his weekly papers, and gave us that remarkable account of his silence (for you must know, though we do not read, yet we inspect all such useful essays,) we seemed unanimous to invite him to partake of our secrecy, but it was unluckily objected, that he had just then published a discourse of his at his own club, and had not arrived at that happy inactivity of the tongue, which we expected from a man of his understanding. You will wonder perhaps, how we managed this debate, but it will be easily accounted for, when I tell you that our fingers are as nimble, and as infallible interpreters of our thoughts, as other men's tongues are; yet even this mechanic eloquence is only allowed upon the weightiest occasions. We admire the wise institutions of the Turks, and other Eastern nations, where all eommands are performed by officious mutes; and we wonder that the polite courts of christendom should come so far short of the majesty of the barbarians. Ben Jonson has gained an eternal reputation among us, by his play called the Silent Woman. Every member here is another Morose1 while the club is sitting, but at home may talk as much and as fast as his family occasions require, without breach of statute. The advantages we find from this quakerlike assembly are many. We consider that the understanding of man is liable to mistakes, and his will fond of contradictions; that disputes, which are of no weight in themselves, are often very considerable in their effects. The disuse of the tongue is the only effectual remedy against these. All party concerns, all private scandal, all insults over another man's weaker reasons, must there be lost, where no disputes arise. Another advantage which follows from the first, (and which is very rarely to be met with,) is, that we are all upon the same level in conversation. A wag of my acquaintance used to add a third, viz. that if ever we debate, we are sure to have all our arguments, at our fingers

a The name of a character in The Silent Woman.-*.

ends. Of all Longinus's remarks, we are most enamoured with that excellent passage, where he mentions Ajax's silence as one of the noblest instances of the sublime, and (if you will allow me to be free with a namesake of yours) I should think that the everlasting story-teller Nestor, had he been likened to the ass instead of our hero, he had suffered less by the comparison.

"I have already described the practice and sentiments of this society, and shall but barely mention the report of the neighbourhood, that we are not only as mute as fishes, but that we drink like fishes too: that we are like the Welchman's owl, though we do not sing, we pay it off with thinking: others take us for an assembly of disaffected persons, nay, their zeal to the government has carried them so far as to send, last week, a party of constables to surprise us you may easily imagine how exactly we represented the Roman senators of old, sitting with majestic silence, and undaunted at the approach of an army of Gauls. If you approve of our undertaking, you need not declare it to the world your silence shall be interpreted as consent given to the honourable body of mutes, and in particular to

"Your humble servant,

"NED MUM."

"P. S. We have had but one word spoken since the foundation, for which the member was expelled by the old Roman custom of bending back the thumb. He had just received the news of the battle of Hochstat,' and being too impatient to communicate his joy, was unfortunately betrayed into a lapsus linguæ. We acted on the principles of the Roman Manlius; and though we approved of the cause of his error as just, we condemned the effect as a manifest violation of his duty."

1 Better known as the battle of Blenheim.-Carefully as Addison seems to avoid politics in these papers, he cannot always keep back the Whig. ~G.

I never could have thought a dumb man would have roared so well out of my lion's mouth. My next pretty correspondent, like Shakespear's lion in Pyramus and Thisbe, roars an it were any nightingale.

“MR. IRONSIDE,

July 28, 1713.

"I was afraid at first you were only in jest, and had a mind to expose our nakedness for the diversion of the town; but since I see that you are in good earnest, and have infallibility of your side, I cannot forbear returning my thanks to you for the care you take of us, having a friend who has promised me to give my letters to the lion, till we can communicate our thoughts to you through our own proper vehicle. Now you must know, dear sir, that if you do not take care to suppress this exorbitant growth of the female chest. all that is left of my waist must inevitably perish. It is at this time reduced to the depth of four inches, by what I have already made over to my neck. But if the stripping design, mentioned by Mrs. Figleaf yesterday, should take effect, sir, I dread to think what it will come to. In short, there is no help for it, my girdle and all must go. This is the naked truth of the matter. Have pity on me then, my dear Guardian, and preserve me from being so inhumanly exposed. I do assure you that I follow your precepts as much as a young woman can, who will live in the world without being laughed at. I have no hooped petticoat, and when I am a matron will wear broad tuckers whether you succeed or no. If the flying project takes, I intend to be the last in wings, being resolved in every thing to behave myself as becomes

"Your most obedient ward."

VOL. IV.-18

No. 122. FRIDAY, JULY 31.

Nec magis expressi vultus per ahenea signa.-HOR.

THAT I may get out of debt with the public as fast as I can, I shall here give them the remaining part of Strada's criticism on the Latin heroic poets. My readers may see the whole work in the three papers numbered 115, 119, 122. acquainted with the authors themselves, cannot

Those who are

but be pleased

to see them so justly represented; and as for those who have never perused the originals, they may form a judgment of them from such accurate and entertaining copies. The whole piece will show, at least, how a man of genius (and none else should call himself a critic) can make the driest art a pleasing amuse

ment.

THE SEQUEL OF STRADA'S PROLUSION.

The poet who personated Ovid gives an account of the chryso-magnet, or of the loadstone which attracts gold, after the same manner as the common loadstone attracts iron. The author, that he might express Ovid's way of thinking, derives this virtue to the chryso-magnet from a poetical metamorphosis.

'As I was sitting by a well, (says he) when I was a boy, my ring dropped into it, when immediately my father fastening a certain stone to the end of a line, let it down into the well. It no sooner touched the surface of the water, but the ring leaped up from the bottom, and clung to it in such a manner, that he drew it out like a fish. My father seeing me wonder at the experiment, gave me the following account of it. When Deucalion and Pyrrha went about the world to repair mankind by throwing stones over their heads, the men who rose from them differed in their inclinations, according to the places on which

the stones fell.

and shepherds. and fishermen.

Those which fell in the fields became plowmen Those which fell into the water produced sailors. Those that fell among the woods and forests gave birth to huntsmen. Among the rest there were several that fell upon mountains, that had mines of gold and silver in them. This last race of men immediately betook themselves to the search of these precious metals; but nature being displeased to see herself ransacked, withdrew these her treasures towards the centre of the earth. The avarice of man, however, persisted in its former pursuits, and ransacked her inmost bowels in quest of the riches which they contained. Nature seeing herself thus plundered by a swarm of miners, was so highly incensed, that she shook the whole place with an earthquake, and buried the men under their own works. The Stygian flames which lay in the neighbourhood of these deep mines, broke out at the same time with great fury, burning up the whole mass of human limbs and earth, until they were hardened and baked into stone. The human bodies that were delving in iron mines were converted into those common loadstones which attract that metal. Those which were in search of gold became chryso magnets, and still keep their former avarice in their present state of petrefaction.'

speaking, but the assembly Several were so taken with formed their tastes upon it,

Ovid had no sooner given over pronounced their opinions of him. his easy way of writing, and had so that they had no relish for any composition which was not framed in the Ovidian manner. A great many, however, were of a contrary opinion, until, at length, it was determined by a plu rality of voices, that Ovid highly deserved the name of a witty man, but that his language was vulgar and trivial, and of the nature of those things which cost no labour in the invention, but are ready found out to a man's hand. In the last place