St. James"s Coffee-house, May 20.
This day a mail arrived from Holland, by which there are advices from Paris, that the kingdom of France is in the utmost misery and distraction. The merchants of Lyons have been at Court, to remonstrate their great sufferings by the failure of their public credit; but have received no other satisfaction, than promises of a sudden peace; and that their debts will be made good by funds out of the revenue, which will not answer, but in case of the peace which is promised. In the meantime, the cries of the common people are loud for want of bread, the gentry have lost all spirit and zeal for their country, and the king himself seems to languish under the anxiety of the pressing calamities of the nation, and retires from hearing those grievances which he hath not power to redress. Instead of preparations for war, and the defence of their country, there is nothing to be seen but evident marks of a general despair. Processions, fastings, public mournings, and humiliations, are become the sole employments of a people, who were lately the most vain and gay of any in the universe.
The Pope has written to the French king on the subject of a peace, and his Majesty has answered in the lowliest terms, that he entirely submits his affairs to divine providence, and shall soon show the world, that he prefers the tranquillity of his people to the glory of his arms, and extent of his conquests.
Letters from the Hague of the 24th say, that his Excellency the Lord Townshend delivered his credentials on that day to the States-General, as plenipotentiary from the Queen of Great Britain; as did also Count Zinzendorf, who bears the same character from the Emperor.
Prince Eugene intended to set out the next day for Brussels, and his Grace the Duke of Marlborough on the Tuesday following. The Marquis de Torcy talks daily of going, but still continues here. The army of the Allies is to a.s.semble on the 7th of the next month at Helchin; though it is generally believed, that the preliminaries to a treaty are fully adjusted.
The approach of a peace[222] strikes a panic through our armies, though that of a battle could never do it, and they almost repent of their bravery, that made such haste to humble themselves and the French king.
The Duke of Marlborough, though otherwise the greatest general of the age, has plainly shown himself unacquainted with the arts of husbanding a war. He might have grown as old as the Duke of Alva, or Prince Waldeck, in the Low Countries, and yet have got reputation enough every year for any reasonable man: for the command of general in Flanders hath been ever looked upon as a provision for life. For my part, I can"t see how his grace can answer it to the world, for the great eagerness he hath shown to send a hundred thousand of the bravest fellows in Europe a begging. But the private gentlemen of the infantry will be able to shift for themselves; a brave man can never starve in a country stocked with hen-roosts. "There is not a yard of linen," says my honoured progenitor, Sir John Falstaff, "in my whole company; but as for that," says this worthy knight, "I am in no great pain, we shall find shirts on every hedge."[223] There is another sort of gentlemen whom I am much more concerned for, and that is, the ingenious fraternity of which I have the honour to be an unworthy member; I mean the news-writers of Great Britain, whether Postmen or Postboys,[224] or by what other name or t.i.tle soever dignified or distinguished. The case of these gentlemen is, I think, more hard than that of the soldiers, considering that they have taken more towns, and fought more battles. They have been upon parties and skirmishes, when our armies have lain still; and given the general a.s.sault to many a place, when the besiegers were quiet in their trenches. They have made us masters of several strong towns many weeks before our generals could do it; and completed victories, when our greatest captains have been glad to come off with a drawn battle. Where Prince Eugene has slain his thousands, Boyer[225] has slain his ten thousands. This, gentleman can indeed be never enough commended for his courage and intrepidity during this whole war: he has laid about him with an inexpressible fury, and like the offended Marius of ancient Rome, made such havoc among his countrymen, as must be the work of two or three ages to repair. It must be confessed, the redoubted Mr.
Buckley[226] has shed as much blood as the former; but I cannot forbear saying (and I hope it will not look like envy) that we regard our brother Buckley as a Drawcansir,[227] who spares neither friend nor foe, but generally kills as many of his own side as the enemy"s. It is impossible for this ingenious sort of men to subsist after a peace: every one remembers the shifts they were driven to in the reign of King Charles II., when they could not furnish out a single paper of news, without lighting up a comet in Germany, or a fire in Moscow. There scarce appeared a letter without a paragraph on an earthquake. Prodigies were grown so familiar, that they had lost their name, as a great poet of that age has it. I remember Mr. Dyer,[228] who is justly looked upon by all the fox-hunters in the nation as the greatest statesman our country has produced, was particularly famous for dealing in whales; insomuch that in five months" time (for I had the curiosity to examine his letters on that occasion) he brought three into the mouth of the river Thames, besides two porpoises and a sturgeon. The judicious and wary Mr. I. Dawks[229] hath all along been the rival of this great writer, and got himself a reputation from plagues and famines, by which, in those days, he destroyed as great mult.i.tudes as he has lately done by the sword. In every dearth of news, Grand Cairo was sure to be unpeopled.
It being therefore visible, that our society will be greater sufferers by the peace than the soldiery itself; insomuch that the _Daily Courant_[230] is in danger of being broken, my friend Dyer of being reformed, and the very best of the whole band of being reduced to half-pay; might I presume to offer anything in the behalf of my distressed brethren, I would humbly move, that an appendix of proper apartments furnished with pen, ink, and paper, and other necessaries of life should be added to the Hospital of Chelsea,[231] for the relief of such decayed news-writers as have served their country in the wars; and that for their exercise, they should compile the annals of their brother-veterans, who have been engaged in the same service, and are still obliged to do duty after the same manner.
I cannot be thought to speak this out of an eye to any private interest; for, as my chief scenes of action are coffee-houses, play-houses, and my own apartment, I am in no need of camps, fortifications, and fields of battle, to support me; I don"t call out for heroes and generals to my a.s.sistance. Though the officers are broken, and the armies disbanded, I shall still be safe as long as there are men or women, or politicians, or lovers, or poets, or nymphs, or swains, or cits, or courtiers in being.
[Footnote 218: It is very possible that the first article in this number (see the allusion to medals) is by Addison, as well as the account of the Distress of the News-writers.]
[Footnote 219: There is much about medals in Addison"s "Remarks on several Parts of Italy," 1705. His "Dialogues on Medals" was published posthumously by Tickell.]
[Footnote 220: Stocks Market was so named from a pair of stocks which were erected there as early as the 13th century. The two statues referred to were really very unlike. The one was of white marble; the other, of bra.s.s, was originally intended for John Sobieski, King of Poland, but being bought by Sir Robert Viner in 1672, it was altered and erected in honour of King Charles II. The Turk underneath the horse was metamorphosed into Oliver Cromwell; but his turban escaped unnoticed or unaltered, to testify the truth. The statue in Stocks Market, with the conduit and all its ornaments, was removed to make way for the Mansion House in 1739. Marvell refers to these statues in his "Satires."]
[Footnote 221: Heidegger. See No. 12.]
[Footnote 222: The remainder of this paper is by Addison. See Steele"s Preface, and his Dedication of "The Drummer" to Congreve.]
[Footnote 223: "There"s but a shirt and a half in all my company; and the half-shirt is two napkins, tacked together, and thrown over the shoulders like a herald"s coat without sleeves; and the shirt, to say the truth, stolen from my host of St. Alban, or the red-nosed innkeeper of Daintry. But that"s all one, they"ll find linen enough on every hedge." (1 Henry IV., act iii. sc. 2).]
[Footnote 224: The Tory _Postboy_ was published by Abel Roper; and the Whig _Flying Post_ by George Ridpath:
"There Ridpath, Roper, cudgelled might ye view, The very worsted still looked black and blue."
("Dunciad," ii. 149.) It is remarkable that both Roper and Ridpath died on the same day, Feb. 5, 1726. Swift and others sometimes contributed to Roper"s paper for party purposes.]
[Footnote 225: Abel Boyer (1667-1729), author of "The Political State of Great Britain," was a Whig journalist towards whom Swift felt bitterly.
"The Secretary promises me to swinge him," he wrote in 1711; "I must make that rogue an example for a warning to others." Boyer compiled a valuable French and English dictionary.]
[Footnote 226: Samuel Buckley was printer of the _London Gazette, Daily Courant_, and _Spectator_. He died in 1741.]
[Footnote 227: Drawcansir, in "The Rehearsal," is described by another character as "a great hero, who frights his mistress, snubs up kings, baffles armies, and does what he will, without regard to number, good sense, or justice."]
[Footnote 228: John Dyer was a Jacobite journalist who issued a news-letter to country subscribers, among whom was Sir Roger de Coverley (_Spectator_, No. 127), by whom he was held in high esteem. Defoe (_Review_, vi. 132) says that Dyer "did not so much write what his readers should believe, as what they would believe." Vellum, in Addison"s "The Drummer" (act ii. sc. i), cannot but believe his master is living, "because the news of his death was first published in Dyer"s Letter." See also _Spectator_, Nos. 43 and 457. At the trial of John Tutchin for seditious libel (Howell"s "State Trials," xiv. 1150), on complaint being made by counsel that Dyer had charged him with broaching seditious principles, Lord Chief Justice Holt said, "Dyer is very familiar with me too sometimes; but you need not fear such a little scandalous paper of such a scandalous author."]
[Footnote 229: Ichabod Dawks was another "epistolary historian" (see _Spectator_, No. 457, and _Tatler_, No. 178). Dawks and Dyer are both introduced by Edmund Smith, author of "Phaedra and Hippolitus," in his poem, "Charlettus Percivallo suo":
"Scribe securus, quid agit Senatus, Quid caput stert.i.t grave Lambethanum, Quid comes Guilford, quid habent novorum.
"Dawksque Dyerque."
[Footnote 230: The _Daily Courant_, our first daily newspaper, was begun in 1702.]
[Footnote 231: Chelsea Hospital, for old soldiers, was founded in 1682.]
No. 19. [STEELE.
From _Sat.u.r.day, May 21_, to _Tuesday, May 24_, 1709.
From my own Apartment, May 23.
There is nothing can give a man of any consideration greater pain, than to see order and distinction laid aside amongst men, especially when the rank (of which he himself is a member) is intruded upon by such as have no pretence to that honour. The appellation of Esquire is the most notoriously abused in this kind of any cla.s.s amongst men, insomuch that it is become almost the subject of derision: but I will be bold to say, this behaviour towards it proceeds from the ignorance of the people in its true origin. I shall therefore, as briefly as possible, do myself and all true esquires the justice to look into antiquity upon this subject.
In the first ages of the world, before the invention of jointures and settlements, when the n.o.ble pa.s.sion of love had possession of the hearts of men, and the fair s.e.x were not yet cultivated into the merciful disposition which they have showed in latter centuries, it was natural for great and heroic spirits to retire to rivulets, woods, and caves, to lament their destiny, and the cruelty of the fair persons who were deaf to their lamentations. The hero in this distress was generally in armour, and in a readiness to fight any man he met with, especially if distinguished by any extraordinary qualifications, it being the nature of heroic love to hate all merit, lest it should come within the observation of the cruel one, by whom its own perfections are neglected.
A lover of this kind had always about him a person of a second value, and subordinate to him, who could hear his afflictions, carry an enchantment for his wounds, hold his helmet when he was eating (if ever he did eat); or in his absence, when he was retired to his apartment in any king"s palace, tell the prince himself, or perhaps his daughter, the birth, parentage, and adventures, of his valiant master. This trusty companion was styled his esquire, and was always fit for any offices about him; was as gentle and chaste as a gentleman usher, quick and active as an equerry, smooth and eloquent as a master of the ceremonies.
A man thus qualified was the first, as the ancients affirm, who was called an esquire; and none without these accomplishments ought to a.s.sume our order: but, to the utter disgrace and confusion of the heralds, every pretender is admitted into this fraternity, even persons the most foreign to this courteous inst.i.tution. I have taken an inventory of all within this city, and looked over every letter in the post-office for my better information. There are of the Middle Temple, including all in the b.u.t.tery books, and in the lists of the house, 5000.
In the Inner, 4000. In the King"s Bench Walks, the whole buildings are inhabited by esquires only. The adjacent street of Ess.e.x, from Morris"
Coffee-house, and the turning towards the Grecian, you cannot meet one who is not an esquire, till you take water. Every house in Norfolk and Arundel Streets is governed also by a squire, or his lady. Soho Square, Bloomsbury Square, and all other places where the floors rise above nine feet, are so many universities, where you enter yourselves, and become of our order. However, if this were the worst of the evil, it were to be supported, because they are generally men of some figure and use; though I know no pretence they have to an honour which had its rise from chivalry. But if you travel into the counties of Great Britain, we are still more imposed upon by innovation. We are indeed derived from the field: but shall that give t.i.tle to all that ride mad after foxes, that halloo when they see a hare, or venture their necks full speed after a hawk, immediately to commence esquires? No, our order is temperate, cleanly, sober, and chaste; but these rural esquires commit immodesties upon hayc.o.c.ks, wear shirts half a week, and are drunk twice a day. These men are also to the last degree excessive in their food: an esquire of Norfolk eats two pounds of dumpling every meal, as if obliged to it by our order: an esquire of Hampshire is as ravenous in devouring hogs"
flesh: one of Ess.e.x has as little mercy on calves. But I must take the liberty to protest against them, and acquaint those persons, that it is not the quant.i.ty they eat, but the manner of eating, that shows a squire. But above all, I am most offended at small quillmen, and transcribing clerks, who are all come into our order, for no reason that I know of, but that they can easily flourish it at the end of their name. I"ll undertake, that if you read the superscriptions to all the offices in the kingdom, you will not find three letters directed to any but esquires. I have myself a couple of clerks, and the rogues make nothing of leaving messages upon each other"s desk: one directs, to "Degory Goosequill, Esq."; to which the other replies by a note, to "Nehemiah Dashwell, Esq.; with respect." In a word, it is now, _populus armigerorum_, a people of esquires. And I don"t know, but, by the late Act of Naturalisation,[232] foreigners will a.s.sume that t.i.tle, as part of the immunity of being Englishmen. All these improprieties flow from the negligence of the Heralds" Office. Those gentlemen in parti-coloured habits do not so rightly, as they ought, understand themselves; though they are dressed _cap-a-pie_ in hieroglyphics, they are inwardly but ignorant men. I asked an acquaintance of mine, who is a man of wit, but of no fortune, and is forced to appear as Jack Pudding on the stage to a mountebank: "Prithee, Jack, why is your coat of so many colours?" He replied, "I act a fool, and this spotted dress is to signify, that every man living has a weak place about him; for I am knight of the shire, and represent you all." I wish the heralds would know as well as this man does, in his way, that they are to act for us in the case of our arms and appellations: we should not then be jumbled together in so promiscuous and absurd a manner. I design to take this matter into further consideration, and no man shall be received as an esquire, who cannot bring a certificate, that he has conquered some lady"s obdurate heart; that he can lead up a country dance, or carry a message between her and her lover, with address, secrecy and diligence. A squire is properly born for the service of the s.e.x, and his credentials shall be signed by three toasts, and one prude, before his t.i.tle shall be received in my office.
Will"s Coffee-house, May 23.
On Sat.u.r.day last was presented, "The Busy Body," a comedy, written (as I have heretofore remarked) by a woman.[233] The plot and incidents of the play are laid with that subtlety of spirit which is peculiar to females of wit, and is very seldom well performed by those of the other s.e.x, in whom craft in love is an act of invention, and not, as with women, the effect of nature and instinct.
To-morrow will be acted a play, called, "The Trip to the Jubilee."[234]
This performance is the greatest instance that we can have of the irresistible force of proper action. The dialogue in itself has something too low to bear a criticism upon it: but Mr. Wilks enters into the part with so much skill, that the gallantry, the youth, and gaiety of a young man of a plentiful fortune, is looked upon with as much indulgence on the stage, as in real life, without any of those intermixtures of wit and humour, which usually prepossess us in favour of such characters in other plays.
St. James"s Coffee-house, May 23.
Letters from the Hague of the 23rd instant, N.S., say, Mr. Walpole[235]
(who is since arrived) was going with all expedition to Great Britain, whither they doubted not but he carried with him the preliminaries to a treaty of peace. The French Minister, Monsieur Torcy, has been observed in this whole negotiation to turn his discourse upon the calamities sent down by Heaven upon France, and imputed the necessities they were under to the immediate hand of Providence, in inflicting a general scarcity of provision, rather than the superior genius of the generals, or the bravery of the armies against them. It would be impious not to acknowledge the indulgence of Heaven to us; but at the same time, as we are to love our enemies, we are glad to see them mortified enough to mix Christianity with their politics. An authentic letter from Madame Maintenon to Monsieur Torcy has been stolen by a person about him, who has communicated a copy of it to some of the dependants of a Minister of the Allies. That epistle is writ in the most pathetic manner imaginable, and in a style which shows her genius, that has so long engrossed the heart of this great monarch.[236]
"SIR,
"I received yours, and am sensible of the address and capacity with which you have hitherto transacted the great affair under your management. You well observe, that our wants here are not to be concealed; and that it is vanity to use artifices with the knowing men with whom you are to deal. Let me beg you therefore, in this representation of our circ.u.mstances, to lay aside art, which ceases to be such when it is seen, and make use of all your skill, to gain us what advantages you can from the enemy"s jealousy of each other"s greatness; which is the place where only you have room for any dexterity. If you have any pa.s.sion for your unhappy country, or any affection for your distressed master, come home with peace. O Heaven! Do I live to talk of Lewis the Great as the object of pity? The king shows a great uneasiness to be informed of all that pa.s.ses; but at the same time, is fearful of every one who appears in his presence, lest he should bring an account of some new calamity. I know not in what terms to represent my thoughts to you, when I speak of the king, with relation to his bodily health.
Figure to yourself that immortal man, who stood in our public places, represented with trophies, armour, and terrors, on his pedestal: consider, the Invincible, the Great, the Good, the Pious, the Mighty, which were the usual epithets we gave him, both in our language and thoughts. I say, consider him whom you knew the most glorious and great of monarchs; and now think you see the same man an unhappy Lazar, in the lowest circ.u.mstances of human nature itself, without regard to the state from whence he is fallen. I write from his bedside: he is at present in a slumber. I have many, many things to add; but my tears flow too fast, and my sorrow is too big for utterance.
"I am, etc."
There is such a veneration due from all men to the persons of princes, that it were a sort of dishonesty to represent further the condition which the king is in; but it is certain, that soon after the receipt of these advices, Monsieur Torcy waited upon his Grace the Duke of Marlborough and the Lord Townshend, and in that conference gave up many points, which he had before said were such, as he must return to France before he could answer.