Volume Iii Part 78 (1/2)
WILLIAM HONEYCOMB, ESQ. [1]
The Seven former Volumes of the _Spectator_ having been Dedicated to some of the most celebrated Persons of the Age, I take leave to Inscribe this Eighth and Last to You, as to a Gentleman who hath ever been ambitious of appearing in the best Company.
You are now wholly retired from the busie Part of Mankind, and at leisure to reflect upon your past Achievements; for which reason, I look upon You as a Person very well qualified for a Dedication.
I may possibly disappoint my Readers, and your self too, if I do not endeavour on this Occasion to make the World acquainted with your Virtues. And here, Sir, I shall not compliment You upon your Birth, Person, or Fortune; nor any other the like Perfections, which You possess whether You will or no: But shall only touch upon those, which are of your own acquiring, and in which every one must allow You have a real Merit.
Your janty Air and easy Motion, the Volubility of your Discourse, the Suddenness of your Laugh, the Management of your Snuff-Box, with the Whiteness of your Hands and Teeth (which have justly gained You the Envy of the most polite part of the Male World, and the Love of the greatest Beauties in the Female) are intirely to be ascribed to your own personal Genius and Application.
You are formed for these Accomplishments by a happy Turn of Nature, and have finished your self in them by the utmost Improvements of Art. A Man that is defective in either of these Qualifications (whatever may be the secret Ambition of his Heart) must never hope to make the Figure You have done, among the fas.h.i.+onable part of his Species. It is therefore no wonder, we see such Mult.i.tudes of aspiring young Men fall short of You in all these Beauties of your Character, notwithstanding the Study and Practice of them is the whole Business of their Lives. But I need not tell You that the free and disengaged Behaviour of a fine Gentleman makes as many aukward Beaux, as the Easiness of your Favourite _Waller_ hath made insipid Poets.
At present You are content to aim all your Charms at your own Spouse, without further Thought of Mischief to any others of the s.e.x. I know you had formerly a very great Contempt for that Pedantick Race of Mortals who call themselves Philosophers; and yet, to your Honour be it spoken, there is not a Sage of them all could have better acted up to their Precepts in one of the most important Points of Life: I mean in that Generous Dis-regard of Popular Opinion, which you showed some Years ago, when you chose for your Wife an obscure young Woman, who doth not indeed pretend to an ancient Family, but has certainly as many Fore-fathers as any Lady in the Land, if she could but reckon up their Names.
I must own I conceived very extraordinary hopes of you from the Moment that you confessed your Age, and from eight and forty (where you had stuck so many Years) very ingenuously step'd into your Grand Climacterick. Your Deportment has since been very venerable and becoming. If I am rightly informed, You make a regular Appearance every Quarter-Sessions among your Brothers of the _Quorum_; and if things go on as they do, stand fair for being a Colonel of the Militia. I am told that your Time pa.s.ses away as agreeably in the Amus.e.m.e.nts of a Country Life, as it ever did in the Gallantries of the Town: And that you now take as much pleasure in the Planting of young Trees, as you did formerly in the Cutting down of your Old ones. In short, we hear from all Hands that You are thoroughly reconciled to your dirty Acres, and have not too much Wit to look into your own Estate.
After having spoken thus much of my Patron, I must take the Privilege of an Author in saying something of my self. I shall therefore beg leave to add, that I have purposely omitted setting those Marks to the End of every Paper, which appeared in my former Volumes, that You may have an Opportunity of showing Mrs. _Honeycomb_ the Shrewdness of your Conjectures, by ascribing every Speculation to its proper Author: Though You know how often many profound Criticks in Style and Sentiments have very judiciously erred in this Particular, before they were let into the Secret. I am, _SIR, Your most Faithful, Humble Servant, THE SPECTATOR_.
(_THE_ Bookseller _to the_ Reader.
_In the Six hundred and thirty second_ Spectator, _the Reader will find an Account of the Rise of this Eighth and Last Volume._
_I have not been able to prevail upon the several Gentlemen who were concerned in this Work to let me acquaint the World with their Names.
Perhaps it will be unnecessary to inform the Reader, that no other Papers, which have appeared under the t.i.tle of_ Spectator, _since the closing of this Eighth Volume, were written by any of those Gentlemen who had a Hand in this or the former Volumes_.)
[Footnote 1: This Dedication to Addison's supplementary _Spectator_, begun a year and a half after the close of Steele's, is thought to be by Eustace Budgell.]
No. 556. Friday, June 18, 1714. Addison. [1]
To be continued every _Monday, Wednesday_, and _Friday_.
'Qualis ubi in lucem coluber, mala gramina, pastus, Frigida sub terra tumidum quem bruma tegebat; Nunc positis novus exuviis, nitidusque juventa, Lubrica convolvit sublato pectore terga Arduus ad solem, et linguis micat ore trisulcis.'
Virg.
Upon laying down the Office of SPECTATOR, I acquainted the World with my Design of electing a new Club, and of opening my Mouth in it after a most solemn Manner. Both the Election and the Ceremony are now past; but not finding it so easy as I at first imagined, to break thro' a Fifty Years Silence, I would not venture into the World under the character of a Man who pretends to talk like other People, till I had arrived at a full Freedom of Speech.