him to assure him I was at his house all that afternoon expecting to see him. His answer is, it is only a trick of hers, and that he neither can nor will believe me. The parting kiss I find mightily nettles him, and confirms him in all his errors. Ben Jonson, as I remember, makes a foreigner, in one of his comedies, "admire the desperate valour of the bold English, who let out their wives to all encounters." The general custom of salutation should excuse the favour done me, or you should lay down rules when such distinctions are to be given or omitted. You cannot imagine, sir, how troubled I am for this unhappy lady's misfortune, and beg you would insert this letter, that the husband may reflect upon this accident coolly. It is no small matter, the ease of a virtuous woman for her whole life. I know she will conform to any regularities (though more strict than the common rules of our country require) to which his particular temper shall incline him to oblige her. This accident puts me in mind how generously Pisistratus, the Athenian. tyrant, behaved himself on a like occasion, when he was instigated by his wife to put to death a young gentleman, because, being passionately fond of his daughter, he had kissed her in public, as he met her in the street. "What," said he, "shall we do to those who are our enemies, if we do thus to those who are our friends?" I will not trouble you much longer, but am exceedingly concerned lest this accident may cause a virtuous lady to lead a miserable life with a husband who has no grounds for his jealousy but what I have faithfully related, and ought to be reckoned none. It is to be feared too, if at last he sees his mistake, yet people will be as slow and unwilling in disbelieving scandal as they are quick and froward in

believing it. I shall endeavour to enliven this plain honest letter with Ovid's relation about Cybele's image. The ship wherein it was aboard was stranded at the mouth of the Tiber, and the men were unable to move it, until Claudia, a virgin, but suspected of unchastity, by a slight pull hauled it in. The story is told in the fourth book of the Fasti.

"Parent of gods,' began the weeping fair,
Reward or punish, but oh! hear my prayer:
If lewdness e'er defil'd my virgin bloom,
From heaven with justice I receive my doom:
But if my honour yet has known no stain,
Thou, goddess, thou my innocence maintain :
Thou, whom the nicest rules of goodness sway'd,
Vouchsafe to follow an unblemish'd maid,'

She spoke, and touch'd the cord with glad surprise,
(The truth was witness'd by ten thousand eyes)
The pittying goddess easily comply'd,

Follow'd in triumph, and adorn'd her guide;
While Claudia, blushing still for past disgrace,
March'd silent on, with a slow solemn pace :
Nor yet from some was all distrust remov'd,
Though heaven such virtue by such wonders prov'd."

I am,
Sir,

You very humble servant,

PHILAGNOTES.'

MR. SPECTATOR,

'You will oblige a languishing lover if you will please to print the enclosed verses in your next paper. If you remember the Metamorphoses, you know Procris, the fond wife of Cephalus, is said to have made her husband, who delighted in the sports of the wood, a present of an unerring javelin. In process of time he was so much in the forest, that his lady suspected he was pursuing some nymph, under the pretence of following a chase more innocent. Under this

suspicion she hid herself among the trees, to observe his motions. While she lay concealed, her husband, tired with the labour of hunting, came within her hearing. As he was fainting with heat he cried out, “Aura veni !" "Oh, charming air, approach!"

The unfortunate wife, taking the word air to be the name of a woman, began to move among the bushes; and the husband believing it a deer, threw his javelin, and killed her. This history, painted on a fan, which I presented to a lady, gave occasion to my growing poetical.

"Come, gentle air!' the Eolian shepherd said,
While Procris panted in the secret shade;
'Come, gentle air,' the fairer Delia cries,
While at her feet the swain expiring lies.
Lo! the glad gales o'er all her beauties stray,
Breathe on her lips, and in her bosom play,
In Delia's hand this toy is fatal found,
Nor did that fabled dart more surely wound.
Both gifts destructive to the givers prove,
Alike both lovers fall by those they love:
Yet guiltless too this bright destroyer lives,

At random wounds, nor knows the wounds she gives;
She views the story, with attentive eyes,

And pities Procris, while her lover dies."

No. 528. WEDNESDAY, NOV. 5, 1712.

Dum potuit, solita gemitum virtute repressit.

OVID. Met. ix. 165.

With wonted fortitude she bore the smart,
And not a groan confess'd her burning heart.

GAY.

MR. SPECTATOR,

'I WHO now write to you am a woman loaded with injuries: and the aggravation of my

VOL. IX,

G

misfortune is, that they are such which are overlooked by the generality of mankind; and though the most afflicting imaginable, not regarded as such in the general sense of the world. I have hid my vexation from all mankind; but having now taken pen, ink, and paper, am resolved to unbosom myself to you, and lay before you what grieves me and all the sex. You have very often mentioned particular hardships done to this or to that lady; but methinks you have not, in any one speculation, directly pointed at the partial freedom men take, the unreasonable confinement women are obliged to, in the only circumstance in which we are necessarily to have a commerce with them, that of love. The case of celibacy is the great evil of our nation; and the indulgence of the vicious conduct of men in that state, with the ridicule to which women are exposed, though ever so virtuous, if long unmarried, is the root of the greatest irregularities of this nation. To show you, sir, that (though you never have given us the catalogue of a lady's library, as you promised) we read books of our own choosing, I shall insert on this occasion a paragraph or two out of Echard's Roman History. In the 44th page of the second volume, the author observes that Augustus, upon his return to Rome at the end of a war, received complaints that too great a number of the young men o quality were unmarried. The emperor thereupon assembled the whole equestrian order; and, having separated the married from the single, did particular honours to the former; but he told the latter, that is to say, Mr. Spectator, he told the bachelors, that their lives and actions had been so peculiar, that he knew not by what name to call them; not by that of men, for they performed nothing that

was manly; not by that of citizens, for the city might perish notwithstanding their care; nor by that of Romans, for they designed to extirpate the Roman name. Then, proceeding to show his tender care and hearty affection for his people, he further told them that their course of life was of such pernicious consequence to the glory and grandeur of the Roman nation, that he could not choose but tell them, that all other crimes put together could not equalize theirs, for they were guilty of murder, in not suffering those to be born which should proceed from them; of impiety, in causing the names and honours of their ancestors to cease; and of sacrilege, in destroying their kind, which proceed from the immortal gods, and human nature, the principal thing consecrated to them: therefore, in this respect, they dissolved the government in disobeying its laws; betrayed their country by making it barren and waste; nay, and demolished their city, in deprive ing it of inhabitants. And he was sensible that all this proceeded not from any kind of virtue or abstinence, but from a looseness and wantonness which ought never to be encouraged in any civil government. There are no particulars dwelt upon that let us into the conduct of these young worthies, whom this great emperor treated with so much justice and indignation; but any one who observes what passes in this town may very well frame to himself a notion of their riots and debaucheries all night, and their apparent preparations for them all day. It is not to be doubted but these Roman's never passed any of their time innocently but when they were asleep, and never slept but when they were weary and heavy with excesses, and slept only to prepare themselves for the repetition of them. If you did your duty