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farther, and found in the rim of the box, At eleven o'clock at night come in an hackney-coach at the end of our freet. This was enough to alarm < me; I fent away the things, and took my meafure accordingly. An hour or two before the appointed time I examined my Young Lady, and found her trunk ftuffed with impertinent letters, and an old feroll of parchment in Latin, which her lover had sent her as a fettlement of fifty pounds a year: Among other things, there was also the best lace I had in my fhop to make him a prefent for cravats. I was very glad of this laft circumftance, because I could very confcientioufly fwear against him that he had enticed my fervant away, and was her accomplice in robbing me: I procured a warrant against him accordingly. Every thing was now prepared, and the tender hour of love approaching, I, who had acted for myself in my youth the same senseless part, knew how to manage accordingly: Therefore, after having locked up my maid, and not being fo much unlike her in height and fhape, as in a huddled way not to pafs for her, I delivered the bundle designed to be carried off to her lover's man, who came with the fignal to receive them. Thus I followed after to the coach, where, when I ftw his mafter take them in, I cried out thieves! thieves! and the conftable with his at⚫tendants feized my expecting lover. I kept myfelf unobferved until I faw the crowd fufficiently increased, and then appeared to declare the goods to be mine; and had the fatisfaction to fee my man of mode put into the Round-House, with the ftolen wares by him, to be produced in evidence against him the next morning. This matter is notoriously known to be fact; and I have been contented to fave my prentice, and take a year's rent of this mortified lover, not to appear farther in the matter. This was fome penance: But,

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Sir, is this enough for a villany of much more pernicious confequence than the trifles for which he was to have been indicted? Should not you, and all men of any parts or honour, put things " upon fo right a foot, as that fuch a rafcal fhould not laugh at the imputation of what he was really guilty, and dread being aceufed of that for which he was arrested?

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In a word, Sir, it is in the power of you, and 'fuch as I hope you are, to make it as infamous to rob a poor creature of her honour as her clothes. I leave this to your confideration, only take leave (which I cannot do without fighing) to remark to you, that if this had been the fenfe of ́ ⚫ mankind thirty years ago, I should have avoided a life fpent in poverty and fhame.

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'I am, SIR,

Your moft humble fervant.

ALICE THREADNEEDLE."

Mr. SPECTATOR, Round-Houfe, Sept. 9. I AM a man of pleasure about town, but by the ftupidity of a dull rogue of a justice of peace, and an infolent conftable, upon the oath of an 'old harridan, am imprifoned here for theft, when I defigned only fornication. The midnight ma-giftrate, as he conveyed me along, had you in ' his mouth, and faid this would make a pure sto-ry for the SPECTATOR. I hope, Sir, you will not pretend to wit, and take the part of dull rogues of bufinefs. The world is fo altered of late years, that there was not a man who would knock down a watchman in my behalf, but I was carried off with as much triumph as if I had been a pick-pocket. At this rate, there is an end of all the wit and humour in the world. The time was when all the honeft whore-mafters in the neighbourhood would have rofe against the cuckolds in my refcue. If fornication is to

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be fcandalous, half the fine things that have been writ by most of the wits of the laft age may be burnt by the common hangman. Harkye, Mr. SPEC, do not be queer; after having done fome things pretty well, do not begin to write at that rate that no Gentleman can read thee. Be truc

to love, and burn your Seneca. You do not expect me to write my name from hence, but I " am,

Your unknown humble, &c.*

No 183. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 29.

ίδιον ψεύδεα πολλὰ λέγειν ἐτίμοισιν ὁμοῖα, ίδιον δ' εκτ ̓ ἐθέλωμεν, ἀληθέα μυθήσαθαι.

HESIOD.

Sometimes fair truth in fiction we disguise,
Sometimes prefent her naked to mens eyes.

F

ABLES were the first pieces of wit that made their appearance in the world, and have been ftill highly valued not only in times of the greatest fimplicity, but among the moft polite ages of mankind. Jotham's fable of the trees is the oldest that is extant, and as beautiful as any which have been made fince that time. Nathan's fable of the poor man and his lamb is likewife more ancient than any that is extant, befides the above-mentioned, and had fo good an effect, as to convey inftruction to the car of a king without offending it, and to bring the man after God's own heart to a right fenfe of his guilt and his duty. We find Efop in the most distant ages of Greece; and if we look into the very beginnings of the commonwealth of Rome, we fee a mutiny among the common people appeafed by a fable of the belly and the limbs, which was indeed very proper to gain the attention of an incenfed rabble, at a time when perhaps they. would

would have torn to pieces any man who had preached the fame doctrine to them in an open and direct manner. As fables took their birth in the very infancy of learning, they never flourished more than' when learning was at its greateft height. To juftify this affertion, I fhall put my reader in mind of Horace, the greateft wit and critic in the Auguftan age; and of Boileau, the most correct poet among 'the moderns: Not to mention La Fontaine, who by this way of writing is come more into vogue than any other author of our times..

The fables I have here mentioned are raised altogether upon brutes and vegetables, with fome of our own fpecies mixt among them, when the moral hath fo required. But befides this kind of fable, there is another in which the actors are paflions, virtues, vices, and other imaginary perfons of the like nature. Some of the ancient criticks will have it, that the Iliad and Odyffey of Homer are fables of this nature; and that the several names of gods and heroes are nothing elfe but the affections of the mind in a visible fhape and character. Thus they tell us, that Achilles, in the first Iliad, represents anger, or the irafcible part of human nature; that upon drawing his fword against his fuperior in a full affembly, Palla's is only another name for reafon, which checks and advifes him upon that occafion; and at her firft appearance touches him upon the head, that part of the man being looked upon as the feat of reafon. And thus of the reft of the poem. As for the Odyffey, I think, it is plain that Horace confidered it as one of thefe allegorical fables, by the moral which he has given us of feveral parts of it. The greatest Italian wits have applied themselves to the writing of this latter kind of fables: As Spenfer's Fairy-Queen is one continued feries of them from the beginning to the end of that admirable work. If we look into the fineft profe-authors of antiquity, fuch as Cicero,

F 3

Plate,

Plato, Xenophon, and many others, we fhall find that this was likewife their favourite kind of fable. I fhall only farther obferve upon it, that the first of this fort that made any confiderable figure in the world, was that of Hercules meeting with Pleafure and Virtue; which was invented by Prodicas, who lived before Socrates, and in the first dawnings of philofophy. He ufed to travel through Greece by virtue of this fable, which procured him a kind reception in all the market-towns, where he never failed telling it as foon as he had gathered an audience about him.

After this fhort preface, which I have made up of fuch materials as my memory does at prefent fuggeft to me, before I prefent my reader with a fable of this kind, which I defign as the entertainment of the prefent paper, I muft in a few words open the occafion of it.

In the account which Plate gives us of the converfation and behaviour of Socrates, the morning he was to die, he tells the following circumftance.

When Socrates his fetters were knocked off (as was ufual to be done on the day that the condemned perfon was to be executed) being feated in the midft of his difciples, and, laying one of his legs over the other, in a very unconcerned pofture, he began to rub it where it had been galled by the iron; and whether it was to fhew the indifference with which he entertained the thoughts of his approaching death, or (after his ufual manner) to take every occafion of philofophifing upon fome ufeful fubject, he obferved the pleasure of that fenfation which now arofe in thofe very parts of his leg, that just before had been fo much pained by the fetter. Upon this he reflected on the nature of pleasure and pain in general, and how conftantly they fucceed one another. To this he added, that if a man of a good genius for a fable were to reprefent the nature of pleasure and pain in that

way

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