’You have it (as Cowley calls it) just warm from the brain.  It came to me the first moment I waked this morning.  Yet, you will see, it was not so absolutely inspiration, but that I had in my head not only the verses of Adrian, but the fine fragment of Sappho, &c.’

The &c. being short for Thomas Flatman, whose name would not have stood well by that of Sappho, though he was an accomplished man in his day, who gave up law for poetry and painting, and died in 1688, one of the best miniature painters of his time, and the author of ’Songs and Poems,’ published in 1674, which in ten years went through three editions.  Flatman had written: 

’When on my sick-bed I languish, Full of sorrow, full of anguish, Fainting, gasping, trembling, crying, Panting, groaning, speechless, dying; Methinks I hear some gentle spirit say, “Be not fearful, come away!"’]

[Footnote 4:  From Thomas Tickell.]

* * * * *

No. 533.  Tuesday, November 11, 1712.  Steele.

  ’Immo duas dabo, inquit ille, una si parum est: 
  Et si duarum paenitebit, addentur duae.’

  Plaut.

  To the SPECTATOR.

  SIR,

’You have often given us very excellent Discourses against that unnatural Custom of Parents, in forcing their Children to marry contrary to their Inclinations.  My own Case, without further Preface, I will lay before you, and leave you to judge of it.  My Father and Mother both being in declining Years, would fain see me, their eldest Son, as they call it settled.  I am as much for that as they can be; but I must be settled, it seems, not according to my own, but their liking.  Upon this account I am teaz’d every Day, because I have not yet fallen in love, in spite of Nature, with one of a neighbouring Gentleman’s Daughters; for out of their abundant Generosity, they give me the choice of four. Jack, begins my Father, Mrs. Catherine is a fine Woman—­Yes, Sir, but she is rather too old—­She will make the more discreet Manager, Boy.  Then my Mother plays her part.  Is not Mrs. Betty exceeding fair?  Yes, Madam, but she is of no Conversation; she has no Fire, no agreeable Vivacity; she neither speaks nor looks with Spirit.  True, Son; but for those very Reasons, she will be an easy, soft, obliging, tractable Creature.  After all, cries an old Aunt, (who belongs to the Class of those who read Plays with Spectacles on) what think you, Nephew, of proper Mrs. Dorothy?  What do I think? why I think she cannot be above six foot two inches high.  Well, well, you may banter as long as you please, but Height of Stature is commanding and majestick.  Come, come, says a Cousin of mine in the Family, I’ll fit him; Fidelia is yet behind—­Pretty Miss Fiddy must please you—­Oh! your very humble Servant, dear Cos. she is as much too young as her eldest