overcome such griefs as these, but I should rather advise you to teach men to be capable of them.

'You men of letters have what you call the fine taste in your apprehensions of what is properly done or said. There is something like this deeply grafted in the soul of him who is honest and faithful in all his thoughts and actions. Every thing which is false, vicious, or unworthy, is despicable to him, though all the world should approve it. At the same time he has the most lively sensibility in all enjoyments and sufferings which it is proper for him to have, where any duty of life is concerned. To want sorrow when you in decency and truth should be afflicted, is, I should think, a greater instance of a man's being a blockhead, than not to know the beauty of any passage in Virgil. You have not yet observed, Mr. Spectator, that the fine gentlemen of this age set up for hardness of heart, and humanity has very little share in their pretences. He is a brave fellow who is always ready to kill a man he hates, but he does not stand in the same degree of esteem who laments for the woman he loves. I should fancy you might work up a thousand pretty thoughts, by reflecting upon the persons most susceptible of the sort of sorrow I have spoken of; and I dare say you will find, upon examination, that they are the wisest and the bravest of mankind who are the most capable of it. I am, sir, your most humble servant, Norwich 7 Octobris, 1712.

STEELE.

F. J.

T.

No. 521. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 28.

Vera redit facies, dissimulata perit.

The real face returns, the counterfeit is lost.

MR. SPECTATOR,

P. ARB.

'I HAVE been for many years loud in this assertion, that there are very few that can see or hear, I mean that can report what they have seen or heard; and this through incapacity or prejudice, one of which disables almost every man who talks to you from representing things as he ought. For which reason I am come to a resolution of believing nothing I hear; and I contemn the man given to narration under the appellation of a matter-of-fact man; and, according to me, a matterof-fact man is one whose life and conversation is spent in the report of what is not matter of fact.

'I remember when Prince Eugene was here, there was no knowing his height or figure, till you, Mr. Spectator, gave the public satisfaction in that matter. In relation, the force of the expression lies very often more in the look, the tone of the voice, or the gesture, than the words themselves, which being repeated in any other manner by the undiscerning, bear a very different interpretation from their original meaning. I must confess I formerly have turned this humour of mine to very good account; for whenever I heard any narration uttered with extraordinary vehemence, and grounded upon considerable authority, I was always ready to lay any wager that it was not so. Indeed, I never pretended to be so rash as to fix the matter any particular way in op

position to theirs; but as there are a hundred ways of any thing happening, besides that it has happened, I only controverted its falling out in that one manner as they settled it, and left it to the ninety-nine other ways, and consequently had more probability of success. I had arrived at a more particular skill in warming a man so far in his narration as to make him throw in a little of the marvellous, and then, if he has much fire, the next degree is the impossible. Now this is always the time for fixing the wager. But this requires the nicest management, otherwise very probably the dispute may arise to the old determination by battle. In these conceits I have been very fortunate, and have won some wagers of those who have professedly valued themselves upon intelligence, and have put themselves to great charge and expense to be misinformed considerably sooner than the rest of the world.

'Having got a comfortable sum by this my opposition to public report, I have brought myself now to so great a perfection in inattention, more especially to party relations, that at the same time I seem with greedy ears to devour up the discourse, I certainly do not know one word of it, but pursue my own course of thought, whether upon business or amusement, with much tranquillity: I say inattention, because a late act of parliament has secured all party liars from the penalty of a wager, and consequently made it unprofitable to attend to them. However, goodbreeding obliges a man to maintain the figure of

*By St. 7. ch. 17. of Anne, all wagers laid upon a contingency relating to the war with France were declared to be void.

the keenest attention, the true posture of which in a coffee-house I take to consist in leaning over a table, with the edge of it pressing hard upon your stomach: for the more pain the narration is received with, the more gracious is your bending over: besides that the narrator thinks you forget your pain by the pleasure of hearing him..

Fort Knock has occasioned several very perplexed and elegant heats and animosities: and there was one the other day in a coffee-house where I was, that took upon him to clear that business to me, for he said he was there. I knew him to be that sort of a man that had not strength of capacity to be informed of any thing that depended merely upon his being an eye-witness, and therefore was fully satisfied he could give me no information, for the very same reason he believed he could, for he was there. However, I heard him with the same greediness as Shakspeare describes in the following lines:

I saw a smith stand on his hammer, thus,

With open mouth swallowing a tailor's news."

'I confess of late I have not been so much amazed at the declaimers in coffee-houses as I formerly was, being satisfied that they expect to be rewarded for their vociferations. Of these liars there are two sorts. The genius of the first consists in much impudence and a strong memory; the others have added to these qualifications a good understanding and smooth language. These therefore have only certain heads, which they are as eloquent upon as they can, and may be called embellishers; the others repeat only what they hear from others as literally as their parts or zeal

Here was a

will permit, and are called reciters. fellow in town some years ago, who used to divert himself by telling a lie at Charing-Cross in the morning at eight of the clock, and then following it through all parts of the town till eight at night; at which time he came to a club of his friends, and diverted them with an account of what censure it had at Will's in Covent-Garden, how dangerous it was believed to be at Child's, and what inference they drew from it with relation to stocks at Jonathan's. I have had the honour to travel with this gentleman I speak of, in search of one of his falsehoods; and have been present when they have described the very man they have spoken to, as him who first reported it, tall or short, black or fair, a gentleman or a ragamuffin, according as they liked the intelligence. I have heard one of our ingenious writers of news say, that when he has had a customer come with an advertisement of an apprentice or a wife run away, he has desired the advertiser to compose himself a little before he dictated the description of the offender; for when a person is put into a public paper by a man who is angry with him, the real description of such a person is hid in the deformity with which the angry man describes him; therefore this fellow always made his customers describe him as he would the day before he offended, or else he was sure he would never find him out. These and many other hints I could suggest to you for the elucidation of all fictions; but I leave it to your own sagacity to improve or neglect this speculation. I am, sir, Your most obedient and humble servant.' STEELE

T.