xtort from Christian and tender
Minds a Supply to a profligate Way of Life, that is always to be
supported, but never relieved.

[Z.] [5]

[Footnote 1: Or Henry Martyn?]

[Footnote 2: Surveyor-general of Ireland to Charles II. See his
Discourse of Taxes (1689).]

[Footnote 3: Our idle poor till the time of Henry VIII. lived upon alms.
After the dissolution of the monasteries experiments were made for their
care, and by a statute 43 Eliz. overseers were appointed and Parishes
charged to maintain their helpless poor and find work for the sturdy. In
Queen Annes time the Poor Law had been made more intricate and
troublesome by the legislation on the subject that had been attempted
after the Restoration.]

[Footnote 4: [_you_] throughout, and in first reprint.]

[Footnote 5: X.]

* * * * *

No. 233. Tuesday, Nov. 27, 1711. Addison.

--Tanquam hec sint nostri medicina furoris,
Aut Deus ille malis hominum mitescere discat.

Virg.

I shall, in this Paper, discharge myself of the Promise I have made to
the Publick, by obliging them with a Translation of the little _Greek_
Manuscript, which is said to have been a Piece of those Records that
were preserved in the Temple of _Apollo_, upon the Promontory of
_Leucate_: It is a short History of the Lovers Leap, and is inscribed,
_An Account of Persons Male and Female, who offered up their Vows in the
Temple of the_ Pythian Apollo, _in the Forty sixth Olympiad, and leaped
from the Promontory of_ Leucate _into the_ Ionian Sea, _in order to cure
themselves of the Passion of Love_.

This Account is very dry in many Parts, as only mentioning the Name of
the Lover who leaped, the Person he leaped for, and relating, in short,
that he was either cured, or killed, or maimed by the Fall. It indeed
gives the Names of so many who died by it, that it would have looked
like a Bill of Mortality, had I translated it at full length; I have
therefore made an Abridgment of it, and only extracted such particular
Passages as have something extraordinary, either in the Case, or in the
Cure, or in the Fate of the Person who is mentioned in it. After this
short Preface take the Account as follows.

_Battus_, the Son of _Menalcas_ the _Sicilian_, leaped for _Bombyca_
the Musician: Got rid of his Passion with the Loss of his Right Leg
and Arm, which were broken in the Fall.

_Melissa_,