with all your loquacity, say enough of her goodhumour and sense. I send you the outlines of a picture, which I can no more finish than I can sufficiently admire the dear original. 'I am, 'Your most affectionate brother, 'CONSTANTIO SPEC.' 'GOOD MR. PERT, 'I WILL allow you nothing till you resolve me the following question. Pray what is the reason that, while you only talk now upon Wednesdays, Fridays, and Mondays, you pretend to be a greater tatler than when you spoke every day as you formerly used to do? If this be your plunging out your taciturnity, pray let the length of your speeches compensate for the scarceness of them. I am, Good Mr. Pert, your admirer, 'If you will be long enough for me, 'AMANDA LOVELENGTH.'• No. 582. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 18, 1714. -Tenet insanabile multos Scribendi caco thes Juv. Sat. vii. 51. The curse of writing is an endless itch. CH. DRYDEN. THERE is a certain distemper, which is mentioned neither by Galen nor Hippocrates, nor to be met with in the London Dispensary. Juvenal, in the No. 1, to No. 555, inclusive of the Spectators, were published every day, Sunday excepted; those after that number three times a-week only. Steele, it is said, had no concern in these latter papers, which were chiefly composed by Addison and Mr. Eustace Budgell, and were without letters motto of my paper, terms it a Cacoethes; which is a hard word for a disease called in plain English The itch of writing.' This cacoethes is as epidemical as the small-pox, there being very few who are not seized with it some time or other in their lives. There is, however, this difference in these two distempers, that the first, after having indisposed you for a time, never returns again ; whereas this I am speaking of, when it is once got into the blood, seldom comes out of it. The British nation is very much afflicted with this malady; and though very many remedies have been applied to persons infected with it, few of them have ever proved successful. Some have been cauterized with satires and lampoons, but have received little or no benefit from them; others have had their heads fastened for an hour together between a cleft board, which is made use of as a cure for the disease when it appears in its greatest malignity. There is indeed one kind of this malady which has been sometimes removed, like the biting of a tarantula, with the sound of a musical instrument, which is commonly known by the name of a cat-call. But if you have a patient of this kind under your care, you may assure yourself there is no other way of recovering him effectually, but by forbidding him the use of pen, ink, and paper. at the end, as in the first 155 numbers. Addison produced more than a fourth part after that Number; and the other contributors are by no means unworthy of appearing as his associates. Dr. Johnson thought these latter papers were more valuable than any of those that went before them. Addison's papers after No. 555, were marked on the authority of Tickell, who, as he lived familiarly with Addison, and shortly after his death first collected and published his works, in which they are included, may well be supposed capable of ascertaining them. Put in the Pillory. But, to drop the allegory before I have tired it out, there is no species of scribblers more offensive and more incurable than your periodical writers, whose works return upon the public on certain days and at stated times. We have not the consolation in the perusal of these authors which we find at the reading of all others; namely, that we are sure if we have but patience we may come to the end of their labours. I have often admired an humorous saying of Diogenes, who, reading a dull author to several of his friends, when every one began to be tired, finding he was almost come to a blank leaf at the end of it, cried, 'Courage, lads, I see land.' On the contrary, our progress through that kind of writers I am now speaking of is never at an end. One day makes work for another-we do not know when to promise ourselves rest. It is a melancholy thing to consider that the art of printing, which might be the greatest blessing to mankind, should prove detrimental to us, and that it should be made use of to scatter prejudice and ignorance through a people, instead of conveying to them truth and knowledge. I was lately reading a very whimsical treatise, entitled William Ramsey's Vindication of Astrology. This profound author, among many mystical passages, has the following one: The absence of the sun is not the cause of night, forasmuch as his light is so great that it may illuminate the earth all over at once as clear as broad day; but there are tenebrificous and dark stars, by whose influence night is brought on, and which do ray out darkness and obscurity upon the earth as the sun does light.' I consider writers in the same view this sage astrologer does the heavenly bodies. Some of them are stars that scatter light as others do darkness. I could mention several authors who are tenebrificous stars of the first magnitude, and point out a knot of gentlemen, who have been dull in consort, and may be looked upon as a dark constellation. The nation has been a great while benighted with several of these antiluminaries. I suffered them to ray out their darkness as long as I was able to endure it, till at length I came to a resolution of rising upon them, and hope in a little time to drive them quite out of the British hemisphere. P No. 583. FRIDAY, AUGUST 20, 1714. Ipse thymum pinosque ferens de montibus altis, Tecta serat latè circum, cui talia curæ: Ipse labore manum duro terat: ipse feraces VIRG. Georg. iv. 112. With his own hand the guardian of the bees DRYDEN. EVERY station of life has duties which are proper to it. Those who are determined by choice to any particular kind of business, are indeed more happy than those who are determined by necessity; but both are under an equal obligation of fixing on employments which may be either useful to themselves or beneficial to others: no one of the sons of Adam By Addison, on the authority of Mr. Thomas Tickell, who has ascertained Addison's papers after No. 555, which were not lettered at the ends as those preceding that number originally were. ought to think himself exempt from that labour and industry which were denounced to our first parent, and in him to all his posterity. Those, to whom birth, or fortune may seem to, make such an application unnecessary, ought to find out some calling or profession for themselves, that they may not lie as a burden on the species, and be the only useless part of the creation. Many of our country gentlemen in their busy hours apply themselves wholly to the chase, or to some other diversion which they find in the fields and woods. This gave occasion to one of our most eminent English writers to represent every one of them as lying under a kind of curse pronounced to them in the words of Goliath, 'I will give thee to the fowls of the air, and to the beasts of the field.' Though exercises of this kind, when indulged with moderation, may have a good influence on the mind and body, the country affords many other amusements of a more noble kind. Among these I know none more delightful in itself, and beneficial to the public, than that of planting. I could mention a nobleman whose fortune has placed him in several parts of England, and who has always left these visible marks behind him, which show he has been there: he never hired a house in his life, without leaving all about it the seeds of wealth, and bestowing legacies on the posterity of the owner. Had all the gentlemen of England made the same improvements upon their estates, our whole country would have been at this time as one great garden. Nor ought such an employment to be looked upon as too inglorious for men of the highest rank. There have been heroes in this art, as well as in others. We are told in particular of |