[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.]
No. 233. Tuesday, Nov. 27, 1711. Addison.
--Tanquam hec sint nostri medicina furoris, Aut Deus ille malis hominum mitescere discat.
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_, in Love with _Daphnis_, very much bruised, but escaped with Life.
_Cynisca_, the Wife of _Æschines_, being in Love with _Lycus_; and _Æschines_ her Husband being in Love with _Eurilla_; (which had made this married Couple very uneasy to one another for several Years) both the Husband and the Wife took the Leap by Consent; they both of them escaped, and have lived very happily together ever since.