It is very odd, this prince should offer to invite me into his dominions, or believe I should accept the invitation. No, no, I remember too well how he served an ingenious gentleman, a friend of mine, whom he locked up in the Bastile for no reason in the world, but because he was a wit, and feared he might mention him with justice in some of his writings. His way is, that all men of sense are preferred, banished, or imprisoned. He has indeed a sort of justice in him, like that of the gamesters; for if a stander-by sees one at play cheat, he has a right to come in for shares, as knowing the mysteries of the game *. This is a very wise and just maxim; and if I have not left at Mr. Morphew's, directed to me, bank bills for two hundred pounds, on or before this day sevennight, I shall tell how Tom Cash got his estate. I expect three hundred pounds of Mr. Soilett, for concealing all the money he has lent to himself, and his landed friend bound with him at thirty per cent. at his scrivener's. Absolute princes make people pay what they please in deference to their power: I do not know why I should not do the same, out of fear or respect to my knowledge. I always preserve decorums and civilities to the fair sex: therefore, if a certain lady, who left her coach at the New Exchange door in the Strand, and whipt down Durham-yard into a boat with a young gentleman for Vauxhall † ; I say, if she will send me word, that I may give the fan which she dropped, and I found, to my sister Jenny, there shall be no more said of it. I expect hush-money to be regularly sent for every folly or vice any one * Sir John Vanbrugh, who was once confined in the Bastile, is probably the person here alluded to. † In the Original Folio it is "Fox-Hall." sich, sidhe, How terrible are conviction and guilt, when they come too late for penitence!" Pacelet was going on in this strain, but he recovered from it, and told me, "It was too soon to gve my discourse on this subject so serious a turn; you have chiefly to do with that part of mankind which must be led into reflection by degrees, and you must treat this custom with humour and raillery to get an audience, before you come to pronounce sentence upon it. There is foundation enough for raising such entertainments, from the practice on this occasion. Do not you know that often a man is called out of bed to follow implicitly a coxcomb (with whom he would not keep company on any other occasion) to ruin and death ?--Then a good list of such as are qualified by the laws of these uncourteous men of chivalry to enter into combat (who are often persons of honour without common honesty); these, I say, ranged and drawn up in their proper order, would give an aversion to doing any thing in common with such as men laugh at and contemn. But to go through this work, you must not let your thoughts vary, or make excursions from your theme: consider, at the same time, that the matter has been often treated by the ablest and greatest writers; yet that must not discourage you: for the properest person to handle it is one who has roved into mixed conversations, and must have opportunities (which I shall give you) of seeing these sort of men in their pleasures and gratifications, among which they pretend to reckon fighting. It was pleasantly enough said of a bully in France, when duels first began to be punished: The King has taken away gaming and stageplaying, and now fighting too; how does he expect gentlemen shall divert themselves?" No 27, SATURDAY, JUNE 11, 1709. Quicquid agunt homines nostri est farrago libelli. JUV. Sat. 1. 85, 86. Whate'er men do, or say, or think, or dream, P. White's Chocolate-house, June 9. PACOLET being gone a-strolling among the men of the sword, in order to find out the secret causes of the frequent disputes we meet with, and furnish me with materials for my treatise on duelling: I have room left to go on in my information to my country readers, whereby they may understand the bright people whose memoirs I have taken upon me to write. But in my discourse of the twenty-eighth of the last month, I omitted to mention the most agreeable of all bad characters, and that is, a Rake. A Rake is a man always to be pitied; and, if he lives, is one day certainly reclaimed; for his faults proceed not from choice or inclination, but from strong passions and appetites, which are in youth too violent for the curb of reason, good sense, good manners, and good-nature: all which he must have by nature and education, before he can be allowed to be, or to have been of this order. He is a poor unwieldy wretch, that commits faults out of the redundance of his good qualities. His pity and compassion make him sometimes a bubble to all his fellows, let them be never so much below him in understanding. His desires run away with him thanh the strength and force of a lively ina, i Laton, which burnes harm on to unlawful p'easures, before trots Las power to come in to his tescue, Ton withan the good antentions in the world to argen Iment, this creature suns on against Heaven, lotsof, his friends, and his crititry, who all all for a better time of his talents. There is not a bong noder the sun 46 traserable as thiss he goes on in a purauit he himself disapproves, and has no enjoy tent but what is followed by remorse; to reef from remorse, but the repention of his crime, It i possible I may talk of this person with too much ndugenee, but I most repeat it, that I think this a character which is the most the object of pity of any in the world. The man in the pangs of the stohe, gout, of any acute distemper, is not in so deplorable a condition, in the eye of right se Le that cars and repents, and repents and errs on. The fellow with broken limbs justly deserves your alms for his impotent condition; but he that cannot hee his own reason is in a much worse state; for you see him in miserable circumstances, with his rebody at the same time in his own possession, if he would, or could toe it. This is the cause that, of all ill characters, the Rake has the best quarter in the world's for when he is himself, and unruffled with intemperance, you see his natural faculties ezert themselves, and attract an eye of favour to wards his infirmities, But if we look round us here, how many dull Fogicame there, that would fain be what this poor tean hates himself for? All the noise towards six in the evening is caused by his minnics and imitators, How ought men of setise to be careful of their actions, if it were merely from the indignation of seeing themselves ill drawn by sne b little pretenders! Not to say, he that leads is guilty of all the actions of his Second-hand followers; and a Rake has imitators whom you would never expect should prove so. vice, sure, of all is the most nauseous. There is hardly a folly more absurd, or which seems less to be accounted for (though it is what we see every day), than that grave and honest natures give into this way, and at the same time have good sense, if they thought fit to use it; but the fatality (under which most men labour) of desiring to be what they are not, makes them go out of a method in which they might be received with applause, and would certainly excel, into one, wherein they will all their life have the air of strangers to what they aim at. For this reason, I have not lamented the metamorphosis of any one I know so much as of Nobilis, who was born with sweetness of temper, just apprehension, and every thing else that might make him a man fit for his order. But instead of the pursuit of sober studies and applications, in which he would certainly be capable of making a considerable figure in the noblest assembly of men in the world; I say, in spite of that good nature, which is his proper beat, he will say ill-natured things aloud, put such as he was, and still should be, out of countenance, and drown all the natural good in him, to receive an artificial ill character, in which he will never succeed; for Nobilis is no Rake. He may guzzle as much wine as he pleases, talk bawdy if he thinks fit; but he may as well drink water-gruel, and go twice a day to church, for it will never do. I pronounce it again, Nobilis is no Rake. To be of that order, he must be vicious against his will, and not so by study or application. All "Pretty Fellows" are also excluded to a man, as well as all inamoratoes, or persons of the epicene gender, who gaze at one another in the presence of ladies. This class, of which I am giving you an |