read it before you signed it?”—“Yes, sure, Sir,” said the new comer. Socrates replies, "Could a man, that would not give his estate without reading the instrument, dispose of his life without asking a question?" That illustrious shade turned from him, and a crowd of impertinent goblins, who had been drolls and parasites in their life-time, and were knocked on the head for their sauciness, came about my fellowtraveller, and made themselves very merry with questions about the words Cart and Terce, and other terms of fencers. But his thoughts began to settle into reflection upon the adventure which had robbed him of his late being: and, with a wretched sigh, said he, "How terrible are conviction and guilt, when they come too late for penitence"!

You

Pacolet was going on in this strain, but he recovered from it, and told me, it was too soon to give my discourse on this subject so serious a turn; have chiefly to do with that part of mankind which anust be led into reflection by degrees, and you must treat this custom with humour and raillery to get an audience, before you come to pronounce sentence

Gordon. God only can know the event, and into his hands I commit my soul, conscious only of having done my duty. 'I therefore declare this to be my last will and testament, &c.'

'In the first place, I commit my soul to Almighty God, in hopes of his mercy and pardon for the irreligious step I now (in compliance with the unwarrantable customs of this wicked world) put myself under the necessity of taking, &c.

(Signed)

FRED. THOMAS.

Lieut. Col. Thomas was killed; and Col. Gordon tried for the murder, but acquitted,

upon it. There is foundation enough for raising such entertainments, from the practice on this occasion. Do you not know that often a man is called out of bed to follow implicitly a coxcomb (with whom he would not keep company on any other occasion) to ruin and death? Then a good list of such as are qualified by the laws of these uncourteous men of chivalry to enter into combat (who are often persons of honour without common honesty); these, I say, ranged and drawn up in their proper order, would give an aversion to doing any thing in common with such as men laugh at and contemn. But to go through this work, you must not let your thoughts vary, or make excursions from your theme: consider, at the same time, that the matter has been often treated by the ablest and greatest writers; yet that must not discourage you for the properest person to handle it is one who has roved into mixed conversations, and must have opportunities (which I shall give you) of seeing these sort of men in their pleasures and gratifications, among which they pretend to reckon fighting. It was pleasantly enough said of a bully in France, when duels first began to be punished: "The king has taken away gaming and stage-playing, and now fighting too; how does he expect gentlemen shall divert themselves"?"

STEELE.

N° 27. SATURDAY, JUNE 11, 1709.

Quicquid agunt homines

nostri est farrago libelli.

Whatever good is done, whatever ill

JUV. Sat. i. 85, 86.

By human kind, shall this collection fill.

White's Chocolate-house, June 9.

PACOLET being gone a-strolling among the men of the sword', in order to find out the secret causes of the frequent disputes we meet with, and furnish me with materials for my treatise on duelling; I have room left to go on in my information to my country readers, whereby they may understand the bright people whose memoirs I have taken upon me to write. But in my discourse of the twenty-eighth of the last month, I omitted to mention the most agreeable of all bad characters, and that is, a Rake.

A Rake is a man always to be pitied; and, if he lives, is one day certainly reclaimed; for his faults proceed not from choice or inclination, but from strong passions and appetites, which are in youth too violent for the curb of reason, good sense, good manners, and good-nature: all which he must have by nature and education, before he can be allowed to be, or to have been of this order. He is a poor unwieldy wretch that commits faults out of the redundance of his good qualities. His pity and compassion make him sometimes a bubble to all his fellows, let them be

See No 25, 26, 28, 29, 31, 38, and 39.

never so much below him in understanding. His desires run away with him through the strength and force of a lively imagination, which hurries him on to unlawful pleasures, before reason has power to come in to his rescue. Thus, with all the good intentions in the world to amendment, this creature sins on against Heaven, himself, his friends, and his country, who all call for a better use of his talents. There is not a being under the sun so miserable as this: he goes on in a pursuit he himself disapproves, and has no enjoyment but what is followed by remorse; no relief from remorse, but the repetition of his crime. It is possible I may talk of this person with too much indulgence; but I must repeat it, that I think this a character which is the most the object of pity of any in the world. The man in the pangs of the stone, gout, or any acute distemper, is not in so deplorable a condition, in the eye of right sense, as he that errs and repents, and repents and errs on. The fellow

with broken limbs justly deserves your alms for his impotent condition; but he that cannot use his own reason is in a much worse state; for you see him in miserable circumstances, with his remedy at the same time in his own possession, if he would, or could use it. This is the cause that, of all ill characters, the Rake has the best quarter in the world; for when he is himself, and unruffled with intemperance, you see his natural faculties exert themselves, and attract an eye of favour towards his infirmities.

But if we look round us here, how many dull rogues are there, that would fain be what this poor man hates himself for? All the noise towards six in the evening, is caused by his mimics and imitators. How ought men of sense to be careful of their ac

tions, if it were merely from the indignation of seeing themselves ill drawn by such little pretenders! Not to say, he that leads is guilty of all the actions of his followers; and a Rake has imitators whom you would never expect should prove so. Second-hand

vice, sure, of all is the most nauseous. There is hardly a folly more absurd, or which seems less to be accounted for (though it is what we see every day), than that grave and honest natures give into this way, and at the same time have good sense, if they thought fit to use it; but the fatality (under which most men labour) of desiring to be what they are not, makes them go out of a method, in which they might be received with applause, and would certainly excel, into one, wherein they will all their life have the air of strangers to what they aim at.

For this reason, I have not lamented the metainorphosis of any one I know so much as of Nobilis, who was born with sweetness of temper, just apprehension, and every thing else that might make him a man fit for his order. But instead of the pursuit of sober studies and applications, in which he would certainly be capable of making a considerable figure in the noblest assembly of men in the world; I say, in spite of that good nature, which is his proper bent, he will say ill-natured things aloud, put such as he was, and still should be, out of countenance, and drown all the natural good in him, to receive an artificial ill character, in which he will never succeed; for Nobilis is no Rake. He may guzzle as much wine as he pleases, talk bawdy if he thinks fit.; but he may as well drink water-gruel, and go twice a-day to church, for it will never do. I pronounce it again, Nobilis is no Rake. To be of that order, he must be vicious against his