Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

town is in, with relation to plays as well as operas. It certainly requires a degree of understanding to play justly; but such is our condition, that we are to suspend our reason to perform our parts.

'As to scenes of madness, you know, sir, there are noble instances of this kind in Shakspeare; but then it is the disturbance of a noble mind, from generous and humane resentments. It is like that grief which we have for the decease of our friends. It is no diminution, but a recommendation of human nature, that in such incidents, passion gets the better of reason; and all we can think to comfort ourselves, is impotent against half what we feel. I will not mention that we had an idiot in the scene, and all the sense it is represented to have is that of lust. As for myself, who have long taken pains in personating the passions, I have fo-night acted only an appetite. The part I played is Thirst, but it is represented as written rather by a drayman than a poet. I come in with a tub about me, that tub hung with quart pots, with a full gallon at my mouth. I am ashamed to tell you that I pleased very much, and this was introduced as a madness; but sure it was not human madness, for a mule or an ass may have seen as dry as ever I was in my life. I am, Sir,

"Your most obedient and humble servant.'

• MR. SPECTATOR,

'From the Savoy,
in the Strand.

If you can read it with dry eyes, I give you this trouble to acquaint you that I am the unfortunate King Latinus, and I believe I am the first prince that dated from this palace since John of Gaunt. Such is the uncertainty of all human greatness, that I, who lately never moved without a guard, am now pressed as a common soldier, and am to sail, with the first fair wind, against my brother Lewis of France. It is a very hard thing to put off a character which one has appeared in with applause. This I experienced since the loss of my diadem; for upon quarrelling with another recruit, spoke my indignation out of my part in recitativo;

[ocr errors][merged small][merged small]
[ocr errors]

The words were no sooner out of my mouth, when a sergeant knocked me down, and asked me if I had a mind to mutiny, in talking things nobody understood. You see, sir, my unhappy circumstances: and if by your mediation you can procure a subsidy for a prince (who never failed to make all that beheld him merry at his appearance) you will merit the thanks of your friend,

6 THE KING OF LATIUM.'

ADVERTISEMENT.

For the good of the Public. Within two doors of the masquerade lives an eminent Italian chirurgeon, arrived from the carnival at Venice, of great experience in private cures. Accommodations are provided, and persons admitted in their masking habits.

[blocks in formation]

*

THERE is nothing that more betrays a base ungenerous spirit than the giving of secret stabs to a man's reputation; lampoons and satires, that are written with wit and spirit, are like poisoned darts, which not only inflict a wound, but make it incurable. For this reason I am very much troubled when I see the talents of humour and ridicule in the possession of an ill-natured man. There cannot be a greater gratification to a barbarous and inhuman wit, than to stir up sorrow in the heart of a private person, to raise uneasiness among near relations, and to expose whole families to derision, at the same time that he remains unseen and undiscovered. If, besides the accomplishments of being witty and ill-natured, à man is vicious into the bargain, he is one of the most mischievous creatures than can enter into a civil society. His satire will be the most exempt from it. Virtue, merit, then chiefly fall upon those who ought to and every thing that is praiseworthy, will be made the subject of ridicule and buffoonery. It is impossible to enumerate the evils which arise from these arrows that fly in the dark, and I know no other excuse that is or can be made for them, than that the wounds they give are only imaginary, and produce nothing more than a secret shame or sorrow in the mind of the suffering person. It must indeed be con fessed, that a lampoon or a satire do not carry in them robbery or murder; but at the same time how many are there that

would not rather lose a considerable sum of money, or even life itself, than be set up as a mark of infamy and derision? and in this case a man should consider, that an injury is not to be measured by the notions of him that gives, but of him who receives it.

Those who can put the best countenance upon the outrages of this nature which are offered them, are not without their secret anguish. I have observed a passage in Socrates' behaviour at his death, in a light

wherein none of the critics have considered it. That excellent man entertaining his friends, a little before he drank the bowl of poison, with a discourse on the immortality of the soul, at his entering upon it, says, that he does not believe any the most

* It has been said that this was intended as a cha racter of Dean Swift.

comic genius can censure him for talking their reproaches, and consequently that upon such a subject at such a time. This passage, I think, evidently glances upon Aristophanes, who writ a comedy on purpose to ridicule the discourses of that divine philosopher. It has been observed by many writers, that Socrates was so little moved at this piece of buffoonery, that he was several times present at its being acted upon the stage, and never expressed the least resentment of it. But with submission, I think the remark I have here made shows us, that this unworthy treatment made an impression upon his mind, though he had been too wise to discover it.

When Julius Cæsar was lampooned by Catullus, he invited him to a supper, and treated him with such a generous civility, that he made the poet his friend ever after. Cardinal Mazarine gave the same kind of treatment to the learned Quillet, who had reflected upon his eminence in a famous Latin poem. The cardinal sent for him, and after some kind expostulations upon what he had written, assured him of his esteem, and dismissed him with a promise of the next good abbey that should fall, which he accordingly conferred upon him a few months after. This had so good an effect upon the author, that he dedicated the second edition of his book to the cardinal, after having expunged the passages which had given him offence.

they received them as very great injuries. For my own part, I would never trust a man that I thought was capable of giving these secret wounds; and cannot but think that he would hurt the person, whose reputation he thus assaults, in his body or in his fortune, could he do it with the same security. There is, indeed, something very barbarous and inhuman in the ordinary scribblers of lampoons. An innocent young lady shall be exposed for an unhappy fea ture. A father of a family turned to ridicule, for some domestic calamity. A wife be made uneasy all her life for å misinter preted word or action. Nay, a good, & temperate, and a just man shall be put out of countenance by the representation of those qualities that should do him honour. So pernicious a thing is wit, when it is not tempered with virtue and humanity.

a

For

I have indeed heard of heedless inconsiderate writers, that without any malice have sacrificed the reputation of their friends and acquaintance to a certain levity of temper, and a silly ambition of distin guishing themselves by a spirit of raillery and satire; as if it were not infinitely more honourable to be a good-natured man than a wit. Where there is this little petulant humour in an author, he is often very mischievous without designing to be so. which reason I always lay it down as a rule, that an indiscreet man is more hurtful than an ill-natured one; for as the latter will only attack his enemies, and those he wishes ill to; the other injures indifferently both friends and foes. I cannot forbear, on this occasion, transcribing a fable out of Sir Roger l'Estrange, which accidentally lies before me. A company of waggish boys were watching of frogs at the side of a pond, and still as any of them put up their heads, they would be pelting them down again with stones. 'Children,' says one of the frogs, you never consider that though this may be play to you The may be play to you it is death to us.

Sextus Quintus was not of so generous and forgiving a temper. Upon his being made pope, the statue of Pasquin was one night dressed in a very dirty shirt, with an excuse written under it, that he was forced to wear foul linen, because his laundress was made a princess. This was a reflection upon the pope's sister, who, before the promotion of her brother, was in these mean_circumstances that Pasquin represented her. As this pasquinade made a great noise in Rome, the pope offered a considerable sum of money to any person that should discover the author of it. The author relying upon his holiness's generosity, as also on some private overtures which he had received from him, made the discovery himself; upon which the pope gave him the reward he had promised, but at the same time to disable the satirist for the future, ordered his tongue to be cut out, and both his hands to be chopped off. Aretine is too trite an instance. Every one knows that all the kings of Europe were his tributaries. Nay, there is a letter of his extant, in which he makes his boasts that he had laid the Sophi of Persia under contribution.

Though in the various examples which I have here drawn together, these several great men behaved themselves very differently towards the wits of the age who had reproached them; they all of them plainly showed that they were very sensible of

* Peter Aretine, commonly called the Scourge of

Princes, infamous for his writings, died in 1556.

As this week is in a manner set apart and dedicated to serious thoughts, I shall indulge myself in such speculations as may not be altogether unsuitable to the season; and in the mean time, as the settling in ourselves a charitable frame of mind is a work very proper for the time, I have in this paper endeavoured to expose that particu lar breach of charity which has been gene rally overlooked by divines, because they are but few who can be guilty of it. C.

No. 24.] Wednesday, March 28, 1711.

Accurrit quidam notus mihi nomine tantum;
Arreptaque manu, Quid agis, dulcissime rerum?
Hor. Lib. 1. Sat. ix. 3
Comes up a fop, (I knew him but by fame)
And seized my hand, and called me by name--
My dear how dost?

of insignificant people, who are by no means
THERE are in this town a great number

[ocr errors]

fit for the better sort of conversation, and | because so many impertinents will break yet have an impertinent ambition of ap-in upon me, and come without appointpearing with those to whom they are not ment? Clinch of Barnet has a nightly meetwelcome. If you walk in the Park, one ing, and shows to every one that will come of them will certainly join with you, though in and pay; but then he is the only actor. you are in company with ladies! If you Why should people miscal things? If his is drink a bottle they will find your haunts. allowed to be a concert, why may not mine What makes such fellows the more bur-be a lecture? However, sir, I submit it to densome is, that they neither offend nor you, and am, Sir, your most obedient &c. please so far as to be taken notice of for "THOMAS KIMBOW." either. It is, I presume, for this reason, that my correspondents are willing by my means to be rid of them. The two following letters are writ by persons who suffer by such impertinence. A worthy old bachelor, who sets in for a dose of claret every night, at such an hour, is teased by a swarm of them; who, because they are sure of room and good fire, have taken it in their heads to keep a sort of club in his company; though the sober gentleman himself is an utter enemy to such meetings.

'MR. Spectator,

The aversion I for some years have had to clubs in general, gave me a perfect relish for your speculation on that subject; but I have since been extremely mortified, by the malicious world's ranking me amongst the supporters of such impertinent assemblies. I beg leave to state my case fairly; and that done, I shall expect redress from your judicious pen.

"GOOD SIR,

'You and I were pressed against each other last winter in a crowd, in which uneasy posture we suffered together for almost half an hour. I thank you for all your civilities ever since, in being of my acquaintance wherever you meet me. But the other day you pulled off your hat to me in the Park, when I was walking with my mistress. She did not like your air, and said she wondered what strange fellows I was acquainted with. Dear sir, consider it is as much as my life is worth, if she should think we were intimate: therefore I earnestly entreat you for the future to take no manner of notice of, Sir, your obliged humble servant,

WILL FASHION."

[ocr errors]

A like impertinence is also trouble very some to the superior and more intelligent part of the fair sex. It is, it seems, a great inconvenience, that those of the meanest capacities will pretend to make visits, though indeed they are qualified rather to add to the furniture of the house (by filling they come into when they visit. A friend an empty chair) than to the conversation of mine hopes for redress in this case, by the publication of her letter in my paper; which she thinks those she would be rid of will take to themselves. It seems to be written with an eye to one of those pert, commendation only of an agreeable person, giddy, unthinking girls, who, upon the reand a fashionable air, take themselves to be upon a level with women of the greatest

merit:

MADAM,

'I am, sir, a bachelor of some standing, and a traveller; my business, to consult my own humour, which I gratify without controlling other people's: I have a room and a whole bed to myself; and I have a dog, a fiddle, and a gun; they please me, and injure no creature alive. My chief meal is a supper, which I always make at a tavern. I am constant to an hour, and not ill-humoured; for which reasons though I invite nobody, I have no sooner supped, than I have a crowd about me of that sort of good company that know not whither else to go. It is true every man pays his share; yet as they are intruders, I have an undoubted right to be the only speaker, or at least the loudest; which I maintain, and that to the great emolument of my audience. I some- "I take this way to acquaint you with times tell them their own in pretty free what common rules and forms would language; and sometimes divert them with never permit me to tell you otherwise; to merry tales, according as I am in humour. wit, that you and I, though equals in qualI am one of those who live in taverns to a ity and fortune, are by no means suitable great age, by a sort of regular intempe- companions. You are, it is true, very pretrance; I never go to bed drunk, but always ty, can dance, and make a very good figure flustered; I wear away very gently; am in a public assembly; but, alas, madam, apt to be peevish, but never angry. Mr. you must go no further; distance and siSpectator, if you have kept various com-lence are your best recommendations, pany, you know there is in every tavern in town some old humourist or other, who is master of the house as much as he that keeps it. The drawers are all in awe of nim; and all the customers who frequent nis company, yield him a sort of comical obedience. I do not know but I may be such a fellow as this myself. But I appeal to you, whether this is to be called a club,

therefore let me beg of you never to make me any more visits. You come in a literal sense to see one, for you have nothing to say. I do not say this, that I would by any means lose your acquaintance; but I would keep it up with the strictest forms of goodbreeding. Let us pay visits, but never see one another. If you will be so good as tc deny yourself always to me, I shall return

the obligation, by giving the same orders to my servants. When accident makes us meet at a third place, we may mutually lament the misfortune of never finding one another at home, go in the same party to a benefit play, and smile at each other, and put down glasses as we pass in our coaches. Thus we may enjoy as much of each other's friendship as we are capable: for there are some people who are to be known only by sight, with which sort of friendship I hope you will always honour, Madam, your most obedient humble servant,

'MARY TUESDAY.

'P. S. I subscribe myself by the name of the day I keep, that my supernumerary friends may know who I am.

ADVERTISEMENT.

To prevent all mistakes that may happen among gentlemen of the other end of the town, who come but once a week to St. James's coffee-house, either by miscalling the servants, or requiring such things from them as are not properly within their respective provinces; this is to give notice, that Kidney, keeper of the bookdebts of the outlying customers, and observer of those who go off without paying, having resigned that employment, is succeeded by John Sowton; to whose place of enterer of messages and first coffee-grinder, William Bird is promoted; and Samuel Burdock comes as shoe-cleaner in the room of the said Bird. R.

No. 25.] Thursday, March 29, 1711.
-Egrescitque medendo. Virg. Æn. xii. 46.
And sickens by the very means of health.

THE following letter will explain itself, and needs no apology.

are very well acquainted with that gentleman's invention; who, for the better carrying on his experiments, contrived a certain mathematical chair, which was so artifi cially hung upon springs, that it would weigh any thing as well as a pair of scales. By this means he discovered how many ounces of his food passed by perspiration, what quantity of it was turned into nourishment, and how much went away by the other channels and distributions of nature.

Having provided myself with this chair, I used to study, eat, drink, and sleep in it; insomuch that I may be said, for these last three years, to have lived in a pair of scales. I compute myself, when I am in full health, to be precisely two hundred weight, falling short of it about a pound after a day's fast, and exceeding it as much after a very full meal; so that it is my continual employment to trim the balance between these two volatile pounds in my constitution. In my ordinary meals I fetch myself up to two hundred weight and half a pound; and if, after having dined, I find myself fall short of it, I drink just so much small beer, or eat such a quantity of bread, as is sufficient to make me weight. In my greatest excesses I do not transgress more than the other half pound; which, for my health's sake, I do the first Monday in every month. As soon as I find myself duly poised after dinner, I walk till I have perspired five ounces and four scruples; and when I discover, by my chair, that I study away three ounces more. As for the am so far reduced, I fall to my books, and remaining parts of the pound, I keep no account of them. I do not dine and sup by the clock, but by my chair; for when that informs me my pound of food is exhausted, I conclude myself to be hungry, and lay in another with all diligence. In my days of abstinence I lose a pound and a half, and on solemn fasts am two pounds lighter than on the other days in the year.

❝SIR-I am one of that sickly tribe who are commonly known by the name of valetudinarians; and do confess to you, that I first contracted this ill habit of body, or rather of mind, by the study of physic. I no sooner began to peruse books of this nature, but I found my pulse was irregular; and scarce ever read the account of any disease that I did not fancy myself afflicted with. 'I allow myself, one night with another, Dr. Sydenham's learned treatise of fevers a quarter of a pound of sleep, within a few threw me into a lingering hectic, which grains more or less; and if, upon my rising, hung upon me all the while I was reading I find that I have not consumed my whole that excellent piece. I then applied my-quantity, I take out the rest in my chair. self to the study of several authors, who Upon an exact calculation of what I exhave written upon phthisical distempers, pended and received the last year, which and by that means fell into a consumption; I always register in a book, I find the metill at length, growing very fat, I was in a manner shamed out of that imagination. Not long after this I found in myself all the symptoms of the gout, except pain; but was cured of it by a treatise upon the gravel, written by a very ingenious author, who, (as it is usual for physicians to convert one distemper into another) eased me of the gout by giving me the stone. I at length studied myself into a complication of distempers; but, accidently taking into my hand that ingenious discourse written by Sanctorius, I was resolved to direct myself by a scheme of rules, which I had collected from his observations. The learned world

dium to be two hundred weight, so that I cannot discover that I am impaired one ounce in my health during a whole twelvemonth. And yet, sir, notwithstanding this my great care to ballast myself equally every day, and to keep my body in its proper poise, so it is, that I find myself in a sick and languishing condition. My complexion is grown very sallow, my pulse low, and my body hydropical. Let me, therefore, beg you, sir, to consider me as your patient, and to give me more certain rules to walk by than those I have already observed, and you will very much oblige

• Your humble servant."

This letter puts me in mind of an Italian | fields, as he thought the nature of the soil epitaph, written on the monument of a va- required. At the end of the year, when letudinarian: Stavo ben, ma per star meg- he expected to see a more than ordinary lio, sto qui:' which it is impossible to crop, his harvest fell infinitely short of that translate. The fear of death often proves of his neighbours. Upon which (says the mortal, and sets people on methods to save fable) he desired Jupiter to take the their lives, which infallibly destroy them. weather again into his own hands, or This is a reflection made by some histo- that otherwise he should utterly ruin himC. rians, upon observing that there are many self. more thousands killed in a flight, than in a battle; and may be applied to those multitudes of imaginary sick persons that break their constitutions by physic, and throw themselves into the arms of death, by endeavouring to escape it. This method is not only dangerous, but below the practice of a reasonable creature. To consult the preservation of life, as the only end of it, to make our health our business, to engage in no action that is not part of a regimen, or course of physic; are purposes so abject, so mean, so unworthy human nature, that a generous soul would rather die than submit to them. Besides that a continual anxiety for life vitiates all the relishes of it, and casts a gloom over the whole face of nature; as it is impossible we should take delight in any thing that we are every moment afraid of losing.

No. 26.] Friday, March 30, 1711.
Pallida mors æquo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas,
Regumque turres. O beate Sexti,
Vitæ summa brevis spem nos vetat inchoare longam,
Jam te premet nox, fabulæque manes,
Et domus exilis Plutonia.--Hor. Lib. 1. Od. iv. 13.
Knocks at the cottage, and the palace gate:
With equal foot, rich friend, impartial fate
Life's span forbids thee to extend thy cares,
And stretch thy hopes beyond thy years:
Night soon will seize, and you must quickly go
To story'd ghosts, and Pluto's house below. Creech.

WHEN I am in a serious humour, I very often walk by myself in Westminster Abbey; where the gloominess of the place, and the use to which it is applied, with the solemnity of the building, and the condition of the people who lie in it, are apt to fill the mind with a kind of melancholy, or I do not mean, by what I have here said, rather thoughtfulness, that is not disagree that I think any one to blame for taking due able. I yesterday passed a whole after care of their health. On the contrary, as noon in the church-yard, the cloisters, and cheerfulness of mind, and capacity for busi- the church, amusing myself with the tomb ness, are in a great measure the effects of a stones and inscriptions that I met with in well-tempered constitution, a man cannot those several regions of the dead. Most of be at too much pains to cultivate and pre- them recorded nothing else of the buried serve it. But this care, which we are person, but that he was born upon one prompted to, not only by common sense, day, and died upon another; the whole but by duty and instinct, should never en-history of his life being comprehended in gage us in groundless fears, melancholy those two circumstances that are common apprehensions, and imaginary distempers, to all mankind. I could not but look upon which are natural to every man who is these registers of existence, whether of more anxious to live, than how to die. In brass or marble, as a kind of satire upon short, the preservation of life should be the departed persons; who had left no only a secondary concern, and the direction other memorial of them but that they were of it our principal. If we have this frame born, and that they died. They put me in of mind, we shall take the best means to mind of several persons mentioned in the preserve life, without being over solicitous battles of heroic poems, who have soundabout the event; and shall arrive at that ing names given them, for no other reason point of felicity which Martial has men-but that they may be killed, and are celetioned as the perfection of happiness, of brated for nothing but being knocked on neither fearing nor wishing for death.

the head.

Γλαυκον τε, Μέδοντα τε, Θερσίλοχον τε.’Hom.
'Glaucumque, Medontaque, Thersilochumque.'-Virg.
'Glaucus, and Mcdon, and Thersilochus.'

The life of these men is finely described in holy writ by the path of an arrow, which is immediately closed up and lost.

In answer to the gentleman, who tempers | his health by ounces and by scruples, and instead of complying with those natural solicitations of hunger and thirst, drowsiness or love of exercise, governs himself by the prescriptions of his chair, I shall tell him a short fable. Jupiter, says the mythologist, Upon my going into the church, I entero reward the piety of a certain country-tained myself with the digging of a grave; nan, promised to give him whatever he would ask. The countryman desired that he might have the management of the weather in his own estate. He obtained his request, and immediately distributed rain, snow, and sunshine among his several

[ocr errors]

* The following translation, however, may give an English reader some idea of the Italian epitaph: 'I was well, but striving to be better, I am here'

and saw in every shovel-full of it that was thrown up, the fragment of a bone or skull intermixt with a kind of fresh mouldering earth that some time or other had a place in the composition of an human body. Upon this I began to consider with myself, what innumerable multitudes of people lay confused together under the pavemen of that ancient cathedral; how men and

« AnteriorContinuar »