66 MADAM, "I HAVE a very good estate, and wish myself your husband: let me know by this way where you live; for I shall be miserable until we live together. " ALEXANDER LANDLORD "." This is the modern way of bargain and sale; a certain short-hand writing, in which laconic elder brothers are very successful. All my fear is, that the nymph's elder sister is unmarried; if she is, we are undone: but perhaps the careless fellow was her husband, and then she will let us go on. From my own Apartment, September 28. THE following letter has given me a new sense of the nature of my writings. I have the deepest regard to conviction, and shall never act against it. However, I do not yet understand what good man he thinks I have injured: but his epistle has such weight in it, that I shall always have respect for his admonition, and desire the continuance of it. I am not conscious that I have spoke any faults a man may not mend if he pleases. MR. BICKERSTAFF, Sept. 25. 'WHEN I read your paper of Thursday3, I was surprised to find mine of the thirteenth inserted at large; I never intended myself or you a second trouble of this kind, believing I had sufficiently pointed out the man you had injured, and that by this time you were convinced that silence would be the best answer; but finding your reflections are such as naturally call for ? See N° 76. 3 N° 71, the letter signed, A. J. a reply, I take this way of doing it; and in the first place, return you thanks for the compliment made me of my seeming sense and worth. I do assure you, I shall always endeavour to convince mankind of the latter, though I have no pretence to the former. But to come a little nearer, I observe you put yourself under a very severe restriction, even the laying down the Tatler for ever, if I can give you an instance, wherein you have injured any good man, or pointed out any thing which is not the true object of raillery. I must confess, Mr. Bickerstaff, if the making a man guilty of vices that would shame the gallows, be the best method to point at the true object of raillery, I have until this time been very ignorant; but if it be so, I will venture to assert one thing, and lay it down as a maxim, even to the Staffian race, viz. That that method of pointing ought no more to be pursued, than those people ought to cut your throat who suffer by it; because I take both to be murder, and the law is not in every private man's hands to execute: but indeed, Sir, were you the only person would suffer by the Tatler's discontinuance, I have malice enough to punish you in the manner you prescribe; but I am not so great an enemy to the town or my own pleasures as to wish it; nor that you would lay aside lashing the reigning vices, so long as you keep to the true spirit of satire, without descending to rake into characters below its dignity; for as you well observe, there is something very terrible in unjustly attacking men in a way that may prejudice their ho❤ nour or fortune; and indeed where crimes are enormous, the delinquent deserves little pity, yet the reporter may deserve less: and here I am naturally led to that celebrated author of The Whole Duty of Man, who hath set this matter in a true light in his treatise Of the Government of the Tongue; where, be tried, are to be scholars. I am persuaded also, that Aristotle will be put up by all that class of men. However, in behalf of others, such as wear the livery of Aristotle, the two famous universities, are called upon, on this occasion; but I except the men of Queen's, Exeter, and Jesus colleges', in Oxford, who are not to be electors, because he shall not be crowned from an implicit faith in his writings, but receive his honour from such judges as shall allow him to be censured. Upon this election, as I was just now going to say, I banish all who think and speak after others to concern themselves in it. For which reason all illiterate distant admirers are forbidden to corrupt the voices, by sending, according to the new mode, any poor students coals and candles for their votes in behalf of such worthies as they pretend to esteem. All news-writers are also excluded, because they consider fame as it is a report which gives foundation to the filling up their rhapsodies, and not as it is the emanation or consequence of good and evil actions. These are excepted against as justly as butchers in case of life and death their familiarity with the greatest names takes off the delicacy of their regard, as dealing in blood makes the Lanii less tender of spilling it. STEELE. s Who were obliged by their statutes to keep to Aristotle for their texts. 6 See No 73. N° 75. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 1, 1709. Quicquid agunt homines nostri est farrago libelli. JUV. Sat. i. 85, 86. Whatever good is done, whatever ill- From my own Apartment, September 30. I AM called off from public dissertations by a domestic affair of great importance, which is no less than the disposal of my sister Jenny for life. The girl is a girl of great merit, and pleasing conversation; but I being born of my father's first wife, and she of his third, she converses with me rather like a daughter than a sister. I have indeed told her, that if she kept her honour, and behaved herself in such a manner as became the Bickerstaffs, I would get her an agreeable man for her husband; which was a promise I made her after reading a passage in Pliny's 'Epistles'' That polite author had been employed to find out a consort for his friend's daughter, and gives the following character of the man he had pitched upon: Aciliano plurimum vigoris et industriæ quanquam in maxima verecundia: est illi facies liberalis, multo sanguine, multo rubore, suffusa: est ingenua totius corporis pulchritudo, et quidam senatorius decor, quæ ego nequaquam arbitror negligenda: debet enim hoc castitati puellarum quasi præmium dari. 'Acilianus (for that was the gentleman's name) is a man of extraordinary vigour and industry, accompanied with the greatest C. Plin. Cæc. Sec. Epistolæ, lib. i. ep. xiv. modesty: he has very much of the gentleman, with a lively colour, and flush of health in his aspect. His whole person is finely turned, and speaks him a man of quality which are qualifications that, I think, ought by no means to be over-looked; and should be bestowed on a daughter as the reward of her chastity.' : A woman that will give herself liberties, need not put her parents to so much trouble; for if she does not possess these ornaments in a husband, she can supply herself elsewhere. But this is not the case of my sister Jenny, who, I may say without vanity, is as unspotted a spinster as any in Great Britain. I shall take this occasion to recommend the conduct of our own family in this particular. We have, in the genealogy of our house, the descriptions and pictures of our ancestors from the time of king Arthur; in whose days there was one of my own name, a knight of his round table, and known by the name of Sir Isaac Bickerstaff. He was of low stature, and of a very swarthy complexion, not unlike a Portugueze Jew. But he was more prudent than men of that height usually are, and would often communicate to his friends his design of lengthening and whitening his posterity. His eldest son Ralph, for that was his name, was for this reason married to a lady who had little else to recommend her, but that she was very tall and very fair. The issue of this match, with the help of high shoes, made a tolerable figure in the next age; though the complexion of the family was obscure until the fourth generation from that marriage. From which time, until the reign of William the Conqueror, the females of our house were famous for their needlework and fine skins. In the male line, there happened an unlucky accident in the reign of Richard III. the eldest son of Philip, then |