themselves they really are busy. Thus their whole time is spent in suspense of the present moment to the next, and then from the next to the succeeding, which, to the end of life is to pass away with pretence to many things, and execution of nothing. "SIR, "The post is just going out, and I have many "Sir, your most obedient humble Servant, "MADAM, "I hate writing, of all things in the world; however, though I have drank the waters, and am told I ought not to use my eyes so much, I cannot forbear writing to you, to tell you I have been to the last degree hipped since I saw you. How could you entertain such a thought, as that I could hear of that silly fellow with patience? Take my word for it, there is nothing in it; and you may believe it when so lazy a creature as I am undergo the pains to assure you of it, by taking pen, mk, and paper in my hand. Forgive this; you know I shall not often offend in this kind. "I am very much your Servant, was almost the only person that looked in a prayer- T. No. 285.] SATURDAY, JANUARY 26, 1711-12. Nor (to avoid such meanness) soaring high. It is requisite that the language of a heroic poem should be both perspicuous and sublime. In proportion as either of these two qualities are wanting, the language is imperfect. Perspicuity is the first and most necessary qualification; insomuch that & good-natured reader sometimes overlooks a little slip even in the grammar or syntax, where it is impossible for him to mistake the poet's sense. Of this kind is that passage in Milton, wherein he speaks of Satan: God and his Son except, "BRIDGET EITHERDOWN. "The fellow is of your country, pr'ythee send me word however whether he has so great an estate." "MR. SPECTATOR, Jan. 24, 1712. "I am clerk of the parish from whence Mrs. Simper sends her complaint, in your Spectator of Wednesday last. I must beg of you to publish this as a public admonition to the aforesaid Mrs. Simper, otherwise all my honest care in the disposition of the greens in the church will have no effect; I shall therefore, with your leave, lay before you the whole matter. I was formerly, as she charges me, for se- and that in which he describes Adam and Eve: veral years a gardener in the county of Kent: but I most absolutely deny that it was out of any affection I retain for my old employment that I have placed my greens so liberally about the church, but out of a particular spleen I conceived against Mrs. Simper (and others of the same sisterhood) some time ago. As to herself, I had one day set the hundredth Psalm, and was singing the first line in order to put the congregation into the tune; she was all the while curtseying to Sir Anthony, in so affected and indecent a manner, that the indignation I conceived at it made me forget myself so far, as from the tune of that psalm to wander into Southwell tune, and from thence into Windsor tune, still unable to recover myself, until I had with the utmost confusion set a new one. Nay, I have often seen her rise up and smile, and curtsey to one at the lower end of the church in the midst of a Gloria Patri; and when I have spoken the assent to a prayer with a long Amen, uttered with decent gravity, she has been rolling her eyes round about in such a manner, as plainly showed, however she was moved, it was not towards a heavenly object. In fine, she extended her conquests so far over the males, and raised such envy in the females, that what between the love of those, and the jealousy of these, I Adam the goodliest man of men since born His sons, the fairest of her daughters Eve It is plain, that in the former of these passages, according to the natural syntax, the Divine Persons mentioned in the first line are represented as created beings; and that, in the other, Adam and Eve are confounded with their sons and daughters. Such little blemishes as these, when the thought is great and natural, we should, with Horace, impute to a pardonable inadvertency, or to the weakness of human nature, which cannot attend to each minute particular, and give the last finishing to every cir cumstance in so long a work. The ancient critics, therefore, who were actuated by a spirit of candour, rather than that of cavilling, invented certain figures of speech, on purpose to palliate little errors of this nature in the writings of those authors who had so many greater beauties to atone for them. If clearness and perspicuity were only to be consulted, the poet would have nothing else to do but to clothe his thoughts in the most plain and natura expressions. But since it often happens that the most obvious phrases, and those which are used in ordinary conversation, become too familiar to the ear, and contract a kind of meanness by passing through the mouths of the vulgar; a poet should take particular care to guard himself against idiomatic ways of speaking. Ovid and Lucan have many poornesses of expression upon this account, as taking up with the first phrases that offered, without putting themselves to the trouble of looking after such as would not only have been natural, but also elevated and sublime. Milton has but few failings in this kind, of which, however, you may meet with some instances, as in the following passages: Embrios and idiots, eremites and friars, White, black, and gray, with all their trumpery -A while discourse they hold No fear lest dinner cool; when thus began Our author Who of all ages to succeed, but feeling The great masters in composition know very well that many an elegant phrase becomes improper for a poet or an orator, when it has been debased by common use. For this reason the works of ancient authors, which are written in dead languages, have a great advantage over those which are written in languages that are now spoken. Were there any mean phrases or idioms in Virgil or Homer, they would not shock the ear of the most delicate modern reader, so much as they would have done that of an old Greek or Roman, because we never hear them pronounced in our streets, or in ordinary conversation. which Homer has made use of for this end. Milton, in conformity with the practice of the ancient poets, and with Artistotle's rule, has infused a great many Latinisins, as well as Græcisms, and sometimes Hebraisms. into the language of his poem; as towards the beginning of it: Nor did they not perceive the evil plight In which they were, or the fierce pains not feel. The dark unbottom'd infinite abyss, Over the vast abrupt? So both ascend In the visions of God BOOK 11. Under this head may be reckoned the placing the adjective after the substantive, the transposition of words, the turning the adjective into a substantive, with several other foreign modes of speech which this poet has naturalized to give his verse the greater sound, and throw it out of prose. The third method mentioned by Aristotle, is what agrees with the genius of the Greek language more than with that of any other tongue, and is therefore more used by Homer than by any other poet. I mean the lengthening of a phrase by the addition of words, which may either be inserted or omitted, as also by the extending or contracting of particular words by the insertion or omission of certain syllables. Milton has put in practice this method of raising his language, as far as the nature of our It is not therefore sufficient, that the language of tongue will permit, as in the passage above menan epic poem be perspicuous, unless it be also sub- tioned, eremite, for what is hermit in common dislime. To this end it ought to deviate from the course. If you observe the measure of his verse, common forms and ordinary phrases of speech. The he has with great judgment suppressed a syllable judgment of a poet very much discovers itself in in several words, and shortened those of two syllashunning the common roads of expression, without bles into one; by which method, besides the abovefalling into such ways of speech as may seem stiff mentioned advantage, he has given a greater variety and unnatural: he must not swell into a false sub- to his numbers. But this practice is more particulime, by endeavouring to avoid the other extreme.larly remarkable in the names of persons and of Among the Greeks, Eschylus, and sometimes Sophocles, were guilty of this fault; among the Latins, Claudian and Statius; and among our own countrymen, Shakspeare and Lee. In these authors the affectation of greatness often hurts the perspicuity of the style, as in many others the endeavour after perspicuity prejudices its greatness. Aristotle has observed, that the idiomatic style may be avoided, and the sublime formed, by the following methods. First, by the use of metaphors: such are those of Milton: Imparadis'a in one another's arms. Stood waving tipt with fire.- In these and innumerable other instances, the metaphors are very bold but just: I must however observe, that if the metaphors are not so thick sown in Milton, which always savours too much of wit, that they never clash with one another, which, as Aristotle observes, turns a sentence into a kind of enigma or riddle; and that he seldom has recourse to them where the proper and natural words will do as well. Another way of raising the language, and giving it a poetical turn, is to make use of the idioms of other tongues. Virgil is full of the Greek forms of speech, which the critics call Hellenisms, as Horace in his odes abounds with them much more than Virgil. I need not mention the several dialects countries, as Beelzebub, Hessebon, and in many other particulars, wherein he has either changed the name, or made use of that which is not the most commonly known, that he might the better deviate from the language of the vulgar. The same reason recommended to him several old words, which also makes his poem appear the more venerable, and gives it a greater air of antiquity. I must likewise take notice, that there are in Milton several words of his own coining, as " cerberean, miscreated, hell-doomed, embryon atoms," and many others. If the reader is offended at this liberty in our English poet, I would recommend to him a discourse in Plutarch, which shows us how frequently Homer has made use of the same liberty. Milton, by the above-mentioned helps, and by the choice of the noblest words and phrases which our tongue would afford him, has carried our language to a greater height than any of the English poets have ever done before or after him, and made the sublimity of his style equal to that of his sentiments. I have been the more particular in these observations on Milton's style, because it is in that part of him in which he appears the most singular. The remarks I have here made upon the practice of other poets, with my observations out of Aristotle, will perhaps alleviate the prejudice which some have taken to his poem upon this account; though, after all, I must confess that I think his style, though admirable in general, is in some places too much stiffened and obscured by the frequent use of those methods which Aristotle has prescribed for the raising of it. This redundancy of those several ways of speech which Aristotle calls "foreign language," and with which Milton has so very much enriched, and in some places darkened, the language of his poem, was the more proper for his use, because his poem is written in blank verse. Rhyme, without any other assistance, throws the language off from prose, and very often makes an indifferent phrase pass unregarded; but where the verse is not built upon rhymes, there pomp of sound and energy of expression are indispensably necessary to support the style, and keep it from falling into the flatness of prose. Those who have not a taste for this elevation of style, and are apt to ridicule a poet when he departs from the common forms of expression, would do well to see how Aristotle has treated an ancient author called Euclid, for his insipid mirth upon this occasion. Mr. Dryden used to call these sort of men his prose-critics. I should, under this head of the language, consider Milton's numbers, in which he has made use of several elisions, which are not customary among other English poets, as may be particularly observed in his cutting off the letter Y, when it precedes a vowel. This, and some other innovations in the measure of his verse, has varied his numbers in such a manner, as makes them incapable of satiating the ear, and cloying the reader, which the same uniform measure would certainly have done, and which the perpetual returns of rhyme never fail to do in long narrative poems. I shall close these reflections upon the language of Paradise Lost with observing, that Milton has copied after Homer rather than Virgil in the length of his periods, the copiousness of his phrases, and the running of his verses into one another.-L. No. 286.] MONDAY, JANUARY 28, 1711-12. "MR. SPECTATOR, "I PRETEND not to inform a gentleman of so much taste, whenever he pleases to use it; but it may not be amiss to inform your readers, that there is a false delicacy, as well as a true one. True delicacy, as I take it, consists in exactness of judgment and dignity of sentiment, or, if you will, purity of affection, as this is opposed to corruption and grossness. There are pedants in breeding, as well as in learning. The eye that cannot bear the light is not delicate, but sore. A good constitution appears in the soundness and vigour of the parts, not in the squeamishness of the stomach; and a false delicacy is affectation, not politeness. What then can be the standard of delicacy, but truth and virtue? Virtue, which as the satirist long since observed, is real honour: whereas the other distinctions among mankind are merely titular. Judging by that rule, in my opinion, and in that of many of your virtuous female readers, you are so far from deserving Mr. Courtly's accusation, that you seem too gentle, and to allow too many excuses for an enormous crime, which is the reproach of the age, and is in all its branches and degrees expressly forbidden by that religion we pretend to profess: and whose laws, in a ration that calls itself Christian, one would think should take place of those rules which men of corrupt minds, and those of weak understandings, follow. I know not any thing more pernicious to good manners, than the giving fair names to foul actions: for this confounds vice and virtue, and takes off that natural horror we have to evil. An innocent creature, who would start at the name of strumpet, may think it pretty to be called a mistress, especially if her seducer has taken care to inform her, that a union of hearts is the principal matter in the sight of heaven, and that the business at church is a mere idle ceremony. Who knows not that the difference between obscene and modest words expressing the same action, consists only in the accessary idea, for there is nothing immodest in letters and syllables. Fornication and adultery are modest words; because they express an evil action as criminal, and so as to excite horror and aversion; whereas words representing the pleasure rather than the sin, are, for this reason, indecent and dishonest. Your papers would be chargeable with something worse than indelicacy, they would be immoral, did you treat the detestable sins of uncleanness in the same manner as you rally an impertinent self-love and an artful glance; as those laws would be very unjust that should chastise murder and petty larceny with the same punishment. Even delicacy requires that the pity shown to distressed indigent wickedness, first betrayed into, and then expelled the harbours of the brothel, should be changed to detestation, when we consider pampered vice in the habitations of the wealthy. The most free person of quality, in Mr. Courtly's phrase, that is, to speak properly, a woman of figure who has forgot her birth and breeding, dishonoured her relations and herself, abandoned her virtue and reputation, together with the natural modesty of her sex, and risked her very soul, is so far from deserving to be treated with no worse character than that of a kind woman, which is, doubtless, Mr. Courtly's meaning (if he has any), that one can scarce be too severe on her, inasmuch as she sins against greater restraints, is less exposed, and liable to fewer temptations, than beauty in poverty and distress. It is hoped, therefore, Sir, that you will not lay aside your generous design of exposing that monstrous wickedness of the town, whereby a multitude of innocents are sacrificed in a more barbarous manner than those who were offered to Moloch. The unchaste are provoked to see their vice exposed, and the chaste cannot rake into such filth without danger of defilement, but a mere spectator may look into the bottom, and come off without partaking in the guilt. The doing so will convince us you pursue public good, and not merely your own advantage; but if your zeal slackens, how can one help thinking that Mr. Courtly's letter is but a feint to get off from a subject, in which either your own, or the private and base ends of others to whom you are partial, or those of whom you are afraid, would not endure a reformation? "I am, Sir, "Your humble Servant and Admirer, so long as you tread in the paths of truth, virtue, and honour." "Trin. Coll. Cantab. Jan. 12, 1711-12. "MR. SPECTATOR, "It is my fortune to have a chamber-fellow, with whom, though I agree very well in many senti other words, when there is no part of the people that has not a common interest with at least one part of the legislators. ments, yet there is one in which we are as contrary This liberty is best preserved, where the legisla as light and darkness. We are both in love. His tive power is lodged in several persons, especially mistress is a lovely fair, and mine a lovely brown. if those persons are of different ranks and interests, Now as the praise of our mistresses' beauty employs for where they are of the same rank, and conse. much of our time, we have frequent quarrels in en- quently have an interest to manage peculiar to that tering upon that subject, while each says all he can rank, it differs but little from a despotical govern to defend his choice. For my own part, I have ment in a single person. But the greatest security racked my fancy to the utmost; and sometimes with a people can have for their liberty, is when the lethe greatest warmth of imagination have told him, gislative power is in the hands of persons so hap that night was made before day, and many more fine pily distinguished, that by providing for the partithings, though without any effect; nay, last night I cular interests of their several ranks, they are procould not forbear saying, with more heat than judg-viding for the whole body of the people; or, in ment, that the devil ought to be painted white. Now my desire is, Sir, that you would be pleased to give us in black and white your opinion in the matter of dispute between us: which will either furnish me with fresh and prevailing arguments to maintain my own taste, or make me with less repining allow that of my chamber-fellow. I know very well that I have Jack Cleveland* and Bond's Horace on my side; but then he has such a band of rhymers and romance-writers, with which he opposes me, and is so continually chiming to the tune of golden tresses, yellow locks, milk, marble, ivory, silver, swans, snow, daisies, doves, and the Lord knows what; which he is always sounding with so much vehemence in my ears, that he often puts me in a brown study how to answer him; and I find that I am in fair way to be quite confounded, without your timely assistance afforded to, Sir, Z. "Your humble Servant, If there be but one body of legislators, it is no better than a tyranny; if there are only two, there will want a casting voice, and one of them must at length be swallowed up by the disputes and contentions that will necessarily arise between them. Four would have the same inconvenience as two, and a greater number would cause too much con. fusion. I could never read a passage in Polybius and another in Cicero to this purpose without a secret pleasure in applying it to the English constitution, which it suits much better than the Roman. Both these great authors give the pre-eminence to a mixed government, consisting of three branches, the regal, the noble, and the popular. They had doubtless in their thoughts the constitution of the Roman commonwealth, in which the consul represented the king, the senate the nobles, and the tribunes the people. This division of the three powers in the Roman constitution was by no means so dis No. 287.] TUESDAY, JANUARY 29, 1711-12. tinct and natural, as it is in the English form of I LOOK upon it as a peculiar happiness, that were I to choose of what religion I would be, and under what government I would live, I should most certainly give the preference to that form of religion and government which is established in my own country. In this point I think I am determined by reason and conviction; but if I shall be told that I am actuated by prejudice, I am sure it is an honest prejudice; it is a prejudice that arises from the love of my country, and therefore such a one as I will always indulge. I have in several papers endeavoured to express my duty and esteem for the church of England, and design this as an essay upon the civil part of our constitution, having often entertained myself with reflections on this subject, which I have not met with in other writers. That form of government appears to me the most reasonable, which is most conformable to the equality that we find in human nature, provided it be consistent with public peace and tranquillity. This is what may properly be called liberty, which exempts one man from subjection to another, so far as the order and economy of government will permit. Liberty should reach every individual of a people, as they all share one common nature; if it only spreads among particular branches, there had better be none at all, since such a liberty only aggravates the misfortune of those who are deprived of it, by setting before them a disagreeable subject of comparison. government. Among several objections that might be made to it, I think the chief are those that affect the consular power, which had only the ornaments without the force of the regal authority. Their number had not a casting voice in it; for which reason, if one did not chance to be employed abroad, while the other sat at home, the public business was sometimes at a stand, while the consuls pulled two different ways in it. Besides, I do not find that the consuls had ever a negative voice in the passing of a law, or decree of the senate; so that indeed they were rather the chief body of the nobility, or the first ministers of state, than a distinct branch of the sovereignty, in which none can be looked upon as a part, who are not a part of the legislature. Had the consuls been invested with the regal authority to as great a degree as our monarchs, there would never have been any occasions for a dictatorship, which had in it the power of all the three orders, and ended in the subversion of the whole constitution. Such a history as that of Suetonius, which gives us a succession of absolute princes, is to me an un answerable argument against despotic power. Where the prince is a man of wisdom and virtue, it is indeed happy for his people that he is absolute; but since in the common run of mankind, for one that is wise and good you find ten of a contrary character, it is very dangerous for a nation to stand to its chauce, or to have its public happiness or misery depend on the virtue or vices of a single person. Look into the history I have mentioned, or into any series of absolute princes, how many tyrants must you read through, before you come to an emperor that is supportable. But this is not all; an honest private man often grows cruel and abandoned, when converted into an absolute prince. Give a man power of doing what he pleases with impunity, you extinguish his fear, and consequently overturn in him one of the great pillars of morality. This too we find confirmed by matter of fact. How many hopeful heirs apparent to grand empires, when in the possession of them, have become such monsters of lust and cruelty as are a reproach to human nature! Some tell us we ought to make our governments on earth like that in heaven, which, say they, is altogether monarchical and unlimited. Was man like his Creator in goodness and justice, I should be for allowing this great model; but where goodness and justice are not essential to the ruler, I would by no means put myself into his hands to be disposed of according to his particular will and pleasure, It is odd to consider the connexion between despotic government and barbarity, and how the making of one person more than man, makes the rest less. Above nine parts of the world in ten are in the lowest state of slavery, and consequently sunk in the most gross and brutal ignorance. European slavery is indeed a state of liberty, if compared with that which prevails in the other three divisions of the world and therefore it is no wonder that those who grovel under it, have many tracks of light among them, of which the others are wholly destitute. Riches and plenty are the natural fruits of liberty, and where these abound, learning and all the liberal arts will immediately lift up their heads and flourish. As a man must have no slavish fears and apprehensions hanging upon his mind, who will indulge the flights of fancy or speculation, and push his researches into all the abstruse corners of truth, so it is necessary for him to have about him a competency of all the conveniences of life. The first thing every one looks after, is to provide himself with necessaries. This point will engross our thoughts until it be satisfied. If this is taken care of to our hands, we look out for pleasures and amusements; and among a great number of idle people, there will be many whose pleasures will lie in reading and contemplation. These are the two great sources of knowledge, and as men grow wise they naturally love to communicate their discoveries; and others seeing the happiness of such a learned life, and improving by their conversation, emulate, imitate, and surpass one another, until a nation is filled with races of wise and understanding persons. Ease and plenty are therefore the great cherishers of knowledge: and as most of the despotic governments of the world have neither of them, they are naturally overrun with ignorance and bar barity. In Europe, indeed, notwithstanding several of its princes are absolute, there are men famous for knowledge and learning; but the reason is, because the subjects are many of them rich and wealthy, the prince not thinking fit to exert himself in his full tyranny like the princes of the eastern nations, lest his subjects should be invited to newmould their constitution, having so many prospects of liberty within their view. But in all despotic governments, though a particular prince may favour arts and letters, there is a natural degeneracy of mankind, as you may observe from Augustus's reign, how the Romans lost themselves by degrees until they fell to an equality with the most barbarous nations that surrounded them. Look upon Greece under its free states, and you would think its inhabitants lived in different climates, and under different heavens, from those at present, so different are the geniuses which are formed under Turkish slavery, and Grecian liberty. Besides poverty and want, there are other reasons that debase the minds of men who live under slavery, though I look on this as the principal. This natural tendency of despotic power to ignorance and barbarity, though not insisted upon by others. is, I think, an unanswerable argument against that form of government, as it shows how repugnant it is to the good of mankind, and the perfection of human nature, which ought to be the great ends of all civil institutions.-L. No. 288.] WEDNESDAY, JAN. 30, 1711-12 "MR. SPECTATOR, "When you spoke of the jilts and coquettes, you then promised to be very impartial, and not to spare even your own sex, should any of their secret or open faults come under your cognisance: which has given me encouragement to describe a certain species of mankind under the denomination of male jilts. They are gentlemen who do not design to marry, yet, that they may appear to have some sense of gallantry, think they must pay their devoirs to one particular fair; in order to which, they single out from amongst the herd of females her to whom they design to make their fruitless addresses. This done, they first take every opportunity of being in her company, and they never fail upon all occasions to be particular to her, laying themselves at her feet, protesting the reality of their passion with a thousand oaths, soliciting a return, and saying as many fine things as their stock of wit will allow and if they are not deficient that way, generally speak so as to admit of a double interpretation; which the credu. lous fair is too apt to turn to her own advantage, since it frequently happens to be a raw, innocent young creature, who thinks all the world as sincere as herself, and so her unwary heart becomes an easy prey to those deceitful monsters, who no sooner perceive it, but immediately they grow cool, and shun her whom they before seemed so much to admire, and proceed to act the same common-place llany towards another. A coxcomb flushed with many of these infamous victories shall say he is sorry for the poor fools, protest and vow he never thought of matrimony, and wonder talking civilly can be so strangely misinterpreted. Now, Mr. Spectator, you that are a professed friend to love, will, I hope, observe upon those who abuse that noble passion, and raise it in innocent minds by a deceitful affectation of it, after which they desert the enamoured. Pray bestow a little of your counsel on those fond believing females who already have, or are in danger of having, broken hearts; in which you will oblige a great part of this town, but in a particular manner, "Sir, "Your (yet heart-whole) Admirer, Melainia's complaint is occasioned by so general a folly, that it is wonderful one could so long overlook it. But this false gallantry proceeds from an impotence of mind, which makes those who are guilty of it incapable of pursuing what they themselves approve. Many a man wishes a woman his wife whom he dare not take for such. Though no one has power over his inclinations or fortunes, be |