Графични страници
PDF файл
ePub

red.

he is sure to find some who are; so that if | clubs with an eye of contempt, and talks
he be disposed to take a whet, a nooning, even of the Kit-Cat and October as of a
an evening's draught, or a bottle after couple of upstarts. Their ordinary dis-
midnight, he goes to the club, and finds a course, (as much as I have been able to
knot of friends to his mind.
learn of it) turns altogether upon such ad-
It is a maxim in this club, that the stew-ventures as have passed in their own as-
ard never dies; for as they succeed one an-sembly; of members who have taken the
other by way of rotation, no man is to quit
the great elbow-chair which stands at the
upper-end of the table, till his successor is
in readiness to fill it: insomuch that there
has not been a sede vacante in the memory
of man.

glass in their turns for a week together, without stirring out of the club; of others who have smoked an hundred pipes at a sitting; of others, who have not missed their morning's draught for twenty years together. Sometimes they speak in raptures of a run of ale in king Charles's reign; and sometimes reflect with astonishment upon games at whist, which have been miraculously recovered by members of the society, when in all human probability the case was desperate.

This club was instituted towards the end (or as some of them say, about the middle) of the civil wars, and continued without interruption till the time of the great fire,* which burnt them out, and dispersed them for several weeks. The steward at that time maintained his post till he had like to have been blown up with a neighbouring • house, (which was demolished in order to stop the fire;) and would not leave the chair at last, till he had emptied all the bottles upon the table, and received re-ture. peated directions from the Club to withdraw himself. This steward is frequently talked of in the club, and looked upon by every member of it as a greater man than the famous captain mentioned in my lord Clarendon, who was burnt in his ship because he would not quit it without orders. It is said, that towards the close of 1700, being the great year of jubilee, the club had it under consideration whether they should break up or continue their session; but after many speeches and debates, it was at length agreed to sit out the other No. 73.] Thursday, May 24, 1711. century. This resolution was passed in a general club nemine contradicente.

They delight in several old catches, which they sing at all hours, to encourage one another to moisten their clay, and grow immortal by drinking; with many other edifying exhortations of the like na

Having given this short account of the institution and continuation of the Everlasting, Club, I should here endeavour to say something of the manners and characters of its several members, which I shall do according to the best lights I have received in this matter.

It appears by their books in general, that since their first institution, they have smoked fifty tons of tobacco, drank thirty thousand butts of ale, one thousand hogsheads of red port, two hundred barrels of brandy, and a kilderkin of small beer. There has been likewise a great consumption of cards. It is also said, that they observe the law in Ben Jonson's club, † which orders the fire to be always kept in (focus perennis esto) as well for the convenience of lighting their pipes, as to cure the dampness of the club-room. They have an old woman in the nature of a vestal, whose business it is to cherish and perpetuate the fire, which burns from generation to gene?ration, and has seen the glass-house fires in and out above an hundred times.

[ocr errors]
[blocks in formation]

There are four general clubs held in a year, at which times they fill up vacancies, appoint waiters, confirm the old firemaker, or elect a new one, settle contributions for coals, pipes, tobacco, and other necessaries.

The senior member has outlived the whole club twice over, and has been drunk with the grandfathers of some of the sent sitting members.

-O Dea certe!

pre

Virg. Æn. i. 328.

O goddess! for no less you seem. IT is very strange to consider, that a creature like man, who is sensible of so many weaknesses and imperfections, should be actuated by a love of fame: that vice and ignorance, imperfection and misery, should contend for praise, and endeavour as much as possible to make themselves objects of admiration.

But notwithstanding man's essential perfection is but very little, his comparative perfection may be very considerable. If he looks upon himself in an abstracted light, he has not much to boast of; but if he considers himself with regard to others, he may find occasion of glorying, if not in lus own virtues, at least in the absence of another's imperfections. This gives a different turn to the reflections of the wise man and the fool. The first endeavours to shine in himself, and the last to outshine others. The first is humbled by the sense of his own infirmities, the last is lifted up by the discovery of those which he observes in other men. The wise man considers what he wants, and the fool what he abounds in. The wise man is happy when he gains his own approbation, and the fool when he recommends himself to the applause of those about him,

[ocr errors]

But however unreasonable and absurd | smiles make men happy; their frowns drive this passion for admiration may appear in them to despair. I shall only add under such a creature as man, it is not wholly to this head, that Ovid's book of the Art of be discouraged; since it cften produces very Love is a kind of heathen ritual, which good effects, not only as it restrains him contains all the forms of worship which are from doing any thing which is mean and made use of to an idol. contemptible, but as it pushes him to actions which are great and glorious. The principle may be defective or faulty, but the consequences it produces are so good, that for the benefit of mankind, it ought not to be extinguished.

It is observed by Cicero, that men of the greatest and the most shining parts are the most actuated by ambition; and if we look into the two sexes, I believe we shall find this principle of action stronger in women than in men.

The passion for praise, which is so very vehement in the fair sex, produces excellent effects in women of sense, who desire to be admired for that only which deserves admiration; and I think we may observe, without a compliment to them, that many of them do not only live in a more uniform course of virtue, but with an infinitely greater regard to their honour, than what we find in the generality of our own sex. How many instances have we of chastity, fidelity, devotion! How many ladies distinguish themselves by the education of their ⚫ children, care of their families, and love of their husbands, which are the great qualities and achievements of womankind! as the making of war, the carrying on of traffic, the administration of justice, are those by which men grow famous, and get themselves a name.

It would be as difficult a task to reckon up these different kinds of idols, as Milton's was to number those that were known in Canaan, and the lands adjoining. Most of them are worshipped like Moloch in fires and flames. Some of them, like Baal, love to see their votaries cut and slashed, and shedding their blood for them. Some of them, like the idol in the Apocrypha, must have treats and collations prepared for them every night. It has indeed been known, that some of them have been used by their incensed worshippers like the Chinese idols, who are whipped and scourged when they refuse to comply with the prayers that are offered to them.

I must here observe that those idolaters who devote themselves to the idols I am here speaking of, differ very much from all other kinds of idolaters. For as others fall out because they worship different idols, these idolaters quarrel because they worship the same.

The intention therefore of the idol is quite contrary to the wishes of the idolater: as the one desires to confine the idol to himself, the whole business and ambition of the other is to multiply adorers. This humour of an idol is prettily described in a tale of Chaucer. He represents one of them sitting at a table with three of her votaries about her, who are all of them courting her fa-, vour, and paying their adorations. She smiled upon one, drank to another, and trod upon the other's foot which was under the table. Now which of these three, says the old bard, do you think was the favourite? In troth, says he, not one of all the three.

But as this passion for admiration, when it works according to reason, improves the beautiful part of our species in every thing that is laudable; so nothing is more destructive to them when it is governed by vanity and folly. What I have therefore here to say, only regards the vain part of the sex, The behaviour of this old idol in Chaucer, 1 whom for certain reasons, which the reader puts me in mind of the beautiful Clarinda, will hereafter see at large, I shall distin-one of the greatest idols among the moderns. guish by the name of idols. An idol is wholly taken up in the adorning of her person. You see in every posture of her body, air of her face, and motion of her head, that it is her business and employment to gain adorers. For this reason your idols appear in all public places and assemblies, in order to seduce men to their worship. The playhouse is very frequently filled with idols; several of them are carried in procession every evening about the ring, and several of them set up their worship even in churches. They are to be accosted in the language proper to the deity. Life and death are in their power: joys of heaven and pains of hell, are at their disposal; paradise is in their arms, and eternity in every moment that you are present with them. Raptures, transports, and ecstacies are the rewards which they confer; sighs and tears, prayers and broken hearts, are the offerings which are paid to them. Their

She is worshipped once a week by candlelight, in the midst of a large congregation, generally called an assembly. Some of the gayest youths in the nation endeavour to plant themselves in her eye, while she sits in form with multitudes of tapers burning about her. To encourage the zeal of her idolaters, she bestows a mark of her favour upon every one of them, before they go out of her presence. She asks a question of one, tells a story to another, glances an ogle upon a third, takes a pinch of snuff from the fourth, lets her fan drop by accident to give the fifth an occasion of taking it up. In short, every one goes away satisfied with his success, and encouraged to renew his devotions on the same canonical hour that day seven-night.

An idol may be undeified by many accidental causes. Marriage in particular is a kind of counter-apotheosis, or a deification inverted. When a man becomes familiar

[blocks in formation]

Old age is likewise a great decayer of your idol. The truth of it is, there is not a more unhappy being than a superannuated idol, especially when she has contracted such airs and behaviour as are only graceful when her worshippers are about her.

will see in several of the following quota

tions.

What can be greater than either the thought or the expression in that stanza,

[ocr errors]

To drive the deer with hound and horn
Earl Percy took his way;

The child may rue that is unborn

The hunting of that day!'

Considering therefore that in these and This way of considering the misfortunes many other cases the woman generally out- which this battle would bring upon poslives the idol, I must return to the moral of terity, not only on those who were born imthis paper, and desire my fair readers to mediately after the battle, and lost their give a proper direction to their passion for fathers in it, but on those also who perished being admired; in order to which, they in future battles which took their rise from must endeavour to make themselves the this quarrel of the two earls, is wonderfully objects of a reasonable and lasting admira- beautiful, and conformable to the way of Audiet pugnas vitio parentum tion. This is not to be hoped for from thinking among the ancient poets. beauty, or dress, or fashion, but from those inward ornaments which are not to be defaced by time or sickness, and which appear most amiable to those who are most acquainted with them.

No. 74.] Friday, May 25, 1711.

-Pendent opera interrupta

C.

Virg. n. iv. 83.

The works unfinish'd and neglected lie.

IN my last Monday's paper I gave some general instances of those beautiful strokes which please the reader in the old song of Chevy-Chase; I shall here, according to my promise, be more particular, and show that the sentiments in that ballad are extremely natural and poetical, and full of the majestic simplicity which we admire in the greatest of the ancient poets: for which reason I shall quote several passages of it, in which the thought is altogether the same with what we meet in several passages of the Æneid; not that I would infer from thence that the poet (whoever he was) proposed to himself any imitation of those passages, but that he was directed to them in general by the same kind of poetical genius, and by the same copyings after

nature.

Had this old song been filled with epigrammatical turns and points of wit, it might perhaps have pleased the wrong taste of some readers; but it would never have become the delight of the common people, nor have warmed the heart of Sir Philip Sidney like the sound of a trumpet; it is only nature that can have this effect, and please those tastes which are the most unprejudiced, or the most refined. I must however beg leave to dissent from so great an authority as that of Sir Philip Sidney, in the judgment which he has passed as to the rude style and evil apparel of this antiquated song; for there are several parts in it where not only the thought but the language is majestic, and the numbers sonorous; at least the apparel is much more gorgeous than many of the poets made use of in Queen Elizabeth's time, as the reader

16

Rara juventus.

Hor. Lib. 1. Od. ii. 23.

Posterity, thinn'd by their fathers' crimes,
Shall read, with grief, the story of their times.
What can be more sounding and poetical,
or resemble more the majestic simplicity of
the ancients, than the following stanzas?

The stout Earl of Northumberland
A vow to God did make,

His pleasure in the Scottish woods
Three summers' days to take.

'With fifteen hundred bowmen bold,
All chosen men of might,

Who knew full well, in time of need
To aim their shafts aright.

'The hounds ran swiftly through the woods
The nimble deer to take,

And with their cries the hills and dales
An echo shrill did make.'

-Vocat ingenti clamore Citharon,
Taygetique canes, domitrixque Epidaurus equorum:
Et vox assensu nemorum ingeminata remugit.
Georg. iii. 43.

Citharon loudly calls me to my way;
Thy hounds, Taygetus, open, and pursue the prey:
High Epidaurus urges on my speed,
Fam'd for his hills, and for his horses' breed:
From hills and dales the cheerful cries rebound;
For Echo hunts along and propagates the sound.

[ocr errors]

'Lo yonder doth Earl Douglas come,
His men in armour bright;
Full twenty hundred Scottish spears,
All marching in our sight.

All men of pleasant Tividale,
Fast by the river Tweed,' &c.

Dryden.

The country of the Scotch warriors, de-
scribed in these two last verses, has a fine
romantic situation, and affords a couple of
smooth words for verse. If the reader com-
pares the foregoing six lines of the song
with the following Latin verses, he will see
how much they are written in the spirit of
Virgil:

Adversi campo apparent, hastasque reductis
Protendunt longe dextris; et spicula vibrant:-
Quique altum Præneste viri, quique arva Gabinæ
Junonis, gelidumque Anienem, et roscida rivis
Hernica saxa colunt:-qui rosea rura Velini,
Qui Tetricæ horrentes rupes, montemque Severum,
Casperiamque colunt, Forulosque, et flumen Himelle:
Qui Tiberim Fabarimque bibunt.-

En. xi. 605-vii. 682, 712.

Advancing in a line, they couch their spears-
-Præneste sends a chosen band,
With those who plow Saturnia's Gabine land:
Besides the succours which cold Anien yields;

[blocks in formation]

Turnus ut antevolans tardum præcesserat agmen, &c. Vidisti, quo Turnus equo, quibus ibat in armis Aureus

'Our English archers bent their bows,

Their hearts were good and true;
At the first flight of arrows sent,

Full threescore Scots they slew.
"They clos'd full fast on ev'ry side,
No slackness there was found;
And many a gallant gentleman
Lay gasping on the ground.

With that there came an arrow keen
Out of an English bow,

Which struck Earl Douglas to the heart,
A deep and deadly blow.'

Æneas was wounded after the same manner by an unknown hand in the midst of a parley.

Has inter voces, media inter talia verba,
Ecce viro stridens alis allapsa sagitta est,
Incertum qua pulsa manu-

Jn. xii. 318.

Thus while he spake, unmindful of defence, A winged arrow struck the pious prince; But whether from a human hand it came, Or hostile god, is left unknown by fame. Dryden. But of all the descriptive parts of this song, there are none more beautiful than the four following stanzas, which have a great force and spirit in them, and are filled with very natural circumstances. The thought in the third stanza was never touched by any other poet, and is such a one as would have shined in Homer or Virgil:

So thus did both these nobles die,
Whose courage none could stain;
An English archer then perceiv'd
The noble Earl was slain.

He had a bow bent in his hand,
Made of a trusty tree,

An arrow of a cloth-yard long
Unto the head drew he.

'Against Sir Hugh Montgomery
So right his shaft he set,

The grey-goose wing that was thereon
In his heart-blood was wet.

"This fight did last from break of day
Till setting of the sun;

For when they rung the ev'ning bell
The battle scarce was done.'

One may observe, likewise, that in the catalogue of the slain, the author has followed the example of the great ancient poets, not only in giving a long list of the dead, but by diversifying it with little characters of particular persons.

'And with Earl Douglas there was slain
Sir Hugh Montgomery,

Sir Charles Carrel, that from the field
One foot would never fly:

'Sir Charles Murrel of Ratcliff too,
His sister's son was he;

Sir David Lamb, so well esteem'd,
Yet saved could not be.'

The familiar sound in these names destroys the majesty of the description; for this rea

[blocks in formation]

Then stept a gallant 'squire forth, Witherington was his name, Who said, I would not have it told To Henry our king for shame,

'That e'er my captain fought on foot,

And I stood looking on."

We meet with the same heroic sentiment in Virgil.

Non pudet, O Rutuli, cunctis pro talibus unam
Objectare animam? numerone, an viribus æqui
Non sumus-
?
En. xii. 229.
For shame, Rutilius, can you bear the sight
Of one expos'd for all, in single fight,

Can we before the face of Heav'n confess Our courage colder, or our numbers less? Dryden. What can be more natural, or more moving, than the circumstances in which he describes the behaviour of those women who had lost their husbands on this fatal day?

'Next day did many widows come

Their husbands to bewail;

They wash'd their wounds in brinish tears,
But all would not prevail.

"Their bodies bath'd in purple blood,

They bore with them away;

They kiss'd them dead a thousand times,
When they were clad in clay.'

Thus we see how the thoughts of this poem, which naturally arise from the subject, are always simple, and sometimes exquisitely noble; that the language is often very sounding, and that the whole is written with a true poetical spirit.

If this song had been written in the Gothic manner, which is the delight of all our little wits, whether writers or readers, it would not have hit the taste of so many ages, and have pleased the readers of all ranks and conditions. I shall only beg pardon for such a profusion of Latin quotations; which I should not have made use of, but that I feared my own judgment would have looked too singular on such a subject, had not I supported it by the practice and authority of Virgil.

C.

*There is nothing ludicrous in the verse alluded to, as it stands in the original ballad:

For Wetharryngton my harte is wo,
That ever he slayne shulde be;

For when both his legges wear hewyne in to,
Yet he knul'd and fought on his kne.'

No. 75.] Saturday, May 26, 1711.

Omnis Aristippum decuit color, et status, et res.
Hor. Lib. 1. Ep. 23. xvii.

All fortune fitted Aristippus well.-Creech.

vail, as the standards of behaviour, in the country wherein he lives. What is opposite to the eternal rules of reason and good sense, must be excluded from any place in It was with some mortification that II confess, explain myself enough on this the carriage of a well-bred man. I did not, suffered the raillery of a fine lady of my subject, when I called Dorimant a clown, acqaintance, for calling, in one of my pa- and made it an instance of it, that he called pers,* Dorimant a clown. She was so un- the orange-wench, Double Tripe: I should merciful as to take advantage of my in- have shown, that humanity obliges a genvincible taciturnity, and on that occasion tleman to give no part of humankind rewith great freedom to consider the air, the height, the face, the gesture of him, who proach, for what they, whom they recould pretend to judge so arrogantly of gal- the most virtuous and worthy amongst us. proach, may possibly have in common with lantry. She is full of motion, janty and When a gentleman speaks coarsely, he has lively in her impertinence, and one of those dressed himself clean to no purpose. The that commonly pass, among the ignorant, for persons who have a great deal of hu- clothing of our minds certainly ought to be She had the play of Sir Fopling in regarded before that of our bodies. To beher hand, and after she had said it was tray in a man's talk a corrupt imagination, happy for her there was not so charming a versation of a gentleman, than any negliis a much greater offence against the concreature as Dorimant now living, she began with a theatrical air and tone of voice to gence of dress imaginable. But this sense read, by way of triumph over me, some of of the matter is so far from being received his speeches. 'Tis she! that lovely air, among people even of condition, that Vocithat easy shape, those wanton eyes, and all fer passes for a fine gentleman. He is loud, those melting charms about her mouth, haughty, gentle, soft, lewd, and obsequious which Medley spoke of. I'll follow the by turns, just as a little understanding and lottery, and put in for a prize with my sent moment. He passes among the silly great impudence prompt him at the prefriend Bellair." part of our women for a man of wit, because he is generally in doubt. He contradicts with a shrug, and confutes with a

mour.

In love the victors from the vanquish'd fly; They fly that wound, and they pursue that die.'

Then turning over the leaves, she reads certain sufficiency, in professing such and alternately, and speaks,

And you and Loveit to her cost shall find I fathom all the depths of woman-kind.' Oh the fine gentleman! But here, continues she, is the passage I admire most, where he begins to tease Loveit, and mimic Sir Fopling. Oh, the pretty satire, in his resolving to be a coxcomb to please, since noise and nonsense have such powerful charms.

'I, that I may successful prove, Transform myself to what you love.'

such a thing is above his capacity. What makes his character the pleasanter is, that he is a professed deluder of women; and because the empty coxcomb has no regard to any thing that is of itself sacred and inviolable. I have heard an unmarried lady of fortune say, It is a pity so fine a gentleman as Vocifer is so great an atheist. The crowds of such inconsiderable creatures, that infest all places of assembling, every reader will have in his eye from his own observation; but would it not be worth

Then how like a man of the town, so wild considering what sort of figure a man and gay is that!

The wise will find a difference in our fate, You wed a woman, I a good estate.'

It would have been a very wild endeavour for a man of my temper to offer any opposition to so nimble a speaker as my fair enemy is; but her discourse gave me very many reflections, when I had left her company. Among others, I could not but consider with some attention, the false impressions the generality (the fair sex more especially) have of what should be in tended, when they say a fine gentleman; and could not help revolving that subject in my thoughts, and settling, as it were, an idea of that character in my own imagina

tion.

No man ought to have the esteem of the rest of the world, for any actions which are disagreeable to those maxims which pre

* Spect. No. 65.

who formed himself upon those principles among us, which are agreeable to the dictates of honour and religion, would make in the familiar and ordinary occurrences of life?

several duties of life better than Ignotus. I hardly have observed any one fill his All the under parts of his behaviour, and such as are exposed to common observation, have their rise in him from great and noble motives. A firm and unshaken expectation of another life makes him become this; humanity and good-nature, fortified by the sense of virtue, has the same effect upon him as the neglect of all goodness has in all matters of importance, that certain upon many others. Being firmly established inattention which makes men's actions look easy, appears in him with greater beauty: lencies, he is perfectly master of them. by a thorough contempt of little excelThis temper of mind leaves him under no necessity of studying his air, and he has this

« ПредишнаНапред »