Our late Act of Naturalisation[193] hath had so great an effect in foreign parts, that some princes have prohibited the French refugees in their dominions to sell or transfer their estates to any other of their subjects; and at the same time have granted them greater immunities than they hitherto enjoyed.  It has been also thought necessary to restrain their own subjects from leaving their native country, on pain of death.

[Footnote 191:  Ovid’s “Epistles,” 1709; translation of “Helen’s Epistle to Paris,” by the Earl of Mulgrave and Dryden.]

[Footnote 192:  An original for Philander has been found in Lord Halifax.  See No. 49.]

[Footnote 193:  See No. 9.  “If the Whigs were now restored to power, the bill [for a general naturalisation] now to be repealed, would then be re-enacted, and the birthright of an Englishman reduced again to the value of twelve pence.”—­(Examiner, vol. i.  No. 26.)]

No. 14. [STEELE.

From Tuesday May 10, to Thursday, May 12, 1709.

* * * * *

From my own Apartment, May 10.

Had it not been that my familiar had appeared to me, as I told you in my last, in person, I had certainly been unable to have found even words, without meaning, to keep up my intelligence with the town:  but he has checked me severely for my despondence, and ordered me to go on in my design of observing upon things, and forbearing persons; “for,” said he, “the age you live in is such, that a good picture of any vice or virtue will infallibly be misrepresented; and though none will take the kind descriptions you make so much to themselves, as to wish well to the author, yet all will resent the ill characters you produce, out of fear of their own turn in the licence you must be obliged to take, if you point at particular persons.”  I took his admonition kindly, and immediately promised him to beg pardon of the author of the “Advice to the Poets,"[194] for my raillery upon his work; though I aimed at no more in that examination, but to convince him, and all men of genius, of the folly of laying themselves out on such plans as are below their characters.  I hope too it was done without ill-breeding, and nothing spoken below what a civilian (as it is allowed I am) may utter to a physician.  After this preface, all the world may be safe from my writings; for if I can find nothing to commend, I am silent, and will forbear the subject:  for, though I am a reformer, I scorn to be an inquisitor.

It would become all men, as well as me, to lay before them the noble character of Verus the magistrate,[195] who always sat in triumph over, and contempt of, vice; he never searched after it, or spared it when it came before him:  at the same time, he could see through the hypocrisy and disguise of those, who have no pretence to virtue themselves, but by their severity to the vicious.  This same Verus was, in times long past,