’Si vulnus tibi monstrata radice vel herba
  Non fieret levius, fugeres radice vel herba
  Proficiente nihil curarier—­’

  Hor.

It is very difficult to praise a Man without putting him out of Countenance.  My following Correspondent has found out this uncommon Art, and, together with his Friends, has celebrated some of my Speculations after such a concealed but diverting manner, that if any of my Readers think I am to blame in Publishing my own Commendations, they will allow I should have deserved their Censure as much, had I suppressed the Humour in which they are convey’d to me.

  SIR,

’I am often in a private Assembly of Wits of both Sexes, where we generally descant upon your Speculations, or upon the Subjects on which you have treated.  We were last Tuesday talking of those two Volumes which you have lately published.  Some were commending one of your Papers, and some another; and there was scarce a single Person in the Company that had not a favourite Speculation.  Upon this a Man of Wit and Learning told us, he thought it would not be amiss if we paid the Spectator the same Compliment that is often made in our publick Prints to Sir William Read, Dr. Grant, Mr. Moor the Apothecary; [1] and other eminent Physicians, where it is usual for the Patients to publish the Cures which have been made upon them, and the several Distempers under which they laboured.  The Proposal took, and the Lady where we visited having the two last Volumes in large Paper interleav’d for her own private use, ordered them to be brought down, and laid in the Window, whither every one in the Company retired, and writ down a particular Advertisement in the Style and Phrase of the like ingenious Compositions which we frequently meet with at the end of our News-Papers.  When we had finish’d our Work, we read them with a great deal of Mirth at the Fire-side, and agreed, Nemine contradicente, to get them transcrib’d, and sent to the Spectator.  The Gentleman who made the Proposal enter’d the following Advertisement before the Title-Page, after which the rest succeeded in order.

Remedium efficax et universum; or, An effectual Remedy adapted to all Capacities; shewing how any Person may Cure himself of Ill-Nature, Pride, Party-Spleen, or any other Distemper incident to the human System, with an easie way to know when the Infection is upon him.  This Panacea is as innocent as Bread, agreeable to the Taste, and requires no Confinement.  It has not its Equal in the Universe, as Abundance of the Nobility and Gentry throughout the Kingdom have experienced.

    N. B.  ’No Family ought to be without it.

  Over the two Spectators on Jealousy, being the two first in the
  third Volume.