THE OBSERVER: BEING A COLLECTION OF MORAL, LITERARY AND FAMILIAR ESSAYS.
VOLUME THE FIRST.
—MULTORUM PROVIDUS URBES
ET MORES HOMINUM INSPEXIT.—
(HORAT.)
LONDON: PRINTED FOR C. DILLY IN THE POULTRY. M.DCC.LXXXVI.
CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
NUMBER I. INTRODUCTORY paper. Quotation from Spectator No 124. Some description of the present work, particularly of the literary anecdotes of Greece PAGE 1
NUMBER II. Sect of the Dampers described. Quotation from Pliny's letters PAGE 7
NUMBER III. Love of praise. Instances of flattery in the dedication of Sepulveda to the present king of Spain, also in Ben Jonson's masques in the court of James I. That poet an imitator of Aristophanes. Vanity of authors in prefixing their prints to their works. Portrait of a citizen on horseback. Anecdote of a dancing-master and his scholar PAGE 19
NUMBER IV. Visit to Sir Theodore and Lady Thimble: their country-house and family described PAGE 27
NUMBER V. Visit continued. Calliope reads part of an epic poem. Dr. Mac-Infidel discourses against Christ's miracles PAGE 35
NUMBER VI. Conversation with Calliope subsequent to Dr. Mac-Infidel's discourse, and two letters from Captain Henry Constant to that young lady PAGE 44
NUMBER VII. Athenian Vision PAGE 54
NUMBER VIII. Athenian Vision concluded PAGE 64
NUMBER IX. Calliope's interview and reconciliation with Captain Constant described, in a letter from that young lady PAGE 75
NUMBER X. History of Pythagoras PAGE 84
NUMBER XI. The same continued to his death PAGE 92
NUMBER XII. Pythagoras compared with Christ; the heathen argument against revealed religion PAGE 101
NUMBER XIII. Defence of Christ's miracles against modern cavils, particularly of the supernatural darkness at the Passion PAGE 113
NUMBER XIV. Abstract of the history of Athens from its origin to the time of Erecthonius, founder of the Eleusynian mysteries and the Panathenaea PAGE 124
NUMBER XV. Short account of the Mysteries: Athenian history brought down to the siege of Troy, and death of Menestheus PAGE 132
NUMBER XVI. The Iliad of Homer described. Athenian history carried on to the conclusion of the decennial archons PAGE 143
NUMBER XVII. Remarks upon the laws of Draco. Life and actions of Solon to the time of his leaving Athens after the publication of his laws PAGE 153
NUMBER XVIII. History of Athens continued to the death of Solon; character of that eminent citizen. Usurpation of Pisistratus PAGE 164
NUMBER XIX. Of the public library founded at Athens by Pisistratus; account of that and the Alexandrian libraries PAGE 174
NUMBER XX. Danger of sudden elevation. Quotation from Ben Jonson's Sir Epicure Mammon. Letters from Pisistratus to Solon, and Solon to Pisistratus in answer. Anecdotes of the latter PAGE 184
NUMBER XXI. On the subject of divorces, with ironical rules for their further propagation and encouragement PAGE 195
NUMBER XXII. Tragic story of Abdullah and Zarima PAGE 205
NUMBER XXIII. Upon resignation to Providence. Diary of Chaubert the misanthrope PAGE 214
NUMBER XXIV. Chaubert's diary concluded. Translation of a fragment of Philemon, a Greek comic poet PAGE 225
NUMBER XXV. Character of Vanessa; visit to that lady, with a conversation piece PAGE 232
NUMBER XXVI. Character of Leontine. Remarks upon duelling. Precepts for disputants PAGE 244
NUMBER XXVII. Tragic story of a Portuguese gentleman, who died by the rack PAGE 256
NUMBER XXVIII. On the practice of puffing. Enumeration of persons addicted to this practice PAGE 267
NUMBER XXIX. Remarks on the state of society in France, Spain, and England, with the causes which obstruct its enjoyment in this country PAGE 276
NUMBER XXX. On Gaming PAGE 286
THE OBSERVER.
No I.
WHEN a man breaks in upon a company of strangers, to which he is not invited, the intrusion does or does not demand an apology, according to the nature of the business which brings him thither: If it imports the company only, and he has no interest in the errand, the less time he spends in ceremony the better; and he must be a very silly fellow indeed, who stands shuffling and apologizing, when he ought either to warn people of their danger, or inform them of their good fortune: But where this is not the case, and the man, so intruding, has nothing more to say for himself, than that he is come to sit down in their company, to prattle and tell stories, and club his share to the general festivity of the table, it will behove him to recommend himself very speedily to the good graces of his new acquaintance; and if his conversation furnishes neither instruction nor amusement, if he starts no new topics, or does not talk agreeably upon old ones, 'tis well if he does not make his exit as abruptly as he entered.
In like manner, every author finds a material difference in his first approaches to the public, whether his subject recommends him, or he is to recommend his subject: If he has any thing new in art or science to produce, any thing important to communicate for the benefit of mankind, he need be under no difficulty in demanding their attention to a business, which it is so much their interest to hear and understand; on the contrary, if he has nothing to tell his readers, but what they knew before he told it, there must be some candor on their part, and great address on his, to secure to such an author a good reception in the world.
I am at this instant under all the embarrassments incident to a man in the last-mentioned predicament: I am exceedingly desirous to make my best bow to the good company I am intruding myself upon, and yet equally anxious, that in so doing I may neither make my first advances with the stiff grimace of a dancing-master, nor with the too familiar air of a self-important. As I pretend to nothing more in these pages, than to tell my readers what I have observed of men and books, in the most amusing manner I am able, I know not what to say to them more than humbly to request a hearing; and, as I am in perfect charity and good-humour with them, sincerely to hope that they on their parts will be in like good-humour and charity with me.
My first wish was to have followed the steps of those Essayists, who have so successfully set the fashion of publishing their lucubrations from day to day in separate papers. This mode of marching into the world by detachments has been happily taken up by men of great generalship in literature, of whom some are yet amongst us. Though Mr. Addison, in his Spectator, No 124, has asserted, that
a man who publishes his works in a volume, has an infinite advantage over one who communicates his writings to the world in loose sheets and single pieces,
it does not appear that he is serious in his assertion; or, if he is, it is plain that his argument draws one way and his example another;
I must confess,
says he,
I am amazed that the press should be only made use of in this way by news-writers and the zealots of parties; as if it were not more advantageous to mankind to be instructed in wisdom and virtue, than in polities; and to be made good fathers, husbands, and sons, than counsellors and statesmen.
This will suffice to convince us that Mr. Addison saw the advantages of this mode of publication in such a light as led him to make choice of it himself, and to recommend it to others; for it is not to be supposed, that he would have prefixed a motto to this very paper, purporting that
a great book is a great evil,
and then argued seriously in recommendation of that evil.
Some of the most pleasing volumes now in our hands are collections of essays published in this manner, and the plan is still capable of a variety, that is in no danger of being exhausted; add to this, that many years have now elapsed since any papers of this sort have been published: the present time therefore on this account, as well as from other circumstances peculiar to it, may seem favourable to the undertaking: but there are good reasons, why writers have desisted from pursuing any further these attempts of working through a channel, which others are in possession of, who might chance to levy such a toll upon their merchandize as would effectually spoil their market.
The miscellaneous matter I propose to give in these sheets naturally coincides with the method I have taken of disposing them into distinct papers, and I shall proceed to publish in like manner till my plan is compleated, or till any unforeseen event cuts short the prosecution of it. For me to conceive, in an age so enlightened as the present, that I can offer any thing to the public, which many of my readers will not be as well informed of as myself, would be a very silly presumption indeed: simply to say that I have written nothing but with a moral design would be saying very little, for it is not the vice of the time to countenance publications of an opposite tendency; to administer moral precepts through a pleasing vehicle seems now the general study of our Essayists, Dramatists, and Novelists. The Preacher may enforce his doctrines in the stile of authority, for it is his profession to summon mankind to their duty; but an uncommissioned instructor will study to conciliate, whilst he attempts to correct. Even the Satirist, who declares war against vice and solly, seldom commits himself to the attack without keeping some retiring-place open in the quarter of panegyric; if he cuts deep, it is with the hand of a surgeon, not of an assassin. Few authors now undertake to mend the world by severity, many make it their study by some new and ingenious device to soften the rigour of philosophy, and to bind the rod of the moralist with the roses of the muse.
I have endeavoured to relieve and chequer these familiar essays in a manner that I hope will be approved of; I allude to those papers, in which I treat of the literature of the Greeks, carrying down my history in a chain of anecdotes from the earliest poets to the death of Menander; to this part of my work I have addressed my greatest pains and attention. I believe the plan is so far my own, that nobody has yet given the account in so compressed and unmixt a state as I shall do, and none I think will envy me the labour of turning over such a mass of heavy materials for the sake of selecting what I hoped would be acceptable in the relation. Though I cannot suppose I am free from error, I can safely say I have asserted nothing without authority; but it did not suit the purpose of the work to make a display of those authorities, as it was my wish to level it to readers of all descriptions. The translations I shall occasionally give will be of such authors, or rather fragments of authors, as come under few people's review, and have never been seen in an English version; these passages therefore will have the merit of novelty at least with most readers, and if I succeed in naturalizing to any degree authors, whose names only float amongst us, I shall not think that what has been the heaviest part of my undertaking has been the most unprofitable. As I mean this to be a kind of
liber circumcurrens,
I have thought it not amiss to intitle it
The Observer.
No II.
THERE is a pretty numerous sect of philosophers in this kingdom, whom I cannot describe by any apter denomination, than that of
Dampers.
They are to be known in society by a sudden damp, which they are sure to cast upon all companies, where they enter. The human heart, that comes within their atmosphere, never fails to be chilled; and the quickest sense of feeling is as effectually benumb'd, as the touch is with the torpedo. As this sect is of very ancient standing in the world, and has been taken notice of by several heathen writers, I have sometimes thought that it might originate in the school of Thales, who held water to be the first principle of all things. If I were certain that this ancient philosopher always administered his water cold to his disciples, I should incline to think the present sect of
Dampers
was really a branch from the Thalesian root, for it is certain they make great use of his first principle in the philosophy they practise.
The business of these philosophers in society is to check the flights and sallies of those volatile beings, who are subject to be carried away by imagination and fancy, or, in other words, to act as a counterpoise against genius; of the vices of mankind they take little notice, but they are at great pains to correct their vanity. They have various receipts for curing this evil; the ordinary method is by keeping stern silence and an unmoved visage in companies which are disposed to be chearful. This taciturnity, if well kept up, never fails in the end to work a cure upon festivity according to the first principle of Thales: if the
Damper
looks morose, every body wonders what the moody gentleman is displeased with, and each in his turn suspects himself in the fault; if he only looks wise, all are expecting when the dumb oracle will utter, and in the mean time his silence infects the whole circle; if the
Damper
seasons his taciturnity with a shrug of the shoulders, or a shake of the head, judiciously thrown in, when any talkative fellow raises a laugh, 'tis ten to one if the mortified wit ever opens his mouth again for that evening; if a story is told in his company, and the teller makes a slip in a date, or a name, a true
Damper
may open, provided it is done agreably to the rules of his order, by setting the story-teller right with much gravity, and adjusting the mistake so deliberately, that the spirit of the story shall be sure to evaporate, before the commentator has properly settled his correction of the text. If any lucky wit chances to say what is called a
good thing,
and the table applauds, it is a
Damper
's duty to ask an explanation of the joke, or whether that was all, and what t'other gentleman said, who was the butt of the jest, and other proper questions of the like sort. If one of the company risques a sally for the sake of good-fellowship, which is a little on the wrong side of truth, or not strictly reducible to proof, a
Damper
may with great propriety set him right in the matter of fact, and demonstrate, as clear as two and two make four, that what he has said may be mathematically confuted, and that the merry gentleman is mistaken. A
Damper
is to keep strict watch over the morals of the company, and not to suffer the least indiscretion to escape in the warmth of conviviality; on this occasion he must be ready to call to order, and to answer for his friend to the company, that he has better principles than he affects to have; that he should be sorry such and such an opinion went out against him; and that he is certain he forgot himself, when he said so and so. If any glance is made at private characters, however notorious, a
Damper
steps in with a recommendation of candour, and inveighs most pathetically against the sin of evil-speaking. He is never merry in company, except when any one in it is apparently out of spirits, and with such an one he is always exceedingly pleasant.
A
Damper
is so profest an enemy to flattery, that he never applies it in ever so small a degree even to the most diffident: he never chears a young author for fear of marring his modesty, never sinks truths because they are disagreable, and if any one is rashly enjoying the transports of public fame on account of some successful production in art or science, the
Damper
kindly tells him what such and such a critic has scoffingly said on the occasion, and, if nothing better offers, lowers his triumphs with a paragraph from a news-paper, which his thoughtless friend might else have overlooked. He is remarkably careful not to spoil young people by making allowances for spirits or inexperience, or by indulging them in an opinion of their persons or accomplishments. He has many excellent apothegms in his mouth ready to recommend to those, who want them, such as
to be merry and wise;—a grain of truth is better than an ounce of wit;—a fool's bolt is soon shot, but a wise man keeps his within the quiver;—he that was only taught by himself had a fool to his master
;—and many more of the like sort.
The following letter will serve to shew in what sort of estimation this sect of
Dampers
was held by a Roman author, who was one of the finest gentlemen of his time.
PLINY to RESTITUTUS
MELMOTH's Translation.
.
I cannot forbear pouring out my indignation before you in a letter, since I have no opportunity of doing so in person, against a certain behaviour which gave me some offence in an assembly, where I was lately present. The company was entertained with the recital of a very finished performance; but there were two or three persons among the audience, men of great genius in their own and a few of their friends estimation, who sat like so many mutes, without so much as moving a lip or a hand, or once rising from their seats, even to shift their posture. But to what purpose, in the name of good sense, all this wondrous air of wisdom and solemnity, or rather indeed (to give it its true appellation) of this proud indolence? Is it not downright folly, or even madness, thus to be at the expence of a whole day merely to commit a piece of rudeness, and leave him an enemy, whom you visited as a friend? Is a man conscious that he possesses a superior degree of eloquence than the person whom he attends upon on such an occasion? So much the rather ought he to guard against every appearance of envy, as a passion that always implies inferiority, wherever it resides. But whatever a man's talent may be, whether greater or equal or less than his friend's, still it is his interest to give him the approbation he deserves: if greater or equal, because the higher his glory rises, whom you equal or excel, the more considerable yours must necessarily be; if less, because if one of more exalted abilities does not meet with applause, neither possibly can you. For my own part, I honour and revere all, who discover any degree of merit in the painful and laborious art of oratory; for eloquence is a high and haughty dame, who scorns to reside with those that despise her. But perhaps you are not of this opinion; yet who has a greater regard for this glorious science, or is a more candid judge of it than yourself? In confidence of which, I chose to vent my indignation particularly to you, as not doubting you would be the first to share with me in the same sentiments.
Farewell.
The Romans were much in the habit of reading their unpublished performances to select parties, and sometimes no doubt put the patience and politeness of their hearers to a severe trial: I conceive that this practice does not obtain to any great degree amongst us at present; neither is it a thing to be recommended to young authors, except under peculiar circumstances; for they certainly expose themselves and their hearers to a situation very delicate at best, and which sometimes leads to unpleasant consequences. I am aware how much is to be expected from the judicious remarks of a critic, who will correct
with all the malice of a friend
; yet a man so qualified and disposed is not easily found, and does not often fall within the list of an author's acquaintance; men, who read their works in circles, or to any but the most select friends, read for no other purpose but for admiration and applause; they cannot possibly expect criticism, and it is accordingly agreed upon by all, but the sect of the
Dampers,
either to keep out of such circles, or to pay their quota when the reckoning is cast up. Few, but men of quick and lively parts, are forward to recite in such societies, and these are the very men, who are most pained by neglect; for I think it is a remark, with as few exceptions to it as most general remarks have, that brilliant talents are attended with extreme sensibility, and the effects of sensibility bear such resemblance to the effects of vanity, that the undiscerning multitude are too apt to confound them. These are the men, who, in their progress through life, are most frequently misunderstood, and generally less pitied than they ought to be.
Now a
Damper
will tell you that he is consulting such a man's good, and lowering his vanity, when he is sporting with his feelings, and will take merit to himself for the discipline he gives him; but humanity will reflect, that the same spirits, which are prone to exult upon success, are proportionably agonized by the failure of it, and will therefore prompt us to a gentler treatment of such persons.
The sums which are expended in this nation upon those refined enjoyments, which are produced by the expertness of the hands and the ingenuity of the head, are certainly very great; and men are therefore apt to exclaim,
"See what encouragement this country gives to arts and sciences!"
If money were the standard measure of encouragement, there could be no dispute in the case; but so long as men have a feeling for their pride, as well as for their pocket, money alone will not encourage and promote the genius of a nation; it is the grace of doing a favour, which constitutes its merit; it is from the manners of the great that the man of rising talents is to draw that inspiriting consideration of himself, that stimulating pride of nature, which are to push his efforts towards perfection.
A limner will take a canvass and chalk out a man's face he has never seen before, and hang on his robes, or his garter, if he has one, or will put a horse in his hand, if he likes it better, or make a battle in the back ground, if he was ever within hearing of one, and when the job is finished will be paid the price of his labour, like any other mechanic; the money he may spend or put to use, and, if customers come in, he may raise his price upon them, and the world may call those profits an encouragement; but the painter is still a tradesman, and his fitter, not a patron, but a customer: The mercer, whose damask clothes the walls of the nobleman's saloon, and the artist, whose pictures hang round it, are in the same predicament as to encouragement, whilst neither of them are admitted into the house they contribute to adorn.
As I have made this remark with a reference to the
Dampers
in high life, I am aware that there are many eminent encouragers of the arts and sciences amongst the rich and liberal; nay so general is their protection, that it comprehends a numerous importation of exotic tooth-drawers, dancers, and milliners, who find that England is the nursery of genius: even the magnifying philosopher of Piccadilly (unless he multiplies as well as magnifies) has shewn his
wonders
so frequently and to such prodigious numbers, that it is to be doubted, if they shall continue to be
wonders
much longer.
There were men in ancient Greece no doubt, who talked, though Zeno chose to hold his tongue, when certain ambassadors had invited him to supper, that they might report his sayings to their sovereign;
What shall we say of you to our master?
the foreigners demanded;
Say that I had the wisdom to hold my tongue,
replied the Stoic. Though I am clearly of opinion that this great master of silence was an intolerable
Damper,
and made a very poor return to these same hospitable ambassadors for their good entertainment of him, yet I am not quite so ready with my answer to a certain female correspondent, who in consequence of some discourse upon
Dampers
the other day, in a company where she was present, favoured me with the following short, but curious, epistle.
Sir,
I HAVE the misfortune to be married to an elderly gentleman, who has taken strange things in his head of late, and is for ever snubbing me before folks, especially when the Captain is in company. 'Twas but t'other night he broke up a party of hot-cockles in the back parlour, and would not let the Captain take a civil salute, though I assured him it was only a forfeit at questions and commands.
I don't know what he means by saying he will put a spoke in my wheel, but I suspect it is some jealousy matter.
Pray, Sir, is not my husband what you call a
Damper?
Yours, LUCY LOVEIT.
No III.
THE desire of praise is natural, but when that appetite becomes canine, it is no longer in nature: a taste of it is pleasant to most men; temperance itself will take a little, but the stomach sickens with a surfeit of it, and the palate nauseates the debauch.
Let the passion for flattery be ever so inordinate, the supply can keep pace with the demand, and in the world's great market, in which wit and folly drive their bargains with each other, there are traders of all sorts; some keep a stall of offals, some a storehouse of delicacies; a squeamish palate must be forced by alluring provocatives, a foul feeder will swallow any trash that he can get hold of.
In a recent publication of the history of the Emperor Charles the Fifth, written by Sepulveda of Cordova (a contemporary and favorite of that famous monarch,) the Academy of History at Madrid in their dedication to his present Catholic Majesty, address him in the following words—
Nam quem tu, Carole Rex, ut nomine refers, ita etiam bellicâ laude jampridem aemularis.
When these courtly academicians have thus mounted their peaceable sovereign on the war-horse of the victorious Charles, they seriously proceed to tell him, that
being fully equal to his predecessor in his martial character, he is out of all distance superior to him in every other kingly quality; more wise, more politic, more magnanimous, and (as the present work can testify) a greater friend to learning than all that ever went before him, and, if they may risque a prediction, there will probably be none to come in competition with him hereafter.
If his Catholic Majesty shall ever come to an understanding of this paragraph, and strike a fair comparison between himself and his illustrious namesake, I should not be surprized if the next work his academicians shall be employed in proves the fortifications of Ceuta.
When I compare the state of flattery in a free country with that, which obtains in arbitrary states, it is a consolation to find that this mean principle is not natural to mankind; for it certainly abates in proportion as independency advances. This will be very evident to any one, who compares the flattery of Elizabeth's and James's days with the present. Ben Johnson for instance was a surly poet, yet how fulsome are his masques! In his
News from the New World
he says of James—
Read him as you would do the book
Of all perfections, and but look
What his proportions be:
No measure that is thence contriv'd,
Or any motion thence deriv'd,
But is pure harmony.
This poet, though he was rather a clumsy flatterer of his prince, was ingenious enough in the mode he took for flattering himself, by introducing a kind of chorus, wherein he takes occasion to tell his hearers, that
careless of all vulgar censure, as not depending on common approbation, he is confident his plays shall super-please judicious spectators, and to them he leaves it to work with the rest by example, or otherwise.
It is remarkable that this passage should be found in his
Magnetic Lady,
and that he should speak with such confidence of one of his worst productions, as if he was determined to force a bad comedy upon the hearers by the authority of his own recommendation. This is an evident imitation of Aristophanes, who in his comedy of
The Clouds
holds the same language to his audience, fairly telling them
he shall estimate their judgment according
to the degree of applause they shall bestow upon his performance then before them:
in conclusion he inveighs against certain of his contemporaries, Eupolis, Phrynichus, and Hermippus,
with whose comedies if any of his audience is well pleased, that person he hopes will depart from his dissatisfied; but if they condemn his rivals, and applaud him, he shall think better of their judgment for the future. Act
1.
Sc.
6.
The caution authors now proceed with shews the refinement of the times; still they can contrive in a modest way to say civil things of themselves, and it would be hard indeed to disappoint them of so slight a gratification—for what praise is so little to be envied, as that which a man bestows on himself? Several of our diurnal Essayists have contrived under the veil of fiction to hook in something recommendatory of themselves, which they mean should pass for truth; such is the intelligent taciturnity of the Spectator, and the solemn integrity of the Guardian.
The latter in one of his papers notices the ambition of some authors to prefix engravings of their portraits to their title pages; his ridicule has not quite laughed this fashion out of countenance, for I perceive it is still in existence, and I frequently meet the face of an old acquaintance looking through the windows of a bookseller's shop. One very ingenious gentleman, whose
beauty
is amongst the least of his recommendations, has very prudently stamped his
age
upon his print. In the same shop window with this gentleman I observed with great pleasure an elegant author standing by him, as erect as a dart, firm and collected in the awful moment of beginning a
minuet.
I own I regret that the honest butler, who has regaled the age with
a treatise on ale and strong beer,
has not hung out his own head in the front of his book, as a sign of the
good entertainment
within.
But of all the instances of face-flattery I have lately met with, that of a worthy citizen surprized me most, whose compting-house I entered the other day, and found an enormous portrait of my friend in a flaming drapery of blue and gold, mounted upon the back of a war-horse, which the limner has made to rear so furiously, that I was quite astonished to see my friend, who is no great jockey, keep his seat so steadily: he confessed to me that he had consented to be drawn on horseback to please his wife and daughters, who chose the attitude; for his own part it made him quite giddy to look at himself, and he frequently desired the painter not to let the horse prance so, but to no purpose.
Too great avidity of praise will sometimes betray an author into a studied attempt at fine writing, where the thought will not carry the stile; writers of this sort are like those tasteless dabblers in architecture, who turn the gable-ends of barns and cottages into castles and temples, and spend a world of plaistering and pains to decorate a pig-stye. They bring to my mind a ridiculous scene, at which I was present the other day; I found a lady of my acquaintance busily employed in the domestic education of her only son; the preceptor was in the room, and was standing in an attitude very much resembling the erect gentleman I had seen that morning in the bookseller's window: The boy kept his eyes fixt, and seemed to govern his motions by certain signals of the feet and arms, which he repeated from the preceptor. In the course of my conversation with his mother, I chanced to drop my glove upon the floor, upon which he approached to pick it up, but in a step so measured and methodical, that I had done the office for myself, before he had performed his advances. As I was about to resume the conversation, the mother interrupted me, by desiring I would favour her so far as to drop my glove again, that Bobby might have the honour of presenting it to me in proper form: All this while the boy stood as upright as an arrow, perfectly motionless; but no sooner had I thrown down my gauntlet, than he began to put one foot slowly in advance before the other; upon which the preceptor of politeness cried out,
One!—First position!
—The boy then made another movement of his feet, upon which the master repeated—
Two!—Second position!
—This was followed by another, and the echo again cried out—
Three! very well—Third position! Bend your body slowly!
—At the word of command the automaton bent its body very deliberately, its arms hanging down in parallel perpendiculars to the floor, like the forelegs of a quadruped. The glove being now taken up by the right hand, was placed with great decorum upon the back of the left hand; the trunk of the animal was slowly restored to its erect position, and the glove presented with all due solemnity. As I was in hopes the ceremony was now over, upon hearing the teacher cry
bravo!
I thought it time to make my compliment of
Thank you, pretty Master!
but I was again in a mistake, for the mother begged me not to hurry her dear Bobby, but allow him time to make his bow, and still hold the glove in my hand: This was an operation of no slight consequence, for in the time it took him up, a nimble artist might have made the glove: At last however it was over, and the boy was putting himself in order of retreat, when the master observing that I had omitted the necessary bend of my wrist upon receiving the glove, for want of which the whole had been imperfect, proposed a repetition of the manoeuvre, in which Bobby should be the dropper, and himself the picker up of the glove. This proposal struck me with such horror, that taking a hasty leave of the lady, in which, first, second and third position were probably huddled all together, I departed, repeating to myself in the words of Foigard,
All this may be very fine, but upon my soul it is very ridiculous.
No IV.
LADY THIMBLE is one of those female pedants, who with quick animal spirits, a pert imagination, great self-conceit, and a homely person, sets herself up for a woman of talents: She has as much of the learned languages, as a boarding-school girl carries home of French upon her first holidays, when Miss assures you she can call for what she wants, and, though she wont utter a word in the parlour from pretended modesty, insults the ignorance of the chambermaid with an eternal jargon of bad grammar, worse pronounced. This learned lady is the only child of a wealthy trader of the city of London, who, having never advanced in his own education beyond the erudition of the compting-house, took care his daughter should be instructed in every thing he did not understand himself, and as the girl grew exceedingly vain of the applause of the pedagogue, who read to her, the merchant grew as vain of the scholarship of his child, and would listen to the sound of Latin or Greek with as much superstitious respect, as a Gentoo does to the Shanscrite language of the Brahmins.
Miss in the mean time became an insufferable slattern in her cloaths and person, her handkerchiefs and aprons were full of iron-moulds from the drippings of the inkhorn, and her stockings full of holes from her neglect of the needle: These were in fact badges of affectation rather than of oversight, and you could not pay your court to her better than by rallying her about them. She wore a head of false hair, not because her own was thin, but because a wig was thrown on in an instant; this was sometimes done with a negligence, that seemed studied, and when the learned Ventosus vouchsafed to visit her, she was sure to wear her wig awry, as Alexander's courtiers did their heads, in honour of her guest: There was indeed an unseemly humour settled in her nose, but this she got by studying
Locke upon the human understanding
after dinner; before she could develope the whole doctrine of
innate ideas,
the humour deepened many shades, which however on the whole may be allowed to be getting off pretty well for a student in metaphysics. No face could bear the addition of a red nose better than Lady Thimble's: but a more alarming accident had befallen her in her astronomical studies, for as she was following a comet in its perihelion through the solutions of Sir Isaac Newton, her cap caught fire, and she was forced to break off in the midst of a proposition, by which means she dropt a stitch in the demonstration, and never was able to take it up again; her skin being cruelly scorched by this system of the comets, she wears a crimson scar upon her cheek, not indeed as an ornament to her beauty, but as a trophy of her science.
Her works are pretty voluminous, especially in manuscript; but censorious people affect to whisper, that she performed one work in concert with the pedant her master, and that, though this composition was brought secretly into the world, it is the only one of her producing, that bids fair for posterity: This story and the remark upon it, I had from a lady, who is one of her intimate friends, but she assured me she gave no credit to it herself, and considered all such scandalous insinuations as the effects of malice and envy.
At the age of seven and twenty, by the persuasion of her father, she was joined in the bands of wedlock to Sir Theodore Thimble: This gentleman had been lately dubbed a knight for his services to the crown in bringing up a county address; his father, Mr. David Thimble, had been an eminent taylor in the precincts of St. Clements, in which business he had by his industry and other methods raised a very respectable fortune in money, book-debts and remnants: In his latter years Mr. Thimble purchased a considerable estate in Essex with a fine old mansion upon it, the last remaining property of an ancient family. This venerable seat during the life of Mr. Thimble remained uncontaminated by the presence of its possessor, but upon his death it fell into the occupation of young Theodore, who disdaining the cross-legg'd art, by which his father had worked himself into opulence, set out upon a new establishment, and figured off as the first gentleman of his family: He served as sheriff of the county, and acquired great reputation in that high office by the elegant and well cut liveries, which he exhibited at the assizes; a lucky address from the county gave him a title, and the recommendation of a good settlement procured him his present lady, whom we have been describing.
As I have been in long habits of friendship with the worthy citizen her father, I could not resist the many pressing invitations he gave me to pay a visit to his daughter and Sir Theodore at their country seat, especially as he prefaced it by assuring me I should see the happiest couple in England; and that, altho' I had frequently opposed his system of education, I should now be convinced that Arabella made as good a housewife and understood the conduct of her family as well, as if she had studied nothing else, and this he was sure I would confess, if he could prevail with me to accompany him to her house.
On the day following this conversation we set out together, and in a few hours found ourselves at the promised spot: As I remembered this fine old mansion in the days of its primitive simplicity, when I was ushered to its gate through a solemn avenue of branching elms, that arched over head in lofty foliage, and formed an approach in perfect unison with the ancient fashion of the place, I must own I was much revolted to find that Sir Theodore had begun his improvements with a specimen of his father's art, by cutting an old coat into a new fashion: My favorite avenue no longer existed; the venerable tenants of the soil were rooted up, and a parcel of dotted clumps, composed of trumpery shrubs, substituted in their places; I was the more disgusted, when I perceived that by the nonsensical zigzaggery of the road, through which we meandered, I was to keep company with these new-fashioned upstarts through as many parallels, as would serve for the regular approaches to a citadel. At one of these turnings however I caught the glimpse of a well-dressed gentleman standing in a very becoming attitude, who I concluded must be the master of the mansion waiting our approach; and as I perceived he had his hat under his arm, expecting us with great politeness and civility, I instantly took mine from my head, and called to our driver to stop the carriage, for that I perceived Sir Theodore was come out to meet us. My companion was at this time exceedingly busy in directing my attention to the beauties of his son-in-law's improvements, so that I had stopped the chaise before he observed what I was looking at; but how was I surprized to find, in place of Sir Theodore, a leaden statue on a pair of scates painted in a blue and gold coat, with a red waistcoat, whose person upon closer examination I recollected to have been acquainted with some years ago amongst the elegant group, which a certain celebrated artist exhibits to the amusement of stage-coaches and country waggons upon their entrance into town at Hyde-park Corner! I was happy to find that this ridiculous mistake, instead of embarrassing my friend, occasioned infinite merriment, and was considered as so good a joke by all the family upon our arrival, that I am persuaded it was in the mind of the improver when he placed him there; for the jest was followed up by several other party-coloured personages cast to the life, gentlemen and ladies, who were airing themselves upon pedestals to the no small delight of my companion; and though most of these witticisms in lead were of the comic cast, one group, of a mountebank in the act of drawing an old woman's tooth, was calculated to move the contrary passion; and this I observed was the last in the company, standing in view from the windows of the house, as the moral of the fable. We now entered a Chinese fence thro' a gate of the same fashion, to the side of which was affixed a board, on which I observed at some distance a writing in fair characters; this I suspected to be some classical text, which my Lady had set up to impress her visiters with a due respect for her learning, but upon a near approach I found it contained a warning to all interlopers, that men-traps and spring-guns were concealed in those walks.
In this dangerous defile we were encountered by a servant in livery, who was dispatched in great haste to stop our driver, and desire us to alight, as the gravel was newly laid down, and a late shower had made it very soft; my friend readily obeyed the arrest, but I confess the denunciation of traps and guns was so formidable to my mind, that I took no step but with great circumspection and forecast, for fear I was treading on a mine, or touching a spring with my foot, and was heartily glad, when I found myself on the steps, though even these I examined with some suspicion before I trusted myself upon them.
As we entered the house, my friend the merchant whispered me, that
we were now in my Lady's regions; all without doors was Sir
Theodore's taste, all within was her's:
—But as here a new scene was opened, I shall reserve my account to another paper.
No V.
OUR visit to Sir Theodore and Lady Thimble being unexpected, we were shewn into the common parlour, where this happy couple were sitting over a good fire with a middle-aged man of athletic size, who was reposing in an elbow chair in great state with his mull in his hand, and with an air so self-important, as plainly indicated him to be the dictator of this domestic circle.
When the first salutations were over, Lady Thimble gave her orders to the servant, in the stile of Lucullus, to prepare
The Apollo,
declaring herself ashamed to receive a gentleman of talents in any other apartment; I beseeched her to let us remain where we were, dreading a removal from a comfortable fire-side to a cold stately apartment, for the season was severe; I was so earnest in my request, that Sir Theodore ventured in the most humble manner to second my suit; the consequence of which was a smart reprimand, accompanied with one of those expressive looks, which ladies of high prerogative in their own houses occasionally bestow to husbands under proper subjection, and I saw with pity the poor gentleman dispatched for his officiousness upon a freezing errand through a great hall, to see that things were set in order, and make report, when they were ready. I could not help giving my friend the merchant a significant look upon this occasion; but he prudently kept silence, waiting with great respect the dreadful order of march.
My Lady now introduced me to the athletic philosopher in the elbow-chair, who condescended to relax one half of his features into a smile, and with a gracious waving of his hand, or rather fist, dismissed me back again to my seat without uttering a syllable. She then informed me, that she had a treat to give me, which she flattered herself would be a feast entirely to my palate; I assured her Ladyship I was always happiest to take the family-dinner of my friends, adding that in truth the sharp air had sufficiently whetted my appetite to recommend much humbler fare, than I was likely to find at her table. She smiled at this, and told me it was the food of the mind that she was about to provide for me; she undertook for nothing else; culinary concerns were not her province; if I was hungry, she hoped there would be something to eat, but for her part she left the care of her kitchen to those who lived in it. Whilst she was saying this methought the philosopher gave her a look, that seemed to say he was of my way of thinking; upon which she rung the bell, and ordered dinner to be held back for an hour, saying to the philosopher she thought we might have
a Canto
in that time.
She now paused for some time, fixing her eyes upon him in expectation of an answer; but none being given, nor any signal of assent, she rose, and, observing that
it was surprizing to think what Sir Theodore could be about all this while, for she was sure
The Apollo
must be ready,
without more delay bade us follow her;
Come, Sir,
says she to me, as I passed the great hall with an aking heart and chattering teeth,
you shall now have a treat in your own taste
; and, meeting one of the domestics by the way, bade him tell Calliope to come into
The Apollo.
When I set my foot into the room, I was immediately saluted by something like one of those ungenial breezes, which travellers inform us have the faculty of putting an end to life and all its cares at a stroke: A fire indeed had been lighted, which poor Sir Theodore was soliciting into a blaze, working the bellows with might and main to little purpose; for the billets were so wet, that Apollo himself with all his beams would have been foiled to set them in a flame: The honest gentleman had taken the precaution of opening all the windows, in spite of which no atom of smoke passed up the chimney, but came curling into the room in columns as thick, as if a hecatomb had been offering to the shrine of Delphi; indeed this was not much to be wondered at, for I soon discovered that a board had been fixed across the flue of the chimney, which Sir Theodore in his attention to the bellows had neglected to observe: I was again the unhappy cause of that poor gentleman's unmerited rebuke, and in terms much severer than before; it was to no purpose he attempted to bring Susan the house-maid in for some share of the blame; his plea was disallowed; and though I must own it was not the most manly defence in the world, yet, considering the unhappy culprit as the son of a taylor, I thought it not entirely inadmissible.
When the smoke cleared up I discovered a cast of the Belvidere Apollo on a pedestal in a niche at the upper end of the room; but, if we were to judge by the climate, this chamber must have derived its name from Apollo, by the rule of
lucus a non lucendo:
As soon as we were seated, and Lady Thimble had in some degree composed her spirits, she began to tell me, that the treat she had to give me was the rehearsal of part of an epic poem, written by a young lady of seventeen, who was a miracle of genius, and whose talents for composition were so extraordinary, that she had written a treatise on female education, whilst she was at the boarding-school, which all the world allowed to be a wonderful work for one of such an early age. There was no escape, for Calliope herself now entered the room, and dinner was put back a full hour for the luxury of hearing a canto of a boarding-school girl's epic poem read by herself in the presence of Apollo. The Scottish philosopher had prudently kept his post by the parlour fire, and I alone was singled out as the victim; Sir Theodore and his father-in-law being considered only as expletives to fill up the audience. Calliope was enthroned in a chair at the pedestal of Apollo, whilst Lady Thimble and I took our seats opposite to the reader.
I was now to undergo an explanation of the subject matter of this poem; this was undertaken and performed by Lady Thimble, whilst the young poetess was adjusting her manuscript: The subject was allegorical; the title was
The Triumph of Reason,
who was the hero of the piece; the inferior characters were the human passions personified; each passion occupied a canto, and the lady had already dispatched a long list; if I rightly remember we were to hear the fourteenth canto; in thirteen actions the hero Reason had been victorious, but it was exceedingly doubtful how he would come off in this, for the antagonist he had to deal with was no less a personage than almighty
Love
himself: The metre was heroic, and many of the thoughts displayed a juvenile fancy and wild originality; the action was not altogether uninteresting, nor ill-managed, and victory for a while was held in suspence by a wound the hero received from an arrow somewhere in the region of the heart; for this wound he could obtain no cure, till an ancient physician, after many experiments for his relief, cut out the part affected with his
scythe:
Upon the whole the poem was such, that had it not been allegorical, and had not I been cold and hungry, I could have found much to commend and some things to admire, even tho' the poetess had been twice as old and not half so handsome, for Calliope was extremely pretty, and I could plainly discover that nature meant her to be most amiable and modest, if flattery and false education would have suffered her good designs to have taken place; I therefore looked upon her with pity, as I do on all spoilt children; and when her reading was concluded, did not bestow all that praise, which, if I had consulted my own gratification more than her good, I certainly should have bestowed; the only occasion, on which I think it a point of conscience to practise the philosophy of
the Dampers.
At length dinner was announced, and being a part of Lady Thimble's domestic oeconomy, which she had put out of her own hands, as she informed us, and in which I suspect the athletic philosopher had something to say, it was plentifully served. Sir Theodore and my friend the merchant plied him pretty briskly with the bottle; but as a stately first-rate ship does not condescend to open her ports to the petty cruisers that presume to hail her, in like manner this gigantic genius kept the oracle within him muzzled, nor condescended once to draw the tompion of his lips, till it happened in the course of many topics, that Lady Thimble, speaking of the talents of Calliope, observed that
miracles
were not ceased:
How should that thing be said to cease,
replied the oracle,
which never had existence?
The spring was now touched, that put this vast machine in motion, and, taking infidelity in miracles for his text, he carried us, in the course of a long uninterrupted harangue, through a series of learned deductions, to what appeared his grand desideratum,
viz. an absolute refutation of the miracles of Christ by proofs logical and historical.
Whilst this discourse was going on, I was curious to observe the different effects it had on the company: Lady Thimble received it with evident marks of triumph, so that I could plainly see all was gospel with her, and the only gospel she had faith in: Sir Theodore wisely fell asleep; the merchant was in his compting-house,—
His mind was tossing on the ocean:
There, where his argosies with portly sail,
Like Seigniors and rich Burghers on the flood,
Or as it were the pageants of the sea,
Did overpeer the petty traffickers—
But all this while the young unsettled thoughts of Calliope were visibly wavering, sometimes borne away by the
ipse dixit
of the philosopher and the echo of Lady Thimble's plaudits; sometimes catching hold of Hope, and hanging to the anchor of her salvation, Faith; at other times without resistance carried down the tide of declamation, which rolled rapidly along in provincial dialect, like a torrent from his native Highland craggs, rough and noisy; I saw her struggles with infinite concern; the savage saw them also, but with triumph, and, turning his discourse upon the breach he had made in her belief, pressed the advantage he had gained with devilish address; in short a new antagonist had started up, more formidable to
Reason
than all the fourteen, from whose attack she had brought her hero off with victory; and that champion, which had resisted the arrows of all-powerful
Love,
was likely now to fall a victim to the pestilential breath of
Infidelity.
In this dilemma I was doubtful how to act; I did not decline the combat because I dreaded the strength of this Goliah of the Philistines, for I knew the weapons might be confided in, which the great captain of salvation had put into my hands; but I disdained to plead before a prejudiced tribunal, in which the mistress of the mansion sat as judge; and as sleep had secured one of the company out of harm's way, and another was upon an excursion from which I did not wish to bring him home, there remained only Calliope, and I determined within myself to take occasion of discoursing with her apart, before I lest the house next morning.
No VI.
I HAD resolved to have some conversation with Calliope after the athletic philosopher's harangue against the evidences of the Christian religion: I was at the pains of putting my thoughts together in writing before I went to bed, for I judged it best to give them to Calliope in such a form, as she might hereafter at any time refer to and examine.
I had the satisfaction of an hour's conversation with that young lady next morning, before the family had assembled for breakfast: I could observe that something dwelt upon her mind, and demanding of her if I was not right in my conjecture, she answered me at once to the point without hesitation—
"I confess to you,"
says she,
"that the discourse which Dr. Mac-Infidel yesterday held, has made me thoroughly unhappy; things, which are above reason, I can readily suppose are mysteries, which I ought to admit as matter of faith in religion; but things contrary to reason, and facts which history confutes how am I to believe? What am I to do in this case? Have you any thing to oppose to his argument? If you have, I should be happy to hear it; if you have not, I pray you let us talk no more upon the subject."
—I then gave the paper into her hand, which I had prepared, and explaining to her the reasons I had for not taking up the dispute before our company yesterday, desired her to give my paper a serious reading; if there was any thing in it, that laid out of the course of her studies, I would gladly do my best to expound it, and would shew her the authorities to which it referred: She received my paper with the best grace in the world, and promised me that she would consider it with all the attention she was mistress of.
In our further discourse it chanced, that I let drop some expressions in commendation of her understanding and talents, upon which I observed she gave me a very expressive look, and when I would have spoken of her poem, she shook her head, and, hastily interrupting me, desired I would spare her on that subject; she did not wish to be any more flattered in a folly she had too much cause to repent of; she had burnt the odious poem I was speaking of, and, bursting suddenly into a flood of tears, protested she would never be guilty of writing another line of poetry, while she lived.
No words of mine can paint the look and action, which accompanied these expressions; much less can I describe the stroke of pity and surprize, which her emotion gave me. It was evident she alluded to something that had occurred since the reading of the poem; I recollected she was absent all the latter part of the evening, and I felt an irresistible propensity to enquire into the cause of her affliction, tho' the shortness of our acquaintance gave me no right to be inquisitive; she saw my difficulty, for her intuition is very great; after a short recollection, which I did not attempt to interrupt—
"I know not how it is,"
says she,
"but something tells me I am speaking to a friend."
—Here she paused, as doubting whether she ought to proceed or not, and fixed her eyes upon the floor in evident embarrassment; it will readily be supposed I seized the opportunity to induce her to confide in me, if there was any service I could render towards alleviating the distress she was evidently suffering—
"I have no right to trouble you,"
says she,
"but that fatal argument I heard last night has so weakened the resource, to which my mind in all afflictions would else have naturally applied, that I really know not how to support myself, nor where to look for comfort, but by throwing myself upon your friendship for advice, as the most unhappy of all beings. You must know I have the honour to be the daughter of that gallant sea officer Captain —."
Here she named an officer, who will be ever dear to his country, ever deplored by it, and whose friendship is at once the joy and the affliction of my life. I started from my seat; the stroke I felt, when she pronounced a name so rooted in my heart, was like the shock of electricity; I clasped her hands in mine, and pressing them exclaimed—
'You have a father'
—here I stopt—the recollection checked me from proceeding—for it was false.—
'No, no, my child,'
I said,
'you have no father! nor had he a friend, who can replace your loss; however, pray proceed.'
—
"Implicitly,"
replied Calliope, (for by that name I still must beg to call her, though that and poetry are both renounced for ever.)
"As you are the friend of my father, you must know that he lost my mother, when I was an infant; two years are now passed since he perished; a miserable period it has been to me; I am now under the protection of a distant relation, who is an intimate of the lady of this house, and one whose ruinous flattery jointly with Lady Thimble's, has conspired to turn my wretched head, and blast the only hope of happiness I had in life: These learned ladies, as they would be thought, put me upon studies I was never fitted to, gave me this silly name Calliope, and never ceased inflaming my vanity, till they persuaded me I had a talent for poetry: In this they were assisted by Mac-Infidel, who lives in great intimacy with Lady Thimble; the adulation of a learned man, (for that he surely is,) intoxicated me with self-opinion, and the gravity of his character compleated the folly and destruction of mine."
'What do I hear,'
said I, interrupting her,
'the destruction of your character?'
—
"Have patience,"
she replied;
"when I disclose the sorrows of my heart, you will own that my destruction is compleat."
—Melancholy as these words were, the deduction notwithstanding that I drew from them was a relief, compared to what at first I apprehended.—
"Alas! Sir,"
resumed Calliope,
"I have lost the affections of the most amiable, the most beloved of men: He was my father's darling, and from a boy was educated by him in the profession of the sea; he shared every service with my father except the last fatal one, in which your friend unhappily was lost; Providence, that ordained the death of the one, has in the same period enriched the other; he is lately returned from the West Indies, and by his duty has been confined to the port he arrived in, so that we have not met since his return to England: Here is the first letter he wrote to me from Plymouth; read it, I beseech you, and then compare it with the fatal one I received last night."
Calliope put a letter into my hands, and I read as follows.—
MY DEAREST NANCY!
I have this instant brought my frigate to an anchor, and seize the first moment, that my duty permits, to tell the loveliest of her sex, that I have luckily come across a prize, that makes a man of me for life; A man did I say? Yes, and the happiest of men, if my dear girl is still true, and will consent to share the fortune of her faithful Henry.
I cannot leave Plymouth this fortnight, therefore pray write to me under cover to my friend the Admiral.
Yours ever, HENRY CONSTANT.
When I had returned this letter to Calliope, she resumed her narrative in the following words:
"The joy this letter gave me set my spirits in such a flow, that in the habit I was of writing verses, I could not bring my thoughts to run in humble prose, but giving the reins to my fancy filled at least six sides with rhapsodies in verse; and not content with this, and foolishly conceiving that my poem would appear at least as charming to Henry, as the flattery of my own sex had persuaded me it was to them, I inclosed a fair copy and sent it to him in a packet by the stage-coach; the next return of the post brought me this fatal letter I received last night."
MADAM,
Though there cannot be in this world a task so painful to me, as what I am now about to perform, yet I think it an indispensible point of honour to inform my late most lovely and beloved Nancy, that if I am to suppose her the author of that enormous bundle of verses I have received from her hand, it is the last favour that hand must bestow upon her unhappy Henry.
My education you know; for it was formed under your most excellent father; I served with him from a child, and he taught me, not indeed the knack of making verses, but what I hope has been as useful to my country, the duties of an officer. Being his daughter, I had flattered myself you would not like me the less for following his profession, or for being trained to it under his instruction. But alas! Nancy, all these hopes are gone. My ignorance would only disgrace you, and your wit would make me contemptible; since you are turned poetess, how can my society be agreeable? If those verses you have sent me are all of your own making, you must have done little else since we parted, and if such are to be your studies and occupations, what is to become of all the comforts of a husband? How are you to fulfil the duties of a mother, or manage the concerns of a family? No, no; may heaven defend me from a learned wife! I am too proud to be the butt of my own table; too accustomed to command, to be easily induced to obey; let me ever live a single man, or let the wife I chuse be modest, unpretending, simple, natural in her manners, plain in her understanding; let her be true as the compass I sail by, and (pardon the coarseness of the allusion) obedient to the helm as the ship I steer; then, Nancy, I will stand by my wife, as I will by my ship, to the latest moment I have to breathe. For God's sake what have women to do with learning? But if they will step out of their own profession and write verses, do not let them step into ours to chuse husbands; we shall prove coarse messmates to the muses.
I understand so much of your poetical epistle, as to perceive that you are in the family of Sir Theodore and Lady Thimble: Three days of such society would make me forswear matrimony for ever: To the daughter of my friend I must for ever speak and act as a friend; suffer me then to ask if any man in his senses will chuse a wife from such a school? Oh grief to think! that one so natural, so sincere and unaffected as was my Nancy, could be the companion of such an ugly petticoated pedant as Lady Thimble, such a tame hen-pecked son of a taylor as Sir Theodore!
As for the volume of verses you have sent me, I dare say it is all very fine, but I really do not comprehend three lines of it; the battles you describe are what I never saw by sea or land, and the people who fight them such as I have never been accustomed to serve with; one gentleman I perceive there is, who combats stoutly against
Love
; it is a good moral, and I thank you for it; cost what it may, I will do my best to imitate your hero.
Farewell.
I must be only your most faithful friend, HENRY CONSTANT.
No VII.
Magnum iter ad doctas proficisci cogor Athenas.
(PROPERT.)
I WAS agreeably surprized the other day with an unexpected visit from a country friend, who once made a considerable figure in the fashionable world, and, with an elegant taste for the fine arts, is possest of many valuable paintings and sculptures of his own collecting in Italy: He told me, that after six years absence from town, he had made a journey purposely to regale his curiosity for a few days with the spectacles of this great capital, and desired I would accompany him on his morning's tour to some of the eminent artists, and afterwards conduct him to the theatre, where he had secured himself a seat for the representation of Mr. Southern's tragedy of the
Fatal Marriage.
Though I had just been honoured with a card from Vanessa, purporting that she should hold
The Feast of Reason
that evening at her house, where my company was expected, I did not hesitate to accept the invitation of my country friend, and excuse myself from that of Vanessa, though I must confess my curiosity was somewhat roused by the novelty of the entertainment to which I was bidden. Our day passed so entirely to the satisfaction of my candid companion, that, when we parted at night, he shook me by the hand, and with a smile of complacency declared, that a day so spent would not disgrace the diary of Pericles.
When I had returned to my apartment, this allusion of my friend to the age of Pericles, with the recollection of what had passed in the day, threw me into a reverie, in the course of which I fell asleep, whilst my mind with more distinctness than is usual in dreaming, pursued its waking train of thought after the following manner.
"I found myself in a stately portico, which being on an eminence, gave me the prospect of a city, inclosing a prodigious circuit, with groves, gardens, and fields, seemingly set apart for martial exercises and sports; the houses were not clustered into streets and alleys like our great trading towns, but were placed apart and separated without any regular order, as if each man had therein consulted his own particular taste and enjoyments. I thought I never saw so delightful a place, nor a people who lived so much at their ease: I felt a freshness and salubrity in the climate, that seemed to clear the brain, and give a spring to the spirits and whole animal frame: The sun was bright and glowing, but the lightness of the atmosphere and a refreshing breeze qualified the heat in the most delicious manner. As I looked about me with wonder and delight, I observed a great many edifices of the purest architecture, that seemed calculated for public purposes; and wherever my eye went, it was encountered by a variety of statues in brass or marble; immediately at the foot of the steps, leading to the portico, in which I stood, I observed a figure in brass of exquisite workmanship, which by its attributes I believed designed to represent the heathen deity Mercurius. In the centre of the city there was an edifice inclosed within walls, which I took to be the citadel; a rapid stream of clear water meandered about the place, and was trained through groves and gardens in the most picturesque and pleasing manner, while the prospect at distance was bounded by the sea.
"As I stood wrapt in contemplation of this new and brilliant scenery, methought I was accosted by a middle-aged man in a loose garment of fine purple, who wore his hair after the manner of our ladies, braided and coiled round upon the crown of his head with great care and delicacy to a considerable heighth; and (which I thought remarkable) he had fastened the braids in several places with golden pins, on which were several figures of small grashoppers of the same metal; behind him walked a servant-youth, or slave, carrying a light wicker chair for his master to repose in, a custom that seemed to me to argue great effeminacy; and looking about me I found it was pretty universal, many of the bettermost sort of citizens being seated in the streets, conversing at their ease, though there was certainly nothing in the climate, that made such an indulgence necessary.
"As I was eyeing this gentleman with a surprize, that I must own had some small tincture of contempt in it, he turned himself to me, and in the most complaisant manner imaginable accosted me in my own language, telling me, he perceived I was a stranger in Athens, and if I was curious to see what was remarkable in the place, he was ready to dedicate the day to my service. To this courteous address I returned the best answer I was able, adding that every thing was new to me and many things appeared admirable. You will say so, replied he, before the day is past, and yet I cannot shew you in the space of a day the hundredth part of what this city contains worth a stranger's observation: Of a certain Arts and Sciences are now carried to their utmost pitch, and no future age I think will succeed, in which the glory of the Athenian commonwealth, and the genius of its citizens shall be found superior to their present lustre.
"The portico, in which you stand, continued the Athenian, is what we call
P
cile,
or the
painted Portico
; the brazen statue at the foot of the steps was raised by the nine Archons in honour of
Mercurius Agoraeus,
or the
Forensal
; and dedicated by them to the tribes: That by its side is the statue of Solon, the other at some distance is the lawgiver Lycurgus. The gate before you, on which you see those warlike trophies, was so adorned in memory of the defeat of Plistarchus, who was brother of the famous Cassander, and commanded his cavalry and auxiliary troops in the action recorded. These paintings behind you, with which the portico is furnished and from which it has its name, are all upon public subjects in commemoration of wise or valiant citizens: The pictures on your right hand are by the celebrated Polygnotus, these on your left by Micon, equal to his rival in art, but not in munificence; for Polygnotus would accept no other reward for his works, than the fame inseparable from such eminent performances; Micon on the contrary was paid by the state. There are several others by the hands of our great masters, particularly that incomparable piece, which represents the field of Marathon, a composition by the great Panaenus, brother of the statuary Phidias; but this, as well as the others, will demand a more particular description.
"Examine this composition on your right; it is the work of Polygnotus; you see two armies drawn up front to front and on the point of engaging; these are the Athenians, the adverse troops are the Lacedemonians; the scene is Oenoe; such is the contrivance of the artist, that you are sure victory is to declare for the Athenians, though the battle is not yet commenced.
"In the opposite piece you see the battle of Theseus with the Amazons; a capital composition by Micon; these warlike ladies are fighting on horseback; with what wonderful art has the master expressed the character of athletic beauty without deviating into vulgarity and grossness! If you recollect the Lysistrata of Aristophanes you will meet an elogium on this picture; it is thus the sister arts encourage and support each other.
"Now turn to Polygnotus's side and look at that magnificent piece of art: The painter has chosen for the subject of his composition the council of the Grecian chiefs upon the violence done to Cassandra by Ajax after the capture of Troy; you see the brutal character of the man strongly expressed in the hero of the piece; amongst that group of Trojan captives Cassandra is conspicuous; that figure, which represents Laodice, is worth your notice, as being a portrait of Elpinice a celebrated courtesan: Scrupulous people have taken offence at it, but great painters will indulge themselves in these liberties, and are fond of painting after beautiful nature; of which I could give you innumerable examples.
"Now let us in the last place regale our eyes with this inestimable battle of Marathon by Panaenus: What think you of it? Was it not a reward worthy of the heroes, who preserved their country on that glorious day? Which party is most honoured by the work, the master who wrought it, or the valiant personages who are recorded by it? It is a question difficult to decide. You will observe three different groups in this superb composition, describing three different periods of the action: Here you see the Athenians and their allies the Plataeans just commencing the action.—There, further removed in perspective, the barbarians are defeated; the slaughter is raging, and the Medes are plunging desperately into the marshy lake to avoid their pursuers; examine the back ground, and you see the Phoenician gallies; the barbarians are making a bold attack, and the sea is covered with wrecks: All mouths are open in applause of this picture, and it was but the other day, that the great orator Demosthenes referred to it in a solemn harangue upon Neaera, as did Eschines in his pleading against Ctesiphon. All our Captains are taken from the life; that General who is encouraging his troops is Miltiades; he is the hero of the piece, and I can assure you the resemblance is in all points exact: This is the portrait of Callimachus the Polemarck: There you see the hero Echetlus, and this is the brave Epizelus; that Athenian, who is valiantly fighting, is Cynaegirus himself, who lost both his hands in the action; there goes an extraordinary story with that dog, which is by his side, and has seized the dying barbarian by the throat; the faithful creature would not forsake his master; he was killed in the action, and is now deservedly immortalized in company with the illustrious heroes, who are the subject of the piece. Those splendid warriors in the army of the Medes, who are standing in their chariots, and calling to their troops, are the generals Datis and Artaphanes. They are drawn in a proud and swelling stile, and seem of a larger size and proportion than our Athenian champions; and the fact is, that this group was inserted by another master; they are by the hand of Micon, and perhaps do not exactly harmonize with the rest; the silly Athenians were piqued at their appearance, and in a fit of jealousy punished Micon by a fine for having painted them too flatteringly; the painter suffered in his pocket, but the people in my opinion were disgraced by the sentence: This circumstance has given occasion for many on the part of Micon to contest the honour of the painting with Panaenus, who in justice must be considered as principal author of the work; and in course of time it may happen, that posterity will be puzzled which master to ascribe it to.
"There are many more pictures well deserving your attentive notice, particularly that by Pamphilus, which represents Alomena with the Heraclidae asking aid of the Athenians against Eurystheus; and this inspired old figure by Polygnotus with a lyre in his hand, which is the portrait of no less a person than the great Sophocles;—but come, let us be gone, for we have much besides to see; and I perceive Zeno coming this way with his scholars to hold his lectures in this portico; and I for one must confess I am no friend to the Stoics, or as we call them the Zenonians.
No VIII.
Ad vetustissimam et sapientissimam et diis carissimam et communem amasiam, hominumque ac Deorum terram, Athenas mittebaris.
(LIBANIUS IN ORATIONE.)
"FROM the painted portico, in which my last was dated, my Athenian conductor took me to the Ptolemaic Gymnasium, in which I observed several statues of Mercury in marble, and others of brass, which he explained to me to be of Ptolemy the founder, Juba and Chrysippus the philosopher. There was one of Berosus the astrologer with a tongue of pure gold, in commemoration of his divine predictions: On one hand of me stood the doric temple of Theseus, enriched with some inestimable paintings of Micon, particularly one upon the subject of the fight of the Lapithae and Centaurs: on the other hand was the antient temple of the Dioscuri, in which I was shewn many capital pictures by Polygnotus; it is here, says my conductor, we administer to the Athenian youth that solemn oath, which binds them not to desert their ranks in action, but to perish, when necessity so requires, in defence of their country; the form is rather long, says he, but this is the substance of the oath. The Prytaneum, or Court-house, was now in view, where the magistracy of the city assemble for the dispatch of public business: Here I saw the venerable laws of Solon in a chest of stone, the statues of Pax and Vesta, and (which were more interesting to me) the figures of Miltiades and Themistocles of exquisite workmanship in pure marble; in this place all those citizens, and the posterity of those, who have deserved well of the state, receive their public doles or allowance of bread in cakes composed of meal, oil, and water; here also I saw the perpetual fire upon the altar of Vesta, and the celebrated image of the Bona Fortuna of the Athenians. In the adjoining temple of Lucina I was shewn the famous statues of that deity clothed in drapery to the feet: My guide now carried me to the great temple of Olympian Jupiter, founded by the tyrant Pisistratus, and perfected by his sons and successors; I observed to my conductor, that I had seen no temple in Athens, except this, with interior columns; he informed me that the great span of the roof made it necessary in this instance, but that it was contrary to their rule of architecture and obtained in no other: He further told me that the city had expended ten thousand talents in this edifice: The image of the god was cut in ivory and gold; to every column was affixed a brazen statue, representing the colonial cities of the Athenian empire. The display of statuary exceeded all description or belief, nor was the painter's art wanting in its share of the decoration; for wherever pictures could be disposed, and particularly about the pedestal of the statue of Jupiter, the most capital paintings were to be seen.
"My sight was now so dazzled with the display of brilliant images, and my mind so overpowered with the miracles of art, which had passed in review, that I beseeched my guide to carry me either to some of those groves, which were in my eye, where I could meditate on what I had seen, or to spectacles of any other sort according to his choice and discretion, for otherwise I should apprehend, from the variety of objects, I should retain the memory of none. He told me in reply, that this was his intention, observing that the proportion I had seen was very small indeed to what the city contained; there was however one more statue, which he could not dispense with himself from shewing me, being a model of beauty and perfection; and having so said methought he took me into a neighbouring garden, and in a grove of cypress and myrtle presented to my view the most exquisite piece of sculpture I had ever beheld.—This, says he, is the Venus called Celestial, the workmanship of the immortal Alcamen.—After I had contemplated this divine original with astonishment and rapture, I was satisfied within myself, that we are mistaken in supposing it has descended to us, and I now acknowledge that our celestial Venus is a copy far inferior to its inimitable prototype. Having examined this statue for some time, I turned to my conductor and said:—Let us gratify our senses in some other way; I have seen enough of art.
"It is impossible to avoid it, replies he, in this city, and so saying led me into the Lyceum; this Gymnasium, says he, has been lately instituted by Pericles, and these plantations of plane-trees are of his making; so are these aqueducts; the Lyceum was originally dedicated to Pastoral Apollo, and owes its foundation and beauty in the first instance to the elegant Pisistratus, who from the surprising resemblance of their persons we now call the elder Pericles. The place is delightful, and before you leave it take notice of this statue of Apollo; the artist has described him in the attitude of resting after his daily course; you see he leans against a column; his right arm bent over his head, and in his left he holds his bow; it is a first-rate piece of sculpture. Leaving the Lyceum my conductor took me by the way of the Tripods; here he shewed me the inimitable satyr in brass, the boasted master-piece of Praxiteles, and the Cupid and Bacchus of Thymilus; we were now close by the theatre, in the portico of which I was shewn the statue of Eschylus, and two pedestals for the statues of Sophocles and Euripides, then under the artists hands, although both those poets were now living: The doors of the theatre were not yet opened, and the temple of Venus being near at hand, methought we entered, and I beheld the beautiful Cupid crowned with roses, painted by Zeuxis; from hence I could see the works, that Pericles had been carrying on upon the citadel, but this we did not enter.
"Methought I was now carried into the theatre amidst a prodigious crowd of people; the comedy of the night was intitled
The Clouds,
and the famous Aristophanes was announced to be the author of it. It was expected that Socrates would be personally attacked, and a great party of that philosopher's enemies were assembled to support the poet. I was much surprized, when my companion pointed out to me that great philosopher in person, who had actually taken his seat in the theatre, and was sitting between Alcibiades and Antipho the son of Pericles; by the side of Alcibiades sate Euripides, and at Antipho's left hand sate Thucydides; I never beheld two more venerable old men than the poet and historian, nor such comely persons as Alcibiades and Antipho: Socrates was exceedingly like the busts we have of him, his head was bald, his beard bushy, and his stature low; there was something very deterring in his countenance; his person was mean and his habit squalid; his vest was of loose drapery, thrown over his left shoulder after the fashion of a Spanish Capa, and seemed to be of coarse cloth, made of black wool undyed; he had a short staff in his hand of knotted wood with a round head, which he was continually rubbing in the palm of his hand, as he talked with Alcibiades, to whom he principally addressed his discourse: Thucydides had lately returned from exile upon a general amnesty, and I observed a melancholy in his countenance mixed with indignation; Euripides seemed employed in examining the countenances of the spectators, whilst Antipho with great modesty paid a most respectful attention to the venerable philosopher on his right hand. Whilst I was engaged in observing this respectable group, my conductor whispered the following words in my ear—
This is the second attack from the same hand upon Socrates; that of last year was defeated by Alcibiades; but if this night's comedy succeeds, I predict that our philosopher is undone: and in truth his school is much out of credit; for some of the worst characters of the age have come out of his hands of late.
"When the players first came on the stage there was so great a murmur in the theatre, that I could scarce hear them; after a short time however the silence became pretty general, and the plot of the play, such as it was, began to open; I perceived that the poet had devised the character of an old clownish father, who being plunged in debt by the extravagancies of a flanting wife and a spendthrift son, who wasted his fortune upon race-horses, was for ever puzzling his brains to strike upon some expedient for cheating his creditors. With this view he goes to the house of Socrates to take counsel of that philosopher, who gives him a great many ridiculous instructions, seemingly not at all to the purpose, and amongst other extravagancies assures him that Jupiter has no concern in the government of the world, but that all the functions of providence are performed by
The Clouds,
which upon his invocation appear and perform the part of a chorus throughout the play: The philosopher is continually foiled by the rustic wit of the old father, who, after being put in Socrates's truckle bed and miserably stung with vermin, has a meeting with his creditors, and endeavours to parry their demands with a parcel of pedantic quibbles, which he has learnt of the philosopher, and which give occasion to scenes of admirable comic humour: My conductor informed me this incident was pointed at Eschines, a favorite disciple of Socrates; a man, says he, plunged in debts and a most notorious defrauder of his creditors. In the end the father brings his son to be instructed by Socrates; the son, after a short lecture, comes forth a perfect Atheist, and gives his father a severe cudgelling on the stage, which irreverend act he undertakes to defend upon the principles of the new philosophy, he had been learning. This was the substance of the play, in the course of which there were many gross allusions to the unnatural vice, of which Socrates was accused, and many personal strokes against Clisthenes, Pericles, Euripides, and others, which told strongly, and were much applauded by the theatre.
"It is not to be supposed, that all this passed without some occasional disgust on the part of the spectators, but it was evident there was a party in the theatre, which carried it through, notwithstanding the presence of Socrates and the respectable junto that attended him: For my part I scarce ever took my eyes from him during the representation, and I observed two or three little actions, which seemed to give me some insight into the temper of his mind during the severest libel, that was ever exhibited against any man's person and principles.
"Before Socrates appears on the stage, the old man raps violently at his door, and is reproved by one of his disciples, who comes out and complains of the disturbance; upon his being questioned what the philosopher may be then employed upon, he answers that he is engaged in measuring the leap of a flea, to decide how many of its own lengths it springs at one hop; the disciple also informs him with great solemnity, that Socrates has discovered that the hum of a gnat is not made by the mouth of the animal, but from behind: This raised a laugh at the expence of the naturalists and minute philosophers, and I observed that Socrates himself smiled at the conceit.
"When the school was opened to the stage and all his scholars were discovered with their heads upon the floor and their posteriors mounted in the air, and turned towards the audience, though the poet pretends to account for it, as if they were searching for natural curiosities on the surface of the ground, the action was evidently intended to convey the grossest allusion, and was so received by the audience: When this scene was produced I remarked, that Socrates shook his head, and turned his eyes off the stage; whilst Euripides with some indignation threw the sleeve of his mantle over his face; this was observed by the spectators, and produced a considerable tumult, in which the theatre seemed pretty fairly divided, so that the actors stood upright, and quitted the posture they were discovered in.
"When Socrates was first produced standing on a basket mounted into the clouds, the person of the actor and the mask he wore, as well as the garment he was dressed in, was the most direct counterpart of the philosopher himself, that could be devised. But when the actor, speaking in his character, in direct terms proceeded to deny the divinity of Jupiter, Socrates laid his hand upon his heart, and cast his eyes up with astonishment; in the same moment Alcibiades started from his seat, and in a loud voice cried out—
Athenians! is this fitting?
Upon this a great tumult arose and very many of the spectators called upon Socrates to speak for himself, and answer to the charge; when the play could not proceed for the noise and clamour of the people, all demanding Socrates to speak for himself, the philosopher unwillingly stept forward, and said—
You require of me, O Athenians, to answer to the charge; there is no charge; neither is this a place to discourse in about the gods: Let the actor proceed!
—Silence immediately took place, and Socrates's invocation to
The Clouds
soon ensued; the passage was so beautiful, the machinery of the clouds so finely introduced, and the chorus of voices in the air so exquisitely conceived, that the whole theatre was in raptures, and the poet from that moment had entire possession of their minds, so that the piece was carried triumphantly to its period. In the heat of the applause my Athenian friend whispered me in the ear and said—
Depend upon it, Socrates will hear of this in another place; he is a lost man; and remember I tell you that if all our philosophers and sophists were driven out of Attica, it would be happy for Athens.
—At these words I started and awaked from my dream.
No IX.
CALLIOPE has favoured me with the following letter; it is dated from the house of a worthy clergyman, a friend of her father's, who with an exemplary wife lives upon a small country vicarage in primitive simplicity, where that afflicted young lady took shelter.
SIR,
AFTER you left me at Lady Thimble's, I seized the first moment, that the anguish of my mind permitted me to make use of, to put myself in readiness for taking my final leave of that family, and, according to the plan we had concerted, came without delay to this place, where, if any thing could have given absolute peace to my mind, the consolation of these excellent people, and the serenity of the scene must have done it. As it was, I felt my afflictions lighten, my self-reproach became less bitter, and, whilst the vanity, which flattery had inspired me with, has been cured by their admonitions, the doubts that infidelity had raised have been totally removed, and truth made clear to my eternal comfort and conviction. Had it not been for this, I should have been given up to despair; for as I heard no more from Captain Constant, I was convinced he had renounced me for ever; in the mean time I wrote many letters, but sent none to him; some of these letters were written in a high tone, most of them in an humble one, and in one I gave a loose to passion and despair in expressions little short of phrensy; all these I constantly destroyed, for as I had not the heart to write angrily to him, so I dreaded to appear mean in his eyes, if I was too plaintive; nay I was not sure, since his fortune had become so superior to mine, but I might lay myself open to a charge of the most despicable nature.
Thus my time passed, till yesterday morning, upon observing the house in one of those bustles, which the expectation of a visiter creates in small families, I found my good hostess deeply engaged with her pastry, and hav
ng myself become a considerable adopt in the art under her tuition, I was putting myself in order to assist her in her preparations, when turning to me with a smile, which seemed to spring from joy as well as benevolence—
Come, my dear child,
says she,
I have been at work this hour; and if you had known it was to entertain a friend of your father's, I am persuaded you would not have let me been so long beforehand with you.
—I asked her who it was she expected—
No
matter,
she replied,
fall to your work, and do your best, like a good girl, for your mistress's credit as well as your own.
—The significant look, with which she accompanied these words, set my heart into such a flutter, that my hands no longer obeyed me in the task I undertook, till having spilt the milk, overthrown the eggs, and put every thing into the same confusion with myself, I burst into a flood of tears, which ended in a strong hysteric fit. My screams brought the good man of the house and every body in it to my assistance; but judge of my condition betwixt joy, astonishment and terror, when the figure of my beloved Constant presented itself to my eyes; My God! he exclaimed, and started back aghast, then sprung to my assistance, and, clasping me in his arms, lifted me at once from the floor and ran with me into the parlour, where there was a couch—My life! my soul!—was all he could say, for he was like a man beside himself with fright and agony, till I recovered; this was at last effected by a plentiful relief of tears, and then I found myself alone with my beloved Henry, my head reclined upon his neck, and him supporting my whole weight in his arms, whilst he knelt on one knee at my feet; no sooner had I recollected myself, than the blood, that had been driven from my cheeks during my fit, rushed back again with violence and covered me with blushes. Henry's transports now became as vehement as his terrors had been, and loosing his hold of me for a moment, whilst he fixed his eyes upon me with an ardour, that confounded me so as almost to deprive me of speech or motion, he again caught me in his arms, and pressing me eagerly to his breast, almost smothered me with caresses. He then quitted me altogether, and throwing himself on his knees at my feet, entreated me to forgive him, if he had offended me; he had been distracted between joy and terror, and scarce knew what he had done; he proceeded to account for the motives of his conduct towards me, both when he wrote the letter to me from Plymouth, and for every moment of his time since: That he had set off for London the very day he wrote, had sought you out, and conversed fully with you upon the effects his letter had produced; that, hearing I was come to this place, he would have followed me with an immediate explanation, if you had not prevailed with him to the contrary (for which advice I cannot now find in my heart to condemn you), that however he had placed himself within two miles of me in a neighbouring village, where he had daily intercourse with the worthy Vicar, who gave him punctual intelligence of the state of my mind and the total revolution effected in it; that what he suffered during this state of trial and suspence no words of his could paint, but the accounts he received of me from this good man and the benefits he knew I was gaining by his counsel and conversation, kept him from discovering himself, till he had permission for so doing; that he threw himself upon my candor and good sense for justification in the honest artifice he had made use of, and now that I added to my good qualities those religious and domestic virtues, which the society of unbelieving pedants had obscured, but not extinguished, he hoped there was no further bar in the way of our mutual happiness; but that I would condescend to accept a man whose heart and soul were devoted to me, and who had one recommendation at least to offer in his own behalf, which he flattered himself no other person could produce, and which he was sure would have some weight with me: So saying, he put a letter into my hands, which I had no sooner glanced my eye upon than perceiving it was the well-known hand-writing of my ever honoured and lamented father, I sunk back upon the couch and dissolved again into tears: Even the manly heart of my Henry now gave way, and the sad remembrance of his departed friend melted his brave bosom into all the softness of a woman's.—Then, Sir, Oh then indeed I loved him, then he triumphed in my heart; how dear, how noble, how almost divine did he then appear! his eyes, whose ardent raptures had affrighted me, now, when I saw them bathed in tears, inspired me with the purest passion, and contemplating him with the affection of a sister, not regarding him as a lover, I cast off all reserve, and following the impulse of the soul,
Dearest and best of men!
I cried—and sunk into his arms.
Thus, Sir, you have the full and unreserved account, to which your friendship is entitled; still there remains one act of kindness in your power to shew me, and which my Henry jointly with myself solicits, which is, that you would stand in the place of your deceased friend upon our marriage, and compleat the kind part you have taken in my welfare, by joining my hand with that of the most deserving man on earth.
I had almost forgot to mention to you a circumstance, that passed as we were sitting at table after dinner, and by which our good friend the Vicar undesignedly threw me into a confusion, that was exceedingly distressing, by repeating some verses from Pope's Essay on Man, in which he applied to me to help him out in his quotation: I certainly remembered the passage, and could have supplied his memory with the words; but Henry being present, and the recollection of what had passed on the subject of poetry rushing on my mind at the same time that I thought I saw him glance a significant look at me, threw me into such embarrassment on the sudden, that in vain endeavouring to evade the subject, and being pressed a little unseasonably by the Vicar, my spirits also being greatly fluttered by the events of the morning, I could no longer command myself, but burst into tears, and very narrowly escaped falling into a second hysteric. Nothing ever equalled the tenderness of Henry on this occasion; nay I thought I could discover that he was secretly pleased with the event, as it betrayed a consciousness of former vanities, and seemed to prove that I repented of them: Whatever interpretation he might put upon it, still I could not bring myself to repeat the verses; and believe I shall never utter another couplet whilst I live; I am certain I shall never make one.
I inclose you a copy of my father's letter to Henry;
And am, Sir,
Your sincere friend, And most obliged servant, ANNE —.
Though the letter, of which my amiable correspondent has inclosed a copy, is hastily written in the bustle and hurry of service, yet as it breathes the sentiments of the friend, the father, and the hero, and as every relick of so venerable a character is, in my opinion at least, too precious not to be preserved, I shall take permission of the reader to subjoin it.
Dear Harry,
This perverse wind has at last taken shame at confining so many brave fellows in port, and come about to the cast, so that we are all in high spirits getting under weigh: The Commissioners yacht is along-side and I drop these few lines by way of farewel to assure my brave lad, that whether we meet again, or not, you shall not hear a bad account of your old shipmate, nor with God's blessing of his crew. I think we shall soon come into action, and that being the case, d'ye see, few words and fair-dealing are best between friends: You tell me, if you get a prize, you mean to marry Nancy; that is honest, for the girl is cruelly in love with you, and I like her the better for it; a seaman's daughter should be a seaman's friend, and without flattery I don't believe a braver lad ever trod a plank in the king's service than yourself—so enough of that, you have my consent, and with it all the fortune I have to bestow, which is little more than my blessing.
There is one thing however I must warn you of, which is, that the girl, though of a good nature in the main, has got a romantic turn in her head and is terribly given to reading and making verses and such land-lubbers trash, as women and sailors have nothing to do with; now I would not have you make a fool of yourself, Harry, and marry a learned wife, though she was of my own begetting. If therefore Nancy and you come to an understanding together, when my old carcase shall be feeding the fishes, remember it is on this express condition only, which I charge you on your honour to observe, that you burn her books, as I will do if ever I get at them, and never yoke with her till she has renounced these vagaries of poetry, which if you cure her of you have my free leave to make her as good a husband as you can, and God bless you with her: and this you will observe and obey as the last will and testament of him who is
Yours till death, * * * * * *.
P. S.
Remember I tell you, Harry, this old ship is damn'd crank and leewardly; but our wiseacres would not take her down, so they must stand by the consequences; she is a fine man of war at the worst, and if she comes along-side of the Monsieurs, will give their first-rates a warming. Hurrah! we are under sail!
No X.
UPON revising what I wrote for Calliope in answer to Dr. Mac-Infidel's discourse against Christ's miracles, I find the argument so connected with certain passages in the life of the great heathen philosopher Pythagoras, which the adversaries of Christianity have set up against the scriptural records of the Messias, that I have been tempted to enlarge upon what I gave to that young lady by prefacing it with an account of what I find curious in the relations of the sophists and biographers touching that extraordinary man.
The variety of fictions, which the writers, who treat of Pythagoras, have interspersed in their accounts, makes it difficult to trace out any consistent story of his life: His biographers agree scarcely in any one fact or date: Porphyry says he was born at Tyre; Jamblichus will have it to be at Sidon, probably as being the more ancient city; Josephus says it is as hard to fix the place of his nativity, as Homer's, or to ascertain the year of his birth. Jamblichus, glancing at the gospel account of the birth of Christ, says, that when the mother of Pythagoras was with child of him, her husband being ignorant of her pregnancy, brought her to the oracle at Delphi, and there the prophetess told him the first news of his wife's having conceived, and also that the child, she then went with, should prove the greatest blessing to mankind; that her husband thereupon changed her name from Parthenis to Pythais, and, when the child was born, named him Pythagoras, as being foretold by Apollo Pythius, for so, says he, the name signifies; and adds, that there can be no doubt, but that the soul of the child was one of Apollo's companions in heaven, and came down by commission from him. When this and many other fables are cast out of the account it is most probable that Pythagoras was born at Samos in the 3d year of Olymp. XLVIII, 586 years before Christ, being the son of Mnesarchus, an engraver of seals, which Mnesarchus was descended from Hippasus of Phlius, and his mother Pythais from Ancaeus, one of the planters of Samos.
Nature bestowed upon Pythagoras a form and person more than ordinarily comely; he gave early indications of a mind capable of great exertions, and ambitious of excelling in knowledge: The Greeks had now begun to open schools for the public instruction of youth; the rudiments of science were taught in these seminaries to a degree sufficient for the common purposes of liberal education, but the last finishing for such as aspired to be adepts in the superior learning of the times was only to be obtained amongst the Egyptian and Chaldean sages; to them was the great resort of literary travellers; from their source Greece had derived her systems of theology and natural philosophy. The Egyptians were in possession of many ancient traditions of Mosaical origin, though disguised by emblems and hieroglyphics, which Greece in adopting was never able to develope, and of which it is probable the Egyptians themselves had lost the clue: The Greeks, ever since the time of Cecrops, had been progressively erecting a fabulous and idolatrous system of theology upon this foundation. The Egyptians in very early time under certain types and symbols had shadowed out the attributes of the deity, the great events of the deluge and repeopling of the earth, and these being received by the Greeks in a literal sense, generated in the end a multitudinous race of deities with a thousand chimerical rites and ceremonies, which altogether formed so puzzling a compound of absurdity, that no two thinking heathens agreed in the same creed: Still they went on accumulating error upon error; every philosopher, who returned from Egypt, imported some addition to the stock, till Olympus was crowded with divinities. If the heathens had ever defined their religion, and established it upon system, they would have destroyed it; but whilst every man might think for himself, and every man, who thought at all, got rid of his difficulties by supposing there was some mystery in the case, which he either did not trouble himself to interpret, or interpreted as he saw fit, the imposing fabric stood, and, magnified through the mists of error, appeared to have a dignity and substance, which upon examination and scrutiny would have vanished.
The parents of Pythagoras put him first under the tuition of Pherecydes of Syrus: Pherecydes did not die till Olymp. LXVI, so that Diogenes Laertius must be flagrantly mistaken in saying that Pythagoras studied under this philosopher till his death: He was very young when he went into Syria for this purpose, for he returned to Samos to his parents, and after studying some time under Hermodamas there, set out upon his travels into Egypt at the age of eighteen. At this early age he had acquired all the erudition the philosophers of Greece could give him; he had already visited many cities of Syria, and performed his initiations: It is said he had consulted Thales in person, and been advised by that sage to prosecute his studies amongst the learned Egyptians; but this is doubtful; it is altogether improbable that he should depart from Samos at the age of eighteen upon the patriotic motive ascribed to him by Laertius of avoiding the growing tyranny of his countryman Polycrates; especially when the same biographer informs us, that he took letters of recommendation from Polycrates to King Amasis, desiring him to give order for Pythagoras's being instructed by the Egyptian priests.
With this letter Pythagoras repaired to Amasis, and obtained an order to the priests, agreeable to the request of Polycrates; with this he went first to the priests of Heliopolis; they declined the execution of it by referring him to their brethren at Memphis, as being their seniors in the sacerdotal rank; these again evaded the order and dispatched him to the Diospolites; he found these sages as little disposed to compliance as the priests of Heliopolis or Memphis; however, as the king's command was urgent, they did not think fit absolutely to disobey it, but took a method, which they thought would answer the same purpose and began by deterring and alarming the inquisitive youth by their preparatory austerities; but they had no common spirit to deal with; Pythagoras had a constitution, that could endure hardships, and an ambition that nothing could daunt; he submitted to the ceremony of circumcision, and was initiated into their sacred rites, unintimidated by all the horrors, with which they contrived to set them forth. They began then to regard him with more benignity and respect, and when they found him learning their language with surprizing rapidity, and conforming to their discipline with the most rigid exactness, they looked upon him with surprize and admiration; they now resolved to hold nothing back from talents so extraordinary and temper so conformable; he learnt their three sorts of letters; they admitted him to their sacrifices, and disclosed the most secret rites of their religion, mysteries never before imparted to any foreigner. He resided in Egypt a long time, during which he read the books of the ancient priests, and in them he discovered the sources of the Grecian theology, and how erroneous the system was, which they had derived from these sources; he is supposed henceforth to have held the gods of the heathen in contempt, and to have entertained suitable ideas of The One Supreme Being.
Having perfected himself in the geometry and astronomy of the Egyptians, and acquired the observations of
infinite ages,
(as Valerius Maximus expresses it) he determined upon exploring new and more distant scenes in search of knowledge, and from Egypt went to Babylon; his recommendations from Egypt secured him a reception by the Chaldees and Magi; here he was a disciple of Nazaratus the Assyrian, and we are told by Porphyry, that he was purified by Zabratus from all defilements of his former life; by what particular modes of discipline this purification was effected Porphyry does not explain. From Babylon he pushed his travels into Persia, and was instructed by the Magi in their religion and way of living; from them he received those rules of diet, which he afterwards prescribed to his disciples, with various opinions of things clean and unclean, which were amongst his maxims: These conform to the present practice of the Brahmins, which may well be supposed to have been inviolably preserved through that separated and sacred Cast from times of high antiquity; for what invention can be devised to secure the longevity of any system better than that upon which the sacerdotal order of Brahmins is established? By the Persian Magi he was instructed in many particulars of Jewish knowledge, chiefly their interpretations of dreams. We have Cicero's authority for this part of his travels (
de fin. lib.
v.) and Valerius Maximus says the Persian Magi taught him a most compleat system of ethics; that they likewise instructed him in the motions and courses of the heavenly bodies, their properties and effects, and the influence every star respectively is supposed to have.
In the course of these travels he passed more than twenty years; he then turned his face homewards, taking the isle of Crete in his way: here and at Lacedemon he perused their famous codes of laws, and having now compleated the great tour of science, and stored his mind with all the hidden treasures of oriental knowledge, he presented himself for the first time to the admiring eyes of Greece assembled at the Olympic Games.
A spectacle no doubt it was for universal admiration and respect; an understanding so enriched and full in its meridian vigour was an object, that the wisest of his contemporaries might look up to with veneration little short of idolatry. Pythagoras in this attitude, surrounded by the Grecian sages on the field of the Olympic Games, whilst every eye was fixed with rapture and delight upon one of the most perfect forms in nature, began to pour forth the wonders of his doctrine: Astonishment seized the hearers, and almost doubting if it was a mortal, that had been discoursing, they with one voice applauded his wisdom, and demanded by what title he would in future be addressed: Pythagoras answered, that their seven sages had taken the name of wise men or sophists; for his part he left them in possession of a distinction they so well merited; he wished to be no otherwise remembered or described, than as a
Lover of Wisdom
; his pretensions did not go to the possession of it; and if they would call him a
Philosopher,
he should be contented with the appellation: From this time the name of Philosopher became a title of honour amongst the learned, whilst that of Sophist sunk into universal contempt.
No XI.
I HAVE observed that Pythagoras on his return from the East took the island of Crete in his way; here he visited the famous philosopher Epimenides. Porphyry and Jamblichus must be greatly out in their chronology when they make Epimenides one of Pythagoras's scholars; Laertius's account is more probable, who says he was one of Pythagoras's masters, which naturally accounts for that philosopher's seeking an interview with him in Crete, as he did afterwards with Pherecydes on his death-bed in Syria: In this interview Pythagoras no doubt gave an account to Epimenides of the many marvellous things he had learnt in his travels, and so far the disciple may be said to have instructed his master; Epimenides himself was no small adept in the marvellous, and propagated a story thro' Greece of his having slept fifty-seven years in a cave, and that upon waking after his long repose he resumed his search for some sheep, which his father had sent him upon more than half a century before; the story does not say that he found these sheep, which probably were now become more difficult to recover than upon his first search; he returned however to his father's house, and was rather surprized upon discovering a new generation in possession, who thought no more of Epimenides, than they did of his sheep: This sleeping philosopher however filled up the gap in his life pretty well, for Xenophanes says he lived to one hundred and fifty-seven years of age; and the Cretans, who are liars upon record, stretch their account to two hundred and ninety-nine years, modestly stopping short of three centuries. Deducting therefore fifty-seven years of sleep, during which he probably made no great advances in science, he might have occasion to go to school, when he waked, and, though an old man, might be a young scholar under Pythagoras, if the credibility of the above story can once be admitted.
From the Olympic Games Pythagoras repaired to Samos, and opened school in a place called in the time of Antipho, (who is quoted by Laertius)
Pythagorae Hemicyclus.
Here he began a practice he continued in Italy of retiring to a cave without the town for the purpose of study, but in fact the idea was, like most others of his, oriental: Hermits have it to this day, and if mortification is used to recommend religion, solitude may be chosen to set off wisdom. Pythagoras in a cave, visited in the dead of night with awful reverence and credulity, might pass stories upon his hearers, which he could not risque in the face of the sun and the streets of the city.
He was not however so far sequestered from the concerns of the world, as to enjoy himself in his cave under the tyranny of Polycrates, now more oppressive than at his departure for Egypt. He thereupon resolved to go into Italy, and took Delos in his way; here he wrote the verses on the sepulchre of Apollo, which Porphyry records: From Delos he passed to Phlius, the ancient country of his family, and at Phlius Cicero informs us he expounded several points of his new philosophy to the tyrant Leo, who, being struck with his doctrine, demanded of him what branch of science he principally professed: Pythagoras replied that he professed none, but was a
Philosopher:
The name was new to Leo, and he desired to be informed of its signification, and wherein philosophers differed from other professors of the learned sciences: Pythagoras answered,
That it appeared to him men were drawn to different objects and pursuits in life, as the Greeks were to their Olympic Games, some for glory, some for gain; at the same time,
says he,
you must have observed that others attend without any view to either, for curiosity and amusement only; so we, who are travellers and adventurers, as it were, from another life and another nature, come amongst mankind, indifferent to the ordinary allurements of avarice or ambition, and studious of nothing but of the truth and essence of things: Such may be called Lovers of Wisdom, or in one word Philosophers; and, like the unconcerned spectators above described, have no other interests to pursue, but the acquisition of knowledge and the rational enjoyments
of a contemplative mind.
—In this reply he glances at his doctrine of the Metempsycosis.
In his progress towards Italy Pythagoras went to Delphi, that he might give the more authority to his precepts upon the pretence of his having received them from the priestess Theoclea.
In Italy he established himself for the remainder of his life, and taught there forty years wanting one in his colleges at Metapontum, Heraclea, and Croton. He staid twenty years at Croton before he went to Metapontum; Milo, the famous Olympic victor, was one of his scholars at the former of these places. The fame of his doctrines drew a prodigious resort to his college; no less than six hundred disciples at one time attended his lectures nightly: He imposed rules of preparation and a system of discipline for his students, admirably contrived to inspire them with veneration for his person, and to train their minds to the exercises of patience and respect: He prescribed a probationary silence of five years, during which initiation they were not once admitted to the sight of their master, who in the mean time, like an invisible and superior spirit, governed them after the most absolute manner by mandates, which they never heard but through the channel of his subordinate agents: At length they were ushered with much ceremony into the awful presence. Such a course of discipline could not fail to prepare every mind, capable of undergoing it, for the marvellous stories, which at certain times he introduced into his lectures touching the doctrine of the Metempsycosis, and the revelation of his own divinity: He scrupled not to tell them, that he was the Apollo of the Hyperboreans, and he corroborated his assertion by exposing to view his thigh composed of solid gold; his food, which was of the simplest sort, was conveyed to him in his recess in a manner so secret, that he was not discovered to be subject to the common appetites and necessities of human nature; his person was most comely and commanding, and his dress of studied cleanliness and simplicity; he was always clad in milk-white garments of the purest wool; he told them his soul had passed through several antecedent forms, and that it had originally received from Mercury, when it inhabited the body of Aethalides (son of that God) the privilege of migrating after the death of one body into that of another, with the faculty of remembering all the actions of its praeterient states; that these transmigrations were not immediate, but after intervals, in which his soul visited the regions of the other world, and was admitted to the society of departed spirits; that in virtue of this prerogative, it passed after some time from the body of Aethalides into that of Euphorbus, who was wounded by Menelaus at the siege of Troy, and in his person was conscious of what had occurred in that of its predecessor; that it next appeared on earth in the person of Hermotimus, who gave proofs of his reminiscence by appealing to the shield suspended in the temple of Apollo by the hands of Menelaus; from Hermotimus it passed into one Pyrrhus a fisherman, retaining the like consciousness; and lastly it had lodged itself, where it now was, possessing all the accumulated recollection of its past transmigrations.
Daring as these fictions were, still they were credited; for the powers of his mind were wonderful, and the authority he had established over his hearers by superior wisdom and ingenious device was unbounded; the curious researches of his study in the East, and the passion he had there contracted for the marvellous and supernatural, inspired him with the ambition of passing himself upon the world for something above human; he had trained on the credulity of his disciples with such art, that he found it would bear whatever he thought proper to impose; he was sensible he transcended all men living in wisdom, and he resolved to assume a superiority of nature also. The idea of transmigration was not started by Pythagoras; it was of eastern origin, but too far out of sight for any then alive to trace it to its source: He told his scholars he should revisit the earth in two hundred and six years after his death.
Doctrines like these were hard to be received, but he so well balanced fiction with truth, that they could not be separated at the time; the strong fortified the weak so effectually, that both took place together; in mathematics, astronomy, and moral philosophy, he was an unrivalled master; his golden verses deserved the name: His principles were temperate, moral, humane, and above all things pacifying and conciliatory: when he admitted a disciple into his presence, he took him ever after into his most cordial friendship and confidence, and men esteemed it the highest honour of their lives to have passed their probation in the school of Pythagoras, and to be allowed access to his person.
After he had staid twenty years at Croton, he removed to Metapontum, where he had a magnificent house, which was afterwards converted into a temple to Ceres, and a school which was called the Museum: Here he was visited by the famous Abaris, priest of the Hyperborean Apollo; and his fabulous historians give out, that having taken Abaris's arrow, he rode upon it through the air to Taurominium in one day, though distant from Metapontum some days sailing. Hearing that his aged master Pherecydes was dying of a loathsome disease in Delos, he went thither, and exerted all his art to recover him; and, when he was dead, having buried him with all the ceremonies due to a father, he returned to Italy. This instance of friendship is the last public action I find recorded in his life: The manner of his death is variously reported, as well as the age at which he died; the most probable account fixes it at eighty years; as to the catastrophe of his death, the relation most to be credited informs us, that one Cylon of Croton, a rich, ambitious, and disorderly man, having offered himself to the college and been rejected by Pythagoras, was so enraged thereby, that having collected a hired mob, he assaulted the house of Milo, when Pythagoras and his disciples were there assembled, and burnt the house with every body in it, two or three excepted, who narrowly escaped. Pythagoras, to whom his disciples even in the last extremity paid a filial reverence and attention, was solicited to make his escape; but not being willing to expose himself to the people, as a fugitive anxious to preserve life, when his friends were on the point of perishing, he resisted their entreaties and was burnt to death. To this account I incline; but others contend, that he escaped from the flames, and was killed in pursuit; some relate that he took refuge in the Muses' Temple at Metapontum, where being kept from victuals forty days, he was starved; and other historians with as little probability on their side say, that being pursued into a bean-plot, he there stopped, because he would not pass over prohibited ground, and yielded his throat to the pursuers. After his death his surviving disciples were dispersed into Greece and the neighbouring countries.
Thus perished Pythagoras, the Samian philosopher, founder of the Italian school, and the great luminary of the heathen world.
No XII.
HAVING in my two preceding papers been at some pains in collecting an account of the life of Pythagoras from the many various unconnected particulars, scattered up and down in the works of the sophists and biographers touching that extraordinary man, I now come to my main object, in which I desire the reader's attention, whilst I attempt to shew in what manner the heathen writers have applied these particulars in opposition to the life and actions of Christ; this will be the subject of the present paper; in my next I purpose to conclude by answering those arguments, on which modern cavillers have grounded their reasonings against the gospel miracles; a subject to which I have been led by Dr. Mac-Infidel's discourse, of which some notice has been taken in former papers.
It has been unfortunate for Pythagoras, that the writers of Julian's time, to pay court to the Emperor, should have corrupted their account of him with so many fictions and absurdities; for he was truly a very wonderful man: But when they undertook to depreciate the character of Christ, his doctrines and miracles, by ascribing actions to Pythagoras equal, or, as they conceived, superior to what Christ had done upon earth, they were driven to strange resources in deifying their philosopher; for in fact the time was rather past for those delusions; deification after death was the most that could be attempted, and even the
Julium Sidus
held its place in the heavens by a precarious tenure: At the same time an
apotheosis
would not serve their purpose; it was necessary to make Pythagoras a god or the son of a god, and to give him a supernatural birth from the womb of a virgin: Their next business was to invest him with the power of working miracles; but here some stubborn facts laid in their way; he had visited Epimenides in his last sickness without being able to prolong his life; they were driven to ridiculous resources; and, taking Abaris's arrow in aid, sent their philosopher upon it through the air from Metapontum to Taurominium; because Christ had walked on the sea, Pythagoras rode through the skies; because Christ had been forty days fasting in the wilderness, Pythagoras was to be forty days without food in the Temple of the Muses at Metapontum; because Christ descended into Hades, and rose again from the dead, and appeared upon earth, Pythagoras descended to the shades below, remained there a compleat year, saw Homer, Hesiod, and other departed spirits, returned upon earth wan and emaciated, and reported what he had seen in full assembly of his disciples, whilst his mother, by his special direction before his descent, registered upon tablets all that passed, and noted the times of his temporary death and resurrection; to carry on the competition, he was made to allay winds, tempests, and earthquakes, to cure diseases, whether of mind or body, and to foretel to certain fishermen, whom he found at work, how many fish they should inclose in their net: The reader, who has consulted Porphyry and Jamblichus, will call to mind other coincidencies.
With what superior what incontestible strength of evidence does the disciple of Christ meet the disciple of Pythagoras in this comparison between their masters! The heathen teacher was almost a miracle of erudition; he traversed the East in pursuit of science, and collected knowledge, wherever it was to be found, with unremitting industry: Christ lived in privacy and obscurity, educated only in the humble trade and occupation of his parents, to whom he was obedient and devoted, till he set out upon the functions of his mission. The person of the first was captivating and comely, not to be approached but with awe and adoration, with preparatory penances and rigid initiations, with every artifice to set him off that human wit could devise; the other was
despised and rejected of men
; the simplest and the meekest being, that ever walked the earth; conversing freely with all men, presenting himself to the poor and lowly, to women and to little children; in him was
no form of comeliness,
that men should desire; no artifice or trick to catch applause or to excite surprize: If he exercised his miraculous power in healing the infirm, or reviving the dead, he did it in silence, and under injunction of secrecy, directing men to pay their thanks to God alone, and forbidding them even to call him good. No magic numbers, nor mystic symbols obscured his doctrines, but he delivered the simple system of his pure morality in little easy anecdotes, levelled to the capacity, and fitted to the memory of the poorest and most illiterate. From such he chose his disciples, that the
wisdom of this world
might have no share in his ministry, and he rested upon the weakest agents the task of preaching and propagating the sublimest religion. Gloomy enthusiasts have buried themselves in desarts and caverns of the earth to brood in solitude and spend their days in penances and prayers; ambitious innovators have been carried to the highest pitch of human greatness by becoming founders of a new religion; but Christ taught his disciples neither to shun society, nor to disturb authorities; he told them indeed that they should die for the faith they professed, but it was not the death of soldiers, but of martyrs, they should suffer, and these precepts he confirmed by his own example, being
led like a lamb to the slaughter
; if they, who profess his religion, were to practise it, Universal Love and Benevolence would obtain upon earth.
But of the internal evidences of Christ's religion I am not now to speak; so long as the distinctions between good and evil exist, these can need no defence; if men agree in the one, they cannot differ or dispute about the other. With regard to the gospel account of Christ's miracles, I may be allowed in general to observe, that these forgeries of Porphyry and Jamblichus in imitation of them, warrant a fair presumption, that if these writers could have disproved the authorities of the Evangelists, and controverted the matter of fact, they would not have resorted to so indecisive and circuitous a mode of opposing them, as this which we are now examining: Men of such learning as these writers, would not have risqued extravagant fictions merely to keep way with a history, which they had more immediate means of refuting: On the other hand, if their absurdity should lead any man to suppose, that they forged these accounts by way of parody and in ridicule of the gospels, the accounts themselves give the strongest evidence to the contrary, and it is clear beyond a doubt, that both Porphyry and Jamblichus mean to be credited in their histories of Pythagoras, as seriously as Philostratus does in his of Apollonius Tyaneus.
This will more fully appear by referring to the circumstances, that occasioned these histories to be written.
Christ having performed his miracles openly and before so many witnesses, it is not found that the matter of fact was ever questioned by any, who lived in that age: On the contrary we see it was acknowledged by his most vigilant enemies the Pharisees: They did not deny the miracle, but they ascribed it to the aid of the prince of the devils; so weak a subterfuge against the evidence of their own senses probably satisfied neither themselves nor others; if it had, this accusation of sorcery (being capital by their law, and also by that of the Romans) would have been heard of, when they were so much to seek for crimes, wherewith to charge him on his trial: If any man shall object, that this is arguing out of the gospels in favour of the gospels, I contend that this matter of fact does not rest solely on the gospel evidence, but also upon collateral historic proof; for this very argument of the Pharisees, and this only, is made use of by those Jews, whom Celsus brings in arguing against the Christian religion; and those Jews on this very account rank Christ with Pythagoras; and I challenge the cavillers against Christ's miracles either to controvert what is thus asserted, or to produce any other argument of Jewish origin, except this ascribed to the Pharisees by the gospel, either from Celsus, as above mentioned, or any other writer.
Celsus, it is well known, was a very learned man, and wrote in the time of Adrian or something later; this was not above fifty years after the date of Christ's miracles. Celsus did not controvert the accounts of them, who were witnesses of the miracles, nor attempt to shew any inconsistence or chicanery in the facts themselves; he takes up at second hand the old Pharisaical argument of ascribing them to the power of the devil: In short, they were performed, he cannot deny it; there was no trick or artifice in the performance, he cannot discover any; the accounts of them are no forgeries, he cannot confute them; they are recent histories, and their authenticity too notorious to be called into question; he knows not how the miracles were performed, and therefore they were done by the invocation of the devil; he cannot patiently look on and see that learning, so long the glory of all civilized nations, and which he himself was to an eminent degree possessed of, now brought into disgrace by a new religion, professing to be a divine revelation, and originating from amongst the meanest and most odious of all the provincial nations, and propagated by disciples, who were as much despised and hated by the Jews in general, as the Jews were by all other people. Unable to disprove the account and at a loss how to parry it from hearsay, or from what he finds in former writers, he has no other resource, but to bring forward again those cavilling Pharisees, and roundly to assert in general terms, (which he does more than once) that these miracles are all
the tricks of a sorcerer,
and for this he expects the world should take his authority.
I have said that Celsus adduces neither oral nor written authority against Christ's miracles; but I am well aware it may be said, (and modern cavillers will affect to say it with triumph) that authorities are silent on the subject;
there are none which make mention of these miracles, at least none have come down to our times.
—If this silence implies a want of collateral evidence, which in the opinion of our modern disbelievers vitiates the authenticity of the gospel, how much stronger would the argument have been in Celsus's time than in ours! Why does he not avail himself of it? And why does he take such pains to controvert accounts of which no man had ever spoken either in proof or disproof? May it not be fairly presumed, that he forbears to urge it from plain conviction, that it would operate the contrary way to what he wished, and that the reason why contemporary writers were silent, was not because they were ignorant of the facts, but because they could not confute them? Here then we will leave the case for the present; the heathen writers, contemporary with Christ, make no mention of his miracles; they are interested to disprove them, and they do not disprove them; modern unbelievers think this a reason that these miracles were never performed; Celsus writes fifty years after the time, never urges this silence as an argument for their non-existence, but virtually, nay expressly, admits Christ's miracles, by setting up Pythagoras's in competition with them.
Neither is it Pythagoras alone he compares to Christ, he states the performances of Aristeas Proconnesius and Abaris also. Of Aristeas the first account we have is in Herodotus, and he gives it only upon hearsay: He relates that it was reported of him, that he died at Proconnesus, and appeared there seven years after, and, having written some verses, disappeared; but that two or three hundred years after he had appeared again at Metapontum, where by special direction of Apollo he was worshipped as a god: Of Abaris, Celsus relates, that he rode through the air on an arrow, passing over mountains and seas in his passage out of Scythia into Greece, and back again into Scythia.
Hence it came to pass that other heathen writers, after the example of Celsus, published their accounts of Pythagoras and Apollonius Tyaneus; not so much for the purpose of giving the histories of those persons, as to set them up in opposition to Christ and his disciples. Porphyry composed the history of Pythagoras after he had written fifteen books professedly against the Christian religion; these were suppressed by the Christian emperors who succeeded Galienus, in whose time Porphyry wrote his history of Pythagoras in the island of Sicily, whither he retired in disgust with the Emperor for his favour to the Christians, and would have put himself to death with his own hand, if Plotinus had not prevented him. Galienus soon died, and the succeeding emperors being disposed to persecute the Christians, Porphyry published his history. Jamblichus published his account of Pythagoras in the reign of the Emperor Julian, with whom he was in high favour, as the letters of that Emperor sufficiently testify. Hierocles also in the time of Dioclesian published two books against the Christian religion under the title of
Philalethes,
and for these was promoted by Galerius from being chief judge at Nicomedia to the government of Alexandria. These books are now lost, but we are informed by Eusebius they were mostly copied from Celsus, and set up Aristeas, Pythagoras and Apollonius Tyaneus against Christ, whom he says the Christians, on account of his doing a few
teratyai,
call a God, and concludes with these words, viz.
That it is worth considering that those things of Jesus are boasted of Peter and Paul, and some others of the like sort, liars and illiterate and impostors; but for these things of Apollonius, we have Maximus and Damis a philosopher, who lived with him, and Philostratus, men eminent for their learning and lovers of truth.
As for these witnesses to Philostratus's legend of Apollonius, Maximus's minutes go no farther than to two or three years of Apollonius's life passed at Aegae, when he was about twenty years old; and what he had from Damis was a tablebook of minutes, which a nameless man, pretending to be a relation of Damis, brought to Julia the mother and wife of Caracalla, and were by her given to the Sophist Philostratus to dress up in handsomer language.
Such are the authorities for the legend of Philostratus, written above a hundred years after the death of Apollonius; who died a few weeks after the Emperor Domitian in the year of Christ 96. This Apollonius was of the sect of Pythagoras, and the patroness of Philostratus's history was the monster Julia, mother and wife to the detestable Caracalla.
No XIII.
IT seems natural to suppose that any great and signal revelation of the Divine Will should be authenticated to mankind by evidences proportioned to the importance of the communication. Christians contend that in the purity and perfection of their religion, as it was taught by Christ, and in the miracles which he performed on earth whilst he was teaching, full and sufficient evidencies are found of a Divine Revelation.
As for the religion of Christ it speaks for itself, the book is open, which contains it, and however it may have degenerated in practice through the corruption of them who profess it, there seems no difference of opinion in the world as to the purity and perfection of its principles: Of these evidencies therefore, which are generally called internal, I have no need to speak.
It is not possible to make the same direct appeal to the miracles as to the religion of Christ. Many centuries have revolved since they have ceased; nature has long since resumed her course, and retains no traces of them; their evidencies therefore are not, like those of Christ's religion, internal, but historical; it must however be acknowledged, that they are historical evidencies of the strongest sort, for the historians were eyewitnesses of what they relate, and their relations agree.
It is easy therefore to see, that if the system of Christianity is to be attacked, it is in this part only the attack is to be expected. This has accordingly taken place in three different periods, and in three different modes.
The unbelieving Jews, contemporary with Christ, before whose eyes the miracles were performed, could not dispute their being done, but they attempted to criminate the doer by accusing him of a guilty communication with evil spirits, ascribing his supernatural deeds to the power of the devil. The heathens, who had not ocular demonstration, but could not contest facts so well established, made their attack upon his miracles, by instancing others, who had done things altogether as wonderful, viz. Pythagoras, Abaris, Apollonius, and others.
Thus the matter rested for many ages, till modern cavillers within the pale of the Christian church struck upon a new argument for an attack upon Christ's miracles; and this argument having been woven into a late publication, whose historical merit puts it into general circulation, many retailers of infidelity, (and Dr. Mac-Infidel amongst the rest,) have caught at it as a discovery of importance, and as they have contrived to connect it with topics of more erudition, than the generality of people are furnished with, on whom they practise, it has been propagated with some success, where it has had the advantage of not being understood.
The strength of this argument lies in the discovery, that contemporary authorities are silent on the subject of Christ's miracles: Naturalists and the authors, who record all curious and extraordinary events of their own or of preceding times, make no mention of the wonderful things, which Christ is said to have done in the land of Judaea; in short, the Evangelists are left alone in the account, and yet some things are related by them too general in their extent, and too wonderful in their nature, to have been passed over in silence by these authors, or in other words not to have had a place in their collections: The elder Pliny and Seneca they tell us were living at the time of Christ's passion; the Evangelists relate, that there was darkness over the face of the earth when Christ gave up the ghost, and this darkness was miraculous, being out of the course of nature, and incidental to the divinity of the person, who was then offering up his life for the redemption of mankind; against the veracity of the gospel account relative to this particular prodigy the attack is pointed; and they argue, that if it extended over the whole earth, elder Pliny and Seneca with all others who were then living, must have noticed it; if it was local to the province of Judaea, men of their information must have heard of it: Each of these philosophers has recorded all the great phoenomena of nature, which his curiosity and care could get together, and Pliny in particular has devoted an entire chapter to eclipses of an extraordinary nature, yet does not mention this at the Passion: The defection of light, which followed Caesar's murder was not to be compared with what the gospel relates of the praeternatural darkness at the Passion, and yet most of the writers of that age have recorded the former event, whilst all are silent as to the latter—
Therefore it did not happen.
This I believe is a fair state of the argument, and, if there be any merit in the discovery, it certainly rests with the moderns; for neither Celsus, Porphyry, nor his disciple Jamblichus, have struck upon it, though the first-mentioned wrote against Christianity in the time of Adrian, who succeeded to the empire eighty years after Christ's passion; as for Seneca, he died about thirty years, and elder Pliny three and forty years after Christ.
The fathers of the church it seems are divided in opinion as to the darkness at Christ's passion being general to the whole earth, or local only to Judaea. As the decision of this point does not affect the general question, the abettors of the argument are willing to admit with Origen, Beza, and others, that the prodigy should be understood as local to that part of the world, to which his other miracles were confined, and to whose conviction, if it really happened, it is natural to suppose it should be specially addressed.
Allowing this, these reasoners contend that it must of necessity have been reported to Rome, and that report must have been known to Seneca and elder Pliny, and, being known, must have been recorded by one or both. These positions merit examination.
The first point to be taken for granted is, that the miracle of the three hours darkness upon the passion of Christ must necessarily have been reported to Rome: This report was either to come in the state dispatches of the Procurator Pilate to the court of Tiberius, or from private communications: Of the probability of the first case the reader must judge for himself from circumstances; it is merely matter of speculation: It involves a doubt at least, whether the Procurator would not see reasons personal, as well as political, against reporting to the court an event, which at best tended to his own crimination, and which, if he had delivered it for truth, might have alarmed the jealousy, or roused the resentment of his sovereign. The idea entertained by the Jews of deliverance from the Roman yoke by their expected Messias, was too general to have escaped the knowledge of their watchful tyrants, and it does not seem likely any Roman governor of that province would be forward to report any miracle, or miracles, that had reference to a person, who having set up a new religion declared himself that very Messias, which the Jewish prophecies foretold should appear to extirpate the Gentile idolatry: If this be a reason for the Roman Procurator in Judaea to be silent on the subject, it is no less so for the people of Rome to reject the reports of the Christians themselves, if they ventured any; and as for the unbelieving Jews, it is not to be expected they would contribute to spread the evidencies of Christ's divinity.
The next point to be taken for granted in the argument under examination is, that this report, if actually made, must have been known to the philosopher Seneca and the naturalist Pliny; and I think it may fairly be allowed, that an event of this sort could not well fail of coming to the knowledge of Seneca, and even of Pliny, (tho' he died forty-three years after the time) if the government in Tiberius's reign had been made acquainted with it by authority, and had taken no measures for suppressing it, or any accounts published at the time respecting it; for after all it must be observed, that this event, not being found in Pliny's Natural History, nor in Seneca's Enquiries, does not by any means decide the question against any accounts being published, but leaves it still open to conjecture, (and with some reason) that such accounts might have been suppressed by the heathen Emperors.
But waving any further discussion of this point, we will pass to the third and last position, in which it is presumed, that if this praeternatural eclipse at Christ's passion was known to Seneca and Pliny, one or both must have recorded it in their works.
This I think is begging a question very hardly to be granted; for these writers must have stated the event, either as a thing credible, or doubtful, or incredible; they must either have grounded it upon authority, or reported it upon hearsay; they must have admitted it with its date and circumstances at the very crisis when it happened, and in that case what would have been the consequence of such a publication? The Christians would naturally have made the application to the passion of Christ, and how dangerous was it for a heathen to admit a fact open to such an interpretation? A Roman philosopher, giving a serious history of extraordinary and prodigious events, would make his court but ill to a heathen persecuting Emperor, by admitting this into the account, unless it was to confute it: Now this does not appear to have been in contemplation of Seneca or Pliny in any part of their writings; each of these authors tells us what he credits and wishes to be credited, not what he disbelieves and wishes to confute: The defection of light at the time of Caesar's death was the creed of the court; the historians, naturalists, and even the poets, celebrated that phoenomenon, and it did not lose in their relations; but in the case of the darkness at Christ's death, a believer in Him and his miracles draws a stronger argument for his belief from the silence of Seneca and Pliny, than any caviller can urge against it from the same circumstance: If we admit they knew it and yet did not record it, are we not better founded in supposing they were silent, because they could not controvert the fact, than our opponents are in saying it did not pass, because they do not mention it? It is too much to require of witnesses, that they should depose to a fact, which is to convict themselves: I must therefore appeal to the candid reader, whether a philosopher writing in the court of Nero, who had charged the Christians with the burning of Rome, and was devising terrible and unheard-of modes of torturing them upon this charge, who had beheaded Paul and crucified Peter for preaching Christ and the redemption of mankind earned by his Passion, whether a heathen philosopher I say writing at this very time an account of extraordinary, but what he delivers as true, events in nature would venture upon putting into his account a miracle, tending to confirm the divine nature and mission of that person, whose immediate followers were then suffering under the most determined persecution? No heathen writer in his senses would have ventured to give such an account. Peter and Paul declared for the miracle, and were martyred for their doctrine; the gospel account declared for the miracle and no one Roman writer controverted the assertion; this was the time for Seneca, for Pliny and other heathen writers to cry out against the glaring fiction,
Do the Christians say there was a general darkness when their master expired? We appeal to the fact against them; it reached not us at Rome; the light of that day was like the light of other days: Do they say it was partial to Judaea only? Be it so! We meet them on their own ground; we appeal to the Procurator Pilate, to the noble Romans resident in Judaea, to the soldiers, to the very Centurion, who attended his execution, to witness against this impudent attack upon men's senses. Let them pretend that he healed the sick, cured the lame, turned water into wine, or performed a thousand other juggling tricks, but darkness over a whole province can be confuted by the testimony of a whole province, and to this we appeal.
—Was this said? Was this appeal made? Strange perversion of reason to turn that into an argument against a thing, which seems conclusive for it! at least no negative can come nearer to conclusion, than contemporary silence in a case so open to confutation, had it not been true.
But Seneca and elder Pliny did not see the gospel
—Let it pass; let us grant all that the argument supposes; why are we told of no confutation of this miracle by any heathen writer contemporary with, or posterior to the gospel account of the Passion? The assertion of a praeternatural event, so generally notorious, must have been open to proof. Would Celsus have overlooked it? Would not Lucian have taken it up? Should not we hear of its having been urged by Porphyry, who was so voluminous a controversialist? Should not we meet it in Julian or Philostratus? Should we hear nothing, that could lead us to believe it was controverted by Jamblichus, or Hierocles in his books entitled Philalethes? If the silence of the heathen writers is to be appealed to for the purpose of impeaching Christ's miracles, let the appeal be made; whilst we confine ourselves to the defence of those miracles only, which are recorded in the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles, neither the silence of ancient, nor the eloquence of modern opponents, can shake the records, on which we ground our faith.
No XIV.
THAT period of the Athenian history, which is included within the aera of Pisistratus and the death of Menander the comic poet, may be justly stiled
the literary age of Greece.
I propose to dedicate some of these papers to a review of that period; but as the earlier ages of poetry, though in general obscure, yet afford much interesting matter of enquiry, it will be proper to take up the Athenian history from its origin, because it is so connected with the account I mean to give, that I cannot otherwise preserve that order and continuation in point of time, which perspicuity requires.
This account may properly be called a history of the human understanding within a period peculiarly favourable to the production of genius; and, though I cannot expect that my labour will in the end furnish any thing more than what every literary man has stored in his memory, or can resort to in his books, still it will have the merit of being a selection uninterrupted and unmixed with other events, that crowd and obscure it in the original relations, to which he must otherwise refer. The wars, both foreign and domestic, which the small communities of Greece were perpetually engaged in, occupy much the greater part of the historian's attention, and the reader, whose enquiries are directed to the subject I am about to treat of, must make his way through many things, not very interesting to an elegant and inquisitive mind, before he can discover.
Quid Sophocles et Thespis et Aeschylus utile ferrent.
Such will not envy me the labour of having turned over a heavy mass of scholiasts and grammarians, or hesitate to prefer accepting the result of my enquiries to the task of following the like track in pursuit of his own.
The Athenians were a most extraordinary people; eminent in arms and in arts: Of their military atchievements I do not profess to treat, and if the reader takes less delight in hearing of the ravages of war than of the progress of literature, he may in the contemplation of these placid scenes, undisturbed by tumult and unstained with blood, experience some degree of that calm recreation of mind, which deludes life of its solicitude, and forms the temperate enjoyment of a contemplative man.
Ogyges is generally supposed to have been the founder of the Athenian monarchy, but in what aera of the world we shall place this illustrious person, whether he was Noah or one of the Titans, grandson to Jupiter or contemporary with Moses, is an enquiry, which the learned have agitated with much zeal and very little success. It is however agreed that there was a grievous flood in his time, which deluged the province afterwards called Attica; but that happily for King Ogyges, being a person of gigantic stature he survived the general calamity. A period of one hundred and eighty-nine years succeeded to this flood, in which this province remained so depopulated, that it is generally supposed no king reigned over it till the time of Cecrops, the founder of Athens, from him at first named Cecropia.
Cecrops made many prudent institutes for the benefit of his rising state during a long reign of fifty years, and, by establishing the rites of matrimony, abolished the promiscuous commerce of the sexes, in which they lived before his time; by these and other regulations upon a general numbering of all his subjects, he found the male adults in his dominions to amount to twenty thousand, every person of the above description being directed to bring a stone in his hand and cast it down in a stated place: This prince, being an Egyptian, introduced the mythology of his native country, upon which so many Grecian fables were formed, and from which a learned modern has with great sagacity traced a very curious analogy with the Mosaic accounts of the early ages: The Greeks adopted the fables without comprehending their allusions, and thereupon formed the constitution of a religion, which kept possession of great part of the world, till revelation dispelled its errors and enlightened the Gentile nations. Till Cecrops erected altars to Jupiter, made libations and established his worship, he was not known in Greece as a God: He set up the image of Mercury, sacrificed to Saturn, Ops, Rhea, Juno, and Minerva, and was in fact the institutor of the Pagan theology: The gods of Cecrops were soon made useful instruments in the hand of the founder of a monarchy, for before he could induce his people to cultivate the dry and barren country of Attica, he was forced to play off his new machinery, by raising a contest in heaven between Neptune and Minerva for the patronage of Cecropia, the capital of his new empire: He found interest enough with the deities to turn their decision in Minerva's favour; and by this contrivance he diverted his subjects from their maritime attachments to agriculture, and particularly to the cultivation of the olive: To strengthen still further the tutelary title of Minerva, he enforced the dedication of the city by changing its name from Cecropia to Athenae, a sacrifice few founders would have made, and a strong proof of his good sense and talents for government. If the reader recollects the story Ovid relates of Minerva's treatment of Erichthonius, Cecrops's son, he will not conceive highly of the gratitude, or even purity of that virgin deity's character; though as we are setting out upon the Athenian ground, it may be not very prudent to talk scandal of Minerva;
At virgo est—negat Aglaurus, negat anguis apertus.
(DAR. PHRYG. lib. 2.
Cecrops enjoyed his new government for the space of fifty years, but his attachment to his native soil of Egypt drew him into an unlucky expedition with King Pharaoh, in whose company he was drowned in the Red Sea, whilst in pursuit of the Israelites; notwithstanding which we are informed upon the authority of the poet Euripides, that he was translated into the starry sphere, and became a constellation of some dignity after his death; and if we consider what obligations this prince had conferred on the gods, as well as men, we shall not think him too highly rewarded; on the contrary we must own he was rather hardly dealt with both by Minerva as well as Mercury; the former of which shut his son in a chest in company with a dragon, and the latter betrayed his daughter into a false step; an attachment, which though it does not convict her of vulgarity of taste, certainly does no credit to the chastity of her morals, or the gratitude of her seducer.
Cranaus succeeded on the death of Cecrops, and after a reign of nine years was deposed by Amphictyon, who seized the throne of Athens and rendered his name memorable to posterity by establishing the great Council or Law-Courts of the Amphictyons, who held their meetings at Thermopylae. This prince introduced the practice of diluting and mixing wines; a practice that obtained through all Greece for many ages; in memory of which sober institution, Amphictyon erected an altar to Bacchus the Upright and placed it in the Temple of the Hours: He also consecrated an altar to the nymphs near at hand in the same temple, that mankind might thereby be kept in mind of the gracefulness of temperance, and it is not easy to find any instance in the pagan worship, where superstition has been applied to more elegant or moral purposes. In small communities such regulations may be carried into effect, where all the people are under the eye of the sovereign, and in the same spirit of reformation Amphictyon published an edict, that none of his subjects should indulge themselves in the use of undiluted wine, except in one small glass after their meals to give them a taste of the potency of the god; under this restriction he permitted the free use of diluted wines, provided they observed in their meetings to address their libations to Jupiter the preserver of man's health.
This virtuous usurper, after an administration of ten years, was in his turn expelled from the throne of Athens by that Erechthonius, the son of Cecrops, whom Minerva shut up in a chest with his companion the dragon, and committed to the keeping of his sisters: This is the person whom Homer mentions in his second book of the Iliad by the name of Erechtheus: He is celebrated for having first yoked horses to a chariot, and also for introducing the use of silver coin in Attica.
Primus Erechthonius currus et quatuor ausus
Jungere Equos, rapidis
que
rotis insistere Victor.
But the institutions which have rendered the name of Erechthonius famous to all posterity, are those of the Eleusynian Mysteries and the feasts of the Panathenaea. The first of these he established in honour of Ceres, on account of a seasonable supply of corn from the granaries of Egypt, when the city and territory of Athens were in imminent danger of starving by an extraordinary drought: These sacred mysteries were of Egyptian origin, and as they consisted of forms and rites, unintelligible to the vulgar, and probably very little comprehended even by the initiated, the secret was well kept.
As for the Panathenaea, they were instituted, as their name indicates, in honour of Minerva, and were the great festival of the Athenians: The celebration was originally comprized in one day, but afterwards it was extended to several, and the various athletic games and races, with the recitation of poems, that accompanied it, attracted an immense resort of spectators. Every species of contention, both on foot and horseback, drew the bold and adventrous to the field of fame, whilst the prizes for music and the rival display of the drama in after-times recreated the aged, the elegant, and the learned: The conquerors in the several games gave entertainments to their friends, in which they presided crowned with olive in honour of the guardian deity: These were scenes of the greatest festivity, till, when Athens had submitted to the Roman yoke, those sanguinary conquerors introduced the combats of gladiators into these favorite solemnities. Every age had its share in contributing to the spectacle; the old men walked in procession with branches of olive in their hands, the young in armour with shield and spear; the labouring peasants with spades, and their wives with water-buckets: The boys crowned with garlands, and dressed in frocks or surplices of white, chaunted hymns to Minerva; and the girls followed with baskets, in which the sacrificing utensils were contained.
A superstition, supported by splendor, and enlivened with festivity, was well calculated to keep a lasting hold upon the human mind.
No XV.
THE Eleusynian Mysteries, instituted by Erechthonius, were celebrated in the time of autumn every fifth year at Eleusis, where a great concourse of people met upon the occasion: The ceremonies of initiation were preceded by sacrifices, prayers, and ablutions; the candidates were exercised in trials of secrecy and prepared by vows of continence; every circumstance was contrived to render the act as awful and striking as possible; the initiation was performed at midnight, and the candidate was taken into an interior sacristy of the temple with a myrtle garland on his head; here he was examined if he had duly performed his stated ablutions; clean hands, a pure heart, and a native proficiency in the Greek tongue were indispensible requisites; having passed this examination, he was admitted into the temple, which was an edifice of immense magnitude; after proclamation made that the strictest silence should be observed, the officiating priest took out the sacred volumes containing the mysteries; these books were written in a strange character, interspersed with the figures of animals and various emblems and hieroglyphics; they were preserved in a cavity between two large blocks of stone, closely fitted to each other, and they were carefully replaced by the priest with much solemnity, after he had explained what was necessary to the initiated out of them. The initiated were enjoined to honour their parents, to reverence the immortal gods, and abstain from particular sorts of diet, particularly tame fowls, fish, beans, and certain sorts of apples.
When this was finished the priests began to play off the whole machinery of the temple in all its terror; doleful groans and lamentations broke out from the fane, thick and sudden darkness involved the temple, momentary gleams of light flashed forth every now and then with tremblings, as if an earthquake had shaken the edifice; sometimes these coruscations continued long enough to discover all the splendor of the shrines and images, accompanied with voices in concert, dancings and music; at other times during the darkness severities were exercised upon the initiated by persons unseen; they were dragged to the ground by the hair of their heads, and there beaten and lashed, without knowing from whom the blows proceeded, or why they were inflicted: Lightnings and thunderings and dreadful apparitions were occasionally played off with every invention to terrify and astonish; at length upon a voice crying out
Conx! Ompax!
the ceremony was concluded and the initiated dismissed. The garment worn upon this occasion was not to be laid aside, whilst it would hang together, and the shreds were then to be dedicated at some shrine, as a tattered trophy of the due performance of the mysteries of Ceres.
These initiations were conceived to lead to the enjoyment of a happier lot in this life, and to fit a man for a more dignified place amongst the blest hereafter; and they were in such general respect, that it afforded great cause of reproach against Socrates, for having neglected his initiation. The vows of secrecy and the penalties to be inflicted on violation, were as binding as could possibly be devised.
Hitherto the rising state of Athens had not been engaged in war, but no sooner was it involved in disputes with the Eleusynians on account of some praedatory incursions, than the idea took its rise of devoting human victims to appease the hostile divinities and to purchase conquest by the oblation of what was dearest and most valuable in life.
As we are now approaching towards the time of Homer, who records instances of this sort, it may be curious to mark when that savage superstition had its origin. No example occurs to me in Grecian story antecedent to Erechthonius, who in obedience to an oracle, sacrificed one of his daughters, and some say all, to purchase thereby success against the Eleusynians. It is however a matter of less wonder than regret how this idea should obtain so generally; when a people are in the habit of making animal sacrifices a part of their worship, and whose religion it is to believe that intercession can be made to the gods, and favours obtained by the blood of victims taken from the brute creation, the thought of ascending a step higher in the dignity of the oblation naturally leads to the hope of purchasing a greater reward. With these ideas enthusiastic spirits, like Decius and Curtius amongst the Romans, rushed upon self-destruction, and Erechthonius, king of Athens, devoted his daughter, Codrus himself—
If the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood,
&c. &c. &c. There is a wild magnanimity in the idea highly captivating; Cicero more than once alludes to this action of Erechthonius, and in his oration for Sextus exclaims—
Shall I after so many illustrious deeds shrink from death, which even the daughters of Erechthonius, with all the weakness of their sex about them, resigned themselves to without regret?
Let the mind be possessed with the persuasion of immortal happiness annexed to the act, and there will be no want of candidates to struggle for the glorious prerogative. Erechthonius and his daughters were associated to the deities after their death, altars were dedicated and a temple erected to them in the citadel of Athens, where divine honours were paid to their memories. The Eleusynians were defeated and despoiled of all they possessed, except the mysteries of Ceres abovementioned; of these they were left in undisturbed enjoyment: Their king Eumolpus was slain in battle, but Neptune, whose son he was, revenged his loss by striking his conqueror dead with his trident.
Thus perished Erechthonius by immortal hands, if we take the authority of Euripides the tragic poet, after he had reigned fifty years in Athens: In his time the people of Attica, heretofore called Cecropians, took the name of Athenians: Ovid, whose metamorphoses mix much ancient truth with fable, says
that this prince at his death left it doubtful with posterity, whether he excelled most in justice as a King, or in military glory as a General.
Aegeus, the reputed father of Theseus, was the eighth king of Athens, reckoning from Cecrops, and son of Pandion II. grandson of Erechthonius, the crown having descended regularly from father to son through several generations: After remaining childless for several years he consulted the oracle at Delphi upon the mode of obtaining an heir; to a very plain question he obtained a very obscure answer, and, not being able to solve the aenigma himself, consulted several persons upon the interpretation of it, and amongst others his friend Pittheus, king of Troezene, from whose sagacity he promised himself a solution of the difficulty: This wise prince had a daughter named Aethra, and she having admitted Aegeus to a secret consultation by night in the fane of Minerva, proved a more able interpreter of the Delphic oracle than her father, and put Aegeus in possession of his wishes by bearing him a son: This son was the hero Theseus, but it cannot be disguised, that a doubt was started, whether Neptune had not a better claim to the child than Aegeus; for the princess Aethra is charged with admitting both visiters in the same evening, and when the controversy lies between a mortal and an immortal lover, the most that can be said for Aegeus is, that it leaves the case doubtful. The king of Athens put in his claim by leaving his sword and sandals in custody of Aethra, when he understood she was pregnant, enjoining her to let the child, if he proved a son, remain at Troezene, until he became adult and had strength enough to remove a block of stone, under which he deposited his pledges; on the hilt of the sword, which was ivory, he caused to be engraved his name and titles, and Aegeus declared he would acknowledge the bearer of those pledges and adopt him as his heir: This being done, he returned to Athens and celebrated the Panathenaea with uncommon splendor.
This monarch filled the throne of Athens for the space of forty-eight years and terminated his life by casting himself into the sea, thence called Aegean, in despair upon discovering the vessel, that brought his son Theseus from his Cretan expedition against the Minotaur, approach the shores of Attica with black sails, when the signal of life and victory was to be the contrary display of white ones, which Theseus by a fatal neglect had failed to put out upon his coming in sight of the coast.
The impatient and despairing parent precipitated himself into the ocean and the son succeeded to his throne. There is no hero in antiquity, who for his magnanimity, his adventures, or the exquisite beauty and perfection of his person has been more celebrated than Theseus: In some of the actions of his life he performed real and distinguished services to his country; in others he appears to have been governed merely by an extravagant and wild passion for adventure: No hero has furnished more themes to the poets, and few princes have at times deserved better of their subjects: By his valour in action and the terror of his name he cleared many regions of those lawless clans of robbers and plunderers, with which they were infested to the disgrace and danger of society: Ambitious to emulate the fame of his contemporary Hercules, he seems sometimes to have forgotten that he had subjects under his care and command, and roved about in quest of adventures, the general champion of distress and the sworn exterminator of monsters and tyrants, wherever they were to be found: Preceded by his axe-bearers in commemoration of his destruction of the robbers, and carrying on his shoulder the ponderous club of Corynaetes, whom he vanquished, he marched in triumph to Delphi, like another Hercules after his labours: The bulls of Crete and Marathon and the Cremmyonian boar were trophies, that might vie with the hydra; and Corcyon, whom he slew, was as formidable a champion as Antaeus, and fixed the triumph of agility over strength: He killed Procrustes, whose couch was as fatal as the den of Cacus.
Theseus upon his accession to the government of Attica reformed the state of justice and amended the condition of his subjects by many kingly regulations; before his time the people were dispersed about the country in small and separated clans, more like the settlements of savages than a regular community; the police of course was very imperfect; the laws were merely local and arbitrary, nor did they generally agree in the same definition or distribution of justice; to remedy these evils he enlarged his capital, assembled the people from all parts, fixed them to a residence in Athens and established general courts of law and justice, where all his subjects might resort to decide their properties, or compose their wrongs, by stated rules and institutes, expounded and administered by judges competent to their vocation.
These are services beneficial to mankind, the actions of a patriot king and legislator, infinitely superior to the extermination of boars or bulls, the unravelling a labyrinth, or conflicting with a wrestler. One should have thought that the rambling spirit of Theseus might henceforward have subsided, and, if Hercules had not been upon earth, this would probably have been the case, and he would have descended to posterity one of the greatest characters in ancient history; but the expedition against the Amazons drew him out upon fresh and foolish adventures, and, though his friendship and his amours may have furnished pleasing tales and fables to Hesiod and others, the historian will do well to pass over this period of his life in silence and regret.
It suffices to relate that Menestheus took advantage of his absence and established himself so firmly in power, that Theseus on his return finding it impossible to dispossess him of his usurped authority retired to Scyros, and there either put a voluntary end to his life, or was destroyed by Lycomedes.
In the reign of Menestheus the famous siege of Troy, memorable to all ages, was undertaken by the joint forces of all the Grecian principalities: The combined fleets assembled at Athens and took their final departure from that port: Agamemnon conducted a hundred ships from Mycenae, Menelaus sixty from Sparta, and Menestheus joined with fifty: The latter excelled all the generals of Greece, Nestor only excepted, in military science for arranging and disposing troops in order of battle. Homer has left this testimony in his favour, and the authority is as indisputable as the record is immortal; the town was taken in the last year of Menestheus's life and reign; he died in the island of Melos, and being one of the chiefs inclosed in the Trojan horse, had a leading share in the capture and destruction of that celebrated city.
No chief like thee, Menestheus, Greece could yield,
To marshal armies in the dusty field,
Th' extended wings of battle to display,
Or close th' embodied host in firm array;
Nestor alone, improv'd by length of days,
For martial conduct bore an equal praise.
POPE.
No XVI.
THE expedition of the Greeks against Troy has supplied a subject to an heroic poem, which remains the wonder of all time and the unrivalled standard of the epic art. It must be owned no poet ever made a happier choice, for what could be more interesting to a Grecian reader than the recital of an action founded in justice and terminated in success? The event itself was magnificent; a coalition of the Grecian states in vindication of an injured prince, who was one of their number. Had it recorded the expedition of one great monarch against another, it is easy to comprehend how much that brilliant variety of character, which now gives such dramatic lustre to the composition, would have lost by the nature of such a subject; whereas the emulation of the rival leaders constitutes that compound action, that striking contrast and discrimination of character, which render the Iliad so peculiarly enchanting. The justice of the undertaking fortifies the poet with a moral, which secures the good opinion of his readers, and interests them cordially in his cause; it is so permanent a pledge for their good wishes, that it enables him to throw into the scale of the Trojans every episode of pity, every ornament of magnanimity and valour, which can beautify his poem without the danger of creating false prejudices in behalf of the offenders; in short, we can mourn for Hector and not regret the victory of Achilles.
If Homer found these incidents ready to his hands, their combination was supremely happy; if he created them, his invention was almost miraculous. The period at which he wrote was no less fortunate, being neither too remote to impair the interest of his subject, nor so near the time of the action as to confine his fancy to the limits of strict historical truth. So wonderful an assemblage of parts meet in this great work, that there is not a passion in the human breast but will find its ruling interest gratified by the perusal; and it is so happily contrived, that the combination of those parts, multitudinous as they are, never violates the uniformity of design; the subject remains simple and entire; our ideas never stray from the main object of the poem, though they are continually carried out upon excursions through the regions of earth and heaven upon the strongest pinions of fancy. The manner in which Homer employs his deities, with the machinery that accompanies them, gives an amazing brilliancy to the picturesque and descriptive powers of the poem; the virtues, vices, prejudices, passions of those imaginary beings set them on a level with human nature so far as to give us an interest in their situations, which a juster representation of superior essences could not impart; while their immortality and power are engines in the poet's hand, whose influence is unlimited by the laws of nature; these extraordinary personages, at the same time that they take a part very essential to the action of the drama, bring about the incidents by those sudden and supernatural means, which mortal heroes of the most romantic sort could not so readily effect. This is an advantage on the part of a heathen poet, for which the Christian writer has no substitute; for those moderns, who in order to create surprize have invented capricious beings to produce extravagant events above the reach of human powers, and below the dignity of divine, violate our reason, whilst they struggle to amuse our fancy; but the Pagan theorist can find a deity for every purpose without giving scandal to the believer, or revolting the philosopher.
Amongst the numberless excellencies of the Iliad there is none more to be admired than the correct precision, with which Homer draws his characters and preserves them uniformly through the poem; an excellence, in which Virgil and the Roman poets in general are greatly his inferiors: With Homer's heroes we have more than historical acquaintance, we are made intimate with their habits and manners, and whenever he withdraws them for a time, we are certain upon the next meeting to recognize and acknowledge the same characteristic traces that separate each individual so decidedly from all others.—But it is time to return to our history.
After the death of Menestheus the crown of Athens returned into the family of Theseus, and Demophon his son, who also was present at the siege of Troy, succeeded to his inheritance: Oxyntes, Aphidas, and Thymaetes reigned in succession after Demophon, and the line of the Erechthidae expired in the person of Thymaetes. This was a remarkable revolution, for that family had possessed the throne of Athens for a period of four hundred and twenty-nine years. The monarchy, properly so called, was now drawing to its conclusion; Melanthus, who succeeded to Thymaetes, was a Messenian and a descendant from Neleus; he had been expelled from Messene by the Heraclidae, and had taken refuge in the Athenian state; he obtained the crown by very honourable means; Thymaetes, being challenged to single combat by Xanthus king of Boeotia, declined the challenge; Melanthus accepted it in his stead, slew Xanthus, and obtained the crown of Athens in reward for his success; at his death it devolved to his son Codrus. The manner in which this prince devoted himself to death for his country scarce needs a recital, but it is not generally known that Codrus was in a very advanced age, when this event took place, and moreover that the Athenians urged him to the deed upon the report of Cleomantis, a citizen of Delphi, who made them acquainted with the answer of the oracle touching the conditions, on which victory was to be obtained. The Athenians, having prevailed with Codrus to embrace the fatal conditions of their deliverance, sacrificed their aged monarch, and impressed with the persuasion that Apollo would verify his prediction, fought and overcame their enemy.
Codrus being dead, the government of Athens underwent a material revolution, for the popular party, pretending a respect to his memory, put forward a decree prohibiting any other person to reign in Athens by the title of King; the change however for the present was more nominal than essential, for they did not alter the succession, nor materially reduce the power of the monarchy. The Prince, or perpetual Archon, (for each title is used occasionally) held the government for life, subject notwithstanding to account to the state for his administration of public affairs.
Medon, son of Codrus, succeeded to his father by this new title: Thirteen princes reigned under this description from Medon to Alcmaeon inclusive, comprehending a period of three hundred and seven years.
Some authorities maintain that Homer came to Athens in the time of Medon, and was hospitably received by that prince; but it is generally thought the age of Homer does not answer to this date, and that he was born about two hundred years after the siege of Troy; this falls within the time of Archippus, grandson of Medon, and third perpetual archon; in the beginning of whose reign Hesiod was born; Homer some few years after at the close of it: Archippus reigned nineteen years; and this aera seems established by the best chronologists.
Archippus, at the conclusion of whose administration we have placed the birth of Homer, was succeeded by Thersippus, who held the government of Athens for a long incumbency of forty-one years, and he was succeeded by Phorbas, who was thirty years archon; in the period of these seventy-one years we have the Athenian aera of the life of Homer.
This however must in some degree be left to opinion, for before the institution of the Olympiads the Grecian chronicles are so vague and obscure that the precise age of Homer will for ever remain a subject of conjecture. The above period has at least the merit of holding a middle place between their opinions, who suppose he was born soon after the siege of Troy and such as contend he was contemporary with Lycurgus. The late Mr. Robert Wood, in his essay on the original genius and writings of Homer, inclines to think the Iliad and Odyssey were finished about half a century after the capture of Troy; he has offered internal evidence in support of this opinion in Homer's account of the family of Aeneas, and his argument is acute and critical: They, who make him contemporary with Lycurgus, have internal evidence against them, which, though perhaps it does not serve to establish Mr. Wood's position, certainly confutes the latter chronologists. Aristotle places Homer in the same epoch with Iphitus and the first Olympiad, but he rests his conjecture upon the weakest of all arguments; whilst the best authorities, as well as the majority in number, point to the period which I have suggested; and here for the present I will leave it.
The last but one of the perpetual archons was Aeschylus, and in the second year of his government the Olympiads were first instituted by Iphitus at Elis; from this period we shall proceed with greater chronological precision.
The successor of Aeschylus and the last of the perpetual archons was Alcmaeon. The people of Athens had new-modelled their government upon the death of Codrus by abolishing the title of King, and reducing their chief magistrate to be in fact rather the first subject of the state, than the monarch: This regulation appears to have been effected without any struggle on the part of the reigning family; thirteen archons in succession had now been permitted to hold the government for life, when upon the expiration of Alcmaeon's administration, the people thought fit by a fresh reform to limit the duration of the chief magistracy to the term of ten years. Charops, brother of Alcmaeon and son of Aeschylus, was the first decennial archon; and this revolution took place in the first year of the seventh Olympiad. Whilst the Athenian state was by these steps enlarging its liberties, Romulus and Remus were forming the embryo of a mighty empire fated in the course of time to become mistress of the world; these adventurers collected a body of Latin shepherds, amongst whom they had been educated, and, settling themselves on the Palatine Mount, became the founders of Rome: This event is supposed to fall within the period of the seventh Olympiad, when Charops was decennial archon. It is generally supposed that this mighty empire was set in motion from one spark, which Greece had scattered from the conflagration of Troy, and which lighted on the shores of Italy, where it was kept alive for more than four centuries, till Rome was founded; but Aeneas's Italian colonization is a very questionable point, and I am inclined to agree with Mr. Wood in his treatise abovementioned, that the posterity of Aeneas did not migrate into Italy, but established themselves in the Troade and reigned over the scattered remains of the Trojans after the destruction of Ilium.
A revolution of eighteen Olympiads produced a third change in the constitution of the Athenian government in favour of popular freedom, by limiting the archons to one year, making the magistracy annual: Neither was this all, for the command was no longer lodged in the hands of one person only, but of nine, the first of which was stiled by pre-eminence Archon, and from him the year had its name; the second, intitled Basileus, took charge of religious ceremonies, and the Polemarc, or third in office, had the conduct of military affairs, whilst all civil and judicial business was referred to the council of the remaining six, called Thesmothetae. None but pure Athenians of three descents could be chosen by lot into this council; an oath of office was administered to them publicly in the portico of the palace, purporting that they would execute the laws with justice and fidelity, and take no gifts either from their clients or the people at large. When they had performed their annual functions, and acquitted themselves without impeachment, they were in course aggregated to the Areopagites, and held that dignity for life. Every thing relating to the care of orphans and widows, or the estates of minors, was vested in the principal magistrate, properly stiled Archon; he had the charge of divorces and the superintendance of the parents and children of soldiers, who fell in battle, and of all such citizens who were maintained at the public charge.
Of these annual archons Creon was the first, and was elected about the twenty-fourth Olympiad.
No XVII.
THE Athenian state continued to be governed by annual archons according to the alteration made in its constitution in the twenty-fourth Olympiad, without any thing occurring of importance to merit a recital from the time of Creon to the administration of Draco in the thirty-ninth Olympiad. The Athenians, having reduced the monarchical power to the most diminutive of all kingly representatives an annual archon, had to all appearance effectually established their liberties; but it has been the fate of freedom to be turned into abuse in all ages, and the licentiousness of the people now seemed in more want of reform, than the prerogative of the king had been in the most arbitrary times. The moral purity of Draco's manners, and the stern inflexibility of his temper fitted him for an office, that required both rigorous virtue and resolute dispatch, for his time was short and his task laborious and full of danger: Had his power been permanent, it is probable he would have qualified the severity of those famous laws, which from their sanguinary nature were figuratively said to be written in blood, and it is certain they breathe a spirit calculated rather for the extinction of society, than for its reformation. We must however admit the difficulty of devising any code of penal statutes, by which degrees of punishment shall be equitably proportioned to degrees of offence. We have no experience or history of any such code now existing, or that ever did exist. A citizen of the world will not estimate crimes and offences by the same rule and standard as a citizen of any one particular community will; local circumstances will give fainter or deeper colourings to crimes according to the peculiar constitution of the state, against which they are committed: The Athenians in the time of Draco were governed by annual magistrates, the administration of these magistrates was made subject to popular enquiry upon its termination; they had expunged from their constitution the wholesome though high-sounding principle, that a king cannot do wrong; it was now become scarce possible that his substitute could do right; the people sat in judgment on their governors, and many of the most virtuous citizens in the state suffered under their sentence: Fear restrained the timid from exertion, and the allurements of power debauched the interested and ambitious from their duty; whilst the magistrate aimed at popularity, the people became intolerably licentious. The rigour of Draco impresses us with a high idea of his purity of principle; his abhorrence of the abuses of his predecessors in office, and his indignation against the depravity of his fellow-citizens embittered his mind, and made him rather a misanthrope, than a statesman.
Draco seems to have considered the commission of crimes, not in proportion to their offence against society, but according to the principle of the criminal, holding a transgressor equally guilty, whether he broke the law in the least tittle, or in its greatest extent; for he punished indiscriminately with death in both cases: In this there is as little wisdom as mercy, and it is to the honour of Solon that he revoked such undistinguishing and bloody laws. Justly to ascertain and define the various degrees of human depravity is impracticable for those who cannot search the human heart; nor in the nature of things is it possible for any man, or council of men, to form a system of punishments to meet the several degrees and definitions of crimes with proportioned retribution: Sentence of death is at once the highest exertion of authority one fellow-creature can exercise over another and the heaviest atonement any offender can make to the laws of that society, in which he is inlisted: Draco excused himself from the charge of indiscriminate rigour by pleading that he could devise no punishment greater than death; the nature of the plea gives an insight into the character of the man, that needs no comment; it is plain however that he had no idea of aggravating death by tortures; he did not know, or would not practise, those detestable arts and refinements, which now prevail in too many parts of the Christian world, of extorting criminations and confessions by heightening the agonies of death. The short duration of his authority, as I before observed, precipitated him upon this system of severity, which time and reflection would probably have corrected: A hasty reformer is equally to be dreaded with a deliberate tyrant; legal cruelty is of all most terrible; a law once made is made to be executed; the will of the judge cannot mitigate it, and the power of the sovereign can only release from punishment, but not apportion or modify it: Herein consists the irreparable defect of all established rules of fixed punishment; to include different degrees of criminality under one and the same degree of penalty is not strict equity, but to live without laws at the arbitrary disposal of any human tribunal is slavery of the most insupportable sort.
By Draco's laws an Athenian was equally guilty of death, whether he pilfered a cabbage or murdered a citizen: Horrible decree! If the principle of punishment does not consist in revenging what is past, but in preventing the culprit from repeating and the community from suffering the like or any other offence from the same person, it may well be doubted if death need be inflicted in any case; the terror of example, not the spirit of revenge, must constitute the necessity of such a mode of punishment, if any necessity exists; but if punishments may be devised, by which guilty persons shall be made to atone to society without cutting them from it, and if these punishments may be such as shall deter and terrify the evil-minded equally with death itself, policy, independent of religion, will be interested to adopt them.
It was not to be expected that the Athenians would be remedied by such sanguinary laws as these of Draco, and they had been in operation nearly half a century, when Solon in the third year of the forty-sixth Olympiad found the people in as much need of reformation, as Draco did in the beginning of the thirty-fifth Olympiad.
Solon was of noble birth and of an elevated soul; he was a friend to liberty, but a lover of order; descended from Codrus, he was a patriot by inheritance; though he was a great adept in the philosophy of the times, it neither soured his manners nor left him without attention to the public: When he withdrew himself from the world for the purposes of study and contemplation, it was to render himself a more useful citizen on his return to society: With a fortune rather below mediocrity he had such a spirit of beneficence and generosity, that he was obliged in his youth to apply himself to commerce to support his independence: Solon's philosophy did not boast any unnatural contempt of pain or pleasure; he affected no apathy; on the contrary, when he was reproached for weeping at the death of his son, as if it was unbecoming of a wise man to bewail an evil he could not remedy, he answered with a modest sensibility of his weakness, that it was on that very account he did bewail it.
The anecdote Plutarch gives us of Solon's interview with his contemporary Thales, and the silly method that philosopher took for convincing Solon of the advantages of celibacy by employing a fellow to make a false report to him of his son's death, heightens our affection for the man, without lowering our respect for the sage: Thales in the true spirit of sophism triumphed in the superiority of his wisdom by avoiding those connections, which soften the human heart, and vainly supposed he sunk the dignity of Solon's character by exposing to ridicule the tender feelings of the father.
The Athenians were exhausted by a tedious and unprosperous war with the people of Megara; the important island of Salamis was lost, and such was their despair of ever recovering it, that they passed a law for making it a capital offence in any citizen to propose the retaking it; Solon, who regarded this degrading edict with honest indignation, feigned himself insane and rushing into the forum harangued the populace, abrogated the edict and declared war against the Megarensians: On this occasion he addressed the people in elegiac verses of his own composing, one hundred in number; the power of his muse prevailed, for it was great; the people gave him the command of an expedition against Salamis, in which he had the good fortune to reduce that island and re-annex it to his country, which had made such public avowal of its despair.
Solon is so highly celebrated as a poet, that some ancient authorities have equalled him to Hesiod and even to Homer: We have few and small remains, but many testimonies of his writings; in particular we are informed, that he composed five thousand verses on the commonwealth of Athens, recording the transactions of his own time, not as a history in praise, but in defence of himself, and with the view to encourage his countrymen to persist in a course of public virtue and private morality. He wrote iambics also and odes, and composed even his laws in verse, of which Plutarch has quoted the exordium.
He employed stratagem in the reduction of the island of Salamis, but as the celebrated Pisistratus was joined with him in this enterprize, it must not be disguised that some authorities give the success of the expedition to Pisistratus; both were men of consummate address and resource, and each no doubt had his share of merit in the service; the reputation Solon gained by this event was still increased by his conduct in the defence of the famous temple of Delphi against the sacrilegious Cirrhaeans; though he was only assessor to the general Clisthenes the Sicyonian in this campaign, the successful termination of the war by the capture of Cirrha was universally attributed to Solon.
Athens was now rent by popular feuds and dissensions; the commonwealth was in imminent peril, every thing tending to civil tumult and confusion, and the people in a state little short of absolute anarchy: In this extremity every eye was turned towards Solon and he was elected archon by the general voice of his fellowcitizens. It was now not only in his power to make himself absolute master of the state, and to establish that tyranny in his own person, which he lived to see Pisistratus aspire to and obtain, but that step was also pressed upon him by the unanimous solicitation of his friends and the public at large; religion had its share in the temptation, for the temple of Delphi uttered its oracular decree for his assuming the supreme power in Athens, and when he withstood the dazzling offer he had to combat the reproaches and invectives of all parties for refusing it. A magnanimity that was proof against temptation was not to be shaken by calumny; supported by conscious integrity he opposed the torrent, and contenting himself with the limited authority of an annual magistracy, framed and published those mild and salutary ordinances, which have endeared his name to all posterity. Amongst the pacifying measures of his government he found it expedient to relieve the people by an ordinance for the remission of debts of a certain description; this act raised a storm of opposition and abuse from all the rich and usurious against his administration, and some who had been his intimates took part in the faction, and began to persecute him in the bitterest manner, charging him with the meanness of exempting himself as a creditor from the conditions of the act; he soon turned the odium of the charge upon the contrivers of it by giving public proof to the city that he himself had been the first, who obeyed his own law, and remitted a considerable sum to his debtors; this proof of his disinterestedness as a creditor convinced his countrymen of his uprightness as a legislator, and he rose the higher in their esteem for the malevolent attack he had so fully repulsed: Reason and public gratitude at length prevailed, and the voice of faction being put to silence, the whole care of the commonwealth was surrendered into his hands to be regulated and reformed according to his wisdom and discretion.
Solon, though too magnanimous to accept the title of king, was too good a citizen to decline the trust, and now it was that he abrogated all Draco's sanguinary laws, except those that affected murderers: This, as I before observed, occurred in the course of the forty-sixth Olympiad; he arranged the people into four classes according to the different proportions of their property; he erected the principal council of the Areopagites with inferior courts for the administration of law and justice, and published his famous manifesto for rendering infamous all persons, who in civil seditions should remain spectators of their country's danger by a criminal neutrality; he enacted many wholesome regulations respecting marriages, tending to the encrease of population; he suppressed libels, and made idleness punishable by law; he put under certain disabilities parents, who were convicted of having grosly neglected the education of their families, and restrained by sumptuary laws every species of public excess. Many more of his laws might be enumerated, if it were necessary to enlarge upon facts so generally known, but it will suffice to mention, that when he had compleated his code, he bound the senators to the observance of what it contained by the solemnest oath he could devise, and causing his laws to be engraven on tables of wood, hung them up in the public courts that no man might plead ignorance.
The nature of this oath is curious; the senator was led up to a ponderous stone preserved in the forum; there the oath was publicly administered, and the obligation of it was, that he should dedicate a piece of gold to the temple of Delphi of equal weight with the stone if he was proved guilty of having violated his oath: Not content with thus swearing the judges and senators to the faithful administration of his laws, he also bound the people by oath to their due observance, and having done all this with a temper and prudence, particularly expressive of his character, Solon took his leave of Athens and sat out upon his travels into Egypt.
No XVIII.
ALTHOUGH the wisdom and magnanimity of Solon are conspicuous in every action of his life, which history has transmitted to us, nothing is more worthy of our admiration and praise than the circumstance last recorded of his secession from Athens.
It is not necessary to follow him in his travels, in which after some time spent in visiting Egypt, Cyprus, and Lydia, he obeyed the summons of his fellow-citizens and returned to Athens: That city during his absence had been distracted by furious and contending factions: Lycurgus headed one party, Megacles son of Alcmaeon another, and Pisistratus was leader of a third, in which was included nearly the whole inferior order of the people: All these parties nevertheless preserved a respect for their ancient benefactor and lawgiver, and he spared no pains in return to assuage and compose the disorders of the state, but in vain; age indeed had not yet deprived him of his mental faculties, but his corporeal ones were debilitated, and the crisis called for more activity than he was now capable of exerting; he could no longer speak in public nor address the people in the forum, as he was accustomed to do; he tried his influence separately and in private with the leaders of the several factions: Pisistratus, whose manners were of the gentlest kind, affected to receive the advice and counsels of Solon with great external respect, but ambition had taken too firm hold of his heart and he had laid his plans too deep to be diverted from them by the patriotic discourses of this venerable citizen; the sagacity of Solon penetrated his designs, and when he was convinced of his dissimulation, and saw the liberties of his country on the point of being overthrown by this artful daemagogue, he came into open court in military array, and presented himself to the assembly ready to head the friends of their country, and expel Pisistratus by force of arms: The noble effort was too late, for the spirit of the people was lost, and all men seemed disposed to surrender themselves without resistance to the usurper. Solon, finding that he could not rouse them to a consideration of their ancient dignity, nor inspire them with a becoming sense of the value of liberty, laid aside his arms, and suspending them at the door of the Court-house, took a short but pathetic leave of Athens, and once again retired into voluntary banishment: Whither is not distinctly ascertained; many pressing invitations were addressed to him from different parts, and I am inclined to think he accepted that of Croesus king of Lydia, and that he closed an illustrious life in extreme old age in the island of Cyprus. His ashes by his express direction were transported to his native island of Salamis and there deposited. The Athenians erected his statue in brass, but Pisistratus revoked his laws: The laws of Draco, notwithstanding their severity, were in execution for a longer period than the mild and prudent ordinances of Solon. The people it is true never wholly forfeited their respect for this excellent person, but they were unworthy of him; even Pisistratus amidst the struggles of ambition offered no insult to his person, and every country, which his fame had reached, presented an asylum to the venerable exile.
As an orator Solon stands high in point of merit, and first in order of time: As a poet, his genius was sublime, various, and fluent; in subjects of fiction and fancy he never dealt; but, though he chose his topics with the gravity of a statesman, and handled them with the fidelity of an historian, he composed with ardour, and never failed to fire his hearers with the recitation of his poems: He is supposed to have reprobated the drama, but, if this be a fact, we may well conclude, that it was the old corrupt masque of Bacchus and the Satyrs, of which he signified his dislike, and in this he is warranted. In two expeditions, where he had a military command, he was eminently successful, and gained a high degree of glory: No statesman ever stood in times more perilous, no citizen ever resisted more alluring offers of ambition, and no legislator ever regulated a more disorderly community: Tho' devoted to the study of philosophy, and a great master in the early science of the times, he mixed with chearfulness in society, was friendly and convivial, and did not hold back from those tender ties and attachments, which connect a man to the world, and which by some have been considered incompatible with a life devoted to wisdom and sublime philosophy: Strict in his morals as Draco, he was not like him disposed to put criminals to death, whilst there was any hope of conducting them by gentle measures to repentance: His modesty was natural and unaffected, and though he was generally silent in company, his silence threw no damp upon festivity, for it did not savour of sullenness, and he was known to be a friend to the use of wine with freedom, but without excess: At the meeting of the seven celebrated sages (his contemporaries and colleagues in wisdom) when they were entertained by Periander at Corinth, the golden salver, which the Milesian fishermen had dragged out of the sea in their net, and which the Delphic oracle upon reference of the controversy had decreed to the wisest man of the age, was by general suffrage given to Solon; each person, with becoming deference to the others, had severally declined the prize, but Solon was at length constrained to receive it by concurrent vote of the whole assembly.
Historians are not agreed upon the exact time of Solon's departure from Athens, and some maintain that he continued there till his death; this is not probable; but the result of the accounts puts it out of doubt that he remained there, whilst there was any hope of composing the disturbances of the state, and of restoring its tranquillity and freedom under the prudent regulations he had established, when he was Archon.
But no sooner had this excellent citizen turned his back upon Athens, than all these hopes perished and universal despair took place; the degeneracy of the people became incurable, and no one was found with authority or zeal to oppose the approaching revolution: Though Solon was far in the decline of life, yet if there had been any public virtue subsisting, the liberty of Athens had not been lost without a struggle; but, although neutrality in civil commotions had been declared infamous and criminal by the laws of Solon, the populace through despair or indolence declined the contest and held themselves in readiness to receive a master in either of the contending partisans, who should prevail over his competitors.
Fortune and superior address at length decided the prize of ambition to Pisistratus and his party, for he possessed every qualification that could recommend him to the public; of insinuating manners, with a beautiful and commanding person, he was gallant, eloquent, and munificent; no man acquitted himself more gracefully as a public speaker, and when Pericles in aftertimes alarmed the jealousy of the Athenians, the resemblance he bore to Pisistratus in eloquence as well as in features was so striking, that he was universally called the
Second Pisistratus,
and the comic poets in their satirical allusions exhibited him on the stage by that name and character.
Whilst these party struggles were in suspence, Pisistratus used an artifice for recommending himself to the people, which was decisive in his favour: One day on a sudden he rushed into the forum, where the citizens were assembled, as if he had been flying from assassins, who were in pursuit of him, and presented himself to public view defaced with wounds, and covered with blood; he was mounted in his chariot, and the mules that drew him were streaming with blood as well as himself: The crowd flocked around him, and in this situation without wiping his wounds or dismounting from his chariot, he harangued the forum; he told them he had that instant escaped from the assassinating swords of the nobles, who had cruelly attempted to destroy the man of the people for his activity in opposing the exactions of sordid creditors and usurious tyrants: His tears, his sufferings, the beauty of his person now streaming with blood, which he had spilt in their cause, his military services at Megara, and his protestations of affection to the people, in whose defence he solemnly protested a determination to persist or perish, all together formed such an address to the passions, and presented such a picture to the eye, that were irresistibly affecting.
Though it soon appeared in proof, that the whole was artifice, and that all these wounds about himself and his mules were of his own giving for the impression of the moment, still the moment served his purpose, and in the heat of popular tumult he obtained a decree for granting him a body-guard, not armed as soldiers, but with sticks and clubs: At the head of this desperate rabble he lost no time in forcing his way into the citadel, and took possession of it and the commonwealth in the same moment: He next proceeded to exile the most powerful and obnoxious of his opponents. Megacles and Lycurgus with their immediate adherents either fled from the city or were forcibly driven out of it; the revolution was compleat.
The tumult having subsided, Pisistratus began to look around him, and to take his measures for securing himself in the authority he had seized: For this purpose he augmented his body-guard, which, as they were first voted to him, consisted only of fifty; these he endeavoured to attach to his person by liberal payments, and whilst he equipt them at all points like soldiers, he put a cunning stratagem in practice by which he contrived to seize all the private arms of the citizens and totally dismantled Athens: He used less ceremony with the nobles, for he stripped them of all weapons of offence openly and by force; and now he found himself, as he believed, in safe possession of the sovereign power and throne of Athens.
This passed in the fifty-first Olympiad, when Comias was archon.
It rarely happens that dominion, rapidly obtained, proves firmly established. The factions of Megacles and Lycurgus were broken by this revolution, but not extinguished, and Pisistratus either could not prevent their re-uniting, or perhaps over-security made him inattentive to their movements: He enjoyed his power for a short time, and was in his turn driven out of Athens by those he had exiled, and his effects were put up to public sale, as the property of an outlaw.
Megacles and Lycurgus now divided the government between them; this was a system that soon wrought its own overthrow; and Megacles, finding his party the weaker, invited Pisistratus to return to Athens, vainly imagining he could lull his ambition and secure him to his interest by giving him his daughter Caesyra in marriage. Pisistratus accepted the terms, and obeyed the welcome recal, but it was in such a manner, as might have put the weakest man upon his guard, for his return and entrance into Athens were accompanied by one of the most barefaced attacks upon public credulity and superstition, that is to be found in the history of man.
He had already succeeded in several hardy stratagems, and all had been discovered after they had served his purposes. His pretended assassination, his contrivances for arming his bodyguard and for disarming the citizens at large, were all well known to the people, so that he must have taken a very nice measure of their folly and blindness, when upon his entering the city he undertook to bring in his train a woman, named Phaea, whom he dressed in the habit of the goddess Minerva, and imposed her on the vulgar for their tutelar deity in person: He had instructed her how to address the people in his behalf, commanding them to reinstate him in his power, and open the gates of the citadel at his approach: The lady was sufficiently personable for the character she assumed, and, as a proof of her divinity, was of colossal stature: Extravagant as the experiment may seem, it succeeded in all points; the human deity was obeyed, and the ingenious demagogue carried all before him: This Grecian Joan of Arc received the adoration of the superstitious vulgar in public, and the grateful caresses of the exulting tyrant in private: The lady was not of very distinguished birth and fortune, for before she took upon her the character of a goddess she condescended to the mortal occupation of a flower-girl, and made garlands after the custom of the Greeks for feasts and merry-makings: Pisistratus rewarded her liberally by giving her in marriage to his son Hipparchus; a commodious resource for disposing of a cast-off goddess; as for himself, he was engaged to Caesyra: Phaea's marriage with Hipparchus soon convinced the world that she was a mortal, but Pisistratus gave himself no concern to prevent the discovery; in process of time it came to pass, upon Pisistratus's second expulsion, that Phaea was publicly impeached and condemned upon the charge of
laesae Majestatis.
No XIX.
PISISTRATUS had been five years in exile, when Megacles brought about his recal, and vainly thought to fix him in his interest by giving him his daughter Caesyra in marriage; such alliances rarely answer the political ends for which they are made: Pisistratus had several sons by his first wife, and having re-established himself in the tyranny after the manner we have been describing, and bestowed his favorite Phaea upon his son Hipparchus, he took the daughter of Megacles as the condition of his contract with her father, but with a fixed determination against a second family, whose pretensions might come in competition with those of his children by his first marriage, in whose favour he wished to secure the succession, and who both by age and capacity were fit for government, whenever it should devolve upon them.
Caesyra put up with her husband's neglect for some time, but at length she imparted her disgust to her mother, and she of course communicated it to Megacles. Justly offended by the indignity of such treatment, Megacles immediately took his measures with the enemies of his son-in-law for his second expulsion, prudently disguising his resentment, till he was in a condition to put it in force: It did not long escape the penetration of Pisistratus, but when he came to the knowledge of the conspiracy that had been formed against his power, he found himself and party too weak to oppose it, and seizing the hour of safety, made a voluntary abdication by retiring into Eretria without a struggle and in the utmost precipitation.
Megacles and his friends seem to have considered this secession of Pisistratus as decisive, or else the time did not allow them to follow it by any active measures for preventing his return: Eleven years however passed and still he remained an exile from Athens; old as he was, his ambition does not seem to have cooled, nor was he idle in the interim; he had an interview with his sons in Eretria and concerted measures with them for his restoration; he formed alliances with several of the Grecian cities, particularly Thebes and Argos, and obtained a seasonable supply of money, with which he enlisted and took into his pay a considerable army of mercenaries, and began hostilities in the Athenian state by seizing upon Marathon. This successful measure drew out many of his secret partisans from Athens to join him in this place, where the promising aspect of his affairs and the popularity of his character had induced great numbers to resort to his standard: Thus reinforced he put his army in motion and directed his march towards the city. The ruling party at Athens hastily collected troops to oppose his approach and put them under the command of Leogaras, who no sooner took the field against Pisistratus, than he suffered himself and army to be surprized by that experienced general and fled in disorder over the country; the politic conqueror stopped the pursuit and dispatched his sons after the fugitives to assure them of pardon and protection, if they would go back to their homes and resume their occupations in peace like good citizens: Pisistratus was far advanced in age, and having carried this decisive action by stratagem, took every prudent precaution for establishing his advantage by seizing the sons of the leading partisans in opposition to his government, and detaining them in close custody as hostages for the peaceable behaviour of their parents. He conducted himself on the occasion with so much temper and judgment, the splendor of his talents and the elegance of his manners reflected so much lustre on his court and country, that his usurpation was either no longer remembered, or remembered without aversion and regret; in short, his genius for government was such that no man questioned his right: Even Solon, with all his zeal for liberty, pronounced of Pisistratus, that Athens would not have contained a more virtuous citizen, had his ambition been directed to a more justifiable pursuit: He was mild and merciful in the extreme, winning in address, an eloquent orator, a just judge, and a munificent sovereign; in a word, he had either the merit of possessing, or the art of dissembling, every good quality and every brilliant accomplishment.
Having now brought down this brief recapitulation of the Athenian history to the last period of the reign of Pisistratus, we are arrived at the point of time, in which that remarkable aera commences, which I call
The Literary age of Greece:
It was now that Pisistratus conceived the enlarged and liberal idea of instituting the first public library in Greece, and of laying it open to the inspection and resort of the learned and curious throughout the kingdoms and provinces of that part of the world—
Libros Athenis disciplinarum liberalium publice ad legendum praebendos primus posuisse dicitur Pisistratus tyrannus.
(Aul. Gell. cap. xvii. lib. vi.)—Thro' a long, though interrupted, reign of three and thirty years he had approved himself a great encourager of literature and a very diligent collector of the works of learned men: The compiler of the scattered rhapsodies of Homer, and the familiar friend of the great epic poet Orpheus of Croton (author of the Argonautics) he was himself accomplished in the learning of the age he lived in; and, whilst his court became a place of resort for contemporary genius, he pushed his researches after the remains of the ancient poets and philosophers through every spot, where the liberal sciences had been known to flourish; collecting books in Ionia, Sicily, and throughout all the provinces of Greece with much cost and diligence; and having at length compleated his purpose and endowed a library with the treasures of the time, he laid it open to all readers for the edification of mankind—
Who of those times surpassed him in learning
(says Cicero)
or what orator was more eloquent or accomplished than Pisistratus, who first disposed the works of Homer in that order of compilation we have them at this very time?
(
De Orat.
iii.137.)
The institution of this library forms a signal epoch in the annals of literature, for from this period Attica took the lead of all the provinces of Greece in arts and sciences, and Athens henceforward became the school of philosophers, the theatre of poets, and the capital of taste and elegance, acknowledged to a proverb throughout the world. From this period to the death of Menander the comic poet an illustrious scene presents itself to our observation. Greece, with unbounded fertility of genius, sent a flood of compositions into light, of which, although few entire specimens have descended to posterity, yet these with some fragments, and what may be further collected on the subject from the records of the scholiasts and grammarians, afford abundant matter for literary disquisition.
It is painful in the extreme to reflect upon the ravages of time, and to call to mind the host of authors of this illuminated age, who have perished by the irruptions of the barbarous nations. When we meditate on the magnificence of the ancient buildings of Greece and Rome, the mind is struck with awe and veneration; but those impressions are of a very melancholy cast, when we consider that it is from their present ruins we are now measuring their past splendor; in like manner from a few reliques of ancient genius we take a mournful estimate of those prodigious collections, which, till the fatal conflagrations at Alexandria, remained entire and were without comparison the most valuable treasure upon earth.
Pisistratus, as we have observed, established the first public library in Greece; Xerxes plundered Athens of this collection much augmented by the literary munificence of Hipparchus and the succeeding archons: Xerxes was not, like the barbarians of the lower ages, insensible to the treasure he had possessed himself of; on the contrary, he regarded these volumes as the most solid fruits of his expedition and imported them into Persia, as splendid trophies of his triumph on his return. Seleucus, sirnamed Nicanor, afterwards restored this library to Athens with a princely magnanimity. The kings of Pergamus also became great collectors, and the Pergamaean library grew into much reputation and resort. But of all the libraries of antiquity that collected at Alexandria by the Ptolemies of Egypt was much the most respectable. Athenaeus says (p. 3.) that Ptolemy Philadelphus purchased the Pergamaean library, and in particular the books collected by Nileus, principally consisting of the Greek dramatists, which with what he got at Athens and Rhodes, furnished the great library at Alexandria with forty thousand volumes. This library was unhappily set on fire, when Julius Caesar found it necessary to burn his ships in the docks at Alexandria; so Plutarch states the case; but Aulus Gellius says they were set on fire accidentally by the auxiliary troops—
non sponte, neque opera consulta, sed a militibus forte auxiliariis incensa sunt.
—This misfortune was in a great measure repaired by the library which Marc Antony presented to Cleopatra, and by subsequent additions was encreased to such an amount, that when it was at last irretrievably destroyed by the Caliph Omar, it consisted of seven hundred thousand volumes.
This amazing repository of ancient science was buried in ashes by the well-known quibbling edict of that barbarous fanatic—
If,
said the Caliph,
these volumes contain doctrines conformable to the Koran, then is the Koran alone
sufficient without these volumes; but, if what they teach be repugnant to God's book, then is it fitting they were destroyed.
—Thus, with false reason for their judge and false religion for their executioner, perished an innumerable company of poets, philosophers, and historians, with almost every thing elegant in art and edifying in science, which the most illuminated people on earth had in the luxuriancy of their genius produced. In vain did the philosopher John of Alexandria intercede to save them; universal condemnation to the flames was the sentence ignorance denounced against these literary martyrs. The flow of wit, the flights of fancy, and the labours of learning alike contributed to feed the fires of those baths, in which the savage conquerors recreated themselves after the toils of the siege. Need we enquire when art and science were extinct, if darkness overspread the nations? It is a period too melancholy to reflect upon and too vacant to record: History passes over it, as over the chart of an ocean without a shore, with this cutting recollection accompanying it, that in this ocean are buried many of the brightest monuments of ancient genius.
It appears that at the time Terence was writing Rome was in possession of two thousand Greek comedies; of all which,
vae barbaris!
not one hath descended to us, except what are found in our scanty volume of Aristophanes, and these are partly of the old personal class. The gleanings of a few fragments from the grammarians and scholiasts, with the translations of the Roman stage, are now the only samples of the Greek comedy in its last purity and perfection. It is true that writers of the lower ages, and even the fathers of the Christian church, have quoted liberally from the new comedy of the Greeks; these fragments are as respectable for their moral cast, as for their elegant turn of expression; but what a poignancy do they give to our regret, when we compute the loss posterity has suffered by the scale of these remains!
On the part of tragedy, although very many noble works have perished, yet as some specimens of the great masters have come down to us entire, we have more to console us in this than in the comic department. Happily for the epic muse, the rage of ignorance could not reach the immortal poems of Homer: What other compositions of that great bard may have been lost to the world is but a dark enquiry at the best; many poems of an antecedent, and some of a contemporary date, have undoubtedly been destroyed; but I am inclined to think, that from the time when those wonderful productions of the Iliad and Odyssey were collected and made public at Athens till the Augustan aera little was attempted in the epic branch.
No XX.
AT the same time that it is fair to suppose there must be more than ordinary merit in men, who rise to great opulence and condition in life from low beginnings, all the world must be sensible of the danger attending sudden elevation, and how very apt a man's head is to turn, who climbs an eminence, to which his habits have not familiarized him. A mountaineer can tread firm upon a precipice and walk erect without tottering along the path, that winds itself about the craggy cliff, on which he has his dwelling; whilst the inhabitant of the valley travels with affright and danger over the giddy pass, and oftentimes is precipitated from the heighth to perish in the gulph beneath his feet. Such is the fate of many, who by the revolutions of fortune are raised to lofty situations: It is generally the lot of such people to make few friends; in their danger there are none to give them warning, in their fall there are few to afford them pity.
This is not the case with them, who are born to the dignities they enjoy; the sovereign, whose throne is his inheritance, meets with pity and indulgence; pity for the cares inseparable from his condition, indulgence for the failings and excesses incidental to hereditary greatness; but the man, who is the maker of his own fortune, acts on a stage, where every step he takes will be observed with jealousy; amongst the many thousands, who are set to watch him, let him reflect how many hearts there are, rankling with disappointed pride, and envying him the lot, which in their own conceit at least their merit had a better title to: When such a man appears, it is the common cry—
I cannot bear that upstart.
—At the same time therefore that it must be allowed more natural to excuse the proud looks of the high, than the proud looks of the low, still it is no bad caution to beware of giving easy faith to reports against those, whom so many unsuccessful people are interested to decry; for though fortune can do mighty things amongst us, and make great men in this world, she cannot make friends.
If caution be necessary for such as are only lookers on upon these sudden changes in the scene of life, how much more wary should he be, who by fortune's favour is the actor in it! Time past and present so abounds in examples to put him on his guard, that if he will not profit by example, what hope is there that precept will avail? That any man should grow arrogant, who has once been dependant, is as unaccountable for the folly of the thing, as it is for the baseness of it; it is as if a pedagogue should turn tyrant, because he remembers to have smarted under the lash of the master when a school-boy: And yet there seems a principle in some natures, that inclines them to this despicable species of revenge, by which they sacrifice all claim to reason, reputation, or religion. Dionysius, though the cruellest of all tyrants, had moderation in a private station and made a good and patient schoolmaster; he handled the sceptre like a rod, and the rod as he should have done a sceptre. Are we to conclude from this and other instances, that humanity may be learnt, by those who descend from power, but that men become tyrants by ascending to it?
Is there in nature any thing so ridiculous as pride, so self-destructive, so absurd? The man, who rises out of humble life, must have seen it, felt it, and remarked its folly; he must have been convinced that pride deprives itself of its own proper object; for every proud man, who assumes a superiority on the score of rank, or wealth, or titles, forfeits that better interest with mankind, which would have credited him for superiorities of a far nobler quality, than those on which he grounds his silly arrogance: How strange is it therefore, when the man, who has seen through the weakness of this passion in others, whilst below them in condition, should fall into the same folly, when he rises to be their equal! And yet it happens every day. What is so hateful to a poor man as the purse-proud arrogance of a rich one? Let fortune shift the scene and make the poor man rich, he runs at once into the vice, that he declaimed against so feelingly: These are strange contradictions in the human character. One should have thought that Pope Sixtus V. might have recollected himself enough to be humble, though Pasquin had never reminded him of it; but neither he, nor Becket, nor Wolsey, had any moderation in their spirit, though professing a religion, whose very essence is humility.
In modern times the philosopher's stone seems to have been found by our adventurers in the East, where beggars have become princes and princes have become beggars; if Ben Johnson was now living, could he have painted these upstart voluptuaries more to the life, than by the following animated description?
I will have all my beds blown up, not stuff'd,
Down is too hard; and then my oval room
Fill'd with such pictures, as Tiberius took
From Elephantis, and dull Aretine
But coldly imitated—My mists
I'll have of perfume, vapour'd 'bout the room,
To lose ourselves in, and my baths, like pits,
To fall into, from whence we will come forth,
And roll us dry in gossamour and roses—
My meat shall all come in in Indian shells,
Dishes of agate set in gold and studded
With emeralds, saphirs, hyacinths, and rubies.
The tongues of carp, dormise, and camel's heels
Boil'd in the spirit of sol and dissolv'd pearl,
(Apicius diet 'gainst the epilepsie)
And I will eat these broths with spoons of amber,
Headed with diamond and carbuncle.
My foot-boy shall eat pheasants; I myself will have
The beards of barbels serv'd instead of sallads;
Oil'd mushrooms and the swelling unctuous paps
Of a fat pregnant sow, newly cut off,
Dressed with an exquisite and poignant sauce,
For which I'll say unto my cook, there's gold,
Go forth and be a knight!—My shirts
I'll have of taffata sarsnet, soft and light
As cobwebs, and for all my other raiment,
It shall be such as might provoke the Persian,
Were he to teach the world riot a-new.
My gloves of fish's and bird's skins perfum'd
With gums of paradise and eastern air—
Q.
And do you think to have the
the stone
with this?—
A.
No, I do think to have all this with
the stone.
(ALCHYMIST.)
These are strong colours; and though he has dipped his pencil pretty liberally into the pallet of the ancients, he has finely mixed the composition with tints of his own; to speak in the same figure, we may say of this sketch, that it is in the very best stile of the master.
As I should be loth however to offer none but instances of the abuse of prosperity, I am happy in recollecting one very singular example of the contrary sort, though I go back to times far distant from our own to fetch it.
PISISTRATUS to SOLON.
I am neither without example in seizing the tyranny, nor without claim; forasmuch as I derive from Codrus, and take no more by force, than I should have inherited by right, if the Athenians had never violated those oaths of allegiance, which in times past confirmed the prerogative of my ancestors. I live here without offence towards men or gods; neither transgressing your laws myself, nor permitting others to transgress them: Judge therefore if the constitution you have given to Athens is not safer under my administration, than if entrusted to the discretion of the people: No man suffers wrong under my government, nor do I exact any new contributions from my people, contenting myself with the tenths of their produce, as by ancient usage established; and these I apply not to my own coffers, but to those of the state, for defraying civil and religious expences, and as a provision for the future exigencies of war. Against you, Solon, I harbour no ill will, convinced that in your opposition to my measures, you acted upon public, not personal motives: You could not foresee what use I was to make of power, and if you could have foreseen it, I will persuade myself you would neither have traversed my interests, nor withdrawn yourself from your country; return therefore I conjure you, return to Athens, and believe me on the word of a king you have nothing to fear from Pisistratus, who has not the heart as you well know, to annoy even his enemies, much less so excellent a citizen as Solon: Come then, if you are so disposed, and be received into the number of my dearest friends; but if you are resolved against returning, remember it is your own choice; and, if Solon is lost to his country, Pisistratus is acquitted of being the cause of it.
Farewell.
SOLON to PISISTRATUS.
I can readily believe that you are incapable of doing me any injury, if I was to return to Athens: Before you was a tyrant I was your friend, and am now no otherwise your enemy, than every Athenian must be, who is adverse to your usurpation. Whether it is better to be governed by the will of one man, or by the laws of the commonwealth, let every individual judge for himself; if I could prefer a tyrant, certainly of all tyrants I should prefer Pisistratus. As to my returning to Athens, I do not think it for my honour, after having founded the constitution of my country upon principles of freedom, to come home upon motives of con
enience, and give a scandal to mankind by appearing to acquiesce under that tyranny, which you have forcibly assumed, but which I, when voluntarily offered, thought proper to reject.
Farewell.
The above letters are to be found in Diogenes Laertius, but the learned reader knows they are generally supposed interpolations of the sophists; it must be owned however they are characteristic of the writers, and, though they ought not to be received as facts in history, may be read as a speech in Livy or Guicciardini. The following anecdotes will throw a stronger light upon the character of Pisistratus, and as there is no reason to question their authenticity, they will be unanswerable witnesses to the point in question.
"At an entertainment given by Pisistratus to some of his intimates, Thrasippus, a man of violent passions and enflamed with wine, took some occasion not recorded to break out into the most virulent abuse and insult: Pisistratus, who had made no reply to his invectives, fearing that the festivity of his guests should be interrupted by the misconduct of Thrasippus, who was now got up and leaving the room, rose from his seat and entreated him to stay, assuring him that nothing he had said should be remembered to his disadvantage; instead of being pacified by an act so gracious and condescending, the brutal drunkard became more furious, and after venting all the soulest words a heated imagination could suggest, with a violence shocking to decency and loathsome to relate, suddenly turned upon Pisistratus, as he was soliciting him to take his seat at the table, and spate in his face. Upon an insult so intolerable the whole company rose as one man, and in particular Hippias and Hipparchus, sons of the tyrant, were with difficulty prevented from killing him on the spot. The interposition of Pisistratus saved Thrasippus, and he was suffered to go home without any violence to his person. The next morning brought him to his senses, and he appeared in the presence of Pisistratus with all proper humility, expecting to receive the punishment he merited. What must have been his self-conviction and reproach, when he was again received with the utmost complacency! Penetrated to the heart with the recollection of his behaviour, and the unmerited pardon he had met with, he was proceeding to execute that vengeance on himself, which he was conscious he deserved, by rushing on his sword, when Pisistratus again interposed and seizing his hand stopt the stroke; not content with this, he consoled him with the most soothing expressions, assured him of his most entire forgiveness, and having put him at peace with himself, reinstated him in his favour and received him again into the number of his intimates."
Though it is scarce possible to find an instance of good-nature in any man's character superior to the above, I am tempted to add the following anecdote not only as a corroborating evidence, but from the pleasure one naturally takes in hearing or relating facts, that make so much to the honour of human nature, and which inspire the heart with a love for mankind.
"Thrasimedes, a young Athenian, had the audacity to force a kiss upon the daughter of Pisistratus, as she was walking in public procession at a religious solemnity; transported by the violence of his passion, and considering that he had already committed an unpardonable offence, he seized her person, and forcibly conveying her on board a ship, put to sea with her on his passage to Aegina; the sons of Pisistratus pursued and overtook him, bringing him in person before their father: Thrasimedes, without betraying any marks of fear, immediately declared himself perfectly prepared to meet any punishment Pisistratus should think fit to decree; for, having miscarried in his attempt, and lost the object for which alone he wished to live, all consequences became indifferent; disappointment, not death, was his punishment; and when the greater evil had been suffered, he had little apprehension for the lesser.—Having said this, he waited his sentence; when Pisistratus after long silence, breaking out into admiration at the resolution of Thrasimedes, instead of punishing his audacity, rewarded his passion by bestowing his daughter upon him in marriage."
No XXI.
Non jam illud quaero, contra ut me diligat illa,
Aut, quod non potis est, esse pudica velit;
Ipse valere opto, et tetrum hunc deponere morbum.
(CATULLUS.)
IT is become a very gainful trade with our small-ware venders of literature to expose certain pamphlets in shop windows and upon stalls in alleys and thorough-fares, which, if any police was kept up in this great capital, would be put down by the civil magistrate as a public nuisance; I mean Trials for Adultery, the publishers of which are not content with setting down every thing
verbatim
from their shorthand records, which the scrutinizing necessity of law draws out by pointed interrogatory, but they are also made to allure the curiosity of the passenger by tawdry engravings, in which the heroine of the tale is displayed in effigy and the most indecent scene of her amours selected as an eye-trap to attract the youth of both sexes, and by debauching the morals of the rising generation, keep up the stock in trade, and feed the market with fresh cases for the Commons, and fresh supplies for the retailers of indecency.
If the frequency of our divorces is thus to be encouraged because they make sport for the lawyers, it may be wise to use no preventives against the plague or small-pox, because they cut out work for the doctors. Upon this principle a prudent father will breed up his sons civilians, and furnish out a library for his daughters with these edifying volumes, and if once they take kindly to their studies, there is no fear of their bringing custom to their brothers and driving a trade, as it is called, for their families. A convenient nest of these trials, neatly bound and gilt at the backs, will serve both as elegant furniture to their closets or bed-chambers, and as repositories of science, like treatises on the chances to make them skilful in the game. If they are afraid of their husbands looking into their library, they may find out a hundred devices for lettering them at the back; they may call them—
Sermons to Married Women
—or
The Lives of the learned Ladies—The Acts of the British Matrons—Commentaries on the Marriage Act—Treatises on Polygamy
—or by any other title, which their wit needs no prompting to devise.
Another circumstance of the times, which will greatly aid them in their studies, is, that they have it daily and hourly in their power to resort to the fountain-head for authority, and consult the very ladies themselves, who are the heroines of these interesting narratives. These adepts in the art are to be seen in all places, and spoken to at all hours without hindrance of business, or knowledge of a bedfellow. As these disfranchised matrons or ex-wives keep the best company, and make the best figures in all fashionable circles, a scholar may receive instruction without slander, and prostitute her honour without risqueing her reputation; a husband must be a brute indeed, who can object to this society, and a wife must be a fool indeed, who does not profit by it; when a new-married woman receives these privileged ladies in her house, she sees at once the folly of being virtuous, for they are the merriest, the loudest, the best followed, and the most admired of all their sex; they never disgrace their characters by a pusillanimous repentance, they never baulk their pleasures by a stupid reformation, but keep it up with spirit, like felons that die hard at the gallows, to the last moment of their lives. Most of them marry again, and are so much better than their neighbours, as they are made honest women of twice over; and that reputation must be more than commonly tender, which two coats of plaister will not keep together.
As a further temptation to our young wives not to wait the tedious course of nature, but to make themselves widows of living husbands, as soon as they can, they will recollect, that they ensure advantages to themselves thereby, which natural widows do not enjoy; for in the first place they avoid a year's mourning, which is a consideration not to be despised; in the next place they have precedents for marrying in the first week of their widowhood; and as it is the general practice to chuse their gallants, they certainly run no risque of taking a step in the dark, which widows sometimes have been suspected to repent of; thirdly, they escape all bickerings and jealousies, which disturb the peace of families, by the common practice of ladies putting their second husband in mind of what their first husband would have done, or would have said on this or that occasion, had he been alive.—
Things were not so in my first husband's time—Oh that my first husband were living! he would not suffer this or that thing to pass, this or that man to use me after such a manner
—are familiar expressions in the family dialogues of second wives in the regular order; whereas the Irregulars never cast these taunts in the teeth of their spouses, because they know the answer is ready at hand, if they did.
The Irregulars have also frequent opportunities of shewing their affability and sweetness of temper upon meeting their first husbands in public places and mixed companies; the graceful acknowledgement of a respectful curtesy, a down-cast look of modest sensibility, or the pretty flutter of embarrassment are incidents upon an unexpected rencontre, which a well-bred woman knows how to make the most of, and are sure to draw the eyes of the company upon her.
If on the other hand a lady on her divorce chuses to revive her maiden title and take post in her former rank, the law will probably give her back as good a title to her virgin name, as it found her with. She also has her advantages; for at the same time that she is free from the encumbrances of matrimony, she escapes the odious appellation of old maid: Such a lady has the privilege of public places without being pinned to the skirts of an old dowager, like other misses; she can also indulge a natural passion for gaming to a greater length than spinsters dare to go; she can make a repartee or smile at a double entendre, when a spinster only bites her lips, or is put to the troublesome resource of her fan, when she ought to blush, but cannot.
Before I turned my mind to reflect upon these and other advantages, so preponderating in favour of divorces, I used to wonder why our legislature was so partial to suitors, and gave such notorious encouragement and facility to Acts of Parliament for their relief and accommodation; I now see the good policy of the measure, and how much the ease of his majesty's good subjects is thereby consulted. It is confessed there is a short monition in the decalogue against this practice, but nobody insists upon it; there are also some texts scattered up and down in holy writ to the same purport, but no well-bred preacher ever handles such topics in his pulpit; and if a fine lady should ever read a chapter in the bible, or hear it read to her, it is very easy to skip over those passages, and every polite person knows it is better to make a breach in any thing, than in good manners to a lady.
Our English ladies by the frequency of their incontinence, and the divorces thence ensuing, have not only furnished out a most amusing library to young students of both sexes, but they have effectually retrieved the characters of our wives from sinking into contempt with foreigners on account of their domestic insipidity and attachment to the dull duties of a family. This was once the general opinion, which other nations entertained of our matrons, but upon a late tour through a great part of the continent of Europe I found it was entirely reversed, and ideas more expressive of their spirit universally adopted.
It may well be expected, that the influx of foreigners, and the out-flow of natives, which the present peace will occasion, will not suffer the pretensions of our ladies to lose ground in this particular: Our French neighbours are certainly good critics in gallantry, and they need not now stand in dread of a repulse from the women of England, whatever they may apprehend from the men.
Much more occurs to me on this subject, but these premises will serve to introduce an idea, which if the several ladies, who have stood trial, would club their wits to assist me in, might be rendered practicable, and that is, of reducing Infamy to a system by rules and regulations of manners tending to the propagation and encrease of divorces in Great Britain. A few loose hints occur to me on this subject, but I offer them with the utmost submission to better judges, simply as rudiments in the art; the refinements must be left to those who are professors.
"As early impressions are strongest and most lasting, I would advise all mothers, who wish to train their daughters after the above system, to put them in their infancy under the care of those commodious ladies, whom we vulgarly call Mademoiselles, as the best forcers of early plants; under whose tuition young ladies have been known to get so forward as to have pretty notions of flirtation at the tender age of six years; at eight years they can answer questions in the catechism of gallantry; before they reach their tenth summer, they can leer, ogle, talk French, write sonnets, play with the footmen and go through their exercises to admiration: I would then put them to their studies, of which the annals abovementioned will be a principal part; the circulating libraries will furnish out a considerable catalogue, and Mademoiselle will supply them with French memoirs, novels, &c. &c. At the age of twelve it will be proper to send them to the boarding-school, and there they will have the opportunity of making female friendships with their seniors in age, by which they will greatly edify: In the holiday vacations they will correspond with their boarding-school associates, and these letters should be sacred and inviolable, by which means they may carry on an intercourse of thoughts without reserve, and greatly improve their stile.
"When two years have been thus employed, they must be brought to London to be finished under the best masters, most of which should be recommended by Mademoiselle; and in their intervals from study they will be allowed to relax their minds in the company of their mother, by looking on at the card-tables, reposing themselves after their fatigue upon sophas, informing themselves of the intrigues of the town, qualifying themselves in a proper familiarity of manners by calling young men by their sirnames, romping occasionally with the gallants of their mother, when she is out of sight, and above all things cultivating intimacies with their late school-fellows, who are come out into the world.
"When their hair is off their foreheads, it will be necessary they should lay out professedly for admirers amongst the young rakes of fashion, and for this purpose I particularly recommend to them the tea-room at the Opera-house, where I would have them stay out all the company, and then commit themselves to their gallants to find out their coaches, who will be sure to lead them through all the blind alleys, and never carry them to the right door till the last, by which time the carriages of these gallants will be drove off, and then common charity will compel them to bring the obliging creatures home in theirs.
"All this while I would have them put entire considence in Mademoiselle, whose good-nature will accommodate them in any little notes or messages they may have to manage, and whose opinion in dress will be so indispensable, that it will be proper to take her out with them to all milliners shops, artificial-flower makers, and masquerade warehouses for advice. If the young fellows will come to these places at the same time, who can help it? Mademoiselle will go down to call the servants, and ten to one if they are not gone to the ale-house, and the coach is out of the way, in spite of all her pains to find it.
"When they have made a strong attachment, and consequences are to be apprehended, it will be time for them to think of marriage, but on no account with the man of their heart, for that would interrupt friendship; any body, who can make a settlement, can make a husband, and that husband can make his wife her own mistress, and every body's else, that she pleases: Mademoiselle becomes
femme de chambre,
and when her lady is disposed for divorce, chief witness upon her trial; a picturesque scene is chosen for the frontispiece, the heroine figures in the printshops, her fame is sounded in the brothels, and her career of infamy is compleated."
No XXII.
IF any of my learned readers, skilled in the oriental languages, shall chuse to turn over the thirty and three volumes of Abulfagi, the Arabian historian, they may find the following story: Near one hundred leaves of the Papyrus have been expended in the relation, but I have been at the pains of compressing it into one paper.
In the beginning of the eleventh century Abderama, the last descendant of the Samanian family, who reigned over the territory of Bucharia, was besieged in his capital of Bochara by Mamood the Great, who afterwards reduced all India to his command. This mighty conqueror, who may be stiled the Alexander of the Arabian historians, made twelve irruptions into India, and in each expedition swept away as much wealth, and made as great a devastation of the human species, as Nadir Shah in his. Mamood was the son of the usurper Subuctagi, who expelled the father of Abderama from Samarcand, and reduced his empire to the possession of Bochara only and its dependencies.
Such was the formidable general who sat down with his forces before Bochara, and such the hereditary enmity of these inveterate opponents; Abderama therefore had no resource but to defend his citadel to the last extremity: Disabled by his age from active service, he put the garrison under command of a valiant captain named Abdullah: This young prince was of the house of Katiba, the general of the Caliph Osman, who conquered Great Bucharia for that victorious Mahommedan: Abdullah was the most accomplished personage of his time, of admirable qualities and matchless intrepidity. In vain he challenged Mamood to decide the fate of Bochara by single combat; he was also beloved by Zarima, daughter of Abderama and sole heiress of his crown; the beauty of this princess was celebrated through all the East; more rhapsodies have been composed and chaunted in the praises of Zarima than even Helen gave a subject to: Our language cannot reach the descriptions of these florid writers; the whole creation has been culled for objects to set in some comparison with Zarima; but as the fire of their imaginations would seem like phrensy to ours, I shall not risque a fall by following them in their flights.
In a furious sally made upon the army of the besiegers, Abdullah at the head of the Bocharians had singled out the person of Mamood, and pushed his horse up to the breast of that on which Mamood was fighting; the shock was furious on both sides; Abdullah received the point of his opponent's lance in his side, and Mamood was struck from his saddle to the ground by the battle-axe of Abdullah; the combatants rushed in to cover their fallen general, and victory was snatched out of the grasp of the brave Bocharian, who fell back wounded amongst his companions, and retreated unpursued into the town after a furious slaughter of the foe.
Whether Mamood was discouraged by the obstinacy of the Bocharians, or, as some historians insinuate, was daunted by this attack, which he had so narrowly escaped from, so it was that he let the command of the siege devolve upon his general Kamhi, and at the head of a scouring party made incursions into the country to lay it waste with fire and sword, and break up the supplies of Bochara.
Kamhi had seen the beautiful Zarima; he had been in Abderama's court before Mamood's invasion, and to see the princess was to be enamoured. No sacrifice could be too great for Kamhi to obtain a prize so much above all computation in the heated fancy of a lover: He secretly imparted to Abderama the conditions, on which he would betray his trust, and expose the army he commanded to inevitable destruction.
If these conditions staggered the aged monarch on the score of honour, so did they on the side of interest. To save his crown and city was a tempting offer, and the divided heart of Abderama was not more agitated as a monarch for the impending danger of his throne, than it was agonized as a man for the daily sufferings of his faithful people. He submitted to receive Kamhi into the town, and to treat with him in person on the subject of his proposal: Abdullah, from whom this was to be concealed, was now recovering from his wound, but incapable of service for a time; it was proposed by Kamhi to exchange hostage against hostage, and Abdullah was instructed to meet him in the depth of night with one companion on each side; each general was to exchange armour on the spot, and so to pass their respective centinels; and mutual secrecy was pledged between the parties.
There was no difficulty in persuading the generous Abdullah to this enterprize; Abderama giving him to understand, that the meeting was to adjust the payment of a sum of money, which Kamhi was to receive for betraying the army he commanded before Bochara; the transaction was to be kept a profound secret even from Zarima; the unsuspecting Abdullah repaired to his rendezvous at the appointed hour without taking leave of the princess, and Kamhi with his associate passed the city guard unquestioned in the habit of his rival. He hasted without a moment's loss to the palace of the old king, and expounding to him the plan he had devised for securing the performance of his part of the contract, nothing now remained for Abderama, but to engage his daughter to make a sacrifice, which severe and difficult as it was, he thought he might depend upon her piety and public spirit for complying with. In this hope he immediately repaired to her chamber, where lie found her reposing on her couch; he threw himself at her feet in an agony of tears, and in the most supplicating posture adjured her to arise and save her father, country, and herself from impending destruction: Roused from her sleep, the beauteous Zarima immediately demanded the reason of that solemn adjuration, and what it was that she could do to gain those glorious ends—
Emulate the magnanimity of Abdullah,
replied the father,
resign Abdullah, as that heroic youth, to save this sinking city from extinction, has now resigned his Zarima.
—Astonishment had now deprived her of the power of utterance, and Abderama proceeded without interruption to expose to her the whole purport of his treaty with Kamhi, and the conditions, on which alone Bochara might be saved, and Mamood's army betrayed into his hands. He protested to her that Abdullah had been a party to this treaty, that he had left the city for ever, and to convince her of it, he was ready to produce Kamhi in the very habit, which her lover had exchanged with him for the purpose of bringing him to an interview with her, and concluding the agreement.
Not to dwell any longer on Abderama's arguments, (in which was I to follow my Arabian author I should swell this recital to an unreasonable length) it will suffice to say that the father prevailed. In the original it appears, as if some share in the success was owing to female pique, but as the Arabian authors are very subtle and refined in finding motives and in scrutinizing the human passions, I should hope this suggestion may be imputed to the historian, rather than to the heroine.
As I chuse to pass over many pages of my original in this place, the reader will now suppose that the traiterous Kamhi is in possession of his beautiful, but reluctant, victim; and that Abderama has already made a sacrifice more painful, than that of Eurystheus, or Agamemnon, when they immolated their daughters. With the first dawn of the morning Kamhi repaired to the army, and began to set on foot the project he had concerted with Abderama; when he had given out his orders for dividing and disposing the troops in such a manner, as was best adapted to his design, he gave the signal agreed upon with the king for the sally: The whole garrison was put in motion on this occasion, and Abderama determined once more to shew himself to his army, and command in person. Every thing had been so prepared on the part of Kamhi, that the impression, which the Bocharians made upon the besiegers, was immediate, and the slaughter became universal: Nothing could have saved them from compleat destruction, but the unexpected appearance of Mamood and his army in this seasonable moment for their relief; as Mamood's troops were entirely composed of cavalry, he flew into action with amazing rapidity; the fainting spirits of the soldiers revived at the sight of their victorious chief; his well-known voice rallied their broken ranks, and they turned upon their pursuers with redoubled fury: Even the guard, that had been planted upon Abdullah, now ran to their arms and joined the action; the army of Abderama, no longer supported by the valour and conduct of their favorite general, began to give way and retreat in disorder to the city; in this instant Abdullah rushed from his tent, and presented himself to the eyes of the dispirited Bocharians; the army sent up a shout of joy, the aged Abderama sunk into his arms, covered with blood and expiring with his wounds; life just served him to exclaim—
My son! my son!
and then forsook him; his attendants bore him off to his litter in the rear, whilst Abdullah turned the faces of his soldiers on the foe, and pressed into the action, where it was hottest.
The conflict became terrible, every inch of ground was obstinately disputed, and the combatants on either side fell by whole ranks, as if resolved upon maintaining the contest to the last man: Night at length put an end to the undecided fight, and Abdullah led off his surviving followers into the city, without any attempt on the part of Mamood to pursue him: His wound in the side, which was not yet healed, burst open by the violence of his exertions in the action, and he had received others, under which he found himself sinking, and which he had reason to believe were mortal; in this extremity he lost not a moment's time in betaking himself to his beloved Zarima; his strength just served him to present himself before her and to fall exhausted with his wounds at her feet.
Terrible interview! Zarima was expiring; she had taken poison.
The supplications of an aged father, the deliverance of a suffering city, the salvation of an ancient empire, and, above all, the example, as she believed, of her betrothed Abdullah, had prevailed with this heroic princess to sacrifice herself to the detested arms of Kamhi; the contract had been fulfilled upon her father's part, but to survive it was more than she had engaged for, and an indignity, which her nature could not submit to: As soon as the battle joined, she put her resolution into act, and swallowed the mortal draught. Life just sufficed to relate this dismal tale to the dying Abdullah, and to receive the account from his lips of the deception, which Abderama had put upon him: The body of her dead father was now brought into the palace; she cast a look upon it, but was speechless; fainting, and in the article of death, she dropt into the arms of Abdullah, her head fell upon his breast, just as it was heaving with the last long-drawn sigh, that stopt his heart for ever.
No XXIII.
AMONGST the variety of human events, which come under the observation of every man of common experience in life, many instances must occur to his memory of the false opinions he has formed of good and evil fortune: Things, which we lament as the most unhappy occurrences and the severest dispensations of providence, frequently turn out to have been vouchsafements of a contrary sort; whilst our prosperity and success, which for a time delight and dazzle us with gleams of pleasure, and visions of ambition, turn against us in the end of life, and sow the bed of death with thorns, that goad us in those awful moments, when the vanities of this world lose their value, and the mind of man, being on its last departure, takes a melancholy review of time mispent and blessings misapplied.
Though it is part of every good man's religion to resign himself to God's will, yet a few reflections upon the worldly wisdom of that duty will be of use to every one, who falls under the immediate pressure of what is termed misfortune in life. By calling to mind the false estimates we have frequently made of worldly good and evil we shall get hope on our side, which, though all friends else should fail us, will be a chearful companion by the way: By a patient acquiescence under painful events for the present, we shall be sure to contract a tranquillity of temper, that will stand us in future stead; and by keeping a fair face to the world we shall by degrees make an easy heart, and find innumerable resources of consolation, which a sretful spirit never can discover.
I wonder why I was so uneasy under my late less of fortune,
said a very worthy gentleman to me the other day,
seeing it was not occasioned by my own misconduct; for the health and content I now enjoy in the humble station I have retired to, are the greatest blessings of my life, and I am devoutly thankful for the event, which I deplored.
—How often do we hear young unmarried people exclaim—
What an escape have I had from such a man, or such a woman!
—And yet perhaps they had not wisdom enough to suppose this might turn out to be the case at the time it hapdened, but complained, lamented and reviled, as if they were suffering persecution from a cruel and tyrannic Being, who takes pleasure in tormenting his unoffending creatures.
An extraordinary example occurs to me of this criminal excess of sensibility in the person of a Frenchman named Chaubert, who happily lived long enough to repent of the extravagance of his misanthropy. Chaubert was born at Bourdeaux, and died there not many years ago in the Franciscan convent; I was in that city soon after this event, and my curiosity led me to collect several particulars relative to this extraordinary humorist. He inherited a good fortune from his parents, and in his youth was of a benevolent disposition, subject however to sudden caprices and extremes of love and hatred. Various causes are assigned for his misanthropy, but the principal disgust, which turned him furious against mankind, seems to have arisen from the treachery of a friend, who ran away with his mistress, just when Chaubert was on the point of marrying her; the ingratitude of this man was certainly of a very black nature, and the provocation heinous, for Chaubert, whose passions were always in extremes, had given a thousand instances of romantic generosity to this unworthy friend, and reposed an entire confidence in him in the matter of his mistress: He had even saved him from drowning one day at the imminent risque of his life, by leaping out of his own boat into the Garonne and swimming to the assistance of his, when it was sinking in the middle of the stream: His passion for his mistress was no less vehement; so that his disappointment had every aggravation possible, and, operating upon a nature more than commonly susceptible, reversed every principle of humanity in the heart of Chaubert, and made him for the greatest part of his life the declared enemy of human nature.
After many years passed in foreign parts he was accidentally brought to his better senses by discovering that through these events, which he had so deeply resented, he had providentially escaped from miseries of the most fatal nature: Thereupon he returned to his own country, and, entering into the order of Franciscans, employed the remainder of his life in atoning for his past errors after the most exemplary manner. On all occasions of distress Father Chaubert's zeal presented itself to the relief and comfort of the unfortunate, and sometimes he would enforce his admonitions of resignation by the lively picture he would draw of his own extravagancies; in extraordinary cases he has been known to give his communicants a transcript or diary in his own hand-writing of certain passages of his life, in which he had minuted his thoughts at the time they occurred, and which he kept by him for such extraordinary purposes. This paper was put into my hands by a gentleman who had received much benefit from this good father's conversation and instruction; I had his leave for transcribing it, or publishing, if I thought fit; this I shall now avail myself of, as I think it is a very curious journal.
My son, whoever thou art, profit by the words of experience, and let the example of Chaubert, who was a beast without reason and is become a man by repentance, teach thee wisdom in adversity and inspire thy heart with sentiments of resignation to the will of the Almighty!
When the treachery of people, which I ought to have despised, had turned my heart to marble and my blood to gall, I was determined upon leaving France and seeking out some of those countries, from whose famished inhabitants nature witholds her bounty and where men groan in slavery and sorrow: As I passed through the villages towards the frontiers of Spain, and saw the peasants dancing in a ring to the pipe or carousing at their vintages, indignation smote my heart, and I wished that heaven would dash their cups with poison, or blast the sunshine of their joys with hail and tempest.
I traversed the delightful province of Biscay without rest to the soles of my feet or sleep to the temples of my head. Nature was before my eyes dressed in her gayest attire;—
Thou mother of fools,
I exclaimed,
why dost thou trick thyself
out so daintily for knaves and harlots to make a property of thee? The children of thy womb are vipers in thy bosom, and will sting thee mortally, when thou hast given them their fill at thy improvident breasts.
—The birds chaunted in the groves, the fruit-trees glistened on the mountain sides, the water-falls made music for the echoes, and man went singing to his labour;—
Give me,
said I,
the clank of fetters and the yell of galley-slaves under the lashes of the whip.
—And in the bitterness of my heart I cursed the earth, as I trode over its prolific surface.
I entered the ancient kingdom of Castile, and the prospect was a recreation to my sorrowvexed soul: I saw the lands lie waste and fallow; the vines trailed on the ground and buried their fruitage in the furrows; the hand of man was idle, and nature slept, as in the cradle of creation; the villages were thinly scattered, and ruin sate upon the unroofed sheds, where lazy pride laid stretched upon its straw in beggary and vermin.
Ah! this is something,
I cried out,
this scene is fit for man, and I'll enjoy it.
—I saw a yellow half-starved form, cloaked to the heels in rags, his broad-brimed beaver on his head, through which his staring locks crept out in squalid shreds, that fell like snakes upon the shoulders of a fiend.—
Such ever be the fate of
human nature! I'll aggravate his misery by the insult of charity. Harkye, Castilian,
I exclaimed,
take this pisette; it is coin, it is silver from the mint of Mexico; a Spaniard dug it from the mine, a Frenchman gives it you; put by your pride and touch it!—Curst be your nation,
the Castilian replied,
I'll starve before I'll take it from your hands.—Starve then,
I answered, and passed on.
I climbed a barren mountain; the wolves howled in the desert and the vultures screamed in flocks for prey; I looked, and beheld a gloomy mansion underneath my feet, vast as the pride of its founder, gloomy and disconsolate as his soul; it was the Escurial.—
Here then the tyrant reigns,
said I,
here let him reign; hard as these rocks his throne, waste as these desarts be his dominion!
—A meagre creature passed me; famine stared in his eye, he cast a look about him, and sprung upon a kid, that was browsing in the desart, he smote it dead with his staff, and hastily thrust it into his wallet.—
Ah, sacrilegious villain!
—cried a brawny fellow; and, leaping on him from behind a rock, seized the hungry wretch in the act; he dropped upon his knees and begged for mercy.—
Mercy!
cried he that seized him,
do you purloin the property of the church and ask for mercy? Take it!
—So saying, he beat him to the earth with a blow, as he was kneeling at his feet, and then dragged him towards the convent of Saint Lawrence: I could have hugged the miscreant for the deed.
I held my journey through the desart, and desolation followed me to the very streets of Madrid; the fathers of the inquisition came forth from the cells of torture, the cross was elevated before them, and a trembling wretch in a saffron-coloured vest, painted with flames of fire, was dragged to execution in an open square; they kindled a fire about him, and sang praises to God, whilst the flames deliberately consumed their human victim: He was a Jew who suffered, they were Christians who tormented.—
See what the religion of God is,
said I to myself,
in the hands of man!
From the gates of Madrid I bent my course towards the port of Lisbon; as I traversed the wilderness of Estremadura, a robber took his aim at me from behind a cork tree, and the ball grazed my hat upon my head.—
You have missed your aim,
I cried,
and have lost the merit of destroying a man.—Give me your purse,
said the robber.—
Take it,
I replied,
and buy with it a friend; may it serve you as it has served me!
I found the city of Lisbon in ruins; her foundations smoaked upon the ground; the dying and the dead laid in heaps; terror fate in every visage, and mankind was visited with the plagues of the Almighty, famine, fire, and earthquake.—
Have they not the inquisition in this country?
I asked; I was answered they had.—
And do they make all this outcry about an earthquake?
said I within myself,
let them give God thanks and be quiet!
Presently there came ships from England, loaded with all manner of goods for the reief of the inhabitants; the people took the bounty, were preserved, then turned and cursed their preservers for heretics.—
This is as it should be,
said I,
these men act up to their nature, and the English are a nation of fools; I will not go amongst them.
—After a short time behold a new city was rising on the ruins of the old one! The people took the builders tools, which the English had sent them, and made themselves houses: I overheard a fellow at his work say to his companion.—
Before the earthquake I made my bed in the streets, now I shall have a house to live in.—This is too much,
said I;
their misfortunes make this people happy, and I will stay no longer in their country.
—I descended to the banks of the Tagus; there was a ship, whose canvass was loosed for sailing.—
She is an English ship,
says a Galliego porter;
they are brave seamen, but damned tyrants on the quarter-deck.—They pay well for
what they have,
says a boatman,
and I am going on board her with a cargo of lemons.
—I threw myself into the wherry, and entered the ship: The mariners were occupied with their work, and nobody questioned me why I was amongst them: The tide wasted us into the ocean and the night became tempestuous, the vessel laboured in the sea and the morning brought no respite to our toil.—
Whither are you bound?
said I to the master.—
To hell,
said he,
for nothing but the devil ever drove at such a rate!
—The fellow's voice was thunder; the sailors sung in the storm, and the master's oaths were louder than the waves; the third day was a dead calm, and he swore louder than ever.—
If the winds were of this man's making,
thought I,
he would not be content with them.
—A favourable breeze sprung up as if it had come at his calling.—
I thought it was coming,
says he,
put her before the wind, it blows fair for our port.—But where is your port?
again I asked him.—
Sir,
says he,
I can now answer your question as I should do; with God's leave I am bound to Bourdeaux; every thing at sea goes as it pleases God.
—My heart sunk at the name of my native city.
I was freighted,
added he,
from London with a cargo of goods of all sorts for the poor sufferers by the earthquake; I shall load back with wine for my owners, and so help out a charitable
voyage with some little profit, if it please God to bless our endeavours.—Heyday!
thought I,
how fair weather changes this fellow's note!—Lewis,
said he to a handsome youth, who stood at his elbow,
we will now seek out this Monsieur Chaubert at Bourdeaux, and get payment of his bills on your account.—Shew me your bills,
said I,
for I am Chaubert.
—He produced them, and I saw my own name forged to bills in favour of the villain who had so treacherously dealt with me in the affair of the woman who was to have been my wife.—
Where is the wretch,
said I,
who drew these forgeries?
—The youth burst into tears.—
He is my father,
he replied, and turned away.—
Sir,
says the master,
I am not surprized to find this fellow a villain to you, for I was once a trader in affluence and have been ruined by his means and reduced to what you see me; but I forgive what he has done to me; I can earn a maintenance, and am as happy in my present hard employ, nay happier than when I was rich and idle; but to defraud his own son proves him an unnatural rascal, and, if I had him here, I would hang him at the mizen yard.
No XXIV.
CHAUBERT's narrative proceeds as follows.—
When the English master declared he was happier in his present hard service than in his former prosperity, and that he forgave the villain who had ruined him, I started with astonishment, and stood out of his reach, expecting every moment when his phrensy would break out; I looked him steadily in the face, and to my surprize saw no symptoms of madness there; there was no wandering in his eyes, and content of mind was impressed upon his features.—
Are you in your senses,
I demanded,
and can you forgive the villain?—From my heart,
answered he,
else how should I expect to be forgiven?
—His words struck me dumb; my heart tugged at my bosom; the blood rushed to my face. He saw my situation and turned aside to give some orders to the sailors; after some minutes he resumed the conversation, and advancing towards me, in his rough familiar manner, said—
It is my way, Mr. Chaubert, to forgive and forget, though to be sure the fellow deserves hanging for his treatment of this poor boy his son, who is as good a lad as ever lived, but as for father and mother—Who is his mother? What was her name?
I eagerly demanded. Her name had no sooner passed his lips than I felt a shock through all my frame beyond that of electricity; I staggered as if with a sudden stroke, and caught hold of the barricade; an involuntary shriek burst from me, and I cried out—
That woman—Oh! that woman—Was a devil,
said the master,
and if you knew but half the misery you have escaped, you would fall down upon your knees and thank God for the blessing: I have heard your story, Mr. Chaubert, and when a man is in love, do you see, he does not like to have his mistress taken from him; but some things are better lost than found, and if this is all you have to complain of, take my word for it you complain of the luckiest hour in your whole life.
He would have proceeded, but I turned from him without uttering a word, and shutting myself into my cabbin surrendered myself to my meditations.
My mind was now in such a tumult, that I cannot recall my thoughts, much less put them into any order for relation: The ship however kept her course, and had now entered the mouth of the Garonne; I landed on the quay of Bourdeaux; the master accompanied me, and young Lewis kept charge of the ship: The first object that met my view was a gibbet erected before the door of a merchant's compting-house: The convict was kneeling on a scaffold; whilst a friar was receiving his last confession; his face was turned towards us; the Englishman glanced his eye upon him, and instantly cried out—
Look, look, Mr. Chaubert, the very man, as I am alive; it is the father of young Lewis.
—The wretch had discovered us in the same moment, and called aloud—
Oh Chaubert, Chaubert! let me speak to you before I die!
—His yell was horror to my soul; I lost the power of motion, and the crowd pushing towards the scaffold, thrust me forward to the very edge of it; the friar ordered silence, and demanded of the wretch why he had called out so eagerly and what he had farther to confess.
Father,
replied the convict,
this is the very man, the very Chaubert of whom I was speaking; he was the best of friends to me, and I repaid his kindness with the blackest treachery; I seduced the woman of his affections from him, I married her, and because we dreaded his resentment, we conspired in an attempt upon his life by poison.
—He now turned to me and proceeded as follows—
You may remember, Chaubert, as we were supping together on the very evening of Louisa's elopement,
handed to you a glass of wine to drink to your approaching nuptials; as you were lifting it to your lips, your favorite spaniel leaped upon your arm and dashed it on the floor; in a sudden transport of passion, which you were ever addicted to, you
struck the creature with violence and laid it dead at your feet. It was the saving moment of your life—the wine was poisoned, inevitable death was in the draught, and the animal you killed was God's instrument for preserving you; reflect upon the event, subdue your passions, and practise resignation: Father, I have no more to confess; I die repentant: Let the executioner do his office.
Here ends the diary of Chaubert.
I do not mean to expose my ideas to ingenious ridicule by maintaining that every thing happens to every man for the best, but I will contend, that he, who makes the best of it, fulfils the part of a wise and good man: Another thing may be safely advanced, namely, that man is not competent to decide upon the good or evil of many events, which befal him in this life, and we have authority to say,
Woe be to him that calls good evil, and evil good!
I could wish that the story of Chaubert, as I have given it, might make that impression upon any one of my readers, as it did upon me, when I received it; and I could also wish, that I felt myself worthy to add to it the experience of many occurrences in my own life, to which time and patience have given colours very different from those they wore upon their first appearance.
When men sink into despondency or break out into rage upon adversities and misfortunes, it is no proof that Providence lays a heavier burthen upon them than they can bear, because it is not clear that they have exerted all the possible resources of the soul.
The passions may be humoured, till they become our masters, as a horse may be pampered till he gets the better of his rider; but early discipline will prevent mutiny and keep the helm in the hands of reason. If we put our children under restraint and correction, why should we, who are but children of a larger growth, be refractory and complain, when the Father of all things lays the wholesome correction of adversity on our heads?
Amongst the fragments of
Philemon
the comic poet, there is part of a dialogue preserved between a master and his servant, whose names are not given, which falls in with the subject I am speaking of; these fragments have been collected from the works of the scholiasts and grammarians, and many of them have been quoted by the fathers of the Christian church for the moral and pious maxims they contain; I think the reader will not be displeased, if I occasionally present him with some specimens from these remains of the Greek Comedy, and for the present conclude my paper with the following translation.
Whilst you live, Sir, drive away sorrow; it is the worst company a man can keep.
Whilst I live, sirrah? why there is no living without it.
Never tell me, Sir; the wounds of the mind are not to be healed by the tears of the eyes: If they were, who would be without the medicine? They would be the best family-physic in nature; and if nothing but money would buy them, you could not pay too dearly for the purchase. But alack-a-day, what do they avail? Weep, or weep not, this stubborn world of ours will have its way; sighing and groaning, take my word for it, is but labour lost.
Granted! for its use I will not contend, nor can you, as I take it, dispute its necessity: It is as natural for the eyes to shed tears in affliction, as for a tree to drop its leaves in autumn.
That I deny; the necessity of evil I admit, but not the necessity of bewailing it. Mark how your maxims and mine differ; you meet misfortune in the way, I let misfortune meet me: There are too many evils in life, that no man's wisdom can avoid; but he is no wise man who multiplies too many by more: Now my philosophy teaches me, that amongst all the evils you complain of, there is no evil so great as your complaint itself: Why it drives a man out of his senses, out of his health, nay at last out of the world; so shall it not me: If misfortune will come, I cannot help it, but if lamentation follows it, that is my fault; and a fool of his own making, my good master, is a fool indeed.
Say you so, sirrah? Now I hold your insensibility to be of the nature of a brute; my feelings I regard as the prerogative of a man; thus although we differ widely in our practice, each acts up to his proper character.
If I am of the nature of a brute, because I fear the gods and submit to their will, the gods forgive me! If it be the prerogative of a man, to say I will not bear misfortunes, I will not submit to the decrees of the gods, let the gods answer that for themselves! I am apt to think it is no great mark of courage to despair, nor any sure proof of weakness to be content. If a man were to die of a disappointment, how the vengeance does it come to pass that any body is left alive? You may, if you think well of it, counteract the designs of the gods, and turn their intended blessings into actual misfortunes, but I do not think their work will be mended by your means; you may, if you please, resent it with a high hand, if your mother, or your son, or your friend should take the liberty to die, when you wish them to live; but to me it appears a natural event, which no man can keep off from his own person, or that of any other; you may, if you think it worth your while, be very miserable, when this woman miscarries, or that woman is brought to bed; you may torment yourself, because your mother has a cough, or your mistress drops a tear; in short you may send yourself out of the world with sorrow, but I think it better to stay my time in it and be happy.
No XXV.
I MENTIONED in my seventh paper that I had a card from Vanessa inviting me to a
Feast of Reason.
I confess I was very curious to know what the nature of this feast might be; and having been since favoured with a second invitation, I shall take the liberty of relating what I saw and heard at that lady's assembly.
The celebrated Vanessa has been either a beauty, or a wit all her life long; and of course has a better plea for vanity, than falls to most women's share; her vanity also is in itself more excuseable for the pleasing colours it sometimes throws upon her character: It gives the spring to charity, good-nature, affability; it makes her splendid, hospitable, facetious; carries her into all the circles of fine people, and crowds all the fine people into her's; it starts a thousand whimsical caprices, that furnish employment to the arts, and it has the merit of opening her doors and her purse to the sons of science; in short it administers protection to all descriptions and degrees of genius, from the manufacturer of a tooth-pick to the author of an epic poem: It is a vanity, that is a sure box at an author's first night, and a sure card at a performer's benefit; it pays well for a dedication, and stands for six copies upon a subscribers list. Vanessa in the centre of her own circle sits like the statue of the Athenian Minerva, incensed with the breath of philosophers, poets, painters, orators, and every votarist of art, science, or fine speaking. It is in her academy young noviciates try their wit and practise panegyric; no one like Vanessa can break in a young lady to the poetics, and teach her Pegasus to carry a side-saddle: She can make a mathematician quote Pindar, a Master in Chancery write novels, or a Birmingham hardware-man stamp rhimes as fast as buttons.
As I came rather before the modern hour of visiting, I waited some time in her room before any of the company appeared; several new publications on various subjects were lying on her table; they were stitched in blue paper and most of them fresh from the press; in some she had stuck small scraps of paper, as if to mark where she had left off reading; in others she had doubled down certain pages seemingly for the same purpose. At last a meagre little man with a most satirical countenance was ushered in, and took his seat in a corner of the room; he eyed me attentively for some time through his spectacles, and at last accosted me in the following words;
"You are looking at these books, Sir; I take for granted they are newly published."
"I believe they are,"
I replied.
"I thought so,"
says he.
"Then you may depend upon it their authors will be here by and by; you may always know what company you are to expect in this house by the books upon the table: It is in this way Vanessa has got all her wit and learning, not by reading, but by making authors believe she reads their works, and by thus tickling their vanity she sends so many heralds into the world to cry up her fame to the skies; it is a very pretty finesse, and saves a world of time for better amusements."
He had no sooner said this than Vanessa entered the room, and whilst I was making a most profound reverence, I beheld something approaching to me, which looked like columns and arches and porticos in the perspective of a playhouse scene; as I raised my eyes and examined it a little closer I recognized the ruins of Palmyra embroidered in coloured silks upon Vanessa's petticoat. It was the first visit I had ever paid, and Vanessa not being ready with my name, I made a silent obeisance, and receiving a smile in return, retreated to my chair: My friend said a great many smart things upon the ruins of Palmyra, which Vanessa on her part contended to be a very proper emblem for an old woman in decay, who had seen better days; the wit replied, that instead of Palmyra it ought to have been Athens, and then she would have been equipped from head to foot in character. Vanessa smiled, but maintained the propriety of her choice, bidding him observe,
"that though she carried a city upon her back, that city all the world knew was planted on a desart."
She now addressed herself to me, and in the most gracious manner asked me when I hoped to put my project into execution; I answered in about two months, thinking she alluded to the publication of these papers, a circumstance I knew she was informed of.
"Well, I protest,"
says Vanessa,
"I envy you the undertaking, and wish I could find courage enough to accompany you."
I assured her there was nothing in the world would make me so happy as her assistance, and that I was confident it would ensure success to my undertaking.
"There you flatter me,"
says she,
"for I should do nothing but look after shells and corals and the palaces of the Tritons and Naiads, if I was to go down with you."
—Here I began to stare most egregiously.—
"But after all,"
added she,
"will your diving-bell carry double?"
This luckless diving-bell was such an unexpected plunge to me, that if I had been actually in it, I could scarce have been more hampered; so I thought it was better to remain under water, and wait till the real artist came in to set the mistake to rights: This however my neighbour with the spectacles would not allow of, for suspecting the mal-entendu, he began to question me how long I could stay under water, and whether I could see distinctly; he then took a pamphlet from the table, and spreading out a large engraved plan of a diving-bell, desired me to inform him how I managed those pipes and conductors of air; all this while he was slyly enjoying my confusion, till I summoned resolution to apprise Vanessa of her mistake; this produced a thousand polite apologies on her part—
"But these wretched eyes of mine,"
says she,
"are for ever betraying me into blunders."
"That is a pity indeed,"
replied the wit,
"for they illuminate every body else; but if they betray their owner,"
adds he,
"it is God's revenge against murder."
Several literati now entered the room, to whom Vanessa made her compliments, particularly to a blind old gentleman, whom she conducted to his chair with great humanity, and immediately began talking to him of his discoveries and experiments on the microscope.
"Ah! madam,"
replied the minute philosopher,
"those researches are now over; something might have been done, if my eyes had held out, but I lost my sight just as I had discovered the generation of mites; but this I can take on myself to pronounce, that they are an oviparous race."
"Be content,"
replied Vanessa,
"there is a blessing upon him who throws even a
mite
into the treasury of science."
The philosopher then proceeded to inform her, that he had begun some curious dissections of the eye of a mole, but that his own would not serve him to complete them:
"If I could have proceeded in them,"
says he,
"I am verily persuaded I could have brought him to his eye-sight by the operation of couching; and now,"
says he,
"I am engaged in a new discovery, in which I mean to employ none but persons under the like misfortune with myself.
—So interesting a discovery raised my curiosity, as well as Vanessa's, to enquire into it, and methought even the wit in the spectacles had a fellow-feeling in the subject.—
"It is a powder, madam,"
added the philosopher,
"which I have prepared for destroying vermin on fruit trees, and even ants in the West Indies; I confess to you,"
says he,
"it is fatal to the eye-sight, for I am persuaded I owe the loss of mine to it, rather than to the eggs of mites, or the couching of moles; and accordingly I propose that this powder shall be blown through bellows of my own inventing by none but men who are stone blind; it will be very easy for your gardener, or overseer of your plantations, to lead them up to their work, and then leave them to perform it; for the dust is so subtle, that it is scarce possible to invent a cover for the eyes, that can secure them against it. I believe,"
added he,
"I have some of it in my pocket, and if you have any flies or spiders in the room, I will soon convince you of its efficacy by an experiment before your eyes."
Vanessa eagerly assured him there was no such thing in her room, and drawing her chair to a distance, begged him not to trouble himself with any experiment at present.
There sat an ordinary woman in a black cloak by the fire side with her feet upon the sender and her knees up, who seemed employed upon a cushion or pillow, which she kept concealed under her apron, without once looking at the work she was upon.
"You have read of the Witch of Endor,"
says she to me, (observing I had fixed my eyes upon her)
"I am a descendant of that old lady's, and can raise the dead, as well as she could."
—Immediately she put aside her apron, and produced a head moulded in wax so strikingly like my deceased friend, the father of Calliope, that the shock it gave me was too apparent to escape her.—
"You knew this brave fellow I perceive,"
says she,
"England never owned a better officer; he was my hero, and every line in his face is engraved in my heart."
—
"What must it be in mine?"
I answered, and turned away to a circle of people, who had collected themselves round a plain, but venerable, old man, and were very attentive to his discourse: He spoke with great energy, and in most chosen language; nobody yet attempted to interrupt him, and his words rolled not with the shallow impetuosity of a torrent, but deeply and fluently, like the copious current of the Nile: He took up the topic of religion in his course, and, though palsy shook his head, he looked so terrible in Christian armour, and dealt his strokes with so much force and judgment, that Infidelity, in the persons of several petty skirmishers, sneaked away from before him: One little fellow however had wriggled his chair nearer and nearer to him, and kept baying at him whilst he was speaking, perpetually crying out—
"Give me leave to observe—not to interrupt you, Sir—That is extremely well, but in answer to what you say."
—All this had been going on without any attention or stop on the part of the speaker, whose eyes never once lighted on the company, till the little fellow, growing out of all patience, walked boldly up to him, and catching hold of a button somewhere above the waistband of his breeches, with a sudden twitch checked the moving-spring of his discourse, and much to my regret brought it to a full stop. The philosopher looked about for the insect that annoyed him, and having at last eyed him, as it were askaunce, demanded what it was provoked him to impatience.—
"Have I said any thing, good Sir, that you do not comprehend?"
—
"No, no,"
replied he,
"I perfectly well comprehend every word you have been saying."
—
"Do you so, Sir?"
said the philosopher,
"then I heartily ask pardon of the company for misemploying their time so egregiously,"
—and stalked away without waiting for an answer.
Vanessa had now recollected or enquired my name, and in a very gracious manner repeated her excuses for mistaking me for the diver.—
"But if the old saying holds good,"
adds she,
"that truth lies at the bottom of a well, I dare say you will not scruple to dive for it, so I hope I have not given you a dishonourable occupation."
I was endeavouring at a reply, when the wit in the spectacles came up to us and whispered Vanessa in the ear, that the true Diving-bell was in yonder corner; she immediately turned that way, and as she passed whispered a young lady loud enough for me to hear her—
"My dear, I am in your third volume."
—The girl bowed her head, and by the Arcadian grace that accompanied it, I took it for granted she was a Novelist.
I now joined a cluster of people, who had crowded round an actress, who sat upon a sopha, leaning on her elbow in a pensive attitude, and seemed to be counting the sticks of her fan, whilst they were vying with each other in the most extravagant encomiums.—
"You was adorable last night in Belvidera,"
says a pert young parson with a high toupee;
"I sat in Lady Blubber's box, and I can assure you she and her daughters too wept most bitterly—but then that charming mad scene, by my soul it was a chef d'oeuvre; pray, Madam, give me leave to ask you, was you really in your senses?"
—
"I strove to do it as well as I could,"
answered the actress.
"Do you intend to play comedy next season?"
says a lady, stepping up to her with great eagerness.—
"I shall do as the manager bids me,"
she replied.
"I should be curious to know,"
says an elderly lady,
"which part, Madam, you yourself esteem the best you play?"
—
"I always endeavour to make that which I am about the best."
An elegant young woman of fashion now took her turn of interrogatory, and with many apologies begged to be informed by her, if she studied those inchanting looks and attitudes before a glass?—
"I never study any thing but my author."
—
"Then you practise them in rehearsals?"
rejoined the questioner.—
"I seldom rehearse at all,"
replied the actress.
"She has fine eyes,"
says a tragic poet to an eminent painter,
"what modest dignity they bear, what awful penetration! mark how they play in those deep sockets, like diamonds in the mine! whilst that commanding brow moves over them like a cloud, and carries storm or sun-shine, as the deity within directs: She is the child of nature, or, if you will allow me the expression, nature herself; for she is in all things original; in pity, or in terror, penitent, or presumptuous, famished, mad, or dying, she is her author's thought personified; and if this nation, which fashion now nails by the ears to the shameful pillory of an Italian opera, shall ever be brought back to a true relish of its native drama, that woman will have the merit of their reformation."
This rhapsody was received with great tranquillity by the painter, who coolly replied—
"All that is very well, but where will you see finer attitudes, than in an opera dance, or more picturesque draperies, than in a masquerade? Every man for his own art."
Vanessa now came up, and desiring leave to introduce a young muse to Melpomene, presented a girl in a white frock with a fillet of flowers twined round her hair, which hung down her back in flowing curls; the young muse made a low obeisance in the stile of an Oriental salam, and with the most unembarrassed voice and countenance, whilst the poor actress was covered with blushes and suffering torture from the eyes of all the room, broke forth as follows:—
Oh thou whom Nature's goddess calls her own,
Pride of the stage and favorite of the town—
—But I can proceed no further, for if the plague had been in the house, I should not have ran away from it more eagerly than I did from Miss and her poetry.
No XXVI.
LEONTINE is one of those purse-proud humorists, who profess to speak what they think—
For why? he is independant and fears no man.
If you complain of an affront from Leontine, you are sure to be told—
That is his way, that is so like Leontine, you must take him as he is.
—In short, there are certain savages in society, who seem to have a patent for their brutality, and he is one.
I often think I can give a good guess at the temper of the master by the servants looks; in Leontine's family it is strongly marked; I was let in the other day by a staring half-starved fellow, fresh from the country, who was out of his wits for fear, not knowing whether he was to say his master was at home or abroad: Whilst he stood gaping with the door half-opened in his hand, a voice roared out from the parlour,
Who's there?
Upon which he slapped the street-door in my face and ran to his master; as I was quietly walking away, he followed me up the street and told me to come back, for his master would see me. I found Leontine in a fit of the gout; his wife on her knees wrapping flannel round his foot: It mortified me to see how much the world is governed by the abject principle of fear, for the assiduity, with which this bashaw was waited upon by his wife and servants, was surprizing. After having cursed the gout, damned his servants, and scolded his wife for her awkwardness in swathing his foot, he began to rave about the state of the nation, crying out to me every now and then—
"A fine pass you have brought things to at last; I always told you how it would be, but you would not believe me, and now you are ruined, bankrupt, and undone to the devil; I thought what it would come to with your damned American war."
—I told him I had nothing to do with politics, and knew very little of the matter.—
"That's true,"
says he,
"I understand you are writing a book, and going to turn author: You know I am your friend, and always speak my mind, therefore I must tell you, you will repent of what you are about. Cannot you let the world alone? Is it in your power to make it better? Can the devil make it worse? Why I could write a book if I pleased, but I scorn it; nay I was fool enough to do it once from a silly principle of good-will to my country; and what was the consequence? Why, after proving as plain as two and two make four that we were no longer a nation, that we were broken, baffled, defeated, and upon the eve of being a province to France—after having proved all this, d'ye see, for the good of my country, what was my reward, think you, but to be abused, vilified, posted in the rascally newspapers, who threw the twelfth of April in my teeth and set the people's heads a madding contrary to all sense and reason, though I had been at the pains of convincing them how foolish all such hopes were, and that there was not a chance left, though miracles should be wrought in their favour, of any possible salvation for this devoted kingdom."
As Leontine is one of those
pro
and
con
reasoners, who handle their own argument in their own way by question and answer, and know what their opponent has to offer before he has uttered three words, I always leave him a clear stage to fight out the subject by himself as he can; so that he proceeded without interruption to put a number of questions, to which he regularly made responses, and, though these were the very opposites to what I should probably have given, I let them pass without contradiction, till there was a stop to the torrent by the introduction of a stranger, who after telling Leontine his name, proceeded to say he had a little necessary business to settle with him, which he should take the liberty to explain in very few words. This stranger was a little, meagre, consumptive man, far advanced in years, of an aspect remarkably meek and humble, so that it was not without surprize I heard him begin as follows.—
"I wait upon you, Sir, to demand full satisfaction and atonement for an injury you have done to my character by the basest lie that ever man uttered, and which if you do not disavow in as public a manner as you reported it, I shall expect you will immediately answer my challenge, as there is no other mode of redressing wrongs of so insidious a nature."
When this gentleman announced his name and description I found he was a general officer, who had been upon an unsuccessful command in the course of the war; and that Leontine in one of his political rhapsodies had treated his character according to his custom with great scurrility; this had unluckily passed in hearing of a friend of the General's, who had endeavoured to stop Leontine in time, but not being able so to do, had made report to his friend of what had been said of him in his absence. As he fixed his eyes upon Leontine in expectation of his answer, I observed his cheeks, which before were of a ruddy scarlet, turn to a deep purple, which gradually darkened into a livid tawney; fear so transformed his features, that the flying soldier in Le Brun's battle was not a more perfect model of horror: His lips, which so lately thundered out vengeance and anathemas against the whole host of critics, magazine-mongers, news-writers, and reviewers, with all their devils, runners, and retainers, now quivered without the power of utterance, till at last a gentle murmuring voice was heard to say—
"General, if I have given you offence, I am very sorry for it, but I suspect that what I said must have been unfairly stated, else"
—Here the little gentleman immediately interrupted him, by saying—
"This excuse affects the veracity of my friend; I shall therefore take the liberty of calling him into your room, which I did not chuse to do in the first instance, not knowing you had any body with you; but if this gentleman will have the goodness to stand in place of your referee on the occasion, I will bring my witness face to face, who will testify to the very words you spoke."
This was no sooner said than done; for the friend was in the passage, and in the most precise terms asserted the truth of his information.—
"And now, Sir,"
resumed the General,
"give me leave to say there is not a man in England more abhors a personal quarrel than I do, but I make it my study to give no offence, and both my reputation and my profession indispensibly oblige me not to put up with insult from any man: There is no alternative therefore left to either of us, but for you to sign this paper, which I shall use as I see fit in my own vindication, or turn out; I am very sorry for it; it is an unhappy custom, but if occasions can justify it, I take the present to be one."
—Having so said, he tendered the paper to Leontine with as much politeness and address, as if he had been delivering a petition to the commander in chief.
The intimidated boaster took the paper with a trembling hand, and throwing his eye over it, begged to know if it might not be mitigated in some particulars:—
"I should be very glad to oblige you,"
says the General,
"in what you wish, but they are my words, and as I generally think before I speak or write, I am not in the habit of unsaying any thing I assert; you must therefore sign to all, or none."
—
"If it must be so, it must,"
says Leontine with a sigh, and took the pen.—
"Stop, Sir, if you please,"
interposed the General,
"I would know of this gentleman, if he has any thing to offer on your behalf, why you should not sign that paper."
I answered, that I had nothing to offer in the case; upon which Leontine put his name to the paper.
"Sir,"
says the General,
"I am perfectly satisfied, and beg your pardon for the trouble I have given you; I am persuaded you are not a person, who can injure my character, and this paper is of no further use."
—So saying, he threw it into the fire, and having made his bow to Leontine and wishing me a good morning, took his friend under the arm and coolly walked out of the house. As I was suspicious Leontine's courage might return after his departure, I thought it best to follow his example, and, taking up my hat, left the mortified bashaw to his meditations, well satisfied to find an example in confirmation of my opinion—
That a bully at home is a coward abroad.
As I walked along, meditating on what had passed, a doubt for the first time arose in my mind as to the practice of duelling, and I began to think there might be certain advantages accruing to society, which, if the immorality of the action could be dispensed with, might possibly balance the evils, so evidently to be set against them. On the one side I saw in all its horrors the untimely catastrophe of a father, husband, son, or brother, hurried out of life, and made the sacrifice of a savage fashion, which the world calls honour: On the other part I reflected within myself what the state of manners might probably be reduced to, and how much society would suffer, if such overbearing insolent characters as Leontine were not held in restraint by those personal considerations, which owe their influence to the practice of duelling. To their wives, servants, and dependant inferiors, from whom no resentment is to be apprehended, these tyrants are insupportable; to society in general they are offensive as far as they dare; it is not shame, nor a respect to good manners in any degree, nor the fear of the laws, which stop them, for none of these considerations affect them; neither is it the unarmed hand of man, that can correct them, for these brutal natures are commonly endowed with brutal strength, and Leontine would no more have feared his puisny antagonist without a weapon than I should stand in awe of an infant. If these creatures, thought I, were let loose upon society, and we had nothing but our fists to keep them in order, the proverb would be literally made good, and the weakest must go to the wall; but that same lucky invention of gunpowder levels the strong with the feeble, and puts all, who bear the character of a gentleman, upon the same line of defence: If blows were to be exchanged with impunity, and foul language was to be endured without account, we should be a nation of rabble. It seems therefore as if nothing more were to be wished, than for certain mitigations of this terrible resource, which must ultimately depend upon the voluntary magnanimity of those, who are compelled to resort to it: What I mean is, to express a wish that gentlemen would think it no derogation from their honour to acknowledge an error, or ask pardon for an offence; and as it can very rarely happen, but that one party must to his own conviction be in the fault, it seems to follow, that all those affairs of honour, that can be done away by an apology, might by manly and ingenuous characters be prevented from extremities: As to injuries of that deep nature, which according to the infirmity of human ideas, we are apt to call inexpiable, I presume not to give an opinion; and in the aggravating instance of a blow, I have only to lament, that the sufferer has to expose his person to equal danger with the offender. Though some unhappy instances of frivolous duels have lately occurred, I cannot think that it is the vice of the times to be fond of quarrelling; the manners of our young men of distinction are certainly not of that cast, and if it lies with any of the present age, it is with those half-made-up gentry, who force their way into half-price plays in boots and spurs, and are clamorous in the passages of the front boxes in a crowded theatre: I have with much concern observed this to be an increasing nuisance, and have often wished those turbulent spirits to be better employed, and that they had dismounted from their horses either a little sooner or not so soon: But it is not by reasoning these gentlemen will be taught to correct their behaviour.
I would seriously recommend to my readers of all descriptions to keep a careful watch upon their tempers, when they enter into argumentation and dispute; let them be assured that by their management of themselves on such occasions they are to decide their characters; and whether they are to pass as men of education, temper, and politeness, or as illiterate, hot, and ill-bred blockheads, will depend upon their conduct in this particular. If the following short and obvious maxims were attended to, I think animosities would be avoided and conversation amended.
Every man, who enters into a dispute with another, (whether he starts it or only takes it up) should hear with patience what his opponent in the argument has to offer in support of the opinion he advances.
Every man, who gives a controverted opinion, ought to lay it down with as much conciseness, temper, and precision, as he can.
An argument once confuted, should never be repeated, nor tortured into any other shape by sophistry and quibble.
No jest, pun, or witticism, tending to turn an opponent or his reasoning into ridicule, or raise a laugh at his expence, ought by any means to be attempted; for this is an attack upon the temper, not an address to the reason of a disputant.
No two disputants should speak at the same time, nor any man overpower another by superiority of lungs, or the loudness of a laugh, or the sudden burst of an exclamation.
It is an indispensible preliminary to all disputes, that oaths are no arguments.
If any disputant slaps his hand upon the table, let him be informed that such an action does not clinch his argument, and is only pardonable in a blacksmith or a butcher.
If any disputant offers a wager, it is plain he has nothing else to offer, and there the dispute should end.
Any gentleman who speaks above the natural key of his voice casts an imputation on his own courage, for cowards are loudest, when they are out of danger.
Contradictions are no arguments, nor any expressions to be made use of, such as—
That I deny—There you are mistaken—That is impossible
—or any of the like blunt assertions, which only irritate, and do not elucidate.
The advantages of rank or fortune are no advantages in argumentation; neither is an inferior to offer, or a superior to extort the submission of the understanding on such occasions; for every man's reason has the same pedigree; it begins and ends with himself.
If a man disputes in a provincial dialect, or trips in his grammar, or, (being Scotch or Irish) uses national expressions, provided they convey his meaning to the understanding of his opponent, it is a foolish jest to turn them into ridicule, for a man can only express his ideas in such language as he is master of.
Let the disputant who confutes another, forbear from triumph; forasmuch as he, who increases his knowledge by conviction, gains more in the contest, than he who converts another to his opinion; and the triumph more becomes the conquered, than the conqueror.
Let every disputant make truth the only object of his controversy, and whether it be of his own finding, or of any other man's bestowing, let him think it worth his acceptance and entertain it accordingly.
No XXVII.
THE following story is so extraordinary, that if I had not had it from good authority in the country, where it happened, I should have considered it as the invention of some poet for the fable of a drama.
A Portuguese gentleman, whom I shall beg leave to describe no otherwise than by the name of Don Juan, was lately brought to trial for poisoning his half-sister by the same father, after she was with child by him. This gentleman had for some years before his trial led a very solitary life at his castle in the neighbourhood of Montremos, a town on the road between Lisbon and Badajos, the frontier garrison of Spain: I was shewn his castle, as I passed through that dismal country, about a mile distant from the road, in a bottom surrounded with cork-trees, and never saw a more melancholy habitation. The circumstances, which made against this gentleman, were so strong and the story was in such general circulation in the neighbourhood, where he lived, that although he laid out the greatest part of a considerable income in acts of charity, no body ever entered his gates to thank him for his bounty, or solicit relief, except one poor father of the Jeronymite convent in Montremos, who was his confessor and acted as his almoner at discretion.
A charge of so black a nature, involving the crime of incest as well as murder, at length reached the ears of justice, and a commission was sent to Montremos to make enquiry into the case: The supposed criminal made no attempt to escape, but readily attended the summons of the commissioners. Upon the trial it came out from the confession of the prisoner, as well as from the deposition of witnesses, that Don Juan had lived from his infancy in the family of a rich merchant at Lisbon, who carried on a considerable trade and correspondence in the Brazils; Don Juan being allowed to take this merchant's name, it was generally supposed that he was his natural son, and a clandestine affair of love having been carried on between him and the merchant's daughter Josepha, who was an only child, she became pregnant, and a medicine being administered to her by the hands of Don Juan, she died in a few hours after with all the symptoms of a person, who had taken poison. The mother of the young lady survived her but a few days, and the father threw himself into a convent of Mendicants, making over by deed of gift the whole of his property to the supposed murderer.
In this account there seemed a strange obscurity of facts, for some made strongly to the crimination of Don Juan, and the last-mentioned circumstance was of so contradictory a nature, as to throw the whole into perplexity; and therefore to compel the prisoner to a further elucidation of the case, it was thought proper to interrogate him by torture.
Whilst this was preparing, Don Juan without betraying the least alarm upon what was going forward, told his judges that it would save them and himself some trouble, if they would receive his confession upon certain points, to which he should truly speak, but beyond which all the tortures in the world could not force one syllable: He said that he was not the son as it was supposed of the merchant, with whom he lived, nor allied to the deceased Josepha any otherwise than by the tenderest ties of mutual affection and a promise of marriage, which however he acknowledged had not been solemnized: That he was the son of a gentleman of considerable fortune in the Brazils, who left him an infant to the care of the merchant in question; that the merchant for reasons best known to himself chose to call him by his own name, and this being done in his infancy, he was taught to believe, that he was an orphan youth, the son of a distant relation of the person who adopted him; he begged his judges therefore to observe that he never understood Josepha to be his sister; that as to her being with child by him, he acknowledged it, and prayed God forgiveness for an offence, which it had been his intention to repair by marrying her; that with respect to the medicine, he certainly did give it to her with his own hands, for that she was sick in consequence of her pregnancy, and being afraid of creating alarm or suspicion in her parents, had required him to order certain drugs from an apothecary, as if for himself, which he accordingly did, and he verily believed they were faithfully mixed, inasmuch as he stood by the man, whilst he prepared the medicine, and saw every ingredient separately put in.
The judges thereupon asked him, if he would take it on his conscience to say, that the lady did not die by poison: Don Juan, bursting into tears for the first time, answered, to his eternal sorrow he knew that she did die by poison.—Was that poison contained in the medicine she took?—It was.—Did he impute the crime of mixing the poison in the medicine to the apothecary, or did he take it on himself?—Neither the apothecary, nor himself, was guilty.—Did the lady from a principle of shame, (he was then asked) commit the act of suicide, and infuse the poison without his knowledge?—He started into horror at the question and took God to witness, that she was innocent of the deed.
The judges seemed now confounded, and for a time abstained from any further interrogatories, debating the matter amongst themselves by whispers; when one of them observed to the prisoner, that according to his confession he had said she did die by poison, and yet by the answers he had now given, it should seem as if he meant to acquit every person, on whom suspicion could possibly rest; there was however one interrogatory left, which unnatural as it was, he would put to him for form's sake only, before they proceeded to greater extremities, and that question involved the father or mother of the lady.—Did he mean to impute the horrid intention of murdering their child to the parents?—No, replied the prisoner in a firm tone of voice, I am certain no such intention ever entered the hearts of the unhappy parents, and I should be the worst of sinners, if I imputed it to them.—The judges upon this declared with one voice that he was trifling with the court, and gave orders for the rack; they would however for the last time demand of him, if he knew who it was that did poison Josepha: to which he answered without hesitation, that he did know, but that no tortures should force him to declare it; as to life, he was weary of it, and they might dispose of it, as they saw fit; he could not die in greater tortures than he had lived.
They now took this peremptory recusant, and stripping him of his upper garments, laid him on the rack; a surgeon was called in, who kept his fingers on his pulse; and the executioners were directed to begin their tortures; they had given him one severe stretch by ligatures fixed to his extremities and passed over an axle, which was turned by a windlass; the strain upon his muscles and joints by the action of this infernal engine was dreadful, and nature spoke her sufferings by a horrid crash in every limb; the sweat started in large drops upon his face and bosom, yet the man was firm amidst the agonies of the machine, not a groan escaped, and the fiend who was superintendant of the hellish work, declared they might encrease his tortures upon the next tug, for that his pulse had not varied a stroke nor abated of its strength in the smallest degree.
The tormentors had now begun a second operation with more violence than the former, which their devilish ingenuity had contrived to vary so as to extort acuter pains from the application of the engine to parts, that had not yet had their full share of the first agony; when suddenly a monk rushed into the chamber and called out to t
h judges to desist from torturing that innocent man, and take the confession of the murderer from his own lips. Upon a signal from the judges, the executioners let go the engine at once, and the joints snapped audibly into their sockets with the elasticity of a bow. Nature sunk under the revulsion, and Don Juan fainted on the rack. The monk immediately with a loud voice exclaimed—
"Inhuman wretches, delegates of hell and agents of the devil, make ready your engine for the guilty, and take off your bloody hands from the innocent, for behold!"
(and so saying he threw back his cowl)
"behold the father and the murderer of Josepha!—"
The whole assembly started with astonishment; the judges stood aghast, and even the daemons of torture rolled their eye-balls on the monk with horror and dismay.
"If you are willing,"
says he to the judges,
"to receive my confession, whilst your tormentors are preparing their rack for the vilest criminal, ever stretched upon it; hear me! If not, set your engine to work without further enquiry, and glut your appetites with human agonies, which once in your lives you may now inflict with justice."
"Proceed,"
said the senior judge.
"That guiltless sufferer, who now lies insensible before my eyes,"
said the monk,
"is the son of an excellent father, who was once my dearest friend: He was confided to my charge, being then an infant, and my friend followed his fortunes to our settlements in the Brazils: He resided there twenty years without visiting Portugal once in the time; he remitted to me many sums of money on his son's account; at this time a hellish thought arose in my mind, which the distress of my affairs and a passion for extravagance inspired, of converting the property of my charge to my own account; I imparted these suggestions to my unhappy wife, who is now at her accompt; let me do her justice to confess she withstood them firmly for a time; still fortune frowned upon me, and I was sinking in my credit every hour; ruin stared me in the face, and nothing stood between me and immediate disgrace, but this infamous expedient."
"At last persuasion, menaces, and the impending pressure of necessity conquered her virtue, and she acceded to the fraud. We agreed to adopt the infant as the orphan son of a distant relation of our own name; I maintained a correspondence with his father by letters pretending to be written by the son, and I supported my family in a splendid extravagance by the assignments I received from the Brazils. At length the father of Don Juan died, and by will bequeathed his fortune to me in failure of his son and his heirs. I had already advanced so far in guilt, that the temptation of this contingency met no resistance in my mind, and I determined upon removing this bar to my ambition, and proposed to my wife to secure the prize, that fortune had hung within our reach, by the assassination of the heir. She revolted from the idea with horror, and for some time her thoughts remained in so disturbed a state, that I did not think it prudent to renew the attack: After some time the agent of the deceased arrived in Lisbon from the Brazils, and as he was privy to my correspondence, it became necessary for me to discover to Don Juan who he was, and also what fortune he was intitled to. In this crisis, threatened with shame and detection on one hand, and tempted by avarice, pride, and the devil on the other, I won over my reluctant wife to a participation of my crime, and we mixed that dose with poison, which we believed was intended for Don Juan, but which in fact was destined for our only child: She took it; heaven discharged its vengeance on our heads, and we saw our daughter expire in agonies before our eyes, with the bitter aggravation of a double murder, for the child was alive within her. Are there words in language to express our lamentations? Are there tortures in the reach of even your invention to compare with those we felt? Wonderful were the struggles of nature in the heart of our expiring child: She bewailed us; she consoled, nay she even forgave us. To Don Juan we made imm
diate confession of our guilt, and conjured him to inflict that punishment upon us, which justice demanded and our crimes deserved. It was in this dreadful moment that our daughter with her last breath by the most solemn adjurations exacted and obtained a promise from Don Juan not to expose her parents to a public execution by disclosing what had passed. Alas! alas! we see too plainly how he kept his word: Behold, he dies a martyr to honour
your infernal tortures have destroyed him—"
No sooner had the monk pronounced these words in a loud and furious tone, than the wretched Don Juan drew a sigh; a second would have followed, but heaven no longer could tolerate the agonies of innocence, and stopped his heart for ever.
The monk had fixed his eyes upon him, ghastly with terror, and as he stretched out his mangled limbs at life's last gasp—
"Accursed monsters,"
he exclaimed,
"may God requite his murder on your souls at the great day of judgment! His blood be on your heads, ye ministers of darkness! For me, if heavenly vengeance is not yet appeased by my contrition, in the midst of flames my aggrieved soul will find some consolation in the thought, that you partake its torments."
Having uttered this in a voice scarce human, he plunged a knife to his heart, and whilst his blood spouted on the pavement dropped dead upon the body of Don Juan, and expired without a groan.
No XXVIII.
Quid dignum tanto feret hic promissor hiatu?
I THINK it much to be lamented that our English news-papers have such an extensive circulation through Europe, unless proper means could be taken to restrain their excessive licentiousness. As few foreigners will believe any government so void of resource in this particular, they can no otherwise account for our not correcting these abuses of the press, but because we want the will and not the power. Amongst the causes that have lately operated to increase their circulation and success, I hope for the honour of human nature, their licentiousness is not one; and yet it appears as if their encouragement had kept pace with their malignance. If I had not experienced the bad effects they have upon the minds of people in other countries, I should not have thought such publications capable of such mischief. Though the conductors of them seem careless about consequences, I will not believe it was in their minds to do a deliberate injury to their country; but as they are not disposed to put a bridle on themselves, it were to be wished some prudent hand would do the office for them; though I see the difficulty of finding such a curb as shall not gall the mouth of Freedom.
I am not at present disposed to be any longer serious on this subject, and therefore waving all the weighter matters of my charge, I shall take notice only of one ridiculous circumstance in which they abound, vulgarly called
Puffing.
I have been turning over some papers to find out the chief professors of this art, which I believe is now carried to its highest state of improvement: Truth compels me to say, that with regret I have discovered several amongst them, who ought to have understood themselves better, but whilst there is hope they will amend, I am contented they should escape; at least I shall pass them over in silence, regarding them for the present as persons surprized into bad company, and chargeable with indiscretion rather than depravity.
Our advertising Quacks or Empirics are an antient and numerous class of
Puffers.
A collision of rival interests occasions these gentlemen to run foul of each other in their general undertakings, and betrays their natural modesty into a warmer stile of colouring their own merits, than the liberal study of physic and the public-spirited principle on which they pretend to act, would otherwise warrant: If the candid reader can find an excuse for them in their zeal and anxiety to recommend the blessings which they offer to mankind, I will not impede the plea. A foolish partiality some people still have for physicians regularly bred, and a squeamish unwillingness to repair to back-doors and blind alleys for relief, oblige them to use strong words to combat strong prejudices. But though they are at some pains to convince us that our bills of natural deaths might be all comprised under the single article of old age, there is yet here and there an obstinate man who will die
felo de se
before the age of threescore years and ten.
Whilst the sages are
puffing
off our distempers in one page, the auctioneers are
puffing
off our property in another. If this island of ours is to be credited for their description of it, it must pass for a terrestrial paradise: It makes an English ear tingle to hear of the boundless variety of lawns, groves, and parks; lakes, rivers, and rivulets; decorated farms and fruitful gardens; superb and matchless collections of pictures, jewels, plate, furniture, and equipapes; town-houses and country-houses; hot-houses and ice-houses; observatories and conservatories; offices attached and detached; with all the numerous
etceteras
that glitter down the columns of our public prints. Numerous as these are, it is less a matter of surprize with me where purchasers are found, than why any one, whose necessities are not his reason, will be a vender of such enchanting possessions. Though a man's caprice may be tired of a beautiful object long enjoyed, yet when he sees an old acquaintance dressed out in new colours, and glowing in the flowery description of these luxuriant writers, I should expect that his affection would revive, and that he would recall the cruel sentence of alienation. Pliny never so described his villa, as these
Puffers
will set forth the cast-off mansion of a weary owner. Put a vicious, lame, and stumbling horse into their hands, and he comes out safe and sound the next morning, and is fit to carry the first lady in the land: Weed your collections of their copies and counterfeits, by the help of a persuasive tongue, quick eye, and energetic hammer, they are knocked down for originals and antiques, and the happy buyer bears them off delighted with his bargain. What is the harp of an Orpheus compared to the hammer of an Auctioneer!
I must in the next place request the reader's attention to the Polishing
Puffers
; a title by which I would be understood to speak of those venerable teachers and instructors, who are endowed with the happy faculty of instilling arts and sciences into their disciples, like fixed air into a vapid menstruum: These are the beatified spirits whom Virgil places in his poetical Elysium: Foolish men amongst the Greeks, such as Socrates, Plato, and others, trained their pupils step by step in knowledge and made a bugbear of instruction; Pythagoras in particular kept his scholars five years in probationary silence, as if wisdom was not to be learned without labour; our modern polishers
puff
it into us in a morning; the polish is laid on at a stroke, just as boys turn a brass buckle into a silver one with a little quicksilver and brick-dust; the polisht buckle indeed soon repents of its transmutation, but it is to be hoped the allusion does not hold through, and that the polisht mind or body does not relapse as soon to its primitive rusticity. Strange! that any body will be a clown, when the Graces invite us to their private hops with hand-bills and advertisements: Why do not the whole court of Aldermen dance at my Lord Mayor's ball instead of standing with their hands in their pockets, when grown gentlemen (let them grow to what size they may) are taught to
walk a minuet
gracefully in three lectures? Amazing art! only to be equalled by the obstinacy that resists it. How are the times degenerated! Orpheus fiddles and the brutes won't dance. Go to the courts of law, listen to the bellowing of the bar; mount the gallery of the senate, observe how
this here
and
that there
orator breaks poor Priscian's head for the good of his country; enter our theatres—does that gentleman speak to a ghost, as a ghost ought to be spoken to? Walk into a church, if you have any feeling for the sacred sublimity of our service, you will never walk into another where it is so mangled: Every one of these parricides might be taught not to murder his mother-tongue without mercy, if he would but believe an advertisement and betake himself to the Polisher. Education at our public schools and universities is travelling in a waggon for expedition, when there is a bridle road will take you by a short cut to Parnassus, and the Polisher has got the key of it; he has elocution for all customers, lawyers, players, parsons, or senators; readymade talents for all professions, the bar, the stage, the pulpit, or the parliament.
There is another class of
Puffers,
who speak strongly to the passions, and use many curious devices to allure the senses, fitting out their Lottery-offices, like fowlers who catch birds by night with looking-glasses and candles, to entice us to their snare. Some of them hang out the goddess of good-fortune in person with moneybags in her hands, a tempting emblem; others recommmend themselves under the auspices of some lucky name, confounding our heads with cabalistical numbers, unintelligible calculations, and mysterious predictions, whose absurdity is their recommendation, and whose obscurity makes the temptation irresistible:
Omnia enim stolidi magis admirantur amantque,
Inversis quae sub verbis latitantia cernunt.
Essences, cosmetics, and a hundred articles of pretended invention for the frivolous adorning of our persons engross a considerable share of our public papers; the
Puffs
from this quarter are replete with all the gums and odours of Arabia; the chemists of Laputa were not more subtle extractors of sunbeams than these artists, who can fetch powder of pearls out of rotten bones and mercury, odour of roses from a turnip, and the breath of zephyrs out of a cabbagestalk; they can furnish your dressing-room with the toilette of Juno, bring you bloom from the cheeks of Hebe, and a nosegay from the bosom of Flora. These
Puffers
never fail to tell you after a court birth-day that their washes, powders, and odours, were the favorites of the drawing-room, and that the reigning beauties of the assembly bought their charms at their counters.
After these follow a rabble of raree-shewmen with mermaids, man-tygers, ourang-outangs, and every monster and abortion in creation; columns of giants and light-infantry companies of dwarfs; conjurers, rope-dancers, and posturemasters; tooth-drawers, oculists, and chiropodists; every one
puffs
himself off to the public in a stile as proud as Antient Pistol's; every fellow, who can twirl upon his toe, or ride a gallop on his head, pastes himself up in effigy on our public offices and churches, and takes all the courts in Europe to witness to the fame of his performances. If a rascal can shew a louse thro' a microscope, he expects all the heads in England to itch till they behold it; if a son of the gallows can slide down a rope from the top of a steeple, he
puffs
off his flight in Pindarics, that would make a moderate man's head giddy to read; nay, we have seen a gambling-house and a brothel thrown open to the town, and public lectures in obscenity audaciously advertised in a Christian city, which would not have been tolerated in Sodom or Gomorrah.
I cannot dismiss this subject without hinting to the proprietors of our Royal Theatres, that this expedient of
puffing
is pardonable only in a troop of strollers, or the master of a puppet-shew. Whilst the Muses keep possession of our theatre, and genius treads the stage, every friend to the national drama will condemn the practice, and hold them inexcusable, who are responsible for it, if they do not discontinue it. It is hardly possible that any cause can be profited by
puffing
; if any can, it must be a contemptible one; the interests of literature are amongst the last that can expect advantage from it, or that should condescend to so mean a resource: Instead of attracting curiosity, it creates disgust; instead of answering the temporary object of profit, it sinks the permanent fund of reputation. As to the impolicy of the measure many reasons may be given, but these I shall forbear to mention, lest whilst I am stating dangers I should appear to suggest them. In conclusion, I have no doubt but the good sense of the proprietors will determine on a reform; for I am persuaded they cannot be profited by houses of their own filling, nor any author flattered by applauses of his own bestowing.
No XXIX.
SOCIETY in despotic governments is narrowed according to the degree of rigour, which the ruling tyrant exercises over his subjects. In some countries it is in a manner annihilated. As despotism relaxes towards limited monarchy, society is dilated in the same proportion. If we consider freedom of condition in no other light than as it affects society, a monarchy limited by law, like this of ours, is perhaps the freest constitution upon earth; because was it to diverge from the center on which it now rests, either towards despotism on one hand, or democracy on the other, the restraints upon social freedom would operate in the same degree, tho' not in the same mode; for whether that restraint is produced by the awe of a court, or the promiscuous licentiousness of a rabble, the barrier is in either case broken down; and whether it lets the cobler or the king's messenger into our company, the tyranny is insupportable and society is enslaved.
When an Englishman is admitted into what are called the best circles in Paris, he generally finds something captivating in them on a first acquaintance; for without speaking of their internal recommendations, it is apt to flatter a man's vanity to find himself in an exclusive party, and to surmount those difficulties, which others cannot. As soon as he has had time to examine the component parts of this circle, into which he has so happily stept, he readily discovers that it is a circle, for he goes round and round without one excursion; the whole party follows the same stated revolution, their minds and bodies keep the same orbit, their opinions rise and set with the regularity of planets, and for what is passing without their sphere they know nothing of it. In this junto it rarely happens but some predominant spirit takes the lead, and if he is ambitious of making a master-stroke indeed, he may go the length to declare,
that he has the honour to profess himself an Atheist.
The creed of this leading spirit is the creed of the junto; there is no fear of controversy; investigation does not reach them, and that liberality of mind, which a collision of ideas only can produce, does not belong to them; you must fall in with their sentiments, or keep out of their society: and hence arises that over-ruling self-opinion so peculiar to the French, that assumed superiority so conspicuous in their manners, which destroys the very essence of that politeness, which they boast to excel in.
Politeness is nothing more than an elegant and concealed species of flattery, tending to put the person to whom it is addressed in good-humour and respect with himself: But if there is a parade and display affected in the exertion of it, if a man seems to say—
Look how condescending and gracious I am!
—whilst he has only the common offices of civility to perform, such politeness seems founded in mistake, and calculated to recommend the wrong person; and this mistake I have observed frequently to occur in French manners.
The national character of the Spaniards is very different from that of the French, and the habits of life in Madrid as opposite as may be from those which obtain at Paris. The Spaniards have been a great and free people, and though that grandeur and that freedom are no more, their traces are yet to be seen amongst the Castilians in particular. The common people have not yet contracted that obsequiousness and submission, which the rigour of their government, if no revolution occurs to redress it, must in time reduce them to. The condition, which this gallant nation is now found in, between the despotism of the throne and the terrors of the Inquisition, cannot be aggravated by description; body and mind are held in such compleat slavery by these two gloomy powers, that men are not willing to expose their persons for the sake of their opinions, and society is of course exceedingly circumscribed; to trifle away time seems all they aspire to; conversation turns upon few topics, and they are such as will not carry a dispute; neither glowing with the zeal of party, nor the cordial interchange of mutual confidence; day after day rolls in the same languid round through life; their seminaries of education, especially since the expulsion of the Jesuits, are grievously in decline; learning is extinct; their faculties are whelmed in superstition, and ignorance covers them with a cloud of darkness, through which the brightest parts cannot find their way.
If this country saw its own interests in their true light, it would conciliate the affections of the Spanish nation, who are naturally disposed towards England; the hostile policy of maintaining a haughty fortress on the extremity of their coast, which is no longer valuable than whilst they continue to attack it, has driven them into a compact with France, odious to all true Spaniards, and which this country has the obvious means of dissolving. It is by an alliance with England that Spain will recover her pristine greatness; France is plunging her into provincial dependency; there is still virtue in the Spanish nation; honesty, simplicity, and sobriety are still characteristics of the Castilian; he is brave, patient, unrepining; no soldier lives harder, sleeps less, or marches longer; treat him like a gentleman, and you may work him like a mule; his word is a passport in affairs of honour, and a bond in matters of property. That dignity of nature, which in the highest orders of the state is miserably debased, still keeps its vigour in the bulk of the people, and will assuredly break out into some sudden and general convulsion for their deliverance. If there are virtue and good sense in the administration of this country, we shall seize the opportunity yet open to us.
It now remains that I should speak of England, and when I turn my thoughts to my native island, and consider it with the impartiality of a citizen of the world, I discern in it all advantages in perfection, which man in a social state can enjoy. A constitution of government sufficiently monarchical to preserve order and decorum in society, and popular enough to secure freedom; a climate so happily tempered, that the human genius is neither exhausted by heat, nor cramped and made torpid by cold; a land abounding in all manner of productions, that can encourage industry, invite exercise and promote health; a lot of earth so singularly located, as marks it out by Providence to be the emporium of plenty and the asylum of peace; a religion, whose establishment leaves all men free, neither endangering their persons, nor enslaving their minds; a system of enlightened education so general, and a vein of genius so characteristical, that under the banners of a free press must secure to the nation a standing body of learned men, to spread its language to the ends of the world and its fame to all posterity.
What is it then, which interrupts the enjoyments of social life, and disturbs the harmony of its inhabitants? Why do foreigners complain that time hangs heavy on their hands in England, that private houses are shut against them, and that, were it not for the resource of public places, they would find themselves in a solitude, or (more properly speaking) solitary in a crowd? How comes it to pass that country gentlemen, who occasionally visit town, see themselves neglected and forgotten by those very people, who have been welcomed to their houses and regaled with their hospitality; and men of talents and character, formed to grace and delight our convivial hours, are left to pace the Park and streets of London by themselves, as if they were the exiles from society?
The fact is, trade occupies one end of the town, and politics engross the other: As for foreigners of distinction, who ought in good policy to be considered as the guests of the state, after they have gone through the dull ceremonial of a drawing-room, the court takes no further concern about them. The crown has no officer charged with their reception, provides no table within or without the palace for their entertainment; parliamentary or official avocations are a standing plea for every state minister in his turn to neglect them. The winter climate and coast of England is so deterring to natives of more temperate latitudes, that they commonly pay their visits to the capital in the summer, when it is deserted; so that after billeting themselves in some empty hotel amidst the fumes of paint and noise of repairs, they wear out a few tedious days, and then take flight, as if they had escaped from a prison. When parliament is sitting and the town is full, a man, who does not interest himself in the politics and party of the day, will find the capital an unsocial place; that degree of freedom, which in other respects, is the life of society, now becomes its mortal foe; the zeal, and even fury, with which people abet their party, and the latitude they give themselves in opinion and discourse, extinguish every voice, that would speak peace and pleasure to the board, and turn good fellowship into loud contention and a strife of tongues.
The right assumed by our news-papers of publishing what they are pleased to call Parliamentary Debates I must regard as one of the greatest evils of the time, replete with foreign and domestic mischief: Our orators speak pamphlets, and the senate is turned into a theatre. The late hours of parliament, which to a degree are become fashionable, are in effect destructive to society. I cannot dispense with observing collaterally on this occasion that professional men in England consort more exclusively amongst themselves, and communicate less generally than in other countries, which gives their conversation, however informing, an air of pedantry, contracted by long habits, great ardour for their profession and deep learning in it.
As for slander, which amongst other evils owes much of its propagation to the same vehicle of the daily press, it is the poison of society; depresses virtuous ambition, damps the early shoots of genius, puts the innocent to pain, and drives the guilty to desperation; it infuses suspicion into the best natures, and loosens the cement of the strongest friendships; very many affect to despise it, few are so highminded as not to feel it; though common slanderers seldom have it in their power to hurt established reputations, yet they can always contrive to spoil company, and put honest men to the trouble of turning them out of it.
It is a common saying that authors are more spiteful to each other, and more irritable under an attack, than other men; I do not believe the observation is well founded; every sensible man knows, that his fame, especially of the literary kind, before it can pass current in the world, pays a duty on entrance, like some sort of merchandize,
ad valorem
; he knows that there are always some who live upon the plunder of condemned reputations, watching the tides of popular savour in hopes of making seizures to their own account—
Habent venenum pro victu, immo pro deliciis.
—The little injury such men do to letters chiefly consists in the stupidity of their own productions: They may to a certain degree check a man's living fame, but if he writes to posterity, he is out of their reach, because he appeals to a court, where they can never appear against him.
When we give our praise to any man's character or performances, let us give it absolutely, and without comparison, for it is justly remarked by foreigners, that we seldom commend positively: This remark bears both against our good-nature and our good sense; but let no man by this or any other declamation against slander be awed into that timid prudence, which affecting the name of candour, dares not to condemn, and of course is not intitled to applaud. Truth and justice have their claims upon us, and our testimony against vice, folly and hypocrisy is due to society; manly resentment against mischievous characters, cleanly ridicule of vanity and impertinence, and fair criticism of what is under public review are the prerogatives of a free spirit; they peculiarly belong to Englishmen, and he betrays a right constitutionally inherent in him, who from mean and personal motives forbears to exercise it.
When I have said this, I think it right to add, that I cannot state a case, in which a man can be justified in treating another's name with freedom, and concealing his own.
No XXX.
Et quando uberior vitiorum copia? quando
Major avaritiae patuit Sinus? ALEA quando
Hos animos? neque enim loculis comitantibus itur
Ad casum tabulae, positâ sed luditur arcâ.
(JUVENAL. Sat. 1.)
THE passage, which I have selected for the motto of this paper, will shew that I intend to devote it to the consideration of the vice of
Gaming
; and I forbore to state it in my preceding essay amongst the causes, that affect society in this country, because I regarded it as an evil too enormous to be brought within the brief enumeration therein contained, resolving to treat it with that particular respect and attention, which its high station and dignity in mischief have a claim to.
Though I have no hesitation at beginning the attack, I beg leave to premise that I am totally without hope of carrying it. I may say to my antagonists in the words, though not altogether in the sense, that the angel Gabriel does to his—
Satan, I know thy strength, and thou know'st mine.
What avails my hurling a feeble essay at the heads of this hydra, when the immortal drama of
The Gamester
lies trodden under his feet?
Conscious that I do not possess the strength, I shall not assume the importance of a champion, and as I am not of dignity enough to be angry, I shall keep my temper and my distance too, skirmishing like those insignificant gentry, who play the part of teazers in the Spanish bull-fights, sticking arrows in his crest to provoke him to bellow, whilst bolder combatants engage him at the point of his horns.
It is well for Gamesters, that they are so numerous as to make a society of themselves, for it would be a strange abuse of terms to rank them amongst society at large, whose profession it is to prey upon all who compose it. Strictly speaking it will bear a doubt, if a Gamester has any other title to be called a man, except under the distinction of Hobbes, and upon claim to the charter of
Homo Homini Lupus
—As a
Human Wolf
I grant he has a right to his
wolfiso prerogatives:
He, who so far surprizes my reason or debauches my principle, as to make me a party in my own destruction, is a worse enemy than he who robs me of my property by force and violence, because he sinks me in my own opinion; and if there was virtue in mankind, sufficient for their own defence, honest men would expel gamesters as outlaws from society, and good citizens drive them from the state, as the destroyers of human happiness, wretches, who make the parent childless and the wife a widow.
But what avail a parcel of statutes against gaming, when they, who make them, conspire together for the infraction of them? Why declare gaming-debts void in law, when that silly principle, so falsely called honour (at once the idol and the ideot of the world) takes all those debts upon itself and calls them debts of honour? It is not amongst things practicable to put gaming down by statute. If the face of society was set steadily against the vice; if parents were agreed to spurn at the alliance of a gamester, however ennobled; if our seminaries of education would enforce their discipline against early habits of play; if the crown, as the fountain of honour, and the virtuous part of the fair sex, as the dispensers of happiness, would reprobate all men addicted to this desperate passion, something might perhaps be done. If tradesmen would consult their own interest, and give no credit to gamesters; if the infamous gang of moneylenders could be absolutely extinguished, and the people at large, instead of rising against a loyal fellow-subject, because he worships God according to the religion of his ancestors at a Catholic altar, would exercise their resentment against those illegal places of resort, where desperadoes meet for nightly pillage, this contagious evil might possibly be checked; but when it is only to be hoped that a combination of remedies might stem the disease, how can we expect a recovery, when no one of them all is administered?
Though domestic misery must follow an alliance with a gamester, matches of this sort are made every day; a parent, who consents so to sacrifice his child, must either place his hope in her reforming her husband, or else he must have made up his mind to set consequences at defiance; a very foolish hope, or a very fatal principle. There can be no domestic comfort in the arms of a gamester, no conjugal asylum in his heart: Weak and ignorant young women may be duped into such connections; vain and self-conceited ones may adventure with their eyes open, and trust to their attractions for security against misfortune; but let them be assured there is not a page in the world's history, that will furnish them with an example to palliate their presumption; eager to snatch the present pleasures of a voluptuous prospect, they care little for the ruin, which futurity keeps out of sight.
With the clearest conviction in my mind of the general advantages of public education, I must acknowledge a suspicion that due attention is not paid in our great seminaries of education to restrain this fatal passion in its first approaches. I fear there are some evidences of a guilty negligence now in operation, spreading poison as they flow, and carrying with them in their course all the charms of eloquence, the flow of wit, and fascinating spell of science; sanctified by fashion, Gaming-houses, which out-peer the royal palace, rise around it in defiance; trophies and monuments of the triumphs of dissipation. The wife, whose husband enters those doors, and the parent, who owns a son within them, must either eradicate affection and nature from their hearts, or take leave of happiness for ever. Woe be to the nation, whose police cannot, or dare not, correct such an evil! 'Tis foolish to lament the amputation of a limb, when the mortality is in our vitals.
I shall not take upon myself to lay down rules for kings, or affect to pronounce what a sovereign can, or cannot, do to discountenance gaming in this kingdom; but I will venture to say that something more is requisite than mere example.
It was in the decline of Rome, when the provinces were falling off from her empire, whilst a virtuous
but unfortunate prince possessed the throne, that the greatest part of Africa was in revolt: The General, who commanded the Roman legions, was a soldier of approved courage in the field, but of mean talents and dissolute manners. This man in the most imminent crisis for the interests of Rome, suffered and encouraged such a spirit of gaming to obtain amongst his officers in their military quarters, that the finest army in the world entirely lost their discipline, and remained inactive, whilst a few levies of raw insurgents wrested from the Roman arms the richest provinces of the empire. History records nothing further of this man's fate or fortune, but leaves us to conclude that the reproaches of his own conscience and the execrations of posterity were all the punishment he met with. The empire was rent by faction, and his party rescued him from the disgrace he merited.
The last resource in all desperate cases, which the law cannot, or will not, reach, lies with the people at large: It is not without reason I state it as the last, because their method of curing disorders is like the violent medicines of empiries, never to be applied to but in absolute extremity. If the people were, like Shakespear's Julius Caesar,
never to do wrong but with just cause,
I should not so much dread the operation of their remedies; I shall therefore venture no further, than to express an humble wish, that when it shall be their high and mighty pleasure to proceed again to the pulling down and burning of houses, those houses may not be the repositories of science, but the receptacles of gamesters.
When a man of fortune turns gamester, the act is so devoid of reason, that we are at a loss to find a motive for it; but when one of desperate circumstances takes to the trade, it only proves that he determines against an honest course of life for a maintenance, and having his choice to make between robbery and gaming, prefers that mode of depredation, which exposes him to least danger, and has a coward's plea for his vocation. Such an one may say with Antient Pistol—
I'll live by Nym, and Nym shall live by me,
And friendship shall combine and brotherhood;
Is not this just?—
In the justice of his league I do not join with Antient Pistol, but I am ready to allow there is some degree of common sense in this class of the brotherhood, of which common sense I cannot trace a shadow amongst the others. A preference therefore in point of understanding is clearly due to the vagabonds and desperadoes; as to the man, who, for the silly chance of winning what he does not want, risques every thing he ought to value, his defence is in his folly, and if we rob him of that, we probably take from him the only harmless quality he is possessed of. If however such an instance shall occur, and the daemon of gaming shall enter the same breast, where honour, courage, wit, wisdom reside, such a mind is like a motley suit of cards, where
kings, queens
and
knaves
are packed together, and make up the game with temporary good-fellowship, but it is a hundred to one but
the knave will beat them all out of doors
in the end.
As there are separate gangs of gamesters, so there are different modes of gaming; some set their property upon games of simple chance, some depend upon skill, others upon fraud.
The gamesters of the first description run upon luck: a silly crew of Fortune's fools; this kind of play is only fit for them, whose circumstances cannot be made worse by losing, otherwise there is no proportion between the good and the evil of the chance; for the good of doubling a man's property bears no comparison with the evil of losing the whole; in the one case he only gains superfluities, in the other he loses necessaries; and he, who stakes what life wants against that which life wants not, makes a foolish bet, to say no worse of it. Games of chance are traps to catch school-boy novices and gaping country-squires, who begin with a guinea and end with a mortgage; whilst the old stagers in the game, keeping their passions in check, watch the ebb and flow of fortune, till the booby they are pillaging sees his acres melt at every cast.
In games of skill, depending upon practice, rule and calculation, the accomplished professor has advantages, which may bid defiance to fortune; and the extreme of art approaches so closely to the beginning of fraud, that they are apt to run one into the other: in these engagements, self-conceit in one party and dissimulation in the other are sure to produce ruin, and the sufferer has something more than chance to arraign, when he reviews the wreck of his fortune and the distresses of his family.
The drama of a gamester commonly has selfmurder for its catastrophe, and authors, who write to the passions, are apt to dwell upon this scene with partial attention, as the striking moral of the piece; I confess it is a moral, that does not strike me; for as this action, whenever it happens, devolves to the share of the losing, not of the winning gamester, I cannot discover any particular edification, nor feel any extraordinary pathos, in a man's falling by his own hand, when he is no longer in a capacity of doing or suffering further injury in society. I look upon every man as a suicide from the moment he takes the dice-box desperately in hand, and all that follows in his career from that fatal time is only sharpening the dagger before he strikes it to his heart.
My proper concern in this short essay is to shew, that Gaming is the chief obstructing cause, that affects the state of society in this nation, and I am sensible I need not have employed so many words to convince my reader that gamesters are very dull and very dangerous companions. When blockheads rattle the dice-box, when fellows of vulgar and base minds sit up whole nights contemplating the turn of a card, their stupid occupation is in character; but whenever a cultivated understanding stoops to the tyranny of so vile a passion, the friend of mankind sees the injury to society with that sort of aggravation, as would attend the taking of his purse on the highway, if upon seizure of the felon, he was unexpectedly to discover the person of a judge.
END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.