Letter No. 220. Monday, November 12, 1711. Steele.
Rumoresque serit varios
Virg. [1]
SIR,
Why will you apply to my Father for my Love? I cannot help it if he
will give you my Person; but I assure you it is not in his Power, nor
even in my own, to give you my Heart. Dear Sir, do but consider the
ill Consequence of such a Match; you are Fifty-five, I Twenty-one. You
are a Man of Business, and mightily conversant in Arithmetick and
making Calculations; be pleased therefore to consider what Proportion
your Spirits bear to mine; and when you have made a just Estimate of
the necessary Decay on one Side, and the Redundance on the other, you
will act accordingly. This perhaps is such Language as you may not
expect from a young Lady; but my Happiness is at Stake, and I must
talk plainly. I mortally hate you; and so, as you and my Father agree,
you may take me or leave me: But if you will be so good as never to
see me more, you will for ever oblige,
SIR,
Your most humble Servant,
HENRIETTA.
Mr. SPECTATOR, [2]
There are so many Artifices and Modes of false Wit, and such a
Variety of Humour discovers it self among its Votaries, that it would
be impossible to exhaust so fertile a Subject, if you would think fit
to resume it. The following Instances may, if you think fit, be added
by Way of Appendix to your Discourses on that Subject.
That Feat of Poetical Activity mentioned by Horace, of an Author
who could compose two hundred Verses while he stood upon one Leg, [3]
has been imitated (as I have heard) by a modern Writer; who priding
himself on the Hurry of his Invention, thought it no small Addition to
his Fame to have each Piece minuted with the exact Number of Hours or
Days it cost him in the Composition. He could taste no Praise till he
had acquainted you in how short Space of Time he had deserved it; and
was not so much led to an Ostentation of his Art, as of his Dispatch.
--Accipe si vis,
Accipe jam tabulas; detur nobis locus, hora,
Custodes: videamus uter plus scribere possit.
Hor.
This was the whole of his Ambition; and therefore I cannot but think
the Flights of this rapid Author very proper to be opposed to those
laborious Nothings which you have observed were the Delight of the
German Wits, and in which they so happily got rid of such a tedious
Quantity of their Time.
I have known a Gentleman of another Turn of Humour, who, despising
the Name of an Author, never printed his Works, but contracted his
Talent, and by the help of a very fine Diamond which he wore on his
little Finger, was a considerable Poet upon Glass. He had a very good
Epigrammatick Wit; and there was not a Parlour or Tavern Window where
he visited or dined for some Years, which did not receive some
Sketches or Memorials of it. It was his Misfortune at last to lose his
Genius and his Ring to a Sharper at Play; and he has not attempted to
make a Verse since.
But of all Contractions or Expedients for Wit, I admire that of an
ingenious Projector whose Book I have seen. [4] This Virtuoso being a
Mathematician, has, according to his Taste, thrown the Art of Poetry
into a short Problem, and contrived Tables by which any one without
knowing a Word of Grammar or Sense, may, to his great Comfort, be able
to compose or rather to erect Latin Verses. His Tables are a kind of