disrespectfully of any

woman is expulsion from our gentle society. As we are at present all of us gownmen, instead of duelling when we are rivals, we drink together the health of our mistress. The manner of doing this sometimes indeed creates debates. On such occasions we have recourse to the rules of love among the ancients:

Nævia sex cyathis, septem Justina bibatur.1

This method of a glass to every letter of her name occasioned the other night a dispute of some warmth. A young student, who is in love with Mrs. Elizabeth Dimple, was so unreasonable as to begin her health under the name of Elizabetha, which so exasperated the club that by common consent we retrenched it to Betty. We look upon a man as no company that does not sigh five times in a quarter of an hour, and look upon a member as very absurd that is so much himself as to make a direct answer to a question. In fine, the whole assembly is made up of absent men, that is, of such persons as have lost their locality, and whose minds and bodies never keep company with one another. As I am an unfortunate member of this distracted society, you cannot expect a very regular account of it, for which reason I hope you will pardon me that I so abruptly subscribe myself,

SIR,

Your most obedient

humble Servant,

T. B.

'I forgot to tell you that Albina, who has six votaries in this club, is one of your readers.' R.

1 Martial, Epig. i. 72.

No. 31. Thursday, April 5, 1711

L

[ADDISON.

Sit mihi fas audita loqui.—VIRG., Æn. vi. 266. AST night, upon my going into a coffeehouse not far from the Haymarket Theatre,

I diverted myself for above half-an-hour with overhearing the discourse of one who, by the shabbiness of his dress, the extravagance of his conceptions, and the hurry of his speech, I discovered to be of that species who are generally distinguished by the title of projectors. This gentleman (for I found he was treated as such by his audience) was entertaining a whole table of listeners with the project of an opera which he told us had not cost him above two or three mornings in the contrivance, and which he was ready to put in execution, provided he might find his account in it. He said that he had observed the great trouble and inconvenience which ladies were at, in travelling up and down to the several shows that are exhibited in different quarters of the town. The dancing monkeys are in one place, the puppetshow in another, the opera in a third; not to mention the lions, that are almost a whole day's journey from the politer part of the town. By this means people of figure are forced to lose half the winter, after their coming to town, before they have seen all the strange sights about it. In order to remedy this great inconvenience, our projector drew out of his pocket the scheme of an opera entitled 'The Expedition of Alexander the Great,' in which he had disposed all the remarkable shows about town among the scenes and decorations of his piece. The thought, he con

fessed, was not originally his own, but that he had taken the hint of it from several performances which he had seen upon our stage: in one of which there was a raree-show,1 in another a ladder-dance,2 and in others a posture-man,3 a moving picture, with many curiosities of the like nature.

This expedition of Alexander opens with his consulting the oracle at Delphos, in which the dumb conjurer, who has been visited by so many persons of quality of late years, is to be introduced as telling him his fortune: at the same time Clinch of Barnet is represented in another corner of the temple as ringing the bells of Delphos for joy of his arrival. The tent of Darius is to be peopled by the ingenious Mrs. Salmon,5 where Alexander is to fall in love with a piece of waxwork that represents the beautiful Statira. When Alexander comes into that country, in which Quintus Curtius tells us the dogs were so exceeding fierce that they would not loose their hold though they were cut to pieces limb by limb, and that they would hang upon their prey by their teeth when they had nothing but a mouth left, there is to

1 A show carried in a box. Of raree-shows he sung, and Punch's feats' (Gay's Shepherd's Week,' Saturday).

2 An order of the Lord Chamberlain to the managers of the theatres, dated Dec. 24, 1709, forbade representations on the stage not necessary to the due performance of the play, such as ladderdancing, antic postures, &c.,' without leave being first had (Steele's Plays, ed. Aitken, 1894, p. 9). In the Tatler, No. 12, Steele complains that Rich had introduced, for the sake of profit, 'ladderdancers, jugglers, and mountebanks, to strut in the place of Shakespeare's heroes and Jonson's humorists.' See, too, Tatler, No. 99.

3 There were many posture-men, or acrobats, in Addison's day. Some of their advertisements are given in Ashton's Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne,' i. 280, 281.

4 See No. 24.

5 See No. 28.