breeding and good sense, is utterly lost in the world; and in the room of it there are started a thousand little inventions, which men, barren of better things, take up in the place of it. Thus for every character in conversation that used to please, there is an impostor put upon you. Him whom we allowed, formerly, for a certain pleasant subtlety and natural way of giving you an unexpected hit, called a Droll, is now mimicked by a Biter, who is a dull fellow, that tells you a lie with a grave face, and laughs at you for knowing no better than to believe him. Instead of that sort of companion who could rally you, and keep his countenance, until he made you fall into some little inconsistency of behaviour, at which you yourself could laugh with him, you have the sneerer, who will keep you company from morning to night, to gather your follies of the day (which perhaps you commit out of confidence in him) and expose you in the evening to all the scorners in town. For your man of sense and free spirit, whose set of thoughts were built upon learning, reason, and experience, you have now an impudent creature made up of vice only, who supports his ignorance by his courage, and want of learning by contempt of it.

Ac. Dear Sir, hold: what you have told me already of this change in conversation is too miserable to be heard with any delight; but methinks as these new creatures appear in the world, it might give an excellent field to writers for the stage, to divert us with the representation of them there.

Friend. No, no; as you say, there might be some hopes of redress of those grievances, if there were proper care taken of the theatre; but the history of that is yet more lamentable, than that of the decay of conversation I gave you.

Ac. Pray, Sir, a little. I have not been in town these six years, until within this fortnight.

Friend. It is now some time since several rev

lutions in the gay world had made the empire of the stage subject to very fatal convulsions, which were too dangerous to be cured by the skill of little King Oberon*, who then sat on the throne of it. The laziness of this Prince threw him upon the choice of a person who was fit to spend his life in contentions, an able and profound attorney, to whom he mortgaged his whole empire. This Divitot is the most skilful of all politicians; he has a perfect art in being unintelligible in discourse, and uncomeatable in business: but he, having no understanding in this way, brought in upon us, to get in his money, ladder-dancers, ropedancers, jugglers, and mountebanks, to strut in the place of Shakspeare's heroes, and Jonson's humourists. When the seat of wit was thus mortgaged without equity of redemption, an architect arose, who has built the Muse a new palace, but secured her no retinue; so that, instead of action there, we have been put off by song and dance. This latter help of sound has also begun to fail for want of voices; therefore the palace has since been put into the hands of a surgeon, who cuts any foreign fellow into an eunuchs, and passes him upon us for a singer of Italy.

Ac. I will go out of town to-morrow.

Friend. Things are come to this pass; and yet the world will not understand, that the theatre has much the same effect on the manners of the age, as the Bank on the credit of the nation. Wit and spirit, humour and good sense, can never be revived but under the government of those who are judges of * Mr. Owen, or Mac Owen Swiny.

+ Christopher Rich.

Sir John Vanbrugh.

John-James Heydegger, Esq. styled here a surgeon, in allusion to the employment assigned to him: he had at that time the direction of the operas, as he had afterwards of the masquerades.

such talents; who know, that whatever is put up in their stead, is but a short and trifling expedient, to support the appearance of them for a season. It is possible, a peace will give leisure to put the matters under new regulations; but, at present, all the assistance we can see towards our recovery is as far from giving us help, as a poultice is from performing what can be done only by the grand elixir.

Will's Coffee-house, May 6.

According to our late design in the applauded verses On the Morning †, which you lately had from hence, we proceed to improve that just intention, and present you with other labours, made proper to the place in which they were written. The following poem comes from Copenhagen, and is as fine a winterpiece as we have ever had from any of the schools of the most learned painters. Such images as these give us a new pleasure in our sight, and fix upon our minds traces of reflection, which accompany us whenever the like objects occur. In short, excellent poetry and description dwell upon us so agreeably, that all the readers of them are made to think, if not write, like men of wit. But it would be injury to detain you longer from this excellent performance, which is addressed to the Earl of Dorset by Mr. Philips, the author of several choice poems in Mr. Tonson's new Miscellany.

Copenhagen, March 9, 1709.

From frozen climes, and endless tracts of snow,
From streams that Northern winds forbid to flow,
What present shall the Muse to Dorset bring,
Or how, so near the Pole, attempt to sing?
The hoary winter here conceals from sight
All pleasing objects that to verse invite:
The hills and dales, and the delightful woods,
The flow'ry plains, and silver-streaming floods
By snow disguis'd, in bright confusion lie,
And with one dazzling waste fatigue the eye.
+ By Swift.

K

No gentle-breathing breeze prepare the spring,
No birds within the desert region sing;
The ships unmov'd, the boisterous winds defy,
While rattling chariots o'er the ocean fly,
The vast Leviathan wants room to play,
And spout his waters in the face of day;
The starving wolves along the main sea prowl,
And to the moon in icy valleys howl.
For many a shining league the level main
Here spreads itself into a glassy plain;
There solid billows of enormous size,
Alps of green ice, in wild disorder rise.
And yet but lately have I seen, ev'n here,
The winter in a lovely dress appear.
Ere yet the clouds let fall the treasur'd snow,
Or winds began thro' hazy skies to blow,
At evening a keen Eastern breeze arose
And the descending rain unsully'd froze.
Soon as the silent shades of night withdrew,
The ruddy morn disclos'd at once to view
The face of nature in a rich disguise,
And brighten'd ev'ry object to my eyes;
For every shrub, and every blade of grass,

And every pointed thorn, seem'd wrought in glass;
In pearls and rubies rich the hawthorns show,
While thro' the ice the crimson berries glow.
The thick-sprung reeds the watery marshes yield
Seem polish'd lances in a hostile field.

The stag in limpid currents, with surprize,
Sees crystal branches on his forehead rise.

The spreading oak, the beech, and towering pines
Glaz'd over, in the freezing æther shine:
The frighted birds the rattling branches shun,
That wave and glitter in the distant sun.
When, if a sudden gust of wind arise,

The brittle forest into atoms flies;

The crackling wood beneath the tempest bends,
And in a spangled shower the prospect ends;
Or, if a Southern gale the region warm,
And by degrees unbind the wintry charm,
The traveller a miry country sees

And journeys sad beneath the drooping trees.
Like some deluded peasant, Merlin leads

Thro' fragrant bowers and thro' delicious meads;
While here enchanted gardens to him rise,
And airy fabrics there attract his eyes,

His wandering feet the magic paths pursue;
And while he thinks the fair illusion true,
The trackless scenes disperse in fluid air,
And woods and wilds, and thorny ways appear;
A tedious road the weary wretch returns,
And as he goes the transient vision mourns.

From my own Apartment, May 6.

There has a mail this day arrived from Holland; but the matter of theladvices importing rather what gives us great expectations, than any positive assurances, I shall, for this time, decline giving you what I know; and apply the following verses of Mr. Dryden, in the second part of "Almanzor," to the present circumstances of things, without discovering what my knowledge in astronomy suggests to me: When Empire in its childhood first appears,

A watchful fate o'ersees its tender years:

Till, grown more strong, it thrusts and stretches out,
And elbows all the kingdoms round about:

The place thus made for its first breathing free,

It moves again for ease and luxury;

Till, swelling by degrees, it has possest

The greater space, and now crowds up the rest,
When from behind there starts some petty state,
And pushes on its now unwieldy fate;
Then down the precipice of time it goes,
And sinks in minutes, which in ages rose.

N° 13. TUESDAY, MAY 10, 1709.

Quicquid agunt homines——

nostri est farrago libelli.

Juv. Sat. i. 85, 86.

P.

What'er men do, or say, or think, or dream,
Our motley paper seizes for its theme.

From my own Apartment, May 8.

MUCH hurry and business has to-day perplexed me into a mood too thoughtful for going into company;