Fantasy Football Challenge - Football Fanatics Library

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The Tatler

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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, where we shall go to loggerheads, my thoughts are running upon a fair enemy in England. I was in hopes I had left you there; but you follow the camp, though I have endeavoured to make some of our leaguer ladies drive you out of the field. All my comfort is, you are more troublesome to my colonel than myself: I permit you to visit me only now and then; but he downright keeps you. I laugh at his Honour as far as his gravity will allow me; but I know him to be a man of too much merit to succeed with a woman. Therefore defend your heart as well as you can, I shall come home this winter irresistibly dressed, and with quite a new foreign air. And so I had like to say, I rest, but alas! I remain, "Madam, "Your most obedient, "Most humble Servant, "JOHN CARELESS." Now for Colonel Constant's epistle; you see it is folded and directed with the utmost care. "MADAM, "I do myself the honour to write to you this evening, because I believe to-morrow will be a day of battle, and something forebodes in my breast that I shall fall in it. If it proves so, I hope you will hear, I have done nothing below a man who had a love of his country, quickened by a passion for a woman of honour. If there be anything noble in going to a certain death; if there be any merit, that I meet it with pleasure, by promising myself a place in your esteem; if your applause, when I am no more, is preferable to the most glorious life without you: I say, madam, if any of these considerations can have weight with you, you will give me a kind place in your memory, which I prefer to the glory of Csar. I hope, this will be read, as it is writ, with tears." The beloved lady is a woman of a sensible mind; but she has confessed to me, that after all her true and solid value for Constant, she had much more concern for the loss of Careless. Those great and serious spirits have something equal to the adversities they meet with, and consequently lessen the objects of pity. Great accidents seem not cut out so much for men of familiar characters, which makes them more easily pitied, and soon after beloved. Add to this, that the sort of love which generally succeeds, is a stranger to awe and distance. I asked Romana, whether of the two she should have chosen had they survived? She said, she knew she ought to have taken Constant; but believed she should have chosen Careless. St. James's Coffee-house, June 17. Letters from Lisbon of the 9th instant, N.S., say, that the enemy's army, having blocked up Olivenza, was posted on the Guadiana. The Portuguese are very apprehensive that the garrison of that place, though it consists of five of the best regiments of their army, will be obliged to surrender, if not timely relieved, they not being supplied with provisions for more than six weeks. Hereupon their generals held a council of war on the 4th instant, wherein it was concluded to advance towards Badajos. With this design the army decamped on the 5th from Jerumena, and marched to Cancaon. It is hoped, that if the enemy follow their motions, they may have opportunity to put a sufficient quantity of provision and ammunition into Olivenza. Mr. Bickerstaff gives notice to all persons that dress themselves as they please, without regard to decorum (as with blue and red stockings in mourning; tucked cravats, and nightcap wigs, before people of the first quality) that he has yet received no fine for indulging them in that liberty, and that he expects their compliance with this demand, or that they go home immediately and shift themselves. This is further to acquaint the town, that the report that the hosiers, toymen, and milliners, have compounded with Mr. Bickerstaff for tolerating such enormities, is utterly false and scandalous. [Footnote 307: At the Tower of London. The Tower menagerie was one of the sights of London until its removal in 1834. See Addison's _Freeholder_; No. 47.] [Footnote 308: In Westminster Abbey.] [Footnote 309: The Priory of Bethlem, in St. Botolph Without, Bishopsgate, was given by Henry VIII. to the Corporation of London, and was from thenceforth used as a hospital for lunatics. In 1675 a new hospital was built near London Wall, in Moorfields, at a cost of 17,000. See Hogarth's "Rake's Progress," Plate 8. In No. 127, Steele calls Bedlam "that magnificent palace."] [Footnote 310: Drury Lane Theatre was closed on June 6, 1709, by order of the Lord Chamberlain, in consequence of Rich's ill-treatment of the actors.] No. 31. [STEELE. From _Saturday, June 18_, to _Tuesday, June 21, 1709._ * * * * * Grecian Coffee-house, June 18. In my dissertation against the custom of single combat,[311] it has been objected, that there is not learning, or much reading, shown therein, which is the very life and soul of all treatises; for which reason, being always easy to receive admonitions, and reform my errors, I thought fit to consult this learned board on the subject. Upon proposing some doubts, and desiring their assistance, a very hopeful young gentleman, my relation, who is to be called to the bar within a year and a half at farthest, told me, that he had ever since I first mentioned duelling turned his head that way; and that he was principally moved thereto, by reason that he thought to follow the circuits in the North of England and South of Scotland, and to reside mostly at his own estate at Landbadernawz[312] in Cardiganshire. The northern Britons and southern Scots are a warm people, and the Welsh a nation of gentlemen; so that it behoved him to understand well the science of quarrelling. The young gentleman proceeded admirably well, and gave the board an

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