I question not but my Reader will be very much pleased to hear, that the Gentleman who has obliged the World with the foregoing Letter, and who was the Author of the 210th Speculation on the Immortality of the Soul, [the 375th on Virtue in Distress,] the 525th on Conjugal Love, and two or three other very fine ones among those which are not lettered at the end, will soon publish a noble Poem, Intitled An Ode to the Creator of the World, occasioned by the Fragments of Orpheus.

[Footnote 1:  Pensees.  Part I. Art. iv. 7.]

[Footnote 2:  Cyropaedia, Book viii.]

* * * * *

No. 538.  Monday, November 17, 1712.  Addison.

  ’—­Ultra
  Finem tendere opus.’

  Hor.

Surprize is so much the Life of Stories, that every one aims at it, who endeavours to please by telling them.  Smooth Delivery, an elegant Choice of Words, and a sweet Arrangement, are all beautifying Graces, but not the particulars in this Point of Conversation which either long command the Attention, or strike with the Violence of a sudden Passion, or occasion the burst of Laughter which accompanies Humour.  I have sometimes fancied that the Mind is in this case like a Traveller who sees a fine Seat in Haste; he acknowledges the Delightfulness of a Walk set with Regularity, but would be uneasy if he were obliged to pass it over, when the first View had let him into all its Beauties from one End to the other.

However, a knowledge of the Success which Stories will have when they are attended with a Turn of Surprize, as it has happily made the Characters of some, so has it also been the Ruin of the Characters of others.  There is a Set of Men who outrage Truth, instead of affecting us with a Manner in telling it; who over-leap the Line of Probability, that they may be seen to move out of the common Road; and endeavour only to make their Hearers stare, by imposing upon them with a kind of Nonsense against the Philosophy of Nature, or such a Heap of Wonders told upon their own Knowledge, as it is not likely one Man should ever have met with.

I have been led to this Observation by a Company into which I fell accidentally.  The Subject of Antipathies was a proper Field wherein such false Surprizes might expatiate, and there were those present who appeared very fond to shew it in its full Extent of traditional History.  Some of them, in a learned manner, offered to our Consideration the miraculous Powers which the Effluviums of Cheese have over Bodies whose Pores are dispos’d to receive them in a noxious manner; others gave an account of such who could indeed bear the sight of Cheese, but not the Taste; for which they brought a Reason from the Milk of their Nurses.  Others again discours’d, without endeavouring at Reasons, concerning an unconquerable Aversion which some Stomachs have against a Joint of Meat when it