THE TATLER, NUMB. 67.

FROM SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 10.  TO TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 13. 1709.

From my own Apartment, September 12.

No man can conceive, till he comes to try it, how great a pain it is to be a public-spirited person.  I am sure I am unable to express to the world, how much anxiety I have suffered, to see of how little benefit my Lucubrations have been to my fellow-subjects.  Men will go on in their own way in spite of all my labour.  I gave Mr. Didapper a private reprimand for wearing red-heeled shoes, and at the same time was so indulgent as to connive at him for fourteen days, because I would give him the wearing of them out; but after all this I am informed, he appeared yesterday with a new pair of the same sort.  I have no better success with Mr. Whatdee’call[1] as to his buttons:  Stentor[2] still roars; and box and dice rattle as loud as they did before I writ against them.  Partridge[3] walks about at noon-day, and Aesculapius[4] thinks of adding a new lace to his livery.  However, I must still go on in laying these enormities before men’s eyes, and let them answer for going on in their practice.[5] My province is much larger than at first sight men would imagine, and I shall lose no part of my jurisdiction, which extends not only to futurity, but also is retrospect to things past; and the behaviour of persons who have long ago acted their parts, is as much liable to my examination, as that of my own contemporaries.

In order to put the whole race of mankind in their proper distinctions, according to the opinion their cohabitants conceived of them, I have with very much care, and depth of meditation, thought fit to erect a Chamber of Fame, and established certain rules, which are to be observed in admitting members into this illustrious society.  In this Chamber of Fame there are to be three tables, but of different lengths; the first is to contain exactly twelve persons; the second, twenty; the third, an hundred.  This is reckoned to be the full number of those who have any competent share of fame.  At the first of these tables are to be placed in their order the twelve most famous persons in the world, not with regard to the things they are famous for, but according to the degree of their fame, whether in valour, wit, or learning.  Thus if a scholar be more famous than a soldier, he is to sit above him.  Neither must any preference be given to virtue, if the person be not equally famous.  When the first table is filled, the next in renown must be seated at the second, and so on in like manner to the number of twenty; as also in the same order at the third, which is to hold an hundred.  At these tables no regard is to be had to seniority:  for if Julius Caesar shall be judged more famous than Romulus and Scipio, he must have the precedence.  No person who has not been dead an hundred years, must be offered to a place at any of these tables:  and because this is altogether a lay society, and that sacred persons move upon greater motives than that of fame, no persons celebrated in Holy Writ, or any ecclesiastical men whatsoever, are to be introduced here.