No. 500.  Friday, October 3, 1712.  Addison.

  ’—­Huc natas adjice septem,
  Et totidem juvenes, et mox generosque nurusque. 
  Quaerite nunc, habeat quam nostra superbia causam.’

  Ov.  Met.

  SIR,

’You who are so well acquainted with the Story of Socrates, must have read how, upon his making a Discourse concerning Love, he pressed his Point with so much Success, that all the Batchelors in his Audience took a Resolution to Marry by the first Opportunity, and that all the married Men immediately took Horse and galloped home to their Wives.  I am apt to think your Discourses, in which you have drawn so many agreeable Pictures of Marriage, have had a very good Effect this way in England.  We are obliged to you, at least for having taken off that Senseless Ridicule, which for many Years the Witlings of the Town have turned upon their Fathers and Mothers.  For my own part, I was born in Wedlock, and I don’t care who knows it; For which Reason, among many others, I should look upon my self as a most insufferable Coxcomb, did I endeavour to maintain that Cuckoldom was inseparable from Marriage, or to make use of Husband and Wife as Terms of Reproach.  Nay, Sir, I will go one step further, and declare to you before the whole World, that I am a married Man, and at the same time I have so much Assurance as not to be ashamed of what I have done.

’Among the several Pleasures that accompany this state of Life, and which you have described in your former Papers, there are two you have not taken Notice of, and which are seldom cast into the Account, by those who write on this Subject.  You must have observed, in your Speculations on Human Nature, that nothing is more gratifying to the Mind of Man than Power or Dominion; and this I think my self amply possessed of, as I am the Father of a Family.  I am perpetually taken up in giving out Orders, in prescribing Duties, in hearing Parties, in administring Justice, and in distributing Rewards and Punishments.  To speak in the Language of the Centurion, I say unto one, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh; and to my Servant, Do This, and he doth it.  In short, Sir, I look upon my Family as a Patriarchal Sovereignty, in which I am my self both King and Priest.  All great Governments are nothing else but Clusters of these little private Royalties, and therefore I consider the Masters of Families as small Deputy-Governors presiding over the several little Parcels and Divisions of their Fellow Subjects.  As I take great pleasure in the Administration of my Government in particular, so I look upon my self not only as a more useful, but as a much greater and happier Man than any Batchelor in England of [my [1]] Rank and Condition.

’There is another accidental Advantage in Marriage, which has likewise fallen to my share,