’While you are surveying every Object that falls in your way, I am wholly taken up with one.  Had that Sage, who demanded what Beauty was, lived to see the dear Angel I love, he would not have asked such a Question.  Had another seen her, he would himself have loved the Person in whom Heaven has made Virtue visible; and were you your self to be in her ompany, you could never, with all your Loquacity, say enough of her good Humour and Sense.  I send you the Outlines of a Picture, which I can no more finish than I can sufficiently admire the dear Original.  I am

  Your most Affectionate Brother,
  Constantio Spec.

Good Mr. Pert,

’I will allow you nothing till you resolve me the following Question.  Pray what’s the Reason that while you only talk now upon Wednesdays, Fridays, and Mondays, you pretend to be a greater Tatler, than when you spoke every Day as you formerly used to do?  If this be your plunging out of your Taciturnity, pray let the Length of your Speeches compensate for the Scarceness of them.

I am,
Good Mr.  Pert,
Your Admirer, if you will be long enough for Me,
Amanda Lovelength.

* * * * *

No. 582.  Wednesday, August 18, 1714.

  ’—­Tenet insanabile multos
  Scribendi Cacoethes—­’

  Juv.

There is a certain Distemper, which is mentioned neither by Galen nor Hippocrates, nor to be met with in the London Dispensary. Juvenal, in the Motto of my Paper, terms it a Cacoethes; which is a hard Word for a Disease called in plain English, the Itch of Writing.  This Cacoethes is as Epidemical as the Small-Pox, there being very few who are not seized with it some time or other in their Lives.  There is, however, this Difference in these two Distempers, that the first, after having indisposed you for a time, never returns again; whereas this I am speaking of, when it is once got into the Blood, seldom comes out of it.  The British Nation is very much afflicted with this Malady, and tho’ very many Remedies have been applied to Persons infected with it, few of them have ever proved successful.  Some have been cauterized with Satyrs and Lampoons, but have received little or no Benefit from them; others have had their Heads fastned for an Hour together between a Cleft Board, which is made use of as a Cure for the Disease when it appears in its greatest Malignity. [1] There is indeed one kind of this Malady which has been sometimes removed, like the Biting of a Tarantula, with the sound of a musical Instrument, which is commonly known by the Name of a Cat-Call.  But if you have a Patient of this kind under your Care, you may assure your self there is no other way of recovering him effectually, but by forbidding him the use of Pen, Ink and Paper.