return to these same hospitable ambassadors for their good entertainment of him, yet I am not quite so ready with my answer to a certain female correspondent, who in consequence of some discourse upon Dampers the other day, in a company where she was present, favoured me with the following short but curious epistle.

'SIR,

"I have the misfortune to be married to an elderly gentleman, who has taken strange things in his head of late, and is for ever snubbing me before folks, especially when the captain is in company. Twas but t'other night he broke up a party of hotcockles in the back parlour, and would not let the captain take a civil salute, though I assured him it was only a forfeit at questions and commands.

"I don't know what he means by saying he will put a spoke in my wheel, but I suspect it is some jealousy matter.

66

Pray, Sir, is not Damper? Your's,

you

call a

husband what my

"LUCY LOVEIT."

No. III.

THE desire of praise is natural, but when that appetite becomes canine, it is no longer in nature; a taste of it is pleasant to most men: temperance itself will take a little, but the stomach sickens with a surfeit of it, and the palate nauseates the debauch.

Let the passion for flattery be ever so inordinate, the supply can keep pace with the demand, and in the world's great market, in which wit and folly. drive their bargains with each other, there are traders of all sorts; some keep a stall of offals, some a

storehouse of delicacies; a squeamish palate must be forced by alluring provocatives, a foul feeder will swallow any trash that he can get hold of.

In a recent publication of the history of the Emperor Charles the Fifth, written by Sepulveda of Cordova (a contemporary and favourite of that famous monarch), the Academy of History at Madrid, in their dedication to his present Catholic Majesty, address him in the following words-Nam quem tu, Carole Rex, ut nomine refers, ita etiam bellicâ laude jampridem amularis. When these courtly academicians have thus mounted their peaceable sovereign on the warhorse of the victorious Charles, they seriously proceed to tell him, that being fully equal to his predecessor in his martial character, he is out of all distance superior to him in every other kingly quality; more wise, more politic, more magnanimous, and (as the present work can testify) a greater friend to learning than all that ever went before him, and if. they may risk a prediction, there will probably be none to come in competition with him hereafter.

If his Catholic Majesty shall ever come to an understanding of this paragraph, and strike a fair comparison between himself and his illustrious namesake, I should not be surprised if the next work his academicians shall be employed in proves the fortifications of Ceuta.

When I compare the state of flattery in a free country with that which obtains in arbitrary states, it is a consolation to find that this mean principle is not natural to mankind; for it certainly abates in proportion as independency advances. This will be very evident to any one who compares the flattery of Elizabeth's and James's days with the present. Ben Jonson, for instance, was a surly poet, yet how fulsome are his masques! In his News from the New World he says of James,

Read him as you would do the book
Of all perfections, and but look
What his proportions be:

No measure that is thence contrived,
Or any motion thence derived,
But is pure harmony.

This poet, though he was rather a clumsy flatterer of his prince, was ingenious enough in the mode he took for flattering himself, by introducing a kind of chorus, wherein he takes occasion to tell his hearers, that careless of all vulgar censure, as not depending on common approbation, he is confident his plays shall superplease judicious spectators, and to them he leaves it to work with the rest by example or otherwise. It is remarkable that this passage should be found in his Magnetic Lady, and that he should speak with such confidence of one of his worst productions, as if he was determined to force a bad comedy upon the hearers by the authority of his own recommendation. This is an evident imitation of Aristophanes, who, in his comedy of The Clouds, holds the same language to his audience, fairly telling them he shall estimate their judgment according to the degree of applause they shall bestow upon his performance then before them: in conclusion he inveighs against certain of his contemporaries, Eupolis, Phyrnichus, and Hermippus, with whose comedies if any of his audience is well pleased, that person he hopes will depart from his dissatisfied; but if they condemn his rivals, and applaud him, he shall think better of their judgment for the future. Act

1. sc. 6.

The caution authors now proceed with shows the refinement of the times; still they can contrive in a modest way to say civil things of themselves, and it would be hard indeed to disappoint them of so slight a gratification-for what praise is so little to

be envied as that which a man bestows on himself? Several of our diurnal essayists have contrived under the veil of fiction to hook in something recommendatory of themselves, which they mean should pass for truth; such is the intelligent taciturnity of the Spectator, and the solemn integrity of the Guardian.

The latter, in one of his papers, notices the ambition of some authors to prefix engravings of their portraits to their titlepages; his ridicule has not quite laughed this fashion out of countenance, for I perceive it is still in existence, and I frequently meet the face of an old acquaintance looking through the windows of a bookseller's shop. One very ingenious gentleman, whose beauty is amongst the least of his recommendations, has very prudently stamped his age upon his print. In the same shop window with this gentleman I observed with great pleasure an elegant author standing by him, as erect as a dart, firm and collected in the awful moment of beginning a minuet. I own I regret that the honest butler, who has regaled the age with a treatise on ale and strong beer, has not hung out his own head in the front of his book, as a sign of the good entertainment within.

But of all the instances of face-flattery I have lately met with, that of a worthy citizen surprised me most, whose countinghouse I entered the other day, and found an enormous portrait of my friend in a flaming drapery of blue and gold, mounted upon the back of a warhorse, which the limner has made to rear so furiously that I was quite astonished to see my friend, who is no great jockey, keep his seat so steadily: he confessed to me that he had consented to be drawn on horseback to please his wife and daughters, who chose the attitude; for his own part it made him quite giddy to look at himself, and he frequently desired the painter not to let the horse prance so, but to no purpose.

Too great avidity of praise will sometimes betray an author into a studied attempt at fine writing, where the thought will not carry the style; writers of this sort are like those tasteless dabblers in architecture, who turn the gable ends of barns and cottages into castles and temples, and spend a world of plastering and pains to decorate a pig-sty. They bring to my mind a ridiculous scene, at which I was present the other day: I found a lady of my acquaintance busily employed in the domestic education of her only son; the preceptor was in the room, and was standing in an attitude very much resembling the erect gentleman I had seen that morning in the bookseller's window: the boy kept his eyes fixed, and seemed to govern his motions by certain signals of the feet and arms, which he repeated from the preceptor. In the course of my conversation with his mother, I chanced to drop my glove upon the floor, upon which he approached to pick it up, but in a step so measured and so methodical that I had done the office for myself before he had performed his advances. As I was about to resume the conversation, the mother interrupted me, by desiring I would favour her so far as to drop my glove again, that Bobby might have the honour of presenting it to me in proper form: all this while the boy stood as upright as an arrow, perfectly motionless; but no sooner had I thrown down my gauntlet than he began to put one foot slowly in advance before the other; upon which the preceptor of politeness cried out, one !-first position!-The boy then made another movement of his feet, upon which the master repeated-two!-second position;-This was followed by another, and the echo again cried out-three! very well-third position! bend your body slowly!-At the word of command the automaton bent his body very deliberately, its arms hanging down in parallel perpendiculars to the floor,