whether the notion he proceeds upon be true or false. I make bold to convey it to you, not knowing if it has yet come to your hands. ON THE SPECTATOR, BY MR. TATE.' -Aliusque et idem Nasceris HOR. You rise another and the same. When first the Tatler to a mute was turn'd, "UPON reading your essay, concerning the pleasures of the imagination, I find among the three sources of those pleasures which you have discovered, that 'greatness' is one. This has suggested to me the reason why, of all objects that I have ever 1 Nahum Tate, Shadwell's successor in the office of Laureate. Born in Dublin, 1652, where he studied. Died 1715.-G. seen, there is none which affects my imagination so much as the sea or ocean. I cannot see the heavings of this prodigious bulk of waters, even in a calm, without a very pleasing astonishment; but when it is worked up in a tempest, so that the horizon on every side is nothing but foaming billows and floating mountains, it is impossible to describe the agreeable horror that rises from such a prospect. A troubled ocean, to a man who sails upon it, is, I think, the biggest object that he can see in motion, and consequently gives his imagination one of the highest kinds of pleasure that can arise from greatness. I must confess, it is impossible for me to survey this world of fluid matter, without thinking on the hand that first poured it out, and made a proper channel for its reception. Such an object naturally raises in my thoughts the idea of an Almighty Being, and convinces me of his existence as much as a metaphysical demonstration. The imagination prompts the understanding, and by the greatness of the sensible object, produces in it the idea of a Being who is neither circumscribed by time nor space. "As I have made several voyages upon the sea, I have often been tossed in storms, and on that occasion have frequently reflected on the descriptions of them in antient poets. I remember Longinus highly recommends one in Homer, because the poet has not amused himself with little fancies upon the occasion, as authors of an inferior genius, whom he mentions, had done, but because he has gathered together those circumstances which are the most apt to terrify the imagination, and which really happen in the raging of a tempest. It is for the same reason, that I prefer the following description of a ship in a storm, which the psalmist has made, before any other I have ever met with. They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters: The reader of taste feels the force of this well-chosen word. Mr. Pope had it in view, when he said,-"Who heaves old ocean."-H. these men see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep. For he commandeth and raiseth the stormy wind, which lifteth up the waters thereof. They mount up to heaven, they go down again to the depths, their soul is melted because of trouble. They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wits-end. Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, and he bringeth them out of their distresses. He maketh the storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are still. Then they are glad because they be quict, so he bringeth them unto their desired haven.' "By the way, how much more comfortable, as well as rational, is this system of the psalmist, than the pagan scheme in Virgil, and other poets, where one deity is represented as raising a storm, and another as laying it? Were we only to consider the sublime in this piece of poetry, what can be nobler than the idea it gives us of the Supreme Being thus raising a tumult among the elements, and recovering them out of their confusion, thus troubling and becalming nature? "Great Painters do not only give us landscapes of gardens, groves, and meadows, but very often employ their pencils upon sea-pieces I could wish you would follow their example. If this small sketch may deserve a place among your works, I shall accompany it with a divine ode, made by a gentleman upon the conclusion of his travels. L 'How are thy servants blest, O Lord! How sure is their defence! Eternal wisdom is their guide, Their help Omnipotence. i. e. By himself. So early had a spirit of piety taken possession of this excellent man's mind!-H. X. My life, if thou preserv'st my life, And death, if death must be my doom, No. 494. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 26. Ægritudinem laudare, unam rem maximè detestabilem, quorum est tandem Philosophorum ? CIC. What kind of philosophy is it, to extol melancholy, the most detestable thing in na'ure? ABOUT an age ago it was the fashion in England, for every one that would be thought religious, to throw as much sanctity as possible into his face, and, in particular, to abstain from all appearances of mirth and pleasantry, which were looked upon as the marks of a carnal mind. The saint was of a sorrowful countenance, and generally eaten up with spleen and melancholy. A gentleman, who was lately a great ornament to the learned world,' has diverted me more than once with an account of the reception which he met with from a very famous independent minister, who was head of a college in those times. This gentleman was then a young adventurer in the republic of letters, and just fitted out for the university with a good cargo of Latin and Greek. His friends were resolved that he should try his fortune at an election 1 Anthony Denley, who died 1711.-V. Tatler, Nos. 11, 25, 26, 44.—G. * Dr. Thomas Goodwin, S. T. P. President of Magdalen College, Oxford, and one of the assembly of divines who sat at Westminster. Mr. Hood says, "Dr. T. Goodwin, and Dr. Owen, were the atlasses and patriarchs of independency. Dr. Goodwin attended his friend and patron, O. Cromwell, on his death-bed. The Doctor's portrait, said to be a strong likeness, with a smoke cap on his head, is prefixed to his works in 2 vols. folio, 1681.-C. VOL, VI.-21* |