but yesterday, that we ballotted into our society one of the Flanderkin-Bird-Merchants."

This association for the preservation of elegant fare gratifies my friend Cramwell's luxury at a cheap rate: and that he may make as many good meals as possible, he often contrives to introduce himself to the tables of persons of quality. This he effects by sending my lord or her ladyship a present of a Bath cheese, or a ruff or land-rail from his friends in Lincolnshire or Somersetshire; which seldom fails to procure him an invitation to dinner. He then plays his part as lustily, as if he had kept Lent, or were not to make a dinner again for a fortnight. He never suffers the smallest side-dish to escape him: for one is so exceeding good; another looks so tempting; another is so great a rarity; and though he declares he cannot touch a bit more, he will make shift to find room for this or that dainty because he never tasted it in his life. Whereever he goes, he always takes care to secure to himself the best share of every nicer dish, without the least regard to the rest of the company: he will help himself to a whole bird, though there are but a brace; and for fear any tid-bit should be snapped up before him, he snatches at it as greedily, as an hungry Frenchman at an ordinary. It once happened, that dining with an alderman his appetite so far got the better of his good-breeding, that he shaved off all the outside of a plumb-pudding; and he has ever since been talked of in the city by the name of skin-pudding.

As all his joy and misery constantly arises from his belly, he thinks it is the same with others; and I heard him ask a perfect stranger to him, who complained that he was sick, "whether he had over-eat himself." It is no wonder, that Cramwell should be sometimes troubled with the gout; I called upon him the other morning, and found him with his legs wrapped up in flannel, and a book lying open before him

upon the table. On asking him what he was reading, he told me he was taking physic; and on inquiring whose advice he had, "Oh, says he, nobody can do me so much good as Mrs. Hannah Glasse. I am here going through a course of her Art of Cookery, in hopes to get a stomach: for indeed, my dear friend, (added he, with tears in his eyes) my appetite is quite gone; and I am sure I shall die, if I do not find something in this book, which I think I can eat." 0.

N° 88. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 2, 1755.

-Fuit haud ignobilis Argis,

Qui se credebat miros audire tragœdos.
In vacuo lætus sessor plausorque theatro.
Hic ubi cognatorum opibus curisque refectus
Expulit helleboro morbum bilemque meraco,
Et redit ad sese ;-Pol me occidistis, amici,
Non servâstis, ait; cui sic extorta voluptas,
Et demptus per vim mentis gratissimus error.

HOR.

A wight there was, whose mad distemper'd brain
Convey'd him ev'ry night to Drury-Lane:
Pleas'd and transported in th' ideal pit
At fancied tragedies he seem'd to sit.
Now to his wits by sage Monro restor❜d,
No thanks, but curses on his friends he pour'd.
Ye fools! (he cried) the dear delusion lost,
My pleasure fled, you've cur'd me to my cost:
Seiz❜d with such whims, with frenzy so diverting,
Cruel! to close the scene, and drop the curtain.

HORACE, in the passage quoted at the head of my paper, tells us (after Aristotle) of a man, who used to sit in the empty theatre and fancy that he saw real

exhibitions on the stage. We have the like account, in another ancient author, of a person that used to wait with great solicitude the coming of ships into the harbour, believing them to be his own property. The end of these madmen was also similar: they were both cured and both complained, that they were deprived of the satisfaction, which they before enjoyed from a pleasing error of their minds.

That the happiness and misery of the far greater part of mankind depends upon the fancy, need not be insisted on: Grede quòd habes et habes, Think that you have, and you have, is a maxim not confined to those only within the walls of Bedlam. I remember an humourist, who would frequently divert himself in the same manner with the madmen above-mentioned, and supply his real wants by the force of his imagination, He would go round the markets, and suppose himself to be cheapening the most dainty provisions; and when he came home to his scanty meal, by the same ideal contrivance he would convert his trotters into turbot, and his small beer into the most delicious Burgundy. As he was a barber by trade, he would put on the air and manners of his customers, while he combed out their wigs with every bag he would conceive himself going to court or an assembly; and once, when he was sick, he got together three or four of the largest tyes, placed them upon blocks round his bed-side, and called them a consultation of physicians,

But of all others, there are none perhaps, who are more obliged to the imagination for their ideal happiness, than the fraternity of which I am an unworthy member. There is no set of people, who are more ambitious to appear grand in the world, and yet have less means, than those gentlemen whom the world has styled au 'hors. Wit and pride as often go hand in hand together as wit and poverty: but though the generality of writers are by the frowns of fortune debarred

from possessing a profuse share of the good things of this world, they are abundantly recompensed by enjoying them in speculation. They indulge in golden dreams, at the time that they have not sixpence in their pockets; and conjure up all the luxuries of Pontac's before them, though they are at a loss perhaps where to get a dinner. Thus a critic by a kind of magic will transport himself to the theatres in an imaginary chariot, and be seated at once in the front-boxes; when in reality he has waited for two hours in Vinegar yard before the opening of the doors, to secure to himself a corner in the twelve-penny gallery. Hence it also happens to most authors, that though their way of life be ever so mean, their writings savour of the most unbounded magnificence; and as they have nothing to bestow, a most surprising generosity always accompanies every action of the quill. A novelist, for example, is remarkably lavish of his cash on all occasions; and spares no expence in carrying on the designs of his personages through ever so many volumes. Nothing, indeed, is more easy than to be very profuse upon paper: An author, when he is about it, may erect his airy castles to what height he pleases, and with the wave of his pen may command the mines of Peru and as he deals about his money without once untying his purse-strings, it will cost him the same whether he throws away a mite or a million; and another dip of ink, by the addition of two or three gratis cyphers, may in an instant convert a single ten into as many thousands.

But it must be confessed, that we essay-writers, as we are the greatest Egotists, are consequently most vain and ostentatious. As we frequently find occasion to prate about ourselves, we take abundant care to put the reader constantly in mind of our importance. It is very well known, that we keep the best company, are present at the most expensive places of diversion, and

can talk as familiarly of White's, as if we had been admitted to the honour of losing an estate there. Though the necessaries as well as the luxuries of life may perhaps be denied us, we readily make up for the want of them by the creative power of the imagination. Thus, for instance, I remember a brother essayist, who took a particular pride in dating his lucubrations, "From my own Apartment ;" which he represented as abounding with every convenience: though at the same time he was working three stories from the ground, and was often forced, for want of other paper, to scribble upon wrappers of tobacco. As to myself, I make no doubt but the reader has long ago discovered without my telling him, that I loll at my ease in a crimson velvet chair, rest my elbow on the polished surface of a mahogany table, write my essays upon gilt paper, and dip my pen into a silver standish.

Indeed, though I have taken upon me the title of Connoisseur, I shall not presume to boast, that I am possessed of a musæum like Sloane's, or a library equal to Mead's. But as Pliny, and after him our countryman Mr. Pope, have left us a description of their elegant villas, I hope it will not be thought arrogance in me, after what I have said, if I set before the reader an account of my own study. This is a little edifice situated at some distance from the rest of the house, for the sake of privacy and retirement. It is an ancient pile of building, and hangs over a small rivulet; and as the entrance into it is shaded by a thick hedge of ever-greens, which cast a kind of awful gloom about it, some learned antiquaries have been led to conjecture, that it was formerly a Temple, or rather a Chapel of ease, dedicated to one of the heathen goddesses. This goddess, they inform me, was worshipped by the Romans, and was probably held in no less veneration by the Egyptians, Chaldees, Syrians, and other nations. However this be, the walls on the in