any mixture of the spleen, I hope you will excuse me, if I admire the character, and am ambitious of subscribing myself, Just published, the seventh edition of Cato, in a neat pocket volume, 12mo. with copies of verses to the author, prefixed. Guard. in folio. Strong from the cradle, of a sturdy brood, DRYDEN. I AM always beating about in my thoughts for something that may turn to the benefit of my dear countrymen. The present season of the year having put most of them in slight summer-suits, has turned my speculations to a subject that concerns every one who is sensible of cold or heat, which I believe takes in the greatest part of my readers. There is nothing in nature more inconstant than the British climate, if we except the humour of its inhabitants. We have frequently in one day all the seasons of the year. I have shivered in the dog-days, and been forced to throw off my coat in January. I have gone to bed in August and rose in December. * ADDISON'S. i Distinguished by a hand, the mark of Addison's papers in the Guardian; and reprinted in Addison's Works, 4to. vol. iv. p. 149. edit. 1721. N. B. Addison seems to have compiled or communicated this paper, No. 101. from the letter-box. In some copies it is not distinguished by his mark, and wants the hand at the end. See Guard. No. 104. Summer has often caught me in my Drap de Berry, and winter in my Doily suit. I remember a very whimsical fellow, commonly known by the name of Posture-master', in king Charles the Second's reign, who was the plague of all the tailors about town. He would often send for one of them to take measure of him, but would so contrive it as to have a most immoderate rising in one of his shoulders. When the clothes were brought home and tried upon him, the deformity was removed into the other shoulder. Upon which the tailor begged pardon for the mistake, and mended it as fast as he could, but upon a third trial found him a straightshouldered man as one would desire to see, but a little unfortunate in a humpt back. In short, this wandering tumour puzzled all the workmen about town, who found it impossible to accommodate so changeable a customer. My reader will apply this to any one who would adapt a suit to a season of our English climate. After this short descant on the uncertainty of our English weather, I come to my moral. A man should take care that his body be not too soft for his climate; but rather, if possible, harden and season himself beyond the degree of cold wherein k Doily was a famous draper about this time, probably the inventor, certainly a principal vender of this kind of cloth, &c. 1 Mr. Joseph Clark, commonly called the posture-master. His father, a distiller in Shoe-lane, put him first to liking to Mr. John Coniers, an apothecary in Fleet-street; but not being pleased with that employment, he was bound apprentice to a silk-man in Bishopsgate-street, beyond Bedlam. He travelled afterwards in the duke of Buckingham's retinue to Paris, where he began to be taken notice of for his agility and postures. Thence he went into Ireland. In 1690 he died in his house in Pall-Mall, and was buried in the Parish-church of St. Martin in the Fields. Harl. MSS. 5912. There are many representations of Clark, in different attitudes, in the London Cries, and in the British Museum. See Dr. King's Works, 3 vols. cr. 8vo. 1776. vol. ii. p. 17. Tat. No. 108. and note on posture-master. he lives. Daily experience teaches us how we may inure ourselves by custom to bear the extremities of weather without injury. The inhabitants of Nova Zembla go naked, without complaining of the bleakness of the air in which they are born, as the armies of the northern nations keep the field all winter. The softest of our British ladies expose their arms and necks to the open air, which the men could not do without catching cold, for want of being accustomed to it. The whole body by the same means might contract the same firmness and temper. The Scythian that was asked how it was possible for the inhabitants of his frozen climate to go naked, replied, • Because we are all over face.' Mr. Locke advises parents to have their children's feet washed every morning in cold water, which might probably prolong multitudes of lives. I verily believe a cold bath would be one of the most healthful exercises in the world, were it made use of in the education of youth. It would make their bodies more than proof to the injuries of the air and weather. It would be somewhat like what the poets tell us of Achilles, whom his mother is said to have dipped, when he was a child, in the river Styx. The story adds, that this made him invulnerable all over, excepting that part which his mother held in her hand during this immersion, and which by that means lost the benefit of these hardening waters. Our common practice runs in a quite contrary method. We are perpetually softening ourselves by good fires and warm clothes. The air within our rooms has generally two or three more degrees of heat in it, than the air without doors". m A peasant's cottage in Yorkshire is often heated up to 70 degrees on Fahrenheit's scale, and is generally warmer than the parlours of the rich and effeminate, in this age of list and carpets. Crassus is an old lethargic valetudinarian. For these twenty years last past he has been clothed in frieze of the same colour, and of the same piece. He fancies he should catch his death in any other kind of manufacture; and though his avarice would incline him to wear it until it was threadbare, he dares not do it least he should take cold when the knap is off. He could no more live without his frieze-coat, than without his skin. It is not indeed so properly his coat as what the anatomists call one of the integuments of the body. How different an old man is Crassus from myself! It is indeed the particular distinction of the Ironsides to be robust and hardy, to defy the cold and rain, and let the weather do its worst. My father lived until a hundred without a cough; and we have a tradition in the family, that my grandfather used to throw off his hat, and go open-breasted, after fourscore. As for myself, they used to souse me over head and ears in water when I was a boy, so that I am now looked upon as one of the most case-hardened" of the whole family of the Ironsides. In short, I have been so plunged in water and inured to the cold, that I regard myself as a piece of true-tempered steel, and can say with the above-mentioned Scythian, that I am face, or, if my enemies please, forehead all over. P There is now in hand, and will be speedily published, an exact draught of the royal Fireworks which were yesterday performed, by the directions of colonel Hopkey and colonel Boigard, on the river Thames before Whitehall. Etched by Mr. James Thornhill. Guard. in fol. n See Guard. No. 95. Note on case-hardened. • Iron and steel are but one and the same metal in different states; steel is tempered, by being suddenly plunged when red hot into cold water; and when tempered it may be untempered again. P Distinguished by a hand, the mark of Addison's papers in the Guardian. See the Publisher to the Reader. It is likewise reprinted by Mr. Tickell in his edition of Addison's Works, 4to. 1721. vol. iv. p. 152. Steele was too delicate to have named himself, even in a pun. No. 108. THURSDAY, JULY 9, 1713.* Dum flammas Jovis, et sonitus imitatur Olympi. VIRG. Æn. vi. 586. With mimic thunder impiously he plays, I AM considering how most of the great phænomena or appearances in nature, have been imitated by the art of man. Thunder is grown a common drug among the chymists. Lightning may be bought by the pound. If a man has occasion for a lambent flame, you have whole sheets of it in a handful of phosphor Showers of rain are to be met with in every water-work; and we are informed', that some years ago the virtuosos of France covered a little vault with artificial snow, which they made to fall above an hour together for the entertainment of his present majesty. I am led into this train of thinking by the noble firework that was exhibited last night upon the Thames. You might there see a little sky filled with innumerable blazing stars and meteors. Nothing could be more astonishing than the pillars of flame, clouds of smoke, and multitudes of stars mingled to. * ADDISON'S. Phosphorus, or phosphor, a name applied to all substances capable of giving light in the dark; but it signifies here a kind of very combustible sulphur composed of a peculiar acid, united with phlogiston, which may be made to burn weakly in a heat from ten to fifteen degrees. The discovery of this phosphor was not very much antecedent to the date of this paper. Processes for making it were known before this century began; but they were incomplete, or over-expensive, and the operation still continued a secret till 1737, when a stranger introduced it into France, and for a public reward communicated the process for making it as now made. r See Nos. 101. 105. and notes. |