luted its most serious interlocutions with buffoonery and meanness; but though perhaps it cannot be pretended that the prefent age has added much to the force and efficacy of the drama, it has at least been able to escape many faults, which either ignorance had overlooked, or indulgence had licenfed. The later tragedies indeed have faults of another kind, perhaps more destructive to delight, though less open to cenfure. That perpetual tumour of phrafe with which every thought is now expreffed by every përfonage, the paucity of adventures which regularity admits, and the unvaried equality of flowing dialogue, has taken away from our prefent writers almost all that dominion over the paffions which was the boast of their predeceffors. Yet they may at least claim this commendation, that they avoid grofs faults, and that if they cannot often move terrour or pity, they are always careful not to provoke laughter.

NUMB. 126. SATURDAY, June 1, 1751.

Nihil eft aliud magnum quam multa minuta. Ver. Aucr. Sands form the mountain, moments make the year. YoUNG.

A1

SIR,

To the RAMBLER.

MONG other topicks of conversation which your papers fupply, I was lately engaged in a difcuffion of the character given by Tranquilla of her lover Venuftulus, whom, notwithstanding the feverity of his mistress, the greater number seemed inclined to acquit of unmanly or culpable timidity.

One of the company remarked that prudence ought to be diftinguished from fear; and that if Venuftulus was afraid of nocturnal adventures, no man who confidered how much every avenue of the town was infested with robbers could think him blamable; for why should life be hazarded without profpect of honour or advantage? Another was of opinion, that a brave man might be afraid of croffing the river in the calmest weather, and declared, that, for his part, while there were coaches and a bridge, he would never be feen tottering in a wooden cafe, out of which he might be thrown by any irregular agitation, or which might be overfet by accident, or negligence, or by the force of a sudden gust, or the rufh of a larger veffel. It was his cuftom, he said, to keep the fecurity of day-light, and dry ground;

for

for it was a maxim with him, that no wise man ever perished by water, or was loft in the dark.

The next was humbly of opinion, that if Tranquilla had feen, like him, the cattle run roaring about the meadows in the hot months, fhe would not have thought meanly of her lover for not venturing his fafety among them. His neighbour then told us, that for his part he was not afhamed to confefs, that he could not see a rat, though it was dead, without palpitation; that he had been driven fix times out of his lodgings either by rats or mice; and that he always had a bed in the closet for his fervant, whom he called up whenever the enemy was in mo tion. Another wondered that any man should think himself difgraced by a precipitate retreat from a dog; for there was always a poffibility that a dog might be mad; and that furely, though there was no danget but of being bit by a fierce animal, there was more wifdom in flight than conteft. By all these declarations another was encouraged to confefs, that if he had been admitted to the honour of paying his addreffes to Tranquilla, he fhould have been likely to incur the fame cenfure; for among all the animals upon which nature has impreffed deformity and horror, there is none whom he durft not encounter ṛather than a beetle.

Thus, Sir, though cowardice is univerfally defined too close and anxious an attention to personal fafety, there will be found fcarcely any fear, however exceffive in its degree, or unreasonable in its object, which will be allowed to characterise a coward. Fear is a paflion which every man feels fo frequently predominant in his own breaft, that he is unwilling

to

to hear it cenfured with great afperity; and, perhaps, if we confefs the truth, the fame reftraint which would hinder a man from declaiming against the frauds of any employment among those who profess it, fhould with-hold him from treating fear with contempt among human beings.

Yet fince fortitude is one of thofe virtues which the condition of our nature makes hourly neceffary, I think you cannot better direct your admonitions than against fuperfluous and panick terrors. Fear is implanted in us as a prefervative from evil; but its duty, like that of other paffions, is not to overbear reason, but to affift it; nor fhould it be fuffered to tyrannize in the imagination, to raise phantoms of horror, or befet life with fupernumerary diftreffes.

To be always afraid of lofing life is, indeed, fcarcely to enjoy a life that can deferve the care of prefervation. He that once indulges idle fears will never be at rest. Our prefent ftate admits only of a kind of negative fecurity; we must conclude ourselves fafe when we fee no danger, or none inadequate to our powers of oppofition. Death indeed continually hovers about us, but hovers commonly unfeen, unless we sharpen our fight by useless curiofity.

There is always a point at which caution, however folicitous, muft limit its prefervatives, because one terror often counteracts another. I once knew one of the fpeculatifts of cowardice, whofe reigning disturbance was the dread of houfe-beakers. His enquiries were for nine years employed upon the best method of barring a window, or a door; and many, an hour has he spent in establishing the preference

VOL. V.

A a

of

of a bolt to a lock. He had at laft, by the daily fuperaddition of new expedients, contrived a door which could never be forced; for one bar was fecured by another with fuch intricacy of fubordination, that he was himself not always able to difengage them in the proper method. He was happy in this fortification, till being asked how he would escape if he was threatened by fire, he discovered, that with all his care and expence, he had only been affifting his own deftruction. He then immediately tore off his bolts, and now leaves at night his outer door half locked, that he may not by his own folly perifh in the flames.

There is one fpecies of terror which those who are unwilling to fuffer the reproach of cowardice have wifely dignified with the name of antipathy. A man who talks with intrepidity of the monsters of the wilderness while they are out of fight, will readily confess his antipathy to a mole, a weafel, or a frog. He has indeed no dread of harm from an infect or a worm, but his antipathy turns him pale whenever they approach him. He believes that a boat will transport him with as much fafety as his neighbours, but he cannot conquer his antipathy to the water. Thus he goes on without any reproach from his own reflections, and every day multiplies antipathies, till he becomes contemptible to others, and burden fome to himself.

It is indeed certain, that impreffions of dread may fometimes be unluckily made by objects not in themselves justly formidable; but when fear is difcovered to be groundlefs, it is to be eradicated like other falfe opinions, and antipathies are generally