’It happen’d at Athens, during a publick Representation of some Play exhibited in honour of the Common-wealth that an old Gentleman came too late for a Place suitable to his Age and Quality.  Many of the young Gentlemen who observed the Difficulty and Confusion he was in, made Signs to him that they would accommodate him if he came where they sate:  The good Man bustled through the Crowd accordingly; but when he came to the Seats to which he was invited, the Jest was to sit close, and expose him, as he stood out of Countenance, to the whole Audience.  The Frolick went round all the Athenian Benches.  But on those Occasions there were also particular Places assigned for Foreigners:  When the good Man skulked towards the Boxes appointed for the Lacedemonians, that honest People, more virtuous than polite, rose up all to a Man, and with the greatest Respect received him among them.  The Athenians being suddenly touched with a Sense of the Spartan Virtue, and their own Degeneracy, gave a Thunder of Applause; and the old Man cry’d out, The Athenians understand what is good, but the Lacedemonians practise it.’

R.

[Footnote 1:  Richard Blackmore, born about 1650, d. 1729, had been knighted in 1697, when he was made physician in ordinary to King William.  He was a thorough Whig, earnestly religious, and given to the production of heroic poems.  Steele shared his principles and honoured his sincerity.  When this essay was written, Blackmore was finishing his best poem, the ‘Creation’, in seven Books, designed to prove from nature the existence of a God.  It had a long and earnest preface of expostulation with the atheism and mocking spirit that were the legacy to his time of the Court of the Restoration.  The citations in the text express the purport of what Blackmore had written in his then unpublished but expected work, but do not quote from it literally.]

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No. 7.  Thursday, March 8, 1711.  Addison.

      ’Somnia, terrores magicos, miracula, Sagas,
      Nocturnos lemures, portentaque Thessala rides?’

      Hor.

Going Yesterday to Dine with an old Acquaintance, I had the Misfortune to find his whole Family very much dejected.  Upon asking him the Occasion of it, he told me that his Wife had dreamt a strange Dream the Night before, which they were afraid portended some Misfortune to themselves or to their Children.  At her coming into the Room, I observed a settled Melancholy in her Countenance, which I should have been troubled for, had I not heard from whence it proceeded.  We were no sooner sat down, but, after having looked upon me a little while,

  ‘My dear’, says she, turning to her husband, ’you may now see the
  Stranger that was in the Candle last Night’.

Soon after this, as they began to talk of Family Affairs, a little Boy at the lower end of the Table told her, that he was to go into Join-hand on Thursday: