in your esteem; if your applause, when I am no more, is preferable to the most glorious life without you I say, madam, if any of these considerations can have weight with you, you will give me a kind place in your memory, which I prefer to the glory of Cæsar. I hope this will be read, as it is writ, with tears."

The beloved lady is a woman of a sensible mind; but she has confessed to me, that after all her true and solid value for Constant, she had much more concern for the loss of Careless. Those noble and serious spirits have something equal to the adversities they meet with, and consequently lessen the objects of pity. Great accidents seem not cut out so much for men of familiar characters, which makes them more easily pitied, and soon after beloved. Add to this, that the sort of love which generally succeeds, is a stranger to awe and distance. I asked Romana, whether of the two she should have chosen, had they survived? She said, she knew she ought to have taken Constant: but believed she should have chosen Careless.

St. James's Coffee-house, June 17.

Letters from Lisbon, of the ninth instant, N. S. say, that the enemy's army, having blocked up Olivenza, was posted on the Guadiana. The Portugueze are very apprehensive that the garrison of that place, though it consists of five of the best regiments of their army, will be obliged to surrender, if not timely relieved, they not being supplied with provisions for more than six weeks. Hereupon their generals held a council of war on the fourth instant, wherein it was concluded to advance towards Badajos. With this design the army decamped on the fifth from Jerumena, and marched to Cancaon. It is hoped, that if the enemy follow their motions, they may have opportunity to put a sufficient quantity of provision and ammunition into Olivenza.

*** Mr. Kickerstaff gives notice to all persons that dress themselves as they please, without regard to decorum (as with blue and red stockings in mourning, tucked cravats, and night-cap wigs, betore people of the first quality), that he has yet received no fine for indulging them in that liberty, and that he expects their compliance with this demand, or that they go home immediately and shift themselves. This is further to acquaint the town, that the report of the hosiers, toymen, and milliners, having compounded with Mr. Bickerstaff for tolerating such enormities, is utterly false and scandalous.

No 31. TUESDAY, JUNE 21, 1709.

Quicquid agunt bomines

nostri est farrago libelli.

JUV. Sat. I. 85, 86.

P.

Whate'er men do, or say, or think, or dream,
Our motley paper seizes for its theme.

Grecian Coffee-house, June 18. In my dissertation against the custom of single combat, it has been objected, that there is not learning, or much reading, shown therein, which is the very life and soul of all treatises; for which reason, being always easy to receive admonitions and reform my errors, I thought fit to consult this learned board

on the subject. Upon proposing some doubts, and desiring their assistance, a very hopeful young gentleman, my relation, who is to be called to the bar within a year and a half at farthest, told me, that he had ever since I first mentioned duelling turned his head that way; and that he was principally moved thereto, because he designed to follow the circuits in the north of England and south of Scotland, and to reside mostly at his own estate at Landbadernawz * in Cardiganshire. The northern Britons and the southern Scots are a warm people, and the Welsh a nation of gentlemen;" so that it behoved him to understand well the science of quarrelling. The young gentleman proceeded admirably well, and gave the board an account that he had read "Fitzherbert's + Grand Abridgement," and had found that duelling is a very antient part of the law; for when a man is sued, be it for his life or his land, the person that joins the issue, whether plaintiff or defendant, may put the trial upon the duel. Further he argued, under favour of the Court, that when the issue is joined by the duel, in treason or other capital crimes, the parties accused and accuser must fight in their own proper persons: but if the dispute be for lands, you may hire a champion at Hockley in the Hole, or any where else. This part of the law we had from the Saxons; and they had it, as also the trial by ordeal, from the Laplanders. It is indeed agreed, said he, the southern and eastern nations never knew any thing of it; for though the antient Romans would scold

* There is no such place. It is probable Llanbadern Vawr in Cardiganshire is intended.

+ A book published under this title in 1516 by Anthony Fitzherbert, one of the judges in the reign of Henry VIII. This author died in 1538.

and call names filthily, yet there is not an example of a challenge that ever passed among them.

His quoting the eastern nations put another gentleman in mind of an account he had from a boatswain of an East-Indiaman; which was, that a Chinese had tricked and bubbled him, and that when he came to demand satisfaction the next morning, and like a true tar of honour called him a son of a whore, lyar, dog, and other rough appellatives used by persons conversant with winds and waves, the Chinese, with great tranquillity, desired him "not to come abroad fasting, nor put himself into a heat, for it would prejudice his health." Thus the East knows nothing of this gallantry.

There sat at the left of the table a person of a venerable aspect, who asserted, that "half the impositions which are put upon these ages have been transmitted by writers who have given too great pomp and magnificence to the exploits of the antient bear-garden, and made their gladiators, by fabulous tradition, greater than Gorman * and others of Great Britain." He informed the company that "he had searched authorities for what he said, and that a learned antiquary, Humphrey Scarecrow, Esquire, of Hockley in the Hole, recorder to the bear-garden, was then writing a discourse on the subject. It appears by the best accounts," says this gentleman, "that the high names which are used among us with so great veneration, were no other than stage-fighters, and worthies of the antient bear-garden. The renowned Hercules always carried a quarterstaff, and was from thence called

* Gorman is mentioned in the epilogue to Lansdowne's "Jew of Venice," and is there explained to have been a prizefighter.

Claviger *. A learned chronologist is about proving what wood this staff was made of, whether oak, ash, or crab-tree. The first trial of skill he ever performed was with one Cacus, a deer-stealer; the next was with Typhonus, a giant of forty feet four inches. Indeed it was unhappily recorded, that meeting at last with a sailor's wife, she made his staff of prowess serve her own use, and dwindle away to a distaff: she clapped him on an old tar jacket of her husband; so that this great hero drooped like a scabbed sheep. Him his contemporary Theseus succeeded in the bear-garden, which honour he held for many years. This grand duellist went to Hell, and was the only one of that sort that ever came back again. As for Achilles and Hector (as the ballads of those times mention), they were pretty smart fellows; they fought at sword and buckler; but the former had much the better of it, his mother, who was an oyster-woman, having got a blacksmith of Lemnos to make her son's weapons. There is a pair of trusty Trojans in a song of Virgil that were famous for handling their gauntlets, Dares and Entellus; and indeed it does appear, they fought no sham-prize."

The Roman bear-garden was abundantly more magnificent than any thing Greece could boast of; it flourished most under those delights of mankind, Nero and Domitian. At one time it is recorded, four hundred senators entered the list, and thought it an honour to be cudgelled and quarterstaffed. I observe the Lanistæ were the people chiefly employed, which makes me imagine our Bear-garden copied much after this, the butchers being the greatest men in it.