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the ardent love I have for you that carries me beyond my strength, and enables me to tell you, the most painful thing in the prospect of death is, that I must part with you. But let it be a comfort to you, that I have no guilt hangs upon me, no unrepented folly that retards me; but I pass away my last hours in reflection upon the happiness we have lived in together, and in sorrow that it is so soon to have an end. This is a frailty which I hope is so far from criminal, that methinks there is a kind of piety in being so unwilling to be separated from a state which is the institution of Heaven, and in which we have lived according to its laws. As we know no more of the next life, but that it will be an happy one to the good, and miserable to the wicked, why may we not please ourselves at least to alleviate the difficulty of resigning this being, in imagining that we shall have a sense of what passes below, and may possibly be employed in guiding the steps of those with whom we walked with innocence when mortal? Why may not I hope to go on in my usual work, and, though unknown to you, be assistant in all the conflicts of your mind? Give me leave to say to you, O best of men, that I cannot figure to myself a greater happiness than in such an employment. To be present at all the adventures to which human life is exposed; to administer slumber to thy eyelids in the agonies of a fever, to cover thy beloved face in the day of battle, to go with thee a guardian angel incapable of wound or pain, where I have longed to attend thee when a weak, a fearful woman: these, my dear, are the thoughts with which I warm my poor languid heart. But, indeed, I am not capable under my present weakness of bearing the strong agonies of mind I fall into, when I form to myself the grief you will be in upon your first hearing of my departure. I will not dwell upon this, because your kind and generous

heart will be but the more afflicted, the more the person for whom you lament offers you consolation. My last breath will, if I am myself, expire in a prayer I shall never see thy face again. Farewell

for you. for ever.'

T

No. 205. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 25, 1711.

Decipimur specie recti.

HOR. ARS POET. 25.

Deluded by a seeming excellence.

ROSCOMMON.

WHEN I meet with any vicious character that is not generally known, in order to prevent its doing mischief, I draw it at length, and set it up as a scarecrow; by which means I do not only make an example of the person to whom it belongs, but give warning to all her majesty's subjects, that they may not suffer by it. Thus, to change the allusion, I have marked out several of the shoals and quicksands of life, and am continually employed in discovering those which are still concealed, in order to keep the ignorant and unwary from running upon them. It is with this intention that I publish the following letter, which brings to light some secrets of this nature.

"MR. SPECTATOR,

"THERE are none of your speculations which I read over with greater delight, than those which are designed for the improvement of our sex. You

have endeavoured to correct our unreasonable fears and superstitions, in your seventh and twelfth papers; our fancy for equipage, in your fifteenth ; our love of puppet-shows, in your thirty-first; our notions of beauty, in your thirty-third; our inclination for romances, in your thirty-seventh; our passion for French fopperies, in your forth-fifth; our manhood and party-zeal, in your fifty-seventh; our abuse of dancing, in your sixty-sixth and sixty-seventh; our levity, in your hundred and twentyeighth; our love of coxcombs, in your hundred and fifty-fourth and hundred and fifty-seventh; our tyranny over the hen-pecked, in your hundred and seventy-sixth. You have described the Pict, in your forty-first; the Idol, in your seventy-third; the Demurrer, in your eighty-ninth; the Salamander, in your hundred and ninety-eighth. You have likewise taken to pieces our dress, and represented to us the extravagances we are often guilty of in that particular. You have fallen upon our patches, in your fiftieth and eighty-first; our commodes, in your ninety-eighth; our fans, in your hundred and second; our riding-habits, in your hundred and fourth; our hoop-petticoats, in your hundred and twentyseventh; besides a great many little blemishes which you have touched upon in your several other papers, and in those many letters that are scattered up and down your works. At the same time we must own that the compliments you pay our sex are innumerable, and that those very faults which you represent in us, are neither black in themselves, nor, as you own, universal among us. But, Sir, it is plain that these your discourses are calculated for none but the fashionable part of womankind, and for the use of those who are rather indiscreet than vicious. But, Sir, there is a sort of prostitutes in the lower part of our sex, who are a scandal to us, and

I

very well deserve to fall under your censure. know it would debase your paper too much to enter into the behaviour of these female libertines; but, as your remarks on some part of it would be a doing of justice to several women of virtue and honour, whose reputations suffer by it, I hope you will not think it improper to give the public some accounts of this nature. You must know, Sir, I am provoked to write you this letter, by the behaviour of an infamous woman, who having passed her youth in a most shameless state of prostitution, is now one of those who gain their livelihood by seducing others that are younger than themselves, and by establishing a criminal commerce between the two sexes. Among several of her artifices to get money, she frequently persuades a vain young fellow, that such a woman of quality, or such a celebrated toast, entertains a secret passion for him, and wants nothing but an opportunity of revealing it. Nay, she has gone so far as to write letters in the name of a woman of figure, to borrow money of one of these foolish Roderigos *, which she has afterwards appropriated to her own use. In the mean time, the person who has lent the money has thought a lady under obligations to him, who scarce knew his name; and wondered at her ingratitude when he has been with her, that she has not owned the favour, though at the same time he was too much a man of honour to put her in mind, of it.

"When this abandoned baggage meets with a man who has vanity enough to give credit to relations of this nature, she turns him to very good account by repeating praises that were never uttered, and delivering messages that were never sent.

*

Alluding to the character so named in Shakspeare's Othello.

As the house of this shameless creature is frequented by several foreigners, I have heard of another artifice, out of which she often raises money. The foreigner sighs after some British beauty, whom he only knows by fame; upon which she promises, if he can be secret, to procure him a meeting. The stranger, ravished at his good fortune, gives her a present, and in a little time is introduced to some imaginary title; for you must know that this cunning purveyor has her representatives upon this occasion of some of the finest ladies in the kingdom. By this means, as I am informed, it is usual enough to meet with a German count in foreign countries, that shall make his boast of favours he has received from women of the highest ranks and the most unblemished characters. Now, Sir, what safety is there for a woman's reputation, when a lady may be thus prostituted as it were by proxy, and be reputed an unchaste woman; as the Hero in the ninth book of Dryden's Virgil is looked upon as a coward, because the phantom which appeared in his likeness ran away from Turnus ? You may depend upon what I relate to you to be matter of fact, and the practice of more than one of these female pandars. If you print this letter, I may give you some further accounts of this vicious race of women.

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I shall add two other letters on different subjects to fill up my paper.

(c MR. SPECTATOR,

"I AM a country clergyman, and hope you will lend me your assistance in ridiculing some little

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