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the example of any particular person is recommended to them in gross; instead of which they ought to be taught wherein such a man, though great in some respects, was weak and faulty in others. For want of this caution, a boy is often so dazzled with the lustre of a great character, that he confounds its beauties with its blemishes, and looks even upon the faulty part of it with an eye of admiration.

'I have often wondered how Alexander, who was naturally of a generous and merciful disposition, came to be guilty of so barbarous an action as that of dragging the governor of a town after his chariot. I know this is generally ascribed to his passion for Homer, but I lately met with a passage in Plutarch, which, if I am not very much mistaken, still gives us a clearer light into the motives of this action. Plutarch tells us, that Alexander in his youth had a master named Lysimachus, who, though he was a man destitute of all politeness, ingratiated himself both with Philip and his pupil, and became the second man at court, by calling the king Peleus, the Prince Achilles, and himself Phoenix. It is no wonder if Alexander, having been thus used not only to admire but to personate Achilles, should think it glorious to imitate him in this piece of cruelty and extravagance.

he would inspire me with an abhorrence of debauchery, 'Do not,' says he, make yourself like Sectanus, when you may be happy in the enjoyment of lawful pleasures. How scandalous,' says he, 'is the character of Trebonius, who was lately caught in bed with another man's wife!"" To illustrate the force of this method, the poet adds, that as a headstrong patient who will not follow at first his physician's prescriptions, grows orderly when he hears that the neighbours die all about him; so youth is often frightened from vice, by hearing the ill report it brings upon others.

Xenophon's schools of equity, in his Life of Cyrus the Great, are sufficiently famous. He tells us, that the Persian children went to school, and employed their time as diligently in learning the principles of justice and sobriety, as the youth in other countries did to acquire the most difficult arts and sciences; their governors spent most part of the day in hearing their mutual accusations one against the other, whether for violence, cheating, slander, or ingratitude; and taught them how to give judgment against those who were found to be any ways guilty of these crimes. I omit the story of the long and short coat, for which Cyrus himself was punished, as a case equally known with any in Littleton.

The method which Apuleius tells us the To carry this thought yet further, I Indian Gymnosophists took to educate their shall submit it to your consideration, whe- disciples, is still more curious and remarkther, instead of a theme or copy of verses, able. His words are as follow: "When which are the usual exercises, as they are their dinner is ready, before it is served called in the school phrase, it would not be up, the masters inquire of every particular more proper that a boy should be tasked, scholar how he has employed his time since once or twice a week, to write down his sun-rising: some of them answer, that, opinion of such persons and things as occur having been chosen as arbiters between two to him by his reading; that he should des- persons, they have composed their differcant upon the actions of Turnus, or Æneas; ences, and made them friends; some that show wherein they excelled, or were de- they have been executing the orders of fective; censure or approve any particular their parents; and others, that they have action; observe how it might have been either found out something new by their carried to a greater degree of perfection, own application, or learnt it from the inand how it exceeded or fell short of an- structions of their fellows. But if there other. He might at the same time mark happens to be any one among them who what was moral in any speech, and how cannot make it appear that he has emfar it agreed with the character of the per-ployed the morning to advantage, he is son speaking. This exercise would soon immediately excluded from the company, strengthen his judgment in what is blame- and obliged to work while the rest are at able or praiseworthy, and give him an early dinner." seasoning of morality.

Next to those examples which may be met with in books, I very much approve Horace's way of setting before youth the infamous or honourable characters of their contemporaries. That poet tells us, this was the method his father made use of to incline him to any particular virtue, or give him an aversion to any particular vice. "If," says Horace, my father advised me to live within bounds, and be contented with the fortune he should leave me; 'Do you not see,' says he, the miserable condition of Burrus, and the son of Albus? Let the misfortunes of those two wretches teach you to avoid luxury and extravagance.' If

'It is not impossible, that from these several ways of producing virtue in the minds of boys, some general method might be invented. What I would endeavour to inculcate is, that our youth cannot be too soon taught the principles of virtue, seeing the first impressions which are made on the mind, are always the strongest.

The archbishop of Cambray makes Telemachus say, that, though he was young in years, he was old in the art of knowing how to keep both his own and his friends' secrets. "When my father," says the prince, "went to the siege of Troy, he took me on his knees, and, after having embraced and blessed me, as he was sur

self upon, that he will easily forgive me for publishing the exceptions made against gaiety at the end of serious entertainments in the following letter: I should be more unwilling to pardon him, than any body, a practice which cannot have any ill consequence but from the abilities of the person who is guilty of it.

rounded by the nobles of Ithaca, O my friends,' says he, into your hands I commit the education of my son: if ever you loved his father, show it in your care towards him; but, above all, do not omit to form him just, sincere, and faithful in keeping a secret.' These words of my father," says Telemachus, "were continually repeated to me by his friends in his absence; who made no scruple of communicating to 'MR. SPECTATOR,-I had the happiness me their uneasiness to see my mother sur-the other night of sitting very near you, and rounded with lovers, and the measures they your worthy friend Sir Roger, at the acting designed to take on that occasion. He of the new tragedy, which you have, in a adds, that he was so ravished at being thus treated like a man, and at the confidence reposed in him, that he never once abused it; nor could all the insinuations of his father's rivals ever get him to betray what was committed to him under the seal of

late paper or two, so justly recommended. I was highly pleased with the advantageous situation fortune had given me in placing me so near two gentlemen, from one of which I was sure to hear such reflections on the several incidents of the play as pure nature suggested, and from the other, such There is hardly any virtue which a lad as flowed from the exactest art and judg might not thus learn by practice and ex-ment: though I must confess that my cuample.

secrecy.

'I have heard of a good man, who used at certain times to give his scholars sixpence a-piece, that they might tell him the next day how they had employed it. The third part was always to be laid out in charity, and every boy was blamed, or commended, as he could make it appear he had chosen a fit object.

riosity led me so much to observe the knight's reflections, that I was not well at leisure to improve myself by yours. Na ture, I found, played her part in the knight pretty well, till at the last concluding lines she entirely forsook him. You must know, sir, that it is always my custom, when I have been well entertained at a new tragedy, to make my retreat before the facetious epilogue enters; not but that those pieces are often very well written, but having paid down my half-crown, and made a fair purchase of as much of the pleasing melancholy as the poet's art can afford me, or my own nature admit of, I am willing to carry some of it home with me: and cannot endure to be at once tricked out of all, though by the wittiest dexterity in the world. However, I kept my seat the other night in hopes of finding my own sentiments of the matter favoured by your friends; when, to my great surprise, I found the knight entering with 'As the subject of this essay is of the equal pleasure into both parts, and as much highest importance, and what I do not re- satisfied with Mrs. Oldfield's gaiety as he member to have yet seen treated by any had been before with Andromache's greatauthor, I have sent you what occurred to ness. Whether this were no more than an me on it from my own observation, or read-effect of the knight's peculiar humanity, ing, and which you may either suppress or publish, as you think fit. I am, sir, yours, X.

In short, nothing is more wanting to our public schools, than that the masters of them should use the same care in fashioning the manners of their scholars, as in forming their tongues to the learned languages. Wherever the former is omitted, I cannot help agreeing with Mr. Locke, that a man must have a very strange value for words, when, preferring the languages of the Greeks and Romans to that which made them such brave men, he can think it worth while to hazard the innocence and virtue of his son for a little Greek and Latin.

&c.'

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pleased to find at last, that, after all the tragical doings, every thing was safe and well, I do not know; but for my own part, I must confess, I was so dissatisfied, that Í was sorry the poet had saved Andromache, and could heartily have wished that he had left her stone-dead upon the stage. For you cannot imagine, Mr. Spectator, the mischief she was reserved to do me. I found my soul, during the action, gradually worked up to the highest pitch, and felt the exalted passion which all generous minds conceive at the sight of virtue in distress. The impression, believe me, sir, was so strong upon me, that I am persuaded, if I had been let alone in it, I could, at an extremity, have ventured to defend yourself and Sir Roger against half a score of the fiercest Mohocks; but the ludicrous epilogue in the close extinguished all my ardour, and made

me look upon all such noble achievements | signs, instead of a penitential psalm, to disas downright silly and romantic. What the miss his audience with an excellent new rest of the audience felt, I cannot so well ballad of his own composing. Pray, sir, do tell. For myself I must declare, that at the what you can to put a stop to these growing end of the play I found my soul uniform, evils, and you will very much oblige your and all of a piece; but at the end of the humble servant, epilogue it was so jumbled together, and PHYSIBULUS.' divided between jest and earnest, that, if you will forgive me an extravagant fancy,

-Ut his exordia primis
Omnia, et ipse tener mundi concreverit orbis,
Tum durare solum et discludere Nerea ponto
Cœperit, et rerum paullatim sumere formas.

Virg. Ecl. v. 33.

I will here set it down. I could not but No. 339.] Saturday, March 29, 1712.
fancy, if my soul had at that moment quit-
ted my body, and descended to the poetical
shades in the posture it was then in, what a
strange figure it would have made among
them. They would not have known what
to have made of my motley spectre, half
comic and half tragic, all over resembling
a ridiculous face that at the same time
laughs on one side and cries on the other.
The only defence, I think, I have ever heard
made for this, as it seems to me the most
unnatural tack of the comic tail to the tragic
head, is this, that the minds of the audience
must be refreshed, and gentlemen and ladies
not sent away to their own homes with too
dismal and melancholy thoughts about them:
for who knows the consequence of this? We
are much obliged, indeed, to the poets, for
the great tenderness they express for the
safety of our persons, and heartily thank
them for it. But if that be all, pray, good
sir, assure them, that we are none of us like
to come to any great harm; and that, let
them do their best, we shall in all proba
bility live out the length of our days, and fre-
quent the theatres more than ever. What
makes me more desirous to have some in-
formation of this matter is, because of an
ill consequence or two attending it: for a
great many of our church musicians being
related to the theatre, they have, in imita-
tion of these epilogues, introduced, in their
farewell voluntaries, a sort of music quite
foreign to the design of church-services, to
the great prejudice of well-disposed people.
Those fingering gentlemen should be in-
formed, that they ought to suit their airs to
the place and business, and that the musi-
cian is obliged to keep to the text as much
as the preacher. For want of this, I have
found by experience a great deal of mis-
chief. When the preacher has often, with
great piety, and art enough, handled his
subject, and the judicious clerk has with
the utmost diligence culled out two staves
proper to the discourse, and I have found
in myself and the rest of the pew, good
thoughts and dispositions, they have been,
all in a moment, dissipated by a merry jig
from the organ-loft. One knows not what
further ill effects the epilogues I have been
speaking of may in time produce: but this
I am credibly informed of, that Paul Lor-
rain has resolved upon a very sudden re-
formation in his tragical dramas; and that,
at the next monthly performance, he de-

He sung the secret seeds of nature's frame:
How seas, and earth, and air, and active flame,
Fell through the mighty void, and in their fall
Were blindly gather'd in this goodly ball.
The tender soil then stiffning by degrees,
Shut from the bounded earth the bounding seas,
The earth and ocean various forms disclose,
And a new sun to the new world arose.-Dryden.
LONGINUS has observed that there may
be a loftiness in sentiments where there is
no passion, and brings instances out of an-
cient authors to support this his opinion.
The pathetic, as that great critic observes,
may animate and inflame the sublime, but
is not essential to it. Accordingly, as he
further remarks, we very often find that
those who excel most in stirring up the
passions very often want the talent of writ-
ing in the great and sublime manner, and
so on the contrary. Milton has shown him-
self a master in both these ways of writing.
The seventh book, which we are now en-
tering upon, is an instance of that sublime
which is not mixed and worked up with
passion. The author appears in a kind of
composed and sedate majesty; and though
the sentiments do not give so great an
emotion as those in the former book, they
abound with as magnificent ideas. The
sixth book, like a troubled ocean, repre-
sents greatness in confusion; the seventh
affects the imagination like the ocean in
a calm, and fills the mind of the reader,
without producing in it any thing like tu-
mult or agitation.

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The critic above-mentioned, among the rules which he lays down for succeeding in the sublime way of writing, proposes to his reader, that he should imitate the most celebrated authors who have gone before him, and have been engaged in works of the same nature; as in particular that, if he writes on poetical subjects, he should consider how Homer would have spoken on such an occasion. By this means one great genius often catches the flame from another, and writes in his spirit, without copying servilely after him. There are a thousand shining passages in Virgil, which have been lighted up by Homer.

Milton, though his own natural strength of genius was capable of furnishing out a perfect work, has doubtless very much raised and ennobled his conceptions by such an imitation as that which Longinus

has recommended.

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In this book which gives us an account of clouds which lay as a barrier before of the six days' works, the poet received them. but very few assistances from heathen I do not know any thing in the whole writers, who are strangers to the wonders poem more sublime than the description of creation. But as there are many glorious which follows, where the Messiah is restrokes of poetry upon this subject in holy presented at the head of his angels, as lookwrit, the author has numberless allusions to ing down into the chaos, calming its confuthem through the whole course of this book. sion, riding into the midst of it, and drawing The great critic I have before mentioned, the first outline of the creation: though a heathen, has taken notice of the sublime manner in which the lawgiver of the Jews has described the creation in the first chapter of Genesis; and there are many other passages in scripture which rise up to the same majesty, where the subject is touched upon. Milton has shown his judgment very remarkably, in making use of such of these as were proper for his poem, and in duly qualifying those strains of eastern poetry which were suited to readers whose imaginations were set to a higher pitch than those of colder climates.

Adam's speech to the angel, wherein he desires an account of what had passed within the regions of nature before the creation, is very great and solemn. The following lines, in which he tells him, that the day is not too far spent for him to enter upon such a subject, are exquisite in their kind:

And the great light of day yet wants to run
Much of his race, though steep; suspense in heav'n
Held by thy voice, thy potent voice he hears,
And longer will delay to hear thee tell
His generation, &c.

The angel's encouraging our first parents in a modest pursuit after knowledge, with the causes which he assigns for the creation of the world, are very just and beautiful. The Messiah, by whom, as we are told in scripture, the heavens were made, goes forth in the power of his Father, surrounded with a host of angels, and clothed with such a majesty as becomes his entering upon a work which, according to our conceptions, appears the utmost exertion of Omnipotence. What a beautiful description has our author raised upon that hint in one of the prophets! And behold there came four chariots out from between two mountains, and the mountains were mountains of

brass:'

About his chariot numberless were pour'd
Cherub and seraph, potentates and thrones,
And virtues, winged spirits, and chariots wing'd
From the armoury of God, where stand of old
Myriads between two brazen mountains lodg'd
Against a solemn day, harness'd at hand,
Celestial equipage! and now came forth
Spontaneous, for within them spirit liv'd,
Attendant on their Lord: heav'n open'd wide
Her ever-during gates, harmonious sound!
On golden hinges moving-

I have before taken notice of these chariots of God, and of these gates of heaven; and shall here only add, that Homer gives us the same idea of the latter as opening of themselves; though he afterwards takes off from it, by telling us, that the Hours first of all removed those prodigious heaps

On heav'nly ground they stood, and from the shore
They view'd the vast immeasurable abyss
Outrageous as a sea, dark, wasteful, wild,
Up from the bottom turn'd by furious winds
And surging waves, as mountains to assault
Heav'n's height, and with the centre mix the pole.
"Silence, ye troubled waves; and thou, deep, peace
Said then th' omnific Word, "Your discord end !"
Nor staid, but, on the wings of cherubim
Uplifted, in paternal glory rode

Far into Chaos, and the world unborn;
For Chaos heard his voice. Him all his train
Follow'd in bright procession, to behold
Creation, and the wonders of his might.
Then stay'd the fervid wheels; and in his hand
He took the golden compasses, prepar'd
In God's eternal store to circumscribe
The universe, and all created things:
One foot he centred, and the other turn'd
Round through the vast profundity obscure,
And said, "Thus far extend, thus far thy bounds,
This be thy just circumference, O world!"

The thought of the golden compasses is conceived altogether in Homer's spirit, and is a very noble incident in this wonderful description. Homer, when he speaks of the gods, ascribes to them several arms and instruments with the same greatness of imagination. Let the reader only peruse the description of Minerva's ægis or buckwould overturn whole squadrons, and her ler, in the fifth book, with her spear which helmet that was sufficient to cover an army drawn out of a hundred cities. The golden compasses, in the above-mentioned passage, of him whom Plato somewhere calls the Diappear a very natural instrument in the hand vine Geometrician. As poetry delights in sensible images, we find a magnificent declothing abstracted ideas in allegories and scription of the creation, formed after the same manner, in one of the prophets, wherein he describes the Almighty Architect as measuring the waters in the hollow of his hand, meting out the heavens with his span, comprehending the dust of the earth in a measure, weighing the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance. Another of them describing the Supreme Being in this great work of creation, represents him as laying the foundations of the earth, and stretching a line upon it; and, in another place, as garnishing the heavens, stretching out the north over the empty place, and hanging the earth upon nothing. This last noble thought Milton has expressed in the following verse:

And earth self-balanced on her centre hung.

The beauties of description in this book lie so very thick, that it is impossible to enumerate them in this paper. The poet has employed on them the whole energy of our tongue. The several great scenes of

the creation rise up to view one after another, in such a manner, that the reader seems present at this wonderful work, and to assist among the choirs of angels who are the spectators of it. How glorious is the conclusion of the first day!

-Thus was the first day even and morn,
Nor past uncelebrated, nor unsung

By the celestial choirs, when orient light
Exhaling first from darkness they beheld;
Birth-day of heav'n and earth! with joy and shout
The hollow universal orb they fill'd.

We have the same elevation of thought in the third day, when the mountains were brought forth, and the deep was made:

Immediately the mountains huge appear
Emergent, and their broad bare backs upheave
Into the clouds, their tops ascend the sky:
So high as heav'n the tumid hills, so low
Down sunk a hollow bottom broad and deep,
Capacious bed of waters-

We have also the rising of the whole vegetable world, described in this day's work, which is filled with all the graces that other poets have lavished on their description of the spring, and leads the reader's imagination into a theatre equally surprising and beautiful.

The several glories of the heavens make their appearance on the fourth day:

First in his east the glorious lamp was seen,
Regent of day, and all the horizon round
Invested with bright rays, jocund to run
His longitude through heavn's high road; the gray
Dawn, and the Pleiades before him danc'd,
Shedding sweet influence. Less bright the moon,
But opposite in levell'd west was set,
His mirror, with full face borrowing her light
From him, for other lights she needed none
In that aspect, and still the distance keeps
Till night; then in the east her turn she shines,
Revolv'd on heav'n's great axle, and her reign
With thousand lesser lights dividual holds,
With thousand thousand stars, that then appear'd
Spangling the hemisphere-

One would wonder how the poet could be so concise in his description of the six days' works, as to comprehend them within the bounds of an episode, and, at the same time, so particular, as to give us a lively idea of them. This is still more remarkable in his account of the fifth and sixth days, in which he has drawn out to our view the whole animal creation, from the reptile to the behemoth. As the lion and the leviathan are two of the noblest productions in the world of living creatures, the reader will find a most exquisite spirit of poetry in the account which our author gives us of them. The sixth day concludes with the formation of man, upon which the angel takes occasion, as he did after the battle in heaven, to remind Adam of his obedience, which was the principal design

of this visit.

The poet afterwards represents the Messiah returning into heaven, and taking a survey of his great work. There is something inexpressibly sublime in this part of the poem, where the author describes the great period of time, filled with so many glorious circumstances; when the heavens and earth were finished; when the Messiah

ascended up in triumph through the everlasting gates; when he looked down with pleasure upon his new creation; when every part of nature seemed to rejoice in its existence, when the morning-stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.

So even and morn accomplish'd the sixth day:
Yet not till the Creator from his work
Desisting, though unwearied, up return'd,
Up to the heaven of heavens, his high abode,
Thence to behold his new created world
The addition of his empire, how it show'd
In prospect from his throne, how good, how fair,
Answering his great idea. Up he rode,
Follow'd with acclamation and the sound
Symphonious of ten thousand harps, that tun'd
Angelic harmonies, the earth, the air,
Resounded, (thou rememberest, for thou heard'st)
The heavens and all the constellations rung,
The planets in their station list ning stood,
While the bright pomp ascended jubilant.
"Open, ye everlasting gates!" they sung,

44

Open, ye heavens, your living doors! let in The great Creator from his work return'd Magnificent, his six days' work—a world!”

I cannot conclude this book upon the creation without mentioning a poem which has lately appeared under that title.* The work was undertaken with so good an intention, and is executed with so great a mastery, that it deserves to be looked upon as one of the most useful and noble productions in our English verse. The reader cannot but be pleased to find the depths of philosophy enlivened with all the charms of poetry, and to see so great a strength of reason, amidst so beautiful a redundancy of the imagination. The author has shown us that design in all the works of nature which necessarily leads us to the knowledge of its first cause. In short, he has illustrated, by numberless and incontestable instances, that divine wisdom which the son of Sirach has so nobly ascribed to the Supreme Being in his formation of the world, when he tells us, that He created her, and saw her, and numbered her, and poured her out upon all his works.'

No. 340.] Monday, March 31, 1712.

Quis novus hic nostris successit sedibus hospes ? Quem sese ore ferens! quam forti pectore et armis! Virg. Æn. iv. 10.

What chief is this that visits us from far, Whose gallant mien bespeaks him train'd to war! I TAKE it to be the highest instance of a noble mind, to bear great qualities without discovering in a man's behaviour any consciousness that he is superior to the rest of the world. Or, to say it otherwise, it is the duty of a great person so to demean himself, as that, whatever endowments he may have, he may appear to value himself upon no qualities but such as any man may arrive at. He ought to think no man valuable but for his public spirit, justice, and integrity; and all other endowments to be esteemed

By Sir Richard Blackmore.

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