Letter C, in a muttering Voice, as if between Soliloquy and fpeaking out, the fays, Her Maiden-head will yield me; let me fee now; Cloe, the Daughter of a Country Gentleman; Her Maiden-head will amount to fome three hundred, THESE Creatures are very well inftructed in the Circumftances and Manners of all who are any way related to the fair one whom they have a Defign upon. As Cloe is to be purchased with 350 Crowns, and the Father taken off with a Pad; the Merchant's Wife next to her, who abounds in Plenty, is not to have down-right Money, but the mercenary Part of her Mind is engaged with a Prefent of Plate and a little Ambition. She is made to underftand that it is a Man of Quality who dies for her. The Examination of a young Girl for Bufinefs, and the crying down her Value for being a flight Thing, together with every other Circumftance in the Scene, are inimitably excellent, and have the true Spirit of Comedy; tho' it were to be wifhed the Author had added a Circumftance which fhould make Leucippe's Easeness more odious. IT must not be thought a Digreffion from my intended Speculation, to talk of Bawds in a Difcourfe up-. on Wenches; for a Woman of the Town is not thoroughly and properly fuch, without having gone through the Education of one of thefe Houfes. But the compaffionate Cafe of very many is, that they are taken into fuch Hands without any the leaft Sufpicion, previous Temptation, or Admonition to what Place they are going. The laft Week I went to an Inn in the City to enquire for fome Provifions which were fent by a Waggon out of the Country, and as I waited in one of the Boxes till the Chamberlain had had looked over his Parcel, I heard an old and a young Voice repeating the Queftions and Refponfes of the ChurchCatechifm. I thought it no Breach of good Manners to peep at a Crevife, and look in at People fo well employed; but who should I fee there but the moft artful Procurefs in the Town, examining a moft beautiful CountryGirl, who had come up in the fame Waggon with my Things, Whether he was well educated, could forbear playing the Wanton with Servants and idle Fellows, of which this Town, fays fhe, is too full: At the fame Time, Whether he knew enough of Breeding, as that if a Squire or a Gentleman, or one that was her Betters, fhould give her a Civil Salute, fhe should curtfy and be bumble nevertheless. Her innocent for footh's, ye's, and't pleafe you's, and he would do her Endeavour, moved the good old Lady to take her out of the Hands of a Country Bumkin her Brother, and hire her for her own Maid. I ftay'd till I faw them all marched out to take Coach; the Brother loaded with a great Cheefe, he prevailed upon her to take for her Civilities to his Sifter. This poor Creature's Fate is not far off that of her's whom I fpoke of above, and it is not to be doubted, but after she has been long enough a Prey to Luft fhe will be delivered over to Famine. The Ironical Commen dation of the Industry and Charity of thefe antiquated Ladies, thefe Directors of Sin, after they can no longer commit it, makes up the Beauty of the inimitable Dedication to the Plain Dealer, and is a Mafter-piece of Rallery on this Vice. But to understand all the Purlues of this Game the better, and to illuftrate this Subject in future Difcourfes, I must venture my felf, with my Friend WILL, into the Haunts of Beauty and Galantry; from pampered Vice in the Habitations of the Wealthy, to diftreffed indigent Wickedness expelled the Harbours of the Brothel. T Saturday N® 267. Saturday, January 5. Cedite Romani Scriptores, cedite Graii. TH Propert. HERE is nothing in Nature fo irksom as general Difcourfes, efpecially when they turn chiefly upon Words. For this Reafon I fhall wave the Difcuffion of that Point which was farted fome Years fince, whether Milton's Paradife Loft may be called an Heroick Poem? Thofe who will not give it that Title, may call it (if they pleafe) a Divine Poem. It will be fufficient to its Perfection, if it has in it all the Beauties of the higheft kind of Poetry; and as for those who alledge it is not an Heroick Poem, they advance no more to the Diminution of it, than if they fhould fay Adam is not Eneas, nor Eve Helen. I fhall therefore examine it by the Rules of Epic Poetry, and fee whether it falls fhort of the Iliad of Æneid, in the Beauties which are effential to that kind of Writing. The first thing to be confidered in an Epic Poem, is the Fable, which is perfect or imperfect, according as the Action which it relates is more or less fo. This Action fhall have three Qualifications in it. First, It fhould be but One Action. Secondly, It fhould be an Entire Action; and, Thirdly, Itfhould be a great Action. To confider the Action of the Iliad, Eneid,and Paridife Loft, in these three feveral Lights. Homer to preferve the Unity of his Action haftens into the Midft of Things, as Horace has obferved: Had he gone up to Leda's Egg, or begun much later, even at the Rape of Helen, or the invefting of Troy, it is manifeft that the Story of the Poem would have been a Series of feveral Actions. He therefore opens his Poem with the Difcord of his Princes, and artfully interweaves in the feveral fucceeding Parts of it, an Account of every Thing material which relates to them, and had paffed before that fatal Diffenfion. After the fame manner, Æneas makes his firft Appearance in the the Tyrrhene Seas, and within Sight of Italy, because the Action propofed to be celebrated was that of his fettling himself in Latium. But because it was neceffary for the Reader to know what had happened to him in the taking of Troy, and in the preceding Parts of his Voyage, Virgil makes his Heroe relate it by way of Epifode in the fecond and third Books of the. Eneid. The contents of both which Books come before thofe of the firft Book in the Thread of the Story, tho' for preferving of this Unity of Action they follow them in the Difpofition of the Foem. Milton, in imitation of these two great Poets, opens his Paradife Loft with an Infernal Council plotting the Fall of Man, which is the Action he propofed to celebrate; and as for thofe great Actions, which preceded, in Point of Time, the Battle of the Angels, and the Creation of the World, (which would have entirely deftroyed the Unity of his principal Action, had he related them in the fame Order that they happened) he caft them into the fifth, fixth, and feventh Books, by way of Epifode to this noble Poem. Ariftoile himfelf allows, that Homer has nothing to boaft of as to the Unity of his Fable, tho' at the fame Time that great Critick and Philofopher endeavours to palliate this Imperfection in the Greek Poet, by imputing it in fome Measure to the very Nature of an Epic Poem. Some have been of Opinion, that the Eneid alfo labours in this Particular, and hes Epifodes which may be looked upon as Excrefcencies rather than as Parts of the Action. On the contrary, the Poem which we have now under cur Confideration, hath no other Epifodes than fuch as naturally arife from the Subject, and yet is filled with. fuch a Multitude of aftonishing Incidents, that it gives us at the fame time a Pleasure of the greatest Variety, and of the greatest Simplicity; uniform in its Nature, tho' diversified in the Execution. I must obferve alfo, that as Virgil in the Poem which was defigned to celebrate the Original of the Roman Empire, has defcribed the Birth of its great Rival, the Carthaginian Commonwealth: Milton, with the like Art in his Poem on the fall of Man, has related the Fall of thofe Angels who are his profeffed Enemies. Befides the many other Beauties in fuch an Episode, its running parallel with the great Action of the Poem, hinders it from breaking the Unity fo much as another Episode would have done, that had not fo great an Affinity with the principal Subject. In short, this is the fame kind of Beauty which the Criticks admire in the Spanish Fryar, or the Double Dif covery, where the two different Plots look like Counterparts and Copies of one another, THE fecond Qualification required in the Action of an Epic Poem, is, that it should be an entire Action: An Action is entire when it is compleat in all its Parts; or, as Ariftotle defcribes it, when it confifts of a Beginning, a Middle, and an End. Nothing fhould go before it, be intermixed with it, or follow after it, that is not related to it. As on the contrary, no fingle Step fhould be omitted in that just and regular Process which it must be fuppofed to take from its Original to its confummation. Thus we fee the Anger of Achilles in its Birth, its Continuance and Effects; and Æneas's Settlement in Italy, carried on tho' all the Oppofitions in his Way to it both by Sea and Land, The Action in Milton excels (I think) both the former in this Particular; we fee it contrived in Hell, executed upon Earth, and punished by Heaven. The Parts of it are told in the most diftin& Manner, and grow out of one another in the most natural Method. THE third Qualification of an Epick Poem is its Greatnefs. The Anger of Achilles was of fuch Confequence, that it embroiled the Kings of Greece, deftroyed the Heroes of Troy and engaged all the Gods in Factions. Eneas's Settlement in Italy produced the Caefars, and gave Birth to the Roman Empire. Milton's Subje&t was ftill greater than either of the former; it does not determine the Fate of fingle Perfons or Nations, but of a whole Species. The united Powers of Hell are joined together for the Deftruction of Mankind, which they effected in Part, and would have completed, had not Omnipotence itfelf interpofed. The principal Actors are Man in his greatest Perfection, and Woman in her highest Beauty. Their Enemies are the fallen Angels: The Meffiah their Friend, and the Almighty their Protector. In short, every Thing that is great in the whole Circle of Being, whether within the Verge of Nature, or out of it, has a proper Part affigned it in this noble Poem.. |