hours after this manner; when I found it past five: and not expecting her husband would return till late, rose up, told her I should go early next morning for the country: she kindly answered she was afraid it would be long before she saw me again; so I took my leave and parted. Now, sir, I had not been got home a fortnight, when I received a letter from a neighbour of theirs, that ever since that fatal afternoon the lady had been most inhumanly treated, and the husband publicly stormed that he was made a member of too numerous a society. He had, it seems, listened most of the time my cousin and I were together. As jealous ears always hear double, so he heard enough to make him mad; and as jealous eyes always see through magnifying glasses, so he was certain it could not be I whom he had seen, a beardless stripling, but fancied he saw a gay gentleman of the Temple, ten years older than myself; and for that reason, I presume, durst not come in, nor take any notice when I went out. He is perpetually asking his wife if she does not think the time long (as she said she should) until she see her cousin again. Pray, sir, what can be done in this case? I have writ to him to assure him I was at his house all that afternoon expecting to see him: his answer is, 'tis only a trick of her's, and that he neither can nor will believe me. The parting kiss I find mightily nettles him, and confirms in him all his errors. Ben Johnson, 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 can not imagine, sir, how troubled I am for this unhappy lady's misfortune, and I 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," says 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. 'Tis 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 forward in believing it. shall endeavour to enliven this plain and honest letter with Ovid's relation about Cybele's image. The ship wherein it was, aboard was stranded at the mouth of the Tyber, and the men were unable to move it, till 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. my 'Parent of gods, began the weeping fair, She spoke, and touched the cord with glad surprise, Followed in triumph, and adorned her guide; 'I am, sir, your very 'MR. SPECTATOR, humble servant, 6 PHILAGNOTES.' You will oblige a languishing lover if you will please to print, the enclosed verses in your next paper. If you remember the metamorphosis, 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 VOL. X. 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 Æolian shepherd said, At random wounds, nor knows the wound she gives. No. 528. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 5. Dum potuit, solitâ gemitum virtute repressit. OVID. With wonted fortitude she bore the smart, 6 MR. SPECTATOR, GAY. 'I WHO now write to you am a woman loaded with injuries, and the aggravation of my misfortune is, that they are such which are overlooked by the generality of mankind, and though the most afflicting imaginable, not regarded as such *These verses and the letter by which they are introduced, were written by Pope. It is not known who wrote the rest of the paper, as it was not lettered at the end; but it might probably be Hughes. See the concluding paragraph of No. 537. in the general sense of the world. I have hid my vexation from all mankind; but have now taken pen, ink and paper, and 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 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 good 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 of 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 |