From Tuesday, Nov. 22, to Thursday, Nov. 24, 1709.

From my own Apartment, Nov. 23.

I read the following letter, which was left for me this evening, with very much concern for the lady's condition who sent it, who expresses the state of her mind with great frankness, as all people ought who talk to their physicians.

"Mr. Bickerstaff,

"Though you are stricken in years, and have had great experience in the world, I believe you will say, there are not frequently such difficult occasions to act in with decency as those wherein I am entangled. I am a woman in love, and that you will allow to be the most unhappy of all circumstances in human life: Nature has formed us with a strong reluctance against owning such a passion, and custom has made it criminal in us to make advances. A gentleman, whom I will call Fabio, has the entire possession of my heart. I am so intimately acquainted with him, that he makes no scruple of communicating to me an ardent affection he has for Cleora, a friend of mine, who also makes me her confidante. Most part of my life I am in company with the one or the other, and am always entertained with his passion, or her triumph. Cleora is one of those ladies, who think they are virtuous, if they are not guilty; and without any delicacy of choice, resolves to take the best offer which shall be made to her. With this prospect she puts off declaring herself in favour of Fabio, till she sees what lovers will fall into her snares, which she lays in all public places with all the art of gesture and glances. This resolution she has herself told me. Though I love him better than life, I would not gain him by betraying Cleora, or committing such a trespass against modesty as letting him know myself that I love him. You are an astrologer, what shall I do?

"Diana Doubtful."

This lady has said very justly, that the condition of a woman in love is of all others the most miserable. Poor Diana! how must she be racked with jealousy when Fabio talks of Cleora? how with indignation when Cleora makes a property of Fabio? A female lover is in the condition of a ghost, that wanders about its beloved treasure, without power to speak until it is spoken to. I desire Diana to continue in this circumstance; for I see an eye of comfort in her case, and will take all proper measures to extricate her out of this unhappy game of cross purposes. Since Cleora is upon the catch with her charms, and has no particular regard for Fabio, I shall place a couple of special fellows in her way, who shall both address to her, and have each a better estate than Fabio. They are both already taken with her, and are preparing for being of her retinue the ensuing winter. To women of this worldly turn, as I apprehend Cleora to be, we must reckon backward in our computation of merit; and when a fair lady thinks only of making her spouse a convenient domestic, the notion of worth and value is altered, and the lover is the more acceptable the less he is considerable. The two I shall throw in the way of Cleora, are Orson Thickett and Mr. Walter Wisdom. Orson is a huntsman, whose father's death, and some difficulties about legacies, brought out of the woods to town last November. He was at that time one of those country savages who despise the softness they meet in town and court, and professedly show their strength and roughness in every motion and gesture, in scorn of our bowing and cringing. He was at his first appearance very remarkable for that piece of good breeding peculiar to natural Britons, to wit, defiance. He showed every one he met he was as good a man as he. But in the midst of all his fierceness, he would sometimes attend the discourse of a man of sense, and look at the charms of a beauty with his eyes and mouth open. He was in this posture when, in the beginning of last December, he was shot by Cleora from a side-box.[300] From that moment he softened into humanity, forgot his dogs and horses, and now moves and speaks with civility and address. What Wisdom, by the death of an elder brother, came to a great estate, when he had proceeded just far enough in his studies to be very impertinent, and at the years when the law gives him possession of his fortune, and his own constitution is too warm for the management of it. Orson is learning to fence and dance, to please and fight for his mistress; and Walter preparing fine horses, and a jingling chariot, to enchant her. All persons concerned will appear at the next opera, where will begin the wild-goose chase; and I doubt, Fabio will see himself so overlooked for Orson or Walter, as to turn his eyes on the modest passion and becoming languor in the countenance of Diana; it being my design to supply with the art of love all those who preserve the sincere passion of it.

Will's Coffee-house, Nov. 23.

An ingenious and worthy gentleman, my ancient friend,[301] fell into discourse with me this evening upon the force and efficacy which the writings of good poets have on the minds of their intelligent readers, and recommended to me his sense of the matter, thrown together in the following manner, which he desired me to communicate to the youth of Great Britain in my essays; which I choose to do in his own words.

"I have always been of opinion," says he, "that virtue sinks deepest into the heart of man when it comes recommended by the powerful charms of poetry. The most active principle in our mind is the imagination: to it a good poet makes his court perpetually, and by this faculty takes care to gain it first. Our passions and inclinations come over next; and our reason surrenders itself with pleasure in the end. Thus the whole soul is insensibly betrayed into morality, by bribing the fancy with beautiful and agreeable images of those very things that in the books of the philosophers appear austere, and have at the best but a kind of forbidden aspect. In a word, the poets do, as it were, strew the rough paths of virtue so full of flowers, that we are not sensible of the uneasiness of them, and imagine ourselves in the midst of pleasures, and the most bewitching allurements, at the time we are making a progress in the severest duties of life.

"All then agree, that licentious poems do of all writings soonest corrupt the heart: and why should we not be as universally persuaded, that the grave and serious performances of such as write in the most engaging manner, by a kind of divine impulse, must be the most effectual persuasives to goodness? If therefore I were blessed with a son, in order to the forming of his manners (which is making him truly my son) I should be continually putting into his hand some fine poet. The graceful sentences and the manly sentiments so frequently to be met with in every great and sublime writer, are, in my judgment, the most ornamental and valuable furniture that can be for a young gentleman's head; methinks they show like so much rich embroidery upon the brain. Let me add to this, that humanity and tenderness (without which there can be no true greatness in the mind) are inspired by the Muses in such pathetical language, that all we find in prose authors towards the raising and improving of these passions, is in comparison but cold, or lukewarm at the best. There is besides a certain elevation of soul, a sedate magnanimity, and a noble turn of virtue, that distinguishes the hero from the plain, honest man, to which verse can only raise us. The bold metaphors and sounding numbers, peculiar to the poets, rouse up all our sleeping faculties, and alarm the whole powers of the soul, much like that excellent trumpeter mentioned by Virgil:

"I fell into this train of thinking this evening, upon reading a passage in a masque written by Milton, where two brothers are introduced seeking after their sister, whom they had lost in a dark night and thick wood. One of the brothers is apprehensive lest the wandering virgin should be overpowered with fears through the darkness and loneliness of the time and place. This gives the other occasion to make the following reflections, which, as I read them, made me forget my age, and renewed in me the warm desires after virtue, so natural to uncorrupted youth.