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+Credit
+
+
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1888 Cassell & Company edition by David Price, email
+ccx074@pglaf.org
+
+CASSELL'S NATIONAL LIBRARY.
+
+
+
+
+
+ESSAYS AND TALES
+
+
+BY
+JOSEPH ADDISON.
+
+CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED:
+_LONDON_, _PARIS_, _NEW YORK & MELBOURNE_.
+1888.
+
+Contents:
+
+Introduction
+Public Credit
+Household Superstitions
+Opera Lions
+Women and Wives
+The Italian Opera
+Lampoons
+True and False Humour
+Sa Ga Yean Qua Rash Tow's Impressions of London
+The Vision of Marraton
+Six Papers on Wit
+Friendship
+Chevy-Chase (Two Papers)
+A Dream of the Painters
+Spare Time (Two Papers)
+Censure
+The English Language
+The Vision of Mirza
+Genius
+Theodosius and Constantia
+Good Nature
+A Grinning Match
+Trust in God
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+The sixty-fourth volume of this Library contains those papers from the
+_Tatler_ which were especially associated with the imagined character of
+ISAAC BICKERSTAFF, who was the central figure in that series; and in the
+twenty-ninth volume there is a similar collection of papers relating to
+the Spectator Club and SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY, who was the central figure
+in Steele and Addison's _Spectator_.  Those volumes contained, no doubt,
+some of the best Essays of Addison and Steele.  But in the _Tatler_ and
+_Spectator_ are full armouries of the wit and wisdom of these two
+writers, who summoned into life the army of the Essayists, and led it on
+to kindly war against the forces of Ill-temper and Ignorance.  Envy,
+Hatred, Malice, and all their first cousins of the family of
+Uncharitableness, are captains under those two commanders-in-chief, and
+we can little afford to dismiss from the field two of the stoutest
+combatants against them.  In this volume it is only Addison who speaks;
+and in another volume, presently to follow, there will be the voice of
+Steele.
+
+The two friends differed in temperament and in many of the outward signs
+of character; but these two little books will very distinctly show how
+wholly they agreed as to essentials.  For Addison, Literature had a charm
+of its own; he delighted in distinguishing the finer graces of good
+style, and he drew from the truths of life the principles of taste in
+writing.  For Steele, Literature was the life itself; he loved a true
+book for the soul he found in it.  So he agreed with Addison in judgment.
+But the six papers on "Wit," the two papers on "Chevy Chase," contained
+in this volume; the eleven papers on "Imagination," and the papers on
+"Paradise Lost," which may be given in some future volume; were in a form
+of study for which Addison was far more apt than Steele.  Thus as fellow-
+workers they gave a breadth to the character of _Tatler_ and _Spectator_
+that could have been produced by neither of them, singly.
+
+The reader of this volume will never suppose that the artist's pleasure
+in good art and in analysis of its constituents removes him from direct
+enjoyment of the life about him; that he misses a real contact with all
+the world gives that is worth his touch.  Good art is but nature, studied
+with love trained to the most delicate perception; and the good criticism
+in which the spirit of an artist speaks is, like Addison's, calm, simple,
+and benign.  Pope yearned to attack John Dennis, a rough critic of the
+day, who had attacked his "Essay on Criticism."  Addison had discouraged
+a very small assault of words.  When Dennis attacked Addison's "Cato,"
+Pope thought himself free to strike; but Addison took occasion to
+express, through Steele, a serious regret that he had done so.  True
+criticism may be affected, as Addison's was, by some bias in the canons
+of taste prevalent in the writer's time, but, as Addison's did in the
+Chevy-Chase papers, it will dissent from prevalent misapplications of
+them, and it can never associate perception of the purest truth and
+beauty with petty arrogance, nor will it so speak as to give pain.  When
+Wordsworth was remembering with love his mother's guidance of his
+childhood, and wished to suggest that there were mothers less wise in
+their ways, he was checked, he said, by the unwillingness to join thought
+of her "with any thought that looks at others' blame."  So Addison felt
+towards his mother Nature, in literature and in life.  He attacked
+nobody.  With a light, kindly humour, that was never personal and never
+could give pain, he sought to soften the harsh lines of life, abate its
+follies, and inspire the temper that alone can overcome its wrongs.
+
+Politics, in which few then knew how to think calmly and recognise the
+worth of various opinion, Steele and Addison excluded from the pages of
+the _Spectator_.  But the first paper in this volume is upon "Public
+Credit," and it did touch on the position of the country at a time when
+the shock of change caused by the Revolution of 1688-89, and also the
+strain of foreign war, were being severely felt.
+
+H. M.
+
+
+
+
+PUBLIC CREDIT.
+
+
+   --_Quoi quisque fere studio devinctus adhaeret_
+   _Aut quibus i rebus multum sumus ante morati_
+   _Atque in quo ratione fuit contenta magis mens_,
+   _In somnis cadem plerumque videmur obire_.
+
+   LUCR., iv. 959.
+
+   --What studies please, what most delight,
+   And fill men's thoughts, they dream them o'er at night.
+
+   CREECH.
+
+In one of my rambles, or rather speculations, I looked into the great
+hall where the bank is kept, and was not a little pleased to see the
+directors, secretaries, and clerks, with all the other members of that
+wealthy corporation, ranged in their several stations, according to the
+parts they act in that just and regular economy.  This revived in my
+memory the many discourses which I had both read and heard concerning the
+decay of public credit, with the methods of restoring it; and which, in
+my opinion, have always been defective, because they have always been
+made with an eye to separate interests and party principles.
+
+The thoughts of the day gave my mind employment for the whole night; so
+that I fell insensibly into a kind of methodical dream, which disposed
+all my contemplations into a vision, or allegory, or what else the reader
+shall please to call it.
+
+Methoughts I returned to the great hall, where I had been the morning
+before; but to my surprise, instead of the company that I left there, I
+saw, towards the upper end of the hall, a beautiful virgin, seated on a
+throne of gold.  Her name, as they told me, was Public Credit.  The
+walls, instead of being adorned with pictures and maps, were hung with
+many Acts of Parliament written in golden letters.  At the upper end of
+the hall was the Magna Charta, with the Act of Uniformity on the right
+hand, and the Act of Toleration on the left.  At the lower end of the
+hall was the Act of Settlement, which was placed full in the eye of the
+virgin that sat upon the throne.  Both the sides of the hall were covered
+with such Acts of Parliament as had been made for the establishment of
+public funds.  The lady seemed to set an unspeakable value upon these
+several pieces of furniture, insomuch that she often refreshed her eye
+with them, and often smiled with a secret pleasure as she looked upon
+them; but, at the same time, showed a very particular uneasiness if she
+saw anything approaching that might hurt them.  She appeared, indeed,
+infinitely timorous in all her behaviour: and whether it was from the
+delicacy of her constitution, or that she was troubled with vapours, as I
+was afterwards told by one who I found was none of her well-wishers, she
+changed colour and startled at everything she heard.  She was likewise,
+as I afterwards found, a greater valetudinarian than any I had ever met
+with, even in her own sex, and subject to such momentary consumptions,
+that in the twinkling of an eye, she would fall away from the most florid
+complexion and the most healthful state of body, and wither into a
+skeleton.  Her recoveries were often as sudden as her decays, insomuch
+that she would revive in a moment out of a wasting distemper, into a
+habit of the highest health and vigour.
+
+I had very soon an opportunity of observing these quick turns and changes
+in her constitution.  There sat at her feet a couple of secretaries, who
+received every hour letters from all parts of the world, which the one or
+the other of them was perpetually reading to her; and according to the
+news she heard, to which she was exceedingly attentive, she changed
+colour, and discovered many symptoms of health or sickness.
+
+Behind the throne was a prodigious heap of bags of money, which were
+piled upon one another so high that they touched the ceiling.  The floor
+on her right hand and on her left was covered with vast sums of gold that
+rose up in pyramids on either side of her.  But this I did not so much
+wonder at, when I heard, upon inquiry, that she had the same virtue in
+her touch, which the poets tell us a Lydian king was formerly possessed
+of; and that she could convert whatever she pleased into that precious
+metal.
+
+After a little dizziness, and confused hurry of thought, which a man
+often meets with in a dream, methoughts the hall was alarmed, the doors
+flew open, and there entered half a dozen of the most hideous phantoms
+that I had ever seen, even in a dream, before that time.  They came in
+two by two, though matched in the most dissociable manner, and mingled
+together in a kind of dance.  It would be tedious to describe their
+habits and persons; for which reason I shall only inform my reader, that
+the first couple were Tyranny and Anarchy; the second were Bigotry and
+Atheism; the third, the Genius of a commonwealth and a young man of about
+twenty-two years of age, whose name I could not learn.  He had a sword in
+his right hand, which in the dance he often brandished at the Act of
+Settlement; and a citizen, who stood by me, whispered in my ear, that he
+saw a sponge in his left hand.  The dance of so many jarring natures put
+me in mind of the sun, moon, and earth, in the _Rehearsal_, that danced
+together for no other end but to eclipse one another.
+
+The reader will easily suppose, by what has been before said, that the
+lady on the throne would have been almost frighted to distraction, had
+she seen but any one of the spectres: what then must have been her
+condition when she saw them all in a body?  She fainted, and died away at
+the sight.
+
+   _Et neque jam color est misto candore rubori_;
+   _Nec vigor_, _et vires_, _et quae modo rise placebant_;
+   _Nec corpus remanet_--.
+
+   OVID, _Met. iii._ 491.
+
+         --Her spirits faint,
+   Her blooming cheeks assume a pallid teint,
+   And scarce her form remains.
+
+There was as great a change in the hill of money-bags and the heaps of
+money, the former shrinking and falling into so many empty bags, that I
+now found not above a tenth part of them had been filled with money.
+
+The rest, that took up the same space and made the same figure as the
+bags that were really filled with money, had been blown up with air, and
+called into my memory the bags full of wind, which Homer tells us his
+hero received as a present from AEolus.  The great heaps of gold on
+either side the throne now appeared to be only heaps of paper, or little
+piles of notched sticks, bound up together in bundles, like Bath <DW19>s.
+
+Whilst I was lamenting this sudden desolation that had been made before
+me, the whole scene vanished.  In the room of the frightful spectres,
+there now entered a second dance of apparitions, very agreeably matched
+together, and made up of very amiable phantoms: the first pair was
+Liberty with Monarchy at her right hand; the second was Moderation
+leading in Religion; and the third, a person whom I had never seen, with
+the Genius of Great Britain.  At the first entrance, the lady revived;
+the bags swelled to their former bulk; the piles of <DW19>s and heaps of
+paper changed into pyramids of guineas: and, for my own part, I was so
+transported with joy that I awaked, though I must confess I would fain
+have fallen asleep again to have closed my vision, if I could have done
+it.
+
+
+
+
+HOUSEHOLD SUPERSTITIONS.
+
+
+   _Somnia_, _terrores magicos_, _miracula_, _sagas_,
+   _Nocturnos lemures_, _portentaque Thessala rides_?
+
+   HOR., _Ep._ ii. 2, 208.
+
+   Visions and magic spells, can you despise,
+   And laugh at witches, ghosts, and prodigies?
+
+Going yesterday to dine with an old acquaintance, I had the misfortune to
+find his whole family very much dejected.  Upon asking him the occasion
+of it, he told me that his wife had dreamt a very strange dream the night
+before, which they were afraid portended some misfortune to themselves or
+to their children.  At her coming into the room, I observed a settled
+melancholy in her countenance, which I should have been troubled for, had
+I not heard from whence it proceeded.  We were no sooner sat down, but,
+after having looked upon me a little while, "My dear," says she, turning
+to her husband, "you may now see the stranger that was in the candle last
+night."  Soon after this, as they began to talk of family affairs, a
+little boy at the lower end of the table told her that he was to go into
+join-hand on Thursday.  "Thursday!" says she.  "No, child; if it please
+God, you shall not begin upon Childermas-day; tell your writing-master
+that Friday will be soon enough."  I was reflecting with myself on the
+oddness of her fancy, and wondering that anybody would establish it as a
+rule, to lose a day in every week.  In the midst of these my musings, she
+desired me to reach her a little salt upon the point of my knife, which I
+did in such a trepidation and hurry of obedience that I let it drop by
+the way; at which she immediately startled, and said it fell towards her.
+Upon this I looked very blank; and observing the concern of the whole
+table, began to consider myself, with some confusion, as a person that
+had brought a disaster upon the family.  The lady, however, recovering
+herself after a little space, said to her husband with a sigh, "My dear,
+misfortunes never come single."  My friend, I found, acted but an under
+part at his table; and, being a man of more good-nature than
+understanding, thinks himself obliged to fall in with all the passions
+and humours of his yoke-fellow.  "Do not you remember, child," says she,
+"that the pigeon-house fell the very afternoon that our careless wench
+spilt the salt upon the table?"--"Yes," says he, "my dear; and the next
+post brought us an account of the battle of Almanza."  The reader may
+guess at the figure I made, after having done all this mischief.  I
+despatched my dinner as soon as I could, with my usual taciturnity; when,
+to my utter confusion, the lady seeing me quitting my knife and fork, and
+laying them across one another upon my plate, desired me that I would
+humour her so far as to take them out of that figure and place them side
+by side.  What the absurdity was which I had committed I did not know,
+but I suppose there was some traditionary superstition in it; and
+therefore, in obedience to the lady of the house, I disposed of my knife
+and fork in two parallel lines, which is the figure I shall always lay
+them in for the future, though I do not know any reason for it.
+
+It is not difficult for a man to see that a person has conceived an
+aversion to him.  For my own part, I quickly found, by the lady's looks,
+that she regarded me as a very odd kind of fellow, with an unfortunate
+aspect: for which reason I took my leave immediately after dinner, and
+withdrew to my own lodgings.  Upon my return home, I fell into a profound
+contemplation on the evils that attend these superstitious follies of
+mankind; how they subject us to imaginary afflictions, and additional
+sorrows, that do not properly come within our lot.  As if the natural
+calamities of life were not sufficient for it, we turn the most
+indifferent circumstances into misfortunes, and suffer as much from
+trifling accidents as from real evils.  I have known the shooting of a
+star spoil a night's rest; and have seen a man in love grow pale, and
+lose his appetite, upon the plucking of a merry-thought.  A screech-owl
+at midnight has alarmed a family more than a band of robbers; nay, the
+voice of a cricket hath struck more terror than the roaring of a lion.
+There is nothing so inconsiderable which may not appear dreadful to an
+imagination that is filled with omens and prognostics: a rusty nail or a
+crooked pin shoot up into prodigies.
+
+I remember I was once in a mixed assembly that was full of noise and
+mirth, when on a sudden an old woman unluckily observed there were
+thirteen of us in company.  This remark struck a panic terror into
+several who were present, insomuch that one or two of the ladies were
+going to leave the room; but a friend of mine taking notice that one of
+our female companions was big with child, affirmed there were fourteen in
+the room, and that, instead of portending one of the company should die,
+it plainly foretold one of them should be born.  Had not my friend found
+this expedient to break the omen, I question not but half the women in
+the company would have fallen sick that very night.
+
+An old maid that is troubled with the vapours produces infinite
+disturbances of this kind among her friends and neighbours.  I know a
+maiden aunt of a great family, who is one of these antiquated Sibyls,
+that forebodes and prophesies from one end of the year to the other.  She
+is always seeing apparitions and hearing death-watches; and was the other
+day almost frighted out of her wits by the great house-dog that howled in
+the stable, at a time when she lay ill of the toothache.  Such an
+extravagant cast of mind engages multitudes of people not only in
+impertinent terrors, but in supernumerary duties of life, and arises from
+that fear and ignorance which are natural to the soul of man.  The horror
+with which we entertain the thoughts of death, or indeed of any future
+evil, and the uncertainty of its approach, fill a melancholy mind with
+innumerable apprehensions and suspicions, and consequently dispose it to
+the observation of such groundless prodigies and predictions.  For as it
+is the chief concern of wise men to retrench the evils of life by the
+reasonings of philosophy, it is the employment of fools to multiply them
+by the sentiments of superstition.
+
+For my own part, I should be very much troubled were I endowed with this
+divining quality, though it should inform me truly of everything that can
+befall me.  I would not anticipate the relish of any happiness, nor feel
+the weight of any misery, before it actually arrives.
+
+I know but one way of fortifying my soul against these gloomy presages
+and terrors of mind; and that is, by securing to myself the friendship
+and protection of that Being who disposes of events and governs futurity.
+He sees, at one view, the whole thread of my existence, not only that
+part of it which I have already passed through, but that which runs
+forward into all the depths of eternity.  When I lay me down to sleep, I
+recommend myself to His care; when I awake, I give myself up to His
+direction.  Amidst all the evils that threaten me, I will look up to Him
+for help, and question not but He will either avert them, or turn them to
+my advantage.  Though I know neither the time nor the manner of the death
+I am to die, I am not at all solicitous about it; because I am sure that
+he knows them both, and that He will not fail to comfort and support me
+under them.
+
+
+
+
+OPERA LIONS.
+
+
+   _Dic mihi_, _si fias tu leo_, _qualis eris_?
+
+   MART., xii. 93.
+
+   Were you a lion, how would you behave?
+
+There is nothing that of late years has afforded matter of greater
+amusement to the town than Signior Nicolini's combat with a lion in the
+Haymarket, which has been very often exhibited to the general
+satisfaction of most of the nobility and gentry in the kingdom of Great
+Britain.  Upon the first rumour of this intended combat, it was
+confidently affirmed, and is still believed, by many in both galleries,
+that there would be a tame lion sent from the tower every opera night in
+order to be killed by Hydaspes.  This report, though altogether
+groundless, so universally prevailed in the upper regions of the
+playhouse, that some of the most refined politicians in those parts of
+the audience gave it out in whisper that the lion was a cousin-german of
+the tiger who made his appearance in King William's days, and that the
+stage would be supplied with lions at the public expense during the whole
+session.  Many likewise were the conjectures of the treatment which this
+lion was to meet with from the hands of Signior Nicolini: some supposed
+that he was to subdue him in recitativo, as Orpheus used to serve the
+wild beasts in his time, and afterwards to knock him on the head; some
+fancied that the lion would not pretend to lay his paws upon the hero, by
+reason of the received opinion that a lion will not hurt a virgin:
+several who pretended to have seen the opera in Italy, had informed their
+friends that the lion was to act a part in High Dutch, and roar twice or
+thrice to a thorough bass before he fell at the feet of Hydaspes.  To
+clear up a matter that was so variously reported, I have made it my
+business to examine whether this pretended lion is really the savage he
+appears to be, or only a counterfeit.
+
+But before I communicate my discoveries, I must acquaint the reader that
+upon my walking behind the scenes last winter, as I was thinking on
+something else, I accidentally jostled against a monstrous animal that
+extremely startled me, and, upon my nearer survey of it, appeared to be a
+lion rampant.  The lion, seeing me very much surprised, told me, in a
+gentle voice, that I might come by him if I pleased; "for," says he, "I
+do not intend to hurt anybody."  I thanked him very kindly and passed by
+him, and in a little time after saw him leap upon the stage and act his
+part with very great applause.  It has been observed by several that the
+lion has changed his manner of acting twice or thrice since his first
+appearance, which will not seem strange when I acquaint my reader that
+the lion has been changed upon the audience three several times.  The
+first lion was a candle-snuffer, who, being a fellow of a testy, choleric
+temper, overdid his part, and would not suffer himself to be killed so
+easily as he ought to have done: besides, it was observed of him, that he
+grew more surly every time he came out of the lion, and having dropped
+some words in ordinary conversation, as if he had not fought his best,
+and that he suffered himself to be thrown upon his back in the scuffle,
+and that he would wrestle with Mr. Nicolini for what he pleased, out of
+his lion's skin, it was thought proper to discard him: and it is verily
+believed to this day, that, had he been brought upon the stage another
+time, he would certainly have done mischief.  Besides, it was objected
+against the first lion, that he reared himself so high upon his hinder
+paws, and walked in so erect a posture, that he looked more like an old
+man than a lion.
+
+The second lion was a tailor by trade, who belonged to the playhouse, and
+had the character of a mild and peaceable man in his profession.  If the
+former was too furious, this was too sheepish for his part; inasmuch
+that, after a short modest walk upon the stage, he would fall at the
+first touch of Hydaspes, without grappling with him, and giving him an
+opportunity of showing his variety of Italian trips.  It is said, indeed,
+that he once gave him a rip in his flesh-colour doublet: but this was
+only to make work for himself in his private character of a tailor.  I
+must not omit that it was this second lion who treated me with so much
+humanity behind the scenes.
+
+The acting lion at present is, as I am informed, a country gentleman, who
+does it for his diversion, but desires his name may be concealed.  He
+says very handsomely, in his own excuse, that he does not act for gain;
+that he indulges an innocent pleasure in it, and that it is better to
+pass away an evening in this manner than in gaming and drinking: but at
+the same time says, with a very agreeable raillery upon himself, that if
+his name should be known, the ill-natured world might call him "the ass
+in the lion's skin."  This gentleman's temper is made out of such a happy
+mixture of the mild and the choleric, that he outdoes both his
+predecessors, and has drawn together greater audiences than have been
+known in the memory of man.
+
+I must not conclude my narrative without taking notice of a groundless
+report that has been raised to a gentleman's disadvantage, of whom I must
+declare myself an admirer; namely, that Signior Nicolini and the lion
+have been seen sitting peaceably by one another, and smoking a pipe
+together behind the scenes; by which their common enemies would insinuate
+that it is but a sham combat which they represent upon the stage: but
+upon inquiry I find, that if any such correspondence has passed between
+them, it was not till the combat was over, when the lion was to be looked
+upon as dead according to the received rules of the drama.  Besides, this
+is what is practised every day in Westminster Hall, where nothing is more
+usual than to see a couple of lawyers, who have been tearing each other
+to pieces in the court, embracing one another as soon as they are out of
+it.
+
+I would not be thought in any part of this relation to reflect upon
+Signior Nicolini, who, in acting this part, only complies with the
+wretched taste of his audience: he knows very well that the lion has many
+more admirers than himself; as they say of the famous equestrian statue
+on the Pont-Neuf at Paris, that more people go to see the horse than the
+king who sits upon it.  On the contrary, it gives me a just indignation
+to see a person whose action gives new majesty to kings, resolution to
+heroes, and softness to lovers, thus sinking from the greatness of his
+behaviour, and degraded into the character of the London Prentice.  I
+have often wished that our tragedians would copy after this great master
+in action.  Could they make the same use of their arms and legs, and
+inform their faces with as significant looks and passions, how glorious
+would an English tragedy appear with that action which is capable of
+giving a dignity to the forced thoughts, cold conceits, and unnatural
+expressions of an Italian opera!  In the meantime, I have related this
+combat of the lion to show what are at present the reigning
+entertainments of the politer part of Great Britain.
+
+Audiences have often been reproached by writers for the coarseness of
+their taste; but our present grievance does not seem to be the want of a
+good taste, but of common sense.
+
+
+
+
+WOMEN AND WIVES.
+
+
+   _Parva leves capiunt animos_.--
+
+   OVID, _Ars Am._, i. 159.
+
+   Light minds are pleased with trifles.
+
+When I was in France, I used to gaze with great astonishment at the
+splendid equipages, and party- habits of that fantastic nation.  I
+was one day in particular contemplating a lady that sat in a coach
+adorned with gilded Cupids, and finely painted with the Loves of Venus
+and Adonis.  The coach was drawn by six milk-white horses, and loaden
+behind with the same number of powdered footmen.  Just before the lady
+were a couple of beautiful pages, that were stuck among the harness, and,
+by their gay dresses and smiling features, looked like the elder brothers
+of the little boys that were carved and painted in every corner of the
+coach.
+
+The lady was the unfortunate Cleanthe, who afterwards gave an occasion to
+a pretty melancholy novel.  She had for several years received the
+addresses of a gentleman, whom, after a long and intimate acquaintance,
+she forsook upon the account of this shining equipage, which had been
+offered to her by one of great riches but a crazy constitution.  The
+circumstances in which I saw her were, it seems, the disguises only of a
+broken heart, and a kind of pageantry to cover distress, for in two
+months after, she was carried to her grave with the same pomp and
+magnificence, being sent thither partly by the loss of one lover and
+partly by the possession of another.
+
+I have often reflected with myself on this unaccountable humour in
+womankind, of being smitten with everything that is showy and
+superficial; and on the numberless evils that befall the sex from this
+light fantastical disposition.  I myself remember a young lady that was
+very warmly solicited by a couple of importunate rivals, who, for several
+months together, did all they could to recommend themselves, by
+complacency of behaviour and agreeableness of conversation.  At length,
+when the competition was doubtful, and the lady undetermined in her
+choice, one of the young lovers very luckily bethought himself of adding
+a supernumerary lace to his liveries, which had so good an effect that he
+married her the very week after.
+
+The usual conversation of ordinary women very much cherishes this natural
+weakness of being taken with outside and appearance.  Talk of a
+new-married couple, and you immediately hear whether they keep their
+coach and six, or eat in plate.  Mention the name of an absent lady, and
+it is ten to one but you learn something of her gown and petticoat.  A
+ball is a great help to discourse, and a birthday furnishes conversation
+for a twelvemonth after.  A furbelow of precious stones, a hat buttoned
+with a diamond, a brocade waistcoat or petticoat, are standing topics.  In
+short, they consider only the drapery of the species, and never cast away
+a thought on those ornaments of the mind that make persons illustrious in
+themselves and useful to others.  When women are thus perpetually
+dazzling one another's imaginations, and filling their heads with nothing
+but colours, it is no wonder that they are more attentive to the
+superficial parts of life than the solid and substantial blessings of it.
+A girl who has been trained up in this kind of conversation is in danger
+of every embroidered coat that comes in her way.  A pair of fringed
+gloves may be her ruin.  In a word, lace and ribands, silver and gold
+galloons, with the like glittering gewgaws, are so many lures to women of
+weak minds or low educations, and, when artificially displayed, are able
+to fetch down the most airy coquette from the wildest of her flights and
+rambles.
+
+True happiness is of a retired nature, and an enemy to pomp and noise; it
+arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one's self, and, in the
+next, from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions; it
+loves shade and solitude, and naturally haunts groves and fountains,
+fields and meadows; in short, it feels everything it wants within itself,
+and receives no addition from multitudes of witnesses and spectators.  On
+the contrary, false happiness loves to be in a crowd, and to draw the
+eyes of the world upon her.  She does not receive any satisfaction from
+the applauses which she gives herself, but from the admiration she raises
+in others.  She flourishes in courts and palaces, theatres and
+assemblies, and has no existence but when she is looked upon.
+
+Aurelia, though a woman of great quality, delights in the privacy of a
+country life, and passes away a great part of her time in her own walks
+and gardens.  Her husband, who is her bosom friend and companion in her
+solitudes, has been in love with her ever since he knew her.  They both
+abound with good sense, consummate virtue, and a mutual esteem; and are a
+perpetual entertainment to one another.  Their family is under so regular
+an economy, in its hours of devotion and repast, employment and
+diversion, that it looks like a little commonwealth within itself.  They
+often go into company, that they may return with the greater delight to
+one another; and sometimes live in town, not to enjoy it so properly as
+to grow weary of it, that they may renew in themselves the relish of a
+country life.  By this means they are happy in each other, beloved by
+their children, adored by their servants, and are become the envy, or
+rather the delight, of all that know them.
+
+How different to this is the life of Fulvia!  She considers her husband
+as her steward, and looks upon discretion and good housewifery as little
+domestic virtues unbecoming a woman of quality.  She thinks life lost in
+her own family, and fancies herself out of the world when she is not in
+the ring, the playhouse, or the drawing-room.  She lives in a perpetual
+motion of body and restlessness of thought, and is never easy in any one
+place when she thinks there is more company in another.  The missing of
+an opera the first night would be more afflicting to her than the death
+of a child.  She pities all the valuable part of her own sex, and calls
+every woman of a prudent, modest, retired life, a poor-spirited,
+unpolished creature.  What a mortification would it be to Fulvia, if she
+knew that her setting herself to view is but exposing herself, and that
+she grows contemptible by being conspicuous!
+
+I cannot conclude my paper without observing that Virgil has very finely
+touched upon this female passion for dress and show, in the character of
+Camilla, who, though she seems to have shaken off all the other
+weaknesses of her sex, is still described as a woman in this particular.
+The poet tells us, that after having made a great slaughter of the enemy,
+she unfortunately cast her eye on a Trojan, who wore an embroidered
+tunic, a beautiful coat of mail, with a mantle of the finest purple.  "A
+golden bow," says he, "hung upon his shoulder; his garment was buckled
+with a golden clasp, and his head covered with a helmet of the same
+shining metal."  The Amazon immediately singled out this well-dressed
+warrior, being seized with a woman's longing for the pretty trappings
+that he was adorned with:
+
+   --_Totumque incauta per agmen_,
+   _Faemineo praedae et spoliorum ardebat amore_.
+
+   _AEn._, xi. 781.
+
+         --So greedy was she bent
+   On golden spoils, and on her prey intent.
+
+   DRYDEN.
+
+This heedless pursuit after these glittering trifles, the poet, by a nice
+concealed moral, represents to have been the destruction of his female
+hero.
+
+
+
+
+THE ITALIAN OPERA.
+
+
+   --_Equitis quoque jam migravit ab aure voluptas_
+   _Omnis ad incertos oculos_, _et gaudia vana_.
+
+   HOR., _Ep._ ii. 1, 187.
+
+   But now our nobles too are <DW2>s and vain,
+   Neglect the sense, but love the painted scene.
+
+   CREECH.
+
+It is my design in this paper to deliver down to posterity a faithful
+account of the Italian opera, and of the gradual progress which it has
+made upon the English stage; for there is no question but our
+great-grandchildren will be very curious to know the reason why their
+forefathers used to sit together like an audience of foreigners in their
+own country, and to hear whole plays acted before them in a tongue which
+they did not understand.
+
+_Arsinoe_ was the first opera that gave us a taste of Italian music.  The
+great success this opera met with produced some attempts of forming
+pieces upon Italian plans, which should give a more natural and
+reasonable entertainment than what can be met with in the elaborate
+trifles of that nation.  This alarmed the poetasters and fiddlers of the
+town, who were used to deal in a more ordinary kind of ware; and
+therefore laid down an established rule, which is received as such to
+this day, "That nothing is capable of being well set to music that is not
+nonsense."
+
+This maxim was no sooner received, but we immediately fell to translating
+the Italian operas; and as there was no great danger of hurting the sense
+of those extraordinary pieces, our authors would often make words of
+their own which were entirely foreign to the meaning of the passages they
+pretended to translate; their chief care being to make the numbers of the
+English verse answer to those of the Italian, that both of them might go
+to the same tune.  Thus the famous swig in Camilla:
+
+   "_Barbara si t' intendo_," &c.
+
+   "Barbarous woman, yes, I know your meaning,"
+
+which expresses the resentments of an angry lover, was translated into
+that English lamentation,
+
+   "Frail are a lover's hopes," &c.
+
+And it was pleasant enough to see the most refined persons of the British
+nation dying away and languishing to notes that were filled with a spirit
+of rage and indignation.  It happened also very frequently, where the
+sense was rightly translated, the necessary transposition of words, which
+were drawn out of the phrase of one tongue into that of another, made the
+music appear very absurd in one tongue that was very natural in the
+other.  I remember an Italian verse that ran thus, word for word:
+
+   "And turned my rage into pity;"
+
+which the English for rhyme's sake translated:
+
+   "And into pity turned my rage."
+
+By this means the soft notes that were adapted to pity in the Italian
+fell upon the word rage in the English; and the angry sounds that were
+turned to rage in the original, were made to express pity in the
+translation.  It oftentimes happened, likewise, that the finest notes in
+the air fell upon the most insignificant words in the sentence.  I have
+known the word "and" pursued through the whole gamut; have been
+entertained with many a melodious "the;" and have heard the most
+beautiful graces, quavers, and divisions bestowed upon "then," "for," and
+"from," to the eternal honour of our English particles.
+
+The next step to our refinement was the introducing of Italian actors
+into our opera; who sang their parts in their own language, at the same
+time that our countrymen performed theirs in our native tongue.  The king
+or hero of the play generally spoke in Italian, and his slaves answered
+him in English.  The lover frequently made his court, and gained the
+heart of his princess, in a language which she did not understand.  One
+would have thought it very difficult to have carried on dialogues after
+this manner without an interpreter between the persons that conversed
+together; but this was the state of the English stage for about three
+years.
+
+At length the audience grew tired of understanding half the opera; and
+therefore, to ease themselves entirely of the fatigue of thinking, have
+so ordered it at present, that the whole opera is performed in an unknown
+tongue.  We no longer understand the language of our own stage; insomuch
+that I have often been afraid, when I have seen our Italian performers
+chattering in the vehemence of action, that they have been calling us
+names, and abusing us among themselves; but I hope, since we put such an
+entire confidence in them, they will not talk against us before our
+faces, though they may do it with the same safety as if it were behind
+our backs.  In the meantime, I cannot forbear thinking how naturally an
+historian who writes two or three hundred years hence, and does not know
+the taste of his wise forefathers, will make the following reflection:
+"In the beginning of the eighteenth century, the Italian tongue was so
+well understood in England, that operas were acted on the public stage in
+that language."
+
+One scarce knows how to be serious in the confutation of an absurdity
+that shows itself at the first sight.  It does not want any great measure
+of sense to see the ridicule of this monstrous practice; but what makes
+it the more astonishing, it is not the taste of the rabble, but of
+persons of the greatest politeness, which has established it.
+
+If the Italians have a genius for music above the English, the English
+have a genius for other performances of a much higher nature, and capable
+of giving the mind a much nobler entertainment.  Would one think it was
+possible, at a time when an author lived that was able to write the
+_Phaedra and Hippolitus_, for a people to be so stupidly fond of the
+Italian opera, as scarce to give a third day's hearing to that admirable
+tragedy?  Music is certainly a very agreeable entertainment: but if it
+would take the entire possession of our ears; if it would make us
+incapable of hearing sense; if it would exclude arts that have a much
+greater tendency to the refinement of human nature; I must confess I
+would allow it no better quarter than Plato has done, who banishes it out
+of his commonwealth.
+
+At present our notions of music are so very uncertain, that we do not
+know what it is we like; only, in general, we are transported with
+anything that is not English: so it be of a foreign growth, let it be
+Italian, French, or High Dutch, it is the same thing.  In short, our
+English music is quite rooted out, and nothing yet planted in its stead.
+
+When a royal palace is burnt to the ground, every man is at liberty to
+present his plan for a new one; and, though it be but indifferently put
+together, it may furnish several hints that may be of use to a good
+architect.  I shall take the same liberty in a following paper of giving
+my opinion upon the subject of music; which I shall lay down only in a
+problematical manner, to be considered by those who are masters in the
+art.
+
+
+
+
+LAMPOONS.
+
+
+   _Saevit atrox Volscens_, _nec teli conspicit usquam_
+   _Auctorem_, _nec quo se ardens immittere possit_.
+
+   VIRG., _AEn._ ix. 420.
+
+   Fierce Volscens foams with rage, and, gazing round,
+   Descry'd not him who gave the fatal wound;
+   Nor knew to fix revenge.
+
+   DRYDEN.
+
+There is nothing that more betrays a base, ungenerous spirit than the
+giving of secret stabs to a man's reputation.  Lampoons and satires, that
+are written with wit and spirit, are like poisoned darts, which not only
+inflict a wound, but make it incurable.  For this reason I am very much
+troubled when I see the talents' of humour and ridicule in the possession
+of an ill-natured man.  There cannot be a greater gratification to a
+barbarous and inhuman wit, than to stir up sorrow in the heart of a
+private person, to raise uneasiness among near relations, and to expose
+whole families to derision, at the same time that he remains unseen and
+undiscovered.  If, besides the accomplishments of being witty and ill-
+natured, a man is vicious into the bargain, he is one of the most
+mischievous creatures that can enter into a civil society.  His satire
+will then chiefly fall upon those who ought to be the most exempt from
+it.  Virtue, merit, and everything that is praiseworthy, will be made the
+subject of ridicule and buffoonery.  It is impossible to enumerate the
+evils which arise from these arrows that fly in the dark; and I know no
+other excuse that is or can be made for them, than that the wounds they
+give are only imaginary, and produce nothing more than a secret shame or
+sorrow in the mind of the suffering person.  It must indeed be confessed
+that a lampoon or a satire do not carry in them robbery or murder; but at
+the same time, how many are there that would not rather lose a
+considerable sum of money, or even life itself, than be set up as a mark
+of infamy and derision?  And in this case a man should consider that an
+injury is not to be measured by the notions of him that gives, but of him
+that receives it.
+
+Those who can put the best countenance upon the outrages of this nature
+which are offered them, are not without their secret anguish.  I have
+often observed a passage in Socrates's behaviour at his death in a light
+wherein none of the critics have considered it.  That excellent man
+entertaining his friends a little before he drank the bowl of poison,
+with a discourse on the immortality of the soul, at his entering upon it
+says that he does not believe any the most comic genius can censure him
+for talking upon such a subject at such at a time.  This passage, I
+think, evidently glances upon Aristophanes, who writ a comedy on purpose
+to ridicule the discourses of that divine philosopher.  It has been
+observed by many writers that Socrates was so little moved at this piece
+of buffoonery, that he was several times present at its being acted upon
+the stage, and never expressed the least resentment of it.  But, with
+submission, I think the remark I have here made shows us that this
+unworthy treatment made an impression upon his mind, though he had been
+too wise to discover it.
+
+When Julius Caesar was lampooned by Catullus, he invited him to a supper,
+and treated him with such a generous civility, that he made the poet his
+friend ever after.  Cardinal Mazarine gave the same kind of treatment to
+the learned Quillet, who had reflected upon his eminence in a famous
+Latin poem.  The cardinal sent for him, and, after some kind
+expostulations upon what he had written, assured him of his esteem, and
+dismissed him with a promise of the next good abbey that should fall,
+which he accordingly conferred upon him in a few months after.  This had
+so good an effect upon the author, that he dedicated the second edition
+of his book to the cardinal, after having expunged the passages which had
+given him offence.
+
+Sextus Quintus was not of so generous and forgiving a temper.  Upon his
+being made Pope, the statue of Pasquin was one night dressed in a very
+dirty shirt, with an excuse written under it, that he was forced to wear
+foul linen because his laundress was made a princess.  This was a
+reflection upon the Pope's sister, who, before the promotion of her
+brother, was in those mean circumstances that Pasquin represented her.  As
+this pasquinade made a great noise in Rome, the Pope offered a
+considerable sum of money to any person that should discover the author
+of it.  The author, relying upon his holiness's generosity, as also on
+some private overtures which he had received from him, made the discovery
+himself; upon which the Pope gave him the reward he had promised, but, at
+the same time, to disable the satirist for the future, ordered his tongue
+to be cut out, and both his hands to be chopped off.  Aretine is too
+trite an instance.  Every one knows that all the kings of Europe were his
+tributaries.  Nay, there is a letter of his extant, in which he makes his
+boast that he had laid the Sophi of Persia under contribution.
+
+Though in the various examples which I have here drawn together, these
+several great men behaved themselves very differently towards the wits of
+the age who had reproached them, they all of them plainly showed that
+they were very sensible of their reproaches, and consequently that they
+received them as very great injuries.  For my own part, I would never
+trust a man that I thought was capable of giving these secret wounds; and
+cannot but think that he would hurt the person, whose reputation he thus
+assaults, in his body or in his fortune, could he do it with the same
+security.  There is indeed something very barbarous and inhuman in the
+ordinary scribblers of lampoons.  An innocent young lady shall be exposed
+for an unhappy feature; a father of a family turned to ridicule for some
+domestic calamity; a wife be made uneasy all her life for a
+misinterpreted word or action; nay, a good, a temperate, and a just man
+shall be put out of countenance by the representation of those qualities
+that should do him honour; so pernicious a thing is wit when it is not
+tempered with virtue and humanity.
+
+I have indeed heard of heedless, inconsiderate writers that, without any
+malice, have sacrificed the reputation of their friends and acquaintance
+to a certain levity of temper, and a silly ambition of distinguishing
+themselves by a spirit of raillery and satire; as if it were not
+infinitely more honourable to be a good-natured man than a wit.  Where
+there is this little petulant humour in an author, he is often very
+mischievous without designing to be so.  For which reason I always lay it
+down as a rule that an indiscreet man is more hurtful than an ill-natured
+one; for as the one will only attack his enemies, and those he wishes ill
+to, the other injures indifferently both friends and foes.  I cannot
+forbear, on this occasion, transcribing a fable out of Sir Roger
+L'Estrange, which accidentally lies before me.  A company of waggish boys
+were watching of frogs at the side of a pond, and still as any of them
+put up their heads, they would be pelting them down again with stones.
+"Children," says one of the frogs, "you never consider that though this
+be play to you, 'tis death to us."
+
+As this week is in a manner set apart and dedicated to serious thoughts,
+I shall indulge myself in such speculations as may not be altogether
+unsuitable to the season; and in the meantime, as the settling in
+ourselves a charitable frame of mind is a work very proper for the time,
+I have in this paper endeavoured to expose that particular breach of
+charity which has been generally overlooked by divines, because they are
+but few who can be guilty of it.
+
+
+
+
+TRUE AND FALSE HUMOUR.
+
+
+   --_Risu inepto res ineptior nulla est_.
+
+   CATULL., _Carm._ 39 _in Egnat_.
+
+   Nothing so foolish as the laugh of fools.
+
+Among all kinds of writing, there is none in which authors are more apt
+to miscarry than in works of humour, as there is none in which they are
+more ambitious to excel.  It is not an imagination that teems with
+monsters, a head that is filled with extravagant conceptions, which is
+capable of furnishing the world with diversions of this nature; and yet,
+if we look into the productions of several writers, who set up for men of
+humour, what wild, irregular fancies, what unnatural distortions of
+thought do we meet with?  If they speak nonsense, they believe they are
+talking humour; and when they have drawn together a scheme of absurd,
+inconsistent ideas, they are not able to read it over to themselves
+without laughing.  These poor gentlemen endeavour to gain themselves the
+reputation of wits and humorists, by such monstrous conceits as almost
+qualify them for Bedlam; not considering that humour should always lie
+under the check of reason, and that it requires the direction of the
+nicest judgment, by so much the more as it indulges itself in the most
+boundless freedoms.  There is a kind of nature that is to be observed in
+this sort of compositions, as well as in all other; and a certain
+regularity of thought which must discover the writer to be a man of
+sense, at the same time that he appears altogether given up to caprice.
+For my part, when I read the delirious mirth of an unskilful author, I
+cannot be so barbarous as to divert myself with it, but am rather apt to
+pity the man, than to laugh at anything he writes.
+
+The deceased Mr. Shadwell, who had himself a great deal of the talent
+which I am treating of, represents an empty rake, in one of his plays, as
+very much surprised to hear one say that breaking of windows was not
+humour; and I question not but several English readers will be as much
+startled to hear me affirm, that many of those raving, incoherent pieces,
+which are often spread among us, under odd chimerical titles, are rather
+the offsprings of a distempered brain than works of humour.
+
+It is, indeed, much easier to describe what is not humour than what is;
+and very difficult to define it otherwise than as Cowley has done wit, by
+negatives.  Were I to give my own notions of it, I would deliver them
+after Plato's manner, in a kind of allegory, and, by supposing Humour to
+be a person, deduce to him all his qualifications, according to the
+following genealogy.  Truth was the founder of the family, and the father
+of Good Sense.  Good Sense was the father of Wit, who married a lady of a
+collateral line called Mirth, by whom he had issue Humour.  Humour
+therefore being the youngest of this illustrious family, and descended
+from parents of such different dispositions, is very various and unequal
+in his temper; sometimes you see him putting on grave looks and a solemn
+habit, sometimes airy in his behaviour and fantastic in his dress;
+insomuch that at different times he appears as serious as a judge, and as
+jocular as a merry-andrew.  But, as he has a great deal of the mother in
+his constitution, whatever mood he is in, he never fails to make his
+company laugh.
+
+But since there is an impostor abroad, who takes upon him the name of
+this young gentleman, and would willingly pass for him in the world; to
+the end that well-meaning persons may not be imposed upon by cheats, I
+would desire my readers, when they meet with this pretender, to look into
+his parentage, and to examine him strictly, whether or no he be remotely
+allied to Truth, and lineally descended from Good Sense; if not, they may
+conclude him a counterfeit.  They may likewise distinguish him by a loud
+and excessive laughter, in which he seldom gets his company to join with
+him.  For as True Humour generally looks serious while everybody laughs
+about him, False Humour is always laughing whilst everybody about him
+looks serious.  I shall only add, if he has not in him a mixture of both
+parents--that is, if he would pass for the offspring of Wit without
+Mirth, or Mirth without Wit, you may conclude him to be altogether
+spurious and a cheat.
+
+The impostor of whom I am speaking descends originally from Falsehood,
+who was the mother of Nonsense, who was brought to bed of a son called
+Phrensy, who married one of the daughters of Folly, commonly known by the
+name of Laughter, on whom he begot that monstrous infant of which I have
+been here speaking.  I shall set down at length the genealogical table of
+False Humour, and, at the same time, place under it the genealogy of True
+Humour, that the reader may at one view behold their different pedigrees
+and relations:--
+
+Falsehood.
+Nonsense.
+Phrensy.--Laughter.
+False Humour.
+
+Truth.
+Good Sense.
+Wit.--Mirth,
+Humour.
+
+I might extend the allegory, by mentioning several of the children of
+False Humour, who are more in number than the sands of the sea, and might
+in particular enumerate the many sons and daughters which he has begot in
+this island.  But as this would be a very invidious task, I shall only
+observe in general that False Humour differs from the True as a monkey
+does from a man.
+
+First of all, he is exceedingly given to little apish tricks and
+buffooneries.
+
+Secondly, he so much delights in mimicry, that it is all one to him
+whether he exposes by it vice and folly, luxury and avarice; or, on the
+contrary, virtue and wisdom, pain and poverty.
+
+Thirdly, he is wonderfully unlucky, insomuch that he will bite the hand
+that feeds him, and endeavour to ridicule both friends and foes
+indifferently.  For, having but small talents, he must be merry where he
+can, not where he should.
+
+Fourthly, Being entirely void of reason, he pursues no point either of
+morality or instruction, but is ludicrous only for the sake of being so.
+
+Fifthly, Being incapable of anything but mock representations, his
+ridicule is always personal, and aimed at the vicious man, or the writer;
+not at the vice, or at the writing.
+
+I have here only pointed at the whole species of false humorists; but, as
+one of my principal designs in this paper is to beat down that malignant
+spirit which discovers itself in the writings of the present age, I shall
+not scruple, for the future, to single out any of the small wits that
+infest the world with such compositions as are ill-natured, immoral, and
+absurd.  This is the only exception which I shall make to the general
+rule I have prescribed myself, of attacking multitudes; since every
+honest man ought to look upon himself as in a natural state of war with
+the libeller and lampooner, and to annoy them wherever they fall in his
+way.  This is but retaliating upon them, and treating them as they treat
+others.
+
+
+
+
+SA GA YEAN QUA RASH TOW'S IMPRESSIONS OF LONDON.
+
+
+   _Nunquam aliud natura_, _aliud sapientia dicit_.
+
+   JUV., _Sat._ xiv. 321.
+
+   Good taste and nature always speak the same.
+
+When the four Indian kings were in this country about a twelvemonth ago,
+I often mixed with the rabble, and followed them a whole day together,
+being wonderfully struck with the sight of everything that is new or
+uncommon.  I have, since their departure, employed a friend to make many
+inquiries of their landlord the upholsterer relating to their manners and
+conversation, as also concerning the remarks which they made in this
+country; for next to the forming a right notion of such strangers, I
+should be desirous of learning what ideas they have conceived of us.
+
+The upholsterer finding my friend very inquisitive about these his
+lodgers, brought him sometime since a little bundle of papers, which he
+assured him were written by King Sa Ga Yean Qua Rash Tow, and, as he
+supposes, left behind by some mistake.  These papers are now translated,
+and contain abundance of very odd observations, which I find this little
+fraternity of kings made during their stay in the Isle of Great Britain.
+I shall present my reader with a short specimen of them in this paper,
+and may perhaps communicate more to him hereafter.  In the article of
+London are the following words, which without doubt are meant of the
+church of St. Paul:--
+
+"On the most rising part of the town there stands a huge house, big
+enough to contain the whole nation of which I am the king.  Our good
+brother E Tow O Koam, King of the Rivers, is of opinion it was made by
+the hands of that great God to whom it is consecrated.  The Kings of
+Granajar and of the Six Nations believe that it was created with the
+earth, and produced on the same day with the sun and moon.  But for my
+own part, by the best information that I could get of this matter, I am
+apt to think that this prodigious pile was fashioned into the shape it
+now bears by several tools and instruments, of which they have a
+wonderful variety in this country.  It was probably at first a huge
+misshapen rock that grew upon the top of the hill, which the natives of
+the country, after having cut into a kind of regular figure, bored and
+hollowed with incredible pains and industry, till they had wrought in it
+all those beautiful vaults and caverns into which it is divided at this
+day.  As soon as this rock was thus curiously scooped to their liking, a
+prodigious number of hands must have been employed in chipping the
+outside of it, which is now as smooth as the surface of a pebble; and is
+in several places hewn out into pillars that stand like the trunks of so
+many trees bound about the top with garlands of leaves.  It is probable
+that when this great work was begun, which must have been many hundred
+years ago, there was some religion among this people; for they give it
+the name of a temple, and have a tradition that it was designed for men
+to pay their devotion in.  And indeed, there are several reasons which
+make us think that the natives of this country had formerly among them
+some sort of worship, for they set apart every seventh day as sacred; but
+upon my going into one of these holy houses on that day, I could not
+observe any circumstance of devotion in their behaviour.  There was,
+indeed, a man in black, who was mounted above the rest, and seemed to
+utter some thing with a great deal of vehemence; but as for those
+underneath him, instead of paying their worship to the deity of the
+place, they were most of them bowing and curtsying to one another, and a
+considerable number of them fast asleep.
+
+"The queen of the country appointed two men to attend us, that had enough
+of our language to make themselves understood in some few particulars.
+But we soon perceived these two were great enemies to one another, and
+did not always agree in the same story.  We could make a shift to gather
+out of one of them that this island was very much infested with a
+monstrous kind of animals, in the shape of men, called Whigs; and he
+often told us that he hoped we should meet with none of them in our way,
+for that, if we did, they would be apt to knock us down for being kings.
+
+"Our other interpreter used to talk very much of a kind of animal called
+a Tory, that was as great a monster as the Whig, and would treat us as
+ill for being foreigners.  These two creatures, it seems, are born with a
+secret antipathy to one another, and engage when they meet as naturally
+as the elephant and the rhinoceros.  But as we saw none of either of
+these species, we are apt to think that our guides deceived us with
+misrepresentations and fictions, and amused us with an account of such
+monsters as are not really in their country.
+
+"These particulars we made a shift to pick out from the discourse of our
+interpreters, which we put together as well as we could, being able to
+understand but here and there a word of what they said, and afterwards
+making up the meaning of it among ourselves.  The men of the country are
+very cunning and ingenious in handicraft works, but withal so very idle,
+that we often saw young, lusty, raw-boned fellows carried up and down the
+streets in little covered rooms by a couple of porters, who were hired
+for that service.  Their dress is likewise very barbarous, for they
+almost strangle themselves about the neck, and bind their bodies with
+many ligatures, that we are apt to think are the occasion of several
+distempers among them, which our country is entirely free from.  Instead
+of those beautiful feathers with which we adorn our heads, they often buy
+up a monstrous bush of hair, which covers their heads, and falls down in
+a large fleece below the middle of their backs, with which they walk up
+and down the streets, and are as proud of it as if it was of their own
+growth.
+
+"We were invited to one of their public diversions, where we hoped to
+have seen the great men of their country running down a stag, or pitching
+a bar, that we might have discovered who were the persons of the greatest
+abilities among them; but instead of that, they conveyed us into a huge
+room lighted up with abundance of candles, where this lazy people sat
+still above three hours to see several feats of ingenuity performed by
+others, who it seems were paid for it.
+
+"As for the women of the country, not being able to talk with them, we
+could only make our remarks upon them at a distance.  They let the hair
+of their heads grow to a great length; but as the men make a great show
+with heads of hair that are none of their own, the women, who they say
+have very fine heads of hair, tie it up in a knot, and cover it from
+being seen.  The women look like angels, and would be more beautiful than
+the sun, were it not for little black spots that are apt to break out in
+their faces, and sometimes rise in very odd figures.  I have observed
+that those little blemishes wear off very soon; but when they disappear
+in one part of the face, they are very apt to break out in another,
+insomuch that I have seen a spot upon the forehead in the afternoon which
+was upon the chin in the morning."
+
+The author then proceeds to show the absurdity of breeches and
+petticoats, with many other curious observations, which I shall reserve
+for another occasion: I cannot, however, conclude this paper without
+taking notice that amidst these wild remarks there now and then appears
+something very reasonable.  I cannot likewise forbear observing, that we
+are all guilty in some measure of the same narrow way of thinking which
+we meet with in this abstract of the Indian journal, when we fancy the
+customs, dresses, and manners of other countries are ridiculous and
+extravagant if they do not resemble those of our own.
+
+
+
+
+THE VISION OF MARRATON.
+
+
+   _Felices errore suo_.--
+
+   LUCAN i. 454.
+
+   Happy in their mistake.
+
+The Americans believe that all creatures have souls, not only men and
+women, but brutes, vegetables, nay, even the most inanimate things, as
+stocks and stones.  They believe the same of all works of art, as of
+knives, boats, looking-glasses; and that, as any of these things perish,
+their souls go into another world, which is inhabited by the ghosts of
+men and women.  For this reason they always place by the corpse of their
+dead friend a bow and arrows, that he may make use of the souls of them
+in the other world, as he did of their wooden bodies in this.  How absurd
+soever such an opinion as this may appear, our European philosophers have
+maintained several notions altogether as improbable.  Some of Plato's
+followers, in particular, when they talk of the world of ideas, entertain
+us with substances and beings no less extravagant and chimerical.  Many
+Aristotelians have likewise spoken as unintelligibly of their substantial
+forms.  I shall only instance Albertus Magnus, who, in his dissertation
+upon the loadstone, observing that fire will destroy its magnetic
+virtues, tells us that he took particular notice of one as it lay glowing
+amidst a heap of burning coals, and that he perceived a certain blue
+vapour to arise from it, which he believed might be the substantial form
+that is, in our West Indian phrase, the soul of the loadstone.
+
+There is a tradition among the Americans that one of their countrymen
+descended in a vision to the great repository of souls, or, as we call it
+here, to the other world; and that upon his return he gave his friends a
+distinct account of everything he saw among those regions of the dead.  A
+friend of mine, whom I have formerly mentioned, prevailed upon one of the
+interpreters of the Indian kings to inquire of them, if possible, what
+tradition they have among them of this matter: which, as well as he could
+learn by those many questions which he asked them at several times, was
+in substance as follows:
+
+The visionary, whose name was Marraton, after having travelled for a long
+space under a hollow mountain, arrived at length on the confines of this
+world of spirits, but could not enter it by reason of a thick forest,
+made up of bushes, brambles, and pointed thorns, so perplexed and
+interwoven with one another that it was impossible to find a passage
+through it.  Whilst he was looking about for some track or pathway that
+might be worn in any part of it, he saw a huge lion couched under the
+side of it, who kept his eye upon him in the same posture as when he
+watches for his prey.  The Indian immediately started back, whilst the
+lion rose with a spring, and leaped towards him.  Being wholly destitute
+of all other weapons, he stooped down to take up a huge stone in his
+hand, but, to his infinite surprise, grasped nothing, and found the
+supposed stone to be only the apparition of one.  If he was disappointed
+on this side, he was as much pleased on the other, when he found the
+lion, which had seized on his left shoulder, had no power to hurt him,
+and was only the ghost of that ravenous creature which it appeared to be.
+He no sooner got rid of his impotent enemy, but he marched up to the
+wood, and, after having surveyed it for some time, endeavoured to press
+into one part of it that was a little thinner than the rest, when, again
+to his great surprise, he found the bushes made no resistance, but that
+he walked through briars and brambles with the same ease as through the
+open air, and, in short, that the whole wood was nothing else but a wood
+of shades.  He immediately concluded that this huge thicket of thorns and
+brakes was designed as a kind of fence or quickset hedge to the ghosts it
+inclosed, and that probably their soft substances might be torn by these
+subtile points and prickles, which were too weak to make any impressions
+in flesh and blood.  With this thought he resolved to travel through this
+intricate wood, when by degrees he felt a gale of perfumes breathing upon
+him, that grew stronger and sweeter in proportion as he advanced.  He had
+not proceeded much further, when he observed the thorns and briers to
+end, and give place to a thousand beautiful green trees, covered with
+blossoms of the finest scents and colours, that formed a wilderness of
+sweets, and were a kind of lining to those ragged scenes which he had
+before passed through.  As he was coming out of this delightful part of
+the wood, and entering upon the plains it enclosed, he saw several
+horsemen rushing by him, and a little while after heard the cry of a pack
+of dogs.  He had not listened long before he saw the apparition of a milk-
+white steed, with a young man on the back of it, advancing upon full
+stretch after the souls of about a hundred beagles, that were hunting
+down the ghost of a hare, which ran away before them with an unspeakable
+swiftness.  As the man on the milk-white steed came by him, he looked
+upon him very attentively, and found him to be the young prince
+Nicharagua, who died about half a year before, and, by reason of his
+great virtues, was at that time lamented over all the western parts of
+America.
+
+He had no sooner got out of the wood but he was entertained with such a
+landscape of flowery plains, green meadows, running streams, sunny hills,
+and shady vales as were not to be represented by his own expressions,
+nor, as he said, by the conceptions of others.  This happy region was
+peopled with innumerable swarms of spirits, who applied themselves to
+exercises and diversions, according as their fancies led them.  Some of
+them were tossing the figure of a quoit; others were pitching the shadow
+of a bar; others were breaking the apparition of a horse; and multitudes
+employing themselves upon ingenious handicrafts with the souls of
+departed utensils, for that is the name which in the Indian language they
+give their tools when they are burnt or broken.  As he travelled through
+this delightful scene he was very often tempted to pluck the flowers that
+rose everywhere about him in the greatest variety and profusion, having
+never seen several of them in his own country: but he quickly found, that
+though they were objects of his sight, they were not liable to his touch.
+He at length came to the side of a great river, and, being a good
+fisherman himself, stood upon the banks of it some time to look upon an
+angler that had taken a great many shapes of fishes, which lay flouncing
+up and down by him.
+
+I should have told my reader that this Indian had been formerly married
+to one of the greatest beauties of his country, by whom he had several
+children.  This couple were so famous for their love and constancy to one
+another that the Indians to this day, when they give a married man joy of
+his wife, wish that they may live together like Marraton and Yaratilda.
+Marraton had not stood long by the fisherman when he saw the shadow of
+his beloved Yaratilda, who had for some time fixed her eye upon him
+before he discovered her.  Her arms were stretched out towards him;
+floods of tears ran down her eyes; her looks, her hands, her voice called
+him over to her, and, at the same time, seemed to tell him that the river
+was unpassable.  Who can describe the passion made up of joy, sorrow,
+love, desire, astonishment that rose in the Indian upon the sight of his
+dear Yaratilda?  He could express it by nothing but his tears, which ran
+like a river down his cheeks as he looked upon her.  He had not stood in
+this posture long before he plunged into the stream that lay before him,
+and finding it to be nothing but the phantom of a river, stalked on the
+bottom of it till he arose on the other side.  At his approach Yaratilda
+flew into his arms, whilst Marraton wished himself disencumbered of that
+body which kept her from his embraces.  After many questions and
+endearments on both sides, she conducted him to a bower, which she had
+dressed with her own hands with all the ornaments that could be met with
+in those blooming regions.  She had made it gay beyond imagination, and
+was every day adding something new to it.  As Marraton stood astonished
+at the unspeakable beauty of her habitation, and ravished with the
+fragrancy that came from every part of it, Yaratilda told him that she
+was preparing this bower for his reception, as well knowing that his
+piety to his God, and his faithful dealing towards men, would certainly
+bring him to that happy place whenever his life should be at an end.  She
+then brought two of her children to him, who died some years before, and
+resided with her in the same delightful bower, advising him to breed up
+those others which were still with him in such a manner that they might
+hereafter all of them meet together in this happy place.
+
+The tradition tells us further that he had afterwards a sight of those
+dismal habitations which are the portion of ill men after death; and
+mentions several molten seas of gold, in which were plunged the souls of
+barbarous Europeans, who put to the sword so many thousands of poor
+Indians for the sake of that precious metal.  But having already touched
+upon the chief points of this tradition, and exceeded the measure of my
+paper, I shall not give any further account of it.
+
+
+
+
+SIX PAPERS ON WIT.
+
+
+First Paper.
+
+
+   _Ut pictura poesis erit_--
+
+   HOR., _Ars Poet._ 361.
+
+   Poems like pictures are.
+
+Nothing is so much admired, and so little understood, as wit.  No author
+that I know of has written professedly upon it.  As for those who make
+any mention of it, they only treat on the subject as it has accidentally
+fallen in their way, and that too in little short reflections, or in
+general declamatory flourishes, without entering into the bottom of the
+matter.  I hope, therefore, I shall perform an acceptable work to my
+countrymen if I treat at large upon this subject; which I shall endeavour
+to do in a manner suitable to it, that I may not incur the censure which
+a famous critic bestows upon one who had written a treatise upon "the
+sublime," in a low grovelling style.  I intend to lay aside a whole week
+for this undertaking, that the scheme of my thoughts may not be broken
+and interrupted; and I dare promise myself, if my readers will give me a
+week's attention, that this great city will be very much changed for the
+better by next Saturday night.  I shall endeavour to make what I say
+intelligible to ordinary capacities; but if my readers meet with any
+paper that in some parts of it may be a little out of their reach, I
+would not have them discouraged, for they may assure themselves the next
+shall be much clearer.
+
+As the great and only end of these my speculations is to banish vice and
+ignorance out of the territories of Great Britain, I shall endeavour, as
+much as possible, to establish among us a taste of polite writing.  It is
+with this view that I have endeavoured to set my readers right in several
+points relating to operas and tragedies, and shall, from time to time,
+impart my notions of comedy, as I think they may tend to its refinement
+and perfection.  I find by my bookseller, that these papers of criticism,
+with that upon humour, have met with a more kind reception than indeed I
+could have hoped for from such subjects; for which reason I shall enter
+upon my present undertaking with greater cheerfulness.
+
+In this, and one or two following papers, I shall trace out the history
+of false wit, and distinguish the several kinds of it as they have
+prevailed in different ages of the world.  This I think the more
+necessary at present, because I observed there were attempts on foot last
+winter to revive some of those antiquated modes of wit that have been
+long exploded out of the commonwealth of letters.  There were several
+satires and panegyrics handed about in an acrostic, by which means some
+of the most arrant undisputed blockheads about the town began to
+entertain ambitious thoughts, and to set up for polite authors.  I shall
+therefore describe at length those many arts of false wit, in which a
+writer does not show himself a man of a beautiful genius, but of great
+industry.
+
+The first species of false wit which I have met with is very venerable
+for its antiquity, and has produced several pieces which have lived very
+near as long as the "Iliad" itself: I mean, those short poems printed
+among the minor Greek poets, which resemble the figure of an egg, a pair
+of wings, an axe, a shepherd's pipe, and an altar.
+
+As for the first, it is a little oval poem, and may not improperly be
+called a scholar's egg.  I would endeavour to hatch it, or, in more
+intelligible language, to translate it into English, did not I find the
+interpretation of it very difficult; for the author seems to have been
+more intent upon the figure of his poem than upon the sense of it.
+
+The pair of wings consists of twelve verses, or rather feathers, every
+verse decreasing gradually in its measure according to its situation in
+the wing.  The subject of it, as in the rest of the poems which follow,
+bears some remote affinity with the figure, for it describes a god of
+love, who is always painted with wings.
+
+The axe, methinks, would have been a good figure for a lampoon, had the
+edge of it consisted of the most satirical parts of the work; but as it
+is in the original, I take it to have been nothing else but the poesy of
+an axe which was consecrated to Minerva, and was thought to be the same
+that Epeus made use of in the building of the Trojan horse; which is a
+hint I shall leave to the consideration of the critics.  I am apt to
+think that the poesy was written originally upon the axe, like those
+which our modern cutlers inscribe upon their knives; and that, therefore,
+the poesy still remains in its ancient shape, though the axe itself is
+lost.
+
+The shepherd's pipe may be said to be full of music, for it is composed
+of nine different kinds of verses, which by their several lengths
+resemble the nine stops of the old musical instrument, that is likewise
+the subject of the poem.
+
+The altar is inscribed with the epitaph of Troilus the son of Hecuba;
+which, by the way, makes me believe that these false pieces of wit are
+much more ancient than the authors to whom they are generally ascribed;
+at least, I will never be persuaded that so fine a writer as Theocritus
+could have been the author of any such simple works.
+
+It was impossible for a man to succeed in these performances who was not
+a kind of painter, or at least a designer.  He was first of all to draw
+the outline of the subject which he intended to write upon, and
+afterwards conform the description to the figure of his subject.  The
+poetry was to contract or dilate itself according to the mould in which
+it was cast.  In a word, the verses were to be cramped or extended to the
+dimensions of the frame that was prepared for them; and to undergo the
+fate of those persons whom the tyrant Procrustes used to lodge in his
+iron bed: if they were too short, he stretched them on a rack; and if
+they were too long, chopped off a part of their legs, till they fitted
+the couch which he had prepared for them.
+
+Mr. Dryden hints at this obsolete kind of wit in one of the following
+verses in his "Mac Flecknoe;" which an English reader cannot understand,
+who does not know that there are those little poems above mentioned in
+the shape of wings and altars:--
+
+   --Choose for thy command
+   Some peaceful province in acrostic land;
+
+   There may'st thou wings display, and altars raise,
+   And torture one poor word a thousand ways.
+
+This fashion of false wit was revived by several poets of the last age,
+and in particular may be met with among Mr. Herbert's poems; and, if I am
+not mistaken, in the translation of Du Bartas.  I do not remember any
+other kind of work among the moderns which more resembles the
+performances I have mentioned than that famous picture of King Charles
+the First, which has the whole Book of Psalms written in the lines of the
+face, and, the hair of the head.  When I was last at Oxford I perused one
+of the whiskers, and was reading the other, but could not go so far in it
+as I would have done, by reason of the impatience of my friends and
+fellow-travellers, who all of them pressed to see such a piece of
+curiosity.  I have since heard, that there is now an eminent
+writing-master in town, who has transcribed all the Old Testament in a
+full-bottomed periwig: and if the fashion should introduce the thick kind
+of wigs which were in vogue some few years ago, he promises to add two or
+three supernumerary locks that should contain all the Apocrypha.  He
+designed this wig originally for King William, having disposed of the two
+Books of Kings in the two forks of the foretop; but that glorious monarch
+dying before the wig was finished, there is a space left in it for the
+face of any one that has a mind to purchase it.
+
+But to return to our ancient poems in picture.  I would humbly propose,
+for the benefit of our modern smatterers in poetry, that they would
+imitate their brethren among the ancients in those ingenious devices.  I
+have communicated this thought to a young poetical lover of my
+acquaintance, who intends to present his mistress with a copy of verses
+made in the shape of her fan; and, if he tells me true, has already
+finished the three first sticks of it.  He has likewise promised me to
+get the measure of his mistress's marriage finger with a design to make a
+posy in the fashion of a ring, which shall exactly fit it.  It is so very
+easy to enlarge upon a good hint, that I do not question but my ingenious
+readers will apply what I have said to many other particulars; and that
+we shall see the town filled in a very little time with poetical tippets,
+handkerchiefs, snuff-boxes, and the like female ornaments.  I shall
+therefore conclude with a word of advice to those admirable English
+authors who call themselves Pindaric writers, that they would apply
+themselves to this kind of wit without loss of time, as being provided
+better than any other poets with verses of all sizes and dimensions.
+
+
+
+Second Paper.
+
+
+   _Operose nihil aguat_.
+
+   SENECA.
+
+   Busy about nothing.
+
+There is nothing more certain than that every man would be a wit if he
+could; and notwithstanding pedants of pretended depth and solidity are
+apt to decry the writings of a polite author, as flash and froth, they
+all of them show, upon occasion, that they would spare no pains to arrive
+at the character of those whom they seem to despise.  For this reason we
+often find them endeavouring at works of fancy, which cost them infinite
+pangs in the production.  The truth of it is, a man had better be a
+galley-slave than a wit, were one to gain that title by those elaborate
+trifles which have been the inventions of such authors as were often
+masters of great learning, but no genius.
+
+In my last paper I mentioned some of these false wits among the ancients;
+and in this shall give the reader two or three other species of them,
+that flourished in the same early ages of the world.  The first I shall
+produce are the lipogrammatists or letter-droppers of antiquity, that
+would take an exception, without any reason, against some particular
+letter in the alphabet, so as not to admit it once into a whole poem.  One
+Tryphiodorus was a great master in this kind of writing.  He composed an
+"Odyssey" or epic poem on the adventures of Ulysses, consisting of four-
+and-twenty books, having entirely banished the letter A from his first
+book, which was called Alpha, as _lucus a non lucendo_, because there was
+not an Alpha in it.  His second book was inscribed Beta for the same
+reason.  In short, the poet excluded the whole four-and-twenty letters in
+their turns, and showed them, one after another, that he could do his
+business without them.
+
+It must have been very pleasant to have seen this poet avoiding the
+reprobate letter, as much as another would a false quantity, and making
+his escape from it through the several Greek dialects, when he was
+pressed with it in any particular syllable.  For the most apt and elegant
+word in the whole language was rejected, like a diamond with a flaw in
+it, if it appeared blemished with a wrong letter.  I shall only observe
+upon this head, that if the work I have here mentioned had been now
+extant, the "Odyssey" of Tryphiodorus, in all probability, would have
+been oftener quoted by our learned pedants than the "Odyssey" of Homer.
+What a perpetual fund would it have been of obsolete words and phrases,
+unusual barbarisms and rusticities, absurd spellings and complicated
+dialects!  I make no question but that it would have been looked upon as
+one of the most valuable treasuries of the Greek tongue.
+
+I find likewise among the ancients that ingenious kind of conceit which
+the moderns distinguish by the name of a rebus, that does not sink a
+letter, but a whole word, by substituting a picture in its place.  When
+Caesar was one of the masters of the Roman mint, he placed the figure of
+an elephant upon the reverse of the public money; the word Caesar
+signifying an elephant in the Punic language.  This was artificially
+contrived by Caesar, because it was not lawful for a private man to stamp
+his own figure upon the coin of the commonwealth.  Cicero, who was so
+called from the founder of his family, that was marked on the nose with a
+little wen like a vetch, which is _Cicer_ in Latin, instead of Marcus
+Tullius Cicero, ordered the words Marcus Tullius, with a figure of a
+vetch at the end of them, to be inscribed on a public monument.  This was
+done probably to show that he was neither ashamed of his name nor family,
+notwithstanding the envy of his competitors had often reproached him with
+both.  In the same manner we read of a famous building that was marked in
+several parts of it with the figures of a frog and a lizard; those words
+in Greek having been the names of the architects, who by the laws of
+their country were never permitted to inscribe their own names upon their
+works.  For the same reason it is thought that the forelock of the horse,
+in the antique equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, represents at a
+distance the shape of an owl, to intimate the country of the statuary,
+who, in all probability, was an Athenian.  This kind of wit was very much
+in vogue among our own countrymen about an age or two ago, who did not
+practise it for any oblique reason, as the ancients above-mentioned, but
+purely for the sake of being witty.  Among innumerable instances that may
+be given of this nature, I shall produce the device of one Mr. Newberry,
+as I find it mentioned by our learned Camden in his Remains.  Mr.
+Newberry, to represent his name by a picture, hung up at his door the
+sign of a yew-tree, that has several berries upon it, and in the midst of
+them a great golden N hung upon a bough of the tree, which by the help of
+a little false spelling made up the word Newberry.
+
+I shall conclude this topic with a rebus, which has been lately hewn out
+in freestone, and erected over two of the portals of Blenheim House,
+being the figure of a monstrous lion tearing to pieces a little cock.  For
+the better understanding of which device I must acquaint my English
+reader that a cock has the misfortune to be called in Latin by the same
+word that signifies a Frenchman, as a lion is the emblem of the English
+nation.  Such a device in so noble a pile of building looks like a pun in
+an heroic poem; and I am very sorry the truly ingenious architect would
+suffer the statuary to blemish his excellent plan with so poor a conceit.
+But I hope what I have said will gain quarter for the cock, and deliver
+him out of the lion's paw.
+
+I find likewise in ancient times the conceit of making an echo talk
+sensibly, and give rational answers.  If this could be excusable in any
+writer, it would be in Ovid where he introduces the Echo as a nymph,
+before she was worn away into nothing but a voice.  The learned Erasmus,
+though a man of wit and genius, has composed a dialogue upon this silly
+kind of device, and made use of an Echo, who seems to have been a very
+extraordinary linguist, for she answers the person she talks with in
+Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, according as she found the syllables which she
+was to repeat in any of those learned languages.  Hudibras, in ridicule
+of this false kind of wit, has described Bruin bewailing the loss of his
+bear to the solitary Echo, who is of great use to the poet in several
+distiches, as she does not only repeat after him, but helps out his
+verse, and furnishes him with rhymes:--
+
+   He raged, and kept as heavy a coil as
+   Stout Hercules for loss of Hylas;
+   Forcing the valleys to repeat
+   The accents of his sad regret;
+   He beat his breast, and tore his hair,
+   For loss of his dear crony bear:
+   That Echo from the hollow ground
+   His doleful wailings did resound
+   More wistfully by many times,
+   Than in small poets' splay-foot rhymes,
+   That make her, in their rueful stories,
+   To answer to int'rogatories,
+   And most unconscionably depose
+   Things of which she nothing knows;
+   And when she has said all she can say,
+   'Tis wrested to the lover's fancy.
+   Quoth he, "O whither, wicked Bruin,
+   Art thou fled to my"--Echo, _Ruin_?
+   "I thought th' hadst scorn'd to budge a step
+   For fear."  Quoth Echo, _Marry guep_.
+   "Am I not here to take thy part?"
+   Then what has quell'd thy stubborn heart?
+   Have these bones rattled, and this head
+   So often in thy quarrel bled?
+   Nor did I ever winch or grudge it,
+   For thy dear sake."  Quoth she, _Mum budget_.
+   Think'st thou 'twill not be laid i' th' dish,
+   Thou turn'dst thy back?"  Quoth Echo, _Pish_.
+   To run from those th' hadst overcome
+   Thus cowardly?"  Quoth Echo, _Mum_.
+   "But what a-vengeance makes thee fly
+   From me too as thine enemy?
+   Or if thou hadst no thought of me,
+   Nor what I have endured for thee,
+   Yet shame and honour might prevail
+   To keep thee thus from turning tail:
+   For who would grudge to spend his blood in
+   His honour's cause?"  Quoth she, _A pudding_.
+
+   _Part_ I., _Cant._ 3, 183.
+
+
+
+Third Paper.
+
+
+   _Hoc est quod palles_?  _Cur quis non prandeat_, _hoc est_?
+
+   PERS., _Sat._ iii.  85.
+
+   Is it for this you gain those meagre looks,
+   And sacrifice your dinner to your books?
+
+Several kinds of false wit that vanished in the refined ages of the
+world, discovered themselves again in the times of monkish ignorance.
+
+As the monks were the masters of all that little learning which was then
+extant, and had their whole lives entirely disengaged from business, it
+is no wonder that several of them, who wanted genius for higher
+performances, employed many hours in the composition of such tricks in
+writing as required much time and little capacity.  I have seen half the
+"AEneid" turned into Latin rhymes by one of the _beaux esprits_ of that
+dark age: who says, in his preface to it, that the "AEneid" wanted
+nothing but the sweets of rhyme to make it the most perfect work in its
+kind.  I have likewise seen a hymn in hexameters to the Virgin Mary,
+which filled a whole book, though it consisted but of the eight following
+words:--
+
+   _Tot tibi sunt_, _Virgo_, _dotes_, _quot sidera coelo_.
+
+   Thou hast as many virtues, O Virgin, as there are stars in heaven.
+
+The poet rang the changes upon these eight several words, and by that
+means made his verses almost as numerous as the virtues and stars which
+they celebrated.  It is no wonder that men who had so much time upon
+their hands did not only restore all the antiquated pieces of false wit,
+but enriched the world with inventions of their own.  It is to this age
+that we owe the production of anagrams, which is nothing else but a
+transmutation of one word into another, or the turning of the same set of
+letters into different words; which may change night into day, or black
+into white, if chance, who is the goddess that presides over these sorts
+of composition, shall so direct.  I remember a witty author, in allusion
+to this kind of writing, calls his rival, who, it seems, was distorted,
+and had his limbs set in places that did not properly belong to them,
+"the anagram of a man."
+
+When the anagrammatist takes a name to work upon, he considers it at
+first as a mine not broken up, which will not show the treasure it
+contains till he shall have spent many hours in the search of it; for it
+is his business to find out one word that conceals itself in another, and
+to examine the letters in all the variety of stations in which they can
+possibly be ranged.  I have heard of a gentleman who, when this kind of
+wit was in fashion, endeavoured to gain his mistress's heart by it.  She
+was one of the finest women of her age, and known by the name of the Lady
+Mary Boon.  The lover not being able to make anything of Mary, by certain
+liberties indulged to this kind of writing converted it into Moll; and
+after having shut himself up for half a year, with indefatigable industry
+produced an anagram.  Upon the presenting it to his mistress, who was a
+little vexed in her heart to see herself degraded into Moll Boon, she
+told him, to his infinite surprise, that he had mistaken her surname, for
+that it was not Boon, but Bohun.
+
+   --_Ibi omnis_
+   _Effusus labor_.--
+
+The lover was thunder-struck with his misfortune, insomuch that in a
+little time after he lost his senses, which, indeed, had been very much
+impaired by that continual application he had given to his anagram.
+
+The acrostic was probably invented about the same time with the anagram,
+though it is impossible to decide whether the inventor of the one or the
+other were the greater blockhead.  The simple acrostic is nothing but the
+name or title of a person, or thing, made out of the initial letters of
+several verses, and by that means written, after the manner of the
+Chinese, in a perpendicular line.  But besides these there are compound
+acrostics, when the principal letters stand two or three deep.  I have
+seen some of them where the verses have not only been edged by a name at
+each extremity, but have had the same name running down like a seam
+through the middle of the poem.
+
+There is another near relation of the anagrams and acrostics, which is
+commonly called a chronogram.  This kind of wit appears very often on
+many modern medals, especially those of Germany, when they represent in
+the inscription the year in which they were coined.  Thus we see on a
+medal of Gustavus Adolphus time following words, CHRISTVS DUX ERGO
+TRIVMPHVS.  If you take the pains to pick the figures out of the several
+words, and range them in their proper order, you will find they amount to
+MDCXVVVII, or 1627, the year in which the medal was stamped: for as some
+of the letters distinguish themselves from the rest, and overtop their
+fellows, they are to be considered in a double capacity, both as letters
+and as figures.  Your laborious German wits will turn over a whole
+dictionary for one of these ingenious devices.  A man would think they
+were searching after an apt classical term, but instead of that they are
+looking out a word that has an L, an M, or a D in it.  When, therefore,
+we meet with any of these inscriptions, we are not so much to look in
+them for the thought, as for the year of the Lord.
+
+The _bouts-rimes_ were the favourites of the French nation for a whole
+age together, and that at a time when it abounded in wit and learning.
+They were a list of words that rhyme to one another, drawn up by another
+hand, and given to a poet, who was to make a poem to the rhymes in the
+same order that they were placed upon the list: the more uncommon the
+rhymes were, the more extraordinary was the genius of the poet that could
+accommodate his verses to them.  I do not know any greater instance of
+the decay of wit and learning among the French, which generally follows
+the declension of empire, than the endeavouring to restore this foolish
+kind of wit.  If the reader will be at trouble to see examples of it, let
+him look into the new _Mercure Gallant_, where the author every month
+gives a list of rhymes to be filled up by the ingenious, in order to be
+communicated to the public in the _Mercure_ for the succeeding month.
+That for the month of November last, which now lies before me, is as
+follows:--
+
+   Lauriers
+   Guerriers
+   Musette
+   Lisette
+   Caesars
+   Etendars
+   Houlette
+   Folette
+
+One would be amazed to see so learned a man as Menage talking seriously
+on this kind of trifle in the following passage:--
+
+"Monsieur de la Chambre has told me that he never knew what he was going
+to write when he took his pen into his hand; but that one sentence always
+produced another.  For my own part, I never knew what I should write next
+when I was making verses.  In the first place I got all my rhymes
+together, and was afterwards perhaps three or four months in filling them
+up.  I one day showed Monsieur Gombaud a composition of this nature, in
+which, among others, I had made use of the four following rhymes,
+Amaryllis, Phyllis, Maine, Arne; desiring him to give me his opinion of
+it.  He told me immediately that my verses were good for nothing.  And
+upon my asking his reason, he said, because the rhymes are too common,
+and for that reason easy to be put into verse.  'Marry,' says I, 'if it
+be so, I am very well rewarded for all the pains I have been at!'  But by
+Monsieur Gombaud's leave, notwithstanding the severity of the criticism,
+the verses were good."  (_Vide_ "Menagiana.")  Thus far the learned
+Menage, whom I have translated word for word.
+
+The first occasion of these _bouts-rimes_ made them in some manner
+excusable, as they were tasks which the French ladies used to impose on
+their lovers.  But when a grave author, like him above-mentioned, tasked
+himself, could there be anything more ridiculous?  Or would not one be
+apt to believe that the author played booty, and did not make his list of
+rhymes till he had finished his poem?
+
+I shall only add that this piece of false wit has been finely ridiculed
+by Monsieur Sarasin, in a poem entitled "La Defaite des Bouts-Rimes."
+(The Rout of the Bouts-Rimes).
+
+I must subjoin to this last kind of wit the double rhymes, which are used
+in doggrel poetry, and generally applauded by ignorant readers.  If the
+thought of the couplet in such compositions is good, the rhyme adds
+little to it; and if bad, it will not be in the power of the rhyme to
+recommend it.  I am afraid that great numbers of those who admire the
+incomparable "Hudibras," do it more on account of these doggrel rhymes
+than of the parts that really deserve admiration.  I am sure I have heard
+the
+
+   Pulpit, drum ecclesiastic,
+   Was beat with fist, instead of a stick (Canto I, II),
+
+and--
+
+   There was an ancient philosopher
+   Who had read Alexander Ross over
+
+   (_Part_ I., _Canto_ 2, 1),
+
+more frequently quoted than the finest pieces of wit in the whole poem.
+
+
+
+Fourth Paper.
+
+
+   _Non equidem hoc studeo bullatis ut mihi nugis_
+   _Pagina turgescat_, _dare pondus idonea fumo_.
+
+   PERS., _Sat._ v. 19.
+
+   'Tis not indeed my talent to engage
+   In lofty trifles, or to swell my page
+   With wind and noise.
+
+   DRYDEN.
+
+There is no kind of false wit which has been so recommended by the
+practice of all ages as that which consists in a jingle of words, and is
+comprehended under the general name of punning.  It is indeed impossible
+to kill a weed which the soil has a natural disposition to produce.  The
+seeds of punning are in the minds of all men, and though they may be
+subdued by reason, reflection, and good sense, they will be very apt to
+shoot up in the greatest genius that is not broken and cultivated by the
+rules of art.  Imitation is natural to us, and when it does not raise the
+mind to poetry, painting, music, or other more noble arts, it often
+breaks out in puns and quibbles.
+
+Aristotle, in the eleventh chapter of his book of rhetoric, describes two
+or three kinds of puns, which he calls paragrams, among the beauties of
+good writing, and produces instances of them out of some of the greatest
+authors in the Greek tongue.  Cicero has sprinkled several of his works
+with puns, and, in his book where he lays down the rules of oratory,
+quotes abundance of sayings as pieces of wit, which also, upon
+examination, prove arrant puns.  But the age in which the pun chiefly
+flourished was in the reign of King James the First.  That learned
+monarch was himself a tolerable punster, and made very few bishops or
+Privy Councillors that had not some time or other signalised themselves
+by a clinch, or a conundrum.  It was, therefore, in this age that the pun
+appeared with pomp and dignity.  It had been before admitted into merry
+speeches and ludicrous compositions, but was now delivered with great
+gravity from the pulpit, or pronounced in the most solemn manner at the
+council-table.  The greatest authors, in their most serious works, made
+frequent use of puns.  The sermons of Bishop Andrews, and the tragedies
+of Shakespeare, are full of them.  The sinner was punned into repentance
+by the former; as in the latter, nothing is more usual than to see a hero
+weeping and quibbling for a dozen lines together.
+
+I must add to these great authorities, which seem to have given a kind of
+sanction to this piece of false wit, that all the writers of rhetoric
+have treated of punning with very great respect, and divided the several
+kinds of it into hard names, that are reckoned among the figures of
+speech, and recommended as ornaments in discourse.  I remember a country
+schoolmaster of my acquaintance told me once, that he had been in company
+with a gentleman whom he looked upon to be the greatest paragrammatist
+among the moderns.  Upon inquiry, I found my learned friend had dined
+that day with Mr. Swan, the famous punster; and desiring him to give me
+some account of Mr. Swan's conversation, he told me that he generally
+talked in the _Paranomasia_, that he sometimes gave in to the _Ploce_,
+but that in his humble opinion he shone most in the _Antanaclasis_.
+
+I must not here omit that a famous university of this land was formerly
+very much infested with puns; but whether or not this might arise from
+the fens and marshes in which it was situated, and which are now drained,
+I must leave to the determination of more skilful naturalists.
+
+After this short history of punning, one would wonder how it should be so
+entirely banished out of the learned world as it is at present,
+especially since it had found a place in the writings of the most ancient
+polite authors.  To account for this we must consider that the first race
+of authors, who were the great heroes in writing, were destitute of all
+rules and arts of criticism; and for that reason, though they excel later
+writers in greatness of genius, they fall short of them in accuracy and
+correctness.  The moderns cannot reach their beauties, but can avoid
+their imperfections.  When the world was furnished with these authors of
+the first eminence, there grew up another set of writers, who gained
+themselves a reputation by the remarks which they made on the works of
+those who preceded them.  It was one of the employments of these
+secondary authors to distinguish the several kinds of wit by terms of
+art, and to consider them as more or less perfect, according as they were
+founded in truth.  It is no wonder, therefore, that even such authors as
+Isocrates, Plato, and Cicero, should have such little blemishes as are
+not to be met with in authors of a much inferior character, who have
+written since those several blemishes were discovered.  I do not find
+that there was a proper separation made between puns and true wit by any
+of the ancient authors, except Quintilian and Longinus.  But when this
+distinction was once settled, it was very natural for all men of sense to
+agree in it.  As for the revival of this false wit, it happened about the
+time of the revival of letters; but as soon as it was once detected, it
+immediately vanished and disappeared.  At the same time there is no
+question but, as it has sunk in one age and rose in another, it will
+again recover itself in some distant period of time, as pedantry and
+ignorance shall prevail upon wit and sense.  And, to speak the truth, I
+do very much apprehend, by some of the last winter's productions, which
+had their sets of admirers, that our posterity will in a few years
+degenerate into a race of punsters: at least, a man may be very excusable
+for any apprehensions of this kind, that has seen acrostics handed about
+the town with great secresy and applause; to which I must also add a
+little epigram called the "Witches' Prayer," that fell into verse when it
+was read either backward or forward, excepting only that it cursed one
+way, and blessed the other.  When one sees there are actually such
+painstakers among our British wits, who can tell what it may end in?  If
+we must lash one another, let it be with the manly strokes of wit and
+satire: for I am of the old philosopher's opinion, that, if I must suffer
+from one or the other, I would rather it should be from the paw of a lion
+than from the hoof of an ass.  I do not speak this out of any spirit of
+party.  There is a most crying dulness on both sides.  I have seen Tory
+acrostics and Whig anagrams, and do not quarrel with either of them
+because they are Whigs or Tories, but because they are anagrams and
+acrostics.
+
+But to return to punning.  Having pursued the history of a pun, from its
+original to its downfall, I shall here define it to be a conceit arising
+from the use of two words that agree in the sound, but differ in the
+sense.  The only way, therefore, to try a piece of wit is to translate it
+into a different language.  If it bears the test, you may pronounce it
+true; but if it vanishes in the experiment, you may conclude it to have
+been a pun.  In short, one may say of a pun, as the countryman described
+his nightingale, that it is "_vox et praeterea nihil_"--"a sound, and
+nothing but a sound."  On the contrary, one may represent true wit by the
+description which Aristaenetus makes of a fine woman:--"When she is
+dressed she is beautiful: when she is undressed she is beautiful;" or, as
+Mercerus has translated it more emphatically, _Induitur_, _formosa est_:
+_exuitur_, _ipsa forma est_.
+
+
+
+Fifth Paper.
+
+
+   _Scribendi recte sapere est et principium_, _et fons_.
+
+   HOR., _Ars Poet._  309.
+
+   Sound judgment is the ground of writing well.--ROSCOMMON.
+
+Mr. Locke has an admirable reflection upon the difference of wit and
+judgment, whereby he endeavours to show the reason why they are not
+always the talents of the same person.  His words are as follow:--"And
+hence, perhaps, may be given some reason of that common observation,
+'That men who have a great deal of wit, and prompt memories, have not
+always the clearest judgment or deepest reason.'  For wit lying most in
+the assemblage of ideas, and putting those together with quickness and
+variety wherein can be found any resemblance or congruity, thereby to
+make up pleasant pictures and agreeable visions in the fancy: judgment,
+on the contrary, lies quite on the other side, in separating carefully
+one from another, ideas wherein can be found the least difference,
+thereby to avoid being misled by similitude, and by affinity to take one
+thing for another.  This is a way of proceeding quite contrary to
+metaphor and allusion, wherein, for the most part, lies that
+entertainment and pleasantry of wit which strikes so lively on the fancy,
+and is therefore so acceptable to all people."
+
+This is, I think, the best and most philosophical account that I have
+ever met with of wit, which generally, though not always, consists in
+such a resemblance and congruity of ideas as this author mentions.  I
+shall only add to it, by way of explanation, that every resemblance of
+ideas is not that which we call wit, unless it be such an one that gives
+delight and surprise to the reader.  These two properties seem essential
+to wit, more particularly the last of them.  In order, therefore, that
+the resemblance in the ideas be wit, it is necessary that the ideas
+should not lie too near one another in the nature of things; for, where
+the likeness is obvious, it gives no surprise.  To compare one man's
+singing to that of another, or to represent the whiteness of any object
+by that of milk and snow, or the variety of its colours by those of the
+rainbow, cannot be called wit, unless, besides this obvious resemblance,
+there be some further congruity discovered in the two ideas that is
+capable of giving the reader some surprise.  Thus, when a poet tells us
+the bosom of his mistress is as white as snow, there is no wit in the
+comparison; but when he adds, with a sigh, it is as cold too, it then
+grows into wit.  Every reader's memory may supply him with innumerable
+instances of the same nature.  For this reason, the similitudes in heroic
+poets, who endeavour rather to fill the mind with great conceptions than
+to divert it with such as are new and surprising, have seldom anything in
+them that can be called wit.  Mr. Locke's account of wit, with this short
+explanation, comprehends most of the species of wit, as metaphors,
+similitudes, allegories, enigmas, mottoes, parables, fables, dreams,
+visions, dramatic writings, burlesque, and all the methods of allusion:
+as there are many other pieces of wit, how remote soever they may appear
+at first sight from the foregoing description, which upon examination
+will be found to agree with it.
+
+As true wit generally consists in this resemblance and congruity of
+ideas, false wit chiefly consists in the resemblance and congruity
+sometimes of single letters, as in anagrams, chronograms, lipograms, and
+acrostics; sometimes of syllables, as in echoes and doggrel rhymes;
+sometimes of words, as in puns and quibbles; and sometimes of whole
+sentences or poems, cast into the figures of eggs, axes, or altars; nay,
+some carry the notion of wit so far as to ascribe it even to external
+mimicry, and to look upon a man as an ingenious person that can resemble
+the tone, posture, or face of another.
+
+As true wit consists in the resemblance of ideas, and false wit in the
+resemblance of words, according to the foregoing instances, there is
+another kind of wit which consists partly in the resemblance of ideas and
+partly in the resemblance of words, which for distinction sake I shall
+call mixed wit.  This kind of wit is that which abounds in Cowley more
+than in any author that ever wrote.  Mr. Waller has likewise a great deal
+of it.  Mr. Dryden is very sparing in it.  Milton had a genius much above
+it.  Spenser is in the same class with Milton.  The Italians, even in
+their epic poetry, are full of it.  Monsieur Boileau, who formed himself
+upon the ancient poets, has everywhere rejected it with scorn.  If we
+look after mixed wit among the Greek writers, we shall find it nowhere
+but in the epigrammatists.  There are indeed some strokes of it in the
+little poem ascribed to Musaeus, which by that as well as many other
+marks betrays itself to be a modern composition.  If we look into the
+Latin writers we find none of this mixed wit in Virgil, Lucretius, or
+Catullus; very little in Horace, but a great deal of it in Ovid, and
+scarce anything else in Martial.
+
+Out of the innumerable branches of mixed wit, I shall choose one instance
+which may be met with in all the writers of this class.  The passion of
+love in its nature has been thought to resemble fire, for which reason
+the words "fire" and "flame" are made use of to signify love.  The witty
+poets, therefore, have taken an advantage, from the doubtful meaning of
+the word "fire," to make an infinite number of witticisms.  Cowley
+observing the cold regard of his mistress's eyes, and at the same time
+the power of producing love in him, considers them as burning-glasses
+made of ice; and, finding himself able to live in the greatest
+extremities of love, concludes the torrid zone to be habitable.  When his
+mistress has read his letter written in juice of lemon, by holding it to
+the fire, he desires her to read it over a second time by love's flames.
+When she weeps, he wishes it were inward heat that distilled those drops
+from the limbec.  When she is absent, he is beyond eighty, that is,
+thirty degrees nearer the pole than when she is with him.  His ambitious
+love is a fire that naturally mounts upwards; his happy love is the beams
+of heaven, and his unhappy love flames of hell.  When it does not let him
+sleep, it is a flame that sends up no smoke; when it is opposed by
+counsel and advice, it is a fire that rages the more by the winds blowing
+upon it.  Upon the dying of a tree, in which he had cut his loves, he
+observes that his written flames had burnt up and withered the tree.  When
+he resolves to give over his passion, he tells us that one burnt like him
+for ever dreads the fire.  His heart is an AEtna, that, instead of
+Vulcan's shop, encloses Cupid's forge in it.  His endeavouring to drown
+his love in wine is throwing oil upon the fire.  He would insinuate to
+his mistress that the fire of love, like that of the sun, which produces
+so many living creatures, should not only warm, but beget.  Love in
+another place cooks Pleasure at his fire.  Sometimes the poet's heart is
+frozen in every breast, and sometimes scorched in every eye.  Sometimes
+he is drowned in tears and burnt in love, like a ship set on fire in the
+middle of the sea.
+
+The reader may observe in every one of these instances that the poet
+mixes the qualities of fire with those of love; and in the same sentence,
+speaking of it both as a passion and as real fire, surprises the reader
+with those seeming resemblances or contradictions that make up all the
+wit in this kind of writing.  Mixed wit, therefore, is a composition of
+pun and true wit, and is more or less perfect as the resemblance lies in
+the ideas or in the words.  Its foundations are laid partly in falsehood
+and partly in truth; reason puts in her claim for one half of it, and
+extravagance for the other.  The only province, therefore, for this kind
+of wit is epigram, or those little occasional poems that in their own
+nature are nothing else but a tissue of epigrams.  I cannot conclude this
+head of mixed wit without owning that the admirable poet, out of whom I
+have taken the examples of it, had as much true wit as any author that
+ever wrote; and indeed all other talents of an extraordinary genius.
+
+It may be expected, since I am upon this subject, that I should take
+notice of Mr. Dryden's definition of wit, which, with all the deference
+that is due to the judgment of so great a man, is not so properly a
+definition of wit as of good writing in general.  Wit, as he defines it,
+is "a propriety of words and thoughts adapted to the subject."  If this
+be a true definition of wit, I am apt to think that Euclid was the
+greatest wit that ever set pen to paper.  It is certain there never was a
+greater propriety of words and thoughts adapted to the subject than what
+that author has made use of in his Elements.  I shall only appeal to my
+reader if this definition agrees with any notion he has of wit.  If it be
+a true one, I am sure Mr. Dryden was not only a better poet, but a
+greater wit than Mr. Cowley, and Virgil a much more facetious man than
+either Ovid or Martial.
+
+Bouhours, whom I look upon to be the most penetrating of all the French
+critics, has taken pains to show that it is impossible for any thought to
+be beautiful which is not just, and has not its foundation in the nature
+of things; that the basis of all wit is truth; and that no thought can be
+valuable of which good sense is not the groundwork.  Boileau has
+endeavoured to inculcate the same notion in several parts of his
+writings, both in prose and verse.  This is that natural way of writing,
+that beautiful simplicity which we so much admire in the compositions of
+the ancients, and which nobody deviates from but those who want strength
+of genius to make a thought shine in its own natural beauties.  Poets who
+want this strength of genius to give that majestic simplicity to nature,
+which we so much admire in the works of the ancients, are forced to hunt
+after foreign ornaments, and not to let any piece of wit of what kind
+soever escape them.  I look upon these writers as Goths in poetry, who,
+like those in architecture, not being able to come up to the beautiful
+simplicity of the old Greeks and Romans, have endeavoured to supply its
+place with all the extravagancies of an irregular fancy.  Mr. Dryden
+makes a very handsome observation on Ovid's writing a letter from Dido to
+AEneas, in the following words: "Ovid," says he, speaking of Virgil's
+fiction of Dido and AEneas, "takes it up after him, even in the same age,
+and makes an ancient heroine of Virgil's new-created Dido; dictates a
+letter for her just before her death to the ungrateful fugitive, and,
+very unluckily for himself, is for measuring a sword with a man so much
+superior in force to him on the same subject.  I think I may be judge of
+this, because I have translated both.  The famous author of 'The Art of
+Love' has nothing of his own; he borrows all from a greater master in his
+own profession, and, which is worse, improves nothing which he finds.
+Nature fails him; and, being forced to his old shift, he has recourse to
+witticism.  This passes indeed with his soft admirers, and gives him the
+preference to Virgil in their esteem."
+
+Were not I supported by so great an authority as that of Mr. Dryden, I
+should not venture to observe that the taste of most of our English
+poets, as well as readers, is extremely Gothic.  He quotes Monsieur
+Segrais for a threefold distinction of the readers of poetry; in the
+first of which he comprehends the rabble of readers, whom he does not
+treat as such with regard to their quality, but to their numbers and the
+coarseness of their taste.  His words are as follows: "Segrais has
+distinguished the readers of poetry, according to their capacity of
+judging, into three classes."  [He might have said the same of writers
+too if he had pleased.]  "In the lowest form he places those whom he
+calls Les Petits Esprits, such things as our upper-gallery audience in a
+playhouse, who like nothing but the husk and rind of wit, and prefer a
+quibble, a conceit, an epigram, before solid sense and elegant
+expression.  These are mob readers.  If Virgil and Martial stood for
+Parliament-men, we know already who would carry it.  But though they made
+the greatest appearance in the field, and cried the loudest, the best of
+it is they are but a sort of French Huguenots, or Dutch boors, brought
+over in herds, but not naturalised: who have not lands of two pounds per
+annum in Parnassus, and therefore are not privileged to poll.  Their
+authors are of the same level, fit to represent them on a mountebank's
+stage, or to be masters of the ceremonies in a bear-garden; yet these are
+they who have the most admirers.  But it often happens, to their
+mortification, that as their readers improve their stock of sense, as
+they may by reading better books, and by conversation with men of
+judgment, they soon forsake them."
+
+I must not dismiss this subject without observing that, as Mr. Locke, in
+the passage above-mentioned, has discovered the most fruitful source of
+wit, so there is another of a quite contrary nature to it, which does
+likewise branch itself into several kinds.  For not only the resemblance,
+but the opposition of ideas does very often produce wit, as I could show
+in several little points, turns, and antitheses that I may possibly
+enlarge upon in some future speculation.
+
+
+
+Sixth Paper.
+
+
+   _Humano capiti cervicem pictor equinam_
+   _Jungere si velit_, _et varias inducere plumas_,
+   _Undique collatis membris_, _ut turpiter atrum_
+   _Desinat in piscem mulier formosa superne_;
+   _Spectatum admissi risum teneatis_, _amici_?
+   _Credite_, _Pisones_, _isti tabulae_, _fore librum_
+   _Persimilem_, _cujus_, _velut aegri somnia_, _vanae_
+   _Fingentur species_.
+
+   HOR., _Ars Poet._ 1.
+
+   If in a picture, Piso, you should see
+   A handsome woman with a fish's tail,
+   Or a man's head upon a horse's neck,
+   Or limbs of beasts, of the most different kinds,
+   Cover'd with feathers of all sorts of birds,--
+   Would you not laugh, and think the painter mad?
+   Trust me, that book is as ridiculous
+   Whose incoherent style, like sick men's dreams,
+   Varies all shapes, and mixes all extremes.
+
+   ROSCOMMON.
+
+It is very hard for the mind to disengage itself from a subject in which
+it has been long employed.  The thoughts will be rising of themselves
+from time to time, though we give them no encouragement: as the tossings
+and fluctuations of the sea continue several hours after the winds are
+laid.
+
+It is to this that I impute my last night's dream or vision, which formed
+into one continued allegory the several schemes of wit, whether false,
+mixed, or true, that have been the subject of my late papers.
+
+Methought I was transported into a country that was filled with prodigies
+and enchantments, governed by the goddess of Falsehood, and entitled the
+Region of False Wit.  There was nothing in the fields, the woods, and the
+rivers, that appeared natural.  Several of the trees blossomed in leaf-
+gold, some of them produced bone-lace, and some of them precious stones.
+The fountains bubbled in an opera tune, and were filled with stags, wild
+bears, and mermaids, that lived among the waters; at the same time that
+dolphins and several kinds of fish played upon the banks, or took their
+pastime in the meadows.  The birds had many of them golden beaks, and
+human voices.  The flowers perfumed the air with smells of incense,
+ambergris, and pulvillios; and were so interwoven with one another, that
+they grew up in pieces of embroidery.  The winds were filled with sighs
+and messages of distant lovers.  As I was walking to and fro in this
+enchanted wilderness, I could not forbear breaking out into soliloquies
+upon the several wonders which lay before me, when, to my great surprise,
+I found there were artificial echoes in every walk, that, by repetitions
+of certain words which I spoke, agreed with me or contradicted me in
+everything I said.  In the midst of my conversation with these invisible
+companions, I discovered in the centre of a very dark grove a monstrous
+fabric built after the Gothic manner, and covered with innumerable
+devices in that barbarous kind of sculpture.  I immediately went up to
+it, and found it to be a kind of heathen temple consecrated to the god of
+Dulness.  Upon my entrance I saw the deity of the place, dressed in the
+habit of a monk, with a book in one hand and a rattle in the other.  Upon
+his right hand was Industry, with a lamp burning before her; and on his
+left, Caprice, with a monkey sitting on her shoulder.  Before his feet
+there stood an altar of a very odd make, which, as I afterwards found,
+was shaped in that manner to comply with the inscription that surrounded
+it.  Upon the altar there lay several offerings of axes, wings, and eggs,
+cut in paper, and inscribed with verses.  The temple was filled with
+votaries, who applied themselves to different diversions, as their
+fancies directed them.  In one part of it I saw a regiment of anagrams,
+who were continually in motion, turning to the right or to the left,
+facing about, doubling their ranks, shifting their stations, and throwing
+themselves into all the figures and counter-marches of the most
+changeable and perplexed exercise.
+
+Not far from these was the body of acrostics, made up of very
+disproportioned persons.  It was disposed into three columns, the
+officers planting themselves in a line on the left hand of each column.
+The officers were all of them at least six feet high, and made three rows
+of very proper men; but the common soldiers, who filled up the spaces
+between the officers, were such dwarfs, <DW36>s, and scarecrows, that
+one could hardly look upon them without laughing.  There were behind the
+acrostics two or three files of chronograms, which differed only from the
+former as their officers were equipped, like the figure of Time, with an
+hour-glass in one hand, and a scythe in the other, and took their posts
+promiscuously among the private men whom they commanded.
+
+In the body of the temple, and before the very face of the deity,
+methought I saw the phantom of Tryphiodorus, the lipogrammatist, engaged
+in a ball with four-and-twenty persons, who pursued him by turns through
+all the intricacies and labyrinths of a country dance, without being able
+to overtake him.
+
+Observing several to be very busy at the western end of the temple, I
+inquired into what they were doing, and found there was in that quarter
+the great magazine of rebuses.  These were several things of the most
+different natures tied up in bundles, and thrown upon one another in
+heaps like fagots.  You might behold an anchor, a night-rail, and a hobby-
+horse bound up together.  One of the workmen, seeing me very much
+surprised, told me there was an infinite deal of wit in several of those
+bundles, and that he would explain them to me if I pleased; I thanked him
+for his civility, but told him I was in very great haste at that time.  As
+I was going out of the temple, I observed in one corner of it a cluster
+of men and women laughing very heartily, and diverting themselves at a
+game of crambo.  I heard several double rhymes as I passed by them, which
+raised a great deal of mirth.
+
+Not far from these was another set of merry people engaged at a
+diversion, in which the whole jest was to mistake one person for another.
+To give occasion for these ludicrous mistakes, they were divided into
+pairs, every pair being covered from head to foot with the same kind of
+dress, though perhaps there was not the least resemblance in their faces.
+By this means an old man was sometimes mistaken for a boy, a woman for a
+man, and a blackamoor for an European, which very often produced great
+peals of laughter.  These I guessed to be a party of puns.  But being
+very desirous to get out of this world of magic, which had almost turned
+my brain, I left the temple and crossed over the fields that lay about it
+with all the speed I could make.  I was not gone far before I heard the
+sound of trumpets and alarms, which seemed to proclaim the march of an
+enemy: and, as I afterwards found, was in reality what I apprehended it.
+There appeared at a great distance a very shining light, and in the midst
+of it a person of a most beautiful aspect; her name was Truth.  On her
+right hand there marched a male deity, who bore several quivers on his
+shoulders, and grasped several arrows in his hand; his name was Wit.  The
+approach of these two enemies filled all the territories of False Wit
+with an unspeakable consternation, insomuch that the goddess of those
+regions appeared in person upon her frontiers, with the several inferior
+deities and the different bodies of forces which I had before seen in the
+temple, who were now drawn up in array, and prepared to give their foes a
+warm reception.  As the march of the enemy was very slow, it gave time to
+the several inhabitants who bordered upon the regions of Falsehood to
+draw their forces into a body, with a design to stand upon their guard as
+neuters, and attend the issue of the combat.
+
+I must here inform my reader that the frontiers of the enchanted region,
+which I have before described, were inhabited by the species of Mixed
+Wit, who made a very odd appearance when they were mustered together in
+an army.  There were men whose bodies were stuck full of darts, and women
+whose eyes were burning-glasses; men that had hearts of fire, and women
+that had breasts of snow.  It would be endless to describe several
+monsters of the like nature that composed this great army, which
+immediately fell asunder, and divided itself into two parts, the one half
+throwing themselves behind the banners of Truth, and the others behind
+those of Falsehood.
+
+The goddess of Falsehood was of a gigantic stature, and advanced some
+paces before the front of the army; but as the dazzling light which
+flowed from Truth began to shine upon her, she faded insensibly; insomuch
+that in a little space she looked rather like a huge phantom than a real
+substance.  At length, as the goddess of Truth approached still nearer to
+her, she fell away entirely, and vanished amidst the brightness of her
+presence; so that there did not remain the least trace or impression of
+her figure in the place where she had been seen.
+
+As at the rising of the sun the constellations grow thin, and the stars
+go out one after another, till the whole hemisphere is extinguished; such
+was the vanishing of the goddess, and not only of the goddess herself,
+but of the whole army that attended her, which sympathised with their
+leader, and shrunk into nothing, in proportion as the goddess
+disappeared.  At the same time the whole temple sunk, the fish betook
+themselves to the streams, and the wild beasts to the woods, the
+fountains recovered their murmurs, the birds their voices, the trees
+their leaves, the flowers their scents, and the whole face of nature its
+true and genuine appearance.  Though I still continued asleep, I fancied
+myself, as it were, awakened out of a dream, when I saw this region of
+prodigies restored to woods and rivers, fields and meadows.
+
+Upon the removal of that wild scene of wonders, which had very much
+disturbed my imagination, I took a full survey of the persons of Wit and
+Truth; for indeed it was impossible to look upon the first without seeing
+the other at the same time.  There was behind them a strong compact body
+of figures.  The genius of Heroic Poetry appeared with a sword in her
+hand, and a laurel on her head.  Tragedy was crowned with cypress, and
+covered with robes dipped in blood.   Satire had smiles in her look, and
+a dagger under her garment.  Rhetoric was known by her thunderbolt, and
+Comedy by her mask.  After several other figures, Epigram marched up in
+the rear, who had been posted there at the beginning of the expedition,
+that he might not revolt to the enemy, whom he was suspected to favour in
+his heart.  I was very much awed and delighted with the appearance of the
+god of Wit; there was something so amiable, and yet so piercing in his
+looks, as inspired me at once with love and terror.  As I was gazing on
+him, to my unspeakable joy, he took a quiver of arrows from his shoulder,
+in order to make me a present of it; but as I was reaching out my hand to
+receive it of him, I knocked it against a chair, and by that means
+awaked.
+
+
+
+
+FRIENDSHIP.
+
+
+   _Nos duo turba sumus_.
+
+   OVID, _Met._ i. 355.
+
+   We two are a multitude.
+
+One would think that the larger the company is, in which we are engaged,
+the greater variety of thoughts and subjects would be started in
+discourse; but instead of this, we find that conversation is never so
+much straitened and confined as in numerous assemblies.  When a multitude
+meet together upon any subject of discourse, their debates are taken up
+chiefly with forms and general positions; nay, if we come into a more
+contracted assembly of men and women, the talk generally runs upon the
+weather, fashions, news, and the like public topics.  In proportion as
+conversation gets into clubs and knots of friends, it descends into
+particulars, and grows more free and communicative: but the most open,
+instructive, and unreserved discourse is that which passes between two
+persons who are familiar and intimate friends.  On these occasions, a man
+gives a loose to every passion and every thought that is uppermost,
+discovers his most retired opinions of persons and things, tries the
+beauty and strength of his sentiments, and exposes his whole soul to the
+examination of his friend.
+
+Tully was the first who observed that friendship improves happiness and
+abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and dividing of our grief; a
+thought in which he hath been followed by all the essayists upon
+friendship that have written since his time.  Sir Francis Bacon has
+finely described other advantages, or, as he calls them, fruits of
+friendship; and, indeed, there is no subject of morality which has been
+better handled and more exhausted than this.  Among the several fine
+things which have been spoken of it, I shall beg leave to quote some out
+of a very ancient author, whose book would be regarded by our modern wits
+as one of the most shining tracts of morality that is extant, if it
+appeared under the name of a Confucius, or of any celebrated Grecian
+philosopher; I mean the little apocryphal treatise entitled The Wisdom of
+the Son of Sirach.  How finely has he described the art of making friends
+by an obliging and affable behaviour; and laid down that precept, which a
+late excellent author has delivered as his own, That we should have many
+well-wishers, but few friends.  "Sweet language will multiply friends;
+and a fair-speaking tongue will increase kind greetings.  Be in peace
+with many, nevertheless have but one counsellor of a thousand."  With
+what prudence does he caution us in the choice of our friends!  And with
+what strokes of nature, I could almost say of humour, has he described
+the behaviour of a treacherous and self-interested friend!  "If thou
+wouldest get a friend, prove him first, and be not hasty to credit him:
+for some man is a friend for his own occasion, and will not abide in the
+day of thy trouble.  And there is a friend who, being turned to enmity
+and strife, will discover thy reproach."  Again, "Some friend is a
+companion at the table, and will not continue in the day of thy
+affliction: but in thy prosperity he will be as thyself, and will be bold
+over thy servants.  If thou be brought low, he will be against thee, and
+hide himself from thy face."  What can be more strong and pointed than
+the following verse?--"Separate thyself from thine enemies, and take heed
+of thy friends."  In the next words he particularises one of those fruits
+of friendship which is described at length by the two famous authors
+above-mentioned, and falls into a general eulogium of friendship, which
+is very just as well as very sublime.  "A faithful friend is a strong
+defence; and he that hath found such an one hath found a treasure.
+Nothing doth countervail a faithful friend, and his excellency is
+unvaluable.  A faithful friend is the medicine of life; and they that
+fear the Lord shall find him.  Whose feareth the Lord shall direct his
+friendship aright; for as he is, so shall his neighbour, that is his
+friend, be also."  I do not remember to have met with any saying that has
+pleased me more than that of a friend's being the medicine of life, to
+express the efficacy of friendship in healing the pains and anguish which
+naturally cleave to our existence in this world; and am wonderfully
+pleased with the turn in the last sentence, that a virtuous man shall as
+a blessing meet with a friend who is as virtuous as himself.  There is
+another saying in the same author, which would have been very much
+admired in a heathen writer: "Forsake not an old friend, for the new is
+not comparable to him: a new friend is as new wine; when it is old thou
+shalt drink it with pleasure."  With what strength of allusion and force
+of thought has he described the breaches and violations of
+friendship!--"Whoso casteth a stone at the birds, frayeth them away; and
+he that upbraideth his friend, breaketh friendship.  Though thou drawest
+a sword at a friend, yet despair not, for there may be a returning to
+favour.  If thou hast opened thy mouth against thy friend, fear not, for
+there may be a reconciliation: except for upbraiding, or pride, or
+disclosing of secrets, or a treacherous wound; for, for these things
+every friend will depart."  We may observe in this, and several other
+precepts in this author, those little familiar instances and
+illustrations which are so much admired in the moral writings of Horace
+and Epictetus.  There are very beautiful instances of this nature in the
+following passages, which are likewise written upon the same subject:
+"Whose discovereth secrets, loseth his credit, and shall never find a
+friend to his mind.  Love thy friend, and be faithful unto him; but if
+thou bewrayeth his secrets, follow no more after him: for as a man hath
+destroyed his enemy, so hast thou lost the love of thy friend; as one
+that letteth a bird go out of his hand, so hast thou let thy friend go,
+and shall not get him again: follow after him no more, for he is too far
+off; he is as a roe escaped out of the snare.  As for a wound it may be
+bound up, and after reviling there may be reconciliation; but he that
+bewrayeth secrets, is without hope."
+
+Among the several qualifications of a good friend, this wise man has very
+justly singled out constancy and faithfulness as the principal: to these,
+others have added virtue, knowledge, discretion, equality in age and
+fortune, and, as Cicero calls it, _Morum comitas_, "a pleasantness of
+temper."  If I were to give my opinion upon such an exhausted subject, I
+should join to these other qualifications a certain equability or
+evenness of behaviour.  A man often contracts a friendship with one whom
+perhaps he does not find out till after a year's conversation; when on a
+sudden some latent ill-humour breaks out upon him, which he never
+discovered or suspected at his first entering into an intimacy with him.
+There are several persons who in some certain periods of their lives are
+inexpressibly agreeable, and in others as odious and detestable.  Martial
+has given us a very pretty picture of one of this species, in the
+following epigram:
+
+   _Difficilis_, _facilis_, _jucundus_, _acerbus es idem_,
+   _Nec tecum possum vivere_, _nec sine te_.
+
+   _Ep._ xii. 47.
+
+   In all thy humours, whether grave or mellow,
+   Thou'rt such a touchy, testy, pleasant fellow;
+   Hast so much wit, and mirth, and spleen about thee,
+   There is no living with thee, nor without thee.
+
+It is very unlucky for a man to be entangled in a friendship with one
+who, by these changes and vicissitudes of humour, is sometimes amiable
+and sometimes odious: and as most men are at some times in admirable
+frame and disposition of mind, it should be one of the greatest tasks of
+wisdom to keep ourselves well when we are so, and never to go out of that
+which is the agreeable part of our character.
+
+
+
+
+CHEVY-CHASE.
+
+
+Part One.
+
+
+   _Interdum vulgus rectum videt_.
+
+   HOR., _Ep._ ii. 1, 63.
+
+Sometimes the vulgar see and judge aright.  When I travelled I took a
+particular delight in hearing the songs and fables that are come from
+father to son, and are most in vogue among the common people of the
+countries through which I passed; for it is impossible that anything
+should be universally tasted and approved by a multitude, though they are
+only the rabble of a nation, which hath not in it some peculiar aptness
+to please and gratify the mind of man.  Human nature is the same in all
+reasonable creatures; and whatever falls in with it will meet with
+admirers amongst readers of all qualities and conditions.  Moliere, as we
+are told by Monsieur Boileau, used to read all his comedies to an old
+woman who was his housekeeper as she sat with him at her work by the
+chimney-corner, and could foretell the success of his play in the theatre
+from the reception it met at his fireside; for he tells us the audience
+always followed the old woman, and never failed to laugh in the same
+place.
+
+I know nothing which more shows the essential and inherent perfection of
+simplicity of thought, above that which I call the Gothic manner in
+writing, than this, that the first pleases all kinds of palates, and the
+latter only such as have formed to themselves a wrong artificial taste
+upon little fanciful authors and writers of epigram.  Homer, Virgil, or
+Milton, so far as the language of their poems is understood, will please
+a reader of plain common sense, who would neither relish nor comprehend
+an epigram of Martial, or a poem of Cowley; so, on the contrary, an
+ordinary song or ballad that is the delight of the common people cannot
+fail to please all such readers as are not unqualified for the
+entertainment by their affectation of ignorance; and the reason is plain,
+because the same paintings of nature which recommend it to the most
+ordinary reader will appear beautiful to the most refined.
+
+The old song of "Chevy-Chase" is the favourite ballad of the common
+people of England, and Ben Jonson used to say he had rather have been the
+author of it than of all his works.  Sir Philip Sidney, in his discourse
+of Poetry, speaks of it in the following words: "I never heard the old
+song of Percy and Douglas that I found not my heart more moved than with
+a trumpet; and yet it is sung by some blind crowder with no rougher voice
+than rude style, which being so evil apparelled in the dust and cobweb of
+that uncivil age, what would it work trimmed in the gorgeous eloquence of
+Pindar?"  For my own part, I am so professed an admirer of this
+antiquated song, that I shall give my reader a critique upon it without
+any further apology for so doing.
+
+The greatest modern critics have laid it down as a rule that an heroic
+poem should be founded upon some important precept of morality adapted to
+the constitution of the country in which the poet writes.  Homer and
+Virgil have formed their plans in this view.  As Greece was a collection
+of many governments, who suffered very much among themselves, and gave
+the Persian emperor, who was their common enemy, many advantages over
+them by their mutual jealousies and animosities, Homer, in order to
+establish among them an union which was so necessary for their safety,
+grounds his poem upon the discords of the several Grecian princes who
+were engaged in a confederacy against an Asiatic prince, and the several
+advantages which the enemy gained by such discords.  At the time the poem
+we are now treating of was written, the dissensions of the barons, who
+were then so many petty princes, ran very high, whether they quarrelled
+among themselves or with their neighbours, and produced unspeakable
+calamities to the country.  The poet, to deter men from such unnatural
+contentions, describes a bloody battle and dreadful scene of death,
+occasioned by the mutual feuds which reigned in the families of an
+English and Scotch nobleman.  That he designed this for the instruction
+of his poem we may learn from his four last lines, in which, after the
+example of the modern tragedians, he draws from it a precept for the
+benefit of his readers:
+
+   God save the king, and bless the land
+      In plenty, joy, and peace;
+   And grant henceforth that foul debate
+      'Twixt noblemen may cease.
+
+The next point observed by the greatest heroic poets hath been to
+celebrate persons and actions which do honour to their country: thus
+Virgil's hero was the founder of Rome; Homer's a prince of Greece; and
+for this reason Valerius Flaccus and Statius, who were both Romans, might
+be justly derided for having chosen the expedition of the Golden Fleece
+and the Wars of Thebes for the subjects of their epic writings.
+
+The poet before us has not only found out a hero in his own country, but
+raises the reputation of it by several beautiful incidents.  The English
+are the first who take the field and the last who quit it.  The English
+bring only fifteen hundred to the battle, the Scotch two thousand.  The
+English keep the field with fifty-three, the Scotch retire with fifty-
+five; all the rest on each side being slain in battle.  But the most
+remarkable circumstance of this kind is the different manner in which the
+Scotch and English kings receive the news of this fight, and of the great
+men's deaths who commanded in it:
+
+   This news was brought to Edinburgh,
+      Where Scotland's king did reign,
+   That brave Earl Douglas suddenly
+      Was with an arrow slain.
+
+   "O heavy news!" King James did say,
+      "Scotland can witness be,
+   I have not any captain more
+      Of such account as he."
+
+   Like tidings to King Henry came,
+      Within as short a space,
+   That Percy of Northumberland
+      Was slain in Chevy-Chase.
+
+   "Now God be with him," said our king,
+      "Sith 'twill no better be,
+   I trust I have within my realm
+      Five hundred as good as he.
+
+   "Yet shall not Scot nor Scotland say
+      But I will vengeance take,
+   And be revenged on them all
+      For brave Lord Percy's sake."
+
+   This vow full well the king performed
+      After on Humble-down,
+   In one day fifty knights were slain,
+      With lords of great renown.
+
+   And of the rest of small account
+      Did many thousands die, &c.
+
+At the same time that our poet shows a laudable partiality to his
+countrymen, he represents the Scots after a manner not unbecoming so bold
+and brave a people:
+
+   Earl Douglas on a milk-white steed,
+      Most like a baron bold,
+   Rode foremost of the company,
+      Whose armour shone like gold.
+
+His sentiments and actions are every way suitable to a hero.  "One of us
+two," says he, "must die: I am an earl as well as yourself, so that you
+can have no pretence for refusing the combat; however," says he, "it is
+pity, and indeed would be a sin, that so many innocent men should perish
+for our sakes: rather let you and I end our quarrel in single fight:"
+
+   "Ere thus I will out-braved be,
+      One of us two shall die;
+   I know thee well, an earl thou art,
+      Lord Percy, so am I.
+
+   "But trust me, Percy, pity it were
+      And great offence to kill
+   Any of these our harmless men,
+      For they have done no ill.
+
+   "Let thou and I the battle try,
+      And set our men aside."
+   "Accurst be he," Lord Percy said,
+      "By whom this is deny'd."
+
+When these brave men had distinguished themselves in the battle and in
+single combat with each other, in the midst of a generous parley, full of
+heroic sentiments, the Scotch earl falls, and with his dying words
+encourages his men to revenge his death, representing to them, as the
+most bitter circumstance of it, that his rival saw him fall:
+
+   With that there came an arrow keen
+      Out of an English bow,
+   Which struck Earl Douglas to the heart
+      A deep and deadly blow.
+
+   Who never spoke more words than these,
+      "Fight on, my merry men all,
+   For why, my life is at an end,
+      Lord Percy sees my fall."
+
+Merry men, in the language of those times, is no more than a cheerful
+word for companions and fellow-soldiers.  A passage in the eleventh book
+of Virgil's "AEneid" is very much to be admired, where Camilla, in her
+last agonies, instead of weeping over the wound she had received, as one
+might have expected from a warrior of her sex, considers only, like the
+hero of whom we are now speaking, how the battle should be continued
+after her death:
+
+   _Tum sic exspirans_, &c.
+
+VIRG., _AEn._ xi. 820.
+
+   A gath'ring mist o'erclouds her cheerful eyes;
+   And from her cheeks the rosy colour flies,
+   Then turns to her, whom of her female train
+   She trusted most, and thus she speaks with pain:
+   "Acca, 'tis past! he swims before my sight,
+   Inexorable Death, and claims his right.
+   Bear my last words to Turnus; fly with speed
+   And bid him timely to my charge succeed;
+   Repel the Trojans, and the town relieve:
+   Farewell."
+
+   DRYDEN.
+
+Turnus did not die in so heroic a manner, though our poet seems to have
+had his eye upon Turnus's speech in the last verse:
+
+   Lord Percy sees my fall.
+
+   --_Vicisti_, _et victum tendere palmas_
+   _Ausonii videre_.
+
+   VIRG., _AEn._ xii. 936.
+
+   The Latin chiefs have seen me beg my life.
+
+   DRYDEN.
+
+Earl Percy's lamentation over his enemy is generous, beautiful, and
+passionate.  I must only caution the reader not to let the simplicity of
+the style, which one may well pardon in so old a poet, prejudice him
+against the greatness of the thought:
+
+   Then leaving life, Earl Percy took
+      The dead man by the hand,
+   And said, "Earl Douglas, for thy life
+      Would I had lost my land.
+
+   "O Christ! my very heart doth bleed
+      With sorrow for thy sake;
+   For sure a more renowned knight
+      Mischance did never take."
+
+That beautiful line, "Taking the dead man by the hand," will put the
+reader in mind of AEneas's behaviour towards Lausus, whom he himself had
+slain as he came to the rescue of his aged father:
+
+   _At vero ut vultum vidit morientis et ora_,
+   _Ora modis Anchisiades pallentia miris_;
+   _Ingemuit_, _miserans graviter_, _dextramqne tetendit_.
+
+   VIRG., _AEn._ x. 821.
+
+   The pious prince beheld young Lausus dead;
+   He grieved, he wept, then grasped his hand and said,
+   "Poor hapless youth! what praises can be paid
+   To worth so great?"
+
+   DRYDEN.
+
+I shall take another opportunity to consider the other parts of this old
+song.
+
+
+
+Part Two.
+
+
+   --_Pendent opera interrupta_.
+
+   VIRG., _AEn._ iv. 88.
+
+   The works unfinished and neglected lie.
+
+In my last Monday's paper I gave some general instances of those
+beautiful strokes which please the reader in the old song of
+"Chevy-Chase;" I shall here, according to my promise, be more particular,
+and show that the sentiments in that ballad are extremely natural and
+poetical, and full of the majestic simplicity which we admire in the
+greatest of the ancient poets: for which reason I shall quote several
+passages of it, in which the thought is altogether the same with what we
+meet in several passages of the "AEneid;" not that I would infer from
+thence that the poet, whoever he was, proposed to himself any imitation
+of those passages, but that he was directed to them in general by the
+same kind of poetical genius, and by the same copyings after nature.
+
+Had this old song been filled with epigrammatical turns and points of
+wit, it might perhaps have pleased the wrong taste of some readers; but
+it would never have become the delight of the common people, nor have
+warmed the heart of Sir Philip Sidney like the sound of a trumpet; it is
+only nature that can have this effect, and please those tastes which are
+the most unprejudiced, or the most refined.  I must, however, beg leave
+to dissent from so great an authority as that of Sir Philip Sidney, in
+the judgment which he has passed as to the rude style and evil apparel of
+this antiquated song; for there are several parts in it where not only
+the thought but the language is majestic, and the numbers sonorous; at
+least the apparel is much more gorgeous than many of the poets made use
+of in Queen Elizabeth's time, as the reader will see in several of the
+following quotations.
+
+What can be greater than either the thought or the expression in that
+stanza,
+
+   To drive the deer with hound and horn
+      Earl Percy took his way;
+   The child may rue that is unborn
+      The hunting of that day!
+
+This way of considering the misfortunes which this battle would bring
+upon posterity, not only on those who were born immediately after the
+battle, and lost their fathers in it, but on those also who perished in
+future battles which took their rise from this quarrel of the two earls,
+is wonderfully beautiful and conformable to the way of thinking among the
+ancient poets.
+
+   _Audiet pugnas vitio parentum_.
+   _   Rara juventus_.
+
+   HOR., _Od._ i. 2, 23.
+
+   Posterity, thinn'd by their fathers' crimes,
+   Shall read, with grief, the story of their times.
+
+What can be more sounding and poetical, or resemble more the majestic
+simplicity of the ancients, than the following stanzas?--
+
+   The stout Earl of Northumberland
+      A vow to God did make,
+   His pleasure in the Scottish woods
+      Three summer's days to take.
+
+   With fifteen hundred bowmen bold,
+      All chosen men of might,
+   Who knew full well, in time of need,
+      To aim their shafts aright.
+
+   The hounds ran swiftly through the woods
+      The nimble deer to take,
+   And with their cries the hills and dales
+      An echo shrill did make.
+
+         --_Vocat ingenti clamore Cithaeron_,
+   _Taygetique canes_, _domitrixque Epidaurus equorum_:
+   _Et vox assensu memorum ingeminata remugit_.
+
+   VIRG., _Georg._ iii. 43.
+
+   Cithaeron loudly calls me to my way:
+   Thy hounds, Taygetus, open, and pursue their prey:
+   High Epidaurus urges on my speed,
+   Famed for his hills, and for his horses' breed:
+   From hills and dales the cheerful cries rebound:
+   For Echo hunts along, and propagates the sound.
+
+   DRYDEN.
+
+   Lo, yonder doth Earl Douglas come,
+      His men in armour bright;
+   Full twenty hundred Scottish spears,
+      All marching in our sight.
+
+   All men of pleasant Tividale,
+      Fast by the river Tweed, &c.
+
+The country of the Scotch warrior, described in these two last verses,
+has a fine romantic situation, and affords a couple of smooth words for
+verse.  If the reader compares the foregoing six lines of the song with
+the following Latin verses, he will see how much they are written in the
+spirit of Virgil:
+
+   _Adversi campo apparent_: _hastasque reductis_
+   _Protendunt longe dextris_, _et spicula vibrant_:--
+   _Quique altum Praeneste viri_, _quique arva Gabinae_
+   _Junonis_, _gelidumque Anienem_, _et roscida rivis_
+   _Hernica saxa colunt_:--_qui rosea rura Velini_;
+   _Qui Tetricae horrentes rupes_, _montemq ue Severum_,
+   _Casperiamque colunt_, _porulosque et flumen Himellae_:
+   _Qui Tyberim Fabarimque bibunt_.
+
+   _AEn._ xi. 605, vii. 682, 712.
+
+   Advancing in a line they couch their spears--
+   --Praeneste sends a chosen band,
+   With those who plough Saturnia's Gabine land:
+   Besides the succours which cold Anien yields:
+   The rocks of Hernicus--besides a band
+   That followed from Velinum's dewy land--
+   And mountaineers that from Severus came:
+   And from the craggy cliffs of Tetrica;
+   And those where yellow Tiber takes his way,
+   And where Himella's wanton waters play:
+   Casperia sends her arms, with those that lie
+   By Fabaris, and fruitful Foruli.
+
+   DRYDEN.
+
+But to proceed:
+
+   Earl Douglas on a milk-white steed,
+      Most like a baron bold,
+   Rode foremost of the company,
+      Whose armour shone like gold.
+
+   _Turnus_, _ut antevolans tardum praecesserat agmen_, &c.
+   _Vidisti_, _quo Turnus equo_, _quibus ibat in armis_
+   _Aurcus_--
+
+_AEn._ ix. 47, 269.
+
+   Our English archers bent their bows,
+      Their hearts were good and true;
+   At the first flight of arrows sent,
+      Full threescore Scots they slew.
+
+   They closed full fast on ev'ry side,
+      No slackness there was found;
+   And many a gallant gentleman
+      Lay gasping on the ground.
+
+   With that there came an arrow keen
+      Out of an English bow,
+   Which struck Earl Douglas to the heart,
+      A deep and deadly blow.
+
+AEneas was wounded after the same manner by an unknown hand in the midst
+of a parley.
+
+   _Has inter voces_, _media inter talia verba_,
+   _Ecce viro stridens alis allapsa sagitta est_,
+   _Incertum qua pulsa manu_--
+
+   _AEn._ xii. 318.
+
+   Thus, while he spake, unmindful of defence,
+   A winged arrow struck the pious prince;
+   But whether from a human hand it came,
+   Or hostile god, is left unknown by fame.
+
+   DRYDEN.
+
+But of all the descriptive parts of this song, there are none more
+beautiful than the four following stanzas, which have a great force and
+spirit in them, and are filled with very natural circumstances.  The
+thought in the third stanza was never touched by any other poet, and is
+such a one as would have shone in Homer or in Virgil:
+
+   So thus did both these nobles die,
+      Whose courage none could stain;
+   An English archer then perceived
+      The noble Earl was slain.
+
+   He had a bow bent in his hand,
+      Made of a trusty tree,
+   An arrow of a cloth-yard long
+      Unto the head drew he.
+
+   Against Sir Hugh Montgomery
+      So right his shaft he set,
+   The gray-goose wing that was thereon
+      In his heart-blood was wet.
+
+   This fight did last from break of day
+      Till setting of the sun;
+   For when they rung the ev'ning bell
+      The battle scarce was done.
+
+One may observe, likewise, that in the catalogue of the slain, the author
+has followed the example of the greatest ancient poets, not only in
+giving a long list of the dead, but by diversifying it with little
+characters of particular persons.
+
+   And with Earl Douglas there was slain
+      Sir Hugh Montgomery,
+   Sir Charles Carrel, that from the field
+      One foot would never fly.
+
+   Sir Charles Murrel of Ratcliff too,
+      His sister's son was he;
+   Sir David Lamb so well esteem'd,
+      Yet saved could not be.
+
+The familiar sound in these names destroys the majesty of the
+description; for this reason I do not mention this part of the poem but
+to show the natural cast of thought which appears in it, as the two last
+verses look almost like a translation of Virgil.
+
+   --_Cadit et Ripheus justissimus unus_
+   _Qui fuit in Teucris et servantissimus aequi_.
+   _Diis aliter visum_.
+
+   _AEn._ ii. 426.
+
+   Then Ripheus fell in the unequal fight,
+   Just of his word, observant of the right:
+   Heav'n thought not so.
+
+   DRYDEN.
+
+In the catalogue of the English who fell, Witherington's behaviour is in
+the same manner particularised very artfully, as the reader is prepared
+for it by that account which is given of him in the beginning of the
+battle; though I am satisfied your little buffoon readers, who have seen
+that passage ridiculed in "Hudibras," will not be able to take the beauty
+of it: for which reason I dare not so much as quote it.
+
+   Then stept a gallant 'squire forth,
+      Witherington was his name,
+   Who said, "I would not have it told
+      To Henry our king for shame,
+
+   "That e'er my captain fought on foot,
+      And I stood looking on."
+
+We meet with the same heroic sentiment in Virgil:
+
+   _Non pudet_, _O Rutuli_, _cunctis pro talibus unam_
+   _Objectare animam_? _numerone an viribus aequi_
+   _Non sumus_?
+
+   _AEn._ xii. 229
+
+   For shame, Rutilians, can you hear the sight
+   Of one exposed for all, in single fight?
+   Can we before the face of heav'n confess
+   Our courage colder, or our numbers less?
+
+   DRYDEN.
+
+What can be more natural, or more moving, than the circumstances in which
+he describes the behaviour of those women who had lost their husbands on
+this fatal day?
+
+   Next day did many widows come
+      Their husbands to bewail;
+   They wash'd their wounds in brinish tears,
+      But all would not prevail.
+
+   Their bodies bathed in purple blood,
+      They bore with them away;
+   They kiss'd them dead a thousand times,
+      When they were clad in clay.
+
+Thus we see how the thoughts of this poem, which naturally arise from the
+subject, are always simple, and sometimes exquisitely noble; that the
+language is often very sounding, and that the whole is written with a
+true poetical spirit.
+
+If this song had been written in the Gothic manner which is the delight
+of all our little wits, whether writers or readers, it would not have hit
+the taste of so many ages, and have pleased the readers of all ranks and
+conditions.  I shall only beg pardon for such a profusion of Latin
+quotations; which I should not have made use of, but that I feared my own
+judgment would have looked too singular on such a subject, had not I
+supported it by the practice and authority of Virgil.
+
+
+
+
+A DREAM OF THE PAINTERS.
+
+
+   --_Animum pictura pascit inani_.
+
+   VIRG., _AEn._ i. 464.
+
+   And with the shadowy picture feeds his mind.
+
+When the weather hinders me from taking my diversions without-doors, I
+frequently make a little party, with two or three select friends, to
+visit anything curious that may be seen under cover.  My principal
+entertainments of this nature are pictures, insomuch that when I have
+found the weather set in to be very bad, I have taken a whole day's
+journey to see a gallery that is furnished by the hands of great masters.
+By this means, when the heavens are filled with clouds, when the earth
+swims in rain, and all nature wears a lowering countenance, I withdraw
+myself from these uncomfortable scenes, into the visionary worlds of art;
+where I meet with shining landscapes, gilded triumphs, beautiful faces,
+and all those other objects that fill the mind with gay ideas, and
+disperse that gloominess which is apt to hang upon it in those dark
+disconsolate seasons.
+
+I was some weeks ago in a course of these diversions, which had taken
+such an entire possession of my imagination that they formed in it a
+short morning's dream, which I shall communicate to my reader, rather as
+the first sketch and outlines of a vision, than as a finished piece.
+
+I dreamt that I was admitted into a long, spacious gallery, which had one
+side covered with pieces of all the famous painters who are now living,
+and the other with the works of the greatest masters that are dead.
+
+On the side of the living, I saw several persons busy in drawing,
+colouring, and designing.  On the side of the dead painters, I could not
+discover more than one person at work, who was exceeding slow in his
+motions, and wonderfully nice in his touches.
+
+I was resolved to examine the several artists that stood before me, and
+accordingly applied myself to the side of the living.  The first I
+observed at work in this part of the gallery was Vanity, with his hair
+tied behind him in a riband, and dressed like a Frenchman.  All the faces
+he drew were very remarkable for their smiles, and a certain smirking air
+which he bestowed indifferently on every age and degree of either sex.
+The _toujours gai_ appeared even in his judges, bishops, and Privy
+Councillors.  In a word, all his men were _petits maitres_, and all his
+women _coquettes_.  The drapery of his figures was extremely well suited
+to his faces, and was made up of all the glaring colours that could be
+mixed together; every part of the dress was in a flutter, and endeavoured
+to distinguish itself above the rest.
+
+On the left hand of Vanity stood a laborious workman, who I found was his
+humble admirer, and copied after him.  He was dressed like a German, and
+had a very hard name that sounded something like Stupidity.
+
+The third artist that I looked over was Fantasque, dressed like a
+Venetian scaramouch.  He had an excellent hand at chimera, and dealt very
+much in distortions and grimaces.  He would sometimes affright himself
+with the phantoms that flowed from his pencil.  In short, the most
+elaborate of his pieces was at best but a terrifying dream: and one could
+say nothing more of his finest figures than that they were agreeable
+monsters.
+
+The fourth person I examined was very remarkable for his hasty hand,
+which left his pictures so unfinished that the beauty in the picture,
+which was designed to continue as a monument of it to posterity, faded
+sooner than in the person after whom it was drawn.  He made so much haste
+to despatch his business that he neither gave himself time to clean his
+pencils nor mix his colours.  The name of this expeditious workman was
+Avarice.
+
+Not far from this artist I saw another of a quite different nature, who
+was dressed in the habit of a Dutchman, and known by the name of
+Industry.  His figures were wonderfully laboured.  If he drew the
+portraiture of a man, he did not omit a single hair in his face; if the
+figure of a ship, there was not a rope among the tackle that escaped him.
+He had likewise hung a great part of the wall with night-pieces, that
+seemed to show themselves by the candles which were lighted up in several
+parts of them; and were so inflamed by the sunshine which accidentally
+fell upon them, that at first sight I could scarce forbear crying out
+"Fire!"
+
+The five foregoing artists were the most considerable on this side the
+gallery; there were indeed several others whom I had not time to look
+into.  One of them, however, I could not forbear observing, who was very
+busy in retouching the finest pieces, though he produced no originals of
+his own.  His pencil aggravated every feature that was before
+overcharged, loaded every defect, and poisoned every colour it touched.
+Though this workman did so much mischief on the side of the living, he
+never turned his eye towards that of the dead.  His name was Envy.
+
+Having taken a cursory view of one side of the gallery, I turned myself
+to that which was filled by the works of those great masters that were
+dead; when immediately I fancied myself standing before a multitude of
+spectators, and thousands of eyes looking upon me at once: for all before
+me appeared so like men and women, that I almost forgot they were
+pictures.  Raphael's pictures stood in one row, Titian's in another,
+Guido Rheni's in a third.  One part of the wall was peopled by Hannabal
+Carrache, another by Correggio, and another by Rubens.  To be short,
+there was not a great master among the dead who had not contributed to
+the embellishment of this side of the gallery.  The persons that owed
+their being to these several masters appeared all of them to be real and
+alive, and differed among one another only in the variety of their
+shapes, complexions, and clothes; so that they looked like different
+nations of the same species.
+
+Observing an old man, who was the same person I before mentioned, as the
+only artist that was at work on this side of the gallery, creeping up and
+down from one picture to another, and retouching all the fine pieces that
+stood before me, I could not but be very attentive to all his motions.  I
+found his pencil was so very light that it worked imperceptibly, and
+after a thousand touches scarce produced any visible effect in the
+picture on which he was employed.  However, as he busied himself
+incessantly, and repeated touch after touch without rest or intermission,
+he wore off insensibly every little disagreeable gloss that hung upon a
+figure.  He also added such a beautiful brown to the shades, and
+mellowness to the colours, that he made every picture appear more perfect
+than when it came fresh from the master's pencil.  I could not forbear
+looking upon the face of this ancient workman, and immediately by the
+long lock of hair upon his forehead, discovered him to be Time.
+
+Whether it were because the thread of my dream was at an end I cannot
+tell, but, upon my taking a survey of this imaginary old man, my sleep
+left me.
+
+
+
+
+SPARE TIME.
+
+
+Part One.
+
+
+            --_Spatio brevi_
+   _Spem longam reseces_: _dum loquimur_, _fugerit invida_
+   _AEtas_: _carpe diem_, _quam minimum credula postero_.
+
+   HOR., _Od._ i. 11, 6.
+
+   Thy lengthen'd hope with prudence bound,
+      Proportion'd to the flying hour:
+   While thus we talk in careless ease,
+      Our envious minutes wing their flight;
+   Then swift the fleeting pleasure seize,
+      Nor trust to-morrow's doubtful light.
+
+   FRANCIS.
+
+We all of us complain of the shortness of time, saith Seneca, and yet
+have much more than we know what to do with.  Our lives, says he, are
+spent either in doing nothing at all, or in doing nothing to the purpose,
+or in doing nothing that we ought to do.  We are always complaining our
+days are few, and acting as though there would be no end of them.  That
+noble philosopher described our inconsistency with ourselves in this
+particular, by all those various turns of expression and thoughts which
+are peculiar to his writings.
+
+I often consider mankind as wholly inconsistent with itself in a point
+that bears some affinity to the former.  Though we seem grieved at the
+shortness of life in general, we are wishing every period of it at an
+end.  The minor longs to be of age, then to be a man of business, then to
+make up an estate, then to arrive at honours, then to retire.  Thus,
+although the whole of life is allowed by every one to be short, the
+several divisions of it appear long and tedious.  We are for lengthening
+our span in general, but would fain contract the parts of which it is
+composed.  The usurer would be very well satisfied to have all the time
+annihilated that lies between the present moment and next quarter-day.
+The politician would be contented to lose three years in his life, could
+he place things in the posture which he fancies they will stand in after
+such a revolution of time.  The lover would be glad to strike out of his
+existence all the moments that are to pass away before the happy meeting.
+Thus, as fast as our time runs, we should be very glad, in most part of
+our lives, that it ran much faster than it does.  Several hours of the
+day hang upon our hands, nay, we wish away whole years; and travel
+through time as through a country filled with many wild and empty wastes,
+which we would fain hurry over, that we may arrive at those several
+little settlements or imaginary points of rest which are dispersed up and
+down in it.
+
+If we divide the life of most men into twenty parts, we shall find that
+at least nineteen of them are mere gaps and chasms, which are neither
+filled with pleasure nor business.  I do not, however, include in this
+calculation the life of those men who are in a perpetual hurry of
+affairs, but of those only who are not always engaged in scenes of
+action; and I hope I shall not do an unacceptable piece of service to
+these persons, if I point out to them certain methods for the filling up
+their empty spaces of life.  The methods I shall propose to them are as
+follow.
+
+The first is the exercise of virtue, in the most general acceptation of
+the word.  That particular scheme which comprehends the social virtues
+may give employment to the most industrious temper, and find a man in
+business more than the most active station of life.  To advise the
+ignorant, relieve the needy, comfort the afflicted, are duties that fall
+in our way almost every day of our lives.  A man has frequent
+opportunities of mitigating the fierceness of a party; of doing justice
+to the character of a deserving man; of softening the envious, quieting
+the angry, and rectifying the prejudiced; which are all of them
+employments suited to a reasonable nature, and bring great satisfaction
+to the person who can busy himself in them with discretion.
+
+There is another kind of virtue that may find employment for those
+retired hours in which we are altogether left to ourselves, and destitute
+of company and conversation; I mean that intercourse and communication
+which every reasonable creature ought to maintain with the great Author
+of his being.  The man who lives under an habitual sense of the Divine
+presence, keeps up a perpetual cheerfulness of temper, and enjoys every
+moment the satisfaction of thinking himself in company with his dearest
+and best of friends.  The time never lies heavy upon him: it is
+impossible for him to be alone.  His thoughts and passions are the most
+busied at such hours when those of other men are the most inactive.  He
+no sooner steps out of the world but his heart burns with devotion,
+swells with hope, and triumphs in the consciousness of that Presence
+which everywhere surrounds him; or, on the contrary, pours out its fears,
+its sorrows, its apprehensions, to the great Supporter of its existence.
+
+I have here only considered the necessity of a man's being virtuous, that
+he may have something to do; but if we consider further that the exercise
+of virtue is not only an amusement for the time it lasts, but that its
+influence extends to those parts of our existence which lie beyond the
+grave, and that our whole eternity is to take its colour from those hours
+which we here employ in virtue or in vice, the argument redoubles upon us
+for putting in practice this method of passing away our time.
+
+When a man has but a little stock to improve, and has opportunities of
+turning it all to good account, what shall we think of him if he suffers
+nineteen parts of it to lie dead, and perhaps employs even the twentieth
+to his ruin or disadvantage?  But, because the mind cannot be always in
+its fervours, nor strained up to a pitch of virtue, it is necessary to
+find out proper employments for it in its relaxations.
+
+The next method, therefore, that I would propose to fill up our time,
+should be useful and innocent diversions.  I must confess I think it is
+below reasonable creatures to be altogether conversant in such diversions
+as are merely innocent, and have nothing else to recommend them but that
+there is no hurt in them.  Whether any kind of gaming has even thus much
+to say for itself, I shall not determine; but I think it is very
+wonderful to see persons of the best sense passing away a dozen hours
+together in shuffling and dividing a pack of cards, with no other
+conversation but what is made up of a few game phrases, and no other
+ideas but those of black or red spots ranged together in different
+figures.  Would not a man laugh to hear any one of this species
+complaining that life is short?
+
+The stage might be made a perpetual source of the most noble and useful
+entertainments, were it under proper regulations.
+
+But the mind never unbends itself so agreeably as in the conversation of
+a well-chosen friend.  There is indeed no blessing of life that is any
+way comparable to the enjoyment of a discreet and virtuous friend.  It
+eases and unloads the mind, clears and improves the understanding,
+engenders thoughts and knowledge, animates virtue and good resolutions,
+soothes and allays the passions, and finds employment for most of the
+vacant hours of life.
+
+Next to such an intimacy with a particular person, one would endeavour
+after a more general conversation with such as are able to entertain and
+improve those with whom they converse, which are qualifications that
+seldom go asunder.
+
+There are many other useful amusements of life which one would endeavour
+to multiply, that one might on all occasions have recourse to something
+rather than suffer the mind to lie idle, or run adrift with any passion
+that chances to rise in it.
+
+A man that has a taste of music, painting, or architecture, is like one
+that has another sense, when compared with such as have no relish of
+those arts.  The florist, the planter, the gardener, the husbandman, when
+they are only as accomplishments to the man of fortune, are great reliefs
+to a country life, and many ways useful to those who are possessed of
+them.
+
+But of all the diversions of life, there is none so proper to fill up its
+empty spaces as the reading of useful and entertaining authors.  But this
+I shall only touch upon, because it in some measure interferes with the
+third method, which I shall propose in another paper, for the employment
+of our dead, inactive hours, and which I shall only mention in general to
+be the pursuit of knowledge.
+
+
+
+Part Two.
+
+
+            --_Hoc est_
+   _Vivere bis_, _vita posse priore frui_.
+
+   MART., _Ep._ x. 23.
+
+   The present joys of life we doubly taste,
+   By looking back with pleasure to the past.
+
+The last method which I proposed in my Saturday's paper, for filing up
+those empty spaces of life which are so tedious and burthensome to idle
+people, is the employing ourselves in the pursuit of knowledge.  I
+remember Mr. Boyle, speaking of a certain mineral, tells us that a man
+may consume his whole life in the study of it without arriving at the
+knowledge of all its qualities.  The truth of it is, there is not a
+single science, or any branch of it, that might not furnish a man with
+business for life, though it were much longer than it is.
+
+I shall not here engage on those beaten subjects of the usefulness of
+knowledge, nor of the pleasure and perfection it gives the mind, nor on
+the methods of attaining it, nor recommend any particular branch of it;
+all which have been the topics of many other writers; but shall indulge
+myself in a speculation that is more uncommon, and may therefore,
+perhaps, be more entertaining.
+
+I have before shown how the unemployed parts of life appear long and
+tedious, and shall here endeavour to show how those parts of life which
+are exercised in study, reading, and the pursuits of knowledge, are long,
+but not tedious, and by that means discover a method of lengthening our
+lives, and at the same time of turning all the parts of them to our
+advantage.
+
+Mr. Locke observes, "That we get the idea of time or duration, by
+reflecting on that train of ideas which succeed one another in our minds:
+that, for this reason, when we sleep soundly without dreaming, we have no
+perception of time, or the length of it whilst we sleep; and that the
+moment wherein we leave off to think, till the moment we begin to think
+again, seems to have no distance."  To which the author adds, "and so I
+doubt not but it would be to a waking man, if it were possible for him to
+keep only one idea in his mind, without variation and the succession of
+others; and we see that one who fixes his thoughts very intently on one
+thing, so as to take but little notice of the succession of ideas that
+pass in his mind whilst he is taken up with that earnest contemplation,
+lets slip out of his account a good part of that duration, and thinks
+that time shorter than it is."
+
+We might carry this thought further, and consider a man as on one side,
+shortening his time by thinking on nothing, or but a few things; so, on
+the other, as lengthening it, by employing his thoughts on many subjects,
+or by entertaining a quick and constant succession of ideas.  Accordingly,
+Monsieur Malebranche, in his "Inquiry after Truth," which was published
+several years before Mr. Locke's Essay on "Human Understanding," tells
+us, "that it is possible some creatures may think half an hour as long as
+we do a thousand years; or look upon that space of duration which we call
+a minute, as an hour, a week, a month, or a whole age."
+
+This notion of Monsieur Malebranche is capable of some little explanation
+from what I have quoted out of Mr. Locke; for if our notion of time is
+produced by our reflecting on the succession of ideas in our mind, and
+this succession may be infinitely accelerated or retarded, it will follow
+that different beings may have different notions of the same parts of
+duration, according as their ideas, which we suppose are equally distinct
+in each of them, follow one another in a greater or less degree of
+rapidity.
+
+There is a famous passage in the Alcoran, which looks as if Mahomet had
+been possessed of the notion we are now speaking of.  It is there said
+that the Angel Gabriel took Mahomet out of his bed one morning to give
+him a sight of all things in the seven heavens, in paradise, and in hell,
+which the prophet took a distinct view of; and, after having held ninety
+thousand conferences with God, was brought back again to his bed.  All
+this, says the Alcoran, was transacted in so small a space of time, that
+Mahomet at his return found his bed still warm, and took up an earthen
+pitcher, which was thrown down at the very instant that the Angel Gabriel
+carried him away, before the water was all spilt.
+
+There is a very pretty story in the Turkish Tales, which relates to this
+passage of that famous impostor, and bears some affinity to the subject
+we are now upon.  A sultan of Egypt, who was an infidel, used to laugh at
+this circumstance in Mahomet's life, as what was altogether impossible
+and absurd: but conversing one day with a great doctor in the law, who
+had the gift of working miracles, the doctor told him he would quickly
+convince him of the truth of this passage in the history of Mahomet, if
+he would consent to do what he should desire of him.  Upon this the
+sultan was directed to place himself by a huge tub of water, which he did
+accordingly; and as he stood by the tub amidst a circle of his great men,
+the holy man bade him plunge his head into the water and draw it up
+again.  The king accordingly thrust his head into the water, and at the
+same time found himself at the foot of a mountain on the sea-shore.  The
+king immediately began to rage against his doctor for this piece of
+treachery and witchcraft; but at length, knowing it was in vain to be
+angry, he set himself to think on proper methods for getting a livelihood
+in this strange country.  Accordingly he applied himself to some people
+whom he saw at work in a neighbouring wood: these people conducted him to
+a town that stood at a little distance from the wood, where, after some
+adventures, he married a woman of great beauty and fortune.  He lived
+with this woman so long that he had by her seven sons and seven
+daughters.  He was afterwards reduced to great want, and forced to think
+of plying in the streets as a porter for his livelihood.  One day as he
+was walking alone by the sea-side, being seized with many melancholy
+reflections upon his former and his present state of life, which had
+raised a fit of devotion in him, he threw off his clothes with a design
+to wash himself, according to the custom of the Mahometans, before he
+said his prayers.
+
+After his first plunge into the sea, he no sooner raised his head above
+the water but he found himself standing by the side of the tub, with the
+great men of his court about him, and the holy man at his side.  He
+immediately upbraided his teacher for having sent him on such a course of
+adventures, and betrayed him into so long a state of misery and
+servitude; but was wonderfully surprised when he heard that the state he
+talked of was only a dream and delusion; that he had not stirred from the
+place where he then stood; and that he had only dipped his head into the
+water, and immediately taken it out again.
+
+The Mahometan doctor took this occasion of instructing the sultan that
+nothing was impossible with God; and that He, with whom a thousand years
+are but as one day, can, if He pleases, make a single day--nay, a single
+moment--appear to any of His creatures as a thousand years.
+
+I shall leave my reader to compare these Eastern fables with the notions
+of those two great philosophers whom I have quoted in this paper; and
+shall only, by way of application, desire him to consider how we may
+extend life beyond its natural dimensions, by applying ourselves
+diligently to the pursuit of knowledge.
+
+The hours of a wise man are lengthened by his ideas, as those of a fool
+are by his passions.  The time of the one is long, because he does not
+know what to do with it; so is that of the other, because he
+distinguishes every moment of it with useful or amusing thoughts; or, in
+other words, because the one is always wishing it away, and the other
+always enjoying it.
+
+How different is the view of past life, in the man who is grown old in
+knowledge and wisdom, from that of him who is grown old in ignorance and
+folly!  The latter is like the owner of a barren country, that fills his
+eye with the prospect of naked hills and plains, which produce nothing
+either profitable or ornamental; the other beholds a beautiful and
+spacious landscape divided into delightful gardens, green meadows,
+fruitful fields, and can scarce cast his eye on a single spot of his
+possessions that is not covered with some beautiful plant or flower.
+
+
+
+
+CENSURE.
+
+
+   _Romulus_, _et Liber pater_, _et cum Castore Pollux_,
+   _Post ingentia facta_, _deorum in templa recepti_;
+   _Dum terras hominumque colunt genus_, _aspera bella_
+   _Componunt_, _agros assignant_, _oppida condunt_;
+   _Ploravere suis non respondere favorem_
+   _Speratum meritis_.
+
+HOR., _Epist._ ii. 1, 5.
+
+   MITATED.
+
+   Edward and Henry, now the boast of fame,
+   And virtuous Alfred, a more sacred name,
+   After a life of generous toils endured,
+   The Gaul subdued, or property secured,
+   Ambition humbled, mighty cities storm'd,
+   Or laws establish'd, and the world reform'd;
+   Closed their long glories with a sigh to find
+   Th' unwilling gratitude of base mankind.
+
+   POPE.
+
+"Censure," says a late ingenious author, "is the tax a man pays to the
+public for being eminent."  It is a folly for an eminent man to think of
+escaping it, and a weakness to be affected with it.  All the illustrious
+persons of antiquity, and indeed of every age in the world, have passed
+through this fiery persecution.  There is no defence against reproach but
+obscurity; it is a kind of concomitant to greatness, as satires and
+invectives were an essential part of a Roman triumph.
+
+If men of eminence are exposed to censure on one hand, they are as much
+liable to flattery on the other.  If they receive reproaches which are
+not due to them, they likewise receive praises which they do not deserve.
+In a word, the man in a high post is never regarded with an indifferent
+eye, but always considered as a friend or an enemy.  For this reason
+persons in great stations have seldom their true characters drawn till
+several years after their deaths.  Their personal friendships and
+enmities must cease, and the parties they were engaged in be at an end,
+before their faults or their virtues can have justice done them.  When
+writers have the least opportunity of knowing the truth, they are in the
+best disposition to tell it.
+
+It is therefore the privilege of posterity to adjust the characters of
+illustrious persons, and to set matters right between those antagonists
+who by their rivalry for greatness divided a whole age into factions.  We
+can now allow Caesar to be a great man, without derogating from Pompey;
+and celebrate the virtues of Cato, without detracting from those of
+Caesar.  Every one that has been long dead has a due proportion of praise
+allotted him, in which, whilst he lived, his friends were too profuse,
+and his enemies too sparing.
+
+According to Sir Isaac Newton's calculations, the last comet that made
+its appearance, in 1680, imbibed so much heat by its approaches to the
+sun, that it would have been two thousand times hotter than red-hot iron,
+had it been a globe of that metal; and that supposing it as big as the
+earth, and at the same distance from the sun, it would be fifty thousand
+years in cooling, before it recovered its natural temper.  In the like
+manner, if an Englishman considers the great ferment into which our
+political world is thrown at present, and how intensely it is heated in
+all its parts, he cannot suppose that it will cool again in less than
+three hundred years.  In such a tract of time it is possible that the
+heats of the present age may be extinguished, and our several classes of
+great men represented under their proper characters.  Some eminent
+historian may then probably arise that will not write _recentibus odiis_,
+as Tacitus expresses it, with the passions and prejudices of a
+contemporary author, but make an impartial distribution of fame among the
+great men of the present age.
+
+I cannot forbear entertaining myself very often with the idea of such an
+imaginary historian describing the reign of Anne the First, and
+introducing it with a preface to his reader, that he is now entering upon
+the most shining part of the English story.  The great rivals in fame
+will be then distinguished according to their respective merits, and
+shine in their proper points of light.  Such an one, says the historian,
+though variously represented by the writers of his own age, appears to
+have been a man of more than ordinary abilities, great application, and
+uncommon integrity: nor was such an one, though of an opposite party and
+interest, inferior to him in any of these respects.  The several
+antagonists who now endeavour to depreciate one another, and are
+celebrated or traduced by different parties, will then have the same body
+of admirers, and appear illustrious in the opinion of the whole British
+nation.  The deserving man, who can now recommend himself to the esteem
+of but half his countrymen, will then receive the approbations and
+applauses of a whole age.
+
+Among the several persons that flourish in this glorious reign, there is
+no question but such a future historian, as the person of whom I am
+speaking, will make mention of the men of genius and learning who have
+now any figure in the British nation.  For my own part, I often flatter
+myself with the honourable mention which will then be made of me; and
+have drawn up a paragraph in my own imagination, that I fancy will not be
+altogether unlike what will be found in some page or other of this
+imaginary historian.
+
+It was under this reign, says he, that the _Spectator_ published those
+little diurnal essays which are still extant.  We know very little of the
+name or person of this author, except only that he was a man of a very
+short face, extremely addicted to silence, and so great a lover of
+knowledge, that he made a voyage to Grand Cairo for no other reason but
+to take the measure of a pyramid.  His chief friend was one Sir Roger De
+Coverley, a whimsical country knight, and a Templar, whose name he has
+not transmitted to us.  He lived as a lodger at the house of a
+widow-woman, and was a great humorist in all parts of his life.  This is
+all we can affirm with any certainty of his person and character.  As for
+his speculations, notwithstanding the several obsolete words and obscure
+phrases of the age in which he lived, we still understand enough of them
+to see the diversions and characters of the English nation in his time:
+not but that we are to make allowance for the mirth and humour of the
+author, who has doubtless strained many representations of things beyond
+the truth.  For if we interpret his words in their literal meaning, we
+must suppose that women of the first quality used to pass away whole
+mornings at a puppet-show; that they attested their principles by their
+patches; that an audience would sit out an evening to hear a dramatical
+performance written in a language which they did not understand; that
+chairs and flower-pots were introduced as actors upon the British stage;
+that a promiscuous assembly of men and women were allowed to meet at
+midnight in masks within the verge of the Court; with many
+improbabilities of the like nature.  We must therefore, in these and the
+like cases, suppose that these remote hints and allusions aimed at some
+certain follies which were then in vogue, and which at present we have
+not any notion of.  We may guess by several passages in the speculations,
+that there were writers who endeavoured to detract from the works of this
+author; but as nothing of this nature is come down to us, we cannot guess
+at any objections that could be made to his paper.  If we consider his
+style with that indulgence which we must show to old English writers, or
+if we look into the variety of his subjects, with those several critical
+dissertations, moral reflections,
+
+* * * * *
+
+The following part of the paragraph is so much to my advantage, and
+beyond anything I can pretend to, that I hope my reader will excuse me
+for not inserting it.
+
+
+
+
+THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.
+
+
+   _Est brevitate opus_, _ut currat sententia_,
+
+   HOR., _Sat._ i. 10, 9.
+
+   Let brevity despatch the rapid thought.
+
+I have somewhere read of an eminent person who used in his private
+offices of devotion to give thanks to Heaven that he was born a
+Frenchman: for my own part I look upon it as a peculiar blessing that I
+was born an Englishman.  Among many other reasons, I think myself very
+happy in my country, as the language of it is wonderfully adapted to a
+man who is sparing of his words, and an enemy to loquacity.
+
+As I have frequently reflected on my good fortune in this particular, I
+shall communicate to the public my speculations upon the English tongue,
+not doubting but they will be acceptable to all my curious readers.
+
+The English delight in silence more than any other European nation, if
+the remarks which are made on us by foreigners are true.  Our discourse
+is not kept up in conversation, but falls into more pauses and intervals
+than in our neighbouring countries; as it is observed that the matter of
+our writings is thrown much closer together, and lies in a narrower
+compass, than is usual in the works of foreign authors; for, to favour
+our natural taciturnity, when we are obliged to utter our thoughts we do
+it in the shortest way we are able, and give as quick a birth to our
+conceptions as possible.
+
+This humour shows itself in several remarks that we may make upon the
+English language.  As, first of all, by its abounding in monosyllables,
+which gives us an opportunity of delivering our thoughts in few sounds.
+This indeed takes off from the elegance of our tongue, but at the same
+time expresses our ideas in the readiest manner, and consequently answers
+the first design of speech better than the multitude of syllables which
+make the words of other languages more tuneable and sonorous.  The sounds
+of our English words are commonly like those of string music, short and
+transient, which rise and perish upon a single touch; those of other
+languages are like the notes of wind instruments, sweet and swelling, and
+lengthened out into variety of modulation.
+
+In the next place we may observe that, where the words are not
+monosyllables, we often make them so, as much as lies in our power, by
+our rapidity of pronunciation; as it generally happens in most of our
+long words which are derived from the Latin, where we contract the length
+of the syllables, that gives them a grave and solemn air in their own
+language, to make them more proper for despatch, and more conformable to
+the genius of our tongue.  This we may find in a multitude of words, as
+"liberty," "conspiracy," "theatre," "orator," &c.
+
+The same natural aversion to loquacity has of late years made a very
+considerable alteration in our language, by closing in one syllable the
+termination of our preterperfect tense, as in the words "drown'd,"
+"walk'd," "arriv'd," for "drowned," "walked," "arrived," which has very
+much disfigured the tongue, and turned a tenth part of our smoothest
+words into so many clusters of consonants.  This is the more remarkable
+because the want of vowels in our language has been the general complaint
+of our politest authors, who nevertheless are the men that have made
+these retrenchments, and consequently very much increased our former
+scarcity.
+
+This reflection on the words that end in "ed" I have heard in
+conversation from one of the greatest geniuses this age has produced.  I
+think we may add to the foregoing observation, the change which has
+happened in our language by the abbreviation of several words that are
+terminated in "eth," by substituting an "s" in the room of the last
+syllable, as in "drowns," "walks," "arrives," and innumerable other
+words, which in the pronunciation of our forefathers were "drowneth,"
+"walketh," "arriveth."  This has wonderfully multiplied a letter which
+was before too frequent in the English tongue, and added to that hissing
+in our language which is taken so much notice of by foreigners, but at
+the same time humours our taciturnity, and eases us of many superfluous
+syllables.
+
+I might here observe that the same single letter on many occasions does
+the office of a whole word, and represents the "his" and "her" of our
+forefathers.  There is no doubt but the ear of a foreigner, which is the
+best judge in this case, would very much disapprove of such innovations,
+which indeed we do ourselves in some measure, by retaining the old
+termination in writing, and in all the solemn offices of our religion.
+
+As, in the instances I have given, we have epitomised many of our
+particular words to the detriment of our tongue, so on other occasions we
+have drawn two words into one, which has likewise very much untuned our
+language, and clogged it with consonants, as "mayn't," "can't," "shan't,"
+"won't," and the like, for "may not," "can not," "shall not," "will not,"
+&c.
+
+It is perhaps this humour of speaking no more than we needs must which
+has so miserably curtailed some of our words, that in familiar writings
+and conversations they often lose all but their first syllables, as in
+"mob.," "rep.," "pos.," "incog.," and the like; and as all ridiculous
+words make their first entry into a language by familiar phrases, I dare
+not answer for these that they will not in time be looked upon as a part
+of our tongue.  We see some of our poets have been so indiscreet as to
+imitate Hudibras's doggrel expressions in their serious compositions, by
+throwing out the signs of our substantives which are essential to the
+English language.  Nay, this humour of shortening our language had once
+run so far, that some of our celebrated authors, among whom we may reckon
+Sir Roger L'Estrange in particular, began to prune their words of all
+superfluous letters, as they termed them, in order to adjust the spelling
+to the pronunciation; which would have confounded all our etymologies,
+and have quite destroyed our tongue.
+
+We may here likewise observe that our proper names, when familiarised in
+English, generally dwindle to monosyllables, whereas in other modern
+languages they receive a softer turn on this occasion, by the addition of
+a new syllable.--Nick, in Italian, is Nicolini; Jack, in French, Janot;
+and so of the rest.
+
+There is another particular in our language which is a great instance of
+our frugality in words, and that is the suppressing of several particles
+which must be produced in other tongues to make a sentence intelligible.
+This often perplexes the best writers, when they find the relatives
+"whom," "which," or "they," at their mercy, whether they may have
+admission or not; and will never be decided till we have something like
+an academy, that by the best authorities, and rules drawn from the
+analogy of languages, shall settle all controversies between grammar and
+idiom.
+
+I have only considered our language as it shows the genius and natural
+temper of the English, which is modest, thoughtful, and sincere, and
+which, perhaps, may recommend the people, though it has spoiled the
+tongue.  We might, perhaps, carry the same thought into other languages,
+and deduce a great part of what is peculiar to them from the genius of
+the people who speak them.  It is certain the light talkative humour of
+the French has not a little infected their tongue, which might be shown
+by many instances; as the genius of the Italians, which is so much
+addicted to music and ceremony, has moulded all their words and phrases
+to those particular uses.  The stateliness and gravity of the Spaniards
+shows itself to perfection in the solemnity of their language; and the
+blunt, honest humour of the Germans sounds better in the roughness of the
+High-Dutch than it would in a politer tongue.
+
+
+
+
+THE VISION OF MIRZA.
+
+
+         --_Omnem_, _quae nunc obducta tuenti_
+   _Mortales hebetat visus tibi_, _et humida circum_
+   _Caligat_, _nubem eripiam_.
+
+   VIRG., _AEn._ ii. 604.
+
+   The cloud, which, intercepting the clear light,
+   Hangs o'er thy eyes, and blunts thy mortal sight,
+   I will remove.
+
+When I was at Grand Cairo, I picked up several Oriental manuscripts,
+which I have still by me.  Among others I met with one entitled "The
+Visions of Mirza," which I have read over with great pleasure.  I intend
+to give it to the public when I have no other entertainment for them; and
+shall begin with the first vision, which I have translated word for word
+as follows:
+
+"On the fifth day of the moon, which, according to the custom of my
+forefathers, I always keep holy, after having washed myself, and offered
+up my morning devotions, I ascended the high hills of Bagdad, in order to
+pass the rest of the day in meditation and prayer.  As I was here airing
+myself on the tops of the mountains, I fell into a profound contemplation
+on the vanity of human life; and passing from one thought to another,
+'Surely,' said I, 'man is but a shadow, and life a dream.'  Whilst I was
+thus musing, I cast my eyes towards the summit of a rock that was not far
+from me, where I discovered one in the habit of a shepherd, with a
+musical instrument in his hand.  As I looked upon him he applied it to
+his lips, and began to play upon it.  The sound of it was exceeding
+sweet, and wrought into a variety of tunes that were inexpressibly
+melodious, and altogether different from anything I had ever heard.  They
+put me in mind of those heavenly airs that are played to the departed
+souls of good men upon their first arrival in Paradise, to wear out the
+impressions of their last agonies, and qualify them for the pleasures of
+that happy place.  My heart melted away in secret raptures.
+
+"I had been often told that the rock before me was the haunt of a genius,
+and that several had been entertained with music who had passed by it,
+but never heard that the musician had before made himself visible.  When
+he had raised my thoughts by those transporting airs which he played, to
+taste the pleasures of his conversation, as I looked upon him like one
+astonished, he beckoned to me, and, by the waving of his hand, directed
+me to approach the place where he sat.  I drew near with that reverence
+which is due to a superior nature; and, as my heart was entirely subdued
+by the captivating strains I had heard, I fell down at his feet and wept.
+The genius smiled upon me with a look of compassion and affability that
+familiarised him to my imagination, and at once dispelled all the fears
+and apprehensions with which I approached him.  He lifted me from the
+ground, and, taking me by the hand, 'Mirza,' said he, 'I have heard thee
+in thy soliloquies; follow me.'
+
+"He then led me to the highest pinnacle of the rock, and placing me on
+the top of it, 'Cast thy eyes eastward,' said he, 'and tell me what thou
+seest.'  'I see,' said I, 'a huge valley, and a prodigious tide of water
+rolling through it.'  'The valley that thou seest,' said he, 'is the Vale
+of Misery, and the tide of water that thou seest is part of the great
+tide of Eternity.'  'What is the reason,' said I, 'that the tide I see
+rises out of a thick mist at one end, and again loses itself in a thick
+mist at the other?'  'What thou seest,' said he, 'is that portion of
+Eternity which is called Time, measured out by the sun, and reaching from
+the beginning of the world to its consummation.  Examine now,' said he,
+'this sea that is bounded with darkness at both ends, and tell me what
+thou discoverest in it.'  'I see a bridge,' said I, 'standing in the
+midst of the tide.'  'The bridge thou seest,' said he, 'is Human Life;
+consider it attentively.'  Upon a more leisurely survey of it, I found
+that it consisted of threescore and ten entire arches, with several
+broken arches, which, added to those that were entire, made up the number
+about a hundred.  As I was counting the arches, the genius told me that
+this bridge consisted at first of a thousand arches; but that a great
+flood swept away the rest, and left the bridge in the ruinous condition I
+now beheld it.  'But tell me further,' said he, 'what thou discoverest on
+it.'  'I see multitudes of people passing over it,' said I, 'and a black
+cloud hanging on each end of it.'  As I looked more attentively, I saw
+several of the passengers dropping through the bridge into the great tide
+that flowed underneath it; and, upon further examination, perceived there
+were innumerable trap-doors that lay concealed in the bridge, which the
+passengers no sooner trod upon but they fell through them into the tide,
+and immediately disappeared.  These hidden pit-falls were set very thick
+at the entrance of the bridge, so that throngs of people no sooner broke
+through the cloud but many of them fell into them.  They grew thinner
+towards the middle, but multiplied and lay closer together towards the
+end of the arches that were entire.
+
+"There were indeed some persons, but their number was very small, that
+continued a kind of hobbling march on the broken arches, but fell through
+one after another, being quite tired and spent with so long a walk.
+
+"I passed some time in the contemplation of this wonderful structure, and
+the great variety of objects which it presented.  My heart was filled
+with a deep melancholy to see several dropping unexpectedly in the midst
+of mirth and jollity, and catching at everything that stood by them to
+save themselves.  Some were looking up towards the heavens in a
+thoughtful posture, and in the midst of a speculation stumbled and fell
+out of sight.  Multitudes were very busy in the pursuit of bubbles that
+glittered in their eyes and danced before them; but often when they
+thought themselves within the reach of them, their footing failed and
+down they sunk.  In this confusion of objects, I observed some with
+scimitars in their hands, who ran to and fro from the bridge, thrusting
+several persons on trapdoors which did not seem to lie in their way, and
+which they might have escaped had they not been thus forced upon them.
+
+"The genius, seeing me indulge myself on this melancholy prospect, told
+me I had dwelt long enough upon it.  'Take thine eyes off the bridge,'
+said he, 'and tell me if thou yet seest anything thou dost not
+comprehend.'  Upon looking up, 'What mean,' said I, 'those great flights
+of birds that are perpetually hovering about the bridge, and settling
+upon it from time to time?  I see vultures, harpies, ravens, cormorants,
+and among many other feathered creatures, several little winged boys,
+that perch in great numbers upon the middle arches.'  'These,' said the
+genius, 'are Envy, Avarice, Superstition, Despair, Love, with the like
+cares and passions that infest human life.'
+
+"I here fetched a deep sigh.  'Alas,' said I, 'man was made in vain! how
+is he given away to misery and mortality! tortured in life, and swallowed
+up in death!'  The genius, being moved with compassion towards me, bade
+me quit so uncomfortable a prospect.  'Look no more,' said he, 'on man in
+the first stage of his existence, in his setting out for Eternity; but
+cast thine eye on that thick mist into which the tide bears the several
+generations of mortals that fall into it.'  I directed my sight as I was
+ordered, and, whether or no the good genius strengthened it with any
+supernatural force, or dissipated part of the mist that was before too
+thick for the eye to penetrate, I saw the valley opening at the further
+end, and spreading forth into an immense ocean, that had a huge rock of
+adamant running through the midst of it, and dividing it into two equal
+parts.  The clouds still rested on one half of it, insomuch that I could
+discover nothing in it; but the other appeared to me a vast ocean planted
+with innumerable islands, that were covered with fruits and flowers, and
+interwoven with a thousand little shining seas that ran among them.  I
+could see persons dressed in glorious habits, with garlands upon their
+heads, passing among the trees, lying down by the sides of fountains, or
+resting on beds of flowers; and could hear a confused harmony of singing
+birds, falling waters, human voices, and musical instruments.  Gladness
+grew in me upon the discovery of so delightful a scene.  I wished for the
+wings of an eagle, that I might fly away to those happy seats; but the
+genius told me there was no passage to them, except through the gates of
+death that I saw opening every moment upon the bridge.  'The islands,'
+said he, 'that lie so fresh and green before thee, amid with which the
+whole face of the ocean appears spotted as far as thou canst see, are
+more in number than the sands on the sea-shore: there are myriads of
+islands behind those which thou here discoverest, reaching further than
+thine eye, or even thine imagination can extend itself.  These are the
+mansions of good men after death, who, according to the degree and kinds
+of virtue in which they excelled, are distributed among those several
+islands, which abound with pleasures of different kinds and degrees,
+suitable to the relishes and perfections of those who are settled in
+them: every island is a paradise accommodated to its respective
+inhabitants.  Are not these, O Mirza, habitations worth contending for?
+Does life appear miserable that gives thee opportunities of earning such
+a reward?  Is death to be feared that will convey thee to so happy an
+existence?  Think not man was made in vain, who has such an Eternity
+reserved for him.'  I gazed with inexpressible pleasure on these happy
+islands.  At length, said I, 'Show me now, I beseech thee, the secrets
+that lie hid under those dark clouds which cover the ocean on the other
+side of the rock of adamant.'  The genius making me no answer, I turned
+about to address myself to him a second time, but I found that he had
+left me; I then turned again to the vision which I had been so long
+contemplating: but instead of the rolling tide, the arched bridge, and
+the happy islands, I saw nothing but the long hollow valley of Bagdad,
+with oxen, sheep, and camels grazing upon the sides of it."
+
+
+
+
+GENIUS.
+
+
+         --_Cui mens divinior_, _atque os_
+   _Magna sonaturum des nominis hujus honorem_.
+
+   HOR., _Sat._ i. 4, 43.
+
+   On him confer the poet's sacred name,
+   Whose lofty voice declares the heavenly flame.
+
+There is no character more frequently given to a writer than that of
+being a genius.  I have heard many a little sonneteer called a fine
+genius.  There is not a heroic scribbler in the nation that has not his
+admirers who think him a great genius; and as for your smatterers in
+tragedy, there is scarce a man among them who is not cried up by one or
+other for a prodigious genius.
+
+My design in this paper is to consider what is properly a great genius,
+and to throw some thoughts together on so uncommon a subject.
+
+Among great geniuses those few draw the admiration of all the world upon
+them, and stand up as the prodigies of mankind, who, by the mere strength
+of natural parts, and without any assistance of art or learning, have
+produced works that were the delight of their own times and the wonder of
+posterity.  There appears something nobly wild and extravagant in these
+great natural geniuses, that is infinitely more beautiful than all turn
+and polishing of what the French call a _bel esprit_, by which they would
+express a genius refined by conversation, reflection, and the reading of
+the most polite authors.  The greatest genius which runs through the arts
+and sciences takes a kind of tincture from them and falls unavoidably
+into imitation.
+
+Many of these great natural geniuses, that were never disciplined and
+broken by rules of art, are to be found among the ancients, and in
+particular among those of the more Eastern parts of the world.  Homer has
+innumerable flights that Virgil was not able to reach, and in the Old
+Testament we find several passages more elevated and sublime than any in
+Homer.  At the same time that we allow a greater and more daring genius
+to the ancients, we must own that the greatest of them very much failed
+in, or, if you will, that they were much above the nicety and correctness
+of the moderns.  In their similitudes and allusions, provided there was a
+likeness, they did not much trouble themselves about the decency of the
+comparison: thus Solomon resembles the nose of his beloved to the tower
+of Lebanon which looketh towards Damascus, as the coming of a thief in
+the night is a similitude of the same kind in the New Testament.  It
+would be endless to make collections of this nature.  Homer illustrates
+one of his heroes encompassed with the enemy, by an ass in a field of
+corn that has his sides belaboured by all the boys of the village without
+stirring a foot for it; and another of them tossing to and fro in his
+bed, and burning with resentment, to a piece of flesh broiled on the
+coals.  This particular failure in the ancients opens a large field of
+raillery to the little wits, who can laugh at an indecency, but not
+relish the sublime in these sorts of writings.  The present Emperor of
+Persia, conformable to this Eastern way of thinking, amidst a great many
+pompous titles, denominates himself "the sun of glory" and "the nutmeg of
+delight."  In short, to cut off all cavilling against the ancients, and
+particularly those of the warmer climates, who had most heat and life in
+their imaginations, we are to consider that the rule of observing what
+the French call the _bienseance_ in an allusion has been found out of
+later years, and in the colder regions of the world, where we could make
+some amends for our want of force and spirit by a scrupulous nicety and
+exactness in our compositions.  Our countryman Shakespeare was a
+remarkable instance of this first kind of great geniuses.
+
+I cannot quit this head without observing that Pindar was a great genius
+of the first class, who was hurried on by a natural fire and impetuosity
+to vast conceptions of things and noble sallies of imagination.  At the
+same time can anything be more ridiculous than for men of a sober and
+moderate fancy to imitate this poet's way of writing in those monstrous
+compositions which go among us under the name of Pindarics?  When I see
+people copying works which, as Horace has represented them, are singular
+in their kind, and inimitable; when I see men following irregularities by
+rule, and by the little tricks of art straining after the most unbounded
+flights of nature, I cannot but apply to them that passage in Terence:
+
+         --_Incerta haec si tu postules_
+   _Ratione certa facere_, _nihilo plus agas_
+   _Quam si des operam_, _ut cum ratione insanias_.
+
+   _Eun._, Act I., Sc. 1, I. 16.
+
+You may as well pretend to be mad and in your senses at the same time, as
+to think of reducing these uncertain things to any certainty by reason.
+
+In short, a modern Pindaric writer compared with Pindar is like a sister
+among the Camisars compared with Virgil's Sibyl; there is the distortion,
+grimace, and outward figure, but nothing of that divine impulse which
+raises the mind above itself, and makes the sounds more than human.
+
+There is another kind of great geniuses which I shall place in a second
+class, not as I think them inferior to the first, but only for
+distinction's sake, as they are of a different kind.  This second class
+of great geniuses are those that have formed themselves by rules, and
+submitted the greatness of their natural talents to the corrections and
+restraints of art.  Such among the Greeks were Plato and Aristotle; among
+the Romans, Virgil and Tully; among the English, Milton and Sir Francis
+Bacon.
+
+The genius in both these classes of authors may be equally great, but
+shows itself after a different manner.  In the first it is like a rich
+soil in a happy climate, that produces a whole wilderness of noble plants
+rising in a thousand beautiful landscapes without any certain order or
+regularity; in the other it is the same rich soil, under the same happy
+climate, that has been laid out in walks and parterres, and cut into
+shape and beauty by the skill of the gardener.
+
+The great danger in these latter kind of geniuses is lest they cramp
+their own abilities too much by imitation, and form themselves altogether
+upon models, without giving the full play to their own natural parts.  An
+imitation of the best authors is not to compare with a good original; and
+I believe we may observe that very few writers make an extraordinary
+figure in the world who have not something in their way of thinking or
+expressing themselves, that is peculiar to them, and entirely their own.
+
+It is odd to consider what great geniuses are sometimes thrown away upon
+trifles.
+
+"I once saw a shepherd," says a famous Italian author, "who used to
+divert himself in his solitudes with tossing up eggs and catching them
+again without breaking them; in which he had arrived to so great a degree
+of perfection that he would keep up four at a time for several minutes
+together playing in the air, and falling into his hand by turns.  I
+think," says the author, "I never saw a greater severity than in this
+man's face, for by his wonderful perseverance and application he had
+contracted the seriousness and gravity of a privy councillor, and I could
+not but reflect with myself that the same assiduity and attention, had
+they been rightly applied, 'might' have made a greater mathematician than
+Archimedes."
+
+
+
+
+THEODOSIUS AND CONSTANTIA.
+
+
+   _Illa_; _Quis et me_, _inquit_, _miseram et te perdidit_, _Orpheu_?--
+   _Jamque vale_: _feror ingenti circumdata nocte_,
+   _Invalidasque tibi tendens_, _heu_! _non tua_, _palmas_.
+
+   VIRG., _Georg._, iv. 494.
+
+   Then thus the bride: "What fury seiz'd on thee,
+   Unhappy man! to lose thyself and me?--
+   And now farewell! involv'd in shades of night,
+   For ever I am ravish'd from thy sight:
+   In vain I reach my feeble hands, to join
+   In sweet embraces--ah! no longer thine!"
+
+   DRYDEN.
+
+Constantia was a woman of extraordinary wit and beauty, but very unhappy
+in a father who, having arrived at great riches by his own industry, took
+delight in nothing but his money.  Theodosius was the younger son of a
+decayed family, of great parts and learning, improved by a genteel and
+virtuous education.  When he was in the twentieth year of his age he
+became acquainted with Constantia, who had not then passed her fifteenth.
+As he lived but a few miles distant from her father's house, he had
+frequent opportunities of seeing her; and, by the advantages of a good
+person and a pleasing conversation, made such an impression in her heart
+as it was impossible for time to efface.  He was himself no less smitten
+with Constantia.  A long acquaintance made them still discover new
+beauties in each other, and by degrees raised in them that mutual passion
+which had an influence on their following lives.  It unfortunately
+happened that, in the midst of this intercourse of love and friendship
+between Theodosius and Constantia, there broke out an irreparable quarrel
+between their parents; the one valuing himself too much upon his birth,
+and the other upon his possessions.  The father of Constantia was so
+incensed at the father of Theodosius, that he contracted an unreasonable
+aversion towards his son, insomuch that he forbade him his house, and
+charged his daughter upon her duty never to see him more.  In the
+meantime, to break off all communication between the two lovers, who he
+knew entertained secret hopes of some favourable opportunity that should
+bring them together, he found out a young gentleman of a good fortune and
+an agreeable person, whom he pitched upon as a husband for his daughter.
+He soon concerted this affair so well, that he told Constantia it was his
+design to marry her to such a gentleman, and that her wedding should be
+celebrated on such a day.  Constantia, who was overawed with the
+authority of her father, and unable to object anything against so
+advantageous a match, received the proposal with a profound silence,
+which her father commended in her, as the most decent manner of a
+virgin's giving her consent to an overture of that kind.  The noise of
+this intended marriage soon reached Theodosius, who, after a long tumult
+of passions which naturally rise in a lover's heart on such an occasion,
+wrote the following letter to Constantia:--
+
+   "The thought of my Constantia, which for some years has been my only
+   happiness, is now become a greater torment to me than I am able to
+   bear.  Must I then live to see you another's?  The streams, the
+   fields, and meadows, where we have so often talked together, grow
+   painful to me; life itself is become a burden.  May you long be happy
+   in the world, but forget that there was ever such a man in it as
+
+   "THEODOSIUS."
+
+This letter was conveyed to Constantia that very evening, who fainted at
+the reading of it; and the next morning she was much more alarmed by two
+or three messengers that came to her father's house, one after another,
+to inquire if they had heard anything of Theodosius, who, it seems, had
+left his chamber about midnight, and could nowhere be found.  The deep
+melancholy which had hung upon his mind some time before made them
+apprehend the worst that could befall him.  Constantia, who knew that
+nothing but the report of her marriage could have driven him to such
+extremities, was not to be comforted.  She now accused herself for having
+so tamely given an ear to the proposal of a husband, and looked upon the
+new lover as the murderer of Theodosius.  In short, she resolved to
+suffer the utmost effects of her father's displeasure rather than comply
+with a marriage which appeared to her so full of guilt and horror.  The
+father, seeing himself entirely rid of Theodosius, and likely to keep a
+considerable portion in his family, was not very much concerned at the
+obstinate refusal of his daughter, and did not find it very difficult to
+excuse himself upon that account to his intended son-in-law, who had all
+along regarded this alliance rather as a marriage of convenience than of
+love.  Constantia had now no relief but in her devotions and exercises of
+religion, to which her affections had so entirely subjected her mind,
+that after some years had abated the violence of her sorrows, and settled
+her thoughts in a kind of tranquillity, she resolved to pass the
+remainder of her days in a convent.  Her father was not displeased with a
+resolution which would save money in his family, and readily complied
+with his daughter's intentions.  Accordingly, in the twenty-fifth year of
+her age, while her beauty was yet in all its height and bloom, he carried
+her to a neighbouring city, in order to look out a sisterhood of nuns
+among whom to place his daughter.  There was in this place a father of a
+convent who was very much renowned for his piety and exemplary life: and
+as it is usual in the Romish Church for those who are under any great
+affliction, or trouble of mind, to apply themselves to the most eminent
+confessors for pardon and consolation, our beautiful votary took the
+opportunity of confessing herself to this celebrated father.
+
+We must now return to Theodosius, who, the very morning that the above-
+mentioned inquiries had been made after him, arrived at a religious house
+in the city where now Constantia resided; and desiring that secrecy and
+concealment of the fathers of the convent, which is very usual upon any
+extraordinary occasion, he made himself one of the order, with a private
+vow never to inquire after Constantia; whom he looked upon as given away
+to his rival upon the day on which, according to common fame, their
+marriage was to have been solemnised.  Having in his youth made a good
+progress in learning, that he might dedicate himself more entirely to
+religion, he entered into holy orders, and in a few years became renowned
+for his sanctity of life, and those pious sentiments which he inspired
+into all who conversed with him.  It was this holy man to whom Constantia
+had determined to apply herself in confession, though neither she nor any
+other, besides the prior of the convent, knew anything of his name or
+family.  The gay, the amiable Theodosius had now taken upon him the name
+of Father Francis, and was so far concealed in a long beard, a shaven
+head, and a religious habit, that it was impossible to discover the man
+of the world in the venerable conventual.
+
+As he was one morning shut up in his confessional, Constantia kneeling by
+him opened the state of her soul to him; and after having given him the
+history of a life full of innocence, she burst out into tears, and
+entered upon that part of her story in which he himself had so great a
+share.  "My behaviour," says she, "has, I fear, been the death of a man
+who had no other fault but that of loving me too much.  Heaven only knows
+how dear he was to me whilst he lived, and how bitter the remembrance of
+him has been to me since his death."  She here paused, and lifted up her
+eyes that streamed with tears towards the father, who was so moved with
+the sense of her sorrows that he could only command his voice, which was
+broken with sighs and sobbings, so far as to bid her proceed.  She
+followed his directions, and in a flood of tears poured out her heart
+before him.  The father could not forbear weeping aloud, insomuch that,
+in the agonies of his grief, the seat shook under him.  Constantia, who
+thought the good man was thus moved by his compassion towards her, and by
+the horror of her guilt, proceeded with the utmost contrition to acquaint
+him with that vow of virginity in which she was going to engage herself,
+as the proper atonement for her sins, and the only sacrifice she could
+make to the memory of Theodosius.  The father, who by this time had
+pretty well composed himself, burst out again in tears upon hearing that
+name to which he had been so long disused, and upon receiving this
+instance of an unparalleled fidelity from one who he thought had several
+years since given herself up to the possession of another.  Amidst the
+interruptions of his sorrow, seeing his penitent overwhelmed with grief,
+he was only able to bid her from time to time be comforted--to tell her
+that her sins were forgiven her--that her guilt was not so great as she
+apprehended--that she should not suffer herself to be afflicted above
+measure.  After which he recovered himself enough to give her the
+absolution in form: directing her at the same time to repair to him again
+the next day, that he might encourage her in the pious resolution she had
+taken, and give her suitable exhortations for her behaviour in it.
+Constantia retired, and the next morning renewed her applications.
+Theodosius, having manned his soul with proper thoughts and reflections,
+exerted himself on this occasion in the best manner he could to animate
+his penitent in the course of life she was entering upon, and wear out of
+her mind those groundless fears and apprehensions which had taken
+possession of it; concluding with a promise to her, that he would from
+time to time continue his admonitions when she should have taken upon her
+the holy veil.  "The rules of our respective orders," says he, "will not
+permit that I should see you; but you may assure yourself not only of
+having a place in my prayers, but of receiving such frequent instructions
+as I can convey to you by letters.  Go on cheerfully in the glorious
+course you have undertaken, and you will quickly find such a peace and
+satisfaction in your mind which it is not in the power of the world to
+give."
+
+Constantia's heart was so elevated within the discourse of Father
+Francis, that the very next day she entered upon her vow.  As soon as the
+solemnities of her reception were over, she retired, as it is usual, with
+the abbess into her own apartment.
+
+The abbess had been informed the night before of all that had passed
+between her novitiate and father Francis: from whom she now delivered to
+her the following letter:--
+
+   "As the first-fruits of those joys and consolations which you may
+   expect from the life you are now engaged in, I must acquaint you that
+   Theodosius, whose death sits so heavy upon your thoughts, is still
+   alive; and that the father to whom you have confessed yourself was
+   once that Theodosius whom you so much lament.  The love which we have
+   had for one another will make us more happy in its disappointment than
+   it could have done in its success.  Providence has disposed of us for
+   our advantage, though not according to our wishes.  Consider your
+   Theodosius still as dead, but assure yourself of one who will not
+   cease to pray for you in father
+
+   "FRANCIS."
+
+Constantia saw that the handwriting agreed with the contents of the
+letter; and, upon reflecting on the voice of the person, the behaviour,
+and above all the extreme sorrow of the father during her confession, she
+discovered Theodosius in every particular.  After having wept with tears
+of joy, "It is enough," says she; "Theodosius is still in being: I shall
+live with comfort and die in peace."
+
+The letters which the father sent her afterwards are yet extant in the
+nunnery where she resided; and are often read to the young religious, in
+order to inspire them with good resolutions and sentiments of virtue.  It
+so happened that after Constantia had lived about ten years in the
+cloister, a violent fever broke out in the place, which swept away great
+multitudes, and among others Theodosius.  Upon his death-bed he sent his
+benediction in a very moving manner to Constantia, who at that time was
+herself so far gone in the same fatal distemper that she lay delirious.
+Upon the interval which generally precedes death in sickness of this
+nature, the abbess, finding that the physicians had given her over, told
+her that Theodosius had just gone before her, and that he had sent her
+his benediction in his last moments.  Constantia received it with
+pleasure.  "And now," says she, "if I do not ask anything improper, let
+me be buried by Theodosius.  My vow reaches no further than the grave;
+what I ask is, I hope, no violation of it."  She died soon after, and was
+interred according to her request.
+
+The tombs are still to be seen, with a short Latin inscription over them
+to the following purpose:--
+
+   "Here lie the bodies of Father Francis and Sister Constance.  They
+   were lovely in their lives, and in their death they were not divided."
+
+
+
+
+GOOD NATURE.
+
+
+Part One.
+
+
+   _Sic vita erat_: _facile omnes perferre ac pati_:
+   _Cum quibus erat cunque una_, _his sese dedere_,
+   _Eorum obsequi studiis_: _advorsus nemini_;
+   _Nunquam praeponens se aliis_.  _Ita facillime_
+   _Sine invidia invenias laudem_.--
+
+   TER., _Andr._, Act i. _se._ 1.
+
+   His manner of life was this: to bear with everybody's humours; to
+   comply with the inclinations and pursuits of those he conversed with;
+   to contradict nobody; never to assume a superiority over others.  This
+   is the ready way to gain applause without exciting envy.
+
+Man is subject to innumerable pains and sorrows by the very condition of
+humanity, and yet, as if Nature had not sown evils enough in life, we are
+continually adding grief to grief, and aggravating the common calamity by
+our cruel treatment of one another.  Every man's natural weight of
+affliction is still made more heavy by the envy, malice, treachery, or
+injustice of his neighbour.  At the same time that the storm beats on the
+whole species, we are falling foul upon one another.
+
+Half the misery of human life might be extinguished, would men alleviate
+the general curse they lie under, by mutual offices of compassion,
+benevolence, and humanity.  There is nothing, therefore, which we ought
+more to encourage in ourselves and others, than that disposition of mind
+which in our language goes under the title of good nature, and which I
+shall choose for the subject of this day's speculation.
+
+Good-nature is more agreeable in conversation than wit, and gives a
+certain air to the countenance which is more amiable than beauty.  It
+shows virtue in the fairest light, takes off in some measure from the
+deformity of vice, and makes even folly and impertinence supportable.
+
+There is no society or conversation to be kept up in the world without
+good nature, or something which must bear its appearance, and supply its
+place.  For this reason, mankind have been forced to invent a kind of
+artificial humanity, which is what we express by the word good-breeding.
+For if we examine thoroughly the idea of what we call so, we shall find
+it to be nothing else but an imitation and mimicry of good nature, or, in
+other terms, affability, complaisance, and easiness of temper, reduced
+into an art.  These exterior shows and appearances of humanity render a
+man wonderfully popular and beloved, when they are founded upon a real
+good nature; but, without it, are like hypocrisy in religion, or a bare
+form of holiness, which, when it is discovered, makes a man more
+detestable than professed impiety.
+
+Good-nature is generally born with us: health, prosperity, and kind
+treatment from the world, are great cherishers of it where they find it;
+but nothing is capable of forcing it up, where it does not grow of
+itself.  It is one of the blessings of a happy constitution, which
+education may improve, but not produce.
+
+Xenophon, in the life of his imaginary prince whom he describes as a
+pattern for real ones, is always celebrating the philanthropy and good
+nature of his hero, which he tells us he brought into the world with him;
+and gives many remarkable instances of it in his childhood, as well as in
+all the several parts of his life.  Nay, on his death-bed, he describes
+him as being pleased, that while his soul returned to Him who made it,
+his body should incorporate with the great mother of all things, and by
+that means become beneficial to mankind.  For which reason, he gives his
+sons a positive order not to enshrine it in gold or silver, but to lay it
+in the earth as soon as the life was gone out of it.
+
+An instance of such an overflowing of humanity, such an exuberant love to
+mankind, could not have entered into the imagination of a writer who had
+not a soul filled with great ideas, and a general benevolence to mankind.
+
+In that celebrated passage of Sallust, where Caesar and Cato are placed
+in such beautiful but opposite lights, Caesar's character is chiefly made
+up of good nature, as it showed itself in all its forms towards his
+friends or his enemies, his servants or dependents, the guilty or the
+distressed.  As for Cato's character, it is rather awful than amiable.
+Justice seems most agreeable to the nature of God, and mercy to that of
+man.  A Being who has nothing to pardon in Himself, may reward every man
+according to his works; but he whose very best actions must be seen with
+grains of allowance, cannot be too mild, moderate, and forgiving.  For
+this reason, among all the monstrous characters in human nature, there is
+none so odious, nor indeed so exquisitely ridiculous, as that of a rigid,
+severe temper in a worthless man.
+
+This part of good nature however, which consists in the pardoning and
+overlooking of faults, is to be exercised only in doing ourselves
+justice, and that too in the ordinary commerce and occurrences of life;
+for, in the public administrations of justice, mercy to one may be
+cruelty to others.
+
+It is grown almost into a maxim, that good-natured men are not always men
+of the most wit.  This observation, in my opinion, has no foundation in
+nature.  The greatest wits I have conversed with are men eminent for
+their humanity.  I take, therefore, this remark to have been occasioned
+by two reasons.  First, because ill-nature among ordinary observers
+passes for wit.  A spiteful saying gratifies so many little passions in
+those who hear it, that it generally meets with a good reception.  The
+laugh rises upon it, and the man who utters it is looked upon as a shrewd
+satirist.  This may be one reason why a great many pleasant companions
+appear so surprisingly dull when they have endeavoured to be merry in
+print; the public being more just than private clubs or assemblies, in
+distinguishing between what is wit and what is ill-nature.
+
+Another reason why the good-natured man may sometimes bring his wit in
+question is perhaps because he is apt to be moved with compassion for
+those misfortunes or infirmities which another would turn into ridicule,
+and by that means gain the reputation of a wit.  The ill-natured man,
+though but of equal parts, gives himself a larger field to expatiate in;
+he exposes those failings in human nature which the other would cast a
+veil over, laughs at vices which the other either excuses or conceals,
+gives utterance to reflections which the other stifles, falls
+indifferently upon friends or enemies, exposes the person who has obliged
+him, and, in short, sticks at nothing that may establish his character as
+a wit.  It is no wonder, therefore, he succeeds in it better than the man
+of humanity, as a person who makes use of indirect methods is more likely
+to grow rich than the fair trader.
+
+
+
+Part Two.
+
+
+   --_Quis enim bonus_, _aut face dignus_
+   _Arcana_, _qualem Cereris vult esse sacerdos_,
+   _Ulla aliena sibi credat mala_?--
+
+   JUV., _Sat._ xv. 140.
+
+   Who can all sense of others' ills escape,
+   Is but a brute, at best, in human shape.
+
+   TATE.
+
+In one of my last week's papers, I treated of good-nature as it is the
+effect of constitution; I shall now speak of it as it is a moral virtue.
+The first may make a man easy in himself and agreeable to others, but
+implies no merit in him that is possessed of it.  A man is no more to be
+praised upon this account, than because he has a regular pulse or a good
+digestion.  This good nature, however, in the constitution, which Mr.
+Dryden somewhere calls "a milkiness of blood," is an admirable groundwork
+for the other.  In order, therefore, to try our good-nature, whether it
+arises from the body or the mind, whether it be founded in the animal or
+rational part of our nature; in a word, whether it be such as is entitled
+to any other reward besides that secret satisfaction and contentment of
+mind which is essential to it, and the kind reception it procures us in
+the world, we must examine it by the following rules:
+
+First, whether it acts with steadiness and uniformity in sickness and in
+health, in prosperity and in adversity; if otherwise, it is to be looked
+upon as nothing else but an irradiation of the mind from some new supply
+of spirits, or a more kindly circulation of the blood.  Sir Francis Bacon
+mentions a cunning solicitor, who would never ask a favour of a great man
+before dinner; but took care to prefer his petition at a time when the
+party petitioned had his mind free from care, and his appetites in good
+humour.  Such a transient temporary good-nature as this, is not that
+philanthropy, that love of mankind, which deserves the title of a moral
+virtue.
+
+The next way of a man's bringing his good-nature to the test is to
+consider whether it operates according to the rules of reason and duty:
+for if, notwithstanding its general benevolence to mankind, it makes no
+distinction between its objects; if it exerts itself promiscuously
+towards the deserving and the undeserving; if it relieves alike the idle
+and the indigent; if it gives itself up to the first petitioner, and
+lights upon any one rather by accident than choice--it may pass for an
+amiable instinct, but must not assume the name of a moral virtue.
+
+The third trial of good-nature will be the examining ourselves whether or
+no we are able to exert it to our own disadvantage, and employ it on
+proper objects, notwithstanding any little pain, want, or inconvenience,
+which may arise to ourselves from it: in a word, whether we are willing
+to risk any part of our fortune, our reputation, our health or ease, for
+the benefit of mankind.  Among all these expressions of good nature, I
+shall single out that which goes under the general name of charity, as it
+consists in relieving the indigent: that being a trial of this kind which
+offers itself to us almost at all times and in every place.
+
+I should propose it as a rule, to every one who is provided with any
+competency of fortune more than sufficient for the necessaries of life,
+to lay aside a certain portion of his income for the use of the poor.
+This I would look upon as an offering to Him who has a right to the
+whole, for the use of those whom, in the passage hereafter mentioned, He
+has described as His own representatives upon earth.  At the same time,
+we should manage our charity with such prudence and caution, that we may
+not hurt our own friends or relations whilst we are doing good to those
+who are strangers to us.
+
+This may possibly be explained better by an example than by a rule.
+
+Eugenius is a man of a universal good nature, and generous beyond the
+extent of his fortune; but withal so prudent in the economy of his
+affairs, that what goes out in charity is made up by good management.
+Eugenius has what the world calls two hundred pounds a year; but never
+values himself above nine-score, as not thinking he has a right to the
+tenth part, which he always appropriates to charitable uses.  To this sum
+he frequently makes other voluntary additions, insomuch, that in a good
+year--for such he accounts those in which he has been able to make
+greater bounties than ordinary--he has given above twice that sum to the
+sickly and indigent.  Eugenius prescribes to himself many particular days
+of fasting and abstinence, in order to increase his private bank of
+charity, and sets aside what would be the current expenses of those times
+for the use of the poor.  He often goes afoot where his business calls
+him, and at the end of his walk has given a shilling, which in his
+ordinary methods of expense would have gone for coach-hire, to the first
+necessitous person that has fallen in his way.  I have known him, when he
+has been going to a play or an opera, divert the money which was designed
+for that purpose upon an object of charity whom he has met with in the
+street; and afterwards pass his evening in a coffee-house, or at a
+friend's fireside, with much greater satisfaction to himself than he
+could have received from the most exquisite entertainments of the
+theatre.  By these means he is generous without impoverishing himself,
+and enjoys his estate by making it the property of others.
+
+There are few men so cramped in their private affairs, who may not be
+charitable after this manner, without any disadvantage to themselves, or
+prejudice to their families.  It is but sometimes sacrificing a diversion
+or convenience to the poor, and turning the usual course of our expenses
+into a better channel.  This is, I think, not only the most prudent and
+convenient, but the most meritorious piece of charity which we can put in
+practice.  By this method, we in some measure share the necessities of
+the poor at the same time that we relieve them, and make ourselves not
+only their patrons, but their fellow-sufferers.
+
+Sir Thomas Brown, in the last part of his "Religio Medici," in which he
+describes his charity in several heroic instances, and with a noble heat
+of sentiments, mentions that verse in the Proverbs of Solomon: "He that
+giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord."  There is more rhetoric in that
+one sentence, says he, than in a library of sermons; and indeed, if those
+sentences were understood by the reader with the same emphasis as they
+are delivered by the author, we needed not those volumes of instructions,
+but might be honest by an epitome.
+
+This passage of Scripture is, indeed, wonderfully persuasive; but I think
+the same thought is carried much further in the New Testament, where our
+Saviour tells us, in a most pathetic manner, that he shall hereafter
+regard the clothing of the naked, the feeding of the hungry, and the
+visiting of the imprisoned, as offices done to Himself, and reward them
+accordingly.  Pursuant to those passages in Holy Scripture, I have
+somewhere met with the epitaph of a charitable man, which has very much
+pleased me.  I cannot recollect the words, but the sense of it is to this
+purpose: What I spent I lost; what I possessed is left to others; what I
+gave away remains with me.
+
+Since I am thus insensibly engaged in Sacred Writ, I cannot forbear
+making an extract of several passages which I have always read with great
+delight in the book of Job.  It is the account which that holy man gives
+of his behaviour in the days of his prosperity; and, if considered only
+as a human composition, is a finer picture of a charitable and
+good-natured man than is to be met with in any other author.
+
+"Oh that I were as in months past, as in the days when God preserved me:
+When his candle shined upon my head, and when by his light I walked
+through darkness: When the Almighty was yet with me; when my children
+were about me: When I washed my steps with butter, and the rock poured me
+out rivers of oil.
+
+"When the ear heard me, then it blessed me; and when the eye saw me, it
+gave witness to me.  Because I delivered the poor that cried, and the
+fatherless, and him that had none to help him.  The blessing of him that
+was ready to perish came upon me, and I caused the widow's heart to sing
+for joy.  I was eyes to the blind; and feet was I to the lame; I was a
+father to the poor, and the cause which I knew not I searched out.  Did
+not I weep for him that was in trouble?  Was not my soul grieved for the
+poor?  Let me be weighed in an even balance, that God may know mine
+integrity.  If I did despise the cause of my man-servant or of my maid-
+servant when they contended with me: What then shall I do when God riseth
+up? and when he visiteth, what shall I answer him?  Did not he that made
+me in the womb, make him? and did not one fashion us in the womb?  If I
+have withheld the poor from their desire, or have caused the eyes of the
+widow to fail; Or have eaten my morsel myself alone, and the fatherless
+hath not eaten thereof; If I have seen any perish for want of clothing,
+or any poor without covering; If his loins have not blessed me, and if he
+were not warmed with the fleece of my sheep; If I have lifted my hand
+against the fatherless, when I saw my help in the gate: Then let mine arm
+fall from my shoulder-blade, and mine arm be broken from the bone.  If I
+[have] rejoiced at the destruction of him that hated me, or lifted up
+myself when evil found him: Neither have I suffered my mouth to sin, by
+wishing a curse to his soul.  The stranger did not lodge in the street;
+but I opened my doors to the traveller.  If my land cry against me, or
+that the furrows likewise thereof complain: If I have eaten the fruits
+thereof without money, or have caused the owners thereof to lose their
+life: Let thistles grow instead of wheat, and cockle instead of barley."
+
+
+
+
+A GRINNING MATCH.
+
+
+   --_Remove fera monstra_, _tuaeque_
+   _Saxificos vultus_, _quaecunque ea_, _tolle Medusae_.
+
+   OVID, _Met._ v. 216.
+
+   Hence with those monstrous features, and, O! spare
+   That Gorgon's look, and petrifying stare.
+
+   POPE.
+
+In a late paper, I mentioned the project of an ingenious author for the
+erecting of several handicraft prizes to be contended for by our British
+artisans, and the influence they might have towards the improvement of
+our several manufactures.  I have since that been very much surprised by
+the following advertisement, which I find in the _Post-boy_ of the 11th
+instant, and again repeated in the _Post-boy_ of the 15th:--
+
+   "On the 9th of October next will be run for upon Coleshill-heath, in
+   Warwickshire, a plate of six guineas value, three heats, by any horse,
+   mare, or gelding that hath not won above the value of 5 pounds, the
+   winning horse to be sold for 10 pounds, to carry 10 stone weight, if
+   14 hands high; if above or under, to carry or be allowed weight for
+   inches, and to be entered Friday, the 5th, at the Swan in Coleshill,
+   before six in the evening.  Also, a plate of less value to be run for
+   by asses.  The same day a gold ring to be grinn'd for by men."
+
+The first of these diversions that is to be exhibited by the 10 pounds
+race-horses, may probably have its use; but the two last, in which the
+asses and men are concerned, seem to me altogether extraordinary and
+unaccountable.  Why they should keep running asses at Coleshill, or how
+making mouths turns to account in Warwickshire, more than in any other
+parts of England, I cannot comprehend.  I have looked over all the
+Olympic games, and do not find anything in them like an ass-race, or a
+match at grinning.  However it be, I am informed that several asses are
+now kept in body-clothes, and sweated every morning upon the heath: and
+that all the country-fellows within ten miles of the Swan grin an hour or
+two in their glasses every morning, in order to qualify themselves for
+the 9th of October.  The prize which is proposed to be grinned for has
+raised such an ambition among the common people of out-grinning one
+another, that many very discerning persons are afraid it should spoil
+most of the faces in the county; and that a Warwickshire man will be
+known by his grin, as Roman Catholics imagine a Kentish man is by his
+tail.  The gold ring which is made the prize of deformity, is just the
+reverse of the golden apple that was formerly made the prize of beauty,
+and should carry for its poesy the old motto inverted:
+
+   _Detur tetriori_.
+
+Or, to accommodate it to the capacity of the combatants,
+
+   The frightfull'st grinner
+   Be the winner.
+
+In the meanwhile I would advise a Dutch painter to be present at this
+great controversy of faces, in order to make a collection of the most
+remarkable grins that shall be there exhibited.
+
+I must not here omit an account which I lately received of one of these
+grinning matches from a gentleman, who, upon reading the above-mentioned
+advertisement, entertained a coffee-house with the following
+narrative:--Upon the taking of Namur, amidst other public rejoicings made
+on that occasion, there was a gold ring given by a Whig justice of peace
+to be grinned for.  The first competitor that entered the lists was a
+black, swarthy Frenchman, who accidentally passed that way, and being a
+man naturally of a withered look and hard features, promised himself good
+success.  He was placed upon a table in the great point of view, and,
+looking upon the company like Milton's Death,
+
+   Grinned horribly a ghastly smile.
+
+His muscles were so drawn together on each side of his face that he
+showed twenty teeth at a grin, and put the country in some pain lest a
+foreigner should carry away the honour of the day; but upon a further
+trial they found he was master only of the merry grin.
+
+The next that mounted the table was a malcontent in those days, and a
+great master in the whole art of grinning, but particularly excelled in
+the angry grin.  He did his part so well that he is said to have made
+half a dozen women miscarry; but the justice being apprised by one who
+stood near him that the fellow who grinned in his face was a Jacobite,
+and being unwilling that a disaffected person should win the gold ring,
+and be looked upon as the best grinner in the county, he ordered the
+oaths to be tendered unto him upon his quitting the table, which the
+grinner refusing, he was set aside as an unqualified person.  There were
+several other grotesque figures that presented themselves, which it would
+be too tedious to describe.  I must not, however, omit a ploughman, who
+lived in the further part of the county, and being very lucky in a pair
+of long lantern jaws, wrung his face into such a hideous grimace that
+every feature of it appeared under a different distortion.  The whole
+company stood astonished at such a complicated grin, and were ready to
+assign the prize to him, had it not been proved by one of his antagonists
+that he had practised with verjuice for some days before, and had a crab
+found upon him at the very time of grinning; upon which the best judges
+of grinning declared it as their opinion that he was not to be looked
+upon as a fair grinner, and therefore ordered him to be set aside as a
+cheat.
+
+The prize, it seems, fell at length upon a cobbler, Giles Gorgon by name,
+who produced several new grins of his own invention, having been used to
+cut faces for many years together over his last.  At the very first grin
+he cast every human feature out of his countenance; at the second he
+became the face of spout; at the third a baboon; at the fourth the head
+of a bass-viol; and at the fifth a pair of nut-crackers.  The whole
+assembly wondered at his accomplishments, and bestowed the ring on him
+unanimously; but what he esteemed more than all the rest, a country
+wench, whom he had wooed in vain for above five years before, was so
+charmed with his grins and the applauses which he received on all sides,
+that she married him the week following, and to this day wears the prize
+upon her finger, the cobbler having made use of it as his wedding ring.
+
+This paper might perhaps seem very impertinent if it grew serious in the
+conclusion.  I would, nevertheless, leave it to the consideration of
+those who are the patrons of this monstrous trial of skill, whether or no
+they are not guilty, in some measure, of an affront to their species in
+treating after this manner the "human face divine," and turning that part
+of us, which has so great an image impressed upon it, into the image of a
+monkey; whether the raising such silly competitions among the ignorant,
+proposing prizes for such useless accomplishments, filling the common
+people's heads with such senseless ambitions, and inspiring them with
+such absurd ideas of superiority and pre-eminence, has not in it
+something immoral as well as ridiculous.
+
+
+
+
+TRUST IN GOD.
+
+
+   _Si fractus illabatur orbis_,
+      _Impavidum ferient ruinae_.
+
+   --HOR., Car. iii. 3, 7.
+
+   Should the whole frame of nature round him break,
+      In ruin and confusion hurled,
+   He, unconcerned, would hear the mighty crack,
+      And stand secure amidst a falling world.
+
+   ANON.
+
+Man, considered in himself, is a very helpless and a very wretched being.
+He is subject every moment to the greatest calamities and misfortunes.  He
+is beset with dangers on all sides, and may become unhappy by numberless
+casualties which he could not foresee, nor have prevented had he foreseen
+them.
+
+It is our comfort, while we are obnoxious to so many accidents, that we
+are under the care of One who directs contingencies, and has in His hands
+the management of everything that is capable of annoying or offending us;
+who knows the assistance we stand in need of, and is always ready to
+bestow it on those who ask it of Him.
+
+The natural homage which such a creature bears to so infinitely wise and
+good a Being is a firm reliance on Him for the blessings and conveniences
+of life, and an habitual trust in Him for deliverance out of all such
+dangers and difficulties as may befall us.
+
+The man who always lives in this disposition of mind has not the same
+dark and melancholy views of human nature as he who considers himself
+abstractedly from this relation to the Supreme Being.  At the same time
+that he reflects upon his own weakness and imperfection he comforts
+himself with the contemplation of those Divine attributes which are
+employed for his safety and his welfare.  He finds his want of foresight
+made up by the Omniscience of Him who is his support.  He is not sensible
+of his own want of strengths when he knows that his helper is almighty.
+In short, the person who has a firm trust on the Supreme Being is
+powerful in His power, wise by His wisdom, happy by His happiness.  He
+reaps the benefit of every Divine attribute, and loses his own
+insufficiency in the fulness of infinite perfection.
+
+To make our lives more easy to us, we are commanded to put our trust in
+Him, who is thus able to relieve and succour us; the Divine goodness
+having made such reliance a duty, notwithstanding we should have been
+miserable had it been forbidden us.
+
+Among several motives which might be made use of to recommend this duty
+to us, I shall only take notice of these that follow.
+
+The first and strongest is, that we are promised He will not fail those
+who put their trust in Him.
+
+But without considering the supernatural blessing which accompanies this
+duty, we may observe that it has a natural tendency to its own reward,
+or, in other words, that this firm trust and confidence in the great
+Disposer of all things contributes very much to the getting clear of any
+affliction, or to the bearing it manfully.  A person who believes he has
+his succour at hand, and that he acts in the sight of his friend, often
+exerts himself beyond his abilities, and does wonders that are not to be
+matched by one who is not animated with such a confidence of success.  I
+could produce instances from history of generals who, out of a belief
+that they were under the protection of some invisible assistant, did not
+only encourage their soldiers to do their utmost, but have acted
+themselves beyond what they would have done had they not been inspired by
+such a belief.  I might in the same manner show how such a trust in the
+assistance of an Almighty Being naturally produces patience, hope,
+cheerfulness, and all other dispositions of the mind that alleviate those
+calamities which we are not able to remove.
+
+The practice of this virtue administers great comfort to the mind of man
+in times of poverty and affliction, but most of all in the hour of death.
+When the soul is hovering in the last moments of its separation, when it
+is just entering on another state of existence, to converse with scenes,
+and objects, and companions, that are altogether new--what can support
+her under such tremblings of thought, such fear, such anxiety, such
+apprehensions, but the casting of all her cares upon Him who first gave
+her being, who has conducted her through one stage of it, and will be
+always with her, to guide and comfort her in her progress through
+eternity?
+
+David has very beautifully represented this steady reliance on God
+Almighty in his twenty-third Psalm, which is a kind of pastoral hymn, and
+filled with those allusions which are usual in that kind of writing.  As
+the poetry is very exquisite, I shall present my reader with the
+following translation of it:
+
+   I.
+
+   The Lord my pasture shall prepare,
+   And feed me with a shepherd's care;
+   His presence shall my wants supply,
+   And guard me with a watchful eye;
+   My noonday walks He shall attend,
+   And all my midnight hours defend.
+
+   II.
+
+   When in the sultry glebe I faint,
+   Or on the thirsty mountain pant;
+   To fertile vales and dewy meads
+   My weary, wand'ring steps He leads;
+   Where peaceful rivers, soft and slow,
+   Amid the verdant landscape flow.
+
+   III.
+
+   Though in the paths of death I tread,
+   With gloomy horrors overspread,
+   My steadfast heart shall fear no ill,
+   For thou, O Lord, art with me still;
+   Thy friendly crook shall give me aid,
+   And guide me through the dreadful shade.
+
+   IV.
+
+   Though in a bare and rugged way,
+   Through devious, lonely wilds I stray,
+   Thy bounty shall my pains beguile:
+   The barren wilderness shall smile
+   With sudden greens and herbage crowned,
+   And streams shall murmur all around.
+
+
+
+***
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