2

which you will easily believe when you know she paints fans for all her female acquaintance, and draws all her relations' pictures in miniature; the first must be mounted by nobody but Colmar, and the other set by nobody but Charles Mather.' What follows is still much worse than the former; for as I told you she is a great artist at her needle, 'tis incredible what sums she expends in embroidery : for besides what is appropriated to her personal use, as mantuas, petticoats, stomachers, handkerchiefs, purses, pin-cushions, and working aprons, she keeps four French Protestants continually employed in making divers pieces of superfluous furniture, as quilts, toilets, hangings for closets, beds, window curtains, easy-chairs, and tabourets: nor have I any hopes of ever reclaiming her from this extravagance, while she obstinately persists in thinking it a notable piece of good housewifery, because they are made at home, and she has had some share in the performThere would be no end of relating to you the particulars of the annual charge in furnishing her store-room with a profusion of pickles and preserves; for she is not contented with having every

ance.

1 A successful toyman in Fleet Street, who died at Teddington, some time after he had retired from his business next door to Nandoe's Coffee-House, over against Chancery Lane.' See No. 503, and the Tatler, Nos. 27, 113, and 142. Mr. Dobson quotes from Swift's Sid Hamet's Rod,' 1710:—

No hobby horse, with gorgeous top,

The dearest in Charles Mather's shop,
Or glittering tinsel of Mayfair

Could with the rod of Sid compare ;

and Pope's Basset Table,' 1716 :

Behold this equipage, by Mathers wrought,
With fifty guineas (a great pen'worth) bought.'

2 See No. 160.

thing, unless it be done every way, in which she consults an hereditary book of receipts; for her female ancestors have been always famed for good housewifery, one of whom is made immortal by giving her name to an eye-water and two sorts of puddings. I cannot undertake to recite all her medicinal preparations, as salves, cerecloths, powders, confects, cordials, ratafia, persico, orange-flower, and cherrybrandy, together with innumerable sorts of simple waters. But there is nothing I lay so much to heart as that detestable catalogue of counterfeit wines, which derive their names from the fruits, herbs, or trees of whose juices they are chiefly compounded: they are loathsome to the taste and pernicious to the health; and as they seldom survive the year, and then are thrown away, under a false pretence of frugality, I may affirm they stand me in more than if I entertained all our visitors with the best burgundy and champagne. Coffee, chocolate, green, imperial, Pekoe, and Bohea tea, seem to be trifles; but when the proper appurtenances of the tea-table are added, they swell the account higher than one would imagine. I cannot conclude without doing her justice in one article; where her frugality is so remarkable I must not deny her the merit of it, and that is in relation to her children, who are all confined, both boys and girls, to one large room in the remotest part of the house, with bolts on the doors, and bars to the windows, under the care and tuition of an old woman who had been dry-nurse to her grandmother. This is their residence all the year round; and as they are never allowed to appear, she prudently thinks it needless to be at any expense in apparel or learning. Her eldest daughter to this day would have neither read nor writ if it had not been for the butler, who, being the son of a country

attorney, has taught her such a hand as is generally used for engrossing bills in Chancery. By this time I have sufficiently tired your patience with my domestic grievances; which I hope you will agree could not well be contained in a narrower compass, when you consider what a paradox I undertook to maintain in the beginning of my epistle, and which manifestly appears to be but too melancholy a truth. And now I heartily wish the relation I have given of my misfortunes may be of use and benefit to the public. By the example I have set before them, the truly virtuous wives may learn to avoid those errors which have so unhappily misled mine, and which are visibly these three. First, in mistaking the proper objects of her esteem, and fixing her affections upon such things as are only the trappings and decorations of her sex. Secondly, in not distinguishing what becomes the different stages of life. And, lastly, the abuse and corruption of some excellent qualities which, if circumscribed within just bounds, would have been the blessings and prosperity of her family, but by a vicious extreme are like to be the bane and destruction of it.'

T.

N 328*. Monday, March 17, 1712

TH

Delectata illa urbanitate tam stulta.

[STEELE.1

-PETRON. ARB.

HAT useful part of learning which consists in emendations, knowledge of different readings, and the like, is what in all ages persons extremely wise and learned have had in great venera1 This paper is the No. 328 of the original issue. See note to the preceding number, p. 36.

tion. For this reason I cannot but rejoice at the following epistle, which lets us into the true author of the letter to Mrs. Margaret Clark,' part of which I did myself the honour to publish in a former paper. I must confess I do not naturally affect critical learning; but finding myself not so much regarded as I am apt to flatter myself I may deserve from some professed patrons of learning, I could not but do myself the justice to show I am not a stranger to such erudition as they smile upon, if I were duly encouraged. However, this only to let the world see what I could do; and shall not give my reader any more of this kind, if he will forgive the ostentation I show at present.

'SIR,

• March 13, 1712.

"UPON reading your paper of yesterday, I took

the pains to look out a copy I had formerly taken, and remembered to be very like your last letter comparing them, I found they were the very same, and have, underwritten, sent you that part of it which you say was torn off. I hope you will insert it, that posterity may know 'twas Gabriel Bullock that made love in that natural style of which you seem to be fond. But, to let you see I have other manuscripts in the same way, I have sent you enclosed three copies, faithfully taken by my own hand from the originals, which were writ by a Yorkshire gentleman of a good estate to Madam Mary, and an uncle of hers, a knight very well known by the most ancient gentry in that and several other counties of Great Britain. I have exactly followed

1 See No. 324.

I have been credibly in

the form and spelling. formed that Mr. William Bullock,' the famous comedian, is the descendant of this Gabriel, who begot Mr. William Bullock's great grandfather on the body of the above-mentioned Mrs. Margaret Clark. But neither Speed, nor Baker, nor Selden. taking notice of it, I will not pretend to be positive; but desire that the letter may be reprinted, and what is here recovered may be in italic.

I am, SIR,

Your daily Reader.

"To her I very much respect, Mrs. Margaret Clark.

"LOVELY (and oh that I could write loving!)

Mrs. Margaret Clark, I pray you let affection excuse presumption. Having been so happy as to enjoy the sight of your sweet countenance and comely body sometimes when I had occasion to buy treacle or liquorice powder at the apothecary's shop, I am so enamoured with you that I can no more keep close my flaming desire to become your servant. And I am the more bold now to write to your sweet self, because I am now my own man, and may match where I please; for my father is taken away; and now I am come to my living, which is ten yard land,2 and a house; and there is never a yard land in our field but is as well worth ten pound a year, as a thief's worth a halter; and all my brothers and sisters are provided for: besides, I have good household stuff, though I say it, both brass and pewter, linens and woollens; and though my house be 2 See No. 324.

1 See No. 36.