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Title: The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes
       Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II

Author: Samuel Johnson

Release Date: March 2, 2004 [EBook #11397]

Language: English

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JOHNSON'S WORKS.


THE RAMBLER.

VOL. II.




THE

WORKS

OF

SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D,

IN NINE VOLUMES.



VOLUME THE THIRD.

[Illustration]


MDCCCXXV.


CONTENTS

OF

THE SECOND VOLUME.


NUMB.

106. The vanity of an author's expectations.--Reasons why good authors
     are sometimes neglected
107. Properantia's hopes of a year of confusion. The misery of
     prostitutes
108. Life sufficient to all purposes if well employed
109. The education of a fop
110. Repentance stated and explained. Retirement and abstinence useful
     to repentance
111. Youth made unfortunate by its haste and eagerness
112. Too much nicety not to be indulged. The character of Eriphile
113. The history of Hymenæus's courtship
114. The necessity of proportioning punishments to crimes
115. The sequel of Hymenæus's courtship
116. The young trader's attempt at politeness
117. The advantages of living in a garret
118. The narrowness of fame
119. Tranquilla's account of her lovers, opposed to Hymenæus
120. The history of Almamoulin the son of Nouradin
121. The dangers of imitation. The impropriety of imitating Spenser
122. A criticism on the English historians
123. The young trader turned gentleman
124. The lady's misery in a summer retirement
125. The difficulty of defining comedy. Tragick and comick sentiments
     confounded
126. The universality of cowardice. The impropriety of extorting praise.
     The impertinence of an astronomer
127. Diligence too soon relaxed. Necessity of perseverance
128. Anxiety universal. The unhappiness of a wit and a fine lady
129. The folly of cowardice and inactivity
130. The history of a beauty
131. Desire of gain the general passion
132. The difficulty of educating a young nobleman
133. The miseries of a beauty defaced
134. Idleness an anxious and miserable state
135. The folly of annual retreats into the country
136. The meanness and mischief of indiscriminate dedication
137. The necessity of literary courage
138. Original characters to be found in the country. The character of
     Mrs. Busy
139. A critical examination of Samson Agonistes
140. The criticism continued
141. The danger of attempting wit in conversation. The character of
     Papilius
142. An account of squire Bluster
143. The criterions of plagiarism
144. The difficulty of raising reputation. The various species of
     detractors
145. Petty writers not to be despised
146. An account of an author travelling in quest of his own character.
     The uncertainty of fame
147. The courtier's esteem of assurance
148. The cruelty of parental tyranny
149. Benefits not always entitled to gratitude
150. Adversity useful to the acquisition of knowledge
151. The climactericks of the mind
152. Criticism on epistolary writings
153. The treatment incurred by loss of fortune
154. The inefficacy of genius without learning
155. The usefulness of advice. The danger of habits. The necessity of
     reviewing life
156. The laws of writing not always indisputable. Reflections on
     tragi-comedy
157. The scholar's complaint of his own bashfulness
158. Rules of writing drawn from examples. Those examples often mistaken
159. The nature and remedies of bashfulness
160. Rules for the choice of associates
161. The revolutions of a garret
162. Old men in danger of falling into pupilage. The conduct of
     Thrasybulus
163. The mischiefs of following a patron
164. Praise universally desired. The failings of eminent men often
     imitated
165. The impotence of wealth. The visit of Scrotinus to the place of his
     nativity
166. Favour not easily gained by the poor
167. The marriage of Hymenæus and Tranquilla
168. Poetry debased by mean expressions. An example from Shakespeare
169. Labour necessary to excellence
170. The history of Misella debauched by her relation
171. Misella's description of the life of a prostitute
172. The effect of sudden riches upon the manners
173. Unreasonable fears of pedantry
174. The mischiefs of unbounded raillery. History of Dicaculus
175. The majority are wicked
176. Directions to authors attacked by criticks. The various degrees of
     critical perspicacity
177. An account of a club of antiquaries
178. Many advantages not to be enjoyed together
179. The awkward merriment of a student
180. The study of life not to be neglected for the sake of books
181. The history of an adventurer in lotteries
182. The history of Leviculus, the fortune-hunter
183. The influence of envy and interest compared
184. The subject of essays often suggested by chance. Chance equally
     prevalent in other affairs
185. The prohibition of revenge justifiable by reason. The meanness of
     regulating our conduct by the opinions of men
186. Anningait and Ajut; a Greenland history
187. The history of Anningait and Ajut concluded
188. Favour often gained with little assistance from understanding
189. The mischiefs of falsehood. The character of Turpicula
190. The history of Abouzaid, the son of Morad
191. The busy life of a young lady
192. Love unsuccessful without riches
193. The author's art of praising himself
194. A young nobleman's progress in politeness
195. A young nobleman's introduction to the knowledge of the town
196. Human opinions mutable. The hopes of youth fallacious
197. The history of a legacy-hunter
198. The legacy-hunter's history concluded
199. The virtues of Rabbi Abraham's magnet
200. Asper's complaint of the insolence of Prospero. Unpoliteness not
     always the effect of pride
201. The importance of punctuality
202. The different acceptations of poverty. Cynicks and Monks not
     poor
203. The pleasures of life to be sought in prospects of futurity. Future
     fame uncertain
204. The history of ten days of Seged, emperour of Ethiopia
205. The history of Seged concluded
206. The art of living at the cost of others
207. The folly of continuing too long upon the stage
208. The Rambler's reception. His design




THE

RAMBLER.



No. 106. SATURDAY, MARCH 23, 1751.

  _Opinionum commenta delet dies, naturæ judicia Confirmat_.
  CICERO, vi. Att. 1.

  Time obliterates the fictions of opinion, and confirms the decisions
  of nature.

It is necessary to the success of flattery, that it be accommodated to
particular circumstances or characters, and enter the heart on that side
where the passions stand ready to receive it. A lady seldom listens with
attention to any praise but that of her beauty; a merchant always
expects to hear of his influence at the bank, his importance on the
exchange, the height of his credit, and the extent of his traffick: and
the author will scarcely be pleased without lamentations of the neglect
of learning, the conspiracies against genius, and the slow progress of
merit, or some praises of the magnanimity of those who encounter poverty
and contempt in the cause of knowledge, and trust for the reward of
their labours to the judgment and gratitude of posterity.

An assurance of unfading laurels, and immortal reputation, is the
settled reciprocation of civility between amicable writers. To raise
_monuments more durable than brass, and more conspicuous than
pyramids_, has been long the common boast of literature; but, among
the innumerable architects that erect columns to themselves, far the
greater part, either for want of durable materials, or of art to dispose
them, see their edifices perish as they are towering to completion, and
those few that for a while attract the eye of mankind, are generally
weak in the foundation, and soon sink by the saps of time.

No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human
hopes, than a publick library; for who can see the wall crowded on every
side by mighty volumes, the works of laborious meditation, and accurate
inquiry, now scarcely known but by the catalogue, and preserved only to
increase the pomp of learning, without considering how many hours have
been wasted in vain endeavours, how often imagination has anticipated
the praises of futurity, how many statues have risen to the eye of
vanity, how many ideal converts have elevated zeal, how often wit has
exulted in the eternal infamy of his antagonists, and dogmatism has
delighted in the gradual advances of his authority, the immutability of
his decrees, and the perpetuity of his power?

  _--Non unquam dedit
  Documenta fors majora, quam frugili loco
  Starent superbi_.

  Insulting chance ne'er call'd with louder voice,
  On swelling mortals to be proud no more.

Of the innumerable authors whose performances are thus treasured up in
magnificent obscurity, most are forgotten, because they never deserved
to be remembered, and owed the honours which they once obtained, not to
judgment or to genius, to labour or to art, but to the prejudice of
faction, the stratagem of intrigue, or the servility of adulation.

Nothing is more common than to find men whose works are now totally
neglected, mentioned with praises by their contemporaries, as the
oracles of their age, and the legislators of science. Curiosity is
naturally excited, their volumes after long inquiry are found, but
seldom reward the labour of the search. Every period of time has
produced these bubbles of artificial fame, which are kept up a while by
the breath of fashion, and then break at once, and are annihilated. The
learned often bewail the loss of ancient writers whose characters have
survived their works; but, perhaps, if we could now retrieve them, we
should find them only the Granvilles, Montagues, Stepneys, and
Sheffields of their time, and wonder by what infatuation or caprice they
could be raised to notice.

It cannot, however, be denied, that many have sunk into oblivion, whom
it were unjust to number with this despicable class. Various kinds of
literary fame seem destined to various measures of duration. Some spread
into exuberance with a very speedy growth, but soon wither and decay;
some rise more slowly, but last long. Parnassus has its flowers of
transient fragrance, as well as its oaks of towering height, and its
laurels of eternal verdure.

Among those whose reputation is exhausted in a short time by its own
luxuriance, are the writers who take advantage of present incidents or
characters which strongly interest the passions, and engage universal
attention. It is not difficult to obtain readers, when we discuss a
question which every one is desirous to understand, which is debated in
every assembly, and has divided the nation into parties; or when we
display the faults or virtues of him whose publick conduct has made
almost every man his enemy or his friend. To the quick circulation of
such productions all the motives of interest and vanity concur; the
disputant enlarges his knowledge, the zealot animates his passion, and
every man is desirous to inform himself concerning affairs so vehemently
agitated and variously represented.

It is scarcely to be imagined, through how many subordinations of
interest the ardour of party is diffused; and what multitudes fancy
themselves affected by every satire or panegyrick on a man of eminence.
Whoever has, at any time, taken occasion to mention him with praise or
blame, whoever happens to love or hate any of his adherents, as he
wishes to confirm his opinion, and to strengthen his party, will
diligently peruse every paper from which he can hope for sentiments like
his own. An object, however small in itself, if placed near to the eye,
will engross all the rays of light; and a transaction, however trivial,
swells into importance when it presses immediately on our attention. He
that shall peruse the political pamphlets of any past reign, will wonder
why they were so eagerly read, or so loudly praised. Many of the
performances which had power to inflame factions, and fill a kingdom
with confusion, have now very little effect upon a frigid critick; and
the time is coming, when the compositions of later hirelings shall lie
equally despised. In proportion as those who write on temporary
subjects, are exalted above their merit at first, they are afterwards
depressed below it; nor can the brightest elegance of diction, or most
artful subtilty of reasoning, hope for so much esteem from those whose
regard is no longer quickened by curiosity or pride.

It is, indeed, the fate of controvertists, even when they contend for
philosophical or theological truth, to be soon laid aside and slighted.
Either the question is decided, and there is no more place for doubt and
opposition; or mankind despair of understanding it, and grow weary of
disturbance, content themselves with quiet ignorance, and refuse to be
harassed with labours which they have no hopes of recompensing with
knowledge.

The authors of new discoveries may surely expect to be reckoned among
those whose writings are secure of veneration: yet it often happens that
the general reception of a doctrine obscures the books in which it was
delivered. When any tenet is generally received and adopted as an
incontrovertible principle, we seldom look back to the arguments upon
which it was first established, or can bear that tediousness of
deduction, and multiplicity of evidence, by which its author was forced
to reconcile it to prejudice, and fortify it in the weakness of novelty
against obstinacy and envy.

It is well known how much of our philosophy is derived from Boyle's
discovery of the qualities of the air; yet of those who now adopt or
enlarge his theory, very few have read the detail of his experiments.
His name is, indeed, reverenced; but his works are neglected; we are
contented to know, that he conquered his opponents, without inquiring
what cavils were produced against him, or by what proofs they were
confuted.

Some writers apply themselves to studies boundless and inexhaustible, as
experiments in natural philosophy. These are always lost in successive
compilations, as new advances are made, and former observations become
more familiar. Others spend their lives in remarks on language, or
explanations of antiquities, and only afford materials for
lexicographers and commentators, who are themselves overwhelmed by
subsequent collectors, that equally destroy the memory of their
predecessors by amplification, transposition, or contraction. Every new
system of nature gives birth to a swarm of expositors, whose business is
to explain and illustrate it, and who can hope to exist no longer than
the founder of their sect preserves his reputation.

There are, indeed, few kinds of composition from which an author,
however learned or ingenious, can hope a long continuance of fame. He
who has carefully studied human nature, and can well describe it, may
with most reason flatter his ambition. Bacon, among all his pretensions
to the regard of posterity, seems to have pleased himself chiefly with
his Essays, _which come home to men's business and bosoms_, and of
which, therefore, he declares his expectation, that they _will live as
long as books last_. It may, however, satisfy an honest and benevolent
mind to have been useful, though less conspicuous; nor will he that
extends his hope to higher rewards, be so much anxious to obtain praise,
as to discharge the duty which Providence assigns him.



No. 107. TUESDAY, MARCH 26, 1751.

  _Alternis igitur contendere versibns ambo
  Coepere: alternos Musoe meminisse volebant_. VIRG. Ec. vii. 18

  On themes alternate now the swains recite;
  The muses in alternate themes delight. ELPHINSTON.

Among the various censures, which the unavoidable comparison of my
performances with those of my predecessors has produced, there is none
more general than that of uniformity. Many of my readers remark the want
of those changes of colours, which formerly fed the attention with
unexhausted novelty, and of that intermixture of subjects, or
alternation of manner, by which other writers relieved weariness, and
awakened expectation.

I have, indeed, hitherto avoided the practice of uniting gay and solemn
subjects in the same paper, because it seems absurd for an author to
counteract himself, to press at once with equal force upon both parts of
the intellectual balance, or give medicines, which, like the double
poison of Dryden, destroy the force of one another. I have endeavoured
sometimes to divert, and sometimes to elevate; but have imagined it an
useless attempt to disturb merriment by solemnity, or interrupt
seriousness by drollery. Yet I shall this day publish two letters of
very different tendency, which I hope, like tragi-comedy, may chance to
please even when they are not critically approved.

TO THE RAMBLER.

DEAR SIR,

Though, as my mamma tells me, I am too young to talk at the table, I
have great pleasure in listening to the conversation of learned men,
especially when they discourse of things which I do not understand; and
have, therefore, been of late particularly delighted with many disputes
about the _alteration of the stile_, which, they say, is to be made by
act of parliament.

One day when my mamma was gone out of the room, I asked a very great
scholar what the style was. He told me he was afraid I should hardly
understand him when he informed me, that it was the stated and
established method of computing time. It was not, indeed, likely that I
should understand him; for I never yet knew time computed in my life,
nor can imagine why we should be at so much trouble to count what we
cannot keep. He did not tell me whether we are to count the time past,
or the time to come; but I have considered them both by myself, and
think it as foolish to count time that is gone, as money that is spent;
and as for the time which is to come, it only seems further off by
counting; and therefore, when any pleasure is promised me, I always
think of the time as little as I can.

I have since listened very attentively to every one that talked upon
this subject, of whom the greater part seem not to understand it better
than myself; for though they often hint how much the nation has been
mistaken, and rejoice that we are at last growing wiser than our
ancestors, I have never been able to discover from them, that any body
has died sooner, or been married later, for counting time wrong; and,
therefore, I began to fancy that there was a great bustle with little
consequence.

At last, two friends of my papa, Mr. Cycle, and Mr. Starlight, being, it
seems, both of high learning, and able to make an almanack, began to
talk about the new style. Sweet Mr. Starlight--I am sure I shall love
his name as long as I live; for he told Cycle roundly, with a fierce
look, that we should never be right without a _year of confusion_. Dear
Mr. Rambler, did you ever hear any thing so charming? a whole year of
confusion! When there has been a rout at mamma's, I have thought one
night of confusion worth a thousand nights of rest; and if I can but see
a year of confusion, a whole year, of cards in one room, and dancings in
another, here a feast, and there a masquerade, and plays, and coaches,
and hurries, and messages, and milliners, and raps at the door, and
visits, and frolicks, and new fashions, I shall not care what they do
with the rest of the time, nor whether they count it by the old style or
the new; for I am resolved to break loose from the nursery in the
tumult, and play my part among the rest; and it will be strange if I
cannot get a husband and a chariot in the year of confusion.

Cycle, who is neither so young nor so handsome as Starlight, very
gravely maintained, that all the perplexity may he avoided by leaping
over eleven days in the reckoning; and, indeed, if it should come only
to this, I think the new style is a delightful thing; for my mamma says
I shall go to court when I am sixteen, and if they can but contrive
often to leap over eleven days together, the months of restraint will
soon be at an end. It is strange, that with all the plots that have been
laid against time, they could never kill it by act of parliament before.
Dear sir, if you have any vote or interest, get them but for once to
destroy eleven months, and then I shall be as old as some married
ladies. But this is desired only if you think they will not comply with
Mr. Starlight's scheme; for nothing surely could please me like a year
of confusion, when I shall no longer be fixed this hour to my pen, and
the next to my needle, or wait at home for the dancing-master one day,
and the next for the musick-master; but run from ball to ball, and from
drum to drum; and spend all my time without tasks, and without account,
and go out without telling whither, and come home without regard to
prescribed hours, or family rules.

I am, sir,

Your humble servant,

PROPERANTIA.

MR. RAMBLER,

I was seized this morning with an unusual pensiveness, and, finding that
books only served to heighten it, took a ramble into the fields, in
hopes of relief and invigoration from the keenness of the air and
brightness of the sun.

As I wandered wrapped up in thought, my eyes were struck with the
hospital for the reception of deserted infants, which I surveyed with
pleasure, till, by a natural train of sentiment, I began to reflect on
the fate of the mothers. For to what shelter can they fly? Only to the
arms of their betrayer, which, perhaps, are now no longer open to
receive them; and then how quick must be the transition from deluded
virtue to shameless guilt, and from shameless guilt to hopeless
wretchedness?

The anguish that I felt, left me no rest till I had, by your means,
addressed myself to the publick on behalf of those forlorn creatures,
the women of the town; whose misery here might satisfy the most rigorous
censor, and whose participation of our common nature might surely induce
us to endeavour, at least, their preservation from eternal punishment.

These were all once, if not virtuous, at least innocent; and might still
have continued blameless and easy, but for the arts and insinuations of
those whose rank, fortune, or education, furnished them with means to
corrupt or to delude them. Let the libertine reflect a moment on the
situation of that woman, who, being forsaken by her betrayer, is reduced
to the necessity of turning prostitute for bread, and judge of the
enormity of his guilt by the evils which it produces.

It cannot be doubted but that numbers follow this dreadful course of
life, with shame, horrour, and regret; but where can they hope for
refuge: "_The world is not their friend, nor the world's law_." Their
sighs, and tears, and groans, are criminal in the eye of their tyrants,
the bully and the bawd, who fatten on their misery, and threaten them
with want or a gaol, if they show the least design of escaping from
their bondage.

"To wipe all tears from off all faces," is a task too hard for mortals;
but to alleviate misfortunes is often within the most limited power: yet
the opportunities which every day affords of relieving the most wretched
of human beings are overlooked and neglected, with equal disregard of
policy and goodness.

There are places, indeed, set apart, to which these unhappy creatures
may resort, when the diseases of incontinence seize upon them; but if
they obtain a cure, to what are they reduced? Either to return with the
small remains of beauty to their former guilt, or perish in the streets
with nakedness and hunger.

How frequently have the gay and thoughtless, in their evening frolicks,
seen a band of those miserable females, covered with rags, shivering
with cold, and pining with hunger; and, without either pitying their
calamities, or reflecting upon the cruelty of those who, perhaps, first
seduced them by caresses of fondness, or magnificence of promises, go on
to reduce others to the same wretchedness by the same means!

To stop the increase of this deplorable multitude, is undoubtedly the
first and most pressing consideration. To prevent evil is the great end
of government, the end for which vigilance and severity are properly
employed. But surely those whom passion or interest has already
depraved, have some claim to compassion, from beings equally frail and
fallible with themselves. Nor will they long groan in their present
afflictions, if none were to refuse them relief, but those that owe
their exemption from the same distress only to their wisdom and their
virtue.

I am, &c.

AMICUS[a].

[Footnote a: The letter from Amicus was from an unknown correspondent.
It breathes a tenderness of spirit worthy of Johnson himself. But he
practised the lesson which it inculcates;--a harder task! Sterne could
_write_ sentiment.]



No. 108. SATURDAY, MARCH 30, 1751.

  _--Sapere aude:
  Incipe. Vivendi recte qui prorogat horam,
  Rusticus expectat dum defluat amnis; at ille
  Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis aevum_. HOR. Lib. i. Ep. ii. 39.

  Begin, be bold, and venture to be wise;
  He who defers this work from day to day,
  Does on a river's bank expecting stay,
  Till the whole stream, which stopp'd him, should be gone,
  That runs, and as it runs, for ever will run on. COWLEY.

An ancient poet, unreasonably discontented at the present state of
things, which his system of opinions obliged him to represent in its
worst form, has observed of the earth, "that its greater part is covered
by the uninhabitable ocean; that of the rest some is encumbered with
naked mountains, and some lost under barren sands; some scorched with
unintermitted heat, and some petrified with perpetual frost; so that
only a few regions remain for the production of fruits, the pasture of
cattle, and the accommodation of man."

The same observation may be transferred to the time allotted us in our
present state. When we have deducted all that is absorbed in sleep, all
that is inevitably appropriated to the demands of nature, or
irresistibly engrossed by the tyranny of custom; all that passes in
regulating the superficial decorations of life, or is given up in the
reciprocations of civility to the disposal of others; all that is torn
from us by the violence of disease, or stolen imperceptibly away by
lassitude and languor; we shall find that part of our duration very
small of which we can truly call ourselves masters, or which we can
spend wholly at our own choice. Many of our hours are lost in a rotation
of petty cares, in a constant recurrence of the same employments; many
of our provisions for ease or happiness are always exhausted by the
present day; and a great part of our existence serves no other purpose,
than that of enabling us to enjoy the rest.

Of the few moments which are left in our disposal, it may reasonably be
expected, that we should be so frugal, as to let none of them slip from
us without some equivalent; and perhaps it might be found, that as the
earth, however straitened by rocks and waters, is capable of producing
more than all its inhabitants are able to consume, our lives, though
much contracted by incidental distraction, would yet afford us a large
space vacant to the exercise of reason and virtue; that we want not
time, but diligence, for great performances; and that we squander much
of our allowance, even while we think it sparing and insufficient.

This natural and necessary comminution of our lives, perhaps, often
makes us insensible of the negligence with which we suffer them to slide
away. We never consider ourselves as possessed at once of time
sufficient for any great design, and therefore indulge ourselves, in
fortuitous amusements. We think it unnecessary to take an account of a
few supernumerary moments, which, however employed, could have produced
little advantage, and which were exposed to a thousand chances of
disturbance and interruption.

It is observable, that, either by nature or by habit, our faculties are
fitted to images of a certain extent, to which we adjust great things by
division, and little things by accumulation. Of extensive surfaces we
can only take a survey, as the parts succeed one another; and atoms we
cannot perceive till they are united into masses. Thus we break the vast
periods of time into centuries and years; and thus, if we would know the
amount of moments, we must agglomerate them into days and weeks.

The proverbial oracles of our parsimonious ancestors have informed us,
that the fatal waste of fortune is by small expenses, by the profusion
of sums too little singly to alarm our caution, and which we never
suffer ourselves to consider together. Of the same kind is the
prodigality of life; he that hopes to look back hereafter with
satisfaction upon past years, must learn to know the present value of
single minutes, and endeavour to let no particle of time fall useless to
the ground.

It is usual for those who are advised to the attainment of any new
qualification, to look upon themselves as required to change the general
course of their conduct, to dismiss business, and exclude pleasure, and
to devote their days and nights to a particular attention. But all
common degrees of excellence are attainable at a lower price; he that
should steadily and resolutely assign to any science or language those
interstitial vacancies which intervene in the most crowded variety of
diversion or employment, would find every day new irradiations of
knowledge, and discover how much more is to be hoped from frequency and
perseverance, than from violent efforts and sudden desires; efforts
which are soon remitted when they encounter difficulty, and desires,
which, if they are indulged too often, will shake off the authority of
reason, and range capriciously from one object to another.

The disposition to defer every important design to a time of leisure,
and a state of settled uniformity, proceeds generally from a false
estimate of the human powers. If we except those gigantic and stupendous
intelligences who are said to grasp a system by intuition, and bound
forward from one series of conclusions to another, without regular steps
through intermediate propositions, the most successful students make
their advances in knowledge by short flights, between each of which the
mind may lie at rest. For every single act of progression a short time
is sufficient; and it is only necessary, that whenever that time is
afforded, it be well employed.

Few minds will be long confined to severe and laborious meditation; and
when a successful attack on knowledge has been made, the student
recreates himself with the contemplation of his conquest, and forbears
another incursion, till the new-acquired truth has become familiar, and
his curiosity calls upon him for fresh gratifications. Whether the time
of intermission is spent in company, or in solitude, in necessary
business, or in voluntary levities, the understanding is equally
abstracted from the object of inquiry; but, perhaps, if it be detained
by occupations less pleasing, it returns again to study with greater
alacrity than when it is glutted with ideal pleasures, and surfeited
with intemperance of application. He that will not suffer himself to be
discouraged by fancied impossibilities, may sometimes find his abilities
invigorated by the necessity of exerting them in short intervals, as the
force of a current is increased by the contraction of its channel.

From some cause like this, it has probably proceeded, that, among those
who have contributed to the advancement of learning, many have risen to
eminence in opposition to all the obstacles which external circumstances
could place in their way, amidst the tumult of business, the distresses
of poverty, or the dissipations of a wandering and unsettled state. A
great part of the life of Erasmus was one continual peregrination; ill
supplied with the gifts of fortune, and led from city to city, and from
kingdom to kingdom, by the hopes of patrons and preferment, hopes which
always flattered and always deceived him; he yet found means, by
unshaken constancy, and a vigilant improvement of those hours, which, in
the midst of the most restless activity, will remain unengaged, to write
more than another in the same condition would have hoped to read.
Compelled by want to attendance and solicitation, and so much versed in
common life, that he has transmitted to us the most perfect delineation
of the manners of his age, he joined to his knowledge of the world such
application to books, that he will stand for ever in the first rank of
literary heroes. How this proficiency was obtained he sufficiently
discovers, by informing us, that the "Praise of Folly," one of his most
celebrated performances, was composed by him on the road to Italy; _ne
totum illud tempus quo equo fuit insidendum, illiteratis fabulis
terreretur_: "lest the hours which he was obliged to spend on horseback
should be tattled away without regard to literature."

An Italian philosopher expressed in his motto, that _time was his
estate_; an estate, indeed, which will produce nothing without
cultivation, but will always abundantly repay the labours of industry,
and satisfy the most extensive desires, if no part of it be suffered to
lie waste by negligence, to be over-run with noxious plants, or laid out
for shew, rather than for use.



No. 109. TUESDAY, APRIL 2, 1751.

  _Gratum est, quod patriæ civem populoque dedisti,
  Si facis, ut patriæ sit idoneus, utilis agris,
  Utilis et bellorum et pacis rebus agendis.
  Plurimum enim intererit, quibus artibus, et quibus hunc tu
  Moribus instituas_ Juv. SAT, xiv. 70.

  Grateful the gift! a member to the state,
  If you that member useful shall create;
  Train'd both to war, and, when the war shall cease,
  As fond, as fit t'improve the arts of peace.
  For much it boots which way you train your boy,
  The hopeful object of your future joy. ELPHINSTON.

TO THE RAMBLER.

SIR,

Though you seem to have taken a view sufficiently extensive of the
miseries of life, and have employed much of your speculation on mournful
subjects, you have not yet exhausted the whole stock of human
infelicity. There is still a species of wretchedness which escapes your
observation, though it might supply you with many sage remarks, and
salutary cautions.

I cannot but imagine the start of attention awakened by this welcome
hint; and at this instant see the Rambler snuffing his candle, rubbing
his spectacles, stirring his fire, locking out interruption, and
settling himself in his easy chair, that he may enjoy a new calamity
without disturbance. For, whether it be that continued sickness or
misfortune has acquainted you only with the bitterness of being; or that
you imagine none but yourself able to discover what I suppose has been
seen and felt by all the inhabitants of the world; whether you intend
your writings as antidotal to the levity and merriment with which your
rivals endeavour to attract the favour of the publick; or fancy that you
have some particular powers of dolorous declamation, and _warble out
your groans_ with uncommon elegance or energy; it is certain, that
whatever be your subject, melancholy for the most part bursts in upon
your speculation, your gaiety is quickly overcast, and though your
readers may be flattered with hopes of pleasantry, they are seldom
dismissed but with heavy hearts.

That I may therefore gratify you with an imitation of your own syllables
of sadness, I will inform you that I was condemned by some disastrous
influence to be an only son, born to the apparent prospect of a large
fortune, and allotted to my parents at that time of life when satiety of
common diversions allows the mind to indulge parental affection with
greater intenseness. My birth was celebrated by the tenants with feasts,
and dances, and bag-pipes: congratulations were sent from every family
within ten miles round; and my parents discovered in my first cries such
tokens of future virtue and understanding, that they declared themselves
determined to devote the remaining part of life to my happiness and the
increase of their estate.

The abilities of my father and mother were not perceptibly unequal, and
education had given neither much advantage over the other. They had both
kept good company, rattled in chariots, glittered in playhouses, and
danced at court, and were both expert in the games that were in their
time called in as auxiliaries against the intrusion of thought.

When there is such a parity between two persons associated for life, the
dejection which the husband, if he be not completely stupid, must always
suffer for want of superiority, sinks him to submissiveness. My mamma
therefore governed the family without controul; and except that my
father still retained some authority in the stables, and, now and then,
after a supernumerary bottle, broke a looking-glass or china dish to
prove his sovereignty, the whole course of the year was regulated by her
direction, the servants received from her all their orders, and the
tenants were continued or dismissed at her discretion.

She, therefore, thought herself entitled to the superintendence of her
son's education; and when my father, at the instigation of the parson,
faintly proposed that I should be sent to school, very positively told
him, that she should not suffer so fine a child to be ruined; that she
never knew any boys at a grammar-school that could come into a room
without blushing, or sit at table without some awkward uneasiness; that
they were always putting themselves into danger by boisterous plays, or
vitiating their behaviour with mean company, and that, for her part, she
would rather follow me to the grave, than see me tear my clothes, and
hang down my head, and sneak about with dirty shoes, and blotted
fingers, my hair unpowdered, and my hat uncocked.

My father, who had no other end in his proposal than to appear wise and
manly, soon acquiesced, since I was not to live by my learning; for,
indeed, he had known very few students that had not some stiffness in
their manner. They, therefore, agreed, that a domestick tutor should be
procured, and hired an honest gentleman of mean conversation and narrow
sentiments, but whom, having passed the common forms of literary
education, they implicitly concluded qualified to teach all that was to
be learned from a scholar. He thought himself sufficiently exalted by
being placed at the same table with his pupil, and had no other view
than to perpetuate his felicity by the utmost flexibility of submission
to all my mother's opinions and caprices. He frequently took away my
book, lest I should mope with too much application, charged me never to
write without turning up my ruffles, and generally brushed my coat
before he dismissed me into the parlour. He had no occasion to complain
of too burdensome an employment: for my mother very judiciously
considered, that I was not likely to grow politer in his company, and
suffered me not to pass any more time in his apartment than my lesson
required. When I was summoned to my task, she enjoined me not to get any
of my tutor's ways, who was seldom mentioned before me but for practices
to be avoided. I was every moment admonished not to lean on my chair,
cross my legs, or swing my hands like my tutor; and once my mother very
seriously deliberated upon his total dismission, because I began, she
said, to learn his manner of sticking on my hat, and had his bend in my
shoulders, and his totter in my gait.

Such, however, was her care, that I escaped all these depravities; and
when I was only twelve years old, had rid myself of every appearance of
childish diffidence. I was celebrated round the country for the
petulance of my remarks, and the quickness of my replies; and many a
scholar, five years older than myself, have I dashed into confusion by
the steadiness of my countenance, silenced by my readiness of repartee,
and tortured with envy by the address with which I picked up a fan,
presented a snuff-box, or received an empty tea-cup.

At fourteen I was completely skilled in all the niceties of dress, and I
could not only enumerate all the variety of silks, and distinguish the
product of a French loom, but dart my eye through a numerous company,
and observe every deviation from the reigning mode. I was universally
skilful in all the changes of expensive finery; but as every one, they
say, has something to which he is particularly born, was eminently
knowing in Brussels' lace.

The next year saw me advanced to the trust and power of adjusting the
ceremonial of an assembly. All received their partners from my hand, and
to me every stranger applied for introduction. My heart now disdained
the instructions of a tutor, who was rewarded with a small annuity for
life, and left me qualified, in my own opinion, to govern myself.

In a short time I came to London, and as my father was well known among
the higher classes of life, soon obtained admission to the most splendid
assemblies and most crowded card-tables. Here I found myself universally
caressed and applauded; the ladies praised the fancy of my clothes, the
beauty of my form, and the softness of my voice; endeavoured in every
place to force themselves to my notice; and invited, by a thousand
oblique solicitations, my attendance to the playhouse, and my
salutations in the park. I was now happy to the utmost extent of my
conception; I passed every morning in dress, every afternoon in visits,
and every night in some select assemblies, where neither care nor
knowledge were suffered to molest us.

After a few years, however, these delights became familiar, and I had
leisure to look round me with more attention. I then found that my
flatterers had very little power to relieve the languor of satiety, or
recreate weariness, by varied amusement; and therefore endeavoured to
enlarge the sphere of my pleasures, and to try what satisfaction might
be found in the society of men. I will not deny the mortification with
which I perceived, that every man whose name I had heard mentioned with
respect, received me with a kind of tenderness, nearly bordering on
compassion; and that those whose reputation was not well established,
thought it necessary to justify their understandings, by treating me
with contempt. One of these witlings elevated his crest, by asking me in
a full coffee-house the price of patches; and another whispered that he
wondered why Miss Frisk did not keep me that afternoon to watch her
squirrel.

When I found myself thus hunted from all masculine conversation by those
who were themselves barely admitted, I returned to the ladies, and
resolved to dedicate my life to their service and their pleasure. But I
find that I have now lost my charms. Of those with whom I entered the
gay world, some are married, some have retired, and some have so much
changed their opinion, that they scarcely pay any regard to my
civilities, if there is any other man in the place. The new flight of
beauties to whom I have made my addresses, suffer me to pay the treat,
and then titter with boys. So that I now find myself welcome only to a
few grave ladies, who, unacquainted with all that gives either use or
dignity to life, are content to pass their hours between their bed and
their cards, without esteem from the old, or reverence from the young.

I cannot but think, Mr. Rambler, that I have reason to complain; for
surely the females ought to pay some regard to the age of him whose
youth was passed in endeavours to please them. They that encourage folly
in the boy, have no right to punish it in the man. Yet I find that,
though they lavish their first fondness upon pertness and gaiety, they
soon transfer their regard to other qualities, and ungratefully abandon
their adorers to dream out their last years in stupidity and contempt.

I am, &c.

FLORENTULUS.



No. 110. SATURDAY, APRIL 6, 1751

  At nobis vitæ dominum quærentibus unum
  Lux iter est, et clara dies, et gratia simplex.
  Spem sequimur, gradimurque fide, fruimurque futuris,
  Ad quæ non veniunt præsentis gaudia vitæ,
  Nec currunt pariter capta, et capienda voluptus.
  PRUDENTIUS, Cont. Sym. ii. 904.

  We through this maze of life one Lord obey;
  Whose light and grace unerring lead the way.
  By hope and faith secure of future bliss,
  Gladly the joys of present life we miss:
  For baffled mortals still attempt in vain,
  Present and future bliss at once to gain. F. LEWIS.

That to please the Lord and Father of the universe, is the supreme
interest of created and dependent beings, as it is easily proved, has
been universally confessed; and since all rational agents are conscious
of having neglected or violated the duties prescribed to them, the fear
of being rejected, or punished by God, has always burdened the human
mind. The expiation of crimes, and renovation of the forfeited hopes of
divine favour, therefore constitute a large part of every religion.

The various methods of propitiation and atonement which fear and folly
have dictated, or artifice and interest tolerated in the different parts
of the world, however they may sometimes reproach or degrade humanity,
at least shew the general consent of all ages and nations in their
opinion of the placability of the divine nature. That God will forgive,
may, indeed, be established as the first and fundamental truth of
religion; for, though the knowledge of his existence is the origin of
philosophy, yet, without the belief of his mercy, it would have little
influence upon our moral conduct. There could be no prospect of enjoying
the protection or regard of him, whom the least deviation from rectitude
made inexorable for ever; and every man would naturally withdraw his
thoughts from the contemplation of a Creator, whom he must consider as a
governor too pure to be pleased, and too severe to be pacified; as an
enemy infinitely wise, and infinitely powerful, whom he could neither
deceive, escape, nor resist.

Where there is no hope, there can be no endeavour. A constant and
unfailing obedience is above the reach of terrestrial diligence; and
therefore the progress of life could only have been the natural descent
of negligent despair from crime to crime, had not the universal
persuasion of forgiveness, to be obtained by proper means of
reconciliation, recalled those to the paths of virtue, whom their
passions had solicited aside; and animated to new attempts, and firmer
perseverance, those whom difficulty had discouraged, or negligence
surprised.

In times and regions so disjoined from each other, that there can
scarcely be imagined any communication of sentiments either by commerce
or tradition, has prevailed a general and uniform expectation of
propitiating God by corporal austerities, of anticipating his vengeance
by voluntary inflictions, and appeasing his justice by a speedy and
cheerful submission to a less penalty, when a greater is incurred.

Incorporated minds will always feel some inclination towards exterior
acts and ritual observances. Ideas not represented by sensible objects
are fleeting, variable, and evanescent. We are not able to judge of the
degree of conviction which operated at any particular time upon our own
thoughts, but as it is recorded by some certain and definite effect. He
that reviews his life in order to determine the probability of his
acceptance with God, if he could once establish the necessary proportion
between crimes and sufferings, might securely rest upon his performance
of the expiation; but while safety remains the reward only of mental
purity, he is always afraid lest he should decide too soon in his own
favour; lest he should not have felt the pangs of true contrition; lest
he should mistake satiety for detestation, or imagine that his passions
are subdued when they are only sleeping.

From this natural and reasonable diffidence arose, in humble and
timorous piety, a disposition to confound penance with repentance, to
repose on human determinations, and to receive from some judicial
sentence the stated and regular assignment of reconciliatory pain. We
are never willing to be without resource: we seek in the knowledge of
others a succour for our own ignorance, and are ready to trust any that
will undertake to direct us when we have no confidence in ourselves.

This desire to ascertain by some outward marks the state of the soul,
and this willingness to calm the conscience by some settled method, have
produced, as they are diversified in their effects by various tempers
and principles, most of the disquisitions and rules, the doubts and
solutions, that have embarrassed the doctrine of repentance, and
perplexed tender and flexible minds with innumerable scruples concerning
the necessary measures of sorrow, and adequate degrees of
self-abhorrence; and these rules, corrupted by fraud, or debased by
credulity, have, by the common resiliency of the mind from one extreme
to another, incited others to an open contempt of all subsidiary
ordinances, all prudential caution, and the whole discipline of
regulated piety.

Repentance, however difficult to be practised, is, if it be explained
without superstition, easily understood. _Repentance is the
relinquishment of any practice, from the conviction that it has offended
God_. Sorrow, and fear, and anxiety, are properly not parts, but
adjuncts of repentance; yet they are too closely connected with it to be
easily separated; for they not only mark its sincerity, but promote its
efficacy.

No man commits any act of negligence or obstinacy, by which his safety
or happiness in this world is endangered, without feeling the pungency
of remorse. He who is fully convinced, that he suffers by his own
failure, can never forbear to trace back his miscarriage to its first
cause, to image to himself a contrary behaviour, and to form involuntary
resolutions against the like fault, even when he knows that he shall
never again have the power of committing it. Danger, considered as
imminent, naturally produces such trepidations of impatience as leave
all human means of safety behind them; he that has once caught an alarm
of terrour, is every moment seized with useless anxieties, adding one
security to another, trembling with sudden doubts, and distracted by the
perpetual occurrence of new expedients. If, therefore, he whose crimes
have deprived him of the favour of God, can reflect upon his conduct
without disturbance, or can at will banish the reflection; if he who
considers himself as suspended over the abyss of eternal perdition only
by the thread of life, which must soon part by its own weakness, and
which the wing of every minute may divide, can cast his eyes round him
without shuddering with horrour, or panting with security; what can he
judge of himself, but that he is not yet awakened to sufficient
conviction, since every loss is more lamented than the loss of the
divine favour, and every danger more dreadful than the danger of final
condemnation?

Retirement from the cares and pleasures of the world has been often
recommended as useful to repentance. This at least is evident, that
every one retires, whenever ratiocination and recollection are required
on other occasions; and surely the retrospect of life, the
disentanglement of actions complicated with innumerable circumstances,
and diffused in various relations, the discovery of the primary
movements of the heart, and the extirpation of lusts and appetites
deeply rooted and widely spread, may be allowed to demand some secession
from sport and noise, business and folly. Some suspension of common
affairs, some pause of temporal pain and pleasure, is doubtless
necessary to him that deliberates for eternity, who is forming the only
plan in which miscarriage cannot be repaired, and examining the only
question in which mistake cannot be rectified.

Austerities and mortifications are means by which the mind is
invigorated and roused, by which the attractions of pleasure are
interrupted, and the chains of sensuality are broken. It is observed by
one of the fathers, that _he who restrains himself in the use of things
lawful, will never encroach upon things forbidden_. Abstinence, if
nothing more, is, at least, a cautious retreat from the utmost verge of
permission, and confers that security which cannot be reasonably hoped
by him that dares always to hover over the precipice of destruction, or
delights to approach the pleasures which he knows it fatal to partake.
Austerity is the proper antidote to indulgence; the diseases of mind as
well as body are cured by contraries, and to contraries we should
readily have recourse, if we dreaded guilt as we dread pain.

The completion and sum of repentance is a change of life. That sorrow
which dictates no caution, that fear which does not quicken our escape,
that austerity which fails to rectify our affections, are vain and
unavailing. But sorrow and terrour must naturally precede reformation;
for what other cause can produce it? He, therefore, that feels himself
alarmed by his conscience, anxious for the attainment of a better state,
and afflicted by the memory of his past faults, may justly conclude,
that the great work of repentance is begun, and hope by retirement and
prayer, the natural and religious means of strengthening his conviction,
to impress upon his mind such a sense of the divine presence, as may
overpower the blandishments of secular delights, and enable him to
advance from one degree of holiness to another, till death shall set him
free from doubt and contest, misery and temptation[b].

  What better can we do than prostrate fall
  Before him reverent; and there confess
  Humbly our faults, and pardon beg; with tears
  Wat'ring the ground, and with our sighs the air
  Frequenting, sent from hearts contrite, in sign
  Of sorrow unfeign'd, and humiliation meek?     Par. Lost. B. x. 1087.



No. 111. TUESDAY, APRIL 9, 1751.

  [Greek: phronein gar hoi tacheis, ouk asphaleis.] SOPHOC.

  Disaster always waits on early wit.

It has been observed, by long experience, that late springs produce the
greatest plenty. The delay of blooms and fragrance, of verdure and
breezes, is for the most part liberally recompensed by the exuberance
and fecundity of the ensuing seasons; the blossoms which lie concealed
till the year is advanced, and the sun is high, escape those chilling
blasts, and nocturnal frosts, which are often fatal to early luxuriance,
prey upon the first smiles of vernal beauty, destroy the feeble
principles of vegetable life, intercept the fruit in the gem, and beat
down the flowers unopened to the ground.

I am afraid there is little hope of persuading the young and sprightly
part of my readers, upon whom the spring naturally forces my attention,
to learn, from the great process of nature, the difference between
diligence and hurry, between speed and precipitation; to prosecute their
designs with calmness, to watch the concurrence of opportunity, and
endeavour to find the lucky moment which they cannot make. Youth is the
time of enterprize and hope: having yet no occasion of comparing our
force with any opposing power, we naturally form presumptions in our own
favour, and imagine that obstruction and impediment will give way before
us. The first repulses rather inflame vehemence than teach prudence; a
brave and generous mind is long before it suspects its own weakness, or
submits to sap the difficulties which it expected to subdue by storm.
Before disappointments have enforced the dictates of philosophy, we
believe it in our power to shorten the interval between the first cause
and the last effect; we laugh at the timorous delays of plodding
industry, and fancy that, by increasing the fire, we can at pleasure
accelerate the projection.

At our entrance into the world, when health and vigour give us fair
promises of time sufficient for the regular maturation of our schemes,
and a long enjoyment of our acquisitions, we are eager to seize the
present moment; we pluck every gratification within our reach, without
suffering it to ripen into perfection, and crowd all the varieties of
delight into a narrow compass; but age seldom fails to change our
conduct; we grow negligent of time in proportion as we have less
remaining, and suffer the last part of life to steal from us in languid
preparations for future undertakings, or slow approaches to remote
advantages, in weak hopes of some fortuitous occurrence, or drowsy
equilibrations of undetermined counsel: whether it be that the aged,
having tasted the pleasures of man's condition, and found them delusive,
become less anxious for their attainment; or that frequent miscarriages
have depressed them to despair, and frozen them to inactivity; or that
death shocks them more as it advances upon them, and they are afraid to
remind themselves of their decay, or to discover to their own hearts
that the time of trifling is past. A perpetual conflict with natural
desires seems to be the lot of our present state. In youth we require
something of the tardiness and frigidity of age; and in age we must
labour to recal the fire and impetuosity of youth; in youth we must
learn to expect, and in age to enjoy.

The torment of expectation is, indeed, not easily to be borne at a time
when every idea of gratification fires the blood, and flashes on the
fancy; when the heart is vacant to every fresh form of delight, and has
no rival engagements to withdraw it from the importunities of a new
desire. Yet, since the fear of missing what we seek must always be
proportionable to the happiness expected from possessing it, the
passions, even in this tempestuous state, might be somewhat moderated by
frequent inculcation of the mischief of temerity, and the hazard of
losing that which we endeavour to seize before our time.

He that too early aspires to honours, must resolve to encounter not only
the opposition of interest, but the malignity of envy. He that is too
eager to be rich, generally endangers his fortune in wild adventures,
and uncertain projects; and he that hastens too speedily to reputation,
often raises his character by artifices and fallacies, decks himself in
colours which quickly fade, or in plumes which accident may shake off,
or competition pluck away.

The danger of early eminence has been extended by some, even to the
gifts of nature; and an opinion has been long conceived, that quickness
of invention, accuracy of judgment, or extent of knowledge, appearing
before the usual time, presage a short life. Even those who are less
inclined to form general conclusions, from instances which by their own
nature must be rare, have yet been inclined to prognosticate no suitable
progress from the first sallies of rapid wits; but have observed, that
after a short effort they either loiter or faint, and suffer themselves
to be surpassed by the even and regular perseverance of slower
understandings.

It frequently happens, that applause abates diligence. Whoever finds
himself to have performed more than was demanded, will be contented to
spare the labour of unnecessary performances, and sit down to enjoy at
ease his superfluities of honour. He whom success has made confident of
his abilities, quickly claims the privilege of negligence, and looks
contemptuously on the gradual advances of a rival, whom he imagines
himself able to leave behind whenever he shall again summon his force to
the contest. But long intervals of pleasure dissipate attention, and
weaken constancy; nor is it easy for him that has sunk from diligence
into sloth, to rouse out of his lethargy, to recollect his notions,
rekindle his curiosity, and engage with his former ardour in the toils
of study.

Even that friendship which intends the reward of genius, too often tends
to obstruct it. The pleasure of being caressed, distinguished, and
admired, easily seduces the student from literary solitude. He is ready
to follow the call which summons him to hear his own praise, and which,
perhaps, at once flatters his appetite with certainty of pleasures, and
his ambition with hopes of patronage; pleasures which he conceives
inexhaustible, and hopes which he has not yet learned to distrust.

These evils, indeed, are by no means to be imputed to nature, or
considered as inseparable from an early display of uncommon abilities.
They may be certainly escaped by prudence and resolution, and must
therefore be recounted rather as consolations to those who are less
liberally endowed, than as discouragements to such as are born with
uncommon qualities. Beauty is well known to draw after it the
persecutions of impertinence, to incite the artifices of envy, and to
raise the flames of unlawful love; yet, among the ladies whom prudence
or modesty have made most eminent, who has ever complained of the
inconveniences of an amiable form? or would have purchased safety by the
loss of charms?

Neither grace of person, nor vigour of understanding, are to be regarded
otherwise than as blessings, as means of happiness indulged by the
Supreme Benefactor; but the advantages of either may be lost by too much
eagerness to obtain them. A thousand beauties in their first blossom, by
an imprudent exposure to the open world, have suddenly withered at the
blast of infamy; and men who might have subjected new regions to the
empire of learning, have been lured by the praise of their first
productions from academical retirement, and wasted their days in vice
and dependance. The virgin who too soon aspires to celebrity and
conquest, perishes by childish vanity, ignorant credulity, or guiltless
indiscretion. The genius who catches at laurels and preferment before
his time, mocks the hopes that he had excited, and loses those years
which might have been most usefully employed, the years of youth, of
spirit, and vivacity.

It is one of the innumerable absurdities of pride, that we are never
more impatient of direction, than in that part of life when we need it
most; we are in haste to meet enemies whom we have not strength to
overcome, and to undertake tasks which we cannot perform: and as he that
once miscarries does not easily persuade mankind to favour another
attempt, an ineffectual struggle for fame is often followed by perpetual
obscurity.

[Footnote b: The perusal of these profound remarks on penance and
repentance had so powerful an effect on one of the English Benedictine
monks (The Rev. James Compton) at Paris, as to lead him from the errours
of Popery! For an account of Dr. Johnson's true benevolence through the
whole of this interesting occasion, see Malone's note to Boswell's Life
of Johnson, vol. iv. p. 210--edit. 1822.]



No. 112. SATURDAY, APRIL 13, 1751.

  _In mea vesanas habui dispendia vires,
    Et valui pænam fortis in ipse meain_. OVID, Am. Lib. i. vii. 25.

  Of strength pernicious to myself I boast;
  The pow'rs I have were given me to my cost. F. LEWIS.

We are taught by Celsus, that health is best preserved by avoiding
settled habits of life, and deviating sometimes into slight aberrations
from the laws of medicine; by varying the proportions of food and
exercise, interrupting the successions of rest and labour, and mingling
hardships with indulgence. The body, long accustomed to stated
quantities and uniform periods, is disordered by the smallest
irregularity; and since we cannot adjust every day by the balance or
barometer, it is fit sometimes to depart from rigid accuracy, that we
may be able to comply with necessary affairs, or strong inclinations. He
that too long observes nice punctualities, condemns himself to voluntary
imbecility, and will not long escape the miseries of disease.

The same laxity of regimen is equally necessary to intellectual health,
and to a perpetual susceptibility of occasional pleasure. Long
confinement to the same company which perhaps similitude of taste
brought first together, quickly contracts the faculties, and makes a
thousand things offensive that are in themselves indifferent; a man
accustomed to hear only the echo of his own sentiments, soon bars all
the common avenues of delight, and has no part in the general
gratifications of mankind.

In things which are not immediately subject to religious or moral
consideration, it is dangerous to be too rigidly in the right.
Sensibility may, by an incessant attention to elegance and propriety, be
quickened to a tenderness inconsistent with the condition of humanity,
irritable by the smallest asperity, and vulnerable by the gentlest
touch. He that pleases himself too much with minute exactness, and
submits to endure nothing in accommodations, attendance, or address,
below the point of perfection, will, whenever he enters the crowd of
life, be harassed with innumerable distresses, from which those who have
not in the same manner increased their sensations find no disturbance.
His exotick softness will shrink at the coarseness of vulgar felicity,
like a plant transplanted to northern nurseries, from the dews and
sunshine of the tropical regions.

There will always be a wide interval between practical and ideal
excellence; and, therefore, if we allow not ourselves to be satisfied
while we can perceive any errour or defect, we must refer our hopes of
ease to some other period of existence. It is well known, that, exposed
to a microscope, the smoothest polish of the most solid bodies discovers
cavities and prominences; and that the softest bloom of roseate
virginity repels the eye with excrescences and discolorations. The
perceptions as well as the senses may be improved to our own disquiet,
and we may, by diligent cultivation of the powers of dislike, raise in
time an artificial fastidiousness, which shall fill the imagination with
phantoms of turpitude, shew us the naked skeleton of every delight, and
present us only with the pains of pleasure, and the deformities of
beauty.

Peevishness, indeed, would perhaps very little disturb the peace of
mankind, were it always the consequence of superfluous delicacy; for it
is the privilege only of deep reflection, or lively fancy, to destroy
happiness by art and refinement. But by continual indulgence of a
particular humour, or by long enjoyment of undisputed superiority, the
dull and thoughtless may likewise acquire the power of tormenting
themselves and others, and become sufficiently ridiculous or hateful to
those who are within sight of their conduct, or reach of their
influence.

They that have grown old in a single state are generally found to be
morose, fretful, and captious; tenacious of their own practices and
maxims; soon offended by contradiction or negligence; and impatient of
any association, but with those that will watch their nod, and submit
themselves to unlimited authority. Such is the effect of having lived
without the necessity of consulting any inclination but their own.

The irascibility of this class of tyrants is generally exerted upon
petty provocations, such as are incident to understandings not far
extended beyond the instincts of animal life; but, unhappily, he that
fixes his attention on things always before him, will never have long
cessations of anger. There are many veterans of luxury upon whom every
noon brings a paroxysm of violence, fury, and execration; they never sit
down to their dinner without finding the meat so injudiciously bought,
or so unskilfully dressed, such blunders in the seasoning, or such
improprieties in the sauce, as can scarcely be expiated without blood;
and, in the transports of resentment, make very little distinction
between guilt and innocence, but let fly their menaces, or growl out
their discontent, upon all whom fortune exposes to the storm.

It is not easy to imagine a more unhappy condition than that of
dependance on a peevish man. In every other state of inferiority the
certainty of pleasing is perpetually increased by a fuller knowledge of
our duty; and kindness and confidence are strengthened by every new act
of trust, and proof of fidelity. But peevishness sacrifices to a
momentory offence the obsequiousness or usefulness of half a life, and,
as more is performed, increases her exactions.

Chrysalus gained a fortune by trade, and retired into the country; and,
having a brother burthened by the number of his children, adopted one of
his sons. The boy was dismissed with many prudent admonitions; informed
of his father's inability to maintain him in his native rank; cautioned
against all opposition to the opinions or precepts of his uncle; and
animated to perseverance by the hopes of supporting the honour of the
family, and overtopping his elder brother. He had a natural ductility of
mind, without much warmth of affection, or elevation of sentiment; and
therefore readily complied with every variety of caprice; patiently
endured contradictory reproofs; heard false accusations without pain,
and opprobrious reproaches without reply; laughed obstreperously at the
ninetieth repetition of a joke; asked questions about the universal
decay of trade; admired the strength of those heads by which the price
of stocks is changed and adjusted; and behaved with such prudence and
circumspection, that after six years the will was made, and Juvenculus
was declared heir. But unhappily, a month afterwards, retiring at night
from his uncle's chamber, he left the door open behind him: the old man
tore his will, and being then perceptibly declining, for want of time to
deliberate, left his money to a trading company.

When female minds are embittered by age or solitude, their malignity is
generally exerted in a rigorous and spiteful superintendance of domestic
trifles. Eriphile has employed her eloquence for twenty years upon the
degeneracy of servants, the nastiness of her house, the ruin of her
furniture, the difficulty of preserving tapestry from the moths, and the
carelessness of the sluts whom she employs in brushing it. It is her
business every morning to visit all the rooms, in hopes of finding a
chair without its cover, a window shut or open contrary to her orders, a
spot on the hearth, or a feather on the floor, that the rest of the day
may be justifiably spent in taunts of contempt, and vociferations of
anger. She lives for no other purpose but to preserve the neatness of a
house and gardens, and feels neither inclination to pleasure, nor
aspiration after virtue, while she is engrossed by the great employment
of keeping gravel from grass, and wainscot from dust. Of three amiable
nieces she has declared herself an irreconcileable enemy; to one,
because she broke off a tulip with her hoop; to another, because she
spilt her coffee on a Turkey carpet; and to the third, because she let a
wet dog run into the parlour. She has broken off her intercourse of
visits, because company makes a house dirty; and resolves to confine
herself more to her own affairs, and to live no longer in mire by
foolish lenity.

Peevishness is generally the vice of narrow minds, and, except when it
is the effect of anguish and disease, by which the resolution is broken,
and the mind made too feeble to bear the lightest addition to its
miseries, proceeds from an unreasonable persuasion of the importance of
trifles. The proper remedy against it is, to consider the dignity of
human nature, and the folly of suffering perturbation and uneasiness
from causes unworthy of our notice.

He that resigns his peace to little casualties, and suffers the course
of his life to be interrupted by fortuitous inadvertencies, or offences,
delivers up himself to the direction of the wind, and loses all that
constancy and equanimity which constitute the chief praise of a wise
man.

The province of prudence lies between the greatest things and the least;
some surpass our power by their magnitude, and some escape our notice by
their number and their frequency. But the indispensable business of life
will afford sufficient exercise to every understanding; and such is the
limitation of the human powers, that by attention to trifles we must let
things of importance pass unobserved: when we examine a mite with a
glass, we see nothing but a mite.

That it is every man's interest to be pleased, will need little proof:
that it is his interest to please others, experience will inform him. It
is therefore not less necessary to happiness than to virtue, that he rid
his mind of passions which make him uneasy to himself, and hateful to
the world, which enchain his intellects, and obstruct his improvement.



No. 113. TUESDAY, APRIL 16, 1751.

  --_Uxorem, Postume, ducis?
  Die, qua Tisiphone, quibus exagitere colubris?_ JUV. Sat. vi. 28.

  A sober man like thee to change his life!
  What fury would possess thee with a wife? DRYDEN.

TO THE RAMBLER.

SIR,

I know not whether it is always a proof of innocence to treat censure
with contempt. We owe so much reverence to the wisdom of mankind, as
justly to wish, that our own opinion of our merit may be ratified by the
concurrence of other suffrages; and since guilt and infamy must have the
same effect upon intelligences unable to pierce beyond external
appearance, and influenced often rather by example than precept, we are
obliged to refute a false charge, lest we should countenance the crime
which we have never committed. To turn away from an accusation with
supercilious silence, is equally in the power of him that is hardened by
villany, and inspirited by innocence. The wall of brass which Horace
erects upon a clear conscience, may be sometimes raised by impudence or
power; and we should always wish to preserve the dignity of virtue by
adorning her with graces which wickedness cannot assume.

For this reason I have determined no longer to endure, with either
patient or sullen resignation, a reproach, which is, at least in my
opinion, unjust; but will lay my case honestly before you, that you or
your readers may at length decide it.

Whether you will be able to preserve your boasted impartiality, when you
hear that I am considered as an adversary by half the female world, you
may surely pardon me for doubting, notwithstanding the veneration to
which you may imagine yourself entitled by your age, your learning, your
abstraction, or your virtue. Beauty, Mr. Rambler, has often overpowered
the resolutions of the firm, and the reasonings of the wise, roused the
old to sensibility, and subdued the rigorous to softness.

I am one of those unhappy beings, who have been marked out as husbands
for many different women, and deliberated a hundred times on the brink
of matrimony. I have discussed all the nuptial preliminaries so often,
that I can repeat the forms in which jointures are settled, pin-money
secured, and provisions for younger children ascertained; but am at last
doomed by general consent to everlasting solitude, and excluded by an
irreversible decree from all hopes of connubial felicity. I am pointed
out by every mother, as a man whose visits cannot be admitted without
reproach; who raises hopes only to embitter disappointment, and makes
offers only to seduce girls into a waste of that part of life, in which
they might gain advantageous matches, and become mistresses and mothers.

I hope you will think, that some part of this penal severity may justly
be remitted, when I inform you, that I never yet professed love to a
woman without sincere intentions of marriage; that I have never
continued an appearance of intimacy from the hour that my inclination
changed, but to preserve her whom I was leaving from the shock of
abruptness, or the ignominy of contempt; that I always endeavoured to
give the ladies an opportunity of seeming to discard me; and that I
never forsook a mistress for larger fortune, or brighter beauty, but
because I discovered some irregularity in her conduct, or some depravity
in her mind; not because I was charmed by another, but because I was
offended by herself.

I was very early tired of that succession of amusements by which the
thoughts of most young men are dissipated, and had not long glittered in
the splendour of an ample patrimomy [Transcriber's note: sic] before I
wished for the calm of domestick happiness. Youth is naturally delighted
with sprightliness and ardour, and therefore I breathed out the sighs of
my first affection at the feet of the gay, the sparkling, the vivacious
Ferocula. I fancied to myself a perpetual source of happiness in wit
never exhausted, and spirit never depressed; looked with veneration on
her readiness of expedients, contempt of difficulty, assurance of
address, and promptitude of reply; considered her as exempt by some
prerogative of nature from the weakness and timidity of female minds;
and congratulated myself upon a companion superior to all common
troubles and embarrassments. I was, indeed, somewhat disturbed by the
unshaken perseverance with which she enforced her demands of an
unreasonable settlement; yet I should have consented to pass my life in
union with her, had not my curiosity led me to a crowd gathered in the
street, where I found Ferocula, in the presence of hundreds, disputing
for six-pence with a chairman. I saw her in so little need of
assistance, that it was no breach of the laws of chivalry to forbear
interposition, and I spared myself the shame of owning her acquaintance.
I forgot some point of ceremony at our next interview, and soon provoked
her to forbid me her presence.

My next attempt was upon a lady of great eminence for learning and
philosophy. I had frequently observed the barrenness and uniformity of
connubial conversation, and therefore thought highly of my own prudence
and discernment, when I selected from a multitude of wealthy beauties,
the deep-read Misothea, who declared herself the inexorable enemy of
ignorant pertness, and puerile levity; and scarcely condescended to make
tea, but for the linguist, the geometrician, the astronomer, or the
poet. The queen of the Amazons was only to be gained by the hero who
could conquer her in single combat; and Misothea's heart was only to
bless the scholar who could overpower her by disputation. Amidst the
fondest transports of courtship she could call for a definition of
terms, and treated every argument with contempt that could not be
reduced to regular syllogism. You may easily imagine, that I wished this
courtship at an end; but when I desired her to shorten my torments, and
fix the day of my felicity, we were led into a long conversation, in
which Misothea endeavoured to demonstrate the folly of attributing
choice and self-direction to any human being. It was not difficult to
discover the danger of committing myself for ever to the arms of one who
might at any time mistake the dictates of passion, or the calls of
appetite, for the decree of fate; or consider cuckoldom as necessary to
the general system, as a link in the everlasting chain of successive
causes. I therefore told her, that destiny had ordained us to part, and
that nothing should have torn me from her but the talons of necessity.

I then solicited the regard of the calm, the prudent, the economical
Sophronia, a lady who considered wit as dangerous, and learning as
superfluous, and thought that the woman who kept her house clean, and
her accounts exact, took receipts for every payment, and could find them
at a sudden call, inquired nicely after the condition of the tenants,
read the price of stocks once a-week, and purchased every thing at the
best market, could want no accomplishments necessary to the happiness of
a wise man. She discoursed with great solemnity on the care and
vigilance which the superintendance of a family demands; observed how
many were ruined by confidence in servants; and told me, that she never
expected honesty but from a strong chest, and that the best storekeeper
was the mistress's eye. Many such oracles of generosity she uttered, and
made every day new improvements in her schemes for the regulations of
her servants, and the distribution of her time. I was convinced that,
whatever I might suffer from Sophronia, I should escape poverty; and we
therefore proceeded to adjust the settlements according to her own rule,
fair and softly. But one morning her maid came to me in tears to intreat
my interest for a reconciliation with her mistress, who had turned her
out at night for breaking six teeth in a tortoise-shell comb; she had
attended her lady from a distant province, and having not lived long
enough to save much money, was destitute among strangers, and, though of
a good family, in danger of perishing in the streets, or of being
compelled by hunger to prostitution. I made no scruple of promising to
restore her; but upon my first application to Sophronia, was answered
with an air which called for approbation, that if she neglected her own
affairs, I might suspect her of neglecting mine; that the comb stood her
in three half crowns; that no servant should wrong her twice; and that
indeed she took the first opportunity of parting with Phillida, because,
though she was honest, her constitution was bad, and she thought her
very likely to fall sick. Of our conferrence I need not tell you the
effect; it surely may be forgiven me, if on this occasion I forgot the
decency of common forms.

From two more ladies I was disengaged by finding, that they entertained
my rivals at the same time, and determined their choice by the
liberality of our settlements. Another, I thought myself justified in
forsaking, because she gave my attorney a bribe to favour her in the
bargain; another because I could never soften her to tenderness, till
she heard that most of my family had died young; and another, because,
to increase her fortune by expectations, she represented her sister as
languishing and consumptive.

I shall in another letter give the remaining part of my history of
courtship. I presume that I should hitherto have injured the majesty of
female virtue, had I not hoped to transfer my affection to higher merit.

I am, &c.

HYMENAEUS.



No. 114. SATURDAY, APRIL 20, 1751.

  --_Audi,
  Nulla umquum de morte hominis cunctatio longa est._ JUV. Sat. vi. 220.

  --When man's life is in debate,
  The judge can ne'er too long deliberate. DRYDEN.

Power and superiority are so flattering and delightful, that, fraught
with temptation, and exposed to danger, as they are, scarcely any virtue
is so cautious, or any prudence so timorous, as to decline them. Even
those that have most reverence for the laws of right, are pleased with
shewing that not fear, but choice, regulates their behaviour; and would
be thought to comply, rather than obey. We love to overlook the
boundaries which we do not wish to pass; and, as the Roman satirist
remarks, he that has no design to take the life of another, is yet glad
to have it in his hands.

From the same principle, tending yet more to degeneracy and corruption,
proceeds the desire of investing lawful authority with terrour, and
governing by force rather than persuasion. Pride is unwilling to believe
the necessity of assigning any other reason than her own will; and would
rather maintain the most equitable claims by violence and penalties,
than descend from the dignity of command to dispute and expostulation.

It may, I think, be suspected, that this political arrogance has
sometimes found its way into legislative assemblies, and mingled with
deliberations upon property and life. A slight perusal of the laws by
which the measures of vindictive and coercive justice are established,
will discover so many disproportions between crimes and punishments,
such capricious distinctions of guilt, and such confusion of remissness
and severity, as can scarcely be believed to have been produced by
publick wisdom, sincerely and calmly studious of publick happiness.

The learned, the judicious, the pious Boerhaave relates, that he never
saw a criminal dragged to execution without asking himself, "Who knows
whether this man is not less culpable than me?" On the days when the
prisons of this city are emptied into the grave, let every spectator of
the dreadful procession put the same question to his own heart. Few
among those that crowd in thousands to the legal massacre, and look with
carelessness, perhaps with triumph, on the utmost exacerbations of human
misery, would then be able to return without horrour and dejection. For,
who can congratulate himself upon a life passed without some act more
mischievous to the peace or prosperity of others, than the theft of a
piece of money?

It has been always the practice, when any particular species of robbery
becomes prevalent and common, to endeavour its suppression by capital
denunciations. Thus one generation of malefactors is commonly cut off,
and their successors are frighted into new expedients; the art of
thievery is augmented with greater variety of fraud, and subtilized to
higher degrees of dexterity, and more occult methods of conveyance. The
law then renews the pursuit in the heat of anger, and overtakes the
offender again with death. By this practice capital inflictions are
multiplied, and crimes, very different in their degrees of enormity, are
equally subjected to the severest punishment that man has the power of
exercising upon man.

The lawgiver is undoubtedly allowed to estimate the malignity of an
offence, not merely by the loss or pain which single acts may produce,
but by the general alarm and anxiety arising from the fear of mischief,
and insecurity of possession: he therefore exercises the right which
societies are supposed to have over the lives of those that compose
them, not simply to punish a transgression, but to maintain order, and
preserve quiet; he enforces those laws with severity, that are most in
danger of violation, as the commander of a garrison doubles the guard on
that side which is threatened by the enemy.

This method has been long tried, but tried with so little success, that
rapine and violence are hourly increasing, yet few seem willing to
despair of its efficacy; and of those who employ their speculations upon
the present corruption of the people, some propose the introduction of
more horrid, lingering, and terrifick punishments; some are inclined to
accelerate the executions; some to discourage pardons; and all seem to
think that lenity has given confidence to wickedness, and that we can
only be rescued from the talons of robbery by inflexible rigour, and
sanguinary justice.

Yet, since the right of setting an uncertain and arbitrary value upon
life has been disputed, and since experience of past times gives us
little reason to hope that any reformation will be effected by a
periodical havock of our fellow-beings, perhaps it will not be useless
to consider what consequences might arise from relaxations of the law,
and a more rational and equitable adaptation of penalties to offences.

Death is, as one of the ancients observes, [Greek: to ton phoberon
phoberotaton], _of dreadful things the most dreadful_: an evil, beyond
which nothing can be threatened by sublunary power, or feared from human
enmity or vengeance. This terrour should, therefore, be reserved as the
last resort of authority, as the strongest and most operative of
prohibitory sanctions, and placed before the treasure of life, to guard
from invasion what cannot be restored. To equal robbery with murder is
to reduce murder to robbery; to confound in common minds the gradations
of iniquity, and incite the commission of a greater crime to prevent the
detection of a less. If only murder were punished with death, very few
robbers would stain their hands in blood; but when, by the last act of
cruelty, no new danger is incurred, and greater security may be
obtained, upon what principle shall we bid them forbear?

It may be urged, that the sentence is often mitigated to simple robbery;
but surely this is to confess that our laws are unreasonable in our own
opinion; and, indeed, it may be observed, that all but murderers have,
at their last hour, the common sensations of mankind pleading in their
favour.

From this conviction of the inequality of the punishment to the offence,
proceeds the frequent solicitation of pardons. They who would rejoice at
the correction of a thief, are yet shocked at the thought of destroying
him. His crime shrinks to nothing, compared with his misery; and
severity defeats itself by exciting pity.

The gibbet, indeed, certainly disables those who die upon it from
infesting the community; but their death seems not to contribute more to
the reformation of their associates, than any other method of
separation. A thief seldom passes much of his time in recollection or
anticipation, but from robbery hastens to riot, and from riot to
robbery; nor, when the grave closes on his companion, has any other care
than to find another.

The frequency of capital punishments, therefore, rarely hinders the
commission of a crime, but naturally and commonly prevents its
detection, and is, if we proceed only upon prudential principles,
chiefly for that reason to be avoided. Whatever may be urged by casuists
or politicians, the greater part of mankind, as they can never think
that to pick the pocket and to pierce the heart is equally criminal,
will scarcely believe that two malefactors so different in guilt can be
justly doomed to the same punishment: nor is the necessity of submitting
the conscience to human laws so plainly evinced, so clearly stated, or
so generally allowed, but that the pious, the tender, and the just, will
always scruple to concur with the community in an act which their
private judgment cannot approve.

He who knows not how often rigorous laws produce total impunity, and how
many crimes are concealed and forgotten for fear of hurrying the
offender to that state in which there is no repentance, has conversed
very little with mankind. And whatever epithets of reproach or contempt
this compassion may incur from those who confound cruelty with firmness,
I know not whether any wise man would wish it less powerful, or less
extensive.

If those whom the wisdom of our laws has condemned to die, had been
detected in their rudiments of robbery, they might, by proper discipline
and useful labour, have been disentangled from their habits, they might
have escaped all the temptation to subsequent crimes, and passed their
days in reparation and penitence; and detected they might all have been,
had the prosecutors been certain that their lives would have been
spared. I believe, every thief will confess, that he has been more than
once seized and dismissed; and that he has sometimes ventured upon
capital crimes, because he knew, that those whom he injured would rather
connive at his escape, than cloud their minds with the horrours of his
death.

All laws against wickedness are ineffectual, unless some will inform,
and some will prosecute; but till we mitigate the penalties for mere
violations of property, information will always be hated, and
prosecution dreaded. The heart of a good man cannot but recoil at the
thought of punishing a slight injury with death; especially when he
remembers that the thief might have procured safety by another crime,
from which he was restrained only by his remaining virtue.

The obligations to assist the exercise of publick justice are indeed
strong; but they will certainly be overpowered by tenderness for life.
What is punished with severity contrary to our ideas of adequate
retribution, will be seldom discovered; and multitudes will be suffered
to advance from crime to crime, till they deserve death, because, if
they had been sooner prosecuted, they would have suffered death before
they deserved it.

This scheme of invigorating the laws by relaxation, and extirpating
wickedness by lenity, is so remote from common practice, that I might
reasonably fear to expose it to the publick, could it be supported only
by my own observations: I shall, therefore, by ascribing it to its
author, Sir Thomas More, endeavour to procure it that attention, which I
wish always paid to prudence, to justice, and to mercy.[c]



No. 115. TUESDAY, APRIL 23, 1751.

  _Quaedam parvu quidem; sed non toleranda maritis_. JUV. Sat vi. 184.

  Some faults, though small, intolerable grow.    DRYDEN.

TO THE RAMBLER.

SIR,

I sit down, in pursuance of my late engagement, to recount the remaining
part of the adventures that befel me in my long quest of conjugal
felicity, which, though I have not yet been so happy as to obtain it, I
have at least endeavoured to deserve by unwearied diligence, without
suffering from repeated disappointments any abatement of my hope, or
repression of my activity.

You must have observed in the world a species of mortals who employ
themselves in promoting matrimony, and without any visible motive of
interest or vanity, without any discoverable impulse of malice or
benevolence, without any reason, but that they want objects of attention
and topicks of conversation, are incessantly busy in procuring wives and
husbands. They fill the ears of every single man and woman with some
convenient match; and when they are informed of your age and fortune,
offer a partner for life with the same readiness, and the same
indifference, as a salesman, when he has taken measure by his eye, fits
his customer with a coat.

It might be expected that they should soon be discouraged from this
officious interposition by resentment or contempt; and that every man
should determine the choice on which so much of his happiness must
depend, by his own judgment and observation: yet it happens, that as
these proposals are generally made with a shew of kindness, they seldom
provoke anger, but are at worst heard with patience, and forgotten. They
influence weak minds to approbation; for many are sure to find in a new
acquaintance, whatever qualities report has taught them to expect; and
in more powerful and active understandings they excite curiosity, and
sometimes, by a lucky chance, bring persons of similar tempers within
the attraction of each other.

I was known to possess a fortune, and to want a wife; and therefore was
frequently attended by these hymeneal solicitors, with whose importunity
I was sometimes diverted, and sometimes perplexed; for they contended
for me as vultures for a carcase; each employing all his eloquence, and
all his artifices, to enforce and promote his own scheme, from the
success of which he was to receive no other advantage than the pleasure
of defeating others equally eager, and equally industrious.

An invitation to sup with one of those busy friends, made me, by a
concerted chance, acquainted with Camilla, by whom it was expected that
I should be suddenly and irresistibly enslaved. The lady, whom the same
kindness had brought without her own concurrence into the lists of love,
seemed to think me at least worthy of the honour of captivity; and
exerted the power, both of her eyes and wit, with so much art and
spirit, that though I had been too often deceived by appearances to
devote myself irrevocably at the first interview, yet I could not
suppress some raptures of admiration, and flutters of desire. I was
easily persuaded to make nearer approaches; but soon discovered, that an
union with Camilla was not much to be wished. Camilla professed a
boundless contempt for the folly, levity, ignorance, and impertinence of
her own sex; and very frequently expressed her wonder that men of
learning or experience could submit to trifle away life with beings
incapable of solid thought. In mixed companies, she always associated
with the men, and declared her satisfaction when the ladies retired. If
any short excursion into the country was proposed, she commonly insisted
upon the exclusion of women from the party; because, where they were
admitted, the time was wasted in frothy compliments, weak indulgences,
and idle ceremonies. To shew the greatness of her mind, she avoided all
compliance with the fashion; and to boast the profundity of her
knowledge, mistook the various textures of silk, confounded tabbies with
damasks, and sent for ribands by wrong names. She despised the commerce
of stated visits, a farce of empty form without instruction; and
congratulated herself, that she never learned to write message cards.
She often applauded the noble sentiment of Plato, who rejoiced that he
was born a man rather than a woman; proclaimed her approbation of
Swift's opinion, that women are only a higher species of monkeys; and
confessed, that when she considered the behaviour, or heard the
conversation, of her sex, she could not but forgive the Turks for
suspecting them to want souls.

It was the joy and pride of Camilla to have provoked, by this insolence,
all the rage of hatred, and all the persecutions of calumny; nor was she
ever more elevated with her own superiority, than when she talked of
female anger, and female cunning. Well, says she, has nature provided
that such virulence should be disabled by folly, and such cruelty be
restrained by impotence.

Camilla doubtless expected, that what she lost on one side, she should
gain on the other; and imagined that every male heart would be open to a
lady, who made such generous advances to the borders of virility. But
man, ungrateful man, instead of springing forward to meet her, shrunk
back at her approach. She was persecuted by the ladies as a deserter,
and at best received by the men only as a fugitive. I, for my part,
amused myself awhile with her fopperies, but novelty soon gave way to
detestation, for nothing out of the common order of nature can be long
borne. I had no inclination to a wife who had the ruggedness of a man
without his force, and the ignorance of a woman without her softness;
nor could I think my quiet and honour to be entrusted to such audacious
virtue as was hourly courting danger, and soliciting assault.

My next mistress was Nitella, a lady of gentle mien, and soft voice,
always speaking to approve, and ready to receive direction from those
with whom chance had brought her into company. In Nitella I promised
myself an easy friend, with whom I might loiter away the day without
disturbance or altercation. I therefore soon resolved to address her,
but was discouraged from prosecuting my courtship, by observing, that
her apartments were superstitiously regular; and that, unless she had
notice of my visit, she was never to be seen. There is a kind of anxious
cleanliness which I have always noted as the characteristick of a
slattern; it is the superfluous scrupulosity of guilt, dreading
discovery, and shunning suspicion: it is the violence of an effort
against habit, which, being impelled by external motives, cannot stop at
the middle point.

Nitella was always tricked out rather with nicety than elegance; and
seldom could forbear to discover, by her uneasiness and constraint, that
her attention was burdened, and her imagination engrossed: I therefore
concluded, that being only occasionally and ambitiously dressed, she was
not familiarized to her own ornaments. There are so many competitors for
the fame of cleanliness, that it is not hard to gain information of
those that fail, from those that desire to excel: I quickly found that
Nitella passed her time between finery and dirt; and was always in a
wrapper, night-cap, and slippers, when she was not decorated for
immediate show.

I was then led by my evil destiny to Charybdis, who never neglected an
opportunity of seizing a new prey when it came within her reach. I
thought myself quickly made happy by permission to attend her to publick
places; and pleased my own vanity with imagining the envy which I should
raise in a thousand hearts, by appearing as the acknowledged favourite
of Charybdis. She soon after hinted her intention to take a ramble for a
fortnight, into a part of the kingdom which she had never seen. I
solicited the happiness of accompanying her, which, after a short
reluctance, was indulged me. She had no other curiosity on her journey,
than after all possible means of expense; and was every moment taking
occasion to mention some delicacy, which I knew it my duty upon such
notices to procure.

After our return, being now more familiar, she told me, whenever we met,
of some new diversion; at night she had notice of a charming company
that would breakfast in the gardens; and in the morning had been
informed of some new song in the opera, some new dress at the playhouse,
or some performer at a concert whom she longed to hear. Her intelligence
was such, that there never was a show, to which she did not summon me on
the second day; and as she hated a crowd, and could not go alone, I was
obliged to attend at some intermediate hour, and pay the price of a
whole company. When we passed the streets, she was often charmed with
some trinket in the toy-shops; and from moderate desires of seals and
snuff-boxes, rose, by degrees, to gold and diamonds. I now began to find
the smile of Charybdis too costly for a private purse, and added one
more to six and forty lovers, whose fortune and patience her rapacity
had exhausted.

Imperia then took possession of my affections; but kept them only for a
short time. She had newly inherited a large fortune, and having spent
the early part of her life in the perusal of romances, brought with her
into the gay world all the pride of Cleopatra; expected nothing less
than vows, altars, and sacrifices; and thought her charms dishonoured,
and her power infringed, by the softest opposition to her sentiments, or
the smallest transgression of her commands. Time might indeed cure this
species of pride in a mind not naturally undiscerning, and vitiated only
by false representations; but the operations of time are slow; and I
therefore left her to grow wise at leisure, or to continue in errour at
her own expense.

Thus I have hitherto, in spite of myself, passed my life in frozen
celibacy. My friends, indeed, often tell me, that I flatter my
imagination with higher hopes than human nature can gratify; that I
dress up an ideal charmer in all the radiance of perfection, and then
enter the world to look for the same excellence in corporeal beauty. But
surely, Mr. Rambler, it is not madness to hope for some terrestrial lady
unstained by the spots which I have been describing; at least I am
resolved to pursue my search; for I am so far from thinking meanly of
marriage, that I believe it able to afford the highest happiness decreed
to our present state; and if, after all these miscarriages, I find a
woman that fills up my expectation, you shall hear once more from,

Yours, &c.

HYMENAEUS.

[Footnote c: The arguments of the revered Sir Samuel Romilly on Criminal
Law, have almost been anticipated in this luminous paper, which would
have gained praise even for a legislator. On the correction of our
English Criminal Code, see Mr. Buxton's speech in the House of Commons,
1820. It is a fund of practical information, and, apart from its own
merits, will repay perusal by the valuable collection of opinions which
it contains on this momentous and interesting subject. ED.]



No. 116. SATURDAY, APRIL 27, 1751.

  _Optat ephippia bos piger: optat arare caballus_.
  HOR. Lib. i. Ep. xiv. 43.

  Thus the slow ox would gaudy trappings claim;
  The sprightly horse would plough.--FRANCIS.

TO THE RAMBLER.

SIR,

I was the second son of a country gentleman by the daughter of a wealthy
citizen of London. My father having by his marriage freed the estate
from a heavy mortgage, and paid his sisters their portions, thought
himself discharged from all obligation to further thought, and entitled
to spend the rest of his life in rural pleasures. He therefore spared
nothing that might contribute to the completion of his felicity; he
procured the best guns and horses that the kingdom could supply, paid
large salaries to his groom and huntsman, and became the envy of the
country for the discipline of his hounds. But, above all his other
attainments, he was eminent for a breed of pointers and setting-dogs,
which by long and vigilant cultivation he had so much improved, that not
a partridge or heathcock could rest in security, and game of whatever
species that dared to light upon his manor, was beaten down by his shot,
or covered with his nets.

My elder brother was very early initiated in the chace, and, at an age
when other boys are _creeping like snails unwillingly to school_, he
could wind the horn, beat the bushes, bound over hedges, and swim
rivers. When the huntsman one day broke his leg, he supplied his place
with equal abilities, and came home with the scut in his hat, amidst the
acclamations of the whole village. I being either delicate or timorous,
less desirous of honour, or less capable of sylvan heroism, was always
the favourite of my mother; because I kept my coat clean, and my
complexion free from freckles, and did not come home, like my brother,
mired and tanned, nor carry corn in my hat to the horse, nor bring dirty
curs into the parlour.

My mother had not been taught to amuse herself with books, and being
much inclined to despise the ignorance and barbarity of the country
ladies, disdained to learn their sentiments or conversation, and had
made no addition to the notions which she had brought from the precincts
of Cornhill. She was, therefore, always recounting the glories of the
city; enumerating the succession of mayors; celebrating the magnificence
of the banquets at Guildhall; and relating the civilities paid her at
the companies' feasts by men of whom some are now made aldermen, some
have fined for sheriffs, and none are worth less than forty thousand
pounds. She frequently displayed her father's greatness; told of the
large bills which he had paid at sight; of the sums for which his word
would pass upon the Exchange; the heaps of gold which he used on
Saturday night to toss about with a shovel; the extent of his warehouse,
and the strength of his doors; and when she relaxed her imagination with
lower subjects, described the furniture of their country-house, or
repeated the wit of the clerks and porters.

By these narratives I was fired with the splendour and dignity of
London, and of trade. I therefore devoted myself to a shop, and warmed
my imagination from year to year with inquiries about the privileges of
a freeman, the power of the common council, the dignity of a wholesale
dealer, and the grandeur of mayoralty, to which my mother assured me
that many had arrived who began the world with less than myself.

I was very impatient to enter into a path, which led to such honour and
felicity; but was forced for a time to endure some repression of my
eagerness, for it was my grandfather's maxim, that a _young man seldom
makes much money, who is out of his time before two-and-twenty_. They
thought it necessary, therefore, to keep me at home till the proper age,
without any other employment than that of learning merchants' accounts,
and the art of regulating books; but at length the tedious days elapsed,
I was transplanted to town, and, with great satisfaction to myself,
bound to a haberdasher.

My master, who had no conception of any virtue, merit, or dignity, but
that of being rich, had all the good qualities which naturally arise
from a close and unwearied attention to the main chance; his desire to
gain wealth was so well tempered by the vanity of shewing it, that
without any other principle of action, he lived in the esteem of the
whole commercial world; and was always treated with respect by the only
men whose good opinion he valued or solicited, those who were
universally allowed to be richer than himself.

By his instructions I learned in a few weeks to handle a yard with great
dexterity, to wind tape neatly upon the ends of my fingers, and to make
up parcels with exact frugality of paper and packthread; and soon caught
from my fellow-apprentices the true grace of a counter-bow, the careless
air with which a small pair of scales is to be held between the fingers,
and the vigour and sprightliness with which the box, after the riband
has been cut, is returned into its place. Having no desire of any higher
employment, and therefore applying all my powers to the knowledge of my
trade, I was quickly master of all that could be known, became a critick
in small wares, contrived new variations of figures, and new mixtures of
colours, and was sometimes consulted by the weavers when they projected
fashions for the ensuing spring.

With all these accomplishments, in the fourth year of my apprenticeship,
I paid a visit to my friends in the country, where I expected to be
received as a new ornament of the family, and consulted by the
neighbouring gentlemen as a master of pecuniary knowledge, and by the
ladies as an oracle of the mode. But, unhappily, at the first publick
table to which I was invited, appeared a student of the Temple, and an
officer of the guards, who looked upon me with a smile of contempt,
which destroyed at once all my hopes of distinction, so that I durst
hardly raise my eyes for fear of encountering their superiority of mien.
Nor was my courage revived by any opportunities of displaying my
knowledge; for the templar entertained the company for part of the day
with historical narratives and political observations; and the colonel
afterwards detailed the adventures of a birth-night, told the claims and
expectations of the courtiers, and gave an account of assemblies,
gardens, and diversions. I, indeed, essayed to fill up a pause in a
parliamentary debate with a faint mention of trade and Spaniards; and
once attempted, with some warmth, to correct a gross mistake about a
silver breast-knot; but neither of my antagonists seemed to think a
reply necessary; they resumed their discourse without emotion, and again
engrossed the attention of the company; nor did one of the ladies appear
desirous to know my opinion of her dress, or to hear how long the
carnation shot with white, that was then new amongst them, had been
antiquated in town.

As I knew that neither of these gentlemen had more money than myself, I
could not discover what had depressed me in their presence; nor why they
were considered by others as more worthy of attention and respect; and
therefore resolved, when we met again, to rouse my spirit, and force
myself into notice. I went very early to the next weekly meeting, and
was entertaining a small circle very successfully with a minute
representation of my lord mayor's show, when the colonel entered
careless and gay, sat down with a kind of unceremonious civility, and
without appearing to intend any interruption, drew my audience away to
the other part of the room, to which I had not the courage to follow
them. Soon after came in the lawyer, not indeed with the same attraction
of mien, but with greater powers of language: and by one or other the
company was so happily amused, that I was neither heard nor seen, nor
was able to give any other proof of my existence than that I put round
the glass, and was in my turn permitted to name the toast.

My mother, indeed, endeavoured to comfort me in my vexation, by telling
me, that perhaps these showy talkers were hardly able to pay every one
his own; that he who has money in his pocket need not care what any man
says of him; that, if I minded my trade, the time will come when lawyers
and soldiers would be glad to borrow out of my purse; and that it is
fine, when a man can set his hands to his sides, and say he is worth
forty thousand pounds every day of the year. These and many more such
consolations and encouragements, I received from my good mother, which,
however, did not much allay my uneasiness; for having by some accident
heard, that the country ladies despised her as a cit, I had therefore no
longer much reverence for her opinions, but considered her as one whose
ignorance and prejudice had hurried me, though without ill intentions,
into a state of meanness and ignominy, from which I could not find any
possibility of rising to the rank which my ancestors had always held.

I returned, however, to my master, and busied myself among thread, and
silks, and laces, but without my former cheerfulness and alacrity. I had
now no longer any felicity in contemplating the exact disposition of my
powdered curls, the equal plaits of my ruffles, or the glossy blackness
of my shoes; nor heard with my former elevation those compliments which
ladies sometimes condescended to pay me upon my readiness in twisting a
paper, or counting out the change. The term of Young Man, with which I
was sometimes honoured, as I carried a parcel to the door of a coach,
tortured my imagination; I grew negligent of my person, and sullen in my
temper; often mistook the demands of the customers, treated their
caprices and objections with contempt, and received and dismissed them
with surly silence.

My master was afraid lest the shop should suffer by this change of my
behaviour; and, therefore, after some expostulations, posted me in the
warehouse, and preserved me from the danger and reproach of desertion,
to which my discontent would certainly have urged me, had I continued
any longer behind the counter.

In the sixth year of my servitude my brother died of drunken joy, for
having run down a fox that had baffled all the packs in the province. I
was now heir, and with the hearty consent of my master commenced
gentleman. The adventures in which my new character engaged me shall be
communicated in another letter, by, Sir,

Yours, &c.

MISOCAPELUS.



No. 117. TUESDAY, APRIL 30, 1751.

  [Greek: Hossan ep Oulumpo memasan Themen autar ep Ossae
  Paelion einosiphullon, in ouranos ambatos eiae.] HOMER, Od.
  [Greek: L] 314.

  The gods they challenge, and affect the skies:
  Heav'd on Olympus tott'ring Ossa stood;
  On Ossa, Pelion nods with all his wood. POPE.

TO THE RAMBLER.

SIR,

Nothing has more retarded the advancement of learning than the
disposition of vulgar minds to ridicule and vilify what they cannot
comprehend. All industry must be excited by hope; and as the student
often proposes no other reward to himself than praise, he is easily
discouraged by contempt and insult. He who brings with him into a
clamorous multitude the timidity of recluse speculation, and has never
hardened his front in publick life, or accustomed his passions to the
vicissitudes and accidents, the triumphs and defeats of mixed
conversation, will blush at the stare of petulant incredulity, and
suffer himself to be driven by a burst of laughter, from the fortresses
of demonstration. The mechanist will be afraid to assert before hardy
contradiction, the possibility of tearing down bulwarks with a
silk-worm's thread; and the astronomer of relating the rapidity of
light, the distance of the fixed stars, and the height of the lunar
mountains.

If I could by any efforts have shaken off this cowardice, I had not
sheltered myself under a borrowed name, nor applied to you for the means
of communicating to the publick the theory of a garret; a subject which,
except some slight and transient strictures, has been hitherto neglected
by those who were best qualified to adorn it, either for want of leisure
to prosecute the various researches in which a nice discussion must
engage them, or because it requires such diversity of knowledge, and
such extent of curiosity, as is scarcely to be found in any single
intellect: or perhaps others foresaw the tumults which would be raised
against them, and confined their knowledge to their own breasts, and
abandoned prejudice and folly to the direction of chance.

That the professors of literature generally reside in the highest
stories, has been immemorially observed. The wisdom of the ancients was
well acquainted with the intellectual advantages of an elevated
situation: why else were the Muses stationed on Olympus or Parnassus, by
those who could with equal right have raised them bowers in the vale of
Tempe, or erected their altars among the flexures of Meander? Why was
Jove himself nursed upon a mountain? or why did the goddesses, when the
prize of beauty was contested, try the cause upon the top of Ida? Such
were the fictions by which the great masters of the earlier ages
endeavoured to inculcate to posterity the importance of a garret, which,
though they had been long obscured by the negligence and ignorance of
succeeding times, were well enforced by the celebrated symbol of
Pythagoras, [Greek: anemon pneonton taen aecho proskunei]; "when the
wind blows, worship its echo." This could not but be understood by his
disciples as an inviolable injunction to live in a garret, which I have
found frequently visited by the echo and the wind. Nor was the tradition
wholly obliterated in the age of Augustus, for Tibullus evidently
congratulates himself upon his garret, not without some allusion to the
Pythagorean precept:

  _Quam juvat immites ventos audire cubantem--
  Aut, gelidas hibernus aquas quum fuderit Auster,
  Securum somnos imbre juvante sequi_!    Lib. i. El. i. 45.

  How sweet in sleep to pass the careless hours,
  Lull'd by the beating winds and dashing show'rs!

And it is impossible not to discover the fondness of Lucretius, an
earlier writer, for a garret, in his description of the lofty towers of
serene learning, and of the pleasure with which a wise man looks down
upon the confused and erratick state of the world moving below him:

  _Sed nil dulcius est, bene quam munita tenere
  Edita doctrina Sapientum templa serena;
  Despicere unde queas alios, passimque videre
  Errare, atque viam palanteis quaerere vitae_.    Lib. ii. 7.

  --'Tis sweet thy lab'ring steps to guide
  To virtue's heights, with wisdom well supplied,
  And all the magazines of learning fortified:
  From thence to look below on human kind,
  Bewilder'd in the maze of life, and blind.    DRYDEN.

The institution has, indeed, continued to our own time; the garret is
still the usual receptacle of the philosopher and poet; but this, like
many ancient customs, is perpetuated only by an accidental imitation,
without knowledge of the original reason for which it was established.

  _Causa latet; res est notissima_.

  The cause is secret, but th' effect is known.    ADDISON.

Conjectures have, indeed, been advanced concerning these habitations of
literature, but without much satisfaction to the judicious inquirer.
Some have imagined, that the garret is generally chosen by the wits as
most easily rented; and concluded that no man rejoices in his aerial
abode, but on the days of payment. Others suspect, that a garret is
chiefly convenient, as it is remoter than any other part of the house
from the outer door, which is often observed to be infested by
visitants, who talk incessantly of beer, or linen, or a coat, and repeat
the same sounds every morning, and sometimes again in the afternoon,
without any variation, except that they grow daily more importunate and
clamorous, and raise their voices in time from mournful murmurs to
raging vociferations. This eternal monotony is always detestable to a
man whose chief pleasure is to enlarge his knowledge, and vary his
ideas. Others talk of freedom from noise, and abstraction from common
business or amusements; and some, yet more visionary, tell us, that the
faculties are enlarged by open prospects, and that the fancy is at more
liberty, when the eye ranges without confinement.

These conveniences may perhaps all be found in a well-chosen garret; but
surely they cannot be supposed sufficiently important to have operated
unvariably upon different climates, distant ages, and separate nations.
Of an universal practice, there must still be presumed an universal
cause, which, however recondite and abstruse, may be perhaps reserved to
make me illustrious by its discovery, and you by its promulgation.

It is universally known that the faculties of the mind are invigorated
or weakened by the state of the body, and that the body is in a great
measure regulated by the various compressions of the ambient element.
The effects of the air in the production or cure of corporeal maladies
have been acknowledged from the time of Hippocrates; but no man has yet
sufficiently considered how far it may influence the operations of the
genius, though every day affords instances of local understanding, of
wits and reasoners, whose faculties are adapted to some single spot, and
who, when they are removed to any other place, sink at once into silence
and stupidity. I have discovered, by a long series of observations, that
invention and elocution suffer great impediments from dense and impure
vapours, and that the tenuity of a defecated air at a proper distance
from the surface of the earth, accelerates the fancy, and sets at
liberty those intellectual powers which were before shackled by too
strong attraction, and unable to expand themselves under the pressure of
a gross atmosphere. I have found dulness to quicken into sentiment in a
thin ether, as water, though not very hot, boils in a receiver partly
exhausted; and heads, in appearance empty, have teemed with notions upon
rising ground, as the flaccid sides of a football would have swelled out
into stiffness and extension.

For this reason I never think myself qualified to judge decisively of
any man's faculties, whom I have only known in one degree of elevation;
but take some opportunity of attending him from the cellar to the
garret, and try upon him all the various degrees of rarefaction and
condensation, tension and laxity. If he is neither vivacious aloft, nor
serious below, I then consider him as hopeless; but as it seldom
happens, that I do not find the temper to which the texture of his brain
is fitted, I accommodate him in time with a tube of mercury, first
marking the points most favourable to his intellects, according to rules
which I have long studied, and which I may, perhaps, reveal to mankind
in a complete treatise of barometrical pneumatology.

Another cause of the gaiety and sprightliness of the dwellers in garrets
is probably the increase of that vertiginous motion, with which we are
carried round by the diurnal revolution of the earth. The power of
agitation upon the spirits is well known; every man has felt his heart
lightened in a rapid vehicle, or on a galloping horse; and nothing is
plainer, than that he who towers to the fifth story, is whirled through
more space by every circumrotation, than another that grovels upon the
ground-floor. The nations between the topicks are known to be fiery,
inconstant, inventive, and fanciful; because, living at the utmost
length of the earth's diameter, they are carried about with more
swiftness than those whom nature has placed nearer to the poles; and
therefore, as it becomes a wise man to struggle with the inconveniencies
of his country, whenever celerity and acuteness are requisite, we must
actuate our languor by taking a few turns round the centre in a garret.

If you imagine that I ascribe to air and motion effects which they
cannot produce, I desire you to consult your own memory, and consider
whether you have never known a man acquire reputation in his garret,
which, when fortune or a patron had placed him upon the first floor, he
was unable to maintain; and who never recovered his former vigour of
understanding, till he was restored to his original situation. That a
garret will make every man a wit, I am very far from supposing; I know
there are some who would continue blockheads even on the summit of the
Andes, or on the peak of Teneriffe. But let not any man be considered as
unimprovable till this potent remedy has been tried; for perhaps he was
formed to be great only in a garret, as the joiner of Aretaeus was
rational in no other place but his own shop.

I think a frequent removal to various distances from the centre, so
necessary to a just estimate of intellectual abilities, and consequently
of so great use in education, that if I hoped that the publick could be
persuaded to so expensive an experiment, I would propose, that there
should be a cavern dug, and a tower erected, like those which Bacon
describes in Solomon's house, for the expansion and concentration of
understanding, according to the exigence of different employments, or
constitutions. Perhaps some that fume away in meditations upon time and
space in the tower, might compose tables of interest at a certain depth;
and he that upon level ground stagnates in silence, or creeps in
narrative, might at the height of half a mile, ferment into merriment,
sparkle with repartee, and froth with declamation.

Addison observes, that we may find the heat of Virgil's climate, in some
lines of his Georgick: so, when I read a composition, I immediately
determine the height of the author's habitation. As an elaborate
performance is commonly said to smell of the lamp, my commendation of a
noble thought, a sprightly sally, or a bold figure, is to pronounce it
fresh from the garret; an expression which would break from me upon the
perusal of most of your papers, did I not believe, that you sometimes
quit the garret, and ascend into the cock-loft.

HYPERTATUS.



No. 118. SATURDAY, MAY 4, 1751.

  --Omnes illacrymabiles
  Urgentur, ignotique longâ
    Nocte. Hon. Lib. iv. Ode ix. 26.

  In endless night they sleep, unwept, unknown. FRANCIS.

Cicero has, with his usual elegance and magnificence of language,
attempted, in his relation of the dream of Scipio, to depreciate those
honours for which he himself appears to have panted with restless
solicitude, by shewing within what narrow limits all that fame and
celebrity which man can hope for from men is circumscribed.

"You see," says Africanus, pointing at the earth, from the celestial
regions, "that the globe assigned to the residence and habitation of
human beings is of small dimensions: how then can you obtain from the
praise of men, any glory worthy of a wish? Of this little world the
inhabited parts are neither numerous nor wide; even the spots where men
are to be found are broken by intervening deserts, and the nations are
so separated as that nothing can be transmitted from one to another.
With the people of the south, by whom the opposite part of the earth is
possessed, you have no intercourse; and by how small a tract do you
communicate with the countries of the north? The territory which you
inhabit is no more than a scanty island, inclosed by a small body of
water, to which you give the name of the great sea and the Atlantick
ocean. And even in this known and frequented continent, what hope can
you entertain, that your renown will pass the stream of Ganges, or the
cliffs of Caucasus? or by whom will your name be uttered in the
extremities of the north or south, towards the rising or the setting
sun? So narrow is the space to which your fame can be propagated; and
even there how long will it remain?"

He then proceeds to assign natural causes why fame is not only narrow in
its extent, but short in its duration; he observes the difference
between the computation of time in earth and heaven, and declares, that
according to the celestial chronology, no human honours can last a
single year.

Such are the objections by which Tully has made a shew of discouraging
the pursuit of fame; objections which sufficiently discover his
tenderness and regard for his darling phantom. Homer, when the plan of
his poem made the death of Patroclus necessary, resolved, at least, that
he should die with honour; and therefore brought down against him the
patron god of Troy, and left to Hector only the mean task of giving the
last blow to an enemy whom a divine hand had disabled from resistance.
Thus Tully ennobles fame, which he professes to degrade, by opposing it
to celestial happiness; he confines not its extent but by the boundaries
of nature, nor contracts its duration but by representing it small in
the estimation of superior beings. He still admits it the highest and
noblest of terrestrial objects, and alleges little more against it, than
that it is neither without end, nor without limits.

What might be the effect of these observations conveyed in Ciceronian
eloquence to Roman understandings, cannot be determined; but few of
those who shall in the present age read my humble version will find
themselves much depressed in their hopes, or retarded in their designs;
for I am not inclined to believe, that they who among us pass their
lives in the cultivation of knowledge, or acquisition of power, have
very anxiously inquired what opinions prevail on the further banks of
the Ganges, or invigorated any effort by the desire of spreading their
renown among the clans of Caucasus. The hopes and fears of modern minds
are content to range in a narrower compass; a single nation, and a few
years, have generally sufficient amplitude to fill our imaginations.

A little consideration will indeed teach us, that fame has other limits
than mountains and oceans; and that he who places happiness in the
frequent repetition of his name, may spend his life in propagating it,
without any danger of weeping for new worlds, or necessity of passing
the Atlantick sea.

The numbers to whom any real and perceptible good or evil can be derived
by the greatest power, or most active diligence, are inconsiderable; and
where neither benefit nor mischief operate, the only motive to the
mention or remembrance of others is curiosity; a passion, which, though
in some degree universally associated to reason, is easily confined,
overborne, or diverted from any particular object.

Among the lower classes of mankind, there will be found very little
desire of any other knowledge, than what may contribute immediately to
the relief of some pressing uneasiness, or the attainment of some near
advantage. The Turks are said to hear with wonder a proposal to walk
out, only that they may walk back; and inquire why any man should labour
for nothing: so those whose condition has always restrained them to the
contemplation of their own necessities, and who have been accustomed to
look forward only to a small distance, will scarcely understand, why
nights and days should be spent in studies, which end in new studies,
and which, according to Malherbe's observation, do not tend to lessen
the price of bread; nor will the trader or manufacturer easily be
persuaded, that much pleasure can arise from the mere knowledge of
actions, performed in remote regions, or in distant times; or that any
thing can deserve their inquiry, of which, [Greek: kleos oion akouomen,
oide ti idmen], we can only hear the report, but which cannot influence
our lives by any consequences.

The truth is, that very few have leisure from indispensable business, to
employ their thoughts upon narrative or characters; and among those to
whom fortune has given the liberty of living more by their own choice,
many create to themselves engagements, by the indulgence of some petty
ambition, the admission of some insatiable desire, or the toleration of
some predominant passion. The man whose whole wish is to accumulate
money, has no other care than to collect interest, to estimate
securities, and to engage for mortgages: the lover disdains to turn his
ear to any other name than that of Corinna; and the courtier thinks the
hour lost which is not spent in promoting his interest, and facilitating
his advancement. The adventures of valour, and the discoveries of
science, will find a cold reception, when they are obtruded upon an
attention thus busy with its favourite amusement, and impatient of
interruption or disturbance.

But not only such employments as seduce attention by appearances of
dignity, or promises of happiness, may restrain the mind from excursion
and inquiry; curiosity may be equally destroyed by less formidable
enemies; it may be dissipated in trifles, or congealed by indolence. The
sportsman and the man of dress have their heads filled with a fox or a
horse-race, a feather or a ball; and live in ignorance of every thing
beside, with as much content as he that heaps up gold, or solicits
preferment, digs the field, or beats the anvil; and some yet lower in
the ranks of intellect, dream out their days without pleasure or
business, without joy or sorrow, nor ever rouse from their lethargy to
hear or think.

Even of those who have dedicated themselves to knowledge, the far
greater part have confined their curiosity to a few objects, and have
very little inclination to promote any fame, but that which their own
studies entitle them to partake. The naturalist has no desire to know
the opinions or conjectures of the philologer: the botanist looks upon
the astronomer as a being unworthy of his regard: the lawyer scarcely
hears the name of a physician without contempt; and he that is growing
great and happy by electrifying a bottle, wonders how the world can be
engaged by trifling prattle about war or peace.

If, therefore, he that imagines the world filled with his actions and
praises, shall subduct from the number of his encomiasts, all those who
are placed below the flight of fame, and who hear in the valleys of life
no voice but that of necessity; all those who imagine themselves too
important to regard him, and consider the mention of his name as an
usurpation of their time; all who are too much or too little pleased
with themselves, to attend to any thing external; all who are attracted
by pleasure, or chained down by pain, to unvaried ideas; all who are
withheld from attending his triumph by different pursuits; and all who
slumber in universal negligence; he will find his renown straitened by
nearer bounds than the rocks of Caucasus, and perceive that no man can
be venerable or formidable, but to a small part of his fellow-creatures.

That we may not languish in our endeavours after excellence, it is
necessary, that, as Africanus counsels his descendant, "we raise our
eyes to higher prospects, and contemplate our future and eternal state,
without giving up our hearts to the praise of crowds, or fixing our
hopes on such rewards as human power can bestow."



No. 119. TUESDAY, MAY 7, 1751.

  _Iliacos intra muros peccatur, et extra_. HOR. Lib. i. Ep. ii, 16.

  Faults lay on either side the Trojan tow'rs. ELPHINSTON.

TO THE RAMBLER.

SIR,

As, notwithstanding all that wit, or malice, or pride, or prudence will
be able to suggest, men and women must at last pass their lives
together, I have never therefore thought those writers friends to human
happiness, who endeavour to excite in either sex a general contempt or
suspicion of the other. To persuade them who are entering the world, and
looking abroad for a suitable associate, that all are equally vicious,
or equally ridiculous; that they who trust are certainly betrayed, and
they who esteem are always disappointed; is not to awaken judgment, but
to inflame temerity. Without hope there can be no caution. Those who are
convinced, that no reason for preference can be found, will never harass
their thoughts with doubt and deliberation; they will resolve, since
they are doomed to misery, that no needless anxiety shall disturb their
quiet; they will plunge at hazard into the crowd, and snatch the first
hand that shall be held toward them.

That the world is over-run with vice, cannot be denied; but vice,
however predominant, has not yet gained an unlimited dominion. Simple
and unmingled good is not in our power, but we may generally escape a
greater evil by suffering a less; and therefore, those who undertake to
initiate the young and ignorant in the knowledge of life, should be
careful to inculcate the possibility of virtue and happiness, and to
encourage endeavours by prospects of success.

You, perhaps, do not suspect, that these are the sentiments of one who
has been subject for many years to all the hardships of antiquated
virginity; has been long accustomed to the coldness of neglect, and the
petulance of insult; has been mortified in full assemblies by inquiries
after forgotten fashions, games long disused, and wits and beauties of
ancient renown; has been invited, with malicious importunity, to the
second wedding of many acquaintances; has been ridiculed by two
generations of coquets in whispers intended to be heard; and been long
considered by the airy and gay, as too venerable for familiarity, and
too wise for pleasure. It is indeed natural for injury to provoke anger,
and by continual repetition to produce an habitual asperity; yet I have
hitherto struggled with so much vigilance against my pride and my
resentment, that I have preserved my temper uncorrupted. I have not yet
made it any part of my employment to collect sentences against marriage;
nor am inclined to lessen the number of the few friends whom time has
left me, by obstructing that happiness which I cannot partake, and
venting my vexation in censures of the forwardness and indiscretion of
girls, or the inconstancy, tastelessness, and perfidy of men.

It is, indeed, not very difficult to bear that condition to which we are
not condemned by necessity, but induced by observation and choice; and
therefore I, perhaps, have never yet felt all the malignity with which a
reproach, edged with the appellation of old maid, swells some of those
hearts in which it is infixed. I was not condemned in my youth to
solitude, either by indigence or deformity, nor passed the earlier part
of life without the flattery of courtship, and the joys of triumph. I
have danced the round of gaiety amidst the murmurs of envy, and
gratulations of applause; been attended from pleasure to pleasure by the
great, the sprightly, and the vain; and seen my regard solicited by the
obsequiousness of gallantry, the gaiety of wit, and the timidity of
love. If, therefore, I am yet a stranger to nuptial happiness, I suffer
only the consequences of my own resolves, and can look back upon the
succession of lovers, whose addresses I have rejected, without grief,
and without malice.

When my name first began to be inscribed upon glasses, I was honoured
with the amorous professions of the gay Venustulus, a gentleman, who,
being the only son of a wealthy family, had been educated in all the
wantonness of expense, and softness of effeminacy. He was beautiful in
his person, and easy in his address, and, therefore, soon gained upon my
eye at an age when the sight is very little over-ruled by the
understanding. He had not any power in himself of gladdening or amusing;
but supplied his want of conversation by treats and diversions; and his
chief art of courtship was to fill the mind of his mistress with
parties, rambles, musick, and shows. We were often engaged in short
excursions to gardens and seats, and I was for a while pleased with the
care which Venustulus discovered in securing me from any appearance of
danger, or possibility of mischance. He never failed to recommend
caution to his coachman, or to promise the waterman a reward if he
landed us safe; and always contrived to return by daylight, for fear of
robbers. This extraordinary solicitude was represented for a time as the
effect of his tenderness for me; but fear is too strong for continued
hypocrisy. I soon discovered that Venustulus had the cowardice as well
as elegance of a female. His imagination was perpetually clouded with
terrours, and he could scarcely refrain from screams and outcries at any
accidental surprise. He durst not enter a room if a rat was heard behind
the wainscot, nor cross a field where the cattle were frisking in the
sunshine; the least breeze that waved upon the river was a storm, and
every clamour in the street was a cry of fire. I have seen him lose his
colour when my squirrel had broke his chain; and was forced to throw
water in his face on the sudden entrance of a black cat. Compassion once
obliged me to drive away with my fan, a beetle that kept him in
distress, and chide off a dog that yelped at his heels, to which he
would gladly have given up me to facilitate his own escape. Women
naturally expect defence and protection from a lover or a husband, and,
therefore, you will not think me culpable in refusing a wretch, who
would have burdened life with unnecessary fears, and flown to me for
that succour which it was his duty to have given.

My next lover was Fungoso, the son of a stockjobber, whose visits my
friends, by the importunity of persuasion, prevailed upon me to allow.
Fungoso was no very suitable companion; for having been bred in a
counting-house, he spoke a language unintelligible in any other place.
He had no desire of any reputation but that of an acute prognosticator
of the changes in the funds; nor had any means of raising merriment, but
by telling how somebody was overreached in a bargain by his father. He
was, however, a youth of great sobriety and prudence, and frequently
informed us how carefully he would improve my fortune. I was not in
haste to conclude the match, but was so much awed by my parents, that I
durst not dismiss him, and might, perhaps, have been doomed for ever to
the grossness of pedlary, and the jargon of usury, had not a fraud been
discovered in the settlement, which set me free from the persecution of
grovelling pride, and pecuniary impudence. I was afterwards six months
without any particular notice but at last became the idol of the
glittering Flosculus, who prescribed the mode of embroidery to all the
fops of his time, and varied at pleasure the cock of every hat, and the
sleeve of every coat that appeared in fashionable assemblies. Flosculus
made some impression upon my heart by a compliment which few ladies can
hear without emotion; he commended my skill in dress, my judgment in
suiting colours, and my art in disposing ornaments. But Flosculus was
too much engaged by his own elegance, to be sufficiently attentive to
the duties of a lover, or to please with varied praise an ear made
delicate by riot of adulation. He expected to be repaid part of his
tribute, and staid away three days, because I neglected to take notice
of a new coat. I quickly found, that Flosculus was rather a rival than
an admirer; and that we should probably live in a perpetual struggle of
emulous finery, and spend our lives in stratagems to be first in the
fashion.

I had soon after the honour at a feast of attracting the eyes of
Dentatus, one of those human beings whose only happiness is to dine.
Dentatus regaled me with foreign varieties, told me of measures that he
had laid for procuring the best cook in France, and entertained me with
bills of fare, prescribed the arrangement of dishes, and taught me two
sauces invented by himself. At length, such is the uncertainty of human
happiness, I declared my opinion too hastily upon a pie made under his
own direction; after which he grew so cold and negligent, that he was
easily dismissed.

Many other lovers, or pretended lovers, I have had the honour to lead
awhile in triumph. But two of them I drove from me, by discovering that
they had no taste or knowledge in musick; three I dismissed, because
they were drunkards; two, because they paid their addresses at the same
time to other ladies; and six, because they attempted to influence my
choice by bribing my maid. Two more I discarded at the second visit for
obscene allusions; and five for drollery on religion. In the latter part
of my reign, I sentenced two to perpetual exile, for offering me
settlements, by which the children of a former marriage would have been
injured; four, for representing falsely the value of their estates;
three for concealing their debts; and one, for raising the rent of a
decrepit tenant.

I have now sent you a narrative, which the ladies may oppose, to the
tale of Hymenaeus. I mean not to depreciate the sex which has produced
poets and philosophers, heroes and martyrs; but will not suffer the
rising generation of beauties to be dejected by partial satire; or to
imagine that those who censured them have not likewise their follies,
and their vices. I do not yet believe happiness unattainable in
marriage, though I have never yet been able to find a man, with whom I
could prudently venture an inseparable union. It is necessary to expose
faults, that their deformity may be seen; but the reproach ought not to
be extended beyond the crime, nor either sex to be contemned, because
some women, or men, are indelicate or dishonest.

I am, &c.

TRANQUILLA.



No. 120. SATURDAY, MAY 11, 1751.

  Redditum Cyri solio Phraaten.
  Dissidens plebi, numero beatorum
  Eiimit virtus, populumque falsis
          Dedocet uti
  Vocibus.--HOR. Lib. ii. Od. ii. 17.

  True virtue can the crowd unteach
  Their false mistaken forms of speech;
  Virtue, to crowds a foe profest,
  Disdains to number with the blest
  Phraates, by his slaves ador'd,
  And to the Parthian crown restor'd. FRANCIS.

In the reign of Jenghiz Can, conqueror of the east, in the city of
Samarcand, lived Nouradin the merchant, renowned throughout all the
regions of India, for the extent of his commerce, and the integrity of
his dealings. His warehouses were filled with all the commodities of the
remotest nations; every rarity of nature, every curiosity of art,
whatever was valuable, whatever was useful, hasted to his hand. The
streets were crowded with his carriages; the sea was covered with his
ships; the streams of Oxus were wearied with conveyance, and every
breeze of the sky wafted wealth to Nouradin.

At length Nouradin felt himself seized with a slow malady, which he
first endeavoured to divert by application, and afterwards to relieve by
luxury and indulgence; but finding his strength every day less, he was
at last terrified, and called for help upon the sages of physick; they
filled his apartments with alexipharmicks, restoratives, and essential
virtues; the pearls of the ocean were dissolved, the spices of Arabia
were distilled, and all the powers of nature were employed to give new
spirits to his nerves, and new balsam to his blood. Nouradin was for
some time amused with promises, invigorated with cordials, or soothed
with anodynes; but the disease preyed upon his vitals, and he soon
discovered with indignation, that health was not to be bought. He was
confined to his chamber, deserted by his physicians, and rarely visited
by his friends; but his unwillingness to die flattered him long with
hopes of life.

At length, having passed the night in tedious languor, he called to him
Almamoulin, his only son, and dismissing his attendants, "My son," says
he, "behold here the weakness and fragility of man; look backward a few
days, thy father was great and happy, fresh as the vernal rose, and
strong as the cedar of the mountain; the nations of Asia drank his dews,
and art and commerce delighted in his shade. Malevolence beheld me, and
sighed: 'His root,' she cried, 'is fixed in the depths; it is watered by
the fountains of Oxus; it sends out branches afar, and bids defiance to
the blast; prudence reclines against his trunk, and prosperity dances on
his top.' Now, Almamoulin, look upon me withering and prostrate; look
upon me, and attend. I have trafficked, I have prospered, I have rioted
in gain; my house is splendid, my servants are numerous; yet I displayed
only a small part of my riches; the rest, which I was hindered from
enjoying by the fear of raising envy, or tempting rapacity, I have piled
in towers, I have buried in caverns, I have hidden in secret
repositories, which this scroll will discover. My purpose was, after ten
months more spent in commerce, to have withdrawn my wealth to a safer
country; to have given seven years to delight and festivity, and the
remaining part of my days to solitude and repentance; but the hand of
death is upon me; a frigorifick torpor encroaches upon my veins; I am
now leaving the produce of my toil, which it must be thy business to
enjoy with wisdom." The thought of leaving his wealth filled Nouradin
with such grief, that he fell into convulsions, became delirious, and
expired.

Almamoulin, who loved his father, was touched a while with honest
sorrow, and sat two hours in profound meditation, without perusing the
paper which he held in his hand. He then retired to his own chamber, as
overborne with affliction, and there read the inventory of his new
possessions, which swelled his heart with such transports, that he no
longer lamented his father's death. He was now sufficiently composed to
order a funeral of modest magnificence, suitable at once to the rank of
Nouradin's profession, and the reputation of his wealth. The two next
nights he spent in visiting the tower and the caverns, and found the
treasures greater to his eye than to his imagination.

Almamoulin had been bred to the practice of exact frugality, and had
often looked with envy on the finery and expenses of other young men: he
therefore believed, that happiness was now in his power, since he could
obtain all of which he had hitherto been accustomed to regret the want.
He resolved to give a loose to his desires, to revel in enjoyment, and
feel pain or uneasiness no more.

He immediately procured a splendid equipage, dressed his servants in
rich embroidery, and covered his horses with golden caparisons. He
showered down silver on the populace, and suffered their acclamations to
swell him with insolence. The nobles saw him with anger, the wise men of
the state combined against him, the leaders of armies threatened his
destruction. Almamoulin was informed of his danger: he put on the robe
of mourning in the presence of his enemies, and appeased them with gold,
and gems, and supplication.

He then sought to strengthen himself by an alliance with the princes of
Tartary, and offered the price of kingdoms for a wife of noble birth.
His suit was generally rejected, and his presents refused; but the
princess of Astracan once condescended to admit him to her presence. She
received him, sitting on a throne, attired in the robe of royalty, and
shining with the jewels of Golconda; command sparkled in her eyes, and
dignity towered on her forehead. Almamoulin approached and trembled. She
saw his confusion and disdained him: "How," says she, "dares the wretch
hope my obedience, who thus shrinks at my glance? Retire, and enjoy thy
riches in sordid ostentation; thou wast born to be wealthy, but never
canst be great."

He then contracted his desires to more private and domestick pleasures.
He built palaces, he laid out gardens[d], he changed the face of the
land, he transplanted forests, he levelled mountains, opened prospects
into distant regions, poured fountains from the tops of turrets, and
rolled rivers through new channels.

These amusements pleased him for a time; but languor and weariness soon
invaded him. His bowers lost their fragrance, and the waters murmured
without notice. He purchased large tracts of land in distant provinces,
adorned them with houses of pleasure, and diversified them with
accommodations for different seasons. Change of place at first relieved
his satiety, but all the novelties of situation were soon exhausted; he
found his heart vacant, and his desires, for want of external objects,
ravaging himself.

He therefore returned to Samarcand, and set open his doors to those whom
idleness sends out in search of pleasure. His tables were always covered
with delicacies; wines of every vintage sparkled in his bowls, and his
lamps scattered perfumes. The sound of the lute, and the voice of the
singer, chased away sadness; every hour was crowded with pleasure; and
the day ended and began with feasts and dances, and revelry and
merriment. Almamoulin cried out, "I have at last found the use of
riches; I am surrounded by companions, who view my greatness without
envy; and I enjoy at once the raptures of popularity, and the safety of
an obscure station. What trouble can he feel, whom all are studious to
please, that they may be repaid with pleasure? What danger can he dread,
to whom every man is a friend?"

Such were the thoughts of Almamoulin, as he looked down from a gallery
upon the gay assembly regaling at his expense; but, in the midst of this
soliloquy, an officer of justice entered the house, and in the form of
legal citation, summoned Almamoulin to appear before the emperor. The
guests stood awhile aghast, then stole imperceptibly away, and he was
led off without a single voice to witness his integrity. He now found
one of his most frequent visitants accusing him of treason, in hopes of
sharing his confiscation; yet, unpatronized and unsupported, he cleared
himself by the openness of innocence, and the consistence of truth; he
was dismissed with honour, and his accuser perished in prison.

Almamoulin now perceived with how little reason he had hoped for justice
or fidelity from those who live only to gratify their senses; and, being
now weary with vain experiments upon life and fruitless researches after
felicity, he had recourse to a sage, who, after spending his youth in
travel and observation, had retired from all human cares, to a small
habitation on the banks of Oxus, where he conversed only with such as
solicited his counsel. "Brother," said the philosopher, "thou hast
suffered thy reason to be deluded by idle hopes, and fallacious
appearances. Having long looked with desire upon riches, thou hadst
taught thyself to think them more valuable than nature designed them,
and to expect from them, what experience has now taught thee, that they
cannot give. That they do not confer wisdom, thou mayest be convinced,
by considering at how dear a price they tempted thee, upon thy first
entrance into the world, to purchase the empty sound of vulgar
acclamation. That they cannot bestow fortitude or magnanimity, that man
may be certain, who stood trembling at Astracan, before a being not
naturally superior to himself. That they will not supply unexhausted
pleasure, the recollection of forsaken palaces, and neglected gardens,
will easily inform thee. That they rarely purchase friends, thou didst
soon discover, when thou wert left to stand thy trial uncountenanced and
alone. Yet think not riches useless; there are purposes to which a wise
man may be delighted to apply them; they may, by a rational distribution
to those who want them, ease the pains of helpless disease, still the
throbs of restless anxiety, relieve innocence from oppression, and raise
imbecility to cheerfulness and vigour. This they will enable thee to
perform, and this will afford the only happiness ordained for our
present state, the confidence of Divine favour, and the hope of future
rewards."

[Footnote d: See Vathek.]



No. 121. TUESDAY, MAY 14, 1751.

  O imitatores, servum pecus! Hor. Lib. i. Ep. xix. 19.

  Away, ye imitators, servile herd! ELPHINSTON.

I have been informed by a letter from one of the universities, that
among the youth from whom the next swarm of reasoners is to learn
philosophy, and the next flight of beauties to hear elegies and sonnets,
there are many, who, instead of endeavouring by books and meditation to
form their own opinions, content themselves with the secondary
knowledge, which a convenient bench in a coffee-house can supply; and
without any examination or distinction, adopt the criticisms and
remarks, which happen to drop from those who have risen, by merit or
fortune, to reputation and authority.

These humble retailers of knowledge my correspondent stigmatises with
the name of Echoes; and seems desirous that they should be made ashamed
of lazy submission, and animated to attempts after new discoveries and
original sentiments.

It is very natural for young men to be vehement, acrimonious, and
severe. For, as they seldom comprehend at once all the consequences of a
position, or perceive the difficulties by which cooler and more
experienced reasoners are restrained from confidence, they form their
conclusions with great precipitance. Seeing nothing that can darken or
embarrass the question, they expect to find their own opinion
universally prevalent, and are inclined to impute uncertainty and
hesitation to want of honesty, rather than of knowledge. I may, perhaps,
therefore, be reproached by my lively correspondent, when it shall be
found, that I have no inclination to persecute these collectors of
fortuitous knowledge with the severity required; yet, as I am now too
old to be much pained by hasty censure, I shall not be afraid of taking
into protection those whom I think condemned without a sufficient
knowledge of their cause.

He that adopts the sentiments of another, whom he has reason to believe
wiser than himself, is only to be blamed when he claims the honours
which are not due but to the author, and endeavours to deceive the world
into praise and veneration; for, to learn, is the proper business of
youth; and whether we increase our knowledge by books or by
conversation, we are equally indebted to foreign assistance.

The greater part of students are not born with abilities to construct
systems, or advance knowledge; nor can have any hope beyond that of
becoming intelligent hearers in the schools of art, of being able to
comprehend what others discover, and to remember what others teach. Even
those to whom Providence hath allotted greater strength of
understanding, can expect only to improve a single science. In every
other part of learning, they must be content to follow opinions, which
they are not able to examine; and, even in that which they claim as
peculiarly their own, can seldom add more than some small particle of
knowledge, to the hereditary stock devolved to them from ancient times,
the collective labour of a thousand intellects.

In science, which, being fixed and limited, admits of no other variety
than such as arises from new methods of distribution, or new arts of
illustration, the necessity of following the traces of our predecessors
is indisputably evident; but there appears no reason, why imagination
should be subject to the same restraint. It might be conceived, that of
those who profess to forsake the narrow paths of truth, every one may
deviate towards a different point, since, though rectitude is uniform
and fixed, obliquity may be infinitely diversified. The roads of science
are narrow, so that they who travel them, must either follow or meet one
another; but in the boundless regions of possibility, which fiction
claims for her dominion, there are surely a thousand recesses
unexplored, a thousand flowers unplucked, a thousand fountains
unexhausted, combinations of imagery yet unobserved, and races of ideal
inhabitants not hitherto described.

Yet, whatever hope may persuade, or reason evince, experience can boast
of very few additions to ancient fable. The wars of Troy, and the
travels of Ulysses, have furnished almost all succeeding poets with
incidents, characters, and sentiments. The Romans are confessed to have
attempted little more than to display in their own tongue the inventions
of the Greeks. There is, in all their writings, such a perpetual
recurrence of allusions to the tales of the fabulous age, that they must
be confessed often to want that power of giving pleasure which novelty
supplies; nor can we wonder that they excelled so much in the graces of
diction, when we consider how rarely they were employed in search of new
thoughts.

The warmest admirers of the great Mantuan poet can extol him for little
more than the skill with which he has, by making his hero both a
traveller and a warrior, united the beauties of the Iliad and the
Odyssey in one composition: yet his judgment was perhaps sometimes
overborne by his avarice of the Homeric treasures; and, for fear of
suffering a sparkling ornament to be lost, he has inserted it where it
cannot shine with its original splendour.

When Ulysses visited the infernal regions, he found among the heroes
that perished at Troy, his competitor, Ajax, who, when the arms of
Achilles were adjudged to Ulysses, died by his own hand in the madness
of disappointment. He still appeared to resent, as on earth, his loss
and disgrace, Ulysses endeavoured to pacify him with praises and
submission; but Ajax walked away without reply. This passage has always
been considered as eminently beautiful; because Ajax, the haughty chief,
the unlettered soldier, of unshaken courage, of immovable constancy, but
without the power of recommending his own virtues by eloquence, or
enforcing his assertions by any other argument than the sword, had no
way of making his anger known, but by gloomy sullenness and dumb
ferocity. His hatred of a man whom he conceived to have defeated him
only by volubility of tongue, was therefore naturally shewn by silence
more contemptuous and piercing than any words that so rude an orator
could have found, and by which he gave his enemy no opportunity of
exerting the only power in which he was superior.

When Æneas is sent by Virgil to the shades, he meets Dido the queen of
Carthage, whom his perfidy had hurried to the grave; he accosts her with
tenderness and excuses; but the lady turns away like Ajax in mute
disdain. She turns away like Ajax; but she resembles him in none of
those qualities which give either dignity or propriety to silence. She
might, without any departure from the tenour of her conduct, have burst
out like other injured women into clamour, reproach, and denunciation;
but Virgil had his imagination full of Ajax, and therefore could not
prevail on himself to teach Dido any other mode of resentment.

If Virgil could be thus seduced by imitation, there will be little hope,
that common wits should escape; and accordingly we find, that besides
the universal and acknowledged practice of copying the ancients, there
has prevailed in every age a particular species of fiction. At one time
all truth was conveyed in allegory; at another, nothing was seen but in
a vision; at one period all the poets followed sheep, and every event
produced a pastoral; at another they busied themselves wholly in giving
directions to a painter.

It is indeed easy to conceive why any fashion should become popular, by
which idleness is favoured, and imbecility assisted; but surely no man
of genius can much applaud himself for repeating a tale with which the
audience is already tired, and which could bring no honour to any but
its inventor.

There are, I think, two schemes of writing, on which the laborious wits
of the present time employ their faculties. One is the adaptation of
sense to all the rhymes which our language can supply to some word, that
makes the burden of the stanza; but this, as it has been only used in a
kind of amorous burlesque, can scarcely be censured with much acrimony.
The other is the imitation of Spenser, which, by the influence of some
men of learning and genius, seems likely to gain upon the age, and
therefore deserves to be more attentively considered.

To imitate the fictions and sentiments of Spenser can incur no reproach,
for allegory is perhaps one of the most pleasing vehicles of
instruction. But I am very far from extending the same respect to his
diction or his stanza. His style was in his own time allowed to be
vicious, so darkened with old words and peculiarities of phrase, and so
remote from common use, that Jonson boldly pronounces him _to have
written no language_. His stanza is at once difficult and unpleasing;
tiresome to the ear by its uniformity, and to the attention by its
length. It was at first formed in imitation of the Italian poets,
without due regard to the genius of our language. The Italians have
little variety of termination, and were forced to contrive such a stanza
as might admit the greatest number of similar rhymes; but our words end
with so much diversity, that it is seldom convenient for us to bring
more than two of the same sound together. If it be justly observed by
Milton, that rhyme obliges poets to express their thoughts in improper
terms, these improprieties must always be multiplied, as the difficulty
of rhyme is increased by long concatenations.

The imitators of Spenser are indeed not very rigid censors of
themselves, for they seem to conclude, that when they have disfigured
their lines with a few obsolete syllables, they have accomplished their
design, without considering that they ought not only to admit old words,
but to avoid new. The laws of imitation are broken by every word
introduced since the time of Spenser, as the character of Hector is
violated by quoting Aristotle in the play. It would, indeed, be
difficult to exclude from a long poem all modern phrases, though it is
easy to sprinkle it with gleanings of antiquity. Perhaps, however, the
style of Spenser might by long labour be justly copied; but life is
surely given us for higher purposes than to gather what our ancestors
have wisely thrown away, and to learn what is of no value, but because
it has been forgotten.



No. 122. SATURDAY, MAY 18, 1751.

  Nescio qua natale solum dulcedine captos
  Ducit. OVID, Ex Pon. Lib. i. Ep. iii. 35.

  By secret charms our native land attracts.

Nothing is more subject to mistake and disappointment than anticipated
judgment concerning the easiness or difficulty of any undertaking,
whether we form our opinion from the performances of others, or from
abstracted contemplation of the thing to be attempted.

Whatever is done skilfully appears to be done with ease; and art, when
it is once matured to habit, vanishes from observation. We are therefore
more powerfully excited to emulation, by those who have attained the
highest degree of excellence, and whom we can therefore with least
reason hope to equal.

In adjusting the probability of success by a previous consideration of
the undertaking, we are equally in danger of deceiving ourselves. It is
never easy, nor often possible, to comprise the series of any process
with all its circumstances, incidents, and variations, in a speculative
scheme. Experience soon shows us the tortuosities of imaginary
rectitude, the complications of simplicity, and the asperities of
smoothness. Sudden difficulties often start up from the ambushes of art,
stop the career of activity, repress the gaiety of confidence, and when
we imagine ourselves almost at the end of our labours, drive us back to
new plans and different measures.

There are many things which we every day see others unable to perform,
and perhaps have even ourselves miscarried in attempting; and yet can
hardly allow to be difficult; nor can we forbear to wonder afresh at
every new failure, or to promise certainty of success to our next essay;
but when we try, the same hindrances recur, the same inability is
perceived, and the vexation of disappointment must again be suffered.

Of the various kinds of speaking or writing, which serve necessity, or
promote pleasure, none appears so artless or easy as simple narration;
for what should make him that knows the whole order and progress of an
affair unable to relate it? Yet we hourly find such as endeavour to
entertain or instruct us by recitals, clouding the facts which they
intend to illustrate, and losing themselves and their auditors in wilds
and mazes, in digression and confusion. When we have congratulated
ourselves upon a new opportunity of inquiry, and new means of
information, it often happens, that without designing either deceit or
concealment, without ignorance of the fact, or unwillingness to disclose
it, the relator fills the ear with empty sounds, harasses the attention
with fruitless impatience, and disturbs the imagination by a tumult of
events, without order of time, or train of consequence.

It is natural to believe, upon the same principle, that no writer has a
more easy task than the historian. The philosopher has the works of
omniscience to examine; and is therefore engaged in disquisitions, to
which finite intellects are utterly unequal. The poet trusts to his
invention, and is not only in danger of those inconsistencies, to which
every one is exposed by departure from truth; but may be censured as
well for deficiencies of matter, as for irregularity of disposition, or
impropriety of ornament. But the happy historian has no other labour
than of gathering what tradition pours down before him, or records
treasure for his use. He has only the actions and designs of men like
himself to conceive and to relate; he is not to form, but copy
characters, and therefore is not blamed for the inconsistency of
statesmen, the injustice of tyrants, or the cowardice of commanders. The
difficulty of making variety consistent, or uniting probability with
surprise, needs not to disturb him; the manners and actions of his
personages are already fixed; his materials are provided and put into
his hands, and he is at leisure to employ all his powers in arranging
and displaying them.

Yet, even with these advantages, very few in any age have been able to
raise themselves to reputation by writing histories; and among the
innumerable authors, who fill every nation with accounts of their
ancestors, or undertake to transmit to futurity the events of their own
time, the greater part, when fashion and novelty have ceased to
recommend them, are of no other use than chronological memorials, which
necessity may sometimes require to be consulted, but which fright away
curiosity, and disgust delicacy.

It is observed, that our nation, which has produced so many authors
eminent for almost every other species of literary excellence, has been
hitherto remarkably barren of historical genius; and so far has this
defect raised prejudices against us, that some have doubted whether an
Englishman can stop at that mediocrity of style, or confine his mind to
that even tenour of imagination, which narrative requires.

They who can believe that nature has so capriciously distributed
understanding, have surely no claim to the honour of serious
confutation. The inhabitants of the same country have opposite
characters in different ages; the prevalence or neglect of any
particular study can proceed only from the accidental influence of some
temporary cause; and if we have failed in history, we can have failed
only because history has not hitherto been diligently cultivated.

But how is it evident, that we have not historians among us, whom we may
venture to place in comparison with any that the neighbouring nations
can produce? The attempt of Raleigh is deservedly celebrated for the
labour of his researches, and the elegance of his style; but he has
endeavoured to exert his judgment more than his genius, to select facts,
rather than adorn them; and has produced an historical dissertation, but
seldom risen to the majesty of history.

The works of Clarendon deserve more regard. His diction is indeed
neither exact in itself, nor suited to the purpose of history. It is the
effusion of a mind crowded with ideas, and desirous of imparting them;
and therefore always accumulating words, and involving one clause and
sentence in another. But there is in his negligence a rude inartificial
majesty, which, without the nicety of laboured elegance, swells the mind
by its plenitude and diffusion. His narration is not perhaps
sufficiently rapid, being stopped too frequently by particularities,
which, though they might strike the author who was present at the
transactions, will not equally detain the attention of posterity. But
his ignorance or carelessness of the art of writing is amply compensated
by his knowledge of nature and of policy; the wisdom of his maxims, the
justness of his reasonings, and the variety, distinctness, and strength
of his characters.

But none of our writers can, in my opinion, justly contest the
superiority of Knolles, who, in his history of the Turks, has displayed
all the excellencies that narration can admit. His style, though
somewhat obscured by time, and sometimes vitiated by false wit, is pure,
nervous, elevated, and clear. A wonderful multiplicity of events is so
artfully arranged, and so distinctly explained, that each facilitates
the knowledge of the next. Whenever a new personage is introduced, the
reader is prepared by his character for his actions; when a nation is
first attacked, or city besieged, he is made acquainted with its
history, or situation; so that a great part of the world is brought into
view. The descriptions of this author are without minuteness, and the
digressions without ostentation. Collateral events are so artfully woven
into the contexture of his principal story, that they cannot be
disjoined without leaving it lacerated and broken. There is nothing
turgid in his dignity, nor superfluous in his copiousness. His orations
only, which he feigns, like the ancient historians, to have been
pronounced on remarkable occasions, are tedious and languid; and since
they are merely the voluntary sports of imagination, prove how much the
most judicious and skilful may be mistaken in the estimate of their own
powers.

Nothing could have sunk this author in obscurity, but the remoteness and
barbarity of the people, whose story he relates. It seldom happens, that
all circumstances concur to happiness or fame. The nation which produced
this great historian, has the grief of seeing his genius employed upon a
foreign and uninteresting subject; and that writer who might have
secured perpetuity to his name, by a history of his own country, has
exposed himself to the danger of oblivion, by recounting enterprises and
revolutions, of which none desire to be informed.


No. 123. TUESDAY, MAY 21, 1751.

  _Quo semet est imbuta recens, servabit odorem
  Testa din_.--HOR. Lib. i. Ep. ii. 69.

  What season'd first the vessel, keeps the taste. CREECH.

TO THE RAMBLER.

SIR,

Though I have so long found myself deluded by projects of honour and
distinction, that I often resolve to admit them no more into my heart;
yet how determinately soever excluded, they always recover their
dominion by force or stratagem; and whenever, after the shortest
relaxation of vigilance, reason and caution return to their charge, they
find hope again in possession, with all her train of pleasures dancing
about her.

Even while I am preparing to write a history of disappointed
expectations, I cannot forbear to flatter myself, that you and your
readers are impatient for my performance; and that the sons of learning
have laid down several of your late papers with discontent, when they
found that Misocapelus had delayed to continue his narrative.

But the desire of gratifying the expectations that I have raised, is not
the only motive of this relation, which, having once promised it, I
think myself no longer at liberty to forbear. For, however I may have
wished to clear myself from every other adhesion of trade, I hope I
shall be always wise enough to retain my punctuality, and amidst all my
new arts of politeness, continue to despise negligence, and detest
falsehood.

When the death of my brother had dismissed me from the duties of a shop,
I considered myself as restored to the rights of my birth, and entitled
to the rank and reception which my ancestors obtained. I was, however,
embarrassed with many difficulties at my first re-entrance into the
world; for my haste to be a gentleman inclined me to precipitate
measures; and every accident that forced me back towards my old station,
was considered by me as an obstruction of my happiness.

It was with no common grief and indignation, that I found my former
companions still daring to claim my notice, and the journeymen and
apprentices sometimes pulling me by the sleeve as I was walking in the
street, and without any terrour of my new sword, which was,
notwithstanding, of an uncommon size, inviting me to partake of a bottle
at the old house, and entertaining me with histories of the girls in the
neighbourhood. I had always, in my officinal state, been kept in awe by
lace and embroidery; and imagined that, to fright away these unwelcome
familiarities, nothing was necessary, but that I should, by splendour of
dress, proclaim my re-union with a higher rank. I, therefore, sent for
my tailor; ordered a suit with twice the usual quantity of lace; and
that I might not let my persecutors increase their confidence, by the
habit of accosting me, staid at home till it was made.

This week of confinement I passed in practising a forbidding frown, a
smile of condescension, a slight salutation, and an abrupt departure;
and in four mornings was able to turn upon my heel, with so much levity
and sprightliness, that I made no doubt of discouraging all publick
attempts upon my dignity. I therefore issued forth in my new coat, with
a resolution of dazzling intimacy to a fitter distance; and pleased
myself with the timidity and reverence, which I should impress upon all
who had hitherto presumed to harass me with their freedoms. But,
whatever was the cause, I did not find myself received with any new
degree of respect; those whom I intended to drive from me, ventured to
advance with their usual phrases of benevolence; and those whose
acquaintance I solicited, grew more supercilious and reserved. I began
soon to repent the expense, by which I had procured no advantage, and to
suspect that a shining dress, like a weighty weapon, has no force in
itself, but owes all its efficacy to him that wears it.

Many were the mortifications and calamities which I was condemned to
suffer in my initiation to politeness. I was so much tortured by the
incessant civilities of my companions, that I never passed through that
region of the city but in a chair with the curtains drawn; and at last
left my lodgings, and fixed myself in the verge of the court. Here I
endeavoured to be thought a gentleman just returned from his travels,
and was pleased to have my landlord believe that I was in some danger
from importunate creditors; but this scheme was quickly defeated by a
formal deputation sent to offer me, though I had now retired from
business, the freedom of my company.

I was now detected in trade, and therefore resolved to stay no longer. I
hired another apartment, and changed my servants. Here I lived very
happily for three months, and, with secret satisfaction, often overheard
the family celebrating the greatness and felicity of the esquire; though
the conversation seldom ended without some complaint of my covetousness,
or some remark upon my language, or my gait. I now began to venture in
the publick walks, and to know the faces of nobles and beauties; but
could not observe, without wonder, as I passed by them, how frequently
they were talking of a tailor. I longed, however, to be admitted to
conversation, and was somewhat weary of walking in crowds without a
companion, yet continued to come and go with the rest, till a lady whom
I endeavoured to protect in a crowded passage, as she was about to step
into her chariot, thanked me for my civility, and told me, that, as she
had often distinguished me for my modest and respectful behaviour,
whenever I set up for myself, I might expect to see her among my first
customers.

Here was an end of all my ambulatory projects. I indeed sometimes
entered the walks again, but was always blasted by this destructive
lady, whose mischievous generosity recommended me to her acquaintance.
Being therefore forced to practise my adscititious character upon
another stage, I betook myself to a coffee-house frequented by wits,
among whom I learned in a short time the cant of criticism, and talked
so loudly and volubly of nature, and manners, and sentiment, and
diction, and similies, and contrasts, and action, and pronunciation,
that I was often desired to lead the hiss and clap, and was feared and
hated by the players and the poets. Many a sentence have I hissed, which
I did not understand, and many a groan have I uttered, when the ladies
were weeping in the boxes. At last a malignant author, whose performance
I had persecuted through the nine nights, wrote an epigram upon Tape the
critick, which drove me from the pit for ever.

My desire to be a fine gentleman still continued: I therefore, after a
short suspense, chose a new set of friends at the gaming-table, and was
for some time pleased with the civility and openness with which I found
myself treated. I was indeed obliged to play; but being naturally
timorous and vigilant, was never surprised into large sums. What might
have been the consequence of long familiarity with these plunderers, I
had not an opportunity of knowing; for one night the constables entered
and seized us, and I was once more compelled to sink into my former
condition, by sending for my old master to attest my character.

When I was deliberating to what new qualifications I should aspire, I
was summoned into the country, by an account of my father's death. Here
I had hopes of being able to distinguish myself, and to support the
honour of my family. I therefore bought guns and horses, and, contrary
to the expectation of the tenants, increased the salary of the huntsman.
But when I entered the field, it was soon discovered, that I was not
destined to the glories of the chase. I was afraid of thorns in the
thicket, and of dirt in the marsh; I shivered on the brink of a river
while the sportsmen crossed it, and trembled at the sight of a five-bar
gate. When the sport and danger were over, I was still equally
disconcerted; for I was effeminate, though not delicate, and could only
join a feeble whispering voice in the clamours of their triumph.

A fall, by which my ribs were broken, soon recalled me to domestick
pleasures, and I exerted all my art to obtain the favour of the
neighbouring ladies; but wherever I came, there was always some unlucky
conversation upon ribands, fillets, pins, or thread, which drove all my
stock of compliments out of my memory, and overwhelmed me with shame and
dejection.

Thus I passed the ten first years after the death of my brother, in
which I have learned at last to repress that ambition, which I could
never gratify; and, instead of wasting more of my life in vain
endeavours after accomplishments, which, if not early acquired, no
endeavours can obtain, I shall confine my care to those higher
excellencies which are in every man's power, and though I cannot enchant
affection by elegance and ease, hope to secure esteem by honesty and
truth.

I am, &c.

MISOCAPELUS.



No. 124. SATURDAY, MAY 25, 1751.

  --Taciturn sylvas inter reptare salubres,
  Curantem quicquid dignim sapiente bonoque est?
  HOR. Lib. i. Ep. iv. 4.

  To range in silence through each healthful wood,
  And muse what's worthy of the wise and good. ELPHINSTON.

The season of the year is now come, in which the theatres are shut, and
the card-tables forsaken; the regions of luxury are for a while
unpeopled, and pleasure leads out her votaries to groves and gardens, to
still scenes and erratick gratifications. Those who have passed many
months in a continual tumult of diversion; who have never opened their
eyes in the morning, but upon some new appointment; nor slept at night
without a dream of dances, musick, and good hands, or of soft sighs and
humble supplications; must now retire to distant provinces, where the
syrens of flattery are scarcely to be heard, where beauty sparkles
without praise or envy, and wit is repeated only by the echo.

As I think it one of the most important duties of social benevolence to
give warning of the approach of calamity, when by timely prevention it
may be turned aside, or by preparatory measures be more easily endured,
I cannot feel the increasing warmth, or observe the lengthening days,
without considering the condition of my fair readers, who are now
preparing to leave all that has so long filled up their hours, all from
which they have been accustomed to hope for delight; and who, till
fashion proclaims the liberty of returning to the seats of mirth and
elegance, must endure the rugged 'squire, the sober housewife, the loud
huntsman, or the formal parson, the roar of obstreperous jollity, or the
dulness of prudential instruction; without any retreat, but to the gloom
of solitude, where they will yet find greater inconveniencies, and must
learn, however unwillingly, to endure themselves.

In winter, the life of the polite and gay may be said to roll on with a
strong and rapid current; they float along from pleasure to pleasure,
without the trouble of regulating their own motions, and pursue the
course of the stream in all the felicity of inattention; content that
they find themselves in progression, and careless whither they are
going. But the months of summer are a kind of sleeping stagnation
without wind or tide, where they are left to force themselves forward by
their own labour, and to direct their passage by their own skill; and
where, if they have not some internal principle of activity, they must
be stranded upon shallows, or lie torpid in a perpetual calm.

There are, indeed, some to whom this universal dissolution of gay
societies affords a welcome opportunity of quitting, without disgrace,
the post which they have found themselves unable to maintain; and of
seeming to retreat only at the call of nature, from assemblies where,
after a short triumph of uncontested superiority, they are overpowered
by some new intruder of softer elegance or sprightlier vivacity. By
these, hopeless of victory, and yet ashamed to confess a conquest, the
summer is regarded as a release from the fatiguing service of celebrity,
a dismission to more certain joys and a safer empire. They now solace
themselves with the influence which they shall obtain, where they have
no rival to fear; and with the lustre which they shall effuse, when
nothing can be seen of brighter splendour. They imagine, while they are
preparing for their journey, the admiration with which the rusticks will
crowd about them; plan the laws of a new assembly; or contrive to delude
provincial ignorance with a fictitious mode. A thousand pleasing
expectations swarm in the fancy; and all the approaching weeks are
filled with distinctions, honours, and authority.

But others, who have lately entered the world, or have yet had no proofs
of its inconstancy and desertion, are cut off, by this cruel
interruption, from the enjoyment of their prerogatives, and doomed to
lose four months in inactive obscurity. Many complaints do vexation and
desire extort from those exiled tyrants of the town, against the
inexorable sun, who pursues his course without any regard to love or
beauty; and visits either tropick at the stated time, whether shunned or
courted, deprecated or implored.

To them who leave the places of publick resort in the full bloom of
reputation, and withdraw from admiration, courtship, submission, and
applause, a rural triumph can give nothing equivalent. The praise of
ignorance, and the subjection of weakness, are little regarded by
beauties who have been accustomed to more important conquests, and more
valuable panegyricks. Nor indeed should the powers which have made
havock in the theatres, or borne down rivalry in courts, be degraded to
a mean attack upon the untravelled heir, or ignoble contest with the
ruddy milkmaid.

How then must four long months be worn away? Four months, in which there
will be no routes, no shows, no ridottos; in which visits must be
regulated by the weather, and assemblies will depend upon the moon! The
Platonists imagine, that the future punishment of those who have in this
life debased their reason by subjection to their senses, and have
preferred the gross gratifications of lewdness and luxury, to the pure
and sublime felicity of virtue and contemplation, will arise from the
predominance and solicitations of the same appetites, in a state which
can furnish no means of appeasing them. I cannot but suspect that this
month, bright with sunshine, and fragrant with perfumes; this month,
which covers the meadow with verdure, and decks the gardens with all the
mixtures of colorifick radiance; this month, from which the man of fancy
expects new infusions of imagery, and the naturalist new scenes of
observation; this month will chain down multitudes to the Platonick
penance of desire without enjoyment, and hurry them from the highest
satisfactions, which they have yet learned to conceive, into a state of
hopeless wishes and pining recollection, where the eye of vanity will
look round for admiration to no purpose, and the hand of avarice shuffle
cards in a bower with ineffectual dexterity.

From the tediousness of this melancholy suspension of life, I would
willingly preserve those who are exposed to it, only by inexperience;
who want not inclination to wisdom or virtue, though they have been
dissipated by negligence, or misled by example; and who would gladly
find the way to rational happiness, though it should be necessary to
struggle with habit, and abandon fashion. To these many arts of spending
time might be recommended, which would neither sadden the present hour
with weariness, nor the future with repentance.

It would seem impossible to a solitary speculatist, that a human being
can want employment. To be born in ignorance with a capacity of
knowledge, and to be placed in the midst of a world filled with variety,
perpetually pressing upon the senses and irritating curiosity, is surely
a sufficient security against the languishment of inattention. Novelty
is indeed necessary to preserve eagerness and alacrity; but art and
nature have stores inexhaustible by human intellects; and every moment
produces something new to him, who has quickened his faculties by
diligent observation.

Some studies, for which the country and the summer afford peculiar
opportunities, I shall perhaps endeavour to recommend in a future essay;
but if there be any apprehension not apt to admit unaccustomed ideas, or
any attention so stubborn and inflexible, as not easily to comply with
new directions, even these obstructions cannot exclude the pleasure of
application; for there is a higher and nobler employment, to which all
faculties are adapted by Him who gave them. The duties of religion,
sincerely and regularly performed, will always be sufficient to exalt
the meanest, and to exercise the highest understanding. That mind will
never be vacant, which is frequently recalled by stated duties to
meditations on eternal interests; nor can any hour be long, which is
spent in obtaining some new qualification for celestial happiness.



No. 125. TUESDAY, MAY 28, 1751.

  _Descriptas servare vices, operumque colores,
  Cur ego, si nequeo ignoroque, poëta salutor?_ HOR. De Ar. Poet. 86.

  But if, through weakness, or my want of art,
  I can't to every different style impart
  The proper strokes and colours it may claim,
  Why am I honour'd with a poet's name? FRANCIS.

It is one of the maxims of the civil law, that _definitions are
hazardous_. Things modified by human understandings, subject to
varieties of complication, and changeable as experience advances
knowledge, or accident influences caprice, are scarcely to be included
in any standing form of expression, because they are always suffering
some alteration of their state. Definition is, indeed, not the province
of man; every thing is set above or below our faculties. The works and
operations of nature are too great in their extent, or too much diffused
in their relations, and the performances of art too inconstant and
uncertain, to be reduced to any determinate idea. It is impossible to
impress upon our minds an adequate and just representation of an object
so great that we can never take it into our view, or so mutable that it
is always changing under our eye, and has already lost its form while we
are labouring to conceive it.

Definitions have been no less difficult or uncertain in criticisms than
in law. Imagination, a licentious and vagrant faculty, unsusceptible of
limitations, and impatient of restraint, has always endeavoured to
baffle the logician, to perplex the confines of distinction, and burst
the inclosures of regularity. There is therefore scarcely any species of
writing, of which we can tell what is its essence, and what are its
constituents; every new genius produces some innovation, which, when
invented and approved, subverts the rules which the practice of
foregoing authors had established.

Comedy has been particularly unpropitious to definers; for though
perhaps they might properly have contented themselves, with declaring it
to be _such a dramatick representation of human life, as may excite
mirth_, they have embarrassed their definition with the means by which
the comick writers attain their end, without considering that the
various methods of exhilarating their audience, not being limited by
nature, cannot be comprised in precept. Thus, some make comedy a
representation of mean and others of bad men; some think that its
essence consists in the unimportance, others in the fictitiousness of
the transaction. But any man's reflections will inform him, that every
dramatick composition which raises mirth, is comick; and that, to raise
mirth, it is by no means universally necessary, that the personages
should be either mean or corrupt, nor always requisite, that the action
should be trivial, nor ever, that it should be fictitious.

If the two kinds of dramatick poetry had been defined only by their
effects upon the mind, some absurdities might have been prevented, with
which the compositions of our greatest poets are disgraced, who, for
want of some settled ideas and accurate distinctions, have unhappily
confounded tragick with comick sentiments. They seem to have thought,
that as the meanest of personages constituted comedy, their greatness
was sufficient to form a tragedy; and that nothing was necessary but
that they should crowd the scene with monarchs, and generals, and
guards; and make them talk, at certain intervals, of the downfall of
kingdoms, and the rout of armies. They have not considered, that
thoughts or incidents, in themselves ridiculous, grow still more
grotesque by the solemnity of such characters; that reason and nature
are uniform and inflexible: and that what is despicable and absurd, will
not, by any association with splendid titles, become rational or great;
that the most important affairs, by an intermixture of an unseasonable
levity, may be made contemptible; and that the robes of royalty can give
no dignity to nonsense or to folly.

"Comedy," says Horace, "sometimes raises her voice;" and Tragedy may
likewise on proper occasions abate her dignity; but as the comick
personages can only depart from their familiarity of style, when the
more violent passions are put in motion, the heroes and queens of
tragedy should never descend to trifle, but in the hours of ease, and
intermissions of danger. Yet in the tragedy of Don Sebastian, when the
king of Portugal is in the hands of his enemy, and having just drawn the
lot, by which he is condemned to die, breaks out into a wild boast that
his dust shall take possession of Africk, the dialogue proceeds thus
between the captive and his conqueror:

  _Muley Moluch_. What shall I do to conquer thee?

  _Seb_. Impossible!
  Souls know no conquerors.

  _M. Mol_. I'll shew thee for a monster thro' my Afric.

  _Seb_. No, thou canst only shew me for a man:
  Afric is stored with monsters; man's a prodigy
  Thy subjects have not seen.

  _M. Mol_. Thou talk'st as if
  Still at the head of battle.

  _Seb_. Thou mistak'st,
  For there I would not talk.

  _Benducar, the Minister_. Sure he would sleep.
 This conversation, with the sly remark of the minister, can only be
found not to be comick, because it wants the probability necessary to
representations of common life, and degenerates too much towards
buffoonery and farce.

The same play affords a smart return of the general to to the emperor,
who, enforcing his orders for the death of Sebastian, vents his
impatience in this abrupt threat:

  --No more replies,
  But see thou dost it: Or--

To which Dorax answers,

  Choak in that threat: I can say Or as loud.

A thousand instances of such impropriety might be produced, were not one
scene in Aureng-Zebe sufficient to exemplify it. Indamora, a captive
queen, having Aureng-Zebe for her lover, employs Arimant, to whose
charge she had been entrusted, and whom she had made sensible of her
charms, to carry her message to his rival.

  ARIMANT, _with a letter in his hand_: INDAMORA.

  _Arim_. And I the messenger to him from you?
  Your empire you to tyranny pursue:
  You lay commands both cruel and unjust,
  To serve my rival, and betray my trust.

  _Ind_. You first betray'd your trust in loving me:
  And should not I my own advantage see?
  Serving my love, you may my friendship gain;
  You know the rest of your pretences vain.
  You must, my Arimant, you must be kind:
  'Tis in your nature, and your noble mind.

  _Arim_. I'll to the king, and straight my trust resign.

  _Ind_. His trust you may, but you shall never mine.
  Heaven made you love me for no other end,
  But to become my confidant and friend:
  As such, I keep no secret from your sight,
  And therefore make you judge how ill I write:
  Read it, and tell me freely then your mind,
  If 'tis indited, as I meant it, kind.

  Arim. _I ask not heaven my freedom to restore_--[Reading.
  _But only for your sake_--I'll read no more.
  And yet I must--
  _Less for my own, than for your sorrow sad_--[Reading.
  Another line like this, would make me mad--
  Heav'n! she goes on--yet more--and yet more kind!
                                                  [--_As reading_.
  Each sentence is a dagger to my mind.
  _See me this night_--[Reading.
  _Thank fortune who did such a friend provide;
  For faithful Arimant shall be your guide_.
  Not only to be made an instrument,
  But pre-engaged without my own consent!

  _Ind_. Unknown to engage you still augments my score,
  And gives you scope of meriting the more.

  _Arim_. The best of men
  Some int'rest in their actions must confess;
  None merit, but in hope they may possess:
  The fatal paper rather let me tear,
  Than, like Bellerophon, my own sentence hear.

  _Ind_. You may; but 'twill not be your best advice:
  'Twill only give me pains of writing twice.
  You know you must obey me, soon or late:
  Why should you vainly struggle with your fate?

  _Arim_. I thank thee, heav'n! thou hast been wondrous kind!
  Why am I thus to slavery design'd,
  And yet am cheated with a free-born mind!
  Or make thy orders with my reason suit,
  Or let me live by sense, a glorious brute--[_She frowns_.
  You frown, and I obey with speed, before
  That dreadful sentence comes, _See me no more_.

In this scene, every circumstance concurs to turn tragedy to farce. The
wild absurdity of the expedient; the contemptible subjection of the
lover; the folly of obliging him to read the letter, only because it
ought to have been concealed from him; the frequent interruptions of
amorous impatience; the faint expostulations of a voluntary slave; the
imperious haughtiness of a tyrant without power; the deep reflection of
the yielding rebel upon fate and free-will; and his wise wish to lose
his reason as soon as he finds himself about to do what he cannot
persuade his reason to approve, are sufficient to awaken the most torpid
risibility.

There is scarce a tragedy of the last century which has not debased its
most important incidents, and polluted its most serious interlocutions,
with buffoonery and meanness; but though, perhaps, it cannot be
pretended that the present age has added much to the force and efficacy
of the drama, it has at least been able to escape many faults, which
either ignorance had overlooked, or indulgence had licensed. The later
tragedies, indeed, have faults of another kind, perhaps more destructive
to delight, though less open to censure. That perpetual tumour of phrase
with which every thought is now expressed by every personage, the
paucity of adventures which regularity admits, and the unvaried equality
of flowing dialogue, has taken away from our present writers almost all
that dominion over the passions which was the boast of their
predecessors. Yet they may at least claim this commendation, that they
avoid gross faults, and that if they cannot often move terrour or pity,
they are always careful not to provoke laughter.



No. 126. SATURDAY, JUNE 1, 1751.

  _--Nihil est aliud magnum quam multa minuta_.    VET. AUCT.

  Sands form the mountain, moments make the year.       YOUNG.

TO THE RAMBLER.

SIR,

Among other topicks of conversation which your papers supply, I was
lately engaged in a discussion of the character given by Tranquilla of
her lover Venustulus, whom, notwithstanding the severity of his
mistress, the greater number seemed inclined to acquit of unmanly or
culpable timidity.

One of the company remarked that prudence ought to be distinguished from
fear; and that if Venustulus was afraid of nocturnal adventures, no man
who considered how much every avenue of the town was infested with
robbers could think him blameable; for why should life be hazarded
without prospect of honour or advantage? Another was of opinion, that a
brave man might be afraid of crossing the river in the calmest weather,
and declared, that, for his part, while there were coaches and a bridge,
he would never be seen tottering in a wooden case, out of which he might
be thrown by any irregular agitation, or which might be overset by
accident, or negligence, or by the force of a sudden gust, or the rush
of a larger vessel. It was his custom, he said, to keep the security of
daylight, and dry ground; for it was a maxim with him, that no wise man
ever perished by water, or was lost in the dark.

The next was humbly of opinion, that if Tranquilla had seen, like him,
the cattle run roaring about the meadows in the hot months, she would
not have thought meanly of her lover for not venturing his safety among
them. His neighbour then told us, that for his part he was not ashamed
to confess, that he could not see a rat, though it was dead, without
palpitation; that he had been driven six times out of his lodgings
either by rats or mice; and that he always had a bed in the closet for
his servant, whom he called up whenever the enemy was in motion. Another
wondered that any man should think himself disgraced by a precipitate
retreat from a dog; for there was always a possibility that a dog might
be mad; and that surely, though there was no danger but of being bit by
a fierce animal, there was more wisdom in flight than contest. By all
these declarations another was encouraged to confess, that if he had
been admitted to the honour of paying his addresses to Tranquilla, he
should have been likely to incur the same censure; for, among all the
animals upon which nature has impressed deformity and horrour, there is
none whom he durst not encounter rather than a beetle.

Thus, Sir, though cowardice is universally defined too close and anxious
an attention to personal safety, there will be found scarcely any fear,
however excessive in its degree, or unreasonable in its object, which
will be allowed to characterise a coward. Fear is a passion which every
man feels so frequently predominant in his own breast, that he is
unwilling to hear it censured with great asperity; and, perhaps, if we
confess the truth, the same restraint which would hinder a man from
declaiming against the frauds of any employment among those who profess
it, should withhold him from treating fear with contempt among human
beings.

Yet, since fortitude is one of those virtues which the condition of our
nature makes hourly necessary, I think you cannot better direct your
admonitions than against superfluous and panick terrours. Fear is
implanted in us as a preservative from evil; but its duty, like that of
other passions, is not to overbear reason, but to assist it; nor should
it be suffered to tyrannize in the imagination, to raise phantoms of
horrour, or beset life with supernumerary distresses.

To be always afraid of losing life is, indeed, scarcely to enjoy a life
that can deserve the care of preservation. He that once indulges idle
fears will never be at rest. Our present state admits only of a kind of
negative security; we must conclude ourselves safe when we see no
danger, or none inadequate to our powers of opposition. Death, indeed,
continually hovers about us, but hovers commonly unseen, unless we
sharpen our sight by useless curiosity.

There is always a point at which caution, however solicitous, must limit
its preservatives, because one terrour often counteracts another. I once
knew one of the speculatists of cowardice, whose reigning disturbance
was the dread of housebreakers. His inquiries were for nine years
employed upon the best method of barring a window, or a door; and many
an hour has he spent in establishing the preference of a bolt to a lock.
He had at last, by the daily superaddition of new expedients, contrived
a door which could never be forced; for one bar was secured by another
with such intricacy of subordination, that he was himself not always
able to disengage them in the proper method. He was happy in this
fortification, till being asked how he would escape if he was threatened
by fire, he discovered, that with all his care and expense, he had only
been assisting his own destruction. He then immediately tore off his
bolts, and now leaves at night his outer door half-locked, that he may
not by his own folly perish in the flames.

There is one species of terrour which those who are unwilling to suffer
the reproach of cowardice have wisely dignified with the name of
_antipathy_. A man who talks with intrepidity of the monsters of the
wilderness while they are out of sight, will readily confess his
antipathy to a mole, a weasel, or a frog. He has indeed no dread of harm
from an insect or a worm, but his antipathy turns him pale whenever they
approach him. He believes that a boat will transport him with as much
safety as his neighbours, but he cannot conquer his antipathy to the
water. Thus he goes on without any reproach from his own reflections,
and every day multiplies antipathies, till he becomes contemptible to
others, and burdensome to himself. It is indeed certain, that
impressions of dread may sometimes be unluckily made by objects not in
themselves justly formidable; but when fear is discovered to be
groundless, it is to be eradicated like other false opinions, and
antipathies are generally superable by a single effort. He that has been
taught to shudder at a mouse, if he can persuade himself to risk one
encounter, will find his own superiority, and exchange his terrours for
the pride of conquest.

I am, Sir, &c.

THRASO.

SIR, As you profess to extend your regard to the minuteness of decency,
as well as to the dignity of science, I cannot forbear to lay before you
a mode of persecution by which I have been exiled to taverns and
coffee-houses, and deterred from entering the doors of my friends. Among
the ladies who please themselves with splendid furniture, or elegant
entertainment, it is a practice very common, to ask every guest how he
likes the carved work of the cornice, or the figures of the tapestry;
the china at the table, or the plate on the side-board: and on all
occasions to inquire his opinion of their judgment and their choice.
Melania has laid her new watch in the window nineteen times, that she
may desire me to look upon it. Calista has an art of dropping her
snuff-box by drawing out her handkerchief, that when I pick it up I may
admire it; and Fulgentia has conducted me, by mistake, into the wrong
room, at every visit I have paid since her picture was put into a new
frame.

I hope, Mr. Rambler, you will inform them, that no man should be denied
the privilege of silence, or tortured to false declarations; and that
though ladies may justly claim to be exempt from rudeness, they have no
right to force unwilling civilities. To please is a laudable and elegant
ambition, and is properly rewarded with honest praise; but to seize
applause by violence, and call out for commendation, without knowing, or
caring to know, whether it be given from conviction, is a species of
tyranny by which modesty is oppressed, and sincerity corrupted. The
tribute of admiration, thus exacted by impudence and importunity,
differs from the respect paid to silent merit, as the plunder of a
pirate from the merchant's profit.

I am, &c.

MISOCOLAX



SIR,

Your great predecessor, the Spectator, endeavoured to diffuse among his
female readers a desire of knowledge; nor can I charge you, though you
do not seem equally attentive to the ladies, with endeavouring to
discourage them from any laudable pursuit. But however either he or you
may excite our curiosity, you have not yet informed us how it may be
gratified. The world seems to have formed an universal conspiracy
against our understandings; our questions are supposed not to expect
answers, our arguments are confuted with a jest, and we are treated like
beings who transgress the limits of our nature whenever we aspire to
seriousness or improvement.

I inquired yesterday of a gentleman eminent for astronomical skill, what
made the day long in summer, and short in winter; and was told that
nature protracted the days in summer, lest ladies should want time to
walk in the park; and the nights in winter, lest they should not have
hours sufficient to spend at the card-table.

I hope you do not doubt but I heard such information with just contempt,
and I desire you to discover to this great master of ridicule, that I
was far from wanting any intelligence which he could have given me. I
asked the question with no other intention than to set him free from the
necessity of silence, and give him an opportunity of mingling on equal
terms with a polite assembly, from which, however uneasy, he could not
then escape, by a kind introduction of the only subject on which I
believed him able to speak with propriety.

I am, &c.

GENEROSA.



No. 127. TUESDAY, JUNE 4, 1751.

  _Capisti meliust, quam desinis. Ultima primis
  Cedunt: dissimiles hic vir et ille puer_.    Ovid. Ep. ix. 24.

  Succeeding years thy early fame destroy;
  Thou, who began'st a man, wilt end a boy.

Politian, a name eminent among the restorers of polite literature, when
he published a collection of epigrams, prefixed to many of them the year
of his age at which they were composed. He might design, by this
information, either to boast the early maturity of his genius, or to
conciliate indulgence to the puerility of his performances. But whatever
was his intent, it is remarked by Scaliger, that he very little promoted
his own reputation, because he fell below the promise which his first
productions had given, and, in the latter part of his life, seldom
equalled the sallies of his youth.

It is not uncommon for those who, at their first entrance into the
world, were distinguished for attainments or abilities, to disappoint
the hopes which they had raised, and to end in neglect and obscurity
that life which they began in celebrity and honour. To the long
catalogue of the inconveniencies of old age, which moral and satirical
writers have so copiously displayed, may be often added the loss of
fame.

The advance of the human mind towards any object of laudable pursuit,
may be compared to the progress of a body driven by a blow. It moves,
for a time, with great velocity and vigour, but the force of the first
impulse is perpetually decreasing, and though it should encounter no
obstacle capable of quelling it by a sudden stop, the resistance of the
medium through which it passes, and the latent inequalities of the
smoothest surface, will, in a short time, by continued retardation,
wholly overpower it. Some hindrances will be found in every road of
life, but he that fixes his eyes upon any thing at a distance,
necessarily loses sight of all that fills up the intermediate space, and
therefore sets forward with alacrity and confidence, nor suspects a
thousand obstacles, by which he afterwards finds his passage embarrassed
and obstructed. Some are indeed stopt at once in their career by a
sudden shock of calamity, or diverted to a different direction by the
cross impulse of some violent passion; but far the greater part languish
by slow degrees, deviate at first into slight obliquities, and
themselves scarcely perceive at what time their ardour forsook them, or
when they lost sight of their original design.

Weariness and negligence are perpetually prevailing by silent
encroachments, assisted by different causes, and not observed till they
cannot, without great difficulty, be opposed. Labour necessarily
requires pauses of ease and relaxation, and the deliciousness of ease
commonly makes us unwilling to return to labour. We, perhaps, prevail
upon ourselves to renew our attempts, but eagerly listen to every
argument for frequent interpositions of amusement; for, when indolence
has once entered upon the mind, it can scarcely be dispossessed but by
such efforts as very few are willing to exert.

It is the fate of industry to be equally endangered by miscarriage and
success, by confidence and despondency. He that engages in a great
undertaking, with a false opinion of its facility, or too high
conceptions of his own strength, is easily discouraged by the first
hindrance of his advances, because he had promised himself an equal and
perpetual progression without impediment or disturbance; when unexpected
interruptions break in upon him, he is in the state of a man surprised
by a tempest, where he purposed only to bask in the calm, or sport in
the shallows.

It is not only common to find the difficulty of an enterprize greater,
but the profit less, than hope had pictured it. Youth enters the world
with very happy prejudices in her own favour. She imagines herself not
only certain of accomplishing every adventure, but of obtaining those
rewards which the accomplishment may deserve. She is not easily
persuaded to believe that the force of merit can be resisted by
obstinacy and avarice, or its lustre darkened by envy and malignity. She
has not yet learned that the most evident claims to praise or preferment
may be rejected by malice against conviction, or by indolence without
examination; that they may be sometimes defeated by artifices, and
sometimes overborne by clamour; that, in the mingled numbers of mankind,
many need no other provocation to enmity than that they find themselves
excelled; that others have ceased their curiosity, and consider every
man who fills the mouth of report with a new name, as an intruder upon
their retreat, and disturber of their repose; that some are engaged in
complications of interest which they imagine endangered by every
innovation; that many yield themselves up implicitly to every report
which hatred disseminates or folly scatters; and that whoever aspires to
the notice of the publick, has in almost every man an enemy and a rival;
and must struggle with the opposition of the daring, and elude the
stratagems of the timorous, must quicken the frigid and soften the
obdurate, must reclaim perverseness and inform stupidity.

It is no wonder that when the prospect of reward has vanished, the zeal
of enterprize should cease; for who would persevere to cultivate the
soil which he has, after long labour, discovered to be barren? He who
hath pleased himself with anticipated praises, and expected that he
should meet in every place with patronage or friendship, will soon remit
his vigour, when he finds that, from those who desire to be considered
as his admirers, nothing can be hoped but cold civility, and that many
refuse to own his excellence, lest they should be too justly expected to
reward it.

A man, thus cut off from the prospect of that port to which his address
and fortitude had been employed to steer him, often abandons himself to
chance and to the wind, and glides careless and idle down the current of
life, without resolution to make another effort, till he is swallowed up
by the gulph of mortality.

Others are betrayed to the same desertion of themselves by a contrary
fallacy. It was said of Hannibal, that he wanted nothing to the
completion of his martial virtues, but that when he had gained a victory
he should know how to use it. The folly of desisting too soon from
successful labours, and the haste of enjoying advantages before they are
secured, are often fatal to men of impetuous desire, to men whose
consciousness of uncommon powers fills them with presumption, and who,
having borne opposition down before them, and left emulation panting
behind, are early persuaded to imagine that they have reached the
heights of perfection, and that now, being no longer in danger from
competitors, they may pass the rest of their days in the enjoyment of
their acquisitions, in contemplation of their own superiority, and in
attention to their own praises, and look unconcerned from their eminence
upon the toils and contentions of meaner beings.

It is not sufficiently considered in the hour of exultation, that all
human excellence is comparative; that no man performs much but in
proportion to what others accomplish, or to the time and opportunities
which have been allowed him; and that he who stops at any point of
excellence is every day sinking in estimation, because his improvement
grows continually more incommensurate to his life. Yet, as no man
willingly quits opinions favourable to himself, they who have once been
justly celebrated, imagine that they still have the same pretensions to
regard, and seldom perceive the diminution of their character while
there is time to recover it. Nothing then remains but murmurs and
remorse; for if the spendthrift's poverty be embittered by the
reflection that he once was rich, how must the idler's obscurity be
clouded by remembering that he once had lustre!

These errours all arise from an original mistake of the true motives of
action. He that never extends his view beyond the praises or rewards of
men will be dejected by neglect and envy, or infatuated by honours and
applause. But the consideration that life is only deposited in his hands
to be employed in obedience to a Master who will regard his endeavours,
not his success, would have preserved him from trivial elations and
discouragements, and enabled him to proceed with constancy and
cheerfulness, neither enervated by commendation, nor intimidated by
censure.



No. 128. SATURDAY, JUNE 8, 1751.

  [Greek:
    Aion d asphalaes
  Ouk egent, out Aiakida para Paelei,
  Oute par antitheo
  Kadmo legontai man broton
  Olbon hupertaton hoi
  Schein.] PIND. Py. iii. 153.

  For not the brave, or wise, or great,
  E'er yet had happiness complete:
  Nor Peleus, grandson of the sky,
    Nor Cadmus, scap'd the shafts of pain,
  Though favour'd by the Pow'rs on high,
    With every bliss that man can gain.

The writers who have undertaken the task of reconciling mankind to their
present state, and relieving the discontent produced by the various
distribution of terrestrial advantages, frequently remind us that we
judge too hastily of good and evil, that we view only the superfices of
life, and determine of the whole by a very small part; and that in the
condition of men it frequently happens, that grief and anxiety lie hid
under the golden robes of prosperity, and the gloom of calamity is
cheered by secret radiations of hope and comfort; as in the works of
nature the bog is sometimes covered with flowers, and the mine concealed
in the barren crags.

None but those who have learned the art of subjecting their senses as
well as reason to hypothetical systems, can be persuaded by the most
specious rhetorician that the lots of life are equal; yet it cannot be
denied that every one has his peculiar pleasures and vexations, that
external accidents operate variously upon different minds, and that no
man can exactly judge from his own sensations, what another would feel
in the same circumstances.

If the general disposition of things be estimated by the representation
which every one makes of his own estate, the world must be considered as
the abode of sorrow and misery; for how few can forbear to relate their
troubles and distresses? If we judge by the account which may be
obtained of every man's fortune from others, it may be concluded, that
we all are placed in an elysian region, overspread with the luxuriance
of plenty, and fanned by the breezes of felicity; since scarcely any
complaint is uttered without censure from those that hear it, and almost
all are allowed to have obtained a provision at least adequate to their
virtue or their understanding, to possess either more than they deserve,
or more than they enjoy.

We are either born with such dissimilitude of temper and inclination, or
receive so many of our ideas and opinions from the state of life in
which we are engaged, that the griefs and cares of one part of mankind
seem to the other hypocrisy, folly, and affectation. Every class of
society has its cant of lamentation, which is understood or regarded by
none but themselves; and every part of life has its uneasiness, which
those who do not feel them will not commiserate. An event which spreads
distraction over half the commercial world, assembles the trading
companies in councils and committees, and shakes the nerves of a
thousand stockjobbers, is read by the landlord and the farmer with
frigid indifference. An affair of love, which fills the young breast
with incessant alternations of hope and fear, and steals away the night
and day from every other pleasure or employment, is regarded by them
whose passions time has extinguished, as an amusement, which can
properly raise neither joy nor sorrow, and, though it may be suffered to
fill the vacuity of an idle moment, should always give way to prudence
or interest.

He that never had any other desire than to fill a chest with money, or
to add another manor to his estate, who never grieved but at a bad
mortgage, or entered a company but to make a bargain, would be
astonished to hear of beings known among the polite and gay by the
denomination of wits. How would he gape with curiosity, or grin with
contempt, at the mention of beings who have no wish but to speak what
was never spoken before; who, if they happen to inherit wealth, often
exhaust their patrimonies in treating those who will hear them talk; and
if they are poor, neglect opportunities of improving their fortunes, for
the pleasure of making others laugh? How slowly would he believe that
there are men who would rather lose a legacy than the reputation of a
distich; who think it less disgrace to want money than repartee; whom
the vexation of having been foiled in a contest of raillery is sometimes
sufficient to deprive of sleep; and who would esteem it a lighter evil
to miss a profitable bargain by some accidental delay, than not to have
thought of a smart reply till the time of producing it was past? How
little would he suspect that this child of idleness and frolick enters
every assembly with a beating bosom, like a litigant on the day of
decision, and revolves the probability of applause with the anxiety of a
conspirator, whose fate depends upon the next night; that at the hour of
retirement he carries home, under a show of airy negligence, a heart
lacerated with envy, or depressed with disappointment; and immures
himself in his closet, that he may disencumber his memory at leisure,
review the progress of the day, state with accuracy his loss or gain of
reputation, and examine the causes of his failure or success?

Yet more remote from common conceptions are the numerous and restless
anxieties, by which female happiness is particularly disturbed. A
solitary philosopher would imagine ladies born with an exemption from
care and sorrow, lulled in perpetual quiet, and feasted with unmingled
pleasure; for what can interrupt the content of those, upon whom one age
has laboured after another to confer honours, and accumulate immunities;
those to whom rudeness is infamy, and insult is cowardice; whose eye
commands the brave, and whose smiles soften the severe; whom the sailor
travels to adorn, the soldier bleeds to defend, and the poet wears out
life to celebrate; who claim tribute from every art and science, and for
whom all who approach them endeavour to multiply delights, without
requiring from them any returns but willingness to be pleased?

Surely, among these favourites of nature, thus unacquainted with toil
and danger, felicity must have fixed her residence; they must know only
the changes of more vivid or more gentle joys: their life must always
move either to the slow or sprightly melody of the lyre of gladness;
they can never assemble but to pleasure, or retire but to peace.

Such would be the thoughts of every man who should hover at a distance
round the world, and know it only by conjecture and speculation. But
experience will soon discover how easily those are disgusted who have
been made nice by plenty and tender by indulgence. He will soon see to
how many dangers power is exposed which has no other guard than youth
and beauty, and how easily that tranquillity is molested which can only
be soothed with the songs of flattery. It is impossible to supply wants
as fast as an idle imagination may be able to form them, or to remove
all inconveniencies by which elegance refined into impatience may be
offended. None are so hard to please, as those whom satiety of pleasure
makes weary of themselves; nor any so readily provoked as those who have
been always courted with an emulation of civility.

There are, indeed, some strokes which the envy of fate aims immediately
at the fair. The mistress of Catullus wept for her sparrow many
centuries ago, and lapdogs will be sometimes sick in the present age.
The most fashionable brocade is subject to stains; a pinner, the pride
of Brussels, may be torn by a careless washer; a picture may drop from a
watch; or the triumph of a new suit may be interrupted on the first day
of its enjoyment, and all distinctions of dress unexpectedly obliterated
by a general mourning.

Such is the state of every age, every sex, and every condition: all have
their cares, either from nature or from folly: and whoever therefore
finds himself inclined to envy another, should remember that he knows
not the real condition which he desires to obtain, but is certain that
by indulging a vicious passion, he must lessen that happiness which he
thinks already too sparingly bestowed.



No. 129. TUESDAY, JUNE 11. 1751.

  _--Nunc, O nunc, Daedale, dixit,
    Materiam, qua sis ingeniosus, habes.
  Possidet en terras, et possidet aequara, Minos:
    Nec tellus nostrae, nec patet undo fugae.
  Restat iter coelo: tentabimus ire.
    Da veniam caepto, Jupiter alte, meo. OVID. Ar. Am. Lib. ii. 33_.

  Now, Daedalus, behold, by fate assign'd,
  A task proportion'd to thy mighty mind!
  Unconquer'd bars on earth and sea withstand;
  Thine, Minos, is the main, and thine the land.
  The skies are open--let us try the skies:
  Forgive, great Jove, the daring enterprize.

Moralists, like other writers, instead of casting their eyes abroad in
the living world, and endeavouring to form maxims of practice and new
hints of theory, content their curiosity with that secondary knowledge
which books afford, and think themselves entitled to reverence by a new
arrangement of an ancient system, or new illustration of established
principles[e]. The sage precepts of the first instructors of the world
are transmitted from age to age with little variation, and echoed from
one author to another, not perhaps without some loss of their original
force at every repercussion.

I know not whether any other reason than this idleness of imitation can
be assigned for that uniform and constant partiality, by which some
vices have hitherto escaped censure, and some virtues wanted
recommendation; nor can I discover why else we have been warned only
against part of our enemies, while the rest have been suffered to steal
upon us without notice; why the heart has on one side been doubly
fortified, and laid open on the other to the incursions of errour, and
the ravages of vice.

Among the favourite topicks of moral declamation, may be numbered the
miscarriages of imprudent boldness, and the folly of attempts beyond our
power. Every page of every philosopher is crowded with examples of
temerity that sunk under burdens which she laid upon herself, and called
out enemies to battle by whom she was destroyed.

Their remarks are too just to be disputed, and too salutary to be
rejected; but there is likewise some danger lest timorous prudence
should be inculcated, till courage and enterprise are wholly repressed,
and the mind congealed in perpetual inactivity by the fatal influence of
frigorifick wisdom.

Every man should, indeed, carefully compare his force with his
undertaking; for though we ought not to live only for our own sakes, and
though therefore danger or difficulty should not be avoided merely
because we may expose ourselves to misery or disgrace; yet it may be
justly required of us, not to throw away our lives upon inadequate and
hopeless designs, since we might, by a just estimate of our abilities,
become more useful to mankind.

There is an irrational contempt of danger, which approaches nearly to
the folly, if not the guilt of suicide; there is a ridiculous
perseverance in impracticable schemes, which is justly punished with
ignominy and reproach. But in the wide regions of probability, which are
the proper province of prudence and election, there is always room to
deviate on either side of rectitude without rushing against apparent
absurdity; and according to the inclinations of nature, or the
impressions of precept, the daring and the cautious may move in
different directions without touching upon rashness or cowardice.

That there is a middle path which it is every man's duty to find, and to
keep, is unanimously confessed: but it is likewise acknowledged that
this middle path is so narrow, that it cannot easily be discovered, and
so little beaten, that there are no certain marks by which it can be
followed: the care, therefore, of all those who conduct others has been,
that whenever they decline into obliquities, they should tend towards
the side of safety.

It can, indeed, raise no wonder that temerity has been generally
censured; for it is one of the vices with which few can be charged, and
which therefore, great numbers are ready to condemn. It is the vice of
noble and generous minds, the exuberance of magnanimity, and the
ebullition of genius; and is therefore not regarded with much
tenderness, because it never flatters us by that appearance of softness
and imbecility which is commonly necessary to conciliate compassion. But
if the same attention had been applied to the search of arguments
against the folly of pre-supposing impossibilities, and anticipating
frustration, I know not whether many would not have been roused to
usefulness, who, having been taught to confound prudence with timidity,
never ventured to excel, lest they should unfortunately fail.

It is necessary to distinguish our own interest from that of others, and
that distinction will perhaps assist us in fixing the just limits of
caution and adventurousness. In an undertaking that involves the
happiness or the safety of many, we have certainly no right to hazard
more than is allowed by those who partake the danger; but where only
ourselves can suffer by miscarriage, we are not confined within such
narrow limits; and still less is the reproach of temerity, when numbers
will receive advantage by success, and only one be incommoded by
failure.

Men are generally willing to hear precepts by which ease is favoured;
and as no resentment is raised by general representations of human
folly, even in those who are most eminently jealous of comparative
reputation, we confess, without reluctance, that vain man is ignorant of
his own weakness, and therefore frequently presumes to attempt what he
can never accomplish; but it ought likewise to be remembered, that man
is no less ignorant of his own powers, and might perhaps have
accomplished a thousand designs, which the prejudices of cowardice
restrained him from attempting.

It is observed in the golden verses of Pythagoras, that "Power is never
far from necessity." The vigour of the human mind quickly appears, when
there is no longer any place for doubt and hesitation, when diffidence
is absorbed in the sense of danger, or overwhelmed by some resistless
passion. We then soon discover, that difficulty is, for the most part,
the daughter of idleness, that the obstacles with which our way seemed
to be obstructed were only phantoms, which we believed real, because we
durst not advance to a close examination; and we learn that it is
impossible to determine without experience how much constancy may
endure, or perseverance perform.

But whatever pleasure may be found in the review of distresses when art
or courage has surmounted them, few will be persuaded to wish that they
may be awakened by want, or terrour, to the conviction of their own
abilities. Every one should therefore endeavour to invigorate himself by
reason and reflection, and determine to exert the latent force that
nature may have reposed in him, before the hour of exigence comes upon
him, and compulsion shall torture him to diligence. It is below the
dignity of a reasonable being to owe that strength to necessity which
ought always to act at the call of choice, or to need any other motive
to industry than the desire of performing his duty.

Reflections that may drive away despair, cannot be wanting to him who
considers how much life is now advanced beyond the state of naked,
undisciplined, uninstructed nature. Whatever has been effected for
convenience or elegance, while it was yet unknown, was believed
impossible; and therefore would never have been attempted, had not some,
more daring than the rest, adventured to bid defiance to prejudice and
censure. Nor is there yet any reason to doubt that the same labour would
be rewarded with the same success. There are qualities in the products
of nature yet undiscovered, and combinations in the powers of art yet
untried. It is the duty of every man to endeavour that something may be
added by his industry to the hereditary aggregate of knowledge and
happiness. To add much can indeed be the lot of few, but to add
something, however little, every one may hope; and of every honest
endeavour, it is certain, that, however unsuccessful, it will be at last
rewarded.

[Footnote e: Johnson gained _his_ knowledge from actual experience. He
told Boswell that before he wrote the Rambler he had been running about
the world more than almost any body. Boswell's Life of Johnson, vol. i.
p. 196.; and vol. iii. pp. 20, 21.]



No. 130. SATURDAY, JUNE 15, 1751.

  Non sic prata novo vere decentia
  Æstatis calidtæ dispoliat vapor:
  Sævit solstitio cum medius dies;--
  Ut fulgor teneris qui radiat genis
  Momento rapitur! nullaque non dies
  Formosi spolium corporis abstulit.
  Res est forma fugax: quis sapiens bono
  Confidat fragili? SENECA, Hippol. act. ii. 764.

  Not faster in the summer's ray
  The spring's frail beauty fades away,
  Than anguish and decay consume
  The smiling virgin's rosy bloom.
  Some beauty's snatch'd each day, each hour;
  For beauty is a fleeting flow'r:
  Then how can wisdom e'er confide
  In beauty's momentary pride? ELPHINSTON

TO THE RAMBLER.

SIR,

You have very lately observed that in the numerous subdivisions of the
world, every class and order of mankind have joys and sorrows of their
own; we all feel hourly pain and pleasure from events which pass
unheeded before other eyes, but can scarcely communicate our perceptions
to minds pre-occupied by different objects, any more than the delight of
well-disposed colours or harmonious sounds can be imparted to such as
want the senses of hearing or of sight.

I am so strongly convinced of the justness of this remark, and have on
so many occasions discovered with how little attention pride looks upon
calamity of which she thinks herself not in danger, and indolence
listens to complaint when it is not echoed by her own remembrance, that
though I am about to lay the occurrences of my life before you, I
question whether you will condescend to peruse my narrative, or, without
the help of some female speculatists, to be able to understand it.

I was born a beauty. From the dawn of reason I had my regard turned
wholly upon myself, nor can recollect any thing earlier than praise and
admiration. My mother, whose face had luckily advanced her to a
condition above her birth, thought no evil so great as deformity. She
had not the power of imagining any other defect than a cloudy
complexion, or disproportionate features; and therefore contemplated me
as an assemblage of all that could raise envy or desire, and predicted
with triumphant fondness the extent of my conquests, and the number of
my slaves.

She never mentioned any of my young acquaintance before me, but to
remark how much they fell below my perfection; how one would have had a
fine face, but that her eyes were without lustre; how another struck the
sight at a distance, but wanted my hair and teeth at a nearer view;
another disgraced an elegant shape with a brown skin; some had short
fingers, and others dimples in a wrong place.

As she expected no happiness nor advantage but from beauty, she thought
nothing but beauty worthy of her care; and her maternal kindness was
chiefly exercised in contrivances to protect me from any accident that
might deface me with a scar, or stain me with a freckle: she never
thought me sufficiently shaded from the sun, or screened from the fire.
She was severe or indulgent with no other intention than the
preservation of my form; she excused me from work, lest I should learn
to hang down my head, or harden my finger with a needle; she snatched
away my book, because a young lady in the neighbourhood had made her
eyes red with reading by a candle; but she would scarcely suffer me to
eat, lest I should spoil my shape, nor to walk lest I should swell my
ancle with a sprain. At night I was accurately surveyed from head to
foot, lest I should have suffered any diminution of my charms in the
adventures of the day; and was never permitted to sleep, till I had
passed through the cosmetick discipline, part of which was a regular
lustration performed with bean-flower water and May-dews; my hair was
perfumed with variety of unguents, by some of which it was to be
thickened, and by others to be curled. The softness of my hands was
secured by medicated gloves, and my bosom rubbed with a pomade prepared
by my mother, of virtue to discuss pimples, and clear discolorations.

I was always called up early, because the morning air gives a freshness
to the cheeks; but I was placed behind a curtain in my mother's chamber,
because the neck is easily tanned by the rising sun. I was then dressed
with a thousand precautions, and again heard my own praises, and
triumphed in the compliments and prognostications of all that approached
me.

My mother was not so much prepossessed with an opinion of my natural
excellencies as not to think some cultivation necessary to their
completion. She took care that I should want none of the accomplishments
included in female education, or considered necessary in fashionable
life. I was looked upon in my ninth year as the chief ornament of the
dancing-master's ball; and Mr. Ariet used to reproach his other scholars
with my performances on the harpsichord. At twelve I was remarkable for
playing my cards with great elegance of manner, and accuracy of
judgment.

At last the time came when my mother thought me perfect in my exercises,
and qualified to display in the open world those accomplishments which
had yet only been discovered in select parties, or domestick assemblies.
Preparations were therefore made for my appearance on a publick night,
which she considered as the most important and critical moment of my
life. She cannot be charged with neglecting any means of recommendation,
or leaving any thing to chance which prudence could ascertain. Every
ornament was tried in every position, every friend was consulted about
the colour of my dress, and the mantua-makers were harassed with
directions and alterations.

At last the night arrived from which my future life was to be reckoned.
I was dressed and sent out to conquer, with a heart beating like that of
an old knight-errant at his first sally. Scholars have told me of a
Spartan matron, who, when she armed her son for battle, bade him bring
back his shield, or be brought upon it. My venerable parent dismissed me
to a field, in her opinion of equal glory, with a command to shew that I
was her daughter, and not to return without a lover.

I went, and was received like other pleasing novelties with a tumult of
applause. Every man who valued himself upon the graces of his person, or
the elegance of his address, crowded about me, and wit and splendour
contended for my notice. I was delightfully fatigued with incessant
civilities, which were made more pleasing by the apparent envy of those
whom my presence exposed to neglect, and returned with an attendant
equal in rank and wealth to my utmost wishes, and from this time stood
in the first rank of beauty, was followed by gazers in the Mall,
celebrated in the papers of the day, imitated by all who endeavoured to
rise into fashion, and censured by those whom age or disappointment
forced to retire.

My mother, who pleased herself with the hopes of seeing my exaltation,
dressed me with all the exuberance of finery; and when I represented to
her that a fortune might be expected proportionate to my appearance,
told me that she should scorn the reptile who could inquire after the
fortune of a girl like me. She advised me to prosecute my victories, and
time would certainly bring me a captive who might deserve the honour of
being enchained for ever.

My lovers were indeed so numerous, that I had no other care than that of
determining to whom I should seem to give the preference. But having
been steadily and industriously instructed to preserve my heart from any
impressions which might hinder me from consulting my interest, I acted
with less embarrassment, because my choice was regulated by principles
more clear and certain than the caprice of approbation. When I had
singled out one from the rest as more worthy of encouragement, I
proceeded in my measures by the rules of art; and yet when the ardour of
the first visits was spent, generally found a sudden declension of my
influence; I felt in myself the want of some power to diversify
amusement, and enliven conversation, and could not but suspect that my
mind failed in performing the promises of my face. This opinion was soon
confirmed by one of my lovers, who married Lavinia with less beauty and
fortune than mine, because he thought a wife ought to have qualities
which might make her amiable when her bloom was past.

The vanity of my mother would not suffer her to discover any defect in
one that had been formed by her instructions, and had all the excellence
which she herself could boast. She told me that nothing so much hindered
the advancement of women as literature and wit, which generally
frightened away those that could make the best settlements, and drew
about them a needy tribe of poets and philosophers, that filled their
heads with wild notions of content, and contemplation, and virtuous
obscurity. She therefore enjoined me to improve my minuet-step with a
new French dancing-master, and wait the event of the next birth-night.

I had now almost completed my nineteenth year: if my charms had lost any
of their softness, it was more than compensated by additional dignity;
and if the attractions of innocence were impaired, their place was
supplied by the arts of allurement. I was therefore preparing for a new
attack, without any abatement of my confidence, when, in the midst of my
hopes and schemes, I was seized by that dreadful malady which has so
often put a sudden end to the tyranny of beauty. I recovered my health
after a long confinement; but when I looked again on that face which had
been often flushed with transport at its own reflection, and saw all
that I had learned to value, all that I had endeavoured to improve, all
that had procured me honours or praises, irrecoverably destroyed, I sunk
at once into melancholy and despondence. My pain was not much consoled
or alleviated by my mother, who grieved that I had not lost my life
together with my beauty; and declared, that she thought a young woman
divested of her charms had nothing for which those who loved her could
desire to save her from the grave.

Having thus continued my relation to the period from which my life took
a new course, I shall conclude it in another letter, if, by publishing
this, you shew any regard for the correspondence of,

Sir, &c.

VICTORIA.



No. 131. TUESDAY, JUNE 18, 1751.

    _--Fatis accede, Deisque,
  Et cole felices, miseros fuge. sidera terrae
  Ut distant, ut flamma mari, sic utile recto_. LUCAN. Lib. viii. 486.
[Transcriber's note: punctuation in original.]

  Still follow where auspicious fates invite;
  Caress the happy, and the wretched slight.
  Sooner shall jarring elements unite,
  Than truth with gain, than interest with right. F. LEWIS.

There is scarcely any sentiment in which, amidst the innumerable
varieties of inclination that nature or accident have scattered in the
world, we find greater numbers concurring, than in the wish for riches;
a wish, indeed, so prevalent that it may be considered as universal and
transcendental, as the desire in which all other desires are included,
and of which the various purposes which actuate mankind are only
subordinate species and different modifications.

Wealth is the general centre of inclination, the point to which all
minds preserve an invariable tendency, and from which they afterwards
diverge in numberless directions. Whatever is the remote or ultimate
design, the immediate care is to be rich; and in whatever enjoyment we
intend finally to acquiesce, we seldom consider it as attainable but by
the means of money. Of wealth therefore all unanimously confess the
value, nor is there any disagreement but about the use.

No desire can be formed which riches do not assist to gratify. He that
places his happiness in splendid equipage or numerous dependants, in
refined praise or popular acclamations, in the accumulation of
curiosities or the revels of luxury, in splendid edifices or wide
plantations, must still, either by birth or acquisition, possess riches.
They may be considered as the elemental principles of pleasure, which
may be combined with endless diversity; as the essential and necessary
substance, of which only the form is left to be adjusted by choice.

The necessity of riches being thus apparent, it is not wonderful that
almost every mind has been employed in endeavours to acquire them; that
multitudes have vied in arts by which life is furnished with
accommodations, and which therefore mankind may reasonably be expected
to reward.

It had, indeed, been happy, if this predominant appetite had operated
only in concurrence with virtue, by influencing none but those who were
zealous to deserve what they were eager to possess, and had abilities to
improve their own fortunes by contributing to the ease or happiness of
others. To have riches and to have merit would then have been the same,
and success might reasonably have been considered as a proof of
excellence.

But we do not find that any of the wishes of men keep a stated
proportion to their powers of attainment. Many envy and desire wealth,
who can never procure it by honest industry or useful knowledge. They
therefore turn their eyes about to examine what other methods can be
found of gaining that which none, however impotent or worthless, will be
content to want.

A little inquiry will discover that there are nearer ways to profit than
through the intricacies of art, or up the steeps of labour; what wisdom
and virtue scarcely receive at the close of life, as the recompense of
long toil and repeated efforts, is brought within the reach of subtilty
and dishonesty by more expeditious and compendious measures: the wealth
of credulity is an open prey to falsehood; and the possessions of
ignorance and imbecility are easily stolen away by the conveyances of
secret artifice, or seized by the gripe of unresisted violence.

It is likewise not hard to discover that riches always procure
protection for themselves, that they dazzle the eyes of inquiry, divert
the celerity of pursuit, or appease the ferocity of vengeance. When any
man is incontestably known to have large possessions, very few think it
requisite to inquire by what practices they were obtained; the
resentment of mankind rages only against the struggles of feeble and
timorous corruption, but when it has surmounted the first opposition, it
is afterwards supported by favour, and animated by applause.

The prospect of gaining speedily what is ardently desired, and the
certainty of obtaining by every accession of advantage an addition of
security, have so far prevailed upon the passions of mankind, that the
peace of life is destroyed by a general and incessant struggle for
riches. It is observed of gold, by an old epigrammatist, that "To have
it is to be in fear, and to want it is to be in sorrow." There is no
condition which is not disquieted either with the care of gaining or of
keeping money; and the race of man may be divided in a political
estimate between those who are practising fraud, and those who are
repelling it.

If we consider the present state of the world, it will be found, that
all confidence is lost among mankind, that no man ventures to act, where
money can be endangered upon the faith of another. It is impossible to
see the long scrolls in which every contract is included, with all their
appendages of seals and attestation, without wondering at the depravity
of those beings, who must be restrained from violation of promise by
such formal and publick evidences, and precluded from equivocation and
subterfuge by such punctilious minuteness. Among all the satires to
which folly and wickedness have given occasion, none is equally severe
with a bond or a settlement.

Of the various arts by which riches may be obtained, the greater part
are at the first view irreconcileable with the laws of virtue; some are
openly flagitious, and practised not only in neglect, but in defiance of
faith and justice; and the rest are on every side so entangled with
dubious tendencies, and so beset with perpetual temptations, that very
few, even of those who are not yet abandoned, are able to preserve their
innocence, or can produce any other claim to pardon than that they
deviated from the right less than others, and have sooner and more
diligently endeavoured to return.

One of the chief characteristicks of the golden age, of the age in which
neither care nor danger had intruded on mankind, is the community of
possessions: strife and fraud were totally excluded, and every turbulent
passion was stilled by plenty and equality. Such were indeed happy
times, but such times can return no more. Community of possession must
include spontaneity of production; for what is obtained by labour will
be of right the property of him by whose labour it is gained. And while
a rightful claim to pleasure or to affluence must be procured either by
slow industry or uncertain hazard, there will always be multitudes whom
cowardice or impatience incite to more safe and more speedy methods, who
strive to pluck the fruit without cultivating the tree, and to share the
advantages of victory without partaking the danger of the battle. In
later ages, the conviction of the danger to which virtue is exposed
while the mind continues open to the influence of riches, has determined
many to vows of perpetual poverty; they have suppressed desire by
cutting off the possibility of gratification, and secured their peace by
destroying the enemy whom they had no hope of reducing to quiet
subjection. But, by debarring themselves from evil, they have rescinded
many opportunities of good; they have too often sunk into inactivity and
uselessness; and, though they have forborne to injure society, have not
fully paid their contributions to its happiness.

While riches are so necessary to present convenience, and so much more
easily obtained by crimes than virtues, the mind can only be secured
from yielding to the continual impulse of covetousness by the
preponderation of unchangeable and eternal motives. Gold will turn the
intellectual balance, when weighed only against reputation; but will be
light and ineffectual when the opposite scale is charged with justice,
veracity, and piety[f].



No. 132. SATURDAY, JUNE 22, 1751.

  --_Dociles imitandis
  Turpibus ac pravis omnes sumus_.--JUV. Sat. xiv. 40.

  The mind of mortals, in perverseness strong,
  Imbibes with dire docility the wrong.

TO THE RAMBLER.

MR. RAMBLER,

I was bred a scholar, and after the usual course of education, found it
necessary to employ for the support of life that learning which I had
almost exhausted my little fortune in acquiring. The lucrative
professions drew my regard with equal attraction; each presented ideas
which excited my curiosity, and each imposed duties which terrified my
apprehension.

There is no temper more unpropitious to interest than desultory
application and unlimited inquiry, by which the desires are held in a
perpetual equipoise, and the mind fluctuates between different purposes
without determination. I had books of every kind round me, among which I
divided my time as caprice or accident directed. I often spent the first
hours of the day, in considering to what study I should devote the rest,
and at last snatched up any author that lay upon the table, or perhaps
fled to a coffee-house for deliverance from the anxiety of irresolution,
and the gloominess of solitude.

Thus my little patrimony grew imperceptibly less, till I was roused from
my literary slumber by a creditor, whose importunity obliged me to
pacify him with so large a sum, that what remained was not sufficient to
support me more than eight months. I hope you will not reproach me with
avarice or cowardice, if I acknowledge that I now thought myself in
danger of distress, and obliged to endeavour after some certain
competence.

There have been heroes of negligence, who have laid the price of their
last acre in a drawer, and, without the least interruption of their
tranquillity, or abatement of their expenses, taken out one piece after
another, till there was no more remaining. But I was not born to such
dignity of imprudence, or such exaltation above the cares and
necessities of life; I therefore immediately engaged my friends to
procure me a little employment, which might set me free from the dread
of poverty, and afford me time to plan out some final scheme of lasting
advantage.

My friends were struck with honest solicitude, and immediately promised
their endeavours for my extrication. They did not suffer their kindness
to languish by delay, but prosecuted their inquiries with such success,
that in less than a month I was perplexed with variety of offers and
contrariety of prospects.

I had however no time for long pauses of consideration; and therefore
soon resolved to accept the office of instructing a young nobleman in
the house of his father: I went to the seat at which the family then
happened to reside, was received with great politeness, and invited to
enter immediately on my charge. The terms offered were such as I should
willingly have accepted, though my fortune had allowed me greater
liberty of choice: the respect with which I was treated, flattered my
vanity; and perhaps the splendour of the apartments, and the luxury of
the table, were not wholly without their influence. I immediately
complied with the proposals, and received the young lord into my care.

Having no desire to gain more than I should truly deserve, I very
diligently prosecuted my undertaking, and had the satisfaction of
discovering in my pupil a flexible temper, a quick apprehension, and a
retentive memory. I did not much doubt that my care would, in time,
produce a wise and useful counsellor to the state, though my labours
were somewhat obstructed by want of authority, and the necessity of
complying with the freaks of negligence, and of waiting patiently for
the lucky moment of voluntary attention. To a man whose imagination was
filled with the dignity of knowledge, and to whom a studious life had
made all the common amusements insipid and contemptible, it was not very
easy to suppress his indignation, when he saw himself forsaken in the
midst of his lecture, for an opportunity to catch an insect, and found
his instructions debarred from access to the intellectual faculties, by
the memory of a childish frolick, or the desire of a new play-thing.

Those vexations would have recurred less frequently, had not his mamma,
by entreating at one time that he should be excused from a task as a
reward for some petty compliance, and withholding him from his book at
another, to gratify herself or her visitants with his vivacity, shewn
him that every thing was more pleasing and more important than
knowledge, and that study was to be endured rather than chosen, and was
only the business of those hours which pleasure left vacant, or
discipline usurped.

I thought it my duty to complain, in tender terms, of these frequent
avocations; but was answered, that rank and fortune might reasonably
hope for some indulgence; that the retardation of my pupil's progress
would not be imputed to any negligence or inability of mine; and that
with the success which satisfied every body else, I might surely satisfy
myself. I had now done my duty, and without more remonstrances continued
to inculcate my precepts whenever they could be heard, gained every day
new influence, and found that by degrees my scholar began to feel the
quick impulses of curiosity, and the honest ardour of studious ambition.

At length it was resolved to pass a winter in London. The lady had too
much fondness for her son to live five months without him, and too high
an opinion of his wit and learning to refuse her vanity the
gratification of exhibiting him to the publick. I remonstrated against
too early an acquaintance with cards and company; but, with a soft
contempt of my ignorance and pedantry, she said, that he had been
already confined too long to solitary study, and it was now time to shew
him the world; nothing was more a brand of meanness than bashful
timidity; gay freedom and elegant assurance were only to be gained by
mixed conversation, a frequent intercourse with strangers, and a timely
introduction to splendid assemblies; and she had more than once
observed, that his forwardness and complaisance began to desert him,
that he was silent when he had not something of consequence to say,
blushed whenever he happened to find himself mistaken, and hung down his
head in the presence of the ladies, without the readiness of reply, and
activity of officiousness, remarkable in young gentlemen that are bred
in London.

Again I found resistance hopeless, and again thought it proper to
comply. We entered the coach, and in four days were placed in the gayest
and most magnificent region of the town. My pupil, who had for several
years lived at a remote seat, was immediately dazzled with a thousand
beams of novelty and shew. His imagination was filled with the perpetual
tumult of pleasure that passed before him, and it was impossible to
allure him from the window, or to overpower by any charm of eloquence
the rattle of coaches, and the sounds which echoed from the doors in the
neighbourhood. In three days his attention, which he began to regain,
was disturbed by a rich suit, in which he was equipped for the reception
of company, and which, having been long accustomed to a plain dress, he
could not at first survey without ecstacy.

The arrival of the family was now formally notified; every hour of every
day brought more intimate or more distant acquaintances to the door; and
my pupil was indiscriminately introduced to all, that he might accustom
himself to change of faces, and be rid with speed of his rustick
diffidence. He soon endeared himself to his mother by the speedy
acquisition or recovery of her darling qualities; his eyes sparkle at a
numerous assembly, and his heart dances at the mention of a ball. He has
at once caught the infection of high life, and has no other test of
principles or actions than the quality of those to whom they are
ascribed. He begins already to look down on me with superiority, and
submits to one short lesson in a week, as an act of condescension rather
than obedience; for he is of opinion, that no tutor is properly
qualified who cannot speak French; and having formerly learned a few
familiar phrases from his sister's governess, he is every day soliciting
his mamma to procure him a foreign footman, that he may grow polite by
his conversation. I am not yet insulted, but find myself likely to
become soon a superfluous incumbrance, for my scholar has now no time
for science, or for virtue; and the lady yesterday declared him so much
the favourite of every company, that she was afraid he would not have an
hour in the day to dance and fence.

I am, &c.

EUMATHES.

[Footnote f: Johnson often conversed, as well as wrote, on riches. In
his conversations on the subject, amidst his often indulged laxity of
talk, there was ever a deep insight into the human heart. "All the
arguments," he once with keen satire remarked, "which are brought to
represent poverty as no evil, shew it to be evidently a great evil. You
never find people _labouring_ to convince you that you may live happily
upon a plentiful fortune. So you hear people talking how miserable a
king must be, and yet they all wish to be in his place." _Boswell_ vol.
i. p. 422.

When Simonides was asked whether it were better to be wise or rich, he
gave an answer in favour of wealth. "For," said he, "I always behold the
wise lingering at the gates of the wealthy." Aristot. Rhet. ii. 18.]



No. 133. TUESDAY, JUNE 25, 1751.

  _Magna quidem, sacris quæ dat præcepta libellis
  Victrix fortune sapientia. Dicimus autem
  Hos quoque felices, qui ferre incommoda vitæ,
  Nec jactare jugum, vita didicere magistra._ Juv. Sat. xiii. 19.

  Let Stoicks ethicks' haughty rules advance
  To combat fortune, and to conquer chance:
  Yet happy those, though not so learn'd are thought,
  Whom life instructs, who by experience taught,
  For new to come from past misfortunes look,
  Nor shake the yoke, which galls the more 'tis shook. CREECH.

TO THE RAMBLER.

SIR,

You have shewn, by the publication of my letter, that you think the
life of Victoria not wholly unworthy of the notice of a philosopher: I
shall therefore continue my narrative, without any apology for
unimportance which you have dignified, or for inaccuracies which you are
to correct.

When my life appeared to be no longer in danger, and as much of my
strength was recovered as enabled me to bear the agitation of a coach, I
was placed at a lodging in a neighbouring village, to which my mother
dismissed me with a faint embrace, having repeated her command not to
expose my face too soon to the sun or wind, and told me that with care I
might perhaps become tolerable again. The prospect of being tolerable
had very little power to elevate the imagination of one who had so long
been accustomed to praise and ecstacy; but it was some satisfaction to
be separated from my mother, who was incessantly ringing the knell of
departed beauty, and never entered my room without the whine of
condolence, or the growl of anger. She often wandered over my face, as
travellers over the ruins of a celebrated city, to note every place
which had once been remarkable for a happy feature. She condescended to
visit my retirement, but always left me more melancholy; for after a
thousand trifling inquiries about my diet, and a minute examination of
my looks, she generally concluded with a sigh, that I should never more
be fit to be seen.

At last I was permitted to return home, but found no great improvement
of my condition; for I was imprisoned in my chamber as a criminal, whose
appearance would disgrace my friends, and condemn me to be tortured into
new beauty. Every experiment which the officiousness of folly could
communicate, or the credulity of ignorance admit, was tried upon me.
Sometimes I was covered with emollients, by which it was expected that
all the scars would be filled, and my cheeks plumped up to their former
smoothness; and sometimes I was punished with artificial excoriations,
in hopes of gaining new graces with a new skin. The cosmetick science
was exhausted upon me; but who can repair the ruins of nature? My mother
was forced to give me rest at last, and abandon me to the fate of a
fallen toast, whose fortune she considered as a hopeless game, no longer
worthy of solicitude or attention.

The condition of a young woman who has never thought or heard of any
other excellence than beauty, and whom the sudden blast of disease
wrinkles in her bloom, is indeed sufficiently calamitous. She is at once
deprived of all that gave her eminence or power; of all that elated her
pride, or animated her activity; all that filled her days with pleasure,
and her nights with hope; all that gave gladness to the present hour, or
brightened her prospects of futurity. It is perhaps not in the power of
a man whose attention has been divided by diversity of pursuits, and who
has not been accustomed to derive from others much of his happiness, to
image to himself such helpless destitution, such dismal inanity. Every
object of pleasing contemplation is at once snatched away, and the soul
finds every receptacle of ideas empty, or filled only with the memory of
joys that can return no more. All is gloomy privation, or impotent
desire; the faculties of anticipation slumber in despondency, or the
powers of pleasure mutiny for employment.

I was so little able to find entertainment for myself, that I was forced
in a short time to venture abroad as the solitary savage is driven by
hunger from his cavern. I entered with all the humility of disgrace into
assemblies, where I had lately sparkled with gaiety, and towered with
triumph. I was not wholly without hope, that dejection had
misrepresented me to myself, and that the remains of my former face
might yet have some attraction and influence; but the first circle of
visits convinced me, that my reign was at an end; that life and death
were no longer in my hands; that I was no more to practise the glance of
command, or the frown of prohibition; to receive the tribute of sighs
and praises, or be soothed with the gentle murmurs of amorous timidity.
My opinion was now unheard, and my proposals were unregarded; the
narrowness of my knowledge, and the meanness of my sentiments, were
easily discovered, when the eyes were no longer engaged against the
judgment; and it was observed, by those who had formerly been charmed
with my vivacious loquacity, that my understanding was impaired as well
as my face, and that I was no longer qualified to fill a place in any
company but a party at cards.

It is scarcely to be imagined how soon the mind sinks to a level with
the condition. I, who had long considered all who approached me as
vassals condemned to regulate their pleasures by my eyes, and harass
their inventions for my entertainment, was in less than three weeks
reduced to receive a ticket with professions of obligation; to catch
with eagerness at a compliment; and to watch with all the anxiousness of
dependance, lest any little civility that was paid me should pass
unacknowledged.

Though the negligence of the men was not very pleasing when compared
with vows and adoration, yet it was far more supportable than the
insolence of my own sex. For the first ten months after my return into
the world, I never entered a single house in which the memory of my
downfall was not revived. At one place I was congratulated on my escape
with life; at another I heard of the benefits of early inoculation; by
some I have been told in express terms, that I am not yet without my
charms; others have whispered at my entrance, This is the celebrated
beauty. One told me of a wash that would smooth the skin; and another
offered me her chair that I might not front the light. Some soothed me
with the observation that none can tell how soon my case may be her own;
and some thought it proper to receive me with mournful tenderness,
formal condolence, and consolatory blandishments.

Thus was I every day harassed with all the stratagems of well-bred
malignity; yet insolence was more tolerable than solitude, and I
therefore persisted to keep my time at the doors of my acquaintance,
without gratifying them with any appearance of resentment or depression.
I expected that their exultation would in time vapour away; that the joy
of their superiority would end with its novelty; and that I should be
suffered to glide along in my present form among the nameless multitude,
whom nature never intended to excite envy or admiration, nor enabled to
delight the eye or inflame the heart.

This was naturally to be expected, and this I began to experience. But
when I was no longer agitated by the perpetual ardour of resistance, and
effort of perseverance, I found more sensibly the want of those
entertainments which had formerly delighted me; the day rose upon me
without an engagement; and the evening closed in its natural gloom,
without summoning me to a concert or a ball. None had any care to find
amusements for me, and I had no power of amusing myself. Idleness
exposed me to melancholy, and life began to languish in motionless
indifference.

Misery and shame are nearly allied. It was not without many struggles
that I prevailed on myself to confess my uneasiness to Euphemia, the
only friend who had never pained me with comfort or with pity. I at last
laid my calamities before her, rather to ease my heart, than receive
assistance. "We must distinguish," said she, "my Victoria, those evils
which are imposed by Providence, from those to which we ourselves give
the power of hurting us. Of your calamity, a small part is the
infliction of Heaven, the rest is little more than the corrosion of idle
discontent. You have lost that which may indeed sometimes contribute to
happiness, but to which happiness is by no means inseparably annexed.
You have lost what the greater number of the human race never have
possessed; what those on whom it is bestowed for the most part possess
in vain; and what you, while it was yours, knew not how to use: you have
only lost early what the laws of nature forbid you to keep long, and
have lost it while your mind is yet flexible, and while you have time to
substitute more valuable and more durable excellencies. Consider
yourself, my Victoria, as a being born to know, to reason, and to act;
rise at once from your dream of melancholy to wisdom and to piety; you
will find that there are other charms than those of beauty, and other
joys than the praise of fools."

I am, Sir, &c.

VICTORIA.



No. 134. SATURDAY, JUNE 29, 1751.

  _Quis scit an adjiciant hodiernae crastina summae
  Tempora Dii superi?_ HOR. Lib. iv. Ode vii. 16.

  Who knows if Heav'n, with ever-bounteous pow'r,
  Shall add to-morrow to the present hour? FRANCIS.

I sat yesterday morning employed in deliberating on which, among the
various subjects that occurred to my imagination, I should bestow the
paper of to-day. After a short effort of meditation by which nothing was
determined, I grew every moment more irresolute, my ideas wandered from
the first intention, and I rather wished to think, than thought upon any
settled subject; till at last I was awakened from this dream of study by
a summons from the press; the time was now come for which I had been
thus negligently purposing to provide, and, however dubious or sluggish,
I was now necessitated to write.

Though to a writer whose design is so comprehensive and miscellaneous,
that he may accommodate himself with a topick from every scene of life,
or view of nature, it is no great aggravation of his task to be obliged
to a sudden composition; yet I could not forbear to reproach myself for
having so long neglected what was unavoidably to be done, and of which
every moment's idleness increased the difficulty. There was however some
pleasure in reflecting that I, who had only trifled till diligence was
necessary, might still congratulate myself upon my superiority to
multitudes, who have trifled till diligence is vain; who can by no
degree of activity or resolution recover the opportunities which have
slipped away; and who are condemned by their own carelessness to
hopeless calamity and barren sorrow.

The folly of allowing ourselves to delay what we know cannot be finally
escaped, is one of the general weaknesses, which, in spite of the
instruction of moralists, and the remonstrances of reason, prevail to a
greater or less degree in every mind; even they who most steadily
withstand it, find it, if not the most violent, the most pertinacious of
their passions, always renewing its attacks, and though often
vanquished, never destroyed.

It is indeed natural to have particular regard to the time present, and
to be most solicitous for that which is by its nearness enabled to make
the strongest impressions. When therefore any sharp pain is to be
suffered, or any formidable danger to be incurred, we can scarcely
exempt ourselves wholly from the seducements of imagination; we readily
believe that another day will bring some support or advantage which we
now want; and are easily persuaded, that the moment of necessity which
we desire never to arrive, is at a great distance from us.

Thus life is languished away in the gloom of anxiety, and consumed in
collecting resolutions which the next morning dissipates; in forming
purposes which we scarcely hope to keep, and reconciling ourselves to
our own cowardice by excuses, which, while we admit them, we know to be
absurd. Our firmness is by the continual contemplation of misery, hourly
impaired; every submission to our fear enlarges its dominion; we not
only waste that time in which the evil we dread might have been suffered
and surmounted, but even where procrastination produces no absolute
increase of our difficulties, make them less superable to ourselves by
habitual terrours. When evils cannot be avoided, it is wise to contract
the interval of expectation; to meet the mischiefs which will overtake
us if we fly; and suffer only their real malignity, without the
conflicts of doubt, and anguish of anticipation.

To act is far easier than to suffer; yet we every day see the progress
of life retarded by the _vis inertiae_, the mere repugnance to motion,
and find multitudes repining at the want of that which nothing but
idleness hinders them from enjoying. The case of Tantalus, in the region
of poetick punishment, was somewhat to be pitied, because the fruits
that hung about him retired from his hand; but what tenderness can be
claimed by those who, though perhaps they suffer the pains of Tantalus,
will never lift their hands for their own relief?

There is nothing more common among this torpid generation than murmurs
and complaints; murmurs at uneasiness which only vacancy and suspicion
expose them to feel, and complaints of distresses which it is in their
own power to remove. Laziness is commonly associated with timidity.
Either fear originally prohibits endeavours by infusing despair of
success; or the frequent failure of irresolute struggles, and the
constant desire of avoiding labour, impress by degrees false terrours on
the mind. But fear, whether natural or acquired, when once it has full
possession of the fancy, never fails to employ it upon visions of
calamity, such as, if they are not dissipated by useful employment, will
soon overcast it with horrours, and embitter life not only with those
miseries by which all earthly beings are really more or less tormented,
but with those which do not yet exist, and which can only be discerned
by the perspicacity of cowardice.

Among all who sacrifice future advantage to present inclination,
scarcely any gain so little as those that suffer themselves to freeze in
idleness. Others are corrupted by some enjoyment of more or less power
to gratify the passions; but to neglect our duties, merely to avoid the
labour of performing them, a labour which is always punctually rewarded,
is surely to sink under weak temptations. Idleness never can secure
tranquillity; the call of reason and of conscience will pierce the
closest pavilion of the sluggard, and though it may not have force to
drive him from his down, will be loud enough to hinder him from sleep.
Those moments which he cannot resolve to make useful, by devoting them
to the great business of his being, will still be usurped by powers that
will not leave them to his disposal; remorse and vexation will seize
upon them, and forbid him to enjoy what he is so desirous to
appropriate.

There are other causes of inactivity incident to more active faculties
and more acute discernment. He to whom many objects of pursuit arise at
the same time, will frequently hesitate between different desires, till
a rival has precluded him, or change his course as new attractions
prevail, and harass himself without advancing. He who sees different
ways to the same end, will, unless he watches carefully over his own
conduct, lay out too much of his attention upon the comparison of
probabilities, and the adjustment of expedients, and pause in the choice
of his road till some accident intercepts his journey. He whose
penetration extends to remote consequences, and who, whenever he applies
his attention to any design, discovers new prospects of advantage, and
possibilities of improvement, will not easily be persuaded that his
project is ripe for execution; but will superadd one contrivance to
another, endeavour to unite various purposes in one operation, multiply
complications, and refine niceties, till he is entangled in his own
scheme, and bewildered in the perplexity of various intentions. He that
resolves to unite all the beauties of situation in a new purchase, must
waste his life in roving to no purpose from province to province. He
that hopes in the same house to obtain every convenience, may draw plans
and study Palladio, but will never lay a stone. He will attempt a
treatise on some important subject, and amass materials, consult
authors, and study all the dependant and collateral parts of learning,
but never conclude himself qualified to write. He that has abilities to
conceive perfection, will not easily be content without it; and since
perfection cannot be reached, will lose the opportunity of doing well in
the vain hope of unattainable excellence.

The certainty that life cannot be long, and the probability that it will
be much shorter than nature allows, ought to awaken every man to the
active prosecution of whatever he is desirous to perform. It is true,
that no diligence can ascertain success; death may intercept the
swiftest career; but he who is cut off in the execution of an honest
undertaking, has at least the honour of falling in his rank, and has
fought the battle though he missed the victory.



No. 135. TUESDAY, JULY 2, 1751.

  Coelum, non animum, mutant. HOR. Lib. i. Ep. xi. 27.

  Place may be chang'd; but who can change his mind?

It is impossible to take a view on any side, or observe any of the
various classes that form the great community of the world, without
discovering the influence of example; and admitting with new conviction
the observation of Aristotle, that _man is an imitative being_. The
greater, far the greater number, follow the track which others have
beaten, without any curiosity after new discoveries, or ambition of
trusting themselves to their own conduct. And, of those who break the
ranks and disorder the uniformity of the march, most return in a short
time from their deviation, and prefer the equal and steady satisfaction
of security before the frolicks of caprice and the honours of adventure.

In questions difficult or dangerous it is indeed natural to repose upon
authority, and, when fear happens to predominate, upon the authority of
those whom we do not in general think wiser than ourselves. Very few
have abilities requisite for the discovery of abstruse truth; and of
those few some want leisure, and some resolution. But it is not so easy
to find the reason of the universal submission to precedent where every
man might safely judge for himself; where no irreparable loss can be
hazarded, nor any mischief of long continuance incurred. Vanity might be
expected to operate where the more powerful passions are not awakened;
the mere pleasure of acknowledging no superior might produce slight
singularities, or the hope of gaining some new degree of happiness
awaken the mind to invention or experiment.

If in any case the shackles of prescription could be wholly shaken off,
and the imagination left to act without control, on what occasion should
it be expected, but in the selection of lawful pleasure? Pleasure, of
which the essence is choice; which compulsion dissociates from every
thing to which nature has united it; and which owes not only its vigour
but its being to the smiles of liberty. Yet we see that the senses, as
well as the reason, are regulated by credulity; and that most will feel,
or say that they feel, the gratifications which others have taught them
to expect.

At this time of universal migration, when almost every one, considerable
enough to attract regard, has retired, or is preparing with all the
earnestness of distress to retire, into the country; when nothing is to
be heard but the hopes of speedy departure, or the complaints of
involuntary delay; I have often been tempted to inquire what happiness
is to be gained, or what inconvenience to be avoided, by this stated
recession? Of the birds of passage, some follow the summer and some the
winter, because they live upon sustenance which only summer or winter
can supply; but of the annual flight of human rovers it is much harder
to assign the reason, because they do not appear either to find or seek
any thing which is not equally afforded by the town and country.

I believe that many of these fugitives may have heard of men whose
continual wish was for the quiet of retirement, who watched every
opportunity to steal away from observation, to forsake the crowd, and
delight themselves with _the society of solitude_. There is indeed
scarcely any writer who has not celebrated the happiness of rural
privacy, and delighted himself and his reader with the melody of birds,
the whisper of groves, and the murmur of rivulets; nor any man eminent
for extent of capacity, or greatness of exploits, that has not left
behind him some memorials of lonely wisdom, and silent dignity.

But almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those
whom we cannot resemble. Those who thus testified their weariness of
tumult and hurry, and hasted with so much eagerness to the leisure of
retreat, were either men overwhelmed with the pressure of difficult
employments, harassed with importunities, and distracted with
multiplicity; or men wholly engrossed by speculative sciences, who
having no other end of life but to learn and teach, found their searches
interrupted by the common commerce of civility, and their reasonings
disjointed by frequent interruptions. Such men might reasonably fly to
that ease and convenience which their condition allowed them to find
only in the country. The statesman who devoted the greater part of his
time to the publick, was desirous of keeping the remainder in his own
power. The general, ruffled with dangers, wearied with labours, and
stunned with acclamations, gladly snatched an interval of silence and
relaxation. The naturalist was unhappy where the works of Providence
were not always before him. The reasoner could adjust his systems only
where his mind was free from the intrusion of outward objects.

Such examples of solitude very few of those who are now hastening from
the town, have any pretensions to plead in their own justification,
since they cannot pretend either weariness of labour, or desire of
knowledge. They purpose nothing more than to quit one scene of idleness
for another, and after having trifled in publick, to sleep in secrecy.
The utmost that they can hope to gain is the change of ridiculousness to
obscurity, and the privilege of having fewer witnesses to a life of
folly. He who is not sufficiently important to be disturbed in his
pursuits, but spends all his hours according to his own inclination, and
has more hours than his mental faculties enable him to fill either with
enjoyment or desires, can have nothing to demand of shades and valleys.
As bravery is said to be a panoply, insignificancy is always a shelter.

There are, however, pleasures and advantages in a rural situation, which
are not confined to philosophers and heroes. The freshness of the air,
the verdure of the woods, the paint of the meadows, and the unexhausted
variety which summer scatters upon the earth, may easily give delight to
an unlearned spectator. It is not necessary that he who looks with
pleasure on the colours of a flower should study the principles of
vegetation, or that the Ptolemaick and Copernican system should be
compared before the light of the sun can gladden, or its warmth
invigorate. Novelty is itself a source of gratification; and Milton
justly observes, that to him who has been long pent up in cities, no
rural object can be presented, which will not delight or refresh some of
his senses.

Yet even these easy pleasures are missed by the greater part of those
who waste their summer in the country. Should any man pursue his
acquaintances to their retreats, he would find few of them listening to
Philomel, loitering in woods, or plucking daisies, catching the healthy
gale of the morning, or watching the gentle coruscations of declining
day. Some will be discovered at a window by the road side, rejoicing
when a new cloud of dust gathers towards them, as at the approach of a
momentary supply of conversation, and a short relief from the
tediousness of unideal vacancy. Others are placed in the adjacent
villages, where they look only upon houses as in the rest of the year,
with no change of objects but what a remove to any new street in London
might have given them. The same set of acquaintances still settle
together, and the form of life is not otherwise diversified than by
doing the same things in a different place. They pay and receive visits
in the usual form, they frequent the walks in the morning, they deal
cards at night, they attend to the same tattle, and dance with the same
partners; nor can they, at their return to their former habitation,
congratulate themselves on any other advantage, than that they have
passed their time like others of the same rank; and have the same right
to talk of the happiness and beauty of the country, of happiness which
they never felt, and beauty which they never regarded.

To be able to procure its own entertainments, and to subsist upon its
own stock, is not the prerogative of every mind. There are indeed
understandings so fertile and comprehensive, that they can always feed
reflection with new supplies, and suffer nothing from the preclusion of
adventitious amusements; as some cities have within their own walls
enclosed ground enough to feed their inhabitants in a siege. But others
live only from day to day, and must be constantly enabled, by foreign
supplies, to keep out the encroachments of languor and stupidity. Such
could not indeed be blamed for hovering within reach of their usual
pleasure, more than any other animal for not quitting its native
element, were not their faculties contracted by their own fault. But let
not those who go into the country, merely because they dare not be left
alone at home, boast their love of nature, or their qualifications for
solitude; nor pretend that they receive instantaneous infusions of
wisdom from the Dryads, and are able, when they leave smoke and noise
behind, to act, or think, or reason for themselves.



No. 136. SATURDAY, JULY 6, 1751.

  [Greek: Echthrus gar moi keimos, omos aidao pulusin,
  Os ch eteron men keuthei eni phresin, allo de bazei.]
  HOMER, [Greek: I'.] 313.

  Who dares think one thing, and another tell,
  My heart detests him as the gates of Hell. POPE.

The regard which they whose abilities are employed in the works of
imagination claim from the rest of mankind, arises in a great measure
from their influence on futurity. Rank may be conferred by princes, and
wealth bequeathed by misers or by robbers; but the honours of a lasting
name, and the veneration of distant ages, only the sons of learning have
the power of bestowing. While therefore it continues one of the
characteristicks of rational nature to decline oblivion, authors never
can be wholly overlooked in the search after happiness, nor become
contemptible but by their own fault.

The man who considers himself as constituted the ultimate judge of
disputable characters, and entrusted with the distribution of the last
terrestrial rewards of merit, ought to summon all his fortitude to the
support of his integrity, and resolve to discharge an office of such
dignity with the most vigilant caution and scrupulous justice. To
deliver examples to posterity, and to regulate the opinion of future
times, is no slight or trivial undertaking; nor is it easy to commit
more atrocious treason against the great republick of humanity, than by
falsifying its records and misguiding its decrees.

To scatter praise or blame without regard to justice, is to destroy the
distinction of good and evil. Many have no other test of actions than
general opinion; and all are so far influenced by a sense of reputation,
that they are often restrained by fear of reproach, and excited by hope
of honour, when other principles have lost their power; nor can any
species of prostitution promote general depravity more than that which
destroys the force of praise, by shewing that it may be acquired without
deserving it, and which, by setting free the active and ambitious from
the dread of infamy, lets loose the rapacity of power, and weakens the
only authority by which greatness is controlled.

Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity. It
becomes cheap as it becomes vulgar, and will no longer raise
expectation, or animate enterprise. It is therefore not only necessary,
that wickedness, even when it is not safe to censure it, be denied
applause, but that goodness be commended only in proportion to its
degree; and that the garlands, due to the great benefactors of mankind,
be not suffered to fade upon the brow of him who can boast only petty
services and easy virtues.

Had these maxims been universally received, how much would have been
added to the task of dedication, the work on which all the power of
modern wit has been exhausted. How few of these initial panegyricks had
appeared, if the author had been obliged first to find a man of virtue,
then to distinguish the distinct species and degree of his desert, and
at last to pay him only the honours which he might justly claim. It is
much easier to learn the name of the last man whom chance has exalted to
wealth and power, to obtain by the intervention of some of his
domesticks the privilege of addressing him, or, in confidence of the
general acceptance of flattery, to venture on an address without any
previous solicitation; and after having heaped upon him all the virtues
to which philosophy had assigned a name, inform him how much more might
be truly said, did not the fear of giving pain to his modesty repress
the raptures of wonder and the zeal of veneration.

Nothing has so much degraded literature from its natural rank, as the
practice of indecent and promiscuous dedication; for what credit can he
expect who professes himself the hireling of vanity, however profligate,
and without shame or scruple, celebrates the worthless, dignifies the
mean, and gives to the corrupt, licentious, and oppressive, the
ornaments which ought only to add grace to truth, and loveliness to
innocence? Every other kind of adulation, however shameful, however
mischievous, is less detestable than the crime of counterfeiting
characters, and fixing the stamp of literary sanction upon the dross and
refuse of the world.

Yet I would not overwhelm the authors with the whole load of infamy, of
which part, perhaps the greater part, ought to fall upon their patrons.
If he that hires a bravo, partakes the guilt of murder, why should he
who bribes a flatterer, hope to be exempted from the shame of falsehood?
The unhappy dedicator is seldom without some motives which obstruct,
though not destroy, the liberty of choice; he is oppressed by miseries
which he hopes to relieve, or inflamed by ambition which he expects to
gratify. But the patron has no incitements equally violent; he can
receive only a short gratification, with which nothing but stupidity
could dispose him to be pleased. The real satisfaction which praise can
afford is by repeating aloud the whispers of conscience, and by shewing
us that we have not endeavoured to deserve well in vain. Every other
encomium is, to an intelligent mind, satire and reproach; the
celebration of those virtues which we feel ourselves to want, can only
impress a quicker sense of our own defects, and shew that we have not
yet satisfied the expectations of the world, by forcing us to observe
how much fiction must contribute to the completion of our character.

Yet sometimes the patron may claim indulgence; for it does not always
happen, that the encomiast has been much encouraged to his attempt. Many
a hapless author, when his book, and perhaps his dedication, was ready
for the press, has waited long before any one would pay the price of
prostitution, or consent to hear the praises destined to insure his name
against the casualties of time; and many a complaint has been vented
against the decline of learning, and neglect of genius, when either
parsimonious prudence has declined expense, or honest indignation
rejected falsehood. But if at last, after long inquiry and innumerable
disappointments, he find a lord willing to hear of his own eloquence and
taste, a statesman desirous of knowing how a friendly historian will
represent his conduct, or a lady delighted to leave to the world some
memorial of her wit and beauty, such weakness cannot be censured as an
instance of enormous depravity. The wisest man may, by a diligent
solicitor, be surprised in the hour of weakness, and persuaded to solace
vexation, or invigorate hope, with the musick of flattery.

To censure all dedications as adulatory and servile, would discover
rather envy than justice. Praise is the tribute of merit, and he that
has incontestably distinguished himself by any publick performance, has
a right to all the honours which the publick can bestow. To men thus
raised above the rest of the community, there is no need that the book
or its author should have any particular relation; that the patron is
known to deserve respect, is sufficient to vindicate him that pays it.
To the same regard from particular persons, private virtue and less
conspicuous excellence may be sometimes entitled. An author may with
great propriety inscribe his work to him by whose encouragement it was
undertaken, or by whose liberality he has been enabled to prosecute it,
and he may justly rejoice in his own fortitude that dares to rescue
merit from obscurity.

  _Acribus exemplis videor te claudere: misce
  Ergo aliquid nostris de moribus.--_

  Thus much I will indulge thee for thy ease,
  And mingle something of our times to please.   Dryden, jun.

I know not whether greater relaxation may not he indulged, and whether
hope as well as gratitude may not unblamably produce a dedication; but
let the writer who pours out his praises only to propitiate power, or
attract the attention of greatness, be cautious lest his desire betray
him to exuberant eulogies. We are naturally more apt to please ourselves
with the future than the past, and while we luxuriate in expectation,
may be easily persuaded to purchase what we yet rate, only by
imagination, at a higher price than experience will warrant.

But no private views of personal regard can discharge any man from his
general obligations to virtue and to truth. It may happen in the various
combinations of life, that a good man may receive favours from one, who,
notwithstanding his accidental beneficence, cannot be justly proposed to
the imitation of others, and whom therefore he must find some other way
of rewarding than by public celebrations. Self-love has indeed many
powers of seducement; but it surely ought not to exalt any individual to
equality with the collective body of mankind, or persuade him that a
benefit conferred on him is equivalent to every other virtue. Yet many,
upon false principles of gratitude, have ventured to extol wretches,
whom all but their dependents numbered among the reproaches of the
species, and whom they would likewise have beheld with the same scorn,
had they not been hired to dishonest approbation.

To encourage merit with praise is the great business of literature; but
praise must lose its influence, by unjust or negligent distribution; and
he that impairs its value may be charged with misapplication of the
power that genius puts into his hands, and with squandering on guilt the
recompense of virtue.



No. 137. TUESDAY, JULY 9, 1751.

  _Dum vitant stulti vitia, in contraria currunt_.
  Hor. Lib. i. Sat. ii. 24.

  --Whilst fools one vice condemn,
  They run into the opposite extreme. CREECH.

That wonder is the effect of ignorance, has been often observed. The
awful stillness of attention, with which the mind is overspread at the
first view of an unexpected effect, ceases when we have leisure to
disentangle complications and investigate causes. Wonder is a pause of
reason, a sudden cessation of the mental progress, which lasts only
while the understanding is fixed upon some single idea, and is at an end
when it recovers force enough to divide the object into its parts, or
mark the intermediate gradations from the first agent to the last
consequence.

It may be remarked with equal truth, that ignorance is often the effect
of wonder. It is common for those who have never accustomed themselves
to the labour of inquiry, nor invigorated their confidence by conquests
over difficulty, to sleep in the gloomy quiescence of astonishment,
without any effort to animate inquiry, or dispel obscurity. What they
cannot immediately conceive, they consider as too high to be reached, or
too extensive to be comprehended; they therefore content themselves with
the gaze of folly, forbear to attempt what they have no hopes of
performing, and resign the pleasure of rational contemplation to more
pertinacious study, or more active faculties.

Among the productions of mechanick art, many are of a form so different
from that of their first materials, and many consist of parts so
numerous and so nicely adapted to each other, that it is not possible to
view them without amazement. But when we enter the shops of artificers,
observe the various tools by which every operation is facilitated, and
trace the progress of a manufacture through the different hands, that,
in succession to each other, contribute to its perfection, we soon
discover that every single man has an easy task, and that the extremes,
however remote, of natural rudeness and artificial elegance, are joined
by a regular concatenation of effects, of which every one is introduced
by that which precedes it, and equally introduces that which is to
follow.

The same is the state of intellectual and manual performances. Long
calculations or complex diagrams affright the timorous and unexperienced
from a second view; but if we have skill sufficient to analyze them into
simple principles, it will be discovered that our fear was groundless.
_Divide and conquer_, is a principle equally just in science as in
policy. Complication is a species of confederacy, which, while it
continues united, bids defiance to the most active and vigorous
intellect; but of which every member is separately weak, and which may
therefore be quickly subdued, if it can once be broken.

The chief art of learning, as Locke has observed, is to attempt but
little at a time. The widest excursions of the mind are made by short
flights frequently repeated; the most lofty fabricks of science are
formed by the continued accumulation of single propositions.

It often happens, whatever be the cause, that impatience of labour, or
dread of miscarriage, seizes those who are most distinguished for
quickness of apprehension; and that they who might with greatest reason
promise themselves victory, are least willing to hazard the encounter.
This diffidence, where the attention is not laid asleep by laziness, or
dissipated by pleasures, can arise only from confused and general views,
such as negligence snatches in haste, or from the disappointment of the
first hopes formed by arrogance without reflection. To expect that the
intricacies of science will be pierced by a careless glance, or the
eminences of fame ascended without labour, is to expect a particular
privilege, a power denied to the rest of mankind; but to suppose that
the maze is inscrutable to diligence, or the heights inaccessible to
perseverance, is to submit tamely to the tyranny of fancy, and enchain
the mind in voluntary shackles.

It is the proper ambition of the heroes in literature to enlarge the
boundaries of knowledge by discovering and conquering new regions of the
intellectual world. To the success of such undertakings perhaps some
degree of fortuitous happiness is necessary, which no man can promise or
procure to himself; and therefore doubt and irresolution may be forgiven
in him that ventures into the unexplored abysses of truth, and attempts
to find his way through the fluctuations of uncertainty, and the
conflicts of contradiction. But when nothing more is required, than to
pursue a path already beaten, and to trample obstacles which others have
demolished, why should any man so much distrust his own intellect as to
imagine himself unequal to the attempt?

It were to be wished that they who devote their lives to study would at
once believe nothing too great for their attainment, and consider
nothing as too little for their regard; that they would extend their
notice alike to science and to life, and unite some knowledge of the
present world to their acquaintance with past ages and remote events.

Nothing has so much exposed men of learning to contempt and ridicule, as
their ignorance of things which are known to all but themselves. Those
who have been taught to consider the institutions of the schools, as
giving the last perfection to human abilities, are surprised to see men
wrinkled with study, yet wanting to be instructed in the minute
circumstances of propriety, or the necessary forms of daily transaction;
and quickly shake off their reverence for modes of education, which they
find to produce no ability above the rest of mankind.

"Books," says Bacon, "can never teach the use of books." The student
must learn by commerce with mankind to reduce his speculations to
practice, and accommodate his knowledge to the purposes of life.

It is too common for those who have been bred to scholastick
professions, and passed much of their time in academies where nothing
but learning confers honours, to disregard every other qualification,
and to imagine that they shall find mankind ready to pay homage to their
knowledge, and to crowd about them for instruction. They therefore step
out from their cells into the open world with all the confidence of
authority and dignity of importance; they look round about them at once
with ignorance and scorn on a race of beings to whom they are equally
unknown and equally contemptible, but whose manners they must imitate,
and with whose opinions they must comply, if they desire to pass their
time happily among them.

To lessen that disdain with which scholars are inclined to look on the
common business of the world, and the unwillingness with which they
condescend to learn what is not to be found in any system of philosophy,
it may be necessary to consider that though admiration is excited by
abstruse researches and remote discoveries, yet pleasure is not given,
nor affection conciliated, but by softer accomplishments, and qualities
more easily communicable to those about us. He that can only converse
upon questions, about which only a small part of mankind has knowledge
sufficient to make them curious, must lose his days in unsocial silence,
and live in the crowd of life without a companion. He that can only be
useful on great occasions, may die without exerting his abilities, and
stand a helpless spectator of a thousand vexations which fret away
happiness, and which nothing is required to remove but a little
dexterity of conduct and readiness of expedients.

No degree of knowledge attainable by man is able to set him above the
want of hourly assistance, or to extinguish the desire of fond
endearments, and tender officiousness; and therefore, no one should
think it unnecessary to learn those arts by which friendship may be
gained. Kindness is preserved by a constant reciprocation of benefits or
interchange of pleasures; but such benefits only can be bestowed, as
others are capable to receive, and such pleasures only imparted, as
others are qualified to enjoy.

By this descent from the pinnacles of art no honour will be lost; for
the condescensions of learning are always overpaid by gratitude. An
elevated genius employed in little things, appears, to use the simile of
Longinus, like the sun in his evening declination: he remits his
splendour but retains his magnitude, and pleases more though he dazzles
less.



No. 138. SATURDAY, JULY 13, 1751.

  _O tantum libeat mecum tibi sordida rura,
  Atque humiles habitare casas, et figere cervos_. VIRG. EC. ii 28.

  With me retire, and leave the pomp of courts
  For humble cottages and rural sports.

TO THE RAMBLER.

SIR,

Though the contempt with which you have treated the annual migrations of
the gay and busy part of mankind is justified by daily observation;
since most of those who leave the town, neither vary their
entertainments nor enlarge their notions; yet I suppose you do not
intend to represent the practice itself as ridiculous, or to declare
that he whose condition puts the distribution of his time into his own
power may not properly divide it between the town and country.

That the country, and only the country, displays the inexhaustible
varieties of nature, and supplies the philosophical mind with matter for
admiration and inquiry, never was denied; but my curiosity is very
little attracted by the colour of a flower, the anatomy of an insect, or
the structure of a nest; I am generally employed upon human manners, and
therefore fill up the months of rural leisure with remarks on those who
live within the circle of my notice. If writers would more frequently
visit those regions of negligence and liberty, they might diversify
their representations, and multiply their images, for in the country are
original characters chiefly to be found. In cities, and yet more in
courts, the minute discriminations which distinguish one from another
are for the most part effaced, the peculiarities of temper and opinion
are gradually worn away by promiscuous converse, as angular bodies and
uneven surfaces lose their points and asperities by frequent attrition
against one another, and approach by degrees to uniform rotundity. The
prevalence of fashion, the influence of example, the desire of applause,
and the dread of censure, obstruct the natural tendencies of the mind,
and check the fancy in its first efforts to break forth into experiments
of caprice.

Few inclinations are so strong as to grow up into habits, when they must
struggle with the constant opposition of settled forms and established
customs. But in the country every man is a separate and independent
being: solitude flatters irregularity with hopes of secrecy; and wealth,
removed from the mortification of comparison, and the awe of equality,
swells into contemptuous confidence, and sets blame and laughter at
defiance; the impulses of nature act unrestrained, and the disposition
dares to shew itself in its true form, without any disguise of
hypocrisy, or decorations of elegance. Every one indulges the full
enjoyment of his own choice, and talks and lives with no other view than
to please himself, without inquiring how far he deviates from the
general practice, or considering others as entitled to any account of
his sentiments or actions. If he builds or demolishes, opens or
encloses, deluges or drains, it is not his care what may be the opinion
of those who are skilled in perspective or architecture, it is
sufficient that he has no landlord to controul him, and that none has
any right to examine in what projects the lord of the manour spends his
own money on his own grounds.

For this reason it is not very common to want subjects for rural
conversation. Almost every man is daily doing something which produces
merriment, wonder, or resentment, among his neighbours. This utter
exemption from restraint leaves every anomalous quality to operate in
its full extent, and suffers the natural character to diffuse itself to
every part of life. The pride which, under the check of publick
observation, would have been only vented among servants and domesticks,
becomes in a country baronet the torment of a province, and instead of
terminating in the destruction of China-ware and glasses, ruins tenants,
dispossesses cottagers, and harasses villages with actions of trespass
and bills of indictment.

It frequently happens that, even without violent passions, or enormous
corruption, the freedom and laxity of a rustick life produces remarkable
particularities of conduct or manner. In the province where I now
reside, we have one lady eminent for wearing a gown always of the same
cut and colour; another for shaking hands with those that visit her; and
a third for unshaken resolution never to let tea or coffee enter her
house.

But of all the female characters which this place affords, I have found
none so worthy of attention as that of Mrs. Busy, a widow, who lost her
husband in her thirtieth year, and has since passed her time at the
manour-house in the government of her children, and the management of
the estate.

Mrs. Busy was married at eighteen from a boarding-school, where she had
passed her time like other young ladies, in needle-work, with a few
intervals of dancing and reading. When she became a bride she spent one
winter with her husband in town, where, having no idea of any
conversation beyond the formalities of a visit, she found nothing to
engage her passions: and when she had been one night at court, and two
at an opera, and seen the Monument, the Tombs, and the Tower, she
concluded that London had nothing more to shew, and wondered that when
women had once seen the world, they could not be content to stay at
home. She therefore went willingly to the ancient seat, and for some
years studied housewifery under Mr. Busy's mother, with so much
assiduity, that the old lady, when she died, bequeathed her a
caudle-cup, a soup-dish, two beakers, and a chest of table-linen spun
by herself.

Mr. Busy, finding the economical qualities of his lady, resigned his
affairs wholly into her hands, and devoted his life to his pointers and
his hounds. He never visited his estates but to destroy the partridges
or foxes; and often committed such devastations in the rage of pleasure,
that some of his tenants refused to hold their lands at the usual rent.
Their landlady persuaded them to be satisfied, and entreated her husband
to dismiss his dogs, with many exact calculations of the ale drunk by
his companions, and corn consumed by the horses, and remonstrances
against the insolence of the huntsman, and the frauds of the groom. The
huntsman was too necessary to his happiness to be discarded; and he had
still continued to ravage his own estate, had he not caught a cold and a
fever by shooting mallards in the fens. His fever was followed by a
consumption, which in a few months brought him to the grave.

Mrs. Busy was too much an economist to feel either joy or sorrow at his
death. She received the compliments and consolations of her neighbours
in a dark room, out of which she stole privately every night and morning
to see the cows milked; and after a few days declared that she thought a
widow might employ herself better than in nursing grief; and that, for
her part, she was resolved that the fortunes of her children should not
be impaired by her neglect.

She therefore immediately applied herself to the reformation of abuses.
She gave away the dogs, discharged the servants of the kennel and
stable, and sent the horses to the next fair, but rated at so high a
price that they returned unsold. She was resolved to have nothing idle
about her, and ordered them to be employed in common drudgery. They lost
their sleekness and grace, and were soon purchased at half the value.

She soon disencumbered herself from her weeds, and put on a riding-hood,
a coarse apron, and short petticoats, and has turned a large manour into
a farm, of which she takes the management wholly upon herself. She rises
before the sun to order the horses to their gears, and sees them well
rubbed down at their return from work; she attends the dairy morning and
evening, and watches when a calf falls that it may be carefully nursed;
she walks out among the sheep at noon, counts the lambs, and observes
the fences, and, where she finds a gap, stops it with a bush till it can
be better mended. In harvest she rides a-field in the waggon, and is
very liberal of her ale from a wooden bottle. At her leisure hours she
looks goose eggs, airs the wool-room, and turns the cheese.

When respect or curiosity brings visitants to her house, she entertains
them with prognosticks of a scarcity of wheat, or a rot among the sheep,
and always thinks herself privileged to dismiss them, when she is to see
the hogs fed, or to count her poultry on the roost.

The only things neglected about her are her children, whom she has
taught nothing but the lowest household duties. In my last visit I met
Miss Busy carrying grains to a sick cow, and was entertained with the
accomplishments of her eldest son, a youth of such early maturity, that
though he is only sixteen, she can trust him to sell corn in the market.
Her younger daughter, who is eminent for her beauty, though somewhat
tanned in making hay, was busy in pouring out ale to the ploughmen, that
every one might have an equal share.

I could not but look with pity on this young family, doomed by the
absurd prudence of their mother to ignorance and meanness: but when I
recommended a more elegant education, was answered, that she never saw
bookish or finical people grow rich, and that she was good for nothing
herself till she had forgotten the nicety of the boarding-school.

I am, Yours, &c.

BUCOLUS.



No. 139. TUESDAY, JULY 16, 1751

  --_Sit quod vis simplex duntanat et unum_. Hor. Art. Poet. 23.

  Let ev'ry piece be simple and be one.

It is required by Aristotle to the perfection of a tragedy, and is
equally necessary to every other species of regular composition, that it
should have a beginning, a middle, and an end. "The beginning," says he,
"is that which hath nothing necessarily previous, but to which that
which follows is naturally consequent; the end, on the contrary, is that
which by necessity, or, at least, according to the common course of
things, succeeds something else, but which implies nothing consequent to
itself; the middle is connected on one side to something that naturally
goes before, and on the other to something that naturally follows it."

Such is the rule laid down by this great critick, for the disposition of
the different parts of a well-constituted fable. It must begin where it
may be made intelligible without introduction; and end where the mind is
left in repose, without expectation of any further event. The
intermediate passages must join the last effect to the first cause, by a
regular and unbroken concatenation; nothing must be, therefore,
inserted, which does not apparently arise from something foregoing, and
properly make way for something that succeeds it.

This precept is to be understood in its rigour only with respect to
great and essential events, and cannot be extended in the same force to
minuter circumstances and arbitrary decorations, which yet are more
happy, as they contribute more to the main design; for it is always a
proof of extensive thought and accurate circumspection, to promote
various purposes by the same act; and the idea of an ornament admits
use, though it seems to exclude necessity.

Whoever purposes, as it is expressed by Milton, _to build the lofty
rhyme_, must acquaint himself with this law of poetical architecture,
and take care that his edifice be solid as well as beautiful; that
nothing stand single or independent, so as that it may be taken away
without injuring the rest; but that, from the foundation to the
pinnacles, one part rest firm upon another.

The regular and consequential distribution is among common authors
frequently neglected; but the failures of those, whose example can have
no influence, may be safely overlooked, nor is it of much use to recall
obscure and unguarded names to memory for the sake of sporting with
their infamy. But if there is any writer whose genius can embellish
impropriety, and whose authority can make errour venerable, his works
are the proper objects of critical inquisition. To expunge faults where
there are no excellencies is a task equally useless with that of the
chymist, who employs the arts of separation and refinement upon ore in
which no precious metal is contained to reward his operations.

The tragedy of Samson Agonistes has been celebrated as the second work
of the great author of Paradise Lost, and opposed, with all the
confidence of triumph, to the dramatick performances of other nations.
It contains, indeed, just sentiments, maxims of wisdom, and oracles of
piety, and many passages written with the ancient spirit of choral
poetry, in which there is a just and pleasing mixture of Seneca's moral
declamation, with the wild enthusiasm of the Greek writers. It is,
therefore, worthy of examination, whether a performance thus illuminated
with genius, and enriched with learning, is composed according to the
indispensable laws of Aristotelian criticism: and, omitting, at present,
all other considerations, whether it exhibits a beginning, a middle, and
an end.

The beginning is undoubtedly beautiful and proper, opening with a
graceful abruptness, and proceeding naturally to a mournful recital of
facts necessary to be known:

  _Samson_. A little onward lend thy guiding hand
  To these dark steps, a little further on;
  For yonder bank hath choice of sun and shade:
  There I am wont to sit, when any chance
  Relieves me from my task of servile toil,
  Daily in the common prison else enjoin'd me.--
  O, wherefore was my birth from Heav'n foretold
  Twice by an Angel?--
  Why was my breeding order'd and prescrib'd,
  As of a person separate to God,
  Design'd for great exploits; if I must die
  Betray'd, captiv'd, and both my eyes put out?--
  Whom have I to complain of but myself?
  Who this high gift of strength committed to me,
  In what part lodg'd, how easily bereft me,
  Under the seal of silence could not keep:
  But weakly to a woman must reveal it.

His soliloquy is interrupted by a chorus or company of men of his own
tribe, who condole his miseries, extenuate his fault, and conclude with
a solemn vindication of divine justice. So that at the conclusion of the
first act there is no design laid, no discovery made, nor any
disposition formed towards the consequent event.

In the second act, Manoah, the father of Samson, comes to seek his son,
and, being shewn him by the chorus, breaks out into lamentations of his
misery, and comparisons of his present with his former state,
representing to him the ignominy which his religion suffers, by the
festival this day celebrated in honour of Dagon, to whom the idolaters
ascribed his overthrow.

              --Thou bear'st
  Enough, and more, the burthen of that fault;
  Bitterly hast thou paid, and still art paying
  That rigid score. A worse thing yet remains,
  This day the Philistines a popular feast
  Here celebrate in Gaza; and proclaim
  Great pomp, and sacrifice, and praises loud
  To Dagon, as their God who hath deliver'd
  Thee, Samson, bound and blind, into their hands,
  Them out of thine, who slew'st them many a slain.

Samson, touched with this reproach, makes a reply equally penitential
and pious, which his father considers as the effusion of prophetick
confidence:

  _Samson_.--He, be sure,
  Will not connive, or linger, thus provok'd,
  But will arise and his great name assert:
  Dagon must stoop, and shall ere long receive
  Such a discomfit, as shall quite despoil him
  Of all these boasted trophies won on me.

  _Manoah_. With cause this hope relieves thee, and these words
  I as a prophecy receive; for God,
  Nothing more certain, will not long defer
  To vindicate the glory of his name.

This part of the dialogue, as it might tend to animate or exasperate
Samson, cannot, I think, be censured as wholly superfluous; but the
succeeding dispute, in which Samson contends to die, and which his
father breaks off, that he may go to solicit his release, is only
valuable for its own beauties, and has no tendency to introduce any
thing that follows it.

The next event of the drama is the arrival of Dalila, with all her
graces, artifices, and allurements. This produces a dialogue, in a very
high degree elegant and instructive, from which she retires, after she
has exhausted her persuasions, and is no more seen nor heard of; nor has
her visit any effect but that of raising the character of Samson.

In the fourth act enters Harapha, the giant of Gath, whose name had
never been mentioned before, and who has now no other motive of coming,
than to see the man whose strength and actions are so loudly celebrated:

  _Haraph_.--Much I have heard
  Of thy prodigious might and feats perform'd,
  Incredible to me, in this displeas'd,
  That I was never present in the place
  Of those encounters, where we might have tried
  Each other's force in camp or listed fields;
  And now am come to see of whom such noise
  Hath walk'd about, and each limb to survey,
  If thy appearance answer loud report.

Samson challenges him to the combat; and, after an interchange of
reproaches, elevated by repeated defiance on one side, and imbittered by
contemptuous insults on the other, Harapha retires; we then hear it
determined by Samson, and the chorus, that no consequence good or bad
will proceed from their interview:

  _Chorus_. He will directly to the lords, I fear,
  And with malicious counsel stir them up
  Some way or other yet farther to afflict thee.

  _Sams_. He must allege some cause, and offer'd fight
  Will not dare mention, lest a question rise
  Whether he durst accept the offer or not;
  And, that he durst not, plain enough appear'd.

At last, in the fifth act, appears a messenger from the lords assembled
at the festival of Dagon, with a summons by which Samson is required to
come and entertain them with some proof of his strength. Samson, after a
short expostulation, dismisses him with a firm and resolute refusal;
but, during the absence of the messenger, having a while defended the
propriety of his conduct, he at last declares himself moved by a secret
impulse to comply, and utters some dark presages of a great event to be
brought to pass by his agency, under the direction of Providence:

  _Sams_. Be of good courage, I begin to feel
  Some rousing motions in me, which dispose
  To something extraordinary my thoughts.
  I with this messenger will go along,
  Nothing to do, be sure, that may dishonour
  Our Law, or stain my vow of Nazarite.
  If there be aught of presage in the mind,
  This day will be remarkable in my life
  By some great act, or of my days the last.

While Samson is conducted off by the messenger, his father returns with
hopes of success in his solicitation, upon which he confers with the
chorus till their dialogue is interrupted, first by a shout of triumph,
and afterwards by screams of horrour and agony. As they stand
deliberating where they shall be secure, a man who had been present at
the show enters, and relates how Samson, having prevailed on his guide
to suffer him to lean against the main pillars of the theatrical
edifice, tore down the roof upon the spectators and himself:

             --Those two massy pillars,
  With horrible convulsion, to and fro
  He tugg'd, he shook, till down they came, and drew
  The whole roof after them, with burst of thunder
  Upon the heads of all who sat beneath--
  Samson, with these immixt, inevitably
  Pull'd down the same destruction on himself.

This is undoubtedly a just and regular catastrophe, and the poem,
therefore, has a beginning and an end which Aristotle himself could not
have disapproved; but it must be allowed to want a middle, since nothing
passes between the first act and the last, that either hastens or delays
the death of Samson. The whole drama, if its superfluities were cut off,
would scarcely fill a single act; yet this is the tragedy which
ignorance has admired, and bigotry applauded.



No. 140. SATURDAY, JULY 20, 1751.

  --_Quis tam Lucili fautor inepte est,
  Ut non hoc fateatur?_ HOR. Lib. i. Sat. x. 2.

  What doating bigot, to his faults so blind,
  As not to grant me this, can Milton find?

It is common, says Bacon, to desire the end without enduring the means.
Every member of society feels and acknowledges the necessity of
detecting crimes, yet scarce any degree of virtue or reputation is able
to secure an informer from publick hatred. The learned world has always
admitted the usefulness of critical disquisitions, yet he that attempts
to show, however modestly, the failures of a celebrated writer, shall
surely irritate his admirers, and incur the imputation of envy,
captiousness, and malignity.

With this danger full in my view, I shall proceed to examine the
sentiments of Milton's tragedy, which, though much less liable to
censure than the disposition of his plan, are, like those of other
writers, sometimes exposed to just exceptions for want of care, or want
of discernment.

Sentiments are proper and improper as they consist more or less with the
character and circumstances of the person to whom they are attributed,
with the rules of the composition in which they are found, or with the
settled and unalterable nature of things.

It is common among the tragick poets to introduce their persons alluding
to events or opinions, of which they could not possibly have any
knowledge. The barbarians of remote or newly discovered regions often
display their skill in European learning. The god of love is mentioned
in Tamerlane with all the familiarity of a Roman epigrammatist; and a
late writer has put Harvey's doctrine of the circulation of the blood
into the mouth of a Turkish statesman, who lived near two centuries
before it was known even to philosophers or anatomists.

Milton's learning, which acquainted him with the manners of the ancient
eastern nations, and his invention, which required no assistance from
the common cant of poetry, have preserved him from frequent outrages of
local or chronological propriety. Yet he has mentioned Chalybean steel,
of which it is not very likely that his chorus should have heard, and
has made Alp the general name of a mountain, in a region where the Alps
could scarcely be known:

  No medicinal liquor can assuage,
  Nor breath of cooling air from snowy Alp.

He has taught Samson the tales of Circe, and the Syrens, at which he
apparently hints in his colloquy with Dalila:

   --I know thy trains,
  Though dearly to my cost, thy gins, and toils;
  Thy fair _enchanted cup_, and _warbling charms_
  No more on me have pow'r.

But the grossest errour of this kind is the solemn introduction of the
Phoenix in the last scene; which is faulty, not only as it is
incongruous to the personage to whom it is ascribed, but as it is so
evidently contrary to reason and nature, that it ought never to be
mentioned but as a fable in any serious poem:

          --Virtue giv'n for lost,
  Deprest, and overthrown, as seem'd,
  Like that self-begotten bird
  In the Arabian woods embost,
  That no second knows nor third,
  And lay ere while a holocaust,
  From out her ashy womb now teem'd,
  Revives, reflourishes, then vigorous most
  When most unactive deem'd,
  And though her body die, her fame survives
  A secular bird, ages of lives.

Another species of impropriety is the unsuitableness of thoughts to the
general character of the poem. The seriousness and solemnity of tragedy
necessarily reject all pointed or epigrammatical expressions, all remote
conceits and opposition of ideas. Samson's complaint is therefore too
elaborate to be natural:

  As in the land of darkness, yet in light,
  To live a life half dead, a living death,
  And bury'd; but, O yet more miserable!
  Myself, my sepulchre, a moving grave,
  Buried, yet not exempt,
  By privilege of death and burial,
  From worst of other evils, pains and wrongs.

All allusions to low and trivial objects, with which contempt is usually
associated, are doubtless unsuitable to a species of composition which
ought to be always awful, though not always magnificent. The remark
therefore of the chorus on good or bad news seems to want elevation:

  _Manoah_. A little stay will bring some notice hither.
  _Chor_. Of good _or_ bad so great, of bad the sooner;
  For evil news _rides post_, while good news _baits_.

But of all meanness that has least to plead which is produced by mere
verbal conceits, which, depending only upon sounds, lose their existence
by the change of a syllable. Of this kind is the following dialogue:

  _Chor_. But had we best retire? I see a _storm_.

  _Sams_. Fair days have oft contracted wind and rain.

  _Chor_. But this another kind of tempest brings.

  _Sams_. Be less abstruse, my riddling days are past.

  _Chor_. Look now for no enchanting voice, nor fear
  The bait of honied words; a rougher tongue
  Draws hitherward; I know him by his stride,
  The giant _Harapha_.--

And yet more despicable are the lines in which Manoah's paternal
kindness is commended by the chorus:

  Fathers are wont to _lay up_ for their sons,
  Thou for thy son art bent to _lay out_ all.

Samson's complaint of the inconveniencies of imprisonment is not wholly
without verbal quaintness:

  --I, a prisoner chain'd, scarce freely draw
  The air, imprison'd also, close and damp.

From the sentiments we may properly descend to the consideration of the
language, which, in imitation of the ancients, is through the whole
dialogue remarkably simple and unadorned, seldom heightened by epithets,
or varied by figures; yet sometimes metaphors find admission, even where
their consistency is not accurately preserved. Thus Samson confounds
loquacity with a shipwreck:

  How could I once look up, or heave the head,
  Who, like a foolish _pilot_, have _shipwreck'd_
  My _vessel_ trusted to me from above,
  Gloriously _rigg'd_; and for a word, a tear,
  Fool! have _divulg'd_ the _secret gift_ of God
  To a deceitful woman?--

And the chorus talks of adding fuel to flame in a report:

  He's gone, and who knows how he may _report_
  Thy _words_, by _adding fuel to the flame_?

The versification is in the dialogue much more smooth and harmonious,
than in the parts allotted to the chorus, which are often so harsh and
dissonant, as scarce to preserve, whether the lines end with or without
rhymes, any appearance of metrical regularity:

  Or do my eyes misrepresent? Can this be he,
  That heroic, that renown'd,
  Irresistible Samson? whom unarm'd
  No strength of man, or fiercest wild beast, could withstand;
  Who tore the lion, as the lion tears the kid.

Since I have thus pointed out the faults of Milton, critical integrity
requires that I should endeavour to display his excellencies, though
they will not easily be discovered in short quotations, because they
consist in the justness of diffuse reasonings, or in the contexture and
method of continued dialogues; this play having none of those
descriptions, similies, or splendid sentences, with which other
tragedies are so lavishly adorned.  Yet some passages may be selected
which seem to deserve particular notice, either as containing sentiments
of passion, representations of life, precepts of conduct, or sallies of
imagination. It is not easy to give a stronger representation of the
weariness of despondency, than in the words of Samson to his father:

  --I feel my genial spirits droop,
  My hopes all flat, Nature within me seems
  In all her functions weary of herself,
  My race of glory run, and race of shame,
  And I shall shortly be with them that rest.

The reply of Samson to the flattering Dalila affords a just and striking
description of the stratagems and allurements of feminine hypocrisy:

  --These are thy wonted arts,
  And arts of every woman false like thee,
  To break all faith, all vows, deceive, betray,
  Then as repentant to submit, beseech,
  And reconcilement move with feign'd remorse,
  Confess and promise wonders in her change;
  Not truly penitent, but chief to try
  Her husband, how far urg'd his patience bears,
  His virtue or weakness which way to assail:
  Then with more cautious and instructed skill
  Again transgresses, and again submits.

When Samson has refused to make himself a spectacle at the feast of
Dagon, he first justifies his behaviour to the chorus, who charge him
with having served the Philistines, by a very just distinction: and then
destroys the common excuse of cowardice and servility, which always
confound temptation with compulsion:

  _Chor_. Yet with thy strength thou serv'st the Philistines.

  _Sams_. Not in their idol worship, but by labour
  Honest and lawful to deserve my food
  Of those, who have me in their civil power.

  _Chor_. Where the heart joins not, outward acts defile not.

  _Sams_. Where outward force constrains, the sentence holds.
  But who constrains me to the temple of Dagon,
  Not dragging? The Philistine lords command.
  Commands are no constraints. If I obey them,
  I do it freely, venturing to displease
  God for the fear of Man, and Man prefer,
  Set God behind.

The complaint of blindness which Samson pours out at the beginning of
the tragedy is equally addressed to the passions and the fancy. The
enumeration of his miseries is succeeded by a very pleasing train of
poetical images, and concluded by such expostulation and wishes, as
reason too often submits to learn from despair:

  O first created Beam, and thou great Word
  "Let there be light, and light was over all;"
  Why am I thus bereav'd thy prime decree?
  The sun to me is dark
  And silent as the moon,
  When she deserts the night
  Hid in her vacant interlunar cave.
  Since light so necessary is to life,
  And almost life itself, if it be true
  That light is in the soul,
  She all in every part; why was the sight
  To such a tender hall as the eye confin'd,
  So obvious and so easy to be quench'd?
  And not, as feeling, through all parts diffus'd,
  That she may look at will through every pore?

Such are the faults and such the beauties of Samson Agonistes, which I
have shown with no other purpose than to promote the knowledge of true
criticism. The everlasting verdure of Milton's laurels has nothing to
fear from the blasts of malignity; nor can my attempt produce any other
effect, than to strengthen their shoots by lopping their luxuriance[g].
[Footnote g: This is not the language of an accomplice in Lauder's
imposition.--ED.]



No. 141. TUESDAY, JULY 23, 1751.

  _Hilarisque, tamen cum pondere, virtus_. STAT.

  Greatness with ease, and gay severity.

TO THE RAMBLER.

SIR,

Politicians have long observed, that the greatest events may be
often traced back to slender causes. Petty competition or casual
friendship, the prudence of a slave, or the garrulity of a woman, have
hindered or promoted the most important schemes, and hastened or
retarded the revolutions of empire.

Whoever shall review his life will generally find, that the whole tenour
of his conduct has been determined by some accident of no apparent
moment, or by a combination of inconsiderable circumstances, acting when
his imagination was unoccupied, and his judgment unsettled; and that his
principles and actions have taken their colour from some secret
infusion, mingled without design in the current of his ideas. The
desires that predominate in our hearts, are instilled by imperceptible
communications at the time when we look upon the various scenes of the
world, and the different employments of men, with the neutrality of
inexperience; and we come forth from the nursery or the school,
invariably destined to the pursuit of great acquisitions, or petty
accomplishments.

Such was the impulse by which I have been kept in motion from my
earliest years. I was born to an inheritance which gave my childhood a
claim to distinction and caresses, and was accustomed to hear applauses,
before they had much influence on my thoughts. The first praise of which
I remember myself sensible was that of good-humour, which, whether I
deserved it or not when it was bestowed, I have since made it my whole
business to propagate and maintain.

When I was sent to school, the gaiety of my look, and the liveliness of
my loquacity, soon gained me admission to hearts not yet fortified
against affection by artifice or interest. I was entrusted with every
stratagem, and associated in every sport; my company gave alacrity to a
frolick, and gladness to a holiday. I was indeed so much employed in
adjusting or executing schemes of diversion, that I had no leisure for
my tasks, but was furnished with exercises, and instructed in my
lessons, by some kind patron of the higher classes. My master, not
suspecting my deficiency, or unwilling to detect what his kindness would
not punish nor his impartiality excuse, allowed me to escape with a
slight examination, laughed at the pertness of my ignorance, and the
sprightliness of my absurdities, and could not forbear to show that he
regarded me with such tenderness, as genius and learning can seldom
excite.

From school I was dismissed to the university, where I soon drew upon me
the notice of the younger students, and was the constant partner of
their morning walks, and evening compotations. I was not indeed much
celebrated for literature, but was looked on with indulgence as a man of
parts, who wanted nothing but the dulness of a scholar, and might become
eminent whenever he should condescend to labour and attention. My tutor
a while reproached me with negligence, and repressed my sallies with
supercilious gravity; yet, having natural good-humour lurking in his
heart, he could not long hold out against the power of hilarity, but
after a few months began to relax the muscles of disciplinarian
moroseness, received me with smiles after an elopement, and, that he
might not betray his trust to his fondness, was content to spare my
diligence by increasing his own.

Thus I continued to dissipate the gloom of collegiate austerity, to
waste my own life in idleness, and lure others from their studies, till
the happy hour arrived, when I was sent to London. I soon discovered the
town to be the proper element of youth and gaiety, and was quickly
distinguished as a wit by the ladies, a species of beings only heard of
at the university, whom I had no sooner the happiness of approaching
than I devoted all my faculties to the ambition of pleasing them.

A wit, Mr. Rambler, in the dialect of ladies, is not always a man who,
by the action of a vigorous fancy upon comprehensive knowledge, brings
distant ideas unexpectedly together, who, by some peculiar acuteness,
discovers resemblance in objects dissimilar to common eyes, or, by
mixing heterogeneous notions, dazzles the attention with sudden
scintillations of conceit. A lady's wit is a man who can make ladies
laugh, to which, however easy it may seem, many gifts of nature, and
attainments of art, must commonly concur. He that hopes to be received
as a wit in female assemblies, should have a form neither so amiable as
to strike with admiration, nor so coarse as to raise disgust, with an
understanding too feeble to be dreaded, and too forcible to be despised.
The other parts of the character are more subject to variation; it was
formerly essential to a wit, that half his back should be covered with a
snowy fleece, and, at a time yet more remote, no man was a wit without
his boots. In the days of the _Spectator_ a snuff-box seems to have been
indispensable; but in my time an embroidered coat was sufficient,
without any precise regulation of the rest of his dress.

But wigs and boots and snuff-boxes are vain, without a perpetual
resolution to be merry, and who can always find supplies of mirth?
Juvenal indeed, in his comparison of the two opposite philosophers,
wonders only whence an unexhausted fountain of tears could be
discharged: but had Juvenal, with all his spirit, undertaken my
province, he would have found constant gaiety equally difficult to be
supported. Consider, Mr. Rambler, and compassionate the condition of a
man, who has taught every company to expect from him a continual feast
of laughter, an unintermitted stream of jocularity. The task of every
other slave has an end. The rower in time reaches the port; the
lexicographer at last finds the conclusion of his alphabet; only the
hapless wit has his labour always to begin, the call for novelty is
never satisfied, and one jest only raises expectation of another.

I know that among men of learning and asperity the retainers to the
female world are not much regarded: yet I cannot but hope that if you
knew at how dear a rate our honours are purchased, you would look with
some gratulation on our success, and with some pity on our miscarriages.
Think on the misery of him who is condemned to cultivate barrenness and
ransack vacuity; who is obliged to continue his talk when his meaning is
spent, to raise merriment without images, to harass his imagination in
quest of thoughts which he cannot start, and his memory in pursuit of
narratives which he cannot overtake; observe the effort with which he
strains to conceal despondency by a smile, and the distress in which he
sits while the eyes of the company are fixed upon him as the last refuge
from silence and dejection.

It were endless to recount the shifts to which I have been reduced, or
to enumerate the different species of artificial wit. I regularly
frequented coffee-houses, and have often lived a week upon an
expression, of which he who dropped it did not know the value. When
fortune did not favour my erratick industry, I gleaned jests at home
from obsolete farces. To collect wit was indeed safe, for I consorted
with none that looked much into books, but to disperse it was the
difficulty. A seeming negligence was often useful, and I have very
successfully made a reply not to what the lady had said, but to what it
was convenient for me to hear; for very few were so perverse as to
rectify a mistake which had given occasion to a burst of merriment.
Sometimes I drew the conversation up by degrees to a proper point, and
produced a conceit which I had treasured up, like sportsmen who boast of
killing the foxes which they lodge in the covert. Eminence is, however,
in some happy moments, gained at less expense; I have delighted a whole
circle at one time with a series of quibbles, and made myself good
company at another, by scalding my fingers, or mistaking a lady's lap
for my own chair.

These are artful deceits and useful expedients; but expedients are at
length exhausted, and deceits detected. Time itself, among other
injuries, diminishes the power of pleasing, and I now find, in my
forty-fifth year, many pranks and pleasantries very coldly received,
which had formerly filled a whole room with jollity and acclamation.
I am under the melancholy necessity of supporting that character by study,
which I gained by levity, having learned too late that gaiety must be
recommended by higher qualities, and that mirth can never please long
but as the efflorescence of a mind loved for its luxuriance, but
esteemed for its usefulness.

I am, &c.

PAPILIUS.



No. 142. SATURDAY, JULY 27, 1751.

  [Greek: Entha d aner eniaue pelorios--
  --oude, met allous
  Poleit, all apaneuthen eon athemistia ede.
  Kai gar Oaum etetukto pelorion oude epskei
  Andri ge sitophagps.] HOMER. Od. [Greek: I'.] 187.

  A giant shepherd here his flock maintains
  Far from the rest, and solitary reigns,
  In shelter thick of horrid shade reclin'd;
  And gloomy mischiefs labour in the mind.
  A form enormous! far unlike the race
  Of human birth, in stature or in face. POPE.

TO THE RAMBLER.

SIR,

Having been accustomed to retire annually from the town, I lately
accepted the invitation of Eugenio, who has an estate and seat in a
distant county. As we were unwilling to travel without improvement, we
turned often from the direct road to please ourselves with the view of
nature or of art; we examined every wild mountain and medicinal spring,
criticised every edifice, contemplated every ruin, and compared every
scene of action with the narratives of historians. By this succession of
amusements we enjoyed the exercise of a journey without suffering the
fatigue, and had nothing to regret but that, by a progress so leisurely
and gentle, we missed the adventures of a post-chaise, and the pleasure
of alarming villages with the tumult of our passage, and of disguising
our insignificancy by the dignity of hurry.

The first week after our arrival at Eugenio's house was passed in
receiving visits from his neighbours, who crowded about him with all the
eagerness of benevolence; some impatient to learn the news of the court
and town, that they might be qualified by authentick information to
dictate to the rural politicians on the next bowling day; others
desirous of his interest to accommodate disputes, or his advice in the
settlement of their fortunes and the marriage of their children.

The civilities which he had received were soon to be returned; and I
passed sometime with great satisfaction in roving through the country,
and viewing the seats, gardens, and plantations, which are scattered
over it. My pleasure would indeed have been greater had I been sometimes
allowed to wander in a park or wilderness alone; but to appear as a
friend of Eugenio was an honour not to be enjoyed without some
inconveniencies: so much was every one solicitous for my regard, that I
could seldom escape to solitude, or steal a moment from the emulation of
complaisance, and the vigilance of officiousness.

In these rambles of good neighbourhood, we frequently passed by a house
of unusual magnificence. While I had my curiosity yet distracted among
many novelties, it did not much attract my observation; but in a short
time I could not forbear surveying it with particular notice; for the
length of the wall which inclosed the gardens, the disposition of the
shades that waved over it, and the canals of which I could obtain some
glimpses through the trees from our own windows, gave me reason to
expect more grandeur and beauty than I had yet seen in that province. I
therefore inquired, as we rode by it, why we never, amongst our
excursions, spent an hour where there was such an appearance of
splendour and affluence? Eugenio told me that the seat which I so much
admired, was commonly called in the country the _haunted house_, and
that no visits were paid there by any of the gentlemen whom I had yet
seen. As the haunts of incorporeal beings are generally ruinous,
neglected, and desolate, I easily conceived that there was something to
be explained, and told him that I supposed it only fairy ground, on
which we might venture by day-light without danger. The danger, says he,
is indeed only that of appearing to solicit the acquaintance of a man,
with whom it is not possible to converse without infamy, and who has
driven from him, by his insolence or malignity, every human being who
can live without him.

Our conversation was then accidentally interrupted; but my inquisitive
humour being now in motion, could not rest without a full account of
this newly discovered prodigy. I was soon informed that the fine house
and spacious gardens were haunted by squire Bluster, of whom it was very
easy to learn the character, since nobody had regard for him sufficient
to hinder them from telling whatever they could discover.

Squire Bluster is descended of an ancient family. The estate which his
ancestors had immemorially possessed was much augmented by captain
Bluster, who served under Drake in the reign of Elizabeth; and the
Blusters, who were before only petty gentlemen, have from that time
frequently represented the shire in parliament, been chosen to present
addresses, and given laws at hunting-matches and races. They were
eminently hospitable and popular, till the father of this gentleman died
of an election. His lady went to the grave soon after him, and left the
heir, then only ten years old, to the care of his grandmother, who would
not suffer him to be controlled, because she could not bear to hear him
cry; and never sent him to school, because she was not able to live
without his company. She taught him however very early to inspect the
steward's accounts, to dog the butler from the cellar, and to catch the
servants at a junket; so that he was at the age of eighteen a complete
master of all the lower arts of domestick policy, had often on the road
detected combinations between the coachman and the ostler, and procured
the discharge of nineteen maids for illicit correspondence with
cottagers and charwomen.

By the opportunities of parsimony which minority affords, and which the
probity of his guardians had diligently improved, a very large sum of
money was accumulated, and he found himself, when he took his affairs
into his own hands, the richest man in the county. It has been long the
custom of this family to celebrate the heir's completion of his
twenty-first year, by an entertainment, at which the house is thrown
open to all that are inclined to enter it, and the whole province flocks
together as to a general festivity. On this occasion young Bluster
exhibited the first tokens of his future eminence, by shaking his purse
at an old gentleman who had been the intimate friend of his father, and
offering to wager a greater sum than he could afford to venture; a
practice with which he has, at one time or other, insulted every
freeholder within ten miles round him.

His next acts of offence were committed in a contentious and spiteful
vindication of the privileges of his manours, and a rigorous and
relentless prosecution of every man that presumed to violate his game.
As he happens to have no estate adjoining equal to his own, his
oppressions are often borne without resistance, for fear of a long suit,
of which he delights to count the expenses without the least solicitude
about the event; for he knows, that where nothing but an honorary right
is contested, the poorer antagonist must always suffer, whatever shall
be the last decision of the law.

By the success of some of these disputes, he has so elated his
insolence, and, by reflection upon the general hatred which they have
brought upon him, so irritated his virulence, that his whole life is
spent in meditating or executing mischief. It is his common practice to
procure his hedges to be broken in the night, and then to demand
satisfaction for damages which his grounds have suffered from his
neighbour's cattle. An old widow was yesterday soliciting Eugenio to
enable her to replevin her only cow, then in the pound by squire
Bluster's order, who had sent one of his agents to take advantage of her
calamity, and persuade her to sell the cow at an under rate. He has
driven a day-labourer from his cottage, for gathering blackberries in a
hedge for his children, and has now an old woman in the county-gaol for
a trespass which she committed, by coming into his ground to pick up
acorns for her hog.

Money, in whatever hands, will confer power. Distress will fly to
immediate refuge, without much consideration of remote consequences.
Bluster has therefore a despotick authority in many families, whom he
has assisted, on pressing occasions, with larger sums than they can
easily repay. The only visits that he makes are to these houses of
misfortune, where he enters with the insolence of absolute command,
enjoys the terrours of the family, exacts their obedience, riots at
their charge, and in the height of his joy insults the father with
menaces, and the daughters with obscenity.

He is of late somewhat less offensive; for one of his debtors, after
gentle expostulations, by which he was only irritated to grosser
outrage, seized him by the sleeve, led him trembling into the
court-yard, and closed the door upon him in a stormy night. He took his
usual revenge next morning by a writ; but the debt was discharged by the
assistance of Eugenio.

It is his rule to suffer his tenants to owe him rent, because by this
indulgence he secures to himself the power of seizure whenever he has an
inclination to amuse himself with calamity, and feast his ears with
entreaties and lamentations. Yet as he is sometimes capriciously liberal
to those whom he happens to adopt as favourites, and lets his lands at a
cheap rate, his farms are never long unoccupied; and when one is ruined
by oppression, the possibility of better fortune quickly lures another
to supply his place.

Such is the life of squire Bluster; a man in whose power fortune has
liberally placed the means of happiness, but who has defeated all her
gifts of their end by the depravity of his mind. He is wealthy without
followers; he is magnificent without witnesses; he has birth without
alliance, and influence without dignity. His neighbours scorn him as a
brute; his dependants dread him as an oppressor; and he has only the
gloomy comfort of reflecting, that if he is hated, he is likewise
feared.

I am, Sir, &c.

VAGULUS.



No. 143. TUESDAY, JULY 30, 1751.

  _--Moveat cornicula risum
  Furtivis nudata coloribus.--_ HOR. Lib. i. Ep. i. 19.

  Lest when the birds their various colours claim,
  Stripp'd of his stolen pride, the crow forlorn
  Should stand the laughter of the publick scorn. FRANCIS.

Among the innumerable practices by which interest or envy have taught
those who live upon literary fame to disturb each other at their airy
banquets, one of the most common is the charge of plagiarism. When the
excellence of a new composition can no longer be contested, and malice
is compelled to give way to the unanimity of applause, there is yet this
one expedient to be tried, by which the author may be degraded, though
his work be reverenced; and the excellence which we cannot obscure, may
be set at such a distance as not to overpower our fainter lustre.

This accusation is dangerous, because, even when it is false, it may be
sometimes urged with probability. Bruyere declares, that we are come
into the world too late to produce any thing new, that nature and life
are preoccupied, and that description and sentiment have been long
exhausted. It is indeed certain, that whoever attempts any common
topick, will find unexpected coincidences of his thoughts with those of
other writers; nor can the nicest judgment always distinguish accidental
similitude from artful imitation. There is likewise a common stock of
images, a settled mode of arrangement, and a beaten track of transition,
which all authors suppose themselves at liberty to use, and which
produce the resemblance generally observable among contemporaries. So
that in books which best deserve the name of originals, there is little
new beyond the disposition of materials already provided; the same ideas
and combinations of ideas have been long in the possession of other
hands; and, by restoring to every man his own, as the Romans must have
returned to their cots from the possession of the world, so the most
inventive and fertile genius would reduce his folios to a few pages. Yet
the author who imitates his predecessors only by furnishing himself with
thoughts and elegancies out of the same general magazine of literature,
can with little more propriety be reproached as a plagiary, than the
architect can be censured as a mean copier of Angelo or Wren, because he
digs his marble from the same quarry, squares his stones by the same
art, and unites them in the columns of the same orders.

Many subjects fall under the consideration of an author, which, being
limited by nature, can admit only of slight and accidental diversities.
All definitions of the same thing must be nearly the same; and
descriptions, which are definitions of a more lax and fanciful kind,
must always have in some degree that resemblance to each other which
they all have to their object. Different poets describing the spring or
the sea would mention the zephyrs and the flowers, the billows and the
rocks; reflecting on human life, they would, without any communication
of opinions, lament the deceitfulness of hope, the fugacity of pleasure,
the fragility of beauty, and the frequency of calamity; and for
palliatives of these incurable miseries, they would concur in
recommending kindness, temperance, caution, and fortitude.

When therefore there are found in Virgil and Horace two similar
passages--

  _Hæ tibi erunt artes--
  Parcere subjectis, et debellare superbos_.    VIRG.

  To tame the proud, the fetter'd slave to free:
  These are imperial arts, and worthy thee.    DRYDEN.

  _Imperet bellante prior, jacentem
  Lenis in hostem_.    HOR.

  Let Cæsar spread his conquests far,
  Less pleas'd to triumph than to spare--

it is surely not necessary to suppose with a late critick, that one is
copied from the other, since neither Virgil nor Horace can be supposed
ignorant of the common duties of humanity, and the virtue of moderation
in success.

Cicero and Ovid have on very different occasions remarked how little of
the honour of a victory belongs to the general, when his soldiers and
his fortune have made their deductions; yet why should Ovid be suspected
to have owed to Tully an observation which perhaps occurs to every man
that sees or hears of military glories?

Tully observes of Achilles, that had not Homer written, his valour had
been without praise:

  _Nisi Ilias illa extitisset, idem tumulus qui corpus ejus contexerat,
  nomen ejus obruisset_.

  Unless the Iliad had been published, his name had been lost in the
  tomb that covered his body.

Horace tells us with more energy that there were brave men before the
wars of Troy, but they were lost in oblivion for want of a poet:

  _Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona
  Multi; sed omnes illachrymabiles
    Urgentur, ignotique longá
      Nocte, carent quia vate sacro_.

  Before great Agamemnon reign'd,
    Reign'd kings as great as he, and brave,
  Whose huge ambition's now contain'd
    In the small compass of a grave:
  In endless night they sleep, unwept, unknown:
  No bard had they to make all time their own.    FRANCIS.

Tully inquires, in the same oration, why, but for fame, we disturb a
short life with so many fatigues?

  _Quid est quod in hoc tam exiguo vitae curriculo et tam brevi, tantis
  nos in laboribus exerceamus?_

  Why in so small a circuit of life should we employ ourselves in so
  many fatigues?

Horace inquires in the same manner,

  _Quid brevi fortes jaculamur aevo
  Multa?_

  Why do we aim, with eager strife,
  At things beyond the mark of life?      FRANCIS.

when our life is of so short duration, why we form such numerous
designs? But Horace, as well as Tully, might discover that records are
needful to preserve the memory of actions, and that no records were so
durable as poems; either of them might find out that life is short, and
that we consume it in unnecessary labour.

There are other flowers of fiction so widely scattered and so easily
cropped, that it is scarcely just to tax the use of them as an act by
which any particular writer is despoiled of his garland; for they may be
said to have been planted by the ancients in the open road of poetry for
the accommodation of their successors, and to be the right of every one
that has art to pluck them without injuring their colours or their
fragrance. The passage of Orpheus to hell, with the recovery and second
loss of Eurydice, have been described after Boetius by Pope, in such a
manner as might justly leave him suspected of imitation, were not the
images such as they might both have derived from more ancient writers.

  _Quae sontes agitant metu,
  Ultrices scelerum deæ
  Jam masta: lacrymis madent,
  Non Ixionium caput
  Velox præcipitat rota_.

  The pow'rs of vengeance, while they hear,
  Touch'd with compassion, drop a tear:
  Ixion's rapid wheel is bound,
  Fix'd in attention to the sound.       F. LEWIS.

  Thy stone, O Sysiphus, stands still,
  Ixion rests upon the wheel,
    And the pale spectres dance!
  The furies sink upon their iron beds.     POPE

  _Tandem, vincimur, arbiter
  Umbrarum, miserans, ait--
  Donemus, comitem viro,
  Emtam carmine, conjugem_.

  Subdu'd at length, Hell's pitying monarch cry'd,
  The song rewarding, let us yield the bride.     F. LEWIS.

  He sung; and hell consented
    To hear the poet's prayer;
  Stern Proserpine relented,
    And gave him back the fair.      POPE

  _Heu, noctis prope terminos
    Orpheus Eurydicen suam
    Vidit, perdidit, occidit_.

  Nor yet the golden verge of day begun,
    When Orpheus, her unhappy lord,
    Eurydice to life restor'd,
  At once beheld, and lost, and was undone.   F. LEWIS.

  But soon, too soon, the lover turns his eyes:
  Again she falls, again she dies, she dies!    POPE.

No writer can be fully convicted of imitation, except there is a
concurrence of more resemblance than can be imagined to have happened by
chance; as where the same ideas are conjoined without any natural series
or necessary coherence, or where not only the thought but the words are
copied. Thus it can scarcely be doubted, that in the first of the
following passages Pope remembered Ovid, and that in the second he
copied Crashaw:

  _Saepe pater dixit, studium quid inutile tentas?
    Maeonides nullas ipse reliquit opes--
  Sponte suâ carmen numeros veniebat ad aptos,
    Et quod conabar scribere, versus erat_.      OVID.

  Quit, quit this barren trade, my father cry'd:
  Ev'n Homer left no riches when he dy'd--
  In verse spontaneous flow'd my native strain,
  Forc'd by no sweat or labour of the brain.    F. LEWIS.

  I left no calling for this idle trade;
  No duty broke, no father disobey'd;
  While yet a child, ere yet a fool to fame,
  I lisp'd in numbers, for the numbers came.    POPE.

          --This plain floor,
  Believe me, reader, can say more
  Than many a braver marble can,
  Here lies a truly honest man.        CRASHAW.

  This modest stone, what few vain marbles can,
  May truly say, Here lies an honest man.     POPE.

Conceits, or thoughts not immediately impressed by sensible objects, or
necessarily arising from the coalition or comparison of common
sentiments, may be with great justice suspected whenever they are found
a second time. Thus Wallar probably owed to Grotius an elegant
compliment:

  Here lies the learned Savil's heir,
  So early wise, and lasting fair,
  That none, except her years they told,
  Thought her a child, or thought her old.          WALLER.

[Transcriber's note: Inconsistency in spelling Waller/Wallar in
original]

  _Unica lux saecli, genitoris gloria, nemo
   Quem puerum, nemo credidit esse senem_.      GROT.

  The age's miracle, his father's joy!
  Nor old you would pronounce him, nor a boy.       F. LEWIS.

And Prior was indebted for a pretty illustration to Alleyne's poetical
history of Henry the Seventh:

  For nought but light itself, itself can shew,
  And only kings can write, what kings can do.      ALLEYNE.

  Your musick's pow'r, your musick must disclose,
  For what light is, 'tis only light that shews.    PRIOR.

And with yet more certainty may the same writer be censured, for
endeavouring the clandestine appropriation of a thought which he
borrowed, surely without thinking himself disgraced, from an epigram of
Plato:

  [Greek: Tae Paphiae to katoptron, epei toiae men orasthai
  Ouk ethelo, oiae d' aen paros, ou dunamai.]

  Venus, take my votive glass,
  Since I am not what I was;
  What from this day I shall be,
  Venus, let me never see.

As not every instance of similitude can be considered as a proof of
imitation, so not every imitation ought to be stigmatized as plagiarism.
The adoption of a noble sentiment, or the insertion of a borrowed
ornament, may sometimes display so much judgment as will almost
compensate for invention: and an inferior genius may, without any
imputation of servility, pursue the path of the ancients, provided he
declines to tread in their footsteps.



No. 144. SATURDAY, AUGUST 3, 1751.

  --_Daphnidis arcum
  Fregisti et calamos: quae tu, perverse Menalea,
  Et quum vidisti puero donata, dolebas;
  Et si non aliqua nocuisses, mortuus esses._ VIRG. EC. iii. 12.

  The bow of Daphnis and the shafts you broke;
  When the fair boy receiv'd the gift of right;
  And but for mischief, you had dy'd for spite. DRYDEN.

It is impossible to mingle in conversation without observing the
difficulty with which a new name makes its way into the world. The first
appearance of excellence unites multitudes against it; unexpected
opposition rises up on every side; the celebrated and the obscure join
in the confederacy; subtlety furnishes arms to impudence, and invention
leads on credulity.

The strength and unanimity of this alliance is not easily conceived. It
might be expected that no man should suffer his heart to be inflamed
with malice, but by injuries; that none should busy himself in
contesting the pretensions of another, but when some right of his own
was involved in the question; that at least hostilities, commenced
without cause, should quickly cease; that the armies of malignity should
soon disperse, when no common interest could be found to hold them
together; and that the attack upon a rising character should be left to
those who had something to hope or fear from the event.

The hazards of those that aspire to eminence, would be much diminished
if they had none but acknowledged rivals to encounter. Their enemies
would then be few, and, what is yet of greater importance, would be
known. But what caution is sufficient to ward off the blows of invisible
assailants, or what force can stand against uninterrupted attacks, and a
continual succession of enemies? Yet such is the state of the world,
that no sooner can any man emerge from the crowd, and fix the eyes of
the publick upon him, than he stands as a mark to the arrows of lurking
calumny, and receives in the tumult of hostility, from distant and from
nameless hands, wounds not always easy to be cured.

It is probable that the onset against the candidates for renown, is
originally incited by those who imagine themselves in danger of
suffering by their success; but, when war is once declared, volunteers
flock to the standard, multitudes follow the camp only for want of
employment, and flying squadrons are dispersed to every part, so pleased
with an opportunity of mischief, that they toil without prospect of
praise, and pillage without hope of profit.

When any man has endeavoured to deserve distinction, he will be
surprised to hear himself censured where he could not expect to have
been named; he will find the utmost acrimony of malice among those whom
he never could have offended.

As there are to be found in the service of envy men of every diversity
of temper and degree of understanding, calumny is diffused by all arts
and methods of propagation. Nothing is too gross or too refined, too
cruel or too trifling, to be practised; very little regard is had to the
rules of honourable hostility, but every weapon is accounted lawful, and
those that cannot make a thrust at life are content to keep themselves
in play with petty malevolence, to tease with feeble blows and impotent
disturbance.

But as the industry of observation has divided the most miscellaneous
and confused assemblages into proper classes, and ranged the insects of
the summer, that torment us with their drones or stings, by their
several tribes; the persecutors of merit, notwithstanding their numbers,
may be likewise commodiously distinguished into Roarers, Whisperers, and
Moderators.

The Roarer is an enemy rather terrible than dangerous. He has no other
qualification for a champion of controversy than a hardened front and
strong voice. Having seldom so much desire to confute as to silence, he
depends rather upon vociferation than argument, and has very little care
to adjust one part of his accusation to another, to preserve decency in
his language, or probability in his narratives.

He has always a store of reproachful epithets and contemptuous
appellations, ready to be produced as occasion may require, which by
constant use he pours out with resistless volubility. If the wealth of a
trader is mentioned, he without hesitation devotes him to bankruptcy; if
the beauty and elegance of a lady be commended, he wonders how the town
can fall in love with rustick deformity; if a new performance of genius
happens to be celebrated, he pronounces the writer a hopeless idiot,
without knowledge of books or life, and without the understanding by
which it must be acquired. His exaggerations are generally without
effect upon those whom he compels to hear them; and though it will
sometimes happen that the timorous are awed by his violence, and the
credulous mistake his confidence for knowledge, yet the opinions which
he endeavours to suppress soon recover their former strength, as the
trees that bend to the tempest erect themselves again when its force is
past.

The Whisperer is more dangerous. He easily gains attention by a soft
address, and excites curiosity by an air of importance. As secrets are
not to be made cheap by promiscuous publication, he calls a select
audience about him, and gratifies their vanity with an appearance of
trust by communicating his intelligence in a low voice. Of the trader he
can tell that, though he seems to manage an extensive commerce, and
talks in high terms of the funds, yet his wealth is not equal to his
reputation; he has lately suffered much by an expensive project, and had
a greater share than is acknowledged in the rich ship that perished by
the storm. Of the beauty he has little to say, but that they who see her
in a morning do not discover all those graces which are admired in the
Park. Of the writer he affirms with great certainty, that though the
excellence of the work be incontestible, he can claim but a small part
of the reputation; that he owed most of the images and sentiments to a
secret friend; and that the accuracy and equality of the style was
produced by the successive correction of the chief criticks of the age.

As every one is pleased with imagining that he knows something not yet
commonly divulged, secret history easily gains credit; but it is for the
most part believed only while it circulates in whispers; and when once
it is openly told, is openly confuted.

The most pernicious enemy is the man of Moderation. Without interest in
the question, or any motive but honest curiosity, this impartial and
zealous inquirer after truth is ready to hear either side, and always
disposed to kind interpretations and favourable opinions. He hath heard
the trader's affairs reported with great variation, and, after a
diligent comparison of the evidence, concludes it probable that the
splendid superstructure of business being originally built upon a narrow
basis, has lately been found to totter; but between dilatory payment and
bankruptcy there is a great distance; many merchants have supported
themselves by expedients for a time, without any final injury to their
creditors; and what is lost by one adventure may be recovered by
another. He believes that a young lady pleased with admiration, and
desirous to make perfect what is already excellent, may heighten her
charms by artificial improvements, but surely most of her beauties must
be genuine, and who can say that he is wholly what he endeavours to
appear? The author he knows to be a man of diligence, who perhaps does
not sparkle with the fire of Homer, but has the judgment to discover his
own deficiencies, and to supply them by the help of others; and, in his
opinion, modesty is a quality so amiable and rare, that it ought to find
a patron wherever it appears, and may justly be preferred by the publick
suffrage to petulant wit and ostentatious literature.

He who thus discovers failings with unwillingness, and extenuates the
faults which cannot be denied, puts an end at once to doubt or
vindication; his hearers repose upon his candour and veracity, and admit
the charge without allowing the excuse.

Such are the arts by which the envious, the idle, the peevish, and the
thoughtless, obstruct that worth which they cannot equal, and, by
artifices thus easy, sordid, and detestable, is industry defeated,
beauty blasted, and genius depressed.



No. 145. TUESDAY, AUGUST 6, 1751.

  _Non, si priores Maeonius tenet
  Sedes Homerus, Pindaricae latent,
    Ceaeque, et Alcaei minaces,
      Stesichorique graves Camoenae_. HOR. Lib. iv. Od. ix. 5.

  What though the muse her Homer thrones
    High above all the immortal quire;
  Nor Pindar's raptures she disowns,
    Nor hides the plaintive Caean lyre;
  Alcaeus strikes the tyrant soul with dread,
  Nor yet is grave Stesichorus unread. FRANCIS.

It is allowed that vocations and employments of least dignity are of the
most apparent use; that the meanest artizan or manufacturer contributes
more to the accommodation of life, than the profound scholar and
argumentative theorist; and that the publick would suffer less present
inconvenience from the banishment of philosophers than from the
extinction of any common trade.

Some have been so forcibly struck with this observation, that they have,
in the first warmth of their discovery, thought it reasonable to alter
the common distribution of dignity, and ventured to condemn mankind of
universal ingratitude. For justice exacts, that those by whom we are
most benefited should be most honoured. And what labour can be more
useful than that which procures to families and communities those
necessaries which supply the wants of nature, or those conveniencies by
which ease, security, and elegance, are conferred?

This is one of the innumerable theories which the first attempt to
reduce them into practice certainly destroys. If we estimate dignity by
immediate usefulness, agriculture is undoubtedly the first and noblest
science; yet we see the plough driven, the clod broken, the manure
spread, the seeds scattered, and the harvest reaped, by men whom those
that feed upon their industry will never be persuaded to admit into the
same rank with heroes, or with sages; and who, after all the confessions
which truth may extort in favour of their occupation, must be content to
fill up the lowest class of the commonwealth, to form the base of the
pyramid of subordination, and lie buried in obscurity themselves, while
they support all that is splendid, conspicuous, or exalted.

It will be found upon a closer inspection, that this part of the conduct
of mankind is by no means contrary to reason or equity. Remuneratory
honours are proportioned at once to the usefulness and difficulty of
performances, and are properly adjusted by comparison of the mental and
corporeal abilities, which they appear to employ. That work, however
necessary, which is carried on only by muscular strength and manual
dexterity, is not of equal esteem, in the consideration of rational
beings, with the tasks that exercise the intellectual powers, and
require the active vigour of imagination or the gradual and laborious
investigations of reason.

The merit of all manual occupations seems to terminate in the inventor;
and surely the first ages cannot be charged with ingratitude; since
those who civilized barbarians, and taught them how to secure themselves
from cold and hunger, were numbered amongst their deities. But these
arts once discovered by philosophy, and facilitated by experience, are
afterwards practised with very little assistance from the faculties of
the soul; nor is any thing necessary to the regular discharge of these
inferior duties, beyond that rude observation which the most sluggish
intellect may practise, and that industry which the stimulations of
necessity naturally enforce.

Yet though the refusal of statues and panegyrick to those who employ
only their hands and feet in the service of mankind may be easily
justified, I am far from intending to incite the petulance of pride, to
justify the superciliousness of grandeur, or to intercept any part of
that tenderness and benevolence which, by the privilege of their common
nature, one may claim from another.

That it would be neither wise nor equitable to discourage the
husbandman, the labourer, the miner, or the smith, is generally granted;
but there is another race of beings equally obscure and equally
indigent, who, because their usefulness is less obvious to vulgar
apprehensions, live unrewarded and die unpitied, and who have been long
exposed to insult without a defender, and to censure without an
apologist.

The authors of London were formerly computed by Swift at several
thousands, and there is not any reason for suspecting that their number
has decreased. Of these only a very few can be said to produce, or
endeavour to produce, new ideas, to extend any principle of science, or
gratify the imagination with any uncommon train of images or contexture
of events; the rest, however laborious, however arrogant, can only be
considered as the drudges of the pen, the manufacturers of literature,
who have set up for authors, either with or without a regular
initiation, and, like other artificers, have no other care than to
deliver their tale of wares at the stated time.

It has been formerly imagined, that he who intends the entertainment or
instruction of others, must feel in himself some peculiar impulse of
genius; that he must watch the happy minute in which his natural fire is
excited, in which his mind is elevated with nobler sentiments,
enlightened with clearer views, and invigorated with stronger
comprehension; that he must carefully select his thoughts and polish his
expressions; and animate his efforts with the hope of raising a monument
of learning, which neither time nor envy shall be able to destroy.

But the authors whom I am now endeavouring to recommend have been too
long _hackneyed in the ways of men_ to indulge the chimerical ambition
of immortality; they have seldom any claim to the trade of writing, but
that they have tried some other without success; they perceive no
particular summons to composition, except the sound of the clock; they
have no other rule than the law or the fashion for admitting their
thoughts or rejecting them; and about the opinion of posterity they have
little solicitude, for their productions are seldom intended to remain
in the world longer than a week.

That such authors are not to be rewarded with praise is evident, since
nothing can be admired when it ceases to exist; but surely, though they
cannot aspire to honour, they may be exempted from ignominy, and adopted
in that order of men which deserves our kindness, though not our
reverence. These papers of the day, the _Ephemerae_ of learning, have
uses more adequate to the purposes of common life than more pompous and
durable volumes. If it is necessary for every man to be more acquainted
with his contemporaries than with past generations, and to rather know
the events which may immediately affect his fortune or quiet, than the
revolutions of ancient kingdoms, in which he has neither possessions nor
expectations; if it be pleasing to hear of the preferment and dismission
of statesmen, the birth of heirs, and the marriage of beauties, the
humble author of journals and gazettes must be considered as a liberal
dispenser of beneficial knowledge.

Even the abridger, compiler, and translator, though their labours cannot
be ranked with those of the diurnal historiographer, yet must not be
rashly doomed to annihilation. Every size of readers requires a genius
of correspondent capacity; some delight in abstracts and epitomes,
because they want room in their memory for long details, and content
themselves with effects, without inquiry after causes; some minds are
overpowered by splendour of sentiment, as some eyes are offended by a
glaring light; such will gladly contemplate an author in an humble
imitation, as we look without pain upon the sun in the water.

As every writer has his use, every writer ought to have his patrons; and
since no man, however high he may now stand, can be certain that he
shall not be soon thrown down from his elevation by criticism or
caprice, the common interest of learning requires that her sons should
cease from intestine hostilities, and, instead of sacrificing each other
to malice and contempt, endeavour to avert persecution from the meanest
of their fraternity.



No. 146. SATURDAY, AUGUST 10, 1751.

  _Sunt illic duo, tresve, qui revolvant
  Nostrarum tineas ineptiarum;
  Sed cum sponsio, fabultaeque lassae
  De scarpo fuerint incitato_. MART.

  'Tis possible that one or two
  These fooleries of mine may view;
  But then the bettings must be o'er,
  Nor Crab or Childers talk'd of more. F. LEWIS.

None of the projects or designs which exercise the mind of man are
equally subject to obstructions and disappointments with the pursuit of
fame. Riches cannot easily be denied to them who have something of
greater value to offer in exchange; he whose fortune is endangered by
litigation, will not refuse to augment the wealth of the lawyer; he
whose days are darkened by langour, or whose nerves are excruciated by
pain, is compelled to pay tribute to the science of healing. But praise
may be always omitted without inconvenience. When once a man has made
celebrity necessary to his happiness, he has put it in the power of the
weakest and most timorous malignity, if not to take away his
satisfaction, at least to withhold it. His enemies may indulge their
pride by airy negligence, and gratify their malice by quiet neutrality.
They that could never have injured a character by invectives, may
combine to annihilate it by silence; as the women of Rome threatened to
put an end to conquest and dominion, by supplying no children to the
commonwealth.

When a writer has with long toil produced a work intended to burst upon
mankind with unexpected lustre, and withdraw the attention of the
learned world from every other controversy or inquiry, he is seldom
contented to wait long without the enjoyment of his new praises. With an
imagination full of his own importance, he walks out like a monarch in
disguise to learn the various opinions of his readers. Prepared to feast
upon admiration; composed to encounter censures without emotion; and
determined not to suffer his quiet to be injured by a sensibility too
exquisite of praise or blame, but to laugh with equal contempt at vain
objections and injudicious commendations, he enters the places of
mingled conversation, sits down to his tea in an obscure corner, and,
while he appears to examine a file of antiquated journals, catches the
conversation of the whole room. He listens, but hears no mention of his
book, and therefore supposes that he has disappointed his curiosity by
delay; and that as men of learning would naturally begin their
conversation with such a wonderful novelty, they had digressed to other
subjects before his arrival. The company disperses, and their places are
supplied by others equally ignorant, or equally careless. The same
expectation hurries him to another place, from which the same
disappointment drives him soon away. His impatience then grows violent
and tumultuous; he ranges over the town with restless curiosity, and
hears in one quarter of a cricket-match, in another of a pick-pocket; is
told by some of an unexpected bankruptcy; by others of a turtle feast;
is sometimes provoked by importunate inquiries after the white bear, and
sometimes with praises of the dancing dog; he is afterwards entreated to
give his judgment upon a wager about the height of the Monument; invited
to see a foot-race in the adjacent villages; desired to read a ludicrous
advertisement; or consulted about the most effectual method of making
inquiry after a favourite cat. The whole world is busied in affairs
which he thinks below the notice of reasonable creatures, and which are
nevertheless sufficient to withdraw all regard from his labours and his
merits.

He resolves at last to violate his own modesty, and to recall the
talkers from their folly by an inquiry after himself. He finds every one
provided with an answer; one has seen the work advertised, but never met
with any that had read it; another has been so often imposed upon by
specious titles, that he never buys a book till its character is
established; a third wonders what any man can hope to produce after so
many writers of greater eminence; the next has inquired after the
author, but can hear no account of him, and therefore suspects the name
to be fictitious; and another knows him to be a man condemned by
indigence to write too frequently what he does not understand.

Many are the consolations with which the unhappy author endeavours to
allay his vexation, and fortify his patience. He has written with too
little indulgence to the understanding of common readers; he has fallen
upon an age in which solid knowledge, and delicate refinement, have
given way to a low merriment, and idle buffoonery, and therefore no
writer can hope for distinction, who has any higher purpose than to
raise laughter. He finds that his enemies, such as superiority will
always raise, have been industrious, while his performance was in the
press, to vilify and blast it; and that the bookseller, whom he had
resolved to enrich, has rivals that obstruct the circulation of the
copies. He at last reposes upon the consideration, that the noblest
works of learning and genius have always made their way slowly against
ignorance and prejudice; and that reputation, which is never to be lost,
must be gradually obtained, as animals of longest life are observed not
soon to attain their full stature and strength.

By such arts of voluntary delusion does every man endeavour to conceal
his own unimportance from himself. It is long before we are convinced of
the small proportion which every individual bears to the collective body
of mankind; or learn how few can be interested in the fortune of any
single man; how little vacancy is left in the world for any new object
of attention; to how small extent the brightest blaze of merit can be
spread amidst the mists of business and of folly; and how soon it is
clouded by the intervention of other novelties. Not only the writer of
books, but the commander of armies, and the deliverer of nations, will
easily outlive all noisy and popular reputation; he may be celebrated
for a time by the publick voice, but his actions and his name will soon
be considered as remote and unaffecting, and be rarely mentioned but by
those whose alliance gives them some vanity to gratify by frequent
commemoration.

It seems not to be sufficiently considered how little renown can be
admitted in the world. Mankind are kept perpetually busy by their fears
or desires, and have not more leisure from their own affairs, than to
acquaint themselves with the accidents of the current day. Engaged in
contriving some refuge from calamity, or in shortening the way to some
new possession, they seldom suffer their thoughts to wander to the past
or future; none but a few solitary students have leisure to inquire into
the claims of ancient heroes or sages; and names which hoped to range
over kingdoms and continents, shrink at last into cloisters or colleges.

Nor is it certain, that even of these dark and narrow habitations, these
last retreats of fame, the possession will be long kept. Of men devoted
to literature, very few extend their views beyond some particular
science, and the greater part seldom inquire, even in their own
profession, for any authors but those whom the present mode of study
happens to force upon their notice; they desire not to fill their minds
with unfashionable knowledge, but contentedly resign to oblivion those
books which they now find censured or neglected.

The hope of fame is necessarily connected with such considerations as
must abate the ardour of confidence, and repress the vigour of pursuit.
Whoever claims renown from any kind of excellence, expects to fill the
place which is now possessed by another; for there are already names of
every class sufficient to employ all that will desire to remember them;
and surely he that is pushing his predecessors into the gulph of
obscurity, cannot but sometimes suspect, that he must himself sink in
like manner, and, as he stands upon the same precipice, be swept away
with the same violence.

It sometimes happens, that fame begins when life is at an end; but far
the greater number of candidates for applause have owed their reception
in the world to some favourable casualties, and have therefore
immediately sunk into neglect, when death stripped them of their casual
influence, and neither fortune nor patronage operated in their favour.
Among those who have better claims to regard, the honour paid to their
memory is commonly proportionate to the reputation which they enjoyed in
their lives, though still growing fainter, as it is at a greater
distance from the first emission; and since it is so difficult to obtain
the notice of contemporaries, how little is to be hoped from future
times? What can merit effect by its own force, when the help of art or
friendship can scarcely support it?



No. 147. TUESDAY, AUGUST 13, 1751.

  Tu nihil invitâ dices faciesve Minervâ. Hon. Ar. Poet. 385.

  --You are of too quick a sight,
  Not to discern which way your talent lies. ROSCOMMON.

TO THE RAMBLER.

SIR,

As little things grow great by continual accumulation, I hope you will
not think the dignity of your character impaired by an account of a
ludicrous persecution, which, though it produced no scenes of horrour or
of ruin, yet, by incessant importunity of vexation, wears away my
happiness, and consumes those years which nature seems particularly to
have assigned to cheerfulness, in silent anxiety and helpless
resentment.

I am the eldest son of a gentleman, who having inherited a large estate
from his ancestors, and feeling no desire either to increase or lessen
it, has from the time of his marriage generally resided at his own seat;
where, by dividing his time among the duties of a father, a master, and
a magistrate, the study of literature, and the offices of civility, he
finds means to rid himself of the day, without any of those amusements,
which all those with whom my residence in this place has made me
acquainted, think necessary to lighten the burthen of existence.

When my age made me capable of instruction, my father prevailed upon a
gentleman, long known at Oxford for the extent of his learning and the
purity of his manners, to undertake my education. The regard with which
I saw him treated, disposed me to consider his instructions as
important, and I therefore soon formed a habit of attention, by which I
made very quick advances in different kinds of learning, and heard,
perhaps too often, very flattering comparisons of my own proficiency
with that of others, either less docile by nature, or less happily
forwarded by instruction. I was caressed by all that exchanged visits
with my father; and as young men are with little difficulty taught to
judge favourably of themselves, began to think that close application
was no longer necessary, and that the time was now come when I was at
liberty to read only for amusement, and was to receive the reward of my
fatigues in praise and admiration.

While I was thus banqueting upon my own perfections, and longing in
secret to escape from tutorage, my father's brother came from London to
pass a summer at his native place. A lucrative employment which he
possessed, and a fondness for the conversation and diversions of the gay
part of mankind, had so long kept him from rural excursions, that I had
never seen him since my infancy. My curiosity was therefore strongly
excited by the hope of observing a character more nearly, which I had
hitherto reverenced only at a distance.

From all private and intimate conversation, I was long withheld by the
perpetual confluence of visitants with whom the first news of my uncle's
arrival crowded the house; but was amply recompensed by seeing an exact
and punctilious practice of the arts of a courtier, in all the
stratagems of endearment, the gradations of respect, and variations of
courtesy. I remarked with what justice of distribution he divided his
talk to a wide circle; with what address he offered to every man an
occasion of indulging some favourite topick, or displaying some
particular attainment; the judgment with which he regulated his
inquiries after the absent; and the care with which he shewed all the
companions of his early years how strongly they were infixed in his
memory, by the mention of past incidents and the recital of puerile
kindnesses, dangers, and frolicks. I soon discovered that he possessed
some science of graciousness and attraction which books had not taught,
and of which neither I nor my father had any knowledge; that he had the
power of obliging those whom he did not benefit; that he diffused, upon
his cursory behaviour and most trifling actions, a gloss of softness and
delicacy by which every one was dazzled; and that, by some occult method
of captivation, he animated the timorous, softened the supercilious, and
opened the reserved. I could not but repine at the inelegance of my own
manners, which left me no hopes but not to offend, and at the inefficacy
of rustick benevolence, which gained no friends but by real service.

My uncle saw the veneration with which I caught every accent of his
voice, and watched every motion of his hand; and the awkward diligence
with which I endeavoured to imitate his embrace of fondness, and his bow
of respect. He was, like others, easily flattered by an imitator by whom
he could not fear ever to be rivalled, and repaid my assiduities with
compliments and professions. Our fondness was so increased by a mutual
endeavour to please each other, that when he returned to London, he
declared himself unable to leave a nephew so amiable and so accomplished
behind him; and obtained my father's permission to enjoy my company for
a few months, by a promise to initiate me in the arts of politeness, and
introduce me into publick life.

The courtier had little inclination to fatigue, and therefore, by
travelling very slowly, afforded me time for more loose and familiar
conversation; but I soon found, that by a few inquiries which he was not
well prepared to satisfy, I had made him weary of his young companion.
His element was a mixed assembly, where ceremony and healths,
compliments and common topicks, kept the tongue employed with very
little assistance from memory or reflection; but in the chariot, where
he was necessitated to support a regular tenour of conversation, without
any relief from a new comer, or any power of starting into gay
digressions, or destroying argument by a jest, he soon discovered that
poverty of ideas which had been hitherto concealed under the tinsel of
politeness. The first day he entertained me with the novelties and
wonders with which I should be astonished at my entrance into London,
and cautioned me with apparent admiration of his own wisdom against the
arts by which rusticity is frequently deluded. The same detail and the
same advice he would have repeated on the second day; but as I every
moment diverted the discourse to the history of the towns by which we
passed, or some other subject of learning or of reason, he soon lost his
vivacity, grew peevish and silent, wrapped his cloak about him, composed
himself to slumber, and reserved his gaiety for fitter auditors.

At length I entered London, and my uncle was reinstated in his
superiority. He awaked at once to loquacity as soon as our wheels
rattled on the pavement, and told me the name of every street as we
crossed it, and owner of every house as we passed by. He presented me to
my aunt, a lady of great eminence for the number of her acquaintances,
and splendour of her assemblies, and either in kindness or revenge
consulted with her, in my presence, how I might be most advantageously
dressed for my first appearance, and most expeditiously disencumbered
from my villatick bashfulness. My indignation at familiarity thus
contemptuous flushed in my face; they mistook anger for shame, and
alternately exerted their eloquence upon the benefits of publick
education, and the happiness of an assurance early acquired.

Assurance is, indeed, the only qualification to which they seem to have
annexed merit, and assurance, therefore, is perpetually recommended to
me as the supply of every defect, and the ornament of every excellence.
I never sit silent in company when secret history is circulating, but I
am reproached for want of assurance. If I fail to return the stated
answer to a compliment; if I am disconcerted by unexpected raillery; if
I blush when I am discovered gazing on a beauty, or hesitate when I find
myself embarrassed in an argument; if I am unwilling to talk of what I
do not understand, or timorous in undertaking offices which I cannot
gracefully perform; if I suffer a more lively tatler to recount the
casualties of a game, or a nimbler fop to pick up a fan, I am censured
between pity and contempt, as a wretch doomed to grovel in obscurity for
want of assurance.

I have found many young persons harassed in the same manner, by those to
whom age has given nothing but the assurance which they recommend; and
therefore cannot but think it useful to inform them, that cowardice and
delicacy are not to be confounded; and that he whose stupidity has armed
him against the shafts of ridicule, will always act and speak with
greater audacity, than they whose sensibility represses their ardour,
and who dare never let their confidence outgrow their abilities.



No. 148. SATURDAY, AUGUST 17, 1751.

  _Me pater saevis oneret catenis,
  Quod viro clemens misero peperci:
  Me vel extremis Numidarum in agros
         Classe releget._ HOR. Lib. iii. Od. xi. 45.

    Me let my father load with chains,
  Or banish to Numidia's farthest plains!
    My crime, that I, a loyal wife,
  In kind compassion sav'd my husband's life. FRANCIS.

Politicians remark, that no oppression is so heavy or lasting as that
which is inflicted by the perversion and exorbitance of legal authority.
The robber may be seized, and the invader repelled, whenever they are
found; they who pretend no right but that of force, may by force be
punished or suppressed. But when plunder bears the name of impost, and
murder is perpetrated by a judicial sentence, fortitude is intimidated,
and wisdom confounded: resistance shrinks from an alliance with
rebellion, and the villain remains secure in the robes of the
magistrate.

Equally dangerous and equally detestable are the cruelties often
exercised in private families, under the venerable sanction of parental
authority; the power which we are taught to honour from the first
moments of reason; which is guarded from insult and violation by all
that can impress awe upon the mind of man; and which therefore may
wanton in cruelty without control, and trample the bounds of right with
innumerable transgressions, before duty and piety will dare to seek
redress, or think themselves at liberty to recur to any other means of
deliverance than supplications by which insolence is elated, and tears
by which cruelty is gratified.

It was for a long time imagined by the Romans, that no son could be the
murderer of his father; and they had therefore no punishment
appropriated to parricide. They seem likewise to have believed with
equal confidence, that no father could be cruel to his child; and
therefore they allowed every man the supreme judicature in his own
house, and put the lives of his offspring into his hands. But experience
informed them by degrees, that they determined too hastily in favour of
human nature; they found that instinct and habit were not able to
contend with avarice or malice; that the nearest relation might be
violated; and that power, to whomsoever intrusted, might be ill
employed. They were therefore obliged to supply and to change their
institutions; to deter the parricide by a new law, and to transfer
capital punishments from the parent to the magistrate.

There are indeed many houses which it is impossible to enter familiarly,
without discovering that parents are by no means exempt from the
intoxications of dominion; and that he who is in no danger of hearing
remonstrances but from his own conscience, will seldom be long without
the art of controling his convictions, and modifying justice by his own
will.

If in any situation the heart were inaccessible to malignity, it might
be supposed to be sufficiently secured by parental relation. To have
voluntarily become to any being the occasion of its existence, produces
an obligation to make that existence happy. To see helpless infancy
stretching out her hands, and pouring out her cries in testimony of
dependence, without any powers to alarm jealousy, or any guilt to
alienate affection, must surely awaken tenderness in every human mind;
and tenderness once excited will be hourly increased by the natural
contagion of felicity, by the repercussion of communicated pleasure, by
the consciousness of the dignity of benefaction. I believe no generous
or benevolent man can see the vilest animal courting his regard, and
shrinking at his anger, playing his gambols of delight before him,
calling on him in distress, and flying to him in danger, without more
kindness than he can persuade himself to feel for the wild and unsocial
inhabitants of the air and water. We naturally endear to ourselves those
to whom we impart any kind of pleasure, because we imagine their
affection and esteem secured to us by the benefits which they receive.

There is, indeed, another method by which the pride of superiority may
be likewise gratified. He that has extinguished all the sensations of
humanity, and has no longer any satisfaction in the reflection that he
is loved as the distributor of happiness, may please himself with
exciting terrour as the inflictor of pain: he may delight his solitude
with contemplating the extent of his power and the force of his
commands; in imagining the desires that flutter on the tongue which is
forbidden to utter them, or the discontent which preys on the heart in
which fear confines it: he may amuse himself with new contrivances of
detection, multiplications of prohibition, and varieties of punishment;
and swell with exultation when he considers how little of the homage
that he receives he owes to choice.

That princes of this character have been known, the history of all
absolute kingdoms will inform us; and since, as Aristotle observes,
_[Greek: hae oikonomikae monarchia], the government of a family is
naturally monarchical_, it is, like other monarchies, too often
arbitrarily administered. The regal and parental tyrant differ only in
the extent of their dominions, and the number of their slaves. The same
passions cause the same miseries; except that seldom any prince, however
despotick, has so far shaken off all awe of the publick eye, as to
venture upon those freaks of injustice, which are sometimes indulged
under the secrecy of a private dwelling. Capricious injunctions, partial
decisions, unequal allotments, distributions of reward, not by merit,
but by fancy, and punishments, regulated not by the degree of the
offence, but by the humour of the judge, are too frequent where no power
is known but that of a father.

That he delights in the misery of others, no man will confess, and yet
what other motive can make a father cruel? The king may be instigated by
one man to the destruction of another; he may sometimes think himself
endangered by the virtues of a subject; he may dread the successful
general or the popular orator; his avarice may point out golden
confiscations; and his guilt may whisper that he can only be secure by
cutting off all power of revenge.

But what can a parent hope from the oppression of those who were born to
his protection, of those who can disturb him with no competition, who
can enrich him with no spoils? Why cowards are cruel may be easily
discovered; but for what reason, not more infamous than cowardice, can
that man delight in oppression who has nothing to fear?

The unjustifiable severity of a parent is loaded with this aggravation,
that those whom he injures are always in his sight. The injustice of a
prince is often exercised upon those of whom he never had any personal
or particular knowledge; and the sentence which he pronounces, whether
of banishment, imprisonment, or death, removes from his view the man
whom he condemns. But the domestick oppressor dooms himself to gaze upon
those faces which he clouds with terrour and with sorrow; and beholds
every moment the effects of his own barbarities. He that can bear to
give continual pain to those who surround him, and can walk with
satisfaction in the gloom of his own presence; he that can see
submissive misery without relenting, and meet without emotion the eye
that implores mercy, or demands justice, will scarcely be amended by
remonstrance or admonition; he has found means of stopping the avenues
of tenderness, and arming his heart against the force of reason.

Even though no consideration should be paid to the great law of social
beings, by which every individual is commanded to consult the happiness
of others, yet the harsh parent is less to be vindicated than any other
criminal, because he less provides for the happiness of himself. Every
man, however little he loves others, would willingly be loved; every man
hopes to live long, and therefore hopes for that time at which he shall
sink back to imbecility, and must depend for ease and cheerfulness upon
the officiousness of others. But how has he obviated the inconveniencies
of old age, who alienates from him the assistance of his children, and
whose bed must be surrounded in the last hours, in the hours of languor
and dejection, of impatience and of pain, by strangers to whom his life
is indifferent, or by enemies to whom his death is desirable?

Piety will, indeed, in good minds overcome provocation, and those who
have been harassed by brutality will forget the injuries which they have
suffered, so far as to perform the last duties with alacrity and zeal.
But surely no resentment can be equally painful with kindness thus
undeserved, nor can severer punishment be imprecated upon a man not
wholly lost in meanness and stupidity, than, through the tediousness of
decrepitude, to be reproached by the kindness of his own children, to
receive not the tribute but the alms of attendance, and to owe every
relief of his miseries, not to gratitude but to mercy.



No. 149. TUESDAY, AUGUST 20, 1751.

  _Quod non sit Pylades hoc tempore, non sit Orestes,
    Miraris? Pylades, Marce, bibebat idem.
  Nec melior panis, turdusve dabatur Oresti:
    Sed par, atque eadem coena duobus erat.--
  Te Cadmea Tyrus, me pinguis Gallia vestit:
    Vis te purpureum, Marce, sagatus amem?
  Ut praestem Pyladen, aliquis mihi praestet Orestem.
    Hoc non fit verbis, Marce: ut ameris, ama_. MART. Lib. vi. Ep. xi.

  You wonder now that no man sees
  Such friends as those of ancient Greece.
  Here lay the point--Orestes' meat
  Was just the same his friend did eat;
  Nor can it yet be found, his wine
  Was better, Pylades, than thine.
  In home-spun russet, I am drest,
  Your cloth is always of the best;
  But, honest Marcus, if you please
  To chuse me for your Pylades,
  Remember, words alone are vain;
  Love--if you would be lov'd again. F. LEWIS.

TO THE RAMBLER.

SIR,

No depravity of the mind has been more frequently or justly censured
than ingratitude. There is indeed sufficient reason for looking on those
that can return evil for good, and repay kindness and assistance with
hatred or neglect, as corrupted beyond the common degrees of wickedness;
nor will he, who has once been clearly detected in acts of injury to his
benefactor, deserve to be numbered among social beings; he has
endeavoured to destroy confidence, to intercept sympathy, and to turn
every man's attention wholly on himself.

There is always danger lest the honest abhorrence of a crime should
raise the passions with too much violence against the man to whom it is
imputed. In proportion as guilt is more enormous, it ought to be
ascertained by stronger evidence. The charge against ingratitude is very
general; almost every man can tell what favours he has conferred upon
insensibility, and how much happiness he has bestowed without return;
but perhaps, if these patrons and protectors were confronted with any
whom they boast of having befriended, it would often appear that they
consulted only their pleasure or vanity, and repaid themselves their
petty donatives by gratifications of insolence and indulgence of
contempt.

It has happened that much of my time has been passed in a dependent
state, and consequently I have received many favours in the opinion of
those at whose expense I have been maintained; yet I do not feel in my
heart any burning gratitude or tumultuous affection; and, as I would not
willingly suppose myself less susceptible of virtuous passions than the
rest of mankind, I shall lay the history of my life before you, that you
may, by your judgment of my conduct, either reform, or confirm, my
present sentiments. My father was the second son of a very ancient and
wealthy family. He married a lady of equal birth, whose fortune, joined
to his own, might have supported his posterity in honour; but being gay
and ambitious, he prevailed on his friends to procure him a post, which
gave him an opportunity of displaying his elegance and politeness. My
mother was equally pleased with splendour, and equally careless of
expense; they both justified their profusion to themselves, by
endeavouring to believe it necessary to the extension of their
acquaintance, and improvement of their interest; and whenever any place
became vacant, they expected to be repaid. In the midst of these hopes
my father was snatched away by an apoplexy; and my mother, who had no
pleasure but in dress, equipage, assemblies, and compliments, finding
that she could live no longer in her accustomed rank, sunk into
dejection, and in two years wore out her life with envy and discontent.

I was sent with a sister, one year younger than myself, to the elder
brother of my father. We were not yet capable of observing how much
fortune influences affection, but flattered ourselves on the road with
the tenderness and regard with which we should be treated by our uncle.
Our reception was rather frigid than malignant; we were introduced to
our young cousins, and for the first month more frequently consoled than
upbraided; but in a short time we found our prattle repressed, our dress
neglected, our endearments unregarded, and our requests referred to the
housekeeper.

The forms of decency were now violated, and every day produced new
insults. We were soon brought to the necessity of receding from our
imagined equality with our cousins, to whom we sunk into humble
companions without choice or influence, expected only to echo their
opinions, facilitate their desires, and accompany their rambles. It was
unfortunate that our early introduction into polite company, and
habitual knowledge of the arts of civility, had given us such an
appearance of superiority to the awkward bashfulness of our relations,
as naturally drew respect and preference from every stranger; and my
aunt was forced to assert the dignity of her own children, while they
were sculking in corners for fear of notice, and hanging down their
heads in silent confusion, by relating the indiscretion of our father,
displaying her own kindness, lamenting the misery of birth without
estate, and declaring her anxiety for our future provision, and the
expedients which she had formed to secure us from those follies or
crimes, to which the conjunction of pride and want often gives occasion.
In a short time care was taken to prevent such vexatious mistakes; we
were told, that fine clothes would only fill our heads with false
expectations, and our dress was therefore accommodated to our fortune.

Childhood is not easily dejected or mortified. We felt no lasting pain
from insolence or neglect; but finding that we were favoured and
commended by all whose interest did not prompt them to discountenance
us, preserved our vivacity and spirit to years of greater sensibility.
It then became irksome and disgusting to live without any principle of
action but the will of another, and we often met privately in the garden
to lament our condition, and to ease our hearts with mutual narratives
of caprice, peevishness, and affront.

There are innumerable modes of insult and tokens of contempt, for which
it is not easy to find a name, which vanish to nothing in an attempt to
describe them, and yet may, by continual repetition, make day pass after
day in sorrow and in terrour. Phrases of cursory compliment and
established salutation may, by a different modulation of the voice, or
cast of the countenance, convey contrary meanings, and be changed from
indications of respect to expressions of scorn. The dependant who
cultivates delicacy in himself, very little consults his own
tranquillity. My unhappy vigilance is every moment discovering some
petulance of accent, or arrogance of mien, some vehemence of
interrogation, or quickness of reply, that recals my poverty to my mind,
and which I feel more acutely, as I know not how to resent it.

You are not, however, to imagine, that I think myself discharged from
the duties of gratitude, only because my relations do not adjust their
looks, or tune their voices to my expectation. The insolence of
benefaction terminates not in negative rudeness or obliquities of
insult. I am often told in express terms of the miseries from which
charity has snatched me, while multitudes are suffered by relations
equally near to devolve upon the parish; and have more than once heard
it numbered among other favours, that I am admitted to the same table
with my cousins.

That I sit at the first table I must acknowledge, but I sit there only
that I may feel the stings of inferiority. My inquiries are neglected,
my opinion is overborne, my assertions are controverted, and, as
insolence always propagates itself, the servants overlook me, in
imitation of their master; if I call modestly, I am not heard; if
loudly, my usurpation of authority is checked by a general frown. I am
often obliged to look uninvited upon delicacies, and sometimes desired
to rise upon very slight pretences.

The incivilities to which I am exposed would give me less pain, were
they not aggravated by the tears of my sister, whom the young ladies are
hourly tormenting with every art of feminine persecution. As it is said
of the supreme magistrate of Venice, that he is a prince in one place
and a slave in another, my sister is a servant to her cousins in their
apartments, and a companion only at the table. Her wit and beauty drew
so much regard away from them, that they never suffer her to appear with
them in any place where they solicit notice, or expect admiration; and
when they are visited by neighbouring ladies and pass their hours in
domestick amusements, she is sometimes called to fill a vacancy,
insulted with contemptuous freedoms, and dismissed to her needle, when
her place is supplied. The heir has of late, by the instigation of his
sisters, begun to harass her with clownish jocularity; he seems inclined
to make his first rude essays of waggery upon her; and by the
connivance, if not encouragement, of his father, treats her with such
licentious brutality, as I cannot bear, though I cannot punish it.

I beg to be informed, Mr. Rambler, how much we can be supposed to owe to
beneficence, exerted on terms like these? to beneficence which pollutes
its gifts with contumely, and may be truly said to pander to pride? I
would willingly be told, whether insolence does not reward its own
liberalities, and whether he that exacts servility can, with justice, at
the same time, expect affection?

I am, Sir, &c.

HYPERDULUS.



No. 150. SATURDAY, AUGUST 24, 1751.

  --_O munera nondum
  Intellecta Deum!_ LUCAN.

  --Thou chiefest good!
  Bestow'd by Heav'n, but seldom understood. ROWE.

As daily experience makes it evident that misfortunes are unavoidably
incident to human life, that calamity will neither be repelled by
fortitude, nor escaped by flight; neither awed by greatness, nor eluded
by obscurity; philosophers have endeavoured to reconcile us to that
condition which they cannot teach us to mend, by persuading us that most
of our evils are made afflictive only by ignorance or perverseness, and
that nature has annexed to every vicissitude of external circumstances
some advantage sufficient to over-balance all its inconveniencies.

This attempt may, perhaps, be justly suspected of resemblance to the
practice of physicians, who, when they cannot mitigate pain, destroy
sensibility, and endeavour to conceal, by opiates, the inefficacy of
their other medicines. The panegyrists of calamity have more frequently
gained applause to their wit, than acquiescence to their arguments; nor
has it appeared that the most musical oratory, or subtle ratiocination,
has been able long to overpower the anguish of oppression, the
tediousness of languor, or the longings of want.

Yet, it may be generally remarked, that, where much has been attempted,
something has been performed; though the discoveries or acquisitions of
man are not always adequate to the expectations of his pride, they are
at least sufficient to animate his industry. The antidotes with which
philosophy has medicated the cup of life, though they cannot give it
salubrity and sweetness, have at least allayed its bitterness, and
contempered its malignity; the balm which she drops upon the wounds of
the mind abates their pain, though it cannot heal them.

By suffering willingly what we cannot avoid, we secure ourselves from
vain and immoderate disquiet; we preserve for better purposes that
strength which would be unprofitably wasted in wild efforts of
desperation, and maintain that circumspection which may enable us to
seize every support, and improve every alleviation. This calmness will
be more easily obtained, as the attention is more powerfully withdrawn
from the contemplation of unmingled unabated evil, and diverted to those
accidental benefits which prudence may confer on every state.

Seneca has attempted, not only to pacify us in misfortune, but almost to
allure us to it, by representing it as necessary to the pleasures of the
mind. _He that never was acquainted with adversity_, says he, _has seen
the world but on one side, and is ignorant of half the scenes of
nature_. He invites his pupil to calamity, as the Syrens allured the
passenger to their coasts, by promising that he shall return [Greek:
pleiona eidos], with increase of knowledge, with enlarged views, and
multiplied ideas.

Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the
last; and perhaps always predominates in proportion to the strength of
the contemplative faculties. He who easily comprehends all that is
before him, and soon exhausts any single subject, is always eager for
new inquiries; and, in proportion as the intellectual eye takes in a
wider prospect, it must be gratified with variety by more rapid flights,
and bolder excursions; nor perhaps can there be proposed to those who
have been accustomed to the pleasures of thought, a more powerful
incitement to any undertaking, than the hope of filling their fancy with
new images, of clearing their doubts, and enlightening their reason.

When Jason, in Valerius Flaccus, would incline the young prince Acastus
to accompany him in the first essay of navigation, he disperses his
apprehensions of danger by representations of the new tracts of earth
and heaven, which the expedition would spread before their eyes; and
tells him with what grief he will hear, at their return, of the
countries which they shall have seen, and the toils which they have
surmounted:

  _O quantum terrae, quantum cognoscere coeli
  Permissum est! pelagus quantos aperimus in usus!
  Nunc forsan grave reris opus: sed laeta recurret
  Cum ratis, et caram cum jam mihi reddet Iolcon;
  Quis pudor heu nostros tibi tunc audire labores!
  Quam referam visas tua per suspiria gentes!_    ARG. Lib. i. 168.

  Led by our stars, what tracts immense we trace!
  From seas remote, what funds of science raise!
  A pain to thought! but when the heroick band
  Returns applauded to their native land,
  A life domestick you will then deplore,
  And sigh while I describe the various, shore.     EDW. CAVE.

Acastus was soon prevailed upon by his curiosity to set rocks and
hardships at defiance, and commit his life to the winds; and the same
motives have in all ages had the same effect upon those whom the desire
of fame or wisdom has distinguished from the lower orders of mankind.

If, therefore, it can be proved that distress is necessary to the
attainment of knowledge, and that a happy situation hides from us so
large a part of the field of meditation, the envy of many who repine at
the sight of affluence and splendour will be much diminished; for such
is the delight of mental superiority, that none on whom nature or study
have conferred it, would purchase the gifts of fortune by its loss.

It is certain, that however the rhetorick of Seneca may have dressed
adversity with extrinsick ornaments, he has justly represented it as
affording some opportunities of observation, which cannot be found in
continual success; he has truly asserted, that to escape misfortune is
to want instruction, and that to live at ease is to live in ignorance.

As no man can enjoy happiness without thinking that he enjoys it, the
experience of calamity is necessary to a just sense of better fortune:
for the good of our present state is merely comparative, and the evil
which every man feels will be sufficient to disturb and harass him, if
he does not know how much he escapes. The lustre of diamonds is
invigorated by the interposition of darker bodies; the lights of a
picture are created by the shades. The highest pleasure which nature has
indulged to sensitive perception, is that of rest after fatigue; yet,
that state which labour heightens into delight, is of itself only ease,
and is incapable of satisfying the mind without the superaddition of
diversified amusements.

Prosperity, as is truly asserted by Seneca, very much obstructs the
knowledge of ourselves. No man can form a just estimate of his own
powers by unactive speculation. That fortitude which has encountered no
dangers, that prudence which has surmounted no difficulties, that
integrity which has been attacked by no temptations, can at best be
considered but as gold not yet brought to the test, of which therefore
the true value cannot be assigned. _He that traverses the lists without
an adversary, may receive_, says the philosopher, _the reward of
victory, but he has no pretensions to the honour_. If it be the highest
happiness of man to contemplate himself with satisfaction, and to
receive the gratulations of his own conscience; he whose courage has
made way amidst the turbulence of opposition, and whose vigour has
broken through the snares of distress, has many advantages over those
that have slept in the shades of indolence, and whose retrospect of time
can entertain them with nothing but day rising upon day, and year
gliding after year.

Equally necessary is some variety of fortune to a nearer inspection of
the manners, principles, and affections of mankind. Princes, when they
would know the opinions or grievances of their subjects, find it
necessary to steal away from guards and attendants, and mingle on equal
terms among the people. To him who is known to have the power of doing
good or harm, nothing is shewn in its natural form. The behaviour of all
that approach him is regulated by his humour, their narratives are
adapted to his inclination, and their reasonings determined by his
opinions; whatever can alarm suspicion, or excite resentment, is
carefully suppressed, and nothing appears but uniformity of sentiments,
and ardour of affection. It may be observed, that the unvaried
complaisance which ladies have the right of exacting, keeps them
generally unskilled in human nature; prosperity will always enjoy the
female prerogatives, and therefore must be always in danger of female
ignorance. Truth is scarcely to be heard, but by those from whom it can
serve no interest to conceal it.



No. 151. TUESDAY, AUGUST 27, 1751.

  [Greek:--Amphi d anthro-
  pon phresin amplakiai
  Anarithmatoi kremantai
  Touto d amachanon eurein,
  O ti nun, kai en teleu-
  ta, phertaton andri tuchein.] PINDAR, Ol. vii. 43.
[Transcriber's note: line breaks and hyphenation in original.]

  But wrapt in error is the human mind,
    And human bliss is ever insecure:
  Know we what fortune yet remains behind?
    Know we how long the present shall endure? WEST.

The writers of medicine and physiology have traced, with great
appearance of accuracy, the effects of time upon the human body, by
marking the various periods of the constitution, and the several stages
by which animal life makes its progress from infancy to decrepitude.
Though their observations have not enabled them to discover how manhood
may be accelerated, or old age retarded, yet surely, if they be
considered only as the amusements of curiosity, they are of equal
importance with conjectures on things more remote, with catalogues of
the fixed stars, and calculations of the bulk of planets.

It had been a task worthy of the moral philosophers to have considered
with equal care the climactericks of the mind; to have pointed out the
time at which every passion begins and ceases to predominate, and noted
the regular variations of desire, and the succession of one appetite to
another.

The periods of mental change are not to be stated with equal certainty;
our bodies grow up under the care of nature, and depend so little on our
own management, that something more than negligence is necessary to
discompose their structure, or impede their vigour. But our minds are
committed in a great measure first to the direction of others, and
afterwards of ourselves. It would be difficult to protract the weakness
of infancy beyond the usual time, but the mind may be very easily
hindered from its share of improvement, and the bulk and strength of
manhood must, without the assistance of education and instruction, be
informed only with the understanding of a child.

Yet, amidst all the disorder and inequality which variety of discipline,
example, conversation, and employment, produce in the intellectual
advances of different men, there is still discovered, by a vigilant
spectator, such a general and remote similitude, as may be expected in
the same common nature affected by external circumstances indefinitely
varied. We all enter the world in equal ignorance, gaze round about us
on the same objects, and have our first pains and pleasures, our first
hopes and fears, our first aversions and desires, from the same causes;
and though, as we proceed farther, life opens wider prospects to our
view, and accidental impulses determine us to different paths, yet as
every mind, however vigorous or abstracted, is necessitated, in its
present state of union, to receive its informations, and execute its
purposes, by the intervention of the body, the uniformity of our
corporeal nature communicates itself to our intellectual operations; and
those whose abilities or knowledge incline them most to deviate from the
general round of life, are recalled from eccentricity by the laws of
their existence.

If we consider the exercises of the mind, it will be found that in each
part of life some particular faculty is more eminently employed. When
the treasures of knowledge are first opened before us, while novelty
blooms alike on either hand, and every thing equally unknown and
unexamined seems of equal value, the power of the soul is principally
exerted in a vivacious and desultory curiosity. She applies by turns to
every object, enjoys it for a short time, and flies with equal ardour to
another. She delights to catch up loose and unconnected ideas, but
starts away from systems and complications, which would obstruct the
rapidity of her transitions, and detain her long in the same pursuit.

When a number of distinct images are collected by these erratick and
hasty surveys, the fancy is busied in arranging them; and combines them
into pleasing pictures with more resemblance to the realities of life as
experience advances, and new observations rectify the former. While the
judgment is yet uninformed, and unable to compare the draughts of
fiction with their originals, we are delighted with improbable
adventures, impracticable virtues, and inimitable characters: but, in
proportion as we have more opportunities of acquainting ourselves with
living nature, we are sooner disgusted with copies in which there
appears no resemblance. We first discard absurdity and impossibility,
then exact greater and greater degrees of probability, but at last
become cold and insensible to the charms of falsehood, however specious,
and, from the imitations of truth, which are never perfect, transfer our
affection to truth itself.

Now commences the reign of judgment or reason; we begin to find little
pleasure but in comparing arguments, stating propositions, disentangling
perplexities, clearing ambiguities, and deducing consequences. The
painted vales of imagination are deserted, and our intellectual activity
is exercised in winding through the labyrinths of fallacy, and toiling
with firm and cautious steps up the narrow tracks of demonstration.
Whatever may lull vigilance, or mislead attention, is contemptuously
rejected, and every disguise in which errour may be concealed, is
carefully observed, till, by degrees, a certain number of incontestable
or unsuspected propositions are established, and at last concatenated
into arguments, or compacted into systems.

At length weariness succeeds to labour, and the mind lies at ease in the
contemplation of her own attainments, without any desire of new
conquests or excursions. This is the age of recollection and narrative;
the opinions are settled, and the avenues of apprehension shut against
any new intelligence; the days that are to follow must pass in the
inculcation of precepts already collected, and assertion of tenets
already received; nothing is henceforward so odious as opposition, so
insolent as doubt, or so dangerous as novelty.

In like manner the passions usurp the separate command of the successive
periods of life. To the happiness of our first years nothing more seems
necessary than freedom from restraint: every man may remember that if he
was left to himself, and indulged in the disposal of his own time, he
was once content without the superaddition of any actual pleasure. The
new world is itself a banquet; and, till we have exhausted the freshness
of life, we have always about us sufficient gratifications: the sunshine
quickens us to play, and the shade invites us to sleep.

But we soon become unsatisfied with negative felicity, and are solicited
by our senses and appetites to more powerful delights, as the taste of
him who has satisfied his hunger must be excited by artificial
stimulations. The simplicity of natural amusement is now past, and art
and contrivance must improve our pleasures; but, in time, art, like
nature, is exhausted, and the senses can no longer supply the cravings
of the intellect.

The attention is then transferred from pleasure to interest, in which
pleasure is perhaps included, though diffused to a wider extent, and
protracted through new gradations. Nothing now dances before the eyes
but wealth and power, nor rings in the ear, but the voice of fame;
wealth, to which, however variously denominated, every man at some time
or other aspires; power, which all wish to obtain within their circle of
action; and fame, which no man, however high or mean, however wise or
ignorant, was yet able to despise. Now prudence and foresight exert
their influence: no hour is devoted wholly to any present enjoyment, no
act or purpose terminates in itself, but every motion is referred to
some distant end; the accomplishment of one design begins another, and
the ultimate wish is always pushed off to its former distance.

At length fame is observed to be uncertain, and power to be dangerous;
the man whose vigour and alacrity begin to forsake him, by degrees
contracts his designs, remits his former multiplicity of pursuits, and
extends no longer his regard to any other honour than the reputation of
wealth, or any other influence than his power. Avarice is generally the
last passion of those lives of which the first part has been squandered
in pleasure, and the second devoted to ambition. He that sinks under the
fatigue of getting wealth, lulls his age with the milder business of
saving it.

I have in this view of life considered man as actuated only by natural
desires, and yielding to their own inclinations, without regard to
superior principles, by which the force of external agents may be
counteracted, and the temporary prevalence of passions restrained.
Nature will indeed always operate, human desires will be always ranging;
but these motions, though very powerful, are not resistless; nature may
be regulated, and desires governed; and, to contend with the
predominance of successive passions, to be endangered first by one
affection, and then by another, is the condition upon which we are to
pass our time, the time of our preparation for that state which shall
put an end to experiment, to disappointment, and to change.



No. 152. SATURDAY, AUGUST 31, 1751.

  --Tristia maestum
  Vullum verba decent, iratum plena minarum. HOR. De Ar. Poet. 105.

  Disastrous words can best disaster shew;
  In angry phrase the angry passions glow. ELPHINSTON.

"It was the wisdom," says Seneca, "of ancient times, to consider what is
most useful as most illustrious." If this rule be applied to works of
genius, scarcely any species of composition deserves more to be
cultivated than the epistolary style, since none is of more various or
frequent use through the whole subordination of human life.

It has yet happened that, among the numerous writers which our nation
has produced, equal, perhaps, always in force and genius, and of late in
elegance and accuracy, to those of any other country, very few have
endeavoured to distinguish themselves by the publication of letters,
except such as were written in the discharge of publick trusts, and
during the transaction of great affairs; which, though they afford
precedents to the minister, and memorials to the historian, are of no
use as examples of the familiar style, or models of private
correspondence.

If it be inquired by foreigners, how this deficiency has happened in the
literature of a country, where all indulge themselves with so little
danger in speaking and writing, may we not without either bigotry or
arrogance inform them, that it must be imputed to our contempt of
trifles, and our due sense of the dignity of the publick? We do not
think it reasonable to fill the world with volumes from which nothing
can be learned, nor expect that the employments of the busy, or the
amusements of the gay, should give way to narratives of our private
affairs, complaints of absence, expressions of fondness, or declarations
of fidelity.

A slight perusal of the innumerable letters by which the wits of France
have signalized their names, will prove that other nations need not be
discouraged from the like attempts by the consciousness of inability;
for surely it is not very difficult to aggravate trifling misfortunes,
to magnify familiar incidents, repeat adulatory professions, accumulate
servile hyperboles, and produce all that can be found in the despicable
remains of Voiture and Scarron.

Yet, as much of life must be passed in affairs considerable only by
their frequent occurrence, and much of the pleasure which our condition
allows, must be produced by giving elegance to trifles, it is necessary
to learn how to become little without becoming mean, to maintain the
necessary intercourse of civility, and fill up the vacuities of actions
by agreeable appearances. It had therefore been of advantage, if such of
our writers as have excelled in the art of decorating insignificance,
had supplied us with a few sallies of innocent gaiety, effusions of
honest tenderness, or exclamations of unimportant hurry.

Precept has generally been posterior to performance. The art of
composing works of genius has never been taught but by the example of
those who performed it by natural vigour of imagination, and rectitude
of judgment. As we have few letters, we have likewise few criticisms
upon the epistolary style. The observations with which Walsh has
introduced his pages of inanity, are such as give him little claim to
the rank assigned him by Dryden among the criticks. _Letters_, says he,
_are intended as resemblances of conversation, and the chief
excellencies of conversation are good humour and good breeding_. This
remark, equally valuable for its novelty and propriety, he dilates and
enforces with an appearance of complete acquiescence in his own
discovery.

No man was ever in doubt about the moral qualities of a letter. It has
been always known that he who endeavours to please must appear pleased,
and he who would not provoke rudeness must not practise it. But the
question among those who establish rules for an epistolary performance
is how gaiety or civility may be properly expressed; as among the
criticks in history it is not contested whether truth ought to be
preserved, but by what mode of diction it is best adorned.

As letters are written on all subjects, in all states of mind, they
cannot be properly reduced to settled rules, or described by any single
characteristick; and we may safely disentangle our minds from critical
embarrassments, by determining that a letter has no peculiarity but its
form, and that nothing is to be refused admission, which would be proper
in any other method of treating the same subject. The qualities of the
epistolary style most frequently required, are ease and simplicity, an
even flow of unlaboured diction, and an artless arrangement of obvious
sentiments. But these directions are no sooner applied to use, than
their scantiness and imperfection become evident. Letters are written to
the great and to the mean, to the learned and the ignorant, at rest and
in distress, in sport and in passion. Nothing can be more improper than
ease and laxity of expression, when the importance of the subject
impresses solicitude, or the dignity of the person exacts reverence.

That letters should be written with strict conformity to nature is true,
because nothing but conformity to nature can make any composition
beautiful or just. But it is natural to depart from familiarity of
language upon occasions not familiar. Whatever elevates the sentiments
will consequently raise the expression; whatever fills us with hope or
terrour, will produce some perturbation of images and some figurative
distortions of phrase. Wherever we are studious to please, we are afraid
of trusting our first thoughts, and endeavour to recommend our opinion
by studied ornaments, accuracy of method, and elegance of style.

If the personages of the comick scene be allowed by Horace to raise
their language in the transports of anger to the turgid vehemence of
tragedy, the epistolary writer may likewise without censure comply with
the varieties of his matter. If great events are to be related, he may
with all the solemnity of an historian deduce them from their causes,
connect them with their concomitants, and trace them to their
consequences. If a disputed position is to be established, or a remote
principle to be investigated, he may detail his reasonings with all the
nicety of syllogistick method. If a menace is to be averted, or a
benefit implored, he may, without any violation of the edicts of
criticism, call every power of rhetorick to his assistance, and try
every inlet at which love or pity enters the heart.

Letters that have no other end than the entertainment of the
correspondents are more properly regulated by critical precepts, because
the matter and style are equally arbitrary, and rules are more
necessary, as there is a larger power of choice. In letters of this
kind, some conceive art graceful, and others think negligence amiable;
some model them by the sonnet, and will allow them no means of
delighting but the soft lapse of calm mellifluence; others adjust them
by the epigram, and expect pointed sentences and forcible periods. The
one party considers exemption from faults as the height of excellence,
the other looks upon neglect of excellence as the most disgusting fault;
one avoids censure, the other aspires to praise; one is always in danger
of insipidity, the other continually on the brink of affectation.

When the subject has no intrinsick dignity, it must necessarily owe its
attractions to artificial embellishments, and may catch at all
advantages which the art of writing can supply. He that, like Pliny,
sends his friend a portion for his daughter, will, without Pliny's
eloquence or address, find means of exciting gratitude, and securing
acceptance; but he that has no present to make but a garland, a riband,
or some petty curiosity, must endeavour to recommend it by his manner of
giving it.

The purpose for which letters are written when no intelligence is
communicated, or business transacted, is to preserve in the minds of the
absent either love or esteem: to excite love we must impart pleasure,
and to raise esteem we must discover abilities. Pleasure will generally
be given, as abilities are displayed by scenes of imagery, points of
conceit, unexpected sallies, and artful compliments. Trifles always
require exuberance of ornament; the building which has no strength can
be valued only for the grace of its decorations. The pebble must be
polished with care, which hopes to be valued as a diamond; and words
ought surely to be laboured, when they are intended to stand for things.



No. 153. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 1751

  _Turba Remi? Sequitur Fortunam, ut semper, et odit
  Damnatos_. JUV. Sat. x. 73.

  The fickle crowd with fortune comes and goes;
  Wealth still finds followers, and misfortune foes.

TO THE RAMBLER.

SIR,

There are occasions on which all apology is rudeness. He that has an
unwelcome message to deliver, may give some proof of tenderness and
delicacy, by a ceremonial introduction and gradual discovery, because
the mind, upon which the weight of sorrow is to fall, gains time for the
collection of its powers; but nothing is more absurd than to delay the
communication of pleasure, to torment curiosity by impatience, and to
delude hope by anticipation.

I shall therefore forbear the arts by which correspondents generally
secure admission, for I have too long remarked the power of vanity, to
doubt that I shall be read by you with a disposition to approve, when I
declare that my narrative has no other tendency than to illustrate and
corroborate your own observations.

I was the second son of a gentleman, whose patrimony had been wasted by
a long succession of squanderers, till he was unable to support any of
his children, except his heir, in the hereditary dignity of idleness.
Being therefore obliged to employ that part of life in study which my
progenitors had devoted to the hawk and hound, I was in my eighteenth
year despatched to the university, without any rural honours. I had
never killed a single woodcock, nor partaken one triumph over a
conquered fox.

At the university I continued to enlarge my acquisitions with little
envy of the noisy happiness which my elder brother had the fortune to
enjoy; and, having obtained my degree, retired to consider at leisure to
what profession I should confine that application which had hitherto
been dissipated in general knowledge. To deliberate upon a choice which
custom and honour forbid to be retracted, is certainly reasonable; yet
to let loose the attention equally to the advantages and inconveniencies
of every employment is not without danger; new motives are every moment
operating on every side; and mechanicks have long ago discovered, that
contrariety of equal attractions is equivalent to rest.

While I was thus trifling in uncertainty, an old adventurer, who had
been once the intimate friend of my father, arrived from the Indies with
a large fortune; which he had so much harassed himself in obtaining,
that sickness and infirmity left him no other desire than to die in his
native country. His wealth easily procured him an invitation to pass his
life with us; and, being incapable of any amusement but conversation, he
necessarily became familiarized to me, whom he found studious and
domestick. Pleased with an opportunity of imparting my knowledge, and
eager of any intelligence that might increase it, I delighted his
curiosity with historical narratives and explications of nature, and
gratified his vanity by inquiries after the products of distant
countries, and the customs of their inhabitants.

My brother saw how much I advanced in the favour of our guest, who,
being without heirs, was naturally expected to enrich the family of his
friend, but never attempted to alienate me, nor to ingratiate himself.
He was, indeed, little qualified to solicit the affection of a
traveller, for the remissness of his education had left him without any
rule of action but his present humour. He often forsook the old
gentleman in the midst of an adventure, because the horn sounded in the
court-yard, and would have lost an opportunity, not only of knowing the
history, but sharing the wealth of the mogul, for the trial of a new
pointer, or the sight of a horse-race.

It was therefore not long before our new friend declared his intention
of bequeathing to me the profits of his commerce, as the only man in the
family by whom he could expect them to be rationally enjoyed. This
distinction drew upon me the envy not only of my brother but my father.

As no man is willing to believe that he suffers by his own fault, they
imputed the preference which I had obtained to adulatory compliances, or
malignant calumnies. To no purpose did I call upon my patron to attest
my innocence, for who will believe what he wishes to be false? In the
heat of disappointment they forced their inmate by repeated insults to
depart from the house, and I was soon, by the same treatment, obliged to
follow him.

He chose his residence in the confines of London, where rest,
tranquillity, and medicine, restored him to part of the health which he
had lost. I pleased myself with perceiving that I was not likely to
obtain the immediate possession of wealth which no labour of mine had
contributed to acquire; and that he, who had thus distinguished me,
might hope to end his life without a total frustration of those
blessings, which, whatever be their real value, he had sought with so
much diligence, and purchased with so many vicissitudes of danger and
fatigue.

He, indeed, left me no reason to repine at his recovery, for he was
willing to accustom me early to the use of money, and set apart for my
expenses such a revenue as I had scarcely dared to image. I can yet
congratulate myself that fortune has seen her golden cup once tasted
without inebriation. Neither my modesty nor prudence was overwhelmed by
affluence; my elevation was without insolence, and my expense without
profusion. Employing the influence which money always confers, to the
improvement of my understanding, I mingled in parties of gaiety, and in
conferences of learning, appeared in every place where instruction was
to be found, and imagined that, by ranging through all the diversities
of life, I had acquainted myself fully with human nature, and learned
all that was to be known of the ways of men.

It happened, however, that I soon discovered how much was wanted to the
completion of my knowledge, and found that, according to Seneca's
remark, I had hitherto seen the world but on one side. My patron's
confidence in his increase of strength tempted him to carelessness and
irregularity; he caught a fever by riding in the rain, of which he died
delirious on the third day. I buried him without any of the heir's
affected grief or secret exultation; then preparing to take a legal
possession of his fortune, I opened his closet, where I found a will,
made at his first arrival, by which my father was appointed the chief
inheritor, and nothing was left me but a legacy sufficient to support me
in the prosecution of my studies.

I had not yet found such charms in prosperity as to continue it by any
acts of forgery or injustice, and made haste to inform my father of the
riches which had been given him, not by the preference of kindness, but
by the delays of indolence and cowardice of age. The hungry family flew
like vultures on their prey, and soon made my disappointment publick, by
the tumult of their claims, and the splendour of their sorrow.

It was now my part to consider how I should repair the disappointment. I
could not but triumph in my long list of friends, which comprised almost
every name that power or knowledge entitled to eminence; and, in the
prospect of the innumerable roads to honour and preferment, which I had
laid open to myself by the wise use of temporary riches, I believed
nothing necessary but that I should continue that acquaintance to which
I had been so readily admitted, and which had hitherto been cultivated
on both sides with equal ardour.

Full of these expectations, I one morning ordered a chair, with an
intention to make my usual circle of morning visits. Where I first
stopped I saw two footmen lolling at the door, who told me without any
change of posture, or collection of countenance, that their master was
at home, and suffered me to open the inner door without assistance. I
found my friend standing, and, as I was tattling with my former freedom,
was formally entreated to sit down; but did not stay to be favoured with
any further condescensions.

My next experiment was made at the levee of a statesman, who received me
with an embrace of tenderness, that he might with more decency publish
my change of fortune to the sycophants about him. After he had enjoyed
the triumph of condolence, he turned to a wealthy stockjobber, and left
me exposed to the scorn of those who had lately courted my notice, and
solicited my interest.

I was then set down at the door of another, who, upon my entrance,
advised me, with great solemnity, to think of some settled provision for
life. I left him, and hurried away to an old friend, who professed
himself unsusceptible of any impressions from prosperity or misfortune,
and begged that he might see me when he was more at leisure.

Of sixty-seven doors, at which I knocked in the first week after my
appearance in a mourning dress, I was denied admission at forty-six; was
suffered at fourteen to wait in the outer room till business was
despatched; at four, was entertained with a few questions about the
weather; at one, heard the footman rated for bringing my name; and at
two was informed, in the flow of casual conversation, how much a man of
rank degrades himself by mean company.

My curiosity now led me to try what reception I should find among the
ladies; but I found that my patron had carried all my powers of pleasing
to the grave. I had formerly been celebrated as a wit, and not
perceiving any languor in my imagination, I essayed to revive that
gaiety which had hitherto broken out involuntarily before my sentences
were finished. My remarks were now heard with a steady countenance, and
if a girl happened to give way to habitual merriment, her forwardness
was repressed with a frown by her mother or her aunt.

Wherever I come I scatter infirmity and disease; every lady whom I meet
in the Mall is too weary to walk; all whom I entreat to sing are
troubled with colds: if I propose cards, they are afflicted with the
head-ach; [Transcriber's note: sic] if I invite them to the gardens,
they cannot bear a crowd.

All this might be endured; but there is a class of mortals who think my
understanding impaired with my fortune, exalt themselves to the dignity
of advice, and, whenever we happen to meet, presume to prescribe my
conduct, regulate my economy, and direct my pursuits. Another race,
equally impertinent and equally despicable, are every moment
recommending to me an attention to my interest, and think themselves
entitled, by their superior prudence, to reproach me if I speak or move
without regard to profit.

Such, Mr. Rambler, is the power of wealth, that it commands the ear of
greatness and the eye of beauty, gives spirit to the dull, and authority
to the timorous, and leaves him from whom it departs, without virtue and
without understanding, the sport of caprice, the scoff of insolence, the
slave of meanness, and the pupil of ignorance.

I am, &c.



No. 154. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 1751.

  _--Tibi res antiquae laudis et artis
  Ingredior, sanctos ausus recludere fontes_. VIR. Geo. ii. 174.

  For thee my tuneful accents will I raise,
  And treat of arts disclos'd in ancient days;
  Once more unlock for thee the sacred spring. DRYDEN.

The direction of Aristotle to those that study politicks, is first to
examine and understand what has been written by the ancients upon
government; then to cast their eyes round upon the world, and consider
by what causes the prosperity of communities is visibly influenced, and
why some are worse, and others better administered.

The same method must be pursued by him who hopes to become eminent in
any other part of knowledge. The first task is to search books, the next
to contemplate nature. He must first possess himself of the intellectual
treasures which the diligence of former ages has accumulated, and then
endeavour to increase them by his own collections.

The mental disease of the present generation, is impatience of study,
contempt of the great masters of ancient wisdom, and a disposition to
rely wholly upon unassisted genius and natural sagacity. The wits of
these happy days have discovered a way to fame, which the dull caution
of our laborious ancestors durst never attempt; they cut the knots of
sophistry which it was formerly the business of years to untie, solve
difficulties by sudden irradiations of intelligence, and comprehend long
processes of argument by immediate intuition.

Men who have flattered themselves into this opinion of their own
abilities, look down on all who waste their lives over books, as a race
of inferior beings, condemned by nature to perpetual pupilage, and
fruitlessly endeavouring to remedy their barrenness by incessant
cultivation, or succour their feebleness by subsidiary strength. They
presume that none would be more industrious than they, if they were not
more sensible of deficiencies; and readily conclude, that he who places
no confidence in his own powers, owes his modesty only to his weakness.

It is however certain, that no estimate is more in danger of erroneous
calculations than those by which a man computes the force of his own
genius. It generally happens at our entrance into the world, that, by
the natural attraction of similitude, we associate with men like
ourselves, young, sprightly, and ignorant, and rate our accomplishments
by comparison with theirs; when we have once obtained an acknowledged
superiority over our acquaintances, imagination and desire easily extend
it over the rest of mankind, and if no accident forces us into new
emulations, we grow old, and die in admiration of ourselves.

Vanity, thus confirmed in her dominion, readily listens to the voice of
idleness, and sooths the slumber of life with continual dreams of
excellence and greatness. A man, elated by confidence in his natural
vigour of fancy and sagacity of conjecture, soon concludes that he
already possesses whatever toil and inquiry can confer. He then listens
with eagerness to the wild objections which folly has raised against the
common means of improvement; talks of the dark chaos of indigested
knowledge; describes the mischievous effects of heterogeneous sciences
fermenting in the mind; relates the blunders of lettered ignorance;
expatiates on the heroick merit of those who deviate from prescription,
or shake off authority; and gives vent to the inflations of his heart by
declaring that he owes nothing to pedants and universities.

All these pretensions, however confident, are very often vain. The
laurels which superficial acuteness gains in triumphs over ignorance
unsupported by vivacity, are observed by Locke to be lost, whenever real
learning and rational diligence appear against her; the sallies of
gaiety are soon repressed by calm confidence; and the artifices of
subtilty are readily detected by those, who, having carefully studied
the question, are not easily confounded or surprised.

But, though the contemner of books had neither been deceived by others
nor himself, and was really born with a genius surpassing the ordinary
abilities of mankind; yet surely such gifts of Providence may be more
properly urged as incitements to labour, than encouragements to
negligence. He that neglects the culture of ground naturally fertile, is
more shamefully culpable, than he whose field would scarcely recompense
his husbandry.

Cicero remarks, that not to know what has been transacted in former
times, is to continue always a child. If no use is made of the labours
of past ages, the world must remain always in the infancy of knowledge.
The discoveries of every man must terminate in his own advantage, and
the studies of every age be employed on questions which the past
generation had discussed and determined. We may with as little reproach
borrow science as manufactures from our ancestors; and it is as rational
to live in caves till our own hands have erected a palace, as to reject
all knowledge of architecture which our understandings will not supply.

To the strongest and quickest mind it is far easier to learn than to
invent. The principles of arithmetick and geometry may be comprehended
by a close attention in a few days; yet who can flatter himself that the
study of a long life would have enabled him to discover them, when he
sees them yet unknown to so many nations, whom he cannot suppose less
liberally endowed with natural reason, than the Grecians or Egyptians?

Every science was thus far advanced towards perfection, by the emulous
diligence of contemporary students, and the gradual discoveries of one
age improving on another. Sometimes unexpected flashes of instruction
were struck out by the fortuitous collision of happy incidents, or an
involuntary concurrence of ideas, in which the philosopher to whom they
happened had no other merit than that of knowing their value, and
transmitting, unclouded, to posterity, that light which had been kindled
by causes out of his power. The happiness of these casual illuminations
no man can promise to himself, because no endeavours can procure them;
and therefore whatever be our abilities or application, we must submit
to learn from others what perhaps would have lain hid for ever from
human penetration, had not some remote inquiry brought it to view; as
treasures are thrown up by the ploughman and the digger in the rude
exercise of their common occupations. The man whose genius qualifies him
for great undertakings, must at least be content to learn from books the
present state of human knowledge; that he may not ascribe to himself the
invention of arts generally known; weary his attention with experiments
of which the event has been long registered; and waste, in attempts
which have already succeeded or miscarried, that time which might have
been spent with usefulness and honour upon new undertakings.

But, though the study of books is necessary, it is not sufficient to
constitute literary eminence. He that wishes to be counted among the
benefactors of posterity, must add by his own toil to the acquisitions
of his ancestors, and secure his memory from neglect by some valuable
improvement. This can only be effected by looking out upon the wastes of
the intellectual world, and extending the power of learning over regions
yet undisciplined and barbarous; or by surveying more exactly our
ancient dominions, and driving ignorance from the fortresses and
retreats where she skulks undetected and undisturbed. Every science has
its difficulties, which yet call for solution before we attempt new
systems of knowledge; as every country has its forests and marshes,
which it would be wise to cultivate and drain, before distant colonies
are projected as a necessary discharge of the exuberance of inhabitants.

No man ever yet became great by imitation. Whatever hopes for the
veneration of mankind must have invention in the design or the
execution; either the effect must itself be new, or the means by which
it is produced. Either truths hitherto unknown must be discovered, or
those which are already known enforced by stronger evidence, facilitated
by clearer method, or elucidated by brighter illustrations.

Fame cannot spread wide or endure long that is not rooted in nature, and
matured by art. That which hopes to resist the blast of malignity, and
stand firm against the attacks of time, must contain in itself some
original principle of growth. The reputation which arises from the
detail or transposition of borrowed sentiments, may spread for awhile,
like ivy on the rind of antiquity, but will be torn away by accident or
contempt, and suffered to rot unheeded on the ground.



No. 155. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 1751.

  _--Steriles transmisimus annos,
  Haec aevi mihi prima dies, haec limina vitae_. STAT. i. 362.

  --Our barren years are past;
  Be this of life the first, of sloth the last. ELPHINSTON.

No weakness of the human mind has more frequently incurred
animadversion, than the negligence with which men overlook their own
faults, however flagrant, and the easiness with which they pardon them,
however frequently repeated.

It seems generally believed, that as the eye cannot see itself, the mind
has no faculties by which it can contemplate its own state, and that
therefore we have not means of becoming acquainted with our real
characters; an opinion which, like innumerable other postulates, an
inquirer finds himself inclined to admit upon very little evidence,
because it affords a ready solution of many difficulties. It will
explain why the greatest abilities frequently fail to promote the
happiness of those who possess them; why those who can distinguish with
the utmost nicety the boundaries of vice and virtue, suffer them to be
confounded in their own conduct; why the active and vigilant resign
their affairs implicitly to the management of others; and why the
cautious and fearful make hourly approaches towards ruin, without one
sigh of solicitude or struggle for escape.

When a position teems thus with commodious consequences, who can without
regret confess it to be false? Yet it is certain that declaimers have
indulged a disposition to describe the dominion of the passions as
extended beyond the limits that nature assigned. Self-love is often
rather arrogant than blind; it does not hide our faults from ourselves,
but persuades us that they escape the notice of others, and disposes us
to resent censures lest we should confess them to be just. We are
secretly conscious of defects and vices, which we hope to conceal from
the publick eye, and please ourselves with innumerable impostures, by
which, in reality, nobody is deceived.

In proof of the dimness of our internal sight, or the general inability
of man to determine rightly concerning his own character, it is common
to urge the success of the most absurd and incredible flattery, and the
resentment always raised by advice, however soft, benevolent, and
reasonable. But flattery, if its operation be nearly examined, will be
found to owe its acceptance, not to our ignorance, but knowledge of our
failures, and to delight us rather as it consoles our wants than
displays our possessions. He that shall solicit the favour of his patron
by praising him for qualities which he can find in himself, will be
defeated by the more daring panegyrist who enriches him with
adscititious excellence. Just praise is only a debt, but flattery is a
present. The acknowledgment of those virtues on which conscience
congratulates us, is a tribute that we can at any time exact with
confidence; but the celebration of those which we only feign, or desire
without any vigorous endeavours to attain them, is received as a
confession of sovereignty over regions never conquered, as a favourable
decision of disputable claims, and is more welcome as it is more
gratuitous.

Advice is offensive, not because it lays us open to unexpected regret,
or convicts us of any fault which had escaped our notice, but because it
shews us that we are known to others as well as to ourselves; and the
officious monitor is persecuted with hatred, not because his accusation
is false, but because he assumes that superiority which we are not
willing to grant him, and has dared to detect what we desired to
conceal.

For this reason advice is commonly ineffectual. If those who follow the
call of their desires, without inquiry whither they are going, had
deviated ignorantly from the paths of wisdom, and were rushing upon
dangers unforeseen, they would readily listen to information that recals
them from their errours, and catch the first alarm by which destruction
or infamy is denounced. Few that wander in the wrong way mistake it for
the right, they only find it more smooth and flowery, and indulge their
own choice rather than approve it: therefore few are persuaded to quit
it by admonition or reproof, since it impresses no new conviction, nor
confers any powers of action or resistance. He that is gravely informed
how soon profusion will annihilate his fortune, hears with little
advantage what he knew before, and catches at the next occasion of
expense, because advice has no force to suppress his vanity. He that is
told how certainly intemperance will hurry him to the grave, runs with
his usual speed to a new course of luxury, because his reason is not
invigorated, nor his appetite weakened.

The mischief of flattery is, not that it persuades any man that he is
what he is not, but that it suppresses the influence of honest ambition,
by raising an opinion that honour may be gained without the toil of
merit; and the benefit of advice arises commonly not from any new light
imparted to the mind, but from the discovery which it affords of the
publick suffrages. He that could withstand conscience is frighted at
infamy, and shame prevails when reason is defeated.

As we all know our own faults, and know them commonly with many
aggravations which human perspicacity cannot discover, there is,
perhaps, no man, however hardened by impudence or dissipated by levity,
sheltered by hypocrisy or blasted by disgrace, who does not intend some
time to review his conduct, and to regulate the remainder of his life by
the laws of virtue. New temptations indeed attack him, new invitations
are offered by pleasure and interest, and the hour of reformation is
always delayed; every delay gives vice another opportunity of fortifying
itself by habit; and the change of manners, though sincerely intended
and rationally planned, is referred to the time when some craving
passion shall be fully gratified, or some powerful allurement cease its
importunity.

Thus procrastination is accumulated on procrastination, and one
impediment succeeds another, till age shatters our resolution, or death
intercepts the project of amendment. Such is often the end of salutary
purposes, after they have long delighted the imagination, and appeased
that disquiet which every mind feels from known misconduct, when the
attention is not diverted by business or by pleasure.

Nothing surely can be more unworthy of a reasonable nature, than to
continue in a state so opposite to real happiness, as that all the peace
of solitude, and felicity of meditation, must arise from resolutions of
forsaking it. Yet the world will often afford examples of men, who pass
months and years in a continual war with their own convictions, and are
daily dragged by habit, or betrayed by passion, into practices which
they closed and opened their eyes with purposes to avoid; purposes
which, though settled on conviction, the first impulse of momentary
desire totally overthrows.

The influence of custom is indeed such, that to conquer it will require
the utmost efforts of fortitude and virtue; nor can I think any man more
worthy of veneration and renown, than those who have burst the shackles
of habitual vice. This victory, however, has different degrees of glory
as of difficulty; it is more, heroick as the objects of guilty
gratification are more familiar, and the recurrence of solicitation more
frequent. He that, from experience of the folly of ambition, resigns his
offices, may set himself free at once from temptation to squander his
life in courts, because he cannot regain his former station. He who is
enslaved by an amorous passion, may quit his tyrant in disgust, and
absence will, without the help of reason, overcome by degrees the desire
of returning. But those appetites to which every place affords their
proper object, and which require no preparatory measures or gradual
advances, are more tenaciously adhesive; the wish is so near the
enjoyment, that compliance often precedes consideration, and, before the
powers of reason can be summoned, the time for employing them is past.

Indolence is therefore one of the vices from which those whom it once
infects are seldom reformed. Every other species of luxury operates upon
some appetite that is quickly satiated, and requires some concurrence of
art or accident which every place will not supply; but the desire of
ease acts equally at all hours, and the longer it is indulged is the
more increased. To do nothing is in every man's power; we can never want
an opportunity of omitting duties. The lapse to indolence is soft and
imperceptible, because it is only a mere cessation of activity; but the
return to diligence is difficult, because it implies a change from rest
to motion, from privation to reality:

  --_Facilis descensus Averni:
  Noctes atque dies patet atri junua ditis;
  Sed revocare gradum, saperasque evadere ad auras,
  Hoc opus, hic labor est_.--VIR. Aen. Lib. vi. 126.

  The gates of Hell are open night and day;
  Smooth the descent, and easy is the way;
  But to return, and view the cheerful skies,
  In this the task and mighty labour lies. DRYDEN.

Of this vice, as of all others, every man who indulges it is conscious:
we all know our own state, if we could be induced to consider it, and it
might perhaps be useful to the conquest of all these ensnarers of the
mind, if, at certain stated days, life was reviewed. Many things
necessary are omitted, because we vainly imagine that they may be always
performed; and what cannot be done without pain will for ever be
delayed, if the time of doing it be left unsettled. No corruption is
great but by long negligence, which can scarcely prevail in a mind
regularly and frequently awakened by periodical remorse. He that thus
breaks his life into parts, will find in himself a desire to distinguish
every stage of his existence by some improvement, and delight himself
with the approach of the day of recollection, as of the time which is to
begin a new series of virtue and felicity.



No. 156. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 1751.

  _Nunquam aliud Natura, aliud Sapientia dicit_. Juv. Sat. xiv. 321.

  For Wisdom ever echoes Nature's voice.

Every government, say the politicians, is perpetually degenerating
towards corruption, from which it must be rescued at certain periods by
the resuscitation of its first principles, and the re-establishment of
its original constitution. Every animal body, according to the methodick
physicians, is, by the predominance of some exuberant quality,
continually declining towards disease and death, which must be obviated
by a seasonable reduction of the peccant humour to the just equipoise
which health requires.

In the same manner the studies of mankind, all at least which, not being
subject to rigorous demonstration, admit the influence of fancy and
caprice, are perpetually tending to errour and confusion. Of the great
principles of truth which the first speculatists discovered, the
simplicity is embarrassed by ambitious additions, or the evidence
obscured by inaccurate argumentation; and as they descend from one
succession of writers to another, like light transmitted from room to
room, they lose their strength and splendour, and fade at last in total
evanescence.

The systems of learning therefore must be sometimes reviewed,
complications analyzed into principles, and knowledge disentangled from
opinion. It is not always possible, without a close inspection, to
separate the genuine shoots of consequential reasoning, which grow out
of some radical postulate, from the branches which art has ingrafted on
it. The accidental prescriptions of authority, when time has procured
them veneration, are often confounded with the laws of nature, and those
rules are supposed coëval with reason, of which the first rise cannot be
discovered.

Criticism has sometimes permitted fancy to dictate the laws by which
fancy ought to be restrained, and fallacy to perplex the principles by
which fallacy is to be detected; her superintendence of others has
betrayed her to negligence of herself; and, like the ancient Scythians,
by extending her conquests over distant regions, she has left her throne
vacant to her slaves.

Among the laws of which the desire of extending authority, or ardour of
promoting knowledge, has prompted the prescription, all which writers
have received, had not the same original right to our regard. Some are
to be considered as fundamental and indispensable, others only as useful
and convenient; some as dictated by reason and necessity, others as
enacted by despotick antiquity; some as invincibly supported by their
conformity to the order of nature and operations of the intellect;
others as formed by accident, or instituted by example, and therefore
always liable to dispute and alteration.

That many rules have been advanced without consulting nature or reason,
we cannot but suspect, when we find it peremptorily decreed by the
ancient masters, that only three speaking personages should appear at
once upon the stage; a law, which, as the variety and intricacy of
modern plays has made it impossible to be observed, we now violate
without scruple, and, as experience proves, without inconvenience.

The original of this precept was merely accidental. Tragedy was a
monody, or solitary song in honour of Bacchus, improved afterwards into
a dialogue by the addition of another speaker; but the ancients,
remembering that the tragedy was at first pronounced only by one, durst
not for some time venture beyond two; at last, when custom and impunity
had made them daring, they extended their liberty to the admission of
three, but restrained themselves by a critical edict from further
exorbitance.

By what accident the number of acts was limited to five, I know not that
any author has informed us; but certainly it is not determined by any
necessity arising either from the nature of action, or propriety of
exhibition. An act is only the representation of such a part of the
business of the play as proceeds in an unbroken tenour, or without any
intermediate pause. Nothing is more evident than that of every real, and
by consequence of every dramatick action, the intervals may be more or
fewer than five; and indeed the rule is upon the English stage every day
broken in effect, without any other mischief than that which arises from
an absurd endeavour to observe it in appearance. Whenever the scene is
shifted the act ceases, since some time is necessarily supposed to
elapse while the personages of the drama change their place.

With no greater right to our obedience have the criticks confined the
dramatick action to a certain number of hours. Probability requires that
the time of action should approach somewhat nearly to that of
exhibition, and those plays will always be thought most happily
conducted which crowd the greatest, variety into the least space. But
since it will frequently happen that some delusion must be admitted, I
know not where the limits of imagination can be fixed. It is rarely
observed that minds, not prepossessed by mechanical criticism, feel any
offence from the extension of the intervals between the acts; nor can I
conceive it absurd or impossible, that he who can multiply three hours
into twelve or twenty-four, might imagine with equal ease a greater
number.

I know not whether he that professes to regard no other laws than those
of nature, will not be inclined to receive tragi-comedy to his
protection, whom, however generally condemned, her own laurels have
hitherto shaded from the fulminations of criticism. For what is there in
the mingled drama which impartial reason can condemn? The connexion of
important with trivial incidents, since it is not only common but
perpetual in the world, may surely be allowed upon the stage, which
pretends only to be the mirror of life. The impropriety of suppressing
passions before we have raised them to the intended agitation, and of
diverting the expectation from an event which we keep suspended only to
raise it, may be speciously urged. But will not experience shew this
objection to be rather subtle than just? Is it not certain that the
tragick and comick affections have been moved alternately with equal
force, and that no plays have oftener filled the eye with tears, and the
breast with palpitation, than those which are variegated with interludes
of mirth?

I do not however think it safe to judge of works of genius merely by the
event. The resistless vicissitudes of the heart, this alternate
prevalence of merriment and solemnity, may sometimes be more properly
ascribed to the vigour of the writer than the justness of the design:
and, instead of vindicating tragi-comedy by the success of Shakspeare,
we ought, perhaps, to pay new honours to that transcendent and unbounded
genius that could preside over the passions in sport; who, to actuate
the affections, needed not the slow gradation of common means, but could
fill the heart with instantaneous jollity or sorrow, and vary our
disposition as he changed his scenes. Perhaps the effects even of
Shakspeare's poetry might have been yet greater, had he not counteracted
himself; and we might have been more interested in the distresses of his
heroes, had we not been so frequently diverted by the jokes of his
buffoons.

There are other rules more fixed and obligatory. It is necessary that of
every play the chief action should be single; for since a play
represents some transaction, through its regular maturation to its final
event, two actions equally important must evidently constitute two
plays.

As the design of tragedy is to instruct by moving the passions, it must
always have a hero, a personage apparently and incontestably superior to
the rest, upon whom the attention may be fixed, and the anxiety
suspended. For though, of two persons opposing each other with equal
abilities and equal virtue, the auditor will inevitably, in time, choose
his favourite, yet as that choice must be without any cogency of
conviction, the hopes or fears which it raises will be faint and
languid. Of two heroes acting in confederacy against a common enemy, the
virtues or dangers will give little emotion, because each claims our
concern with the same right, and the heart lies at rest between equal
motives.

It ought to be the first endeavour of a writer to distinguish nature
from custom; or that which is established because it is right, from that
which is right only because it is established; that he may neither
violate essential principles by a desire of novelty, nor debar himself
from the attainment of beauties within his view, by a needless fear of
breaking rules which no literary dictator had authority to enact.



No. 157. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 1751.

  [Greek:--Oi aidos
  Ginetai ae t' andras mega sinetai aed' oninaesi.]
  HOM. Il. [Greek: O.] 44.

  Shame greatly hurts or greatly helps mankind. ELPHINSTON.

TO THE RAMBLER.

SIR,

Though one of your correspondents has presumed to mention with some
contempt that presence of attention and easiness of address, which the
polite have long agreed to celebrate and esteem, yet I cannot be
persuaded to think them unworthy of regard or cultivation; but am
inclined to believe that, as we seldom value rightly what we have never
known the misery of wanting, his judgment has been vitiated by his
happiness; and that a natural exuberance of assurance has hindered him
from discovering its excellence and use.

This felicity, whether bestowed by constitution, or obtained by early
habitudes, I can scarcely contemplate without envy. I was bred under a
man of learning in the country, who inculcated nothing but the dignity
of knowledge, and the happiness of virtue. By frequency of admonition,
and confidence of assertion, he prevailed upon me to believe, that the
splendour of literature would always attract reverence, if not darkened
by corruption. I therefore pursued my studies with incessant industry,
and avoided every thing which I had been taught to consider either as
vicious or tending to vice, because I regarded guilt and reproach as
inseparably united, and thought a tainted reputation the greatest
calamity.

At the university, I found no reason for changing my opinion; for though
many among my fellow-students took the opportunity of a more remiss
discipline to gratify their passions; yet virtue preserved her natural
superiority, and those who ventured to neglect, were not suffered to
insult her. The ambition of petty accomplishments found its way into the
receptacles of learning, but was observed to seize commonly on those who
either neglected the sciences or could not attain them; and I was
therefore confirmed in the doctrines of my old master, and thought
nothing worthy of my care but the means of gaining or imparting
knowledge.

This purity of manners, and intenseness of application, soon extended my
renown, and I was applauded by those, whose opinion I then thought
unlikely to deceive me, as a young man that gave uncommon hopes of
future eminence. My performances in time reached my native province, and
my relations congratulated themselves upon the new honours that were
added to their family.

I returned home covered with academical laurels, and fraught with
criticism and philosophy. The wit and the scholar excited curiosity, and
my acquaintance was solicited by innumerable invitations. To please will
always be the wish of benevolence, to be admired must be the constant
aim of ambition; and I therefore considered myself as about to receive
the reward of my honest labours, and to find the efficacy of learning
and of virtue.

The third day after my arrival I dined at the house of a gentleman who
had summoned a multitude of his friends to the annual celebration of his
wedding-day. I set forward with great exultation, and thought myself
happy that I had an opportunity of displaying my knowledge to so
numerous an assembly. I felt no sense of my own insufficiency, till,
going up stairs to the dining-room, I heard the mingled roar of
obstreperous merriment. I was, however, disgusted rather than terrified,
and went forward without dejection. The whole company rose at my
entrance; but when I saw so many eyes fixed at once upon me, I was
blasted with a sudden imbecility, I was quelled by some nameless power
which I found impossible to be resisted. My sight was dazzled, my cheeks
glowed, my perceptions were confounded; I was harassed by the multitude
of eager salutations, and returned the common civilities with hesitation
and impropriety; the sense of my own blunders increased my confusion,
and, before the exchange of ceremonies allowed me to sit down, I was
ready to sink under the oppression of surprise; my voice grew weak, and
my knees trembled.

The assembly then resumed their places, and I sat with my eyes fixed
upon the ground. To the questions of curiosity, or the appeals of
complaisance, I could seldom answer but with negative monosyllables, or
professions of ignorance; for the subjects on which they conversed, were
such as are seldom discussed in books, and were therefore out of my
range of knowledge. At length an old clergyman, who rightly conjectured
the reason of my conciseness, relieved me by some questions about the
present state of natural knowledge, and engaged me, by an appearance of
doubt and opposition, in the explication and defence of the Newtonian
philosophy.

The consciousness of my own abilities roused me from depression, and
long familiarity with my subject enabled me to discourse with ease and
volubility; but, however I might please myself, I found very little
added by my demonstrations to the satisfaction of the company; and my
antagonist, who knew the laws of conversation too well to detain their
attention long upon an unpleasing topick, after he had commended my
acuteness and comprehension, dismissed the controversy, and resigned me
to my former insignificance and perplexity.

After dinner, I received from the ladies, who had heard that I was a
wit, an invitation to the tea-table. I congratulated myself upon an
opportunity to escape from the company, whose gaiety began to be
tumultuous, and among whom several hints had been dropped of the
uselessness of universities, the folly of book-learning, and the
awkwardness of scholars. To the ladies, therefore, I flew, as to a
refuge from clamour, insult, and rusticity; but found my heart sink as I
approached their apartment, and was again disconcerted by the ceremonies
of entrance, and confounded by the necessity of encountering so many
eyes at once.

When I sat down I considered that, something pretty was always said to
ladies, and resolved to recover my credit by some elegant observation or
graceful compliment. I applied myself to the recollection of all that I
had read or heard in praise of beauty, and endeavoured to accommodate
some classical compliment to the present occasion. I sunk into profound
meditation, revolved the characters of the heroines of old, considered
whatever the poets have sung in their praise, and, after having borrowed
and invented, chosen and rejected a thousand sentiments, which, if I had
uttered them, would not have been understood, I was awakened from my
dream of learned gallantry, by the servant who distributed the tea.

There are not many situations more incessantly uneasy than that in which
the man is placed who is watching an opportunity to speak, without
courage to take it when it is offered, and who, though he resolves to
give a specimen of his abilities, always finds some reason or other for
delaying it to the next minute. I was ashamed of silence, yet could find
nothing to say of elegance or importance equal to my wishes. The ladies,
afraid of my learning, thought themselves not qualified to propose any
subject of prattle to a man so famous for dispute, and there was nothing
on either side but impatience and vexation.

In this conflict of shame, as I was re-assembling my scattered
sentiments, and, resolving to force my imagination to some sprightly
sally, had just found a very happy compliment, by too much attention to
my own meditations, I suffered the saucer to drop from my hand. The cup
was broken, the lap-dog was scalded, a brocaded petticoat was stained,
and the whole assembly was thrown into disorder. I now considered all
hopes of reputation at an end, and while they were consoling and
assisting one another, stole away in silence.

The misadventures of this unhappy day are not yet at an end; I am afraid
of meeting the meanest of them that triumphed over me in this state of
stupidity and contempt, and feel the same terrours encroaching upon my
heart at the sight of those who have once impressed them. Shame, above
any other passion, propagates itself. Before those who have seen me
confused, I can never appear without new confusion, and the remembrance
of the weakness which I formerly discovered, hinders me from acting or
speaking with my natural force.

But is this misery, Mr. Rambler, never to cease; have I spent my life in
study only to become the sport of the ignorant, and debarred myself from
all the common enjoyments of youth to collect ideas which must sleep in
silence, and form opinions which I must not divulge? Inform me, dear
Sir, by what means I may rescue my faculties from these shackles of
cowardice, how I may rise to a level with my fellow-beings, recall
myself from this langour of involuntary subjection to the free exertion
of my intellects, and add to the power of reasoning the liberty of
speech.

I am, Sir, &c.

VERECUNDULUS.



No. 158. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 1751.

  Grammatici certunt, et adhuc sub judice lis est. HOR. Ar. Poet. 78.

  --Criticks yet contend,
  And of their vain disputings find no end. FRANCIS.

Criticism, though dignified from the earliest ages by the labours of men
eminent for knowledge and sagacity, and, since the revival of polite
literature, the favourite study of European scholars, has not yet
attained the certainty and stability of science. The rules hitherto
received are seldom drawn from any settled principle or self-evident
postulate, or adapted to the natural and invariable constitution of
things; but will be found, upon examination, the arbitrary edicts of
legislators, authorised only by themselves, who, out of various means by
which the same end may be attained, selected such as happened to occur
to their own reflection, and then, by a law which idleness and timidity
were too willing to obey, prohibited new experiments of wit, restrained
fancy from the indulgence of her innate inclination to hazard and
adventure, and condemned all future flights of genius to pursue the path
of the Meonian eagle.

This authority may be more justly opposed, as it is apparently derived
from them whom they endeavour to control; for we owe few of the rules of
writing to the acuteness of criticks, who have generally no other merit
than that, having read the works of great authors with attention, they
have observed the arrangement of their matter, or the graces of their
expression, and then expected honour and reverence for precepts which
they never could have invented; so that practice has introduced rules,
rather than rules have directed practice.

For this reason the laws of every species of writing have been settled
by the ideas of him who first raised it to reputation, without inquiry
whether his performances were not yet susceptible of improvement. The
excellencies and faults of celebrated writers have been equally
recommended to posterity; and, so far has blind reverence prevailed,
that even the number of their books has been thought worthy of
imitation.

The imagination of the first authors of lyrick poetry was vehement and
rapid, and their knowledge various and extensive. Living in an age when
science had been little cultivated, and when the minds of their
auditors, not being accustomed to accurate inspection, were easily
dazzled by glaring ideas, they applied themselves to instruct, rather by
short sentences and striking thoughts, than by regular argumentation;
and, finding attention more successfully excited by sudden sallies and
unexpected exclamations, than by the more artful and placid beauties of
methodical deduction, they loosed their genius to its own course, passed
from one sentiment to another without expressing the intermediate ideas,
and roved at large over the ideal world with such lightness and agility,
that their footsteps are scarcely to be traced.

From this accidental peculiarity of the ancient writers the criticks
deduce the rules of lyrick poetry, which they have set free from all the
laws by which other compositions are confined, and allow to neglect the
niceties of transition, to start into remote digressions, and to wander
without restraint from one scene of imagery to another.

A writer of later times has, by the vivacity of his essays, reconciled
mankind to the same licentiousness in short dissertations; and he
therefore who wants skill to form a plan, or diligence to pursue it,
needs only entitle his performance an essay, to acquire the right of
heaping together the collections of half his life without order,
coherence, or propriety.

In writing, as in life, faults are endured without disgust when they are
associated with transcendent merit, and may be sometimes recommended to
weak judgments by the lustre which they obtain from their union with
excellence; but it is the business of those who presume to superintend
the taste or morals of mankind, to separate delusive combinations and
distinguish that which may be praised from that which can only be
excused. As vices never promote happiness, though, when overpowered by
more active and more numerous virtues, they cannot totally destroy it;
so confusion and irregularity produce no beauty, though they cannot
always obstruct the brightness of genius and learning. To proceed from
one truth to another, and connect distant propositions by regular
consequences, is the great prerogative of man. Independent and
unconnected sentiments flashing upon the mind in quick succession, may,
for a time, delight by their novelty, but they differ from systematical
reasoning, as single notes from harmony, as glances of lightning from
the radiance of the sun.

When rules are thus drawn, rather from precedents than reason, there is
danger not only from the faults of an author, but from the errours of
those who criticise his works; since they may often mislead their pupils
by false representations, as the Ciceronians of the sixteenth century
were betrayed into barbarisms by corrupt copies of their darling writer.

It is established at present, that the proemial lines of a poem, in
which the general subject is proposed, must be void of glitter and
embellishment. "The first lines of Paradise Lost," says Addison, "are
perhaps as plain, simple, and unadorned, as any of the whole poem, in
which particular the author has conformed himself to the example of
Homer, and the precept of Horace."

This observation seems to have been made by an implicit adoption of the
common opinion, without consideration either of the precept or example.
Had Horace been consulted, he would have been found to direct only what
should be comprised in the proposition, not how it should be expressed;
and to have commended Homer in opposition to a meaner poet, not for the
gradual elevation of his diction, but the judicious expansion of his
plan; for displaying unpromised events, not for producing unexpected
elegancies.

  --Specivsa dehinc miracula prouiat;
  Antiphaten, Scyllamque, et cum Cyclope Charybdim.  Hon. Ar. Poet. 146.

  But from a cloud of smoke he breaks to light,
  And pours his specious miracles to sight;
  Antiphates his hideous feast devours,
  Charybdis barks, and Polyphemus roars.     FRANCIS.

If the exordial verses of Homer be compared with the rest of the poem,
they will not appear remarkable for plainness or simplicity, but rather
eminently adorned and illuminated:

  [Greek:
  Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, polutropon, os mala polla
  Plagchthae, epei Troiaes ieron ptoliethron eperse;
  Pollon d anthropon iden astea, kai noon egno;
  Polla d og en pontps pathen algea on kata thumon,
  Arnumenos aen te psuchaen kai noston etairon;
  All oud os etarous errusato, iemenos per;
  Auton gar spheteraesin atasthaliaesin olonto.
  Naepioi, oi kata bous uperionos Aeelioio
  Aesthion; autar o toisin apheileto vostimon aemao;
  Ton amothen ge, thea, thugater Dios, eipe kai eamin.]

  The man, for wisdom's various arts renown'd,
  Long exercised in woes, O muse! resound.
  Who, when his arms had wrought the destin'd fall
  Of sacred Troy, and raz'd her heav'n-built wall,
  Wandering from clime to clime, observant stray'd,
  The manners noted, and their states survey'd.
  On stormy seas unnumber'd toils he bore,
  Safe with his friends to gain his natal shore:
  Vain toils! their impious folly dar'd to prey
  On herds devoted to the god of day;
  The god vindictive doom'd them never more
  (Ah! men unbless'd) to touch that natal shore.
  O snatch some portion of these acts from fate,
  Celestial muse! and to our world relate.   POPE.

The first verses of the Iliad are in like manner particularly splendid,
and the proposition of the Aeneid closes with dignity and magnificence
not often to be found even in the poetry of Virgil.

The intent of the introduction is to raise expectation, and suspend it;
something therefore must be discovered, and something concealed; and the
poet, while the fertility of his invention is yet unknown, may properly
recommend himself by the grace of his language.

He that reveals too much, or promises too little; he that never
irritates the intellectual appetite, or that immediately satiates it,
equally defeats his own purpose. It is necessary to the pleasure of the
reader, that the events should not be anticipated, and how then can his
attention be invited, but by grandeur of expression?



No. 159. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 1751.

  _Sunt verba et voces, quibus hunc lenire dolorem
  Possis, et magnuum morbi deponere partem_. HOR. Ep. Lib. i. 34.

  The power of words, and soothing sounds, appease
  The raging pain, and lessen the disease. FRANCIS.

The imbecility with which Verecundulus complains that the presence of a
numerous assembly freezes his faculties, is particularly incident to the
studious part of mankind, whose education necessarily secludes them in
their earlier years from mingled converse, till, at their dismission
from schools and academies, they plunge at once into the tumult of the
world, and, coming forth from the gloom of solitude, are overpowered by
the blaze of publick life.

It is, perhaps, kindly provided by nature, that as the feathers and
strength of a bird grow together, and her wings are not completed till
she is able to fly, so some proportion should be preserved in the human
kind between judgment and courage; the precipitation of inexperience is
therefore restrained by shame, and we remain shackled by timidity, till
we have learned to speak and act with propriety.  I believe few can
review the days of their youth without recollecting temptations, which
shame, rather than virtue, enabled them to resist; and opinions which,
however erroneous in their principles, and dangerous in their
consequences, they have panted to advance at the hazard of contempt and
hatred, when they found themselves irresistibly depressed by a languid
anxiety, which seized them at the moment of utterance, and still
gathered strength from their endeavours to resist it.

It generally happens that assurance keeps an even pace with ability, and
the fear of miscarriage, which hinders Our first attempts, is gradually
dissipated as our skill advances towards certainty of success. That
bashfulness, therefore, which prevents disgrace, that short and
temporary shame which secures us from the danger of lasting reproach,
cannot be properly counted among our misfortunes.

Bashfulness, however it may incommode for a moment, scarcely ever
produces evils of long continuance; it may flush the cheek, flutter in
the heart, deject the eyes, and enchain the tongue, but its mischiefs
soon pass off without remembrance. It may sometimes exclude pleasure,
but seldom opens any avenue to sorrow or remorse. It is observed
somewhere that _few have repented of having forborne to speak_.

To excite opposition, and inflame malevolence, is the unhappy privilege
of courage made arrogant by consciousness of strength. No man finds in
himself any inclination to attack or oppose him who confesses his
superiority by blushing in his presence. Qualities exerted with apparent
fearfulness, receive applause from every voice, and support from every
hand. Diffidence may check resolution and obstruct performance, but
compensates its embarrassments by more important advantages; it
conciliates the proud, and softens the severe, averts envy from
excellence, and censure from miscarriage.

It may indeed happen that knowledge and virtue remain too long congealed
by this frigorifick power, as the principles of vegetation are sometimes
obstructed by lingering frosts. He that enters late into a public
station, though with all the abilities requisite to the discharge of his
duty, will find his powers at first impeded by a timidity which he
himself knows to be vicious, and must struggle long against dejection
and reluctance, before he obtains the full command of his own attention,
and adds the gracefulness of ease to the dignity of merit.

For this disease of the mind I know not whether any remedies of much
efficacy can be found. To advise a man unaccustomed to the eyes of
multitudes to mount a tribunal without perturbation, to tell him whose
life was passed in the shades of contemplation, that he must not be
disconcerted or perplexed in receiving and returning the compliments of
a splendid assembly, is to advise an inhabitant of Brasil or Sumatra not
to shiver at an English winter, or him who has always lived upon a plain
to look from a precipice without emotion. It is to suppose custom
instantaneously controllable by reason, and to endeavour to communicate,
by precept, that which only time and habit can bestow.

He that hopes by philosophy and contemplation alone to fortify himself
against that awe which all, at their first appearance on the stage of
life, must feel from the spectators, will, at the hour of need, be
mocked by his resolution; and I doubt whether the preservatives which
Plato relates Alcibiades to have received from Socrates, when he was
about to speak in publick, proved sufficient to secure him from the
powerful fascination.

Yet, as the effects of time may by art and industry be accelerated or
retarded, it cannot be improper to consider how this troublesome
instinct may be opposed when it exceeds its just proportion, and instead
of repressing petulance and temerity, silences eloquence, and
debilitates force; since, though it cannot be hoped that anxiety should
be immediately dissipated, it may be at least somewhat abated; and the
passions will operate with less violence, when reason rises against
them, than while she either slumbers in neutrality, or, mistaking her
interest, lends them her assistance.

No cause more frequently produces bashfulness than too high an opinion
of our own importance. He that imagines an assembly filled with his
merit, panting with expectation, and hushed with attention, easily
terrifies himself with the dread of disappointing them, and strains his
imagination in pursuit of something that may vindicate the veracity of
fame, and shew that his reputation was not gained by chance. He
considers that what he shall say or do will never be forgotten; that
renown or infamy is suspended upon every syllable, and that nothing
ought to fall from him which will not bear the test of time. Under such
solicitude, who can wonder that the mind is overwhelmed, and, by
struggling with attempts above her strength, quickly sinks into
languishment and despondency?

The most useful medicines are often unpleasing to the taste. Those who
are oppressed by their own reputation, will, perhaps, not be comforted
by hearing that their cares are unnecessary. But the truth is, that no
man is much regarded by the rest of the world. He that considers how
little he dwells upon the condition of others, will learn how little the
attention of others is attracted by himself. While we see multitudes
passing before us, of whom, perhaps, not one appears to deserve our
notice, or excite our sympathy, we should remember, that we likewise are
lost in the same throng; that the eye which happens to glance upon us is
turned in a moment on him that follows us, and that the utmost which we
can reasonably hope or fear is, to fill a vacant hour with prattle, and
be forgotten.



No. 160. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 1751

  --Inter se convenit ursis. JUV. Sat. xv. 164.

  Beasts of each kind their fellows spare;
  Bear lives in amity with bear.

"The world," says Locke, "has people of all sorts." As in the general
hurry produced by the superfluities of some, and necessities of others,
no man needs to stand still for want of employment, so in the
innumerable gradations of ability, and endless varieties of study and
inclination, no employment can be vacant for want of a man qualified to
discharge it.

Such is probably the natural state of the universe; but it is so much
deformed by interest and passion, that the benefit of this adaptation of
men to things is not always perceived. The folly or indigence of those
who set their services to sale, inclines them to boast of qualifications
which they do not possess, and attempt business which they do not
understand; and they who have the power of assigning to others the task
of life, are seldom honest or seldom happy in their nomination. Patrons
are corrupted by avarice, cheated by credulity, or overpowered by
resistless solicitation. They are sometimes too strongly influenced by
honest prejudices of friendship, or the prevalence of virtuous
compassion. For, whatever cool reason may direct, it is not easy for a
man of tender and scrupulous goodness to overlook the immediate effect
of his own actions, by turning his eyes upon remoter consequences, and
to do that which must give present pain, for the sake of obviating evil
yet unfelt, or securing advantage in time to come. What is distant is in
itself obscure, and, when we have no wish to see it, easily escapes our
notice, or takes such a form as desire or imagination bestows upon it.

Every man might, for the same reason, in the multitudes that swarm about
him, find some kindred mind with which he could unite in confidence and
friendship; yet we see many straggling single about the world, unhappy
for want of an associate, and pining with the necessity of confining
their sentiments to their own bosoms.

This inconvenience arises, in like manner, from struggles of the will
against the understanding. It is not often difficult to find a suitable
companion, if every man would be content with such as he is qualified to
please. But if vanity tempts him to forsake his rank, and post himself
among those with whom no common interest or mutual pleasure can ever
unite him, he must always live in a state of unsocial separation,
without tenderness and without trust.

There are many natures which can never approach within a certain
distance, and which, when any irregular motive impels them towards
contact, seem to start back from each other by some invincible
repulsion. There are others which immediately cohere whenever they come
into the reach of mutual attraction, and with very little formality of
preparation mingle intimately as soon as they meet. Every man, whom
either business or curiosity has thrown at large into the world, will
recollect many instances of fondness and dislike, which have forced
themselves upon him without the intervention of his judgment; of
dispositions to court some and avoid others, when he could assign no
reason for the preference, or none adequate to the violence of his
passions; of influence that acted instantaneously upon his mind, and
which no arguments or persuasions could ever overcome.

Among those with whom time and intercourse have made us familiar, we
feel our affections divided in different proportions without much regard
to moral or intellectual merit. Every man knows some whom he cannot
induce himself to trust, though he has no reason to suspect that they
would betray him; those to whom he cannot complain, though he never
observed them to want compassion; those in whose presence he never can
be gay, though excited by invitations to mirth and freedom; and those
from whom he cannot be content to receive instruction, though they never
insulted his ignorance by contempt or ostentation.

That much regard is to be had to those instincts of kindness and
dislike, or that reason should blindly follow them, I am far from
intending to inculcate: it is very certain, that by indulgence we may
give them strength which they have not from nature, and almost every
example of ingratitude and treachery proves, that by obeying them we may
commit our happiness to those who are very unworthy of so great a trust.
But it may deserve to be remarked, that since few contend much with
their inclinations, it is generally vain to solicit the good-will of
those whom we perceive thus involuntarily alienated from us; neither
knowledge nor virtue will reconcile antipathy, and though officiousness
may be for a time admitted, and diligence applauded, they will at last
be dismissed with coldness, or discouraged by neglect.

Some have indeed an occult power of stealing upon the affections, of
exciting universal benevolence, and disposing every heart to fondness
and friendship. But this is a felicity granted only to the favourites of
nature. The greater part of mankind find a different reception from
different dispositions; they sometimes obtain unexpected caresses from
those whom they never flattered with uncommon regard, and sometimes
exhaust all their arts of pleasing without effect. To these it is
necessary to look round, and attempt every breast in which they find
virtue sufficient for the foundation of friendship; to enter into the
crowd, and try whom chance will offer to their notice, till they fix on
some temper congenial to their own, as the magnet rolled in the dust
collects the fragments of its kindred metal from a thousand particles of
other substances.

Every man must have remarked the facility with which the kindness of
others is sometimes gained by those to whom he never could have imparted
his own. We are by our occupations, education, and habits of life,
divided almost into different species, which regard one another, for the
most part, with scorn and malignity. Each of these classes of the human
race has desires, fears, and conversation, vexations and merriment
peculiar to itself; cares which another cannot feel; pleasures which he
cannot partake; and modes of expressing every sensation which he cannot
understand. That frolick which shakes one man with laughter, will
convulse another with indignation; the strain of jocularity which in one
place obtains treats and patronage, would in another be heard with
indifference, and in a third with abhorrence.

To raise esteem we must benefit others, to procure love we must please
them. Aristotle observes, that old men do not readily form friendships,
because they are not easily susceptible of pleasure. He that can
contribute to the hilarity of the vacant hour, or partake with equal
gust the favourite amusement; he whose mind is employed on the same
objects, and who therefore never harasses the understanding with
unaccustomed ideas, will be welcomed with ardour, and left with regret,
unless he destroys those recommendations by faults with which peace and
security cannot consist.

It were happy, if, in forming friendships, virtue could concur with
pleasure; but the greatest part of human gratifications approach so
nearly to vice, that few who make the delight of others their rule of
conduct, can avoid disingenuous compliances; yet certainly he that
suffers himself to be driven or allured from virtue, mistakes his own
interest, since he gains succour by means, for which his friend, if ever
he becomes wise, must scorn him, and for which at last he must scorn
himself.



No. 161. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 1, 1751.

  [Greek: Oiae gar phullon geneae, toiaede kai Andron.]
  HOM. Il. [Greek: T.]

  Frail as the leaves that quiver on the sprays,
  Like them man flourishes, like them decays.

MR. RAMBLER.

SIR,

You have formerly observed that curiosity often terminates in barren
knowledge, and that the mind is prompted to study and inquiry rather by
the uneasiness of ignorance, than the hope