weighed the force and energy that lie in the several words of a language, so as to be able to distinguish which are most significant and expressive of their proper ideas, and what additional strength and beauty they are capable of receiving from conjunction with others. The fancy must be warm, to retain the print of those images it hath received from outward objects, and the judgment discerning, to know what expressions are most proper to clothe and adorn them to the best advantage. A man who is deficient in either of these respects, though he may receive the general notion of a description, can never see distinctly all its particular beauties; as a person with a weak sight may have the confused prospect of a place that lies before him, without entering into its several parts, or discerning the variety of its colors in their full glory and perfection.-O. No. 422.] FRIDAY, JULY 4, 1712. Hæc scripsi non otii abundantia, sed amoris erga te.-TULL. EPIST. I have written this, not out of the abundance of leisure, but of my affection toward you. I Do not know anything which gives greater disturbance to conversation, than the false notion some people have of raillery. It ought, certainly, to be the first point to be aimed at in society, to gain the goodwill of those with whom you converse; the way to that is, to show you are well inclined toward them. What then can be more absurd than to set up for being extremely sharp and biting, as the term is, in your expressions to your familiars? A man who has no good quality but courage, is in a very ill way toward making an agreeable figure in the world, because that which he has superior to other people cannot be exerted without raising himself an enemy. Your gentleman of a satirical vein is in the like condition. To say a thing which perplexes the heart of him you speak to, or brings blushes into his face, is a degree. of murder; and it is, I think, an unpardonable offense to show a man you do not care whether he is pleased or displeased. But will you not then take a jest?— Yes: but pray let it be a jest. It is no jest to put me, who am so unhappy as to have an utter aversion to speaking to more than one man at a time, under a necessity to explain myself in much company, and reducing me to shame and derision, except I perform what my infirmity of silence disables me to do. Calisthenes has great wit, accompanied with that quality without which a man can have no wit at all -a sound judgment. This gentleman rallies the best of any man I know; for he forms his ridicule upon a circumstance which you are, in your heart, not unwilling to grant him; to wit, that you are guilty of an excess in something which is in itself laudable. He very well understands what you would be, and needs not fear your anger for declaring you are a little too much that thing. The generous will bear being reproached as lavish, and the valiant as rash, without being provoked to resentment against their monitor. What has been said to be a mark of a good writer will fall in with the character of a good companion. The good writer makes his reader better pleased with himself, and the agreeable man makes his friends enjoy themselves, rather than him, while he is in their company. Calisthenes does this with inimitable pleasantry. He whispered a friend the other day, so as to be overheard by a young officer who gave symptoms of cocking upon the company, "That gen tleman has very much of the air of a general officer." The youth immediately put on a composed behavior, and behaved himself suitably to the conceptions he believed the company had of him. It is to be allowed that Calisthenes will make a man run into impertinent relations to his own advantage, and express the satisfaction he has in his own dear self, till he is very ridiculous; but in this case the man is made a fool by his own consent, and not exposed as such whether he will or no. I take it, therefore, that to make raillery agreeable, a man must either not know he is rallied, or think never the worse of himself if he sees he is. Acetus is of a quite contrary genius, and is more generally admired than Calisthenes, but not with justice. Acetus has no regard to the modesty or weakness of the person he rallies; but if his quality or humility gives him any superiority to the man he would fall upon, he has no mercy in making the onHe can be pleased to see his best friend out of countenance, while the laugh is loud in his own applause. His raillery always puts the company into little divisions and separate interests, while that of Calisthenes cements it, and makes every man not only better pleased with himself, but also with all the rest in the conversation. set. To rally well, it is absolutely necessary that kindness must run through all you say; and you must never preserve the character of a friend to support your pretensions to be free with a man. Acetus ought to be banished human society, because he raises his mirth upon giving pain to the person upon whom he is pleasant. Nothing but the malevolence which is too general toward those who excel could make his company tolerated; but they with whom he converses are sure to see some man sacrificed wherever he is admitted; and all the credit he has for wit, is owing to the gratification it gives to other men's ill-nature. Minutius has a wit that conciliates a man's love, at the same time that it is exerted against his faults. He has an art of keeping the person he rallies in countenance, by insinuating that he himself is guilty of the same imperfection. This he does with so much address, that he seems rather to bewail himself, than fall upon his friend. It is really monstrous to see how unaccountably it prevails among men to take the liberty of displeasing each other. One would think sometimes that the contention is who shall be most disagreeable. Allusions to past follies, hints which revive what a man has a mind to forget forever, and deserves that all the rest of the world should, are commonly brought forth even in company of men of distinction. They do not thrust with the skill of fencers, but cut up with the barbarity of butchers. It is, methinks, below the character of men of humanity and good-manners to be capable of mirth while there is any of the company in pain and disorder. They who have the true taste of conversation, enjoy themselves in a communication of each other's excellencies, and not in a triumph over their imperfections. Fortius would have been reckoned a wit if there had never been a fool in the world; he wants not foils to be a beauty, but has that natural pleasure in observing perfection in others, that his own faults are overlooked, out of gratitude, by all his acquaintance. After these several characters of men who succeed or fail in raillery, it may not be amiss to reflect a little further what one takes to be the most agreeable kind of it; and that to me appears when the satire is directed against vice, with an air of contempt of the fault, but no ill-will to the criminal. Mr. Congreve's Doris is a masterpiece in this kind. It is the character of a woman utterly abandoned; but her impudence, by the finest piece of raillery, is made only generosity. No. 424.] * * MONDAY, JULY 7, 1712. Est Ulubris, animus si te non deficit æquus. HOR. 1 Ep. xi. 30. 'Tis not the place disgust or pleasure brings : "MR. SPECTATOR, London, June 24. "A MAN who has it in his power to choose his own company, would certainly be much to blame, should he not, to the best of his judgment, take such as are of a temper most suitable to his own; and where that choice is wanting, or where a man is mistaken in his choice, and yet under a necessity of continuing in the same company, it will certainly be his interest to carry himself as easily as possible. In this I am sensible I do but repeat what has been said a thousand times, at which, however, I think nobody has any title to take exception, but they who never fail to put this in practice. Not to use any longer preface, this being the season of the year in which great numbers of all sorts of people retire from this place of business and pleasure to country solitude, I think it not improper to advise them to take with them as great a stock of good humor as they can; for though a country life is described as the most pleasant of all others, and though it may in truth be so, yet it is so only to those who know how to enjoy leisure and retirement. "As for those who cannot live without the constant helps of business or company, let them consider, that |