with greater honesty than men of the world. edition, with the several various readings The chief reason for it I take to be as follows. which I find of it in former editions, and in anA man that has spent his youth in reading, cient manuscripts. Those who cannot relish the has been used to find virtue extolled, and vice various readings, will perhaps find their acstigmatized. A man that has passed his time count in the song, which never before appearin the world, has often seen vice triumphant, ed in print. and virtue discountenanced. Extortion, rapine and injustice, which are branded with infamy in books, often give a man a figure in the world; while several qualities, which are celebrated in authors, as generosity, ingenuity, and good-nature, impoverish and ruin him. This cannot but have a proportionable effect on men whose tempers and principles are equally good and vicious. There would be at least this advantage in employing men of learning and parts in business; that their prosperity would sit more gracefully on them, and that we should not see many worthless persons shot up into the greatest figures of life. 0. Mart. Epig. lxxxvi. Lib. 2. 9. 'Tis folly only, and defect of sense, 'My love was fickle once and changing, "Twas first a charming shape enslav'd me; And all my former fetters broke. 'But now a long and lasting anguish Various Readings. Stanza the first, verse the first. And chang ing.] The and in some manuscripts is written thus, &; but that in the Cotton library writes it in three distinct letters. Verse the second. Nor e'er would.] Aldus reads it ever would; but as this would hurt the metre, we have restored it to the genuine reading, by observing that synæresis which had been neglected by ignorant transcribers. Ibid. In my heart.] Scaliger and others, on my heart I HAVE been very often disappointed of late years, when, upon examining the new edition of a classic author, I have found above half the volume taken up with various readings. When I have expected to meet with a learned note Verse the fourth. I found a dart.] The upon a doubtful passage in a Latin poet, Vatican manuscript for I reads it; but this have only been informed, that such or such an- must have been the hallucination of the trancient manuscripts for an et write an ac, or of scriber, who probably mistook the dash of the some other notable discovery of the like im-Ifor a T. The Verse the third. Till by her wit.] Some manuscripts have it his wit, others our, others their wit. But as I find Corinna to be the name of a woman in other authors, I cannot doubt but it should be her. › portance. Indeed, when a different reading Stanza the second, verse the second. gives us a different sense or a new elegance in fatal stroke.] Scioppius, Salmasius, and many an author, the editor does very well in taking others, for the read a: but I have stuck to the notice of it; but when he only entertains us usual reading. with the several ways of spelling the same word, and gathers together the various blunders and mistakes of twenty or thirty different transcribers, they only take up the time of the learned readers, and puzzle the minds of the ignorant. I have often fancied with myself Stanza the third, verse the first. A long how enraged an old Latin author would be, and lasting anguish.] The German manushould he see the several absurdities, in sense script reads a lasting passion, but the rhyme and grammar, which are imputed to him by will not admit it. some or other of these various readings. In Verse the second. For Belvidera I endure.] one he speaks nonsense; in another makes use Did not all the manuscripts reclaim, I should of a word that was never heard of; and in-change Belvidera into Pelvidera; Pelvis being deed there is scarce a solecism in writing which used by several of the ancient comic writers the best author is not guilty of, if we may be for a looking-glass, by which means the etyat liberty to read him in the words of some mology of the word is very visible, and Pelmanuscript which the laborious editor has videra will signify a lady who often looks in thought fit to examine in the prosecution of his her glass; as indeed she had very good reawork. son, if she had all those beauties which our I question not but the ladies and pretty fel-poet here ascribes to her. lows will be very curious to understand what Verse the third. Hourly I sigh and hourly it is that I have been hitherto talking of. languish.] Some for the word hourly read shall therefore give them a notion of this prac-daily, and others nightly; the last has great tice, by endeavouring to write after the man-authorities of its side. ner of several persons who make an eminent Verse the fourth. The wonted cure.] The figure in the republic of letters. To this end elder Stevens reads wanted cure. we will suppose that the following song is an Stanza the fourth, verse the second. After old ode, which I present to the public in a new a thousand beauties.] In several copies we meet with a hundred beauties, by the usual error of the transcribers, who probably omitted a scypher, and had not taste enough to know that the word thousand was ten times a greater compliment to the poet's mistress than an hundred. ing, were he not endowed with this passion, which gives him a taste of those good things that may possibly come into his possession. 'We should hope for every thing that is good,' says the old poet Linus, because there is nothing which may not be hoped for, and no Hope quickens all the still parts of life, and Verse the fourth. And finds variety in one.]thing but what the gods are able to give us.' Most of the ancient manuscripts have it in two. Indeed so many of them concur in this last reading, that I am very much in doubt whether it ought not to take place. There are but two reasons which incline me to the reading as I have published it: first, because the rhyme; and, secondly, because the sense is preserved by it. It might likewise proceed from the oscitancy of transcribers, who, to despatch their work the sooner, used to write all numbers in cypher, and seeing the figure I followed by a little dash of the pen, as is customary in old manuscripts, they perhaps mistook the dash for a second figure, and, by casting up both together, composed out of them the figure 2. But this I shall leave to the learned, without determining any thing in a matter of so great uncertainty. C. Beside these several advantages which rise from hope, there is another which is none of the least, and that is, its great efficacy in preserving us from setting too high a value on present enjoyments. The saying of Cæsar is very well known. When he had given away all his estate in gratuities among his friends, one of them asked what he had left for himself; to which that great man replied. 'Hope.' His natural magnanimity hindered him from prizing what he was certainly possessed of, and turned all his thoughts upon something more valuable that he had in view. I question not but every reader will draw a moral from this story, and apply it to himself without my direction. No. 471.] Saturday, August 30, 1712. Ἐν ἐλπίσιν χρὴ τους σοφεε· ἔχειν βίοου. Euripid. The wise with hope support the pains of life. THE time present seldom affords sufficient The old story of Pandora's box (which maemployment to the mind of man. Objects of ny of the learned believe was formed among pain or pleasure, love or admiration, do not the heathens upon the tradition of the fall of lie thick enough together in life to keep the man) shows us how deplorable a state they soul in constant action, and supply an imme- thought the present life, without hope. To diate exercise to its faculties. In order, there-set forth the utmost condition of misery, they fore, to remedy this defect, that the mind may tell us, that our forefather, according to the not want business, but always have materials pagan theology, had a great vessel presented for thinking, she is endowed with certain pow-him by Pandora. Upon his lifting up the lid ers, that can recall what is passed, and anti-of it, says the fable, there flew out all the cacipate what is to come. lamities and distempers incident to men, from which, till that time, they had been altogether exempt. Hope, who had been enclosed in the cup with so much bad company, instead of flying off with the rest, stuck so close to the lid of it, that it was shut down That wonderful faculty, which we call the memory, is perpetually looking back, when we having nothing present to entertain us. It is like those repositories in several animals that were filled with stores of their former food, on which they may ruminate when upon her. their present pasture fails. I shall make but two reflections upon what As the memory relieves the mind in her va- I have hitherto said. First, that no kind of cant moments, and prevents any chasms of life is so happy as that which is full of hope, thought by ideas of what is passed, we have especially when the hope is well grounded, other faculties that agitate and employ her and when the object of it is of an exalted for what is to come. These are the passions kind, and in its nature proper to make the of hope and fear. person happy who enjoys it. This proposiBy these two passions we reach forward in- tion must be very evident to those who consito futurity, and bring up to our present der how faw are the present enjoyments of thoughts objects that lie hid in the remotest the most happy man, and how insufficient to depths of time. We suffer misery and enjoy give him an entire satisfaction and acquieshappiness, before they are in being; we can cence in them. set the sun and stars forward, or lose sight My next observation is this, that a religious of them by wandering into those retired life is that which most abounds in a wellparts of eternity, when the heavens and earth grounded hope, and such an one as is fixed on shall be no more. By the way, who can objects that are capable of making us entirely imagine that the existence of a creature is to happy. This hope in a religious man is much be circumscribed by time, whose thoughts are more sure and certain than the hope of any not? But I shall, in this paper, confine myself temporal. blessing, as it is strengthened not to that particular passion which goes by the only by reason, but by faith. It has at the name of hope. same time its eye perpetually fixed on that Our actual enjoyments are so few and tran-state, which implies in the very notion of it sient, that man would be a very miserable be- the most full and complete happiness. I have before shown how the influence of one common distress. If all the rich who are hope in general sweetens life, and makes our lame in the gout, from a life of ease, pleasure, present condition supportable, if not pleas- and luxury, would help those few who have it ing; but a religious hope has still greater ad- without a previous life of pleasure, and add a vantages. It does not only hear up the mind few of such laborious men, who are become under her sufferings, but makes her rejoice in lame from unhappy blows, falls, or other acthem, as they may be the instrnments of pro- cident of age or sickness; I say, would such curing her the great and ultimate end of all gouty persons administer to the necessities of her hope. men disabled like themselves, the consciousness Religious hope has likewise this advantage of such a behaviour would be the best julep, above any other kind of hope, that it is able cordial, and anodyne, in the feverish, faint, to revive the dying man, and to fill up his and tormenting vicissitudes of that miserable mind not only with secret comfort and re- distemper. The same may be said of all other, freshment, but sometimes with rapture and both bodily and intellectual evils. These transport. He triumphs in his agonies, whilst classes of charity would certainly bring down the soul springs forward with delight to the blessings upon an age and people; and if great object which she has always had in men were not petrified with the love of this view, and leaves the body with an expecta-world, against all sense of the commerce tion of being reunited to her in a glorious and which ought to be among them, it would not joyful resurrection. be an unreasonable bill for a poor man in the form: " MR. BASIL PLENTY, 'SIR, I shall conclude this essay with those em- agony of pain, aggravated by want and povphatical expressions of a lively hope, which erty, to draw upon a sick alderman after this the psalmist made use of in the midst of those dangers and adversities which surrounded him; for the following passage had its present and personal, as well as its future and prophetic sense. 'I have set the Lord always before Because he is at my right hand I shall You have the gout and stone, with sixty not be moved. Therefore my heart is glad, thousand pounds sterling; I have the gout and and my glory rejoiceth. My flesh also shall stone, not worth one farthing; I shall pray for rest in hope. For thou wilt not leave my soul you, and desire you would pay the bearer twenin hell, neither wilt thou suffer thine holy one ty shillings, for value received from, me. to see corruption. Thou wilt show me the path of life. In thy presence is fulness of joy, at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.' No. 472.] Monday, September 1, 1712. -Voluptas Solamenque malio C. Virg. En. iii. 660. This only solace his hard fortune sends. Dryden. 'Sir, your humble servant, 'LAZARUS HOPEFUL.' Cripplegate, August 29, 1712. MR. SPECTATOR, The reader's own imagination will suggest to him the reasonableness of such correspondences, and diversify them into a thousand forms; but I shall close this as 1 began upon the subject of blindness. The following letter seems to be written by a man of learnI RECEIVED Some time ago a proposal, which ing, who is returned to his study, after a sushad a preface to it, wherein the author dis-pense of ability to do so. The benefit he recoursed at large of the innumerable objects of ports himself to have received, may well claim charity in a nation, and admonished the rich, the handsomest encomium he can give the who were afflicted with any distemper of body, operator, particularly to regard the poor in the same species of affliction, and confine their tenderness to them, since it is impossible to assist all Ruminating lately on your admirable diswho are presented to them. The proposer had courses on the Pleasures of the Imagination, I been relieved from a malady in his eyes by an began to consider to which of our senses we operation performed by Sir William Read, and, are obliged for the greatest and most important being a man of condition, had taken a resolu- share of those pleasures; and I soon concluded tion to maintain three poor blind men during that it was to the sight. That is the sovereign their lives, in gratitude for that great blessing of the senses, and mother of all the arts and This misfortune is so very great and unfrequent, sciences, that have refined the rudeness of the that one would think an establishment for all uncultivated mind to a politeness that distinthe poor under it might be easily accomplished, guishes the fine spirits from the barbarous goût with the addition of a very few others to those of the great vulgar and the small. The sight wealthy who are in the same calamity. How- is the obliging benefactress that bestows on us ever, the thought of the proposer arose from a the most transporting sensations that we have very good motive; and the parcelling of our- from the various and wonderful products of naselves out, as called to particular acts of bene-ture. To the sight we owe the amazing discoficence, would be a pretty cement of society veries of the height, magnitude, and motion and virtue. It is the ordinary foundation for of the planets, their several revolutions about men's holding a commerce with each other, their common centre of light, heat and motion, and becoming familiar, that they agree in the the sun. The sight travels yet further to the same sort of pleasure; and sure it may also fixed stars, and furnishes the understanding be some reason for amity, that they are under with solid reasons to prove, that each of them is a sun, moving on its own axis, in the centre of its own vortex or turbillion, and performing the same offices to its dependant planets that our glorious sun does to this. But the inquiries of the sight will not be stopped here, but make their progress through the immense expanse to the Milky Way, and there divide the blended fires of the galaxy into infinite and different worlds, made up of distinct suns, and their peculiar equipages of planets, till, unable to pursue this track any further, it deputes the imagination to go on to new discoveries, till it fill the unbounded space with endless worlds. Revisit'st not these eyes, that roll in vain "Seasons return, but not to me returns Of nature's works, to me expung'd and raz'd, -But chief of all, O loss of sight! of thee I most complain: -Still as a fool, In pow'r of others, never in my own, 'The sight informs the statuary's chisel with power to give breath to lifeless brass and marble, and the painter's pencil to swell the flat canvas with moving figures actuated by imaginary souls. Music indeed may plead another original, since Jubal, by the different falls of his hammer on the anvil, discovered by the ear the first rude music that pleased the antediluvian fathers; but then the sight has not only reduced those wilder sounds into artful order and harmony, but conveys that harmony to the most distant parts of the world without the help of sound. To the sight we owe not 'The enjoyment of sight then being so great only all the discoveries of philosophy, but all a blessing, and the loss of it so terrible an evil, the divine imagery of poetry that transports how excellent and valuable is the skill of the intelligent reader of Homer, Milton, and that artist which can restore the former, and Virgil. redress the latter! My frequent perusal of the 'As the sight has polished the world, so advertisements in the public newspapers (gendoes it supply us with the most grateful and erally the most agreeable entertainment they lasting pleasure. Let love, let friendship, pa-afford) has presented me with many and vaternal affection, filial piety, and conjugal duty, rious benefits of this kind done to my coundeclare the joys the sight bestows on a meet-trymen by that skillful artist, Dr. Grant, her ing after absence. But it would be endless to majesty's oculist extraordinary, whose happy enumerate all the pleasures and advantages of sight: every one that has it, every hour he makes use of it, finds them, feels them, enjoys them. Thus, as our greatest pleasures and knowledge are derived from the sight, so has Providence been more curious in the formation of its seat, the eye, than of the organs of the That stupendous machine is composed, in a wonderful manner, of muscles, membranes, and humours. Its motions are other senses. per hand has brought and restored to sight several hundreds in less than four years Many have received sight by his means who came blind from their mother's womb, as in the famous instance of Jones of Newington. I myself have been cured by him of a weakness in my eyes next to blindness, and am ready to believe any thing that is reported of his ability this way; and know that many, who could not purchase his assistance with money, have enjoyed it from his charity. But a list of particulars admirably directed by the muscles; the would swell my letter beyond its bounds: spicuity of the humours transmits the rays of what I have said being sufficient to comfort light; the rays are regularly refracted by their those who are in the like distress, since they figure; the black lining of the sclerotes effec- may conceive hopes of being no longer misetually prevents their being confounded by re-rable in this kind, while there is yet alive so flection. It is wonderful indeed to consider able an oculist as Dr. Grant. how many objects the eye is fitted to take in at once, and successively in an instant, and at the same time to make a judgment of their position, figure, or colour. It watches against our dangers, guides our steps, and lets in all No 473.] the visible objects, whose beauty and variety instruct and delight. The pleasures and advantages of sight being so great, the loss must be very grievous; of which Milton, from experience, gives the most sensible idea, both in the third book of his Paradise Lost, and in his Samson Agonis tes. T. 'I am the Spectator's Tuesday, September 2, 1712. Quid? si quis vultu torvo ferus et pede nudo, Hor. Ep. xix. Lib. 1. 12. Suppose a man the coarsest gown should wear, 'SIR, 'I AM now in the country, and employ most of my time in reading, or thinking upon what Your most humble servant, MR. SPECTATOR, much service it would do me with my fair one, as well as reputation with all my friends, to crime was, that I snatched a kiss, and my poet. have something of mine in the Spectator. My ical excuse as follows: I have read. Your paper comes constantly Greek, Hebrew, and the Orientals: at the same down to me, and it affects me so much, that time that he published his aversion to those I find my thoughts run into your way and I languages, he said that the knowledge of them recommend to you a subject upon which you was rather a diminution than an advancehave not yet touched, and that is, the satisfac- ment of a man's character: though at the tion some men seem to take in their imperfec- same time I know he languishes and repines tions: I think one may call it glorying in he is not master of them himself. Whenever their insufficiency. A certain great author is I take any of these fine persons thus detractof opinion it is the contrary to envy, though ing from what they do not understand, I tell perhaps it may proceed from it. Nothing is them I will complain to you; and say I am so common as to hear men of this sort, speak- sure you will not allow it an exception against ing of themselves, add to their own merit (as a thing, that he who contemns it is an ignothey think) by impairing it, in praising them- rant in it. selves for their defects, freely allowing they commit some few frivolous errors, in order to 'I am, Sir, be esteemed persons of uncommon talents and great qualifications. They are generally professing an injudicious neglect of dancing, fencing, and riding, as also an unjust contempt for 'I am a man of a very good estate, and am travelling, and the modern languages; as for honourably in love. I hope you will allow, their part, they say, they never valued or when the ultimate purpose is honest, there troubled their heads about them. This pane- may be, without trespass against innocence, gyrical satire on themselves certainly is wor- some toying by the way. People of condition thy of your animadversion. I have known are perhaps too distant and formal on those one of these gentlemen think himself obliged to occasions; but however that is, I am to conforget the day of an appointment, and some-fess to you that I have writ some verses to times even that you spoke to him; and when atone for my offence. You professed authors you see 'em, they hope you'll pardon 'em, for are a little severe upon us, who write like genthey have the worst memory in the world. tlemen: but if you are a friend to love, you One of 'em started up t'other day in some con- will insert my poem. You cannot imagine how fusion, and said, "Now I think on't. I am to meet Mr. Mortmain, the attorney, about some business, but whether it is to-day or to-morrow, 'faith I can't tell. Now, to my certain knowledge, he knew his time to a moment, and was there accordingly. These forgetful persons have, to heighten their crime, generally the best memories of any people, as I have found out by their remembering sometimes through inadvertency. Two or three of 'em that I know can say most of our modern tragedies by heart. I asked a gentleman the other day that is famous for a good carver (at which acquisition he is out of countenance, imaging it may detract from some of his more essential qualifications) to help me to something that was near him; but he excused himself, and blushing told me, "Of all things he could never carve in his life;" though it can be proved upon him that he cuts up, disjoints, and uncases with incomparable dexterity. I would not be understood as if I thought it laudable for a man of quality and fortune to rival the acquisitions of artificers, and endeavour to excel in little handy qualities; no, I argue only against being ashamed of what is really could not think of bestowing it better, than in praise-worthy. As these pretences to ingenuity writing an epistle to the Spectator, which I show themselves several ways, you will often now do, and am, Sir, see a man of this temper ashamed to be clean, and setting up for wit, only for negligence in his habit. Now I am upon this head, I cannot help observing also upon a very different folly likely enough to become your correspondent. 'P. S. If you approve of my style, I am proceeding from the same cause. above-mentioned arise from affecting an equa- way of writing called by the judicious "the As these I desire your opinion of it. I design it for that lity with men of greater talents, from having familiar." the same faults, there are others that would I. "Belinda, see from youder flowers II. "So, though I robb'd you of a kiss, Has it at all impoverish'd you? III. ""Tis by this cunning I contrive, SIR, Your humble servant, TIMOTHY STANZA,' Aug. 23, 1712. 'Having a little time upon my hands, I "Your humble servant, T. come at a parallel with those above them, by No. 474.] Wednesday, September 3, 1712. possessing little advantages which they want. I heard a young man not long ago, who has sense, comfort himself in his ignorance of VOL. II. Asperitas agrestis et inconcinna Hor.Ep. 18. Lib. 1. 6. |