Part I. Printed for B. Lintott" (_Daily Courant_, August 31, 1710).
[105] I cannot find any notice in the _London Gazette_ or elsewhere of the bankruptcy of Bernard Lintott, who is no doubt here referred to. It almost seems as if Addison inserted the initials of the flourishing bookseller in retaliation for the publication by Lintott of the satirical "Annotations on the _Tatler_."
=No. 225.= [STEELE.
From _Thursday, Sept. 14_, to _Saturday, Sept. 16, 1710_.
----Si quid novisti rectius istis, Candidus imperti; si non, his utere mecum.
HOR., 1 Ep. vi. 67.
_From my own Apartment, Sept. 15._
The hours which we spend in conversation are the most pleasing of any which we enjoy; yet, methinks, there is very little care taken to improve ourselves for the frequent repetition of them. The common fault in this case, is that of growing too intimate, and falling into displeasing familiarities: for it is a very ordinary thing for men to make no other use of a close acquaintance with each other's affairs, but to tease one another with unacceptable allusions. One would pass over patiently such as converse like animals, and salute each other with bangs on the shoulder, sly raps with canes, or other robust pleasantries practised by the rural gentry of this nation: but even among those who should have more polite ideas of things, you see a set of people who invert the design of conversation, and make frequent mention of ungrateful subjects; nay, mention them because they are ungrateful; as if the perfection of society were in knowing how to offend on the one part, and how to bear an offence on the other. In all parts of this populous town you find the merry world made up of an active and a passive companion; one who has good-nature enough to suffer all his friend shall think fit to say, and one who is resolved to make the most of his good-humour to show his parts. In the trading part of mankind, I have ever observed the jest went by the weight of purses, and the ridicule is made up by the gains which arise from it. Thus the packer allows the clothier to say what he pleases, and the broker has his countenance ready to laugh with the merchant, though the abuse is to fall on himself, because he knows that, as a go-between, he shall find his account in being in the good graces of a man of wealth. Among these just and punctual people, the richest man is ever the better jester; and they know no such thing as a person who shall pretend to a superior laugh at a man, who does not make him amends by opportunities of advantage in another kind: but among people of a different way, where the pretended distinction in company is only what is raised from sense and understanding, it is very absurd to carry on a rough raillery so far, as that the whole discourse should turn upon each other's infirmities, follies, or misfortunes.
I was this evening with a set of wags of this class. They appear generally by two and two; and what is most extraordinary, is, that those very persons who are most together, appear least of a mind when joined by other company. This evil proceeds from an indiscreet familiarity, whereby a man is allowed to say the most grating thing imaginable to another, and it shall be accounted weakness to show an impatience for the unkindness. But this and all other deviations from the design of pleasing each other when we meet, are derived from interlopers in society, who want capacity to put in a stock among regular companions, and therefore supply their wants by stale histories, sly observations, and rude hints, which relate to the conduct of others. All cohabitants in general run into this unhappy fault; men and their wives break into reflections which are like so much Arabic to the rest of the company; sisters and brothers often make the like figure from the same unjust sense of the art of being intimate and familiar. It is often said, such a one cannot stand the mention of such a circumstance: if he cannot, I am sure it is for want of discourse, or a worse reason, that any companion of his touches upon it.
Familiarity, among the truly well-bred, never gives authority to trespass upon one another in the most minute circumstance, but it allows to be kinder than we ought otherwise presume to be. Eusebius has wit, humour, and spirit; but there never was a man in his company who wished he had less, for he understands familiarity so well, that he knows how to make use of it in a way that neither makes himself or his friend contemptible; but if any one is lessened by his freedom, it is he himself, who always likes the place, the diet, and the reception, when he is in the company of his friends. Equality is the life of conversation; and he is as much out who assumes to himself any part above another, as he who considers himself below the rest of the society. Familiarity in inferiors is sauciness; in superiors, condescension; neither of which are to have being among companions, the very word implying that they are to be equal. When therefore we have abstracted the company from all considerations of their quality or fortune, it will immediately appear, that to make it happy and polite, there must nothing be started which shall discover that our thoughts run upon any such distinctions. Hence it will arise, that benevolence must become the rule of society, and he that is most obliging must be most diverting.
This way of talking I am fallen into from the reflection that I am wherever I go entertained with some absurdity, mistake, weakness, or ill luck of some man or other, whom not only I, but the person who makes me those relations has a value for. It would therefore be a great benefit to the world, if it could be brought to pass that no story should be a taking one, but what was to the advantage of the person of whom it is related. By this means, he that is now a wit in conversation, would be considered as a spreader of false news is in business.
But above all, to make a familiar fit for a bosom friend, it is absolutely necessary that we should always be inclined rather to hide than rally each other's infirmities. To suffer for a fault is a sort of atonement; and nobody is concerned for the offence for which he has made reparation.
_P.S._--I have received the following letter, which rallies me for being witty sooner than I designed; but I have now altered my resolution, and intend to be facetious till the day in October heretofore mentioned, instead of beginning for that day.[106]
* * * * *
_Sept. 6, 1710_.
"Mr. BICKERSTAFF,
"By your own reckoning, you came yesterday about a month before the time you looked yourself, much to the satisfaction of
"Your most obliged "Humble Servant, "PLAIN ENGLISH."
_St. James's Coffee-house, Sept. 15._
Advices from Madrid of the 8th say, the Duke of Anjou, with his Court, and all the Councils, were preparing to leave that place in a day or two, in order to remove to Valladolid. They add, that the palace was already unfurnished, and a declaration had been published, importing, that it was absolutely necessary, in the present conjuncture of affairs, that the Court were absent for some time from Madrid, but would return thither in six weeks. This sudden departure is attributed to the advice that the Portuguese army was in motion to enter Spain by Braganza, and that his Catholic Majesty was on the march with a strong detachment towards Castille. Two thousand horse were arrived at Agreda, and it is reported they were to join the rest of the body, with the King, and advance to Calatayud, on their way to Madrid, whilst General Staremberg observed the enemy on the frontier of Navarre. They write from Bayonne, that the Duke of Vendôme set forwards to Spain on the 14th.
FOOTNOTES:
[106] See No. 217.
=No. 226.= [ADDISON.
From _Saturday, Sept. 16_, to _Tuesday, Sept. 19, 1710_.
----Juvenis quondam, nunc femina, Cænis, Rursus et in veterem fato revoluta figuram.
VIRG., Æn. vi. 448.
_From my own Apartment, Sept. 18._
It is one of the designs of this paper to transmit to posterity an account of everything that is monstrous in my own times. For this reason I shall here publish to the world the life of a person who was neither man nor woman, as written by one of my ingenious correspondents, who seems to have imitated Plutarch in that multifarious erudition, and those occasional dissertations, which he has wrought into the body of his history. The Life I am putting out, is that of Margery, _alias_ John Young, commonly known by the name of Dr. Young, who (as the town very well knows) was a woman that practised physic in man's clothes, and after having had two wives and several children, died about a month since.
* * * * *
"SIR,
"I here make bold to trouble you with a short account of the famous Dr. Young's life, which you may call (if you please) a second part of the farce of the 'Sham Doctor.' This perhaps will not seem so strange to you, who (if I am not mistaken) have somewhere mentioned with honour your sister Kirleus[107] as a practitioner both in physic and astrology: but in the common opinion of mankind, a she-quack is altogether as strange and astonishing a creature as the centaur that practised physic in the days of Achilles, or as King Phys in 'The Rehearsal.'[108] Æsculapius, the great founder of your art, was particularly famous for his beard, as we may conclude from the behaviour of a tyrant who is branded by heathen historians as guilty both of sacrilege and blasphemy, having robbed the statue of Æsculapius of a thick bushy golden beard, and then alleged for his excuse, that it was a shame the son should have a beard when his father Apollo had none. This latter instance indeed seems something to favour a female professor, since (as I have been told) the ancient statues of Apollo are generally made with the head and face of a woman: nay, I have been credibly informed by those who have seen them both, that the famous Apollo in the Belvedere did very much resemble Dr. Young. Let that be as it will, the doctor was a kind of Amazon in physic, that made as great devastations and slaughters as any of our chief heroes in the art, and was as fatal to the English in these our days, as the famous Joan d'Arc was in those of our forefathers.
"I do not find anything remarkable in the Life I am about to write till the year 1695, at which time the doctor, being about twenty-three years old, was brought to bed of a bastard child. The scandal of such a misfortune gave so great uneasiness to pretty Mrs. Peggy (for that was the name by which the doctor was then called), that she left her family, and followed her lover to London, with a fixed resolution some way or other to recover her lost reputation: but instead of changing her life, which one would have expected from so good a disposition of mind, she took it in her head to change her sex. This was soon done by the help of a sword and a pair of breeches. I have reason to believe, that her first design was to turn man-midwife, having herself had some experience in those affairs: but thinking this too narrow a foundation for her future fortune, she at length bought her a gold button coat, and set up for a physician. Thus we see the same fatal miscarriage in her youth made Mrs. Young a doctor, that formerly made one of the same sex a Pope.
"The doctor succeeded very well in his business at first, but very often met with accidents that disquieted him. As he wanted that deep magisterial voice which gives authority to a prescription, and is absolutely necessary for the right pronouncing of those words, 'Take these pills,' he unfortunately got the nickname of the Squeaking Doctor. If this circumstance alarmed the doctor, there was another that gave him no small disquiet, and very much diminished his gains. In short, he found himself run down as a superficial prating quack in all families that had at the head of them a cautious father or a jealous husband. These would often complain among one another, that they did not like such a smock-faced physician; though in truth had they known how justly he deserved that name, they would rather have favoured his practice than have apprehended anything from it.
"Such were the motives that determined Mrs. Young to change her condition, and take in marriage a virtuous young woman, who lived with her in good reputation, and made her the father of a very pretty girl. But this part of her happiness was soon after destroyed by a distemper which was too hard for our physician, and carried off his first wife. The doctor had not been a widow long before he married his second lady, with whom also he lived in very good understanding. It so happened that the doctor was with child at the same time that his lady was; but the little ones coming both together, they passed for twins. The doctor having entirely established the reputation of his manhood, especially by the birth of the boy of whom he had been lately delivered, and who very much resembles him, grew into good business, and was particularly famous for the cure of venereal distempers; but would have had much more practice among his own sex, had not some of them been so unreasonable as to demand certain proofs of their cure, which the doctor was not able to give them. The florid blooming look, which gave the doctor some uneasiness at first, instead of betraying his person, only recommended his physic. Upon this occasion I cannot forbear mentioning what I thought a very agreeable surprise in one of Molière's plays, where a young woman applies herself to a sick person in the habit of a quack, and speaks to her patient, who was something scandalised at the youth of his physician, to the following purpose: 'I began to practise in the reign of Francis I., and am now in the hundred-and-fiftieth year of my age; but, by the virtue of my medicaments, have maintained myself in the same beauty and freshness I had at fifteen.' For this reason Hippocrates lays it down as a rule, that a student in physic should have a sound constitution and a healthy look, which indeed seem as necessary qualifications for a physician as a good life and virtuous behaviour for a divine. But to return to our subject. About two years ago the doctor was very much afflicted with the vapours, which grew upon him to such a degree, that about six weeks since they made an end of him. His death discovered the disguise he had acted under, and brought him back again to his former sex. 'Tis said, that at his burial the pall was held up by six women of some fashion. The doctor left behind him a widow and two fatherless children, if they may be called so, besides the little boy before mentioned; in relation to whom we may say of the doctor, as the good old ballad about the 'Children in the Wood' says of the unnatural uncle, that he was father and mother both in one. These are all the circumstances that I could learn of Dr. Young's life, which might have given occasion to many obscene fictions: but as I know those would never have gained a place in your paper, I have not troubled you with any impertinence of that nature; having stuck to the truth very scrupulously, as I always do when I subscribe myself,
"Sir, "Your, &c.
"I shall add, as a postscript to this letter, that I am informed, the famous Saltero,[109] who sells coffee in his museum at Chelsea, has by him a curiosity which helped the doctor to carry on his imposture, and will give great satisfaction to the curious inquirer."
FOOTNOTES:
[107] See No. 14.
[108] The Physician was one of the usurping Kings of Brentford.
[109] See No. 34
=No. 227.= [STEELE.
From _Tuesday, Sept. 19_, to _Thursday, Sept. 21, 1710_.
Omnibus invideas, Zoile,[110] nemo tibi.--MARTIAL, Epig. i. 40.
_From my own Apartment, Sept. 20._
It is the business of reason and philosophy to soothe and allay the passions of the mind, or turn them to a vigorous prosecution of what is dictated by the understanding. In order to this good end, I would keep a watchful eye upon the growing inclinations of youth, and be particularly careful to prevent their indulging themselves in such sentiments as may embitter their more advanced age. I have now under cure a young gentleman, who lately communicated to me, that he was of all men living the most miserably envious. I desired the circumstances of his distemper; upon which, with a sigh that would have moved the most inhuman breast: "Mr. Bickerstaff," said he, "I am nephew to a gentleman of a very great estate, to whose favour I have a cousin that has equal pretensions with myself. This kinsman of mine is a young man of the highest merit imaginable, and has a mind so tender and so generous, that I can observe he returns my envy with pity. He makes me upon all occasions the most obliging condescensions: and I cannot but take notice of the concern he is in to see my life blasted with this racking passion, though it is against himself. In the presence of my uncle, when I am in the room, he never speaks so well as he is capable of, but always lowers his talents and accomplishments out of regard to me. What I beg of you, dear sir, is to instruct me how to love him, as I know he does me; and I beseech you, if possible, to set my heart right, that it may no longer be tormented where it should be pleased, or hate a man whom I cannot but approve."
The patient gave me this account with such candour and openness, that I conceived immediate hopes of his cure; because in diseases of the mind the person affected is half recovered when he is sensible of his distemper. "Sir," said I, "the acknowledgment of your kinsman's merit is a very hopeful symptom; for it is the nature of persons afflicted with this evil, when they are incurable, to pretend a contempt of the person envied, if they are taxed with that weakness. A man who is really envious will not allow he is so; but upon such an accusation is tormented with the reflection, that to envy a man is to allow him your superior. But in your case, when you examine the bottom of your heart, I am apt to think it is avarice which you mistake for envy. Were it not that you have both expectations from the same man, you would look upon your cousin's accomplishments with pleasure. You that now consider him as an obstacle to your interest, would then behold him as an ornament to your family." I observed my patient upon this occasion recover himself in some measure; and he owned to me, that he hoped it was as I imagined; for that in all places but where he was his rival, he had pleasure in his company. This was the first discourse we had upon this malady; and I do not doubt but, after two or three more, I shall by just degrees soften his envy into emulation.
Such an envy as I have here described may possibly creep into an ingenuous mind; but the envy which makes a man uneasy to himself and others, is a certain distortion and perverseness of temper, that renders him unwilling to be pleased with anything without him that has either beauty or perfection in it. I look upon it as a distemper in the mind (which I know no moralist that has described in this light), when a man cannot discern anything which another is master of that is agreeable. For which reason I look upon the good-natured man to be endowed with a certain discerning faculty which the envious are altogether deprived of. Shallow wits, superficial critics, and conceited fops are with me so many blind men in respect of excellences. They can behold nothing but faults and blemishes, and indeed see nothing that is worth seeing. Show them a poem, it is stuff; a picture, it is daubing. They find nothing in architecture that is not irregular, or in music that is not out of tune. These men should consider, that it is their envy which deforms everything, and that the ugliness is not in the object, but in the eye. And as for nobler minds, whose merits are either not discovered, or are misrepresented by the envious part of mankind, they should rather consider their defamers with pity than indignation. A man cannot have an idea of perfection in another which he was never sensible of in himself. Mr. Locke tells us, that upon asking a blind man, what he thought scarlet was, he answered, that he believed it was like the sound of a trumpet. He was forced to form his conceptions of ideas which he had not by those which he had. In the same manner, ask an envious man, what he thinks of virtue? he will call it design: what of good-nature? and he will term it dulness. The difference is, that as the person before mentioned was born blind, your envious men have contracted the distemper themselves, and are troubled with a sort of an acquired blindness. Thus the devil in Milton, though made an angel of light, could see nothing to please him even in Paradise, and hated our first parents, though in their state of innocence.[111]
FOOTNOTES:
[110] "Livide" (Martial).
[111] "Paradise Lost," iv. 358 seq.
=No. 228.= [STEELE.
From _Thursday, Sept. 21_, to _Saturday, Sept. 23, 1710_.
----Veniet manus, auxilio quæ Sit mihi----
HOR., 1 Sat. iv. 141.
_From my own Apartment, Sept. 22._
A man of business who makes a public entertainment, may sometimes leave his guests, and beg them to divert themselves as well as they can till his return. I shall here make use of the same privilege (being engaged in matters of some importance relating to the family of the Bickerstaffs), and must desire my readers to entertain one another till I can have leisure to attend them. I have therefore furnished out this paper, as I have done some few others, with letters of my ingenious correspondents, which I have reason to believe will please the public as much as my own more elaborate lucubrations.
* * * * *
_Lincoln, Sept. 9_.
"SIR,
"I have long been of the number of your admirers, and take this opportunity of telling you so. I know not why a man so famed for astrological observations may not be also a good casuist, upon which presumption 'tis I ask your advice in an affair that at present puzzles quite that slender stock of divinity I am master of. I have now been some time in holy orders, and fellow of a certain college in one of the universities; but weary of that inactive life, I resolve to be doing good in my generation. A worthy gentleman has lately offered me a fat rectory, but means, I perceive, his kinswoman should have the benefit of the clergy. I am a novice in the world, and confess, it startles me how the body of Mrs. Abigail can be annexed to cure of souls. Sir, would you give us in one of your _Tatlers_ the original and progress of smock-simony, and show us, that where the laws are silent, men's consciences ought to be so too; you could not more oblige our fraternity of young divines, and among the rest,
"Your humble Servant, "HIGH CHURCH."
I am very proud of having a gentleman of this name for my admirer, and may some time or other write such a treatise as he mentions. In the meantime I do not see why our clergy, who are very frequently men of good families, should be reproached if any of them chance to espouse a handmaid with a rectory _in commendam_, since the best of our peers have often joined themselves to the daughters of very ordinary tradesmen upon the same valuable considerations.
* * * * *
"_Globe in Moorfields, Sept. 16._
"HONOURED SON,
"I have now finished my almanac for the next year, in all the parts of it except that which concerns the weather; and you having shown yourself, by some of your late works,[112] more weather-wise than any of our modern astrologers, I most humbly presume to trouble you upon this head. You know very well, that in our ordinary almanacs, the wind and rain, snow and hail, clouds and sunshine, have their proper seasons, and come up as regularly in their several months as the fruits and plants of the earth.[113] As for my own part, I freely own to you that I generally steal my weather out of some antiquated almanac that foretold it several years ago. Now, sir, what I humbly beg of you is, that you would lend me your State weather-glass, in order to fill up this vacant column in my works. This, I know, would sell my almanac beyond any other, and make me a richer man than Poor Robin.[114] If you will not grant me this favour, I must have recourse to my old method, and will copy after an almanac which I have by me, and which I think was made for the year when the great storm was. I am,
"Sir, "The most humble of "Your Admirers, "T. PHILOMATH."
This gentleman does not consider, what a strange appearance his almanac would make to the ignorant, should he transpose his weather, as he must do, did he follow the dictates of my glass. What would the world say to see summers filled with clouds and storms, and winters with calms and sunshine, according to the variations of the weather, as they might accidentally appear in a State barometer? But let that be as it will, I shall apply my own invention to my own use; and if I do not make my fortune by it, it will be my own fault.
The next letter comes to me from another self-interested solicitor.
* * * * *
"Mr. BICKERSTAFF,
"I am going to set up for a scrivener, and have thought of a project which may turn both to your account and mine. It came into my head upon reading that learned and useful paper of yours concerning advertisements.[115] You must understand, I have made myself master in the whole art of advertising, both as to the style and the letter. Now if you and I could so manage it, that nobody should write advertisements besides myself, or print them anywhere but in your paper, we might both of us get estates in a little time. For this end I would likewise propose, that you should enlarge the design of advertisements, and have sent you two or three samples of my work in this kind, which I have made for particular friends, and intend to open shop with. The first is for a gentleman, who would willingly marry, if he could find a wife to his liking; the second is for a poor Whig, who is lately turned out of his post; and the third for a person of a contrary party, who is willing to get into one.
* * * * *
"'Whereas A. B., next door to the "Pestle and Mortar," being about thirty years old, of a spare make, with dark-coloured hair, bright eyes, and a long nose, has occasion for a good-humoured, tall, fair, young woman, of about £3000 fortune: these are to give notice, that if any such young woman has a mind to dispose of herself in marriage to such a person as the above-mentioned, she may be provided with a husband, a coach and horses, and a proportionable settlement.'
* * * * *
"'C. D., designing to quit his place, has great quantities of paper, parchment, ink, wax, and wafers to dispose of, which will be sold at very reasonable rates.'
"'E. F., a person of good behaviour, six foot high, of a black complexion and sound principles, wants an employ. He is an excellent penman and accountant, and speaks French.'"
FOOTNOTES:
[112] Nos. 214 and 220.
[113] "Next Tuesday morning will be published the account of the alterations of wind and weather, by the discoveries of the portable barometer; from what quarter the wind will blow, clouds or rain, wind and weather, clear and cloudy, wet and dry, come every day and night for the month of October, all over England, and also when the quicksilver weather-glasses will rise in wet, and sink in fair weather, and rise and sink without any alteration at all. Whereas there was a false impression of the last month, to the great damage of the author, who has been at vast charge and expense to being so useful an invention to perfection, and to prevent the like for the future, it is hoped that those ingenious persons who are lovers of so useful a discovery will not encourage the false one, the true one being only to be had at W. Hawes, at the Rose in Ludgate Street, and A. Baldwin in Warwick Lane, where they shall be sent to any gentleman, if desired, monthly" (_Post-Man_, September 26, 1700). These "barometer papers" are ridiculed in _The Infallible Astrologer_, a paper published in 1700.
[114] This almanac was first published in 1663. The title of it was assumed in ridicule of Dr. Robert Pory, a pluralist of the last century, who, amongst other preferments (such as the archdeaconry of Middlesex, a residentiaryship of St. Paul's, &c.), enjoyed the rectory of Lambeth. Pory died in 1669, and "Poor Robin's Almanac" professed to bear his _imprimatur_ (see Wood's "Fasti," Part II., col. 267).
[115] No. 224.
=No. 229.= [ADDISON.
From _Saturday, Sept. 23_, to _Tuesday, Sept. 26, 1710_.
----Sume superbiam Quæsitam meritis----
HOR., 3 Od. xxx. 14.
_From my own Apartment, Sept. 25._
The whole creation preys upon itself: every living creature is inhabited. A flea has a thousand invisible insects that tease him as he jumps from place to place, and revenge our quarrels upon him. A very ordinary microscope shows us that a louse is itself a very lousy creature. A whale, besides those seas and oceans in the several vessels of his body, which are filled with innumerable shoals of little animals, carries about it a whole world of inhabitants; insomuch that, if we believe the calculations some have made, there are more living creatures which are too small for the naked eye to behold about the leviathan, than there are of visible creatures upon the face of the whole earth. Thus every nobler creature is as it were the basis and support of multitudes that are his inferiors.
This consideration very much comforts me, when I think on those numberless vermin that feed upon this paper, and find their sustenance out of it: I mean, the small wits and scribblers that every day turn a penny by nibbling at my Lucubrations. This has been so advantageous to this little species of writers, that, if they do me justice, I may expect to have my statue erected in Grub Street, as being a common benefactor to that quarter.
They say, when a fox is very much troubled with fleas, he goes into the next pool with a little lock of wool in his mouth, and keeps his body under water till the vermin get into it, after which he quits the wool, and diving, leaves his tormentors to shift for themselves, and get their livelihood where they can. I would have these gentlemen take care that I do not serve them after the same manner; for though I have hitherto kept my temper pretty well, it is not impossible but I may some time or other disappear; and what will then become of them? Should I lay down my paper, what a famine would there be among the hawkers, printers, booksellers, and authors? It would be like Dr. B----'s[116] dropping his cloak, with the whole congregation hanging upon the skirts of it. To enumerate some of these my doughty antagonists, I was threatened to be answered weekly _Tit for Tat_: I was undermined by the _Whisperer_, haunted by _Tom Brown's Ghost_, scolded at by a _Female Tatler_, and slandered by another of the same character, under the title of _Atalantis_. I have been _annotated_, _re-tattled_, _examined_, and _condoled_;[117] but it being my standing maxim never to speak ill of the dead, I shall let these authors rest in peace, and take great pleasure in thinking that I have sometimes been the means of their getting a bellyful. When I see myself thus surrounded by such formidable enemies, I often think of the Knight of the Red Cross in Spenser's "Den of Error," who after he has cut off the dragon's head, and left it wallowing in a flood of ink, sees a thousand monstrous reptiles making their attempts upon him, one with many heads, another with none, and all of them without eyes.
_The same so sore annoyèd has the knight, That well-nigh chokèd with the deadly stink, His forces fail, he can no longer fight; Whose courage when the fiend perceived to shrink, She pourèd forth out of her hellish sink Her fruitful cursèd spawn of serpents small, Deformèd monsters, foul, and black as ink; Which swarming all about his legs did crawl, And him encumbered sore, but could not hurt at all._
_As gentle shepherd in sweet eventide, When ruddy Phœbus 'gins to welk in West, High on an hill, his flock to viewen wide, Marks which do bite their hasty supper best; A cloud of cumbrous gnats do him molest, All striving to infix their feeble stings, That from their 'noyance he nowhere can rest; But with his clownish hands their tender wings He brusheth oft, and oft doth mar their murmurings._[118]
If ever I should want such a fry of little authors to attend me, I shall think my paper in a very decaying condition. They are like ivy about an oak, which adorns the tree at the same time that it eats into it; or like a great man's equipage, that do honour to the person on whom they feed. For my part, when I see myself thus attacked, I do not consider my antagonists as malicious, but hungry, and therefore am resolved never to take any notice of them.
As for those who detract from my labours without being prompted to it by an empty stomach, in return to their censures I shall take pains to excel, and never fail to persuade myself, that their enmity is nothing but their envy or ignorance.
Give me leave to conclude, like an old man and a moralist, with a fable:
The owls, bats, and several other birds of night, were one day got together in a thick shade, where they abused their neighbours in a very sociable manner. Their satire at last fell upon the sun, whom they all agreed to be very troublesome, impertinent, and inquisitive. Upon which the sun, who overheard them, spoke to them after this manner: "Gentlemen, I wonder how you dare abuse one that you know could in an instant scorch you up, and burn every mother's son of you: but the only answer I shall give you, or the revenge I shall take of you, is, to _shine on_."[119]
FOOTNOTES:
[116] Daniel Burgess (see No. 66).
[117] The first number of _Tit for Tat_ appeared under the name of Jo. Partridge, Esq., on March 2, 1710, with an announcement of Bickerstaff's death; probably it reached only to five numbers. Of the _Whisperer_ (October 11, 1709), and the _Gazette à-la-Mode, or Tom Brown's Ghost_ (May 12, 1709), only single numbers are known. The _Female Tatler_, issued by Thomas Baker, lasted from July 8, 1709, to March 31, 1710; and there was a rival paper, with the same title, printed for A Baldwin. The "New Atalantis," Mrs. Manley's well-known book, contained more than one attack on Steele. "Annotated" refers to the satirical "Annotations upon the _Tatler_," 1710 (see No. 224); and "condoled," to a pamphlet, "A Condoling Letter to the _Tatler_; on account of the misfortunes of Isaac Bickerstaff, a prisoner in the ---- on suspicion of debt" (September 19, 1710). The Tory _Examiner_ had much to say about the _Tatler_ and Steele's subsequent writings. Nothing is known of a _Re-Tatler_.
"For my part," wrote Defoe, "I have always thought that the weakest step the Tatler ever took, if that complete author can be said to have done anything weak, was to stoop to take the least notice of the barkings of the animals that have condoled him, examined him, &c. He should have let every bark and fool rail, and, according to his own observation of the fable of the sun, continued to shine on. This I have found to be agreeable to the true notion of contempt. Silence is the utmost slight nature can dictate to a man, and the most insupportable for a vain man to bear."
[118] "Faërie Queene," 1. i. 22, 23.
[119] See No. 239.
=No. 230.= [STEELE and SWIFT.
From _Tuesday, Sept. 26_, to _Thursday, Sept. 28, 1710_.
_From my own Apartment, Sept. 27._
The following letter has laid before me many great and manifest evils in the world of letters which I had overlooked; but they open to me a very busy scene, and it will require no small care and application to amend errors which are become so universal. The affectation of politeness is exposed in this epistle with a great deal of wit and discernment; so that whatever discourses I may fall into hereafter upon the subjects the writer treats of, I shall at present lay the matter before the world without the least alteration from the words of my correspondent.[120]
* * * * *
To ISAAC BICKERSTAFF, Esq.
"SIR,
"There are some abuses among us of great consequence, the reformation of which is properly your province; though as far as I have been conversant in your papers, you have not yet considered them. These are the deplorable ignorance that for some years hath reigned among our English writers, the great depravity of our taste, and the continual corruption of our style. I say nothing here of those who handle particular sciences, divinity, law, physic, and the like; I mean the traders in history and politics, and the _belles lettres_; together with those by whom books are not translated, but (as the common expressions are) done out of French, Latin, or other language, and made English. I cannot but observe to you, that till of late years a Grub Street book was always bound in sheepskin, with suitable print and paper, the price never above a shilling, and taken off wholly by common tradesmen or country pedlars; but now they appear in all sizes and shapes, and in all places. They are handed about from lapfuls in every coffee-house to persons of quality; are shown in Westminster Hall and the Court of Requests. You may see them gilt and in royal paper of five or six hundred pages, and rated accordingly. I would engage to furnish you with a catalogue of English books published within the compass of seven years past, which at the first hand would cost you a hundred pounds, wherein you shall not be able to find ten lines together of common grammar or common sense.
"These two evils, ignorance and want of taste, have produced a third; I mean the continual corruption of our English tongue, which, without some timely remedy, will suffer more by the false refinements of twenty years past than it hath been improved in the foregoing hundred. And this is what I design chiefly to enlarge upon, leaving the former evils to your animadversion.
"But instead of giving you a list of the late refinements crept into our language, I here send you the copy of a letter I received some time ago from a most accomplished person in this way of writing; upon which I shall make some remarks. It is in these terms:
"'SIR,
"'I _cou'dn't_ get the things you sent for all _about town_. I _thôt_ to _ha'_ come down myself, and then _I'd h' bôt 'um_; but I _ha'n't don't_, and I believe I _can't d't, that's pozz_. Tom[121] begins to _gi'mself_ airs, because _he's_ going with the _plenipo's_. 'Tis said the French King will _bamboozl' us agen_, which _causes many speculations_. The Jacks and others of that _kidney_ are very _uppish_, and _alert upon't_, as you may see by their _phizz's_. Will Hazzard has got the _hipps_, having lost _to the tune of_ five hundr'd pound, _thô_ he understands play very well, _nobody better_. He has promis't me upon _rep_, to leave off play; but you know 'tis a weakness _he's_ too apt to _give into, thô_ he has as much wit as any man, _nobody more_. He has lain _incog._ ever since. The _mobb's_ very quiet with us now. I believe you _thôt_ I _bantr'd_ you in my last like a _country put_. I _shan't_ leave town this month,' &c.
"This letter is in every point an admirable pattern of the present polite way of writing, nor is it of less authority for being an epistle: you may gather every flower in it, with a thousand more of equal sweetness, from the books, pamphlets, and single papers, offered us every day in the coffee-houses: and these are the beauties introduced to supply the want of wit, sense, humour, and learning, which formerly were looked upon as qualifications for a writer. If a man of wit, who died forty years ago, were to rise from the grave on purpose, how would he be able to read this letter? And after he had got through that difficulty, how would he be able to understand it? The first thing that strikes your eye is the breaks at the end of almost every sentence, of which I know not the use, only that it is a refinement, and very frequently practised. Then you will observe the abbreviations and elisions, by which consonants of most obdurate sound are joined together, without one softening vowel to intervene; and all this only to make one syllable of two, directly contrary to the example of the Greeks and Romans, altogether of the Gothic strain, and a natural tendency towards relapsing into barbarity, which delights in monosyllables, and uniting of mute consonants, as it is observable in all the Northern languages. And this is still more visible in the next refinement, which consists in pronouncing the first syllable in a word that has many, and dismissing the rest; such as phizz, hipps, mobb, pozz, rep, and many more, when we are already overloaded with monosyllables, which are the disgrace of our language. Thus we cram one syllable, and cut off the rest, as the owl fattened her mice after she had bit off their legs, to prevent them from running away; and if ours be the same reason for maiming our words, it will certainly answer the end, for I am sure no other nation will desire to borrow them. Some words are hitherto but fairly split, and therefore only in their way to perfection, as incog. and plenipo; but in a short time, 'tis to be hoped, they will be further docked to inc. and plen. This reflection has made me of late years very impatient for a peace, which I believe would save the lives of many brave words, as well as men. The war has introduced abundance of polysyllables, which will never be able to live many more campaigns. Speculations, operations, preliminaries, ambassadors, palisadoes, communication, circumvallation, battalions, as numerous as they are, if they attack us too frequently in our coffee-houses, we shall certainly put them to flight, and cut off the rear.
"The third refinement observable in the letter I send you, consists in the choice of certain words invented by some pretty fellows, such as banter, bamboozle, country put, and kidney, as it is there applied, some of which are now struggling for the vogue, and others are in possession of it. I have done my utmost for some years past to stop the progress of mobb and banter, but have been plainly borne down by numbers, and betrayed by those who promised to assist me.
"In the last place, you are to take notice of certain choice phrases scattered through the letter, some of them tolerable enough, till they were worn to rags by servile imitators. You might easily find them, though they were not in a different print, and therefore I need not disturb them.
"These are the false refinements in our style which you ought to correct: first, by argument and fair means; but if those fail, I think you are to make use of your authority as censor, and by an annual 'Index Expurgatorius' expunge all words and phrases that are offensive to good sense, and condemn those barbarous mutilations of vowels and syllables. In this last point the usual pretence is, that they spell as they speak: a noble standard for language! To depend upon the caprice of every coxcomb, who, because words are the clothing of our thoughts, cuts them out and shapes them as he pleases, and changes them oftener than his dress. I believe all reasonable people would be content that such refiners were more sparing in their words and liberal in their syllables: and upon this head I should be glad you would bestow some advice upon several young readers in our churches, who coming up from the university full fraught with admiration of our town politeness, will needs correct the style of their prayer-books. In reading the Absolution, they are very careful to say 'pardons' and 'absolves'; and in the prayer for the royal family it must be 'endue 'um, enrich 'um, prosper 'um, and bring 'um.' Then in their sermons they use all the modern terms of art: sham, banter, mob, bubble, bully, cutting, shuffling, and palming; all which, and many more of the like stamp, as I have heard them often in the pulpit from such young sophisters, so I have read them in some of those sermons that have made most noise of late. The design, it seems, is to avoid the dreadful imputation of pedantry; to show us that they know the town, understand men and manners, and have not been poring upon old unfashionable books in the university.
"I should be glad to see you the instrument of introducing into our style that simplicity which is the best and truest ornament of most things in life, which the politer ages always aimed at in their building and dress (_simplex munditiis_), as well as their productions of wit. It is manifest, that all new affected modes of speech, whether borrowed from the court, the town, or the theatre, are the first perishing parts in any language; and, as I could prove by many hundred instances, have been so in ours. The writings of Hooker, who was a country clergyman, and of Parsons the Jesuit, both in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, are in a style that, with very few allowances, would not offend any present reader; much more clear and intelligible than those of Sir H. Wootton, Sir Rob. Naunton, Osborn, Daniel the historian, and several others who wrote later; but being men of the court, and affecting the phrases then in fashion, they are often either not to be understood, or appear perfectly ridiculous.
"What remedies are to be applied to these evils, I have not room to consider, having, I fear, already taken up most of your paper. Besides, I think it is our office only to represent abuses, and yours to redress them. I am with great respect,
"Sir, "Your, &c."
FOOTNOTES:
[120] Swift was author of the letter which fills the remainder of this paper. See his "Journal to Stella," Sept. 18, 1710: "Got home early, and began a letter to the _Tatler_ about the corruptions of style and writing, &c." Sept. 23, 1710: "I have sent a long letter to Bickerstaff, let the Bishop of Clogher smoke it if he can." Sept. 29, 1710: "I made a _Tatler_ since I came; guess which it is, and whether the Bishop of Clogher smokes it." Oct. 1, 1710: "Have you smoked the _Tatler_ that I wrote? It is much liked here, and I think it a pure one."
[121] Thomas Harley, minister at the Court of Hanover, and cousin of Robert Harley, afterwards Earl of Oxford. He died in 1737.
=No. 231.= [STEELE.
Principiis obsta----
OVID, Rem. Amor. 91.
From _Thursday, Sept. 28_, to _Saturday, Sept. 30, 1710_.
_From my own Apartment, Sept. 29._
There are very many ill habits that might with much ease have been prevented, which, after we have indulged ourselves in them, become incorrigible. We have a sort of proverbial expression, of taking a woman down in her wedding shoes, if you would bring her to reason. An early behaviour of this sort had a very remarkable good effect in a family wherein I was several years an intimate acquaintance.
A gentleman in Lincolnshire[122] had four daughters, three of which were early married very happily; but the fourth, though no way inferior to any of her sisters, either in person or accomplishments, had from her infancy discovered so imperious a temper (usually called a high spirit), that it continually made great uneasiness in the family, became her known character in the neighbourhood, and deterred all her lovers from declaring themselves. However, in process of time, a gentleman of a plentiful fortune and long acquaintance, having observed that quickness of spirit to be her only fault, made his addresses, and obtained her consent in due form. The lawyers finished the writings (in which, by the way, there was no pin-money), and they were married. After a decent time spent in the father's house, the bridegroom went to prepare his seat for her reception. During the whole course of his courtship, though a man of the most equal temper, he had artificially lamented to her, that he was the most passionate creature breathing. By this one intimation, he at once made her understand warmth of temper to be what he ought to pardon in her, as well as that he alarmed her against that constitution in himself. She at the same time thought herself highly obliged by the composed behaviour which he maintained in her presence. Thus far he with great success soothed her from being guilty of violences, and still resolved to give her such a terrible apprehension of his fiery spirit, that she should never dream of giving way to her own. He returned on the day appointed for carrying her home; but instead of a coach and six horses, together with the gay equipage suitable to the occasion, he appeared without a servant, mounted on the skeleton of a horse which his huntsman had the day before brought in to feast his dogs on the arrival of their new mistress, with a pillion fixed behind, and a case of pistols before him, attended only by a favourite hound. Thus equipped, he in a very obliging (but somewhat positive) manner desired his lady to seat herself on the cushion; which done, away they crawled. The road being obstructed by a gate, the dog was commanded to open it: the poor cur looked up and wagged his tail; but the master, to show the impatience of his temper, drew a pistol and shot him dead. He had no sooner done it, but he fell into a thousand apologies for his unhappy rashness, and begged as many pardons for his excesses before one for whom he had so profound a respect. Soon after their steed stumbled, but with some difficulty recovered: however, the bridegroom took occasion to swear, if he frightened his wife so again, he would run him through: and alas! the poor animal being now almost tired, made a second trip; immediately on which the careful husband alights, and with great ceremony first takes off his lady, then the accoutrements, draws his sword, and saves the huntsman the trouble of killing him: then says to his wife, "Child, prithee take up the saddle;" which she readily did, and tugged it home, where they found all things in the greatest order, suitable to their fortune and the present occasion. Some time after the father of the lady gave an entertainment to all his daughters and their husbands, where, when the wives were retired, and the gentlemen passing a toast about, our last married man took occasion to observe to the rest of his brethren, how much, to his great satisfaction, he found the world mistaken as to the temper of his lady, for that she was the most meek and humble woman breathing. The applause was received with a loud laugh: but as a trial which of them would appear the most master at home, he proposed they should all by turns send for their wives down to them. A servant was despatched, and answer was made by one, "Tell him I will come by-and-by;" another, that she would come when the cards were out of her hand; and so on. But no sooner was her husband's desire whispered in the ear of our last married lady, but the cards were clapped on the table, and down she comes with, "My dear, would you speak with me?" He receives her in his arms, and after repeated caresses, tells her the experiment, confesses his good-nature, and assures her, that since she could now command her temper, he would no longer disguise his own.
I received the following letter, with a dozen of wine, and cannot but do justice to the liquor, and give my testimony, that I have tried it upon several of my acquaintances, who were given to impertinent abbreviations,[123] with great success:
* * * * *
"Mr. BICKERSTAFF,
"I send you by this bearer, and not per bearer, a dozen of that claret which is to be sold at Garraway's Coffee-house on Thursday the fifth of October next. I can assure you, I have found by experience the efficacy of it in amending a fault you complain of in your last. The very first draught of it has some effect upon the speech of the drinker, and restores all the letters taken away by the elisions so justly complained of. Will Hazzard was cured of his hypochondria by three glasses; and the gentleman who gave you an account of his late indisposition, has in public company, after the first quart, spoke every syllable of the word plenipotentiary.
"Your, &c."
FOOTNOTES:
[122] This story is simply that of Katherine and Petruchio, in "The Taming of the Shrew," retold. It would seem that Steele was able to count upon his readers having very little knowledge of Shakespeare.
[123] See No. 230.
=No. 232.= [STEELE.
From _Saturday Sept. 30_, to _Tuesday, Oct. 3, 1710_.
_From my own Apartment, Oct. 2._
I have received the following letter from my unfortunate old acquaintance the upholsterer,[124] who, I observed, had long absented himself from the bench at the upper end of the Mall. Having not seen him for some time, I was in fear I should soon hear of his death, especially since he never appeared, though the noons have been of late pretty warm, and the councils at that place very full from the hour of twelve to three, which the sages of that board employ in conference, while the unthinking part of mankind are eating and drinking for the support of their own private persons, without any regard to the public.
* * * * *
"SIR,
"I should have waited on you very frequently to have discoursed you upon some matters of moment, but that I love to be well informed in the subject upon which I consult my friends before I enter into debate with them. I have therefore with the utmost care and pains applied myself to the reading all the writings and pamphlets which have come out since the trial,[125] and have studied night and day in order to be master of the whole controversy; but the authors are so numerous, and the state of affairs alters so very fast, that I am now a fortnight behindhand in my reading, and know only how things stood twelve days ago. I wish you would enter into those useful subjects; for, if I may be allowed to say so, these are not times to jest in. As for my own part, you know very well, that I am of a public spirit, and never regarded my own interest, but looked further; and let me tell you, that while some people are minding only themselves and families, and others are thinking only of their own country, things go on strangely in the North. I foresee very great evils arising from the neglect of transactions at a distance; for which reason I am now writing a letter to a friend in the country, which I design as an answer to the Czar of Muscovy's letter to the Grand Signior concerning his Majesty of Sweden. I have endeavoured to prove that it is not reasonable to expect that his Swedish Majesty should leave Bender without forty thousand men; and I have added to this an apology for the Cossacks. But the matter multiplies upon me, and I grow dim with much writing; therefore desire, if you have an old green pair of spectacles, such as you used about your fiftieth year, that you send them to me; as also, that you would please to desire Mr. Morphew to send me in a bushel of coals on the credit of my answer to his Czarian Majesty; for I design it shall be printed for Morphew, and the weather grows sharp. I shall take it kindly if you would order him also to send me the papers as they come out. If there are no fresh pamphlets published, I compute that I shall know before the end of next month what has been done in town to this day. If it were not for an ill custom lately introduced by a certain author, of talking Latin at the beginning of papers, matters would be in a much clearer light than they are; but to our comfort, there are solid writers who are not guilty of this pedantry. The _Post-Man_ writes like an angel: the _Moderator_[126] is fine reading! It would do you no harm to read the _Post-Boy_ with attention; he is very deep of late. He is instructive; but I confess a little satirical: a sharp pen! He cares not what he says. The _Examiner_ is admirable, and is become a grave and substantial author. But above all, I am at a loss how to govern myself in my judgment of those whose whole writings consist in interrogatories: and then the way of answering, by proposing questions as hard to them, is quite as extraordinary. As for my part, I tremble at these novelties; we expose, in my opinion, our affairs too much by it. You may be sure the French King will spare no cost to come at the reading of them. I dread to think if the fable of the Blackbirds should fall into his hands. But I shall not venture to say more till I see you. In the meantime,
"I am, &c.
"_P.S._--I take the Bender letter in the _Examiner_ to be spurious."[127]
This unhappy correspondent, whose fantastical loyalty to the King of Sweden has reduced him to this low condition of reason and fortune, would appear much more monstrous in his madness, did we not see crowds very little above his circumstances from the same cause, a passion to politics.
It is no unpleasant entertainment to consider the commerce even of the sexes interrupted by difference in State affairs. A wench and her gallant parted last week upon the words "unlimited" and "passive": and there is such a jargon of terms got into the mouths of the very silliest of the women, that you cannot come into a room even among them, but you find them divided into Whig and Tory. What heightens the humour is, that all the hard words they know they certainly suppose to be terms useful in the disputes of the parties. I came in this day where two were in very hot debate, and one of them proposed to me to explain to them what was the difference between circumcision and predestination. You may be sure I was at a loss; but they were too angry at each other to wait for my explanation, but proceeded to lay open the whole state of affairs, instead of the usual topics of dress, gallantry, and scandal.
I have often wondered how it should be possible that this turn to politics should so universally prevail, to the exclusion of every other subject out of conversation; and upon mature consideration, find it is for want of discourse. Look round you among all the young fellows you meet, and you see those who have least relish for books, company, or pleasure, though they have no manner of qualities to make them succeed in those pursuits, shall make very passable politicians. Thus the most barren invention shall find enough to say to make one appear an able man in the top coffee-houses. It is but adding a certain vehemence in uttering yourself, let the thing you say be never so flat, and you shall be thought a very sensible man, if you were not too hot. As love and honour are the noblest motives of life; so the pretenders to them, without being animated by them, are the most contemptible of all sorts of pretenders. The unjust affectation of anything that is laudable, is ignominious in proportion to the worth of the thing we affect: thus, as love of one's country is the most glorious of all passions, to see the most ordinary tools in a nation give themselves airs that way, without any one good quality in their own life, has something in it romantic, yet not so ridiculous as odious.
ADVERTISEMENT.
Mr. Bickerstaff has received Silvia's letter from the Bath, and his sister is set out thither. Tom Frontley, who is one of the guides for the town, is desired to bring her into company, and oblige her with a mention in his next lampoon.
FOOTNOTES:
[124] See Nos. 155, 160, and 178.
[125] Sacheverell's.
[126] The _Moderator_, which professed to discuss the arguments of both parties impartially, lasted from May to November 1710.
[127] No. 7 of the _Examiner_ contained what purported to be a letter from a Swedish officer at Bender to his friend at Stockholm.
=No. 233.= [STEELE.
From _Tuesday, Oct. 3_, to _Thursday, Oct. 5, 1710_.
----Sunt certa piacula, quæ te Ter pure lecto poterunt recreare libello.
HOR., 1 Ep. i. 36.
_From my own Apartment, Oct. 4._
When the mind has been perplexed with anxious cares and passions, the best method of bringing it to its usual state of tranquillity, is, as much as we possibly can, to turn our thoughts to the adversities of persons of higher consideration in virtue and merit than ourselves. By this means all the little incidents of our own lives, if they are unfortunate, seem to be the effect of justice upon our faults and indiscretions. When those whom we know to be excellent and deserving of a better fate are wretched, we cannot but resign ourselves, whom most of us know to merit a much worse state than that we are placed in. For such and many other occasions, there is one admirable relation which one might recommend for certain periods of one's life, to touch, comfort, and improve the heart of man. Tully says, somewhere, the pleasures of a husbandman are next to those of a philosopher. In like manner one may say (for methinks they bear the same proportion one to another), the pleasures of humanity are next to those of devotion. In both these latter satisfactions, there is a certain humiliation which exalts the soul above its ordinary state. At the same time that it lessens our value of ourselves, it enlarges our estimation of others. The history I am going to speak of, is that of Joseph in Holy Writ, which is related with such majestic simplicity, that all the parts of it strike us with strong touches of nature and compassion, and he must be a stranger to both who can read it with attention, and not be overwhelmed with the vicissitudes of joy and sorrow. I hope it will not be a profanation to tell it one's own way here, that they who may be unthinking enough to be more frequently readers of such papers as this than of Sacred Writ, may be advertised, that the greatest pleasures the imagination can be entertained with are to be found there, and that even the style of the Scriptures is more than human.
Joseph, a beloved child of Israel, became invidious to his elder brethren, for no other reason but his superior beauty and excellence of body and mind, insomuch that they could not bear his growing virtue, and let him live. They therefore conspire his death; but nature pleaded so strongly for him in the heart of one of them, that by his persuasion they determined rather to bury him in a pit, than be his immediate executioners with their own hands. When thus much was obtained for him, their minds still softened towards him, and they took the opportunity of some passengers to sell him into Egypt. Israel was persuaded by the artifice of his sons, that the youth was torn to pieces by wild beasts: but Joseph was sold to slavery, and still exposed to new misfortunes, from the same cause as before, his beauty and his virtue. By a false accusation he was committed to prison, but in process of time delivered from it, in consideration of his wisdom and knowledge, and made the governor of Pharaoh's house. In this elevation of his fortune, his brothers were sent into Egypt to buy necessaries of life in a famine. As soon as they are brought into his presence, he beholds, but he beholds with compassion, the men who had sold him to slavery approaching him with awe and reverence. While he was looking over his brethren, he takes a resolution to indulge himself in the pleasure of stirring their and his own affections, by keeping himself concealed, and examining into the circumstances of their family. For this end, with an air of severity, as a watchful minister to Pharaoh, he accuses them as spies, who are come into Egypt with designs against the State. This led them into the account which he wanted of them, the condition of their ancient father and little brother, whom they had left behind them. When he had learned that his brother was living, he demands the bringing him to Egypt, as a proof of their veracity.
But it would be a vain and empty endeavour to attempt laying this excellent representation of the passions of man in the same colours as they appear in the Sacred Writ in any other manner, or almost any other words, than those made use of in the page itself. I am obliged therefore to turn my designed narration rather into a comment upon the several parts of that beautiful and passionate scene. When Joseph expects to see Benjamin, how natural and how forcible is the reflection, "This affliction is come upon us in that we saw the anguish of our brother's soul without pity!" How moving must it be to Joseph to hear Reuben accuse the rest, that they would not hear what he pleaded in behalf of his innocence and distress! He turns from them and weeps, but commands his passion so far as to give orders for binding one of them in the presence of the rest, while he at leisure observed their different sentiments and concern in their gesture and countenance. When Benjamin is demanded in bondage for stealing the cup, with what force and what resignation does Judah address his brother!
"In what words shall I speak to my lord; with what confidence can I say anything? Our guilt is but too apparent; we submit to our fate. We are my lord's servants, both we and he also with whom the cup is found." When that is not accepted, how pathetically does he recapitulate the whole story! And approaching nearer to Joseph, delivers himself as follows; which, if we fix our thoughts upon the relation between the pleader and the judge, it is impossible to read without tears:
"Sir, let me intrude so far upon you, even in the high condition in which you are, and the miserable one in which you see me and my brethren, to inform you of the circumstances of us unhappy men that prostrate ourselves before you. When we were first examined by you, you inquired (for what reason my lord inquired we know not), but you inquired whether we had not a father or a brother? We then acquainted you, that we had a father, an old man, who had a child of his old age, and had buried another son whom he had by the same woman. You were pleased to command us to bring the child he had remaining down to us: we did so, and he has forfeited his liberty. But my father said to us, 'You know that my wife bore me two sons: one of them was torn in pieces: if mischief befall this also, it will bring my grey hairs with sorrow to the grave. Accept, therefore, oh my lord! me for your bondman, and let the lad return with his brethren, that I may not see the evil that shall come on my father.' Here Joseph's passion grew too great for further disguise, and he reveals himself with exclamations of transport and tenderness.
"After their recovery from their first astonishment, his brethren were seized with fear for the injuries they had done him; but how generously does he keep them in countenance, and make an apology for them: 'Be not angry with yourselves for selling me hither; call it not so, but think Providence sent me before you to preserve life.'"
It would be endless to go through all the beauties of this sacred narrative; but any who shall read it, at an hour when he is disengaged from all other regard or interests than what arise from it, will feel the alternate passion of a father, a brother, and a son, so warm in him, that they will incline him to exert himself (in such of those characters as happen to be his) much above the ordinary course of his life.
=No. 234.= [STEELE.
From _Thursday, Oct. 5_, to _Saturday, Oct. 7, 1710_.
_From my own Apartment, Oct. 6._
I have reason to believe that certain of my contemporaries have made use of an art I some time ago professed, of being often designedly dull;[128] and for that reason shall not exert myself when I see them lazy. He that has so much to struggle with as the man who pretends to censure others, must keep up his fire for an onset, and may be allowed to carry his arms a little carelessly upon an ordinary march. This paper therefore shall be taken up by my correspondents, two of which have sent me the two following plain, but sensible and honest letters, upon subjects no less important than those of education and devotion:
* * * * *
"SIR,[129]
"I am an old man, retired from all acquaintance with the town, but what I have from your papers (not the worst entertainment of my solitude); yet being still a well-wisher to my country and the commonwealth of learning (_a qua, confiteor, nullam ætatis meæ partem abhorruisse_), and hoping the plain phrase in writing that was current in my younger days would have lasted for my time, I was startled at the picture of modern politeness transmitted by your ingenious correspondent, and grieved to see our sterling English language fallen into the hands of clippers and coiners. That mutilated epistle, consisting of _hipps_, _reps_, and such-like enormous curtailings, was a mortifying spectacle, but with the reserve of comfort to find this, and other abuses of our mother-tongue, so pathetically complained of, and to the proper person for redressing them, the Censor of Great Britain.
* * * * *
"He had before represented the deplorable ignorance that for several years past has reigned amongst our English writers, the great depravity of our taste, and continual corruption of our style: but, sir, before you give yourself the trouble of prescribing remedies for these distempers (which you own will require the greatest care and application), give me leave (having long had my eye upon these mischiefs, and thoughts exercised about them) to mention what I humbly conceive to be the cause of them, and in your friend Horace's words, "Quo fonte derivata clades In patriam populumque fluxit."[130]
* * * * *
"I take our corrupt ways of writing to proceed from the mistakes and wrong measures in our common methods of education, which I always looked upon as one of our national grievances, and a singularity that renders us no less than our situation,
_----Penitus toto divisos orbe Britannos._[131]
This puts me upon consulting the most celebrated critics on that subject, to compare our practice with their precepts, and find where it was that we came short or went wide.
"But after all, I found our case required something more than these doctors had directed, and the principal defect of our English discipline to lie in the initiatory part, which, although it needs the greatest care and skill, is usually left to the conduct of those blind guides, viz., Chance and Ignorance.
"I shall trouble you with but a single instance, pursuant to what your sagacious friend has said, that he could furnish you with a catalogue of English books, that would cost you a hundred pounds at first hand, wherein you could not find ten lines together of common grammar; which is a necessary consequence of our mismanagement in that province.
"For can anything be more absurd than our way of proceeding in this part of literature? To push tender wits into the intricate mazes of grammar, and a Latin grammar? To learn an unknown art by an unknown tongue? To carry them a dark roundabout way to let them in at a back-door? Whereas by teaching them first the grammar of their mother-tongue (so easy to be learned), their advance to the grammars of Latin and Greek would be gradual and easy; but our precipitate way of hurrying them over such a gulf, before we have built them a bridge to it, is a shock to their weak understandings, which they seldom, or very late, recover. In the meantime we wrong nature, and slander infants, who want neither capacity nor will to learn, till we put them upon service beyond their strength, and then indeed we baulk them.
"The liberal arts and sciences are all beautiful as the Graces, nor has Grammar (the severe mother of all) so frightful a face of her own; it is the vizard put upon it that scares children. She is made to speak hard words that to them sound like conjuring. Let her talk intelligibly, and they will listen to her.
"In this, I think, as on other accounts, we show ourselves true Britons, always overlooking our natural advantages. It has been the practice of wisest nations to learn their own language by stated rules, to avoid the confusion that would follow from leaving it to vulgar use. Our English tongue, says a learned man, is the most determinate in its construction, and reducible to the fewest rules: whatever language has less grammar in it, is not intelligible; and whatever has more, all that it has more is superfluous; for which reasons he would have it made the foundation of learning Latin, and all other languages.
"To speak and write without absurdity the language of one's country, is commendable in persons of all stations, and to some indispensably necessary; and to this purpose, I would recommend above all things the having a grammar of our mother-tongue first taught in our schools, which would facilitate our youths learning their Latin and Greek grammars, with spare time for arithmetic, astronomy, cosmography, history, &c., that would make them pass the spring of their life with profit and pleasure, that is now miserably spent in grammatical perplexities.
"But here, methinks, I see the reader smile, and ready to ask me (as the lawyer did sexton Diego on his bequeathing rich legacies to the poor of the parish,[132] Where are these mighty sums to be raised?), Where is there such a grammar to be had? I will not answer, as he did, Even where your Worship pleases. No, it is our good fortune to have such a grammar, with notes, now in the press, and to be published next term.
"I hear it is a chargeable work, and wish the publisher to have customers of all that have need of such a book; yet fancy that he cannot be much a sufferer, if it is only bought by all that have more need for it than they think they have.
"A certain author brought a poem to Mr. Cowley, for his perusal and judgment of the performance, which he demanded at the next visit with a poetaster's assurance; and Mr. Cowley, with his usual modesty, desired that he would be pleased to look a little to the grammar of it. 'To the grammar of it! What do you mean, sir? Would you send me to school again?' 'Why, Mr. H----, would it do you any harm?'
"This put me on considering how this voyage of literature may be made with more safety and profit, expedition and delight; and at last, for completing so good a service, to request your directions in so deplorable a case; hoping that, as you have had compassion on our overgrown coxcombs in concerns of less consequence, you will exert your charity towards innocents, and vouchsafe to be guardian to the children and youth of Great Britain in this important affair of education, wherein mistakes and wrong measures have so often occasioned their aversion to books, that had otherwise proved the chief ornament and pleasure of their life. I am with sincerest respect,
"Sir, "Your, &c."
* * * * *
_St. Cl[eme]nts, Oct. 5_.
"Mr. BICKERSTAFF,
"I observe, as the season begins to grow cold, so does people's devotion; insomuch that, instead of filling the churches, that united zeal might keep one warm there, one is left to freeze in almost bare walls, by those who in hot weather are troublesome the contrary way. This, sir, needs a regulation that none but you can give to it, by causing those who absent themselves on account of weather only this winter time, to pay the apothecary's bills occasioned by coughs, catarrhs, and other distempers contracted by sitting in empty seats. Therefore to you I apply myself for redress, having gotten such a cold on Sunday was sevennight, that has brought me almost to your worship's age from sixty within less than a fortnight. I am,
"Your Worship's in all obedience, "W. E."
FOOTNOTES:
[128] See Nos. 38 and 230.
[129] This letter refers to the one by Swift in No. 230, on the corruptions of the English language in ordinary writings. The present letter, which is supposed to be by James Greenwood, closes with the statement that an English grammar, with notes, would be published next term. Soon afterwards there appeared, with the date 1711, "A Grammar of the English Tongue, with Notes.... Printed for John Brightland," &c. This book was noticed in the _Works of the Learned_ for November 1710. Facing the title is a page bearing the head of Cato the Censor, and the following lines: "The Approbation of Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq.: 'The following treatise being submitted to my censure, that I may pass it with integrity, I must declare, that as grammar in general is on all hands allowed to be the foundation of all arts and sciences, so it appears to me that this Grammar of the English Tongue has done that justice to our language which, till now, it never obtained. The text will improve the most ignorant, and the notes will employ the most learned. I therefore enjoin all my female correspondents to buy, read, and study this grammar, that their letters may be something less enigmatic; and on all my male correspondents likewise, who make no conscience of false spelling and false English, I lay the same injunction, on pain of having their epistles exposed in their own proper dress in my Lucubrations.--Isaac Bickerstaff, Censor.'" There is a Dedication to the Queen, and a Preface in which "the Authors" explain how they have come to undertake a much-needed work at the request of Mr. Brightland.
This book was followed by a pamphlet of six pages, "Reasons for an English Education, by teaching the Youth of both Sexes the Arts of Grammar, Rhetoric, Poetry, and Logic, in their own Mother-Tongue, 1711." On p. 5 the writer asks, "Has our Censor complained without cause, and given a false alarm of danger to the language of our country? (Lucubrat., Sept. 28, 1710);" and on the next page we are told that I. B., encouraged by the success of his book, was industriously correcting it for a second edition. This appeared in 1712, with an increase in the number of pages from 180 to 264. Other editions appeared in 1714 and 1720. The fifth is dated 1729, and is advertised in the _Craftsman_ for July 5, 1729, as "recommended by Sir Richard Steele, for the use of the schools of Great Britain;" but according to the _Monthly Chronicle_, it really appeared on August 8, 1728, being called in the Index, "Bickerstaffe's Grammar." The seventh and eighth editions were published in 1746 and 1759.
In Nos. 254 and 255 of the _Tatler_ there was advertised, as shortly to be published, "An Essay towards a Practical English Grammar, by James Greenwood.... Particular care has been taken to render this book useful and agreeable to the Fair Sex." This book is dated 1711, and is noticed in the _Works of the Learned_ for July. The Preface gives "part of a letter which I wrote about a twelvemonth ago to the ingenious author of the _Tatler_ upon this head" (_i.e._ knowledge of grammar among the fair sex). Greenwood's remarks on female education were not printed in the _Tatler_; but they may have formed part of the letter in this number (234), if this letter is by Greenwood. The third edition, enlarged, of Greenwood's "Essay" appeared on May 24, 1729. Greenwood was sub-master at St. Paul's School, and afterwards kept a boarding-school at Woodford, in Essex. He published "The London Vocabulary, English and Latin," of which there was a third edition in 1713, with curious illustrations. By 1817 this book had passed through twenty six-editions in England, besides several in America. Greenwood also published in 1713 "The Virgin Muse," a collection of poetry for "young gentlemen and ladies at school." Second and third editions appeared in 1722 and 1731.
Michael Maittaire also issued, in 1712, "An English Grammar; or, an Essay on the Art of Grammar, applied to and exemplified in the English Tongue." In the same year a pamphlet appeared with the title, "Bellum Grammatical, or the Grammatical Battle-Royal. In Reflections on the three English Grammars published in about a year last past." It consists chiefly of an attack on Greenwood's "Essay," and praise of Brightland's "Grammar," which "merits what the Censor said of it." In a postscript Maittaire's "Grammar" is described as the worst of all. Brightland and Greenwood deserve to be remembered for their efforts to spread abroad a knowledge of "the genius and nature of the English tongue." (The facts in this note are taken from a paper by the present writer in _Watford's Antiquarian_ for October 1885.)
[130] Horace, 3 Od. iv. 19.
[131] Virgil, "Eclog." i. 67.
[132]
"_Bartolus_ (_a covetous lawyer_). Where shall I find these sums? _Diego_ (_sexton to Lopez_). Even where you please, sir."
--_Beaumont and Fletcher's "Spanish Curate,"_ Act. iv. sc. i.
=No. 235.= [STEELE.[133]
From _Saturday, Oct. 7_, to _Tuesday, Oct. 10, 1710_.
Scit Genius, natale comes qui temperat astrum.
HOR., 2 Ep. ii. 187.
_From my own Apartment, Oct. 9._
Among those inclinations which are common to all men, there is none more unaccountable than that unequal love by which parents distinguish their children from each other. Sometimes vanity and self-love appear to have a share towards this effect; and in other instances I have been apt to attribute it to mere instinct: but however that is, we frequently see the child that has been beholden to neither of these impulses in their parents, in spite of being neglected, snubbed, and thwarted at home, acquire a behaviour which makes it as agreeable to all the rest of the world, as that of every one else of their family is to each other. I fell into this way of thinking from an intimacy which I have with a very good house in our neighbourhood, where there are three daughters of a very different character and genius. The eldest has a great deal of wit and cunning; the second has good sense, but no artifice; the third has much vivacity, but little understanding. The first is a fine, but scornful woman; the second is not charming, but very winning; the third no way commendable, but very desirable. The father of these young creatures was ever a great pretender to wit, the mother a woman of as much coquetry. This turn in the parents has biassed their affections towards their children. The old man supposes the eldest of his own genius, and the mother looks upon the youngest as herself renewed. By this means, all the lovers that approach the house are discarded by the father for not observing Mrs. Mary's wit and beauty, and by the mother for being blind to the mien and air of Mrs. Biddy. Come never so many pretenders, they are not suspected to have the least thoughts of Mrs. Betty, the middle daughter. Betty therefore is mortified into a woman of a great deal of merit, and knows she must depend on that only for her advancement. The middlemost is thus the favourite of all her acquaintance as well as mine, while the other two carry a certain insolence about them in all conversations, and expect the partiality which they meet with at home to attend them wherever they appear. So little do parents understand that they are of all people the least judges of their children's merit, that what they reckon such, is seldom anything else but a repetition of their own faults and infirmities.
There is, methinks, some excuse for being particular when one of the offspring has any defect in nature. In this case, the child, if we may so speak, is so much the longer the child of its parents, and calls for the continuance of their care and indulgence from the slowness of its capacity, or the weakness of its body. But there is no enduring to see men enamoured only at the sight of their own impertinences repeated, and to observe, as we may sometimes, that they have a secret dislike of their children for a degeneracy from their very crimes. Commend me to Lady Goodly; she is equal to all her own children, but prefers them to those of all the world beside. My lady is a perfect hen in the care of her brood; she fights and squabbles with all that appear where they come, but is wholly unbiassed in dispensing her favours among them. It is no small pains she is at to defame all the young women in her neighbourhood by visits, whispers, intimations, and hearsays; all which she ends with thanking Heaven, that no one living is so blessed with such obedient and well-inclined children as herself. Perhaps, says she, Betty cannot dance like Mrs. Frontinett, and it is no great matter whether she does or not; but she comes into a room with a good grace; though she says it that should not, she looks like a gentlewoman. Then if Mrs. Rebecca is not so talkative as the mighty wit Mrs. Clapper, yet she is discreet, she knows better what she says when she does speak. If her wit be slow, her tongue never runs before it. This kind parent lifts up her eyes and hands in congratulation of her own good fortune, and is maliciously thankful that none of her girls are like any of her neighbours: but this preference of her own to all others, is grounded upon an impulse of nature; while those who like one before another of their own, are so unpardonably unjust, that it could hardly be equalled in the children, though they preferred all the rest of the world to such parents. It is no unpleasant entertainment to see a ball at a dancing-school, and observe the joy of relations when the young ones, for whom they are concerned, are in motion. You need not be told whom the dancers belong to: at their first appearance the passion of their parents are in their faces, and there is always a nod of approbation stolen at a good step, or a graceful turn.
I remember among all my acquaintance but one man whom I have thought to live with his children with equanimity and a good grace. He had three sons and one daughter, whom he bred with all the care imaginable in a liberal and ingenuous way.[134] I have often heard him say, he had the weakness to love one much better than the other, but that he took as much pains to correct that as any other criminal passion that could arise in his mind. His method was, to make it the only pretension in his children to his favour to be kind to each other; and he would tell them, that he who was the best brother, he would reckon the best son. This turned their thoughts into an emulation for the superiority in kind and tender affection towards each other. The boys behaved themselves very early with a manly friendship; and their sister, instead of the gross familiarities and impertinent freedoms in behaviour, usual in other houses, was always treated by them with as much complaisance as any other young lady of their acquaintance. It was an unspeakable pleasure to visit or sit at meal in that family. I have often seen the old man's heart flow at his eyes with joy upon occasions which would appear indifferent to such as were strangers to the turn of his mind; but a very slight accident, wherein he saw his children's good-will to one another, created in him the God-like pleasure of loving them, because they loved each other.[135] This great command of himself, in hiding his first impulse to partiality, at last improved to a steady justice towards them; and that which at first was but an expedient to correct his weakness, was afterwards the measure of his virtue.
The truth of it is, those parents who are interested in the care of one child more than that of another, no longer deserve the name of parents, but are in effect as childish as their children, in having such unreasonable and ungovernable inclinations. A father of this sort has degraded himself into one of his own offspring; for none but a child would take part in the passions of children.
FOOTNOTES:
[133] Nichols thinks that Addison was probably the author of this paper, because of the allusion to Addison's family at the close. But Steele had visited Dr. Lancelot Addison's home when he was a boy at the Charterhouse. The paper is not printed in Addison's works.
[134] Addison's father, Dr. Lancelot Addison, Dean of Lichfield, had three sons: (1) Joseph; (2) Gulston, who died Governor of Fort-George in the East Indies; (3) Lancelot, who was entered in Queen's College, and afterwards became Master of Arts, and Fellow of Magdalen College in Oxford; and a daughter, Dorothy, first married to Dr. Sartre, formerly minister of Montpellier, and afterwards Prebendary of Westminster; and, secondly, to Daniel Combes, Esq. Swift wrote on October 25, 1710: "I dined to-day with Addison and Steele, and a sister of Mr. Addison, who is married to one Mons. Sartre, a Frenchman, prebendary of Westminster, who has a delicious house and garden; yet I thought it was a sort of monastic life in those cloisters, and I liked Laracor better. Addison's sister is a sort of a wit, very like him. I am not fond of her."
Addison had two other sisters, who died young. Of his brother Gulston we read thus in the "Wentworth Papers" (pp. 75-76): "Since I wrote this, I am told a great piece of news, that Mr. Addison is really a very great man with the juncto, and that he has got his elder brother, who has been a factor abroad in those parts, to be Governor of Fort St. George.... It seems Mr. Addison's friends can do what they please with the chief of the East India Company, who, I think, have the liberty of naming their Governor, and by management with them this place is got, which they say some years is worth £20,000" (Peter Wentworth to Lord Raby, January 28, 1709).
[135] In the Dedication to Congreve of Addison's "Drummer" (1722), Steele said, "Mr. Dean Addison, father of this memorable man, left behind him four children, each of whom, for excellent talents and singular perfections, was as much above the ordinary world as their brother Joseph was above them. Were things of this nature to be exposed to public view, I could show, under the Dean's own hand, in the warmest terms, his blessing on the friendship between his son and me; nor had he a child who did not prefer me in the first place of kindness and esteem, as their father loved me like one of them."
=No. 236.= [STEELE.[136]
From _Tuesday, Oct. 10_, to _Thursday, Oct. 12, 1710_.
Nescio qua natale solum dulcedine mentem Tangit, et immemorem non sinit esse sui.
OVID, Ep. ex Pont. 1. iii.
_From my own Apartment, Oct. 11._
I find in the registers of my family, that the branch of the Bickerstaffs from which I am descended, came originally out of Ireland.[137] This has given me a kind of natural affection for that country. It is therefore with pleasure that I see not only some of the greatest warriors, but also of the greatest wits, to be natives of that kingdom. The gentleman who writes the following letter is one of these last. The matter of fact contained in it is literally true, though the diverting manner in which it is told may give it the colour of a fable.
To ISAAC BICKERSTAFF, Esq., at his House in Great Britain.
_Dublin_.
"SIR,
"Finding by several passages of your _Tatlers_, that you are a person curious in natural knowledge, I thought it would not be unacceptable to you to give you the following history of the migration of frogs into this country. There is an ancient tradition among the wild philosophers of the kingdom, that this whole island was once as much infested by frogs, as that wherein Whittington made his fortune was by mice; insomuch that it is said, Macdonald the First could no more sleep by reason of these Dutch nightingales (as they are called at Paris), than Pharaoh could when they croaked in his bed-chamber. It was in the reign of this great monarch that St. Patrick arrived in Ireland, being as famous for destroying vermin as any rat-catcher of our times. If we may believe the tradition, he killed more in one day than a flock of storks could have done in a twelvemonth. From that time for about five hundred years, there was not a frog to be heard in Ireland, notwithstanding the bogs still remained, which in former ages had been so plentifully stocked with those inhabitants.
"When the arts began to flourish in the reign of King Charles the Second, and that great monarch had placed himself at the head of the Royal Society, to lead them forward into the discoveries of nature, it is said, that several proposals were laid before his Majesty for the importing of frogs into Ireland. In order to it, a virtuoso of known abilities was unanimously elected by the Society, and entrusted with the whole management of that affair. For this end he took along with him a sound, able-bodied frog, of a strong, hale constitution, that had given proof of his vigour by several leaps which he made before that learned body. They took ship, and sailed together till they came within sight of the Hill of Howth, before the frog discovered any symptoms of being indisposed by his voyage: but as the wind chopped about, and began to blow from the Irish coast, he grew sea-sick, or rather land-sick; for his learned companion ascribed it to the particles of the soil with which the wind was impregnated. He was confirmed in his conjecture, when, upon the wind's turning about, his fellow-traveller sensibly recovered, and continued in good health till his arrival upon the shore, where he suddenly relapsed, and expired upon a Ring's End car[138] on his way to Dublin. The same experiment was repeated several times in that reign, but to no purpose. A frog was never known to take three leaps upon Irish turf, before he stretched himself out and died.
"Whether it were that the philosophers on this side the water despaired of stocking the island with this useful animal, or whether in the following reign it was not thought proper to undo the miracle of a Popish saint, I do not hear of any further progress made in this affair till about two years after the battle of the Boyne.
"It was then that an ingenious physician,[139] to the honour as well as improvement of his native country, performed what the English had been so long attempting in vain. This learned man, with the hazard of his life, made a voyage to Liverpool, where he filled several barrels with the choicest spawn of frogs that could be found in those parts. This cargo he brought over very carefully, and afterwards disposed of it in several warm beds that he thought most capable of bringing it to life. The doctor was a very ingenious physician, and a very good Protestant; for which reason, to show his zeal against Popery, he placed some of the most promising spawn in the very fountain that is dedicated to the Saint, and known by the name of St. Patrick's Well, where these animals had the impudence to make their first appearance. They have since that time very much increased and multiplied in all the neighbourhood of this city. We have here some curious inquirers into natural history who observe their motions, with a design to compute in how many years they will be able to hop from Dublin to Wexford; though, as I am informed, not one of them has yet passed the mountains of Wicklow.
"I am further informed, that several graziers of the county of Cork have entered into a project of planting a colony in those parts, at the instance of the French Protestants: and I know not but the same design may be on foot in other parts of the kingdom, if the wisdom of the British nation do not think fit to prohibit the further importation of English frogs. I am,
"Sir, "Your most humble Servant, "T. B."
There is no study more becoming a rational creature than that of natural philosophy; but as several of our modern virtuosos manage it, their speculations do not so much tend to open and enlarge the mind, as to contract and fix it upon trifles.
This in England is in a great measure owing to the worthy elections that are so frequently made in our Royal Society.[140] They seem to be in a confederacy against men of polite genius, noble thought, and diffusive learning; and choose into their assemblies such as have no pretence to wisdom, but want of wit; or to natural knowledge, but ignorance of everything else. I have made observations in this matter so long, that when I meet with a young fellow that is a humble admirer of the sciences, but more dull than the rest of the company, I conclude him to be a Fellow of the Royal Society.
FOOTNOTES:
[136] The authorship of the letter which forms the principal part of this number is unknown. Goldsmith was told that a Dean of Killaloe was the author of a paper in the _Tatler_ or _Spectator_, but there is nothing to connect the Dean (Jerome Ryves) with this particular number.
[137] This may apply either to Swift, from whom Steele borrowed the name of Bickerstaff, or to Steele himself.
[138] "Our one horse vehicles have always been peculiar to ourselves, and were in use long before anything of a similar kind was introduced into England. The earliest and rudest of these were the Ring's End cars, so called from their plying principally to that place and Irishtown, then the resort of the _beau monde_ for the benefit of sea-bathing. This car consisted of a seat suspended in a strap of leather between shafts, and without springs. The noise made by the creaking of the strap, which supported the whole weight of the company, particularly distinguished this mode of conveyance" ("Sketches of Ireland Sixty Years Ago," p. 77, quoted in _Notes and Queries_, 7th Series, iv. 178-179). Ring's End is a fishing village near Dublin.
[139] Sir Hans Sloane. The hazardous voyage to Liverpool is, perhaps, an allusion to the doctor's voyage to Jamaica, ridiculed by Dr. William King, in "A Voyage to the Island of Cajamai."
[140] For previous attacks on the Royal Society by Addison, see Nos. 119, 216, and 221.
=No. 237.= [? STEELE.[141]
From _Thursday, Oct. 12_, to _Saturday, Oct. 14, 1710_.
In nova fert animus mutatas dicere formas Corpora.----
OVID, Met. i. 1.
_From my own Apartment, Oct. 13._
Coming home last night before my usual hour, I took a book into my hand, in order to divert myself with it till bed-time. Milton chanced to be my author, whose admirable poem of "Paradise Lost" serves, at once, to fill the mind with pleasing ideas, and with good thoughts, and was therefore the most proper book for my purpose. I was amusing myself with that beautiful passage in which the poet represents Eve sleeping by Adam's side, with the devil sitting at her ear, and inspiring evil thoughts under the shape of a toad. Ithuriel, one of the guardian angels of the place, walking his nightly rounds, saw the great enemy of mankind hid in this loathsome animal, which he touched with his spear. This spear being of a celestial temper, had such a secret virtue in it, that whatever it was applied to, immediately flung off all disguise, and appeared in its natural figure. I am afraid the reader will not pardon me if I content myself with explaining the passage in prose, without giving it in the author's own inimitable words:
_----On he led his radiant files, Dazzling the morn: these to the bower direct, In search of whom they sought. Him there they found, Squat like a toad, close at the ear of Eve; Essaying by his devilish art to reach The organs of her fancy, and with them forge Illusions as he list, phantasms and dreams; Or if, inspiring venom, he might taint The animal spirits (that from pure blood arise Like gentle breaths from rivers pure), thence raise At least distempered, discontented thoughts, Vain hopes, vain aims, inordinate desires, Blown up with high conceits, engendering pride. Him thus intent, Ithuriel with his spear Touched lightly; for no falsehood can endure Touch of celestial temper, but returns Of force to his own likeness. Up he starts, Discovered and surprised. As when a spark Lights on a heap of nitrous powder, laid Fit for the tun, some magazine to store Against a rumoured war, the smutty grain, With sudden blaze diffused, inflames the air; So started up in his own shape the fiend._[142]
I could not forbear thinking how happy a man would be in the possession of this spear; or what an advantage it would be to a Minister of State, were he master of such a white staff. It would let him discover his friends from his enemies, men of abilities from pretenders: it would hinder him from being imposed upon by appearances and professions, and might be made use of as a kind of State test, which no artifice could elude.
These thoughts made very lively impressions on my imagination, which were improved, instead of being defaced by sleep, and produced in me the following dream: I was no sooner fallen asleep, but, methought, the angel Ithuriel appeared to me, and with a smile that still added to his celestial beauty, made me a present of the spear which he held in his hand, and disappeared. To make trials of it, I went into a place of public resort.
The first person that passed by me, was a lady that had a particular shyness in the cast of her eye, and a more than ordinary reservedness in all the parts of her behaviour. She seemed to look upon man as an obscene creature, with a certain scorn and fear of him. In the height of her airs I touched her gently with my wand, when, to my unspeakable surprise, she fell upon her back, and kicked up her heels in such a manner as made me blush in my sleep. As I was hasting away from this undisguised prude, I saw a lady in earnest discourse with another, and overheard her say with some vehemence, "Never tell me of him, for I am resolved to die a virgin!" I had a curiosity to try her; but as soon as I laid my wand upon her head, she immediately fell in labour. My eyes were diverted from her by a man and his wife, who walked near me hand-in-hand after a very loving manner. I gave each of them a gentle tap, and the next instant saw the woman in breeches, and the man with a fan in his hand. It would be tedious to describe the long series of metamorphoses that I entertained myself with in my night's adventure, of Whigs disguised in Tories, and Tories in Whigs; men in red coats that denounced terror in their countenances, trembling at the touch of my spear; others in black with peace in their mouths, but swords in their hands. I could tell stories of noblemen changed into usurers, and magistrates into beadles; of free-thinkers into penitents, and reformers into whoremasters. I must not, however, omit the mention of a grave citizen that passed by me with a huge clasped Bible under his arm, and a band of most immoderate breadth; but upon a touch on the shoulder, he let drop his book, and fell a-picking my pocket.
In the general I observed, that those who appeared good, often disappointed my expectation; but that, on the contrary, those who appeared very bad, still grew worse upon the experiment; as the toad in Milton, which one would have thought the most deformed part of the creation, at Ithuriel's stroke, became more deformed, and started up into a devil.
Among all the persons that I touched, there was but one who stood the test of my wand; and after many repetitions of the stroke, stuck to his form, and remained steady and fixed in his first appearance. This was a young man who boasted of foul distempers, wild debauches, insults upon holy men, and affronts to religion.
My heart was extremely troubled at this vision: the contemplation of the whole species, so entirely sunk in corruption, filled my mind with a melancholy that is inexpressible, and my discoveries still added to my affliction.
In the midst of these sorrows which I had in my heart, methought there passed by me a couple of coaches with purple liveries. There sat in each of them a person with a very venerable aspect. At the appearance of them, the people who were gathered round me in great multitudes divided into parties, as they were disposed to favour either of those reverend persons. The enemies of one of them begged me to touch him with my wand, and assured me, I should see his lawn converted into a cloak. The opposite party told me with as much assurance, that if I laid my wand upon the other, I should see his garments embroidered with fleurs-de-lis, and his head covered with a cardinal's cap. I made the experiment, and, to my great joy, saw them both, without any change, distributing their blessings to the people, and praying for those who had reviled them. Is it possible, thought I, that good men, who are so few in number, should be divided among themselves, and give better quarter to the vicious that are in their party, than the most strictly virtuous who are out of it? Are the ties of faction above those of religion?--I was going on in my soliloquies, but some sudden accident awakened me, when I found my hand grasped, but my spear gone. The reflection on so very odd a dream made me figure to myself, what a strange face the world would bear, should all mankind appear in their proper shapes and characters, without hypocrisy and disguise? I am afraid the earth we live upon would appear to other intellectual beings no better than a planet peopled with monsters. This should, methinks, inspire us with an honest ambition of recommending ourselves to those invisible spies, and of being what we would appear. There was one circumstance in my foregoing dream which I at first intended to conceal; but upon second thoughts, I cannot look upon myself as a candid and impartial historian, if I do not acquaint my reader, that upon taking Ithuriel's spear into my hand, though I was before an old decrepid fellow, I appeared a very handsome, jolly, black man. But I know my enemies will say, this is praising my own beauty, for which reason I will speak no more of it.
FOOTNOTES:
[141] Nichols thought this paper was written by Addison, or with his assistance. "The _Tatler_ upon Milton's 'spear' is not mine, madam. What a puzzle there was between you and your judgment! In general you may sometimes be sure of things, as that about Style [_Tatler_, No. 230], because it is what I have frequently spoken of; but guessing is mine;--and I defy mankind if I please" (Swift's "Journal to Stella," Nov. 8, 1710).
[142] "Paradise Lost," iv. 797-819.
=No. 238.= [STEELE and SWIFT.[143]
From _Saturday, Oct. 14_, to _Tuesday, Oct. 17, 1710_.
----Poetica surgit Tempestas----
JUV., Sat. xii. 23.
_From my own Apartment, Oct. 16._
Storms at sea are so frequently described by the ancient poets, and copied by the moderns, that whenever I find the winds begin to rise in a new heroic poem, I generally skip a leaf or two till I come into fair weather. Virgil's Tempest is a masterpiece in this kind, and is indeed so naturally drawn, that one who has made a voyage can scarce read it without being sea-sick.
Land showers are no less frequent among the poets than the former, but I remember none of them which have not fallen in the country; for which reason they are generally filled with the lowings of oxen and the bleatings of sheep, and very often embellished with a rainbow.
Virgil's Land Shower is likewise the best in its kind: it is indeed a shower of consequence, and contributes to the main design of the poem, by cutting off a tedious ceremonial, and bringing matters to a speedy conclusion between two potentates of different sexes. My ingenious kinsman, Mr. Humphrey Wagstaff, who treats of every subject after a manner that no other author has done, and better than any other can do, has sent me the description of a City Shower. I do not question but the reader remembers my cousin's description of the Morning as it breaks in town, which is printed in the ninth _Tatler_, and is another exquisite piece of this local poetry:
Careful observers may foretell the hour (By sure prognostics) when to dread a shower: While rain depends, the pensive cat gives o'er Her frolics, and pursues her tail no more. Returning home at night, you'll find the sink Strike your offended sense with double stink. If you be wise, then go not far to dine, You'll spend in coach-hire more than save in wine. A coming shower your shooting corns presage, Old aches throb,[144] your hollow tooth will rage. Saunt'ring in coffee-house is Dulman seen; He damns the climate, and complains of spleen.
Meanwhile the south rising with dabbled wings, A sable cloud athwart the welkin flings, That swilled more liquor than it could contain, And like a drunkard gives it up again. Brisk Susan whips her linen from the rope, While the first drizzling shower is borne aslope. Such is that sprinkling which some careless quean Flirts on you from her mop, but not so clean. You fly, invoke the gods; then turning, stop To rail; she singing, still whirls on her mop. Not yet the dust had shunned th'unequal strife, But aided by the wind, fought still for life; And wafted with its foe by violent gust, 'Twas doubtful which was rain and which was dust. Ah! where must needy poet seek for aid, When dust and rain at once his coat invade; His only coat, where dust confused with rain Roughen the nap, and leave a mingled stain.
Now in contiguous drops the flood comes down, Threatening with deluge this devoted town. To shops in crowds the daggled females fly, Pretend to cheapen goods, but nothing buy. The Templar spruce, while every spout's abroach, Stays till 'tis fair, yet seems to call a coach. The tucked-up sempstress walks with hasty strides, While streams run down her oiled umbrella's sides. Here various kinds by various fortunes led, Commence acquaintance underneath a shed. Triumphant Tories and desponding Whigs Forget their feuds, and join to save their wigs. Boxed in a chair the beau impatient sits, While spouts run clattering o'er the roof by fits; And ever and anon with frightful din The leather sounds, he trembles from within. So when Troy chairmen bore the wooden steed, Pregnant with Greeks, impatient to be freed. (Those bully Greeks, who, as the moderns do, Instead of paying chairmen, run them through.) Laocoon struck the outside with his spear, And each imprisoned hero quaked for fear.
Now from all parts the swelling kennels flow, And bear their trophies with them as they go: Filth of all hues and odours seem to tell What street they sailed from, by their sight and smell. They, as each torrent drives, with rapid force, From Smithfield or St. Pulchre's shape their course, And in huge confluent joined at Snow Hill ridge, Fall from the Conduit, prone to Holborn Bridge. Sweepings from butchers' stalls, dung, guts, and blood, Drowned puppies, stinking sprats, all drenched in mud, Dead cats and turnip-tops come tumbling down the flood.
FOOTNOTES:
[143] "I am going to work at another _Tatler_" (Swift's "Journal," Oct. 4, 1710). "And now I am going in charity to send Steele another _Tatler_, who is very low of late" (_Ib._, Oct. 7, 1710). "I am now writing my poetical description of a 'Shower in London,' and will send it to the _Tatler_" (_Ib._, Oct. 10, 1710). "I have finished my poem on the 'Shower,' all but the beginning; and am going on with my _Tatler_" (_Ib._, Oct. 12, 1710). "This day came out the _Tatler_, made up wholly of my 'Shower,' and a preface to it. They say it is the best thing I ever wrote, and I think so too. I suppose the Bishop of Clogher will show it you. Pray tell me how you like it" (_Ib._, Oct. 17, 1710). "They both [Rowe and Prior] fell commending my 'Shower' beyond anything that has been written of the kind; there never was such a 'Shower' since Danae's," &c. "You must tell me how it is liked among you" (_Ib._, Oct. 27, 1710). "The Bishop of Clogher says, I bid him read the London 'Shaver,' and that you both swore it was 'Shaver,' and not 'Shower.' You all lie, and you are puppies, and can't read Presto's hand" (_Ib._, Nov. 28, 1710). "My 'Shower' admired with you; why the Bishop of Clogher says, he has seen something of mine of the same sort, better than the 'Shower.' I suppose he means 'The Morning'; but it is not half so good" (_Ib._, Nov. 30, 1710).
[144] Altered in Johnson's "Poets," and other editions, to "old aches will throb"; otherwise "aches" must be pronounced as a dissyllable.
=No. 239.= [ADDISON.
From _Tuesday, Oct. 17_, to _Thursday, Oct. 19, 1710_.
----Mecum certasse feretur.--OVID, Met. xiii. 20.
_From my own Apartment, Oct. 18._
It is ridiculous for any man to criticise on the works of another, who has not distinguished himself by his own performances. A judge would make but an indifferent figure who had never been known at the bar. Cicero was reputed the greatest orator of his age and country before he wrote a book "De Oratore"; and Horace the greatest poet before he published his "Art of Poetry." This observation arises naturally in any one who casts his eye upon this last-mentioned author, where he will find the criticisms placed in the latter end of his book, that is, after the finest odes and satires in the Latin tongue.
A modern, whose name I shall not mention,[145] because I would not make a silly paper sell, was born a critic and an Examiner, and, like one of the race of the serpent's teeth, came into the world with a sword in his hand. His works put me in mind of the story that is told of a German monk, who was taking a catalogue of a friend's library, and meeting with a Hebrew book in it, entered it under the title of "A book that has the beginning where the end should be." This author, in the last of his crudities, has amassed together a heap of quotations, to prove that Horace and Virgil were both of them modester men than myself, and if his works were to live as long as mine, they might possibly give posterity a notion, that Isaac Bickerstaff was a very conceited old fellow, and as vain a man as either Tully or Sir Francis Bacon. Had this serious writer fallen upon me only, I could have overlooked it; but to see Cicero abused, is, I must confess, what I cannot bear. The censure he passes upon this great man runs thus: "The itch of being very abusive, is almost inseparable from vainglory. Tully has these two faults in so high a degree, that nothing but his being the best writer in the world can make amends for them." The scurrilous wretch goes on to say I am as bad as Tully. His words are these: "And yet the Tatler, in his paper of September 26, has outdone him in both. He speaks of himself with more arrogance, and with more insolence of others." I am afraid by his discourse, this gentleman has no more read Plutarch than he has Tully. If he had, he would have observed a passage in that historian, wherein he has with great delicacy distinguished between two passions which are usually complicated in human nature, and which an ordinary writer would not have thought of separating. Not having my Greek spectacles by me, I shall quote the passage word for word as I find it translated to my hand. "Nevertheless, though he was intemperately fond of his own praise, yet he was very free from envying others, and most liberally profuse in commending both the ancients and his contemporaries, as is to be understood by his writings; and many of those sayings are still recorded, as that concerning Aristotle, that he was a river of flowing gold: of Plato's 'Dialogue,' that if Jupiter were to speak, he would discourse as he did. Theophrastus he was wont to call his peculiar delight; and being asked, which of Demosthenes his orations he liked best? he answered, the longest.
"And as for the eminent men of his own time, either for eloquence or philosophy, there was not one of them which he did not, by writing or speaking favourably of, render more illustrious."
Thus the critic tells us, that Cicero was excessively vainglorious and abusive; Plutarch, that he was vain, but not abusive. Let the reader believe which of them he pleases.
After this he complains to the world, that I call him names; and that in my passion I said, he was "a flea, a louse, an owl, a bat, a small wit, a scribbler, and a nibbler." When he has thus bespoken his reader's pity, he falls into that admirable vein of mirth, which I shall set down at length, it being an exquisite piece of raillery, and written in great gaiety of heart. "After this list of names (viz., flea, louse, owl, bat, &c.), I was surprised to hear him say, that he has hitherto kept his temper pretty well; I wonder how he will write when he has lost his temper? I suppose, as he now is very angry and unmannerly, he will then be exceeding courteous and good-humoured." If I can outlive this raillery, I shall be able to bear anything.
There is a method of criticism made use of by this author (for I shall take care how I call him a scribbler again), which may turn into ridicule any work that was ever written, wherein there is a variety of thoughts: this the reader will observe in the following words: "He (meaning me) is so intent upon being something extraordinary, that he scarce knows what he would be; and is as fruitful in his similes, as a brother of his[146] whom I lately took notice of. In the compass of a few lines he compares himself to a fox, to Daniel Burgess, to the Knight of the Red Cross, to an oak with ivy about it, and to a great man with an equipage." I think myself as much honoured by being joined in this part of his paper with the gentleman whom he here calls my brother, as I am in the beginning of it, by being mentioned with Horace and Virgil.
It is very hard that a man cannot publish ten papers without stealing from himself; but to show you that this is only a knack of writing, and that the author is got into a certain road of criticism, I shall set down his remarks on the works of the gentleman whom he here glances upon, as they stand in his sixth paper, and desire the reader to compare them with the foregoing passage upon mine:
"In thirty lines his patron is a river, the _primum mobile_, a pilot, a victim, the sun, anything, and nothing. He bestows increase, conceals his source, makes the machine move, teaches to steer, expiates our offences, raises vapours, and looks larger as he sets."
What poem can be safe from this sort of criticism? I think I was never in my life so much offended as at a wag whom I once met with in a coffee-house: he had in his hand one of the Miscellanies, and was reading the following short copy of verses, which, without flattery to the author,[147] is, I think, as beautiful in its kind as any one in the English tongue:
_Flavia the least and slightest toy Can with resistless art employ. This fan in meaner hands would prove An engine of small force in love; But she with such an air and mien, Not to be told, or safely seen, Directs its wanton motions so, That it wounds more than Cupid's bow; Gives coolness to the matchless dame, To every other breast a flame._
When this coxcomb had done reading them, "Heyday!" says he, "what instrument is this that Flavia employs in such a manner as is not to be told, nor safely seen? In ten lines it is a toy, a Cupid's bow, a fan, and an engine in love. It has wanton motions, it wounds, it cools, and inflames."
Such criticisms make a man of sense sick, and a fool merry.
The next paragraph of the paper we are talking of falls upon somebody whom I am at a loss to guess at:[148] but I find the whole invective turns upon a man who (it seems) has been imprisoned for debt. Whoever he was, I most heartily pity him; but at the same time must put the Examiner in mind, that notwithstanding he is a critic, he still ought to remember he is a Christian. Poverty was never thought a proper subject for ridicule; and I do not remember that I ever met with a satire upon a beggar.
As for those little retortings of my own expressions, of being dull by design, witty in October, shining, excelling, and so forth; they are the common cavils of every witling, who has no other method of showing his parts, but by little variations and repetitions of the man's words whom he attacks.
But the truth of it is, the paper before me, not only in this particular, but in its very essence, is like Ovid's echo:
----Quæ nec reticere loquenti, Nec prior ipsa loqui didicit.[149]
I should not have deserved the character of a censor, had I not animadverted upon the above-mentioned author by a gentle chastisement: but I know my reader will not pardon me, unless I declare, that nothing of this nature for the future (unless it be written with some wit) shall divert me from my care of the public.
FOOTNOTES:
[145] The _Examiner_, the eleventh number of which consisted of jibes against No. 229 of the _Tatler_, by Addison.
[146] Sir Samuel Garth, who has attacked in the sixth number of the _Examiner_.
[147] Bishop Atterbury. The verses were written "on a white fan borrowed from Miss Osborne, afterwards his wife."
[148] The attack was, of course, on Steele, and consisted of allusions to sponging-houses and fears of arrest for debt. It will be remarked that No. 229 was really by Addison, who here nobly defends his friend.
[149] Ovid, "Met." iii, 357.
=No. 240.= [ADDISON.
From _Thursday, Oct. 19_, to _Saturday, Oct. 21, 1710_.
Ad populum phaleras.--PERS., Sat. iii. 30.
_From my own Apartment, Oct. 20._
I do not remember that in any of my Lucubrations I have touched upon that useful science of physic, notwithstanding I have declared myself more than once a professor of it. I have indeed joined the study of astrology with it, because I never knew a physician recommend himself to the public who had not a sister art to embellish his knowledge in medicine. It has been commonly observed in compliment to the ingenious of our profession, that Apollo was god of verse as well as physic; and in all ages the most celebrated practitioners of our country were the particular favourites of the Muses. Poetry to physic is indeed like the gilding to a pill; it makes the art shine, and covers the severity of the doctor with the agreeableness of the companion.
The very foundation of poetry is good sense, if we may allow Horace to be a judge of the art:
_Scribendi recte sapere est et principium et fons._[150]
And if so, we have reason to believe that the same man who writes well can prescribe well, if he has applied himself to the study of both. Besides, when we see a man making profession of two different sciences, it is natural for us to believe he is no pretender in that which we are not judges of when we find him skilful in that which we understand.
Ordinary quacks and charlatans are thoroughly sensible how necessary it is to support themselves by these collateral assistances, and therefore always lay their claim to some supernumerary accomplishments which are wholly foreign to their profession.
About twenty years ago it was impossible to walk the streets without having an advertisement thrust into your hand of a doctor who was arrived at the knowledge of the green and red dragon, and had discovered the female fern seed. Nobody ever knew what this meant; but the green and red dragon so amused the people, that the doctor lived very comfortably upon them. About the same time there was pasted a very hard word upon every corner of the streets. This, to the best of my remembrance, was
TETRACHYMAGOGON,
which drew great shoals of spectators about it, who read the bill that it introduced with unspeakable curiosity; and when they were sick, would have nobody but this learned man for their physician.
I once received an advertisement of one who had studied thirty years by candle-light for the good of his countrymen. He might have studied twice as long by daylight, and never have been taken notice of: but lucubrations cannot be overvalued. There are some who have gained themselves great reputation for physic by their birth, as the seventh son of a seventh son; and others by not being born at all, as the Unborn Doctor,[151] who, I hear, is lately gone the way of his patients, having died worth five hundred pounds per annum, though he was not born to a halfpenny.
My ingenious friend Dr. Saffold[152] succeeded my old contemporary Dr. Lilly[153] in the studies both of physic and astrology, to which he added that of poetry, as was to be seen both upon the sign where he lived, and in the bills which he distributed. He was succeeded by Dr. Case,[154] who erased the verses of his predecessor out of the sign-post, and substituted in their stead two of his own, which were as follows:
_Within this place Lives_ Doctor CASE.
He is said to have got more by this distich than Mr. Dryden did by all his works. There would be no end of enumerating the several imaginary perfections and unaccountable artifices by which this tribe of men ensnare the minds of the vulgar, and gain crowds of admirers. I have seen the whole front of a mountebank's stage from one end to the other faced with patents, certificates, medals, and great seals, by which the several princes of Europe have testified their particular respect and esteem for the doctor. Every great man with a sounding title has been his patient. I believe I have seen twenty mountebanks that have given physic to the Czar of Muscovy. The great Duke of Tuscany escapes no better. The Elector of Brandenburg was likewise a very good patient.
This great condescension of the doctor draws upon him much good-will from his audience; and it is ten to one, but if any of them be troubled with an aching tooth, his ambition will prompt him to get it drawn by a person who has had so many princes, kings, and emperors under his hands.
I must not leave this subject without observing, that as physicians are apt to deal in poetry, apothecaries endeavour to recommend themselves by oratory, and are therefore without controversy the most eloquent persons in the whole British nation. I would not willingly discourage any of the arts, especially that of which I am a humble professor; but I must confess, for the good of my native country, I could wish there might be a suspension of physic for some years, that our kingdom, which has been so much exhausted by the wars, might have leave to recruit itself.
As for myself, the only physic which has brought me safe to almost the age of man, and which I prescribe to all my friends, is abstinence. This is certainly the best physic for prevention, and very often the most effectual against a present distemper. In short, my recipe is, Take nothing.
Were the body politic to be physicked like particular persons, I should venture to prescribe to it after the same manner. I remember when our whole island was shaken with an earthquake some years ago, there was an impudent mountebank who sold pills which (as he told the country people) were very good against an earthquake. It may perhaps be thought as absurd to prescribe a diet for the allaying popular commotions, and national ferments. But I am verily persuaded, that if in such a case a whole people were to enter into a course of abstinence, and eat nothing but water-gruel for a fortnight, it would abate the rage and animosity of parties, and not a little contribute to the cure of a distracted nation. Such a fast would have a natural tendency to the procuring of those ends for which a fast is usually proclaimed. If any man has a mind to enter on such a voluntary abstinence, it might not be improper to give him the caution of Pythagoras in particular:[155]
_Abstine a fabis._ "Abstain from beans."
That is, say the interpreters, meddle not with elections, beans having been made use of by the voters among the Athenians in the choice of magistrates.
FOOTNOTES:
[150] Ars Poet. 309
[151] Kirleus (see No. 14).
[152] Saffold (see No. 20, note) is said to have been originally a weaver. Afterwards he told fortunes, and practised as a quack doctor. A satirical "Elegy on the Death of Thomas Saffold, who departed this life, May 12, 1691," was published after his death.
[153] William Lilly, astrologer, died in 1681, aged seventy-nine. He published thirty-six almanacs, and a large number of pamphlets about his predictions. In 1715 appeared the "History of Lilly's Life and Times," written by himself.
[154] See No. 20.
[155] See Cicero, Div. i. 30, 62; ii. 58, 119; and Horace, 2 Sat. vi. 63.
=No. 241.= [STEELE.
From _Saturday, Oct. 21_, to _Tuesday, Oct. 24, 1710_.
_From my own Apartment, Oct. 23._
A method of spending one's time agreeably is a thing so little studied, that the common amusement of our young gentlemen (especially of such as are at a distance from those of the first breeding) is drinking. This way of entertainment has custom of its side; but as much as it has prevailed, I believe there have been very few companies that have been guilty of excess this way, where there have not happened more accidents which make against than for the continuance of it. It is very common that events arise from a debauch which are fatal, and always such as are disagreeable. With all a man's reason and good sense about him, his tongue is apt to utter things out of mere gaiety of heart which may displease his best friends. Who then would trust himself to the power of wine, without saying more against it, than that it raises the imagination, and depresses the judgment. Were there only this single consideration, that we are less masters of ourselves when we drink in the least proportion above the exigencies of thirst; I say, were this all that could be objected, it were sufficient to make us abhor this vice. But we may go on to say, that as he who drinks but a little is not master of himself, so he who drinks much is a slave to himself. As for my part, I ever esteemed a drunkard of all vicious persons the most vicious: for if our actions are to be weighed and considered according to the intention of them, what can we think of him who puts himself into a circumstance wherein he can have no intention at all, but incapacitates himself for the duties and offices of life, by a suspension of all his faculties. If a man considered, that he cannot under the oppression of drink be a friend, a gentleman, a master, or a subject; that he has so long banished himself from all that is dear, and given up all that is sacred to him, he would even then think of a debauch with horror: but when he looks still further, and acknowledges, that he is not only expelled out of all the relations of life, but also liable to offend against them all, what words can express the terror and detestation he would have of such a condition? And yet he owns all this of himself who says he was drunk last night.
As I have all along persisted in it, that all the vicious in general are in a state of death, so I think I may add to the non-existence of drunkards, that they died by their own hands. He is certainly as guilty of suicide who perishes by a slow, as he that is despatched by an immediate poison. In my last Lucubration I proposed the general use of water-gruel, and hinted that it might not be amiss at this very season: but as there are some whose cases, in regard to their families, will not admit of delay, I have used my interest in several wards of the city, that the wholesome restorative above mentioned may be given in tavern kitchens to all the morning's draught-men within the walls when they call for wine before noon. For a further restraint and mark upon such persons, I have given orders, that in all the offices where policies are drawn upon lives, it shall be added to the article which prohibits that the nominee should cross the sea, the words, "Provided also, that the above-mentioned A. B. shall not drink before dinner during the term mentioned in this indenture."
I am not without hopes but by this method I shall bring some unsizable friends of mine into shape and breath, as well as others who are languid and consumptive into health and vigour. Most of the self-murderers whom I yet hinted at, are such as preserve a certain regularity in taking their poison, and make it mix pretty well with their food: but the most conspicuous of those who destroy themselves, are such as in their youth fall into this sort of debauchery, and contract a certain uneasiness of spirit, which is not to be diverted but by tippling as often as they can fall into company in the day, and conclude with downright drunkenness at night. These gentlemen never know the satisfaction of youth, but skip the years of manhood, and are decrepid soon after they are of age. I was god-father to one of these old fellows. He is now three-and-thirty, which is the grand climacteric of a young drunkard. I went to visit the crazy wretch this morning, with no other purpose but to rally him under the pain and uneasiness of being sober.
But as our faults are double when they affect others besides ourselves, so this vice is still more odious in a married than a single man. He that is the husband of a woman of honour, and comes home overloaded with wine, is still more contemptible in proportion to the regard we have to the unhappy consort of his bestiality. The imagination cannot shape to itself anything more monstrous and unnatural than the familiarities between drunkenness and chastity. The wretched Astrea, who is the perfection of beauty and innocence, has long been thus condemned for life. The romantic tales of virgins devoted to the jaws of monsters, have nothing in them so terrible as the gift of Astrea to that bacchanal.
The reflection of such a match as spotless innocence with abandoned lewdness, is what puts this vice in the worst figure it can bear with regard to others; but when it is looked upon with respect only to the drunkard himself, it has deformities enough to make it disagreeable, which may be summed up in a word, by allowing, that he who resigns his reason, is actually guilty of all that he is liable to from the want of reason.
_P.S._--Among many other enormities, there are two in the following letters which I think should be suddenly amended; but since they are sins of omission only, I shall not make remarks upon them till I find the delinquents persist in their errors; and the inserting the letters themselves shall be all their present admonition.
* * * * *
_October 16_.
"Mr. BICKERSTAFF,
"Several that frequent divine service at St. Paul's, as well as myself, having with great satisfaction observed the good effect which your animadversion had on an excess in performance there;[156] it is requested, that you will take notice of a contrary fault, which is the unconcerned silence and the motionless postures of others who come thither. If this custom prevails, the congregation will resemble an audience at a play-house, or rather a dumb meeting of Quakers. Your censuring such church-mutes in the manner you think fit, may make these dissenters join with us, out of fear lest you should further animadvert upon their non-conformity. According as this succeeds, you shall hear from,
"Sir, "Your most humble Servant, "B. B."
* * * * *
"Mr. BICKERSTAFF,
"I was the other day in company with a gentleman, who, in reciting his own qualifications, concluded every period with these words, 'the best of any man in England.' Thus for example: he kept the best house of any man in England; he understood this, and that, and the other, the best of any man in England. How harsh and ungrateful soever this expression might sound to one of my nation, yet the gentleman was one whom it no ways became me to interrupt; but perhaps a new term put into his by-words (as they call a sentence a man particularly affects) may cure him. I therefore took a resolution to apply to you, who, I dare say, can easily persuade this gentleman (whom I cannot believe an enemy to the Union) to mend his phrase, and be hereafter the wisest of any man in Great Britain. I am,
"Sir, "Your most humble Servant, "SCOTO-BRITANNUS."
ADVERTISEMENT.
Whereas Mr. Humphrey Trelooby, wearing his own hair, a pair of buck-skin breeches, a hunting-whip, with a new pair of spurs, has complained to the Censor, that on Thursday last he was defrauded of half-a-crown, under pretence of a duty to the sexton for seeing the Cathedral of St. Paul, London: it is hereby ordered, that none hereafter require above sixpence of any country gentleman under the age of twenty-five for that liberty; and that all which shall be received above the said sum of any person for beholding the inside of that sacred edifice, be forthwith paid to Mr. John Morphew for the use of Mr. Bickerstaff, under pain of further censure on the above-mentioned extortion.
FOOTNOTES:
[156] See Nos. 56, 61, 67, and 70.
=No. 242.= [STEELE.
From _Tuesday, Oct. 24_, to _Thursday, Oct. 26, 1710_.
----Quis iniquæ Tam patiens urbis, tam ferreus, ut teneat se?
JUV., Sat. i. 30.
_From my own Apartment, Oct. 25._
It was with very great displeasure I heard this day a man say of a companion of his with an air of approbation, "You know Tom never fails of saying a spiteful thing. He has a great deal of wit, but satire is his particular talent. Did you mind how he put the young fellow out of countenance that pretended to talk to him?" Such impertinent applauses, which one meets with every day, put me upon considering what true raillery and satire were in themselves; and this, methought, occurred to me from reflection upon the great and excellent persons that were admired for talents this way. When I had run over several such in my thoughts, I concluded (however unaccountable the assertion might appear at first sight) that good-nature was an essential quality in a satirist, and that all the sentiments which are beautiful in this way of writing must proceed from that quality in the author. Good-nature produces a disdain of all baseness, vice, and folly, which prompts them to express themselves with smartness against the errors of men, without bitterness towards their persons. This quality keeps the mind in equanimity, and never lets an offence unseasonably throw a man out of his character. When Virgil said, he that did not hate Bavius might love Mævius,[157] he was in perfect good-humour, and was not so much moved at their absurdities as passionately to call them sots or blockheads in a direct invective, but laughed at them with a delicacy of scorn, without any mixture of anger.
The best good man, with the worst-natured muse, was the character among us of a gentleman as famous for his humanity as his wit.[158]
The ordinary subjects for satire are such as incite the greatest indignation in the best tempers, and consequently men of such a make are the best qualified for speaking of the offences in human life. These men can behold vice and folly when they injure persons to whom they are wholly unacquainted, with the same severity as others resent the ills they do themselves. A good-natured man cannot see an overbearing fellow put a bashful man of merit out of countenance, or outstrip him in the pursuit of any advantage; but he is on fire to succour the oppressed, to produce the merit of the one, and confront the impudence of the other.
The men of the greatest character in this kind were Horace and Juvenal. There is not, that I remember, one ill-natured expression in all their writings, not one sentence of severity which does not apparently proceed from the contrary disposition. Whoever reads them, will, I believe, be of this mind; and if they were read with this view, it may possibly persuade our young fellows, that they may be very witty men without speaking ill of any but those who deserve it: but in the perusal of these writers it may not be unnecessary to consider, that they lived in very different times. Horace was intimate with a prince of the greatest goodness and humanity imaginable, and his court was formed after his example; therefore the faults that poet falls upon were little inconsistencies in behaviour, false pretences to politeness, or impertinent affectations of what men were not fit for. Vices of a coarser sort could not come under his consideration, or enter the palace of Augustus. Juvenal, on the other hand, lived under Domitian, in whose reign everything that was great and noble was banished the habitations of the men in power. Therefore he attacks vice as it passes by in triumph, not as it breaks into conversation. The fall of empire, contempt of glory, and a general degeneracy of manners, are before his eyes in all his writings. In the days of Augustus, to have talked like Juvenal had been madness, or in those of Domitian like Horace. Morality and virtue are everywhere recommended in Horace, as became a man in a polite court, from the beauty, the propriety, the convenience, of pursuing them. Vice and corruption are attacked by Juvenal in a style which denotes, he fears he shall not be heard without he calls to them in their own language, with a bare-faced mention of the villanies and obscenities of his contemporaries.
This accidental talk of these two great men runs me from my design, which was to tell some coxcombs that run about this town with the name of smart satirical fellows, that they are by no means qualified for the characters they pretend to, of being severe upon other men, for they want good-nature. There is no foundation in them for arriving at what they aim at; and they may as well pretend to flatter, as rail agreeably without being good-natured.
There is a certain impartiality necessary to make what a man says bear any weight with those he speaks to. This quality, with respect to men's errors and vices, is never seen but in good-natured men. They have ever such a frankness of mind, and benevolence to all men, that they cannot receive impressions of unkindness without mature deliberation; and writing or speaking ill of a man upon personal considerations, is so irreparable and mean an injury, that no one possessed of this quality is capable of doing it: but in all ages there have been interpreters to authors when living, of the same genius with the commentators, into whose hands they fall when dead. I dare say, it is impossible for any man of more wit than one of these to take any of the four-and-twenty letters, and form out of them a name to describe the character of a vicious man with greater life, but one of these would immediately cry, Mr. Such-a-one is meant in that place. But the truth of it is, satirists describe the age, and backbiters assign their descriptions to private men.
In all terms of reproof, when the sentence appears to arise from personal hatred or passion, it is not then made the cause of mankind, but a misunderstanding between two persons. For this reason, the representations of a good-natured man bear a pleasantry in them, which shows there is no malignity at heart, and by consequence are attended to by his hearers or readers because they are unprejudiced. This deference is only what is due to him; for no man thoroughly nettled can say a thing general enough to pass off with the air of an opinion declared, and not a passion gratified. I remember a humorous fellow at Oxford, when he heard any one had spoken ill of him, used to say, "I won't take my revenge of him till I have forgiven him." What he meant by this, was, that he would not enter upon this subject till it was grown as indifferent to him as any other; and I have, by this rule, seen him more than once triumph over his adversary with an inimitable spirit and humour; for he came to the assault against a man full of sore places, and he himself invulnerable.
There is no possibility of succeeding in a satirical way of writing or speaking, except a man throws himself quite out of the question. It is great vanity to think any one will attend a thing because it is your quarrel. You must make your satire the concern of society in general, if you would have it regarded. When it is so, the good-nature of a man of wit will prompt him to many brisk and disdainful sentiments and replies, to which all the malice in the world will not be able to repartee.
FOOTNOTES:
[157] Virgil, "Eclog." iii. 90.
[158] This was said of Lord Buckhurst, afterwards Earl of Dorset, by the Earl of Rochester.
=No. 243.= [ADDISON.
From _Thursday, Oct. 26_, to _Saturday, Oct. 28, 1710_.
Infert se septus nebula, mirabile dictu, Per medios, miscetque viris; neque cernitur ulli.
VIRG., Æn. i. 439.
_From my own Apartment, Oct. 27._
I have somewhere made mention of Gyges's ring,[159] and intimated to my reader, that it was at present in my possession, though I have not since made any use of it. The tradition concerning this ring is very romantic, and taken notice of both by Plato and Tully, who each of them make an admirable use of it for the advancement of morality. This Gyges was the master shepherd to King Candaules. As he was wandering over the plains of Lydia, he saw a great chasm in the earth, and had the curiosity to enter it. After having descended pretty far into it, he found the statue of a horse in brass, with doors in the sides of it. Upon opening of them, he found the body of a dead man bigger than ordinary, with a ring upon his finger, which he took off, and put it upon his own. The virtues of it were much greater than he at first imagined; for upon his going into the assembly of shepherds, he observed, that he was invisible when he turned the stone of the ring within the palm of his hand, and visible when he turned it towards his company. Had Plato and Cicero been as well versed in the occult sciences as I am, they would have found a great deal of mystic learning in this tradition; but it is impossible for an adept to be understood by one who is not an adept.
As for myself, I have with much study and application arrived at this great secret of making myself invisible, and by that means conveying myself where I pleased; or to speak in Rosicrucian lore, I have entered into the clefts of the earth, discovered the brazen horse, and robbed the dead giant of his ring. The tradition says further of Gyges, that by the means of this ring he gained admission into the most retired parts of the court, and made such use of those opportunities, that he at length became King of Lydia. For my own part, I, who have always rather endeavoured to improve my mind than my fortune, have turned this ring to no other advantage than to get a thorough insight into the ways of men, and to make such observations upon the errors of others as may be useful to the public, whatever effect they may have upon myself.
About a week ago, not being able to sleep, I got up and put on my magical ring, and with a thought transported myself into a chamber where I saw a light. I found it inhabited by a celebrated beauty, though she is of that species of women which we call a slattern. Her head-dress and one of her shoes lay upon a chair, her petticoat in one corner of the room, and her girdle, that had a copy of verses made upon it but the day before, with her thread stockings, in the middle of the floor. I was so foolishly officious, that I could not forbear gathering up her clothes together to lay them upon the chair that stood by her bedside, when, to my great surprise, after a little muttering, she cried out, "What do you do? Let my petticoat alone." I was startled at first, but soon found that she was in a dream; being one of those who, to use Shakespeare's expression, are "so loose of thought,"[160] that they utter in their sleep everything that passes in their imagination. I left the apartment of this female rake, and went into her neighbour's, where there lay a male coquet. He had a bottle of salts hanging over his head, and upon the table, by his bedside, Suckling's Poems, with a little heap of black patches on it. His snuff-box was within reach on a chair: but while I was admiring the disposition which he made of the several parts of his dress, his slumber seemed interrupted by a pang, that was accompanied by a sudden oath, as he turned himself over hastily in his bed. I did not care for seeing him in his nocturnal pains, and left the room.
I was no sooner got into another bed-chamber, but I heard very harsh words uttered in a smooth uniform tone. I was amazed to hear so great a volubility in reproach, and thought it too coherent to be spoken by one asleep; but upon looking nearer, I saw the headdress of the person who spoke, which showed her to be a female with a man lying by her side broad awake, and as quiet as a lamb. I could not but admire his exemplary patience, and discovered by his whole behaviour, that he was then lying under the discipline of a curtain lecture.
I was entertained in many other places with this kind of nocturnal eloquence, but observed, that most of those whom I found awake, were kept so either by envy or by love. Some of these were fighting, and others cursing, in soliloquy; some hugged their pillows, and others gnashed their teeth.
The covetous I likewise found to be a very wakeful people. I happened to come into a room where one of them lay sick. His physician and his wife were in close whisper near his bedside. I overheard the doctor say to the poor gentlewoman, "He cannot possibly live till five in the morning." She received it like the mistress of a family prepared for all events. At the same instant came in a servant-maid, who said, "Madam, the undertaker is below according to your order." The words were scarce out of her mouth, when the sick man cried out with a feeble voice, "Pray, doctor, how went bank-stock to-day at 'Change?" This melancholy object made me too serious for diverting myself further this way: but as I was going home, I saw a light in a garret, and entering into it, heard a voice crying, "And, hand, stand, band, fanned, tanned." I concluded him by this, and the furniture of his room, to be a lunatic; but upon listening a little longer, perceived it was a poet, writing an heroic upon the ensuing peace.
It was now towards morning, an hour when spirits, witches, and conjurers are obliged to retire to their own apartments, and feeling the influence of it, I was hastening home, when I saw a man had got half way into a neighbour's house. I immediately called to him, and turning my ring, appeared in my proper person. There is something magisterial in the aspect of the Bickerstaffs, which made him run away in confusion.
As I took a turn or two in my own lodging, I was thinking, that, old as I was, I need not go to bed alone, but that it was in my power to marry the finest lady in this kingdom, if I would wed her with this ring. For what a figure would she that should have it make at a visit, with so perfect a knowledge as this would give her of all the scandal in the town? But instead of endeavouring to dispose of myself and it in matrimony, I resolved to lend it to my loving friend the author of the "Atalantis,"[161] to furnish a new Secret History of Secret Memoirs.
FOOTNOTES:
[159] See No. 138.
[160] Iago's words ("Othello," act iii. sc. 3) are, "There are a kind of men so loose of soul that in their sleeps will mutter their affairs; one of this kind is Cassio."
[161] Mrs. Manley (see Nos. 35 and 63). In the dedication prefixed to her play of "Lucius" (1717), Mrs. Manley made public apology for the attacks upon Steele in her earlier writings: "I have not known a greater mortification than when I have reflected upon the severities which have flowed from a pen which is now, you see, disposed as much to celebrate and commend you."
=No. 244.= [STEELE.
From _Saturday, Oct. 28_, to _Tuesday, Oct. 31, 1710_.
Quid voveat dulci nutricula majus alumno, Qui sapere et fari possit quæ sentiat?----
HOR., I Ep. iv. 8.
_Will's Coffee-house, Oct. 30._
It is no easy matter when people are advancing in anything, to prevent their going too fast for want of patience. This happens in nothing more frequently than in the prosecution of studies. Hence it is, that we meet crowds who attempt to be eloquent before they can speak. They affect the flowers of rhetoric before they understand the parts of speech. In the ordinary conversation of this town, there are so many who can, as they call it, talk well, that there is not one in twenty that talks to be understood. This proceeds from an ambition to excel, or, as the term is, to shine, in company. The matter is not to make themselves understood, but admired. They come together with a certain emulation, rather than benevolence. When you fall among such companions, the safe way is to give yourself up, and let the orators declaim for your esteem, and trouble yourself no further. It is said that a poet must be born so; but I think it may be much better said of an orator, especially when we talk of our town poets and orators; but the town poets are full of rules and laws, the town orators go through thick and thin, and are, forsooth, persons of such eminent natural parts and knowledge of the world, that they despise all men as inexperienced scholastics who wait for an occasion before they speak, or who speak no more than is necessary. They had half persuaded me to go to the tavern the other night, but that a gentleman whispered me, "Prithee, Isaac, go with us; there is Tom Varnish will be there, and he is a fellow that talks as well as any man in England."
I must confess, when a man expresses himself well upon any occasion, and his falling into an account of any subject arises from a desire to oblige the company, or from fulness of the circumstance itself, so that his speaking of it at large is occasioned only by the openness of a companion; I say, in such a case as this, it is not only pardonable, but agreeable, when a man takes the discourse to himself; but when you see a fellow watch for opportunities for being copious, it is excessively troublesome. A man that stammers, if he has understanding, is to be attended with patience and good-nature; but he that speaks more than he need, has no right to such an indulgence. The man who has a defect in his speech takes pains to come to you, while a man of a weak capacity with fluency of speech triumphs in outrunning you. The stammerer strives to be fit for your company; the loquacious man endeavours to show you, you are not fit for his.
With thoughts of this kind do I always enter into that man's company who is recommended as a person that talks well; but if I were to choose the people with whom I would spend my hours of conversation, they should be certainly such as laboured no further than to make themselves readily and clearly apprehended, and would have patience and curiosity to understand me. To have good sense, and ability to express it, are the most essential and necessary qualities in companions. When thoughts rise in us fit to utter, among familiar friends there needs but very little care in clothing them.
Urbanus is, I take it, a man one might live with whole years, and enjoy all the freedom and improvement imaginable, and yet be insensible of a contradiction to you in all the mistakes you can be guilty of. His great good-will to his friends has produced in him such a general deference in his discourse, that if he differs from you in his sense of anything, he introduces his own thoughts by some agreeable circumlocution, or he has often observed such and such a circumstance that made him of another opinion. Again, where another would be apt to say, "This I am confident of; I may pretend to judge of this matter as well as anybody;" Urbanus says, "I am verily persuaded; I believe one may conclude." In a word, there is no man more clear in his thoughts and expressions than he is, or speaks with greater diffidence. You shall hardly find one man of any consideration, but you shall observe one of less consequence form himself after him. This happens to Urbanus; but the man who steals from him almost every sentiment he utters in a whole week, disguises the theft, by carrying it with quite a different air. Umbratilis knows Urbanus's doubtful way of speaking proceeds from good-nature and good-breeding, and not from uncertainty in his opinions. Umbratilis therefore has no more to do but repeat the thoughts of Urbanus in a positive manner, and appear to the undiscerning a wiser man than the person from whom he borrows: but those who know him, can see the servant in his master's habit; and the more he struts, the less do his clothes appear his own.
In conversation, the medium is neither to affect silence or eloquence; not to value our approbation, and to endeavour to excel us who are of your company, are equal injuries. The great enemies therefore to good company, and those who transgress most against the laws of equality (which is the life of it), are, the clown, the wit, and the pedant. A clown, when he has sense, is conscious of his want of education, and with an awkward bluntness hopes to keep himself in countenance, by overthrowing the use of all polite behaviour. He takes advantage of the restraint good-breeding lays upon others not to offend him to trespass against them, and is under the man's own shelter while he intrudes upon him. The fellows of this class are very frequent in the repetition of the words "rough" and "manly." When these people happen to be by their fortunes of the rank of gentlemen, they defend their other absurdities by an impertinent courage; and to help out the defect of their behaviour, add their being dangerous to their being disagreeable. This gentleman (though he displeases, professes to do so, and knowing that, dares still go on to do so) is not so painful a companion as he who will please you against your will, and resolves to be a wit.
This man upon all occasions, and whoever he falls in company with, talks in the same circle, and in the same round of chat which he has learned at one of the tables of this coffee-house. As poetry is in itself an elevation above ordinary and common sentiments, so there is no fop is so very near a madman in indifferent company as a poetical one. He is not apprehensive that the generality of the world are intent upon the business of their own fortune and profession, and have as little capacity as curiosity to enter into matters of ornament or speculation. I remember at a full table in the city, one of these ubiquitary wits was entertaining the company with a soliloquy (for so I call it when a man talks to those who do not understand him) concerning wit and humour. An honest gentleman who sat next to me, and was worth half a plum, stared at him, and observing there was some sense, as he thought, mixed with his impertinence, whispered me, "Take my word for it, this fellow is more knave than fool." This was all my good friend's applause of the wittiest man of talk that I was ever present at, which wanted nothing to make it excellent but that there was no occasion for it.
The pedant is so obvious to ridicule, that it would be to be one to offer to explain him. He is a gentleman so well known, that there is none but those of his own class who do not laugh at and avoid him. Pedantry proceeds from much reading and little understanding. A pedant among men of learning and sense, is like an ignorant servant giving an account of a polite conversation. You may find he has brought with him more than could have entered into his head without being there, but still that he is not a bit wiser than if he had not been there at all.
=No. 245.= [STEELE.
From _Tuesday, Oct. 31_, to _Thursday, Nov. 2, 1710_.
_From my own Apartment, Nov. 1._
The lady hereafter mentioned having come to me in very great haste, and paid me much above the usual fee as a cunning man to find her stolen goods, and also having approved my late discourse of advertisements,[162] obliged me to draw up this, and insert it in the body of my paper:
ADVERTISEMENT.
Whereas Bridget Howd'ee,[163] late servant to the Lady Farthingale, a short, thick, lively, hard-favoured wench, of about twenty-nine years of age, her eyes small and bleared, her nose very broad at bottom, and turning up at the end, her mouth wide, and lips of an unusual thickness, two teeth out before, the rest black and uneven, the tip of her left ear being of a mouse-colour, her voice loud and shrill, quick of speech, and something of a Welsh accent; withdrew herself on Wednesday last from her ladyship's dwelling-house, and, with the help of her consorts, carried off the following goods of her said lady--viz., a thick wadded calico wrapper, a musk-coloured velvet mantle lined with squirrel-skins, eight night-shifts, four pair of silk stockings curiously darned, six pair of laced shoes, new and old, with the heels of half two inches higher than their fellows; a quilted petticoat of the largest size, and one of canvas with whalebone hoops; three pair of stays, bolstered below the left shoulder; two pair of hips of the newest fashion, six roundabout aprons with pockets, and four striped muslin night-rails very little frayed; a silver pot for coffee or chocolate, the lid much bruised; a broad-brimmed flat silver plate for sugar with Rhenish wine, a silver ladle for plum-porridge; a silver cheese-toaster with three tongues, an ebony handle, and silvering at the end; a silver posnet[164] to butter eggs; one caudle and two cordial-water cups, two cocoa cups, and an ostrich's egg, with rims and feet of silver; a marrow spoon, with a scoop at the other end; a silver orange-strainer, eight sweetmeat spoons made with forks at the end, an agate-handle knife and fork in a sheath, a silver tongue-scraper, a silver tobacco-box, with a tulip graved on the top; and a Bible bound in shagreen, with gilt leaves and clasps, never opened but once. Also a small cabinet, with six drawers inlaid with red tortoise-shell, and brass gilt ornaments at the four corners, in which were two leather forehead cloths, three pair of oiled dogskin gloves,[165] seven cakes of superfine Spanish wool, half-a-dozen of Portugal dishes, and a quire of paper from thence; two pair of brand-new plumpers, four black-lead combs, three pair of fashionable eyebrows,[166] two sets of ivory teeth, little the worse for wearing, and one pair of box for common use; Adam and Eve in bugle-work, without fig-leaves, upon canvas, curiously wrought with her ladyship's own hand; several filigrane curiosities; a crochet of 122 diamonds, set strong and deep in silver, with a rump jewel after the same fashion; bracelets of braided hair, pomander, and seed-pearl; a large old purple velvet purse, embroidered, and shutting with a spring, containing two pictures in miniature, the features visible; a broad thick gold ring with a hand in hand graved upon it, and within this posy, "While life does last, I'll hold thee fast;" another set round with small rubies and sparks, six wanting; another of Turkey stone[167] cracked through the middle; an Elizabeth and four Jacobus's, one guinea the first of the coin, an angel with a hole bored through, a broken half of a Spanish piece of gold, a crown piece with the breeches,[168] an old nine-pence bent both ways by Lilly,[169] the almanac maker, for luck at langteraloo,[170] and twelve of the shells called blackamoor's teeth; one small amber box with apoplectic balsam, and one silver gilt of a larger size for cashu[171] and caraway comfits, to be taken at long sermons, the lid enamelled, representing a Cupid fishing for hearts, with a piece of gold on his hook; over his head this rhyme, "Only with gold you me shall hold." In the lower drawer was a large new gold repeating watch, made by a Frenchman; a gold chain, and all the proper appurtenances hung upon steel swivels, to wit, lockets with the hair of dead and living lovers, seals with arms, emblems and devices cut in cornelian, agate, and onyx, with Cupids, hearts, darts, altars, flames, rocks, pick-axes, roses, thorns, and sun-flowers; as also variety of ingenious French mottoes; together with gold etuis for quills, scissors, needles, thimbles, and a sponge dipped in Hungary water, left but the night before by a young lady going upon a frolic incog. There was also a bundle of letters, dated between the years 1670 and 1682, most of them signed Philander, the rest Strephon, Amyntas, Corydon, and Adonis; together with a collection of receipts to make pastes for the hands, pomatums, lip-salves, white-pots,[172] beautifying creams, water of talc,[173] and frog spawn water; decoctions for clearing the complexion, and an approved medicine to procure abortion.
Whoever can discover the aforesaid goods, so that they may be had again, shall have fifty guineas for the whole, or proportionable for any part. _N.B._--Her ladyship is pleased to promise ten pounds for the packet of letters over and above, or five for Philander's only, being her first love. My lady bestows those of Strephon to the finder, being so written, that they may serve to any woman who reads them.
POSTSCRIPT.
As I am patron of persons who have no other friend to apply to, I cannot suppress the following complaint:
* * * * *
"SIR,
"I am a blackamoor boy, and have, by my lady's order, been christened by the chaplain. The good man has gone further with me, and told me a great deal of good news; as, that I am as good as my lady herself, as I am a Christian, and many other things: but, for all this, the parrot who came over with me from our country is as much esteemed by her as I am. Besides this, the shock-dog has a collar that cost almost as much as mine.[174] I desire also to know, whether now I am a Christian, I am obliged to dress like a Turk and wear a turban. I am,
"Sir, "Your most humble Servant, "POMPEY."
FOOTNOTES:
[162] See No. 224.
[163] See No. 109.
[164] A small basin. Bacon speaks of utensils which will endure fire, such as "chafing-dishes, posnets, and such other silver dishes."
[165] The cloths and gloves were to soften the skin; the Spanish wool and Portugal dishes for "complexions"; the plumpers for the cheeks. The black-lead combs were for darkening the hair. By ivory and box teeth, tooth-combs are probably intended (Dobson). Perhaps, however, the "teeth" are artificial teeth.
[166] _Cf._ Steele's "The Tender Husband," act iii. sc. I: "Prithee, wench, bring me my black eyebrows out of the next room." Prior often refers to this subject-thus:
"The slattern had left in the hurry and haste Her lady's complexion and eyebrows at Calais;"
and when the kitten had stolen Helen's eyebrows, a trap was at once baited:
"If we don't catch a mouse to-night, Alas! no eyebrows for to-morrow!"
[167] Turquoise.
[168] The two shields on Oliver Cromwell's coins were vulgarly called "breeches," because they somewhat resembled vast trunk-hose.
[169] See No. 240.
[170] Lanterloo, lantrillou, or lanctreloo, a game at cards in which the knave of clubs is the highest card. Cf. _lanturloo_ (Fr.), nonsense. The game is mentioned, says Strutt, in the "Complete Gamester" (1734). In a letter in the _Spectator_, No. 245, we find the following: "I would have these sports and pastimes not only merry, but innocent, for which reason I have not mentioned either whisk or lanterloo, nor indeed so much as one-and-thirty."
[171] Cachou, for sweetening the breath.
[172] A spiced custard pudding formerly a favourite dish in Devonshire. See _Spectator_, No. 109, and Gay's "Shepherd's Week" (Monday):
"White-pot thick is my Buxoma's fare."
[173] A cosmetic.
[174] On the black marble bust of the favourite slave of William III., at Hampton Court, there is a white marble collar, with a padlock. Contemporary advertisements show that negro servants often wore a collar bearing the name of their master. In No. 132 of the original issue of the _Tatler_ there was this advertisement: "A black Indian boy, twelve years of age, fit to wait on a gentleman, to be disposed of at Denis's Coffee-house, in Finch Lane, near the Royal Exchange." The reward offered for the recovery of a runaway black servant rarely exceeded a guinea.
=No. 246.= [STEELE.
From _Thursday, Nov. 2_, to _Saturday, Nov. 4, 1710_.
----Vitiis nemo sine nascitur, optimus ille est Qui minimis urgetur.----
HOR., 1 Sat. iii. 68.
_From my own Apartment, Nov. 3._
When one considers the turn which conversation takes in almost every set of acquaintance, club or assembly, in this town or kingdom, one cannot but observe, that in spite of what I am every day saying, and all the moral writers since the beginning of the world have said, the subject of discourse is generally upon one another's faults. This in a great measure proceeds from self-conceit, which were to be endured in one or other individual person; but the folly has spread itself almost over all the species; and one cannot only say, Tom, Jack, or Will, but in general, that man is a coxcomb. From this source it is that any excellence is faintly received, any imperfection unmercifully exposed. But if things were put in a true light, and we would take time to consider that man in his very nature is an imperfect being, our sense of this matter would be immediately altered, and the word "imperfection" would not carry an unkinder idea than the word "humanity." It is a pleasant story, that we, forsooth, who are the only imperfect creatures in the universe, are the only beings that will not allow of imperfection. Somebody has taken notice, that we stand in the middle of existences, and are by this one circumstance the most unhappy of all others. The brutes are guided by instinct, and know no sorrow; the angels have knowledge, and they are happy; but men are governed by opinion, which is I know not what mixture of instinct and knowledge, and are neither indolent nor happy. It is very observable, that critics are a people between the learned and the ignorant, and by that situation enjoy the tranquillity of neither. As critics stand among men, so do men in general between brutes and angels. Thus every man as he is a critic and a coxcomb, till improved by reason and speculation, is ever forgetting himself, and laying open the faults of others.
At the same time that I am talking of the cruelty of urging people's faults with severity, I cannot but bewail some which men are guilty of for want of admonition. These are such as they can easily mend, and nobody tells them of; for which reason I shall make use of the penny-post (as I have with success to several young ladies about turning their eyes, and holding up their heads) to certain gentlemen whom I remark habitually guilty of what they may reform in a moment. There is a fat fellow whom I have long remarked wearing his breast open in the midst of winter, out of an affectation of youth. I have therefore sent him just now the following letter in my physical capacity:
* * * * *
"SIR,
"From the twentieth instant to the first of May next, both days inclusive, I beg of you to button your waistcoat from your collar to your waistband. I am,
"Your most humble Servant, "ISAAC BICKERSTAFF, _Philomath_."[175]
There is a very handsome well-shaped youth that frequents the coffee-houses about Charing Cross, and ties a very pretty ribbon with a cross of jewels at his breast.[176] This being something new, and a thing in which the gentleman may offend the Heralds' Office, I have addressed myself to him as I am censor:
* * * * *
"DEAR COUNTRYMAN,
"Was that ensign of honour which you wear, given you by a prince or a lady that you have served? If you bear it as an absent lover, please to hang it on a black ribbon; if as a rewarded soldier, you may have my licence to continue the red.
"Your faithful Servant, "BICKERSTAFF, _Censor_."
These little intimations do great service, and are very useful, not only to the persons themselves, but to inform others how to conduct themselves towards them.
Instead of this honest private method, or a friendly one face to face, of acquainting people with things in their power to explain or amend, the usual way among people is to take no notice of things you can help, and nevertheless expose you for those you cannot.
Plumbeus and Levis are constantly in each other's company: they would, if they took proper methods, be very agreeable companions; but they so extravagantly aim at what they are unfit for, and each of them rallies the other so much in the wrong place, that instead of doing each other the offices of friends, they do but instruct the rest of the world to laugh at them with more knowledge and skill. Plumbeus is of a saturnine and sullen complexion; Levis, of a mercurial and airy disposition. Both these gentlemen have but very slow parts, but would make a very good figure, did they pursue what they ought. If Plumbeus would take to business, he would in a few years know the forms of orders so well, as to direct and dictate with so much ease, as to be thought a solid, able, and at the same time a sure man of despatch. Levis, with a little reading and coming more into company, would soon be able to write a song, or lead up a country-dance. Instead of these proper pursuits, in obedience to their respective geniuses, Plumbeus endeavours to be the man of pleasure, and Levis the man of business. This appears in their speech, and in their dress: Plumbeus is ever egregiously fine, and talking something like wit; Levis is ever extremely grave, and with a silly face repeating maxims. These two pardon each other for affecting what each is incapable of, the one to be wise, and the other gay; but are extremely critical in their judgments of each other in their way towards what they pretend to. Plumbeus acknowledges Levis a man of a great reach, because it is what Plumbeus never cared for being thought himself; and Levis allows Plumbeus to be an agreeable rake for the same reason. Now were these dear friends to be free with each other as they ought to be, they would change characters, and be both as commendable, instead of being as ridiculous, as their capacities will admit of.
Were it not too grave, all that I would urge on this subject is, that men are bewildered when they consider themselves in any other view than that of strangers, who are in a place where it is no great matter whether they can, or unreasonable to expect they should, have everything about them as well as at their own home. This way of thinking is, perhaps, the only one that can put this being into a proper posture for the ease of society. It is certain, this would reduce all faults into those which proceed from malice or dishonesty: it would quite change our manner of beholding one another, and nothing that was not below a man's nature would be below his character. The arts of this life would be proper advances towards the next; and a very good man would be a very fine gentleman. As it now is, human life is inverted, and we have not learned half the knowledge of this world before we are dropping into another. Thus, instead of the raptures and contemplations which naturally attend a well-spent life from the approach of eternity, even we old fellows are afraid of the ridicule of those who are born since us, and ashamed not to understand, as well as peevish to resign, the mode, the fashion, the ladies, the fiddles, the balls, and what not. Dick Reptile, who does not want humour, is very pleasant at our club when he sees an old fellow touchy at being laughed at for anything that is not in the mode, and bawls in his ear, "Prithee don't mind him; tell him thou art mortal."
FOOTNOTES:
[175] See No. 95.
[176] Possibly Colonel Ambrose Edgworth, a great dandy, whom Swift calls "that prince of puppies" ("Journal to Stella," Oct. 17, 1710).
=No. 247.= [STEELE.
By JENNY DISTAFF, HALF-SISTER TO MR. BICKERSTAFF.
From _Saturday, Nov. 4_, to _Tuesday, Nov. 7, 1710_.
Ædepol, næ nos sumus ... æque omnes invisæ viris, Propter paucas; quæ omnes faciunt dignæ ut videamur malo.
TER., Hecyra, act ii. sc. 3.
_From my own Apartment, Nov. 6._
My brother, having written the above piece of Latin, desired me to take care of the rest of the ensuing paper. Towards this he bid me answer the following letter, and said, nothing I could write properly on the subject of it would be disagreeable to the motto. It is the cause of my sex, and I therefore enter upon it with great alacrity. The epistle is literally thus:
* * * * *
_Edinburgh, Oct. 23_.
"Mr. BICKERSTAFF,
"I presume to lay before you an affair of mine, and begs you'le be very sinceir in giving me your judgment and advice in this matter, which is as followes:
"A very agreeable young gentleman, who is endowed with all the good quallities that can make a man compleat, has this long time maid love to me in the most passionat manner that was posable. He has left nothing unsaid to make me belive his affections real; and in his letters expressed himself so hansomly, and so tenderly, that I had all the reason imaginable to belive him sinceir. In short, he positively has promised me he would marry me: but I find all he said nothing; for when the question was put to him, he wouldn't; but still would continue my humble servant, and would go on at the ould rate, repeating the assurences of his fidelity (and at the same time has none in him). He now writs to me in the same endearing style he ust to do, would have me spake to no man but himself. His estate is in his oune hand, his father being dead. My fortune at my oune disposal (mine being also dead), and to the full answers his estate. Pray, sir, be ingeinous, and tell me cordially, if you don't think I shall do myself an injurey if I keep company or a corospondance any longer with this gentleman. I hope you'le faver an honest North Briton (as I am) with your advice in this amoure; for I am resolved just to folow your directions. Sir, you'le do me a sensable pleasure, and very great honour, if you'le pleas to insirt this poor scrole, with your answer to it, in your _Tatler_. Pray fail not to give me your answer; for on it depends the happiness of
"DISCONSOLAT ALMEIRA."
* * * * *
"MADAM,
"I have frequently read over your letter, and am of opinion, that as lamentable as it is, it is the most common of any evil that attends our sex. I am very much troubled for the tenderness you express towards your lover, but rejoice at the same time that you can so far surmount your inclination for him as to resolve to dismiss him when you have my brother's opinion for it. His sense of the matter he desired me to communicate to you. O Almeira! the common failing of our sex is to value the merit of our lovers rather from the grace of their address than the sincerity of their hearts. 'He has expressed himself so handsomely!' Can you say that after you have reason to doubt his truth? It is a very melancholy thing, that in this circumstance of love (which is the most important of all others in female life) we women, who are, they say, always weak, are still weakest. The true way of valuing a man, is to consider his reputation among the men: for want of this necessary rule towards our conduct, when it is too late we find ourselves married to the outcasts of that sex; and it is generally from being disagreeable among men, that fellows endeavour to make themselves pleasing to us. The little accomplishments of coming into a room with a good air, and telling while they are with us what we cannot hear among ourselves, usually make up the whole of a woman's man's merit. But if we, when we began to reflect upon our lovers, in the first place considered what figures they make in the camp, at the bar, on the 'Change, in their country, or at court, we should behold them in quite another view than at present.
"Were we to behave ourselves according to this rule, we should not have the just imputation of favouring the silliest of mortals, to the great scandal of the wisest, who value our favour as it advances their pleasure, not their reputation. In a word, madam, if you would judge aright in love, you must look upon it as in a case of friendship. Were this gentleman treating with you for anything but yourself, when you had consented to his offer, if he fell off, you would call him a cheat and an impostor. There is therefore nothing left for you to do, but to despise him and yourself for doing with regret.
"I am, "Madam, &c."
I have heard it often argued in conversation, that this evil practice is owing to the perverted taste of the wits in the last generation. A libertine on the throne could very easily make the language and the fashion turn his own way. Hence it is, that woman is treated as a mistress, and not a wife. It is from the writings of those times, and the traditional accounts of the debauches of their men of pleasure, that the coxcombs nowadays take upon them, forsooth, to be false swains and perjured lovers. Methinks I feel all the woman rise in me, when I reflect upon the nauseous rogues that pretend to deceive us. Wretches, that can never have it in their power to overreach anything living but their mistresses! In the name of goodness, if we are designed by nature as suitable companions to the other sex, why are we not treated accordingly? If we have merit, as some allow, why is it not as base in men to injure us as one another? If we are the insignificants that others call us, where is the triumph in deceiving us? But when I look at the bottom of this disaster, and recollect the many of my acquaintance whom I have known in the same condition with the Northern lass that occasions this discourse, I must own I have ever found the perfidiousness of men has been generally owing to ourselves, and we have contributed to our own deceit. The truth is, we do not conduct ourselves as we are courted, but as we are inclined. When we let our imaginations take this unbridled swing, it is not he that acts best is most lovely, but he that is most lovely acts best. When our humble servants make their addresses, we do not keep ourselves enough disengaged to be judges of their merit; and we seldom give our judgment of our lover, till we have lost our judgment for him.
While Clarinda was passionately attended and addressed to by Strephon, who is a man of sense and knowledge in the world, and Cassio, who has a plentiful fortune and an excellent understanding, she fell in love with Damon at a ball: from that moment she that was before the most reasonable creature of all my acquaintance, cannot hear Strephon speak, but it is something "so out of the way of ladies' conversation;" and Cassio has never since opened his mouth before us, but she whispers me, "How seldom do riches and sense go together!" The issue of all this is, that for the love of Damon, who has neither experience, understanding, or wealth, she despises those advantages in the other two which she finds wanting in her lover; or else thinks he has them for no reason but because he is her lover. This and many other instances may be given in this town; but I hope thus much may suffice to prevent the growth of such evils at Edinburgh.
=No. 248.= [STEELE.
By ISAAC BICKERSTAFF, Esq.
From _Tuesday, Nov. 7_, to _Thursday, Nov. 9, 1710_.
----Media sese tulit obvia silva, Virginis os habitumque gerens----
VIRG., Æn. i. 314.
_From my own Apartment, Nov. 8._
It may perhaps appear ridiculous; but I must confess, this last summer as I was riding in Enfield Chase, I met a young lady whom I could hardly get out of my head, and for aught I know my heart, ever since.[177] She was mounted on a pad, with a very well-fancied furniture. She sat her horse with a very graceful air; and when I saluted her with my hat, she bowed to me so obligingly, that whether it was her civility or beauty that touched me so much, I know not, but I am sure I shall never forget her. She dwells in my imagination in a figure so much to her advantage, that if I were to draw a picture of youth, health, beauty, or modesty, I should represent any or all of them in the person of that young woman.
I do not find that there are any descriptions in the ancient poets so beautiful as those they draw of nymphs in their pastoral dresses and exercises. Virgil gives Venus the habit of a Spartan huntress when she is to put Æneas in his way, and relieve his cares with the most agreeable object imaginable.[178] Diana and her train are always described as inhabitants of the woods, and followers of the chase. To be well diverted, is the safest guard to innocence; and, methinks, it should be one of the first things to be regarded among people of condition to find out proper amusements for young ladies. I cannot but think this of riding might easily be revived among them, when they consider how much it must contribute to their beauty. This would lay up the best portion they could bring into a family, a good stock of health to transmit to their posterity. Such a charming bloom as this gives the countenance, is very much preferable to the real or affected feebleness or softness which appear in the faces of our modern beauties.
The comedy called "The Ladies' Cure,"[179] represents the affectation of wan looks and languid glances to a very entertaining extravagance. There is, as the lady in the play complains, something so robust in perfect health, that it is with her a point of breeding and delicacy to appear in public with a sickly air. But the natural gaiety and spirit which shine in the complexion of such as form to themselves a sort of diverting industry by choosing recreations that are exercises, surpass all the false ornaments and graces that can be put on by applying the whole dispensary of a toilet. A healthy body and a cheerful mind give charms as irresistible as inimitable. The beauteous Dyctinna, who came to town last week, has, from the constant prospect in a delicious country, and the moderate exercise and journeys in the visits she made round it, contracted a certain life in her countenance which will in vain employ both the painters and poets to represent. The becoming negligence in her dress, the severe sweetness of her looks, and a certain innocent boldness in all her behaviour, are the effect of the active recreations I am talking of.
But instead of such or any other as innocent and pleasing method of passing away their time with alacrity, we have many in town who spend their hours in an indolent state of body and mind, without either recreations or reflections. I am apt to believe, there are some parents imagine their daughters will be accomplished enough, if nothing interrupts their growth or their shape. According to this method of education, I could name you twenty families, where all the girls hear of in this life is, that it is time to rise and to come to dinner; as if they were so insignificant as to be wholly provided for when they are fed and clothed.
It is with great indignation that I see such crowds of the female world lost to human society, and condemned to a laziness which makes life pass away with less relish than in the hardest labour. Palestris, in her drawing-room, is supported by spirits to keep off the returns of spleen and melancholy, before she can get over half the day for want of something to do, while the wench in the kitchen sings and scours from morning to night.
The next disagreeable thing to a lazy lady is a very busy one. A man of business in good company, who gives an account of his abilities and despatches, is hardly more insupportable than her they call a notable woman and a manager. Lady Goodday, where I visited the other day at a very polite circle, entertained a great lady with a recipe for a poultice, and gave us to understand, that she had done extraordinary cures since she was last in town. It seems a countryman had wounded himself with his scythe as he was mowing; and we were obliged to hear of her charity, her medicine, and her humility, in the harshest tone and coarsest language imaginable.
What I would request in all this prattle is, that our females would either let us have their persons or their minds in such perfection as nature designed them.
The way to this is, that those who are in the quality of gentlewomen should propose to themselves some suitable method of passing away their time. This would furnish them with reflections and sentiments proper for the companions of reasonable men, and prevent the unnatural marriages which happen every day between the most accomplished women and the veriest oafs, the worthiest men and the most insignificant females. Were the general turn of women's education of another kind than it is at present, we should want one another for more reasons than we do as the world now goes. The common design of parents is to get their girls off as well as they can, and make no conscience of putting into our hands a bargain for our whole life which will make our hearts ache every day of it.
I shall therefore take this matter into serious consideration, and will propose, for the better improvement of the fair sex, a female library.[180] This collection of books shall consist of such authors as do not corrupt while they divert, but shall tend more immediately to improve them, as they are women. They shall be such as shall not hurt a feature by the austerity of their reflections, nor cause one impertinent glance by the wantonness of them. They shall all tend to advance the value of their innocence as virgins, improve their understanding as wives, and regulate their tenderness as parents. It has been very often said in these Lucubrations, that the ideas which most frequently pass through our imaginations, leave traces of themselves in our countenances. There shall be a strict regard had to this in my female library, which shall be furnished with nothing that shall give supplies to ostentation or impertinence; but the whole shall be so digested for the use of my students, that they shall not go out of character in their inquiries, but their knowledge appear only a cultivated innocence.
FOOTNOTES:
[177] This lady is believed to have been the unfortunate Elizabeth Malyn, whose third husband was Charles, eighth Lord Cathcart. Her fourth husband was Colonel Hugh Macguire, who kept her in confinement for more than twenty years at Tempo, in Enniskillen. (See Miss Edgeworth's "Castle Rackrent"; and a pamphlet entitled "Tewin-Water; or, the Story of Lady Cathcart," by Mr. Edward Ford, of Old Park, Enfield.)
[178] "Æneid," i. 315 _seq._
[179] "The Double Gallant; or, the Sick Lady's Cure," by Colley Cibber (1707).
[180] Addison wrote on this subject in the _Spectator_ (No. 37); and in 1714 Steele published "The Ladies' Library," in three volumes, a gathering from the most approved religious and moral writers.
=No. 249.= [ADDISON.
From _Thursday, Nov. 9_, to _Saturday, Nov. 11, 1710_.
Per varios casus, per tot discrimina rerum, Tendimus----
VIRG., Æn. i. 204.
_From my own Apartment, Nov. 10._
I was last night visited by a friend[181] of mine who has an inexhaustible fund of discourse, and never fails to entertain his company with a variety of thoughts and hints that are altogether new and uncommon. Whether it were in complaisance to my way of living, or his real opinion, he advanced the following paradox, that it required much greater talents to fill up and become a retired life than a life of business. Upon this occasion he rallied very agreeably the busy men of the age, who only valued themselves for being in motion, and passing through a series of trifling and insignificant actions. In the heat of his discourse, seeing a piece of money lying on my table, "I defy," says he, "any of these active persons to produce half the adventures that this twelvepenny-piece has been engaged in, were it possible for him to give us an account of his life."
My friend's talk made so odd an impression upon my mind, that soon after I was a-bed I fell insensibly into a most unaccountable reverie, that had neither moral nor design in it, and cannot be so properly called a dream as a delirium.
Methought the shilling that lay upon the table reared itself upon its edge, and turning the face towards me, opened its mouth, and in a soft silver sound gave me the following account of his life and adventures:
"I was born," says he, "on the side of a mountain, near a little village of Peru, and made a voyage to England in an ingot, under the convoy of Sir Francis Drake. I was, soon after my arrival, taken out of my Indian habit, refined, naturalised, and put into the British mode, with the face of Queen Elizabeth on one side, and the arms of the country on the other. Being thus equipped, I found in me a wonderful inclination to ramble, and visit all the parts of the new world into which I was brought. The people very much favoured my natural disposition, and shifted me so fast from hand to hand, that before I was five years old, I had travelled into almost every corner of the nation. But in the beginning of my sixth year, to my unspeakable grief, I fell into the hands of a miserable old fellow, who clapped me into an iron chest, where I found five hundred more of my own quality who lay under the same confinement. The only relief we had, was to be taken out and counted over in the fresh air every morning and evening. After an imprisonment of several years, we heard somebody knocking at our chest, and breaking it open with a hammer. This we found was the old man's heir, who, as his father lay a-dying, was so good as to come to our release: he separated us that very day. What was the fate of my companions, I know not: as for myself, I was sent to the apothecary's shop for a pint of sack. The apothecary gave me to a herb-woman, the herb-woman to a butcher, the butcher to a brewer, and the brewer to his wife, who made a present of me to a Nonconformist preacher. After this manner I made my way merrily through the world; for, as I told you before, we shillings love nothing so much as travelling. I sometimes fetched in a shoulder of mutton, sometimes a play-book, and often had the satisfaction to treat a Templar at a twelvepenny ordinary, or carry him with three friends to Westminster Hall.
"In the midst of this pleasant progress which I made from place to place, I was arrested by a superstitious old woman, who shut me up in a greasy purse, in pursuance of a foolish saying, that while she kept a Queen Elizabeth's shilling about her, she should never be without money. I continued here a close prisoner for many months, till at last I was exchanged for eight-and-forty farthings.
"I thus rambled from pocket to pocket till the beginning of the Civil Wars, when, to my shame be it spoken, I was employed in raising soldiers against the King; for being of a very tempting breadth, a sergeant made use of me to inveigle country fellows, and list them in the service of the Parliament.
"As soon as he had made one man sure, his way was to oblige him to take a shilling of a more homely figure, and then practise the same trick upon another. Thus I continued doing great mischief to the Crown, till my officer chancing one morning to walk abroad earlier than ordinary, sacrificed me to his pleasures, and made use of me to seduce a milkmaid. This wench bent me, and gave me to her sweetheart, applying more properly than she intended the usual form of, 'To my love and from my love.' This ungenerous gallant marrying her within few days after, pawned me for a dram of brandy, and drinking me out next day, I was beaten flat with a hammer, and again set a-running.
"After many adventures, which it would be tedious to relate, I was sent to a young spendthrift, in company with the will of his deceased father. The young fellow, who I found was very extravagant, gave great demonstrations of joy at the receiving the will; but opening it, he found himself disinherited and cut off from the possession of a fair estate, by virtue of my being made a present to him. This put him into such a passion, that after having taken me in his hand, and cursed me, he squirred[182] me away from him as far as he could fling me. I chanced to light in an unfrequented place under a dead wall, where I lay undiscovered and useless during the usurpation of Oliver Cromwell.
"About a year after the King's return, a poor cavalier that was walking there about dinner-time fortunately cast his eye upon me, and, to the great joy of us both, carried me to a cook's-shop, where he dined upon me, and drank the King's health. When I came again into the world, I found that I had been happier in my retirement than I thought, having probably by that means escaped wearing a monstrous pair of breeches.[183]
"Being now of great credit and antiquity, I was rather looked upon as a medal than an ordinary coin; for which reason a gamester laid hold of me, and converted me to a counter, having got together some dozens of us for that use. We led a melancholy life in his possession, being busy at those hours wherein current coin is at rest, and partaking the fate of our master, being in a few moments valued at a crown, a pound, or a sixpence, according to the situation in which the fortune of the cards placed us. I had at length the good luck to see my master break, by which means I was again sent abroad under my primitive denomination of a shilling.
"I shall pass over many other accidents of less moment, and hasten to that fatal catastrophe when I fell into the hands of an artist, who conveyed me under ground, and with an unmerciful pair of shears cut off my titles, clipped my brims, retrenched my shape, rubbed me to my inmost ring, and, in short, so spoiled and pillaged me, that he did not leave me worth a groat. You may think what a confusion I was in to see myself thus curtailed and disfigured. I should have been ashamed to have shown my head, had not all my old acquaintance been reduced to the same shameful figure, excepting some few that were punched through the belly. In the midst of this general calamity, when everybody thought our misfortune irretrievable, and our case desperate, we were thrown into the furnace together, and (as it often happens with cities rising out of a fire) appeared with greater beauty and lustre than we could ever boast of before. What has happened to me since the change of sex which you now see, I shall take some other opportunity to relate. In the meantime I shall only repeat two adventures, as being very extraordinary, and neither of them having ever happened to me above once in my life. The first was, my being in a poet's pocket, who was so taken with the brightness and novelty of my appearance, that it gave occasion to the finest burlesque poem in the British language, entitled from me, 'The Splendid Shilling.'[184] The second adventure, which I must not omit, happened to me in the year 1703, when I was given away in charity to a blind man; but indeed this was by a mistake, the person who gave me having heedlessly thrown me into the hat among a pennyworth of farthings."
FOOTNOTES:
[181] Swift. This paper is mentioned twice in the "Journal to Stella," Nov. 30 and Dec. 14, 1710: "You are mistaken in all your conjectures about the _Tatlers_. I have given him one or two hints, and you have heard me talk about 'The Shilling.'" "No, the _Tatler_ of 'The Shilling' was not mine, more than the hint, and two or three general heads for it. I have much more important business on my hands; and, besides, the ministry hate to think that I should help him, and have made reproaches on it; and I frankly told them I would do it no more. This is a secret, though, Madam Stella."
[182] Threw with a jerk. Cf. _Spectator_, No. 77, "I saw him squir away his watch a considerable way into the Thames."
[183] The two shields on Cromwell's shilling; see No. 245.
[184] By John Philips (1676-1709), the author of "Cyder." The "Splendid Shilling" was published in 1705, after two unauthorised versions had appeared. Written in imitation of Milton, it describes, in mock-heroic strains, the miseries of a debtor in want of a shilling to buy food, clothes, wine, or tobacco.
=No. 250.= [ADDISON.
From _Saturday, Nov. 11_, to _Tuesday, Nov. 14, 1710_.
Scis etenim justum gemina suspendere lance Ancipitis libræ.----
PERS., Sat. iv. 10.
_From my own Apartment, Nov. 13._
I last winter erected a Court of Justice for the correcting of several enormities in dress and behaviour, which are not cognisable in any other courts of this realm. The vintner's case[185] which I there tried is still fresh in every man's memory. That of the petticoat[186] gave also a general satisfaction, not to mention the more important points of the cane and perspective;[187] in which, if I did not give judgments and decrees according to the strictest rules of equity and justice, I can safely say, I acted according to the best of my understanding. But as for the proceedings of that court, I shall refer my reader to an account of them, written by my secretary, which is now in the press, and will shortly be published under the title of "Lillie's[188] Reports."
As I last year presided over a Court of Justice, it is my intention this year to set myself at the head of a Court of Honour. There is no court of this nature anywhere at present, except in France, where, according to the best of my intelligence, it consists of such only as are marshals of that kingdom. I am likewise informed, that there is not one of that honourable board at present who has not been driven out of the field by the Duke of Marlborough; but whether this be only an accidental or a necessary qualification, I must confess I am not able to determine.
As for the Court of Honour of which I am here speaking, I intend to sit myself in it as president, with several men of honour on my right hand, and women of virtue on my left, as my assistants. The first place of the bench I have given to an old Tangerine captain with a wooden leg. The second is a gentleman of a long twisted periwig without a curl in it, a muff with very little hair upon it, and a threadbare coat with new buttons, being a person of great worth, and second brother to a man of quality. The third is a gentleman-usher, extremely well read in romances, and grandson to one of the greatest wits in Germany, who was some time master of the ceremonies to the Duke of Wolfembuttel.
As for those who sit farther on my right hand, as it is usual in public courts, they are such as will fill up the number of faces upon the bench, and serve rather for ornament than use.[189]
The chief upon my left hand are, an old maiden lady, that preserves some of the best blood of England in her veins.
A Welsh woman of a little stature, but high spirit.
An old prude that has censured every marriage for these thirty years, and is lately wedded to a young rake.
Having thus furnished my bench, I shall establish correspondencies with the Horse Guards, and the veterans of Chelsea College; the former to furnish me with twelve men of honour as often as I shall have occasion for a grand jury, and the latter with as many good men and true for a petty jury.
As for the women of virtue, it will not be difficult for me to find them about midnight at crimp and basset.
Having given this public notice of my court, I must further add, that I intend to open it on this day sevennight, being Monday the twentieth instant; and do hereby invite all such as have suffered injuries and affronts that are not to be redressed by the common laws of this land, whether they be short bows, cold salutations, supercilious looks, unreturned smiles, distant behaviour, or forced familiarity; as also all such as have been aggrieved by any ambiguous expression, accidental jostle, or unkind repartee; likewise all such as have been defrauded of their right to the wall, tricked out of the upper end of the table, or have been suffered to place themselves in their own wrong on the back seat of the coach: these, and all of these, I do, as I above said, invite to bring in their several cases and complaints, in which they shall be relieved with all imaginable expedition.
I am very sensible, that the office I have now taken upon me will engage me in the disquisition of many weighty points that daily perplex the youth of the British nation, and therefore I have already discussed several of them for my future use; as, How far a man may brandish his cane in the telling a story, without insulting his hearer? What degree of contradiction amounts to the lie? How a man should resent another's staring and cocking a hat in his face? If asking pardon is an atonement for treading upon one's toes? Whether a man may put up [with] a box on the ear received from a stranger in the dark? Or, Whether a man of honour may take a blow off his wife? With several other subtleties of the like nature.
For my direction in the duties of my office, I have furnished myself with a certain astrological pair of scales which I have contrived for this purpose. In one of them I lay the injuries, in the other the reparations. The first are represented by little weights made of a metal resembling iron, and the other in gold. These are not only lighter than the weights made use of in avoirdupois, but also than such as are used in troy weight. The heaviest of those that represent the injuries amount but to a scruple; and decrease by so many subdivisions, that there are several imperceptible weights which cannot be seen without the help of a very fine microscope. I might acquaint my reader, that these scales were made under the influence of the sun when he was in Libra, and describe many signatures on the weights both of injury and reparation: but as this would look rather to proceed from an ostentation of my own art than any care for the public, I shall pass it over in silence.
* * * * *
The letter of the 7th instant, inquired for by another of the 11th, came to hand.
FOOTNOTES:
[185] See No. 132.
[186] See No. 116.
[187] See No. 103.
[188] Charles Lillie; see No. 110.
[189] The Masters in Chancery sat on the bench with the Lord Chancellor, but he was the sole judge of the court.
=No. 251.= [STEELE.
From _Tuesday, Nov. 14_, to _Thursday, Nov. 16, 1710_.
Quisnam igitur liber? Sapiens, sibi qui imperiosus, Quem neque pauperies, neque mors, neque vincula, terrent: Responsare cupidinibus, contemnere honores Fortis, et in se ipso totus, teres atque rotundus, Externi ne quid valeat per leve morari; In quem manca ruit semper fortuna.----
HOR., 2 Sat. vii. 83.
_From my own Apartment, Nov. 15._
It is necessary to an easy and happy life, to possess our minds in such a manner as to be always well satisfied with our own reflections. The way to this state is to measure our actions by our own opinion, and not by that of the rest of the world. The sense of other men ought to prevail over us in things of less consideration, but not in concerns where truth and honour are engaged. When we look into the bottom of things, what at first appears a paradox is a plain truth; and those possessions which, for want of being duly weighed, seem to proceed from a sort of romantic philosophy, and ignorance of the world, after a little reflection are so reasonable, that it is direct madness to walk by any other rules. Thus to contradict our desires, and to conquer the impulses of our ambition, if they do not fall in with what we in our inward sentiments approve, is so much our interest, and so absolutely necessary to our real happiness, that to contemn all the wealth and power in the world, where they stand in competition with a man's honour, is rather good sense than greatness of mind.
Did we consider that the mind of a man is the man himself, we should think it the most unnatural sort of self-murder to sacrifice the sentiment of the soul to gratify the appetites of the body. Bless us! Is it possible, that when the necessities of life are supplied, a man would flatter to be rich, or circumvent to be powerful? When we meet a poor wretch urged with hunger and cold asking an alms, we are apt to think this a state we could rather starve than submit to: but yet how much more despicable is his condition who is above necessity, and yet shall resign his reason and his integrity to purchase superfluities? These are both abject and common beggars; but sure it is less despicable to beg a supply to a man's hunger than his vanity. But custom and general prepossessions have so far prevailed over an unthinking world, that those necessitous creatures who cannot relish life without applause, attendance, and equipage, are so far from making a contemptible figure, that distressed virtue is less esteemed than successful vice. But if a man's appeal in cases that regarded his honour were made to his own soul, there would be a basis and standing rule for our conduct, and we should always endeavour rather to be than appear honourable. Mr. Collier, in his essay on Fortitude,[190] has treated this subject with great wit and magnanimity. "What," says he, "can be more honourable than to have courage enough to execute the commands of reason and conscience; to maintain the dignity of our nature, and the station assigned us? To be proof against poverty, pain, and death itself? I mean so far as not to do anything that is scandalous or sinful to avoid them? To stand adversity under all shapes with decency and resolution? To do this, is to be great above title and fortune. This argues the soul of a heavenly extraction, and is worthy the offspring of the Deity."
What a generous ambition has this man pointed to us? When men have settled in themselves a conviction by such noble precepts, that there is nothing honourable that is not accompanied with innocence; nothing mean but what has guilt in it; I say, when they have attained thus much, though poverty, pain, and death may still retain their terrors, yet riches, pleasures, and honours will easily lose their charms, if they stand between us and our integrity.
What is here said with allusion to fortune and fame, may as justly be applied to wit and beauty; for these latter are as adventitious as the other, and as little concern the essence of the soul. They are all laudable in the man who possesses them only for the just application of them. A bright imagination, while it is subservient to an honest and noble soul, is a faculty which makes a man justly admired by mankind, and furnishes him with reflections upon his own actions, which add delicates to the feast of a good conscience: but when wit descends to wait upon sensual pleasures, or promote the base purposes of ambition, it is then to be contemned in proportion to its excellence. If a man will not resolve to place the foundation of his happiness in his own mind, life is a bewildered and unhappy state, incapable of rest or tranquillity: for to such a one the general applause of valour, wit, nay of honesty itself, can give him but a very feeble comfort, since it is capable of being interrupted by any one who wants either understanding or good-nature to see or acknowledge such excellences. This rule is so necessary, that one may very safely say, it is impossible to know any true relish of our being without it. Look about you in common life among the ordinary race of mankind, and you will find merit in every kind is allowed only to those who are in particular districts or sets of company: but since men can have little pleasure in these faculties which denominate them persons of distinction, let them give up such an empty pursuit, and think nothing essential to happiness but what is in their own power, the capacity of reflecting with pleasure on their own actions, however they are interpreted.
It is so evident a truth, that it is only in our own bosoms we are to search for anything to make us happy, that it is, methinks, a disgrace to our nature to talk of the taking our measures from thence only as a matter of fortitude. When all is well there, the vicissitudes and distinctions of life are the mere scenes of a drama, and he will never act his part well who has his thoughts more fixed upon the applause of the audience than the design of his part.
The life of a man who acts with a steady integrity, without valuing the interpretation of his actions, has but one uniform regular path to move in, where he cannot meet opposition, or fear ambuscade. On the other side, the least deviation from the rules of honour introduces a train of numberless evils, and involves him in inexplicable mazes. He that has entered into guilt has bid adieu to rest, and every criminal has his share of the misery expressed so emphatically in the tragedian:[191]
_Macbeth shall sleep no more!_[192]
It was with detestation of any other grandeur but the calm command of his own passion, that the excellent Mr. Cowley cries out with so much justice:
_If e'er ambition did my fancy cheat With any thought so mean as to be great, Continue, Heaven, still from me to remove The humble blessings of that life I love._[193]
FOOTNOTES:
[190] See Jeremy Collier's "Essays upon Several Moral Subjects" (1709),