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about town very ingeniously understood themselves to be to the undesigning part of mankind what foxes are to lambs, and therefore used the word biting, to express any exploit wherein they had over-reached any innocent and inadvertent man of his purse. These rascals of late years have been the gallants of the town, and carried it with a fashionable haughty air, to the discouragement of modesty, and all honest arts. Shallow fops, who are governed by the eye, and admire every thing that struts in vogue, took up from the sharpers the phrase of biting, and used it upon all occasions, either to disown any nonsensical stuff they should talk themselves, or evade the force of what was reasonably said by others. Thus, when one of these cunning creatures was entered into a debate with you, whether it was practicable in the present state of affairs to accomplish such a proposition, and you thought he had let fall what destroyed his side of the question, as soon as you looked with an earnestness ready to lay hold of it, he immediately effed, Bite,' and you were immediately to acknowledge all that part was in jest. They carry this to all the extravagance imaginable; and if one of these witlings knows any particulars which may give authority to what he says, he is still the more ingenious if he imposes upon your credulity. I remember a remarkable instance of this kind. There came up a shrewd young fellow to a plain young man, his countryman, and taking him aside with a grave concerned countenance, goes on at this rate : 'I see you here, and have you heard nothing out of Yorkshire ?-You look so surprised you could not have heard of itand yet the particulars are such that it cannot be false I am sorry I am got into it so far that I must tell you; but I know not but it may be for your service to know. On Tuesday last, just after dinner-you know his manner is to smoke-opening his box,

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your father fell down dead in an apoplexy.' The youth showed the filial sorrow which he oughtUpon which the witty man cried, Bite, there was nothing in all this.'

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To put an end to this silly, pernicious, frivolous way at once, I will give the reader one late instance of a bite, which no biter for the future will ever be able to equal, though I heartily wish him the same occasion. It is a superstition with some surgeons who beg the bodies of condemned malefactors, to go to the gaol, and bargain for the carcase with the criminal himself. A good honest fellow did so last sessions, and was admitted to the condemned men on the morning wherein they died. The surgeon communicated his business, and fell into discourse with a little fellow, who refused twelve shillings, and insisted upon fifteen for his body. The fellow, who killed the officer of Newgate, very forwardly, and like a man who was willing to deal, told him, 'Look you, Mr. Surgeon, that little dry fellow, who has been halfstarved all his life, and is now half dead with fear, cannot answer your purpose. I have ever lived highly and freely, my veins are full, I have not pined in imprisonment; you see my crest swells to your knife; and after Jack Catch has done, upon my honour you will find me as sound as ever a bullock in any of the markets. Come, for twenty shillings I am your man.' Says the surgeon, Done, there is a guinea.' This witty rogue took the money, and as soon as he had it in his fist, cries, Bite, I am to be hung in chains.'

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N° 505. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 9, 1712.

Non habeo denique nauci Marsum augurem,
Non vicanos aruspices, non de circo astrologos.
Non Isiacos conjectores, non interpretes somnium:
Non enim sunt ii, aut scientia, aut arte divini,
Sed superstitiosi vates, impudentesque barioli,
Aut inertes, aut insani, aut quibus egestas imperat :
Qui sui questus causa fictas suscitant sententias,
Qui sibi semitam non sapiunt, alteri monstrant viam,
Quibus divinas pollicentur, ab iis drachmam petunt:
De divitiis deducant drachmam, reddant cætera.

Augurs and soothsayers, astrologers,
Diviners, and interpreters of dreams,
Í ne'er consult, and heartily despise:

ENNIUS,

Vain their pretence to more than human skill:
For gain, imaginary schemes they draw;
Wand'rers themselves, they guide another's steps:
And for poor sixpence promise countless wealth:
Let them, if they expect to be believed,
Deduct the sixpence, and bestow the rest.

THOSE who have maintained that men would be more miserable than beasts, were their hopes confined to this life only, among other considerations take notice that the latter are only afflicted with the anguish of the present evil, whereas the former are very often pained by the reflexion on what is passed, and the fear of what is to come. This fear of any future difficulties or misfortunes is so natural to the mind, that were a man's sorrows and disquietudes summed up at the end of his life, it would generally be found that he had suffered more from the apprehension of such evils as never happened to him, than from those evils which had really befallen him. Το this we may add, that among those evils which befal

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us, there are many which have been more painful to us in the prospect, than by their actual pressure.

This natural impatience to look into futurity, and to know what accidents may happen to us hereafter, has given birth to many ridiculous arts and inventions. Some found their prescience on the lines of a man's hand, others on the features of his face: some on the signatures which nature has impressed on his body, and others on his own hand-writing: some read men's fortunes in the stars, as others have searched after them in the entrails of beasts, or the flight of birds, Men of the best sense have been touched more or less with these groundless horrors and presages of futurity, upon surveying the most indifferent works Can any thing be more surprising than to consider Cicero, who made the grea.est figure at the bar and in the senate of the Roman commonwealth, and at the same time outshined all the philosophers of antiquity in his library and in his retirements, as busying himself in the college of augurs, and observing with a religious attention after what manner the chickens pecked the several grains of corn which were thrown to them?

of nature.

Notwithstanding these follies are pretty well worn out of the minds of the wise and learned in the present age, multitudes of weak and ignorant persons are still slaves to them. There are numberless arts of prediction among the vulgar, which are too trifling to enumerate; and infinite observation of days, numbers, voices, and figures, which are regarded by them as portents and prodigies. In short, every thing prophesies to the superstitious man; there is scarce a straw, or a rusty piece of iron, that lies in his way by accident,

It is not to be conceived how many wizards,

*This censure of Cicero seems to be unfounded; for it is said of him, that he wondered how one augur could meet another without laughing in his face.

gipsies, and cunning men, are dispersed through all the counties and market-towns of Great Britain, not to mention the fortune-tellers and astrologers, who live very comfortably upon the curiosity of several well-disposed persons in the cities of London and Westminster.

Among the many pretended arts of divination, there is none which so universally amuses as that by dreams. I have indeed observed in a late speculation, that there have been sometimes, upon very extraordinary occasions, supernatural revelations made to certain persons by this means; but as it is the chief business of this paper to root out popular errors, I must endeavour to expose the folly and superstition of those persons, who, in the common and ordinary course of life, lay any stress upon things of so uncertain, shadowy, and chimerical a nature. This I cannot do more effectually than by the following letter, which is dated from a quarter of the town that has always been the habitation of some prophetic Philomath; it having been usual, time out of mind, for all such people as have lost their wits, to resort to that place either for their cure or for their instruction.

'Mr. SPECTATOR,

Moorfields, Oct. 4, 1712.

6 HAVING long considered whether there be any trade wanted in this great city, after having surveyed very attentively all kinds of ranks and professions, I do not find in any quarter of the town an oneiro-critic, or, in plain English, an interpreter of dreams. For want of so useful a person, there are several good people who are very much puzzled in this particular, and dream a whole year together without being ever the wiser for it. I hope I am pretty well qualified for this office, having studied by candle-light all

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