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him to have it said he contended with me; but I would have him to know, that I can look beyond his wires, and know very well the whole trick of his art; and that it is only by these wires that the eye of the spectator is cheated, and hindered from seeing that there is a thread on one of Punch's chops which draws it up, and lets it fall at the discretion of the said Powel, who stands behind and plays him, and makes him speak saucily of his betters. He! to pretend to make prologues against me !-But a man never behaves himself with decency in his own case; therefore I shall command myself, and never trouble me farther with this little fellow, who is himself but a tall puppet, and has not brains enough to make even wood speak as it ought to do: and I, that have heard the groaning board, can despise all that his puppets shall be able to speak as long as they live. But Ex quovis ligno non fit Mercurius. Every log of wood will not make a Mercury.' He has pretended to write to me also from the Bath, and says he thought to have deferred giving me an answer until he came to his books; but that my writings might do well with the waters; which are pert expressions, that become a schoolboy better than one that is to teach others; and when I have said a civil thing to him, he cries, 'Oh! I thank you for that -I am your humble servant for that.' Ah! Mr. Powel, these smart civilities will never run down men of learning: I know well enough your design is to have all men automata, like your puppets; but the world is grown too wise, and can look through these thin devices. I know your design to make a reply to this but be sure you stick close to my words; for if you bring me into discourses concerning the government of your puppets, I must tell you, 'I neither am, nor have been, nor will be, at leisure to answer you.'. It is really a burning shame this man

should be tolerated in abusing the world with such representations of things: but his parts decay, and he is not much more alive than Partridge.

From my own Apartment, July 14.

I must beg pardon of my readers, that for this time I have, I fear, huddled up my discourse, having been very busy in helping an old friend of mine out of town. He has a very good estate, and is a man of wit; but he has been three years absent from town, and cannot bear a jest; for which reason I have, with some pains, convinced him, that he can no more live here than if he were a downright bankrupt. He was so fond of dear London, that he began to fret, only inwardly; but being unable to laugh and be laughed at, I took a place in the northern coach for him and his family; and hope he has got to-night safe from all sneerers in his own parlour.

St. James's Coffee-house, July 20.

This morning we received by express the agreeable news of the surrender of the town of Tournay on the twenty-eighth instant, N. S. The place was assaulted by the attacks of General Schuylemberg, and that of General Lottum, at the same time. The action at both those parts of the town was very obstinate, and the allies lost a considerable number in the beginning of the dispute; but the fight was continued with so great bravery, that the enemy, observing our men to be masters of all the posts which were necessary for a general attack, beat the chamade, and hostages were received from the town, and others sent from the besiegers, in order to come to a formal capitulation for the surrender of the place. We have also this day received advice, that Sir John Leake, who lies off Dunkirk, had intercepted several ships laden with corn from the Baltic; and that the Dutch

privateers had fallen in with others, and carried them into Holland. The French letters advise, that the young son to the Duke of Anjou lived but eight days.

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No 45. SATURDAY, JULY 23, 1709.

Credo pudicitiam Saturno rege moratam
In Terris-

Juv. Sat. vi. 1.

In Saturn's reign, at nature's early birth,
There was that thing call'd chastity on earth.-Dryden.

White's Chocolate-house, July 22.

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THE other day I took a walk a mile or two out of town, and strolling wherever chance led me, I was insensibly carried into a by-rode, along which was a very agreeable quickset, of an extraordinary height, which surrounded a very delicious seat and garden. From one angle of the hedge, I heard a voice cry. Sir, Sir!'This raised my curiosity, and I heard the same voice say, but in a gentle tone, Come forward, come forward!' I did so, and one through the hedge called me by my name, and bid me go on to the left, and I should be admitted to visit an old acquaintance in distress. The laws of knight-errantry made me obey the summons without hesitation; and I was let in at the back-gate of a lonely house by a maid-servant, who carried me from room to room until I came into a gallery; at the end of which I saw a fine lady, dressed in the most sumptuous habit, as if she were going to a ball, but with the most abject and disconsolate sorrow in her face that I ever beheld. As I came near, she burst into tears and cried, Sir, do not you know the unhappy Teraminta?' I soon recollected her whole person: But,'

said I, 'madam, the simplicity of dress, in which I have ever seen you at your good father's house, and the cheerfulness of countenance with which you always appeared, are so unlike the fashion and temper you are now in, that I did not easily recover my memory of you. Your habit was then decent and modest, your looks serene and beautiful: whence then is this unaccountable change? Nothing can speak so deep a sorrow as your present aspect; yet your dress is made for jollity and revelling!' It is,' said she, an unspeakable pleasure to meet with one I know, and to bewail myself to any that is not an utter stranger to humanity.

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When your friend my father died, he left me to a wide world, with no defence against the insults of fortune; but rather, a thousand snares to entrap me in the dangers to which youth and innocence are exposed, in an age wherein honour and virtue are become mere words, and used only as they serve to betray those who understand them in their native sense, and obey them as the guides and motives of their being. The wickedest of all men living, the abandoned Decius, who has no knowledge of any good art or purpose of human life, but as it tends to the satisfaction of his appetites, had opportunities of frequently seeing and entertaining me at a house where mixed company boarded, and where he placed himself for the base intention which he has since brought to pass. Decius saw enough in me to raise his brutal desires, and my circumstances gave him hopes of accomplishing them. But all the glittering expectations he could lay before me, joined by my private terrors of poverty itself, could not for some months prevail upon me; yet, however I hated his intention, I still had a secret satisfaction in his courtship, and always exposed myself to his solicitations. See here the bane of our sex! Let the flattery be

never so apparent, the flatterer never so ill thought of, his praises are still agreeable, and we contribute to our own deceit. I was, therefore, ever fond of all opportunities and pretences of being in his company. In a word, I was at last ruined by him, and brought to this place, where I have been ever since immured; and from the fatal day after my fall from innocence, my worshipper became my master and my tyrant.

Thus you see me habited in the most gorgeous manner, not in honour of me as a woman he loves, but as this attire charms his own eye, and urges him to repeat the gratification he takes in me, as the servant of his brutish lusts and appetites. I know not where to fly for redress: but am here pining away life in the solitude and severity of a nun, but the conscience and guilt of a harlot. I live in this lewd practice with a religious awe of my minister of darkness, upbraided with the support I received from him, for the inestimable possession of youth, of innocence, of honour, and of conscience. I see, Sir, my discourse grows painful to you; all I beg of you is, to paint it in so strong colours, as to let Decius see I am discovered to be in his possession, that I may be turned out of this detestable scene of regular iniquity, and either think no more, or sin no more. If your writings have the good effect of gaining my enlargement, I promise you I will atone for this unhappy step, by preferring an innocent, laborious poverty to all the guilty affluence the world can offer me.'

Will's Coffee-house, July 21.

To shew that I do not bear any irreconcilable hatred to my mortal enemy, Mr. Powel at Bath, I do his function the honour to publish to the world, that plays represented by puppets are permitted in our universities, and that sort of drama is not wholly thought unworthy the critique of learned heads; but

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