despatch that multitude of affairs in which
he was engaged? replied, that his whole
art consisted in doing one thing at once.
'If,' says he, I have any necessary des-
patches to make, I think of nothing else
until those are finished: if any domestic
affairs require my attention, I give myself
up wholly to them until they are set in
order.'

In short, we often see men of dull and phlegmatic tempers arriving to great estates, by making a regular and orderly disposition of their business, and that without it the greatest parts and most lively imaginations rather puzzle their affairs, than bring them to an happy issue.

his chin. I am credibly informed that by this means he does not only maintain him self and his mother, but that he is laying up money every day, with a design, if the war continues, to purchase a drum at least, if not a pair of colours.

I shall conclude these instances with the device of the famous Rabelais, when he was at a great distance from Paris, and without money to bear his expenses thither, The ingenious author being thus sharp-set, got together a convenient quantity of brickdust, and having disposed of it into several papers, writ upon one, Poison for monsieur;' upon a second, Poison for the dauphin,' and on a third, 'Poison for the king.' Having made a provision for the Royal family of France, he laid his papers so that his landlord, who was an inquisitive man, and a good subject, might get a sight of them.

6

The

From what has been said, I think I may lay it down as a maxim, that every man of good common sense may, if he pleases, in his particular station of life, most certainly be rich. The reason why we sometimes see that men of the greatest capacities are not The plot succeeded as he desired. so, is either because they despise wealth in host gave immediate intelligence to the comparison of something else; or at least secretary of state. The secretary preare not content to be getting an estate, un-sently sent down a special messenger, who less they may do it in their own way, and brought up the traitor to court, and proat the same time enjoy all the pleasures vided him at the king's expense with and gratifications of life. proper accommodations, on the road. As But besides these ordinary forms of grow-soon as he appeared, he was known to be ing rich, it must be allowed that there is the celebrated Rabelais, and his powder room for genius as well in this as in all other | upon examination being found very innocircumstances of life. cent, the jest was only laughed at; for which a less eminent droll would have been sent to the galleys.

Though the ways of getting money were long since very numerous, and though so many new ones have been found out of late years, there is certainly still remaining so large a field for invention, that a man of an indifferent head might easily sit down and draw up such a plan for the conduct | and support of his life, as was never yet once thought of.

We daily see methods put in practice by hungry and ingenious men, which demonstrate the power of invention in this particular.

It is reported of Scaramouch, the first famous Italian comedian, that being at Paris and in great want, he bethought himself of constantly plying near the door of a noted perfumer in that city, and when any one came out who had been buying snuff, never failed to desire a taste of them: when he had got together a quantity made up of several different sorts, he sold it again at a lower rate to the same perfumer, who finding out the trick, called it 'Tabac de mille fleurs,' or 'Snuff of a thousand flowers.' The story farther tells us, that by this means he got a very comfortable subsistence, until making too much haste to grow rich, he one day took such an unreasonable pinch out of the box of a Swiss officer, as engaged him in a quarrel, and obliged him to quit this ingenious way of life.

Nor can I in this place omit doing justice to a youth of my own country, who, though ne is scarce yet twelve years old, has with great industry and application attained to the art of beating the granadiers march on

Trade and commerce might doubtless be still varied a thousand ways, out of which would arise such branches as have not yet been touched. The famous Doily is still fresh in every one's memory, who raised a fortune by finding out materials for such stuffs as might at once be cheap and gen teel. I have heard it affirmed, that had not he discovered this frugal method of gratifying our pride, we should hardly have been able to carry on the last war.

I regard trade not only as highly advantageous to the commonwealth in general, but as the most natural and likely method of making a man's fortune; having observed since my being a Spectator in the world, greater estates got about 'Change, than at Whitehall or Saint James's. I believe I may also add, that the first acquisitions are generally attended with more satisfaction and as good a conscience.

My

I must not however close this essay, without observing that what has been said is only intended for persons in the common ways of thriving, and is not designed for those men who from low beginnings push themselves up to the top of states, and the most considerable figures in life. maxim of saving is not designed for such as these, since nothing is more usual thar for thrift to disappoint the ends of ambition; it being almost impossible that the mind should be intent upon trifles, while it is at the same time forming some great design.

should never be detained: let all the world allow that business is to be minded, and their affairs will be at an end. Their vanity is to be importuned, and compliance with their multiplicity of affairs would effectually despatch them. The travelling ladies, who have half the town to see in an afternoon, may be pardoned for being in a constant hurry; but it is inexcusable in men to come where they have no business, tc profess they absent themselves where they have. It has been remarked by some nice observers and critics, that there is nothing discovers the true temper of a person so much as his letters. I have by me two epistles, which are written by two people of the different humours above mentioned. It is wonderful that a man cannot observe upon himself, when he sits down to write, but that he will gravely commit himself to paper the same man that he is in the freedom of conversation. I have hardly seen a line from any of these gentlemen but spoke them as absent from what they were doing, as they profess they are when they come into company. For the folly is, that they have persuaded themselves they really are busy. Thus their whole time is spent in suspense of the present moment to the next, and then from the next to the succeeding, which, to the end of life, is to pass away with pretence to many things, and

Posthabui tamen illorum mea seria ludo.* Virg. Ecl. vii. 17. Their mirth to share, I bid my business wait. AN affected behaviour is without question a very great charm; but under the notion of being unconstrained and disengaged, people take upon them to be unconcerned in any duty of life. A general negligence is what they assume upon all occasions, and set up for an aversion to all manner of business and attention. I am the carelessest creature in the world, I have certainly the worst memory of any man living,' are frequent expressions in the mouth of a pretender of this sort. It is a professed maxim with these people never to think; there is something so solemn in reflection, they, forsooth, can never give themselves time for such a way of employ-execution of nothing. ing themselves. It happens often that this sort of man is heavy enough in his nature to be a good proficient in such matters as are attainable by industry; but alas! he has such an ardent desire to be what he is not, to be too volatile, to have the faults of a person of spirit, that he professes himself the most unfit man living for any manner of application. When this humour enters into the head of a female, she generally professes sickness upon all occasions, and acts all things with an indisposed air. She is offended, but her mind is too lazy to raise her to anger, therefore she lives only as actuated by a violent spleen, and gentle scorn. She has hardly curiosity to listen to scandal of her acquaintance, and has never attention enough to hear them commended. This affectation in both sexes makes them vain of being useless, and take a certain pride in their insignificancy.

Opposite to this folly is another no less unreasonable, and that is, the 'impertinence of being always in a hurry.' There are those who visit ladies, and beg pardon, before they are well seated in their chairs, that they just called in, but are obliged to attend business of importance elsewhere the very next moment. Thus they run from place to place, professing that they are obliged to be still in another company than that which they are in. These persons who are just a going somewhere else

* The motto originally prefixed to this paper was, 'Strenua nos exercet inertia.-Hor.' which is now that of No. 54.

'SIR,-The post is just going out, and I have many other letters of very great importance to write this evening, but I could not omit making my compliments to you for your civilities to me when I was last in business, that I cannot tell you a thousand town. It is my misfortune to be so full of things which I have to say to you. I must desire you to communicate the contents of this to no one living; but believe me to be, with the greatest fidelity, sir, your most obedient, humble servant,

STEPHEN COURIER.'

'MADAM,—I hate writing, of all things in the world; however, though I have drank the waters, and am told I ought not to use my eyes so much, I cannot forbear writing to you, to tell you I have been to the last degree hipped since I saw you. How could you entertain such a thought, as that I should hear of that silly fellow with patience? Take my word for it, there is nothing in it; and you may believe it when so lazy a creature as I am undergo the pains to assure you of it, by taking pen, ink, and paper in my hand. Forgive this; you know I shall not often offend in this kind. I am very much your servant,

BRIDGET EITHERDOWN.'

• The fellow is of your country; pr'ythee send me word, however, whether he has so

great an estate.'

'Jan 24, 1712. 'MR. SPECTATOR,-I am clerk of the

HAVING already treated of the fable, the characters, and sentiments in the Paradise Lost, we are in the last place to consider the language; and as the learned world is very much divided upon Milton as to this point, I hope they will excuse me if I appear particular in any of my opinions, and incline to those who judge the most advantageously of the author.

God and his Son except,

Created thing nought valu'd he nor shunn'd:

and that in which he describes Adam and and that in which he describes Adam and Eve:

parish from whence Mrs. Simper sends her complaint, in your Spectator of Wednesday last. I must beg of you to publish this as a public admonition to the aforesaid Mrs. Simper, otherwise all my honest care in the disposition of the greens in the church will have no effect: I shall therefore, with your leave, lay before you the whole matter. I was formerly, as she charges me, for several years a gardener in the county It is requisite that the language of an of Kent but I must absolutely deny that it heroic poem should be both perspicuous is out of any affection I retain for my old and sublime. In proportion as either of employment that I have placed my greens these two qualities are wanting, the lanso liberally about the church, but out of a guage is imperfect. Perspicuity is the particular spleen I conceived against Mrs. first and most necessary qualification; insoSimper (and others of the same sisterhood) much that a good-natured reader somesome time ago. As to herself, I had one times overlooks a little slip even in the day set the hundredth psalm, and was sing-grammar or syntax, where it is impossible ing the first line in order to put the congre- for him to mistake the poet's sense. Of gation into the tune; she was all the while this kind is that passage in Milton, wherein courtesying to Sir Anthony in so affected he speaks of Satan: and indecent a manner, that the indignation I conceived at it made me forget myself so far, as from the tune of that psalm to wander into Southwell tune, and from thence into Windsor tune, still unable to recover myself, until I had with the utmost confusion set a new one. Nay, I have often seen her rise up and smile, and courtesy to one at the lower end of the church in the midst of a Gloria Patri; and when I have spoken the assent to a prayer with a long Amen, uttered with decent gravity, she has been rolling her eyes around about in such a manner, as plainly showed, however she was moved, it was not towards a heavenly object. In fine, she extended her conquests so far over the males, and raised such envy in the females, that what between love of those, and the jealousy of these, I was almost the only person that looked in a prayer-book all church-time, I had several projects in my head to put a stop to this growing mischief; but as I have long lived in Kent, and there often heard how the Kentish men evaded the conqueror, by carrying green boughs over their heads, it put me in mind of practising this device against Mrs. Simper. I find I have preserved many young men from her eyeshot by this means, therefore humbly pray the boughs may be fixed, until she shall give security for her peaceable intentions. Your humble servant,

Adam the goodliest man of men since born His sons, the fairest of her daughters Eve. It is plain, that in the former of these passages, according to the natural syntax, the divine persons mentioned in the first line are represented as created beings; and that, in the other, Adam and Eve are confounded with their sons and daughters. Such little blemishes as these, when the thought is great and natural, we should with Horace, impute to a pardonable inadvertency, or to the weakness of human nature, which cannot attend to each minute particular, and give the last finishing to every circumstance in so long a work. The ancient critics, therefore, who were actuated by a spirit of candour, rather than that of cavilling, invented certain figures of speech, on purposes to palliate little errors of this nature in the writings of those authors who had so many greater beauties to atone for them.

If clearness and perspicuity were only to be consulted, the poet would have nothing else to do but to clothe his thoughts in the most plain and natural expressions. But since it often happens that the most obvious phrases, and those which are used in ordinary conversation, become too familiar to the ear, and contract a kind of meanness by passing through the mouths of the vul

No. 285.] Saturday, January 26, 1711-12. gar; a poet should take particular care

to guard himself against idiomatic ways of speaking. Ovid and Lucan have many poornesses of expression upon this account, as taking up with the first phrases that offered, without putting themselves to the trouble of looking after such as would not only have been natural, but also elevated and sublime. Milton has but few failings in this kind, of which, however, you may meet with some instances, as in the following passages:

In these, and innumerable other instances, the metaphors are very bold but just: I must however observe, that the metaphors are not so thick sown in Milton, The same reason recommended to him. which always savours too much of wit: several old words, which also makes his that they never clash with one another, poem appear the more venerable, and gives which, as Aristotle observes, turns a sen-it a greater air of antiquity. tence into a kind of an enigma or riddle; and that he seldom has recourse to them where the proper and natural words will do as well.

him a discourse in Plutarch, which shows us how frequently Homer has made use of the same liberty.

Milton, by the above-mentioned helps, and by the choice of the noblest words and phrases which our tongue would afford him, has carried our language to a greater height than any of the English poets have ever done before or after him, and made the sublimity of his style equal to that of

his sentiments.

I have been the more particular in these observations on Milton's style, because it is in that part of him in which he appears the most singular. The remarks I have here made upon the practice of other poets, with my observations out of Aristotle, will perhaps alleviate the prejudice which some have taken to his poem upon this account; though, after all, I must confess that I think his style, though admirable in general, is in some places too much stiffened and obscured by the frequent use of those methods which Aristotle has prescribed for the raising of it.

True deli

'York, Jan. 18, 1711-12. 'MR. SPECTATOR,-I pretend not to informa gentleman of so much taste, whenever he pleases to use it; but it may not be amiss to inform your readers, that there is a false delicacy, as well as a true one. cacy, as I take it, consists in exactness of judgment and dignity of sentiment, or, if you will, purity of affection, as this is opposed to corruption and grossness. There are pedants in breeding, as well as in learning. The eye that cannot bear the light is not delicate, but sore. A good constitution appears in the soundness and vigour of the parts, not in the squeamishness of the stomach; and a false delicacy is affectation, not politeness. What then can be the standard of delicacy, but truth and virtue? Virtue, which as the satirist long since observed, is real honour; whereas the other distincThis redundancy of those several ways tions among mankind are merely titular. of speech which Aristotle calls foreign lan- | Judging by that rule, in my opinion, and guage, and with which Milton has so very in that of many of your virtuous female much enriched, and in some places dark-readers, you are so far from deserving Mr. ened the language of his poem, was the Courtly's accusation, that you seem toc more proper for his use, because his poem is written in blank verse. Rhyme, without any other assistance, throws the language off from prose, and very often makes an indifferent phrase pass unregarded; but where the verse is not built upon rhymes, there pomp of sound and energy of expression are indispensably necessary to support the style and keep it from falling into the flatness of prose.

Those who have not a taste for this elevation of style, and are apt to ridicule a poet when he departs from the common forms of expression, would do well to see how Aristotle has treated an ancient author called Euclid, for his insipid mirth upon this occasion. Mr. Dryden used to call these sort of men his prose-critics.

I should, under this head of the language, consider Milton's numbers, in which he has made use of several elisions, that are not customary among other English poets, as may be particularly observed in his cutting off the letter Y, when it precedes a vowel. This, and some other innovations in the measure of his verse, has varied his numbers in such a manner, as makes them incapable of satiating the ear, and cloying the reader, which the same uniform measure would certainly have done, and which the perpetual returns of rhyme never fail to do in long narrative poems. I shall close these reflections upon the language of Paradise Lost, with observing, that Milton has copied after Homer rather than Virgil in the length of his periods, the copiousness of his phrases, and the running of his verses into one another.

L.

gentle, and to allow too many excuses for an enormous crime, which is the reproach of the age, and is in all its branches and degrees expressly forbidden by that religion we pretend to profess; and whose laws, in a nation that calls itself Christian, one would think should take place of those rules which men of corrupt minds, and those of weak understandings, follow. I know not any thing more pernicious to good manners, than the giving fair names to foul actions: for this confounds vice and virtue, and takes off that natural horror we have to evil. An innocent creature, who would start at the name of strumpet, may think it pretty to be called a mistress, especially if her seducer has taken care to inform her, that an union of heart is the principal matter in the sight of heaven, and that the business at church is a mere idle ceremony. Who knows not that the difference between obscene and modest words expressing the same action, consists only in the accessary idea; for there is nothing immodest in letters and syllables. Fornication and adultery are modest words; because they express an evil action as criminal, and so as to excite horror and aversion; whereas words representing the pleasure rather than the sin, are, for this reason, indecent and dishonest. Your papers would be chargeable with something worse than indelicacy, they would be immoral, did you treat the detestable sins of uncleanness in the same manner as you rally an impertinent self-love, and an artful glance; as those laws would be very unjust that should chastise murder and petty larceny with the same punishment,