No. 140.
[Steele.
Tuesday, Feb. 28, to Thursday, March 2, 1709-10.
——Aliena negotia centum
Per caput, et circa saliunt latus—
Hor., 2 Sat. vi. 33.
Sheer Lane, March 1.
Having the honour to be by my great-grandmother a Welshman, I have been among some choice spirits of that part of Great Britain, where we solaced ourselves in celebration of the day of St. David. I am, I confess, elevated above that state of mind which is proper for lucubration: but I am the less concerned at this, because I have for this day or two last past observed, that we novelists have been condemned wholly to the pastry-cooks, the eyes of the nation being turned upon greater matters.[127] This therefore being a time when none but my immediate correspondents will read me, I shall speak to them chiefly at this present writing. It is the fate of us who pretend to joke, to be frequently understood to be only upon the droll when we are speaking the most seriously, as appears by the following letter to Charles Lillie:
"Mr. Lillie, "London, February 28, 1709/10.
"It being professed by 'Squire Bickerstaff, that his intention is to expose the vices and follies of the age, and to promote virtue and goodwill amongst mankind; it must be a comfort, to a person labouring under great straits and difficulties, to read anything that has the appearance of succour. I should be glad to know therefore, whether the intelligence given in his Tatler of Saturday last,[128] of the intended charity of a certain citizen of London, to maintain the education of ten boys in writing and accounts till they be fit for trade, be given only to encourage and recommend persons to the practice of such noble and charitable designs, or whether there be a person who really intends to do so. If the latter, I humbly beg Squire Bickerstaff's pardon for making a doubt, and impute it to my ignorance; and most humbly crave, that he would be pleased to give notice in his Tatler, when he thinks fit, whether his nomination of ten boys be disposed of, or whether there be room for two boys to be recommended to him; and that he will permit the writer of this to present him with two boys, who, it is humbly presumed, will be judged to be very remarkable objects of such charity.
"Sir,
"Your most humble Servant."
I am to tell this gentleman in sober sadness, and without jest, that there really is so good and charitable a man as the benefactor inquired for in his letter, and that there are but two boys yet named. The father of one of them was killed at Blenheim, the father of the other at Almanza. I do not here give the names of the children, because I should take it to be an insolence in me to publish them, in a charity which I have only the direction of as a servant, to that worthy and generous spirit who bestows upon them this bounty, without laying the bondage of an obligation. What I have to do is to tell them, they are beholden only to their Maker, to kill in them as they grow up the false shame of poverty, and let them know, that their present fortune, which is come upon them by the loss of their poor fathers on so glorious occasions, is much more honourable, than the inheritance of the most ample ill-gotten wealth.