ous through all parts of your life. Your averfion to any oftentatious arts of fetting to fhow thofe great fervices, which you have done the public, has not likeways a little contributed to that univerfal acknow. ledgment which is paid you by your coun try. THE Confideration of this part of your character, is that which hinders me from enlarging on thofe extraordinary talents, which have given you fo great a figure in the British fenate, as well as on that elegance and politenefs which appeared in your more retired converfation. I fhould be unpardonable, if, after what I have faid, I fhould longer detain you with an address of this nature: I cannot, however, conclude it without owning thofe great obligations which you have laid upon, SIR, Your most obedient, bumble Servant, The SPECTATOR. THE SPECTATOR. No 170.. i VOLUME THIR D. Friday, September 14, 1711. In amore hæc omnia infunt vitia: injuriæ, TER. Eun. act. 1. fc. 1. All thefe inconveniences are incident to love: reproaches. jealoufies, quarrels, reconcilements, war, and then peace, UPON PON looking over the letters of my female correfpondents, I find several from women complaining of jealous husbands, and at the fame time protefting their own innocence; and defiring my advice on this occafion. I fhall therefore take this fubject into my confideration; and the more willingly, because I find that the Marquis of Halifax, who in his advice to a daughter, has inftructed a wife how to behave herself towards a falle, an intemperate, a choleric, a fullen, a covetous, or a filly husband, has not fpoken one word of a jealous husband. JEALOUSY is that pain which a man feels from the apprehenfion that he is not equally beloved by the perfon whom he intirely loves. Now because our inward paffions and inclinations can never make themselves vifible, it is impoffible for a jealous man to be thoroughly cured: of his fufpicions. His thoughts hang at beft in a state of doubtfulness and uncertainty and are never capable of receiving any fatisfaction on the advantageous fide; fo that his inquiries are moft fuccessful when they difcover nothing: his pleasure arifes from his disappointinents, and his life is fpent in purfuit of a fecret that deftroys his happiness if. he chance to find it. An ardent love is always a ftrong ingredient in this paffion; for the fame affection which tirs up the jealous man's defires, and gives the party beloved fo beautiful a figure in his imagination, makes him believe the kindles the fame paffion in others, and appears as amiable to all beholders. And as jealousy thus arifes from an extraordinary love, it is of fo delicate a nature, that it fcorns to take up with any thing less than an equal return of love. Not the warmest expreffions of affection, the foftest and moft tender hypocrify, are able to give any fatisfaction, where we are not perfuaded that the affection is real, and the fatisfaction mutual. For the jealous man wishes himfelf a kind of deity to the perfon he loves: he would be the only pleasure of her fenfes, the employment of her thoughts; and is angry at every thing fie admires, or takes delight in, befides himself. PHEDRIA's request to his miftrefs, upon his leav.. ing her for three days, is inimitably beautiful and natural. Cum milite iflo præfens, abfens ut fies Dies noctefque me amens: me defideres: Me fomnies me expectes: de me cogites: Me peres: me te oblectes; mecum tota fis: Meus fac fis pafiremo animus, quando ego fum tuus. TER. Eun. act. 1. fc. 2. << When you are in company with that foldier, behave as "if you were abfent: but continue to love me by day "and by night: want me; dream of me; expect me; "think of me; with for me; delight in me; be wholly « with me; in fhort, be my very foul, as I am yours." THE jealous man's difeafe is of fo malignant a nature, that it converts all it takes into its own nourishment. A cool behaviour fets him on the rack, and is interpreted as an instance of averfion or indifference; a fond one raifes his fufpicions, and looks too much like diffimulation and artifice. If the perfon he loves be chearful, her thoughts must be employed on another; and if fad, fhe is certainly thinking on himfelf. In fhort, there is no word or gefture fo infignificant, but it gives him new hints, feeds his fufpicions, and furnishes him with fresh matters of dif covery: fo that if we confider the effects of this paffion, one would rather think it proceeded from an inveterate ha tred tred, than an exceffive love; for certainly none can meet with more difquietude and uneafinefs than a fufpected wife, if we except the jealous husband. BUT the great unhappiness of this paffion is, that it naturally tends to alienate the affection which it is fo folicitous to engross; and that for these two reafons, because it lays too great a constraint on the words and actions of the fufpected perfon, and at the fame time fhews you have no honourable opinion of her; both of which are strong motives to averfion. NOR is this the worst effect of jealoufy; for it oftendraws after it a more fatal train of confequences, and makes the perfon you fufpect, guilty of the very crimes you are fo much afraid of. It is very natural for fuch who are treated ill and upbraided falfely, to find out an intimate friend that will hear their complaints, condole their fufferings, and endeavour to footh and affuage their fecret refentments. Befides jealoufy puts a woman often in mind of an ill thing that he would not otherwife perhaps have thought of, and fills her imagination with fuch an unlucky idea, as in time grows familiar, excites defire, and lofes all the fhame and horror which might at first attend it. Nor is it a wonder if the who fuffers wrongfully in a man's opinion of her, and has therefore nothing to forfeit in his efteem, refolves to give him reafon for his fufpicions, and to enjoy the pleafure of the crime, fince fhe muft undergo the ignominy. Such probably were the confiderations that directed the wife man in his advice to hufbands; Be not jealous over the wife of thy bofom, and teach her not an eqil leffon against thyself. Eccl. AND here, among the other torments which this paffion produces, we may ufually obferve that none are greater mourners than jealous men, when the perfon who provoked their jealoufy is taken from them. Then it is that their love breaks out furioufly, and throws off all the mixtures of fufpicion which choked and fmother'd it before. The beautiful parts of the character rife uppermoft in the jealous hufband's memory, and upbraids him with the ill ufage of fo divine a creature as was once in his poffeffion; whilft all the little imperfections, that were before fo uneafy to him, wear off from his remembrance, and fhew themselves no more. WE WE may fee by what has been said, that jealoufy takes the deepest root in-men of amorous dipofitions; and of these we may find three kinds who are most over run with it. THE first are those who are conscious to themselves of an infirmity, whether it be weakness, old-age, deformity, ignorance, or the like. Thefe men are fo well acquainted with the unamiable part of themselves, that they have not the confidence to think they are really beloved; and are fo diftruftful of their own merits, that all fondness towards them puts them out of countenance, and looks like a jeft upon their perfons. They grow fufpicious on their first looking in a glafs, and are ftung with jealousy at the fight of a wrinkle. A handfom fellow immediately alarms them, and every thing that looks young and gay turns their thoughts upon their wives. A SECOND fort of men, who are most liable to this paffion, are thofe of cunning, wary, and distrustful tempers. It is a fault very justly found in hiftories compofed by politicians, that they leave nothing to chance or humour, but are fill for deriving every action from fome plot and contrivance, for drawing up a perpetual scheme of caufes or events, and preferving a conftant correspondence between the camp and the council-table, And thus it happens in the affairs of love with men of too refined a thought. They put a conftruction on a look, and find out a design in a fmile; they give new fenfes and fignifications to words and actions; and are ever tormenting themfelves with fancies of their own railing. They generally act in a disguise themselves, and therefore mistake all outward fhows and appearances for hyprocrify in others; fo that I believe no men fee less of the truth and reality of things, than thefe great refiners upon incidents, who are fo wonderfully fubtile and over-wife in their conceptions. Now, what these men fancy they know of women by reflection, your lewd and vicious men believe they have learned by experience. They have feen the poor husband fo milled by tricks and artifices, and in the midst of his enquiries fo loft and bewildered in a crooked intrigue, that they ftill fufpect an under-plot in every female action; and especially where they fee any resemblance in the behaviour of two perfons, are apt to fancy it proceeds from the fame defign in both. These men therefore |