and cheerful mind, to accompany him in | but you must explain yourself farther, be either. fore I know what to do. Your most obedient I can tell Parthenissa for her comfort servant, THE SPECTATOR.' that the beauties, generally speaking, are T. the most impertinent and disagreeable of women. An apparent desire of admiration,

-Versate diu, quid ferre recusent,
Quid valeant humeri-

a reflection upon their own merit, and a No. 307.] Thursday, Feb. 21, 1711-12. precise behaviour in their general conduct, are almost inseparable accidents in beauties. All you obtain of them, is granted to importunity and solicitation for what did not deserve so much of your time, and you recover from the possession of it as out of a dream.

You are ashamed of the vagaries of fancy which so strangely misled you, and your admiration of a beauty, merely as such, is inconsistent with a tolerable reflection upon yourself. The cheerful good-humoured creatures, into whose heads it never entered that they could make any man unhappy, are the persons formed for making men happy. There is Miss Liddy can dance a jig, raise paste, write a good hand, keep an account, give a reasonable answer, and do as she is bid; while her eldest sister, Madam Martha, is out of humour, has the spleen, learns by reports of people of higher quality new ways of being uneasy and displeased. And this happens for no reason in the world, but that poor Liddy knows she has no such thing, as a certain negligence that is so becoming:' that there is not I know not what in her air; and that if she talks like a fool, there is no one will say, Well! I know not what it is, but every thing pleases when she speaks it.'

Hor. Ars Poet. v. 39.
-Often try what weight you can support,
And what your shoulders are too weak to bear.
Roscommon.

I AM SO well pleased with the following letter, that I am in hopes it will not be å disagreeable present to the public.

'SIR,-Though I believe none of your readers more admire your agreeable manner of working up trifles than myself, yet as your speculations are now swelling into volumes, and will in all probability pass down to future ages, methinks I would have no single subject in them, wherein the general good of mankind is concerned, left unfinished.

'I have a long time expected with great impatience that you would enlarge upon the ordinary mistakes which are committed in the education of our children. I the more easily flattered myself that you would one time or other resume this consideration, because you tell us that your 168th paper was only composed of a few broken hints: but finding myself hitherto disappointed, I have ventured to send you my own thoughts on this subject.

I remember Pericles, in his famous Ask any of the husbands of your great beauties, and they will tell you that they hate oration at the funeral of those Athenian their wives nine hours of every day they young men who perished in the Samian expass together. There is such a particularity pedition, has a thought very much celefor ever affected by them, that they are brated by several ancient critics, namely, encumbered with their charms in all they that the loss which the commonwealth sufsay or do. They pray at public devotions fered by the destruction of its youth, was as they are beauties: they converse on or- like the loss which the year would suffer dinary occasions as they are beauties. Ask by the destruction of the spring. The preBelinda what it is o'clock, and she is at a judice which the public sustains from a stand whether so great a beauty should an- wrong education of children, is an evil of swer you. In a word, I think, instead of the same nature, as it in a manner starves offering to administer consolation to Parthe-posterity, and defrauds our country of those nissa, I should congratulate her metamor- persons, who, with due care, might make phosis; and however she thinks she was an eminent figure in their respective posts not the least insolent in the prosperity of of life. her charms, she was enough so to find she 'I have seen a book written by Juan may make herself a much more agreeable Huartes a Spanish Physician, entitled Excreature in her present adversity. The en-amen de Ingenois, wherein he lays it down deavour to please is highly promoted by a as one of his first positions, that nothing but consciousness that the approbation of the nature can qualify a man for learning: and person you would be agreeable to, is a that without a proper temperament for the favour you do not deserve: for in this case particular art or science which he studies, assurance of success is the most certain way his utmost pains and application, assisted to disappointment. Good-nature will al- by the ablest masters, will be to no purways supply the absence of beauty, but pose. beauty cannot long supply the absence of good-nature.

'POSTSCRIPT.

'February 18. MADAM,-I have yours of this day, wherein you twice bid me not disoblige you,

'He illustrates this by the example of Tully's son Marcus.

'Cicero, in order to accomplish his son in that sort of learning which he designed him for, sent him to Athens, the most cele brated academy at that time in the world,

and where a vast concourse, out of the most |
polite nations could not but furnish the
young gentleman with a multitude of great
examples and accidents that might insensi-
bly have instructed him in his designed
studies. He placed him under the care of
Cratippus, who was one of the greatest
philosophers of the age, and, as if all the
books which were at that time written had
not been sufficient for his use, he composed
others on purpose for him: notwithstand-
ing all this, history informs us that Marcus
proved a mere blockhead, and that nature,
(who it seems was even with the son for
her prodigality to the father) rendered him
incapable of improving by all the rules of
eloquence, the precepts of philosophy, his
own endeavours, and the most refined con-
versation in Athens. This author, there-
fore, proposes, that there should be certain
triers or examiners appointed by the state,
to inspect the genius of every particular
boy, and to allot him the part that is most
suitable to his natural talents.

Plato in one of his dialogues tells us that Socrates, who was the son of a midwife, used to say, that as his mother, though she was very skilful in her profession, could not deliver a woman unless she was first with child, so neither could he himself raise knowledge out of a mind where nature had not planted it.

Accordingly the method this philosopher took, of instructing his scholars by several interrogatories or questions, was only helping the birth, and bringing their own thoughts to light.

The Spanish doctor above-mentioned, as his speculations grew more refined, asserts that every kind of wit has a particular science, corresponding to it, and in which alone it can be truly excellent. As to those geniuses, which may seem to have an equal aptitude for several things, he regards them as so many unfinished pieces of nature wrought off in haste.

"How different from this manner of education is that which prevails in our own country! where nothing is more usual than to see forty or fifty boys of several ages, tempers, and inclinations, ranged together in the same class, employed upon the same authors, and enjoined the same tasks! Whatever their natural genius may be, they are all to be made poets, historians, and orators alike. They are all obliged to have the same capacity, to bring in the same tale of verse, and to furnish out the same portion of prose. Every boy is bound to have as good a memory as the captain of the form. To be brief, instead of adapting studies to the particular genius of a youth, we expect from the young man, that he should adapt his genius to his studies. This, I must confess, is not so much to be imputed to the instructor, as to the parent, who will never be brought to believe, that his son is not capable of performing as much as his neighbour's, and that he may not make him whatever he has a mind to.

"If the present age is more laudable than those which have gone before it in any single particular, it is in that generous care which several well-disposed persons have taken in the education of poor children; and as in these charity-schools there is no place left for the overweaning fondness of a parent, the directors of them would make them beneficial to the public, if they considered the precept which I have been thus long inculcating. They might easily, by well examining the parts of those under their inspection, make a just distribution of them into proper classes and divisions, and allot to them this or that particular study, as their genius qualifies them for professions, trades, handicrafts, or service by sea or land.

"How is this kind of regulation wanting in the three great professions!

'In like manner many a lawyer, who makes but an indifferent figure at the bar, might have made a very elegant waterman, and have shined at the Temple stairs, though he can get no business in the house.

'Dr. South, complaining of persons who "There are indeed but very few to whom took upon them holy orders, though altonature has been so unkind, that they are gether unqualified for the sacred function, not capable of shining in some science or says somewhere, that many a man runs his other. There is a certain bias towards know-head against a pulpit, who might have done ledge in every mind, which may be strength- his country excellent service at the ploughened and improved by proper applications. [ tail. "The story of Clavius is very well known. He was entered in a college of Jesuits, and after having been tried at several parts of learning, was upon the point of being dismissed, as a hopeless blockhead, until one of the fathers took it into his head to make an essay of his parts in geometry, which it seems hit his genius so luckily, that he afterwards became one of the greatest mathematicians of the age.* It is commonly thought that the sagacity of these fathers in discovering the talent of a young student, has not a little contributed to the figure which their order has made in the world.

'I have known a corn-cutter, who with a right education would have been an excellent physician.

"To descend lower, are not our streets filled with sagacious draymen, and politicians in liveries? We have several tailors of six foot high, and meet with many a broad pair of shoulders that are thrown away upon a barber, when perhaps at the same time we see a pigmy porter reeling

* Clavius did at Rome in 1612, aged 75; his works under a burden, who might have managed

are comprised n five volumes in folio.

a needle with much dexterity, or have

snapped his fingers with great ease to him- | for I am an ugly fellow, of great wit and self, and advantage to the public. sagacity. My father was a he country The Spartans, though they acted with 'squire, my mother a witty beauty of no the spirit which I am here speaking of, fortune. The match was made by consent carried it much farther than what I pro- of my mother's parents against her own, pose. Among them it was not lawful for and I am the child of the rape on the wedthe father himself to bring up his children ding night; so that I am as healthy and as after his own fancy. As soon as they were homely as my father, but as sprightly and seven years old, they were all listed in se- agreeable as my mother. It would be of veral companies, and disciplined by the great ease to you, if you would use me unpublic. The old men were spectators of der you, that matches might be better their performances, who often raised quar-regulated for the future, and we might rels among them, and set them at strife have no more children of squabbles. I shall with one another, that by those early dis- not reveal all my pretensions until I receive coveries they might see how their several your answer: and I am, sir, your most talents lay, and, without any regard to their humble servant, quality, disposed of them accordingly, for the service of the commonwealth. By this means Sparta soon became the mistress of Greece, and famous through the whole world for her civil and military discipline.

If you think this letter deserves a place think this letter deserves a place among your speculations, I may perhaps may perhaps trouble you with some other thoughts on the same subject. I am, &c.'

X.

'MULES PALFREY.'

'MR. SPECTATOR,-I am one of those unfortunate men within the city-walls, who am married to a woman of quality, but her temper is something different from that of thoughts are spent in keeping up to the Lady Anvil. My lady's whole time and mode both in apparel and furniture. All the goods in my house have been changed three times in seven years. I have had seven children by her: and by our marriage-articles she was to have her apart

No. 308.] Friday, February 22, 1711-12. ment new furnished as often as she lay-in.

Nothing in our house is useful but that
which is fashionable; my pewter holds out
generally half a year, my plate a full
twelve-month; chairs are not fit to sit in
that were made two years since, nor beds
fit for any thing but to sleep in, that have
stood up above that time. My dear is of
opinion that an old-fashioned grate con-
sumes coals, but gives no heat.
drinks out of glasses of the last year she
cannot distinguish wine from small beer.
Oh, dear sir, you may guess all the rest.

If she

❝ Yours.

"P. S. I could bear even all this, if I were not obliged also to eat fashionably. I have a plain stomach, and have a constant loathing of whatever comes to my own table; for which reason I dine at the chophouse three days in a week; where the good company wonders they never see you of late. I am sure, by your unprejudiced discourses, you love broth better than soup.'

'MR. SPECTATOR,-I give you this trouble in order to propose myself to you as an assistant in the weighty cares which you have thought fit to undergo for the public good. I am a very great lover of women, that is to say, honestly; and as it is natural to study what one likes, I have industriously applied myself to understand them. The present circumstance relating to them is, that I think there wants under you, as Spectator, a person to be distinguished and vested in the power and quality of a censor on marriages. I lodge at the Temple, and know, by seeing women come hither, and afterwards observing them conducted by their counsel to judges' chambers, that there is a custom, in case of making conveyance of a wife's estate, that she is carried to a judge's apartment, and left alone with him, to be examined in private, 'MR. SPECTATOR,-You may believe whether she has not been frightened or you are a person as much talked of as any sweetened by her spouse into the act she is man in town. I am one of your best friends going to do, or whether it is of her own free- in this house, and have laid a wager you will. Now if this be a method founded are so candid a man, and so honest a fellow, upon reason and equity, why should there that you will print this letter, though it is not be also a proper officer for examining in recommendation of a new paper called such as are entered into the state of matrimony, whether they are forced by parents on one side, or moved by interest only on the other, to come together, and bring forth such awkward heirs as are the product of half love and constrained compliances? There is nobody, though I say it myself, would be fitter for this office than I am:

'Will's, Feb. 19.

The Historian. I have read it carefully, and find it written with skill, good sense, modesty, and fire. You must allow the town is kinder to you than you deserve; and I doubt not but you have so much sense of the world's change of humour, and instability of all human things, as to understand, that the only way to preserve favour

is to communicate it to others with good
nature and judgment. You are so generally
read, that what you speak of will be read.
This with men of sense and taste, is all that
is wanting to recommend The Historian.
'I am, sir, your daily advocate,

READER GENTLE.'

No. 309.] Saturday, February 23, 1711-12.
Di, quibus imperium est animarum, umbræque silentes,
Et Chaos, et Phlegethon, loca nocte silentia late:
Sit mihi fas audita loqui! sit numine vestro
Pandere res alta terra et caligine mersus.

Virg. Æn. vi. ver. 264

Ye realms, yet unreveal'd to human sight,
Ye gods, who rule the regions of the night,
Ye gliding ghosts, permit me to relate
The mystic wonders of your silent state.

Dryden.

I was very much surprised this morning that any one should find out my lodging, and know it so well, as to come directly to I HAVE before observed in general, that my closet door, and knock at it, to give me the persons whom Milton introduces into the following letter. When I came out I his poem always discover such sentiments opened it, and saw, by a very strong pair and behaviour as are in a peculiar manner of shoes, and a warm coat the bearer had conformable to their respective characters. on, that he walked all the way to bring it Every circumstance in their speeches and me, though dated from York. My misfor-actions is with great justice and delicacy tune is that I cannot talk, and I found the messenger had so much of me, that he could think better than speak. He had, I observed, a polite discerning, hid under a shrewd rusticity. He delivered the paper with a Yorkshire tone and a town leer.

adapted to the persons who speak and act.
As the poet very much excels in this con-
sistency of his characters, I shall beg leave
to consider several passages of the second
book in this light. That superior great-
ness and mock-majesty, which is ascribed
to the prince of the fallen angels, is admi-
rably preserved in the beginning of this
book. His opening and closing the debate;
his taking on himself that great enterprise,
at the thought of which, the whole infernal
assembly trembled; his encountering the
hideous phantom who guarded the gates of
hell, and appeared to him in all his terrors;
are instances of that proud and daring mind
which could not brook submission, even to
Omnipotence!

Satan was now at hand, and from his seat
The monster moving onward came as fast
With horrid strides. hell trembled as he strode,
Th' undaunted fiend what this might be admir'd,
Admir'd, not fear'd.---

MR. SPECTATOR.-The privilege you have indulged John Trot has proved of very bad consequence to our illustrious assembly, which besides the many excellent maxims it is founded upon, is remarkable for the extraordinary decorum always observed in it. One instance of which is that the carders (who are always of the first quality) never begin to play until the French dances are finished, and the country dances begin: but John Trot, having now got your commission in his pocket, (which every one here has a profound respect for) has the assurance to set up for a minuetdancer. Not only so, but he has brought The same boldness and intrepidity of bedown upon us the whole body of the Trots, haviour discovers itself in the several adwhich are very numerous, with their aux-ventures which he meets with, during his iliaries the hobblers and the skippers, by passage through the regions of unformed which means the time is so much wasted, that, unless we break all rules of government, it must redound to the utter subversion of the brag-table, the discreet members of which value time as Fribble's wife does her pin-money. We are pretty well assured that your indulgence to Trot was only in relation to country-dances; how ever, we have deferred issuing an order of council upon the premises, hoping to get you to join with us, that Trot, nor any of his clan, presume for the future to dance any but country dances, unless a hornpipe upon a festival day. If you will do this you will oblige a great many ladies, and particularly your most humble servant,

'ELIZ. SWEEPSTAKES.

York, Feb. 16.’

"I never meant any other than that Mr. Trot should confine himself to country dances. And I further direct that he shall take out none but his own relations according to their nearness of blood, but any gentlewoman may take out him.

THE SPECTATOR.

'London, Feb. 21.'

matter, and particularly in his address to those tremendous powers who are described as presiding over it.

circumstances, full of that fire and fury
The part of Moloch is likewise, in all its
which distinguish this spirit from the rest
of the fallen angels. He is described in the
first book as besmeared with the blood of
human sacrifices, and delighted with the
tears of parents, and the cries of children.
In the second book he is marked out as the
fiercest spirit that fought in heaven: and if
we consider the figure which he makes in
the sixth book, where the battle of the
angels is described, we find it every way
answerable to the same furious, enraged
character:

Where the might of Gabriel fought,
And with fierce ensigns pierc'd the deep array
Of Moloch, furious king, who him defy'd,
And at his chariot-wheels to drag him bound,
Threaten'd, nor from the Holy One of heaven
Refrain'd his tongue blasphemous: but anon
Down cloven to the waist, with shatter'd arms
And uncouth pain fled bellowing.

It may be worth while to observe, that
Milton has represented this violent impetu-
T.ous spirit, wo is hurried on by such pre-

cipitate passions, as the first that rises in that assembly to give his opinion upon their present posture of affairs. Accordingly, he declares himself abruptly for war, and appears incensed at his companions for losing so much time as even to deliberate upon it. All his sentiments are rash, audacious, and desperate. Such is that of arming themselves with their tortures, and turning their punishments upon him who inflicted them:

-No, let us rather choose,

Arm'd with hell flames and fury, all at once
O'er heav'n's high tow'rs to force resistless way,
Turning our tortures into horrid arms
Against the tort'rer; when to meet the noise
Of his almighty engine he shall hear

And with the majesty of darkness round
Covers his throne; from whence deep thunders roar,
Mustering their rage, and heav'n resembles hell!
As he our darkness, cannot we his light
Imitate when we please? This desert soil
Wants not her hidden lustre, gems and gold;
Nor want we skill or art, from whence to raise
Magnificence; and what can heav'n show more?

Beelzebub, who is reckoned the second in dignity that fell, and is, in the first book, the second that awakens out of the trance, and confers with Satan upon the situation of their affairs, maintains his rank in the book now before us. There is a wonderful majesty described in his rising up to speak. He acts as a kind of moderator between the two opposite parties, and proposes a third undertaking, which the whole assembly gives into. The motion he makes of detaching one of their body in search of a new world is grounded upon a project deHis preferring annihilation to shame or vised by Satan, and cursorily proposed by misery is also highly suitable to his charac-him in the following lines of the first book: ter; as the comfort he draws from their disturbing the peace of heaven, that if it be not victory it is revenge, is a sentiment truly diabolical, and becoming the bitterness of this implacable spirit.

Infernal thunder, and for lightning see
Black fire and horror shot with equal rage
Among his angels: and his throne itself
Mix'd with Tartarian sulphur, and strange fire,
His own invented torments.

Belial is described in the first book as the idol of the lewd and luxurious. He is in the second book, pursuant to that description, characterized as timorous and slothful; and if we look into the sixth book, we find him celebrated in the battle of angels for nothing but that scoffing speech which he makes to Satan, on their supposed advantage over the enemy. As his appearance is uniform, and of a piece in these three several views, we find his sentiments in the infernal assembly every way conformable to his character. Such are his apprehensions of a second battle, his horrors of annihilation, his preferring to be miserable, rather than not to be.' I need not observe, that the contrast of thought in this speech, and that which precedes it, gives an agreeable variety to the debate. Mammon's character is so fully drawn in the first book, that the poet adds nothing to it in the second. We were before told, that he was the first who taught mankind to ransack the earth for gold and silver, and that he was the architect of Pandemonium, or the infernal palace, where the evil spirits were to meet in council. His speech in this book is every way suitable to so depraved a character. How proper is that reflection of their being unable to taste the happiness of heaven, were they actually there, in the mouth of one, who, while he was in heaven, is said to have had his mind dazzled with the outward pomps and glories of the place, and to have been more intent on the riches of the pavement than on the beatific vision. I shall also leave the reader to judge how agreeable the following senti

ments are to the same character:

Space may produce new worlds, whereof so rife
There went a fame in heav'n, that he ere long
Intended to create, and therein plant
A generation, whom his choice regard
Should favour equal to the sons of heav'n;
Thither, if but to pry, shall be perhaps
Our first eruption, thither or elsewhere:
For this infernal pit shall never hold
Celestial spirits in bondage, nor th' abyss
Long under darkness cover. But these thoughts
Full counsel must mature:-

It is on this project that Beelzebub grounds his proposal:

-What if we find

Some easier enterprise? There is a place,
(If ancient and prophetic fame in heav'n
Err not,) another world, the happy seat
Of some new race call'd man, about this time
To be created like to us, though less
In pow'r and excellence, but favour'd more
Of him who rules above; so was his will
Pronounc'd among the gods, and by an oath,
That shook heav'n's whole circumference, confirm'd

The reader may observe how just it was, not to omit in the first book the project upon which the whole poem turns; as also that the prince of the fallen angels was the the next to him in dignity was the fittest to only proper person to give it birth, and that second and support it.

There is besides, I think, something won

derfully beautiful, and very apt to affect the reader's imagination, in this ancient prophecy or report in heaven, concerning the creation of man. Nothing could more show the dignity of the species, than this tradition which ran of them before their existthe talk of heaven before they were created. ence. They are represented to have been Virgil, in compliment to the Roman comin their state of pre-existence; but Milton monwealth, makes the heroes of it appear does a far greater honour to mankind in general, as he gives us a glimpse of them even before they are in being.

The rising of this great assembly is described in a very sublime and poetical

manner:

Their rising all at once was as the sound
Of thunder heard remote.