cakes themselves: upon which one of the company said merrily, 'We are eating our tables.' They immediately took the hint, says the historian, and concluded the prophecy to be fulfilled. As Virgil did not think it proper to omit so material a particular in the history of Eneas, it may be worth while to consider with how much judgment he has qualified it, and taken off every thing that might have appeared improper for a passage in a heroic poem. The prophetess who foretells it is a hungry harpy, as the person who discovers it is young Ascanius:

⚫ Heus etiam mensas consumimus, inquit Iulus!' En. vii. 116. * See we devour the plates on which we fed!"

Dryden.

Such an observation, which is beautiful in the mouth of a boy, would have been ridiculous from any other of the company. I am apt to think that the changing of the Trojan fleet into water-nymphs, which is the most violent machine in the whole Eneid, and has given offence to several critics, may be accounted for the same way. Virgil himself, before he begins that relation, premises, that what he was going to tell appeared incredible, but that it was justified by tradition. What further confirms me that this change of the fleet was a celebrated circumstance in the history of Æneas, is, that Ovid has given a place to the same metamorphosis in his account of the heathen mythology.

None of the critics I have met with have considered the fable of the Æneid in this light, and taken notice how the tradition on which it was founded authorizes those parts in it which appear most exceptionable. I hope the length of this reflection will not make it unacceptable to the curious part of my readers.

dents, than any other in the whole poem.
Satan's traversing the globe, and still keep-
ing within the shadow of the night, as fear-
ing to be discovered by the angel of the
sun, who had before detected him, is one
of those beautiful imaginations with which
he introduces this his second series of ad-
ventures. Having examined the nature of
every creature, and found out one which
was the most proper for his purpose, he
again returns to Paradise; and to avoid dis-
covery, sinks by night with a river that
ran under the garden, and rises up again
through a fountain that issued from it by
the tree of life. The poet, who, as we
have before taken notice, speaks as little
as possible in his own person, and, after the
example of Homer, fills every part of his
work with manners and characters, intro-
duces a soliloquy of this infernal agent,
who was thus restless in the destruction of
man. He is then described as gliding
through the garden, under the resemblance
of a mist, in order to find out the creature
in which he designed to tempt our first pa-
rents. This description has something in it
very poetical and surprising:

So saying, through each thicket dank or dry,
Like a black mist low creeping, he held on
His midnight search, where soonest he night find
The serpent: him fast sleeping soon he found,
In labyrinth of many a round self-roll'd
His head the midst, well stor'd with subtil wiles.

ration:

Now when a sacred light began to dawn
In Eden on the humid flowers, that breath'd
Their morning incense; when all things that breathe
From th' earth's great altar send up silent praise
To the Creator, and his nostrils fill
With grateful smell; forth came the human pair,
And join'd their vocal worship to the choir
Of creatures wanting voice.-

The author afterwards gives us a description of the morning which is wonderfully suitable to a divine poem, and peculiar to that first season of nature. He represents the earth before it was cursed, as a great altar, breathing out its incense from all parts, and sending up a pleasant savour to the nostrils of its Creator; to which he adds a noble idea of Adam and Eve, as offering their morning worship, and filling The history which was the basis of Mil-up the universal concert of praise and adoton's poem is still shorter than either that of the Iliad or Æneid. The poet has likewise taken care to insert every circumstance of it in the body of his fable. The ninth book, which we are here to consider, is raised upon that brief account in scripture, wherein we are told that the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field; that he tempted the woman to eat of the The dispute which follows between our forbidden fruit; that she was overcome by two first parents is represented with great this temptation, and that Adam followed art. It proceeds from a difference of judgher example. From these few particulars ment, not of passion, and is managed with Milton has formed one of the most entertain- reason, not with heat. It is such a dispute ing fables that invention ever produced. as we may suppose might have happened He has disposed of these several circum- in Paradise, had man continued happy and stances among so many agreeable and na-innocent. There is a great delicacy in tural fictions of his own, that his whole the moralities which are interspersed in story looks only like a comment upon sacred Adam's discourse, and which the most orwrit, or rather seems to be a full and com- dinary reader cannot but take notice of. plete relation of what the other is only an That force of love which the father of manepitome. I have insisted the longer on this kind so finely describes in the eighth book, consideration, as I look upon the disposi- and which is inserted in my last Saturday's tion and contrivance of the fable to be the paper, shows itself here in many fine inprincipal beauty of the ninth book, which stances: as in those fond regards he casts tohas more story in it, and is fuller of inci-wards Eve at her parting from him:

Her long with ardent look his eye pursu'd
Delighted, but desiring more her stay,
Oft he to her his charge of quick return
Repeated; she to him as oft engaged
To be return'd by noon amid the bow'r.

it, are conceived with a wonderful imagination, and described in very natural sentiments.

When Dido, in the fourth Æneid, yielded

In his impatience and amusement during to that fatal temptation which ruined her,

Of enemy hath beguil'd thee, yet unknown,
And me with thee hath ruin'd; for with thee
Certain my resolution is to die:

How can I live without thee? how forego
Thy sweet converse and love so dearly join'd
To live again in these wild woods forlorn?
Should God create another Eve, and I
Another rib afford, yet loss of thee
Would never from my heart; no, no! I feel
The link of nature draw me: flesh of flesh,
Bone of my bone thou art, and from thy state
Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe.

The beginning of this speech, and the preparation to it, are animated with the same spirit as the conclusion, which I have here quoted.

Virgil tells us the earth trembled, the heavens were filled with flashes of lightning, and the nymphs howled upon the mountain tops. Milton, in the same poetical spirit, has described all nature as disturbed upon Eve's eating the forbidden fruit.

So saying, her rash hand in evil hour,

Forth reaching to the fruit, she pluck'd, she eat,
Earth felt the wound, and Nature, from her seat
Sighing, through all her works gave signs of woe
That all was lost.-

Upon Adam's falling into the same guilt, the whole creation appears a second time in convulsions.

-He scrupled not to eat

Against his better knowledge; not deceiv'd
But fondly overcome with female charm,
Earth trembled from her entrails, as again
In pangs, and Nature gave a second groan;
Sky lower'd, and, muttering thunder, some sad drops
Wept at completing of the mortal sin.

As all nature suffered by the guilt of our first parents, these symptoms of trouble and consternation are wonderfully imagined, not only as prodigies, but as marks of her sympathizing in the fall of man.

Adam's converse with Eve, after having The several wiles which are put in prac-eaten the forbidden fruit, is an exact copy tice by the tempter, when he found Eve se- of that between Jupiter and Juno in the fourparated from her husband, the many pleas- teenth Iliad. Juno there approaches Jupiing images of nature which are intermixed ter with the girdle which she had received in this part of the story, with its gradual and from Venus: upon which he tells her, that regular progress to the fatal catastrophe, she appeared more charming and desirable are so very remarkable, that it would be than she had ever done before, even when superfluous to point out their respective their loves were at the highest. The poet afterwards describes them as reposing on a summit of Mount Ida, which produced under them a bed of flowers, the lotus, the crocus, and the hyacinth; and concludes his description with their falling asleep.

beauties.

I have avcided mentioning any particular similitudes in my remarks on this great work, because I have given a general account of them in my paper on the first book. There is one, however, in this part of the poem which I shall here quote, as it is not only very beautiful, but the closest of any in the whole poem; I mean that where the serpent is described as rolling forward in all his pride, animated by the evil spirit, and conducting Eve to her destruction, while Adam was at too great a distance from her to give her his assistance. These several particulars are all of them wrought into the following similitude:

-Hope elevates, and joy
Brightens his crest; as when a wandering fire
Compact of unctious vapour, which the night
Condenses, and the cold environs round,
Kindled through agitation to a flame,
(Which oft, they say, some evil spirit attends)
Hovering and blazing with delusive light,
Misleads th' amaz'd night-wanderer from his way
To bogs and mires, and oft through pond or pool,
There swallow'd up and lost from succour far.

The secret intoxication of pleasure, with all those transient flushings of guilt and joy, which the poet represents in our first parents upon their eating the forbidden fruit, to those flaggings of spirit, damps of sorrow, and mutual accusations which succeed

Let the reader compare this with the following passage in Milton, which begins with Adam's speech to Eve:

'For never did thy beauty since the day
I saw thee first and wedded thee, adorn'd,
With all perfections, so inflame my sense
With ardour to enjoy thee, fairer now
Than ever, bounty of this virtuous tree.'

So said he, and forbore not glance or toy
Of amorous intent, well understood
Of Eve, whose eye darted contagious fire.
Her hand he seiz'd, and to a shady bank,
Thick overhead with verdant roof embower'd,
He led her nothing loth; flowers were the couch,
Pansies, and violets, and asphodel,

And hyacinth, Earth's freshest softest lap.
There they their fill of love and love's disport
Took largely, of their mutual guilt the seal,
The solace of their sin, till dewy sleep
Oppress'd them.-

As no poet seems ever to have studied Homer more, or to have more resembled him in the greatness of genius, than Milton, I think I should have given but a very imperfect account of its beauties, if I had not observed the most remarkable passages which look like parallels in these two great authors. I might, in the course of these

that nothing but truth and ingenuity has any lasting good effect, even upon a man's fortune and interest.

Truth and reality have all the advantages of appearance, and many more. If the show of any thing be good for any thing, I am sure sincerity is better; for why does any man dissemble, or seem to be that which he is not, but because he thinks it good to have such a quality as he pretends to? for to counterfeit and dissemble is to put on the appearance of some real excellency. Now the best way in the world for a man to seem to be any thing, is really to be what he would seem to be. Besides, that it is many times as troublesome to make good the pretence of a good quality, as to have it; and if a man have it not, it is ten to one but he is discovered to want it, and then all his pains and labour to seem to have it is lost. There is something unnatural in painting, which a skilful eye will easily discern from native beauty and complexion.

'It is hard to personate and act a part long; for where truth is not at the bottom, nature will always be endeavouring to return, and will peep out and betray herself one time or other. Therefore, if any man think it convenient to seem good, let him be so indeed, and then his goodness will appear to every body's satisfaction; so that upon all accounts sincerity is true wisdom. Particularly as to the affairs of this world, integrity has many advantages over all the fine and artificial ways of dissimulation and deceit; it is much the plainer and easier, much the safer and more secure way of dealing in the world: it has less of trouble and difficulty, of entanglement and per

WILL HONEYCOMB was complaining to me yesterday, that the conversation of the town is so altered of late years, that a fine gentleman is at a loss for matter to start discourse, as well as unable to fall in with the talk he generally meets with. Will takes notice, that there is now an evil under the sun which he supposes to be entirely new, because not mentioned by any satirist, or moralist, in any age. ‘Men,' said he, 'grow knaves sooner than they ever did since the creation of the world before.' If you read the tragedies of the last age, you find the artful men, and persons of intrigue, are advanced very far in years, and beyond the pleasures and sallies of youth; but now Will observes, that the young have taken in the vices of the aged, and you shall have a man of five-and-twenty, crafty, false, and in-plexity, of danger and hazard in it; it is the triguing, not ashamed to over-reach, cozen, and beguile. My friend adds, that till about the latter end of king Charles's reign there was not a rascal of any eminence under forty. In the places of resort for conversation, you now hear nothing but what relates to improving men's fortunes, without regard to the methods towards it. This is so fashionable, that young men form themselves upon a certain neglect of every thing that is candid, simple, and worthy of true esteem; and affect being yet worse than they are, by acknowledging, in their general turn of mind and discourse, that they have Truth is always consistent with itself, not any remaining value for true honour and and needs nothing to help it out; it is alhonesty; preferring the capacity of being ways near at hand, and sits upon our lips, artful to gain their ends, to the merit of and is ready to drop out before we are despising those ends when they come in aware; whereas a lie is troublesome, and competition with their honesty. All this is sets a man's invention upon the rack, and due to the very silly pride that generally one trick needs a great many more to make prevails of being valued for the ability of it good. It is like building upon a false founcarrying their point; in a word, from the dation, which constantly stands in need of opinion that shallow and inexperienced peo- props to shore it up, and proves at last ple entertain of the short lived force of cun- more chargeable than to have raised a subning. But I shall, before I enter upon the stantial building at first upon a true and various faces which folly covered with ar- solid foundation; for sincerity is firm and tifice, puts on to impose upon the unthink-substantial, and there is nothing hollow and ing, produce a great authority for asserting unsound in it; and, because it is plain and

shortest and nearest way to our end, carrying us thither in a straight line, and will hold out and last longest. The arts of deceit and cunning do continually grow weaker and less effectual and serviceable to them that use them; whereas integrity gains strength by use, and the more and longer any man practiseth it, the greater service it does him, by confirming his reputation, and encouraging those with whom he hath to do to repose the greatest trust and confidence in him, which is an unspeakable advantage in the business and affairs of life.

open, fears no discovery; of which the crafty | No. 353.] Tuesday, April 15, 1712.

man is always in danger: and when he thinks he walks in the dark, all his pretences are so transparent, that he that runs may read them: he is the last man that finds himself to be found out; and whilst he takes it for granted that he makes fools of others, he renders himself ridiculous.

In tenui labor

Virg. Georg. v. 6. Though low the subject, it deserves our pains.

THE gentleman who obliges the world in general, and me in particular, with his thoughts upon education, has just sent me the following letter:

'SIR,-I take the liberty to send you a fourth letter upon the education of youth. In my last I gave you my thoughts upon some particular tasks, which I conceived it might not be amiss to mix with their usual exercises, in order to give them an early seasoning of virtue: I shall in this propose some others, which I fancy might contribute to give them a right turn for the world, and enable them to make their way

'Add to all this, that sincerity is the most compendious wisdom, and an excellent instrument for the speedy despatch of business; it creates confidence in those we have to deal with, saves the labour of many inquiries, and brings things to an issue in a few words. It is like travelling in a plain beaten road, which commonly brings a man sooner to his journey's end than by-ways, in which men often lose themselves. In a word, whatsoever convenience may be thought to be in falsehood and dissimula-in it. tion, it is soon over; but the inconvenience 'The design of learning is, as I take it, of it is perpetual, because it brings a man either to render a man an agreeable comunder an everlasting jealousy and suspi-panion to himself, and teach him to support cion, so that he is not believed when he speaks the truth, nor trusted perhaps when he means honestly. When a man has once forfeited the reputation of his integrity, he is set fast; and nothing will then serve his turn, neither truth nor falsehood.

solitude with pleasure; or, if he is not born to an estate, to supply that defect, and furnish him with the means of acquiring one. A person who applies himself to learning with the first of these views may be said to study for ornament; as he who proposes to And I have often thought, that God hath himself the second, properly studies for use. in his great wisdom, hid from men of false The one does it to raise himself a fortune; and dishonest minds the wonderful advan- the other to set off that which he is already tages of truth and integrity to the pros- possessed of. But as far the greater part perity even of our worldly affairs: these of mankind are included in the latter class, men are so blinded by their covetousness I shall only propose some methods at preand ambition, that they cannot look beyond sent for the service of such who expect to a present advantage, nor forbear to seize advance themselves in the world by their upon it, though by ways never so indirect; learning. In order to which, I shall prethey cannot see so far as to the remote con- mise, that many more estates have been sequence of a steady integrity, and the acquired by little accomplishments than by vast benefit and advantages which it will extraordinary ones; those qualities which bring a man at last. Were but this sort of make the greatest figure in the eye of the men wise and clear-sighted enough to dis-world not being always the most useful in cern this, they would be honest out of very themselves, or the most advantageous to knavery, not out of any love to honesty and virtue, but with a crafty design to promote and advance more effectually their own interests; and therefore the justice of the Divine Providence hath hid this truest point of wisdom from their eyes, that bad men might not be upon equal terms with the just and upright, and serve their own wicked designs by honest and lawful means.

their owners.

"The posts which require men of shining and uncommon parts to discharge them are so very few, that many a great genius goes out of the world without ever having an opportunity to exert itself; whereas, persons of ordinary endowments meet with occasions fitted to their parts and capacities every day in the common occurrences of life.

head at school, but still maintained his reputation at the university; the other was the pride of his master, and the most celebrated person in the college of which he was a member. The man of genius is at

Indeed, if a man were only to deal in the world for a day, and should never have 'I am acquainted with two persons who occasion to converse more with mankind, were formerly school-fellows, and have never more need their good opinion or good been good friends ever since. One of them word, it were then no great matter (speak-was not only thought an impenetrable blocking as to the concernments of this world,) if a man spent his reputation all at once, and ventured it at one throw; but if he be to continue in the world, and would have the advantage of conversation whilst he is in it, let him make use of truth and sincerity in all his words and actions; for nothing but this will last and hold out to the end: all other arts will fail, but truth and integrity will carry a man through, and bear him out to the last,'

T.

*"Swift, and Mr. Stratford, a merchant. Stratford is worth a plumb, and is now lending the government 40,000. yet we were educated together at the same school and university.', Swift's Works, vol. xxii. p. 10, cr. 8vo.-Stratford was afterwards a bankrupt."

Chalmers

present buried in a country parsonage of eight-score pounds a year; while the other, with the bare abilities of a common scrivener, has got an estate of above a hundred thousand pounds.

I fancy from what I have said, it will almost appear a doubtful case to many a wealthy citizen, whether or no he ought to wish his son should be a great genius: but this I am sure of, that nothing is more absurd than to give a lad the education of one, whom nature has not favoured with any particular marks of distinction.

The fault, therefore, of our grammar schools is, that every boy is pushed on to works of genius: whereas, it would be far more advantageous for the greatest part of them to be taught such little practical arts and sciences as do not require any great share of parts to be master of them, and yet may come often into play during the course of a man's life.

'Such are all the parts of practical geometry. I have known a man contract a friendship with a minister of state, upon cutting a dial in his window; and remember a clergyman who got one of the best bene- | fices in the west of England, by setting a country gentleman's affairs in some method, and giving him an exact survey of his estate. 'While I am upon this subject, I cannot forbear mentioning a particular which is of use in every station of life, and which, methinks, every master should teach scholars; I mean the writing of English letters. To this end, instead of perplexing them with Latin epistles, themes, and verses, there might be a punctual correspondence established between two boys, who might act in any imaginary parts of business, or be allowed sometimes to give a range to their own fancies, and communicate to each other whatever trifles they thought fit, provided neither of them ever failed at the appointed time to answer his correspondent's letter.

fied for the finer parts of learning; yet I believe I might carry this matter still further, and venture to assert, that a lad of genius has sometimes occasion for these little acquirements, to be as it were the forerunners of his parts, and to introduce him into the world.

"History is full of examples of persons who, though they have had the largest abilities, have been obliged to insinuate themselves into the favour of great men, by these trivial accomplishments; as the complete gentleman in some of our modern comedies, makes his first advances to his mistress under the disguise of a painter or a dancing-master.

The difference is, that in a lad of genius these are only so many accomplishments, which in another are essentials; the one diverts himself with them, the other works at them. In short, I look upon a great genius, with these little additions, in the same light as I regard the Grand Seignior, who is obliged, by an express command in the Alcoran, to learn and practise some handicraft trade; though I need not to have gone for my instance farther than Germany, where several emperors have voluntarily done the same thing. Leopold the last, worked in wood: and I have heard there are several handicraft works of his making to be seen at Vienna, so neatly turned that the best joiner in Europe might safely own them without any disgrace to his profession.*

I would not be thought, by any thing I have said, to be against improving a boy's genius to the utmost pitch it can be carried. What I would endeavour to show in this essay is, that there may be methods taken to make learning advantageous even to the meanest capacities. I am, sir, yours, &c.' X.

'I believe I may venture to affirm, that No. 354.] Wednesday, April 16, 1712. the generality of boys would find themselves more advantaged by this custom, when they come to be men, than by all the Greek and Latin their masters can teach them in seven or eight years.

The want of it is very visible in many learned persons, who, while they are admiring the styles of Demosthenes or Cicero, want phrases to express themselves on the most common occasions. I have seen a letter from one of these Latin orators which would have been deservedly laughed at by a common attorney.

'Under this head of writing, I cannot omit accounts and short-hand, which are learned with little pains, and very properly come into the number of such arts as I have been here recommending.

'You must doubtless, sir, observe that I have hitherto chiefly insisted upon these things for such boys as do not appear to have any thing extraordinary in their natural talents, and consequently are not quali

-Cum magnis virtutibus affers Grande supercilium.Juv. Sat. vi. 168. Their signal virtues hardly can be borne, Dash'd as they are with supercilious scorn. 'MR. SPECTATOR,-You have in some of your discourses described most sort of women in their distinct and proper classes, as the ape, the coquette, and many others; but I think you have never yet said any thing of a devotee. A devotee is one of those who disparage religion by their indiscreet and unseasonable introduction of the mention of virtue on all occasions. She professes she is what nobody ought to doubt she is; and betrays the labour she is put to, to be what she ought to be with cheerfulness and alacrity. She lives in the world, and denies herself none of the diversions of it, with a constant declaration how insipid all things in it are to her. She is never

* The well-known labours of the Czar Peter may be

added to those enumerated above.