[Footnote 287:  See No. 15.]

[Footnote 288:  “Whereas several gentlemen have desired this paper with a blank leaf to write business on, and for the convenience of the post; this is to give notice, that this day, and for the future, it may be had of Mr. Morphew, near Stationers’ Hall” (folio, advertisement).]

No. 27. [STEELE.

From Thursday, June 9, to Saturday, June 11, 1709.

* * * * *

White’s Chocolate-house, June 9.

Pacolet being gone a strolling among the men of the sword, in order to find out the secret causes of the frequent disputes we meet with, and furnish me with material for my treatise on duelling; I have room left to go on in my information to my country readers, whereby they may understand the bright people whose memoirs I have taken upon me to write.  But in my discourse of the 28th of the last month,[289] I omitted to mention the most agreeable of all bad characters; and that is, a Rake.

A Rake is a man always to be pitied; and if he lives, is one day certainly reclaimed; for his faults proceed not from choice or inclination, but from strong passions and appetites, which are in youth too violent for the curb of reason, good sense, good manners, and good nature:  all which he must have by nature and education, before he can be allowed to be, or have been of this order.  He is a poor unwieldy wretch, that commits faults out of the redundance of his good qualities.  His pity and compassion make him sometimes a bubble to all his fellows, let them be never so much below him in understanding.  His desires run away with him through the strength and force of a lively imagination, which hurries him on to unlawful pleasures, before reason has power to come in to his rescue.  Thus, with all the good intentions in the world to amendment, this creature sins on against heaven, himself, his friends, and his country, who all call for a better use of his talents.  There is not a being under the sun so miserable as this:  he goes on in a pursuit he himself disapproves, and has no enjoyment but what is followed by remorse; no relief from remorse, but the repetition of his crime.  It is possible I may talk of this person with too much indulgence; but I must repeat it, that I think this a character which is the most the object of pity of any in the world.  The man in the pangs of the stone, gout, or any acute distempers, is not in so deplorable a condition in the eye of right sense, as he that errs and repents, and repents and errs on.  The fellow with broken limbs justly deserves your alms for his impotent condition; but he that cannot use his own reason, is in a much worse state; for you see him in miserable circumstances, with his remedy at the same time in his own possession, if he would or could use it.  This is the cause, that of all ill characters, the rake has the best quarter in the world; for when he is himself, and unruffled with intemperance, you