No. 94.] THE SPECTATOR. mention in general to be the pursuit of subjects, or by entertaining a quick and knowledge. No. 94.] Monday, June 18, 1711. -Hoc est Vivere bis, vita posse priore frui. constant succession of ideas. Accordingly, Mart. Epig. xxiii. 10. The present joys of life we doubly taste, By looking back with pleasure on the past. The notion of Monsieur Malebranche is THE last method which I proposed in my Saturday's paper, for filling up those empty spaces of life which are so tedious capable of some little explanation from and burdensome to idle people, is the em- what I have quoted out of Mr. Locke; for ploying ourselves in the pursuit of know-if our notion of time is produced by our reledge. I remember Mr. Boyle, speaking flecting on the succession of ideas in our of a certain mineral, tells us, that a man mind, and this succession may be infinitely may consume his whole life in the study of accelerated or retarded, it will follow, that it, without arriving at the knowledge of all different beings may have different notions its qualities. The truth of it is, there is of the same parts of duration, according as not a single science, or any branch of it, their ideas, which we suppose are equally that might not furnish a man with business distinct in each of them, follow one another There is a famous passage in the Alcofor life, though it were much longer than in a greater or less degree of rapidity. it is. ran, which looks as if Mahomet had been It is there said, that the angel possessed of the notion we are now speaking of. Gabriel took Mahomet out of his bed one morning to give him a sight of all things in the seven heavens, in paradise, and in hell, which the prophet took a distinct view of; and after having held ninety thousand conto his bed. All this, says the Alcoran, was ferences with God, was brought back again transacted in so small a space of time, that Mahomet at his return found his bed still warm, and took up an earthen pitcher which was thrown down at the very instant that the angel Gabriel carried him away, before the water was all spilt. I shall not here engage on those beaten subjects of the usefulness of knowledge, nor of the pleasure and perfection it gives the mind; nor on the methods of obtaining it, nor recommend any particular branch of it; all which have been the topics of many other writers; but shall indulge myself in a speculation that is more uncommon, and may therefore perhaps be more entertaining. have before shown how the unemployed parts of life appear long and tedious, and shall here endeavour to show how those parts of life which are exercised in study, reading, and the pursuits of knowledge, are long, but not tedious, and by that means discover a method of lengthening our lives, and at the same time of turning all the parts of them to our advantage. Mr. Locke observes, That we get the idea of time or duration, by reflecting on that train of ideas which succeed one another in our minds; that for this reason, when we sleep soundly without dreaming, we have no perception of time, or the length of it while we sleep; and that the moment wherein we leave off to think, till the moment we begin to think again, seems to To which the author have no distance.' adds, 'And so I doubt not but it would be to a waking man, if it were possible for him to keep only one idea in his mind, without variation, and the succession of others; and we see, that one who fixes his thoughts very intently on one thing, so as to take but little notice of the succession of ideas that pass in his mind whilst he is taken up with that earnest contemplation, lets slip out of his account a good part of that duration, and thinks that time shorter than it is.' We might carry this thought further, and consider a man as, on one side, shortening his time by thinking on nothing, or but a few things; so on the other, as lengthening it, by employing his thoughts on many There is a very pretty story in the Turkish Tales, which relates to this passage of that famous impostor, and bears some affinity to the subject we are now upon. A sultan of Egypt, who was an infidel, used to laugh at this circumstance in Mahomet's life, as what was altogether impossible and absurd: but conversing one day with a great doctor in the law, who had the gift of working miracles, the doctor told him he would quickly convince him of the truth of this passage in the history of Mahomet, if he would consent to do what he would desire of him. Upon this the sultan was directed to place himself by a huge tub of water, which he did accordingly; and as he stood by the tub amidst a circle of his great men, the holy man bid him plunge his head into the water, and draw it up again. The king accordingly thrust his head into the water, and at the same time found himself at the foot of a mountain on the sea-shore. The doctor for this piece of treachery and witchking immediately began to rage against his *This story is not to be found in the Alcoran, nor can I meet with any life of the prophet where it is told in these words; there is something like it in Simon's but it is less particular. Critical History of the Belief of the Eastern Nations, 12 craft; but at length, knowing it was in vain | beautiful and spacious landscape divided to be angry, he set himself to think on pro-into delightful gardens, green meadows, per methods for getting a livelihood in this fruitful fields, and can scarce cast his eye strange country. Accordingly he applied on a single spot of his possessions, that is himself to some people whom he saw at not covered with some beautiful plant or work in a neighbouring wood: these peo-flower. No. 95.] Tuesday, June 19, 1711. L. ple conducted him to a town that stood at a little distance from the wood, where after some adventures, he married a woman of great beauty and fortune. He lived with this woman so long, that he had by her se- Curæ leves loquuntur, ingentes stupent.--Senece Trag ven sons and seven daughters. He was af- Light sorrows loose the tongue, but great enchain.-P terwards reduced to great want, and forced HAVING read the two following letters to think of plying in the streets as a porter with much pleasure, I cannot but think the for his livelihood. One day as he was walk-good sense of them will be as agreeable to ing alone by the sea-side, being seized with the town as any thing I could say either on many melancholy reflections upon his former and his present state of life, which had both allude to former papers of mine, and I the topics they treat of, or any other; they raised a fit of devotion in him, he threw off do not question but the first, which is upon his clothes with a design to wash himself, inward mourning, will be thought the proaccording to the custom of the Mahometans, duction of a man who is well acquainted before he said his prayers. with the generous yearnings of distress in a manly temper, which is above the relief of subject I shall defer till another occasion. A speculation of my own on that The second letter is from a lady of a mind perhaps something in the beginning of it as great as her understanding. There is which I ought in modesty to conceal; but I have so much esteem for this correspondent, that I will not alter a tittle of what she writes, though I am thus scrupulous at the price of being ridiculous. After his first plunge into the sea, he no sooner raised his head above the water but he found himself standing by the side of the tub, with the great men of his court about him, and the holy man at his side. He immediately upbraided his teacher for having sent him on such a course of adventures, and betrayed him into so long a state of misery and servitude; but was wonderfully surprised when he heard that the state he talked of was only a dream and a delusion; that he had not stirred from the place where he then stood; and that he had only dipped his head into the water, and immediately taken it out again. The Mahometan doctor took this occasion of instructing the sultan, that nothing was impossible with God; and that He, with whom a thousand years are but as one day, can, if he pleases, make a single day, nay, a single moment, appear to any of his creatures as a thousand years. tears. 'MR. SPECTATOR,-I was very well pleased with your discourse upon general mourning, and should be obliged to you if you would enter into the matter more deeply, and give us your thoughts upon the common sense the ordinary people have of the demonstrations of grief, who prescribe rules and fashions to the most solemn affliction; such as the loss of the nearest relations and dearest friends. You cannot go to visit a sick friend, but some impertinent waiter about him observes the muscles of your face, as strictly as if they were prognostics of his death or recovery. If he happens to be taken from you, you are immediately surrounded with numbers of these specta I shall leave my reader to compare these eastern fables with the notions of those two great philosophers whom I have quoted in this paper; and shall only, by way of application, desire him to consider how we may extend life beyond its natural dimensions, by applying ourselves diligently to the pur-tors, who expect a melancholy shrug of suits of knowledge. The hours of a wise man are lengthened by his ideas, as those of a fool are by his passions. The time of the one is long, because he does not know what to do with it; so is that of the other, because he distinguishes every moment of it with useful or amusing thoughts; or, in other words, because the one is always wishing it away, and the other always enjoying it. How different is the view of past life, in the man who is grown old in knowledge and wisdom, from that of him who is grown old in ignorance and folly! The latter is like the owner of a barren country, that fills his eye with the prospect of naked hills and plains, which produce nothing either profitable or ornamental; the other beholds a your shoulders, a pathetical shake of your head, and an expressive distortion of your face, to measure your affection and value for the deceased. But there is nothing, on these occasions, so much in their favour as immoderate weeping. As all their passions are superficial, they imagine the seat of love and friendship to be placed visibly in the eyes. They judge what stock of kindness you had for the living, by the quantity of tears you pour out for the dead; so that if one body wants that quantity of saltwater another abounds with, he is in great danger of being thought insensible or illnatured. They are strangers to friendship whose grief happens not to be moist enough to wet such a parcel of handkerchiefs. But experience has told us, nothing is so THE SPECTATOR. fallacious as this outward sign of sorrow; and the natural history of our bodies will teach us that this flux of the eyes, this faculty of weeping, is peculiar only to some constitutions. We observe in the tender bodies of children, when crossed in their little wills and expectations, how dissolvable they are into tears. If this were what grief is in men, nature would not be able to support them in the excess of it for one moment. Add to this observation, how quick is their transition from this passion to that of their joy! I will not say we see often, in the next tender things to children, tears shed without much grieving. Thus it is common to shed tears without much sorrow, and as common to suffer much sorrow without shedding tears. Grief and weeping are indeed frequent companions: but, I believe, never in their highest excesses. As laughter does not proceed from profound joy, so neither does weeping from profound sorrow. The sorrow which appears so easily at the eyes, cannot have pierced deeply into the heart. The heart distended with grief, stops all the passages for tears or lamentations. "Now, sir, what I would incline you to in all this is, that you would inform the shallow critics and observers upon sorrow, that true affliction labours to be invisible, that it is a stranger to ceremony, and that it bears in its own nature a dignity much above the little circumstances which are affected under the notion of decency. You must know, sir, I have lately lost a dear friend, for whom I have not yet shed a tear, and for that reason your animadversions on that subject would be the more acceptable to, sir, your most humble servant, than the beaux, and that you could name I cannot but agree with the judicious June the 15th. MR. SPECTATOR,-As I hope there are but few who have so little gratitude as not to acknowledge the usefulness of your pen, and to esteem it a public benefit; so I am sensible, be that as it will, you must nevertheless find the secret and incomparable No. 96.] Wednesday, June 20, 1711. pleasure of doing good, and be a great sharer in the entertainment you give. I acknowledge our sex to be much obliged, and I hope improved by your labours, and even your intentions more particularly for our service. If it be true, as it is sometimes said, that our sex have an influence on the other, your paper may be yet a more general good. Your directing us to reading, is certainly the best means to our instruction; but I think, with you, caution in that particular very useful, since the improvement of our understandings may, or may not, be of service to us, according as it is managed. It has been thought we are not generally so ignorant as ill-taught, or that our sex does not so often want wit, judgment, or knowledge, as the right application of them. You are so well-bred, as to say your fair readers are already deeper scholars MR. SPECTATOR,-I have frequently read your discourse upon servants, and as I am one myself, have been much offended, that in that variety of forms wherein you considered the bad, you found no place to mention the good. There is however one "That there are men of wit and good sense observation of yours I approve, which is, among all orders of men, and that servants report most of the good or ill which is spoken of their masters." That there are men of sense who live in servitude, I have the vanity to say I have felt to my woful experience. You attribute very justly the source of our general iniquity to board ladies of my master's acquaintance. We rambled from tavern to tavern, to the playhouse, the Mulberry-garden,* and all places of resort; where my master engaged every night in some new amour, in which and drinking, he spent all his time when he had money. During these extravagances, I had the pleasure of lying on the stairs of a tavern half a night playing at dice with other servants, and the like idleness. When my master was moneyless, I was generally employed in transcribing amorous pieces of poetry, old songs, and new lampoons. This life held till my master married, and he had then the prudence to turn me off, because I was in the secret of his intrigues. wages, and the manner of living out of a walks in the Temple. A young gentleman domestic way: but I cannot give you my of the house, who (as I heard him say afterthoughts on this subject any way so well, as wards) seeing me half-starved and wellby a short account of my own life to this the dressed, thought me an equipage ready to forty-fifth year of my age; that is to say, his hand, after a very little inquiry more from my being first a footboy at fourteen, than "Did I want a master?" bid me folto my present station of a nobleman's por- low him; I did so, and in a very little while ter in the year of my age above-mentioned. thought myself the happiest creature in the 'Know then, that my father was a poor world. My time was taken up in carrying tenant to the family of Sir Stephen Rack-letters to wenches, or messages to young rent. Sir Stephen put me to school, or rather made me follow his son Harry to school, from my ninth year: and there, though Sir Stephen paid something for my learning, I was used like a servant, and was forced to get what scraps of learning I could by my own industry, for the school-master took very little notice of me. My young master was a lad of very sprightly parts; and my being constantly about him, and loving him, was no small advantage to me. My master loved me extremely, and has often been whipped for not keeping me at a distance. He used always to say, that when he came to his estate I should have a lease of my father's tenement for nothing. I came up to town with him to Westminster-school; at which time he taught me at night all he learnt; and put me to find out words in the dictionary when he was about his exercise. It was the will of Providence that master Harry was taken very ill of a fever of which he died within ten days after his first falling sick. Here was the first sorrow I ever knew; and I assure you, Mr. Spectator, I remember the beautiful action of the sweet youth in his fever, as fresh as if it were yesterday. If he wanted any thing, it must be given him by Tom. When I let any thing fall through the grief I was under, he would cry, "Do not beat the poor boy: give him some more julep for me, nobody else shall give it me." He would strive to hide his being so bad, when he saw I could not bear his being in so much danger, and comforted me, saying, "Tom, Tom, have a good heart." When I was holding a cup at his mouth, he fell into convulsions; and at this very time I hear my dear master's last groan. I was quickly turned out of the room, and left to sob and beat my head against the wall at my leisure. The grief I was in was inexpressible; and every body thought it would have cost me my life. In a few days my old lady, who was one of the housewives of the world, thought of turning me out of doors, because I put her in mind of her son. Sir Stephen proposed putting me to prentice; but my lady being an excellent manager would not let her husband throw away his money in acts of charity. I had sense enough to be under the utmost indignation, to see her discard with so little concern, one her son had loved so much; and went out of the house to ramble wherever my feet would I was utterly at a loss what course to take next; when at last I applied myself to a fellow-sufferer, one of his mistresses, a woman of the town. She happening at that time to be pretty full of money, clothed me from head to foot; and knowing me to be a sharp fellow, employed me accordingly. Sometimes I was to go abroad with her, and when she had pitched upon a young fellow, she thought for her turn, I was to be dropped as one she could not trust. She would often cheapen goods at the New Exchange; and when she had a mind to be attacked, she would send me away on an errand. When an humble servant and she were beginning a parley, I came immediately, and told her Sir John was come home; then she would order another coach to prevent being dogged. The lover makes signs to me as I get behind the coach; I shake my head, it was impossible: I leave my lady at the next turning, and follow the cully to know how to fall in his way on another occasion. Besides good offices of this nature, I writ all my mistress's love-letters; some from a lady that saw such a gentleman at such a place in such a coloured coat, some showing the terror she was in of a jealous old husband, others explaining that the severity of her parents was such (though her fortune was settled) that she was willing to run away with such a one, though she knew he was but a younger brother. In a word, my half education and love of idle books, made me outwrite all that made *The Mulberry-garden was a place of genteel enter tainment near Buckingham-house, (now the Queen's Palace.) † Britain's Burse, or the New Exchange, built in 1608, was situated between Durham-yard and York-buildings, in the Strand. It had rows of shops (says Pennant) over This was a place of fashionable resort. It was pulled the walk, filled chiefly with milliners, sempstresses, &c. down in 1737. No. 97.] THE SPECTATOR. love to her by way of epistle; and as she | No. 97.] Thursday, June 21, 1711. 66 more, HONEST TOM,-You will never see me I am married to a very cunning country gentleman, who might possibly guess something if I kept you still; therefore farewell." Virg. n. vi. 436. Eucrate argued, that nothing but the most severe and vindictive punishment, such as placing the bodies of the offenders 'When this place was lost also in mar-in chains, and putting them to death by the riage, I was resolved to go among quite another people, for the future, and got in butler to one of those families where there is a coach kept, three or four servants, a clean house, and a good general outside upon a small estate. Here I lived very comfortably for some time, until I unfortunately found my master, the very gravest man alive, in the garret with the chamber-maid. I knew the world too well to think of staying there; and the next day pretended to have received a letter out of the country that my father was dying, and got my discharge, with a bounty for my discretion. most exquisite torments, would be sufficient to extirpate a crime which had so long prevailed, and was so firmly fixed in the opinion of the world as great and laudable. The king answered, 'that indeed instances of ignominy were necessary in the cure of this evil; but, considering that it prevailed only among such as had a nicety in their sense of honour, and that it often happened that a duel was fought to save appearances to the world, when both parties were in their hearts in amity and reconciliation to mode another way would effectually put a each other, it was evident that turning the stop to what had being only as a mode; that to such persons, poverty and shame were torments sufficient; that he would not go further in punishing in others, crimes which he was satisfied he himself was most guilty of, in that he might have prevented them sides which the king said, he was in geneby speaking his displeasure sooner.' Beral averse to tortures, which was putting human nature itself, rather than the criminal, to disgrace; and that he would be sure not to use this means where the crime was but an ill effect arising from a laudable cause, the fear of shame.' The king, at the same time, spoke with much grace upon the subject of mercy; and repented of many acts of that kind which had a magnificent aspect in the doing, but dreadful consequences in the example. Mercy to particulars,' he observed, was cruelty in the general. That though a prince could not revive a dead man by taking the life of him who killed him, neither could he make reparation to the next that should die by the evil example: or answer to himself for the partiality in not pardoning the next as well as the former offender. As for me,' says Pharamond, "I have conquered France, and yet have given laws to my people. The laws are my methods of life; they are not a diminution but a direction to am abmy power. I am still absolute to distinguish the innocent and the virtuous, to give honours to the brave and generous; solute in my good-will; none can oppose my bounty, or prescribe rules for my favour. While I can, as I please, reward the good, I am under no pain that I cannot pardon the wicked: for which reason,' continued THOMAS TRUSTY.' Pharamond, "I will effectually put a stop to this evil, by exposing no more the ten The next I lived with was a peevish single man, whom I stayed with for a year and a half. Most part of the time I passed very easily; for when I began to know him, I minded no more than he meant what he said; so that one day in a good humour he said, "I was the best man he ever had, by my want of respect to him.' These, sir, are the chief occurrences of my life, and I will not dwell upon very many other places I have been in, where I have been the strangest fellow in the world, where nobody in the world had such servants as they, where sure they were the unluckiest people in the world in servants, and so forth. All I mean by this representation is, to show you that we poor servants are not [what you called us too generally] all rogues; but that we are what we are, according to the example of our superiors. In the family I am now in, I am guilty of no one sin but lying: which I do with a grave face in my gown and staff every day I live, and almost all day long, in denying my lord to impertinent suitors, and my lady to unwelcome visitants. But, sir, I am to let you know that I am, when I can get abroad, a leader of the servants: I am he that keeps time with beating my cudgel against the boards in the gallery at an opera; I am he that am touched so properly at a tragedy, when the people of quality are staring at one another during the most important incidents. When you hear in a crowd a cry in the right place, a hum where the point is touched in a speech, or a huzza set up where it is the voice of the people; you may conclude it is begun or joined by, sir, your more than humble servant, T. 20 |