gloomy reflections, and deep melancholy. How savage must he be, who can sacrifice the quiet of such a mind to a transient burst of mirth! Let him who wantonly sports away the peace of a poor lady, consider what discord he sows in families; how often he wrings the heart of an hoary parent; how often he rouses the fury of a jealous husband; how he extorts from the abused woman curses, perhaps not unheard, and poured out in the bitterness of her soul! What weapons hath she wherewith to repel such an outrage? How shall she oppose her softness and imbecility to the hardened forehead of a coward, who hath trampled upon weakness that could not resist him? to a buffoon, who hath slandered innocence to raise the laughter of fools? who hath 'scattered firebrands, arrows, and death, and said, Am I not in sport?' - Irreverent reflections upon men of learning and note, if their character be sacred, do great disservice to religion, and betray a vile mind in the author. I have therefore always thought, with indignation, upon that accuser of the brethren,' the famous antiquary*, whose employment it was, for several years, to rake up all the ill natured stories that had ever been fastened upon celebrated men, and transmit them to posterity with cruel industry and malicious joy. Though the good men, ill-used, may, out of a meek and christian disposition, so far subdue their natural resentment, as to neglect and forgive; yet the inventors of such calumnies will find generous persons, whose bravery of mind makes them think themselves proper instruments to chastise such insolence. And I have, in my time, more than once known the discipline of the blanket administered to the offenders, and all their slanders answered by that Mr. Anthony à Wood. kind of syllogism which the ancient Romans called the argumentum bacillinum.' I have less compassion for men of sprightly parts. and genius, whose characters are played upon, because they have it in their power to revenge themselves tenfold. But I think, of all the classes of mankind they are the most pardonable if they pay the slanderer in his own coin. For their names being already blazed abroad in the world, the least blot thrown upon them is displayed far and wide; and they have this sad privilege above the men in olscurity, that the dishonour travels as far as their fame. To be even therefore with their enemy, they are but too apt to diffuse his infamy as far as their own reputation; and perhaps triumph in secret, that they have it in their power to make his name the scoff and derision of after ages. This, I say, they are. too apt to do. For sometimes they resent the e:posing of their little affectations or slips in writings as much as wounds upon their honour. The first are trifles they should laugh away, but the latter deserves their utmost severity. I must confess a warmth against the buffooneries mentioned in the beginning of this paper, as they have so many circumstances to aggravate their guilt. A license for a man to stand up in the schools of the prophets, in a grave decent habit, and audaciously vent his obloquies against the doctors of our church, and directors, of our young nobility, gentry, and clergy, in their hearing and before their eyes; to throw calumnies upon poor defenceless women, and offend their ears with nauseous ribaldry, and name their names at length in a public theatre, when a queen* is upon the throne; such a license as this never yet gained ground in our playhouses; and I * Queen Anne, mentioned merely as a queen. T hope will not need a law to forbid it. Were I to advise in this matter, I should represent to the orator how noble a field there lay before him for panegyric; what a happy opportunity he had of doing justice to the great men who once were of that famous body, or now shine forth in it; nor should I neglect to insinuate the advantages he might propose by gaining their friendship, whose worth, by a contrary treatment, he will be imagined either not to know, or to envy. This might rescue the name from scandal; and if, as it ought, this performance turned solely upon matters of wit and learning, it might have the honour of being one of the first productions of the magnificent printing-house just erected at Oxford*. This paper is written with a design to make my journey to Oxford agreeable to me, where I design to be at the Public Act. If my advice is neglected, I shall not scruple to insert in the Guardian whatever the men of letters and genius transmit to me, in their own vindication; and I hereby promise that I myself will draw my pen in defence of all injured women. The Clarendon printing-house. No. 73. THURSDAY, JUNE 4, 1713. In amore hæc insunt omnia.-TER. Eun. Act. i. Sc. 1. It is a matter of great concern that there come so many letters to me, wherein I see parents make love for their children, and, without any manner of regard to the season of life and the respective interests of their progeny, judge of their future happiness by the rules of ordinary commerce. When a man falls in love in some families, they use him as if his land was mortgaged to them, and he cannot discharge himself, but by really making it the same thing in an unreasonable settlement, or forgoing what is dearer to him than his estate itself. These extortioners are of all others the most cruel; and the sharks, who prey upon the inadvertency of young heirs, are more pardonable than those who trespass upon the good opinion of those who treat with them upon the foot of choice and respect. The following letters may place in the reader's view uneasinesses of this sort, which may perhaps be useful to some under the circumstances mentioned by my correspondents. TO NESTOR IRONSIDE, ESQ. From a certain town in Cumberland, May 21. VENERABLE SIR, It is impossible to express the universal satisfaction your precautions give in a country so far north as ours; and indeed it were impertinent to expatiate in a case that is by no means particular to ourselves, all mankind, who wish well to one another, being equally concerned in their success. However, as all nations have not the genius, and each particular man has his different views and taste, we northerns cannot but acknowledge our obligations in a more especial manner for your matrimonial precautions, which we more immediately are interested in. Our climate has ever been recorded as friendly to the continuation of our kind; and the ancient histories are not more full of their Goths and Vandals, that in swarms overspread all Europe, than modern story of its Yorkshire hostlers and attorneys, who are remarkably eminent and beneficial in every market-town, and most inns in this kingdom. I shall not here presume to enter, with the ancient sages, into a parti. cular reasoning upon the case, as whether it proceeds from the cold temper of the air, or the particular constitutions of the persons, or both; from the fashionable want of artifice in the women, and their entire satisfaction in one conquest only; or the happy ignorance in the men, of those southern vices which effeminate mankind. From this encomium, I do not question but by this time you infer me happy already in the legal possession of some fair one, or in a probable way of being so. But, alas! neither is my case; and, from |