No. DL. MONDAY, DECEMBER 1.

Quid dignum tanto feret hic promissor hiatu?

In what will all this ostentation end.

HOR.

ROSCOMMON.

SINCE the late dissolution of the club whereof I have often declared myself a member, there are very many persons who by letters, petitions, and recommendations put up for the next election. At the same time I must complain, that several indirect and under-hand practices have been made use of upon this occasion. A certain country gentleman began to tap upon the first intimation he received of Sir Roger's death: when he sent me up word, that if I would get him chosen in the place of the deceased, he would present me with a barrel of the best October I had ever drank in my life. The ladies are in great pain to know whom I intended to elect in the room of Will Honeycomb. Some of them indeed are of opinion that Mr. Honeycomb did not take sufficient care of their interest in the club, and are therefore desirous of having in it hereafter a representative of their own sex. A citizen who subscribes himself Y. Z. tells me that he has one and twenty shares in the African company, and offers to bribe me with the odd one, in case he may succeed Sir Andrew Freeport, which he thinks would raise the credit of that fund. I have several letters, dated from Jenny Man's, by gentlemen who are candidates for captain Sentry's place, and as many from a coffee-house in St. Paul's church-yard of such who would fill up the vacancy occasioned by the death of my worthy friend the clergyman, whom I can never mention but with a particular respect.

Having maturely weighed these several particulars, with the many remonstrances that have been

made to me on this subject, and considering how invidious an office I shall take upon me if I make the whole election depend upon my single voice, and being unwilling to expose myself to those clamours, which on such an occasion, will not fail to be raised against me for partiality, injustice, corruption, and other qualities which my nature abhors, I have formed to myself the project of a club as follows.

I have thoughts of issuing out writs to all and every of the clubs that are established in the cities of London and Westminster, requiring them to choose out of their respective bodies a person of the greatest merit, and to return his name to me before Lady-day, at which time I intend to sit upon business.

By this means I have reason to hope, that the club over which I shall preside will be the very flower and quintessence of all other clubs. I have communicated this my project to none but a particular friend of mine, whom I have celebrated twice or thrice for his happiness in that kind of wit which is commonly known by the name of a pun. The only objection he makes to it is, that I shall raise up enemies to myself if I act with so regal an air, and that my detractors, instead of giving me the usual title of Spectator, will be apt to call me the king of clubs.

But to proceed on my intended project: it is very well known that I at first set forth in this work with the character of a silent man; and I think I have so well preserved my taciturnity, that I do not remember to have violated it with three sentences in the space of almost two years. As a monosyllable is my delight, I have made very few excursions in the conversations which I have related beyond a yes or a no. By this means my readers have lost many good things which I have had in my heart, though I did not care for uttering them.

Now in order to diversify my character and to shew the world how well I can talk if I have a mind, I have thoughts of being very loquacious in the club which I have now under consideration. But that I may proceed the more regularly in this affair I design, upon the first meeting of the said club, to have my mouth opened in form; intending to regulate myself in this particular by a certain ritual which I have by me, that contains all the ceremonies which are practised at the opening of the mouth of a cardinal. I have likewise examined the forms which were used of old by Pythagoras, when any of his scholars, after an apprenticeship of silence, was made free of his speech. In the mean time, as I have of late found my name in foreign gazettes upon less occasions, I question not but in their next articles from Great-Britain, they will inform the world, that the Spectator's mouth is to be opened on the twenty-fifth of March next. I may perhaps publish a very useful paper at that time of the proceedings in that solemnity, and of the persons who shall assist at it. But of this more hereafter.

No. DLI. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 2.

Sic honor & nomen divinis vatibus atque
Carminibus venit.........

So ancient is the pedigree of verse,
And so divine a poet's function.

MR. SPECTATOR,

HOR.

ROSCOMMON.

'WHEN men of worthy and excelling geniuses have obliged the world with beautiful and instructive writings, it is in the nature of gratitude that praise should be returned them, as one proper consequent reward of their performances. Nor has mankind

ever been so degenerately sunk, but they have made this return, and even when they have not been wrought up by the generous endeavour so as to receive the advantages designed by it. This praise, which arises first in the mouth of particular persons, spreads and lasts according to the merit of authors; and when it thus meets with a full success changes its denomination, and is called fame. They who have happily arrived at this, are, even while they live, inflamed by the acknowledgment of others, and spurred on to new undertakings for the benefit of mankind, notwithstanding the detraction which some abject tempers would cast upon them: but when they decease, their characters being free from the shadow which envy laid them under, begin to shine out with greater splendor; their spirits sur vive in their works; and they are admitted into the highest company, and they continue pleasing and instructing posterity from age to age. Some of the best gain a character, by being able to shew that they are no strangers to them; and others obtain a new warmth to labour for the happiness and ease G g

VOL. VII.

of mankind, from a reflection upon those honours which are paid to their memories.

The thought of this took me up as I turned over those epigrams which are the remains of several of the wits of Greece, and perceived many dedicated to the fame of those who had excelled in beautiful poetic performances. Wherefore, in pursuance to my thought, I concluded to do something along with them, to bring their praises into a new light and language, for the encouragement of those whose modest tempers may be deterred by the fear of envy or detraction from fair attempts, to which their parts might render them equal. You will perceive them as they follow to be conceived in the form of epitaphs, a sort of which is wholly set apart for a short pointed method of praise.

On Orpheus, written by Antipater.

No longer, Orpheus, shall thy sacred strains
Lead stones, and trees, and beasts along the plains;
No longer sooth the boisterous winds to sleep,
Or still the billows of the raging deep:

For thou art gone, the muses mourn'd thy fall
In solemn strains, thy mother most of all.
Ye mortals, idly for your sons ye moan
If thus a goddess could not save her own.

'Observe here, that if we take the fable for granted, as it was believed to be in that age when the epigram was written, the turn appears to have piety to the gods, and a resigning spirit in its application. But if we consider the point with respect to our present knowledge, it will be less esteemed; though the author himself, because he believed it, may still be more valued than any one who should now write with a point of the same nature.