private malices, into mirth and entertainment, by means of a peevish old gentlewoman, known by the title of Lady Bluemantle. This heroine had, for many years together, outdone the whole sisterhood of gossips in invention, quick utterance, and unprovoked malice. This good body is of a lasting constitution, though extremely decayed in her eyes, and decrepid in her feet. The two circumstances of being always at home from her lameness, and very attentive from her blindness, make her lodgings the receptacle of all that passes in town, good or bad; but for the latter she seems to have the better memory. There is another thing to be noted of her, which is, that as it is usual with old people, she has a livelier memory of things which passed when she was very young than of late years. Add to all this, that she does not only not love anybody, but she hates everybody. The statue in Rome* does not serve to vent malice half so well as this old lady does to disappoint it. She does not know the author of anything that is told her, but can readily repeat the matter itself; therefore, though she exposes all the whole town, she offends no one in it. She is so exquisitely restless and peevish, that she quarrels with all about her, and sometimes in a freak will instantly change her habitation. To indulge this humor she is led about the grounds belonging to the same house she is in; and the persons to whom she is to remove, being in the plot, are ready to receive her at her own chamber again. At stated times the gentlewoman at whose house she supposes she is at the time, is sent for to quarrel with, according to her common custom. When they have a mind to drive the jest, she is immediately urged to that degree, that * A statue of Pasquin in that city, on which sarcastic remarks were pasted, and thence called Pasquinades. she will board in a family with which she has never yet been; and away she will go this instant, and tell them all that the rest have been saying of them. By this means, she has been an inhabitant of every house in the place, without stirring from the same habitation : and the many stories which everybody furnishes her with, to favor that deceit, make her the general intelligencer of the town of all that can be said by one woman against another. Thus groundless stories die away, and sometimes truths are smothered under the general word, when they have a mind to discountenance a thing, "Oh, this is in my Lady Bluemantle's Memoirs." Whoever receives impressions to the disadvantage of others, without examination, is to be had in no other credit for intelligence than this good Lady Bluemantle, who is subjected to have her ears imposed upon for want of other helps to better information. Add to this, that other scandal-bearers suspend the use of these faculties which she has lost, rather than apply them to do justice to their neighbors: and I think, for the service of my fair readers, to acquaint them, that there is a voluntary Lady Bluemantle at every visit in town.-T. WEDNESDAY, JULY 23, 1712. No. 438.1 Imperat Animum rege, qui, nisi paret, HOR. I Ep. ii. 62. -Curb thy soul, And check thy rage, which must be rul'd or rule. CREECH. IT is a very common expression that such a one is very good-natured but very passionate. The expression, indeed, is very good-natured, to allow pas sionate people so much quarter: but I think a passionate man deserves the least indulgence imaginable. It is said, it is soon over; that is, all the mischief he does is quickly dispatched, which, I think, is no great recommendation to favor. I have known one of these good-natured passionate men say in a mixed company, even to his own wife or child, such things as the most inveterate enemy of his family would not have spoken, even in imagination. It is certain that quick sensibility is inseparable from a ready understanding; but why should not that good understanding call to itself all its force on such occasions, to master that sudden inclination to anger? One of the greatest souls now in the world* is the most subject by nature to anger, and yet so famous, from a conquest of himself this way that he is the known example when you talk of temper and command of a man's self. To contain the spirit of anger, is the worthiest discipline we can put ourselves When a man has made any progress this way, a frivolous fellow in a passion is to him as contemptible as a froward child. It ought to be the study of every man for his own quiet and peace. When he stands_combustible and ready to flame upon everything that touches him, life is as uneasy to himself as it is to all about him. Syncropius leads, of all men living, the most ridiculous life; he is ever offending and begging pardon. If his man enters the room without what he was sent for-"That blockhead," begins he "Gentlemen, I ask your pardon, but servants now-a-days"—. The wrong plates are laid, they are thrown into the middle of the room; his wife stands by in pain for him, which he sees in her face, and answers as if he had heard all she was thinking: to. * Lord Somers. —“Why, what the devil! Why don't you take care to give orders in these things?" His friends sit down to a tasteless plenty of everything, every minute expecting new insults from his impertinent passions. In a word, to eat with, or visit Syncropius, is no other than going to see him exercise his family, exercise their patience, and his own anger. It is monstrous that the shame and confusion in which this good-natured angry man must needs behold his friends, while he thus lays about him, does not give him so much reflection, as to create an amendment. This is the most scandalous disuse of reason imaginable: all the harmless part of him is no more than that of a bulldog, they are tame no longer than they are not offended. One of these goodnatured angry men shall, in an instant, assemble together so many allusions to secret circumstances, as are enough to dissolve the peace of all the families and friends he is acquainted with in a quarter of an hour, and yet the next moment be the best-natured man in the whole world. If you could see passion in its purity, without mixture of reason, behold it represented in a mad hero, drawn by a mad poet. Nat. Lee makes his Alexander say thus: Away! begone! and give a whirlwind room, Fury! revenge! disdain and indignation! Tear my swoll'n breast, make way for fire and tempest! My brain is burst, debate and reason quench'd; The storm is up, and my hot bleeding heart Splits with the rack; while passions, like the wind, Rise up to heav'n, and put out all the stars. Every passionate fellow in town talks half the day with as little consistency, and threatens things as much out of his power. The next disagreeable person to the outrageous gentleman, is one of a much lower order of anger, and he is what we commonly call a peevish fellow. A peevish fellow is one who has some reason in himself for being out of humor, or has a natural incapacity for delight, and therefore disturbs all who are happier than himself with pishes and pshaws, or other well-bred interjections, at everything that is said or done in his presence. There should be physic mixed in the food of all which these fellows eat in good company. This degree of anger passes, forsooth, for a delicacy of judgment, that will not admit of being. easily pleased; but none above the character of wearing a peevish man's livery ought to bear with his ill-manners. All things among men of sense and condition should pass the censure, and have the protection, of the eye of reason. No man ought to be tolerated in an habitual humor, whim, or particularity of behavior, by any who do not wait upon him for bread. Next to the peevish fellow is the snarler. This gentleman deals mightily in what we call the irony; and as those sort of people exert themselves most against those below them, you see their humor best in their talk to their servants. "That is so like you; You are a fine fellow; Thou art the quickest head-piece;" and the like. One would think the hectoring, the storming, the sullen, and all the different species and subordinations of the angry, should be cured, by knowing they live only as pardoned men; and how pitiful is the condition of being only suffered! But I am interrupted by the pleasantest scene of anger and the disappointment of it that I have ever known, which happened while I was yet writing, and I overheard as I sat in the back |