feveral castles to be difpofed of, very delightfully fituated; as alfo groves, woods, forests, fountains, and country-feats, with very pleasant profpects on all fides of them; being the moveables of Chriftopher Rich, efquire, who is breaking up housekeeping, and has many curious pieces of furniture to difpofe of, which may be feen between the hours of fix and ten in the evening. THE INVENTORY. SPIRITS of right Nantz brandy, for lambent flames and apparitions. Three bottles and an half of lightning. One shower of snow in the whitest French paper. A fea, confifting of a dozen large waves; the tenth bigger than ordinary, and a little damaged. A dozen and half of clouds, trimmed with black, and well-conditioned. A rainbow, a little faded.. A fet of clouds after the French mode, ftreaked with lightning and furbelowed. A new moon, fomething decayed. A pint of the fineft Spanish wash, being all that is left of two hogsheads sent over laft winter. A coach very finely gilt, and little ufed, with a pais of dragons, to be fold cheap. A fetting fun, a pennyworth. An imperial mantle, made for Cyrus the Great, and worn by Julius Cæfar, Bajazet, king Henry the eighth, and fignior Valentini. A basket-hilted fword, very convenient to carry milk in, Othello's handkerchief. The imperial robes of Xerxes, never worn but once. A mustard-bowl to make thunder with. Another of a bigger fort, by Mr. Dennis's directions, little used. Six elbow chairs, very expert in country-dances, with Ex flower-pots for their partners. The The whiskers of a Turkish baffa. The complexion of a murderer in a band-box; confifting of a large piece of burnt cork, and a coal-black peruke. A fuit of clothes for a ghoft, viz. a bloody fhirt, a doublet curiously pinked, and a coat with three great eyelet-eyes upon the breast. A bale of red Spanish wool. Modern plots, commonly known by the name of trapdoors, ladders of ropes, vizard-mafques, and tables with broad carpets over them. Three oak-cudgels, with one of crab-tree; all bought for the ufe of Mr. Pinkethinan. Materials for dancing; as mafques, caftanets, and a ladder of ten rounds. Aurengezebe's fcymitar, made by Will. Brown in Picca dilly. A plume of feathers, never used but by Œdipus and the earl of Effex. There are alfo fwords, halbards, theep-hooks, cardinals hats, turbans, drums, gallipots, a gibbet, a cradle, a rack, a cart-wheel, an altar, an helmet, a back-piece, a breastplate, a bell, a tub, and a jointed-baby. Thefe are the hard fhifts we intelligencers are forced to; therefore our readers ought to excufe us, if a wefterly wind blowing for a fortnight together generally fills every paper with an order of battle; when we fhew our martial skill in every line, and according to the fpace we have to fill, we range our men in fquadrons and battalions, or draw out company by company, and troop by troop; ever obferving that no mufter is to be made, but when the wind is in a cross-point, which often happens at the end of a campaign, when half the men are deferted or killed. The Courant is fometimes ten deep, his ranks clofe: the Pott-boy is generally in files, for greater exactnefs, and the Poftman comes down upon you rather after the Turkish way, fword in hand, pell-mell, without form or difcipline; but fure to bring men enough into the field, and wherever they are railed, never to lofe a battle for want of numbers. NO. NO. 43. TUESDAY, JULY 19, 1709. ·Bene nummatum decorat Suadela Venufque. The goddess of perfuafion forms his train, And Venus decks the well-bemoney'd fwain. White's Chocolate-house, July 18. HOR. FRANCIS. I WRITE from hence at present to complain, that wit and merit are fo little encouraged by people of rank and quality, that the wits of the age are obliged to run within Temple-bar for patronage. There is a deplorable instance of this in the cafe of Mr. Durfey, who has dedicated his inimitable comedy, called, The Modern Prophets, to a worthy knight, to whom, it feems, he had before communicated his plan, which was, ' to ridicule the ridiculers of our established doctrine.' I have elsewhere celebrated the contrivance of this excellent drama; but was not, until I read the dedication, wholly let into the religious defign of it. I am afraid it has fuffered difcontinuance at this gay end of the town, for no other reafon but the piety of the purpofe. There is however in this epiftle the true life of panegyrical performance; and I do not doubt but if the patron would part with it, I can help him to others with good pretenfions to it, viz. of uncommon underftanding,' who will give him as much as he gave for it. I know perfectly well a noble perfon, whom thefe words (which are the body of the panegyric) would fit to a hair. • Your eafinefs of humour, or rather your harmonious difpofition, is fo admirably mixed with your compofure, that the rugged cares and difturbance that public affairs bring with it, which does fo vexatioufly affect the heads of other great men of business, &c. does scarce ever ruffle your unclouded brow fo much as with a frown. And what above all is praise-worthy, you are so far from thinking yourself better than others, that a flourishing and opu lent lent fortune, which, by a certain natural corruption in its quality, feldom fails to infect other poffeffors with pride, feems in this cafe as if only providentially difpofed to enlarge upon humility. • But I find, fir, I am now got into a very large field, where though I could with great cafe raise a number of plants in relation to your merit of this plauditory nature; yet for fear of an author's general vice, and that the plain juftice I have done you' fhould by my proceeding, and others miftaken judgment, be imagined flattery, a thing the bluntnefs of my nature does not care to be concerned, with, and which I also know you abominate.” It is wonderful to fee how many judges of these fine things fpring up every day by the rife of ttocks, and other elegant methods of abridging the way to learning and criticifm. But I do hereby forbid all dedications to any per fons within the city of London; except fir Francis, fir Stephen, and the Bank, will take epigrams and epiftles as value received for their notes; and the Eaft-India company accept of heroic poems for their fealed bonds. Upon which bottom our publishers have full power to treat with the city in behalf of us authors, to enable traders to become patrons and fellows of the royal fociety, as well as receive certain degrees of skill in the Latin and Greek tongues, according to the quantity of the commodities which they take off our hands. Grecian Coffee-boufe, July 28. THE learned have fo long laboured under the imputa tion of drynefs and dulness in their accounts of the phenomena, that an ingenious gentleman of our fociety has refolved to write a fyftem of philosophy in a more lively method, both as to the matter and language, than has been hitherto attempted. He read to us the plan upon which he intends to proceed. I thought his account, by way of fable, of the worlds about us, had so much vivacity in it, that I could not forbear transcribing his hypothefis, to give the reader a taste of my friend's treatife, which is now in the prefs. The • The inferior deities, having defigned on a day to play a game at football, kneaded together a numberlefs collection of dancing atoms into the form of feven rolling globes; and that nature might be kept from a dull inactivity, each separate party is indued with a principle of motion, or a power of attraction, whereby all the feveral parcels of matter draw each other proportionably to their magnitudes and distances into fuch a remarkable variety of different forms, as to produce all the wonderful appearances we now obferve in empire, philosophy, and religion. But to proceed : At the beginning of the game, each of the globes, being ftruck forward with a vast violence, ran out of fight, and wandered in a straight line through the infinite spaces. The nimble deities purfue, breathless almost, and spent in the eager chace; each of them caught hold of one, and ftamped it with his name; as, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, and fo of the reft. To prevent this inconvenience for the future, the seven are condemned to a precipitation, which in our inferior style we call gravity. Thus the tangential and centripetal forces, by their counterstruggle, make the celeftial bodies describe an exact ellipfis. • There will be added to this an appendix, in defence of the first day of the term according to the Oxford almanac, by a learned knight of this realm, with an apology for the faid knight's manner of drefs; proving, that his habit, according to this hypothefis, is the true modern and fashionable; and that buckles are not to be worn, by this fyftem, until the tenth of March in the year 1714, which, according to the computation of fome of our greatest divines, is to be the first year of the millennium; in which blessed age all habits will be reduced to a primitive Gimplicity; and whoever fhall be found to have perfevered in a con stancy of dress, in fpite of all the allurements of prophane and heathen habits, fhall be rewarded with a never-fading doublet of a thousand years. All points in the system, which are doubted, fhall be attefted by the knight's extemporary oath, for the fatisfaction of his readers. Will's |