I have before shown how the influence of one common distress. If all the rich who are hope in general sweetens life, and makes our lame of the gout, from a life of ease, pleasure, present condition supportable, if not pleas- and luxury, would help those few who have it ing; but a religious hope has still greater ad- without a previous life of pleasure, and add a vantages. It does not only bear up the mind few of such laborious men, who are become under her sufferings, but makes her rejoice in lame from unhappy blows, falls, or other acthem, as they may be the instruments of pro-cident of age or sickness; I say, would such curing her the great and ultimate end of all gouty persons administer to the necessities of her hope. men disabled like themselves, the consciousness Religious hope has likewise this advantage of such a behaviour would be the best julep, above any other kind of hope, that it is able cordial, and anodyne, in the feverish, faint, to revive the dying man, and to fill up his and tormenting vicissitudes of that miserable mind not only with secret comfort and re- distemper. The same may be said of all other, freshment, but sometimes with rapture and both bodily and intellectual evils. These transport. He triumphs in his agonies, whilst classes of charity would certainly bring down the soul springs forward with delight to the blessings upon an age and people; and if great object which she has always had in men were not petrified with the love of this view, and leaves the body with an expecta-world, against all sense of the commerce tion of being reunited to her in a glorious and which ought to be among them, it would not joyful resurrection. be an unreasonable bill for a poor man in the me. MR. BASIL PLENTY, 'SIR, I shall conclude this essay with those em- agony of pain, aggravated by 'want and povphatical expressions of a lively hope, which erty, to draw upon a sick alderman after this the psalmist made use of in the midst of those form: dangers and adversities which surrounded him; for the following passage had its present and personal, as well as its future and prophetic sense. 'I have set the Lord always before Because he is at my right hand I shall not be moved. Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth. My flesh also shall rest in hope. For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt thou suffer thine holy one to see corruption. Thou wilt show me the path of life. In thy presence is fulness of joy, at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.' No. 472.] Monday, September 1, 1712. -Voluptas Solamenque malio C. Virg. En. iii. 660. This only solace his hard fortune sends. Dryden. 'You have the gout and stone, with sixty thousand pounds sterling; I have the gout and stone, not worth one farthing; I shall pray for you, and desire you would pay the bearer twenty shillings, for value received from, 'Sir, your humble servant, 'LAZARUS HOPEFUL' Cripplegate, August 29, 1712. The reader's own imagination will suggest to him the reasonableness of such correspondences, and diversify them into a thousand forms; but I shall close this as I began upon the subject of blindness. The following letter seems to be written by a man of learning, who is returned to his study, after a susThe benefit he re I RECEIVED Some time ago a proposal, which had a preface to it, wherein the author dis-pense of ability to do so. operator. MR. SPECTATOE, coursed at large of the innumerable objects of ports himself to have received, may well claim charity in a nation, and admonished the rich, the handsomest encomium he can give the who were afflicted with any distemper of body, particularly to regard the poor in the same species of affliction, and confine their tenderness to them, since it is impossible to assist all 'Ruminating lately on your admirable diswho are presented to them. The proposer had courses on the Pleasures of the Imagination, I been relieved from a malady in his eyes by an began to consider to which of our senses we operation performed by Sir William Read, and, are obliged for the greatest and most important being a man of condition, had taken a resolu-share of those pleasures; and I soon concluded tion to maintain three poor blind men during that it was to the sight That is the sovereign their lives, in gratitude for that great blessing of the senses, and mother of all the arts and This misfortune is so very great and unfrequent, sciences, that have refined the rudeness of the that one would think an establishment for all uncultivated mind to a politeness that distinthe poor under it might be easily accomplished, guishes the fine spirits from the barbarou goût with the addition of a very few others to those of the great vulgar and the small. The sight wealthy who are in the same calamity. How-is the obliging benefactress that bestows on us ever, the thought of the proposer arose from a the most transporting sensations that we have very good motive; and the parcelling of our-from the various and wonderful products of naselves out, as called to particular acts of bene- ture. To the sight we owe the amazing discoficence, would be a pretty cement of society veries of the height, magnitude, and motion and virtue. It is the ordinary foundation for of the planets, their several revolutions about men's holding a commerce with each other, their common centre of light, heat and motion, and becoming familiar, that they agree in the the sun. The sight travels yet further to the same sort of pleasure; and sure it may also fixed stars, and furnishes the understanding be some reason for amity, that they are under with solid reasons to prove, that each of them is a sun, moving on its own axis, in the centre of its own vortex or turbillion, and performing the same offices to its dependant planets that our glorious sun does to this. But the inquiries of the sight will not be stopped here, but make their progress through the immense expanse to the Milky Way, and there divide the blended fires of the galaxy into infinite and different worlds, made up of distinct suns, and their peculiar equipages of planets, till, unable to pursue this track any further, it deputes the imagination to go on to new discoveries, till it fill the unbounded space with endless worlds. 66 Again, in Samson Agonistes ; -But chief of all, O loss of sight of thee I most complain: Still as a fool, In pow'r of others, never in my own, 'The sight informs the statuary's chisel with power to give breath to lifeless brass and marble, and the painter's pencil to swell the flat canvas with moving figures actuated by imaginary souls. Music indeed may plead another original, since Jubal, by the different falls of his hammer on the anvil, discovered by the ear the first rude music that pleased the antediluvian fathers; but then the sight has not only reduced those wilder sounds into artful order and harmony, but conveys that harmony to the most distant parts of the world without the The enjoyment of sight then being so great help of sound. To the sight we owe not only all the discoveries of philosophy, but all a blessing, and the loss of it so terrible an evil, the divine imagery of poetry that transports how excellent and valuable is the skill of the intelligent reader of Homer, Milton, and that artist which can restore the former, and redress the latter! My frequent perusal of the Virgil. As the sight has polished the world, so advertisements in the public newspapers (gendoes it supply us with the most grateful and erally the most agreeable entertainment they lasting pleasure. Let love, let friendship, pa-afford) has presented me with many and vaternal affection, filial piety, and conjugal duty,rious benefits of this kind done to my coundeclare the joys the sight bestows on a meet-trymen by that skillful artist, Dr. Grant, her ing after absence. But it would be endless to majesty's oculist extraordinary, whose happy enumerate all the pleasures and advantages of hand has brought and restored to sight several sight: every one that has it, every hour he hundreds in less than four years. Many have makes use of it, finds them, feels them, enjoys received sight by his means who came blind from their mother's womb, as in the famous inThus, as our greatest pleasures and know-stance of Jones of Newington. I myself have ledge are derived from the sight, so has Provi- been cured by him of a weakness in my eyes dence been more curious in the formation of next to blindness, and am ready to believe any its seat, the eye, than of the organs of the thing that is reported of his ability this way; other senses. That stupendous machine is and know that many, who could not purchase composed, in a wonderful manner, of muscles, his assistance with money, have enjoyed it from his charity. But a list of particulars membranes, and humours. Its motions are admirably directed by the muscles; the per- would swell my letter beyond its bounds: spicuity of the humours transmits the rays of what I have said being sufficient to comfort light; the rays are regularly refracted by their those who are in the like distress, since they figure; the black lining of the sclerotes effec- may conceive hopes of being no longer misetually prevents their being confounded by re-rable in this kind, while there is yet alive so flection. It is wonderful indeed to consider able an oculist as Dr. Grant. how many objects the eye is fitted to take in at once, and successively in an instant, and at the same time to make a judgment of their position, figure, or colour. It watches against our dangers, guides our steps, and lets in all No 473.] the visible objects, whose beauty and variety instruct and delight. them. The pleasures and advantages of sight being so great, the loss must be very grievous; of which Milton, from experience, gives the most sensible idea, both in the third book of his Paradise Lost, and in his Samson Agonistes. T. 'I am the Spectator's 'humble servant, PHILANTHROPUS.' Tuesday, September 2, 1712. Quid? si quis vultu torvo ferus et pede nudo, Hor. Ep. xix. Lib. 1. 12. 'I am, Sir, MR. SPECTATOR, 'S. T.' 'I am a man of a very good estate, and am I have read. Your paper comes constantly Greek, Hebrew, and the Orientals: at the same down to me, and it affects me so much, that time that he published his aversion to those I find my thoughts run into your way and I languages, he said that the knowledge of them recommend to you a subject upon which you was rather a diminution than an advance. have not yet touched, and that is, the satisfac-ment of a man's character: though at the tion some men seem to take in their imperfec- same time I know he languishes and repines tions: I think one may call it glorying in he is not master of them himself. Whenever their insufficiency. A certain great author is I take any of these fine persons thus detractof opinion it is the contrary to envy, though ing from what they do not understand, I tell perhaps it may proceed from it. Nothing is them I will complain to you; and say I am so common as to hear men of this sort, speak- sure you will not allow it an exception against ing of themselves, add to their own merit (as a thing, that he who contemns it is an ignothey think) by impairing it, in praising them-rant in it. selves for their defects, freely allowing they commit some few frivolous errors, in order to be esteemed persons of uncommon talents and great qualifications. They are generally professing an injudicious neglect of dancing, fencing, and riding, as also an unjust contempt for travelling, and the modern languages; as for honourably in love. I hope you will allow, their part, they say, they never valued or when the ultimate purpose is honest, there troubled their heads about them. This pane- may be, without trespass against innocence, gyrical satire on themselves certainly is wor- some toying by the way. People of condition thy of your animadversion. I have known are perhaps too distant and formal on those one of these gentlemen think himself obliged to occasions; but however that is, I am to conforget the day of an appointment, and somefess to you that I have writ some verses to times even that you spoke to him; and when atone for my offence. You professed authors you see 'em, they hope you'll pardon 'em, for are a little severe upon us, who write like genthey have the worst memory in the world. tlemen: but if you are a friend to love, you One of 'em started up t'other day in some conwill insert my poem. You cannot imagine how fusion, and said, "Now I think on't, I am to much service it would do me with my fair one, meet Mr. Mortmain, the attorney, about some as well as reputation with all my friends, to business, but whether it is to-day or to-morrow, crime was, that I snatched a kiss, and my poethave something of mine in the Spectator. My 'faith I can't tell. Now, to my certain knowJedge, he knew his time to a moment, and was there accordingly. These forgetful persons have, to heighten their crime, generally the best memories of any people, as I have found out by their remembering sometimes through inadvertency. Two or three of 'em that I know can say most of our modern tragedies by heart. I asked a gentleman the other day that is famous for a good carver (at which acquisition he is out of countenance, imaging it may detract from some of his more essential qualifications) to help me to something that was near him; but he excused himself, and blushing told me, "Of all things he could never carve in his life;" though it can be proved upon him that he cuts up, disjoints, and uncases with incomparable dexterity. I would not be understood as if I thought it laudable for a man of quality and fortune to rival the acquisitions of artificers, and endeavour to excel in little handy qualities; no, I argue 'Having a little time upon my hands, I only against being ashamed of what is really could not think of bestowing it better, than in praise-worthy. As these pretences to ingenuity writing an epistle to the Spectator, which I show themselves several ways, you will often now do, and am, Sir, see a man of this temper ashamed to be clean, and setting up for wit, only for negligence in his habit. Now I am upon this head, I cannot help observing also upon a very different folly likely enough to become your correspondent. 'P. S. If you approve of my style, I am proceeding from the same cause. As these I desire your opinion of it. I design it for that above-mentioned arise from affecting an equa- way of writing called by the judicious "the lity with men of greater talents, from having familiar." the same faults, there are others that would ical excuse as follows: I. "Belinda, see from yonder flowers II. "So, though I robb'd you of a kiss, Has it at all impoverish'd you? III. ""Tis by this cunning I contrive, " SIR, "Your humble servant, TIMOTHY STANZA.' Aug. 23, 1712. "Your humble servant, come at a parallel with those above them, by No. 474.] Wednesday, September 3, 1712. possessing little advantages which they want. I heard a young man not long ago, who has seuse, comfort himself in his ignorance of VOL. II. T. Asperitas agrestis et inconcinna Hor.Ep. 18. Lib. 1. 6. MR. SPECTATOR, county, be established a club of the persons 'BEING of the number of those that have whose conversations I have described, who for lately retired from the centre of business and their own private, as also the public emolupleasure, my uneasiness in the country, where ment, should exclude, and be excluded, all I am, arises rather from the society than the other society. Their attire should be the solitude of it. To be obliged to receive and same with their huntsmen's, and none should return visits from and to a circle of neighbours, be admitted into this green conversation piece, who, through diversity of age or inclinations, except he had broke his collar-bone thrice. can neither be entertaining nor serviceable to A broken rib or two might also admit a man us, is a vile loss of time, and a slavery from without the least opposition. The president which a man should deliver himself, if possi- must necessarily have broken his neck, and ble: for why must I lose the remaining part have been taken up dead once or twice: for of my life, because they have thrown away the the more maims this brotherhood shall have former part of theirs? It is to me an insup- met with, the easier will their conversation portable affliction, to be tormented with the flow and keep up; and when any one of these narrations of a set of people, who are warm in vigorous invalids had finished his narration of their expressions of the quick relish of that the collar-bone, this naturally would intropleasure which their dogs and horses have a duce the history of the ribs. Besides, the difmore delicate taste of. I do also in my heart ferent circumstances of their falls and fracdetest and abhor that damnable doctrine and tures would help to prolong and diversify position of the necessity of a bumper, though their relations. There should also be another to one's own toast; for though it be pretended club of such men who have not succeeded so that these deep potations are used only to in- well in maiming themselves, but are however spire gaiety, they certainly drown that cheer- in the constant pursuit of these accomplishfulness which would survive a moderate circu-ments. I would by no means be suspected, lation. If at these meetings it were left to by what I have said, to traduce in general every stranger either to fill his glass accord- the body of fox-hunters; for whilst I look ing to his own inclination, or to make his re- upon a reasonable creature full speed after treat when he finds he has been sufficiently a pack of dogs by way of pleasure, and not obedient to that of others, these entertain-of business, I shall always make honourable ments would be governed with more good mention of it. sense, and consequently with more good-breed- 'But the most irksome conversation of all ing, than at present they are. Indeed, where others I have met with in the neighbourhood, any of the guests are known to measure has been among two or three of your traveltheir fame or pleasure by their glass, proper lers, who have overlooked men and manners, exhortations might be used to these to push and have passed through France and Italy their fortunes in this sort of reputation; but, with the same observation that the carriers where it is unseasonably insisted on to a and stage-coachmen do through Great Brimodest stranger, this drench may be said tain; that is, their stops and stages have been to be swallowed with the same necessity, as regulated according to the liquor they have if it had been tendered in the horn for that met with in their passage. They indeed repurpose, with this aggravating circumstance, member the names of abundance of places, that it distresses the entertainer's guest in the with the particular fineries of certain churchsame degree as it relieves his horses. es; but their distinguishing mark is certain "In talking of the Alps aud Appennines, and then concludes with a sigh: To attend without impatience an account prettinesses of foreign languages, the meanof five-barred gates, double ditches, and preci-ing of which they could have better expresspices, and to survey the orator with desiring ed in their own. The entertainment of these eyes, is to me extremely difficult, but abso- fine observers Shakespeare has described to lutely necessary, to be upon tolerable terms consist with him but then the occasional bursting out into laughter, is of all other accomplishments the most requisite. I confess at present I have not that command of these convulsions' as is necessary to be good company; therefore I beg you would publish this letter, and let me be known all at once for a queer] 'I would not be thought in all this to hate fellow and avoided. It is monstrous to me, such honest creatures as dogs; I am only unthat we who are given to reading and calm happy that I cannot partake in their diversions. conversation should ever be visited by these But I love them so well, as dogs, that I often roarers but they think they themselves, as go with my pockets stuffed with bread to disneighbours, may come into our rooms with the pense my favours, or make my way through same right that they and their dogs hunt in them at neighbours' houses. There is in parour grounds. ticular a young hound of great expectation, viYour institution of clubs I have always vacity, and enterprise, that attends my flights admired, in which you constantly endeavour-wherever he spies me. This creature observes ed the union of the metaphorically defunct, my countenance, and behaves himself accordthat is, such as are neither serviceable to the ingly. His mirth, his frolic, and joy, upon busy and enterprising part of mankind, nor the sight of me has been observed, and I entertaining to the retired and speculative. have been gravely desired not to encourage There should certainly, therefore, in each him so much, for it spoils his parts; but I custom. think he shows them sufficiently in the seve- Campbell, the dumb man; for they told me ral boundings, friskings, and scourings, when that that was chiefly what brought them to he makes his court to me: but I foresee in town, having heard wonders of him in Essex. a little time he and I must keep company I, who always wanted faith in matters of that with one another only, for we are fit for kind, was not easily prevailed on to go; but, no other in these parts. Having informed lest they should take it ill, I went with them; you how I do pass my time in the country when, to my surprise, Mr. Campbell related where I am, I must proceed to tell you how all their past life; in short, had he not been I would pass it, had I such a fortune as would prevented, such a discovery would have come put me above the observance of ceremony and out as would have ruined the next design of their coming to town, viz. buying wedding 'My scheme of a country life then should clothes. Our names-though he never heard be as follows. As I am happy in three or four of us before-and we endeavoured to convery agreeable friends, these I would constantly ceal-were as familiar to him as to ourselves. have with me; and the freedom we took with To be sure, Mr. Spectator, he is a very learnone another at school and the university, weed and wise man. Being impatient to know would maintain and exert upon all occasions my fortune, having paid my respects in a fawith great courage. There should be certain mily Jacobus, he told me, after his manner, hours of the day to be employed in reading, among several other things, that in a year and during which time it should be impossible for nine months I should fall ill of a fever, be giany one of us to enter the other's chamber, ven over by my my physicians, but should unless by storm. After this we would commu- with much difficulty recover: that, the first nicate the trash or treasure we had met with, time I took the air afterwards, I should be adwith our own reflections upon the matter; dressed to by a young gentleman of a plentithe justness of which we would controvert with ful fortune, good sense, and a generous spirit. good-humoured warmth, and never spare one Mr. Spectator, he is the purest man in the another out of that complaisant spirit of con-world, for all he said is come to pass, and I versation, which makes others affirm and deny am the happiest she in Kent. I have been in the same matter in a quarter of an hour. If quest of Mr. Campbell these three months, any of the neighbouring gentlemen, not of our and cannot find him out. Now, hearing you turn, should take it in their heads to visit me, are a dumb man too, I thought you might corI should look upon these persons in the same respond, and be able to tell me something; degree enemies to my particular state of hap- for I think myself highly obliged to make his piness, as ever the French were to that of the fortune, as he has mine. It is very possible public, and I would be at an annual expense your worship, who has spies all over this town, in spies to observe their motions. Whenever can inform me how to send to him. If you I should be surprised with a visit, as I hate can, I beseech you be as speedy as possible, drinking, I would be brisk in swilling bumpers, and you will highly oblige upon this maxim, that it is better to trouble others with my impertinence, than to be troubled myself with theirs. The necessity of an infirmary makes me resolve to fall into that Ordered, That the inspector I employ about project; and as we should be but five, the ter- wonders, inquire at the Golden-Lion, opposite rors of an involuntary separation, which our to the Half-Moon tavern in Drury-lane, into number cannot so well admit of, would make the merits of this silent sage, and report acus exert ourselves in opposition to all the cordingly. particulars mentioned in your institution of Your constant reader and admirer, 'DULCIBELLA THANKLEY.' T. -Quæ res in se neque consilium, neque modum that equitable confinement. This my way of No. 475.] Thursday September 4, 1712. life I know would subject me to the imputation of a morose, covetous, and singular fellow. These and all other hard words, with all manner of insipid jests, and all other reproach, would be matter of mirth to me and my friends: besides, I would destroy the application of the epithets morose and covetous, Ir is an old observation, which has been by a yearly relief of my undeservedly neces-made of politicians who would rather ingrasitous neighbours, and by treating my friends tiate themselves with their sovereign, than proand domestics with a humanity that should mote his real service, that they accommodate express the obligation to lie rather on my side; and as for the word singular, I was always of opinion every man must be so, to be what one would desire him. their counsels to his inclinations, and advise him to such actions only as his heart is naturally set upon. The privy counsellor of onc in love must observe the same conduct, unless he would forfeit the friendship of the person who desires his advice. I have known seve'J. R.'ral odd cases of this nature. Hipparchus was "Your very humble servant, 'MR. SPECTATOR, * Duncan Campbell announced himself to the public About two years ago I was called upon by as a Scotch highlander, gifted with the second sight. He the younger part of a country family, by my in making a fortune to himself, by practising for some was, or pretended to be, deaf and dumb, and succeeded mother's side related to me, to visit Mr. years on the credulity of the vulgar in the ignominious character of a fortune-teller. |