that I am credibly informed there are several female undertakers about the 'Change, who upon the arrival of a likely man out of a neighbouring kingdom, will furnish him with proper dress from head to foot, to be paid for at a double price on the day of marriage.

We must however distinguish between fortunehunters and fortune-stealers. The first are those assiduous gentlemen who employ their whole lives in the chace, without ever coming at the quarry. Suffenus has combed and powdered at the ladies for thirty years together, and taken his stand in a side box, until he is grown wrinkled under their eyes, He is now laying the same snare for the present generation of beauties, which he practised on their mothers. Cottilus, after having made his applications to more than you meet with in Mr. Cowley's ballad of mistresses, was at last smitten with a city lady of 20,0001. sterling; but died of old age before he could bring matters to bear. Nor must I here omit my worthy friend Mr. Honeycomb, who has often told us in the club, that for twenty years successively, upon the death of a childless rich man, he immediately drew on his boots, called for his horse, and made up to the widow. When he is rallied upon his ill success, Will, with his usual gaiety tells us, that he always found her pre-engaged.

Widows are indeed the great game of your fortunehunters. There is scarce a young fellow in the town' of six feet high, that has not passed in review before one or other of these wealthy relicts. Hudibras's Cupid, who

nd

"Upon a widowok his ste land,"

is daily employed in throwing darts, and kindling flames. But as for widows, they are such a subtle generation of people, that they may be left to their own conduct; or if they make a false step in it, they are answerable for it to no body but themselves. The

young innocent creatures who have no knowledge and experience of the world, are those whose safety I would principally consult in this speculation. The stealing of such an one should, in my opinion, be as punishable as a rape. Where there is no judgment there is no choice; and why the inveigling a woman before she is come to years of discretion, should not be as criminal as the seducing of her before she is ten years old, I am at a loss to comprehend.

L

No. CCCXII.

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 27.

Quod huic officium, quae laus, quod decus erit tanti, quod adipisci cum dolore corporis velit, qui dolorem summum malum sibi persuaserit? Quam porro quis ignominiam, quam turpitudinem non petulerit, ut effugiat dolorem, si id summum malum esse decreverit?

TULL.

What duty will a man perform, what praise, what honour will he think worth purchasing at the expence of his ease, who is persuaded that pain is the greatest of evils? And what ignominy, what baseness, will he not submit to, in order to avoid pain, if he has determined it to be the worst of misfortunes?

IT is a very melancholy reflection, that men are usually so weak, that it is absolutely necessary for them to know sorrow and pain, to be in their right senses. Prosperous people, for happy there are none, are hurried away with a fond sense of their present condition, and thoughtless of the mutability of fortune: fortune is a term which we must use in such discourses as these, for what is wrought by the unseen hand of the Disposer of all things. But methinks the disposition of a mind which is truly great is that which makes misfortunes and sorrows little when they befal ourselves, great and lamentable when they befal other men. The most unpardonable malefactor

in the world going to his death and bearing it with composure, would win the pity of those who should behold him and this not because his calamity is deplorable, but because he seems himself not to deplore it: we suffer for him who is less sensible of his own misery, and are inclined to despise him who sinks under the weight of his distresses. On the other hand, without any touch of envy, a temperate and well-governed mind looks down on such as are exalted with success, with a certain shame for the imbecility of human nature, that can so far forget how liable it is to calamity, as to grow giddy with only the suspense of sorrow, which is the portion of all men. He therefore who turns his face from the unhappy man, who will not look again when his eye is cast upon modest sorrow, who shuns affliction like a contagion, does but pamper himself up for a sacrifice, and contract in himself a greater aptitude to misery by attempting to escape it. A gentleman, where I happened to be last night, fell into a discourse which I thought shewed a good discerning in him: he took notice that whenever men have looked into their heart for the idea of true excellency in human nature, they have found it to consist in suffering after a right manner and with a good grace. Heroes are always drawn bearing sorrows, struggling with adversities, undergoing all kinds of hardships, and having in the service of mankind a kind of appetite to difficulties and dangers. The gentleman went on to observe, that it is from this secret sense of the high merit which there is in patience under calamities, that the writers of romances, when they attempt to furnish out characters of the highest excellence, ransack nature for things terrible; they raise a new creation of monsters, dragons, and giants; where the danger ends, the hero ceases; when he has won an empire, or gained his mistress, the rest of the story is not worth relating. My friend carried his discourse so

far as to say, that it was for higher beings than men to join happiness and greatness in the same idea; but that in our condition we have no conception of superlative excellence, or heroism, but as it is surrounded with a shade of distress.

It is certainly the proper education we should give ourselves, to be prepared for the ill events and accidents we are to meet with in a life sentenced to be a scene of sorrow; but instead of this expectation, we soften ourselves with prospects of constant delight, and destroy in our minds the seeds of fortitude and virtue, which should support us in hours of anguish. The constant pursuit of pleasure has in it something insolent and improper for our being. There is a pretty sober liveliness in the ode of Horace to Delius, where he tells him, " loud mirth, or immoderate sor"row, inequality of behaviour either in prosperity or "adversity, are alike ungraceful in man that is born "to die." Moderation in both circumstances is peculiar to generous minds: men of that sort ever taste the gratifications of health, and all other advantages of life, as if they were liable to part with them, and when bereft of them, resign them with a greatness of mind which shews they know their value and duration. The contempt of pleasure is a certain preparatory for the contempt of pain: without this, the mind is as it were taken suddenly by an unforeseen event; but he that has always, during health and prosperity, been abstinent in his satisfactions, enjoys, in the worst of difficulties, the reflection, that his anguish is not aggravated with the comparison of past pleasures which upbraid his present condition. Tully tells us a story after Pompey, which gives us a good taste of the pleasant manner the men of wit and philosophy had in old times of alleviating the distresses of life by the force of reason and philosophy. Pompey, when he came to Rhodes, had a curiosity to visit the famous philosopher Possidonius; but finding him B b

VOL. IV.

in his sick bed, he bewailed the misfortune that he should not hear a discourse from him: but you may, answered Possidonius; and immediately entered into the point of stoical philosophy, which says pain is not an evil. During the discourse, upon every puncture he felt from his distemper, he smiled and cried out, "Pain, pain, be as impertinent and troublesome as "you please, I shall never own that thou art an evil.”

MR. SPECTATOR,

• HAVING seen in several of your papers, a 'concern for the honour of the clergy, and their doing · every thing as becomes their character, and parti'cularly performing the public service with a due zeal and devotion; I am the more encouraged to 6 lay before them, by your means, several expressions used by some of them in their prayers before sermon, which I am not well satisfied in; as their 'giving some titles and epithets to great men, which ' are indeed due to them in their several ranks and 'stations, but not properly used, I think, in our pray6 ers. Is it not contradiction to say, illustrious, ' right reverend, and right honourable poor sinners?

(

These distinctions are suited only to our state here, ' and have no place in heaven? we see they are omit'ted in the liturgy; which I think the clergy should take for their pattern in their own forms of devo'tion. There is another expression which I would 'not mention, but that I have heard it several times 'before a learned congregation, to bring in the last petition of the prayer in these words, "O let not "the Lord be angry, and I will speak but this once;" " as if there was no difference between Abraham's 'interceding for Sodom, for which he had no warrant 'as we can find, and our asking those things which " we are required to pray for; they would therefore have much more reason to fear his anger, if they 'did not make such petitions to him. There is