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that there were several letters from France, fondness for the character of a fine gentlejust come in, with advice that the king was in good health, and was gone out a-hunting the very morning the post came away: upon which the haberdasher stole off his hat that hung upon a wooden peg by him, and retired to his shop with great confusion. This intelligence put a stop to my travels, which I had prosecuted with so much satisfaction; not being a little pleased to hear so many different opinions upon so great an event, and to observe how naturally upon such a piece of news every one is apt to consider it with regard to his particular interest and advantage.

L.

No. 404.] Friday, June 13, 1712.
-Non omnia possumus omnes.-Virg. Ecl. viii. 63.
With different talents form'd, we variously excel.

NATURE does nothing in vain: the Creator of the universe has appointed every thing to a certain use and purpose, and determined it to a settled course and sphere of action, from which if it in the least deviates, it becomes unfit to answer those ends for which it was designed. In like manner it is in the dispositions of society, the civil economy is formed in a chain as well as the natural: and in either case the breach but of one link puts the whole in some disorder. It is, I think, pretty plain, that most of the absurdity and ridicule we meet with in the world, is generally owing to the impertinent affectation of excelling in characters men are not fit for, and for which nature never designed them.

man; all his thoughts are bent upon this; instead of attending a dissection, frequenting the courts of justice, or studying the fathers, Cleanthes reads plays, dances, dresses, and spends his time in drawingrooms; instead of being a good lawyer, divine, or physician, Cleanthes is a downright coxcomb, and will remain to all that know him a contemptible example of talents misapplied. It is to this affectation the world owes its whole race of coxcombs. Nature in her whole drama never drew such a part; she has sometimes made a fool, but a coxcomb is always of a man's own making, by applying his talents otherwise than Nature designed, who ever bears a high resentment for being put out of her course, and never fails of taking her revenge on those that do so. Opposing her tendency in the application of a man's parts has the same success as declining from her course in the production of vegetables, by the assistance of art and a hot-bed. We may possibly extort an unwilling plant, or an untimely salad; but how weak, how tasteless and insipid. Just as insipid as the poetry of Valerio. Valerio had an universal character, was genteel, had learning, thought justly, spoke correctly; it was believed there was nothing in which Valerio did not excel; and it was so far true, that there was but one; Valerio had no genius for poetry, yet he is resolved to be a poet; he writes verses, and takes great pains to convince the town that Valerio is not that extraordinary person he was taken for.

Το

If men would be content to graft upon Nature, and assist her operations, what mighty effects might we expect! Tully would not stand so much alone in oratory, Virgil in poetry, or Cæsar in war. build upon Nature, is laying a foundation upon a rock; every thing disposes itself into order as it were of course, and the whole work is half done as soon as undertaken. Cicero's genius inclined him to oratory, Virgil's to follow the train of the Muses; they piously obeyed the admonition, and were rewarded. Had Virgil attended the bar, his modest and ingenuous virtue would surely have made but a very indifferent figure; and Tully's declamatory inclination would have been as useless in poetry. Nature, if left to herself, leads us on in the best course, but will do nothing by compulsion and constraint; and if we are not always satisfied to go her way, we are always the greatest sufferers by it.

Every man has one or more qualities which may make him useful both to himself and others. Nature never fails of pointing them out; and while the infant continues under her guardianship, she brings him on in his way, and then offers herself as a guide in what remains of the journey; if he proceeds in that course he can hardly m..scarry. Nature makes good her engagements: for, as she never promises what she is not able to perform, so she never fails of performing what she promises. But the misfortune is, men despise what they may be masters of, and affect what they are not fit for; they reckon themselves already possessed of what their genius inclined them to, and so bend all their ambition to excel in what is out of their reach. Thus they destroy the use of their natural talents, in the same manner as covetous men do their quiet and repose: Wherever nature designs a production, they can enjoy no satisfaction in what they she always disposes seeds proper for it, have, because of the absurd inclination they which are as absolutely necessary to the are possessed with for what they have not. formation of any moral or intellectual exCleanthes has good sense, a great memo-cellence, as they are to the being and ry, and a constitution capable of the closest growth of plants, and I know not by what application. In a word, there was no pro-fate and folly it is, that men are taught not fession in which Cleanthes might not have to reckon him equally absurd that will write made a very good figure; but this won't verses in spite of Nature, with that garsatisfy him; he takes up an unaccountable dener that should undertake to raise a jonVOL. II.

17

quil or tulip without the help of their respective seeds.

As there is no good or bad quality that does not affect both sexes, so it is not to be imagined but the fair sex must have suffered by an affectation of this nature, at least as much as the other. The ill effect of it is in none so conspicuous as in the two opposite characters of Calia and Iras; Cælia has all the charms of person, together with an abundant sweetness of nature, but wants wit, and has a very ill voice; Iras is ugly and ungenteel, but has wit and good sense. If Calia would be silent, her beholders would adore her; if Iras would talk, her hearers would admire her; but Cælia's tongue runs incessantly, while Iras gives herself silent airs and soft languors, so that it is difficult to persuade oneself that Cælia has beauty, and Iras wit: each neglects her own excellence, and is ambitious of the other's character; Iras would be thought to have as much beauty as Cælia, and Cælia as much wit as Iras.

I AM very sorry to find, by the opera bills for this day, that we are likely to lose the greatest performer in dramatic music that is now living, or that perhaps ever appeared upon a stage. I need not acquaint my readers that I am speaking of signior Nicolini. The town is highly obliged to that excellent artist, for having shown us the Italian music in its perfection, as well as for that generous approbation he lately gave to an opera of our own country, in which the composer endeavoured to do justice to the beauty of the words, by following that noble example, which has been set him by the greatest foreign masters in that art.

I could heartily wish there was the same application and endeavours to cultivate and improve our church-music as have been lately bestowed on that of the stage. Our composers have one very great incitement to it. They are sure to meet with excellent words, and at the same time a wonderful variety of them. There is no passion that is not finely expressed in those parts of the inspired writings, which are proper for divine songs and anthems.

The great misfortune of this affectation is, that men not only lose a good quality, but also contract a bad one. They not only There is a certain coldness and indifferare unfit for what they were designed, but ence in the phrases of our European lanthey assign themselves to what they are guages, when they are compared with the not fit for; and, instead of making a very oriental forms of speech; and it happens good figure one way, make a very ridi- very luckily, that the Hebrew idioms run culous one another. If Semanthe would into the English tongue with a particular have been satisfied with her natural com- grace and beauty. Our language has replexion, she might still have been cele- ceived innumerable elegances and improvebrated by the name of the olive beauty; ments, from that infusion of Hebraisms, but Semanthe has taken up an affectation which are derived to it out of the poetical to white and red, and is now distinguished passages in holy writ. They give a force by the character of the lady that paints sond energy to our expression, warm and aniwell. In a word, could the world be re-mate our language, and convey our thoughts formed to the obedience of that famed dic-in more ardent and intense phrases, than tate,Follow Nature,' which the oracle of Delphos pronounced to Cicero, when he consulted what course of studies he should pursue, we should see almost every man as eminent in his proper sphere as Tully was in his, and should in a very short time find impertinence and affectation banished from among the women, and coxcombs and false characters from among the men. For my part I could never consider this preposterous repugnancy to Nature any otherwise, than not only as the greatest folly, but also one of the most heinous crimes, since it is a direct opposition to the disposition of Providence, and (as Tully expresses it) like the sin of the giants, an actual rebellion against heaven. Z.

No. 405.] Saturday, June 14, 1712.

Οι δε πανημέριοι μολπη Θεον ιλάσκοντο
Καλον αείδοντες Παιηονα κούροι Αχαιών,
Μέλποντες Εκαι γον ο δε φρενα τέρπετ' ακιων.
Hom. Iliad. i. 472.

With hymns divine the joyous banquet ends;
The pæans lengthen'd till the sun descends;
The Greeks restor'd the grateful notes prolong;
Apollo listens and approves the song.-Pope.

any that are to be met with in our own tongue. There is something so pathetic in this kind of diction, that it often sets the mind in a flame, and makes our hearts burn within us. How cold and dead does a prayer appear, that is composed in the most elegant and polite forms of speech, which are natural to our tongue, when it is not heightened by that solemnity of phrase which may be drawn from the sacred writings! It has been said by some of the ancients, that if the gods were to talk with men, they would certainly speak in Plato's style; but I think we may say with justice, that when mortals converse with their Creator, they cannot do it in so proper a style as in that of the holy scriptures.

If any one would judge of the beauties of poetry that are to be met with in the divine writings, and examine how kindly the Hebrew manners of speech mix and incorporate with the English language; after having perused the book of Psalms; let him read a literal translation of Horace or Pindar. He will find in these two last such an absurdity and confusion of style, with such a comparative poverty of imagination, as will make him very sensible of what I have been here advancing.

Since we have therefore such a treasury | produees more lasting and permanent imof words, so beautiful in themselves, and so pressions in the mind, than those which acproper for the airs of music, I cannot but company any transient form of words that wonder that persons of distinction should are uttered in the ordinary method of religive so little attention and encouragement gious worship. 0. to that kind of music, which would have its foundation in reason, and which would im

prove our virtue in proportion as it raises No. 406.] Monday, June 16, 1712.
our delight. The passions that are excited
by ordinary compositions generally flow
from such silly and absurd occasions, that a
man is ashamed to reflect upon them se-
riously; but the fear, the love, the sorrow,
the indignation, that are awakened in the
mind by hymns and anthems, make the
heart better, and proceed from such causes
as are altogether reasonable and praisewor-
thy. Pleasure and duty go hand in hand,
and the greater our satisfaction is, the
greater is our religion.

Hæc studia adolescentiam alunt, senectutem, oblec

tant, secundas res ornant, adversis solatium et perfugium præbent; delectant domi, non impediunt foris; pernoctant nobiscum, peregrinatur, rusticantur.-Tull.

These studies nourish youth; delight old age; are the

Music among those who are styled the chosen people was a religious art. The songs of Sion, which we have reason to believe were in high repute among the courts of the eastern monarchs, were nothing else but psalms and pieces of poetry that adored or celebrated the Supreme Being. The greatest conqueror in the holy nation, after the manner of the old Grecian lyrics, did not only compose the words of his divine odes, but generally set them to music himself: after which, his works, though they were consecrated to the tabernacle, became the national entertainment, as well as the devotion of the people.

ornament of prosperity; the solacement and the refuge of adversity; they are delectable at home, and not burdensome abroad; they gladden us at nights, and on our journeys, and in the country.

THE following letters bear a pleasing image of the joys and satisfactions of a private life. The first is from a gentleman to a friend, for whom he has a very great respect, and to whom he communicates the satisfaction he takes in retirement; the other is a letter to me, occasioned by an ode written by my Lapland lover: this correspondent is so kind as to translate another of Scheffer's songs in a very agreeable manner. I publish them together, that the young and old may find something in the same paper which may be suitable to their respective tastes in solitude; for I know no fault in the description of ardent desires, provided they are honourable.

DEAR SIR,-You have obliged me with The first original of the drama was a re- a very kind letter; by which I find you ligious worship, consisting only of a chorus, shift the scene of your life from the town which was nothing else but a hymn to a to the country, and enjoy that mixed deity. As luxury and voluptuousness pre- state, which wise men both delight in and vailed over innocence and religion, this form are qualified for. Methinks most of the phiof worship degenerated into tragedies; in losophers and moralists have run too much which however the chorus so far remem-into extremes in praising entirely either sobered its first office, as to brand every thing that was vicious, and recommend every thing that was laudable, to intercede with heaven for the innocent, and to implore its vengeance on the people.

Homer and Hesiod intimate to us how this art should be applied, when they represent the Muses as surrounding Jupiter, and warbling their hymns about his throne. I might show, from innumerable passages in ancient writers, not only that vocal and instrumental music were made use of in their religious worship, but that their most favourite diversions were filled with songs and hymns to their respective deities. Had we frequent entertainments of this nature among us, they would not a little purify and exalt our passions, give our thoughts a proper turn, and cherish those divine impulses in the soul, which every one feels that has not stifled them by sensual and immoral pleasures.

Music, when thus applied, raises noble hints in the mind of the hearer, and fills it with great conceptions. It strengthens devotion, and advances praise into rapture, lengthens out every act of worship, and

litude or public life; in the former, men generally grow useless by too much rest; and, in the latter, are destroyed by too much precipitation; as waters lying still putrify and are good for nothing; and running violently on, do but the more mischief in their passage to others, and are swallowed up and lost the sooner themselves. Those who, like you, can make themselves useful to all states, should be like gentle streams, that not only glide through lonely vales and forests, amidst the flocks and shepherds, but visit populous towns in their course, and are at once of ornament and service to them. But there is another sort of people who seem designed for solitude, those I mean who have more to hide than to show. As for my own part, I am one of those whom Seneca says, Tam umbratiles sunt, ut putent in turbido esse quicquid in luce est.' Some men like pictures, are fitter for a corner than a full light; and I believe such as have a natural bent to solitude are like waters, which may be forced into fountains, and, exalted to a great height, may make a much nobler figure, and a much louder noise, but after all run more smoothly,

equally, and plentifully in their own natural course upon the ground. The consideration of this would make me very well contented with the possession only of that quiet which Cowley calls the companion of obscurity; but whoever has the muses too for his companions can never be idle enough to be uneasy. Thus, sir, you see I would flatter myself into a good opinion of my own way of living: Plutarch just now told me, that it is in human life as in a game at tables: one may wish he had the highest cast; but, if his chance be otherwise, he is even to play it as well as he can, and make the best of it. I am, sir, your most obliged and most humble servant.'

'MR. SPECTATOR,-The town being so well pleased with the fine picture of artless

IV.

"Each moment from the charmer I'm confin'd,
My breast is tortur'd with impatient fires;
Fly, my rein-deer, fly swifter than the wind,
Thy tardy feet wing with my fierce desires.

V.

"Our pleasing toil will then be soon o'erpaid, And thou, in wonder lost, shalt view my fair; Admire each feature of the lovely maid,

Her artless charms, her bloom, her sprightly air.

VI.

"But lo! with graceful motion there she swims,
Gently removing each ambitious wave;
The crowding waves transported clasp her limbs ;
When, when, oh! when shall I such freedoms have!

VII.

"In vain, ye envious streams, so fast ye flow,
To hide her from her lover's ardent gaze :
From every touch you more transparent grow,
And all reveal'd the beauteous wanton plays."

love, which nature inspired the Laplander No. 407.] Tuesday, June 17, 1712.

to paint in the ode you lately printed, we were in hopes that the ingenious translator would have obliged it with the other also which Scheffer has given us: but since he has not, a much inferior hand has ventured to send you this.

abest facundis gratia dictis.
Ovid. Met. Lib. xiii. 127.

Eloquent words a graceful manner want.

T.

MOST foreign writers, who have given 'It is a custom with the northern lovers any character of the English nation, whatto divert themselves with a song, whilst ever vices they ascribe to it, allow, in gethey journey through the fenny moors to neral, that the people are naturally mopay a visit to their mistresses. This is ad-dest. It proceeds, perhaps, from this our dressed by the lover to his rein-deer, which national virtue, that our orators are observed is the creature that in that country supplies to make use of less gesture or action than the want of horses. The circumstances those of other countries. Our preachers which successively present themselves to stand stock still in the pulpit, and will not him in his way, are, I believe you will think, so much as move a finger to set off the best naturally interwoven. The anxiety of ab- sermon in the world. We meet with the sence, the gloominess of the roads, and his same speaking statues at our bars, and in Our words resolution of frequenting only those, since all public places of debate. those only can carry him to the object of his flow from us in a smooth continued stream, desires; the dissatisfaction he expresses without those strainings of the voice, moeven at the greatest swiftness with which tions of the body, and majesty of the hand, he is carried, and his joyful surprise at an which are so much celebrated in the oraunexpected sight of his mistress as she is tors of Greece and Rome. We can talk of bathing, seem beautifully described in the life and death in cold blood, and keep our original. temper in a discourse which turns upon 'If those pretty images of rural nature every thing that is dear to us. Though our are lost in the imitation, yet possibly you zeal breaks out in the finest tropes and may think fit to let this supply the place of figures, it is not able to stir a limb about us. a long letter, when want of leisure, or indis- I have heard it observed more than once, by position for writing, will not permit our be- those who have seen Italy, that an untraing entertained by your own hand. I pro-velled Englishman cannot relish all the pose such a time, because, though it is natural to have a fondness for what one does oneself, yet, I assure you, I would not have any thing of mine displace a single line of

yours.

1.

"Haste, my rein-deer, and let us nimbly go

Our am'rous journey through this dreary waste; Haste, my rein-deer! still, still thou art too slow, Impetuous love demands the lightning's haste.

II.

"Around us far the rushy moors are spread:
Soon will the sun withdraw his cheerful ray:
Darkling and tir'd we shall the marshes tread,
No lay unsung to cheat the tedious way.

III.
"The wat'ry length of these unjoyous moors
Does all the flow'ry meadows' pride excel;
Through these I fly to her my soul adores;
Ye flow'ry meadows, empty pride, farewell.

beauties of Italian pictures, because the postures which are expressed in them are often such as are peculiar to that country. One who has not seen an Italian in the pulpit, will not know what to make of that noble gesture in Raphael's picture of St. Paul's preaching at Athens, where the apostle is represented as lifting up both his arms, and pouring out the thunder of his rhetoric amidst an audience of pagan philosophers. It is certain that proper gestures and vehement exertions of the voice cannot be too much studied by a public orator. They are a kind of comment to what he utters, and enforce every thing he says, with weak hearers, better than the strongest argument he can make use of. They keep the audience awake, and fix their attention to what

is delivered to them, at the same time that | stole it from him one day in the midst of his they show the speaker is in earnest, and af- pleading; but he had better have let it fected himself with what he so passionately alone, for he lost his cause by his jest. recommends to others. Violent gesture and vociferation naturally shake the hearts of the ignorant, and fill them with a kind of religious horror. Nothing is more frequent than to see women weep and tremble at the sight of a moving preacher, though he is placed quite out of their hearing; as in England we very frequently see people lulled to sleep, with solid and elaborate discourses of piety, who would be warmed and transported out of themselves by the bellowing and distortions of enthusiasm.

If nonsense, when accompanied with such an emotion of voice and body, has such an influence on men's minds, what might we =not expect from many of those admirable discourses which are printed in our tongue, were they delivered with a becoming fervour, and with the most agreeable graces of voice and gesture!

I have all along acknowledged myself to be a dumb man, and therefore may be thought a very improper person to give rules for oratory; but I believe every one will agree with me in this, that we ought either to lay aside all kinds of gesture (which seems to be very suitable to the genius of our nation,) or at least to make use of such only as are graceful and expressive. O.

No. 408.] Wednesday, June 18, 1712.

subjacere, serviliter.-Tull, de Finibus.
Decet affectus animi neque se nimium erigere, nec

indulged, nor servilely depressed.

The affections of the heart ought not to be too much

'MR. SPECTATOR,-I have always been a very great lover of your speculations, as We are told that the great Latin orator well in regard to the subject as to your manvery much impaired his health by the late-ner of treating it. Human nature I always rum contentio, the vehemence of action, with which he used to deliver himself. The Greek orator was likewise so very famous for this particular in rhetoric, that one of his antagonists, whom he had banished from Athens, reading over the oration which had procured his banishment, and seeing his friends admire it, could not forbear asking them, if they were so much affected by the bare reading of it, how much more they would have been alarmed, had they heard him actually throwing out such a storm of eloquence?

How cold and dead a figure, in comparison of these two great men, does an orator often make at the British bar, holding up his head with the most insipid serenity, and stroking the sides of a long wig that reaches down to his middle! The truth of it is, there is often nothing more ridiculous than the gestures of an English speaker: you see some of them running their hands into their pockets as far as ever they can thrust them, and others looking with great attention on a piece of paper that has nothing written on it; you may see many a smart rhetorician turning his hat in his hands, moulding it into several different cocks, examining sometimes the lining of it, and sometimes the button, during the whole course of his harangue. A deaf man would think he was cheapening a beaver, when perhaps he is talking of the fate of the British nation. I remember, when I was a young man, and used to frequent Westminster-hall, there was a counsellor who never pleaded without a piece of pack-thread in his hand, which he used to twist about a thumb or a finger all the while he was speaking: the wags of those days used to call it the thread of his discourse,' for he was unable to utter a word without it. One of his clients, who was more merry than wise,

thought the most useful object of human reason; and to make the consideration of it pleasant and entertaining, I always thought the best employment of human wit: other parts of philosophy may perhaps make us wiser, but this not only answers that end, but makes us better too. Hence it was that the oracle pronounced Socrates the wisest of all men living, because he judiciously made choice of human nature for the object of his thoughts; an inquiry into which, as much exceeds all other learning, as it is of more consequence to adjust the true nature and measures of right and wrong, than to settle the distances of the planets, and compute the time of their circumvolutions.

'One good effect that will immediately arise from a near observation of human nature, is, that we shall cease to wonder at those actions which men are used to reckon wholly unaccountable; for, as nothing is produced without a cause, so by observing the nature and course of the passions, we shall be able to trace every action from its first conception to its death. We shall no more admire at the proceedings of Catiline or Tiberius, when we know the one was actuated by a cruel jealousy, the other by a furious ambition: for the actions of men follow their passions as naturally as light does heat, or as any other effect flows from its cause; reason must be employed in adjusting the passions, but they must ever remain the principles of action.

The strange and absurd variety that is so apparent in men's actions, shows plainly they can never proceed immediately from reason; so pure a fountain emits no such troubled waters: they must necessarily arise from the passions, which are to the mind as the winds to a ship; they can only move it, and they too often destroy it: if fair and gentle, they guide it into the harbour; if

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