Criminibus debent hortos. Juv. Sat. i. 75. A beauteous garden, but by vice maintain'd. am sensible I have no pretensions to this fa-, No. 383.] Tuesday, May 20, 1712. As I was sitting in my chamber, and thinking on a subject for my next Spectator, I heard two or three irregular bounces at my landlady's door, and upon the opening of it, a loud cheerful voice inquiring whether the philosopher was at home. The child who went to the door answered very innocently, that he did not lodge there. I immediately recollected that it was my good friend sir Roger's voice; and The Spectator writes often in an elegant, ter to Spring-garden,* in case it proved a geod that I had promised to go with him on the waoften in an argumentative, and often in a sublime style with equal success; but how would evening. The knight put me in mind of my it hurt the reputed author of that paper to own, told me, that if I was speculating, he would promise from the bottom of the staircase, but that of the most beautiful pieces under his title he is barely the publisher? There is nothing stay below till I had done. Upon my coming but what a man really performs can be an ho- down, I found all the children of the family nour to him; what he takes more than he ought got about my old friend; and my landlady in the eye of the world, he loses in the convic-herself, who is a notable prating gossip ention of his own heart; and a man must lose his gaged in a conference with him; being mighticonsciousness, that is, his very self, before he y pleased with his stroking her little boy on the head, and bidding him to be a good child can rejoice in any falsehood without inward and mind his book. mortification. Who has not seen a very criminal at the bar, when his counsel and friends have done all that they could for him in vain, prevail on the whole assembly to pity him, and his judge to recommend his case to the mercy of the throne, without offering any thing new in his defence, but that he, whom before we wished convicted, became so out of his own mouth, and took upon himself all the shame and sorrow we were just before preparing for him? The great opposition to this kind of candour arises from the unjust idea people ordinarily have of what we call a high spirit. It is far from greatness of spirit to persist in the wrong in any thing; nor is it a diminution of greatness of spirit to have been in the wrong. Perfection is not the attribute of man, therefore he is not degraded by the acknowledgment of an imperfection; but it is the work of little minds to imitate the fortitude of great spirits on worthy occasions, by obstinacy in the wrong. This obstinacy prevails so far upon them, that they make it extend to the defence of faults in their very servants. It would swell this paper to too great a length should I insert all the quarrels and debates which are now on foot in this town; where one party, and in some cases both, is sensible of being on the faulty side, and have not spirit enough to acknowledge it. Among the ladies the case is very common; for there are very few of them who know that it is to maintain a true and high spirit, to throw away from it all which itself disapproves, and to scorn so pitiful a shame, as that which disables the heart from acquiring a liberality of affections and sentiments. The candid mind, by acknowledging and discharging its faults, has reason and truth for the foundation of all its passions and desires, and consequently is happy and simple; the disingenuous spirit, by indulgence of one unacknowledged error, is entangled with an after-life of guilt, sorrow, and perplexity. T. it, We were no sooner come to the Templestairs, but we were surrounded with a crowd vices. Sir Roger, after having looked about of watermen, offering us their respective serhim very attentively, spied one with a wooden leg, and immediately gave him orders to get his boat ready. As we were walking towards make use of any body to row me, that has 'You must know,' says Sir Roger, 'I never not either lost a leg or an arm. I would rather bate him a few strokes of his oar than not employ an honest man that has been wounded in the queen's service. If I was a not put a fellow in my livery that had not a lord or a bishop, and kept a barge, I would wooden leg.' My old friend, after having seated himself, and trimmed the boat with his coachman, who, being a very sober man, always serves for ballast on these occasions, we made the best of our way for Vauxhall. Sir Roger obliged the waterman to give us the history of his right leg; and, hearing that he had left it at La that glorious action, the knight, in the triumph Hogue, with many particulars which passed in of his heart, made several reflections on the greatness of the British nation; as. that one Englishman could beat three Frenchmen; that we could never be in danger of popery so long as we took care of our fleet; that the Thames was the noblest river in Europe; that London bridge was a greater piece of work than any of the seven wonders of the world; with many other honest prejudices which naturally cleave to the heart of a true English man. After some short pause, the old knight turning about his head twice or thrice, to take a survey of this great metropolis, bid me observe how thick the city was set with churches, and that there was scarce a single steeple on this * Or Vauxhall. . side Temple-bar. A most heathenish sight!' says sir Roger: there is no religion at this end of the town. The fifty new churches will very much mend the prospect; but church-work is slow, church-work is slow.' of the place, told the mistress of the house, who sat at the bar, that he should be a better customer to her garden, if there were more nightingales and fewer strumpets. I. No. 384.] Wednesday, May 21, 1712. who have so often since the chevalier de St. George's Hague, May 24, N. S. The same republican hands, recovery killed him in our public prints, have now reduced the young dauphin of France to that desperate conjecture what method they will take to bring him to condition of weakness, and death itself, that it is hard to life again. Mean time we are assured, by a very good hand from Paris, that on the 20th instant this young prince was as well as ever he was known to be since the day of ghost, we suppose (for they never had the modesty to his birth. As for the other, they are now sending his contradict their assertion of his death,) to Commerei in Lorrain, attended only by four gentlemen, and a few domestics of little consideration. The Baron de Bothmar having delivered in his credentials to qualify him as an ambassador to this state (an office to which his greatest enemies will acknowledge him to be equal,) is gone to Utrecht, whence he will proceed to Hanover, but not stay long at that court, for fear the peace should be made I do not remember I have any where mentioned in sir Roger's character, his custom of saluting every body that passes by him with a good-morrow, or a good-night. This the old man does out of the overflowings of his hu manity; though, at the same time, it renders him so popular among all his country neigh bours, that it is thought to have gone a good way in making him once or twice knight of the shire. He cannot forbear this exercise of benevolence even in town, when he meets with any one in his morning or evening walk. It broke from him to several boats that passed by us on the water; but, to the knight's great surprise, as he gave the good-night to two or three young fellows a little before our landing, one of them, instead of returning the civility, asked us, what queer old put we had in the boat, and whether he was not ashamed to go a wenching at his years? with a great deal of I SHOULD be thought not able to read should the like Thames-ribaldry. Sir Roger seemed I overlook some excellent pieces lately come a little shocked at first, but at length assum-out. My lord bishop of St. Asapht has just ing a face of magistracy, told us, that if he now published some sermons, the preface to were a Middlesex justice, he would make such vagrants know that her majesty's subjects were no more to be abused by water than by land. We were now arrived at Spring-garden, which is exquisitely pleasant at this time of the year. When I considered the fragrancy of the walks and bowers, with the choirs of birds, that sung upon the trees, and the loose tribe of people that walked under their shades, I could not but look upon the place as a kind of Mahometan paradise. Sir Roger told me it put him in mind of a little coppice by his house in the country, which his chaplain used to call an aviary of nightingales. You must understand,' says the knight, ' that there is nothing in the world that pleases a man in love so much as your nightingale. Ah, Mr. Spectator, the many moon-light nights that I have walked by myself, and thought on the widow by the music of the nightingale! Here he fetched a deep sigh, and was falling into a fit of musing, when a mask, who came behind him, gave him a gentle tap upon the shoulder, and asked him if he would drink a bottle of mead with her? But the knight being startled at so unexpected a familiarity, and displeased to be interrupted in his thoughts of the widow, told her she was a wanton baggage; and bid her go about her business. during his lamentable absence.'-Post-Boy, May 20. which seems to me to determine a great point. He has, like a good man, and a good Christian, in opposition to all the flattery and base submission of false friends to princes, asserted, that Christianity left us where it found us as to our civil rights. The present entertainment shall consist only of a sentence out of the Post-Boy, and the said preface of the lord of St. Asaph. I should think it a little odd if the author of the Post-Boy should with impunity call men republicans for a gladness on the report of the death of the pretender; and treat baron Bothmar, the minister of Hanover, in such a manner as you see in my motto. I must own, I think every man in England concerned to support the succession of that family. The publishing a few sermons, whilst I live, the latest of which was preached about eight years since, and the first above seventeen, will make it very natural for people to inquire into the occasion of doing so; and to such I do very willingly assign these following reasons: First, from the observations I have been able to make for these many years last past upon our public affairs, and from the natural tendency of several principles and practices, that have of late been studiously revived, and from what has followed thereupon, I could We concluded our walk with a glass of Bur- not help both fearing and presaging, that ton ale, and a slice of hung beef. When we these nations should some time or other, if had done eating ourselves, the knight called ever we should have an enterprising prince a waiter to him, and bid him carry the remain- upon the throne, of more ambition than virder to the waterman that had but one leg. Itue, justice, and true honour, fall into the perceived the fellow stared upon him at the way of all other nations, and lose their li oddness of the message, and was going to be berty. saucy; upon which I ratified the knight's commands with a peremptory look. Nor could I help foreseeing to whose As we were going out of the garden, my old friend thinking himself obliged, as a member here for the Hanoverian family. of the quorum, to animadvert upon the morals! VOL. II. Ambassador from Hanover, and afterwards agent N Dr. William Fleetwood. charge a great deal of this dreadful mischief, lived to see their illustrious names very rudely whenever it should happen, would be laid; handled, and the great benefits they did this whether justly or unjustly, was not my busi-nation treated slightly and contemptuously. I ness to determine; but I resolved, for my own have lived to see our deliverance from arbiparticular part, to deliver myself, as well as trary power and popery traduced and vilified I could, from the reproaches and the curses of by some who formerly thought it was their posterity, by publicly declaring to all the greatest merit, and made it part of their boast world, that, although in the constant course and glory to have had a little hand and share of my ministry I have never failed, on proper in bringing it about; and others who, withoccasions, to recommend, urge, and insist out it, must have lived in exile, poverty, and upon the loving, honouring, and reverencing misery, meanly disclaiming it, and using ill the prince's person, and holding it, according the glorious instruments thereof. Who could to the laws, inviolable and sacred; and pay-expect such a requital of such merit? I have, ing all obedience and submission to the laws, I own it, an ambition of exempting myself though never so hard and inconvenient to pri- from the number of unthankful people: and vate people yet did I never think myself as I loved and honoured those great princes at liberty, or authorized to tell the people, living, and lamented over them when dead, that either Christ, St. Peter, or St. Paul, or Iso I would gladly raise them up a monument any other holy writer, had, by any doctrine of praise as lasting as any thing of mine delivered by them, subverted the laws and can be; and I choose to do it at this time, constitutions of the country in which they when it is so unfashionable a thing to speak lived, or put them in a worse condition, with honourably of thein. respect to their civil liberties, than they would The sermon that was preached upon the have been had they not been Christians. I duke of Gloucester's death was printed quickly ever thought it a most impious blasphemy after, and is now, because the subject was so against that holy religion, to father any thing suitable, joined to the others. The loss of that upon it that might encourage tyranny, op-most promising and hopeful prince was at pression, or injustice in a prince, or that that time, I saw, unspeakably great; and easily tended to make a free and happy peo- many accidents since have convinced us that ple slaves and miserable. No people may it could not have been overvalued. That premake themselves as wretched as they will, but cious life, had it pleased God to have prolonglet not God be called into that wicked party. ed it the usual space, had saved us many fears When force and violence, and hard necessity, and jealousies, and dark distrusts, and prehave brought the yoke of servitude upon a vented many alarms, that have long kept us, people's neck, religion will supply them with and will keep us still, waking and uneasy. a patient and submissive spirit under it till Nothing remained to comfort and support they can innocently shake it off: but certain- us under this heavy stroke, but the necesly religion never puts it on. This always was, sity it brought the king and nation under and this at present is, my judgment of these of settling the succession in the house of matters: and I would be transmitted to pos- Hanover, and giving it an hereditary right terity (for the little share of time such names by act of parliament, as long as it continues as mine can live) under the character of one protestant. So much good did God, in his who loved his country, and would be thought merciful providence, produce from a misfora good Englishman, as well as a good clergy-tune, which we could never otherwise have sufficiently deplored! man. 'This character I thought would be transmitted by the following sermons, which were made for and preached in a private audience, when I could think of nothing else but doing my duty on the occasions that were then of fered by God's providence, without any manner of design of making them public; and for that reason I give them now as they were then delivered; by which I hope to satisfy those people who have objected a change of principles to me, as if I were not now the same man I formerly was. I never had but one opinion of these matters; and that I think is so reasonable and well-grounded, that I believe I can never have any other. "The fourth sermon was preached upon the queen's accession to the throne, and the first year in which that day was solemnly observed (for by some accident or other it had been overlooked the year before;) and every one will see, without the date of it, that it was preached very early in this reign, since I was able only to promise and presage its future glories and successes, from the good appearances of things, and the happy turn our affairs began to take; and could not then count up the victories and triumphs that, for seven years after, made it, in the prophet's language, a name and a praise among all the people of the earth. Never did seven such 'Another reason of my publishing these years together pass over the head of any Engsermons at this time is, that I have a mind lish monarch, nor cover it with so much hoto do myself some honour by doing what nour. The crown and sceptre seemed to be honour I could to the memory of two most the queen's least ornaments; those, other excellent princes, and who have very highly princes wore in common with her, and her deserved at the hands of all the people of great personal virtues were the same before these dominions, who have any true value for and since; but such was the fame of her adthe protestant religion, and the constitution of ministration of affairs at home, such was the the English government of which they were reputation of her wisdom and felicity in choosthe great deliverers and defenders. 1 have ing ministers, and such was then esteemed their faithfulness and zeal, their diligence of loving a man whom we cannot esteem; so, and great abilities in executing her com- on the other, though we are truly sensible of a mands; to such a height of military glory man's abilities, we can never raise ourselves to did her great general and her armies carry the warmth of friendship, without an affectionthe British name abroad; such was the har-ate good-will towards his person. mony and concord betwixt her and her al Friendship immediately banishes envy unlies; and such was the blessing of God upon der all its disguises. A man who can once all her councils and undertakings, that I am doubt whether he should rejoice in his as sure as history can make me, no prince of friend's being happier than himself, may deof ours ever was so prosperous and success-pend upon it that he is an utter stranger to ful, so beloved, esteemed, and honoured by this virtue. their subjects and their friends, nor near so There is something in friendship so very formidable to their enemies. We were, as great and noble, that in those fictitious stories all the world imagined then, just entering on which are invented to the honour of any parthe ways that promised to lead to such a ticular person, the authors have thought it as peace as would have answered all the pray-necessary to make their hero a friend as a ers of our religious queen, the care and vigi- lover. Achilles has his Patroclus, and Æneas lance of a most able ministry, the payments his Achates. In the first of these instances we of a willing and most obedient people, as well may observe, for the reputation of the subject all the glorious toils and hazards of the sol- I am treating of, that Greece, was almost ruindiery; when God, for our sins, permitted the ed by the hero's love, but was preserved by his spirit of discord to go forth, and by troubling friendship. sore the camp, the city and the country, (and oh that it had altogether spared the places sacred to his worship!) to spoil, for a time, this beautiful and pleasing prospect, and give us in its stead, I know not what- Our enemies will tell the rest with pleasure. It will become me better to pray to God to restore us to the power of obtaining such a peace as will be to his glory, the safety, hoand welfare of the queen and her dominions, and the general satisfaction of all her high and mighty allies.* nour, May 2, 1712. No. 385.] Thursday, May 22, 1712. Thesea pectora juncta fide. Ovid. Trist. iii. Lib. 1. 66. Breasts that with sympathizing ardour glow'd, And holy friendship, such as Theseus vow'd I INTEND the paper for this day as a loose essay on friendship, in which I shall throw my observations together without any set form, that I may avoid repeating what has been often said on this subject. The character of Achates suggests to us an observation we may often make on the intimacies of great men, who frequently choose their companions rather for the qualities of the heart than those of the head, and prefer fidelity in an easy, inoffensive, complying temper, to those endowments which make a much greater figure among mankind. I do not remember that Achates, who is represented as the first favourite, either gives his advice, or strikes a blow, through the whole Æneid. A friendship which makes the least noise is very often most useful: for which reason I should prefer a prudent friend to a zealous one. Atticus, one of the best men of ancient Rome, was a very remarkable instance of what I am here speaking. This extraordinary person, amidst the civil wars of his country, when he saw the designs of all parties equally tended to the subversion of liberty, by constantly preserving the esteem and affection of both the competitors, found means to serve his friends on either side: and, while he sent money to young Marius, whose father was declared an enemy to the commonwealth, he was himself one of Sylla's chief favourites, and always near that general. Friendship is a strong and habitual inclination in two persons to promote the good and During the war between Caesar and Pomhappiness of one another. Though the plea-pey, he still maintained the same conduct. sures and advantages of friendship have been largely celebrated by the best moral writers, and are considered by all as great ingredients of human happiness, we very rarely meet with the practice of this virtue in the world. Every man is ready to give in a long catalogue of those virtues and good qualities he expects to find in the person of a friend, but very few of us are careful to cultivate them in ourselves. Love and esteem are the first principles of friendship, which always is imperfect where either of these two is wanting. As, on the one hand, we are soon ashamed This Preface was seized on by the Tory ministry, and condemned, by a motion of the House of Commons, to be burned by the common hangman.-See Biographia Britannica, vol. iii. p. 1974. After the death of Cæsar, he sent money to Brutus in his troubles, and did a thousand good offices to Antony's wife and friends when that party seemed ruined. Lastly, even in that bloody war between Antony and Augustus, Atticus still kept his place in both their friendships: insomuch that the first, says Cornelius Nepos, whenever he was absent from Rome in any part of the empire, writ punctually to him what he was doing, what he read, and whither he intended to go; and the latter gave him constantly an exact account of all his affairs. A likeness of inclinations in every particular is so far from being requisite to form a benevolence in two minds towards each other, as it is generally imagined, that I believe we shall find some of the firmest friendships to have been contracted between persons of different humours; the mind being often pleased with despicable. A man must be sincerely pleased those perfections which are new to it, and which to become pleasure, or not to interrupt that of it does not find among its own accomplish-others; for this reason it is a most calamitous ments. Besides that a man in some measure circumstance that many people who want to supplies his own defects, and fancies himself at be alone, or should be so, will come into consecond-hand possessed of those good qualities and endowments, which are in the possession of him who in the eye of the world is looked upon as his other self. The most difficult province in friendship is the letting a man see his faults and errors, which should, if possible, be so contrived, that he may perceive our advice is given him not so much to please ourselves as for his own advantage. The reproaches therefore of a friend should always be strictly just, and not too frequent. The violent desire of pleasing in the person reproved may otherwise change into a despair of doing it, while he finds himself censured for faults he is not conscious of. A mind that is softened and humanized by friendship cannot bear frequent reproaches; either it must quite sink under the oppression, or abate considerably of the value and esteem it had for him who bestows them. The proper business of friendship is to inspire life and courage and a soul thus supported outdoes itself: whereas, if it be unexpectedly deprived of these succours, it droops and languishes. versation. It is certain that all men, who are the least given to reflection, are seized with an inclination that way when, perhaps, they had rather be inclined to company; but indeed they had better go home and be tired with themselves, than force themselves upon others to recover their good humour. In all this, the case of communicating to a friend a sad thought or difficulty, in order to relieve a heavy heart, stands excepted; but what is here meant is, that a man should always go with inclination to the turn of the company he is going into, or not pretend to be of the party. It is certainly a very happy temper to be able to live with all kinds of dispositions, because it argues a mind that lies open to receive what is pleasing to others, and not obstinately bent on any particularity of his own. This is it which makes me pleased with the character of my good acquaintance Acasto. You meet him at the tables and conversations of the wise, the impertinent, the grave, the frolic, and the witty; and yet his own character has nothing in it that can make him particularly agreeable to any one sect of men; but Acasto has natural good sense, good-nature, and We are in some measure more inexcusable if discretion, so that every man enjoys himself in we violate our duties to a friend than to a rela- his company; and though Acasto contributes tion; since the former arise from a volunta-nothing to the entertainment, he never was at. ry choice, the latter from a necessity to which we could not give our own consent. As it has been said on one side, that a man ought not to break with a faulty friend, that he may not expose the weakness of his choice; it will doubtless hold much stronger with respect to a worthy one, that he may never be upbraided for having lost so valuable a treasure which was once in his possession. X. No. 386.] Friday, May 23, 1712. Cum tristibus severe, cum remissis jucunde, cum seni bus graviter, cum juventute comiter vivere, Tull. 6 a place where he was not welcome a second time. Without the subordinate good qualities of Acasto, a man of wit and learning would be painful to the generality of mankind, instead of being pleasing. Witty men are apt to imagine they are agreeable as such, and by that means grow the worst companions imaginable; they deride the absent or rally the present in a wrong manner, not knowing that if you pinch or tickle a man till he is uneasy in his seat, or ungracefully distinguished from the rest of the company, you equally hurt him. agreeable in company (but there can be no such I was going to say, the true art of being thing as art in it) is to appear well pleased with THE piece of Latin on the head of this paper those you are engaged with, and rather to seem is part of a character extremely vicious, but I well entertained, than to bring entertainment have set down no more than may fall in with to others. A man thus disposed is not indeed the rules of justice and honour. Cicero spoke what we ordinarily call a good companion, but it of Cataline, who, he said, 'lived with the sad essentially is such, and in all the parts of his severely, with the cheerful agreeably, with the conversation has something friendly in his beold gravely, with the young pleasantly; he haviour, which conciliates men's minds more added, with the wicked boldly, with the wan- than the highest sallies of wit or starts of huton lasciviously.' The two last instances of his mour can possibly do. The feebleness of age complaisance I forbear to consider, having it in a man of this turn has something which in any thoughts at present only to speak of ob- should be treated with respect even in a man sequious behaviour as it sits upon a companion no otherwise venerable. The forwardness of in pleasure, not a man of design and intrigue. youth, when it proceeds from alacrity and not To vary with every humour in this manner insolence, has also its allowances. The comcannot be agreeable, except it comes from a panion who is formed for such by nature, gives man's own temper and natural complexion; to to every character of life its due regards, and do it out of an ambition to excel that way, is is ready to account for their imperfections, and the most fruitless and unbecoming prostitution receive their accomplishments as if they were imaginable. To put on an artful part to ob- his own. It must appear that you receive law tain no other end but an unjust praise from from, and not give it, to your company, to the undiscerning, is of all endeavours the most I make you agreeable. |