nefs and pity, but at the fame time with an air of welcome and confolation: they pronounced me very happy who had died in innocence; and told me, a quite different place was allotted to me, than that which was appointed for my companion; there being a great distance from the manfions of fools and innocents: Though at the fame time, faid one of the ghofts, there is a great affinity between an idiot who has been fo for a long life, and a child who departs before maturity. But this gentleman who has arrived with you is a fool of his own making, is ignorant out of choice, and will fare accordingly. The affembly began to flock about him, and one faid to him, Sir, I obferved you came into the gate of persons murdered, and I defire to know, what brought you to your untimely end? He faid, he had been a fecond. Socrates (who may be faid to have been murdered by the commonwealth of Athens) stood by, and began to draw near him, in order, after his manner, to lead him into a sense of his error by conceffions in his own discourse. Sir, faid that divine and amicable fpirit, what was the quarrel? He answered, We fhall know very fuddenly, when the principal in the business comes, for he was defperately wounded before I fell. Sir, faid the fage, had you an estate? Yes, fir, the new gueft anfwered, I have left it in a very good condition, and made my will the night before this occafion. Did you read it before you figned it? Yes, fure, fir, faid the new comer. Socrates replies, Could a man, that would not give his eftate without reading the inftrument, difpofe of his life without asking a question? That illuftrious fhade turned from him, and a crowd of impertinent goblins, who had been drolls and parafites in their life-time, and were knocked on the head for their faucinefs, came about my fellow-traveller, and made themselves very merry with questions about the words Cart and Terce, and other terms of fencers. But his thoughts began to fettle into reflection upon the adventure which had robbed him of his late being and with a wretched figh, faid he, How terrible are conviction and guilt, when they come too late for penitence?'

1

Pacolet

عليا

Pacolet was going on in this ftrain, but he recovered from it, and told me, it was too foon to give my difcourfe on this fubject fo ferious 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 cuftom with humour and raillery to get an audience, before you come to pronounce fentence upon it. There is foundation enough for raifing fuch entertainments from the practice on this occafion. 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 occafion) to ruin and death? Then a good lift of fuch, as are qualified

by the laws of these uncourteous men of chivalry to enter 100 into combat (who are often perfons of honour without common honefty): thefe, I fay, ranged and drawn up in their proper order, would give an averfion to doing any thing in common with fuch as men laugh at and contemn. But to go through this work, you must not let your thoughts vary, or make excurfions from your theme: confider at the fame time, that the matter has been often treated by the ableft and greatest writers; yet that must not difcourage you: for the propereft person to handle it is one, who has roved into mixed converfations, and must have opportunities (which I fhall give you) of feeing these fort of men in their pleasures and gratifications, among which they pretend to reckon fighting. It was pleafantly enough faid 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 fhall divert themselves?'

NO

NO. 27. SATURDAY, JUNE II, 1709.

White's Chocolate-house, June 9.

PACOLET being gone a strolling among the men of the fword, in order to find out the fecret causes of the frequent difputes we meet with, and furnifh 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 whofe memoirs I have taken upon me to write. But in my difcourse of the twenty-eighth of the last month, I omitted to mention the moft agreeable of all bad characters, and that is, a rake.

can

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 ftrong paffions and appetites, which are in youth too violent for the curb of reafon, good fenfe, good manners, and good nature: all which he must have by nature and education, before he be allowed to be, or 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 compaffion - make him fometimes a bubble to all his fellows, let them be never fo much below him in understanding. His defires run away with him through the ftrength and force of a lively imagination, which hurries him on to unlawful pleafures, before reafon has power to come in to his refcue. Thus, with all the good intentions in the world to amendment, this creature fins on against heaven, himfelf, his friends, and his country, who all call for a better use of his talents. There is not a being under the fun fo miferable as this: he goes on in a purfuit he himfelf difapproves, and has no enjoyment but what is followed by remorfe; no relief from remorfe, but the repetion of his crime. It is poffible I may talk of this perfon with too much indulgence; but I muft repeat it, that I think this a character which is moft the object of pity of

any

any in the world. The man in the pangs of the stone, gout, or any acute diftemper, is not in fo deplorable a condition in the eye of right fenfe, as he that errs and repents, and repents and errs on. The fellow with broken limbs juftly deferves your alms for his impotent condition; but he that cannot use his own reason is in a much worse ftate; for you fee him in miferable circumstances, with his remedy at the fame time in his own poffeffion, if he would, or could ufe it. This is the caufe that, of all ill characters, the rake has the best quarter in the world; for when he is himfelf, and unruffled with intemperance, you fee 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 noife towards fix in the evening is caufed by his mimics and imitators. How ought men of fenfe to be careful of their actions, if it were merely from the indignation of feeing themselves ill drawn by fuch little pretenders? Not to fay, he that leads is guilty of all the actions of his followers; and a rake has imita tors whom you would never expect fhould prove fo. Second-hand vice, fure, of all, is the most nauseous. There is hardly a folly more abfurd, or which feems lefs to be accounted for (though it is what we fee every day), than that grave and honeft natures give into this way, and at the fame time have good fenfe, if they thought fit to use it but the fatality (under which most men labour) of defiring to be what they are not, inakes them go out of a method, in which they might be received with applaufe, and would certainly excel, into one, wherein they will all their life have the air of ftrangers to what they aim at.

For this reafon, I have not lamented the metamorphofis of any one I know fo much as of Nobilis, who was born with fweetness of temper, juft apprehenfion, and every thing else that might make him a man fit for his order. But instead of the pursuit of fober ftudies and applications, in which he would certainly be capable of making a confiderable figure in the noblest assembly of men in the world:

I fay,

I fay, in spite of that good nature, which is his proper bent, he will fay ill-natured things aloud, put fuch 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 fucceed; 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. 1 pronounce it again, Nobilis is no rake. To be of that order, he must be vicious against his will, and not fo by ftudy or application. All pretty fellows are also excluded to a man, as well as all inamoratos, or perfons of the epicene gender, who gaze at one another in the presence of ladies. This clafs, of which I am giving you an account, is pretended to also by men of strong abilities in drinking; though they are fuch whom the liquor, not the converfation, keeps together. But blockheads may roar, fight, and stab, and be never the nearer; their labour is alfo loft; they want' fense: they are no rakes.

As a rake among men is the man who lives in the conftant abuse of his reafon, fo a coquette among women is one who lives in continual mifapplication of her beauty. The chief of all whom I have the honour to be acquainted with, is pretty Mifs Tofs: fhe is ever in practice of fomething 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 the has changed for the prettieft lifp imaginable. She fees what he has a mind to fee at half a mile distance; but poring with her eyes half fhut at every one fhe paffes by, The 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 is turned from that dear object, you may have a glance, and your bow, if fhe is in humour, returned as civilly as you make it; but that must not be in the prefence of a man of greater quality; for Mifs Tofs is fo thoroughly well-bred, that the chief perfon present has all her regards. And she who giggles at divine fervice, and laughs at her

eye

very