not large, is easy; and nobody fears certain applications from her. She has a small house of her own, which she has fitted up very prettily, and is often at home, not to crouds indeed, but to people of the best fashion, from twenty occasionally down to two; and let me tell you, that nothing makes a woman of Loveit's sort better received abroad, than being often at home. I own, said Bellair, that I looked upon her rather as a genteel led-captain, a postscript to women of fashion. Perhaps too sometimes the cover, answered Dorimant, and if so, an equal. You may joke as much as you please upon poor Loveit, but she is the best-humoured creature in the world; and I maintain her to be a woman of fashion; for, in short, we all roll with her, as the soldiers say. I want to know, said Belinda, what you will determine upon a character very different from the two last, I mean lady Loveless: is she a woman of fashion? Dear Belinda, answered Harriet hastily, how could she possibly come into your head? Very naturally, said Belinda; she has birth, beauty and fortune; she is genteel and well-bred. I own it, said Harriet; but still she is handsome without meaning, well shaped without air, genteel without graces, and well drest without taste. She is such an insipid creature, she seldom comes about, but lives at home with her lord, and so domestically tame, that she eats out of his hand, and teaches her young ones to peck out of her own. Odd, very odd, take my word for it. Ay, mere rockwater, said Dorimant; and, as I told you an hour ago, that will not do. No, most certainly, added Bellair, all that reserve, simplicity, and coldness, can never do. It seems to me rather that the true composition of people of fashion, like that of Venice treacle, consists of an infinite number of fine ingredients, but all of the warm kind. Truce with your filthy treacle, said Harriet; and since the conversation has hitherto chiefly turned upon us poor women, I think we have a right to insist upon the definition of you men of fashion. No doubt on't, said Dorimant; nothing is more just, and nothing more easy. Allowing some small difference for modes and habits, the men and the women of fashion are in truth the counter parts of each other; they fit like tallies, are made of the same wood, and are cut out for one another. As Dorimant was going on, probably to illustrate his assertion, a valet de chambre proclaimed in a solemn manner the arrival of the duchess dowager of Mattadore, and her three daughters, who were immediately followed by lord Formal, sir Peter Plausible, and divers others of both sexes, and of equal importance. The lady of the house, with infinite skill and indefatigable pains, soon peopled the several card-tables, with the greatest propriety, and to universal satisfaction; and the night concluded with flams, honours, best-games, pairs, pair-royals, and all other such rational demonstrations of joy. For my own part, I made my escape as soon as I possibly could, with my head full of that most extraordinary conversation which I had just heard, and which, from having taken no part in it, I had attended to the more, and retained the better. I went straight home, and immediately reduced it into writing, as I here offer it for the present edification of my readers. But as it has furnished me with great and new lights, I propose, as soon as possible, to give the public a new and compleat system of ethics, founded upon these principles of people of fashion; as in my opinion, they are better calculated than any others, for the use and instruction of all private families. No. 152. THURSDAY, NOV. 28, 1755. Floriferis ut opes in saltibus omnia libant, LUCRET. SIR, TO MR. FITZ-ADAM. OXFORD, Nov. 11th, 1755. I HAVE, for a long time past, had a strong inclination upon me to become one of your correspondents; but from the habits contracted from this place of my education and residence, I have felt a certain timidity in my constitution, which has hitherto restrained me (pardon the expression) from venturing into the world. However, when I reflect that Oxford, as well as her sister Cambridge, has always been distinguished with the title of one of the eyes of England, I cannot suppose that you pay so little respect to so valuable a part of the microcosm, as to reject my letter with disdain, merely because it comes dated to you from this ancient seat of learning; especially as I assure you, you shall see nothing in it that shall savour at all of that narrow and unsociable spirit, which was heretofore the characteristic of the productions of the college. will No, Mr. Fitz-Adam, though learning itself be my subject, I will not treat of it in a manner that shall disgust the politest of your readers; and though I write from a place, which, within the memory of many now living, enjoyed in some sort the monopoly of it, yet I will not lament the loss of that privilege, but am, with Moses, thoroughly contented that all the Lord's people should be prophets. Indeed, the main business I am upon is to congratulate the great world on that diffusion of science and literature, which, for some years, has been spreading itself abroad upon the face of it. A revolution this, in the kingdom of learning, which has introduced the levelling principle, with much better success than ever it met with in politics. The old fences have been happily broken down, the trade has been laid open, and the old repositories, or storehouses, are now no longer necessary or useful, for the purpose of managing or conducting it. They have had their day; and very good custom and encouragement they had while that day lasted; but surely our sons, or, at farthest, our grand-sons, will be much surprised, when they are told for what purposes they were built and endowed by our ancestors, and at how vast an expense the journeymen and factors, belonging to them, were maintained by the public, merely to supply us with what may now be had from every coffee-house, and Robin-Hood assembly. In short, it has fared with learning, as with our pine-apples. At their first introduction amongst us, the manner of raising them was a very great secret, and little less than a mystery. The expenses of compost, hot-houses, and attendance, were prodigious; and at last, at a great price, they were introduced at the tables of a few of the nobility and gentry. But how common are they grown of late! Every gardener, that used to pride himself in an early cucumber, can now raise a pineapple; and one need not despair of seeing them sold at six a penny in Covent-Garden, and become the common treat of taylors and hackney-coach men. The university of London, it is agreed, ought to be allowed the chief merit of this general dissemination of learning and knowledge. The students of that ample body, as they are less straitened by rules and statutes, have been much more communicative than those of other learned societies. It seems, indeed, to be their established principle, to let nothing stay long by them. Whatever they collect, in the several courses of their studies, they immediately give up again for the service of the public. Hence that profusion of historians, politicians, and philosophers, with whose works we are daily amused and instructed. I am told, there is not a bookseller within a mile of Temple-bar, who has not one or two of these authors constantly in his pay, who are ready, at the word of command, to write a book of any size, upon any subject. And yet I never heard that any of these gentlemen ever drank, in a regular manner, of the waters of Helicon, or endeavoured to trace out that spring, by the streams of Cam or Isis. But it is not merely the regular book, or legitimate treatise, which has thus abounded with learning and science; but our loose papers and pamphlets, periodical as well as occasional, are, for their bulk, equally profuse of instruction. Monthly magazines, which, some years since, were nothing more than collections to amuse and entertain, are now become the magazines of universal knowledge. Astronomy, history, mathematics, antiquities, and the whole history of inscriptions and medals, may now be had, fresh and fresh, at the most easy rates from the repositories of any of these general undertakers. What an advantage is this to the modern student, to have his mess of learning thus carved out for him, at proper seasons and intervals, in quantities that will not over-cloy his stomach, or be too expensive to his pocket! How greatly preferable, both for cheapness and utility, is this method of study, to that of proposing a whole system to his VOL. III. G |