In lunacy, as in dreams, ideas are conceived which material objects do not excite; and which the force of imagination, exerted by a voluntary effort, cannot form: but the mind of the lunatic, besides being impreffed with the images of things that do not fall under the cognizance of his fenfes, is prevented from receiving correfponding images from thofe that do. When the vifionary monarch looks round upon his cloaths which he has decorated with the spoils of his bed, his mind does not conceive the ideas of rags and straw, but of velvet, embroidery, and gold; and when he gazes at the bounds of his cell, the image impreffed upon his mind is not that of a naked wall which inclofes an area of ten feet fquare; but of wainfcot, and painting, and tapestry, the bounds of a fpacious apartment adorned with magnificent furniture, and crowded with fplendid dependants. Of the lunatic it is alfo univerfally true, that his understanding is perverted to evils, which a mere perverfion of the understanding does not neceffarily imply; he either fits torpid in despair, or is bulied in the contrivance or the execution of mischief. But if lunacy is ultimately produced by mere material causes, it is difficult to fhew, why mifery or malevolence should always be complicated with abfurdity; why madnefs fhould not fometimes produce inftances of frantic and extravagant kindness, of a benevolent purpose formed upon erroneous principles and purfued by ridiculous means, and of an honeft and harmless chearfulness arifing from the fancied feicity of others. Ty; A lunatic is, indeed, fometimes merbut the merry lunatic is never kind; his fport is always mifchief; and mifchief is rather aggravated than atoned by wantonness; his difpofition is always evil in proportion to the height of his phrenzy; and upon this occafion it may be remarked, that if every approach to madness is a deviation to ill, every deviation to ill may be confidered as an approach to madness. thrown quite out of her feat, and the perversion of the understanding for a time becomes general; but sometimes it ftill continues to be perverted but in part, and the abfurdity itself is defended with all the force of regular argumentation. A moft extraordinary inftance of this kind may now be communicated to the public, without injury to a good man, or a good caufe which he fuccefs fully maintained. Mr. Simon Browne, a diffenting teacher of exemplary life and eminent intellectual abilities, after having been fome time feized with melancholy, desisted from the duties of his function, and could not be perfuaded to join in any a&t of worship either public or private. His friends often urged him to account for this change in his conduct, at which they expreffed the utmost grief and astonishment; and after much importunity he told them, that he had fallen under the fenfible difpleasure of GOD, who had ́ caufed his rational foul gradually to perifh, and left him only an animal life in common with brutes; that it was, therefore, prophane for him to pray, and incongruous to be prefent at the prayers of others. In this opinion, however abfurd, he was inflexible, at a time when all the powers of his mind fubfifted in their full vigour, when his conceptions were clear, and his reafoning ftrong. Being once importuned to fay grace at the table of a friend, he excufed himfelf many times; but the request being ftill repeated, and the company kept ftanding, he difcovered evident tokens of diftrefs, and after fome irrefolute geftures and hesitation, expreffed with great fervor this ejaculation: Moft merciful and Alinighty GOD, let thy Spirit, which moved upon the face of the waters when there was no light, defcend upon me; that from this darkness there may rife up a man to praise thee!' But the most aftonishing proof both of his intellectual excellence and defect, is, A defence of the Religion of Nature and the Chriftian Revelation, in Among other unaccountable pheno- answer to Tindal's Chriftianity as old mena in lunacy, is the invincible abfur-as the Creation,' and his dedication dity of opinion with refpect to fome fin- of it to the late queen. The book is gle object, while the mind operates with univerfally allowed to be the best which it's full vigour upon every other: it that controverfy produced, and the dedi fometimes happens, that when this ob- cation is as follows: ject is prefented to the mind, reason is MADAM, MADAM, OF all the extraordinary things that have been tendered to your royal hands fince vour first happy arrival in Britain, it may be boldly faid, what now befpeaks your majesty's acceptance is the chief. Not in itself indeed; it is a trifle unworthy your exalted rank, and what will hardly prove an entertaining amufement to one of your majesty's deep penetration, exact judgment, and fine taste. But on account of the author, who is the first being of the kind, and yet with out a name. He was once a man; and of fome little name; but of no worth, as his prefent unparalleled cafe makes but too manifeft; for by the immediate hand of an avenging GOD, his very thinking fubftance has for more than feven years been continually wafting away, till it is wholly perished out of him, if it be not utterly come to nothing. None, no not the leaft remembrance of it's very ruins, remains, not the fhadow of an idea is left, nor any fenfe that, fo much as one fingle one, perfect or imperfect, whole or diminished, ever did appear to a mind within him, or was perceived by it. Such a prefent from fuch a thing, however worthlefs in itself, may not be wholly unacceptable to your majefty, the author being fuch as hiftory cannot parallel: and if the fact, which is real and no fiction, nor wrong conceit, obtains credit, it must be recorded as the most memorable, and indeed astonishing, event in the reign of George the Second, that a tract compofed by fuch a thing was prefented to the illuftrious Caroline; his royal confort needs not be added; fame, if I am not mifinformed, will tell that with pleasure to all fucceeding times. He has been informed, that your majefty's piety is as genuine and eminent, as your excellent qualities are great and confpicuous. This can, indeed, be truly known to the great Searcher of hearts only; He alone who can look into them, can difcern if they are fincere, and the main intention correfponds with the appearance; and your majefty cannot take it amifs, if fuch an author hints, that His fecret approbation is of infinitely greater value than the commendation of men, who may be easily mistaken, and are too apt to flatter their fuperiors. But if he has been told the truth, fuch a cafe as his will certainly ftrike your majefty with astonishment, and may raife that commiferation in your royal breaft which he has in vain endeavoured to excite in thofe of his friends; who, by the most unreasonable and ill-founded conceit in the world, have imagined that a thinking being could for feven years together live a ftranger to it's own powers, exercifes, operations and ftate, and to what the great God has been doing in it and to it. If your majefty, in your most retired addrefs to the KING of kings, fhould think of fo fingular a cafe, you may, perhaps, make it your devout request, that the reign of your beloved fovereign and confort may be renowned to all pofterity by the recovery of a foul now in the utmoft ruin, the restoration of one utterly loft at prefent amongst men. And fhould this cafe affect your royal breast, you will recommend it to the piety and prayers of all the truly devout who have the honour to be known to your majefty: many such doubtless there are; though courts are not ufually the places where the devout refort, or where devotion reigns. And it is not improbable, that multitudes of the pious throughout the land may take a cafe to heart, that under your majesty's patronage comes thus recommended. Could fuch a favour as this restora tion be obtained from Heaven by the prayers of your majefty, with what a tranfport of gratitude would the reco vered being throw himself at your majefty's feet; and, adoring the DIVINE POWER and GRACE, profefs himself, Madam, Your majefty's moft obliged And dutiful fervant.* This dedication, which is no where feeble or abfurd, but in the places where the object of his phrenzy was immediate ly before him, his friends found means to fupprefs; wifely confidering, that a book to which it fhould be prefixed would certainly be condemned without examination; for few would have requir ed ftronger evidence of it's inutility, than that the author, by his dedication, appeared to be mad. The copy, however, was was preferved, and has been tranfcribed into the blank leaves before one of the books which is now in the library of a friend to this undertaking, who is not lefs diftinguished by his merit than his rank, and who recommended it as a literary curiofity, which was in danger of being loft for want of a repository in which it might be preferved. N° LXXXIX. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 1753. PRÆCIPUA TAMEN EJUS IN COMMOVENDA MISERATIONE VIRTUS, UT QUIDAM IN HAC EUM PARTE OMNIBUS EJUSDEM OPERIS AUTORIBUS PRÆFERANT. QUINTILIAN. BIS GREAT EXCELLENCE WAS IN MOVING COMPASSION, WITH RESPECT TO WHICH MANY GIVE HIM THE FIRST PLACE OF ALL THE WRITERS OF THAT KIND. SIR, T TO THE ADVENTURER. rious readers. In imitation, therefore, of the examples I have just mentioned, I fhall fend you, for the inftruction and with indifcriminating regret, the devaftations committed on ancient libraries, by accident and time, by fuperftition, ignorance, and gothicifm: but the lofs is very far from being in all cafes equally irreparable, as the want of fome kinds of books may be much more easily fupplied than that of others. By the interruption that fometimes happens in the fucceffion of philofophical opinions, the mind is emancipated from traditionary fyftems, recovers it's native elafticity which had been benumbed by cuftom, begins to examine with freedom and freth vigour, and to follow truth instead of authority. The lofs of writings, therefore, in which reasoning is concerned, is not, perhaps, fo great an evil to mankind, as of thofe which defcribe characters and facts. To be deprived of the laft books of Livy, of the fatires of Archilochus, and the comedies of Menander, is a greater misfortune to the republic of literature, than if the logic and the phyfics of Ariftotle had never defcended to pofterity. Two of your predeceffors, Mr. Adventurer, of great judgment and genius, very jufly thought that they fould adorn their lucubrations by publishing, one of them a fragment of Sappho, and the other an old Grecian hymn to the goddess Health: and, indeed, I conceive it to be a very important ufe of your paper, to bring into coinmon light thore beautiful remains of ancient art, which by their prefent Gituation are deprived of that universal admiration they fo juftly deferve, and are only the fecret enjoyment of a few cu ment of Simonides and of Menander. Simonides was celebrated by the ancients for the sweetness, correctness, and purity of his style, and his irrefiftible kill in moving the paffions. It is a fufficient panegyric that Plato often mentions him with approbation. Dionyfius places him among thofe polifhed writers, who excel in a finooth volubility, and flow on, like plenteous and perennial rivers, in a courfe of even and uninterrupted harmony." It is to this excellent critic that we are indebted for the preservation of the following paffage, the tenderness and elegance of which fcarcely need be pointed out to those who have tafte and fenfibility. Danaë, being by her merci. lefs father inclosed in a cheft and thrown into the fea with her child, the poet proceeds thus far to relate her diftrefs; Βρέμη πνέων, κινηθεῖσα δὲ λίμνα When the raging wind began to roar, and the waves to beat fo violently on the the cheft as to threaten to overfet it, fhe threw her arm fondly around Perfeus, and faid, the tears trickling down her cheeks- O my fon, what forrows do I undergo! But thou art wrapt in a deep flumber; thou fleepeft foundly like a fucking child, in this joyless 'habitation, in this dark and dreadful 'night, lighted only by the glimmer'ings of the moon! Covered with thy purple mantle, thou regardeft not the waves that dafh around thee, nor the whittling of the winds. O thou beauteous babe! if thou wert fenfible of this calamity, thou wouldeft bend thy 'tender ears to my complaints. Sleep on, I beseech thee, O my child! Sleep with him, O ye billows! and fleep ' likewife my diftrefs!' Those who would form a full idea of the delicacy of the Greek, fhould attentively confider the following happy imitation of it, which, I-have reafon to believe, is not fo extenfively known or fo warmly admired as it ought to be; and which, indeed, far excels the original. The poet, having pathetically painted a great princefs taking leave of an affectionate hufband on his death-bed, and endeavouring afterwards to comfort her inconfolable family, adds the following particular. His conatibus occupata, ocellos Qui matrem cruciant tuæ quietis The contrast betwixt the infenfibility of the infant and the agony of the mother; her obferving that the child is unmoved with what was most likely to affect him, the forrows of his little brothers, the many mournful countenances, and the difmal filence that reigned throughout the court; the circumftances of the father playing with the child on his knees or in his arms, and teaching him to · fpeak; are fuch delicate master-strokes of nature and parental tenderness, as fhew the author is intimately acquainted with the human heart, and with those little touches of paffion that are best calculated to move it. The affectionate with of dormi, parvule!' is plainly imitated from the fragment of Simonides; but the fudden exclamation that follows- When, O when shall I fleep like this infant!" is entirely the property of the author, and worthy of, though not excelled by, any of the ancients. It is making the most artful and the moft ftriking use of the flumber of the child, to aggravate and heighten by comparifon the reftleffnefs of the mother's forrow; it is the finest and strongest way of faying My grief will never ceafe,' that has ever been used. I think it not exaggeration to affirm, that in this little poem are united the pathetic of Euripides and the elegance of Catullus. It affords a judicious example of the manner in which the ancients ought to be imitated; not by using their expreflions and epithets, which is the common method, but by catching a por tion of their fpirit, and adapting their images and ways of thinking to new fubjects. The generality of those who have propofed Catullus for their pattern, even the best of the modern Latin poets of Italy, feem to think they have accomplished their defign, by introducing many florid diminutives, fuch as tenellula,' and 'columbula:' but there is a purity and feverity of ftyle, a tem perate and auftere manner in Catullus, which nearly refembles that of his cotemporary Lucretius, and is happily copied by the author of the poem which has produced thefe reflections. Whenever, therefore, we fit down to compofe, we fhould ask ourselves in the words of Longinus a little altered- How would Homer or Plato, Demofthenes or Thucydides, have expreffed themfelves on this occafion; allowing for the alteration of our customs, and the different idioms of our refpective languages?' This would be following the ancients, without tamely treading in their footsteps; this would be making the fame glorious ufe of them that Racine has done of Euripides in his Phædra and Iphigenia, and that Milton has done of the Prometheus of Efchylus in the cha racter of Satan. If you should happen not to lay afide this paper among the refufe of your correfpondence, as the offspring of pedantry and a blind fondness for antiquity; or rather, if your readers can endure the fight of so much Greek, though ever so Attic; I may, perhaps, trouble you again with a few reflections on the character of Menander. Z I am, Mr. Adventurer, yours, PALEOPHILUS. N° XC. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 1753. SIR, CONCRETAM EXEMIT LABEM, PURUMQUE RELIQUIT THERIUM SENSUM, ATQUE AURAI SIMPLICIS IGNEM. VIRGIL. BY LENGTH OF TIME, THE SCURF IS WORN AWAY OF EACH COMMITTED CRIME; TO THE ADVENTURER. OTHING fooner quells the ri No diculous triumph of human vanity, than reading thofe paffages of the greatest writers, in which they feem deprived of that noble fpirit that infpires them in other parts; and where, instead of invention and grandeur, we meet with nothing but flatnefs and infipidity. The pain I have felt in obferving a lofty genius thus fink beneath itself, has often made me with, that these unworthy ftains, could be blotted from their works, and leave them perfect and immaculate. I went to bed a few nights ago, full of these thoughts, and clofed the evening, as I frequently do, with reading a few lines in Virgil. I accidentally opened that part of the fixth book, where Anchifes recounts to his fon the various methods of purgation which the foul undergoes in the next world, to cleanfe it from the filth it has contracted by it's connection with the body, and to deliver the pure etherial effence from the vicious tincture of mortality. This was fo much like my evening's fpeculation, that it infenfibly mixed and incorporated with it, and as foon as I fell asleep, formed itself into the following dream. I found myself in an instant in the midst of a temple which was built with all that magnificent fimplicity that diftinguishes the productions of the ancients. At the east end was raised an altar, on each fide of which stood a prieft, who feemed preparing to facrifice. On the altar was kindled a fire, from which arofe the brightest flame I had ever beheld. The light which it dif DRYDEN. penfed, though remarkably ftrong and clear, was not quivering and dazzling, but steady and uniform, and diffused a purple radiance through the whole edifice, not unlike the first appearance of the morning. While I stood fixed in admiration, my attention was awakened by the blast of a trumpet that shook the whole temple; but it carried a certain sweetness in it's found, which mellowed and tempered the natural fhrillness of that inftrument. After it had founded thrice, the being who blew it, habited according to the defcription of Fame by the ancients, iffued a proclamation to the following purpose: By command of Apollo and the Mufes, all who have ever made any pretenfions to fame by their write ings, are enjoined to facrifice upon the altar in this temple, thofe parts of their works which have hitherto been preferved to their infamy, that their names may defcend fpotlefs and unfullied to pofterity. For this purpose • Ariftotle and Longinus are appointed chief priests, who are to fee that no improper oblations are made, and no 'proper ones concealed; and for the more eafy performance of this office, they are allowed to chufe as their af fiftants whomfoever they fhail think 'worthy of the function." As foon as this proclamation was made, I turned my eyes with inexpreffi ble delight towards the two priefts; but was foon robbed of the pleasure of look ing at them by a crowd of people run ning up to offer their fervice. Thefe found to be a groupe of French critics but their offers were rejected by both priests with the utmost indignation, and their whole works were thrown on the altar |