Fortuna saevo laeta negotio et Ludum insolentem ludere pertinax Trans.m.u.tat incertos honores, Nunc mihi, nunc alii, benigna.
HOR., 3 Od. xxix. 49.
_From my own Apartment, May 10._
Having this morning spent some time in reading on the subject of the vicissitude of human life, I laid aside my book, and began to ruminate on the discourse which raised in me those reflections. I believed it a very good office to the world, to sit down and show others the road in which I am experienced by my wanderings and errors. This is Seneca"s way of thinking, and he had half convinced me, how dangerous it is to our true happiness and tranquillity to fix our minds upon anything which is in the power of Fortune. It is excusable only in animals who have not the use of reason, to be catched by hooks and baits. Wealth, glory, and power, which the ordinary people look up at with admiration, the learned and wise know to be only so many snares laid to enslave them. There is nothing further to be sought for with earnestness, than what will clothe and feed us. If we pamper ourselves in our diet, or give our imaginations a loose in our desires, the body will no longer obey the mind. Let us think no further than to defend ourselves against hunger, thirst, and cold. We are to remember, that everything else is despicable, and not worth our care. To want little is true grandeur, and very few things are great to a great mind. Those who form their thoughts in this manner, and abstract themselves from the world, are out of the way of Fortune, and can look with contempt both on her favours and her frowns. At the same time, they who separate themselves from the immediate commerce with the busy part of mankind, are still beneficial to them, while by their studies and writings they recommend to them the small value which ought to be put upon what they pursue with so much labour and disquiet. Whilst such men are thought the most idle, they are the most usefully employed. They have all things, both human and divine, under consideration. To be perfectly free from the insults of fortune, we should arm ourselves with their reflections. We should learn, that none but intellectual possessions are what we can properly call our own.
All things from without are but borrowed. What Fortune gives us, is not ours; and whatever she gives, she can take away.
It is a common imputation to Seneca, that though he declaimed with so much strength of reason, and a stoical contempt of riches and power, he was at the same time one of the richest and most powerful men in Rome. I know no instance of his being insolent in that fortune, and can therefore read his thoughts on those subjects with the more deference. I will not give philosophy so poor a look, as to say it cannot live in courts; but I am of opinion, that it is there in the greatest eminence, when amidst the affluence of all the world can bestow, and the addresses of a crowd who follow him for that reason, a man can think both of himself and those about him abstracted from these circ.u.mstances. Such a philosopher is as much above an anchorite, as a wise matron, who pa.s.ses through the world with innocence, is preferable to the nun who locks herself up from it.
Full of these thoughts I left my lodgings, and took a walk to the Court end of the town; and the hurry, and busy faces I met with about Whitehall, made me form to myself ideas of the different prospects of all I saw, from the turn and cast of their countenances. All, methought, had the same thing in view, but prosecuted their hopes with a different air: some showed an unbecoming eagerness, some a surly impatience, some a winning deference, but the generality a servile complaisance.
I could not but observe, as I roved about the offices, that all who were still but in expectation, murmured at Fortune; and all who had obtained their wishes, immediately began to say, there was no such being. Each believed it an act of blind chance that any other man was preferred, but owed only to service and merit what he had obtained himself. It is the fault of studious men to appear in public with too contemplative a carriage; and I began to observe, that my figure, age, and dress, made me particular: for which reason I thought it better to remove a studious countenance from among busy ones, and take a turn with a friend in the Privy Garden.[259]
When my friend was alone with me there, "Isaac," said he, "I know you came abroad only to moralise and make observations, and I will carry you hard by, where you shall see all that you have yourself considered or read in authors, or collected from experience, concerning blind Fortune and irresistible Destiny, ill.u.s.trated in real persons and proper mechanisms. The Graces, the Muses, the Fates, all the beings which have a good or evil influence upon human life, are, you"ll say, very justly figured in the persons of women; and where I am carrying you, you"ll see enough of that s.e.x together, in an employment which will have so important an effect upon those who are to receive their manufacture, as will make them be respectively called Deities or Furies, as their labour shall prove disadvantageous or successful to their votaries." Without waiting for my answer, he carried me to an apartment contiguous to the Banqueting House, where there were placed at two long tables a large company of young women, in decent and agreeable habits, making up tickets for the lottery appointed by the Government. There walked between the tables a person who presided over the work. This gentlewoman seemed an emblem of Fortune, she commanded as if unconcerned in their business; and though everything was performed by her direction, she did not visibly interpose in particulars. She seemed in pain at our near approach to her, and most to approve us, when we made her no advances.
Her height, her mien, her gesture, her shape, and her countenance, had something that spoke both familiarity and dignity. She therefore appeared to me not only a picture of Fortune, but of Fortune as I liked her; which made me break out in the following words:
"MADAM,
"I am very glad to see the fate of the many who now languish in expectation of what will be the event of your labours in the hands of one who can act with so impartial an indifference. Pardon me, that have often seen you before, and have lost you for want of the respect due to you. Let me beg of you, who have both the furnishing and turning of that wheel of lots, to be unlike the rest of your s.e.x, repulse the forward and the bold, and favour the modest and the humble. I know you fly the importunate, but smile no more on the careless. Add not to the coffers of the usurer, but give the power of bestowing to the generous. Continue his wants who cannot enjoy or communicate plenty; but turn away his poverty, who can bear it with more ease than he can see it in another."
ADVERTIs.e.m.e.nT.
Whereas Philander signified to Clarinda by letter bearing date Thursday 12 o"clock, that he had lost his heart by a shot from her eyes, and desired she would condescend to meet him the same day at eight in the evening at Rosamond"s Pond,[260] faithfully protesting, that in case she would not do him that honour, she might see the body of the said Philander the next day floating on the said lake of Love, and that he desired only three sighs upon view of his said body: it is desired, if he has not made away with himself accordingly, that he would forthwith show himself to the coroner of the city of Westminster; or Clarinda, being an old offender, will be found guilty of wilful murder.
[Footnote 259: Now Whitehall Gardens, between Parliament Street and the Thames. There Pepys had the pleasure of seeing Lady Castlemaine in 1662: "In the Privy Garden saw the finest smocks and linen petticoats of my Lady Castlemaine"s, laced with rich lace at the bottom; and did me good to look at them."]
[Footnote 260: See No. 60.]
No. 171. [STEELE.
From _Thursday, May 11_, to _Sat.u.r.day, May 13, 1710_.
Alter rixatur de lana saepe caprina, Propugnat nugis armatus.-- HOR., I Ep. xviii. 15.
_Grecian Coffee-house, May 12._
It has happened to be for some days the deliberation at the learnedest board in this house, whence honour and t.i.tle had its first original.
Timoleon, who is very particular in his opinions, but is thought particular for no other cause but that he acts against depraved custom, by the rules of nature and reason, in a very handsome discourse gave the company to understand, that in those ages which first degenerated from simplicity of life, and natural justice, the wise among them thought it necessary to inspire men with the love of virtue, by giving them who adhered to the interests of innocence and truth, some distinguishing name to raise them above the common level of mankind. This way of fixing appellations of credit upon eminent merit, was what gave being to t.i.tles and terms of honour. "Such a name," continued he, "without the qualities which should give a man pretence to be exalted above others, does but turn him to jest and ridicule. Should one see another cudgelled, or scurvily treated, do you think a man so used would take it kindly to be called Hector, or Alexander? Everything must bear a proportion with the outward value that is set upon it; or instead of being long had in veneration, that very term of esteem will become a word of reproach."
When Timoleon had done speaking, Urba.n.u.s pursued the same purpose, by giving an account of the manner in which the Indian kings,[261] who were lately in Great Britain, did honour to the person where they lodged.
"They were placed," said he, "in a handsome apartment, at an upholsterer"s in King Street, Covent Garden. The man of the house, it seems, had been very observant of them, and ready in their service.
These just and generous princes, who act according to the dictates of natural justice, thought it proper to confer some dignity upon their landlord before they left his house. One of them had been sick during his residence there, and having never before been in a bed, had a very great veneration for him who made that engine of repose, so useful and so necessary in his distress. It was consulted among the four princes, by what name to dignify his great merit and services. The Emperor of the Mohocks, and the other three kings, stood up, and in that posture recounted the civilities they had received, and particularly repeated the care which was taken of their sick brother. This, in their imagination, who are used to know the injuries of weather, and the vicissitudes of cold and heat, gave them very great impressions of a skilful upholsterer, whose furniture was so well contrived for their protection on such occasions. It is with these less instructed (I will not say less knowing) people, the manner of doing honour, to impose some name significant of the qualities of the person they distinguish, and the good offices received from him. It was therefore resolved, to call their landlord Cadaroque, which is the name of the strongest fort in their part of the world. When they had agreed upon the name, they sent for their landlord, and as he entered into their presence, the Emperor of the Mohocks taking him by the hand, called him Cadaroque. After which the other three princes repeated the same word and ceremony."
Timoleon appeared much satisfied with this account, and having a philosophic turn, began to argue against the modes and manners of those nations which we esteem polite, and express himself with disdain at our usual method of calling such as are strangers to our innovations, barbarous. "I have," says he, "so great a deference for the distinction given by these princes, that Cadaroque shall be my upholsterer----" He was going on, but the intended discourse was interrupted by Minucio, who sat near him, a small philosopher, who is also somewhat of a politician; one of those who sets up for knowledge by doubting, and has no other way of making himself considerable, but by contradicting all he hears said.
He has, besides much doubt and spirit of contradiction, a constant suspicion as to State affairs. This accomplished gentleman, with a very awful brow, and a countenance full of weight, told Timoleon, that it was a great misfortune men of letters seldom looked into the bottom of things. "Will any man," continued he, "persuade me, that this was not from the beginning to the end a concerted affair? Who can convince the world, that four kings shall come over here, and lie at the Two Crowns and Cushion,[262] and one of them fall sick, and the place be called King Street, and all this by mere accident? No, no: to a man of very small penetration, it appears, that Tee Yee Neen Ho Ga Row, Emperor of the Mohocks, was prepared for this adventure beforehand. I do not care to contradict any gentleman in his discourse; but I must say, however, Sa Ga Yeath Rua Geth Ton, and E Tow Oh Koam, might be surprised in this matter; nevertheless, Ho Nee Yeth Taw No Row knew it before he set foot on the English sh.o.r.e."
Timoleon looked steadfastly at him for some time, then shaked his head, paid for his tea, and marched off. Several others who sat around him, were in their turns attacked by this ready disputant. A gentleman who was at some distance, happened in discourse to say it was four miles to Hammersmith. "I must beg your pardon," says Minucio, "when we say a place is so far off, we do not mean exactly from the very spot of earth we are in, but from the town where we are; so that you must begin your account from the end of Piccadilly; and if you do so, I"ll lay any man ten to one, it is not above three good miles off." Another, about Minucio"s level of understanding, began to take him up in this important argument, and maintained, that considering the way from Pimlico at the end of St. James"s Park, and the crossing from Chelsea by Earl"s Court, he would stand to it, that it was full four miles. But Minucio replied with great vehemence, and seemed so much to have the better of the dispute, that this adversary quitted the field, as well as the other. I sat till I saw the table almost all vanished, where, for want of discourse, Minucio asked me, how I did? To which I answered, "Very well." "That"s very much," said he; "I a.s.sure you, you look paler than ordinary." "Nay," thought I, "if he won"t allow me to know whether I am well or not, there is no staying for me neither." Upon which I took my leave, pondering as I went home at this strange poverty of imagination, which makes men run into the fault of giving contradiction. They want in their minds entertainment for themselves or their company, and therefore build all they speak upon what is started by others; and since they cannot improve that foundation, they strive to destroy it. The only way of dealing with these people is to answer in monosyllables, or by way of question. When one of them tells you a thing that he thinks extraordinary, I go no further than, "Say you so, sir? Indeed! Heyday!"
or "Is it come to that!" These little rules, which appear but silly in the repet.i.tion, have brought me with great tranquillity to this age. And I have made it an observation, that as a.s.sent is more agreeable than flattery, so contradiction is more odious than culumny.
ADVERTIs.e.m.e.nT.
Mr. Bickerstaff"s aerial messenger has brought him a report of what pa.s.sed at the auction of pictures which was in Somerset House Yard on Monday last, and finds there were no "screens" present, but all transacted with great justice.
N.B. All false buyers at auctions being employed only to hide others, are from this day forward to be known in Mr. Bickerstaff"s writings by the word "screens."
[Footnote 261: The four kings were Iroquois chiefs who had been persuaded by adjacent British colonists to come and pay their respects to Queen Anne, and satisfy themselves of the untruth of the a.s.sertion made by the Jesuits, that the English and all other nations were va.s.sals to the French king. They were said also to have been told that the Saviour was born in France and crucified in England. The names of the kings, according to Boyer"s "Annals," were: Tee Yee Neen Ho Ga Prow, and Sa Ga Yean Qua Prah Ton, of the Maquas; Elow Oh Kaom, and Oh Nee Yeath Ton No Prow, of the River Sachem, and the Ganajoh-h.o.r.e Sachem. They had an audience of the Queen on April 19, 1710, and were afterwards entertained by the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, the Duke of Ormonde, &c., until their departure for Boston on the 8th of May. See Addison"s paper in the _Spectator_, No. 50, and Swift"s remark upon it in the "Journal to Stella," April 28, 1711. A concert at York Buildings on May 1, 1710, "for the entertainment of the Emperor of the Mohocks and the three Indian kings," was advertised in No. 165 of the _Tatler_. The kings were lodged at the Two Crowns and Cushion, the house of an upholsterer in Covent Garden, probably Thomas Arne, the father of Dr.
Thomas Arne the musician, and Mrs. Cibber, the actress. The following advertis.e.m.e.nt appeared at the end of No. 250, dated Nov. 14, 1710, and with some variation was reprinted in Nos. 253, 256, and 267 of the original edition: "This is to give notice, that the metzotinto-prints, by John Simmonds, in whole lengths, of the four Indian kings, that are done from the original pictures drawn by John Verelst, which her Majesty has at her palace at Kensington, are now to be delivered to subscribers, and sold at the Rainbow and Dove, the corner of Ivy Bridge in the Strand."]
[Footnote 262: Arne"s shop.]
No. 172. [STEELE.
From _Sat.u.r.day, May 13_, to _Tuesday, May 16, 1710_.
Quid quisque vitet, nunquam homini satis Cautum est in horas.--HOR., 2 Od. xiii. 13.
_From my own Apartment, May 15._
When a man is in a serious mood, and ponders upon his own make, with a retrospect to the actions of his life, and the many fatal miscarriages in it, which he owes to ungoverned pa.s.sions, he is then apt to say to himself, that experience has guarded him against such errors for the future: but nature often recurs in spite of his best resolutions, and it is to the very end of our days a struggle between our reason and our temper, which shall have the empire over us. However, this is very much to be helped by circ.u.mspection, and a constant alarm against the first onsets of pa.s.sion. As this is in general a necessary care to make a man"s life easy and agreeable to himself, so it is more particularly the duty of such as are engaged in friendship and more near commerce with others. Those who have their joys, have also their griefs in proportion, and none can extremely exalt or depress friends, but friends. The harsh things which come from the rest of the world, are received and repulsed with that spirit which every honest man bears for his own vindication; but unkindness in words or actions among friends, affects us at the first instant in the inmost recesses of our souls. Indifferent people, if I may so say, can wound us only in heterogeneous parts, maim us in our legs or arms; but the friend can make no pa.s.s but at the heart itself. On the other side, the most impotent a.s.sistance, the mere well-wishes of a friend, gives a man constancy and courage against the most prevailing force of his enemies. It is here only a man enjoys and suffers to the quick. For this reason, the most gentle behaviour is absolutely necessary to maintain friendship in any degree above the common level of acquaintance. But there is a relation of life much more near than the most strict and sacred friendship, that is to say, marriage. This union is of too close and delicate a nature to be easily conceived by those who do not know that condition by experience. Here a man should, if possible, soften his pa.s.sions; if not for his own ease, in compliance to a creature formed with a mind of a quite different make from his own. I am sure, I do not mean it an injury to women, when I say there is a sort of s.e.x in souls. I am tender of offending them, and know it is hard not to do it on this subject; but I must go on to say, that the soul of a man and that of a woman are made very unlike, according to the employments for which they are designed. The ladies will please to observe, I say, our minds have different, not superior qualities to theirs. The virtues have respectively a masculine and a feminine cast.
What we call in men wisdom, is in women prudence. It is a partiality to call one greater than the other. A prudent woman is in the same cla.s.s of honour as a wise man, and the scandals in the way of both are equally dangerous. But to make this state anything but a burden, and not hang a weight upon our very beings, it is very proper each of the couple should frequently remember, that there are many things which grow out of their very natures that are pardonable, nay becoming, when considered as such, but without that reflection must give the quickest pain and vexation. To manage well a great family is as worthy an instance of capacity, as to execute a great employment; and for the generality, as women perform the considerable part of their duties as well as men do theirs, so in their common behaviour, those of ordinary genius are not more trivial than the common rate of men; and in my opinion, the playing of a fan is every whit as good an entertainment as the beating a snuff-box.
But however I have rambled in this libertine manner of writing by way of essay, I now sat down with an intention to represent to my readers, how pernicious, how sudden, and how fatal surprises of pa.s.sion are to the mind of man; and that in the more intimate commerces of life they are most liable to arise, even in our most sedate and indolent hours.
Occurrences of this kind have had very terrible effects; and when one reflects upon them, we cannot but tremble to consider what we are capable of being wrought up to against all the ties of nature, love, honour, reason, and religion, though the man who breaks through them all, had, an hour before he did so, a lively and virtuous sense of their dictates. When unhappy catastrophes make up part of the history of princes, and persons who act in high spheres, or are represented in the moving language and well-wrought scenes of tragedians, they do not fail of striking us with terror; but then they affect us only in a transient manner, and pa.s.s through our imaginations, as incidents in which our fortunes are too humble to be concerned, or which writers form for the ostentation of their own force; or, at most, as things fit rather to exercise the powers of our minds, than to create new habits in them.
Instead of such high pa.s.sages, I was thinking it would be of great use (if anybody could hit it) to lay before the world such adventures as befall persons not exalted above the common level. This, methought, would better prevail upon the ordinary race of men, who are so prepossessed with outward appearances, that they mistake fortune for nature, and believe nothing can relate to them that does not happen to such as live and look like themselves.
The unhappy end of a gentleman whose story an acquaintance of mine was just now telling me, would be very proper for this end if it could be related with all the circ.u.mstances as I heard it this evening; for it touched me so much, that I cannot forbear entering upon it.
Mr. Eustace,[263] a young gentleman of a good estate near Dublin in Ireland, married a lady of youth, beauty, and modesty, and lived with her in general with much ease and tranquillity; but was in his secret temper impatient of rebuke: she is apt to fall into little sallies of pa.s.sion, yet as suddenly recalled by her own reflection on her fault, and the consideration of her husband"s temper. It happened, as he, his wife, and her sister, were at supper together about two months ago, that in the midst of a careless and familiar conversation, the sisters fell into a little warmth and contradiction. He, who was one of that sort of men who are never unconcerned at what pa.s.ses before them, fell into an outrageous pa.s.sion on the side of the sister. The person about whom they disputed was so near, that they were under no restraint from running into vain repet.i.tions of past heats: on which occasion all the aggravations of anger and distaste boiled up, and were repeated with the bitterness of exasperated lovers. The wife observing her husband extremely moved, began to turn it off, and rally him for interposing between two people who from their infancy had been angry and pleased with each other every half-hour. But it descended deeper into his thoughts, and they broke up with a sullen silence. The wife immediately retired to her chamber, whither her husband soon after followed. When they were in bed, he soon dissembled a sleep, and she, pleased that his thoughts were composed, fell into a real one. Their apartment was very distant from the rest of their family, in a lonely country house. He now saw his opportunity, and with a dagger he had brought to bed with him, stabbed his wife in the side. She awaked in the highest terror; but immediately imagined it was a blow designed for her husband by ruffians, began to grasp him, and strive to awake and rouse him to defend himself.
He still pretended himself sleeping, and gave her a second wound.