full in the Indolent, with his lips crumpled up, in the posture of one whistling. Her anger at this usage immediately appeared in every muscle of her face, and after many emotions, which glistened in her eyes, she cast them round the whole house, and gave them softness in the face of every man she had ever seen before. After she thought she had reduced all she saw to her obedience, the play began, and ended their dialogue. As soon as the first act was over, she stood up with a visage full of dissembled alacrity and pleasure, with which she overlooked the audience, and at last came to him; he was then placed in a side-way, with his hat slouched over his eyes, and gazing at a wench in the sidebox, as talking of that gypsy to the gentleman who sat by him. But, as she fixed upon him, he turned suddenly with a full face upon her, and, with all the respect imaginable, made her the most obsequious bow in the presence of the whole theatre. This gave her a pleasure not to be concealed; and she made him the recovering, or second courtsy, with a smile that spoke a perfect reconciliation. Between the ensuing acts, they talked to each other with gestures and glances so significant, that they ridiculed the whole house in this silent speech, and made an appointment that Mirtillo should lead her to her coach. The peculiar language of one eye, as it differs from another, as much as the tone of one voice from another, and the fascination or enchantment, which is lodged in the optic nerves of the persons concerned in these dialogues, is, I must confess, too nice a subject for one who is not an adept in these speculations; but I shall, for the good and safety of the fair sex, call my learned friend Sir William Read to my assistance, and, by the help of his observations on this organ, acquaint them when the eye is to be believed, and when distrusted. On the contrary, I shall conceal the true meaning of the looks of ladies, and indulge in them all the art they can acquire in the management of their glances: all which is but too little against creatures who triumph in falsehood, and begin to forswear with their eyes, when their tongues can be no longer believed. ADVERTISEMENT. *** A very clean well behaved young gentleman, who is in a very good way in Cornhill, has writ to me the following lines; and seems in some passages of his letter, which I omit, to lay it very much to heart, that I have not spoken of a supernatural beauty whom he sighs for, and complains to in most elaborate language. Alas! What can a Monitor do? All mankind live in romance. 66 Royal Exchange, March 11. "MR. BICKERSTAFF, "Some time since, you were pleased to mention the beauties in the New-Exchange and Westminsterhall, and in my judgment were not very impartial; for if you were pleased to allow there was one Goddess in the New-Exchange, and two Shepherdesses in Westminster-hall*, you very well might say, there was and is at present one Angel in the Royal-Exchange: and I humbly beg the favour of you to let justice be done her, by inserting this in your next Tatler; which will make her my good Angel, and me your most humble servant, *See Tatler, No. 139. A. B. N° 146. THURSDAY, MARCH 16, 1709-19. Permittes ipsis expenlere numinibus, quid JUV. Sat. x. 347, & seq. Intrust thy fortune to the Powers above; From my own Apartment, March 15. DRYDEN. AMONG the various sets of correspondents who apply to me for advice, and send up their cases from all parts of Great-Britain, there are none who are more importunate with me, and whom I am more inclined to answer, than the Complainers. One of them dates his letter to me from the banks of a purling stream, where he used to ruminate in solitude upon the divine Clarissa, and where he is now looking about for a convenient leap, which he tells me he is resolved to take, unless I support him under the loss of that charming perjured woman. Poor Lavinia presses as much for consolation on the other side, and is reduced to such an extremity of despair by the inconstancy of Philander, that she tells me she writes her letter with her pen in one hand, and her garter in the other. A gentleman of an antient family in Norfolk is almost out of his wits upon the account of a greyhound, that, after having been his inseparable companion for ten years, is at last run mad. Another, who I believe is serious, complains to me, in a very moving manner, of the loss of a wife; and another, in terms still more moving, of a purse of money that was taken from him on Bagshot-heath, and which, he tells me, would not have troubled him, if he had given it to the poor. In short, there is scarce a calamity in human life that has not produced me a letter. It is indeed wonderful to consider, how men are able to raise affliction to themselves out of every thing. Lands and houses, sheep and oxen, can convey happiness and misery into the hearts of reasonable creatures. Nay, I have known a muff, a scarf, or a tippet, become a solid blessing or misfortune. A lap-dog has broke the hearts of thousands. Flavia, who had buried five children and two husbands, was never able to get over the loss of her parrot. How often has a divine creature been thrown into a fit by a neglect at a ball or an assembly! Mopsa has kept her chamber ever since the last masquerade, and is in greater danger of her life upon being left out of it, than Clarinda from the violent cold which she caught at it. Nor are these dear creatures the only sufferers by such imaginary calamities. Many an author has been dejected at the censure of one whom he ever looked upon as an idiot and many an hero cast into a fit of melancholy, because the rabble have not hooted at him as he passed through the streets. Theron places all his happiness in a running horse, Suffenus in a gilded chariot, Fulvius in a blue string, and Florio in a tulip-root. It would be endless to enumerate the many fantastical afflictions that disturb mankind; but as a misery is not to be measured from the nature of the evil, but from the temper of the sufferer, I shall present my readers, who are unhappy either in reality or imagination, with an allegory, for which I am indebted to the great father and prince of poets. As I was sitting after dinner in my elbow-chair, I took up Homer, and dipped into that famous speech of Achilles to Priam*, in which he tells him, that Jupiter has by him two great vessels, the one filled with blessings, and the other with misfortunes; out of which he mingles a composition for every man that comes into the world. This passage so exceedingly pleased me, that, as I fell insensibly into my afternoon's slumber, it wrought my imagination into the following dream. When Jupiter took into his hands the government of the world, the several parts of nature with the presiding deities did homage to him. One presented him with a mountain of winds, another with a magazine of hail, and a third with a pile of thunder-bolts. The stars offered up their influences; Ocean gave in his trident, Earth her fruits, and the Sun his seasons. Among the several deities who came to make their court on this occasion, the *Two urns by Jove's high throne have ever stood, |