lament offers you Consolation. My last Breath will, if I am my self,
expire in a Prayer for you. I shall never see thy Face again.
Farewell for ever. T.
[Footnote 1: Saudades. To have saudades of anything is to yearn with
desire towards it. Saudades da Patria is home sickness. To say Tenho
Saudades without naming an object would be taken to mean I am all
yearning to call a certain gentleman or lady mine.]
[Footnote 2: In Act I. sc. 3, of Congreve's Way of the World, Mirabell
says of Millamant,
I like her with all her faults, nay, like her for her faults. Her
follies are so natural, or so artful, that they become her; and those
affectations which in another woman would be odious, serve but to make
her more agreeable. Ill tell thee, Fainall, she once used me with
that insolence, that in revenge I took her to pieces, sifted her, and
separated her failings; I studied em and got em by rote. The
Catalogue was so large, that I was not without hopes one day or other
to hate her heartily: to which end I so used myself to think of em,
that at length, contrary to my design and expectation, they gave me
every hour less and less disturbance; till in a few days it became
habitual to me to remember em without being displeased. They are now
grown as familiar to me as my own frailties; and, in all probability,
in a little time longer I shall like em as well.]
[Footnote 3: The name was commonly believed to be Rivers, when this
Paper was published.]
* * * * *
No. 205. Thursday, October 25, 1711. Addison.
Decipimur specie recti
Hor.
When I meet with any vicious Character that is not generally known, in
order to prevent its doing Mischief, I draw it at length, and set it up
as a Scarecrow; by which means I do not only make an Example of the
Person to whom it belongs, but give Warning to all Her Majesty's
Subjects, that they may not suffer by it. Thus, to change the
[Allusion,[1]] I have marked out several of the Shoals and Quicksands of
Life, and am continually employed in discovering those [which [2]] are
still concealed, in order to keep the Ignorant and Unwary from running
upon them. It is with this Intention that I publish the following
Letter, which brings to light some Secrets of this Nature.
_Mr_. SPECTATOR,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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