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for this reason, too, we pay so great deference to those few who have enriched their minds with the treasures of antiquity. An illiterate officer either hardens into a bravo, or refines into a fop. The insipidity of a fop is utterly contemptible; and a rough brutal courage, unpolished by science, and unassisted by reason, has no more claim to heroism, than the case-hardened valour of a bruiser or prize-fighter. Agreeable to this notion, Homer, in the fifth Iliad, represents the goddess Minerva as wounding Mars, and driving the heavy deity off the field of battle; implying, allegorically, that wisdom is capable of subduing courage.

I would flatter myself, that British minds are still as noble, and British genius as exuberant, as those of any other nation or age whatever; but that some are debased by luxury, and others run wild for want of proper cultivation. If Athens can boast her Miltiades, Themistocles, &c., Rome her Camillus, Fabius, Cæsar, &c., England had her Edwards, Henrys, and Marlboroughs. It is to be hoped the time will come, when learning will be reckoned as necessary to qualify a man for the army, as for the bar or pulpit. Then we may expect to see the British soldiery enter on the field of battle, as on a theatre, for which they are prepared in the parts they are to act. 'They will' not then,' as Milton expresses himself with his usual strength in his Treatise on Education, if intrusted with fair and hopeful armies, suffer them, for want of just and wise discipline, to shed away from about them like sick feathers, though they be never so oft supplied: they would not suffer their empty and unrecruitable colonels of twenty men in a company, to quaff out, or convey into secret hoards, the wages of a delusive list and miserable remnant; yet, in the meanwhile to be over-mastered with a score or

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two of drunkards, the only soldiery left about them; or else to comply with all rapines and violences. No certainly, if they knew aught of that knowledge, that belongs to good men and good governors, they would not suffer these things.'

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THE principal character in Steele's comedy of The Lying Lover is young Bookwit, an Oxonian, who at once throws off the habit and manners of an academic, and assumes the dress, air, and conversation of a man of the town. He is, like other fine gentlemen, a coxcomb; but a coxcomb of learning and parts. His erudition he renders subservient to his pleasures: his knowledge in poetry qualifies him for a sonneteer, his rhetoric to say fine things to the ladies, and his philosophy to regulate his equipage; for he talks of having Peripatetic footmen, a follower of Aristippus for a valet-de-chambre, an Epicurean cook, with an hermetical chymist, who are good only at making fires, for a scullion. Thus he is, in every particular, a fop of letters, a complete classical beau.

By a review I have lately made of the people in this great metropolis, as Čensor, I find that the town swarms with bookwits. The playhouses,

parks, taverns, and coffee-houses are thronged with them. Their manner, which has something in it very characteristic, and different from the townbred coxcombs, discovers them to the slightest observer. It is, indeed, no easy matter for one, whose chief employment is to store his mind with new ideas, to throw that happy vacancy, that total absence of thought and reflection, into his countenance, so remarkable in our modern fine gentlemen. The same lounging air, too, that passes for genteel in an university coffee-house, is soon distinguished from the genuine careless loll and easy saunter; and brings us over to the notion of Sir Wilful in The Way of the World, that a man should be bound prentice to a maker of fops, before he ventures to set up for himself.'

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Yet, in spite of all these disadvantages, the love of pleasure, and a few supernumerary guineas, draw the student from his literary employment, and entice him to this theatre of noise and hurry, this grand mart of luxury; where, as long as his purse can supply him, he may be as idle and debauched as he pleases. I could not help smiling at a dialogue between two of these gentlemen, which I overheard a few nights ago at the Bedford Coffeehouse. 'Ha! Jack!' says one accosting the other,

is it you? How long have you been in town?? -Two hours.'-' How long do you stay?'-' Ten guineas. If you'll come to Venable's after the play is over, you'll find Tom Latine, Bob Classic, and two or three more, who will be very glad to see you. What, you're in town upon the sober plan at your father's? But hark ye, Frank; if you'll call in, I'll tell your friend Harris to prepare for you. So your servant; for I'm going to meet the finest girl upon town in the green boxes.'

I left the coffee-house pretty late; and as I came

VOL. XXV.

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into the piazza, the fire in the Bedford-arms kitchen blazed so cheerfully and invitingly before me, that I was easily persuaded by a friend who was with me, to end the evening in that house. Our good fortune led us into the next room to this knot of academical rakes. Their merriment being pretty boisterous, gave us a good pretext to inquire what company were in the next room. The waiter told us, with a smartness which those fellows frequently contract from attending on beaux and wits, Some gentlemen from Oxford with some ladies, Sir. My master is always very glad to see them; for while tbey stay in town, they never dine or sup out of his house, and eat and drink, and pay better than any nobleman.'

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As it grew later they grew louder; till at length an unhappy dispute arose between two of the company, concerning the present grand contest between the Old and the New Interest, which has lately inflamed Oxfordshire. This accident might have been attended with ugly consequences; but as the ladies are great enemies to quarrelling, unless themselves are the occasion, a good-natured female of the company interposed, and quelled their animosity. By the mediation of this fair one, the dispute ended very fashionably, in a bet of a dozen of claret, to be drank there by the company then present, whenever the wager should be decided. In short, there was something so extraordinary in their whole evening's conversation, such an odd mixture of the town and university, that I am persuaded, if Sir Richard had been witness to it, he could have wrought it into a scene as lively and entertaining as any he has left us.

The whole time these lettered beaux remain in London, is spent in a continual round of diversion. Their sphere, indeed, is somewhat confined; for

they generally eat, drink, and sleep within the precincts of Covent-garden. I remember I once saw, at a public inn on the road to Oxford, a journal of the town transactions of one of these sparks; who had recorded them on a window-pane for the example and imitation of his fellow-students. I shall present my reader with an exact copy of this curious journal, as nearly as I can remember.

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Monday rode to town in six hours-saw the two last acts of Hamlet-at night with Polly Brown. Tuesday, saw Harlequin Sorcerer-at night, Polly again.

Wednesday, saw Macbeth-at night, with Sally Parker. Polly engaged.

Thursday, saw the Suspicious Husband-at night, Polly again.

Friday, set out at twelve o'clock for Oxforda damn'd muzzy place.'

There are no set of mortals more joyous than these occasional rakes, whose pride it is to gallop up to town once or twice in the year with their quarterage in their pockets, and in a few days to squander it away in the highest scenes of luxury and debauchery. The tavern, the theatre, and the bagnio, engross the chief part of their attention; and it is constantly Polly again' with them, till their finances are quite exhausted, and they are obliged to return, as Bookwit has it, "to small beer and three-halfpenny commons."

I shall enlarge no further on this subject at present, but conclude these reflections with an Öde, which I have received from an unknown correspondent. He tells me, it was lately sent from an academical friend to one of these gentlemen who had resigned himself wholly to these polite enjoyments, and seemed to have forgot his connexions with the university. All, who peruse this elegant

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