SIR,

’Having heard the following Epigram very much commended, I wonder that it has not yet had a place in any of your Papers:  I think the Suffrage of our Poet Laureat should not be overlooked, which shews the Opinion he entertains of your Paper, whether the Notion he proceeds upon be true or false.  I make bold to convey it to you, not knowing if it has yet come to your Hands.

    On the SPECTATOR.

    By Mr. TATE. [1]

—­Aliusque et idem
    Nasceris—­

    Hor.

      ’When first the_ Tatler to a Mute was turn’d,
      Great Britain for her Censor’s Silence mourn’d. 
      Robb’d of his sprightly Beams, she wept the Night,
      ’Till the Spectator_ rose, and blaz’d as bright. 
      So the first Man the Sun’s first Setting view’d,
      And sigh’d, till circling Day his Joys renew’d;
      Yet doubtful how that second Sun to name,
      Whether a bright Successor, or the same. 
      So we:  but now from this Suspense are freed,
      Since all agree, who both with Judgment read,
      ‘Tis the same Sun, and does himself succeed.’

O.

[Footnote 1:  Nahum Tate, born and educated at Dublin, and befriended in his youth by Dryden and Dorset, was at this time 60 years old, and poet-laureate, having in 1692 succeeded in that office Thomas Shadwell, the Whig substitute for Dryden.  Besides his version of the Psalms produced in concert with his friend Dr. Nicholas Brady, Tate produced his own notion of an improvement upon Shakespeare’s King Lear and nine dramatic pieces, with other poetry, of which the above lines are a specimen.  Tate was in his younger days the writer of the second part of Dryden’s ‘Absalom and Achithophel,’ to which Dryden himself contributed only the characters of Julian Johnson as Ben Jochanan, of Shadwell as Og, and of Settle as Doeg.  His salary as poet-laureate was L100 a year, and a butt of canary.  He died three years after the date of this Spectator a poor man who had made his home in the Mint to escape his creditors.]

* * * * *

No. 489.  Saturday, September 20, 1712.  Addison.

  [Greek:  Bathyrrheitao mega sthenos ’Okeaneio]—­Hom.

  SIR,

Upon reading your Essay concerning the Pleasures of the Imagination, I find, among the three Sources of those Pleasures which you have discovered, [that] Greatness is one.  This has suggested to me the reason why, of all Objects that I have ever seen, there is none which affects my Imagination so much as the Sea or Ocean.  I cannot see the Heavings of this prodigious Bulk of Waters, even in a Calm, without a very pleasing Astonishment; but when it is worked up in a Tempest, so that the Horizon on every side is nothing but foaming Billows and floating Mountains, it is impossible