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The Spectator
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1803 edition. ...but her beauteous form, instead of being blemished by her falsehood and inconstancy, every day increased upon him, and she had new attractions every time he saw her. When she observed Will irrevocably her slave, she began to use him as such, and after many steps towards such a cruelty, she at last utterly banished him. The unhappy lover strove in vain, by servile epistles, to revoke his doom; till at length he was forced to the last refuge, a round sum of money to her maid. This corrupt attendant placed him early in the morning behind the hangings of her mistress's dressing-room. He stood very conveniently to ohserve, without being seen. The Pict begins the face she designed to wear that day, and I have heard him protest she had worked a full half hour before he knew her to be the same woman. As soon as he saw the dawn of that complexion, for which he had so long languished, he thought fit to break from his concealment, repeating that of Th' adorning Thee with so much art, Is but a barb'rous 'Tis like the pois'ning of a dart, Too apt before to kill. The Pict stood before him in the utmost confusion, with the prettiest smirk imaginable on the finished side of her face, pale as ashes on the other. Honeycomb, seized all her gally-pots and washes, and carried off his handkerchief full of brushes, scraps of Spanish wool, and phials of unguents. The lady wept into the country, the lover was cured. It is certain no faith ought to be kept with cheats, and an oath made to a Pict is of itself void. I would' therefore exhort all the British ladies to single them out; nor do I know any butLindamira who should be exempt from discovery; for her own complexion is so delicate, that she ought to be allowed the covering it with paint, as a...
- GenresLiterature
116 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1876
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Joseph Addison
1,348Ìýbooks85ÌýfollowersEnglish essayist, poet, playwright, and politician.
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June 18, 2014Close reading excercise:Spectator, No. 119. Tuesday, July 17, 1711
The first and most obvious Reflections which arise in a Man who changes the City for the Country, are upon the different Manners of the People whom he meets with in those two different Scenes of Life. By Manners I do not mean Morals, but Behaviour and Good Breeding, as they shew themselves in the Town and in the Country.
And here, in the first place, I must observe a very great Revolution that has happen’d in this Article of Good Breeding. Several obliging Deferences, Condescensions and Submissions, with many outward Forms and Ceremonies that accompany them, were first of all brought up among the politer Part of Mankind, who lived in Courts and Cities, and distinguished themselves from the Rustick part of the Species (who on all Occasions acted bluntly and naturally) by such a mutual Complaisance and Intercourse of Civilities. These Forms of Conversation by degrees multiplied and grew troublesome; the Modish World found too great a Constraint in them, and have therefore thrown most of them aside……�..At present therefore an unconstrained Carriage, and a certain Openness of Behaviour, are the Height of Good Breeding. The Fashionable World is grown free and easie; our Manners sit more loose upon us: Nothing is so modish as an agreeable Negligence. In a word, Good Breeding shews it self most, where to an ordinary Eye it appears the least.
If after this we look on the People of Mode in the Country, we find in them the Manners of the last Age. They have no sooner fetched themselves up to the Fashion of the polite World, but the Town has dropped them, and are nearer to the first State of Nature than to those Refinements which formerly reign’d in the Court, and still prevail in the Country. One may now know a Man that never conversed in the World, by his Excess of Good Breeding. A polite Country ‘Squire shall make you as many Bows in half an Hour, as would serve a Courtier for a Week. There is infinitely more to do about Place and Precedency in a Meeting of Justices Wives, than in an Assembly of Dutchesses.
There has happened another Revolution in the Point of Good Breeding, which relates to the Conversation among Men of Mode, and which I cannot but look upon as very extraordinary. It was certainly one of the first Distinctions of a well-bred Man, to express every thing that had the most remote Appearance of being obscene, in modest Terms and distant Phrases; whilst the Clown, who had no such Delicacy of Conception and Expression, clothed his Ideas in those plain homely Terms that are the most obvious and natural. This kind of Good Manners was perhaps carried to an Excess, so as to make Conversation too stiff, formal and precise: ……�. so that at present several of our Men of the Town, and particularly those who have been polished in France, make use of the most coarse uncivilized Words in our Language, and utter themselves often in such a manner as a Clown would blush to hear.
This infamous Piece of Good Breeding, which reigns among the Coxcombs of the Town, has not yet made its way into the Country; and as it is impossible for such an irrational way of Conversation to last long among a People that make any Profession of Religion, or Show of Modesty, if the Country Gentlemen get into it they will certainly be left in the Lurch. Their Good-breeding will come too late to them, and they will be thought a Parcel of lewd Clowns, while they fancy themselves talking together like Men of Wit and Pleasure.
As the two Points of Good Breeding, which I have hitherto insisted upon, regard Behaviour and Conversation, there is a third which turns upon Dress. In this too the Country are very much behind-hand. The Rural Beaus are not yet got out of the Fashion that took place at the time of the Revolution, but ride about the Country in red Coats and laced Hats, while the Women in many Parts are still trying to outvie one another in the Height of their Head-dresses.
December 28, 2022
I only read up to May of 1711, which I reckoned was about 350 pages worth of material. Now onto Volumes 2 and 3, consisting of the longer by half sections published in 1712 1713, in the year of our Lord, 2023.
April 27, 2019
Crisp stories, great narration. Very good series
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