NUMB. 71. TUESDAY, Nov. 20, 1750.

MANY words and sentences are so frequently heard in the mouths of men, that a superficial observer is inclined to believe, that they must contain some primary principle, some great rule of action or maxim of prudence, which it is proper al­ways to have present to the attention, and by which the use of every hour is to be adjusted. Yet, if we consider the conduct of those sen­tentious philosophers, it will often be found, that they repeat these aphorisms, merely be­cause they have somewhere heard them, be­cause they have nothing else to say, or be­cause they conceive that some veneration is gained by such appearances of wisdom, but that no ideas are annexed to the words, and [Page 2] that, according to the old blunder of the fol­lowers of Aristotle, their souls are mere pipes or organs, which transmit sounds, but do not understand them.

OF this kind is that well known and well attested position, that life is short, which may be heard among mankind by an attentive au­ditor, many times a day, but which never yet within my reach of observation left any im­pression upon the mind; and perhaps if my readers will turn their thoughts back upon their old friends, they will find it difficult to call a single man to remembrance, who ap­peared to know that life was short till he was about to lose it.

IT is observable that Horace, in his ac­count of the characters of men, as they are diversified by the various influence of time, remarks, that the old man is dilator, spe longus, given to procrastination, and inclined to ex­tend his hopes to a great distance. So far are we, generally, from thinking what we often say of the shortness of life, that at the time when it is necessarily shortest, we form pro­jects which we delay to execute, indulge such [Page 3] expectations as nothing but a long train of events can gratify, and suffer those passions to gain upon us, which are only excusable in the prime of life.

THESE reflections were lately excited in my mind, by an evening's conversation with my friend Prospero, who at the age of fifty­five, has bought an estate, and is now con­triving to dispose and cultivate it with uncom­mon elegance. His great pleasure is to walk among stately trees, and lye musing in the heat of noon under their shade; he is there­fore maturely considering how he shall dispose his walks and his groves, and has at last deter­mined to send for the best plans from Italy, and forbear planting till the next season.

THUS is life trifled away in preparations to do what never can be done, if it be left unattempted till all the requisites which ima­gination can suggest are gathered together. Where our design terminates only in our own satisfaction, the mistake is of no great im­portance; for the pleasure of expecting en­joyment, is often greater than that of obtain­ing it, and the completion of almost every [Page 4] wish is found a disappointment; but when many others are interested in an undertaking, when any design is formed, in which the improvement or security of mankind is in­volved, nothing is more unworthy either of wisdom or benevolence, than to delay it from time to time, or to forget how much every day that passes over us, take away from our power, and how soon an idle purpose to do an action, sinks into a mournful wish that it had once been done.

WE are frequently importuned, by the bac­chanalian writers, to lay hold on the present hour, to catch the pleasures which are now within our reach, and remember that futurity is not at our command. ‘ [...]’

BUT surely these exhortations may, with equal propriety, be applied to better purposes; it may be at least inculcated, that pleasures are more safely postponed than virtues, and that greater loss is suffered by missing an opportu­nity [Page 5] of doing good, than an hour of giddy frolick and noisy merriment.

WHEN Baxter had lost a thousand pounds, which he had laid up for the erection of a school, he used frequently to mention the misfortune, as an incitement to be charitable while God gives the power of bestowing, and considered himself as culpable in some degree, for having left a good action in the hands of chance, and suffered his benevolence to be defeated for want of quickness and diligence.

IT is lamented by Hearne, the learned an­tiquary of Oxford, that this general forgetful­ness of the fragility of life, has remarkably infected the students of monuments and re­cords; as their employment consists first in collecting and afterwards in arranging, or abslracting what libraries afford them, they ought to amass no more than they can digest; but when they have undertaken a work, they go on searching and transcribing, call for new supplies, when they are already over-bur­dened, and at last leave their work un­finished. It is, says he, the business of a good antiquary, as of a good man, to have mortality always before him.

[Page 6] THUS, not only in the slumber of sloth, but in the dissipation of ill directed industry, is the shortness of life generally forgotten. As some men lose their hours in laziness, because they suppose, that there is time enough for the reparation of their negligence; others busy themselves in providing that no length of life may want employment; and it often hap­pens, that sluggishness and activity are equal­ly surprised by the last summons, and perish not more differently from each other, than the fowl that receives the shot in her flight, from her that is killed upon the bush.

AMONG the many improvements, made by the last centuries in human knowledge, may be numbered the exact calculations of the value of life; but whatever may be their use in traffick, they seem very little to have advanced morality. They have hitherto been rather applied to the acquisition of money, than of wisdom; the computer refers none of his calculations to his own tenure, but per­sists, in contempt of probability, to foretel long life to himself, and believes that he is marked out to reach the utmost verge of hu­man [Page 7] existence, and see thousands and ten thousands fall into the grave.

SO deeply is this sallacy rooted in the heart, and so strongly guarded by hope and fear against the approach of reason, that neither science nor experience can shake it, and we act as if life were without end, though we see and confess its uncertainty and shortness.

DIVINES have, with great strength and ardour, shewn the absurdity of delaying refor­mation and repentance; a degree of folly in­deed, which sets eternity to hazard. It is the same weakness, in proportion to the impor­tance of the neglect, to transfer any care, which now claims our attention, to a future time: we sometimes subject ourselves to need­less dangers from accidents which early dili­gence would have obviated, and sometimes perplex our minds by vain precautions, and make provision for the execution of designs, for which the opportunity once missed never will return.

AS he that lives longest lives but a little while, every man may be certain that he has no [Page 8] time to waste. The duties of life are commen­surate to its duration, and every day brings its task, which if neglected, is doubled on the morrow. But he that has already trifled away those months and years, in which he should have laboured, must remember, that of what he has now only a part, the whole is little; and that since the few moments remaining are to be considered as the last trust of hea­ven, not one is to be lost.

NUMB. 72. SATURDAY, Nov. 24, 1750.

NUMB. 73. TUESDAY, Nov. 27, 1750.

NUMB. 74. SATURDAY, December 1, 1750.

MEN are seldom able to give pleasure, where they are not pleased themselves; it is necessary, therefore, to cultivate an habi­tual alacrity and chearfulness of mind, for man­kind are chiefly influenced by their affections, and in whatever state we may be placed by providence, whether we are appointed to con­fer or receive benefits, to implore or to af­ford protection, we can prosecute our pur­poses with success, only by securing the love of those with whom we transact. For though it [Page 27] is generally imagined, that he who grants fa­vours, may spare any farther attention to his behaviour, and that usefulness will procure friends; yet it has been found that there is an art of granting requests, an art very difficult of attainment; and that officiousness and libera­lity may be so adulterated, as to lose the greater part of their effect; compliance may provoke, relief may harrass, and liberality distress.

No disease of the mind can more fatally dis­able it from that intercourse of benevolence, which is one of the chief duties of social be­ings, than ill humour or peevishness; for tho' it breaks not out in paroxysms of outrage, nor bursts into clamour, and turbulence, and bloodshed, it yet supplies the deficiency of vi­olence by its frequency, and wears out hap­piness by slow corrosion, and small injuries in­cessantly repeated. It may be considered as the canker of life, that destroys its vigour, and checks its improvement, that creeps on with hourly depredations, and taints and vitiates what it cannot consume.

[Page 28] PEEVISHNESS, when it has been so far indulged, as to out-run the motions of the will, and discover itself without premeditation, is a species of depravity in the highest degree disgusting and offensive, because no caution or regularity, no rectitude of intention, nor soft­ness of address, can ensure a moment's ex­emption from affront and indignity. While we are courting the favour of a peevish man, while we are making the warmest offers of service, or exerting ourselves in the most di­ligent civility, an unlucky syllable displeases, an unheeded circumstance ruffles and exaspe­rates; and in the moment when we congra­tulate ourselves upon having gained a friend, we have the mortification of finding all our endeavours frustrated in a moment, and all our assiduity forgotten in the casual tumult of some trifling irritation.

THIS troublesome impatience is sometimes nothing more than the symptom of some deeper malady. He that is angry without daring to confess his resentment, or sorrowful without the liberty of telling his grief, is too fre­quently inclined to give vent to the fermen­tations of his mind at the first passages that [Page 29] are opened, and to let his passions boil over upon those whom accident throws in his way. A painful and tedious course of sick­ness frequently produces such a quick sensibi­lity, such an alarming apprehension of any increase of uneasiness, as keeps the soul per­petually on the watch, to prevent or repel any thing from which inconvenience is felt or feared, such a restless and incessant solicitude, as no care, no tenderness can appease, and can only be pacified by the cure of the di­stemper, and the removal of that pain by which it is excited.

NEARLY approaching to this weakness, is the captiousness of old age: when the strength is crushed, the senses dulled, and the common pleasures of life become insipid by repetition, we are willing to impute the uneasiness of our condition to causes not wholly out of our pow­er, and please ourselves with fancying that we suffer by neglect, or unkindness, or want of skill, or any evil which admits a remedy, ra­ther than by the decays of nature which can­not be prevented, delayed, or repaired. We therefore revenge our pains upon those on whom we resolve to charge them; and too of­ten [Page 30] drive mankind away at the time we have the greatest need of kindness and assistance.

BUT though peevishness may sometimes claim our compassion, as the consequence or concomitant of misery, it is very often sound, where nothing can justify or excuse its admis­sion. It is often one of the attendants on prosperity, employed by insolence in exacting homage, and by tyranny in harrassing sub­jection. It is frequently the offspring of idle­ness and pride; of idleness anxious for trifles; and pride unwilling to endure the least ob­struction of her wishes. Those who have long lived in solitude, indeed, naturally con­tract this unsocial quality; because, having long had only themselves to please, they do not readily depart from their own inclinations; their singularities therefore are only blameable, when they have imprudently or morosely with­drawn themselves from the world; but there are others, who have, without any necessity, nursed up this habit in their minds, by making implicit submissiveness, the condition of their favour, and suffering none to approach them, but those who watch their eyes, and observe [Page 31] their nods; who never speak but to applaud, or move but to obey.

HE that gives himself up to his own fan­cy, and converses with none but such as he hires to lull him in the down of absolute au­thority, to [...] him with obsequiousness, and regale him with flattery, soon grows too [...]ful for the labour of contest, too tender for the asperity of contradiction, and too de­licate for the coarseness of truth. A little opposition offends, a little restraint enrages, and a little difficulty perplexes him: for a man, who has been accustomed to see every thing give way to his humour and his choice, soon forgets his own littleness, and expects to find the world rolling at his beck, and all mankind employed to accommodate and de­light him.

TETRICA had a very large fortune be­queathed to her by the sondness of an aunt, which made her very early independent of her parents, and placed her in a state of superi­ority to all about her. She had naturally no superfluity of understanding, and therefore was soon intoxicated by the flatteries of her maid, [Page 32] who informed her that ladies, such as she, had nothing to do but take pleasure their own way; that she wanted nothing from others, and had therefore no reason to value their opinion; that money was every thing; and that they who thought themselves ill-treated, should look for better usage among their e­quals.

WARM with these generous sentiments, Tetrica came forth into the world, in which she endeavoured to distinguish herself by an overbearing haughtiness of mien and contemp­tuous vehemence of language; but having neither birth, nor beauty, nor wit in any uncommon degree, the frequent mortifications which she underwent from those who thought themselves at liberty to return her insults, re­duced her turbulence to more cool and secret malignity, and taught her to consine her arts of vexation, to those whom she might hope to harrass without controul. She conti­nued from her twentieth to her fiftyfifth year to torment all her inferiors with so much di­ligence, that she has contracted a settled prin­ciple of disapprobation, and finds in every [Page 33] place something to grate her mind, and di­sturb her quiet.

IF she takes the air, she is always of­fended with the heat or cold, the glare of the sun, or the gloom of the clouds; if she makes a visit, the room in which she is to be received, is too light, or too dark, or furnished with something which she cannot see without aversion. Her tea is never of the right sort; the figures on the China give her disgust. Where there are children she hates the gabble of brats; where there are none she cannot bear a place without some chearfulness and rattle. If many servants are kept in a house, she never fails to tell how lord Lavish was ruined by a numerous reti­nue; if few, she relates the story of a miser that made his company wait on themselves. She quarrelled with one family, because she had an unpleasant view from their windows; with another, because the squirrel leaped with­in two yards of her; and with a third, be­cause she could not bear the noise of the par­rot.

[Page 34] OF milliners and mantua-makers she is the proverbial torment. She compels them to alter their work, then to unmake it, and contrive it after another fashion, then changes her mind, and likes it better as it was at first, then will have a small improvement. Thus she proceeds till no profit can recom­pense the vexation; they at last leave the work at her house, and refuse to serve her at any price. Her maid, who is the only being that can endure her tyranny, professes to take her own course, and hear her mistress talk. Such is the consequence of peevishness; it can be born only when it is despised.

IT sometimes happens that too close an attention to minute exactness, or too rigo­rous habits of examining every thing by the standard of perfection, vitiates the temper, rather than improves the understanding, and teaches the mind to discern faults with un­happy penetration. It is incident likewise to men of vigorous imagination to please them­selves too much with suturities, and to fret because those expectations are disappointed, which ought never to have been formed. Knowledge and genius are often enemies to [Page 35] quiet, by suggesting ideas of excellence, which men and the performances of men cannot at­tain: But let no man rashly determine, that his unwillingness to be pleased, is a proof of understanding, unless his superiority appears from less doubtful evidence; for though pee­vishness may sometimes justly boast its de­scent from learning or from wit, it is much oftener of base extraction, the child of vanity, and nursling of ignorance.

NUMB. 75. TUESDAY, December 4, 1750.

NUMB. 76. SATURDAY, December 8, 1750.

IT is always very easy for every man, whatever may be his character with others, to find reasons for esteeming himself, and therefore censure, contempt, or the indubita­ble conviction of crimes, seldom deprive him of his own favour. Those, indeed, who can see only external facts and appearances, may look upon him with abhorrence, but when he calls himself to his own tribunal, he finds every fault, if not absolutely effaced by the goodness of the intention, and the cogen­cy of the motive, yet so much palliated by [Page 46] concomittant circumstances, that very little guilt or turpitude remains; and when he takes a sur­vey of the whole complication of his charac­ter, he discovers so many latent excellencies, so many virtues, that want but an opportunity to exert themselves in act, and so many kind wishes for general happiness, that he cannot but look on himself as suffering unjustly un­der the infamy of single failings, while the general temper of his mind is unknown or unregarded.

IT is natural to mean well, when only ge­neral ideas of virtue are proposed to the mind, and when no particular passion or in­terest turns us aside from rectitude; and so willing is every man to flatter himself, that the difference between approving laws, and obeying them, is frequently forgotten; he that acknowledges the obligations of morality, and pleases his vanity with enforcing them to others, concludes himself zealous in the cause of virtue, though he has no longer any regard to her precepts, than they con­form to his own desires; and counts himself among her warmest lovers, because he praises her beauty, though every rival steals away his heart.

[Page 47] THERE are, however, great numbers who have little recourse to the refinements of spe­culation, but who yet live at peace with them­selves, by means which require less under­standing, or less attention. When they find their hearts burthened with the consciousness of a crime, instead of seeking for some remedy with­in themselves, they look round upon the rest of mankind, to find others tainted with the same guilt, and oppressed with the same igno­miny: they please themselves with observing, that they have numbers on their side; that they do not bear any peculiar marks of de­pravity; and that though they are hunted out from the society of good men, they are not likely to be condemned to solitude.

IT may be observed, perhaps without ex­ception, that none are so industrious to detect wickedness, or so ready to impute it, as they whose crimes are apparent and confessed. They envy the happiness of an unblemished reputa­tion, and what they envy they are busy to destroy: they are unwilling to suppose them­selves meaner, and more corrupt than others, and therefore would willingly pull down from their elevations those with whom they cannot [Page 48] rise to an equality. No man yet was wicked without secret discontent, and according to the different degrees of remaining virtue, or unex­tinguished reason, he either endeavours to re­form himself, or corrupt others; either to regain the station which he has quitted, or prevail on others to imitate his defection.

IT has been always considered as an alle­viation of misery not to suffer alone, even when union and society can contribute no­thing to resistance or escape; some comfort of the same kind seems to incite wickedness to seek associates, though indeed another rea­son may be given, for as guilt is propagated the power of reproach is at least diminished, and among numbers equally detestable every individual may be sheltered from shame, though not from conscience.

ANOTHER lenitive by which the throbs of the breast are sometimes assuaged, is, the con­templation, not of the same, but of different crimes. He that cannot justify himself by his resemblance to others, is ready to try some other expedient, and to enquire what will rise to his advantage from opposition and dissimilitude. He easily finds some fault or other in every human [Page 49] being, and when he weighs them against his own, easily makes them preponderate while he keeps the balance in his own hand, and throws in or takes out at his pleasure circum­stances that make them heavier or lighter. He then triumphs in his comparative purity, and sets himself at ease, not because he can refute the charges that are advanced against him, but because he can censure his accusers with equal justice, and no longer fears the arrows of re­proach, when he has stored his magazine of malice with weapons equally sharp and equal­ly envenomed.

THIS practice, though never reasonable, or just, is yet specious and artful, when the censure is directed against deviations to the contrary extreme. The man who is branded with cowardice, may, with some appearance of propriety, turn all his force of argument against a stupid contempt of Life, and rash precipitation into unnecessary danger. Every recession from temerity is an approach towards cowardice, and though it be confessed that bravery, like other virtues, stands between faults on either hand, yet the place of the middle point may always be disputed; he may therefore often impose upon careless [Page 50] understandings, by turning the attention whol­ly from himself, and keeping it fixed invaria­bly on the opposite fault; by shewing how many evils are avoided by his behaviour, he may conceal for a time those which are incurred.

BUT vice has not always opportunities or address for such artful subtersuges; and we often find men extenuating their own guilt, only by vague and general charges upon o­thers, or endeavouring to gain rest to them­selves, by pointing some other prey to the pursuit of censure.

EVERY whisper of infamy is industri­ously circulated, every hint of suspicion ea­gerly improved, and every failure of con­duct joyfully published, by those whose inte­rest it is, that the eye and voice of the pub­lick should be employed on any rather than on themselves.

ALL these artifices, and a thousand others equally vain and equally despicable, are incit­ed by that conviction from which none can set himself free, by a view of the deformity of wickedness, and by an absurd desire to sepa­rate [Page 51] the cause from the effects, and to enjoy the profit of crimes without suffering the shame. Men are willing to try all methods of reconciling guilt and quiet, and when their understandings are stubborn and uncomplying, raise their passions against them, and hope to overpower their own knowledge.

IT is generally not so much the desire of men, oppressed with crimes, to deceive the world as themselves, for when no particular circumstances make them dependant on the kindness or favour of others, infamy will not much disturb them but as it revives their remorse, and is echoed to them from their own hearts. The sentence which they most dread, is that of reason and conscience, which they would engage on their side at any price but the labours of duty, and the sorrows of repentance. For this purpose e­very seducement and fallacy is sought, till life is too often at an end while the hopes rest upon some new experiment, and the last hour steals on unperceived, while the facul­ties are engaged in counteracting providence, resisting the voice of reason, and repressing the sense of the divine disapprobation.

NUMB. 77. TUESDAY, December 11, 1750.

AMONG those, whose hopes of ad­vancement, distinction, or riches, a­rise from an opinion of their intellectual attainments, it has been, from age to age, an established custom to complain of the neglect of learning, of the ingratitude of mankind to their instructors, and the discou­ragement which men of genius and study suffer from the avarice of the wealthy, the ignorance of the great, the prevalence of false taste, and the encroachment of bar­barity.

MEN are most powerfully affected by those evils which themselves feel, or which appear before their own eyes; and as there has never been a time of such general feli­city, [Page 53] but that many have miscarried in their hopes, and failed to obtain the rewards to which they had, in their own judgment, a just claim, some offended writer has always declaim'd, in the rage of dliappointment, against the age, or nation, into which his fate has thrown him; nor is there one who has not fallen upon times more unfavoura­ble to learning than any former century, or who does not wish, that he had been reserved in the insensibility of non-existence to some happier hour, when the sons of science shall regain their antient honours, when literary merit shall no longer be de­spis'd, and all the gifts and caresses of man­kind shall recompence the toils of study, and add lustre to the charms of wit.

MANY of these clamours are undoubte to be considered only as the bursts of pride never to be satisfied, as the prattle of affec­tation mimicking distresses which are not felt, or as the common places of vanity solicitous for splendour of sentences and acuteness of remark. Yet it cannot be denied that uni­versal discontent must proceed from univer­sal hardships, and though it is evident, that [Page 54] not more than one age or people can deserve the censure of being more averse from learn­ing than any other, yet at all times knowledge has encountered impediments, and wit been mortified with contempt, or harrassed with persecution.

IT is not necessary, however, to join im­mediately in the general outcry, or to con­demn mankind as pleased with ignorance, or always envious of superior abilities. The miseries of the learned have been related by themselves, and since they have not been hitherto found exempted by their knowledge from that partiality with which men gene­rally look upon their own actions and suffer­ings, we may conclude that they have not forgotten to deck their cause with their brightest ornaments, and strongest colours. The logician has doubtless collected all his subtilties when they are to be employed in his own defence; and the master of rheto­ric exerted against his adversary all the arts by which hatred is embittered. and indigna­tion inflamed.

TO believe no man in his own cause, is the standing and perpetual rule of distribu­tive [Page 55] justice; and, therefore, since, in the controversy between the learned and their enemies, we have only the pleas of one party, of the party more able to delude our understandings by false representations, and engage our passions by pleasing narratives, pathetic lamentations, and soft addresses, we must determine our opinion by facts which remain uncontested, and evidences which are, on each side allowed to be genuine.

BY this procedure, which must be ac­knowledged unexceptionably just, I know not whether the learned will find their cause promoted, or the compassion which they seem to expect much increased: for when their conduct is impartially surveyed, when they are allowed no longer to direct attention at their pleasure, by expatiating on their own deserts, when neither the dignity of know­ledge overawes the judgment, nor the graces of elegance seduce it, it will, perhaps, be found, that they have not been able to produce claims to kinder treatment, but have provoked the calamities which they suffered, and seldom wanted friends, but when they wanted virtue.

[Page 56] THAT few men, celebrated for theore­tic wisdom, live with conformity to their precepts, must be readily confessed; and we cannot wonder that the indignation of mankind rises with great vehemence against those, who neglect duties which they appear to know, with so strong conviction, the necessity of performing. Yet since no man has the power of acting equal to that of thinking, I know not whether the speculatist may not some­times incur censures too severe, and by those, who form their ideas of his life from their knowledge of his books, be considered as worse than others, only because he was ex­pected to be better.

HE, by whose writings the heart is recti­fied, the appetites counteracted, and the pas­sions repressed, may be considered as not unprofitable to the great republick of huma­nity, even though his behaviour should not always exemplify his rules. His instructions may diffuse their influence to regions, in which it will not be enquired, whether the author be albus an ater, good or bad; to times, when all his faults and all his follies shall be lost in forgetfulness, among things [Page 57] of no concern or importance to the world; and he may kindle in thousands and ten thou­sands that flame which burnt but dimly in himself, through the fumes of passion, or the damps of cowardice. The vicious mo­ralist may be considered as a taper, by which we are lighted through the labyrinth of com­plicated passions, he extends his radiance far­ther than his heat, and guides all that are within view, but burns only those who make too near approaches.

YET, since good or harm must be re­ceived, for the most part, from those to whom we are familiarly known, he whose vices overpower his virtues, in the compass to which his vices can extend, has surely no reason to complain that he meets not with affection or veneration, among those who are more corrupted by his practice than enlightened by his ideas; that admiration be­gins where acquaintance ceases; and that his favourers are distant, but his enemies at hand.

BUT many have dared to boast of neglect­ed merit, and to challenge their age or coun­try [Page 58] for cruelty and folly, of whom it can­not be alleged that they have endeavoured to increase the wisdom or virtue of their readers. They have often been at once profligate in their lives, and licentious in their compositions; have not only forsaken the paths of virtue, but have attempted to lure others after them. They have smoothed the road of perdition, covered with flowers the thorns of guilt, and taught temptation sweeter notes, softer blandishments, and stronger allurements.

IT has been apparently the settled pur­pose of many writers whose powers, in­dustry, and acquisitions, place them high in the ranks of literature, to set fashion on the side of wickedness; to recommend de­bauchery, and lewdness, by associating them with those qualities, which are most likely to dazzle the discernment, and attract the affections; and to show innocence and good­ness with such attendant weaknesses and fol­lies, as necessarily expose them to contempt and derision.

[Page 59] SUCH men naturally found intimates and companions among the corrupt, the thought­less, and the intemperate; passed their lives amidst the gay levities of sportive idleness, or the warm professions of drunken friend­ship; and fed their hopes with the promi­ses of wretches, whom themselves had taught to scoff at truth. But when fools had laugh­ed away their sprightliness, and the lan­guors of excess could no longer be relieved, they saw their favourers hourly drop away, and wondered and stormed to find themselves abandoned. Whether their companions per­sisted in wickedness, or returned to virtue, they were equally without assistance; for de­bauchery is selfish and negligent, and from virtue the virtuous only can expect regard.

IT is said by Florus of Catiline, who died in the midst of slaughtered enemies, that his death had been illustrious, had it been suf­fered for his country. Of the wits, who have languished away life under the pressures of poverty, or in the restlessness of suspense, who have been caressed and rejected, flat­tered and despised, as they were of more or less use to those who stiled themselves their patrons, it might be observed, that [Page 60] their miseries would enforce compassion, had they been brought upon them by honesty and religion.

THE wickedness of a profane or libidi­nous writer is more atrocious and detestable than that of the giddy libertine, or drunken ravisher, not only because it extends its ef­fects wider; as a pestilence that taints the air is more destructive than poison infused in a draught, but because it is committed with cool deliberation. By the instantane­ous violence of desire, a good man may sometimes be surprised before reflection can come to his rescue; and when the appetites have strengthened their influence by habit they are not easily resisted or suppress'd; But for the frigid villainy of studious lewd­ness, for the calm and mediated malignity of laboured impiety, what plea can be in­vented? What punishment can be adequate to the crime of him who retires to soli­tudes for the refinement of debauchery, who tortures his fancy, and ransacks his memory, only that he may leave the world less vir­tuous than he found it, that he may inter­cept the hopes of the rising generation, and [Page 61] spread snares for the soul with more dex­terity?

WHAT were their motives, or what their excuses, is below the dignity of reason to examine. If they had extinguished in them­selves the distinction of right and wrong, and were insensible of the mischief which they pro­moted, they deserved to be hunted down by general hatred, as apparent nusances to social beings; if they were influenced by the corrup­tion of their patrons, or their readers, and sa­crificed their own convictions to vanity or in­terest, they were at least to be abhorred with more acrimony than he that robs by profes­sion, or murders for pay, since they commit­ted greater crimes without greater tempta­tions.

Of him, to whom much is given, much shall be required. Those, to whom God has grant­ed superior faculties, and more extensive ca­pacities, and made eminent for quickness of intuition, and accuracy of distinction, will certainly be regarded as culpable in his eye, for defects and deviations which, in souls less exalted and enlightened, may be guiltless.

[Page 62] But, surely, none can think without horror on that man's condition, who has been more wicked in proportion as he has had more means of excelling in virtue, and used the light imparted from heaven only to embellish folly, and to palliate crimes.

NUMB. 78. SATURDAY, Decem. 15, 1750.

CORPORAL sensation is known to depend so much upon novelty, that custom takes away from many things their power of giving pleasure or pain. Thus a new dress becomes easy by wearing it, and the Palate is reconciled by degrees to dishes which at first disgusted it. That by long ha­bit of carrying a burden we lose, at least in a great part, our sensibility of its weight, any man may be convinced by putting on, for an hour, the armour of our ancestors; for he will scarcely believe that men would have had much inclination to marches and battles, en­cumbered [Page 63] and oppressed, as he will find him­self with the ancient panoply. Yet the heroes that over-run regions, and stormed towns in iron accoutrements, he knows not to have been bigger, and has no reason to imagine them stronger than the present race of men; he therefore must conclude, that their pe­culiar powers were conferred only by pecu­liar habits, and that their familiarity with the dress of war enabled them to move in it with ease, vigour and agility.

YET it seems to be the condition of our pre­sent state, that pain should be more fixed and permanent than pleasure. Uneasiness gives way by slow degrees, and is long before it quits its possession of the sensory; but all our gratifica­tions are volatile, vagrant, and easily dissipat­ed. The fragrance of the jessamine bower is lost after the enjoyment of a few moments, and the Indian wanders among his native odours without any sense of their exhalations. It is, indeed, not necessary to shew by many instances what every change of place is suffi­cient to prove, and what all mankind confess, by an incessant call for variety, and a restless [Page 64] pursuit of enjoyments, which they value only because unpossessed.

SOMETHING similar, or analogous, may be observed in those effects which are pro­duced immediately upon the mind; nothing can strongly strike or affect us, but what is rare or sudden; the most important events, when they become familiar, are no longer considered with wonder or solicitude, and that which at first filled up our whole attention, and left no place for any other thought, is soon thrust aside into some remote repository of the Mind, and lies among other lumber of the memory, over-looked and neglected.

THE manner in which external force acts upon the body is very little subject to the re­gulation of the will; no man can at pleasure obtund, or invigorate his senses, prolong the agency of any impulse, or continue the pre­sence of any image traced upon the eye, or any sound infused into the ear. But our ideas are more subjected to choice, we can call them before us, and command their stay, we can facilitate and promote their recurrence, we can either repress their intrusion, or [Page 65] hasten their retreat. It is therefore the busi­ness of wisdom and virtue, to select among the numberless objects which are every mo­ment striving for our notice, such as may afford useful employment to the mind, by en­abling us to exalt our reason, extend our views, and secure our happiness. But this choice is to be made with very little regard to rareness or frequency; for nothing is valuable merely because it is either rare or common, but because it is adapted to some useful purpose, and enables us to supply some deficiency of our nature.

MILTON has very judiciously represented the father of mankind seized with horror and astonishment at the sight of death, exhibited to him on the mount of vision. For surely, nothing can so much disturb the passions, or perplex the intellects of man, as the disruption of his union with visible nature; a separation from all that has hitherto delighted or engaged him; a change, not only of the place, but the manner of his being; an entrance into a slate, not simply which he knows not, but which perhaps he has not faculties to know; an immediate and perceptible communication [Page 66] with the supreme being, and, what is above all distressful and alarming, the final sen­tence, and unalterable allotment.

YET we to whom the shortness of life has given frequent occasions of contemplat­ing mortality, can, without emotion, see generations of men pass away, and are at leisure to establish modes of sorrow, and adjust the ceremonial of death. We can look upon funereal pomp as a common spec­tacle in which we have no concern, and turn away from it to trifles and amusements, without dejection of look, or inquietude of heart.

IT is, indeed, apparent from the consti­tution of the world, that there must be a time for other thoughts; and a perpetual me­ditation upon the last hour, however it may become the solitude of a monastery, is in­consistent with many duties of common life. But surely the remembrance of death ought to predominate in our minds, as an habi­tual and settled principle, always operating, though not always perceived; and our at­tention should seldom wander so far from [Page 67] our own condition, as not to be recalled and fixed by sight of an event, which must soon, we know not how soon, happen likewise to ourselves, and of which, tho' we cannot appoint the time, we may secure the consequence.

YET, though every instance of death may justly awaken our fears, and quicken our vigilance, it seldom happens that we are much alarmed, unless some close connexion is broken, some scheme frustrated, or some hope defeated. Many therefore seem to pass on from youth to decrepitude without any reflection on the end of life, because they are wholly involved within themselves, and look on others only as inhabitants of the common earth, without any expectation of receiving good, or intention of bestow­ing it.

IT is indeed impossible, without some mor­tification of that desire which every man feels of being remembered and lamented, to remark how little concern is caused by the eternal de­parture even of those who have passed their lives with publick honours, and been distin­guished by superior qualities, or extraordinary [Page 68] performances. It is not possible to be regard­ed with tenderness except by a few. That merit which gives greatness and renown, dif­fuses its influence to a wide compass, but acts weakly on every single breast; it is placed at a distance from common spectators, and shines like one of the remote stars, of which the light reaches us, but not the heat. The wit, the hero, the philosopher, whom either their tempers or their fortunes have hindered from intimate relations and tender intercourses, die often without any other effect than that of adding a new Topic to the conversation of the day. They impress none with any fresh conviction of the fragility of our nature, be­cause none had any particular interest in their lives, or was united to them by a reciprocation of benefits and endearments.

THUS we find it often happens, that those who in their lives have excited applause and admiration, are laid at last in the ground with­out the common honour of a stone; because by those excellencies with which many have been delighted, none have been obliged, and, though they had many to celebrate, they had none to love them.

[Page 69] CUSTOM so far regulates the sentiments at least of common minds, that I believe men may be generally observed to grow less tender as they advance in age. He, who, when life was new, melted at the loss of every compa­nion, can look in time without concern, upon the grave into which his last friend was thrown, and into which himself is ready to fall; not that he is more willing to die than formerly, but that he is more familiar to the death of o­thers, and therefore is not alarmed so far as to consider how much nearer he approaches to his end. But this is to submit tamely to the tyranny of accident, and to suffer our reason to lie useless. Every funeral may justly be considered as a summons to prepare for that state, into which it shews us that we must sometime enter; and the summons is more loud and piercing, as the event of which it warns us is at less distance. To neglect at any time preparation for death, is to sleep on our post at a siege, but to omit it in old age, is to sleep at an attack.

IT has always appeared to me one of the most striking passages in the visions of Quevedo, which stigmatises those as fools who complain [Page 70] that they failed of happiness by sudden death. "How, says he, can death be sudden to a be­ing who always knew that he must die, and that the time of his death was uncertain?"

SINCE business and gaiety are always drawing our attention away from a future state, some admonition is frequently necessary to recall it to our minds, and what can more properly renew the impression than the exam­ples of mortality which every day supplies? The great incentive to virtue is the reflection that we must die, it will therefore be useful to accustom ourselves, whenever we see a fu­neral, to consider how soon we may be add­ed to the number of those whose probation is past, and whose happiness or misery shall en­dure for ever.

NUMB. 79. TUESDAY, Decemb. 18, 1750.

SUSPICION, however necessary it may be to our safe passage through ways beset on all sides by fraud and malice, has been always considered, when it exceeds the common measures of prudent caution, as a token of depravity and corruption; and an old Greek writer of sententious precepts has laid down as a standing maxim, that he who believes not another on his oath, knows himself to be perjured.

WE can form our opinions of that which we know not, only by placing it in com­parison with something that we know: whoever therefore is over-run with suspicion, and detects artifice and stratagem in every proposal, must either have learned by expe­rience the wickedness of mankind, and been taught to avoid fraud by having often been deceived; or he must derive his judgment [Page 72] from the consciousness of his own disposition, and impute to others the same inclinations which he feels predominant in himself.

TO learn caution by turning our eyes upon life, and observing the arts by which negligence is surprised, timidity overborn, and credulity amused, requires either great latitude of converse and long acquaintance with business, or uncommon activity of vigilance, and acuteness of penetration. When therefore a young man, not distin­guished by superior vigour of intellect, comes into the world full of scruples apd diffidence; makes a bargain with many provisional li­mitations; hesitates in his answer to a com­mon question, lest more should be intended than he can immediately discover; has a long reach in detecting the projects of his acquaintance; considers every caress as an act of hypocrisy, and feels neither gratitude nor affection from the tenderness of his friends, because he believes no one to have any real tenderness but for himself; what­ever expectations this early sagacity may raise of his future eminence or riches, I can seldom forbear to consider him as a wretch incapable of generosity or bene­volence, [Page 73] as a villain early completed beyond the need of common opportunities and gra­dual temptations.

UPON men of this class instruction and admonition are generally thrown away, be­cause they consider artifice and deceit as proofs of understanding; they are misled at the same time by the two great seducers of the world, vanity and interest, and not only look upon those, who act with openness and confidence, as condemned by their princi­ples to obscurity and want, but as con­temptible for narrowness of comprehension, shortness of views, and slowness of con­trivance.

THE world has been long amused with the mention of policy in publick transactions, and of art in private affairs; they have been considered as the effects of great qualities, and as unattainable by men of the com­mon level: yet I have not found many performances either of art, or policy, that required such stupendous efforts of intellect, [Page 74] or might not have been effected by falshood and impudence, without the assistance of any other powers. To profess what he does not mean, to promise what he cannot per­form, to flatter ambition with prospects of promotion, and misery with hopes of relief, to sooth pride with appearances of submis­sion, and appease enmity by blandishments and bribes, can surely imply nothing more or greater than a mind devoted wholly to its own purposes, a face that cannot blush, and a heart that cannot feel.

THESE practices are so mean and base, that he who finds in himself no tendency to use them, cannot easily believe that they are considered by others with less detesta­tion; he therefore suffers himself to slumber in false security, and becomes a prey to those who applaud their own subtilty be­cause they know how to steal upon his sleep, and exult in the success which they could never have obtained had they not at­tempted a man better than themselves, who [Page 75] was hindered from obviating their stratagems, not by folly, but by innocence.

SUSPICION is, indeed, a temper so un­easy and restless, that it is very justly ap­pointed the concomitant of guilt. It is said, that no torture is equal to the inhibition of sleep long continued; a pain, to which the state of that man bears a very exact analogy, who dares never give rest to his vigilance and circumspection, but considers himself as sur­rounded by secret foes, and fears to entrust his children, or his friend, the secret that throbs in his breast, and the anxieties that break into his face. To avoid, at this ex­pence, those evils to which easiness and friend­ship might have exposed him, is surely to buy safety at too dear a rate, to die lest he should be killed, and, in the language of the Roman satirist, to save life by losing all for which a wise man would live.

IN the diet of the German empire, as we are told by Camerarius, the princes were once displaying their riches and felicity, and each boasting the particular advantages of his own [Page 76] dominions. One of them who possessed a country not remarkable for the grandeur of its cities, or the fertility of its soil, rose in his turn to speak: the rest listened between pity and contempt, till he declared, in honour of his territories, that he could travel through them without a guard, and if he was weary, sleep in safety upon the lap of the first man whom he should meet; a commendation which would have been ill exchanged for the boast of palaces, pastures, or streams.

SUSPICION is not less an enemy to virtue than to happiness: he that is already corrupt is naturally suspicious, and he that becomes suspicious will quickly be corrupt. It is too common for men to learn the frauds by which themselves have suffered, and when they are once persuaded that deceit will be employed against them, they sometimes think the same arts justified by the necessity of defence. Even they whose virtue is too well established to give way to example, or be shaken by sophi­stry, must yet find their love of mankind di­minished with their esteem, and will grow less zealous for the safety and happiness of [Page 77] those by whom they suspect their own safety or happiness endangered.

THUS we find old age, upon which sus­picion has for the most part been strongly im­pressed by long intercourse with the world, inflexible and severe, not easily softened by submission, melted by complaint, or subdued by supplication. Frequent experience of counterfeited miseries, and dissembled virtue, have in time overcome that disposition to ten­derness and sympathy, which is so powerful in our younger years, and they that happen to petition late for compassion or assistance are doomed to languish without regard, and suffer for the crimes of men who have formerly been found undeserving or ungrateful.

HISTORIANS are certainly chargeable with the depravation of mankind, when they relate without censure those stratagems of war by which the virtues of an enemy are engaged to his destruction. A ship comes be­fore a port, weather-beaten and shattered, and the crew implore the liberty of repairing [Page 78] their breaches, supplying themselves with ne­cessaries, or burying their dead. The huma­nity of the inhabitants inclines them to con­sent, the strangers enter the town with weapons concealed, fall suddenly upon their benefactors, destroy those that make resistance, and become masters of the place; they return home rich with plunder, and their success is recorded to encourage imitation.

BUT surely war has its laws, and ought to be conducted with some regard to the uni­versal interest of Man. Those may justly be pursued as enemies to the general community of the world, who suffer hostility to vacate the eternal and unalterable laws of right, and pursue their private advantages by means, which, if once established and allowed, must destroy all benevolence, cut off from every man all hopes of assistance from another, and fill the world with implacable hostility. What­ever is thus gained ought to be restored, and those who have conquered by such treachery may be justly denied the protection of their native country.

[Page 79] WHOEVER commits a fraud is guilty not only of the particular injury to him whom he deceives, but of the diminution of that confidence which constitutes not only the ease but the existence of society. He that suffers by imposture has too often his virtue more impaired than his fortune; but as it is necessary not to invite robbery by supineness, so it is our duty not to suppress ten­derness by suspicion; it is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.

NUMB. 80. SATURDAY, Dec. 22, 1750.

AS providence has made the human soul an active being, always impatient for novelty, and struggling for something yet un­enjoyed with restless desire and unwearied progression, the world seems to have been eminently adapted to this disposition of the mind: it is formed to raise new expectations by constant vicissitudes, and to obviate satie­ty by perpetual change.

WHEREVER we turn our eyes, we find something to revive our curiosity, and engage our attention. In the dusk of the morning we watch the rising of the sun, and see the day diversify the clouds, and open new pro­spects in its gradual advance. After a few hours, we see the shades lengthen, and the light decline, till the sky is resigned to a mul­titude [Page 81] of shining orbs different from each other in magnitude and splendour. The earth has a new appearance as we move upon it; the woods offer their shades, and the fields their harvests; the hill flatters with an extensive view, and the valley invites with shelter, fra­grance and flowers.

THE poets have numbered among the fe­licities of the golden age, an exemption from the change of seasons, and a perpetuity of spring; but I am not certain that in this state of imaginary happiness they have made sufficient provision for that insatiable demand of new gratifications, which seems particular­ly to characterize the nature of man. Our sense of delight is in a great measure compa­rative, and arises at once from the sensations which we feel, and those which we remember: Thus ease after torment is pleasure for a time, and we are very agreeably recreated, when the body, chilled with the weather, is gradual­ly recovering its natural tepidity; but the joy ceases when we have forgot the cold, we must fall below ease again, if we desire to rise above it, and purchase new selicity by vo­luntary [Page 82] pain. It is therefore not unlikely that however the fancy may be amused with the description of regions in which no wind is heard but the gentle zephir, and no scenes are displayed, but vallies enamelled with unfading flowers, and woods waving their perennial verdure, we should soon grow weary of uni­formity, find our thoughts languish for want of other objects and employment, call on hea­ven for our wonted round of season, and think ourselves liberally recompensed for the inconveniencies of summer and winter, by new perceptions of the calmness and mildness of the intermediate variations.

EVERY season has its particular power of striking the mind. The nakedness and aspe­rity of the wintry world always fills the be­holder with pensive and profound astonish­ment; as the variety of the scene is lessened, its grandeur is increased; and the mind is swelled at once by the mingled ideas of the present and the past, of the beauties which have vanished from the eyes, and the waste and desolation that are now before them.

[Page 83] IT is observed by Milton, that he who neg­lects to visit the country in spring, and rejects the pleasures that are then in their first bloom and fragrance, is guilty of sullenness against na­ture. If we allot different duties to different seasons, he may be charged with equal disobe­dience to the voice of nature, who looks on the bleak hills and leafless woods, without se­riousness and awe. Spring is the season of gaie­ty, and winter of terror; in spring the heart of tranquillity dances to the melody of the groves, and the eye of benevolence sparkles at the sight of happiness and plenty: In the win­ter, compassion melts at universal calamity, and the tear of softness starts at the wailings of hunger, and the cries of the creation in distress.

THERE is indeed in most minds very lit­tle inclination to indulge heaviness and sorrow, nor do I recommend them beyond the degree necessary to maintain in its full vigour that habitual sympathy and tenderness, which, in a world of so much misery, is necessary to the ready discharge of our most important du­ties. The winter therefore is generally cele­brated [Page 84] as the proper season for domestick mer­riment and gaiety. We are seldom invited by the votaries of pleasure to look abroad for any other purpose, than that we may shrink back with more satisfaction to our coverts, and when we have heard the howl of the tempest, and felt the gripe of the frost, con­gratulate each other with more gladness upon a close room, an easy chair, a high piled fire, and a smoaking dinner.

THERE are indeed now natural incite­ments to jollity and conversation. Differ­ences, we know, are never so effectually laid asleep, as by some common calamity; an enemy unites all to whom he threatens dan­ger. The rigour of winter brings generally to the same fire-side those, who, by the op­position of their inclinations, or the diffe­rence of their employments, moved in various directions through the other parts of the year; and when they have met, and find it their mu­tual interest to remain together, they endear each other by mutual compliances, and often wish for the continuance of the social season with all its bleakness and all its severities.

[Page 85] TO the men of study and imagination the winter is generally the chief time of labour. Gloom and silence produce composure of mind, and concentration of ideas; and the privation of external pleasure naturally causes an effort to find entertainment within. This is the time in which those, whom literature enables to find amusements for themselves, have more than common con­victions of their own happiness, When they are condemned by the elements to retirement, and debarred from most of the diversions which are called in to assist the flight of time, they can always find new subjects of enquiry, engage their passions in new pursuits, and pre­serve themselves from that weariness which hangs always flagging upon the vacant mind.

IT cannot indeed be expected of all to be poets and philosophers, deeply versed in sci­ences, or much engaged in researches in­to past or distant transactions; it is necessary that the greater part of mankind should be employed in the trivial business of common life; trivial, indeed, not with respect to its influence upon our happiness, but of the abi­lities [Page 86] requisite to conduct it. These must ne­cessarily be more dependent on accident for the means of spending agreeably those hours which their occupations leave unengaged, or which the imbecillity of nature obliges them to allow to relaxation and diversion. Yet even on these I would willingly impress such a sense of the value of time, as may incline them to find out for their most careless hours some amusement of more use and dignity than the common games, which not only weary the mind without im­proving it, but strengthen the passions of en­vy and avarice, and often lead to fraud and to profusion, to corruption and to ruin. It is unworthy of a reasonble being to spend any of the little time allotted us, without some tendency, either direct or oblique, to the end of our existence. And though every moment cannot be laid out on the formal and regular improvement of our knowledge, or in the sta­ted practice of a moral or religious duty, yet none should be so spent as to exclude wisdom or virtue, or pass without possibility of quali­fying us more or less for the better employ­ment of those which are to come.

[Page 87] IT is scarcely possible to pass an hour in ho­nest conversation, without being able when we rise from it, to please ourselves with hav­ing given or received some advantages; but a man may shuffle cards, or rattle dice, from noon to midnight, without tracing any new idea in his mind, or being able to recollect the day by any other token than his gain or loss, and a confused remembrance of agitated passions, and clamorous altercations.

HOWEVER, as experience is always of more weight than precept, any of my readers, who are contriving how to spend the dreary months before them, may consider which of their past amusements fill them now with greatest satisfaction, and resolve to repeat those gratifications of which the pleasure is most durable.

NUMB. 81. TUESDAY, Decem. 25, 1750.

AMONG questions which have been long discussed in the world, without any approach to decision, may be numbered the precedency or superior exeellence of one virtue to another, which has long furnished a subject of debate to men whose leisure sent them out into the intellectual world in search of employment, and who have, perhaps, been sometimes with-held from attending to the practice of their favourite duty, by their zeal for its advancement, and diligence in its celebration.

THE intricacy of this dispute may be al­ledged as a proof of that tenderness for man­kind which providence has, I think, univer­sally displayed, by making attainments easy in proportion as they are necesary. That all the duties of morality ought to be practised, is without difficulty discoverable, because igno­rance or uncertainty would immediately in­volve the world in confusion and distress; but [Page 89] which duty ought to be most esteemed or praised, we may continue to debate, without much inconvenience, so all be diligently per­formed as there is opportunity or need: for upon practice, not upon opinion, depends the happiness of mankind; and controver­sies, merely speculative, are of small impor­tance in themselves, however they may have sometimes heated a disputant, or provoked a faction.

OF the divine author of our religion it is impossible to peruse the evangelical histo­ries, without observing how little he fa­voured the vanity of inquisitiveness; how much more rarely he condescended to satisfy curiosity, than to relieve distress; and how much he desired that his followers should ra­ther excel in goodness than in knowledge. His precepts tend immediately to the rectifica­tion of the moral principles, and the direction of daily conduct, without ostentation, with­out art, at once irrefragable and plain, such as well-meaning simplicity may readily con­ceive, and of which we cannot mistake the meaning, but when we are afraid to find it.

[Page 90] THE measure of justice prescribed to us, in our transactions with others, is remarka­bly clear and comprehensive: Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, even so do unto them. A law by which every claim of right may be immediately adjusted, as far as the private conscience requires to be inform­ed; a law, of which every man may find the exposition in his own breast, and which may always be observed without any other qualifi­cations than honesty of intention, and purity of will.

OVER this Law, indeed, some sons of so­phistry have been subtile enough to throw mists, which have darkened their own eyes. To find means of perplexing that universal principle upon which every question of ju­stice, between one man and another, is to be decided, they have enquired whether a man, conscious to himself of unreasonable wishes, be bound to gratify them in another. But surely there needed no long delibera­tion to conclude, that the desires, which are to be considered by us as the measure of right, [Page 91] must be such as we approve, and that we ought to pay no regard to those expectations in others which we condemn in ourselves, and which, however they may intrude upon our imagination, we know it our duty to re­sist and suppress.

ONE of the most celebrated cases which have been produced as requiring some skill in the direction of conscience to adapt them to this great rule, is that of a criminal asking mercy of his judge, who cannot but know that if he was in the state of the supplicant, he should desire that pardon which he now denies. The difficulty of this sophism will vanish, if we remember that the parties are in reality on one side criminal, and on the o­ther the community of which the magistrate is only the minister, and by which he is in­trusted with the publick safety. The magi­strate therefore in pardoning a man unwor­thy of pardon, betrays the trust with which he is invested, gives away what is not his own, and, apparently, does to others what he would not that others should do to him. Even the community, whose right is still great­er to arbitrary grants of mercy, is bound [Page 92] by those laws which regard the great republick of mankind, and cannot justify such forbear­ance as may promote wickedness, and lessen the general confidence and security in which all have an equal interest, and which all are therefore bound to maintain. For this rea­son the state has not a right to erect a gene­ral sanctuary for fugitives, or give protec­tion to such as have forfeited their lives by crimes against the laws of common morality equally acknowledged by all nations, because no people can, without infraction of the uni­versal league of social beings, incite, by prospects of impunity and safety, those practi­ces in another dominion, which they would themselves punish in their own.

ONE occasion of uncertainty and hesita­tion, in those by whom this great rule has been commented and dilated, is the confusion of what the casuists are careful to distinguish, debts of justice and debts of charity. The im­mediate and primary intention of this pre­cept, is to establish a rule of justice for the tribunal of conscience; and I know not whether invention, or sophistry, can start a single difficulty to retard its application, when [Page 93] it is thus expressed and explained, let every man allow the claim of right in another which he should think himself entitled to make in the like circumstances.

THE discharge of the debts of charity, or duties which we owe to others not merely as required by justice, but as dictated by benevo­lence, admits in its own nature greater com­plication of circumstances and greater latitude of choice. Justice is indispensably and uni­versally necessary, and what is necessary must always be limited, uniform, and distinct. But beneficence though in general equally en­joined by our religion, and equally needful to the conciliation of the divine favour, is yet, for the most part, with regard to its sin­gle acts, elective and voluntary. We may cer­tainly, without injury to our fellow beings, allow in the distribution of kindness some­thing to our affections, and change the mea­sure of our liberality according to our opini­ons and prospects, our hopes and fears. This rule therefore is not equally determinate and absolute with respect to offices of kindness, and acts of liberality, because liberality and kindness, absolutely determined, would lose their nature; for how could we be called ten­der, [Page 94] or charitable, for giving that which we are positively forbidden to withhold.

YET even in adjusting the extent of our beneficence no other measure can be taken than this precept affords us, for we can only know what others suffer or want, by con­sidering how we should be affected in the same state; nor can we proportion our assist­ance by any other rule than that of doing what we should then expect from others. It indeed generally happens that the giver and receiver differ in their opinions of generosity; the same partiality to his own interest inclines one to large expectations, and the other to sparing distributions. Perhaps the infirmity of hu­man nature will scarcely suffer a man groan­ing under the pressure of distress, to judge rightly of the kindness of his friends, or to think they have done enough till his deliver­ance is compleated; it is therefore apparent that not what we might wish, but what we could demand from others, we are obliged to grant, since, though we can easily know how much we might claim, it is impossible to de­termine what we should hope.

BUT in all enquiries concerning the prac­tice of voluntary and occasional virtues, it is [Page 95] safest for minds not oppressed with supersti­tious fears to determine against their own in­clinations, and secure themselves from defici­ency by being more than they believe strictly necessary. For of this every man may be certain that, if he were to exchange condi­tions with his dependent, he should expect more than, with the utmost exertion of his ardour, he now will prevail upon himself to perform; and when our reason has no settled rule, and our passions are striving to mislead us, it is surely the part of a wise man to err on the side of safety.

NUMB. 82. SATURDAY, Decem. 29, 1750.

NUMB. 83. TUESDAY, Jan. 1, 1750.

THE publication of the letter in my last paper has naturally led me to the con­sideration [Page 106] of that thirst after curiosities, which often draws contempt and ridicule upon itself, but which is perhaps no otherwise blameable, than as it wants those circumstantial recom­mendations which have long been observed to add lustre even to moral excellencies, and are absolutely necessary to the grace and beauty of indifferent actions.

LEARNING confers so much superiority on those who possess it, that they might pro­bably have escaped all censure, had they been able to agree among themselves: but as envy and competition have divided the republick of letters into factions, they have neglected the common interest; each has called in foreign aid, and endeavoured to strengthen his own cause by the frown of power, the hiss of ig­norance, and the clamour of popularity. They have all been so much engaged in destruction, that they have neglected defence, till by mu­tual hostilities they demolished those outworks which veneration had raised for their security, and laid themselves open to invaders, by whom every region of science is equally laid waste.

[Page 107] THERE passes between men of different studies and professions a constant reciproca­tion of reproaches. The collector of shells and stones, wonders at the folly of him who pastes leaves and flowers upon paper, pleases himself with colours that are perpetually fad­ing, and amasses with care what cannot be preserved. The hunter of insects stands a­mazed that any man can waste much of his short time upon lifeless matter, while many tribes of animals are yet neglected. Every one is inclined not only to promote his own study, but to exclude all others from regard, and having heated his imagination with some favourite pursuit, wonders that the rest of mankind are not seized with the same passion.

THERE are, indeed, many subjects of study which seem but remotely allied to use­ful knowledge, and are of little importance to happiness or virtue; nor is it easy to for­bear some sallies of merriment, or expres­sions of pity, when we see a man wrinkled with attention, and emaciated with solici­tude in the investigation of questions never to be resolved, and of which, without any [Page 108] visible harm, the world may expire in ig­norance. Yet it is dangerous to discourage any well intended labours, or suppress any innocent curiosity; for he who is employ­ed in searches, which by any deduction of consequences tend to the benefit of life, is surely laudable, in comparison of those who spend their time in counteracting happiness, and filling the world with wrong and dan­ger, confusion and remorse. No man can perform so little, as not to have reason to congratulate himself on his merits, when he beholds the multitudes that live in total idleness, and have never yet endeavoured to be useful.

IT is impossible to determine the limits of any enquiry, or to foresee what consequen­ces a new discovery may produce. He who suffers not his faculties to lie torpid, has a chance, whatever be his employment, of doing good to his fellow-creatures. There are probably in every part of nature pow­ers and qualities yet undiscovered, which might be applied to the advantage of man­kind, but which can never be known with­out the labour of experiment. He who first ranged the woods in search of medicinal springs, or climbed the mountains for salu­tary [Page 109] plants, has undoubtedly merited the gratitude of posterity, how much soever his frequent miscarriages might excite the scorn of his contemporaries. If what appears lit­tle be universally despised, nothing greater can be attained, for whatever is great was at first little, and rose to its present bulk by gradual accessions, successive improvements, and accumulated labours.

THOSE who lay out their time or their money in assembling matter for contempla­tion, and forming repositories of natural or ar­tificial rarities, are surely entitled to some de­gree of respect, though in a flight of gaiety it be easy to ridicule their treasure, or in a fit of fullenness to despise it. A man goes not a­way much illuminated by having enjoyed the privilege of handling the tooth of a shark, or the paw of a white bear; yet though some particular curiosities may be rated by their owners beyond their value, there is nothing more worthy of admiration to a philosophical eye than the structure of ani­mals, by which they are qualified to sup­port life in the particular elements or cli­mates to which they are appropriated; and [Page 110] of all natural productions it must be con­fessed, that they exhibit evidences of infi­nite wisdom, bear their testimony to the supreme reason, and excite in the mind new raptures of admiration, and new incentives to piety.

TO collect the productions of art and ex­amples of mechanical science or manual a­bility is unquestionably useful, even when the things themselves are of small impor­tance, because it is always advantageous to know how far the human powers have pro­ceeded, and how much experience has shewn to be within the reach of diligence. It is natural for idleness and timidity to despair without being overcome, and to forbear attempts for fear of being defeated; and we may promote the invigoration of faint en­deavours, by being able to prove what has been already performed; for though it may sometimes happen that the greatest instances of ingenuity have been exerted in trifles, yet the same principles and the same expedients may be applied to more important purposes, and the movements which put into action machines of no other use but to raise the [Page 111] wonder of ignorance, may be employed to drain fens, or manufacture metals, to assist the architect, or preserve the sailor.

FOR the utensils, arms, or dresses of foreign nations, which make the greatest part of many collections, I have no great regard when they are valuable only because they are foreign, and can suggest no im­provement of our own practice. Yet they are not all equally useless, nor can it be always safely determined, which should be rejected or retained, for they may sometimes unex­pectedly contribute to the illustration of hi­story, to the knowledge of the natural com­modities of the country, or of the genius and customs of its inhabitants.

THERE IS one sort of rarities of a yet lower rank, which owe their value merely to accident, and which can convey no in­formation, nor satisfy any rational desire. Such are many fragments of antiquity, as urns and pieces of pavement; and things which are held in veneration only for hav­ing been once the property of some eminent person, as the armour of king Henry; or for having been used on some remarkable oc­casion, [Page 112] as the lanthorn of Guy Faux. The loss or preservation of these seems to be a thing indifferent, nor can I perceive why the pos­session of them should be coveted. Yet, perhaps, even this curiosity is implanted by nature; and when I find Tully confessing of himself, that he could not forbear at Athens to visit the walks and houses which the old philosophers had frequented or inhabited, and recollect the reverence which every nation, civil and barbarous, has paid to the ground where merit has been buried, I am afraid to declare against the general voice of mankind, and am inclined to believe, that this regard, which we involuntarily pay to the meanest relique of a man great and illustrious, is in­tended as an incitement to labour, and an encouragement to expect the same renown, if it be sought by the same virtues.

THE virtuoso therefore cannot be censured, as contributing nothing to the encrease of knowledge, but perhaps he may be sometimes justly culpable for consining himself to busi­ness below his genius, for losing in trifling amusements and petty speculations, those hours which he might have spent in nobler studies, and in which he might have given [Page 113] new light to the intellectual world. It is in­deed never without grief, that I find a man capable of ratiocination or invention enlist­ing himself in this secondary class of learning; for when he has once discovered a method of gratifying his desire of eminence by expence rather than by labour, and known the sweets of a life blest at once with the ease of idleness, and the reputation of knowledge, he will not easily be brought to undergo again the toil of thinking, or leave his toys and his trinkets for arguments and ideas, arguments which re­quire circumspection and vigilance, and ideas which cannot be obtained but by the drudgery of meditation. He will gladly shut himself up forever with his shells and medals, like the companions of Ulysses, who having tasted the fruit of Lotos, would not even by the hope of seeing their own country, be tempt­ed again to the dangers of the sea. ‘ [...]’

COLLECTIONS of this kind are of use to the learned, as heaps of stone and piles of timber are necessary to the architect. But to dig the quarry or to search the field, requires [Page 114] not much of any quality, beyond stubborn per­severance; and though genius must often lye inactive without this humble and neglected assistance, yet this can claim little praise be­cause every man can afford it.

TO mean understandings, it is indeed suf­ficient honour to be numbered amongst the lowest labourers of learning; but surely dif­ferent abilities must find different tasks. To hew stone would have been unworthy of Pal­ladio, and to have rambled in search of shells and flowers, had but ill suited with the capa­city of Newton.

NUMB. 84. SATURDAY, Jan. 5, 1751.

NUMB. 85. TUESDAY, January 8, 1751.

MANY writers of eminence in phy­sick have laid out their diligence up­on the consideration of those distempers to which men are more remarkably exposed by particular states of life, and very learned treatises have been produced upon the mala­dies of the camp, the sea, and the mines. There is, indeed, scarcely any employment which a man accustomed to anatomical en­quiries, and medical refinements, would not find reasons for declining as dangerous to health, did not his learning or experience in­form him, that almost every occupation, however inconvenient or formidable, is hap­pier and safer than a life of sloth.

THE necessity of action is not only de­monstrable from the fabrick of the body, but evident from observation of the universal practice of mankind, who for the preserva­tion [Page 126] of health, in those whose rank or wealth exempts them from the necessity of lucrative labour, have invented sports and diversions, though not of equal use to the world with manual trades, yet of equal fa­tigue to those that practise them, and differ­ing only from the drudgery of the husband­man or manufacturer, as they are acts of choice, and therefore performed without the painful sense of compulsion. The huntsman rises early, persues his game through all the dangers and obstructions of the chase, swims rivers, and scales precipices, till he returns home no less harrassed than the soldier, and has, perhaps, sometimes incurred as great hazard of wounds or death: Yet he has no motive to incite his ardour; he is neither subject to the commands of a general, nor dreads any penalties for neglect and disobe­dience; he has neither profit or honour to expect from his perils and his conquests, but toils without the hope either of mutal or civick garlands, and must content himself with the praise of his tenants and compa­nions.

BUT such indeed is the constitution of man, that labour may be with great justice [Page 127] stiled its own reward; nor will any external incitements be requisite, if it be considered how much happiness is gained, and how much misery escaped by frequent and violent agita­tion of the body.

EASE is the utmost that can be hoped from a sedentary and unactive habit; ease a neutral state between pain and pleasure. The dance of spirits, the bound of vigour, readiness of enterprize, and defiance of fatigue, are reserved for him that braces his nerves, and hardens his fibres, that keeps his limbs pliant with motion, and by frequent exposure fortifies his frame against the com­mon accidents of cold and heat.

WITH ease, however, if it could be se­cured, many would be content; but nothing terrestrial can be kept at a stand. Ease, if it is not rising into pleasure, will be falling to­wards pain, and whatever hope the dreams of speculation may suggest of observing the proportion between nutriment and labour, and keeping the body in a healthy state by supplies exactly equal to its waste, we know that, in effect, the vital powers unexcited by motion, grow gradually languid; that as [Page 128] their vigour fails obstructions are generated; and that from obstructions proceed most of those pains which wear us away slowly with periodical tortures, and which though they sometimes suffer life to be long, condemn it to be useless, chain us down on the couch of misery, and mock us with the hopes of death.

EXERCISE, indeed, cannot secure us from that dissolution to which we are de­creed; but while the soul and body conti­nue united, it can make the association plea­sing, and can give probable hopes that they shall be disjoined by an easy separation. It was a principle among the ancients, that acute diseases are from heaven, and chronical from ourselves; the dart of death indeed falls from heaven, but we poison it by our own misconduct; to dye is the fate of man, but to dye with lingering anguish is generally his folly.

IT is necessary to that perfection of which our present state is capable, that the mind and body should both be kept in action; that neither the faculties of the one nor of the other be suffered to grow lax or torpid [Page 129] for want of use; that neither health be pur­chased by voluntary submission to ignorance, nor knowledge cultivated at the expence of that health, which must enable it either to give pleasure to its possessor or assistance to others. It is too frequently the pride of students to despise those amusements and re­creations which give to the rest of mankind strength of limbs and cheerfulness of heart. Solitude and contemplation are indeed seldom consistent with such skill in common exercises or sports as is necessary to make them practi­sed with delight, and no man is willing to do that of which the necessity is not pres­sing and immediate, when he knows that his aukwardness must make him ridiculous.

THUS the man of learning is often re­signed, almost by his own consent, to lan­guor and to pain; and while in the prose­cution of his studies he suffers the weariness of labour, is subject by his course of life to the maladies of idleness.

[Page 130] IT was, perhaps, from the observation of this mischievous omission in those who are employed about intellectual objects, that Locke has, in his System of Education, so warmly urged the necessity of a manual trade to men of all ranks and professions, that when the mind is weary with its proper task, it may be relaxed by a slighter attention to some mechanical operation; and that while the vital functions are resuscitated and awa­kened by vigorous motion, the understanding may be restrained from that vagrance and dissipation by which it too often relieves it­self after a long intenseness of thought, un­less some allurement be presented that may engage application without anxiety.

THERE is so little reason for expecting any frequent conformity to Locke's precept, that it is not necessary to enquire whether the practice of manual arts might not give occa­sion to petty emulation, and trivial ambition; and whether, if our divines and physicians were taught the lathe and the chizzel, they would not think more of their tools than their books; as Nero neglected the care of his empire for his chariot and his fiddle. It is certainly dangerous to be too much pleased [Page 131] with little things; but what is there which may not be perverted? let us, remember how much worse employment might have been found for those hours, which a manual occupation appears to engross; let us com­pute the profit with the loss, and when we reflect how often a genius is allured from his studies, consider likewise that perhaps by the same attractions he is sometimes withheld from debauchery, or recalled from malice, from ambition, from envy, and from lust.

I HAVE always admired the wisdom of those by whom our female education was in­stituted, for having contrived, that every woman of whatever condition should be taught some arts of manufacture, by which the vacuities of recluse and domestick leisure may always be filled up. These arts are more necessary as the weakness of their sex and the general system of life debar ladies from many employments which by diversifying the circumstances of men, preserve them from being cankered by the rust of their own thoughts. I know not how much of the virtue and happiness of the world may be the consequence of this judicious regulation. Perhaps, the most powerful fancy might be [Page 132] unable to figure the confusion and slaughter that would be produced by so many piercing eyes and vivid understandings, turned loose at once upon mankind, with no other busi­ness than to sparkle and intrigue, to perplex and to destroy.

FOR my part, whenever chance brings within my observation a knot of misses busy at their needles, I consider myself as in the school of virtue; and though I have no ex­traordinary skill in plain work or embroide­ry, look upon their operations with, at least, as much satisfaction as their governess, be­cause I regard them as providing a security against the most dangerous ensnarers of the soul, by enabling themselves to exclude idle­ness from their solitary moments, and with idleness her attendant train of passions, fan­cies, and chimeras, fears, sorrows and de­sires. Ovid and Cervantes will inform them that love has no power but over those whom he catches unemployed; and Hector, in the Iliad, when he sees Andromache overwhelmed with terrors, sends her for consolation to the loom and the distaff.

[Page 133] IT is certain that any wild wish or vain imagination never takes such firm possession of the mind, as when it is found empty and unoccupied; for the old peripatetick princi­ple, that Nature abhors a Vacuum, may be properly applied to the intellect, which will embrace any thing however absurd or crimi­nal rather than be wholly without an object. Perhaps every man may date the predomi­nance of those desires that disturb his life and contaminate his conscience, from some un­happy hour when too much leisure exposed him to their incursions; for he has lived with little observation either on himself or others, who does not know that to be idle is to be vicious.

NUMB. 86. SATURDAY, Jan. 12, 1751.

IT has been observed by one of the an­cients, that the burthen of government is encreased upon princes by the virtues of their immediate predecessors. It is, indeed, always dangerous to be placed in a state of unavoidable comparison with excellence, and the danger is still greater when that excellence is consecrated by death, when envy and in­terest cease to act against it, and those pas­sions by which it was at first vilified and op­posed, now stand in its defence, and turn their vehemence against honest emulation.

HE that succeeds a celebrated writer, has the same difficulties to encounter; he stands under the shade of exalted merit, and is hindered from rising to his natural height, by the interception of those beams which should invigorate and quicken him. He ap­plies to that attention which is already en­gaged, [Page 135] and unwilling to be drawn off from certain satisfaction; or perhaps to an attention already wearied, and not to be recalled to the same object. One of the old poets congratu­lates himself that he has the untrodden regi­ons of Parnassus before him, and that his garland will be gathered from plantations which no writer had yet culled. But the imi­tator treads a beaten walk, and with all his diligence can only hope to find a few flow­ers or branches untouched by his predecessor, the refuse of contempt, or the omissions of negligence. The Macedonian conqueror, when he was once invited to hear a man that sung like a nightingale, replied with con­tempt, "that he had heard the nightingale herself;" and the same treatment must every man expect, whose praise is, that he imitates another.

YET, in the midst of these discouraging reflections, I am about to offer to my reader some observations upon Paradise Lost, and hope, that however I may fall below the illu­strious writer who so long dictated to the commonwealth of learning, my attempt may not be wholly useless. There are in every [Page 136] age, new errors to be rectify'd, and new pre­judices to be opposed. False taste is always busy to mislead those that are entering upon the regions of learning; and the traveller, uncertain of his way, and forsaken by the sun, will be pleased to see a fainter orb arise on the horizon, that may rescue him from total darkness, though with weak and bor­rowed lustre.

ADDISON, though he has considered this poem under most of the general topicks of criticism, has barely touched upon the ver­sification; not probably because he thought the art of numbers unworthy of his notice, for he knew with how minute attention the ancient criticks considered the disposition of syllables, and had himself given hopes of some metrical observations upon that great Roman poet; but being the first who under­took to display the beauties, and point out the defects of Milton, he had many objects at once before him, and passed willingly over those which were most barren of ideas, and required labour, rather than genius.

[Page 137] YET versification, or the art of modulat­ing his Numbers, is indispensably necessary to a poet. Every other power by which the at­tention is fixed, the understanding enlighten­ed, or the imagination enchanted, may be exercised in prose. But the poet has this pe­culiar superiority, that to all the powers which the perfection of every other composition can require, he adds the faculty of joining musick with reason, and of acting at once upon the senses and the passions. I suppose there are few who do not feel themselves touched by poetical melody, and who will not confess that they are more or less moved by the same thoughts, as they are conveyed by dif­ferent sounds, and more affected by the same words in one order, than in another. The perception of harmony is indeed conserred upon men in degrees very unequal, but there are none who do not perceive it, or to whom a regular series of proportionate sounds can­not give delight.

IN treating on the versification of Mil­ton I am desirous to be generally understood, and shall therefore studiously decline the dia­lect of grammarians; though, indeed, it is [Page 138] always difficult and sometimes scarcely possi­ble to deliver the precepts of an art without the terms by which the peculiar ideas of that art are expressed, and which had not been invented but because the language already in use, was insufficient. If therefore I shall sometimes seem obscure, may it be imputed to this voluntary interdiction, and to a de­sire of avoiding that offence which is always given by unusual words.

THE heroic measure of the English lan­guage may be properly considered as pure or mixed. It is pure when the accent rests up­on every second syllable through the whole line.

[Page 139] The accent may be observed in the second line of Dryden, and the second and fourth of Mil­ton, to repose upon every second syllable.

THE repetition of this sound or percus­sion at equal times is the most complete har­mony of which a single verse is capable, and should therefore be exactly kept in di­stichs, and generally in the last line of a paragraph, that the ear may rest without any sense of imperfection.

BUT, to preserve the series of sounds un­transposed in a long composition, is not only very difficult but tiresome and disgusting; for we are soon wearied with the perpetual re­currence of the same cadence. Necessity has therefore enforced the mixed measure, in which some variation of the accents is allow­ed; this, though it always injures the har­mony of the line considered by itself, yet compensates the loss by relieving us from the continual tyranny of the same sound, and makes us more sensible of the harmony of the pure measure.

OF these mixed numbers every poet affords us innumerable instances, and Milton seldom [Page 140] has two pure lines together, as will appear if any of his paragraphs be read with attention merely to the musick.

In this passage it will be at first observed, that all the lines are not equally harmonious, and upon a nearer examination it will be found that only the fifth and ninth lines are regular, and the rest are more or less licentious with [Page 141] respect to the accent. In some the accent is equally upon two syllables together, and in both strong. As

In others the accent is equally upon two syllables, but upon both weak.

In the first pair of syllables the accent may deviate from the rigour of exactness without any unpleasing diminution of harmony, as may be observed in the lines already cited, and more remarkably in this

But, excepting in the first pair of syllables, which may be considered as arbitrary, a poet who, not having the invention or knowledge of Milton, has more need to allure his audi­ence by musical cadences, should seldom suf­fer more than one aberration from the rule in any single verse.

[Page 142] THERE are two lines in this passage more remarkably unharmonious.

Here the third pair of syllables in the first, and fourth pair in the second verse, have their accents retrograde or inverted; the first syl­lable being strong or acute, and the second weak. The detriment which the measure suffers by this inversion of the accents is sometimes less perceptible, when the verses are carried one into another, but is remarkably striking in this place, where the vicious verse concludes a period; and is yet more offen­sive in rhyme, when we regularly attend to the flow of every single line. This will ap­pear by reading a couplet in which Cowley, an author not sufficiently studious of harmony, has committed the same fault.

In these the law of metre is very grossly vio­lated by mingling combinations of sound di­rectly opposite to each other, as Milton ex­presses it in his sonnet, by committing short [Page 143] and long, and setting one part of the measure as variance with the rest. The ancients, who had a language more capable of variety than ours, had two kinds of verse, the lam­bick, consisting of short and long syllables al­ternately, from which our heroick measure is derived, and the Trochaick, consisting in a like alternation of long and short. These were considered as opposites, and conveyed the contrary images of speed and slowness; to confound them, therefore, as in these lines, is to deviate from the established practice. But where the senses are to judge, authori­ty is not necessary, the ear is sufficient to detect dissonance, nor should I have sought auxiliaries on such an occasion against any name but that of Milton.

NUMB. 87. TUESDAY, Jan. 15, 1751.

THAT few things are so liberally be­stowed, or squandered with so little effect, as good advice, has been generally observed; and many sage positions have been advanced concerning the reasons of this com­plaint, and the means of removing it. It is, indeed, an important and noble enquiry, for little would be wanting to the happiness of life, if every man could conform to the right as soon as he was shown it.

THIS perverse neglect of the most salutary precepts, and stubborn resistance of the most pathetic persuasion, is usually imputed to him by whom the counsel is received, and we therefore often hear it mentioned as a sign of hopeless and abandoned depravity, that tho' good advice was given, it has wrought no re­formation.

[Page 145] OTHERS who imagine themselves to have quicker sagacity and deeper penetration, have found out, that the inefficacy of advice is u­sually the fault of the counsellor, and rules have therefore been laid down, by which this important duty may be successfully per­formed: We are directed by what tokens to discover the favourable moment at which the heart is disposed for the operation of truth and reason, with what address to administer and with what vehicles to disguise the catharticks of the soul.

BUT, notwithstanding this specious ex­pedient, we find the world yet in the same state; advice is still given, but still received with disgust; nor has it appeared that the bitterness of the medicine has been yet abated, or its power encreased by any methods of preparing it.

IF we consider the manner in which those who assume the office of directing the con­duct of others execute their undertaking, it will not be very wonderful that their labours, however zealous or affectionate, are fre­quently useless. For what is the advice that is commonly given? A few general max­ims, [Page 146] enforced with vehemence and inculcated with importunity, but failing for want of particular reference, and immediate appli­cation.

IT is not often that any man can have so much knowledge of another, as is necessary to make instruction useful. We are some­times not ourselves conscious of the original motives of our actions, and when we know them, our first care is to hide them from the sight of others, and often from those most di­ligently, whose superiority either of power or understanding may intitle them to in­spect our lives; it is therefore very probable that he who endeavours the cure of our intel­lectual maladies, mistakes their cause; and that his prescriptions avail nothing, because he knows not which of the passions or desires is vitiated.

ADVICE, as it always gives a temporary appearance of superiority, can never be very grateful, even when it is most necessary or most judicious. But for the same reason every one is eager to instruct his neighbours. To be wise or to be virtuous, is to buy dignity [Page 147] and importance at a high price; but when nothing is necessary to elevation but detec­tion of the follies or the faults of others, no man is so insensible to the voice of fame as to linger on the ground.

VANITY is so frequently the apparent motive of advice, that we, for the most part, summon our powers to oppose it with­out any very accurate enquiry whether it is right. It is sufficient that another is grow­ing great in his own eyes at our expence, and that he assumes an authority over us without our permission; for many would be content­ed to suffer the consequences of their own mistakes, rather than the insolence of him who triumphs as their deliverer.

IT is, indeed, seldom found that any ad­vantages are enjoyed with that moderation which the uncertainty of all human good so powerfully enforces; and therefore the ad­viser may justly suspect, that he has inflamed [Page 148] the opposition which he laments by arrogance and superciliousness, though, indeed, he can rarely be certain, that the softest language or most humble diffidence would have escaped resentment; for scarcely any degree of cir­cumspection can prevent or obviate the rage with which the slothful, the impotent, and the unsuccessful, vent their discontent upon those that excel them, endeavour to eclipse the beauties which they cannot outshine, and to retard the speed which they cannot over­take. Modesty itself, if it is praised, will be envied; and there are minds so impatient of inferiority, that their gratitude is a species of revenge, and they return benefits, not be­cause recompence is a pleasure, but because obligation is a pain.

THE number of those whom the love of themselves has thus far corrupted, is perhaps not great; but there are few so free from vanity as not to dictate to those who will hear their instructions with a visible sense of their own beneficence; and few to whom it is not un­pleasing to receive documents, however ten­derly and cautiously delivered, or who are [Page 149] not willing to raise themselves from pupillage, by disputing the propositions of their teacher.

IT was the maxim, I think, of Alphonsus of Arragon, that dead counsellors are safest. The grave puts an end to flattery and arti­fice, and the information that we receive from books is pure from interest, fear, or am­bition. Dead counsellors are likewise most instructive; because they are heard with pa­tience and with reverence. We are not un­willing to believe that man wiser than our­selves, from whose abilities we may receive advantage, without any danger of rivalry or opposition, and who affords us the light of his experience, without hurting our eyes by flashes of insolence,

BY the consultation of books, whether of dead or living authors, many temptations to petulance and opposition, which occur in oral conferences, are avoided. An author can­not obtrude his advice unasked, nor can be often suspected of any malignant intention to insult his readers with his knowledge or his wit. Yet so prevalent is the habit of com­paring [Page 150] ourselves with others, while they re­main within the reach of our passions, that books are seldom read with complete impar­tiality, but by those from whom the writer is placed at such a distance that his life or death is indifferent.

WE see that volumes may be perused, and perused with attention, to little effect; and that maxims of prudence, or principles of vir­tue, may be treasured in the memory without influencing the conduct. Of the numbers that pass their lives among books, very few read to be made wiser or better, apply any ge­neral reproof of vice to themselves, or try their own manners by axioms of justice. They pur­pose either to consume those hours for which they can find no other amusement; to gain or preserve that respect which the learned have always obtained; or to gratify their curiosity with knowledge, which, like treasure buried and forgotten, is of no use to others or them­selves.

"THE preacher, (says a French author) may spend an hour in explaining and en­forcing a precept of religion, without feel­ing [Page 151] any impression from his own perform­ance, because he may have no further de­sign than to fill up his hour." A student may easily exhaust his life in comparing di­vines and moralists, without any practical regard to morality or religion; he may be learning not to live but to reason; he may regard only the elegance of stile, justness of argument, and accuracy of method; and may enable himself to criticise with judgment, and dispute with subtilty, while the chief use of his volumes is unthought of, his mind is unaf­fected, and his life is unreformed.

BUT though truth and virtue are thus frequently defeated by pride, obstinacy, or folly, we are not allowed to desert them, for whoever can furnish arms which they have not hitherto employed, may enable them to gain some hearts which would have resisted any other method of attack. Every man of genius has some arts of fixing the at­tention peculiar to himself, by which, honest­ly exerted, he may benefit mankind; for the arguments for purity of life fail of their due influence, not because they have been consi­dered and confuted, but because they have [Page 152] been passed over without consideration. To the position of Tully, that if Virtue could be seen she must be loved, may be added, that if Truth could be heard, she must be obeyed.

NUMB. 88. SATURDAY, Jan. 19. 1751.

[Page] CONFIRMED and animated by this illu­strious precedent, I shall continue my inquiries into Milton's art of versification. Since, how­ever minute and trivial the employment may appear, of analysing lines into syllables, and whatever ridicule may be incurred by a so­lemn deliberation upon accents and pauses, it is certain that without this petty knowledge no man can be a poet; and that from the pro­per disposition of single sounds results that harmony that adds force to reason, and gives grace to sublimity; that shackles attention, and governs passion.

THAT verse may be melodious and pleas­ing, it is necessary, not only that the words be so ranged as that the accent may fall on its proper place, but that the syllables themselves be so chosen as to flow smoothly into one an­other. This is to be effected by a propor­tionate mixture of vowels and consonants, and by tempering the mute consonants with liquids and semivowels. The Hebrew grammarians have observ'd, that it is impossible to pronounce two consonants without the intervention of a vowel, or without some emission of the breath between one and the other; this is longer and more perceptible, as the sounds of the [Page 154] consonants are less harmonically conjoined, and, by consequence, the flow of the verse is longer interrupted.

IT is pronounced by Dryden, that a line of monosyllables is almost always harsh. This, with regard to our language, is evi­dently true, not because monosyllables cannot compose harmony, but because our monosyl­lables being of Teutonic original, or formed by contraction, commonly begin and end with consonants, as,

THE difference of harmony arising princi­pally from the collocation of vowels and con­sonants, will be sufficiently conceived by at­tending to the following passages.

THE same comparison that I propose to be made between the fourth and sixth verses of this passage, may be repeated between the last lines of the following quotations.

MILTON, whose ear had been accu­stomed, not only to the musick of the antient tongues, which, however vitiated by our pronunciation, excel all that are now in use, but to the softness of the Italian, the most mellifluous of all modern poetry, seems fully convinced of the unfitness of our language for smooth versification, and is therefore [Page 156] pleased with an opportunity of calling in a softer word to his assistance; for this reason, and I believe for this only, he sometimes in­dulges himself in a long series of proper names, and introduces them where they add little but musick to his poem.

HE has indeed, been more attentive to his syllables than to his accents, and does not of­ten offend by collisions of consonants, or openings of vowels upon each other, at least not more often than other writers who have had less important or complicated subjects to take off their care ftom the cadence of their lines.

THE great peculiarity of Milton's versifi­cation, compared with that of later poets, is [Page 157] the elision of one vowel before another, or the suppression of the last syllable of a word ending with a vowel, when a vowel begins the following word. As

THIS licence, though now disused in Eng­lish poetry, is yet allowed in many other languages antient and modern, and therefore the critics on Paradise Lost have, without much deliberation, commended Milton for continuing it. But one language cannot communicate its rules to another. We have already tried and rejected the hexameter of the antients, the double close of the Italians, and the Alex­andrine of the French; and therefore the elision of vowels, however graceful it may seem to other nations, is not consequently suitable to the genius of the English Tongue.

THERE is, indeed, reason to believe that we have negligently lost part of our vowels, and that the silent e which our ancestors added to most of our monosyllables, was once vocal. By this detruncation of our syllables, our [Page 158] language is over-stocked with consonants, and it is more necessary to add vowels to the be­ginning of words, than to cut them off from the end.

MILTON therefore seems to have some­what mistaken the nature of our language, of which the chief defect is ruggedness and asperity, and has left our harsh cadences yet harsher. But his elisions are not all equally to be censured; in some syllables they may be allowed, and perhaps in a few days may be safely imitated. The abscision of a vowel is undoubtedly vicious when it is strongly sounded, and makes, with its associate conso­nant, a full and audible syllable.

I BELIEVE every reader will agree that in all those passages, though not equally in all, the music is injured, and in some the meaning obscured. There are other lines in which the vowel is cut off, but it is so faintly pronounced in common speech, that the loss of it in poetry is scarcely perceived; and therefore such com­pliance with the measure may be allowed.

YET even these contractions encrease the roughness of a language too rough already; and though in long Poems they may be some­times suffered, yet it never can be faulty to forbear them.

MILTON frequently uses in his poems the hypermetrical or redundant line of eleven syllables.

VERSES of this kind occur almost in every page; but though they are not unpleasing or dissonant, they ought not to be admitted into heroic poetry, since the narrow limits of our language allow us no other distinction of epic and tragic measures, than is afforded by the liberty of changing at will the terminiation [Page 161] of the dramatic lines, and bringing them by that relaxation of metrical rigour nearer to prose.

NUMB. 89. TUESDAY, Jan. 22, 1751.

LOCKE, whom there is no reason to suspect of being a favourer of idleness or libertinism, has advanced, that whoever hopes to employ any part of his time with efficacy and vigour, must allow some of it to pass in trifles. It is beyond the powers of humanity to spend a whole life in profound study and intense meditation, and the most ri­gorous exacters of industry and seriousness, have appointed hours for relaxation and a­musement.

IT is certain, that, with or without our consent, many of the few moments allotted us will slide imperceptibly away, and that the mind will break, from confinement to it; stated task, into sudden excursions. Severe and con­nected [Page 162] attention is preserved but for a short time, and when a man shuts himself up in his closet, and bends his thoughts to the discussion of any abstruse question, he will find his fa­culties continually stealing away to more pleas­ing entertainments. He often perceives him­self transported, he knows not how, to distant tracts of thought, and return to his first object as from a dream, without knowing when he forsook it, or how long he has been abstracted from it.

IT has been observed that the most studious are not always the most learned. There is, indeed, no great difficulty in discovering that this difference of proficiency may arise from the difference of intellectual powers, of the choice of books, or the convenience of infor­mation. But I believe it likewise frequently happens that the most recluse are not the most vigorous prosecutors of study. Many impose upon the world, and many upon themselves, by an appearance of severe and exemplary di­ligence, when they, in reality, give them­selves up to the luxury of fancy, please their minds with regulating the past, or planning out the future; place themselves at will in varied situations of happiness, and slumber away their [Page 163] days in voluntary visions. In the journey of life some are left behind, because they are natu­rally feeble and slow; some because they miss the way, and many because they leave it by choice, and instead of pressing onward with a steady pace, delight themselves with momen­tary deviations, turn aside to pluck every flower, and repose in every shade.

THERE is nothing more fatal to a man whose business is to think, than to have learned the art of regaling his mind with those airy gratifications. Other vices or follies are re­strained by fear, reformed by admonition, or rejected by the conviction which the compa­rison of our conduct with that of others, may in time produce. But this invisible riot of the mind, this secret prodigality of being is secure from detection, and fearless of reproach. The dreamer retires to his apartments, shuts out the cares and interruptions of mankind, and abandons himself to his own fancy; new worlds rise up before him, one image is fol­lowed by another, and a long succession of delights dances round him. He is at last called back to life by nature, or by custom, and enters peevish into society, because he [Page 164] cannot model it to his own will. He returns from his idle excursions with the asperity, tho' not with the knowledge, of a student, and hastens again to the same felicity with the eagerness of a man bent upon the advance­ment of some favourite science. The insatu­ation strengthens by degrees, and, like the poison of opiates, weakens his powers with­out any external symptom of malignity.

IT happens, indeed, that these hypocrites of learning are in time detected, and con­vinced by disgrace and disappointment of the difference between the labour of thought, and the sport of musing. But this discovery is of­ten not made till it is too late to recover the time that has been fooled away. A thou­sand accidents may, indeed, awaken drones to a more early sense of their danger and their shame. But they who are con­vinced of the necessity of breaking from this habitual drowsiness, too often relapse in spite of their resolution; for these ideal seducers are always near, and neither any particularity of time nor place is necessary to their influ­ence; they invade the soul without warning, and have often charmed down resistance be­fore their approach is perceived or suspected.

[Page 165] THIS captivity, however, it is necessary for every man to break, who has any desire to be wise or useful, to pass his life with the esteem of others, or to look back with satis­faction from his old age upon his earlier years. In order to regain liberty, he must find the means of flying from himself; he must, in opposition to the Stoick precept, teach his desires to fix upon external things; he must adopt the joys and the pains of others, and excite in his mind the want of social pleasures and amicable communi­cation.

IT is perhaps, not impossible to promote the cure of this mental malady, by close ap­plication to some new study, which may pour in fresh ideas, and keep curiosity in per­petual motion. But study requires solitude, and solitude is a state dangerous to those who are too much accustomed to sink into themselves. Active employment, or publick pleasure, is generally a necessary part of this intellectual regimen, without which, though some remission may be ob­tained, a compleat cure will scarcely be effected.

[Page 166] THIS is a formidable and obstinate disease of the intellect, of which, when it has once become radicated by time, the remedy is one of the hardest tasks of reason and of virtue. Its slightest attacks, therefore, should be watchfully opposed; and he that finds the frigid and narcotick infection beginning to seize him, should turn his whole attention against it, and check it at the first discovery by proper counteraction.

THE great resolution to be formed, when happiness and virtue are thus formidably in­vaded, is, that no part of life be spent in a state of neutrality or indifference; but that some pleasure be found for every moment that is not devoted to labour; and that, when­ever the necessary business of life grows irk­some, or disgusting, an immediate transition be made to diversion and gaiety.

AFTER the exercises which the health of the body requires, and which have themselves a natural tendency to actuate and invigorate the mind, the most eligible amusement of a rational being seems to be that interchange of thoughts which is practised in free and [Page 167] easy conversation; where suspicion is banish­ed by experience, and emulation by benevo­lence; where every man speaks with no other restraint than unwillingness to offend, and hears with no other disposition than desire to be pleased.

THERE must be a time in which every man trifles; and the only choice that nature offers us, is, to trifle in company or alone. To join profit with pleasure, has been an old precept among men who have had very dif­ferent conceptions of profit. All have agreed that our amusements should not terminate whol­ly in the present moment, but contribute more or less to future advantage. He that amuses himself among well chosen companions, can scarcely fail to receive, from the most careless and obstreperous merriment which virtue can allow some useful hints; nor can converse on the most familiar topics, without some casual information. The loose sparkles of thought­less wit may give new light to the mind, and the gay contention for paradoxical positions rectify the opinions.

[Page 168] THIS is the time in which those friend­ships that give happiness or consolation, re­lief or security, are generally formed. A wise and good man is never so amiable as in his unbended and familiar intervals. Heroic generosity, or philosophical discoveries may compel veneration and respect, but love al­ways implies some kind of natural or volun­tary equality, and is only to be excited by that levity and chearfulness which disencum­bers all minds from awe and solicitude, invites the modest to freedom, and exalts the timo­rous to confidence. This ease and frankness is certain to please, whatever be the character of him that exerts it; if our superiors descend from their elevation, we love them for lessen­ing the distance at which we are placed below them; and inferiors, from whom we can re­ceive no lasting advantage, will always keep our affections while their sprightliness and mirth contributes to our pleasure.

EVERY man finds himself differently af­fected by the sight of fortresses of war, and palaces of pleasure; we look on the height and strength of the bulwarks with a kind of [Page 169] gloomy satisfaction, for we cannot think of defence without admitting images of danger; but we range delighted and jocund through the gay apartments of the palace, because nothing is impressed by them on the mind but joy and festivity. Such is the difference between great and amiable characters; with protectors we are safe, with companions we are happy.

NUMB. 90. SATURDAY, Jan. 26, 1751.

IT is very difficult to write on the minuter parts of literature without failing either to please or instruct. Too much nicety of detail disgusts the greatest part of readers, and to throw a multitude of particulars under ge­neral heads, and lay down rules of extensive comprehension, is to common understandings of little use. They who undertake these sub­jects are therefore always in danger, as one or other inconvenience arises to their imagi­nation, of frighting us with rugged science, or amusing us with empty sound.

IN criticising the work of Milton, there is, indeed, opportunity to intersperse passages that can hardly fail to relieve the langours of attention; and since, in examining the va­riety and choice of the pauses with which he has diversified his numbers, it will be neces­sary to exhibit the lines in which they are to be found, perhaps the remarks may be well [Page 171] compensated by the examples, and the irk­someness of grammatical disquisitions some­what alleviated.

MILTON formed his scheme of versifica­tion by the poets of Greece and Rome, whom he proposed to himself for his models so far as the difference of his language from theirs would permit the imitation. There are in­deed many inconveniencies inseparable from our heroick measure compared with that of Homer and Virgil; inconveniencies, which, it is no reproach to Milton not to have overcome, because they are in their own nature insuperable; but against which he has struggled with so much art and diligence, that he may at least be said to have deserved success.

THE hexameter of the ancients may be considered as consisting of fifteen syllables, so melodiously disposed, that, as every one knows who has examined the poetical au­thors, very pleasing and sonorous lyrick mea­sures are formed from the fragments of the heroick. It is, indeed, scarce possible to break them in such a manner but that in­venias [Page 172] etiam disjecti membra poetae, some har­mony will still remain, and the due propor­tions of sound will always be discovered. This measure therefore allowed great variety of pauses, and great liberties of connecting one verse with another, because wherever the line was interrupted, either part singly was musical. But the ancients seem to have con­fined this privilege to hexameters; for in their other measures, though frequently longer than the English heroick, those who wrote after the refinements of versification venture so seldom to change their pauses, that every variation may be supposed rather a compliance with necessity than the choice of judgment.

MILTON, was constrained within the nar­row limits of a measure not very harmonious in the utmost perfection; the single parts, therefore, into which it was to be sometime; broken by pauses, were in danger of losing the very form of verse. This has, perhaps, notwithstanding all his care, sometimes hap­pened.

AS harmony is the end of poetical mea­sures, no part of a verse ought to be so sepa­rated from the rest as not to remain still [Page 173] more harmonious than prose, or to shew, by the disposition of the tones, that it is part of a verse. This rule in the old hexameter might be easily observed, but in English will very frequently be in danger of violation; for the order and regularity of accents cannot well be perceived in a succession of fewer than three syllables, which will confine the English poet to only five pauses; it being supposed, that, when he connects one line with another, he should never make a full pause at less distance than that of three syl­lables from the beginning or end of a verse.

THAT this rule should be universally and indispensably established, perhaps cannot be granted; something may be allowed to variety, and something to the adaptation of the numbers to the subject; but it will be found generally necessary, and the ear will seldom fail to suffer by its neglect.

THUS when a single syllable is cut off from the rest, it must either be united to the line with which the sense connects it, or be sounded alone. If it be united to the other line, it corrupts its harmony; if disjoined, [Page 174] it must, with regard to musick, be super­fluous; for there is no harmony in a single sound, because it has no proportion to an­other.

WHEN two syllables likewise are abscind­ed from the rest, they evidently want some associate sounds to make them harmonious.

THE same defect is perceived in the fol­lowing lines where the pause is at the se­cond syllable from the beginning.

WHEN the pause falls upon the third syl­lable or the seventh, the harmony is better preserved, but as the third and seventh are weak syllables, the period leaves the ear un­satisfied, and in expectation of the remaining part of the verse.

IT may be, I think, established as a rule, that a pause which concludes a period should be made for the most part upon a strong syllable, as the fourth and sixth; but those pauses which only suspend the Sense may be placed upon the weaker. Thus the rest in the third line of the first passage satisfies the ear better than in the fourth, and the close of the second quotation better than of the third.

THE rest in the fifth place has the same inconvenience as in the seventh and third, that the syllable is weak.

THE noblest and most majestic pauses which our versification admits, are upon the fourth and sixth syllables, which are both strongly sounded in a pure and regular verse, and at either of which the line is so divid­ed, that both members participate of har­mony.

BUT far above all others, if I can give any credit to my own ear, is the rest upon the sixth syllable, which taking in a complete compass of sound, such as is sufficient to con­stitute one of our lyrick measures, makes a full and solemn close. Some passages which conclude at this stop, I could never read with­out [Page 179] some strong emotions of delight or ad­miration.

[Page 180] IF the poetry of Milton be examined, with regard to the pauses and flow of his verses into each other, it will appear, that he has per­formed all that our language would admit; and the comparison of his numbers with those who have cultivated the same manner of writing, will show that he excelled as much in the lower as the higher parts of his art, and that his skill in harmony was not less than his invention or his learning.

NUMB. 91. TUESDAY, January 29, 1751.

THE SCIENCES having long seen their votaries labouring for the benefit of man­kind without reward, put up their petition to Jupiter for a more equitable distribution of riches and honours. Jupiter was moved at their complaints, and touched with the ap­proaching miseries of Men, whom the SCIEN­CES, wearied with perpetual ingratitude, were now threatening to forsake, and who would have been reduced by their departure to feed in dens upon the mast of trees, to hunt their prey in desarts, and to perish under the paws of animals stronger and fiercer than themselves.

A SYNOD of the celestials was therefore convened, in which it was resolved, that PA­TRONAGE should descend to the assistance of the SCIENCES. PATRONAGE was the Daughter of ASTREA, by a mortal father, and had been educated in the school of TRUTH, by the Goddesses, whom she was now appointed to protect. She had from her [Page 182] mother that dignity of aspect, which struck terror into false merit, and from her mistress that reserve, which made her only accessible to those whom the SCIENCES brought into her presence.

SHE came down, with the general acclama­tion of all the powers that favour learning. HOPE danced before her, and LIBERALI­TY stood at her side, ready to scatter by her direction the gifts which FORTUNE, who fol­lowed her, was commanded to supply. As she advanced towards Parnassus, the cloud which had long hung over it, was immediately dispelled. The shades, before withered with drought, spread their original verdure, and the flowers that had languished with chilness brightened their colours, and invigorated their scents; the Muses tuned their harps and ex­erted their voices; and all the conceit of nature welcomed her arrival.

ON Parnassus she fixed her residence, in a palace raised by the SCIENCES, and adorned with whatever could delight the eye, elevate the imagination, or enlarge the understand­ing. Here she dispersed the gifts of FOR­TUNE, with the impartiality of JUSTICE, [Page 183] and the discernment of TRUTH. Her gate stood always open, and HOPE sat at the portal, inviting to entrance all whom the SCIENCES numbered in their train. The court was therefore thronged with innumera­ble multitudes, of whom, though many returned disappointed, seldom any had confidence to complain; for PATRONAGE was universally known to neglect few, but for want of the due claims to her regard. Those, therefore, who had solicited her favour without success, generally withdrew from publick notice, and either diverted their attention to meaner em­ployments, or endeavoured to supply their deficiencies by closer application.

IN time, however, the number of those who had miscarried in their pretensions grew so great, that they became less ashamed of their repulses; and instead of hiding their disgrace in retirement, began to be­siege the gates of the palace, and obstruct the entrance of such as they thought likely to be more successful. The decisions of PA­TRONAGE, who was but half a Goddess, had been sometimes erroneous; and though she always made haste to rectify her mistakes, a few instances of her fallibility encouraged [Page 184] every one to appeal from her judgment to his own and that of his companions, who were always ready to clamour in the common cause, and elate each other with reciprocal applause.

HOPE was a steady friend to the disap­pointed, and IMPUDENCE incited them to accept a second invitation, and lay their claim again before PATRONAGE. They were again, for the most part, sent back with igno­miny, but found HOPE not alienated, and IMPUDENCE more resolutely zealous; they therefore, contrived new expedients, and hoped at last to prevail by their multitudes which were always encreasing, and their per­severance which HOPE and IMPUDENCE forbad them to relax.

PATRONAGE having been long a stranger to the heavenly assemblies, began to degene­rate towards terrestrial nature, and forget the precepts of JUSTICE and TRUTH. Instead of confining her friendship to the SCI­ENCES, she suffered herself, by little and lit­tle, to contract an acquaintance with PRIDE, the son of FALSEHOOD, by whose embraces she had two daughters, FLATTERY and CAPRICE. FLATTERY was nursed by LI­BERALITY, and CAPRICE by FORTUNE, [Page 185] without any assistance from the lessons of the SCIENCES.

PATRONAGE began openly to adopt the sentiments and imitate the manners of her husband, by whose opinion she now directed her decisions with very little heed to the precepts of TRUTH; and, as her daughters continually gained upon her affections, the SCIENCES lost their influence, till none found much reason to boast of their reception, but those whom CAPRICE or FLATTERY conducted to her throne.

THE throngs who had so long waited, and so often been dismissed for want of recommen­dation from the SCIENCES, were delighted to see the power of those rigorous Goddesses, tending to its extinction. Their patronesses now renewed their encouragements. HOPE smiled at the approach of CAPRICE, and IMPUDENCE was always at hand to intro­duce her clients to FLATTERY.

PATRONAGE had now learned to pro­cure herself reverence by ceremonies and formalities, and instead of admitting her pe­titioners to an immediate audience, ordered [Page 184] [...] [Page 185] [...] [Page 186] the antichamber to be erected, called among mortals, the Hall of Expectation. Into this hall the entrance was easy to those whom IM­PUDENCE had consigned to FLATTERY, and it was therefore crouded with a promis­cuous throng, assembled from every corner of the earth, pressing forward with the utmost eagerness of desire, and agitated with all the anxieties of competition.

THEY entered this general receptacle with ardour and alacrity, and made no doubt of speedy access under the conduct of FLAT­TERY to the presence of PATRONAGE. But it generally happened that they were here left to their destiny, for the inner doors were committed to CAPRICE, who opened and shut them, as it seemed, by chance, and rejected or admitted without any settled rule of distinction. In the mean time, the mise­rable attendants, were left to wear out their lives in alternate exultation and dejection, delivered up to the sport of SUSPICION who was always whispering into their ear designs against them which were never formed, and of ENVY who diligently pointed out the good fortune of one or other of their competitors. [Page 187] INFAMY flew round the hall, and scat­tered mildews from her wings, with which every one was stained; REFUTATION fol­lowed her with slower flight, and endea­voured to hide the blemishes with paint, which was immediately brushed away, or separated of itself, and left the stains more visible; nor were the spots of INFAMY ever effaced, but with limpid water effused by the hand of TIME from the well of TRUTH.

IT frequently happened that SCIENCE, unwilling to lose the antient prerogative of recommending to PATRONAGE, would lead her followers into the Hall of Expecta­tion; but they were soon discouraged from attending, for not only ENVY and SUS­PICION incessantly tormented them, but IM­PUDENCE considered them as intruders, and incited INFAMY to blacken them. They therefore quickly retired, but seldom without some spots which they could never wash away, and which shewed that they had once waited in the Hall of Expectation.

THE rest continued to expect the happy moment, at which CAPRICE should beckon them to approach; and endeavoured to pro­pitiate [Page 188] her not with Homerical harmony, the representation of great actions, or the recital of noble sentiments, but with soft and volup­tuous melody, intermingled with the praises of PATRONAGE and PRIDE, by whom they were heard at once with pleasure and contempt.

SOME were indeed admitted by CAPRICE, when they least expected it, and heaped by PATRONAGE with the gifts of FORTUNE, but they were from that time chained to her foot-stool, end condemned to regulate their lives by her glances and her nods; they seemed proud of their manacles, and seldom com­plained of any drudgery, however servile, or any affront, however contemptuous; yet they were often, notwithstanding their obedience, seized on a sudden by CAPRICE, divested of their ornaments, and thrust back into the Hall of Expectation.

HERE they mingled again with the tumult, and all, except a few whom experience had taught to seek happiness in the regions of li­berty, continued to spend hours, and days, and years, courting the smile of CAPRICE with the arts of FLATTERY; till at length [Page 189] new crouds pressed in upon them, and drove them forth at different outlets into the habita­tions of DISEASE, and SHAME, and PO­VERTY, and DESPAIR, where they passed the rest of their lives in narratives of promises and breaches of faith, of joys and sorrows, of hopes and disappointments.

THE SCIENCES, after a thousand indigni­ties, retired from the palace of PATRONAGE, and having long wandered over the world in grief and distress, were led at last to the cot­tage of INDEPENDANCE, the daughter of FORTITUDE; where they were taught by PRUDENCE and PARSIMONY to support themselves in dignity and quiet.

NUMB. 92. SATURDAY, Feb. 2, 1751.

IT has been long observed that the idea of beauty is vague and undefined, different in different minds, and diversified by time or place. It has been a term hitherto used to signify that which pleases us we know not why, and in our approbation of which we can justify ourselves only by the concurrence of numbers, without much power of enforc­ing our opinion upon others by any argu­ment, but example and authority. It is, in­deed, so little subject to the examinations of reason, that Paschal supposes it to end where demonstration begins, and maintains that without incongruity and absurdity we cannot speak of geometrical beauty

TO trace all the sources of that various pleasure which we ascribe to the agency of beauty, or to disentangle all the perceptions involved in its idea, would, perhaps, require [Page 191] a very great part of the life of Aristotle or Plato. It is, however, in many cases, ap­parent that this quality is merely relative and comparative; that we pronounce things beau­tiful, because they have something which we agree, for whatever reason, to call beauty, in a greater degree than we have been accus­tomed to find it in other things of the same kind; and that we transfer the epithet as our knowledge encreases, and appropriate it to higher excellence, when higher excellence comes within our view.

MUCH of the beauty of writing is of this kind; and therefore Boileau justly remarks, that the books which have stood the test of time, and been admired through all the changes which the mind of man has suffered from the various revolutions of knowledge, and the prevalence of contrary customs, have a better claim to our regard than any modern can boast, because the long continuance of their reputation proves that they are adequate to our faculties, and agreeable to nature.

IT is, however, the task of criticism to establish principles; to improve opinion into [Page 192] knowledge; and to distinguish those means of pleasing which depend upon known causes and rational deduction, from the nameless and inexplicable elegancies which appeal wholly to the fancy, from which we feel delight but know not how they produce it, and which may well be termed the enchan­tresses of the soul. Criticism reduces those regions of literature under the dominion of science, which have hitherto known only the anarchy of ignorance, the caprices of fancy, and the tyranny of prescription.

THERE is nothing in the art of versifying so much exposed to the power of imagination as the accommodation of the sound to the sense, or the representation of particular images, by the flow of the verse in which they are expressed. Every student has innu­merable passages, in which he, and perhaps he alone, discovers such resemblances; and since the attention of the present race of poetical readers seems particularly turned up­on this species of elegance, I shall endeavour to examine how much these in conformity have been observed by the poets, or directed by the criticks, how far they can be established upon [Page 193] nature and reason, and on what occasions they have been practised by Milton.

HOMER, the father of all poetical beauty, has been particularly celebrated by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, as he that, of all the poets, exhi­bited the greatest variety of sound; for there are, says he, innumerable passages, in which length of time, bulk of body, extremity of pas­sion, and stillness of repose; or, in which, on the contrary, brevity, speed, and eagerness, are evidently marked out by the sound of the syllables. Thus the anguish and slow pace with which the blind Polypheme groped out with his hands the entrance of his cave, are perceived in the ca­dence of the verses which describe it. ‘ [...]’

THUS the efforts of Achilles struggling in his armour against the current of a river, sometimes resisting and sometimes yielding, may be perceived in the elisions of the sylla­bles, the slow succession of the feet, and the strength of the consonants. ‘[Page 194] [...]’

WHEN he describes the crush of men dashed against a rock, he collects the most unpleasing and harsh sounds. ‘ [...]’

And when he would place before the eyes something dreadful and astonishing, he makes choice of the strongest vowels, and the letters of most difficult utterance. ‘ [...]’

MANY other examples Dionysius produces, but these will sufficiently shew that either he was fanciful, or we have lost the genuine pro­nunciation; for I know not whether in any one of these instances such similitude can be discovered. It seems, indeed, probable, that the veneration with which Homer was read, produced many suppositious beauties; for though it is certain, that the sound of many of his verses very justly corresponds with the [Page 195] things expressed, yet when the force of his imagination, which gave him full possession of every object, is considered together with the flexibility of his language, of which the syl­lables might be often contracted or dilated at pleasure, it will seem unlikely that such con­formity should happen less frequently even without design.

IT is not however to be doubted, that Virgil who wrote amidst the light of criticism, and who owed so much of his success to art and labour, endeavoured among other excel­lencies to exhibit this similitude; nor has he been less happy in this than in the other graces of versification. This felicity of his numbers was at the revival of learning displayed with great elegance by Vida in his art of poetry.

FROM the Italian Gardens Pope seems to have transplanted this flower, the growth of happier climates, into a soil less adapted to its nature, and less favourable to its increase.

FROM these lines laboured with great at­tention, and celebrated by a rival wit, may be judged what can be expected from the [Page 200] most diligent endeavours after this imagery of sound. The verse intended to represent the whisper of the vernal breeze, must be confessed not much to excel in softness or volubility; and the smooth stream, runs with a perpetual clash of jarring consonants. The noise and turbulence of the torrent, is, in­deed, distinctly imaged, for it requires very little skill to make our language rough; but in these lines, which mention the effort of Ajax, there is no particular heaviness, obstruction, or delay. The swiftness of Camilla is rather contrasted than exemplified; why the verse should be lengthened to express speed, will not easily be discovered. In the dactyls used for that purpose by the ancients, two short syl­lables were pronounced with such rapidity, as to be equal only to one long; they, therefore, naturally exhibit the act of passing through a long space in a short time. But the Alexan­drine, by its pause in the midst, is a tardy and stately measure; and the word unbending, one of the most sluggish and slow which our language affords, cannot much accelerate its motion.

[Page 201] THESE rules and these examples have taught our present criticks to enquire very studiously and minutely into sounds and ca­dences. It is, therefore, useful to examine with what skill they have proceeded; what discoveries they have made; and whether any rules can be established, which may guide us hereafter in such researches.

NUMB. 93. TUESDAY, February. 5, 1751.

THERE are few books on which more time is spent by young students, than on treatises which deliver the characters of au­thors; nor any which oftener deceive the ex­pectation of the reader, or fill his mind with more opinions which the progress of his studies and the encrease of his knowledge oblige him to resign.

BAILLET has introduced his collec­tion of the decisions of the learned, by an enumeration of the prejudices which mislead the critick, and raise the passions in rebellion against the judgment. His catalogue, though large, is imperfect; and who can hope to complete it? The beauties of writing have been observed to be often such as cannot in the present state of human knowledge be evinced by evidence, or drawn out into demon­strations; they are therefore wholly subject to the imagination, and do not force their ef­fects [Page 203] upon a mind preoccupied by unfavour­able sentiments, nor overcome the counter­action of a false principle or of stubborn par­tiality.

TO convince any man against his will is hard, but to please him against his will is justly pronounced by Dryden to be above the reach of human abilities. Interest and passion will hold out long against the closest siege of diagrams and syllogisms, but they are abso­lutely impregnable to imagery and sentiment; and will for ever bid defiance to the most powerful strains of Virgil or Homer, though they may give way in time to the batteries of Euclid or Archimedes.

IN trusting therefore to the sentence of a critick, we are in danger not only from that vanity which exalts writers too often to the dignity of teaching what they are yet to learn, from that negligence which sometimes steals upon the most vigilant caution, and that fal­libility to which the condition of nature has subjected every human understanding; but from a thousand extrinsick and accidental causes, from every thing which can excite kindness or malevolence, veneration or con­tempt.

[Page 204] MANY of those who have determined with great boldness, upon the various degrees of literary merit, may be justly suspected of hav­ing passed sentence, as Seneca remarks of Claudius,

without much knowledge of the cause before them; for it will not easily be imagined of Langbaine, Borrichitus or Rapin, that they had very accurately perused all the books which they praise or censure; or that, even if nature and learning had qualified them for judges, they could read for ever with the at­tention necessary to just criticism. Such per­formances, however, are not wholly without their use; for they are commonly just echoes to the voice of fame, and transmit the general suffrage of mankind when they have no par­ticular motives to suppress it.

CRITICKS, like all the rest of mankind, are very frequently misled by interest. The bigotry with which editors regard the authors whom they illustrate or correct, has been generally remarked. Dryden was known to have writ­ten [Page 205] most of his critical dissertations only to recommend the works, upon which he then happened to be employed; and Addison is suspected to have denied the expediency of poetical justice, because his own Cata was condemned to perish in a good cause.

THERE are prejudices which authors, not otherwise weak or corrupt, have indulged without scruple; and perhaps some of them are so complicated with our natural affections, that they cannot easily be disintangled from the heart. Scarce any can hear with impar­tiality a comparison between the writers of his own and another country; and though it cannot, I think, be charged equally on all nations, that they are blinded with this li­terary patriotism, yet there are none that do not look upon their authors with the fondness of affinity, and esteem them as well for the place of their birth, as for their know­ledge or their wit. There is, therefore, sel­dom much respect due to comparative criti­cism, when the competitors are of different countries, unless the judge is of a nation equally indifferent to both. The Italians could not for a long time believe, that there was any learning beyond the mountains; and [Page 206] the French seem generally persuaded, that there are no wits or reasoners equal to their own. I can scarcely believe that if Scaliger had not considered himself as allied to Virgil, by being born in the same country, he would have found his works so much superior to those of Homer, or have thought the contro­versy worthy of so much zeal, vehemence, and acrimony.

THERE is, indeed, one prejudice, and only one, by which it may be doubted whe­ther it is any dishonour to be sometimes mis­guided. Criticism has so often given occa­sion to the envious and ill-natured of gratify­ing their malignity, that some have thought it necessary to recommend the virtue of can­dour without limits or restriction, and to pre­clude all future ages from the liberty of cen­sure. Writers possessed with this opinion are continually enforcing the duties of civility and decency, recommending to criticks the proper diffidence of themselves, and inculcat­ing the veneration due to celebrated names.

I AM not of opinion that these professed enemies of arrogance and severity, have much [Page 207] more benevolence or modesty than the rest of mankind; or that they feel in their own hearts, any other intention than to distinguish themselves by their softness and delicacy. Some are modest because they are timorous, and some are lavish of praise because they hope to be repaid.

THERE is indeed some tenderness due to living writers, when they attack none of those truths which are of importance to the happi­ness of mankind, and have committed no other offence than that of betraying their own igno­rance or dulness. I should think it cruelty to crush an insect who had provoked me only by buzzing in my ear; and would not willingly interrupt the dream of harmless stupidity, or destroy the jest which makes its author laugh. Yet I am far from thinking this tenderness universally necessary; for he that writes may be considered as a kind of general challenger, whom every one has a right to attack; since he quits the common rank of life, steps for­ward beyond the lists, and offers his merit to the publick judgment. To commence au­thor is to claim praise, and no man can justly [Page 208] aspire to honour, but at the hazard of dis­grace.

BUT whatever be decided concerning con­temporaries, whom he that knows the trea­chery of the human heart, and considers how often we gratify our own pride or envy under the appearance of contending for elegance and propriety, will find himself not much in­clined to disturb; there can surely be no ex­emptions pleaded to secure them from criti­cism, who can no longer suffer by reproach, and of whom nothing now remains but their writings and their names. Upon these au­thors the critick is, undoubtedly, at full li­berty to exercise the strictest severity, since he endangers only his own fame, and, like Aeneas when he drew his sword in the infernal re­gions, encounters phantoms which cannot be wounded. He may indeed pay some regard to established reputation; but he can by that shew of reverence consult only his own secu­rity, for all other motives are now at an end.

THE faults of a writer of acknowledged excellence are more dangerous, because the influence of his example is more extensive; [Page 209] and the interest of learning requires that they should be discovered and stigmatized, before they have the sanction of antiquity conferred upon them, and become precedents of indis­putable authority.

IT has, indeed, been advanced by Addison, as one of the characteristicks of a true critick, that he points out beauties rather than faults. But it is rather natural to a man of learning and genius, to apply himself chiefly to the study of writers who have more beauties than faults to be displayed; for the duty of criti­cism is neither to depreciate, nor dignify by partial representations; but to hold out the light of reason, whatever it may discover; and to promulgate the determinations of truth, whatever she shall dictate.

NUMB. 94. SATURDAY, Feb. 9, 1751.

THE resemblance of poetick numbers to the subject which they mention or describe, may be considered as general or par­ticular; as consisting in the flow and structure of a whole passage taken together, or as com­prised in the sound of some emphatical and de­scriptive words, or in the cadence and harmo­ny of single verses.

THE general resemblance of the sound to the sense is to be found in every language which admits of poetry, in every author whose force of fancy enables him to impress images strongly on his own mind, and whose choice and variety of language readily sup­plies him with just representations. To such a writer it is natural to change his measures with his subject, even without any effort of [Page 211] the understanding, or intervention of the judgment. To revolve jollity and mirth ne­cessarily tunes the voice of a poet to gay and sprightly notes, as it fires his eye with vi­vacity; and reflection on gloomy situations and disastrous events, will sadden his num­bers, as it will cloud his countenance. But in such passages there is only the similitude of pleasure to pleasure, and of grief to grief, without any immediate application to parti­cular images. The same flow of joyous ver­sification will celebrate the jollity of marriage, and the exultation of triumph; and the same languor of melody will suit the complaints of an absent lover, as of a conquered king.

IT is scarcely to be doubted, that on many occasions we make the musick which we ima­gine ourselves to hear; that we modulate the poem by our own disposition, and a­scribe to the numbers the effects of the sense. We may observe in life, that it is not easy to deliver a pleasing message in an un­pleasing manner, and that we readily asso­ciate beauty and deformity with those whom for any reason we love or hate. Yet it would be too daring to declare that all the celebrat­ed [Page 212] adaptations of harmony are chimerical; that Homer had no extraordinary attention to the melody of his verse when he described a nuptial festivity; ‘ [...]’ that Vida was merely fanciful, when he sup­posed Virgil endeavouring to represent by un­common sweetness of numbers the adventi­tious beauty of Aeneas;

or that Milton did not intend to exemplify the harmony which he mentions:

[Page 213] THAT Milton understood the force of sounds well adjusted, and knew the compass and variety of the ancient measures, cannot be doubted, since he was both a musician and a critick; but he seems to have considered these conformities of cadence, as either not often attainable in our language, or as petty excellencies unworthy of his ambition; for it will not be found that he has always as­signed the same cast of numbers to the same subjects. He has given in two passages very minute descriptions of angelick beauty; but though the images are nearly the same, the numbers will be found upon comparison very different.

[Page 214] Some of the lines of this description are re­markably defective in harmony, and therefore by no means correspondent with that sym­metrical elegance and easy grace which they are intended to exhibit. The failure, how­ever, is fully compensated by the representa­tion of Raphael which equally delights the ear and imagination.

[Page 215] THE adumbration of particular and distinct images by an exact and perceptible resem­blance of sound, is sometimes studied, and sometimes casual. Every language has many words formed in imitation of the noises which they signify. Such are Stridor, Balo, and Boatus, in Latin; and in English to growl, to buzz, to hiss, and to jarr. Words of this kind give to a verse the proper simi­litude of sound without much labour of the writer, and such happiness is therefore to be attributed rather to fortune than skill; yet they are sometimes combined with great pro­priety, and undeniably contribute to enforce the impression of the idea. We hear the passing arrow in this line of Virgil; ‘Et fugit horrendum stridens elapsa sagitta;’ and the creaking of hell gates, in the de­scription by Milton;

[Page 216] BUT many beauties of this kind, which the moderns, and perhaps the ancients have observed, seem to be the product of blind reverence acting upon fancy. Dionysius him­self tells us, that the sound of Homer's verses sometimes exhibits the idea of corporeal bulk: is not this a discovery nearly approaching to that of the blind man, who after long en­quiry into the nature of the scarlet colour, found that it represented nothing so much as the clangor of a trumpet? the representative power of poetick harmony consists of sound and measure; of the force of the syllables singly considered, and of the time in which they are pronounced. Sound can resemble nothing but sound, and time can measure no­thing but motion and duration.

THE criticks, however, have struck out other similitudes; nor is there any irregu­larity of numbers which credulous admira­tion cannot discover to be eminently beautiful. Thus the propriety of each of these lines has been celebrated by writers whose opinion the world has reason to regard,

If all these observations are just, there must be some remarkable conformity between the sud­den succession of night to day, the fall of an ox under a blow, and the birth of a mouse from a mountain; since we are told of all these images, that they are very strongly im­pressed by the same form and termination of the verse.

WE may, however, without giving way to enthusiasm, admit that some beauties of this kind may be produced. A sudden stop at an unusual syllable may image the cessation of action, or the pause of discourse; and Milton has very happily imitated the repeti­tions of an echo,

[Page 218] THE measure or time of pronouncing may be varied so as very strongly to repre­sent, not only the modes of external motion, but the quick or slow succession of ideas, and consequently the passions of the mind. This at least was the power of the spondaick and dactylick harmony, but our language can reach no eminent diversities of sound. We can indeed sometimes, by encumbering and retarding the line, shew the difficulty of a progress made by strong efforts and with frequent interruptions, or mark a slow and heavy motion. Thus Milton has imaged the toil of Satan struggling through chaos,

thus he has described the leviathans or whales. ‘Wallowing, unweildy, enormous in their gait.’ But he has at other times neglected such re­presentations, as may be observed in the vo­lubility and levity of these lines, which ex­press an action tardy and reluctant.

IN another place, he describes the gentle glide of ebbing waters in a line remarkably rough and halting.

IT is not indeed to be expected, that the sound should always assist the meaning, but it ought never to counteract it; and therefore Milton has here certainly committed a fault like that of the player, who looked on the earth when he implored the heavens, and to the heavens when he addressed the earth.

THOSE who are determined to find in Milton an assemblage of all the excellencies [Page 220] which have enobled all other poets, will perhaps be offended that I do not celebrate his versification in higher terms; for there are readers who discover that in this passage, ‘So stretch'd out huge in length the arch­fiend lay,’ a long form is described in a long line; but the truth is, that length of body is only men­tioned in a slow line, to which it has only the resemblance of time to space, of an hour to a maypole.

THE same turn of ingenuity might per­form wonders upon the description of the ark;

In these lines the poet apparently designs to fix the attention upon bulk; but this is effect­ed by the enumeration, not by the measure; for what analogy can there be between modu­lations of sound, and corporeal dimensions.

[Page 221] MILTON, indeed, seems only to have re­garded this species of embellishment so far as not to reject it when it came unsought; which would often happen to a mind so vigo­rous, employed upon a subject so various and extensive. He had, indeed, a greater and a nobler work to perform; a single sentiment of moral or religious truth, a single image of life or nature, would have been cheaply lost for a thousand echoes of the cadence to the sense; and he who had undertaken to vindi­cate the ways of God to man, might have been accused of neglecting his cause, had he lavish­ed much of his attention upon syllables and sounds.

NUMB. 95. TUESDAY, Feb. 12, 1751.

NUMB. 96. SATURDAY, Feb. 16, 1751.

IT is reported of the Persians, by an an­cient writer that the sum of their education consisted in teaching youth to ride, to shoot with the bow, and to speak truth.

THE bow and the horse were easily ma­stered, but it would have been happy if we had been informed by what arts veracity was cultivated, and by what preservatives a Per­sian mind was secured against the temptations to falsehood.

THERE are, indeed, in the present cor­ruption of mankind, many incitements to forsake truth; the need of palliating our own faults, and the convenience of imposing on the ignorance or credulty of others so fre­quently occur, so many immediate evils are to be avoided, and so many present gratifica­tions obtained by craft and delusion, that very [Page 232] few of those who are much entangled in life, have spirit and constancy sufficient to sup­port them in the steady practice of open veracity.

IN order that all men may be taught to speak truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it; for no species of false­hood is more frequent than flattery, to which the coward is betrayed by fear, the dependent by interest, and the friend by tenderness: Those who are neither servile nor timorous, are yet desirous to bestow pleasure; and while unjust demands of praise continue to be made, there will always be some whom hope, fear or kindness will dispose to pay them.

THE guilt of falsehood is very widely ex­tended, and many whom their conscience can scarcely charge with stooping to a lye, have vitiated the morals of others by their vanity, and patronized the vice which they believe themselves to abhor.

TRUTH is, indeed, not often welcome for its own sake; it is generally unpleasing because contrary to our wishes and opposite to our practice; and as our attention naturally [Page 233] follows our interest, we very unwillingly hear what we are afraid to know, and very soon forget what we have no inclination to impress upon our memories.

FOR this reason many arts of instruction have been invented, by which the reluctance against Truth may be overcome, and as phy­sick is given to children in confections, pre­cepts have been hidden under a thousand ap­pearances, that mankind may be bribed by pleasure to escape destruction.

WHILE the world was yet in its infancy TRUTH came among mortals from above, and FALSEHOOD from below. TRUTH was the daughter of JUPITER and WISDOM; FALSEHOOD was the progeny of FOLLY impregnated by the wind. They advanced with equal confidence to seize the dominion of the new creation, and as their enmity and their force were well known to the celestials, all the eyes of heaven were turned upon the contest.

TRUTH seemed conscious of superior power and juster claim, and therefore came on towering and majestick, unassisted and [Page 234] alone; REASON indeed always attended her, but appeared her follower, rather than com­panion. Her march was slow and stately, but her motion was perpetually progressive, and when once she had grounded her foot, neither gods nor men could force her to retire.

FALSEHOOD always endeavoured to copy the mien and attitudes of TRUTH, and was very successful in the arts of mimickry. She was surrounded, animated, and supported by innumerable legions of appetites and pas­sions, but, like other seeble commanders, was obliged often to receive law from her allies. Her motions were sudden, irregular, and violent; for she had no steadiness nor con­stancy. She often gained conquests by hasty incursions, which she never hoped to keep by her own strength, but maintained by the help of the passions, whom she generally found resolute and faithful.

IT sometimes happened that the antagonists met in full opposition. In these encounters, FALSEHOOD always invested her head with clouds, and commanded FRAUD to place ambushes about her. In her left hand she [Page 235] bore the shield of IMPUDENCE, and the quiver of SOPHISTRY rattled on her shoul­der. All the passions attended at her call; VA­NITY clapped her wings before, and OB­STINACY supported her behind. Thus guarded and assisted, she sometimes advanced against TRUTH, and sometimes waited the attack; but always endeavoured to skirmish at a distance, perpetually shifted her ground, and let fly her arrows in different directions; for she certainly found that her strength fail­ed, whenever the eye of TRUTH darted full upon her.

TRUTH had the awful aspect though not the thunder of her father, and when the long continuance of the contest brought them near to one another, FALSEHOOD let the arms of SOPHISTRY fall from her grasp, and, hold­ing up the shield of IMPUDENCE with both her hands, sheltered herself amongst the passions.

TRUTH, though she was often wounded, always recovered in a short time; but it was common for the slightest hurt, received by FALSEHOOD, to spread its malignity to the [Page 236] neighbouring parts, and to burst open again when it seemed to have been cured.

FALSEHOOD, in a short time, found by experience that her superiority consisted only in the celerity of her course, and the changes of her posture. She therefore ordered SUSPI­CION to beat the ground before her, and a­voided with great care to cross the way of TRUTH, who, as she never varied her point, but moved constantly upon the same line, was easily escaped by the oblique and desultory movements, the quick retreats and active doubles which FALSEHOOD always practised, when the enemy began to raise terror by her approach.

BY this procedure FALSEHOOD every hour encroached upon the world, and extend­ed her empire through all climes and regions. Wherever she carried her victories she left the PASSIONS in full authority behind her; who were so well pleased with command, that they held out with great obstinacy when TRUTH came to seize their posts, and ne­ver failed to retard her progress though they could not always stop it: They yielded at [Page 237] last with great reluctance, frequent rallies, and sullen submission; and always inclined to revolt when TRUTH ceased to awe them by her immediate presence.

TRUTH who, when she first descended from the heavenly palaces, expected to have been received by universal acclamation, che­rished with kindness, heard with obedience, and invited to spread her influence from pro­vince to province, now found that, wherever she came, she must force her passage. Every intellect was precluded by PREJUDICE, and every heart preoccupied by PASSION. She indeed advanced, but she advanced slowly, and often lost the conquests which she left behind her, by sudden insurrections of the appetites, that shook off their allegiance, and ranged themselves again under the banner of her enemy.

TRUTH, however, did not grow weaker by the struggle, for her vigour was uncon­querable, yet she was provoked to see herself thus baffled and impeded by an enemy, whom she looked on with contempt, and who had no advantage but such as she owed to incon­stancy, [Page 238] weakness, and artifice. She there­fore, in the anger of disappointment, called upon her father JUPITER to re-establish her in the skies, and leave mankind to the disor­der and misery which they deserved by sub­mitting willingly to the usurpation of FALSE­HOOD.

JUPITER compassionated the world too much to grant her request, yet was willing to ease her labours and mitigate her vexation. He commanded her to consult the muses by what methods she might obtain an easier re­ception, and reign without the toil of inces­sant war. It was then discovered, that she obstructed her own progress by the severity of her aspect, and the solemnity of her dic­tates; and that men would never willingly admit her, till they ceased to fear her, since by giving themselves up to FALSEHOOD they seldom made any sacrifice of their ease or pleasure, because she took the shape that was most engaging, and always suffered her­self to be dressed and painted by DESIRE. The muses wove in the loom of Pallas, a loose and changeable robe, like that in which FALSEHOOD captivated her admirers; with this they invested TRUTH, and named her [Page 239] FICTION. She now went out again to conquer with more success; for when she de­manded entrance of the PASSIONS, they of­ten mistook her for FALSEHOOD, and deli­vered up their charge; but when she had once taken possession, she was soon disrobed by REASON, and shone out, in her original form, with native effulgence and resistless dignity.

NUMB. 97 TUESDAY, Feb. 19, 1751.

THE reader is indebted for this day's en­tertainment, to an author from whom the age has received greater favours, who has enlarged the knowledge of human nature, and taught the passions to move at the command of virtue.

NUMB. 98. SATURDAY, Feb. 23, 1751.

NUMB. 99. TUESDAY, February. 26, 1751.

IT has been ordained by providence, for the conservation of order in the im­mense variety of created nature, and for the regular propagation of the several classes of life with which the elements are peopled, that every creature should be drawn by some secret attraction to those of his own kind; and that not only the gentle and domestick animals which naturally unite into companies or cohabit by pairs, should continue faithful to their species, but even those ravenous and ferocious savages which Aristotle observes never to be gregarious, should range moun­tains and desarts in search of one another, rather than pollute the world with a mon­strous birth.

[Page 262] As the perpetuity and distinction of the lower tribes of the creation require that they should be determined to proper mates by some uniform motive of choice, or some co­gent principle of instinct; it is necessary likewise, that man whose wider capacity de­mands more gratifications, and who feels in himself innumerable wants, which a life of solitude cannot supply, and innumerable pow­ers to which it cannot give employment, should be led to suitable companions by particular in­fluence; that among many beings of the same nature with himself, he may select some for intimacy and tenderness, and improve the condition of his existence, by superadding friendship to humanity, and the love of indi­viduals to that of the species.

OTHER animals are so formed, that they seem to contribute very little to the happi­ness of each other, and know neither joy, nor grief, nor love, nor hatred, but as they are urged by some desire immediately sub­servient either to the support of their own lives, or to the continuation of their race; they therefore seldom appear to regard any of the minuter discriminations which distinguish [Page 263] creatures of the same kind from one ano­ther.

BUT if man were to feel no incentives to kindness, more than his general tendency to congenial nature, Babylon or London, with all their multitudes, would have to him the desolation of a wilderness; his affections, not compressed into a narrower compass, would vanish like elemental fire, in boundless eva­poration, he would languish in perpetual in­sensibility, suspended between different im­pulses; and though he might, perhaps, in the first vigour of youth, amuse himself with the fresh enjoyments of life, yet, when cu­riosity should cease, and alacrity subside, he would abandon himself to the fluctuations of chance, without expecting help against any calamity, or feeling any wish for the happiness of others.

TO love all men is our duty, so far as it includes a general habit of benevolence, and readiness of occasional kindness; but to love all equally is impossible, at least impossible without the extinction of those passions which now produce all our pains and all our plea­sures, without the disuse, if not the aboli­tion [Page 264] of some of our faculties, and the sup­pression of all our hopes and fears in apathy and indifference.

THE necessities of our condition require a thousand offices of tenderness, which mere regard for the species will never dictate. E­very man has frequent grievances which only the solicitude of friendship will discover and remedy, and which would remain for ever unheeded in the mighty heap of human cala­mity, were it only surveyed by the eye of ge­neral benevolence equally attentive to every misery.

THE great community of mankind is therefore, necessarily broken into smaller in­dependent societies; these form distinct inte­rests, which are too frequently opposed to each other, and which they who have entered into the league of particular governments falsely think it virtue to promote, however destructive to the happiness of the rest of the world.

SUCH unions are again separated into subordinate classes and combinations, and so­cial [Page 265] life is perpetually branched out into mi­nuter subdivisions, till it terminates in the last ramifications of private friendship.

THAT friendship may at once be fond and lasting, it has been already observed in these papers, that a conformity of inclinations is necessary. No man can have much kind­ness for him by whom he does not believe himself esteemed, and nothing so evidently proves esteem as imitation.

THAT benevolence is always strongest which arises from participation of the same pleasures, since we are naturally most willing to revive in our minds the memory of persons, with whom the idea of enjoyment is con­nected.

IT is commonly, therefore, to little pur­pose that any one endeavours to ingratiate himself with such as he cannot accompany in their amusements and diversions. Men have been known to rise to favour and to fortune, only by being skilful in the sports with which their patron happened to be de­lighted, by concurring with his taste for some particular species of curiosities, by relish­ing [Page 266] the same wine, or applauding the same cookery.

EVEN those whom their wisdom or their virtue have placed above regard to such petty recommendations, must nevertheless be gained by similitude of manners. The highest and noblest enjoyment of familiar life, the com­munication of knowledge and reciprocation of sentiments, must always presuppose a dis­position to the same inquiry, and delight in the same discoveries.

WITH what satisfaction could the politi­cian lay his schemes for the reformation of laws, or his comparisons of different forms of government, before the chemist, who has never accustomed his thoughts to any other object than salt and sulphur; or how could the astronomer, in explaining his calculations and conjectures, endure the coldness of a grammarian, who would lose sight of Jupiter and all his satellites, for a happy etymology of an obscure word, or a better explication of a controverted line.

EVERY man loves merit of the same kind with his own, when it is not likely to hin­der [Page 267] his advancement or his reputation; for he not only best understands the worth of those qualities which he labours to cultivate, or the usefulness of the art which he practises with success, but always feels a reflected plea­sure from the praises, which, though given to another, belong equally to himself.

THERE is indeed no need of research and refinement to discover that men must generally select their companions from their own state of life, since there are not many minds furnished for great variety of conversation, or adapted to multiplicity of intellectual entertainments.

THE sailor, the academick, the lawyer, the mechanick, and the courtier, have all a cast of talk peculiar to their own fraternity, have fixed their attention upon the same events, have been engaged in affairs of the same sort, and make use of allusions and illustrations which themselves only can understand.

TO be infected with the jargon of a particu­lar profession, and to know only the language of a single rank of mortals, is indeed suffi­ciently despicable. But as limits must be always set to the excursions of the human [Page 268] mind, there will be some study which every man more zealously prosecutes, some darling subject on which he is principally pleased to converse, and he that can most inform or best understand him, will certainly be wel­comed with particular regard.

SUCH partiality is not wholly to be avoided, nor is it culpable unless suffered so far to pre­dominate as to produce aversion from every other kind of excellence, and to shade the lustre of dissimilar virtues. Those, therefore, whom the lot of life has conjoined, should endeavour constantly to approach towards the inclination of each other, invigorate every motion of concurrent desire, and fan every spark of kindred curiosity.

IT has been justly observed, that discord generally operates in little things; it is in­flamed to its utmost vehemence by contra­riety of taste, oftener than of principles; and might therefore commonly be avoided by in­nocent conformity, which, if it was not at first the motive, ought always to be the con­sequence of indissoluble union.

NUMB. 100. SATURDAY, March 2. 1751.