'All accounts of gallantry, pleasure, and entertainment shall be under the article of White's Chocolate-house;[14] poetry, under that of Will's Coffee-house;[15] learning, under the title of Grecian;[16] foreign and domestic news, you will have from Saint James's Coffee-house; and what else I have to offer on any other subject shall be dated from my own apartment.[17]
'I once more desire my reader to consider, that as I cannot keep an ingenious man to go daily to Will's under twopence each day, merely for his charges; to White's, under sixpence; nor to the Grecian, without allowing him some plain Spanish, to be as able as others at the learned table; and that a good observer cannot speak with even Kidney (the waiter) at St. James's without clean linen; I say, these considerations will, I hope, make all persons willing to comply with my humble request (when my gratis stock is exhausted) of a penny apiece; especially since they are sure of some proper amusement, and that it is impossible for me to want means to entertain them, having, besides the force of my own parts, the power of divination, and that I can, by casting a figure, tell you all that may happen before it comes to pass.'
No. 5. The 'Tatler.'—April 21, 1709.
Who names that lost thing love without a tear,
Since so debauch'd by ill-bred customs here?
To an exact perfection they have brought
The action love, the passion is forgot.
'This was long ago a witty author's lamentation, but the evil still continues; and if a man of any delicacy were to attend the discourses of the young fellows of this age, he would believe there were none but the fallen to make the objects of passion. So true it is what the author of the above verses said, a little before his death, of the modern pretenders to gallantry: "They set up for wits in this age, by saying, when they are sober, what they of the last spoke only when they were drunk." But Cupid is not only blind at present, but dead drunk; and he has lost all his faculties; else how should Celia be so long a maid, with that agreeable behaviour? Corinna, with that sprightly wit? Serbia, with that heavenly voice? and Sacharissa, with all those excellences in one person, frequent the park, the play, and murder the poor Tits that drag her to public places, and not a man turn pale at her appearance? But such is the fallen state of love, that if it were not for honest Cynthio, who is true to the cause, we should hardly have a pattern left of the ancient worthies in that way; and indeed he has but very little encouragement to persevere. Though Cynthio has wit, good sense, fortune, and his very being depends upon her, the termagant for whom he sighs is in love with a fellow who stares in the glass all the time he is with her, and lets her plainly see she may possibly be his rival, but never his mistress. Yet Cynthio pleases himself with a vain imagination that, with the language of his eyes, now he has found out who she is, he shall conquer her, though her eyes are intent upon one who looks from her, which is ordinary with the sex.
'It is certainly a mistake in the ancients to draw the little gentleman Love as a blind boy, for his real character is a little thief that squints; for ask Mrs. Meddle, who is a confidante or spy upon all the passions in town, and she will tell you that the whole is a game of cross purposes. The lover is generally pursuing one who is in pursuit of another, and running from one that desires to meet him. Nay, the nature of this passion is so justly represented in a squinting little thief (who is always in a double action), that do but observe Clarissa next time you see her, and you will find, when her eyes have made their soft tour round the company she makes no stay on him they say she is to marry, but rests two seconds of a minute on Wildair, who neither looks nor thinks on her or any woman else. However, Cynthio had a bow from her the other day, upon which he is very much come to himself; and I heard him send his man of an errand yesterday, without any manner of hesitation; a quarter of an hour after which he reckoned twenty, remembered he was to sup with a friend, and went exactly to his appointment. I sent to know how he did this morning, and I find he hath not forgotten that he spoke to me yesterday.'
