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he makes me grow dull and melancholy. My master wonders what is the matter with with me; I am afraid to tell him; for he is a man that loves to encourage learning, and would be apt to chide my father, and, not knowing his temper, may make him worse. Sir, if you have any love for learning, I beg you would give me some instructions in this case, and persuade parents to encourage their children when they find them diligent and desirous of learning. I have heard some parents say, they would do any thing for their children, if they would but mind their learning: I would be glad to be in their place. Dear sir, pardon my boldness. If you will but consider and pity my case, I will pray for your prosperity as long as I live. Your humble servant,

of his virtue. It would be a worthy work | My father's carriage so discourages me, that to show what great charities are to be done without expense, and how many noble actions are lost, out of inadvertency, in persons capable of performing them, if they were put in mind of it. If a gentleman of figure in a county would make his family a pattern of sobriety, good sense, and breeding, and would kindly endeavour to influence the education and growing prospect of the younger gentry about him, I am apt to believe it would save him a great deal of stale beer on a public occasion, and render him the leader of his county from their gratitude to him, instead of being a slave to their riots and tumults in order to be made their representative. The same thing might be recommended to all who have made any progress in any parts of knowledge, or arrived at any degree in a profession Others may gain preferments and fortunes from their patrons; but I have, I hope, received from mine good habits and virtues. I repeat to you, sir, my request to print this, in return for all the No. 331.] Thursday, March 20, 1711-12. evil a helpless orphan shall ever escape, and all the good he shall receive in this life; both which are wholly owing to this gentleman's favour to, sir, your most obedient servant, S. P.'

'MR. SPECTATOR-I am a lad of about fourteen. I find a mighty pleasure in learning. I have been at the Latin school four years. I don't know I ever played truant, or neglected any task my master set me in my life. I think on what I read in the school as I go home at noon and night, and so intently, that I have often gone half a mile out of my way, not minding whither I went. Our maid tells me she often hears me talk Latin in my sleep, and I dream two or three nights in a week I am reading Juvenal and Homer. My master seems as well pleased with my performances as any boy's in the same class. I think, if I know my own mind, I would choose rather to be a scholar than a prince without learning. I have a very good, affectionate father; but though very rich, yet so mighty near, that he thinks much of the charges of my education. He often tells me he believes my schooling will ruin him; that I cost him God knows what, in books. I tremble to tell him I want one. I am forced to keep my pocket-money, and lay it out for a book now and then, that he don't know of. He has ordered my master to buy no more books for me, but says he will buy them himself. I asked him for Horace t'other day, and he told me in a passion he did not believe I was fit for it, but only my master had a mind to make him think I had got a great way in my learning. I am sometimes a month behind other boys in getting the books my master gives orders for. All the boys in the school, but I, have the classic authors in usum Delphini, gilt and lettered on the back. My father is often reckoning up how long I have been at school, and tells me he fears I do little good.

JAMES DISCIPULUS. 'London, March 2, 1711.'

Stolidam præbet tibi vellere barbam.

T.

Pers. Sat. ii. 28. Holds out his foolish beard for thee to pluck. WHEN I was last with my friend Sir Roger in Westminster-abbey, I observed that he stood longer than ordinary before I was at a the bust of a venerable old man. loss to guess the reason of it; when, after some time, he pointed to the figure, and asked me if I did not think that our forefathers looked much wiser in their beards than we do without them? For my part,' says he, when I am walking in my gallery in the country, and see my ancestors, who many of them died before they were of my age, I cannot forbear regarding them as so many old patriarchs, and at the same time, looking upon myself as an idle smock-faced young fellow. I love to see your Abrahams, your Isaacs, and your Jacobs, as we have them in old pieces of tapestry, with beards below their girdles, that cover half the hangings. The knight added, "if I would recommend beards in one of my papers, and endeavour to restore human faces to their ancient dignity, that, upon a month's warning he would undertake to lead up the fashion himself in a pair of whiskers.'

I smiled at my friend's fancy; but, after we parted, could not forbear reflecting on the metamorphosis our faces have undergone in this particular.

The beard, conformable to the notion of my friend Sir Roger, was for many ages looked upon as the type of wisdom. Lucian more than once rallies the philosophers of his time, who endeavoured to rival one an other in beards; and represents a learned man who stood for a professorship in philosophy, as unqualified for it by the shortness of his beard.

Ælian, in his account of Zoilus, the pretended critic, who wrote against Homer and Plato, and thought himself wiser than all

who had gone before him, tells us that this Zoilus had a very long beard that hung down upon his breast, but no hair upon his head, which he always kept close shaved, regarding, it seems, the hairs of his head as so many suckers, which if they had been suffered to grow, might have drawn away the nourishment from his chin, and by that means have starved his beard.

I have read somewhere, that one of the popes refused to accept an edition of a saint's works, which were presented to him, because the saint, in his effigies before the book, was drawn without a beard.

We see by these instances what homage the world has formerly paid to beards; and that a barber was not then allowed to make those depredations on the faces of the learned, which have been permitted him of late years.

tinct treatise, which I keep by me in manuscript, upon the mustache.

If my friend Sir Roger's project of introducing beards should take effect, I fear the luxury of the present age would make it a very expensive fashion. There is no question but the beaux would soon provide themselves with false ones of the lightest colours and the most immoderate lengths. A fair beard of the tapestry size, which Sir Roger seems to approve, could not come under twenty guineas. The famous golden beard of Esculapius would hardly be more valuable than one made in the extravagance of the fashion.

Besides, we are not certain that the ladies would not come into the mode, when they take the air on horseback. They already appear in hats and feathers, coats and periwigs; and I see no reason why we may not suppose that they would have their ridingbeards on the same occasion. N. B. I may give the moral of this discourse in another paper.

Accordingly several wise nations have been so extremely jealous of the least ruffle offered to their beards, that they seem to have fixed the point of honour principally in that part. The Spaniards were wonderfully tender in this particular. Don Quevedo, in his third vision on the last judgment, has carried the humour very far, when he No. 332.] Friday, March 21, 1712. tells us that one of his vainglorious countrymen, after having received sentence, was taken into custody by a couple of evil spirits; but that his guides happening to disorder his mustaches, they were forced to recompose them with a pair of curling-irons, before they could get him to file off.

If we look into the history of our own nation, we shall find that the beard flourished in the Saxon heptarchy, but was very much discouraged under the Norman line. It shot out, however, from time to time, in several reigns under different shapes. The last effort it made seems to have been in queen Mary's days, as the curious reader may find if he pleases to peruse the figures of Cardinal Pole and Bishop Gardiner: though, at the same time, I think it may be questioned, if zeal against popery has not induced our protestant painters to extend the beards of these two persecutors beyond their natural dimensions, in order to make them appear the more terrible.

I find but few beards worth taking notice of in the reign of King James the first.

During the civil wars there appeared one, which makes too great a figure in story to be passed over in silence: I mean that of the redoubted Hudibras, an account of which Butler has transmitted to posterity in the following lines:

'His tawny beard was th' equal grace Both of his wisdom and his face;

In cut and dye so like a tile,

A sudden view it would beguile;
The upper part thereof was whey,
The nether orange mixt with grey.'

The whisker continued for some time among us after the expiration of beards; but this is a subject which I shall not here enter upon, having discussed it at large in a dis

X.

-Minus aptus acutis
Naribus horum hominum-Hor. Sat. iii. Lib. 1. 29.
He cannot bear the raillery of the age. Creech.

'DEAR SHORT FACE,-In your speculation of Wednesday last, you have given us some account of that worthy society of brutes the Mohocks, wherein you have particularly specified the ingenious performances of the lion-tippers, the dancing-masters, and the tumblers; but as you acknowledged you had not then a perfect history of the whole club, you might very easily omit one of the most notable species of it, the sweaters, which may be reckoned a sort of dancing-masters too. It is, it seems, the custom for half a dozen, or more, of these well-disposed savages, as soon as they have enclosed the person upon whom they design the favour of a sweat, to whip out their swords, and holding them parallel to the horizon, they describe a sort of magic circle round about him with the points. As soon as this piece of conjuration is performed, and the patient without doubt already beginning to wax warm, to forward the operation, that member of the circle towards whom he is so rude as to turn his back first, runs his sword directly into that part of the patient whereon school-boys are punished; and as it is very natural to imagine this will soon make him tack about to some other point, every gentleman does himself the same justice as often as he receives the affront. After this jig has gone two or three times round, and the patient is thought to have sweat sufficiently, he is very handsomely rubbed down by some attendants, who carry with them instruments for that purpose, and so discharged. This relation I had from a friend of mine, who has lately

been under this discipline. He tells me he |
had the honour to dance before the emperor
himself, not without the applause and ac-
clamations both of his imperial majesty and
the whole ring; though I dare say, neither
I, nor any of his acquaintance, ever dreamt
he would have merited any reputation by
his activity.

being in a great doubt about the orthography of the word bagnio. I consulted several dictionaries, but found no relief: at last having recourse both to the bagnio in Newgate street, and to that in Chancery-lane, and finding the original manuscripts upon the sign-posts of each to agree literally with my own spelling, I returned home full of satisfaction in order to despatch this epistle.'

that fall within the occurrences of a retired life; in the afternoon we sometimes enjoy the good company of some friend or neightire to our chambers, and take leave of each bour, or else work or read: at night we reother for the whole night at ten o'clock. We take particular care never to be sick of a maids, but ambitious of characters which Sunday. Mr. Spectator, we are all very good we think more laudable, that of being very good wives. If any of your correspondents inquire for a spouse for an honest country gentleman, whose estate is not dipped, and wants a wife that can save half his revenue, neighbours of the same estate, with finer and yet make a better figure than any of his bred women, you shall have further notice from, sir, your courteous readers,

'I can assure you, Mr. Spectator, I was very near being qualified to have given you a faithful and painful account of this 'MR. SPECTATOR-AS you have taken walking bagnio, if I may so call it, myself. most of the circumstances of human life into Going the other night along Fleet-street, your consideration, we the underwritten and having, out of curiosity, just entered thought it not improper for us also to reinto discourse with a wandering female who present to you our condition. We are three was travelling the same way, a couple of ladies who live in the country, and the fellows advanced towards us, drew their greatest improvement we make is by readswords, and cried out to each other, Aing. We have taken a small journal of our sweat! a sweat!" Whereon, suspecting lives, and find it extremely opposite to your they were some of the ring-leaders of the last Tuesday's speculation. We rise by bagnio, I also drew my sword, and demand- seven, and pass the beginning of each day ed a parley; but finding none would be in devotion, and looking into those affairs granted me, and perceiving others behind them filing off with great diligence to take me in flank, I began to sweat for fear of being forced to it: but very luckily betaking myself to a pair of heels, which I had good reason to believe would do me justice, I instantly got possession of a very snug corner in a neighbouring alley that lay in my rear; which post I maintained for above half an hour with great firmness and resolution, though not letting this success so far overcome me as to make me unmindful of the circumspection that was necessary to be observed upon my advancing again towards the street; by which prudence and good management I made a handsome and orderly retreat, having suffered no other damage in this action than the loss of my baggage, and the dislocation of one of my shoe heels, which last I am just now informed is in a fair way of recovery. These sweaters, by what I can learn from my friend, and by as near a view as I was able to take of them myself, seem to me to have at pre- No. 333.] Saturday, March 22, 1711-12. sent but a rude kind of discipline among them. It is probable, if you would take a little pains with them, they might be brought into better order. But I'll leave this to your own discretion; and will only add, that if you think it worth while to insert this by way of caution to those who have a mind to preserve their skins whole from this sort of cupping, and tell them at the same time the hazard of treating with night-walkers, you will perhaps oblige others, as well as your very humble servant,

'JACK LIGHTFOOT. 'P. S. My friend will have me acquaint you, that though he would not willingly detract from the merit of that extraordinary strokesman Mr. Sprightly, yet it is his real opinion, that some of those fellows who are employed as rubbers to this new-fashioned bagnio, have struck as bold strokes as ever he did in his life.

'I had sent this four-and-twenty hours sooner, if I had not had the misfortune of

T.

'MARTHA BUSIE, DEBORAH THRIFTY, 'ALICE EARLY.'

-vocat in certamina divos.-Virg. He calls embattled deities to arms.

WE are now entering upon the sixth book of Paradise Lost, in which the poet describes the battle of the angels; having raised his reader's expectation, and prepared him for it by several passages in the preceding books. I omitted quoting these passages in my observations on the former books, having purposely reserved them for the opening of this, the subject of which gave occasion to them. The author's imagination was so inflamed with this great scene of action, that wherever he speaks of it, he rises, if possible, above himself. Thus, where he mentions Satan in the beginning of his poem,

-Him the almighty Power

Hurl'd headlong flaming from th' ethereal sky.
With hideous ruin and combustion, down
To bottomless perdition, there to dwell
In adamantine chains and penal fire,
Who durst defy th' Omnipotent to arms.

We have likewise several noble hints of it | days' engagement, which does not appear

n the infernal conference:

'O prince! O chief of many throned powers,
That led the embattled seraphim to war,

Too well I see and rue the dire event,
That with sad overthrow and foul defeat
Hath lost us heav'n; and all this mighty host
In horrible destruction laid thus low.
But see! the angry victor has recall'd
His ministers of vengeance and pursuit
Back to the gates of heav'n. The sulphurous hai
Shot after us in storm, o'erblown, hath laid
The fiery surge, that from the precipice
Of heav'n received us falling; and the thunder,
Wing'd with red lightning and impetuous rage,
Perhaps has spent his shafts, and ceases now
To bellow through the vast and boundless deep.

There are several other very sublime images on the same subject in the first book,

as also in the second:

'What when we fled amain, pursued and struck
With heav'n's afflicting thunder, and besought
The deep to shelter us; this hell then seem'd
A refuge from those wounds-

In short, the poet never mentions any thing of this battle, but in such images of greatness and terror as are suitable to the subject. Among several others I cannot forbear quoting that passage where the Power, who is described as presiding over the chaos, speaks in the second book:

Thus Satan; and him thus the 'Anarch old,
With fault'ring speech and visage incompos'd,
Answer'd: "I know thee, stranger, who thou art,
That mighty leading angel, who of late
Made head against heav'n's King, though overthrown

I saw and heard; for such a numerous host
Fled not in silence through the frighted deep
With ruin upon ruin, rout on rout,
Confusion worse confounded; and heaven's gates
Pour'd out by millions her victorious bands
Pursuing

natural, and agreeable enough to the ideas most readers would conceive of a fight be tween two armies of angels.

The second day's engagement is apt to startle an imagination which has not been raised and qualified for such a description by the reading of the ancient poets, and of Homer in particular. It was certainly a very bold thought in our author, to ascribe the first use of artillery to the rebel angels. But as such a pernicious invention may be well supposed to have proceeded from such authors, so it enters very properly into the thoughts of that being, who is all along deMaker. Such engines were the only instruscribed as aspiring to the majesty of his

ments he could have made use of to imitate those thunders, that in all poetry, both sacred and profane, are represented as the arms of the Almighty. The tearing up the hills was not altogether so daring a thought as the former. We are, in some measure, prepared for such an incident by the description of the giants' war, which we meet made this circumstance the more proper with among the ancient poets. What still for the poet's use, is the opinion of many learned men, that the fable of the giants' war, which makes as great a noise in antiquity, and gave birth to the sublimest description in Hesiod's works, was an allegory founded upon this very tradition of a fight between the good and bad angels.

It may, perhaps, be worth while to consider with what judgment Milton, in this narration, has avoided every thing that is mean and trivial in the description of the It required great pregnancy of invention, Latin and Greek poets; and at the same and strength of imagination, to fill this bat-time improved every great hint which he tle with such circumstances as should raise and astonish the mind of the reader; and at the same time an exactness of judgment, to avoid every thing that might appear light or trivial. Those who look into Homer are surprised to find his battles still rising one above another, and improving in horror to the conclusion of the Iliad. Milton's fight of angels is wrought up with the same beauty. It is ushered in with such signs of wrath as are suitable to Omnipotence incensed. The first engagement is carried on under a cope of fire, occasioned by the flights of in- | numerable burning darts and arrows which are discharged from either host. The second onset is still more terrible, as it is filled with those artificial thunders, which seem to make the victory doubtful, and produce a kind of consternation even in the good angels. This is followed by the tearing up of mountains and promontories; till in the last place Messiah comes forth in the fulness of majesty and terror. The pomp of his appearance, amidst the roarings of his thunders, the flashes of his lightnings, and the noise of his chariot wheels, is described with the utmost flights of human imagination.

There is nothing in the firs and last

met with in their works upon this subject. Homer, in that passage which Longinus has celebrated for its sublimeness, and which Virgil and Ovid have copied after him, tells us, that the giants threw Ossa upon Olympus, and Pelion upon Ossa. He adds an epithet to Pelion (EVOQuAoV) which very much swells the idea, by bringing up to the reader's imagination all the woods that grew upon it. There is further a greater beauty in his singling out by names these three remarkable mountains so well known to the Greeks. This last is such a beauty, as the scene of Milton's war could not possibly furnish him with. Claudian, in his fragment upon the giants' war, has given full scope to that wildness of imagination which was natural to him. He tells us that the giants tore up whole islands by the roots, and threw them at the gods. He describes one of them in particular taking up Lemnos in his arms, and whirling it to the skies, with all Vulcan's shop in the midst of it. Another tears up mount Ida, with the river Enipeus, which ran down the sides of it; but the poet, not content to describe him with this mountain upon his shoulders, tells us that the river flowed down his back as he held it up in that posture. It is visible

• to every judicious reader, that such ideas Į savour more of the burlesque than of the sublime. They proceed from a wantonness of imagination, and rather divert the mind than astonish it. Milton has taken

every thing that is sublime in these several
passages, and composes out of them the fol-
lowing great image:

From their foundations loos'ning to and fro,
They pluck'd the seated hills, with all their load,
Rocks, waters, woods, and by the shaggy tops
Uplifting bore them in their hands.

We have the full majesty of Homer in this short description, improved by the imagination of Claudian, without its puerilities.

I need not point out the description of the fallen angels seeing the promontories hanging over their heads in such a dreadful manner, with the other numberless beauties in this book, which are so conspicuous, *hat they cannot escape the notice of the .nost ordinary reader,

There are indeed so many wonderful strokes of poetry in this book, and such a variety of sublime ideas, that it would have been impossible to have given them a place within the bounds of this paper. Besides that I find it in a great measure done to my hand at the end of my lord Roscommon's Essay on Translated Poetry. I shall refer my reader thither for some of the masterstrokes of the sixth book of Paradise Lost, though at the same time there are many others which that noble author has not taken notice of.

Milton, notwithstanding the sublime genius he was master of, has in this book drawn to his assistance all the helps he could meet with among the ancient poets. The sword of Michael, which makes so great a havoc among the bad angels, was given him, we are told, out of the armoury of God:

But the sword

Of Michael from the armoury of God
Was giv`n him, temper'd so, that neither keen
Nor solid might resist that edge: it met
The sword of Satan, with steep force to smite
Descending, and in half cut sheer-

This passage is a copy of that in Virgil, wherein the poet tells us, that the sword of Eneas, which was given him by a deity, roke into pieces the sword of Turnus, which came from a mortal forge. As the moral in this place is divine, so by the way we may observe, that the bestowing on a man who is favoured by heaven such an allegorical weapon is very conformable to the old eastern way of thinking. Not only Homer has made use of it, but we find the Jewish hero in the book of Maccabees, who had fought the battles of the chosen people with so much glory and success, receiving in his dream a sword from the hand of the prophet Jeremiah. The following passage, wherein Satan is described as wounded by the sword of Michael, is in imitation of Homer:

The griding sword with discontinuous wound
Pass'd through him; but th' ethereal substance clos":
VOL. II.
5

Not long divisible; and from the gash

A stream of nectarous humour issuing flow'd
Sanguine, (such as celestial spirits may eed)
And all his armour stain'd-

Homer tells us in the same manner, that upon Diomede's wounding the gods, there flowed from the wound an ichor, or pure kind of blood, which was not bred from mortal viands; and that though the pain was exquisitely great, the wound soon closed up and healed in those beings who are vested with immortality.

I question not but Milton, in his descrip tion of his furious Moloch flying from the battle, and bellowing with the wound he had received, had his eye on Mars in the Iliad; who, upon his being wounded, is re presented as retiring out of the fight, and making an outcry louder than that of a Homer adds, that the Greeks and Trojans whole army when it begins the charge. Homer adds, that the Greeks and Trojans who were engaged in a general battle, were terrified on each side with the bellowing of this wounded deity. The reader will easily observe how Milton has kept all the horror of this image without running into the ridi cule of it:

-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 heav'n
Refrain'd his tongue blasphemous: but anon
Down cloven to the waist, with shatter'd arms
And uncouth pain, fled bellowing-

Milton has likewise raised his description in this book with many images taken out of the poetical parts of scripture. The Mes siah's chariot, as I have before taken notice, is formed upon a vision of Ezekiel, who, as Grotius observes, has very much in him of Homer's spirit in the poetical parts of his prophecy.

The following lines, in that glorious commission which is given the Messiah to ex tirpate the host of rebel angels, is drawn from a sublime passage in the psalms:

Go then, thou mightiest, in thy Father's might!
Ascend my chariot, guide the rapid wheels
That take heav'n's basis; bring forth all my war,
My bow, my thunder, my almighty arms
Gird on, and sword on thy puissant thigh.
The reader will easily discover many
other strokes of the same nature.

There is no question but Milton had heated his imagination with the fight of the gods in Homer, before he entered into this engagement of the angels. Homer there gives us a scene of men, heroes, and gods, mixed together in battle. Mars animates the contending armies, and lifts up his voice in such a manner, that it is heard distinctly amidst all the shouts and confusion of the fight. Jupiter at the same time thunders over their heads; while Neptune raises such a tempest, that the whole field of battle, and all the tops of the mountains, shake about them. The poet tells, that Pluto himself, whose habitation was in the very centre of the earth, was so affrighted at the shock, that he leapt from his throne.

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