musicians in the Turkish empire, and that it would be very easy for our factory at Smyrna to furnish us every year with a colony of musicians, by the opportunity of the Turkey fleet; besides, says he, if we want any single voice for any lower part in the opera, Lawrence can learn to speak Greek, as well as he does Italian, in a fortnight's time. The projector having thus settled matters, to the good-liking of all that heard him, he left his seat at the table, and planted himself before the fire, where I had unluckily taken my stand for the convenience of overhearing what he said. Whether he had observed me to be more attentive than ordinary, I cannot tell, but he had not stood by me above a quarter of a minute, but he turned short upon me on a sudden, and catching me by a button of my coat, attacked me very abruptly after the following manner. 'Besides, Sir, I have heard of a very extraordinary genius for music that lives in Switzerland, who has so strong a spring in his fingers, that he can make the board of an organ sound like a drum, and if I could but procure a subscription of about ten thousand pounds every winter, I would undertake to fetch him over, and oblige him by articles to set every thing that should be sung upon the English stage.' After this he looked full in my face, expecting I would make an answer, when, by good luck, a gentleman that had entered the coffee-house since the projector applied himself to me, hearing him talk of his Swiss compositions cried out in a kind of laugh,' Is our music then to receive farther improvements from Switzerland?' This alarmed the projector, who immediately let go my button, and turned about to answer him. I took the opportunity of the diversion which seemed to be made in favour of me, and laying down my penny upon the bar, retired with some precipitation.-C N° 32. FRIDAY, APRIL 6, 1711. Nil illi larva aut tragicis opus esse cothurnis. He wants no tragic vizor to increase His natural deformity of face. HOR. 1 Sat. v. 64. THE late discourse concerning the statutes of the Ugly club, having been so well received at Oxford, that, contrary to the strict rules of the society, they have been so partial as to take my own testimonial, and admit me into that select body; I could not restrain the vanity of publishing to the world the honour which is done me. It is no small satisfaction that I have given occasion for the President's shewing both his invention and reading to such advantage as my correspondent reports he did: but it is not to be doubted there were many very proper hums and pauses in his harangue, which lose their ugliness in the narration, and which my correspondent (begging his pardon) has no very good talent at representing. I very much approve of the contempt the society has of beauty. Nothing ought to be laudable in a man, in which his will is not concerned; therefore our society can follow nature, and where she has thought fit, as it were, to mock herself, we can do so too, and be merry upon the occasion. 'MR. SPECTATOR, I 'Your making public the late trouble I gave you, you will find to have been the occasion of this. Who should I meet at the coffee-house door the other night, but my old friend Mr. President? saw somewhat had pleased him; and as soon as he had cast his eye upon me." Oho, doctor, rare news from London," says he; "the Spectator has made honourable mention of the club (man), and publishe to the world his sincere desire to be a membe with a recommendatory description of his phiz; an though our constitution has made no particular pro vision for short faces, yet his being an extraordinar case, I believe we shall find a hole for him to creep in at; for I assure you he is not against the canon and if his sides are as compact as his joles, he need not disguise himself to make one of us." I presently called for the paper, to see how you looked in print and after we had regaled ourselves a while upon the pleasant image of our proselyte, Mr. President told me I should be his stranger at the next night's club; where we were no sooner come, and pipes brought, but Mr. President began a harangue upon your introduction to my epistle, setting forth with no less volubility of speech, than strength of reason, "That a speculation of this nature was what had been long and much wanted; and that he doubted not but it would be of inestimable value to the public, in reconciling even of bodies and souls; in composing and quieting the minds of men under all corporal redundancies, deficiencies, and irregularities whatsoever; and making every one sit down content in his own carcass, though it were not perhaps so mathematically put together as he could wish." And again, How that for want of a due consideration of what you first advance, viz. That our faces are not of our own choosing, people had been transported beyond all good breeding, and hurried themselves into unaccountable and fatal extravagances; as, how many impartial looking-glasses had been censured and calumniated, nay, and sometimes shivered into ten thousand splinters, only for a fair representation of the truth? How many head-strings and garters had been made accessary, and actually forfeited, only because folks must needs quarrel 66 with their own shadows? And who," continues he, 'but is deeply sensible, that one great source of the uneasiness and misery of human life, especially amongst those of distinction, arises from nothing in the world else, but too severe a contemplation of an indefeasible contexture of our external parts, or certain natural and invincible dispositions to be fat or lean? when a little more of Mr. Spectator's philosophy would take off all this. In the mean time let them observe, that there is not one of their grievances of this sort, but perhaps, in some ages of the world, has been highly in vogue, and may be so again; nay, in some country or other, ten to one is so at this day. My Lady Ample is the most miserable woman in the world, purely of her own making. She even grudges herself meat and drink, for fear she should thrive by them; and is constantly crying out, 'In a quarter of a year more I shall be quite out of all manner of shape! Now the lady's misfortune seems to be only this, that she is planted in a wrong soil; for go but to the other side of the water, it is a jest at Haerlem to talk of a shape under eighteen stone. These wise traders regulate their beauties as they do their butter, by the pound; and Miss Cross, when she first arrived in the Low Countries, was not computed to be so handsome as Madam Vad Brisket by near half a ton. On the other hand, there is 'Squire Lath, a proper gentleman of 1,500l. per annum, as well as of an unblamable life and conversation; yet would not I be the esquire for half his estate; for if it was as much more, he would freely part with it all for a pair of legs to his mind. Whereas in the reign of our first Edward of glorious memory, nothing more modish than a brace of your fine taper supporters; and his majesty, without an inch of calf, managed affairs in peace or war as laudably as the bravest and most N° 33. SATURDAY, APRIL 7, 1711. Fervidus tecum puer, et solutis The graces with their zones unloos'd; And Mercury compose thy train.-CREECH. A FRIEND of mine has two daughters, whom will call Lætitia and Daphne; the former is one o the greatest beauties of the age in which she lives the latter no way remarkable for any charms in he person. Upon this one circumstance of their out ward form, the good and ill of their life seems to turn Lætitia has not, from her very childhood, heard any thing else but commendations of her features and complexion, by which means she is no other than nature made her, a very beautiful outside. The consciousness of her charms has rendered her insup portably vain and insolent, towards all who have to do with her. Daphne, who was almost twenty be fore one civil thing had ever been said to her, found herself obliged to acquire some accomplishments to make up for the want of those attractions which she saw in her sister. Poor Daphne was seldom submitted to in a debate wherein she was concerned; her discourse had nothing to recommend it but the good sense of it, and she was always under a necessity to have very well considered what she was to say before she uttered it; while Lætitia was listened |
