the author's piety, that I bought the whole book. I have often profited by thefe accidental readings, and have fometimes found very curious pieces, that are either out of print, or not to be met with in the shops of our London bookfellers. For this reason, when my friends take a furvey of my library, they are very much furprised to find, upon the shelf of folios, two long band-boxes standing upright among my books, till I let them fee that they are both of them lined with deep erudition and abftrufe literature. I might likewise mention a paper-kite, from which I have received great improvement; and a hatcafe, which I would not exchange for all the beavers in Great-Britain. This my inquifitive temper, or rather impertinent humour of prying into all ferts of writing, with my natural averfion to loquacity, give me a good deal of employment when I enter any houfe in the country; for I cannot from my heart leave a room, before I have thoroughly ftudied the walls of it, and examined the feveral printed papers which are ufually pafted upon them. The last piece that I met with upon this occafion gave me a moft exquifite pleasure. My reader will think I am not ferious, 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 fongs of the common people, and has been thie delight of most Englishmen in fome part of their age.

This fong is a plain fimple copy of nature, deftitute of the helps and ornaments of art. The tale of it is a pretty tragical ftory, and pleafes for no other reafon but because it is a copy of nature. There is even a defpicable fimplicity in the verfe; and yet because the fentiments appear genuine and unaffected, they are able to move the mind of the most polite reader with inward meltings of humanity and compaffion. The incidents grow out of the fubject, and are fuch as are the most proper to excite pity; for which reafon the whole narration has fomething in it very moving, notwithstanding the author of it (whoever he was) has delivered it in fuch an abject phrafe and poornefs of expreffion, that the quoting any part of it would look like a defign of turning it into ridicule. But tho' the language is mean, the thoughts, as I have before faid, from one end to the other, are

natural,

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 unpre judiced tafte of nature. The condition, speech, and behaviour of the dying parents, with the age, innocence, and diftrefs of the children, are fet forth in fuch tender circumstances, that it is impoffible for a reader of common humanity not to be affected with them. As for the circumftance of the Robin-red-breaft, it is indeed a little poetical ornament; and to fhew the genius of the author amidft all his fimplicity, it is juft the fame kind of fiction which one of the greatest of the Latin poets has made ufe of upon a parallel occafion; I mean that paffage in Horace, where he describes himself when he was a child, fallen afleep in a defart wood, and covered with leaves by the turtles that took pity on him.

Me fabulofa vulture in Apulo,
Altricis extra limen Apuliæ,
Ludo fatigatumque fomno

Fronde nová puerum palumbes

Texere

Od. 4. 1. 3. v. 9.

In lofty vulture's rifing grounds,
Without my nurfe Apulia's bounds,

When young, and tir'd with sport and play,
And bound with pleafing fleep I lay,
Doves cover'd me with myrtle boughs.

CREECH.

I have heard that the late Lord Dorfet, who had the greatest wit temper'd with the greatest candour, and was one of the finest criticks as well as the beft 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 fame of Mr. Dryden, and know feveral of the most refined writers of our prefent age who are of the fame humour.

I might likewife refer my reader to Moliere's thoughts on this fubject, as he has expreffed them in the character of the Mifanthrope; but thofe only who are endowed with a true greatness of foul and genius can diveft themselves of the little images of ridicule, and admire nature in her fimplicity and nakedness. As for the little

con

conceited wits of the age, who can only fhew their judgment by finding fault, they cannot be fuppofed to admire thefe productions which have nothing to recommend them but the beauties of nature, when they do not know how to relifh even those compofitions that, with all the beauties of nature, have also the additional advantages of art.

L

T

ADDISON.

HERE are feveral arts which all men are in fome measure mafters of, without having been at the pains of learning them. Every one that speaks or reafons is a grammarian and a logician, tho' he may be wholly unacquainted with the rules of grammar os logick, as they are delivered in books and fyftems. In the fame manner, every one is in fome degree a master of that art which is generally diftinguifhed by the name of phyfiognomy; and naturally forms to himself the character or fortune of a ftranger, from the features and lineaments of his face. We are no fooner prefented to any one we never faw before, but we are immediately ftruck with the idea of a proud, a reserved, an affable, or a good-natured man; and upon our firft going into a company of ftrangers, our benevolence or averfion, awe or contempt, rifes naturally towards feveral parti cular perfons, before we have heard them speak a fingle word, or fo much as know who they are.

Every paffion gives a particular caft to the counte nance, and is apt to discover itfelf in fome feature or other. I have seen an eye curfe for half an hour together, and an eye-brow call a man fcoundrel. Nothing is mare common than for lovers to complain, refent, languish, defpair and die in dumb fhow. For my own part, I VOL. II.

B

am

am fo apt to frame a notion of every man's humour of circumflances by his looks, that I have fometimes employed myself from Charing-Cros to the Royal-Exchange in drawing the characters of thofe who have paffed by me. When I fee a man with a four rivell'd face, 1 cannot forbear pitying his wife; and when I meet with an open ingenuous countenance, think on the happinefs of his friends, his family, and relations.

I cannot recollect the author of a famous faying to a ftranger who stood filent in his company, Speak that I may Jee thee. But, with fubmiffion, I think we may be better known by our looks than by our words, and that a man's fpeech is much more easily disguised than his countenance. In this cafe, however, I think the air of the whole face is much more expreflive than the lines of it: The truth of it is, the air is generally nothing else but the inward difpofition of the mind made vifible.

Thofe who have eftablished phyfiognomy into an art, and laid down rules of judging mens tempers by their faces, have regarded the features much more than the air. Martial has a pretty epigram on this fubject:

Crine ruber, niger ore, brevis pede, lumine læfus:
Rem magnam præflas, Zoile, fi bonus es.

Epig. 54. 1. 12.
Thy beard and head are of a diff'rent dye;
Short of one foot, diftorted in an eye :

With all thefe tokens of a knave complete,
Should't thou be honeft, thou'rt a dev'lish cheat.

I have seen a very ingenious author on this fubject, who founds his fpeculations on the fuppofition, that as a man hath in the mould of his face a remote likeness to that of an ox, a fheep, a lion, an hog, or any other creature; he hath the fame refemblance in the frame of his mind, and is fubject to thofe paffions which are predominant in the creature that appears in his countenance. Accordingly he gives the prints of feveral faces that are of a different mould, and by a little overcharging the likeness, difcovers the figures of thefe feveral kinds of brutal faces in human features. I remember, in the Ffe of the famous prince of Conde, the writer obferves, the face of that prince was like the face of an eagle,

and

and that the prince was very well pleafed to be told fo In this cafe therefore we may be fure, that he had in his mind fome general implicit notion of this art of phyfiognomy which I have juft now mentioned; and that when his courtiers told him his face was made like an eagle's, he understood them in the fame manner as if they had told him, there was fomething in his looks which fhewed him to be strong, active, piercing, and of a royal defcent. Whether or no the different motions of the animal fpirits, in different paffions, may have any effect on the mould of the face when the lineaments are pliable and tender, or whether the fame kind of fouls require the fame kinds of habitations, I fhall leave to the confideration of the curious. In the mean time I think nothing can be more glorious than for a man to give the lie to his face, and to be an honeft, juft, good-natured man, in fpite of all thofe marks and fignatures which nature feems to have set upon him for the contrary. This very often happens among thofe, who, inftead of being exafperated by their own looks, or envying the looks of others, apply themselves entirely to the cultivating of their minds, and getting those beauties which are more lafting and more ornamental. I have feen many an amiable piece of deformity; and have observed a certain chearfulness in as bad a fyftem of features as ever was clapped together, which hath appeared more lovely than all the blooming charms of an infolent beauty. There is a double praise due to virtue, when it is lodged in a body that feems to have been prepared for the reception of vice; in many fuch cafes the foul and the body do not feem to be fellows.

Socrates was an extraordinary inftance of this nature. There chanced to be a great phyfiognomift in his time at Athens, who had made ftrange difcoveries of mens tempers and inclinations by their outward appearances. Socrates's difciples, that they might put this artift to the trial, carried him to their mafter, whom he had never seen before, and did not know he was then in company with him. After a fhort examination of his face, the phyfiognomist pronounced him the moft lewd, libidi nous, drunken old fellow that he had ever met with in his whole life. Upon which the difciples all burst out a laughing, as thinking they had detected the falfhood

B 2

and