[Footnote 4:  It is Monsieur in the first issue and also in the first reprint.]

[Footnote 5:  [begun]]

* * * * *

No. 482.  Friday, September 12, 1712.  Addison.

  ‘Floriferis ut apes in saltibus omnia libant.’

  Lucr.

When I have published any single Paper that falls in with the Popular Taste, and pleases more than ordinary, it always brings me in a great return of Letters.  My Tuesday’s Discourse, wherein I gave several Admonitions to the Fraternity of the Henpeck’d, has already produced me very many Correspondents; the Reason I cannot guess at, unless it be that such a Discourse is of general Use, and every married Man’s Money.  An honest Tradesman, who dates his Letter from Cheapside, sends me Thanks in the name of a Club, who, he tells me, meet as often as their Wives will give them leave, and stay together till they are sent for home.  He informs me, that my Paper has administered great Consolation to their whole Club, and desires me to give some further Account of Socrates, and to acquaint them in whose Reign he lived, whether he was a Citizen or a Courtier, whether he buried Xantippe, with many other particulars:  For that by his Sayings he appears to have been a very Wise Man and a good Christian.  Another, who writes himself Benjamin Bamboo, tells me, that being coupled with a Shrew, he had endeavoured to tame her by such lawful means as those which I mentioned in my last Tuesday’s Paper, and that in his Wrath he had often gone further than Bracton allows in those cases; but that for the future he was resolved to bear it like a Man of Temper and Learning, and consider her only as one who lives in his House to teach him Philosophy. Tom Dapperwit says, that he agrees with me in that whole Discourse, excepting only the last Sentence, where I affirm the married State to be either an Heaven or an Hell. Tom has been at the charge of a Penny upon this occasion, to tell me, that by his Experience it is neither one nor the other, but rather that middle kind of State, commonly known by the Name of Purgatory.

The Fair Sex have likewise obliged me with their Reflections upon the same Discourse.  A Lady, who calls herself Euterpe, and seems a Woman of Letters, asks me whether I am for establishing the Salick Law in every Family, and why it is not fit that a Woman who has Discretion and Learning should sit at the Helm, when the Husband is weak and illiterate?  Another, of a quite contrary Character, subscribes herself Xantippe, and tells me, that she follows the Example of her Name-sake; for being married to a Bookish Man, who has no Knowledge of the World, she is forced to take their Affairs into her own Hands, and to spirit him up now and then, that he may not grow musty, and unfit for Conversation.

After this Abridgment of some Letters which are come to my hands upon this Occasion, I shall publish one of them at large.