if possible, what tradition they have among them of this matter: which, as well as he could learn by many questions which he asked them at several times, was in substance as follows:

pleasures, banishing all the necessary cau- | friend of mine, whom I have formerly mentions against want, and consequently un- tioned, prevailed upon one of the interpredermining those principles on which the ters of the Indian kings, to inquire of them, government of Avarice was founded. At last, in order to an accommodation, they agreed upon this preliminary; that each of them should immediately dismiss his privycounsellor. When things were thus far adjusted towards a peace, all other differences were soon accommodated, insomuch that for the future they resolved to live as good friends and confederates, and to share between them whatever conquests were made on either side. For this reason, we now find Luxury and Avarice taking possession of the same heart, and dividing the same person between them. To which I shall only add, that since the discarding of the counsellors above-mentioned, Avarice supplies Luxury in the room of Plenty, as Luxury prompts Avarice in the place of Poverty.

No. 56.] Friday, May 4, 1711.

Felices errore suo.

C.

Lucan, 1. 454.

The visionary, whose name was Marraton, after having travelled for a long space under a hollow mountain, arrived at length on the confines of this world of spirits, but could not enter it by reason of a thick forest made up of bushes, brambles, and pointed thorns, so perplexed and interwoven with one another, that it was impossible to find a passage through it. Whilst he was looking about for some track or pathway that might be worn in any part of it, he saw a huge lion crouched under the side of it, who kept his eye upon him in the same posture as when he watches for his prey. The Indian immediately started back, whilst the lion rose with a spring, and leaped towards him. Being wholly destitute of all other weapons, he stooped down to take up a huge stone in his hand; but to his infinite surprise grasped nothing, and found the supposed stone to be only the apparition of one. If he was disappointed on this side, he was as much pleased on the other, when he found the lion, which had seized on his left shoulder, had no power to hurt him, and was only the ghost of that ravenous creature which it appeared to be. He no sooner got rid of this impotent enemy, but he marched up to the wood, and after having surveyed it for some time, endeavoured to press into one part of it that was a little thinner than the rest; when again, to his great surprise, he found the bushes made no resistance, but that he walked through briars and brambles with the same ease as through the open air; and in short, that the whole wood was nothing else but a wood of shades. He immediately concluded, that this huge thicket of thorns and brakes was designed as a kind of fence or quickset hedge to the ghosts it enclosed; and that probably their soft substances might be torn by these subtle points and prickles, which were too weak to make any impressions in flesh and blood. With this thought he resolved to travel through this intricate wood; when by degrees he felt a gale of perfumes breathing upon him, that grew stronger and sweeter in proportion as he advanced. He had not proceeded much further, when he observed the thorns and briers to end, and gave place to a thousand beautiful green trees covered with blossoms of the finest scents and colours, There is a tradition among the Ameri- that formed a wilderness of sweets, and cans, that one of their countrymen de- were a kind of lining to those ragged scenes scended in a vision to the great repository which he had before passed through. As of souls, or, as we call it here, to the other he was coming out of this delightful part world; and that upon his return he gave of the wood, and entering upon the plains his friends a distinct account of every thing it enclosed, he saw several horsemen rushhe saw among those regions of the dead. Aing by him, and a little while after he heard

Happy in their mistake. THE Americans believe that all creatures have souls, not only men and women, but brutes, vegetables, nay, even the most inanimate things, as stocks and stones. They believe the same of all the works of art, as of knives, boats, looking-glasses; and that as any of these things perish, their souls go into another world, which is inhabited by the ghosts of men and women. For this reason they always place by the corpse of their dead friend a bow and arrows, that he may make use of the souls of them in the other world, as he did of their wooden bodies in this. How absurd soever such an opinion as this may appear, our European philosophers have maintained several notions altogether as improbable. Some of Plato's followers in particular, when they talk of the world of ideas, entertain us with substances and beings no less extravagant and chimerical. Many Aristotelians have likewise spoken as unintelligibly of their substantial forms. I shall only instance Albertus Magnus, who, in his dissertation upon the load-stone, observing that fire will destroy its magnetic virtues, tells us that he took particular notice of one as it lay glowing amidst a heap of burning coals, and that he perceived a certain blue vapour to arise from it, which he believed might be the substantial form, that is in our West Indian phrase, the soul of the loadstone.

the cry of a pack of dogs. He had not | but his tears, which ran like a river down listened long before he saw the apparition his cheeks as he looked upon her. He had of a milk-white steed, with a young man on not stood in this posture long, before he the back of it, advancing upon full stretch plunged into the stream that lay before him; after the souls of about a hundred beagles, and finding it to be nothing but the phantom that were hunting down the ghost of a hare, of a river, walked on the bottom of it till which ran away before them with an un- he arose on the other side. At his approach speakable swiftness. As the man on the Yaratilda flew into his arms, whilst Marmilk-white steed came by him, he looked raton wished himself disencumbered of that upon him very attentively, and found him body which kept her from his embraces. to be the young prince Nicharagua, who After many questions and endearments on died about half a year before, and by rea- both sides, she conducted him to a bower son of his great virtues, was at that time which she had dressed with all the ornalamented over all the western parts of ments that could be met with in those America. blooming regions. She had made it gay He had no sooner got out of the wood, but beyond imagination, and was every day he was entertained with such a landscape adding something new to it. As Marraton of flowery plains, green meadows, running stood astonished at the unspeakable beauty streams, sunny hills, and shady vales, as of her habitation, and ravished with the frawere not to be represented by his own ex-grancy that came from every part of it, pressions, nor, as he said, by the concep- Yaratilda told him that she was preparing tions of others. This happy region was this bower for his reception, as well knowpeopled with innumerable swarms of spi-ing that his piety to his God, and his faithrits, who applied themselves to exercises ful dealing towards men, would certainly and diversions, according as their fancies led them. Some of them were tossing the figure of a coit; others were pitching the shadow of a bar; others were breaking the apparition of a horse; and multitudes employing themselves upon ingenious handicrafts with the souls of departed utensils, for that is the name which in the Indian language they give their tools when they are burnt or broken. As he travelled The tradition tells us further, that he through this delightful scene, he was very had afterwards a sight of those dismal haoften tempted to pluck the flowers that bitations which are the portion of ill men rose every where about him in the greatest after death; and mentions several molten variety and profusion, having never seen seas of gold, in which were plunged the several of them in his own country: but he souls of barbarous Europeans, who put to quickly found, that though they were ob- the sword so many thousands of poor Injects of his sight, they were not liable to dians for the sake of that precious metal. his touch. He at length came to the side But having already touched upon the chief of a great river, and being a good fisher-points of this tradition, and exceeded the man himself, stood upon the banks of it measure of my paper, I shall not give any some time to look upon an angler that had further account of it. taken a great many shapes of fishes, which lay flouncing up and down by him.

bring him to that happy place, whenever his life should be at an end. She then brought two of her children to him, who died some years before, and resided with her in the same delightful bower; advising him to breed up those others which were still with him in such a manner, that they might hereafter all of them meet together in this happy place.

C.

I should have told my reader, that this No. 57.] Saturday, May 5, 1711. Indian had been formerly married to one of the greatest beauties of his country, by whom he had several children. This couple were so famous for their love and constancy to one another, that the Indians to this day, when they give a married man joy of his wife, wish they may live together like Marraton and Yaratilda. Marraton had not stood long by the fisherman, when he saw the shadow of his beloved Yaratilda, who had for some time fixed her eyes upon him, before he discovered her. Her arms were stretched out towards him, floods of tears ran down her eyes. Her looks, her hands, her voice called him over to her; and at the same time seemed to tell him that the river was impassable. Who can describe the passion made up of joy, sorrow, love, desire, astonishment, that rose in the Indian upon the sight of his dear Yaratilda' He could express it by nothing

Quem præstare potest mulier galeata pudorem, Quæ fugit a sexu?Juv. Sat. vi. 251. What sense of shame in woman's breast can lie, Inur'd to arms, and her own sex to fly.-Dryden. WHEN the wife of Hector, in Homer's Iliad, discourses with her husband about the battle in which he was going to engage, the hero, desiring her to leave the matter to his care, bids her go to her maids, and mind her spinning: by which the poet intimates that men and women ought to busy themselves in their proper spheres, and on such matters only as are suitable to their respective sex.

I am at this time acquainted with a young gentleman, who has passed a great part of his life in the nursery, and upon occasion can make a caudle or a sack-posset better than any man in England. He is likewise a wonderful critic in cambric and muslins, and

will talk an hour together upon a sweet- | petticoat. Had not this accident broke off meat. He entertains his mother every night the debate, nobody knows where it would with observations that he makes both in have ended. town and court: as what lady shows the nicest fancy in her dress; what man of quality wears the fairest wig; who has the finest linen, who the prettiest snuff-box, with many other the like curious remarks, that may be made in good company.

There is one consideration which I would earnestly recommend to all my female readers, and which, I hope, will have some weight with them. In short, it is this, that there is nothing so bad for the face as party zeal. It gives an ill-natured cast to the eye and a disagreeable sourness to the look; besides that it makes the lines too strong, and flushes them worse than brandy. I have seen a woman's face break out in heats, as she has been talking against a great lord, whom she had never seen in her life; and indeed I never knew a party-woman that kept her beauty for a twelve-month. I would therefore advise all my female rea

On the other hand, I have very frequently the opportunity of seeing a rural Andromache, who came up to town last winter, and is one of the greatest fox-hunters in the country. She talks of hounds and horses, and makes nothing of leaping over a sixbar gate. If a man tells her a waggish story, she gives him a push with her hand in jest, and calls him an impudent dog; and if her servant neglects his business, threat-ders, as they value their complexions, to ens to kick him out of the house. I have heard her in her wrath call a substantial tradesman a lousy cur; and remember one day, when she could not think of the name of a person, she described him in a large company of men and ladies by the fellow with the broad shoulders.

let alone all disputes of this nature; though at the same time, I would give free liberty to all superannuated motherly partisans to be as violent as they please, since there will be no danger either of their spoiling their faces, or of their gaining converts.

For my own part I think a man makes an odious and despicable figure that is violent in a party; but a woman is too sincere to mitigate the fury of her principles with temper and discretion, and to act with that caution and reservedness which are requisite in our sex. When this unnatural zeal gets into them, it throws them into ten thousand heats and extravagancies; their generous souls set no bounds to their love, or to their hatred; and whether a whig or a tory, a lap-dog or a gallant, an opera or a puppet-show, be the object of it, the passion, while it reigns, engrosses the whole woman.

If those speeches and actions, which in their own nature are indifferent, appear ridiculous when they proceed from a wrong sex, the faults and imperfections of one sex transplanted into another, appear black and monstrous. As for the men, I shall not in this paper any further concern myself about them; but as I would fain contribute to make womankind, which is the most beautiful part of the creation, entirely amiable, and wear out all those little spots and blemishes that are apt to rise among the charms which nature has poured out upon them, I shall dedicate this paper to their service. The spot which I would here en- I remember when Dr. Titus Oates* was deavour to clear them of, is that party rage in all his glory, I accompanied my friend which of late years is very much crept into Will Honeycomb in a visit to a lady of his their conversation. This is, in its nature, acquaintance. We were no sooner sat a male vice, and made up of many angry down, but upon casting my eyes about the and cruel passions that are altogether re-room, I found in almost every corner of it pugnant to the softness, the modesty, and a print that represented the doctor in all those other endearing qualities which are magnitudes and dimensions. A little after, natural to the fair sex. Women were form- as the lady was discoursing with my friend, ed to temper mankind, and soothe them into and held her snuff-box in her hand, who tenderness and compassion; not to set an should I see in the lid of it but the doctor. edge upon their minds, and blow up in them It was not long after this when she had octhose passions which are too apt to rise of casion for her handkerchief, which, upon their own accord. When I have seen a the first opening, discovered among the pretty mouth uttering calumnies and invec- plaits of it the figure of the doctor. Up tives, what would I not have given to have this my friend Will, who loves raillery, stopt it? How have I been troubled to see told her, that if he was in Mr. Truelove's some of the finest features in the world grow place (for that was the name of her huspale, and tremble with party rage? Ca- band) he should be made as uneasy by a milla is one of the greatest beauties in the handkerchief as ever Othello was. I am British nation, and yet values herself more afraid,' said she, Mr. Honeycomb, you upon being the virago of one party, than are a tory: tell me truly, are you a friend upon being the toast of both. The dear to the doctor, or not?" Will, instead of creature, about a week ago, encountered making her a reply, smiled in her face (for the fierce and beautiful Penthesilea across indeed she was very pretty) and told her, a tea-table; but in the height of her anger, that one of her patches was dropping off. as her hand chanced to shake with the earnestness of the dispute, she scalded her fingers, and spilt a dish of tea upon her that of Dr. Sacheverell, who is the real person meant.

pon

The name of Dr. T. Oates is here substituted for

In this, and one or two following papers,

She immediately adjusted it, and looking a reason, I shall enter upon my present un · little seriously, 'Well,' says she, I will dertaking with greater cheerfulness. be hanged if you and your silent friend there are not against the doctor in your I shall trace out the history of false wit, and hearts, I suspected as much by his saying distinguish the several kinds of it as they nothing. Upon this she took her fan in her have prevailed in different ages of the hand, and upon the opening of it, again dis- world. This I think the more necessary at played to us the figure of the doctor, who present, because I observed there were was placed with great gravity among the attempts on foot last winter to revive some sticks of it. In a word, I found that the of those antiquated modes of wit that have doctor had taken possession of her thoughts, been long exploded out of the commonher discourse, and most of her furniture; wealth of letters. There were several but finding myself pressed too close by her satires and panegyrics handed about in question, I winked upon my friend to take acrostic, by which means some of the most his leave, which he did accordingly. arrant undisputed blockheads about the town began to entertain ambitious thoughts, and to set up for polite authors. I shall therefore describe at length those many arts of false wit, in which a writer does not show himself a man of a beautiful genius, but of great industry.

No. 58.]

Monday, May 7, 1711.

Ut pictura poesis erit

Hor. Ars Poct. ver. 361.

Poems like pictures are.

As for the first, it is a little oval poem, and may not improperly be called a scholar's egg. I would endeavour to hatch it, or in more intelligible language, to translate it into English, did not I find the interpretation of it very difficult; for the author seems to have been more intent upon the figure of his poem than upon the sense of it.

The first species of false wit which I NOTHING is so much admired, and so have met with is very venerable for its anlittle understood, as wit. No author that I tiquity, and has produced several pieces know of has written professedly upon it; which have lived very near as long as the and as for those who make any mention of Iliad itself: I mean those short poems it, they only treat on the subject as it has printed among the minor Greek poets, accidentally fallen in their way, and that which resemble the figure of an egg, a pair too in little short reflections, or in general of wings, an axe, a shepherd's pipe, and declamatory flourishes, without entering an altar. into the bottom of the matter. I hope therefore I shall perform an acceptable work to my countrymen, if I treat at large upon this subject; which I shall endeavour to do in a manner suitable to it, that I may not incur the censure which a famous critic* bestows upon one who had written a treatise on the sublime' in a low grovelling style. I intend to lay aside a whole week for this undertaking, that the scheme of my thoughts may not be broken and interrupted; and I dare promise myself, if my readers will give me a week's attention, that this great city will be very much changed for the better by next Saturday night. I shall endeavour to make what I say intelligible to ordinary capacities, but if my readers meet with any paper that in some parts of it may be a little out of their reach, I would not have them discouraged, for they may assure themselves the next shall be much clearer.

As the great and only end of these my speculations is to banish vice and ignorance out of the territories of Great Britain, I shall endeavour as much as possible to establish among us a taste of polite writing. It is with this view that I have endeavoured to set my readers right in several points relating to operas and tragedies; and shall from time to time impart my notions of comedy, as I think they may tend to its refinement and perfection. I find by my bookseller, that these papers of criticism, with that upon humour, have met with a more kind reception than indeed I could have hoped for from such subjects; for this

* Longinus.

The pair of wings consist of twelve verses, or rather feathers, every verse decreasing gradually in its measure according to its situation in the wing. The subject of it (as in the rest of the poems which follow) bears some remote affinity with the figure, for it describes a god of love, who is always painted with wings.

The axe methinks would have been a good figure for a lampoon, had the edge of it consisted of the most satirical parts of the work; but as it is in the original, I take it to have been nothing else but the posy of an axe which was consecrated to Minerva, and was thought to have been the same that Epeus made use of in the building of the Trojan horse; which is a hint I shall leave to the consideration of the critics. I am apt to think that the posy was written originally upon the axe, like those which our modern cutlers inscribe upon their knives; and that therefore the posy still remains in its ancient shape, though the axe itself is lost.

The shepherd's pipe may be said to be full of music, for it is composed of nine different kinds of verses, which by their several lengths resemble the nine stops of the old musical instrument, that is likewise the subject of the poem.

The altar is inscribed with the epitaph

of Troflus the son of Hecuba; which, by | ture. I would humbly propose, for the the way, makes me believe, that these false benefit of our modern smatterers in poetry, pieces of wit are much more ancient than that they would imitate their brethren the authors to whom they are generally among the ancients in those ingenious deascribed; at least I will never be persuaded, vices. I have communicated this thought that so fine a writer as Theocritus could to a young poetical lover of my acquainthave been the author of any such simple ance, who intends to present his mistress works. with a copy of verses made in the shape of her fan: and if he tells me true, has already finished the three first sticks of it. He has likewise promised me to get the measure of his mistress's marriage finger, with a design to make a posy in the fashion of a ring, which shall exactly fit it. It is so very easy to enlarge upon a good hint, that I do not question but my ingenious readers will apply what I have said to many other particulars: and that we shall see the town filled in a very little time with poetical tippets, handkerchiefs, snuff-boxes, and the like female ornaments. I shall therefore conclude with a word of advice to those admirable English authors who call themselves Pindaric writers, that they would apply themselves to this kind of wit without loss of time, as being provided better than any other poets with verses of all sizes and dimensions.

It was impossible for a man to succeed in these performances who was not a kind of painter, or at least a designer. He was first of all to draw the outline of the subject which he intended to write upon, and afterwards conform the description to the figure of his subject. The poetry was to contract or dilate itself according to the mould in which it was cast. In a word, the verses were to be cramped or extended to the dimensions of the frame that was prepared for them; and to undergo the fate of those persons whom the tyrant Procustes used to lodge in his iron bed; if they were too short, he stretched them on a rack; and if they were too long, chopped off a part of their legs, till they fitted the couch which he had prepared for them.

Mr. Dryden hints at this obsolete kind of wit in one of the following verses in his Mac Flecno; which an English reader cannot understand, who does not know that there are those little poems above-men- No. 59.] Tuesday, May 8, 1711. tioned in the shape of wings and altars:

Operose nihil agunt.

Busy about nothing.

Seneca.

C.

THERE is nothing more certain than that every man would be a wit if he could; and

endeavouring at works of fancy, which cost them infinite pangs in the production. The truth of it is, a man had better be a galley slave than a wit, were one to gain that title by those elaborate trifles which have been the inventions of such authors as were often masters of great learning, but no genius.

This fashion of false wit was revived by notwithstanding pedants of a pretended several poets of the last age, and in par-depth and solidity are apt to decry the writicular may be met with among Mr. Her- tings of a polite author, as flash and froth, bert's poems; and, if I am not mistaken, in they all of them show upon occasion, that the translation of Du Bartas. I do not re- they would spare no pains to arrive at the member any other kind of work among the character of those whom they seem to desmoderns which more resembles the per-pise. For this reason we often find them formances I have mentioned, than that famous picture of king Charles the First, which has the whole book of Psalms written in the lines of the face, and the hair of the head. When I was last at Oxford, I perused one of the whiskers, and was reading the other, but could not go so far in it as I would have done, by reason of the impatience of my friends and fellow-travellers, who all of them pressed to see such a piece of curiosity. I have since heard, that there is now an eminent writing-master in town, who has transcribed all the Old Testament in a full-bottomed periwig; and if the fashion should introduce the thick kind of wigs, which were in vogue some years ago, he promises to add two or three supernumerary locks that shall contain all the Apocrypha. He designed this wig originally for king William, having disposed of the two books of Kings in the two forks of the foretop; but that glorious monarch dying before the wig was finished, there is a space left in it for the face of any one that has a mind to purchase it.

In my last paper I mentioned some of those false wits among the ancients, and in this shall give the reader two or three other species of them, that flourished in the same early ages of the world. The first I shall produce are the lipogrammatists or letter-droppers of antiquity, that would take an exception, without any reason, against some particular letter in the alphabet, so as not to admit it once into a whole poem. One Tryphiodorus was a great master in this kind of writing. He composed an Odyssey or epic poem on the adventures of Ulysses, consisting of four and twenty books, having entirely banished the letter A from his first book, which was called Alpha (as lucus a non lucendo) because there was But to return to our ancient poems in pic-not an Alpha in it. His second book was in