I am, Sir,
Your most humble Servant,
R. B.
[Footnote 1: Charles de St. Denis, Sieur de St.
Evremond, died in 1703, aged 95, and was buried in
Westminster Abbey. His military and diplomatic
career in France was closed in 1661, when his condemnations
of Mazarin, although the Cardinal was then dead, obliged
him to fly from the wrath of the French Court to Holland
and afterwards to England, where Charles II granted
him a pension of L300 a-year. At Charles’s
death the pension lapsed, and St. Evremond declined
the post of cabinet secretary to James II. After
the Revolution he had William III for friend, and
when, at last, he was invited back, in his old age,
to France, he chose to stay and die among his English
friends. In a second volume of ‘Miscellany
Essays by Monsieur de St. Evremont,’ done into
English by Mr. Brown (1694), an Essay ’Of the
Pleasure that Women take in their Beauty’ ends
(p. 135) with the thought quoted by Steele.]
[Footnote 2: In ‘Don Sebastian, King of
Portugal,’ act I, says Muley Moloch, Emperor
of Barbary,
Ay; There look like the Workmanship of
Heav’n:
This is the Porcelain Clay of Human Kind.]
[Footnote 3: The lines are in the Epitaph ‘on
Elizabeth L.H.’
’One name was Elizabeth,
The other, let it sleep in death.’
But Steele, quoting from memory, altered the words
to his purpose. Ben Johnson’s lines were:
’Underneath this stone doth lie,
As much Beauty as could die,
Which in Life did Harbour give
To more Virture than doth live.’]
* * * *
*
No. 34. Monday, April 9, 1711
Addison.
’... parcit
Cognatis maculis
similis fera ...’
Juv.
The Club of which I am a Member, is very luckily composed
of such persons as are engaged in different Ways of
Life, and disputed as it were out of the most conspicuous
Classes of Mankind: By this Means I am furnished
with the greatest Variety of Hints and Materials, and
know every thing that passes in the different Quarters
and Divisions, not only of this great City, but of
the whole Kingdom. My Readers too have the Satisfaction
to find, that there is no Rank or Degree among them
who have not their Representative in this Club, and
that there is always some Body present who will take
Care of their respective Interests, that nothing may
be written or published to the Prejudice or Infringement
of their just Rights and Privileges.
I last Night sat very late in company with this select
Body of Friends, who entertain’d me with several
Remarks which they and others had made upon these
my Speculations, as also with the various Success which
they had met with among their several Ranks and Degrees
of Readers. WILL. HONEYCOMB told me, in
the softest Manner he could, That there were some
Ladies (but for your Comfort, says WILL., they are
not those of the most Wit) that were offended at the
Liberties I had taken with the Opera and the Puppet-Show:
That some of them were likewise very much surpriz’d,
that I should think such serious Points as the Dress
and Equipage of Persons of Quality, proper Subjects
for Raillery.
