no account of any thing from those he ap- 'Among those innumerable sets of whims proves. Mr. Penkethman is also master of which our country produces, there are none as many faces in the dumb scene as can be whom I have regarded with more curiosity expected from a man in the circumstances than those who have invented any particuof being ready to perish out of fear and lar kind of diversion for the entertainment hunger. He wanders through the whole of themselves and their friends. My letter scene very masterly, without neglecting shall single out those who take delight in his victuals. If it be, as I have heard it sorting a company that has something of sometimes mentioned, a great qualification burlesque and ridicule in its appearance. I of the world to follow business and pleasure shall make myself understood by the foltoo, what is it in the ingenious Mr. Pen-lowing example: One of the wits of the kethman to represent a sense of pleasure last age, who was a man of a good estate,* and pain at the same time, as you may see him do this evening? thought he never laid out his money better than in a jest. As he was one year at the Bath, observing that, in the great confluence of fine people, there were several among them with long chins, a part of the visage by which he himself was very much distinguished, he invited to dinner half a score of these remarkable persons who had their mouths in the middle of their faces. They had no sooner placed themselves about the table but they began to stare upon one another, not being able to imagine what had brought them together. Our English proverb says, Tis merry in the hall, As it is certain that a stage ought to be wholly suppressed or judiciously encouraged, while there is one in the nation, men turned for regular pleasure cannot employ their thoughts more usefully, for the diversion of mankind, than by convincing them that it is in themselves to raise this entertainment to the greatest height. It would be a great improvement, as well as embellishment to the theatre, if dancing were more regarded, and taught to all the actors. One who has the advantage of such an agreeable girlish person as Mrs. Bicknell, joined with her capacity of imitation, could in proper gesture and motion represent all the decent characters of female life. An amiable modesty in one aspect of a dancer, and assumed confidence in another, a sudden joy in another, a falling off with an impatience of being beheld, a return towards the audience with an unsteady resolution to approach them, and well-acted solicitude to please, would revive in the company all the fine touches of mind raised in observing all the objects of affection and passion they 'The same gentleman some time after had before beheld. Such elegant enter-packed together a set of oglers, as he called tainments as these would polish the town them, consisting of such as had an unlucky into judgment in their gratifications; and cast in their eyes. His diversion on this ocdelicacy in pleasure is the first step people casion was to see the cross bows, mistaken of condition take in reformation from vice. signs, and wrong connivances, that passed Mrs. Bicknell has the only capacity for this amidst so many broken and refracted rays sort of dancing of any on the stage; and I of sight. dare say all who see her performance tomorrow night, when sure the romp will do her best for her own benefit, will be of my mind. No. 371.] Tuesday, May 6, 1712. T. Jamne igitur laudas quod de sapientibus unus 'SIR,-You know very well that our na- 12 It proved so in the assembly I am now speaking of, who seeing so many peaks of faces agitated with eating, drinking, and discourse, and observing all the chins that were present meeting together very often over the centre of the table, every one grew sensible of the jest, and gave into it with so much good humour, that they lived in strict friendship and alliance from that day forward. "The third feast which this merry gentleman exhibited was to the stammerers, whom he got together in a sufficient body to fill his table. He had ordered one of his servants, who was placed behind a screen, to write down their table-talk, which was very easy to be done without the help of short-hand. It appears by the notes which were taken, that though their conversation never fell, there were not above twenty words spoken during the first course; that upon serving up the second, one of the company was a quarter of an hour in telling them that the ducklings and asparagus were very good; and that another took up the same time in declaring himself of the same opinion. This jest did not, however, go off so well as the former; for one of the guests being a brave inan, and fuller of resentment than he knew how to express, went out of the room, and sent the facetious Villars, Duke of Buckingham. inviter a challenge in writing, which, though | wherein he made use of the same invention it was afterwards dropped by the interposi- to cure a different kind of men, who are the tion of friends, put a stop to these ludicrous pests of all polite conversation, and murder entertainments. time as much as either of the two former, 'Now, sir, I dare say you will agree with though they do it more innocently—I mean, me, that as there is no moral in these jests, that dull generation of story-tellers. My they ought to be discouraged, and looked friend got together about half a dozen of his upon rather as pieces of unluckiness than acquaintance, who were infected with this wit. However, as it is natural for one man strange malady. The first day one of them to refine upon the thought of another; and sitting down, entered upon the siege of impossible for any single person, how great Namur, which lasted till four o'clock, their soever his parts may be, to invent an art, time of parting. The second day a North and bring it to its utmost perfection; I shall Briton took possession of the discourse, here give you an account of an honest which it was impossible to get out of his gentleman of my acquaintance, who upon hands so long as the company stayed tohearing the character of the wit above-gether. The third day was engrossed after mentioned, has himself assumed it, and endeavoured to convert it to the benefit of mankind. He invited half a dozen of his friends one day to dinner, who were each of them famous for inserting several redundant phrases in their discourse, as "D'ye hear me?-D'ye see?-That is,-And so, sir. Each of his guests making use of his particular elegance, appeared so ridiculous to his neighbour, that he could not but reflect upon himself as appearing equally ridiculous to the rest of the company. By this means, before they had sat long together, every one, talking with the greatest circumspection, and carefully avoiding his favourite expletive, the conversation was cleared of its redundancies, and had a No. 372.] Wednesday, May 7, 1712. greater quantity of sense, though less of sound in it. the same manner by a story of the same length. They at last began to reflect upon this barbarous way of treating one another, and by this means awakened out of that lethargy with which each of them had been seized for several years. 'As you have somewhere declared, that extraordinary and uncommon characters of mankind are the game which you delight in, and as I look upon you to be the greatest sportsman, or, if you please, the Nimrod among this species of writers, I thought this discovery would not be unacceptable to you. I am, sir, &c.' -Pudet hæc opprobria nobis I. Ovid. Met. i. 759. To hear an open slander, is a curse; ་ Dryden. 'The same well-meaning gentleman took occasion, at another time, to bring together such of his friends as were addicted to a foolish habitual custom of swearing. In May 6, 1712. order to show them the absurdity of the 'MR. SPECTATOR,-I am sexton of the practice, he had recourse to the invention parish of Covent-garden, and_complained above-mentioned, having placed an amanu- to you some time ago, that as I was tolling ensis in a private part of the room. After in to prayers at eleven in the morning, the second bottle, when men open their crowds of people of quality hastened to asminds without reserve, my honest friend semble at a puppet-show on the other side began to take notice of the many sonorous of the garden. I had at the same time a but unnecessary words that had passed in very great disesteem for Mr. Powell and his house since their sitting down at table, his little thoughtless commonwealth, as if and how much good conversation they had they had enticed the gentry into those wanlost by giving way to such superfluous derings: but let that be as it will, I am conphrases."What a tax," says he, "would vinced of the honest intentions of the said they have raised for the poor, had we put Mr. Powell and company, and send this to the laws in execution upon one another!" acquaint you, that he has given all the Every one of them took this gentle reproof profits which shall arise to-morrow night in good part; upon which he told them, by his play to the use of the poor charitythat, knowing their conversation would have children of this parish. I have been inno secrets in it, he ordered it to be taken formed, sir, that in Holland all persons down in writing, and, for the humour-sake, who set up any show, or act any stage-play, would read it to them, if they pleased. be the actors either of wood and wire, or There were ten sheets of it, which might flesh and blood, are obliged to pay out of have been reduced to two, had there not their gains such a proportion to the honest been those abominable interpolations I have and industrious poor in the neighbourhood: before mentioned. Upon the reading of it by this means they make diversion and in cold blood, it looked rather like a con-pleasure pay a tax to labour and industry. ference of fiends than of men. In short, every one trembled at himself upon hearing calmly what he had pronounced amidst the heat and inadvertency of discourse. 'I shall only mention another occasion I have been told also, that all the time of Lent, in Roman-Catholic countries, the persons of condition administer to the necessities of the poor, and attend the beds of lazars and diseased persons. Our Protestant ladies and gentlemen are so much to seek 'I am credibly informed, that all the insinuations which a certain writer made against Mr. Powell at the Bath, are false and groundless.' 'May 6. 'MR. SPECTATOR,-I was last Wednesday night at a tavern in the city, among a set of men who call themselves "the lawyers' club." You must know, sir, this club consists only of attorneys; and at this meeting every one proposes the cause he has then in hand to the board, upon which each member gives his judgment according to the experience he has met with. If it happens that any one puts a case of which they have had no precedent, it is noted down by their clerk, Will Goosequill (who registers all their proceedings,) that one of them may go the next day with it to a counsel. This indeed is commendable, and ought to be the principal end of their meeting; but had you been there to have heard them relate their methods of managing a cause, their manner of drawing out their bills, and, in short, their arguments upon the several ways of abusing their clients, with the applause that is given to him who has done it most artfully, you would before now have given your remarks on them. They are so conscious that their discourses ought to be kept a secret, that they are very cautious of admitting any person who is not of their profession. When any who are not of the law are let in, the person who introduces him says he is a very honest gentleman, and he is taken in, as their cant is, to pay costs. I am admitted upon the recommendation of one of their principals, as a very honest good-natured fellow, that will never be in a plot, and only desires to drink his bottle and smoke his pipe. You have formerly remarked upon several sorts of clubs; and as the tendency of this is only to increase fraud and deceit, I hope you will please to take notice of it. I am, with respect, your humble servant, H. R.' T. Fallit enim vitium specie virtutis et umbra. Vice oft is hid in Virtue's fair disguise, 'MR. SPECTATOR,-My employment, which is that of a broker, leading me often into taverns about the Exchange, has given me occasion to observe a certain enormity, which I shall here submit to your animadversion. In three or four of these taverns, I have at different times, taken notice of a precise set of people, with grave countenances, short wigs, black clothes, or dark camlet trimmed with black, and mourning No. 373.] Thursday, May 8, 1712. gloves and hat-bands, who meet on certain days at each tavern successively, and keep a sort of moving club. Having often met with their faces, and observed a certain slinking way in their dropping in one after another, I had the curiosity to inquire into their characters, being the rather moved to it by their agreeing in the singularity of their dress; and I find, upon due examination, they are a knot of parish clerks, who have taken a fancy to one another, and perhaps settle the bills of mortality over their half-pints. I have so great a value and veneration for any who have but even an assenting Amen in the service of religion, that I am afraid lest these persons should incur some scandal by this practice; and would therefore have them, without raillery, advised to send the Florence and pullets home to their own houses, and not pretend to live as well as the overseers of the poor. I am, sir, your most humble servant, HUMPHRY TRANSFER.' MR. LOCKE, in his treatise of Human Understanding, has spent two chapters upon the abuse of words. The first and most palpable abuse of words, he says, is when they are used without clear and distinct ideas; the second, when we are so unconstant and unsteady in the application of them, that we sometimes use them to signify one idea, sometimes another. He adds, that the result of our contemplations and reasonings, while we have no precise ideas fixed to our words, must needs be very confused and absurd. To avoid this inconvenience, more especially in moral discourses, where the same word should be constantly used in the same sense, he earnestly recommends the use of definitions. A definition,' says he, is the only way whereby the pre cise meaning of moral words can be known.'| within himself, and from a consciousness of He therefore accuses those of great negli-his own integrity, assumes force enough to gence who discourse of moral things with despise the little censures of ignorance and the least obscurity in the terms they make malice. use of; since, upon the 'forementioned ground, he does not scruple to say that he thinks morality is capable of demonstration as well as the mathematics.' Every one ought to cherish and encourage in himself the modesty and assurance I have here mentioned. A man without assurance is liable to be made uneasy by the folly or ill-nature of every one he converses with. A man without modesty is lost to all sense of honour and virtue. I know no two words that have been more abused by the different and wrong interpretations which are put upon them, than those two, modesty and assurance. To say such a one is a modest man, sometimes indeed It is more than probable that the prince passes for a good character; but at present above-mentioned possessed both these quais very often used to signify a sheepish, awk-lifications in a very eminent degree. Withward fellow, who has neither good breed-out assurance he would never have undering, politeness, nor any knowledge of the world. Again, a man of assurance, though at first it only denoted a person of a free and open carriage, is now very usually applied to a profligate wretch, who can break through all the rules of decency and morality without a blush. I shall endeavour therefore in this essay to restore these words to their true meaning, to prevent the idea of modesty from being confounded with that of sheepishness, and to hinder impudence from passing for assur ance. taken to speak before the most_august assembly in the world: without modesty he would have pleaded the cause he had taken upon him, though it had appeared ever so scandalous. From what has been said, it is plain that modesty and assurance are both amiable, and may very well meet in the same person. When they are thus mixed and blended together, they compose what we endeavour to express when we say 'a modest assurance;' by which we understand the just mean between bashfulness and impudence. I shall conclude with observing, that as the same man may be both modest and assured, so it is also possible for the same to be both impudent and bashful. We have frequent instances of this odd kind of mixture in people of depraved minds, and mean education, who, though they are not able to meet a man's eyes, or pronounce a sentence without confusion, can voluntarily commit the greatest villanies or most indecent actions. If I was put to define modesty, I would call it 'the reflection of an ingenious mind, either when a man has committed an action for which he censures himself, or fancies that he is exposed to the censure of others.' For this reason a man truly modest is as much so when he is alone as in company, and as subject to a blush in his closet as when the eyes of multitudes are upon him. I do not remember to have met with any instance of modesty with which I am so well pleased as that celebrated one of the young prince, whose father being a tributary king to the Romans, had several complaints laid against him before the senate, as a tyrant and oppressor of his subjects. The prince went to Rome to defend his father; but Upon the whole I would endeavour to escoming into the senate, and hearing a multi-tablish this maxim, that the practice of virtude of crimes proved upon him, was so oppressed when it came to his turn to speak, that he was unable to utter a word. The story tells us, that the fathers were more moved at this instance of modesty and ingenuity than they could have been by the most pathetic oration, and, in short, pardoned the guilty father, for this early promise of vir- No. 374.] Friday, May 9, 1712. tue in the son. Such a person seems to have made a resolution to do ill even in spite of himself, and in defiance of all those checks and restraints his temper and complexion seem to have laid in his way. tue is the most proper method to give a man a becoming assurance in his words and actions. Guilt always seeks to shelter itself in one of the extremes, and is sometimes attended with both. X. Nil actum reputans si quid superesset agendum. Rowe. I take assurance to be the faculty of possessing a man's self, or of saying and doing indifferent things without any uneasiness or emotion in the mind.' That which generally gives a man assurance is a moderate THERE is a fault, which, though comknowledge of the world, but above all, a mon, wants a name. It is the very contrary mind fixed and determined in itself to do to procrastination. As we lose the present nothing against the rules of honour and de-hour by delaying from day to day to execency. An open and assured behaviour is the natural consequence of such a resolution. A man thus armed, if his words or actions are at any time misrepresented, retires cute what we ought to do immediately, so most of us take occasion to sit still and throw away the time in our possession, by retrospect on what is passed, imagining we have friends who have been long in my interests. Power is weakened by the full use of it, but extended by moderation. Galbinius is proud, and will be servile in his present fortune: let him wait. Send for Stertinius: he is modest, and his virtue is worth gaining. I have cooled my heart with reflection, and am fit to rejoice with the army to-morrow. He is a popular general, who can expose himself like a private man during a battle; but he is more popular who can rejoice but like a private man after a victory.' already acquitted ourselves, and established | nown upon any thing that was past. I shall our characters in the sight of mankind. produce two fragments of his, to demonBut when we thus put a value upon our-strate that it was his rule of life to support selves for what we have already done, any himself rather by what he should perform, farther than to explain ourselves in order to than what he had done already. In the taassist our future conduct, that will give us blet which he wore about him, the same an over-weening opinion of our merit, to the year in which he obtained the battle of prejudice of our present industry. The Pharsalia, there were found these loose great rule, methinks, should be, to manage notes of his own conduct. It is supposed by the instant in which we stand, with forti- the circumstances they alluded to, that they tude, equanimity and moderation, according might be set down the evening of the same to men's respective circumstances. If our night. past actions reproach us, they cannot be My part is now but begun, and my atoned for by our own severe reflections so glory must be sustained by the use I make effectually as by a contrary behaviour. If of this victory; otherwise my loss will be they are praise-worthy, the memory of greater than that of Pompey. Our personal them is of no use but to act suitably to them. reputation will rise or fall as we bear our reThus a good present behaviour is an im- spective fortunes. All my private enemies plicit repentance for any miscarriage in among the prisoners shall be spared. I will what is past; but present slackness will not forget this, in order to obtain such another make up for past activity. Time has swal- day. Trebutius is ashamed to see me: I lowed up all that we contemporaries did will go to his tent, and be reconciled in yesterday, as irrevocably as it has the ac-private. Give all the men of honour, who tions of the antediluvians. But we are again take part with me, the terms I offered beawake, and what shall we do to-day-to-fore the battle. Let them owe this to their day, which passes while we are yet speaking? Shall we remember the folly of last night, or resolve upon the exercise of virtue to-morrow? Last night is certainly gone, and to-morrow may never arrive. This instant make use of. Can you oblige any man of honour and virtue? Do it immediately. Can you visit a sick friend? Will it revive him to see you enter, and suspend your own ease and pleasure to comfort his weakness, and hear the impertinences of a wretch in pain? Do not stay to take coach, but be gone; your mistress will bring sorrow, and your bottle madness. Go to neither. Such What is particularly proper for the exvirtues and diversions as these are mention- ample of all who pretend to industry in the ed because they occur to all men. But every pursuit of honour and virtue, is, that this man is sufficiently convinced that to sus-hero was more than ordinarily solicitous pend the use of the present moment, and resolve better for the future only, is an unpardonable folly. What I attempted to consider, was the mischief of setting such a value upon what is past, as to think we have done enough. Let a man have filled all the offices of life with the highest dignity till yesterday, and begin to live only to himself to-day, he must expect he will, in the effects upon his reputation, be considered as the man who died yesterday. The man who distinguishes himself from the rest, stands in a press of people: those before him intercept his progress; and those behind him, if he does not urge on, will tread him down. Cæsar, of whom it was said that he thought nothing done while there was left any thing for him to do, went on in performing the greatest exploits, without assuming to himself a privilege of taking rest upon the foundation of the merit of his former actions. It was the manner of that glorious captain to write down what scenes he had passed through, but it was rather to keep his affairs in method, and capable of a clear review, in case they should be examined by others, than that he built a re about his reputation, when a common mind would have thought itself in security, and given itself a loose to joy and triumph. But though this is a very great instance of his temper, I must confess I am more taken with his reflections when he retired to his closet in some disturbance upon the repeated ill omens of Calphurnia's dream, the night before his death. The literal translation of that fragment shall conclude this paper. Be it so, then. If I am to die to-morrow, that is what I am to do to-morrow. It will not be then, because I am willing it should be then; nor shall I escape it because I am unwilling. It is in the gods when, but in myself how, I shall die. If Calphurnia's dreams are fumes of indigestion, how shall I behold the day after to-morrow? If they are from the gods, their admonition is not to prepare me to escape from their decree, but to meet it. I have lived to a fulness of days and of glory: what is there that Cæsar has not done with as much honour as ancient heroes? Cæsar has not yet died! Cæsar is prepared to die.' T. |