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what manner that love, you always professed to me, entered into your heart; for its usual admission is at the eyes.'

The young man answered, Dear Lydia, if I am to lose by sight the soft pantings which I have always felt when I heard your voice; if I am no more to distinguish the step of her I love when she approaches me, but to change that sweet and frequent pleasure for such an amazement as I knew the little time I lately saw or if I am to have any thing besides, which may take from me the sense I have of what appeared most pleasing to me at that time, which apparition it seems was you; pull out these eyes, before they lead me to be ungrateful to you, or undo myself. I wished for them but to see you; pull them out, if they are to make me forget you.'

Lydia was extremely satisfied with these assurances; and pleased herself with playing with his perplexities. In all this talk to her, he shewed but very faint ideas of any thing which had not been received at the ears; and closed his protestation to her, by saying, that if he were to see Valentia and Barcelona, whom he supposed the most esteemed of all women, by the quarrel there was about them, he would never like any but Lydia,

STEELE.

N° 56. THURSDAY, AUGUST 18, 1709.

Quicquid agunt homines

nostri est farrago libelli.

Whatever good is done, whatever ill

JUV. Sat. i. 85, 86.

By human kind, shall this collection fill.

White's Chocolate-house, August 17.

THERE is a young foreigner committed to my care, who puzzles me extremely in the questions he asks about the persons of figure we meet in public places. He has but very little of our language, and therefore I am mightily at a loss to express to him things for which they have no word in that tongue to which he was born. It has been often my answer, upon his asking who such a fine gentleman is, that he is what we call a sharper:' and he wants my explication. I thought it would be very unjust to tell him, he is the same the French call coquin; the Latins, nebulo; or the Greeks, paoxaλ: for, as custom is the most powerful of all laws, and that the order of men we call sharpers are received amongst us, not only with permission, but favour, I thought it unjust to use them like persons upon no establishment; besides that it would be an unpardonable dishonour to our country, to let him leave us with an opinion, that our nobility and gentry keep company with common thieves and cheats: I told him they were a sort of tame hussars, that were allowed in our cities, like the wild ones in our camp; who had all the privileges belonging to us, but at the same time were not tied to our disci

pline or laws. Aletheus', who is a gentleman of too much virtue for the age he lives in, would not let this matter be thus palliated; but told my pupil, that he was to understand that distinction, quality, merit, and industry, were laid aside among us by the incursions of these civil hussars; who had got so much countenance, that the breeding and fashion of the age turned their way to the ruin of order and œconomy in all places where they are admitted. But Sophronius, who never falls into heat upon any subject, but applies proper language, temper, and skill, with which the thing in debate is to be treated, told the youth, that gentleman had spoken nothing but what was literally true; but fell upon it with too much earnestness to give a true idea of that sort of people he was declaiming against, or to remedy the evil which he bewailed: for the acceptance of these men being an ill which had crept into the conversation-part of our lives, and not into our constitution itself, it must be corrected where it began: and consequently is to be amended only by bringing raillery and derision upon the persons who are guilty, or those who converse with them. For the sharpers,' continued he, ' at present are not as formerly, under the acceptation of pick-pockets; but are by custom erected into a real and venerable body of men, and have subdued us to so very particular a deference to them, that, though they are known to be men without honour or conscience, no demand is called a debt of honour so indisputably as theirs. You may lose your honour to them, but they lay none against you: as the priesthood in Roman catholic countries can purchase what they please for the church, but they can alienate no

Mr. John Hughes.

thing from it. It is from this toleration, that sharpers are to be found among all sorts of assemblies and companies and every talent amongst men is made use of by some one or other of the society, for the good of their common cause: so that an unexperienced young gentleman is as often ensnared by his understanding as his folly; for who could be unmoved, to hear the eloquent Dromio explain the constitution, talk in the key of Cato, with the severity of one of the ancient sages, and debate the greatest question of state in a common chocolate or coffeehouse? who could, I say, hear this generous declamator, without being fired at his noble zeal, and becoming his professed follower, if he might be admitted? Monoculus's gravity would be no less inviting to a beginner in conversation; and the snare of his eloquence would equally catch one who had never seen an old gentleman so very wise, and yet so little severe. Many other instances of extraordinary men among the brotherhood might be produced; but every man, who knows the town, can supply himself with such examples without their being named.'-Will Vafer, who is skilful at finding out the ridiculous side of a thing, and placing it in a new and proper light, though he very seldom talks, thought fit to enter into this subject. He has lately lost certain loose sums, which half the income of his estate will bring in within seven years: besides which, he proposes to marry, to set all right. He was, therefore, indolent enough to speak of this matter with great impartiality. "When I look around me,' said this easy gentleman, and consider in a just balance us bubbles, elder brothers, whose support our dull fathers contrived to depend upon certain acres, with the rooks, whose ancestors left them the wide world; I cannot

but admire their fraternity, and contemn my own. Is not Jack Heyday much to be preferred to the knight he has bubbled? Jack has his equipage, his wenches, and his followers: the knight, so far from a retinue, that he is almost one of Jack's. However, he is gay, you see, still; a florid outside-His habit speaks

the man-And since he must unbutton, he would not be reduced outwardly, but is stripped to his upper, coat. But though I have great temptation to it, I will not at this time give the history of the losing side; but speak the effects of my thoughts, since the loss of my money, upon the gaining people. This ill fortune makes most men contemplative and given to reading; at least it has happened so to me; and the rise and fall of the family of sharpers in all ages has been my contemplation.'

I find all times have had of this people: Homer, in his excellent heroic poem, calls them' Myrmidons,' who were a body that kept among themselves, and had nothing to lose; therefore never spared either Greek or Trojan, when they fell in their way, upon a party. But there is a memorable verse, which gives us an account of what broke that whole body, and made both Greeks and Trojans masters of the secret of their warfare and plunder. There is nothing so pedantic as many quotations; therefore I shall inform you only, that in this battalion there were two officers, called Thersites and Pandarus: they were both less renowned for their beauty than their wit; but each had this particular happiness, that they were plunged over head and ears in the same water which made Achilles invulnerable; and had ever after certain gifts, which the rest of the world were never to enjoy. Among others, they were never to know they were the most

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