y degrees, and you must treat this custom
with humour and raillery to get an audience, before you come to
pronounce sentence upon it. There is foundation enough for raising such
entertainments from the practice on this occasion. Don't you know, that
often a man is called out of bed to follow implicitly a coxcomb (with
whom he would not keep company on any other occasion) to ruin and death?
Then a good list of such as are qualified by the laws of these
uncourteous men of chivalry to enter into combat (who are often persons
of honour without common honesty): these, I say, ranged and drawn up in
their proper order, would give an aversion to doing anything in common
with such as men laugh at and contemn. But to go through this work, you
must not let your thoughts vary, or make excursions from your theme:
consider at the same time, that the matter has been often treated by the
ablest and greatest writers; yet that must not discourage you; for the
properest person to handle it, is one who has roved into mixed
conversations, and must have opportunities (which I shall give you) of
seeing these sort of men in their pleasures and gratifications; among
which, they pretend to reckon fighting. It was pleasantly enough said of
a bully in France, when duels first began to be punished: "The king has
taken away gaming, and stage-playing, and now fighting too; how does he
expect gentlemen shall divert themselves?"[288]

[Footnote 274: See Nos. 1, 10, 16.]

[Footnote 275: This letter is probably by Anthony Henley; see
advertisement at end of No. 25. At this time Henley was M.P. for
Weymouth, and a friend of the wits belonging to the Whig party. He died
in 1711. See Nos. 11, 193.]

[Footnote 276: No. 21.]

[Footnote 277: Wall and the others named were quack doctors.]

[Footnote 278: Sintelaer, who lived in High Holborn, published in Feb.
1709, "The Scourge of Venus and Mercury. With an appendix in answer to
Mr. John Marten's reflections thereupon" (_Postman_, Feb. 24 to 26,
1709).]

[Footnote 279: "AEneid," i. 460. Steele alters Virgil's "terriss" to
"villa."]

[Footnote 280: A sort of periwig, with a short tie and small round head.
See No. 30, end. In the _Spectator_ (No. 319), Dorinda describes a
humble servant of hers who "appeared to me in one of those wigs that I
think you call a 'night-cap,' which had altered him more effectually
than before. He afterwards played a couple of black riding wigs upon me,
with the same succe