English weeds pasted on royal paper,

With my large folio of Indian cabbage.

Item, To my learned and worthy friend Dr. Johannes Elscrickius, professor in anatomy, and my associate in the studies of nature, as an eternal monument of my affection and friendship for him, I bequeath

My rat's testicles, and

Whale's pizzle.-,

To him and his issue male; and in default of such issue in the said Dr. Elscrickius, then to return to my executor and his heirs for ever.

Having fully provided for my nephew Isaac, by making over to him some years since

A horned scarabæus,

The skin of a rattle-snake, and

The mummy of an Egyptian king,

I make no further provision for him in this my will.

My eldest son, John, having spoken disrespectfully of his little sister whom I keep by me in spirits of wine, and in many other instances behaved himself undutifully towards me, I do disinherit, and wholly cut off from any part of this my personal estate, by giving him a single cockle-shell.

To my second son, Charles, I give and bequeath all my flowers, plants, minerals, mosses, shells, pebbles, fossils, beetles, butterflies, caterpillars, grasshoppers, and vermin, not above specified as also all my monsters, both wet and dry, making the said Charles whole and sole executor of this my last will and testament; he paying, or causing to be paid, the aforesaid legacies within the space of six months after my decease. And I do hereby revoke all other wills whatsoever by me formerly made.

VOL. IV.-10

ADVERTISEMENT.

WHEREAS an ignorant upstart in astrology, has publicly endeavoured to persuade the world, that he is the late John Partridge, who died the 28th of March 1708; these are to certify all whom it may concern, that the true John Partridge was not only dead at that time, but continues so to this present day.

Beware of counterfeits, for such are abroad.

No. 218. THURSDAY, AUGUST 30, 1710.

Scriptorum Chorus omnis amat nemus et fugit urbes.-Hor.

From my own Apartment, August 30.

I CHANCED to rise very early one particular morning this summer, and took a walk into the country to divert myself among the fields and meadows, while the green was new, and the flowers in their bloom. As at this season of the year every lane is a beautiful walk, and every hedge full of nosegays," I lost myself with a great deal of pleasure among several thickets and bushes that were filled with a great variety of birds, and an agreeable confusion of notes," which formed the pleasantest scene in the

a

с

Nosegay. An oddly compounded word, if we take gay in the sense of fine or showy, expressing, together, the effect which flowers have on the sight and smell. But gay, in the primary sense of the word, is that which cheers, refreshes, or delights: and derived like gaudy from "gaudere." In this view, the composition is more natural and proper, However, the word itself, is, now, much out of use.

b Filled with-birds, and-notes. We may say of a thicket, that it is filled with birds, or filled with the notes of birds, but not at the same time: because the word, filled, must, then, be taken in a different sense, as applied to each; in a literal sense, when connected with birds, and, a metaphorical sense, as joined to the notes of birds: whence arises a degree of quaintness and confusion.

• Which formed. That is, which birds and notes formed: but one does not see how birds and notes can be said to form a scene. In short, the

world to one who had passed a whole winter in noise and smoke. The freshness of the dews that lay upon every thing about me, with the cool breath of the morning, which inspired the birds with so many delightful instincts, created in me the same kind of animal pleasure, and made my heart overflow with such secret emotions of joy and satisfaction as are not to be described or accounted for. On this occasion, I could not but reflect upon a beautiful simile in Milton:

'As one who long in populous city pent,
Where houses thick, and sewers, annoy the air,
Forth issuing on a summer's morn, to breathe
Among the pleasant villages, and farms

Adjoin'd, from each thing met conceives delight:
The smell of grain, or tedded grass, or kine,

Or dairy, each rural sight, each rural sound.'

Those who are conversant in the writings of polite authors, receive an additional entertainment from the country, as it revives in their memories those charming descriptions with which such authors do frequently abound.a

I was thinking of the foregoing beautiful simile in Milton, and applying it to myself, when I observed to the windward of me a black cloud falling to the earth in long trails of rain, which made me betake myself for shelter to a house which I saw at a little distance from the place where I was walking. As I sat in the porch, I heard the voices of two or three persons, who seemed very earnest in discourse. My curiosity was raised when I heard the names of Alexander the Great and Artaxerxes; and as their

whole sentence is heavy and inaccurate. But the author makes amends in what follows.

a With which such authors do frequently abound. One wonders to find the expletive “do” inserted in this place. It was to prevent the close of this paragraph from running into a verse:

"With which such authors frequently abound." He might have said, "which are frequent in such authors.”

talk seemed to run on ancient heroes, I concluded there could not be any secret in it; for which reason I thought I might very fairly listen to what they said.

After several parallels between great men, which appeared to me altogether groundless and chimerical, I was surprised to hear one say, 'That he valued the Black Prince more than the Duke of Vendosme.' How the Duke of Vendosme should become a rival of the Black Prince's, I could not conceive and was more startled, when I heard a second affirm with great vehemence, 'That if the emperor of Germany was not going off, he should like him better than either of them.' He added, 'That though the season was so changeable, the Duke of Marlborough was in blooming beauty.' I was wondering to myself from whence they had received this odd intelligence, especially when I heard them mention the names of several other great generals, as the Prince of Hesse, and the King of Sweden, who, they said, were both running away. To which they added, what I entirely agreed with them in, That the Crown of France was very weak, but that the Marshal Villars still kept his colours.' At last one of them told the company, 'If they would go along with him, he would show them a Chimney Sweeper and a Painted Lady in the same bed, which he was sure would very much please them.' The shower which had driven them, as well as myself, into the house was now over: and as they were passing by me into the garden, I asked them to let me be one of their company.

The gentleman of the house told me, 'If I delighted in flowers, it would be worth my while, for that he believed he could show me such a blow of tulips as was not to be matched in the whole country.'

I accepted the offer, and immediately found that they had been talking in terms of gardening, and that the kings and generals they had mentioned were only so many tulips, to which the

gardeners, according to their usual custom, had given such high titles and appellations of honour.

I was very much pleased and astonished at the glorious show of these gay vegetables, that arose in great profusion on all the banks about us. Sometimes I considered them, with the eye of an ordinary spectator, as so many beautiful objects, varnished over with a natural gloss, and stained with such a variety of colours, as are not to be equalled in any artificial dyes or tinctures. Sometimes I considered every leaf as an elaborate piece of tissue, in which the threads and fibres were woven together into different configurations, which gave a different colouring to the light as it glanced on the several parts of the surface. Sometimes I considered the whole bed of tulips, according to the notion of the greatest mathematician and philosopher that ever lived, as a multitude of optic instruments, designed for the separating light into all those various colours of which it is composed.

3

. I was awakened out of these my philosophical speculations, by observing the company often seemed to laugh at me. I accidentally praised a tulip as one of the finest I ever saw; upon which they told me, it was a common Fool's-coat. Upon that I praised a second, which it seems was but another kind of Fool'scoat. I had the same fate with two or three more; for which reason I desired the owner of the garden to let me know which were the finest of the flowers, for that I was so unskilful in the art, that I thought the most beautiful were the most valuable, and that those which had the gayest colours were the most beautiful. The gentleman smiled at my ignorance: he seemed a very plain honest man, and a person of good sense, had not his head been touched with that distemper which Hippocrates calls the Tulippo-Mania, Tvinnoμaría; insomuch that he would talk very rationally on any subject in the world but a tulip.