THE OBSERVER: BEING A COLLECTION OF MORAL, LITERARY AND FAMILIAR ESSAYS.
—MULTORUM PROVIDUS URBES
ET MORES HOMINUM INSPEXIT.—
(HORAT.)
VOL. V.
LONDON: PRINTED FOR C. DILLY IN THE POULTRY. M.DCC.XC.
CONTENTS OF THE FIFTH VOLUME.
NUMBER CXXVI. WRITTEN on the last day of the year 1789. Short review of the remarkable events within the period of that year, with some elegiac lines applicable to its history and character
Page
1
NUMBER CXXVII. The history of Ned Drowsy resumed
Page
8
NUMBER CXXVIII. The history concluded
Page
18
NUMBER CXXIX. Letter from Simon Sapling, describing his own character, the incidents that befel him on the death of his father, his marriages, and the characters of both his wives
Page
31
NUMBER CXXX. Walter Wormwood, an envious defamer, gives his own history in a letter to the Observer. Remarks thereupon, and a few lines on the passion of envy
Page
41
NUMBER CXXXI. The character of a flatterer pourtrayed in the adventures of Billy Simper
Page
52
NUMBER CXXXII. The adventures of Billy Simper concluded, and the flatterer reformed
Page
64
NUMBER CXXXIII. Observations on the various sorts of stile; examples adduced, and some hints submitted to young students
Page
75
NUMBER CXXXIV. Kit Cracker, a great dealer in the marvellous, describes himself and his adventures in a letter to the Observer
Page
86
NUMBER CXXXV. Letters from various correspondents, particularly from Gorgon, a self-conceited painter of the deformed and terrible
Page
96
NUMBER CXXXVI. Sketches of various characters in a populous country town
Page
105
NUMBER CXXXVII. The literary annals of Greece resumed, with an account of the new Comedy, and the several writers of that aera: Anecdotes of Menander
Page
115
NUMBER CXXXVIII. Various fragments of Menander translated
Page
125
NUMBER CXXXIX. Anecdotes of the poet Philemon, and a selection of his fragments
Page
136
NUMBER CXL. Anecdotes and fragments of Diphilus, of Apollodorus Gelous, of Philippidas and of Posidippus, writers of the new Comedy. General remarks upon the conclusion of the subject: The author defends himself against the charge of having attacked the moral doctrines of Socrates
Page
145
NUMBER CXLI. Remarks upon Aristophanes's attack upon Socrates, in the Comedy of the Clouds. The introductory scenes of that comedy translated, wherein the philosopher is exhibited on the stage
Page
154
NUMBER CXLII. The history of Nicolas Pedrosa, and his escape from the Inquisition in Madrid
Page
181
NUMBER CXLIII. The history of Nicolas Pedrosa continued
Page
193
NUMBER CXLIV. The history concluded
Page
205
NUMBER CXLV. Serious meditations upon the character of an infidel. Quotation from Bonnet's Philosophical and Critical Enquiries concerning Christianity. Translation of 139th Psalm
Page
214
NUMBER CXLVI. General observations on the social character. Certain rules recommended for the improvement of our manners and habits in society. Example of an egotist, and the rebuke which he received
Page
224
NUMBER CXLVII. Conversation in a Coffee-house, upon the Time past, compared with the Time present. The merits of the authors in each period candidly considered
Page
233
NUMBER CXLVIII. The Coffee-house debate on the aforesaid subject concluded
Page
241
NUMBER CXLIX. On the topic of procrastination: A letter from Tom Tortoise: The supposed form of a deed of conveyance to be signed by To-day, for making over sundry engagements to its successor
Page
253
NUMBER CL. Remarks upon anger. The character of Tom Tinder delineated and contrasted with that of Major Man-love
Page
262
NUMBER CLI. The origin and progress of poetry
Page
273
NUMBER CLII. Upon the effects of jealousy exemplified in the occurrences that happened in the family of Sir Paul Testy
Page
283
NUMBER CLIII. The story of Adelisa and Leander. Conclusion of the work with a short address from the Author to his readers
Page
296
THE OBSERVER.
No CXXVI.
Jam te premit nox.
HORAT.
I Am sitting down to begin the task of adding a new volume to these essays, when the last day of the year 1789 is within a few hours of its conclusion, and I shall bid farewell to this eventful period with a grateful mind for its having passed lightly over my head without any extraordinary perturbation or misfortune on my part suffered, gently leading me towards that destined and not far distant hour, when I, like it, shall be no more.
I have accompanied it through all those changes and successions of seasons, which in our climate are so strongly discriminated; have shared in the pleasures and productions of each, and if any little idle jars or bickerings may occasionally have started up betwixt us, as will sometimes happen to the best of friends, I willingly consign them to oblivion, and keep in mind only those kind and good offices, which will please on reflection, and serve to endear the memory of the deceased.
All days in twelve months will not be days of sunshine; but I will say this for
my friend in his last moments,
that I cannot put my finger upon one in the same century, that hath given birth to more interesting events, been a warmer advocate for the liberties and rights of mankind in general, or a kinder patron to this country in particular: I could name a day (if there was any need to point out what is so strongly impressed on our hearts) a day of gratulation and thanksgiving, which will ever stand forth amongst the whitest in our calendar.
Hic dies verè mihi festus atras
Eximet curas: ego nec tumultum,
Nec mori per vim metuam, tenente
Caesare terras.
HORAT.
This is indeed a festal day,
A day that heals my cares and pains,
Drives death and danger far away,
And tells me—Caesar lives and reigns.
Though
my friend in his last moments
hath in this and other instances been so considerate of our happiness, I am afraid he is not likely to leave our morals much better than he found them: I cannot say that in the course of my duty as an
Observer
any very striking instance of amendment hath come under my notice; and though I have all the disposition in life to speak as favourably in my friend's behalf as truth will let me, I am bound to confess he was not apt to think so seriously of his latter end as I could have wished: there was a levity in his conduct, which he took no pains to conceal; he did not seem to reflect upon the lapse of time, how speedily his
spring, summer,
and
autumn
would pass away and the
winter
of his days come upon him; like
Wolsey
he was not aware how soon the
frost, the killing frost would nip his root:
he was however a gay convivial fellow, loved his bottle and his friend, passed his time peaceably amongst us, and certainly merits the good word of every loyal subject in this kingdom.
As for his proceedings in other countries, it is not here the reader must look for an account of them; politics have no place in these volumes; but it cannot be denied that he has made many widows and orphans in Europe, been an active agent for the court of death, and dipped his hands deep in Christian and Mahometan blood. By the friends of freedom he will be celebrated to the latest time. He has begun a business, which, if followed up by his successor with equal zeal, less ferocity and more discretion, may lead to wonderful revolutions: there are indeed some instances of cruelty, which bear hard upon his character; if separately viewed, they admit of no palliation; in a general light, allowances may be made for that phrensy, which seizes the mind, when impelled to great and arduous undertakings; when the wound is gangrened the incision must be deep, and if that is to be done by coarse instruments and unskilful hands, who can wonder if the gash more resembles the stab of an assassin than the operation of a surgeon? An aera is now opened, awful, interesting and so involved in mystery, that the acutest speculation cannot penetrate to the issue of it: In short,
my friend in his last moments
hath put a vast machine in motion, and left a task to futurity, that will demand the strongest hands and ablest heads to compleat: in the mean time I shall hope that my countrymen, who have all those blessings by inheritance, which less-favoured nations are now struggling to obtain by force, will so use their liberty, that the rest of the world, who are not so happy, may think it an object worth contending for, and quote our peace and our prosperity as the best proofs existing of its real value.
Whilst my thoughts have been thus employed in reflecting upon the last day of an ever-memorable year, I have composed a few elegiac lines to be thrown into the grave, which time is now opening to receive his reliques.
The year's gay verdure, all its charms are gone,
And now comes old December chill and drear,
Dragging a darkling length of evening on,
Whilst all things droop, as Nature's death were near.
Time flies amain with broad-expanded wings,
Whence never yet a single feather fell,
But holds his speed, and through the welkin rings
Of all that breathe the inexorable knell.
Oh! for a moment stop—a moment's space
For recollection mercy might concede,
A little pause for man's unthinking race
To ponder on that world, to which they speed.
But, 'tis in vain; old Time disdains to rest,
And moment after moment flits along,
Each with a sting to pierce the idler's breast,
And vindicate its predecessor's wrong.
Though the new-dawning year in its advance
With hope's gay promise may entrap the mind,
Let memory give one retrospective glance
Through the bright period, which it leaves behind,
Aera of mercies! my wrapt bosom springs
To meet the transport recollection gives;
Heaven's angel comes with healing on his wings;
He shakes his plumes, my country's father lives.
The joyful tidings o'er the distant round
Of Britain's empire the four winds proclaim,
Her sun-burnt islands swell th' exulting sound,
And farthest Ganges echoes George's name.
Period of bliss! can any British muse
Bid thee farewell without a parting tear?
Shall the historian's gratitude refuse
His brightest page to this recorded year?
Thou Freedom's nursing mother shalt be stil'd,
The glories of its birth are all thine own,
Upon thy breasts hung th' Herculean child,
And tyrants trembled at its baby frown.
A sanguine mantle the dread infant wore,
Before it roll'd a stream of human blood;
Smiling it stood, and, pointing to the shore,
Beckon'd the nations from across the flood.
Then at that awful sight, as with a spell,
The everlasting doors of death gave way,
Prone to the dust Oppression's fortress fell,
And rescu'd captives hail'd the light of day.
Meanwhile Ambition chac'd its fairy prize
With moonstruck madness down the Danube's stream,
The Turkish crescent glittering in its eyes,
And lost an empire to pursue a dream.
The trampled serpent (Superstition) wreath'd
Her fest'ring scales with anguish to and fro,
Torpid she lay, then darting forward sheath'd
Her deadly fangs in the unguarded foe.
Oh Austria! why so prompt to venture forth,
When fate now hurries thee to life's last goal?
Thee too, thou crowned eagle of the north,
Death's dart arrests, though tow'ring to the pole.
Down then, Ambition; drop into the grave!
And by thy follies be this maxim shewn—
'Tis not the monarch's glory to enslave
His neighbour's empire, but to bless his own.
Come then, sweet Peace! in Britain fix thy reign,
Bid Plenty smile, and Commerce croud her coast;
And may this ever-blessed year remain
Her king's, her people's and her muse's boast.
No CXXVII.
I Am under promise to resume the history of my friend Ned Drowsy, from which I was obliged to break off in my last volume, No 122. The events, which have since occurred, shall now be related.
The reader will perhaps recollect that the worthy Hebrew, who assumes the name of Abrahams, had just concluded the narrative of his adventures, and that the next morning was appointed for a conciliatory interview between Mrs. Goodison and her father. Ned, whose natural indolence had now began to give place to the most active of all passions, had been so much agitated by the events of the day, that we had no sooner parted from honest Abrahams, than he began to comment upon the lucky incident of our rencontre with the old gentleman at the comedy; he seemed strongly inclined to deal with destiny for some certain impulses, which he remembered to have felt, when he was so earnest to go to the play; and declared with much gravity, that he went thither fully prepossessed some good fortune would turn up:
"Well, to be sure,"
said he,
"I ought to rejoice in the happy turn affairs have now taken, and I do rejoice; but it would have given me infinite delight to have fulfilled the plan I had in design for Mrs. Goodison's accommodation; she will now want no assistance from me; my little cottage will never have the honour of receiving her; all those schemes are at an end; Constantia too will be a great fortune, she will have higher views in life, and think no more of me; or, if she did, it is not to be supposed her grandfather, who so bitterly resented his daughter's match, will suffer her to fall into the offence."
I must confess I thought so entirely with my friend Ned in the concluding part of these remarks, that I could only advise him to wait the event of time, and recommend himself in the mean while as well as he could to Mr. Somerville, the grandfather of Constantia. Art and education, it is true, had not contributed much to Ned's accomplishments, but nature had done great things in his favour; to a person admirably, though not finically, formed, she had given a most interesting set of features, with such a striking character of benevolence and open honesty, that he might be said to carry his heart in his countenance: though there was a kind of lassitude in his deportment, the effect of habits long indulged, yet his sensibibility was ever ready to start forth upon the first call, and on those occasions no one would have regretted that he had not been trained in the school of the graces; there was something then displayed, which they cannot teach, and only nature in her happiest moments can bestow.
The next morning produced a letter from honest Abrahams, full of joy for the happy reconciliation now established, and inviting us to celebrate the day with Mrs. Somerville and the ladies at his house. This was an anxious crisis for my friend Ned; and I perceived his mind in such a state of agitation, that I thought fit to stay with him for the rest of the forenoon: he began to form a variety of conjectures as to the reception he was likely to meet from the old gentleman, with no less a variety of plans for his own behaviour, and even of speeches with which he was to usher in his first addresses; sometimes he sunk into melancholy and despair, at other times he would snatch a gleam of hope, and talk himself into transports; he was now, for the first time in his life, studiously contriving how to set off his person to the best advantage; his hair was fashionably drest, and a handsome new suit was tried on, during which he surveyed himself in the glass with some attention, and, as I thought, not entirely without a secret satisfaction, which, indeed, I have seen other gentlemen bestow upon their persons in a much greater degree, with much less reason for their excuse.
When he was compleatly equipt, and the time approached for our going,
"Alas!"
he cried,
"what does all this signify? I am but a clown in better clothes. Why was my father so neglectful of my education, or rather why was I so negligent to avail myself of the little he allowed me? What would I not give to redeem the time I have thrown away! But 'tis in vain: I have neither wit to recommend myself, nor address to disguise my want of it; I have nothing to plead in my favour, but common honour and honesty; and what cares that old hard-hearted fellow for qualities, which could not reconcile him to his own son-in-law? he will certainly look upon me with contempt. As for Constantia, gratitude, perhaps, might in time have disposed her heart towards me, and my zealous services might have induced her mother to overlook my deficiencies, but there is an end of that only chance I had for happiness, and I am a fool to thrust myself into a society, where I am sure to heap fresh fuel on my passion, and fresh misfortunes on my head."
With these impressions, which I could only sooth but not dispel, Ned proceeded to the place of meeting with an aching heart and dejected countenance. We found the whole party assembled to receive us, and though my friend's embarrassment disabled him from uttering any one of the ready-made speeches he had digested for the purpose, yet I saw nothing in Mr. Somerville's countenance or address, that could augur otherwise than well for honest Ned; Mrs. Goodison was as gracious as possible, and Constantia's smile was benignity itself. Honest Abrahams, who has all the hospitality, as well as virtues of his forefathers the patriarchs, received us with open arms, and a face in which-wide-mouthed joy grinned most delectably. It was with pleasure I observed Mr. Somerville's grateful attentions towards him and his good dame; they had nothing of ostentation or artifice in them, but seemed the genuine effusions of his heart; they convinced me he was not a man innately morose, and that the resentment, so long fostered in his bosom, was effectually extirpated. Mrs. Abrahams, in her province, had exerted herself to very good purpose, and spread her board, if not elegantly, yet abundantly: Abrahams, on his part, kept his wine and his tongue going with incessant gaiety and good-humour, and whilst he took every opportunity of drawing forth Ned's honest heart and natural manners to the best advantage, I was happy in discovering that they did not escape the intuition of Somerville, and that he made faster progress towards his good opinion, than if he had exhibited better breeding and less sincerity of character.
In the course of the evening the old gentleman told us he had determined upon taking his daughter and Constantia into the country with him, where he flattered himself Mrs. Goodison would recover her health and spirits sooner than in town, and at the same time gave us all in turn a pressing invitation to his house. Abrahams and his wife excused themselves on the score of business; but Ned, who had no such plea to make, nor any disposition to invent one, thankfully accepted the proposal.
The day succeeding, and some few others, were passed by Mrs. Goodison and Constantia at Mr. Somerville's in the necessary preparations and arrangements previous to their leaving London; during this time Ned's diffidence and their occupations did not admit of any interview, and their departure was only announced to him by a note from the old gentleman, reminding him of his engagement: his spirits were by this time so much lowered from their late elevation, that he even doubted if he should accept the invitation: love however took care to settle this point in his own favour, and Ned arrived at the place of his destination rather as a victim under the power of a hopeless passion, than as a modern fine gentleman with the assuming airs of a conqueror. The charms of the beautiful Constantia, which had drawn her indolent admirer so much out of his character and so far from his home, now heightened by the happy reverse of her situation, and set off with all the aids of dress, dazzled him with their lustre; and though her change of fortune and appearance was not calculated to diminish his passion, it seemed to forbid his hopes: in sorrow, poverty and dependance she had inspired him with the generous ambition of rescuing her from a situation so ill proportioned to her merits, and, though he had not actually made, he had very seriously meditated a proposal of marriage: He saw her now in a far different point of view, and comparing her with himself, her beauty, fortune and accomplishments with his own conscious deficiencies, he sunk into despair. This was not unobserved by Constantia, neither did she want the penetration to discern the cause of it. When he had dragged on this wretched existence for some days, he found the pain of it no longer supportable, and, ashamed of wearing a face of woe in the house of happiness, he took the hardy resolution of bidding farewell to Constantia and his hopes for ever.
Whilst he was meditating upon this painful subject one evening during a solitary walk, he was surprized to hear himself accosted by the very person, from whose chains he had determined to break loose; Constantia was unattended, the place was retired, the hour was solemn and her looks were soft and full of compassion. What cannot love effect? it inspired him with resolution to speak; it did more, it supplied him with eloquence to express his feelings.
Constantia in few words gave him to understand that she rightly guessed the situation of his mind; this at once drew from him a confession of his love and his despair—of the former he spoke little and with no display; he neither sought to recommend his passion, or excite her pity; of his own defects he spoke more at large, and dwelt much upon his want of education; he reproached himself for the habitual indolence of his disposition, and then, for the first time, raising his eyes from the ground, he turned them on Constantia, and after a pause exclaimed,
"Thank Heaven! you are restored to a condition, which no longer subjects you to the possible sacrifice I had once the audacity to hint at. Conscious as I am of my own unworthiness at all times to aspire to such a proposal, let me do myself the justice to declare that my heart was open to you in the purest sense; that to have tendered an asylum to your beloved mother, without ensnaring your heart by the obligation, would still have been the pride of my life, and I as truly abhorred to exact, as you could disdain to grant, an interested surrender of your hand: and now, lovely Constantia, when I am about to leave you in the bosom of prosperity, if I do not seem to part from you with all that unmixt felicity, which your good fortune ought to inspire, do not reproach me for my unhappy weakness; but recollect for once in your life, that your charms are irresistible, and my soul only too susceptible of their power and too far plunged into despair, to admit of any happiness hereafter."
At the conclusion of this speech Ned again fixt his eyes on the ground; after a short silence,
"I perceive,"
replied Constantia,
"that my observations of late were rightly formed, and you have been torturing your mind with reflections very flattering to me, but not very just towards yourself: believe me, Sir, your opinion is as much too exalted in one case, as it is too humble in the other. As for me, having as yet seen little of the world but its miseries, and being indebted to the benevolence of human nature for supporting me under them, I shall ever look to that principle as a greater recommendation in the character of a companion for life, than the most brilliant talents or most elegant accomplishments: in the quiet walks of life I shall expect to find my enjoyments."
Here Ned started from his reverie, a gleam of joy rushed upon his heart, by an involuntary motion he had grasped one of her hands; she perceived the tumult her words had created, and extricating her hand from his—
"Permit me,"
said she,
"to qualify my respect for a benevolent disposition by remarking to you, that without activity there can be no virtue: I will explain myself more particularly; I will speak to you with the sincerity of a friend—You are blest with excellent natural endowments, a good heart and a good understanding; you have nothing to do but to shake off an indolent habit, and, having youth at your command, to employ the one and cultivate the other: the means of doing this it would be presumption in me to prescribe, but as my grandfather is a man well acquainted with the world and fully qualified to give advice, I should earnestly recommend to you not to take a hasty departure before you have consulted him, and I may venture to promise you will never repent of any confidence you may repose in his friendship and discretion."
Here Constantia put an end to the conference and turned towards the house; Ned stood fixt in deep reflection, his mind sometimes brightening with hope, sometimes relapsing into despair: his final determination, however, was to obey Constantia's advice and seek an interview with Mr. Somerville.
No CXXVIII.
THE next morning, as soon as Ned and Mr. Somerville met, the old gentleman took him into his library, and when he was seated,
"Sir,"
said he,
"I shall save you some embarrassment if I begin our conference by telling you that I am well apprised of your sentiments towards my Constantia; I shall make the same haste to put you out of suspense by assuring you that I am not unfriendly to your wishes."
This was an opening of such unexpected joy to Ned, that his spirits had nearly sunk under the surprize; he stared wildly without power of utterance, scarce venturing to credit what he had heard; the blood rushed into his cheeks, and Somerville, seeing his disorder, proceeded:
"When I have said this on my own part, understand, young gentleman, that I only engage not to obstruct your success, I do not, nay I cannot, undertake to ensure it: that must depend upon Constantia; permit me to add, it must depend upon yourself."
Here Ned, unable to suppress his transports, eagerly demanded what there could be in his power to do, that might advance him in the good opinion and esteem of Constantia; such was his gratitude to the old gentleman for his kindness, that he could scarce refrain from throwing himself at his feet, and he implored him instantly to point out the happy means, which he would implicitly embrace, were they every so difficult, ever so dangerous.
"There will be neither hardship nor hazard,"
replied Mr. Somerville,
"in what I shall advise. Great things may be accomplished in a short time, where the disposition is good and the understanding apt: though your father neglected your education, it is no reason you should neglect yourself; you must shake off your indolence; and as the first step necessary towards your future comfort is to put yourself at ease in point of fortune, you must make yourself master of your own estate; that I suspect can only be done by extricating your affairs from the hands they are in; but as this is a business, that will require the assistance of an honest and able agent, I shall recommend to you my own lawyer, on whose integrity you may securely rely; he will soon reduce your affairs to such a system of regularity, that you will find it an easy business, and when you discover how many sources of future happiness it opens to you, you will pursue it as an employment of no less pleasure than advantage."
To this good advice Ned promised the fullest and most unreserved obedience; Mr. Somerville resumed his subject and proceeded:
"When you have thus laid the foundation in oeconomy, what remains to be done will be a task of pleasure: this will consist in, furnishing your mind and enlarging your experience, in short, Sir, rubbing off the rust of indolence and the prejudices of a narrow education: now for this important undertaking I have a friend in my eye, whose understanding, temper, morals and manners qualify him to render you most essential services: with this amiable and instructive companion I should in the first place recommend you to take a tour through the most interesting parts of your own country, and hereafter, as occasion shall serve, you may, or you may not, extend your travels into other countries: this is the best counsel I have to give you, and I tender it with all possible good wishes for your success."
A plan, proposed with so much cordiality and holding forth such a reward for the accomplishment of its conditions, could not fail to be embraced with ardour by the late despairing lover of Constantia. The worthy lawyer was prepared for the undertaking, and Ned was all impatience to convince Mr. Somerville, that indolence was no longer his ruling defect. He gave instant orders for his journey, and then flew to Constantia, at whose feet he poured forth the humble, yet ardent, acknowledgments of a heart overflowing with gratitude and love: it seemed as if love's arrow, like
Ithuriel
's spear, possessed the magic powers of transformation with a touch: there was a spirit in his eyes, an energy in his motions, an illumination over his whole person, that gave his form and features a new cast: Constantia saw the sudden transformation with surprize, and as it evinced the flexibility of his nature and the influence of her own charms, she saw it also with delight:
"So soon!"
was her only reply, when he announced his immediate departure, but those words were uttered with such a cadence and accompanied by such a look, as to the eye and ear of love conveyed more meaning than volumes would contain, unaided by such expression—
"Yes, adorable Constantia,"
he exclaimed,
"I am now setting forth to give the earliest proof in my power of a ready and alert obedience to the dictates of my best adviser; these few moments, which your condescension indulges me with, are the only moments I shall not rigidly devote to the immediate duties of my task: inspired with the hope of returning less unworthy of your attention, I chearfully submit to banish myself from your sight for a time, content to cherish in my heart the lovely image there imprest, and flattering myself I have the sanction of your good wishes for the success of my undertaking."
Constantia assured him he had her good wishes for every happiness in life, and, then yielding her hand to him, he tenderly pressed it to his lips and departed.
It would be an uninteresting detail to enumerate the arrangements, which Ned by the instructions of his friendly and judicious agent adopted on his return to Poppy-hall. His affairs had indeed been much neglected, but they were not embarrassed, so that they were easily put into such order and regulation, as gave him full leisure for pursuing other objects of a more animating nature: with this view he returned to his friend Mr. Somerville, and was again blest with the presence of Constantia, to whom every day seemed to add new graces: he was welcomed by all parties in the most affectionate manmer; Mr. Somerville, upon conversing with his lawyer, received a very flattering report of Ned's activity and attention, nor was he displeased to hear from the same authority, that his estate and property far exceeded any amount, which the unpretending owner himself had ever hinted at.
It was now the latter end of April, and Ned had allowed himself only a few days to prepare for his tour, and to form an acquaintance with the amiable person, who at Mr. Somerville's request had engaged to accompany him; their plan was to employ six months in this excursion through England and part of Scotland, during which they were to visit the chief towns and principal manufactories, and Mr. Somerville had further contrived to lay out their course, so as to fall in with the houses of some of his friends by the way, where he had secured them a welcome in such societies, as promised no less profit than amusement to a young person in the pursuit of experience. Measures had been taken to provide equipage, servants and all things requisite for a travelling establishment, amongst which a few well-selected books were not forgotten, and, thus at length equipt, Ned with his companion, on the first morning of the month of May, having taken leave of Mr. Somerville and Mrs. Goodison, and received a tender adieu from his beloved Constantia, slept reluctantly into his chaise, and left the finest eyes in the creation to pay the tribute of a tear to the sorrows of the scene.
From this period I had heard nothing of his proceedings till a few days ago, when I was favoured by him with the following letter, dated from the house of Mr. Somerville:
Dear Sir,
I am just returned from a six months tour, in the course of which I have visited a variety of places and persons in company with a gentleman, from whose pleasing society I have reaped the highest enjoyment, and, if I do not deceive myself, no small degree of profit and instruction.
Before I sate out upon this excursion I had the satisfaction of seeing my private affairs put in such a train, and arranged upon so clear a system, that I find myself in possession of a fund of occupation for the rest of my days in superintending the concerns of my estate, and interesting myself in the welfare and prosperity of every person, who depends upon me.
When I returned to this charming place, the reception I met with from Mr. Somerville was as flattering as can be conceived; the worthy mother of my beloved Constantia was no less kind to me; but in what words can I attempt to convey to you the impression I felt on my heart, when I was welcomed with smiles of approbation by the ever-adorable object of my affection? What transport did it give me, when I found her anxious to enquire into every circumstance, that had occured in the course of my travels! none were too minute for her notice; she seemed to take an interest in every thing that had happened to me, and our conversations were renewed time after time without weariness on her part, or any prospect of exhausting our subject.
At this time I had no other expectation but of a second excursion with the conductor of the first, and as that gentleman was in frequent conference with Mr. Somerville, I took for granted they were concerting the plan of a foreign tour; and though my heart was every hour more and more fondly attached to Constantia, so that a separation from her was painful to reflect on, yet I was resolved at all events not to swerve from my engagements with her grandfather, and therefore held myself in trembling expectation of another summons to go forth: delightfully as the hours passed away in her society, I dreaded lest any symptoms of self-indulgence should lower me in her opinion, or create suspicions in Mr. Somerville and Mrs. Goodison that I was in any danger of relapsing into my former indolence: I therefore seized the first opportunity of explaining myself to those respectable friends, when Constantia was not present, and, addressing myself to Mr. Somerville, assured him that I was not disposed to forget any part of his good advice, nor so much my own enemy as to evade any one of those conditions, to the performance of which he had annexed the hope of so transcendant a reward: conscious that he could impose nothing upon me so hard to do, or so painful to suffer, which such a prize would not infinitely overbalance, I had no other backwardness or apprehension as to his commands, but what sprung from the conviction, that after all my efforts I must ever remain unworthy of Constantia.
I shall never forget Mr. Somerville's reply, nor the action which accompanied it. My good friend, said he, (leaning over the arm of the chair, and kindly taking me by the hand) it is more than enough for a man to have made one such fatal error in his life as I have done, one such unhappy sacrifice to the false opinions of the world; but though I have heartily repented of this error, I am not so far reformed, as to be without ambition in the choice of a husband for our Constantia; no, Sir, I am still as ambitious as ever, but I hope with better judgment and upon better principles: I will not bate an atom of virtue in the bargain I am to make; I insist upon the good qualities of the heart and temper to the last scruple; these are the essentials which I rigidly exact, and all these you possess; there are indeed other, many other, incidental articles, which you may, or you may not, superadd to the account; but I am contented to strike hands with you on the spot, though you shall never have set foot upon foreign soil.—What says my daughter to this?
When I cast my eyes upon the countenance of the most benevolent of women, and saw it turned expressively upon me, smiling through tears, joy palpitated at my heart, whilst she delivered herself as follows:—I were of all beings most insensible, could I withhold my testimony to this gentleman's merits, or my entire assent to his alliance with my daughter; but as I have ever reposed perfect confidence in her, and, as far as I was enabled, always consulted her wishes, I should be glad this question might be fairly and candidly referred to her unbiassed judgment for decision: she is very young; our friend here is neither old in years nor experience; both parties have time before them; should she be willing to hold off from the married state for a while, should she foresee advantages in our friend's undertaking a second tour with the same instructive associate, (whether into foreign countries or nearer home) let her be the judge of what is most likely to conduce to her future happiness in a husband, and as I am persuaded our friend here will practicse no unfair measures for biassing her judgment, let him consult Constantia's wishes on the case, and as she determines so let him act, and so let us agree.
With these instructions, which Mr Somerville seconded, I hastened to Constantia, and without hesitation or disguise related to her what had passed and requested her decision. Judge (if it be possible to judge) of my transports, when that ingenuous, that angelic creature gave me a reply, that left no room to doubt that I was blest in the possession of her heart, and that she could not endure a second separation.
I flew to Mr. Somerville; I fell at the feet of Mrs. Goodison; I interceded, implored and was accepted. Nothing ever equalled the generosity of their behaviour. I am now to change my name to Somerville, at that worthy gentleman's express desire, and measures are already in train for that purpose. The same abilities, which I am indebted to for the good condition of my affairs, are employed in perfecting the marriage settlement, and the period now between me and happiness would by any other person but myself be termed a very short one.
Thus am I on the very eve of being blest with the loveliest, the divinest object upon earth, and thus have I by the good counsel of my friends (in which number I shall ever reckon you) broke the shackles of that unmanly indolence, under which I was sinking apace into irretrievable languor and insignificance. Henceforward I entreat you to regard me as a new man, and believe that with my name I have put off my infirmity. We are in daily expectation of our friendly Abrahams, who is
an Israelite indeed:
your company would round our circle and complete the happiness of
Your ever affectionate EDWARD.
No CXXIX.
Facilitas Animi ad partem stultitiae rapit.
(P. SYRUS.)
TO THE OBSERVER.
Sir,
THE antient family of the
Saplings,
whereof your humble servant is the unworthy representative, has been for many generations distinguished for a certain pliability of temper, which with some people passes for good-humour, and by others is called weakness; but however the world may differ in describing it, there seems a general agreement in the manner of making use of it.
Our family estate, though far from contemptible, is considerably reduced from its antient spendor, not only by an unlucky tumble that my grandfather Sir Paul got in the famous Missisippi scheme, but also by various losses, bad debts and incautious securities, which have fallen heavy upon the purses of my predecessors at different times; but as every man must pay for his good character, I dare say they did not repent of their purchase, and for my part it is a reflection that never gives me any disturbance. This aforesaid grandfather of mine was supposed to have furnished
Congreve
with the hint for his character of
Sir Paul Pliant,
at least it hath been so whispered to me very frequently by my aunt Jemima, who was a great collector of family anecdotes; and, to speak the truth, I am not totally without suspicion, that a certain ingenious author, lately deceased, had an eye towards my insignificant self in the dramatic pourtrait of his
Good-natured Man.
Though I scorn the notion of setting myself off to the public and you by panegyrics of my own penning, (as the manner of some is) yet I may truly say without boasting, that I had the character at school of being the very best
fag
that ever came into it; and this I believe every gentleman, who was my contemporary at
Westminster,
will do me the justice to acknowledge: it was a reputation I confess that I did not earn for nothing, for whilst I worked the clothes off my back and the skin off my bones in scouting upon every body's errands, I was pummeled to a mummy by the boys,
shewed up
by the ushers, slead alive by the masters and reported for an incorrigible dunce at my book; a report, which under correction I must think had some degree of injustice in it, as it was impossible for me to learn a book I was never allowed to open: in this period of my education I took little food and less sleep, so that, whilst I shot up in stature after the manner of my progenitors, who were a tall race of men, I grew as gaunt as a grey-hound, but having abundantly more spirit than strength, and being
voted
by the great boys to to be what is called
True game,
I was singled out as a kind of trial-cock, and pitted against every new comer to make proof of his bottom in fair fighting, though I may safely say I never turned out upon a quarrel of my own making in all my life. Notwithstanding all these honours, which I obtained from my colleagues, I will not attempt to disguise from you that I left the school in disgrace, being expelled by the master, when head of my boarding house, for not supporting my authority over the petty boys belonging to it, who I must confess were just then not in the most orderly and correct state of discipline.
My father, whose maxim it was never to let trifles vex him, received me with all the good humour in life, and admitted me of the university of Oxford: here I was overjoyed to find that the affair of the expulsion was so far from having prejudiced my contemporaries against me, that I was resorted to by numbers, whose time hung upon their hands, and my rooms became the rendezvous of all the loungers in the college: few or no schemes were set on foot without me, and if a loose guinea or two was wanted for the purpose, every body knew where to have it: I was allowed a horse for my health's sake, which was rather delicate, but I cannot say my health was much the better for him, as I never mounted his back above once or twice, whilst my friends kept him in exercise morning and evening, as long as he lasted, which indeed was only till the hunting season set in, when the currier had his hide, and his flesh went to the kennel. I must own I did not excel in any of my academical exercises, save that of circumambulating the colleges and public buildings with strangers, who came to gaze about them for curiosity's sake; in this branch of learning I gained such general reputation as to be honoured with the title of
Keeper of the Lions
: neither will I disguise the frequent
jobations
I incurred for neglect of college duties, and particularly for non-attendance at chapel, but in this I should not perhaps have been thought so reprehensible, had it been known that my surplice never failed to be there, though I had rarely the credit of bearing it company.
My mother died of a cold she caught by attending some young ladies on a water-party before I had been a month in the world; and my father never married again, having promised her on her death-bed not to bring a stepdame into his family, whilst I survived: I had the misfortune to lose him when I was in my twenty-second year; he got his death at a country canvass for Sir Harry Osier, a very obliging gentleman and nearly related to our family: I attended my father's corpse to the grave, on which melancholy occasion such were the lamentations and bewailings of all the servants in the house, that I thought it but a proper return for their affection to his memory to prove myself as kind a master by continuing them in their several employs: this however was not altogether what they meant, as I was soon convinced every one amongst them had a remonstrance to make and a new demand to prefer: the butler would have better perquisites, the footman wanted to be out of livery, the scullion demanded tea-money, and the cook murmured about kitchen-stuff.
Though I was now a single being in the world, my friends and neighbours kindly took care I should not be a solitary one; I was young Indeed and of small experience in the world, but I had plenty of counsellors: some advised me to buy horses they wanted to sell, others to sell horses they wanted to buy: a lady of great taste fell in love with two or three of my best cows for their colour; they were upon her lawn the next day: a gentleman of extraordinary
virtù
discovered a picture or two in my collection, that exactly fitted his pannels: an eminent improver, whom every body declared to be the first genius of the age for laying out grounds, had taken measures for transporting my garden a mile out of my sight, and floating my richest meadow grounds with a lake of muddy water: as for my mansion and its appendages I am persuaded I could never have kept them in their places, had it not been that the several projectors, who all united in pulling them down, could never rightly agree in what particular spot to build them up again: one kind friend complimented me with the first refusal of a mistress, whom for reasons of oeconomy he was obliged to part from; and a neighbouring gentlewoman, whose daughter had perhaps stuck on hand a little longer than was convenient, more than hinted to me that Miss had every requisite in life to make the married state perfectly happy.
In justice however to my own discretion let me say that I was not hastily surprized into a serious measure by this latter overture, nor did I ask the young lady's hand in marriage till I was verily persuaded by her excessive fondness that there were no other means to save her life. Now whether it was the violence of her passion before our marriage, that gave some shock to her intellects, or from what other cause it might proceed I know not, certain however it is, that after marriage she became subject to very odd whims and caprices, and though I made it a point of humanity never to thwart her in these humours, yet I was seldom fortunate enough to please her; so that, had I not been sure to demonstration that love for me was the cause and origin of them all, I might have been so deceived by appearances as to have imputed them to aversion. She was in the habit of deciding upon almost every action in her life by the interpretation of her dreams, in which I cannot doubt her great skill, though I could not always comprehend the principles, on which she applied it; she never failed, as soon as winter set in, to dream of going to London, and our journey as certainly succeeded; I remember upon our arrival there the first year after our marriage, she dreamt of a new coach, and at the same time put the servants in new liveries, the colours and pattern of which were circumstantially revealed to her in sleep: sometimes, (dear creature!) she dreamt of winning large sums at cards, but I am apt to think those dreams were of the sort, which should have been interpreted by their contraries: she was not a little fond of running after conjurors and deaf and dumb fortune tellers, who dealt in figures and cast nativities; and when we were in the country my barns and outhouses were haunted with gypsies and vagabonds, who made sad havoc with our pigs and poultry: of ghosts and evil spirits she had such terror, that I was fain to keep a chaplain in my house to exorcise the chambers, and when business called me from home, the good man condescended so far to her fears, as to sleep in a little closet within her call in case she was troubled in the night; and I must say this for my friend, that if there is any trust to be put in flesh and blood, he was a match for the best spirit that ever walked: she had all the sensibility in life towards omens and prognostics, and though I guarded every motion and action, that mighty give any possible alarm to her, yet my unhappy awkwardnesses were always boding ill luck, and I had the grief of heart to hear her declare in her last moments, that a capital oversight I had been guilty of in handing to her a candle with an enormous winding-sheet appending to it was the immediate occasion of her death and my irreparable misfortune.
My second wife I married in mere charity and compassion, because a young fellow, whom she was engaged to, had played her a base trick by scandalously breaking off the match, when the wedding clothes were bought, the day appointed for the wedding and myself invited to it. Such transactions ever appeared shocking to me, and therefore to make up her loss to her as well as I was able, I put myself to extraordinary charges for providing her with every thing handsome upon our marriage: she was a fine woman, loved shew and was particularly fond of displaying herself in public places, where she had an opportunity of meeting and mortifying the young man, who had behaved so ill to her: she took this revenge against him so often, that one day to my great surprize I discovered that she had eloped from me and fairly gone off with him. There was something so unhandsome, as I thought, in this proceeding, that I should probably have taken legal measures for redress, as in like cases other husbands have done, had I not been diverted from my purpose by a very civil note from the gentleman himself, wherein he says—
"That being a younger son of little or no fortune, he hopes I am too much of a gentleman to think of resorting to the vexatious measures of the law for revenging myself upon him; and, as a proof of his readiness to make me all the reparation in his power in an honourable way, he begs leave to inform me, that he shall most respectfully attend upon me with either sword or pistols, or with both, whenever I shall be pleased to lay my commands upon him for a meeting, and appoint the hour and place."
After such atonement on the part of the offender, I could no longer harbour any thoughts of a divorce, especially as my younger brother the parson has heirs to continue the family, and seems to think so entirely with me in the business, that I have determined to drop it altogether, and give the parties no further molestation; for, as my brother very properly observes, it is the part of a christian to forget and to forgive; and in truth I see no reason why I should disturb them in their enjoyments, or return evil for good to an obliging gentleman, who has taken a task of trouble off my hands, and set me at my ease for the rest of my days; in which tranquil and contented state of mind, as becomes a man, whose inheritance is philanthropy, and whose mother's milk hath been the milk of human kindness, I remain in all brotherly charity and good will,
Your's and the world's friend, SIMON SAPLING.
No CXXX.
DEMOPHILI SENTENTIA.
He, who another's peace annoys,
By the same act his own destroys.
TO THE OBSERVER.
AS I have lived long enough to repent of a fatal propensity, that has led me to commit many offences, not the less irksome to my present feelings for the secrecy, with which I contrived to execute them, and as these can now be no otherwise atoned for than by a frank confession, I have resolved upon this mode of addressing myself to you. Few people chuse to display their own characters to the world in such colours as I shall give to mine, but as I have mangled so many reputations in my time without mercy, I should be the meanest of mankind if I spared my own; and being now about to speak of a person, whom no man loves, I may give vent to an acrimony, at which no man can take offence. If I have been troublesome to others, I am no less uncomfortable to myself, and amidst vexations without number the greatest of all is, that there is not one, which does not originate from myself.
I entered upon life with many advantages natural and acquired; I am indebted to my parents for a liberal education, and to nature for no contemptible share of talents: my propensities were not such as betrayed me into dissipation and extravagance: my mind was habitually of a studious cast; I had a passion for books, and began to collect them at an early period of my life: to them I devoted the greatest portion of my time, and had my vanity been of a sort to be contented with the literary credit I had now acquired, I had been happy; but I was ambitious of convincing the world I was not the idle owner of weapons, which I did not know the use of; I seized every safe opportunity of making my pretensions respected by such dabblers in the belles lettres, who paid court to me, and as I was ever cautious of stepping an inch beyond my tether on these occasions, I soon found myself credited for more learning, than my real stock amounted to. I received all visitors in my library, affected a studious air, and took care to furnish my table with volumes of a select sort; upon these I was prepared to descant, if by chance a curious friend took up any one of them, and as there is little same to be got by treading in the beaten track of popular opinion, I sometimes took the liberty to be eccentric and paradoxical in my criticisms and cavils, which gained me great respect from the ignorant, (for upon such only I took care to practise this chicanery) so that in a short time I became a sovereign dictator within a certain set, who looked up to me for second hand opinions in all matters of literary taste, and saw myself inaugurated by my flatterers censor of all new publications.
My trumpeters had now made such a noise in the world, that I began to be in great request, and men of real literature laid out for my acquaintance; but here I acted with a coldness, that was in me constitutional as well as prudential: I was resolved not to risk my laurels, and throw away the fruits of a triumph so cheaply purchased: solicitations, that would have flattered others, only alarmed me; such was not the society I delighted in; against such attacks I entrenched myself with the most jealous caution: If however by accident I was drawn out of my fastnesses, and trapped unawares into an ambuscade of wicked wits, I armed myself to meet them with a triple tier of smiles; I primed my lips with such a ready charge of flattery, that when I had once engaged them in the pleasing contemplation of their own merits, they were seldom disposed to scrutinize into mine, and thus in general I contrived to escape undetected. Though it was no easy matter to extort an opinion from me in such companies, yet sometimes I was unavoidably entangled in conversation, and then I was forced to have recourse to all my address; happily my features were habituated to a smile of the most convertible sort, for it would answer the purposes of affected humility as well as those of actual contempt, to which in truth it was more congenial: my opinion, therefore, upon any point of controversy flattered both parties and befriended neither; it was calculated to impress the company with an idea that I knew much more than I profest to know; it was in short so insinuating, so submitted, so hesitating, that a man must have had the heart of Nero to have persecuted a being so absolutely inoffensive: but these sacrifices cost me dear, for they were foreign to my nature, and, as I hated my superiors, I avoided their society.
Having sufficiently distinguished myself as a critic, I now began to meditate some secret attempts as an author; but in these the same caution attended me, and my performances did not rise above a little sonnet, or a parody, which I circulated through a few hands without a name, prepared to disavow it, if it was not applauded to my wishes: I also wrote occasional essays and paragraphs for the public prints, by way of trying my talents in various kinds of stile; by these experiments I acquired a certain facility of imitating other people's manner and disguising my own, and so far my point was gained; but as for the secret satisfaction I had promised myself in hearing my productions applauded, of that I was altogether disappointed; for though I tried both praise and dispraise for the purpose of bringing them into notice, I never had the pleasure to be contradicted by any man in the latter case, or seconded by a living soul in the former: I had circulated a little poem, which cost me some pains, and as I had been flattered with the applause it gained from several of its readers, I put it one evening in my pocket, and went to the house of a certain person, who was much resorted to by men of genius: an opportunity luckily offered for producing my manuscript, which I was prepared to avow as soon as the company present had given sentence in its favour: it was put into the hands of a dramatic author of some celebrity, who read it aloud, and in a manner as I thought that clearly anticipated his disgust: as soon therefore as he had finished it and demanded of me if I knew the author, I had no hesitation to declare that I did not—Then I presume, rejoined he, it is no offence to say I think it the merest trash I ever read—None in life, I replied, and from that moment held him in everlasting hatred.
Disgusted with the world I now began to dip my pen in gall, and as soon as I had singled out a proper object for my spleen, I looked round him for his weak side, where I could place a blow to best effect, and wound him undiscovered: the author abovementioned had a full share of my attention; he was an irritable man, and I have seen him agonized with the pain, which my very shafts had given him, whilst I was foremost to arraign the scurrility of the age and encourage him to disregard it: the practise I had been in of masking my stile facilitated my attacks upon every body, who either moved my envy, or provoked my spleen.
The meanest of all passions had now taken entire possession of my heart, and I surrendered myself to it without a struggle: still there was a consciousness about me, that sunk me in my own esteem, and when I met the eye of a man, whom I had secretly defamed; I felt abashed society became painful to me; and I shrunk into retirement, for my self-esteem was lost; though I had gratified my malice, I had destroyed my comfort; I now contemplated myself a solitary being at the very moment when I had every requisite of fortune, health and endowments to have recommended me to the world, and to those tender ties and engagements, which are natural to man and constitute his best enjoyments.
The solitude, I resorted to, made me every day more morose, and supplied me with reflections that rendered me intolerable to myself and unfit for society. I had reason to apprehend, in spite of all my caution, that I was now narrowly watched, and that strong suspicions were taken up against me; when as I was feasting my jaundiced eye one morning with a certain newspaper, which I was in the habit of employing as the vehicle of my venom, I was startled at discovering myself conspicuously pointed out in an angry column as a cowardly defamer, and menaced with personal chastisement, as soon as ever proofs could be obtained against me; and this threatening denunciation evidently came from the very author, who had unknowingly given me such umbrage, when he recited my poem.
The sight of this resentful paragraph was like an arrow to my brain: habituated to skirmish only behind entrenchments, I was ill prepared to turn into the open field, and had never put the question to my heart, how it was provided for the emergency: In early life I had not any reason to suspect my courage, nay it was rather forward to meet occasions in those days of innocence; but the meanness, I had lately sunk into, had sapped every manly principle of my nature, and I now discovered to my sorrow, that in taking up the lurking malice of an assassin, I had lost the gallant spirit of a gentleman.
There was still one alleviation to my terrors: it so chanced that I was not the author of the particular libel, which my accuser had imputed to me; and though I had been father of a thousand others, I felt myself supported by truth in almost the only charge, against which I could have fairly appealed to it. It seemed to me therefore adviseable to lose no time in disculpating myself from the accusation, yet to seek an interview with this irascible man was a service of some danger: chance threw the opportunity in my way, which I had probably else wanted spirit to invite; I accosted him with all imaginable civility and made the strongest asseverations of my innocence: whether I did this with a servility that might aggravate his suspicions, or that he had others impressed upon him besides those I was labouring to remove, so it was, that he treated all I said with the most contemptuous incredulity, and elevating his voice to a tone, that petrified me with fear, bade me avoid his fight, threatening me both by words and actions in a manner too humiliating to relate.
Alas! can words express my feelings? Is there a being more wretched than myself? to be friendless, an exile from society and at enmity with myself is a situation deplorable in the extreme: let what I have now written be made public; if I could believe my shame would be turned to others' profit, it might perhaps become less painful to myself; if men want other motives to divert them from defamation, than what their own hearts supply, let them turn to my example, and if they will not be reasoned, let them be frightened out of their propensity.
I am, Sir, &c. WALTER WORMWOOD.
The case of this correspondent is a melancholy one, and I have admitted his letter, because I do not doubt the present good motives of the writer; but I shall not easily yield a place in these essays to characters so disgusting, and representations so derogatory to human nature. The historians of the day, who profess to give us intelligence of what is passing in the world, ought not to be condemned, if they sometimes make a little free with our soibles and our follies; but downright libels are grown too dangerous, and scurrility is become too dull to find a market; the pillory is a great reformer. The detail of a court drawing-room, though not very edifying, is perfectly inoffensive; a lady cannot greatly complain of the liberty of the press, if it is contented with the humble task of celebrating the workmanship of her mantua-maker: as for such inveterate malice, as my correspondent
Wormwood
describes, I flatter myself it is very rarely to be found: I can only say, that though I have often heard of it in conversation, and read of it in books, I do not meet in human nature originals so strongly featured as their paintings: amongst a small collection of sonnets in manuscript, descriptive of the human passions, which has fallen into my hands, the following lines upon
Envy,
as coinciding with my subject, shall conclude this paper.
ENVY.
Oh! never let me see that shape again,
Exile me rather to some savage den,
Far from the social haunts of men!
Horrible phantom, pale it was as death,
Consumption fed upon its meager cheek,
And ever as the fiend essay'd to speak,
Dreadfully steam'd its pestilential breath.
Fang'd like the wolf it was, and all as gaunt,
And still it prowl'd around us and around,
Rolling its squinting eyes askaunt,
Wherever human happiness was found.
Furious thereat, the self-tormenting sprite
Drew forth an asp, and (terrible to sight)
To its left pap the envenom'd reptile prest,
Which gnaw'd and worm'd into its tortur'd breast.
The desperate suicide with pain
Writh'd to and fro, and yell'd amain;
And then with hollow, dying cadence cries—
It is not of this asp that
Envy
dies;
'Tis not this reptile's tooth, that gives the smart;
'Tis others' happiness, that gnaws my heart.
No CXXXI.
Alter in obsequium plus aequo pronus, et imi
Derisor lecti, sic nutum divitis horret,
Sic iterat voces, et verba cadentia tollit.
HORAT.
I Am bewildered by the definitions, which metaphysical writers give us of the human passions: I can understand the characters of
Theophrastus,
and am entertained by his sketches; but when your profound thinkers take the subject in hand, they appear to me to dive to the bottom of the deep in search of that, which floats upon its surface: if a man in the heat of anger would describe the movements of his mind, he might paint the tempest to the life; but as such descriptions are not to be expected, moral essayists have substituted personification in their place, and by the pleasing introduction of a few natural incidents form a kind of little drama, in which they make their fictitious hero describe those follies, foibles and passions, which they who really feel them, are not so forward to confess.
When Mr. Locke in his
Essay on the Human Understanding
describes all pity as partaking of contempt, I cannot acknowledge that he is speaking of pity, as I feel it: when I pity a fellow creature in pain (a woman, for instance, in the throes of childbirth) I cannot submit to own there is any ingredient of so bad a quality as contempt in my pity: but if the metaphysicians tell me that I do not know how to call my feelings by their right name, and that my pity is not pity properly so defined, I will not pretend to dispute with any gentleman, whose language I do not understand, and only beg permission to enjoy a sensation, which I call pity, without indulging a propensity, which he calls contempt.
The flatterer is a character, which the moralists and wits of all times and all nations have ridiculed more severely and more successfully than almost any other; yet it still exists, and a few pages perhaps would not be misapplied, if I was to make room for a civil kind of gentleman of this description, (by name
Billy Simper
) who, having seen his failings in their proper light of ridicule, is willing to expose them to public view for the amusement it is hoped, if not for the use and benefit, of the reader.
I beg leave therefore to introduce Mr.
Billy Simper
to my candid friends and protectors, and shall leave him to tell his story in his own words.—
I am the younger son of a younger brother: my father qualified himself for orders in the university of Aberdeen, and by the help of an insinuating address, a soft counter-tenor voice, a civil smile and a happy flexibility in the vertebrae of his back-bone, recommended himself to the good graces of a right reverend patron, who after a due course of attendance and dependance presented him to a comfortable benefice, which enabled him to support a pretty numerous family of children. The good bishop it seems was passionately fond of the game of chess, and my father, though the better player of the two, knew how to make a timely move so as to throw the victory into his lordship's hands after a hard battle, which was a triumph very grateful to his vanity, and not a little serviceable to my father's purposes.
Under this expert professor I was instructed in all the shifts and movements in the great game of life, and then sent to make my way in the world as well as I was able. My first object was to pay my court to my father's elder brother, the head of our family; an enterprize not less arduous than important. My uncle Antony was a widower, parsimonious, peevish, and recluse; he was rich however, egregiously self-conceited, and in his own opinion a deep philosopher and metaphysician; by which I would be understood to say that he doubted every thing, disputed every thing and believed nothing. He had one son, his only child, and him he had lately driven out of doors and disinherited for nonsuiting him in an argument upon the immortality of the soul: here then was an opening no prudent man could miss, who scorned to say his soul was his own, when it stood in the way of his interest: and as I was well tutored beforehand, I no sooner gained admission to the old philosopher, than I so far worked my way into his good graces, as to be allowed to take possession of a truckle-bed in a spare garret of the family mansion: envy must have owned (if envy could have looked asquint upon so humble a situation as mine was) that, considering what a game I had to play, I managed my cards well; for uncle Antony was an old dog at a dispute, and as that cannot well take place, whilst both parties are on the same side, I was forced at times to make battle for the good of the argument, and seldom failed to find Antony as compleatly puzzled with the zig-zaggeries of his metaphysics, as uncle
Toby
of more worthy memory was with the horn-works and counterscarps of his fortifications.
Amongst the various topics, from which Antony's ingenuity drew matter of dispute some were so truly ridiculous, that if I were sure my reader was as much at leisure to hear, as I am just now to relate them, I should not scruple the recital. One morning having been rather longwinded in describing the circumstances of a dream, that had disturbed his imagination in the night, I thought it not amiss to throw in a remark in the way of consolation upon the fallacy of dreams in general. This was enough for him to turn over to the other side and support the credit of dreams
totis viribus:
I now thought it adviseable to trim, and took a middle course between both extremes by humbly conceiving dreams might be sometimes true and sometimes false: this he contended to be nonsense upon the face of it, and if I would undertake to shew they were both true and false, he would engage to prove by sound logic they could be neither one nor the other:—
"But why do we begin to talk,"
added he,
"before we settle what we are to talk about? What kind of dreams are you speaking of, and how do you distinguish dreams?"—
"I see no distinction between them,"
I replied;
"Dreams visit our fancies in sleep, and are all, according to Mr. Locke's idea, made up of the waking man's thoughts."—
"Does Mr. Locke say that?"
exclaimed my uncle.
"Then Mr. Locke's an impostor for telling you so, and you are a fool for believing him: wiser men than Mr. Locke have settled that matter many centuries before he was born or even
dreamt
of; but perhaps Mr. Locke forgot to tell you how many precise sorts of dreams there are, and how to denominate and define them; perhaps he forgot that I say."
I confessed that I neither knew any thing of the matter myself, nor did I believe the author alluded to had left any clue towards the discovery.
"I thought as much,"
retorted my uncle Antony in a tone of triumph,
"and yet this is the man who sets up for an investigator of the human understanding; but I will tell you, Sir, though he could not, that there are neither more nor less than five several sorts of dreams particularly distinguished, and I defy even the seven sleepers themselves to name a sixth. The first of these was by the Greeks denominated
Oneiros,
by the Latins
Somnium,
(simply a
Dream
) and you must be asleep to dream it."
"Granted,"
quoth I.
"What is granted?"
rejoined the philosopher,
"Not that sleep is in all cases indispensable to the man who dreams."—
"Humph!"
quoth I.—My uncle proceeded.
"The second sort of dreams you shall understand was by the aforesaid Greeks called
Orama,
by the Latins
Visio,
or as we might say a
vision
; in this case take notice you may be asleep, or you may be awake, or neither, or as it were between both; your eyes may be shut, or they may be open, looking inwards or outwards or upwards, either with sight or without sight, as it pleases God, but the
vision
you must see, or how else can it rightly be called a vision?"
"True,"
replied I,
"there is a sect who are particularly favoured with this kind of visions."
"Prythee, don't interrupt me,"
said my uncle, and again went on.
"The third sort of dreams to speak according to the Greeks we shall call
Chrematismos,
according to the Latins we must denominate it
Oraculum,
(an
oracle
); now this differs from a
vision,
in as much as it may happen to a man born blind as well as to Argus himself, for he has nothing for it but to listen, understand and believe, and whatever it tells him shall come true, though it never entered into his head to preconceive one tittle of what is told him; and where is Mr. Locke and his waking thoughts here?"—
"He is done for,"
I answered,
"there is no disputing against an oracle."
"The fourth sort,"
resumed he,
"is the
Enuption
of the aforesaid Greeks and answers to the Latin
Insomnium,
which is in fact a dream and no dream, a kind of
resverie,
when a man doses between sleeping and waking and builds castles (as we say) in the air upon the ramblings of his own fancy."
"The fifth and last sort of dreams is by Greeks and Latins mutually stiled
Phantasma,
a word adopted into our own language by the greatest poet, who ever wrote in it: now this
phantasma
is a visitation peculiar to the first mental absence or slumber, when the man fancies himself yet waking, and in fact can scarce be called asleep; at which time strange images and appearances seem to float before him and terrify his imagination. Here then you have all the several denominations of dreams perfectly distinguished and defined,"
quoth the old sophist, and throwing himself back in his chair with an air of triumph, waited for the applause, which I was not backward in bestowing upon this pedantic farrago of dogmatizing dullness.
It will readily be believed that my uncle Antony did not fail to revive his favorite controversy, which had produced such fatal consequences to his discarded son: in fact he held fast with those antient philosophers, who maintained the eternity of this material world, and as he saw no period when men would not be in existence, no moment in time to come when mortality shall cease, he by consequence argued that there could be no moment in time, when immortality shall commence. There were other points respecting this grand stumbling-block of his philosophy, the human soul, upon which he was equally puzzled, for he sided with Aristotle against Plato in the unintelligible controversy concerning its power of motion: but whilst my uncle Antony was thus unluckily wedded to the wrong side in all cases, where reason ought to have been his guide, in points of mere quibble and sophistry, which reason has nothing to say to, and where a wise man would take neither side, he regularly took both, or hung suspended between them like Socrates in the basket.
Of this sort was the celebrated question—
Ovumne prius fuerit, an gallina
—viz:
"Whether the egg was anterior to the hen, or the hen to the egg."
—This enquiry never failed to interest his passions in a peculiar degree, and he found so much to say on both sides, that he could never well determine which side to be of: at length however, hoping to bring it to some point, he took up the cause of Egg versus Hen, and having composed a learned essay, published it in one of the monthly magazines, as a lure to future controversialists. This essay he had so often avowed in my hearing, and piqued himself so highly upon it, that I must have been dull indeed not to have understood how to flatter him upon it: but when he had found month after month slip away, and nobody mounting the stage upon his challenge, he felt angry at the contempt, with which his labours were passed over, and without imparting to me his purpose, furnished the same magazine with a counter-essay, in which his former argument was handled with an asperity truly controversial, and the hen was triumphantly made to cackle over the new-laid egg, decidedly posterior to herself.
I am inclined to think that if Antony had any partiality, it was not to this side; but as the second essay was clearly posterior to the first, (whatever the egg may have been to the hen) it had the advantage of being couched in all the spirit of a reply with an agreeable tinge of the malice of one, so that when at length it came down printed in a fair type, and respectfully posted in the front of the long-wisht-for magazine, his heart beat with joy, and calling out to me in a lofty tone of counterfeited anger, as he run his eye over it—
"By the horns of Jupiter Ammon,"
quoth he,
"here is a fellow has the confidence to enter the lists against me in the notable question of the egg."—
"Then I hope you will break that egg about his ears,"
replied I.—
"Hold your tongue, puppy, and listen,"
quoth the sophist and immediately began to read.
At every pause I was ready with a pooh! or a pish! which I hooked in with every mark of contempt I could give it both by accent and action. At the conclusion of the essay my uncle Antony shut the book and demanded what I thought of the author—
"Hang him,"
I exclaimed,
"poor, Grub-street Garreteer; the fellow is too contemptible for your notice; he can neither write, nor reason; he is a mere ignoramus, and does not know the commonest rules of logic: he has no feature of a critic about him, but the malice of one."—
"Hold your tongue,"
cried Antony, no longer able to contain himself,
"you are a booby; I will maintain it to be as fine an essay as ever was written."
—With these words he snatched up the magazine and departed: I saw no more of him that night, and early next morning was presented by a servant with the following billet—
"The Grub-street Garreteer finds himself no longer fit company for the sagacious
Mr. William Simper
; therefore desires him without loss of time to seek out better society than that of a
mere ignoramus, who does not know the common rules of logic:
one rule however he makes bold to lay down, which is, Never again to see the face of an impertinent upstart, called William Simper, whilst he remains on this earth."
A. S.
No CXXXII.
Sunt verba et voces, quibus hunc lenire dolorent
Possis, et magnam morbi deponere partem.
HORAT.
DRIVEN from my uncle Antony's doors by my unlucky mistake between the hen and her egg, my case would have been desperate, but that I had yet one string left to my bow, and this was my aunt
Mrs. Susanna Simper,
who lived within a few miles of my uncle, but in such declared hostility, that I promised myself a favorable reception, if I could but flatter her animosity with a sufficient portion of invective; and for this I deemed myself very tolerably qualified, having so much good-will towards the business, and no slight inducements to spur me to it.
My aunt, who was an aged maiden, and a valetudinarian, was at my arrival closeted with her apothecary: upon his departure I was admitted to my audience, in which I acquitted myself with all the address I was master of: my aunt heard my story through without interrupting me by a single word; at last, fixing her eyes upon me, she said,
"'Tis very well, child; you have said enough; your uncle's character I perfectly understand; look well to your own, for upon that will depend the terms you and I shall be upon."
—She now took up a phial from the table and surveying it for some time, said to me—
"Here is a nostrum recommended by my apothecary, that promises great things, but perhaps contains none of the wondrous properties it professes to have: the label says it is a carminative, sedative mixture; in other words, it will expel vapours and spasms, and quiet the mind and spirits: Do you think it will make good what it promises?"
—So whimsical a question put to me at such a moment confounded me not a little, and I only murmured out in reply, that I hoped it would—
"Take it then,"
said my aunt,
"as you have faith in it; swallow it yourself, and when I see how it operates with you, I may have more confidence in it on my own account."
—I was now in a more awkward dilemma than ever, for she had emptied the dose into a cup, and tendered it to me in so peremptory a manner, that, not knowing how to excuse myself, and being naturally submissive, I silently took the cup with a trembling hand, and swallowed its abominable contents.
"Much good may it do you, child,"
cried she,
"you have done more for me than I would for any doctor in the kingdom: Don't you find it nauseous to the palate?"
—I confest that it was very nauseous.—
"And did you think yourself in need of such a medicine?"—
"I did not perceive that I was."
"Then you did not swallow it by your own choice, but my desire?"
—I had no hesitation in acknowledging that.—
"Upon my word, child,"
she replied,
"you have a very accommodating way with you."
I was now fighting with the cursed drug, and had all the difficulty in life to keep it where it was. My aunt saw my distress, and smiling at it demanded if I was not sick: I confest I was rather discomposed in my stomach with the draught.—
"I don't doubt it,"
she replied;
"but as you have so civilly made yourself sick for my sake, cannot you flatter me so far as to be well, when I request it?"
I was just then struggling to keep the nausea down, and though I could not answer, put the best face upon the matter in my power.
A maid-servant came in upon my aunt's ringing her bell.—
"Betty,"
said she,
"take away these things; this doctor will poison us with his doses."—
"Foh!"
cried the wench,
"how it smells!"
"Nay, but only put your lips to the cup,"
said the mistress,
"there is enough left for you to taste it."—
"I taste it! I'll not touch it, I want none of his nasty physic."—
"Well, but though you don't want it,"
rejoined the mistress,
"taste it nevertheless, if it be only to flatter my humour."—
"Excuse me, madam,"
replied Betty,
"I'll not make myself sick to flatter any body."—
"Humph!"
cried my aunt,
"how this wench's want of manners must have shocked you, nephew William! you swallowed the whole dose at a word, she, though my servant, at my repeated command would not touch it with her lips; but these low-bred creatures have a will of their own."
—There was something in my aunt's manner I did not understand; she puzzled me, and I thought it best to keep myself on the reserve, and wait the further developement of her humour in silence.
We went down to supper; it was elegantly served, and my aunt particularly recommended two or three dishes to me; her hospitality embarrassed me not a little, for my stomach was by no means reconciled; yet I felt myself bound in good manners to eat of her dishes and commend their cookery; this I did, though sorely against the grain, and, whilst my stomach rose against its food, I flattered what I nauseated.
A grave, well-looking personage stood at the sideboard, with whom my aunt entered into conversation.—
"Johnson,"
said she,
"I think I must lodge my nephew in your room, which is warm and well-aired, and dispose of you in the tapestry chamber, which has not lately been slept in."—
"Madam,"
replied Johnson,
"I am ready to give up my bed to Mr. William at your command; but as to sleeping in the tapestry chamber you must excuse me."
"Why?"
replied my aunt,
"what is your objection?"
"I am almost ashamed to tell you,"
answered Johnson,
"but every body has his humour; perhaps my objection may be none to the young gentleman, but I confess I don't chuse to pass the night in a chamber, that is under an ill name."
"An ill name for what?"
demanded the lady.
"For being haunted,"
answered the butler,
"for being visited by noises, and rattling of chains and apparitions; the gentleman no doubt is a scholar and can account for these things; I am a plain man, and don't like to have my imagination disturbed, nor my rest broken, though it were only by my own fancies."
"What then is to be done?"
said my aunt, directing her question to me;
"Johnson don't chuse to trust himself in a haunted chamber; I shall have my house brought into discredit by these reports: Now, nephew, if you will encounter this ghost, and exorcise the chamber by sleeping in it a few nights, I dare say we shall hear no more of it. Are you willing to undertake it?"
I was ashamed to confess my fears, and yet had no stomach to the undertaking; I was also afraid of giving umbrage to my aunt, and impressing her with an unfavourable opinion of me; I therefore assented upon the condition of Johnson's taking part of the bed with me; upon which the old lady, turning to her butler, said,
"Well, Johnson, you have no objection to this proposal."
"Pardon me, madam,"
said he,
"I have such objections to that chamber, that I will not sleep in it for any body living."
"You see he is obstinate,"
said my aunt,
"you must even undertake it alone, or my house will lie under an ill name for ever."
"Sooner than this shall be the case,"
I replied,
"I will sleep in the chamber by myself."
"You are very polite,"
cried my aunt,
"and I admire your spirit: Johnson, light my nephew to his room."
Johnson took up the candle, but absolutely refused to march before me with the light, when we came into the gallery, where, pointing to a door, he told me that was my chamber, and hastily made his retreat down the stairs.
I opened the door with no small degree of terror and found a chamber comfortably and elegantly furnished, and by no means of that melancholy cast, which I had pictured to myself from Johnson's report of it. My first precaution was to search the closet; I then peeped under the bed, examined the hangings; all was as it should be; nothing seemed to augur a ghost, or (which I take to be worse) the counterfeit of a ghost. I plucked up as good a spirit as I could, said my prayers and turned into bed: With the darkness my terrors returned; I passed a sleepless night, though neither ghost, nor noise of any sort molested me.
"Why,"
said I within myself,
"could not I be as sincere and peremptory as Johnson? He takes his rest and is at peace, I am sleepless and in terrors: Though a servant by condition, in his will he is independant; I, who have not the like call of duty, have not the same liberty of mind: he refuses what he does not chuse to obey, I obey all things whether I chuse them or not; And wherefore do I this? Because I am a flatterer: And why did I swallow a whole nauseous dose to humour my aunt's caprice, which her own chamber-maid, who receives her wages, would not touch with her lips? Because I am a flatterer: And what has this flattery done for me, who am a slave to it? what did I gain by it at my uncle's? I was the echo of his opinions, shifted as they shifted, sided with him against truth, demonstration, reason and even the evidence of my own senses: Abject wretch, I sunk myself in my own esteem first, then lost all shadow of respect with him, and was finally expelled from his doors, whilst I was in the very act of prostituting my own judgment to his gross absurdities: And now again, here I am at my aunt's, devoted to the same mean flattery, that has already so shamefully betrayed me. What has flattery gained for me here? A bitter harvest truly I have had of it; poisoned by an infernal dose, which I had no plea for swallowing; surfeited by dainties I had no appetite to taste, and now condemned to sleepless hours within a haunted chamber, which her own domestic would not consent even to enter: Fool that I am to be the dupe of such a vapor as flattery! despicable wretch, not to assert a freedom of will, which is the natural right of every man, and which even servants and hirelings exercise with a spirit I envy, but have not the heart to imitate: I am ashamed of my own meanness; I blush for myself in the comparison, and am determined, if I survive till to-morrow, to assert the dignity of a man, and abide by the consequences."
In meditations like these night passed away, and the dawn of morning called me from my bed: I rose and refreshed my spirits with a walk through a most charming plantation: I met a countryman at his work—
"Friend,"
said I,
"you are early at your labour."—
"Yes,"
answered he,
"'tis by my labour I live, and whilst I have health and strength to follow it, I have nothing to fear but God alone."
So! thought I, here is a lesson for me; this man is no flatterer; then why do I worship what a clown despises?
I found my aunt ready for breakfast; she questioned me about my night's rest; I answered her with truth that I had enjoyed no rest, but had neither seen nor heard any thing to alarm me, and was persuaded there were no grounds for the report of her chamber being haunted.
"I am as well persuaded as yourself of that,"
she replied;
"I know 'tis only one of Johnson's whims; but people you know will have their whims, and it was great courtesy in you to sacrifice a night's rest to his humour: my servants have been spoilt by indulgence, but it is to be hoped they will learn better submission by your example."
There was a sarcastic tone in my aunt's manner of uttering this, which gave it more the air of ridicule than compliment, and I blusht to the eyes with the consciousness of deserving it.
After breakfast she took me into her closet, and, desiring me to sit down to a writing table,
"Nephew,"
says she,
"I know my brother Antony full well; he is a tyrant in his nature, a bigot to his opinions, and a man of a most perverted understanding, but he is rich and you have your fortune to make; he can insult, but you can flatter; he has his weaknesses, and you can avail yourself of them; suppose you write him a penitential letter."
—I now saw the opportunity present for exerting my new-made resolution, and felt a spirit rising within me, that prompted me to deliver myself as follows.
"No, madam, I will neither gratify my uncle's pride, nor lower my own self-esteem, by making him any submission; I despise him for the insults he has put upon me, and myself for having in some sort deserved them; but I will never flatter him or any living creature more; and if I am to forfeit your favour by resisting your commands, I must meet the consequences, and will rather trust to my own labour for support than depend upon the caprice of any person living; least of all on him."
"Heyday,"
cried my aunt,
"you refuse to write!—you will not do as I advise you?"
"In this particular,"
I replied,
"permit me to say I neither can, nor will, obey you."
"And you are resolved to think and act for yourself?"
"In the present case I am, and in all cases, let me add, where my honour and my conscience tell me I am right."
"Then,"
exclaimed my aunt,
"I acknowledge you for my nephew; I adopt you from this hour;"
and with that she took me by the hand most cordially;
"I saw,"
said she,
"or thought I saw, the symptoms of an abject spirit in you, and was resolved to put my suspicions to the test; all that has past here since your coming has been done in concert and by way of trial; your haunted chamber, the pretended fears of my butler, his blunt refusal, all have been experiments to found your character, and I should totally have despaired of you, had not this last instance of a manly spirit restored you to my esteem: you have now only to persist in the same line of conduct to confirm my good opinion of you, and ensure your own prosperity and happiness."
Thus I have given my history, and if the example of my reformation shall warn others from the contemptible character, which I have fortunately escaped from, I shall be most happy, being truly anxious to approve myself the friend of mankind, and the
Observer's
very sincere well-wisher.
WILL. SIMPER.
No CXXXIII.
Citò scribendo non fit ut bene scribatur; bene scribendo fit ut citò.
(QUINTIL. LIB. X.)
THE celebrated author of the
Rambler
in his concluding paper says,
I have laboured to refine our language to grammatical purity, and
to clear it from colloquial barbarisms, licentious idioms and irregular combinations: something perhaps I have added to the elegance of its construction, and something to the harmony of its cadence.
I hope our language hath gained all the profit, which the labours of this meritorious writer were exerted to produce: in stile of a certain description he undoubtedly excels; but though I think there is much in his essays for a reader to admire, I should not recommend them as a model for a disciple to copy.
Simplicity, ease and perspicuity should be the first objects of a young writer: Addison and other authors of his class will furnish him with examples, and assist him in the attainment of these excellencies; but after all, the stile, in which a man shall write, will not be formed by imitation only; it will be the stile of his mind; it will assimilate itself to his mode of thinking, and take its colour from the complexion of his ordinary discourse, and the company he consorts with. As for that distinguishing characteristic, which the ingenious essayist terms very properly
the harmony of its cadence
; that I take to be incommunicable and immediately dependant upon the ear of him, who models it. This
harmony of cadence
is so strong a mark of discrimination between authors of note in the world of letters, that we can depose to a stile, whose modulation we are familiar with, almost as confidently as to the hand-writing of a correspondent. But though I think there will be found in the periods of every established writer a certain peculiar tune, (whether harmonious or otherwise) which will depend rather upon the natural ear than upon the imitative powers, yet I would not be understood to say that the study of good models can fail to be of use in the first formation of it. When a subject presents itself to the mind, and thoughts arise, which are to be committed to writing, it is then for a man to chuse whether he will express himself in simple or in elaborate diction, whether he will compress his matter or dilate it, ornament it with epithets and robe it in metaphor, or whether he will deliver it plainly and naturally in such language as a well-bred person and a scholar would use, who affects no parade of speech, nor aims at any flights of fancy. Let him decide as he will, in all these cases he hath models in plenty to chuse from, which may be said to court his imitation.
For instance; if his ambition is to glitter and surprize with the figurative and metaphorical brilliancy of his period, let him tune his ear to some such passages as the following, where
Doctor Johnson
in the character of critic and biographer is pronouncing upon the poet
Congreve.
"His scenes exhibit not much of humour, imagery or passion: his personages are a kind of intellectual gladiators; every sentence is to ward or strike, the contest of smartness is never intermitted; his wit is a meteor playing to and fro with alternate coruscations."
If he can learn to embroider with as much spendor, taste and address as this and many other samples from the same master exhibit, he cannot study in a better school.
On the contrary, if simplicity be his object, and a certain serenity of stile, which seems in unison with the soul, he may open the
Spectator,
and take from the first paper of Mr.
Addison
the first paragraph, that meets his eye—the following for instance—
"There is nothing that makes its way more directly to the soul than
Beauty,
which immediately diffuses a secret satisfaction and complacency through the imagination, and gives a finishing to any thing that is great or uncommon: the very first discovery of it strikes the mind with an inward joy, and spreads a chearfulness and delight through all its faculties."
Or again in the same essay.
"We no where meet with a more glorious or pleasing show in nature than what appears in the heavens at the rising and setting of the sun, which is wholly made up of those different stains of light, that show themselves in clouds of a different situation."
A florid writer would hardly have resisted the opportunities, which here court the imagination to indulge its flights, whereas few writers of any sort would have been tempted on a topic merely critical to have employed such figurative and spendid diction, as that of Doctor Johnson; these little samples therefore, though selected with little or no care, but taken as they came to hand, may serve to exemplify my meaning, and in some degree characterize the different stiles of the respective writers.
Now as every student, who is capable of copying either of these stiles, or even of comparing them, must discern on which side the greater danger of miscarrying lies, as well as the greater disgrace in case of such miscarriage, prudence will direct him in his outset not to hazard the attempt at a florid diction. If his ear hath not been vitiated by vulgar habitudes, he will only have to guard against mean expressions, whilst he is studying to be simple and perspicuous; he will put his thoughts into language naturally as they present themselves, giving them for the present little more than mere grammatical correction; afterwards, upon a closer review, he will polish those parts that seem rude, harmonize them where they are unequal, compress what is too diffusive, raise what is low, and attune the whole to that general cadence, which seems most grateful to his ear.
But if our student hath been smitten with the turbulent oratory of the senate, the acrimonious declamation of the bar, or the pompous eloquence of the pulpit, and shall take the lofty speakers in these several orders for his models, rather than such as address the ear in humbler tones, his passions will in that case hurry him into the florid and figurative stile, to a sublime and swelling period; and if in this he excels, it must be owned he accomplishes a great and arduous task, and he will gain a liberal share of applause from the world, which in general is apt to be captivated with those high and towering images, that strike and surprize the senses. In this stile the Hebrew prophets write,
"whose discourse"
(to use the words of the learned
Doctor Bentley
)
"after the genius of the Eastern nations, is thick set-with metaphor and allegory; the same bold comparisons and dithyrambic liberty of stile every where occurring—For when
the Spirit of God came upon them,
and breathed a new warmth and vigour through all the powers of the body and soul; when by the influx of divine light the whole scene of Christ's heavenly kingdom was represented to their view, so that their hearts were ravished with joy, and their imaginations turgid and pregnant with the glorious ideas; then surely, if ever, their stile would be strong and lofty, full of allusions to all that is great and magnificent in the kingdoms of this world."
(Commencement Sermon.)
—And these flights of imagination, these effusions of rapture and sublimity will occasionally be found in the pulpit eloquence of some of our most correct and temperate writers; witness that brilliant apostrophe at the conclusion of the ninth discourse of
Bishop Sherlock,
than whom few or none have written with more didactic brevity and simplicity—
"Go,"
(says he to the Deists)
"go to your natural religion: Lay before her Mahomet and his disciples arrayed in armour and in blood, riding in triumph over the spoils of thousands and tens of thousands, who fell by his victorious sword: Shew her the cities, which he set in flames, the countries which he ravaged and destroyed, and the miserable distress of all the inhabitants of the earth When she has viewed him in this scene, carry her into his retirements; shew her the prophet's chamber, his concubines and wives; let her see his adultery, and hear him alledge revelation and his divine commission to justify his lust and oppression. When she is tired with this prospect, then shew her the blessed Jesus, humble and meek, doing good to all the sons of men, patiently instructing both the ignorant and perverse; let her see him in his most retired privacies; let her follow him to the mount, and hear his devotions and supplications to God; carry her to his table to view his poor fare, and hear his heavenly discourse: Let her see him injured but not provoked; let her attend him to the tribunal, and consider the patience with which he endured the scoffs and reproaches of his enemies: Lead her to his cross, and let her view him in the agony of death, and hear his last prayer for his persecutors—
Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.
"
This is a lofty passage in the high imperative tone of declamation; it is richly coloured, boldly contrasted and replete with imagery, and is amongst the strongest of those instances, where the orator addresses himself to the senses and passions of his hearers: But let the disciple tread this path with caution; let him wait the call, and be sure he has an occasion worthy of his efforts before he makes them.
Allegory, personification and metaphor will press upon his imagination at certain times, but let him soberly consult his judgment in those moments, and weigh their fitness before he admits them into his stile. As for allegory, it is at best but a kind of fairy form; it is hard to naturalize it and it will rarely fill a graceful part in any manly composition. With respect to personification, as I am speaking of prose only, it is but an exotic ornament, and may be considered rather as the loan of the muses than as the property of prose; let our student therefore beware how he borrows the feathers of the jay, lest his unnatural finery should only serve to make him pointed at and despised. Metaphor, on the other hand, is common property, and he may take his share of it, provided he has discretion not to abuse his privilege, and neither surfeits the appetite with repletion, nor confounds the palate with too much variety: Let his metaphor be apposite, single and unconfused, and it will serve him as a kind of rhetorical lever to lift and elevate his stile above the pitch of ordinary discourse; let him also so apply this machine, as to make it touch in as many points as possible; otherwise it can never so poise the weight above it, as to keep it firm and steady on its proper center.
To give an example of the right use and application of this figure I again apply to a learned author already quoted—
"Our first parents having fallen from their native state of innocence, the tincture of evil, like an hereditary disease infected all their posterity; and the leaven of sin having once corrupted the whole mass of mankind, all the species ever after would be soured and tainted with it; the vitious ferment perpetually diffusing and propagating itself through all generations."—
(Bentley, Comm. Sermon).
There will be found also in certain writers a profusion of words, ramifying indeed from the same root, yet rising into climax by their power and importance, which seems to burst forth from the overflow and impetuosity of the imagination; resembling at first sight what
Quintilian
characterises as the
Abundantia Juvenilis,
but which, when tempered by the hand of a master, will upon closer examination be found to bear the stamp of judgment under the appearance of precipitancy. I need only turn to the famous
Commencement Sermon
before quoted, and my meaning will be fully illustrated—
"Let them tell us then what is the chain, the cement, the magnetism, what they will call it, the invisible tie of that union, whereby matter and an incorporeal mind, things that have no similitude or alliance to each other, can so sympathize by a mutual league of motion and sensation. No; they will not pretend to that, for they can frame no conceptions of it: They are sure there is such an union from the operations and effects, but the cause and the manner of it are too subtle and secret to be discovered by the eye of reason; 'tis mystery, 'tis divine magic, 'tis natural miracle."
No CXXXIV.
(DEMOCRATES.)
Remember only that your words be true,
No matter then how many or how few.
TO THE OBSERVER.
I HAVE a habit of dealing in the marvellous, which I cannot overcome: Some people, who seem to take a pleasure in magnifying the little flaws to be found in all characters, call this by a name, which no gentleman ought to use, or likes to hear: The fact is, I have so much tender consideration for Truth in her state of nakedness, that, till I have put her into decent cloathing, I cannot think of bringing her into company; and if her appearance is sometimes so much altered by dress, that her best friends cannot find her out, am I to blame for that?
There is a matter-of-fact man of my acquaintance, who haunts me in all places and is the very torment of my life; he sticks to me as the thresher does to the whale, and is the perfect night-mare of my imagination; this fellow never lets one of my stories pass without docking it like an attorney's bill before a master in chancery: He cut forty miles out of a journey of one hundred, which but for him I had performed in one day upon the same horse; in which I confess I had stretched a point for the pleasure of out-riding a fat fellow in company, who by the malicious veracity of my aforesaid
Damper
threw me at least ten miles distance behind him.
This provoking animal cut up my success in so many intrigues and adventures, that I was determined to lay my plan out of his reach in a spot, which I had provided for an evil day, and accordingly I led him a dance into Corsica, where I was sure he could not follow me: Here I had certainly been, and knew my ground well enough to prance over it at a very handsome rate: I noticed a kind of sly leer in some of the company, which was pointed towards a gentleman present, who was a stranger to me, and so far from joining in the titter was very politely attentive to what I was relating. I was at this moment warm in the cause of freedom, and had performed such prodigies of valour in its defence, that before my story was well ended I had got upon such close terms with General Paoli, that, had my hearers been but half as credulous as they ought to have been, they might have set us down for sworn friends and inseparables: But here again, as ill luck would have it, my evil genius tapt me on the shoulder, and remarking that I principally addressed myself to the gentleman, whose politeness and attention were so flattering, said to me with a smile, that had the malice of the devil in it—
"Give me leave to introduce you to General Paoli here present."
—Death and confusion, what I felt! a stroke of lightning would have been charity compared to this.—My persecutor had not done with me—
I "am afraid you have forgot your old friend and familiar, who no doubt will be overjoyed at recognizing a brother warrior, who has performed such noble services jointly with himself in the glorious struggle for the liberties of his beloved country."
—Can I paint the shame I suffered at this moment? It is impossible; I can only say there is a generosity in true valour, which scorns to triumph over the fallen.—
"There were so many brave men,"
(said that gallant person in a tone I shall never lose the impression of)
"of whose services I shall ever preserve a grateful memory, but whose persons have slipt from my recollection, that I have only to entreat your pardon for a forgetfulness, which I desire you to believe is not my fault, but my infirmity."
—If a bottle had been vollied at my head, I could not have been more in need of a surgeon, than I was at this instant: I could never have suspected Truth of playing me such a jade's trick; I always considered her as a good-natured simple creature without gall or bitterness, and was in the habit of treating her accordingly; but this was such a specimen of her malice, that I fled out of her company as hastily as I could.
The very next morning I took my passage in the stage-coach for my native town in the north of England, heartily out of humour with my trip to Corsica; but even here I could not shake off old habits so far as to resist the temptation of getting into a post-chaise for the last stage, by which manoeuvre I took the credit of having travelled like a gentleman, and became intitled to rail against the post-tax and the expences of the road.
I was now voted into a club of the chief inhabitants of the place, and as I had no reason to believe the story of my late discomfiture had reached them, I soon recovered my spirits, and with them the amplifying powers of my invention. My stories for a considerable time were swallowed so glibly, and seemed to sit so easy on the stomachs of these natural, unsophisticated people, that I was encouraged to encrease the dose to such a degree, as seemed at length to produce something like a nausea with those I administered it to; especially with a certain precise personage of the sect of Quakers, one
Simon Stiff,
a wealthy trader and much respected for his probity and fair-dealing.
Simon
had a way of asking me at the end of a story—
But is it true?
—which sometimes disconcerted me, and considerably lessened the applauses, that the rest of the club had been accustomed to bestow upon my narratives.
One evening, when I had been describing an enormous shark, by which I had been attacked in one of my West-India voyages,
Simon Stiff,
lifting up both his hands in an attitude of astonishment, cried out—
"Verily, friend
Cracker,
thou drawest a long bow."
With an angry look I demanded the meaning of that expression.—
"I mean,"
replied
Simon,
"thou speakest the thing which is not."
"That is as much as to say I tell a lie."—
"Even so, friend, thou hast hit it,"
said
Simon
without altering his voice, or regarding the tone of rage I had thrown mine into: The steady serenity of his countenance put me down, and I suffered him to proceed without interruption—
"Thou hast told us many things, friend
Cracker,
that are perfectly incredible; were I to attempt imposing upon my customers in the way of traffic, as thou dost upon thy company in the way of talk, the world would justly set me down for a dishonest man. Believe me, thou mayest be a very good companion without swerving from the truth, nay, thou canst no otherwise be a good one than by adhering to it; for if thou art in the practice of uttering falsehoods, we shall be in the practice of disbelieving thee, even when thou speakest the truth, and so there will be an end of all confidence in society, and thy word will pass for nothing. I have observed it is thy vanity, that betrays thee into falsehood; I should have hoped thou wou'dst not have forgotten how thy falsehood betrayed thee into shame, and how we received and welcomed thee into our society, when thy friends in the metropolis had hooted thee out of their's. Think not thou canst establish a credit with us by the fictions of imagination; plain truths suit men of plain understandings. Had thy shark been as big again as thou wou'dst have us believe it was, what wou'dst thou have gained by it? Nothing but the merit of having seen a monster; and what is that compared to the risque of being thought a monster-maker? If thou wast snatched from the jaws of the animal by the hand of God, give God the praise: If thine own courage and address contributed to save thee, give Him still the praise, who inspired thee with those means of furthering his Providence in thy rescue; Where is the ground for boasting in all this? Sometimes thou wou'dst persuade us thou art a man of consequence, in the favour of princes and in the secrets of ministers: If we are to believe all this, thou dost but libel those ministers for letting such a babler into their councils, and if thou thinkest to gain a consequence with us thereby, thou art grievously deceived, friend
Cracker,
for we do not want to know what thou oughtest not to tell, and we despise the servant, who betrayeth his master's trust. As for wonders, what signifieth telling us of them? The time is full of wonders; the revolution of empires, the fall of despotism and the emancipation of mankind are objects, whose superior magnitude makes thy shark shrink into an atom. Had the monster gorg'd thee at a mouthful, how many thousands, nay tens of thousands have the voracious jaws of death devoured in a succession of campaigns, which have made creation melt? Didst thou escape the monster? what then; how can we have leisure to reflect upon thy single deliverance, when we call to mind the numbers of despairing captives, who have been liberated from the dungeons of tyranny? In a word, friend
Cracker,
if it is through a love for the marvellous thou makest so free with the sacred name of truth, thou dost but abuse our patience and thine own time in hunting after sharks and monsters of the deep; and if thou hast any other motive for fiction than the above, it must be a motive less innocent than what I have supposed, and in that case we hold thee dangerous to society and a disgrace to human nature."
Here he concluded, and though the length and deliberate solemnity of his harangue had given me time enough, yet I had not so availed myself of it as to collect my thoughts and prepare myself for any kind of defence: How to deal with this formal old fellow I knew not; to cudgel him was a service of more danger than I saw fit to engage in, for he was of athletic limbs and stature; to challenge him to a gentleman's satisfaction, being a Quaker, would have subjected me to universal ridicule: I rose from my chair, took my hat from the peg and abruptly quitted the room: Next morning I sent to cut my name out of the club, but behold! they had saved me that ceremony over-night, and I had once more a new set of acquaintance to go in search of.
In this solitary interim I strove to lighten the burthen of time by starting a correspondence with one of our public prints, and so long as I supplied it with anecdotes from the country, I may say without vanity there was neither fire nor flood, murder, rape nor robbery wanting to embellish it: I broke two or three necks at a horse-race without any detriment to the community, and for the amusement of my readers drove over blind beggars, drowned drunken farmers, and tossed women with child by mad bullocks, without adding one item to the bills of mortality; I made matches without number which the register never recorded; I was at the same time a correspondent at Brussels, a resident in Spain and a traveller at Constantinople, who gave secret information of all proceedings in those several places, and by the mysterious stile, in which I enveloped my dispatches, nobody could fix a falsehood on my intelligence, till I imprudently fought a battle on the banks of the Danube, after the armies were gone into winter quarters, which did the Turk no mischief, and effectually blasted me with the compiler, and him with the public.
I am now out of business, and, if you want any thing in my way to enliven your
Observers,
(which give me leave to remark are sometimes rather of the dullest) I shall be proud to serve you, being
Your very humble servant at command, KIT CRACKER.
N. B.
I do not want any thing in
Kit Cracker's
way; but though I decline the offer of his assistance, I willingly avail myself of the moral of his example.
No CXXXV.
A Writer of miscellaneous essays is open to the correspondence of persons of all descriptions, and though I think fit to admit the following letter into my collection, I hope my readers will not suppose I wish to introduce the writer of it into their company, or even into my own.
TO THE OBSERVER.
Sir,
As we hear a great deal of the affluence of this flourishing country, and the vast quantity of
sleeping cash,
as it is called, lockt up in vaults and strong boxes, we conceive it would be a good deed to waken some of it, and put it into use and circulation: we have therefore associated ourselves into a patriotic fraternity of circulators, commonly called pick-pockets: But with sorrow we let you know, that notwithstanding our best endeavours to put forward the purposes of our institution, and the great charges of providing ourselves with instruments and tools of all sorts for the better furtherance of our business, we have yet hooked up little except dirty handkerchiefs, leathern snuff-boxes, empty purses and bath-metal watches from the pockets of the public; articles these, let me say, that would hardly be received at the depôt of the patriotic contributors in Paris. Are these the symptoms of a great and wealthy nation? we blush for our country, whilst we are compelled by truth and candor to reply—They are not.
As we have a number of petty articles on hand, which will not pass in our trade, nothing deters us from putting them up to public cant, but the tax our unworthy parliament has laid upon auctions. I send you two or three papers, which a brother artist angled out of the pocket of a penniless gentleman the other night at the playhouse door; the one a letter signed
Urania,
the other
Gorgon
; they can be of no use to us, as we have nothing to do with
Urania
's virtue, nor stand in need of
Gorgon
to paint scenes, which we can act better than he describes; neither do we want his effigy of a man under the gallows to remind us of what we must all come to.
Your's, CROOK-FINGERED JACK.
The letter from
Urania
breathes the full spirit of that amiable ambition, which at present seems generally to inspire our heroines of the stage to accept of none but shining characters, and never to present themselves to the public but as illustrious models of purity and grace. If virtue be thus captivating by resemblance only, how beautiful must it be in the reality! I cannot however help pitying the unknown poet, whose hopes were dasht with the following rebuke.
Sir,
I have run my eye over your tragedy, and am beyond measure surprized you could think of allotting a part to me, which is so totally unamiable. Sir, I neither can, nor will, appear in any public character, which is at variance with my private one; and, though I have no objection to your scene of self-murder, and flatter myself I could do it justice, yet my mind revolts from spilling any blood but my own.
I confess there are many fine passages and some very striking situations, that would fall to my lot in your drama, but permit me to tell you, Sir, that until you can clear up the legitimacy of the child, you have been pleased therein to lay at my door, and will find a father for it, whom I may not blush to own for a husband, you must never hope for the assistance of your humble servant.
URANIA.
The other letter is addressed to the same unfortunate poet from an artist, who seems to have studied nature in her deformities only.
Dear Dismal,
I wait with impatience to hear of the success of your tragedy, and in the mean time have worked off a frontispiece for it, that you, who have a passion for the terrific, will be perfectly charmed with.
I am scandalized when I hear people say that the fine arts are protected in this country; nothing can be further from the truth, as I am one amongst many to witness. Painting I presume will not be disputed to be one of the fine arts, and I may say without vanity I have some pretensions to rank with the best of my brethren in that profession.
My first studies were carried on in the capital of a certain county, where I was born; and being determined to chuse a striking subject for my
debût
in the branch of portrait-painting, I perswaded my grandmother to sit to me, and I am bold to say there was great merit in my picture, considering it as a maiden production; particularly in the execution of a hair-mole upon her chin, and a wart under her eye, which I touched to such a nicety, as to make every body start, who cast their eyes upon the canvass.
There was a little dwarfish lad in the parish, who besides the deformity of his person, had a remarkable hare-lip, which exposed to view a broken row of discoloured teeth, and was indeed a very brilliant subject for a painter of effect: I gave a full-length of him, that was executed so to the life, as to turn the stomach of every body, who looked upon it.
At this time there came into our town a travelling show-man, who amongst other curiosities of the savage kind brought with him a man-ape, or Ourong-outong; and this person, having seen and admired my portrait of the little humpbacked dwarf, employed me to take the figure of his celebrated savage for the purpose of displaying it on the outside of his booth. Such an occasion of introducing my art into notice spurred my genius to extraordinary exertions, and though I must premise that the savage was not the best sitter in the world, yet I flatter myself I acquitted myself to the satisfaction of his keeper and did justice to the ferocity of my subject: I caught him in one of his most striking attitudes, standing erect with a huge club in his paw: I put every muscle into play, and threw such a terrific dignity into his features, as would not have disgraced the character of a
Nero
or
Caligula.
I was happy to observe the general notice, which was taken of my performance by all the country folks, who resorted to the show, and I believe my employer had no cause to repent of having set me upon the work.
The figure of this animal with the club in his paw suggested a hint to a publican in the place of treating his ale-house with a new sign, and as he had been in the service of a noble family, who from antient time have borne the
Bear and ragged staff
for their erest, he gave me a commission to provide him with a sign to that effect: Though I spared no pains to get a real bear to sit to me for his portrait, my endeavours proved abortive, and I was forced to resort to such common prints of that animal as I could obtain, and trusted to my imagination for supplying what else might be wanted for the piece: As I worked upon this capital design in the room, where my grandmother's portrait was before my eyes, it occurred to me to introduce the same hair-mole into the whiskers of Bruin, which I had so successfully copied from her chin, and certainly the thought was a happy one, for it had a picturesque effect; but in doing this I was naturally enough, though undesignedly, betrayed into giving such a general resemblance to the good dame in the rest of Bruin's features, that when it came to be exhibited on the sign-post all the people cried out upon the likeness, and a malicious rumour ran through the town, that I had painted my grandmother instead of the bear; which lost me the favour of that indulgent relation, though Heaven knows I was as innocent of the intention as the child unborn.
The disgust my grandmother conceived against her likeness with the ragged staff, gave me incredible uneasiness, and as she was a good customer to the landlord and much respected in the place, he was induced to return the bear upon my hands. I am now thinking to what use I can turn him, and as it occurs to me, that by throwing a little more authority into his features, and gilding his chain, he might very possibly hit the likeness of some lord mayor of London in his fur-gown and gold chain, and make a respectable figure in some city hall, I am willing to dispose of him to any such at an easy price.
As I have also preserved a sketch of my famous Ourong-Outong, a thought has struck me that with a few finishing touches he might easily be converted into a
Caliban
for
the Tempest,
and, when that is done, I shall not totally despair of his obtaining a niche in the Shakspere gallery.
It has been common with the great masters
Rubens, Vandyke,
Sir
Joshua Reynolds
and others, when they paint a warrior, or other great personage, on horseback, to throw a dwarf, or some such contrasted figure, into the back-ground: Should any artist be in want of such a thing, I can very readily supply him with my hare-lipped boy; if otherwise, I am not totally without hopes that he may suit some Spanish grandee, when any such shall visit this country upon his travels, or in the character of ambassador from that illustrious court.
Before I conclude I shall beg leave to observe, that I have a compleat set of ready-made devils, that would do honour to Saint Antony, or any other person, who may be in want of such accompaniments to set off the self-denying virtues of his character: I have also a fine parcel of murdered innocents, which I meant to have filled up with the story of Herod; but if any gentleman thinks fit to lay the scene in Ghent, and make a modern composition of it, I am bold to say my pretty babes will not disgrace the pathos of the subject, nor violate the
Costuma.
I took a notable sketch of a man hanging, and seized him just in the dying twitches, before the last stretch gave a stiffness and rigidity unfavourable to the human figure; this I would willingly accommodate to the wishes of any lady, who is desirous of preserving a portrait of her lover, friend or husband in that interesting attitude.
These,
cum multis aliis,
are part of my stock on hand, and I hope, upon my arrival at my lodgings in Blood-bowl-alley, to exhibit them with much credit to myself, and to the entire satisfaction of such of my neighbours in that quarter, as may incline to patronize the fine arts, and restore the credit of this drooping country.
Your's, GORGON.
No CXXXVI.
(MENANDER.)
Still to be tattling, still to prate,
No luxury in life so great.
THE humours and characters of a populous county town at a distance from the capital furnish matter of much amusement to a curious observer. I have now been some weeks resident in a place of this description, where I have been continually treated with the private lives and little scandalizing anecdotes of almost every person of any note in it. Having passed most of my days in the capital, I could not but remark the striking difference between it and these subordinate capitals in this particular: in London we are in the habit of looking to our own affairs, and caring little about those, with whom we have no dealings: here every body's business seems to be no less his neighbour's concern than his own: A set of tattling gossips (including all the idlers in the place male as well as female) seem to have no other employment for their time or tongue, but to run from house to house, and circulate their silly stories up and down. A few of these contemptible impertinents I shall now describe.
Miss Penelope Tabby
is an antiquated maiden of at least forty years standing, a great observer of decorum, and particularly hurt by the behaviour of two young ladies, who are her next-door neighbours, for a custom they have of lolling out of their windows and talking to fellows in the street: The charge cannot be denied, for it is certainly a practice these young ladies indulge themselves in very freely; but on the other hand it must be owned Miss Pen Tabby is also in the habit of lolling out of her window at the same time to stare at them, and put them to shame for the levity of their conduct: They have also the crime proved upon them of being unpardonably handsome, and this they neither can nor will attempt to contradict. Miss Pen Tabby is extremely regular at morning prayers, but she complains heavily of a young staring fellow in the pew next to her own, who violates the solemnity of the service by ogling her at her devotions: He has a way of leaning over the pew, and dangling a white hand ornamented with a flaming paste ring, which sometimes plays the lights in her eyes, so as to make them water with the reflection, and Miss Pen has this very natural remark ever ready on the occasion—
"Such things, you know, are apt to take off one's attention."
Another of this illustrious junto is
Billy Bachelor,
an old unmarried petit-maitre: Billy is a courter of antient standing; he abounds in anecdotes not of the freshest date, nor altogether of the most interesting sort; for he will tell you how such and such a lady was dressed, when he had the honour of handing her into the drawing-room; he has a court-atalantis of his own, from which he can favour you with some hints of sly doings amongst maids of honour, particularly of a certain dubious duchess now deceased, (for he names no names) who appeared at a certain masquerade
in puris naturalibus,
and other wonderful discoveries, which all the world has long ago known, and long ago been tired of. Billy has a smattering in the fine arts, for he can nett purses and make admirable coffee and write sonnets; he has the best receipt in nature for a dentifrice, which he makes up with his own hands, and gives to such ladies, as are in his favour and have an even row of teeth: He can boast some skill in music, for he plays Barberini's minuet to admiration, and accompanies the airs in the Beggar's opera on his flute in their original taste: He is also a playhouse critic of no mean pretensions, for he remembers Mrs. Woffington, and Quin and Mrs. Cibber; and when the players come to town, Billy is greatly looked up to, and has been known to lead a clap, where nobody but himself could find a reason for clapping at all. When his vanity is in the cue, Billy Bachelor can talk to you of his amours, and upon occasion stretch the truth to save his credit; particularly in accounting for a certain old lameness in his knee-pan, which some, who are in the secret, know was got by being kicked out of a coffee-house, but which to the world at large he asserts was incurred by leaping out of a window to save a lady's reputation, and escape the fury of an enraged husband.
Dr. Pyeball
is a dignitary of the church, and a mighty proficient in the
belles lettres:
He tells you Voltaire was a man of some fancy and had a knack of writing, but he bids you beware of his principles, and doubts if he had any more christianity than Pontius Pilate: He has wrote an epigram against a certain contemporary historian, which cuts him up at a stroke. By a happy jargon of professional phrases with a kind of Socratic mode of arguing, he has so bamboozled the dons of the cathedral as to have effected a total revolution in their church music, making Purcell, Crofts and Handel give place to a quaint, quirkish stile, little less capricious than if the organist was to play cotillons and the dean and chapter dance to them. The doctor is a mighty admirer of those ingenious publications, which are intitled
The flowers
of the several authors they are selected from; this short cut to Parnassus not only saves him a great deal of round-about riding, but supplies him with many an apt couplet for off-hand quotations, in which he is very expert and has besides a clever knack of weaving them into his pulpit essays (for I will not call them sermons) in much the same way as
Tiddy-Doll
stuck plumbs on
his short pigs and his long pigs and his pigs with a curley tail.
By a proper sprinkling of these spiritual nosegays, and the recommendation of a soft insinuating address, doctor Pyeball is universally cried up as a very pretty genteel preacher, one who understands the politeness of the pulpit and does not surfeit well-bred people with more religion than they have stomachs for. Amiable Miss
Pen Tabby
is one of his warmest admirers, and declares Doctor Pyeball in his gown and cassock is quite the man of fashion: The ill-natured world will have it she has contemplated him in other situations with equal approbation.
Elegant Mrs.
Dainty
is another ornament of this charming coterie: She is separated from her husband, but the eye of malice never spied a speck upon her virtue; his manners were insupportable; she, good lady, never gave him the least provocation, for she was always sick and mostly confined to her chamber in nursing a delicate constitution: Noises racked her head; company shook her nerves all to pieces; in the country she could not live, for country doctors and apothecaries knew nothing of her case; in London she could not sleep, unless the whole street was littered with straw. Her husband was a man of no refinement;
all the fine feelings of the human heart
were heathen Greek to him; he loved his friend, had no quarrel with his bottle, and, coming from his club one night a little flustered, his horrid dalliances threw Mrs. Dainty into strong hysterics, and the covenanted truce being now broken, she kept no further terms with him and they separated. It was a step of absolute necessity, for she declares her life could no otherwise have been saved; his boisterous familiarities would have been her death. She now leads an uncontaminated life, supporting a feeble frame by medicine, sipping her tea with her dear quiet friends every evening, chatting over the little news of the day, sighing charitably when she hears any evil of her kind neighbours, turning off her femme-de-chambre once a week or thereabouts, fondling her lap-dog, who is a dear sweet pretty creature and so sensible, and taking the air now and then on a pillion behind faithful John, who is so careful of her, and so handy, and at the same time one of the stoutest, handsomest, best-limbed lads in all England.
Sir
Hugo Fitz-Hugo
is a decayed baronet of a family so very antient, that they have long since worn out the estate that supported them: Sir Hugo knows his own dignity none the less, and keeps a little snivelling boy, who can scarce move under the load of worsted lace, that is plaistered down the edges and seams of his livery: He leaves a visiting card at your door, stuck as full of emblems as an American paper dollar. Sir Hugo abominates a tradesman; his olfactory nerves are tortured with the scent of a grocer, or a butcher, quite across the way, and as for a tallow-chandler he can wind him to the very end of the street; these are people, whose visits he cannot endure; their very bills turn his stomach upside down. Sir Hugo inveighs against modern manners as severely as Cato would against French cookery; he notes down omissions in punctilio as a merchant does bills for protesting; and in cold weather Sir Hugo is of some use, for he suffers no man to turn his back to the fire and screen it from the company who sit round: He holds it for a solecism in good-breeding for any man to touch a lady's hand without his glove: This as a general maxim Miss
Pen Tabby
agrees to, but doubts whether there are not some cases when it may be waved: He anathematizes the heresy of a gentleman's sitting at the head of a lady's table, and contends that the honours of the upper dish are the unalienable rights of the mistress of the family: In short, Sir Hugo Fitz-Hugo has more pride about him than he knows how to dispose of, and yet cannot find in his heart to bestow one atom of it upon honesty: From the world he merits no other praise but that of having lived single all his life, and, being the last of his family; at his decease the Fitz-Hugos will be extinct.
This society may also boast a tenth muse in the person of the celebrated
Rhodope:
Her talents are multifarious; poetical, biographical, epistolary, miscellaneous: She can reason like Socrates, dispute like Aristotle and love like Sappho; her magnanimity equals that of Marc Antony, for when the world was at her feet, she sacrificed it
all for love,
and accounted it
well lost.
She was a philosopher in her leading-strings, and had travelled geographically over the globe ere she could set one foot fairly before the other: Her cradle was rocked to the Iambic measure, and she was lulled to sleep by singing to her an ode of Horace. Rhodope has written a book of travels full of most enchanting incidents, which some of her admirers say was actually sketched in the nursery, and only filled up with little temporary touches in her riper years; I know they make appeal to her stile as internal evidence of what they assert about the nursery; but though I am ready to admit that it has every infantine charm, which they discover in it, yet I cannot go the length of thinking with them, that a mere infant could possibly dictate any thing so nearly approaching to the language of men and women: We all know that
Goody Two-shoes,
and other amusing books, though written for children, were not written by children. Rhodope has preserved some singular curiosities in her museum: She has a bottle of coagulated foam, something like the congealed blood of Saint Januarius; this she maintains was the veritable foam of the tremendous Minotaur of Crete of immortal memory; there are some indeed, who profess to doubt this, and assert that it is nothing more than the slaver of a noble English mastiff, which went tame about her house, and, though formidable to thieves and interlopers, was ever gentle and affectionate to honest men. She has a lyre in fine preservation, held to be the identical lyre, which
Phaon
played upon, when he won the heart of the amorous
Sappho
; this also is made matter of dispute amongst the
cognoscenti
; these will have it to be a common Italian instrument, such as the ladies of that country play upon to this day; this is a point they must settle as they can, but all agree it is a well-strung instrument, and
discourses sweet music.
She has in her cabinet an evergreen of the cypress race, which is supposed to be the very individual shrub, that led up the ball when Orpheus fiddled and the groves began a vegetable dance; and this they tell you was the origin of all country dances, now in such general practice. She has also in her possession the original epistle, which king
Agenor
wrote to
Europa,
dissuading her from her ridiculous partiality for her favourite bull, when Jupiter in the form of that animal took her off in spite of all
Agenor
's remonstrances, and carried her across the sea with him upon a tour, that has immortalized her name through the most enlightened quarter of the globe: Rhodope is so tenacious of this manuscript, that she rarely indulges the curiosity of her friends with a sight of it; she has written an answer in
Europa
's behalf after the manner of Ovid's epistle, in which she makes a very ingenious defence for her heroine, and every body, who has seen the whole of the correspondence, allows that
Agenor
writes like a man, who knew little of human nature, and that
Rhodope
in her reply has the best of the argument.
No CXXXVII.
NOTHING now remains for compleating the literary annals of Greece, according to the plan I have proceeded upon in the foregoing volumes, but to give some account of the Drama within that period of time, which commences with the death of Alexander of Macedon and concludes with that of Menander, or at most extends to a very few years beyond it, when the curtain may figuratively be said to have dropt upon all the glories of the Athenian stage.
This, though the last, is yet a brilliant aera, for now flourished
Menander, Philemon, Diphilus, Apollodorus, Philippides, Posidippus
; poets no less celebrated for the luxuriancy than for the elegance of their genius; all writers of the
New Comedy
; which, if it had not all the wit and fire of the old satirical drama produced in times of greater public freedom, is generally reputed to have been far superior to it in delicacy, regularity and decorum. All attacks upon living characters ceased with what is properly denominated the
Old Comedy
; the writers of the
Middle Class
contented themselves with venting their raillery upon the works of their dramatic predecessors; the persons and politics of their contemporaries were safe; whereas neither the highest station, nor the brightest talents were any sure protection from the unrestrained invectives of the comic muse in her earliest sallies.
The poets under our present review were not however so closely circumscribed, as to be afraid of indulging their talent for ridicule and satire upon topics of a general nature; without a latitude like this comedy could hardly have existed; but this was not all, for amongst their fragments some are to be found, which advance sentiments and opinions so directly in the teeth of the popular religion, that we cannot but admire at the extraordinary toleration of their pagan audiences.
Justin
quotes a passage from Menander's comedy of
The Charioteer,
in which an old mendicant is introduced carrying about a painted figure of the Great Mother of the Gods, after the manner of the present Popish Rosaries, and begging a boon as usual on those occasions; the person addressed for his subscription, contemptuously replies—
"I have no relish for such deities as stroll about with an old beggar-woman from door to door, nor for that painted cloth you have the impudence to thrust into my presence: Let me tell you, woman, if your Mother of the Gods was good for any thing, she would keep to her own station and take charge of none but those, who merit her protection by their piety and devotion."
This rebuff is of a piece with the surly answer of the cynic
Antisthenes,
recorded by
Clemens Alexandrinus,
when, being teazed by these mendicants, the philosopher replied—
"Let the Gods provide for their own Mother; I am not bound to maintain her."
In another fragment, quoted both by
Clemens
and
Eusebius,
Menander breaks forth into a bolder rhapsody, which breathes the spirit and nearly the very words of the Hebrew prophets: a person (in what drama does not appear) addresses his companion in the scene to this effect—
"If any man, O Pamphilus, thinks that God will be well pleased with the sacrifice of multitudes of oxen or of goats, or of any other victims; or by robing his images in cloth of gold and purple, and decking them out with ivory and emeralds; that man deceives himself, and his imaginations are vain; let him rather study to conciliate God's favour by doing good to all men; let him abstain from violation and adultery; let him not commit theft or murder through the lust of money; nay covet not, O Pamphilus, so much even as the thread of another's needle, for God is ever present and his eye is upon thee."
This will serve in the place of many more passages, which might be adduced, to prove that the comic poets of this period were not only bold declaimers against the vice and immorality of the age they lived in, but that they ventured upon truths and doctrines in religion totally irreconcileable to the popular superstition and idolatries of the heathen world.
It was on the new comedy of the Greeks that the Roman writers in general founded their's, and this they seem to have accomplished by the servile vehicle of translation: It is said that Terence alone translated all Menander's plays, and these by the lowest account amounted to eighty; some authorities more than double them, an improbable number to have been composed by a poet, who died at the age of fifty, or very little after.
Quin et longa dies delebit scripta Menandri,
Et quandoque levis carmina pulvis erunt.
(T. FABER.)
Menander
was born at Athens, the son of
Diopethes
and
Hegesistrata:
He was educated in the school of
Theophrastus
the peripatetic, Aristotle's successor: At the early age of twenty he began to write for the stage, and his passions seem to have been no less forward and impetuous than his genius; his attachment to the fair sex and especially to his mistress Glycera is upon record, and was vehement in the extreme; several of his epistles to that celebrated courtesan, written in a very ardent stile, were collected and made public after his decease: The celebrity of his muse, and the brilliancy of his wit were probably his chief recommendations to that lady's favour; for it should seem that nature had not been very partial to his external, besides which he squinted most egregiously, and was of a temper extremely irascible: If we were to take his character as a writer from no other authorities but of the fragments, we should form a very different idea from that of
Pliny,
who says he was
omnis luxuriae interpres,
and this even
Plutarch
his avowed panegyrist is candid enough to admit: Ovid also says—
The gay Menander charms each youthful heart,
And Love in every fable claims a part.
However this may be, the remains, which have come down to us, bear the stamp of an austere and gloomy muse rather than of a wanton and voluptuous one; but these it must be owned prove little;
Terence
is supposed to have copied all his comedies from Menander, except the
Phormio
and the
Hecyra,
and he gives us the best insight into the character of his elegant original.
All Greece seems to have joined in lamenting the premature loss of this celebrated poet, who unfortunately perished as he was bathing in the Piraean harbour, to which
Ovid
alludes in his
Ibis
—
Comicus ut liquidis periit dum nabat in undis.
This happened in Olymp. CXXII; his first comedy, intitled
Orge
was performed in Olymp. CXV, which gives him something less than thirty years for the production of more than one hundred plays, and if we take the former account of his beginning to write for the stage at the age of twenty, it will agree with what we have before said respecting the age at which he died.
Fatal as was the Piraean sea to the person of this lamented poet, posterity has more cause to execrate that barbarous gulph, which has swallowed up his works; nor his alone, but those of above two hundred other eminent dramatic poets, whose labours are totally lost and extinguished. We have some lines of
Callimachus
upon the death of
Menander,
who was one amongst many of his poetic survivors, that paid the tribute of their ingenious sorrow to his memory: Nor poets only, but princes bewailed his loss, particularly
Ptolemy
the son of
Lagus,
who loved and favoured him very greatly, and maintained a friendly correspondence with him till his death; some of Menander's letters to this prince were published with those addressed to his beloved Glycera.
Though many great authorities concur in placing Menander decidedly at the head of all the comic writers of his time, yet his contemporaries must have been of a different opinion, or else his rivals were more popular with their judges, for out of one hundred and five comedies, which
Apollodorus
ascribes to him, he tells us that he obtained only eight prizes, and that
Philemon
in particular triumphed over him in the suffrages of the theatre very frequently. If these decisions were so glaringly unjust and partial as we are taught to believe they were, we have some sort of apology for the sarcastic question put to his successful competitor, when upon meeting him he said—
"Do you not blush, Philemon, when you prevail over me?"
This anecdote however at best only proves that Menander rated his own merits very highly, and that, if they were unjustly treated by those, who decided for Philemon, he laid the blame upon the wrong person, and betrayed a very irritable temper upon the occasion.
We have a collection of Menander's fragments and the titles of seventy-three comedies; the fragments consist only of short sentences, and do not give us the spirit and character of the dialogue, much less of any one entire scene; for though
Hertelius
has gone further than
Grotius
and
Le Clerc
in arranging them under distinct topics, and has brought into one view every passage of a correspondent sort, still it is a mere disjointed medley, interesting only to the curious, but affording little edification to the generality of readers: Many of them however are to be respected for their moral sentiment, some are of a very elevated cast, and others, (more in number than I could wish) of a gloomy, acrimonious and morose quality.
Antient authorities are nevertheless so loud in the praise of Menander, that we cannot doubt of his excellence.
Quintilian
after applauding him for his peculiar address in preserving the manners and distinctions proper to every character he introduces on his scene, adds in general terms,
"that he eclipses every writer of his class, and by the superior brilliancy of his genius throws them all into shade."
—He condemns the perverted judgment of his contemporaries for affecting to prefer Philemon on so many occasions; and
C. J. Caesar,
whilst he is passing a compliment upon Terence, stiles him only
dimidiatum Menandrum. Dion Chrysostom
recommends him as a model for all who study to excel in oratory,
"and let none of our wise men reprehend me,"
he adds,
"for preferring Menander to the old comic poets, inasmuch as his art in delineating the various manners and graces is more to be esteemed than all the force and vehemence of the antient drama."
There is so much classical elegance in the lines, which
T. Faber
has prefixed to his edition of
Terence,
particularly in the introductory stanza, and this is withal so apposite to the subject in hand, that I shall conclude this paper by transcribing it.
Sacrum Menandri pectus
Aura jam reliquerat,
Vagulaque animula
Elysias penetrarat oras:
Tum dolore percitae,
Virgineasque
Suffusae lacrymis genas,
Huc et illuc cursitarunt
Perque lucos, perque montes,
Perque vallium sinus,
Cursitarunt Gratiae,
Querentes sibi
Queis nova sedibus
Templa ponere possent.
No CXXXVIII.
Apparent rari nantes in gurgite vasto.
(VIRGIL.)
THE various authors, who have contributed to the collection of Menander's remains, seem to have extracted from him, as if by general agreement, little else but the most unfavourable delineations of the human character: So far from finding those facetious and sprightly sallies to be expected from a comic writer, those voluptuous descriptions, which Pliny alludes to, or any fragments of the love scenes Ovid tells us he so abounded in, we meet a melancholy display of the miseries, the enormities, the repinings of mankind.
What can be more gloomy and misanthropic than the following strain of discontent, extracted by Eustathius!—
Suppose some God should say—'Die when thou wilt,
' Mortal, expect another life on earth;
' And for that life make choice of all creation
' What thou wilt be; dog, sheep, goat, man or horse;
' For live again thou must; it is thy fate:
' Chuse only in what form; there thou art free—'
So help me, Crato, I wou'd fairly answer—
Let me be all things, any thing but man!
He only of all creatures feels affliction:
The generous horse is valued for his worth,
And dog by merit is preferr'd to dog;
The warrior cock is pamper'd for his courage,
And awes the baser brood—But what is man?
Truth, virtue, valour, how do they avail him?
Of this world's good the first and greatest share
Is flattery's prize; the informer takes the next,
And barefaced knavery garbles what is left.
I'd rather be an ass than what I am,
And see these villains lord it o'er their betters.
Another fragment presents itself of the same cast, but coloured a little nearer to the hue of comedy—
All creatures are more blest in their condition,
And in their natures worthier than man.
Look at yond ass!—a sorry beast, you'll say,
And such in truth he is—poor, hapless thing!
Yet these his sufferings spring not from himself,
For all that Nature gave him he enjoys;
Whilst we, besides our necessary ills,
Make ourselves sorrows of our own begetting:
If a man sneeze, we're sad—for that's ill luck;
If he traduce us, we run mad with rage;
A dream, a vapour throws us into terrors,
And let the night-owl hoot, we melt with fear:
Anxieties, opinions, laws, ambition,
All these are torments we may thank ourselves for.
The reader will observe that these are specimens of a general disgust against mankind, and of discontent with the common lot of human life; as such they can class with the humour of no other character but that of an absolute misanthrope, a kind of
Timon
; for general invective differs widely from that, which is pointed against any particular vice or folly, and in fact can hardly be considered as falling within the province of comedy in any case.
If Menander hath been justly celebrated for his faithful pictures of the living manners of the age he wrote in, we cannot but receive a gloomy impression from the dark and dismal tints, in which these sketches are cast; and though the age we live in hath follies and failings enough still to feed the comic poet's appetite for satire, we may console ourselves in the comparison of our own time with his, provided the stage is to be regarded as a faithful mirror in both instances. It is not however improbable but the writers of the
new comedy
might fall with more severity upon general vices to revenge themselves for the restrictions they were subjected to with respect to personalities: Add to this, that as far as the early Christian writers were concerned in selecting these passages, it may well be supposed they would naturally take the most moral and sententious from amongst the comedies they quoted, and such as afforded grave and useful remarks upon life, harmonizing with their own doctrines and instructions. More especially it is to be supposed that they would eagerly catch at any of those passages, which exhibit purer and more worthy notions of the Being and Providence of God, than the vulgar herd of Heathens were known to entertain: Of this cast is the following contemptuous ridicule upon the Pagan ceremony of lustration.
If your complaints were serious, 'twould be well
You sought a serious cure, but for weak minds
Weak med'cines may suffice—Go, call around you
The women with their purifying water;
Drug it with salt and lentils, and then take
A treble sprinkling from the holy mess:
Now search your heart; if that reproach you not,
Then and then only you are truly pure.
(EX FAMULO MATRIS IDEAE.)
I am sorry to remark that amongst all the fragments of this poet not one has been preserved, that is stampt with even the slightest commendation of the fair sex: On the contrary I find abundance of invective, chiefly against marriage and married women, often coarse and always bitter: I may venture to say, if there was a single woman in all Athens, who merited one good word, it is one more than the strictest scrutiny can discover in his remains. Mark how he rails!—
If such the sex, was not the sentence just,
That riveted Prometheus to his rock?—
—Why, for what crime?—A spark, a little spark;
But, Oh ye Gods! how infinite the mischief—
That little spark gave being to a woman,
And let in a new race of plagues to curse us.
Where is the man that weds? shew me the wretch:
Woe to his lot!—Insatiable desires,
His nuptial bed defil'd, poisonings and plots
And maladies untold—these are the fruits
Of marriage, these the blessings of a wife.
The poet, who can thus lend his wit to libel the greatest blessing of life, may well be ingenious in depreciating life itself—
The lot of all most fortunate is his,
Who having staid just long enough on earth
To feast his sight with this fair face of nature,
Sun, sea and clouds and Heaven's bright starry fires,
Drops without pain into an early grave.
For what is life, the longest life of man,
But the same scene repeated o'er and o'er?
A few more ling'ring days to be consum'd
In throngs and crowds, with sharpers, knaves and thieves;
From such the speediest riddance is the best.
Having given some passages from this poet, where he speaks in the character of a misanthropist, it is but justice to exhibit him as a moralist: If the following fragment suggests no new ideas upon the subject of
Envy,
it will at least serve to convince us that mankind in all ages have thought alike upon that despicable passion—
Thou seem'st to me, young man, not to perceive
That every thing contains within itself
The seeds and sources of its own corruption:
The cankering rust corrodes the brightest steel;
The moth frets out your garment, and the worm
Eats its slow way into the solid oak;
But Envy, of all evil things the worst,
The same to-day, to-morrow and for ever,
Saps and consumes the heart, in which it lurks.
In the fragment next ensuing an old man is reproved for the vice of covetousness; there is a delicacy in the manner of it, that well becomes both the age and condition of the speaker, for he is a youth, and son to the character, whom he addresses: This fragment is extracted from the comedy intitled
Dyscolus (the Churl)
which Plautus is said to have translated and performed under its original title; but of this only a few fragments remain in our volume of that poet; probably the father herein addressed is the person who gives name to the comedy—
Weak is the Vanity, that boasts of riches,
For they are fleeting things; were they not such,
Could they be your's to all succeeding time,
T'were wise to let none share in the possession:
But if whate'er you have is held of fortune
And not of right inherent, why, my father,
Why with such niggard jealousy engross
What the next hour may ravish from your grasp,
And cast into some worthless favorite's lap?
Snatch then the swift occasion while 'tis your's;
Put this unstable boon to noble uses;
Foster the wants of men, impart your wealth
And purchase friends; 'twill be more lasting treasure,
And, when misfortune comes, your best resource.
There is another fragment of a more comic sort, which is a relique of
The Minstrel,
pointed at the same vice—
Ne'er trust me, Phanias, but I thought till now,
That you rich fellows had the knack of sleeping
A good sound nap, that held you for the night;
And not like us poor rogues, who toss and turn,
Sighing,
Ah me!
and grumbling at our duns:
But now I find, in spite of all your money,
You rest no better than your needy neighbours,
And sorrow is the common lot of all.
We are indebted to Plutarch for a very respectable fragment of his favourite poet; he quotes it for the consolatory advice it contains, and addresses it to Apollonius; I give it to my readers as one of the most valuable specimens of its author.
If you, O Trophimus, and you alone
Of all your mother's sons have Nature's charter
For privilege of pleasures uncontroul'd,
With full exemption from the strokes of Fortune,
And that some god hath ratified the grant,
You then with cause may vent your loud reproach,
For he hath broke your charter and betray'd you:
But if you live and breathe the common air
On the same terms as we do, then I tell you,
And tell it in the tragic poet's words—
Of your philosophy you make no use,
If you give place to accidental evils—
The sum of which philosophy is this—
You are a man, and therefore Fortune's sport,
This hour exalted and the next abas'd:
You are a man, and, tho' by nature weak,
By nature arrogant, climbing to heights
That mock your reach and crush you in the fall:
Nor was the blessing you have lost the best
Of all life's blessings, nor is your misfortune
The worst of its afflictions; therefore, Trophimus,
Make it not such by overstrain'd complaints,
But to your disappointment suit your sorrow.
The lines it Italics quoted from
Shakspere's Julius Caesar,
not only correspond with the exact meaning of the original, but are also apposite as a quotation from a tragic poet, Menander himself having applied the words of some one of the writers of tragedy, probably
Euripides.
Amongst the smaller fragments there are several good apothegms, some brief moral maxims well expressed, and though not many of those witty points, which are so frequent in
Aristophanes,
yet there are some specimens of the
Vis comica,
which have a very ingenious turn of words in their own tongue; but generally such passages elude translation.—This quaint confession from the mouth of an old miser is of that sort.—
"I own I am rich, abominably rich; all the world accuses me of being a very warm old fellow, but not a soul alive can slander me so far as to say I am a happy one."
—The following scrap once belonged to
The Thrasyleon
;
You say not always wisely,
Know thyself!
Know others, oft times is the better maxim.
A strong moral truth told with epigrammatic neatness strikes me in this pointed remark—
Of all bad things, with which Mankind are curst,
Their own bad tempers surely are the worst.
I could not pass over a short but touching apostrophe quoted from the comedy of
The Olynthian
—
What pity 'tis, when happy Nature rears
A noble pile, that Fortune should o'erthrow it!
I shall conclude with a fragment of the declamatory sort, not as offering any novelty either in the sentiment or expression, but simply for the sake of contrasting it with other specimens—
If you wou'd know of what frail stuff you're made,
Go to the tombs of the illustrious Dead;
There rest the bones of Kings, there Tyrants rot;
There sleep the Rich, the Noble and the Wise;
There Pride, Ambition, Beauty's fairest form,
All dust alike, compound one common mass:
Reflect on these, and in them see yourself.
I now take leave of Menander, the most renowned of the writers of the latter comedy, and if my readers shall remark, that these fragments of a poet so eminent in his time offer nothing, which has not been said over and over again by poets of our own, I hope it will serve to strengthen their conviction, that frequently there shall be a coincidence of sentiment and expression between authors without communication; for it will hardly be supposed that plagiarisms have been committed upon these fragments, and much less upon others of more obscurity, which I have in former papers introduced into our language.
In short I should be happy, if any thing I have done now or may hereafter do, shall serve to mitigate the zeal of critics for detecting their contemporaries in pretended pilferings and misdemeanours, where the
letter
of the law may perhaps appear against them, but the
spirit
of it, if interpreted with candour, condemns them not. I would call upon them, as
Terence
did upon his audience, to reflect that men in all ages will think and speak alike.—
Nullum est jam dictum, quod non dictum sit prius:
Quare aequum est vos cognoscere atque ignoscere,
Quae veteres sactitarunt si faciunt novi.
No CXXXIX.
Habent tamen et alii quoque comici, si cum venia legantur, quaedam, quae possis decerpere, et praecipue
Philemon;
qui, ut pravis sui temporis judiciis Menandro soepe praelatus est, ita consensu tamen omnium meruit esse secundus.
(QUINTIL. LIB. X.)
THERE is not amongst all the Greek dramatic poets a more amiable character than
Philemon
: He was a Syracusan by
Suidas
's account, but
Strabo
says he was born in Solae a city of Cilicia: He was some years elder than Menander, and no unworthy rival of that poet, though more frequently successful in his competitions with him than the critics in general seem to think he deserved to be: Of this we can form little or no judgment; they, who had access to the works of both authors, had the best materials to decide upon.
Apulcius
however speaks rather doubtingly in the comparison, for he says of Philemon that he was
fortasse impar
; to which he subjoins, that
"though his frequent triumphs over Menander are not reputable to insist upon, yet there are to be found in him many witty strokes, plots ingeniously disposed, discoveries strikingly brought to light, characters well adapted to their parts, sentiments that accord with human life;"
—
Joca non infra soccum, seria non usque cothurnum,
viz.
"Jests that do not degrade the sock, gravity that does not intrench upon the buskin."
Philemon lived to the extraordinary age of one hundred and one years, in which time he composed ninety comedies; a competent collection it must be owned, though not to be compared to the bulk of Menander's productions, who in half the time wrote more in number, and with a rapidity, for which we have his own word,
"for when I have once determined upon the plot,"
says he,
"I consider the work as finished."
The longevity of Philemon was the result of great temperance and a placid frame of mind: Frugal to a degree that subjected him to the charge of avarice, he never weakened his faculties and constitution by excess, and as he summed up all his wishes in one rational and moderate petition to Heaven, which throws a most favourable light upon his character, it is with pleasure I record it.—
"I pray for health in the first place; in the next for success in my undertakings; thirdly, for a chearful heart, and lastly, to be out of debt to all mankind."
—This temperate petition seems to have been granted in all particulars; he was blessed with a long and healthful life; he was successful in his undertakings to a degree, which posterity seems to think above his merits, and he triumphed over all his competitors more perhaps through the suavity of his manners than from any actual superiority of his talents: That he was of a gay and happy spirit there is every reason to believe, and his oeconomy secured to him that independant competency, which put him in possession of the final object of his wishes. As he lived in constant serenity of mind, so he died without pain of body; for having called together a number of his friends to the reading of a play, which he had newly finished, and sitting, as was the custom in that serene climate, under the open canopy of Heaven, an unforeseen fall of rain broke up the company just when the old man had got into his third act in the very warmest interests of his fable: His hearers disappointed by this unlucky check to their entertainment interceded with him for the remainder on the day following, to which he readily assented; and a great company being then assembled, whom the fame of the rehearsal had brought together, they sate a considerable time in eager expectation of the poet, till wearied out with waiting, and unable to account for his impunctuality, some of his intimates were dispatcht in quest of him, who, having entered his house and made their way to his chamber, found the old man dead on his couch, in his usual meditating posture, his features placid and composed, and with every symptom, that indicated a death without pain or struggle.
This is
Apuleius
's account, but
Oelian
embellishes the story with a vision, in which he pretends that nine fair damsels appeared to Philemon, and upon his accosting them as they were going out of the door, demanding why they would leave him, they told him it was because it was not permitted to man to hold converse with the Immortals: Upon waking from this trance or vision, Philemon related it to his page, and then getting up returned to his studies, and put the last hand to the comedy he was employed upon:
"That done,"
says
Oelian,
"he stretched himself on his couch and quietly expired."
From this silly anecdote he draws an inference, which without his help the world had probaby discovered, viz.
That Philemon truly was in favour with the Muses.
Valerius Maximus
varies from both these authors in his account of the death of this aged poet; he tells us Philemon was suffocated by a sudden fit of laughter upon seeing an ass, who had found his way into the house, devour a plate of figs, which his page had provided for him; that he called out to the boy to drive away the ass, but when this order was not executed before the animal had emptied the plate, he bade his page pour out a goblet of wine and present it to the plunderer to compleat his entertainment; tickled with the pleasantry of this conceit, and no less with the grotesque attitude and adventure of the animal, Philemon was seized with a fit of laughing and in that fit expired.
The fragments of Philemon are in general of a sentimental, tender cast, and, though they enforce found and strict morality, yet no one instance occurs of that gloomy misanthropy, that harsh and dogmatizing spirit, which too often marks the maxims of his more illustrious rival: The following specimen will illustrate what I assert—It is clear that our poet has
Aeschylus
in his eye.
All are not Just, because they do no wrong,
But he, who will not wrong me when he may,
He is the truly Just. I praise not them,
Who in their petty dealings pilfer not;
But him, whose conscience spurns a secret fraud,
When he might plunder and defy surprize:
His be the praise, who looking down with scorn
On the false judgement of the partial herd,
Consults his own clear heart, and boldly dares
To be, not to be thought, an honest Man.
I flatter myself the reader will be pleased with the following animated apostrophe, which is a fragment of the
Ignifer
—
Now by the Gods, it is not in the power
Of painting or of sculpture to express
Aught so divine as the fair form of Truth!
The creatures of their art may catch the eye,
But her sweet nature captivates the soul.
I shall next produce a passage from the
Pyrrhus,
which breathes so soft and placid a spirit, and so perfectly harmonizes with the amiable character of the poet I am reviewing, that it is with pleasure I present it to my readers—
Philosophers consume much time and pains
To seek the Sovereign Good, nor is there one,
Who yet hath struck upon it: Virtue some,
And Prudence some contend for, whilst the knot
Grows harder by their struggles to untye it.
I, a mere clown, in turning up the soil
Have dug the secret forth—All-gracious Jove!
'Tis Peace, most lovely and of all belov'd;
Peace is the bounteous Goddess, who bestows
Weddings and holidays and joyous feasts,
Relations, friends, health, plenty, social comforts
And pleasures, which alone make life a blessing.
Stobaeus
has preserved a fragment of the
Ephebus,
which is of a mild and plaintive character; though it speaks the language of the deepest sorrow, it speaks at the same time the language of humanity; there is no turbulence, no invective; it is calculated to move our pity, not excite our horror—
'Tis not on them alone, who tempt the sea,
That the storm breaks, it whelms e'en us, O Laches,
Whether we pace the open colonnade,
Or to the inmost shelter of our house
Shrink from its rage. The sailor for a day,
A night perhaps, is bandied up and down,
And then anon reposes, when the wind
Veers to the wisht-for point, and wafts him home:
But I know no repose; not one day only,
But every day to the last hour of life
Deeper and deeper I am plung'd in woe.
In all the remains of this engaging author there seems a characteristic gentleness of manners; where he gives advice, it is recommended rather than imposed; his reproofs are softened with such an air of good humour, as gives a grace to instruction, and smiles whilst it corrects: Can experience tutor indiscretion in milder terms than these?—
O Cleon, cease to trifle thus with life:
A mind, so barren of experience,
Can hoard up nought but misery, believe me.
The shipwreckt mariner must sink outright,
Who makes no effort to regain the shore:
The needy wretch, who never learnt a trade,
And will not work, must starve—
What then,
you cry?
My riches
—Frail security—
My farms,
My houses, my estate
—Alas, my friend,
Fortune makes quick dispatch, and in a day
Can strip you bare as beggary itself.
Grant that you now had piloted your bark
Into good fortune's haven, anchor'd there
And moor'd her safe as caution cou'd devise;
Yet if the headstrong passions seize the helm
And turn her out to sea, the stormy gusts
Shall rise and blow you out of sight of port,
Never to reach prosperity again—
What tell you me? have I not friends to fly to?
I have: And will not those kind friends protect me?
—
Better it were you shall not need their service,
And so not make the trial: Much I fear
Your sinking hand wou'd only grasp a shade.
Many of his maxims and remarks are neatly expressed and ingeniously conceived; they have all a tincture of pleasantry, which without impairing the morality or good sense they convey, takes off the gloom and solemnity, which the same thoughts, otherwise expressed, might have.
Two words of nonsense are two words too much;
Whole volumes of good sense will never tire.
What multitudes of lines hath Homer wrote!
Who ever thought he wrote one line too much?
Again—
If what we have we use not, and still covet
What we have not, we are cajol'd by fortune
Of present bliss, of future by ourselves.
Still to be rich is still to be unhappy;
Still to be envied, hated and abus'd;
Still to commence new law suits, new vexations;
Still to be carking, still to be collecting,
Only to make your funeral a feast,
And hoard up riches for a thriftless heir:
Let me be light in purse and light in heart;
Give me small means, but give content withal,
Only preserve me from the law, kind Gods,
And I will thank you for my poverty.
Extremes of fortune are true Wisdom's test,
And he's of men most wise, who bears them best.
No CXL.
THE poet
Diphilus
was a native of Sinope, a city of Pontus, and contemporary with Menander.
Clemens Alexandrinus
applauds him for his comic wit and humour;
Eusebius
says the same and adds a further encomium in respect of the sententious and moral character of his drama. The poet
Plautus
speaks of him in his prologue to the
Casina,
and acknowledges the excellence of the original upon which he had formed his comedy. He died at Smyrna, a city of Ionia, and was author of one hundred comedies, of which we have a list of two and thirty titles, and no inconsiderable collection of fragments; out of these I have selected the following example—
We have a notable good law at Corinth,
Where, if an idle fellow outruns reason,
Feasting and junketing at furious cost,
The sumptuary proctor calls upon him
And thus begins to sift him—You live well,
But have you well to live? You squander freely,
Have you the wherewithal? have you the fund
For these out-goings? If you have, go on!
If you have not, we'll stop you in good time
Before you outrun honesty; for he,
Who lives we know not how, must live by plunder;
Either he picks a purse, or robs a house,
Or is accomplice with some knavish gang,
Or thrusts himself in crowds to play th' Informer,
And put his perjur'd evidence to sale:
This a well-order'd city will not suffer;
Such Vermin we expell.—
And you do wisely:
But what is this to me?—
Why, this it is:
Here we behold you every day at work,
Living forsooth! not as your neighbours live,
But richly, royally, ye gods!—Why, man,
We cannot get a fish for love or money,
You swallow the whole produce of the sea:
You've driven our citizens to browze on cabbage;
A sprig of parsley sets them all a-fighting,
As at the Isthmian games: If hare, or partridge,
Or but a simple thrush comes to the market,
Quick, at a word you snap him: By the gods!
Hunt Athens through, you shall not find a feather
But in your kitchen; and for wine, 'tis gold—
Not to be purchas'd—We may drink the ditches.
Apollodorus Gelous
in the same period with the poets abovementioned was a writer high in fame, and author of many comedies, of all which the titles of eight only and some few fragments now remain: It is generally understood that the
Phormio
and
Hecyra
of
Terence
are copied from this poet. Very little has been preserved from the wreck of this author's writings that can tempt me to a translation; a few short specimens however according to custom are submitted.—
How sweet were life, how placid and serene,
Were others but as gentle as ourselves:
But if we must consort with apes and monkies,
We must be brutes like them—O life of sorrow!
What do you trust to, Father? To your money?
Fortune indeed to those, who have it not,
Will sometimes give it; but 'tis done in malice,
Merely that she may take it back again.
Athenaeus has rescued a little stroke of raillery, which is ludicrous enough—
Go to! make fast your gates with bars and bolts;
But never chamber door was shut so close,
But cats and cuckold-makers wou'd creep thro' it.
The following has some point in it, but comes ill into translation, or, more properly speaking, is ill translated—
Youth and old age have their respective humours;
And son by privilege can say to father,
Were you not once as young as I am now?
Not so the father; he cannot demand,
Were you not once as old as I am now?
There is something pleasing in the following natural description of a friendly welcome—
There is a certain hospitable air
In a friend's house, that tells me I am welcome:
The porter opens to me with a smile;
The yard dog wags his tail, the servant runs,
Beats up the cushion, spreads the couch, and says—
Sit down, good Sir! e'er I can say I'm weary.
Philippidas,
the son of
Philocles,
was another of this illustrious band of contemporary and rival authors: His extreme sensibility was the cause of his death, for the sudden transport, occasioned by the unexpected success of one of his comedies, put a period to his life; the poet however was at this time very aged. Donatus informs us that Philippidas was in the highest favour with
Lysimachus,
to whom he recommended himself not by the common modes of flattery, but by his amiable and virtuous qualities; the interest he had with Lysimachus he ever employed to the most honourable purposes, and thereby disposed him to confer many great and useful favours upon the people of Athens: So highly did his princely patron esteem this venerable man, that whenever he set out upon any expedition, and chanced upon Philippidas is his way, he accounted it as the happiest prognostic of good fortune.—
"What is there,"
said Lysimachus to him upon a certain occasion,
"which Philippidas would wish I should impart to him?"—
"Any thing,"
replied the poet,
"but your secrets."
Posidippus,
with whom I shall conclude, was a Macedonian, born at Cassandria and the son of
Cyniscus.
Abundant testimonies are to be found in the old grammarians of the celebrity of this poet; few fragments of his comedies have descended to us, and the titles only of twelve. He may be reckoned the last of the comic poets, as it was not till three years after the death of Menander that he began to write for the Athenian stage, and posterior to him I know of no author, who has bequeathed even his name to posterity: Here then concludes the history of the Greek stage; below this period it is in vain to search for genius worth recording; Grecian literature and Grecian liberty expired together; a succession of sophists, paedagogues and grammarians filled the posts of those illustrious wits, whose spirit, fostered by freedom, soared to such heights as left the Roman poets little else except the secondary fame of imitation.
I have now fulfilled what I may be allowed to call my literary engagements; in the course of which I have expended no small pains and attention in dragging from obscurity relicks buried in the rubbish of the darker ages, when the whole world seemed to conspire against Genius; when learning had degenerated into sophism, and religion was made a theme of metaphysical subtelty, serving, as it should seem, no other purpose but to puzzle and confound, to inflame the passions and to perplex the head. Then it was, the fathers of the church, in whose hands these authors were, held it a point of conscience to destroy the idols of the stage, as they had already destroyed the idols of the temple, and to bury heathen wit in the same grave with heathen superstition; their poets and their gods were to be exterminated alike. To the more enlightened taste, or rather perhaps to the lucky partiality, of
Chrysostom
alone we owe the preservation of
Aristophanes.
Continually engaged in argumentative and controversial writings there were some, who occasionally condescended to quote a passage, as it served their purpose, from these proscribed comedies, either to help out their wits or illustrate their meaning; and these scraps and splinters being swept together by some few patient collectors, who had charity enough to work upon the wreck, posterity hath been put into possession of these gleanings of the comic stage of Athens in addition to the more entire and inestimable remains of
Aristophanes.
It has been my task (and I believe it is the first of the sort attempted in our language) to avail myself of these friendly guides for making something like a regular detail of the names, characters and productions of these lost, but once illustrious, poets, and to give to the public such as I conceived to be the best of their fragments in an English translation. This part of my general undertaking being heavier than all the rest to myself, I was much afraid it would have proved so to my readers also; but their candid reception of these papers in particular, and the encouraging voice of my profest reviewers, have banished that anxiety from my mind, and enabled me to proceed with chearfulness to the end.
There is one part however of these papers, in which I conceive I have been misunderstood as having carried my attack against the moral doctrines of Socrates, and of this I am interested to exculpate myself; My subject led me to refer to certain anecdotes unfavourable to his private character, but I studiously marked those passages by observing that there was no design to glance at his moral doctrines, and at the same time quoted the authorities upon which those anecdotes rest; when any scholar will convince me these were futile and malicious tales, I will retract all credit in them and thank him for the conviction: As for the purity of Socrates's doctrine I never attempted to impeach it; of the purity of his character I must continue to think there is much cause to doubt. The learned
Bishop Sherlock
in his fourth discourse may be referred to upon this subject: He there says
that the corrupt example of Socrates was a dead weight upon the purity of his doctrine, and tended to perpetuate superstition in the world
—Though I am aware that the
corrupt example
here alluded to respects his religious practice, yet surely if the preacher of Christianity was interested to shew the
corrupt example
of
Socrates
in this light, the friend of Christianity may be allowed to represent it in another point of view, and by fair authorities to exhibit what the heathens themselves have reported of this famous philosopher, whose moral purity is by some taken merely upon trust, by others designedly extolled to the skies for the sake of opposing character to character, and by an audacious comparison with Christ disparaging the Divinity of the World's Redeemer. I should expect then, that as far as truth and good authorities warrant, I am as free to discuss the private vices and impurities of
Socrates,
as those of
Mahomet,
which the learned prelate abovementioned most eloquently displays in his parallel between Christ and that Impostor: The Deist will perhaps be much interested to support his favourite philosopher, and will care little for the prophet: The modern Platonist, who is ingenious to erect a new system of natural religion out of the ruins of heathen idolatry, may be zealous to defend the founder of his faith, and his anger I must submit to incur; but it is not quite so easy to bear the reproof of friends, from whom I have not deserved it, and in whose service I have drawn that anger upon myself.
As for my defence of
Aristophanes
against the groundless charge of having taken bribes from the enemies of
Socrates
to attack him for the purpose of paving the way to his public trial, that I observe hath been on all hands admitted; for in truth the facts and dates on which it turns, cannot be contested; they are decisive for his exculpation.
No CXLI.
Nunc quam rem vitio dent quaeso animum advertite.
(TERENT.)
EASY as it has been to clear
Aristophanes
from the charge of conspiring against the life of
Socrates,
he would be a hardy advocate, who should attempt to defend his personal attack upon that philosopher in his comedy of
The Clouds.
The outcry has been kept up for so many ages, that now to combat it would be a task indeed; there are so many, who join in it, without having examined into the merits of the case, and an appeal to the practice of the stage in those times as likewise to the comedy itself would affect so few amongst the many, who pretend to pronounce upon the offence, that the man, who undertook to soften general prejudices, must undertake to translate
The Clouds
; and to transfuse the original spirit of such a composition into a modern language would be no easy work.
An attempt however to give my English readers some idea of the opening scenes of this famous comedy so far as goes to the introduction of the philosopher upon the stage, and the obnoxious incident of
the basket,
will I hope be neither thought presumptuous or displeasing: It will at least disclose something of the character and design of the piece, and may in future tempt an abler hand to execute the whole, and give it to the public.
"At the opening of this comedy
Strepsiades,
(the father of the Prodigal) is discovered sitting at his desk with a number of bills and papers before him, in deep meditation, whilst
Phidippides
his son is sleeping on his bed in the same chamber—The time before break of day—
Strepsiades,
starting from his seat, breaks forth into the following exclamation"—
Ah me, Ah me! what an eternal night!
O Kingly Jove, shall the day never dawn?
And yet the cock sung out long long ago;
I heard him, I—But my slaves lie and snore,
Snore in defiance; for the rascals know
It is their privilege in time of war,
Which with its other plagues bring this upon us,
That we mayn't rouse these vermin with a cudgel.
There's my young Hopeful too—He sleeps it through,
Snug under five fat blankets at the least:
Wou'd I cou'd sleep as sound! But my poor eyes
Have no sleep in them; what with debts and duns
And stable keepers bills, which this fine spark
Heaps on my back I lie awake all night.
And what cares he but to coil up his locks,
Ride, drive his horses, dream of 'em all night,
Whilst I, poor devil, may go hang?—For now
The settling day of term comes on apace,
And my usurious creditors are gaping—
—What hoa! a light there, boy! bring me my tablets,
(Boy enters.)
That I may set down all and sum them up,
Debts, creditors and interest upon interest—
(Boy gives him the tablets.)
Let me see where I am, and what the total—
Put down twelve pounds, twelve standard pounds to
Pasias
—
Out on it, and for what? A horse, a horse;
Right noble by the mark—Curse on such marks!
Wou'd I had giv'n this eye from out this head!
E'er I had paid the purchase of this jennet.
(talking in his sleep.)
Phidon
! for shame, keep, keep the ring!—
There 'tis!
That's it—my bane. He's on his horse's back:
He's racing in his sleep.
(as before.)
A heat, a heat—
How many turns to a heat?
More than enough:
You've given me heats in plenty: I am jaded—
But to my list—What name stands next to
Pasias?
Amynias
—three good pounds—still for the race,
A chariot for the race of the first rank,
(as before.)
Dismount; unharness and away!
I thank you,
You have unharness'd me; I am dismounted,
And with a vengeance; all my goods in pawn,
Fines, forfeitures and penalties in plenty.
My Father!—Why so restless; who has vext you?
The Sheriff vexes me; he breaks my rest.
Peace, peace! and let me sleep awhile.
Sleep on;
But take this with you, all these debts of mine
Will double on your head. A plague confound
My evil Genius, when the crotchet took me
To wed forsooth! that precious dam of thine.
I liv'd at ease i' th' country, coarsely clad,
Rough, free and full withal as oil and honey
And store of stock cou'd make me, till I took,
Clown as I was, this limb of quality,
This vain, extravagant, high-blooded dame.
Rare bedfellows and dainty, were we not?
I smelling of the wine-vat, figs and fleeces,
The produce of my farm—All essence she,
Saffron and harlot's kisses; feast and frolick,
A pamper'd wanton—Idle I'll not call her,
For she takes pains enough to spend my money;
Which made me tell her, pointing to this cloak
Now threadbare on my shoulders—See, good wife,
This is your work; in troth you labour hard.
(re-enters.)
Master! the lamp has drank up all its oil.
Aye, 'tis a drunken lamp—The more fault your's:
Whelp, you shall howl for this!
Why, for what fault?
For cramming such a greedy wick with oil.
(exit Boy.)
Well! in good time this hopeful heir was born;
Then I and my beloved fell to wrangling
About the naming of the brat—My wife
Wou'd dub her colt
Xanthippus,
or
Charippus,
Or it might be
Callipedes,
she car'd not,
So 'twere a horse, which own'd the name—But I
Stuck for his grandfather
Phidonides.
At last, when neither cou'd prevail, the matter
Was compromis'd by calling him
Phidippides:
When she began to fondle the sweet babe,
And taking him by th' hand—Lambkin, she cried,
When thou art some years older thou shalt drive
Thy chariot to the city, rob'd in state
Like thy great ancestor
Megacles
—No;
Not so, quoth I, but thou shalt drive thy goats,
When thou art able, from the fields of
Phelle,
Clad in a woolly jacket like thy father;
But he is deaf to all these frugal rules,
And drives me on the gallop to my ruin:
Therefore all night I call my thoughts to council,
And after long debate find one chance left,
To which if I can lead him, all is safe;
If not—But soft! 'Tis time that I shou'd wake him;
But how to soothe him is the task—Phidippides!
Precious Phidippides!—
What now, my father?
Kiss me, my boy! Reach me thine hand!
Ah me!
What wou'd you?
Tell me, Sirrah, dost thou love me?
Aye, be content; by Neptune's self I swear it!
Neptune, the patron of the equestrian race.
Ah! name not him; name not that chariotteer,
That God, who is my bane; but, oh, my son!
If thou indeed dost love, hear and obey me.
In what must I obey?
Reform your habits;
And what I dictate, do!
What do you dictate?
But will you do't?
I will, so help me, Bacchus!
'Tis well; get up! come hither, boy! Look out—
Yon little wicket and the hut hard by—
Dost thou not see them?
Yes, I do: What then?
Why, that's the council-chamber of all wisdom;
There the great sophists meet and teach the world,
That heav'n's high firmament is one vast oven,
And men it's burning embers: These are they,
Who can teach pleaders how to twist a cause,
So you'll but pay them for it, right or wrong,
But how do you call 'em?
Troth, I know not that:
But they are men, who take a world of pains,
Wond'rous good men and able.
Out upon 'em!
Poor rogues! I know 'em now; you mean those scabs,
Those squalid, barefoot, beggarly enthusiasts,
The mighty Cacodaemons of whose sect
Are
Socrates
and
Chaeriphon
—Away!
Hush, hush, be still! don't vent such foolish prattle;
But, if you'll take my counsel, join their college
And quit your riding-school.
Not I, by Bacchus!
No; not for all
Leogaras
's stud.
Come, my dear boy, my darling lad, consent;
I prythee do, and learn!
What shall I learn?
They have a choice of logic; this for justice,
That for injustice—learn this useful art,
And all these creditors, that now beset me,
Shall never touch a drachm that I owe them.
I'll learn of no such masters, nor be made
An object of contempt to all my colleagues.
Out of my doors then! You and your fine cattle
Shall feed no more at my cost; so begone!
To the crows I bequeath you—
Do your worst!
I'll to my uncle, to my noble uncle:
He'll scorn to see his nephew walk on foot:
To him I go: I'll trouble you no more.
(exit.)
(alone.)
He has thrown me to the ground, but I'll not there:
I'll up, and with permission of the Gods
Try if I cannot learn these arts myself:
But being old, sluggish and dull of wit,
How am I sure these subtilties won't pose me?
Well, I'll attempt it: What avails complaint?
Why don't I knock and enter?—Hoa! within there!
(Knocks violently at Socrates's door, a disciple calls out from within.)
Go hang yourself, and give the crows a dinner!
What noisy fellow art thou at the door?
Strepsiades of
Cicynna,
son of
Phidon.
You're mad methinks to kick up such a riot;
Battering the door, you've batter'd out my brains
Just in the very crisis of projection.
(Comes from the house.)
Excuse my ignorance; I'm country-bred:
But tell me what rare thought your brains were hatching.
That were not lawful to reveal to strangers.
Speak boldly then as to a fellow student;
For therefore am I come.
Then I will speak;
But set it down amongst our mysteries—
It is a question put to
Chaerephon
By our great master
Socrates
to answer—
How many of his own lengths at one spring
A flea can hop—for we did see one vault
From
Chaerephon
's black eyebrow to the head
Of the philosopher.
And how did t'other
Contrive to measure this?
Most accurately:
He dipt the insect's feet in melted wax,
Which, hardening into sandals as it cool'd,
Gave him the space by rule infallible.
O Jupiter, what subtilty of thought!
But there's a greater question yet behind—
What wou'd you say to that?
Tell it, I pray you.
'Twas put to Socrates, if he could say,
When a gnat humm'd, whether the sound did issue
From mouth or tail—
Aye, marry, what said he?
He said your gnat doth blow his trumpet backwards
From a sonorous cavity within him;
Which, being fill'd with breath and forc'd along
The narrow pipe, or rectum of his body,
Doth vent itself in a loud hum behind.
Hah! then I see the podex of your gnat
Is trumpet fashion'd—Oh! the blessings on him
For this discovery! well may he escape
The law's strict scrutiny, who thus developes
Th' anatomy of a gnat.
Nor is this all;
Another great experiment was marr'd
By a curst cat—
As how, good sir? discuss.
One night as he was gazing at the moon,
Curious and all intent upon it's motions,
A cat on the house-ridge was at her needs,
And squirted in his face.
Beshrew her for it!
Yet I must laugh no less.
Sir, you shall know
We had no supper yesternight—
How so?
What was your master doing?
Sifting ashes
Upon the board, then with a little broach,
Crook'd for the nonce, pretending to describe
A circle, neatly filch'd away a cloak.
Why talk we then of Thales? Open to me,
Open the school and let me see your master:
I am on fire to enter—Come, unbar!
(The school is open'd.)
O Hercules, defend me! Who are these?
What kind of cattle have we here in view?
Where is the wonder? What do they resemble?
Methinks they're like our Spartan prisoners,
Captur'd at Pylos. What are they in search of?
Why are their eyes so rooted in the ground?
Their studies lie that way.
Oh! 'tis for onions
They are in quest—Come, lads, give o'er your search;
I'll shew you what you want, a noble plat,
All round and sound—But soft! what mean those gentry,
Who dip their heads so low?
Marry, because
Their studies lie so deep; they are now diving
To the dark realms of Tartarus and Night.
And why are all their cruppers mounted up?
To practise them in star-gazing, and teach them
Their proper elevations—But no more:
Come, fellow students, let us hence or e'er
The master comes—
Nay, prythee let them stay,
And be of council with me in my business.
Impossible; they cannot give the time.
Now, for the love of Heaven, what have we here?
Explain their uses to me.
(Observing the apparatus.)
This machine
Is for Astronomy—
And this—?
For Geometry.
As how?
For measuring the Earth.
Indeed!
What, by the lot?
No, faith, sir, by the lump;
Ev'n the whole world at once
Well said, in troth!
A quaint device, and made for general use.
Look now! this line marks the circumference
Of the whole globe, d'ye see—This spot is Athens.
Athens! Go to; I see no courts of law;
Therefore I'll not believe you.
Nay, in truth,
This very spot is Attica.
And where,
Where is my own Cicynna?
Here it lies;
And this Euboea; mark how far it runs!—
How far it runs! Yes, Pericles has made it
far enough from us: Where's Lacedaemon?
Here, close to Athens.
Ah! how much too close!
Prythee, good friends, take that had neighbour from us.
That's not for us to do.
Then woe betide you!
But look! who's this suspended in a basket?
(Socrates is discovered.)
This, this is he.
What he?
Why Socrates.
Hah! Socrates?—Make up to him and roar:
Bid him come down: Roar lustily!
Not I;
Do it yourself: I've other things to mind.
(exit.)
Hoa! Socrates—What hoa! my little Socrates!
Mortal, how now! Thou insect of a day,
What would'st thou?
I would know what thou art doing.
Treading the air; contemplating the sun.
Ah! then I see you're basketed so high,
That you look down upon the Gods; on Earth
Good hope you'll lower a peg.
Sublime in air,
Sublime in thought I carry my mind with me;
It's cogitations all assimilated
To the pure atmosphere in which I float:
Lower me to Earth, and my mind's subtle powers,
Seiz'd by contagious dulness, lose their spirit:
For the dry Earth drinks up the generous sap,
The vegetating vigor of philosophy,
And leaves it a mere husk.
What do you say?
Philosophy has sapt your vigor?—Fie upon it!
But come, my precious fellow, come down quickly,
And teach me those fine things I'm here in quest of.
And what fine things are they?
(Socrates descends on the stage.)
A new receipt
For fending off my creditors, and foiling them
By the art logical; for you shall know
By debts, pawns, pledges, usuries, executions
I am rackt and rent in tatters.
Why permit it?
What strange infatuation seiz'd your senses?
The horse-consumption, a voracious plague:
But so you'll enter me amongst your scholars,
And tutor me like them to bilk my creditors,
Name your own price, and by the Gods I swear
I'll pay you the last drachm.
By what Gods?
Answer that first; for your Gods are not mine.
How swear you then? as the Byzantians swear,
By your base iron coin?
Will you have patience,
Whilst I expound to you the mysteries
Of these celestial matters?
Yea, by Jove,
And so I will—but let them be celestial,
What, if I bring you to a conference
With my own proper Goddesses,
the Clouds?
By all means, and most welcome.
Come, sit down;
Sit down upon this dinner-couch.
Tis done.
Now take this chaplet: Wear it!
Why this chaplet?
Would'st make of me another Athamas,
And sacrifice me to a Cloud?
Fear nothing;
It is a ceremony indispensible
At all initiations.
What to gain?
'Twill sift your faculties as fine as powder;
Bolt 'em like meal, grind 'em as light as dust:
Only be patient.
Marry, you'll go near
To make your words good; an you pound me thus,
You'll make me very dust and nothing else.
(anapaestic.)
Keep silence then, and listen to a prayer,
Which fits the gravity of age to hear.
Oh, air! all-powerful air! which dost enfold
This pendant globe; thou vault of flaming gold!
Ye Clouds, in whose dark womb the thunders roll,
Bright Clouds, inspire and raise your suppliant's soul!
Hold, keep them off awhile till I am ready:
Ah! luckless me, wou'd I had brought my cloak,
And so escap'd a soaking.—
Peace—Approach,
Fly swift, ye Clouds, and give yourselves to view!
Whether on high Olympus sacred top
Snow-crown'd ye sit, or in the azure vales
Of your own father Ocean sporting weave
Your misty dance, or dip your golden urns
In the seven mouths of Nile; whether ye dwell
On Thracian Mimas, or Maeotis lake,
Hear me, yet hear, and thus invok'd approach!
Come, ye bright Clouds, ascend on high;
Daughters of Ocean, climb the sky!
And o'er the mountain's pine-capt brow
Tow'ring your sleecy mantle throw:
Thence we may scan the wide-stretcht scene,
Groves, lawns and rilling streams between,
And stormy Neptune's vast expanse,
And grasp all Nature at a glance:
Now the dark tempest flits away,
And see! the glittering orb of day
Darts forth his clear aetherial beam;
Come, let us snatch the joyous gleam.
Yes, ye Divinities, whom I adore,
I hail you now propitious to my prayer!
Did'st thou not hear them speak in thunder to me?
And I too, I'm your Cloudships most devoted,
And under sufferance trump against your thunder:
Nay, take it how you may, my frights and fears
Have pincht and cholickt my poor bowels so,
That I can't chuse but treat your holy nostrils
With an unsavory sacrifice.
Forbear
These gross scurrilities for low buffoons
And mountebanks more fitting—Hush, be still!
List to the Chorus of their heavenly voices,
For music is the language they delight in.
Ye Clouds, replete with fruitful showers,
Here let us seek Minerva's towers,
The cradle of old Cecrops race,
The world's chief ornament and grace:
Here mystic fanes and rites divine
And lamps in sacred splendor shine;
Here the Gods dwell in marble domes,
And feast on costly hecatombs,
That round their votive statues blaze,
Whilst crowded temples ring with praise;
And pompous sacrifices here
Make holidays throughout the year;
And when gay spring-time comes again,
Bromius convokes his sportive train,
And pipe, and song and choral dance
Hail the soft hours as they advance.
I prythee for the love of Heaven, good Socrates,
Who are these ranting queans, that talk in stilts?
Dames of high quality no doubt.—
Not so:
No dames, but Clouds celestial, friendly powers
To men of sluggish parts; from these we draw
Sense, apprehension, volubility,
To strike, dilate, surprize and seize the soul.
Aye, therefore 'twas that my heart leapt within me
For very sympathy, when first I heard 'em.
Now could I prattle shrewdly of first causes,
And spin out metaphysic cobwebs finely,
And dogmatize most rarely, and dispute
And paradox it with the best of you;
So, come what may, I must and will behold 'em:
Shew me their faces I conjure you.
Look!
Look where I point! there, there, towards mount
Parnes:
Now they descend the hill; I see them plainly
As plain can be.
Where, where? I prythee shew me!
Here! a whole troop of them, thro' woods and hollows,
A bye-road of their own.
What ails my eyes,
That I can't catch a glimpse of them?
Behold!
Here, at the very entrance.
Never trust me,
If yet I see them clearly.
Then you must be.
Sand-blind, or worse.
Nay, now by father Jove,
I cannot chuse but see them—precious creatures!
For in good faith there's plenty and to spare.
(Chorus enters).
And did you doubt if they were Goddesses?
Not I, so help me! only I had a notion
That they were clouds and dew and darksome vapors.
For shame! Why, man, these are the nursing mothers
Of all our famous sophists, fortune-tellers,
Quacks, medicine-mongers, fops of the first fashion,
Ballet-projectors, singers in
Capricio
And wonder-making cheats—a gang of idlers,
Who pay them for their feeding with good store
Of flattery and mouth-worship.
Now I see
Whom they may thank for driving them along
At such a furious pace, tricking them out
In many-colour'd dyes; now rousing them
In storms and hurricanes about our ears;
Now swiftly wafting them adown the sky,
Moist, airy, bending, bursting into showers:
For all which fine descriptions the poor rogues
Dine daintily on scraps.
And well rewarded:
What better do they merit?
Under favour,
If these be clouds, do you mark me? very clouds,
How came they metamorphos'd into women?
Clouds are not such as these.
And what else are they?
Troth, I can't rightly tell, but I should guess
Something like flakes of wool; not women, sure:
And look! these dames have noses.
Hark ye, friend!
I'll put a question to you.—
Out with it!
Be quick; let's have it—Humph!
This then in short:
Have you ne'er seen a Cloud, which you could fancy
Shap'd like a centaur, leopard, bull or wolf?
Yes, marry have I, and what then?
Why then,
Clouds can assume what shapes they will, believe me:
For instance, should they spy some hairy clown,
Rugged and rough, and like the unlickt cub
Of
Xenophantes,
strait they turn to centaurs,
And kick at him for vengeance.
Well done, Clouds!
But should they meet that peculating knave
Simon,
that public thief—How would they treat him?
As wolves—in character most like his own.
Aye, there it is now, when they spied
Cleonymus,
That dastard run-away, they turn'd to hinds
In honor of his cowardice.
And now,
Having seen
Clisthenes,
to mock his lewdness,
They change themselves to women.
Welcome, Ladies!
(to the Chorus).
And now, so please your majesties to indulge me,
Give us a touch of your celestial voices.—
TANTUM.
No CXLII.
NICOLAS Pedrosa, a busy little being, who followed the trades of shaver, surgeon and man-midwife in the town of Madrid, mounted his mule at the door of his shop in the Plazuela de los Affligidos, and pushed through the gate of San Bernardino, being called to a patient in the neighbouring village of Foncarral, upon a pressing occasion. Every body knows that the ladies in Spain in certain cases do not give long warning to practitioners of a certain description, and no body knew it better than Nicolas, who was resolved not to lose an inch of his way, nor of his mule's best speed by the way, if cudgelling could beat it out of her. It was plain to Nicolas's conviction as plain could be, that his road laid strait forward to the little convent in front; the mule was of opinion, that the turning on the left down the hill towards the Prado was the road of all roads most familiar and agreeable to herself, and accordingly began to dispute the point of topography with Nicolas by fixing her fore feet resolutely in the ground, dipping her head at the same time between them, and launching heels and crupper furiously into the air, in the way of argument. Little Pedrosa, who was armed at heel with one massy silver spur of stout, though antient, workmanship, resolutely applied the rusty rowel to the shoulder of his beast, driving it with all the good will in the world to the very butt, and at the same time, adroitly tucking his blue cloth capa under his right arm, and flinging the skirt over the left shoulder
en cavalier,
began to lay about him with a stout ashen sapling upon the ears, pole and cheeks of the recreant mule. The fire now flashed from a pair of Andalusian eyes, as black as charcoal and not less inflammable, and taking the segara from his mouth, with which he had vainly hoped to have regaled his nostrils in a sharp winter's evening by the way, raised such a thundering troop of angels, saints and martyrs, from St. Michael downwards, not forgetting his own namesake Saint Nicolas de Tolentino by the way, that if curses could have made the mule to go, the dispute would have been soon ended, but not a saint could make her stir any other ways than upwards and downwards at a stand. A small troop of mendicant friars were at this moment conducting the host to a dying man.—
"Nicolas Pedrosa,"
says an old friar,
"be patient with your beast and spare your blasphemies; remember Balaam."—
"Ah father,"
replied Pedrosa,
"Balaam cudgelled his beast till she spoke, so will I mine till she roars."—
"Fie, fie, prophane fellow,"
cries another of the fraternity.
"Go about your work, friend,"
quoth Nicolas,
"and let me go about mine; I warrant it is the more pressing of the two; your patient is going out of the world, mine is coming into it."—
"Hear him,"
cries a third,
"hear the vile wretch, how he blasphemes the body of God."
—And then the troop passed slowly on to the tinkling of the bell.
A man must know nothing of a mule's ears, who does not know what a passion they have for the tinkling of a bell, and no sooner had the jingling chords vibrated in the sympathetic organs of Pedrosa's beast, than boulting forward with a sudden spring she ran roaring into the throng of friars, trampling on some and shouldering others at a most profane rate; when Nicolas availing himself of the impetus, and perhaps not able to controul it, broke away and was out of sight in a moment.
"All the devils in hell blow fire into thy tail, thou beast of Babylon,"
muttered Nicolas to himself, as he scampered along, never once looking behind him or stopping to apologize for the mischief he had done to the bare feet and shirtless ribs of the holy brotherhood.
Whether Nicolas saved his distance, as likewise, if he did, whether it was a male or female Castilian he ushered into the world, we shall not just now enquire, contented to await his return in the first of the morning next day, when he had no sooner dismounted at his shop and delivered his mule to a sturdy Arragonese wench, when Don Ignacio de Santos Aparicio, alguazil mayor of the supreme and general inquisition, put an order into his hand, signed and sealed by the inquisidor general, for the conveyance of his body to the Casa, whose formidable door presents itself in the street adjoining to the square, in which Nicolas's brazen basin hung forth the emblem of his trade.
The poor little fellow, trembling in every joint and with a face as yellow as saffron, dropt a knee to the altar, which fronts the entrance, and crossed himself most devoutly; as soon as he had ascended the first flight of stairs, a porter habited in black opened the tremendous barricade and Nicolas with horror heard the grating of the heavy bolts that shut him in. He was led through passages and vaults and melancholy cells, till he was delivered into the dungeon, where he was finally left to his solitary meditations. Hapless being! what a scene of horror.—Nicolas felt all the terrors of his condition, but being an Andalusian and like his countrymen of a lively imagination, he began to turn over all the resources of his invention for some happy fetch, if any such might occur, for helping him out of the dismal limbo he was in: He was not long to seek for the cause of his misfortune; his adventure with the barefooted friars was a ready solution of all difficulties of that nature, had there been any: There was however another thing, which might have troubled a stouter heart than Nicolas's—He was a Jew.—This of a certain would have been a staggering item in a poor devil's confession, but then it was a secret to all the world but Nicolas, and Nicolas's conscience did not just then urge him to reveal it: He now began to overhaul the inventory of his personals about him, and with some satisfaction counted three little medals of the blessed virgin, two Agnus Deis, a Saint Nicolas de Tolentino and a formidable string of beads all pendant from his neck and within his shirt; in his pockets he had had a paper of dried figs, a small bundle of segaras, a case of lancets, squirt and forceps, and two old razors in a leathern envelope; these he had delivered one by one to the alguazil, who first arrested him,—
"and let him make the most of them,"
said he to himself,
"they can never prove me an Israelite by a case of razors."
—Upon a closer rummage however he discovered in a secret pocket a letter, which the alguazil had overlooked, and which his patient Donna Leonora de Casafonda had given him in charge to deliver as directed—
"Well, well,"
cried he,
"let it pass; there can be no mystery in this harmless scrawl; a letter of advice to some friend or relation, I'll not break the seal; let the fathers read it, if they like, 'twill prove the truth of my deposition, and help out my excuse for the hurry of my errand, and the unfortunate adventure of my damned refractory mule."
—And now no sooner had the recollection of the wayward mule crossed the brain of poor Nicolas Pedrosa, than he began to blast her at a furious rate—
"The scratches and the scab to boot confound thy scurvy hide,"
quoth he,
"thou ass-begotten bastard, whom Noah never let into his ark! The vengeance take thee for an uncreated barren beast of promiscuous generation! What devil's crotch
t got into thy capricious noddle, that thou shouldst fall in love with that Nazaritish bell, and run bellowing like Lucifer into the midst of those barefooted vermin, who are more malicious and more greedy than the locusts of Egypt? Oh! that I had the art of Simon Magus to conjure thee into this dungeon in my stead; but I warrant thou art chewing thy barley straw without any pity for thy wretched master, whom thy jade's tricks have delivered bodily to the tormentors, to be sport of these uncircumcised sons of Dagon."
And now the cell door opened, when a savage figure entered carrying a huge parcel of clanking fetters, with a collar of iron, which he put round the neck of poor Pedrosa, telling him with a truly diabolic grin, whilst he was rivetting it on, that it was a proper cravat for the throat of a blasphemer.—
"Jesu-Maria,"
quoth Pedrosa,
"is all this fallen upon me for only cudgelling a restive mule?"
"Aye,"
cried the demon,
"and this is only a taste of what is to come,"
at the same time slipping his pincers from the screw he was forcing to the head, he caught a piece of flesh in the forceps and wrenched it out of his cheek, laughing at poor Nicolas, whilst he roared aloud with the pain, telling him it was a just reward for the torture he had put him to awhile ago, when he tugged at a tooth, till he broke it in his jaw.
"Ah, for the love of Heaven,"
cried Pedrosa,
"have more pity on me; for the sake of Saint Nicolas de Tolentino, my holy patron, be not so unmerciful to a poor barber-surgeon, and I will shave your worship's beard for nothing as long as I have life"
One of the messengers of the auditory now came in, and bade the fellow strike off the prisoner's fetters, for that the holy fathers were in council and demanded him for examination.
"This is something extraordinary,"
quoth the tormentor,
"I should not have expected it this twelvemonth to come."
Pedrosa's fetters were struck off; some brandy was applied to staunch the bleeding of his cheeks; his hands and face were washed, and a short jacket of coarse ticking thrown over him, and the messenger with an assistant taking him each under an arm led him into a spacious chamber, where at the head of a long table sate his excellency the inquisidor general with six of his assessors, three on each side the chair of state: The alguazil mayor, a secretary and two notaries with other officers of the holy council were attending in their places.
The prisoner was placed behind a bar at the foot of the table between the messengers, who brought him in, and having made his obeisance to the awful presence in the most supplicating manner, he was called upon according to the usual form of questions by one of the junior judges to declare his name, parentage, profession, age, place of abode, and to answer various interrogatories of the like trifling nature: His excellency the inquisidor general now opened his reverend lips, and in a solemn tone of voice, that penetrated to the heart of the poor trembling prisoner, interrogated him as follows—
"Nicolas Pedrosa, we have listened to the account you give of yourself, your business and connections, now tell us for what offence, or offences, you are here standing a prisoner before us: Examine your own heart, and speak the truth from your conscience without prevarication or disguise."
"May it please your excellency,"
replied Pedrosa,
"with all due submission to your holiness and this reverend assembly, my most equitable judges, I conceive I stand here before you for no worse a crime, than that of cudgelling a refractory mule; an animal so restive in its nature, (under correction of your holiness be it spoken) that although I were blest with the forbearance of holy Job, (for like him too I am married and my patience hath been exercised by a wife) yet could I not forbear to smite my beast for her obstinacy, and the rather because I was summoned in the way of my profession, as I have already made known to your most merciful ears, upon a certain crying occasion, which would not admit of a moment's delay."
"Recollect yourself, Nicolas,"
said his Excellency the inquisidor general,
"was there nothing else you did, save smiting your beast?"
"I take saint Nicolas de Tolentino to witness,"
replied he,
"that I know of no other crime, for which I can be responsible at this righteous tribunal, save smiting my unruly beast."
"Take notice, brethren,"
exclaimed the inquisidor,
"this unholy wretch holds trampling over friars to be no crime."
"Pardon me, holy father,"
replied Nicolas,
"I hold it for the worst of crimes, and therefore willingly surrender my refractory mule to be dealt with as you see fit, and if you impale her alive it will not be more than she deserves."
"Your wits are too nimble, Nicolas,"
cried the judge;
"have a care they do not run away with your discretion: Recollect the blasphemies you uttered in the hearing of those pious people."
"I humbly pray your excellency,"
answered the prisoner,
"to recollect that anger is a short madness, and I hope allowances will be made by your holy council for words spoke in haste to a rebellious mule: The prophet Balaam was thrown off his guard with a simple ass, and what is an ass compared to a mule? If your excellency had seen the lovely creature that was screaming in agony till I came to her relief, and how fine a boy I ushered into the world, which would have been lost but for my assistance, I am sure I should not be condemned for a few hasty words spoke in passion."
"Sirrah!"
cried one of the puisny judges,
"respect the decency of the court."
"Produce the contents of this fellow's pockets before the court,"
said the president,
"lay them on the table."
"Monster,"
resumed the aforesaid puisny judge taking up the forceps,
"what is the use of this diabolical machine?"
"Please your reverence,"
replied Pedrosa,
"
aptum est ad extrahendos foetus.
"—
"Unnatural wretch,"
again exclaimed the judge,
"you have murdered the mother."
"The Mother of God forbid,"
exclaimed Pedrosa,
"I believe I have a proof in my pocket, that will acquit me of that charge;"
and so saying, he tendered the letter we have before made mention of: The secretary took it, and by command of the court read as follows:
Senor Don Manuel de Herrera,
When this letter, which I send by Nicolas Pedrosa, shall reach your hands, you shall know that I am safely delivered of a lovely boy after a dangerous labour, in consideration of which I pray you to pay to the said Nicolas Pedrosa the sum of twenty gold pistoles, which sum his excellency—
"Hold,"
cried the inquisidor general, starting hastily from his seat, and snatching away the letter,
"there is more in this than meets the eye: Break up the court; I must take an examination of this prisoner in private."
No CXLIII.
AS soon as the room was cleared the inquisidor general beckoning to the prisoner to follow him, retired into a private closet, where throwing himself carelessly into an arm chair, he turned a gracious countenance upon the poor affrighted accoucheur, and bidding him sit down upon a low stool by his side, thus accosted him:—
"Take heart, senor Pedrosa, your imprisonment is not likely to be very tedious, for I have a commission you must execute without loss of time: you have too much consideration for yourself to betray a trust, the violation of which must involve you in inevitable ruin, and can in no degree attaint my character, which is far enough beyond the reach of malice: Be attentive therefore to my orders; execute them punctually and keep my secret as you tender your own life: Dost thou know the name and condition of the lady, whom thou hast delivered?"
Nicolas assured him he did not, and his excellency proceeded as follows—
"Then I tell thee, Nicolas, it is the illustrious Donna Leonora de Casafonda; her husband is the president of Quito and daily expected with the next arrivals from the South Seas; now, though measures have been taken for detaining him at the port, wherever he shall land, till he shall receive further orders, yet you must be sensible Donna Leonora's situation is somewhat delicate: It will be your business to take the speediest measures for her recovery, but as it seems she has had a dangerous and painful labour, this may be a work of more time than could be wished, unless some medicines more efficacious than common are administered: Art thou acquainted with any such, friend Nicolas?"
—
"So please your excellency,"
quoth Nicolas, my
"processes have been tolerably successful; I have bandages and cataplasms with oils and conserves, that I have no cause to complain of; they will restore nature to it's proper state in all decent time."—
"Thou talkest like a fool, friend Nicolas,"
interrupting him, said the inquisidor;
"What tellest thou me of thy swathings and swadlings? quick work must be wrought by quick medicines: Hast thou none such in thy botica? I'll answer for it thou hast not; therefore look you, sirrah, here is a little vial compounded by a famous chymist; see that you mix it in the next apozem you administer to Donna Leonora; it is the most capital sedative in nature; give her the whole of it, and let her husband return when he will, depend upon it he will make no discoveries from her."—
"Humph!"
quoth Nicolas within himself,
"Well said, inquisidor!"
He took the vial with all possible respect, and was not wanting in professions of the most inviolable fidelity and secrecy—
"No more words, friend Nicolas,"
quoth the inquisidor,
"upon that score; I do not believe thee one jot the more for all thy promises, my dependance is upon thy fears and not thy faith; I fancy thou hast seen enough of this place not to be willing to return to it once for all."
—Having so said, he rang a bell, and ordered Nicolas to be forthwith liberated, bidding the messenger return his clothes instantly to him with all that belonged to him, and having slipt a purse into his hand well filled with doubloons, he bade him be gone about his business and not see his face again till he had executed his commands.
Nicolas boulted out of the porch without taking leave of the altar, and never checked his speed till he found himself fairly housed under shelter of his own beloved brass basin.—
"Aha!"
quoth Nicolas,
"my lord inquisidor, I see the king is not likely to gain a subject more by your intrigues: A pretty job you have set me about; and so, when I have put the poor lady to rest with your damned sedative, my tongue must be stopt next to prevent its blabbing: But I'll shew you I was not born in Andalusia for nothing."
Nicolas now opened a secret drawer and took out a few pieces of money, which in fact was his whole stock of cash in the world; he loaded and primed his pistols and carefully lodged them in the housers of his saddle, he buckled to his side his trusty spada, and hastened to caparison his mule.
"Ah, thou imp of the old one,"
quoth he as he entered the stable,
"art not ashamed to look me in the face? But come, hussey, thou owest me a good turn methinks, stand by me this once, and be friends for ever! thou art in good case, and if thou wilt put thy best foot foremost, like a faithful beast, thou shalt not want for barley by the way."
The bargain was soon struck between Nicolas and his mule, he mounted her in the happy moment and pointing his course towards the bridge of Toledo, which proudly strides with half a dozen lofty arches over a stream scarce three feet wide, he found himself as completely in a desart in half a mile's riding, as if he had been dropt in the center of Arabia petraea. As Nicolas's journey was not a tour of curiosity, he did not amuse himself with a peep at Toledo, or Talavera, or even Merida by the way; for the same reason he took a
circumbendibus
round the frontier town of Badajoz, and crossing a little brook refreshed his mule with the last draught of Spanish water, and instantly congratulated himself upon entering the territory of Portugal.
"Brava!"
quoth he, patting the neck of his mule,
"thou shalt have a supper this night of the best sieve-meat that Estremadura can furnish: We are now in a country where the scattered flock of Israel fold thick and fare well."
He now began to chaunt the song of Solomon, and gently ambled on in the joy of his heart.
When Nicolas at length reached the city of Lisbon, he hugged himself in his good fortune; still he recollected that the inquisition has long arms, and he was yet in a place of no perfect security. Our adventurer had in early life acted as assistant surgeon in a Spanish frigate bound to Buenos Ayres, and being captured by a British man of war and carried into Jamaica, had very quietly passed some years in that place as journeyman apothecary, in which time he had acquired a tolerable acquaintance with the English language: No sooner then did he discover the British ensign flying on the poop of an English frigate then lying in the Tagus, than he eagerly caught the opportunity of paying a visit to the surgeon, and finding he was in want of a mate, offered himself and was entered in that capacity for a cruize against the French and Spaniards, with whom Great Britain was then at war. In this secure asylum Nicolas enjoyed the first happy moments he had experienced for a long time past, and being a lively good-humoured little fellow, and one that touched the guitar and sung sequidillas with a tolerable grace, he soon recommended himself to his ship-mates and grew in favour with every body on board from the captain to the cook's mate.
When they were out upon their cruize hovering on the Spanish coast, it occurred to Nicolas that the inquisidor general at Madrid had told him of the expected arrival of the president of Quito, and having imparted this to one of the lieutenants, he reported it to the captain, and, as the intelligence seemed of importance, he availed himself of it by hawling into the track of the homeward-bound galleons, and great was the joy, when at the break of the morning the man at the mast-head announced a square-rigged vessel in view: The ardor of a chace now set all hands at work, and a few hours brought them near enough to discern that she was a Spanish frigate and seemingly from a long voyage: Little Pedrosa, as alert as the rest, stript himself for his work and repaired to his post in the cock-pit, whilst the thunder of the guns rolled incessantly overhead; three cheers from the whole crew at length announced the moment of victory, and a few more minutes ascertained the good news that the prize was a frigate richly laden from the South Seas with the governor of Quito and his suite on board.
Pedrosa was now called upon deck and sent on board the prize as interpreter to the first lieutenant, who was to take possession of her. He found every thing in confusion, a deck covered with the slain and the whole crew in consternation at an event they were in no degree prepared for, not having received any intimation of a war. He found the officers in general and the passengers without exception under the most horrid impressions of the English, and expecting to be plundered and perhaps butchered without mercy. Don Manuel de Casafonda the governor, whose countenance bespoke a constitution far gone in a decline, had thrown himself on a sopha in the last state of despair and given way to an effusion of tears; when the lieutenant entered the cabin he rose trembling from his couch and with the most supplicating action presented to him his sword, and with it a casket which he carried in his other hand; as he tendered these spoils to his conqueror, whether through weakness or of his own will, he made a motion of bending his knee; the generous Briton, shocked at the unmanly overture, caught him suddenly with both hands, and turning to Pedrosa, said aloud—
"Convince this gentleman he is fallen into the hands of an honourable enemy."—
"Is it possible!"
cried Don Manuel, and lifting up his streaming eyes to the countenance of the British officer, saw humanity, valour and generous pity so strongly charactered in his youthful features, that the conviction was irresistible.
"Will he not accept my sword,"
cried the Spaniard?
"He desires you to wear it, till he has the honour of presenting you to his captain."—
"Ah then he has a captain,"
exclaimed Don Manuel,
"his superior will be of another way of thinking; tell him this casket contains my jewels; they are valuable; let him present them as a lawful prize, which will enrich the captor; his superior will not hesitate to take them from me."—
"If they are your excellency's private property,"
replied Pedrosa,
"I am ordered to assure you, that if your ship was loaded with jewels, no British officer in the service of his king will take them at your hands; the ship and effects of his Catholic Majesty are the only prize of the captors; the personals of the passengers are inviolate."—
"Generous nation!"
exclaimed Don Manuel,
"how greatly have I wronged thee!"
—The boats of the British frigate now came alongside and part of the crew were shifted out of the prize, taking their clothes and trunks along with them, in which they were very cordially assisted by their conquerors. The barge soon after came aboard with an officer in the stern-sheets, and the crew in their white shirts and velvet caps, to escort the governor and the ship's captain on board the frigate, which lay with her sails to the mast awaiting their arrival; the accommodation ladder was slung over the side and manned for the prisoners, who were received on the gang-way by the second lieutenant, whilst perfect silence and the strictest discipline reigned in the ship, where all were under the decks and no inquisitive curious eyes were suffered to wound the feelings of the conquered even with a glance; in the door of his cabin stood the captain, who received them with that modest complaisance, which does not revolt the unfortunate by an overstrained politeness; he was a man of high birth and elegant manners with a heart as benevolent as it was brave: Such an address set off with a person finely formed and perfectly engaging could not fail to impress the prisoners with the most favourable ideas, and as Don Manuel spoke French fluently, he could converse with the British captain without the help of an interpreter: As he expressed an impatient desire of being admitted to his parole, that he might revisit friends and connections, from which he had been long separated, he was overjoyed to hear that the English ship would carry her prize into Lisbon; and that he would there be set on shore and permitted to make the best of his way from thence to Madrid; he talked of his wife with all the ardor of the most impassioned lover, and apologized for his tears by imputing them to the agony of his mind and the infirmity of his health under the dread of being longer separated from an object so dear to his heart and on whom he doated with the fondest affection. The generous captor indulged him in these conversations, and, being a husband himself, knew how to allow for all the tenderness of his sensations.
"Ah, sir,"
cried Don Manuel,
"would to Heaven it were in my power to have the honour of presenting my beloved Leonora to you on our landing at Lisbon—Perhaps,"
added he, turning to Pedrosa, who at that moment entered the cabin,
"this gentleman, whom I take to be a Spaniard, may have heard the name of Donna Leonora de Casafonda; if he has been at Madrid, it is possible he may have seen her; should that be the case he can testify to her external charms; I alone can witness to the exquisite perfection of her mind."—
"Senor Don Manuel,"
replied Pedrosa,
"I have seen Donna Leonora, and your excellency is warranted in all you can say in her praise; she is of incomparable beauty."
These words threw the uxorious Spaniard into raptures; his eyes sparkled with delight; the blood rushed into his emaciated cheeks and every feature glowed with unutterable joy: He pressed Pedrosa with a variety of rapid enquiries, all which he evaded by pleading ignorance, saying that he had only had a casual glance of her, as she passed along the Pardo. The embarassment however which accompanied these answers did not escape the English captain, who shortly after drawing Pedrosa aside into the surgeon's cabin, was by him made acquainted with the melancholy situation of that unfortunate lady, and every particular of the story as before related; nay the very vial was produced with it's contents, as put into the hands of Pedrosa by the inquisidor.
No CXLIV.
"CAN there be such villainy in man?"
cried the British captain, when Pedrosa had concluded his detail;
"Alas! my heart bleeds for this unhappy husband: assuredly that monster has destroyed Leonora; as for thee, Pedrosa, whilst the British flag flies over thy head, neither Spain, nor Portugal, nor Inquisitors, nor Devils shall annoy thee under it's protection; but if thou ever venturest over the side of this ship and rashly settest one foot upon Catholic soil, when we arrive at Lisbon, thou art a lost man."—
"I were worse than a madman,"
replied Nicolas,
"should I attempt it."—
"Keep close in this asylum then,"
resumed the captain,
"and fear nothing: Had it been our fate to have been captured by the Spaniard, what would have become of thee?"—
"In the worst of extremities,"
replied Nicolas,
"I should have applied to the inquisidor's vial; but I confess I had no fears of that sort; a ship so commanded and so manned is in little danger of being carried into a Spanish port."—
"I hope not,"
said the captain,
"and I promise thee thou shalt take thy chance in her, so long as she is afloat under my command, and if we live to conduct her to England, thou shalt have thy proper share of prize money, which, if the galleon breaks up according to her entries, will be something towards enabling thee to shift, and if thou art as diligent in thy duty, as I am persuaded thou wilt be, whilst I live thou shalt never want a seaman's friend."
—At these chearing words, little Nicolas threw himself at the feet of his generous preserver, and with streaming eyes poured out his thanks from a heart animated with joy and gratitude.—The captain raising him by the hand forbade him as he prized his friendship ever to address him in that posture any more;
"Thank me, if you will,"
added he,
"but thank me as one man should another; let no knees bend in this ship but to the name of God.—But now,"
continued he,
"let us turn our thoughts to the situation of our unhappy Casafonda; we are now drawing near to Lisbon, where he will look to be liberated on his parole."—
"By no means let him venture into Spain,"
said Pedrosa;
"I am well assured there are orders to arrest him in every port or frontier town, where he may present himself."—
"I can well believe it,"
replied the captain;
"his piteous case will require further deliberation; in the mean time let nothing transpire on your part and keep yourself out of his sight as carefully as you can."
—This said, the captain left the cabin, and both parties repaired to their several occupations.
As soon as the frigate and her prize cast anchor in the Tagus, Don Manuel de Casafonda impatiently reminded our captain of his promised parole. The painful moment was now come when an explanation of some sort became unavoidable: The generous Englishman with a countenance expressive of the tenderest pity, took the Spaniard's hand in his and seating him on a couch beside him, ordered the centinel to keep the cabin private, and delivered himself as follows—
"Senor Don Manuel, I must now impart to you an anxiety which I labour under on your account; I have strong reason to suspect you have enemies in your own country, who are upon the watch to arrest you on your landing; when I have told you this, I expect you will repose such trust in my honour and the sincerity of my regard for you, as not to demand a further explanation of the particulars, on which my intelligence is founded."—
"Heaven and Earth,"
cried the astonished Spaniard,
"who can be those enemies I have to fear, and what can I have done to deserve them?"—
"So far I will open myself to you,"
answered the captain,
"as to point out the principal to you, the inquisidor general."—
"The best friend I have in Spain,"
exclaimed the governor,
"my sworn protector, the patron of my fortune: He my enemy! impossible."—
"Well, Sir,"
replied the captain,
"if my advice does not meet belief, I must so far exert my authority for your sake, as to make this ship your prison, till I have waited on our minister at Lisbon and made the enquiries necessary for your safety; suspend your judgment upon the seeming harshness of this measure till I return to you again;"
and at the same time rising from his seat, he gave orders for the barge, and leaving strict injunctions with the first lieutenant not to allow of the governor's quitting the frigate, he put off for the shore and left the melancholy Spaniard buried in profound and silent meditation.
The emissaries of the Inquisition having at last traced Pedrosa to Lisbon, and there gained intelligence of his having entered on board the frigate, our captain had no sooner turned into the porch of the hotel at Buenos-Ayres, than he was accosted by a messenger of state with a requisition from the prime minister's office for the surrender of one Nicolas Pedrosa, a subject of Spain and a criminal, who had escaped out of the prison of the Inquisition in Madrid, where he stood charged of high crimes and misdemeanors.—As soon as this requisition was explained to our worthy captain, without condescending to a word in reply he called for pen and ink, and writing a short order to the officer commanding on board, instantly dispatched the midshipman, who attended him, to the barge with directions to make the best of his way back to the frigate and deliver it to the lieutenant: Then turning to the messenger, he said to him in a resolute tone—
"That Spaniard is now borne on my books, and before you shall take him out of the service of my King, you must sink his ship."
—Not waiting for a reply, he immediately proceeded without stop to the house of the British Minister at the further end of the city: Here he found Pedrosa's intelligence with regard to the Governor of Quito expressly verified, for the order had come down even to Lisbon upon the chance of the Spanish frigate's taking shelter in that port: To this Minister he related the horrid tale, which Pedrosa had delivered to him, and with his concurrence it was determined to forward letters into Spain, which Don Manuel should be advised to write to his lady and friends at Madrid, and to wait their answer before any further discoveries were imparted to him respecting the blacker circumstances of the case: In the mean time it was resolved to keep the prisoner safe in his asylum.
The generous Captain lost no time in returning to his frigate, where he immediately imparted to Don Manuel the intelligence he had obtained at the British Minister's—
"This indeed,"
cried the afflicted Spaniard,
"is a stroke I was in no respect prepared for; I had fondly persuaded myself there was not in the whole empire of Spain a more friendly heart than that of the Inquisidor's; to my beloved Leonora he had ever shewn the tenderness of a paternal affection from her very childhood; by him our hands were joined; his lips pronounced the nuptial benediction, and through his favour I was promoted to my government: Grant, Heaven, no misfortune hath befallen my Leonora! surely she cannot have offended him and forfeited his favour."—
"As I know him not,"
replied the Captain,
"I can form no judgment of his motives; but this I know, that if a man's heart is capable of cruelty, the fittest school to learn it in, must be the Inquisition."
The proposal was now suggested of sending letters into Spain, and the Governor retired to his desk for the purpose of writing them; in the afternoon of the same day the Minister paid a visit to the Captain, and receiving a packet from the hands of Don Manuel, promised to get it forwarded by a safe conveyance according to direction.
In due course of time this fatal letter from Leonora opened all the horrible transaction to the wretched husband:—
The guilty hand of an expiring wife, under the agonizing operation of a mortal poison, traces these few trembling lines to an injured wretched husband. If thou hast any pity for my parting spirit fly the ruin that awaits thee and avoid this scene of villainy and horror. When I tell thee I have borne a child to the monster, whose poison runs in my veins, thou wilt abhor thy faithless Leonora; had I strength to relate to thee the subtle machinations, which betrayed me to disgrace, thou wouldst pity and perhaps forgive me. Oh agony! can I write his name?—The Inquisidor is my murderer—My pen falls from my hand—Farewell for ever.
Had a shot passed through the heart of Don Manuel, it could not more effectually have stopt its motions, than the perusal of this fatal writing: He dropped lifeless on the couch, and but for the care and assistance of the Captain and Pedrosa in that posture he had probably expired. Grief like his will not be described by words, for to words it gave no utterance; 'twas suffocating, silent woe.
Let us drop the curtain over this melancholy pause in our narration, and attend upon the mournful widower now landing upon English ground, and conveyed by his humane and generous preserver to the house of a noble Earl, the father of our amiable Captain and a man by his virtues still more conspicuous than by his rank. Here amidst the gentle solicitudes of a benevolent family, in one of the most enchanting spots on earth, in a climate most salubrious and restorative to a constitution exhausted by heat and a heart near broken with sorrow, the reviving spirits of the unfortunate Don Manuel gave the first symptoms of a possible recovery. At the period of a few tranquillizing weeks here passed in the bosom of humanity, letters came to hand from the British Minister at Lisbon, in answer to a memorial, that I should have stated to have been drawn up by the friendly Captain before his departure from that port, with a detail of facts deposed and sworn to by Nicolas Pedrosa, which memorial with the documents attached to it was forwarded to the Spanish Court by special express from the Portuguese premier. By these letters it appeared that the high dignity of the person impeached by this statement of facts had not been sufficient to screen him from a very serious and complete investigation; in the course of which facts had been so clearly brought home to him by the confession of his several agents, and the testimony of the deceased Leonora's attendants together with her own written declarations, whilst the poison was in operation, that though no public sentence had been executed upon the criminal, it was generally understood he was either no longer in existence, or in a situation never to be heard of any more, till roused by the awakening trump he shall be summoned to his tremendous last account. As for the unhappy widower it was fully signified to him from authority, that his return to Spain, whether upon exchange or parole, would be no longer opposed, nor had he any thing to apprehend on the part of government, when he should there arrive. The same was signified in fewer words to the exculpated Pedrosa.
Whether Don Manuel de Casafonda will in time to come avail himself of these overtures time alone can prove: As for little Nicolas, whose prize money has set him up in a comfortable little shop in Duke's place, where he breathes the veins and cleanses the bowels of his Israelitish brethren in a land of freedom and toleration, his merry heart is at rest, save only when with fire in his eyes and vengeance on his tongue he anathematizes the Inquisition, and struts into the synagogue every sabbath with as bold a step and as erect a look, as if he was himself High Priest of the Temple going to perform sacrifice upon the re-assembling of the scattered tribes.
No CXLV.
I Would wish no man to deceive himself with opinions, which he has not thoroughly reflected upon in his solitary hours: Till he has
communed with his own heart in his chamber,
it will be dangerous to commit himself to its impulses amidst the distractions of society: In solitude he will hear another voice than he has been used to hear in the colloquial scenes of life; for conscience, though mute as the antient chorus in the bustle of the drama, will be found a powerful speaker in soliloquy. If I could believe that any man in these times had seriously and deliberately reasoned himself into an absolute contempt of things sacred, I should expect that such a being should uniformly act up to his principles in all situations, and, having thrown aside all the restraints of religion, should discharge from his mind all those fears, apprehensions and solicitudes, that have any connection with the dread of a futurity. But, without knowing what passes in the private thoughts of men, who profess these daring notions, I cannot help observing, that, if noisy clamour be a mark of cowardice, they also have the symptoms strongly upon them of belying their own conscience: They are bold in the crowd, and loudest in the revels of the feast; there they can echo the insult, dash the ridicule in the very face of Heaven, and stun their consciences in the roar of the carousal.
Let me picture to myself a man of this description surprized into unexpected solitude after the revels of an evening, where he has been the wit of the company at the expence of decency and religion; here his triumphs are over; the plaudits of his comrades no longer encourage him; the lights of the feast are extinguished, and he is surrendered to darkness and reflection: Place him in the midst of a desart heath, a lonesome traveller in some dark tempestuous night, and let the elements subscribe their terrors to encounter this redoubted champion—
Who durst defy th' Omnipotent.
If consistency be the test of a man's sincerity, he ought now to hold the same language of defiance, and with undaunted spirit cry out to the elements—
"Do your worst, ye blind tools of chance! Since there can be neither intelligence nor direction in your rage, I set you at nought. You may indeed subject me to some bodily inconvenience, but you can raise no terrors in my mind, for I have said you have no master: There is no hand to point the lightning, and the stroke of its flash is directed to no aim: If it smites the oak, it perishes; if it penetrates my breast, it annihilates my existence, and there is no soul within me to resume it. What have I to fear? The worst you threaten is a momentary extinction without pain or struggle; and as I only wait on earth till I am weary of life, the most you can do is to forestall me in the natural rights of suicide. I have lived in this world as the only world I have to live in, and have done all things therein as a man, who acts without account to an Hereafter. The moral offices, as they are called, I have sometimes regarded as a system of worldly wisdom, and where they have not crossed my purposes, or thwarted my pleasures, I have occasionally thought fit to comply with them: My proper pride in some instances, and self-interest in others, have dissuaded me from the open violation of a trust, for it is inconvenient to be detected; and though I acknowledge no remonstrances from within upon the score of infamy, I do not like the clamours of the crowd. As for those mercenary inducements, which a pretended revelation holds forth as lures for patience under wrongs and tame resignation to misfortune, I regard them as derogatory to my nature; they sink the very character of virtue by meanly tendering a reversionary happiness as the bribe for practising it; the doctrine therefore of a future life, in which the obedient are to expect rewards, and the disobedient are threatened with punishments, confutes itself by its own internal weakness, and is a system so sordid in its principle, that it can only be calculated to dupe us into mental slavery, and frighten us out of that generous privilege, which is our universal birthright, the privilege of dismissing ourselves out of existence, when we are tired with its conditions."
Had I fabricated this language for infidelity with the purpose of stamping greater deteslation upon its audacity, I had rather bear the blame of having overcharged the character, than to be able (as I now am) to point out a recent publication, which openly avows this shameless doctrine: But as I do not wish to help any anonymous blasphemer into notice, let the toleration of the times be his shelter, and their contempt his answer! In the mean time I will take leave to oppose to it a short passage from a tract, lately translated into English, intitled
Philosophical and Critical Enquiries concerning Christianity, by Mr. Bonnet of Geneva
; a work well deserving an attentive perusal.
Here I invite that reader, who can elevate his mind to the contemplation of the ways of Providence, to meditate with me on the admirable methods of divine wisdom in the establishment of Christianity; a religion, the universality of which was to comprehend all ages, all places, nations, ranks and situations in life; a religion, which made no distinction between the crowned head and that of the lowest subject; formed to disengage the heart from terrestrial things, to ennoble, to refine, to sublime the thoughts and affections of man; to render him conscious of the dignity of his nature, the importance of his end, to carry his hopes even to eternity, and thus associate him with superior intelligences; a religion, which gave every thing to the spirit and nothing to the flesh; which called its disciples to the greatest sacrifices, because men, who are taught
to fear God alone,
can undergo the severest trials; a religion in short (to conclude my weak conceptions on so sublime a subject) which was the perfection or completion of natural law, the science of the truly wise, the refuge of the humble, the consolation of the wretched; so majestie in its simplicity, so sublime in its doctrine, so great in its object, so astonishing in its effects.—I have endeavoured
(says this excellent author in his conclusion)
to explore the inmost recesses of my heart, and having discovered no secret motive there, which should induce me to reject a religion so well calculated to supply the defects of my reason, to comfort me under affliction and to advance the perfection of my nature, I receive this religion as the greatest blessing Heaven in its goodness could conser upon mankind; and I should still receive it with gratitude, were I to consider it only as the very best and most perfect system of practical philosophy.
(BONNET.)
That man, hurried away by the impetuosity of his passions, is capable of strange and monstrous irregularities I am not to learn; even vanity and the mean ambition of being eccentric may draw out very wild expressions from him in his unguarded hours; but that any creature should be deliberately blasphemous, and reason himself (if I may so express it) into irrationality, surpasses my conception, and is a species of desperation for which I have no name.
If the voice of universal nature, the experience of all ages, the light of reason and the immediate evidence of my senses cannot awaken me to a dependance upon my God, a reverence for his religion and an humble opinion of myself, what a lost creature am I!
Where can we meet a more touching description of God's omnipresence and providence than in the 139th psalm? and how can I better conclude this paper than by the following humble attempt at a translation of that most beautiful address to the Creator of mankind.
PSALM CXXXIX.
O Lord, who by thy mighty power
Hast search'd me out in every part,
Thou know'st each thought at every hour,
Or e'er it rises to my heart.
In whatsoever path I stray,
Where'er I make my bed at night,
No maze can so conceal my way,
But I stand open to thy sight.
Nor can my tongue pronounce a word,
How secretly soe'er 'twere said,
But in thine ear it shall be heard,
And by thy judgment shall be weigh'd.
In every particle I see
The fashion of thy plastic hand:
Knowledge too excellent for me,
Me, wretched man, to understand.
Whither, ah! whither then can I
From thine all-present spirit go?
To Heav'n? 'tis there thou'rt thron'd on high:
To Hell? 'tis there thou rul'st below.
Lend me, O Morning, lend me wings!
On the first beam of op'ning day
To the last wave, that ocean flings
On the world's shore, I'll flit away.
Ah fool! if there I meant to hide,
For thou, my God, shalt reach me there;
Ev'n there thy hand shall be my guide,
Thy right hand hold me in its care.
Again, if calling out for night,
I bid it shroud me from thine eyes,
Thy presence makes a burst of light,
And darkness to the centre hies.
Nay, darkness cannot intervene
Betwixt the universe and Thee;
Light or no light, there's nought, I ween,
God self-illumin'd cannot see.
Thine is each atom of my frame;
Thy fingers strung my inmost reins,
Ev'n in the womb, or e'er I came
To life and caus'd a mother's pains.
Oh! what a fearful work is man!
A wonder of creative art!
My God, how marvellous thy plan!
'Tis character'd upon my heart.
My very bones, tho' deep conceal'd
And buried in this living clay,
Are to thy searching sight reveal'd
As clear as in the face of day.
That eye, which thro' creation darts,
My substance, yet imperfect, scan'd,
And in thy book my embryo parts
Were written and their uses plan'd,
Ere Time to shape and fashion drew
These ductile members one by one,
Into man's image ere they grew,
Thy great prospective work was done.
O God! how gracious, how divine,
How dear thy counsels to my soul!
Myriads to myriads cou'd I join,
They'd fail to number up the whole.
I might as well go tell the sand,
And count it over grain by grain:
No; in thy presence let me stand,
And waking with my God remain.
Wilt thou not, Lord, avenge the good?
Shall not blasphemers be destroy'd?
Depart from me, ye men of blood,
Hence, murderers, and my sight avoid!
Loud are their hostile voices heard
To take thy sacred name in vain:
Am I not griev'd? Doth not each word
Wring my afflicted heart with pain?
Doth not my zealous soul return
Hatred for hatred to thy foes?
Yea, Lord! I feel my bosom burn,
As tho' against my peace they rose.
Try me, dread Power! and search my heart;
Lay all its movements in thy view;
Explore it to its inmost part,
Nor spare it, if 'tis found untrue.
If devious from thy paths I stray,
And wickedness be found with me,
Oh! lead me back the better way
To everlasting life and Thee.
No CXLVI.
Est genus hominum, qui esse primos se omnium rerum volunt,
Nec sunt.
(TERENT. EUN.)
WHAT a delightful thing it is to find one's self in a company, where tempers harmonize and hearts are open; where wit flows without any checks but what decency and good-nature impose, and humour indulges itself in those harmless freaks and caprices, that raise a laugh, by which no man's feelings are offended.
This can only happen to us in a land of freedom; it is in vain to hope for it in those arbitrary countries, where men must lock the doors against spies and informers, and must entrust their lives, whilst they impart their sentiments, to each other. In such circumstances a mind, enlightened by education is no longer a blessing: What is the advantage of discernment, and how is a man profited by his capacity of separating truth from error, if he dare not exercise that faculty? It were safer to be the blind dupe of superstition than the intuitive philosopher, if born within the jurisdiction of an inquisitorial tribunal. Can a man felicitate himself in the glow of genius and the gayety of wit, when breathing the air of a country, where so dire an instrument is in force as a
lettre de cachet?
But experience hath shewn us, that if arbitrary monarchs cannot keep their people in ignorance, they cannot retain them in slavery; if men read, they will meditate; if they travel, they will compare, and their minds must be as dark as the dungeons, which imprison their persons, if they do not rise with indignation against such monstrous maxims, as imprisonment at pleasure for undefined offences, self-accusations extorted by torments and secret trials, where the prisoner hath neither voice nor advocate. Let those princes, whose government is so administered,
make darkness
their pavilion,
and draw their very mountains down upon them to shut out the light, or expect the period of their despotism: Illuminated minds will not be kept in slavery.
With a nation so free, so highly enlightened and so eminent in letters as the English, we may well expect to find the social qualities in their best state; and it is but justice to the age we live in to confess those expectations may be fully gratified: There are some perhaps who will not subscribe to this assertion, but probably those very people make the disappointments they complain of: If a man takes no pains to please his company, he is little likely to be pleased by his company. Liberty, though essential to good society, may in some of it's effects operate against it, for as it makes men independant, independance will occasionally be found to make them arrogant, and none such can be good companions; yet let me say for the contemporaries I am living with, that within the period of my own acquaintance with the world the reform in it's social manners and habits has been gradual and encreasing. The feudal haughtiness of our nobility has totally disappeared, and, in place of a proud distant reserve, a pleasing suavity and companionable ease have almost universally obtained amongst the higher orders: The pedantry of office is gone, and even the animosity of party is so far in the wain, that it serves rather to whet our wits than our swords against each other: The agitation of political opinions is no longer a subject fatal to the peace of the table, but takes it's turn with other topics without any breach of good-manners or good fellowship.
It were too much to say that there are no general causes still subsisting, which annoy our social comforts, and disgrace our tempers; they are still too many, and it is amongst the duties of an
Observer
to set a mark upon them, though by so doing I may run into repetition, for I am not conscious of having any thing to say upon the subject, which I have not said before; but if a beggar, who asks charity, because of his importunity shall at length be relieved, an author perhaps, who enforces his advice, shall in the end be listened to.
I must therefore again and again insist upon it, that there are two sides to every argument, and that it is the natural and unalienable right of man to be heard in support of his opinion, he having first lent a patient ear to the speaker, who maintains sentiments, which oppose that opinion: I do humbly apprehend that an overbearing voice and noisy volubility of tongue are proofs of a very underbred fellow, and it is with regret I see society too frequently disturbed in it's most delectable enjoyments by this odious character: I do not see that any man hath a right by obligation or otherwise to lay me under a necessity of thinking exactly as he thinks: Though I admit that
from the fullness of the heart the tongue speaketh,
I do not admit any superior pretensions it hath to be
Sir Oracle
from the fullness of the pocket. In the name of freedom what claim hath any man to be the tyrant of the table? As well he may avail himself of the greater force of his fists as of his lungs. Doth sense consist in sound, or is truth only to be measured by the noise it makes? Can it be a disgrace to be convinced, or doth any one lose by the exchange, who resigns his own opinion for a better? When I reflect upon the advantages of our public schools, where puerile tempers are corrected by collision; upon the mathematical studies and scholastic exercises of our universities, I am no less grieved than astonished to discover so few proficients in well-mannered controversy, so very few, who seem to make truth the object of their investigation, or will spare a few patient moments from the eternal repetition of their own deafening jargon to the temperate reply of men, probably better qualified to speak than themselves.
There is another grievance not unfrequent though inferior to this abovementioned, which proceeds jointly from the mixt nature of society and the ebullitions of freedom in this happy country, I mean that roar of mirth and uncontrouled flow of spirits, which hath more vulgarity in it than ease, more noise than gayety: The stream of elegant festivity will never overflow it's banks; the delicacy of sex, the dignity of rank and the decorum of certain professions should never be so overlooked, as to alarm the feelings of any person present, interested for their preservation. When the softer sex entrust themselves to our society, we should never forget the tender respect due to them even in our gayest hours: When the higher orders by descending, and the lower by ascending out of their sphere meet upon the level of good fellowship, let not our superiors be revolted by a rusticity however jovial, nor driven back into their fastnesses by our overstepping the partition line, and making saucy inroads into their proper quarters. Who questions a minister about news or politics? who talks ribaldry before a bishop? once in seven years is often enough for the levelling familiarity of electioneering manners.
There is another remark, which I cannot excuse myself from making, if it were only for the sake of those luckless beings, who being born with duller faculties, or stampt by the hand of nature with oddities either of humour, or of person, seem to be set up in society as butts for the arrows of raillery and ridicule: If the object, thus made the victim of the company, feels the shaft, who but must suffer with him? If he feels it not, we blush for human nature, whose dignity is sacrificed in his person; and as for the profest buffoon, I take him to have as little pretensions to true humour, as a punster has to true wit. There is scope enough for all the eccentricities of character without turning cruelty into sport; let satire take it's share, but let vice only shrink before it; let it silence the tongue that wantonly violates truth, or defames reputation; let it batter the insulting towers of pride, but let the air-built castles of vanity, much more the humble roof of the indigent and infirm never provoke it's spleen.
It happened to me not long ago to fall into company with some very respectable persons, chiefly of the mercantile order, where a country gentleman, who was a stranger to most of the party, took upon him to entertain the company, with a tedious string of stories of no sort of importance to any soul present, and all tending to display his own consequence, fortune and independance. Such conversation was ill calculated for the company present, the majority of whom had I dare say been the founders of their own fortunes, and I should doubt if there was any quarter of the globe accessible to commerce, which had not been resorted to by some one or other then sitting at the table. This uninteresting egotist therefore was the more unpardonable, as he shut out every topic of curious and amusing information, which could no where meet a happier opportunity for discussion.
He was endured for a considerable time with that patience which is natural to men of good manners and experience in the world: This encouragement only rendered him more insupportable; when at last an elderly gentleman seized the opportunity of a short pause in his discourse to address the following reproof to this eternal talker.
"We have listened to you, sir, a long time with attention, and it does not appear that any body present is disposed to question either your independance, or the comforts that are annexed to it; we rejoice that you possess them in so full a degree, and we wish every landed gentleman in the kingdom was in the same happy predicament with yourself; but we are traders, sir, and are beholden to our industry and fair-dealing for what you inherit from your ancestors and yourself never toiled for: Might it not be altogether as amusing to you to be told of our adventures in foreign climes and countries; of our dangers, difficulties and escapes; our remarks upon the manners and customs of other nations, as to enclose the whole conversation within the hedge of your own estate, and shut up intelligence, wide as the world itself, within the narrow limits of your parish pound? Believe me, sir, we are glad to hear you, and we respect your order in the state, but we are willing to hear each other also in our turns; for let me observe to you in the stile of the Compting-house, that conversation like trade abhors a monopoly, and that a man can derive no benefit from society, unless he hears others talk as well as himself."
No CXLVII.
Desunctus jam sum, nihil est quod dicat mihi.
(TERENT.)
IN all ages of the world men have been in habits of praising the time past at the expence of the time present. This was done even in the Augustan aera, and in that witty and celebrated period the
laudator temporis acti
must have been either a very splenetic, or a very silly character.
Our present grumblers may perhaps be better warranted; but, though there may not be the same injustice in their cavilling complaints, there is more than equal impolicy in them; for if by discouraging their contemporaries they mean to mend them, they take a very certain method of counteracting their own designs; and if they have any other meaning, it must be something worse than impolitic and they have more to answer for than a mere mistake.
Who but the meanest of mankind would wish to damp the spirit and degrade the genius of the country he belongs to? Is any man lowered by the dignity of his own nation, by the talents of his contemporaries? Who would not prefer to live in an enlightened and a rising age rather than in a dark and declining one? It is natural to take a pride in the excellence of our free constitution, in the virtues of our Sovereign; is it not as natural to sympathize in the prosperity of our arts and sciences, in the reputation of our countrymen? But these splenetic
Dampers
are for ever sighing over the decline of wit, the decline of genius, the decline of literature, when if there is any one thing that has declined rather than another, it is the wretched state of criticism, so far as they have to do with it.
As I was passing from the city the other day I turned into a coffee-house, and took my seat at a table, next to which some gentlemen had assembled, and were conversing over their coffee. A dispute was carried on between a little prattling volatile fellow and an old gentleman of a sullen, morose aspect, who in a dictatorial tone of voice was declaiming against the times, and treating them and their puisny advocate with more contempt than either one or the other seemed to deserve: Still the little fellow, who had abundance of zeal and no want of words, kept battling with might and main for the world as it goes against the world as it had gone by, and I could perceive he had an interest with the junior part of his hearers, whilst the sullen orator was no less popular amongst the elders of the party: The little fellow, who seemed to think it no good reason why any work should be decried only because the author of it was living, had been descanting upon the merit of a recent publication, and had now shifted his ground from the sciences to the fine arts, where he seemed to have taken a strong post and stood resolutely to it; his opponent, who was not a man to be tickled out of his spleen by a few fine dashes of arts merely elegant, did not relish this kind of skirmishing argument, and tauntingly cried out—
"What tell you me of a parcel of gew-gaw artists, fit only to pick the pockets of a dissipated trifling age? You talk of your painters and pourtrait-mongers, what use are they of? Where are the philosophers and the poets, whose countenances might interest posterity to sit to them? Will they paint me a Bacon, a Newton or a Locke? I defy them: There are not three heads upon living shoulders in the kingdom worth the oil, that would be wasted upon them. Will they or you find me a Shakespear, a Milton, a Dryden, a Pope, an Addison? You cannot find a limb, a feature, or even the shadow of the least of them: These were men worthy to be recorded; poets, who reached the very topmost summits of Parnassus; our moderns are but pismires crawling at its lowest root."
—This lofty defiance brought our little advocate to a nonplus; the moment was embarrassing; the champion of time past was echoed by his party with a cry of—
"No, No! there are no such men as these now living."—
"I believe not,"
he replied,
"I believe not: I could give you a score of names more, but those are enough: Honest Tom Durfey would be more than a match for any poetaster now breathing."
In this stile he went on crowing and clapping his wings over a beaten cock, for our poor little champion seemed dead upon the pit: He muttered something between his teeth, as if struggling to pronounce some name that stuck in his throat; but either there was in fact no contemporary, whom he thought it safe to oppose to these Goliahs in the lists, or none were present to his mind at this moment.
Alas! thought I, your cause, my beloved contemporaries, is desperate:
Vae Victis!
You are but dust in the scale, while this
Brennus
directs the beam. All that I have admired and applauded in my zeal for those with whom I have lived and still live; all that has hitherto made my heart expand with pride and reverence for the age and nation I belong to, will be immolated to the manes of these departed worthies, whom, though I revere, I cannot love and cherish with that sympathy of soul, which I feel towards you, my dear but degenerate contemporaries!
There was a young man, sitting at the elbow of the little crest-fallen fellow, with a round clerical curl, which tokened him to be a son of the church. Having silently awaited the full time for a rally, if any spirit of resurrection had been left in the fallen hero, and none such appearing, he addressed himself to the challenger with an air so modest, but withal so impressive, that it was impossible not to be prejudiced in his favour, before he opened his cause.
"I cannot wonder,"
said he,
"if the gentleman, who has challenged us to produce a parallel to any one of the great names he has enumerated, finds us unprepared with any living rival to those illustrious characters: Their fame, though the age in which they lived did not always appreciate it as it ought, hath yet been rising day by day in the esteem of posterity, till time hath stampt a kind of sacredness upon it, which it would now be a literary impiety to blaspheme. There are some amongst those, whom their advocate hath named, I cannot speak or think of but with a reverence only short of idolatry. Not this nation only but all Europe hath been enlightened by their labours: The great principle of nature, the very law, upon which the whole system of the universe moves and gravitates, hath been developed and demonstrated by the penetrating, I had almost said the praeternatural, powers of our immortal Newton. The present race of philosophers can only be considered as his disciples; but they are disciples, who do honour to their master: If the principle of gravitation be the grand
desideratum
of philosophy, the discovery is with him, the application, inferences and advantages of that discovery are with those, who succeed him; and can we accuse the present age of being idle or unable to avail themselves of the ground he gave them? Let me remind you that our present solar system is furnished with more planets than Newton knew; that our late observations upon the transit of the planet Venus were decisive for the proof and confirmation of his system; that we have circumnavigated the globe again and again; that we can boast the researches and discoveries of a Captain Cook, who, though he did not invent the compass, employed it as no man ever did, and left a map behind him, compared to which Sir Isaac Newton's was a sheet of nakedness and error: It is with gravitation therefore as with the loadstone; their powers have been discovered by our predecessors, but we have put them to their noblest uses."
"The venerable names of Bacon and Locke were, if I mistake not, mentioned in the same class with Newton, and though the learned gentleman could no doubt have made his selection more numerous, I doubt if he could have made it stronger or more to the purpose of his own assertions."
"I have always regarded Bacon as the father of philosophy in this country, yet it is no breach of candor to observe that the darkness of the age, which he enlightened, affords a favourable contrast to set off the splendor of his talents: But do we, who applaud him, read him? Yet, if such is our veneration for times long since gone by, why do we not? The fact is, intermediate writers have disseminated his original matter through more pleasing vehicles, and we concur, whether commendably or not, to put his volumes upon the superannuated list, allowing him however an unalienable compensation upon our praise, and reserving to ourselves a right of taking him from the shelf, whenever we are disposed to sink the merit of a more recent author by a comparison with him. I will not therefore disturb his venerable dust, but turn without further delay to the author of the Essay upon the Human Understanding."
"This Essay, which professes to define every thing, as it arises or passes in the mind, must ultimately be compiled from observations of it's author upon himself and within himself: Before I compare the merit of this work therefore with the merit of any other man's work of our own immediate times, I must compare what it advances as general to mankind with what I perceive within my particular self; and upon this reference, speaking only for an humble individual, I must own to my shame, that my understanding and the author's do by no means coincide either in definitions or ideas. I may have reason to lament the inaccuracy or the sluggishness of my own senses and perceptions, but I cannot submit to any man's doctrine against their conviction: I will only say that Mr. Locke's metaphysics are not my metaphysics, and, as it would be an ill compliment to any one of our contemporaries to compare him with a writer, who to me is unintelligible, so will I hope it can never be considered as a reflection upon so great a name as Mr. Locke's, not to be understood by so insignificant a man as myself."
"Well, sir,"
cried the sullen gentleman with a sneer,
"I think you have contrived to dispatch our philosophers; you have now only a few obscure poets to dismiss in like manner, and you will have a clear field for yourself and your friends."
No CXLVIII.
Ingeniis non ille savet plauditque sepultis,
Nostra sed impugnat, nos nostraque lividus odit.
(HORAT.)
THE sarcastic speech of the old Snarler, with which we concluded the last paper, being undeserved on the part of the person, to whom it was applied, was very properly disregarded; and the clergyman proceeded as follows:—
"The poets you have named will never be mentioned by me but with a degree of enthusiasm, which I should rather expect to be accused of carrying to excess than of erring in the opposite extreme, had you not put me on my guard against partiality by charging me with it beforehand. I shall therefore without further apology or preface begin with Shakespear, first named by you and first in fame as well as time: It would be madness in me to think of bringing any poet now living into competition with Shakespear; but I hope it will not be thought madness, or any thing resembling it, to observe to you, that it is not in the nature of things possible for any poet to appear in an age so polished as this of our's, who can be brought into any critical comparison with that extraordinary and eccentric genius."
"For let us consider the two great striking features of his drama, sublimity and character, Now sublimity involves sentiment and expression; the first of these is in the soul of the poet; it is that portion of inspiration, which we personify when we call it
the Muse
; so far I am free to acknowledge there is no immediate reason to be given, why her visits should be confined to any age, nation or person; she may fire the heart of the poet on the shores of Ionia three thousand years ago, or on the banks of the Cam or Isis at the present moment; but so far as language is concerned, I may venture to say that modern diction will never strike modern ears with that awful kind of magic, which antiquity gives to words and phrases no longer in familiar use: In this respect our great dramatic poet hath an advantage over his distant descendants, which he owes to time, and which of course is one more than he is indebted for to his own preeminent genius. As for character, which I suggested as one of the two most striking features of Shakespear's drama, (or in other words the true and perfect delineation of nature), in this our poet is indeed a master unrivalled; yet who will not allow the happy coincidence of time for this perfection in a writer of the drama? The different orders of men, which Shakespear saw and copied, are in many instances extinct, and such must have the charms of novelty at least in our eyes: And has the modern dramatist the same rich and various field of character? The level manners of a polished age furnish little choice to an author, who now enters on the task, in which such numbers have gone before him, and so exhausted the materials, that it is justly to be wondered at, when any thing like variety can be struck out. Dramatic characters are pourtraits drawn from nature, and if all the sitters have a family likeness, the artist must either depart from the truth, or preserve the resemblance; in like manner the poet must either invent characters of which there is no counterpart in existence, or expose himself to the danger of an insipid and tiresome repetition: To add to his difficulties it so happens, that the present age, whilst it furnishes less variety to his choice, requires more than ever for it's own amusement; the dignity of the stage must of course be prostituted to the unnatural resources of a wild imagination, and it's propriety disturbed; music will supply those resources for a time, and accordingly we find the French and English theatres in the dearth of character feeding upon the airy diet of sound; but this, with all the support that spectacle can give, is but a flimsy substitute, whilst the public whose taste in the mean time becomes vitiated—
—media inter carmina poscunt
Aut Ursum aut Pugiles—
the latter of which monstrous prostitutions we have lately seen our national stage most shamefully exposed to."
"By comparing the different ages of poetry in our own country with those of Greece, we shall find the effects agree in each; for as the refinement of manners took place, the language of poetry became also more refined, and with greater correctness had less energy and force; the stile of the poet, like the characters of the people, takes a brighter polish, which, whilst it smooths away it's former asperities and protuberances, weakens the staple of it's fabric, and what it gives to the elegance and delicacy of it's complexion, takes away from the strength and sturdiness of it's constitution. Whoever will compare Aeschylus with Euripides and Aristophanes with Menander, will need no other illustration of this remark."
"Consider only the inequalities of Shakespear's dramas; examine not only one with another, but compare even scene with scene in the same play: Did ever the imagination of man run riot into such wild and opposite extremes? Could this be done, or, being done, would it be suffered in the present age? How many of these plays, if acted as they were originally written, would now be permitted to pass? Can we have a stronger proof of the barbarous taste of those times, in which Titus Andronicus first appeared, than the favour, which that horrid spectacle was received with? yet of this we are assured by Ben Johnson. If this play was Shakespear's, it was his first production, and some of his best commentators are of opinion it was actually written by him, whilst he resided at Stratford upon Avon. Had this production been followed by the three parts of Henry the Sixth, by Love's Labour Lost, the Two Gentlemen of Verona, the Comedy of Errors, or some few others, which our stage does not attempt to reform, that critic must have had a very singular degree of intuition, who had discovered in those dramas a genius capable of producing the Macbeth. How would a young author be received in the present time, who was to make his first essay before the public with such a piece as Titus Andronicus? Now if we are warranted in saying there are several of Shakespear's dramas, which could not live upon our present stage at any rate, and few, if any, that would pass without just censure in many parts, were they represented in their original state, we must acknowledge it is with reason that our living authors, standing in awe of their audiences, dare not aim at those bold and irregular flights of imagination, which carried our bard to such a height of fame; and therefore it was that I ventured awhile ago to say, there can be no poet in a polished and critical age like this, who can be brought into any fair comparison with so bold and eccentric a genius as Shakespear, of whom we may say with Horace—
Tentavit quoque rem, si digne vertere posset,
Et placuit sibi, natura sublimis et acer:
Nam spirat tragicum satis, et feliciter audet:
Sed turpem putat in scriptis metuitque lituram.
When I bring to my recollection the several periods of our English drama since the age of Shakespear, I could name many dates, when it has been in hands far inferior to the present, and were it my purpose to enter into particulars, I should not scruple to appeal to several dramatic productions within the compass of our own times, but as the task of separating and selecting one from another amongst our own contemporaries can never be a pleasant task, nor one I would willingly engage in, I will content myself with referring to our stock of modern acting plays; many of which having passed the ordeal of critics, (who speak the same language with what I have just now heard, and are continually crying down those they live with) may perhaps take their turn with posterity, and be hereafter as partially overrated upon a comparison with the productions of the age to come, as they are now undervalued when compared with those of the ages past."
"With regard to Milton, if we could not name any one epic poet of our nation since his time, it would be saying no more of us than may be said of the world in general from the aera of Homer to that of Virgil. Greece had one standard epic poet; Rome had no more; England has her Milton. If Dryden pronounced that
the force of nature could no further go,
he was at once a good authority and a strong example of the truth of the assertion: If his genius shrunk from the undertaking, can we wonder that so few have taken it up? Yet we will not forget Leonidas, nor speak slightly of it's merit; and as death has removed the worthy author where he cannot hear our praises, the world may now, as in the case of Milton heretofore, be so much the more forward to bestow them. If the Sampson Agonistes is nearer to the simplicity of it's Grecian original than either our own Elfrida or Caractacus, those dramas have a tender interest, a pathetic delicacy, which in that are wanting; and though Comus has every charm of language, it has a vein of allegory, that impoverishes the mine."
"The variety of Dryden's genius was such as to preclude comparison, were I disposed to attempt it. Of his dramatic productions he himself declares
that he never wrote any thing in that way to please himself but his All for Love.
For ever under arms he lived in a continual state of poetic warfare with his contemporaries, galling and galled by turns; he subsisted also by expedients, and necessity, which forced his genius into quicker growth than was natural to it, made a rich harvest but slovenly husbandry; it drove him also into a duplicity of character that is painful to reflect upon; it put him ill at ease within himself, and verified the fable of the nightingale, singing with a thorn at it's breast."
"Pope's versification gave the last and finishing polish to our English poetry: His lyre more sweet than Dryden's was less sonorous; his touch more correct, but not so bold; his strain more musical in it's tones, but not so striking in it's effect: Review him as a critic, and review him throughout, you will pronounce him the most perfect poet in our language; read him as an enthusiast and examine him in detail, you cannot refuse him your approbation, but your rapture you will reserve for Dryden."
"But you will tell me this does not apply to the question in dispute, and that, instead of settling precedency between your poets, it is time for me to produce my own: For this I shall beg your excuse; my zeal for my contemporaries shall not hurry them into comparisons, which their own modesty would revolt from; it hath prompted me to intrude upon your patience, whilst I submitted a few mitigating considerations in their behalf; not as an answer to your challenge, but as an effort to soften your contempt. I confess to you I have sometimes flattered myself I have found the strength of Dryden in our late Churchill, and the sweetness of Pope in our lamented Goldsmith: Enraptured as I am with the lyre of Timotheus in the Feast of Alexander, I contemplate with awful delight Gray's enthusiastic bard—
On a rock, whose haughty brow
Frowns o'er old Conway's foaming flood,
Rob'd in the sable garb of woe,
With haggard eyes the Poet stood;
(Loose his beard and hoary hair
Stream'd like a meteor to the troubled air,)
And with a master's hand and prophet's fire
Struck the deep sorrows of his lyre.
Let the living muses speak for themselves; I have all the warmth of a friend, but not the presumption of a champion: The poets you now so loudly praise when dead, found the world as loud in defamation when living; you are now paying the debts of your predecessors and atoning for their injustice; posterity will in like manner atone for your's."
"You mentioned the name of Addison in your list, not altogether as a poet I presume, but rather as the man of morals, the reformer of manners and the friend of religion; with affection I subscribe my tribute to his literary fame, to his amiable character: In sweetness and simplicity of stile, in purity and perspicuity of sentiment he is a model to all essayists. At the same time I feel the honest pride of a contemporary in recalling to your memory the name of Samuel Johnson, who as a moral and religious essayist, as an acute and penetrating critic, as a nervous and elaborate poet, an excellent grammarian and a general scholar ranks with the first names in literature."
"Not having named an Historian in your list of illustrious men, you have precluded me from adverting to the histories of Hume, Robertson, Lyttelton, Henry, Gibbon and others, who are a host of writers, which all antiquity cannot equal."
Here the clergyman concluded: The conversation now grew desultory and uninteresting, and I returned home.
No CXLIX.
Quis scit an adjiciant hodiernae crastina summae
Tempora Dii Superi?
(HORAT.)
TO-morrow is the day, which procrastination always promises to employ and never overtakes: My correspondent
Tom Tortoise,
whose letter I shall now lay before the public, seems to have made these promises and broken them as often as most men.
TO THE OBSERVER.
I have been resolving to write to thee every morning for these two months, but something or other has always come athwart my resolution to put it by. In the first place I should have told thee that aunt Gertrude was taken grievously sick, and had a mighty desire to see thee upon affairs of consequence; but as I was in daily hopes she would mend and be able to write to thee herself, (for every body you know understands their own business best) I thought I would wait till she got well enough to tell her own story; but alas! she dwindled and dwindled away till she died; so, if she had any secrets, they are buried with her, and there's and end of that matter.
Another thing I would fain have written to thee about was to enquire into the character of a fellow, one John Jenkyns, who had served a friend of thine, Sir Theodore Thimble, as his house steward, and offered himself to me in the same capacity: But this was only my own affair do you see, so I put it by from day to day, and in the mean time took the rascal upon his word without a character: But if he ever had one, he would have lost it in my service, for he plundered me without mercy, and at last made off with a pretty round sum of my money, which I have never been able to get any wind of, probably because I never took the trouble to make any enquiry.
I now sit down to let you know son Tom is come from Oxford, and a strapping fine fellow he is grown of his age: He has a mighty longing to set out upon his travels to foreign parts, which you must know seems to me a very foolish conceit in a young lad, who has only kept his first term and not completed his nineteenth year; so I opposed his whim manfully, which I think you will approve of, for I recollected the opinion you gave upon this subject when last here, and quoted it against him: To do him justice he fairly offered to be ruled by your advice, and willed me to write to you on the matter; but one thing or other always stood in the way, and in the mean time came lord Ramble in his way to Dover, and being a great crony of Tom's and very eager for his company, and no letter coming from you (which indeed I acquit you of, not having written to you on the subject) away the youngsters went together, and probably before this are upon French ground. Pray tell me what you think of this trip, which appears to me but a wild-goose kind of a chace, and if I live till to-morrow I intend to write Tom a piece of my mind to that purpose, and give him a few wholesome hints, which I had put together for our parting, but had not time just then to communicate to him.
I intend very shortly to brush up your quarters in town, as my solicitor writes me word every thing is at a stand for want of my appearance: What dilatory doings must we experience, who have to do with the law! putting off from month to month and year to year: I wonder men of business are not ashamed of themselves; as for me, I should have been up and amongst them long enough ago, if it had not been for one thing or another that hampered me about my journey: Horses are for ever falling lame, and farriers are such lazy rascals, that before one can be cured, another cries out; and now I am in daily expectation of my favourite brood-mare dropping a foal, which I am in great hopes will prove a colt, and therefore I cannot be absent at the time, for a master's eye you know is every thing in those cases: Besides I should be sorry to come up in this dripping season, and as the parson has begun praying for fair weather, I hope it will set in ere long in good earnest, and that it will please God to make it pleasant travelling.
You will be pleased to hear that I mean soon to make a job of draining the marsh in front of my house: Every body allows that as soon as there is a channel cut to the river, it will be as dry as a bowling-green and as fine meadow land as any on my estate: It will also add considerably to the health as well as beauty of our situation, for at present 'tis a grievous eye-sore, and fills us with fogs and foul air at such a rate, that I have had my whole family down with the ague all this spring: Here is a fellow ready to undertake the job at a very easy expence and will complete it in a week, so that it will soon be done when once begun; therefore you see I need not hurry myself for setting about it, but wait till leisure and opportunity suit.
I am sorry I can send you no better news of your old friend the vicar; he is sadly out of sorts: You must know the incumbent of
Slow-in-the-Wilds
died some time ago, and as the living lies so handy to my own parish I had always intended it for our friend, and had promised him again and again: When behold! time slipt away unperceived, and in came my lord bishop of the diocese with a parson of his own, ready cut and dried, and claimed it as a lapsed living, when it has been mine and my ancestors any time these five hundred years for aught I know: If these are not nimble doings I know not what are: Egad! a man need have all his eyes about him, that has to do with these bishops. If I had been aware of such a trick being played me, I would have hoisted the honest vicar into the pulpit before the old parson, who is dead and gone, had been nailed in his coffin; for no man loves less to be taken napping (as they call it) than I do; and as for the poor vicar 'tis surprizing to see how he takes to heart the disappointment; whereas I tell him he has nothing for it but to outlive the young fellow, who has jumped into his shoes, and then let us see if any bishop shall jockey us with the like jade's trick for the future.
I have now only to request you will send me down a new almanack, for the year wears out apace, and I am terribly puzzled for want of knowing how it goes, and I love to be regular. If there is any thing I can do for you in these parts, pray employ me, for I flatter myself you believe no man living would go further, or more readily fly to do you service than your's to command,
THOMAS TORTOISE.
Alas! though the wise men in all ages have been calling out as it were with one voice for us
to know ourselves,
it is a voice that has not yet reached the ears or understanding of my correspondent Tom Tortoise. Somebody or other hath left us another good maxim,
never to put off till to-morrow what we can do to-day.
—Whether he was indeed a wise man, who first broached this maxim, I'll not take on myself to pronounce, but I am apt to think he would be no fool, who observed it.
If all the resolutions, promises and engagements of To-day, that lie over for To-morrow, were to be summed up and posted by items, what a cumbrous load of procrastinations would be transferred in the midnight crisis of a moment! Something perhaps like the following might be the outline of the deed, by which Today might will and devise the aforesaid contingencies to its heir and successor.
Conscious that my existence is drawing to its close, I hereby devise and make over to my natural heir and successor all my right and title in those many vows, promises and obligations, which have been so liberally made to me by sundry persons in my life time, but which still remain unfulfilled on their part, and stand out against them: But at the same time that I am heartily desirous all engagements, fair and lawful in their nature, may be punctually complied with, I do most willingly cancel all such as are of a contrary description; hereby releasing and discharging all manner of persons, who have bound themselves to me under rash and inconsiderate resolutions, from the performance of which evil might ensue to themselves, and wrong or violence be done to society.
In the first place I desire my said heir and successor will call in all those debts of conscience, which have been incurred by, and are due from, certain defaulters, who stand pledged to repentance and atonement, of all which immediate payment ought in justice and discretion to be rigorously exacted from the several parties, forasmuch as every hour, by which they outrun their debt, weakens their security.
It is my further will and desire, that all those free livers and profest voluptuaries, who have wasted the hours of my existence in riot and debauchery, may be made to pay down their lawful quota of sick stomachs and aching heads, to be levied upon them severally by poll at the discretion of my heir and successor.
Whereas I am apprized of many dark dealings and malicious designs now in actual execution to the great annoyance of society and good-fellowship, I earnestly recommend the detection of all such evil-minded persons with To-morrow's light, heartily hoping they will meet their due shame, punishment and disappointment: And I sincerely wish that every honest man, who hath this night gone to rest with a good reputation, may not be deprived of To-morrow's repose by any base efforts, which Slander, who works in the dark, may conjure up to take it from him.
It is with singular satisfaction I have been made privy to sundry kind and charitable benevolences, that have been privately bestowed upon the indigent and distrest, without any ostentation or parade on the part of the givers, and I do thereupon strictly enjoin and require a fair and impartial account to be taken of the same by my lawful heir and successor, (be the amount what it may) that interest for the same may be put into immediate course of payment; whereby the parties so intitled may enjoy, as in justice they ought to do, all those comforts, blessings and rewards, which talents so employed are calculated to produce.
All promises made by men of power to their dependants, and all verbal engagements to tradesmen on the score of bills, that lie over for To-morrow, I hereby cancel and acquit; well assured they were not meant by those, who made them, nor expected by any, who received them, then to be made good and fulfilled.
To all gamesters, rakes and revellers, who shall be found out of bed at my decease, I bequeath rotten constitutions, restless thoughts and squalid complexions; but to all such regular and industrious people, who rise with the sun and carefully resume their honest occupations, I give the greatest of all human blessings—health of body, peace of mind and length of days.
Given under my hand, &c. &c. TO-DAY.
No CL.
Homo extra est corpus suum cum irascitur.
(P. SYRUS.)
IT is wonderful to me that any man will surrender himself to be the slave of peevish and irascible humours, that annoy his peace, impair his health and hurt his reputation. Who does not love to be greeted in society with a smile? Who lives that is insensible to the frowns, the sneers, the curses of his neighbours? What can be more delightful than to enter our own doors 2amidst the congratulations of a whole family, and to bring a chearful heart into a chearful house? Foolish, contemptible self-tormentors ye are, whom every little accident irritates, every slight omission piques! Surely we should guard our passions as we would any other combustibles, and not spread open the inflammable magazine to catch the first spark, that may blow it and ourselves into the air.
Tom Tinder
is one of these touchy blockheads, whom no body can endure: The fellow has not a single plea in life for his ill temper; he does not want money, is not married, has a great deal of health to spare and never once felt the slightest twinge of the gout. His eyes no sooner open to the morning light than he begins to quarrel with the weather; it rains, and he wanted to ride; it is sunshine, and he meant to go a fishing; he would hunt only when it is a frost, and never thinks of skaiting but in open weather; in short the wind is never in the right quarter with this testy fellow; and though I could excuse a man for being a little out of humour with an easterly wind, Tom Tinder shall box the whole compass, and never set his needle to a single point of good humour upon the face of it.
He now rings his bell for his servant to begin the operation of dressing him, a task more ticklish than to wait upon the toilette of a monkey: As Tom shifts his servants about as regularly as he does his shirt, 'tis all the world to nothing if the poor devil does not stumble at starting; or if by happy inspiration he should begin with the right foot foremost, Tom has another inspiration ready at command to quarrel with him for not setting forward with the left: To a certainty then the razor wants strapping, the shaving water is smoaked, and the devil's in the fellow for a dunce, booby and blockhead.
Tom now comes down to breakfast, and though the savage has the stomach of an ostrich, there is not a morsel passes down his blaspheming throat without a damn to digest it; 'twould be a less dangerous task to serve in the morning mess to a fasting bear. He then walks forth into his garden; there he does not meet a plant, which his ill-humour does not engraft with the bitter fruit of cursing; the wasps have pierced his nectarines; the caterpillars have raised contributions upon his cabbages, and the infernal blackbirds have eaten up all his cherries: Tom's soul is not large enough to allow the denizens of creation a taste of Nature's gifts, though he surfeits with the superabundance of her bounty.
He next takes a turn about his farm; there vexation upon vexation crosses him at every corner: The fly, a plague upon't, has got amongst his turnips; the smut has seized his wheat and his sheep are falling down with the rot: All this is the fault of his bailiff, and at his door the blame lies with a proportionable quantity of blessings to recommend it. He finds a few dry sticks pickt out of his hedges, and he blasts all the poor in his neighbourhood for a set of thieves, pilferers and vagabonds. He meets one of his tenants by the way, and he has a petition for a new gate to his farm-yard, or some repairs to his dove-house, or it may be a new threshing-floor to his barn—Hell and fury! there is no end to the demands of these cursed farmers—His stomach rises at the request, and he turns aside speechless with rage, and in this humour pays a visit to his masons and carpenters, who are at work upon a building he is adding to his offices: Here his choler instead of subsiding only flames more furiously, for the idle rascals have done nothing; some have been making holiday, others have gone to the fair at the next town, and the master workman has fallen from the scaffold, and keeps his bed with the bruises: Every devil is conjured up from the bottomless pit to come on earth and confound these dilatory miscreants; and now let him go to his dinner with what stomach he may. If an humble parson or dependant cousin expects a peaceful meal at his table, he may as well sit down to feed with Thyestes or the Centaurs. After a meal of misery and a glass of wine, which ten to one but the infernal butler has clouded in the decanting, he is summoned to a game at back-gammon: The parson throws size-ace, and in a few more casts covers all his points; the devil's in the dice! Tom makes a blot, and the parson hits it; he takes up man after man, all his points are full and Tom is gammoned past redemption—Can flesh and blood bear this? Was ever such a run of luck? The dice-box is slapt down with a vengeance; the tables ring with the deafening crash, the parson stands aghast, and Tom stamps the floor in the phrenzy of passion—Despicable passion! miserable dependant!—
Where is his next resource? the parson has fled the pit; the back-gammon table is closed; no chearful neighbour knocks at his unsocial gate; silence and night and solitude are his melancholy inmates; his boiling bosom labours like a turbid sea after the winds are lulled; shame stares him in the face; conscience plucks at his heart, and to divert his own tormenting thoughts, he calls in those of another person, no matter whom—the first idle author that stands next to his hand: he takes up a book; 'tis a volume of comedies; he opens it at random; 'tis all alike to him where he begins; all our poets put together are not worth a halter; he stumbles by mere chance upon
The Choleric Man
; 'twas one to a thousand he should strike upon that blasted play—What an infernal title! What execrable nonsense! What a canting, preaching puppy of an author!—Away goes the poet with his play and half a dozen better poets than himself bound up in the same luckless volume, the innocent sufferers for his offence.
Tom now sits forlorn, disgusted, without a friend living or dead to chear him, gnawing his own heart for want of other diet to feed his spleen upon: At length he slinks into a comfortless bed; damns his servant as he draws the curtains round him, drops asleep and dreams of the devil.
Major Manlove
is a near neighbour, but no intimate of Tom Tinder's: With the enjoyments, that result from health, the major is but rarely blest, for a body-wound, which he received in battle, is apt upon certain changes of the climate to visit him with acute pains. He is married to one of the best of women; but she too has impaired her health by nursing him when he was wounded, and is subject to severe rheumatic attacks. Love however has an opiate for all her pains, and domestic peace pours a balsam into the husband's wound. It is only by the scrutinizing eye of affection, that either can discover when the other suffers, for religion has endued both hearts with patience, and neither will permit a complaint to escape, which might invite the sympathizing friend to share it's anguish. Disabled for service, major Manlove has retired upon half-pay, and as he plundered neither the enemy's country nor his own during the war, he is not burthened with the superfluities of fortune; happily for him these are not amongst his regrets, and a prudent oeconomy keeps him strait with the world and independant.
One brave youth, trained under his own eye in the same regiment with himself, is all the offspring Heaven hath bestowed upon this worthy father, and in him the hearts of the fond parents are centered; yet not so centered, as to shut them against the general calls of philanthropy, for in the village where they live they are beloved and blessed by every creature. The garden furnishes amusement to Mrs. Manlove, and when the sharp north east does not blow pain into the major's wound, he is occupied with his farm: His trees, his crop, his cattle are his nurselings, and the poor that labour in his service are his children and friends. To his superiors major Manlove deports himself with that graceful respect, that puts them in mind of their own dignity without diminishing his; to his inferiors he is ever kind and condescending: To all men he maintains a natural sincerity with a countenance so expressive of the benevolence, glowing in his heart, that he is beloved as soon as known, and known as soon as seen. With a soul formed for society, and a lively flow of spirits, this amiable man no sooner enters into company, than his presence diffuses joy and gladness over the whole circle: Every voice bids him welcome; every hand is reached out to greet him with a cordial shake. He sits down with a complacent smile; chimes in with the conversation as it is going, hears all, overbears none, damps nobody's jest, if it is harmless; cuts no man's story, if it is only tedious, and is the very life and soul of the table.
According to annual custom I passed some days with him last autumn: There is a tranquillity, which transpires from the master and mistress of this family through every member belonging to it; the servants are few, but so assiduous in their respective stations, that you can no where be better waited on: The table is plain, but elegant, and though the major himself is no sportsman, and has done carrying a gun, the kindness of his neighbours keeps him well supplied with game, and every sort of rural luxury, that their farms and gardens can furnish. Nothing can be more delightful than the face of the country about him, and I was charmed with his little ornamented farm in particular: The disposition of the garden, and the abundance of it's fruits and flowers bespeak Mrs. Manlove no common adept in that sweet and captivating science.
One day as my friend and I were riding through his fields to enjoy the western breeze of a fine September morning, our ears were saluted with the full chorus of the hounds from a neighbouring copse, and as we were crossing one of the pastures towards them, we heard two men at high words behind a thick hedge, that concealed them from our fight, and soon after the sound of blows, which seemed to be heavily laid on, accompanied with oaths and cries, that made us push to the next gate with all the speed we could muster. One of the combatants was lying on the ground, roaring for mercy under the cudgel of his conqueror, who was belaboring him at a furious rate: The person of the victor was unknown to major Manlove; the vanquisht soon made him recognize the ruesul features of Tom Tinder, who called upon the major by name to interpose and save him from being murdered.
This was no sooner done than the cudgeller, who was a sturdy clown, gave us to understand, that he had been doing no more than every Englishman has a right to do, returning the loan of a blow with proper interest to the lender: This the prostrate hero did not deny, but asserted that the rascal had headed the hare as she was breaking cover, and turned her into the wood again, by which means he had spoilt the day's sport.—And did you this designedly? said the major.—Not I, master, replied the countryman, as Heaven shall judge me! I love the sport too well to spoil it wilfully: But if I was travelling along the road just as puss was popping through the hedge, could I help it? am I in the fault? And should this gentleman, if he be a gentleman, ride up to me as if he would have trampled me like a dog under his horse's feet, and lay the butt of his whip upon my scull? I think no man can bear that; so I pulled him out of the saddle, and banged him well, and I think no good man, as you appear to be, will say otherwise than that he well deserved it.—If this be so, answered the major, I can say nothing to the contrary.—How, sir, exclaimed the squire, who was now upon his legs, is a rascal like this to return blow for blow, and does major Manlove abet him in such insolence?—I am sorry, sir, replied the major calmly, you should put such a question to me; but when gentlemen lose their temper—Sir, quoth Tom, interrupting him, I have lost my horse, and that's the worse loss of the two—'Tis what you are least used to, replied the major, and without more words quietly trotted homewards.
As we jogged along my friend began to comment with much pleasantry upon this ridiculous incident, interlarding his discourse every now and then with remarks of a more serious sort upon the ill effects of a hasty temper, and giving me some traits of his neighbour's habits of life, which, though not so uncommon as I could wish, were nevertheless such, as, when contrasted with his benevolent character, may perhaps serve to furnish out no very unedifying topic for an Essay in
The Observer.
No CLI.
Musa dedit fidibus Divos, puerosque Deorum,
Et pugilem victorem, et equum certamine primum,
Et juvenum curas, et libera vina referre.
(HORAT.)
IN times of very remote antiquity, when men were not so lavish of their wit as they have since been, Poetry could not furnish employment for more than
Three Muses
; but as business grew upon their hands and departments multiplied, it became necessary to enlarge the commission and a board was constituted consisting of
Nine
in number, who had their several presidencies allotted to them, and every branch of the art poetic thenceforth had its peculiar patroness and superintendant.
As to the precise time when these three senior goddesses called in their six new assessors it is matter of conjecture only; but if the poet
Hesiod
was, as we are told, the first, who had the honour of announcing their names and characters to the world, we may reasonably suppose this was done upon the immediate opening of their new commission, as they would hardly enter upon their offices without apprising all those, whom it might concern, of their accession.
Before this period the three eldest sisters condescended to be
maids of all work
; and if the work became more than they could turn their hands to, they have nobody but themselves and their fellow deities to complain of; for had they been content to have let the world go on in its natural course, mere mortal poets would not probably have overburthened either it or them; but when Apollo himself (who being their president should have had more consideration for their ease) begot the poet
Linus
in one of his terrestrial frolics, and endowed him with hereditary genius, he took a certain method to make work for the muses: Accordingly we find the chaste Calliope herself, the eldest of the sisterhood, and who should have set a better example to the family, could not hold out against this heavenly bastard, but in an unguarded moment yielded her virgin honours to
Linus,
and produced the poet
Orpheus:
Such an instance of celestial incontinence could not fail to shake the morals of the most demure; and even the cold goddess Luna caught the flame, and smuggled a bantling into the world, whom maliciously enough she named
Musaeus,
with a sly design no doubt of laying her child at the door of the Parnassian nunnery.
Three such high-blooded bards as
Linus, Orpheus
and
Musaeus,
so fathered and so mothered, were enough to people all Greece with poets and musicians; and in truth they were not idle in their generation, but like true patriarchs spread their families over all the shores of Ionia and the islands of the Archipelago: It is not therefore to be wondered at, if the three sister muses, who had enough to do to nurse their own children and descendants, were disposed to call in other helpmates to the task, and whilst Greece was in its glory, it may well be supposed that all the nine sisters were fully employed in bestowing upon every votary a portion of their attention, and answering every call made upon them for aid and inspiration: Much gratitude is due to them from their favoured poets, and much hath been paid, for even to the present hour they are invoked and worshipped by the sons of verse, whilst all the other deities of Olympus have either abdicated their thrones, or been dismissed from them with contempt; even Milton himself in his sacred epic invokes the
heavenly muse,
who inspired Moses
on the top of Horeb or of Sinai
; by which he ascribes great antiquity as well as dignity to the character he addresses.
The powers ascribed to
Orpheus
were under the veil of fable emblems of his influence over savage minds, and of his wisdom and eloquence in reclaiming them from that barbarous state: Upon these impressions civilization and society took place: The patriarch, who founded a family or tribe, the legislator, who established a state, the priest, prophet, judge or king, are characters, which, if traced to their first sources, will be found to branch from that of poet: The first prayers, the first laws and the earliest prophecies were metrical; prose hath a later origin, and before the art of writing was in existence, poetry had reached a very high degree of excellence and some of it's noblest productions were no otherwise preserved than by tradition. As to the sacred quality of their first poetry the Greeks are agreed, and to give their early bards the better title to inspiration they feign them to be descended from the Gods;
Orpheus
must have profited by his mother's partiality, and
Linus
may well be supposed to have had some interest with his father Apollo. But to dwell no longer on these fabulous legends of the Greeks, we may refer to the books of Moses for the earliest and most authentic examples of sacred poetry: Every thing that was the immediate effusion of the prophetic spirit seems to have been chaunted. forth in dithyrambic measure; the valedictory blessings of the Patriarchs, when dying, the songs of triumph and thanksgiving after victory are metrical, and high as the antiquity of the sacred poem of Job undoubtedly is, such nevertheless is its character and construction as to carry strong internal marks of its being written in an advanced state of the art.
The poet therefore, whether Hebrew or Greek, was in the earliest ages a sacred character, and his talent a divine gift, a celestial inspiration: Men regarded him as the ambassador of Heaven and the interpreter of it's will. It is perfectly in nature and no less agreeable to God's providence to suppose that even in the darkest times some minds of a more enlightened sort should break forth, and be engaged in the contemplation of the universe and its author: From meditating upon the works of the Creator the transition to the act of praise and adoration follows as it were of course: These are operations of the mind, which naturally inspire it with a certain portion of rapture and enthusiasm, rushing upon the lips in warm and glowing language, and disdaining to be expressed in ordinary and vulgar phrase; the thoughts become inflated, the breast labours with a passionate desire to say something worthy of the ear of Heaven, something in a more elevated tone and cadence, something more harmonious and musical; this can only be effected by measured periods, by some chaunt, that can be repeated in the strain again and again, grateful at once to the ear and impressive on the memory; and what is this but poetry? Poetry then is the language of prayer, an address becoming of the Deity; it may be remembered; it may be repeated in the ears of the people called together for the purposes of worship; this is a form that may be fixt upon their minds and in this they may be taught to join.
The next step in the progress of poetry from the praise of God is to the praise of men: Illustrious characters, heroic actions are singled out for celebration; the inventors of useful arts, the reformers of savage countries, the benefactors of mankind are extolled in verse, they are raised to the skies, and the poet, having praised them as the first of men, whilst on earth, deifies them after death, and, conscious that they merit immortality, boldly bestows it, and assigns to them a rank and office in heaven appropriate to the character they maintained in life; hence it is that the merits of a Bacchus, a Hercules and numbers more are amplified by the poet, till they become the attributes of their divinity, altars are raised and victims immolated to their worship. These are the fanciful effects of poetry in its second stage: Religion over-heated turns into enthusiasm; enthusiasm forces the imagination into all the visionary regions of fable, and idolatry takes possession of the whole Gentile world. The Egyptians, a mysterious dogmatizing race, begin the work with symbol and hieroglyphic; the Greeks, a vain ingenious people, invent a set of tales and fables for what they do not understand, embellish them with all the glittering ornaments of poetry, and spread the captivating delusion over all the world.
In the succeeding period we review the poet in full possession of this brilliant machinery and with all Olympus at his command: Surrounded by Apollo and the muses he commences every poem with an address to them for protection: He has a deity at his call for every operation of nature; if he would roll the thunder, Jupiter shakes Mount Ida to dignify his description; Neptune attends him in his car, if he would allay the ocean; if he would let loose the winds to raise it Aeolus unbars his cave; the spear of Mars and the aegis of Minerva arm him for the battle; the arrows of Apollo scatter pestilence through the air; Mercury flies upon the messages of Jupiter; Juno raves with jealousy and Venus leads the Loves and Graces in her train. In this class we contemplate
Homer
and his inferior brethren of the epic order; it is their province to form the warrior, instruct the politician, animate the patriot; they delineate the characters and manners; they charm us with their descriptions, surprize us with their incidents, interest us with their dialogue; they engage every passion in its turn, melt us to pity, rouse us to glory, strike us with terror, fire us with indignation; in a word they prepare us for the drama, and the drama for us.
A new poet now comes upon the stage; he stands in person before us: He no longer appears as a blind and wandering bard chaunting his rhapsodies to a throng of villagers collected in a group about him, but erects a splendid theatre, gathers together a whole city as his audience, prepares a striking spectacle, provides a chorus of actors, brings music, dance and dress to his aid, realizes the thunder, bursts open the tombs of the dead, calls forth their apparitions, descends to the very regions of the damned and drags the Furies from their flames to present themselves personally to the terrified spectators: Such are the powers of the drama; here the poet reigns and triumphs in his highest glory.
The fifth denomination gives us the lyric poet chaunting his ode at the public games and festivals, crowned with olive and encompassed by all the wits and nobles of his age and country: Here we contemplate
Stesichorus, Alcaeus, Pindar, Callistratus
; sublime, abrupt, impetuous they strike us with the shock of their electric genius; they dart from earth to heaven; there is no following them in their flights; we stand gazing with surprize, their boldness awes us, their brevity confounds us; their sudden transitions and ellipses escape our apprehension; we are charmed we know not why, we are pleased with being puzzled and applaud although we cannot comprehend. In the lighter lyric we meet
Anacreon, Sappho,
and the votaries of Bacchus and Venus; in the grave, didactic, solemn class we have the venerable names of a
Solon,
a
Tyrtaeus
and those, who may be stiled the demagogues in poetry: Is liberty to be asserted, licentiousness to be repressed? Is the spirit of a nation to be roused? It is the poet not the orator must give the soul its energy and spring: Is Salamis to be recovered? It is the elegy of
Solon
must found the march to it's attack. Are the Lacedaemonians to be awakened from their lethargy? It is
Tyrtaeus,
who must sing the war-song and revive their languid courage.
Poetry next appears in its pastoral character; it affects the garb of shepherds and the language of the rustic: It represents to our view the rural landscape and the peaceful cottage; it records the labours, the amusements, the loves of the village nymphs and swains, and exhibits nature in its simplest state: It is no longer the harp or the lyre, but the pipe of the poet, which now invites our attention:
Theocritus,
leaning on his crook in his russet mantle and
clouted brogues,
appears more perfectly in character than the courtly
Maro,
who seems more the shepherd of the theatre than of the field. I have yet one other class in reserve for the epigrammatist, but I will shut up my list without him, not being willing that poetry, which commences with a prayer, should conclude with a pun.
No CLII.
Neque lex est justior ulla
Quam necis artifices arte perire suâ.
WE have heard so much of the tragical effects of jealousy, that I was not a little pleased with an account lately given me of a gentleman, who has been happily cured of his jealousy without any of those melancholy circumstances, which too frequently result from that fatal passion, even when it is groundless: As this gentleman's jealousy was of that description, I am the rather tempted to relate the story (under proper caution as to names and persons) because there is a moral justice in its catastrophe, which is pleasing even in fiction, but more particularly so when we meet it in the real occurrences of life.
Sir Paul Testy in his forty-eighth year married the beautiful Louisa in her eighteenth; there are some parents, who seem to think a good settlement can atone for any disparity of age, and Louisa's were of this sort. Sir Paul had a maiden sister several years younger than himself, who had kept his house for some time before his marriage with Louisa, and as this lady was in fact an admirable oeconomist and also in possession of a very considerable independent fortune, the prudent baronet took his measures for her continuance in his family, where under pretence of assisting the inexperience of his young bride she still maintained her government in as absolute authority as ever: As Miss Rachel would have been better pleased with her brother, had he chosen a wife with less beauty and more fortune than Louisa brought into the family, it may well be doubted if she would have remained with him after his marriage, had she not been pretty far advanced in an affair of the heart with a certain young gentleman, whose attentions, though in fact directed to her purse, she was willing to believe had been honourably addressed to her person: This young gentleman, whom I shall call Lionel, was undoubtedly an object well deserving the regards of any lady in Miss Rachel's predicament; with a fine person and engaging address he had the recommendation of high birth, being a younger son of the Lord Mortimer, a venerable old peer, who resided at his family mansion within a few miles of Sir Paul, and lived upon the most friendly terms with him in a frequent intercourse of visits: Lionel had given this worthy father great uneasiness from his early dissipation and extravagance; considerable sums had been paid for him to clear his debts, but the old lord's estate being a moderate one and entailed upon his eldest son, Lionel had been obliged to sell out of the army, and was now living at home upon the bounty of his father on a reduced and slender allowance.
It is not to be wondered at that Lionel, who felt his own embarassments too sensibly to neglect any fair means of getting rid of them, should be willing to repair his shattered fortunes by an advantageous match; and though Miss Rachel was not exactly the lady he would have chosen, yet he very justly considered that his circumstances did not entitle him to chuse for himself; he was also strongly urged to the measure by his father, to whose wishes he held himself bound to conform not only on the score of duty but of atonement likewise: At this time the affair was in so promising a train, that there is little doubt but it would have been brought to a conclusion between the parties, had not Sir Paul's marriage taken place as it did; but as Miss Rachel for reasons, which are sufficiently explained, determined upon remaining with her brother, the intercourse between the lovers was renewed, as soon as Sir Peter had brought home his bride, and was sufficiently settled to receive the visits of his friends and neighbours on the occasion.
Now it was that the unhappy Rachel became a victim to the most tormenting of all human passions: her sister-in-law had a thousand charms, and she soon discovered, or fancied she discovered, that Lionel's attentions were directed towards a fairer object than herself: She had now the strongest of all motives for keeping a watchful eye upon Louisa's behaviour, and it is the property of jealousy to magnify and discolour every thing it looks upon; for some time however she kept herself under prudent restraint; a hint now and then, cautiously introduced in the way of advice, was all she ventured upon; but these hints were so little attended to by Louisa, whose innocent gayety lent no ear to such remonstrances, that they were occasionally repeated in a graver tone; as these grew more and more peevish, Louisa began to take a little mischievous pleasure in teazing, and was piqued into a behaviour, which probably she would never have indulged herself in towards Lionel, had not Rachel's jealousy provoked her to it; still it was innocent, but so far imprudent, as it gave a handle to Rachel's malice, who now began to sow the seeds of discontent in her brother's irritable bosom.
In one of those sparring dialogues, which now frequently passed between the sisters, Rachel, after descanting upon the old topic with some degree of asperity, concluded her lecture with many professions of zeal for Louisa's happiness, and observed to her as an apology for the freedom of her advice, that she had a right to some little experience of the world more than had yet fallen to the other's lot: To which Louisa replied with some tartness—
"True! for you have lived more years in it than I have."—
"A few perhaps,"
answered Rachel.—
"As few, or as many as you chuse to acknowledge,"
added Louisa:
"It is one amongst a variety of advantages over me, which you are too generous to boast of, and I too humble to repine at."—
"Be that as it may,"
said the elder damsel,
"you will give me leave to observe that you have a double call upon you for discretion; you are a married woman."
"Perhaps that very circumstance may be a proof of my indiscretion."
"How so, madam! I may venture to say my brother Sir Paul was no unseasonable match for your ladyship; at least I can witness some pains were employed on your part to obtain him."
"Well, my dear sister,"
replied Louisa with an affected nonchalance,
"after so much pains is it not natural I should wish to repose myself a little?"—
"Indiscretion admits of no repose; health, honour, happiness are sacrificed by it's effects; it saps the reputation of a wife; it shakes the affections of a husband."
"Be content!"
cried Louisa,
"if you will give no cause for disturbing the affections of the husband, I will take care none shall be given for attainting the reputation of the wife."
At this moment Sir Paul entered the room, and perceiving by the countenances of the ladies, that they were not perfectly in good-humour with each other, eagerly demanded of Louisa why she looked so grave.
"I would look grave, if I could,"
she replied,
"out of compliment to my company; but I have so light a conscience and so gay a heart, that I cannot look gravity in the face without laughing at it."
This was delivered with so pointed a glance at Rachel, that it was not possible to mistake the application, and she had no sooner left the room, than an explanation took place between the brother and sister, in the course of which Rachel artfully contrived to infuse such a copious portion of her own poisonous jealousy into the bosom of sir Paul, that upon the arrival of lord Mortimer, which was at this crisis announced to him, he took a sudden determination to give him to understand how necessary it was become to his domestic happiness, that Lionel should be induced to discontinue his visits in his family.
Under these impressions and in a very awkward state of mind Sir Paul repaired to his library, where lord Mortimer was expecting him in a situation of no less embarassment, having conned over a speech for the purpose of introducing a proposal for an alliance between the families, and with a view to sound how Sir Paul might stand affected towards a match between his son Lionel and Miss Rachel.
As soon as the first ceremonies were over, which were not very speedily dismissed, as both parties were strict observers of the old rules of breeding, his lordship began after his manner to wind about by way of reconnoitring his ground, and having composed his features with much gravity and deliberation, began to open his honourable trenches as follows—
"In very truth, Sir Paul, I protest to you there are few things in life can give me more pleasure than to find my son Lionel so assiduous in his visits to this family."
—The baronet, whose mind at this moment was not capable of adverting to any other idea but what had reference to his own jealousy, stared with amazement at this unexpected address and was staggered how to reply to it; at last with much hesitation in a tone of ill-counterfeited raillery he replied that he truly believed there was one person in his family, to whom Mr. Lionel's visits were particularly acceptable; and as this was a subject very near his heart, nay, that alone upon which the honour and happiness of him and his family depended, he assured his lordship that it was with avidity he embraced the opportunity of coming to an explanation, which he hoped would be as confidential on his lordship's part, as it should be on his own. There was something in the manner of Sir Paul's delivery, as well as in the matter of the speech itself, which alarmed the hereditary pride of the old peer, who drawing himself up with great dignity observed to Sir Paul, that for his son Lionel he had this to say, that want of honour was never amongst his failings; nay it was never to be charged with impunity against any member of his family, and that to prevent any imputation of this sort from being grounded upon his son's assiduities to a certain lady, he had now sought this interview and explanation with his good friend and neighbour.
This was so kind a lift in Sir Paul's conception towards his favourite point, that he immediately exclaimed—
"I see your lordship is not unapprised of what is too conspicuous to be overlooked by any body, who is familiar in this house; but as I know your lordship is a man of the nicest honour in your own person, I should hold myself essentially bound to you, if you would prevail upon your son to adopt the like principles towards a certain lady under this roof, and caution him to desist from those assiduities, which you yourself have noticed, and which to confess the truth to you I cannot be a witness to without very great uneasiness and discontent."
Upon these words the peer started from his seat as nimbly as age would permit him, and with great firmness replied—
"Sir Paul Testy, if this be your wish and desire, let me assure you, it shall be mine also; my son's visits in this family will never be repeated; set your heart at rest; Lionel Mortimer will give you and your's no further disturbance."
"My lord,"
answered the baronet,
"I am penetrated with the sense of your very honourable proceedings, and the warmth with which you have expressed yourself on a subject so closely interwoven with my peace of mind; you have eased my heart of it's burthen and I shall ever be most grateful to you for it."
"Sir,"
replied the peer,
"there is more than enough said on the subject; I dare say my son will survive his disappointment."—
"I dare say he will,"
said Sir Paul,
"I cannot doubt the success of Mr. Lionel's attentions; I have only to hope he will direct them to some other object."
Lord Mortimer now muttered something, which Sir Paul did not hear, nor perhaps attend to, and took a hasty leave. When it is explained to the reader that Miss Rachel had never, even in the most distant manner, hinted the situation of her heart to her brother, on the contrary had industriously concealed it from him, this
malentendu
will not appear out of nature and probability. Lionel, whose little gallantries with Louisa had not gone far enough seriously to engage his heart, was sufficiently tired of his mercenary attachment to Miss Rachel; so that he patiently submitted to his dismission and readily obeyed his father's commands by a total discontinuance of his visits to Sir Paul: To the ladies of the family this behaviour appeared altogether mysterious; Sir Paul kept the secret to himself, and watched Louisa very narrowly; when he found she took no other notice of Lionel's neglect, than by slightly remarking that she supposed he was more agreeably engaged, he began to dismiss his jealousy and regain his spirits.
It was far otherwise with the unhappy Rachel; her heart was on the rack, for though she naturally suspected her brother's jealousy of being the cause of Lionel's absence, yet she could not account for his silence towards herself in any other way than by supposing that Louisa had totally drawn off his affections from her, and this was agony not to be supported; day after day passed in anxious expectation of a letter to explain this cruel neglect, but none came; all communication with the whole family of lord Mortimer was at a stop; no intelligence could be obtained from that quarter, and to all such enquiries as she ventured to try upon her brother, he answered so drily, that she could gather nothing from him: In the mean time as he became hourly better reconciled to Louisa, so he grew more and more cool to the miserable Rachel, who now too late discovered the fatal consequences of interfering between husband and wife, and heartily reproached herself for her officiousness in aggravating his jealousy.
Whilst she was tormenting herself with these reflections, and when Louisa seemed to have forgotten that ever such a person as Lionel existed, a report was circulated that he was about to be married to a certain lady of great rank and fortune, and that he had gone up with lord Mortimer to town for that purpose. There wanted only this blow to make Rachel's agonies compleat; in a state of mind little short of phrensy she betook herself to her chamber, and there shutting herself up she gave vent to her passion in a letter fully charged with complaints and reproaches, which she committed to a trusty messenger with strict injunctions to deliver it into Lionel's own hand, and return with his answer: This commission was faithfully performed, and the following is the answer she received in return.—
Madam,
I am no less astonished than affected by your letter: If your brother has not long since informed you of his conference with my father and the result of it, he has acted as unjustly by you as he has by lord Mortimer and myself: When my father waited upon Sir Paul for the express purpose of making known to him the hopes I had the ambition to entertain of rendering myself acceptable to you upon a proposal of marriage, he received at once so short and peremptory a dismission on my behalf, that, painful as it was to my feelings, I had no part to act but silently to submit and withdraw myself from a family, where I was so unacceptable an intruder.
When I confirm the truth of the report you have heard, and inform you that my marriage took place this very morning, you will pardon me if I add no more than that I have the honour to be,
Madam,
your most obedient and most humble servant, LIONEL MORTIMER.
Every hope being extinguished by the receipt of this letter, the disconsolate Rachel became henceforth one of the most miserable of human beings: After venting a torrent of rage against her brother, she turned her back upon his house for ever, and undetermined where to six, whilst at intervals she can scarce be said to be in possession of her senses, she is still wandering from place to place in search of that repose, which is not to be found, and wherever she goes exhibits a melancholy spectacle of disappointed envy and self-tormenting spleen.
No CLIII.
A Delisa possest of beauty, fortune, rank, and every elegant accomplishment, that genius and education could bestow, was withal so unsupportably capricious, that she seemed born to be the torment of every heart, which suffered itself to be attracted by her charms. Though her coquetry was notorious to a proverb, such were her allurements, that very few, upon whom she thought fit to practise them, had ever found resolution to resist their power. Of all the victims of her vanity Leander seemed to be that over whom she threw her chains with the greatest air of triumph; he was indeed a conquest to boast of, for he had long and obstinately defended his heart, and for a time made as many reprisals upon the tender passions of her sex as she raised contributions upon his: Her better star at length prevailed; she beheld Leander at her feet, and though her victory was accomplished at the expence of more tender glances, than she had ever bestowed upon the whole sex collectively, yet it was a victory, which only piqued Adelisa to render his slavery the more intolerable for the trouble it had cost her to reduce him to it. After she had trifled with him and tortured him in every way that her ingenious malice could devise, and made such public display of her tyranny, as subjected him to the ridicule and contempt of all the men, who had envied his success, and every woman, who resented his neglect, Adelisa avowedly dismissed him as an object which could no longer furnish sport to her cruelty, and turned to other pursuits with a kind of indifference as to the choice of them, which seemed to have no other guide but mere caprice.
Leander was not wanting to himself in the efforts he now made to free himself from her chains; but it was in vain; the hand of beauty had wrapped them too closely about his heart, and love had rivetted them too securely, for reason, pride or even the strongest struggles of resentment to throw them off; he continued to love, to hate, to execrate and adore her. His first resolution was to exile himself from her sight; this was a measure of absolute necessity, for he was not yet recovered enough to abide the chance of meeting her, and he had neither spirits nor inclination to start a fresh attachment by way of experiment upon her jealousy. Fortune however befriended him in the very moment of despair, for no sooner was he out of her sight, than the coquettish Adelisa found something wanting, which had been so familiar to her, that Leander, though despised when possest, when lost was regretted. In vain she culled her numerous admirers for some one to replace him; continually peevish and discontented Adelisa became so intolerable to her lovers, that there seemed to be a spirit conjuring up amongst them, which threatened her with a general desertion. What was to be done? Her danger was alarming, it was imminent: She determined to recall Leander: She informed herself of his haunts, and threw herself in the way of a rencontre; but he avoided her: Chance brought them to an interview, and she began by rallying him for his apostacy: There was an anxiety under all this affected pleasantry, that she could not thoroughly conceal, and he did not fail to discover: He instantly determined upon the very wisest measure, which deliberation could have formed; he combated her with her own weapons; he put himself apparently so much at his ease and counterfeited his part so well, as effectually to deceive her: she had now a new task upon her hands and the hardest as well as the most hazardous she had ever undertaken: She attempted to throw him off his guard by a pretended pity for his past sufferings and a promise of kinder usage for the future: He denied that he had suffered any thing, and assured her that he never failed to be amused by her humours, which were perfectly agreeable to him at all times.—
"Then it is plain,"
replied she,
"that you never thought of me as a wife; for such humours must be insupportable to a husband."—
"Pardon me,"
cried Leander,
"if ever I should be betrayed into the idle act of marriage, I must be in one of those very humours myself: Defend me from the dull uniformity of domestic life! What can be so insipid as the tame strain of nuptial harmony everlastingly repeated? Whatever other varieties I may then debar myself of, let me at least find a variety of whim in the woman I am to be fettered to."—
"Upon my word,"
exclaimed Adelisa,
"you would almost persuade me that we were destined for each other."
—This she accompanied with one of those looks, in which she was most expert, and which was calculated at once to inspire and to betray sensibility: Leander, not yet so certain of his observations as to confide in them, seemed to receive this ouverture as a raillery and affecting a laugh, replied—
"I do not think it is in the power of destiny herself to determine either of us; for if you was for one moment in the humour to promise yourself to me, I am certain in the next you would retract it; and if I was fool enough to believe you, I should well deserve to be punished for my credulity: Hymen will never yoak us to each other, nor to any body else; but if you are in the mind to make a very harmless experiment of the little faith I put in all such promises, here is my hand; 'tis fit the proposal should spring from my quarter and not your's; close with it as soon as you please, and laugh at me as much as you please, if I vent one murmur when you break the bargain."—
"Well then,"
said Adelisa,
"to punish you for the sauciness of your provoking challenge, and to convince you that I do not credit you for this pretended indifference to my treatment of you, here is my hand, and with it my promise; and now I give you warning, that if ever I do keep it, 'twill be only from the conviction that I shall torment you more by fulfilling it than by flying from it."—
"Fairly declared,"
cried Leander,
"and since my word is passed, I'll stand to it; but take notice, if I was not perfectly secure of being jilted, I should think myself in a fair way to be the most egregious dupe in nature."
In this strain of mutual raillery they proceeded to settle the most serious business of their lives, and whilst neither would venture upon a confession of their passion, each seemed to rely upon the other for a discovery of it. They now broke up their conference in the gayest spirits imaginable, and Leander upon parting offered to make a bett of half his fortune with Adelisa that she did not stand to her engagement, at the same time naming a certain day as the period of its taking place.—
"And what shall I gain,"
said she,
"in that case by half your fortune, when I shall have a joint share in possession of the whole?"—
"Talk not of fortune,"
cried Leander, giving loose to the rapture which he could no longer restrain,
"my heart, my happiness, my life itself is your's."
—So saying he caught her in his arms, pressed her eagerly in his embrace, and hastily departed.
No sooner was he out of her sight than he began to expostulate with himself upon his indiscretion: In the ecstacy of one unguarded moment he had blasted all his schemes, and by exposing his weakness armed her with fresh engines to torment him. In these reflections he passed the remainder of the night; in vain he strove to find some justification for his folly; he could not form his mind to believe that the tender looks she had bestowed upon him were any other than an experiment upon his heart to throw him from his guard and reestablish her tyranny. With these impressions he presented himself at her door next morning and was immediately admitted; Adelisa was alone, and Leander immediately began by saying to her—
"I am now come to receive at your hands the punishment, which a man who cannot keep his own secret richly deserves; I surrender myself to you, and I expect you will exert your utmost ingenuity in tormenting me; only remember that you cannot give a stab to my heart without wounding your own image, which envelopes every part, and is too deeply imprest for even your cruelty totally to extirpate."
—At the conclusion of this speech, Adelisa's countenance became serious; she fixt her eyes upon the floor and after a pause without taking any notice of Leander, and as if she had been talking to herself in soliloquy repeated in a murmuring tone—
"Well, well, 'tis all over; but no matter."—
"For the love of Heaven,"
cried Leander in alarm,
"what is all over?"—
"All that is most delightful to woman,"
she replied;
"all the luxury, which the vanity of my sex enjoys in tormenting your's: Oh Leander! what charming projects of revenge had I contrived to punish your pretended indifference, and depend upon it I would have executed them to the utmost rigour of the law of retaliation, had you not in one moment disarmed me of my malice by a fair confession of your love. Believe me, Leander, I never was a coquette but in self-defence; sincerity is my natural character; but how should a woman of any attractions be safe in such a character, when the whole circle of fashion abounds with artificial coxcombs, pretenders to sentiment and professors of seduction? When the whole world is in arms against innocence, what is to become of the naked children of nature, if experience does not teach them the art of defence? If I have employed this art more particularly against you than others, why have I so done, but because I had more to apprehend from your insincerity than any other person's, and proportioned my defences to my danger? Between you and me, Leander, it has been more a contest of cunning than an affair of honour, and if you will call your own conduct into fair review, trust me you will find little reason to complain of mine. Naturally disposed to favour your attentions more than any other man's, it particularly behoved me to guard myself against propensities at once so pleasing and so suspicious. Let this suffice in justification of what is past; it now remains that I should explain to you the system I have laid down for the time to come: If ever I assume the character of a wife, I devote myself to all it's duties; I bid farewell at once to all the vanities, the petulancies, the coquetries of what is falsely called a life of pleasure; the whole system must undergo a revolution and be administered upon other principles and to other purposes: I know the world too well to commit myself to it, when I have more than my own conscience to account to, when I have not only truths but the similitudes of truths to study; suspicions, jealousies, appearances to provide against; when I am no longer singly responsible on the score of error, but of example also: It is not therefore in the public display of an affluent fortune, in dress, equipage, entertainments, nor even in the fame of splendid charities my pleasures will be found; they will center in domestic occupations; in cultivating nature and the sons of nature, in benefiting the tenants and labourers of the soil that supplies us with the means of being useful; in living happily with my neighbours, in availing myself of those numberless opportunities, which a residence in the country affords of relieving the untold distresses of those, who suffer in secret, and are too humble or perhaps too proud to ask."
—Here the enraptured Leander could no longer keep silence, but breaking forth into transports of love and admiration, gave a turn to the conversation, which it is no otherwise interesting to relate than as it proved the prelude to an union which speedily took place and has made Leander and Adelisa the fondest and the worthiest couple in England.
From Adelisa's example I would willingly establish this conclusion, that the characters of young unmarried women, who are objects of admiration, are not to be decided upon by the appearances, which they are oftentimes tempted to assume upon the plea of self-defence: I would not be understood by this to recommend disguise in any shape, or to justify those who resort to artifice upon the pretended necessity of the measure; but I am thoroughly disposed to believe that the triflings and dissemblings of the young and fair do not so often flow from the real levity of their natures, as they are thought to do: Those in particular, whose situation throws them into the vortex of the fashion, have much that might be said in palliation of appearances. Many coquettes besides Adelisa have become admirable wives and mothers, and how very many more might have approved themselves such, had they fallen into the hands of men of worth and good sense, is a conjecture, which leads to the most melancholy reflections. There is so little honorable love in the men of high life before marriage, and so much infidelity after it, that the husband is almost in every instance the corrupter of his wife. A woman (as she is called) of the world is in many people's notions a proscribed animal; a silly idea prevails that she is to lead a husband into certain ruin and disgrace: Parents in general seem agreed in exerting all their influence and authority for keeping her out of their families; in place of whom they frequently obtrude upon their sons some raw and inexperienced thing, whom they figure to themselves as a creature of perfect innocence and simplicity, a wife who may be modelled to the wishes of her husband, whose manners are untainted by the vices of the age, and on whose purity, fidelity and affection he may repose his happiness for the rest of his days. Alas! how grossly they misjudge their own true interests in the case: How dangerous is the situation of these children of the nursery at their first introduction into the world! Those only who are unacquainted with the deceitfulness of pleasure can be thoroughly intoxicated by it; it is the novelty which makes the danger; and surely it requires infinitely more judgment, stronger resolutions and closer attentions to steer the conduct of a young wife without experience, than would serve to detach the woman of the world from frivolities she is surfeited with, and by fixing her to your interests convert what you have thought a dissipated character into a domestic one.
The same remark applies to young men of private education: you keep them in absolute subjection till they marry, and then in a moment make them their own masters; from mere infancy you expect them to step at once into perfect manhood: The motives for the experiment may be virtuous, but the effects of it will be fatal.
I am now approaching to the conclusion of this my fifth volume, and according to my present purpose shall dismiss the
Observers
from any further duty: The reader and I are here to part. A few words therefore on such an occasion I may be permitted to subjoin; I have done my best to merit his protection, and as I have been favorably heard whilst yet talking with him, I hope I shall not be unkindly remembered when I can speak no more: I have passed a life of many labours, and now being near it's end have little to boast but of an inherent good-will towards mankind, which disappointments, injuries and age itself have not been able to diminish. It has been the chief aim of all my attempts to reconcile and endear man to man: I love my country and contemporaries to a degree of enthusiasm that I am not sure is perfectly defensible; though to do them justice, each in their turns have taken some pains to cure me of my partiality. It is however one of those stubborn habits, which people are apt to excuse in themselves by calling it a
second nature.
There is a certain amiable lady in the world, in whose interests I have the tenderest concern and whose virtues I contemplate with paternal pride; to her I have always wished to dedicate these volumes; but when I consider that such a tribute cannot add an atom to her reputation, and that no form of words, which I can invent for the occasion, would do justice to what passes in my heart, I drop the undertaking and am silent.
FINIS.