hurt myself, but am very often above half an hour before I can catch either of them; for you must know we hide ourselves up and down in corners, that we may have the more sport. I only give you this hint as a sample of such innocent diversions as I would have you recommend: and am, Most esteemed SIR, Your ever loving friend, The following letter was occasioned by my last Thursday's paper upon the absence of lovers, and the methods therein mentioned of making such absence supportable. 'SIR, 'AMONG the several ways of consolation which absent lovers make use of while their souls are in that state of departure, which you say is death in love, there are some very material ones that have escaped your notice. Among these, the first and most received is a crooked shilling, which has administered great comfort to our forefathers, and is still made use of on this occasion with very good effect in most parts of her majesty's dominions. There are some, I know, who think a crown piece cut into two equal parts, and preserved by the distant lovers, is of more sovereign virtue than the former. But since opinions are divided in this particular, why may not the same persons make use of both? The figure of a heart, whether cut in stone or cast in metal, whether bleeding upon an altar, stuck with darts, or held in the hand of a Cupid, has always been looked upon as talismanic in distresses of this nature. I am acquainted with many a brave fellow, who carries his mistress in the lid of his snuffbox, and by that expedient has supported himself under the absence of a whole campaign. For my own part, I have tried all these remedies, but never found so much benefit from any as from a ring, in which my mistress's hair is plaited together very artificially in a kind of true-lover's knot. As I have received great benefit from this secret, I think myself obliged to communicate it to the public for the good of my fellow-subjects. I desire you will add this letter as an appendix to your consolations upon absence, and am Your very humble servant, T. B.' I shall conclude this paper with a letter from an university gentleman, occasioned by my last Tuesday's paper, wherein I gave some account of the great feuds which happened formerly in those learned bodies, between the modern Greeks and Trojans. SIR, THIS will give you to understand, that there is at present in the society whereof I am a member, a very considerable body of Trojans, who, upon a proper occasion, would not fail to declare ourselves. In the mean while we do all we can to annoy our enemies by stratagem, and are resolved by the first opportunity to attack Mr. Joshua Barnes,* whom we look upon as the Achilles of the opposite party. As for myself, I have had the reputation ever since I came from school, of being a trusty Trojan, and am resolved never to give quarter to the smallest particle of *The noted Greek professor of the university of Cambridge., Greek, wherever I chance to meet it. It is for this reason I take it very ill of that you, you sometimes hang out Greek colours at the head of your paper, and sometimes give a word of the enemy even in the body of it. When I meet with any thing of this nature, I throw down your speculations upon the table, with that form of words which we make use of when we declare war upon an author, Græcum est, non potest legi. I give you this hint, that you may for the future abstain from any such hostilities at your peril. TROILUS.' No. 246. WEDNESDAY, DEC. 12, 1711. Οὐκ άρα σοί γε πατὴρ ἦν ἱππότα Πηλεύς, HOM. Iliad xvi. 63: No amorous hero ever gave thee birth, Nor ever tender goddess brought thee forth: < MR. SPECTATOR, POPE. 'As your paper is part of the equipage of the tea-table, I conjure you to print what I now write to you; for I have no other way to communicate what I have to say to the fair sex on the most important circumstances of life, even the care of children.' I do not understand that you profess your paper is always to consist of matters which are only to entertain the learned and pofite, but that it may agree with your design to publish some which may tend to the information of mankind in general; and when it does so, you do more than writing wit and humour. Give me leave then to tell you, that of all the abuses that ever you have as yet endeavoured to reform, certainly not one wanted so much your assistance as the abuse in nursing of children. It is unmerciful to see, that a woman endowed with all the perfections and blessings of nature can, as soon as she is delivered, turn off her innocent, tender, and helpless infant, and give it up to a woman that is (ten thousand to one) neither in health nor good condition, neither sound in mind nor body, that has neither honour nor reputation, neither love nor pity for the poor babe, but more regard for the money than for the whole child, and never will take farther care of it than what by all the encouragement of money and presents she is forced to; like Æsop's earth, which would not nurse the plant of another ground, although never so much improved, by reason that plant was not of its own production. And since another's child is no more natural to a nurse, than a plant to a strange and different ground, how can it be supposed that the child should thrive; and if it thrives, must it not imbibe the gross humours and qualities of the nurse, like a plant in a different ground, or like a graft upon a different stock? Do not we observe, that a lamb sucking a goat changes very much its nature, nay even its skin and wool into the goat kind? The power a nurse over a child, by infusing into it with her milk her qualities and disposition, is sufficiently of and daily observed. Hence came that old saying concerning an ill-natured and malicious fellow, that he had imbibed his malice with his nurse's milk, or that some brute or other had been his nurse." Hence Romulus and Remus were said to have been nursed by a wolf; Telephus the son of Hercules by a hind; Pelias the son of Neptune by a mare; and Ægisthus by a goat; not that they had actually sucked such creatures, as some simpletons have imagined, but that their nurses had been of such a nature and temper, and infused such into them. 6 Many instances may be produced from good authorities and daily experience, that children actually suck in the several passions and depraved inclinations of their nurses, as anger, malice, fear, melancholy, sadness, desire, and aversion. This Diodorus, lib. 2. witnesses, when he speaks, saying, that Nero the Emperor's nurse had been very much addicted to drinking; which habit Nero received from his nurse, and was so very particular in this, that the people took so much notice of it, as instead of Tiberius Nero, they called him Biberius Mero. The same Diodorus also relates of Caligula, predecessor to Nero, that his nurse used to moisten the nipples of her breast frequently with blood, to make Caligula take the better hold of them: which, says Diodorus, was the cause that made him so blood-thirsty and cruel all his life-time after, that he not only committed frequent murder by his own hand, but likewise wished that all human kind wore but one neck, that he might have the pleasure to cut it off. Such like degeneracies astonish the parents, who, not knowing after whom the child can take, see one incline to stealing, another to drinking, cruelty, stupidity; yet all these are not minded. |