No More Learning

At last, what every one had called for was got, or
declared impossible to be got at that time, and we were persuaded to sit
round the same table; when the gentleman in the red surtout looked again
upon his watch, told us that we had half an hour to spare, but he was
sorry to see so little merriment among us; that all fellow travellers
were for the time upon the level, and that it was always his way to make
himself one of the company. "I remember," says he, "it was on just such
a morning as this, that I and my Lord Mumble and the Duke of Tenterden
were out upon a ramble: we called at a little house as it might be this;
and my landlady, I warrant you, not suspecting to whom she was talking,
was so jocular and facetious, and made so many merry answers to our
questions, that we were all ready to burst with laughter. At last the
good woman happening to overhear me whisper the duke and call him by his
title, was so surprised and confounded, that we could scarcely get a
word from her; and the duke never met me from that day to this, but he
talks of the little house, and quarrels with me for terrifying the
landlady. "

He had scarcely time to congratulate himself on the veneration which
this narrative must have procured for him from the company, when one of
the ladies having reached out for a plate on a distant part of the
table, began to remark, "the inconveniencies of travelling, and the
difficulty which they who never sat at home without a great number of
attendants, found in performing for themselves such offices as the road
required; but that people of quality often travelled in disguise, and
might be generally known from the vulgar by their condescension to poor
inn-keepers, and the allowance which they made for any defect in their
entertainment; that for her part, while people were civil and meant
well, it was never her custom to find fault, for one was not to expect
upon a journey all that one enjoyed at one's own house. "

A general emulation seemed now to be excited. One of the men who had
hitherto said nothing, called for the last newspaper; and having perused
it a while with deep pensiveness, "It is impossible," says he, "for any
man to guess how to act with regard to the stocks; last week it was the
general opinion that they would fall; and I sold out twenty thousand
pounds in order to a purchase: they have now risen unexpectedly; and I
make no doubt but at my return to London I shall risk thirty thousand
pounds among them again. "

A young man, who had hitherto distinguished himself only by the vivacity
of his looks, and a frequent diversion of his eyes from one object to
another, upon this closed his snuff-box, and told us that "he had a
hundred times talked with the chancellor and the judges on the subject
of the stocks; that for his part he did not pretend to be well
acquainted with the principles on which they were established, but had
always heard them reckoned pernicious to trade, uncertain in their
produce, and unsolid in their foundation; and that he had been advised
by three judges, his most intimate friends, never to venture his money
in the funds, but to put it out upon land security, till he could light
upon an estate in his own country. "

It might be expected, that upon these glimpses of latent dignity, we
should all have begun to look round us with veneration; and have behaved
like the princes of romance, when the enchantment that disguises them is
dissolved, and they discover the dignity of each other; yet it happened,
that none of these hints made much impression on the company; every one
was apparently suspected of endeavouring to impose false appearances
upon the rest; all continued their haughtiness in hopes to enforce their
claims; and all grew every hour more sullen, because they found their
representations of themselves without effect.

Thus we travelled on four days with malevolence perpetually increasing,
and without any endeavour but to outvie each other in superciliousness
and neglect; and when any two of us could separate ourselves for a
moment we vented our indignation at the sauciness of the rest.

At length the journey was at an end; and time and chance, that strip off
all disguises, have discovered that the intimate of lords and dukes is a
nobleman's butler, who has furnished a shop with the money he has saved;
the man who deals so largely in the funds, is the clerk of a broker in
Change-alley; the lady who so carefully concealed her quality, keeps a
cook-shop behind the Exchange; and the young man who is so happy in the
friendship of the judges, engrosses and transcribes for bread in a
garret of the Temple. Of one of the women only I could make no
disadvantageous detection, because she had assumed no character, but
accommodated herself to the scene before her, without any struggle for
distinction or superiority.

I could not forbear to reflect on the folly of practising a fraud,
which, as the event showed, had been already practised too often to
succeed, and by the success of which no advantage could have been
obtained; of assuming a character, which was to end with the day; and of
claiming upon false pretences honours which must perish with the breath
that paid them.

But, Mr. Adventurer, let not those who laugh at me and my companions,
think this folly confined to a stagecoach. Every man in the journey of
life takes the same advantage of the ignorance of his fellow travellers,
disguises himself in counterfeited merit, and hears those praises with
complacency which his conscience reproaches him for accepting. Every man
deceives himself while he thinks he is deceiving others; and forgets
that the time is at hand when every illusion shall cease, when
fictitious excellence shall be torn away, and _all_ must be shown to
_all_ in their realestate.

I am, Sir, your humble servant,

Viator.

[1] Johnson has made impressive allusion to the immortal work of
Cervantes in his second Rambler. Every reflecting man must arise
from its perusal with feelings of the deepest melancholy, with the
most tender commiseration for the weakness and lot of humanity. To
such a man its moral must ever be "profoundly sad. " Vulgar minds
cannot know it. Hence it has ever been the favorite with the
intellectual class, while Gil Blas has more generally won the
applause of men of the world. An amusing anecdote of the almost
universal admiration for the _chef d'oeuvre_ of Le Sage may be found
in Butler's Reminiscences.

That bigotted, yet extraordinary man, Alva, predicted, with
prophetic precision, the effects which the satire on Chivalry would
produce in Spain. _See Broad Stone of Honour; or Rules for the
Gentlemen of England. _




No. 85 TUESDAY, AUGUST 28, 1753.

_Qui studet optatam cursu contingere metam,
Multa tulit fecitque puer. _ HOR. De Ar. Poet. 412.

The youth, who hopes th' Olympic prize to gain,
All arts must try, and every toil sustain. FRANCIS.

It is observed by Bacon, that "reading makes a full man, conversation a
ready man, and writing an exact man. "

As Bacon attained to degrees of knowledge scarcely ever reached by any
other man, the directions which he gives for study have certainly a just
claim to our regard; for who can teach an art with so great authority,
as he that has practised it with undisputed success?

Under the protection of so great a name, I shall, therefore, venture to
inculcate to my ingenious contemporaries, the necessity of reading, the
fitness of consulting other understandings than their own, and of
considering the sentiments and opinions of those who, however neglected
in the present age, had in their own times, and many of them a long time
afterwards, such reputation for knowledge and acuteness as will scarcely
ever be attained by those that despise them.

An opinion has of late been, I know not how, propagated among us, that
libraries are filled only with useless lumber; that men of parts stand
in need of no assistance; and that to spend life in poring upon books,
is only to imbibe prejudices, to obstruct and embarrass the powers of
nature, to cultivate memory at the expense of judgment, and to bury
reason under a chaos of indigested learning.

Such is the talk of many who think themselves wise, and of some who are
thought wise by others; of whom part probably believe their own tenets,
and part may be justly suspected of endeavouring to shelter their
ignorance in multitudes, and of wishing to destroy that reputation which
they have no hopes to share. It will, I believe, be found invariably
true, that learning was never decried by any learned man; and what
credit can be given to those who venture to condemn that which they do
not know?

If reason has the power ascribed to it by its advocates, if so much is
to be discovered by attention and meditation, it is hard to believe,
that so many millions, equally participating of the bounties of nature
with ourselves, have been for ages upon ages meditating in vain: if the
wits of the present time expect the regard of posterity, which will then
inherit the reason which is now thought superior to instruction, surely
they may allow themselves to be instructed by the reason of former
generations. When, therefore, an author declares, that he has been able
to learn nothing from the writings of his predecessors, and such a
declaration has been lately made, nothing but a degree of arrogance
unpardonable in the greatest human understanding, can hinder him from
perceiving that he is raising prejudices against his own performance;
for with what hopes of success can he attempt that in which greater
abilities have hitherto miscarried? or with what peculiar force does he
suppose himself invigorated, that difficulties hitherto invincible
should give way before him?

Of those whom Providence has qualified to make any additions to human
knowledge, the number is extremely small; and what can be added by each
single mind, even of this superior class, is very little: the greatest
part of mankind must owe all their knowledge, and all must owe far the
larger part of it, to the information of others. To understand the works
of celebrated authors, to comprehend their systems, and retain their
reasonings, is a task more than equal to common intellects; and he is by
no means to be accounted useless or idle, who has stored his mind with
acquired knowledge, and can detail it occasionally to others who have
less leisure or weaker abilities.

Persius has justly observed, that knowledge is nothing to him who is not
known by others to possess it[1]: to the scholar himself it is nothing
with respect either to honour or advantage, for the world cannot reward
those qualities which are concealed from it; with respect to others it
is nothing, because it affords no help to ignorance or errour.

It is with justice, therefore, that in an accomplished character, Horace
unites just sentiments with the power of expressing them; and he that
has once accumulated learning, is next to consider, how he shall most
widely diffuse and most agreeably impart it.

A ready man is made by conversation. He that buries himself among his
manuscripts, "besprent," as Pope expresses it, "with learned dust," and
wears out his days and nights in perpetual research and solitary
meditation, is too apt to lose in his elocution what he adds to his
wisdom; and when he comes into the world, to appear overloaded with his
own notions, like a man armed with weapons which he cannot wield. He has
no facility of inculcating his speculations, of adapting himself to the
various degrees of intellect which the accidents of conversation will
present; but will talk to most unintelligibly, and to all unpleasantly.

I was once present at the lectures of a profound philosopher, a man
really skilled in the science which he professed, who having occasion to
explain the terms _opacum_ and _pellucidum_, told us, after some
hesitation, that _opacum_ was, as one might say, _opake_, and that
_pellucidum_ signified _pellucid_. Such was the dexterity with which
this learned reader facilitated to his auditors the intricacies of
science; and so true is it, that a man may know what he cannot teach.

Boerhaave complains, that the writers who have treated of chymistry
before him, are useless to the greater part of students, because they
presuppose their readers to have such degrees of skill as are not often
to be found. Into the same errour are all men apt to fall, who have
familiarized any subject to themselves in solitude: they discourse, as
if they thought every other man had been employed in the same inquiries;
and expect that short hints and obscure allusions will produce in others
the same train of ideas which they excite in themselves.

Nor is this the only inconvenience which the man of study suffers from a
recluse life. When he meets with an opinion that pleases him, he catches
it up with eagerness; looks only after such arguments as tend to his
confirmation; or spares himself the trouble of discussion, and adopts it
with very little proof; indulges it long without suspicion, and in time
unites it to the general body of his knowledge, and treasures it up
among incontestable truths: but when he comes into the world among men
who, arguing upon dissimilar principles, have been led to different
conclusions, and being placed in various situations, view the same
object on many sides; he finds his darling position attacked, and
himself in no condition to defend it: having thought always in one
train, he is in the state of a man who having fenced always with the
same master, is perplexed and amazed by a new posture of his antagonist;
he is entangled in unexpected difficulties, he is harassed by sudden
objections, he is unprovided with solutions or replies; his surprise
impedes his natural powers of reasoning, his thoughts are scattered and
confounded, and he gratifies the pride of airy petulance with an easy
victory.

It is difficult to imagine, with what obstinacy truths which one mind
perceives almost by intuition, will be rejected by another; and how many
artifices must be practised, to procure admission for the most evident
propositions into understandings frighted by their novelty, or hardened
against them by accidental prejudice; it can scarcely be conceived, how
frequently, in these extemporaneous controversies, the dull will be
subtle, and the acute absurd; how often stupidity will elude the force
of argument, by involving itself in its own gloom; and mistaken
ingenuity will weave artful fallacies, which reason can scarcely find
means to disentangle.

In these encounters the learning of the recluse usually fails him:
nothing but long habit and frequent experiments can confer the power of
changing a position into various forms, presenting it in different
points of view, connecting it with known and granted truths, fortifying
it with intelligible arguments, and illustrating it by apt similitudes;
and he, therefore, that has collected his knowledge in solitude, must
learn its application by mixing with mankind.

But while the various opportunities of conversation invite us to try
every mode of argument, and every art of recommending our sentiments, we
are frequently betrayed to the use of such as are not in themselves
strictly defensible: a man heated in talk, and eager of victory, takes
advantage of the mistakes or ignorance of his adversary, lays hold of
concessions to which he knows he has no right, and urges proofs likely
to prevail on his opponent, though he knows himself that they have no
force: thus the severity of reason is relaxed, many topicks are
accumulated, but without just arrangement or distinction; we learn to
satisfy ourselves with such ratiocination as silences others; and seldom
recall to a close examination, that discourse which has gratified our
vanity with victory and applause.

Some caution, therefore, must be used lest copiousness and facility be
made less valuable by inaccuracy and confusion. To fix the thoughts by
writing, and subject them to frequent examinations and reviews, is the
best method of enabling the mind to detect its own sophisms, and keep it
on guard against the fallacies which it practises on others: in
conversation we naturally diffuse our thoughts, and in writing we
contract them; method is the excellence of writing, and unconstraint the
grace of conversation.

To read, write, and converse in due proportions, is, therefore, the
business of a man of letters. For all these there is not often equal
opportunity; excellence, therefore, is not often attainable; and most
men fail in one or other of the ends proposed, and are full without
readiness, or without exactness. Some deficiency must be forgiven all,
because all are men; and more must be allowed to pass uncensured in the
greater part of the world, because none can confer upon himself
abilities, and few have the choice of situations proper for the
improvement of those which nature has bestowed: it is, however,
reasonable to have _perfection_ in our eye; that we may always advance
towards it, though we know it never can be reached.

[1] Scire tuum nihil est, nisi te scire hoc sciat alter. Sat. i. 27.




No. 92. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 1753.

_Cum tabulis animum censoris sumet honesti. _HOR. Lib. ii. Ep. it. 110.

Bold be the critick, zealous to his trust,
Like the firm judge inexorably just.

TO THE ADVENTURER.

Sir,

In the papers of criticism which you have given to the publick, I have
remarked a spirit of candour and love of truth equally remote from
bigotry and captiousness; a just distribution of praise amongst the
ancients and the moderns: a sober deference to reputation long
established, without a blind adoration of antiquity; and a willingness
to favour later performances, without a light or puerile fondness for
novelty.

I shall, therefore, venture to lay before you, such observations as have
risen to my mind in the consideration of Virgil's pastorals, without any
inquiry how far my sentiments deviate from established rules or common
opinions.

If we survey the ten pastorals in a general view, it will be found that
Virgil can derive from them very little claim to the praise of an
inventor. To search into the antiquity of this kind of poetry is not my
present purpose; that it has long subsisted in the east, the _Sacred
Writings_ sufficiently inform us; and we may conjecture, with great
probability, that it was sometimes the devotion, and sometimes the
entertainment of the first generations of mankind. Theocritus united
elegance with simplicity; and taught his shepherds to sing with so much
ease and harmony, that his countrymen, despairing to excel, forbore to
imitate him; and the Greeks, however vain or ambitious, left him in
quiet possession of the garlands which the wood-nymphs had bestowed upon
him.

Virgil, however, taking advantage of another language, ventured to copy
or to rival the _Sicilian bard_: he has written with greater splendour
of diction, and elevation of sentiment: but as the magnificence of his
performances was more, the simplicity was less; and, perhaps, where he
excels Theocritus, he sometimes obtains his superiority by deviating
from the pastoral character, and performing what Theocritus never
attempted.

Yet, though I would willingly pay to Theocritus the honour which is
always due to an original author, I am far from intending to depreciate
Virgil: of whom Horace justly declares, that the rural muses have
appropriated to him their elegance and sweetness, and who, as he copied
Theocritus in his design, has resembled him likewise in his success;
for, if we except Calphurnius, an obscure author of the lower ages, I
know not that a single pastoral was written after him by any poet, till
the revival of literature.

But though his general merit has been universally acknowledged, I am far
from thinking all the productions of his rural Thalia equally excellent;
there is, indeed, in all his pastorals a strain of versification which
it is vain to seek in any other poet; but if we except the first and the
tenth, they seem liable either wholly or in part to considerable
objections.

The second, though we should forget the great charge against it, which I
am afraid can never be refuted, might, I think, have perished, without
any diminution of the praise of its author; for I know not that it
contains one affecting sentiment or pleasing description, or one passage
that strikes the imagination or awakens the passions.

The third contains a contest between two shepherds, begun with a quarrel
of which some particulars might well be spared, carried on with
sprightliness and elegance, and terminated at last in a reconciliation:
but, surely, whether the invectives with which they attack each other be
true or false, they are too much degraded from the dignity of pastoral
innocence; and instead of rejoicing that they are both victorious, I
should not have grieved could they have been both defeated.

The poem to Pollio is, indeed, of another kind: it is filled with images
at once splendid and pleasing, and is elevated with grandeur of language
worthy of the first of Roman poets; but I am not able to reconcile
myself to the disproportion between the performance and the occasion
that produced it: that the golden age should return because Pollio had a
son, appears so wild a fiction, that I am ready to suspect the poet of
having written, for some other purpose, what he took this opportunity of
producing to the publick.

The fifth contains a celebration of Daphnis, which has stood to all
succeeding ages as the model of pastoral elegies. To deny praise to a
performance which so many thousands have laboured to imitate, would be
to judge with too little deference for the opinion of mankind: yet
whoever shall read it with impartiality, will find that most of the
images are of the mythological kind, and therefore easily invented; and
that there are few sentiments of rational praise or natural lamentation.

In the Silenus he again rises to the dignity of philosophick sentiments,
and heroick poetry. The address to Varus is eminently beautiful: but
since the compliment paid to Gallus fixes the transaction to his own
time, the fiction of Silenus seems injudicious: nor has any sufficient
reason yet been found, to justify his choice of those fables that make
the subject of the song.

The seventh exhibits another contest of the tuneful shepherds: and,
surely, it is not without some reproach to his inventive power, that of
ten pastorals Virgil has written two upon the same plan. One of the
shepherds now gains an acknowledged victory, but without any apparent,
superiority, and the reader, when he sees the prize adjudged, is not
able to discover how it was deserved.

Of the eighth pastoral, so little is properly the work of Virgil, that
he has no claim to other praise or blame, than that of a translator.

Of the ninth, it is scarce possible to discover the design or tendency;
it is said, I know not upon what authority, to have been composed from
fragments of other poems; and except a few lines in which the author
touches upon his own misfortunes, there is nothing that seems
appropriated to any time or place, or of which any other use can be
discovered than to fill up the poem.

The first and the tenth pastorals, whatever be determined of the rest,
are sufficient to place their author above the reach of rivalry. The
complaint of Gallus disappointed in his love, is full of such sentiments
as disappointed love naturally produces; his wishes are wild, his
resentment is tender, and his purposes are inconstant. In the genuine
language of despair, he soothes himself awhile with the pity that shall
be paid him after his death.

_--Tamen cantabitis, Arcades, inquit,
Montibus haec vestris: soli cantare periti
Arcades. O mihi tum quam molliter ossa quiescant,
Vestra meos olim si fistula dicat amores! _ Virg. Ec. x. 31.

--Yet, O Arcadian swains,
Ye best artificers of soothing strains!
Tune your soft reeds, and teach your rocks my woes,
So shall my shade in sweeter rest repose.
O that your birth and business had been mine;
To feed the flock, and prune the spreading vine! WARTON.

Discontented with his present condition, and desirous to be any thing
but what he is, he wishes himself one of the shepherds. He then catches
the idea of rural tranquillity; but soon discovers how much happier he
should be in these happy regions, with Lycoris at his side:

_Hic gelidi fontes, hic mollia prata, Lycori:
Hic nemus, hic ipso tecum consumerer aevo.
Nunc insanus amor duri me Martis in armis
Tela inter media atque adversos detinet hostes.
Tu procul a patria (nec sit mihi credere) tantum
Alpinas, ah dura, nives, et frigora Rheni
Me sine sola vides. Ah te ne frigora laedant!
Ah tibi ne teneras glacies secet aspera plantas! _ Ec. x. 42.

Here cooling fountains roll through flow'ry meads,
Here woods, Lycoris, lift their verdant heads;
Here could I wear my careless life away,
And in thy arms insensibly decay.
Instead of that, me frantick love detains,
'Mid foes, and dreadful darts, and bloody plains:
While you--and can my soul the tale believe,
Far from your country, lonely wand'ring leave
Me, me your lover, barbarous fugitive!
Seek the rough Alps where snows eternal shine,
And joyless borders of the frozen Rhine.
Ah! may no cold e'er blast my dearest maid,
Nor pointed ice thy tender feet invade. WARTON.

He then turns his thoughts on every side, in quest of something that may
solace or amuse him: he proposes happiness to himself, first in one
scene and then in another: and at last finds that nothing will satisfy:

_Jam neque Hamadryades rursum, nec carmina nobis
Ipsa placent: ipsae rursum concedite sylvae.
Non illum nostri possunt mutare labores;
Nec si frigoribus mediis Hebrumque bibamus,
Sithoniasque nives hyemis subeamus aquosae:
Nec si, cum moriens alta liber aret in ulmo
Aethiopum versemus oves sub sidere Cancri.
Omnia vincit amor; et nos cedamns amori. _ Ec. x. 62.

But now again no more the woodland maids,
Nor pastoral songs delight--Farewell, ye shades--
No toils of ours the cruel god can change,
Tho' lost in frozen deserts we should range;
Tho' we should drink where chilling Hebrus flows,
Endure bleak winter blasts, and Thracian snows:
Or on hot India's plains our flocks should feed,
Where the parch'd elm declines his sickening head,
Beneath fierce-glowing Cancer's fiery beams,
Far from cool breezes and refreshing streams.
Love over all maintains resistless sway,
And let us love's all-conquering power obey. WARTON.

But notwithstanding the excellence of the tenth pastoral, I cannot
forbear to give the preference to the first, which is equally natural
and more diversified. The complaint of the shepherd, who saw his old
companion at ease in the shade, while himself was driving his little
flock he knew not whither, is such as, with variation of circumstances,
misery always utters at the sight of prosperity:

_Nos patriae fines, et dulcia linquimus arra;
Nos patrium fugimus: Tu, Tityre, lentus in umbra
Formosam resonare doces Amaryllida sylvas. _ Ec. i. 3.

We leave our country's bounds, our much-lov'd plains;
We from our country fly, unhappy swains!
You, Tit'rus, in the groves at leisure laid,
Teach Amaryllis' name to every shade. WARTON.

His account of the difficulties of his journey, gives a very tender
image of pastoral distress:

--_En ipse capellas
Protenus aeger ago: hanc etiam vix, Tityre, duco:
Hic inter densas corylos modo namque gemellos,
Spem gregis, ah! silice in nuda connixa reliquit. _ Ec. i. 12.

And lo! sad partner of the general care,
Weary and faint I drive my goats afar!
While scarcely this my leading hand sustains,
Tired with the way, and recent from her pains;
For 'mid yon tangled hazels as we past,
On the bare flints her hapless twin she cast,
The hopes and promise of my ruin'd fold! WARTON.

The description of Virgil's happiness in his little farm, combines
almost all the images of rural pleasure; and he, therefore, that can
read it with indifference, has no sense of pastoral poetry:

_Fortunate senex! ergo tua rura manebunt,
Et tibi magna satis; quamvis lapis omnia nudus,
Limosoque palus obducat pascua junco:
Non insueta graves tentabunt pabula foetas,
Nec mala vicini pecoris contagia laedent.
Fortunate senex! hic inter flumina nota,
Et fontes sacros, frigus captabis opacum.
Hinc tibi, quae semper vicino ab limite sepes,
Hyblaeis apibus florem depasta salicti,
Saepe levi somnum suadebit inire susurro.
Hinc alta sub rupe canet frondator ad auras.
Nec tamen interea raucae, tua cura, palumbes,
Nec gemere aëria cessabit turtur ab ulmo. _ Ec. i. 47

Happy old man! then still thy farms restored,
Enough for thee, shall bless thy frugal board.
What tho' rough stones the naked soil o'erspread,
Or marshy bulrush rear its wat'ry head,
No foreign food thy teeming ewes shall fear,
No touch contagious spread its influence here.
Happy old man! here 'mid th' accustom'd streams
And sacred springs, you'll shun the scorching beams;
While from yon willow-fence, thy picture's bound,
The bees that suck their flow'ry stores around,
Shall sweetly mingle with the whispering boughs
Their lulling murmurs, and invite repose:
While from steep rocks the pruner's song is heard;
Nor the soft-cooing dove, thy fav'rite bird,
Meanwhile shall cease to breathe her melting strain,
Nor turtles from th' aërial elm to 'plain. WARTON.

It may be observed, that these two poems were produced by events that
really happened; and may, therefore, be of use to prove, that we can
always feel more than we can imagine, and that the most artful fiction
must give way to truth.

I am, Sir,
Your humble servant,

DUBIUS.




No. 95. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 2, 1753.

--_Dulcique animos novitate tenebo_. OVID. Met. iv. 284.

And with sweet novelty your soul detain.

It is often charged upon writers, that with all their pretensions to
genius and discoveries, they do little more than copy one another; and
that compositions obtruded upon the world with the pomp of novelty,
contain only tedious repetitions of common sentiments, or at best
exhibit a transposition of known images, and give a new appearance to
truth only by some slight difference of dress and decoration.

The allegation of resemblance between authors is indisputably true; but
the charge of plagiarism, which is raised upon it, is not to be allowed
with equal readiness. A coincidence of sentiment may easily happen
without any communication, since there are many occasions in which all
reasonable men will nearly think alike. Writers of all ages have had the
same sentiments, because they have in all ages had the same objects of
speculation; the interests and passions, the virtues and vices of
mankind, have been diversified in different times, only by unessential
and casual varieties: and we must, therefore, expect in the works of all
those who attempt to describe them, such a likeness as we find in the
pictures of the same person drawn in different periods of his life.

It is necessary, therefore, that before an author be charged with
plagiarism, one of the most reproachful, though, perhaps, not the most
atrocious of literary crimes, the subject on which he treats should be
carefully considered. We do not wonder, that historians, relating the
same facts, agree in their narration; or that authors, delivering the
elements of science, advance the same theorems, and lay down the same
definitions: yet it is not wholly without use to mankind, that books are
multiplied, and that different authors lay out their labours on the same
subject; for there will always be some reason why one should on
particular occasions, or to particular persons, be preferable to
another; some will be clear where others are obscure, some will please
by their style and others by their method, some by their embellishments
and others by their simplicity, some by closeness and others by
diffusion.

The same indulgence is to be shown to the writers of morality: right and
wrong are immutable; and those, therefore, who teach us to distinguish
them, if they all teach us right, must agree with one another. The
relations of social life, and the duties resulting from them, must be
the same at all times and in all nations: some petty differences may be,
indeed, produced, by forms of government or arbitrary customs; but the
general doctrine can receive no alteration.

Yet it is not to be desired, that morality should be considered as
interdicted to all future writers: men will always be tempted to deviate
from their duty, and will, therefore, always want a monitor to recall
them; and a new book often seizes the attention of the publick, without
any other claim than that it is new. There is likewise in composition,
as in other things, a perpetual vicissitude of fashion; and truth is
recommended at one time to regard, by appearances which at another would
expose it to neglect; the author, therefore, who has judgment to discern
the taste of his contemporaries, and skill to gratify it, will have
always an opportunity to deserve well of mankind, by conveying
instruction to them in a grateful vehicle.

There are likewise many modes of composition, by which a moralist may
deserve the name of an original writer: he may familiarize his system by
dialogues after the manner of the ancients, or subtilize it into a
series of syllogistick arguments: he may enforce his doctrine by
seriousness and solemnity, or enliven it by sprightliness and gaiety: he
may deliver his sentiments in naked precepts, or illustrate them by
historical examples: he may detain the studious by the artful
concatenation of a continued discourse, or relieve the busy by short
strictures, and unconnected essays.

To excel in any of these forms of writing will require a particular
cultivation of the genius: whoever can attain to excellence, will be
certain to engage a set of readers, whom no other method would have
equally allured; and he that communicates truth with success, must be
numbered among the first benefactors to mankind.

The same observation may be extended likewise to the passions: their
influence is uniform, and their effects nearly the same in every human
breast: a man loves and hates, desires and avoids, exactly like his
neighbour; resentment and ambition, avarice and indolence, discover
themselves by the same symptoms in minds distant a thousand years from
one another.

Nothing, therefore, can be more unjust, than to charge an author with
plagiarism, merely because he assigns to every cause its natural effect;
and makes his personages act, as others in like circumstances have
always done. There are conceptions in which all men will agree, though
each derives them from his own observation: whoever has been in love,
will represent a lover impatient of every idea that interrupts his
meditations on his mistress, retiring to shades and solitude, that he
may muse without disturbance on his approaching happiness, or
associating himself with some friend that flatters his passion, and
talking away the hours of absence upon his darling subject. Whoever has
been so unhappy as to have felt the miseries of long-continued hatred,
will, without any assistance from ancient volumes, be able to relate how
the passions are kept in perpetual agitation, by the recollection of
injury and meditations of revenge; how the blood boils at the name of
the enemy, and life is worn away in contrivances of mischief.

Every other passion is alike simple and limited, if it be considered
only with regard to the breast which it inhabits; the anatomy of the
mind, as that of the body, must perpetually exhibit the same
appearances; and though by the continued industry of successive
inquirers, new movements will be from time to time discovered, they can
affect only the minuter parts, and are commonly of more curiosity than
importance.

It will now be natural to inquire, by what arts are the writers of the
present and future ages to attract the notice; and favour of mankind.
They are to observe the alterations which time is always making in the
modes of life, that they may gratify every generation with a picture of
themselves. Thus love is uniform, but courtship is perpetually varying:
the different arts of gallantry, which beauty has inspired, would of
themselves be sufficient to fill a volume; sometimes balls and
serenades, sometimes tournaments and adventures, have been employed to
melt the hearts of ladies, who in another century have been sensible of
scarce any other merit than that of riches, and listened only to
jointures and pin-money. Thus the ambitious man has at all times been
eager of wealth and power; but these hopes have been gratified in some
countries by supplicating the people, and in others by flattering the
prince: honour in some states has been only the reward of military
achievements, in others it has been gained by noisy turbulence and
popular clamour.
Avarice has worn a different form, as she actuated the
usurer of Rome, and the stock-jobber of England; and idleness itself,
how little soever inclined to the trouble of invention, has been forced
from time to time to change its amusements, and contrive different
methods of wearing out the day.

Here then is the fund, from which those who study mankind may fill their
compositions with an inexhaustible variety of images and allusions: and
he must be confessed to look with little attention upon scenes thus
perpetually changing, who cannot catch some of the figures before they
are made vulgar by reiterated descriptions.

It has been discovered by Sir Isaac Newton, that the distinct and
primogenial colours are only seven; but every eye can witness, that from
various mixtures, in various proportions, infinite diversifications of
tints may be produced. In like manner, the passions of the mind, which
put the world in motion, and produce all the bustle and eagerness of the
busy crowds that swarm upon the earth; the passions, from whence arise
all the pleasures and pains that we see and hear of, if we analyze the
mind of man, are very few; but those few agitated and combined, as
external causes shall happen to operate, and modified by prevailing
opinions and accidental caprices, make such frequent alterations on the
surface of life, that the show, while we are busied in delineating it,
vanishes from the view, and a new set of objects succeed, doomed to the
same shortness of duration with the former: thus curiosity may always
find employment, and the busy part of mankind will furnish the
contemplative with the materials of speculation to the end of time.

The complaint, therefore, that all topicks are preoccupied, is nothing
more than the murmur of ignorance or idleness, by which some discourage
others, and some themselves; the mutability of mankind will always
furnish writers with new images, and the luxuriance of fancy may always
embellish them with new decorations.




No. 99. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 16, 1753.

--_Magnis tamen excidit ausis_. OVID. Met. Lib. ii. 328.

But in the glorious enterprise he died. ADDISON.

It has always been the practice of mankind, to judge of actions by the
event. The same attempts, conducted in the same manner, but terminated
by different success, produce different judgments: they who attain their
wishes, never want celebrators of their wisdom and their virtue; and
they that miscarry, are quickly discovered to have been defective not
only in mental but in moral qualities. The world will never be long
without some good reason to hate the unhappy; their real faults are
immediately detected; and if those are not sufficient to sink them into
infamy, an additional weight of calumny will be superadded: he that
fails in his endeavours after wealth or power, will not long retain
either honesty or courage.

This species of injustice has so long prevailed in universal practice,
that it seems likewise to have infected speculation: so few minds are
able to separate the ideas of greatness and prosperity, that even Sir
William Temple has determined, "that he who can deserve the name of a
hero, must not only be virtuous but fortunate. "

By this unreasonable distribution of praise and blame, none have
suffered oftener than projectors, whose rapidity of imagination and
vastness of design raise such envy in their fellow mortals, that every
eye watches for their fall, and every heart exults at their distresses:
yet even a projector may gain favour by success; and the tongue that was
prepared to hiss, then endeavours to excel others in loudness of
applause.

When Coriolanus, in Shakespeare, deserted to Aufidius, the Volscian
servants at first insulted him, even while he stood under the protection
of the household gods: but when they saw that the project took effect,
and the stranger was seated at the head of the table, one of them very
judiciously observes, "that he always thought there was more in him than
he could think. "

Machiavel has justly animadverted on the different notice taken by all
succeeding times, of the two great projectors, Cataline and Cæsar. Both
formed the same project, and intended to raise themselves to power, by
subverting the commonwealth: they pursued their design, perhaps, with
equal abilities, and with equal virtue; but Cataline perished in the
field, and Cæsar returned from Pharsalia with unlimited authority: and
from that time, every monarch of the earth has thought himself honoured
by a comparison with Cæsar; and Cataline has been never mentioned, but
that his name might be applied to traitors and incendiaries.

In an age more remote, Xerxes projected the conquest of Greece, and
brought down the power of Asia against it: but after the world had been
filled with expectation and terrour, his army was beaten, his fleet was
destroyed, and Xerxes has been never mentioned without contempt.

A few years afterwards, Greece likewise had her turn of giving birth to
a projector; who invading Asia with a small army, went forward in search
of adventures, and by his escape from one danger, gained only more
rashness to rush into another: he stormed city after city, over-ran
kingdom after kingdom, fought battles only for barren victory, and
invaded nations only that he might make his way through them to new
invasions: but having been fortunate in the execution of his projects,
he died with the name of Alexander the Great.

These are, indeed, events of ancient times; but human nature is always
the same, and every age will afford us instances of publick censures
influenced by events. The great business of the middle centuries, was
the holy war; which undoubtedly was a noble project, and was for a long
time prosecuted with a spirit equal to that with which it had been
contrived; but the ardour of the European heroes only hurried them to
destruction; for a long time they could not gain the territories for
which they fought, and, when at last gained, they could not keep them:
their expeditions, therefore, have been the scoff of idleness and
ignorance, their understanding and their virtue have been equally
vilified, their conduct has been ridiculed, and their cause has been
defamed.

When Columbus had engaged king Ferdinand in the discovery of the other
hemisphere, the sailors, with whom he embarked in the expedition, had so
little confidence in their commander, that after having been long at sea
looking for coasts which they expected never to find, they raised a
general mutiny, and demanded to return. He found means to sooth them
into a permission to continue the same course three days longer, and on
the evening of the third day descried land. Had the impatience of his
crew denied him a few hours of the time requested, what had been his
fate but to have come back with the infamy of a vain projector, who had
betrayed the king's credulity to useless expenses, and risked his life
in seeking countries that had no existence? how would those that had
rejected his proposals have triumphed in their acuteness! and when would
his name have been mentioned, but with the makers of potable gold and
malleable glass?

The last royal projectors with whom the world has been troubled, were
Charles of Sweden and the Czar of Muscovy. Charles, if any judgment may
be formed of his designs by his measures and his inquiries, had purposed
first to dethrone the Czar, then to lead his army through pathless
deserts into China, thence to make his way by the sword through the
whole circuit of Asia, and by the conquest of Turkey to unite Sweden
with his new dominions: but this mighty project was crushed at Pultowa;
and Charles has since been considered as a madman by those powers, who
sent their ambassadors to solicit his friendship, and their generals "to
learn under him the art of war. "

The Czar found employment sufficient in his own dominions, and amused
himself in digging canals, and building cities: murdering his subjects
with insufferable fatigues, and transplanting nations from one corner of
his dominions to another, without regretting the thousands that perished
on the way: but he attained his end, he made his people formidable, and
is numbered by fame among the demi-gods.

I am far from intending to vindicate the sanguinary projects of heroes
and conquerors, and would wish rather to diminish the reputation of
their success, than the infamy of their miscarriages: for I cannot
conceive, why he that has burned cities, wasted nations, and filled the
world with horrour and desolation, should be more kindly regarded by
mankind, than he that died in the rudiments of wickedness; why he that
accomplished mischief should be glorious, and he that only endeavoured
it should be criminal. I would wish Cæsar and Catiline, Xerxes and
Alexander, Charles and Peter, huddled together in obscurity or
detestation.

But there is another species of projectors, to whom I would willingly
conciliate mankind; whose ends are generally laudable, and whose labours
are innocent; who are searching out new powers of nature, or contriving
new works of art; but who are yet persecuted with incessant obloquy, and
whom the universal contempt with which they are treated, often debars
from that success which their industry would obtain, if it were
permitted to act without opposition.

They who find themselves inclined to censure new undertakings, only
because they are new, should consider, that the folly of projection is
very seldom the folly of a fool; it is commonly the ebullition of a
capacious mind, crowded with variety of knowledge, and heated with
intenseness of thought; it proceeds often from the consciousness of
uncommon powers, from the confidence of those, who having already done
much, are easily persuaded that they can do more. When Rowley had
completed the orrery, he attempted the perpetual motion; when Boyle had
exhausted the secrets of vulgar chymistry, he turned his thoughts to the
work of transmutation[1].

A projector generally unites those qualities which have the fairest
claim to veneration, extent of knowledge and greatness of design; it was
said of Catiline, "_immoderata, incredibilia, nimis alta semper
cupiebat_. " Projectors of all kinds agree in their intellects, though
they differ in their morals; they all fail by attempting things beyond
their power, by despising vulgar attainments, and aspiring to
performances to which, perhaps, nature has not proportioned the force of
man: when they fail, therefore, they fail not by idleness or timidity,
but by rash adventure and fruitless diligence.

That the attempts of such men will often miscarry, we may reasonably
expect; yet from such men, and such only, are we to hope for the
cultivation of those parts of nature which lie yet waste, and the
invention of those arts which are yet wanting to the felicity of life.
If they are, therefore, universally discouraged, art and discovery can
make no advances. Whatever is attempted without previous certainty of
success, may be considered as a project, and amongst narrow minds may,
therefore, expose its author to censure and contempt; and if the liberty
of laughing be once indulged, every man will laugh at what he does not
understand, every project will be considered as madness, and every great
or new design will be censured as a project. Men unaccustomed to reason
and researches, think every enterprise impracticable, which is extended
beyond common effects, or comprises many intermediate operations. Many
that presume to laugh at projectors, would consider a flight through the
air in a winged chariot, and the movement of a mighty engine by the
steam of water as equally the dreams of mechanick lunacy; and would
hear, with equal negligence, of the union of the Thames and Severn by a
canal, and the scheme of Albuquerque, the viceroy of the Indies, who in
the rage of hostility had contrived to make Egypt a barren desert, by
turning the Nile into the Red Sea.

Those who have attempted much, have seldom failed to perform more than
those who never deviate from the common roads of action: many valuable
preparations of chymistry are supposed to have risen from unsuccessful
inquiries after the grand elixir: it is, therefore, just to encourage
those who endeavour to enlarge the power of art, since they often
succeed beyond expectation; and when they fail, may sometimes benefit
the world even by their miscarriages.

[1] Sir Richard Steele was infatuated, with notions of Alchemy, and
wasted money in its visionary projects. He had a laboratory at
Poplar. Addisoniana, vol i. p. 10.

The readers of Washington Irving's Brace-Bridge Hall will recollect
a pleasing and popular exposition of the alternately splendid and
benevolent, and always passionate reveries of the Alchemist, in the
affecting story of the Student of Salamanca.




No. 102. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 27, 1753.

--_Quid tam dextro pede concipis, ut te
Conatus non poeniteat votique peracti? _ JUV. Sat. x. 5.

What in the conduct of our life appears
So well design'd, so luckily begun,
But when we have our wish, we wish undone. DRYDEN.

TO THE ADVENTURER.

Sir,

I have been for many years a trader in London. My beginning was narrow,
and my stock small; I was, therefore, a long time brow-beaten and
despised by those, who, having more money, thought they had more merit
than myself. I did not, however, suffer my resentment to instigate me to
any mean arts of supplantation, nor my eagerness of riches to betray me
to any indirect methods of gain; I pursued my business with incessant
assiduity, supported by the hope of being one day richer than those who
contemned me; and had, upon every annual review of my books, the
satisfaction of finding my fortune increased beyond my expectation.

In a few years my industry and probity were fully recompensed, my wealth
was really great, and my reputation for wealth still greater. I had
large warehouses crowded with goods, and considerable sums in the
publick funds; I was caressed upon the Exchange by the most eminent
merchants; became the oracle of the common council; was solicited to
engage in all commercial undertakings; was flattered with the hopes of
becoming in a short time one of the directors of a wealthy company, and,
to complete my mercantile honours, enjoyed the expensive happiness of
fining for sheriff.

Riches, you know, easily produce riches; when I had arrived to this
degree of wealth, I had no longer any obstruction or opposition to fear;
new acquisitions were hourly brought within my reach, and I continued
for some years longer to heap thousands upon thousands.

At last I resolved to complete the circle of a citizen's prosperity by
the purchase of an estate in the country, and to close my life in
retirement. From the hour that this design entered my imagination, I
found the fatigues of my employment every day more oppressive, and
persuaded myself that I was no longer equal to perpetual attention, and
that my health would soon be destroyed by the torment and distraction of
extensive business. I could image to myself no happiness, but in vacant
jollity, and uninterrupted leisure: nor entertain my friends with any
other topick than the vexation and uncertainty of trade, and the
happiness of rural privacy.

But, notwithstanding these declarations, I could not at once reconcile
myself to the thoughts of ceasing to get money; and though I was every
day inquiring for a purchase, I found some reason for rejecting all that
were offered me; and, indeed, had accumulated so many beauties and
conveniencies in my idea of the spot where I was finally to be happy,
that, perhaps, the world might have been travelled over without
discovery of a place which would not have been defective in some
particular.

Thus I went on, still talking of retirement, and still refusing to
retire; my friends began to laugh at my delays, and I grew ashamed to
trifle longer with my own inclinations; an estate was at length
purchased, I transferred my stock to a prudent young man who had married
my daughter, went down into the country, and commenced lord of a
spacious manor.

Here for some time I found happiness equal to my expectation. I reformed
the old house according to the advice of the best architects, I threw
down the walls of the garden, and enclosed it with palisades, planted
long avenues of trees, filled a green-house with exotick plants, dug a
new canal, and threw the earth into the old moat.

The fame of these expensive improvements brought in all the country to
see the show. I entertained my visitors with great liberality, led them
round my gardens, showed them my apartments, laid before them plans for
new decorations, and was gratified by the wonder of some and the envy of
others.

I was envied: but how little can one man judge of the condition of
another! The time was now coming, in which affluence and splendour could
no longer make me pleased with myself. I had built till the imagination
of the architect was exhausted; I had added one convenience to another,
till I knew not what more to wish or to design; I had laid out my
gardens, planted my park, and completed my water-works; and what now
remained to be done? what, but to look up to turrets, of which when they
were once raised I had no further use, to range over apartments where
time was tarnishing the furniture, to stand by the cascade of which I
scarcely now perceived the sound, and to watch the growth of woods that
must give their shade to a distant generation.

In this gloomy inactivity, is every day begun and ended: the happiness
that I have been so long procuring is now at an end, because it has been
procured; I wander from room to room, till I am weary of myself; I ride
out to a neighbouring hill in the centre of my estate, from whence all
my lands lie in prospect round me; I see nothing that I have not seen
before, and return home disappointed, though I knew that I had nothing
to expect.

In my happy days of business I had been accustomed to rise early in the
morning; and remember the time when I grieved that the night came so
soon upon me, and obliged me for a few hours to shut out affluence and
prosperity. I now seldom see the rising sun, but to "tell him," with the
fallen angel, "how I hate his beams[1]. " I awake from sleep as to
languor or imprisonment, and have no employment for the first hour but
to consider by what art I shall rid myself of the second. I protract the
breakfast as long as I can, because when it is ended I have no call for
my attention, till I can with some degree of decency grow impatient for
my dinner. If I could dine all my life, I should be happy; I eat not
because I am hungry, but because I am idle: but, alas! the time quickly
comes when I can eat no longer; and so ill does my constitution second
my inclination, that I cannot bear strong liquors: seven hours must then
be endured before I shall sup; but supper comes at last, the more
welcome as it is in a short time succeeded by sleep.

Such, Mr. Adventurer, is the happiness, the hope of which seduced me
from the duties and pleasures of a mercantile life. I shall be told by
those who read my narrative, that there are many means of innocent
amusement, and many schemes of useful employment, which I do not appear
ever to have known; and that nature and art have provided pleasures, by
which, without the drudgery of settled business, the active may be
engaged, the solitary soothed, and the social entertained.

These arts, Sir, I have tried. When first I took possession of my
estate, in conformity to the taste of my neighbours, I bought guns and
nets, filled my kennel with dogs, and my stable with horses: but a
little experience showed me, that these instruments of rural felicity
would afford me few gratifications. I never shot but to miss the mark,
and, to confess the truth, was afraid of the fire of my own gun. I could
discover no musick in the cry of the dogs, nor could divest myself of
pity for the animal whose peaceful and inoffensive life was sacrificed
to our sport. I was not, indeed, always at leisure to reflect upon her
danger; for my horse, who had been bred to the chase, did not always
regard my choice either of speed or way, but leaped hedges and ditches
at his own discretion, and hurried me along with the dogs, to the great
diversion of my brother sportsmen. His eagerness of pursuit once incited
him to swim a river; and I had leisure to resolve in the water, that I
would never hazard my life again for the destruction of a hare.

I then ordered books to be procured, and by the direction of the vicar
had in a few weeks a closet elegantly furnished. You will, perhaps, be
surprised when I shall tell you, that when once I had ranged them
according to their sizes, and piled them up in regular gradations, I had
received all the pleasure which they could give me. I am not able to
excite in myself any curiosity after events which have been long passed,
and in which I can, therefore, have no interest; I am utterly
unconcerned to know whether Tully or Demosthenes excelled in oratory,
whether Hannibal lost Italy by his own negligence or the corruption of
his countrymen. I have no skill in controversial learning, nor can
conceive why so many volumes should have been written upon questions,
which I have lived so long and so happily without understanding. I once
resolved to go through the volumes relating to the office of justice of
the peace, but found them so crabbed and intricate, that in less than a
month I desisted in despair, and resolved to supply my deficiencies by
paying a competent salary to a skilful clerk.

I am naturally inclined to hospitality, and for some time kept up a
constant intercourse of visits with the neighbouring gentlemen; but
though they are easily brought about me by better wine than they can
find at any other house, I am not much relieved by their conversation;
they have no skill in commerce or the stocks, and I have no knowledge of
the history of families or the factions of the country; so that when the
first civilities are over, they usually talk to one another, and I am
left alone in the midst of the company. Though I cannot drink myself, I
am obliged to encourage the circulation of the glass; their mirth grows
more turbulent and obstreperous; and before their merriment is at an
end, I am sick with disgust, and, perhaps, reproached with my sobriety,
or by some sly insinuations insulted as a cit.

Such, Mr. Adventurer, is the life to which I am condemned by a foolish
endeavour to be happy by imitation; such is the happiness to which I
pleased myself with approaching, and which I considered as the chief end
of my cares and my labours. I toiled year after year with cheerfulness,
in expectation of the happy hour in which I might be idle: the privilege
of idleness is attained, but has not brought with it the blessing of
tranquillity.

I am yours, &c.
MERCATOR.


[1] Johnson was too apt to destroy the _keeping_ of character in his
correspondences. A retired trader might desire a little more
slumber, "a little folding of the hands to sleep;" but the lofty
malignity of a fallen spirit sickening at the beams of day, would
not be among the feelings of an ordinary mind. Some good remarks on
this point may be seen in Miss Talbot's Letters to Mrs. Carter.




No. 107. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 1753.

--_Sub judice lis est. _ HOR. De Ar. Poet. 78.

And of their vain disputings find no end. FRANCIS.

It has been sometimes asked by those who find the appearance of wisdom
more easily attained by questions than solutions, how it comes to pass,
that the world is divided by such difference of opinion? and why men,
equally reasonable, and equally lovers of truth, do not always think in
the same manner?

With regard to simple propositions, where the terms are understood, and
the whole subject is comprehended at once, there is such an uniformity
of sentiment among all human beings, that, for many ages, a very
numerous set of notions were supposed to be innate, or necessarily
co-existent with the faculty of reason: it being imagined, that universal
agreement could proceed only from the invariable dictates of the
universal parent.

In questions diffuse and compounded, this similarity of determination is
no longer to be expected. At our first sally into the intellectual
world, we all march together along one straight and open road; but as we
proceed further, and wider prospects open to our view, every eye fixes
upon a different scene; we divide into various paths, and, as we move
forward, are still at a greater distance from each other. As a question
becomes more complicated and involved, and extends to a greater number
of relations, disagreement of opinion will always be multiplied; not
because we are irrational, but because we are finite beings, furnished
with different kinds of knowledge, exerting different degrees of
attention, one discovering consequences which escape another, none
taking in the whole concatenation of causes and effects, and most
comprehending but a very small part, each comparing what he observes
with a different criterion, and each referring it to a different
purpose.

Where, then, is the wonder, that they who see only a small part should
judge erroneously of the whole? or that they, who see different and
dissimilar parts, should judge differently from each other?

Whatever has various respects, must have various appearances of good and
evil, beauty or deformity; thus, the gardener tears up as a weed, the
plant which the physician gathers as a medicine; and "a general," says
Sir Kenelm Digby, "will look with pleasure over a plain, as a fit place
on which the fate of empires might be decided in battle, which the
farmer will despise as bleak and barren, neither fruitful of pasturage,
nor fit for tillage[1]. "

Two men examining the same question proceed commonly like the physician
and gardener in selecting herbs, or the farmer and hero looking on the
plain; they bring minds impressed with different notions, and direct
their inquiries to different ends; they form, therefore, contrary
conclusions, and each wonders at the other's absurdity.

We have less reason to be surprised or offended when we find others
differ from us in opinion, because we very often differ from ourselves.
How often we alter our minds, we do not always remark; because the
change is sometimes made imperceptibly and gradually, and the last
conviction effaces all memory of the former: yet every man, accustomed
from time to time to take a survey of his own notions, will by a slight
retrospection be able to discover, that his mind has suffered many
revolutions; that the same things have in the several parts of his life
been condemned and approved, pursued and shunned: and that on many
occasions, even when his practice has been steady, his mind has been
wavering, and he has persisted in a scheme of action, rather because he
feared the censure of inconstancy, than because he was always pleased
with his own choice.

Of the different faces shown by the same objects, as they are viewed on
opposite sides, and of the different inclinations which they must
constantly raise in him that contemplates them, a more striking example
cannot easily be found than two Greek epigrammatists will afford us in
their accounts of human life, which I shall lay before the reader in
English prose.

Posidippus, a comick poet, utters this complaint: "Through which of the
paths of life is it eligible to pass? In public assemblies are debates
and troublesome affairs: domestick privacies are haunted with anxieties;
in the country is labour; on the sea is terrour: in a foreign land, he
that has money must live in fear, he that wants it must pine in
distress: are you married? you are troubled with suspicions; are you
single? you languish in solitude; children occasion toil, and a
childless life is a state of destitution: the time of youth is a time of
folly, and gray hairs are loaded with infirmity. This choice only,
therefore, can be made, either never to receive being, or immediately to
lose it[2]. "

Such and so gloomy is the prospect, which Posidippus has laid before us.
But we are not to acquiesce too hastily in his determination against the
value of existence: for Metrodorus, a philosopher of Athens, has shown,
that life has pleasures as well as pains; and having exhibited the
present state of man in brighter colours, draws with equal appearance of
reason, a contrary conclusion.

"You may pass well through any of the paths of life. In publick
assemblies are honours and transactions of wisdom; in domestick privacy
is stillness and quiet: in the country are the beauties of nature; on
the sea is the hope of gain: in a foreign land, he that is rich is
honoured, he that is poor may keep his poverty secret: are you married?
you have a cheerful house; are you single? you are unincumbered;
children are objects of affection, to be without children is to be
without care: the time of youth is the time of vigour, and gray hairs
are made venerable by piety. It will, therefore, never be a wise man's
choice, either not to obtain existence, or to lose it; for every state
of life has its felicity. "

In these epigrams are included most of the questions which have engaged
the speculations of the inquirers after happiness; and though they will
not much assist our determinations, they may, perhaps, equally promote
our quiet, by showing that no absolute determination ever can be formed.

Whether a publick station or private life be desirable, has always been
debated. We see here both the allurements and discouragements of civil
employments; on one side there is trouble, on the other honour; the
management of affairs is vexatious and difficult, but it is the only
duty in which wisdom can be conspicuously displayed: it must then still
be left to every man to choose either ease or glory; nor can any general
precept be given, since no man can be happy by the prescription of
another.

Thus, what is said of children by Posidippus, "that they are occasions
of fatigue," and by Metrodorus, "that they are objects of affection," is
equally certain; but whether they will give most pain or pleasure, must
depend on their future conduct and dispositions, on many causes over
which the parent can have little influence: there is, therefore, room
for all the caprices of imagination, and desire must be proportioned to
the hope or fear that shall happen to predominate.

Such is the uncertainty in which we are always likely to remain with
regard to questions wherein we have most interest, and which every day
affords us fresh opportunity to examine: we may examine, indeed, but we
never can decide, because our faculties are unequal to the subject; we
see a little, and form an opinion; we see more, and change it.

This inconstancy and unsteadiness, to which we must so often find
ourselves liable, ought certainly to teach us moderation and forbearance
towards those who cannot accommodate themselves to our sentiments: if
they are deceived, we have no right to attribute their mistake to
obstinacy or negligence, because we likewise have been mistaken; we may,
perhaps, again change our own opinion: and what excuse shall we be able
to find for aversion and malignity conceived against him, whom we shall
then find to have committed no fault, and who offended us only by
refusing to follow us into errour?

It may likewise contribute to soften that resentment which pride
naturally raises against opposition, if we consider, that he who differs
from us, does not always contradict us; he has one view of an object,
and we have another; each describes what he sees with equal fidelity,
and each regulates his steps by his own eyes: one man with Posidippus,
looks on celibacy as a state of gloomy solitude, without a partner in
joy, or a comforter in sorrow; the other considers it, with Metrodorus,
as a state free from incumbrances, in which a man is at liberty to
choose his own gratifications, to remove from place to place in quest of
pleasure, and to think of nothing but merriment and diversion: full of
these notions one hastens to choose a wife, and the other laughs at his
rashness, or pities his ignorance; yet it is possible that each is
right, but that each is right only for himself.

Life is not the object of science: we see a little, very little; and
what is beyond we only can conjecture. If we inquire of those who have
gone before us, we receive small satisfaction; some have travelled life
without observation, and some willingly mislead us. The only thought,
therefore, on which we can repose with comfort, is that which presents
to us the care of Providence, whose eye takes in the whole of things,
and under whose direction all involuntary errours will terminate in
happiness.


[1] Livy has described the Achaean leader, Philopaemen, as actually so
exercising his thoughts whilst he wandered among the rocky passes of
the Morea, xxxv. 28. In the graphic page of the Roman historian, as
in the stanzas of the "Ariosto of the North:"

"From shingles grey the lances start,
The bracken bush sends forth the dart,
The rushes and the willow wand
Are bristling into axe and brand. "
Lady of the Lake, Canto v. 9.

[2]
"Count o'er the joys thine hours have seen,
Count o'er thy days from anguish free,
And know, whatever thou hast been,
'Tis something better not to be. "
Lord Byron's Euthanasia.

Compare also the plaintive chorus in the Oedipus at Colonos, 1211.
Among the tragedies of Sophocles this stands forth a mass of
feeling. See Schlegel's remarks upon it in his Dramatic Literature.




No. 108. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 1753.

_Nobis, quum semet occidit brevis lux,
Nox est perpetua una dormienda. _ CATULLUS. Lib. v. El. v.

When once the short-liv'd mortal dies,
A night eternal seals his eyes. ADDISON.

It may have been observed by every reader, that there are certain
topicks which never are exhausted. Of some images and sentiments the
mind of man may be said to be enamoured; it meets them, however often
they occur, with the same ardour which a lover feels at the sight of his
mistress, and parts from them with the same regret when they can no
longer be enjoyed.

Of this kind are many descriptions which the poets have transcribed from
each other, and their successors will probably copy to the end of time;
which will continue to engage, or, as the French term it, to flatter the
imagination, as long as human nature shall remain the same.

When a poet mentions the spring, we know that the zephyrs are about to
whisper, that the groves are to recover their verdure, the linnets to
warble forth their notes of love, and the flocks and herds to frisk over
vales painted with flowers: yet, who is there so insensible of the
beauties of nature, so little delighted with the renovation of the
world, as not to feel his heart bound at the mention of the spring?

When night overshadows a romantick scene, all is stillness, silence, and
quiet; the poets of the grove cease their melody, the moon towers over
the world in gentle majesty, men forget their labours and their cares,
and every passion and pursuit is for a while suspended. All this we know
already, yet we hear it repeated without weariness; because such is
generally the life of man, that he is pleased to think on the time when
he shall pause from a sense of his condition.

When a poetical grove invites us to its covert, we know that we shall
find what we have already seen, a limpid brook murmuring over pebbles, a
bank diversified with flowers, a green arch that excludes the sun, and a
natural grot shaded with myrtles; yet who can forbear to enter the
pleasing gloom to enjoy coolness and privacy, and gratify himself once
more by scenes with which nature has formed him to be delighted?

Many moral sentiments likewise are so adapted to our state, that they
find approbation whenever they solicit it, and are seldom read without
exciting a gentle emotion in the mind: such is the comparison of the
life of man with the duration of a flower, a thought which perhaps every
nation has heard warbled in its own language, from the inspired poets of
the Hebrews to our own times; yet this comparion must always please,
because every heart feels its justness, and every hour confirms it by
example.

Such, likewise, is the precept that directs us to use the present hour,
and refer nothing to a distant time, which we are uncertain whether we
shall reach: this every moralist may venture to inculcate, because it
will always be approved, and because it is always forgotten.

This rule is, indeed, every day enforced, by arguments more powerful
than the dissertations of moralists: we see men pleasing themselves with
future happiness, fixing a certain hour for the completion of their
wishes, and perishing, some at a greater and some at a less distance
from the happy time; all complaining of their disappointments, and
lamenting that they had suffered the years which heaven allowed them, to
pass without improvement, and deferred the principal purpose of their
lives to the time when life itself was to forsake them.

It is not only uncertain, whether, through all the casualties and
dangers which beset the life of man, we shall be able to reach the time
appointed for happiness or wisdom; but it is likely, that whatever now
hinders us from doing that which our reason and conscience declare
necessary to be done, will equally obstruct us in times to come. It is
easy for the imagination, operating on things not yet existing, to
please itself with scenes of unmingled felicity, or plan out courses of
uniform virtue; but good and evil are in real life inseparably united;
habits grow stronger by indulgence; and reason loses her dignity, in
proportion as she has oftener yielded to temptation: "he that cannot
live well to-day," says Martial, "will be less qualified to live well
to-morrow. "

Of the uncertainty of every human good, every human being seems to be
convinced; yet this uncertainty is voluntarily increased by unnecessary
delay, whether we respect external causes, or consider the nature of our
own minds. He that now feels a desire to do right, and wishes to
regulate his life according to his reason, is not sure that, at any
future time assignable, he shall be able to rekindle the same ardour; he
that has now an opportunity offered him of breaking loose from vice and
folly, cannot know, but that he shall hereafter be more entangled, and
struggle for freedom without obtaining it.

We are so unwilling to believe any thing to our own disadvantage, that
we will always imagine the perspicacity of our judgment and the strength
of our resolution more likely to increase than to grow less by time;
and, therefore, conclude, that the will to pursue laudable purposes,
will be always seconded by the power.

But, however we may be deceived in calculating the strength of our
faculties, we cannot doubt the uncertainty of that life in which they
must be employed: we see every day the unexpected death of our friends
and our enemies, we see new graves hourly opened for men older and
younger than ourselves, for the cautious and the careless, the dissolute
and the temperate, for men who like us were providing to enjoy or
improve hours now irreversibly cut off: we see all this, and yet,
instead of living, let year glide after year in preparations to live.

Men are so frequently cut off in the midst of their projections, that
sudden death causes little emotion in them that behold it, unless it be
impressed upon the attention by uncommon circumstances. I, like every
other man, have outlived multitudes, have seen ambition sink in its
triumphs, and beauty perish in its bloom; but have been seldom so much
affected as by the fate of Euryalus, whom I lately lost as I began to
love him.