tance; so good-breeding is an expedient to make fools and wise men equals. Will's Coffee-house, June 17. The suspension of the playhouse has made me have nothing to send you from hence; but, calling here this evening, I found the party I usually sit with, upon the business of writing, and examining what was the handsomest style in which to address women, and to write letters of gallantry. Many were the opinions which were immediately declared on this subject. Some were for a certain softness; something inexpressibly tender. When it came to me, I said there was no rule in the world to be made for writing letters, but that of being as near what you would speak face to face, as you can; which is so great a truth, that I am of opinion, writing has lost more mistresses than any one mistake in the whole legend of love. For, when you write to a lady for whom you have a solid and honourable passion, the great idea you have of her, joined to a quick sense of her absence, fills your mind with a sort of tenderness, that gives your language too much the air of complaint, which is seldom successful. man may flatter himself as he pleases; but he will find that the women have more understanding in their own affairs than we have; and women of spirit are not to be won by mourners. He that can keep handsomely within rules, and support the carriage of a companion to his mistress, is much more likely to prevail, than he who lets her see that the whole relish of his life depends upon her. If possible, therefore, divert your mistress, rather than sigh for her. The pleasant man she will desire for her own sake; but the languishing lover has nothing to hope for, but her pity. To show the difference, I produce two letters a lady gave me, which had been writ by two gentlemen who pretended to her, but were both killed For a the next day after the date, at the battle of Almanza. One of them was a mercurial, gay-humoured man; the other, a man of a serious, but a great and gallant spirit. Poor Jack Careless! this is his letter: you see how it is folded: the air of it is so negligent, one might have read half of it by peeping into it, without breaking it open. He had no exactness. 66 "Madam, It is a very pleasant circumstance I am in, that while I should be thinking of the good company we are to meet with in a day or two, where we shall go to loggerheads, my thoughts are running upon a fair enemy in England. I was in hopes I had left you there; but you follow the camp, though I have endeavoured to make some of our leaguer ladies* drive you out of the field. All my comfort is, you are more troublesome to my colonel than myself: I permit you to visit me only now and then; but he downright keeps you. I laugh at his honour, as far as his gravity will allow me: but I know him to be a man of too much merit to succeed with a woman. Therefore defend your heart as well as you can: I shall come home this winter irresistibly dressed, and with quite a new foreign air. And so I had like to say, I rest; but, alas! I remain, madam, your most obedient, most humble servant, "JOHN CARELESS." Now for Colonel Constant's epistle; you see it is folded and directed with the utmost care: “Madam, "I do myself the honour to write to you this evening, because I believe to-morrow will be the day of battle; and something forbodes in my breast that I shall fall in it. If it prove so, I hope you will hear * Women who accompany the army. I have done nothing below a man who had the love of his country, quickened by a passion for a woman of honour. If there be any thing noble in going to a certain death; if there be any merit, that I meet it with pleasure, by promising myself a place in your esteem; if your applause, when I am no more, is preferable to the most glorious life without you: I say, madam, if any of these considerations can have weight with you, you will give me a kind place in your memory, which I prefer to the glory of Cæsar. I hope this will be read, as it is writ, with tears.' The beloved lady is a woman of a sensible mind; but she has confessed to me, that after all her true and solid value for Constant, she had much more concern for the loss of Careless. These noble and serious spirits have something equal to the adversities they meet with, and consequently lessen the objects of pity. Great accidents seem not cut out so much for men of familiar characters, which makes them more easily pitied, and soon after beloved. Add to this, that the sort of love which generally succeeds, is a stranger to awe and distance. I asked Romana, whether of the two she should have chosen, had they survived? She said, she knew she ought to have taken Constant; but believed she should have chosen Careless. St. James's Coffee-house, June 17. Letters from Lisbon, of the ninth instant, N. S. say, that the enemy's army, having blocked up Olivenza, was posted on the Guardians. The Portuguese are very apprehensive that the garrison of that place, though it consists of five of the best regiments of their army, will be obliged to surrender, if not timely relieved; they not being supplied with provisions for more than six weeks. Hereupon their generals held a council of war on the fourth instant, wherein it was concluded to advance towards Badajos. With this design, the army decamped on the fifth from Jerumena, and marched to Cancaon. It is hoped, that if the enemy follow their motions, they may have opportunity to put a sufficient quantity of provision and ammunition into Olivenza. Mr Bickerstaff gives notice to all persons that dress themselves as they please, without regard to decorum (as with blue and red stockings in mourning, tucked cravats, and night-cap wigs, before people of the first quality), that he has yet received no fine for indulging them in that liberty; and that he expects their compliance with this demand, or that they go home immediately and shift themselves. This is further to acquaint the town, that the report of the hosiers, toymen, and milliners, having compounded with Mr. Bickerstaff for tolerating such enormities, is utterly false and scandalous. N° 31. TUESDAY, JUNE 21, 1709. Whate'er men do, or say, or think, or dream, Grecian Coffee-house, June 18. P. IN my dissertation against the custom of single combat, it has been objected, that there is not learning, or much reading shown therein, which is the very life and soul of all treatises: for which reason, being always easy to receive admonitions and reform my errors, I thought fit to consult this learned board on the subject. Upon proposing some doubts, and desiring their assistance, a very hopeful good gentleman, my relation, who is to be called to the bar within a year and a half at farthest, told me, that he had ever since I first mentioned duelling turned his head that way; and that he was principally moved thereto, because he designed to follow the circuits in the north of England and south of Scotland, and to reside mostly at his own estate at Landbadernawz in Cardiganshire. The northern Britons and the southern Scots are a warm people, and the Welsh "a nation of gentlemen;" so that it behoved him to understand well the science of quarrelling. The young gentleman proceeded admirably well, and gave the board an account that he had read" Fitzherbert's+ Grand Abridgement," and had found that duelling is a very antient part of the law; for when a man is sued, be it for his life or his land, the person that joins the issue, whether plaintiff or defendant, may put the trial upon the duel. Further, he argued, under favour of the Court, that when the issue is joined by the duel, in treason, or other capital crimes, the party accused and the accuser must fight in their own proper persons: but if the dispute be for lands, you may hire a champion at Hockley in the Hole, or any where else. This part of the law we had from the Saxons; and they had it, as also the trial by ordeal, from the Laplanders. It is indeed agreed, said he, the southern and eastern nations never knew any thing of it; for though the antient Romans would scold and call names filthily, yet there is not an example of a challenge that ever passed among them. His quoting the eastern nations put another gentleman in mind of an account he had from a boat * There is no such place. It is probable Llanbadern Vawr in Cardiganshire is intended. + A book published under this title in 1516, by Anthony Fitzherbert, one of the judges in the reign of Henry VIII. author died in 1538. |