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The rocks of Herniens-besides a band,
That followed from Velinum's dewy land-
And mountaineers that from Severus came:
And from the craggy cliffs of Tetrica;
And those where yellow Tiber takes his way,
And where Himella's wanton waters play:
Casperia sends her arms with those that lie
By Fabaris, and fruitful Foruli.

But to proceed:

Earl Douglas on a milk-white steed,
Most like a baron bold,

Rode foremost of the company.

Whose armour shone like gold.'

Dryden.

Turnus ut antevolans tardum præcesserat agmen, &c.
Vidisti, quo Turnus equo, quibus ibat in armis
Aureus-

Our English archers bent their bows,
Their hearts were good and true;

At the first flight of arrows sent,
Full threescore Scots they slew.
They clos'd full fast on ev'ry side,
No slackness there was found;
And many a gallant gentleman

Lay gasping on the ground.

With that there came an arrow keen
Out of an English bow,

Which struck Earl Douglas to the heart,
A deep and deadly blow.'

Eneas was wounded after the same manner
by an unknown hand in the midst of a par-
ley.

Has inter voces, media inter talia verba,
Ecce viro stridens alis allapsa sagitta est,
Incertum qua pulsa manu- Æn. xii. 318.
Thus while he spake, unmindful of defence,
A winged arrow struck the pious prince;
But whether from a human hand it came,

Or hostile god, is left unknown by fame. Dryden. But of all the descriptive parts of this song, there are none more beautiful than the four following stanzas, which have a great force and spirit in them, and are filled with very natural circumstances. The thought in the third stanza was never touched by any other poet, and is such a one as would have shined in Homer or Virgil:

So thus did both these nobles die,
Whose courage none could stain;
An English archer then perceiv'd
The noble Earl was slain.

'He had a bow bent in his hand,
Made of a trusty tree,
An arrow of a cloth-yard long
Unto the head drew he.

'Against Sir Hugh Montgomery
So right his shaft he set,

The grey-goose wing that was thereon
In his heart-blood was wet.

This fight did last from break of day
Till setting of the sun;

For when they rung the ev'ning bell
The battle scarce was done.'"

One may observe, likewise, that in the ca-
talogue of the slain, the author has followed
the example of the great ancient poets, not
only in giving a long list of the dead, but
by diversifying it with little characters of
particular persons.

And with Earl Douglas there was slain
Sir Hugh Montgomery,

Sir Charles Carrel, that from the field
One foot would never fly:

•Sir Charles Murrel of Ratcliff too.
His sister's son was he;

Sir David Lamb, so well esteem'd,

Yet saved could not be.'

The familiar sound in these names destroys the majesty of the description; for this rea

son I do not mention this part of the poem
but to show the natural cast of thought
which appears in it, as the two last verses
look almost like a translation of Virgil.
Cadit et Ripheus, justissimus unus
Qui fuit in Teucris, et servantissimus æqui.
Diis aliter visum-
En. ii. 46.

Then Ripheus fell in the unequal fight,
Just of his word, observant of the right;
Heav'n thought not so.

Dryden.

In the catalogue of the English who fell,
Witherington's behaviour is in the same
manner particularized very artfully, as the
reader is prepared for it by that account
which is given of him in the beginning of
the battle; though I am satisfied your little
buffoon readers (who have seen that pas-
sage ridiculed in Hudibras) will not be able
to take the beauty of it: for which reason I
dare not so much as quote it.*

Then stept a gallant 'squire forth,
Witherington was his name,
Who said, I would not have it told
To Henry our king for shame,

That e'er my captain fought on foot,
And I stood looking on."

We meet with the same heroic sentiment
in Virgil.

Non pudet, O Rutuli, cunctis pro talībus unam
Objectare animam? numerone, an viribus æqui
Non sumus-
-?
Ex. xii. 29.
For shame, Rutilius, can you bear the sight
Of one expos'd for all, in single fight,

Can we before the face of Heav'n confess
What can be more natural, or more mov-
Our courage colder, or our numbers less! Drydra.
ing, than the circumstances in which he
describes the behaviour of those women
who had lost their husbands on this fatal
day?

*Next day did many widows come

Their husbands to bewail;

They wash'd their wounds in brinish tears,
But all would not prevail.

'Their bodies bath'd in purple blood,
They bore with them away;

They kiss'd them dead a thousand times,
When they were clad in clay.'

Thus we see how the thoughts of this
poem, which naturally arise from the sub-
ject, are always simple, and sometimes ex-
quisitely noble; that the language is often
very sounding, and that the whole is writ-
ten with a true poetical spirit.

If this song had been written in the Gothic manner, which is the delight of all our little wits, whether writers or readers, it would not have hit the taste of so many ages, and have pleased the readers of all ranks and conditions. I shall only beg pardon for such a profusion of Latin quotations; which I should not have made use of, but that I feared my own judgment would have looked too singular on such a subject, had not I supported it by the practice and authority of Virgil.

*C.

There is nothing ludicrous in the verse alluded to,

as it stands in the original ballad:

For Wetharryngton my harte is wo,
That ever he slayne shulde be;

For when both his legges wear bewyne in to,
Yet he knul'd and fought on his kne.'

No. 75.] Saturday, May 26, 1711.

Omnis Aristippum decuit color, et status, et res.
Hor. Lib. 1. Ep. 23. xvii.

All fortune fitted Aristippus well.-Creech.

IT was with some mortification that I suffered the raillery of a fine lady of my acqaintance, for calling, in one of my papers, Dorimant a clown. She was so unmerciful as to take advantage of my invincible taciturnity, and on that occasion with great freedom to consider the air, the height, the face, the gesture of him, who could pretend to judge so arrogantly of gallantry. She is full of motion, janty and lively in her impertinence, and one of those that commonly pass, among the ignorant, for persons who have a great deal of humour. She had the play of Sir Fopling in her hand, and after she had said it was happy for her there was not so charming a creature as Dorimant now living, she began with a theatrical air and tone of voice to read, by way of triumph over me, some of his speeches. "Tis she! that lovely air, that easy shape, those wanton eyes, and all those melting charms about her mouth, which Medley spoke of. I'll follow the lottery, and put in for a prize with my friend Bellair.

In love the victors from the vanquish'd fly;
They fly that wound, and they pursue that die."

[graphic]

alternately, and speaks, had alr

And you and Loveit to her cost shall find
I fathom all the depths of woman-kind.'
Oh the fine gentleman! But here, continues
she, is the passage I admire most, where
he begins to tease Loveit, and mimic Sir
Fopling. Oh, the pretty satire, in his re-
solving to be a coxcomb to please, since
noise and nonsense have such powerful
charms. tigeret do mouth, and
spilti

I, that I may successful prove, du
Transform myself to what you love."
Then how like a man of the town, so wild
and gay is that!

The wise will find a diff'rence in our fate,
You wed a woman, I a good estate.

such a thing is above his capacity. What makes his character the pleasanter is, that he is a professed deluder of women; and because the empty coxcomb has no regard to any thing that is of itself sacred and inviolable. I have heard an unmarried lady of fortune say, It is a pity so fine a gentleman as Vocifer is so great an atheist. The crowds of such inconsiderable creatures, that infest all places of assembling, every reader will have in his eye from his own observation; but would it not be worth considering what sort of figure a man who formed himself upon those principles among us, which are agreeable to the dictates of honour and religion, would make in the familiar and ordinary occurrences of life?

It would have been a very wild endeavour for a man of my temper to offer any opposition to so nimble a speaker as my fair several duties of life better than Ignotus. I hardly have observed any one fill his enemy is; but her discourse gave me very All the under parts of his behaviour, and many reflections, when I had left her com- such as are exposed to common observapany. Among others, I could not but con- tion, have their rise in him from great and sider with some attention, the false impres-noble motives. A firm and unshaken exsions the generality (the fair sex more pectation of another life makes him become especially) have of what should be in this; humanity and good-nature, fortified tended, when they say a fine gentleman; by the sense of virtue, has the same effect and could not help revolving that subject upon him as the neglect of all goodness has in my thoughts, and settling, as it were, an idea of that character in my own imagina- in all matters of importance, that certain upon many others. Being firmly established inattention which makes men's actions look by a thorough contempt of little exceleasy, appears in him with greater beauty: lencies, he is perfectly master of them. This temper of mind leaves him under no necessity of studying his air, and he has this

tion.

No man ought to have the esteem of the rest of the world, for any actions which are disagreeable to those maxims which pre

peculiar distinction, that his negligence is alliances. A man who is but a mere Specunaffected.

He that can work himself into a pleasure in considering this being as an uncertain one, and think to reap an advantage by its discontinuance, is in a fair way of doing all things with a graceful unconcern, and a gentleman-like ease. Such a one does not Behold his life as a short, transient, perplexing state, made up of trifling pleasures and great anxieties; but sees it in quite another light; his griefs are momentary and his joys immortal. Reflection upon death is not a gloomy and sad thought of resigning every thing that he delights in, but it is a short night followed by an endless day. What I would here contend for is, that the more virtuous a man is, the nearer he will naturally be to the character of genteel and agreeable. A man whose fortune is plentiful, shows an ease in his countenance, and confidence in his behaviour, which he that is under wants and difficulties cannot assume. It is thus with the state of the mind; he that governs his thoughts with the everlasting rules of reason and sense, must have something so inexpressibly graceful in his words and actions, that every circumstance must become him. The change of persons or things around him does not alter his situation, but he looks disinterested in the occurrences with which others are distracted, because the greatest purpose of his life is to maintain an indifference both to it and all its enjoyments. In a word, to be a fine gentleman, is to be a generous and a brave man. What can make a man so much in constant good humour, and shine, as we call it, than to be supported by what can never fail him, and to believe that whatever happens to him was the best thing that could possibly befal him, or else he on whom it depends, would not have permitted it to have befallen him at all.

R.

No. 76.] Monday, May 28, 1711.
Ut tu fortunam, sic nos te. Celse, feremus.
Hor. Lib. 1. Ep. viii. 17.
As you your fortune bear, we will bear you.
Creech.

THERE is nothing so common as to find a man whom in the general observation of his carriage you take to be of a uniform temper, subject to such unaccountable starts of humour and passion, that he is as much unlike himself, and differs as much from the man you at first thought him, as any two distinct persons can differ from each other. This proceeds from the want of forming some law of life to ourselves, or fixing some notion of things in general, which may affect us in such a manner as to create proper habits both in our minds and bodies. The negligence of this, leaves us exposed, not only to an unbecoming levity in our usual conversation, but also to the same instability in our friendships, interests, and

tator of what passes around him, and not engaged in commerces of any consideration, is but an ill judge of the secret motions of the heart of man, and by what degrees it is actuated to make such visible alterations in the same person: but at the same time, when a man is no way concerned in the effect of such inconsistencies in the behaviour of men of the world, the speculation must be in the utmost degree both diverting and instructive; yet to enjoy such observations in the highest relish, he ought to be placed in a post of direction, and have the dealings of their fortunes to them. I have therefore been wonderfully diverted with some pieces of secret history, which an antiquary, my very good friend, lent me as a curiosity. They are memoirs of the private life of Pharamond of France. Pharamond,' says my author, was a prince of infinite humanity and generosity, and at the same time the most pleasant and facetious companion of his time. He had a peculiar taste in him, which would have been unlucky in any prince but himself; he thought there could be no exquisite pleasure in conversation, but among equals; and would pleasantly bewail himself that he always lived in a crowd, but was the only man in France that could never get into company. This turn of mind made him delight in midnight rambles, attended only with one person of his bed-chamber. He would in these excursions get acquainted with men (whose temper he had a mind to try) and recommend them privately to the particular observation of his first minister. He generally found himself neglected by his new acquaintance as soon as they had hopes of growing great; and used on such occasions to remark, that it was a great injustice to tax princes of forgetting themselves in their high fortunes, when there were so few that could with constancy bear the favour of their very creatures.' My author in these loose hints has one passage that gives us a very lively idea of the uncommon genius of Pharamond. He met with one man whom he had put to all the usual proofs he made of those he had a mind to know thoroughly, and found him for his purpose. In discourse with him one day, he gave him an opportunity of saying how much would satisfy all his wishes. The prince immediately revealed himself, doubled the sum, and spoke to him in this manner: 'Sir, you have twice what you desired, by the favour of Pharamond; but look to it, that you are satisfied with it, for it is the last you shall ever receive. I from this moment consider you as mine; and to make you truly so, I give you my royal word you shall never be greater or less than you are at present. Answer me not (concluded the prince smiling,) but enjoy the fortune I have put you in, which is above my own condition; for you have hereafter nothing to hope or fear."

His majesty having thus well chosen and

bought a friend and companion, he enjoyed which no man else can ever have an op-
alternately all the pleasures of an agreeable portunity of enjoying. He gave fortune to
private man, and a great and powerful mo-none but those whom he knew could re-
narch. He gave himself, with his compa-ceive it without transport. He made a no-
nion, the name of the merry tyrant; for he ble and generous use of his observations,
punished his courtiers for their insolence and did not regard his ministers as they
and folly, not by any act of public disfavour, were agreeable to himself, but as they were
but by humorously practising upon their useful to his kingdom. By this means, the
imaginations. If he observed a man un-king appeared in every officer of state; and
tractable to his inferiors, he would find an no man had a participation of the power,
opportunity to take some favourable notice who had not a similitude of the virtue of
of him, and render him insupportable. He Pharamond.
knew all his own looks, words, and actions,
had their interpretations; and his friend
Monsieur Eucrate (for so he was called)

having a great soul without ambition, he No. 77.] Tuesday, May 29, 1711.
could communicate all his thoughts to him,
and fear no artful use would be made of
that freedom. It was no small delight when
they were in private, to reflect upon all
which had passed in public.

Pharamond would often, to satisfy a vain fool of power in his country, talk to him in a full court, and with one whisper make him despise all his old friends and acquaintance. He was come to that knowledge of men by long observation, that he would profess altering the whole mass of blood in some tempers, by thrice speaking to them. As fortune was in his power, he gave himself constant entertainment in managing the mere followers of it with the treatment they deserved. He would, by a skilful cast of his eye, and half a smile, make two fellows who hated, embrace, and fall upon each other's necks with as much eagerness, as if they followed their real inclinations, and intended to stifle one another. When he was in high good humour, he would lay the scene with Eucrate, and on a public night exercise the passions of his whole court. He was pleased to see a haughty beauty watch the looks of the man she had long despised, from observation of his being taken notice of by Pharamond; and the lover conceive higher hopes, than to follow the woman he was dying for the day before. In a court, where men speak affection in the strongest terms, and dislike in the faintest, it was a comical mixture of incidents to see disguises thrown aside in one case, and increased on the other, according as favour or disgrace attended the respective objects of men's approbation or disesteem. Pharamond, in his mirth upon the meanness of mankind, used to say, As he could take away a man's five senses, he Icould give him a hundred. The man in disgrace shall immediately lose all his natural endowments, and he that finds favour have the attributes of an angel.' He would carry it so far as to say, It should not be only so in the opinion of the lower part of his court, but the men themselves shall think thus meanly or greatly of themselves, as they are out or in the good graces of a court."

A monarch, who had wit and humour like Pharamond, must have pleasures

R.

Non convivere licet, nec urbe tota Quisquam est tam prope tam proculque nobis. Mart. Epig. 87. I. i. What correspondence can I hold with you, Who are so near, and yet so distant too? My friend Will Honeycomb is one of those sort of men who are very often absent in conversation, and what the French call a reveur and a distrait. A little before our club-time last night, we were walking together in Somerset-gardens, where Will had picked up a small pebble of so odd a make, that he said he would present it to a friend of his, an eminent virtuoso. After we had walked some time, I made a full stop with my face towards the west, which Will knowing to be my usual method of asking what's o'clock, in an afternoon, immediately pulled out his watch, and told me we had seven minutes good. We took a turn or two more, when to my great surprise, I saw him squir away his watch a considerable way into the Thames, and with great sedateness in his looks put up the pebble, he had before found, in his fob. As I have naturally an aversion to much speaking, and do not love to be the messenger of ill news, especially when it comes too late to be useful, I left him to be convinced of his mistake in due time, and continued my walk, reflecting on these little absences and distractions in mankind, and resolving to make them the subject of a future speculation.

I was the more confirmed in my design, when I considered that they were very often blemishes in the characters of men of excellent sense; and helped to keep up the reputation of that Latin proverb, which Mr. Dryden has translated in the following

lines:

'Great wit to madness sure is near ally'd, And thin partitions do their bounds divide."* My reader does, I hope, perceive, that I distinguish a man who is absent, because he thinks of something else, from one who is absent, because he thinks of nothing at all. The latter is too innocent a creature to be taken notice of; but the distractions of the

* Nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementia Seneca De Tranquil. Anim, cap. xw

ac-house about 'Change. I was his bail in the time of the Popish plot, when he was taken up for a Jesuit.' If he had looked on me a little longer, he had certainly described me so particularly, without ever considering what led him into it, that the whole company must necessarily have found me out; for which reason, remembering the old proverb, 'Out of sight out of mind,' I left the room; and upon meeting him an hour afterwards, was asked by him, with a great deal of good humour, in what part of the world I lived, that he had not seen me these three days.

former may, I believe, be generally counted for from one of these reasons. Either their minds are wholly fixed on some particular science, which is often the case of mathematicians and other learned men; or are wholly taken up with some violent passion, such as anger, fear or love, which ties the mind to some distant object, or, lastly, these distractions proceed from a certain vivacity and fickleness in a man's temper, which while it raises up infinite numbers of ideas in the mind, is continually pushing it on, without allowing it to rest on any particular image. Nothing therefore is more unnatural than the thoughts and conceptions of such a man, which are seldom occasioned either by the company he is in, or any of those objects which are placed before him. While you fancy he is admiring a beautiful woman, it is an even wager that he is solving a proposition in Euclid; and while you may imagine he is reading the Paris Gazette, it is far from being impossible, that he is pulling down and rebuilding the front of his country

house.

At the same time that I am endeavouring to expose this weakness in others, I shall readily confess that I once laboured under the same infirmity myself. The method I took to conquer it was a firm resolution to learn something from whatever I was obliged to see or hear. There is a way of thinking, if a man can attain to it, by which he may strike somewhat out of any thing. I can at present observe those starts of good sense, and struggles of unimproved reason in the conversation of a clown, with as much satisfaction as the most shining periods of the most finished orator; and can make a shift to command my attention at a puppet-show or an opera, as well as at Hamlet or Othello. I always make one of the company I am in; for though I say little myself, my attention to others, and those nods of approbation which I never bestow unmerited, sufficiently show that I am among them. Whereas Will Honeycomb, though a fellow of good sense, is every day doing and saying a hundred things, which he afterwards confesses, with a well-bred frankness, were somewhat mal à propos, and undesigned.

Monsieur Bruyere has given us the character of an absent man, with a great deal of humour, which he has pushed to an agreeable extravagance: with the heads of it I shall conclude my present paper.

'Menalcas,' says that excellent author, comes down in a morning, opens his door to go out, but shuts it again, because he perceives that he has his night-capon: and examining himself further, finds that he is but half shaved, that he has stuck his sword on his right side, that his stockings are about his heels, and that his shirt is over his breeches. When he is dressed, he goes to court, comes into the drawingroom, and walking bolt-upright under a branch of candlesticks, his wig is caught up by one of them, and hangs dangling in the air. All the courtiers fall a-laughing, but Menalcas laughs louder than any of them and looks about for the person that is the jest of the company. Coming down to the courtgate he finds a coach, which taking for his own, he whips into it; and the coachman drives off, not doubting but he carries his master. As soon as he stops, Menalcas throws himself out of the coach, crosses the court, ascends the stair-case, and runs through all the chambers with the greatest familiarity; reposes himself on a couch, and fancies himself at home. The master of the house at last comes in; Menalcas rises to receive him, and desires him to sit down; he talks, muses, and then talks again. The gentleman of the house is tired and amazed; Menalcas is no less so, but is every moment in hopes that his impertinent guest will at last end his tedious visit. Night comes on, when Menalcas is hardly

I chanced the other day to go into a cof-undeceived. fee-house, where Will was standing in the When he is playing at backgammon, midst of several auditors, whom he had he calls for a full glass of wine and water: gathered round him, and was giving them it is his turn to throw, he has the box in an account of the person and character of one hand, and his glass in the other; and Moll Hinton. My appearance before him being extremely dry, and unwilling to lose just put him in mind of me, without making time, he swallows down both the dice, and him reflect that I was actually present. at the same time throws his wine into the So that, keeping his eyes full upon me, to tables. He writes a letter, and flings the the great surprise of his audience, he sand into the ink-bottle; he writes a second broke off his first harangue, and proceed- and mistakes the superscription. A nobleed thus: Why now there's my friend,' man receives one of them, and upon openmentioning me by my name, he is a fel- ing it reads as follows: 'I would have you, low that thinks a great deal, but never honest Jack, immediately upon the receipt opens his mouth; I warrant you he is now of this, take in hay enough to serve me the thrusting his short face into some coffee-winter.' His farmer receives the other,

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