knew their arts. As ceremony is the
invention of wise men to keep fools at a distance, so good breeding is
an expedient to make fools and wise men equals.

Will's Coffee-house, June 17.

The suspension of the playhouse[310] has made me have nothing to send
you from hence; but calling here this evening, I found the party I
usually sit with, upon the business of writing, and examining what was
the handsomest style in which to address women, and write letters of
gallantry. Many were the opinions which were immediately declared on
this subject: some were for a certain softness; some for I know not what
delicacy; others for something inexpressibly tender: when it came to me,
I said there was no rule in the world to be made for writing letters,
but that of being as near what you speak face to face as you can; which
is so great a truth, that I am of opinion, writing has lost more
mistresses than any one mistake in the whole legend of love. For when
you write to a lady for whom you have a solid and honourable love, the
great idea you have of her, joined to a quick sense of her absence,
fills your mind with a sort of tenderness, that gives your language too
much the air of complaint, which is seldom successful. For a man may
flatter himself as he pleases, but he will find, that the women have
more understanding in their own affairs than we have, and women of
spirit are not to be won by mourners. Therefore he that can keep
handsomely within rules, and support the carriage of a companion to his
mistress, is much more likely to prevail, than he who lets her see, the
whole relish of his life depends upon her. If possible therefore divert
your mistress, rather than sigh to her. The pleasant man she will desire
for her own sake; but the languishing lover has nothing to hope from but
her pity. To show the difference I produced two letters a lady gave me,
which had been writ to her by two gentlemen who pretended to her, but
were both killed the next day after the date at the battle of Almanza.
One of them was a mercurial gay-humoured man; the other a man of a
serious, but a great and gallant spirit. Poor Jack Careless! This is his
letter: you see how it is folded: the air of it is so negligent, one
might have read half of it by peeping into it, without breaking it open.
He had no exactness.

"MADAM,

"It is a very pleasant circumstance I am in, that while I should be
thinking of the good company we are to meet within a day or two,