was troubled with vapours, as I was afterwards told by one who I found was none of her well-wishers, she changed colour and startled at everything she heard. She was likewise, as I afterwards found, a greater valetudinarian than any I had ever met with, even in her own sex, and subject to such momentary consumptions, that in the twinkling of an eye she would fall away from the most florid complexion and the most healthful state of body, and wither into a skeleton. Her recoveries were often as sudden as her decays, insomuch that she would revive in a moment out of a wasting distemper, into a habit of the highest health and vigour. I had very soon an opportunity of observing these quick turns and changes in her constitution. There sat at her feet a couple of secretaries, who received every hour letters from all parts of the world, which the one or the other of them was perpetually reading to her; and, according to the news she heard, to which she was exceedingly attentive, she changed colour, and discovered many symptoms of health or sickness. Behind the throne was a prodigious heap of bags of money, which were piled upon one another so high that they touched the ceiling. The floor, on her right hand and on her left, was covered with vast sums of gold that rose up in pyramids on either side of her but this I did not so much wonder at, when I heard, upon inquiry, that she had the same virtue in her touch, which the poets tell us a Lydian king was formerly possessed of, and that she could convert whatever she pleased into that precious metal. 1 After a little dizziness and confused hurry of 1 King Midas. thought, which a man often meets with in a dream, methought the hall was alarmed, the doors flew open, and there entered half-a-dozen of the most hideous phantoms that I had ever seen, even in a dream, before that time. They came in two by two, though matched in the most dissociable manner, and mingled together in a kind of dance. It would be tedious to describe their habits and persons, for which reason I shall only inform my reader that the first couple were Tyranny and Anarchy, the second were Bigotry and Atheism, the third the Genius of a Commonwealth and a young man of about twentytwo years of age, whose name I could not learn. He had a sword in his right hand, which in the dance he often brandished at the Act of Settlement; and a citizen, who stood by me, whispered in my ear that he saw a sponge in his left hand. The dance of so many jarring natures put me in mind of the sun, moon, and earth in the 'Rehearsal,' that danced together for no other end but to eclipse one another. 2 The reader will easily suppose, by what has been before said, that the lady on the throne would have been almost frighted to distraction, had she seen but any one of these spectres; what then must have 1 James Stuart, the elder Pretender,' born in June 1688, was, as Addison says, in his twenty-third year in March 1711. The Act of Settlement, passed at the Revolution, excluded the Stuarts from the throne. 2 The Rehearsal,' a burlesque on the heroic dramas of the day, by George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, was first acted in 1671. The poet Bayes (Dryden) introduces an eclipse, making 'the earth, sun, and moon come out upon the stage, and dance the "hey." When they dance Bayes cries, Now the earth's before the moon; now the moon's before the sun; there's the eclipse again.' been her condition when she saw them all in a body? She fainted and died away at the sight. Et neque jam color est mixto candore rubori; There was as great a change in the hill of moneybags and the heaps of money, the former shrinking, and falling into so many empty bags, that I now found not above a tenth part of them had been filled with money. The rest that took up the same space, and made the same figure as the bags that were really filled with money, had been blown up with air, and called into my memory the bags full of wind, which Homer tells us his hero received as a present from Æolus.1 The great heaps of gold on either side the throne now appeared to be only heaps of paper, or little piles of notched sticks,2 bound up together in bundles, like Bath-faggots. Whilst I was lamenting this sudden desolation that had been made before me, the whole scene vanished in the room of the frightful spectres there now entered a second dance of apparitions very agreeably matched together, and made up of very amiable phantoms. The first pair was Liberty with Monarchy at her right hand; the second was Moderation leading in Religion; and the third a person, whom I had never seen, with the Genius of Great Britain. At their first entrance the lady revived, the bags swelled to their former bulk, the piles of faggots and heaps of paper changed into pyramids of guineas; and for my own part I was 1 Odyssey, X. 19. 2 Exchequer tallies. 3 Probably the Elector of Hanover, afterwards George I. 4 In 1695 Charles Montague (afterwards Earl of Halifax), the 3 so transported with joy that I awaked, though, I must confess, I would fain have fallen asleep again to have closed my vision, if I could have done it. A Monday, March 5, 1711 C. [STEELE. -Egregii mortalem, altique silenti! -HOR., 2 Sat. vi. 58. N author, when he first appears in the world, is very apt to believe it has nothing to think of but his performances. With a good share of this vanity in my heart, I made it my business these three days to listen after my own fame; and as I have sometimes met with circumstances which did not displease me, I have been encountered by others which gave me as much mortification. It is incredible to think how empty I have in this time observed some part of the species to be, what mere blanks they are when they first come abroad in the morning, how utterly they are at a stand until they are set agoing by some paragraph in a newspaper. Chancellor of the Exchequer, restored the silver currency to a just standard. The process of recoinage caused for a time a scarcity of coin and stoppage of trade. The paper of the Bank of England fell to 20 per cent. discount. Montague then collected and paid public debts from taxes imposed for the purpose, and invented, to relieve the want of currency, the issue of Exchequer bills. credit revived, the Bank capital increased, the currency sufficed, and, says Earl Russell in his Essay on the English Government and Constitution,' from this time loans were made of a vast increasing amount with great facility, and generally at a low interest, by which the nation were enabled to resist their enemies. . . . In all French projects drawn up in imitation of England, one little element was omitted, videlicet, her free constitution' (Morley). Public Such persons are very acceptable to a young author, for they desire no more in anything but to be new, to be agreeable. If I found consolation among such, I was as much disquieted by the incapacity of others. These are mortals who have a certain curiosity without power of reflection, and perused my papers like spectators rather than readers. But there is so little pleasure in inquiries that so nearly concern ourselves (it being the worst way in the world to fame to be too anxious about it), that upon the whole I resolved for the future to go on in my ordinary way, and without too much fear or hope about the business of reputation, to be very careful of the design of my actions, but very negligent of the consequences of them. It is an endless and frivolous pursuit to act by any other rule than the care of satisfying our own minds in what we do. One would think a silent man, who concerned himself with no one breathing, should be very little liable to misinterpretations; and yet I remember I was once taken up for a Jesuit, for no other reason but my profound taciturnity. It is from this misfortune that to be out of harm's way I have ever since affected crowds. He who comes into assemblies only to gratify his curiosity, and not to make a figure, enjoys the pleasures of retirement in a more exquisite degree than he possibly could in his closet; the lover, the ambitious, and the miser are followed thither by a worse crowd than any they can withdraw from. To be exempt from the passions with which others are tormented is the only pleasing solitude. I can very justly say with the ancient sage, I am never less alone than when alone. As I am insignificant to the company in public places, and as it is visible I do not come |