artisan for my antagonist? That I, who have overthrown the princes of Lacedæmon, must now see myself in danger of being defeated by a brewer? What will the world say of the goddess that presides over you, should they suppose you follow her dictates? would they think she acted like herself, like the great Minerva? would they now say, she inspires her sons with wisdom? or would they not rather say, she has a second time chosen owls for her favourites? But, O ye men of Athens, what has this man done to deserve your voices? You say he is honest; I believe it, and therefore he shall brew for me. You say he is assiduous in his calling; and is he not grown rich by it? let him have your custom, but not your votes: you are now to cast your eyes on those who can detect the artifices of the common enemy, that can disappoint your secret foes in council, and your open ones in the field. Let it not avail my competitor, that he has been tapping his liquors, while I have been spilling my blood; that he has been gathering hops for you, while I have been reaping laurels. Have I not borne the dust and heat of the day, while he has been sweating at the furnace? behold these scars, behold this wound, which still bleeds in your service; what can Taureas show you of this nature? What are his marks of honour? Has he any other wound about him, except the accidental scaldings of his wort, or bruises from the tub or barrel? Let it not, O Athenians, let it not be said, that your generals have conquered themselves into your displeasure, and lost your favour by gaining you victories. Shall those achievements that have redeemed the present age from slavery, be undervalued by those who feel the benefits of them ? Shall those names that have made your city the glory of the whole earth, be mentioned in it with obloquy and detraction? Will not your posterity blush at their forefathers, when they shall read in the annals of their country, that Alcibiades, in the 90th Olympiad, after having conquered the Lacedæmonians, and recovered Byzantium, contended for a prize against Taureas the brewer? The competition is dishonourable, the defeat would be shameful. I shall not, however, slacken my endeavours for the security of my country. If she is ungrateful, she is still Athens. On the contrary, as she will stand more in need of defence, when she has so degenerate a people; I will pursue my victories till such time as it shall be out of your power to hurt your selves, and that you may be in safety even under your present leaders. But oh! thou genius of Athens, whither art thou fled? Where is now the race of those glorious spirits that perished at the battle of Thermopyle, and fought upon the plains of Marathon? Are you weary of conquering, or have you forgotten the oath which you took at Agraulos, 'That you would look upon the bounds of Attica to be those soils only which are incapable of bearing wheat and barley, vines and olives?' Consider your enemies the Lacedæmonians; did you ever hear that they preferred a coffee-man to Agesilaus? No, though their generals have been unfortunate, though they have lost several battles, though they have not been able to cope with the troops of Athens, which I have conducted; they are comforted and condoled, nay, celebrated and extolled, by their fellow-citizens. Their generals have been received with honour after their defeat, yours with ignominy after conquest. Are there not men of Taureas's temper and character, who tremble in their hearts at the name of the Great King of Persia? who have been against entering into a war with him, or for making a peace upon base conditions? that have grudged those contributions which have set our country at the head of all the governments of Greece? that would dishonour those who have raised her to such a pitch of glory? that would betray those liberties which your fathers in all ages have purchased or recovered with their blood? and would prosecute your fellowcitizens with as much rigour and fury, as of late years we have attacked the common enemy? I shall trouble you no more, O ye men of Athens; you know my actions, let my antagonist relate what he has done for you. Let him proluce his vats and tubs, in opposition to the heaps of arms and standards which were employed against you, and which I have wrested out of the hands of your enemies. And when this is done, let him be brought into the field of election upon his dray-cart; and if I can finish my conquest sooner, I will not fail to meet him there in a triumphant chariot. But, O ye gods! let not the king of Persia laugh at the fall of Alcibiades! Let him not say, 'The Athenians have avenged me upon their own generals;' or let me be rather struck dead by the hand of a Lacedæmonian, than disgraced by the voices of my fellow-citizens." No. 4. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 5. Satis eloquentiæ sapientiæ parum. SALLUST. HUDIBRAS has defined nonsense (as Cowley does wit) by negatives. Nonsense, (says he,) is that which is neither true nor false. These two great properties of nonsense, which are always essential to it, give it such a peculiar advantage over all other writings, that it is incapable of being either answered or contradicted. It stands upon its own basis like a rock of adamant, secured by its natural situation against all conquests or attacks. There is no one place about it weaker than another, to favour an enemy in his approaches. The major and the minor are of equal strength. Its questions admit of no reply, and its assertions are not to be invalidated. A man may as well hope to distinguish colours in the midst of darkness, as to find out what to approve and disapprove in nonsense; you may as well assault an army that is buried in intrenchments. If it affirms anything, you cannot lay hold of it; or if it denies, you cannot confute it. In a word, there are greater depths and obscurities, greater intricacies and perplexities, in an elaborate and well-written piece of nonsense, than in the most abstruse and profound tract of school-divinity. After this short panegyric upon nonsense, which may appear as extravagant to an ordinary reader, as Erasmus's Encomium of Folly, I must here solemnly protest, that I, have not done it to curry favour with my antagonist, or to reflect any praise in an oblique manner upon the Letter to the Examiner: I have no private considerations to warp me in this controversy, since my first entering upon it. But before I proceed any further, because it may be of great use to me in this dispute to state the whole nature of nonsense, and because 'tis a subject entirely new, I must take notice that there are two kinds of it, viz. high nonsense and low nonsense. Low nonsense is the talent of a cold, phlegmatic temper, that in a poor, dispirited style creeps along servilely through darkness and confusion. A writer of this complexion gropes his way softly amongst self-contradictions, and grovels in absurdities. Videri vult pauper, et est pauper. He has neither wit nor sense, and pretends to none. On the contrary, your high nonsense blusters and makes a noise, it stalks upon hard words, and rattles through polysyllables. It is loud and sonorous, smooth and periodical. It has something in it like manliness and force, and makes one think of the name of Sir Hercules Nonsense in the play called the Nest of Fools. In a word, your high nonsense has a majestic appearance, and wears a most tremendous garb, like Esop's ass clothed in a lion's skin. When Aristotle lay upon his death-bed, and was asked whom he would appoint for his successor in his school, two of his scholars being candidates for it; he called for two different sorts of wine, and by the character which he gave of them, denoted the different qualities and perfections that showed themselves in the style and writings of each of the competitors. As rational writings have been represented by wine, I shall represent those kinds of writings we are now speaking of by small-beer. Low nonsense is like that in the barrel, which is altogether flat, tasteless, and insipid. High nonsense is like that in the bottle, which has in reality no more strength and spirit than the other, but frets, and flies, and bounces, and, by the help of a little wind that is got into it, imitates the passions of a much nobler liquor. We meet with a low grovelling nonsense in every Grub Street production; but I think there are none of our present writers who have hit the sublime in nonsense, besides Dr. S―—————————l in divinity, and the author of this letter in politics; between whose characters in their respective professions, there seems to be a very nice resemblance. There is still another qualification in nonsense which I must not pass over, being that which gives it the last finishing and perfection, and eminently discovers itself in the Letter to the Examiner. This is when an author without any meaning, seems to have it; and so imposes upon us by the sound and ranging of his words, that one is apt to fancy they signify something. Any one who reads this letter, as he goes through it, will lie under the same delusion; but after having read it, let him consider what he has learnt from it, and he will immediately discover the deceit. I did not, indeed, at first imagine there was in it such a jargon of ideas, 66 66 such an inconsistency of notions, such a confusion of particles, that rather puzzle than connect the sense, which in some places he seems to have aimed at, as I found upon my nearer perusal of it: nevertheless, as nobody writes a book without meaning something, though he may not have the faculty of writing consequentially, and expressing his meaning; I think I have, with a great deal of attention and difficulty, found out what this gentleman would say had he the gift of utterance. The system of his politics, when disembroiled and cleared of all those incoherences and independent matters that are woven into this motley piece, will be as follows. The conduct of the late ministry is considered first of all in respect to foreign affairs, and secondly, to domestic: as to the first, he tells us, that "the motives which engaged Britain in the present war, were both wise and generous; so that the ministry is cleared as to that particular. These motives, he tells us, were to restore the Spanish monarchy to the house of Austria, and to regain a barrier for Holland. The last of these two motives," he says, was effectually answered by the reduction of the Netherlands in the year 1706, or might have been so by the concessions which it is notorious that the enemy offered.” So that the ministry are here blamed for not contenting themselves with the barrier they had gained in the year 1706, nor with the concessions which the enemy then offered. The other motive of our entering into the war, viz. "The restoring the Spanish monarchy to the house of Austria," he tells us, "remained still in its full force; and we were told," says he, "that though the barrier of Holland was secured, the trade of Britain, and the balance of power in Europe, would be still precarious: Spain, therefore, must be conquered." He then loses himself in matter foreign to his purpose; but what he endeavours in the sequel of his discourse, is to show, that we have not taken the proper method to recover the Spanish monarchy; "that the whole stress of the war has been wantonly laid where France is best able to keep us at bay;" that the French king has made it impossible for himself to give up Spain, and that the duke of Anjou has made it as impossible for us to conquer it: nay, "that instead of regaining Spain, we shall find the duke of Anjou in a condition to pay the debt of gratitude, and support the grandfather in his declining years, by whose arms, in the days of his infancy, he was upheld." He then |