never any such Man as
_Plutarch_, than that _Plutarch_ was ill-natured, capricious, or inhuman.

If we may believe our Logicians, Man is distinguished from all other
Creatures by the Faculty of Laughter. He has an Heart capable of Mirth,
and naturally disposed to it. It is not the Business of Virtue to
extirpate the Affections of the Mind, but to regulate them. It may
moderate and restrain, but was not designed to banish Gladness from the
Heart of Man. Religion contracts the Circle of our Pleasures, but leaves
it wide enough for her Votaries to expatiate in. The Contemplation of
the Divine Being, and the Exercise of Virtue, are in their own Nature so
far from excluding all Gladness of Heart, that they are perpetual
Sources of it. In a word, the true Spirit of Religion cheers, as well as
composes the Soul; it banishes indeed all Levity of Behaviour, all
vicious and dissolute Mirth, but in exchange fills the Mind with a
perpetual Serenity, uninterrupted Chearfulness, and an habitual
Inclination to please others, as well as to be pleased in it self.

O.

[Footnote 1: Supposed to be Anthony Henley, a gentleman of property, who
corresponded with Swift, was a friend of Steele's, and contributed some
unidentified papers to the _Tatler_. He died in August, 1711.]

[Footnote 2: Dr. Thomas Goodwin, who was born in 1600, and educated at
Cambridge. He was one of those who, like Milton's tutor, Dr. Thomas
Young, went to Holland to escape from persecution, and was pastor of the
English church at Arnheim, till in the Civil Wars he came to London, and
sat at Westminster as one of the Assembly of Divines. In 1649 Cromwell
made him President of Magdalen College As Oliver Cromwell's chaplain, he
prayed with and for him in his last illness. At the Restoration, Dr.
Goodwin was deprived of his post at Oxford, and he then preached in
London to an Assembly of Independents till his death, in 1679. His works
were collected in five volumes folio.]

[Footnote 3: Plutarch, in his short Treatise 'On Superstition.']

* * * * *

No. 495. Saturday, September 27, 1712. Addison.

Duris ut ilex tonsa bipennibus
Nigrae feraci frondis in Algido,
Per damna, per cades, ab ipso
Ducit opes animumque ferro.

Hor.

As I am one, who, by my Profession, am obliged to look into all kinds of
Men, there are none whom I consider with so much Pleasure,