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THE SPECTATOR
A NEW EDITION
REPRODUCING THE ORIGINAL TEXT BOTH AS FIRST ISSUED
AND AS CORRECTED BY ITS AUTHORS
WITH INTRODUCTION, NOTES, AND INDEX
BY
HENRY MORLEY
PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON
IN THREE VOLUMES
VOL. I.
1891
[advertisement]
EACH IN THREE VOLS., PRICE 10s. 6d.
CHARLES KNIGHT'S SHAKSPERE.
NAPIER'S HISTORY OF THE PENINSULAR WAR. With Maps and Plans.
LONGFELLOW'S WORKS--Poems--Prose--Dante.
BOSWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON. With Illustrations.
MOTLEY'S RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC.
BYRON'S POETICAL WORKS.
INTRODUCTION
When Richard Steele, in number 555 of his 'Spectator', signed its last
paper and named those who had most helped him
'to keep up the spirit of so long and approved a performance,'
he gave chief honour to one who had on his page, as in his heart, no
name but Friend. This was
'the gentleman of whose assistance I formerly boasted in the Preface
and concluding Leaf of my 'Tatlers'. I am indeed much more proud of
his long-continued Friendship, than I should be of the fame of being
thought the author of any writings which he himself is capable of
producing. I remember when I finished the 'Tender Husband', I told him
there was nothing I so ardently wished, as that we might some time or
other publish a work, written by us both, which should bear the name
of THE MONUMENT, in Memory of our Friendship.'
Why he refers to such a wish, his next words show. The seven volumes of
the 'Spectator', then complete, were to his mind The Monument, and of
the Friendship it commemorates he wrote,
'I heartily wish what I have done here were as honorary to that sacred
name as learning, wit, and humanity render those pieces which I have
taught the reader how to distinguish for his.'
So wrote Steele; and the 'Spectator' will bear witness how religiously
his friendship was returned. In number 453, when, paraphrasing David's
Hymn on Gratitude, the 'rising soul' of Addison surveyed the mercies of
his God, was it not Steele whom he felt near to him at the Mercy-seat as
he wrote
Thy bounteous hand with worldly bliss
Has made my cup run o'er,
And in a kind and faithful Friend
Has doubled all my store?
The _Spectator_, Steele-and-Addison's _Spectator_, is a monument
befitting the most memorable friendship in our history. Steele was its
projector, founder, editor, and he was writer of that part of it which
took the widest grasp upon the hearts of men. His sympathies were with
all England. Defoe and he, with eyes upon the future, were the truest
leaders of their time. It was the firm hand of his friend Steele that
helped Addison up to the place in literature which became him. It was
Steele who caused the nice critical taste which Addison might have spent
only in accordance with the fleeting fashions of his time, to be
inspired with all Addison's religious earnestness, and to be enlivened
with the free play of that sportive humour, delicately whimsical and
gaily wise, which made his conversation the delight of the few men with
whom he sat at ease. It was Steele who drew his friend towards the days
to come, and made his gifts the wealth of a whole people. Steele said in
one of the later numbers of his _Spectator_, No. 532, to which he
prefixed a motto that assigned to himself only the part of whetstone to
the wit of others,
'I claim to myself the merit of having extorted excellent productions
from a person of the greatest abilities, who would not have let them
appear by any other means.'
There were those who argued that he was too careless of his own fame in
unselfish labour for the exaltation of his friend, and, no doubt, his
rare generosity of temper has been often misinterpreted. But for that
Addison is not answerable. And why should Steele have defined his own
merits? He knew his countrymen, and was in too genuine accord with the
spirit of a time then distant but now come, to doubt that, when he was
dead, his whole life's work would speak truth for him to posterity.
The friendship of which this work is the monument remained unbroken from
boyhood until death. Addison and Steele were schoolboys together at the
Charterhouse. Addison was a dean's son, and a private boarder; Steele,
fatherless, and a boy on the foundation. They were of like age. The
register of Steele's baptism, corroborated by the entry made on his
admission to the Charterhouse (which also implies that he was baptized
on the day of his birth) is March 12, 1671, Old Style; New Style, 1672.
Addison was born on May-day, 1672. Thus there was a difference of only
seven weeks.
Steele's father according to the register, also named Richard, was an
attorney in Dublin. Steele seems to draw from experience--although he is
not writing as of himself or bound to any truth of personal detail--when
in No. 181 of the 'Tatler' he speaks of his father as having died when
he was not quite five years of age, and of his mother as 'a very
beautiful woman, of a noble spirit.' The first Duke of Ormond is
referred to by Steele in his Dedication to the 'Lying Lover' as the
patron of his infancy; and it was by this nobleman that a place was
found for him, when in his thirteenth year, among the foundation boys at
the Charterhouse, where he first met with Joseph Addison. Addison, who
was at school at Lichfield in 1683-4-5, went to the Charterhouse in
1686, and left in 1687, when he was entered of Queen's College, Oxford.
Steele went to Oxford two years later, matriculating at Christ Church,
March 13, 1689-90, the year in which Addison was elected a Demy of
Magdalene. A letter of introduction from Steele, dated April 2, 1711,
refers to the administration of the will of 'my uncle Gascoigne, to
whose bounty I owe a liberal education.' This only representative of the
family ties into which Steele was born, an 'uncle' whose surname is not
that of Steele's mother before marriage, appears, therefore, to have
died just before or at the time when the 'Spectator' undertook to
publish a sheetful of thoughts every morning, and--Addison here speaking
for him--looked forward to
'leaving his country, when he was summoned out of it, with the secret
satisfaction of thinking that he had not lived in vain.'
To Steele's warm heart Addison's friendship stood for all home blessings
he had missed. The sister's playful grace, the brother's love, the
mother's sympathy and simple faith in God, the father's guidance, where
were these for Steele, if not in his friend Addison?
Addison's father was a dean; his mother was the sister of a bishop; and
his ambition as a schoolboy, or his father's ambition for him, was only
that he should be one day a prosperous and pious dignitary of the
Church. But there was in him, as in Steele, the genius which shaped
their lives to its own uses, and made them both what they are to us now.
Joseph Addison was born into a home which the steadfast labour of his
father, Lancelot, had made prosperous and happy. Lancelot Addison had
earned success. His father, Joseph's grandfather, had been also a
clergyman, but he was one of those Westmoreland clergy of whose
simplicity and poverty many a joke has been made. Lancelot got his
education as a poor child in the Appleby Grammar School; but he made his
own way when at College; was too avowed a Royalist to satisfy the
Commonwealth, and got, for his zeal, at the Restoration, small reward in
a chaplaincy to the garrison at Dunkirk. This was changed, for the
worse, to a position of the same sort at Tangier, where he remained
eight years. He lost that office by misadventure, and would have been
left destitute if Mr. Joseph Williamson had not given him a living of
L120 a-year at Milston in Wiltshire. Upon this Lancelot Addison married
Jane Gulstone, who was the daughter of a Doctor of Divinity, and whose
brother became Bishop of Bristol. In the little Wiltshire parsonage
Joseph Addison and his younger brothers and sisters were born. The
essayist was named Joseph after his father's patron, afterwards Sir
Joseph Williamson, a friend high in office. While the children grew, the
father worked. He showed his ability and loyalty in books on West
Barbary, and Mahomet, and the State of the Jews; and he became one of
the King's chaplains in ordinary at a time when his patron Joseph
Williamson was Secretary of State. Joseph Addison was then but three
years old. Soon afterwards the busy father became Archdeacon of
Salisbury, and he was made Dean of Lichfield in 1683, when his boy
Joseph had reached the age of 11. When Archdeacon of Salisbury, the Rev.
Lancelot Addison sent Joseph to school at Salisbury; and when his father
became Dean of Lichfield, Joseph was sent to school at Lichfield, as
before said, in the years 1683-4-5. And then he was sent as a private
pupil to the Charterhouse. The friendship he there formed with Steele
was ratified by the approval of the Dean. The desolate boy with the warm
heart, bright intellect, and noble aspirations, was carried home by his
friend, at holiday times, into the Lichfield Deanery, where, Steele
wrote afterwards to Congreve in a Dedication of the 'Drummer',
'were things of this nature to be exposed to public view, I could show
under the Dean's own hand, in the warmest terms, his blessing on the
friendship between his son and me; nor had he a child who did not
prefer me in the first place of kindness and esteem, as their father
loved me like one of them.'
Addison had two brothers, of whom one traded and became Governor of Fort
George in India, and the other became, like himself, a Fellow of
Magdalene College, Oxford. Of his three sisters two died young, the
other married twice, her first husband being a French refugee minister
who became a Prebendary of Westminster. Of this sister of Addison's,
Swift said she was 'a sort of wit, very like him. I was not fond of her.'
In the latter years of the seventeenth century, when Steele and Addison
were students at Oxford, most English writers were submissive to the new
strength of the critical genius of France. But the English nation had
then newly accomplished the great Revolution that secured its liberties,
was thinking for itself, and calling forth the energies of writers who
spoke for the people and looked to the people for approval and support.
A new period was then opening, of popular influence on English
literature. They were the young days of the influence now full grown,
then slowly getting strength and winning the best minds away from an
imported Latin style adapted to the taste of patrons who sought credit
for nice critical discrimination. In 1690 Addison had been three years,
Steele one year, at Oxford. Boileau was then living, fifty-four years
old; and Western Europe was submissive to his sway as the great monarch
of literary criticism. Boileau was still living when Steele published
his 'Tatler', and died in the year of the establishment of the
'Spectator'. Boileau, a true-hearted man, of genius and sense, advanced
his countrymen from the nice weighing of words by the Precieuses and the
grammarians, and by the French Academy, child of the intercourse between
those ladies and gentlemen. He brought ridicule on the inane politeness
of a style then in its decrepitude, and bade the writers of his time
find models in the Latin writers who, like Virgil and Horace, had
brought natural thought and speech to their perfection. In the preceding
labour for the rectifying of the language, preference had been given to
French words of Latin origin. French being one of those languages in
which Latin is the chief constituent, this was but a fair following of
the desire to make it run pure from its source.
If the English critics who, in Charles the Second's time, submitted to
French law, had seen its spirit, instead of paying blind obedience to
the letter, they also would have looked back to the chief source of
their language. Finding this to be not Latin but Saxon, they would have
sought to give it strength and harmony, by doing then what, in the
course of nature, we have learnt again to do, now that the patronage of
literature has gone from the cultivated noble who appreciates in much
accordance with the fashion of his time, and passed into the holding of
the English people. Addison and Steele lived in the transition time
between these periods. They were born into one of them and--Steele
immediately, Addison through Steele's influence upon him--they were
trusty guides into the other. Thus the 'Spectator' is not merely the
best example of their skill. It represents also, perhaps best
represents, a wholesome Revolution in our Literature. The essential
character of English Literature was no more changed than characters of
Englishmen were altered by the Declaration of Right which Prince William
of Orange had accepted with the English Crown, when Addison had lately
left and Steele was leaving Charterhouse for Oxford. Yet change there
was, and Steele saw to the heart of it, even in his College days.
Oxford, in times not long past, had inclined to faith in divine right of
kings. Addison's father, a church dignitary who had been a Royalist
during the Civil War, laid stress upon obedience to authority in Church
and State. When modern literature was discussed or studied at Oxford
there would be the strongest disposition to maintain the commonly
accepted authority of French critics, who were really men of great
ability, correcting bad taste in their predecessors, and conciliating
scholars by their own devout acceptance of the purest Latin authors as
the types of a good style or proper method in the treatment of a
subject. Young Addison found nothing new to him in the temper of his
University, and was influenced, as in his youth every one must and
should be, by the prevalent tone of opinion in cultivated men. But he
had, and felt that he had, wit and genius of his own. His sensitive mind
was simply and thoroughly religious, generous in its instincts, and
strengthened in its nobler part by close communion with the mind of his
friend Steele.
May we not think of the two friends together in a College chamber,
Addison of slender frame, with features wanting neither in dignity nor
in refinement, Steele of robust make, with the radiant 'short face' of
the 'Spectator', by right of which he claimed for that worthy his
admission to the Ugly Club. Addison reads Dryden, in praise of whom he
wrote his earliest known verse; or reads endeavours of his own, which
his friend Steele warmly applauds. They dream together of the future;
Addison sage, but speculative, and Steele practical, if rash. Each is
disposed to find God in the ways of life, and both avoid that outward
show of irreligion, which, after the recent Civil Wars, remains yet
common in the country, as reaction from an ostentatious piety which laid
on burdens of restraint; a natural reaction which had been intensified
by the base influence of a profligate King. Addison, bred among the
preachers, has a little of the preacher's abstract tone, when talk
between the friends draws them at times into direct expression of the
sacred sense of life which made them one.
Apart also from the mere accidents of his childhood, a speculative turn
in Addison is naturally stronger than in Steele. He relishes analysis of
thought. Steele came as a boy from the rough world of shame and sorrow;
his great, kindly heart is most open to the realities of life, the state
and prospects of his country, direct personal sympathies; actual wrongs,
actual remedies. Addison is sensitive, and has among strangers the
reserve of speech and aspect which will pass often for coldness and
pride, but is, indeed, the shape taken by modesty in thoughtful men
whose instinct it is to speculate and analyze, and who become
self-conscious, not through conceit, but because they cannot help
turning their speculations also on themselves. Steele wholly comes out
of himself as his heart hastens to meet his friend. He lives in his
surroundings, and, in friendly intercourse, fixes his whole thought on
the worth of his companion. Never abating a jot of his ideal of a true
and perfect life, or ceasing to uphold the good because he cannot live
to the full height of his own argument, he is too frank to conceal the
least or greatest of his own shortcomings. Delight and strength of a
friendship like that between Steele and Addison are to be found, as many
find them, in the charm and use of a compact where characters differ so
much that one lays open as it were a fresh world to the other, and each
draws from the other aid of forces which the friendship makes his own.
But the deep foundations of this friendship were laid in the religious
earnestness that was alike in both; and in religious earnestness are
laid also the foundations of this book, its Monument.
Both Addison and Steele wrote verse at College. From each of them we
have a poem written at nearly the same age: Addison's in April, 1694,
Steele's early in 1695. Addison drew from literature a metrical 'Account
of the Greatest English Poets.' Steele drew from life the grief of
England at the death of William's Queen, which happened on the 28th of
December, 1694.
Addison, writing in that year, and at the age of about 23, for a College
friend,
A short account of all the Muse-possest,
That, down from Chaucer's days to Dryden's times
Have spent their noble rage in British rhymes,
was so far under the influence of French critical authority, as accepted
by most cultivators of polite literature at Oxford and wherever
authority was much respected, that from 'An Account of the Greatest
English Poets' he omitted Shakespeare. Of Chaucer he then knew no better
than to say, what might have been said in France, that
... age has rusted what the Poet writ,
Worn out his language, and obscured his wit:
In vain he jests in his unpolish'd strain,
And tries to make his readers laugh in vain.
Old Spenser next, warm'd with poetic rage,
In ancient tales amused a barb'rous age;
But now the mystic tale, that pleased of yore,
Can charm an understanding age no more.
It cost Addison some trouble to break loose from the critical cobweb of
an age of periwigs and patches, that accounted itself 'understanding,'
and the grand epoch of our Elizabethan literature, 'barbarous.' Rymer,
one of his critics, had said, that
'in the neighing of an horse, or in the growling of a mastiff, there
is a meaning, there is as lively expression, and, may I say, more
humanity than many times in the tragical flights of Shakespeare.'
Addison, with a genius of his own helped to free movement by the
sympathies of Steele, did break through the cobwebs of the critics; but
he carried off a little of their web upon his wings. We see it when in
the 'Spectator' he meets the prejudices of an 'understanding age,' and
partly satisfies his own, by finding reason for his admiration of 'Chevy
Chase' and the 'Babes in the Wood', in their great similarity to works
of Virgil. We see it also in some of the criticisms which accompany his
admirable working out of the resolve to justify his true natural
admiration of the poetry of Milton, by showing that 'Paradise Lost' was
planned after the manner of the ancients, and supreme even in its
obedience to the laws of Aristotle. In his 'Spectator' papers on
Imagination he but half escapes from the conventions of his time, which
detested the wildness of a mountain pass, thought Salisbury Plain one of
the finest prospects in England, planned parks with circles and straight
lines of trees, despised our old cathedrals for their 'Gothic' art, and
saw perfection in the Roman architecture, and the round dome of St.
Paul's. Yet in these and all such papers of his we find that Addison had
broken through the weaker prejudices of the day, opposing them with
sound natural thought of his own. Among cultivated readers, lesser
moulders of opinion, there can be no doubt that his genius was only the
more serviceable in amendment of the tastes of his own time, for
friendly understanding and a partial sharing of ideas for which it gave
itself no little credit.
It is noticeable, however, that in his Account of the Greatest English
Poets, young Addison gave a fifth part of the piece to expression of the
admiration he felt even then for Milton. That his appreciation became
critical, and, although limited, based on a sense of poetry which
brought him near to Milton, Addison proved in the 'Spectator' by his
eighteen Saturday papers upon 'Paradise Lost'. But it was from the
religious side that he first entered into the perception of its
grandeur. His sympathy with its high purpose caused him to praise, in
the same pages that commended 'Paradise Lost' to his countrymen, another
'epic,' Blackmore's 'Creation', a dull metrical treatise against
atheism, as a work which deserved to be looked upon as
'one of the most useful and noble productions of our English verse.
The reader,' he added, of a piece which shared certainly with
Salisbury Plain the charms of flatness and extent of space, 'the
reader cannot but be pleased to find the depths of philosophy
enlivened with all the charms of poetry, and to see so great a
strength of reason amidst so beautiful a redundancy of the
imagination.'
The same strong sympathy with Blackmore's purpose in it blinded Dr.
Johnson also to the failure of this poem, which is Blackmore's best.
From its religious side, then, it may be that Addison, when a student at
Oxford, first took his impressions of the poetry of Milton. At Oxford he
accepted the opinion of France on Milton's art, but honestly declared,
in spite of that, unchecked enthusiasm:
Whate'er his pen describes I more than see,
Whilst every verse, arrayed in majesty,
Bold and sublime, my whole attention draws,
And seems above the critic's nicer laws.
This chief place among English poets Addison assigned to Milton, with
his mind fresh from the influences of a father who had openly contemned
the Commonwealth, and by whom he had been trained so to regard Milton's
service of it that of this he wrote:
Oh, had the Poet ne'er profaned his pen,
To varnish o'er the guilt of faithless men;
His other works might have deserved applause
But now the language can't support the cause,
While the clean current, tho' serene and bright,
Betrays a bottom odious to the sight.
If we turn now to the verse written by Steele in his young Oxford days,
and within twelve months of the date of Addison's lines upon English
poets, we have what Steele called 'The Procession.' It is the procession
of those who followed to the grave the good Queen Mary, dead of
small-pox, at the age of 32. Steele shared his friend Addison's delight
in Milton, and had not, indeed, got beyond the sixth number of the
'Tatler' before he compared the natural beauty and innocence of Milton's
Adam and Eve with Dryden's treatment of their love. But the one man for
whom Steele felt most enthusiasm was not to be sought through books, he
was a living moulder of the future of the nation. Eagerly intent upon
King William, the hero of the Revolution that secured our liberties, the
young patriot found in him also the hero of his verse. Keen sense of the
realities about him into which Steele had been born, spoke through the
very first lines of this poem:
The days of man are doom'd to pain and strife,
Quiet and ease are foreign to our life;
No satisfaction is, below, sincere,
Pleasure itself has something that's severe.
Britain had rejoiced in the high fortune of King William, and now a
mourning world attended his wife to the tomb. The poor were her first
and deepest mourners, poor from many causes; and then Steele pictured,
with warm sympathy, form after form of human suffering. Among those
mourning poor were mothers who, in the despair of want, would have
stabbed infants sobbing for their food,
But in the thought they stopp'd, their locks they tore,
Threw down the steel, and cruelly forbore.
The innocents their parents' love forgive,
Smile at their fate, nor know they are to live.
To the mysteries of such distress the dead queen penetrated, by her
'cunning to be good.' After the poor, marched the House of Commons in
the funeral procession. Steele gave only two lines to it:
With dread concern, the awful Senate came,
Their grief, as all their passions, is the same.
The next Assembly dissipates our fears,
The stately, mourning throng of British Peers.
A factious intemperance then characterized debates of the Commons, while
the House of Lords stood in the front of the Revolution, and secured the
permanency of its best issues. Steele describes, as they pass, Ormond,
Somers, Villars, who leads the horse of the dead queen, that 'heaves
into big sighs when he would neigh'--the verse has in it crudity as well
as warmth of youth--and then follow the funeral chariot, the jewelled
mourners, and the ladies of the court,
Their clouded beauties speak man's gaudy strife,
The glittering miseries of human life.
I yet see, Steele adds, this queen passing to her coronation in the
place whither she now is carried to her grave. On the way, through
acclamations of her people, to receive her crown,
She unconcerned and careless all the while
Rewards their loud applauses with a smile,
With easy Majesty and humble State
Smiles at the trifle Power, and knows its date.
But now
What hands commit the beauteous, good, and just,
The dearer part of William, to the dust?
In her his vital heat, his glory lies,
In her the Monarch lived, in her he dies.
...
No form of state makes the Great Man forego
The task due to her love and to his woe;
Since his kind frame can't the large suffering bear
In pity to his People, he's not here:
For to the mighty loss we now receive
The next affliction were to see him grieve.
If we look from these serious strains of their youth to the literary
expression of the gayer side of character in the two friends, we find
Addison sheltering his taste for playful writing behind a Roman Wall of
hexameter. For among his Latin poems in the Oxford 'Musae Anglicanae' are
eighty or ninety lines of resonant Latin verse upon 'Machinae
Gesticulantes, 'anglice' A Puppet-show.' Steele, taking life as he found
it, and expressing mirth in his own way of conversation, wrote an
English comedy, and took the word of a College friend that it was
valueless. There were two paths in life then open to an English writer.
One was the smooth and level way of patronage; the other a rough up-hill
track for men who struggled in the service of the people. The way of
patronage was honourable. The age had been made so very discerning by
the Romans and the French that a true understanding of the beauties of
literature was confined to the select few who had been taught what to
admire. Fine writing was beyond the rude appreciation of the multitude.
Had, therefore, the reading public been much larger than it was, men of
fastidious taste, who paid as much deference to polite opinion as
Addison did in his youth, could have expected only audience fit but few,
and would have been without encouragement to the pursuit of letters
unless patronage rewarded merit. The other way had charms only for the
stout-hearted pioneer who foresaw where the road was to be made that now
is the great highway of our literature. Addison went out into the world
by the way of his time; Steele by the way of ours.
Addison, after the campaign of 1695, offered to the King the homage of a
paper of verses on the capture of Namur, and presented them through Sir
John Somers, then Lord Keeper of the Great Seal. To Lord Somers he sent
with them a flattering dedicatory address. Somers, who was esteemed a
man of taste, was not unwilling to 'receive the present of a muse
unknown.' He asked Addison to call upon him, and became his patron.
Charles Montagu, afterwards Earl of Halifax, critic and wit himself,
shone also among the statesmen who were known patrons of letters. Also
to him, who was a prince of patrons 'fed with soft dedication all day
long,' Addison introduced himself. To him, in 1697, as it was part of
his public fame to be a Latin scholar, Addison, also a skilful Latinist,
addressed, in Latin, a paper of verses on the Peace of Ryswick. With
Somers and Montagu for patrons, the young man of genius who wished to
thrive might fairly commit himself to the service of the Church, for
which he had been bred by his father; but Addison's tact and refinement
promised to be serviceable to the State, and so it was that, as Steele
tells us, Montagu made Addison a layman.
'His arguments were founded upon the general pravity and corruption of
men of business, who wanted liberal education. And I remember, as if I
had read the letter yesterday, that my Lord ended with a compliment,
that, however he might be represented as no friend to the Church, he
never would do it any other injury than keeping Mr. Addison out of
it.'
To the good offices of Montagu and Somers, Addison was indebted,
therefore, in 1699, for a travelling allowance of L300 a year. The grant
was for his support while qualifying himself on the continent by study
of modern languages, and otherwise, for diplomatic service. It dropped
at the King's death, in the spring of 1702, and Addison was cast upon
his own resources; but he throve, and lived to become an Under-Secretary
of State in days that made Prior an Ambassador, and rewarded with
official incomes Congreve, Rowe, Hughes, Philips, Stepney, and others.
Throughout his honourable career prudence dictated to Addison more or
less of dependence on the friendship of the strong. An honest friend of
the popular cause, he was more ready to sell than give his pen to it;
although the utmost reward would at no time have tempted him to throw
his conscience into the bargain. The good word of Halifax obtained him
from Godolphin, in 1704, the Government order for a poem on the Battle
of Blenheim, with immediate earnest of payment for it in the office of a
Commissioner of Appeal in the Excise worth L200 a year. For this
substantial reason Addison wrote the 'Campaign'; and upon its success,
he obtained the further reward of an Irish Under-secretaryship.
The 'Campaign' is not a great poem. Reams of 'Campaigns' would not have
made Addison's name, what it now is, a household word among his
countrymen. The 'Remarks on several Parts of Italy, &c.,' in which
Addison followed up the success of his 'Campaign' with notes of foreign
travel, represent him visiting Italy as 'Virgil's Italy,' the land of
the great writers in Latin, and finding scenery or customs of the people
eloquent of them at every turn. He crammed his pages with quotation from
Virgil and Horace, Ovid and Tibullus, Propertius, Lucan, Juvenal and
Martial, Lucretius, Statius, Claudian, Silius Italicus, Ausonius,
Seneca, Phaedrus, and gave even to his 'understanding age' an overdose of
its own physic for all ills of literature. He could not see a pyramid of
jugglers standing on each other's shoulders, without observing how it
explained a passage in Claudian which shows that the Venetians were not
the inventors of this trick. But Addison's short original accounts of
cities and states that he saw are pleasant as well as sensible, and here
and there, as in the space he gives to a report of St. Anthony's sermon
to the fishes, or his short account of a visit to the opera at Venice,
there are indications of the humour that was veiled, not crushed, under
a sense of classical propriety. In his account of the political state of
Naples and in other passages, there is mild suggestion also of the love
of liberty, a part of the fine nature of Addison which had been slightly
warmed by contact with the generous enthusiasm of Steele. In his
poetical letter to Halifax written during his travels Addison gave the
sum of his prose volume when he told how he felt himself
... on classic ground.
For here the Muse so oft her harp hath strung,
That not a mountain rears its head unsung;
Renown'd in verse each shady thicket grows,
And ev'ry stream in heav'nly numbers flows.
But he was writing to a statesman of the Revolution, who was his
political patron, just then out of office, and propriety suggested such
personal compliment as calling the Boyne a Tiber, and Halifax an
improvement upon Virgil; while his heart was in the closing emphasis,
also proper to the occasion, which dwelt on the liberty that gives their
smile to the barren rocks and bleak mountains of Britannia's isle, while
for Italy, rich in the unexhausted stores of nature, proud Oppression in
her valleys reigns, and tyranny usurps her happy plains. Addison's were
formal raptures, and he knew them to be so, when he wrote,
I bridle in my struggling Muse with pain,
That longs to launch into a bolder strain.
Richard Steele was not content with learning to be bold. Eager, at that
turning point of her national life, to serve England with strength of
arm, at least, if not with the good brains which he was neither
encouraged nor disposed to value highly, Steele's patriotism impelled
him to make his start in the world, not by the way of patronage, but by
enlisting himself as a private in the Coldstream Guards. By so doing he
knew that he offended a relation, and lost a bequest. As he said of
himself afterwards,
'when he mounted a war-horse, with a great sword in his hand, and
planted himself behind King William III against Louis XIV, he lost the
succession to a very good estate in the county of Wexford, in Ireland,
from the same humour which he has preserved, ever since, of preferring
the state of his mind to that of his fortune.'
Steele entered the Duke of Ormond's regiment, and had reasons for
enlistment. James Butler, the first Duke, whom his father served, had
sent him to the Charterhouse. That first Duke had been Chancellor of the
University at Oxford, and when he died, on the 21st of July, 1688, nine
months before Steele entered to Christchurch, his grandson, another
James Butler, succeeded to the Dukedom. This second Duke of Ormond was
also placed by the University of Oxford in his grandfather's office of
Chancellor. He went with King William to Holland in 1691, shared the
defeat of William in the battle of Steinkirk in August, 1692, and was
taken prisoner in July, 1693, when King William was defeated at Landen.
These defeats encouraged the friends of the Stuarts, and in 1694,
Bristol, Exeter and Boston adhered to King James. Troops were raised in
the North of England to assist his cause. In 1696 there was the
conspiracy of Sir George Barclay to seize William on the 15th of
February. Captain Charnock, one of the conspirators, had been a Fellow
of Magdalene. On the 23rd of February the plot was laid before
Parliament. There was high excitement throughout the country. Loyal
Associations were formed. The Chancellor of the University of Oxford was
a fellow-soldier of the King's, and desired to draw strength to his
regiment from the enthusiasm of the time. Steele's heart was with the
cause of the Revolution, and he owed also to the Ormonds a kind of
family allegiance. What was more natural than that he should be among
those young Oxford men who were tempted to enlist in the Chancellor's
own regiment for the defence of liberty? Lord Cutts, the Colonel of the
Regiment, made Steele his Secretary, and got him an Ensign's commission.
It was then that he wrote his first book, the 'Christian Hero', of which
the modest account given by Steele himself long afterwards, when put on
his defence by the injurious violence of faction, is as follows:
'He first became an author when an Ensign of the Guards, a way of life
exposed to much irregularity; and being thoroughly convinced of many
things, of which he often repented, and which he more often repeated,
he writ, for his own private use, a little book called the 'Christian
Hero', with a design principally to fix upon his own mind a strong
impression of virtue and religion, in opposition to a stronger
propensity towards unwarrantable pleasures. This secret admiration was
too weak; he therefore printed the book with his name, in hopes that a
standing testimony against himself, and the eyes of the world (that is
to say, of his acquaintance) upon him in a new light, would make him
ashamed of understanding and seeming to feel what was virtuous, and
living so contrary a life.'
Among his brother soldiers, and fresh from the Oxford worship of old
classical models, the religious feeling that accompanies all true
refinement, and that was indeed part of the English nature in him as in
Addison, prompted Steele to write this book, in which he opposed to the
fashionable classicism of his day a sound reflection that the heroism of
Cato or Brutus had far less in it of true strength, and far less
adaptation to the needs of life, than the unfashionable Christian
Heroism set forth by the Sermon on the Mount.
According to the second title of this book it is 'an Argument, proving
that no Principles but those of Religion are sufficient to make a Great
Man.' It is addressed to Lord Cutts in a dedication dated from the
Tower-Yard, March 23, 1701, and is in four chapters, of which the first
treats of the heroism of the ancient world, the second connects man with
his Creator, by the Bible Story and the Life and Death of Christ, the
third defines the Christian as set forth by the character and teaching
of St. Paul, applying the definition practically to the daily life of
Steele's own time. In the last chapter he descends from the
consideration of those bright incentives to a higher life, and treats of
the ordinary passions and interests of men, the common springs of action
(of which, he says, the chief are Fame and Conscience) which he declares
to be best used and improved when joined with religion; and here all
culminates in a final strain of patriotism, closing with the character
of King William, 'that of a glorious captain, and (what he much more
values than the most splendid titles) that of a sincere and honest man.'
This was the character of William which, when, in days of meaner public
strife, Steele quoted it years afterwards in the _Spectator_, he broke
off painfully and abruptly with a
... Fuit Ilium, et ingens
Gloria.
Steele's 'Christian Hero' obtained many readers. Its fifth edition was
appended to the first collection of the 'Tatler' into volumes, at the
time of the establishment of the 'Spectator'. The old bent of the
English mind was strong in Steele, and he gave unostentatiously a lively
wit to the true service of religion, without having spoken or written to
the last day of his life a word of mere religious cant. One officer
thrust a duel on him for his zeal in seeking to make peace between him
and another comrade. Steele, as an officer, then, or soon afterwards,
made a Captain of Fusiliers, could not refuse to fight, but stood on the
defensive; yet in parrying a thrust his sword pierced his antagonist,
and the danger in which he lay quickened that abiding detestation of the
practice of duelling, which caused Steele to attack it in his plays, in
his 'Tatler', in his 'Spectator', with persistent energy.
Of the 'Christian Hero' his companions felt, and he himself saw, that
the book was too didactic. It was indeed plain truth out of Steele's
heart, but an air of superiority, freely allowed only to the
professional man teaching rules of his own art, belongs to a too
didactic manner. Nothing was more repugnant to Steele's nature than the
sense of this. He had defined the Christian as 'one who is always a
benefactor, with the mien of a receiver.' And that was his own
character, which was, to a fault, more ready to give than to receive,
more prompt to ascribe honour to others than to claim it for himself. To
right himself, Steele wrote a light-hearted comedy, 'The Funeral', or
'Grief a la Mode'; but at the core even of that lay the great
earnestness of his censure against the mockery and mummery of grief that
should be sacred; and he blended with this, in the character of Lawyer
Puzzle, a protest against mockery of truth and justice by the
intricacies of the law. The liveliness of this comedy made Steele
popular with the wits; and the inevitable touches of the author's
patriotism brought on him also the notice of the Whigs. Party men might,
perhaps, already feel something of the unbending independence that was
in Steele himself, as in this play he made old Lord Brumpton teach it to
his son:
'But be them honest, firm, impartial;
Let neither love, nor hate, nor faction move thee;
Distinguish words from things, and men from crimes.'
King William, perhaps, had he lived, could fairly have recognized in
Steele the social form of that sound mind which in Defoe was solitary.
In a later day it was to Steele a proud recollection that his name, to
be provided for, 'was in the last table-book ever worn by the glorious
and immortal William III.'
The 'Funeral', first acted with great success in 1702, was followed in
the next year by 'The Tender Husband', to which Addison contributed some
touches, for which Addison wrote a Prologue, and which Steele dedicated
to Addison, who would 'be surprised,' he said, 'in the midst of a daily
and familiar conversation, with an address which bears so distant an air
as a public dedication.' Addison and his friend were then thirty-one
years old. Close friends when boys, they are close friends now in the
prime of manhood. It was after they had blended wits over the writing of
this comedy that Steele expressed his wish for a work, written by both,
which should serve as THE MONUMENT to their most happy friendship. When
Addison and Steele were amused together with the writing of this comedy,
Addison, having lost his immediate prospect of political employment, and
his salary too, by King William's death in the preceding year, had come
home from his travels. On his way home he had received, in September, at
the Hague, news of his father's death. He wrote from the Hague, to Mr.
Wyche,
'At my first arrival I received the news of my father's death, and
ever since have been engaged in so much noise and company, that it was
impossible for me to think of rhyming in it.'
As his father's eldest son, he had, on his return to England, family
affairs to arrange, and probably some money to receive. Though attached
to a party that lost power at the accession of Queen Anne, and waiting
for new employment, Addison--who had declined the Duke of Somerset's
over-condescending offer of a hundred a year and all expenses as
travelling tutor to his son, the Marquis of Hertford--was able, while
lodging poorly in the Haymarket, to associate in London with the men by
whose friendship he hoped to rise, and was, with Steele, admitted into
the select society of wits, and men of fashion who affected wit and took
wits for their comrades, in the Kitcat Club. When in 1704 Marlborough's
victory at Blenheim revived the Whig influence, the suggestion of
Halifax to Lord Treasurer Godolphin caused Addison to be applied to for
his poem of the 'Campaign'. It was after the appearance of this poem
that Steele's play was printed, with the dedication to his friend, in
which he said,
'I look upon my intimacy with you as one of the most valuable
enjoyments of my life. At the same time I make the town no ill
compliment for their kind acceptance of this comedy, in acknowledging
that it has so far raised my opinion of it, as to make me think it no
improper memorial of an inviolable Friendship. I should not offer it
to you as such, had I not been very careful to avoid everything that
might look ill-natured, immoral, or prejudicial to what the better
part of mankind hold sacred and honourable.'
This was the common ground between the friends. Collier's 'Short View of
the Profaneness and Immorality of the English Stage' had been published
in 1698; it attacked a real evil, if not always in the right way, and
Congreve's reply to it had been a failure. Steele's comedies with all
their gaiety and humour were wholly free from the garnish of oaths and
unwholesome expletives which his contemporaries seemed to think
essential to stage emphasis. Each comedy of his was based on
seriousness, as all sound English wit has been since there have been
writers in England. The gay manner did not conceal all the earnest
thoughts that might jar with the humour of the town; and thus Steele was
able to claim, by right of his third play, 'the honour of being the only
English dramatist who had had a piece damned for its piety.'
This was the 'Lying Lover', produced in 1704, an adaptation from
Corneille in which we must allow that Steele's earnestness in upholding
truth and right did cause him to spoil the comedy. The play was
afterwards re-adapted by Foote as the 'Liar', and in its last form, with
another change or two, has been revived at times with great success. It
is worth while to note how Steele dealt with the story of this piece.
Its original is a play by Alarcon, which Corneille at first supposed to
have been a play by Lope de Vega. Alarcon, or, to give him his full
style, Don Juan Ruiz de Alarcon y Mendoza, was a Mexican-born Spaniard
of a noble family which had distinguished itself in Mexico from the time
of the conquest, and took its name of Alarcon from a village in New
Castile. The poet was a humpbacked dwarf, a thorough, but rather
haughty, Spanish gentleman, poet and wit, who wrote in an unusually pure
Spanish style; a man of the world, too, who came to Spain in or about
the year 1622, and held the very well-paid office of reporter to the
Royal Council of the Indies. When Alarcon, in 1634, was chosen by the
Court to write a festival drama, and, at the same time, publishing the
second part of his dramatic works, vehemently reclaimed plays for which,
under disguised names, some of his contemporaries had taken credit to
themselves, there was an angry combination against him, in which Lope de
Vega, Gongora, and Quevedo were found taking part. All that Alarcon
wrote was thoroughly his own, but editors of the 17th century boldly
passed over his claims to honour, and distributed his best works among
plays of other famous writers, chiefly those of Rojas and Lope de Vega.
This was what deceived Corneille, and caused him to believe and say that
Alarcon's 'la Verdad sospechosa', on which, in 1642, he founded his
'Menteur', was a work of Lope de Vega's. Afterwards Corneille learnt how
there had been in this matter lying among editors. He gave to Alarcon
the honour due, and thenceforth it is chiefly by this play that Alarcon
has been remembered out of Spain. In Spain, when in 1852 Don Juan
Hartzenbusch edited Alarcon's comedies for the Biblioteca de Autores
Espanoles, he had to remark on the unjust neglect of that good author in
Spain also, where the poets and men of letters had long wished in vain
for a complete edition of his works. Lope de Vega, it may be added, was
really the author of a sequel to 'la Verdad sospechosa', which Corneille
adapted also as a sequel to his 'Menteur', but it was even poorer than
such sequels usually are.
The 'Lying Lover' in Alarcon's play is a Don Garcia fresh from his
studies in Salamanca, and Steele's Latine first appears there as a
Tristan, the gracioso of old Spanish comedy. The two ladies are a
Jacinta and Lucrecia. Alarcon has in his light and graceful play no less
than three heavy fathers, of a Spanish type, one of whom, the father of
Lucrecia, brings about Don Garcia's punishment by threatening to kill
him if he will not marry his daughter; and so the Liar is punished for
his romancing by a marriage with the girl he does not care for, and not
marrying the girl he loves.
Corneille was merciful, and in the fifth act bred in his 'Menteur' a new
fancy for Lucrece, so that the marriage at cross purposes was rather
agreeable to him.
Steele, in adapting the 'Menteur' as his 'Lying Lover', altered the
close in sharp accordance with that 'just regard to a reforming age,'
which caused him (adapting a line in his 'Procession' then unprinted) to
write in his Prologue to it, 'Pleasure must still have something that's
severe.' Having translated Corneille's translations of Garcia and
Tristan (Dorante and Cliton) into Young Bookwit and Latine, he
transformed the servant into a college friend, mumming as servant
because, since 'a prating servant is necessary in intrigues,' the two
had 'cast lots who should be the other's footman for the present
expedition.' Then he adapted the French couplets into pleasant prose
comedy, giving with a light touch the romancing of feats of war and of
an entertainment on the river, but at last he turned desperately
serious, and sent his Young Bookwit to Newgate on a charge of killing
the gentleman--here called Lovemore--who was at last to win the hand of
the lady whom the Liar loved. In his last act, opening in Newgate,
Steele started with blank verse, and although Lovemore of course was not
dead, and Young Bookwit got at last more than a shadow of a promise of
the other lady in reward for his repentance, the changes in construction
of the play took it beyond the bounds of comedy, and were, in fact,
excellent morality but not good art. And this is what Steele means when
he says that he had his play damned for its piety.
With that strong regard for the drama which cannot well be wanting to
the man who has an artist's vivid sense of life, Steele never withdrew
his good will from the players, never neglected to praise a good play,
and, I may add, took every fair occasion of suggesting to the town the
subtlety of Shakespeare's genius. But he now ceased to write comedies,
until towards the close of his life he produced with a remarkable
success his other play, the 'Conscious Lovers'. And of that, by the way,
Fielding made his Parson Adams say that 'Cato' and the 'Conscious
Lovers' were the only plays he ever heard of, fit for a Christian to
read, 'and, I must own, in the latter there are some things almost
solemn enough for a sermon.'
Perhaps it was about this time that Addison wrote his comedy of the
'Drummer', which had been long in his possession when Steele, who had
become a partner in the management of Drury Lane Theatre, drew it from
obscurity, suggested a few changes in it, and produced it--not openly as
Addison's--upon the stage. The published edition of it was recommended
also by a preface from Steele in which he says that he liked this
author's play the better
'for the want of those studied similies and repartees which we, who
have writ before him, have thrown into our plays, to indulge and gain
upon a false taste that has prevailed for many years in the British
theatre. I believe the author would have condescended to fall into
this way a little more than he has, had he before the writing of it
been often present at theatrical representations. I was confirmed in
my thoughts of the play by the opinion of better judges to whom it was
communicated, who observed that the scenes were drawn after Moliere's
manner, and that an easy and natural vein of humour ran through the
whole. I do not question but the reader will discover this, and see
many beauties that escaped the audience; the touches being too
delicate for every taste in a popular assembly. My brother-sharers'
(in the Drury Lane patent) 'were of opinion, at the first reading of
it, that it was like a picture in which the strokes were not strong
enough to appear at a distance. As it is not in the common way of
writing, the approbation was at first doubtful, but has risen every
time it has been acted, and has given an opportunity in several of its
parts for as just and good actions as ever I saw on the stage.'
Addison's comedy was not produced till 1715, the year after his
unsuccessful attempt to revive the 'Spectator', which produced what is
called the eighth volume of that work. The play, not known to be his,
was so ill spoken of that he kept the authorship a secret to the last,
and Tickell omitted it from the collection of his patron's works. But
Steele knew what was due to his friend, and in 1722 manfully republished
the piece as Addison's, with a dedication to Congreve and censure of
Tickell for suppressing it. If it be true that the 'Drummer' made no
figure on the stage though excellently acted, 'when I observe this,'
said Steele, 'I say a much harder thing of this than of the comedy.'
Addison's Drummer is a gentleman who, to forward his suit to a soldier's
widow, masquerades as the drumbeating ghost of her husband in her
country house, and terrifies a self-confident, free-thinking town
exquisite, another suitor, who believes himself brought face to face
with the spirit world, in which he professes that he can't believe. 'For
my part, child, I have made myself easy in those points.' The character
of a free-thinking exquisite is drawn from life without exaggeration,
but with more than a touch of the bitter contempt Addison felt for the
atheistic coxcomb, with whom he was too ready to confound the sincere
questioner of orthodox opinion. The only passages of his in the
'Spectator' that border on intolerance are those in which he deals with
the free-thinker; but it should not be forgotten that the commonest type
of free-thinker in Queen Anne's time was not a thoughtful man who
battled openly with doubt and made an independent search for truth, but
an idler who repudiated thought and formed his character upon tradition
of the Court of Charles the Second. And throughout the 'Spectator' we
may find a Christian under-tone in Addison's intolerance of infidelity,
which is entirely wanting when the moralist is Eustace Budgell. Two or
three persons in the comedy of the 'Drummer' give opportunity for good
character-painting in the actor, and on a healthy stage, before an
audience able to discriminate light touches of humour and to enjoy
unstrained although well-marked expression of varieties of character,
the 'Drummer' would not fail to be a welcome entertainment.
But our sketch now stands at the year 1705, when Steele had ceased for a
time to write comedies. Addison's 'Campaign' had brought him fame, and
perhaps helped him to pay, as he now did, his College debts, with
interest. His 'Remarks on Italy', now published, were, as Tickell says,
'at first but indifferently relished by the bulk of readers;' and his
'Drummer' probably was written and locked in his desk. There were now
such days of intercourse as Steele looked back to when with undying
friendship he wrote in the preface to that edition of the 'Drummer'
produced by him after Addison's death:
'He was above all men in that talent we call humour, and enjoyed it in
such perfection, that I have often reflected, after a night spent with
him apart from all the world, that I had had the pleasure of
conversing with an intimate acquaintance of Terence and Catullus, who
had all their wit and nature, heightened with humour more exquisite
and delightful than any other man ever possessed.' And again in the
same Preface, Steele dwelt upon 'that smiling mirth, that delicate
satire and genteel raillery, which appeared in Mr. Addison when he was
free from that remarkable bashfulness which is a cloak that hides and
muffles merit; and his abilities were covered only by modesty, which
doubles the beauties which are seen, and gives credit and esteem to
all that are concealed.'
Addison had the self-consciousness of a sensitive and speculative mind.
This, with a shy manner among those with whom he was not intimate,
passed for cold self-assertion. The 'little senate' of his intimate
friends was drawn to him by its knowledge of the real warmth of his
nature. And his friendships, like his religion, influenced his judgment.
His geniality that wore a philosophic cloak before the world, caused him
to abandon himself in the 'Spectator', even more unreservedly than
Steele would have done, to iterated efforts for the help of a friend
like Ambrose Philips, whose poems to eminent babies, 'little subject,
little wit,' gave rise to the name of Namby-pamby. Addison's quietness
with strangers was against a rapid widening of his circle of familiar
friends, and must have made the great-hearted friendship of Steele as
much to him as his could be to Steele. In very truth it 'doubled all his
store.' Steele's heart was open to enjoyment of all kindly intercourse
with men. In after years, as expression of thought in the literature of
nations gained freedom and sincerity, two types of literature were
formed from the types of mind which Addison and Steele may be said to
have in some measure represented. Each sought advance towards a better
light, one part by dwelling on the individual duties and
responsibilities of man, and his relation to the infinite; the other by
especial study of man's social ties and liberties, and his relation to
the commonwealth of which he is a member. Goethe, for instance, inclined
to one study; Schiller to the other; and every free mind will incline
probably to one or other of these centres of opinion. Addison was a cold
politician because he was most himself when analyzing principles of
thought, and humours, passions, duties of the individual. Steele, on the
contrary, braved ruin for his convictions as a politician, because his
social nature turned his earnestness into concern for the well-being of
his country, and he lived in times when it was not yet certain that the
newly-secured liberties were also finally secured. The party was strong
that desired to re-establish ancient tyrannies, and the Queen herself
was hardly on the side of freedom.
In 1706, the date of the union between England and Scotland, Whig
influence had been strengthened by the elections of the preceding year,
and Addison was, early in 1706, made Under-Secretary of State to Sir
Charles Hedges, a Tory, who was superseded before the end of the year by
Marlborough's son-in-law, the Earl of Sunderland, a Whig under whom
Addison, of course, remained in office, and who was, thenceforth, his
active patron. In the same year the opera of _Rosamond_ was produced,
with Addison's libretto. It was but the third, or indeed the second,
year of operas in England, for we can hardly reckon as forming a year of
opera the Italian intermezzi and interludes of singing and dancing,
performed under Clayton's direction, at York Buildings, in 1703. In
1705, Clayton's _Arsinoe_, adapted and translated from the Italian, was
produced at Drury Lane. Buononcini's _Camilla_ was given at the house in
the Haymarket, and sung in two languages, the heroine's part being in
English and the hero's in Italian. Thomas Clayton, a second-rate
musician, but a man with literary tastes, who had been introducer of the
opera to London, argued that the words of an opera should be not only
English, but the best of English, and that English music ought to
illustrate good home-grown literature. Addison and Steele agreed
heartily in this. Addison was persuaded to write words for an opera by
Clayton--his _Rosamond_--and Steele was persuaded afterwards to
speculate in some sort of partnership with Clayton's efforts to set
English poetry to music in the entertainments at York Buildings, though
his friend Hughes warned him candidly that Clayton was not much of a
musician. _Rosamond_ was a failure of Clayton's and not a success of
Addison's. There is poor jesting got by the poet from a comic Sir
Trusty, who keeps Rosamond's bower, and has a scolding wife. But there
is a happy compliment to Marlborough in giving to King Henry a vision at
Woodstock of the glory to come for England, and in a scenic realization
of it by the rising of Blenheim Palace, the nation's gift to
Marlborough, upon the scene of the Fair Rosamond story. Indeed there can
be no doubt that it was for the sake of the scene at Woodstock, and the
opportunity thus to be made, that Rosamond was chosen for the subject of
the opera. Addison made Queen Eleanor give Rosamond a narcotic instead
of a poison, and thus he achieved the desired happy ending to an opera.
Believe your Rosamond alive.
'King.' O happy day! O pleasing view!
My Queen forgives--
'Queen.' --My lord is true.
'King.' No more I'll change.
'Queen.' No more I'll grieve.
'Both.' But ever thus united live.
That is to say, for three days, the extent of the life of the opera. But
the literary Under-Secretary had saved his political dignity with the
stage tribute to Marlborough, which backed the closet praise in the
'Campaign.'
In May, 1707, Steele received the office of Gazetteer, until then worth
L60, but presently endowed by Harley with a salary of L300 a-year. At
about the same time he was made one of the gentlemen ushers to Queen
Anne's husband, Prince George of Denmark. In the same year Steele
married. Of his most private life before this date little is known. He
had been married to a lady from Barbadoes, who died in a few months.
From days referred to in the 'Christian Hero' he derived a daughter of
whom he took fatherly care. In 1707 Steele, aged about 35, married Miss
(or, as ladies come of age were then called, Mrs.) Mary Scurlock, aged
29. It was a marriage of affection on both sides. Steele had from his
first wife an estate in Barbadoes, which produced, after payment of the
interest on its encumbrances, L670 a-year. His appointment as Gazetteer,
less the L45 tax on it, was worth L255 a-year, and his appointment on
the Prince Consort's household another hundred. Thus the income upon
which Steele married was rather more than a thousand a-year, and Miss
Scurlock's mother had an estate of about L330 a-year. Mary Scurlock had
been a friend of Steele's first wife, for before marriage she recalls
Steele to her mother's mind by saying, 'It is the survivor of the person
to whose funeral I went in my illness.'
'Let us make our regards to each other,' Steele wrote just before
marriage, 'mutual and unchangeable, that whilst the world around us is
enchanted with the false satisfactions of vagrant desires, our persons
may be shrines to each other, and sacred to conjugal faith, unreserved
confidence, and heavenly society.'
There remains also a prayer written by Steele before first taking the
sacrament with his wife, after marriage. There are also letters and
little notes written by Steele to his wife, treasured by her love, and
printed by a remorseless antiquary, blind to the sentence in one of the
first of them:
'I beg of you to shew my letters to no one living, but let us be
contented with one another's thoughts upon our words and actions,
without the intervention of other people, who cannot judge of so
delicate a circumstance as the commerce between man and wife.'
But they are printed for the frivolous to laugh at and the wise to
honour. They show that even in his most thoughtless or most anxious
moments the social wit, the busy patriot, remembered his 'dear Prue,'
and was her lover to the end. Soon after marriage, Steele took his wife
to a boarding-school in the suburbs, where they saw a young lady for
whom Steele showed an affection that caused Mrs. Steele to ask, whether
she was not his daughter. He said that she was. 'Then,' said Mrs.
Steele, 'I beg she may be mine too.' Thenceforth she lived in their home
as Miss Ousley, and was treated as a daughter by Steele's wife. Surely
this was a woman who deserved the love that never swerved from her. True
husband and true friend, he playfully called Addison her rival. In the
_Spectator_ there is a paper of Steele's (No. 142) representing some of
his own love-letters as telling what a man said and should be able to
say of his wife after forty years of marriage. Seven years after
marriage he signs himself, 'Yours more than you can imagine, or I
express.' He dedicates to her a volume of the _Lady's Library_, and
writes of her ministrations to him:
'if there are such beings as guardian angels, thus are they employed.
I will no more believe one of them more good in its inclinations than
I can conceive it more charming in its form than my wife.'
In the year before her death he was signing his letters with 'God bless
you!' and 'Dear Prue, eternally yours.' That Steele made it a duty of
his literary life to contend against the frivolous and vicious ridicule
of the ties of marriage common in his day, and to maintain their sacred
honour and their happiness, readers of the 'Spectator' cannot fail to
find.
Steele, on his marriage in 1707, took a house in Bury Street, St.
James's, and in the following year went to a house at Hampton, which he
called in jest the Hovel. Addison had lent him a thousand pounds for
costs of furnishing and other immediate needs. This was repaid within a
year, and when, at the same time, his wife's mother was proposing a
settlement of her money beneficial to himself, Steele replied that he
was far from desiring, if he should survive his wife, 'to turn the
current of the estate out of the channel it would have been in, had I
never come into the family.' Liberal always of his own to others, he was
sometimes without a guinea, and perplexed by debt. But he defrauded no
man. When he followed his Prue to the grave he was in no man's debt,
though he left all his countrymen his debtors, and he left more than
their mother's fortune to his two surviving children. One died of
consumption a year afterwards, the other married one of the Welsh
Judges, afterwards Lord Trevor.
The friendship--equal friendship--between Steele and Addison was as
unbroken as the love between Steele and his wife. Petty tales may have
been invented or misread. In days of malicious personality Steele braved
the worst of party spite, and little enough even slander found to throw
against him. Nobody in their lifetime doubted the equal strength and
sincerity of the relationship between the two friends. Steele was no
follower of Addison's. Throughout life he went his own way, leading
rather than following; first as a playwright; first in conception and
execution of the scheme of the 'Tatler', 'Spectator', and 'Guardian';
following his own sense of duty against Addison's sense of expediency in
passing from the 'Guardian' to the 'Englishman', and so to energetic
movement upon perilous paths as a political writer, whose whole heart
was with what he took to be the people's cause.
When Swift had been writing to Addison that he thought Steele 'the
vilest of mankind,' in writing of this to Swift, Steele complained that
the 'Examiner',--in which Swift had a busy hand,--said Addison had
'bridled him in point of politics,' adding,
'This was ill hinted both in relation to him and me. I know no party;
but the truth of the question is what I will support as well as I can,
when any man I honour is attacked.'
John Forster, whose keen insight into the essentials of literature led
him to write an essay upon each of the two great founders of the latest
period of English literature, Defoe and Steele, has pointed out in his
masterly essay upon Steele that Swift denies having spoken of Steele as
bridled by his friend, and does so in a way that frankly admits Steele's
right to be jealous of the imputation. Mr. Forster justly adds that
throughout Swift's intimate speech to Stella,
'whether his humours be sarcastic or polite, the friendship of Steele
and Addison is for ever suggesting some annoyance to himself, some
mortification, some regret, but never once the doubt that it was not
intimate and sincere, or that into it entered anything inconsistent
with a perfect equality.'
Six months after Addison's death Steele wrote (in No. 12 of the
'Theatre', and I am again quoting facts cited by John Forster),
'that there never was a more strict friendship than between himself
and Addison, nor had they ever any difference but what proceeded from
their different way of pursuing the same thing; the one waited and
stemmed the torrent, while the other too often plunged into it; but
though they thus had lived for some years past, shunning each other,
they still preserved the most passionate concern for their mutual
welfare; and when they met they were as unreserved as boys, and talked
of the greatest affairs, upon which they saw where they differed,
without pressing (what they knew impossible) to convert each other.'
As to the substance or worth of what thus divided them, Steele only adds
the significant expression of his hope that, if his family is the worse,
his country may be the better, 'for the mortification _he_ has
undergone.'
Such, then, was the Friendship of which the 'Spectator' is the abiding
Monument. The 'Spectator' was a modified continuation of the 'Tatler',
and the 'Tatler' was suggested by a portion of Defoe's 'Review'. The
'Spectator' belongs to the first days of a period when the people at
large extended their reading power into departments of knowledge
formerly unsought by them, and their favour was found generally to be
more desirable than that of the most princely patron. This period should
date from the day in 1703 when the key turned upon Defoe in Newgate, the
year of the production of Steele's 'Tender Husband', and the time when
Addison was in Holland on the way home from his continental travels.
Defoe was then forty-two years old, Addison and Steele being about
eleven years younger.
In the following year, 1704, the year of Blenheim--Defoe issued, on the
19th of February, No. 1 of 'A Weekly Review of the Affairs of France:
Purg'd from the Errors and Partiality of 'News-Writers' and
'Petty-Statesmen', of all Sides,' and in the introductory sketch of its
plan, said:
'After our Serious Matters are over, we shall at the end of every
Paper, Present you with a little Diversion, as anything occurs to make
the World Merry; and whether Friend or Foe, one Party or another, if
anything happens so scandalous as to require an open Reproof, the
World may meet with it there.'
Here is the first 'little Diversion'; the germ of 'Tatlers' and
'Spectators' which in after years amused and edified the town.
'Mercure Scandale:
or,
ADVICE from the Scandalous CLUB. 'Translated out of French'.
This Society is a Corporation long since established in 'Paris', and
we cannot compleat our Advices from 'France', without entertaining the
World with everything we meet with from that Country.
And, tho Corresponding with the Queens Enemies is prohibited; yet
since the Matter will be so honest, as only to tell the World of what
everybody will own to be scandalous, we reckon we shall be welcome.
This Corporation has been set up some months, and opend their first
Sessions about last 'Bartholomew' Fair; but having not yet obtaind a
Patent, they have never, till now, made their Resolves publick.
The Business of this Society is to censure the Actions of Men, not of
Parties, and in particular, those Actions which are made publick so by
their Authors, as to be, in their own Nature, an Appeal to the general
Approbation.
They do not design to expose Persons but things; and of them, none but
such as more than ordinarily deserve it; they who would not be censurd
by this Assembly, are desired to act with caution enough, not to fall
under their Hands; for they resolve to treat Vice, and Villanous
Actions, with the utmost Severity.
The First considerable Matter that came before this Society, was about
'Bartholomew' Fair; but the Debates being long, they were at last
adjourned to the next Fair, when we suppose it will be decided; so
being not willing to trouble the World with anything twice over, we
refer that to next 'August'.
On the 10th of September last, there was a long Hearing, before the
Club, of a Fellow that said he had killd the Duke of 'Bavaria'. Now as
David punishd the Man that said he had killd King 'Saul', whether it
was so or no, twas thought this Fellow ought to be delivered up to
Justice, tho the Duke of 'Bavaria' was alive.
Upon the whole, twas voted a scandalous Thing, That News. Writers
shoud kill Kings and Princes, and bring them to life again at
pleasure; and to make an Example of this Fellow, he was dismissd, upon
Condition he should go to the Queens-bench once a Day, and bear
Fuller, his Brother of the Faculty, company two hours for fourteen
Days together; which cruel Punishment was executed with the utmost
Severity.
The Club has had a great deal of trouble about the News-Writers, who
have been continually brought before them for their ridiculous
Stories, and imposing upon Mankind; and tho the Proceedings have been
pretty tedious, we must give you the trouble of a few of them in our
next.
The addition to the heading, 'Translated out of French,' appears only in
No. 1, and the first title 'Mercure Scandale' (adopted from a French
book published about 1681) having been much criticized for its grammar
and on other grounds, was dropped in No. 18. Thenceforth Defoe's
pleasant comment upon passing follies appeared under the single head of
'Advice from the Scandalous Club.' Still the verbal Critics exercised
their wits upon the title.
'We have been so often on the Defence of our Title,' says Defoe, in
No. 38, 'that the world begins to think Our Society wants
Employment ... If Scandalous must signify nothing but Personal
Scandal, respecting the Subject of which it is predicated; we desire
those gentlemen to answer for us how 'Post-Man' or 'Post-Boy' can
signify a News-Paper, the Post Man or Post Boy being in all my reading
properly and strictly applicable, not to the Paper, but to the Person
bringing or carrying the News? Mercury also is, if I understand it, by
a Transmutation of Meaning, from a God turned into a Book--From hence
our Club thinks they have not fair Play, in being deny'd the Privilege
of making an Allegory as well as other People.'
In No. 46 Defoe made, in one change more, a whimsical half concession of
a syllable, by putting a sign of contraction in its place, and
thenceforth calling this part of his Review, Advice from the Scandal
Club. Nothing can be more evident than the family likeness between this
forefather of the 'Tatler' and 'Spectator' and its more familiar
descendants. There is a trick of voice common to all, and some papers of
Defoe's might have been written for the 'Spectator'. Take the little
allegory, for instance, in No. 45, which tells of a desponding young
Lady brought before the Society, as found by Rosamond's Pond in the Park
in a strange condition, taken by the mob for a lunatic, and whose
clothes were all out of fashion, but whose face, when it was seen,
astonished the whole society by its extraordinary sweetness and majesty.
She told how she had been brought to despair, and her name proved to
be--Modesty. In letters, questions, and comments also which might be
taken from Defoe's Monthly Supplementary Journal to the Advice from the
Scandal Club, we catch a likeness to the spirit of the 'Tatler' and
'Spectator' now and then exact. Some censured Defoe for not confining
himself to the weightier part of his purpose in establishing the
'Review'. He replied, in the Introduction to his first Monthly
Supplement, that many men
'care but for a little reading at a time,' and said, 'thus we wheedle
them in, if it may be allow'd that Expression, to the Knowledge of the
World, who rather than take more Pains, would be content with their
Ignorance, and search into nothing.'
Single-minded, quick-witted, and prompt to act on the first suggestion
of a higher point of usefulness to which he might attain, Steele saw the
mind of the people ready for a new sort of relation to its writers, and
he followed the lead of Defoe. But though he turned from the more
frivolous temper of the enfeebled playhouse audience, to commune in free
air with the country at large, he took fresh care for the restraint of
his deep earnestness within the bounds of a cheerful, unpretending
influence. Drop by drop it should fall, and its strength lie in its
persistence. He would bring what wit he had out of the playhouse, and
speak his mind, like Defoe, to the people themselves every post-day. But
he would affect no pedantry of moralizing, he would appeal to no
passions, he would profess himself only 'a Tatler.' Might he not use, he
thought, modestly distrustful of the charm of his own mind, some of the
news obtained by virtue of the office of Gazetteer that Harley had given
him, to bring weight and acceptance to writing of his which he valued
only for the use to which it could be put. For, as he himself truly says
in the 'Tatler',
'wit, if a man had it, unless it be directed to some useful end, is
but a wanton, frivolous quality; all that one should value himself
upon in this kind is that he had some honourable intention in it.'
Swift, not then a deserter to the Tories, was a friend of Steele's, who,
when the first 'Tatler' appeared, had been amusing the town at the
expense of John Partridge, astrologer and almanac-maker, with
'Predictions for the year 1708,' professing to be written by Isaac
Bickerstaff, Esq. The first prediction was of the death of Partridge,
'on the 29th of March next, about eleven at night, of a raging fever.'
Swift answered himself, and also published in due time
'The Accomplishment of the first of Mr. Bickerstaff's Predictions:
being an account of the death of Mr. Partridge, the almanack-maker,
upon the 29th instant.'
Other wits kept up the joke, and, in his next year's almanac (that for
1709), Partridge advertised that,
'whereas it has been industriously given out by Isaac Bickerstaff,
Esq., and others, to prevent the sale of this year's almanack, that
John Partridge is dead, this may inform all his loving countrymen that
he is still living, in health, and they are knaves that reported it
otherwise.'
Steele gave additional lightness to the touch of his 'Tatler', which
first appeared on the 12th of April, 1709, by writing in the name of
Isaac Bickerstaff, and carrying on the jest, that was to his serious
mind a blow dealt against prevailing superstition. Referring in his
first 'Tatler' to this advertisement of Partridge's, he said of it,
'I have in another place, and in a paper by itself, sufficiently
convinced this man that he is dead; and if he has any shame, I do not
doubt but that by this time he owns it to all his acquaintance. For
though the legs and arms and whole body of that man may still appear
and perform their animal functions, yet since, as I have elsewhere
observed, his art is gone, the man is gone.'
To Steele, indeed, the truth was absolute, that a man is but what he can
do.
In this spirit, then, Steele began the 'Tatler', simply considering that
his paper was to be published 'for the use of the good people of
England,' and professing at the outset that he was an author writing for
the public, who expected from the public payment for his work, and that
he preferred this course to gambling for the patronage of men in office.
Having pleasantly shown the sordid spirit that underlies the
mountebank's sublime professions of disinterestedness,
'we have a contempt,' he says, 'for such paltry barterers, and have
therefore all along informed the public that we intend to give them
our advices for our own sakes, and are labouring to make our
lucubrations come to some price in money, for our more convenient
support in the service of the public. It is certain that many other
schemes have been proposed to me, as a friend offered to show me in a
treatise he had writ, which he called, "The whole Art of Life; or, The
Introduction to Great Men, illustrated in a Pack of Cards." But being
a novice at all manner of play, I declined the offer.'
Addison took these cards, and played an honest game with them
successfully. When, at the end of 1708, the Earl of Sunderland,
Marlborough's son-in-law, lost his secretaryship, Addison lost his place
as under-secretary; but he did not object to go to Ireland as chief
secretary to Lord Wharton, the new Lord-lieutenant, an active party man,
a leader on the turf with reputation for indulgence after business hours
according to the fashion of the court of Charles II.
Lord Wharton took to Ireland Clayton to write him musical
entertainments, and a train of parasites of quality. He was a great
borough-monger, and is said at one critical time to have returned thirty
members. He had no difficulty, therefore, in finding Addison a seat, and
made him in that year, 1709, M.P. for Malmesbury. Addison only once
attempted to speak in the House of Commons, and then, embarrassed by
encouraging applause that welcomed him he stammered and sat down. But
when, having laid his political cards down for a time, and at ease in
his own home, pen in hand, he brought his sound mind and quick humour to
the aid of his friend Steele, he came with him into direct relation with
the English people. Addison never gave posterity a chance of knowing
what was in him till, following Steele's lead, he wrote those papers in
'Tatler', 'Spectator', and 'Guardian', wherein alone his genius abides
with us, and will abide with English readers to the end. The 'Tatler',
the 'Spectator', and the 'Guardian' were, all of them, Steele's, begun
and ended by him at his sole discretion. In these three journals Steele
was answerable for 510 papers; Addison for 369. Swift wrote two papers,
and sent about a dozen fragments. Congreve wrote one article in the
'Tatler'; Pope wrote thrice for the 'Spectator', and eight times for the
'Guardian'. Addison, who was in Ireland when the 'Tatler' first
appeared, only guessed the authorship by an expression in an early
number; and it was not until eighty numbers had been issued, and the
character of the new paper was formed and established, that Addison, on
his return to London, joined the friend who, with his usual complete
absence of the vanity of self-assertion, finally ascribed to the ally he
dearly loved, the honours of success.
It was the kind of success Steele had desired--a widely-diffused
influence for good. The 'Tatlers' were penny papers published three
times a week, and issued also for another halfpenny with a blank
half-sheet for transmission by post, when any written scraps of the
day's gossip that friend might send to friend could be included. It was
through these, and the daily 'Spectators' which succeeded them, that the
people of England really learnt to read. The few leaves of sound reason
and fancy were but a light tax on uncultivated powers of attention.
Exquisite grace and true kindliness, here associated with familiar ways
and common incidents of everyday life, gave many an honest man fresh
sense of the best happiness that lies in common duties honestly
performed, and a fresh energy, free as Christianity itself from
malice--for so both Steele and Addison meant that it should be--in
opposing themselves to the frivolities and small frauds on the
conscience by which manliness is undermined.
A pamphlet by John Gay--'The Present State of Wit, in a Letter to a
Friend in the Country'--was dated May 3, 1711, about two months after
the 'Spectator' had replaced the 'Tatler'. And thus Gay represents the
best talk of the town about these papers:
"Before I proceed further in the account of our weekly papers, it will
be necessary to inform you that at the beginning of the winter, to the
infinite surprise of all the Town, Mr. Steele flung up his 'Tatler',
and instead of Isaac Bickerstaff, Esquire, subscribed himself Richard
Steele to the last of those papers, after a handsome compliment to the
Town for their kind acceptance of his endeavours to divert them.
The chief reason he thought fit to give for his leaving off writing
was, that having been so long looked on in all public places and
companies as the Author of those papers, he found that his most
intimate friends and acquaintance were in pain to speak or act before
him.
The Town was very far from being satisfied with this reason, and most
people judged the true cause to be, either
That he was quite spent, and wanted matter to continue his
undertaking any longer; or
That he laid it down as a sort of submission to, and composition
with, the Government for some past offences; or, lastly,
That he had a mind to vary his Shape, and appear again in some new
light.
However that were, his disappearance seemed to be bewailed as some
general calamity. Every one wanted so agreeable an amusement, and the
Coffee-houses began to be sensible that the Esquire's 'Lucubrations'
alone had brought them more customers than all their other newspapers
put together.
It must indeed be confessed that never man threw up his pen, under
stronger temptations to have employed it longer. His reputation was at
a greater height, than I believe ever any living author's was before
him. It is reasonable to suppose that his gains were proportionably
considerable. Every one read him with pleasure and good-will; and the
Tories, in respect to his other good qualities, had almost forgiven
his unaccountable imprudence in declaring against them.
Lastly, it was highly improbable that, if he threw off a Character,
the ideas of which were so strongly impressed in every one's mind,
however finely he might write in any new form, that he should meet
with the same reception.
To give you my own thoughts of this gentleman's writings I shall, in
the first place, observe, that there is a noble difference between him
and all the rest of our gallant and polite authors. The latter have
endeavoured to please the Age by falling in with them, and encouraging
them in their fashionable vices and false notions of things. It would
have been a jest, some time since, for a man to have asserted that
anything witty could be said in praise of a married state, or that
Devotion and Virtue were any way necessary to the character of a Fine
Gentleman. 'Bickerstaff' ventured to tell the Town that they were a
parcel of fops, fools, and coquettes; but in such a manner as even
pleased them, and made them more than half inclined to believe that he
spoke truth.
Instead of complying with the false sentiments or vicious tastes of
the Age--either in morality, criticism, or good breeding--he has
boldly assured them that they were altogether in the wrong; and
commanded them, with an authority which perfectly well became him, to
surrender themselves to his arguments for Virtue and Good Sense.
It is incredible to conceive the effect his writings have had on the
Town; how many thousand follies they have either quite banished or
given a very great check to; how much countenance they have added to
Virtue and Religion; how many people they have rendered happy, by
shewing them it was their own fault if they were not so; and, lastly,
how entirely they have convinced our young fops and young fellows of
the value and advantages of Learning.
He has indeed rescued it out of the hands of pedants and fools, and
discovered the true method of making it amiable and lovely to all
mankind. In the dress he gives it, it is a most welcome guest at
tea-tables and assemblies, and is relished and caressed by the
merchants on the Change. Accordingly there is not a Lady at Court, nor
a Banker in Lombard Street, who is not verily persuaded that Captain
Steele is the greatest scholar and best Casuist of any man in England.
Lastly, his writings have set all our Wits and men of letters on a new
way of thinking, of which they had little or no notion before: and,
although we cannot say that any of them have come up to the beauties
of the original, I think we may venture to affirm, that every one of
them writes and thinks much more justly than they did some time since.
The vast variety of subjects which Mr. Steele has treated of, in so
different manners, and yet all so perfectly well, made the World
believe that it was impossible they should all come from the same
hand. This set every one upon guessing who was the Esquire's friend?
and most people at first fancied it must be Doctor Swift; but it is
now no longer a secret, that his only great and constant assistant was
Mr. Addison.
This is that excellent friend to whom Mr. Steele owes so much; and who
refuses to have his name set before those pieces, which the greatest
pens in England would be proud to own. Indeed, they could hardly add
to this Gentleman's reputation: whose works in Latin and English
poetry long since convinced the World, that he was the greatest Master
in Europe in those two languages.
I am assured, from good hands, that all the visions, and other tracts
of that way of writing, with a very great number of the most exquisite
pieces of wit and raillery through the 'Lucubrations' are entirely of
this Gentleman's composing: which may, in some measure, account for
that different Genius, which appears in the winter papers, from those
of the summer; at which time, as the 'Examiner' often hinted, this
friend of Mr. Steele was in Ireland.
Mr. Steele confesses in his last Volume of the 'Tatlers' that he is
obliged to Dr. Swift for his 'Town Shower', and the 'Description of
the Morn', with some other hints received from him in private
conversation.
I have also heard that several of those 'Letters', which came as from
unknown hands, were written by Mr. Henley: which is an answer to your
query, 'Who those friends are whom Mr. Steele speaks of in his last
'Tatler?''
But to proceed with my account of our other papers. The expiration of
'Bickerstaff's Lucubrations' was attended with much the same
consequences as the death of Meliboeus's 'Ox' in Virgil: as the latter
engendered swarms of bees, the former immediately produced whole
swarms of little satirical scribblers.
One of these authors called himself the 'Growler', and assured us
that, to make amends for Mr. Steele's silence, he was resolved to
'growl' at us weekly, as long as we should think fit to give him any
encouragement. Another Gentleman, with more modesty, called his paper
the 'Whisperer'; and a third, to please the Ladies, christened his the
'Tell tale'.
At the same-time came out several 'Tatlers'; each of which, with equal
truth and wit, assured us that he was the genuine 'Isaac Bickerstaff'.
It may be observed that when the 'Esquire' laid down his pen; though
he could not but foresee that several scribblers would soon snatch it
up, which he might (one would think) easily have prevented: he scorned
to take any further care about it, but left the field fairly open to
any worthy successor. Immediately, some of our Wits were for forming
themselves into a Club, headed by one Mr. Harrison, and trying how
they could shoot in this Bow of Ulysses; but soon found that this sort
of writing requires so fine and particular a manner of thinking, with
so exact a knowledge of the World, as must make them utterly despair
of success.
They seemed indeed at first to think that what was only the garnish of
the former 'Tatlers', was that which recommended them; and not those
Substantial Entertainments which they everywhere abound in. According
they were continually talking of their 'Maid', 'Night Cap',
'Spectacles', and Charles Lillie. However there were, now and then,
some faint endeavours at Humour and sparks of Wit: which the Town, for
want of better entertainment, was content to hunt after through a heap
of impertinences; but even those are, at present, become wholly
invisible and quite swallowed up in the blaze of the 'Spectator'.
You may remember, I told you before, that one cause assigned for the
laying down the 'Tatler' was, Want of Matter; and, indeed, this was
the prevailing opinion in Town: when we were surprised all at once by
a paper called the 'Spectator', which was promised to be continued
every day; and was written in so excellent a style, with so nice a
judgment, and such a noble profusion of wit and humour, that it was
not difficult to determine it could come from no other hands but those
which had penned the 'Lucubrations'.
This immediately alarmed these gentlemen, who, as it is said Mr.
Steele phrases it, had 'the Censorship in Commission.' They found the
new 'Spectator' came on like a torrent, and swept away all before him.
They despaired ever to equal him in wit, humour, or learning; which
had been their true and certain way of opposing him: and therefore
rather chose to fall on the Author; and to call out for help to all
good Christians, by assuring them again and again that they were the
First, Original, True, and undisputed 'Isaac Bickerstaff'.
Meanwhile, the 'Spectator', whom we regard as our Shelter from that
flood of false wit and impertinence which was breaking in upon us, is
in every one's hands; and a constant for our morning conversation at
tea-tables and coffee-houses. We had at first, indeed, no manner of
notion how a diurnal paper could be continued in the spirit and style
of our present 'Spectators': but, to our no small surprise, we find
them still rising upon us, and can only wonder from whence so
prodigious a run of Wit and Learning can proceed; since some of our
best judges seem to think that they have hitherto, in general,
outshone even the 'Esquire's' first 'Tatlers'.
Most people fancy, from their frequency, that they must be composed by
a Society: I withal assign the first places to Mr. Steele and his
Friend.
So far John Gay, whose discussion of the 'Tatlers' and 'Spectators'
appeared when only fifty-five numbers of the 'Spectator' had been
published.
There was high strife of faction; and there was real peril to the
country by a possible turn of affairs after Queen Anne's death, that
another Stuart restoration, in the name of divine right of kings, would
leave rights of the people to be reconquered in civil war. The chiefs of
either party were appealing to the people, and engaging all the wit they
could secure to fight on their side in the war of pamphlets. Steele's
heart was in the momentous issue. Both he and Addison had it in mind
while they were blending their calm playfulness with all the clamour of
the press. The spirit in which these friends worked, young Pope must
have felt; for after Addison had helped him in his first approach to
fame by giving honour in the 'Spectator' to his 'Essay on Criticism,'
and when he was thankful for that service, he contributed to the
'Spectator' his 'Messiah.' Such offering clearly showed how Pope
interpreted the labour of the essayists.
In the fens of Lincolnshire the antiquary Maurice Johnson collected his
neighbours of Spalding.
'Taking care,' it is said, 'not to alarm the country gentlemen by any
premature mention of antiquities, he endeavoured at first to allure
them into the more flowery paths of literature. In 1709 a few of them
were brought together every post-day at the coffee-house in the Abbey
Yard; and after one of the party had read aloud the last published
number of the 'Tatler', they proceeded to talk over the subject among
themselves.'
Even in distant Perthshire
'the gentlemen met after church on Sunday to discuss the news of the
week; the 'Spectators' were read as regularly as the 'Journal'.'
So the political draught of bitterness came sweetened with the wisdom of
good-humour. The good-humour of the essayists touched with a light and
kindly hand every form of affectation, and placed every-day life in the
light in which it would be seen by a natural and honest man. A sense of
the essentials of life was assumed everywhere for the reader, who was
asked only to smile charitably at its vanities. Steele looked through
all shams to the natural heart of the Englishman, appealed to that, and
found it easily enough, even under the disguise of the young gentleman
cited in the 77th 'Tatler',
'so ambitious to be thought worse than he is that in his degree of
understanding he sets up for a free-thinker, and talks atheistically
in coffee-houses all day, though every morning and evening, it can be
proved upon him, he regularly at home says his prayers.'
But as public events led nearer to the prospect of a Jacobite triumph
that would have again brought Englishmen against each other sword to
sword, there was no voice of warning more fearless than Richard
Steele's. He changed the 'Spectator' for the 'Guardian', that was to be,
in its plan, more free to guard the people's rights, and, standing
forward more distinctly as a politician, he became member for
Stockbridge. In place of the 'Guardian', which he had dropped when he
felt the plan of that journal unequal to the right and full expression
of his mind, Steele took for a periodical the name of 'Englishman', and
under that name fought, with then unexampled abstinence from
personality, against the principles upheld by Swift in his 'Examiner'.
Then, when the Peace of Utrecht alarmed English patriots, Steele in a
bold pamphlet on 'The Crisis' expressed his dread of arbitrary power and
a Jacobite succession with a boldness that cost him his seat in
Parliament, as he had before sacrificed to plain speaking his place of
Gazetteer.
Of the later history of Steele and Addison a few words will suffice.
This is not an account of their lives, but an endeavour to show why
Englishmen must always have a living interest in the 'Spectator', their
joint production. Steele's 'Spectator' ended with the seventh volume.
The members of the Club were all disposed of, and the journal formally
wound up; but by the suggestion of a future ceremony of opening the
'Spectator's' mouth, a way was made for Addison, whenever he pleased, to
connect with the famous series an attempt of his own for its revival. A
year and a half later Addison made this attempt, producing his new
journal with the old name and, as far as his contributions went, not
less than the old wit and earnestness, three times a week instead of
daily. But he kept it alive only until the completion of one volume.
Addison had not Steele's popular tact as an editor. He preached, and he
suffered drier men to preach, while in his jest he now and then wrote
what he seems to have been unwilling to acknowledge. His eighth volume
contains excellent matter, but the subjects are not always well chosen
or varied judiciously, and one understands why the 'Spectator' took a
firmer hold upon society when the two friends in the full strength of
their life, aged about forty, worked together and embraced between them
a wide range of human thought and feeling. It should be remembered also
that Queen Anne died while Addison's eighth volume was appearing, and
the change in the Whig position brought him other occupation of his time.
In April, 1713, in the interval between the completion of the true
'Spectator' and the appearance of the supplementary volume, Addison's
tragedy of 'Cato', planned at College; begun during his foreign travels,
retouched in England, and at last completed, was produced at Drury Lane.
Addison had not considered it a stage play, but when it was urged that
the time was proper for animating the public with the sentiments of
Cato, he assented to its production. Apart from its real merit the play
had the advantage of being applauded by the Whigs, who saw in it a Whig
political ideal, and by the Tories, who desired to show that they were
as warm friends of liberty as any Whig could be.
Upon the death of Queen Anne Addison acted for a short time as secretary
to the Regency, and when George I. appointed Addison's patron, the Earl
of Sunderland, to the Lord-lieutenancy of Ireland, Sunderland took
Addison with him as chief secretary. Sunderland resigned in ten months,
and thus Addison's secretaryship came to an end in August, 1716. Addison
was also employed to meet the Rebellion of 1715 by writing the
'Freeholder'. He wrote under this title fifty-five papers, which were
published twice a week between December, 1715, and June, 1716; and he
was rewarded with the post of Commissioner for Trade and Colonies. In
August, 1716, he married the Countess Dowager of Warwick, mother to the
young Earl of Warwick, of whose education he seems to have had some
charge in 1708. Addison settled upon the Countess L4000 in lieu of an
estate which she gave up for his sake. Henceforth he lived chiefly at
Holland House. In April, 1717, Lord Sunderland became Secretary of
State, and still mindful of Marlborough's illustrious supporter, he made
Addison his colleague. Eleven months later, ill health obliged Addison
to resign the seals; and his death followed, June 17, 1719, at the age
of 47.
Steele's political difficulties ended at the death of Queen Anne. The
return of the Whigs to power on the accession of George I. brought him
the office of Surveyor of the Royal Stables at Hampton Court; he was
also first in the Commission of the peace for Middlesex, and was made
one of the deputy lieutenants of the county. At the request of the
managers Steele's name was included in the new patent required at Drury
Lane by the royal company of comedians upon the accession of a new
sovereign. Steele also was returned as M.P. for Boroughbridge, in
Yorkshire, was writer of the Address to the king presented by the
Lord-lieutenant and the deputy lieutenants of Middlesex, and being
knighted on that occasion, with two other of the deputies, became in the
spring of the year, 1714, Sir Richard Steele. Very few weeks after the
death of his wife, in December, 1718, Sunderland, at a time when he had
Addison for colleague, brought in a bill for preventing any future
creations of peers, except when an existing peerage should become
extinct. Steele, who looked upon this as an infringement alike of the
privileges of the crown and of the rights of the subject, opposed the
bill in Parliament, and started in March, 1719, a paper called the
'Plebeian', in which he argued against a measure tending, he said, to
the formation of an oligarchy. Addison replied in the 'Old Whig', and
this, which occurred within a year of the close of Addison's life, was
the main subject of political difference between them. The bill,
strongly opposed, was dropped for that session, and reintroduced (after
Addison's death) in the December following, to be thrown out by the
House of Commons.
Steele's argument against the government brought on him the hostility of
the Duke of Newcastle, then Lord Chamberlain; and it was partly to
defend himself and his brother patentees against hostile action
threatened by the Duke, that Steele, in January, 1720, started his paper
called the 'Theatre'. But he was dispossessed of his government of the
theatre, to which a salary of L600 a-year had been attached, and
suffered by the persecution of the court until Walpole's return to
power. Steele was then restored to his office, and in the following
year, 1722, produced his most successful comedy, 'The Conscious Lovers'.
After this time his health declined; his spirits were depressed. He left
London for Bath. His only surviving son, Eugene, born while the
'Spectator' was being issued, and to whom Prince Eugene had stood
godfather, died at the age of eleven or twelve in November, 1723. The
younger also of his two daughters was marked for death by consumption.
He was broken in health and fortune when, in 1726, he had an attack of
palsy which was the prelude to his death. He died Sept. 1, 1729, at
Carmarthen, where he had been boarding with a mercer who was his agent
and receiver of rents. There is a pleasant record that
'he retained his cheerful sweetness of temper to the last; and would
often be carried out, of a summer's evening, where the country lads
and lasses were assembled at their rural sports,--and, with his
pencil, gave an order on his agent, the mercer, for a new gown to the
best dancer.'
Two editions of the 'Spectator', the tenth and eleventh, were published
by Tonson in the year of Steele's death. These and the next edition,
dated 1739, were without the translations of the mottos, which appear,
however, in the edition of 1744. Notes were first added by Dr. Percy,
the editor of the 'Reliques of Ancient Poetry', and Dr. Calder. Dr. John
Calder, a native of Aberdeen, bred to the dissenting ministry, was for
some time keeper of Dr. Williams's Library in Redcross Street. He was a
candidate for the office given to Dr. Abraham Rees, of editor and
general super-intendent of the new issue of Chambers's Cyclopaedia,
undertaken by the booksellers in 1776, and he supplied to it some new
articles. The Duke of Northumberland warmly patronized Dr. Calder, and
made him his companion in London and at Alnwick Castle as Private
Literary Secretary. Dr. Thomas Percy, who had constituted himself cousin
and retainer to the Percy of Northumberland, obtained his bishopric of
Dromore in 1782, in the following year lost his only son, and suffered
from that failure in eyesight, which resulted in a total blindness.
Having become intimately acquainted with Dr. Calder when at
Northumberland House and Alnwick, Percy intrusted to him the notes he
had collected for illustrating the 'Tatler', 'Spectator', and
'Guardian'. These were after-wards used, with additions by Dr. Calder,
in the various editions of those works, especially in the six-volume
edition of the 'Tatler', published by John Nichols in 1786, where
Percy's notes have a P. attached to them, and Dr. Calder's are signed
'Annotator.' The 'Tatler' was annotated fully, and the annotated
'Tatler' has supplied some pieces of information given in the present
edition of the 'Spectator'. Percy actually edited two volumes for R.
Tonson in 1764, but the work was stopped by the death of the bookseller,
and the other six were added to them in 1789. They were slightly
annotated, both as regards the number and the value of the notes; but
Percy and Calder lived when 'Spectator' traditions were yet fresh, and
oral information was accessible as to points of personal allusion or as
to the authorship of a few papers or letters which but for them might
have remained anonymous. Their notes are those of which the substance
has run through all subsequent editions. Little, if anything, was added
to them by Bisset or Chalmers; the energies of those editors having been
chiefly directed to the preserving or multiplying of corruptions of the
text. Percy, when telling Tonson that he had completed two volumes of
the 'Spectator', said that he had corrected 'innumerable corruptions'
which had then crept in, and could have come only by misprint. Since
that time not only have misprints been preserved and multiplied, but
punctuation has been deliberately modernized, to the destruction of the
freshness of the original style, and editors of another 'understanding
age' have also taken upon themselves by many a little touch to correct
Addison's style or grammar.
This volume reprints for the first time in the present century the text
of the 'Spectator' as its authors left it. A good recent edition
contains in the first 18 papers, which are a fair sample of the whole,
88 petty variations from the proper text (at that rate, in the whole
work more than 3000) apart from the recasting of the punctuation, which
is counted as a defect only in two instances, where it has changed the
sense. Chalmers's text, of 1817, was hardly better, and about two-thirds
of the whole number of corruptions had already appeared in Bisset's
edition of 1793, from which they were transferred. Thus Bisset as well
as Chalmers in the Dedication to Vol. I. turned the 'polite _parts_ of
learning' into the 'polite _arts_ of learning,' and when the silent
gentleman tells us that many to whom his person is well known speak of
him 'very currently by Mr. What-d'ye-call him,' Bisset before Chalmers
rounded the sentence into 'very correctly by _the appellation_ of Mr.
What-d'ye-call him.' But it seems to have been Chalmers who first
undertook to correct, in the next paper, Addison's grammar, by turning
'have laughed _to have seen_' into 'have laughed _to see_' and
transformed a treaty '_with_ London and Wise,'--a firm now of historical
repute,--for the supply of flowers to the opera, into a treaty
'_between_ London and Wise,' which most people would take to be a very
different matter. If the present edition has its own share of misprints
and oversights, at least it inherits none; and it contains no wilful
alteration of the text.
The papers as they first appeared in the daily issue of a penny (and
after the stamp was imposed two-penny) folio half-sheet, have been
closely compared with the first issue in guinea octavos, for which they
were revised, and with the last edition that appeared before the death
of Steele. The original text is here given precisely as it was left
after revision by its authors; and there is shown at the same time the
amount and character of the revision.
Sentences added in the reprint are placed between square brackets [ ],
without any appended note.
Sentences omitted, or words altered, are shown by bracketing the revised
version, and giving the text as it stood in the original daily issue
within corresponding brackets as a foot-note.[1]
Thus the reader has here both the original texts of the 'Spectator'. The
Essays, as revised by their authors for permanent use, form the main
text of the present volume.
But if the words or passages in brackets be omitted; the words or
passages in corresponding foot-notes,--where there are such
foot-notes,--being substituted for them; the text becomes throughout
that of the 'Spectator' as it first came out in daily numbers.
As the few differences between good spelling in Queen Anne's time and
good spelling now are never of a kind to obscure the sense of a word, or
lessen the enjoyment of the reader, it has been thought better to make
the reproduction perfect, and thus show not only what Steele and Addison
wrote, but how they spelt, while restoring to their style the proper
harmony of their own methods of punctuating, and their way of sometimes
getting emphasis by turning to account the use of capitals, which in
their hands was not wholly conventional.
The original folio numbers have been followed also in the use of
_italics_ [_shown between underscored thus_] and other little details of
the disposition of the type; for example, in the reproduction of those
rows of single inverted commas, which distinguish what a correspondent
called the parts 'laced down the side with little c's.' [This last
detail of formatting has not been reproduced in this file. Text Ed.]
The translation of the mottos and Latin quotations, which Steele and
Addison deliberately abstained from giving, and which, as they were
since added, impede and sometimes confound and contradict the text, are
here placed in a body at the end, for those who want them. Again and
again the essayists indulge in banter on the mystery of the Latin and
Greek mottos; and what confusion must enter into the mind of the unwary
reader who finds Pope's Homer quoted at the head of a 'Spectator' long
before Addison's word of applause to the young poet's 'Essay on
Criticism.' The mottos then are placed in an Appendix.
There is a short Appendix also of advertisements taken from the original
number of the 'Spectator', and a few others, where they seem to
illustrate some point in the text, will be found among the notes.
In the large number of notes here added to a revision of those
bequeathed to us by Percy and Calder, the object has been to give
information which may contribute to some nearer acquaintance with the
writers of the book, and enjoyment of allusions to past manners and
events.
Finally, from the 'General Index to the Spectators, &c.,' published as a
separate volume in 1760, there has been taken what was serviceable, and
additions have been made to it with a desire to secure for this edition
of the 'Spectator' the advantages of being handy for reference as well
as true to the real text.
H. M.
[Footnote 1: "Sentences omitted, or words altered;" not, of course, the
immaterial variations of spelling into which compositors slipped in the
printing office. In the 'Athenaeum' of May 12, 1877, is an answer to
misapprehensions on this head by the editor of a Clarendon Press volume
of 'Selections from Addison'.]
TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
JOHN LORD SOMMERS,
BARON OF EVESHAM. [1]
My LORD,
I should not act the Part of an impartial Spectator, if I Dedicated the
following Papers to one who is not of the most consummate and most
acknowledged Merit.
None but a person of a finished Character can be the proper Patron of a
Work, which endeavours to Cultivate and Polish Human Life, by promoting
Virtue and Knowledge, and by recommending whatsoever may be either
Useful or Ornamental to Society.
I know that the Homage I now pay You, is offering a kind of Violence to
one who is as solicitous to shun Applause, as he is assiduous to deserve
it. But, my Lord, this is perhaps the only Particular in which your
Prudence will be always disappointed.
While Justice, Candour, Equanimity, a Zeal for the Good of your Country,
and the most persuasive Eloquence in bringing over others to it, are
valuable Distinctions, You are not to expect that the Publick will so
far comply with your Inclinations, as to forbear celebrating such
extraordinary Qualities. It is in vain that You have endeavoured to
conceal your Share of Merit, in the many National Services which You
have effected. Do what You will, the present Age will be talking of your
Virtues, tho' Posterity alone will do them Justice.
Other Men pass through Oppositions and contending Interests in the ways
of Ambition, but Your Great Abilities have been invited to Power, and
importuned to accept of Advancement. Nor is it strange that this should
happen to your Lordship, who could bring into the Service of Your
Sovereign the Arts and Policies of Ancient 'Greece' and 'Rome'; as well
as the most exact knowledge of our own Constitution in particular, and
of the interests of 'Europe' in general; to which I must also add, a
certain Dignity in Yourself, that (to say the least of it) has been
always equal to those great Honours which have been conferred upon You.
It is very well known how much the Church owed to You in the most
dangerous Day it ever saw, that of the Arraignment of its Prelates; and
how far the Civil Power, in the Late and present Reign, has been
indebted to your Counsels and Wisdom.
But to enumerate the great Advantages which the publick has received
from your Administration, would be a more proper Work for an History,
than an Address of this Nature.
Your Lordship appears as great in your Private Life, as in the most
Important Offices which You have born. I would therefore rather chuse to
speak of the Pleasure You afford all who are admitted into your
Conversation, of Your Elegant Taste in all the Polite Parts of Learning,
of Your great Humanity and Complacency of Manners, and of the surprising
Influence which is peculiar to You in making every one who Converses
with your Lordship prefer You to himself, without thinking the less
meanly of his own Talents. But if I should take notice of all that might
be observed in your Lordship, I should have nothing new to say upon any
other Character of Distinction.
I am,
My Lord,
Your Lordship's
Most Obedient,
Most Devoted
Humble Servant,
THE SPECTATOR.
[Footnote 1: In 1695, when a student at Oxford, aged 23, Joseph Addison
had dedicated 'to the Right Honourable Sir George Somers, Lord Keeper of
the Great Seal,' a poem written in honour of King William III. after his
capture of Namur in sight of the whole French Army under Villeroi. This
was Addison's first bid for success in Literature; and the twenty-seven
lines in which he then asked Somers to 'receive the present of a Muse
unknown,' were honourably meant to be what Dr. Johnson called 'a kind of
rhyming introduction to Lord Somers.' If you, he said to Somers then--
'If you, well pleas'd, shall smile upon my lays,
Secure of fame, my voice I'll boldly raise,
For next to what you write, is what you praise.'
Somers did smile, and at once held out to Addison his helping hand.
Mindful of this, and of substantial friendship during the last seventeen
years, Addison joined Steele in dedicating to his earliest patron the
first volume of the Essays which include his best security of fame.
At that time, John Somers, aged 61, and retired from political life, was
weak in health and high in honours earned by desert only. He was the son
of an attorney at Worcester, rich enough to give him a liberal education
at his City Grammar School and at Trinity College, Oxford, where he was
entered as a Gentleman Commoner. He left the University, without taking
a degree, to practise law. Having a strong bent towards Literature as
well as a keen, manly interest in the vital questions which concerned
the liberties of England under Charles the Second, he distinguished
himself by political tracts which maintained constitutional rights. He
rose at the bar to honour and popularity, especially after his pleading
as junior counsel for Sancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Six
Bishops, Lloyd, Turner, Lake, Ken, White, and Trelawney, who signed the
petition against the King's order for reading in all churches a
Declaration for Liberty of Conscience, which they said 'was founded upon
such a dispensing power as hath been often declared illegal in
Parliament.' Somers earned the gratitude of a people openly and loudly
triumphing in the acquittal of the Seven Bishops. He was active also in
co-operation with those who were planning the expulsion of the Stuarts
and the bringing over of the Prince of Orange. During the Interregnum
he, and at the same time also Charles Montague, afterwards Lord Halifax,
first entered Parliament. He was at the conference with the Lords upon
the question of declaring the Throne vacant. As Chairman of the
Committee appointed for the purpose, it was Somers who drew up the
Declaration of Right, which, in placing the Prince and Princess of
Orange on the throne, set forth the grounds of the Revolution and
asserted against royal encroachment the ancient rights and liberties of
England. For these services and for his rare ability as a constitutional
lawyer, King William, in the first year of his reign, made Somers
Solicitor-General. In 1692 he became Attorney-General as Sir John
Somers, and soon afterwards, in March 1692-3, the Great Seal, which had
been four years in Commission, was delivered to his keeping, with a
patent entitling him to a pension of L2000 a year from the day he
quitted office. He was then also sworn in as Privy Councillor. In April
1697 Somers as Lord Keeper delivered up the Great Seal, and received it
back with the higher title of Lord Chancellor. He was at the same time
created Baron Somers of Evesham; Crown property was also given to him to
support his dignity. One use that he made of his influence was to
procure young Addison a pension, that he might be forwarded in service
of the State. Party spirit among his political opponents ran high
against Somers. At the close of 1699 they had a majority in the Commons,
and deprived him of office, but they failed before the Lords in an
impeachment against him. In Queen Anne's reign, between 1708 and 1710,
the constitutional statesman, long infirm of health, who had been in
retirement serving Science as President of the Royal Society, was
serving the State as President of the Council. But in 1712, when Addison
addressed to him this Dedication of the first Volume of the first
reprint of 'the Spectator', he had withdrawn from public life, and four
years afterwards he died of a stroke of apoplexy.
Of Somers as a patron Lord Macaulay wrote:
'He had traversed the whole vast range of polite literature, ancient
and modern. He was at once a munificent and a severely judicious
patron of genius and learning. Locke owed opulence to Somers. By
Somers Addison was drawn forth from a cell in a college. In distant
countries the name of Somers was mentioned with respect and gratitude
by great scholars and poets who had never seen his face. He was the
benefactor of Leclerc. He was the friend of Filicaja. Neither
political nor religious differences prevented him from extending his
powerful protection to merit. Hickes, the fiercest and most intolerant
of all the non-jurors, obtained, by the influence of Somers,
permission to study Teutonic antiquities in freedom and safety.
Vertue, a Strict Roman Catholic, was raised, by the discriminating and
liberal patronage of Somers, from poverty and obscurity to the first
rank among the engravers of the age.']
* * * * *
No. 1. Thursday, March 1, 1711. Addison.
'Non fumum ex fulgore, sed ex fumo dare lucem
Cogitat, ut speciosa dehinc miracula promat.'
Hor.
I have observed, that a Reader seldom peruses a Book with Pleasure 'till
he knows whether the Writer of it be a black or a fair Man, of a mild or
cholerick Disposition, Married or a Batchelor, with other Particulars of
the like nature, that conduce very much to the right Understanding of an
Author. To gratify this Curiosity, which is so natural to a Reader, I
design this Paper, and my next, as Prefatory Discourses to my following
Writings, and shall give some Account in them of the several persons
that are engaged in this Work. As the chief trouble of Compiling,
Digesting, and Correcting will fall to my Share, I must do myself the
Justice to open the Work with my own History.
I was born to a small Hereditary Estate, which [according to the
tradition of the village where it lies, [1]] was bounded by the same
Hedges and Ditches in _William_ the Conqueror's Time that it is at
present, and has been delivered down from Father to Son whole and
entire, without the Loss or Acquisition of a single Field or Meadow,
during the Space of six hundred Years. There [runs [2]] a Story in the
Family, that when my Mother was gone with Child of me about three
Months, she dreamt that she was brought to Bed of a Judge. Whether this
might proceed from a Law-suit which was then depending in the Family, or
my Father's being a Justice of the Peace, I cannot determine; for I am
not so vain as to think it presaged any Dignity that I should arrive at
in my future Life, though that was the Interpretation which the
Neighbourhood put upon it. The Gravity of my Behaviour at my very first
Appearance in the World, and all the Time that I sucked, seemed to
favour my Mother's Dream: For, as she has often told me, I threw away my
Rattle before I was two Months old, and would not make use of my Coral
till they had taken away the Bells from it.
As for the rest of my Infancy, there being nothing in it remarkable, I
shall pass it over in Silence. I find that, during my Nonage, I had the
reputation of a very sullen Youth, but was always a Favourite of my
School-master, who used to say, _that my parts were solid, and would
wear well_. I had not been long at the University, before I
distinguished myself by a most profound Silence: For, during the Space
of eight Years, excepting in the publick Exercises of the College, I
scarce uttered the Quantity of an hundred Words; and indeed do not
remember that I ever spoke three Sentences together in my whole Life.
Whilst I was in this Learned Body, I applied myself with so much
Diligence to my Studies, that there are very few celebrated Books,
either in the Learned or the Modern Tongues, which I am not acquainted
with.
Upon the Death of my Father I was resolved to travel into Foreign
Countries, and therefore left the University, with the Character of an
odd unaccountable Fellow, that had a great deal of Learning, if I would
but show it. An insatiable Thirst after Knowledge carried me into all
the Countries of _Europe_, [in which [3]] there was any thing new or
strange to be seen; nay, to such a Degree was my curiosity raised, that
having read the controversies of some great Men concerning the
Antiquities of _Egypt_, I made a Voyage to _Grand Cairo_, on purpose to
take the Measure of a Pyramid; and, as soon as I had set my self right
in that Particular, returned to my Native Country with great
Satisfaction. [4]
I have passed my latter Years in this City, where I am frequently seen
in most publick Places, tho' there are not above half a dozen of my
select Friends that know me; of whom my next Paper shall give a more
particular Account. There is no place of [general [5]] Resort wherein I
do not often make my appearance; sometimes I am seen thrusting my Head
into a Round of Politicians at _Will's_ [6] and listning with great
Attention to the Narratives that are made in those little Circular
Audiences. Sometimes I smoak a Pipe at _Child's_; [7] and, while I seem
attentive to nothing but the _Post-Man_, [8] over-hear the Conversation
of every Table in the Room. I appear on _Sunday_ nights at _St. James's_
Coffee House, [9] and sometimes join the little Committee of Politicks
in the Inner-Room, as one who comes there to hear and improve. My Face
is likewise very well known at the _Grecian_, [10] the _Cocoa-Tree_,
[11] and in the Theaters both of _Drury Lane_ and the _Hay-Market_. [12]
I have been taken for a Merchant upon the _Exchange_ for above these ten
Years, and sometimes pass for a _Jew_ in the Assembly of Stock-jobbers
at _Jonathan's_. [13] In short, where-ever I see a Cluster of People, I
always mix with them, tho' I never open my Lips but in my own Club.
Thus I live in the World, rather as a Spectator of Mankind, than as one
of the Species; by which means I have made my self a Speculative
Statesman, Soldier, Merchant, and Artizan, without ever medling with any
Practical Part in Life. I am very well versed in the Theory of an
Husband, or a Father, and can discern the Errors in the Oeconomy,
Business, and Diversion of others, better than those who are engaged in
them; as Standers-by discover Blots, which are apt to escape those who
are in the Game. I never espoused any Party with Violence, and am
resolved to observe an exact Neutrality between the Whigs and Tories,
unless I shall be forc'd to declare myself by the Hostilities of either
side. In short, I have acted in all the parts of my Life as a Looker-on,
which is the Character I intend to preserve in this Paper.
I have given the Reader just so much of my History and Character, as to
let him see I am not altogether unqualified for the Business I have
undertaken. As for other Particulars in my Life and Adventures, I shall
insert them in following Papers, as I shall see occasion. In the mean
time, when I consider how much I have seen, read, and heard, I begin to
blame my own Taciturnity; and since I have neither Time nor Inclination
to communicate the Fulness of my Heart in Speech, I am resolved to do it
in Writing; and to Print my self out, if possible, before I Die. I have
been often told by my Friends that it is Pity so many useful Discoveries
which I have made, should be in the Possession of a Silent Man. For this
Reason therefore, I shall publish a Sheet full of Thoughts every
Morning, for the Benefit of my Contemporaries; and if I can any way
contribute to the Diversion or Improvement of the Country in which I
live, I shall leave it, when I am summoned out of it, with the secret
Satisfaction of thinking that I have not Lived in vain.
There are three very material Points which I have not spoken to in this
Paper, and which, for several important Reasons, I must keep to my self,
at least for some Time: I mean, an Account of my Name, my Age, and my
Lodgings. I must confess I would gratify my Reader in any thing that is
reasonable; but as for these three Particulars, though I am sensible
they might tend very much to the Embellishment of my Paper, I cannot yet
come to a Resolution of communicating them to the Publick. They would
indeed draw me out of that Obscurity which I have enjoyed for many
Years, and expose me in Publick Places to several Salutes and
Civilities, which have been always very disagreeable to me; for the
greatest [pain] I can suffer, [is [14]] the being talked to, and being
stared at. It is for this Reason likewise, that I keep my Complexion and
Dress, as very great Secrets; tho' it is not impossible, but I may make
Discoveries of both in the Progress of the Work I have undertaken.
After having been thus particular upon my self, I shall in to-Morrow's
Paper give an Account of those Gentlemen who are concerned with me in
this Work. For, as I have before intimated, a Plan of it is laid and
concerted (as all other Matters of Importance are) in a Club. However,
as my Friends have engaged me to stand in the Front, those who have a
mind to correspond with me, may direct their Letters _To the Spectator_,
at Mr. _Buckley's_, in _Little Britain_ [15]. For I must further
acquaint the Reader, that tho' our Club meets only on _Tuesdays_ and
_Thursdays_, we have appointed a Committee to sit every Night, for the
Inspection of all such Papers as may contribute to the Advancement of
the Public Weal.
C. [16]
[Footnote 1: I find by the writings of the family,]
[Footnote 2: goes]
[Footnote 3: where]
[Footnote 4: This is said to allude to a description of the Pyramids of
Egypt, by John Greaves, a Persian scholar and Savilian Professor of
Astronomy at Oxford, who studied the principle of weights and measures
in the Roman Foot and the Denarius, and whose visit to the Pyramids in
1638, by aid of his patron Laud, was described in his 'Pyramidographia.'
That work had been published in 1646, sixty-five years before the
appearance of the 'Spectator', and Greaves died in 1652. But in 1706
appeared a tract, ascribed to him by its title-page, and popular enough
to have been reprinted in 1727 and 1745, entitled, 'The Origine and
Antiquity of our English Weights and Measures discovered by their near
agreement with such Standards that are now found in one of the Egyptian
Pyramids.' It based its arguments on measurements in the
'Pyramidographia,' and gave to Professor Greaves, in Addison's time, the
same position with regard to Egypt that has been taken in our time by
the Astronomer-Royal for Scotland, Professor Piazzi Smyth.]
[Footnote 5: publick]
[Footnote 6: 'Will's' Coffee House, which had been known successively as
the 'Red Cow' and the 'Rose' before it took a permanent name from Will
Urwin, its proprietor, was the corner house on the north side of Russell
Street, at the end of Bow Street, now No. 21. Dryden's use of this
Coffee House caused the wits of the town to resort there, and after
Dryden's death, in 1700, it remained for some years the Wits' Coffee
House. There the strong interest in current politics took chiefly the
form of satire, epigram, or entertaining narrative. Its credit was
already declining in the days of the 'Spectator'; wit going out and
card-play coming in.]
[Footnote 7: 'Child's' Coffee House was in St. Paul's Churchyard.
Neighbourhood to the Cathedral and Doctors' Commons made it a place of
resort for the Clergy. The College of Physicians had been first
established in Linacre's House, No. 5, Knightrider Street, Doctors'
Commons, whence it had removed to Amen Corner, and thence in 1674 to the
adjacent Warwick Lane. The Royal Society, until its removal in 1711 to
Crane Court, Fleet Street, had its rooms further east, at Gresham
College. Physicians, therefore, and philosophers, as well as the clergy,
used 'Child's' as a convenient place of resort.]
[Footnote 8: The 'Postman', established and edited by M. Fonvive, a
learned and grave French Protestant, who was said to make L600 a year by
it, was a penny paper in the highest repute, Fonvive having secured for
his weekly chronicle of foreign news a good correspondence in Italy,
Spain, Portugal, Germany, Flanders, Holland. John Dunton, the
bookseller, in his 'Life and Errors,' published in 1705, thus
characterized the chief newspapers of the day:
'the 'Observator' is best to towel the Jacks, the 'Review' is best to
promote peace, the 'Flying Post' is best for the Scotch news, the
'Postboy' is best for the English and Spanish news, the 'Daily
Courant' is the best critic, the 'English Post' is the best collector,
the 'London Gazette' has the best authority, and the 'Postman' is the
best for everything.']
[Footnote 9: 'St. James's' Coffee House was the last house but one on
the south-west corner of St. James's Street; closed about 1806. On its
site is now a pile of buildings looking down Pall Mall. Near St. James's
Palace, it was a place of resort for Whig officers of the Guards and men
of fashion. It was famous also in Queen Anne's reign, and long after, as
the house most favoured Whig statesmen and members of Parliament, who
could there privately discuss their party tactics.]
[Footnote 10: The 'Grecian' Coffee House was in Devereux Court, Strand,
and named from a Greek, Constantine, who kept it. Close to the Temple,
it was a place of resort for the lawyers. Constantine's Greek had
tempted also Greek scholars to the house, learned Professors and Fellows
of the Royal Society. Here, it is said, two friends quarrelled so
bitterly over a Greek accent that they went out into Devereux Court and
fought a duel, in which one was killed on the spot.]
[Footnote 11: The 'Cocoa Tree' was a Chocolate House in St. James's
Street, used by Tory statesmen and men of fashion as exclusively as 'St.
James's' Coffee House, in the same street, was used by Whigs of the same
class. It afterwards became a Tory club.]
[Footnote 12: Drury Lane had a theatre in Shakespeare's time, 'the
Phoenix,' called also 'the Cockpit.' It was destroyed in 1617 by a
Puritan mob, re-built, and occupied again till the stoppage of
stage-plays in 1648. In that theatre Marlowe's 'Jew of Malta,'
Massinger's 'New Way to Pay Old Debts,' and other pieces of good
literature, were first produced. Its players under James I. were 'the
Queen's servants.' In 1656 Davenant broke through the restriction upon
stage-plays, and took actors and musicians to 'the Cockpit,' from
Aldersgate Street. After the Restoration, Davenant having obtained a
patent, occupied, in Portugal Row, the Lincoln's Inn Theatre, and
afterwards one on the site of Dorset House, west of Whitefriars, the
last theatre to which people went in boats. Sir William Davenant, under
the patronage of the Duke of York, called his the Duke's Players. Thomas
Killigrew then had 'the Cockpit' in Drury Lane, his company being that
of the King's Players, and it was Killigrew who, dissatisfied with the
old 'Cockpit,' opened, in 1663, the first 'Drury Lane Theatre', nearly
upon the site now occupied by D.L. No. 4. The original theatre, burnt in
1671-2, was rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren, and opened in 1674 with a
Prologue by Dryden. That (D.L. No. 2) was the house visited by 'the
Spectator'. It required rebuilding in 1741 (D.L. No. 3); and was burnt
down, and again rebuilt, in 1809, as we now have it (D.L. No. 4). There
was no Covent Garden Theatre till after 'the Spectator's' time, in 1733,
when that house was first opened by Rich, the harlequin, under the
patent granted to the Duke's Company.
In 1711 the other great house was the theatre in the Haymarket, recently
built by Sir John Vanbrugh, author of 'The Provoked Wife,' and architect
of Blenheim. This 'Haymarket Theatre', on the site of that known as 'Her
Majesty's,' was designed and opened by Vanbrugh in 1706, thirty persons
of quality having subscribed a hundred pounds each towards the cost of
it. He and Congreve were to write the plays, and Betterton was to take
charge of their performance. The speculation was a failure; partly
because the fields and meadows of the west end of the town cut off the
poorer playgoers of the City, who could not afford coach-hire; partly
because the house was too large, and its architecture swallowed up the
voices of the actors. Vanbrugh and Congreve opened their grand west-end
theatre with concession to the new taste of the fashionable for Italian
Opera. They began with a translated opera set to Italian music, which
ran only for three nights. Sir John Vanbrugh then produced his comedy of
'The Confederacy,' with less success than it deserved. In a few months
Congreve abandoned his share in the undertaking. Vanbrugh proceeded to
adapt for his new house three plays of Moliere. Then Vanbrugh, still
failing, let the Haymarket to Mr. Owen Swiney, a trusted agent of the
manager of 'Drury Lane', who was to allow him to draw what actors he
pleased from 'Drury Lane' and divide profits. The recruited actors in
the 'Haymarket' had better success. The secret league between the two
theatres was broken. In 1707 the 'Haymarket' was supported by a
subscription headed by Lord Halifax. But presently a new joint patentee
brought energy into the counsels of 'Drury Lane'. Amicable restoration
was made to the Theatre Royal of the actors under Swiney at the
'Haymarket'; and to compensate Swiney for his loss of profit, it was
agreed that while 'Drury Lane' confined itself to the acting of plays,
he should profit by the new taste for Italian music, and devote the
house in the 'Haymarket' to opera. Swiney was content. The famous singer
Nicolini had come over, and the town was impatient to hear him. This
compact held for a short time. It was broken then by quarrels behind the
scenes. In 1709 Wilks, Dogget, Cibber, and Mrs. Oldfield treated with
Swiney to be sharers with him in the 'Haymarket' as heads of a dramatic
company. They contracted the width of the theatre, brought down its
enormously high ceiling, thus made the words of the plays audible, and
had the town to themselves, till a lawyer, Mr. William Collier, M.P. for
Truro, in spite of the counter-attraction of the trial of Sacheverell,
obtained a license to open 'Drury Lane', and produced an actress who
drew money to Charles Shadwell's comedy, 'The Fair Quaker of Deal.' At
the close of the season Collier agreed with Swiney and his
actor-colleagues to give up to them 'Drury Lane' with its actors, take
in exchange the 'Haymarket' with its singers, and be sole Director of
the Opera; the actors to pay Collier two hundred a year for the use of
his license, and to close their house on the Wednesdays when an opera
was played.
This was the relative position of 'Drury Lane' and the 'Haymarket'
theatres when the 'Spectator' first appeared. 'Drury Lane' had entered
upon a long season of greater prosperity than it had enjoyed for thirty
years before. Collier, not finding the 'Haymarket' as prosperous as it
was fashionable, was planning a change of place with Swiney, and he so
contrived, by lawyer's wit and court influence, that in the winter
following 1711 Collier was at Drury Lane with a new license for himself,
Wilks, Dogget, and Cibber; while Swiney, transferred to the Opera, was
suffering a ruin that caused him to go abroad, and be for twenty years
afterwards an exile from his country.]
[Footnote 13: 'Jonathan's' Coffee House, in Change Alley, was the place
of resort for stock-jobbers. It was to 'Garraway's', also in Change
Alley, that people of quality on business in the City, or the wealthy
and reputable citizens, preferred to go.]
[Footnote 14: pains ... are.]
[Footnote 15: 'The Spectator' in its first daily issue was 'Printed for
'Sam. Buckley', at the 'Dolphin' in 'Little Britain'; and sold by 'A.
Baldwin' in 'Warwick Lane'.']
[Footnote 16: The initials appended to the papers in their daily issue
were placed, in a corner of the page, after the printer's name.]
* * * * *
No. 2. Friday, March 2, 1711. Steele.
... Ast Alii sex
Et plures uno conclamant ore.
Juv.
The first of our Society is a Gentleman of _Worcestershire_, of antient
Descent, a Baronet, his Name Sir ROGER DE COVERLY. [1] His great
Grandfather was Inventor of that famous Country-Dance which is call'd
after him. All who know that Shire are very well acquainted with the
Parts and Merits of Sir ROGER. He is a Gentleman that is very singular
in his Behaviour, but his Singularities proceed from his good Sense, and
are Contradictions to the Manners of the World, only as he thinks the
World is in the wrong. However, this Humour creates him no Enemies, for
he does nothing with Sourness or Obstinacy; and his being unconfined to
Modes and Forms, makes him but the readier and more capable to please
and oblige all who know him. When he is in town he lives in _Soho
Square_: [2] It is said, he keeps himself a Batchelour by reason he was
crossed in Love by a perverse beautiful Widow of the next County to him.
Before this Disappointment, Sir ROGER was what you call a fine
Gentleman, had often supped with my Lord _Rochester_ [3] and Sir _George
Etherege_, [4] fought a Duel upon his first coming to Town, and kick'd
Bully _Dawson_ [5] in a publick Coffee-house for calling him Youngster.
But being ill-used by the above-mentioned Widow, he was very serious for
a Year and a half; and tho' his Temper being naturally jovial, he at
last got over it, he grew careless of himself and never dressed
afterwards; he continues to wear a Coat and Doublet of the same Cut that
were in Fashion at the Time of his Repulse, which, in his merry Humours,
he tells us, has been in and out twelve Times since he first wore it.
'Tis said Sir ROGER grew humble in his Desires after he had forgot this
cruel Beauty, insomuch that it is reported he has frequently offended in
Point of Chastity with Beggars and Gypsies: but this is look'd upon by
his Friends rather as Matter of Raillery than Truth. He is now in his
Fifty-sixth Year, cheerful, gay, and hearty, keeps a good House in both
Town and Country; a great Lover of Mankind; but there is such a mirthful
Cast in his Behaviour, that he is rather beloved than esteemed. His
Tenants grow rich, his Servants look satisfied, all the young Women
profess Love to him, and the young Men are glad of his Company: When he
comes into a House he calls the Servants by their Names, and talks all
the way Up Stairs to a Visit. I must not omit that Sir ROGER is a
Justice of the _Quorum_; that he fills the chair at a Quarter-Session
with great Abilities, and three Months ago, gained universal Applause by
explaining a Passage in the Game-Act.
The Gentleman next in Esteem and Authority among us, is another
Batchelour, who is a Member of the _Inner Temple_: a Man of great
Probity, Wit, and Understanding; but he has chosen his Place of
Residence rather to obey the Direction of an old humoursome Father, than
in pursuit of his own Inclinations. He was plac'd there to study the
Laws of the Land, and is the most learned of any of the House in those
of the Stage. _Aristotle_ and _Longinus_ are much better understood by
him than _Littleton_ or _Cooke_. The Father sends up every Post
Questions relating to Marriage-Articles, Leases, and Tenures, in the
Neighbourhood; all which Questions he agrees with an Attorney to answer
and take care of in the Lump. He is studying the Passions themselves,
when he should be inquiring into the Debates among Men which arise from
them. He knows the Argument of each of the Orations of _Demosthenes_ and
_Tully_, but not one Case in the Reports of our own Courts. No one ever
took him for a Fool, but none, except his intimate Friends, know he has
a great deal of Wit. This Turn makes him at once both disinterested and
agreeable: As few of his Thoughts are drawn from Business, they are most
of them fit for Conversation. His Taste of Books is a little too just
for the Age he lives in; he has read all, but Approves of very few. His
Familiarity with the Customs, Manners, Actions, and Writings of the
Antients, makes him a very delicate Observer of what occurs to him in
the present World. He is an excellent Critick, and the Time of the Play
is his Hour of Business; exactly at five he passes through _New Inn_,
crosses through _Russel Court_; and takes a turn at _Will's_ till the
play begins; he has his shoes rubb'd and his Perriwig powder'd at the
Barber's as you go into the Rose [6]--It is for the Good of the Audience
when he is at a Play, for the Actors have an Ambition to please him.
The Person of next Consideration is Sir ANDREW FREEPORT, a Merchant of
great Eminence in the City of _London_: A Person of indefatigable
Industry, strong Reason, and great Experience. His Notions of Trade are
noble and generous, and (as every rich Man has usually some sly Way of
Jesting, which would make no great Figure were he not a rich Man) he
calls the Sea the _British Common_. He is acquainted with Commerce in
all its Parts, and will tell you that it is a stupid and barbarous Way
to extend Dominion by Arms; for true Power is to be got by Arts and
Industry. He will often argue, that if this Part of our Trade were well
cultivated, we should gain from one Nation; and if another, from
another. I have heard him prove that Diligence makes more lasting
Acquisitions than Valour, and that Sloth has ruin'd more Nations than
the Sword. He abounds in several frugal Maxims, amongst which the
greatest Favourite is, 'A Penny saved is a Penny got.' A General Trader
of good Sense is pleasanter Company than a general Scholar; and Sir
ANDREW having a natural unaffected Eloquence, the Perspicuity of his
Discourse gives the same Pleasure that Wit would in another Man. He has
made his Fortunes himself; and says that _England_ may be richer than
other Kingdoms, by as plain Methods as he himself is richer than other
Men; tho' at the same Time I can say this of him, that there is not a
point in the Compass, but blows home a Ship in which he is an Owner.
Next to Sir ANDREW in the Club-room sits Captain SENTRY, [7] a Gentleman
of great Courage, good Understanding, but Invincible Modesty. He is one
of those that deserve very well, but are very awkward at putting their
Talents within the Observation of such as should take notice of them. He
was some Years a Captain, and behaved himself with great Gallantry in
several Engagements, and at several Sieges; but having a small Estate of
his own, and being next Heir to Sir ROGER, he has quitted a Way of Life
in which no Man can rise suitably to his Merit, who is not something of
a Courtier, as well as a Soldier. I have heard him often lament, that in
a Profession where Merit is placed in so conspicuous a View, Impudence
should get the better of Modesty. When he has talked to this Purpose, I
never heard him make a sour Expression, but frankly confess that he left
the World, because he was not fit for it. A strict Honesty and an even
regular Behaviour, are in themselves Obstacles to him that must press
through Crowds who endeavour at the same End with himself, the Favour of
a Commander. He will, however, in this Way of Talk, excuse Generals, for
not disposing according to Men's Desert, or enquiring into it: For, says
he, that great Man who has a Mind to help me, has as many to break
through to come at me, as I have to come at him: Therefore he will
conclude, that the Man who would make a Figure, especially in a military
Way, must get over all false Modesty, and assist his Patron against the
Importunity of other Pretenders, by a proper Assurance in his own
Vindication. He says it is a civil Cowardice to be backward in asserting
what you ought to expect, as it is a military Fear to be slow in
attacking when it is your Duty. With this Candour does the Gentleman
speak of himself and others. The same Frankness runs through all his
Conversation. The military Part of his Life has furnished him with many
Adventures, in the Relation of which he is very agreeable to the
Company; for he is never over-bearing, though accustomed to command Men
in the utmost Degree below him; nor ever too obsequious, from an Habit
of obeying Men highly above him.
But that our Society may not appear a Set of Humourists unacquainted
with the Gallantries and Pleasures of the Age, we have among us the
gallant WILL. HONEYCOMB, [8] a Gentleman who, according to his Years,
should be in the Decline of his Life, but having ever been very careful
of his Person, and always had a very easy Fortune, Time has made but
very little Impression, either by Wrinkles on his Forehead, or Traces in
his Brain. His Person is well turned, and of a good Height. He is very
ready at that sort of Discourse with which Men usually entertain Women.
He has all his Life dressed very well, and remembers Habits as others do
Men. He can smile when one speaks to him, and laughs easily. He knows
the History of every Mode, and can inform you from which of the French
King's Wenches our Wives and Daughters had this Manner of curling their
Hair, that Way of placing their Hoods; whose Frailty was covered by such
a Sort of Petticoat, and whose Vanity to show her Foot made that Part of
the Dress so short in such a Year. In a Word, all his Conversation and
Knowledge has been in the female World: As other Men of his Age will
take Notice to you what such a Minister said upon such and such an
Occasion, he will tell you when the Duke of _Monmouth_ danced at Court
such a Woman was then smitten, another was taken with him at the Head of
his Troop in the _Park_. In all these important Relations, he has ever
about the same Time received a kind Glance, or a Blow of a Fan, from
some celebrated Beauty, Mother of the present Lord such-a-one. If you
speak of a young Commoner that said a lively thing in the House, he
starts up,
'He has good Blood in his Veins, _Tom Mirabell_ begot him, the Rogue
cheated me in that Affair; that young Fellow's Mother used me more
like a Dog than any Woman I ever made Advances to.'
This Way of Talking of his, very much enlivens the Conversation among us
of a more sedate Turn; and I find there is not one of the Company but
myself, who rarely speak at all, but speaks of him as of that Sort of
Man, who is usually called a well-bred fine Gentleman. To conclude his
Character, where Women are not concerned, he is an honest worthy Man.
I cannot tell whether I am to account him whom I am next to speak of, as
one of our Company; for he visits us but seldom, but when he does, it
adds to every Man else a new Enjoyment of himself. He is a Clergyman, a
very philosophick Man, of general Learning, great Sanctity of Life, and
the most exact good Breeding. He has the Misfortune to be of a very weak
Constitution, and consequently cannot accept of such Cares and Business
as Preferments in his Function would oblige him to: He is therefore
among Divines what a Chamber-Counsellor is among Lawyers. The Probity of
his Mind, and the Integrity of his Life, create him Followers, as being
eloquent or loud advances others. He seldom introduces the Subject he
speaks upon; but we are so far gone in Years, that he observes when he
is among us, an Earnestness to have him fall on some divine Topick,
which he always treats with much Authority, as one who has no Interests
in this World, as one who is hastening to the Object of all his Wishes,
and conceives Hope from his Decays and Infirmities. These are my
ordinary Companions.
R. [9]
[Footnote 1: The character of Sir Roger de Coverley is said to have been
drawn from Sir John Pakington, of Worcestershire, a Tory, whose name,
family, and politics are represented by a statesman of the present time.
The name, on this its first appearance in the 'Spectator', is spelt
Coverly; also in the first reprint.]
[Footnote 2: 'Soho Square' was then a new and most fashionable part of
the town. It was built in 1681. The Duke of Monmouth lived in the centre
house, facing the statue. Originally the square was called King Square.
Pennant mentions, on Pegg's authority, a tradition that, on the death of
Monmouth, his admirers changed the name to Soho, the word of the day at
the field of Sedgemoor. But the ground upon which the Square stands was
called Soho as early as the year 1632. 'So ho' was the old call in
hunting when a hare was found.]
[Footnote 3: John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, b. 1648, d. 1680. His
licentious wit made him a favourite of Charles II. His strength was
exhausted by licentious living at the age of one and thirty. His chief
work is a poem upon 'Nothing.' He died repentant of his wasted life, in
which, as he told Burnet, he had 'for five years been continually
drunk,' or so much affected by frequent drunkenness as in no instance to
be master of himself.]
[Footnote 4: Sir George Etherege, b. 1636, d. 1694. 'Gentle George' and
'Easy Etherege,' a wit and friend of the wits of the Restoration. He
bought his knighthood to enable him to marry a rich widow who required a
title, and died of a broken neck, by tumbling down-stairs when he was
drunk and lighting guests to their apartments. His three comedies, 'The
Comical Revenge,' 'She Would if she Could,' and 'The Man of Mode, or Sir
Fopling Flutter,' excellent embodiments of the court humour of his time,
were collected and printed in 8vo in 1704, and reprinted, with addition
of five poems, in 1715.]
[Footnote 5: Bully Dawson, a swaggering sharper of Whitefriars, is said
to have been sketched by Shadwell in the Captain Hackum of his comedy
called 'The Squire of Alsatia.']
[Footnote 6: The 'Rose' Tavern was on the east side of Brydges Street,
near Drury Lane Theatre, much favoured by the looser sort of play-goers.
Garrick, when he enlarged the Theatre, made the 'Rose' Tavern a part of
it.]
[Footnote 7: Captain Sentry was by some supposed to have been drawn from
Colonel Kempenfelt, the father of the Admiral who went down with the
'Royal George'.]
[Footnote 8: Will. Honeycomb was by some found in a Colonel Cleland.]
[Footnote 9: Steele's signature was R till No. 91; then T, and
occasionally R, till No. 134; then always T.
Addison signed C till No. 85, when he first used L; and was L or C till
No. 265, then L, till he first used I in No. 372. Once or twice using L,
he was I till No. 405, which he signed O, and by this letter he held,
except for a return to C (with a single use of O), from 433 to 477.]
* * * * *
No. 3. Saturday, March 3, 1711. Addison.
'Quoi quisque fere studio devinctus adhaeret:
Aut quibus in rebus multum sumus ante morati:
Atque in qua ratione fuit contenta magis mens;
In somnis eadem plerumque videmur obire.'
Lucr. L. 4.
In one of my late Rambles, or rather Speculations, I looked into the
great Hall where the Bank [1] is kept, and was not a little pleased to
see the Directors, Secretaries, and Clerks, with all the other Members
of that wealthy Corporation, ranged in their several Stations, according
to the Parts they act in that just and regular Oeconomy. This revived in
my Memory the many Discourses which I had both read and heard,
concerning the Decay of Publick Credit, with the Methods of restoring
it, and which, in my Opinion, have always been defective, because they
have always been made with an Eye to separate Interests and Party
Principles.
The Thoughts of the Day gave my Mind Employment for the whole Night, so
that I fell insensibly into a kind of Methodical Dream, which disposed
all my Contemplations into a Vision or Allegory, or what else the Reader
shall please to call it.
Methoughts I returned to the Great Hall, where I had been the Morning
before, but to my Surprize, instead of the Company that I left there, I
saw, towards the Upper-end of the Hall, a beautiful Virgin seated on a
Throne of Gold. Her Name (as they told me) was _Publick Credit_. The
Walls, instead of being adorned with Pictures and Maps, were hung with
many Acts of Parliament written in Golden Letters. At the Upper end of
the Hall was the _Magna Charta_, [2] with the Act of Uniformity [3] on
the right Hand, and the Act of Toleration [4] on the left. At the Lower
end of the Hall was the Act of Settlement, [5] which was placed full in
the Eye of the Virgin that sat upon the Throne. Both the Sides of the
Hall were covered with such Acts of Parliament as had been made for the
Establishment of Publick Funds. The Lady seemed to set an unspeakable
Value upon these several Pieces of Furniture, insomuch that she often
refreshed her Eye with them, and often smiled with a Secret Pleasure, as
she looked upon them; but at the same time showed a very particular
Uneasiness, if she saw any thing approaching that might hurt them. She
appeared indeed infinitely timorous in all her Behaviour: And, whether
it was from the Delicacy of her Constitution, or that she was troubled
with the Vapours, as I was afterwards told by one who I found was none
of her Well-wishers, she changed Colour, and startled at everything she
heard. She was likewise (as I afterwards found) a greater Valetudinarian
than any I had ever met with, even in her own Sex, and subject to such
Momentary Consumptions, that in the twinkling of an Eye, she would fall
away from the most florid Complexion, and the most healthful State of
Body, and wither into a Skeleton. Her Recoveries were often as sudden as
her Decays, insomuch that she would revive in a Moment out of a wasting
Distemper, into a Habit of the highest Health and Vigour.
I had very soon an Opportunity of observing these quick Turns and
Changes in her Constitution. There sat at her Feet a Couple of
Secretaries, who received every Hour Letters from all Parts of the
World; which the one or the other of them was perpetually reading to
her; and according to the News she heard, to which she was exceedingly
attentive, she changed Colour, and discovered many Symptoms of Health or
Sickness.
Behind the Throne was a prodigious Heap of Bags of Mony, which were
piled upon one another so high that they touched the Ceiling. The Floor
on her right Hand, and on her left, was covered with vast Sums of Gold
that rose up in Pyramids on either side of her: But this I did not so
much wonder at, when I heard, upon Enquiry, that she had the same Virtue
in her Touch, which the Poets tell us a 'Lydian' King was formerly
possessed of; and that she could convert whatever she pleased into that
precious Metal.
After a little Dizziness, and confused Hurry of Thought, which a Man
often meets with in a Dream, methoughts the Hall was alarm'd, the Doors
flew open, and there entered half a dozen of the most hideous Phantoms
that I had ever seen (even in a Dream) before that Time. They came in
two by two, though match'd in the most dissociable Manner, and mingled
together in a kind of Dance. It would be tedious to describe their
Habits and Persons; for which Reason I shall only inform my Reader that
the first Couple were Tyranny and Anarchy, the second were Bigotry and
Atheism, the third the Genius of a Common-Wealth, and a young Man of
about twenty-two Years of Age, [6] whose Name I could not learn. He had
a Sword in his right Hand, which in the Dance he often brandished at the
Act of Settlement; and a Citizen, who stood by me, whispered in my Ear,
that he saw a Spunge in his left Hand. The Dance of so many jarring
Natures put me in mind of the Sun, Moon, and Earth, in the 'Rehearsal',
[7] that danced together for no other end but to eclipse one another.
The Reader will easily suppose, by what has been before said, that the
Lady on the Throne would have been almost frightened to Distraction, had
she seen but any one of these Spectres; what then must have been her
Condition when she saw them all in a Body? She fainted and dyed away at
the sight.
'Et neq; jam color est misto candore rubori;
Nec Vigor, et Vires, et quae modo visa placebant;
Nec Corpus remanet ...'
Ov. 'Met.' Lib. 3.
There was as great a Change in the Hill of Mony Bags, and the Heaps of
Mony, the former shrinking, and falling into so many empty Bags, that I
now found not above a tenth part of them had been filled with Mony. The
rest that took up the same Space, and made the same Figure as the Bags
that were really filled with Mony, had been blown up with Air, and
called into my Memory the Bags full of Wind, which Homer tells us his
Hero received as a present from AEolus. The great Heaps of Gold, on
either side of the Throne, now appeared to be only Heaps of Paper, or
little Piles of notched Sticks, bound up together in Bundles, like
Bath-Faggots.
Whilst I was lamenting this sudden Desolation that had been made before
me, the whole Scene vanished: In the Room of the frightful Spectres,
there now entered a second Dance of Apparitions very agreeably matched
together, and made up of very amiable Phantoms. The first Pair was
Liberty, with Monarchy at her right Hand: The Second was Moderation
leading in Religion; and the third a Person whom I had never seen, [8]
with the genius of _Great Britain_. At their first Entrance the
Lady reviv'd, the Bags swell'd to their former Bulk, the Piles of
Faggots and Heaps of Paper changed into Pyramids of Guineas: [9] And for
my own part I was so transported with Joy, that I awaked, tho' I must
confess I would fain have fallen asleep again to have closed my Vision,
if I could have done it.
[Footnote 1: The Bank of England was then only 17 years old. It was
founded in 1694, and grew out of a loan of L1,200,000 for the public
service, for which the lenders--so low was the public credit--were to
have 8 per cent. interest, four thousand a year for expense of
management, and a charter for 10 years, afterwards renewed from time to
time, as the 'Governor and Company of the Bank of England.']
[Footnote 2: Magna Charta Libertatum, the Great Charter of Liberties
obtained by the barons of King John, June 16, 1215, not only asserted
rights of the subject against despotic power of the king, but included
among them right of insurrection against royal authority unlawfully
exerted.]
[Footnote 3: The Act of Uniformity, passed May 19, 1662, withheld
promotion in the Church from all who had not received episcopal
ordination, and required of all clergy assent to the contents of the
Prayer Book on pain of being deprived of their spiritual promotion. It
forbade all changes in matters of belief otherwise than by the king in
Parliament. While it barred the unconstitutional exercise of a
dispensing power by the king, and kept the settlement of its faith out
of the hands of the clergy and in those of the people, it was so
contrived also according to the temper of the majority that it served as
a test act for the English Hierarchy, and cast out of the Church, as
Nonconformists, those best members of its Puritan clergy, about two
thousand in number, whose faith was sincere enough to make them
sacrifice their livings to their sense of truth.]
[Footnote 4: The Act of Toleration, with which Addison balances the Act
of Uniformity, was passed in the first year of William and Mary, and
confirmed in the 10th year of Queen Anne, the year in which this Essay
was written. By it all persons dissenting from the Church of England,
except Roman Catholics and persons denying the Trinity, were relieved
from such acts against Nonconformity as restrained their religious
liberty and right of public worship, on condition that they took the
oaths of allegiance and supremacy, subscribed a declaration against
transubstantiation, and, if dissenting ministers, subscribed also to
certain of the Thirty-Nine Articles.]
[Footnote 5: The Act of Settlement was that which, at the Revolution,
excluded the Stuarts and settled the succession to the throne of princes
who have since governed England upon the principle there laid down, not
of divine right, but of an original contract between prince and people,
the breaking of which by the prince may lawfully entail forfeiture of
the crown.]
[Footnote 6: James Stuart, son of James II, born June 10, 1688, was
then in the 23rd year of his age.]
[Footnote 7: The 'Rehearsal' was a witty burlesque upon the heroic
dramas of Davenant, Dryden, and others, written by George Villiers, duke
of Buckingham, the Zimri of Dryden's 'Absalom and Achitophel,' 'that
life of pleasure and that soul of whim,' who, after running through a
fortune of L50,000 a year, died, says Pope, 'in the worst inn's worst
room.' His 'Rehearsal', written in 1663-4, was first acted in 1671. In
the last act the poet Bayes, who is showing and explaining a Rehearsal
of his play to Smith and Johnson, introduces an Eclipse which, as he
explains, being nothing else but an interposition, &c.
'Well, Sir, then what do I, but make the earth, sun, and moon, come
out upon the stage, and dance the hey' ... 'Come, come out, eclipse,
to the tune of 'Tom Tyler'.'
[Enter Luna.]
'Luna': Orbis, O Orbis! Come to me, thou little rogue, Orbis.
[Enter the Earth.]
'Orb.' Who calls Terra-firma pray?
...
[Enter Sol, to the tune of Robin Hood, &c.]
While they dance Bayes cries, mightily taken with his device,
'Now the Earth's before the Moon; now the Moon's before
the Sun: there's the Eclipse again.']
[Footnote 8: The elector of Hanover, who, in 1714, became King George I.]
[Footnote 9: In the year after the foundation of the Bank of England,
Mr. Charles Montague,--made in 1700 Baron and by George I., Earl of
Halifax, then (in 1695) Chancellor of the Exchequer,--restored the
silver currency to a just standard. The process of recoinage caused for
a time scarcity of coin and stoppage of trade. The paper of the Bank of
England fell to 20 per cent. discount. Montague then collected and paid
public debts from taxes imposed for the purpose and invented (in 1696),
to relieve the want of currency, the issue of Exchequer bills. Public
credit revived, the Bank capital increased, the currency sufficed, and.
says Earl Russell in his Essay on the English Government and
Constitution,
'from this time loans were made of a vast increasing amount with great
facility, and generally at a low interest, by which the nation were
enabled to resist their enemies. The French wondered at the prodigious
efforts that were made by so small a power, and the abundance with
which money was poured into its treasury... Books were written,
projects drawn up, edicts prepared, which were to give to France the
same facilities as her rival; every plan that fiscal ingenuity could
strike out, every calculation that laborious arithmetic could form,
was proposed, and tried, and found wanting; and for this simple
reason, that in all their projects drawn up in imitation of England,
one little element was omitted, _videlicet_, her free constitution.'
That is what Addison means by his allegory.]
* * * * *
No. 4. Monday, March 5, 1711. Steele.
... Egregii Mortalem altique silenti!
Hor.
An Author, when he first appears in the World, is very apt to believe it
has nothing to think of but his Performances. With a good Share of this
Vanity in my Heart, I made it my Business these three Days to listen
after my own Fame; and, as I have sometimes met with Circumstances which
did not displease me, I have been encountered by others which gave me
much Mortification. It is incredible to think how empty I have in this
time observed some Part of the Species to be, what mere Blanks they are
when they first come abroad in the Morning, how utterly they are at a
Stand, until they are set a going by some Paragraph in a News-Paper:
Such Persons are very acceptable to a young Author, for they desire no
more [in anything] but to be new, to be agreeable. If I found
Consolation among such, I was as much disquieted by the Incapacity of
others. These are Mortals who have a certain Curiosity without Power of
Reflection, and perused my Papers like Spectators rather than Readers.
But there is so little Pleasure in Enquiries that so nearly concern our
selves (it being the worst Way in the World to Fame, to be too anxious
about it), that upon the whole I resolv'd for the future to go on in my
ordinary Way; and without too much Fear or Hope about the Business of
Reputation, to be very careful of the Design of my Actions, but very
negligent of the Consequences of them.
It is an endless and frivolous Pursuit to act by any other Rule than the
Care of satisfying our own Minds in what we do. One would think a silent
Man, who concerned himself with no one breathing, should be very liable
to Misinterpretations; and yet I remember I was once taken up for a
Jesuit, for no other reason but my profound Taciturnity. It is from this
Misfortune, that to be out of Harm's Way, I have ever since affected
Crowds. He who comes into Assemblies only to gratify his Curiosity, and
not to make a Figure, enjoys the Pleasures of Retirement in a more
exquisite Degree, than he possibly could in his Closet; the Lover, the
Ambitious, and the Miser, are followed thither by a worse Crowd than any
they can withdraw from. To be exempt from the Passions with which others
are tormented, is the only pleasing Solitude. I can very justly say with
the antient Sage, 'I am never less alone than when alone'. As I am
insignificant to the Company in publick Places, and as it is visible I
do not come thither as most do, to shew my self; I gratify the Vanity of
all who pretend to make an Appearance, and often have as kind Looks from
well-dressed Gentlemen and Ladies, as a Poet would bestow upon one of
his Audience. There are so many Gratifications attend this publick sort
of Obscurity, that some little Distastes I daily receive have lost their
Anguish; and I [did the other day, [1]] without the least Displeasure
overhear one say of me,
'That strange Fellow,'
and another answer,
'I have known the Fellow's Face for these twelve Years, and so must
you; but I believe you are the first ever asked who he was.'
There are, I must confess, many to whom my Person is as well known as
that of their nearest Relations, who give themselves no further Trouble
about calling me by my Name or Quality, but speak of me very currently
by Mr 'what-d-ye-call-him'.
To make up for these trivial Disadvantages, I have the high Satisfaction
of beholding all Nature with an unprejudiced Eye; and having nothing to
do with Men's Passions or Interests, I can with the greater Sagacity
consider their Talents, Manners, Failings, and Merits.
It is remarkable, that those who want any one Sense, possess the others
with greater Force and Vivacity. Thus my Want of, or rather Resignation
of Speech, gives me all the Advantages of a dumb Man. I have, methinks,
a more than ordinary Penetration in Seeing; and flatter my self that I
have looked into the Highest and Lowest of Mankind, and make shrewd
Guesses, without being admitted to their Conversation, at the inmost
Thoughts and Reflections of all whom I behold. It is from hence that
good or ill Fortune has no manner of Force towards affecting my
Judgment. I see Men flourishing in Courts, and languishing in Jayls,
without being prejudiced from their Circumstances to their Favour or
Disadvantage; but from their inward Manner of bearing their Condition,
often pity the Prosperous and admire the Unhappy.
Those who converse with the Dumb, know from the Turn of their Eyes and
the Changes of their Countenance their Sentiments of the Objects before
them. I have indulged my Silence to such an Extravagance, that the few
who are intimate with me, answer my Smiles with concurrent Sentences,
and argue to the very Point I shak'd my Head at without my speaking.
WILL. HONEYCOMB was very entertaining the other Night at a Play to a
Gentleman who sat on his right Hand, while I was at his Left. The
Gentleman believed WILL. was talking to himself, when upon my looking
with great Approbation at a [young thing [2]] in a Box before us, he
said,
'I am quite of another Opinion: She has, I will allow, a very pleasing
Aspect, but, methinks, that Simplicity in her Countenance is rather
childish than innocent.'
When I observed her a second time, he said,
'I grant her Dress is very becoming, but perhaps the Merit of Choice
is owing to her Mother; for though,' continued he, 'I allow a Beauty
to be as much to be commended for the Elegance of her Dress, as a Wit
for that of his Language; yet if she has stolen the Colour of her
Ribbands from another, or had Advice about her Trimmings, I shall not
allow her the Praise of Dress, any more than I would call a Plagiary
an Author.'
When I threw my Eye towards the next Woman to her, WILL. spoke what I
looked, [according to his romantic imagination,] in the following Manner.
'Behold, you who dare, that charming Virgin. Behold the Beauty of her
Person chastised by the Innocence of her Thoughts. Chastity,
Good-Nature, and Affability, are the Graces that play in her
Countenance; she knows she is handsome, but she knows she is good.
Conscious Beauty adorned with conscious Virtue! What a Spirit is there
in those Eyes! What a Bloom in that Person! How is the whole Woman
expressed in her Appearance! Her Air has the Beauty of Motion, and her
Look the Force of Language.'
It was Prudence to turn away my Eyes from this Object, and therefore I
turned them to the thoughtless Creatures who make up the Lump of that
Sex, and move a knowing Eye no more than the Portraitures of
insignificant People by ordinary Painters, which are but Pictures of
Pictures.
Thus the working of my own Mind, is the general Entertainment of my
Life; I never enter into the Commerce of Discourse with any but my
particular Friends, and not in Publick even with them. Such an Habit has
perhaps raised in me uncommon Reflections; but this Effect I cannot
communicate but by my Writings. As my Pleasures are almost wholly
confined to those of the Sight, I take it for a peculiar Happiness that
I have always had an easy and familiar Admittance to the fair Sex. If I
never praised or flattered, I never belyed or contradicted them. As
these compose half the World, and are by the just Complaisance and
Gallantry of our Nation the more powerful Part of our People, I shall
dedicate a considerable Share of these my Speculations to their Service,
and shall lead the young through all the becoming Duties of Virginity,
Marriage, and Widowhood. When it is a Woman's Day, in my Works, I shall
endeavour at a Stile and Air suitable to their Understanding. When I say
this, I must be understood to mean, that I shall not lower but exalt the
Subjects I treat upon. Discourse for their Entertainment, is not to be
debased but refined. A Man may appear learned without talking Sentences;
as in his ordinary Gesture he discovers he can dance, tho' he does not
cut Capers. In a Word, I shall take it for the greatest Glory of my
Work, if among reasonable Women this Paper may furnish _Tea-Table Talk_.
In order to it, I shall treat on Matters which relate to Females as they
are concern'd to approach or fly from the other Sex, or as they are tyed
to them by Blood, Interest, or Affection. Upon this Occasion I think it
but reasonable to declare, that whatever Skill I may have in
Speculation, I shall never betray what the Eyes of Lovers say to each
other in my Presence. At the same Time I shall not think my self obliged
by this Promise, to conceal any false Protestations which I observe made
by Glances in publick Assemblies; but endeavour to make both Sexes
appear in their Conduct what they are in their Hearts. By this Means
Love, during the Time of my Speculations, shall be carried on with the
same Sincerity as any other Affair of less Consideration. As this is the
greatest Concern, Men shall be from henceforth liable to the greatest
Reproach for Misbehaviour in it. Falsehood in Love shall hereafter bear
a blacker Aspect than Infidelity in Friendship or Villany in Business.
For this great and good End, all Breaches against that noble Passion,
the Cement of Society, shall be severely examined. But this and all
other Matters loosely hinted at now and in my former Papers, shall have
their proper Place in my following Discourses: The present writing is
only to admonish the World, that they shall not find me an idle but a
very busy Spectator.
[Footnote 1: can]
[Footnote 2: blooming Beauty]
* * * * *
No. 5. Tuesday, March 6, 1711. Addison.
'Spectatum admissi risum teneatis?'
Hor.
An Opera may be allowed to be extravagantly lavish in its Decorations,
as its only Design is to gratify the Senses, and keep up an indolent
Attention in the Audience. Common Sense however requires that there
should be nothing in the Scenes and Machines which may appear Childish
and Absurd. How would the Wits of King _Charles's_ time have laughed to
have seen _Nicolini_ exposed to a Tempest in Robes of Ermin, and sailing
in an open Boat upon a Sea of Paste-Board? What a Field of Raillery
would they have been let into, had they been entertain'd with painted
Dragons spitting Wild-fire, enchanted Chariots drawn by _Flanders_
Mares, and real Cascades in artificial Land-skips? A little Skill in
Criticism would inform us that Shadows and Realities ought not to be
mix'd together in the same Piece; and that Scenes, which are designed as
the Representations of Nature, should be filled with Resemblances, and
not with the Things themselves. If one would represent a wide Champain
Country filled with Herds and Flocks, it would be ridiculous to draw the
Country only upon the Scenes, and to crowd several Parts of the Stage
with Sheep and Oxen. This is joining together Inconsistencies, and
making the Decoration partly Real, and partly Imaginary. I would
recommend what I have here said, to the Directors, as well as to the
Admirers, of our Modern Opera.
As I was walking [in] the Streets about a Fortnight ago, I saw an
ordinary Fellow carrying a Cage full of little Birds upon his Shoulder;
and as I was wondering with my self what Use he would put them to, he
was met very luckily by an Acquaintance, who had the same Curiosity.
Upon his asking him what he had upon his Shoulder, he told him, that he
had been buying Sparrows for the Opera. Sparrows for the Opera, says his
Friend, licking his lips, what are they to be roasted? No, no, says the
other, they are to enter towards the end of the first Act, and to fly
about the Stage.
This strange Dialogue awakened my Curiosity so far that I immediately
bought the Opera, by which means I perceived the Sparrows were to act
the part of Singing Birds in a delightful Grove: though, upon a nearer
Enquiry I found the Sparrows put the same Trick upon the Audience, that
Sir _Martin Mar-all_ [1] practised upon his Mistress; for, though they
flew in Sight, the Musick proceeded from a Consort of Flagellets and
Bird-calls which was planted behind the Scenes. At the same time I made
this Discovery, I found by the Discourse of the Actors, that there were
great Designs on foot for the Improvement of the Opera; that it had been
proposed to break down a part of the Wall, and to surprize the Audience
with a Party of an hundred Horse, and that there was actually a Project
of bringing the _New River_ into the House, to be employed in Jetteaus
and Water-works. This Project, as I have since heard, is post-poned
'till the Summer-Season; when it is thought the Coolness that proceeds
from Fountains and Cascades will be more acceptable and refreshing to
People of Quality. In the mean time, to find out a more agreeable
Entertainment for the Winter-Season, the Opera of _Rinaldo_ [2] is
filled with Thunder and Lightning, Illuminations, and Fireworks; which
the Audience may look upon without catching Cold, and indeed without
much Danger of being burnt; for there are several Engines filled with
Water, and ready to play at a Minute's Warning, in case any such
Accident should happen. However, as I have a very great Friendship for
the Owner of this Theater, I hope that he has been wise enough to
_insure_ his House before he would let this Opera be acted in it.
It is no wonder, that those Scenes should be very surprizing, which were
contrived by two Poets of different Nations, and raised by two Magicians
of different Sexes. _Armida_ (as we are told in the Argument) was an
_Amazonian_ Enchantress, and poor Seignior _Cassani_ (as we learn from
the _Persons represented_) a Christian Conjuror (_Mago Christiano_). I
must confess I am very much puzzled to find how an _Amazon_ should be
versed in the Black Art, or how a [good] Christian [for such is the part
of the magician] should deal with the Devil.
To consider the Poets after the Conjurers, I shall give you a Taste of
the _Italian_, from the first Lines of his Preface.
'Eccoti, benigno Lettore, un Parto di poche Sere, che se ben nato di
Notte, non e pero aborto di Tenebre, ma si fara conoscere Figlio
d'Apollo con qualche Raggio di Parnasso.
Behold, gentle Reader, the Birth of a few Evenings, which, tho' it be
the Offspring of the Night, is not the Abortive of Darkness, but will
make it self known to be the Son of Apollo, with a certain Ray of
Parnassus.'
He afterwards proceeds to call Minheer _Hendel_, [3] the _Orpheus_ of
our Age, and to acquaint us, in the same Sublimity of Stile, that he
Composed this Opera in a Fortnight. Such are the Wits, to whose Tastes
we so ambitiously conform our selves. The Truth of it is, the finest
Writers among the Modern _Italians_ express themselves in such a florid
form of Words, and such tedious Circumlocutions, as are used by none but
Pedants in our own Country; and at the same time, fill their Writings
with such poor Imaginations and Conceits, as our Youths are ashamed of,
before they have been Two Years at the University. Some may be apt to
think that it is the difference of Genius which produces this difference
in the Works of the two Nations; but to show there is nothing in this,
if we look into the Writings of the old _Italians_, such as _Cicero_ and
_Virgil_, we shall find that the _English_ Writers, in their way of
thinking and expressing themselves, resemble those Authors much more
than the modern _Italians_ pretend to do. And as for the Poet himself
from whom the Dreams of this Opera are taken, I must entirely agree with
Monsieur _Boileau_, that one Verse in _Virgil_ is worth all the
_Clincant_ or Tinsel of _Tasso_.
But to return to the Sparrows; there have been so many Flights of them
let loose in this Opera, that it is feared the House will never get rid
of them; and that in other Plays, they may make their Entrance in very
wrong and improper Scenes, so as to be seen flying in a Lady's
Bed-Chamber, or perching upon a King's Throne; besides the
Inconveniences which the Heads of the Audience may sometimes suffer from
them. I am credibly informed, that there was once a Design of casting
into an Opera the Story of _Whittington_ and his Cat, and that in order
to it, there had been got together a great Quantity of Mice; but Mr.
_Rich_, the Proprietor of the Play-House, very prudently considered that
it would be impossible for the Cat to kill them all, and that
consequently the Princes of his Stage might be as much infested with
Mice, as the Prince of the Island was before the Cat's arrival upon it;
for which Reason he would not permit it to be Acted in his House. And
indeed I cannot blame him; for, as he said very well upon that Occasion,
I do not hear that any of the Performers in our Opera, pretend to equal
the famous Pied Piper, who made all the Mice of a great Town in
_Germany_ [4] follow his Musick, and by that means cleared the Place of
those little Noxious Animals.
Before I dismiss this Paper, I must inform my Reader, that I hear there
is a Treaty on Foot with _London_ and _Wise_ [5] (who will be appointed
Gardeners of the Play-House,) to furnish the Opera of _Rinaldo_ and
_Armida_ with an Orange-Grove; and that the next time it is Acted, the
Singing Birds will be Personated by Tom-Tits: The undertakers being
resolved to spare neither Pains nor Mony, for the Gratification of the
Audience.
C.
[Footnote 1: Dryden's play of 'Sir Martin Mar-all' was produced in 1666.
It was entered at Stationers' Hall as by the duke of Newcastle, but
Dryden finished it. In Act 5 the foolish Sir Martin appears at a window
with a lute, as if playing and singing to Millicent, his mistress, while
his man Warner plays and sings. Absorbed in looking at the lady, Sir
Martin foolishly goes on opening and shutting his mouth and fumbling on
the lute after the man's song, a version of Voiture's 'L'Amour sous sa
Loi', is done. To which Millicent says,
'A pretty-humoured song--but stay, methinks he plays and sings still,
and yet we cannot hear him--Play louder, Sir Martin, that we may have
the Fruits on't.']
[Footnote 2: Handel had been met in Hanover by English noblemen who
invited him to England, and their invitation was accepted by permission
of the elector, afterwards George I., to whom he was then Chapel-master.
Immediately upon Handel's arrival in England, in 1710, Aaron Hill, who
was directing the Haymarket Theatre, bespoke of him an opera, the
subject being of Hill's own devising and sketching, on the story of
Rinaldo and Armida in Tasso's 'Jerusalem Delivered'. G. Rossi wrote the
Italian words. 'Rinaldo', brought out in 1711, on the 24th of February,
had a run of fifteen nights, and is accounted one of the best of the 35
operas composed by Handel for the English stage. Two airs in it, 'Cara
sposa' and 'Lascia ch'io pianga' (the latter still admired as one of the
purest expressions of his genius), made a great impression. In the same
season the Haymarket produced 'Hamlet' as an opera by Gasparini, called
'Ambleto', with an overture that had four movements ending in a jig. But
as was Gasparini so was Handel in the ears of Addison and Steele. They
recognized in music only the sensual pleasure that it gave, and the
words set to music for the opera, whatever the composer, were then, as
they have since been, almost without exception, insults to the
intellect.]
[Footnote 3: Addison's spelling, which is as good as ours, represents
what was the true and then usual pronunciation of the name of Haendel.]
[Footnote 4: The Pied Piper of Hamelin (i.e. Hameln).
'Hamelin town's in Brunswick,
By famous Hanover city;
The river Weser, deep and wide,
Washes its wall on the southern side.'
The old story has been annexed to English literature by the genius of
Robert Browning.]
[Footnote 5: Evelyn, in the preface to his translation of Quintinye's
'Complete Gardener' (1701), says that the nursery of Messrs. London and
Wise far surpassed all the others in England put together. It exceeded
100 acres in extent. George London was chief gardener first to William
and Mary, then to Queen Anne. London and Wise's nursery belonged at this
time to a gardener named Swinhoe, but kept the name in which it had
become famous.]
* * * * *
No. 6. Wednesday, March 7, 1711. Steele.
'Credebant hoc grande Nefas, et Morte piandum,
Si Juvenis Vetulo non assurrexerat ...'
Juv.
I know no Evil under the Sun so great as the Abuse of the Understanding,
and yet there is no one Vice more common. It has diffus'd itself through
both Sexes, and all Qualities of Mankind; and there is hardly that
Person to be found, who is not more concerned for the Reputation of Wit
and Sense, than Honesty and Virtue. But this unhappy Affectation of
being Wise rather than Honest, Witty than Good-natur'd, is the Source of
most of the ill Habits of Life. Such false Impressions are owing to the
abandon'd Writings of Men of Wit, and the awkward Imitation of the rest
of Mankind.
For this Reason, Sir ROGER was saying last Night, that he was of Opinion
that none but Men of fine Parts deserve to be hanged. The Reflections of
such Men are so delicate upon all Occurrences which they are concern'd
in, that they should be expos'd to more than ordinary Infamy and
Punishment, for offending against such quick Admonitions as their own
Souls give them, and blunting the fine Edge of their Minds in such a
Manner, that they are no more shock'd at Vice and Folly, than Men of
slower Capacities. There is no greater Monster in Being, than a very ill
Man of great Parts: He lives like a Man in a Palsy, with one Side of him
dead. While perhaps he enjoys the Satisfaction of Luxury, of Wealth, of
Ambition, he has lost the Taste of Good-will, of Friendship, of
Innocence. _Scarecrow_, the Beggar in _Lincoln's-Inn-Fields_, who
disabled himself in his Right Leg, and asks Alms all Day to get himself
a warm Supper and a Trull at Night, is not half so despicable a Wretch
as such a Man of Sense. The Beggar has no Relish above Sensations; he
finds Rest more agreeable than Motion; and while he has a warm Fire and
his Doxy, never reflects that he deserves to be whipped. Every Man who
terminates his Satisfaction and Enjoyments within the Supply of his own
Necessities and Passions, is, says Sir Roger, in my Eye as poor a Rogue
as _Scarecrow_. But, continued he, for the loss of publick and private
Virtue we are beholden to your Men of Parts forsooth; it is with them no
matter what is done, so it is done with an Air. But to me who am so
whimsical in a corrupt Age as to act according to Nature and Reason, a
selfish Man in the most shining Circumstance and Equipage, appears in
the same Condition with the Fellow above-mentioned, but more
contemptible in Proportion to what more he robs the Publick of and
enjoys above him. I lay it down therefore for a Rule, That the whole Man
is to move together; that every Action of any Importance is to have a
Prospect of publick Good; and that the general Tendency of our
indifferent Actions ought to be agreeable to the Dictates of Reason, of
Religion, of good Breeding; without this, a Man, as I have before
hinted, is hopping instead of walking, he is not in his entire and
proper Motion.
While the honest Knight was thus bewildering himself in good Starts, I
look'd intentively upon him, which made him I thought collect his Mind a
little. What I aim at, says he, is, to represent, That I am of Opinion,
to polish our Understandings and neglect our Manners is of all things
the most inexcusable. Reason should govern Passion, but instead of that,
you see, it is often subservient to it; and, as unaccountable as one
would think it, a wise Man is not always a good Man. This Degeneracy is
not only the Guilt of particular Persons, but also at some times of a
whole People; and perhaps it may appear upon Examination, that the most
polite Ages are the least virtuous. This may be attributed to the Folly
of admitting Wit and Learning as Merit in themselves, without
considering the Application of them. By this Means it becomes a Rule not
so much to regard what we do, as how we do it. But this false Beauty
will not pass upon Men of honest Minds and true Taste. Sir _Richard
Blackmore_ says, with as much good Sense as Virtue, _It is a mighty
Dishonour and Shame to employ excellent Faculties and abundance of Wit,
to humour and please Men in their Vices and Follies. The great Enemy of
Mankind, notwithstanding his Wit and Angelick Faculties, is the most
odious Being in the whole Creation_. He goes on soon after to say very
generously, That he undertook the writing of his Poem _to rescue the
Muses out of the Hands of Ravishers, to restore them to their sweet and
chaste Mansions, and to engage them in an _Employment suitable to their
Dignity_. [1] This certainly ought to be the Purpose of every man who
appears in Publick; and whoever does not proceed upon that Foundation,
injures his Country as fast as he succeeds in his Studies. When Modesty
ceases to be the chief Ornament of one Sex, and Integrity of the other,
Society is upon a wrong Basis, and we shall be ever after without Rules
to guide our Judgment in what is really becoming and ornamental. Nature
and Reason direct one thing, Passion and Humour another: To follow the
Dictates of the two latter, is going into a Road that is both endless
and intricate; when we pursue the other, our Passage is delightful, and
what we aim at easily attainable.
I do not doubt but _England_ is at present as polite a Nation as any in
the World; but any Man who thinks can easily see, that the Affectation
of being gay and in fashion has very near eaten up our good Sense and
our Religion. Is there anything so just, as that Mode and Gallantry
should be built upon exerting ourselves in what is proper and agreeable
to the Institutions of Justice and Piety among us? And yet is there
anything more common, than that we run in perfect Contradiction to them?
All which is supported by no other Pretension, than that it is done with
what we call a good Grace.
Nothing ought to be held laudable or becoming, but what Nature it self
should prompt us to think so. Respect to all kind of Superiours is
founded methinks upon Instinct; and yet what is so ridiculous as Age? I
make this abrupt Transition to the Mention of this Vice more than any
other, in order to introduce a little Story, which I think a pretty
Instance that the most polite Age is in danger of being the most
vicious.
'It happen'd at _Athens_, during a publick Representation of some Play
exhibited in honour of the Common-wealth that an old Gentleman came
too late for a Place suitable to his Age and Quality. Many of the
young Gentlemen who observed the Difficulty and Confusion he was in,
made Signs to him that they would accommodate him if he came where
they sate: The good Man bustled through the Crowd accordingly; but
when he came to the Seats to which he was invited, the Jest was to sit
close, and expose him, as he stood out of Countenance, to the whole
Audience. The Frolick went round all the Athenian Benches. But on
those Occasions there were also particular Places assigned for
Foreigners: When the good Man skulked towards the Boxes appointed for
the _Lacedemonians_, that honest People, more virtuous than polite,
rose up all to a Man, and with the greatest Respect received him among
them. The _Athenians_ being suddenly touched with a Sense of the
_Spartan_ Virtue, and their own Degeneracy, gave a Thunder of
Applause; and the old Man cry'd out, _The_ Athenians _understand what
is good, but the_ Lacedemonians _practise it_.'
R.
[Footnote 1: Richard Blackmore, born about 1650, d. 1729, had been
knighted in 1697, when he was made physician in ordinary to King
William. He was a thorough Whig, earnestly religious, and given to the
production of heroic poems. Steele shared his principles and honoured
his sincerity. When this essay was written, Blackmore was finishing his
best poem, the 'Creation', in seven Books, designed to prove from nature
the existence of a God. It had a long and earnest preface of
expostulation with the atheism and mocking spirit that were the legacy
to his time of the Court of the Restoration. The citations in the text
express the purport of what Blackmore had written in his then
unpublished but expected work, but do not quote from it literally.]
* * * * *
No. 7. Thursday, March 8, 1711. Addison.
'Somnia, terrores magicos, miracula, Sagas,
Nocturnos lemures, portentaque Thessala rides?'
Hor.
Going Yesterday to Dine with an old Acquaintance, I had the Misfortune
to find his whole Family very much dejected. Upon asking him the
Occasion of it, he told me that his Wife had dreamt a strange Dream the
Night before, which they were afraid portended some Misfortune to
themselves or to their Children. At her coming into the Room, I observed
a settled Melancholy in her Countenance, which I should have been
troubled for, had I not heard from whence it proceeded. We were no
sooner sat down, but, after having looked upon me a little while,
'My dear', says she, turning to her husband, 'you may now see the
Stranger that was in the Candle last Night'.
Soon after this, as they began to talk of Family Affairs, a little Boy
at the lower end of the Table told her, that he was to go into Join-hand
on _Thursday_:
'Thursday,' says she, 'no, Child, if it please God, you shall not
begin upon Childermas-day; tell your Writing-Master that Friday will
be soon enough'.
I was reflecting with my self on the Odness of her Fancy, and wondering
that any body would establish it as a Rule to lose a Day in every Week.
In the midst of these my Musings she desired me to reach her a little
Salt upon the Point of my Knife, which I did in such a Trepidation and
hurry of Obedience, that I let it drop by the way; at which she
immediately startled, and said it fell towards her. Upon this I looked
very blank; and, observing the Concern of the whole Table, began to
consider my self, with some Confusion, as a Person that had brought a
Disaster upon the Family. The Lady however recovering her self, after a
little space, said to her Husband with a Sigh,
'My Dear, Misfortunes never come Single'.
My Friend, I found, acted but an under Part at his Table, and
being a Man of more Goodnature than Understanding, thinks himself
obliged to fall in with all the Passions and Humours of his Yoke-fellow:
'Do not you remember, Child', says she, 'that the Pidgeon-House fell
the very Afternoon that our careless Wench spilt the Salt upon the
Table?'
'Yes', says he, 'my Dear, and the next Post brought us an Account of
the Battel of Almanza'. [1]
The Reader may guess at the figure I made, after having done all this
Mischief. I dispatched my Dinner as soon as I could, with my usual
Taciturnity; when, to my utter Confusion, the Lady seeing me [quitting
[2]] my Knife and Fork, and laying them across one another upon my
Plate, desired me that I would humour her so far as to take them out of
that Figure, and place them side by side. What the Absurdity was which I
had committed I did not know, but I suppose there was some traditionary
Superstition in it; and therefore, in obedience to the Lady of the
House, I disposed of my Knife and Fork in two parallel Lines, which is
the figure I shall always lay them in for the future, though I do not
know any Reason for it.
It is not difficult for a Man to see that a Person has conceived an
Aversion to him. For my own part, I quickly found, by the Lady's Looks,
that she regarded me as a very odd kind of Fellow, with an unfortunate
Aspect: For which Reason I took my leave immediately after Dinner, and
withdrew to my own Lodgings. Upon my Return home, I fell into a profound
Contemplation on the Evils that attend these superstitious Follies of
Mankind; how they subject us to imaginary Afflictions, and additional
Sorrows, that do not properly come within our Lot. As if the natural
Calamities of Life were not sufficient for it, we turn the most
indifferent Circumstances into Misfortunes, and suffer as much from
trifling Accidents, as from real Evils. I have known the shooting of a
Star spoil a Night's Rest; and have seen a Man in Love grow pale and
lose his Appetite, upon the plucking of a Merry-thought. A Screech-Owl
at Midnight has alarmed a Family, more than a Band of Robbers; nay, the
Voice of a Cricket hath struck more Terrour, than the Roaring of a Lion.
There is nothing so inconsiderable [which [3]] may not appear dreadful
to an Imagination that is filled with Omens and Prognosticks. A Rusty
Nail, or a Crooked Pin, shoot up into Prodigies.
I remember I was once in a mixt Assembly, that was full of Noise and
Mirth, when on a sudden an old Woman unluckily observed there were
thirteen of us in Company. This Remark struck a pannick Terror into
several [who [4]] were present, insomuch that one or two of the Ladies
were going to leave the Room; but a Friend of mine, taking notice that
one of our female Companions was big with Child, affirm'd there were
fourteen in the Room, and that, instead of portending one of the Company
should die, it plainly foretold one of them should be born. Had not my
Friend found this Expedient to break the Omen, I question not but half
the Women in the Company would have fallen sick that very Night.
An old Maid, that is troubled with the Vapours, produces infinite
Disturbances of this kind among her Friends and Neighbours. I know a
Maiden Aunt, of a great Family, who is one of these Antiquated _Sybils_,
that forebodes and prophesies from one end of the Year to the other. She
is always seeing Apparitions, and hearing Death-Watches; and was the
other Day almost frighted out of her Wits by the great House-Dog, that
howled in the Stable at a time when she lay ill of the Tooth-ach. Such
an extravagant Cast of Mind engages Multitudes of People, not only in
impertinent Terrors, but in supernumerary Duties of Life, and arises
from that Fear and Ignorance which are natural to the Soul of Man. The
Horrour with which we entertain the Thoughts of Death (or indeed of any
future Evil), and the Uncertainty of its Approach, fill a melancholy
Mind with innumerable Apprehensions and Suspicions, and consequently
dispose it to the Observation of such groundless Prodigies and
Predictions. For as it is the chief Concern of Wise-Men, to retrench the
Evils of Life by the Reasonings of Philosophy; it is the Employment of
Fools, to multiply them by the Sentiments of Superstition.
For my own part, I should be very much troubled were I endowed with this
Divining Quality, though it should inform me truly of every thing that
can befall me. I would not anticipate the Relish of any Happiness, nor
feel the Weight of any Misery, before it actually arrives.
I know but one way of fortifying my Soul against these gloomy Presages
and Terrours of Mind, and that is, by securing to my self the Friendship
and Protection of that Being, who disposes of Events, and governs
Futurity. He sees, at one View, the whole Thread of my Existence, not
only that Part of it which I have already passed through, but that which
runs forward into all the Depths of Eternity. When I lay me down to
Sleep, I recommend my self to his Care; when I awake, I give my self up
to his Direction. Amidst all the Evils that threaten me, I will look up
to him for Help, and question not but he will either avert them, or turn
them to my Advantage. Though I know neither the Time nor the Manner of
the Death I am to die, I am not at all sollicitous about it, because I
am sure that he knows them both, and that he will not fail to comfort
and support me under them.
C.
[Footnote 1: Fought April 25 (O.S. 14), 1707, between the English, under
Lord Galway, a Frenchman, with Portuguese, Dutch, and Spanish allies,
and a superior force of French and Spaniards, under an Englishman, the
Duke of Berwick, natural son of James II. Deserted by many of the
foreign troops, the English were defeated.]
[Footnote 2: cleaning]
[Footnote 3: that]
[Footnote 4: that]
* * * * *
No. 8. Friday, March 9, 1711. Addison.
'At _Venus_ obscuro gradientes aere sepsit,
Et multo Nebulae circum Dea fudit amictu,
Cernere ne quis eos ...'
Virg.
I shall here communicate to the World a couple of Letters, which I
believe will give the Reader as good an Entertainment as any that I am
able to furnish [him [1]] with, and therefore shall make no Apology for
them.
'To the SPECTATOR, &c.
SIR,
I am one of the Directors of the Society for the Reformation of
Manners, and therefore think myself a proper Person for your
Correspondence. I have thoroughly examined the present State of
Religion in _Great-Britain_, and am able to acquaint you with the
predominant Vice of every Market-Town in the whole Island. I can tell
you the Progress that Virtue has made in all our Cities, Boroughs, and
Corporations; and know as well the evil Practices that are committed
in _Berwick_ or _Exeter_, as what is done in my own Family. In a Word,
Sir, I have my Correspondents in the remotest Parts of the Nation, who
send me up punctual Accounts from time to time of all the little
Irregularities that fall under their Notice in their several Districts
and Divisions.
I am no less acquainted with the particular Quarters and Regions of
this great Town, than with the different Parts and Distributions of
the whole Nation. I can describe every Parish by its Impieties, and
can tell you in which of our Streets Lewdness prevails, which Gaming
has taken the Possession of, and where Drunkenness has got the better
of them both. When I am disposed to raise a Fine for the Poor, I know
the Lanes and Allies that are inhabited by common Swearers. When I
would encourage the Hospital of _Bridewell_, and improve the Hempen
Manufacture, I am very well acquainted with all the Haunts and Resorts
of Female Night-walkers.
After this short Account of my self, I must let you know, that the
Design of this Paper is to give you Information of a certain irregular
Assembly which I think falls very properly under your Observation,
especially since the Persons it is composed of are Criminals too
considerable for the Animadversions of our Society. I mean, Sir, the
Midnight Masque, which has of late been frequently held in one of the
most conspicuous Parts of the Town, and which I hear will be continued
with Additions and Improvements. As all the Persons who compose this
lawless Assembly are masqued, we dare not attack any of them in _our
Way_, lest we should send a Woman of Quality to _Bridewell_, or a Peer
of _Great-Britain_ to the _Counter_: Besides, that their Numbers are
so very great, that I am afraid they would be able to rout our whole
Fraternity, tho' we were accompanied with all our Guard of Constables.
Both these Reasons which secure them from our Authority, make them
obnoxious to yours; as both their Disguise and their Numbers will give
no particular Person Reason to think himself affronted by you.
If we are rightly inform'd, the Rules that are observed by this new
Society are wonderfully contriv'd for the Advancement of Cuckoldom.
The Women either come by themselves, or are introduced by Friends, who
are obliged to quit them upon their first Entrance, to the
Conversation of any Body that addresses himself to them. There are
several Rooms where the Parties may retire, and, if they please, show
their Faces by Consent. Whispers, Squeezes, Nods, and Embraces, are
the innocent Freedoms of the Place. In short, the whole Design of this
libidinous Assembly seems to terminate in Assignations and Intrigues;
and I hope you will take effectual Methods, by your publick Advice and
Admonitions, to prevent such a promiscuous Multitude of both Sexes
from meeting together in so clandestine a Manner.'
I am,
Your humble Servant,
And Fellow Labourer,
T. B.
Not long after the Perusal of this Letter I received another upon the
same Subject; which by the Date and Stile of it, I take to be written by
some young Templer.
Middle Temple, 1710-11.
SIR,
When a Man has been guilty of any Vice or Folly, I think the best
Attonement he can make for it is to warn others not to fall into the
like. In order to this I must acquaint you, that some Time in
_February_ last I went to the Tuesday's Masquerade. Upon my first
going in I was attacked by half a Dozen female Quakers, who seemed
willing to adopt me for a Brother; but, upon a nearer Examination, I
found they were a Sisterhood of Coquets, disguised in that precise
Habit. I was soon after taken out to dance, and, as I fancied, by a
Woman of the first Quality, for she was very tall, and moved
gracefully. As soon as the Minuet was over, we ogled one another
through our Masques; and as I am very well read in _Waller_, I
repeated to her the four following Verses out of his poem to
_Vandike_.
'The heedless Lover does not know
Whose Eyes they are that wound him so;
But confounded with thy Art,
Enquires her Name that has his Heart.'
I pronounced these Words with such a languishing Air, that I had some
Reason to conclude I had made a Conquest. She told me that she hoped
my Face was not akin to my Tongue; and looking upon her Watch, I
accidentally discovered the Figure of a Coronet on the back Part of
it. I was so transported with the Thought of such an Amour, that I
plied her from one Room to another with all the Gallantries I could
invent; and at length brought things to so happy an Issue, that she
gave me a private Meeting the next Day, without Page or Footman, Coach
or Equipage. My Heart danced in Raptures; but I had not lived in this
golden Dream above three Days, before I found good Reason to wish that
I had continued true to my Landress. I have since heard by a very
great Accident, that this fine Lady does not live far from
_Covent-Garden_, and that I am not the first Cully whom she has passed
herself upon for a Countess.
Thus, Sir, you see how I have mistaken a _Cloud_ for a _Juno_; and if
you can make any use of this Adventure for the Benefit of those who
may possibly be as vain young Coxcombs as my self, I do most heartily
give you Leave.'
I am,
Sir,
Your most humble admirer,
B. L.
I design to visit the next Masquerade my self, in the same Habit I wore
at _Grand Cairo_; [2] and till then shall suspend my Judgment of this
Midnight Entertainment.
C.
[Footnote 1: them]
[Footnote 2: See [Spectator] No. 1.]
* * * * *
No. 9. Saturday, March 10, 1711. Addison.
Tigris agit rabida cum tigride pacem
Perpetuam, saevis inter se convenit ursis.
Juv.
Man is said to be a Sociable Animal, and, as an Instance of it, we may
observe, that we take all Occasions and Pretences of forming ourselves
into those little Nocturnal Assemblies, which are commonly known by the
name of 'Clubs'. When a Sett of Men find themselves agree in any
Particular, tho' never so trivial, they establish themselves into a kind
of Fraternity, and meet once or twice a Week, upon the Account of such a
Fantastick-Resemblance. I know a considerable Market-town, in which
there was a Club of Fat-Men, that did not come together (as you may well
suppose) to entertain one another with Sprightliness and Wit, but to
keep one another in Countenance: The Room, where the Club met, was
something of the largest, and had two Entrances, the one by a Door of a
moderate Size, and the other by a Pair of Folding-Doors. If a Candidate
for this Corpulent Club could make his Entrance through the first he was
looked upon as unqualified; but if he stuck in the Passage, and could
not force his Way through it, the Folding-Doors were immediately thrown
open for his Reception, and he was saluted as a Brother. I have heard
that this Club, though it consisted but of fifteen Persons, weighed
above three Tun.
In Opposition to this Society, there sprung up another composed of
Scare-Crows and Skeletons, who being very meagre and envious, did all
they could to thwart the Designs of their Bulky Brethren, whom they
represented as Men of Dangerous Principles; till at length they worked
them out of the Favour of the People, and consequently out of the
Magistracy. These Factions tore the Corporation in Pieces for several
Years, till at length they came to this Accommodation; that the two
Bailiffs of the Town should be annually chosen out of the two Clubs; by
which Means the principal Magistrates are at this Day coupled like
Rabbets, one fat and one lean.
Every one has heard of the Club, or rather the Confederacy, of the
'Kings'. This grand Alliance was formed a little after the Return of
King 'Charles' the Second, and admitted into it Men of all Qualities and
Professions, provided they agreed in this Sir-name of 'King', which, as
they imagined, sufficiently declared the Owners of it to be altogether
untainted with Republican and Anti-Monarchical Principles.
A Christian Name has likewise been often used as a Badge of Distinction,
and made the Occasion of a Club. That of the 'Georges', which used to
meet at the Sign of the 'George', on St. 'George's' day, and swear
'Before George', is still fresh in every one's Memory.
There are at present in several Parts of this City what they call
'Street-Clubs', in which the chief Inhabitants of the Street converse
together every Night. I remember, upon my enquiring after Lodgings in
'Ormond-Street', the Landlord, to recommend that Quarter of the Town,
told me there was at that time a very good Club in it; he also told me,
upon further Discourse with him, that two or three noisy Country
Squires, who were settled there the Year before, had considerably sunk
the Price of House-Rent; and that the Club (to prevent the like
Inconveniencies for the future) had thoughts of taking every House that
became vacant into their own Hands, till they had found a Tenant for it,
of a Sociable Nature and good Conversation.
The 'Hum-Drum' Club, of which I was formerly an unworthy Member, was
made up of very honest Gentlemen, of peaceable Dispositions, that used
to sit together, smoak their Pipes, and say nothing 'till Midnight. The
'Mum' Club (as I am informed) is an Institution of the same Nature, and
as great an Enemy to Noise.
After these two innocent Societies, I cannot forbear mentioning a very
mischievous one, that was erected in the Reign of King 'Charles' the
Second: I mean 'the Club of Duellists', in which none was to be admitted
that had not fought his Man. The President of it was said to have killed
half a dozen in single Combat; and as for the other Members, they took
their Seats according to the number of their Slain. There was likewise a
Side-Table for such as had only drawn Blood, and shown a laudable
Ambition of taking the first Opportunity to qualify themselves for the
first Table. This Club, consisting only of Men of Honour, did not
continue long, most of the Members of it being put to the Sword, or
hanged, a little after its Institution.
Our Modern celebrated Clubs are founded upon Eating and Drinking, which
are Points wherein most Men agree, and in which the Learned and
Illiterate, the Dull and the Airy, the Philosopher and the Buffoon, can
all of them bear a Part. The 'Kit-Cat' [1] it self is said to have taken
its Original from a Mutton-Pye. The 'Beef-Steak' [2] and October [3]
Clubs, are neither of them averse to Eating and Drinking, if we may form
a Judgment of them from their respective Titles.
When Men are thus knit together, by Love of Society, not a Spirit of
Faction, and do not meet to censure or annoy those that are absent, but
to enjoy one another: When they are thus combined for their own
Improvement, or for the Good of others, or at least to relax themselves
from the Business of the Day, by an innocent and chearful Conversation,
there may be something very useful in these little Institutions and
Establishments.
I cannot forbear concluding this Paper with a Scheme of Laws that I met
with upon a Wall in a little Ale-house: How I came thither I may inform
my Reader at a more convenient time. These Laws were enacted by a Knot
of Artizans and Mechanicks, who used to meet every Night; and as there
is something in them, which gives us a pretty Picture of low Life, I
shall transcribe them Word for Word.
'RULES to be observed in the Two-penny Club, erected in this Place,
for the Preservation of Friendship and good Neighbourhood.'
I. Every Member at his first coming in shall lay down his Two Pence.
II. Every Member shall fill his Pipe out of his own Box.
III. If any Member absents himself he shall forfeit a Penny for the
Use of the Club, unless in case of Sickness or Imprisonment.
IV. If any Member swears or curses, his Neighbour may give him a Kick
upon the Shins.
V. If any Member tells Stories in the Club that are not true, he
shall forfeit for every third Lie an Half-Penny.
VI. If any Member strikes another wrongfully, he shall pay his Club
for him.
VII. If any Member brings his Wife into the Club, he shall pay for
whatever she drinks or smoaks.
VIII If any Member's Wife comes to fetch him Home from the Club, she
shall speak to him without the Door.
IX. If any Member calls another Cuckold, he shall be turned out of
the Club.
X. None shall be admitted into the Club that is of the same Trade
with any Member of it.
XI. None of the Club shall have his Cloaths or Shoes made or mended,
but by a Brother Member.
XII. No Non-juror shall be capable of being a Member.
The Morality of this little Club is guarded by such wholesome Laws and
Penalties, that I question not but my Reader will be as well pleased
with them, as he would have been with the 'Leges Convivales' of _Ben.
Johnson_, [4] the Regulations of an old _Roman_ Club cited by _Lipsius_,
or the rules of a _Symposium_ in an ancient _Greek_ author.
C.
[Footnote 1: The 'Kit-Cat' Club met at a famous Mutton-Pie house in
Shire Lane, by Temple Bar. The house was kept by Christopher Cat, after
whom his pies were called Kit-Cats. The club originated in the
hospitality of Jacob Tonson, the bookseller, who, once a week, was host
at the house in Shire Lane to a gathering of writers. In an occasional
poem on the Kit-Cat Club, attributed to Sir Richard Blackmore, Jacob is
read backwards into Bocaj, and we are told
One Night in Seven at this convenient Seat
Indulgent Bocaj did the Muses treat;
Their Drink was gen'rous Wine and Kit-Cat's Pyes their Meat.
Hence did th' Assembly's Title first arise,
And Kit-Cat Wits spring first from Kit-Cat's Pyes.
About the year 1700 this gathering of wits produced a club in which the
great Whig chiefs were associated with foremost Whig writers, Tonson
being Secretary. It was as much literary as political, and its 'toasting
glasses,' each inscribed with lines to a reigning beauty, caused
Arbuthnot to derive its name from 'its pell mell pack of toasts'
'Of old Cats and young Kits.'
Tonson built a room for the Club at Barn Elms to which each member gave
his portrait by Sir Godfrey Kneller, who was himself a member. The
pictures were on a new-sized canvas adapted to the height of the walls,
whence the name 'kit-cat' came to be applied generally to three-quarter
length portraits.]
[Footnote 2: The 'Beef-Steak' Club, founded in Queen Anne's time, first
of its name, took a gridiron for badge, and had cheery Dick Estcourt the
actor for its providore. It met at a tavern in the Old Jewry that had
old repute for broiled steaks and 'the true British quintessence of malt
and hops.']
[Footnote 3: The 'October' Club was of a hundred and fifty Tory squires,
Parliament men, who met at the Bell Tavern, in King Street, Westminster,
and there nourished patriotism with October ale. The portrait of Queen
Anne that used to hang in its Club room is now in the Town
Council-chamber at Salisbury.]
[Footnote 4: In Four and Twenty Latin sentences engraven in marble over
the chimney, in the Apollo or Old Devil Tavern at Temple Bar; that being
his club room.]
* * * * *
No. 10. Monday, March 12, 1711. Addison.
'Non aliter quam qui adverso vix flumine lembum
Remigiis subigit: si brachia forte remisit,
Atque illum in praeceps prono rapit alveus amni.'
Virg.
It is with much Satisfaction that I hear this great City inquiring Day
by Day after these my Papers, and receiving my Morning Lectures with a
becoming Seriousness and Attention. My Publisher tells me, that there
are already Three Thousand of them distributed every Day: So that if I
allow Twenty Readers to every Paper, which I look upon as a modest
Computation, I may reckon about Threescore thousand Disciples in
_London_ and _Westminster_, who I hope will take care to distinguish
themselves from the thoughtless Herd of their ignorant and unattentive
Brethren. Since I have raised to myself so great an Audience, I shall
spare no Pains to make their Instruction agreeable, and their Diversion
useful. For which Reasons I shall endeavour to enliven Morality with
Wit, and to temper Wit with Morality, that my Readers may, if possible,
both Ways find their account in the Speculation of the Day. And to the
End that their Virtue and Discretion may not be short transient
intermitting Starts of Thought, I have resolved to refresh their
Memories from Day to Day, till I have recovered them out of that
desperate State of Vice and Folly, into which the Age is fallen. The
Mind that lies fallow but a single Day, sprouts up in Follies that are
only to be killed by a constant and assiduous Culture. It was said of
_Socrates_, that he brought Philosophy down from Heaven, to inhabit
among Men; and I shall be ambitious to have it said of me, that I have
brought Philosophy out of Closets and Libraries, Schools and Colleges,
to dwell in Clubs and Assemblies, at Tea-tables, and in Coffee-houses.
I would therefore in a very particular Manner recommend these my
Speculations to all well-regulated Families, that set apart an Hour in
every Morning for Tea and Bread and Butter; and would earnestly advise
them for their Good to order this Paper to be punctually served up, and
to be looked upon as a Part of the Tea Equipage.
Sir _Francis Bacon_ observes, that a well-written Book, compared with
its Rivals and Antagonists, is like _Moses's_ Serpent, that immediately
swallow'd up and devoured those of the _AEgyptians_. I shall not be so
vain as to think, that where the SPECTATOR appears, the other publick
Prints will vanish; but shall leave it to my Readers Consideration,
whether, Is it not much better to be let into the Knowledge of
ones-self, than to hear what passes in _Muscovy_ or _Poland_; and to
amuse our selves with such Writings as tend to the wearing out of
Ignorance, Passion, and Prejudice, than such as naturally conduce to
inflame Hatreds, and make Enmities irreconcileable.
In the next Place, I would recommend this Paper to the daily Perusal of
those Gentlemen whom I cannot but consider as my good Brothers and
Allies, I mean the Fraternity of Spectators who live in the World
without having any thing to do in it; and either by the Affluence of
their Fortunes, or Laziness of their Dispositions, have no other
Business with the rest of Mankind but to look upon them. Under this
Class of Men are comprehended all contemplative Tradesmen, titular
Physicians, Fellows of the Royal Society, Templers that are not given to
be contentious, and Statesmen that are out of business. In short, every
one that considers the World as a Theatre, and desires to form a right
Judgment of those who are the Actors on it.
There is another Set of Men that I must likewise lay a Claim to, whom I
have lately called the Blanks of Society, as being altogether
unfurnish'd with Ideas, till the Business and Conversation of the Day
has supplied them. I have often considered these poor Souls with an Eye
of great Commiseration, when I have heard them asking the first Man they
have met with, whether there was any News stirring? and by that Means
gathering together Materials for thinking. These needy Persons do not
know what to talk of, till about twelve a Clock in the Morning; for by
that Time they are pretty good Judges of the Weather, know which Way the
Wind sits, and whether the Dutch Mail be come in. As they lie at the
Mercy of the first Man they meet, and are grave or impertinent all the
Day long, according to the Notions which they have imbibed in the
Morning, I would earnestly entreat them not to stir out of their
Chambers till they have read this Paper, and do promise them that I will
daily instil into them such sound and wholesome Sentiments, as shall
have a good Effect on their Conversation for the ensuing twelve Hours.
But there are none to whom this Paper will be more useful than to the
female World. I have often thought there has not been sufficient Pains
taken in finding out proper Employments and Diversions for the Fair
ones. Their Amusements seem contrived for them rather as they are Women,
than as they are reasonable Creatures; and are more adapted to the Sex,
than to the Species. The Toilet is their great Scene of Business, and
the right adjusting of their Hair the principal Employment of their
Lives. The sorting of a Suit of Ribbons is reckoned a very good
Morning's Work; and if they make an Excursion to a Mercer's or a
Toy-shop, so great a Fatigue makes them unfit for any thing else all the
Day after. Their more serious Occupations are Sowing and Embroidery, and
their greatest Drudgery the Preparation of Jellies and Sweetmeats. This,
I say, is the State of ordinary Women; tho' I know there are Multitudes
of those of a more elevated Life and Conversation, that move in an
exalted Sphere of Knowledge and Virtue, that join all the Beauties of
the Mind to the Ornaments of Dress, and inspire a kind of Awe and
Respect, as well as Love, into their Male-Beholders. I hope to encrease
the Number of these by publishing this daily Paper, which I shall always
endeavour to make an innocent if not an improving Entertainment, and by
that Means at least divert the Minds of my female Readers from greater
Trifles. At the same Time, as I would fain give some finishing Touches
to those which are already the most beautiful Pieces in humane Nature, I
shall endeavour to point out all those Imperfections that are the
Blemishes, as well as those Virtues which are the Embellishments, of the
Sex. In the mean while I hope these my gentle Readers, who have so much
Time on their Hands, will not grudge throwing away a Quarter of an Hour
in a Day on this Paper, since they may do it without any Hindrance to
Business.
I know several of my Friends and Well-wishers are in great Pain for me,
lest I should not be able to keep up the Spirit of a Paper which I
oblige myself to furnish every Day: But to make them easy in this
Particular, I will promise them faithfully to give it over as soon as I
grow dull. This I know will be Matter of great Raillery to the small
Wits; who will frequently put me in mind of my Promise, desire me to
keep my Word, assure me that it is high Time to give over, with many
other little Pleasantries of the like Nature, which men of a little
smart Genius cannot forbear throwing out against their best Friends,
when they have such a Handle given them of being witty. But let them
remember, that I do hereby enter my Caveat against this Piece of
Raillery.
C.
* * * * *
No. 11. Tuesday, March 13, 1711. Steele.
'Dat veniam corvis, vexat censura columbas.'
Juv.
Arietta is visited by all Persons of both Sexes, who may have any
Pretence to Wit and Gallantry. She is in that time of Life which is
neither affected with the Follies of Youth or Infirmities of Age; and
her Conversation is so mixed with Gaiety and Prudence, that she is
agreeable both to the Young and the Old. Her Behaviour is very frank,
without being in the least blameable; and as she is out of the Tract of
any amorous or ambitious Pursuits of her own, her Visitants entertain
her with Accounts of themselves very freely, whether they concern their
Passions or their Interests. I made her a Visit this Afternoon, having
been formerly introduced to the Honour of her Acquaintance, by my friend
_Will. Honeycomb_, who has prevailed upon her to admit me sometimes into
her Assembly, as a civil, inoffensive Man. I found her accompanied with
one Person only, a Common-Place Talker, who, upon my Entrance, rose, and
after a very slight Civility sat down again; then turning to _Arietta_,
pursued his Discourse, which I found was upon the old Topick, of
Constancy in Love. He went on with great Facility in repeating what he
talks every Day of his Life; and, with the Ornaments of insignificant
Laughs and Gestures, enforced his Arguments by Quotations out of Plays
and Songs, which allude to the Perjuries of the Fair, and the general
Levity of Women. Methought he strove to shine more than ordinarily in
his Talkative Way, that he might insult my Silence, and distinguish
himself before a Woman of _Arietta's_ Taste and Understanding. She had
often an Inclination to interrupt him, but could find no Opportunity,
'till the Larum ceased of its self; which it did not 'till he had
repeated and murdered the celebrated Story of the _Ephesian_ Matron. [1]
_Arietta_ seemed to regard this Piece of Raillery as an Outrage done to
her Sex; as indeed I have always observed that Women, whether out of a
nicer Regard to their Honour, or what other Reason I cannot tell, are
more sensibly touched with those general Aspersions, which are cast upon
their Sex, than Men are by what is said of theirs.
When she had a little recovered her self from the serious Anger she was
in, she replied in the following manner.
Sir, when I consider, how perfectly new all you have said on this
Subject is, and that the Story you have given us is not quite two
thousand Years Old, I cannot but think it a Piece of Presumption to
dispute with you: But your Quotations put me in Mind of the Fable of
the Lion and the Man. The Man walking with that noble Animal, showed
him, in the Ostentation of Human Superiority, a Sign of a Man killing
a Lion. Upon which the Lion said very justly, _We Lions are none of us
Painters, else we could show a hundred Men killed by Lions, for one
Lion killed by a Man_. You Men are Writers, and can represent us Women
as Unbecoming as you please in your Works, while we are unable to
return the Injury. You have twice or thrice observed in your
Discourse, that Hypocrisy is the very Foundation of our Education; and
that an Ability to dissemble our affections, is a professed Part of
our Breeding. These, and such other Reflections, are sprinkled up and
down the Writings of all Ages, by Authors, who leave behind them
Memorials of their Resentment against the Scorn of particular Women,
in Invectives against the whole Sex. Such a Writer, I doubt not, was
the celebrated _Petronius_, who invented the pleasant Aggravations of
the Frailty of the _Ephesian_ Lady; but when we consider this Question
between the Sexes, which has been either a Point of Dispute or
Raillery ever since there were Men and Women, let us take Facts from
plain People, and from such as have not either Ambition or Capacity to
embellish their Narrations with any Beauties of Imagination. I was the
other Day amusing myself with _Ligon's_ Account of _Barbadoes_; and,
in Answer to your well-wrought Tale, I will give you (as it dwells
upon my Memory) out of that honest Traveller, in his fifty fifth page,
the History of _Inkle_ and _Yarico_. [2]
Mr. _Thomas Inkle_ of _London_, aged twenty Years, embarked in the
_Downs_, on the good Ship called the 'Achilles', bound for the _West
Indies_, on the 16th of June 1647, in order to improve his Fortune by
Trade and Merchandize. Our Adventurer was the third Son of an eminent
Citizen, who had taken particular Care to instill into his Mind an
early Love of Gain, by making him a perfect Master of Numbers, and
consequently giving him a quick View of Loss and Advantage, and
preventing the natural Impulses of his Passions, by Prepossession
towards his Interests. With a Mind thus turned, young _Inkle_ had a
Person every way agreeable, a ruddy Vigour in his Countenance,
Strength in his Limbs, with Ringlets of fair Hair loosely flowing on
his Shoulders. It happened, in the Course of the Voyage, that the
_Achilles_, in some Distress, put into a Creek on the Main of
_America_, in search of Provisions. The Youth, who is the Hero of my
Story, among others, went ashore on this Occasion. From their first
Landing they were observed by a Party of _Indians_, who hid themselves
in the Woods for that Purpose. The _English_ unadvisedly marched a
great distance from the Shore into the Country, and were intercepted
by the Natives, who slew the greatest Number of them. Our Adventurer
escaped among others, by flying into a Forest. Upon his coming into a
remote and pathless Part of the Wood, he threw himself [tired and]
breathless on a little Hillock, when an _Indian_ Maid rushed from
a Thicket behind him: After the first Surprize, they appeared mutually
agreeable to each other. If the _European_ was highly charmed
with the Limbs, Features, and wild Graces of the Naked
_American_; the _American_ was no less taken with the Dress,
Complexion, and Shape of an _European_, covered from Head to
Foot. The _Indian_ grew immediately enamoured of him, and
consequently sollicitous for his Preservation: She therefore conveyed
him to a Cave, where she gave him a Delicious Repast of Fruits, and
led him to a Stream to slake his Thirst. In the midst of these good
Offices, she would sometimes play with his Hair, and delight in the
Opposition of its Colour to that of her Fingers: Then open his Bosome,
then laugh at him for covering it. She was, it seems, a Person of
Distinction, for she every day came to him in a different Dress, of
the most beautiful Shells, Bugles, and Bredes. She likewise brought
him a great many Spoils, which her other Lovers had presented to her;
so that his Cave was richly adorned with all the spotted Skins of
Beasts, and most Party-coloured Feathers of Fowls, which that World
afforded. To make his Confinement more tolerable, she would carry him
in the Dusk of the Evening, or by the favour of Moon-light, to
unfrequented Groves, and Solitudes, and show him where to lye down in
Safety, and sleep amidst the Falls of Waters, and Melody of
Nightingales. Her Part was to watch and hold him in her Arms, for fear
of her Country-men, and wake on Occasions to consult his Safety. In
this manner did the Lovers pass away their Time, till they had learn'd
a Language of their own, in which the Voyager communicated to his
Mistress, how happy he should be to have her in his Country, where she
should be Cloathed in such Silks as his Wastecoat was made of, and be
carried in Houses drawn by Horses, without being exposed to Wind or
Weather. All this he promised her the Enjoyment of, without such Fears
and Alarms as they were there tormented with. In this tender
Correspondence these Lovers lived for several Months, when
_Yarico_, instructed by her Lover, discovered a Vessel on the
Coast, to which she made Signals, and in the Night, with the utmost
Joy and Satisfaction accompanied him to a Ships-Crew of his
Country-Men, bound for _Barbadoes_. When a Vessel from the Main
arrives in that Island, it seems the Planters come down to the Shoar,
where there is an immediate Market of the _Indians_ and other Slaves,
as with us of Horses and Oxen.
To be short, Mr. _Thomas Inkle_, now coming into _English_
Territories, began seriously to reflect upon his loss of Time, and to
weigh with himself how many Days Interest of his Mony he had lost
during his Stay with _Yarico_. This Thought made the Young Man very
pensive, and careful what Account he should be able to give his
Friends of his Voyage. Upon which Considerations, the prudent and
frugal young Man sold _Yarico_ to a _Barbadian_ Merchant;
notwithstanding that the poor Girl, to incline him to commiserate her
Condition, told him that she was with Child by him: But he only made
use of that Information, to rise in his Demands upon the Purchaser.
I was so touch'd with this Story, (which I think should be always a
Counterpart to the _Ephesian_ Matron) that I left the Room with Tears in
my Eyes; which a Woman of _Arietta's_ good Sense, did, I am sure, take
for greater Applause, than any Compliments I could make her.
R.
[Footnote 1: Told in the prose 'Satyricon' ascribed to Petronius, whom
Nero called his Arbiter of Elegance. The tale was known in the Middle
Ages from the stories of the 'Seven Wise Masters.' She went down into
the vault with her husband's corpse, resolved to weep to death or die of
famine; but was tempted to share the supper of a soldier who was
watching seven bodies hanging upon trees, and that very night, in the
grave of her husband and in her funeral garments, married her new and
stranger guest.]
[Footnote 2: 'A True and Exact History of the Island of Barbadoes. By
Richard Ligon, Gent.,' fol. 1673. The first edition had appeared in
1657. Steele's beautiful story is elaborated from the following short
passage in the page he cites. After telling that he had an Indian slave
woman 'of excellent shape and colour,' who would not be wooed by any
means to wear clothes, Mr. Ligon says:
'This _Indian_ dwelling near the Sea Coast, upon the Main, an
_English_ ship put in to a Bay, and sent some of her Men a shoar, to
try what victuals or water they could find, for in some distress they
were: But the _Indians_ perceiving them to go up so far into the
Country, as they were sure they could not make a safe retreat,
intercepted them in their return, and fell upon them, chasing them
into a Wood, and being dispersed there, some were taken, and some
kill'd: But a young man amongst them straggling from the rest, was met
by this _Indian_ maid, who upon the first sight fell in love with him,
and hid him close from her Countrymen (the _Indians_) in a Cave, and
there fed him, till they could safely go down to the shoar, where the
ship lay at anchor, expecting the return of their friends. But at
last, seeing them upon the shoar, sent the long-Boat for them, took
them aboard, and brought them away. But the youth, when he came ashoar
in the _Barbadoes_, forgot the kindness of the poor maid, that had
ventured her life for his safety, and sold her for a slave, who was as
free born as he: And so poor _Yarico_ for her love, lost her liberty.']
* * * * *
No. 12. Wednesday, March 14, 1711. Addison.
... Veteres avias tibi de pulmone revello.
Per.
At my coming to _London_, it was some time before I could settle my self
in a House to my likeing. I was forced to quit my first Lodgings, by
reason of an officious Land-lady, that would be asking every Morning how
I had slept. I then fell into an honest Family, and lived very happily
for above a Week; when my Land-lord, who was a jolly good-natur'd Man,
took it into his head that I wanted Company, and therefore would
frequently come into my Chamber to keep me from being alone. This I bore
for Two or Three Days; but telling me one Day that he was afraid I was
melancholy, I thought it was high time for me to be gone, and
accordingly took new Lodgings that very Night. About a Week after, I
found my jolly Land-lord, who, as I said before was an honest hearty
Man, had put me into an Advertisement of the 'Daily Courant', in the
following Words.
'_Whereas a melancholy Man left his Lodgings on Thursday last in the
Afternoon, and was afterwards seen going towards Islington; If any one
can give Notice of him to_ R. B., Fishmonger in the_ Strand, _he shall
be very well rewarded for his Pains._'
As I am the best Man in the World to keep my own Counsel, and my
Land-lord the Fishmonger not knowing my Name, this Accident of my Life
was never discovered to this very Day.
I am now settled with a Widow-woman, who has a great many Children, and
complies with my Humour in everything. I do not remember that we have
exchang'd a Word together these Five Years; my Coffee comes into my
Chamber every Morning without asking for it; if I want Fire I point to
my Chimney, if Water, to my Bason: Upon which my Land-lady nods, as much
as to say she takes my Meaning, and immediately obeys my Signals. She
has likewise model'd her Family so well, that when her little Boy offers
to pull me by the Coat or prattle in my Face, his eldest Sister
immediately calls him off and bids him not disturb the Gentleman. At my
first entering into the Family, I was troubled with the Civility of
their rising up to me every time I came into the Room; but my Land-lady
observing, that upon these Occasions I always cried Pish and went out
again, has forbidden any such Ceremony to be used in the House; so that
at present I walk into the Kitchin or Parlour without being taken notice
of, or giving any Interruption to the Business or Discourse of the
Family. The Maid will ask her Mistress (tho' I am by) whether the
Gentleman is ready to go to Dinner, as the Mistress (who is indeed an
excellent Housewife) scolds at the Servants as heartily before my Face
as behind my Back. In short, I move up and down the House and enter into
all Companies, with the same Liberty as a Cat or any other domestick
Animal, and am as little suspected of telling anything that I hear or
see.
I remember last Winter there were several young Girls of the
Neighbourhood sitting about the Fire with my Land-lady's Daughters, and
telling Stories of Spirits and Apparitions. Upon my opening the Door the
young Women broke off their Discourse, but my Land-lady's Daughters
telling them that it was no Body but the Gentleman (for that is the Name
which I go by in the Neighbourhood as well as in the Family), they went
on without minding me. I seated myself by the Candle that stood on a
Table at one End of the Room; and pretending to read a Book that I took
out of my Pocket, heard several dreadful Stories of Ghosts as pale as
Ashes that had stood at the Feet of a Bed, or walked over a Churchyard
by Moonlight: And of others that had been conjured into the _Red-Sea_,
for disturbing People's Rest, and drawing their Curtains at Midnight;
with many other old Women's Fables of the like Nature. As one Spirit
raised another, I observed that at the End of every Story the whole
Company closed their Ranks and crouded about the Fire: I took Notice in
particular of a little Boy, who was so attentive to every Story, that I
am mistaken if he ventures to go to bed by himself this Twelvemonth.
Indeed they talked so long, that the Imaginations of the whole Assembly
were manifestly crazed, and I am sure will be the worse for it as long
as they live. I heard one of the Girls, that had looked upon me over her
Shoulder, asking the Company how long I had been in the Room, and
whether I did not look paler than I used to do. This put me under some
Apprehensions that I should be forced to explain my self if I did not
retire; for which Reason I took the Candle in my Hand, and went up into
my Chamber, not without wondering at this unaccountable Weakness in
reasonable Creatures, [that they should [1]] love to astonish and
terrify one another.
Were I a Father, I should take a particular Care to preserve my Children
from these little Horrours of Imagination, which they are apt to
contract when they are young, and are not able to shake off when they
are in Years. I have known a Soldier that has enter'd a Breach,
affrighted at his own Shadow; and look pale upon a little scratching at
his Door, who the Day before had march'd up against a Battery of Cannon.
There are Instances of Persons, who have been terrify'd, even to
Distraction, at the Figure of a Tree or the shaking of a Bull-rush. The
Truth of it is, I look upon a sound Imagination as the greatest Blessing
of Life, next to a clear Judgment and a good Conscience. In the mean
Time, since there are very few whose Minds are not more or less subject
to these dreadful Thoughts and Apprehensions, we ought to arm our selves
against them by the Dictates of Reason and Religion, _to pull the old
Woman out of our Hearts_ (as _Persius_ expresses it in the Motto of my
Paper), and extinguish those impertinent Notions which we imbibed at a
Time that we were not able to judge of their Absurdity. Or if we
believe, as many wise and good Men have done, that there are such
Phantoms and Apparitions as those I have been speaking of, let us
endeavour to establish to our selves an Interest in him who holds the
Reins of the whole Creation in his Hand, and moderates them after such a
Manner, that it is impossible for one Being to break loose upon another
without his Knowledge and Permission.
For my own Part, I am apt to join in Opinion with those who believe that
all the Regions of Nature swarm with Spirits; and that we have
Multitudes of Spectators on all our Actions, when we think our selves
most alone: But instead of terrifying my self with such a Notion, I am
wonderfully pleased to think that I am always engaged with such an
innumerable Society in searching out the Wonders of the Creation, and
joining in the same Consort of Praise and Adoration.
Milton [2] has finely described this mixed Communion of Men and Spirits
in Paradise; and had doubtless his Eye upon a Verse in old _Hesiod_, [3]
which is almost Word for Word the same with his third Line in the
following Passage.
'Nor think, though Men were none,
That Heav'n would want Spectators, God want praise:
Millions of spiritual Creatures walk the Earth
Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep;
All these with ceaseless Praise his Works behold
Both Day and Night. How often from the Steep
Of echoing Hill or Thicket, have we heard
Celestial Voices to the midnight Air,
Sole, or responsive each to others Note,
Singing their great Creator: Oft in bands,
While they keep Watch, or nightly Rounding walk,
With heav'nly Touch of instrumental Sounds,
In full harmonick Number join'd, their Songs
Divide the Night, and lift our Thoughts to Heav'n.'
C.
[Footnote 1: who]
[Footnote 2: 'Paradise Lost', B. IV., lines 675-688.]
[Footnote 3: In Bk. I. of the 'Works and Days,' description of the
Golden Age, when the good after death
Yet still held state on earth, and guardians were
Of all best mortals still surviving there,
Observ'd works just and unjust, clad in air,
And gliding undiscovered everywhere.
'Chapman's Translation'.]
* * * * *
No. 13. Thursday, March 15, 1711. Addison.
'Dic mi hi si fueris tu leo qualis eris?'
Mart.
There is nothing that of late Years has afforded Matter of greater
Amusement to the Town than Signior _Nicolini's_ Combat with a Lion in
the _Hay-Market_ [1] which has been very often exhibited to the general
Satisfaction of most of the Nobility and Gentry in the Kingdom of _Great
Britain_. Upon the first Rumour of this intended Combat, it was
confidently affirmed, and is still believed by many in both Galleries,
that there would be a tame Lion sent from the Tower every Opera Night,
in order to be killed by _Hydaspes_; this Report, tho' altogether
groundless, so universally prevailed in the upper Regions of the
Play-House, that some of the most refined Politicians in those Parts of
the Audience, gave it out in Whisper, that the Lion was a Cousin-German
of the Tyger who made his Appearance in King _William's_ days, and that
the Stage would be supplied with Lions at the public Expence, during the
whole Session. Many likewise were the Conjectures of the Treatment which
this Lion was to meet with from the hands of Signior _Nicolini_; some
supposed that he was to Subdue him in _Recitativo_, as _Orpheus_ used to
serve the wild Beasts in his time, and afterwards to knock him on the
head; some fancied that the Lion would not pretend to lay his Paws upon
the Hero, by Reason of the received Opinion, that a Lion will not hurt a
Virgin. Several, who pretended to have seen the Opera in _Italy_, had
informed their Friends, that the Lion was to act a part in _High Dutch_,
and roar twice or thrice to a thorough Base, before he fell at the Feet
of _Hydaspes_. To clear up a Matter that was so variously reported, I
have made it my Business to examine whether this pretended Lion is
really the Savage he appears to be, or only a Counterfeit.
But before I communicate my Discoveries, I must acquaint the Reader,
that upon my walking behind the Scenes last Winter, as I was thinking on
something else, I accidentally jostled against a monstrous Animal that
extreamly startled me, and, upon my nearer Survey of it, appeared to be
a Lion-Rampant. The Lion, seeing me very much surprized, told me, in a
gentle Voice, that I might come by him if I pleased: 'For' (says he) 'I
do not intend to hurt anybody'. I thanked him very kindly, and passed by
him. And in a little time after saw him leap upon the Stage, and act his
Part with very great Applause. It has been observed by several, that the
Lion has changed his manner of Acting twice or thrice since his first
Appearance; which will not seem strange, when I acquaint my Reader that
the Lion has been changed upon the Audience three several times. The
first Lion was a Candle-snuffer, who being a Fellow of a testy,
cholerick Temper over-did his Part, and would not suffer himself to be
killed so easily as he ought to have done; besides, it was observ'd of
him, that he grew more surly every time he came out of the Lion; and
having dropt some Words in ordinary Conversation, as if he had not
fought his best, and that he suffered himself to be thrown upon his Back
in the Scuffle, and that he would wrestle with Mr 'Nicolini' for what he
pleased, out of his Lion's Skin, it was thought proper to discard him:
And it is verily believed to this Day, that had he been brought upon the
Stage another time, he would certainly have done Mischief. Besides, it
was objected against the first Lion, that he reared himself so high upon
his hinder Paws, and walked in so erect a Posture, that he looked more
like an old Man than a Lion. The second Lion was a Taylor by Trade, who
belonged to the Play-House, and had the Character of a mild and
peaceable Man in his Profession. If the former was too furious, this was
too sheepish, for his Part; insomuch that after a short modest Walk upon
the Stage, he would fall at the first Touch of 'Hydaspes', without
grappling with him, and giving him an Opportunity of showing his Variety
of 'Italian' Tripps: It is said, indeed, that he once gave him a Ripp in
his flesh-colour Doublet, but this was only to make work for himself, in
his private Character of a Taylor. I must not omit that it was this
second Lion [who [2]] treated me with so much Humanity behind the
Scenes. The Acting Lion at present is, as I am informed, a Country
Gentleman, who does it for his Diversion, but desires his Name may be
concealed. He says very handsomely in his own Excuse, that he does not
Act for Gain, that he indulges an innocent Pleasure in it, and that it
is better to pass away an Evening in this manner, than in Gaming and
Drinking: But at the same time says, with a very agreeable Raillery upon
himself, that if his name should be known, the ill-natured World might
call him, _The Ass in the Lion's skin_. This Gentleman's Temper is made
out of such a happy Mixture of the Mild and the Cholerick, that he
out-does both his predecessors, and has drawn together greater Audiences
than have been known in the Memory of Man.
I must not conclude my Narrative, without taking Notice of a groundless
Report that has been raised, to a Gentleman's Disadvantage, of whom I
must declare my self an Admirer; namely, that Signior _Nicolini_ and the
Lion have been seen sitting peaceably by one another, and smoking a Pipe
together, behind the Scenes; by which their common Enemies would
insinuate, it is but a sham Combat which they represent upon the Stage:
But upon Enquiry I find, that if any such Correspondence has passed
between them, it was not till the Combat was over, when the Lion was to
be looked upon as dead, according to the received Rules of the _Drama_.
Besides, this is what is practised every day in _Westminster-Hall_,
where nothing is more usual than to see a Couple of Lawyers, who have
been rearing each other to pieces in the Court, embracing one another as
soon as they are out of it.
I would not be thought, in any part of this Relation, to reflect upon
Signior _Nicolini_, who, in Acting this Part only complies with the
wretched Taste of his Audience; he knows very well, that the Lion has
many more Admirers than himself; as they say of the famous _Equestrian_
Statue on the _Pont-Neuf_ at _Paris_, that more People go to see the
Horse, than the King who sits upon it. On the contrary, it gives me a
just Indignation, to see a Person whose Action gives new Majesty to
Kings, Resolution to Heroes, and Softness to Lovers, thus sinking from
the Greatness of his Behaviour, and degraded into the Character of the
_London_ Prentice. I have often wished that our Tragoedians would copy
after this great Master in Action. Could they make the same use of their
Arms and Legs, and inform their Faces with as significant Looks and
Passions, how glorious would an _English_ Tragedy appear with that
Action which is capable of giving a Dignity to the forced Thoughts, cold
Conceits, and unnatural Expressions of an _Italian_ Opera. In the mean
time, I have related this Combat of the Lion, to show what are at
present the reigning Entertainments of the Politer Part of _Great
Britain_.
Audiences have often been reproached by Writers for the Coarseness of
their Taste, but our present Grievance does not seem to be the Want of a
good Taste, but of Common Sense.
C.
[Footnote 1: The famous Neapolitan actor and singer, Cavalier Nicolino
Grimaldi, commonly called Nicolini, had made his first appearance in an
opera called 'Pyrrhus and Demetrius,' which was the last attempt to
combine English with Italian. His voice was a soprano, but afterwards
descended into a fine contralto, and he seems to have been the finest
actor of his day. Prices of seats at the opera were raised on his coming
from 7s. 6d. to 10s. for pit and boxes, and from 10s. 6d. to 15s. for
boxes on the stage. When this paper was written he had appeared also in
a new opera on 'Almahide,' and proceeded to those encounters with the
lion in the opera of _Hydaspes_, by a Roman composer, Francesco Mancini,
first produced May 23, 1710, which the _Spectator_ has made memorable.
It had been performed 21 times in 1710, and was now reproduced and
repeated four times. Nicolini, as Hydaspes in this opera, thrown naked
into an amphitheatre to be devoured by a lion, is so inspired with
courage by the presence of his mistress among the spectators that (says
Mr Sutherland Edwards in his 'History of the Opera')
'after appealing to the monster in a minor key, and telling him that
he may tear his bosom, but cannot touch his heart, he attacks him in
the relative major, and strangles him.']
[Footnote 2: that]
* * * * *
No. 14. Friday, March 16, 1711. Steele.
... Teque his, Infelix, exue monstris.
Ovid.
I was reflecting this Morning upon the Spirit and Humour of the publick
Diversions Five and twenty Years ago, and those of the present Time; and
lamented to my self, that though in those Days they neglected their
Morality, they kept up their Good Sense; but that the _beau Monde_, at
present, is only grown more childish, not more innocent, than the
former. While I was in this Train of Thought, an odd Fellow, whose Face
I have often seen at the Play-house, gave me the following Letter with
these words, Sir, _The Lyon presents his humble Service to you, and
desired me to give this into your own Hands._
From my Den in the Hay-market, March 15.
SIR
'I have read all your Papers, and have stifled my Resentment against
your Reflections upon Operas, till that of this Day, wherein you
plainly insinuate, that Signior _Grimaldi_ and my self have a
Correspondence more friendly than is consistent with the Valour of his
Character, or the Fierceness of mine. I desire you would, for your own
Sake, forbear such Intimations for the future; and must say it is a
great Piece of Ill-nature in you, to show so great an Esteem for a
Foreigner, and to discourage a _Lyon_ that is your own Country-man.
I take notice of your Fable of the Lyon and Man, but am so equally
concerned in that Matter, that I shall not be offended to which soever
of the Animals the Superiority is given. You have misrepresented me,
in saying that I am a Country-Gentleman, who act only for my
Diversion; whereas, had I still the same Woods to range in which I
once had when I was a Fox-hunter, I should not resign my Manhood for a
Maintenance; and assure you, as low as my Circumstances are at
present, I am so much a Man of Honour, that I would scorn to be any
Beast for Bread but a Lyon.
Yours, &c.
I had no sooner ended this, than one of my Land-lady's Children brought
me in several others, with some of which I shall make up my present
Paper, they all having a Tendency to the same Subject, _viz_. the
Elegance of our present Diversions.
Covent Garden, March 13.
SIR,
'I Have been for twenty Years Under-Sexton of this Parish of _St.
Paul's, Covent-Garden_, and have not missed tolling in to Prayers six
times in all those Years; which Office I have performed to my great
Satisfaction, till this Fortnight last past, during which Time I find
my Congregation take the Warning of my Bell, Morning and Evening, to
go to a Puppett-show set forth by one _Powell_, under the _Piazzas_.
By this Means, I have not only lost my two Customers, whom I used to
place for six Pence a Piece over against Mrs _Rachel Eyebright_, but
Mrs _Rachel_ herself is gone thither also. There now appear among us
none but a few ordinary People, who come to Church only to say their
Prayers, so that I have no Work worth speaking of but on _Sundays_. I
have placed my Son at the _Piazzas_, to acquaint the Ladies that the
Bell rings for Church, and that it stands on the other side of the
_Garden_; but they only laugh at the Child.
I desire you would lay this before all the World, that I may not be
made such a Tool for the Future, and that Punchinello may chuse Hours
less canonical. As things are now, Mr _Powell_ has a full
Congregation, while we have a very thin House; which if you can
Remedy, you will very much oblige,
Sir, Yours, &c.'
The following Epistle I find is from the Undertaker of the Masquerade. [1]
SIR,
'I Have observed the Rules of my Masque so carefully (in not enquiring
into Persons), that I cannot tell whether you were one of the Company
or not last _Tuesday_; but if you were not and still design to come, I
desire you would, for your own Entertainment, please to admonish the
Town, that all Persons indifferently are not fit for this Sort of
Diversion. I could wish, Sir, you could make them understand, that it
is a kind of acting to go in Masquerade, and a Man should be able to
say or do things proper for the Dress in which he appears. We have now
and then Rakes in the Habit of Roman Senators, and grave Politicians
in the Dress of Rakes. The Misfortune of the thing is, that People
dress themselves in what they have a Mind to be, and not what they are
fit for. There is not a Girl in the Town, but let her have her Will in
going to a Masque, and she shall dress as a Shepherdess. But let me
beg of them to read the Arcadia, or some other good Romance, before
they appear in any such Character at my House. The last Day we
presented, every Body was so rashly habited, that when they came to
speak to each other, a Nymph with a Crook had not a Word to say but in
the pert Stile of the Pit Bawdry; and a Man in the Habit of a
Philosopher was speechless, till an occasion offered of expressing
himself in the Refuse of the Tyring-Rooms. We had a Judge that danced
a Minuet, with a Quaker for his Partner, while half a dozen Harlequins
stood by as Spectators: A _Turk_ drank me off two Bottles of Wine, and
a _Jew_ eat me up half a Ham of Bacon. If I can bring my Design to
bear, and make the Maskers preserve their Characters in my Assemblies,
I hope you will allow there is a Foundation laid for more elegant and
improving Gallantries than any the Town at present affords; and
consequently that you will give your Approbation to the Endeavours of,
Sir, Your most obedient humble servant.'
I am very glad the following Epistle obliges me to mention Mr _Powell_ a
second Time in the same Paper; for indeed there cannot be too great
Encouragement given to his Skill in Motions, provided he is under proper
Restrictions.
SIR,
'The Opera at the _Hay-Market_, and that under the little _Piazza_ in
_Covent-Garden_, being at present the Two leading Diversions of the
Town; and Mr _Powell_ professing in his Advertisements to set up
_Whittington and his Cat_ against _Rinaldo and Armida_, my Curiosity
led me the Beginning of last Week to view both these Performances, and
make my Observations upon them.
First therefore, I cannot but observe that Mr _Powell_ wisely
forbearing to give his Company a Bill of Fare before-hand, every Scene
is new and unexpected; whereas it is certain, that the Undertakers of
the _Hay-Market_, having raised too great an Expectation in their
printed Opera, very much disappointed their Audience on the Stage.
The King of _Jerusalem_ is obliged to come from the City on foot,
instead of being drawn in a triumphant Chariot by white Horses, as my
Opera-Book had promised me; and thus, while I expected _Armida's_
Dragons should rush forward towards _Argantes_, I found the Hero was
obliged to go to _Armida_, and hand her out of her Coach. We had also
but a very short Allowance of Thunder and Lightning; tho' I cannot in
this Place omit doing Justice to the Boy who had the Direction of the
Two painted Dragons, and made them spit Fire and Smoke: He flash'd out
his Rosin in such just Proportions, and in such due Time, that I could
not forbear conceiving Hopes of his being one Day a most excellent
Player. I saw, indeed, but Two things wanting to render his whole
Action compleat, I mean the keeping his Head a little lower, and
hiding his Candle.
I observe that Mr _Powell_ and the Undertakers had both the same
Thought, and I think, much about the same time, of introducing Animals
on their several Stages, though indeed with very different Success.
The Sparrows and Chaffinches at the _Hay-Market_ fly as yet very
irregularly over the Stage; and instead of perching on the Trees and
performing their Parts, these young Actors either get into the
Galleries or put out the Candles; whereas Mr _Powell_ has so well
disciplined his Pig, that in the first Scene he and Punch dance a
Minuet together. I am informed however, that Mr _Powell_ resolves to
excell his Adversaries in their own Way; and introduce Larks in his
next Opera of _Susanna_, or _Innocence betrayed_, which will be
exhibited next Week with a Pair of new Elders.' [2]
The Moral of Mr _Powell's_ Drama is violated I confess by Punch's
national Reflections on the _French_, and King _Harry's_ laying his
Leg upon his Queen's Lap in too ludicrous a manner before so great an
Assembly.
As to the Mechanism and Scenary, every thing, indeed, was uniform,
and of a Piece, and the Scenes were managed very dexterously; which
calls on me to take Notice, that at the _Hay-Market_ the Undertakers
forgetting to change their Side-Scenes, we were presented with a
Prospect of the Ocean in the midst of a delightful Grove; and tho' the
Gentlemen on the Stage had very much contributed to the Beauty of the
Grove, by walking up and down between the Trees, I must own I was not
a little astonished to see a well-dressed young Fellow in a
full-bottomed Wigg, appear in the Midst of the Sea, and without any
visible Concern taking Snuff.
I shall only observe one thing further, in which both Dramas agree;
which is, that by the Squeak of their Voices the Heroes of each are
Eunuchs; and as the Wit in both Pieces are equal, I must prefer the
Performance of Mr _Powell_, because it is in our own Language.
I am, &c.'
[Footnote 1: Masquerades took rank as a leading pleasure of the town
under the management of John James Heidegger, son of a Zurich clergyman,
who came to England in 1708, at the age of 50, as a Swiss negotiator. He
entered as a private in the Guards, and attached himself to the service
of the fashionable world, which called him 'the Swiss Count,' and
readily accepted him as leader. In 1709 he made five hundred guineas by
furnishing the spectacle for Motteux's opera of 'Tomyris, Queen of
Scythia'. When these papers were written he was thriving upon the
Masquerades, which he brought into fashion and made so much a rage of
the town that moralists and satirists protested, and the clergy preached
against them. A sermon preached against them by the Bishop of London,
January 6th, 1724, led to an order that no more should take place than
the six subscribed for at the beginning of the month. Nevertheless they
held their ground afterwards by connivance of the government. In 1728,
Heidegger was called in to nurse the Opera, which throve by his bold
puffing. He died, in 1749, at the age of 90, claiming chief honour to
the Swiss for ingenuity.
'I was born,' he said, 'a Swiss, and came to England without a
farthing, where I have found means to gain, L5000 a-year,--and to
spend it. Now I defy the ablest Englishman to go to Switzerland and
either gain that income or spend it there.']
[Footnote 2: The 'History of Susanna' had been an established puppet
play for more than two generations. An old copy of verses on Bartholomew
Fair in the year 1665, describing the penny and twopenny puppet plays,
or, as they had been called in and since Queen Elizabeth's time,
'motions,' says
"Their Sights are so rich, is able to bewitch
The heart of a very fine man-a;
Here's 'Patient Grisel' here, and 'Fair Rosamond' there,
And 'the History of Susanna.'"
Pepys tells of the crowd waiting, in 1667, to see Lady Castlemaine come
out from the puppet play of 'Patient Grisel.'
The Powell mentioned in this essay was a deformed cripple whose
Puppet-Show, called Punch's Theatre, owed its pre-eminence to his own
power of satire. This he delivered chiefly through Punch, the clown of
the puppets, who appeared in all plays with so little respect to
dramatic rule that Steele in the Tatler (for May 17, 1709) represents a
correspondent at Bath, telling how, of two ladies, Prudentia and
Florimel, who would lead the fashion, Prudentia caused Eve in the
Puppet-Show of 'the Creation of the World' to be
'made the most like Florimel that ever was seen,'
and
'when we came to Noah's Flood in the show, Punch and his wife were
introduced dancing in the ark.'
Of the fanatics called French Prophets, who used to assemble in
Moorfields in Queen Anne's reign, Lord Chesterfield remembered that
'the then Ministry, who loved a little persecution well enough, was,
however, so wise as not to disturb their madness, and only ordered one
Powell, the master of a famous Puppet-Show, to make Punch turn
Prophet; which he did so well, that it soon put an end to the prophets
and their prophecies. The obscure Dr Sacheverell's fortune was made by
a parliamentary prosecution' (from Feb. 27 to March 23, 1709-10) 'much
about the same time the French Prophets were totally extinguished by a
Puppet-Show'
(Misc. Works, ed. Maty., Vol. II, p. 523, 555).
This was the Powell who played in Covent Garden during the time of
week-day evening service, and who, taking up Addison's joke against the
opera from No. 5 of the 'Spectator', produced 'Whittington and his Cat'
as a rival to 'Rinaldo and Armida'. [See also a note to No. 31.]]
* * * * *
ADVERTISEMENT.
On the first of April will be performed at the Play-house in the
Hay-market, an Opera call'd 'The Cruelty of Atreus'.
N.B. The Scene wherein Thyestes eats his own Children, is to be
performed by the famous Mr Psalmanazar, [1] lately
arrived from Formosa; The whole Supper
being set to Kettle-drums.
R.
[Footnote 1: George Psalmanazar, who never told his real name and
precise birthplace, was an impostor from Languedoc, and 31 years old in
1711. He had been educated in a Jesuit college, where he heard stories
of the Jesuit missions in Japan and Formosa, which suggested to him how
he might thrive abroad as an interesting native. He enlisted as a
soldier, and had in his character of Japanese only a small notoriety
until, at Sluys, a dishonest young chaplain of Brigadier Lauder's Scotch
regiment, saw through the trick and favoured it, that he might recommend
himself to the Bishop of London for promotion. He professed to have
converted Psalmanazar, baptized him, with the Brigadier for godfather,
got his discharge from the regiment, and launched him upon London under
the patronage of Bishop Compton. Here Psalmanazar, who on his arrival
was between nineteen and twenty years old, became famous in the
religious world. He supported his fraud by invention of a language and
letters, and of a Formosan religion. To oblige the Bishop he translated
the church catechism into 'Formosan,' and he published in 1704 'an
historical and geographical Description of Formosa,' of which a second
edition appeared in the following year. It contained numerous plates of
imaginary scenes and persons. His gross and puerile absurdities in print
and conversation--such as his statements that the Formosans sacrificed
eighteen thousand male infants every year, and that the Japanese studied
Greek as a learned tongue,--excited a distrust that would have been
fatal to the success of his fraud, even with the credulous, if he had
not forced himself to give colour to his story by acting the savage in
men's eyes. But he must really, it was thought, be a savage who fed upon
roots, herbs, and raw flesh. He made, however, so little by the
imposture, that he at last confessed himself a cheat, and got his living
as a well-conducted bookseller's hack for many years before his death,
in 1763, aged 84. In 1711, when this jest was penned, he had not yet
publicly eaten his own children, i.e. swallowed his words and declared
his writings forgeries. In 1716 there was a subscription of L20 or L30 a
year raised for him as a Formosan convert. It was in 1728 that he began
to write that formal confession of his fraud, which he left for
publication after his death, and whereby he made his great public
appearance as Thyestes.
This jest against Psalmanazar was expunged from the first reprint of the
_Spectator_ in 1712, and did not reappear in the lifetime of Steele
or Addison, or until long after it had been amply justified.]
* * * * *
No. 15. Saturday, March 17, 1711. Addison.
'Parva leves capiunt animos ...'
Ovid.
When I was in _France_, I used to gaze with great Astonishment at the
Splendid Equipages and Party-coloured Habits, of that Fantastick Nation.
I was one Day in particular contemplating a Lady that sate in a Coach
adorned with gilded _Cupids_, and finely painted with the Loves of
_Venus_ and _Adonis_. The Coach was drawn by six milk-white Horses, and
loaden behind with the same Number of powder'd Foot-men. Just before the
Lady were a Couple of beautiful Pages, that were stuck among the
Harness, and by their gay Dresses, and smiling Features, looked like the
elder Brothers of the little Boys that were carved and painted in every
Corner of the Coach.
The Lady was the unfortunate _Cleanthe_, who afterwards gave an Occasion
to a pretty melancholy Novel. She had, for several Years, received the
Addresses of a Gentleman, whom, after a long and intimate Acquaintance,
she forsook, upon the Account of this shining Equipage which had been
offered to her by one of great Riches, but a Crazy Constitution. The
Circumstances in which I saw her, were, it seems, the Disguises only of
a broken Heart, and a kind of Pageantry to cover Distress; for in two
Months after, she was carried to her Grave with the same Pomp and
Magnificence: being sent thither partly by the Loss of one Lover, and
partly by the Possession of another.
I have often reflected with my self on this unaccountable Humour in
Woman-kind, of being smitten with every thing that is showy and
superficial; and on the numberless Evils that befall the Sex, from this
light, fantastical Disposition. I my self remember a young Lady that was
very warmly sollicited by a Couple of importunate Rivals, who, for
several Months together, did all they could to recommend themselves, by
Complacency of Behaviour, and Agreeableness of Conversation. At length,
when the Competition was doubtful, and the Lady undetermined in her
Choice, one of the young Lovers very luckily bethought himself of adding
a supernumerary Lace to his Liveries, which had so good an Effect that
he married her the very Week after.
The usual Conversation of ordinary Women, very much cherishes this
Natural Weakness of being taken with Outside and Appearance. Talk of a
new-married Couple, and you immediately hear whether they keep their
Coach and six, or eat in Plate: Mention the Name of an absent Lady, and
it is ten to one but you learn something of her Gown and Petticoat. A
Ball is a great Help to Discourse, and a Birth-Day furnishes
Conversation for a Twelve-month after. A Furbelow of precious Stones, an
Hat buttoned with a Diamond, a Brocade Waistcoat or Petticoat, are
standing Topicks. In short, they consider only the Drapery of the
Species, and never cast away a Thought on those Ornaments of the Mind,
that make Persons Illustrious in themselves, and Useful to others. When
Women are thus perpetually dazling one anothers Imaginations, and
filling their Heads with nothing but Colours, it is no Wonder that they
are more attentive to the superficial Parts of Life, than the solid and
substantial Blessings of it. A Girl, who has been trained up in this
kind of Conversation, is in danger of every Embroidered Coat that comes
in her Way. A Pair of fringed Gloves may be her Ruin. In a word, Lace
and Ribbons, Silver and Gold Galloons, with the like glittering
Gew-Gaws, are so many Lures to Women of weak Minds or low Educations,
and, when artificially displayed, are able to fetch down the most airy
Coquet from the wildest of her Flights and Rambles.
True Happiness is of a retired Nature, and an Enemy to Pomp and Noise;
it arises, in the first place, from the Enjoyment of ones self; and, in
the next, from the Friendship and Conversation of a few select
Companions. It loves Shade and Solitude, and naturally haunts Groves and
Fountains, Fields and Meadows: In short, it feels every thing it wants
within itself, and receives no Addition from Multitudes of Witnesses and
Spectators. On the contrary, false Happiness loves to be in a Crowd, and
to draw the Eyes of the World upon her. She does not receive any
Satisfaction from the Applauses which she gives her self, but from the
Admiration which she raises in others. She flourishes in Courts and
Palaces, Theatres and Assemblies, and has no Existence but when she is
looked upon.
_Aurelia_, tho' a Woman of Great Quality, delights in the Privacy of a
Country Life, and passes away a great part of her Time in her own Walks
and Gardens. Her Husband, who is her Bosom Friend and Companion in her
Solitudes, has been in Love with her ever since he knew her. They both
abound with good Sense, consummate Virtue, and a mutual Esteem; and are
a perpetual Entertainment to one another. Their Family is under so
regular an Oeconomy, in its Hours of Devotion and Repast, Employment and
Diversion, that it looks like a little Common-Wealth within it self.
They often go into Company, that they may return with the greater
Delight to one another; and sometimes live in Town not to enjoy it so
properly as to grow weary of it, that they may renew in themselves the
Relish of a Country Life. By this means they are Happy in each other,
beloved by their Children, adored by their Servants, and are become the
Envy, or rather the Delight, of all that know them.
How different to this is the Life of _Fulvia_! she considers her Husband
as her Steward, and looks upon Discretion and good House-Wifery, as
little domestick Virtues, unbecoming a Woman of Quality. She thinks Life
lost in her own Family, and fancies herself out of the World, when she
is not in the Ring, the Play-House, or the Drawing-Room: She lives in a
perpetual Motion of Body and Restlessness of Thought, and is never easie
in any one Place, when she thinks there is more Company in another. The
missing of an Opera the first Night, would be more afflicting to her
than the Death of a Child. She pities all the valuable Part of her own
Sex, and calls every Woman of a prudent modest retired Life, a
poor-spirited, unpolished Creature. What a Mortification would it be to
_Fulvia_, if she knew that her setting her self to View, is but exposing
her self, and that she grows Contemptible by being Conspicuous.
I cannot conclude my Paper, without observing that _Virgil_ has very
finely touched upon this Female Passion for Dress and Show, in the
Character of _Camilla_; who, tho' she seems to have shaken off all the
other Weaknesses of her Sex, is still described as a Woman in this
Particular. The Poet tells us, that, after having made a great Slaughter
of the Enemy, she unfortunately cast her Eye on a _Trojan_ [who[1]] wore
an embroidered Tunick, a beautiful Coat of Mail, with a Mantle of the
finest Purple. _A Golden Bow_, says he, _Hung upon his Shoulder; his
Garment was buckled with a Golden Clasp, and his Head was covered with
an Helmet of the same shining Mettle_. The _Amazon_ immediately singled
out this well-dressed Warrior, being seized with a Woman's Longing for
the pretty Trappings that he was adorned with:
'... Totumque incauta per agmen
Faemineo praedae et spoliorum ardebat amore.'
This heedless Pursuit after these glittering Trifles, the Poet (by a
nice concealed Moral) represents to have been the Destruction of his
Female Hero.
C.
[Footnote 1: that]
* * * * *
No. 16 Monday, March 19. Addison
Quid verum atque decens curo et rogo, et omnis in hoc sum.
Hor.
I have receiv'd a Letter, desiring me to be very satyrical upon the
little Muff that is now in Fashion; another informs me of a Pair of
silver Garters buckled below the Knee, that have been lately seen at the
Rainbow Coffee-house in _Fleet-street_; [1] a third sends me an heavy
Complaint against fringed Gloves. To be brief, there is scarce an
Ornament of either Sex which one or other of my Correspondents has not
inveighed against with some Bitterness, and recommended to my
Observation. I must therefore, once for all inform my Readers, that it
is not my Intention to sink the Dignity of this my Paper with
Reflections upon Red-heels or Top-knots, but rather to enter into the
Passions of Mankind, and to correct those depraved Sentiments that give
Birth to all those little Extravagancies which appear in their outward
Dress and Behaviour. Foppish and fantastick Ornaments are only
Indications of Vice, not criminal in themselves. Extinguish Vanity in
the Mind, and you naturally retrench the little Superfluities of
Garniture and Equipage. The Blossoms will fall of themselves, when the
Root that nourishes them is destroyed.
I shall therefore, as I have said, apply my Remedies to the first Seeds
and Principles of an affected Dress, without descending to the Dress it
self; though at the same time I must own, that I have Thoughts of
creating an Officer under me to be entituled, _The Censor of small
Wares_, and of allotting him one Day in a Week for the Execution of such
his Office. An Operator of this Nature might act under me with the same
Regard as a Surgeon to a Physician; the one might be employ'd in healing
those Blotches and Tumours which break out in the Body, while the other
is sweetning the Blood and rectifying the Constitution. To speak truly,
the young People of both Sexes are so wonderfully apt to shoot out into
long Swords or sweeping Trains, bushy Head-dresses or full-bottom'd
Perriwigs, with several other Incumbrances of Dress, that they stand in
need of being pruned very frequently [lest they should [2]] be oppressed
with Ornaments, and over-run with the Luxuriency of their Habits. I am
much in doubt, whether I should give the Preference to a Quaker that is
trimmed close and almost cut to the Quick, or to a Beau that is loaden
with such a Redundance of Excrescencies. I must therefore desire my
Correspondents to let me know how they approve my Project, and whether
they think the erecting of such a petty Censorship may not turn to the
Emolument of the Publick; for I would not do any thing of this Nature
rashly and without Advice.
There is another Set of Correspondents to whom I must address my self,
in the second Place; I mean such as fill their Letters with private
Scandal, and black Accounts of particular Persons and Families. The
world is so full of Ill-nature, that I have Lampoons sent me by People
[who [3]] cannot spell, and Satyrs compos'd by those who scarce know how
to write. By the last Post in particular I receiv'd a Packet of Scandal
that is not legible; and have a whole Bundle of Letters in Womens Hands
that are full of Blots and Calumnies, insomuch that when I see the Name
_Caelia, Phillis, Pastora_, or the like, at the Bottom of a Scrawl, I
conclude on course that it brings me some Account of a fallen Virgin, a
faithless Wife, or an amorous Widow. I must therefore inform these my
Correspondents, that it is not my Design to be a Publisher of Intreagues
and Cuckoldoms, or to bring little infamous Stories out of their present
lurking Holes into broad Day light. If I attack the Vicious, I shall
only set upon them in a Body: and will not be provoked by the worst
Usage that I can receive from others, to make an Example of any
particular Criminal. In short, I have so much of a Drawcansir[4] in me,
that I shall pass over a single Foe to charge whole Armies. It is not
_Lais_ or _Silenus_, but the Harlot and the Drunkard, whom I shall
endeavour to expose; and shall consider the Crime as it appears in a
Species, not as it is circumstanced in an Individual. I think it was
_Caligula_ who wished the whole City of _Rome_ had but one Neck, that he
might behead them at a Blow. I shall do out of Humanity what that
Emperor would have done in the Cruelty of his Temper, and aim every
Stroak at a collective Body of Offenders. At the same Time I am very
sensible, that nothing spreads a Paper like private Calumny and
Defamation; but as my Speculations are not under this Necessity, they
are not exposed to this Temptation.
In the next Place I must apply my self to my Party-Correspondents, who
are continually teazing me to take Notice of one anothers Proceedings.
How often am I asked by both Sides, if it is possible for me to be an
unconcerned Spectator of the Rogueries that are committed by the Party
which is opposite to him that writes the Letter. About two Days since I
was reproached with an old Grecian Law, that forbids any Man to stand as
a Neuter or a Looker-on in the Divisions of his Country. However, as I
am very sensible [my [5]] Paper would lose its whole Effect, should it
run into the Outrages of a Party, I shall take Care to keep clear of
every thing [which [6]] looks that Way. If I can any way asswage private
Inflammations, or allay publick Ferments, I shall apply my self to it
with my utmost Endeavours; but will never let my Heart reproach me with
having done any thing towards [encreasing [7]] those Feuds and
Animosities that extinguish Religion, deface Government, and make a
Nation miserable.
What I have said under the three foregoing Heads, will, I am afraid,
very much retrench the Number of my Correspondents: I shall therefore
acquaint my Reader, that if he has started any Hint which he is not able
to pursue, if he has met with any surprizing Story which he does not
know how to tell, if he has discovered any epidemical Vice which has
escaped my Observation, or has heard of any uncommon Virtue which he
would desire to publish; in short, if he has any Materials that can
furnish out an innocent Diversion, I shall promise him my best
Assistance in the working of them up for a publick Entertainment.
This Paper my Reader will find was intended for an answer to a Multitude
of Correspondents; but I hope he will pardon me if I single out one of
them in particular, who has made me so very humble a Request, that I
cannot forbear complying with it.
To the SPECTATOR.
March 15, 1710-11.
SIR,
'I Am at present so unfortunate, as to have nothing to do but to mind
my own Business; and therefore beg of you that you will be pleased to
put me into some small Post under you. I observe that you have
appointed your Printer and Publisher to receive Letters and
Advertisements for the City of _London_, and shall think my self very
much honoured by you, if you will appoint me to take in Letters and
Advertisements for the City of _Westminster_ and the Dutchy of
_Lancaster_. Tho' I cannot promise to fill such an Employment with
sufficient Abilities, I will endeavour to make up with Industry and
Fidelity what I want in Parts and Genius. I am,
Sir,
Your most obedient servant,
Charles Lillie.'
C.
[Footnote 1: The _Rainbow_, near the Inner Temple Gate, in Fleet Street,
was the second Coffee-house opened in London. It was opened about 1656,
by a barber named James Farr, part of the house still being occupied by
the bookseller's shop which had been there for at least twenty years
before. Farr also, at first, combined his coffee trade with the business
of barber, which he had been carrying on under the same roof. Farr was
made rich by his Coffee-house, which soon monopolized the _Rainbow_. Its
repute was high in the _Spectator's_ time; and afterwards, when
coffee-houses became taverns, it lived on as a reputable tavern till the
present day.]
[Footnote 2: that they may not]
[Footnote 3: that]
[Footnote 4: _Drawcansir_ in the Duke of Buckingham's _Rehearsal_
parodies the heroic drama of the Restoration, as by turning the lines in
Dryden's 'Tyrannic Love,'
Spite of myself, I'll stay, fight, love, despair;
And all this I can do, because I dare,
into
I drink, I huff, I strut, look big and stare;
And all this I can do, because I dare.
When, in the last act, a Battle is fought between Foot and great
Hobby-Horses
'At last, Drawcansir comes in and Kills them all on both Sides,'
explaining himself in lines that begin,
Others may boast a single man to kill;
But I the blood of thousands daily spill.]
[Footnote 5: that my]
[Footnote 6: that]
[Footnote 7: the encreasing]
* * * * *
No. 17. Tuesday, March 20, 1711. Steele.
'... Tetrum ante Omnia vultum.'
Juv.
Since our Persons are not of our own Making, when they are such as
appear Defective or Uncomely, it is, methinks, an honest and laudable
Fortitude to dare to be Ugly; at least to keep our selves from being
abashed with a Consciousness of Imperfections which we cannot help, and
in which there is no Guilt. I would not defend an haggard Beau, for
passing away much time at a Glass, and giving Softnesses and Languishing
Graces to Deformity. All I intend is, that we ought to be contented with
our Countenance and Shape, so far, as never to give our selves an
uneasie Reflection on that Subject. It is to the ordinary People, who
are not accustomed to make very proper Remarks on any Occasion, matter
of great Jest, if a Man enters with a prominent Pair of Shoulders into
an Assembly, or is distinguished by an Expansion of Mouth, or Obliquity
of Aspect. It is happy for a Man, that has any of these Oddnesses about
him, if he can be as merry upon himself, as others are apt to be upon
that Occasion: When he can possess himself with such a Chearfulness,
Women and Children, who were at first frighted at him, will afterwards
be as much pleased with him. As it is barbarous in others to railly him
for natural Defects, it is extreamly agreeable when he can Jest upon
himself for them.
Madam _Maintenon's_ first Husband was an Hero in this Kind, and has
drawn many Pleasantries from the Irregularity of his Shape, which he
describes as very much resembling the Letter Z. [1] He diverts himself
likewise by representing to his Reader the Make of an Engine and Pully,
with which he used to take off his Hat. When there happens to be any
thing ridiculous in a Visage, and the Owner of it thinks it an Aspect of
Dignity, he must be of very great Quality to be exempt from Raillery:
The best Expedient therefore is to be pleasant upon himself. Prince
_Harry_ and _Falstaffe_, in _Shakespear_, have carried the Ridicule upon
Fat and Lean as far as it will go. _Falstaffe_ is Humourously called
_Woolsack_, _Bed-presser_, and _Hill of Flesh_; Harry a _Starveling_, an
_Elves-Skin_, a _Sheath_, a _Bowcase_, and a _Tuck_. There is, in
several incidents of the Conversation between them, the Jest still kept
up upon the Person. Great Tenderness and Sensibility in this Point is
one of the greatest Weaknesses of Self-love; for my own part, I am a
little unhappy in the Mold of my Face, which is not quite so long as it
is broad: Whether this might not partly arise from my opening my Mouth
much seldomer than other People, and by Consequence not so much
lengthning the Fibres of my Visage, I am not at leisure to determine.
However it be, I have been often put out of Countenance by the Shortness
of my Face, and was formerly at great Pains in concealing it by wearing
a Periwigg with an high Foretop, and letting my Beard grow. But now I
have thoroughly got over this Delicacy, and could be contented it were
much shorter, provided it might qualify me for a Member of the Merry
Club, which the following Letter gives me an Account of. I have received
it from _Oxford_, and as it abounds with the Spirit of Mirth and good
Humour, which is natural to that Place, I shall set it down Word for
Word as it came to me.
'Most Profound Sir,
Having been very well entertained, in the last of your Speculations
that I have yet seen, by your Specimen upon Clubs, which I therefore
hope you will continue, I shall take the Liberty to furnish you with a
brief Account of such a one as perhaps you have not seen in all your
Travels, unless it was your Fortune to touch upon some of the woody
Parts of the _African_ Continent, in your Voyage to or from _Grand
Cairo_. There have arose in this University (long since you left us
without saying any thing) several of these inferior Hebdomadal
Societies, as _the Punning Club_, _the Witty Club_, and amongst the
rest, the _Handsom Club_; as a Burlesque upon which, a certain merry
Species, that seem to have come into the World in Masquerade, for some
Years last past have associated themselves together, and assumed the
name of the _Ugly Club_: This ill-favoured Fraternity consists of a
President and twelve Fellows; the Choice of which is not confin'd by
Patent to any particular Foundation (as _St. John's_ Men would have
the World believe, and have therefore erected a separate Society
within themselves) but Liberty is left to elect from any School in
_Great Britain_, provided the Candidates be within the Rules of the
Club, as set forth in a Table entituled _The Act of Deformity_. A
Clause or two of which I shall transmit to you.
I. That no Person whatsoever shall be admitted without a visible
Quearity in his Aspect, or peculiar Cast of Countenance; of which the
President and Officers for the time being are to determine, and the
President to have the casting Voice.
II. That a singular Regard be had, upon Examination, to the Gibbosity
of the Gentlemen that offer themselves, as Founders Kinsmen, or to the
Obliquity of their Figure, in what sort soever.
III. That if the Quantity of any Man's Nose be eminently
miscalculated, whether as to Length or Breadth, he shall have a just
Pretence to be elected.
_Lastly_, That if there shall be two or more Competitors for the same
Vacancy, _caeteris paribus_, he that has the thickest Skin to have the
Preference.
Every fresh Member, upon his first Night, is to entertain the Company
with a Dish of Codfish, and a Speech in praise of _AEsop_; [2] whose
portraiture they have in full Proportion, or rather Disproportion,
over the Chimney; and their Design is, as soon as their Funds are
sufficient, to purchase the Heads of _Thersites, Duns Scotus, Scarron,
Hudibras_, and the old Gentleman in _Oldham_, [3] with all the
celebrated ill Faces of Antiquity, as Furniture for the Club Room.
As they have always been profess'd Admirers of the other Sex, so they
unanimously declare that they will give all possible Encouragement to
such as will take the Benefit of the Statute, tho' none yet have
appeared to do it.
The worthy President, who is their most devoted Champion, has lately
shown me two Copies of Verses composed by a Gentleman of his Society;
the first, a Congratulatory Ode inscrib'd to Mrs. _Touchwood_, upon
the loss of her two Fore-teeth; the other, a Panegyrick upon Mrs.
_Andirons_ left Shoulder. Mrs. _Vizard_ (he says) since the Small Pox,
is grown tolerably ugly, and a top Toast in the Club; but I never hear
him so lavish of his fine things, as upon old _Nell Trot_, who
constantly officiates at their Table; her he even adores, and extolls
as the very Counterpart of Mother _Shipton_; in short, _Nell_ (says
he) is one of the Extraordinary Works of Nature; but as for
Complexion, Shape, and Features, so valued by others, they are all
meer Outside and Symmetry, which is his Aversion. Give me leave to
add, that the President is a facetious, pleasant Gentleman, and never
more so, than when he has got (as he calls 'em) his dear Mummers about
him; and he often protests it does him good to meet a Fellow with a
right genuine Grimmace in his Air, (which is so agreeable in the
generality of the _French_ Nation;) and as an Instance of his
Sincerity in this particular, he gave me a sight of a List in his
Pocket-book of all of this Class, who for these five Years have fallen
under his Observation, with himself at the Head of 'em, and in the
Rear (as one of a promising and improving Aspect),
Sir, Your Obliged and Humble Servant,
Alexander Carbuncle.' [Sidenote: Oxford, March 12, 1710.]
R.
[Footnote 1: Abbe Paul Scarron, the burlesque writer, high in court
favour, was deformed from birth, and at the age of 27 lost the use of
all his limbs. In 1651, when 41 years old, Scarron married Frances
d'Aubigne, afterwards Madame de Maintenon; her age was then 16, and she
lived with Scarron until his death, which occurred when she was 25 years
old and left her very poor. Scarron's comparison of himself to the
letter Z is in his address 'To the Reader who has Never seen Me,'
prefixed to his 'Relation Veritable de tout ce qui s'est passe en
l'autre Monde, au combat des Parques et des Poetes, sur la Mort de
Voiture.' This was illustrated with a burlesque plate representing
himself as seen from the back of his chair, and surrounded by a
wondering and mocking world. His back, he said, was turned to the
public, because the convex of his back is more convenient than the
concave of his stomach for receiving the inscription of his name and
age.]
[Footnote 2: The Life of AEsop, ascribed to Planudes Maximus, a monk of
Constantinople in the fourteenth century, and usually prefixed to the
Fables, says that he was 'the most deformed of all men of his age, for
he had a pointed head, flat nostrils, a short neck, thick lips, was
black, pot-bellied, bow-legged, and hump-backed; perhaps even uglier
than Homer's Thersites.']
[Footnote 3: The description of Thersites in the second book of the
Iliad is thus translated by Professor Blackie:
'The most
Ill-favoured wight was he, I ween, of all the Grecian host.
With hideous squint the railer leered: on one foot he was lame;
Forward before his narrow chest his hunching shoulders came;
Slanting and sharp his forehead rose, with shreds of meagre hair.'
Controversies between the Scotists and Thomists, followers of the
teaching of Duns Scotus and Thomas Aquinas, caused Thomist perversion of
the name of Duns into its use as Dunce and tradition of the subtle
Doctor's extreme personal ugliness. Doctor Subtilis was translated The
Lath Doctor.
Scarron we have just spoken of. Hudibras's outward gifts are described
in Part I., Canto i., lines 240-296 of the poem.
'His beard
In cut and dye so like a tile
A sudden view it would beguile:
The upper part thereof was whey;
The nether, orange mix'd with grey.
This hairy meteor, &c.'
The 'old Gentleman in _Oldham_' is Loyola, as described in Oldham's
third satire on the Jesuits, when
'Summon'd together, all th' officious band
The orders of their bedrid, chief attend.'
Raised on his pillow he greets them, and, says Oldham,
'Like Delphic Hag of old, by Fiend possest,
He swells, wild Frenzy heaves his panting breast,
His bristling hairs stick up, his eyeballs glow,
And from his mouth long strakes of drivel flow.']
* * * * *
No. 18. Wednesday, March 21, 1711. Addison.
Equitis quoque jam migravit ab aure voluptas
Omnis ad incertos oculos et gaudia vana.
Hor.
It is my Design in this Paper to deliver down to Posterity a faithful
Account of the Italian Opera, and of the gradual Progress which it has
made upon the English Stage: For there is no Question but our great
Grand-children will be very curious to know the Reason why their
Fore-fathers used to sit together like an Audience of Foreigners in
their own Country, and to hear whole Plays acted before them in a Tongue
which they did not understand.
'Arsinoe' [1] was the first Opera that gave us a Taste of Italian
Musick. The great Success this Opera met with, produced some Attempts of
forming Pieces upon Italian Plans, [which [2]] should give a more
natural and reasonable Entertainment than what can be met with in the
elaborate Trifles of that Nation. This alarm'd the Poetasters and
Fidlers of the Town, who were used to deal in a more ordinary Kind of
Ware; and therefore laid down an establish'd Rule, which is receiv'd as
such to this [Day, [3]] 'That nothing is capable of being well set to
Musick, that is not Nonsense.'
This Maxim was no sooner receiv'd, but we immediately fell to
translating the Italian Operas; and as there was no great Danger of
hurting the Sense of those extraordinary Pieces, our Authors would often
make Words of their own [which[ 4]] were entirely foreign to the Meaning
of the Passages [they [5]] pretended to translate; their chief Care
being to make the Numbers of the English Verse answer to those of the
Italian, that both of them might go to the same Tune. Thus the famous
Song in 'Camilla',
'Barbara si t' intendo, &c.'
Barbarous Woman, yes, I know your Meaning,
which expresses the Resentments of an angry Lover, was translated into
that English lamentation:
'Frail are a Lovers Hopes, &c.'
And it was pleasant enough to see the most refined Persons of the
British Nation dying away and languishing to Notes that were filled with
a Spirit of Rage and Indignation. It happen'd also very frequently,
where the Sense was rightly translated, the necessary Transposition of
Words [which [6]] were drawn out of the Phrase of one Tongue into that
of another, made the Musick appear very absurd in one Tongue that was
very natural in the other. I remember an Italian verse that ran thus
Word for Word,
'And turned my Rage, into Pity;'
which the English for Rhime sake translated,
'And into Pity turn'd my Rage.'
By this Means the soft Notes that were adapted to Pity in the Italian,
fell upon the word Rage in the English; and the angry Sounds that were
turn'd to Rage in the Original, were made to express Pity in the
Translation. It oftentimes happen'd likewise, that the finest Notes in
the Air fell upon the most insignificant Words in the Sentence. I have
known the Word 'And' pursu'd through the whole Gamut, have been
entertained with many a melodious 'The', and have heard the most
beautiful Graces Quavers and Divisions bestowed upon 'Then, For,' and
'From;' to the eternal Honour of our English Particles. [7]
The next Step to our Refinement, was the introducing of Italian Actors
into our Opera; who sung their Parts in their own Language, at the same
Time that our Countrymen perform'd theirs in our native Tongue. The King
or Hero of the Play generally spoke in Italian, and his Slaves answered
him in English: The Lover frequently made his Court, and gained the
Heart of his Princess in a Language which she did not understand. One
would have thought it very difficult to have carry'd on Dialogues after
this Manner, without an Interpreter between the Persons that convers'd
together; but this was the State of the English Stage for about three
Years.
At length the Audience grew tir'd of understanding Half the Opera, and
therefore to ease themselves Entirely of the Fatigue of Thinking, have
so order'd it at Present that the whole Opera is performed in an unknown
Tongue. We no longer understand the Language of our own Stage; insomuch
that I have often been afraid, when I have seen our Italian Performers
chattering in the Vehemence of Action, that they have been calling us
Names, and abusing us among themselves; but I hope, since we do put such
an entire Confidence in them, they will not talk against us before our
Faces, though they may do it with the same Safety as if it [were [8]]
behind our Backs. In the mean Time I cannot forbear thinking how
naturally an Historian, who writes Two or Three hundred Years hence, and
does not know the Taste of his wise Fore-fathers, will make the
following Reflection, 'In the Beginning of the Eighteenth Century, the
Italian Tongue was so well understood in _England_, that Operas were
acted on the publick Stage in that Language.'
One scarce knows how to be serious in the Confutation of an Absurdity
that shews itself at the first Sight. It does not want any great Measure
of Sense to see the Ridicule of this monstrous Practice; but what makes
it the more astonishing, it is not the Taste of the Rabble, but of
Persons of the greatest Politeness, which has establish'd it.
If the Italians have a Genius for Musick above the English, the English
have a Genius for other Performances of a much higher Nature, and
capable of giving the Mind a much nobler Entertainment. Would one think
it was possible (at a Time when an Author lived that was able to write
the 'Phaedra' and 'Hippolitus') [9] for a People to be so stupidly fond
of the Italian Opera, as scarce to give a Third Days Hearing to that
admirable Tragedy? Musick is certainly a very agreeable Entertainment,
but if it would take the entire Possession of our Ears, if it would make
us incapable of hearing Sense, if it would exclude Arts that have a much
greater Tendency to the Refinement of humane Nature: I must confess I
would allow it no better Quarter than 'Plato' has done, who banishes it
out of his Common-wealth.
At present, our Notions of Musick are so very uncertain, that we do not
know what it is we like, only, in general, we are transported with any
thing that is not English: so if it be of a foreign Growth, let it be
Italian, French, or High-Dutch, it is the same thing. In short, our
English Musick is quite rooted out, and nothing yet planted in its
stead.
When a Royal Palace is burnt to the Ground, every Man is at Liberty to
present his Plan for a new one; and tho' it be but indifferently put
together, it may furnish several Hints that may be of Use to a good
Architect. I shall take the same Liberty in a following Paper, of giving
my Opinion upon the Subject of Musick, which I shall lay down only in a
problematical Manner to be considered by those who are Masters in the
Art.
C.
[Footnote 1: 'Arsinoe' was produced at Drury Lane in 1705, with Mrs.
Tofts in the chief character, and her Italian rival, Margarita de
l'Epine, singing Italian songs before and after the Opera. The drama was
an Italian opera translated into English, and set to new music by Thomas
Clayton, formerly band master to William III. No. 20 of the Spectator
and other numbers from time to time advertised 'The Passion of Sappho,
and Feast of Alexander: Set to Musick by Mr. Thomas Clayton, as it is
performed at his house in 'York Buildings.' It was the same Clayton who
set to music Addison's unsuccessful opera of 'Rosamond', written as an
experiment in substituting homegrown literature for the fashionable
nonsense illustrated by Italian music. Thomas Clayton's music to
'Rosamond' was described as 'a jargon of sounds.' 'Camilla', composed by
Marco Antonio Buononcini, and said to contain beautiful music, was
produced at Sir John Vanbrugh's Haymarket opera in 1705, and sung half
in English, half in Italian; Mrs. Tofts singing the part of the
Amazonian heroine in English, and Valentini that of the hero in Italian.]
[Footnote 2: that]
[Footnote 3: very day]
[Footnote 4: that]
[Footnote 5: which they]
[Footnote 6: that]
[Footnote 7: It was fifty years after this that Churchill wrote of
Mossop in the 'Rosciad,'
'In monosyllables his thunders roll,
He, she, it, and, we, ye, they, fright the soul.']
[Footnote 8: was]
[Footnote 9: The Tragedy of 'Phaedra and Hippolitus', acted without
success in 1707, was the one play written by Mr. Edmund Smith, a
merchant's son who had been educated at Westminster School and Christ
Church, Oxford, and who had ended a dissolute life at the age of 42 (in
1710), very shortly before this paper was written. Addison's regard for
the play is warmed by friendship for the unhappy writer. He had, indeed,
written the Prologue to it, and struck therein also his note of war
against the follies of Italian Opera.
'Had Valentini, musically coy,
Shunned Phaedra's Arms, and scorn'd the puffer'd Joy,
It had not momed your Wonder to have seen
An Eunich fly from an enamour'd Queen;
How would it please, should she in English speak,
And could Hippolitus reply in Greek!'
The Epilogue to this play was by Prior. Edmund Smith's relation to
Addison is shown by the fact that, in dedicating the printed edition of
his Phaedra and Hippolitus to Lord Halifax, he speaks of Addison's lines
on the Peace of Ryswick as 'the best Latin Poem since the AEneid.']
* * * * *
No. 19. Thursday, March 22, 1711. Steele.
'Dii benefecerunt, inopis me quodque pusilli
Finxerunt animi, rari et perpauca loquentis.'
Hor.
Observing one Person behold another, who was an utter Stranger to him,
with a Cast of his Eye which, methought, expressed an Emotion of Heart
very different from what could be raised by an Object so agreeable as
the Gentleman he looked at, I began to consider, not without some secret
Sorrow, the Condition of an Envious Man. Some have fancied that Envy has
a certain Magical Force in it, and that the Eyes of the Envious have by
their Fascination blasted the Enjoyments of the Happy. Sir _Francis
Bacon_ says, [1] Some have been so curious as to remark the Times and
Seasons when the Stroke of an Envious Eye is most effectually
pernicious, and have observed that it has been when the Person envied
has been in any Circumstance of Glory and Triumph. At such a time the
Mind of the Prosperous Man goes, as it were, abroad, among things
without him, and is more exposed to the Malignity. But I shall not dwell
upon Speculations so abstracted as this, or repeat the many excellent
Things which one might collect out of Authors upon this miserable
Affection; but keeping in the road of common Life, consider the Envious
Man with relation to these three Heads, His Pains, His Reliefs, and His
Happiness.
The Envious Man is in Pain upon all Occasions which ought to give him
Pleasure. The Relish of his Life is inverted, and the Objects which
administer the highest Satisfaction to those who are exempt from this
Passion, give the quickest Pangs to Persons who are subject to it. All
the Perfections of their Fellow-Creatures are odious: Youth, Beauty,
Valour and Wisdom are Provocations of their Displeasure. What a Wretched
and Apostate State is this! To be offended with Excellence, and to hate
a Man because we Approve him! The Condition of the Envious Man is the
most Emphatically miserable; he is not only incapable of rejoicing in
another's Merit or Success, but lives in a World wherein all Mankind are
in a Plot against his Quiet, by studying their own Happiness and
Advantage. _Will. Prosper_ is an honest Tale-bearer, he makes it his
business to join in Conversation with Envious Men. He points to such an
handsom Young Fellow, and whispers that he is secretly married to a
Great Fortune: When they doubt, he adds Circumstances to prove it; and
never fails to aggravate their Distress, by assuring 'em that to his
knowledge he has an Uncle will leave him some Thousands. _Will._ has
many Arts of this kind to torture this sort of Temper, and delights in
it. When he finds them change colour, and say faintly They wish such a
Piece of News is true, he has the Malice to speak some good or other of
every Man of their Acquaintance.
The Reliefs of the Envious Man are those little Blemishes and
Imperfections, that discover themselves in an Illustrious Character. It
is matter of great Consolation to an Envious Person, when a Man of Known
Honour does a thing Unworthy himself: Or when any Action which was well
executed, upon better Information appears so alter'd in its
Circumstances, that the Fame of it is divided among many, instead of
being attributed to One. This is a secret Satisfaction to these
Malignants; for the Person whom they before could not but admire, they
fancy is nearer their own Condition as soon as his Merit is shared among
others. I remember some Years ago there came out an Excellent Poem,
without the Name of the Author. The little Wits, who were incapable of
Writing it, began to pull in Pieces the supposed Writer. When that would
not do, they took great Pains to suppress the Opinion that it was his.
That again failed. The next Refuge was to say it was overlook'd by one
Man, and many Pages wholly written by another. An honest Fellow, who
sate among a Cluster of them in debate on this Subject, cryed out,
'Gentlemen, if you are sure none of you yourselves had an hand in it,
you are but where you were, whoever writ it.'
But the most usual Succour to the Envious, in cases of nameless Merit in
this kind, is to keep the Property, if possible, unfixed, and by that
means to hinder the Reputation of it from falling upon any particular
Person. You see an Envious Man clear up his Countenance, if in the
Relation of any Man's Great Happiness in one Point, you mention his
Uneasiness in another. When he hears such a one is very rich he turns
Pale, but recovers when you add that he has many Children. In a Word,
the only sure Way to an Envious Man's Favour, is not to deserve it.
But if we consider the Envious Man in Delight, it is like reading the
Seat of a Giant in a Romance; the Magnificence of his House consists in
the many Limbs of Men whom he has slain. If any who promised themselves
Success in any Uncommon Undertaking miscarry in the Attempt, or he that
aimed at what would have been Useful and Laudable, meets with Contempt
and Derision, the Envious Man, under the Colour of hating Vainglory, can
smile with an inward Wantonness of Heart at the ill Effect it may have
upon an honest Ambition for the future.
Having throughly considered the Nature of this Passion, I have made it
my Study how to avoid the Envy that may acrue to me from these my
Speculations; and if I am not mistaken in my self, I think I have a
Genius to escape it. Upon hearing in a Coffee-house one of my Papers
commended, I immediately apprehended the Envy that would spring from
that Applause; and therefore gave a Description of my Face the next Day;
[2] being resolved as I grow in Reputation for Wit, to resign my
Pretensions to Beauty. This, I hope, may give some Ease to those unhappy
Gentlemen, who do me the Honour to torment themselves upon the Account
of this my Paper. As their Case is very deplorable, and deserves
Compassion, I shall sometimes be dull, in Pity to them, and will from
time to time administer Consolations to them by further Discoveries of
my Person. In the meanwhile, if any one says the _Spectator_ has Wit, it
may be some Relief to them, to think that he does not show it in
Company. And if any one praises his Morality they may comfort themselves
by considering that his Face is none of the longest.
R.
[Footnote 1:
We see likewise, the Scripture calleth Envy an Evil Eye: And the
Astrologers call the evil influences of the stars, Evil Aspects; so
that still there seemeth to be acknowledged, in the act of envy, an
ejaculation or irradiation of the eye. Nay some have been so curious
as to note that the times when the stroke or percussion of an envious
eye doth most hurt, are, when the party envied is beheld in glory or
triumph; for that sets an edge upon Envy; And besides, at such times,
the spirits of the persons envied do come forth most into the outward
parts, and so meet the blow.
'Bacon's Essays: IX. Of Envy'.]
[Footnote 2: In No. 17.]
* * * * *
No. 20.] Friday, March 23, 1711. [Steele.
[Greek: Kynos ommat' ech_on ...]
Hom.
Among the other hardy Undertakings which I have proposed to my self,
that of the Correction of Impudence is what I have very much at Heart.
This in a particular Manner is my Province as SPECTATOR; for it is
generally an Offence committed by the Eyes, and that against such as the
Offenders would perhaps never have an Opportunity of injuring any other
Way. The following Letter is a Complaint of a Young Lady, who sets forth
a Trespass of this Kind with that Command of herself as befits Beauty
and Innocence, and yet with so much Spirit as sufficiently expresses her
Indignation. The whole Transaction is performed with the Eyes; and the
Crime is no less than employing them in such a Manner, as to divert the
Eyes of others from the best use they can make of them, even looking up
to Heaven.
'SIR,
There never was (I believe) an acceptable Man, but had some awkward
Imitators. Ever since the SPECTATOR appear'd, have I remarked a kind
of Men, whom I choose to call _Starers_, that without any Regard to
Time, Place, or Modesty, disturb a large Company with their
impertinent Eyes. Spectators make up a proper Assembly for a
Puppet-Show or a Bear-Garden; but devout Supplicants and attentive
Hearers, are the Audience one ought to expect in Churches. I am, Sir,
Member of a small pious congregation near one of the North Gates of
this City; much the greater Part of us indeed are Females, and used to
behave our selves in a regular attentive Manner, till very lately one
whole Isle has been disturbed with one of these monstrous _Starers_:
He's the Head taller than any one in the Church; but for the greater
Advantage of exposing himself, stands upon a Hassock, and commands the
whole Congregation, to the great Annoyance of the devoutest part of
the Auditory; for what with Blushing, Confusion, and Vexation, we can
neither mind the Prayers nor Sermon. Your Animadversion upon this
Insolence would be a great favour to,
Sir,
Your most humble servant,
S. C.
I have frequently seen of this Sort of Fellows; and do not think there
can be a greater Aggravation of an Offence, than that it is committed
where the Criminal is protected by the Sacredness of the Place which he
violates. Many Reflections of this Sort might be very justly made upon
this Kind of Behaviour, but a _Starer_ is not usually a Person to be
convinced by the Reason of the thing; and a Fellow that is capable of
showing an impudent Front before a whole Congregation, and can bear
being a publick Spectacle, is not so easily rebuked as to amend by
Admonitions. If therefore my Correspondent does not inform me, that
within Seven Days after this Date the Barbarian does not at least stand
upon his own Legs only, without an Eminence, my friend WILL. PROSPER has
promised to take an Hassock opposite to him, and stare against him in
Defence of the Ladies. I have given him Directions, according to the
most exact Rules of Opticks, to place himself in such a Manner that he
shall meet his Eyes wherever he throws them: I have Hopes that when
WILL. confronts him, and all the Ladies, in whose Behalf he engages him,
cast kind Looks and Wishes of Success at their Champion, he will have
some Shame, and feel a little of the Pain he has so often put others to,
of being out of Countenance.
It has indeed been Time out of Mind generally remarked, and as often
lamented, that this Family of _Starers_ have infested publick
Assemblies: And I know no other Way to obviate so great an Evil, except,
in the Case of fixing their Eyes upon Women, some Male Friend will take
the Part of such as are under the Oppression of Impudence, and encounter
the Eyes of the _Starers_ wherever they meet them. While we suffer our
Women to be thus impudently attacked, they have no Defence, but in the
End to cast yielding Glances at the _Starers_: And in this Case, a Man
who has no Sense of Shame has the same Advantage over his Mistress, as
he who has no Regard for his own Life has over his Adversary. While the
Generality of the World are fetter'd by Rules, and move by proper and
just Methods, he who has no Respect to any of them, carries away the
Reward due to that Propriety of Behaviour, with no other Merit but that
of having neglected it.
I take an impudent Fellow to be a sort of Out-law in Good-Breeding, and
therefore what is said of him no Nation or Person can be concerned for:
For this Reason one may be free upon him. I have put my self to great
Pains in considering this prevailing Quality which we call Impudence,
and have taken Notice that it exerts it self in a different Manner,
according to the different Soils wherein such Subjects of these
Dominions as are Masters of it were born. Impudence in an Englishman is
sullen and insolent, in a Scotchman it is untractable and rapacious, in
an Irishman absurd and fawning: As the Course of the World now runs, the
impudent Englishman behaves like a surly Landlord, the Scot, like an
ill-received Guest, and the Irishman, like a Stranger who knows he is
not welcome. There is seldom anything entertaining either in the
Impudence of a South or North Briton; but that of an Irishman is always
comick. A true and genuine Impudence is ever the Effect of Ignorance,
without the least Sense of it. The best and most successful _Starers_
now in this Town are of that Nation: They have usually the Advantage of
the Stature mentioned in the above Letter of my Correspondent, and
generally take their Stands in the Eye of Women of Fortune; insomuch
that I have known one of them, three Months after he came from Plough,
with a tolerable good Air lead out a Woman from a Play, which one of our
own Breed, after four years at _Oxford_ and two at the _Temple_, would
have been afraid to look at.
I cannot tell how to account for it, but these People have usually the
Preference to our own Fools, in the Opinion of the sillier Part of
Womankind. Perhaps it is that an English Coxcomb is seldom so obsequious
as an Irish one; and when the Design of pleasing is visible, an
Absurdity in the Way toward it is easily forgiven.
But those who are downright impudent, and go on without Reflection that
they are such, are more to be tolerated, than a Set of Fellows among us
who profess Impudence with an Air of Humour, and think to carry off the
most inexcusable of all Faults in the World, with no other Apology than
saying in a gay Tone, _I put an impudent Face upon the Matter_. No, no
Man shall be allowed the Advantages of Impudence, who is conscious that
he is such: If he knows he is impudent, he may as well be otherwise; and
it shall be expected that he blush, when he sees he makes another do it:
For nothing can attone for the want of Modesty, without which Beauty is
ungraceful, and Wit detestable.
R.
* * * * *
No. 21. Saturday, March 24, 1711. [1] Addison.
'Locus est et phiribus Umbris.'
Hor.
I am sometimes very much troubled, when I reflect upon the three great
Professions of Divinity, Law, and Physick; how they are each of them
over-burdened with Practitioners, and filled with Multitudes of
Ingenious Gentlemen that starve one another.
We may divide the Clergy into Generals, Field-Officers, and Subalterns.
Among the first we may reckon Bishops, Deans, and Arch-Deacons. Among
the second are Doctors of Divinity, Prebendaries, and all that wear
Scarfs. The rest are comprehended under the Subalterns. As for the first
Class, our Constitution preserves it from any Redundancy of Incumbents,
notwithstanding Competitors are numberless. Upon a strict Calculation,
it is found that there has been a great Exceeding of late Years in the
Second Division, several Brevets having been granted for the converting
of Subalterns into Scarf-Officers; insomuch that within my Memory the
price of Lute-string is raised above two Pence in a Yard. As for the
Subalterns, they are not to be numbred. Should our Clergy once enter
into the corrupt Practice of the Laity, by the splitting of their
Free-holds, they would be able to carry most of the Elections in
_England_.
The Body of the Law is no less encumbered with superfluous Members, that
are like _Virgil's_ Army, which he tells us was so crouded, [2] many of
them had not Room to use their Weapons. This prodigious Society of Men
may be divided into the Litigious and Peaceable. Under the first are
comprehended all those who are carried down in Coach-fulls to
_Westminster-Hall_ every Morning in Term-time. _Martial's_ description
of this Species of Lawyers is full of Humour:
'Iras et verba locant.'
Men that hire out their Words and Anger; that are more or less
passionate according as they are paid for it, and allow their Client a
quantity of Wrath proportionable to the Fee which they receive from him.
I must, however, observe to the Reader, that above three Parts of those
whom I reckon among the Litigious, are such as are only quarrelsome in
their Hearts, and have no Opportunity of showing their Passion at the
Bar. Nevertheless, as they do not know what Strifes may arise, they
appear at the Hall every Day, that they may show themselves in a
Readiness to enter the Lists, whenever there shall be Occasion for them.
The Peaceable Lawyers are, in the first place, many of the Benchers of
the several Inns of Court, who seem to be the Dignitaries of the Law,
and are endowed with those Qualifications of Mind that accomplish a Man
rather for a Ruler, than a Pleader. These Men live peaceably in their
Habitations, Eating once a Day, and Dancing once a Year, [3] for the
Honour of their Respective Societies.
Another numberless Branch of Peaceable Lawyers, are those young Men who
being placed at the Inns of Court in order to study the Laws of their
Country, frequent the Play-House more than _Westminster-Hall_, and are
seen in all publick Assemblies, except in a Court of Justice. I shall
say nothing of those Silent and Busie Multitudes that are employed
within Doors in the drawing up of Writings and Conveyances; nor of those
greater Numbers that palliate their want of Business with a Pretence to
such Chamber-Practice.
If, in the third place, we look into the Profession of Physick, we shall
find a most formidable Body of Men: The Sight of them is enough to make
a Man serious, for we may lay it down as a Maxim, that When a Nation
abounds in Physicians, it grows thin of People. Sir _William Temple_ is
very much puzzled to find a Reason why the Northern Hive, as he calls
it, does not send out such prodigious Swarms, and over-run the World
with _Goths_ and _Vandals, as it did formerly; [4] but had that
Excellent Author observed that there were no Students in Physick among
the Subjects of _Thor_ and _Woden_, and that this Science very much
flourishes in the North at present, he might have found a better
Solution for this Difficulty, than any of those he has made use of. This
Body of Men, in our own Country, may be described like the _British_
Army in _Caesar's_ time: Some of them slay in Chariots, and some on Foot.
If the Infantry do less Execution than the Charioteers, it is, because
they cannot be carried so soon into all Quarters of the Town, and
dispatch so much Business in so short a Time. Besides this Body of
Regular Troops, there are Stragglers, who, without being duly listed and
enrolled, do infinite Mischief to those who are so unlucky as to fall
into their Hands.
There are, besides the above-mentioned, innumerable Retainers to
Physick, who, for want of other Patients, amuse themselves with the
stifling of Cats in an Air Pump, cutting up Dogs alive, or impaling of
Insects upon the point of a Needle for Microscopical Observations;
besides those that are employed in the gathering of Weeds, and the Chase
of Butterflies: Not to mention the Cockle-shell-Merchants and
Spider-catchers.
When I consider how each of these Professions are crouded with
Multitudes that seek their Livelihood in them, and how many Men of Merit
there are in each of them, who may be rather said to be of the Science,
than the Profession; I very much wonder at the Humour of Parents, who
will not rather chuse to place their Sons in a way of Life where an
honest Industry cannot but thrive, than in Stations where the greatest
Probity, Learning and Good Sense may miscarry. How many Men are
Country-Curates, that might have made themselves Aldermen of _London_ by
a right Improvement of a smaller Sum of Mony than what is usually laid
out upon a learned Education? A sober, frugal Person, of slender Parts
and a slow Apprehension, might have thrived in Trade, tho' he starves
upon Physick; as a Man would be well enough pleased to buy Silks of one,
whom he would not venture to feel his Pulse. _Vagellius_ is careful,
studious and obliging, but withal a little thick-skull'd; he has not a
single Client, but might have had abundance of Customers. The Misfortune
is, that Parents take a Liking to a particular Profession, and therefore
desire their Sons may be of it. Whereas, in so great an Affair of Life,
they should consider the Genius and Abilities of their Children, more
than their own Inclinations.
It is the great Advantage of a trading Nation, that there are very few
in it so dull and heavy, who may not be placed in Stations of Life which
may give them an Opportunity of making their Fortunes. A well-regulated
Commerce is not, like Law, Physick or Divinity, to be overstocked with
Hands; but, on the contrary, flourishes by Multitudes, and gives
Employment to all its Professors. Fleets of Merchantmen are so many
Squadrons of floating Shops, that vend our Wares and Manufactures in all
the Markets of the World, and find out Chapmen under both the Tropicks.
C.
[Footnote 1: At this time, and until the establishment of New Style,
from 1752, the legal year began in England on the 25th of March, while
legally in Scotland, and by common usage throughout the whole kingdom,
the customary year began on the 1st of January. The _Spectator_
dated its years, according to custom, from the first of January; and so
wrote its first date March 1, 1711. But we have seen letters in it dated
in a way often adopted to avoid confusion (1710-11) which gave both the
legal and the customary reckoning. March 24 being the last day of the
legal year 1710, in the following papers, until December 31, the year is
1711 both by law and custom. Then again until March 24, while usage will
be recognizing a new year, 1712, it will be still for England (but not
for Scotland) 1711 to the lawyers. The reform initiated by Pope Gregory
XIII. in 1582, and not accepted for England and Ireland until 1751, had
been adopted by Scotland from the 1st of January, 1600.
[This reform was necessary to make up for the inadequate shortness of
the previous calendar (relative to the solar year), which had resulted
in some months' discrepancy by the eighteenth century.]]
[Footnote 2: [that]
[Footnote 3: In Dugdale's 'Origines Juridiciales' we read how in the
Middle Temple, on All Saints' Day, when the judges and serjeants who had
belonged to the Inn were feasted,
'the music being begun, the Master of the Revels was twice called. At
the second call, the Reader with the white staff advanced, and began
to lead the measures, followed by the barristers and students in
order; and when one measure was ended, the Reader at the cupboard
called for another.']
[Footnote 4: See Sir W. Temple's Essay on Heroic Virtue, Section 4.
'This part of Scythia, in its whole Northern extent, I take to have
been the vast Hive out of which issued so many mighty swarms of
barbarous nations,' &c. And again, 'Each of these countries was like a
mighty hive, which, by the vigour of propagation and health of
climate, growing too full of people, threw out some new swarm at
certain periods of time, that took wing and sought out some new abode,
expelling or subduing the old inhabitants, and seating themselves in
their rooms, if they liked the conditions of place and commodities of
life they met with; if not, going on till they found some other more
agreeable to their present humours and dispositions.' He attributes
their successes and their rapid propagation to the greater vigour of
life in the northern climates; and the only reason he gives for the
absence of like effects during the continued presence of like causes
is, that Christianity abated their enthusiasm and allayed 'the
restless humour of perpetual wars and actions.']
* * * * *
No. 22. Monday, March 26, 1711. Steele.
'Quodcunque ostendis mihi sic incredulus odi.'
Hor.
The word _Spectator_ being most usually understood as one of the
Audience at Publick Representations in our Theatres, I seldom fail of
many Letters relating to Plays and Operas. But, indeed, there are such
monstrous things done in both, that if one had not been an Eye-witness
of them, one could not believe that such Matters had really been
exhibited. There is very little which concerns human Life, or is a
Picture of Nature, that is regarded by the greater Part of the Company.
The Understanding is dismissed from our Entertainments. Our Mirth is the
Laughter of Fools, and our Admiration the Wonder of Idiots; else such
improbable, monstrous, and incoherent Dreams could not go off as they
do, not only without the utmost Scorn and Contempt, but even with the
loudest Applause and Approbation. But the Letters of my Correspondents
will represent this Affair in a more lively Manner than any Discourse of
my own; I [shall therefore [1] ] give them to my Reader with only this
Preparation, that they all come from Players, [and that the business of
Playing is now so managed that you are not to be surprised when I say]
one or two of [them [2]] are rational, others sensitive and vegetative
Actors, and others wholly inanimate. I shall not place these as I have
named them, but as they have Precedence in the Opinion of their
Audiences.
"Mr. SPECTATOR,
Your having been so humble as to take Notice of the Epistles of other
Animals, emboldens me, who am the wild Boar that was killed by Mrs.
_Tofts_, [3] to represent to you, That I think I was hardly used
in not having the Part of the Lion in 'Hydaspes' given to me. It
would have been but a natural Step for me to have personated that
noble Creature, after having behaved my self to Satisfaction in the
Part above-mention'd: But that of a Lion, is too great a Character for
one that never trod the Stage before but upon two Legs. As for the
little Resistance which I made, I hope it may be excused, when it is
considered that the Dart was thrown at me by so fair an Hand. I must
confess I had but just put on my Brutality; and _Camilla's_
charms were such, that b-holding her erect Mien, hearing her charming
Voice, and astonished with her graceful Motion, I could not keep up to
my assumed Fierceness, but died like a Man.
I am Sir,
Your most humble Servan.,
Thomas Prone."
"Mr. SPECTATOR,
This is to let you understand, that the Play-House is a Representation
of the World in nothing so much as in this Particular, That no one
rises in it according to his Merit. I have acted several Parts of
Household-stuff with great Applause for many Years: I am one of the
Men in the Hangings in the _Emperour of the Moon_; [4] I have
twice performed the third Chair in an English Opera; and have
rehearsed the Pump in the _Fortune-Hunters_. [5] I am now grown
old, and hope you will recommend me so effectually, as that I may say
something before I go off the Stage: In which you will do a great Act
of Charity to
Your most humble servant,
William Serene."
"Mr. SPECTATOR,
Understanding that Mr. _Serene_ has writ to you, and desired to
be raised from dumb and still Parts; I desire, if you give him Motion
or Speech, that you would advance me in my Way, and let me keep on in
what I humbly presume I am a Master, to wit, in representing human and
still Life together. I have several times acted one of the finest
Flower-pots in the same Opera wherein Mr. _Serene_ is a Chair;
therefore, upon his promotion, request that I may succeed him in the
Hangings, with my Hand in the Orange-Trees.
Your humble servant,
Ralph Simple."
"Drury Lane, March 24, 1710-11.
SIR,
I saw your Friend the Templar this Evening in the Pit, and thought he
looked very little pleased with the Representation of the mad Scene of
the _Pilgrim_. I wish, Sir, you would do us the Favour to animadvert
frequently upon the false Taste the Town is in, with Relation to Plays
as well as Operas. It certainly requires a Degree of Understanding to
play justly; but such is our Condition, that we are to suspend our
Reason to perform our Parts. As to Scenes of Madness, you know, Sir,
there are noble Instances of this Kind in _Shakespear_; but then it is
the Disturbance of a noble Mind, from generous and humane Resentments:
It is like that Grief which we have for the decease of our Friends: It
is no Diminution, but a Recommendation of humane Nature, that in such
Incidents Passion gets the better of Reason; and all we can think to
comfort ourselves, is impotent against half what we feel. I will not
mention that we had an Idiot in the Scene, and all the Sense it is
represented to have, is that of Lust. As for my self, who have long
taken Pains in personating the Passions, I have to Night acted only an
Appetite: The part I play'd is Thirst, but it is represented as
written rather by a Drayman than a Poet. I come in with a Tub about
me, that Tub hung with Quart-pots; with a full Gallon at my Mouth. [6]
I am ashamed to tell you that I pleased very much, and this was
introduced as a Madness; but sure it was not humane Madness, for a
Mule or an [ass [7]] may have been as dry as ever I was in my Life.
I am, Sir,
Your most obedient And humble servant."
"From the Savoy in the Strand.
Mr. SPECTATOR,
If you can read it with dry Eyes, I give you this trouble to acquaint
you, that I am the unfortunate King _Latinus_, and believe I am the
first Prince that dated from this Palace since _John_ of _Gaunt_. Such
is the Uncertainty of all human Greatness, that I who lately never
moved without a Guard, am now pressed as a common Soldier, and am to
sail with the first fair Wind against my Brother _Lewis_ of _France_.
It is a very hard thing to put off a Character which one has appeared
in with Applause: This I experienced since the Loss of my Diadem; for,
upon quarrelling with another Recruit, I spoke my Indignation out of
my Part in _recitativo:_
... Most audacious Slave,
Dar'st thou an angry Monarch's Fury brave? [8]
The Words were no sooner out of my Mouth, when a Serjeant knock'd me
down, and ask'd me if I had a Mind to Mutiny, in talking things no
Body understood. You see, Sir, my unhappy Circumstances; and if by
your Mediation you can procure a Subsidy for a Prince (who never
failed to make all that beheld him merry at his Appearance) you will
merit the Thanks of
Your friend,
The King of _Latium_."
[Footnote 1: therefore shall]
[Footnote 2: whom]
[Footnote 3: In the opera of 'Camilla':
Camilla: That Dorindas my Name.
Linco: Well, I knowt, Ill take care.
Camilla: And my Life scarce of late--
Linco: You need not repeat.
Prenesto: Help me! oh help me!
[A wild Boar struck by Prenesto.]
Huntsman: Lets try to assist him.
Linco: Ye Gods, what Alarm!
Huntsman: Quick run to his aid.
[Enter Prenesto: The Boar pursuing him.]
Prenesto: O Heavns! who defends me?
Camilla: My Arm.
[She throws a Dart, and kills the Boar.]
Linco: Dorinda of nothing afraid,
Shes sprightly and gay, a valiant Maid,
And as bright as the Day.
Camilla: Take Courage, Hunter, the Savage is dead.
Katherine Tofts, the daughter of a person in the family of Bishop
Burnet, had great natural charms of voice, person, and manner. Playing
with Nicolini, singing English to his Italian, she was the first of our
'prime donne' in Italian Opera. Mrs. Tofts had made much money when
in 1709 she quitted the stage with disordered intellect; her voice being
then unbroken, and her beauty in the height of its bloom. Having
recovered health, she married Mr. Joseph Smith, a rich patron of arts
and collector of books and engravings, with whom she went to Venice,
when he was sent thither as English Consul. Her madness afterwards
returned, she lived, therefore, says Sir J. Hawkins,
'sequestered from the world in a remote part of the house, and had a
large garden to range in, in which she would frequently walk, singing
and giving way to that innocent frenzy which had seized her in the
earlier part of her life.'
She identified herself with the great princesses whose loves and sorrows
she had represented in her youth, and died about the year 1760.]
[Footnote 4: The 'Emperor of the Moon' is a farce, from the French,
by Mrs. Aphra Behn, first acted in London in 1687. It was originally
Italian, and had run 80 nights in Paris as 'Harlequin I'Empereur dans
le Monde de la Lune'. In Act II. sc. 3,
'The Front of the Scene is only a Curtain or Hangings to be drawn up
at Pleasure.'
Various gay masqueraders, interrupted by return of the Doctor, are
carried by Scaramouch behind the curtain. The Doctor enters in wrath,
vowing he has heard fiddles. Presently the curtain is drawn up and
discovers where Scaramouch has
'plac'd them all in the Hanging in which they make the Figures, where
they stand without Motion in Postures.'
Scaramouch professes that the noise was made by putting up this piece of
Tapestry,
'the best in Italy for the Rareness of the Figures, sir.'
While the Doctor is admiring the new tapestry, said to have been sent
him as a gift, Harlequin, who is
'placed on a Tree in the Hangings, hits him on the 'Head with his
Truncheon.'
The place of a particular figure in the picture, with a hand on a tree,
is that supposed to be aspired to by the 'Spectator's' next
correspondent.]
[Footnote 5: 'The Fortune Hunters, or Two Fools Well Met,' a Comedy
first produced in 1685, was the only work of James Carlile, a player who
quitted the stage to serve King William III. in the Irish Wars, and was
killed at the battle of Aghrim. The crowning joke of the second Act of
'the Fortune Hunters' is the return at night of Mr. Spruce, an Exchange
man, drunk and musical, to the garden-door of his house, when Mrs.
Spruce is just taking leave of young Wealthy. Wealthy hides behind the
pump. The drunken husband, who has been in a gutter, goes to the pump to
clean himself, and seizes a man's arm instead of a pump-handle. He works
it as a pump-handle, and complains that 'the pump's dry;' upon which
Young Wealthy empties a bottle of orange-flower water into his face.]
[Footnote 6: In the third act of Fletcher's comedy of the 'Pilgrim',
Pedro, the Pilgrim, a noble gentleman, has shown to him the interior of
a Spanish mad-house, and discovers in it his mistress Alinda, who,
disguised in a boy's dress, was found in the town the night before a
little crazed, distracted, and so sent thither. The scene here shows
various shapes of madness,
Some of pity
That it would make ye melt to see their passions,
And some as light again.
One is an English madman who cries, 'Give me some drink,'
Fill me a thousand pots and froth 'em, froth 'em!
Upon which a keeper says:
Those English are so malt-mad, there's no meddling with 'em.
When they've a fruitful year of barley there,
All the whole Island's thus.
We read in the text how they had produced on the stage of Drury Lane
that madman on the previous Saturday night; this Essay appearing on the
breakfast tables upon Monday morning.]
[Footnote 7: horse]
[Footnote 8: King Latinus to Turnus in Act II., sc. 10, of the opera of
'Camilla'. Posterity will never know in whose person 'Latinus, king of
Latium and of the Volscians,' abdicated his crown at the opera to take
the Queen of England's shilling. It is the only character to which, in
the opera book, no name of a performer is attached. It is a part of
sixty or seventy lines in tyrant's vein; but all recitative. The King of
Latium was not once called upon for a song.]
* * * * *
ADVERTISEMENT.
For the Good of the Publick.
Within two Doors of the Masquerade lives an eminent Italian Chirurgeon,
arriv'd from the Carnaval at Venice,
of great Experience in private Cures.
Accommodations are provided,
and Persons admitted in their masquing Habits.
He has cur'd since his coming thither, in less than a Fortnight,
Four Scaramouches,
a Mountebank Doctor,
Two Turkish Bassas,
Three Nuns,
and a Morris Dancer.
'Venienti occurrite morbo.'
N. B. Any Person may agree by the Great,
and be kept in Repair by the Year.
The Doctor draws Teeth without pulling off your Mask.
R.
* * * * *
No. 23. Tuesday, March 27, 1711 [1] Addison.
Savit atrox Volscens, nec teli conspicit usquam
Auctorem nec quo se ardens immittere possit.
Vir.
There is nothing that more betrays a base, ungenerous Spirit, than the
giving of secret Stabs to a Man's Reputation. Lampoons and Satyrs, that
are written with Wit and Spirit, are like poison'd Darts, which not only
inflict a Wound, but make it incurable. For this Reason I am very much
troubled when I see the Talents of Humour and Ridicule in the Possession
of an ill-natured Man. There cannot be a greater Gratification to a
barbarous and inhuman Wit, than to stir up Sorrow in the Heart of a
private Person, to raise Uneasiness among near Relations, and to expose
whole Families to Derision, at the same time that he remains unseen and
undiscovered. If, besides the Accomplishments of being Witty and
Ill-natured, a Man is vicious into the bargain, he is one of the most
mischievous Creatures that can enter into a Civil Society. His Satyr
will then chiefly fall upon those who ought to be the most exempt from
it. Virtue, Merit, and every thing that is Praise-worthy, will be made
the Subject of Ridicule and Buffoonry. It is impossible to enumerate the
Evils which arise from these Arrows that fly in the dark, and I know no
other Excuse that is or can be made for them, than that the Wounds they
give are only Imaginary, and produce nothing more than a secret Shame or
Sorrow in the Mind of the suffering Person. It must indeed be confess'd,
that a Lampoon or a Satyr do not carry in them Robbery or Murder; but at
the same time, how many are there that would not rather lose a
considerable Sum of Mony, or even Life it self, than be set up as a Mark
of Infamy and Derision? And in this Case a Man should consider, that an
Injury is not to be measured by the Notions of him that gives, but of
him that receives it.
Those who can put the best Countenance upon the Outrages of this nature
which are offered them, are not without their secret Anguish. I have
often observed a Passage in _Socrates's_ Behaviour at his Death, in a
Light wherein none of the Criticks have considered it. That excellent
Man, entertaining his Friends a little before he drank the Bowl of
Poison with a Discourse on the Immortality of the Soul, at his entering
upon it says, that he does not believe any the most Comick Genius can
censure him for talking upon such a Subject at such a Time. This
passage, I think, evidently glances upon _Aristophanes_, who writ a
Comedy on purpose to ridicule the Discourses of that Divine Philosopher:
[2] It has been observed by many Writers, that _Socrates_ was so little
moved at this piece of Buffoonry, that he was several times present at
its being acted upon the Stage, and never expressed the least Resentment
of it. But, with Submission, I think the Remark I have here made shows
us, that this unworthy Treatment made an impression upon his Mind,
though he had been too wise to discover it.
When _Julius Caesar_ was Lampoon'd by _Catullus_, he invited him to a
Supper, and treated him with such a generous Civility, that he made the
Poet his friend ever after. [3] Cardinal _Mazarine_ gave the same kind
of Treatment to the learned _Quillet_, who had reflected upon his
Eminence in a famous Latin Poem. The Cardinal sent for him, and, after
some kind Expostulations upon what he had written, assured him of his
Esteem, and dismissed him with a Promise of the next good Abby that
should fall, which he accordingly conferr'd upon him in a few Months
after. This had so good an Effect upon the Author, that he dedicated the
second Edition of his Book to the Cardinal, after having expunged the
Passages which had given him offence. [4]
_Sextus Quintus_ was not of so generous and forgiving a Temper. Upon his
being made Pope, the statue of _Pasquin_ was one Night dressed in a very
dirty Shirt, with an Excuse written under it, that he was forced to wear
foul Linnen, because his Laundress was made a Princess. This was a
Reflection upon the Pope's Sister, who, before the Promotion of her
Brother, was in those mean Circumstances that _Pasquin_ represented her.
As this Pasquinade made a great noise in _Rome_, the Pope offered a
Considerable Sum of Mony to any Person that should discover the Author
of it. The Author, relying upon his Holiness's Generosity, as also on
some private Overtures which he had received from him, made the
Discovery himself; upon which the Pope gave him the Reward he had
promised, but at the same time, to disable the Satyrist for the future,
ordered his Tongue to be cut out, and both his Hands to be chopped off.
[5] _Aretine_ [6] is too trite an instance. Every
one knows that all the Kings of Europe were his tributaries. Nay, there
is a Letter of his extant, in which he makes his Boasts that he had laid
the Sophi of _Persia_ under Contribution.
Though in the various Examples which I have here drawn together, these
several great Men behaved themselves very differently towards the Wits
of the Age who had reproached them, they all of them plainly showed that
they were very sensible of their Reproaches, and consequently that they
received them as very great Injuries. For my own part, I would never
trust a Man that I thought was capable of giving these secret Wounds,
and cannot but think that he would hurt the Person, whose Reputation he
thus assaults, in his Body or in his Fortune, could he do it with the
same Security. There is indeed something very barbarous and inhuman in
the ordinary Scriblers of Lampoons. An Innocent young Lady shall be
exposed, for an unhappy Feature. A Father of a Family turn'd to
Ridicule, for some domestick Calamity. A Wife be made uneasy all her
Life, for a misinterpreted Word or Action. Nay, a good, a temperate, and
a just Man, shall be put out of Countenance, by the Representation of
those Qualities that should do him Honour. So pernicious a thing is Wit,
when it is not tempered with Virtue and Humanity.
I have indeed heard of heedless, inconsiderate Writers, that without any
Malice have sacrificed the Reputation of their Friends and Acquaintance
to a certain Levity of Temper, and a silly Ambition of distinguishing
themselves by a Spirit of Raillery and Satyr: As if it were not
infinitely more honourable to be a Good-natured Man than a Wit. Where
there is this little petulant Humour in an Author, he is often very
mischievous without designing to be so. For which Reason I always lay it
down as a Rule, that an indiscreet Man is more hurtful than an
ill-natured one; for as the former will only attack his Enemies, and
those he wishes ill to, the other injures indifferently both Friends and
Foes. I cannot forbear, on this occasion, transcribing a Fable out of
Sir _Roger l'Estrange_, [7] which accidentally lies before me.
'A company of Waggish Boys were watching of Frogs at the side of a
Pond, and still as any of 'em put up their Heads, they'd be pelting
them down again with Stones. _Children_ (says one of the Frogs), _you
never consider that though this may be Play to you, 'tis Death to us_.'
As this Week is in a manner set apart and dedicated to Serious Thoughts,
[8] I shall indulge my self in such Speculations as may not be
altogether unsuitable to the Season; and in the mean time, as the
settling in our selves a Charitable Frame of Mind is a Work very proper
for the Time, I have in this Paper endeavoured to expose that particular
Breach of Charity which has been generally over-looked by Divines,
because they are but few who can be guilty of it.
C.
[Footnote 1: At the top of this paper in a 12mo copy of the _Spectator_,
published in 17l2, and annotated by a contemporary Spanish merchant, is
written, 'The character of Dr Swift.' This proves that the writer of the
note had an ill opinion of Dr Swift and a weak sense of the purport of
what he read. Swift, of course, understood what he read. At this time he
was fretting under the sense of a chill in friendship between himself
and Addison, but was enjoying his _Spectators_. A week before this date,
on the 16th of March, he wrote,
'Have you seen the 'Spectators' yet, a paper that comes out every
day? It is written by Mr. Steele, who seems to have gathered new life
and have a new fund of wit; it is in the same nature as his
'Tatlers', and they have all of them had something pretty. I
believe Addison and he club.'
Then he adds a complaint of the chill in their friendship. A month after
the date of this paper Swift wrote in his journal,
'The 'Spectator' is written by Steele with Addison's help; 'tis
often very pretty.'
Later in the year, in June and September, he records dinner and supper
with his friends of old time, and says of Addison,
'I yet know no man half so agreeable to me as he is.']
[Footnote 2: 'Plato's Phaedon', Sec. 40. The ridicule of Socrates in
'The Clouds' of Aristophanes includes the accusation that he
displaced Zeus and put in his place Dinos,--Rotation. When Socrates, at
the point of death, assents to the request that he should show grounds
for his faith
'that when the man is dead, the soul exists and retains thought and
power,' Plato represents him as suggesting: Not the sharpest censor
'could say that in now discussing such matters, I am dealing with what
does not concern me.']
[Footnote 3: The bitter attack upon Caesar and his parasite Mamurra was
notwithdrawn, but remains to us as No. 29 of the Poems of Catullus. The
doubtful authority for Caesar's answer to it is the statement in the Life
of Julius Caesar by Suetonius that, on the day of its appearance,
Catullus apologized and was invited to supper; Caesar abiding also by his
old familiar friendship with the poet's father. This is the attack said
to be referred to in one of Cicero's letters to Atticus (the last of Bk.
XIII.), in which he tells how Caesar was
'after the eighth hour in the bath; then he heard _De Mamurra_;
did not change countenance; was anointed; lay down; took an emetic.']
[Footnote 4: Claude Quillet published a Latin poem in four books,
entitled '_Callipaedia_, seu de pulchrae prolis habenda ratione,' at
Leyden, under the name of Calvidius Laetus, in 1655. In discussing unions
harmonious and inharmonious he digressed into an invective against
marriages of Powers, when not in accordance with certain conditions; and
complained that France entered into such unions prolific only of ill,
witness her gift of sovereign power to a Sicilian stranger.
'Trinacriis devectus ab oris advena.'
Mazarin, though born at Rome, was of Sicilian family. In the second
edition, published at Paris in 1656, dedicated to the cardinal Mazarin, the
passages complained of were omitted for the reason and with the result told
in the text; the poet getting 'une jolie Abbaye de 400 pistoles,' which he
enjoyed until his death (aged 59) in 1661.]
[Footnote 5: Pasquino is the name of a torso, perhaps of Menelaus
supporting the dead body of Patroclus, in the Piazza di Pasquino in
Rome, at the corner of the Braschi Palace. To this modern Romans affixed
their scoffs at persons or laws open to ridicule or censure. The name of
the statue is accounted for by the tradition that there was in Rome, at
the beginning of the 16th century, a cobbler or tailor named Pasquino,
whose humour for sharp satire made his stall a place of common resort
for the idle, who would jest together at the passers-by. After
Pasquino's death his stall was removed, and in digging up its floor
there was found the broken statue of a gladiator. In this, when it was
set up, the gossips who still gathered there to exercise their wit,
declared that Pasquino lived again. There was a statue opposite to it
called Marforio--perhaps because it had been brought from the Forum of
Mars--with which the statue of Pasquin used to hold witty conversation;
questions affixed to one receiving soon afterwards salted answers on the
other. It was in answer to Marforio's question, Why he wore a dirty
shirt? that Pasquin's statue gave the answer cited in the text, when, in
1585, Pope Sixtus V. had brought to Rome, and lodged there in great
state, his sister Camilla, who had been a laundress and was married to a
carpenter. The Pope's bait for catching the offender was promise of life
and a thousand doubloons if he declared himself, death on the gallows if
his name were disclosed by another.]
[Footnote 6: The satirist Pietro d'Arezzo (Aretino), the most famous
among twenty of the name, was in his youth banished from Arezzo for
satire of the Indulgence trade of Leo XI. But he throve instead of
suffering by his audacity of bitterness, and rose to honour as the
Scourge of Princes, _il Flagello de' Principi_. Under Clement VII.
he was at Rome in the Pope's service. Francis I of France gave him a
gold chain. Emperor Charles V gave him a pension of 200 scudi. He died
in 1557, aged 66, called by himself and his compatriots, though his wit
often was beastly, Aretino 'the divine.']
[Footnote 7: From the 'Fables of AEsop and other eminent Mythologists,
with 'Morals and Reflections. By Sir Roger l'Estrange.' The vol.
contains Fables of AEsop, Barlandus, Anianus, Abstemius, Poggio the
Florentine, Miscellany from a Common School Book, and a Supplement of
Fables out of several authors, in which last section is that of the Boys
and Frogs, which Addison has copied out verbatim. Sir R. l'Estrange had
died in 1704, aged 88.]
[Footnote 8: Easter Day in 1711 fell on the 1st of April.]
* * * * *
No. 24. Wednesday, March 28, 1711. Steele.
Accurrit quidam notus mihi nomine tantum;
Arreptaque manu, Quid agis dulcissime rerum?
Hor.
There are in this Town a great Number of insignificant People, who are
by no means fit for the better sort of Conversation, and yet have an
impertinent Ambition of appearing with those to whom they are not
welcome. If you walk in the _Park_, one of them will certainly joyn with
you, though you are in Company with Ladies; if you drink a Bottle, they
will find your Haunts. What makes [such Fellows [1]] the more burdensome
is, that they neither offend nor please so far as to be taken Notice of
for either. It is, I presume, for this Reason that my Correspondents are
willing by my Means to be rid of them. The two following Letters are
writ by Persons who suffer by such Impertinence. A worthy old
Batchelour, who sets in for his Dose of Claret every Night at such an
Hour, is teized by a Swarm of them; who because they are sure of Room
and good Fire, have taken it in their Heads to keep a sort of Club in
his Company; tho' the sober Gentleman himself is an utter Enemy to such
Meetings.
Mr. SPECTATOR,
'The Aversion I for some Years have had to Clubs in general, gave me a
perfect Relish for your Speculation on that Subject; but I have since
been extremely mortified, by the malicious World's ranking me amongst
the Supporters of such impertinent Assemblies. I beg Leave to state my
Case fairly; and that done, I shall expect Redress from your judicious
Pen.
I am, Sir, a Batchelour of some standing, and a Traveller; my
Business, to consult my own Humour, which I gratify without
controuling other People's; I have a Room and a whole Bed to myself;
and I have a Dog, a Fiddle, and a Gun; they please me, and injure no
Creature alive. My chief Meal is a Supper, which I always make at a
Tavern. I am constant to an Hour, and not ill-humour'd; for which
Reasons, tho' I invite no Body, I have no sooner supp'd, than I have a
Crowd about me of that sort of good Company that know not whither else
to go. It is true every Man pays his Share, yet as they are Intruders,
I have an undoubted Right to be the only Speaker, or at least the
loudest; which I maintain, and that to the great Emolument of my
Audience. I sometimes tell them their own in pretty free Language; and
sometimes divert them with merry Tales, according as I am in Humour. I
am one of those who live in Taverns to a great Age, by a sort of
regular Intemperance; I never go to Bed drunk, but always flustered; I
wear away very gently; am apt to be peevish, but never angry. Mr.
SPECTATOR, if you have kept various Company, you know there is in
every Tavern in Town some old Humourist or other, who is Master of the
House as much as he that keeps it. The Drawers are all in Awe of him;
and all the Customers who frequent his Company, yield him a sort of
comical Obedience. I do not know but I may be such a Fellow as this my
self. But I appeal to you, whether this is to be called a Club,
because so many Impertinents will break in upon me, and come without
Appointment? 'Clinch of Barnet' [2] has a nightly Meeting, and shows
to every one that will come in and pay; but then he is the only Actor.
Why should People miscall things?
If his is allowed to be a Consort, why mayn't mine be a Lecture?
However, Sir, I submit it to you, and am,
Sir,
Your most obedient, Etc.
Tho. Kimbow.'
* * *
Good Sir,
'You and I were press'd against each other last Winter in a Crowd, in
which uneasy Posture we suffer'd together for almost Half an Hour. I
thank you for all your Civilities ever since, in being of my
Acquaintance wherever you meet me. But the other Day you pulled off
your Hat to me in the _Park_, when I was walking with my Mistress: She
did not like your Air, and said she wonder'd what strange Fellows I
was acquainted with. Dear Sir, consider it is as much as my Life is
Worth, if she should think we were intimate; therefore I earnestly
intreat you for the Future to take no Manner of Notice of,
Sir,
Your obliged humble Servant,
Will. Fashion.'
[A like [3]] Impertinence is also very troublesome to the superior and
more intelligent Part of the fair Sex. It is, it seems, a great
Inconvenience, that those of the meanest Capacities will pretend to make
Visits, tho' indeed they are qualify'd rather to add to the Furniture of
the House (by filling an empty Chair) than to the Conversation they come
into when they visit. A Friend of mine hopes for Redress in this Case,
by the Publication of her Letter in my Paper; which she thinks those she
would be rid of will take to themselves. It seems to be written with an
Eye to one of those pert giddy unthinking Girls, who, upon the
Recommendation only of an agreeable Person and a fashionable Air, take
themselves to be upon a Level with Women of the greatest Merit.
Madam,
'I take this Way to acquaint you with what common Rules and Forms
would never permit me to tell you otherwise; to wit, that you and I,
tho' Equals in Quality and Fortune, are by no Means suitable
Companions. You are, 'tis true, very pretty, can dance, and make a
very good Figure in a publick Assembly; but alass, Madam, you must go
no further; Distance and Silence are your best Recommendations;
therefore let me beg of you never to make me any more Visits. You come
in a literal Sense to see one, for you have nothing to say. I do not
say this that I would by any Means lose your Acquaintance; but I would
keep it up with the Strictest Forms of good Breeding. Let us pay
Visits, but never see one another: If you will be so good as to deny
your self always to me, I shall return the Obligation by giving the
same Orders to my Servants. When Accident makes us meet at a third
Place, we may mutually lament the Misfortune of never finding one
another at home, go in the same Party to a Benefit-Play, and smile at
each other and put down Glasses as we pass in our Coaches. Thus we may
enjoy as much of each others Friendship as we are capable: For there
are some People who are to be known only by Sight, with which sort of
Friendship I hope you will always honour,
Madam,
Your most obedient humble Servant,
Mary Tuesday.
P.S. I subscribe my self by the Name of the Day I keep, that my
supernumerary Friends may know who I am.
[Footnote 1: these People]
[Footnote 2: Clinch of Barnet, whose place of performance was at the
corner of Bartholomew Lane, behind the Royal Exchange, imitated,
according to his own advertisement,
'the Horses, the Huntsmen and a Pack of Hounds, a Sham Doctor, an old
Woman, the Bells, the Flute, the Double Curtell (or bassoon) and the
Organ,--all with his own Natural Voice, to the greatest perfection.'
The price of admission was a shilling.]
[Footnote 3: This]
* * * * *
ADVERTISEMENT.
To prevent all Mistakes that may happen
among Gentlemen of the other End of the Town,
who come but once a Week to St. _James's_ Coffee-house,
either by miscalling the Servants,
or requiring such things from them
as are not properly within their respective Provinces;
this is to give Notice,
that _Kidney,_ Keeper of the Book-Debts of the outlying Customers,
and Observer of those who go off without paying,
having resigned that Employment,
is succeeded by _John Sowton_;
to whose Place of Enterer of Messages and first Coffee-Grinder,
_William Bird_ is promoted;
and _Samuel Burdock_ comes as Shooe-Cleaner
in the Room of the said _Bird_.
R.
* * * * *
No. 25. Thursday, March 29, 1711. Addison.
... AEgrescitque medendo.
Vir.
The following Letter will explain it self, and needs no Apology.
SIR,
'I am one of that sickly Tribe who are commonly known by the Name of
_Valetudinarians_, and do confess to you, that I first contracted this
ill Habit of Body, or rather of Mind, by the Study of Physick. I no
sooner began to peruse Books of this Nature, but I found my Pulse was
irregular, and scarce ever read the Account of any Disease that I did
not fancy my self afflicted with. Dr. _Sydenham's_ learned Treatise of
Fevers [1] threw me into a lingring Hectick, which hung upon me all
the while I was reading that excellent Piece. I then applied my self
to the Study of several Authors, who have written upon Phthisical
Distempers, and by that means fell into a Consumption, till at length,
growing very fat, I was in a manner shamed out of that Imagination.
Not long after this I found in my self all the Symptoms of the Gout,
except Pain, but was cured of it by a Treatise upon the Gravel,
written by a very Ingenious Author, who (as it is usual for Physicians
to convert one Distemper into another) eased me of the Gout by giving
me the Stone. I at length studied my self into a Complication of
Distempers; but accidentally taking into my Hand that Ingenious
Discourse written by _Sanctorius_, [2] I was resolved to direct my
self by a Scheme of Rules, which I had collected from his
Observations. The Learned World are very well acquainted with that
Gentleman's Invention; who, for the better carrying on of his
Experiments, contrived a certain Mathematical Chair, which was so
Artifically hung upon Springs, that it would weigh any thing as well
as a Pair of Scales. By this means he discovered how many Ounces of
his Food pass'd by Perspiration, what quantity of it was turned into
Nourishment, and how much went away by the other Channels and
Distributions of Nature.
Having provided myself with this Chair, I used to Study, Eat, Drink,
and Sleep in it; insomuch that I may be said, for these three last
Years, to have lived in a Pair of Scales. I compute my self, when I am
in full Health, to be precisely Two Hundred Weight, falling short of
it about a Pound after a Day's Fast, and exceeding it as much after a
very full Meal; so that it is my continual Employment, to trim the
Ballance between these two Volatile Pounds in my Constitution. In my
ordinary Meals I fetch my self up to two Hundred Weight and [a half
pound [3]]; and if after having dined I find my self fall short of it,
I drink just so much Small Beer, or eat such a quantity of Bread, as
is sufficient to make me weight. In my greatest Excesses I do not
transgress more than the other half Pound; which, for my Healths sake,
I do the first _Monday_ in every Month. As soon as I find my self duly
poised after Dinner, I walk till I have perspired five Ounces and four
Scruples; and when I discover, by my Chair, that I am so far reduced,
I fall to my Books, and Study away three Ounces more. As for the
remaining Parts of the Pound, I keep no account of them. I do not dine
and sup by the Clock, but by my Chair, for when that informs me my
Pound of Food is exhausted I conclude my self to be hungry, and lay in
another with all Diligence. In my Days of Abstinence I lose a Pound
and an half, and on solemn Fasts am two Pound lighter than on other
Days in the Year.
I allow my self, one Night with another, a Quarter of a Pound of Sleep
within a few Grains more or less; and if upon my rising I find that I
have not consumed my whole quantity, I take out the rest in my Chair.
Upon an exact Calculation of what I expended and received the last
Year, which I always register in a Book, I find the Medium to be two
hundred weight, so that I cannot discover that I am impaired one Ounce
in my Health during a whole Twelvemonth. And yet, Sir, notwithstanding
this my great care to ballast my self equally every Day, and to keep
my Body in its proper Poise, so it is that I find my self in a sick
and languishing Condition. My Complexion is grown very sallow, my
Pulse low, and my Body Hydropical. Let me therefore beg you, Sir, to
consider me as your Patient, and to give me more certain Rules to walk
by than those I have already observed, and you will very much oblige
_Your Humble Servant_.'
This Letter puts me in mind of an _Italian_ Epitaph written on the
Monument of a Valetudinarian; 'Stavo ben, ma per star Meglio, sto
qui': Which it is impossible to translate. [4] The Fear of Death often
proves mortal, and sets People on Methods to save their Lives, which
infallibly destroy them. This is a Reflection made by some Historians,
upon observing that there are many more thousands killed in a Flight
than in a Battel, and may be applied to those Multitudes of Imaginary
Sick Persons that break their Constitutions by Physick, and throw
themselves into the Arms of Death, by endeavouring to escape it. This
Method is not only dangerous, but below the Practice of a Reasonable
Creature. To consult the Preservation of Life, as the only End of it, To
make our Health our Business, To engage in no Action that is not part of
a Regimen, or course of Physick, are Purposes so abject, so mean, so
unworthy human Nature, that a generous Soul would rather die than submit
to them. Besides that a continual Anxiety for Life vitiates all the
Relishes of it, and casts a Gloom over the whole Face of Nature; as it
is impossible we should take Delight in any thing that we are every
Moment afraid of losing.
I do not mean, by what I have here said, that I think any one to blame
for taking due Care of their Health. On the contrary, as Cheerfulness of
Mind, and Capacity for Business, are in a great measure the Effects of a
well-tempered Constitution, a Man cannot be at too much Pains to
cultivate and preserve it. But this Care, which we are prompted to, not
only by common Sense, but by Duty and Instinct, should never engage us
in groundless Fears, melancholly Apprehensions and imaginary Distempers,
which are natural to every Man who is more anxious to live than how to
live. In short, the Preservation of Life should be only a secondary
Concern, and the Direction of it our Principal. If we have this Frame of
Mind, we shall take the best Means to preserve Life, without being
over-sollicitous about the Event; and shall arrive at that Point of
Felicity which _Martial_ has mentioned as the Perfection of Happiness,
of neither fearing nor wishing for Death.
In answer to the Gentleman, who tempers his Health by Ounces and by
Scruples, and instead of complying with those natural Sollicitations of
Hunger and Thirst, Drowsiness or Love of Exercise, governs himself by
the Prescriptions of his Chair, I shall tell him a short Fable.
_Jupiter_, says the Mythologist, to reward the Piety of a certain
Country-man, promised to give him whatever he would ask. The Country-man
desired that he might have the Management of the Weather in his own
Estate: He obtained his Request, and immediately distributed Rain, Snow,
and Sunshine, among his several Fields, as he thought the Nature of the
Soil required. At the end of the Year, when he expected to see a more
than ordinary Crop, his Harvest fell infinitely short of that of his
Neighbours: Upon which (says the fable) he desired _Jupiter_ to take the
Weather again into his own Hands, or that otherwise he should utterly
ruin himself.
C.
[Footnote 1: Dr. Thomas Sydenham died in 1689, aged 65. He was the
friend of Boyle and Locke, and has sometimes been called the English
Hippocrates; though brethren of an older school endeavoured, but in
vain, to banish him as a heretic out of the College of Physicians. His
'Methodus Curandi Febres' was first published in 1666.]
[Footnote 2: Sanctorius, a Professor of Medicine at Padua, who died in
1636, aged 75, was the first to discover the insensible perspiration,
and he discriminated the amount of loss by it in experiments upon
himself by means of his Statical Chair. His observations were published
at Venice in 1614, in his 'Ars de Static Medicind', and led to the
increased use of Sudorifics. A translation of Sanctorius by Dr. John
Quincy appeared in 1712, the year after the publication of this essay.
The 'Art of Static Medicine' was also translated into French by M. Le
Breton, in 1722. Dr. John Quincy became well known as the author of a
'Complete Dispensatory' (1719, &c.).]
[Footnote 3: an half]
[Footnote 4: The old English reading is:
'I was well; I would be better; and here I am.']
* * * * *
No. 26. Friday, March 30, 1711. Addison.
'Pallida mors aquo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas
Regumque turres, O beate Sexti,
Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat inchoare longam.
Jam te premet nox, fabulaeque manes,
Et domus exilis Plutonia.'
Hor.
When I am in a serious Humour, I very often walk by my self in
_Westminster_ Abbey; where the Gloominess of the Place, and the Use to
which it is applied, with the Solemnity of the Building, and the
Condition of the People who lye in it, are apt to fill the Mind with a
kind of Melancholy, or rather Thoughtfulness, that is not disagreeable.
I Yesterday pass'd a whole Afternoon in the Church-yard, the Cloysters,
and the Church, amusing myself with the Tomb-stones and Inscriptions
that I met with in those several Regions of the Dead. Most of them
recorded nothing else of the buried Person, but that he was born upon
one Day and died upon another: The whole History of his Life, being
comprehended in those two Circumstances, that are common to all Mankind.
I could not but look upon these Registers of Existence, whether of Brass
or Marble, as a kind of Satyr upon the departed Persons; who had left no
other Memorial of them, but that they were born and that they died. They
put me in mind of several Persons mentioned in the Battles of Heroic
Poems, who have sounding Names given them, for no other Reason but that
they may be killed, and are celebrated for nothing but being knocked on
the Head.
[Greek: Glaukon te, Medonta te, Thersilochon te]--Hom.
_Glaucumque, Medontaque, Thersilochumque_.--Virg.
The Life of these Men is finely described in Holy Writ by _the Path of
an Arrow_ which is immediately closed up and lost. Upon my going into
the Church, I entertain'd my self with the digging of a Grave; and saw
in every Shovel-full of it that was thrown up, the Fragment of a Bone or
Skull intermixt with a kind of fresh mouldering Earth that some time or
other had a Place in the Composition of an humane Body. Upon this, I
began to consider with my self, what innumerable Multitudes of People
lay confus'd together under the Pavement of that ancient Cathedral; how
Men and Women, Friends and Enemies, Priests and Soldiers, Monks and
Prebendaries, were crumbled amongst one another, and blended together in
the same common Mass; how Beauty, Strength, and Youth, with Old-age,
Weakness, and Deformity, lay undistinguish'd in the same promiscuous
Heap of Matter.
After having thus surveyed this great Magazine of Mortality, as it were
in the Lump, I examined it more particularly by the Accounts which I
found on several of the Monuments [which [1]] are raised in every
Quarter of that ancient Fabrick. Some of them were covered with such
extravagant Epitaphs, that, if it were possible for the dead Person to
be acquainted with them, he would blush at the Praises which his Friends
[have [2]] bestowed upon him. There are others so excessively modest,
that they deliver the Character of the Person departed in Greek or
Hebrew, and by that Means are not understood once in a Twelve-month. In
the poetical Quarter, I found there were Poets [who [3]] had no
Monuments, and Monuments [which [4]] had no Poets. I observed indeed
that the present War [5] had filled the Church with many of these
uninhabited Monuments, which had been erected to the Memory of Persons
whose Bodies were perhaps buried in the Plains of _Blenheim_, or in
the Bosom of the Ocean.
I could not but be very much delighted with several modern Epitaphs,
which are written with great Elegance of Expression and Justness of
Thought, and therefore do Honour to the Living as well as to the Dead.
As a Foreigner is very apt to conceive an Idea of the Ignorance or
Politeness of a Nation from the Turn of their publick Monuments and
Inscriptions, they should be submitted to the Perusal of Men of Learning
and Genius before they are put in Execution. Sir _Cloudesly
Shovel's_ Monument has very often given me great Offence: Instead of
the brave rough English Admiral, which was the distinguishing Character
of that plain gallant Man, [6] he is represented on his Tomb by the
Figure of a Beau, dress'd in a long Perriwig, and reposing himself upon
Velvet Cushions under a Canopy of State, The Inscription is answerable
to the Monument; for, instead of celebrating the many remarkable Actions
he had performed in the service of his Country, it acquaints us only
with the Manner of his Death, in which it was impossible for him to reap
any Honour. The _Dutch_, whom we are apt to despise for want of
Genius, shew an infinitely greater Taste of Antiquity and Politeness in
their Buildings and Works of this Nature, than what we meet with in
those of our own Country. The Monuments of their Admirals, which have
been erected at the publick Expence, represent them like themselves; and
are adorned with rostral Crowns and naval Ornaments, with beautiful
Festoons of [Seaweed], Shells, and Coral.
But to return to our Subject. I have left the Repository of our English
Kings for the Contemplation of another Day, when I shall find my Mind
disposed for so serious an Amusement. I know that Entertainments of this
Nature, are apt to raise dark and dismal Thoughts in timorous Minds and
gloomy Imaginations; but for my own Part, though I am always serious, I
do not know what it is to be melancholy; and can, therefore, take a View
of Nature in her deep and solemn Scenes, with the same Pleasure as in
her most gay and delightful ones. By this Means I can improve my self
with those Objects, which others consider with Terror. When I look upon
the Tombs of the Great, every Emotion of Envy dies in me; when I read
the Epitaphs of the Beautiful, every inordinate Desire goes out; when I
meet with the Grief of Parents upon a Tombstone, my Heart melts with
Compassion; when I see the Tomb of the Parents themselves, I consider
the Vanity of grieving for those whom we must quickly follow: When I see
Kings lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival Wits placed
Side by Side, or the holy Men that divided the World with their Contests
and Disputes, I reflect with Sorrow and Astonishment on the little
Competitions, Factions and Debates of Mankind. When I read the several
Dates of the Tombs, of some that dy'd Yesterday, and some six hundred
Years ago, I consider that great Day when we shall all of us be
Contemporaries, and make our Appearance together.
C.
[Footnote 1: that]
[Footnote 2: had]
[Footnote 3: that]
[Footnote 4: that]
[Footnote 5: At the close of the reign of William III. the exiled James
II died, and France proclaimed his son as King of England. William III
thus was enabled to take England with him into the European War of the
Spanish Succession. The accession of Queen Anne did not check the
movement, and, on the 4th of May, 1702, war was declared against France
and Spain by England, the Empire, and Holland. The war then begun had
lasted throughout the Queen's reign, and continued, after the writing of
the _Spectator_ Essays, until the signing of the Peace of Utrecht
on the 11th of April, 1713, which was not a year and a half before the
Queen's death, on the 1st of August, 1714. In this war Marlborough had
among his victories, Blenheim, 1704, Ramilies, 1706, Oudenarde, 1708,
Malplaquet, 1709. At sea Sir George Rooke had defeated the French fleet
off Vigo, in October, 1702, and in a bloody battle off Malaga, in
August, 1704, after his capture of Gibraltar.]
[Footnote 6: Sir Cloudesly Shovel, a brave man of humble birth, who,
from a cabin boy, became, through merit, an admiral, died by the wreck
of his fleet on the Scilly Islands as he was returning from an
unsuccessful attack on Toulon. His body was cast on the shore, robbed of
a ring by some fishermen, and buried in the sand. The ring discovering
his quality, he was disinterred, and brought home for burial in
Westminster Abbey.]
* * * * *
No. 27. Saturday, March 31, 1711. Steele.
'Ut nox longa, quibus Mentitur arnica, diesque
Longa videtur opus debentibus, ut piger Annus
Pupillis, quos dura premit Custodia matrum,
Sic mihi Tarda fluunt ingrataque Tempora, quae spem
Consiliumque morantur agendi Gnaviter, id quod
AEque pauperibus prodest, Locupletibus aque,
AEque neglectum pueris senibusque nocebit.'
Hor.
There is scarce a thinking Man in the World, who is involved in the
Business of it, but lives under a secret Impatience of the Hurry and
Fatigue he suffers, and has formed a Resolution to fix himself, one time
or other, in such a State as is suitable to the End of his Being. You
hear Men every Day in Conversation profess, that all the Honour, Power,
and Riches which they propose to themselves, cannot give Satisfaction
enough to reward them for half the Anxiety they undergo in the Pursuit,
or Possession of them. While Men are in this Temper (which happens very
frequently) how inconsistent are they with themselves? They are wearied
with the Toil they bear, but cannot find in their Hearts to relinquish
it; Retirement is what they want, but they cannot betake themselves to
it; While they pant after Shade and Covert, they still affect to appear
in the most glittering Scenes of Life: But sure this is but just as
reasonable as if a Man should call for more Lights, when he has a mind
to go to Sleep.
Since then it is certain that our own Hearts deceive us in the Love of
the World, and that we cannot command our selves enough to resign it,
tho' we every Day wish our selves disengaged from its Allurements; let
us not stand upon a Formal taking of Leave, but wean our selves from
them, while we are in the midst of them.
It is certainly the general Intention of the greater Part of Mankind to
accomplish this Work, and live according to their own Approbation, as
soon as they possibly can: But since the Duration of Life is so
incertain, and that has been a common Topick of Discourse ever since
there was such a thing as Life it self, how is it possible that we
should defer a Moment the beginning to Live according to the Rules of
Reason?
The Man of Business has ever some one Point to carry, and then he tells
himself he'll bid adieu to all the Vanity of Ambition: The Man of
Pleasure resolves to take his leave at least, and part civilly with his
Mistress: But the Ambitious Man is entangled every Moment in a fresh
Pursuit, and the Lover sees new Charms in the Object he fancy'd he could
abandon. It is, therefore, a fantastical way of thinking, when we
promise our selves an Alteration in our Conduct from change of Place,
and difference of Circumstances; the same Passions will attend us
where-ever we are, till they are Conquered, and we can never live to our
Satisfaction in the deepest Retirement, unless we are capable of living
so in some measure amidst the Noise and Business of the World.
I have ever thought Men were better known, by what could be observed of
them from a Perusal of their private Letters, than any other way. My
Friend, the Clergyman, [1] the other Day, upon serious Discourse with
him concerning the Danger of Procrastination, gave me the following
Letters from Persons with whom he lives in great Friendship and
Intimacy, according to the good Breeding and good Sense of his
Character. The first is from a Man of Business, who is his Convert; The
second from one of whom he conceives good Hopes; The third from one who
is in no State at all, but carried one way and another by starts.
SIR,
'I know not with what Words to express to you the Sense I have of the
high Obligation you have laid upon me, in the Penance you enjoined me
of doing some Good or other, to a Person of Worth, every Day I live.
The Station I am in furnishes me with daily Opportunities of this
kind: and the Noble Principle with which you have inspired me, of
Benevolence to all I have to deal with, quickens my Application in
every thing I undertake. When I relieve Merit from Discountenance,
when I assist a Friendless Person, when I produce conceal'd Worth, I
am displeas'd with my self, for having design'd to leave the World in
order to be Virtuous. I am sorry you decline the Occasions which the
Condition I am in might afford me of enlarging your Fortunes; but know
I contribute more to your Satisfaction, when I acknowledge I am the
better Man, from the Influence and Authority you have over,
SIR,
Your most Oblig'd and Most Humble, Servant,
R. O.'
* * *
SIR,
'I am intirely convinced of the Truth of what you were pleas'd to say
to me, when I was last with you alone. You told me then of the silly
way I was in; but you told me so, as I saw you loved me, otherwise I
could not obey your Commands in letting you know my Thoughts so
sincerely as I do at present. I know _the Creature for whom I resign
so much of my Character_ is all that you said of her; but then the
Trifler has something in her so undesigning and harmless, that her
Guilt in one kind disappears by the Comparison of her Innocence in
another. Will you, Virtuous Men, allow no alteration of Offences? Must
Dear [Chloe [2]] be called by the hard Name you pious People give to
common Women? I keep the solemn Promise I made you, in writing to you
the State of my Mind, after your kind Admonition; and will endeavour
to get the better of this Fondness, which makes me so much her humble
Servant, that I am almost asham'd to Subscribe my self
Yours,
T. D.'
* * *
SIR,
'There is no State of Life so Anxious as that of a Man who does not
live according to the Dictates of his own Reason. It will seem odd to
you, when I assure you that my Love of Retirement first of all brought
me to Court; but this will be no Riddle, when I acquaint you that I
placed my self here with a Design of getting so much Mony as might
enable me to Purchase a handsome Retreat in the Country. At present my
Circumstances enable me, and my Duty prompts me, to pass away the
remaining Part of my Life in such a Retirement as I at first proposed
to my self; but to my great Misfortune I have intirely lost the Relish
of it, and shou'd now return to the Country with greater Reluctance
than I at first came to Court. I am so unhappy, as to know that what I
am fond of are Trifles, and that what I neglect is of the greatest
Importance: In short, I find a Contest in my own Mind between Reason
and Fashion. I remember you once told me, that I might live in the
World, and out of it, at the same time. Let me beg of you to explain
this Paradox more at large to me, that I may conform my Life, if
possible, both to my Duty and my Inclination.
I am,
Your most humble Servant,
R.B.'
R.
[Footnote 1: See the close of No. 2.]
[Footnote 2: blank left]
* * * * *
No. 28. Monday, April 2, 1711. Addison.
'... Neque semper arcum
Tendit Apollo.'
Hor.
I shall here present my Reader with a Letter from a Projector,
concerning a new Office which he thinks may very much contribute to the
Embellishment of the City, and to the driving Barbarity out of our
Streets. [I consider it as a Satyr upon Projectors in general, and a
lively Picture of the whole Art of Modern Criticism. [1]]
SIR,
'Observing that you have Thoughts of creating certain Officers under
you for the Inspection of several petty Enormities which you your self
cannot attend to; and finding daily Absurdities hung out upon the
Sign-Posts of this City, [2] to the great Scandal of Foreigners, as
well as those of our own Country, who are curious Spectators of the
same: I do humbly propose, that you would be pleased to make me your
Superintendant of all such Figures and Devices, as are or shall be
made use of on this Occasion; with full Powers to rectify or expunge
whatever I shall find irregular or defective. For want of such an
Officer, there is nothing like sound Literature and good Sense to be
met with in those Objects, that are everywhere thrusting themselves
out to the Eye, and endeavouring to become visible. Our streets are
filled with blue Boars, black Swans, and red Lions; not to mention
flying Pigs, and Hogs in Armour, with many other Creatures more
extraordinary than any in the desarts of _Africk._ Strange! that one
who has all the Birds and Beasts in Nature to chuse out of, should
live at the Sign of an _Ens Rationis!_
My first Task, therefore, should be, like that of _Hercules_, to clear
the City from Monsters. In the second Place, I would forbid, that
Creatures of jarring and incongruous Natures should be joined together
in the same Sign; such as the Bell and the Neats-tongue, the Dog and
Gridiron. The Fox and Goose may be supposed to have met, but what has
the Fox and the Seven Stars to do together? and when did the Lamb [3]
and Dolphin ever meet, except upon a Sign-Post? As for the Cat and
Fiddle, there is a Conceit in it, and therefore, I do not intend that
anything I have here said should affect it. I must however observe to
you upon this Subject, that it is usual for a young Tradesman, at his
first setting up, to add to his own Sign that of the Master whom he
serv'd; as the Husband, after Marriage, gives a Place to his
Mistress's Arms in his own Coat. This I take to have given Rise to
many of those Absurdities which are committed over our Heads, and, as
I am inform'd, first occasioned the three Nuns and a Hare, which we
see so frequently joined together. I would, therefore, establish
certain Rules, for the determining how far one Tradesman may _give_
the Sign of another, and in what Cases he may be allowed to quarter it
with his own.
In the third place, I would enjoin every Shop to make use of a Sign
which bears some Affinity to the Wares in which it deals. What can be
more inconsistent, than to see a Bawd at the Sign of the Angel, or a
Taylor at the Lion? A Cook should not live at the Boot, nor a
Shoemaker at the roasted Pig; and yet, for want of this Regulation, I
have seen a Goat set up before the Door of a Perfumer, and the French
King's Head at a Sword-Cutler's.
An ingenious Foreigner observes, that several of those Gentlemen who
value themselves upon their Families, and overlook such as are bred to
Trade, bear the Tools of their Fore-fathers in their Coats of Arms. I
will not examine how true this is in Fact: But though it may not be
necessary for Posterity thus to set up the Sign of their Fore-fathers;
I think it highly proper for those who actually profess the Trade, to
shew some such Marks of it before their Doors.
When the Name gives an Occasion for an ingenious Sign-post, I would
likewise advise the Owner to take that Opportunity of letting the
World know who he is. It would have been ridiculous for the ingenious
Mrs. _Salmon_ [4] to have lived at the Sign of the Trout; for which
Reason she has erected before her House the Figure of the Fish that is
her Namesake. Mr. _Bell_ has likewise distinguished himself by a
Device of the same Nature: And here, Sir, I must beg Leave to observe
to you, that this particular Figure of a Bell has given Occasion to
several Pieces of Wit in this Kind. A Man of your Reading must know,
that _Abel Drugger_ gained great Applause by it in the Time of _Ben
Johnson_ [5]. Our Apocryphal Heathen God [6] is also represented by
this Figure; which, in conjunction with the Dragon, make a very
handsome picture in several of our Streets. As for the Bell-Savage,
which is the Sign of a savage Man standing by a Bell, I was formerly
very much puzzled upon the Conceit of it, till I accidentally fell
into the reading of an old Romance translated out of the French; which
gives an Account of a very beautiful Woman who was found in a
Wilderness, and is called in the French _la_ _belle Sauvage_; and is
everywhere translated by our Countrymen the Bell-Savage. This Piece of
Philology will, I hope, convince you that I have made Sign posts my
Study, and consequently qualified my self for the Employment which I
sollicit at your Hands. But before I conclude my Letter, I must
communicate to you another Remark, which I have made upon the Subject
with which I am now entertaining you, namely, that I can give a shrewd
Guess at the Humour of the Inhabitant by the Sign that hangs before
his Door. A surly cholerick Fellow generally makes Choice of a Bear;
as Men of milder Dispositions, frequently live at the Lamb. Seeing a
Punch-Bowl painted upon a Sign near _Charing Cross_, and very
curiously garnished, with a couple of Angels hovering over it and
squeezing a Lemmon into it, I had the Curiosity to ask after the
Master of the House, and found upon Inquiry, as I had guessed by the
little _Agreemens_ upon his Sign, that he was a Frenchman. I know,
Sir, it is not requisite for me to enlarge upon these Hints to a
Gentleman of your great Abilities; so humbly recommending my self to
your Favour and Patronage,
I remain, &c.
I shall add to the foregoing Letter, another which came to me by the
same Penny-Post.
From my own Apartment near Charing-Cross.
Honoured Sir,
'Having heard that this Nation is a great Encourager of Ingenuity, I
have brought with me a Rope-dancer that was caught in one of the Woods
belonging to the Great _Mogul_. He is by Birth a Monkey; but swings
upon a Rope, takes a pipe of Tobacco, and drinks a Glass of Ale, like
any reasonable Creature. He gives great Satisfaction to the Quality;
and if they will make a Subscription for him, I will send for a
Brother of his out of _Holland_, that is a very good Tumbler, and also
for another of the same Family, whom I design for my Merry-Andrew, as
being an excellent mimick, and the greatest Drole in the Country where
he now is. I hope to have this Entertainment in a Readiness for the
next Winter; and doubt not but it will please more than the Opera or
Puppet-Show. I will not say that a Monkey is a better Man than some of
the Opera Heroes; but certainly he is a better Representative of a
Man, than the most artificial Composition of Wood and Wire. If you
will be pleased to give me a good Word in your paper, you shall be
every Night a Spectator at my Show for nothing.
I am, &c.
C.
[Footnote 1: It is as follows.]
[Footnote 2: In the 'Spectator's' time numbering of houses was so rare
that in Hatton's 'New View of London', published in 1708, special
mention is made of the fact that
'in Prescott Street, Goodman's Fields, instead of signs the houses are
distinguished by numbers, as the staircases in the Inns of Court and
Chancery.']
[Footnote 3: sheep]
[Footnote 4: The sign before her Waxwork Exhibition, in Fleet Street,
near Temple Bar, was 'the Golden Salmon.' She had very recently removed
to this house from her old establishment in St. Martin's le Grand.]
[Footnote 5: Ben Jonson's Alchemist having taken gold from Abel Drugger,
the Tobacco Man, for the device of a sign--'a good lucky one, a thriving
sign'--will give him nothing so commonplace as a sign copied from the
constellation he was born under, but says:
'Subtle'. He shall have 'a bel', that's 'Abel';
And by it standing one whose name is 'Dee'
In a 'rug' grown, there's 'D' and 'rug', that's 'Drug':
And right anenst him a dog snarling 'er',
There's 'Drugger', Abel Drugger. That's his sign.
And here's now mystery and hieroglyphic.
'Face'. Abel, thou art made.
'Drugger'. Sir, I do thank his worship.]
[Footnote 6: Bel, in the apocryphal addition to the Book of Daniel,
called 'the 'History of the Destruction of Bel and the Dragon.']
* * * * *
No. 29. Tuesday, April 3, 1711 Addison
... Sermo lingua concinnus utraque
Suavior: ut Chio nota si commista Falerni est.
Hor.
There is nothing that [has] more startled our _English_ Audience, than
the _Italian Recitativo_ at its first Entrance upon the Stage. People
were wonderfully surprized to hear Generals singing the Word of Command,
and Ladies delivering Messages in Musick. Our Country-men could not
forbear laughing when they heard a Lover chanting out a Billet-doux, and
even the Superscription of a Letter set to a Tune. The Famous Blunder in
an old Play of _Enter a King and two Fidlers Solus_, was now no longer
an Absurdity, when it was impossible for a Hero in a Desart, or a
Princess in her Closet, to speak anything unaccompanied with Musical
Instruments.
But however this _Italian_ method of acting in _Recitativo_ might appear
at first hearing, I cannot but think it much more just than that which
prevailed in our _English_ Opera before this Innovation: The Transition
from an Air to Recitative Musick being more natural than the passing
from a Song to plain and ordinary Speaking, which was the common Method
in _Purcell's_ Operas.
The only Fault I find in our present Practice, is the making use of
_Italian Recitative_ with _English_ Words.
To go to the Bottom of this Matter, I must observe, that the Tone, or
(as the _French_ call it) the Accent of every Nation in their ordinary
Speech is altogether different from that of every other People, as we
may see even in the _Welsh_ and _Scotch_, [who [1]] border so near upon
us. By the Tone or Accent, I do not mean the Pronunciation of each
particular Word, but the Sound of the whole Sentence. Thus it is very
common for an _English_ Gentleman, when he hears a _French_ Tragedy, to
complain that the Actors all of them speak in a Tone; and therefore he
very wisely prefers his own Country-men, not considering that a
Foreigner complains of the same Tone in an _English_ Actor.
For this Reason, the Recitative Musick in every Language, should be as
different as the Tone or Accent of each Language; for otherwise, what
may properly express a Passion in one Language, will not do it in
another. Every one who has been long in _Italy_ knows very well, that
the Cadences in the _Recitativo_ bear a remote Affinity to the Tone of
their Voices in ordinary Conversation, or to speak more properly, are
only the Accents of their Language made more Musical and Tuneful.
Thus the Notes of Interrogation, or Admiration, in the _Italian_ Musick
(if one may so call them) which resemble their Accents in Discourse on
such Occasions, are not unlike the ordinary Tones of an _English_ Voice
when we are angry; insomuch that I have often seen our Audiences
extreamly mistaken as to what has been doing upon the Stage, and
expecting to see the Hero knock down his Messenger, when he has been
[asking [2]] him a Question, or fancying that he quarrels with his
Friend, when he only bids him Good-morrow.
For this Reason the _Italian_ Artists cannot agree with our _English_
Musicians in admiring _Purcell's_ Compositions, [3] and thinking his
Tunes so wonderfully adapted to his Words, because both Nations do not
always express the same Passions by the same Sounds.
I am therefore humbly of Opinion, that an _English_ Composer should not
follow the _Italian_ Recitative too servilely, but make use of many
gentle Deviations from it, in Compliance with his own Native Language.
He may Copy out of it all the lulling Softness and _Dying Falls_ (as
_Shakespear_ calls them), but should still remember that he ought to
accommodate himself to an _English_ Audience, and by humouring the Tone
of our Voices in ordinary Conversation, have the same Regard to the
Accent of his own Language, as those Persons had to theirs whom he
professes to imitate. It is observed, that several of the singing Birds
of our own Country learn to sweeten their Voices, and mellow the
Harshness of their natural Notes, by practising under those that come
from warmer Climates. In the same manner, I would allow the _Italian_
Opera to lend our _English_ Musick as much as may grace and soften it,
but never entirely to annihilate and destroy it. Let the Infusion be as
strong as you please, but still let the Subject Matter of it be
_English_.
A Composer should fit his Musick to the Genius of the People, and
consider that the Delicacy of Hearing, and Taste of Harmony, has been
formed upon those Sounds which every Country abounds with: In short,
that Musick is of a Relative Nature, and what is Harmony to one Ear, may
be Dissonance to another.
The same Observations which I have made upon the Recitative part of
Musick may be applied to all our Songs and Airs in general.
Signior _Baptist Lully_ [4] acted like a Man of Sense in this
Particular. He found the _French_ Musick extreamly defective, and very
often barbarous: However, knowing the Genius of the People, the Humour
of their Language, and the prejudiced Ears [he [5]] had to deal with he
did not pretend to extirpate the _French_ Musick, and plant the
_Italian_ in its stead; but only to Cultivate and Civilize it with
innumerable Graces and Modulations which he borrow'd from the _Italian_.
By this means the _French_ Musick is now perfect in its kind; and when
you say it is not so good as the _Italian_, you only mean that it does
not please you so well; for there is [scarce [6]] a _Frenchman_ who
would not wonder to hear you give the _Italian_ such a Preference. The
Musick of the _French_ is indeed very properly adapted to their
Pronunciation and Accent, as their whole Opera wonderfully favours the
Genius of such a gay airy People. The Chorus in which that Opera
abounds, gives the Parterre frequent Opportunities of joining in Consort
with the Stage. This Inclination of the Audience to Sing along with the
Actors, so prevails with them, that I have sometimes known the Performer
on the Stage do no more in a Celebrated Song, than the Clerk of a Parish
Church, who serves only to raise the Psalm, and is afterwards drown'd in
the Musick of the Congregation. Every Actor that comes on the Stage is a
Beau. The Queens and Heroines are so Painted, that they appear as Ruddy
and Cherry-cheek'd as Milk-maids. The Shepherds are all Embroider'd, and
acquit themselves in a Ball better than our _English_ Dancing Masters. I
have seen a couple of Rivers appear in red Stockings; and _Alpheus_,
instead of having his Head covered with Sedge and Bull-Rushes, making
Love in a fair full-bottomed Perriwig, and a Plume of Feathers; but with
a Voice so full of Shakes and Quavers that I should have thought the
Murmurs of a Country Brook the much more agreeable Musick.
I remember the last Opera I saw in that merry Nation was the Rape of
_Proserpine_, where _Pluto_, to make the more tempting Figure, puts
himself in a _French_ Equipage, and brings _Ascalaphus_ along with him
as his _Valet de Chambre_. This is what we call Folly and Impertinence;
but what the _French_ look upon as Gay and Polite.
I shall add no more to what I have here offer'd, than that Musick,
Architecture, and Painting, as well as Poetry, and Oratory, are to
deduce their Laws and Rules from the general Sense and Taste of Mankind,
and not from the Principles of those Arts themselves; or, in other
Words, the Taste is not to conform to the Art, but the Art to the Taste.
Music is not design'd to please only Chromatick Ears, but all that are
capable ef distinguishing harsh from disagreeable Notes. A Man of an
ordinary Ear is a Judge whether a Passion is express'd in proper Sounds,
and whether the Melody of those Sounds be more or less pleasing. [7]
C.
[Footnote 1: that]
[Footnote 2: only asking]
[Footnote 3: Henry Purcell died of consumption in 1695, aged 37.
'He was,' says Mr. Hullah, in his Lectures on the History of Modern
Music, 'the first Englishman to demonstrate the possibility of a
national opera. No Englishman of the last century succeeded in
following Purcell's lead into this domain of art; none, indeed, would
seem to have understood in what his excellence consisted, or how his
success was attained. His dramatic music exhibits the same qualities
which had already made the success of Lulli. ... For some years after
Purcell's death his compositions, of whatever kind, were the chief, if
not the only, music heard in England. His reign might have lasted
longer, but for the advent of a musician who, though not perhaps more
highly gifted, had enjoyed immeasurably greater opportunities of
cultivating his gifts,'
Handel, who had also the advantage of being born thirty years later.]
[Footnote 4: John Baptist Lulli, a Florentine, died in 1687, aged 53. In
his youth he was an under-scullion in the kitchen of Madame de
Montpensier, niece to Louis XIV. The discovery of his musical genius led
to his becoming the King's Superintendent of Music, and one of the most
influential composers that has ever lived. He composed the occasional
music for Moliere's comedies, besides about twenty lyric tragedies;
which succeeded beyond all others in France, not only because of his
dramatic genius, which enabled him to give to the persons of these
operas a musical language fitted to their characters and expressive of
the situations in which they were placed; but also, says Mr. Hullah,
because
'Lulli being the first modern composer who caught the French ear, was
the means, to a great extent, of forming the modern French taste.'
His operas kept the stage for more than a century.]
[Footnote 5: that he]
[Footnote 6: not]
* * * * *
No. 30. [1] Wednesday, April 4, 1711. Steele.
'Si, Mimnermus uti censet, sine amore Focisque
Nil est Jucundum; vivas in amore Jocisque.'
Hor.
One common Calamity makes Men extremely affect each other, tho' they
differ in every other Particular. The Passion of Love is the most
general Concern among Men; and I am glad to hear by my last Advices from
_Oxford_, that there are a Set of Sighers in that University, who have
erected themselves into a Society in honour of that tender Passion.
These Gentlemen are of that Sort of Inamoratos, who are not so very much
lost to common Sense, but that they understand the Folly they are guilty
of; and for that Reason separate themselves from all other Company,
because they will enjoy the Pleasure of talking incoherently, without
being ridiculous to any but each other. When a Man comes into the Club,
he is not obliged to make any Introduction to his Discourse, but at
once, as he is seating himself in his Chair, speaks in the Thread of his
own Thoughts, 'She gave me a very obliging Glance, She Never look'd so
well in her Life as this Evening,' or the like Reflection, without
Regard to any other Members of the Society; for in this Assembly they do
not meet to talk to each other, but every Man claims the full Liberty of
talking to himself. Instead of Snuff-boxes and Canes, which are the
usual Helps to Discourse with other young Fellows, these have each some
Piece of Ribbon, a broken Fan, or an old Girdle, which they play with
while they talk of the fair Person remember'd by each respective Token.
According to the Representation of the Matter from my Letters, the
Company appear like so many Players rehearsing behind the Scenes; one is
sighing and lamenting his Destiny in beseeching Terms, another declaring
he will break his Chain, and another in dumb-Show, striving to express
his Passion by his Gesture. It is very ordinary in the Assembly for one
of a sudden to rise and make a Discourse concerning his Passion in
general, and describe the Temper of his Mind in such a Manner, as that
the whole Company shall join in the Description, and feel the Force of
it. In this Case, if any Man has declared the Violence of his Flame in
more pathetick Terms, he is made President for that Night, out of
respect to his superior Passion.
We had some Years ago in this Town a Set of People who met and dressed
like Lovers, and were distinguished by the Name of the _Fringe-Glove
Club_; but they were Persons of such moderate Intellects even before
they were impaired by their Passion, that their Irregularities could not
furnish sufficient Variety of Folly to afford daily new Impertinencies;
by which Means that Institution dropp'd. These Fellows could express
their Passion in nothing but their Dress; but the _Oxonians_ are
Fantastical now they are Lovers, in proportion to their Learning and
Understanding before they became such. The Thoughts of the ancient Poets
on this agreeable Phrenzy, are translated in honour of some modern
Beauty; and _Chloris_ is won to Day, by the same Compliment that was
made to _Lesbia_ a thousand Years ago. But as far as I can learn, the
Patron of the Club is the renowned Don _Quixote_. The Adventures of that
gentle Knight are frequently mention'd in the Society, under the colour
of Laughing at the Passion and themselves: But at the same Time, tho'
they are sensible of the Extravagancies of that unhappy Warrior, they do
not observe, that to turn all the Reading of the best and wisest
Writings into Rhapsodies of Love, is a Phrenzy no less diverting than
that of the aforesaid accomplish'd _Spaniard_. A Gentleman who, I hope,
will continue his Correspondence, is lately admitted into the
Fraternity, and sent me the following Letter.
SIR,
'Since I find you take Notice of Clubs, I beg Leave to give you an
Account of one in _Oxford_, which you have no where mention'd, and
perhaps never heard of. We distinguish our selves by the Title of the
_Amorous Club_, are all Votaries of _Cupid_, and Admirers of the Fair
Sex. The Reason that we are so little known in the World, is the
Secrecy which we are obliged to live under in the University. Our
Constitution runs counter to that of the Place wherein we live: For in
Love there are no Doctors, and we all profess so high Passion, that we
admit of no Graduates in it. Our Presidentship is bestow'd according
to the Dignity of Passion; our Number is unlimited; and our Statutes
are like those of the Druids, recorded in our own Breasts only, and
explained by the Majority of the Company. A Mistress, and a Poem in
her Praise, will introduce any Candidate: Without the latter no one
can be admitted; for he that is not in love enough to rhime, is
unqualified for our Society. To speak disrespectfully of any Woman, is
Expulsion from our gentle Society. As we are at present all of us
Gown-men, instead of duelling when we are Rivals, we drink together
the Health of our Mistress. The Manner of doing this sometimes indeed
creates Debates; on such Occasions we have Recourse to the Rules of
Love among the Antients.
'Naevia sex Cyathis, septem Justina bibatur.'
This Method of a Glass to every Letter of her Name, occasioned the
other Night a Dispute of some Warmth. A young Student, who is in Love
with Mrs. _Elizabeth Dimple_, was so unreasonable as to begin her
Health under the Name of _Elizabetha_; which so exasperated the Club,
that by common Consent we retrenched it to _Betty_. We look upon a Man
as no Company, that does not sigh five times in a Quarter of an Hour;
and look upon a Member as very absurd, that is so much himself as to
make a direct Answer to a Question. In fine, the whole Assembly is
made up of absent Men, that is, of such Persons as have lost their
Locality, and whose Minds and Bodies never keep Company with one
another. As I am an unfortunate Member of this distracted Society, you
cannot expect a very regular Account of it; for which Reason, I hope
you will pardon me that I so abruptly subscribe my self,
Sir,
Your most obedient,
humble Servant,
T. B.
I forgot to tell you, that _Albina_, who has six Votaries in this
Club, is one of your Readers.'
R.
[Footnote 1: To this number of the Spectator was added in the original
daily issue an announcement of six places at which were to be sold
'Compleat Setts of this Paper for the Month of March.']
* * * * *
No. 31. Thursday, April 5, 1711. Addison.
'Sit mihi fas audita loqui!'
Vir.
Last Night, upon my going into a Coffee-House not far from the
_Hay-Market_ Theatre, I diverted my self for above half an Hour with
overhearing the Discourse of one, who, by the Shabbiness of his Dress,
the Extravagance of his Conceptions, and the Hurry of his Speech, I
discovered to be of that Species who are generally distinguished by the
Title of Projectors. This Gentleman, for I found he was treated as such
by his Audience, was entertaining a whole Table of Listners with the
Project of an Opera, which he told us had not cost him above two or
three Mornings in the Contrivance, and which he was ready to put in
Execution, provided he might find his Account in it. He said, that he
had observed the great Trouble and Inconvenience which Ladies were at,
in travelling up and down to the several Shows that are exhibited in
different Quarters of the Town. The dancing Monkies are in one place;
the Puppet-Show in another; the Opera in a third; not to mention the
Lions, that are almost a whole Day's Journey from the Politer Part of
the Town. By this means People of Figure are forced to lose half the
Winter after their coming to Town, before they have seen all the strange
Sights about it. In order to remedy this great Inconvenience, our
Projector drew out of his Pocket the Scheme of an Opera, Entitled, _The
Expedition of Alexander the Great_; in which he had disposed of all the
remarkable Shows about Town, among the Scenes and Decorations of his
Piece. The Thought, he confessed, was not originally his own, but that
he had taken the Hint of it from several Performances which he had seen
upon our Stage: In one of which there was a Rary-Show; in another, a
Ladder-dance; and in others a Posture-man, a moving Picture, with many
Curiosities of the like nature.
This _Expedition of Alexander_ opens with his consulting the oracle at
_Delphos_, in which the dumb Conjuror, who has been visited by so many
Persons of Quality of late Years, is to be introduced as telling him his
Fortune; At the same time _Clench_ of _Barnet_ is represented in another
Corner of the Temple, as ringing the Bells of _Delphos_, for joy of his
arrival. The Tent of _Darius_ is to be Peopled by the Ingenious Mrs.
_Salmon_, [1] where Alexander is to fall in Love with a Piece of
Wax-Work, that represents the beautiful _Statira_. When Alexander comes
into that Country, in which _Quintus Curtius_ tells us the Dogs were so
exceeding fierce that they would not loose their hold, tho' they were
cut to pieces Limb by Limb, and that they would hang upon their Prey by
their Teeth when they had nothing but a Mouth left, there is to be a
scene of _Hockley in the Hole_, [2] in which is to be represented all
the Diversions of that Place, the Bull-baiting only excepted, which
cannot possibly be exhibited in the Theatre, by Reason of the Lowness of
the Roof. The several Woods in _Asia_, which _Alexander_ must be
supposed to pass through, will give the Audience a Sight of Monkies
dancing upon Ropes, with many other Pleasantries of that ludicrous
Species. At the same time, if there chance to be any Strange Animals in
Town, whether Birds or Beasts, they may be either let loose among the
Woods, or driven across the Stage by some of the Country People of
_Asia_. In the last great Battel, Pinkethman [3] is to personate King
_Porus_ upon an _Elephant_, and is to be encountered by _Powell_ [4]
representing _Alexander_ the Great upon a Dromedary, which nevertheless
Mr. _Powell_ is desired to call by the Name of _Bucephalus_. Upon the
Close of this great decisive Battel, when the two Kings are thoroughly
reconciled, to shew the mutual Friendship and good Correspondence that
reigns between them, they both of them go together to a Puppet-Show, in
which the ingenious Mr. _Powell, junior_ [5] may have an Opportunity of
displaying his whole Art of Machinery, for the Diversion of the two
Monarchs. Some at the Table urged that a Puppet-Show was not a suitable
Entertainment for _Alexander_ the Great; and that it might be introduced
more properly, if we suppose the Conqueror touched upon that part of
_India_ which is said to be inhabited by the Pigmies. But this Objection
was looked upon as frivolous, and the Proposal immediately over-ruled.
Our Projector further added, that after the Reconciliation of these two
Kings they might invite one another to Dinner, and either of them
entertain his Guest with the _German Artist_, Mr. _Pinkethman's_ Heathen
Gods, [6] or any of the like Diversions, which shall then chance to be
in vogue.
This Project was receiv'd with very great Applause by the whole Table.
Upon which the Undertaker told us, that he had not yet communicated to
us above half his Design; for that _Alexander_ being a _Greek_, it was
his Intention that the whole Opera should be acted in that Language,
which was a Tongue he was sure would wonderfully please the Ladies,
especially when it was a little raised and rounded by the _Ionick_
Dialect; and could not but be [acceptable [8]] to the whole Audience,
because there are fewer of them who understand _Greek_ than _Italian_.
The only Difficulty that remained, was, how to get Performers, unless we
could persuade some Gentlemen of the Universities to learn to sing, in
order to qualify themselves for the Stage; but this Objection soon
vanished, when the Projector informed us that the _Greeks_ were at
present the only Musicians in the _Turkish_ Empire, and that it would be
very easy for our Factory at _Smyrna_ to furnish us every Year with a
Colony of Musicians, by the Opportunity of the _Turkey_ Fleet; besides,
says he, if we want any single Voice for any lower Part in the Opera,
_Lawrence_ can learn to speak _Greek_, as well as he does _Italian_, in
a Fortnight's time.
The Projector having thus settled Matters, to the good liking of all
that heard him, he left his Seat at the Table, and planted himself
before the Fire, where I had unluckily taken my Stand for the
Convenience of over-hearing what he said. Whether he had observed me to
be more attentive than ordinary, I cannot tell, but he had not stood by
me above a Quarter of a Minute, but he turned short upon me on a sudden,
and catching me by a Button of my Coat, attacked me very abruptly after
the following manner.
Besides, Sir, I have heard of a very extraordinary Genius for Musick
that lives in _Switzerland_, who has so strong a Spring in his
Fingers, that he can make the Board of an Organ sound like a Drum, and
if I could but procure a Subscription of about Ten Thousand Pound
every Winter, I would undertake to fetch him over, and oblige him by
Articles to set every thing that should be sung upon the _English_
Stage.
After this he looked full in my Face, expecting I would make an Answer,
when by good Luck, a Gentleman that had entered the Coffee-house since
the Projector applied himself to me, hearing him talk of his _Swiss_
Compositions, cry'd out with a kind of Laugh,
Is our Musick then to receive further Improvements from _Switzerland!_
[8]
This alarmed the Projector, who immediately let go my Button, and turned
about to answer him. I took the Opportunity of the Diversion, which
seemed to be made in favour of me, and laying down my Penny upon the
Bar, retired with some Precipitation.
C.
[Footnote 1: An advertisement of Mrs. Salmon's wax-work in the 'Tatler'
for Nov. 30, 1710, specifies among other attractions the Turkish
Seraglio in wax-work, the Fatal Sisters that spin, reel, and cut the
thread of man's life, 'an Old Woman flying from Time, who shakes his
head and hour-glass with sorrow at seeing age so unwilling to die.
Nothing but life can exceed the motions of the heads, hands, eyes, &c.,
of these figures, &c.']
[Footnote 2: Hockley-in-the-Hole, memorable for its Bear Garden, was on
the outskirt of the town, by Clerkenwell Green; with Mutton Lane on the
East and the fields on the West. By Town's End Lane (called Coppice Row
since the levelling of the coppice-crowned knoll over which it ran)
through Pickled-Egg Walk (now Crawford's Passage) one came to
Hockley-in-the-Hole or Hockley Hole, now Ray Street. The leveller has
been at work upon the eminences that surrounded it. In Hockley Hole,
dealers in rags and old iron congregated. This gave it the name of Rag
Street, euphonized into Ray Street since 1774. In the _Spectator's_
time its Bear Garden, upon the site of which there are now metal works,
was a famous resort of the lowest classes. 'You must go to
Hockley-in-the-Hole, child, to learn valour,' says Mr. Peachum to Filch
in the _Beggar's Opera_.]
[Footnote 3: William Penkethman was a low comedian dear to the gallery
at Drury Lane as 'Pinkey,' very popular also as a Booth Manager at
Bartholomew Fair. Though a sour critic described him as 'the Flower of
Bartholomew Fair and the Idol of the Rabble; a Fellow that overdoes
everything, and spoils many a Part with his own Stuff,' the _Spectator_
has in another paper given honourable fame to his skill as a comedian.
Here there is but the whimsical suggestion of a favourite showman and
low comedian mounted on an elephant to play King Porus.]
[Footnote 4: George Powell, who in 1711 and 1712 appeared in such
characters as Falstaff, Lear, and Cortez in 'the Indian Emperor,' now
and then also played the part of the favourite stage hero, Alexander the
Great in Lee's _Rival Queens_. He was a good actor, spoilt by
intemperance, who came on the stage sometimes warm with Nantz brandy,
and courted his heroines so furiously that Sir John Vanbrugh said they
were almost in danger of being conquered on the spot. His last new part
of any note was in 1713, Portius in Addison's Cato. He lived on for a
few wretched years, lost to the public, but much sought by sheriff's
officers.]
[Footnote 5: 'Powell junior' of the Puppet Show (see note [Footnote 2 of
No. 14], p. 59, _ante_) was a more prosperous man than his namesake of
Drury Lane. In De Foe's 'Groans of Great Britain,' published in 1813, we
read:
'I was the other Day at a Coffee-House when the following
Advertisement was thrown in.--_At_ Punch's _Theatre in the Little
Piazza, Covent-Garden, this present Evening will be performed an
Entertainment, called,_ The History of Sir Richard Whittington,
_shewing his Rise from a Scullion to be Lord-Mayor of London, with the
Comical Humours of Old Madge, the jolly Chamber-Maid, and the
Representation of the Sea, and the Court of Great Britain, concluding
with the Court of Aldermen, and_ Whittington _Lord-Mayor, honoured
with the Presence of K. Hen. VIII. and his Queen Anna Bullen, with
other diverting Decorations proper to the Play, beginning at 6
o'clock_. Note, _No money to be returned after the Entertainment is
begun._ Boxes, 2s. Pit, 1s. _Vivat Regina_.
On enquiring into the Matter, I find this has long been a noble
Diversion of our Quality and Gentry; and that Mr. Powell, by
Subscriptions and full Houses, has gathered such Wealth as is ten
times sufficient to buy all the Poets in England; that he seldom goes
out without his Chair, and thrives on this incredible Folly to that
degree, that, were he a Freeman, he might hope that some future
Puppet-Show might celebrate his being Lord Mayor, as he has done Sir
R. Whittington.']
[Footnote 6:
'Mr. Penkethman's Wonderful Invention call'd the Pantheon: or, the
Temple of the Heathen Gods. The Work of several Years, and great
Expense, is now perfected; being a most surprising and magnificent
Machine, consisting of 5 several curious Pictures, the Painting and
contrivance whereof is beyond Expression Admirable. The Figures, which
are above 100, and move their Heads, Legs, Arms, and Fingers, so
exactly to what they perform, and setting one Foot before another,
like living Creatures, that it justly deserves to be esteem'd the
greatest Wonder of the Age. To be seen from 10 in the Morning till 10
at Night, in the Little Piazza, Covent Garden, in the same House where
Punch's Opera is. Price 1s. 6d., 1s., and the lowest, 6d.'
This Advertisement was published in 46 and a few following numbers of
the _Spectator_.]
[Footnote 7: wonderfully acceptable]
[Footnote 8: The satire is against Heidegger. See note [Footnote 1 of
No. 14], p. 56, _ante_.]
* * * * *
No. 32. Friday, April 6, 1711. Steele.
'Nil illi larva aut tragicis opus esse Cothurnis.'
Hor.
The late Discourse concerning the Statutes of the _Ugly-Club_,
having been so well received at _Oxford_, that, contrary to the
strict Rules of the Society, they have been so partial as to take my own
Testimonial, and admit me into that select Body; I could not restrain
the Vanity of publishing to the World the Honour which is done me. It is
no small Satisfaction, that I have given Occasion for the President's
shewing both his Invention and Reading to such Advantage as my
Correspondent reports he did: But it is not to be doubted there were
many very proper Hums and Pauses in his Harangue, which lose their
Ugliness in the Narration, and which my Correspondent (begging his
Pardon) has no very good Talent at representing. I very much approve of
the Contempt the Society has of Beauty: Nothing ought to be laudable in
a Man, in which his Will is not concerned; therefore our Society can
follow Nature, and where she has thought fit, as it were, to mock
herself, we can do so too, and be merry upon the Occasion.
Mr. SPECTATOR,
'Your making publick the late Trouble I gave you, you will find to
have been the Occasion of this: Who should I meet at the Coffee-house
Door t'other Night, but my old Friend Mr. President? I saw somewhat
had pleased him; and as soon as he had cast his Eye upon me,
"Oho, Doctor, rare News from _London_, (says he); the SPECTATOR has
made honourable Mention of the Club (Man) and published to the World
his sincere Desire to be a Member, with a recommendatory Description
of his Phiz: And tho' our Constitution has made no particular
Provision for short Faces, yet, his being an extraordinary Case, I
believe we shall find an Hole for him to creep in at; for I assure
you he is not against the Canon; and if his Sides are as compact as
his Joles, he need not disguise himself to make one of us."
I presently called for the Paper to see how you looked in Print; and
after we had regaled our selves a while upon the pleasant Image of our
Proselite, Mr. President told me I should be his Stranger at the next
Night's Club: Where we were no sooner come, and Pipes brought, but Mr.
President began an Harangue upon your Introduction to my Epistle;
setting forth with no less Volubility of Speech than Strength of
Reason, "That a Speculation of this Nature was what had been long and
much wanted; and that he doubted not but it would be of inestimable
Value to the Publick, in reconciling even of Bodies and Souls; in
composing and quieting the Minds of Men under all corporal
Redundancies, Deficiencies, and Irregularities whatsoever; and making
every one sit down content in his own Carcase, though it were not
perhaps so mathematically put together as he could wish." And again,
"How that for want of a due Consideration of what you first advance,
_viz._ that our Faces are not of our own choosing, People had been
transported beyond all good Breeding, and hurried themselves into
unaccountable and fatal Extravagancies: As, how many impartial
Looking-Glasses had been censured and calumniated, nay, and sometimes
shivered into ten thousand Splinters, only for a fair Representation
of the Truth? How many Headstrings and Garters had been made
accessory, and actually forfeited, only because Folks must needs
quarrel with their own Shadows? And who (continues he) but is deeply
sensible, that one great Source of the Uneasiness and Misery of human
Life, especially amongst those of Distinction, arises from nothing in
the World else, but too severe a Contemplation of an indefeasible
Contexture of our external Parts, or certain natural and invincible
Disposition to be fat or lean? When a little more of Mr. SPECTATOR'S
Philosophy would take off all this; and in the mean time let them
observe, that there's not one of their Grievances of this Sort, but
perhaps in some Ages of the World has been highly in vogue; and may be
so again, nay, in some Country or other ten to one is so at this Day.
My Lady _Ample_ is the most miserable Woman in the World, purely of
her own making: She even grudges her self Meat and Drink, for fear she
should thrive by them; and is constantly crying out, In a Quarter of a
Year more I shall be quite out of all manner of Shape! Now [the[1]]
Lady's Misfortune seems to be only this, that she is planted in a
wrong Soil; for, go but t'other Side of the Water, it's a Jest at
_Harlem_ to talk of a Shape under eighteen Stone. These wise Traders
regulate their Beauties as they do their Butter, by the Pound; and
Miss _Cross_, when she first arrived in the _Low-Countries_, was not
computed to be so handsom as Madam _Van Brisket_ by near half a Tun.
On the other hand, there's 'Squire _Lath_, a proper Gentleman of
Fifteen hundred Pound _per Annum_, as well as of an unblameable Life
and Conversation; yet would not I be the Esquire for half his Estate;
for if it was as much more, he'd freely pare with it all for a pair of
Legs to his Mind: Whereas in the Reign of our first King _Edward_ of
glorious Memory, nothing more modish than a Brace of your fine taper
Supporters; and his Majesty without an Inch of Calf, managed Affairs
in Peace and War as laudably as the bravest and most politick of his
Ancestors; and was as terrible to his Neighbours under the Royal Name
of _Long-shanks_, as _Coeur de Lion_ to the _Saracens_ before him. If
we look farther back into History we shall find, that _Alexander_ the
Great wore his Head a little over the left Shoulder; and then not a
Soul stirred out 'till he had adjusted his Neck-bone; the whole
Nobility addressed the Prince and each other obliquely, and all
Matters of Importance were concerted and carried on in the
_Macedonian_ Court with their Polls on one Side. For about the first
Century nothing made more Noise in the World than _Roman_ Noses, and
then not a Word of them till they revived again in Eighty eight. [2]
Nor is it so very long since _Richard_ the Third set up half the Backs
of the Nation; and high Shoulders, as well as high Noses, were the Top
of the Fashion. But to come to our selves, Gentlemen, tho' I find by
my quinquennial Observations that we shall never get Ladies enough to
make a Party in our own Country, yet might we meet with better Success
among some of our Allies. And what think you if our Board sate for a
_Dutch_ Piece? Truly I am of Opinion, that as odd as we appear in
Flesh and Blood, we should be no such strange Things in Metzo-Tinto.
But this Project may rest 'till our Number is compleat; and this being
our Election Night, give me leave to propose Mr. SPECTATOR: You see
his Inclinations, and perhaps we may not have his Fellow."
I found most of them (as it is usual in all such Cases) were prepared;
but one of the Seniors (whom by the by Mr. President had taken all
this Pains to bring over) sate still, and cocking his Chin, which
seemed only to be levelled at his Nose, very gravely declared,
"That in case he had had sufficient Knowledge of you, no Man should
have been more willing to have served you; but that he, for his
part, had always had regard to his own Conscience, as well as other
Peoples Merit; and he did not know but that you might be a handsome
Fellow; for as for your own Certificate, it was every Body's
Business to speak for themselves."
Mr. President immediately retorted,
"A handsome Fellow! why he is a Wit (Sir) and you know the Proverb;"
and to ease the old Gentleman of his Scruples, cried,
"That for Matter of Merit it was all one, you might wear a Mask."
This threw him into a Pause, and he looked, desirous of three Days to
consider on it; but Mr. President improved the Thought, and followed
him up with an old Story,
"That Wits were privileged to wear what Masks they pleased in all
Ages; and that a Vizard had been the constant Crown of their
Labours, which was generally presented them by the Hand of some
Satyr, and sometimes of _Apollo_ himself:"
For the Truth of which he appealed to the Frontispiece of several
Books, and particularly to the _English Juvenal_, [3] to which he
referred him; and only added,
"That such Authors were the _Larvati_ [4] or _Larva donati_ of the
Ancients."
This cleared up all, and in the Conclusion you were chose Probationer;
and Mr. President put round your Health as such, protesting,
"That tho' indeed he talked of a Vizard, he did not believe all the
while you had any more Occasion for it than the Cat-a-mountain;"
so that all you have to do now is to pay your Fees, which here are
very reasonable if you are not imposed upon; and you may stile your
self _Informis Societatis Socius_: Which I am desired to acquaint you
with; and upon the same I beg you to accept of the Congratulation of,
SIR,
Your oblig'd humble Servant,
R. A. C.
Oxford March 21.
[Footnote 1: this]
[Footnote 2: At the coming of William III.]
[Footnote 3: The third edition of Dryden's Satires of Juvenal and
Persius, published in 1702, was the first 'adorn'd with Sculptures.' The
Frontispiece represents at full length Juvenal receiving a mask of Satyr
from Apollo's hand, and hovered over by a Cupid who will bind the Head
to its Vizard with a Laurel Crown.]
[Footnote 4: Larvati were bewitched persons; from Larva, of which the
original meaning is a ghost or spectre; the derived meanings are, a Mask
and a Skeleton.]
* * * * *
No. 33 Saturday, April 7, 1711. Steele.
'Fervidus tecum Puer, et solutis
Gratiae zonis, properentque Nymphae,
Et parum comis sine te Juventas,
Mercuriusque.'
Hor. 'ad Venerem.'
A friend of mine has two Daughters, whom I will call _Laetitia_ and
_Daphne_; The Former is one of the Greatest Beauties of the Age in which
she lives, the Latter no way remarkable for any Charms in her Person.
Upon this one Circumstance of their Outward Form, the Good and Ill of
their Life seems to turn. _Laetitia_ has not, from her very Childhood,
heard any thing else but Commendations of her Features and Complexion,
by which means she is no other than Nature made her, a very beautiful
Outside. The Consciousness of her Charms has rendered her insupportably
Vain and Insolent, towards all who have to do with her. _Daphne_, who
was almost Twenty before one civil Thing had ever been said to her,
found her self obliged to acquire some Accomplishments to make up for
the want of those Attractions which she saw in her Sister. Poor _Daphne_
was seldom submitted to in a Debate wherein she was concerned; her
Discourse had nothing to recommend it but the good Sense of it, and she
was always under a Necessity to have very well considered what she was
to say before she uttered it; while _Laetitia_ was listened to with
Partiality, and Approbation sate in the Countenances of those she
conversed with, before she communicated what she had to say. These
Causes have produced suitable Effects, and _Laetitia_ is as insipid a
Companion, as _Daphne_ is an agreeable one. _Laetitia_, confident of
Favour, has studied no Arts to please; _Daphne_, despairing of any
Inclination towards her Person, has depended only on her Merit.
_Laetitia_ has always something in her Air that is sullen, grave and
disconsolate. _Daphne_ has a Countenance that appears chearful, open and
unconcerned. A young Gentleman saw _Laetitia_ this Winter at a Play, and
became her Captive. His Fortune was such, that he wanted very little
Introduction to speak his Sentiments to her Father. The Lover was
admitted with the utmost Freedom into the Family, where a constrained
Behaviour, severe Looks, and distant Civilities, were the highest
Favours he could obtain of _Laetitia_; while _Daphne_ used him with the
good Humour, Familiarity, and Innocence of a Sister: Insomuch that he
would often say to her, _Dear_ Daphne; _wert thou but as Handsome as
Laetitia!_--She received such Language with that ingenuous and pleasing
Mirth, which is natural to a Woman without Design. He still Sighed in
vain for _Laetitia_, but found certain Relief in the agreeable
Conversation of _Daphne_. At length, heartily tired with the haughty
Impertinence of _Laetitia_, and charmed with repeated Instances of good
Humour he had observed in _Daphne_, he one Day told the latter, that he
had something to say to her he hoped she would be pleased with.--_Faith
Daphne,_ continued he, _I am in Love with thee, and despise thy Sister
sincerely_. The Manner of his declaring himself gave his Mistress
occasion for a very hearty Laughter.--_Nay,_ says he, _I knew you would
Laugh at me, but I'll ask your Father._ He did so; the Father received
his Intelligence with no less Joy than Surprize, and was very glad he
had now no Care left but for his _Beauty_, which he thought he could
carry to Market at his Leisure. I do not know any thing that has pleased
me so much a great while, as this Conquest of my Friend _Daphne's_. All
her Acquaintance congratulate her upon her Chance. Medley, and laugh at
that premeditating Murderer her Sister. As it is an Argument of a light
Mind, to think the worse of our selves for the Imperfections of our
Persons, it is equally below us to value our selves upon the Advantages
of them. The Female World seem to be almost incorrigibly gone astray in
this Particular; for which Reason, I shall recommend the following
Extract out of a Friend's Letter to the Profess'd Beauties, who are a
People almost as unsufferable as the Profess'd Wits.
Monsieur St. _Evremont_ [1] has concluded one of his Essays, with
affirming that the last Sighs of a Handsome Woman are not so much for
the loss of her Life, as of her Beauty. Perhaps this Raillery is
pursued too far, yet it is turn'd upon a very obvious Remark, that
Woman's strongest Passion is for her own Beauty, and that she values
it as her Favourite Distinction. From hence it is that all Arts, which
pretend to improve or preserve it, meet with so general a Reception
among the Sex. To say nothing of many False Helps and Contraband Wares
of Beauty, which are daily vended in this great Mart, there is not a
Maiden-Gentlewoman, of a good Family in any County of _South-Britain_,
who has not heard of the Virtues of _May_-Dew, or is unfurnished with
some Receipt or other in Favour of her Complexion; and I have known a
Physician of Learning and Sense, after Eight Years Study in the
University, and a Course of Travels into most Countries of _Europe_,
owe the first raising of his Fortunes to a Cosmetick Wash.
This has given me Occasion to consider how so Universal a Disposition
in Womankind, which springs from a laudable Motive, the Desire of
Pleasing, and proceeds upon an Opinion, not altogether groundless,
that Nature may be helped by Art, may be turn'd to their Advantage.
And, methinks, it would be an acceptable Service to take them out of
the Hands of Quacks and Pretenders, and to prevent their imposing upon
themselves, by discovering to them the true Secret and Art of
improving Beauty.
In order to this, before I touch upon it directly, it will be
necessary to lay down a few Preliminary Maxims, _viz_.
That no Woman can be Handsome by the Force of Features alone, any
more than she can be Witty only by the Help of Speech.
That Pride destroys all Symmetry and Grace, and Affectation is a
more terrible Enemy to fine Faces than the Small-Pox.
That no Woman is capable of being Beautiful, who is not incapable of
being False.
And, That what would be Odious in a Friend, is Deformity in a
Mistress.
From these few Principles, thus laid down, it will be easie to prove,
that the true Art of assisting Beauty consists in Embellishing the
whole Person by the proper Ornaments of virtuous and commendable
Qualities. By this Help alone it is that those who are the Favourite
Work of Nature, or, as Mr. _Dryden_ expresses it, the Porcelain Clay
of human Kind [2], become animated, and are in a Capacity of exerting
their Charms: And those who seem to have been neglected by her, like
Models wrought in haste, are capable, in a great measure, of finishing
what She has left imperfect.
It is, methinks, a low and degrading Idea of that Sex, which was
created to refine the Joys, and soften the Cares of Humanity, by the
most agreeable Participation, to consider them meerly as Objects of
Sight. This is abridging them of their natural Extent of Power, to put
them upon a Level with their Pictures at _Kneller's_. How much nobler
is the Contemplation of Beauty heighten'd by Virtue, and commanding
our Esteem and Love, while it draws our Observation? How faint and
spiritless are the Charms of a Coquet, when compar'd with the real
Loveliness of _Sophronia's_ Innocence, Piety, good Humour and Truth;
Virtues which add a new Softness to her Sex, and even beautify her
Beauty! That Agreeableness, which must otherwise have appeared no
longer in the modest Virgin, is now preserv'd in the tender Mother,
the prudent Friend, and the faithful Wife. Colours, artfully spread
upon Canvas, may entertain the Eye, but not affect the Heart; and she,
who takes no care to add to the natural Graces of her Person any
excelling Qualities, may be allowed still to amuse, as a Picture, but
not to triumph as a Beauty.
When _Adam_ is introduced by _Milton_ describing _Eve_ in Paradise,
and relating to the Angel the Impressions he felt upon seeing her at
her first Creation, he does not represent her like a _Grecian Venus_
by her Shape or Features, but by the Lustre of her Mind which shone in
them, and gave them their Power of charming.
_Grace was in all her Steps, Heaven in her Eye,
In all her Gestures Dignity and Love._
Without this irradiating Power the proudest Fair One ought to know,
whatever her Glass may tell her to the contrary, that her most perfect
Features are Uninform'd and Dead.
I cannot better close this Moral, than by a short Epitaph written by
_Ben Johnson_, with a Spirit which nothing could inspire but such an
Object as I have been describing.
Underneath this Stone doth lie
As much Virtue as cou'd die,
Which when alive did Vigour give
To as much Beauty as cou'd live. [3]
I am, Sir,
Your most humble Servant,
R. B.
R.
[Footnote 1: Charles de St. Denis, Sieur de St. Evremond, died in 1703,
aged 95, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. His military and
diplomatic career in France was closed in 1661, when his condemnations
of Mazarin, although the Cardinal was then dead, obliged him to fly from
the wrath of the French Court to Holland and afterwards to England,
where Charles II granted him a pension of L300 a-year. At Charles's
death the pension lapsed, and St. Evremond declined the post of cabinet
secretary to James II. After the Revolution he had William III for
friend, and when, at last, he was invited back, in his old age, to
France, he chose to stay and die among his English friends. In a second
volume of 'Miscellany Essays by Monsieur de St. Evremont,' done into
English by Mr. Brown (1694), an Essay 'Of the Pleasure that Women take
in their Beauty' ends (p. 135) with the thought quoted by Steele.]
[Footnote 2: In 'Don Sebastian, King of Portugal,' act I, says Muley
Moloch, Emperor of Barbary,
Ay; There look like the Workmanship of Heav'n:
This is the Porcelain Clay of Human Kind.]
[Footnote 3: The lines are in the Epitaph 'on Elizabeth L.H.'
'One name was Elizabeth,
The other, let it sleep in death.'
But Steele, quoting from memory, altered the words to his purpose. Ben
Johnson's lines were:
'Underneath this stone doth lie,
As much Beauty as could die,
Which in Life did Harbour give
To more Virture than doth live.']
* * * * *
No. 34. Monday, April 9, 1711 Addison.
'... parcit
Cognatis maculis similis fera ...'
Juv.
The Club of which I am a Member, is very luckily composed of such
persons as are engaged in different Ways of Life, and disputed as it
were out of the most conspicuous Classes of Mankind: By this Means I am
furnished with the greatest Variety of Hints and Materials, and know
every thing that passes in the different Quarters and Divisions, not
only of this great City, but of the whole Kingdom. My Readers too have
the Satisfaction to find, that there is no Rank or Degree among them who
have not their Representative in this Club, and that there is always
some Body present who will take Care of their respective Interests, that
nothing may be written or published to the Prejudice or Infringement of
their just Rights and Privileges.
I last Night sat very late in company with this select Body of Friends,
who entertain'd me with several Remarks which they and others had made
upon these my Speculations, as also with the various Success which they
had met with among their several Ranks and Degrees of Readers. WILL.
HONEYCOMB told me, in the softest Manner he could, That there were some
Ladies (but for your Comfort, says WILL., they are not those of the most
Wit) that were offended at the Liberties I had taken with the Opera and
the Puppet-Show: That some of them were likewise very much surpriz'd,
that I should think such serious Points as the Dress and Equipage of
Persons of Quality, proper Subjects for Raillery.
He was going on, when Sir ANDREW FREEPORT took him up short, and told
him, That the Papers he hinted at had done great Good in the City, and
that all their Wives and Daughters were the better for them: And further
added, That the whole City thought themselves very much obliged to me
for declaring my generous Intentions to scourge Vice and Folly as they
appear in a Multitude, without condescending to be a Publisher of
particular Intrigues and Cuckoldoms. In short, says Sir ANDREW, if you
avoid that foolish beaten Road of falling upon Aldermen and Citizens,
and employ your Pen upon the Vanity and Luxury of Courts, your Paper
must needs be of general Use.
Upon this my Friend the TEMPLAR told Sir ANDREW, That he wondered to
hear a Man of his Sense talk after that Manner; that the City had always
been the Province for Satyr; and that the Wits of King _Charles's_ Time
jested upon nothing else during his whole Reign. He then shewed, by the
Examples of _Horace, Juvenal, Boileau_, and the best Writers of every
Age, that the Follies of the Stage and Court had never been accounted
too sacred for Ridicule, how great so-ever the Persons might be that
patronized them. But after all, says he, I think your Raillery has made
too great an Excursion, in attacking several Persons of the Inns of
Court; and I do not believe you can shew me any Precedent for your
Behaviour in that Particular.
My good Friend Sir ROGER DE COVERL[E]Y, who had said nothing all this
while, began his Speech with a Pish! and told us. That he wondered to
see so many Men of Sense so very serious upon Fooleries. Let our good
Friend, says he, attack every one that deserves it: I would only advise
you, Mr. SPECTATOR, applying himself to me, to take Care how you meddle
with Country Squires: They are the Ornaments of the _English_ Nation;
Men of good Heads and sound Bodies! and let me tell you, some of them
take it ill of you that you mention Fox-hunters with so little Respect.
Captain SENTRY spoke very sparingly on this Occasion. What he said was
only to commend my Prudence in not touching upon the Army, and advised
me to continue to act discreetly in that Point.
By this Time I found every subject of my Speculations was taken away
from me by one or other of the Club; and began to think my self in the
Condition of the good Man that had one Wife who took a Dislike to his
grey Hairs, and another to his black, till by their picking out what
each of them had an Aversion to, they left his Head altogether bald and
naked.
While I was thus musing with my self, my worthy Friend the Clergy-man,
who, very luckily for me, was at the Club that Night, undertook my
Cause. He told us, That he wondered any Order of Persons should think
themselves too considerable to be advis'd: That it was not Quality, but
Innocence which exempted Men from Reproof; That Vice and Folly ought to
be attacked where-ever they could be met with, and especially when they
were placed in high and conspicuous Stations of Life. He further added,
That my Paper would only serve to aggravate the Pains of Poverty, if it
chiefly expos'd those who are already depressed, and in some measure
turn'd into Ridicule, by the Meanness of their Conditions and
Circumstances. He afterwards proceeded to take Notice of the great Use
this Paper might be of to the Publick, by reprehending those Vices which
are too trivial for the Chastisement of the Law, and too fantastical for
the Cognizance of the Pulpit. He then advised me to prosecute my
Undertaking with Chearfulness; and assured me, that whoever might be
displeased with me, I should be approved by all those whose Praises do
Honour to the Persons on whom they are bestowed.
The whole Club pays a particular Deference to the Discourse of this
Gentleman, and are drawn into what he says as much by the candid and
ingenuous Manner with which he delivers himself, as by the Strength of
Argument and Force of Reason which he makes use of. WILL. HONEYCOMB
immediately agreed, that what he had said was right; and that for his
Part, he would not insist upon the Quarter which he had demanded for the
Ladies. Sir ANDREW gave up the City with the same Frankness. The TEMPLAR
would not stand out; and was followed by Sir ROGER and the CAPTAIN: Who
all agreed that I should be at Liberty to carry the War into what
Quarter I pleased; provided I continued to combat with Criminals in a
Body, and to assault the Vice without hurting the Person.
This Debate, which was held for the Good of Mankind, put me in Mind of
that which the _Roman_ Triumvirate were formerly engaged in, for their
Destruction. Every Man at first stood hard for his Friend, till they
found that by this Means they should spoil their Proscription: And at
length, making a Sacrifice of all their Acquaintance and Relations,
furnished out a very decent Execution.
Having thus taken my Resolution to march on boldly in the Cause of
Virtue and good Sense, and to annoy their Adversaries in whatever Degree
or Rank of Men they may be found: I shall be deaf for the future to all
the Remonstrances that shall be made to me on this Account. If _Punch_
grow extravagant, I shall reprimand him very freely: If the Stage
becomes a Nursery of Folly and Impertinence, I shall not be afraid to
animadvert upon it. In short, If I meet with any thing in City, Court,
or Country, that shocks Modesty or good Manners, I shall use my utmost
Endeavours to make an Example of it. I must however intreat every
particular Person, who does me the Honour to be a Reader of this Paper,
never to think himself, or any one of his Friends or Enemies, aimed at
in what is said: For I promise him, never to draw a faulty Character
which does not fit at least a Thousand People; or to publish a single
Paper, that is not written in the Spirit of Benevolence and with a Love
to Mankind.
C.
* * * * *
No. 35. Tuesday, April 10, 1711. Addison.
'Risu inepto res ineptior milla est.'
Mart.
Among all kinds of Writing, there is none in which Authors are more apt
to miscarry than in Works of Humour, as there is none in which they are
more ambitious to excell. It is not an Imagination that teems with
Monsters, an Head that is filled with extravagant Conceptions, which is
capable of furnishing the World with Diversions of this nature; and yet
if we look into the Productions of several Writers, who set up for Men
of Humour, what wild irregular Fancies, what unnatural Distortions of
Thought, do we meet with? If they speak Nonsense, they believe they are
talking Humour; and when they have drawn together a Scheme of absurd,
inconsistent Ideas, they are not able to read it over to themselves
without laughing. These poor Gentlemen endeavour to gain themselves the
Reputation of Wits and Humourists, by such monstrous Conceits as almost
qualify them for _Bedlam;_ not considering that Humour should always lye
under the Check of Reason, and that it requires the Direction of the
nicest Judgment, by so much the more as it indulges it self in the most
boundless Freedoms. There is a kind of Nature that is to be observed in
this sort of Compositions, as well as in all other, and a certain
Regularity of Thought [which [1]] must discover the Writer to be a Man
of Sense, at the same time that he appears altogether given up to
Caprice: For my part, when I read the delirious Mirth of an unskilful
Author, I cannot be so barbarous as to divert my self with it, but am
rather apt to pity the Man, than to laugh at any thing he writes.
The deceased Mr. _Shadwell_, who had himself a great deal of the Talent,
which I am treating of, represents an empty Rake, in one of his Plays,
as very much surprized to hear one say that breaking of Windows was not
Humour;[2] and I question not but several _English_ Readers will be as
much startled to hear me affirm, that many of those raving incoherent
Pieces, which are often spread among us, under odd Chimerical Titles,
are rather the Offsprings of a Distempered Brain, than Works of Humour.
It is indeed much easier to describe what is not Humour, than what is;
and very difficult to define it otherwise than as _Cowley_ has done Wit,
by Negatives. Were I to give my own Notions of it, I would deliver them
after _Plato's_ manner, in a kind of Allegory, and by supposing Humour
to be a Person, deduce to him all his Qualifications, according to the
following Genealogy. TRUTH was the Founder of the Family, and the Father
of GOOD SENSE. GOOD SENSE was the Father of WIT, who married a Lady of a
Collateral Line called MIRTH, by whom he had Issue HUMOUR. HUMOUR
therefore being the youngest of this Illustrious Fami |
