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VARIOUS READINGS.

Stanza the first, verse the first. And changing.] The and in some manuscripts is written thus, &, but that in the Cotton Library writes in it three distinct letters.

Verse the second. Nor e'er would.] Aldus reads it ever would; but as this would hurt the metre, we have restored it to its genuine reading, by observing that synæresis which had been neglected by ignorant transcribers.

Ibid. In my heart.] Scaliger and others, on my heart. Verse the fourth. I found a dart.] The Vatican manuscript for I reads it, but this must have been the hallucination of the transcriber, who probably mistook the dash of the I for a T.

Stanza the second, verse the second. The fatal stroke.] Scioppius, Salmasius, and many others, for the read a, but I have stuck to the usual reading.

Verse the third. Till by her wit.] Some manuscripts have it his wit, others your, others their wit. But as I find Corinna to be the name of a woman in other authors, I cannot doubt but it should be her.

Stanza the third, verse the first. A long and lasting anguish.] The German manuscript reads a lasting passion, but the rhyme will not admit it.

Verse the second. For Belvidera I endure.] Did not all the manuscripts reclaim, I should change Belvidera into Pelvidera; Pelvis being used by several of the ancient comic writers for a looking-glass, by which means the etymology of the word is very visible, and Pelvidera will signify a lady who often looks in her glass, as indeed she had very good reason, if she had all those beauties which our poet here ascribes to her.

Verse the third. Hourly I sigh and hourly languish.] Some for the word hourly read daily, and others nightly; the last has great authorities of its side. Verse the fourth, The wonted cure.] reads wanted cure.

The elder Stevens

Stanza the fourth, verse the second. After a thousand beauties.] In several copies we meet with a hundred beauties, by the usual error of the transcribers, who probably omitted a cypher, and had not taste enough to know, that

the word thousand was ten times a greater compliment to the poet's mistress than an hundred.

Verse the fourth. And finds variety in one.] Most of the ancient manuscripts have it in two. Indeed so many of them concur in this last reading, that I am very much in doubt whether it ought not to take place. There are but two reasons which incline me to the reading, as I have published it; first, because the rhyme, and, secondly, because the sense is preserved by it. It might likewise proceed from the oscitancy of transcribers, who, to despatch their work the sooner, used to write all numbers in cypher, and seeing the figure 1 followed by a little dash of the pen, as is customary in old manuscripts, they perhaps mistook the dash for a second figure, and by casting up both together composed out of them the figure 2. But this I shall leave to the learned, without determining anything in a matter of so great uncertainty.1

No. 471. SATURDAY, AUGUST 30.

Ἐν ἐλπίσιν χρὴ τοὺς σοφοὺς ἔχειν βίον. ΕURIP.

THE time present seldom affords sufficient employment to the mind of man. Objects of pain or pleasure, love or admiration, do not lie thick enough together in life to keep the soul in constant action, and supply an immediate exercise to its faculties. In order, therefore, to remedy this defect, that the mind may not want business, but always have materials for thinking, she is endowed with certain powers, that can recall what is past, and anticipate what is to come.

That wonderful faculty, which we call the memory, is perpetually looking back, when we have nothing present to entertain us. It is like those repositories in several animals, that are filled with stores of their former food, on which they may ruminate when their present pasture fails.

As the memory relieves the mind in her vacant moments, and prevents any chasms of thought by ideas of what is

1 Mr. Addison knew how to proportion the expense of his wit to the worth of his subject. There is more good sense, as well as true humour, in this little paper, than in the long laboured work of St. Hyacinth, which goes under the name of "Le Chef d'œuvre d'un Inconnu."

past, we have other faculties that agitate and employ her upon what is to come. These are the passions of hope and

fear.

By these two passions we reach forward into futurity, and bring up to our present thoughts objects that lie hid in the remotest depths of time. We suffer misery, and enjoy hap piness, before they are in being; we can set the sun and stars forward, or lose sight of them by wandering into those retired parts of eternity, when the heavens and earth shall be no more.

By the way, who can imagine that the existence of a creature is to be circumscribed by time, whose thoughts are not? But I shall, in this paper, confine myself to that particular passion which goes by the name of hope.

Our actual enjoyments are so few and transient, that man would be a very miserable being, were he not endowed with this passion, which gives him a taste of those good things that may possibly come into his possession. "We should hope for everything that is good, (says the old poet Linus,) because there is nothing which may not be hoped for, and nothing but what the gods are able to give us." Hope quickens all the still parts of life, and keeps the mind awake in her most remiss and indolent hours. It gives habitual serenity and good humour. It is a kind of vital heat in the soul, that cheers and gladdens her, when she does not attend to it. It makes pain easy, and labour pleasant.

Besides these several advantages which rise from hope, there is another which is none of the least, and that is, its great efficacy in preserving us from setting too high a value on present enjoyments. The saying of Cæsar is very well known. When he had given away all his estate in gratuities among his friends, one of them asked what he had left for himself; to which that great man replied, Hope. His natural magnanimity hindered him from prizing what he was certainly possessed of, and turned all his thoughts upon something more valuable that he had in view. I question not but every reader will draw a moral from this story, and apply it to himself without my direction.

The old story of Pandora's box (which many of the learned believe was formed among the heathens upon the tradition of the fall of man) shows us how deplorable a state they thought the present life without hope. To set forth the

utmost condition of misery, they tell us that our forefather, according to the pagan theology, had a great vessel presented him by Pandora: upon his lifting up the lid of it, says the fable, there flew out all the calamities and distempers incident to men, from which, till that time, they had been altogether exempt. Hope, who had been enclosed in the cup with so much bad company, instead of flying off with the rest, stuck so close to the lid of it, that it was shut down upon her.

I shall make but two reflections upon what I have hitherto said. First, that no kind of life is so happy as that which is full of hope, especially when the hope is well grounded, and when the object of it is of an exalted kind, and in its nature proper to make the person happy who enjoys it. This proposition must be very evident to those who consider how few are the present enjoyments of the most happy man, and how insufficient to give him an entire satisfaction and acquiescence in them.

My next observation is this, that a religious life is that which most abounds in a well-grounded hope, and such an one as is fixed on objects that are capable of making us entirely happy. This hope in a religious man, is much more sure and certain than the hope of any temporal blessing, as it is strengthened not only by reason, but by faith. It has at the same time its eye perpetually fixed on that state, which implies in the very notion of it the most full and most complete happiness.

I have before shown how the influence of hope in general sweetens life, and makes our present condition supportable, if not pleasing; but a religious hope has still greater advantages. It does not only bear up the mind under her sufferings, but makes her rejoice in them, as they may be the instruments of procuring her the great and ultimate end of all her hope.

Religious hope has likewise this advantage above any other kind of hope, that it is able to revive the dying man, and to fill his mind not only with secret comfort and refreshment, but sometimes with rapture and transport. He triumphs in his agonies, whilst the soul springs forward with delight to the great object which she has always had in view, and leaves the body with an expectation of being re-united to her in a glorious and joyful resurrection.

I shall conclude this essay with those emphatical expressions of a lively hope, which the psalmist made use of in the midst of those dangers and adversities which surrounded him; for the following passage had its present and personal, as well as its future and prophetic, sense. "I have set the Lord always before me: because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth: my flesh also shall rest in hope. For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt thou suffer thine holy one to see corruption. Thou wilt show me the path of life in thy presence is fulness of joy, and at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore."1

No. 475. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 4.

-Quæ res in se neque consilium neque modum
Habet ullum, eam consilio regere non potes.

TER.

Ir is an old observation, which has been made of politicians who would rather ingratiate themselves with their sovereign, than promote his real service, that they accommodate their counsels to his inclinations, and advise him to such actions only as his heart is naturally set upon. The privy-counsellor of one in love must observe the same conduct, unless he would forfeit the friendship of the person who desires his advice. I have known several odd cases of this nature. Hipparchus was going to marry a common woman, but being resolved to do nothing without the advice of his friend Philander, he consulted him upon the occasion. Philander told him his mind freely, and represented his mistress to him in such strong colours, that the next morning he received a challenge for his pains, and before twelve o'clock was run through the body by the man who had asked his advice. Celia was more prudent on the like occasion; she desired Leonilla to give her opinion freely upon a young fellow who made his addresses to her. Leonilla, to oblige her,

This paper seems to be made up of such casual hints as occurred to the writer at the time of composing it. But the subject of futurity warmed the breast of this good man, and gave to his expression a force and spirit which we do not always find in his more laboured discourses on moral subjects.

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