roes of our size. He has entertained so great a respect for Statius, on the score of that line, Major in exiguo regnabat corpore virtus. A larger portion of heroic fire Did his small limbs and little breast inspire. that he once designed to translate the whole Thebaid for the sake of little Tydeus. "Tom Tiptoe, a dapper black fellow, is the most gallant lover of the age. He is particularly nice in his habiliments; and to the end justice may be done him that way, constantly employs the same artist who makes attire for the neighbouring princes and ladies of quality at Mr. Powel's. The vivacity of his temper inclines him sometimes to boast of the favours of the fair. He was the other night excusing his absence from the club upon account of an assignation with a lady (and, as he had the vanity to tell us, a tall one too) who had consented to the full accomplishment of his desires that evening; but one of the company, who was his confidant, assured us she was a woman of humour, and made the agreement on this condition, that his toe* should be tied to hers. "Our politician is a person of real gravity, and professed wisdom. Gravity in a man of this size, compared with that of one of ordinary bulk, appears like the gravity of a cat, compared with that of a lion. This gentleman is accustomed to talk to himself, and was once overheard to compare his own person to a little cabinet, wherein are locked up all the secrets of state, and refined schemes of princes. His face is pale and meagre, which proceeds from much watching and studying for the welfare of Europe, which is also thought to have stinted his growth: for he hath destroyed his own constitution with taking care of that of the nation. He is what Mons. Balzac calls a great distiller of the maxims of Tacitus. When he speaks, it is slowly, and word by word, as one that is loath to enrich you too fast with his observations: like a limbec, that gives you, drop by drop, an extract of the simples in it. "The last I shall mention is Tim Tuck the hero. He is Pope seems to allude here, and at the close of this paper, to his waggish rondeau on Mrs. Eliz. Thomas, mistress to H. Cromwell, Esq. See Biogr. Brit. art. Pope, p. 3414. particularly remarkable for the length of his sword, which intersects his person in a cross line, and makes him appear not unlike a fly, that the boys have run a pin through and set a walking. He once challenged a tall fellow for giving him a blow on the pate with his elbow as he passed along the street. But what he especially values himself upon is, that in all the campaigns he has made, he never once ducked at the whiz of a cannon-ball. Tim was full as large at fourteen years old as he is now, This we are tender of mentioning; your little heroes being generally choleric. "These are the gentleman that most enliven our conversation. The discourse generally turns upon such accidents, whether fortunate or unfortunate, as are daily occasioned by our size. These we faithfully communicate, either as matter of mirth or of consolation to each other. The president had lately an unlucky fall, being unable to keep his legs on a stormy day; whereupon he informed us, it was no new disaster, but the same a certain ancient poet had been subject to, who is recorded to have been so light, that he was obliged to poise himself against the wind with lead on one side and his own works on the other. The lover confessed the other night that he had been cured of love to a tall woman by reading over the legend of Ragotine in Scarron, with his tea, three mornings successively. Our hero rarely acquaints us with any of his unsuccessful adventures. And as for the politician, he declares himself an utter enemy to all kind of burlesque, so will never discompose the austerity of his aspect by laughing at our adventures, much less discover any of his own in this ludicrous light. Whatever he tells of any accidents that befal him, is by way of complaint, nor is he to be laughed at, but in his absence. men. "We are likewise particularly careful to communicate to the club all such passages of history, or characters of illustrious personages, as any way reflect honour on little Tim Tuck having but just reading enough for a military man, perpetually entertains us with the same stories of little David, that conquered the mighty Goliah, and little Luxembourg, that made Lewis XIV. a grand monarque, never forgetting little Alexander the Great. Dick Distich celebrates the exceeding humanity of Augustus, who called Horace Lepidissimum Homunciolum; and is wonderfully pleased with Voiture and Scarron, for having so well described their diminutive forms to all posterity. He is peremptorily of opinion, against a great reader, and all his adherents, that Æsop was not a jot properer or handsomer than he is represented by the common pictures. But the soldier believes with the learned person above mentioned; for he thinks none but an impudent tall author could be guilty of such an unmannerly piece of satire on little warriors, as his battle of the mouse and the frog. The politician is very proud of a certain king of Egypt, called Bocchor, who, as Diodorus assures us, was a person of very low stature, but far exceeded all that went before him in discretion and politics. "As I am secretary to the club, it is my business whenever we meet, to take minutes of the transactions. This has enabled me to send you the foregoing particulars, as I may hereafter other memoirs. We have spies appointed in every quarter of the town, to give us informations of the misbehaviour of such refractory persons as refuse to be subject to our statutes. Whatsoever aspiring practices any of these our people shall be guilty of in their amours, single combats, or any indirect means to manhood, we shall certainly be acquainted with, and publish to the world for their punishment and reformation. For the president has granted me the sole property of exposing and shewing to the town all such intractable dwarfs, whose circumstances exempt them from being carried about in boxes; reserving only to himself, as the right of a poet, those smart characters that will shine in epigrams. Venerable Nestor, I salute you in the name of the club. "BOB SHORT, Secretary." N° 93. SATURDAY, JUNE 27, 1713. Est animus lucis contemptor.-VIRG. Æn. ix. 205. HE following letters are curious and instructive, and TH "TO THE AUTHOR OF THE GUARDIAN. June 25, 1713. "SIR, "The enclosed is a faithful translation from an old author, which, if it deserves your notice, let the readers guess whether he was a heathen or a Christian.* "I am, your most humble servant. "I cannot, my friends, forbear letting you know what I think of death; for methinks I view and understand it much better, the nearer I approach to it. I am convinced that your fathers, those illustrious persons whom I so much loved and honoured, do not cease to live, though they have passed through what we call death; they are undoubtedly still living, but it is that sort of life which alone deserves truly to be called life. In effect, while we are confined to bodies, we ought to esteem ourselves no other than a sort of galley-slaves at the chain, since the soul, which is somewhat divine, and descends from heaven as the place of its original, seems debased and dishonoured by the mixture with flesh and blood, and to be in a state of banishment from its celestial country. I cannot help thinking, too, that one main reason of uniting souls to bodies was, that the great work of the universe might have spectators to admire the beautiful order of nature, the regular motion of heavenly bodies, who should strive to express that regularity in the uniformity of their lives. When I consider the boundless activity of our minds, the remembrance we have of things past, our foresight of what is to come; when I reflect on the noble discoveries and vast improvements, by which these minds have advanced arts and sciences; I am entirely persuaded, and out of all doubt that a nature which has in it Xenoph. Opera, vol. i. p. 547, et seq. edit. A. Ernesti. 8vo. Lips. 1763. 4 tom. M. T. Cicer. Opera, Pars Xmas, p. 3754, et seq. Cato Major, De Senectute, xxii. edit. J. Verburgii, 8vo. Amst. 1724. self a fund of so many excellent things, cannot possibly be mortal. I observe farther, that my mind is altogether simple, without the mixture of any substance or nature different from its own; I conclude from thence that it is indivisible, and consequently cannot perish. "By no means think, therefore, my dear friends, when I shall have quitted you, that I cease to be, or shall subsist no where. Remember that while we live together, you do not see my mind, and yet are sure that I have one actuating and moving my body; doubt not then but that this same mind will have a being when it is separated, though you cannot then perceive its actions. What nonsense would it be to pay those honours to great men after their deaths, which we constantly do, if their souls did not then subsist? For my own part, I could never imagine that our minds live only when united to our bodies, and die when they leave them; or that they shall cease to think and understand when disengaged from bodies, which without them have neither sense nor reason: on the contrary, I believe the soul, when separated from matter, to enjoy the greatest purity and simplicity of its nature, and to have much more wisdom and light than while it was united. We see when the body dies what becomes of all the parts which composed it; but we do not see the mind, either in the body, or when it leaves it. Nothing more resembles death than sleep, and it is in that state the soul chiefly shews it has something divine in its nature. How much more then must it shew it when entirely disengaged?" "Since you have not refused to insert matters of a theological nature in those excellent papers with which you daily both instruct and divert us, I earnestly desire you to print the following paper. The notions therein advanced are, for aught I know, new to the English reader, and if they are true, will afford room for many useful inferences. "No man that reads the evangelists, but must observe that our blessed Saviour does upon every occasion bend all his force and zeal to rebuke and correct the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. Upon that subject he shews a warmth which one meets with in no other part of his sermons. They |