lady elaborately dressed, loses nothing of its | Th' adorning thee with so much art I know not whether by merit or destiny, I was soon after my arrival, admitted to this envied party, which I frequented till I had learned the art by which each endeavoured to support his character. Tom Steady was a vehement assertor of unCowley seems to have possessed the power controverted truth; and by keeping himself of writing easily beyond any other of our out of the reach of contradiction had acquired poets; yet his pursuit of remote thoughts led all the confidence which the consciousness of him often into harshness of expression. Wal-irresistible abilities could have given. I was ler often attempted, but seldom attained it; for he is too frequently driven into transpositions. The poets, from the time of Dryden, have gradually advanced in embellishment, and conse-"Sir," said Mr. Steady, "that he has faults I quently departed from simplicity and ease. once mentioning a man of eminence, and after having recounted his virtues, endeavoured to represent him fully, by mentioning his faults. can easily believe, for who is without them? No man, Sir, is now alive, among the innumerable multitudes that swarm upon the earth, however wise, or however good, who has not, To require from any author many pieces of easy poetry, would be, indeed, to oppress him with too hard a task. It is less difficult to write a volume of lines swelled with epithets, bright-in some degree, his failings and his faults. If ened by figures, and stiffened by transpositions, than to produce a few couplets graced only by naked elegance and simple purity, which requires so much care and skill, that I doubt whether any of our authors have yet been able, for twenty lines together, nicely to observe the true definition of easy poetry. No. 78.] SATURDAY, OCT. 13, 1759. there be any man faultless, bring him forth into public view, show him openly, and let him be known; but I will venture to affirm, and, till the contrary be plainly shown, shall always maintain, that no such man is to be found. Tell not me, Sir, of impeccability and perfection; such talk is for those that are strangers in the world; I have seen several nations, and conversed with all ranks of people; I have known the great and the mean, the learned and the ignorant, the old and the young, the clerical and the lay; but I have never found a man without a fault; and I suppose shall die in the opinion, that to be human is to be frail." I HAVE passed the summer in one of those places to which a mineral spring gives the idle and luxurious an annual reason for resorting, whenever they fancy themselves offended by To all this nothing could be opposed. I listhe heat of London. What is the true motive tened with a hanging head: Mr. Steady looked of this periodical assembly I have never yet round on the hearers with triumph, and saw been able to discover. The greater part of every eye congratulating his victory; he dethe visitants neither feel diseases nor fear them. parted, and spent the next morning in followWhat pleasure can be expected, more than the ing those who retired from the company, and variety of the journey, I know not, for the num-telling them, with injunctions of secrecy, how bers are too great for privacy, and too small for diversion. As each is known to be a spy upon the rest, they all live in continual restraint; and having but a narrow range for censure, they gratify its cravings by preying on one another. But every condition has some advantages. In this confinement a smaller circle affords opportunities for more exact observation. The glass that magnifies its object contracts the sight to a point; and the mind must be fixed upon a single character to remark its minute peculiarities. The quality or habit which passes unobserved in the tumult of successive multitudes, becomes conspicuous when it is of fered to the notice day after day; and perhaps I have, without any distinct notice, seen thousands, like my late companions; for when the scene can be varied at pleasure, a slight disgust turns us aside before a deep impression can be made upon the mind. poor Sprightly began to take liberties with men wiser than himself, but that he suppressed him by a decisive argument, which put him totally to silence. Dick Snug is a man of sly remark and pithy sententiousness; he never immerges himself in the stream of conversation, but lies to catch his companions in the eddy: he is often very successful in breaking narratives, and confounding eloquence. A gentleman, giving the history of one of his acquaintance, made mention of a lady that had many lovers: "Then," said Dick, "she was either handsome or rich." This observation being well received, Dick watched the progress of the tale; and hearing of a man lost in a shipwreck, remarked, that "no man was ever drowned upon dry land.” Will Startle is a man of exquisite sensibility, whose delicacy of frame, and quickness of discernment, subject him to impressions There was a select set, supposed to be dis- from the slightest causes; and who, therefore, tinguished by superiority of intellects, who al-passes his life between rapture and horror, in ways passed the evening together. To be admitted to their conversation was the highest honour of the place; many youths aspired to distinction, by pretending to occasional invitations; and the ladies were often wishing to be men, that they might partake the pleasures of learned society. quiverings of delight, or convulsions of disgust. His emotions are too violent for many words; his thoughts are always discovered by exclamations. "Vile, odious, horrid, detestable," and "sweet, charming, delightful, astonishing," compose almost his whole vocabulary, which he utters with various contor this imitation being merely mechanica which the slowest intellect is always su succeed best; for the painter of genius ca stoop to drudgery, in which the understan has no part; and what pretence has the to claim kindred with poetry, but by its ers over the imagination? To this power painter of genius directs his aim; in this s he studies nature, and often arrives at his even by being unnatural in the confined se of the word. The grand style of painting requires minute attention to be carefully avoided, must be kept as separate from it as the styl poetry from that of history. Poetical on ments destroy that air of truth and plainn which ought to characterise history; but very being of poetry consists in departi from this plain narration, and adopting eve ornament that will warm the imagination. 1 desire to see the excellencies of each sty united, to mingle the Dutch with the Italia school, is to join contrarieties which cann subsist together, and which destroy the effica cy of each other. The Italian attends on to the invariable, the great and general ideas which are fixed and inherent in universal na ture; the Dutch, on the contrary, to literal truth, and a minute exactness in the detail, as Poets lose half the praise they would have got, Were it but known what they discretely blot. Dick Misty is a man of deep research, and forcible penetration. Others are content with superficial appearances: but Dick holds, that there is no effect without a cause, and values himself upon his power of explaining the difficulty, and displaying the abstruse. Upon a dispute among us, which of two young strangers was more beautiful, "You," says Mr. Misty, turning to me, "like Amaranthia better than Chloris. I do not wonder at the preference, for the cause is evident; there is in man a perception of harmony, and a sensibility of perfection, which touches the finer fibres of the mental texture; and before reason can de-I may say of nature modified by accident scend from her throne, to pass her sentence upon the things compared, drives us towards the object proportioned to our faculties, by an impulse gentle, yet irresistible; for the harmonic system of the universe, and the reciprocal magnetism of similar natures, are always operating towards conformity and union; nor can the powers of the soul cease from agitation, till they find something on which they can repose." To this nothing was opposed; and Amaranthia was acknowledged to excel Chloris. No. 79.] SATURDAY, OCT. 20, 1759. SIR, TO THE IDLER. YOUR acceptance of a former letter on painting, gives me encouragement to offer a few more sketches on the same subject. The attention to these petty peculiarities is is the very cause of this naturalness, so much admired in the Dutch pictures, which, if we suppose it to be a beauty, is certainly of s lower order, which ought to give place to beauty of a superior kind, since one cannot be obtained but by departing from the other. If my opinion was asked concerning the works of Michael Angelo, whether they would receive any advantage from possessing this mechanical merit, I should not scruple to say they would not only receive no advantage, but would lose, in a great measure, the effect which they now have on every mind suscepti ble of great and noble ideas. His works may be said to be all genius and soul; and why should they be loaded with heavy matter, which can only counteract his purpose by re tarding the progress of the imagination. If this opinion should be thought one of the wild extravagancies of enthusiasm, I shall only say, that those who censure it are not conver sant in the works of the great masters. It is very difficult to determine the exact degree of enthusiasm that the arts of painting and poe Amongst the painters and the writers on try may admit. There may perhaps be too painting, there is one maxim universally ad- great an indulgence, as well as too great a re mitted, and continually inculcated. Imitate straint of imagination; and if the one pronature is the invariable rule; but I know none duces incoherent monsters, the other produ who have explained in what manner this rule ces what is full as bad, lifeless insipidity. is to be understood; the consequence of which An intimate knowledge of the passions, and is, that every one takes it in the most obvious good sense, but not common sense, must at sense, that objects are represented naturally last determine its limits. It has been thought, when they have such relief that they seem real. and I believe with reason, that Michael Angelo It may appear strange, perhaps, to hear this sometimes transgressed those limits, and ! sense of the rule disputed; but it must be con- think I have seen figures of him of which it sidered, that, if the excellence of a painter was very difficult to determine whether they consisted only in this kind of imitation, paint- were in the highest degree sublime or ex ing must lose its rank, and be no longer con-tremely ridiculous. Such faults may be said sidered as a liberal art, and sister to poetry, to be the ebullitions of genius; but at least 20 had this merit, that he never was insipid, Amon nature. ne may very safely recommend a little e enthusiasm to the modern painters; too ch is certainly not the vice of the present The Italians seem to have been contilly declining in this respect from the time Michael Angelo to that of Carlo Maratti, 1 from thence to the very bathos of insipidito which they are now sunk; so that there 10 need of remarking, that where I menned the Italian painters in opposition to the tch, I mean not the moderns, but the heads the old Roman and Bolognian schools; nor I mean to include in my idea of an Italian inter, the Venetian school, which may be id to be the Dutch part of the Italian genius. have only to add a word of advice to the inters, that however excellent they may be painting naturally, they would not flatter emselves very much upon it; and to the onnoisseurs, that when they see a cat or fide painted so finely, that as the phrase is, It looks as if you could take it up," they ould not for that reason immediately comare the painter to Raffaelle and Michael ngelo. its labours, than whole shops of silk busy the fancy. But happiness is nothing if it is not known, and very little if it is not envied. Before the day of departure a week is always appropriated to the payment and reception of ceremonial vi sits, at which nothing can be mentioned but the delights of London. The lady who is hastening to the scene of action, flutters her wings, displays her prospect of felicity, tells how she grudges every moment of delay, and, in the presence of those whom she knows condemned to stay at home, is sure to wonder by what arts life can be made supportable through a winter in the country, and to tell how often, amidst the ecstacies of an opera, she shall pity those friends whom she has left behind. Her hope of giving pain is seldom disappointed: the affected indifference of one, the faint congratulations of another, the wishes of some openly confessed, and the silent dejection of the rest, all exalt her opinion of her own superiority. But, however we may labour for our own deception, truth, though unwelcome, will sometimes intrude upon the mind. They who have already enjoyed the crowds and noise of the great city, know that their desire to return is little more than the restlessness of a vacant mind, that they are not so much led by hope as driven by disgust, and wish rather to leave the country than to see the town. There is commonly in every coach a passenger enwrapped in silent expectation, whose joy is more sincere, and whose hopes are more exalted. The virgin whom the last summer released from her governess, and who is now going between her mother and her aunt to try the fortune of her wit and beauty, suspects no fallacy in the gay representation. She beTHAT every day has its pains and sorrows is lieves herself passing into another world, and Aniversally experienced, and almost univer-images London as an Elysian region, where sally confessed; but let us not attend only to mournful truths; if we look impartially about us, we shall find that every day has likewise its pleasures and its joys. No. 80.] SATURDAY, OCT. 27, 1759. The time is now come when the town is again beginning to be full, and the rusticated beauty sees an end of her banishment. Those whom the tyranny of fashion had condemned to pass the summer among shades and brooks, are now preparing to return to plays, balls, and assemblies, with health restored by retirement, and spirits kindled by expectation. every hour has its proper pleasure, where nothing is seen but the blaze of wealth, and nothing heard but merriment and flattery; where the morning always rises on a show, and the evening closes on a ball; where the eyes are used only to sparkle, and the feet only to dance. Her aunt and her mother amuse themselves on the road, with telling her of dangers to be dreaded, and cautions to be observed. She hears them as they heard their predecessors, with incredulity or contempt. She sees that they have ventured and escaped; and one of the pleasures which she promises herself is, to detect their falsehoods, and be freed from their admonitions. Many a mind, which has languished some months without emotion or desire, now feels a sudden renovation of its faculties. It was long ago observed by Pythagoras, that ability and necessity dwell near each other. She that wandered in the garden without sense of its fragrance, and lay day after day stretched upon a couch behind a green curtain, unwilling to wake and unable to sleep, now summons her thoughts to consider which of her last year's clothes shall be seen again, and to anticipate the raptures of a new suit; the day The uniform necessities of human nature and the night are now filled with occupation; produce in a great measure uniformity of life, the laces, which were too fine to be worn and for part of the day make one place like among rustics, are taken from the boxes, and another; to dress and undress, to eat and to reviewed, and the eye is no sooner closed after | sleep, are the same in London as in the coun We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know, because they have never deceived us. The fair adventurer may perhaps lis ten to the Idler, whom she cannot suspect of rivalry or malice; yet he scarcely expects to be credited when he tells her, that her expectations will likewise end in disappointment. try. The supernumerary hours have indeed a greater variety both of pleasure and of pain. The stranger gazed on by multitudes at her first appearance in the Park, is perhaps on the highest summit of female happiness: but how great is the anguish when the novelty of another face draws her worshippers away! The heart may leap for a time under a fine gown; but the sight of a gown yet finer puts an end to rapture. In the first row at an opera, two hours may be happily passed in listening to the music on the stage, and watching the glances of the company; but how will the night end in despondency when she that imagined herself the sovereign of the place, sees lords contending to lead Iris to her chair! There is little pleasure in conversation to her whose wit is regarded but in the second place; and who can dance with ease or spirit that sees Amaryllis led out before her? She that fancied nothing but a succession of pleasures, will find herself engaged without design in numberless competitions, and mortified without provocation with numberless afflictions. "Many years and ages are supposed to have been thus passed in plenty and security; when, at last, a new race of men entered our country from the great ocean. They inclosed themselves in habitations of stone, which our ancestors could neither enter by violence, nor destroy by fire. They issued from those fastnesses, sometimes, covered like the armadillo with shells, from which the lance rebounded on the striker, and sometimes carried by mighty beasts which had never been seen in our vales or forests, of such strength and swiftness, that flight and opposition were vain alike. Those invaders ranged over the continent, slaughtering in their rage those that resisted, and those that submitted, in their mirth. Of those that remained, some were buried in caverns, and condemned to dig metals for their masters; some were employed in tilling the ground, of which foreign tyrants devour the produce; and, when the sword and the mines have destroyed the natives, they supply their place by human beings of another colour, brought from some distant country to perish here under toil and torture. But I do not mean to extinguish that ardour which I wish to moderate, or to discourage those whom I am endeavouring to restrain. To know the world is necessary, since we are born for the help of one another; and to know it early is convenient, if it be only that we may learn early to despise it. She that brings to London a mind well prepared for improvement, though she misses her hope of uninter-residence and tyranny; but surely the insolence rupted happiness, will gain in return an opportunity of adding knowledge to vivacity, and enlarging innocence to virtue. "Some there are who boast their humanity, and content themselves to seize our chases and fisheries, who drive us from every track of ground where fertility and pleasantness invite them to settle, and make no war upon us, ex cept when we intrude upon our own lands. "Others pretend to have purchased a right of As the English army was passing towards Quebec, along a soft savanna between a mountain and a lake, one of the petty chiefs of the inland regions stood upon a rock surrounded by his clan, and from behind the shelter of the bushes contemplated the art and regularity of European war. It was evening, the tents were pitched: he observed the security with which the troops rested in the night, and the order with which the march was renewed in the morning. He continued to pursue them with his eye till they could be seen no longer, and then stood for some time silent and pensive. Then turning to his followers, "My children," said he, "I have often heard from men hoary with long life, that there was a time when our ancestors were absolute lords of the woods, the meadows, and the lakes, wherever the eye can reach, or the foot can pass. They fished and hunted, feasted and danced, and, when they were weary lay down under the first thicket, without danger, and without fear. They changed their habitations as the seasons required, convenience prompted, or curiosity allured them; and sometimes gathered the fruits of the mountain, and sometimes sported in canoes along the coast. of such bargains is more offensive than the avowed and open dominion of force. What reward can induce the possessor of a country to admit a stranger more powerful than himself? Fraud or terror must operate in such contracts; either they promised protection which they never have afforded, or instruction which they never imparted. We hoped to be secured by their favour from some other evil, or to learn the arts of Europe, by which we might be able to secure ourselves. Their power they never have exerted in our defence, and their arts they have studiously concealed from us. Their treaties are only to deceive, and their traffic only to defraud us. They have a written law among them, of which they boast as derived from Him who made the earth and sea, and by which they profess to believe that man will be made happy when life shall forsake him. Why is not this law communicated to us? It is concealed because it is violated. For how can they preach it to an Indian nation, when I am told that one of its first precepts forbids them to do to others what they would not that other should do to them? "But the time perhaps is now approaching when the pride of usurpation shall be crushed, and the cruelties of invasion shall be revenged. The sons of rapacity have now drawn their swords upon each other, and referred their claims to the decision of war; let us look unconcerned upon the slaughter and remember that the death of every European delivers the country from a tyrant and a robber; for what is the claim of either nation, but the claim of the vulture to the leveret, of the tiger to the fawn? Let them then continue to dispute No. 82.] SATURDAY, Nov. 10, 1759. their title to regions which they cannot people, [ continually inclining, like various lines termito purchase by danger and blood the empty nating in the centre; or it may be compared to dignity of dominion over mountains which pendulums vibrating in different directions over they will never climb, and rivers which they one central point, and as they all cross the will never pass. Let us endeavour in the centre, though only one passes through any mean time, to learn their discipline, and to other point, so it will be found that perfect beauforge their weapons; and, when they shall ty is oftener produced by nature than deformity; be weakened with mutual slaughter, let us I do not mean than deformity in general, but rush down upon them, force their remains to than any one kind of deformity. To instance take shelter in their ships, and reign once in a particular part of a feature: the line that more in our native country." forms the ridge of the nose is beautiful when it is straight; this then is the central form, which is oftener found than either concave, convex, or any other irregular form, that shall be proposed. As we are then more accustomed to beauty than deformity, we may conclude that to be the reason why we approve and admire it as we approve and admire customs, and fashions of dress for no other reason than that we are used to them, so that though habit and custom cannot be said to be the cause of beauty, it is certainly the cause of our liking it; and I have no doubt but that, if we were more used to deformity than beauty, deformity would then lose the idea now annexed it, and take that of beauty: as, if the whole world should agree that yes and no should change their meanings, yes would then deny, and no would affirm. SIR, TO THE IDLER. DISCOURSING in my last letter on the different practice of the Italian and Dutch painters, I observed, that "the Italian painter attends only to the invariable, the great and general ideas which are fixed and inherent in universal nature." I was led into the subject of this letter by endeavouring to fix the original cause of this conduct of the Italian masters. If it can be proved that by this choice they selected the most beautiful part of the creation, it will show how much their principles are founded on reason, and, at the same time, discover the origin of our ideas of beauty. Whoever undertakes to proceed farther in this argument, and endeavours to fix a general criterion of beauty respecting different speI suppose it will be easily granted, that no cies, or to show why one species is more beauman can judge whether any animal be beauti-tiful than another, it will be required from him ful in its kind, or deformed, who has seen only one of that species; that is as conclusive in regard to the human figure; so that if a man, born blind, was to recover his sight, and the most beautiful woman was brought before him, he could not determine whether she was handsome or not; nor, if the most beautiful and most deformed were produced, could he any better determine to which he should give the preference, having seen only those two. To distinguish beauty, then, implies the having seen many individuals of that species. If it is asked, how is more skill acquired by the observation of greater numbers? I answer, that, in consequence of having seen many, the power is acquired, even without seeking after it, of distinguishing between accidental blemishes and excrescences which are continually varying the surface of Nature's works, and the invariable general form which nature most frequently produces, and always seems to intend in her productions. first to prove that one species is more beautiful than another. That we prefer one to the other, and with very good reason, will be readily granted; but it does not follow from thence that we think it a more beautiful form; for we have no criterion of form by which to determine our judgment. He who says a swan is more beautiful than a dove, means little more than he has more pleasure in seeing a swan than a dove, either from the stateliness of its motions, or its being a more rare bird; and he who gives the preference to the dove, does it from some association of ideas of innocence that he always annexes to the dove; but if he pretends to defend the preference he gives to one or the other by endeavouring to prove that this more beautiful form proceeds from a particular gradation of magnitude, undulation of a curve, or direction of a line, or whatever other conceit of his imagination he shall fix on as a criterion of form, he will be continually contradicting himself, and find at last that the great mother Thus amongst the blades of grass or leaves of nature will not be subjected to such narrow of the same tree, though no two can be found rules. Among the various reasons why we preexactly alike, yet the general form is invaria-fer one part of her works to another, the most ble: a naturalist, before he chose one as a general, I believe, is habit and custom; cussample, would examine many, since if he took tom makes, in a certain sense, white black, and the first that occurred, it might have by acci-black white! it is custom alone determines our dent, or otherwise, such a form as that it would scarcely be known to belong to that species; he selects as the painter does, the most beautiful, that is, the most general form of nature. Every species of the animal as well as the vegetable creation may be said to have a fixed or determinate form towards which nature is preference of the colour of the Europeans to the Ethiopians; and they, for the same reason, prefer their own colour to ours. I suppose nobody will doubt, if one of their painters were to paint the goddess of beauty, but that he would represent her black, with thick lips, flat nose, and woolly hair; and, it seems to me, he would act very unnaturally if he did not; for |