[Steele.

Tuesday, June 20, to Thursday, June 22, 1710.

From my own Apartment. June 21.

I was this morning looking over my letters that I have lately received from my several correspondents; some of which referring to my late papers, I have laid aside, with an intent to give my reader a sight of them. The first criticises upon my greenhouse, and is as follows:

"Mr. Bickerstaff, "South Wales, June 7.

"This letter comes to you from my orangery, which I intend to reform as much as I can, according to your ingenious model, and shall only beg of you to communicate to me your secret of preserving grass-plots in a covered room;[317] for in the climate where my country-seat lies, they require rain and dews as well as sun and fresh air, and cannot live upon such fine food as your 'sifted weather.' I must likewise desire you to write over your greenhouse the following motto:

instead of your

which, under favour, is the panting of one in summer after cool shades, and not of one in winter after a summer-house. The rest of your plan is very beautiful; and that your friend who has so well described it may enjoy it many winters, is the hearty wish of

"His and your Unknown," &c.

This oversight of a grass-plot in my friend's greenhouse, puts me in mind of a like inconsistency in a celebrated picture, where Moses is represented as striking a rock, and the Children of Israel quenching their thirst at the waters that flow from it, and run through a beautiful landscape of groves and meadows, which could not flourish in a place where water was to have been found only by a miracle.

The next letter comes to me from a Kentish yeoman, who is very angry with me for my advice to parents, occasioned by the amours of Sylvia and Philander, as related in my paper, No. 185:

"Squire Bickerstaff,

"I don't know by what chance one of your Tatlers is got into my family, and has almost turned the brains of my eldest daughter Winifred, who has been so undutiful as to fall in love of her own head, and tells me a foolish heathen story that she has read in your paper to persuade me to give my consent. I am too wise to let children have their own wills in a business like marriage. It is a matter in which neither I myself, nor any of my kindred, were ever humoured. My wife and I never pretended to love one another like your Sylvias and Philanders; and yet if you saw our fireside, you would be satisfied we are not always a-squabbling. For my part, I think that where man and woman come together by their own good liking, there is so much fondling and fooling, that it hinders young people from minding their business. I must therefore desire you to change your note, and instead of advising us old folks, who perhaps have more wit than yourself, to let Sylvia know, that she ought to act like a dutiful daughter, and marry the man that she does not care for. Our great-grandmothers were all bid to marry first, and love would come afterwards; and I don't see why their daughters should follow their own inventions. I am resolved Winifred shan't.

"Yours," &c.

This letter is a natural picture of ordinary contracts, and of the sentiments of those minds that lie under a kind of intellectual rusticity. This trifling occasion made me run over in my imagination the many scenes I have observed of the married condition, wherein the quintessence of pleasure and pain are represented as they accompany that state, and no other. It is certain, there are a thousand thousand like the above-mentioned yeoman and his wife, who are never highly pleased or distasted in their whole lives: but when we consider the more informed part of mankind, and look upon their behaviour, it then appears that very little of their time is indifferent, but generally spent in the most anxious vexation, or the highest satisfaction. Shakespeare has admirably represented both the aspects of this state in the most excellent tragedy of "Othello." In the character of Desdemona, he runs through all the sentiments of a virtuous maid and a tender wife. She is captivated by his virtue, and faithful to him, as well from that motive, as regard to her own honour. Othello is a great and noble spirit, misled by the villany of a false friend to suspect her innocence, and resents it accordingly. When after the many instances of passion the wife is told her husband is jealous, her simplicity makes her incapable of believing it, and say, after such circumstances as would drive another woman into distraction,

This opinion of him is so just, that his noble and tender heart beats itself to pieces before he can affront her with the mention of his jealousy; and owns, this suspicion has blotted out all the sense of glory and happiness which before it was possessed with, when he laments himself in the warm allusions of a mind accustomed to entertainments so very different from the pangs of jealousy and revenge. How moving is his sorrow, when he cries out as follows:

I believe I may venture to say, there is not in any other part of Shakespeare's works more strong and lively pictures of nature than in this. I shall therefore steal incog. to see it, out of curiosity to observe how Wilks and Cibber touch those places where Betterton[321] and Sandford[322] so very highly excelled. But now I am got into a discourse of acting, with which I am so professedly pleased, I shall conclude this paper with a note I have just received from the two ingenious friends, Mr. Penkethman[323] and Mr. Bullock:[324]

"Sir,

"Finding by your paper, No. 182, that you are drawing parallels between the greatest actors of the age; as you have already begun with Mr. Wilks and Mr. Cibber, we desire you would do the same justice to your humble Servants,

"William Bullock, and "William Penkethman."

For the information of posterity, I shall comply with this letter, and set these two great men in such a light as Sallust has placed his Cato and Cæsar.

Mr. William Bullock and Mr. William Penkethman are of the same age, profession, and sex. They both distinguish themselves in a very particular manner under the discipline of the crabtree, with this only difference, that Mr. Bullock has the most agreeable squawl, and Mr. Penkethman the more graceful shrug. Penkethman devours a cold chicken with great applause; Bullock's talent lies chiefly in asparagus. Penkethman is very dexterous at conveying himself under a table; Bullock is no less active at jumping over a stick. Mr. Penkethman has a great deal of money, but Mr. Bullock is the taller man.

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