Obrázky stránek
PDF
ePub

very good effects, not only as it reftrains him from doing any thing which is mean and contemptible, but as it pushes him to actions which are great and glorious. The principle may be defective or faulty; but the confequences it produces are fo good, that, for the benefit of mankind, it ought not to be extinguished.

It is obferved by Cicero, that men of the greatest and the moft fhining parts are the most actuated by ambition ; and if we look into the two fexes, I believe we shall find this principle of action ftronger in women than in men.

The paffion for praife, which is fo very vehement in the fair fex, produces excellent effects in women of sense, who defire to be admired for that only which deferves admiration and I think we may obferve, without a compliment to them, that many of them do not only live in a more uniform courfe of virtue, but with an infinitely greater regard to their honour, than what we find in, the generality of our own fex. How many inftances have we of chastity, fidelity, devotion? How many ladies diftinguish themselves by the education of their children, care of their families, and love of their hufbands which are the great qualities and atchievements of woman-kind: as the making of war, the carrying on of traffic, the administration of juftice, are thofe by which men grow famous, and get themselves a name?

But as this paffion for admiration, when it works according to reafon, improves the beautiful part of our fpecies in every thing that is laudable; so nothing is more deftructive to them when it is governed by vanity and folly. What I have therefore here to fay, only regards the vain part of the fex, whom for certain reafons, which the reader hereafter will fee at large, I fhall diftinguifh by the name of Idols. An Idol is wholly taken up in the adorning of her perfon. You fee in every pofture of her body, air of her face, and motion of her head, that it is her bufinefs and employment to gain adorers. For this reafon your Idols appear in all public places and affemblies, in order to feduce men to their worship. The play-house is very frequently filled with Idols; feveral of them are carried in proceffion every evening about the

1

Ring, and feveral of them fet up their worship even in churches. They are to be accofted in the language proper to the Deity. Life and death are in their power: joys of heaven and pains of hell are at their disposal : paradife is in their arms; and eternity in every moment that you are present with them. Raptures, transports, and ecftafies, are the rewards which they confer : fighs and tears, prayers and broken hearts, are the offerings which are paid to them. Their fimiles make men happy; their frowns drive them to defpair. I fhall only add under this head, that Ovid's book of the Art of Love is a kind of heathen ritual, which contains all the forms of worship which are made ufe of to an idol.

It would be as difficult a task to reckon up thefe different kinds of Idols, as Milton's was to number those that were known in Canaan, and the lands adjoining. Most of them are worthipped, like Moloch, in fire and flames. Some of them, like Baal, love to fee their votaries cut and flashed, and, fhedding their blood for them like the Idol in the Apocrypha, must have treats and collations prepared for them every night. It has indeed been known, that fome of them have been used by their incenfed worshipers like the Chinese Idols, who are whipped and fcourged when they refuse to comply with the prayers that are offered to them.

I must here observe, that those idolaters, who devote themselves to the Idols I am here fpeaking of, differ very much from all other kinds of idolaters. For as others fall out because they worship different Idols, these idolaters quarrel because they worship the fame.

The intention therefore of the Idol is quite contrary to the wishes of the idolater: as the one defires to confine the idol to himself, the whole business and ambition of the other is to multiply adorers. This humour of an Idol is prettily described in a tale of Chaucer: he reprefents one of them fitting at a table with three of her vo taries about her, who are all of them courting her favour, and paying their adorations: she smiled upon one, drank to another, and trod upon the other's foot which was under the table. Now which of those three, fays the old

bard,

[ocr errors]

bard, do you think was the favourite? In troth, says he, not one of all the three,

The behaviour of this old Idol in Chaucer, puts me in mind of the beautiful Clarinda, one of the greatest Idols among the moderns. She is worshipped once a week by candlelight, in the midft of a large congregation, generally called an affembly. Some of the gayeft youths in the nation endeavour to plant themselves in her eye, while fhe fits in form with multitudes of tapers burning about her. To encourage the zeal of idolaters, she bestows a mark of her favour upon every one of them, before they go out of her prefence. She asks a queftion of one, tells a story to another, glances an ogle upon a third, takes a pinch of fnuff from the fourth, lets her fan drop by accident to give the fifth an occafion of taking it up. In fhort, every one goes away fatisfied with his fuccess, and encouraged to renew his devotions on the fame canonical hour that day fevennight.

An Idol may be undeified by many accidental caufes. Marriage in particular is a kind of Counter-Apotheofis, or a deification inverted. When a man becomes familiar with his goddess, the quickly finks into a woman.

Old age is likewife a great decayer of your idol. The truth of it is, there is not a more unhappy being than a fuperannuated Idol, efpecially when the has contracted fuch airs and behaviour as are only graceful when her worshippers are about her.

Confidering therefore that in these and many other cafes the Woman generally outlives the Idol; I must return to the moral of this paper, and defire my fair readers to give a proper direction to their paffion for being admired; in order to which, they muft endeavour to make themfelves the objects of a reasonable and lafting admiration. This is not to be hoped for from beauty, or dress, or fafhion, but from those inward ornaments which are not to be defaced by time or fick nefs, and which appear moft amiable to those who are most acquainted with them.

с

No. LXXIV.

No. LXXIV. FRIDAY, MAY 25.

-Pendent opera interrupta

The works unfinish'd and neglected lie.

VIRG.

N my laft Monday's paper I gave fome general inftances of those beautiful strokes which please the reader in the old fong of Chevy-Cafe: I fhall here, according to my promife, be more particular, and fhew that the fentiments in that ballad are extremely natural and poetical, and full of the majestic fimplicity which we admire in the greatest of the ancient poets: for which reafon I fhall quote feveral paffages of it, in which the thought is altogether the fame with what we meet in several passages of the Æneid; not that I would infer from thence, that the poet, whoever he was, proposed to himself any imitation of those passages, but that he was directed to them in general by the fame kind of poetical genius, and by the fame copyings after nature.

Had this old fong been filled with epigrammatical turns and points of wit, it might perhaps have pleased the wrong tafte of fome readers; but it would never have become the delight of the common people, nor have warmed the heart of Sir Philip Sydney like the found of a trumpet; it is only nature that can have this effect, and please those taftes which are the moft unprejudiced or the moft refined. I must however beg leave to diffent from fo great an authority as that of Sir Philip Sydney, in the judgment which he has paffed as to the rude ftile and evil apparel of this antiquated fong; for there are feveral parts in it where not only the thought but the language is majestic, and the numbers fonorous; at leaft, the apparel is much more gorgeous than many of the poets made ufe of in Queen Elizabeth's time, as the reader will fee in feveral of the following quotations.

What can be greater than either the thought or the expreffion in that stanza,

[blocks in formation]

To drive the deer with hound and horn
Earl Piercy took his way;

The child may rue that was unborn
The hunting of that day!

This way of confidering the misfortunes which this battle would bring upon pofterity, not only on those who were born immediately after the battle, and loft their fathers in it, but on thofe alfo who perished in future battles which took their rife from this quarrel of the two earls, is wonderfully beautiful, and conformable to the way of thinking among the ancient poets.

Audiet pugnas, vitia parentum
Rara juventus.

< Pofterity, thinn'd by their fathers crimes,

Shall read, with grief, the ftory of their times."

HOR.

What can be more founding and poetical, or resemble more the majestic fimplicity of the ancients, than the following stanzas ?

The ftout earl of Northumberland

A vow to God did make,

His pleasure in the Scottish woods
'Three fummers days to take.

With fifteen hundred bowmen bold,
All chofen men of might,

Who knew full well, in time of need,

To aim their fhafts aright.

The hounds ran fwiftly through the woods,

The nimble deer to take,

And with their cries the hills and dales
An echo fhrill did make."

Vocat ingenti clamore Citharon

Taygetique canes, domitrixque Epidaurus equorum:,
Et vox affenfu nemorum ingeminata remugit.

GEORG.

The hounds, Taygetus, open, and purfue the prey:

Citharon loudly calls me to my way;

« PředchozíPokračovat »