by dipping into many authors of this nature, | seems to endow human nature with that which history denies; and to give satisfaction to the mind, with at least the shadow of things, where the substance cannot be had. For if the matter be thoroughly considered, a strong argument may be drawn from poesy, that a more stately greatness of things, a more perfect order, and a more beautiful variety, delights the soul of man, than any way can be found in nature since the fall. Wherefore seeing the acts and events, which are the subjects of true history, are not of that amplitude as to content the mind of man; poesy is ready at hand to feign acts more heroical. Because true history reports the successes of business not proportionable to the merit of virtues and vices, poesy corrects it, and presents events and fortunes according to desert, and according to the law of Providence: because true history, through the frequent satiety and similitude of things, works a distaste and misprison in the mind of man, poesy cheereth and refresheth the soul, chanting things rare and various, and full of vicissitudes. So as poesy serveth and conferreth to delectation, magnanimity, and morality; and therefore it may seem deservedly to have some participation of divineness, because it doth raise the mind, and exalt the spirit with high raptures, by proportioning the shows of things to the desires of the mind; and not submitting the mind to things, as reason and history do. And by these allurements and congruities, whereby it cherishes the soul of man, joined also with consort of music, whereby it may more sweetly insinuate itself, it hath won such access, that it hath been in estimation even in rude times, and barbarous nations, when other learning stood excluded." But there is nothing which favours and falls in with this natural greatness and dignity of human nature so much as religion, which does not only promise the entire refinement of the mind, but the glorifying of the body, and the immortality of both. -Quæ lucis miseris tam dira cupido? Virg. Sheer-Lane, December 21. I think it is one of Pythagoras's golden sayings, "That a man should take care above all things to have a due respect for himself:" and it is certain, that this licentious sort of authors, who are for depreciating mankind, endeavour to disappoint and undo what the most refined spirits have been labouring to advance since the beginning of No. 110.] Tuesday, December 22, 1709. the world. The very design of dress, goodbreeding, outward ornaments, and ceremony, were to lift up human nature, and to set it off to an advantage. Architecture, painting, and statuary, were invented with the same design; as indeed every art and science contributes to the embellishment of life, and to the wearing off, or throwing into shades, the mean and low parts of our nature. Poetry carries on this great end more than all the rest, as may be seen in the following passage, taken out of Sir Francis Bacon's Advancement of Learning, which gives a truer and better account of this art, than all the volumes that were ever written upon it. "Poetry, especially heroical, seems to be raised altogether from a noble foundation, which makes much for the dignity of man's nature. For seeing this sensible world is in dignity inferior to the soul of man, poesy As soon as I had placed myself in my chair of judicature, I ordered my clerk Mr. Lillie to read to the assembly (who were gathered together according to notice) a certain declaration, by way of charge to open the purpose of my session, which tended only to this explanation, "That as other courts were often called to demand the execution of persons dead in law, so this was held to give the last orders relating to those who are dead in reason." The solicitor of the new company of upholders, near the HayMarket, appeared in behalf of that useful society, and brought in an accusation of a young woman, who herself stood at the bar before me. Mr. Lillie read her indictment, which was in substance, "That, whereas Mrs. Rebecca Pindust, of the parish of St. Martin in the Fields, had, by the use of one instrument, called a looking-glass, and by the further use of certain attire, made either of cambric, muslin, or other linen wares, upon her head, attained to such an evil art and magical force, in the motion of her eyes, and turn of her countenance, that she the said Rebecca had put to death several young men of the said parish; and that the sai young men had acknowledged, in cerem papers, commonly called love letters, (which were produced in court, gilded on the ages, and sealed with a particular wax, w certain amorous and enchanting words wrought upon the said seals,) that they die for the said Rebecca: and whereas the sai Rebecca persisted in the said evil practice; this way of life the said society consued to be, according to former edicts, a state of death, and demanded an order for the interment of the said Rebecca." I looked upon the maid w great humanity, and desired her to make answer to what was said against her. She said, "It was, indeed, true, that she had practised all the arts and means she could to dispose of herself happily in marriage, bu thought she did not come under the censure expressed in my writings for the same and humbly hoped, I would not condemn her for the ignorance of her accusers, who, according to their own words, had rather represented her killing than dead." She further alledged, "That the expressions mentioned in the papers written to her were become mere words, and that she had been always ready to marry any of those who said they died for her; but that they made their escape as soon as they found themselves pitied or believed." She ended her discourse, by desiring I would for the future settle the meaning of the words, "I die," in letters of love. Mrs. Pindust behaved herself with such an air of innocence, that she easily gained credit, and was acquitted. Upon which occasion, I gave it as a standing rule, "That any persons, who in any letter, billet, or discourse, should tell a woman he died for her, should, if she pleased, be obliged to live with her, or be immediately interred upon such their own confession, without bail or mainprise." It happened, that the very next who was brought before me was one of her admirers, who was indicted upon that very head. A letter, which he acknowledged to be his own hand, was read; in which were the following words: "Cruel creature, I die for you." It was observable that he took snuff all the time his accusation was reading. I asked him, "How he came to use these words, if he were not a dead man?" He told me, "He was in love with a lady, and did not know any other way of telling her so; and that all his acquaintance took the same method." Though I was moved with compassion towards him by reason of the weakness of his parts, yet, for example's sake, I was forced to answer, "Your sentence shall be a warning to all the rest of your companions, not to tell lies for want of wit." Upon this, he began to beat his snuff-box with a very saucy air; and opening it again, "Faith, Isaac, (said he,) thou art a very unaccountable old fellow.-Prythee, who gave thee power of life and death? What-a-pox hast thou to do with ladies and lovers? I suppose thou wouldst have a man be in company with his mistress, and say nothing to her. Dost thou call breaking a jest, telling a lie? Ha! is that thy wisdom, old stiff-rump, ha?" He was going on with this insipid commonplace mirth, sometimes opening his box, sometimes shutting it, then viewing the picture on the lid, and then the workmanship of the hinge, when, in the midst of his eloquence, I ordered his box to be taken from him; upon which he was immediately struck speechless, and carried off stone dead. The next who appeared, was a hale old fellow of sixty. He was brought in by his relations, who desired leave to bury him. Upon requiring a distinct account of the prisoner, a credible witness deposed, "That he always rose at ten of the clock, played with his cat till twelve, smoked tobacco till one, was at dinner till two, then took another pipe, and played at backgammon till six, talked of one Madam Frances, an old mistress of his, till eight, repeated the same account at the tavern till ten, then returned home, took the other pipe, and then to bed." I asked him what he had to say for himself? "As to what (said he) they mention concerning Madam Frances" I did not care for hearing a Canterbury tale, and therefore thought myself seasonably interrupted by a young gentleman, who appeared in the behalf of the old man, and prayed an arrest of judgment; for that he the said young man held certain lands by his the said old man's life. Upon this, the solicitor of the upholders took an occasion to demand him also, and thereupon produced several evidences that witnessed to his life and conversation. It appeared, that each of them divided their hours in matters of equal moment and importance to themselves and to the public. They rose at the same hour: while the old man was playing with his cat, the young one was looking out of his window; while the old man was smoking his pipe, the young man was rubbing his teeth; while one was at dinner, the other was dressing; while one was at backgammon, the other was at dinner; while the old fellow was talking of Madam Frances, the young one was either at play, or toasting women whom he never conversed with. The only difference was, that the young man had never been good for any thing; the old man, a man of worth, before he knew Madam Frances. Upon the whole, I ordered them both to be interred together, with inscriptions proper to their characters, signifying, "That the old man died in the year 1689, and was buried in the year 1709." And over the young one it was said, "That | night, that I awakened at the knock, and he departed this world in the 25th year of his death." The next class of criminals, were authors in prose and verse. Those of them who had produced any still-born work, were immediately dismissed to their burial, and were followed by others, who, notwithstanding some sprightly issue in their life-time, had given proofs of their death, by some posthumous children, that bore no resemblance to their elder brethren. As for those who were the fathers of a mixed progeny, provided always they could prove the last to be a live child, they escaped with life, but not without loss of limbs; for in this case, I was satisfied with an amputation of the parts which were mortified. These were followed by a great crowd of superanuated benchers of the inns of court, senior fellows of colleges, and defunct statesmen; all whom I ordered to be decimated indifferently, allowing the rest a reprieve for one year, with a promise of a free pardon in case of resuscitation. There were still great multitudes to be examined; but finding it very late, I adjourned the court; not without the secret pleasure that I had done my duty, and furnished out a handsome execution. Going out of the court, I received a letter, informing me, "That, in pursuance of the edict of Justice in one of my late visions, all those of the fair sex began to appear pregnant who had run any hazard of it; as was manifest by a particular swelling in the petticoats of several ladies in and about this great city. I must confess, I do not attribute the rising of this part of the dress to this occasion, yet must own, that I am very much disposed to be offended with such a new and unaccountable fashion. I shall, however, pronounce nothing upon it, till Í have examined all that can be said for and against it. And in the mean time, think fit to give this notice to the fair ladies who are now making up their winter suits, that they may abstain from all dresses of that kind, till they shall find what judgment will be passed upon them; for it would very much trouble me, that they should put themselves to an unnecessary expense; and I could not but think myself to blame, if I should hereafter forbid them the wearing of such garments, when they have laid out money upon them, without having given them any previous admonitions."* heard myself complimented with the usual salutation of "Good morrow, Mr. Bickerstaffe; good morrow, my masters all." The silence and darkness of the night disposed me to be more than ordinarily serious: and as my attention was not drawn out among exterior objects, by the avocations of sense, my thoughts naturally fell upon myself. I was considering, amidst the stillness of the night, what was the proper employmeat of a thinking being? What were the perfections it should propose to itself? And, what the end it should aim at? My mind is of such a particular cast, that the falling of a shower of rain, or the whistling of the wind, at such a time, is apt to fill my thoughts with something awful and solemn. I was in this disposition, when our bellman began his midnight homily, (which he has been repeating to us every winter night for these twenty years,) with the usual exordium, Oh! mortal man, thou that art born in sin ! Sentiments of this nature, which are in themselves just and reasonable, however debased by the circumstances that accompany them, do not fail to produce their natural effect in a mind that is not perverted and depraved by wrong notions of gallantry, politeness, and ridicule. The temper which I now found myself in, as well as the time of the year, put me in mind of those lines in Shakspeare, wherein, according to his agreeable wildness of imagination, he has wrought a country tradition into a beautiful piece of poetry. In the tragedy of Hamlet, where the ghost vanishes upon the cock's crowing, he takes occasion to mention its crowing all hours of the night about Christmas time, and to insinuate a kind of religious veneration for that season. It faded on the crowing of the cock. Some say, that ever 'gainst that season comes This admirable author, as well as the best and greatest men of all ages, and of all nations, seems to have had his mind thoroughly seasoned with religion, as is evident by many passages in his plays, that would not be suffered by a modern audience; and are therefore certain instances, that the age he lived in had a much greater sense of virtue than the present. It is, indeed, a melancholy reflection to consider, that the British nation, which is now at a greater height of glory for its councils and conquests than it ever was before, should distinguish itself by a certain looseness of principles, and a falling off from those schemes of thinking, which conduce to the happiness and perfection of human nature. This evil comes upon us from the works of a few solemn blockheads, that meet together with the zeal and seriousness of apostles, to came to his estate. The good man was astonished; and a report immediately ran through the ship, that there was an atheist upon the upper deck. Several of the common seamen, who had never heard the word before, thought it had been some strange fish; but they were more surprised when they saw it was a man, and heard out of his own mouth, "That he never believed till that day that there was a God." As he lay in the agonies of confession, one of the honest tars whispered to the boatswain, "That it would be a good deed to heave him overboard." But we were now within sight of port, when of a sudden the wind fell, and the penitent relapsed, begging all of us that were present, as we were gentlemen, not to say any thing of what had passed. extirpate common sense, and propagate in- | had denied a Supreme Being ever since he fidelity. These are the wretches, who, without any show of wit, learning, or reason, publish their crude conceptions with the ambition of appearing more wise than the rest of mankind, upon no other pretence, than that of dissenting from them. One gets by heart a catalogue of title-pages and editions; and immediately to become conspicuous, declares that he is an unbeliever. Another knows how to write a receipt, or cut up a dog, and forthwith argues against the immortality of the soul. I have known many a little wit, in the ostentation of his parts, rally the truth of the scriptures, who was not able to read a chapter in it. These poor wretches talk blasphemy for want of discourse, and are rather the objects of scorn or pity, than of our indignation; but the grave disputant, that reads, and writes, and spends all his time in convincing himself and the world, that he is no better than a brute, ought to be whipped out of a government, as a blot to a civil society, and a defamer of mankind. I love to consider an infidel, whether distinguished by the title of deist, atheist, or free-thinker, in three different lights; in his solitude, his afflictions, and his last moments. A wise man, that lives up to the principles of reason and virtue, if one considers him in his solitude, as taking in the system of the universe, observing the mutual dependance and harmony by which the whole frame of it hangs together, beating down his passions, or swelling his thoughts with magnificent ideas of Providence, makes a nobler figure in the eye of an intelligent being, than the greatest conqueror amidst the pomps and solemnities of a triumph. On the contrary, there is not a more ridiculous animal than an atheist in his retirement. His mind is incapable of rapture or elevation: he can only consider himself as an insignificant figure in a landscape, and wandering up and down in a field or meadow, under the same terms as the meanest animals about him, and subject to as total a mortality as they, with this aggravation, that he is the only one amongst them who lies under the apprehension of it. In distresses, he must be of all creatures the most helpless and forlorn; he feels the whole pressure of a present calamity, without being relieved by the memory of any thing that is passed, or the prospect of any thing that is to come. Annihilation is the greatest blessing that he proposes to himself, and a halter or a pistol the only refuge he can fly to. But if you would behold one of these gloomy miscreants in his poorest figure, you must consider him under the terrors, or at the approach of death. About thirty years ago I was on shipboard with one of these vermin, when there arose a brisk gale, which could frighten nobody but himself. Upon the rolling of the ship he fell upon his knees, and confessed to the chaplain, that he had been a vile atheist, and He had not been ashore above two days, when one of the company began to rally him upon his devotion on shipboard, which the other denied in such high terms, that it produced the lie on both sides, and ended in a duel. The atheist was run through the body, and, after some loss of blood, became as good a Christian as he was at sea, till he found that his wound was not mortal, He is at present one of the free-thinkers of the age, and now writing a pamphlet against several received opinions concerning the existence of fairies. As I have taken upon me to censure the faults of the age and country which I live in, I should have thought myself inexcusable to have passed over this crying one, which is the subject of my present discourse. I shall, therefore, from time to time, give my countrymen particular cautions against this distemper of the mind, that is almost become fashionable, and by that means more likely to spread. I have somewhere either read or heard a very memorable sentence, "That a man would be a most insupportable monster, should he have the faults that are incident to his years, constitution, profession, family, religion, age, and country and yet every man is in danger of them all." For this reason, as I am an old man, I take particular care to avoid being covetous, and telling long stories: as I am choleric, I forbear not only swearing, but all interjections of fretting; as Pugh! Pish! and the like. As I am a layman, I resolve not to conceive an aversion for a wise and good man, because his coat is of a different colour from mine. As I am descended of the ancient families of Bickerstaffes, I never call a man of merit an upstart. As a Protestant, I do not suffer my zeal so far to transport me, as to name the Pope and the Devil together. As I am fallen into this degenerate age, I guard myself particularly against the folly I have been now speaking of. And as I am an Englishman, I am very cautious not to hate a stranger, or despise a poor Palatine.* * Sir Richard Steel assisted in this paper. No. 114.] Saturday, December 31, 1709. mum existimo, severitatem comitatemque miscere, ne had been composed a little before, at the sight of me, turned away his face, and wept. The little family of children renewed the expressions of their sorrow, according to their Plin. Epist. several ages and degrees of understanding. Sheer-Lane, December 30. The eldest daughter was in tears, busied in I WAS walking about my chamber this attendance upon her mother; others were morning in a very gay humour, when I saw kneeling about the bed-side: and what troua coach stop at my door, and a youth about bled me most was, to see a little boy, who fifteen alighting out of it, whom I perceived was too young to know the reason, weeping to be the eldest son of my bosom friend, that only because his sisters did. The only one I gave some account of in my paper of the in the room who seemed resigned and com17th of the last month. I felt a sensible forted, was the dying person. At my appleasure rising in me at the the sight of him, proach to the bed-side, she told me, with a my acquaintance having begun with his fa- low broken voice, "This is kindly donether when he was just such a stripling, and Take care of your friend-Do not go from about that very age. When he came up to him." She had before taken leave of her me, he took me by the hand, and burst into husband and children, in a manner proper tears. I was extremely moved, and imme- for so solemn a parting, and with a gracefuldiately said, “Child, how does your father ness peculiar to a woman of her character. do? He began to reply, "My mother". My heart was torn to pieces to see the husbut could not go on for weeping. I went band on one side suppressing and keeping down with him into the coach, and gathered down the swellings of his grief, for fear of out of him, that his mother was then dying; disturbing her in her last moments; and the and that while the holy man was doing the wife even at that time concealing the pains last offices to her, he had taken that time she endured, for fear of increasing his afflicto come and call me to his father, "Who tion. She kept her eyes upon him for some (he said) would certainly break his heart, if moments after she grew speechless, and soon did not go and comfort him." The child's after closed them for ever. In the moment discretion in coming to me of his own head, of her departure, my friend (who had thus and the tenderness he showed for his pa- far commanded himself) gave a deep groan, rents, would have quite overpowered me, and fell into a swoon by her bedside. The had Í not resolved to fortify myself for the distraction of the children, who thought they seasonable performance of those duties saw both their parents expiring together, which I owed to my friend. As we were and now lying dead before them, would have going, I could not but reflect upon the char-melted the hardest heart; but they soon racter of that excellent woman, and the greatness of his grief, for the loss of one who had ever been the support of him under all other afflictions. How (thought I) will he be able to bear the hour of her death, that could not, when I was lately with him, speak of a sickness, which was then past, without sorrow? We were now got pretty far into Westminster, and arrived at my friend's house. At the door of it I met Favonius, not without a secret satisfaction, to find he had been there. I had formerly conversed with him at his house; and as he abounds with that sort of virtue and knowledge which makes religion beautiful, and never leads the conversation into the violence and rage of party-disptutes, I listened to him with. In the mean time, I cannot but consider, great pleasure. Our discourse chanced to with much commiseration, the melancholy be upon the subject of death, which he treat-state of one who has had such a part of himed with such a strength of reason, and greatness of soul, that, instead of being terrible, it appeared to a mind rightly cultivated, not altogether to be contemned, but rather to be desired. As I met him at the door, I saw in his face a certain glowing of grief and humanity, heightened with an air of fortitude and resolution, which, as I afterwards found, had such an irresistible force, as to suspend the pains of the dying, and the lamentation of the nearest friends who attended her. I went up directly to the room where she lay, and was met at the entrance by my friend, who, notwithstanding his thoughts perceived their father recover, whom I helped to remove into another room, with a resolution to accompany him till the first pangs of his affliction were abated. I knew consolation would now be impertinent; and therefore contented myself to sit by him, and condole with him in silence: for I shall here use the method of an ancient author, who, in one of his epistles, relating the virtues and death of Macrinus's wife, expresses himself thus: "I shall suspend my advice to this best of friends, till he is made capable of receiving it by those three great remedies, (necessitas ipsa, dies longa, et satietas doloris,) the necessity of submission, length of time, and satiety of grief.” self torn from him, and which he misses in every circumstance of life. His condition is like that of one who has lately lost his right arm, and is every moment offering to help himself with it. He does not appear to himself the same person in his house, at his table, in company, or in retirement; and loses the relish of all the pleasures and diversions that were before entertaining to him by her participation of them. The most agreeable objects recall the sorrow for her with whom he used to enjoy them. This additional satisfaction, from the taste of pleasures in the society of one we love, is admirably described |