I am, Sir,
  Your most humble Servant,
  R. B.

R.

[Footnote 1:  Charles de St. Denis, Sieur de St. Evremond, died in 1703, aged 95, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.  His military and diplomatic career in France was closed in 1661, when his condemnations of Mazarin, although the Cardinal was then dead, obliged him to fly from the wrath of the French Court to Holland and afterwards to England, where Charles II granted him a pension of L300 a-year.  At Charles’s death the pension lapsed, and St. Evremond declined the post of cabinet secretary to James II.  After the Revolution he had William III for friend, and when, at last, he was invited back, in his old age, to France, he chose to stay and die among his English friends.  In a second volume of ‘Miscellany Essays by Monsieur de St. Evremont,’ done into English by Mr. Brown (1694), an Essay ’Of the Pleasure that Women take in their Beauty’ ends (p. 135) with the thought quoted by Steele.]

[Footnote 2:  In ‘Don Sebastian, King of Portugal,’ act I, says Muley Moloch, Emperor of Barbary,

  Ay; There look like the Workmanship of Heav’n: 
  This is the Porcelain Clay of Human Kind.]

[Footnote 3:  The lines are in the Epitaph ‘on Elizabeth L.H.’

  ’One name was Elizabeth,
  The other, let it sleep in death.’

But Steele, quoting from memory, altered the words to his purpose.  Ben Johnson’s lines were: 

  ’Underneath this stone doth lie,
  As much Beauty as could die,
  Which in Life did Harbour give
  To more Virture than doth live.’]

* * * * *

No. 34.  Monday, April 9, 1711 Addison.

      ’... parcit
      Cognatis maculis similis fera ...’

      Juv.

The Club of which I am a Member, is very luckily composed of such persons as are engaged in different Ways of Life, and disputed as it were out of the most conspicuous Classes of Mankind:  By this Means I am furnished with the greatest Variety of Hints and Materials, and know every thing that passes in the different Quarters and Divisions, not only of this great City, but of the whole Kingdom.  My Readers too have the Satisfaction to find, that there is no Rank or Degree among them who have not their Representative in this Club, and that there is always some Body present who will take Care of their respective Interests, that nothing may be written or published to the Prejudice or Infringement of their just Rights and Privileges.

I last Night sat very late in company with this select Body of Friends, who entertain’d me with several Remarks which they and others had made upon these my Speculations, as also with the various Success which they had met with among their several Ranks and Degrees of Readers.  WILL.  HONEYCOMB told me, in the softest Manner he could, That there were some Ladies (but for your Comfort, says WILL., they are not those of the most Wit) that were offended at the Liberties I had taken with the Opera and the Puppet-Show:  That some of them were likewise very much surpriz’d, that I should think such serious Points as the Dress and Equipage of Persons of Quality, proper Subjects for Raillery.