back, as women in England do at the sight of a toad or spider. However, when she had awhile seen my behavior, and how well I observed the signs her husband made, she was soon reconciled, and by degrees grew extremely tender of me. The king, who, . . was a prince of excellent understanding, would frequently order that I should be brought in my box, and set lature; to be members of the highest court of judicature, from whence there can be no appeal; and to be champions always ready for the defence of their prince and country, by 5 their valor, conduct, and fidelity. That these were the ornament and bulwark of the kingdom, worthy followers of their most renowned ancestors, whose honor have been the reward of their virtue, from which their posterity were were joined several holy persons, as part of that assembly, under the title of bishops; whose peculiar business it is to take care of religion, and of those who instruct the people through the whole nation, by the prince and his wisest counselors, among such of the priesthood as were most deservedly distinguished by the sanctity of their lives and the depth of fathers of the clergy and the people. upon the table in his closet: he would then 10 never once known to degenerate. To these command me to bring one of my chairs out of the box, and sit down within three yards' distance upon the top of the cabinet, which brought me almost to a level with his face. In this manner I had several conversations 15 therein. These were searched and sought out with him. I one day took the freedom to tell his majesty that the contempt he discovered toward Europe, and the rest of the world, did not seem answerable to those excellent qualities of mind that he was master 20 their erudition; who were indeed the spiritual of; that reason did not extend itself with the bulk of the body; on the contrary, we observed in our country that the tallest persons were usually least provided with it; that among other animals, bees and ants had the reputa- 25 tion of more industry, art, and sagacity, than many of the larger kinds; and that, as inconsiderable as he took me to be, I hoped I might live to do his majesty some signal service. The king heard me with attention, and began 30 to whom, in conjunction with the prince, the to conceive a much better opinion of me than he had ever before. He desired I would give him as exact an account of the government of England as I possibly could; because, as fond as princes commonly are of their own customs 35 termining the disputed rights and properties (for so he conjectured of other monarchs by my former discourses), he should be glad to hear of anything that might deserve imitation. Imagine with thyself, courteous reader, how often I then wished for the tongue of Demos- 40 thenes or Cicero, that might have enabled me to celebrate the praise of my own dear native country in a style equal to its merits and felicity. I began my discourse by informing his maj- 45 esty that our dominions consisted of two islands, which composed three mighty kingdoms, under one sovereign, besides our plantations in America. I dwelt long upon the fertility of our soil, and the temperature of 50 our climate. I then spoke at large upon the constitution of an English parliament; partly made up of an illustrious body, called the House of Peers; persons of the noblest blood, and of the most ancient and ample patrimonies. 55 I described that extraordinary care always taken of their education in arts and arms, to qualify them for being counselors both to the king and kingdom; to have a share in the legis That the other part of the parliament consisted of an assembly called the House of Commons, who were all principal gentlemen, freely picked and culled out by the people themselves, for their great abilities and love of their country, to represent the wisdom of the whole nation. And that these two bodies made up the most august assembly in Europe; whole legislature is committed. I then descended to the courts of justice; over which the judges, those venerable sages and interpreters of the law, presided, for de of men, as well as for the punishment of vice and protection of innocence. I mentioned the prudent management of our treasury; the valor and achievements of our forces, by sea and land. I computed the number of our people by reckoning how many millions there might be of each religious sect, or political party, among us. I did not omit even our sports and pastimes, or any other particular which I thought might redound to the honor of my country. And I finished all with a brief historical account of affairs and events in England for about an hundred years past. This conversation was not ended under five audiences, each of several hours; and the king heard the whole with great attention, frequently taking notes of what I spoke, as well as memorandums of all questions he intended to ask me. When I had put an end to these long discourses, his majesty, in a sixth audience, consulting his notes, proposed many doubts, queries, and objections upon every article. He asked what methods were used to culti and wrong, and what degree of expense? Whether advocates and orators had liberty to plead in causes manifestly known to be unjust, vexatious, or oppressive? Whether party, 5 in religion or politics, were observed to be of any weight in the scale of justice? Whether those pleading orators were persons educated in the general knowledge of equity, or only in provincial, national, and other local customs? vate the minds and bodies of our young nobility, and in what kind of business they commonly spent the first and teachable part of their lives? What course was taken to supply that assembly, when any noble family became extinct? What qualifications were necessary in those who are to be created new lords; whether the humor of the prince, a sum of money to a court lady or a prime minister, or a design of strengthening a party opposite 10 Whether they or their judges had any part in to the public interest, ever happened to be motives in those advancements? What share of knowledge these lords had in the laws of their country, and how they came by it, so as to enable them to decide the properties of their 15 same cause, and cited precedents to prove con penning those laws, which they assumed the liberty of interpreting and glossing upon at their pleasure? Whether they had ever, at different times, pleaded for and against the trary opinions? Whether they were a rich or a poor corporation? Whether they received any pecuniary reward for pleading or delivering their opinions? And particularly, whether lower senate? fellow-subjects in the last resort? Whether they were always so free from avarice, partialities, or want, that a bribe, or some other sinister view, could have no place among them? Whether those holy lords I spoke of were 20 they were ever admitted as members in the always promoted to that rank upon account of their knowledge in religious matters, and the sanctity of their lives; had never been compliers with the times, while they were common priests; or slavish prostitute chaplains to some 25 nobleman, whose opinions they continued servilely to follow, after they were admitted into that assembly? He fell next upon the management of our treasury; and said he thought my memory had failed me, because I computed our taxes at about five or six millions a year, and when I came to mention the issues, he found they sometimes amounted to more than double; for the notes he had taken were very particular in this point, because he hoped, as he told He then desired to know what arts were practiced in electing those whom I called 30 me, that the knowledge of our conduct might be useful to him, and he could not be deceived in his calculations. But, if what I told him were true, he was still at a loss how a kingdom could run out of its estate, like a private person. He asked me who were our creditors, and where we found money to pay them? He wondered to hear me talk of such chargeable and expensive wars. That certainly we must be a quarrelsome people, or live among very commoners; whether a stranger, with a strong purse, might not influence the vulgar voters to choose him before their own landlord, or the most considerable gentleman in the neighborhood? How it came to pass that people 35 were so violently bent upon getting into this assembly, which I allowed to be a great trouble and expense, often to the ruin of their families, without any salary or pension; because this appeared such an exalted strain of virtue and 40 bad neighbors, and that our generals must public spirit, that his majesty seemed to doubt it might possibly not be always sincere. And he desired to know whether such zealous gentlemen could have any views of refunding themselves for the charges and trouble they 45 were at, by sacrificing the public good to the designs of a weak and vicious prince, in conjunction with a corrupted ministry. He multiplied his questions, and sifted me thoroughly upon every part of this head, proposing num- 50 berless inquiries and objections, which I think it not prudent or convenient to repeat. Upon what I said in relation to our courts of justice, his majesty desired to be satisfied in several points: and this I was the better able 55 to do, having been formerly almost ruined by a long suit in the Chancery, which was decreed for me, with costs. He asked what time was usually spent in determining between right needs be richer than our kings. He asked what business we had out of our own islands, unless upon the score of trade, or treaty, or to defend the coasts with our fleet? Above all, he was amazed to hear me talk of a mercenary standing army in the midst of peace and among a free people. He said if we were governed by our own consent, in the persons of our representatives, he could not imagine of whom we were afraid, or against whom we were to fight; and would hear my opinion, whether a private man's house might not better be defended by himself, his children and family, than by half a dozen rascals, picked up at a venture in the streets for small wages, who might get an hundred times more by cutting their throats. He laughed at my odd kind of arithmetic, as he was pleased to call it, in reckoning the numbers of our people, by a computation drawn from the several sects among us in religion and politics. He said he knew no reason why those who entertain opinions prejudicial to the public should be obliged to change, or should not be obliged to conceal them. And, as it was tyranny in any government to require the first, so it was weakness not to enforce the second; for a man may be allowed to keep poisons in his closet, but not to vend them about for cordials. try; or counselors, for their wisdom. As for yourself," continued the king, "who have spent the greatest part of your life in travelling, I am well disposed to hope you may hitherto 5 have escaped many vices of your country. But, by what I have gathered from your own relation, and the answers I have with much pains wringed and extorted from you, I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to 10 be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth." He observed, that, among the diversions of our nobility and gentry, I had mentioned gaming: he desired to know at what age this entertainment was usually taken up, and when it was laid down; how much of their time it 15 employed; whether it ever went so high as to affect their fortunes; whether mean, vicious people, by their dexterity in that art, might not arrive at great riches, and sometimes keep our very nobles in dependence, as well as 20 habituate them to vile companions; wholly take them from the improvement of their minds, and force them, by the losses they have received, to learn and practice that infamous dexterity upon others? 25 He was perfectly astonished with the historical account I gave him of our affairs during the last century; protesting, it was only a heap of conspiracies, rebellions, murders, massacres, revolutions, banishments—the very 30 worst effects that avarice, faction, hypocrisy, perfidiousness, cruelty, rage, madness, hatred, envy, lust, malice, or ambition could produce. His majesty, in another audience, was at the pains to recapitulate the sum of all I had 35 spoken; compared the questions he made with the answers I had given; then, taking me into his hands, and stroking me gently, delivered himself in these words, which I shall never forget, nor the manner he spoke them in: "My 40 little friend Grildrig, you have made a most admirable panegyric upon your country; you have clearly proved that ignorance, idleness, and vice are the proper ingredients for qualifying a legislator; the laws are best explained, inter- 45 preted and applied, by those whose interests and abilities lie in perverting, confounding, and eluding them. I observe among you some lines of an institution, which, in its original, might have been tolerable, but these half-erased, and 50 the rest wholly blurred and blotted by corruptions. It doth not appear from all you have said how any one perfection is required, toward the procurement of any one station among you; much less, that men are ennobled 55 on account of their virtue; that priests are advanced for their piety or learning; soldiers, for their conduct or valor; judges, for their integrity; senators, for the love of their coun Joseph Addison 1672-1719 NED SOFTLY, THE POET Idem inficeto est inficetior rure, quam Quem non in aliqua re videre Suffnum Catul. de Suffeno, xx, 14. (Suffenus has no more wit than a mere clown when he attempts to write verses; and yet he is never happier than when he is scribbling: so much does he admire himself and his compositions. And, indeed, this is the foible of every one of us; for there is no man living who is not a Suffenus in one thing or other.) Will's Coffee-house, April 24. I yesterday came hither1 about two hours before the company generally make their appearance, with a design to read over all the newspapers; but upon my sitting down, I was accosted by Ned Softly, who saw me from a corner in the other end of the room, where I found he had been writing something. "Mr. Bickerstaff," ," says he, "I observe by a late paper of yours, that you and I are just of a humour; for you must know, of all impertinences, there is nothing which I so much hate as news. I never read a gazette in my life; and never trouble my head about our armies, whether they win or lose; or in what part of the world they lie encamped." Without giv 1 Since the days of Dryden (who patronized it regularly) Will's Coffee-House, on the north side of Russell Street near Covent Garden, was a famous resort for the critics and the wits of the town. The name which Steele adopted as the pseudonym of the Editor of the Tatler. V. note on Bickerstaff, p. 321, and n. 1. supra. ing me time to reply, he drew a paper of verses out of his pocket, telling me, "That he had something which would entertain me more agreeably; and that he would desire my judgment upon every line, for that we had time enough before us until the company came in." Ned Softly is a very pretty poet, and a great admirer of easy lines. Waller is his favourite:3 and as that admirable writer has the best and worst verses of any among our great English 10 poets, Ned Softly has got all the bad ones without book; which he repeats upon occasion, to show his reading, and garnish his conversation. Ned is indeed a true English reader, shaking me by the hand, "everybody knows you to be a judge of these things; and, to tell you truly, I read over Roscommon's translation of Horace's 'Art of Poetry' three several 5 times before I sat down to write the sonnet which I have shown you. But you shall hear it again, and pray observe every line of it, for not one of them shall pass without your approbation. When dressed in laurel wreaths you shine. "This is," says he, "when you have your garland on; when you are writing verses." To which I replied, "I know your meaning: went on. incapable of relishing the great and masterly 15 a metaphor!" "The same," said he, and strokes of this art; but wonderfully pleased with the little Gothic ornaments of epigrammatical conceits, turns, points, and quibbles, which are so frequent in the most admired of And tune your soft melodious notes. "Pray observe the gliding of that verse; our English poets, and practised by those who 20 there is scarce a consonant in it: I took care want genius and strength to represent, after the manner of the ancients, simplicity in its natural beauty and perfection. to make it run upon liquids. Give me your opinion of it." "Truly," said I, "I think it as good as the former.' "I am very glad to hear you say so," says he; "but mind the next You seem a sister of the Nine. "That is," says he, "you seem a sister of the Muses; for, if you look into ancient authors, you will find it was their opinion, that Finding myself unavoidably engaged in such a conversation, I was resolved to turn my 25 pain into a pleasure, and to divert myself as well as I could with so very odd a fellow. "You must understand," says Ned, "that the sonnet I am going to read to you was written upon a lady who showed me some 30 there were nine of them." "I remember it verses of her own making, and is, perhaps, the best poet of our age. But you shall hear it." Upon which he began to read as follows: very well," said I; "but pray proceed." Or Phoebus' self in petticoats. "Phoebus," says he, "was the god of Poetry. TO MIRA, ON HER INCOMPARABLE 35 These little instances, Mr. Bickerstaff, show POEMS When dressed in laurel wreaths you shine, You seem a sister of the Nine, Or Phoebus' self in petticoats. 2 I fancy, when your song you sing, Your song you sing with so much art, Your pen was plucked from Cupid's wing; For, ah! it wounds me like his dart. a gentleman's reading. Then to take off from the air of learning, which Phoebus and the Muses have given to this first stanza, you may observe, how it falls all of a sudden into the 40 familiar-'in petticoats!'" Or Phoebus' self in petticoats. "Let us now," says I, "enter upon the second stanza; I find the first line is still a con45 tinuation of the metaphor. "Why," says I, "this is a little nosegay of conceits, a very lump of salt: every verse hath 50 something in it that piques; and then the dart in the last line is certainly as pretty a sting in the tail of an epigram (for so I think you critics call it) as ever entered into the thought of a poet." "Dear Mr. Bickerstaff," says he, Edmund Waller (1605-1687), was looked up to as a great refiner of language and style, and as a master of English versification. In Addison's time the sonnet form was neglected, and the word Sonnet was applied loosely to any short poem. 55 I fancy when your song you sing. "It is very right," says he; "but pray observe the turn of words in those two lines. I was a whole hour in adjusting of them, and have still a doubt upon me whether, in the second line it should be-'Your song you sing; or, You sing your song?' You shall hear them both: • Wentworth Dillon, Earl of Roscommon. nephew of the famous Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, and a contemporary of Waller. Besides his translation of the Ars Poetica (1680), he wrote an essay On Translated Verse. which influenced Dryden, and which teaches the importance of following set rules in poetical composition. or, I fancy, when your song you sing. (Your song you sing with so much art); I fancy, when your song you sing, my papers, and receiving my morning lectures with a becoming seriousness and attention. My publisher tells me that there are already three thousand of them distributed every day; 5 so that if I allow twenty readers to every paper, which I look upon as a modest computation, I may reckon about threescore thousand disciples in London and Westminster,' who I hope will take care to distinguish themselves (You sing your song with so much art). "Truly," said I, "the turn is so natural either way, that you have made me almost giddy with it." "Dear sir," said he, grasping me by the hand, "you have a great deal of 10 from the thoughtless herd of their ignorant patience; but pray what do you think of the next verse?" Your pen was pluck'd from Cupid's wing. and unattentive brethren. Since I have raised to myself so great an audience, I shall spare no pains to make their instruction agreeable, and their diversion useful. For which reasons I "Think!" says I; "I think you have made 15 shall endeavour to enliven morality with wit, Cupid look like a little goose." "That was my meaning," says he: "I think the ridicule is well enough hit off. But we come now to the last, which sums up the whole matter. For, ah! it wounds me like his dart. "Pray how do you like that Ah! doth it not make a pretty figure in that place? Ah!-it looks as if I felt the dart, and cried out at being pricked with it. and to temper wit with morality, that my readers may, if possible, both ways find their account in the speculation of the day. And to the end that their virtue and discretion may 20 not be short, transient, intermitting starts of thought, I have resolved to refresh their memories from day to day, till I have recovered them out of that desperate state of vice and folly into which the age is fallen. The mind 25 that lies fallow but a single day, sprouts up in follies that are only to be killed by a constant and assiduous culture. It was said of Socrates that he brought philosophy down from heaven, to inhabit among men; and I shall be ambitious to have it said of me, that I have brought philosophy out of closets and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs and assemblies, at tea-tables, and in coffee-houses.3 I would, therefore, in a very particular For, ah! it wounds me like his dart. "My friend Dick Easy," continued he, "assured me he would rather have written that Ah! than to have been the author of the 30 Æneid. He indeed objected, that I made Mira's pen like a quill in one of the lines, and like a dart in the other. But as to that"Oh! as to that," says I, "it is but supposing Cupid to be like a porcupine, and his quills 35 manner, recommend these my speculations and darts will be the same thing." He was to all well-regulated families, that set apart going to embrace me for the hint; but half a an hour in every morning for tea and bread dozen critics coming into the room, whose and butter; and would earnestly advise them faces he did not like, he conveyed the sonnet for their good, to order this paper to be puncinto his pocket, and whispered me in the ear, 40 tually served up, and to be looked upon as a he would show it me again as soon as his man had written it over fair. THE OBJECT OF THE SPECTATOR (The Spectator, No. 10, 1711-1714) part of the tea-equipage. 4 Sir Francis Bacon observes, that a well written book, compared with its rivals and antagonists, is like Moses's serpent, that im45 mediately swallowed up and devoured those of the Egyptians. I shall not be so vain as to think, that where the Spectator appears, the other public prints will vanish; but shall leave it to my reader's consideration, whether it is 50 So the boat's brawny crew the current stem, DRYDEN. It is with much satisfaction that I hear this great city inquiring day by day after these 1 Addison's "London" is the modern "City," the part of London lying to the East of the Temple and comprising the commercial and money-making part of the metropolis. "Westminster" corresponds to the modern "West End," the quarter west of the Temple "which spends money, makes laws, and regulates fashion." (V. Baedeker's London, pp. 93-94). i. e., shall find something to interest them in the discussion, etc. Cf. what Macaulay says of his History of England: "I shall not be satisfied unless I produce something which shall for a few days supersede the last fashionable novel on the tables of young ladies." Advancement of Learning, Bk. II, Introd., § 14. |