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<h2>
<a href="#startoftext">Essays and Tales, by Joseph Addison</a>
</h2>
<pre>
The Project Gutenberg eBook, Essays and Tales, by Joseph Addison, Edited
by Henry Morley
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: Essays and Tales
Author: Joseph Addison
Editor: Henry Morley
Release Date: October 18, 2007 [eBook #2791]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ESSAYS AND TALES***
</pre>
<p><a name="startoftext"></a></p>
<p>Transcribed from the 1888 Cassell & Company edition by
David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org</p>
<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">cassell’s
national library</span>.</p>
<h1>ESSAYS AND TALES</h1>
<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">by</span><br />
JOSEPH ADDISON.</p>
<p style="text-align: center">CASSELL & COMPANY, <span
class="smcap">Limited</span>:<br />
<span class="smcap"><i>london</i></span>, <span
class="smcap"><i>paris</i></span>, <span class="smcap"><i>new
york & melbourne</i></span>.<br />
1888.</p>
<p>Contents:</p>
<p>Introduction<br />
Public Credit<br />
Household Superstitions<br />
Opera Lions<br />
Women and Wives<br />
The Italian Opera<br />
Lampoons<br />
True and False Humour<br />
Sa Ga Yean Qua Rash Tow’s Impressions of London<br />
The Vision of Marraton<br />
Six Papers on Wit<br />
Friendship<br />
Chevy-Chase (Two Papers)<br />
A Dream of the Painters<br />
Spare Time (Two Papers)<br />
Censure<br />
The English Language<br />
The Vision of Mirza<br />
Genius<br />
Theodosius and Constantia<br />
Good Nature<br />
A Grinning Match<br />
Trust in God</p>
<h2>INTRODUCTION.</h2>
<p>The sixty-fourth volume of this Library contains those papers
from the <i>Tatler</i> which were especially associated with the
imagined character of <span class="smcap">Isaac
Bickerstaff</span>, who was the central figure in that series;
and in the twenty-ninth volume there is a similar collection of
papers relating to the Spectator Club and <span class="smcap">Sir
Roger de Coverley</span>, who was the central figure in Steele
and Addison’s <i>Spectator</i>. Those volumes
contained, no doubt, some of the best Essays of Addison and
Steele. But in the <i>Tatler</i> and <i>Spectator</i> are
full armouries of the wit and wisdom of these two writers, who
summoned into life the army of the Essayists, and led it on to
kindly war against the forces of Ill-temper and Ignorance.
Envy, Hatred, Malice, and all their first cousins of the family
of Uncharitableness, are captains under those two
commanders-in-chief, and we can little afford to dismiss from the
field two of the stoutest combatants against them. In this
volume it is only Addison who speaks; and in another volume,
presently to follow, there will be the voice of Steele.</p>
<p>The two friends differed in temperament and in many of the
outward signs of character; but these two little books will very
distinctly show how wholly they agreed as to essentials.
For Addison, Literature had a charm of its own; he delighted in
distinguishing the finer graces of good style, and he drew from
the truths of life the principles of taste in writing. For
Steele, Literature was the life itself; he loved a true book for
the soul he found in it. So he agreed with Addison in
judgment. But the six papers on “Wit,” the two
papers on “Chevy Chase,” contained in this volume;
the eleven papers on “Imagination,” and the papers on
“Paradise Lost,” which may be given in some future
volume; were in a form of study for which Addison was far more
apt than Steele. Thus as fellow-workers they gave a breadth
to the character of <i>Tatler</i> and <i>Spectator</i> that could
have been produced by neither of them, singly.</p>
<p>The reader of this volume will never suppose that the
artist’s pleasure in good art and in analysis of its
constituents removes him from direct enjoyment of the life about
him; that he misses a real contact with all the world gives that
is worth his touch. Good art is but nature, studied with
love trained to the most delicate perception; and the good
criticism in which the spirit of an artist speaks is, like
Addison’s, calm, simple, and benign. Pope yearned to
attack John Dennis, a rough critic of the day, who had attacked
his “Essay on Criticism.” Addison had
discouraged a very small assault of words. When Dennis
attacked Addison’s “Cato,” Pope thought himself
free to strike; but Addison took occasion to express, through
Steele, a serious regret that he had done so. True
criticism may be affected, as Addison’s was, by some bias
in the canons of taste prevalent in the writer’s time, but,
as Addison’s did in the Chevy-Chase papers, it will dissent
from prevalent misapplications of them, and it can never
associate perception of the purest truth and beauty with petty
arrogance, nor will it so speak as to give pain. When
Wordsworth was remembering with love his mother’s guidance
of his childhood, and wished to suggest that there were mothers
less wise in their ways, he was checked, he said, by the
unwillingness to join thought of her “with any thought that
looks at others’ blame.” So Addison felt
towards his mother Nature, in literature and in life. He
attacked nobody. With a light, kindly humour, that was
never personal and never could give pain, he sought to soften the
harsh lines of life, abate its follies, and inspire the temper
that alone can overcome its wrongs.</p>
<p>Politics, in which few then knew how to think calmly and
recognise the worth of various opinion, Steele and Addison
excluded from the pages of the <i>Spectator</i>. But the
first paper in this volume is upon “Public Credit,”
and it did touch on the position of the country at a time when
the shock of change caused by the Revolution of 1688-89, and also
the strain of foreign war, were being severely felt.</p>
<p style="text-align: right">H. M.</p>
<h2>PUBLIC CREDIT.</h2>
<blockquote><p>—<i>Quoi quisque ferè studio
devinctus adhæret</i><br />
<i>Aut quibus i rebus multùm sumus antè
morati</i><br />
<i>Atque in quô ratione fuit contenta magis mens</i>,<br />
<i>In somnis cadem plerumque videmur obire</i>.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Lucr.</span>,
iv. 959.</p>
<p>—What studies please, what most delight,<br />
And fill men’s thoughts, they dream them o’er at
night.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span
class="smcap">Creech</span>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In one of my rambles, or rather speculations, I looked into
the great hall where the bank is kept, and was not a little
pleased to see the directors, secretaries, and clerks, with all
the other members of that wealthy corporation, ranged in their
several stations, according to the parts they act in that just
and regular economy. This revived in my memory the many
discourses which I had both read and heard concerning the decay
of public credit, with the methods of restoring it; and which, in
my opinion, have always been defective, because they have always
been made with an eye to separate interests and party
principles.</p>
<p>The thoughts of the day gave my mind employment for the whole
night; so that I fell insensibly into a kind of methodical dream,
which disposed all my contemplations into a vision, or allegory,
or what else the reader shall please to call it.</p>
<p>Methoughts I returned to the great hall, where I had been the
morning before; but to my surprise, instead of the company that I
left there, I saw, towards the upper end of the hall, a beautiful
virgin, seated on a throne of gold. Her name, as they told
me, was Public Credit. The walls, instead of being adorned
with pictures and maps, were hung with many Acts of Parliament
written in golden letters. At the upper end of the hall was
the Magna Charta, with the Act of Uniformity on the right hand,
and the Act of Toleration on the left. At the lower end of
the hall was the Act of Settlement, which was placed full in the
eye of the virgin that sat upon the throne. Both the sides
of the hall were covered with such Acts of Parliament as had been
made for the establishment of public funds. The lady seemed
to set an unspeakable value upon these several pieces of
furniture, insomuch that she often refreshed her eye with them,
and often smiled with a secret pleasure as she looked upon them;
but, at the same time, showed a very particular uneasiness if she
saw anything approaching that might hurt them. She
appeared, indeed, infinitely timorous in all her behaviour: and
whether it was from the delicacy of her constitution, or that she
was troubled with vapours, as I was afterwards told by one who I
found was none of her well-wishers, she changed colour and
startled at everything she heard. She was likewise, as I
afterwards found, a greater valetudinarian than any I had ever
met with, even in her own sex, and subject to such momentary
consumptions, that in the twinkling of an eye, she would fall
away from the most florid complexion and the most healthful state
of body, and wither into a skeleton. Her recoveries were
often as sudden as her decays, insomuch that she would revive in
a moment out of a wasting distemper, into a habit of the highest
health and vigour.</p>
<p>I had very soon an opportunity of observing these quick turns
and changes in her constitution. There sat at her feet a
couple of secretaries, who received every hour letters from all
parts of the world, which the one or the other of them was
perpetually reading to her; and according to the news she heard,
to which she was exceedingly attentive, she changed colour, and
discovered many symptoms of health or sickness.</p>
<p>Behind the throne was a prodigious heap of bags of money,
which were piled upon one another so high that they touched the
ceiling. The floor on her right hand and on her left was
covered with vast sums of gold that rose up in pyramids on either
side of her. But this I did not so much wonder at, when I
heard, upon inquiry, that she had the same virtue in her touch,
which the poets tell us a Lydian king was formerly possessed of;
and that she could convert whatever she pleased into that
precious metal.</p>
<p>After a little dizziness, and confused hurry of thought, which
a man often meets with in a dream, methoughts the hall was
alarmed, the doors flew open, and there entered half a dozen of
the most hideous phantoms that I had ever seen, even in a dream,
before that time. They came in two by two, though matched
in the most dissociable manner, and mingled together in a kind of
dance. It would be tedious to describe their habits and
persons; for which reason I shall only inform my reader, that the
first couple were Tyranny and Anarchy; the second were Bigotry
and Atheism; the third, the Genius of a commonwealth and a young
man of about twenty-two years of age, whose name I could not
learn. He had a sword in his right hand, which in the dance
he often brandished at the Act of Settlement; and a citizen, who
stood by me, whispered in my ear, that he saw a sponge in his
left hand. The dance of so many jarring natures put me in
mind of the sun, moon, and earth, in the <i>Rehearsal</i>, that
danced together for no other end but to eclipse one another.</p>
<p>The reader will easily suppose, by what has been before said,
that the lady on the throne would have been almost frighted to
distraction, had she seen but any one of the spectres: what then
must have been her condition when she saw them all in a
body? She fainted, and died away at the sight.</p>
<blockquote><p><i>Et neque jam color est misto candore
rubori</i>;<br />
<i>Nec vigor</i>, <i>et vires</i>, <i>et quæ modò
rise placebant</i>;<br />
<i>Nec corpus remanet</i>—.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Ovid</span>,
<i>Met. iii.</i> 491.</p>
<p> —Her spirits
faint,<br />
Her blooming cheeks assume a pallid teint,<br />
And scarce her form remains.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There was as great a change in the hill of money-bags and the
heaps of money, the former shrinking and falling into so many
empty bags, that I now found not above a tenth part of them had
been filled with money.</p>
<p>The rest, that took up the same space and made the same figure
as the bags that were really filled with money, had been blown up
with air, and called into my memory the bags full of wind, which
Homer tells us his hero received as a present from
Æolus. The great heaps of gold on either side the
throne now appeared to be only heaps of paper, or little piles of
notched sticks, bound up together in bundles, like Bath
faggots.</p>
<p>Whilst I was lamenting this sudden desolation that had been
made before me, the whole scene vanished. In the room of
the frightful spectres, there now entered a second dance of
apparitions, very agreeably matched together, and made up of very
amiable phantoms: the first pair was Liberty with Monarchy at her
right hand; the second was Moderation leading in Religion; and
the third, a person whom I had never seen, with the Genius of
Great Britain. At the first entrance, the lady revived; the
bags swelled to their former bulk; the piles of faggots and heaps
of paper changed into pyramids of guineas: and, for my own part,
I was so transported with joy that I awaked, though I must
confess I would fain have fallen asleep again to have closed my
vision, if I could have done it.</p>
<h2>HOUSEHOLD SUPERSTITIONS.</h2>
<blockquote><p><i>Somnia</i>, <i>terrores magicos</i>,
<i>miracula</i>, <i>sagas</i>,<br />
<i>Nocturnos lemures</i>, <i>portentaque Thessala rides</i>?</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Hor.</span>,
<i>Ep.</i> ii. 2, 208.</p>
<p>Visions and magic spells, can you despise,<br />
And laugh at witches, ghosts, and prodigies?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Going yesterday to dine with an old acquaintance, I had the
misfortune to find his whole family very much dejected.
Upon asking him the occasion of it, he told me that his wife had
dreamt a very strange dream the night before, which they were
afraid portended some misfortune to themselves or to their
children. At her coming into the room, I observed a settled
melancholy in her countenance, which I should have been troubled
for, had I not heard from whence it proceeded. We were no
sooner sat down, but, after having looked upon me a little while,
“My dear,” says she, turning to her husband,
“you may now see the stranger that was in the candle last
night.” Soon after this, as they began to talk of
family affairs, a little boy at the lower end of the table told
her that he was to go into join-hand on Thursday.
“Thursday!” says she. “No, child; if it
please God, you shall not begin upon Childermas-day; tell your
writing-master that Friday will be soon enough.” I
was reflecting with myself on the oddness of her fancy, and
wondering that anybody would establish it as a rule, to lose a
day in every week. In the midst of these my musings, she
desired me to reach her a little salt upon the point of my knife,
which I did in such a trepidation and hurry of obedience that I
let it drop by the way; at which she immediately startled, and
said it fell towards her. Upon this I looked very blank;
and observing the concern of the whole table, began to consider
myself, with some confusion, as a person that had brought a
disaster upon the family. The lady, however, recovering
herself after a little space, said to her husband with a sigh,
“My dear, misfortunes never come single.” My
friend, I found, acted but an under part at his table; and, being
a man of more good-nature than understanding, thinks himself
obliged to fall in with all the passions and humours of his
yoke-fellow. “Do not you remember, child,” says
she, “that the pigeon-house fell the very afternoon that
our careless wench spilt the salt upon the
table?”—“Yes,” says he, “my dear;
and the next post brought us an account of the battle of
Almanza.” The reader may guess at the figure I made,
after having done all this mischief. I despatched my dinner
as soon as I could, with my usual taciturnity; when, to my utter
confusion, the lady seeing me quitting my knife and fork, and
laying them across one another upon my plate, desired me that I
would humour her so far as to take them out of that figure and
place them side by side. What the absurdity was which I had
committed I did not know, but I suppose there was some
traditionary superstition in it; and therefore, in obedience to
the lady of the house, I disposed of my knife and fork in two
parallel lines, which is the figure I shall always lay them in
for the future, though I do not know any reason for it.</p>
<p>It is not difficult for a man to see that a person has
conceived an aversion to him. For my own part, I quickly
found, by the lady’s looks, that she regarded me as a very
odd kind of fellow, with an unfortunate aspect: for which reason
I took my leave immediately after dinner, and withdrew to my own
lodgings. Upon my return home, I fell into a profound
contemplation on the evils that attend these superstitious
follies of mankind; how they subject us to imaginary afflictions,
and additional sorrows, that do not properly come within our
lot. As if the natural calamities of life were not
sufficient for it, we turn the most indifferent circumstances
into misfortunes, and suffer as much from trifling accidents as
from real evils. I have known the shooting of a star spoil
a night’s rest; and have seen a man in love grow pale, and
lose his appetite, upon the plucking of a merry-thought. A
screech-owl at midnight has alarmed a family more than a band of
robbers; nay, the voice of a cricket hath struck more terror than
the roaring of a lion. There is nothing so inconsiderable
which may not appear dreadful to an imagination that is filled
with omens and prognostics: a rusty nail or a crooked pin shoot
up into prodigies.</p>
<p>I remember I was once in a mixed assembly that was full of
noise and mirth, when on a sudden an old woman unluckily observed
there were thirteen of us in company. This remark struck a
panic terror into several who were present, insomuch that one or
two of the ladies were going to leave the room; but a friend of
mine taking notice that one of our female companions was big with
child, affirmed there were fourteen in the room, and that,
instead of portending one of the company should die, it plainly
foretold one of them should be born. Had not my friend
found this expedient to break the omen, I question not but half
the women in the company would have fallen sick that very
night.</p>
<p>An old maid that is troubled with the vapours produces
infinite disturbances of this kind among her friends and
neighbours. I know a maiden aunt of a great family, who is
one of these antiquated Sibyls, that forebodes and prophesies
from one end of the year to the other. She is always seeing
apparitions and hearing death-watches; and was the other day
almost frighted out of her wits by the great house-dog that
howled in the stable, at a time when she lay ill of the
toothache. Such an extravagant cast of mind engages
multitudes of people not only in impertinent terrors, but in
supernumerary duties of life, and arises from that fear and
ignorance which are natural to the soul of man. The horror
with which we entertain the thoughts of death, or indeed of any
future evil, and the uncertainty of its approach, fill a
melancholy mind with innumerable apprehensions and suspicions,
and consequently dispose it to the observation of such groundless
prodigies and predictions. For as it is the chief concern
of wise men to retrench the evils of life by the reasonings of
philosophy, it is the employment of fools to multiply them by the
sentiments of superstition.</p>
<p>For my own part, I should be very much troubled were I endowed
with this divining quality, though it should inform me truly of
everything that can befall me. I would not anticipate the
relish of any happiness, nor feel the weight of any misery,
before it actually arrives.</p>
<p>I know but one way of fortifying my soul against these gloomy
presages and terrors of mind; and that is, by securing to myself
the friendship and protection of that Being who disposes of
events and governs futurity. He sees, at one view, the
whole thread of my existence, not only that part of it which I
have already passed through, but that which runs forward into all
the depths of eternity. When I lay me down to sleep, I
recommend myself to His care; when I awake, I give myself up to
His direction. Amidst all the evils that threaten me, I
will look up to Him for help, and question not but He will either
avert them, or turn them to my advantage. Though I know
neither the time nor the manner of the death I am to die, I am
not at all solicitous about it; because I am sure that he knows
them both, and that He will not fail to comfort and support me
under them.</p>
<h2>OPERA LIONS.</h2>
<blockquote><p><i>Dic mihi</i>, <i>si fias tu leo</i>, <i>qualis
eris</i>?</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Mart.</span>,
xii. 93.</p>
<p>Were you a lion, how would you behave?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There is nothing that of late years has afforded matter of
greater amusement to the town than Signior Nicolini’s
combat with a lion in the Haymarket, which has been very often
exhibited to the general satisfaction of most of the nobility and
gentry in the kingdom of Great Britain. Upon the first
rumour of this intended combat, it was confidently affirmed, and
is still believed, by many in both galleries, that there would be
a tame lion sent from the tower every opera night in order to be
killed by Hydaspes. This report, though altogether
groundless, so universally prevailed in the upper regions of the
playhouse, that some of the most refined politicians in those
parts of the audience gave it out in whisper that the lion was a
cousin-german of the tiger who made his appearance in King
William’s days, and that the stage would be supplied with
lions at the public expense during the whole session. Many
likewise were the conjectures of the treatment which this lion
was to meet with from the hands of Signior Nicolini: some
supposed that he was to subdue him in recitativo, as Orpheus used
to serve the wild beasts in his time, and afterwards to knock him
on the head; some fancied that the lion would not pretend to lay
his paws upon the hero, by reason of the received opinion that a
lion will not hurt a virgin: several who pretended to have seen
the opera in Italy, had informed their friends that the lion was
to act a part in High Dutch, and roar twice or thrice to a
thorough bass before he fell at the feet of Hydaspes. To
clear up a matter that was so variously reported, I have made it
my business to examine whether this pretended lion is really the
savage he appears to be, or only a counterfeit.</p>
<p>But before I communicate my discoveries, I must acquaint the
reader that upon my walking behind the scenes last winter, as I
was thinking on something else, I accidentally jostled against a
monstrous animal that extremely startled me, and, upon my nearer
survey of it, appeared to be a lion rampant. The lion,
seeing me very much surprised, told me, in a gentle voice, that I
might come by him if I pleased; “for,” says he,
“I do not intend to hurt anybody.” I thanked
him very kindly and passed by him, and in a little time after saw
him leap upon the stage and act his part with very great
applause. It has been observed by several that the lion has
changed his manner of acting twice or thrice since his first
appearance, which will not seem strange when I acquaint my reader
that the lion has been changed upon the audience three several
times. The first lion was a candle-snuffer, who, being a
fellow of a testy, choleric temper, overdid his part, and would
not suffer himself to be killed so easily as he ought to have
done: besides, it was observed of him, that he grew more surly
every time he came out of the lion, and having dropped some words
in ordinary conversation, as if he had not fought his best, and
that he suffered himself to be thrown upon his back in the
scuffle, and that he would wrestle with Mr. Nicolini for what he
pleased, out of his lion’s skin, it was thought proper to
discard him: and it is verily believed to this day, that, had he
been brought upon the stage another time, he would certainly have
done mischief. Besides, it was objected against the first
lion, that he reared himself so high upon his hinder paws, and
walked in so erect a posture, that he looked more like an old man
than a lion.</p>
<p>The second lion was a tailor by trade, who belonged to the
playhouse, and had the character of a mild and peaceable man in
his profession. If the former was too furious, this was too
sheepish for his part; inasmuch that, after a short modest walk
upon the stage, he would fall at the first touch of Hydaspes,
without grappling with him, and giving him an opportunity of
showing his variety of Italian trips. It is said, indeed,
that he once gave him a rip in his flesh-colour doublet: but this
was only to make work for himself in his private character of a
tailor. I must not omit that it was this second lion who
treated me with so much humanity behind the scenes.</p>
<p>The acting lion at present is, as I am informed, a country
gentleman, who does it for his diversion, but desires his name
may be concealed. He says very handsomely, in his own
excuse, that he does not act for gain; that he indulges an
innocent pleasure in it, and that it is better to pass away an
evening in this manner than in gaming and drinking: but at the
same time says, with a very agreeable raillery upon himself, that
if his name should be known, the ill-natured world might call him
“the ass in the lion’s skin.” This
gentleman’s temper is made out of such a happy mixture of
the mild and the choleric, that he outdoes both his predecessors,
and has drawn together greater audiences than have been known in
the memory of man.</p>
<p>I must not conclude my narrative without taking notice of a
groundless report that has been raised to a gentleman’s
disadvantage, of whom I must declare myself an admirer; namely,
that Signior Nicolini and the lion have been seen sitting
peaceably by one another, and smoking a pipe together behind the
scenes; by which their common enemies would insinuate that it is
but a sham combat which they represent upon the stage: but upon
inquiry I find, that if any such correspondence has passed
between them, it was not till the combat was over, when the lion
was to be looked upon as dead according to the received rules of
the drama. Besides, this is what is practised every day in
Westminster Hall, where nothing is more usual than to see a
couple of lawyers, who have been tearing each other to pieces in
the court, embracing one another as soon as they are out of
it.</p>
<p>I would not be thought in any part of this relation to reflect
upon Signior Nicolini, who, in acting this part, only complies
with the wretched taste of his audience: he knows very well that
the lion has many more admirers than himself; as they say of the
famous equestrian statue on the Pont-Neuf at Paris, that more
people go to see the horse than the king who sits upon it.
On the contrary, it gives me a just indignation to see a person
whose action gives new majesty to kings, resolution to heroes,
and softness to lovers, thus sinking from the greatness of his
behaviour, and degraded into the character of the London
Prentice. I have often wished that our tragedians would
copy after this great master in action. Could they make the
same use of their arms and legs, and inform their faces with as
significant looks and passions, how glorious would an English
tragedy appear with that action which is capable of giving a
dignity to the forced thoughts, cold conceits, and unnatural
expressions of an Italian opera! In the meantime, I have
related this combat of the lion to show what are at present the
reigning entertainments of the politer part of Great Britain.</p>
<p>Audiences have often been reproached by writers for the
coarseness of their taste; but our present grievance does not
seem to be the want of a good taste, but of common sense.</p>
<h2>WOMEN AND WIVES.</h2>
<blockquote><p><i>Parva leves capiunt animos</i>.—</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Ovid</span>,
<i>Ars Am.</i>, i. 159.</p>
<p>Light minds are pleased with trifles.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>When I was in France, I used to gaze with great astonishment
at the splendid equipages, and party-coloured habits of that
fantastic nation. I was one day in particular contemplating
a lady that sat in a coach adorned with gilded Cupids, and finely
painted with the Loves of Venus and Adonis. The coach was
drawn by six milk-white horses, and loaden behind with the same
number of powdered footmen. Just before the lady were a
couple of beautiful pages, that were stuck among the harness,
and, by their gay dresses and smiling features, looked like the
elder brothers of the little boys that were carved and painted in
every corner of the coach.</p>
<p>The lady was the unfortunate Cleanthe, who afterwards gave an
occasion to a pretty melancholy novel. She had for several
years received the addresses of a gentleman, whom, after a long
and intimate acquaintance, she forsook upon the account of this
shining equipage, which had been offered to her by one of great
riches but a crazy constitution. The circumstances in which
I saw her were, it seems, the disguises only of a broken heart,
and a kind of pageantry to cover distress, for in two months
after, she was carried to her grave with the same pomp and
magnificence, being sent thither partly by the loss of one lover
and partly by the possession of another.</p>
<p>I have often reflected with myself on this unaccountable
humour in womankind, of being smitten with everything that is
showy and superficial; and on the numberless evils that befall
the sex from this light fantastical disposition. I myself
remember a young lady that was very warmly solicited by a couple
of importunate rivals, who, for several months together, did all
they could to recommend themselves, by complacency of behaviour
and agreeableness of conversation. At length, when the
competition was doubtful, and the lady undetermined in her
choice, one of the young lovers very luckily bethought himself of
adding a supernumerary lace to his liveries, which had so good an
effect that he married her the very week after.</p>
<p>The usual conversation of ordinary women very much cherishes
this natural weakness of being taken with outside and
appearance. Talk of a new-married couple, and you
immediately hear whether they keep their coach and six, or eat in
plate. Mention the name of an absent lady, and it is ten to
one but you learn something of her gown and petticoat. A
ball is a great help to discourse, and a birthday furnishes
conversation for a twelvemonth after. A furbelow of
precious stones, a hat buttoned with a diamond, a brocade
waistcoat or petticoat, are standing topics. In short, they
consider only the drapery of the species, and never cast away a
thought on those ornaments of the mind that make persons
illustrious in themselves and useful to others. When women
are thus perpetually dazzling one another’s imaginations,
and filling their heads with nothing but colours, it is no wonder
that they are more attentive to the superficial parts of life
than the solid and substantial blessings of it. A girl who
has been trained up in this kind of conversation is in danger of
every embroidered coat that comes in her way. A pair of
fringed gloves may be her ruin. In a word, lace and
ribands, silver and gold galloons, with the like glittering
gewgaws, are so many lures to women of weak minds or low
educations, and, when artificially displayed, are able to fetch
down the most airy coquette from the wildest of her flights and
rambles.</p>
<p>True happiness is of a retired nature, and an enemy to pomp
and noise; it arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of
one’s self, and, in the next, from the friendship and
conversation of a few select companions; it loves shade and
solitude, and naturally haunts groves and fountains, fields and
meadows; in short, it feels everything it wants within itself,
and receives no addition from multitudes of witnesses and
spectators. On the contrary, false happiness loves to be in
a crowd, and to draw the eyes of the world upon her. She
does not receive any satisfaction from the applauses which she
gives herself, but from the admiration she raises in
others. She flourishes in courts and palaces, theatres and
assemblies, and has no existence but when she is looked upon.</p>
<p>Aurelia, though a woman of great quality, delights in the
privacy of a country life, and passes away a great part of her
time in her own walks and gardens. Her husband, who is her
bosom friend and companion in her solitudes, has been in love
with her ever since he knew her. They both abound with good
sense, consummate virtue, and a mutual esteem; and are a
perpetual entertainment to one another. Their family is
under so regular an economy, in its hours of devotion and repast,
employment and diversion, that it looks like a little
commonwealth within itself. They often go into company,
that they may return with the greater delight to one another; and
sometimes live in town, not to enjoy it so properly as to grow
weary of it, that they may renew in themselves the relish of a
country life. By this means they are happy in each other,
beloved by their children, adored by their servants, and are
become the envy, or rather the delight, of all that know
them.</p>
<p>How different to this is the life of Fulvia! She
considers her husband as her steward, and looks upon discretion
and good housewifery as little domestic virtues unbecoming a
woman of quality. She thinks life lost in her own family,
and fancies herself out of the world when she is not in the ring,
the playhouse, or the drawing-room. She lives in a
perpetual motion of body and restlessness of thought, and is
never easy in any one place when she thinks there is more company
in another. The missing of an opera the first night would
be more afflicting to her than the death of a child. She
pities all the valuable part of her own sex, and calls every
woman of a prudent, modest, retired life, a poor-spirited,
unpolished creature. What a mortification would it be to
Fulvia, if she knew that her setting herself to view is but
exposing herself, and that she grows contemptible by being
conspicuous!</p>
<p>I cannot conclude my paper without observing that Virgil has
very finely touched upon this female passion for dress and show,
in the character of Camilla, who, though she seems to have shaken
off all the other weaknesses of her sex, is still described as a
woman in this particular. The poet tells us, that after
having made a great slaughter of the enemy, she unfortunately
cast her eye on a Trojan, who wore an embroidered tunic, a
beautiful coat of mail, with a mantle of the finest purple.
“A golden bow,” says he, “hung upon his
shoulder; his garment was buckled with a golden clasp, and his
head covered with a helmet of the same shining
metal.” The Amazon immediately singled out this
well-dressed warrior, being seized with a woman’s longing
for the pretty trappings that he was adorned with:</p>
<blockquote><p>—<i>Totumque incauta per agmen</i>,<br />
<i>Fæmineo prædæ et spoliorum ardebat
amore</i>.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Æn.</i>, xi. 781.</p>
<p> —So greedy was she
bent<br />
On golden spoils, and on her prey intent.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span
class="smcap">Dryden</span>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This heedless pursuit after these glittering trifles, the
poet, by a nice concealed moral, represents to have been the
destruction of his female hero.</p>
<h2>THE ITALIAN OPERA.</h2>
<blockquote><p>—<i>Equitis quoque jam migravit ab aure
voluptas</i><br />
<i>Omnis ad incertos oculos</i>, <i>et gaudia vana</i>.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Hor.</span>,
<i>Ep.</i> ii. 1, 187.</p>
<p>But now our nobles too are fops and vain,<br />
Neglect the sense, but love the painted scene.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span
class="smcap">Creech</span>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is my design in this paper to deliver down to posterity a
faithful account of the Italian opera, and of the gradual
progress which it has made upon the English stage; for there is
no question but our great-grandchildren will be very curious to
know the reason why their forefathers used to sit together like
an audience of foreigners in their own country, and to hear whole
plays acted before them in a tongue which they did not
understand.</p>
<p><i>Arsinoë</i> was the first opera that gave us a taste
of Italian music. The great success this opera met with
produced some attempts of forming pieces upon Italian plans,
which should give a more natural and reasonable entertainment
than what can be met with in the elaborate trifles of that
nation. This alarmed the poetasters and fiddlers of the
town, who were used to deal in a more ordinary kind of ware; and
therefore laid down an established rule, which is received as
such to this day, “That nothing is capable of being well
set to music that is not nonsense.”</p>
<p>This maxim was no sooner received, but we immediately fell to
translating the Italian operas; and as there was no great danger
of hurting the sense of those extraordinary pieces, our authors
would often make words of their own which were entirely foreign
to the meaning of the passages they pretended to translate; their
chief care being to make the numbers of the English verse answer
to those of the Italian, that both of them might go to the same
tune. Thus the famous swig in Camilla:</p>
<blockquote><p>“<i>Barbara si t’ intendo</i>,”
&c.</p>
<p>“Barbarous woman, yes, I know your meaning,”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>which expresses the resentments of an angry lover, was
translated into that English lamentation,</p>
<blockquote><p>“Frail are a lover’s hopes,”
&c.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And it was pleasant enough to see the most refined persons of
the British nation dying away and languishing to notes that were
filled with a spirit of rage and indignation. It happened
also very frequently, where the sense was rightly translated, the
necessary transposition of words, which were drawn out of the
phrase of one tongue into that of another, made the music appear
very absurd in one tongue that was very natural in the
other. I remember an Italian verse that ran thus, word for
word:</p>
<blockquote><p>“And turned my rage into pity;”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>which the English for rhyme’s sake translated:</p>
<blockquote><p>“And into pity turned my rage.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>By this means the soft notes that were adapted to pity in the
Italian fell upon the word rage in the English; and the angry
sounds that were turned to rage in the original, were made to
express pity in the translation. It oftentimes happened,
likewise, that the finest notes in the air fell upon the most
insignificant words in the sentence. I have known the word
“and” pursued through the whole gamut; have been
entertained with many a melodious “the;” and have
heard the most beautiful graces, quavers, and divisions bestowed
upon “then,” “for,” and
“from,” to the eternal honour of our English
particles.</p>
<p>The next step to our refinement was the introducing of Italian
actors into our opera; who sang their parts in their own
language, at the same time that our countrymen performed theirs
in our native tongue. The king or hero of the play
generally spoke in Italian, and his slaves answered him in
English. The lover frequently made his court, and gained
the heart of his princess, in a language which she did not
understand. One would have thought it very difficult to
have carried on dialogues after this manner without an
interpreter between the persons that conversed together; but this
was the state of the English stage for about three years.</p>
<p>At length the audience grew tired of understanding half the
opera; and therefore, to ease themselves entirely of the fatigue
of thinking, have so ordered it at present, that the whole opera
is performed in an unknown tongue. We no longer understand
the language of our own stage; insomuch that I have often been
afraid, when I have seen our Italian performers chattering in the
vehemence of action, that they have been calling us names, and
abusing us among themselves; but I hope, since we put such an
entire confidence in them, they will not talk against us before
our faces, though they may do it with the same safety as if it
were behind our backs. In the meantime, I cannot forbear
thinking how naturally an historian who writes two or three
hundred years hence, and does not know the taste of his wise
forefathers, will make the following reflection: “In the
beginning of the eighteenth century, the Italian tongue was so
well understood in England, that operas were acted on the public
stage in that language.”</p>
<p>One scarce knows how to be serious in the confutation of an
absurdity that shows itself at the first sight. It does not
want any great measure of sense to see the ridicule of this
monstrous practice; but what makes it the more astonishing, it is
not the taste of the rabble, but of persons of the greatest
politeness, which has established it.</p>
<p>If the Italians have a genius for music above the English, the
English have a genius for other performances of a much higher
nature, and capable of giving the mind a much nobler
entertainment. Would one think it was possible, at a time
when an author lived that was able to write the <i>Phædra
and Hippolitus</i>, for a people to be so stupidly fond of the
Italian opera, as scarce to give a third day’s hearing to
that admirable tragedy? Music is certainly a very agreeable
entertainment: but if it would take the entire possession of our
ears; if it would make us incapable of hearing sense; if it would
exclude arts that have a much greater tendency to the refinement
of human nature; I must confess I would allow it no better
quarter than Plato has done, who banishes it out of his
commonwealth.</p>
<p>At present our notions of music are so very uncertain, that we
do not know what it is we like; only, in general, we are
transported with anything that is not English: so it be of a
foreign growth, let it be Italian, French, or High Dutch, it is
the same thing. In short, our English music is quite rooted
out, and nothing yet planted in its stead.</p>
<p>When a royal palace is burnt to the ground, every man is at
liberty to present his plan for a new one; and, though it be but
indifferently put together, it may furnish several hints that may
be of use to a good architect. I shall take the same
liberty in a following paper of giving my opinion upon the
subject of music; which I shall lay down only in a problematical
manner, to be considered by those who are masters in the art.</p>
<h2>LAMPOONS.</h2>
<blockquote><p><i>Sævit atrox Volscens</i>, <i>nec teli
conspicit usquam</i><br />
<i>Auctorem</i>, <i>nec quò se ardens immittere
possit</i>.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Virg.</span>,
<i>Æn.</i> ix. 420.</p>
<p>Fierce Volscens foams with rage, and, gazing round,<br />
Descry’d not him who gave the fatal wound;<br />
Nor knew to fix revenge.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span
class="smcap">Dryden</span>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There is nothing that more betrays a base, ungenerous spirit
than the giving of secret stabs to a man’s
reputation. Lampoons and satires, that are written with wit
and spirit, are like poisoned darts, which not only inflict a
wound, but make it incurable. For this reason I am very
much troubled when I see the talents’ of humour and
ridicule in the possession of an ill-natured man. There
cannot be a greater gratification to a barbarous and inhuman wit,
than to stir up sorrow in the heart of a private person, to raise
uneasiness among near relations, and to expose whole families to
derision, at the same time that he remains unseen and
undiscovered. If, besides the accomplishments of being
witty and ill-natured, a man is vicious into the bargain, he is
one of the most mischievous creatures that can enter into a civil
society. His satire will then chiefly fall upon those who
ought to be the most exempt from it. Virtue, merit, and
everything that is praiseworthy, will be made the subject of
ridicule and buffoonery. It is impossible to enumerate the
evils which arise from these arrows that fly in the dark; and I
know no other excuse that is or can be made for them, than that
the wounds they give are only imaginary, and produce nothing more
than a secret shame or sorrow in the mind of the suffering
person. It must indeed be confessed that a lampoon or a
satire do not carry in them robbery or murder; but at the same
time, how many are there that would not rather lose a
considerable sum of money, or even life itself, than be set up as
a mark of infamy and derision? And in this case a man
should consider that an injury is not to be measured by the
notions of him that gives, but of him that receives it.</p>
<p>Those who can put the best countenance upon the outrages of
this nature which are offered them, are not without their secret
anguish. I have often observed a passage in
Socrates’s behaviour at his death in a light wherein none
of the critics have considered it. That excellent man
entertaining his friends a little before he drank the bowl of
poison, with a discourse on the immortality of the soul, at his
entering upon it says that he does not believe any the most comic
genius can censure him for talking upon such a subject at such at
a time. This passage, I think, evidently glances upon
Aristophanes, who writ a comedy on purpose to ridicule the
discourses of that divine philosopher. It has been observed
by many writers that Socrates was so little moved at this piece
of buffoonery, that he was several times present at its being
acted upon the stage, and never expressed the least resentment of
it. But, with submission, I think the remark I have here
made shows us that this unworthy treatment made an impression
upon his mind, though he had been too wise to discover it.</p>
<p>When Julius Cæsar was lampooned by Catullus, he invited
him to a supper, and treated him with such a generous civility,
that he made the poet his friend ever after. Cardinal
Mazarine gave the same kind of treatment to the learned Quillet,
who had reflected upon his eminence in a famous Latin poem.
The cardinal sent for him, and, after some kind expostulations
upon what he had written, assured him of his esteem, and
dismissed him with a promise of the next good abbey that should
fall, which he accordingly conferred upon him in a few months
after. This had so good an effect upon the author, that he
dedicated the second edition of his book to the cardinal, after
having expunged the passages which had given him offence.</p>
<p>Sextus Quintus was not of so generous and forgiving a
temper. Upon his being made Pope, the statue of Pasquin was
one night dressed in a very dirty shirt, with an excuse written
under it, that he was forced to wear foul linen because his
laundress was made a princess. This was a reflection upon
the Pope’s sister, who, before the promotion of her
brother, was in those mean circumstances that Pasquin represented
her. As this pasquinade made a great noise in Rome, the
Pope offered a considerable sum of money to any person that
should discover the author of it. The author, relying upon
his holiness’s generosity, as also on some private
overtures which he had received from him, made the discovery
himself; upon which the Pope gave him the reward he had promised,
but, at the same time, to disable the satirist for the future,
ordered his tongue to be cut out, and both his hands to be
chopped off. Aretine is too trite an instance. Every
one knows that all the kings of Europe were his
tributaries. Nay, there is a letter of his extant, in which
he makes his boast that he had laid the Sophi of Persia under
contribution.</p>
<p>Though in the various examples which I have here drawn
together, these several great men behaved themselves very
differently towards the wits of the age who had reproached them,
they all of them plainly showed that they were very sensible of
their reproaches, and consequently that they received them as
very great injuries. For my own part, I would never trust a
man that I thought was capable of giving these secret wounds; and
cannot but think that he would hurt the person, whose reputation
he thus assaults, in his body or in his fortune, could he do it
with the same security. There is indeed something very
barbarous and inhuman in the ordinary scribblers of
lampoons. An innocent young lady shall be exposed for an
unhappy feature; a father of a family turned to ridicule for some
domestic calamity; a wife be made uneasy all her life for a
misinterpreted word or action; nay, a good, a temperate, and a
just man shall be put out of countenance by the representation of
those qualities that should do him honour; so pernicious a thing
is wit when it is not tempered with virtue and humanity.</p>
<p>I have indeed heard of heedless, inconsiderate writers that,
without any malice, have sacrificed the reputation of their
friends and acquaintance to a certain levity of temper, and a
silly ambition of distinguishing themselves by a spirit of
raillery and satire; as if it were not infinitely more honourable
to be a good-natured man than a wit. Where there is this
little petulant humour in an author, he is often very mischievous
without designing to be so. For which reason I always lay
it down as a rule that an indiscreet man is more hurtful than an
ill-natured one; for as the one will only attack his enemies, and
those he wishes ill to, the other injures indifferently both
friends and foes. I cannot forbear, on this occasion,
transcribing a fable out of Sir Roger L’Estrange, which
accidentally lies before me. A company of waggish boys were
watching of frogs at the side of a pond, and still as any of them
put up their heads, they would be pelting them down again with
stones. “Children,” says one of the frogs,
“you never consider that though this be play to you,
’tis death to us.”</p>
<p>As this week is in a manner set apart and dedicated to serious
thoughts, I shall indulge myself in such speculations as may not
be altogether unsuitable to the season; and in the meantime, as
the settling in ourselves a charitable frame of mind is a work
very proper for the time, I have in this paper endeavoured to
expose that particular breach of charity which has been generally
overlooked by divines, because they are but few who can be guilty
of it.</p>
<h2>TRUE AND FALSE HUMOUR.</h2>
<blockquote><p>—<i>Risu inepto res ineptior nulla
est</i>.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Catull.</span>,
<i>Carm.</i> 39 <i>in Egnat</i>.</p>
<p>Nothing so foolish as the laugh of fools.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Among all kinds of writing, there is none in which authors are
more apt to miscarry than in works of humour, as there is none in
which they are more ambitious to excel. It is not an
imagination that teems with monsters, a head that is filled with
extravagant conceptions, which is capable of furnishing the world
with diversions of this nature; and yet, if we look into the
productions of several writers, who set up for men of humour,
what wild, irregular fancies, what unnatural distortions of
thought do we meet with? If they speak nonsense, they
believe they are talking humour; and when they have drawn
together a scheme of absurd, inconsistent ideas, they are not
able to read it over to themselves without laughing. These
poor gentlemen endeavour to gain themselves the reputation of
wits and humorists, by such monstrous conceits as almost qualify
them for Bedlam; not considering that humour should always lie
under the check of reason, and that it requires the direction of
the nicest judgment, by so much the more as it indulges itself in
the most boundless freedoms. There is a kind of nature that
is to be observed in this sort of compositions, as well as in all
other; and a certain regularity of thought which must discover
the writer to be a man of sense, at the same time that he appears
altogether given up to caprice. For my part, when I read
the delirious mirth of an unskilful author, I cannot be so
barbarous as to divert myself with it, but am rather apt to pity
the man, than to laugh at anything he writes.</p>
<p>The deceased Mr. Shadwell, who had himself a great deal of the
talent which I am treating of, represents an empty rake, in one
of his plays, as very much surprised to hear one say that
breaking of windows was not humour; and I question not but
several English readers will be as much startled to hear me
affirm, that many of those raving, incoherent pieces, which are
often spread among us, under odd chimerical titles, are rather
the offsprings of a distempered brain than works of humour.</p>
<p>It is, indeed, much easier to describe what is not humour than
what is; and very difficult to define it otherwise than as Cowley
has done wit, by negatives. Were I to give my own notions
of it, I would deliver them after Plato’s manner, in a kind
of allegory, and, by supposing Humour to be a person, deduce to
him all his qualifications, according to the following
genealogy. Truth was the founder of the family, and the
father of Good Sense. Good Sense was the father of Wit, who
married a lady of a collateral line called Mirth, by whom he had
issue Humour. Humour therefore being the youngest of this
illustrious family, and descended from parents of such different
dispositions, is very various and unequal in his temper;
sometimes you see him putting on grave looks and a solemn habit,
sometimes airy in his behaviour and fantastic in his dress;
insomuch that at different times he appears as serious as a
judge, and as jocular as a merry-andrew. But, as he has a
great deal of the mother in his constitution, whatever mood he is
in, he never fails to make his company laugh.</p>
<p>But since there is an impostor abroad, who takes upon him the
name of this young gentleman, and would willingly pass for him in
the world; to the end that well-meaning persons may not be
imposed upon by cheats, I would desire my readers, when they meet
with this pretender, to look into his parentage, and to examine
him strictly, whether or no he be remotely allied to Truth, and
lineally descended from Good Sense; if not, they may conclude him
a counterfeit. They may likewise distinguish him by a loud
and excessive laughter, in which he seldom gets his company to
join with him. For as True Humour generally looks serious
while everybody laughs about him, False Humour is always laughing
whilst everybody about him looks serious. I shall only add,
if he has not in him a mixture of both parents—that is, if
he would pass for the offspring of Wit without Mirth, or Mirth
without Wit, you may conclude him to be altogether spurious and a
cheat.</p>
<p>The impostor of whom I am speaking descends originally from
Falsehood, who was the mother of Nonsense, who was brought to bed
of a son called Phrensy, who married one of the daughters of
Folly, commonly known by the name of Laughter, on whom he begot
that monstrous infant of which I have been here speaking. I
shall set down at length the genealogical table of False Humour,
and, at the same time, place under it the genealogy of True
Humour, that the reader may at one view behold their different
pedigrees and relations:—</p>
<p style="text-align: center">Falsehood.<br />
Nonsense.<br />
Phrensy.—Laughter.<br />
False Humour.</p>
<p style="text-align: center">Truth.<br />
Good Sense.<br />
Wit.—Mirth,<br />
Humour.</p>
<p>I might extend the allegory, by mentioning several of the
children of False Humour, who are more in number than the sands
of the sea, and might in particular enumerate the many sons and
daughters which he has begot in this island. But as this
would be a very invidious task, I shall only observe in general
that False Humour differs from the True as a monkey does from a
man.</p>
<p>First of all, he is exceedingly given to little apish tricks
and buffooneries.</p>
<p>Secondly, he so much delights in mimicry, that it is all one
to him whether he exposes by it vice and folly, luxury and
avarice; or, on the contrary, virtue and wisdom, pain and
poverty.</p>
<p>Thirdly, he is wonderfully unlucky, insomuch that he will bite
the hand that feeds him, and endeavour to ridicule both friends
and foes indifferently. For, having but small talents, he
must be merry where he can, not where he should.</p>
<p>Fourthly, Being entirely void of reason, he pursues no point
either of morality or instruction, but is ludicrous only for the
sake of being so.</p>
<p>Fifthly, Being incapable of anything but mock representations,
his ridicule is always personal, and aimed at the vicious man, or
the writer; not at the vice, or at the writing.</p>
<p>I have here only pointed at the whole species of false
humorists; but, as one of my principal designs in this paper is
to beat down that malignant spirit which discovers itself in the
writings of the present age, I shall not scruple, for the future,
to single out any of the small wits that infest the world with
such compositions as are ill-natured, immoral, and absurd.
This is the only exception which I shall make to the general rule
I have prescribed myself, of attacking multitudes; since every
honest man ought to look upon himself as in a natural state of
war with the libeller and lampooner, and to annoy them wherever
they fall in his way. This is but retaliating upon them,
and treating them as they treat others.</p>
<h2>SA GA YEAN QUA RASH TOW’S IMPRESSIONS OF LONDON.</h2>
<blockquote><p><i>Nunquam aliud natura</i>, <i>aliud sapientia
dicit</i>.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Juv.</span>,
<i>Sat.</i> xiv. 321.</p>
<p>Good taste and nature always speak the same.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>When the four Indian kings were in this country about a
twelvemonth ago, I often mixed with the rabble, and followed them
a whole day together, being wonderfully struck with the sight of
everything that is new or uncommon. I have, since their
departure, employed a friend to make many inquiries of their
landlord the upholsterer relating to their manners and
conversation, as also concerning the remarks which they made in
this country; for next to the forming a right notion of such
strangers, I should be desirous of learning what ideas they have
conceived of us.</p>
<p>The upholsterer finding my friend very inquisitive about these
his lodgers, brought him sometime since a little bundle of
papers, which he assured him were written by King Sa Ga Yean Qua
Rash Tow, and, as he supposes, left behind by some mistake.
These papers are now translated, and contain abundance of very
odd observations, which I find this little fraternity of kings
made during their stay in the Isle of Great Britain. I
shall present my reader with a short specimen of them in this
paper, and may perhaps communicate more to him hereafter.
In the article of London are the following words, which without
doubt are meant of the church of St. Paul:—</p>
<p>“On the most rising part of the town there stands a huge
house, big enough to contain the whole nation of which I am the
king. Our good brother E Tow O Koam, King of the Rivers, is
of opinion it was made by the hands of that great God to whom it
is consecrated. The Kings of Granajar and of the Six
Nations believe that it was created with the earth, and produced
on the same day with the sun and moon. But for my own part,
by the best information that I could get of this matter, I am apt
to think that this prodigious pile was fashioned into the shape
it now bears by several tools and instruments, of which they have
a wonderful variety in this country. It was probably at
first a huge misshapen rock that grew upon the top of the hill,
which the natives of the country, after having cut into a kind of
regular figure, bored and hollowed with incredible pains and
industry, till they had wrought in it all those beautiful vaults
and caverns into which it is divided at this day. As soon
as this rock was thus curiously scooped to their liking, a
prodigious number of hands must have been employed in chipping
the outside of it, which is now as smooth as the surface of a
pebble; and is in several places hewn out into pillars that stand
like the trunks of so many trees bound about the top with
garlands of leaves. It is probable that when this great
work was begun, which must have been many hundred years ago,
there was some religion among this people; for they give it the
name of a temple, and have a tradition that it was designed for
men to pay their devotion in. And indeed, there are several
reasons which make us think that the natives of this country had
formerly among them some sort of worship, for they set apart
every seventh day as sacred; but upon my going into one of these
holy houses on that day, I could not observe any circumstance of
devotion in their behaviour. There was, indeed, a man in
black, who was mounted above the rest, and seemed to utter some
thing with a great deal of vehemence; but as for those underneath
him, instead of paying their worship to the deity of the place,
they were most of them bowing and curtsying to one another, and a
considerable number of them fast asleep.</p>
<p>“The queen of the country appointed two men to attend
us, that had enough of our language to make themselves understood
in some few particulars. But we soon perceived these two
were great enemies to one another, and did not always agree in
the same story. We could make a shift to gather out of one
of them that this island was very much infested with a monstrous
kind of animals, in the shape of men, called Whigs; and he often
told us that he hoped we should meet with none of them in our
way, for that, if we did, they would be apt to knock us down for
being kings.</p>
<p>“Our other interpreter used to talk very much of a kind
of animal called a Tory, that was as great a monster as the Whig,
and would treat us as ill for being foreigners. These two
creatures, it seems, are born with a secret antipathy to one
another, and engage when they meet as naturally as the elephant
and the rhinoceros. But as we saw none of either of these
species, we are apt to think that our guides deceived us with
misrepresentations and fictions, and amused us with an account of
such monsters as are not really in their country.</p>
<p>“These particulars we made a shift to pick out from the
discourse of our interpreters, which we put together as well as
we could, being able to understand but here and there a word of
what they said, and afterwards making up the meaning of it among
ourselves. The men of the country are very cunning and
ingenious in handicraft works, but withal so very idle, that we
often saw young, lusty, raw-boned fellows carried up and down the
streets in little covered rooms by a couple of porters, who were
hired for that service. Their dress is likewise very
barbarous, for they almost strangle themselves about the neck,
and bind their bodies with many ligatures, that we are apt to
think are the occasion of several distempers among them, which
our country is entirely free from. Instead of those
beautiful feathers with which we adorn our heads, they often buy
up a monstrous bush of hair, which covers their heads, and falls
down in a large fleece below the middle of their backs, with
which they walk up and down the streets, and are as proud of it
as if it was of their own growth.</p>
<p>“We were invited to one of their public diversions,
where we hoped to have seen the great men of their country
running down a stag, or pitching a bar, that we might have
discovered who were the persons of the greatest abilities among
them; but instead of that, they conveyed us into a huge room
lighted up with abundance of candles, where this lazy people sat
still above three hours to see several feats of ingenuity
performed by others, who it seems were paid for it.</p>
<p>“As for the women of the country, not being able to talk
with them, we could only make our remarks upon them at a
distance. They let the hair of their heads grow to a great
length; but as the men make a great show with heads of hair that
are none of their own, the women, who they say have very fine
heads of hair, tie it up in a knot, and cover it from being
seen. The women look like angels, and would be more
beautiful than the sun, were it not for little black spots that
are apt to break out in their faces, and sometimes rise in very
odd figures. I have observed that those little blemishes
wear off very soon; but when they disappear in one part of the
face, they are very apt to break out in another, insomuch that I
have seen a spot upon the forehead in the afternoon which was
upon the chin in the morning.”</p>
<p>The author then proceeds to show the absurdity of breeches and
petticoats, with many other curious observations, which I shall
reserve for another occasion: I cannot, however, conclude this
paper without taking notice that amidst these wild remarks there
now and then appears something very reasonable. I cannot
likewise forbear observing, that we are all guilty in some
measure of the same narrow way of thinking which we meet with in
this abstract of the Indian journal, when we fancy the customs,
dresses, and manners of other countries are ridiculous and
extravagant if they do not resemble those of our own.</p>
<h2>THE VISION OF MARRATON.</h2>
<blockquote><p><i>Felices errore suo</i>.—</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Lucan</span> i.
454.</p>
<p>Happy in their mistake.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Americans believe that all creatures have souls, not only
men and women, but brutes, vegetables, nay, even the most
inanimate things, as stocks and stones. They believe the
same of all works of art, as of knives, boats, looking-glasses;
and that, as any of these things perish, their souls go into
another world, which is inhabited by the ghosts of men and
women. For this reason they always place by the corpse of
their dead friend a bow and arrows, that he may make use of the
souls of them in the other world, as he did of their wooden
bodies in this. How absurd soever such an opinion as this
may appear, our European philosophers have maintained several
notions altogether as improbable. Some of Plato’s
followers, in particular, when they talk of the world of ideas,
entertain us with substances and beings no less extravagant and
chimerical. Many Aristotelians have likewise spoken as
unintelligibly of their substantial forms. I shall only
instance Albertus Magnus, who, in his dissertation upon the
loadstone, observing that fire will destroy its magnetic virtues,
tells us that he took particular notice of one as it lay glowing
amidst a heap of burning coals, and that he perceived a certain
blue vapour to arise from it, which he believed might be the
substantial form that is, in our West Indian phrase, the soul of
the loadstone.</p>
<p>There is a tradition among the Americans that one of their
countrymen descended in a vision to the great repository of
souls, or, as we call it here, to the other world; and that upon
his return he gave his friends a distinct account of everything
he saw among those regions of the dead. A friend of mine,
whom I have formerly mentioned, prevailed upon one of the
interpreters of the Indian kings to inquire of them, if possible,
what tradition they have among them of this matter: which, as
well as he could learn by those many questions which he asked
them at several times, was in substance as follows:</p>
<p>The visionary, whose name was Marraton, after having travelled
for a long space under a hollow mountain, arrived at length on
the confines of this world of spirits, but could not enter it by
reason of a thick forest, made up of bushes, brambles, and
pointed thorns, so perplexed and interwoven with one another that
it was impossible to find a passage through it. Whilst he
was looking about for some track or pathway that might be worn in
any part of it, he saw a huge lion couched under the side of it,
who kept his eye upon him in the same posture as when he watches
for his prey. The Indian immediately started back, whilst
the lion rose with a spring, and leaped towards him. Being
wholly destitute of all other weapons, he stooped down to take up
a huge stone in his hand, but, to his infinite surprise, grasped
nothing, and found the supposed stone to be only the apparition
of one. If he was disappointed on this side, he was as much
pleased on the other, when he found the lion, which had seized on
his left shoulder, had no power to hurt him, and was only the
ghost of that ravenous creature which it appeared to be. He
no sooner got rid of his impotent enemy, but he marched up to the
wood, and, after having surveyed it for some time, endeavoured to
press into one part of it that was a little thinner than the
rest, when, again to his great surprise, he found the bushes made
no resistance, but that he walked through briars and brambles
with the same ease as through the open air, and, in short, that
the whole wood was nothing else but a wood of shades. He
immediately concluded that this huge thicket of thorns and brakes
was designed as a kind of fence or quickset hedge to the ghosts
it inclosed, and that probably their soft substances might be
torn by these subtile points and prickles, which were too weak to
make any impressions in flesh and blood. With this thought
he resolved to travel through this intricate wood, when by
degrees he felt a gale of perfumes breathing upon him, that grew
stronger and sweeter in proportion as he advanced. He had
not proceeded much further, when he observed the thorns and
briers to end, and give place to a thousand beautiful green
trees, covered with blossoms of the finest scents and colours,
that formed a wilderness of sweets, and were a kind of lining to
those ragged scenes which he had before passed through. As
he was coming out of this delightful part of the wood, and
entering upon the plains it enclosed, he saw several horsemen
rushing by him, and a little while after heard the cry of a pack
of dogs. He had not listened long before he saw the
apparition of a milk-white steed, with a young man on the back of
it, advancing upon full stretch after the souls of about a
hundred beagles, that were hunting down the ghost of a hare,
which ran away before them with an unspeakable swiftness.
As the man on the milk-white steed came by him, he looked upon
him very attentively, and found him to be the young prince
Nicharagua, who died about half a year before, and, by reason of
his great virtues, was at that time lamented over all the western
parts of America.</p>
<p>He had no sooner got out of the wood but he was entertained
with such a landscape of flowery plains, green meadows, running
streams, sunny hills, and shady vales as were not to be
represented by his own expressions, nor, as he said, by the
conceptions of others. This happy region was peopled with
innumerable swarms of spirits, who applied themselves to
exercises and diversions, according as their fancies led
them. Some of them were tossing the figure of a quoit;
others were pitching the shadow of a bar; others were breaking
the apparition of a horse; and multitudes employing themselves
upon ingenious handicrafts with the souls of departed utensils,
for that is the name which in the Indian language they give their
tools when they are burnt or broken. As he travelled
through this delightful scene he was very often tempted to pluck
the flowers that rose everywhere about him in the greatest
variety and profusion, having never seen several of them in his
own country: but he quickly found, that though they were objects
of his sight, they were not liable to his touch. He at
length came to the side of a great river, and, being a good
fisherman himself, stood upon the banks of it some time to look
upon an angler that had taken a great many shapes of fishes,
which lay flouncing up and down by him.</p>
<p>I should have told my reader that this Indian had been
formerly married to one of the greatest beauties of his country,
by whom he had several children. This couple were so famous
for their love and constancy to one another that the Indians to
this day, when they give a married man joy of his wife, wish that
they may live together like Marraton and Yaratilda.
Marraton had not stood long by the fisherman when he saw the
shadow of his beloved Yaratilda, who had for some time fixed her
eye upon him before he discovered her. Her arms were
stretched out towards him; floods of tears ran down her eyes; her
looks, her hands, her voice called him over to her, and, at the
same time, seemed to tell him that the river was
unpassable. Who can describe the passion made up of joy,
sorrow, love, desire, astonishment that rose in the Indian upon
the sight of his dear Yaratilda? He could express it by
nothing but his tears, which ran like a river down his cheeks as
he looked upon her. He had not stood in this posture long
before he plunged into the stream that lay before him, and
finding it to be nothing but the phantom of a river, stalked on
the bottom of it till he arose on the other side. At his
approach Yaratilda flew into his arms, whilst Marraton wished
himself disencumbered of that body which kept her from his
embraces. After many questions and endearments on both
sides, she conducted him to a bower, which she had dressed with
her own hands with all the ornaments that could be met with in
those blooming regions. She had made it gay beyond
imagination, and was every day adding something new to it.
As Marraton stood astonished at the unspeakable beauty of her
habitation, and ravished with the fragrancy that came from every
part of it, Yaratilda told him that she was preparing this bower
for his reception, as well knowing that his piety to his God, and
his faithful dealing towards men, would certainly bring him to
that happy place whenever his life should be at an end. She
then brought two of her children to him, who died some years
before, and resided with her in the same delightful bower,
advising him to breed up those others which were still with him
in such a manner that they might hereafter all of them meet
together in this happy place.</p>
<p>The tradition tells us further that he had afterwards a sight
of those dismal habitations which are the portion of ill men
after death; and mentions several molten seas of gold, in which
were plunged the souls of barbarous Europeans, who put to the
sword so many thousands of poor Indians for the sake of that
precious metal. But having already touched upon the chief
points of this tradition, and exceeded the measure of my paper, I
shall not give any further account of it.</p>
<h2>SIX PAPERS ON WIT.</h2>
<h3>First Paper.</h3>
<blockquote><p><i>Ut pictura poësis erit</i>—</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Hor.</span>,
<i>Ars Poet.</i> 361.</p>
<p>Poems like pictures are.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Nothing is so much admired, and so little understood, as
wit. No author that I know of has written professedly upon
it. As for those who make any mention of it, they only
treat on the subject as it has accidentally fallen in their way,
and that too in little short reflections, or in general
declamatory flourishes, without entering into the bottom of the
matter. I hope, therefore, I shall perform an acceptable
work to my countrymen if I treat at large upon this subject;
which I shall endeavour to do in a manner suitable to it, that I
may not incur the censure which a famous critic bestows upon one
who had written a treatise upon “the sublime,” in a
low grovelling style. I intend to lay aside a whole week
for this undertaking, that the scheme of my thoughts may not be
broken and interrupted; and I dare promise myself, if my readers
will give me a week’s attention, that this great city will
be very much changed for the better by next Saturday night.
I shall endeavour to make what I say intelligible to ordinary
capacities; but if my readers meet with any paper that in some
parts of it may be a little out of their reach, I would not have
them discouraged, for they may assure themselves the next shall
be much clearer.</p>
<p>As the great and only end of these my speculations is to
banish vice and ignorance out of the territories of Great
Britain, I shall endeavour, as much as possible, to establish
among us a taste of polite writing. It is with this view
that I have endeavoured to set my readers right in several points
relating to operas and tragedies, and shall, from time to time,
impart my notions of comedy, as I think they may tend to its
refinement and perfection. I find by my bookseller, that
these papers of criticism, with that upon humour, have met with a
more kind reception than indeed I could have hoped for from such
subjects; for which reason I shall enter upon my present
undertaking with greater cheerfulness.</p>
<p>In this, and one or two following papers, I shall trace out
the history of false wit, and distinguish the several kinds of it
as they have prevailed in different ages of the world. This
I think the more necessary at present, because I observed there
were attempts on foot last winter to revive some of those
antiquated modes of wit that have been long exploded out of the
commonwealth of letters. There were several satires and
panegyrics handed about in an acrostic, by which means some of
the most arrant undisputed blockheads about the town began to
entertain ambitious thoughts, and to set up for polite
authors. I shall therefore describe at length those many
arts of false wit, in which a writer does not show himself a man
of a beautiful genius, but of great industry.</p>
<p>The first species of false wit which I have met with is very
venerable for its antiquity, and has produced several pieces
which have lived very near as long as the “Iliad”
itself: I mean, those short poems printed among the minor Greek
poets, which resemble the figure of an egg, a pair of wings, an
axe, a shepherd’s pipe, and an altar.</p>
<p>As for the first, it is a little oval poem, and may not
improperly be called a scholar’s egg. I would
endeavour to hatch it, or, in more intelligible language, to
translate it into English, did not I find the interpretation of
it very difficult; for the author seems to have been more intent
upon the figure of his poem than upon the sense of it.</p>
<p>The pair of wings consists of twelve verses, or rather
feathers, every verse decreasing gradually in its measure
according to its situation in the wing. The subject of it,
as in the rest of the poems which follow, bears some remote
affinity with the figure, for it describes a god of love, who is
always painted with wings.</p>
<p>The axe, methinks, would have been a good figure for a
lampoon, had the edge of it consisted of the most satirical parts
of the work; but as it is in the original, I take it to have been
nothing else but the poesy of an axe which was consecrated to
Minerva, and was thought to be the same that Epeus made use of in
the building of the Trojan horse; which is a hint I shall leave
to the consideration of the critics. I am apt to think that
the poesy was written originally upon the axe, like those which
our modern cutlers inscribe upon their knives; and that,
therefore, the poesy still remains in its ancient shape, though
the axe itself is lost.</p>
<p>The shepherd’s pipe may be said to be full of music, for
it is composed of nine different kinds of verses, which by their
several lengths resemble the nine stops of the old musical
instrument, that is likewise the subject of the poem.</p>
<p>The altar is inscribed with the epitaph of Troïlus the
son of Hecuba; which, by the way, makes me believe that these
false pieces of wit are much more ancient than the authors to
whom they are generally ascribed; at least, I will never be
persuaded that so fine a writer as Theocritus could have been the
author of any such simple works.</p>
<p>It was impossible for a man to succeed in these performances
who was not a kind of painter, or at least a designer. He
was first of all to draw the outline of the subject which he
intended to write upon, and afterwards conform the description to
the figure of his subject. The poetry was to contract or
dilate itself according to the mould in which it was cast.
In a word, the verses were to be cramped or extended to the
dimensions of the frame that was prepared for them; and to
undergo the fate of those persons whom the tyrant Procrustes used
to lodge in his iron bed: if they were too short, he stretched
them on a rack; and if they were too long, chopped off a part of
their legs, till they fitted the couch which he had prepared for
them.</p>
<p>Mr. Dryden hints at this obsolete kind of wit in one of the
following verses in his “Mac Flecknoe;” which an
English reader cannot understand, who does not know that there
are those little poems above mentioned in the shape of wings and
altars:—</p>
<blockquote><p>—Choose for thy command<br />
Some peaceful province in acrostic land;</p>
<p>There may’st thou wings display, and altars raise,<br />
And torture one poor word a thousand ways.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This fashion of false wit was revived by several poets of the
last age, and in particular may be met with among Mr.
Herbert’s poems; and, if I am not mistaken, in the
translation of Du Bartas. I do not remember any other kind
of work among the moderns which more resembles the performances I
have mentioned than that famous picture of King Charles the
First, which has the whole Book of Psalms written in the lines of
the face, and, the hair of the head. When I was last at
Oxford I perused one of the whiskers, and was reading the other,
but could not go so far in it as I would have done, by reason of
the impatience of my friends and fellow-travellers, who all of
them pressed to see such a piece of curiosity. I have since
heard, that there is now an eminent writing-master in town, who
has transcribed all the Old Testament in a full-bottomed periwig:
and if the fashion should introduce the thick kind of wigs which
were in vogue some few years ago, he promises to add two or three
supernumerary locks that should contain all the Apocrypha.
He designed this wig originally for King William, having disposed
of the two Books of Kings in the two forks of the foretop; but
that glorious monarch dying before the wig was finished, there is
a space left in it for the face of any one that has a mind to
purchase it.</p>
<p>But to return to our ancient poems in picture. I would
humbly propose, for the benefit of our modern smatterers in
poetry, that they would imitate their brethren among the ancients
in those ingenious devices. I have communicated this
thought to a young poetical lover of my acquaintance, who intends
to present his mistress with a copy of verses made in the shape
of her fan; and, if he tells me true, has already finished the
three first sticks of it. He has likewise promised me to
get the measure of his mistress’s marriage finger with a
design to make a posy in the fashion of a ring, which shall
exactly fit it. It is so very easy to enlarge upon a good
hint, that I do not question but my ingenious readers will apply
what I have said to many other particulars; and that we shall see
the town filled in a very little time with poetical tippets,
handkerchiefs, snuff-boxes, and the like female ornaments.
I shall therefore conclude with a word of advice to those
admirable English authors who call themselves Pindaric writers,
that they would apply themselves to this kind of wit without loss
of time, as being provided better than any other poets with
verses of all sizes and dimensions.</p>
<h3>Second Paper.</h3>
<blockquote><p><i>Operose nihil aguat</i>.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span
class="smcap">Seneca</span>.</p>
<p>Busy about nothing.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There is nothing more certain than that every man would be a
wit if he could; and notwithstanding pedants of pretended depth
and solidity are apt to decry the writings of a polite author, as
flash and froth, they all of them show, upon occasion, that they
would spare no pains to arrive at the character of those whom
they seem to despise. For this reason we often find them
endeavouring at works of fancy, which cost them infinite pangs in
the production. The truth of it is, a man had better be a
galley-slave than a wit, were one to gain that title by those
elaborate trifles which have been the inventions of such authors
as were often masters of great learning, but no genius.</p>
<p>In my last paper I mentioned some of these false wits among
the ancients; and in this shall give the reader two or three
other species of them, that flourished in the same early ages of
the world. The first I shall produce are the
lipogrammatists or letter-droppers of antiquity, that would take
an exception, without any reason, against some particular letter
in the alphabet, so as not to admit it once into a whole
poem. One Tryphiodorus was a great master in this kind of
writing. He composed an “Odyssey” or epic poem
on the adventures of Ulysses, consisting of four-and-twenty
books, having entirely banished the letter A from his first book,
which was called Alpha, as <i>lucus à non lucendo</i>,
because there was not an Alpha in it. His second book was
inscribed Beta for the same reason. In short, the poet
excluded the whole four-and-twenty letters in their turns, and
showed them, one after another, that he could do his business
without them.</p>
<p>It must have been very pleasant to have seen this poet
avoiding the reprobate letter, as much as another would a false
quantity, and making his escape from it through the several Greek
dialects, when he was pressed with it in any particular
syllable. For the most apt and elegant word in the whole
language was rejected, like a diamond with a flaw in it, if it
appeared blemished with a wrong letter. I shall only
observe upon this head, that if the work I have here mentioned
had been now extant, the “Odyssey” of Tryphiodorus,
in all probability, would have been oftener quoted by our learned
pedants than the “Odyssey” of Homer. What a
perpetual fund would it have been of obsolete words and phrases,
unusual barbarisms and rusticities, absurd spellings and
complicated dialects! I make no question but that it would
have been looked upon as one of the most valuable treasuries of
the Greek tongue.</p>
<p>I find likewise among the ancients that ingenious kind of
conceit which the moderns distinguish by the name of a rebus,
that does not sink a letter, but a whole word, by substituting a
picture in its place. When Cæsar was one of the
masters of the Roman mint, he placed the figure of an elephant
upon the reverse of the public money; the word Cæsar
signifying an elephant in the Punic language. This was
artificially contrived by Cæsar, because it was not lawful
for a private man to stamp his own figure upon the coin of the
commonwealth. Cicero, who was so called from the founder of
his family, that was marked on the nose with a little wen like a
vetch, which is <i>Cicer</i> in Latin, instead of Marcus Tullius
Cicero, ordered the words Marcus Tullius, with a figure of a
vetch at the end of them, to be inscribed on a public
monument. This was done probably to show that he was
neither ashamed of his name nor family, notwithstanding the envy
of his competitors had often reproached him with both. In
the same manner we read of a famous building that was marked in
several parts of it with the figures of a frog and a lizard;
those words in Greek having been the names of the architects, who
by the laws of their country were never permitted to inscribe
their own names upon their works. For the same reason it is
thought that the forelock of the horse, in the antique equestrian
statue of Marcus Aurelius, represents at a distance the shape of
an owl, to intimate the country of the statuary, who, in all
probability, was an Athenian. This kind of wit was very
much in vogue among our own countrymen about an age or two ago,
who did not practise it for any oblique reason, as the ancients
above-mentioned, but purely for the sake of being witty.
Among innumerable instances that may be given of this nature, I
shall produce the device of one Mr. Newberry, as I find it
mentioned by our learned Camden in his Remains. Mr.
Newberry, to represent his name by a picture, hung up at his door
the sign of a yew-tree, that has several berries upon it, and in
the midst of them a great golden N hung upon a bough of the tree,
which by the help of a little false spelling made up the word
Newberry.</p>
<p>I shall conclude this topic with a rebus, which has been
lately hewn out in freestone, and erected over two of the portals
of Blenheim House, being the figure of a monstrous lion tearing
to pieces a little cock. For the better understanding of
which device I must acquaint my English reader that a cock has
the misfortune to be called in Latin by the same word that
signifies a Frenchman, as a lion is the emblem of the English
nation. Such a device in so noble a pile of building looks
like a pun in an heroic poem; and I am very sorry the truly
ingenious architect would suffer the statuary to blemish his
excellent plan with so poor a conceit. But I hope what I
have said will gain quarter for the cock, and deliver him out of
the lion’s paw.</p>
<p>I find likewise in ancient times the conceit of making an echo
talk sensibly, and give rational answers. If this could be
excusable in any writer, it would be in Ovid where he introduces
the Echo as a nymph, before she was worn away into nothing but a
voice. The learned Erasmus, though a man of wit and genius,
has composed a dialogue upon this silly kind of device, and made
use of an Echo, who seems to have been a very extraordinary
linguist, for she answers the person she talks with in Latin,
Greek, and Hebrew, according as she found the syllables which she
was to repeat in any of those learned languages. Hudibras,
in ridicule of this false kind of wit, has described Bruin
bewailing the loss of his bear to the solitary Echo, who is of
great use to the poet in several distiches, as she does not only
repeat after him, but helps out his verse, and furnishes him with
rhymes:—</p>
<blockquote><p>He raged, and kept as heavy a coil as<br />
Stout Hercules for loss of Hylas;<br />
Forcing the valleys to repeat<br />
The accents of his sad regret;<br />
He beat his breast, and tore his hair,<br />
For loss of his dear crony bear:<br />
That Echo from the hollow ground<br />
His doleful wailings did resound<br />
More wistfully by many times,<br />
Than in small poets’ splay-foot rhymes,<br />
That make her, in their rueful stories,<br />
To answer to int’rogatories,<br />
And most unconscionably depose<br />
Things of which she nothing knows;<br />
And when she has said all she can say,<br />
’Tis wrested to the lover’s fancy.<br />
Quoth he, “O whither, wicked Bruin,<br />
Art thou fled to my”—Echo, <i>Ruin</i>?<br />
“I thought th’ hadst scorn’d to budge a step<br
/>
For fear.” Quoth Echo, <i>Marry guep</i>.<br />
“Am I not here to take thy part?”<br />
Then what has quell’d thy stubborn heart?<br />
Have these bones rattled, and this head<br />
So often in thy quarrel bled?<br />
Nor did I ever winch or grudge it,<br />
For thy dear sake.” Quoth she, <i>Mum budget</i>.<br
/>
Think’st thou ’twill not be laid i’ th’
dish,<br />
Thou turn’dst thy back?” Quoth Echo,
<i>Pish</i>.<br />
To run from those th’ hadst overcome<br />
Thus cowardly?” Quoth Echo, <i>Mum</i>.<br />
“But what a-vengeance makes thee fly<br />
From me too as thine enemy?<br />
Or if thou hadst no thought of me,<br />
Nor what I have endured for thee,<br />
Yet shame and honour might prevail<br />
To keep thee thus from turning tail:<br />
For who would grudge to spend his blood in<br />
His honour’s cause?” Quoth she, <i>A
pudding</i>.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Part</i> I., <i>Cant.</i> 3,
183.</p>
</blockquote>
<h3>Third Paper.</h3>
<blockquote><p><i>Hoc est quod palles</i>? <i>Cur quis non
prandeat</i>, <i>hoc est</i>?</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Pers.</span>,
<i>Sat.</i> iii. 85.</p>
<p>Is it for this you gain those meagre looks,<br />
And sacrifice your dinner to your books?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Several kinds of false wit that vanished in the refined ages
of the world, discovered themselves again in the times of monkish
ignorance.</p>
<p>As the monks were the masters of all that little learning
which was then extant, and had their whole lives entirely
disengaged from business, it is no wonder that several of them,
who wanted genius for higher performances, employed many hours in
the composition of such tricks in writing as required much time
and little capacity. I have seen half the
“Æneid” turned into Latin rhymes by one of the
<i>beaux esprits</i> of that dark age: who says, in his preface
to it, that the “Æneid” wanted nothing but the
sweets of rhyme to make it the most perfect work in its
kind. I have likewise seen a hymn in hexameters to the
Virgin Mary, which filled a whole book, though it consisted but
of the eight following words:—</p>
<blockquote><p><i>Tot tibi sunt</i>, <i>Virgo</i>, <i>dotes</i>,
<i>quot sidera coelo</i>.</p>
<p>Thou hast as many virtues, O Virgin, as there are stars in
heaven.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The poet rang the changes upon these eight several words, and
by that means made his verses almost as numerous as the virtues
and stars which they celebrated. It is no wonder that men
who had so much time upon their hands did not only restore all
the antiquated pieces of false wit, but enriched the world with
inventions of their own. It is to this age that we owe the
production of anagrams, which is nothing else but a transmutation
of one word into another, or the turning of the same set of
letters into different words; which may change night into day, or
black into white, if chance, who is the goddess that presides
over these sorts of composition, shall so direct. I
remember a witty author, in allusion to this kind of writing,
calls his rival, who, it seems, was distorted, and had his limbs
set in places that did not properly belong to them, “the
anagram of a man.”</p>
<p>When the anagrammatist takes a name to work upon, he considers
it at first as a mine not broken up, which will not show the
treasure it contains till he shall have spent many hours in the
search of it; for it is his business to find out one word that
conceals itself in another, and to examine the letters in all the
variety of stations in which they can possibly be ranged. I
have heard of a gentleman who, when this kind of wit was in
fashion, endeavoured to gain his mistress’s heart by
it. She was one of the finest women of her age, and known
by the name of the Lady Mary Boon. The lover not being able
to make anything of Mary, by certain liberties indulged to this
kind of writing converted it into Moll; and after having shut
himself up for half a year, with indefatigable industry produced
an anagram. Upon the presenting it to his mistress, who was
a little vexed in her heart to see herself degraded into Moll
Boon, she told him, to his infinite surprise, that he had
mistaken her surname, for that it was not Boon, but Bohun.</p>
<blockquote><p>—<i>Ibi omnis</i><br />
<i>Effusus labor</i>.—</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The lover was thunder-struck with his misfortune, insomuch
that in a little time after he lost his senses, which, indeed,
had been very much impaired by that continual application he had
given to his anagram.</p>
<p>The acrostic was probably invented about the same time with
the anagram, though it is impossible to decide whether the
inventor of the one or the other were the greater
blockhead. The simple acrostic is nothing but the name or
title of a person, or thing, made out of the initial letters of
several verses, and by that means written, after the manner of
the Chinese, in a perpendicular line. But besides these
there are compound acrostics, when the principal letters stand
two or three deep. I have seen some of them where the
verses have not only been edged by a name at each extremity, but
have had the same name running down like a seam through the
middle of the poem.</p>
<p>There is another near relation of the anagrams and acrostics,
which is commonly called a chronogram. This kind of wit
appears very often on many modern medals, especially those of
Germany, when they represent in the inscription the year in which
they were coined. Thus we see on a medal of Gustavus
Adolphus time following words, <span class="smcap">ChrIstVs DuX
ergo trIVMphVs</span>. If you take the pains to pick the
figures out of the several words, and range them in their proper
order, you will find they amount to <span
class="smcap">mdcxvvvii</span>, or 1627, the year in which the
medal was stamped: for as some of the letters distinguish
themselves from the rest, and overtop their fellows, they are to
be considered in a double capacity, both as letters and as
figures. Your laborious German wits will turn over a whole
dictionary for one of these ingenious devices. A man would
think they were searching after an apt classical term, but
instead of that they are looking out a word that has an L, an M,
or a D in it. When, therefore, we meet with any of these
inscriptions, we are not so much to look in them for the thought,
as for the year of the Lord.</p>
<p>The <i>bouts-rimés</i> were the favourites of the
French nation for a whole age together, and that at a time when
it abounded in wit and learning. They were a list of words
that rhyme to one another, drawn up by another hand, and given to
a poet, who was to make a poem to the rhymes in the same order
that they were placed upon the list: the more uncommon the rhymes
were, the more extraordinary was the genius of the poet that
could accommodate his verses to them. I do not know any
greater instance of the decay of wit and learning among the
French, which generally follows the declension of empire, than
the endeavouring to restore this foolish kind of wit. If
the reader will be at trouble to see examples of it, let him look
into the new <i>Mercure Gallant</i>, where the author every month
gives a list of rhymes to be filled up by the ingenious, in order
to be communicated to the public in the <i>Mercure</i> for the
succeeding month. That for the month of November last,
which now lies before me, is as follows:—</p>
<blockquote><p>Lauriers<br />
Guerriers<br />
Musette<br />
Lisette<br />
Cæsars<br />
Etendars<br />
Houlette<br />
Folette</p>
</blockquote>
<p>One would be amazed to see so learned a man as Menage talking
seriously on this kind of trifle in the following
passage:—</p>
<p>“Monsieur de la Chambre has told me that he never knew
what he was going to write when he took his pen into his hand;
but that one sentence always produced another. For my own
part, I never knew what I should write next when I was making
verses. In the first place I got all my rhymes together,
and was afterwards perhaps three or four months in filling them
up. I one day showed Monsieur Gombaud a composition of this
nature, in which, among others, I had made use of the four
following rhymes, Amaryllis, Phyllis, Maine, Arne; desiring him
to give me his opinion of it. He told me immediately that
my verses were good for nothing. And upon my asking his
reason, he said, because the rhymes are too common, and for that
reason easy to be put into verse. ‘Marry,’ says
I, ‘if it be so, I am very well rewarded for all the pains
I have been at!’ But by Monsieur Gombaud’s
leave, notwithstanding the severity of the criticism, the verses
were good.” (<i>Vide</i>
“Menagiana.”) Thus far the learned Menage, whom
I have translated word for word.</p>
<p>The first occasion of these <i>bouts-rimés</i> made
them in some manner excusable, as they were tasks which the
French ladies used to impose on their lovers. But when a
grave author, like him above-mentioned, tasked himself, could
there be anything more ridiculous? Or would not one be apt
to believe that the author played booty, and did not make his
list of rhymes till he had finished his poem?</p>
<p>I shall only add that this piece of false wit has been finely
ridiculed by Monsieur Sarasin, in a poem entitled “La
Défaite des Bouts-Rimés.” (The Rout of
the Bouts-Rimés).</p>
<p>I must subjoin to this last kind of wit the double rhymes,
which are used in doggrel poetry, and generally applauded by
ignorant readers. If the thought of the couplet in such
compositions is good, the rhyme adds little to it; and if bad, it
will not be in the power of the rhyme to recommend it. I am
afraid that great numbers of those who admire the incomparable
“Hudibras,” do it more on account of these doggrel
rhymes than of the parts that really deserve admiration. I
am sure I have heard the</p>
<blockquote><p>Pulpit, drum ecclesiastic,<br />
Was beat with fist, instead of a stick (Canto I, II),</p>
</blockquote>
<p>and—</p>
<blockquote><p>There was an ancient philosopher<br />
Who had read Alexander Ross over</p>
<p style="text-align: right">(<i>Part</i> I., <i>Canto</i> 2,
1),</p>
</blockquote>
<p>more frequently quoted than the finest pieces of wit in the
whole poem.</p>
<h3>Fourth Paper.</h3>
<blockquote><p><i>Non equidem hoc studeo bullatis ut mihi
nugis</i><br />
<i>Pagina turgescat</i>, <i>dare pondus idonea fumo</i>.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Pers.</span>,
<i>Sat.</i> v. 19.</p>
<p>’Tis not indeed my talent to engage<br />
In lofty trifles, or to swell my page<br />
With wind and noise.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span
class="smcap">Dryden</span>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There is no kind of false wit which has been so recommended by
the practice of all ages as that which consists in a jingle of
words, and is comprehended under the general name of
punning. It is indeed impossible to kill a weed which the
soil has a natural disposition to produce. The seeds of
punning are in the minds of all men, and though they may be
subdued by reason, reflection, and good sense, they will be very
apt to shoot up in the greatest genius that is not broken and
cultivated by the rules of art. Imitation is natural to us,
and when it does not raise the mind to poetry, painting, music,
or other more noble arts, it often breaks out in puns and
quibbles.</p>
<p>Aristotle, in the eleventh chapter of his book of rhetoric,
describes two or three kinds of puns, which he calls paragrams,
among the beauties of good writing, and produces instances of
them out of some of the greatest authors in the Greek
tongue. Cicero has sprinkled several of his works with
puns, and, in his book where he lays down the rules of oratory,
quotes abundance of sayings as pieces of wit, which also, upon
examination, prove arrant puns. But the age in which the
pun chiefly flourished was in the reign of King James the
First. That learned monarch was himself a tolerable
punster, and made very few bishops or Privy Councillors that had
not some time or other signalised themselves by a clinch, or a
conundrum. It was, therefore, in this age that the pun
appeared with pomp and dignity. It had been before admitted
into merry speeches and ludicrous compositions, but was now
delivered with great gravity from the pulpit, or pronounced in
the most solemn manner at the council-table. The greatest
authors, in their most serious works, made frequent use of
puns. The sermons of Bishop Andrews, and the tragedies of
Shakespeare, are full of them. The sinner was punned into
repentance by the former; as in the latter, nothing is more usual
than to see a hero weeping and quibbling for a dozen lines
together.</p>
<p>I must add to these great authorities, which seem to have
given a kind of sanction to this piece of false wit, that all the
writers of rhetoric have treated of punning with very great
respect, and divided the several kinds of it into hard names,
that are reckoned among the figures of speech, and recommended as
ornaments in discourse. I remember a country schoolmaster
of my acquaintance told me once, that he had been in company with
a gentleman whom he looked upon to be the greatest paragrammatist
among the moderns. Upon inquiry, I found my learned friend
had dined that day with Mr. Swan, the famous punster; and
desiring him to give me some account of Mr. Swan’s
conversation, he told me that he generally talked in the
<i>Paranomasia</i>, that he sometimes gave in to the
<i>Plocé</i>, but that in his humble opinion he shone most
in the <i>Antanaclasis</i>.</p>
<p>I must not here omit that a famous university of this land was
formerly very much infested with puns; but whether or not this
might arise from the fens and marshes in which it was situated,
and which are now drained, I must leave to the determination of
more skilful naturalists.</p>
<p>After this short history of punning, one would wonder how it
should be so entirely banished out of the learned world as it is
at present, especially since it had found a place in the writings
of the most ancient polite authors. To account for this we
must consider that the first race of authors, who were the great
heroes in writing, were destitute of all rules and arts of
criticism; and for that reason, though they excel later writers
in greatness of genius, they fall short of them in accuracy and
correctness. The moderns cannot reach their beauties, but
can avoid their imperfections. When the world was furnished
with these authors of the first eminence, there grew up another
set of writers, who gained themselves a reputation by the remarks
which they made on the works of those who preceded them. It
was one of the employments of these secondary authors to
distinguish the several kinds of wit by terms of art, and to
consider them as more or less perfect, according as they were
founded in truth. It is no wonder, therefore, that even
such authors as Isocrates, Plato, and Cicero, should have such
little blemishes as are not to be met with in authors of a much
inferior character, who have written since those several
blemishes were discovered. I do not find that there was a
proper separation made between puns and true wit by any of the
ancient authors, except Quintilian and Longinus. But when
this distinction was once settled, it was very natural for all
men of sense to agree in it. As for the revival of this
false wit, it happened about the time of the revival of letters;
but as soon as it was once detected, it immediately vanished and
disappeared. At the same time there is no question but, as
it has sunk in one age and rose in another, it will again recover
itself in some distant period of time, as pedantry and ignorance
shall prevail upon wit and sense. And, to speak the truth,
I do very much apprehend, by some of the last winter’s
productions, which had their sets of admirers, that our posterity
will in a few years degenerate into a race of punsters: at least,
a man may be very excusable for any apprehensions of this kind,
that has seen acrostics handed about the town with great secresy
and applause; to which I must also add a little epigram called
the “Witches’ Prayer,” that fell into verse
when it was read either backward or forward, excepting only that
it cursed one way, and blessed the other. When one sees
there are actually such painstakers among our British wits, who
can tell what it may end in? If we must lash one another,
let it be with the manly strokes of wit and satire: for I am of
the old philosopher’s opinion, that, if I must suffer from
one or the other, I would rather it should be from the paw of a
lion than from the hoof of an ass. I do not speak this out
of any spirit of party. There is a most crying dulness on
both sides. I have seen Tory acrostics and Whig anagrams,
and do not quarrel with either of them because they are Whigs or
Tories, but because they are anagrams and acrostics.</p>
<p>But to return to punning. Having pursued the history of
a pun, from its original to its downfall, I shall here define it
to be a conceit arising from the use of two words that agree in
the sound, but differ in the sense. The only way,
therefore, to try a piece of wit is to translate it into a
different language. If it bears the test, you may pronounce
it true; but if it vanishes in the experiment, you may conclude
it to have been a pun. In short, one may say of a pun, as
the countryman described his nightingale, that it is
“<i>vox et præterea nihil</i>”—“a
sound, and nothing but a sound.” On the contrary, one
may represent true wit by the description which Aristænetus
makes of a fine woman:—“When she is dressed she is
beautiful: when she is undressed she is beautiful;” or, as
Mercerus has translated it more emphatically, <i>Induitur</i>,
<i>formosa est</i>: <i>exuitur</i>, <i>ipsa forma est</i>.</p>
<h3>Fifth Paper.</h3>
<blockquote><p><i>Scribendi recte sapere est et principium</i>,
<i>et fons</i>.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Hor.</span>,
<i>Ars Poet.</i> 309.</p>
<p>Sound judgment is the ground of writing well.—<span
class="smcap">Roscommon</span>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Mr. Locke has an admirable reflection upon the difference of
wit and judgment, whereby he endeavours to show the reason why
they are not always the talents of the same person. His
words are as follow:—“And hence, perhaps, may be
given some reason of that common observation, ‘That men who
have a great deal of wit, and prompt memories, have not always
the clearest judgment or deepest reason.’ For wit
lying most in the assemblage of ideas, and putting those together
with quickness and variety wherein can be found any resemblance
or congruity, thereby to make up pleasant pictures and agreeable
visions in the fancy: judgment, on the contrary, lies quite on
the other side, in separating carefully one from another, ideas
wherein can be found the least difference, thereby to avoid being
misled by similitude, and by affinity to take one thing for
another. This is a way of proceeding quite contrary to
metaphor and allusion, wherein, for the most part, lies that
entertainment and pleasantry of wit which strikes so lively on
the fancy, and is therefore so acceptable to all
people.”</p>
<p>This is, I think, the best and most philosophical account that
I have ever met with of wit, which generally, though not always,
consists in such a resemblance and congruity of ideas as this
author mentions. I shall only add to it, by way of
explanation, that every resemblance of ideas is not that which we
call wit, unless it be such an one that gives delight and
surprise to the reader. These two properties seem essential
to wit, more particularly the last of them. In order,
therefore, that the resemblance in the ideas be wit, it is
necessary that the ideas should not lie too near one another in
the nature of things; for, where the likeness is obvious, it
gives no surprise. To compare one man’s singing to
that of another, or to represent the whiteness of any object by
that of milk and snow, or the variety of its colours by those of
the rainbow, cannot be called wit, unless, besides this obvious
resemblance, there be some further congruity discovered in the
two ideas that is capable of giving the reader some
surprise. Thus, when a poet tells us the bosom of his
mistress is as white as snow, there is no wit in the comparison;
but when he adds, with a sigh, it is as cold too, it then grows
into wit. Every reader’s memory may supply him with
innumerable instances of the same nature. For this reason,
the similitudes in heroic poets, who endeavour rather to fill the
mind with great conceptions than to divert it with such as are
new and surprising, have seldom anything in them that can be
called wit. Mr. Locke’s account of wit, with this
short explanation, comprehends most of the species of wit, as
metaphors, similitudes, allegories, enigmas, mottoes, parables,
fables, dreams, visions, dramatic writings, burlesque, and all
the methods of allusion: as there are many other pieces of wit,
how remote soever they may appear at first sight from the
foregoing description, which upon examination will be found to
agree with it.</p>
<p>As true wit generally consists in this resemblance and
congruity of ideas, false wit chiefly consists in the resemblance
and congruity sometimes of single letters, as in anagrams,
chronograms, lipograms, and acrostics; sometimes of syllables, as
in echoes and doggrel rhymes; sometimes of words, as in puns and
quibbles; and sometimes of whole sentences or poems, cast into
the figures of eggs, axes, or altars; nay, some carry the notion
of wit so far as to ascribe it even to external mimicry, and to
look upon a man as an ingenious person that can resemble the
tone, posture, or face of another.</p>
<p>As true wit consists in the resemblance of ideas, and false
wit in the resemblance of words, according to the foregoing
instances, there is another kind of wit which consists partly in
the resemblance of ideas and partly in the resemblance of words,
which for distinction sake I shall call mixed wit. This
kind of wit is that which abounds in Cowley more than in any
author that ever wrote. Mr. Waller has likewise a great
deal of it. Mr. Dryden is very sparing in it. Milton
had a genius much above it. Spenser is in the same class
with Milton. The Italians, even in their epic poetry, are
full of it. Monsieur Boileau, who formed himself upon the
ancient poets, has everywhere rejected it with scorn. If we
look after mixed wit among the Greek writers, we shall find it
nowhere but in the epigrammatists. There are indeed some
strokes of it in the little poem ascribed to Musæus, which
by that as well as many other marks betrays itself to be a modern
composition. If we look into the Latin writers we find none
of this mixed wit in Virgil, Lucretius, or Catullus; very little
in Horace, but a great deal of it in Ovid, and scarce anything
else in Martial.</p>
<p>Out of the innumerable branches of mixed wit, I shall choose
one instance which may be met with in all the writers of this
class. The passion of love in its nature has been thought
to resemble fire, for which reason the words “fire”
and “flame” are made use of to signify love.
The witty poets, therefore, have taken an advantage, from the
doubtful meaning of the word “fire,” to make an
infinite number of witticisms. Cowley observing the cold
regard of his mistress’s eyes, and at the same time the
power of producing love in him, considers them as burning-glasses
made of ice; and, finding himself able to live in the greatest
extremities of love, concludes the torrid zone to be
habitable. When his mistress has read his letter written in
juice of lemon, by holding it to the fire, he desires her to read
it over a second time by love’s flames. When she
weeps, he wishes it were inward heat that distilled those drops
from the limbec. When she is absent, he is beyond eighty,
that is, thirty degrees nearer the pole than when she is with
him. His ambitious love is a fire that naturally mounts
upwards; his happy love is the beams of heaven, and his unhappy
love flames of hell. When it does not let him sleep, it is
a flame that sends up no smoke; when it is opposed by counsel and
advice, it is a fire that rages the more by the winds blowing
upon it. Upon the dying of a tree, in which he had cut his
loves, he observes that his written flames had burnt up and
withered the tree. When he resolves to give over his
passion, he tells us that one burnt like him for ever dreads the
fire. His heart is an Ætna, that, instead of
Vulcan’s shop, encloses Cupid’s forge in it.
His endeavouring to drown his love in wine is throwing oil upon
the fire. He would insinuate to his mistress that the fire
of love, like that of the sun, which produces so many living
creatures, should not only warm, but beget. Love in another
place cooks Pleasure at his fire. Sometimes the
poet’s heart is frozen in every breast, and sometimes
scorched in every eye. Sometimes he is drowned in tears and
burnt in love, like a ship set on fire in the middle of the
sea.</p>
<p>The reader may observe in every one of these instances that
the poet mixes the qualities of fire with those of love; and in
the same sentence, speaking of it both as a passion and as real
fire, surprises the reader with those seeming resemblances or
contradictions that make up all the wit in this kind of
writing. Mixed wit, therefore, is a composition of pun and
true wit, and is more or less perfect as the resemblance lies in
the ideas or in the words. Its foundations are laid partly
in falsehood and partly in truth; reason puts in her claim for
one half of it, and extravagance for the other. The only
province, therefore, for this kind of wit is epigram, or those
little occasional poems that in their own nature are nothing else
but a tissue of epigrams. I cannot conclude this head of
mixed wit without owning that the admirable poet, out of whom I
have taken the examples of it, had as much true wit as any author
that ever wrote; and indeed all other talents of an extraordinary
genius.</p>
<p>It may be expected, since I am upon this subject, that I
should take notice of Mr. Dryden’s definition of wit,
which, with all the deference that is due to the judgment of so
great a man, is not so properly a definition of wit as of good
writing in general. Wit, as he defines it, is “a
propriety of words and thoughts adapted to the
subject.” If this be a true definition of wit, I am
apt to think that Euclid was the greatest wit that ever set pen
to paper. It is certain there never was a greater propriety
of words and thoughts adapted to the subject than what that
author has made use of in his Elements. I shall only appeal
to my reader if this definition agrees with any notion he has of
wit. If it be a true one, I am sure Mr. Dryden was not only
a better poet, but a greater wit than Mr. Cowley, and Virgil a
much more facetious man than either Ovid or Martial.</p>
<p>Bouhours, whom I look upon to be the most penetrating of all
the French critics, has taken pains to show that it is impossible
for any thought to be beautiful which is not just, and has not
its foundation in the nature of things; that the basis of all wit
is truth; and that no thought can be valuable of which good sense
is not the groundwork. Boileau has endeavoured to inculcate
the same notion in several parts of his writings, both in prose
and verse. This is that natural way of writing, that
beautiful simplicity which we so much admire in the compositions
of the ancients, and which nobody deviates from but those who
want strength of genius to make a thought shine in its own
natural beauties. Poets who want this strength of genius to
give that majestic simplicity to nature, which we so much admire
in the works of the ancients, are forced to hunt after foreign
ornaments, and not to let any piece of wit of what kind soever
escape them. I look upon these writers as Goths in poetry,
who, like those in architecture, not being able to come up to the
beautiful simplicity of the old Greeks and Romans, have
endeavoured to supply its place with all the extravagancies of an
irregular fancy. Mr. Dryden makes a very handsome
observation on Ovid’s writing a letter from Dido to
Æneas, in the following words: “Ovid,” says he,
speaking of Virgil’s fiction of Dido and Æneas,
“takes it up after him, even in the same age, and makes an
ancient heroine of Virgil’s new-created Dido; dictates a
letter for her just before her death to the ungrateful fugitive,
and, very unluckily for himself, is for measuring a sword with a
man so much superior in force to him on the same subject. I
think I may be judge of this, because I have translated
both. The famous author of ‘The Art of Love’
has nothing of his own; he borrows all from a greater master in
his own profession, and, which is worse, improves nothing which
he finds. Nature fails him; and, being forced to his old
shift, he has recourse to witticism. This passes indeed
with his soft admirers, and gives him the preference to Virgil in
their esteem.”</p>
<p>Were not I supported by so great an authority as that of Mr.
Dryden, I should not venture to observe that the taste of most of
our English poets, as well as readers, is extremely Gothic.
He quotes Monsieur Segrais for a threefold distinction of the
readers of poetry; in the first of which he comprehends the
rabble of readers, whom he does not treat as such with regard to
their quality, but to their numbers and the coarseness of their
taste. His words are as follows: “Segrais has
distinguished the readers of poetry, according to their capacity
of judging, into three classes.” [He might have said
the same of writers too if he had pleased.] “In the
lowest form he places those whom he calls Les Petits Esprits,
such things as our upper-gallery audience in a playhouse, who
like nothing but the husk and rind of wit, and prefer a quibble,
a conceit, an epigram, before solid sense and elegant
expression. These are mob readers. If Virgil and
Martial stood for Parliament-men, we know already who would carry
it. But though they made the greatest appearance in the
field, and cried the loudest, the best of it is they are but a
sort of French Huguenots, or Dutch boors, brought over in herds,
but not naturalised: who have not lands of two pounds per annum
in Parnassus, and therefore are not privileged to poll.
Their authors are of the same level, fit to represent them on a
mountebank’s stage, or to be masters of the ceremonies in a
bear-garden; yet these are they who have the most admirers.
But it often happens, to their mortification, that as their
readers improve their stock of sense, as they may by reading
better books, and by conversation with men of judgment, they soon
forsake them.”</p>
<p>I must not dismiss this subject without observing that, as Mr.
Locke, in the passage above-mentioned, has discovered the most
fruitful source of wit, so there is another of a quite contrary
nature to it, which does likewise branch itself into several
kinds. For not only the resemblance, but the opposition of
ideas does very often produce wit, as I could show in several
little points, turns, and antitheses that I may possibly enlarge
upon in some future speculation.</p>
<h3>Sixth Paper.</h3>
<blockquote><p><i>Humano capiti cervicem pictor equinam</i><br />
<i>Jungere si velit</i>, <i>et varias inducere plumas</i>,<br />
<i>Undique collatis membris</i>, <i>ut turpiter atrum</i><br />
<i>Desinat in piscem mulier formosa superne</i>;<br />
<i>Spectatum admissi risum teneatis</i>, <i>amici</i>?<br />
<i>Credite</i>, <i>Pisones</i>, <i>isti tabulæ</i>, <i>fore
librum</i><br />
<i>Persimilem</i>, <i>cujus</i>, <i>velut ægri somnia</i>,
<i>vanæ</i><br />
<i>Fingentur species</i>.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Hor.</span>,
<i>Ars Poet.</i> 1.</p>
<p>If in a picture, Piso, you should see<br />
A handsome woman with a fish’s tail,<br />
Or a man’s head upon a horse’s neck,<br />
Or limbs of beasts, of the most different kinds,<br />
Cover’d with feathers of all sorts of birds,—<br />
Would you not laugh, and think the painter mad?<br />
Trust me, that book is as ridiculous<br />
Whose incoherent style, like sick men’s dreams,<br />
Varies all shapes, and mixes all extremes.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span
class="smcap">Roscommon</span>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is very hard for the mind to disengage itself from a
subject in which it has been long employed. The thoughts
will be rising of themselves from time to time, though we give
them no encouragement: as the tossings and fluctuations of the
sea continue several hours after the winds are laid.</p>
<p>It is to this that I impute my last night’s dream or
vision, which formed into one continued allegory the several
schemes of wit, whether false, mixed, or true, that have been the
subject of my late papers.</p>
<p>Methought I was transported into a country that was filled
with prodigies and enchantments, governed by the goddess of
Falsehood, and entitled the Region of False Wit. There was
nothing in the fields, the woods, and the rivers, that appeared
natural. Several of the trees blossomed in leaf-gold, some
of them produced bone-lace, and some of them precious
stones. The fountains bubbled in an opera tune, and were
filled with stags, wild bears, and mermaids, that lived among the
waters; at the same time that dolphins and several kinds of fish
played upon the banks, or took their pastime in the
meadows. The birds had many of them golden beaks, and human
voices. The flowers perfumed the air with smells of
incense, ambergris, and pulvillios; and were so interwoven with
one another, that they grew up in pieces of embroidery. The
winds were filled with sighs and messages of distant
lovers. As I was walking to and fro in this enchanted
wilderness, I could not forbear breaking out into soliloquies
upon the several wonders which lay before me, when, to my great
surprise, I found there were artificial echoes in every walk,
that, by repetitions of certain words which I spoke, agreed with
me or contradicted me in everything I said. In the midst of
my conversation with these invisible companions, I discovered in
the centre of a very dark grove a monstrous fabric built after
the Gothic manner, and covered with innumerable devices in that
barbarous kind of sculpture. I immediately went up to it,
and found it to be a kind of heathen temple consecrated to the
god of Dulness. Upon my entrance I saw the deity of the
place, dressed in the habit of a monk, with a book in one hand
and a rattle in the other. Upon his right hand was
Industry, with a lamp burning before her; and on his left,
Caprice, with a monkey sitting on her shoulder. Before his
feet there stood an altar of a very odd make, which, as I
afterwards found, was shaped in that manner to comply with the
inscription that surrounded it. Upon the altar there lay
several offerings of axes, wings, and eggs, cut in paper, and
inscribed with verses. The temple was filled with votaries,
who applied themselves to different diversions, as their fancies
directed them. In one part of it I saw a regiment of
anagrams, who were continually in motion, turning to the right or
to the left, facing about, doubling their ranks, shifting their
stations, and throwing themselves into all the figures and
counter-marches of the most changeable and perplexed
exercise.</p>
<p>Not far from these was the body of acrostics, made up of very
disproportioned persons. It was disposed into three
columns, the officers planting themselves in a line on the left
hand of each column. The officers were all of them at least
six feet high, and made three rows of very proper men; but the
common soldiers, who filled up the spaces between the officers,
were such dwarfs, cripples, and scarecrows, that one could hardly
look upon them without laughing. There were behind the
acrostics two or three files of chronograms, which differed only
from the former as their officers were equipped, like the figure
of Time, with an hour-glass in one hand, and a scythe in the
other, and took their posts promiscuously among the private men
whom they commanded.</p>
<p>In the body of the temple, and before the very face of the
deity, methought I saw the phantom of Tryphiodorus, the
lipogrammatist, engaged in a ball with four-and-twenty persons,
who pursued him by turns through all the intricacies and
labyrinths of a country dance, without being able to overtake
him.</p>
<p>Observing several to be very busy at the western end of the
temple, I inquired into what they were doing, and found there was
in that quarter the great magazine of rebuses. These were
several things of the most different natures tied up in bundles,
and thrown upon one another in heaps like fagots. You might
behold an anchor, a night-rail, and a hobby-horse bound up
together. One of the workmen, seeing me very much
surprised, told me there was an infinite deal of wit in several
of those bundles, and that he would explain them to me if I
pleased; I thanked him for his civility, but told him I was in
very great haste at that time. As I was going out of the
temple, I observed in one corner of it a cluster of men and women
laughing very heartily, and diverting themselves at a game of
crambo. I heard several double rhymes as I passed by them,
which raised a great deal of mirth.</p>
<p>Not far from these was another set of merry people engaged at
a diversion, in which the whole jest was to mistake one person
for another. To give occasion for these ludicrous mistakes,
they were divided into pairs, every pair being covered from head
to foot with the same kind of dress, though perhaps there was not
the least resemblance in their faces. By this means an old
man was sometimes mistaken for a boy, a woman for a man, and a
blackamoor for an European, which very often produced great peals
of laughter. These I guessed to be a party of puns.
But being very desirous to get out of this world of magic, which
had almost turned my brain, I left the temple and crossed over
the fields that lay about it with all the speed I could
make. I was not gone far before I heard the sound of
trumpets and alarms, which seemed to proclaim the march of an
enemy: and, as I afterwards found, was in reality what I
apprehended it. There appeared at a great distance a very
shining light, and in the midst of it a person of a most
beautiful aspect; her name was Truth. On her right hand
there marched a male deity, who bore several quivers on his
shoulders, and grasped several arrows in his hand; his name was
Wit. The approach of these two enemies filled all the
territories of False Wit with an unspeakable consternation,
insomuch that the goddess of those regions appeared in person
upon her frontiers, with the several inferior deities and the
different bodies of forces which I had before seen in the temple,
who were now drawn up in array, and prepared to give their foes a
warm reception. As the march of the enemy was very slow, it
gave time to the several inhabitants who bordered upon the
regions of Falsehood to draw their forces into a body, with a
design to stand upon their guard as neuters, and attend the issue
of the combat.</p>
<p>I must here inform my reader that the frontiers of the
enchanted region, which I have before described, were inhabited
by the species of Mixed Wit, who made a very odd appearance when
they were mustered together in an army. There were men
whose bodies were stuck full of darts, and women whose eyes were
burning-glasses; men that had hearts of fire, and women that had
breasts of snow. It would be endless to describe several
monsters of the like nature that composed this great army, which
immediately fell asunder, and divided itself into two parts, the
one half throwing themselves behind the banners of Truth, and the
others behind those of Falsehood.</p>
<p>The goddess of Falsehood was of a gigantic stature, and
advanced some paces before the front of the army; but as the
dazzling light which flowed from Truth began to shine upon her,
she faded insensibly; insomuch that in a little space she looked
rather like a huge phantom than a real substance. At
length, as the goddess of Truth approached still nearer to her,
she fell away entirely, and vanished amidst the brightness of her
presence; so that there did not remain the least trace or
impression of her figure in the place where she had been
seen.</p>
<p>As at the rising of the sun the constellations grow thin, and
the stars go out one after another, till the whole hemisphere is
extinguished; such was the vanishing of the goddess, and not only
of the goddess herself, but of the whole army that attended her,
which sympathised with their leader, and shrunk into nothing, in
proportion as the goddess disappeared. At the same time the
whole temple sunk, the fish betook themselves to the streams, and
the wild beasts to the woods, the fountains recovered their
murmurs, the birds their voices, the trees their leaves, the
flowers their scents, and the whole face of nature its true and
genuine appearance. Though I still continued asleep, I
fancied myself, as it were, awakened out of a dream, when I saw
this region of prodigies restored to woods and rivers, fields and
meadows.</p>
<p>Upon the removal of that wild scene of wonders, which had very
much disturbed my imagination, I took a full survey of the
persons of Wit and Truth; for indeed it was impossible to look
upon the first without seeing the other at the same time.
There was behind them a strong compact body of figures. The
genius of Heroic Poetry appeared with a sword in her hand, and a
laurel on her head. Tragedy was crowned with cypress, and
covered with robes dipped in blood. Satire had smiles
in her look, and a dagger under her garment. Rhetoric was
known by her thunderbolt, and Comedy by her mask. After
several other figures, Epigram marched up in the rear, who had
been posted there at the beginning of the expedition, that he
might not revolt to the enemy, whom he was suspected to favour in
his heart. I was very much awed and delighted with the
appearance of the god of Wit; there was something so amiable, and
yet so piercing in his looks, as inspired me at once with love
and terror. As I was gazing on him, to my unspeakable joy,
he took a quiver of arrows from his shoulder, in order to make me
a present of it; but as I was reaching out my hand to receive it
of him, I knocked it against a chair, and by that means
awaked.</p>
<h2>FRIENDSHIP.</h2>
<blockquote><p><i>Nos duo turba sumus</i>.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Ovid</span>,
<i>Met.</i> i. 355.</p>
<p>We two are a multitude.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>One would think that the larger the company is, in which we
are engaged, the greater variety of thoughts and subjects would
be started in discourse; but instead of this, we find that
conversation is never so much straitened and confined as in
numerous assemblies. When a multitude meet together upon
any subject of discourse, their debates are taken up chiefly with
forms and general positions; nay, if we come into a more
contracted assembly of men and women, the talk generally runs
upon the weather, fashions, news, and the like public
topics. In proportion as conversation gets into clubs and
knots of friends, it descends into particulars, and grows more
free and communicative: but the most open, instructive, and
unreserved discourse is that which passes between two persons who
are familiar and intimate friends. On these occasions, a
man gives a loose to every passion and every thought that is
uppermost, discovers his most retired opinions of persons and
things, tries the beauty and strength of his sentiments, and
exposes his whole soul to the examination of his friend.</p>
<p>Tully was the first who observed that friendship improves
happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and
dividing of our grief; a thought in which he hath been followed
by all the essayists upon friendship that have written since his
time. Sir Francis Bacon has finely described other
advantages, or, as he calls them, fruits of friendship; and,
indeed, there is no subject of morality which has been better
handled and more exhausted than this. Among the several
fine things which have been spoken of it, I shall beg leave to
quote some out of a very ancient author, whose book would be
regarded by our modern wits as one of the most shining tracts of
morality that is extant, if it appeared under the name of a
Confucius, or of any celebrated Grecian philosopher; I mean the
little apocryphal treatise entitled The Wisdom of the Son of
Sirach. How finely has he described the art of making
friends by an obliging and affable behaviour; and laid down that
precept, which a late excellent author has delivered as his own,
That we should have many well-wishers, but few friends.
“Sweet language will multiply friends; and a fair-speaking
tongue will increase kind greetings. Be in peace with many,
nevertheless have but one counsellor of a thousand.”
With what prudence does he caution us in the choice of our
friends! And with what strokes of nature, I could almost
say of humour, has he described the behaviour of a treacherous
and self-interested friend! “If thou wouldest get a
friend, prove him first, and be not hasty to credit him: for some
man is a friend for his own occasion, and will not abide in the
day of thy trouble. And there is a friend who, being turned
to enmity and strife, will discover thy reproach.”
Again, “Some friend is a companion at the table, and will
not continue in the day of thy affliction: but in thy prosperity
he will be as thyself, and will be bold over thy servants.
If thou be brought low, he will be against thee, and hide himself
from thy face.” What can be more strong and pointed
than the following verse?—“Separate thyself from
thine enemies, and take heed of thy friends.” In the
next words he particularises one of those fruits of friendship
which is described at length by the two famous authors
above-mentioned, and falls into a general eulogium of friendship,
which is very just as well as very sublime. “A
faithful friend is a strong defence; and he that hath found such
an one hath found a treasure. Nothing doth countervail a
faithful friend, and his excellency is unvaluable. A
faithful friend is the medicine of life; and they that fear the
Lord shall find him. Whose feareth the Lord shall direct
his friendship aright; for as he is, so shall his neighbour, that
is his friend, be also.” I do not remember to have
met with any saying that has pleased me more than that of a
friend’s being the medicine of life, to express the
efficacy of friendship in healing the pains and anguish which
naturally cleave to our existence in this world; and am
wonderfully pleased with the turn in the last sentence, that a
virtuous man shall as a blessing meet with a friend who is as
virtuous as himself. There is another saying in the same
author, which would have been very much admired in a heathen
writer: “Forsake not an old friend, for the new is not
comparable to him: a new friend is as new wine; when it is old
thou shalt drink it with pleasure.” With what
strength of allusion and force of thought has he described the
breaches and violations of friendship!—“Whoso casteth
a stone at the birds, frayeth them away; and he that upbraideth
his friend, breaketh friendship. Though thou drawest a
sword at a friend, yet despair not, for there may be a returning
to favour. If thou hast opened thy mouth against thy
friend, fear not, for there may be a reconciliation: except for
upbraiding, or pride, or disclosing of secrets, or a treacherous
wound; for, for these things every friend will
depart.” We may observe in this, and several other
precepts in this author, those little familiar instances and
illustrations which are so much admired in the moral writings of
Horace and Epictetus. There are very beautiful instances of
this nature in the following passages, which are likewise written
upon the same subject: “Whose discovereth secrets, loseth
his credit, and shall never find a friend to his mind. Love
thy friend, and be faithful unto him; but if thou bewrayeth his
secrets, follow no more after him: for as a man hath destroyed
his enemy, so hast thou lost the love of thy friend; as one that
letteth a bird go out of his hand, so hast thou let thy friend
go, and shall not get him again: follow after him no more, for he
is too far off; he is as a roe escaped out of the snare. As
for a wound it may be bound up, and after reviling there may be
reconciliation; but he that bewrayeth secrets, is without
hope.”</p>
<p>Among the several qualifications of a good friend, this wise
man has very justly singled out constancy and faithfulness as the
principal: to these, others have added virtue, knowledge,
discretion, equality in age and fortune, and, as Cicero calls it,
<i>Morum comitas</i>, “a pleasantness of
temper.” If I were to give my opinion upon such an
exhausted subject, I should join to these other qualifications a
certain equability or evenness of behaviour. A man often
contracts a friendship with one whom perhaps he does not find out
till after a year’s conversation; when on a sudden some
latent ill-humour breaks out upon him, which he never discovered
or suspected at his first entering into an intimacy with
him. There are several persons who in some certain periods
of their lives are inexpressibly agreeable, and in others as
odious and detestable. Martial has given us a very pretty
picture of one of this species, in the following epigram:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>Difficilis</i>, <i>facilis</i>,
<i>jucundus</i>, <i>acerbus es idem</i>,<br />
<i>Nec tecum possum vivere</i>, <i>nec sine te</i>.</p>
<p><i>Ep.</i> xii. 47.</p>
<p>In all thy humours, whether grave or mellow,<br />
Thou’rt such a touchy, testy, pleasant fellow;<br />
Hast so much wit, and mirth, and spleen about thee,<br />
There is no living with thee, nor without thee.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is very unlucky for a man to be entangled in a friendship
with one who, by these changes and vicissitudes of humour, is
sometimes amiable and sometimes odious: and as most men are at
some times in admirable frame and disposition of mind, it should
be one of the greatest tasks of wisdom to keep ourselves well
when we are so, and never to go out of that which is the
agreeable part of our character.</p>
<h2>CHEVY-CHASE.</h2>
<h3>Part One.</h3>
<blockquote><p><i>Interdum vulgus rectum videt</i>.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Hor.</span>,
<i>Ep.</i> ii. 1, 63.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Sometimes the vulgar see and judge aright. When I
travelled I took a particular delight in hearing the songs and
fables that are come from father to son, and are most in vogue
among the common people of the countries through which I passed;
for it is impossible that anything should be universally tasted
and approved by a multitude, though they are only the rabble of a
nation, which hath not in it some peculiar aptness to please and
gratify the mind of man. Human nature is the same in all
reasonable creatures; and whatever falls in with it will meet
with admirers amongst readers of all qualities and
conditions. Molière, as we are told by Monsieur
Boileau, used to read all his comedies to an old woman who was
his housekeeper as she sat with him at her work by the
chimney-corner, and could foretell the success of his play in the
theatre from the reception it met at his fireside; for he tells
us the audience always followed the old woman, and never failed
to laugh in the same place.</p>
<p>I know nothing which more shows the essential and inherent
perfection of simplicity of thought, above that which I call the
Gothic manner in writing, than this, that the first pleases all
kinds of palates, and the latter only such as have formed to
themselves a wrong artificial taste upon little fanciful authors
and writers of epigram. Homer, Virgil, or Milton, so far as
the language of their poems is understood, will please a reader
of plain common sense, who would neither relish nor comprehend an
epigram of Martial, or a poem of Cowley; so, on the contrary, an
ordinary song or ballad that is the delight of the common people
cannot fail to please all such readers as are not unqualified for
the entertainment by their affectation of ignorance; and the
reason is plain, because the same paintings of nature which
recommend it to the most ordinary reader will appear beautiful to
the most refined.</p>
<p>The old song of “Chevy-Chase” is the favourite
ballad of the common people of England, and Ben Jonson used to
say he had rather have been the author of it than of all his
works. Sir Philip Sidney, in his discourse of Poetry,
speaks of it in the following words: “I never heard the old
song of Percy and Douglas that I found not my heart more moved
than with a trumpet; and yet it is sung by some blind crowder
with no rougher voice than rude style, which being so evil
apparelled in the dust and cobweb of that uncivil age, what would
it work trimmed in the gorgeous eloquence of Pindar?”
For my own part, I am so professed an admirer of this antiquated
song, that I shall give my reader a critique upon it without any
further apology for so doing.</p>
<p>The greatest modern critics have laid it down as a rule that
an heroic poem should be founded upon some important precept of
morality adapted to the constitution of the country in which the
poet writes. Homer and Virgil have formed their plans in
this view. As Greece was a collection of many governments,
who suffered very much among themselves, and gave the Persian
emperor, who was their common enemy, many advantages over them by
their mutual jealousies and animosities, Homer, in order to
establish among them an union which was so necessary for their
safety, grounds his poem upon the discords of the several Grecian
princes who were engaged in a confederacy against an Asiatic
prince, and the several advantages which the enemy gained by such
discords. At the time the poem we are now treating of was
written, the dissensions of the barons, who were then so many
petty princes, ran very high, whether they quarrelled among
themselves or with their neighbours, and produced unspeakable
calamities to the country. The poet, to deter men from such
unnatural contentions, describes a bloody battle and dreadful
scene of death, occasioned by the mutual feuds which reigned in
the families of an English and Scotch nobleman. That he
designed this for the instruction of his poem we may learn from
his four last lines, in which, after the example of the modern
tragedians, he draws from it a precept for the benefit of his
readers:</p>
<blockquote><p>God save the king, and bless the land<br />
In plenty, joy, and peace;<br />
And grant henceforth that foul debate<br />
’Twixt noblemen may cease.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The next point observed by the greatest heroic poets hath been
to celebrate persons and actions which do honour to their
country: thus Virgil’s hero was the founder of Rome;
Homer’s a prince of Greece; and for this reason Valerius
Flaccus and Statius, who were both Romans, might be justly
derided for having chosen the expedition of the Golden Fleece and
the Wars of Thebes for the subjects of their epic writings.</p>
<p>The poet before us has not only found out a hero in his own
country, but raises the reputation of it by several beautiful
incidents. The English are the first who take the field and
the last who quit it. The English bring only fifteen
hundred to the battle, the Scotch two thousand. The English
keep the field with fifty-three, the Scotch retire with
fifty-five; all the rest on each side being slain in
battle. But the most remarkable circumstance of this kind
is the different manner in which the Scotch and English kings
receive the news of this fight, and of the great men’s
deaths who commanded in it:</p>
<blockquote><p>This news was brought to Edinburgh,<br />
Where Scotland’s king did reign,<br />
That brave Earl Douglas suddenly<br />
Was with an arrow slain.</p>
<p>“O heavy news!” King James did say,<br />
“Scotland can witness be,<br />
I have not any captain more<br />
Of such account as he.”</p>
<p>Like tidings to King Henry came,<br />
Within as short a space,<br />
That Percy of Northumberland<br />
Was slain in Chevy-Chase.</p>
<p>“Now God be with him,” said our king,<br />
“Sith ’twill no better be,<br />
I trust I have within my realm<br />
Five hundred as good as he.</p>
<p>“Yet shall not Scot nor Scotland say<br />
But I will vengeance take,<br />
And be revenged on them all<br />
For brave Lord Percy’s sake.”</p>
<p>This vow full well the king performed<br />
After on Humble-down,<br />
In one day fifty knights were slain,<br />
With lords of great renown.</p>
<p>And of the rest of small account<br />
Did many thousands die, &c.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>At the same time that our poet shows a laudable partiality to
his countrymen, he represents the Scots after a manner not
unbecoming so bold and brave a people:</p>
<blockquote><p>Earl Douglas on a milk-white steed,<br />
Most like a baron bold,<br />
Rode foremost of the company,<br />
Whose armour shone like gold.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>His sentiments and actions are every way suitable to a
hero. “One of us two,” says he, “must
die: I am an earl as well as yourself, so that you can have no
pretence for refusing the combat; however,” says he,
“it is pity, and indeed would be a sin, that so many
innocent men should perish for our sakes: rather let you and I
end our quarrel in single fight:”</p>
<blockquote><p>“Ere thus I will out-braved be,<br />
One of us two shall die;<br />
I know thee well, an earl thou art,<br />
Lord Percy, so am I.</p>
<p>“But trust me, Percy, pity it were<br />
And great offence to kill<br />
Any of these our harmless men,<br />
For they have done no ill.</p>
<p>“Let thou and I the battle try,<br />
And set our men aside.”<br />
“Accurst be he,” Lord Percy said,<br />
“By whom this is deny’d.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>When these brave men had distinguished themselves in the
battle and in single combat with each other, in the midst of a
generous parley, full of heroic sentiments, the Scotch earl
falls, and with his dying words encourages his men to revenge his
death, representing to them, as the most bitter circumstance of
it, that his rival saw him fall:</p>
<blockquote><p>With that there came an arrow keen<br />
Out of an English bow,<br />
Which struck Earl Douglas to the heart<br />
A deep and deadly blow.</p>
<p>Who never spoke more words than these,<br />
“Fight on, my merry men all,<br />
For why, my life is at an end,<br />
Lord Percy sees my fall.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Merry men, in the language of those times, is no more than a
cheerful word for companions and fellow-soldiers. A passage
in the eleventh book of Virgil’s “Æneid”
is very much to be admired, where Camilla, in her last agonies,
instead of weeping over the wound she had received, as one might
have expected from a warrior of her sex, considers only, like the
hero of whom we are now speaking, how the battle should be
continued after her death:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>Tum sic exspirans</i>, &c.</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Virg.</span>,
<i>Æn.</i> xi. 820.</p>
<blockquote><p>A gath’ring mist o’erclouds her
cheerful eyes;<br />
And from her cheeks the rosy colour flies,<br />
Then turns to her, whom of her female train<br />
She trusted most, and thus she speaks with pain:<br />
“Acca, ’tis past! he swims before my sight,<br />
Inexorable Death, and claims his right.<br />
Bear my last words to Turnus; fly with speed<br />
And bid him timely to my charge succeed;<br />
Repel the Trojans, and the town relieve:<br />
Farewell.”</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span
class="smcap">Dryden</span>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Turnus did not die in so heroic a manner, though our poet
seems to have had his eye upon Turnus’s speech in the last
verse:</p>
<blockquote><p>Lord Percy sees my fall.</p>
<p>—<i>Vicisti</i>, <i>et victum tendere palmas</i><br />
<i>Ausonii vidêre</i>.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Virg.</span>,
<i>Æn.</i> xii. 936.</p>
<p>The Latin chiefs have seen me beg my life.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span
class="smcap">Dryden</span>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Earl Percy’s lamentation over his enemy is generous,
beautiful, and passionate. I must only caution the reader
not to let the simplicity of the style, which one may well pardon
in so old a poet, prejudice him against the greatness of the
thought:</p>
<blockquote><p>Then leaving life, Earl Percy took<br />
The dead man by the hand,<br />
And said, “Earl Douglas, for thy life<br />
Would I had lost my land.</p>
<p>“O Christ! my very heart doth bleed<br />
With sorrow for thy sake;<br />
For sure a more renowned knight<br />
Mischance did never take.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That beautiful line, “Taking the dead man by the
hand,” will put the reader in mind of Æneas’s
behaviour towards Lausus, whom he himself had slain as he came to
the rescue of his aged father:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>At verò ut vultum vidit morientis et
ora</i>,<br />
<i>Ora modis Anchisiades pallentia miris</i>;<br />
<i>Ingemuit</i>, <i>miserans graviter</i>, <i>dextramqne
tetendit</i>.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Virg.</span>,
<i>Æn.</i> x. 821.</p>
<p>The pious prince beheld young Lausus dead;<br />
He grieved, he wept, then grasped his hand and said,<br />
“Poor hapless youth! what praises can be paid<br />
To worth so great?”</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span
class="smcap">Dryden</span>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I shall take another opportunity to consider the other parts
of this old song.</p>
<h3>Part Two.</h3>
<blockquote><p>—<i>Pendent opera interrupta</i>.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Virg.</span>,
<i>Æn.</i> iv. 88.</p>
<p>The works unfinished and neglected lie.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In my last Monday’s paper I gave some general instances
of those beautiful strokes which please the reader in the old
song of “Chevy-Chase;” I shall here, according to my
promise, be more particular, and show that the sentiments in that
ballad are extremely natural and poetical, and full of the
majestic simplicity which we admire in the greatest of the
ancient poets: for which reason I shall quote several passages of
it, in which the thought is altogether the same with what we meet
in several passages of the “Æneid;” not that I
would infer from thence that the poet, whoever he was, proposed
to himself any imitation of those passages, but that he was
directed to them in general by the same kind of poetical genius,
and by the same copyings after nature.</p>
<p>Had this old song been filled with epigrammatical turns and
points of wit, it might perhaps have pleased the wrong taste of
some readers; but it would never have become the delight of the
common people, nor have warmed the heart of Sir Philip Sidney
like the sound of a trumpet; it is only nature that can have this
effect, and please those tastes which are the most unprejudiced,
or the most refined. I must, however, beg leave to dissent
from so great an authority as that of Sir Philip Sidney, in the
judgment which he has passed as to the rude style and evil
apparel of this antiquated song; for there are several parts in
it where not only the thought but the language is majestic, and
the numbers sonorous; at least the apparel is much more gorgeous
than many of the poets made use of in Queen Elizabeth’s
time, as the reader will see in several of the following
quotations.</p>
<p>What can be greater than either the thought or the expression
in that stanza,</p>
<blockquote><p>To drive the deer with hound and horn<br />
Earl Percy took his way;<br />
The child may rue that is unborn<br />
The hunting of that day!</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This way of considering the misfortunes which this battle
would bring upon posterity, not only on those who were born
immediately after the battle, and lost their fathers in it, but
on those also who perished in future battles which took their
rise from this quarrel of the two earls, is wonderfully beautiful
and conformable to the way of thinking among the ancient
poets.</p>
<blockquote><p><i>Audiet pugnas vitio parentum</i>.<br />
<i> Rara juventus</i>.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Hor.</span>,
<i>Od.</i> i. 2, 23.</p>
<p>Posterity, thinn’d by their fathers’ crimes,<br />
Shall read, with grief, the story of their times.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>What can be more sounding and poetical, or resemble more the
majestic simplicity of the ancients, than the following
stanzas?—</p>
<blockquote><p>The stout Earl of Northumberland<br />
A vow to God did make,<br />
His pleasure in the Scottish woods<br />
Three summer’s days to take.</p>
<p>With fifteen hundred bowmen bold,<br />
All chosen men of might,<br />
Who knew full well, in time of need,<br />
To aim their shafts aright.</p>
<p>The hounds ran swiftly through the woods<br />
The nimble deer to take,<br />
And with their cries the hills and dales<br />
An echo shrill did make.</p>
<p> —<i>Vocat ingenti
clamore Cithæron</i>,<br />
<i>Taygetique canes</i>, <i>domitrixque Epidaurus equorum</i>:<br
/>
<i>Et vox assensu memorum ingeminata remugit</i>.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Virg.</span>,
<i>Georg.</i> iii. 43.</p>
<p>Cithæron loudly calls me to my way:<br />
Thy hounds, Taygetus, open, and pursue their prey:<br />
High Epidaurus urges on my speed,<br />
Famed for his hills, and for his horses’ breed:<br />
From hills and dales the cheerful cries rebound:<br />
For Echo hunts along, and propagates the sound.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span
class="smcap">Dryden</span>.</p>
<p>Lo, yonder doth Earl Douglas come,<br />
His men in armour bright;<br />
Full twenty hundred Scottish spears,<br />
All marching in our sight.</p>
<p>All men of pleasant Tividale,<br />
Fast by the river Tweed, &c.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The country of the Scotch warrior, described in these two last
verses, has a fine romantic situation, and affords a couple of
smooth words for verse. If the reader compares the
foregoing six lines of the song with the following Latin verses,
he will see how much they are written in the spirit of
Virgil:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>Adversi campo apparent</i>: <i>hastasque
reductis</i><br />
<i>Protendunt longè dextris</i>, <i>et spicula
vibrant</i>:—<br />
<i>Quique altum Præneste viri</i>, <i>quique arva
Gabinæ</i><br />
<i>Junonis</i>, <i>gelidumque Anienem</i>, <i>et roscida
rivis</i><br />
<i>Hernica saxa colunt</i>:—<i>qui rosea rura
Velini</i>;<br />
<i>Qui Tetricæ horrentes rupes</i>, <i>montemq ue
Severum</i>,<br />
<i>Casperiamque colunt</i>, <i>porulosque et flumen
Himellæ</i>:<br />
<i>Qui Tyberim Fabarimque bibunt</i>.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Æn.</i> xi. 605, vii. 682,
712.</p>
<p>Advancing in a line they couch their spears—<br />
—Præneste sends a chosen band,<br />
With those who plough Saturnia’s Gabine land:<br />
Besides the succours which cold Anien yields:<br />
The rocks of Hernicus—besides a band<br />
That followed from Velinum’s dewy land—<br />
And mountaineers that from Severus came:<br />
And from the craggy cliffs of Tetrica;<br />
And those where yellow Tiber takes his way,<br />
And where Himella’s wanton waters play:<br />
Casperia sends her arms, with those that lie<br />
By Fabaris, and fruitful Foruli.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span
class="smcap">Dryden</span>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But to proceed:</p>
<blockquote><p>Earl Douglas on a milk-white steed,<br />
Most like a baron bold,<br />
Rode foremost of the company,<br />
Whose armour shone like gold.</p>
<p><i>Turnus</i>, <i>ut antevolans tardum præcesserat
agmen</i>, &c.<br />
<i>Vidisti</i>, <i>quo Turnus equo</i>, <i>quibus ibat in
armis</i><br />
<i>Aurcus</i>—</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Æn.</i> ix. 47, 269.</p>
<blockquote><p>Our English archers bent their bows,<br />
Their hearts were good and true;<br />
At the first flight of arrows sent,<br />
Full threescore Scots they slew.</p>
<p>They closed full fast on ev’ry side,<br />
No slackness there was found;<br />
And many a gallant gentleman<br />
Lay gasping on the ground.</p>
<p>With that there came an arrow keen<br />
Out of an English bow,<br />
Which struck Earl Douglas to the heart,<br />
A deep and deadly blow.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Æneas was wounded after the same manner by an unknown
hand in the midst of a parley.</p>
<blockquote><p><i>Has inter voces</i>, <i>media inter talia
verba</i>,<br />
<i>Ecce viro stridens alis allapsa sagitta est</i>,<br />
<i>Incertum quâ pulsa manu</i>—</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Æn.</i> xii. 318.</p>
<p>Thus, while he spake, unmindful of defence,<br />
A winged arrow struck the pious prince;<br />
But whether from a human hand it came,<br />
Or hostile god, is left unknown by fame.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span
class="smcap">Dryden</span>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But of all the descriptive parts of this song, there are none
more beautiful than the four following stanzas, which have a
great force and spirit in them, and are filled with very natural
circumstances. The thought in the third stanza was never
touched by any other poet, and is such a one as would have shone
in Homer or in Virgil:</p>
<blockquote><p>So thus did both these nobles die,<br />
Whose courage none could stain;<br />
An English archer then perceived<br />
The noble Earl was slain.</p>
<p>He had a bow bent in his hand,<br />
Made of a trusty tree,<br />
An arrow of a cloth-yard long<br />
Unto the head drew he.</p>
<p>Against Sir Hugh Montgomery<br />
So right his shaft he set,<br />
The gray-goose wing that was thereon<br />
In his heart-blood was wet.</p>
<p>This fight did last from break of day<br />
Till setting of the sun;<br />
For when they rung the ev’ning bell<br />
The battle scarce was done.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>One may observe, likewise, that in the catalogue of the slain,
the author has followed the example of the greatest ancient
poets, not only in giving a long list of the dead, but by
diversifying it with little characters of particular persons.</p>
<blockquote><p>And with Earl Douglas there was slain<br />
Sir Hugh Montgomery,<br />
Sir Charles Carrel, that from the field<br />
One foot would never fly.</p>
<p>Sir Charles Murrel of Ratcliff too,<br />
His sister’s son was he;<br />
Sir David Lamb so well esteem’d,<br />
Yet saved could not be.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The familiar sound in these names destroys the majesty of the
description; for this reason I do not mention this part of the
poem but to show the natural cast of thought which appears in it,
as the two last verses look almost like a translation of
Virgil.</p>
<blockquote><p>—<i>Cadit et Ripheus justissimus unus</i><br
/>
<i>Qui fuit in Teucris et servantissimus æqui</i>.<br />
<i>Diis aliter visum</i>.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Æn.</i> ii. 426.</p>
<p>Then Ripheus fell in the unequal fight,<br />
Just of his word, observant of the right:<br />
Heav’n thought not so.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span
class="smcap">Dryden</span>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the catalogue of the English who fell, Witherington’s
behaviour is in the same manner particularised very artfully, as
the reader is prepared for it by that account which is given of
him in the beginning of the battle; though I am satisfied your
little buffoon readers, who have seen that passage ridiculed in
“Hudibras,” will not be able to take the beauty of
it: for which reason I dare not so much as quote it.</p>
<blockquote><p>Then stept a gallant ’squire forth,<br />
Witherington was his name,<br />
Who said, “I would not have it told<br />
To Henry our king for shame,</p>
<p>“That e’er my captain fought on foot,<br />
And I stood looking on.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>We meet with the same heroic sentiment in Virgil:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>Non pudet</i>, <i>O Rutuli</i>, <i>cunctis pro
talibus unam</i><br />
<i>Objectare animam</i>? <i>numerone an viribus æqui</i><br
/>
<i>Non sumus</i>?</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><i>Æn.</i> xii. 229</p>
<p>For shame, Rutilians, can you hear the sight<br />
Of one exposed for all, in single fight?<br />
Can we before the face of heav’n confess<br />
Our courage colder, or our numbers less?</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span
class="smcap">Dryden</span>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>What can be more natural, or more moving, than the
circumstances in which he describes the behaviour of those women
who had lost their husbands on this fatal day?</p>
<blockquote><p>Next day did many widows come<br />
Their husbands to bewail;<br />
They wash’d their wounds in brinish tears,<br />
But all would not prevail.</p>
<p>Their bodies bathed in purple blood,<br />
They bore with them away;<br />
They kiss’d them dead a thousand times,<br />
When they were clad in clay.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Thus we see how the thoughts of this poem, which naturally
arise from the subject, are always simple, and sometimes
exquisitely noble; that the language is often very sounding, and
that the whole is written with a true poetical spirit.</p>
<p>If this song had been written in the Gothic manner which is
the delight of all our little wits, whether writers or readers,
it would not have hit the taste of so many ages, and have pleased
the readers of all ranks and conditions. I shall only beg
pardon for such a profusion of Latin quotations; which I should
not have made use of, but that I feared my own judgment would
have looked too singular on such a subject, had not I supported
it by the practice and authority of Virgil.</p>
<h2>A DREAM OF THE PAINTERS.</h2>
<blockquote><p>—<i>Animum picturâ pascit
inani</i>.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Virg.</span>,
<i>Æn.</i> i. 464.</p>
<p>And with the shadowy picture feeds his mind.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>When the weather hinders me from taking my diversions
without-doors, I frequently make a little party, with two or
three select friends, to visit anything curious that may be seen
under cover. My principal entertainments of this nature are
pictures, insomuch that when I have found the weather set in to
be very bad, I have taken a whole day’s journey to see a
gallery that is furnished by the hands of great masters. By
this means, when the heavens are filled with clouds, when the
earth swims in rain, and all nature wears a lowering countenance,
I withdraw myself from these uncomfortable scenes, into the
visionary worlds of art; where I meet with shining landscapes,
gilded triumphs, beautiful faces, and all those other objects
that fill the mind with gay ideas, and disperse that gloominess
which is apt to hang upon it in those dark disconsolate
seasons.</p>
<p>I was some weeks ago in a course of these diversions, which
had taken such an entire possession of my imagination that they
formed in it a short morning’s dream, which I shall
communicate to my reader, rather as the first sketch and outlines
of a vision, than as a finished piece.</p>
<p>I dreamt that I was admitted into a long, spacious gallery,
which had one side covered with pieces of all the famous painters
who are now living, and the other with the works of the greatest
masters that are dead.</p>
<p>On the side of the living, I saw several persons busy in
drawing, colouring, and designing. On the side of the dead
painters, I could not discover more than one person at work, who
was exceeding slow in his motions, and wonderfully nice in his
touches.</p>
<p>I was resolved to examine the several artists that stood
before me, and accordingly applied myself to the side of the
living. The first I observed at work in this part of the
gallery was Vanity, with his hair tied behind him in a riband,
and dressed like a Frenchman. All the faces he drew were
very remarkable for their smiles, and a certain smirking air
which he bestowed indifferently on every age and degree of either
sex. The <i>toujours gai</i> appeared even in his judges,
bishops, and Privy Councillors. In a word, all his men were
<i>petits maïtres</i>, and all his women
<i>coquettes</i>. The drapery of his figures was extremely
well suited to his faces, and was made up of all the glaring
colours that could be mixed together; every part of the dress was
in a flutter, and endeavoured to distinguish itself above the
rest.</p>
<p>On the left hand of Vanity stood a laborious workman, who I
found was his humble admirer, and copied after him. He was
dressed like a German, and had a very hard name that sounded
something like Stupidity.</p>
<p>The third artist that I looked over was Fantasque, dressed
like a Venetian scaramouch. He had an excellent hand at
chimera, and dealt very much in distortions and grimaces.
He would sometimes affright himself with the phantoms that flowed
from his pencil. In short, the most elaborate of his pieces
was at best but a terrifying dream: and one could say nothing
more of his finest figures than that they were agreeable
monsters.</p>
<p>The fourth person I examined was very remarkable for his hasty
hand, which left his pictures so unfinished that the beauty in
the picture, which was designed to continue as a monument of it
to posterity, faded sooner than in the person after whom it was
drawn. He made so much haste to despatch his business that
he neither gave himself time to clean his pencils nor mix his
colours. The name of this expeditious workman was
Avarice.</p>
<p>Not far from this artist I saw another of a quite different
nature, who was dressed in the habit of a Dutchman, and known by
the name of Industry. His figures were wonderfully
laboured. If he drew the portraiture of a man, he did not
omit a single hair in his face; if the figure of a ship, there
was not a rope among the tackle that escaped him. He had
likewise hung a great part of the wall with night-pieces, that
seemed to show themselves by the candles which were lighted up in
several parts of them; and were so inflamed by the sunshine which
accidentally fell upon them, that at first sight I could scarce
forbear crying out “Fire!”</p>
<p>The five foregoing artists were the most considerable on this
side the gallery; there were indeed several others whom I had not
time to look into. One of them, however, I could not
forbear observing, who was very busy in retouching the finest
pieces, though he produced no originals of his own. His
pencil aggravated every feature that was before overcharged,
loaded every defect, and poisoned every colour it touched.
Though this workman did so much mischief on the side of the
living, he never turned his eye towards that of the dead.
His name was Envy.</p>
<p>Having taken a cursory view of one side of the gallery, I
turned myself to that which was filled by the works of those
great masters that were dead; when immediately I fancied myself
standing before a multitude of spectators, and thousands of eyes
looking upon me at once: for all before me appeared so like men
and women, that I almost forgot they were pictures.
Raphael’s pictures stood in one row, Titian’s in
another, Guido Rheni’s in a third. One part of the
wall was peopled by Hannabal Carrache, another by Correggio, and
another by Rubens. To be short, there was not a great
master among the dead who had not contributed to the
embellishment of this side of the gallery. The persons that
owed their being to these several masters appeared all of them to
be real and alive, and differed among one another only in the
variety of their shapes, complexions, and clothes; so that they
looked like different nations of the same species.</p>
<p>Observing an old man, who was the same person I before
mentioned, as the only artist that was at work on this side of
the gallery, creeping up and down from one picture to another,
and retouching all the fine pieces that stood before me, I could
not but be very attentive to all his motions. I found his
pencil was so very light that it worked imperceptibly, and after
a thousand touches scarce produced any visible effect in the
picture on which he was employed. However, as he busied
himself incessantly, and repeated touch after touch without rest
or intermission, he wore off insensibly every little disagreeable
gloss that hung upon a figure. He also added such a
beautiful brown to the shades, and mellowness to the colours,
that he made every picture appear more perfect than when it came
fresh from the master’s pencil. I could not forbear
looking upon the face of this ancient workman, and immediately by
the long lock of hair upon his forehead, discovered him to be
Time.</p>
<p>Whether it were because the thread of my dream was at an end I
cannot tell, but, upon my taking a survey of this imaginary old
man, my sleep left me.</p>
<h2>SPARE TIME.</h2>
<h3>Part One.</h3>
<blockquote><p> —<i>Spatio
brevi</i><br />
<i>Spem longam reseces</i>: <i>dum loquimur</i>, <i>fugerit
invida</i><br />
<i>Ætas</i>: <i>carpe diem</i>, <i>quâm minimum
credula postero</i>.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Hor.</span>,
<i>Od.</i> i. 11, 6.</p>
<p>Thy lengthen’d hope with prudence bound,<br />
Proportion’d to the flying hour:<br />
While thus we talk in careless ease,<br />
Our envious minutes wing their flight;<br />
Then swift the fleeting pleasure seize,<br />
Nor trust to-morrow’s doubtful light.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span
class="smcap">Francis</span>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>We all of us complain of the shortness of time, saith Seneca,
and yet have much more than we know what to do with. Our
lives, says he, are spent either in doing nothing at all, or in
doing nothing to the purpose, or in doing nothing that we ought
to do. We are always complaining our days are few, and
acting as though there would be no end of them. That noble
philosopher described our inconsistency with ourselves in this
particular, by all those various turns of expression and thoughts
which are peculiar to his writings.</p>
<p>I often consider mankind as wholly inconsistent with itself in
a point that bears some affinity to the former. Though we
seem grieved at the shortness of life in general, we are wishing
every period of it at an end. The minor longs to be of age,
then to be a man of business, then to make up an estate, then to
arrive at honours, then to retire. Thus, although the whole
of life is allowed by every one to be short, the several
divisions of it appear long and tedious. We are for
lengthening our span in general, but would fain contract the
parts of which it is composed. The usurer would be very
well satisfied to have all the time annihilated that lies between
the present moment and next quarter-day. The politician
would be contented to lose three years in his life, could he
place things in the posture which he fancies they will stand in
after such a revolution of time. The lover would be glad to
strike out of his existence all the moments that are to pass away
before the happy meeting. Thus, as fast as our time runs,
we should be very glad, in most part of our lives, that it ran
much faster than it does. Several hours of the day hang
upon our hands, nay, we wish away whole years; and travel through
time as through a country filled with many wild and empty wastes,
which we would fain hurry over, that we may arrive at those
several little settlements or imaginary points of rest which are
dispersed up and down in it.</p>
<p>If we divide the life of most men into twenty parts, we shall
find that at least nineteen of them are mere gaps and chasms,
which are neither filled with pleasure nor business. I do
not, however, include in this calculation the life of those men
who are in a perpetual hurry of affairs, but of those only who
are not always engaged in scenes of action; and I hope I shall
not do an unacceptable piece of service to these persons, if I
point out to them certain methods for the filling up their empty
spaces of life. The methods I shall propose to them are as
follow.</p>
<p>The first is the exercise of virtue, in the most general
acceptation of the word. That particular scheme which
comprehends the social virtues may give employment to the most
industrious temper, and find a man in business more than the most
active station of life. To advise the ignorant, relieve the
needy, comfort the afflicted, are duties that fall in our way
almost every day of our lives. A man has frequent
opportunities of mitigating the fierceness of a party; of doing
justice to the character of a deserving man; of softening the
envious, quieting the angry, and rectifying the prejudiced; which
are all of them employments suited to a reasonable nature, and
bring great satisfaction to the person who can busy himself in
them with discretion.</p>
<p>There is another kind of virtue that may find employment for
those retired hours in which we are altogether left to ourselves,
and destitute of company and conversation; I mean that
intercourse and communication which every reasonable creature
ought to maintain with the great Author of his being. The
man who lives under an habitual sense of the Divine presence,
keeps up a perpetual cheerfulness of temper, and enjoys every
moment the satisfaction of thinking himself in company with his
dearest and best of friends. The time never lies heavy upon
him: it is impossible for him to be alone. His thoughts and
passions are the most busied at such hours when those of other
men are the most inactive. He no sooner steps out of the
world but his heart burns with devotion, swells with hope, and
triumphs in the consciousness of that Presence which everywhere
surrounds him; or, on the contrary, pours out its fears, its
sorrows, its apprehensions, to the great Supporter of its
existence.</p>
<p>I have here only considered the necessity of a man’s
being virtuous, that he may have something to do; but if we
consider further that the exercise of virtue is not only an
amusement for the time it lasts, but that its influence extends
to those parts of our existence which lie beyond the grave, and
that our whole eternity is to take its colour from those hours
which we here employ in virtue or in vice, the argument redoubles
upon us for putting in practice this method of passing away our
time.</p>
<p>When a man has but a little stock to improve, and has
opportunities of turning it all to good account, what shall we
think of him if he suffers nineteen parts of it to lie dead, and
perhaps employs even the twentieth to his ruin or
disadvantage? But, because the mind cannot be always in its
fervours, nor strained up to a pitch of virtue, it is necessary
to find out proper employments for it in its relaxations.</p>
<p>The next method, therefore, that I would propose to fill up
our time, should be useful and innocent diversions. I must
confess I think it is below reasonable creatures to be altogether
conversant in such diversions as are merely innocent, and have
nothing else to recommend them but that there is no hurt in
them. Whether any kind of gaming has even thus much to say
for itself, I shall not determine; but I think it is very
wonderful to see persons of the best sense passing away a dozen
hours together in shuffling and dividing a pack of cards, with no
other conversation but what is made up of a few game phrases, and
no other ideas but those of black or red spots ranged together in
different figures. Would not a man laugh to hear any one of
this species complaining that life is short?</p>
<p>The stage might be made a perpetual source of the most noble
and useful entertainments, were it under proper regulations.</p>
<p>But the mind never unbends itself so agreeably as in the
conversation of a well-chosen friend. There is indeed no
blessing of life that is any way comparable to the enjoyment of a
discreet and virtuous friend. It eases and unloads the
mind, clears and improves the understanding, engenders thoughts
and knowledge, animates virtue and good resolutions, soothes and
allays the passions, and finds employment for most of the vacant
hours of life.</p>
<p>Next to such an intimacy with a particular person, one would
endeavour after a more general conversation with such as are able
to entertain and improve those with whom they converse, which are
qualifications that seldom go asunder.</p>
<p>There are many other useful amusements of life which one would
endeavour to multiply, that one might on all occasions have
recourse to something rather than suffer the mind to lie idle, or
run adrift with any passion that chances to rise in it.</p>
<p>A man that has a taste of music, painting, or architecture, is
like one that has another sense, when compared with such as have
no relish of those arts. The florist, the planter, the
gardener, the husbandman, when they are only as accomplishments
to the man of fortune, are great reliefs to a country life, and
many ways useful to those who are possessed of them.</p>
<p>But of all the diversions of life, there is none so proper to
fill up its empty spaces as the reading of useful and
entertaining authors. But this I shall only touch upon,
because it in some measure interferes with the third method,
which I shall propose in another paper, for the employment of our
dead, inactive hours, and which I shall only mention in general
to be the pursuit of knowledge.</p>
<h3>Part Two.</h3>
<blockquote><p> —<i>Hoc
est</i><br />
<i>Vivere bis</i>, <i>vitâ posse priore frui</i>.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Mart.</span>,
<i>Ep.</i> x. 23.</p>
<p>The present joys of life we doubly taste,<br />
By looking back with pleasure to the past.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The last method which I proposed in my Saturday’s paper,
for filing up those empty spaces of life which are so tedious and
burthensome to idle people, is the employing ourselves in the
pursuit of knowledge. I remember Mr. Boyle, speaking of a
certain mineral, tells us that a man may consume his whole life
in the study of it without arriving at the knowledge of all its
qualities. The truth of it is, there is not a single
science, or any branch of it, that might not furnish a man with
business for life, though it were much longer than it is.</p>
<p>I shall not here engage on those beaten subjects of the
usefulness of knowledge, nor of the pleasure and perfection it
gives the mind, nor on the methods of attaining it, nor recommend
any particular branch of it; all which have been the topics of
many other writers; but shall indulge myself in a speculation
that is more uncommon, and may therefore, perhaps, be more
entertaining.</p>
<p>I have before shown how the unemployed parts of life appear
long and tedious, and shall here endeavour to show how those
parts of life which are exercised in study, reading, and the
pursuits of knowledge, are long, but not tedious, and by that
means discover a method of lengthening our lives, and at the same
time of turning all the parts of them to our advantage.</p>
<p>Mr. Locke observes, “That we get the idea of time or
duration, by reflecting on that train of ideas which succeed one
another in our minds: that, for this reason, when we sleep
soundly without dreaming, we have no perception of time, or the
length of it whilst we sleep; and that the moment wherein we
leave off to think, till the moment we begin to think again,
seems to have no distance.” To which the author adds,
“and so I doubt not but it would be to a waking man, if it
were possible for him to keep only one idea in his mind, without
variation and the succession of others; and we see that one who
fixes his thoughts very intently on one thing, so as to take but
little notice of the succession of ideas that pass in his mind
whilst he is taken up with that earnest contemplation, lets slip
out of his account a good part of that duration, and thinks that
time shorter than it is.”</p>
<p>We might carry this thought further, and consider a man as on
one side, shortening his time by thinking on nothing, or but a
few things; so, on the other, as lengthening it, by employing his
thoughts on many subjects, or by entertaining a quick and
constant succession of ideas. Accordingly, Monsieur
Malebranche, in his “Inquiry after Truth,” which was
published several years before Mr. Locke’s Essay on
“Human Understanding,” tells us, “that it is
possible some creatures may think half an hour as long as we do a
thousand years; or look upon that space of duration which we call
a minute, as an hour, a week, a month, or a whole age.”</p>
<p>This notion of Monsieur Malebranche is capable of some little
explanation from what I have quoted out of Mr. Locke; for if our
notion of time is produced by our reflecting on the succession of
ideas in our mind, and this succession may be infinitely
accelerated or retarded, it will follow that different beings may
have different notions of the same parts of duration, according
as their ideas, which we suppose are equally distinct in each of
them, follow one another in a greater or less degree of
rapidity.</p>
<p>There is a famous passage in the Alcoran, which looks as if
Mahomet had been possessed of the notion we are now speaking
of. It is there said that the Angel Gabriel took Mahomet
out of his bed one morning to give him a sight of all things in
the seven heavens, in paradise, and in hell, which the prophet
took a distinct view of; and, after having held ninety thousand
conferences with God, was brought back again to his bed.
All this, says the Alcoran, was transacted in so small a space of
time, that Mahomet at his return found his bed still warm, and
took up an earthen pitcher, which was thrown down at the very
instant that the Angel Gabriel carried him away, before the water
was all spilt.</p>
<p>There is a very pretty story in the Turkish Tales, which
relates to this passage of that famous impostor, and bears some
affinity to the subject we are now upon. A sultan of Egypt,
who was an infidel, used to laugh at this circumstance in
Mahomet’s life, as what was altogether impossible and
absurd: but conversing one day with a great doctor in the law,
who had the gift of working miracles, the doctor told him he
would quickly convince him of the truth of this passage in the
history of Mahomet, if he would consent to do what he should
desire of him. Upon this the sultan was directed to place
himself by a huge tub of water, which he did accordingly; and as
he stood by the tub amidst a circle of his great men, the holy
man bade him plunge his head into the water and draw it up
again. The king accordingly thrust his head into the water,
and at the same time found himself at the foot of a mountain on
the sea-shore. The king immediately began to rage against
his doctor for this piece of treachery and witchcraft; but at
length, knowing it was in vain to be angry, he set himself to
think on proper methods for getting a livelihood in this strange
country. Accordingly he applied himself to some people whom
he saw at work in a neighbouring wood: these people conducted him
to a town that stood at a little distance from the wood, where,
after some adventures, he married a woman of great beauty and
fortune. He lived with this woman so long that he had by
her seven sons and seven daughters. He was afterwards
reduced to great want, and forced to think of plying in the
streets as a porter for his livelihood. One day as he was
walking alone by the sea-side, being seized with many melancholy
reflections upon his former and his present state of life, which
had raised a fit of devotion in him, he threw off his clothes
with a design to wash himself, according to the custom of the
Mahometans, before he said his prayers.</p>
<p>After his first plunge into the sea, he no sooner raised his
head above the water but he found himself standing by the side of
the tub, with the great men of his court about him, and the holy
man at his side. He immediately upbraided his teacher for
having sent him on such a course of adventures, and betrayed him
into so long a state of misery and servitude; but was wonderfully
surprised when he heard that the state he talked of was only a
dream and delusion; that he had not stirred from the place where
he then stood; and that he had only dipped his head into the
water, and immediately taken it out again.</p>
<p>The Mahometan doctor took this occasion of instructing the
sultan that nothing was impossible with God; and that He, with
whom a thousand years are but as one day, can, if He pleases,
make a single day—nay, a single moment—appear to any
of His creatures as a thousand years.</p>
<p>I shall leave my reader to compare these Eastern fables with
the notions of those two great philosophers whom I have quoted in
this paper; and shall only, by way of application, desire him to
consider how we may extend life beyond its natural dimensions, by
applying ourselves diligently to the pursuit of knowledge.</p>
<p>The hours of a wise man are lengthened by his ideas, as those
of a fool are by his passions. The time of the one is long,
because he does not know what to do with it; so is that of the
other, because he distinguishes every moment of it with useful or
amusing thoughts; or, in other words, because the one is always
wishing it away, and the other always enjoying it.</p>
<p>How different is the view of past life, in the man who is
grown old in knowledge and wisdom, from that of him who is grown
old in ignorance and folly! The latter is like the owner of
a barren country, that fills his eye with the prospect of naked
hills and plains, which produce nothing either profitable or
ornamental; the other beholds a beautiful and spacious landscape
divided into delightful gardens, green meadows, fruitful fields,
and can scarce cast his eye on a single spot of his possessions
that is not covered with some beautiful plant or flower.</p>
<h2>CENSURE.</h2>
<blockquote><p><i>Romulus</i>, <i>et Liber pater</i>, <i>et cum
Castore Pollux</i>,<br />
<i>Post ingentia facta</i>, <i>deorum in templa recepti</i>;<br
/>
<i>Dum terras hominumque colunt genus</i>, <i>aspera bella</i><br
/>
<i>Componunt</i>, <i>agros assignant</i>, <i>oppida
condunt</i>;<br />
<i>Ploravere suis non respondere favorem</i><br />
<i>Speratum meritis</i>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Hor.</span>,
<i>Epist.</i> ii. 1, 5.</p>
<blockquote><p style="text-align: center">MITATED.</p>
<p>Edward and Henry, now the boast of fame,<br />
And virtuous Alfred, a more sacred name,<br />
After a life of generous toils endured,<br />
The Gaul subdued, or property secured,<br />
Ambition humbled, mighty cities storm’d,<br />
Or laws establish’d, and the world reform’d;<br />
Closed their long glories with a sigh to find<br />
Th’ unwilling gratitude of base mankind.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Pope</span>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>“Censure,” says a late ingenious author, “is
the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent.”
It is a folly for an eminent man to think of escaping it, and a
weakness to be affected with it. All the illustrious
persons of antiquity, and indeed of every age in the world, have
passed through this fiery persecution. There is no defence
against reproach but obscurity; it is a kind of concomitant to
greatness, as satires and invectives were an essential part of a
Roman triumph.</p>
<p>If men of eminence are exposed to censure on one hand, they
are as much liable to flattery on the other. If they
receive reproaches which are not due to them, they likewise
receive praises which they do not deserve. In a word, the
man in a high post is never regarded with an indifferent eye, but
always considered as a friend or an enemy. For this reason
persons in great stations have seldom their true characters drawn
till several years after their deaths. Their personal
friendships and enmities must cease, and the parties they were
engaged in be at an end, before their faults or their virtues can
have justice done them. When writers have the least
opportunity of knowing the truth, they are in the best
disposition to tell it.</p>
<p>It is therefore the privilege of posterity to adjust the
characters of illustrious persons, and to set matters right
between those antagonists who by their rivalry for greatness
divided a whole age into factions. We can now allow
Cæsar to be a great man, without derogating from Pompey;
and celebrate the virtues of Cato, without detracting from those
of Cæsar. Every one that has been long dead has a due
proportion of praise allotted him, in which, whilst he lived, his
friends were too profuse, and his enemies too sparing.</p>
<p>According to Sir Isaac Newton’s calculations, the last
comet that made its appearance, in 1680, imbibed so much heat by
its approaches to the sun, that it would have been two thousand
times hotter than red-hot iron, had it been a globe of that
metal; and that supposing it as big as the earth, and at the same
distance from the sun, it would be fifty thousand years in
cooling, before it recovered its natural temper. In the
like manner, if an Englishman considers the great ferment into
which our political world is thrown at present, and how intensely
it is heated in all its parts, he cannot suppose that it will
cool again in less than three hundred years. In such a
tract of time it is possible that the heats of the present age
may be extinguished, and our several classes of great men
represented under their proper characters. Some eminent
historian may then probably arise that will not write
<i>recentibus odiis</i>, as Tacitus expresses it, with the
passions and prejudices of a contemporary author, but make an
impartial distribution of fame among the great men of the present
age.</p>
<p>I cannot forbear entertaining myself very often with the idea
of such an imaginary historian describing the reign of Anne the
First, and introducing it with a preface to his reader, that he
is now entering upon the most shining part of the English
story. The great rivals in fame will be then distinguished
according to their respective merits, and shine in their proper
points of light. Such an one, says the historian, though
variously represented by the writers of his own age, appears to
have been a man of more than ordinary abilities, great
application, and uncommon integrity: nor was such an one, though
of an opposite party and interest, inferior to him in any of
these respects. The several antagonists who now endeavour
to depreciate one another, and are celebrated or traduced by
different parties, will then have the same body of admirers, and
appear illustrious in the opinion of the whole British
nation. The deserving man, who can now recommend himself to
the esteem of but half his countrymen, will then receive the
approbations and applauses of a whole age.</p>
<p>Among the several persons that flourish in this glorious
reign, there is no question but such a future historian, as the
person of whom I am speaking, will make mention of the men of
genius and learning who have now any figure in the British
nation. For my own part, I often flatter myself with the
honourable mention which will then be made of me; and have drawn
up a paragraph in my own imagination, that I fancy will not be
altogether unlike what will be found in some page or other of
this imaginary historian.</p>
<p>It was under this reign, says he, that the <i>Spectator</i>
published those little diurnal essays which are still
extant. We know very little of the name or person of this
author, except only that he was a man of a very short face,
extremely addicted to silence, and so great a lover of knowledge,
that he made a voyage to Grand Cairo for no other reason but to
take the measure of a pyramid. His chief friend was one Sir
Roger De Coverley, a whimsical country knight, and a Templar,
whose name he has not transmitted to us. He lived as a
lodger at the house of a widow-woman, and was a great humorist in
all parts of his life. This is all we can affirm with any
certainty of his person and character. As for his
speculations, notwithstanding the several obsolete words and
obscure phrases of the age in which he lived, we still understand
enough of them to see the diversions and characters of the
English nation in his time: not but that we are to make allowance
for the mirth and humour of the author, who has doubtless
strained many representations of things beyond the truth.
For if we interpret his words in their literal meaning, we must
suppose that women of the first quality used to pass away whole
mornings at a puppet-show; that they attested their principles by
their patches; that an audience would sit out an evening to hear
a dramatical performance written in a language which they did not
understand; that chairs and flower-pots were introduced as actors
upon the British stage; that a promiscuous assembly of men and
women were allowed to meet at midnight in masks within the verge
of the Court; with many improbabilities of the like nature.
We must therefore, in these and the like cases, suppose that
these remote hints and allusions aimed at some certain follies
which were then in vogue, and which at present we have not any
notion of. We may guess by several passages in the
speculations, that there were writers who endeavoured to detract
from the works of this author; but as nothing of this nature is
come down to us, we cannot guess at any objections that could be
made to his paper. If we consider his style with that
indulgence which we must show to old English writers, or if we
look into the variety of his subjects, with those several
critical dissertations, moral reflections,</p>
<p style="text-align: center">* * * * *</p>
<p>The following part of the paragraph is so much to my
advantage, and beyond anything I can pretend to, that I hope my
reader will excuse me for not inserting it.</p>
<h2>THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.</h2>
<blockquote><p><i>Est brevitate opus</i>, <i>ut currat
sententia</i>,</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Hor.</span>,
<i>Sat.</i> i. 10, 9.</p>
<p>Let brevity despatch the rapid thought.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I have somewhere read of an eminent person who used in his
private offices of devotion to give thanks to Heaven that he was
born a Frenchman: for my own part I look upon it as a peculiar
blessing that I was born an Englishman. Among many other
reasons, I think myself very happy in my country, as the language
of it is wonderfully adapted to a man who is sparing of his
words, and an enemy to loquacity.</p>
<p>As I have frequently reflected on my good fortune in this
particular, I shall communicate to the public my speculations
upon the English tongue, not doubting but they will be acceptable
to all my curious readers.</p>
<p>The English delight in silence more than any other European
nation, if the remarks which are made on us by foreigners are
true. Our discourse is not kept up in conversation, but
falls into more pauses and intervals than in our neighbouring
countries; as it is observed that the matter of our writings is
thrown much closer together, and lies in a narrower compass, than
is usual in the works of foreign authors; for, to favour our
natural taciturnity, when we are obliged to utter our thoughts we
do it in the shortest way we are able, and give as quick a birth
to our conceptions as possible.</p>
<p>This humour shows itself in several remarks that we may make
upon the English language. As, first of all, by its
abounding in monosyllables, which gives us an opportunity of
delivering our thoughts in few sounds. This indeed takes
off from the elegance of our tongue, but at the same time
expresses our ideas in the readiest manner, and consequently
answers the first design of speech better than the multitude of
syllables which make the words of other languages more tuneable
and sonorous. The sounds of our English words are commonly
like those of string music, short and transient, which rise and
perish upon a single touch; those of other languages are like the
notes of wind instruments, sweet and swelling, and lengthened out
into variety of modulation.</p>
<p>In the next place we may observe that, where the words are not
monosyllables, we often make them so, as much as lies in our
power, by our rapidity of pronunciation; as it generally happens
in most of our long words which are derived from the Latin, where
we contract the length of the syllables, that gives them a grave
and solemn air in their own language, to make them more proper
for despatch, and more conformable to the genius of our
tongue. This we may find in a multitude of words, as
“liberty,” “conspiracy,”
“theatre,” “orator,” &c.</p>
<p>The same natural aversion to loquacity has of late years made
a very considerable alteration in our language, by closing in one
syllable the termination of our preterperfect tense, as in the
words “drown’d,” “walk’d,”
“arriv’d,” for “drowned,”
“walked,” “arrived,” which has very much
disfigured the tongue, and turned a tenth part of our smoothest
words into so many clusters of consonants. This is the more
remarkable because the want of vowels in our language has been
the general complaint of our politest authors, who nevertheless
are the men that have made these retrenchments, and consequently
very much increased our former scarcity.</p>
<p>This reflection on the words that end in “ed” I
have heard in conversation from one of the greatest geniuses this
age has produced. I think we may add to the foregoing
observation, the change which has happened in our language by the
abbreviation of several words that are terminated in
“eth,” by substituting an “s” in the room
of the last syllable, as in “drowns,”
“walks,” “arrives,” and innumerable other
words, which in the pronunciation of our forefathers were
“drowneth,” “walketh,”
“arriveth.” This has wonderfully multiplied a
letter which was before too frequent in the English tongue, and
added to that hissing in our language which is taken so much
notice of by foreigners, but at the same time humours our
taciturnity, and eases us of many superfluous syllables.</p>
<p>I might here observe that the same single letter on many
occasions does the office of a whole word, and represents the
“his” and “her” of our forefathers.
There is no doubt but the ear of a foreigner, which is the best
judge in this case, would very much disapprove of such
innovations, which indeed we do ourselves in some measure, by
retaining the old termination in writing, and in all the solemn
offices of our religion.</p>
<p>As, in the instances I have given, we have epitomised many of
our particular words to the detriment of our tongue, so on other
occasions we have drawn two words into one, which has likewise
very much untuned our language, and clogged it with consonants,
as “mayn’t,” “can’t,”
“shan’t,” “won’t,” and the
like, for “may not,” “can not,”
“shall not,” “will not,” &c.</p>
<p>It is perhaps this humour of speaking no more than we needs
must which has so miserably curtailed some of our words, that in
familiar writings and conversations they often lose all but their
first syllables, as in “mob.,” “rep.,”
“pos.,” “incog.,” and the like; and as
all ridiculous words make their first entry into a language by
familiar phrases, I dare not answer for these that they will not
in time be looked upon as a part of our tongue. We see some
of our poets have been so indiscreet as to imitate
Hudibras’s doggrel expressions in their serious
compositions, by throwing out the signs of our substantives which
are essential to the English language. Nay, this humour of
shortening our language had once run so far, that some of our
celebrated authors, among whom we may reckon Sir Roger
L’Estrange in particular, began to prune their words of all
superfluous letters, as they termed them, in order to adjust the
spelling to the pronunciation; which would have confounded all
our etymologies, and have quite destroyed our tongue.</p>
<p>We may here likewise observe that our proper names, when
familiarised in English, generally dwindle to monosyllables,
whereas in other modern languages they receive a softer turn on
this occasion, by the addition of a new syllable.—Nick, in
Italian, is Nicolini; Jack, in French, Janot; and so of the
rest.</p>
<p>There is another particular in our language which is a great
instance of our frugality in words, and that is the suppressing
of several particles which must be produced in other tongues to
make a sentence intelligible. This often perplexes the best
writers, when they find the relatives “whom,”
“which,” or “they,” at their mercy,
whether they may have admission or not; and will never be decided
till we have something like an academy, that by the best
authorities, and rules drawn from the analogy of languages, shall
settle all controversies between grammar and idiom.</p>
<p>I have only considered our language as it shows the genius and
natural temper of the English, which is modest, thoughtful, and
sincere, and which, perhaps, may recommend the people, though it
has spoiled the tongue. We might, perhaps, carry the same
thought into other languages, and deduce a great part of what is
peculiar to them from the genius of the people who speak
them. It is certain the light talkative humour of the
French has not a little infected their tongue, which might be
shown by many instances; as the genius of the Italians, which is
so much addicted to music and ceremony, has moulded all their
words and phrases to those particular uses. The stateliness
and gravity of the Spaniards shows itself to perfection in the
solemnity of their language; and the blunt, honest humour of the
Germans sounds better in the roughness of the High-Dutch than it
would in a politer tongue.</p>
<h2>THE VISION OF MIRZA.</h2>
<blockquote><p> —<i>Omnem</i>,
<i>quæ nunc obducta tuenti</i><br />
<i>Mortales hebetat visus tibi</i>, <i>et humida
circúm</i><br />
<i>Caligat</i>, <i>nubem eripiam</i>.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Virg.</span>,
<i>Æn.</i> ii. 604.</p>
<p>The cloud, which, intercepting the clear light,<br />
Hangs o’er thy eyes, and blunts thy mortal sight,<br />
I will remove.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>When I was at Grand Cairo, I picked up several Oriental
manuscripts, which I have still by me. Among others I met
with one entitled “The Visions of Mirza,” which I
have read over with great pleasure. I intend to give it to
the public when I have no other entertainment for them; and shall
begin with the first vision, which I have translated word for
word as follows:</p>
<p>“On the fifth day of the moon, which, according to the
custom of my forefathers, I always keep holy, after having washed
myself, and offered up my morning devotions, I ascended the high
hills of Bagdad, in order to pass the rest of the day in
meditation and prayer. As I was here airing myself on the
tops of the mountains, I fell into a profound contemplation on
the vanity of human life; and passing from one thought to
another, ‘Surely,’ said I, ‘man is but a
shadow, and life a dream.’ Whilst I was thus musing,
I cast my eyes towards the summit of a rock that was not far from
me, where I discovered one in the habit of a shepherd, with a
musical instrument in his hand. As I looked upon him he
applied it to his lips, and began to play upon it. The
sound of it was exceeding sweet, and wrought into a variety of
tunes that were inexpressibly melodious, and altogether different
from anything I had ever heard. They put me in mind of
those heavenly airs that are played to the departed souls of good
men upon their first arrival in Paradise, to wear out the
impressions of their last agonies, and qualify them for the
pleasures of that happy place. My heart melted away in
secret raptures.</p>
<p>“I had been often told that the rock before me was the
haunt of a genius, and that several had been entertained with
music who had passed by it, but never heard that the musician had
before made himself visible. When he had raised my thoughts
by those transporting airs which he played, to taste the
pleasures of his conversation, as I looked upon him like one
astonished, he beckoned to me, and, by the waving of his hand,
directed me to approach the place where he sat. I drew near
with that reverence which is due to a superior nature; and, as my
heart was entirely subdued by the captivating strains I had
heard, I fell down at his feet and wept. The genius smiled
upon me with a look of compassion and affability that
familiarised him to my imagination, and at once dispelled all the
fears and apprehensions with which I approached him. He
lifted me from the ground, and, taking me by the hand,
‘Mirza,’ said he, ‘I have heard thee in thy
soliloquies; follow me.’</p>
<p>“He then led me to the highest pinnacle of the rock, and
placing me on the top of it, ‘Cast thy eyes
eastward,’ said he, ‘and tell me what thou
seest.’ ‘I see,’ said I, ‘a huge
valley, and a prodigious tide of water rolling through
it.’ ‘The valley that thou seest,’ said
he, ‘is the Vale of Misery, and the tide of water that thou
seest is part of the great tide of Eternity.’
‘What is the reason,’ said I, ‘that the tide I
see rises out of a thick mist at one end, and again loses itself
in a thick mist at the other?’ ‘What thou
seest,’ said he, ‘is that portion of Eternity which
is called Time, measured out by the sun, and reaching from the
beginning of the world to its consummation. Examine
now,’ said he, ‘this sea that is bounded with
darkness at both ends, and tell me what thou discoverest in
it.’ ‘I see a bridge,’ said I,
‘standing in the midst of the tide.’ ‘The
bridge thou seest,’ said he, ‘is Human Life; consider
it attentively.’ Upon a more leisurely survey of it,
I found that it consisted of threescore and ten entire arches,
with several broken arches, which, added to those that were
entire, made up the number about a hundred. As I was
counting the arches, the genius told me that this bridge
consisted at first of a thousand arches; but that a great flood
swept away the rest, and left the bridge in the ruinous condition
I now beheld it. ‘But tell me further,’ said
he, ‘what thou discoverest on it.’ ‘I see
multitudes of people passing over it,’ said I, ‘and a
black cloud hanging on each end of it.’ As I looked
more attentively, I saw several of the passengers dropping
through the bridge into the great tide that flowed underneath it;
and, upon further examination, perceived there were innumerable
trap-doors that lay concealed in the bridge, which the passengers
no sooner trod upon but they fell through them into the tide, and
immediately disappeared. These hidden pit-falls were set
very thick at the entrance of the bridge, so that throngs of
people no sooner broke through the cloud but many of them fell
into them. They grew thinner towards the middle, but
multiplied and lay closer together towards the end of the arches
that were entire.</p>
<p>“There were indeed some persons, but their number was
very small, that continued a kind of hobbling march on the broken
arches, but fell through one after another, being quite tired and
spent with so long a walk.</p>
<p>“I passed some time in the contemplation of this
wonderful structure, and the great variety of objects which it
presented. My heart was filled with a deep melancholy to
see several dropping unexpectedly in the midst of mirth and
jollity, and catching at everything that stood by them to save
themselves. Some were looking up towards the heavens in a
thoughtful posture, and in the midst of a speculation stumbled
and fell out of sight. Multitudes were very busy in the
pursuit of bubbles that glittered in their eyes and danced before
them; but often when they thought themselves within the reach of
them, their footing failed and down they sunk. In this
confusion of objects, I observed some with scimitars in their
hands, who ran to and fro from the bridge, thrusting several
persons on trapdoors which did not seem to lie in their way, and
which they might have escaped had they not been thus forced upon
them.</p>
<p>“The genius, seeing me indulge myself on this melancholy
prospect, told me I had dwelt long enough upon it.
‘Take thine eyes off the bridge,’ said he, ‘and
tell me if thou yet seest anything thou dost not
comprehend.’ Upon looking up, ‘What
mean,’ said I, ‘those great flights of birds that are
perpetually hovering about the bridge, and settling upon it from
time to time? I see vultures, harpies, ravens, cormorants,
and among many other feathered creatures, several little winged
boys, that perch in great numbers upon the middle
arches.’ ‘These,’ said the genius,
‘are Envy, Avarice, Superstition, Despair, Love, with the
like cares and passions that infest human life.’</p>
<p>“I here fetched a deep sigh. ‘Alas,’
said I, ‘man was made in vain! how is he given away to
misery and mortality! tortured in life, and swallowed up in
death!’ The genius, being moved with compassion
towards me, bade me quit so uncomfortable a prospect.
‘Look no more,’ said he, ‘on man in the first
stage of his existence, in his setting out for Eternity; but cast
thine eye on that thick mist into which the tide bears the
several generations of mortals that fall into it.’ I
directed my sight as I was ordered, and, whether or no the good
genius strengthened it with any supernatural force, or dissipated
part of the mist that was before too thick for the eye to
penetrate, I saw the valley opening at the further end, and
spreading forth into an immense ocean, that had a huge rock of
adamant running through the midst of it, and dividing it into two
equal parts. The clouds still rested on one half of it,
insomuch that I could discover nothing in it; but the other
appeared to me a vast ocean planted with innumerable islands,
that were covered with fruits and flowers, and interwoven with a
thousand little shining seas that ran among them. I could
see persons dressed in glorious habits, with garlands upon their
heads, passing among the trees, lying down by the sides of
fountains, or resting on beds of flowers; and could hear a
confused harmony of singing birds, falling waters, human voices,
and musical instruments. Gladness grew in me upon the
discovery of so delightful a scene. I wished for the wings
of an eagle, that I might fly away to those happy seats; but the
genius told me there was no passage to them, except through the
gates of death that I saw opening every moment upon the
bridge. ‘The islands,’ said he, ‘that lie
so fresh and green before thee, amid with which the whole face of
the ocean appears spotted as far as thou canst see, are more in
number than the sands on the sea-shore: there are myriads of
islands behind those which thou here discoverest, reaching
further than thine eye, or even thine imagination can extend
itself. These are the mansions of good men after death,
who, according to the degree and kinds of virtue in which they
excelled, are distributed among those several islands, which
abound with pleasures of different kinds and degrees, suitable to
the relishes and perfections of those who are settled in them:
every island is a paradise accommodated to its respective
inhabitants. Are not these, O Mirza, habitations worth
contending for? Does life appear miserable that gives thee
opportunities of earning such a reward? Is death to be
feared that will convey thee to so happy an existence?
Think not man was made in vain, who has such an Eternity reserved
for him.’ I gazed with inexpressible pleasure on
these happy islands. At length, said I, ‘Show me now,
I beseech thee, the secrets that lie hid under those dark clouds
which cover the ocean on the other side of the rock of
adamant.’ The genius making me no answer, I turned
about to address myself to him a second time, but I found that he
had left me; I then turned again to the vision which I had been
so long contemplating: but instead of the rolling tide, the
arched bridge, and the happy islands, I saw nothing but the long
hollow valley of Bagdad, with oxen, sheep, and camels grazing
upon the sides of it.”</p>
<h2>GENIUS.</h2>
<blockquote><p> —<i>Cui
mens divinior</i>, <i>atque os</i><br />
<i>Magna sonaturum des nominis hujus honorem</i>.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Hor.</span>,
<i>Sat.</i> i. 4, 43.</p>
<p>On him confer the poet’s sacred name,<br />
Whose lofty voice declares the heavenly flame.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There is no character more frequently given to a writer than
that of being a genius. I have heard many a little
sonneteer called a fine genius. There is not a heroic
scribbler in the nation that has not his admirers who think him a
great genius; and as for your smatterers in tragedy, there is
scarce a man among them who is not cried up by one or other for a
prodigious genius.</p>
<p>My design in this paper is to consider what is properly a
great genius, and to throw some thoughts together on so uncommon
a subject.</p>
<p>Among great geniuses those few draw the admiration of all the
world upon them, and stand up as the prodigies of mankind, who,
by the mere strength of natural parts, and without any assistance
of art or learning, have produced works that were the delight of
their own times and the wonder of posterity. There appears
something nobly wild and extravagant in these great natural
geniuses, that is infinitely more beautiful than all turn and
polishing of what the French call a <i>bel esprit</i>, by which
they would express a genius refined by conversation, reflection,
and the reading of the most polite authors. The greatest
genius which runs through the arts and sciences takes a kind of
tincture from them and falls unavoidably into imitation.</p>
<p>Many of these great natural geniuses, that were never
disciplined and broken by rules of art, are to be found among the
ancients, and in particular among those of the more Eastern parts
of the world. Homer has innumerable flights that Virgil was
not able to reach, and in the Old Testament we find several
passages more elevated and sublime than any in Homer. At
the same time that we allow a greater and more daring genius to
the ancients, we must own that the greatest of them very much
failed in, or, if you will, that they were much above the nicety
and correctness of the moderns. In their similitudes and
allusions, provided there was a likeness, they did not much
trouble themselves about the decency of the comparison: thus
Solomon resembles the nose of his beloved to the tower of Lebanon
which looketh towards Damascus, as the coming of a thief in the
night is a similitude of the same kind in the New
Testament. It would be endless to make collections of this
nature. Homer illustrates one of his heroes encompassed
with the enemy, by an ass in a field of corn that has his sides
belaboured by all the boys of the village without stirring a foot
for it; and another of them tossing to and fro in his bed, and
burning with resentment, to a piece of flesh broiled on the
coals. This particular failure in the ancients opens a
large field of raillery to the little wits, who can laugh at an
indecency, but not relish the sublime in these sorts of
writings. The present Emperor of Persia, conformable to
this Eastern way of thinking, amidst a great many pompous titles,
denominates himself “the sun of glory” and “the
nutmeg of delight.” In short, to cut off all
cavilling against the ancients, and particularly those of the
warmer climates, who had most heat and life in their
imaginations, we are to consider that the rule of observing what
the French call the <i>bienseance</i> in an allusion has been
found out of later years, and in the colder regions of the world,
where we could make some amends for our want of force and spirit
by a scrupulous nicety and exactness in our compositions.
Our countryman Shakespeare was a remarkable instance of this
first kind of great geniuses.</p>
<p>I cannot quit this head without observing that Pindar was a
great genius of the first class, who was hurried on by a natural
fire and impetuosity to vast conceptions of things and noble
sallies of imagination. At the same time can anything be
more ridiculous than for men of a sober and moderate fancy to
imitate this poet’s way of writing in those monstrous
compositions which go among us under the name of Pindarics?
When I see people copying works which, as Horace has represented
them, are singular in their kind, and inimitable; when I see men
following irregularities by rule, and by the little tricks of art
straining after the most unbounded flights of nature, I cannot
but apply to them that passage in Terence:</p>
<blockquote><p> —<i>Incerta
hæc si tu postules</i><br />
<i>Ratione certâ facere</i>, <i>nihilo plus agas</i><br />
<i>Quâm si des operam</i>, <i>ut cum ratione
insanias</i>.</p>
<p><i>Eun.</i>, Act I., Sc. 1, I. 16.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>You may as well pretend to be mad and in your senses at the
same time, as to think of reducing these uncertain things to any
certainty by reason.</p>
<p>In short, a modern Pindaric writer compared with Pindar is
like a sister among the Camisars compared with Virgil’s
Sibyl; there is the distortion, grimace, and outward figure, but
nothing of that divine impulse which raises the mind above
itself, and makes the sounds more than human.</p>
<p>There is another kind of great geniuses which I shall place in
a second class, not as I think them inferior to the first, but
only for distinction’s sake, as they are of a different
kind. This second class of great geniuses are those that
have formed themselves by rules, and submitted the greatness of
their natural talents to the corrections and restraints of
art. Such among the Greeks were Plato and Aristotle; among
the Romans, Virgil and Tully; among the English, Milton and Sir
Francis Bacon.</p>
<p>The genius in both these classes of authors may be equally
great, but shows itself after a different manner. In the
first it is like a rich soil in a happy climate, that produces a
whole wilderness of noble plants rising in a thousand beautiful
landscapes without any certain order or regularity; in the other
it is the same rich soil, under the same happy climate, that has
been laid out in walks and parterres, and cut into shape and
beauty by the skill of the gardener.</p>
<p>The great danger in these latter kind of geniuses is lest they
cramp their own abilities too much by imitation, and form
themselves altogether upon models, without giving the full play
to their own natural parts. An imitation of the best
authors is not to compare with a good original; and I believe we
may observe that very few writers make an extraordinary figure in
the world who have not something in their way of thinking or
expressing themselves, that is peculiar to them, and entirely
their own.</p>
<p>It is odd to consider what great geniuses are sometimes thrown
away upon trifles.</p>
<p>“I once saw a shepherd,” says a famous Italian
author, “who used to divert himself in his solitudes with
tossing up eggs and catching them again without breaking them; in
which he had arrived to so great a degree of perfection that he
would keep up four at a time for several minutes together playing
in the air, and falling into his hand by turns. I
think,” says the author, “I never saw a greater
severity than in this man’s face, for by his wonderful
perseverance and application he had contracted the seriousness
and gravity of a privy councillor, and I could not but reflect
with myself that the same assiduity and attention, had they been
rightly applied, ‘might’ have made a greater
mathematician than Archimedes.”</p>
<h2>THEODOSIUS AND CONSTANTIA.</h2>
<blockquote><p><i>Illa</i>; <i>Quis et me</i>, <i>inquit</i>,
<i>miseram et te perdidit</i>, <i>Orpheu</i>?—<br />
<i>Jamque vale</i>: <i>feror ingenti circumdata nocte</i>,<br />
<i>Invalidasque tibi tendens</i>, <i>heu</i>! <i>non tua</i>,
<i>palmas</i>.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Virg.</span>,
<i>Georg.</i>, iv. 494.</p>
<p>Then thus the bride: “What fury seiz’d on thee,
<br />
Unhappy man! to lose thyself and me?—<br />
And now farewell! involv’d in shades of night,<br />
For ever I am ravish’d from thy sight:<br />
In vain I reach my feeble hands, to join<br />
In sweet embraces—ah! no longer thine!”</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span
class="smcap">Dryden</span>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Constantia was a woman of extraordinary wit and beauty, but
very unhappy in a father who, having arrived at great riches by
his own industry, took delight in nothing but his money.
Theodosius was the younger son of a decayed family, of great
parts and learning, improved by a genteel and virtuous
education. When he was in the twentieth year of his age he
became acquainted with Constantia, who had not then passed her
fifteenth. As he lived but a few miles distant from her
father’s house, he had frequent opportunities of seeing
her; and, by the advantages of a good person and a pleasing
conversation, made such an impression in her heart as it was
impossible for time to efface. He was himself no less
smitten with Constantia. A long acquaintance made them
still discover new beauties in each other, and by degrees raised
in them that mutual passion which had an influence on their
following lives. It unfortunately happened that, in the
midst of this intercourse of love and friendship between
Theodosius and Constantia, there broke out an irreparable quarrel
between their parents; the one valuing himself too much upon his
birth, and the other upon his possessions. The father of
Constantia was so incensed at the father of Theodosius, that he
contracted an unreasonable aversion towards his son, insomuch
that he forbade him his house, and charged his daughter upon her
duty never to see him more. In the meantime, to break off
all communication between the two lovers, who he knew entertained
secret hopes of some favourable opportunity that should bring
them together, he found out a young gentleman of a good fortune
and an agreeable person, whom he pitched upon as a husband for
his daughter. He soon concerted this affair so well, that
he told Constantia it was his design to marry her to such a
gentleman, and that her wedding should be celebrated on such a
day. Constantia, who was overawed with the authority of her
father, and unable to object anything against so advantageous a
match, received the proposal with a profound silence, which her
father commended in her, as the most decent manner of a
virgin’s giving her consent to an overture of that
kind. The noise of this intended marriage soon reached
Theodosius, who, after a long tumult of passions which naturally
rise in a lover’s heart on such an occasion, wrote the
following letter to Constantia:—</p>
<blockquote><p>“The thought of my Constantia, which for
some years has been my only happiness, is now become a greater
torment to me than I am able to bear. Must I then live to
see you another’s? The streams, the fields, and
meadows, where we have so often talked together, grow painful to
me; life itself is become a burden. May you long be happy
in the world, but forget that there was ever such a man in it
as</p>
<p style="text-align: right">“<span
class="smcap">Theodosius</span>.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This letter was conveyed to Constantia that very evening, who
fainted at the reading of it; and the next morning she was much
more alarmed by two or three messengers that came to her
father’s house, one after another, to inquire if they had
heard anything of Theodosius, who, it seems, had left his chamber
about midnight, and could nowhere be found. The deep
melancholy which had hung upon his mind some time before made
them apprehend the worst that could befall him. Constantia,
who knew that nothing but the report of her marriage could have
driven him to such extremities, was not to be comforted.
She now accused herself for having so tamely given an ear to the
proposal of a husband, and looked upon the new lover as the
murderer of Theodosius. In short, she resolved to suffer
the utmost effects of her father’s displeasure rather than
comply with a marriage which appeared to her so full of guilt and
horror. The father, seeing himself entirely rid of
Theodosius, and likely to keep a considerable portion in his
family, was not very much concerned at the obstinate refusal of
his daughter, and did not find it very difficult to excuse
himself upon that account to his intended son-in-law, who had all
along regarded this alliance rather as a marriage of convenience
than of love. Constantia had now no relief but in her
devotions and exercises of religion, to which her affections had
so entirely subjected her mind, that after some years had abated
the violence of her sorrows, and settled her thoughts in a kind
of tranquillity, she resolved to pass the remainder of her days
in a convent. Her father was not displeased with a
resolution which would save money in his family, and readily
complied with his daughter’s intentions. Accordingly,
in the twenty-fifth year of her age, while her beauty was yet in
all its height and bloom, he carried her to a neighbouring city,
in order to look out a sisterhood of nuns among whom to place his
daughter. There was in this place a father of a convent who
was very much renowned for his piety and exemplary life: and as
it is usual in the Romish Church for those who are under any
great affliction, or trouble of mind, to apply themselves to the
most eminent confessors for pardon and consolation, our beautiful
votary took the opportunity of confessing herself to this
celebrated father.</p>
<p>We must now return to Theodosius, who, the very morning that
the above-mentioned inquiries had been made after him, arrived at
a religious house in the city where now Constantia resided; and
desiring that secrecy and concealment of the fathers of the
convent, which is very usual upon any extraordinary occasion, he
made himself one of the order, with a private vow never to
inquire after Constantia; whom he looked upon as given away to
his rival upon the day on which, according to common fame, their
marriage was to have been solemnised. Having in his youth
made a good progress in learning, that he might dedicate himself
more entirely to religion, he entered into holy orders, and in a
few years became renowned for his sanctity of life, and those
pious sentiments which he inspired into all who conversed with
him. It was this holy man to whom Constantia had determined
to apply herself in confession, though neither she nor any other,
besides the prior of the convent, knew anything of his name or
family. The gay, the amiable Theodosius had now taken upon
him the name of Father Francis, and was so far concealed in a
long beard, a shaven head, and a religious habit, that it was
impossible to discover the man of the world in the venerable
conventual.</p>
<p>As he was one morning shut up in his confessional, Constantia
kneeling by him opened the state of her soul to him; and after
having given him the history of a life full of innocence, she
burst out into tears, and entered upon that part of her story in
which he himself had so great a share. “My
behaviour,” says she, “has, I fear, been the death of
a man who had no other fault but that of loving me too
much. Heaven only knows how dear he was to me whilst he
lived, and how bitter the remembrance of him has been to me since
his death.” She here paused, and lifted up her eyes
that streamed with tears towards the father, who was so moved
with the sense of her sorrows that he could only command his
voice, which was broken with sighs and sobbings, so far as to bid
her proceed. She followed his directions, and in a flood of
tears poured out her heart before him. The father could not
forbear weeping aloud, insomuch that, in the agonies of his
grief, the seat shook under him. Constantia, who thought
the good man was thus moved by his compassion towards her, and by
the horror of her guilt, proceeded with the utmost contrition to
acquaint him with that vow of virginity in which she was going to
engage herself, as the proper atonement for her sins, and the
only sacrifice she could make to the memory of Theodosius.
The father, who by this time had pretty well composed himself,
burst out again in tears upon hearing that name to which he had
been so long disused, and upon receiving this instance of an
unparalleled fidelity from one who he thought had several years
since given herself up to the possession of another. Amidst
the interruptions of his sorrow, seeing his penitent overwhelmed
with grief, he was only able to bid her from time to time be
comforted—to tell her that her sins were forgiven
her—that her guilt was not so great as she
apprehended—that she should not suffer herself to be
afflicted above measure. After which he recovered himself
enough to give her the absolution in form: directing her at the
same time to repair to him again the next day, that he might
encourage her in the pious resolution she had taken, and give her
suitable exhortations for her behaviour in it. Constantia
retired, and the next morning renewed her applications.
Theodosius, having manned his soul with proper thoughts and
reflections, exerted himself on this occasion in the best manner
he could to animate his penitent in the course of life she was
entering upon, and wear out of her mind those groundless fears
and apprehensions which had taken possession of it; concluding
with a promise to her, that he would from time to time continue
his admonitions when she should have taken upon her the holy
veil. “The rules of our respective orders,”
says he, “will not permit that I should see you; but you
may assure yourself not only of having a place in my prayers, but
of receiving such frequent instructions as I can convey to you by
letters. Go on cheerfully in the glorious course you have
undertaken, and you will quickly find such a peace and
satisfaction in your mind which it is not in the power of the
world to give.”</p>
<p>Constantia’s heart was so elevated within the discourse
of Father Francis, that the very next day she entered upon her
vow. As soon as the solemnities of her reception were over,
she retired, as it is usual, with the abbess into her own
apartment.</p>
<p>The abbess had been informed the night before of all that had
passed between her novitiate and father Francis: from whom she
now delivered to her the following letter:—</p>
<blockquote><p>“As the first-fruits of those joys and
consolations which you may expect from the life you are now
engaged in, I must acquaint you that Theodosius, whose death sits
so heavy upon your thoughts, is still alive; and that the father
to whom you have confessed yourself was once that Theodosius whom
you so much lament. The love which we have had for one
another will make us more happy in its disappointment than it
could have done in its success. Providence has disposed of
us for our advantage, though not according to our wishes.
Consider your Theodosius still as dead, but assure yourself of
one who will not cease to pray for you in father</p>
<p style="text-align: right">“<span
class="smcap">Francis</span>.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Constantia saw that the handwriting agreed with the contents
of the letter; and, upon reflecting on the voice of the person,
the behaviour, and above all the extreme sorrow of the father
during her confession, she discovered Theodosius in every
particular. After having wept with tears of joy, “It
is enough,” says she; “Theodosius is still in being:
I shall live with comfort and die in peace.”</p>
<p>The letters which the father sent her afterwards are yet
extant in the nunnery where she resided; and are often read to
the young religious, in order to inspire them with good
resolutions and sentiments of virtue. It so happened that
after Constantia had lived about ten years in the cloister, a
violent fever broke out in the place, which swept away great
multitudes, and among others Theodosius. Upon his death-bed
he sent his benediction in a very moving manner to Constantia,
who at that time was herself so far gone in the same fatal
distemper that she lay delirious. Upon the interval which
generally precedes death in sickness of this nature, the abbess,
finding that the physicians had given her over, told her that
Theodosius had just gone before her, and that he had sent her his
benediction in his last moments. Constantia received it
with pleasure. “And now,” says she, “if I
do not ask anything improper, let me be buried by
Theodosius. My vow reaches no further than the grave; what
I ask is, I hope, no violation of it.” She died soon
after, and was interred according to her request.</p>
<p>The tombs are still to be seen, with a short Latin inscription
over them to the following purpose:—</p>
<blockquote><p>“Here lie the bodies of Father Francis and
Sister Constance. They were lovely in their lives, and in
their death they were not divided.”</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>GOOD NATURE.</h2>
<h3>Part One.</h3>
<blockquote><p><i>Sic vita erat</i>: <i>facilè omnes
perferre ac pati</i>:<br />
<i>Cum quibus erat cunque unà</i>, <i>his sese
dedere</i>,<br />
<i>Eorum obsequi studiis</i>: <i>advorsus nemini</i>;<br />
<i>Nunquam præponens se aliis</i>. <i>Ita
facillime</i><br />
<i>Sine invidia invenias laudem</i>.—</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Ter.</span>,
<i>Andr.</i>, Act i. <i>se.</i> 1.</p>
<p>His manner of life was this: to bear with everybody’s
humours; to comply with the inclinations and pursuits of those he
conversed with; to contradict nobody; never to assume a
superiority over others. This is the ready way to gain
applause without exciting envy.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Man is subject to innumerable pains and sorrows by the very
condition of humanity, and yet, as if Nature had not sown evils
enough in life, we are continually adding grief to grief, and
aggravating the common calamity by our cruel treatment of one
another. Every man’s natural weight of affliction is
still made more heavy by the envy, malice, treachery, or
injustice of his neighbour. At the same time that the storm
beats on the whole species, we are falling foul upon one
another.</p>
<p>Half the misery of human life might be extinguished, would men
alleviate the general curse they lie under, by mutual offices of
compassion, benevolence, and humanity. There is nothing,
therefore, which we ought more to encourage in ourselves and
others, than that disposition of mind which in our language goes
under the title of good nature, and which I shall choose for the
subject of this day’s speculation.</p>
<p>Good-nature is more agreeable in conversation than wit, and
gives a certain air to the countenance which is more amiable than
beauty. It shows virtue in the fairest light, takes off in
some measure from the deformity of vice, and makes even folly and
impertinence supportable.</p>
<p>There is no society or conversation to be kept up in the world
without good nature, or something which must bear its appearance,
and supply its place. For this reason, mankind have been
forced to invent a kind of artificial humanity, which is what we
express by the word good-breeding. For if we examine
thoroughly the idea of what we call so, we shall find it to be
nothing else but an imitation and mimicry of good nature, or, in
other terms, affability, complaisance, and easiness of temper,
reduced into an art. These exterior shows and appearances
of humanity render a man wonderfully popular and beloved, when
they are founded upon a real good nature; but, without it, are
like hypocrisy in religion, or a bare form of holiness, which,
when it is discovered, makes a man more detestable than professed
impiety.</p>
<p>Good-nature is generally born with us: health, prosperity, and
kind treatment from the world, are great cherishers of it where
they find it; but nothing is capable of forcing it up, where it
does not grow of itself. It is one of the blessings of a
happy constitution, which education may improve, but not
produce.</p>
<p>Xenophon, in the life of his imaginary prince whom he
describes as a pattern for real ones, is always celebrating the
philanthropy and good nature of his hero, which he tells us he
brought into the world with him; and gives many remarkable
instances of it in his childhood, as well as in all the several
parts of his life. Nay, on his death-bed, he describes him
as being pleased, that while his soul returned to Him who made
it, his body should incorporate with the great mother of all
things, and by that means become beneficial to mankind. For
which reason, he gives his sons a positive order not to enshrine
it in gold or silver, but to lay it in the earth as soon as the
life was gone out of it.</p>
<p>An instance of such an overflowing of humanity, such an
exuberant love to mankind, could not have entered into the
imagination of a writer who had not a soul filled with great
ideas, and a general benevolence to mankind.</p>
<p>In that celebrated passage of Sallust, where Cæsar and
Cato are placed in such beautiful but opposite lights,
Cæsar’s character is chiefly made up of good nature,
as it showed itself in all its forms towards his friends or his
enemies, his servants or dependents, the guilty or the
distressed. As for Cato’s character, it is rather
awful than amiable. Justice seems most agreeable to the
nature of God, and mercy to that of man. A Being who has
nothing to pardon in Himself, may reward every man according to
his works; but he whose very best actions must be seen with
grains of allowance, cannot be too mild, moderate, and
forgiving. For this reason, among all the monstrous
characters in human nature, there is none so odious, nor indeed
so exquisitely ridiculous, as that of a rigid, severe temper in a
worthless man.</p>
<p>This part of good nature however, which consists in the
pardoning and overlooking of faults, is to be exercised only in
doing ourselves justice, and that too in the ordinary commerce
and occurrences of life; for, in the public administrations of
justice, mercy to one may be cruelty to others.</p>
<p>It is grown almost into a maxim, that good-natured men are not
always men of the most wit. This observation, in my
opinion, has no foundation in nature. The greatest wits I
have conversed with are men eminent for their humanity. I
take, therefore, this remark to have been occasioned by two
reasons. First, because ill-nature among ordinary observers
passes for wit. A spiteful saying gratifies so many little
passions in those who hear it, that it generally meets with a
good reception. The laugh rises upon it, and the man who
utters it is looked upon as a shrewd satirist. This may be
one reason why a great many pleasant companions appear so
surprisingly dull when they have endeavoured to be merry in
print; the public being more just than private clubs or
assemblies, in distinguishing between what is wit and what is
ill-nature.</p>
<p>Another reason why the good-natured man may sometimes bring
his wit in question is perhaps because he is apt to be moved with
compassion for those misfortunes or infirmities which another
would turn into ridicule, and by that means gain the reputation
of a wit. The ill-natured man, though but of equal parts,
gives himself a larger field to expatiate in; he exposes those
failings in human nature which the other would cast a veil over,
laughs at vices which the other either excuses or conceals, gives
utterance to reflections which the other stifles, falls
indifferently upon friends or enemies, exposes the person who has
obliged him, and, in short, sticks at nothing that may establish
his character as a wit. It is no wonder, therefore, he
succeeds in it better than the man of humanity, as a person who
makes use of indirect methods is more likely to grow rich than
the fair trader.</p>
<h3>Part Two.</h3>
<blockquote><p>—<i>Quis enim bonus</i>, <i>aut face
dignus</i><br />
<i>Arcanâ</i>, <i>qualem Cereris vult esse sacerdos</i>,<br
/>
<i>Ulla aliena sibi credat mala</i>?—</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Juv.</span>,
<i>Sat.</i> xv. 140.</p>
<p>Who can all sense of others’ ills escape,<br />
Is but a brute, at best, in human shape.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Tate</span>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In one of my last week’s papers, I treated of
good-nature as it is the effect of constitution; I shall now
speak of it as it is a moral virtue. The first may make a
man easy in himself and agreeable to others, but implies no merit
in him that is possessed of it. A man is no more to be
praised upon this account, than because he has a regular pulse or
a good digestion. This good nature, however, in the
constitution, which Mr. Dryden somewhere calls “a milkiness
of blood,” is an admirable groundwork for the other.
In order, therefore, to try our good-nature, whether it arises
from the body or the mind, whether it be founded in the animal or
rational part of our nature; in a word, whether it be such as is
entitled to any other reward besides that secret satisfaction and
contentment of mind which is essential to it, and the kind
reception it procures us in the world, we must examine it by the
following rules:</p>
<p>First, whether it acts with steadiness and uniformity in
sickness and in health, in prosperity and in adversity; if
otherwise, it is to be looked upon as nothing else but an
irradiation of the mind from some new supply of spirits, or a
more kindly circulation of the blood. Sir Francis Bacon
mentions a cunning solicitor, who would never ask a favour of a
great man before dinner; but took care to prefer his petition at
a time when the party petitioned had his mind free from care, and
his appetites in good humour. Such a transient temporary
good-nature as this, is not that philanthropy, that love of
mankind, which deserves the title of a moral virtue.</p>
<p>The next way of a man’s bringing his good-nature to the
test is to consider whether it operates according to the rules of
reason and duty: for if, notwithstanding its general benevolence
to mankind, it makes no distinction between its objects; if it
exerts itself promiscuously towards the deserving and the
undeserving; if it relieves alike the idle and the indigent; if
it gives itself up to the first petitioner, and lights upon any
one rather by accident than choice—it may pass for an
amiable instinct, but must not assume the name of a moral
virtue.</p>
<p>The third trial of good-nature will be the examining ourselves
whether or no we are able to exert it to our own disadvantage,
and employ it on proper objects, notwithstanding any little pain,
want, or inconvenience, which may arise to ourselves from it: in
a word, whether we are willing to risk any part of our fortune,
our reputation, our health or ease, for the benefit of
mankind. Among all these expressions of good nature, I
shall single out that which goes under the general name of
charity, as it consists in relieving the indigent: that being a
trial of this kind which offers itself to us almost at all times
and in every place.</p>
<p>I should propose it as a rule, to every one who is provided
with any competency of fortune more than sufficient for the
necessaries of life, to lay aside a certain portion of his income
for the use of the poor. This I would look upon as an
offering to Him who has a right to the whole, for the use of
those whom, in the passage hereafter mentioned, He has described
as His own representatives upon earth. At the same time, we
should manage our charity with such prudence and caution, that we
may not hurt our own friends or relations whilst we are doing
good to those who are strangers to us.</p>
<p>This may possibly be explained better by an example than by a
rule.</p>
<p>Eugenius is a man of a universal good nature, and generous
beyond the extent of his fortune; but withal so prudent in the
economy of his affairs, that what goes out in charity is made up
by good management. Eugenius has what the world calls two
hundred pounds a year; but never values himself above nine-score,
as not thinking he has a right to the tenth part, which he always
appropriates to charitable uses. To this sum he frequently
makes other voluntary additions, insomuch, that in a good
year—for such he accounts those in which he has been able
to make greater bounties than ordinary—he has given above
twice that sum to the sickly and indigent. Eugenius
prescribes to himself many particular days of fasting and
abstinence, in order to increase his private bank of charity, and
sets aside what would be the current expenses of those times for
the use of the poor. He often goes afoot where his business
calls him, and at the end of his walk has given a shilling, which
in his ordinary methods of expense would have gone for
coach-hire, to the first necessitous person that has fallen in
his way. I have known him, when he has been going to a play
or an opera, divert the money which was designed for that purpose
upon an object of charity whom he has met with in the street; and
afterwards pass his evening in a coffee-house, or at a
friend’s fireside, with much greater satisfaction to
himself than he could have received from the most exquisite
entertainments of the theatre. By these means he is
generous without impoverishing himself, and enjoys his estate by
making it the property of others.</p>
<p>There are few men so cramped in their private affairs, who may
not be charitable after this manner, without any disadvantage to
themselves, or prejudice to their families. It is but
sometimes sacrificing a diversion or convenience to the poor, and
turning the usual course of our expenses into a better
channel. This is, I think, not only the most prudent and
convenient, but the most meritorious piece of charity which we
can put in practice. By this method, we in some measure
share the necessities of the poor at the same time that we
relieve them, and make ourselves not only their patrons, but
their fellow-sufferers.</p>
<p>Sir Thomas Brown, in the last part of his “Religio
Medici,” in which he describes his charity in several
heroic instances, and with a noble heat of sentiments, mentions
that verse in the Proverbs of Solomon: “He that giveth to
the poor lendeth to the Lord.” There is more rhetoric
in that one sentence, says he, than in a library of sermons; and
indeed, if those sentences were understood by the reader with the
same emphasis as they are delivered by the author, we needed not
those volumes of instructions, but might be honest by an
epitome.</p>
<p>This passage of Scripture is, indeed, wonderfully persuasive;
but I think the same thought is carried much further in the New
Testament, where our Saviour tells us, in a most pathetic manner,
that he shall hereafter regard the clothing of the naked, the
feeding of the hungry, and the visiting of the imprisoned, as
offices done to Himself, and reward them accordingly.
Pursuant to those passages in Holy Scripture, I have somewhere
met with the epitaph of a charitable man, which has very much
pleased me. I cannot recollect the words, but the sense of
it is to this purpose: What I spent I lost; what I possessed is
left to others; what I gave away remains with me.</p>
<p>Since I am thus insensibly engaged in Sacred Writ, I cannot
forbear making an extract of several passages which I have always
read with great delight in the book of Job. It is the
account which that holy man gives of his behaviour in the days of
his prosperity; and, if considered only as a human composition,
is a finer picture of a charitable and good-natured man than is
to be met with in any other author.</p>
<p>“Oh that I were as in months past, as in the days when
God preserved me: When his candle shined upon my head, and when
by his light I walked through darkness: When the Almighty was yet
with me; when my children were about me: When I washed my steps
with butter, and the rock poured me out rivers of oil.</p>
<p>“When the ear heard me, then it blessed me; and when the
eye saw me, it gave witness to me. Because I delivered the
poor that cried, and the fatherless, and him that had none to
help him. The blessing of him that was ready to perish came
upon me, and I caused the widow’s heart to sing for
joy. I was eyes to the blind; and feet was I to the lame; I
was a father to the poor, and the cause which I knew not I
searched out. Did not I weep for him that was in
trouble? Was not my soul grieved for the poor? Let me
be weighed in an even balance, that God may know mine
integrity. If I did despise the cause of my man-servant or
of my maid-servant when they contended with me: What then shall I
do when God riseth up? and when he visiteth, what shall I answer
him? Did not he that made me in the womb, make him? and did
not one fashion us in the womb? If I have withheld the poor
from their desire, or have caused the eyes of the widow to fail;
Or have eaten my morsel myself alone, and the fatherless hath not
eaten thereof; If I have seen any perish for want of clothing, or
any poor without covering; If his loins have not blessed me, and
if he were not warmed with the fleece of my sheep; If I have
lifted my hand against the fatherless, when I saw my help in the
gate: Then let mine arm fall from my shoulder-blade, and mine arm
be broken from the bone. If I [have] rejoiced at the
destruction of him that hated me, or lifted up myself when evil
found him: Neither have I suffered my mouth to sin, by wishing a
curse to his soul. The stranger did not lodge in the
street; but I opened my doors to the traveller. If my land
cry against me, or that the furrows likewise thereof complain: If
I have eaten the fruits thereof without money, or have caused the
owners thereof to lose their life: Let thistles grow instead of
wheat, and cockle instead of barley.”</p>
<h2>A GRINNING MATCH.</h2>
<blockquote><p>—<i>Remove fera monstra</i>,
<i>tuæque</i><br />
<i>Saxificos vultus</i>, <i>quæcunque ea</i>, <i>tolle
Medusæ</i>.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Ovid</span>,
<i>Met.</i> v. 216.</p>
<p>Hence with those monstrous features, and, O! spare<br />
That Gorgon’s look, and petrifying stare.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Pope</span>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In a late paper, I mentioned the project of an ingenious
author for the erecting of several handicraft prizes to be
contended for by our British artisans, and the influence they
might have towards the improvement of our several
manufactures. I have since that been very much surprised by
the following advertisement, which I find in the <i>Post-boy</i>
of the 11th instant, and again repeated in the <i>Post-boy</i> of
the 15th:—</p>
<blockquote><p>“On the 9th of October next will be run for
upon Coleshill-heath, in Warwickshire, a plate of six guineas
value, three heats, by any horse, mare, or gelding that hath not
won above the value of £5, the winning horse to be sold for
£10, to carry 10 stone weight, if 14 hands high; if above
or under, to carry or be allowed weight for inches, and to be
entered Friday, the 5th, at the Swan in Coleshill, before six in
the evening. Also, a plate of less value to be run for by
asses. The same day a gold ring to be grinn’d for by
men.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The first of these diversions that is to be exhibited by the
£10 race-horses, may probably have its use; but the two
last, in which the asses and men are concerned, seem to me
altogether extraordinary and unaccountable. Why they should
keep running asses at Coleshill, or how making mouths turns to
account in Warwickshire, more than in any other parts of England,
I cannot comprehend. I have looked over all the Olympic
games, and do not find anything in them like an ass-race, or a
match at grinning. However it be, I am informed that
several asses are now kept in body-clothes, and sweated every
morning upon the heath: and that all the country-fellows within
ten miles of the Swan grin an hour or two in their glasses every
morning, in order to qualify themselves for the 9th of
October. The prize which is proposed to be grinned for has
raised such an ambition among the common people of out-grinning
one another, that many very discerning persons are afraid it
should spoil most of the faces in the county; and that a
Warwickshire man will be known by his grin, as Roman Catholics
imagine a Kentish man is by his tail. The gold ring which
is made the prize of deformity, is just the reverse of the golden
apple that was formerly made the prize of beauty, and should
carry for its poesy the old motto inverted:</p>
<blockquote><p><i>Detur tetriori</i>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Or, to accommodate it to the capacity of the combatants,</p>
<blockquote><p>The frightfull’st grinner<br />
Be the winner.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the meanwhile I would advise a Dutch painter to be present
at this great controversy of faces, in order to make a collection
of the most remarkable grins that shall be there exhibited.</p>
<p>I must not here omit an account which I lately received of one
of these grinning matches from a gentleman, who, upon reading the
above-mentioned advertisement, entertained a coffee-house with
the following narrative:—Upon the taking of Namur, amidst
other public rejoicings made on that occasion, there was a gold
ring given by a Whig justice of peace to be grinned for.
The first competitor that entered the lists was a black, swarthy
Frenchman, who accidentally passed that way, and being a man
naturally of a withered look and hard features, promised himself
good success. He was placed upon a table in the great point
of view, and, looking upon the company like Milton’s
Death,</p>
<blockquote><p>Grinned horribly a ghastly smile.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>His muscles were so drawn together on each side of his face
that he showed twenty teeth at a grin, and put the country in
some pain lest a foreigner should carry away the honour of the
day; but upon a further trial they found he was master only of
the merry grin.</p>
<p>The next that mounted the table was a malcontent in those
days, and a great master in the whole art of grinning, but
particularly excelled in the angry grin. He did his part so
well that he is said to have made half a dozen women miscarry;
but the justice being apprised by one who stood near him that the
fellow who grinned in his face was a Jacobite, and being
unwilling that a disaffected person should win the gold ring, and
be looked upon as the best grinner in the county, he ordered the
oaths to be tendered unto him upon his quitting the table, which
the grinner refusing, he was set aside as an unqualified
person. There were several other grotesque figures that
presented themselves, which it would be too tedious to
describe. I must not, however, omit a ploughman, who lived
in the further part of the county, and being very lucky in a pair
of long lantern jaws, wrung his face into such a hideous grimace
that every feature of it appeared under a different
distortion. The whole company stood astonished at such a
complicated grin, and were ready to assign the prize to him, had
it not been proved by one of his antagonists that he had
practised with verjuice for some days before, and had a crab
found upon him at the very time of grinning; upon which the best
judges of grinning declared it as their opinion that he was not
to be looked upon as a fair grinner, and therefore ordered him to
be set aside as a cheat.</p>
<p>The prize, it seems, fell at length upon a cobbler, Giles
Gorgon by name, who produced several new grins of his own
invention, having been used to cut faces for many years together
over his last. At the very first grin he cast every human
feature out of his countenance; at the second he became the face
of spout; at the third a baboon; at the fourth the head of a
bass-viol; and at the fifth a pair of nut-crackers. The
whole assembly wondered at his accomplishments, and bestowed the
ring on him unanimously; but what he esteemed more than all the
rest, a country wench, whom he had wooed in vain for above five
years before, was so charmed with his grins and the applauses
which he received on all sides, that she married him the week
following, and to this day wears the prize upon her finger, the
cobbler having made use of it as his wedding ring.</p>
<p>This paper might perhaps seem very impertinent if it grew
serious in the conclusion. I would, nevertheless, leave it
to the consideration of those who are the patrons of this
monstrous trial of skill, whether or no they are not guilty, in
some measure, of an affront to their species in treating after
this manner the “human face divine,” and turning that
part of us, which has so great an image impressed upon it, into
the image of a monkey; whether the raising such silly
competitions among the ignorant, proposing prizes for such
useless accomplishments, filling the common people’s heads
with such senseless ambitions, and inspiring them with such
absurd ideas of superiority and pre-eminence, has not in it
something immoral as well as ridiculous.</p>
<h2>TRUST IN GOD.</h2>
<blockquote><p><i>Si fractus illabatur orbis</i>,<br />
<i>Impavidum ferient ruinæ</i>.</p>
<p style="text-align: right">—<span
class="smcap">Hor</span>., Car. iii. 3, 7.</p>
<p>Should the whole frame of nature round him break,<br />
In ruin and confusion hurled,<br />
He, unconcerned, would hear the mighty crack,<br />
And stand secure amidst a falling world.</p>
<p style="text-align: right"><span class="smcap">Anon</span>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Man, considered in himself, is a very helpless and a very
wretched being. He is subject every moment to the greatest
calamities and misfortunes. He is beset with dangers on all
sides, and may become unhappy by numberless casualties which he
could not foresee, nor have prevented had he foreseen them.</p>
<p>It is our comfort, while we are obnoxious to so many
accidents, that we are under the care of One who directs
contingencies, and has in His hands the management of everything
that is capable of annoying or offending us; who knows the
assistance we stand in need of, and is always ready to bestow it
on those who ask it of Him.</p>
<p>The natural homage which such a creature bears to so
infinitely wise and good a Being is a firm reliance on Him for
the blessings and conveniences of life, and an habitual trust in
Him for deliverance out of all such dangers and difficulties as
may befall us.</p>
<p>The man who always lives in this disposition of mind has not
the same dark and melancholy views of human nature as he who
considers himself abstractedly from this relation to the Supreme
Being. At the same time that he reflects upon his own
weakness and imperfection he comforts himself with the
contemplation of those Divine attributes which are employed for
his safety and his welfare. He finds his want of foresight
made up by the Omniscience of Him who is his support. He is
not sensible of his own want of strengths when he knows that his
helper is almighty. In short, the person who has a firm
trust on the Supreme Being is powerful in His power, wise by His
wisdom, happy by His happiness. He reaps the benefit of
every Divine attribute, and loses his own insufficiency in the
fulness of infinite perfection.</p>
<p>To make our lives more easy to us, we are commanded to put our
trust in Him, who is thus able to relieve and succour us; the
Divine goodness having made such reliance a duty, notwithstanding
we should have been miserable had it been forbidden us.</p>
<p>Among several motives which might be made use of to recommend
this duty to us, I shall only take notice of these that
follow.</p>
<p>The first and strongest is, that we are promised He will not
fail those who put their trust in Him.</p>
<p>But without considering the supernatural blessing which
accompanies this duty, we may observe that it has a natural
tendency to its own reward, or, in other words, that this firm
trust and confidence in the great Disposer of all things
contributes very much to the getting clear of any affliction, or
to the bearing it manfully. A person who believes he has
his succour at hand, and that he acts in the sight of his friend,
often exerts himself beyond his abilities, and does wonders that
are not to be matched by one who is not animated with such a
confidence of success. I could produce instances from
history of generals who, out of a belief that they were under the
protection of some invisible assistant, did not only encourage
their soldiers to do their utmost, but have acted themselves
beyond what they would have done had they not been inspired by
such a belief. I might in the same manner show how such a
trust in the assistance of an Almighty Being naturally produces
patience, hope, cheerfulness, and all other dispositions of the
mind that alleviate those calamities which we are not able to
remove.</p>
<p>The practice of this virtue administers great comfort to the
mind of man in times of poverty and affliction, but most of all
in the hour of death. When the soul is hovering in the last
moments of its separation, when it is just entering on another
state of existence, to converse with scenes, and objects, and
companions, that are altogether new—what can support her
under such tremblings of thought, such fear, such anxiety, such
apprehensions, but the casting of all her cares upon Him who
first gave her being, who has conducted her through one stage of
it, and will be always with her, to guide and comfort her in her
progress through eternity?</p>
<p>David has very beautifully represented this steady reliance on
God Almighty in his twenty-third Psalm, which is a kind of
pastoral hymn, and filled with those allusions which are usual in
that kind of writing. As the poetry is very exquisite, I
shall present my reader with the following translation of it:</p>
<blockquote><p>I.</p>
<p>The Lord my pasture shall prepare,<br />
And feed me with a shepherd’s care;<br />
His presence shall my wants supply,<br />
And guard me with a watchful eye;<br />
My noonday walks He shall attend,<br />
And all my midnight hours defend.</p>
<p>II.</p>
<p>When in the sultry glebe I faint,<br />
Or on the thirsty mountain pant;<br />
To fertile vales and dewy meads<br />
My weary, wand’ring steps He leads;<br />
Where peaceful rivers, soft and slow,<br />
Amid the verdant landscape flow.</p>
<p>III.</p>
<p>Though in the paths of death I tread,<br />
With gloomy horrors overspread,<br />
My steadfast heart shall fear no ill,<br />
For thou, O Lord, art with me still;<br />
Thy friendly crook shall give me aid,<br />
And guide me through the dreadful shade.</p>
<p>IV.</p>
<p>Though in a bare and rugged way,<br />
Through devious, lonely wilds I stray,<br />
Thy bounty shall my pains beguile:<br />
The barren wilderness shall smile<br />
With sudden greens and herbage crowned,<br />
And streams shall murmur all around.</p>
</blockquote>
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