Pacolet was going on in this strain; but he recovered from it, and told me, "it was too soon to give my discourse on this subject so serious a turn; you have chiefly to do with that part of mankind which must be led into reflection by degrees, and you must treat this custom with humour and raillery to get an audience, before you come to pronounce sentence upon it. There is foundation enough for raising such entertainments, from the practice on this occasion. Do not you know that often a man is called out of bed to follow implicitly a coxcomb (with whom he would not keep company on any other occasion) to ruin and death?—Then a good list of such as are qualified by the laws of these uncourteous men of chivalry to enter into combat (who are often persons of honour without common honesty); these I say, ranged and drawn up in their proper order, would give an aversion to doing any thing in common with such as men laugh at, and contemn. But to go through this work, you must not let your thoughts vary, or make excursions from your theme: consider, at the same time, that the matter has been often treated by the ablest and greatest writers: yet that must not discourage you: for the properest person to handle it, is one who has roved into mixed conversations, and must have opportunities (which I shall give you) of seeing these sort of men in their pleasures and gratifications, among which they pretend to reckon fighting. It was pleasantly enough said of a bully in France, when duels first began to be punished: "The King has taken away gaming and stage-playing, and now fighting too; how does he expect gentlemen shall divert themselves?" N° 27. SATURDAY, JUNE 11, 1709. Quicquid agunt homines nostri est farrago libelli. Juv. Sat. i. 85, 86. Whate'er men do, or say, or think, or dream, White's Chocolate-house, June 15. P. PACOLET being gone a-strolling among men of the sword, in order to find out the secret causes of the frequent disputes we meet with, and furnish me with materials for my treatise on duelling; I have room left to go on in my information to my country readers, whereby they may understand the bright people whose memoirs I have taken upon me to write. But in my discourse of the twenty-eighth of the last month, I omitted to mention the most agreeable of all bad characters, and that is, a Rake. A Rake is a man always to be pitied; and, if he lives, is one day certainly reclaimed; for his faults proceed not from choice or inclination, but from strong passions and appetites, which are in youth too violent for the curb of reason, good sense, good manners, and good-nature; all which he must have by nature and education, before he can be allowed to be, or to have been, of this order. He is a poor unwieldy wretch, that commits faults out of the redundance of his good qualities. His pity and compassion make him sometimes a bubble to all his fellows, let them be never so much below him in understanding. His desires run away with him through the strength and force of a lively imagination, which hurries him on to unlawful pleasures, before reason has power to come unto his rescue. Thus, with all the good intentions in the world to amendment, this creature sins on against Heaven, himself, his friends, and his country; who all call for a better use of his talents. There is not a being under the sun so miserable as this; he goes on in a pursuit he himself disapproves, and has no enjoyment but what is followed by remorse; no relief from remorse, but the repetition of his crime. It is possible I may talk of this person with too much indulgence; but I must repeat it, that I think this a eharacter which is the most the object of pity of any in the world. The man in the pangs of the stone, gout, or any acute distemper, is not in so deplorable a condition, in the eye of right sense, as he that errs and repents, and repents and errs on. The fellow with broken limbs justly deserves your alms for his impotent condition; but he that cannot use his reason is in a much worse state; for you see him in miserable circumstances, with his remedy at the same time in his own possession, if he would, or could use it. This is the cause that, of all ill characters, the Rake has the best quarter in the world; for when he is himself, and unruffled with intemperance, you see his natural faculties exert themselves, and attract an eye of favour towards his infirmities. But if we look round us here, how many dull rogues are there, that would fain be what this poor man hates himself for? All the noise towards six in the evening is caused by his mimics and imitators. How ought men of sense to be careful of their actions, if it were merely from the indignation of seeing themselves ill drawn by such little pretenders! Not to say, he that leads is guilty of all the actions of his followers; and a Rake has imitators whom you would never expect should Second-hand prove so. vice, sure, of all is the most nauseous. There is hardly a folly more absurd, or which seems less to be accounted for (though it is what we see every day,) than that grave and honest natures give into this way, and at the same time have good sense, if they thought fit to use it; but the fatality (under which most men labour) of desiring to be what they are not, makes them go out of a method in which they might be received with applause, and would certainly excel, into one wherein they will all their life have the air of strangers to what they aim at. For this reason, I have not lamented the metamorphosis of any one I know, so much as of Nobilis; who was born with sweetness of temper, just apprehension, and every thing else that might make him a man fit for his order. But, instead of the pursuit of sober studies and applications, in which he would certainly be capable of making a considerable figure in the noblest assembly of men in the world; I say, in spite of that good nature, which is his proper bent, he will say ill-natured things aloud; put such as he was, and still should be, out of countenance; and drown all the natural good in him, to receive an artificial ill character, in which he will never succeed; for Nobilis is no Rake. He may guzzle as much wine as he pleases, talk bawdy if he thinks fit; but he may as well drink water-gruel, and go twice a day to church, for it will never do. I pronounce it again, Nobilis is no Rake. To be of that order, he must be vicious against his will, and not so by study or application. All Pretty Fellows" are also excluded to a man, as well as all inamoratos, or persons of the epicene gender, who gaze at one another in the presence of ladies. This class, of which I am giving you an account, is pretended to also by men of strong abilities in drinking; though they are such whom the liquor, 66 the conversation, keeps together. But blockheads may roar, fight, and stab, and be never the nearer; their labour is also lost; they want sense they are no Rakes. As a Rake among men is the man who lives in the constant abuse of his reason, so a coquette among women is one who lives in continual misapplication of her beauty. The chief of all whom I have the honour to be acquainted with, is pretty Mrs. Toss: she is ever in practice of something which disfigures her, and takes from her charms; though all she does tends to a contrary effect. She has naturally a very agreeable voice and utterance, which she has changed for the prettiest lisp imaginable. She sees what she has a mind to see at half a mile distance; but poring with her eyes half shut at every one she passes by, she believes much more becoming. The Cupid on her fan and she have their eyes full on each other, all the time in which they are not both in motion. Whenever her eye is turned from that dear object, you may have a glance, and your bow, if she is in humour, returned as civilly as you make it; but that must not be in the presence of a man of greater quality: for Mrs. Toss is so thoroughly well-bred, that the chief person present has all her regards. And she who giggles at divine service, and laughs at her very mother, can compose herself at the approach of a man of a good estate. Will's Coffee-house, June 9. company, A fine lady showed a gentleman of this of for an eternal answer to all his addresses, a paper verses, with which she is so captivated, that she professed the author should be the happy man in spite of all other pretenders. It is ordinary for love to make men poetical, and it had that effect on this enamoured man: but he was resold to try his vein upon some of her confidants or ue, before ventured upon so high a theme self. To |