[194] They were obliged by the statutes of these colleges to keep to Aristotle for their texts (Nichols).
[195] See the account of the Queenhithe election in No. 73.
[No. 75. [Steele and Addison.][196]
From Thursday, Sept. 29, to Saturday, Oct. 1, 1709
From my own Apartment, Sept. 30.
I am called off from public dissertations by a domestic affair of great importance, which is no less than the disposal of my sister Jenny for life. The girl is a girl of great merit, and pleasing conversation; but I being born of my father's first wife, and she of his third, she converses with me rather like a daughter than a sister. I have indeed told her, that if she kept her honour, and behaved herself in such manner as became the Bickerstaffs, I would get her an agreeable man for her husband; which was a promise I made her after reading a passage in Pliny's Epistles.[197] That polite author had been employed to find out a consort for his friend's daughter, and gives the following character of the man he had pitched upon:
"Aciliano plurimum vigoris et industriæ quanqum in maxima verecundia: est illi facies liberalis, multo sanguine, multo rubore, suffusa: est ingenua totius corporis pulchritudo, et quidum senatorius decor, quæ ego nequaquam arbitror negligenda: debet enim hoc castitati puellarum quasi præmium dari."
"Acilianus (for that was the gentleman's name) is a man of extraordinary vigour and industry, accompanied with the greatest modesty. He has very much of the gentleman, with a lively colour, and flush of health in his aspect. His whole person is finely turned, and speaks him a man of quality: which are qualifications that, I think, ought by no means to be overlooked, and should be bestowed on a daughter as the reward of her chastity."
A woman that will give herself liberties, need not put her parents to so much trouble; for if she does not possess these ornaments in a husband, she can supply herself elsewhere. But this is not the case of my sister Jenny, who, I may say without vanity, is as unspotted a spinster as any in Great Britain. I shall take this occasion to recommend the conduct of our own family in this particular.
We have in the genealogy of our house, the descriptions and pictures of our ancestors from the time of King Arthur; in whose days there was one of my own name, a Knight of his Round Table, and known by the name of Sir Isaac Bickerstaff. He was low of stature, and of a very swarthy complexion, not unlike a Portuguese Jew. But he was more prudent than men of that height usually are, and would often communicate to his friends his design of lengthening and whitening his posterity. His eldest son Ralph, for that was his name, was for this reason married to a lady who had little else to recommend her, but that she was very tall and very fair. The issue of this match, with the help of high shoes, made a tolerable figure in the next age; though the complexion of the family was obscure until the fourth generation from that marriage. From which time, till the reign of William the Conqueror, the females of our house were famous for their needlework and fine skins. In the male line, there happened an unlucky accident in the reign of Richard the Third; the eldest son of Philip, then chief of the family, being born with an hump-back and very high nose. This was the more astonishing, because none of his forefathers ever had such a blemish; nor indeed was there any in the neighbourhood of that make, except the butler, who was noted for round shoulders, and a Roman nose: what made the nose the less excusable, was the remarkable smallness of his eyes.