lighted with the voice of your lion. His roarings against the tucker have been most melodious and emphatical. It is to be hoped, that the ladies will take warning by them, and not provoke him to greater outrages; for I observe, that your lion, as you yourself have told us, is made up of mouth and paws. For my own part, I have long considered with myself how I might express my gratitude to this noble animal that has so much the good of our country at his heart. After many thoughts on this subject, I have at length resolved to do honour to him, by compiling a history of his species, and extrac'ing out of all authors whatever may redound to his reputation. In the prosecution of this design, I shall have no manner of regard to what Æsop has said upon the subject, whom I look upon to have been a republican, by the unworthy treatment which he often gives to this king of beasts, and whom, if I had time, I could convict of falsehood and forgery, in almost every matter of fact which he has related of this generous animal. Your romance writers are likewise a set of men whose authority I shall build upon very little in this case. They all of them are born with a particular antipathy to lions, and give them no more quarter than they do giants, wherever they chance to meet them. There is not one of the seven champions, but when he has nothing else to do, encounters with a lion, and you may be sure always gets the better of him. In short, a knight errant lives in a perpetual state of enmity with this noble creature, and hates him more than all things upon the earth, except a dragon. Had the stories recorded of them by these writers been true, the whole species would have been destroyed before After having thus renounced all fabulous authorities, I shall begin my memoirs of the lion with a story related of him by Aulus Gellius, and extracted now. by him out of Dion Cassius, an historian of undoubted veracity. It is the famous story of Androcles the Roman slave, which I premise for the sake of my learned reader, who needs go no further in it, if he has read it already. • Androcles was the slave of a noble Roman who was proconsul of Africa. He had been guilty of a fault, for which his master would have put him to death, had not he found an opportunity to escape out of his hands, and fled into the desarts of Numidia. As he was wandering among the barren sands, and almost dead with heat and hunger, he saw a cave in the side of a rock. He went into it, and finding at the further end of it a place to sit down upon, rested there for some time. At length, to his great surprise, a huge overgrown lion entered at the mouth of the cave, and seeing a man at the upper end of it immediately made towards him. Androcles gave himselfs for gone; but the lion, instead of treating him as he expected, laid his paw upon his lap, and with a complaining kind of voice fell a licking his hand. Androcles, after having recovered himself a little from the fright he was in, observed the lion's paw to be exceedingly swelled by a large thorn that stuck in it. He immediately pulled it out, and by squeezing the paw very gently made a great deal of corrupt matter run out of it, which probably freed the lion from the great anguish he had felt some time before. The lion left him upon receiving this good office from him, and soon after returned with a fawn which he had just killed. This he laid down at the feet of his benefactor, and went off again in pursuit of his prey. Androcles, after having sodden the flesh of it by the sun, subsisted upon it until the lion had supplied him 3 up for lost. with another. He lived many days in this frightful solitude, the lion catering for him with great assiduity. Being tired at length with this savage society, he was resolved to deliver himself up into his master's hands, and suffer the worst effects of his displeasure, rather than be thus driven out from mankind. His master, as was customary for the proconsuls of Africa, was at that time getting together a present of all the largest lions that could be found in the country, in order to send them to Rome, that they might furnish out a show to the Roman people. Upon his poor slave's surrendering himself into his hands, he ordered him to be carried away to Rome, as soon as the lions were in readiness to be sent, and that for his crime he should be exposed to fight with one of the lions in the amphitheatre, as usual, for the diversion of the people. This was all performed accordingly. Androcles, after such a strange run of fortune, was now in the area of the theatre amidst thousands of spectators, expecting every moment when his antagonist would come out upon him. At length a huge monstrous lion leaped out from the place where he had been kept hungry for the show. He advanced with great rage towards the man, but on a sudden, after having regarded him a little wistfully, fell to the ground, and crept towards his feet with all the signs of blandishment and caress. Androcles, after a short pause, discovered that it was his old Numidian friend, and immediately renewed his acquaintance with him. Their mutual congratulations were very surprising to the beholders, who, upon hearing an account of the whole matter from Androcles, ordered him to be pardoned, and the lion to be given up into his possession. Androcles returned at Rome the civilities which he had received from him in the deserts of Africa. Dion Cassius says, that he himself saw the man leading the lion about the streets of Rome, the people every where gathering about them, and repeating to one another, "Hic est leo hospes hominis, hic est homo medicus leonis." "This is the lion who was the man's host, this is the man who was the lion's physician." No. 140. FRIDAY, AUGUST 21, 1713.* Quibus incendi jam frigidus ævo A sight, might thaw old Priam's frozen age, Juv. Sat. vi. 324. I HAVE lately received a letter from an astrologer in Moorfields, which I have read with great satisfaction. He observes to me, that my lion at Button's coffeehouse was very luckily erected in the very month when the sun was in Leo. He further adds, that upon conversing with the above-mentioned Mr. Button, whose other name he observes is Daniel, a good omen still with regard to the lion his cohabitant, he had discovered the very hour in which the said lion was set up; and that by the help of other lights, which he had received from the said Mr. Button, he had been enabled to calculate the nativity of the lion. This mysterious philosopher acquaints me, that the sign of Leo in the heavens immediately precedes that of Virgo, by which, says he, is signified the natural * ADDISON'S. t This paper, No. 159. is marked with a hand, Addison's signature in the Guardian; and reprinted in Mr. Tickell's edition of Addison's ' Works,' 4to. vol. iv. p. 232. edit. 1721. The curious reader may find abundance of entertainment on this subject of lions in M. Buffon's Histoire Naturelle, and the supplement to that work. ners. love and friendship the lion bears to virginity; and not only to virginity, but to such matrons likewise as are pure and unspotted: from whence he foretels the good influence which the roarings of my lion are likely to have over the female world, for the purifying of their behaviour, and bettering of their manHe then proceeds to inform me, that in the most exact astrological schemes, the lion is observed to affect, in a more particular manner, the legs and the neck, as well as to allay the power of the scorpion in those parts which are allotted to that fiery constellation. From hence he very naturally prognosticates, that my lion will meet with great success in the attacks he has made on the untuckered stays and short petticoat; and that, in a few months, there will not be a female bosom or ancle uncovered in Great Britain. He concludes, that by the rules of his art he foresaw five years ago, that both the pope and myself should about this time unite our endeavours in this particular, and that sundry mutations and revolutions would happen in the female dress. I have another letter by me from a person of a more volatile and airy genius, who finding this great propension in the fair sex to go uncovered, and thinking it impossible to reclaim them entirely from it, is for compounding the matter with them, and finding out a middle expedient between nakedness and clothing. He proposes, therefore, that they should imitate their great-grandmothers the Briths or Picts, and paint the parts of their bodies which are uncovered with such figures as shall be most to their fancy. The bosom of the coquette, says he, may bear the figure of a Cupid, with a bow in his hand, and his arrow upon the string. The prude might have a Pallas, with a shield and Gorgon's head. In short, by this method, he thinks every woman might make very |