THE RAMBLER.
VOLUME THE THIRD.
Nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri,
Quo me cunque rapit tempestas, deferor hospes.
HOR.
LONDON:
Printed for J. PAYNE and J. BOUQUET, IN PATER-NOSTER-ROW. M.DCC.LII.
THE RAMBLER.
NUMB. 71.
TUESDAY,
Nov.
20, 1750.
Vivere quod propero pauper, rec inutilis annis
Da veniam, properat vivere nemo satis.
MART.
MANY words and sentences are so frequently heard in the mouths of men, that a superficial observer is inclined to believe, that they must contain some primary principle, some great rule of action or maxim of prudence, which it is proper always to have present to the attention, and by which the use of every hour is to be adjusted. Yet, if we consider the conduct of those sententious philosophers, it will often be found, that they repeat these aphorisms, merely because they have somewhere heard them, because they have nothing else to say, or because they conceive that some veneration is gained by such appearances of wisdom, but that no ideas are annexed to the words, and that, according to the old blunder of the followers of
Aristotle,
their souls are mere pipes or organs, which transmit sounds, but do not understand them.
OF this kind is that well known and well attested position, that
life is short,
which may be heard among mankind by an attentive auditor, many times a day, but which never yet within my reach of observation left any impression upon the mind; and perhaps if my readers will turn their thoughts back upon their old friends, they will find it difficult to call a single man to remembrance, who appeared to know that life was short till he was about to lose it.
IT is observable that
Horace,
in his account of the characters of men, as they are diversified by the various influence of time, remarks, that the old man is
dilator, spe longus,
given to procrastination, and inclined to extend his hopes to a great distance. So far are we, generally, from thinking what we often say of the shortness of life, that at the time when it is necessarily shortest, we form projects which we delay to execute, indulge such expectations as nothing but a long train of events can gratify, and suffer those passions to gain upon us, which are only excusable in the prime of life.
THESE reflections were lately excited in my mind, by an evening's conversation with my friend
Prospero,
who at the age of fiftyfive, has bought an estate, and is now contriving to dispose and cultivate it with uncommon elegance. His great pleasure is to walk among stately trees, and lye musing in the heat of noon under their shade; he is therefore maturely considering how he shall dispose his walks and his groves, and has at last determined to send for the best plans from
Italy,
and forbear planting till the next season.
THUS is life trifled away in preparations to do what never can be done, if it be left unattempted till all the requisites which imagination can suggest are gathered together. Where our design terminates only in our own satisfaction, the mistake is of no great importance; for the pleasure of expecting enjoyment, is often greater than that of obtaining it, and the completion of almost every wish is found a disappointment; but when many others are interested in an undertaking, when any design is formed, in which the improvement or security of mankind is involved, nothing is more unworthy either of wisdom or benevolence, than to delay it from time to time, or to forget how much every day that passes over us, take away from our power, and how soon an idle purpose to do an action, sinks into a mournful wish that it had once been done.
WE are frequently importuned, by the bacchanalian writers, to lay hold on the present hour, to catch the pleasures which are now within our reach, and remember that futurity is not at our command.
BUT surely these exhortations may, with equal propriety, be applied to better purposes; it may be at least inculcated, that pleasures are more safely postponed than virtues, and that greater loss is suffered by missing an opportunity of doing good, than an hour of giddy frolick and noisy merriment.
WHEN
Baxter
had lost a thousand pounds, which he had laid up for the erection of a school, he used frequently to mention the misfortune, as an incitement to be charitable while God gives the power of bestowing, and considered himself as culpable in some degree, for having left a good action in the hands of chance, and suffered his benevolence to be defeated for want of quickness and diligence.
IT is lamented by
Hearne,
the learned antiquary of
Oxford,
that this general forgetfulness of the fragility of life, has remarkably infected the students of monuments and records; as their employment consists first in collecting and afterwards in arranging, or abslracting what libraries afford them, they ought to amass no more than they can digest; but when they have undertaken a work, they go on searching and transcribing, call for new supplies, when they are already over-burdened, and at last leave their work unfinished.
It is,
says he,
the business of a good antiquary, as of a good man, to have mortality always before him.
THUS, not only in the slumber of sloth, but in the dissipation of ill directed industry, is the shortness of life generally forgotten. As some men lose their hours in laziness, because they suppose, that there is time enough for the reparation of their negligence; others busy themselves in providing that no length of life may want employment; and it often happens, that sluggishness and activity are equally surprised by the last summons, and perish not more differently from each other, than the fowl that receives the shot in her flight, from her that is killed upon the bush.
AMONG the many improvements, made by the last centuries in human knowledge, may be numbered the exact calculations of the value of life; but whatever may be their use in traffick, they seem very little to have advanced morality. They have hitherto been rather applied to the acquisition of money, than of wisdom; the computer refers none of his calculations to his own tenure, but persists, in contempt of probability, to foretel long life to himself, and believes that he is marked out to reach the utmost verge of human existence, and see thousands and ten thousands fall into the grave.
SO deeply is this sallacy rooted in the heart, and so strongly guarded by hope and fear against the approach of reason, that neither science nor experience can shake it, and we act as if life were without end, though we see and confess its uncertainty and shortness.
DIVINES have, with great strength and ardour, shewn the absurdity of delaying reformation and repentance; a degree of folly indeed, which sets eternity to hazard. It is the same weakness, in proportion to the importance of the neglect, to transfer any care, which now claims our attention, to a future time: we sometimes subject ourselves to needless dangers from accidents which early diligence would have obviated, and sometimes perplex our minds by vain precautions, and make provision for the execution of designs, for which the opportunity once missed never will return.
AS he that lives longest lives but a little while, every man may be certain that he has no time to waste. The duties of life are commensurate to its duration, and every day brings its task, which if neglected, is doubled on the morrow. But he that has already trifled away those months and years, in which he should have laboured, must remember, that of what he has now only a part, the whole is little; and that since the few moments remaining are to be considered as the last trust of heaven, not one is to be lost.
NUMB. 72.
SATURDAY,
Nov.
24, 1750.
Omnis
Aristippum
decuit status, et color, et res,
Sectantem majora fere; presentibus aequum.
HOR.
To the RAMBLER.
SIR,
THOSE who exalt themselves into the chair of instruction, and venture upon the presumptuous office of teaching others, very often without enquiring whether any will submit to their authority, have, I think, not sufficiently considered how much of human life passes in little incidents, cursory conversation, slight business, and casual amusements; and therefore they have endeavoured only to exhibit and inculcate the severer, more difficult, and more awful virtues, without condescending to regard those petty affections, or secondary qualities, which grow important only by their frequency, and which, though they are overlooked by the speculatist because they produce no single acts of heroism, nor astonish us by great events, yet are every moment exerting their influence upon us, and make the draught of life sweet or bitter by imperceptible instillations. They operate unseen and unregarded, as change of air makes us sick or healthy, though we breathe it without attention, and only know the particles that impregnate it by their salutary or malignant effects.
YOU have indeed shewn yourself not ignorant of the value and power of those subaltern endowments, yet you have hitherto forgotten or neglected to recommend good humour to the world, though a little reflection will shew you that it may be properly termed the
balm of being,
the quality to which all that adorns or elevates mankind must owe its power of pleasing. Without good humour, learning and bravery can to feeble minds be only formidable: It confers that superiority which swells the heart of the lion in the desart, where he roars without reply, and ravages without resistance. Without good humour, virtue may indeed awe by its dignity, and amaze by its brightness; but must always be viewed at a distance, and will scarcely gain a friend or attract an imitator.
GOOD humour may be defined a habit of being pleased, a constant and perennial softness of manner, easiness of approach, and suavity of disposition; like that which every man perceives in himself, when the first transports of new felicity have subsided, and his thoughts are only kept in motion by a slow succession of soft impulses. Good humour is a state between gayety and unconcern; the act or emanation of a mind at leisure to regard the gratification of another.
IT is imagined by many, that whenever they aspire to please, they are required to be merry, to shew the gladness of their souls by slights of pleasantry, and bursts of laughter, and to lose all reserve and reflection in overflowing jollity. But, though these Men may be courted for a time, and heard with applause and admiration, they seldom delight us long. We enjoy them a little, and then retire to easiness and good humour, as the eye gazes a while on eminences glittering with the sun, but soon turns aching away to verdure and to flowers.
GAYETY is to good humour as animal persumes to vegetable fragrance; the one overpowers weak spirits, and the other recreates and revives them. Gayety seldom fails to give some pain; the hearers either strain their faculties to accompany its towerings, or are left behind in envy and despair. Good humour boasts no faculties which every one does not believe in his own power, and pleases principally by not offending.
IT is well known that the most certain way to give any man pleasure, is to persuade him that you receive pleasure from him, to encourage him to freedom and confidence, and to avoid any such appearance of superiority as may overbear and depress him. We see many that by this art only, spend their days in the midst of caresses, invitations, and civilities; and without any great qualities or extraordinary attainments, are the universal favourites of both sexes, and certainly find a friend in every place, because they heighten every man's opinion of himself. The darlings of the world will, indeed, be generally found such as excite neither jealousy nor fear, and are not considered as candidates for any eminent degree of reputation, but content themselves with common accomplishments, and endeavour rather to solicit kindness than to raise esteem; therefore in assemblies and places of resort it seldom fails to happen, that though at the entrance of some particular person every face brightens with gladness, and every hand is extended in salutation, yet if you persue him beyond the first exchange of civilities, you will find him of very small importance, and only welcome to the company, as one by whom all conceive themselves admired, and with whom any one is at liberty to amuse himself when he can find no other auditor or companion, as one with whom all are at ease, who will hear a jest without criticism, and a narrative without contradiction, who laughs with every wit, and yields to every disputer.
THERE are many whose vanity always inclines them to associate with those from whom they have no reason to fear mortification; and there are times in which the wise and the knowing are willing to receive praise without the labour of deserving it, in which the most elevated mind is willing to descend, and the most active to be at rest. All therefore are at some hour or another fond of companions whom they can entertain upon easy terms, and who will relieve them from solitude, without condemning them to vigilance and caution. We are most inclined to love when we have nothing to fear, and he that always indulges us in our present Disposition, and encourages us to please ourselves, will not be long without preference in our affection to those whose learning holds us at the distance of pupils, or whose wit calls all attention from us, and leaves us without importance and without regard,
IT is remarked by prince
Henry,
when he sees
Falstaff
lying on the ground, that
he could have better spared a better man.
He was well acquainted with the vices and follies of him whom he lamented, but while his conviction compelled him to do justice to superior qualities, his tenderness still broke out at the remembrance of
Falstaff,
of the chearful companion, the loud buffoon, with whom he had passed his time in all the luxury of idleness, who had gladded him with unenvied merriment, and whom he could at once enjoy and despise.
YOU may perhaps think this account of those who are distinguished for their good humour, not very consistent with the praises which I have bestowed upon it. But surely nothing can more evidently shew the value of this quality, than that it recommends those who are destitute of all other excellencies, and procures regard to the trifling, friendship to the worthless, and affection to the dull.
GOOD humour is indeed generally degraded by the characters in which it is found; for being considered as a cheap and vulgar quality, we find it often neglected by those that having excellencies of higher reputation and brighter splendor, perhaps imagine that they have some right to gratify themselves at the expence of others, and are to demand compliance, rather than to practise it. It is by some unfortunate mistake that almost all those who have any claim to esteem or love, press their pretensions with too little consideration of others. This mistake my own interest as well as my zeal for general happiness makes me desirous to rectify, for I have a friend, who, because he knows his own fidelity, knowledge, and usefulness, is never willing to sink into a companion, but is always grave, and solemn, and morose. I have a wife whose beauty first subdued me, and whose wit afterwards confirmed her conquest, but whose beauty serves no other purpose since our marriage, than to entitle her, in her own opinion, to tyranny, and whose wit is only used to justify perverseness.
SURELY nothing can be more unreasonable than to lose the will to please, when we are conscious of the power, or show more tyranny of disposition, than to chuse any kind of influence before that of kindness. He that regards the welfare of others, should endeavour to make his virtue approachable, that it may be loved and copied; and he that considers his own happiness, and the wants which every man feels, or will feel of external assistance, will rather wish to be surrounded by those that love him, than by those that admire his excellencies, or sollicit his favours; for admiration ceases with novelty, and interest gains its end and retires. A man whose great qualities want the ornament of superficial attractions, is like a naked mountain with mines of gold, which will be frequented only till the treasure is exhausted.
I am, &c. PHILOMIDES.
NUMB. 73.
TUESDAY,
Nov.
27, 1750.
Stulte quid heu votis frustra puerilibus optas
Quae non ulla tulit, fertve, feretve dies.
OVID,
To the RAMBLER.
SIR,
IF you feel any of that Compassion, which you recommend to others, you will not disregard a representation of a case which I have reason from observation, to believe very common, and which I know by experience to be very miserable. And though the querulous are seldom received with great ardour of kindness, I hope to escape the mortification of finding, that my lamentations spread the contagion of impatience, and produce Anger rather than tenderness. I write not merely to vent the swelling of my heart, but to enquire by what means I may recover my tranquillity, and shall endeavour at brevity in my narrative, having long known that complaint quickly tires, however elegant, or however just.
I WAS born in a remote county, of an antient family that boasts of alliances with the greatest names of the
English
history, and extends its claims of affinity to the
Tudors
and
Plantagenets.
My ancestors had, by little and little, wasted their patrimony, till my father had not enough left for the support o
a family, without descending to the cultivation of his own grounds, being condemned to pay three sisters the fortunes allotted them by my grandfather, who is suspected to have made his will when he was incapable of adjusting the claims of his children in due proportion, and who, perhaps, without design, enriched his daughters by beggaring his son. My aunts being at the death of their father, neither young nor beautiful, nor very eminent for softness of behaviour, benevolence of temper, or extent of knowledge, were suffered, by the neighbours, to live unsolicited, and, by the accumulation of the interest of their portions, grew every day richer and prouder. My father pleased himself with foreseeing that the possessions of those ladies must revert at last to the hereditary estate, and, that his family might lose none of its dignity, resolved to keep me untainted with any profession or lucrative employment; whenever therefore I discovered any inclination to the improvement of my condition, my mother never failed to put me in mind of my birth, and charged me to do nothing with which I might be reproached, when I should come to my aunts estate.
IN all the perplexities or vexations which want of money brought upon us, it was our constant practice to have recourse to futurity. If any of our neighbours surpassed us in appearance, we went home and contrived an equipage, with which the death of my aunts was to supply us. If any purse-proud upstart was deficient in respect, vengeance was referred to the time in which our estate was to be repaired. We registered every act of civility and rudeness, enquired the number of dishes at every feast, and minuted the furniture of every house, that we might, when the hour of affluence should come, be able to eclipse all their splendor, and surpass all their magnificence.
UPON plans of elegance and schemes of pleasure the day rose and set, and the year went round unregarded while we were busied in laying out plantations on ground not yet our own, and deliberating whether the manor-house should be rebuilt or repaired. This was all the amusement of our leisure, and all the solace of our exigencies; we met together only to contrive how our approaching fortune should be enjoyed; for in this our conversation always ended, on whatever subject it began. We had none of the collateral interests which diversify the life of others with joys and hopes, but had turned our whole attention on one event, which we could neither hasten nor retard, and had no other object of curiosity, than the health or sickness of my aunts, of which we were careful to procure very exact and early intelligence.
THIS visionary opulence for a while soothed our imagination, but afterwards fired our wishes, and exasperated our necessities, and my father could not always restrain himself from exclaiming, that
no creature had so many lives as a cat and an old maid.
At last upon the recovery of his sister from an age, which she was supposed to have caught by sparing fire, he began to lose his stomach, and four months afterwards sunk into the grave.
MY mother who loved her husband, survived him but a little while, and left me the sole heir of their lands, their prospects, their fchemes, and their wishes, As I had not enlarged my conceptions either by books or conversation, I differed only from my father by the freshness of my cheeks, and the vigour of my step; and, like him, gave way to no thoughts but of enjoying the wealth which my aunts were hoarding.
AT length the eldest fell ill. I paid the civilities and compliments which sickness requires with the utmost punctuality. I dreamed every night of escutcheons and white gloves, and enquired every morning at an early hour, whether there were any news of my dear aunt. At last a messenger was sent to inform me that I must come to her without the delay of a moment. I went and heard her last advice, but opening her will found that she had left her fortune to her second sister,
I HUNG my head; the younger sister threatened to be married, and every thing was disappointment and discontent. I was in danger of losing irreparably one third of my hopes, and was condemned still to wait for an accession to my fortune. Of part of my terror I was soon eased; for the youth, whom his relations would have compelled to marry the old lady, after innumerable stipulations, articles, and settlements, ran away with the daughter of his father's groom; and my aunt, upon this conviction of the perfidy of man, resolved never to listen more to amorous addresses.
TEN years longer I dragged the shackles of expectation, without ever suffering a day to pass, in which I did not compute how much my chance was improved of being rich to-morrow. At last the second lady died, after a short illness, which yet was long enough to afford her time for the disposal of her estate, which she gave to me after the death of her sister.
I WAS now relieved from part of my misery; a larger fortune, though not in my power, was certain and unalienable; nor was there any longer danger, that I might at last be frustrated of my hopes by a fit of dotage, the flatteries of a chambermaid, the whispers of a tale-bearer, or the officiousness of a nurse. But my fortune was yet in reversion, my aunt was to be buried before I could emerge to grandeur and to pleasure; and there were yet, according to my father's observation, nine lives between me and happiness.
I HOWEVER lived on, without any clamours of discontent, and comforted myself with considering, that all are mortal, and they who are continually decaying, must at last be destroyed.
BUT let no man from this time suffer his felicity to depend on the death of his aunt. The good gentlewoman was very regular in her hours, and simple in her diet, and in walking or sitting still, waking or sleeping, had always in view the preservation of her health. She was not subject to any disorder but hypochondriac dejection; by which, without any intention, she encreased my miseries, for whenever the weather was cloudy, she would take to her bed and send me notice that her time was come. I went with all the haste of eagerness, and sometimes received passionate injunctions to be kind to her maid, and directions how the last offices should be performed; but if before my arrival the sun happened to break out, or the wind to change, I met her at the door, or found her in the garden, bustling and vigilant, with all the tokens of long life.
SOMETIMES however she fell into distempers, and was thrice given over by the doctor, yet she found means of slipping through the gripe of death, and after having tortured me three months at each time with violent alternations of hope and fear, came out of her chamber without any other hurt than the loss of flesh, which in a few weeks she recovered by broths and jellies.
AS most have sagacity sufficient to guess at the desires of an heir, it was the constant practice of those who were hoping at second hand, and endeavoured to secure my favour against the time when I should be rich, to pay their court, by informing me that my aunt began to droop, that she had lately a bad night, that she coughed feebly, and that she could never climb
May
hill; or at least, that the autumn would carry her off. Thus was I flattered in the winter with the piercing Winds of
March,
and in summer, with the Fogs of
September.
But she lived through spring and fall, and set heat and cold at defiance, till after near half a century, I buried her the fourteenth of last
June,
aged ninety-three years, five months, and six days.
FOR two months after her death I was rich, and was pleased with that obsequiousness and reverence which wealth instantaneously procures. But this joy is now past, and I have returned again to my old habit of wishing. Being accustomed to give the future full power over my mind, and to start away from the scene before me to some expected enjoyment, I deliver up myself to the tyranny of every desire which fancy suggests, and long for a thousand things which I am unable to procure. Money has much less power, than is ascribed to it by those that want it. I had formed schemes which I cannot execute, I had supposed events which do not come to pass, and the rest of my life must pass in craving solicitude, unless you can find some remedy for a mind, corrupted with an inveterate disease of wishing, and unable to think on any thing but wants, which reason tells me will never be supplied.
I am, &c. CUPIDUS.
NUMB. 74.
SATURDAY,
December
1, 1750.
Rixatur de lanâ saepe caprina.
HOR.
MEN are seldom able to give pleasure, where they are not pleased themselves; it is necessary, therefore, to cultivate an habitual alacrity and chearfulness of mind, for mankind are chiefly influenced by their affections, and in whatever state we may be placed by providence, whether we are appointed to confer or receive benefits, to implore or to afford protection, we can prosecute our purposes with success, only by securing the love of those with whom we transact. For though it is generally imagined, that he who grants favours, may spare any farther attention to his behaviour, and that usefulness will procure friends; yet it has been found that there is an art of granting requests, an art very difficult of attainment; and that officiousness and liberality may be so adulterated, as to lose the greater part of their effect; compliance may provoke, relief may harrass, and liberality distress.
No disease of the mind can more fatally disable it from that intercourse of benevolence, which is one of the chief duties of social beings, than ill humour or peevishness; for tho' it breaks not out in paroxysms of outrage, nor bursts into clamour, and turbulence, and bloodshed, it yet supplies the deficiency of violence by its frequency, and wears out happiness by slow corrosion, and small injuries incessantly repeated. It may be considered as the canker of life, that destroys its vigour, and checks its improvement, that creeps on with hourly depredations, and taints and vitiates what it cannot consume.
PEEVISHNESS, when it has been so far indulged, as to out-run the motions of the will, and discover itself without premeditation, is a species of depravity in the highest degree disgusting and offensive, because no caution or regularity, no rectitude of intention, nor softness of address, can ensure a moment's exemption from affront and indignity. While we are courting the favour of a peevish man, while we are making the warmest offers of service, or exerting ourselves in the most diligent civility, an unlucky syllable displeases, an unheeded circumstance ruffles and exasperates; and in the moment when we congratulate ourselves upon having gained a friend, we have the mortification of finding all our endeavours frustrated in a moment, and all our assiduity forgotten in the casual tumult of some trifling irritation.
THIS troublesome impatience is sometimes nothing more than the symptom of some deeper malady. He that is angry without daring to confess his resentment, or sorrowful without the liberty of telling his grief, is too frequently inclined to give vent to the fermentations of his mind at the first passages that are opened, and to let his passions boil over upon those whom accident throws in his way. A painful and tedious course of sickness frequently produces such a quick sensibility, such an alarming apprehension of any increase of uneasiness, as keeps the soul perpetually on the watch, to prevent or repel any thing from which inconvenience is felt or feared, such a restless and incessant solicitude, as no care, no tenderness can appease, and can only be pacified by the cure of the distemper, and the removal of that pain by which it is excited.
NEARLY approaching to this weakness, is the captiousness of old age: when the strength is crushed, the senses dulled, and the common pleasures of life become insipid by repetition, we are willing to impute the uneasiness of our condition to causes not wholly out of our power, and please ourselves with fancying that we suffer by neglect, or unkindness, or want of skill, or any evil which admits a remedy, rather than by the decays of nature which cannot be prevented, delayed, or repaired. We therefore revenge our pains upon those on whom we resolve to charge them; and too often drive mankind away at the time we have the greatest need of kindness and assistance.
BUT though peevishness may sometimes claim our compassion, as the consequence or concomitant of misery, it is very often sound, where nothing can justify or excuse its admission. It is often one of the attendants on prosperity, employed by insolence in exacting homage, and by tyranny in harrassing subjection. It is frequently the offspring of idleness and pride; of idleness anxious for trifles; and pride unwilling to endure the least obstruction of her wishes. Those who have long lived in solitude, indeed, naturally contract this unsocial quality; because, having long had only themselves to please, they do not readily depart from their own inclinations; their singularities therefore are only blameable, when they have imprudently or morosely withdrawn themselves from the world; but there are others, who have, without any necessity, nursed up this habit in their minds, by making implicit submissiveness, the condition of their favour, and suffering none to approach them, but those who watch their eyes, and observe their nods; who never speak but to applaud, or move but to obey.
HE that gives himself up to his own fancy, and converses with none but such as he hires to lull him in the down of absolute authority, to
him with obsequiousness, and regale him with flattery, soon grows too
ful for the labour of contest, too tender for the asperity of contradiction, and too delicate for the coarseness of truth. A little opposition offends, a little restraint enrages, and a little difficulty perplexes him: for a man, who has been accustomed to see every thing give way to his humour and his choice, soon forgets his own littleness, and expects to find the world rolling at his beck, and all mankind employed to accommodate and delight him.
TETRICA had a very large fortune bequeathed to her by the sondness of an aunt, which made her very early independent of her parents, and placed her in a state of superiority to all about her. She had naturally no superfluity of understanding, and therefore was soon intoxicated by the flatteries of her maid, who informed her that ladies, such as she, had nothing to do but take pleasure their own way; that she wanted nothing from others, and had therefore no reason to value their opinion; that money was every thing; and that they who thought themselves ill-treated, should look for better usage among their equals.
WARM with these generous sentiments,
Tetrica
came forth into the world, in which she endeavoured to distinguish herself by an overbearing haughtiness of mien and contemptuous vehemence of language; but having neither birth, nor beauty, nor wit in any uncommon degree, the frequent mortifications which she underwent from those who thought themselves at liberty to return her insults, reduced her turbulence to more cool and secret malignity, and taught her to consine her arts of vexation, to those whom she might hope to harrass without controul. She continued from her twentieth to her fiftyfifth year to torment all her inferiors with so much diligence, that she has contracted a settled principle of disapprobation, and finds in every place something to grate her mind, and disturb her quiet.
IF she takes the air, she is always offended with the heat or cold, the glare of the sun, or the gloom of the clouds; if she makes a visit, the room in which she is to be received, is too light, or too dark, or furnished with something which she cannot see without aversion. Her tea is never of the right sort; the figures on the
China
give her disgust. Where there are children she hates the gabble of brats; where there are none she cannot bear a place without some chearfulness and rattle. If many servants are kept in a house, she never fails to tell how lord
Lavish
was ruined by a numerous retinue; if few, she relates the story of a miser that made his company wait on themselves. She quarrelled with one family, because she had an unpleasant view from their windows; with another, because the squirrel leaped within two yards of her; and with a third, because she could not bear the noise of the parrot.
OF milliners and mantua-makers she is the proverbial torment. She compels them to alter their work, then to unmake it, and contrive it after another fashion, then changes her mind, and likes it better as it was at first, then will have a small improvement. Thus she proceeds till no profit can recompense the vexation; they at last leave the work at her house, and refuse to serve her at any price. Her maid, who is the only being that can endure her tyranny, professes to take her own course, and hear her mistress talk. Such is the consequence of peevishness; it can be born only when it is despised.
IT sometimes happens that too close an attention to minute exactness, or too rigorous habits of examining every thing by the standard of perfection, vitiates the temper, rather than improves the understanding, and teaches the mind to discern faults with unhappy penetration. It is incident likewise to men of vigorous imagination to please themselves too much with suturities, and to fret because those expectations are disappointed, which ought never to have been formed. Knowledge and genius are often enemies to quiet, by suggesting ideas of excellence, which men and the performances of men cannot attain: But let no man rashly determine, that his unwillingness to be pleased, is a proof of understanding, unless his superiority appears from less doubtful evidence; for though peevishness may sometimes justly boast its descent from learning or from wit, it is much oftener of base extraction, the child of vanity, and nursling of ignorance.
NUMB. 75.
TUESDAY,
December
4, 1750.
Diligitur nemo, nisi cui Fortuna secunda est,
Quae, simul intonuit, proxima quaeque fugat.
OVID.
To the RAMBLER.
SIR,
THE diligence with which you endeavour to cultivate the knowledge of nature, manners, and life, will perhaps incline you to pay some regard to the observations of one who has been taught to know mankind by unwelcome information, and whose opinions are the result, not of solitary conjectures, but of practice and experience.
I WAS born to a large fortune, and bred to the knowledge of those arts which are supposed to accomplish the mind, and adorn the person of a woman. To these attainments which custom and education almost forced upon me, I added some voluntary acquisitions by the use of books, and the conversation of that species of men whom the ladies generally mention with horror and aversion by the name of scholars, but whom I have found, for the most part, a harmless and inoffensive order of beings, not so much wiser than ourselves, but that they may receive as well as communicate knowledge, and more inclined to degrade their own character by cowardly submission, than to overbear or oppress us with their learning or their wit.
FROM these men, however, if they are by kind treatment encouraged to talk, something may be gained, which embellished with elegance, and softened by modesty, will always add dignity and value to female conversation; and from my acquaintance with the bookish part of the world I derived many principles of judgment and maxims of prudence, by which I was enabled to excel all my competitors, and draw upon myself the general regard in every place of concourse or pleasure. My opinion was the great rule of approbation, my remarks were remembred by those who desired the second degree of fame, my mien was studied, my dress was imitated, my letters were handed from one family to another, and read by those who copied them as sent to themselves, my visits were solicited as honours, and multitudes boasted of an intimacy with
Melissa,
who had only seen me by accident, and whose familiarity had never proceeded beyond the exchange of a compliment, or return of a courtesy.
I SHALL make no scruple of confessing that I was pleased with this universal veneration, because I always considered it as paid to my intrinsic qualities and inseparable merit, and very easily perswaded myself, that fortune had no part in my superiority. When I looked upon my glass I saw youth and beauty, with health that might give me reason to hope their continuance: when I examined my mind, I found some strength of judgment, and fertility of fancy; and was told that every action was grace, and that every accent was perswasion.
IN this manner my life passed like a continual triumph amidst acclamations, and envy, and courtship, and caresses: to please
Melissa
was the general ambition, and every stratagem of artful flattery was practised upon me. To be flattered is grateful, even when we know that our praises are not believed by those who pronounce them; for they prove, at least, our general power, and shew that our favour is valued, since it is purchased by the meanness of falshood. But, perhaps, the flatterer is not often detected, for an honest mind is not apt to suspect, and no one exerts the powers of discernment with much vigour when self-love favours the deceit.
THE number of adorers, and the perpetual distraction of my thoughts by new schemes of pleasure, prevented me from listening to any of those who croud in multitudes to give girls advice, and kept me unmarried and unengaged to my twenty-seventh year, when, as I was towering in all the pride of uncontested excellency, with a face yet little impaired, and a mind hourly improving, the failure of a fund, in which my money was placed, reduced me to a frugal competency, which allowed little beyond neatness and independence.
I BORE the diminution of my riches without any outrages of sorrow, or pusilanimity of dejection. Indeed I did not know how much I had lost, for, having always heard and thought more of my wit and beauty, than of my fortune, it did not suddenly enter my imagination, that
Melissa
could sink beneath her established rank, while her form and her mind continued the same; that she could cease to raise admiration but by ceasing to deserve it, or feel any stroke but from the hand of time.
IT was in my power to have concealed the loss, and to have married, by continuing the same appearance, with all the credit of my original fortune, but I was not so far sunk in my own esteem, as to submit to the baseness of fraud, or to desire any other recommendation than sense and virtue. I therefore dismissed my equipage, sold those ornaments which were become unsuitable to my new condition, and appeared among those with whom I used to converse with less glitter, but with equal spirit.
I FOUND myself received at every visit, with an appearance of sorrow beyond what is naturally felt for calamities in which we have no part, and was entertained with condolence and consolation so long continued, and so frequently repeated, that my friends plainly consulted, rather their own gratification, than my relief. Some from that time refused my acquaintance, and forebore, without any provocation, to repay my visits; some visited me, but after a longer interval than usual, and every return was still with more delay; nor did any of my female acquaintances fail to introduce the mention of my misfortunes, to compare my present and former condition, to tell me how much it must trouble me to want the splendor which I became so well, to look at pleasures, which I had formerly enjoyed, and to sink to a level with those by whom I had always been considered as moving in a higher sphere, and had been hitherto approached with reverence and submission, which, as they insinuated, I was now no longer to expect.
OBSERVATIONS like these, are commonly nothing b
er than covert insults, which serve to giv
vent to the flatulence of pride, but they
and then imprudently uttered by
and benevolence, and inflict pain
kindness is intended; I will, therefore, so far maintain my antiquated claim to politeness, as to venture the establishment of this rule, that no one ought to remind another of any misfortune of which the sufferer does not complain, and which there are no means proposed of alleviating. No one has a right to excite thoughts which necessarily give pain whenever they return, and which perhaps might not have revived but by absurd and unseasonable compassion.
MY endless train of lovers immediately withdrew, without raising any emotions. The greater part had indeed always professed to court, as it is termed, upon the square, had enquired my fortune, and offered settlements; and these had undoubtedly a right to retire without censure, since they had openly treated for money, as necessary to their happiness, and who can tell how little they wanted any other portion? I have always thought the clamours of women unreasonable, who imagine themselves injured because the men who followed them upon the supposition of a greater fortune, reject them when they are discovered to have less. I have never known any lady, who did not think wealth a title to some stipulations in her favour; and surely what is claimed by the possession of money is justly forfeited by its loss. She that has once demanded a settlement has allowed the importance of fortune; and when she cannot shew pecuniary merit, why should she think her cheapener obliged to purchase?
MY lovers were not all contented with silent desertion. Some of them revenged the neglect which they had formerly endured by wanton and superfluous insults, and endeavoured to mortify me by paying in my presence those civilities to other ladies, which were once devoted only to me. But, as it had been my rule to treat men according to the rank of their intellect, I had never suffered any one to waste his life in suspense, who could have employed it to better purpose, and had therefore no enemies but coxcombs, whose resentment and respect were equally below my consideration.
THE only pain which I have felt from degradation, is the loss of that influence which I had always exerted on the side of virtue, in the defence of innocence, and the assertion of truth. I now find my opinions slighted, my sentiments criticised, and my arguments opposed by those that used to listen to me without reply, and struggle to be first in expressing their conviction. The female disputants have wholly thrown off my authority, and if I endeavour to enforce my reasons by an appeal to the scholars that happen to be present, the wretches are certain to pay their court by sacrificing me and my system to a siner gown, and I am every hour insulted with contradiction by cowards, who could never find till lately that
Melissa
was liable to error.
THERE are two persons only whom I cannot charge with having changed their conduct with my change of fortune. One is an old curate that has passed his life in the duties of his profession with great reputation for his knowledge and piety; the other is a licutenant of dragoons. The parson made no difficulty in the height of my elevation to check me when I was pert, and instruct me when I blundered; and if there is any alteration, he is now more timorous lest his freedom should be thought rudeness. The soldier never paid me any particular addresses, but very rigidly observed all the rules of politeness, which he is now so far from relaxing, that whenever he serves the tea, he obstinately carries me the first dish, in defiance of the frowns and whispers of the whole table.
THIS, Mr. RAMBLER, is
to see the World.
It is impossible for those that have only known affluence and prosperity, to judge rightly of themselves or others. The rich and the powerful live in a perpetual masquerade, in which all about them wear borrowed characters; and we only discover in what estimation we are held, when we can no longer give hopes or fears.
I am, &c. MELISSA.
NUMB. 76.
SATURDAY,
December
8, 1750.
—Silvis ubi passim
Palantes error certo de tramite pellit,
Ille sinistrorsum, hic dextrorsum abit, unus utrique
Error, sed variis illudit partibus.
HOR.
IT is always very easy for every man, whatever may be his character with others, to find reasons for esteeming himself, and therefore censure, contempt, or the indubitable conviction of crimes, seldom deprive him of his own favour. Those, indeed, who can see only external facts and appearances, may look upon him with abhorrence, but when he calls himself to his own tribunal, he finds every fault, if not absolutely effaced by the goodness of the intention, and the cogency of the motive, yet so much palliated by concomittant circumstances, that very little guilt or turpitude remains; and when he takes a survey of the whole complication of his character, he discovers so many latent excellencies, so many virtues, that want but an opportunity to exert themselves in act, and so many kind wishes for general happiness, that he cannot but look on himself as suffering unjustly under the infamy of single failings, while the general temper of his mind is unknown or unregarded.
IT is natural to mean well, when only general ideas of virtue are proposed to the mind, and when no particular passion or interest turns us aside from rectitude; and so willing is every man to flatter himself, that the difference between approving laws, and obeying them, is frequently forgotten; he that acknowledges the obligations of morality, and pleases his vanity with enforcing them to others, concludes himself zealous in the cause of virtue, though he has no longer any regard to her precepts, than they conform to his own desires; and counts himself among her warmest lovers, because he praises her beauty, though every rival steals away his heart.
THERE are, however, great numbers who have little recourse to the refinements of speculation, but who yet live at peace with themselves, by means which require less understanding, or less attention. When they find their hearts burthened with the consciousness of a crime, instead of seeking for some remedy within themselves, they look round upon the rest of mankind, to find others tainted with the same guilt, and oppressed with the same ignominy: they please themselves with observing, that they have numbers on their side; that they do not bear any peculiar marks of depravity; and that though they are hunted out from the society of good men, they are not likely to be condemned to solitude.
IT may be observed, perhaps without exception, that none are so industrious to detect wickedness, or so ready to impute it, as they whose crimes are apparent and confessed. They envy the happiness of an unblemished reputation, and what they envy they are busy to destroy: they are unwilling to suppose themselves meaner, and more corrupt than others, and therefore would willingly pull down from their elevations those with whom they cannot rise to an equality. No man yet was wicked without secret discontent, and according to the different degrees of remaining virtue, or unextinguished reason, he either endeavours to reform himself, or corrupt others; either to regain the station which he has quitted, or prevail on others to imitate his defection.
IT has been always considered as an alleviation of misery not to suffer alone, even when union and society can contribute nothing to resistance or escape; some comfort of the same kind seems to incite wickedness to seek associates, though indeed another reason may be given, for as guilt is propagated the power of reproach is at least diminished, and among numbers equally detestable every individual may be sheltered from shame, though not from conscience.
ANOTHER lenitive by which the throbs of the breast are sometimes assuaged, is, the contemplation, not of the same, but of different crimes. He that cannot justify himself by his resemblance to others, is ready to try some other expedient, and to enquire what will rise to his advantage from opposition and dissimilitude. He easily finds some fault or other in every human being, and when he weighs them against his own, easily makes them preponderate while he keeps the balance in his own hand, and throws in or takes out at his pleasure circumstances that make them heavier or lighter. He then triumphs in his comparative purity, and sets himself at ease, not because he can refute the charges that are advanced against him, but because he can censure his accusers with equal justice, and no longer fears the arrows of reproach, when he has stored his magazine of malice with weapons equally sharp and equally envenomed.
THIS practice, though never reasonable, or just, is yet specious and artful, when the censure is directed against deviations to the contrary extreme. The man who is branded with cowardice, may, with some appearance of propriety, turn all his force of argument against a stupid contempt of Life, and rash precipitation into unnecessary danger. Every recession from temerity is an approach towards cowardice, and though it be confessed that bravery, like other virtues, stands between faults on either hand, yet the place of the middle point may always be disputed; he may therefore often impose upon careless understandings, by turning the attention wholly from himself, and keeping it fixed invariably on the opposite fault; by shewing how many evils are avoided by his behaviour, he may conceal for a time those which are incurred.
BUT vice has not always opportunities or address for such artful subtersuges; and we often find men extenuating their own guilt, only by vague and general charges upon others, or endeavouring to gain rest to themselves, by pointing some other prey to the pursuit of censure.
EVERY whisper of infamy is industriously circulated, every hint of suspicion eagerly improved, and every failure of conduct joyfully published, by those whose interest it is, that the eye and voice of the publick should be employed on any rather than on themselves.
ALL these artifices, and a thousand others equally vain and equally despicable, are incited by that conviction from which none can set himself free, by a view of the deformity of wickedness, and by an absurd desire to separate the cause from the effects, and to enjoy the profit of crimes without suffering the shame. Men are willing to try all methods of reconciling guilt and quiet, and when their understandings are stubborn and uncomplying, raise their passions against them, and hope to overpower their own knowledge.
IT is generally not so much the desire of men, oppressed with crimes, to deceive the world as themselves, for when no particular circumstances make them dependant on the kindness or favour of others, infamy will not much disturb them but as it revives their remorse, and is echoed to them from their own hearts. The sentence which they most dread, is that of reason and conscience, which they would engage on their side at any price but the labours of duty, and the sorrows of repentance. For this purpose every seducement and fallacy is sought, till life is too often at an end while the hopes rest upon some new experiment, and the last hour steals on unperceived, while the faculties are engaged in counteracting providence, resisting the voice of reason, and repressing the sense of the divine disapprobation.
NUMB. 77.
TUESDAY,
December
11, 1750.
Os dignum aeterno nitidum quod fulgeat Auro,
Si mallet laudare Deum, cui sordida Monstra
Praetulit, et liquidam temeravit Crimine Vocem.
PRUDENT.
AMONG those, whose hopes of advancement, distinction, or riches, arise from an opinion of their intellectual attainments, it has been, from age to age, an established custom to complain of the neglect of learning, of the ingratitude of mankind to their instructors, and the discouragement which men of genius and study suffer from the avarice of the wealthy, the ignorance of the great, the prevalence of false taste, and the encroachment of barbarity.
MEN are most powerfully affected by those evils which themselves feel, or which appear before their own eyes; and as there has never been a time of such general felicity, but that many have miscarried in their hopes, and failed to obtain the rewards to which they had, in their own judgment, a just claim, some offended writer has always declaim'd, in the rage of dliappointment, against the age, or nation, into which his fate has thrown him; nor is there one who has not fallen upon times more unfavourable to learning than any former century, or who does not wish, that he had been reserved in the insensibility of non-existence to some happier hour, when the sons of science shall regain their antient honours, when literary merit shall no longer be despis'd, and all the gifts and caresses of mankind shall recompence the toils of study, and add lustre to the charms of wit.
MANY of these clamours are undoubte to be considered only as the bursts of pride never to be satisfied, as the prattle of affectation mimicking distresses which are not felt, or as the common places of vanity solicitous for splendour of sentences and acuteness of remark. Yet it cannot be denied that universal discontent must proceed from universal hardships, and though it is evident, that not more than one age or people can deserve the censure of being more averse from learning than any other, yet at all times knowledge has encountered impediments, and wit been mortified with contempt, or harrassed with persecution.
IT is not necessary, however, to join immediately in the general outcry, or to condemn mankind as pleased with ignorance, or always envious of superior abilities. The miseries of the learned have been related by themselves, and since they have not been hitherto found exempted by their knowledge from that partiality with which men generally look upon their own actions and sufferings, we may conclude that they have not forgotten to deck their cause with their brightest ornaments, and strongest colours. The logician has doubtless collected all his subtilties when they are to be employed in his own defence; and the master of rhetoric exerted against his adversary all the arts by which hatred is embittered. and indignation inflamed.
TO believe no man in his own cause, is the standing and perpetual rule of distributive justice; and, therefore, since, in the controversy between the learned and their enemies, we have only the pleas of one party, of the party more able to delude our understandings by false representations, and engage our passions by pleasing narratives, pathetic lamentations, and soft addresses, we must determine our opinion by facts which remain uncontested, and evidences which are, on each side allowed to be genuine.
BY this procedure, which must be acknowledged unexceptionably just, I know not whether the learned will find their cause promoted, or the compassion which they seem to expect much increased: for when their conduct is impartially surveyed, when they are allowed no longer to direct attention at their pleasure, by expatiating on their own deserts, when neither the dignity of knowledge overawes the judgment, nor the graces of elegance seduce it, it will, perhaps, be found, that they have not been able to produce claims to kinder treatment, but have provoked the calamities which they suffered, and seldom wanted friends, but when they wanted virtue.
THAT few men, celebrated for theoretic wisdom, live with conformity to their precepts, must be readily confessed; and we cannot wonder that the indignation of mankind rises with great vehemence against those, who neglect duties which they appear to know, with so strong conviction, the necessity of performing. Yet since no man has the power of acting equal to that of thinking, I know not whether the speculatist may not sometimes incur censures too severe, and by those, who form their ideas of his life from their knowledge of his books, be considered as worse than others, only because he was expected to be better.
HE, by whose writings the heart is rectified, the appetites counteracted, and the passions repressed, may be considered as not unprofitable to the great republick of humanity, even though his behaviour should not always exemplify his rules. His instructions may diffuse their influence to regions, in which it will not be enquired, whether the author be
albus an ater,
good or bad; to times, when all his faults and all his follies shall be lost in forgetfulness, among things of no concern or importance to the world; and he may kindle in thousands and ten thousands that flame which burnt but dimly in himself, through the fumes of passion, or the damps of cowardice. The vicious moralist may be considered as a taper, by which we are lighted through the labyrinth of complicated passions, he extends his radiance farther than his heat, and guides all that are within view, but burns only those who make too near approaches.
YET, since good or harm must be received, for the most part, from those to whom we are familiarly known, he whose vices overpower his virtues, in the compass to which his vices can extend, has surely no reason to complain that he meets not with affection or veneration, among those who are more corrupted by his practice than enlightened by his ideas; that admiration begins where acquaintance ceases; and that his favourers are distant, but his enemies at hand.
BUT many have dared to boast of neglected merit, and to challenge their age or country for cruelty and folly, of whom it cannot be alleged that they have endeavoured to increase the wisdom or virtue of their readers. They have often been at once profligate in their lives, and licentious in their compositions; have not only forsaken the paths of virtue, but have attempted to lure others after them. They have smoothed the road of perdition, covered with flowers the thorns of guilt, and taught temptation sweeter notes, softer blandishments, and stronger allurements.
IT has been apparently the settled purpose of many writers whose powers, industry, and acquisitions, place them high in the ranks of literature, to set fashion on the side of wickedness; to recommend debauchery, and lewdness, by associating them with those qualities, which are most likely to dazzle the discernment, and attract the affections; and to show innocence and goodness with such attendant weaknesses and follies, as necessarily expose them to contempt and derision.
SUCH men naturally found intimates and companions among the corrupt, the thoughtless, and the intemperate; passed their lives amidst the gay levities of sportive idleness, or the warm professions of drunken friendship; and fed their hopes with the promises of wretches, whom themselves had taught to scoff at truth. But when fools had laughed away their sprightliness, and the languors of excess could no longer be relieved, they saw their favourers hourly drop away, and wondered and stormed to find themselves abandoned. Whether their companions persisted in wickedness, or returned to virtue, they were equally without assistance; for debauchery is selfish and negligent, and from virtue the virtuous only can expect regard.
IT is said by
Florus
of
Catiline,
who died in the midst of slaughtered enemies, that
his death had been illustrious, had it been suffered for his country.
Of the wits, who have languished away life under the pressures of poverty, or in the restlessness of suspense, who have been caressed and rejected, flattered and despised, as they were of more or less use to those who stiled themselves their patrons, it might be observed, that their miseries would enforce compassion, had they been brought upon them by honesty and religion.
THE wickedness of a profane or libidinous writer is more atrocious and detestable than that of the giddy libertine, or drunken ravisher, not only because it extends its effects wider; as a pestilence that taints the air is more destructive than poison infused in a draught, but because it is committed with cool deliberation. By the instantaneous violence of desire, a good man may sometimes be surprised before reflection can come to his rescue; and when the appetites have strengthened their influence by habit they are not easily resisted or suppress'd; But for the frigid villainy of studious lewdness, for the calm and mediated malignity of laboured impiety, what plea can be invented? What punishment can be adequate to the crime of him who retires to solitudes for the refinement of debauchery, who tortures his fancy, and ransacks his memory, only that he may leave the world less virtuous than he found it, that he may intercept the hopes of the rising generation, and spread snares for the soul with more dexterity?
WHAT were their motives, or what their excuses, is below the dignity of reason to examine. If they had extinguished in themselves the distinction of right and wrong, and were insensible of the mischief which they promoted, they deserved to be hunted down by general hatred, as apparent nusances to social beings; if they were influenced by the corruption of their patrons, or their readers, and sacrificed their own convictions to vanity or interest, they were at least to be abhorred with more acrimony than he that robs by profession, or murders for pay, since they committed greater crimes without greater temptations.
Of him, to whom much is given, much shall be required.
Those, to whom God has granted superior faculties, and more extensive capacities, and made eminent for quickness of intuition, and accuracy of distinction, will certainly be regarded as culpable in his eye, for defects and deviations which, in souls less exalted and enlightened, may be guiltless.
But, surely, none can think without horror on that man's condition, who has been more wicked in proportion as he has had more means of excelling in virtue, and used the light imparted from heaven only to embellish folly, and to palliate crimes.
NUMB. 78.
SATURDAY,
Decem.
15, 1750.
—Mors sola satetur
Quantula sint hominum corpuscula.
JUV.
CORPORAL sensation is known to depend so much upon novelty, that custom takes away from many things their power of giving pleasure or pain. Thus a new dress becomes easy by wearing it, and the Palate is reconciled by degrees to dishes which at first disgusted it. That by long habit of carrying a burden we lose, at least in a great part, our sensibility of its weight, any man may be convinced by putting on, for an hour, the armour of our ancestors; for he will scarcely believe that men would have had much inclination to marches and battles, encumbered and oppressed, as he will find himself with the ancient panoply. Yet the heroes that over-run regions, and stormed towns in iron accoutrements, he knows not to have been bigger, and has no reason to imagine them stronger than the present race of men; he therefore must conclude, that their peculiar powers were conferred only by peculiar habits, and that their familiarity with the dress of war enabled them to move in it with ease, vigour and agility.
YET it seems to be the condition of our present state, that pain should be more fixed and permanent than pleasure. Uneasiness gives way by slow degrees, and is long before it quits its possession of the sensory; but all our gratifications are volatile, vagrant, and easily dissipated. The fragrance of the jessamine bower is lost after the enjoyment of a few moments, and the
Indian
wanders among his native odours without any sense of their exhalations. It is, indeed, not necessary to shew by many instances what every change of place is sufficient to prove, and what all mankind confess, by an incessant call for variety, and a restless pursuit of enjoyments, which they value only because unpossessed.
SOMETHING similar, or analogous, may be observed in those effects which are produced immediately upon the mind; nothing can strongly strike or affect us, but what is rare or sudden; the most important events, when they become familiar, are no longer considered with wonder or solicitude, and that which at first filled up our whole attention, and left no place for any other thought, is soon thrust aside into some remote repository of the Mind, and lies among other lumber of the memory, over-looked and neglected.
THE manner in which external force acts upon the body is very little subject to the regulation of the will; no man can at pleasure obtund, or invigorate his senses, prolong the agency of any impulse, or continue the presence of any image traced upon the eye, or any sound infused into the ear. But our ideas are more subjected to choice, we can call them before us, and command their stay, we can facilitate and promote their recurrence, we can either repress their intrusion, or hasten their retreat. It is therefore the business of wisdom and virtue, to select among the numberless objects which are every moment striving for our notice, such as may afford useful employment to the mind, by enabling us to exalt our reason, extend our views, and secure our happiness. But this choice is to be made with very little regard to rareness or frequency; for nothing is valuable merely because it is either rare or common, but because it is adapted to some useful purpose, and enables us to supply some deficiency of our nature.
MILTON has very judiciously represented the father of mankind seized with horror and astonishment at the sight of death, exhibited to him on the mount of vision. For surely, nothing can so much disturb the passions, or perplex the intellects of man, as the disruption of his union with visible nature; a separation from all that has hitherto delighted or engaged him; a change, not only of the place, but the manner of his being; an entrance into a slate, not simply which he knows not, but which perhaps he has not faculties to know; an immediate and perceptible communication with the supreme being, and, what is above all distressful and alarming, the final sentence, and unalterable allotment.
YET we to whom the shortness of life has given frequent occasions of contemplating mortality, can, without emotion, see generations of men pass away, and are at leisure to establish modes of sorrow, and adjust the ceremonial of death. We can look upon funereal pomp as a common spectacle in which we have no concern, and turn away from it to trifles and amusements, without dejection of look, or inquietude of heart.
IT is, indeed, apparent from the constitution of the world, that there must be a time for other thoughts; and a perpetual meditation upon the last hour, however it may become the solitude of a monastery, is inconsistent with many duties of common life. But surely the remembrance of death ought to predominate in our minds, as an habitual and settled principle, always operating, though not always perceived; and our attention should seldom wander so far from our own condition, as not to be recalled and fixed by sight of an event, which must soon, we know not how soon, happen likewise to ourselves, and of which, tho' we cannot appoint the time, we may secure the consequence.
YET, though every instance of death may justly awaken our fears, and quicken our vigilance, it seldom happens that we are much alarmed, unless some close connexion is broken, some scheme frustrated, or some hope defeated. Many therefore seem to pass on from youth to decrepitude without any reflection on the end of life, because they are wholly involved within themselves, and look on others only as inhabitants of the common earth, without any expectation of receiving good, or intention of bestowing it.
IT is indeed impossible, without some mortification of that desire which every man feels of being remembered and lamented, to remark how little concern is caused by the eternal departure even of those who have passed their lives with publick honours, and been distinguished by superior qualities, or extraordinary performances. It is not possible to be regarded with tenderness except by a few. That merit which gives greatness and renown, diffuses its influence to a wide compass, but acts weakly on every single breast; it is placed at a distance from common spectators, and shines like one of the remote stars, of which the light reaches us, but not the heat. The wit, the hero, the philosopher, whom either their tempers or their fortunes have hindered from intimate relations and tender intercourses, die often without any other effect than that of adding a new Topic to the conversation of the day. They impress none with any fresh conviction of the fragility of our nature, because none had any particular interest in their lives, or was united to them by a reciprocation of benefits and endearments.
THUS we find it often happens, that those who in their lives have excited applause and admiration, are laid at last in the ground without the common honour of a stone; because by those excellencies with which many have been delighted, none have been obliged, and, though they had many to celebrate, they had none to love them.
CUSTOM so far regulates the sentiments at least of common minds, that I believe men may be generally observed to grow less tender as they advance in age. He, who, when life was new, melted at the loss of every companion, can look in time without concern, upon the grave into which his last friend was thrown, and into which himself is ready to fall; not that he is more willing to die than formerly, but that he is more familiar to the death of others, and therefore is not alarmed so far as to consider how much nearer he approaches to his end. But this is to submit tamely to the tyranny of accident, and to suffer our reason to lie useless. Every funeral may justly be considered as a summons to prepare for that state, into which it shews us that we must sometime enter; and the summons is more loud and piercing, as the event of which it warns us is at less distance. To neglect at any time preparation for death, is to sleep on our post at a siege, but to omit it in old age, is to sleep at an attack.
IT has always appeared to me one of the most striking passages in the visions of
Quevedo,
which stigmatises those as fools who complain that they failed of happiness by sudden death. "How, says he, can death be sudden to a being who always knew that he must die, and that the time of his death was uncertain?"
SINCE business and gaiety are always drawing our attention away from a future state, some admonition is frequently necessary to recall it to our minds, and what can more properly renew the impression than the examples of mortality which every day supplies? The great incentive to virtue is the reflection that we must die, it will therefore be useful to accustom ourselves, whenever we see a funeral, to consider how soon we may be added to the number of those whose probation is past, and whose happiness or misery shall endure for ever.
NUMB. 79.
TUESDAY,
Decemb.
18, 1750.
Tam saepe nostrum decipi Fabullum, quid
Miraris, Aule? Semper bonus homo tiro est.
MART.
SUSPICION, however necessary it may be to our safe passage through ways beset on all sides by fraud and malice, has been always considered, when it exceeds the common measures of prudent caution, as a token of depravity and corruption; and an old
Greek
writer of sententious precepts has laid down as a standing maxim, that
he who believes not another on his oath, knows himself to be perjured.
WE can form our opinions of that which we know not, only by placing it in comparison with something that we know: whoever therefore is over-run with suspicion, and detects artifice and stratagem in every proposal, must either have learned by experience the wickedness of mankind, and been taught to avoid fraud by having often been deceived; or he must derive his judgment from the consciousness of his own disposition, and impute to others the same inclinations which he feels predominant in himself.
TO learn caution by turning our eyes upon life, and observing the arts by which negligence is surprised, timidity overborn, and credulity amused, requires either great latitude of converse and long acquaintance with business, or uncommon activity of vigilance, and acuteness of penetration. When therefore a young man, not distinguished by superior vigour of intellect, comes into the world full of scruples apd diffidence; makes a bargain with many provisional limitations; hesitates in his answer to a common question, lest more should be intended than he can immediately discover; has a long reach in detecting the projects of his acquaintance; considers every caress as an act of hypocrisy, and feels neither gratitude nor affection from the tenderness of his friends, because he believes no one to have any real tenderness but for himself; whatever expectations this early sagacity may raise of his future eminence or riches, I can seldom forbear to consider him as a wretch incapable of generosity or benevolence, as a villain early completed beyond the need of common opportunities and gradual temptations.
UPON men of this class instruction and admonition are generally thrown away, because they consider artifice and deceit as proofs of understanding; they are misled at the same time by the two great seducers of the world, vanity and interest, and not only look upon those, who act with openness and confidence, as condemned by their principles to obscurity and want, but as contemptible for narrowness of comprehension, shortness of views, and slowness of contrivance.
THE world has been long amused with the mention of policy in publick transactions, and of art in private affairs; they have been considered as the effects of great qualities, and as unattainable by men of the common level: yet I have not found many performances either of art, or policy, that required such stupendous efforts of intellect, or might not have been effected by falshood and impudence, without the assistance of any other powers. To profess what he does not mean, to promise what he cannot perform, to flatter ambition with prospects of promotion, and misery with hopes of relief, to sooth pride with appearances of submission, and appease enmity by blandishments and bribes, can surely imply nothing more or greater than a mind devoted wholly to its own purposes, a face that cannot blush, and a heart that cannot feel.
THESE practices are so mean and base, that he who finds in himself no tendency to use them, cannot easily believe that they are considered by others with less detestation; he therefore suffers himself to slumber in false security, and becomes a prey to those who applaud their own subtilty because they know how to steal upon his sleep, and exult in the success which they could never have obtained had they not attempted a man better than themselves, who was hindered from obviating their stratagems, not by folly, but by innocence.
SUSPICION is, indeed, a temper so uneasy and restless, that it is very justly appointed the concomitant of guilt. It is said, that no torture is equal to the inhibition of sleep long continued; a pain, to which the state of that man bears a very exact analogy, who dares never give rest to his vigilance and circumspection, but considers himself as surrounded by secret foes, and fears to entrust his children, or his friend, the secret that throbs in his breast, and the anxieties that break into his face. To avoid, at this expence, those evils to which easiness and friendship might have exposed him, is surely to buy safety at too dear a rate, to die lest he should be killed, and, in the language of the
Roman
satirist, to save life by losing all for which a wise man would live.
IN the diet of the
German
empire, as we are told by
Camerarius,
the princes were once displaying their riches and felicity, and each boasting the particular advantages of his own dominions. One of them who possessed a country not remarkable for the grandeur of its cities, or the fertility of its soil, rose in his turn to speak: the rest listened between pity and contempt, till he declared, in honour of his territories, that he could travel through them without a guard, and if he was weary, sleep in safety upon the lap of the first man whom he should meet; a commendation which would have been ill exchanged for the boast of palaces, pastures, or streams.
SUSPICION is not less an enemy to virtue than to happiness: he that is already corrupt is naturally suspicious, and he that becomes suspicious will quickly be corrupt. It is too common for men to learn the frauds by which themselves have suffered, and when they are once persuaded that deceit will be employed against them, they sometimes think the same arts justified by the necessity of defence. Even they whose virtue is too well established to give way to example, or be shaken by sophistry, must yet find their love of mankind diminished with their esteem, and will grow less zealous for the safety and happiness of those by whom they suspect their own safety or happiness endangered.
THUS we find old age, upon which suspicion has for the most part been strongly impressed by long intercourse with the world, inflexible and severe, not easily softened by submission, melted by complaint, or subdued by supplication. Frequent experience of counterfeited miseries, and dissembled virtue, have in time overcome that disposition to tenderness and sympathy, which is so powerful in our younger years, and they that happen to petition late for compassion or assistance are doomed to languish without regard, and suffer for the crimes of men who have formerly been found undeserving or ungrateful.
HISTORIANS are certainly chargeable with the depravation of mankind, when they relate without censure those stratagems of war by which the virtues of an enemy are engaged to his destruction. A ship comes before a port, weather-beaten and shattered, and the crew implore the liberty of repairing their breaches, supplying themselves with necessaries, or burying their dead. The humanity of the inhabitants inclines them to consent, the strangers enter the town with weapons concealed, fall suddenly upon their benefactors, destroy those that make resistance, and become masters of the place; they return home rich with plunder, and their success is recorded to encourage imitation.
BUT surely war has its laws, and ought to be conducted with some regard to the universal interest of Man. Those may justly be pursued as enemies to the general community of the world, who suffer hostility to vacate the eternal and unalterable laws of right, and pursue their private advantages by means, which, if once established and allowed, must destroy all benevolence, cut off from every man all hopes of assistance from another, and fill the world with implacable hostility. Whatever is thus gained ought to be restored, and those who have conquered by such treachery may be justly denied the protection of their native country.
WHOEVER commits a fraud is guilty not only of the particular injury to him whom he deceives, but of the diminution of that confidence which constitutes not only the ease but the existence of society. He that suffers by imposture has too often his virtue more impaired than his fortune; but as it is necessary not to invite robbery by supineness, so it is our duty not to suppress tenderness by suspicion; it is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.
NUMB. 80.
SATURDAY,
Dec.
22, 1750.
Vides ut altâ stet Nive candidum
Soracte,
ncc jam substineant Onus
Silvae laborantes—
HOR.
AS providence has made the human soul an active being, always impatient for novelty, and struggling for something yet unenjoyed with restless desire and unwearied progression, the world seems to have been eminently adapted to this disposition of the mind: it is formed to raise new expectations by constant vicissitudes, and to obviate satiety by perpetual change.
WHEREVER we turn our eyes, we find something to revive our curiosity, and engage our attention. In the dusk of the morning we watch the rising of the sun, and see the day diversify the clouds, and open new prospects in its gradual advance. After a few hours, we see the shades lengthen, and the light decline, till the sky is resigned to a multitude of shining orbs different from each other in magnitude and splendour. The earth has a new appearance as we move upon it; the woods offer their shades, and the fields their harvests; the hill flatters with an extensive view, and the valley invites with shelter, fragrance and flowers.
THE poets have numbered among the felicities of the golden age, an exemption from the change of seasons, and a perpetuity of spring; but I am not certain that in this state of imaginary happiness they have made sufficient provision for that insatiable demand of new gratifications, which seems particularly to characterize the nature of man. Our sense of delight is in a great measure comparative, and arises at once from the sensations which we feel, and those which we remember: Thus ease after torment is pleasure for a time, and we are very agreeably recreated, when the body, chilled with the weather, is gradually recovering its natural tepidity; but the joy ceases when we have forgot the cold, we must fall below ease again, if we desire to rise above it, and purchase new selicity by voluntary pain. It is therefore not unlikely that however the fancy may be amused with the description of regions in which no wind is heard but the gentle zephir, and no scenes are displayed, but vallies enamelled with unfading flowers, and woods waving their perennial verdure, we should soon grow weary of uniformity, find our thoughts languish for want of other objects and employment, call on heaven for our wonted round of season, and think ourselves liberally recompensed for the inconveniencies of summer and winter, by new perceptions of the calmness and mildness of the intermediate variations.
EVERY season has its particular power of striking the mind. The nakedness and asperity of the wintry world always fills the beholder with pensive and profound astonishment; as the variety of the scene is lessened, its grandeur is increased; and the mind is swelled at once by the mingled ideas of the present and the past, of the beauties which have vanished from the eyes, and the waste and desolation that are now before them.
IT is observed by
Milton,
that he who neglects to visit the country in spring, and rejects the pleasures that are then in their first bloom and fragrance, is guilty of
sullenness against nature.
If we allot different duties to different seasons, he may be charged with equal disobedience to the voice of nature, who looks on the bleak hills and leafless woods, without seriousness and awe. Spring is the season of gaiety, and winter of terror; in spring the heart of tranquillity dances to the melody of the groves, and the eye of benevolence sparkles at the sight of happiness and plenty: In the winter, compassion melts at universal calamity, and the tear of softness starts at the wailings of hunger, and the cries of the creation in distress.
THERE is indeed in most minds very little inclination to indulge heaviness and sorrow, nor do I recommend them beyond the degree necessary to maintain in its full vigour that habitual sympathy and tenderness, which, in a world of so much misery, is necessary to the ready discharge of our most important duties. The winter therefore is generally celebrated as the proper season for domestick merriment and gaiety. We are seldom invited by the votaries of pleasure to look abroad for any other purpose, than that we may shrink back with more satisfaction to our coverts, and when we have heard the howl of the tempest, and felt the gripe of the frost, congratulate each other with more gladness upon a close room, an easy chair, a high piled fire, and a smoaking dinner.
THERE are indeed now natural incitements to jollity and conversation. Differences, we know, are never so effectually laid asleep, as by some common calamity; an enemy unites all to whom he threatens danger. The rigour of winter brings generally to the same fire-side those, who, by the opposition of their inclinations, or the difference of their employments, moved in various directions through the other parts of the year; and when they have met, and find it their mutual interest to remain together, they endear each other by mutual compliances, and often wish for the continuance of the social season with all its bleakness and all its severities.
TO the men of study and imagination the winter is generally the chief time of labour. Gloom and silence produce composure of mind, and concentration of ideas; and the privation of external pleasure naturally causes an effort to find entertainment within. This is the time in which those, whom literature enables to find amusements for themselves, have more than common convictions of their own happiness, When they are condemned by the elements to retirement, and debarred from most of the diversions which are called in to assist the flight of time, they can always find new subjects of enquiry, engage their passions in new pursuits, and preserve themselves from that weariness which hangs always flagging upon the vacant mind.
IT cannot indeed be expected of all to be poets and philosophers, deeply versed in sciences, or much engaged in researches into past or distant transactions; it is necessary that the greater part of mankind should be employed in the trivial business of common life; trivial, indeed, not with respect to its influence upon our happiness, but of the abilities requisite to conduct it. These must necessarily be more dependent on accident for the means of spending agreeably those hours which their occupations leave unengaged, or which the imbecillity of nature obliges them to allow to relaxation and diversion. Yet even on these I would willingly impress such a sense of the value of time, as may incline them to find out for their most careless hours some amusement of more use and dignity than the common games, which not only weary the mind without improving it, but strengthen the passions of envy and avarice, and often lead to fraud and to profusion, to corruption and to ruin. It is unworthy of a reasonble being to spend any of the little time allotted us, without some tendency, either direct or oblique, to the end of our existence. And though every moment cannot be laid out on the formal and regular improvement of our knowledge, or in the stated practice of a moral or religious duty, yet none should be so spent as to exclude wisdom or virtue, or pass without possibility of qualifying us more or less for the better employment of those which are to come.
IT is scarcely possible to pass an hour in honest conversation, without being able when we rise from it, to please ourselves with having given or received some advantages; but a man may shuffle cards, or rattle dice, from noon to midnight, without tracing any new idea in his mind, or being able to recollect the day by any other token than his gain or loss, and a confused remembrance of agitated passions, and clamorous altercations.
HOWEVER, as experience is always of more weight than precept, any of my readers, who are contriving how to spend the dreary months before them, may consider which of their past amusements fill them now with greatest satisfaction, and resolve to repeat those gratifications of which the pleasure is most durable.
NUMB. 81.
TUESDAY,
Decem.
25, 1750.
Discite Justitiam moniti—
VIRG.
AMONG questions which have been long discussed in the world, without any approach to decision, may be numbered the precedency or superior exeellence of one virtue to another, which has long furnished a subject of debate to men whose leisure sent them out into the intellectual world in search of employment, and who have, perhaps, been sometimes with-held from attending to the practice of their favourite duty, by their zeal for its advancement, and diligence in its celebration.
THE intricacy of this dispute may be alledged as a proof of that tenderness for mankind which providence has, I think, universally displayed, by making attainments easy in proportion as they are necesary. That all the duties of morality ought to be practised, is without difficulty discoverable, because ignorance or uncertainty would immediately involve the world in confusion and distress; but which duty ought to be most esteemed or praised, we may continue to debate, without much inconvenience, so all be diligently performed as there is opportunity or need: for upon practice, not upon opinion, depends the happiness of mankind; and controversies, merely speculative, are of small importance in themselves, however they may have sometimes heated a disputant, or provoked a faction.
OF the divine author of our religion it is impossible to peruse the evangelical histories, without observing how little he favoured the vanity of inquisitiveness; how much more rarely he condescended to satisfy curiosity, than to relieve distress; and how much he desired that his followers should rather excel in goodness than in knowledge. His precepts tend immediately to the rectification of the moral principles, and the direction of daily conduct, without ostentation, without art, at once irrefragable and plain, such as well-meaning simplicity may readily conceive, and of which we cannot mistake the meaning, but when we are afraid to find it.
THE measure of justice prescribed to us, in our transactions with others, is remarkably clear and comprehensive:
Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, even so do unto them.
A law by which every claim of right may be immediately adjusted, as far as the private conscience requires to be informed; a law, of which every man may find the exposition in his own breast, and which may always be observed without any other qualifications than honesty of intention, and purity of will.
OVER this Law, indeed, some sons of sophistry have been subtile enough to throw mists, which have darkened their own eyes. To find means of perplexing that universal principle upon which every question of justice, between one man and another, is to be decided, they have enquired whether a man, conscious to himself of unreasonable wishes, be bound to gratify them in another. But surely there needed no long deliberation to conclude, that the desires, which are to be considered by us as the measure of right, must be such as we approve, and that we ought to pay no regard to those expectations in others which we condemn in ourselves, and which, however they may intrude upon our imagination, we know it our duty to resist and suppress.
ONE of the most celebrated cases which have been produced as requiring some skill in the direction of conscience to adapt them to this great rule, is that of a criminal asking mercy of his judge, who cannot but know that if he was in the state of the supplicant, he should desire that pardon which he now denies. The difficulty of this sophism will vanish, if we remember that the parties are in reality on one side criminal, and on the other the community of which the magistrate is only the minister, and by which he is intrusted with the publick safety. The magistrate therefore in pardoning a man unworthy of pardon, betrays the trust with which he is invested, gives away what is not his own, and, apparently, does to others what he would not that others should do to him. Even the community, whose right is still greater to arbitrary grants of mercy, is bound by those laws which regard the great republick of mankind, and cannot justify such forbearance as may promote wickedness, and lessen the general confidence and security in which all have an equal interest, and which all are therefore bound to maintain. For this reason the state has not a right to erect a general sanctuary for fugitives, or give protection to such as have forfeited their lives by crimes against the laws of common morality equally acknowledged by all nations, because no people can, without infraction of the universal league of social beings, incite, by prospects of impunity and safety, those practices in another dominion, which they would themselves punish in their own.
ONE occasion of uncertainty and hesitation, in those by whom this great rule has been commented and dilated, is the confusion of what the casuists are careful to distinguish,
debts of justice and debts of charity.
The immediate and primary intention of this precept, is to establish a rule of justice for the tribunal of conscience; and I know not whether invention, or sophistry, can start a single difficulty to retard its application, when it is thus expressed and explained,
let every man allow the claim of right in another which he should think himself entitled to make in the like circumstances.
THE discharge of the
debts of charity,
or duties which we owe to others not merely as required by justice, but as dictated by benevolence, admits in its own nature greater complication of circumstances and greater latitude of choice. Justice is indispensably and universally necessary, and what is necessary must always be limited, uniform, and distinct. But beneficence though in general equally enjoined by our religion, and equally needful to the conciliation of the divine favour, is yet, for the most part, with regard to its single acts, elective and voluntary. We may certainly, without injury to our fellow beings, allow in the distribution of kindness something to our affections, and change the measure of our liberality according to our opinions and prospects, our hopes and fears. This rule therefore is not equally determinate and absolute with respect to offices of kindness, and acts of liberality, because liberality and kindness, absolutely determined, would lose their nature; for how could we be called tender, or charitable, for giving that which we are positively forbidden to withhold.
YET even in adjusting the extent of our beneficence no other measure can be taken than this precept affords us, for we can only know what others suffer or want, by considering how we should be affected in the same state; nor can we proportion our assistance by any other rule than that of doing what we should then expect from others. It indeed generally happens that the giver and receiver differ in their opinions of generosity; the same partiality to his own interest inclines one to large expectations, and the other to sparing distributions. Perhaps the infirmity of human nature will scarcely suffer a man groaning under the pressure of distress, to judge rightly of the kindness of his friends, or to think they have done enough till his deliverance is compleated; it is therefore apparent that not what we might wish, but what we could demand from others, we are obliged to grant, since, though we can easily know how much we might claim, it is impossible to determine what we should hope.
BUT in all enquiries concerning the practice of voluntary and occasional virtues, it is safest for minds not oppressed with superstitious fears to determine against their own inclinations, and secure themselves from deficiency by being more than they believe strictly necessary. For of this every man may be certain that, if he were to exchange conditions with his dependent, he should expect more than, with the utmost exertion of his ardour, he now will prevail upon himself to perform; and when our reason has no settled rule, and our passions are striving to mislead us, it is surely the part of a wise man to err on the side of safety.
NUMB. 82.
SATURDAY,
Decem.
29, 1750.
Omnia
Castor
emit, sic fiet ut omnia vendat,
MART.
To the RAMBLER.
SIR,
I SUPPOSE it will not be necessary to solicit your good will by any formal preface or apology, when I have informed you, that I have long been known in the world of learning, as the most laborious and zealous virtuoso that the present age has had the honour of producing, and that the inconveniencies which I now suffer, have been been brought upon me by an unextinguishable ardour of curiosity, and an unshaken perseverance in the acquisition of all the productions of art and nature.
IT was observed, from my entrance into the world, that I had something uncommon in my disposition, and that there appeared in me very early tokens of genius, superior to the bulk of mankind. I was always an enemy to trifles; the play things which my mother bestowed upon me I immediately broke that I might discover the method of their structure, and the causes of their motions; of all the toys with which children are dellghted I valued only my coral, and as soon as I could speak, asked, like
Peiresc,
innumerable questions which the maids about me could not resolve. As I grew older I was more thoughtful and serious, and instead of amusing myself with puerile diversions, made collections of natural rarities, and never walked into the fields without bringing home stones of remarkable forms, or insects of some uncommon species. I never entered an old house, from which I did not take away the painted glass, and often lamented that I was not one of that happy generation who demolished the convents and monasteries, and broke windows by law.
BEING thus early possessed by a taste for folid knowledge, I passed my youth with very little disturbance from passions and appetites, and having no pleasure in the company of boys and girls, who talked of plays, politicks, fashions, or love, I carried on my enquiries with incessant diligence, and had amassed more stones, mosses, and shells, than are to be found in many celebrated collections, at an age in which the greatest part of young men arc studying under tutors, or endeavouring to recommend themselves to notice by their dress, their air, and their levities.
WHEN I was two and twenty years old, I became, by the death of my father, possessed of a small estate in land, with a very large sum of money in the public funds, and must confess that I did not much lament him, for he was a man of mean parts, bent rather upon growing rich than wise. He once fretted at the expence of only ten shillings, which he happened to overhear me offering for the sting of a hornet, though it was a cold moist summer, in which very few hornets had been seen. He often recommended to me the study of physick, in which, said he, you may at once gratify your curiosity after natural history, and encrease your fortune by benefiting mankind. I heard him, Mr.
Rambler,
with pity, and as there was no prospect of elevating a mind formed to grovel, suffered him to please himself with hoping that I should sometime follow his advice. For you know that there are men, with whom, when they have once settled a notion in their heads, it is to very little purpose to dispute.
BEING now left wholly to my own inclinations, I very soon enlarged the bounds of my curiosity, and contented myself no longer with such rarities as required only judgment and industry, and when once found, might be had for nothing. I now turned my thoughts to
Exoticks
and
Antiques,
and became so well known for my generous patronage of ingenious men, that my levee was crowded with visitants, some to see my museum, and others to encrease its treasures, by selling me whatever they had brought from other countries.
I HAD always a contempt of that narrowness of conception, which contents itself with cultivating some single corner of the field of science; I took the whole region into my view, and wished it of yet greater extent. But no man's power can be equal to his will. I was forced to proceed by slow degrees, and to purchase what chance, or kindness happened to present. I did not, however, proceed without some design, or imitate the indiscretion of those, who begin a thousand collections, and finish none. Having been always a lover of geography, I determined to collect the maps drawn in the rude and barbarous times, before any regular surveys, or just observations; and have, at a great expence, brought together a volume, in which, perhaps, not a single country is laid down according to its true situation, and by which, he that desires to know the errors of the antient geographers, may be amply informed.
I DID not suffer myself, however, to neglect the products of our own country; but as
Alfred
received the tribute of the
Welch
in Wolves heads, I allowed my tenants to pay their rents in butterflies, till I had exhausted the papilionaceous tribe. I then directed them to the pursuit of other animals, and obtained, by this easy method, most of the grubs and insects, which land, air, or water can supply. I have three species of earthworms not known to the naturalists, have discovered a new ephemera, and can shew four wasps that were taken torpid in their winter quarters. I have, from my own ground, the longest blade of grass upon record, and once accepted, as a half year's rent for a field of wheat, an ear containing more grains than had been seen before upon a single stem.
ONE of my tenants so much neglected his own interest, as to supply me, in a whole summer, with only two horse-flies, and those of little more than the common size; and I was upon the brink of seizing for arrears, when his good fortune threw a white mole in his way, for which he was not only forgiven, but rewarded.
THESE, however, were petty acquisitions and made at small expence, nor should I have ventured to rank myself among the virtuosi without better claims. I have suffered nothing worthy the regard of a wise man to escape my notice: I have ransacked the old and the new world, and been equally attentive to past ages and the present. For the illustration of antient history, I can shew a marble, of which the inscription, though it is not now legible, appears from some broken remains of the letters, to have been
Tuscan,
and therefore probably engraved before the foundation of
Rome.
I have two pieces of porphyry found among the ruins of
Ephesus,
and three letters broken off by a learned traveller from the monuments at
Persepolis
; a piece of stone which paved the
Areopagus
of
Athens,
and a plate without figures or characters, which was found at
Corinth,
and which I therefore believe to be that metal, which was once valued before gold. I have sand gathered out of the
Granicus
; a fragment of
Trajan
's bridge over the
Danube
; some of the mortar which cemented the watercourse of
Tarquin
; a horse shoe broken on the
Flaminian
way; and a turf with five daisies dug from the field of
Pharsalia.
I DO not wish to raise the envy of unsuccessful collectors, by too pompous a display of my scientifick wealth, but cannot forbear to observe, that there are few regions of the globe which are not honoured with some memorial in my cabinets. The
Persian
monarchs are said to have boasted the greatness of their empire, by being served at their tables with drink from the
Ganges
and the
Danule:
I can shew one vial, of which the water was formerly an icicle on the crags of
Caucasus,
and another that contains what once was a snow on the top of
Atlas
; in a third is dew brushed from a Banana in the gardens of
Ispahan
; and, in another brine that once rolled in the pacific ocean. I flatter myself that I am writing to a man who will rejoice at the honour which my labours have procured to my country, and therefore, I shall tell you that
Britain
can by my care boast of a snail that has crawled upon the wall of
China
; a humming bird which an
American
princess wore in her ear; the tooth of an elephant who carried the queen of
Siam
; the skin of an ape that was kept in the palace of the great mogul; a ribbon that adorned one of the maids of a
Turkish
sultana; and a symeter once wielded by a soldier of
Alas
the great.
IN collecting antiquities of every country, I have been careful to chuse only by intrinsick worth, and real usefulness without regard to party or opinions. I have therefore a lock of
Cromwell
's hair in a box turned from a piece of the royal oak; and keep, in the same drawers, sand scraped from the coffin of king
Richard,
and a commission signed by
Henry
VII. I have equal veneration for the ruff of
Elizabeth
and the shoe of
Mary
of
Scotland
; and should lose, with like regret, a tobaccopipe of
Raleigh,
and a stirrup of king
James.
I have paid the same price for a glove of
Lewis,
and a thimble of queen
Mary
; for a fur cap of the
Czar,
and a boot of
Charles
of
Sweden.
YOU will easily imagine that these accumulations were not made without some diminution of my fortune, for I was so well known to spare no cost, that at every sale some bid against me for hire, some for sport, and some for malice; and, if I asked the price of any thing it was sufficient to double the demand. For curiosity, trafficking thus with avarice, the wealth of
India
had not been enough; and I, by little and little, transferred all my money from the funds to my closet: here I was inclined to stop, and live upon my estate in literary leisure, but the sale of the
Harleian
collection shook my resolution; I mortgaged my land, and purchased thirty medals, which I could never find before. I have at length bought till I can buy no longer, and the cruelty of my creditors has seized my repository; I am therefore condemned to disperse what the labour of an age will not reassemble. I submit to that which cannot be opposed, and shall, in a short time, declare a sale. I have, while it is yet in my power, sent you a pebble, pick'd up by
Tavernier
on the banks of the
Ganges
; for which I desire no other recompence than that you will recommend my catalogue to the public,
QUISQUILIUS.
NUMB. 83.
TUESDAY,
Jan.
1, 1750.
Nisi utile est quod facias stulta est gloria.
PHAE.
THE publication of the letter in my last paper has naturally led me to the consideration of that thirst after curiosities, which often draws contempt and ridicule upon itself, but which is perhaps no otherwise blameable, than as it wants those circumstantial recommendations which have long been observed to add lustre even to moral excellencies, and are absolutely necessary to the grace and beauty of indifferent actions.
LEARNING confers so much superiority on those who possess it, that they might probably have escaped all censure, had they been able to agree among themselves: but as envy and competition have divided the republick of letters into factions, they have neglected the common interest; each has called in foreign aid, and endeavoured to strengthen his own cause by the frown of power, the hiss of ignorance, and the clamour of popularity. They have all been so much engaged in destruction, that they have neglected defence, till by mutual hostilities they demolished those outworks which veneration had raised for their security, and laid themselves open to invaders, by whom every region of science is equally laid waste.
THERE passes between men of different studies and professions a constant reciprocation of reproaches. The collector of shells and stones, wonders at the folly of him who pastes leaves and flowers upon paper, pleases himself with colours that are perpetually fading, and amasses with care what cannot be preserved. The hunter of insects stands amazed that any man can waste much of his short time upon lifeless matter, while many tribes of animals are yet neglected. Every one is inclined not only to promote his own study, but to exclude all others from regard, and having heated his imagination with some favourite pursuit, wonders that the rest of mankind are not seized with the same passion.
THERE are, indeed, many subjects of study which seem but remotely allied to useful knowledge, and are of little importance to happiness or virtue; nor is it easy to forbear some sallies of merriment, or expressions of pity, when we see a man wrinkled with attention, and emaciated with solicitude in the investigation of questions never to be resolved, and of which, without any visible harm, the world may expire in ignorance. Yet it is dangerous to discourage any well intended labours, or suppress any innocent curiosity; for he who is employed in searches, which by any deduction of consequences tend to the benefit of life, is surely laudable, in comparison of those who spend their time in counteracting happiness, and filling the world with wrong and danger, confusion and remorse. No man can perform so little, as not to have reason to congratulate himself on his merits, when he beholds the multitudes that live in total idleness, and have never yet endeavoured to be useful.
IT is impossible to determine the limits of any enquiry, or to foresee what consequences a new discovery may produce. He who suffers not his faculties to lie torpid, has a chance, whatever be his employment, of doing good to his fellow-creatures. There are probably in every part of nature powers and qualities yet undiscovered, which might be applied to the advantage of mankind, but which can never be known without the labour of experiment. He who first ranged the woods in search of medicinal springs, or climbed the mountains for salutary plants, has undoubtedly merited the gratitude of posterity, how much soever his frequent miscarriages might excite the scorn of his contemporaries. If what appears little be universally despised, nothing greater can be attained, for whatever is great was at first little, and rose to its present bulk by gradual accessions, successive improvements, and accumulated labours.
THOSE who lay out their time or their money in assembling matter for contemplation, and forming repositories of natural or artificial rarities, are surely entitled to some degree of respect, though in a flight of gaiety it be easy to ridicule their treasure, or in a fit of fullenness to despise it. A man goes not away much illuminated by having enjoyed the privilege of handling the tooth of a shark, or the paw of a white bear; yet though some particular curiosities may be rated by their owners beyond their value, there is nothing more worthy of admiration to a philosophical eye than the structure of animals, by which they are qualified to support life in the particular elements or climates to which they are appropriated; and of all natural productions it must be confessed, that they exhibit evidences of infinite wisdom, bear their testimony to the supreme reason, and excite in the mind new raptures of admiration, and new incentives to piety.
TO collect the productions of art and examples of mechanical science or manual ability is unquestionably useful, even when the things themselves are of small importance, because it is always advantageous to know how far the human powers have proceeded, and how much experience has shewn to be within the reach of diligence. It is natural for idleness and timidity to despair without being overcome, and to forbear attempts for fear of being defeated; and we may promote the invigoration of faint endeavours, by being able to prove what has been already performed; for though it may sometimes happen that the greatest instances of ingenuity have been exerted in trifles, yet the same principles and the same expedients may be applied to more important purposes, and the movements which put into action machines of no other use but to raise the wonder of ignorance, may be employed to drain fens, or manufacture metals, to assist the architect, or preserve the sailor.
FOR the utensils, arms, or dresses of foreign nations, which make the greatest part of many collections, I have no great regard when they are valuable only because they are foreign, and can suggest no improvement of our own practice. Yet they are not all equally useless, nor can it be always safely determined, which should be rejected or retained, for they may sometimes unexpectedly contribute to the illustration of history, to the knowledge of the natural commodities of the country, or of the genius and customs of its inhabitants.
THERE IS one sort of rarities of a yet lower rank, which owe their value merely to accident, and which can convey no information, nor satisfy any rational desire. Such are many fragments of antiquity, as urns and pieces of pavement; and things which are held in veneration only for having been once the property of some eminent person, as the armour of king
Henry
; or for having been used on some remarkable occasion, as the lanthorn of
Guy Faux.
The loss or preservation of these seems to be a thing indifferent, nor can I perceive why the possession of them should be coveted. Yet, perhaps, even this curiosity is implanted by nature; and when I find
Tully
confessing of himself, that he could not forbear at
Athens
to visit the walks and houses which the old philosophers had frequented or inhabited, and recollect the reverence which every nation, civil and barbarous, has paid to the ground where merit has been buried, I am afraid to declare against the general voice of mankind, and am inclined to believe, that this regard, which we involuntarily pay to the meanest relique of a man great and illustrious, is intended as an incitement to labour, and an encouragement to expect the same renown, if it be sought by the same virtues.
THE virtuoso therefore cannot be censured, as contributing nothing to the encrease of knowledge, but perhaps he may be sometimes justly culpable for consining himself to business below his genius, for losing in trifling amusements and petty speculations, those hours which he might have spent in nobler studies, and in which he might have given new light to the intellectual world. It is indeed never without grief, that I find a man capable of ratiocination or invention enlisting himself in this secondary class of learning; for when he has once discovered a method of gratifying his desire of eminence by expence rather than by labour, and known the sweets of a life blest at once with the ease of idleness, and the reputation of knowledge, he will not easily be brought to undergo again the toil of thinking, or leave his toys and his trinkets for arguments and ideas, arguments which require circumspection and vigilance, and ideas which cannot be obtained but by the drudgery of meditation. He will gladly shut himself up forever with his shells and medals, like the companions of
Ulysses,
who having tasted the fruit of
Lotos,
would not even by the hope of seeing their own country, be tempted again to the dangers of the sea.
COLLECTIONS of this kind are of use to the learned, as heaps of stone and piles of timber are necessary to the architect. But to dig the quarry or to search the field, requires not much of any quality, beyond stubborn perseverance; and though genius must often lye inactive without this humble and neglected assistance, yet this can claim little praise because every man can afford it.
TO mean understandings, it is indeed sufficient honour to be numbered amongst the lowest labourers of learning; but surely different abilities must find different tasks. To hew stone would have been unworthy of
Palladio,
and to have rambled in search of shells and flowers, had but ill suited with the capacity of
Newton.
NUMB. 84.
SATURDAY,
Jan.
5, 1751.
Cunarum fueras motor,
CHARIDEME,
mearum,
Et pueri custos, assiduusque comes.
Jam mihi nigrescunt tonsa sudaria barba,—
Sed tibi non crevi: te noster villicus horret:
Te dispensator, te donus ipsa pavet.
Corripis, observas, quereris, suspiria ducis,
Et vix a ferulis abstinet ira manum.
MART.
To the RAMBLER.
SIR,
YOU seem in all your papers to be an enemy to tyranny and oppression, and to look with indifference and impartiality upon the world; I shall therefore lay my case before you with great confidence, and hope by your decision to be set free from the unreasonable restraints which I now suffer, and enabled to justify myself against the accusations which spite and peevishness produce against me.
AT the age of five years I lost my mother, and my father being a man in public employment, and neither by his situation or temper very well qualified to superintend the education of a girl, committed me to the care of his sister, a woman of virtue and discretion, who instructed me with the authority, and, not to deny her what she may justly claim, with the affection of a parent. She had not indeed very elevated sentiments or extensive views, but her principles were good, and her intentions pure, and though some may practise more virtues, scarce any commit fewer faults.
UNDER this good lady I learned all the common rules of decent behaviour, and all the standing maxims of domestick prudence; and might have grown up by degrees to a country gentlewoman, without any thoughts of ranging beyond the neighbourhood, had not
Flavia
come down, last summer, to visit her relations in the next village. I was taken, of course, to compliment the stranger, and was, at the first sight, surprized at the unconcern with which she saw herself gazed at by company whom she had never known before; at the carelesness with which she received compliments, and the readiness with which she returned them. I found she had something which I perceived myself to want, and could not but wish to be like her, at once easy and officious, attentive and unembarrassed. I went home, and for four days could think and talk of nothing but miss
Flavia
; though my aunt told me, that she was a forward flirt, and thought herself wise before her time.
IN a little time she repaid my visit, and raised im my heart a new confusion of love, esteem, and admiration. I soon saw her again, and still found new charms in her air, behaviour, and conversation. You who have known the world may, perhaps, have observed, that formality soon ceases between young persons. I know not, indeed, how others are affected on such occasions, but I found myself irresistibly allured to friendship and intimacy, by the familiar complaisance and airy gaiety of
Flavia,
so that in a few weeks I became her favourite, and all the time was passed with me, that she could gain from ceremony and cards.
AS she came often to me, she necessarily spent some hours with my aunt, to whom she paid great respect, by low courtesies, submisive compliance, and soft acquiescence; but as I became gradually more accustomed to her manners, I discovered that her civility was general; that there was a certain degree of deference shewn by her to circumstances and appearances; that many went away flattered by her humility, whom she despised in her heart; that the influence of far the greatest part of those with whom she conversed, ceased with their presence; and that sometimes she did not remember the names of them whom, without any intentional insincerity or false commendation, her habitual civility had sent away with very high thoughts of their own importance.
IT was not long before I perceived, that my aunt's opinion was not of much weight in
Flavia
's deliberations, and that she was looked upon by her as a woman of narrow sentiments, without knowledge of books, or observations on mankind. I had hitherto considered my aunt, as entitled by her wisdom and experience to the highest reverence, and could not forbear to wonder that any one so much younger should venture to suspect her of error, or of ignorance; but my surprize was without uneasiness, and being now accustomed to think
Flavia
always in the right, I very readily learned from her to trust my own reason, to consider every question for myself, and to believe it possible, that they who had lived longer might be mistaken.
FLAVIA had read much, and used so often to converse on subjects of learning, that she put all the men in the county to flight, except the old parson, who declared himself much delighted with her company, because she gave him opportunity to recollect the studies of his younger years, and had made him rub the dust off his
Homer
which had
ain unregarded in his closet. With
Homer
and a thousand other names familiar to
Flavia,
I had no acquaintance, but began by comparing her accomplishments with my own, to repine at my education, and wish that I had not been so long confined to the company of those from whom nothing but housewifery was to be learned. I then set myself to peruse such books as
Flavia
recommended, and heard her opinion of their beauties and defects. I saw new worlds hourly bursting upon my mind, and was enraptured at the prospect of diversifying life with endless entertainment.
THE old lady finding that a large screen, which I had undertaken to adorn with turkey-work against winter, made very slow advances and that I had added in two months but three leaves to a flowered apron then in the frame, soon took the alarm, and with all the zeal of honest folly exclaimed against my new acquaintance, who had filled me with idle notions, and turned my head with books. But she had now lost her authority, for I began to find innumerable mistakes in her opinions, and improprieties in her language; and therefore thought myself no longer bound to pay much regard to one who knew little beyond her needle and her dairy, and who professed to think that nothing more is required of a woman than to see that the house is clean, and that the maids go to bed and rise at a certain hour.
SHE seemed however to look upon
Flavia
as seducing me, and to imagine that when her influence was withdrawn, I should return to my allegiance; she therefore contented herself with remote hints, and gentle admonitions, intermixed with sage histories of the miscarriages of wit, and disappointments of pride. But since she has found, that, tho'
Flavia
is departed, I still persist in my new scheme, she has at length lost her patience; she snatches my book out of my hand, tears my paper if she finds me writing, burns
Flavia
's letters before my face if she can seize them, and threatens to lock me up, and to complain to my father of my perverseness. If women, she says, would but know their duty and their interest, they would be careful to acquaint themselves with family affairs, and many a penny might be saved; for while the mistress of the house is scribbling and reading, servants are junketing, and linnen is wearing out. She then takes me round the rooms, shews me the worked hangings, and chairs of tent-stich, and asks whether all this was done with a pen and a book.
I CANNOT deny that I sometimes laugh, and sometimes am sullen, but she has not delicacy enough to be much moved either with my mirth or my gloom, if she did not think the interest of the family endangered by this change of my manners. She had for some years marked out young Mr.
Surly,
an heir in the neighbourhood, remarkable for his love of fighting-cocks, as an advantageous match, and was extremely pleased with the civilities which he used to pay me, till under
Flavia
's tuition I learned to talk of subjects which he could not understand. This, she says, is the consequence of female study; girls grow too wise to be advised, and too stubborn to be commanded; but she is resolved to try who shall govern, and will thwart my humour till she breaks my spirit.
THESE menaces, Mr.
Rambler,
sometimes make me quite angry; for I have been sixteen, these ten weeks, and think myself exempted from the dominion of a governess, who has no pretensions to more sense or knowledge than myself: I am resolved, since I am as tall and as wise as other women, to be no longer treated like a girl. Miss
Flavia
has often told me, that ladies of my age go to assemblies and routs, without their mothers and their aunts; I shall therefore, from this time, leave asking advice, and refuse to give accounts. I hope you will publish something in defence of my conduct, and state the time at which young ladies may judge for themselves, which I am sure you cannot but think ought to begin before sixteen; if you are inclined to delay it longer, I shall have very little regard to your understanding or opinion.
MY aunt often tells me of the advantages of experience, and of the deference due to seniority; and both she and all the antiquated part of the world talk of the unreserved obedience which they paid to the commands of their parents, and the undoubting confidence with which they listened to their precepts; of the terrors which they felt at a frown, and the humility with which they supplicated forgiveness whenever they had offended. I cannot but fancy that this boast is too general to be true, and that the young and the old were always at variance. I have, however, told my aunt that I will mend whatever she will prove to be wrong; but she replies that she has reasons of her own, and that she is sorry to live in an age when girls have the impudence to ask for proofs.
I BEG once again, Mr.
Rambler,
to know whether I am not as wise as my aunt, and whether when she presumes to check me as a baby, I may not pluck up a spirit and return her insolence. I shall not proceed to extremities without your advice, which is therefore impatiently expected by
MYRTYLLA.
P. S. Remember I am past sixteen.
NUMB. 85.
TUESDAY,
January
8, 1751.
Otia si tollas periere
Cupidinis
arcus
Contemptaeque jacent, et sine luce faces.
OVID.
MANY writers of eminence in physick have laid out their diligence upon the consideration of those distempers to which men are more remarkably exposed by particular states of life, and very learned treatises have been produced upon the maladies of the camp, the sea, and the mines. There is, indeed, scarcely any employment which a man accustomed to anatomical enquiries, and medical refinements, would not find reasons for declining as dangerous to health, did not his learning or experience inform him, that almost every occupation, however inconvenient or formidable, is happier and safer than a life of sloth.
THE necessity of action is not only demonstrable from the fabrick of the body, but evident from observation of the universal practice of mankind, who for the preservation of health, in those whose rank or wealth exempts them from the necessity of lucrative labour, have invented sports and diversions, though not of equal use to the world with manual trades, yet of equal fatigue to those that practise them, and differing only from the drudgery of the husbandman or manufacturer, as they are acts of choice, and therefore performed without the painful sense of compulsion. The huntsman rises early, persues his game through all the dangers and obstructions of the chase, swims rivers, and scales precipices, till he returns home no less harrassed than the soldier, and has, perhaps, sometimes incurred as great hazard of wounds or death: Yet he has no motive to incite his ardour; he is neither subject to the commands of a general, nor dreads any penalties for neglect and disobedience; he has neither profit or honour to expect from his perils and his conquests, but toils without the hope either of mutal or civick garlands, and must content himself with the praise of his tenants and companions.
BUT such indeed is the constitution of man, that labour may be with great justice stiled its own reward; nor will any external incitements be requisite, if it be considered how much happiness is gained, and how much misery escaped by frequent and violent agitation of the body.
EASE is the utmost that can be hoped from a sedentary and unactive habit; ease a neutral state between pain and pleasure. The dance of spirits, the bound of vigour, readiness of enterprize, and defiance of fatigue, are reserved for him that braces his nerves, and hardens his fibres, that keeps his limbs pliant with motion, and by frequent exposure fortifies his frame against the common accidents of cold and heat.
WITH ease, however, if it could be secured, many would be content; but nothing terrestrial can be kept at a stand. Ease, if it is not rising into pleasure, will be falling towards pain, and whatever hope the dreams of speculation may suggest of observing the proportion between nutriment and labour, and keeping the body in a healthy state by supplies exactly equal to its waste, we know that, in effect, the vital powers unexcited by motion, grow gradually languid; that as their vigour fails obstructions are generated; and that from obstructions proceed most of those pains which wear us away slowly with periodical tortures, and which though they sometimes suffer life to be long, condemn it to be useless, chain us down on the couch of misery, and mock us with the hopes of death.
EXERCISE, indeed, cannot secure us from that dissolution to which we are decreed; but while the soul and body continue united, it can make the association pleasing, and can give probable hopes that they shall be disjoined by an easy separation. It was a principle among the ancients, that acute diseases are from heaven, and chronical from ourselves; the dart of death indeed falls from heaven, but we poison it by our own misconduct; to dye is the fate of man, but to dye with lingering anguish is generally his folly.
IT is necessary to that perfection of which our present state is capable, that the mind and body should both be kept in action; that neither the faculties of the one nor of the other be suffered to grow lax or torpid for want of use; that neither health be purchased by voluntary submission to ignorance, nor knowledge cultivated at the expence of that health, which must enable it either to give pleasure to its possessor or assistance to others. It is too frequently the pride of students to despise those amusements and recreations which give to the rest of mankind strength of limbs and cheerfulness of heart. Solitude and contemplation are indeed seldom consistent with such skill in common exercises or sports as is necessary to make them practised with delight, and no man is willing to do that of which the necessity is not pressing and immediate, when he knows that his aukwardness must make him ridiculous.
Ludere qui nescit, campestribus abstinet armis,
Indoctusque Pilae, Discive, Trochive quiescit,
Ne spissae Risum tollant impunè Coronae.
THUS the man of learning is often resigned, almost by his own consent, to languor and to pain; and while in the prosecution of his studies he suffers the weariness of labour, is subject by his course of life to the maladies of idleness.
IT was, perhaps, from the observation of this mischievous omission in those who are employed about intellectual objects, that
Locke
has, in his
System of Education,
so warmly urged the necessity of a manual trade to men of all ranks and professions, that when the mind is weary with its proper task, it may be relaxed by a slighter attention to some mechanical operation; and that while the vital functions are resuscitated and awakened by vigorous motion, the understanding may be restrained from that vagrance and dissipation by which it too often relieves itself after a long intenseness of thought, unless some allurement be presented that may engage application without anxiety.
THERE is so little reason for expecting any frequent conformity to
Locke
's precept, that it is not necessary to enquire whether the practice of manual arts might not give occasion to petty emulation, and trivial ambition; and whether, if our divines and physicians were taught the lathe and the chizzel, they would not think more of their tools than their books; as
Nero
neglected the care of his empire for his chariot and his fiddle. It is certainly dangerous to be too much pleased with little things; but what is there which may not be perverted? let us, remember how much worse employment might have been found for those hours, which a manual occupation appears to engross; let us compute the profit with the loss, and when we reflect how often a genius is allured from his studies, consider likewise that perhaps by the same attractions he is sometimes withheld from debauchery, or recalled from malice, from ambition, from envy, and from lust.
I HAVE always admired the wisdom of those by whom our female education was instituted, for having contrived, that every woman of whatever condition should be taught some arts of manufacture, by which the vacuities of recluse and domestick leisure may always be filled up. These arts are more necessary as the weakness of their sex and the general system of life debar ladies from many employments which by diversifying the circumstances of men, preserve them from being cankered by the rust of their own thoughts. I know not how much of the virtue and happiness of the world may be the consequence of this judicious regulation. Perhaps, the most powerful fancy might be unable to figure the confusion and slaughter that would be produced by so many piercing eyes and vivid understandings, turned loose at once upon mankind, with no other business than to sparkle and intrigue, to perplex and to destroy.
FOR my part, whenever chance brings within my observation a knot of misses busy at their needles, I consider myself as in the school of virtue; and though I have no extraordinary skill in plain work or embroidery, look upon their operations with, at least, as much satisfaction as their governess, because I regard them as providing a security against the most dangerous ensnarers of the soul, by enabling themselves to exclude idleness from their solitary moments, and with idleness her attendant train of passions, fancies, and chimeras, fears, sorrows and desires.
Ovid
and
Cervantes
will inform them that love has no power but over those whom he catches unemployed; and
Hector,
in the
Iliad,
when he sees
Andromache
overwhelmed with terrors, sends her for consolation to the loom and the distaff.
IT is certain that any wild wish or vain imagination never takes such firm possession of the mind, as when it is found empty and unoccupied; for the old peripatetick principle, that
Nature abhors a Vacuum,
may be properly applied to the intellect, which will embrace any thing however absurd or criminal rather than be wholly without an object. Perhaps every man may date the predominance of those desires that disturb his life and contaminate his conscience, from some unhappy hour when too much leisure exposed him to their incursions; for he has lived with little observation either on himself or others, who does not know that to be idle is to be vicious.
NUMB. 86.
SATURDAY,
Jan.
12, 1751.
—Rectum Numerum Digitis callemus et Aure
HOR.
IT has been observed by one of the ancients, that the burthen of government is encreased upon princes by the virtues of their immediate predecessors. It is, indeed, always dangerous to be placed in a state of unavoidable comparison with excellence, and the danger is still greater when that excellence is consecrated by death, when envy and interest cease to act against it, and those passions by which it was at first vilified and opposed, now stand in its defence, and turn their vehemence against honest emulation.
HE that succeeds a celebrated writer, has the same difficulties to encounter; he stands under the shade of exalted merit, and is hindered from rising to his natural height, by the interception of those beams which should invigorate and quicken him. He applies to that attention which is already engaged, and unwilling to be drawn off from certain satisfaction; or perhaps to an attention already wearied, and not to be recalled to the same object. One of the old poets congratulates himself that he has the untrodden regions of
Parnassus
before him, and that his garland will be gathered from plantations which no writer had yet culled. But the imitator treads a beaten walk, and with all his diligence can only hope to find a few flowers or branches untouched by his predecessor, the refuse of contempt, or the omissions of negligence. The
Macedonian
conqueror, when he was once invited to hear a man that sung like a nightingale, replied with contempt, "that he had heard the nightingale herself;" and the same treatment must every man expect, whose praise is, that he imitates another.
YET, in the midst of these discouraging reflections, I am about to offer to my reader some observations upon
Paradise Lost,
and hope, that however I may fall below the illustrious writer who so long dictated to the commonwealth of learning, my attempt may not be wholly useless. There are in every age, new errors to be rectify'd, and new prejudices to be opposed. False taste is always busy to mislead those that are entering upon the regions of learning; and the traveller, uncertain of his way, and forsaken by the sun, will be pleased to see a fainter orb arise on the horizon, that may rescue him from total darkness, though with weak and borrowed lustre.
ADDISON, though he has considered this poem under most of the general topicks of criticism, has barely touched upon the versification; not probably because he thought the art of numbers unworthy of his notice, for he knew with how minute attention the ancient criticks considered the disposition of syllables, and had himself given hopes of some metrical observations upon that great
Roman
poet; but being the first who undertook to display the beauties, and point out the defects of
Milton,
he had many objects at once before him, and passed willingly over those which were most barren of ideas, and required labour, rather than genius.
YET versification, or the art of modulating his Numbers, is indispensably necessary to a poet. Every other power by which the attention is fixed, the understanding enlightened, or the imagination enchanted, may be exercised in prose. But the poet has this peculiar superiority, that to all the powers which the perfection of every other composition can require, he adds the faculty of joining musick with reason, and of acting at once upon the senses and the passions. I suppose there are few who do not feel themselves touched by poetical melody, and who will not confess that they are more or less moved by the same thoughts, as they are conveyed by different sounds, and more affected by the same words in one order, than in another. The perception of harmony is indeed conserred upon men in degrees very unequal, but there are none who do not perceive it, or to whom a regular series of proportionate sounds cannot give delight.
IN treating on the versification of
Milton
I am desirous to be generally understood, and shall therefore studiously decline the dialect of grammarians; though, indeed, it is always difficult and sometimes scarcely possible to deliver the precepts of an art without the terms by which the peculiar ideas of that art are expressed, and which had not been invented but because the language already in use, was insufficient. If therefore I shall sometimes seem obscure, may it be imputed to this voluntary interdiction, and to a desire of avoiding that offence which is always given by unusual words.
THE heroic measure of the
English
language may be properly considered as pure or mixed. It is pure when the accent rests upon every second syllable through the whole line.
Courage uncertain dangers may abate,
But whó can beár th' appróach of cértain fáte.
DRYDEN.
Here love his golden shafts employs, here lights
His cónstant lámp, and wáves his púrple wings,
Reigns here, and revels; not in the bought smile
Of hárlots, lóveless, jóyless, únendéar'd.
MILTON.
The accent may be observed in the second line of
Dryden,
and the second and fourth of
Milton,
to repose upon every second syllable.
THE repetition of this sound or percussion at equal times is the most complete harmony of which a single verse is capable, and should therefore be exactly kept in distichs, and generally in the last line of a paragraph, that the ear may rest without any sense of imperfection.
BUT, to preserve the series of sounds untransposed in a long composition, is not only very difficult but tiresome and disgusting; for we are soon wearied with the perpetual recurrence of the same cadence. Necessity has therefore enforced the mixed measure, in which some variation of the accents is allowed; this, though it always injures the harmony of the line considered by itself, yet compensates the loss by relieving us from the continual tyranny of the same sound, and makes us more sensible of the harmony of the pure measure.
OF these mixed numbers every poet affords us innumerable instances, and
Milton
seldom has two pure lines together, as will appear if any of his paragraphs be read with attention merely to the musick.
Thus at their shady lodge arriv'd both stood,
Both turn'd and under open sky adorn'd
The God that made both sky, air, earth, and heav'n,
Which they beheld; the moon's resplendent globe,
And starry pole: thou also mad'st the night,
Maker omnipotent! and thou the day,
Which we in our appointed work employ'd
Have finish'd, happy in our mutual help,
And mutual love, the crown of all our bliss
Ordain'd by thee; and this delicious place,
For us too large; where thy abundance wants
Partakers, and uncrop'd falls to the ground,
But thou hast promis'd from us two a race
To fill the earth, who shall with us extol
Thy goodness infinite, both when we awake,
And when we seek, as now, thy gift of sleep.
In this passage it will be at first observed, that all the lines are not equally harmonious, and upon a nearer examination it will be found that only the fifth and ninth lines are regular, and the rest are more or less licentious with respect to the accent. In some the accent is equally upon two syllables together, and in both strong. As
Thus at their shady lodge arriv'd,
both stood,
Both turn'd,
and under open sky ador'd
The God that made both sky,
air, earth,
and heav'n.
In others the accent is equally upon two syllables, but upon both weak.
—a race
To fill the earth, who shall with us extol
Thy goodness in
finite,
both when we wake,
And when
we seek, as now, thy gift of sleep.
In the first pair of syllables the accent may deviate from the rigour of exactness without any unpleasing diminution of harmony, as may be observed in the lines already cited, and more remarkably in this
—Thou also mad'st the night,
Maker
omnipotent! and thou the day.
But, excepting in the first pair of syllables, which may be considered as arbitrary, a poet who, not having the invention or knowledge of
Milton,
has more need to allure his audience by musical cadences, should seldom suffer more than one aberration from the rule in any single verse.
THERE are two lines in this passage more remarkably unharmonious.
—This delicious place,
For us too large;
where thy
abundance wants
Partakers, and uncrop'd
falls to
the ground.
Here the third pair of syllables in the first, and fourth pair in the second verse, have their accents retrograde or inverted; the first syllable being strong or acute, and the second weak. The detriment which the measure suffers by this inversion of the accents is sometimes less perceptible, when the verses are carried one into another, but is remarkably striking in this place, where the vicious verse concludes a period; and is yet more offensive in rhyme, when we regularly attend to the flow of every single line. This will appear by reading a couplet in which
Cowley,
an author not sufficiently studious of harmony, has committed the same fault.
—His harmless life
Does with substantial blessedness abound,
And the soft wings of peace
cover
him round.
In these the law of metre is very grossly violated by mingling combinations of sound directly opposite to each other, as
Milton
expresses it in his sonnet, by
committing short
and long,
and setting one part of the measure as variance with the rest. The ancients, who had a language more capable of variety than ours, had two kinds of verse, the
lambick,
consisting of short and long syllables alternately, from which our heroick measure is derived, and the
Trochaick,
consisting in a like alternation of long and short. These were considered as opposites, and conveyed the contrary images of speed and slowness; to confound them, therefore, as in these lines, is to deviate from the established practice. But where the senses are to judge, authority is not necessary, the ear is sufficient to detect dissonance, nor should I have sought auxiliaries on such an occasion against any name but that of
Milton.
NUMB. 87.
TUESDAY,
Jan.
15, 1751.
Invidus, iracundus, iners, vinosus, amator,
Nemo adeo ferus est, ut non mitescere possit
Si modo culturae patientem commodet aurem.
HOR,
THAT few things are so liberally bestowed, or squandered with so little effect, as good advice, has been generally observed; and many sage positions have been advanced concerning the reasons of this complaint, and the means of removing it. It is, indeed, an important and noble enquiry, for little would be wanting to the happiness of life, if every man could conform to the right as soon as he was shown it.
THIS perverse neglect of the most salutary precepts, and stubborn resistance of the most pathetic persuasion, is usually imputed to him by whom the counsel is received, and we therefore often hear it mentioned as a sign of hopeless and abandoned depravity, that tho' good advice was given, it has wrought no reformation.
OTHERS who imagine themselves to have quicker sagacity and deeper penetration, have found out, that the inefficacy of advice is usually the fault of the counsellor, and rules have therefore been laid down, by which this important duty may be successfully performed: We are directed by what tokens to discover the favourable moment at which the heart is disposed for the operation of truth and reason, with what address to administer and with what vehicles to disguise
the catharticks of the soul.
BUT, notwithstanding this specious expedient, we find the world yet in the same state; advice is still given, but still received with disgust; nor has it appeared that the bitterness of the medicine has been yet abated, or its power encreased by any methods of preparing it.
IF we consider the manner in which those who assume the office of directing the conduct of others execute their undertaking, it will not be very wonderful that their labours, however zealous or affectionate, are frequently useless. For what is the advice that is commonly given? A few general maxims, enforced with vehemence and inculcated with importunity, but failing for want of particular reference, and immediate application.
IT is not often that any man can have so much knowledge of another, as is necessary to make instruction useful. We are sometimes not ourselves conscious of the original motives of our actions, and when we know them, our first care is to hide them from the sight of others, and often from those most diligently, whose superiority either of power or understanding may intitle them to inspect our lives; it is therefore very probable that he who endeavours the cure of our intellectual maladies, mistakes their cause; and that his prescriptions avail nothing, because he knows not which of the passions or desires is vitiated.
ADVICE, as it always gives a temporary appearance of superiority, can never be very grateful, even when it is most necessary or most judicious. But for the same reason every one is eager to instruct his neighbours. To be wise or to be virtuous, is to buy dignity and importance at a high price; but when nothing is necessary to elevation but detection of the follies or the faults of others, no man is so insensible to the voice of fame as to linger on the ground.
—Tentanda via est qua me quoque possim
Tollere humo, victorque virûm valitare per ora.
VANITY is so frequently the apparent motive of advice, that we, for the most part, summon our powers to oppose it without any very accurate enquiry whether it is right. It is sufficient that another is growing great in his own eyes at our expence, and that he assumes an authority over us without our permission; for many would be contented to suffer the consequences of their own mistakes, rather than the insolence of him who triumphs as their deliverer.
IT is, indeed, seldom found that any advantages are enjoyed with that moderation which the uncertainty of all human good so powerfully enforces; and therefore the adviser may justly suspect, that he has inflamed the opposition which he laments by arrogance and superciliousness, though, indeed, he can rarely be certain, that the softest language or most humble diffidence would have escaped resentment; for scarcely any degree of circumspection can prevent or obviate the rage with which the slothful, the impotent, and the unsuccessful, vent their discontent upon those that excel them, endeavour to eclipse the beauties which they cannot outshine, and to retard the speed which they cannot overtake. Modesty itself, if it is praised, will be envied; and there are minds so impatient of inferiority, that their gratitude is a species of revenge, and they return benefits, not because recompence is a pleasure, but because obligation is a pain.
THE number of those whom the love of themselves has thus far corrupted, is perhaps not great; but there are few so free from vanity as not to dictate to those who will hear their instructions with a visible sense of their own beneficence; and few to whom it is not unpleasing to receive documents, however tenderly and cautiously delivered, or who are not willing to raise themselves from pupillage, by disputing the propositions of their teacher.
IT was the maxim, I think, of
Alphonsus
of
Arragon,
that
dead counsellors are safest.
The grave puts an end to flattery and artifice, and the information that we receive from books is pure from interest, fear, or ambition. Dead counsellors are likewise most instructive; because they are heard with patience and with reverence. We are not unwilling to believe that man wiser than ourselves, from whose abilities we may receive advantage, without any danger of rivalry or opposition, and who affords us the light of his experience, without hurting our eyes by flashes of insolence,
BY the consultation of books, whether of dead or living authors, many temptations to petulance and opposition, which occur in oral conferences, are avoided. An author cannot obtrude his advice unasked, nor can be often suspected of any malignant intention to insult his readers with his knowledge or his wit. Yet so prevalent is the habit of comparing ourselves with others, while they remain within the reach of our passions, that books are seldom read with complete impartiality, but by those from whom the writer is placed at such a distance that his life or death is indifferent.
WE see that volumes may be perused, and perused with attention, to little effect; and that maxims of prudence, or principles of virtue, may be treasured in the memory without influencing the conduct. Of the numbers that pass their lives among books, very few read to be made wiser or better, apply any general reproof of vice to themselves, or try their own manners by axioms of justice. They purpose either to consume those hours for which they can find no other amusement; to gain or preserve that respect which the learned have always obtained; or to gratify their curiosity with knowledge, which, like treasure buried and forgotten, is of no use to others or themselves.
"THE preacher, (says a
French
author) may spend an hour in explaining and enforcing a precept of religion, without feeling any impression from his own performance, because he may have no further design than to fill up his hour." A student may easily exhaust his life in comparing divines and moralists, without any practical regard to morality or religion; he may be learning not to live but to reason; he may regard only the elegance of stile, justness of argument, and accuracy of method; and may enable himself to criticise with judgment, and dispute with subtilty, while the chief use of his volumes is unthought of, his mind is unaffected, and his life is unreformed.
BUT though truth and virtue are thus frequently defeated by pride, obstinacy, or folly, we are not allowed to desert them, for whoever can furnish arms which they have not hitherto employed, may enable them to gain some hearts which would have resisted any other method of attack. Every man of genius has some arts of fixing the attention peculiar to himself, by which, honestly exerted, he may benefit mankind; for the arguments for purity of life fail of their due influence, not because they have been considered and confuted, but because they have been passed over without consideration. To the position of
Tully,
that if Virtue could be seen she must be loved, may be added, that if Truth could be heard, she must be obeyed.
NUMB. 88.
SATURDAY,
Jan.
19. 1751.
Cum Tabulis animum Censoris sumet honesti,
Audebit quaecunque minus splendoris habebunt,
Aut sine pondere erunt, et honore indigna ferentur
Verba movere loco, quamvis invita recedant
Et versentur adhuc intra penctralia Vestae.
HOR.
"THERE is no reputation for genius, says
Qui
tillian,
to be gained by writing on things, which, however necessary, have little splendor or shew. The height of a building attracts the eye, but the foundations lie without regard. Yet since there is not any way to the top of science, but from the lowest parts, I shall think nothing unconnected with the art of oratory, which he that wants cannot be an orator"
CONFIRMED and animated by this illustrious precedent, I shall continue my inquiries into
Milton
's art of versification. Since, however minute and trivial the employment may appear, of analysing lines into syllables, and whatever ridicule may be incurred by a solemn deliberation upon accents and pauses, it is certain that without this petty knowledge no man can be a poet; and that from the proper disposition of single sounds results that harmony that adds force to reason, and gives grace to sublimity; that shackles attention, and governs passion.
THAT verse may be melodious and pleasing, it is necessary, not only that the words be so ranged as that the accent may fall on its proper place, but that the syllables themselves be so chosen as to flow smoothly into one another. This is to be effected by a proportionate mixture of vowels and consonants, and by tempering the mute consonants with liquids and semivowels. The
Hebrew
grammarians have observ'd, that it is impossible to pronounce two consonants without the intervention of a vowel, or without some emission of the breath between one and the other; this is longer and more perceptible, as the sounds of the consonants are less harmonically conjoined, and, by consequence, the flow of the verse is longer interrupted.
IT is pronounced by
Dryden,
that a line of monosyllables is almost always harsh. This, with regard to our language, is evidently true, not because monosyllables cannot compose harmony, but because our monosyllables being of
Teutonic
original, or formed by contraction, commonly begin and end with consonants, as,
—Every lower faculty
Of sense, whereby they hear, see, smell, touch, taste.
THE difference of harmony arising principally from the collocation of vowels and consonants, will be sufficiently conceived by attending to the following passages.
Immortal
Amarant
—there grows
And flow'rs aloft, shading the fount of life,
And where the river of bliss thro' midst of heav'n
Rolls o'er Elysian flow'rs her amber stream
;
With these that never fade, the spirits elect
Bind their resplendent locks inwreath'd with beams.
THE same comparison that I propose to be made between the fourth and sixth verses of this passage, may be repeated between the last lines of the following quotations.
Under foot the violet,
Crocus, and hyacinth, with rich in-lay
Broider'd the ground, more colour'd than with stone,
Of costliest emblem.
Here in close recess,
With flowers, garlands, and sweet-smelling herbs,
Espoused
Eve
first deck'd her nuptial bed:
And heav'nly choirs the hymenean sung.
MILTON,
whose ear had been accustomed, not only to the musick of the antient tongues, which, however vitiated by our pronunciation, excel all that are now in use, but to the softness of the
Italian,
the most mellifluous of all modern poetry, seems fully convinced of the unfitness of our language for smooth versification, and is therefore pleased with an opportunity of calling in a softer word to his assistance; for this reason, and I believe for this only, he sometimes indulges himself in a long series of proper names, and introduces them where they add little but musick to his poem.
—The richer seat
Of
Atabalipa,
and yet unspoil'd
Guiana,
whose great city
Gerion
's sons
Call
El Dorado,
—
The Moon—The
Tuscan
artist views
At evening, from the top of
Fesole
Or in
Valdarno,
to descry new lands.—
HE has indeed, been more attentive to his syllables than to his accents, and does not often offend by collisions of consonants, or openings of vowels upon each other, at least not more often than other writers who have had less important or complicated subjects to take off their care ftom the cadence of their lines.
THE great peculiarity of
Milton
's versification, compared with that of later poets, is the elision of one vowel before another, or the suppression of the last syllable of a word ending with a vowel, when a vowel begins the following word. As
Knowledge—
Oppresses else with surfeit, and soon turns
Wisdom to folly, as nourishment to wind.
THIS licence, though now disused in
English
poetry, is yet allowed in many other languages antient and modern, and therefore the critics on
Paradise Lost
have, without much deliberation, commended
Milton
for continuing it. But one language cannot communicate its rules to another. We have already tried and rejected the hexameter of the antients, the double close of the
Italians,
and the Alexandrine of the
French
; and therefore the elision of vowels, however graceful it may seem to other nations, is not consequently suitable to the genius of the
English
Tongue.
THERE is, indeed, reason to believe that we have negligently lost part of our vowels, and that the silent
e
which our ancestors added to most of our monosyllables, was once vocal. By this detruncation of our syllables, our language is over-stocked with consonants, and it is more necessary to add vowels to the beginning of words, than to cut them off from the end.
MILTON
therefore seems to have somewhat mistaken the nature of our language, of which the chief defect is ruggedness and asperity, and has left our harsh cadences yet harsher. But his elisions are not all equally to be censured; in some syllables they may be allowed, and perhaps in a few days may be safely imitated. The abscision of a vowel is undoubtedly vicious when it is strongly sounded, and makes, with its associate consonant, a full and audible syllable.
—What he gives,
Spiritual, may to purest spirits be found
No
ingrateful food, and food alike these pure
Intelligential substances require.
Fruits,—
Hesperian
fables true,
If true, here
only,
and of delicious taste.
—Evening now approach'd
For we have
also
our evening and our morn.
Of guests he makes them slaves.
Inhospita
bly,
and kills their infant males.
And vital Vir
tue
infus'd, and vital warmth
Throughout the fluid mass.—
God made
thee
of choice his own, and of his own
To serve him.
I BELIEVE every reader will agree that in all those passages, though not equally in all, the music is injured, and in some the meaning obscured. There are other lines in which the vowel is cut off, but it is so faintly pronounced in common speech, that the loss of it in poetry is scarcely perceived; and therefore such compliance with the measure may be allowed.
Nature breeds
Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things,
Abomina
ble,
inuttera
ble
; and worse
Than fables yet have seign'd
—From the shore
They view'd the vast immensura
ble
abyss.
Impenetra
ble,
impal'd with circling fire.
To none communica
ble
in earth or heav'n
YET even these contractions encrease the roughness of a language too rough already; and though in long Poems they may be sometimes suffered, yet it never can be faulty to forbear them.
MILTON
frequently uses in his poems the hypermetrical or redundant line of eleven syllables.
—Thus it shall befall
Him who to worth in woman over-trust
ing
Lets her will rule.—
I also err'd in over-much admir
ing
VERSES of this kind occur almost in every page; but though they are not unpleasing or dissonant, they ought not to be admitted into heroic poetry, since the narrow limits of our language allow us no other distinction of epic and tragic measures, than is afforded by the liberty of changing at will the terminiation of the dramatic lines, and bringing them by that relaxation of metrical rigour nearer to prose.
NUMB. 89.
TUESDAY,
Jan.
22, 1751.
Dulce est disipere in Loco.
HOR.
LOCKE,
whom there is no reason to suspect of being a favourer of idleness or libertinism, has advanced, that whoever hopes to employ any part of his time with efficacy and vigour, must allow some of it to pass in trifles. It is beyond the powers of humanity to spend a whole life in profound study and intense meditation, and the most rigorous exacters of industry and seriousness, have appointed hours for relaxation and amusement.
IT is certain, that, with or without our consent, many of the few moments allotted us will slide imperceptibly away, and that the mind will break, from confinement to it; stated task, into sudden excursions. Severe and connected attention is preserved but for a short time, and when a man shuts himself up in his closet, and bends his thoughts to the discussion of any abstruse question, he will find his faculties continually stealing away to more pleasing entertainments. He often perceives himself transported, he knows not how, to distant tracts of thought, and return to his first object as from a dream, without knowing when he forsook it, or how long he has been abstracted from it.
IT has been observed that the most studious are not always the most learned. There is, indeed, no great difficulty in discovering that this difference of proficiency may arise from the difference of intellectual powers, of the choice of books, or the convenience of information. But I believe it likewise frequently happens that the most recluse are not the most vigorous prosecutors of study. Many impose upon the world, and many upon themselves, by an appearance of severe and exemplary diligence, when they, in reality, give themselves up to the luxury of fancy, please their minds with regulating the past, or planning out the future; place themselves at will in varied situations of happiness, and slumber away their days in voluntary visions. In the journey of life some are left behind, because they are naturally feeble and slow; some because they miss the way, and many because they leave it by choice, and instead of pressing onward with a steady pace, delight themselves with momentary deviations, turn aside to pluck every flower, and repose in every shade.
THERE is nothing more fatal to a man whose business is to think, than to have learned the art of regaling his mind with those airy gratifications. Other vices or follies are restrained by fear, reformed by admonition, or rejected by the conviction which the comparison of our conduct with that of others, may in time produce. But this invisible riot of the mind, this secret prodigality of being is secure from detection, and fearless of reproach. The dreamer retires to his apartments, shuts out the cares and interruptions of mankind, and abandons himself to his own fancy; new worlds rise up before him, one image is followed by another, and a long succession of delights dances round him. He is at last called back to life by nature, or by custom, and enters peevish into society, because he cannot model it to his own will. He returns from his idle excursions with the asperity, tho' not with the knowledge, of a student, and hastens again to the same felicity with the eagerness of a man bent upon the advancement of some favourite science. The insatuation strengthens by degrees, and, like the poison of opiates, weakens his powers without any external symptom of malignity.
IT happens, indeed, that these hypocrites of learning are in time detected, and convinced by disgrace and disappointment of the difference between the labour of thought, and the sport of musing. But this discovery is often not made till it is too late to recover the time that has been fooled away. A thousand accidents may, indeed, awaken drones to a more early sense of their danger and their shame. But they who are convinced of the necessity of breaking from this habitual drowsiness, too often relapse in spite of their resolution; for these ideal seducers are always near, and neither any particularity of time nor place is necessary to their influence; they invade the soul without warning, and have often charmed down resistance before their approach is perceived or suspected.
THIS captivity, however, it is necessary for every man to break, who has any desire to be wise or useful, to pass his life with the esteem of others, or to look back with satisfaction from his old age upon his earlier years. In order to regain liberty, he must find the means of flying from himself; he must, in opposition to the
Stoick
precept, teach his desires to fix upon external things; he must adopt the joys and the pains of others, and excite in his mind the want of social pleasures and amicable communication.
IT is perhaps, not impossible to promote the cure of this mental malady, by close application to some new study, which may pour in fresh ideas, and keep curiosity in perpetual motion. But study requires solitude, and solitude is a state dangerous to those who are too much accustomed to sink into themselves. Active employment, or publick pleasure, is generally a necessary part of this intellectual regimen, without which, though some remission may be obtained, a compleat cure will scarcely be effected.
THIS is a formidable and obstinate disease of the intellect, of which, when it has once become radicated by time, the remedy is one of the hardest tasks of reason and of virtue. Its slightest attacks, therefore, should be watchfully opposed; and he that finds the frigid and narcotick infection beginning to seize him, should turn his whole attention against it, and check it at the first discovery by proper counteraction.
THE great resolution to be formed, when happiness and virtue are thus formidably invaded, is, that no part of life be spent in a state of neutrality or indifference; but that some pleasure be found for every moment that is not devoted to labour; and that, whenever the necessary business of life grows irksome, or disgusting, an immediate transition be made to diversion and gaiety.
AFTER the exercises which the health of the body requires, and which have themselves a natural tendency to actuate and invigorate the mind, the most eligible amusement of a rational being seems to be that interchange of thoughts which is practised in free and easy conversation; where suspicion is banished by experience, and emulation by benevolence; where every man speaks with no other restraint than unwillingness to offend, and hears with no other disposition than desire to be pleased.
THERE must be a time in which every man trifles; and the only choice that nature offers us, is, to trifle in company or alone. To join profit with pleasure, has been an old precept among men who have had very different conceptions of profit. All have agreed that our amusements should not terminate wholly in the present moment, but contribute more or less to future advantage. He that amuses himself among well chosen companions, can scarcely fail to receive, from the most careless and obstreperous merriment which virtue can allow some useful hints; nor can converse on the most familiar topics, without some casual information. The loose sparkles of thoughtless wit may give new light to the mind, and the gay contention for paradoxical positions rectify the opinions.
THIS is the time in which those friendships that give happiness or consolation, relief or security, are generally formed. A wise and good man is never so amiable as in his unbended and familiar intervals. Heroic generosity, or philosophical discoveries may compel veneration and respect, but love always implies some kind of natural or voluntary equality, and is only to be excited by that levity and chearfulness which disencumbers all minds from awe and solicitude, invites the modest to freedom, and exalts the timorous to confidence. This ease and frankness is certain to please, whatever be the character of him that exerts it; if our superiors descend from their elevation, we love them for lessening the distance at which we are placed below them; and inferiors, from whom we can receive no lasting advantage, will always keep our affections while their sprightliness and mirth contributes to our pleasure.
EVERY man finds himself differently affected by the sight of fortresses of war, and palaces of pleasure; we look on the height and strength of the bulwarks with a kind of gloomy satisfaction, for we cannot think of defence without admitting images of danger; but we range delighted and jocund through the gay apartments of the palace, because nothing is impressed by them on the mind but joy and festivity. Such is the difference between great and amiable characters; with protectors we are safe, with companions we are happy.
NUMB. 90.
SATURDAY,
Jan.
26, 1751.
In tenui labor.
VIRG.
IT is very difficult to write on the minuter parts of literature without failing either to please or instruct. Too much nicety of detail disgusts the greatest part of readers, and to throw a multitude of particulars under general heads, and lay down rules of extensive comprehension, is to common understandings of little use. They who undertake these subjects are therefore always in danger, as one or other inconvenience arises to their imagination, of frighting us with rugged science, or amusing us with empty sound.
IN criticising the work of
Milton,
there is, indeed, opportunity to intersperse passages that can hardly fail to relieve the langours of attention; and since, in examining the variety and choice of the pauses with which he has diversified his numbers, it will be necessary to exhibit the lines in which they are to be found, perhaps the remarks may be well compensated by the examples, and the irksomeness of grammatical disquisitions somewhat alleviated.
MILTON formed his scheme of versification by the poets of
Greece
and
Rome,
whom he proposed to himself for his models so far as the difference of his language from theirs would permit the imitation. There are indeed many inconveniencies inseparable from our heroick measure compared with that of
Homer
and
Virgil
; inconveniencies, which, it is no reproach to
Milton
not to have overcome, because they are in their own nature insuperable; but against which he has struggled with so much art and diligence, that he may at least be said to have deserved success.
THE hexameter of the ancients may be considered as consisting of fifteen syllables, so melodiously disposed, that, as every one knows who has examined the poetical authors, very pleasing and sonorous lyrick measures are formed from the fragments of the heroick. It is, indeed, scarce possible to break them in such a manner but that
invenias
etiam disjecti membra poetae,
some harmony will still remain, and the due proportions of sound will always be discovered. This measure therefore allowed great variety of pauses, and great liberties of connecting one verse with another, because wherever the line was interrupted, either part singly was musical. But the ancients seem to have confined this privilege to hexameters; for in their other measures, though frequently longer than the
English
heroick, those who wrote after the refinements of versification venture so seldom to change their pauses, that every variation may be supposed rather a compliance with necessity than the choice of judgment.
MILTON, was constrained within the narrow limits of a measure not very harmonious in the utmost perfection; the single parts, therefore, into which it was to be sometime; broken by pauses, were in danger of losing the very form of verse. This has, perhaps, notwithstanding all his care, sometimes happened.
AS harmony is the end of poetical measures, no part of a verse ought to be so separated from the rest as not to remain still more harmonious than prose, or to shew, by the disposition of the tones, that it is part of a verse. This rule in the old hexameter might be easily observed, but in
English
will very frequently be in danger of violation; for the order and regularity of accents cannot well be perceived in a succession of fewer than three syllables, which will confine the
English
poet to only five pauses; it being supposed, that, when he connects one line with another, he should never make a full pause at less distance than that of three syllables from the beginning or end of a verse.
THAT this rule should be universally and indispensably established, perhaps cannot be granted; something may be allowed to variety, and something to the adaptation of the numbers to the subject; but it will be found generally necessary, and the ear will seldom fail to suffer by its neglect.
THUS when a single syllable is cut off from the rest, it must either be united to the line with which the sense connects it, or be sounded alone. If it be united to the other line, it corrupts its harmony; if disjoined, it must, with regard to musick, be superfluous; for there is no harmony in a single sound, because it has no proportion to another.
Hypocrites austerely talk
Defaming as impure what God declares
Pure
; and commands to some, leaves free to all.
WHEN two syllables likewise are abscinded from the rest, they evidently want some associate sounds to make them harmonious.
—Eyes—
—more wakeful than to drouze
Charm'd with arcadian pipe, the past'ral reed
Of
Hermes,
or his opiate rod.
Mcanwhile
To re-salute the world with sacred light
Leucothea
wak'd.
He ended, and the sun gave signal high
To the bright minister that watch'd:
he blew
His trumpet
First in his cast the glorious lamp was seen,
Regent of day; and all th' horizon round
Invested with bright rays, jocund to run
His longitude through heav'n's high road;
the gray
Dawn, and the pleiades, before him danc'd,
Shedding sweet influence.
THE same defect is perceived in the following lines where the pause is at the second syllable from the beginning.
The race
Of that wild rout that tore the
Thracian
bard
In
Rhodope,
where woods and rocks, had ears,
To rapture, 'till the savage clamour drown'd
Both harp and voice; nor could the muse defend
Her son.
So fail not thou, who thee implores.
WHEN the pause falls upon the third syllable or the seventh, the harmony is better preserved, but as the third and seventh are weak syllables, the period leaves the ear unsatisfied, and in expectation of the remaining part of the verse.
He, with his horrid crew,
Lay vanquish'd, rolling in the fiery gulph,
Confounded though immor
tal.
But his doom
Reserv'd him to more wrath; for now the thought
Both of lost happiness and lasting pain
Torments
him.
God,—with frequent intercourse,
Thither will send his winged messengers
On errands of supernal grace. So sung
The glorious train ascend
ing.
IT may be, I think, established as a rule, that a pause which concludes a period should be made for the most part upon a strong syllable, as the fourth and sixth; but those pauses which only suspend the Sense may be placed upon the weaker. Thus the rest in the third line of the first passage satisfies the ear better than in the fourth, and the close of the second quotation better than of the third.
The evil soon
Drawn back, redounded (as a flood) on those
From whom it
sprung
; impossible to mix
With
blessedness.
—What we by day
Lop overgrown, or prune, or prop, or bind
One night or two with wanton growth derides,
Tending to
wild.
The paths and bow'rs doubt not but our joint hands
Will keep from wilderness with ease as wide
As we need walk, till younger hands ere long
Assist
us.
THE rest in the fifth place has the same inconvenience as in the seventh and third, that the syllable is weak.
Beast now with beast 'gan war, and fowl with fowl,
And fish with fish, to graze the herb all leaving,
Devour'd each
other:
Nor stood much in awe
Of man, but fled
him,
or with countenance grim,
Glar'd on him pass
ing.
THE noblest and most majestic pauses which our versification admits, are upon the fourth and sixth syllables, which are both strongly sounded in a pure and regular verse, and at either of which the line is so divided, that both members participate of harmony.
But now at last the sacred influence
Of light ap
pears,
and from the walls of heav'n
Shoots far into the bosom of dim night
A glimmering
dawn:
here nature first begins
Her farthest verge and chaos to retire.
BUT far above all others, if I can give any credit to my own ear, is the rest upon the sixth syllable, which taking in a complete compass of sound, such as is sufficient to constitute one of our lyrick measures, makes a full and solemn close. Some passages which conclude at this stop, I could never read without some strong emotions of delight or admiration.
Before the hills appear'd, or fountain flow'd,
Thou with the eternal wisdom didst converse,
Wisdom thy sister; and with her didst play
In presence of the almighty father, pleas'd
With thy celestial
Song
Or other worlds they seem'd, or happy isles,
Like those
Hesporian
gardens fam'd of old,
Fortunate fields, and groves, and flow'ry vales,
Thrice happy isles! But who dwelt happy there,
He staid not to
inquire.
He blew
His trumpet, heard in
Oreb
since, perhaps
When GOD descended; and, perhaps, once more
To sound at general
doom.
IF the poetry of
Milton
be examined, with regard to the pauses and flow of his verses into each other, it will appear, that he has performed all that our language would admit; and the comparison of his numbers with those who have cultivated the same manner of writing, will show that he excelled as much in the lower as the higher parts of his art, and that his skill in harmony was not less than his invention or his learning.
NUMB. 91.
TUESDAY,
January
29, 1751.
Dulcis inexpertis cultura potentis amici,
Expertus metuit.
HOR.
THE SCIENCES having long seen their votaries labouring for the benefit of mankind without reward, put up their petition to
Jupiter
for a more equitable distribution of riches and honours.
Jupiter
was moved at their complaints, and touched with the approaching miseries of Men, whom the SCIENCES, wearied with perpetual ingratitude, were now threatening to forsake, and who would have been reduced by their departure to feed in dens upon the mast of trees, to hunt their prey in desarts, and to perish under the paws of animals stronger and fiercer than themselves.
A SYNOD of the celestials was therefore convened, in which it was resolved, that PATRONAGE should descend to the assistance of the SCIENCES. PATRONAGE was the Daughter of ASTREA, by a mortal father, and had been educated in the school of TRUTH, by the Goddesses, whom she was now appointed to protect. She had from her mother that dignity of aspect, which struck terror into false merit, and from her mistress that reserve, which made her only accessible to those whom the SCIENCES brought into her presence.
SHE came down, with the general acclamation of all the powers that favour learning. HOPE danced before her, and LIBERALITY stood at her side, ready to scatter by her direction the gifts which FORTUNE, who followed her, was commanded to supply. As she advanced towards
Parnassus,
the cloud which had long hung over it, was immediately dispelled. The shades, before withered with drought, spread their original verdure, and the flowers that had languished with chilness brightened their colours, and invigorated their scents; the Muses tuned their harps and exerted their voices; and all the conceit of nature welcomed her arrival.
ON
Parnassus
she fixed her residence, in a palace raised by the SCIENCES, and adorned with whatever could delight the eye, elevate the imagination, or enlarge the understanding. Here she dispersed the gifts of FORTUNE, with the impartiality of JUSTICE, and the discernment of TRUTH. Her gate stood always open, and HOPE sat at the portal, inviting to entrance all whom the SCIENCES numbered in their train. The court was therefore thronged with innumerable multitudes, of whom, though many returned disappointed, seldom any had confidence to complain; for PATRONAGE was universally known to neglect few, but for want of the due claims to her regard. Those, therefore, who had solicited her favour without success, generally withdrew from publick notice, and either diverted their attention to meaner employments, or endeavoured to supply their deficiencies by closer application.
IN time, however, the number of those who had miscarried in their pretensions grew so great, that they became less ashamed of their repulses; and instead of hiding their disgrace in retirement, began to besiege the gates of the palace, and obstruct the entrance of such as they thought likely to be more successful. The decisions of PATRONAGE, who was but half a Goddess, had been sometimes erroneous; and though she always made haste to rectify her mistakes, a few instances of her fallibility encouraged every one to appeal from her judgment to his own and that of his companions, who were always ready to clamour in the common cause, and elate each other with reciprocal applause.
HOPE was a steady friend to the disappointed, and IMPUDENCE incited them to accept a second invitation, and lay their claim again before PATRONAGE. They were again, for the most part, sent back with ignominy, but found HOPE not alienated, and IMPUDENCE more resolutely zealous; they therefore, contrived new expedients, and hoped at last to prevail by their multitudes which were always encreasing, and their perseverance which HOPE and IMPUDENCE forbad them to relax.
PATRONAGE having been long a stranger to the heavenly assemblies, began to degenerate towards terrestrial nature, and forget the precepts of JUSTICE and TRUTH. Instead of confining her friendship to the SCIENCES, she suffered herself, by little and little, to contract an acquaintance with PRIDE, the son of FALSEHOOD, by whose embraces she had two daughters, FLATTERY and CAPRICE. FLATTERY was nursed by LIBERALITY, and CAPRICE by FORTUNE, without any assistance from the lessons of the SCIENCES.
PATRONAGE began openly to adopt the sentiments and imitate the manners of her husband, by whose opinion she now directed her decisions with very little heed to the precepts of TRUTH; and, as her daughters continually gained upon her affections, the SCIENCES lost their influence, till none found much reason to boast of their reception, but those whom CAPRICE or FLATTERY conducted to her throne.
THE throngs who had so long waited, and so often been dismissed for want of recommendation from the SCIENCES, were delighted to see the power of those rigorous Goddesses, tending to its extinction. Their patronesses now renewed their encouragements. HOPE smiled at the approach of CAPRICE, and IMPUDENCE was always at hand to introduce her clients to FLATTERY.
PATRONAGE had now learned to procure herself reverence by ceremonies and formalities, and instead of admitting her petitioners to an immediate audience, ordered
the antichamber to be erected, called among mortals, the
Hall of Expectation.
Into this hall the entrance was easy to those whom IMPUDENCE had consigned to FLATTERY, and it was therefore crouded with a promiscuous throng, assembled from every corner of the earth, pressing forward with the utmost eagerness of desire, and agitated with all the anxieties of competition.
THEY entered this general receptacle with ardour and alacrity, and made no doubt of speedy access under the conduct of FLATTERY to the presence of PATRONAGE. But it generally happened that they were here left to their destiny, for the inner doors were committed to CAPRICE, who opened and shut them, as it seemed, by chance, and rejected or admitted without any settled rule of distinction. In the mean time, the miserable attendants, were left to wear out their lives in alternate exultation and dejection, delivered up to the sport of SUSPICION who was always whispering into their ear designs against them which were never formed, and of ENVY who diligently pointed out the good fortune of one or other of their competitors. INFAMY flew round the hall, and scattered mildews from her wings, with which every one was stained; REFUTATION followed her with slower flight, and endeavoured to hide the blemishes with paint, which was immediately brushed away, or separated of itself, and left the stains more visible; nor were the spots of INFAMY ever effaced, but with limpid water effused by the hand of TIME from the well of TRUTH.
IT frequently happened that SCIENCE, unwilling to lose the antient prerogative of recommending to PATRONAGE, would lead her followers into the
Hall of Expectation
; but they were soon discouraged from attending, for not only ENVY and SUSPICION incessantly tormented them, but IMPUDENCE considered them as intruders, and incited INFAMY to blacken them. They therefore quickly retired, but seldom without some spots which they could never wash away, and which shewed that they had once waited in the
Hall of Expectation.
THE rest continued to expect the happy moment, at which CAPRICE should beckon them to approach; and endeavoured to propitiate her not with
Homerical
harmony, the representation of great actions, or the recital of noble sentiments, but with soft and voluptuous melody, intermingled with the praises of PATRONAGE and PRIDE, by whom they were heard at once with pleasure and contempt.
SOME were indeed admitted by CAPRICE, when they least expected it, and heaped by PATRONAGE with the gifts of FORTUNE, but they were from that time chained to her foot-stool, end condemned to regulate their lives by her glances and her nods; they seemed proud of their manacles, and seldom complained of any drudgery, however servile, or any affront, however contemptuous; yet they were often, notwithstanding their obedience, seized on a sudden by CAPRICE, divested of their ornaments, and thrust back into the
Hall of Expectation.
HERE they mingled again with the tumult, and all, except a few whom experience had taught to seek happiness in the regions of liberty, continued to spend hours, and days, and years, courting the smile of CAPRICE with the arts of FLATTERY; till at length new crouds pressed in upon them, and drove them forth at different outlets into the habitations of DISEASE, and SHAME, and POVERTY, and DESPAIR, where they passed the rest of their lives in narratives of promises and breaches of faith, of joys and sorrows, of hopes and disappointments.
THE SCIENCES, after a thousand indignities, retired from the palace of PATRONAGE, and having long wandered over the world in grief and distress, were led at last to the cottage of INDEPENDANCE, the daughter of FORTITUDE; where they were taught by PRUDENCE and PARSIMONY to support themselves in dignity and quiet.
NUMB. 92.
SATURDAY,
Feb.
2, 1751.
Jam nunc minaci murmure cornuum
Perstringis aures, jam litui strepunt.
HOR.
IT has been long observed that the idea of beauty is vague and undefined, different in different minds, and diversified by time or place. It has been a term hitherto used to signify that which pleases us we know not why, and in our approbation of which we can justify ourselves only by the concurrence of numbers, without much power of enforcing our opinion upon others by any argument, but example and authority. It is, indeed, so little subject to the examinations of reason, that
Paschal
supposes it to end where demonstration begins, and maintains that without incongruity and absurdity we cannot speak of
geometrical beauty
TO trace all the sources of that various pleasure which we ascribe to the agency of beauty, or to disentangle all the perceptions involved in its idea, would, perhaps, require a very great part of the life of
Aristotle
or
Plato.
It is, however, in many cases, apparent that this quality is merely relative and comparative; that we pronounce things beautiful, because they have something which we agree, for whatever reason, to call beauty, in a greater degree than we have been accustomed to find it in other things of the same kind; and that we transfer the epithet as our knowledge encreases, and appropriate it to higher excellence, when higher excellence comes within our view.
MUCH of the beauty of writing is of this kind; and therefore
Boileau
justly remarks, that the books which have stood the test of time, and been admired through all the changes which the mind of man has suffered from the various revolutions of knowledge, and the prevalence of contrary customs, have a better claim to our regard than any modern can boast, because the long continuance of their reputation proves that they are adequate to our faculties, and agreeable to nature.
IT is, however, the task of criticism to establish principles; to improve opinion into knowledge; and to distinguish those means of pleasing which depend upon known causes and rational deduction, from the nameless and inexplicable elegancies which appeal wholly to the fancy, from which we feel delight but know not how they produce it, and which may well be termed the enchantresses of the soul. Criticism reduces those regions of literature under the dominion of science, which have hitherto known only the anarchy of ignorance, the caprices of fancy, and the tyranny of prescription.
THERE is nothing in the art of versifying so much exposed to the power of imagination as the accommodation of the sound to the sense, or the representation of particular images, by the flow of the verse in which they are expressed. Every student has innumerable passages, in which he, and perhaps he alone, discovers such resemblances; and since the attention of the present race of poetical readers seems particularly turned upon this species of elegance, I shall endeavour to examine how much these in conformity have been observed by the poets, or directed by the criticks, how far they can be established upon nature and reason, and on what occasions they have been practised by
Milton.
HOMER,
the father of all poetical beauty, has been particularly celebrated by
Dionysius
of
Halicarnassus,
as
he that, of all the poets, exhibited the greatest variety of sound; for there are,
says he,
innumerable passages, in which length of time, bulk of body, extremity of passion, and stillness of repose; or, in which, on the contrary, brevity, speed, and eagerness, are evidently marked out by the sound of the syllables. Thus the anguish and slow pace with which the blind
Polypheme
groped out with his hands the entrance of his cave, are perceived in the cadence of the verses which describe it.
THUS the efforts of
Achilles
struggling in his armour against the current of a river, sometimes resisting and sometimes yielding, may be perceived in the elisions of the syllables, the slow succession of the feet, and the strength of the consonants.
WHEN he describes the crush of men dashed against a rock, he collects the most unpleasing and harsh sounds.
And when he would place before the eyes something dreadful and astonishing, he makes choice of the strongest vowels, and the letters of most difficult utterance.
MANY other examples
Dionysius
produces, but these will sufficiently shew that either he was fanciful, or we have lost the genuine pronunciation; for I know not whether in any one of these instances such similitude can be discovered. It seems, indeed, probable, that the veneration with which
Homer
was read, produced many suppositious beauties; for though it is certain, that the sound of many of his verses very justly corresponds with the things expressed, yet when the force of his imagination, which gave him full possession of every object, is considered together with the flexibility of his language, of which the syllables might be often contracted or dilated at pleasure, it will seem unlikely that such conformity should happen less frequently even without design.
IT is not however to be doubted, that
Virgil
who wrote amidst the light of criticism, and who owed so much of his success to art and labour, endeavoured among other excellencies to exhibit this similitude; nor has he been less happy in this than in the other graces of versification. This felicity of his numbers was at the revival of learning displayed with great elegance by
Vida
in his art of poetry.
Haud satis est illis utcunque claudere versum.—
Omnia sed numeris vocum concordibus aptant,
Atque sono quaecunque canunt imitantur, & apta
Verborum facie, & quaesito carminis ore.
Nam diversa opus est veluti dare versibus ora,—
Hic melior motuque pedum, & pernicibus alis,
Molle viam tacito lapsu per levia radit:
Ille autem membris, ac mole ignavius ingens
Incedit tardo molimine subsidendo.
Ecce aliquis subit egregio pulcherrimus ore,
Cui laetum membris Venus omnibus afflat honorem.
Contra alius iudis, informes ostendit & artus,
Hirsutumque supercilium, ac caudam sinuosam,
Ingratus visu, sonitu illaetabilis ipso.—
Ergo ubi jam nautae spumas salis aere ruentes
Incubuere mari, videas spumare reductis
Convulsum remis, rostrisque stridentibus aequor.
Tunc longe sale saxa sonant, tunc & freta ventis
Incipiunt agitata tumescere: littore fluctus
Illidunt rauco, atque refracta remurmurat unda
Ad scopulos, cumulo insequitur praeruptus aquae mons.—
Cum vero ex alto speculatus caerula Nereus
Leniit in morem stagni, placidaeque paludis,
Labitur uncta vadis abies, natat uncta carina.—
Verba etiam res exiguas angusta sequuntur,
Ingentesque juvant ingentia: cuncta gigantem
Vasta decent, vultus imanes, pectora lata,
Et magni membrorum artus, magna ossa lacertique.
Atque adeo, siquid geritur molimine magno,
Adde moram, & pariter tecum quoque verba laborent
Segnia: seu quando vi multa gleba coactis
Aeternum frangenda bidentibus, aequore seu cum
Cornua velatarum obvertimus antennarum.
At mora si fuerit damno, properare jubebo.
Si se sorte cava extulerit mala vipera terra,
Tolle moras, cape saxa manu, cape robora, pastor;
Ferte citi flammas, date tela, repellite pestem.
Ipse etiam versus ruat, in precepsque feratur,
Immenso cum praecipitans ruit Oceano nox,
Aut cum perculsus gravitur procumbit humi bos.
Cumque etiam requies rebus datur, ipsa quoque ultro
Carmina paulisper cursu cessare videbis
In medio interrupta: quiêrunt cum freta ponti,
Postquam aurae posuere, quiescere protinus ipsum
Cernere erit, mediisque incoeptis sistere versum.
Quid dicam, senior cum telum imbelle sine ictu
Invalidus jacit, & defectis viribus aeger?
Nam quoque tum versus segni pariter pede languet:
Sanguis hebet, frigent effoetae in corpore vires.
Fortem autem juvenem deceat prorumpere in arces,
Evertisse domos, praefractaque quadrupedantum
Pectora pectoribus perrumpere, sternere turres
Ingentes, totoque ferum dare funera campo.
FROM the
Italian
Gardens
Pope
seems to have transplanted this flower, the growth of happier climates, into a soil less adapted to its nature, and less favourable to its increase.
Soft is the strain when
Zephyr
gently blows,
And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;
But when loud billows lash the sounding shore,
The hoarse rough verse should like the torrent roar.
When
Ajax
strives some rock's vast weight to throw,
The line too labours, and the words move slow;
Not so when swift
Camilla
scours the plain,
Flies o'er th' unbending corn, and skims along the main.
FROM these lines laboured with great attention, and celebrated by a rival wit, may be judged what can be expected from the most diligent endeavours after this imagery of sound. The verse intended to represent the whisper of the vernal breeze, must be confessed not much to excel in softness or volubility; and the smooth stream, runs with a perpetual clash of jarring consonants. The noise and turbulence of the torrent, is, indeed, distinctly imaged, for it requires very little skill to make our language rough; but in these lines, which mention the effort of
Ajax,
there is no particular heaviness, obstruction, or delay. The swiftness of
Camilla
is rather contrasted than exemplified; why the verse should be lengthened to express speed, will not easily be discovered. In the dactyls used for that purpose by the ancients, two short syllables were pronounced with such rapidity, as to be equal only to one long; they, therefore, naturally exhibit the act of passing through a long space in a short time. But the
Alexandrine,
by its pause in the midst, is a tardy and stately measure; and the word
unbending,
one of the most sluggish and slow which our language affords, cannot much accelerate its motion.
THESE rules and these examples have taught our present criticks to enquire very studiously and minutely into sounds and cadences. It is, therefore, useful to examine with what skill they have proceeded; what discoveries they have made; and whether any rules can be established, which may guide us hereafter in such researches.
NUMB. 93.
TUESDAY,
February.
5, 1751.
—Experiar quid concedatur in illos
Quorum Flaminiâ tegitur cinis atque Latinâ.
JUV.
THERE are few books on which more time is spent by young students, than on treatises which deliver the characters of authors; nor any which oftener deceive the expectation of the reader, or fill his mind with more opinions which the progress of his studies and the encrease of his knowledge oblige him to resign.
BAILLET
has introduced his collection of the decisions of the learned, by an enumeration of the prejudices which mislead the critick, and raise the passions in rebellion against the judgment. His catalogue, though large, is imperfect; and who can hope to complete it? The beauties of writing have been observed to be often such as cannot in the present state of human knowledge be evinced by evidence, or drawn out into demonstrations; they are therefore wholly subject to the imagination, and do not force their effects upon a mind preoccupied by unfavourable sentiments, nor overcome the counteraction of a false principle or of stubborn partiality.
TO convince any man against his will is hard, but to please him against his will is justly pronounced by
Dryden
to be above the reach of human abilities. Interest and passion will hold out long against the closest siege of diagrams and syllogisms, but they are absolutely impregnable to imagery and sentiment; and will for ever bid defiance to the most powerful strains of
Virgil
or
Homer,
though they may give way in time to the batteries of
Euclid
or
Archimedes.
IN trusting therefore to the sentence of a critick, we are in danger not only from that vanity which exalts writers too often to the dignity of teaching what they are yet to learn, from that negligence which sometimes steals upon the most vigilant caution, and that fallibility to which the condition of nature has subjected every human understanding; but from a thousand extrinsick and accidental causes, from every thing which can excite kindness or malevolence, veneration or contempt.
MANY of those who have determined with great boldness, upon the various degrees of literary merit, may be justly suspected of having passed sentence, as
Seneca
remarks of
Claudius,
Una tantum Parte audita,
Saepe et nulla,
without much knowledge of the cause before them; for it will not easily be imagined of
Langbaine, Borrichitus
or
Rapin,
that they had very accurately perused all the books which they praise or censure; or that, even if nature and learning had qualified them for judges, they could read for ever with the attention necessary to just criticism. Such performances, however, are not wholly without their use; for they are commonly just echoes to the voice of fame, and transmit the general suffrage of mankind when they have no particular motives to suppress it.
CRITICKS, like all the rest of mankind, are very frequently misled by interest. The bigotry with which editors regard the authors whom they illustrate or correct, has been generally remarked.
Dryden
was known to have written most of his critical dissertations only to recommend the works, upon which he then happened to be employed; and
Addison
is suspected to have denied the expediency of poetical justice, because his own
Cata
was condemned to perish in a good cause.
THERE are prejudices which authors, not otherwise weak or corrupt, have indulged without scruple; and perhaps some of them are so complicated with our natural affections, that they cannot easily be disintangled from the heart. Scarce any can hear with impartiality a comparison between the writers of his own and another country; and though it cannot, I think, be charged equally on all nations, that they are blinded with this literary patriotism, yet there are none that do not look upon their authors with the fondness of affinity, and esteem them as well for the place of their birth, as for their knowledge or their wit. There is, therefore, seldom much respect due to comparative criticism, when the competitors are of different countries, unless the judge is of a nation equally indifferent to both. The
Italians
could not for a long time believe, that there was any learning beyond the mountains; and the
French
seem generally persuaded, that there are no wits or reasoners equal to their own. I can scarcely believe that if
Scaliger
had not considered himself as allied to
Virgil,
by being born in the same country, he would have found his works so much superior to those of
Homer,
or have thought the controversy worthy of so much zeal, vehemence, and acrimony.
THERE is, indeed, one prejudice, and only one, by which it may be doubted whether it is any dishonour to be sometimes misguided. Criticism has so often given occasion to the envious and ill-natured of gratifying their malignity, that some have thought it necessary to recommend the virtue of candour without limits or restriction, and to preclude all future ages from the liberty of censure. Writers possessed with this opinion are continually enforcing the duties of civility and decency, recommending to criticks the proper diffidence of themselves, and inculcating the veneration due to celebrated names.
I AM not of opinion that these professed enemies of arrogance and severity, have much more benevolence or modesty than the rest of mankind; or that they feel in their own hearts, any other intention than to distinguish themselves by their softness and delicacy. Some are modest because they are timorous, and some are lavish of praise because they hope to be repaid.
THERE is indeed some tenderness due to living writers, when they attack none of those truths which are of importance to the happiness of mankind, and have committed no other offence than that of betraying their own ignorance or dulness. I should think it cruelty to crush an insect who had provoked me only by buzzing in my ear; and would not willingly interrupt the dream of harmless stupidity, or destroy the jest which makes its author laugh. Yet I am far from thinking this tenderness universally necessary; for he that writes may be considered as a kind of general challenger, whom every one has a right to attack; since he quits the common rank of life, steps forward beyond the lists, and offers his merit to the publick judgment. To commence author is to claim praise, and no man can justly aspire to honour, but at the hazard of disgrace.
BUT whatever be decided concerning contemporaries, whom he that knows the treachery of the human heart, and considers how often we gratify our own pride or envy under the appearance of contending for elegance and propriety, will find himself not much inclined to disturb; there can surely be no exemptions pleaded to secure them from criticism, who can no longer suffer by reproach, and of whom nothing now remains but their writings and their names. Upon these authors the critick is, undoubtedly, at full liberty to exercise the strictest severity, since he endangers only his own fame, and, like
Aeneas
when he drew his sword in the infernal regions, encounters phantoms which cannot be wounded. He may indeed pay some regard to established reputation; but he can by that shew of reverence consult only his own security, for all other motives are now at an end.
THE faults of a writer of acknowledged excellence are more dangerous, because the influence of his example is more extensive; and the interest of learning requires that they should be discovered and stigmatized, before they have the sanction of antiquity conferred upon them, and become precedents of indisputable authority.
IT has, indeed, been advanced by
Addison,
as one of the characteristicks of a true critick, that he points out beauties rather than faults. But it is rather natural to a man of learning and genius, to apply himself chiefly to the study of writers who have more beauties than faults to be displayed; for the duty of criticism is neither to depreciate, nor dignify by partial representations; but to hold out the light of reason, whatever it may discover; and to promulgate the determinations of truth, whatever she shall dictate.
NUMB. 94.
SATURDAY,
Feb.
9, 1751.
—Bonus atque fidus
Judex—per obstantes catervas
Explicuit sua victor arma.
HOR.
THE resemblance of poetick numbers to the subject which they mention or describe, may be considered as general or particular; as consisting in the flow and structure of a whole passage taken together, or as comprised in the sound of some emphatical and descriptive words, or in the cadence and harmony of single verses.
THE general resemblance of the sound to the sense is to be found in every language which admits of poetry, in every author whose force of fancy enables him to impress images strongly on his own mind, and whose choice and variety of language readily supplies him with just representations. To such a writer it is natural to change his measures with his subject, even without any effort of the understanding, or intervention of the judgment. To revolve jollity and mirth necessarily tunes the voice of a poet to gay and sprightly notes, as it fires his eye with vivacity; and reflection on gloomy situations and disastrous events, will sadden his numbers, as it will cloud his countenance. But in such passages there is only the similitude of pleasure to pleasure, and of grief to grief, without any immediate application to particular images. The same flow of joyous versification will celebrate the jollity of marriage, and the exultation of triumph; and the same languor of melody will suit the complaints of an absent lover, as of a conquered king.
IT is scarcely to be doubted, that on many occasions we make the musick which we imagine ourselves to hear; that we modulate the poem by our own disposition, and ascribe to the numbers the effects of the sense. We may observe in life, that it is not easy to deliver a pleasing message in an unpleasing manner, and that we readily associate beauty and deformity with those whom for any reason we love or hate. Yet it would be too daring to declare that all the celebrated adaptations of harmony are chimerical; that
Homer
had no extraordinary attention to the melody of his verse when he described a nuptial festivity;
that
Vida
was merely fanciful, when he supposed
Virgil
endeavouring to represent by uncommon sweetness of numbers the adventitious beauty of
Aeneas
;
Os, humerosque Deo similis: namque ipsa decoram
Caesariem nato genetrix, lumenque juventae
Purpureum, et laetos oculis afflarat honores;
or that
Milton
did not intend to exemplify the harmony which he mentions:
Fountains! and ye that warble, as ye flow,
Melodious murmurs! warbling tune his praise.
THAT
Milton
understood the force of sounds well adjusted, and knew the compass and variety of the ancient measures, cannot be doubted, since he was both a musician and a critick; but he seems to have considered these conformities of cadence, as either not often attainable in our language, or as petty excellencies unworthy of his ambition; for it will not be found that he has always assigned the same cast of numbers to the same subjects. He has given in two passages very minute descriptions of angelick beauty; but though the images are nearly the same, the numbers will be found upon comparison very different.
And now a stripling cherub he appears,
Not of the prime, yet such as in his face
Youth smil'd caelestial, and to ev'ry limb
Suitable grace diffus'd, so well be feign'd
;
Under a coronet his flowing hair
In curls on either cheek play'd
;
wings he wore
Of many a colour'd plume, sprinkled with gold.
Some of the lines of this description are remarkably defective in harmony, and therefore by no means correspondent with that symmetrical elegance and easy grace which they are intended to exhibit. The failure, however, is fully compensated by the representation of
Raphael
which equally delights the ear and imagination.
A seraph wing'd: six wings he wore to shade
His lineaments divine; the pair that clad
Each shoulder broad, came mantling o'er his breast
With regal ornament: the middle pair
Girt like a starry zone his waist, and round
Skirted his loins and thighs, with downy gold,
And colours dipp'd in heav'n: the third his feet
Shadow'd from either heel with feather'd mail,
Sky-tinctur'd grain! like
Maia
's son he stood,
And shook his plumes, that heav'nly fragrance fill'd
The circuit wide—
THE adumbration of particular and distinct images by an exact and perceptible resemblance of sound, is sometimes studied, and sometimes casual. Every language has many words formed in imitation of the noises which they signify. Such are
Stridor, Balo,
and
Boatus,
in
Latin
; and in
English
to
growl,
to
buzz,
to
hiss,
and to
jarr.
Words of this kind give to a verse the proper similitude of sound without much labour of the writer, and such happiness is therefore to be attributed rather to fortune than skill; yet they are sometimes combined with great propriety, and undeniably contribute to enforce the impression of the idea. We hear the passing arrow in this line of
Virgil
;
Et fugit
horrendum stridens
elapsa sagitta;
and the creaking of hell gates, in the description by
Milton
;
Open fly
With impetuous recoil, and jarring sound
Th' infernal doors; and on their hinges grate
Harsh thunder.
BUT many beauties of this kind, which the moderns, and perhaps the ancients have observed, seem to be the product of blind reverence acting upon fancy.
Dionysius
himself tells us, that the sound of
Homer
's verses sometimes exhibits the idea of corporeal bulk: is not this a discovery nearly approaching to that of the blind man, who after long enquiry into the nature of the scarlet colour, found that it represented nothing so much as the clangor of a trumpet? the representative power of poetick harmony consists of sound and measure; of the force of the syllables singly considered, and of the time in which they are pronounced. Sound can resemble nothing but sound, and time can measure nothing but motion and duration.
THE criticks, however, have struck out other similitudes; nor is there any irregularity of numbers which credulous admiration cannot discover to be eminently beautiful. Thus the propriety of each of these lines has been celebrated by writers whose opinion the world has reason to regard,
Vertitur interea coelum, & ruit oceano nox.—
Sternitur, exanimisque tremens procumbit humi bos.—
Parturiunt, montes, nascetur ridiculus mus.—
If all these observations are just, there must be some remarkable conformity between the sudden succession of night to day, the fall of an ox under a blow, and the birth of a mouse from a mountain; since we are told of all these images, that they are very strongly impressed by the same form and termination of the verse.
WE may, however, without giving way to enthusiasm, admit that some beauties of this kind may be produced. A sudden stop at an unusual syllable may image the cessation of action, or the pause of discourse; and
Milton
has very happily imitated the repetitions of an echo,
I fled, and cried out
death
;
Hell trembled at the hideous name, and sigh'd
From all her caves, and back resounded
death.
THE measure or time of pronouncing may be varied so as very strongly to represent, not only the modes of external motion, but the quick or slow succession of ideas, and consequently the passions of the mind. This at least was the power of the spondaick and dactylick harmony, but our language can reach no eminent diversities of sound. We can indeed sometimes, by encumbering and retarding the line, shew the difficulty of a progress made by strong efforts and with frequent interruptions, or mark a slow and heavy motion. Thus
Milton
has imaged the toil of
Satan
struggling through chaos,
So he with difficulty and labour hard
Mov'd on: with difficulty and labour he—
thus he has described the leviathans or whales.
Wallowing, unweildy, enormous in their gait.
But he has at other times neglected such representations, as may be observed in the volubility and levity of these lines, which express an action tardy and reluctant.
Descent and fall
To us is adverse. Who but felt of late,
When the fierce foe hung on our broken rear
Insulting, and pursu'd us through the deep,
With what confusion and laborious flight
We sunk thus low? Th' ascent is easy then.
IN another place, he describes the gentle glide of ebbing waters in a line remarkably rough and halting.
Tripping ebb; that stole
With soft foot tow'rds the deep who now had stopp'd
His sluices.
IT is not indeed to be expected, that the sound should always assist the meaning, but it ought never to counteract it; and therefore
Milton
has here certainly committed a fault like that of the player, who looked on the earth when he implored the heavens, and to the heavens when he addressed the earth.
THOSE who are determined to find in
Milton
an assemblage of all the excellencies which have enobled all other poets, will perhaps be offended that I do not celebrate his versification in higher terms; for there are readers who discover that in this passage,
So stretch'd out huge in length the archfiend lay,
a
long
form is described in a
long
line; but the truth is, that length of body is only mentioned in a
slow
line, to which it has only the resemblance of time to space, of an hour to a maypole.
THE same turn of ingenuity might perform wonders upon the description of the ark;
Then from the mountains hewing timber tall
Began to build a vessel of huge bulk;
Measur'd by cubit, length, breadth, and height.
In these lines the poet apparently designs to fix the attention upon bulk; but this is effected by the enumeration, not by the measure; for what analogy can there be between modulations of sound, and corporeal dimensions.
MILTON, indeed, seems only to have regarded this species of embellishment so far as not to reject it when it came unsought; which would often happen to a mind so vigorous, employed upon a subject so various and extensive. He had, indeed, a greater and a nobler work to perform; a single sentiment of moral or religious truth, a single image of life or nature, would have been cheaply lost for a thousand echoes of the cadence to the sense; and he who had undertaken to
vindicate the ways of God to man,
might have been accused of neglecting his cause, had he lavished much of his attention upon syllables and sounds.
NUMB. 95.
TUESDAY,
Feb.
12, 1751.
Parcus Decorum Cultor, et infrequens,
Insanientis dum sapientiae
Consultus erro, nune retrorsum
Vela dare, atque iterare Cursus
Cogor relictos.
HOR.
To the RAMBLER.
SIR,
THERE are many diseases both of the body and mind, which it is far easier to prevent than to cure, and therefore I hope you will think me employed in an office not useless either to learning or virtue, if I describe the symptoms of an intellectual malady, which, though at first it seizes only the passions, will, if not speedily remedied, infect the reason, and, from blasting the blossoms of knowledge, proceed in time to canker the root.
I WAS born in the house of discord. My parents were of unsuitable ages, conrary tempers, and different religions, and therefore employed the spirit and acuteness which nature had very liberally bestowed upon both, in hourly disputes, and incessant contrivances to detect each other in the wrong; so that from the first exertions of reason I was bred a disputant, trained up in all the arts of domestick sophistry, initiated in a thousand low stratagems, nimble shifts, and sly concealments; versed in all the turns of altercation, and acquainted with the whole discipline of
fending
and
proving.
IT was necessarily my care to preserve the kindness of both the controvertists, and therefore I had very early formed the habit of suspending my judgment, of hearing arguments with indifference, inclining as occasion required to either side, and of holding myself undetermined between them till I knew for what opinion I might conveniently declare.
THUS, Sir, I acquired very early the skill of disputation, and, as we naturally love the arts in which we believe ourselves to excel, I did not let my abilities lie useless, nor suffer my dexterity to be lost for want of practice. I engaged in perpetual wrangles with my school-fellows, and was never to be convinced or repressed by any other arguments than blows, by which my antagonists commonly determined the controversy, as I was, like the
Roman
orator, much more eminent for eloquence than courage.
AT the university I found my predominant ambition completely gratified by the study of logick. I empressed upon my memory a thousand axioms, and ten thousand distinctions, practised every form of syllogism, passed all my Days in the schools of disputation, and slept every night with
Smiglecius
on my pillow.
YOU will not doubt but such a genius was soon raised to eminence by such application: I was celebrated in my third year for the most artful opponent that the university could boast, and became the terror and the envy of all the candidates for philosophical reputation.
MY renown, indeed, was not purchased but at the price of all my time and all my studies. I never spoke but to contradict, nor declaimed but in defence of a position universally acknowledged to be false, and therefore worthy, in my opinion, to beadorned with all the colours of false representation, and strengthened with all the arts of fallacious subtilty.
MY father, who had no other wish than to see his son richer than himself, easily concluded that I should distinguish myself among the professors of the law; and therefore, when I had with great honour taken my first degree, dispatched me to the
temple
with a paternal admonition, that I should never suffer myself to feel shame, for nothing but modesty could retard my fortune.
VITIATED, ignorant, and heady as I was I had not yet lost my reverence for virtue, and therefore could not receive such dictates without horror; but however was pleased with his determination of my course of life, because he placed me in the way that leads soonest from the prescribed walks of discipline and education, to the open fields of liberty and choice.
I WAS now in the place where every one catches the contagion of vanity, and soon began to distinguish myself by sophisms and paradoxes. I declared war against all received opinions and established rules, and levelled my batteries particularly against those universal principles which have stood unshaken in all the vicissitudes of literature, and are considered as the inviolable temples of truth, or the impregnable bulwarks of science.
I APPLIED myself chiefly to those parts of learning which have filled the world with doubt and perplexity, and could readily produce all the arguments relating to matter and motion, time and space, identity and infinity.
I WAS equally able and equally willing to maintain the system of
Newton
or
Descartes,
and favoured occasionally the hypothesis of
Ptolomy,
or that of
Copernicus.
I sometimes exalted vegetables to sense, and sometimes degraded animals to mechanism.
NOR was I less inclined to weaken the credit of history, or perplex the doctrines of polity. I was always of the party which I heard the company condemn.
AMONG the zealots of liberty, I could harangue with great copiousness upon the advantages of absolute monarchy, the secresy of its counsels, and the expedition of its measures; and often celebrated the blessings produced by the extinction of parties, and preclusion of debates.
AMONG the assertors of regal authority, I never failed to declaim with republican warmth upon the original charter of universal liberty, the corruption of courts, and the folly of voluntary submission to those whom nature has levelled with ourselves.
I KNEW the defects of every scheme of government, and the inconveniencies of every law. I sometimes shewed how much the condition of mankind would be improved by breaking the world into petty sovereignties, and sometimes displayed the felicity and peace which universal monarchy would diffuse over the earth.
TO every acknowledged fact I found innumerable objections; for it was my rule to judge of history only by reason, and therefore I made no scruple of bidding defiance to testimony. I have more than once questioned the existence of
Alexander the Great
; and having demonstrated the folly of erecting edifices like the pyramids of
Egypt,
I frequently hinted my suspicion that the world had been long deceived, and that they were to be found only in the narratives of travellers.
IT had been happy for me could I have confined my scepticism to historical controversies, and philosophical disquisitions, but having now violated my reason, and accustomed myself to enquire not after proofs, but objections, I had perplexed truth with falsehood till my ideas were confused, my judgment embarrassed, and my intellects distorted. The habit of considering every proposition as alike uncertain, left me no test by which any tenet could be tried; every opinion presented both sides with equal evidence, and my fallacies began to operate upon my own mind in more important enquiries. It was at last the sport of my vanity to weaken the obligations of moral duty, and efface the distinctions of good and evil, till I had deadened the sense of conviction, and abandoned my heart to the fluctuations of uncertainty, without anchor and without compass, without satisfaction of curiosity or peace of conscience without principles of reason or motives of action.
SUCH is the hazard of repressing the first perceptions of truth, of spreading for diversion the snares of sophistry, and engaging reason against its own determinations.
THE disproportions of absurdity grow less and less visible, as we are reconciled by degrees to the deformity of a mistress; and falsehood, by long use, is assimilated to the mind, as poison to the body.
I HAD soon the mortification of seeing my conversation courted only by the ignorant or wicked, by either boys who were enchanted by novelty, or wretches who having long disobeyed virtue and reason, were now desirous of my assistance to dethrone them.
THUS alarmed, I shuddered at my own corruption, and that pride by which I had been seduced, contributed to reclaim me. I was weary of continual irresolution, and a perpetual equipoise of the mind; and ashamed of being the favourite of those who were scorned and shunned by the rest of mankind.
I THEREFORE retired from all temptations to dispute, prescribed a new regimen to my understanding, and resolved, instead of rejecting all established opinions which I could not prove, to admit all which I could not confute. I forbore to heat my imagination with needless controversies, to discuss questions confessedly uncertain, and refrained steadily from gratifying my vanity by the support of falsehood.
BY this method I am at length recovered from my argumental delirium, and find myself in the state of one awakened from the confusion and tumult of a feverish dream. I rejoice in the new possession of evidence and reality, and step on from truth to truth with confidence and quiet.
I am, Sir, &c. PERTINAX.
NUMB. 96.
SATURDAY,
Feb.
16, 1751.
Quod si
Platonis
musa personat verum,
Quod quisque discit, immemor recordatur.
BOETIUS.
IT is reported of the
Persians,
by an ancient writer that the sum of their education consisted in teaching youth
to ride, to shoot with the bow, and to speak truth.
THE bow and the horse were easily mastered, but it would have been happy if we had been informed by what arts veracity was cultivated, and by what preservatives a
Persian
mind was secured against the temptations to falsehood.
THERE are, indeed, in the present corruption of mankind, many incitements to forsake truth; the need of palliating our own faults, and the convenience of imposing on the ignorance or credulty of others so frequently occur, so many immediate evils are to be avoided, and so many present gratifications obtained by craft and delusion, that very few of those who are much entangled in life, have spirit and constancy sufficient to support them in the steady practice of open veracity.
IN order that all men may be taught to speak truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it; for no species of falsehood is more frequent than flattery, to which the coward is betrayed by fear, the dependent by interest, and the friend by tenderness: Those who are neither servile nor timorous, are yet desirous to bestow pleasure; and while unjust demands of praise continue to be made, there will always be some whom hope, fear or kindness will dispose to pay them.
THE guilt of falsehood is very widely extended, and many whom their conscience can scarcely charge with stooping to a lye, have vitiated the morals of others by their vanity, and patronized the vice which they believe themselves to abhor.
TRUTH is, indeed, not often welcome for its own sake; it is generally unpleasing because contrary to our wishes and opposite to our practice; and as our attention naturally follows our interest, we very unwillingly hear what we are afraid to know, and very soon forget what we have no inclination to impress upon our memories.
FOR this reason many arts of instruction have been invented, by which the reluctance against Truth may be overcome, and as physick is given to children in confections, precepts have been hidden under a thousand appearances, that mankind may be bribed by pleasure to escape destruction.
WHILE the world was yet in its infancy TRUTH came among mortals from above, and FALSEHOOD from below. TRUTH was the daughter of JUPITER and WISDOM; FALSEHOOD was the progeny of FOLLY impregnated by the wind. They advanced with equal confidence to seize the dominion of the new creation, and as their enmity and their force were well known to the celestials, all the eyes of heaven were turned upon the contest.
TRUTH seemed conscious of superior power and juster claim, and therefore came on towering and majestick, unassisted and alone; REASON indeed always attended her, but appeared her follower, rather than companion. Her march was slow and stately, but her motion was perpetually progressive, and when once she had grounded her foot, neither gods nor men could force her to retire.
FALSEHOOD always endeavoured to copy the mien and attitudes of TRUTH, and was very successful in the arts of mimickry. She was surrounded, animated, and supported by innumerable legions of appetites and passions, but, like other seeble commanders, was obliged often to receive law from her allies. Her motions were sudden, irregular, and violent; for she had no steadiness nor constancy. She often gained conquests by hasty incursions, which she never hoped to keep by her own strength, but maintained by the help of the passions, whom she generally found resolute and faithful.
IT sometimes happened that the antagonists met in full opposition. In these encounters, FALSEHOOD always invested her head with clouds, and commanded FRAUD to place ambushes about her. In her left hand she bore the shield of IMPUDENCE, and the quiver of SOPHISTRY rattled on her shoulder. All the passions attended at her call; VANITY clapped her wings before, and OBSTINACY supported her behind. Thus guarded and assisted, she sometimes advanced against TRUTH, and sometimes waited the attack; but always endeavoured to skirmish at a distance, perpetually shifted her ground, and let fly her arrows in different directions; for she certainly found that her strength failed, whenever the eye of TRUTH darted full upon her.
TRUTH had the awful aspect though not the thunder of her father, and when the long continuance of the contest brought them near to one another, FALSEHOOD let the arms of SOPHISTRY fall from her grasp, and, holding up the shield of IMPUDENCE with both her hands, sheltered herself amongst the passions.
TRUTH, though she was often wounded, always recovered in a short time; but it was common for the slightest hurt, received by FALSEHOOD, to spread its malignity to the neighbouring parts, and to burst open again when it seemed to have been cured.
FALSEHOOD, in a short time, found by experience that her superiority consisted only in the celerity of her course, and the changes of her posture. She therefore ordered SUSPICION to beat the ground before her, and avoided with great care to cross the way of TRUTH, who, as she never varied her point, but moved constantly upon the same line, was easily escaped by the oblique and desultory movements, the quick retreats and active doubles which FALSEHOOD always practised, when the enemy began to raise terror by her approach.
BY this procedure FALSEHOOD every hour encroached upon the world, and extended her empire through all climes and regions. Wherever she carried her victories she left the PASSIONS in full authority behind her; who were so well pleased with command, that they held out with great obstinacy when TRUTH came to seize their posts, and never failed to retard her progress though they could not always stop it: They yielded at last with great reluctance, frequent rallies, and sullen submission; and always inclined to revolt when TRUTH ceased to awe them by her immediate presence.
TRUTH who, when she first descended from the heavenly palaces, expected to have been received by universal acclamation, cherished with kindness, heard with obedience, and invited to spread her influence from province to province, now found that, wherever she came, she must force her passage. Every intellect was precluded by PREJUDICE, and every heart preoccupied by PASSION. She indeed advanced, but she advanced slowly, and often lost the conquests which she left behind her, by sudden insurrections of the appetites, that shook off their allegiance, and ranged themselves again under the banner of her enemy.
TRUTH, however, did not grow weaker by the struggle, for her vigour was unconquerable, yet she was provoked to see herself thus baffled and impeded by an enemy, whom she looked on with contempt, and who had no advantage but such as she owed to inconstancy, weakness, and artifice. She therefore, in the anger of disappointment, called upon her father JUPITER to re-establish her in the skies, and leave mankind to the disorder and misery which they deserved by submitting willingly to the usurpation of FALSEHOOD.
JUPITER compassionated the world too much to grant her request, yet was willing to ease her labours and mitigate her vexation. He commanded her to consult the muses by what methods she might obtain an easier reception, and reign without the toil of incessant war. It was then discovered, that she obstructed her own progress by the severity of her aspect, and the solemnity of her dictates; and that men would never willingly admit her, till they ceased to fear her, since by giving themselves up to FALSEHOOD they seldom made any sacrifice of their ease or pleasure, because she took the shape that was most engaging, and always suffered herself to be dressed and painted by DESIRE. The muses wove in the loom of
Pallas,
a loose and changeable robe, like that in which FALSEHOOD captivated her admirers; with this they invested TRUTH, and named her FICTION. She now went out again to conquer with more success; for when she demanded entrance of the PASSIONS, they often mistook her for FALSEHOOD, and delivered up their charge; but when she had once taken possession, she was soon disrobed by REASON, and shone out, in her original form, with native effulgence and resistless dignity.
NUMB. 97
TUESDAY,
Feb.
19, 1751.
Foecunda culpae Secula Nuptias
Primum inquinavere, & genus, & domos,
Hoc Fonte derivata clades
In Patriam Populumque fluxit.
HOR.
THE reader is indebted for this day's entertainment, to an author from whom the age has received greater favours, who has enlarged the knowledge of human nature, and taught the passions to move at the command of virtue.
To the RAMBLER.
SIR,
WHEN the SPECTATOR was first published in single papers, it gave me so much pleasure, that it is one of the favourite amusements of my age to recollect it; and when I reflect on the soibles of those times as described in that useful work, and compare them with the vices now reigning among us, I cannot but wish that you would oftener take cognizance of the manners of the better half of the human species, that if your precepts and observations be carried down to posterity, the SPECTATORS may shew to the rising generation what were the fashionable follies of their grandmothers, the RAMBLER of their mothers, and that from both they may draw instruction and warning.
WHEN I read those SPECTATORS which took notice of the misbehaviour of young women at church by which they vainly hope to attract admirers, I used to pronounce such forward young women SEEKERS, in order to distinguish them by a mark of infamy from those who had patience and decency to stay till they were sought.
BUT I have lived to see such a change in the manners of women, that I would now be willing to compound with them for that name, although I then thought it disgraceful enough, if they would deserve no worse; since now they are too generally given up to negligence of domestick business, to idle amusements, and to wicked rackets, without any settled view at all but of squandering time.
IN the time of the SPECTATOR, excepting sometimes an appearance in the ring, sometimes at a good and chosen play, sometimes on a visit at the house of a grave relation, the young ladies contented themselves to be found employed in domestick duties; for then routs, drums, balls, assemblies, and such like markets for women were not known.
MODESTY and diffidence, gentleness and meekness, were looked upon as the appropriate virtues and characteristick graces of the sex. And if a forward spirit pushed itself into notice, it was exposed in print as it deserved.
THE churches were almost the only places where single women were to be seen by strangers. Men went thither expecting to see them; and perhaps too much for that only purpose.
BUT some good often resulted, however improper was their motive. Both sexes were in the way of their duty. The man must be abandoned indeed, who loves not goodness in another; nor were the young fellows of that age so wholly lost to a sense of right, as pride and conceit has since made them affect to be. When therefore they saw a fair-one whose decent behaviour and chearful piety shewed her earnest in her first duties, they had the less doubt, judging politically only, that she would have a conscientious regard to her second.
WITH what ardor have I seen watched for, the rising of a kneeling beauty? and what additional charms has devotion given to her recommunicated features?
THE men were often the better for what they heard. Even a
Saul
was once found prophesying among the prophets whom he had set out to destroy. To a man thus put into good humour by a pleasing object, religion itself looked more amiably. The MEN SEEKERS of the SPECTATOR'S time loved the holy place for the object's sake, and loved the object for her suitable behaviour in it.
REVERENCE mingled with their love, and they thought that a young lady of such good principles must be addressed only by the man, who at least made a shew of good principles, whether his heart was yet quite right or not.
NOR did the young lady's behaviour, at any time of the service, lessen this reverence. Her eyes were her own, her ears the preacher's. Women are always most observed, when they seem themselves least to observe, or to lay out for observation. The eye of a respectful lover loves rather to receive confidence from the withdrawn eye of the fairone, than to find itself obliged to retreat.
WHEN a young gentleman's affection was thus laudably engaged, he pursued its natural dictates; keeping then was a rare, at least a secret and scandalous vice, and a wife was the summit of his wishes. Rejection was now dreaded, and pre-engagement apprehended. A woman whom he loved, he was ready to think must be admired by all the world. His fears, his uncertainties, increased his love.
EVERY enquiry he made into the lady's domestick excellence, which, when a wife is to be chosen, will surely not be neglected, confirmed him in his choice. He opens his heart to a common friend, and honestly discovers the state of his fortune. His friend applies to those of the young lady, whose parents, if they approve his proposals, disclose them to their daughter.
SHE perhaps is not an absolute stranger to the passion of the young gentleman. His eyes, his assiduities, his constant attendance at a church, whither till of late, he used seldom to come, and a thousand little observances that he paid her, had very probably first forced her to regard, and then inclined her to favour him.
THAT a young lady should be in love, and the love of the young gentleman undeclared, is an heterodoxy which prudence, and even policy, must not allow. But thus applied to, she is all resignation to her parents. Charming resignation, which inclination opposes not.
HER relations applaud her for her duty; friends meet; points are adjusted; delightful perturbations, and hopes, and a few lover's fears, fill up the tedious space, till an interview is granted; for the young lady had not made her cheap at publick places.
THE time of interview arrives. She is modestly reserved; he is not confident. He declares his passion; the consciousness of her own worth, and his application to her parents, take from her any doubt of his sincerity; and she owns herself obliged to him for his good opinion. The enquiries of her friends into his character, have taught her that his good opinion deserves to be valued.
SHE tacitly allows of his future visits; he renews them; the regard of each for the other is confirmed; and when he presses for the favour of her hand, he receives a declaration of an entire acquiescence with her duty, and a modest acknowledgement of esteem for him.
HE applies to her parents therefore for a near day; and thinks himself under obligation to them for the chearful and affectionate manner with which they receive his agreeable application.
WITH this prospect of future happiness, the marriage is celebrated. Gratulations pour in from every quarter. Parents and relations on both sides, brought acquainted in the course of the courtship, can receive the happy couple with countenances illumined, and joyful hearts.
THE brothers, the sisters, the friends of one family, are the brothers the sisters, the friends of the other. Their two families thus made one, are the world to the young couple.
THEIR home is the place of their principal delight, nor do they ever occasionally quit it but they find the pleasure of returning to it augmented in proportion to the time of their absence from it.
OH Mr. RAMBLER! forgive the talkativeness of an old man! when I courted and married my
Laetitia,
than a blooming beauty, every thing passed just so! But how is the case now? The ladies, maidens, wives and widows are engrossed by places of open resort, and general entertainment which fill every quarter of the metropolis, and being constantly frequented, make home irksome. Breakfasting-places, dining-places; routs, drums, concerts, balls, plays, operas, masquerades for the evening, and even for all night, and lately, publick sales of the goods of broken housekeepers, which the general dissoluteness of manners has contributed to make very frequent, come in as another seasonable relief to these modern time-killers.
IN the summer there are in every country town assemblies;
Tunbridge, Bath, Cheltenham, Scarborough!
What expence of dress and equipage is required to qualify the frequenters for such emulous appearance?
BY the natural infection of example, the lowest people have places of six-penny resort, and gaming tables for pence. Thus servants are now induced to fraud and dishonesty, to support extravagance, and supply their losses.
AS to the ladies who frequent those publick places, they are not ashamed to shew their faces wherever men dare go, nor blush to try who shall stare most impudently, or who shall laugh loudest on the publick walks.
THE men who would make good husbands, if they visit those places, are frighted at wedlock, and resolve to live single, except they are bought at a very high price. They can be spectators of all that passes, and, if they please, more than spectators, at the expence of others. The companion of an evening, and the companion for life, require very different qualifications.
TWO thousand pounds in the last age, with a domestick wife, would go farther than ten thousand in this. Yet settlements are expected, that often, to a mercantile man especially, sink a fortune into uselessness; and pin-money is stipulated for, which makes a wife independent, and destroys love, by putting it out of a man's power to lay any obligation upon her, that might engage gratitude, and kindle affection: When to all this the card-tables are added, how can a prudent man think of marrying?
AND when the worthy men know not where to find wives, must not the sex be left to the foplings, the coxcombs, the libertines of the age, whom they help to make such? And need even these wretches marry to enjoy the conversation of those who render their company so cheap?
AND what, after all, is the benefit which the gay coquet obtains by her flutters? As she is approachable by every man without requiring, I will not say incense or adoration, but even common complaisance, every fop treats her as upon the level, looks upon her light airs as invitations, and is on the watch to take the advantage: she has companions indeed, but no lovers; for love is respectful, and timorous; and where among all her followers will she find a husband?
SET, dear Sir, before the youthful, the gay, the inconsiderate, the contempt as well as the danger to which they are exposed. At one time or other, women, not utterly thoughtless, will be convinced of the justice of your censure, and the charity of your instruction.
BUT should your expostulations and reproofs have no effect upon those who are far gone in fashionable folly, they may be retailed from their mouths to their nieces, marriage will not often have intitled these to daughters, when they, the meteors of a day, find themselves elbowed off the stage of vanity by other flutterers; for the most admired women cannot have many
Tunbridge,
many
Bath
seasons to blaze in; since even fine faces, often seen, are less regarded than new faces, the proper punishment of showy girls, for rendering themselves so impolitickly cheap.
I am, SIR, Your sincere admirer, &c.
NUMB. 98.
SATURDAY,
Feb.
23, 1751.
Quae nec
Sarmentus
iniquas
Caesaris
ad Mensas, nec vilis
Gabba
tulisset.
JUV.
To the AUTHOR of the RAMBLER.
Mr. RAMBLER,
YOU have often endeavoured to impress upon your readers an observation of more truth than novelty, that life passes, for the most part, in petty transactions; that our hours glide away in trifling amusements and slight gratifications; and that there very seldom emerges any occasion that can call forth great virtue or great abilities.
IT very commonly hapens that speculation has no influence on conduct. Just conclusions, and cogent arguments, formed by laborious study, and diligent enquiry, are often reposited in the treasuries of memory, as gold in the miser's chest useless alike to others and himself. As some are not richer for the extent of their possessions, others are not wiser for the multitude of their ideas.
YOU have very truly described the state of human beings, but it may be doubted whether you have sufficiently accommodated your precepts to your description; whether you have not generally considered your readers as influenced wholly by the more violent and tragick passions, engaged always in deep designs and important pursuits, and susceptible of pain or pleasure only from powerful agents and from great events.
TO an author who writes not for the elucidation or improvement of any single art, the establishment of any controverted doctrine, or the promotion of any particular purpose, but equally intends the advantage, and equally courts the perusal of all the classes of mankind, nothing can justly seem unworthy of regard, by which the pleasure of conversation may be increased, and the daily satisfactions of familiar life secured from interruption and disgust.
FOR this reason you would not have injured your reputation, if you had sometimes descended to the minuter duties of social beings, and enforced the observance of those little civilities and ceremonious delicacies, which, inconsiderable as they may appear to the man of science, and difficult as they may prove to be detailed with the dignity of a philosopher, yet contribute to the regulation of the world, by facilitating the intercourse between one man and another, and of which the
French
have sufficiently testified their esteem by terming the knowledge and practice of them
Sçavoir vivre, the art of living.
POLITENESS is one of those advantages which we never estimate rightly but by the inconvenience of its loss. Its influence upon the manners is constant and uniform, so that, like an equal motion, it escapes perception. The circumstances of every action are so adjusted to each other, that we do not see where any error could have been committed, and rather acquiefce in its propriety, than admire its exactness.
BUT as sickness shews us the value of ease, a little familiarity with those who were never taught to endeavour the gratification of others, but regulate their behaviour merely by their own will, will soon evince the necessity of established modes and formalities to the happiness and quiet of common life.
WISDOM and virtue are by no means sufficient without the supplemental laws of good-breeding to secure freedom from degenerating to rudeness, or self-esteem from swelling into insolence; and a thousand offences may be committed, and a thousand offices neglected without any remorse of conscience, or reproach from reason.
THE true effect of genuine politeness seems to be rather ease than pleasure. The power of delighting must be conferred by nature, and cannot be delivered by precept, or obtained by imitation; but though it be the privilege of a very small number to ravish and to charm, every man may hope by rules and caution not to give pain, and may, therefore, by the help of good-breeding enjoy the kindness of mankind, though he should have no claim to higher distinctions.
THE universal axiom in which all complaisance is included, and from which flow all the formalities which custom has established in civilised nations, is,
That no man should give any preference to himself.
A rule so comprehensive and certain, that, perhaps, it is not easy for the mind to image an incivility, without supposing it to be broken.
THERE are, indeed, in every place some particular modes of the ceremonial part of good-breeding, which, being arbitrary and accidental, can be learned only by habitude and conversation; such are the forms of salutation, the different gradations of reverence, and all the adjustments of place and precedence. These, however, may be often violated without offence, if it be be sufficiently evident, that neither malice nor pride contributed to the failure, but will not atone, however rigidly observed, for the tumour of insolence, or petulance of contempt.
I HAVE, indeed, not found among any part of mankind, less real and rational complaisance, than among those who have passed their time in paying and receiving visits, in frequenting publick entertainments, in studying the exact measures of ceremony, and in watching all the variations of fashionable courtesy.
THEY know, indeed, at what hour they may beat the door of an acquaintance, how many steps they must attend him towards the gate, and what interval should pass before his visit is returned, but seldom extend their care beyond the exterior and unessential parts of civility, nor refuse their own vanity any gratification, however expensive to the quiet of another.
TRYPHERUS
is a man remarkable for elegance and expence; a man, that having been originally placed by his fortune and rank in the first class of the community, has acquired that air of dignity, and that readiness in the exchange of compliments which courts balls and levees easily confer.
BUT
Trypherus,
without any settled purposes of malignity, partly by his ignorance of human nature, and partly by the habit of contemplating with great satisfaction his own grandeur and riches, is hourly giving disgust to those whom chance or expectation subject to his vanity.
TO a man whose fortune confines him to a small house, he declaims upon the pleasure of spacious apartments, and the convenience of changing his lodging room in different parts of the year; tells him that he hates confinement; and concludes, that if his chamber was less, he should never wake without thinking of a prison.
TO
Eucrates,
a man of birth equal to himself, but of much less estate, he shewed his services of plate, and remarked that such things were, indeed, nothing better than costly trifles, but that no man must pretend to the rank of a gentleman without them; and that for his part, if his estate was smaller, he should not think of enjoying but encreasing it, and would enquire out a trade for his eldest son.
HE has, in imitation of some more acute observer than himself, collected a great many shifts and artifices by which poverty is concealed, and among ladies of small fortune, never fails to talk of frippery and slight silks, and the convenience of a general mourning.
I HAVE been insulted a thousand times with a catalogue of his pictures, his jewels, and his rarities, which, though he knows the humble neatness of my habitation, he seldom fails to conclude by a declaration, that wherever he sees a house meanly furnished, he despises the owner's taste or pities his poverty.
THIS, Mr.
Rambler,
is the practice of
Trypherus,
by which he is become the terror of all who are less wealthy than himself, and has raised innumerable enemies without rivalry, and without malevolence.
YET though all are not equally culpable with
Trypherus,
it is scarcely possible to find any man who does not frequently, like him, indulge his own pride by forcing others into a comparison with himself, when he knows the advantage is on his side, without considering that unnecessarily to obtrude unpleasing ideas is a species of oppression, and that it is little more criminal to deprive another of some real advantage, than to interrupt that forgetfulness of its absence which is the next happiness to actual possession.
I am, &c. EUTROPIUS.
NUMB. 99.
TUESDAY,
February.
26, 1751.
Scilicet ingeniis aliqua est concordia junctis,
Et servat studii foedera quisque sui,
Rusticus agricolam, miles fera bella gerentem,
Rectorem dubiae navita puppis amat.
OVID.
IT has been ordained by providence, for the conservation of order in the immense variety of created nature, and for the regular propagation of the several classes of life with which the elements are peopled, that every creature should be drawn by some secret attraction to those of his own kind; and that not only the gentle and domestick animals which naturally unite into companies or cohabit by pairs, should continue faithful to their species, but even those ravenous and ferocious savages which
Aristotle
observes never to be gregarious, should range mountains and desarts in search of one another, rather than pollute the world with a monstrous birth.
As the perpetuity and distinction of the lower tribes of the creation require that they should be determined to proper mates by some uniform motive of choice, or some cogent principle of instinct; it is necessary likewise, that man whose wider capacity demands more gratifications, and who feels in himself innumerable wants, which a life of solitude cannot supply, and innumerable powers to which it cannot give employment, should be led to suitable companions by particular influence; that among many beings of the same nature with himself, he may select some for intimacy and tenderness, and improve the condition of his existence, by superadding friendship to humanity, and the love of individuals to that of the species.
OTHER animals are so formed, that they seem to contribute very little to the happiness of each other, and know neither joy, nor grief, nor love, nor hatred, but as they are urged by some desire immediately subservient either to the support of their own lives, or to the continuation of their race; they therefore seldom appear to regard any of the minuter discriminations which distinguish creatures of the same kind from one another.
BUT if man were to feel no incentives to kindness, more than his general tendency to congenial nature,
Babylon
or
London,
with all their multitudes, would have to him the desolation of a wilderness; his affections, not compressed into a narrower compass, would vanish like elemental fire, in boundless evaporation, he would languish in perpetual insensibility, suspended between different impulses; and though he might, perhaps, in the first vigour of youth, amuse himself with the fresh enjoyments of life, yet, when curiosity should cease, and alacrity subside, he would abandon himself to the fluctuations of chance, without expecting help against any calamity, or feeling any wish for the happiness of others.
TO love all men is our duty, so far as it includes a general habit of benevolence, and readiness of occasional kindness; but to love all equally is impossible, at least impossible without the extinction of those passions which now produce all our pains and all our pleasures, without the disuse, if not the abolition of some of our faculties, and the suppression of all our hopes and fears in apathy and indifference.
THE necessities of our condition require a thousand offices of tenderness, which mere regard for the species will never dictate. Every man has frequent grievances which only the solicitude of friendship will discover and remedy, and which would remain for ever unheeded in the mighty heap of human calamity, were it only surveyed by the eye of general benevolence equally attentive to every misery.
THE great community of mankind is therefore, necessarily broken into smaller independent societies; these form distinct interests, which are too frequently opposed to each other, and which they who have entered into the league of particular governments falsely think it virtue to promote, however destructive to the happiness of the rest of the world.
SUCH unions are again separated into subordinate classes and combinations, and social life is perpetually branched out into minuter subdivisions, till it terminates in the last ramifications of private friendship.
THAT friendship may at once be fond and lasting, it has been already observed in these papers, that a conformity of inclinations is necessary. No man can have much kindness for him by whom he does not believe himself esteemed, and nothing so evidently proves esteem as imitation.
THAT benevolence is always strongest which arises from participation of the same pleasures, since we are naturally most willing to revive in our minds the memory of persons, with whom the idea of enjoyment is connected.
IT is commonly, therefore, to little purpose that any one endeavours to ingratiate himself with such as he cannot accompany in their amusements and diversions. Men have been known to rise to favour and to fortune, only by being skilful in the sports with which their patron happened to be delighted, by concurring with his taste for some particular species of curiosities, by relishing the same wine, or applauding the same cookery.
EVEN those whom their wisdom or their virtue have placed above regard to such petty recommendations, must nevertheless be gained by similitude of manners. The highest and noblest enjoyment of familiar life, the communication of knowledge and reciprocation of sentiments, must always presuppose a disposition to the same inquiry, and delight in the same discoveries.
WITH what satisfaction could the politician lay his schemes for the reformation of laws, or his comparisons of different forms of government, before the chemist, who has never accustomed his thoughts to any other object than salt and sulphur; or how could the astronomer, in explaining his calculations and conjectures, endure the coldness of a grammarian, who would lose sight of
Jupiter
and all his
satellites,
for a happy etymology of an obscure word, or a better explication of a controverted line.
EVERY man loves merit of the same kind with his own, when it is not likely to hinder his advancement or his reputation; for he not only best understands the worth of those qualities which he labours to cultivate, or the usefulness of the art which he practises with success, but always feels a reflected pleasure from the praises, which, though given to another, belong equally to himself.
THERE is indeed no need of research and refinement to discover that men must generally select their companions from their own state of life, since there are not many minds furnished for great variety of conversation, or adapted to multiplicity of intellectual entertainments.
THE sailor, the academick, the lawyer, the mechanick, and the courtier, have all a cast of talk peculiar to their own fraternity, have fixed their attention upon the same events, have been engaged in affairs of the same sort, and make use of allusions and illustrations which themselves only can understand.
TO be infected with the jargon of a particular profession, and to know only the language of a single rank of mortals, is indeed sufficiently despicable. But as limits must be always set to the excursions of the human mind, there will be some study which every man more zealously prosecutes, some darling subject on which he is principally pleased to converse, and he that can most inform or best understand him, will certainly be welcomed with particular regard.
SUCH partiality is not wholly to be avoided, nor is it culpable unless suffered so far to predominate as to produce aversion from every other kind of excellence, and to shade the lustre of dissimilar virtues. Those, therefore, whom the lot of life has conjoined, should endeavour constantly to approach towards the inclination of each other, invigorate every motion of concurrent desire, and fan every spark of kindred curiosity.
IT has been justly observed, that discord generally operates in little things; it is inflamed to its utmost vehemence by contrariety of taste, oftener than of principles; and might therefore commonly be avoided by innocent conformity, which, if it was not at first the motive, ought always to be the consequence of indissoluble union.
NUMB. 100.
SATURDAY,
March
2. 1751.
Omne vafer vitium ridenti
Flaccus
amico
Tangit, et admissus circum praecordia ludit.
PERSIUS.
To the RAMBLER.
SIR,
AS very many well-disposed persons by the unavoidable necessity of their affairs, are so unfortunate as to be totally buried in the country, where they labour under the most deplorable ignorance of what is transacting among the polite part of mankind, I cannot help thinking, that, as a publick writer, you should take the case of these truly compassionable objects under your consideration.
THESE unhappy languishers in obscurity should be furnished with such accounts of the employments of people of the world, as may engage them in their several remote corners to a laudable imitation; or, at least so far inform and prepare them, that if by any joyful change of situation they should be suddenly transported into the gay scene, they may not gape, and wonder, and stare, and be utterly at a loss how to behave and make a proper appearance in it.
IT is inconceivable how much the welfare of all the country towns in the kingdom might be promoted, if you would use your charitable endeavours to raise in them a noble emulation of the manners and customs of higher life.
FOR this purpose you should give a very clear and ample description of the whole set of polite acquirements; a compleat history of forms, fashions, frolicks, of routs, drums, hurricanes, balls, assemblies, ridottos, masquerades, auctions, plays, operas, puppetshows, and bear-gardens: of all those delights which profitably engage the attention of the most sublime characters, and by which they have brought to such amazing perfection the whole art and mystery of passing day after day, week after week, and year after year, without the heavy assistance of any one thing that formal creatures are pleased to call useful and necessary.
IN giving due instructions through what steps to attain this summit of human excellence, you may add such irresistible arguments in its favour, as must convince numbers, who in other instances do not seem to want natural understanding, of the unaccountable error of supposing they were sent into the world for any other purpose but to flutter, sport, and shine. For, after all, nothing can be clearer than that an everlasting round of diversion, and the more lively and hurrying the better, is the most important end of human life.
IT is really prodigious, so much as the world is improved, that there should in these days be persons so ignorant and stupid as to think it necessary to mispend their time, and trouble their heads about any thing else than pursuing the present fancy; for what else is worth living for?
It is time enough surely to think of consequences when they come; and as for the antiquated notions of duty, they are not to be met with in any
French
novel, or any book one ever looks into, but derived almost wholly from the writings of authors, who lived a vast many ages ago, and who, as they totally without any idea of those accompilshments which now characterise people of distinction, have been for some time sinking apace into utter contempt. It does not appear that even their most zealous admirers, for some partisans of his own sort every writer will have, can pretend to say they were ever at one ridotto.
IN the important article of diversions, the ceremonial of visits, the extatick delight of unfriendly intimacies and unmeaning civilities, they are absolutely silent. Blunt truth, and downright honesty, plain clothes, staying at home, hard work, few words, and those unenlivened with censure or double meaning, are what they recommend as the ornaments and pleasures of life. Little oaths, polite dissimulation, tea-table scandal, delightful indolence, the glitter of finery, the triumph of precedence, the enchantments of flattery, they seem to have had no notion of, and I cannot but laugh to think what a figure they would have made in a drawing-room, and how frighted they would have looked at a gaming-table.
THE noble zeal of patriotism that disdains authority, and tramples on laws for sport, was absolutely the aversion of these tame wretches.
INDEED one cannot but discover any one thing they pretend to teach people, but to be wise, and good; acquirements infinitely below the consideration of persons of taste and spirit, who know how to spend their time to so much better purpose.
AMONG other admirable improvements, pray, Mr.
Rambier,
do not forget to enlarge on the very extensive benefit of playing at cards on Sundays, a practice of such infinite use, that we may modestly expect to see it prevail universally in all parts of this kingdom.
TO persons of fashion, the advantage is obvious, because as for some strange reason or other, which no fine gentleman or fine lady has yet been able to penetrate, there is neither play, nor masquerade, nor bottled conjuror, nor any other thing worth living for, to be had on a Sunday, if it were not for the charitable assistance of whist or bragg, the genteel part of mankind must one day in seven, necessarily suffer a total extinction of being.
NOR are the persons of high rank the only gainers by so salutary a custom, which extends its good influence, in some degree, to the lower orders of people; but were it quite general how much better and happier would the world be than it is even now!
'TIS hard upon poor creatures, be they ever so mean, to deny them those enjoyments and liberties which are equally open for all. Yet if servants were taught to go to church on this day, spend some part of it in reading or receiving instruction in a family way, and the rest in mere friendly conversation, the poor wretches would infallibly take it into their heads, that they were obliged to be sober, modest, diligent, and faithful to their masters and mistresses.
NOW surely no one of common prudence or humanity would wish their domesticks infected with such strange and primitive notions, or laid under such unmerciful restraints: All which may, in a great measure, be prevented by the prevalence of the good-humoured fashion that I would have you recommend, For when the lower kind of people see their betters with a truly laudable spirit, insulting and flying in the face of those rude, ill-bred dictators, piety and the laws, they are thereby excited and admonished, as far as actions can admonish and excite, and taught that they too have an equal right of setting them at defiance in such instances as their particular necessities and inclinations may require; and thus is the liberty of the whole human species mightily improved and enlarged.
IN short, Mr.
Rambler,
by a faithful representation of the numberless benefits of a modish life, you will have done your part in promoting what every body seems to confess the true purpose of human existence, perpetual dissipation.
BY encouraging people to employ their whole attention on trifles, and make amusement their sole study, you will teach them how to avoid many very uneasy reflections.
ALL the soft feelings of humanity, the sympathies of friendship, all natural temptations to the care of a family, and solicitude about the good or ill of others, with the whole train of domestick and social affections, which create such daily anxieties and embarrasments, will be happily stifled and suppressed in a round of perpetual delights; and all serious thoughts, but particularly that of
hereafter,
be banished out of the world; a most perplexing apprehension, but luckily a most groundless one too, as it is so very clear a case, that nobody ever dies.
I am, &c. CHARIESSA.
The End of the Third Volume.