that place, takes upon him to difpute my title to the appellation of Efquire. I think I need not fay much to convince all the world, that this Mr. Powel, for that is his name, is a pragmatical and vain perfon to pretend to argue with me on any fubject. Mecum certaffe feretur; that is to fay, It will be an honour to him to have it faid he contended with me: But I would have him to know, that I can look beyond his wires, and know very well the whole trick of his art; and that it is only by these wires that the eye of the spectator is cheated, and hindered from feeing that there is a thread on one of Punch's chaps, which draws it up, and lets it fall at the difcretion of the faid Porvel, who ftands behind and plays him, and makes him fpeak faucily of his betters. He! to pretend to make prologues against me--But a man never behaves himself with decency in his own cafe ; therefore I fhall command myself, and never trouble me farther with this little fellow, who is himfelf but a tall puppet, and has not brains enough to make even wood fpeak as it ought to do: And I, that have heard the groaning board, can defpife all that his puppets fhall be able to speak as long as they live. But, Ex quovis ligno non fit Mercurius. Every log of wood will not make a Mercury." He has pretended to write to me also from the Bath, and fays, he thought to have deferred giving me an anfwer until he came to his books; but that my writings might do well with the waters: Which are pert expreffions that become a fchool-boy, better than one that is to teach others: And when I have faid a civil thing to him, he cries, "Oh! I thank you for "that--I am your humble fervant for that." Ah ! Mr. Powel, thefe fmart civilities will never run down men of learning: I know well enough your design is to have all men Automata, like your puppets; but the world is grown too wife, and can look through these thin devices. I know your defign to make a reply to this; but be fure you stick close to my words; for if you bring me into difcourfes concerning the government of your puppets, I must tell you, "I neither am, nor have "been, nor will be, at leifure to answer you." It is really a burning fhame this man fhould be tolerated in abufing the world with fuch representations of things: 66 But his parts decay, and he is not much more alive than Partridge. From my own Apartment, July 14. I must beg pardon of my readers, that for this time I have, I fear, huddled up my difcourfe, having been very busy in helping an old friend of mine out of town. He has a very good eftate, is a man of wit; but he has been three years abfent from town, and cannot bear à jeft; for which reason I have, with fome pains, convinced him, that he can no more live here than if he were a downright bankrupt. He was fo fond of dear London, that he began to fret only inwardly; but being 'unable to laugh and be laughed at, I took a place in the northern coach for him and his family; and hope he is got to-night fafe from all fneerers in his own parlour. St. James's Coffee-houfe, July 20. This morning we received by exprefs the agreeable News of the furrender of the town of Tournay on the twenty-eighth inftant, N. S. The place was affaulted at the attacks of General Schuylemberg, and that of General Lottum, at the fame time. The action at both those parts of the town was very obftinate, and the Allies loft a confiderable number at the beginning of the difpute; but the fight was continued with fo great bravery, that the enemy obferving our men to be mafters of all the pofts which were neceffary for a general attack, beat the Chamade, and hostages were received from the town, and others fent from the beliegers, in order to come to a formal capitulation for the furrender of the place. We have alfo this day received advice, that Sir John Leak, who lies off Dunkirk, had intercepted several ships laden with corn from the Baltic; and that the Dutch privateers had fallen in with others, and carried them into Holland. The French Letters advise, that the young fon to the Duke of Anjou lived but eight days. Saturday, N° 45. Saturday, July 23, 1709. Credo pudicitiam Saturno rege moratam In terris Juv. Sat. 6. ver. 1. In Saturn's reign, at Nature's early birth, TH White's Chocolate-houfe, July 22. DRYDEN. HE other day I took a walk a mile or two out of town, and frolling wherever chance led me, I vas infenfibly carried into a by-road, along which was a very agreeable quickfet, of an extraordinary height, which furrounded a very delicious feat and garden. From one angle of the hedge, I heard a voice cry, Sir, Sir -This raifed my curiofity, and I heard the fame voice fay, but in a gentle tone, Come forward, come forward. I did fo, and one through the hedge called me by my name, and bid me go on to the left, and I fhould be ad mitted to visit an old acquaintance in diftrefs. The laws of knight-errantry made me obey the fummons without hesitation; and I was let in at the back-gate of a lovely house by a maid-servant, who carried me from room to room until I came into a gallery; at the end of which, I faw a fine Lady dreffed in the most fumptuous habit, as if he were going to a Ball, but with the most abject and difconfolate forrow in her face that I ever be. held. As I came near, the burst into tears, and cried, Sir, do not you know the unhappy Teraminta? I foon re collected her whole perfon: But, faid I, Madam, the fimplicity of drefs, in which I have ever seen you at your good father's houfe, and the chearfulness of coun tenance with which you always appeared, are fo unlike the fashion and temper you are now in, that I did not VOL. I. N eafily Your habit was then eafily recover the memory of you. decent and modeft, your looks ferene and beautiful : Whence then this unaccountable change? Nothing can fpeak fo deep a forrow as your prefent afpect; yet your drefs is made for jollity and revelling. It is, faid fhe, an unspeakable pleasure to meet with one I know, and to bewail myfelf to any that is not an utter stranger to humanity. When your friend my father died, he left me to a wide world, with no defence against the infults of fortune; but rather, a thousand fnares to intrap me in the dangers to which youth and innocence are expofed, in an age wherein honour and virtue are become mere words, and ufed only as they ferve to betray those who understand them in their native fenfe, and obey them as the guides and motives of their Being. The wickedeft of all men living, the abandoned Decius, who has no knowledge of any good art or purpose of human life, but as it tends to the fatisfaction of his appetites, had opportunities of frequently feeing and entertaining me at a houfe where mixed company boarded, and where he placed himself for the bafe intention which he has fince brought to pass. Decius faw enough in me to raise his brutal defires, and my circumstances gave him hopes of accomplishing them. But all the glittering expectations he could lay before me, joined by my private terrors of poverty itself, could not for fome months prevail upon me; yet however I hated his intention, I ftill had a fecret fatisfaction in his courtship, and always expofed myself to his folicitations. See here the bane of our Sex! let the flattery be never fo apparent, the flatterer never fo ill thought of, his praifes are ftill agreeable, and we contribute to our own deceit. I was therefore ever fond of all opportunities and pretences of being in his company. In a word, I was at last ruined by him, and brought to this place, where I have been ever fince immured; and from the fatal day after my fall from innocence, my worshipper became my mafter and my tyrant, Thus you fee me habited in the most gorgeous manner, not in honour of me as a woman he loves, but as this attire charms his own eye, and urges him to repeat the gratification he takes in me, as the fervant of his brutish brutish lufts and appetites. I know not where to fly for redress; but am here pining away life in the folitude and feverity of a nun, but the confcience and guilt of an harlot. I live in this lewd practice with a religious awe of my minister of darknefs, upbraided with the fupport I receive from him, for the inestimable poffeffion of youth, of innocence, of honour, and of confcience. I fee, Sir, my difcourfe grows painful to you; all I beg of you is, to paint it in fo ftrong colours, as to let Decius fee I am difcovered to be in his poffeffion, that I may be turned out of this detestable scene of regular iniquity, and either think no more, or fin no more. If your writings have the good effect of gaining my enlargement, I promise you I will attone for this unhappy ftep, by preferring an innocent laborious poverty to all the guilty affluence the world can offer me. Will's Coffee-houfe, July 21. To fhew that I do not bear an irreconcileable hatred to my mortal enemy, Mr. Powel at Bath, I do his function the honour to publish to the world, that Plays reprefented by puppets are permitted in our Univerfities, and that fort of Drama is not wholly thought unworthy the Critique of learned heads; but as I have been converfant rather with the greater Ode, as I think the critics call it, I must be fo humble as to make a request to Mr. Powel, and defire him to apply his thoughts to anfwering the difficulties with which my kinfman, the Author of the following Letter, feems to be embarrassed. To my honoured kinfman, Ifaac Bickerstaff, Efquire. Dear Coufin, AD the family of the Beadleftaffs, whereof I, though unworthy, am one, known of your being "lately at Oxon, we had in our own name, and in the "Univerfity's, as it is our office, made you a compli ment: But your short stay here robbed us of an op"portunity of paying our due refpects, and you of re"ceiving an ingenious entertainment, with which we N 2 66 at |