Imatges de pàgina
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you bring me into discourses concerning the government of your puppets, I must tell you", 'I neither am, nor have been, nor will be, at leisure to answer you.' It is really a burning shame this man should be tolerated in abusing the world with such representations of things: but his parts decay, and he is not much more alive than Partridge 13.

From my own Apartment, July 14.

I MUST beg pardon of my readers, that for this time I have, I fear, huddled up my discourse, having been very busy in helping an old friend of mine out of town. He has a very good estate, and is a man of wit; but he has been three years absent from town, and cannot bear a jest; for which reason I have, with some pains, convinced him, that he can no more live here than if he were a downright bankrupt. He was

so fond of dear London, that he began to fret, only inwardly; but being unable to laugh and be laughed at, I took a place in the northern coach for him and his family; and hope he is got to-night safe from all sneerers in his own parlour.

STEELE.

12 The bishop's own words retorted.

13 See N° 1, 7, 11, and 45. See also No 50, art. From my own Apartment.

N° 45. SATURDAY, JULY 23, 1709.

Credo pudicitiam Saturno rege moratam

In terris

JUV. Sat. vi. 1.

'In Saturn's reign, at nature's early birth,
There was that thing called Chastity on earth.'
DRYDEN.

White's Chocolate-house, July 22.

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THE other day I took a walk a mile or two out of town, and, strolling wherever chance led me, I was insensibly carried into a by-road, along which was a very agreeable quickset, of an extraordinary height, which surrounded a very delicious seat and garden. From one angle of the hedge I heard a voice cry, 'Sir, Sir!'-This raised my curiosity, and I heard the same voice say, but in a gentle tone, Come forward, come forward!' I did so, and one through the hedge called me by my name, and bid me go on to the left, and I should be admitted to visit an old acquaintance in distress. The laws of knight-errantry made me obey the summons without hesitation; and I was let in at the back-gate of a lovely house by a maid-servant, who carried me from room to room until I came into a gallery; at the end of which I saw a fine lady, dressed in the most sumptuous habit, as if she were going to a ball, but with the most abject and disconsolate sorrow in her face that I ever beheld. As I came near, she burst into tears, and cried, 'Sir, do not you know the unhappy Teraminta '?' I soon re

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collected her whole person: 'But,' said I, 'madam, the simplicity of dress, in which I have ever seen you at your good father's house, and the cheerfulness of countenance with which you always appeared, are so unlike the fashion and temper you are now in, that I did not easily recover the memory of you. Your habit was then decent and modest, your looks serene and beautiful: whence then this unaccountable change? Nothing can speak so deep a sorrow as your present aspect; yet your dress is made for jollity and revelling! It is,' said she, an unspeakable pleasure to meet with one I know, and to bewail myself to any that is not an utter stranger to humanity.

• When your friend, my father, died, he left me to a wide world, with no defence against the insults of fortune; but rather a thousand snares to intrap me in the dangers to which youth and innocence are exposed, in an age wherein honour and virtue are become mere words, and used only as they serve to betray those who understand them in their native sense, and obey them as the guides and motives of their being. The wickedest of all men living, the abandoned Decius, who has no knowledge of any good art or purpose of human life, but as it tends to the satisfaction of his appetites, had opportunities of frequently seeing and entertaining me at a house where mixed company boarded, and where he placed himself for the base intention which he has since brought to pass. Decius saw enough in me to raise his brutal desires, and my circumstances gave him hopes of accomplishing them. But all the glittering expectations he could lay before me, joined by my private terrors of poverty itself, could not for some months prevail upon me; yet, however I hated his intention, I still had a secret satisfaction in his courtship, and

always exposed myself to his solicitations. See here the bane of our sex! Let the flattery be never so apparent, the flatterer never so ill thought of, his praises are still agreeable, and we contribute to our own deceit. I was, therefore, ever fond of all opportunities and pretences of being in his company. In a word, I was at last ruined by him, and brought to this place, where I have been ever since immured; and, from the fatal day after my fall from innocence, my worshipper became my master, and my tyrant.

Thus you see me habited in the most gorgeous manner, not in honour of me as a woman he loves, but as this attire charms his own eye, and urges him to repeat the gratification he takes in me, as the servant of his brutish lusts and appetites. I know not where to fly for redress; but am here pining away life in the solitude and severity of a nun, but the conscience and guilt of an harlot. I live in this lewd practice with a religious awe of my minister of darkness, upbraided with the support I receive from him, for the inestimable possession of youth, of innocence, of honour, and of conscience. I see, Sir, my discourse grows painful to you; all I beg of you is, to paint it in so strong colours, as to let Decius see I am discovered to be in his possession, that I may be turned out of this detestable scene of regular iniquity, and either think no more, or sin no more. If your writings have the good effect of gaining my enlargement, I promise you I will atone for this unhappy step, by preferring an innocent laborious poverty, to all the guilty affluence the world can offer me.'

Will's Coffee-house, July 21.

To shew that I do not bear an irreconcileable hatred to my mortal enemy, Mr. Powel at Bath, I do

his function the honour to publish to the world, that plays represented by puppets are permitted in our universities, and that sort of drama is not wholly thought unworthy the critique of learned heads; but as I have been conversant rather with the greater ode, as I think the critics call it, I must be so humble as to make a request to Mr. Powel, and desire him to apply his thoughts to answering the difficulties with which my kinsman, the author of the following letter, seems to be embarrassed.

To my honoured kinsman, Isaac Bickerstaff, esq. From mother Gourdon's at Hedington, near Oxon, June 18.

6 DEAR COUSIN,

HAD the family of the Beadlestaffs 3, whereof I, though unworthy, am one, known of your being lately at Oxon, we had in our own name, and in the university's, as it is our office, made you a compliment: but your short stay here robbed us of an opportunity of paying our due respects, and you of receiving an ingenious entertainment, with which we at present divert ourselves and strangers. A puppet-show at this time supplies the want of an act. And since the nymphs of this city are disappointed of a luscious music-speech, and the country ladies of hearing their sons or brothers speak verses; yet the vocal machines, like them, by the help of a prompter, say things as much to the benefit of the audience, and almost as properly their own. The licence of a Terræ-Filius, is refined to the well-bred satire of Punchenello.

2 The university of Oxford declared publicly in favour of the Bishop, and his doctrine of passive obedience.--See N 44, notes.

3 See No 11.

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