The Spectator, Volume 2. eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 1,123 pages of information about The Spectator, Volume 2..

The Spectator, Volume 2. eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 1,123 pages of information about The Spectator, Volume 2..

[Footnote 1:  Or Henry Martyn?]

[Footnote 2:  Surveyor-general of Ireland to Charles II.  See his Discourse of Taxes (1689).]

[Footnote 3:  Our idle poor till the time of Henry VIII. lived upon alms.  After the dissolution of the monasteries experiments were made for their care, and by a statute 43 Eliz. overseers were appointed and Parishes charged to maintain their helpless poor and find work for the sturdy.  In Queen Annes time the Poor Law had been made more intricate and troublesome by the legislation on the subject that had been attempted after the Restoration.]

[Footnote 4:  [you] throughout, and in first reprint.]

[Footnote 5:  X.]

* * * * *

No. 233.  Tuesday, Nov. 27, 1711.  Addison.

 —­Tanquam hec sint nostri medicina furoris,
  Aut Deus ille malis hominum mitescere discat.

  Virg.

I shall, in this Paper, discharge myself of the Promise I have made to the Publick, by obliging them with a Translation of the little Greek Manuscript, which is said to have been a Piece of those Records that were preserved in the Temple of Apollo, upon the Promontory of Leucate:  It is a short History of the Lovers Leap, and is inscribed, An Account of Persons Male and Female, who offered up their Vows in the Temple of the Pythian Apollo, in the Forty sixth Olympiad, and leaped from the Promontory of Leucate into the Ionian Sea, in order to cure themselves of the Passion of Love.

This Account is very dry in many Parts, as only mentioning the Name of the Lover who leaped, the Person he leaped for, and relating, in short, that he was either cured, or killed, or maimed by the Fall.  It indeed gives the Names of so many who died by it, that it would have looked like a Bill of Mortality, had I translated it at full length; I have therefore made an Abridgment of it, and only extracted such particular Passages as have something extraordinary, either in the Case, or in the Cure, or in the Fate of the Person who is mentioned in it.  After this short Preface take the Account as follows.

  Battus, the Son of Menalcas the Sicilian, leaped for Bombyca
  the Musician:  Got rid of his Passion with the Loss of his Right Leg
  and Arm, which were broken in the Fall.

  Melissa, in Love with Daphnis, very much bruised, but escaped with
  Life.

Cynisca, the Wife of AEschines, being in Love with Lycus; and AEschines her Husband being in Love with Eurilla; (which had made this married Couple very uneasy to one another for several Years) both the Husband and the Wife took the Leap by Consent; they both of them escaped, and have lived very happily together ever since.
Larissa, a Virgin of Thessaly,
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The Spectator, Volume 2. from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.