be no room for emulation, contention, and several of the most lively passions of the mind; which, without being sometimes moved by these means, may possibly contract a dulness and insensibility. "One of the greatest writers our nation ever produced observes, that a boy who forms parties, and makes himself popular in a school or a college, would act the same part with equal ease in a senate or a privy-council; and Mr. Osborne, speaking like a man versed in the ways of the world, affirms, that the well laying and carrying on of a design to rob an orchard, trains up a youth insensibly to caution, secrecy, and circumspection, and fits him for matters of greater importance. "In short, a private education seems the most natural method for the forming of a virtuous man; a public education for making a man of business. The first would furnish out a good subject for Plato's republic, the latter a member for a community overrun with artifice and corruption. "It must, however, be confessed, that a person at the head of a public school has sometimes so many boys under his direction, that it is impossible he should extend a due proportion of his care to each of them. This is, however, in reality, the fault of the age, in which we often see twenty parents, who, though each expects his son should be made a scholar, are not contented all together to make it worth while for any man of liberal education to take upon him the care of their instruction. ** In our great schools, indeed, this fault has been of late years rectified, so that we have at present not only ingenious men for the chief masters, but such as have proper ushers and assistants under them. I must nevertheless own, that for want of the same encouragement in the country, we have many a promising genius spoiled and abused in those little seminaries. "I am the more inclined to this opinion, having myself experienced the usage of two rural masters, each of them very unfit for the trust they took upon them to discharge. The first imposed much more upon me than my parts, though none of the weakest, The severity of the master was too well known for the criminal to expect any pardon for such a fault; so that the boy, who was of a meek temper, was terrified to death at the thoughts of his appearance, when his friend who sat next to him bade him be of good cheer, for that he would take the fault on himself. He kept his word accordingly. As soon as they were grown up to be men, the civil war broke out, in which our two friends took the opposite sides; one of them followed the parliament, the other the royal party. "As their tempers were different, the youth who had torn the curtain endeavoured to raise himself on the civil list, and the other, who had borne the blame of it, on the military. The first succeeded so well, that he was in a short time made a judge under the protector. The other was engaged in the unhappy enterprise of Penruddock and Groves in the West. I suppose, Sir, I need not acquaint you with the event of that undertaking. Every one knows that the royal party was routed, and all the heads of them, among whom was the curtain champion, imprisoned at Exeter. It happened to be his friend's lot at that time to go the western circuit. The trial of the rebels, as they were then called, was very short, and nothing now remained but to pass sentence on them; when the judge hearing the name of his old friend, and observing his face more attentively, which he had not seen for many years, asked him if he was not formerly a Westminster scholar? By the answer, he was soon convinced that it was his former generous friend; and without saying any thing more at that time, made the best of his way to London, where employing all his power and interest with the protector, he saved his friend from the fate of his unhappy associates. "The gentleman whose life was thus preserved by the gratitude of his school-fellow, was afterward the father of a son, whom he lived to see promoted in the church, and who still deservedly fills one of the highest stations in it."† Χ. could endure; and used me barbarously for not per- No. 314.] FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 29, 1711-12. forming impossibilities. The latter was of quite another temper; and a boy who would run upon his errands, wash his coffee-pot, or ring the bell, might have as little conversation with any of the classics as he thought fit. I have known a lad at this place excused his exercise for assisting the cook-maid; and remember a neighbouring gentleman's son was among us five years, most of which time he employed in airing and watering our master's gray pad. I scorned to compound for my faults by doing any of these elegant offices, and was accordingly the best scholar, and the worst used of any boy in the school. " I shall conclude this discourse with an advantage mentioned by Quintilian, as accompanying a public way of education, which I have not yet taken notice of; namely, that we very often contract such friendships at school, as are a service to us all the following parts of our lives. " I shall give you under this head, a story very well known to several persons, and which you may depend upon as real truth. "Every one, who is acquainted with Westminster-school, knows that there is a curtain which used to be drawn across the room, to separate the upper school from the lower. A youth happened, by some mischance, to tear the above-mentioned curtain. Tandem desine matrem Tempestiva sequi viro. Hor. 1 Od. xxiii. 11. Attend thy mother's heels no more, "I AM a young man about eighteen years of age, and have been in love with a young woman of the same age about this half year. I go to see her six days in the week, but never could have the happiness of being with her alone. If any of her friends are at home, she will see me in their company; but if they be not in the way, she flies to her chamber. I can discover no signs of her aversion: but either a fear of falling into the toils of matrimony, or a childish timidity, deprives us of an interview apart, and drives us upon the difficulty of languishing out our lives in fruitless expectation. Now, Mr. Spectator, if you think us ripe for economy, persuade the dear creature, that to pine away into barrenness and deformity under a mother's shade, is not so honour * Busby. + The gentleman here alluded to was Colonel Wake, father to Dr. Wake, bishop of Lincoln, and afterward Arch bishop of Canterbury. As Penruddock in the course of the trial takes occasion to say, "he sees Judge Nicholas on the bench," it is most likely that he was the judge of the assize, who tried this cavalier ral ladies had complained of the prosecutor, who, after ogling them for a quarter of an hour, upon their making a curtesy to him, would not return the civility of a bow. The censor observing several glances of the prosecutor's eye, and perceiving that when he talked to the court he looked upon the jury, found reason to suspect there was a wrong cast in his sight, which, upon examination, proved true. The censor therefore ordered the prisoner, that he might not produce any more confusions in public assemblies, 'never to bow to any body whom he did not at the time call to by name.' Oliver Bluff and Benjamin Browbeat were indicted for going to fight a duel since the erection of the Court of Honour.' It appeared, that they were both taken up in the street as they passed by the court in their way to the fields behind Montaguehouse. The criminals would answer nothing for themselves, but that they were going to execute a challenge which had been made a week before the *Court of Honour' was erected. The censor finding some reason to suspect, by the sturdiness of their behaviour, that they were not so brave as they would have the court believe them, ordered them both to be searched by the grand jury, who found a breast-plate upon the one, and two quires of paper upon the other. The breast-plate was immediately ordered to be hung upon a peg over Mr. Bickerstaff's tribunal, and the paper to be laid upon the table for the use of his clerk. He then ordered the criminals to button up their bosoms, and, if they pleased, proceed to their duel. Upon which they both went very quietly out of the court, and retired to their respective lodgings. The court then adjourned till after the holidays. Copia vera. CHARLES LILLIE. No. 266.] THURSDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1710. Rideat et pulset lasciva decentius ætas. Hor. 2 Ep. ii. ult. Let youth, more decent in their follies, scoff From my own Apartment, December 20. It would be a good appendix to 'The art of living and dying, if any one would write 'The art of growing old,' and teach men to resign their pretensions to the pleasures and gallantries of youth, in proportion to the alteration they find in themselves by the approach of age and infirmities. The infirmities of this stage of life would be much fewer, if we did not affect those which attend the more vigorous and active part of our days; but instead of studying to be wiser, or being contented with our present follies, the ambition of many of us is also to be the same sort of fools we formerly have been. I have often argued, as I am a professed lover of women, that our sex grows old with a much worse grace than the other does; and have ever been of opinion, that there are more well-pleased old women than old men. I thought it a good reason for this, that the ambition of the lair sex being confined to advantageous marriages, or shining in the eyes of men, their parts were over sooner, and consequently the errors in the performance of them. The conversation of this evening has not convinced me of the contrary; for one or two fop-women shall not make a balance for the crowds of coxcombs among ourselves, diversified according to the different pursuits of pleasure and business. Returning home this evening a little before my usual hour, I scarce had seated myself in my easy chair, stirred the fire, and stroked my cat, but I heard somebody come rumbling up stairs. I saw my door opened, and a human figure advancing towards me, so fantastically put together, that it was some minutes before I discovered it to be my old and intimate friend, Sam Trusty. Immediately I 10se up, and placed him in my own seat; a compliment I pay to few. The first thing he uttered was, 'Isaac, fetch me a cup of your cherry-brandy before you offer to ask any question.' He drank a lusty draught, sat silent for some time, and at last broke out: 'I am come,' quoth he, 'to insult thee for an old fantastic dotard as thou art, in ever defending the women. I have this evening visited two widows, who are now in that state I have often heard you call an after-life: I suppose you mean by it, an existence which grows out of past entertainments, and is an untimely delight in the satisfactions which they once set their hearts upon too much to be ever able to relinquish. Have but patience,' continued he, 'until I give you a succinct account of my ladies, and of this night's adventure. They are much of an age, but very different in their characters. The one of them, with all the advances which years have made upon her, goes on in a certain romantic road of love and friendship which she fell into in her teens; the other has transferred the amorous passions of her first years to the love of cro nies, pets, and favourites, with which she is always surrounded; but the genius of each of them will best appear by the account of what happened to me at their houses. About five this afternoon, being tired with my study, the weather inviting, and time lying a little upon my hands, I resolved, at the instigation of my evil genius, to visit them; their husbands having been our contemporaries. This I thought I could do without much trouble, for both live in the very next street. I went first to my lady Camomile; and the butler, who had lived long in the family, and seen me often in his master's time, ushered me very civilly into the parlour, and told me, though my lady had given strict orders to be denied, he was sure I might be admitted, and bid the black boy acquaint his lady that I was come to wait upon her. In the window lay two letters, one broke open, the other fresh sealed with a wafer the first directed to the divine Cosmelia, the second to the charming Lucinda; but both, by the indented characters, appeared to have been writ by very unsteady hands. Such uncommon addresses increased my curiosity, and put me upon asking my old friend the butler, if he knew who those persons were? Very well,' says he, this is from Mrs. Furbish to my lady, an old schoolfellow and great crony of her ladyship's; and this the answer. I inquired in what county she lived. Oh dear!' says he, 'but just by, in the neighbourhood. Why, she was here all this morning, and that letter came and was answered within these two hours. They have taken an odd fancy, you must know, to call one another hard names; but, for all that, they love one another hugely.' By this time the boy returned with his lady's humble service to me, desiring I would excuse her, for she could not possibly see me, nor any body else, as it was opera-night. ، 'Methinks,' says I, 'such innocent folly as two old women's courtship to each other, should rather make you merry than put you out of humour.' Peace, good Isaac,' says he, 'no interruption, I be seech you. I got soon to Mrs. Feeble's; she that was formerly Betty Frisk-you must needs remember her; Tom Feeble, of Brazen-Nose, fell in love with her for her fine dancing. Well, Mrs. Ursula, without further ceremony, carries me directly up to her mistress's chamber, where I found her environed by venient house in a good air, I am not without hope which we are to look for in these speeches, are not but that you will promote this generous design. I of a poetical nature, nor so proper to fill the mind It must further tell you, Sir, that all who shall be committed to my conduct, besides the usual accomplishments of the needle, dancing, and the French tongue, shall not fail to be your constant readers. is therefore my humble petition, that you will entertain the town on this important subject, and so far oblige a stranger, as to raise a curiosity and inquiry in my behalf, by publishing the following advertisement. "I am, Sir, "Your constant Admirer, ADVERTISEMENT. "M. W." The Boarding-School for young Gentlewomen, which was formerly kept on Mile-End-Green, being laid down, there is now one set up almost opposite toit, at the two Golden Balls, and much more convenient in every respect; where besides the common instructions given to young gentlewomen, they will be taught the whole art of pastry and preserving, with whatever may render them accomplished. Those who please to make trial of the vigilance and ability of the persons concerned, may inquire at the 10 Golden Balls on Mile-End-Green, near Stepney, where they will receive further satisfaction. This is to give notice, that the Spectator has taken upon him to be visitant of all boarding-schools where young women are educated; and designs to proceed in the said office after the same manner that the vistants of colleges do in the two famous universities of this land. All lovers who write to the Spectator, are desired b forbear one expression which is in most of the tters to him, either out of laziness or want of intention, and is true of not above two thousand women in the whole world: viz. "She has in her and that is valuable in woman."-T. No. 315.] SATURDAY, MARCH 1, 1711-12. HOR. Ars Poet. ver. 191. Never presume to make a god appear, HORACE advises a poet to consider thoroughly the Bature and force of his genius. Milton seems to kave known perfectly well wherein his strength lay, and has therefore chosen a subject entirely conkurmable to those talents of which he was master. As his genius was wonderfully turned to the subLme, his subject was the noblest that could have entered into the thoughts of man. Every thing that s truly great and astonishing has a place in it. The whole system of the intellectual world; the chaos, and the creation; heaven, earth, and hell; enter Into the constitution of his poem. Having in the first and second books represented the infernal world with all its horrors, the thread of his fable naturally leads him into the opposite regions of bliss and glory. The with sentiments of grandeur, as with thoughts of devotion. The passions which they are ey are designed to raise, are a divine love and religious fear. particular beauty of the speeches in the third book, consists in that shortness and perspicuity of style, in which the poet has couched the greatest mysteries of Christianity, and drawn together in a regular scheme, the whole dispensation of Providence with respect to man. He has represented all the abstruse doctrines of predestination, free-will, and grace, as also the great points of the incarnation and redemption (which naturally grow up in a poem that treats of the fall of man), with great energy of expression, and in a clearer and stronger light than I ever met with in any other writer. As these points are dry in themselves to the generality of readers, the concise and clear manner in which he has treated them is very much to be admired, as is likewise that particular art which he has made use of in the interspersing of all those graces of poetry which the subject was capable of receiving. The survey of the whole creation, and of every thing that is transacted in it, is a prospect worthy of Omniscience, and as much above that in which Virgil has drawn his Jupiter, as the Christian idea "Now had the Almighty Father from above Satan's approach to the confines of the creation is finely imaged in the beginning of the speech which immediately follows. The effects of this speech in the blessed spirits, and in the divine person to whom it was addressed, cannot but fill the mind of the reader with a secret pleasure and com placency: "Thus while God spake, ambrosial fragrance fill'd Beyond compare the Son of God was seen Love without end, and without measure grace." If Milton's majesty forsakes him any where, it is in those parts of his poem where the divine persons jare introduced as speakers. One may, I think, obHerve, that the author proceeds with a kind of fear I need not point out the beauty of that circumed trembling, whilst he describes the sentiments of stance, wherein the whole host of angels are repreDe Almighty. He dares not give his imagination sented as standing mute; nor show how proper the a full play, but chooses to confine himself to such occasion was to produce such a silence in heaven. ughts as are drawn from the books of the most The close of this divine colloquy, with the hymn of thodox divines, and to such expressions as may angels that follows upon it, are so wonderfully beaumet with in Scripture. The beauties, therefore, tiful and poetical, that I should not forbear inserting the whole passage, if the bounds of my paper would other supernatural power capable of producing it. give me leave: "No sooner had the Almighty ceas'd but all Satan's walk upon the outside of the universe, which at a distance appeared to him of a globular form, but upon his nearer approach looked like an unbounded plain, is natural and noble; as his roaming upon the frontiers of the creation, between that mass of matter which was wrought into a world and that shapeless unformed heap of materials which still lay in chaos and confusion, strikes the imagination with something astonishingly great and wild. I have before spoken of the Limbo of Vanity, which the poet places upon this outermost surface of the universe, and shall here explain myself more at large on that and other parts of the poem, which are of the same shadowy nature. Aristotle observes that the fable of an epic poem should abound in circumstances that are both credible and astonishing; or, as the French critics choose to phrase it, the fable should be filled with the probable and the marvellous. This rule is as fine and just as any in Aristotle's whole Art of Poetry. If the fable is only probable, it differs nothing from a true history; if it is only marvellous, it is no better than a romance. The great secret, therefore, of heroic poetry, is to relate such circumstances as may produce in the reader at the same time both belief and astonishment. This is brought to pass in a well-chosen fable, by the account of such things as have really happened, or at least of such things as have happened according to the received opinions of mankind. Milton's fable is a master-piece of this nature: as the war in heaven, the condition of the fallen angels, the state of innocence, the temptation of the serpent and the fall of man; though they are very astonishing in themselves, and are not only credible, but actual points of faith. per The spears and arrows grow of themselves without Satan, after having long wandered upon the surface, or outmost wall of the universe, discovers at last a wide gap in it, which led into the creation, and is described as the opening through which the angels pass to and fro into the lower world, upon their errands to mankind. His sitting upon the brink of this passage, and taking a survey of the whole face of nature that appeared to him new and fresh in all its beauties, with the simile illustrating the circumstance, fills the mind of the reader with as surprising and glorious an idea as any that arises in the whole poem. He looks down into that vast hollow of the universe with the eye, or (as Milton calls it in his first book) with the ken of an angel. He surveys all the wonders in the immense amper theatre that lie between both the poles of heaven, and takes in at one view the whole round of the creation His flight between the several worlds that shined The next method of reconciling miracles with credibility, is by a happy invention of the poet; as in particular, when he introduces agents of a superior nature, who are capable of effecting what is wonderful, and what is not to be met with in the ordinary course of things. Ulysses' ship being turned into a rock, and Æneas's fleet into a shoal of water nymphs, though they are very surprising accidents, are nevertheless probable when we are told, that they were the gods who thus transformed them, It is this kind of machinery which fills the poems both of Homer and Virgil with such circum-on every side of him, with the particular description stances as are wonderful but not impossible, and so frequently produce in the reader the most pleasing passion that can rise in the mind of man, which is admiration. If there be any instance in the Æneid liable to exception upon this account, it is in the beginning of the third book, where Æneas is represented as tearing up the myrtle that dropped blood. To qualify this wonderful circumstance, Polydorus tells a story from the root of the myrtle, that the barbarous inhabitants of the country having pierced him with spears and arrows, the wood which was left in his body took root in his wounds, and gave birth to that bleeding tree. This circumstance seems to have the marvellous without the probable, because it is represented as proceeding from natural causes, without the interposition of any god, or of the sun, are set forth in all the wantonness of a luxuriant imagination. His shape, speech, and be haviour upon his transforming himself into an angel of light, are touched with exquisite beauty. The poet thoughts of directing Satan to the sun, which, the vulgar opinion of mankind, is the most consp cuous part of the creation, and the placing in in angel, is a circumstance very finely contrived, ana the more adjusted to a poetical probability, as it was a received doctrine among the most famous philom phers, that every orb had its intelligence; and as an apostle in sacred writ is said to have seen such an angel in the sun. In the answer which this ange returns to the disguised evil spirit, there is such becoming majesty as is altogether suitable to a su perior being. The part of it in which he represent himself as present at the creation, is very noble in itself, and not only proper where it is introduced, but requisite to prepare the reader for what follows in the seventh book: I saw when at his word the formless mass, In the following part of the speech he points out the earth with such circumstances, that the reader can scarce forbear fancying himself employed on the same distant view of it: "Look downward on that globe, whose hither side I must not conclude my reflections upon this third book of Paradise Lost, without taking notice of that celebrated complaint of Milton with which it opens, and which certainly deserves all the praises that have been given it; though, as I have before hunted, it may rather be looked upon as an excrescence, than as an essential part of the poem. The Bame observation might be applied to that beautiful digression upon hypocrisy in the same book. L. No. 316.] MONDAY, MARCH 3, 1711-12. VIRG. Ecl. i. 28. Freedom, which came at length, though slow to come. "MR. SPECTATOR, "If you ever read a letter which is sent with the more pleasure for the reality of its complaints, this may have reason to hope for a favourable acceptince; and if time be the most irretrievable loss, the Jegrets which follow will be thought, I hope, the most justifiable. The regaining of my liberty from As I am like to be but of little use whilst I live, I am resolved to do what good I can after my decease; and have accordingly ordered my bones to be disposed of in this manner for the good of my countrymen, who are troubled with two exorbitant a degree of fire. All fox-hunters, upon wearing me, would in a short time be brought to endure their beds in a morning, and perhaps even quit them with regret at ten. Instead of hurrying away to tease a poor animal, and run away from their own thoughts, a chair or a chariot would be thought the most desirable means of performing a remove from one place to another. I should be a cure for the unnatural desire of John Trot for dancing, and a specific to lessen the inclination Mrs. Fidget has to motion, and cause her always to give her approbation to the present place she is in. In fine, no Egyptian mummy was ever half so useful in physic, as I should be to these feverish constitutions, to repress the violent sallies of youth, and give each action its proper weight and repose. " I can stifle any violent inclination, and oppose a torrent of anger, or the solicitations of revenge, with success. Indolence is a stream which flows slowly on, but yet undermines the foundation of every virtue. A vice of a more lively nature were a more desirable tyrant than this rust of the mind, which gives a tincture of its nature to every action of one's life. It were as little hazard to be lost in a storm, as to lie thus perpetually becalmed; and it is to no purpose to have within one the seeds of a thousand good qualities, if we want the vigour and resolution necessary for the exerting them. Death brings all persons back to an equality; and this image of it, this slumber of the mind, leaves no difference between the greatest genius and the meanest understanding. A faculty of doing things remarkably praiseworthy, thus concealed, is of no more use to the owner, than a heap of gold to the man who dares not use it. "To-morrow is still the fatal time when all is to long state of indolence and inactivity, and the de- be rectified. To-morrow comes, it goes, and still I ure of resisting the further encroachments of idle- please myself with the shadow, whilst I lose the Ress, make me apply to you; and the uneasiness reality: unmindful that the present time alone is With which I recollect the past years, and the apprebeusion with which I expect the future, soon deterune me to it. Idleness is so general a distemper, What I cannot but imagine a speculation on this subynct will be of universal use. "The time we live ought not to be computed by There is hardly any the number of years, but by the use that has been one person without some allay of it; and thousands made of it: thus, it is not the extent of ground, but besides myself spend more time in an idle uncer- the yearly rent, which gives the value to the estate. talaty which to begin first of two affairs, than would Wretched and thoughtless creatures, in the only have been sufficient to have ended them both. The ours, the future is yet unborn, and the past is dead, and can only live (as parents in their children) in the actions it has produced. Decasion of this seems to be the want of some neces- place where covetousness were a virtue, we turn uneasiness, nor have there been so many devices for prodigals! Nothing lies upon our hands with such any one thing, as to make it slide away imperceptibly and to no purpose. A shilling shall be hoarded my time distinguished into portions, some for busi- up with care, whilst that which is above the price Less, and others for the indulging of pleasures; but of an estate is flung away with disregard and conhow one face of indolence overspreads the whole, tempt. There is nothing now-a-days so much and I have no land-mark to direct myself by. Were avoided as a solicitous improvement of every part one's time a little straitened by business, like water of time; it is a report must be shunned as one Kuclosed in its banks, it would have some determined course; but unless it be put into some channel it has no current, but becomes a deluge without either e or motion. "When Scanderbeg, prince of Epirus, was dead, who can think either Socrates or Demosthenes lost tenders the name of a wit and a fine genius, and as one fears the dreadful character of a laborious plodder: but notwithstanding this, the greatest wits any age has produced thought far otherwise; for Turks, who had but too often felt the force of any reputation, by their continued pains both in Warm in the battles he had won from them, ima- overcoming the defects and improving the gifts of ned that by wearing a piece of his bones near their nature? All are acquainted with the labour and assiduity with which Tully acquired his eloquence. Seneca in his letters to Lucilius assures him, there wart, they should be animated with a vigour and ce like to that which inspired him when living. |