as the first sketch and outlines of a vision, than as a finished piece. I dreamt that I was admitted into a long spacious gallery, which had one side covered with pieces of all the famous painters who are now living, and the other with the works of the greatest masters that are dead. On the side of the living, I saw several persons busy in drawing, colouring, and designing. On the side of the dead painters, I could not discover more than one person at work, who was exceedingly slow in his motions, and wonderfully nice in his touches. tion. Jack has a whorish unresisting goodnature, which makes him incapable of having a property in any thing. His fortune, his reputation, his time, and his capacity, are at any man's service that comes first. When he was at school, he was whipped thrice a week for faults he took upon him to excuse others; since he came into the business of the world, he has been arrested twice or thrice a year for debts he had nothing to do with, but as surety for others; and I remember when a friend of his had suffered in the vice of the town, all the physic his friend took was conveyed to him by Jack, and inscribed 'A bolus, or an electuary for Mr. Truepenny.' Jack I was resolved to examine the several had a good estate left him which came to artists that stood before me, and accordnothing; because he believed all who pre-ingly applied myself to the side of the livtended to demands upon it. This easiness ing. The first I observed at work in this and credulity destroy all the other merit part of the gallery was Vanity, with his hair he has; and he has all his life been a sacrifice tied behind him in a riband, and dressed to others, without ever receiving thanks, or like a Frenchman, All the faces he drew doing one good action. were very remarkable for their smiles, and a certain smirking air which he bestowed indifferently on every age and degree of either sex. The toujours gai appeared even in his judges, bishops, and privy-counsellors. In a word, all his men were petits maitres, and all his women coquettes. The drapery of his figures was extremely well suited to his faces, and was made up of all the glaring colours that could be mixt together; every part of the dress was in a flutter, and endeavoured to distinguish itself above the rest. I will end this discourse with a speech which I heard Jack make to one of his creditors (of whom he deserved gentler usage) after lying a whole night in custody at his suit. 'Sir, your ingratitude for the many kindnesses I have done you, shall not make me unthankful for the good you have done me, in letting me see there is such a man as you in the world. I am obliged to you for the diffidence I shall have all the rest of my life: I shall hereafter trust no man so far as to be in his debt.' No. 83.] Tuesday, June 5, 1711. -Animum pictura pascit inani. R. On the left hand of Vanity stood a laborious workman, who I found was his humble admirer, and copied after him. He was dressed like a German, and had a very hard name, that sounded something like Stupidity. The third artist that I looked over was Fantasque dressed like a Venitian scaramouch. He had an excellent hand at chimera, and dealt very much in distortions and grimaces. He would sometimes affright himself with the phantoms that flowed from his pencil. In short, the most elaborate of his pieces was at best but a terrifying dream; and one could say nothing more of his finest figures, than that they were agreeable monsters. Virg. Æn. i. 468. And with the shadowy picture feeds his mind. WHEN the weather hinders me from taking my diversions without doors, I frequently make a little party with two or three select friends, to visit any thing curious that may be seen under covert. My principal entertainments of this nature are pictures, insomuch, that when I have found the weather set in to be very bad, I have taken a whole day's journey to see a gallery that is furnished by the hands of great mas- The fourth person I examined was very ters. By this means, when the heavens are remarkable for his hasty hand, which left filled with clouds, when the earth swims in his pictures so unfinished, that the beauty rain, and all nature wears a lowering coun- in the picture (which was designed to contenance, I withdraw myself from these un- tinue as a monument of it to posterity) faded comfortable scenes into the visionary worlds sooner than in the person after whom it was of art; where I meet with shining land-drawn, He made so much haste to desscapes, gilded triumphs, beautiful faces, and all those other objects that fill the mind with gay ideas, and disperse that gloominess which is apt to hang upon it in those dark disconsolate seasons. I was some weeks ago in a course of these diversions; which had taken such an entire possession of my imagination, that they formed in it a short morning's dream, which I shall communicate to my reader, rather patch his business, that he neither gave himself time to clean his pencils, nor mix his colours, The name of this expeditious workman was Avarice, Not far from this artist I saw another of a quite different nature, who was dressed in the habit of a Dutchman, and known by the name of Industry. His figures were wonderfully laboured. If he drew the portraiture of a man, he did not omit a single hair in his face; if the figure of a ship, there hair upon his forehead, discovered him to Whether it were because the thread of my dream was at an end I cannot tell, but upon my taking a survey of this imaginary old man, my sleep left me. C. The five foregoing artists were the most -Quis talia fando considerable on this side the gallery; there Myrmidonum, Dolopumve, aut duri miles Ulyssei, Temperet a lachrymis ? were indeed several others whom I had not Virg. Æn. ii. v. 6. time to look into. One of them, however, Who can such woes relate without a tear, As stern Ulysses must have wept to hear? I could not forbear observing, who was very busy in retouching the finest pieces, LOOKING Over the old manuscript wherethough he produced no originals of his own. in the private actions of Pharamond are set His pencil aggravated every feature that down by way of table-book, I found many was before overcharged, loaded every de- things which gave me great delight, and fect, and poisoned every colour it touched. as human life turns upon the same princiThough this workman did so much mis-ples and passions in all ages, I thought it chief on the side of the living, he never turned his eye towards that of the dead. His name was Envy. Having taken a cursory view of one side of the gallery, I turned myself to that which was filled by the works of those great masters that were dead; when immediately I fancied myself standing before a multitude of spectators, and thousands of eyes looking upon me at once: for all before me appeared so like men and women, that I almost forgot they were pictures. Raphael's figures stood in one row, Titian's in another, Guido Rheni's in a third. One part of the wall was peopled by Hannibal Carrache, another by Corregio, and another by Rubens. To be short, there was not a great master among the dead who had not contributed to the embellishment of this side of the gallery. The persons that owed their being to these several masters, appeared all of them to be real and alive, and differed among one another only in the variety of their shapes, complexions, and clothes; so that they looked like different nations of the same species. Observing an old man (who was the same person I before mentioned, as the only artist that was at work on this side of the gallery) creeping up and down from one picture to another, and retouching all the fine pieces that stood before me, I could not but be very attentive to all his motions. I found his pencil was so very light, that it worked imperceptibly, and after a thousand touches, scarce produced any visible effect in the picture on which he was employed. However, as he busied himself incessantly, and repeated touch after touch without rest or intermission, he wore off insensibly every little disagreeable gloss that hung upon a figure. He also added such a beautiful brown to the shades, and mellowness to the colours, that he made every picture appear more perfect than when it came fresh from the master's pencil. I could not forbear looking upon the face of this ancient workman, and immediately, by the long lock of very proper to take minutes of what passed in that age for the instruction of this. The antiquary who lent me these papers, gave me a character of Eucrate the favourite of Pharamond, extracted from an author who lived in that court. The account he gives both of the prince and this his faithful friend, will not be improper to insert here, because I may have occasion to mention many of their conversations, into which these memorials of them may give light. Pharamond, when he had a mind to retire for an hour or two from the hurry of business and fatigue of ceremony, made a signal to Eucrate, by putting his hand to his face, placing his arm negligently on a window, or some such action as appeared indifferent to all the rest of the company. Upon such notice, unobserved by others (for their entire intimacy was always a secret) Eucrate repaired to his own apartment to receive the king. There was a secret access to this part of the court, at which Eucrate used to admit many whose mean appearance in the eyes of the ordinary waiters and door-keepers, made them be repulsed from other parts of the palace. Such as these were let in here by order of Eucrate, and had audiences of Pharamond. This entrance Pharamond called "The gate of the unhappy," and the tears of the afflicted who came before him, he would say, were bribes received by Eucrate; for Eucrate had the most compassionate spirit of all men living, except his generous master, who was always kindled at the least affliction which was communicated to him. In regard for the miserable, Eucrate took particular care that the common forms of distress, and the idle pretenders to sorrow, about courts, who wanted only supplies to luxury, should never obtain favour by his means: but the distresses which arise from the many inexplicable occurrences that happen among men, the unaccountable alienation of parents from their children, cruelty of husbands to wives, poverty occasioned from shipwreck or fire, the falling about. out of friends, or such other terrible disas- | hearing the voice of it; I am sure Pharaters, to which the life of man is exposed; mond is not. Know, then, that I have this in cases of this nature, Eucrate was the morning unfortunately killed in a duel, the patron; and enjoyed this part of the royal man whom of all men living I most loved. favour so much without being envied, that I command myself too much in your royal it was never inquired into, by whose means presence, to say, Pharamond gave me my what no one else cared for doing, was brought friend! Pharamond has taken him from me! I will not say, Shall the merciful PhaOne evening when Pharamond came ramond destroy his own subjects? Will the into the apartment of Eucrate, he found father of his country murder his people? him extremely dejected; upon which he But the merciful Pharamond does destroy asked, (with a smile that was natural to his subjects, the father of his country does him,) "What, is there any one too misera-murder his people. Fortune is so much the ble to be relieved by Pharamond, that Eu- pursuit of mankind, that all glory and hocrate is melancholy?" "I fear there is," nour is in the power of a prince, because he answered the favourite: "A person with- has the distribution of their fortunes. It is out, of a good air, well dressed, and though therefore the inadvertency, negligence, or a man in the strength of his life, seems to guilt of princes to let any thing grow into faint under some inconsolable calamity. All custom which is against their laws. A his features seem suffused with agony of court can make fashion and duty walk tomind; but I can observe in him, that it is gether; it can never without the guilt of a more inclined to break away in tears, than court, happen, that it shall not be unfashionrage. I asked him what he would have. able to do what is unlawful. But, alas! in He said he would speak to Pharamond. I the dominions of Pharamond, by the force desired his business. He could hardly say of a tyrant custom, which is misnamed a to me, 'Eucrate, carry me to the king, my point of honour, the duellist kills his friend story is not to be told twice; I fear I shall whom he loves; and the judge condemns not be able to speak it at all.' Pharamond the duellist while he approves his behavicommanded Eucrate to let him enter; he our. Shame is the greatest of all evils; did so, and the gentleman approached the what avail laws, when death only attends king with an air which spoke him under the breach of them, and shame obedience the greatest concern in what manner to de- to them? As for me, oh Pharamond, were mean himself. The king, who had a quick it possible to describe the nameless kinds discerning, relieved him from the oppres- of compunctions and tenderness I feel, when sion he was under: and with the most beau-I reflect upon the little accidents in our fortiful complacency, said to him, "Sir, do not add to that load of sorrow I see in your countenance the awe of my presence. Think you are speaking to your friend. If the circumstances of your distress will admit of it, you shall find me so. To whom the stranger: "Oh, excellent Pharamond, name not a friend to the unfortunate Spinamont.* I had one, but he is dead by my own hand; but, oh Pharamond, though it was by the hand of Spinamont, it was by the guilt of Pharamond. I come not, oh excellent prince, to implore your pardon; I come to relate my sorrow, a sorrow too great for human life to support; from henceforth No. 85.] Thursday, June 7, 1711. shall all occurrences appear dreams, or short intervals of amusement, for this one affliction which has seized my very being. Pardon me, oh Pharamond, if my griefs give me leave, that I lay before you in the anguish of a wounded mind, that you, good as you are, are guilty of the generous blood spilt this day by this unhappy hand. Oh that it had perished before that instant!" Here the stranger paused, and recollecting his mind, after some little meditation, he went on in a calmer tone and gesture as follows: "There is an authority due to distress, and as none of human race is above the reach of sorrow, none should be above the Mr. Thornhill, the gentleman here alluded to, under the translated name of Spinamont, killed sir C. Deering of Kent, Bart. in a duel, May 9, 1711. mer familiarity, my mind swells into sorrow which cannot be resisted enough to be silent in the presence of Pharamond. (With that he fell into a flood of tears, and wept aloud.) Why should not Pharamond hear the anguish he only can relieve others from in time to come? Let him hear from me, what they feel who have given death by the false mercy of his administration, and form to himself the vengeance called for by those who have perished by his negligence.' Interdum speciosa locis, morataque recte R. Hors. Ars Poet. ver. 319. -When the sentiments and manners please, Francis. IT is the custom of the Mahometans, if they see any printed or written paper upon the ground, to take it up and lay it aside carefully, as not knowing but it may contain some piece of their Alcoran. I must confess I have so much of the Mussulman in me, that I cannot forbear looking into every printed paper which comes in my whole narration has something in it very moving, notwithstanding the author of it (whoever he was) has delivered it in such an abject phrase and poorness of expression, that the quoting any part of it would look like a design of turning it into ridicule. But though the language is mean, the thoughts, as I have before said, from one end to the other, are natural, and therefore cannot fail to please those who are not judges of language, or those who, notwithstanding they are judges of language, have a true and unprejudiced taste of nature. The condition, speech, and behaviour of the dying parents, with the age, innocence, and distress of the children, are set forth in such tender circumstances, that it is impossible for a reader of common humanity not to be affected with them. As for the circumstance of the_robin-red-breast, it is indeed a little poetical ornament; and to show the genius of the author amidst all his simplicity, it is just the same kind of fiction which one of the greatest of the Latin poets has made use of upon a parallel occasion; I mean that passage in Horace, where he describes himself when he was a child, fallen asleep in a desert wood, and covered with leaves by the turtles that took pity on him. way, under whatsoever despicable circum- | compassion. The incidents grow out of the stances it may appear; for as no mortal subject, and are such as are the most proauthor, in the ordinary fate and vicissitude per to excite pity; for which reason the of things, knows to what use his works may some time or other be applied, a man may often meet with very celebrated names in a paper of tobacco. I have lighted my pipe more than once with the writings of a prelate; and know a friend of mine, who, for these several years, has converted the essays of a man of quality into a kind of fringe for his candlesticks. I remember, in particular, after having read over a poem of an eminent author on a victory, I met with several fragments of it upon the next rejoicing day, which had been employed in squibs and crackers, and by that means celebrated its subject in a double capacity. I once met with a page of Mr. Baxter, under a Christmas pie. Whether or no the pastry-cook had made use of it through chance or waggery, for the defence of that superstitious viande, I know not; but upon the perusal of it, I conceived so good an idea of the author's piety, that I bought the whole book. I have often profited by these accidental readings, and have sometimes found very curious pieces that are either out of print, or not to be met with in the shops of our London booksellers. For this reason, when my friends take a survey of my library, they are very much surprised to find upon the shelf of folios, two long band-boxes standing upright among my books; till I let them see that they are both of them lined with deep erudition and abstruse literature. I might likewise mention a paper-kite, from which I have received great improvement; and a hat case, which I would not exchange for all the beavers in Great Britain. This my inquisitive temper, or rather impertinent humour, of prying into all sorts of writing, with my natural aversion to loquacity, give me a good deal of employment when I enter any house in the country; for I cannot for my heart leave a room, before I have thoroughly studied the walls of it, and examined the several printed papers which are usually pasted upon them. The last piece that I met with upon this occasion gave me most exquisite pleasure. My reader will think I am not serious, when I acquaint him that the piece I am going to speak of, was the old ballad of the Two Children in the Wood, which is one of the darling songs of the common people, and has been the delight of most Englishmen in some part of their age. This song is a plain simple copy of nature, destitute of the helps and ornaments of art. The tale of it is a pretty tragical story, and pleases for no other reason but because it is a copy of nature. There is even a despicable simplicity in the verse; and yet because the sentiments appear genuine and unaffected, they are able to move the mind of the most polite reader ' with inward meltings of humanity and Me fabulosa Vulture in Appulo, 'Me when a child, as tir'd with play, In careless slumbers bound, The gentle doves protecting found, I have heard that the late Lord Dorset, who had the greatest wit tempered with the greatest candour, and was one of the finest critics as well as the best poets of his age, had a numerous collection of old English ballads, and took a particular pleasure in the reading of them. I can affirm the same of Mr. Dryden, and know several of the most refined writers of our present age who are of the same humour. I might likewise refer my readers to Moliere's thoughts on this subject, as he has expressed them in the character of the Misanthrope; but those only who are endowed with a true greatness of soul and genius, can divest themselves of the images of ridicule, and admire nature in her simplicity and nakedness. As for the little conceited wits of the age, who can only show their judgment by finding fault, they cannot be supposed to admire these productions which have nothing to recommend them but the beauties of nature,, when they do not know how to relish even those compositions that with all the beauties of nature, have also the additional advantages of art. L. No. 86.] Friday, June 8, 1711. Heu quam difficile est crimen non prodere vultu! Addison. Thy beard and head are of a different dye : Short of one foot, distorted in an eye; With all these tokens of a knave complete, Should'st thou be honest, thou'rt a dev'lish cheat.' I have seen a very ingenious author on this subject, who founds his speculations THERE are several arts which all men on the supposition that as a man hath in are in some measure masters of, without the mould of his face a remote likeness to having been at the pains of learning them. that of an ox, a sheep, a lion, a hog, or any Every one that speaks or reasons is a other creature; he hath the same resemgrammarian and a logician, though he blance in the frame of his mind, and is submay be wholly unacquainted with the rules ject to those passions which are predomiof grammar or logic, as they are delivered nant in the creature that appears in his in books and systems. In the same man- countenance. Accordingly he gives the ner, every one is in some degree a master prints of several faces that are of a differof that art which is generally distinguished ent mould, and by a little overcharging the by the name of physiognomy; and naturally likeness discovers the figures of these seforms to himself the character or fortune veral kinds of brutal faces in human feaof a stranger, from the features and linea- tures.* I remember in the life of the faments of his face. We are no sooner pre-mous Prince of Conde, the writer observes, sented to any one we never saw before, but we are immediately struck with the idea of a proud, a reserved, an affable, or a good-natured man; and upon our first going into a company of strangers, our benevolence or aversion, awe or contempt, rises naturally towards several particular persons, before we have heard them speak a single word, or so much as know who they are. the face of that prince was like the face of an eagle, and that the prince was very well pleased to be told so. In this case therefore we may be sure, that he had in his mind some general implicit notion of this art of physiognomy which I have just now mentioned; and that when his courtiers told him his face was made like an eagle's, he understood them in the same manner as if they had told him, there was Every passion gives a particular cast to something in his looks which showed him the countenance, and is apt to discover it- to be strong, active, piercing, and of a self in some feature or other. I have seen royal descent. Whether or no the differan eye curse for half an hour together, and ent motions of the animal spirits, in differan eyebrow call a man a scoundrel. No- ent passions, may have any effect on the thing is more common than for lovers to mould of the face when the lineaments are complain, resent, languish, despair, and pliable and tender, or whether the same die in dumb show. For my own part, I kind of souls require the same kind of haam so apt to frame a notion of every man's bitations, I shall leave to the considerahumour or circumstances by his looks, that tion of the curious. In the mean time I I have sometimes employed myself from think nothing can be more glorious than Charing-Cross to the Royal Exchange in for a man to give the lie to his face, and to drawing the characters of those who have be an honest, just, good-natured man, in passed by me. When I see a man with a spite of all those marks and signatures sour rivelled face, I cannot forbear pitying which nature seems to have set upon him his wife; and when I meet with an open in- for the contrary. This very often happens genuous countenance, think on the happi- among those, who instead of being exaspeness of his friends, his family and his rela-rated by their own looks, or envying the tions. I cannot recollect the author of a famous saying to a person who stood silent in his company, Speak, that I may see thee.' But, with submission, I think we may be better known by our looks than by our words, and that a man's speech is much more easily disguised than his countenance. In this case, however, I think the air of the whole face is much more expressive than the lines of it. The truth of it is, the air is generally nothing else but the inward disposition of the mind made visible. Those who have established physiognomy into an art, and laid down rules of judging men's tempers by their faces, have regarded the features much more than the air. Martial has a pretty epigram on this subject: Crine ruber, niger ore, brevis pede, lumine læsus: looks of others, apply themselves entirely to the cultivating of their minds, and getting those beauties which are more lasting, and more ornamental. I have seen many an amiable piece of deformity; and have observed a certain cheerfulness in as bad a system of features as ever was clapped together, which hath appeared more lovely than all the blooming charms of an insolent beauty. There is a double praise due to virtue, when it is lodged in a body that seems to have been prepared for the reception of vice; in many such cases the soul and the body do not seem to be fellows. Socrates was an extraordinary instance of this nature. There chanced to be a This refers to Baptista della Porta's celebrated Treatise De Humana Physiognomia: which has ran through many editions both in Latin and Italian. He died in 1615. |
