WILLIAM HONEYCOMB, ESQ. [1]
The Seven former Volumes of the _Spectator_ having been Dedicated to some of the most celebrated Persons of the Age, I take leave to Inscribe this Eighth and Last to You, as to a Gentleman who hath ever been ambitious of appearing in the best Company.
You are now wholly retired from the busie Part of Mankind, and at leisure to reflect upon your past Achievements; for which reason, I look upon You as a Person very well qualified for a Dedication.
I may possibly disappoint my Readers, and your self too, if I do not endeavour on this Occasion to make the World acquainted with your Virtues. And here, Sir, I shall not compliment You upon your Birth, Person, or Fortune; nor any other the like Perfections, which You possess whether You will or no: But shall only touch upon those, which are of your own acquiring, and in which every one must allow You have a real Merit.
Your janty Air and easy Motion, the Volubility of your Discourse, the Suddenness of your Laugh, the Management of your Snuff-Box, with the Whiteness of your Hands and Teeth (which have justly gained You the Envy of the most polite part of the Male World, and the Love of the greatest Beauties in the Female) are intirely to be ascribed to your own personal Genius and Application.
You are formed for these Accomplishments by a happy Turn of Nature, and have finished your self in them by the utmost Improvements of Art. A Man that is defective in either of these Qualifications (whatever may be the secret Ambition of his Heart) must never hope to make the Figure You have done, among the fashionable part of his Species. It is therefore no wonder, we see such Mult.i.tudes of aspiring young Men fall short of You in all these Beauties of your Character, notwithstanding the Study and Practice of them is the whole Business of their Lives. But I need not tell You that the free and disengaged Behaviour of a fine Gentleman makes as many aukward Beaux, as the Easiness of your Favourite _Waller_ hath made insipid Poets.
At present You are content to aim all your Charms at your own Spouse, without further Thought of Mischief to any others of the s.e.x. I know you had formerly a very great Contempt for that Pedantick Race of Mortals who call themselves Philosophers; and yet, to your Honour be it spoken, there is not a Sage of them all could have better acted up to their Precepts in one of the most important Points of Life: I mean in that Generous Dis-regard of Popular Opinion, which you showed some Years ago, when you chose for your Wife an obscure young Woman, who doth not indeed pretend to an ancient Family, but has certainly as many Fore-fathers as any Lady in the Land, if she could but reckon up their Names.
I must own I conceived very extraordinary hopes of you from the Moment that you confessed your Age, and from eight and forty (where you had stuck so many Years) very ingenuously step"d into your Grand Climacterick. Your Deportment has since been very venerable and becoming. If I am rightly informed, You make a regular Appearance every Quarter-Sessions among your Brothers of the _Quorum_; and if things go on as they do, stand fair for being a Colonel of the Militia. I am told that your Time pa.s.ses away as agreeably in the Amus.e.m.e.nts of a Country Life, as it ever did in the Gallantries of the Town: And that you now take as much pleasure in the Planting of young Trees, as you did formerly in the Cutting down of your Old ones. In short, we hear from all Hands that You are thoroughly reconciled to your dirty Acres, and have not too much Wit to look into your own Estate.
After having spoken thus much of my Patron, I must take the Privilege of an Author in saying something of my self. I shall therefore beg leave to add, that I have purposely omitted setting those Marks to the End of every Paper, which appeared in my former Volumes, that You may have an Opportunity of showing Mrs. _Honeycomb_ the Shrewdness of your Conjectures, by ascribing every Speculation to its proper Author: Though You know how often many profound Criticks in Style and Sentiments have very judiciously erred in this Particular, before they were let into the Secret. I am, _SIR, Your most Faithful, Humble Servant, THE SPECTATOR_.
(_THE_ Bookseller _to the_ Reader.
_In the Six hundred and thirty second_ Spectator, _the Reader will find an Account of the Rise of this Eighth and Last Volume._
_I have not been able to prevail upon the several Gentlemen who were concerned in this Work to let me acquaint the World with their Names.
Perhaps it will be unnecessary to inform the Reader, that no other Papers, which have appeared under the t.i.tle of_ Spectator, _since the closing of this Eighth Volume, were written by any of those Gentlemen who had a Hand in this or the former Volumes_.)
[Footnote 1: This Dedication to Addison"s supplementary _Spectator_, begun a year and a half after the close of Steele"s, is thought to be by Eustace Budgell.]
No. 556. Friday, June 18, 1714. Addison. [1]
To be continued every _Monday, Wednesday_, and _Friday_.
"Qualis ubi in lucem coluber, mala gramina, pastus, Frigida sub terra tumidum quem bruma tegebat; Nunc positis novus exuviis, nitidusque juventa, Lubrica convolvit sublato pectore terga Arduus ad solem, et linguis micat ore trisulcis."
Virg.
Upon laying down the Office of SPECTATOR, I acquainted the World with my Design of electing a new Club, and of opening my Mouth in it after a most solemn Manner. Both the Election and the Ceremony are now past; but not finding it so easy as I at first imagined, to break thro" a Fifty Years Silence, I would not venture into the World under the character of a Man who pretends to talk like other People, till I had arrived at a full Freedom of Speech.
I shall reserve for another time the History of such Club or Clubs of which I am now a Talkative, but unworthy Member; and shall here give an Account of this surprising Change which has been produced in me, and which I look upon to be as remarkable an Accident as any recorded in History, since that which happened to the Son of _Croesus_, after having been many Years as much Tongue-tied as my self.
Upon the first opening of my Mouth, I made a Speech consisting of about half a Dozen well-turned Periods; but grew so very hoa.r.s.e upon it, that for three Days together, instead of finding the use of my Tongue, I was afraid that I had quite lost it. Besides, the unusual Extension of my Muscles on this Occasion, made my Face ake on both Sides to such a Degree, that nothing but an invincible Resolution and Perseverance could have prevented me from falling back to my Monosyllables. I afterwards made several Essays towards speaking; and that I might not be startled at my own Voice, which has happen"d to me more than once, I used to read aloud in my Chamber, and have often stood in the Middle of the Street to call a Coach, when I knew there was none within hearing.
When I was thus grown pretty well acquainted with my own Voice, I laid hold of all Opportunities to exert it. Not caring however to speak much by my self, and to draw upon me the whole Attention of those I conversed with, I used, for some time, to walk every Morning in the _Mall_, and talk in Chorus with a Parcel of _Frenchmen_. I found my Modesty greatly relieved by the communicative Temper of this Nation, who are so very sociable, as to think they are never better Company, than when they are all opening at the same time.
I then fancied I might receive great Benefit from Female Conversation, and that I should have a Convenience of talking with the greater Freedom, when I was not under any Impediment of thinking: I therefore threw my self into an a.s.sembly of Ladies, but could not for my Life get in a Word among them; and found that if I did not change my Company, I was in Danger of being reduced to my primitive Taciturnity.
The Coffee-houses have ever since been my chief Places of Resort, where I have made the greatest Improvements; in order to which I have taken a particular Care never to be of the same Opinion with the Man I conversed with. I was a Tory at _b.u.t.ton"s_, and a Whig at _Childe"s_; a Friend to the _Englishman_, or an Advocate for the _Examiner_, as it best served my Turn; some fancy me a great Enemy to the _French_ King, though, in reality, I only make use of him for a Help to Discourse. In short, I wrangle and dispute for Exercise; and have carried this Point so far that I was once like to have been run through the Body for making a little too free with my Betters.
In a Word, I am quite another Man to what I was.
"--Nil fuit unquam Tam dispar sibi--"
My old Acquaintance scarce know me; nay I was asked the other Day by a _Jew_ at _Jonathan"s_, whether I was not related to a dumb Gentleman, who used to come to that Coffee-house? But I think I^never was better pleased in my Life than about a Week ago, when, as I was battling it across the Table with a young Templar, his Companion gave him a Pull by the Sleeve, begging him to come away, for that the old Prig would talk him to Death.
Being now a very good Proficient in Discourse, I shall appear in the World with this Addition to my Character, that my Countrymen may reap the Fruits of my new-acquired Loquacity.
Those who have been present at public Disputes in the University, know that it is usual to maintain Heresies for Argument"s sake. I have heard a Man a most impudent Socinian for Half an Hour, who has been an Orthodox Divine all his Life after. I have taken the same Method to accomplish my self in the Gift of Utterance, having talked above a Twelve-month, not so much for the Benefit of my Hearers as of my self.
But since I have now gained the Faculty, I have been so long endeavouring after, I intend to make a right Use of it, and shall think my self obliged, for the future, to speak always in Truth and Sincerity of Heart. While a Man is learning to fence, he practises both on Friend and Foe; but when he is a Master in the Art, he never exerts it but on what he thinks the right Side.
That this last Allusion may not give my Reader a wrong Idea of my Design in this Paper, I must here inform him, that the Author of it is of no Faction, that he is a Friend to no Interests but those of Truth and Virtue, nor a Foe to any but those of Vice and Folly. Though I make more Noise in the World than I used to do, I am still resolved to act in it as an indifferent SPECTATOR. It is not my Ambition to encrease the Number either of Whigs or Tories, but of wise and good Men, and I could heartily wish there were not Faults common to both Parties which afford me sufficient Matter to work upon, without descending to those which are peculiar to either.
If in a Mult.i.tude of Counsellors there is Safety, we ought to think our selves the securest Nation in the World. Most of our Garrets are inhabited by Statesmen, who watch over the Liberties of their Country, and make a Shift to keep themselves from starving by taking into their Care the Properties of their Fellow-Subjects.
As these Politicians of both Sides have already worked the Nation into a most unnatural Ferment, I shall be so far from endeavouring to raise it to a greater Height, that on the contrary, it shall be the chief Tendency of my Papers, to inspire my Countrymen with a mutual Good-will and Benevolence. Whatever Faults either Party may be guilty of, they are rather inflamed than cured by those Reproaches, which they cast upon one another. The most likely Method of rectifying any Man"s Conduct, is, by recommending to him the Principles of Truth and Honour, Religion and Virtue; and so long as he acts with an Eye to these Principles, whatever Party he is of, he cannot fail of being a good _Englishman_, and a Lover of his Country.
As for the Persons concerned in this Work, the Names of all of them, or at least of such as desire it, shall be published hereafter: Till which time I must entreat the courteous Reader to suspend his Curiosity, and rather to consider what is written, than who they are that write it.
Having thus adjusted all necessary Preliminaries with my Reader, I shall not trouble him with any more prefatory Discourses, but proceed in my old Method, and entertain him with Speculations on every useful Subject that falls in my Way.
[Footnote 1: Addison"s papers are marked on the authority of Tickell.]