to have passed through it in such a manner as not to have lost the friendship of those who suffered with him, but to receive an honourable acknowledgement of his honesty from those very persons to whom the law had consigned his estate. The misfortune of this citizen is like to prove of a very general advantage to those who shall deal with him hereafter; for the stock with which he now sets up being the loan of his friends, he cannot expose that to the hazard of giving credit, but enters into a ready money trade, by which means he will both buy and sell the best and cheapest. He imposes upon himself a rule of affixing the value of each piece he sells to the piece itself; so that the most ignorant servant or child will be as good a buyer at his shop as the most skilful in the trade. For all which you have all his hopes and fortune for your security. To encourage dealing after this way, there is not only the avoiding the most infamous guilt in ordinary bartering, but this observation, that he who buys with ready money saves as much to his family as the state exacts out of his land for the security and service of his country; that is to say, in plain English, sixteen will do as much as twenty shillings. MR. SPECTATOR, My heart is so swelled with grateful sentiments on account of some favours which I have lately received, that I must beg leave to give them utterance amongst the crowd of other anonymous correspondents; and writing, I hope, will be as great a relief to my forced silence, as it is to your natural taciturnity.......My generous benefactor will not suffer me to speak to him in any terms of acknowledgment, but ever treats me as if he had the greatest obligations, and uses me with a distinction that is not to be expected from one so much my superior in fortune, years, and understanding. He insinu-ates, as if I had a certain right to his favours from some merit, which his particular indulgence to me has discovered; but that is only a beautiful artifice to lessen the pain an honest mind feels in receiving obligations, when there is no probability of returning them. A gift is doubled when accompanied with such a delicacy of address; but what to me gives it an inexpressible value is its coming from the man I most esteem.in the world. It pleases me indeed, as it is an advantage and addition to my fortune; but when I consider it as an instance of that good man's friendship, it overjoys, it transports me; I look on it with a lover's eye, and no longer regard the gift, but the hand that gave it. For my friendship is so entirely void of any gainful views, that it often gives me pain to think it should have been chargeable to him; and I cannot, at some melancholy hours, help doing his generosity the injury of fearing it should cool on this account, and that the last favour might be a sort of legacy of a departing friendship. 'I confess these fears seem very groundless and unjust, but you must forgive them to the apprehension of one possessed of a great treasure, who is frighted at the most distant shadow of danger. Since I have thus far opened my heart to you, I will not conceal the secret satisfaction I feel there of knowing the goodness of my friend will not be unrewarded. I am pleased with thinking the providence of the Almighty hath sufficient blessings in store for him, and will certainly discharge the debt, though I am not made the happy instrument of doing it. However nothing in my power shall be wanting to shew my gratitude; I will make it the business of my life to thank him, and shall esteem (next to him) those my best friends, who give me the great est assistance in this good work. Printing this letter would be some little instance of my gratitude; and your favour herein will very much oblige Your most humble servant, &c. Nov. 24. T W. C. No. DXLVII. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 27. Si vulnus tibi, monstrata radice vel herba, Suppose you had a wound, and one had show'd нов. CREECH. IT is very difficult to praise a man without putting him out of countenance. My following correspondent has found out this uncommon art, and together with his friends, has celebrated some of my speculations after such a concealed but diverting manner, that if any of my readers think I am to blame in publishing my own commendations, they will allow I should have deserved their censure as much, had I suppressed the humour in which they are conveyed to me. SIR, 'I AM often in a private assembly of wits of both sexes, where we generally descant upon your speculations, or upon the subjects on which you have treated. We were last Tuesday talking of those two volumes which you have lately published. Some were commending one of your papers, and some another; and there was scarce a single person in the company that had not a favourite speculation. Upon this a man of wit and learning told us, he thought it would not be amiss, if we paid the Spectator the same compliment that is often made in our public prints to Sir William Read, Dr. Grant, Mr. Moor the apothecary, and other eminent physicians, where it is usual for the patients to publish the cures which have been made upon them, and the several distempers under which they laboured. The proposal took, and the lady where we visited having the two last volumes, in large paper, interleaved for her own private use, ordered them to be brought down, and laid in the window, whither every one of the company retired, and writ down a particular advertisement in the style and phrase of the 'like ingenious compositions which we frequently meet with at the end of our newspapers. When we had finished our work, we read them with a great deal of mirth at the fire-side, and agreed, nemine contradicente, to get them transcribed, and sent to the Spectator. The gentleman who made the proposal entered the following advertisement before the titlepage, after which the rest succeeded in order. "Remedium efficax & universum; or, an effectual remedy adapted to all capacities; shewing how any person may cure himself of ill-nature, pride, partyspleen, or any other distemper incident to the human system, with an easy way to know when the infection is upon him. This panacea is as innocent as bread, agreeable to the taste, and requires no confinement. It has not its equal in the universe, as abundance of the nobility and gentry throughout the kingdom have experienced. "N. B. No family ought to be without it." Over the two Spectators on Jealousy, being the two first in the third volume. "I William Crazy, aged threescore and seven, having been for several years afflicted with uneasy doubts, fears, and vapours, occasioned by the youth and beauty of Mary my wife, aged twenty-five, do hereby, for the benefit of the public, give notice, that I have found great relief from the two following doses, having taken them two mornings together with a dish of chocolate. Witness my hand, &c." For the benefit of the poor. "In charity to such as are troubled with the disease of levee-hunting, and are forced to seek their bread every morning at the chamber doors of great men, I, A. B. do testify that for many years past I laboured under this fashionable distemper, but was cured of it by a remedy which I bought of Mrs. Baldwin, contained in a half sheet of paper, marked No. 193, where any one may be provided with the same remedy, at the price of a single penny." "An infallible cure for hypochondriac melancholy, No. 173, 184, 191, 203, 209, 221, 233, 235, 239, 245, 247, 251. "Probatum est. CHARLES EASY." "I Christopher Query, having been troubled with a certain distemper in my tongue, which shewed itself in impertinent and superfluous interrogatories, have not asked one unnecessary question since my perusal of the prescription marked No. 228." "The Britannic Beautifier, being an essay on modesty, No. 231, which gives such a delightful blushing colour to the cheeks of those that are white or pale, that it is not to be distinguished from a natural fine complexion, nor perceived to be artificial by |