’In monosyllables his thunders roll,
  He, she, it, and, we, ye, they, fright the soul.’]

[Footnote 8:  was]

[Footnote 9:  The Tragedy of ‘Phaedra and Hippolitus’, acted without success in 1707, was the one play written by Mr. Edmund Smith, a merchant’s son who had been educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford, and who had ended a dissolute life at the age of 42 (in 1710), very shortly before this paper was written.  Addison’s regard for the play is warmed by friendship for the unhappy writer.  He had, indeed, written the Prologue to it, and struck therein also his note of war against the follies of Italian Opera.

  ’Had Valentini, musically coy,
  Shunned Phaedra’s Arms, and scorn’d the puffer’d Joy,
  It had not momed your Wonder to have seen
  An Eunich fly from an enamour’d Queen;
  How would it please, should she in English speak,
  And could Hippolitus reply in Greek!’

The Epilogue to this play was by Prior.  Edmund Smith’s relation to Addison is shown by the fact that, in dedicating the printed edition of his Phaedra and Hippolitus to Lord Halifax, he speaks of Addison’s lines on the Peace of Ryswick as ‘the best Latin Poem since the AEneid.’]

* * * * *

No. 19.  Thursday, March 22, 1711.  Steele.

      ’Dii benefecerunt, inopis me quodque pusilli
      Finxerunt animi, rari et perpauca loquentis.’

      Hor.

Observing one Person behold another, who was an utter Stranger to him, with a Cast of his Eye which, methought, expressed an Emotion of Heart very different from what could be raised by an Object so agreeable as the Gentleman he looked at, I began to consider, not without some secret Sorrow, the Condition of an Envious Man.  Some have fancied that Envy has a certain Magical Force in it, and that the Eyes of the Envious have by their Fascination blasted the Enjoyments of the Happy.  Sir Francis Bacon says, [1] Some have been so curious as to remark the Times and Seasons when the Stroke of an Envious Eye is most effectually pernicious, and have observed that it has been when the Person envied has been in any Circumstance of Glory and Triumph.  At such a time the Mind of the Prosperous Man goes, as it were, abroad, among things without him, and is more exposed to the Malignity.  But I shall not dwell upon Speculations so abstracted as this, or repeat the many excellent Things which one might collect out of Authors upon this miserable Affection; but keeping in the road of common Life, consider the Envious Man with relation to these three Heads, His Pains, His Reliefs, and His Happiness.