Chapter 2

_Plato_.--Your notions are just, and if your country rejects them she will not long hold the rank of the first nation in Europe. Her declension is begun, her ruin approaches; for, omitting all other arguments, can a state be well served when the raising of an opulent fortune in its service, and making a splendid use of that fortune, is a distinction more envied than any which arises from integrity in office or public spirit in government? Can that spirit, which is the parent of national greatness, continue vigorous and diffusive where the desire of wealth, for the sake of a luxury which wealth alone can support, and an ambition aspiring, not to glory, but to profit, are the predominant passions? If it exists in a king or a minister of state, how will either of them find among a people so disposed the necessary instruments to execute his great designs; or, rather, what obstruction will he not find from the continual opposition of private interest to public? But if, on the contrary, a court inclines to tyranny, what a facility will be given by these dispositions to that evil purpose? How will men with minds relaxed by the enervating ease and softness of luxury have vigour to oppose it? Will not most of them lean to servitude, as their natural state, as that in which the extravagant and insatiable cravings of their artificial wants may best be gratified at the charge of a bountiful master or by the spoils of an enslaved and ruined people? When all sense of public virtue is thus destroyed, will not fraud, corruption, and avarice, or the opposite workings of court factions to bring disgrace on each other, ruin armies and fleets without the help of an enemy, and give up the independence of the nation to foreigners, after having betrayed its liberties to a king? All these mischiefs you saw attendant on that luxury, which some modern philosophers account (as I am informed) the highest good to a state! Time will show that their doctrines are pernicious to society, pernicious to government; and that yours, tempered and moderated so as to render them more practicable in the present circumstances of your country, are wise, salutary, and deserving of the general thanks of mankind. But lest you should think, from the praise I have given you, that flattery can find a place in Elysium, allow me to lament, with the tender sorrow of a friend, that a man so superior to all other follies could give into the reveries of a Madame Guyon, a distracted enthusiast. How strange was it to see the two great lights of France, you and the Bishop of Meaux, engaged in a controversy whether a madwoman was a heretic or a saint!

_Fenelon_.--I confess my own weakness, and the ridiculousness of the dispute; but did not your warm imagination carry you also into some reveries about divine love, in which you talked unintelligibly, even to yourself?

_Plato_.--I felt something more than I was able to express.

_Fenelon_.--I had my feelings too, as fine and as lively as yours; but we should both have done better to have avoided those subjects in which sentiment took the place of reason.

DIALOGUE IV.

MR. ADDISON--DR. SWIFT.

_Dr. Swift_.--Surely, Addison, Fortune was exceedingly inclined to play the fool (a humour her ladyship, as well as most other ladies of very great quality, is frequently in) when she made you a minister of state and me a divine!

_Addison_.--I must confess we were both of us out of our elements; but you don't mean to insinuate that all would have been right if our destinies had been reversed?

_Swift_.--Yes, I do. You would have made an excellent bishop, and I should have governed Great Britain, as I did Ireland, with an absolute sway, while I talked of nothing but liberty, property, and so forth.

_Addison_.--You governed the mob of Ireland; but I never understood that you governed the kingdom. A nation and a mob are very different things.

_Swift_.--Ay, so you fellows that have no genius for politics may suppose; but there are times when, by seasonably putting himself at the head of the mob, an able man may get to the head of the nation. Nay, there are times when the nation itself is a mob, and ought to be treated as such by a skilful observer.

_Addison_.--I don't deny the truth of your proposition; but is there no danger that, from the natural vicissitudes of human affairs, the favourite of the mob should be mobbed in his turn?

_Swift_.--Sometimes there may, but I risked it, and it answered my purpose. Ask the lord-lieutenants, who were forced to pay court to me instead of my courting them, whether they did not feel my superiority. And if I could make myself so considerable when I was only a dirty Dean of St. Patrick's, without a seat in either House of Parliament, what should I have done if Fortune had placed me in England, unencumbered with a gown, and in a situation that would have enabled me to make myself heard in the House of Lords or of Commons?

_Addison_.--You would undoubtedly have done very marvellous acts! Perhaps you might then have been as zealous a Whig as my Lord Wharton himself; or, if the Whigs had unhappily offended the statesman as they did the doctor, who knows whether you might not have brought in the Pretender? Pray let me ask you one question between you and me: If your great talents had raised you to the office of first minister under that prince, would you have tolerated the Protestant religion or not?

_Swift_.--Ha! Mr. Secretary, are you witty upon me? Do you think, because Sunderland took a fancy to make you a great man in the state, that he, or his master, could make you as great in wit as Nature made me? No, no; wit is like grace, it must be given from above. You can no more get that from the king than my lords the bishops can the other. And, though I will own you had some, yet believe me, my good friend, it was no match for mine. I think you have not vanity enough in your nature to pretend to a competition in that point with me.

_Addison_.--I have been told by my friends that I was rather too modest, so I will not determine this dispute for myself, but refer it to Mercury, the god of wit, who fortunately happens to be coming this way with a soul he has brought to the Shades.

Hail, divine Hermes! A question of precedence in the class of wit and humour, over which you preside, having arisen between me and my countryman, Dr. Swift, we beg leave--

_Mercury_.--Dr. Swift, I rejoice to see you. How does my old lad? How does honest Lemuel Gulliver? Have you been in Lilliput lately, or in the Flying Island, or with your good nurse Glumdalclitch? Pray when did you eat a crust with Lord Peter? Is Jack as mad still as ever? I hear that since you published the history of his case the poor fellow, by more gentle usage, is almost got well. If he had but more food he would be as much in his senses as Brother Martin himself; but Martin, they tell me, has lately spawned a strange brood of Methodists, Moravians, Hutchinsonians, who are madder than ever Jack was in his worst days. It is a great pity you are not alive again to make a new edition of your "Tale of the Tub" for the use of these fellows. Mr. Addison, I beg your pardon; I should have spoken to you sooner, but I was so struck with the sight of my old friend the doctor, that I forgot for a time the respects due to you.

_Swift_.--Addison, I think our dispute is decided before the judge has heard the cause.

_Addison_.--I own it is in your favour, but--

_Mercury_.--Don't be discouraged, friend Addison. Apollo perhaps would have given a different judgment. I am a wit, and a rogue, and a foe to all dignity. Swift and I naturally like one another. He worships me more than Jupiter, and I honour him more than Homer; but yet, I assure you, I have a great value for you. Sir Roger de Coverley, Will Honeycomb, Will Wimble, the Country Gentleman in the Freeholder, and twenty more characters, drawn with the finest strokes of unaffected wit and humour in your admirable writings, have obtained for you a high place in the class of my authors, though not quite so high a one as the Dean of St. Patrick's. Perhaps you might have got before him if the decency of your nature and the cautiousness of your judgment would have given you leave. But, allowing that in the force and spirit of his wit he has really the advantage, how much does he yield to you in all the elegant graces, in the fine touches of delicate sentiment, in developing the secret springs of the soul, in showing the mild lights and shades of a character, in distinctly marking each line, and every soft gradation of tints, which would escape the common eye? Who ever painted like you the beautiful parts of human nature, and brought them out from under the shade even of the greatest simplicity, or the most ridiculous weaknesses; so that we are forced to admire and feel that we venerate, even while we are laughing? Swift was able to do nothing that approaches to this. He could draw an ill face, or caricature a good one, with a masterly hand; but there was all his power, and, if I am to speak as a god, a worthless power it is. Yours is divine. It tends to exalt human nature.

_Swift_.--Pray, good Mercury (if I may have liberty to say a word for myself) do you think that my talent was not highly beneficial to correct human nature? Is whipping of no use to mend naughty boys?

_Mercury_.--Men are generally not so patient of whipping as boys, and a rough satirist is seldom known to mend them. Satire, like antimony, if it be used as a medicine, must be rendered less corrosive. Yours is often rank poison. But I will allow that you have done some good in your way, though not half so much as Addison did in his.

_Addison_.--Mercury, I am satisfied. It matters little what rank you assign me as a wit, if you give me the precedence as a friend and benefactor to mankind.

_Mercury_.--I pass sentence on the writers, not the men, and my decree is this:--When any hero is brought hither who wants to be humbled, let the talk of lowering his arrogance be assigned to Swift. The same good office may be done to a philosopher vain of his wisdom and virtue, or to a bigot puffed up with spiritual pride. The doctor's discipline will soon convince the first, that with all his boasted morality, he is but a Yahoo; and the latter, that to be holy he must necessarily be humble. I would also have him apply his anticosmetic wash to the painted face of female vanity, and his rod, which draws blood at every stroke, to the hard back of insolent folly or petulant wit. But Addison should be employed to comfort those whose delicate minds are dejected with too painful a sense of some infirmities in their nature. To them he should hold his fair and charitable mirror, which would bring to their sight their hidden excellences, and put them in a temper fit for Elysium.--Adieu. Continue to esteem and love each other, as you did in the other world, though you were of opposite parties, and, what is still more wonderful, rival wits. This alone is sufficient to entitle you both to Elysium.

DIALOGUE V.

ULYSSES--CIRCE.--IN CIRCE'S ISLAND.

_Circe_.--You will go then, Ulysses, but tell me, without reserve, what carries you from me?

_Ulysses_.--Pardon, goddess, the weakness of human nature. My heart will sigh for my country. It is an attachment which all my admiration of you cannot entirely overcome.

_Circe_.--This is not all. I perceive you are afraid to declare your whole mind. But what, Ulysses, do you fear? My terrors are gone. The proudest goddess on earth, when she has favoured a mortal as I have favoured you, has laid her divinity and power at his feet.

_Ulysses_.--It may be so while there still remains in her heart the tenderness of love, or in her mind the fear of shame. But you, Circe, are above those vulgar sensations.

_Circe_.--I understand your caution; it belongs to your character, and therefore, to remove all diffidence from you, I swear by Styx I will do no manner of harm, either to you or your friends, for anything which you say, however offensive it may be to my love or my pride, but will send you away from my island with all marks of my friendship. Tell me now, truly, what pleasures you hope to enjoy in the barren rock of Ithaca, which can compensate for those you leave in this paradise, exempt from all cares and overflowing with all delights?

_Ulysses_.--The pleasures of virtue; the supreme happiness of doing good. Here I do nothing. My mind is in a palsy; all its faculties are benumbed. I long to return into action, that I may worthily employ those talents which I have cultivated from the earliest days of my youth. Toils and cares fright not me; they are the exercise of my soul; they keep it in health and in vigour. Give me again the fields of Troy, rather than these vacant groves. There I could reap the bright harvest of glory; here I am hid like a coward from the eyes of mankind, and begin to appear comtemptible in my own. The image of my former self haunts and seems to upbraid me wheresoever I go. I meet it under the gloom of every shade; it even intrudes itself into your presence and chides me from your arms. O goddess, unless you have power to lay that spirit, unless you can make me forget myself, I cannot be happy here, I shall every day be more wretched.

_Circe_.--May not a wise and good man, who has spent all his youth in active life and honourable danger, when he begins to decline, be permitted to retire and enjoy the rest of his days in quiet and pleasure?

_Ulysses_.--No retreat can be honourable to a wise and good man but in company with the muses. Here I am deprived of that sacred society. The muses will not inhabit the abodes of voluptuousness and sensual pleasure. How can I study or think while such a number of beasts--and the worst beasts are men turned into beasts--are howling or roaring or grunting all about me?

_Circe_.--There may be something in this, but this I know is not all. You suppress the strongest reason that draws you to Ithaca. There is another image besides that of your former self, which appears to you in this island, which follows you in your walks, which more particularly interposes itself between you and me, and chides you from my arms. It is Penelope, Ulysses, I know it is. Don't pretend to deny it. You sigh for Penelope in my bosom itself. And yet she is not an immortal. She is not, as I am, endowed by Nature with the gift of unfading youth. Several years have passed since hers has been faded. I might say, without vanity, that in her best days she was never so handsome as I. But what is she now?

_Ulysses_.--You have told me yourself, in a former conversation, when I inquired of you about her, that she is faithful to my bed, and as fond of me now, after twenty years' absence, as at the time when I left her to go to Troy. I left her in the bloom of youth and beauty. How much must her constancy have been tried since that time! How meritorious is her fidelity! Shall I reward her with falsehood? Shall I forget my Penelope, who can't forget me, who has no pleasure so dear to her as my remembrance?

_Circe_.--Her love is preserved by the continual hope of your speedy return. Take that hope from her. Let your companions return, and let her know that you have fixed your abode with me, that you have fixed it for ever. Let her know that she is free to dispose as she pleases of her heart and her hand. Send my picture to her, bid her compare it with her own face. If all this does not cure her of the remains of her passion, if you don't hear of her marrying Eurymachus in a twelvemonth, I understand nothing of womankind.

_Ulysses_.--O cruel goddess! why will you force me to tell you truths I desire to conceal? If by such unmerited, such barbarous usage I could lose her heart it would break mine. How should I be able to endure the torment of thinking that I had wronged such a wife? What could make me amends for her being no longer mine, for her being another's? Don't frown, Circe, I must own--since you will have me speak--I must own you could not. With all your pride of immortal beauty, with all your magical charms to assist those of Nature, you are not so powerful a charmer as she. You feel desire, and you give it, but you have never felt love, nor can you inspire it. How can I love one who would have degraded me into a beast? Penelope raised me into a hero. Her love ennobled, invigorated, exalted my mind. She bid me go to the siege of Troy, though the parting with me was worse than death to herself. She bid me expose myself there to all the perils of war among the foremost heroes of Greece, though her poor heart sunk and trembled at every thought of those perils, and would have given all its own blood to save a drop of mine. Then there was such a conformity in all our inclinations! When Minerva was teaching me the lessons of wisdom she delighted to be present. She heard, she retained, she gave them back to me softened and sweetened with the peculiar graces of her own mind. When we unbent our thoughts with the charms of poetry, when we read together the poems of Orpheus, Musaeus, and Linus, with what taste did she discern every excellence in them! My feelings were dull compared to hers. She seemed herself to be the muse who had inspired those verses, and had tuned their lyres to infuse into the hearts of mankind the love of wisdom and virtue and the fear of the gods. How beneficent was she, how tender to my people! What care did she take to instruct them in all the finer arts, to relieve the necessities of the sick and aged, to superintend the education of children, to do my subjects every good office of kind intercession, to lay before me their wants, to mediate for those who were objects of mercy, to sue for those who deserved the favours of the Crown. And shall I banish myself for ever from such a consort? Shall I give up her society for the brutal joys of a sensual life, keeping indeed the exterior form of a man, but having lost the human soul, or at least all its noble and godlike powers? Oh, Circe, it is impossible, I can't bear the thought.

_Circe_.--Begone; don't imagine that I ask you to stay a moment longer. The daughter of the sun is not so mean-spirited as to solicit a mortal to share her happiness with her. It is a happiness which I find you cannot enjoy. I pity and despise you. All you have said seems to me a jargon of sentiments fitter for a silly woman than a great man. Go read, and spin too, if you please, with your wife. I forbid you to remain another day in my island. You shall have a fair wind to carry you from it. After that may every storm that Neptune can raise pursue and overwhelm you. Begone, I say, quit my sight.

_Ulysses_.--Great goddess, I obey, but remember your oath.

DIALOGUE VI.

MERCURY--AN ENGLISH DUELLIST--A NORTH AMERICAN SAVAGE.

_The Duellist_.--Mercury, Charon's boat is on the other side of the water. Allow me, before it returns, to have some conversation with the North American savage whom you brought hither with me. I never before saw one of that species. He looks very grim. Pray, sir, what is your name? I understand you speak English.

_Savage_.--Yes, I learnt it in my childhood, having been bred for some years among the English of New York. But before I was a man I returned to my valiant countrymen, the Mohawks; and having been villainously cheated by one of yours in the sale of some rum, I never cared to have anything to do with them afterwards. Yet I took up the hatchet for them with the rest of my tribe in the late war against France, and was killed while I was out upon a scalping party. But I died very well satisfied, for my brethren were victorious, and before I was shot I had gloriously scalped seven men and five women and children. In a former war I had performed still greater exploits. My name is the Bloody Bear; it was given me to express my fierceness and valour.

_Duellist_.--Bloody Bear, I respect you, and am much your humble servant. My name is Tom Pushwell, very well known at Arthur's. I am a gentleman by my birth, and by profession a gamester and man of honour. I have killed men in fair fighting, in honourable single combat, but don't understand cutting the throats of women and children.

_Savage_.--Sir, that is our way of making war. Every nation has its customs. But, by the grimness of your countenance, and that hole in your breast, I presume you were killed, as I was, in some scalping party. How happened it that your enemy did not take off your scalp?

_Duellist_.--Sir, I was killed in a duel. A friend of mine had lent me a sum of money. After two or three years, being in great want himself, he asked me to pay him. I thought his demand, which was somewhat peremptory, an affront to my honour, and sent him a challenge. We met in Hyde Park. The fellow could not fence: I was absolutely the adroitest swordsman in England, so I gave him three or four wounds; but at last he ran upon me with such impetuosity, that he put me out of my play, and I could not prevent him from whipping me through the lungs. I died the next day, as a man of honour should, without any snivelling signs of contrition or repentance; and he will follow me soon, for his surgeon has declared his wounds to be mortal. It is said that his wife is dead of grief, and that his family of seven children will be undone by his death. So I am well revenged, and that is a comfort. For my part, I had no wife. I always hated marriage.

_Savage_.--Mercury, I won't go in a boat with that fellow. He has murdered his countryman--he has murdered his friend: I say, positively, I won't go in a boat with that fellow. I will swim over the River, I can swim like a duck.

_Mercury_.--Swim over the Styx! it must not be done; it is against the laws of Pluto's Empire. You must go in the boat, and be quiet.

_Savage_.--Don't tell me of laws, I am a savage. I value no laws. Talk of laws to the Englishman. There are laws in his country, and yet you see he did not regard them, for they could never allow him to kill his fellow-subject, in time of peace, because he asked him to pay a debt. I know indeed, that the English are a barbarous nation, but they can't possibly be so brutal as to make such things lawful.

_Mercury_.--You reason well against him. But how comes it that you are so offended with murder; you, who have frequently massacred women in their sleep, and children in the cradle?

_Savage_.--I killed none but my enemies. I never killed my own countrymen. I never killed my friend. Here, take my blanket, and let it come over in the boat, but see that the murderer does not sit upon it, or touch it. If he does, I will burn it instantly in the fire I see yonder. Farewell! I am determined to swim over the water.

_Mercury_.--By this touch of my wand I deprive thee of all thy strength. Swim now if thou canst.

_Savage_.--This is a potent enchanter. Restore me my strength, and I promise to obey thee.

_Mercury_.--I restore it: but be orderly, and do as I bid you; otherwise worse will befall you.

_Duellist_.--Mercury, leave him to me. I'll tutor him for you. Sirrah, savage, dost thou pretend to be ashamed of my company? Dost thou know I have kept the best company in England?

_Savage_.--I know thou art a scoundrel! Not pay thy debts! kill thy friend who lent thee money for asking thee for it! Get out of my sight! I will drive thee into Styx!

_Mercury_.--Stop! I command thee. No violence! Talk to him calmly.

_Savage_.--I must obey thee. Well, sir, let me know what merit you had to introduce you into good company? What could you do?

_Duellist_.--Sir, I gamed, as I told you. Besides, I kept a good table. I eat as well as any man either in England or France.