^ - s IILL']l' 1819. J if 2Zt THE BEE. No. 1. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 6, 1759. INTRODUCTION. There is not, perhaps, a more whimsically dis- mal figure in nature, than a man of real modesty who assumes an air of impudence ; who, while his heart beats with anxiety, studies ease, and affects good humour. In this situation, however, a perio- dical writer often finds himself, upon his first at- tempt to address the public in form. All his power of pleasing is damped by solicitude, and his cheer- fulness dashed with apprehension. Impressed with the terrors of the tribunal before which he is going to appear, his natural humour turns to pertness, and for real wit he is obliged to substitute vivacity. His first publication draws a crowd ; they part dis- satisfied, and the author, never more to be indulged with a favourable hearing, is left, to condemn the indelicacy of his own address, or their want of dis- cernment. 4 THE BEE. s For my part, as I was never distinguished for ad- dress, and have often even blundered in making my bow, such bodings as these had like to have totally repressed my ambition. I was at a loss whether to give the public specious promises, or give none ; wiiether to be merry or sad on this solemn occasion. If I should decline all merit, it was too probable the hasty reader might have taken me at my word. If, on the other hand, like labourers in the magazine trade, I had, with modest impudence, humbly pre- sumed to promise an epitome of all the good things that ever were said or written, this might have dis- gusted those readers I most desire to please. Had I been merry, I might have been censured as vastly low ; and had I been sorrowful, I might have been left to mourn in solitude and silence : in short, whichever way I turned, nothing presented but prospects of terror, despair, chandler' shops, and waste paper. In this debate, between fear and ambition, my publisher happening to arrive, interrupted for a while my anxiety. Perceiving my embarrassment about making my first appearance, he instantly offered his assistance and advice : " You must know, sir," says he, " that the republic of letters is at pre- sent divided into three classes. One writer, for instance, excels at a plan, or a title-page, another works away the body of the book, and a third is a dab at an index. Thus a magazine is not the result of any single man's industry ; but goes through as many hands as a new pin, before it is fit for the public. I fancy, sir," continues he, " I can provide an eminent hand, and upon moderate INTRODUCTION. 5 terms, to draw up a promising plan to smooth up our readers a little, and pay them, as Colonel Charteris paid his seraglio, at the rate of three- halfpence in hand, and three shillings more in pro- mises." He was proceeding in his advice, which, how- ever, I thought proper to decline, by assuring him, that as I intended to pursue no fixed method, so it was impossible to form any regular plan ; deter- mined never to be tedious, in order to be logical, wherever pleasure presented, I was resolved to follow. . Like the Bee, which I had taken for the title of my paper, I would rove from flower to flower, with seeming inattention, but concealed choice, expatiate over all the beauties of the season, and make my industry my amusement. This reply may also serve as an apology to the reader, who expects, before he sits down, a bill of his future entertainment. It would be improper to pall his curiosity by lessening his surprise, or anti- cipate any pleasure I am able to procure him, by saying what shall come next. Thus much, how- ever, he may be assured of, that neither war nor scandal shall make any part of it. Homer finely imagines his deity turning away with horror from the prospect of a field of battle, and seeking tran- quillity among a nation noted for peace and simpli- city. Happy could any effort of mine, but for a moment, repress that savage pleasure some men find in the daily accounts of human misery ! How gladly would I lead them from scenes of blood and altercation, to prospects of innocence and ease, where every breeze breathes health, ancl every sound is but the echo of tranquillity J 6 THE BEE. But whatever the merit of his intentions may be, every writer is now convinced that he must be chiefly indebted to good fortune for finding readers willing to allow him any degree of reputation. It has been remarked that almost every character which has excited either attention or praise, has owed part of its success to merit, and part to a happy concurrence of circumstances in its favour. Had Caesar or Cromwell exchanged countries, the one might have been a serjeant, and the other an exciseman. So it is with wit, which generally suc- ceeds more from being happily addressed, than from its native poignancy. A bon mot, for instance, that might be relished at White's, may lose all its flavour when delivered at the Cat and Bagpipes in St. Giles's. A jest calculated to spread at a ga- ming-table, may be received with a perfect neutrality of face, should it happen to drop in a mackarel boat. We have all seen dunces triumph in some companies, when men of real humour were disre- garded, by a general combination in favour of stu- pidity. To drive the observation as far as it will go, should the labours of a writer, who designs his performances for readers of a more refined appe- tite, fall into the hands of a devourer of compila- tions, what can he expect but contempt and con- fusion ! If his merits are to be determined by judges who estimate the value of a book from its bulk, or its frontispiece, every rival must acquire an easy superiority, who, with persuasive eloquence, promises four extraordinary pages of letter press, or three beautiful prints, curiously coloured from nature. INTRODUCTION. 7 But to proceed; though I cannot promise as much entertainment, or as much elegance, as others have done, yet the reader may be assured he shall have as much of both as I can. He shall, at least, find me alive while I study his entertainment ; for I solemnly assure him, I was never yet possessed of the secret at once of writing and sleeping. During the course of this paper, therefore, all the wit and learning I have are heartily at his service ; which if, after so candid a confession, he should, notwithstanding, still find it intolerably dull, low, or sad stuff, this I protest is more than I know. I have a clear conscience, and am entirely out of the secret. Yet I would not have him, upon the perusal of a single paper, pronounce me incorrigible ; he may try a second, which, as there is a studied difference in subject and style, may be more suited to his taste : if this also fails, I must refer him to a third, or even to a fourth, in case of extremity ; if he should still continue refractory, and find me dull to the last, I must inform him, with Bayes in the Rehearsal, that I think him a very odd kind of a fellow, and desire no more of his acquaintance. It is with such reflections as these I endeavour to fortify myself against the future contempt or neglect of some readers, and am prepared for their dislike by mutual recrimination. If such should impute dealing neither in battles nor scandal to me as a fault, instead of acquiescing in their censure, I must beg leave to tell them a story. A traveller, in his way to Italy, happening to pass at the foot of the Alps, found himself at last in a country where the inhabitants had each a large ex- crescence depending from the chin, like the pouch of a monkey. This deformity, as it was endemic, and the people little used to strangers, it had been the custom time immemorial to look upon as the greatest ornament of the human visage. Ladies grew toasts from the size of their chins, and none were regarded as pretty fellows but such whose faces were broadest at the bottom. It was Sunday, a country church was at hand, and our traveller was willing to perform the duties of the day. Upon his first appearance at the church door, the eyes of all were naturally fixed upon the stranger ; but what was their amazement, when they found that he actually wanted that emblem of beauty, a pursed chin ! This was a defect that not a single creature had sufficient gravity (though they were noted for being grave) to withstand. Stifled bursts of laugh- ter, winks, and whispers, circulated from visage to visage, and the prismatic figure of the stranger's face was a fund of infinite gaiety; even the parson, equally remarkable for his gravity and chin, could hardly refrain joining in the good humour. Our traveller could no longer patiently continue an ob- ject for deformity to point at. " Good folks," said he, " I perceive that I am the unfortunate cause of all this good humour. It is true, I may have faults in abundance, but I shall never be induced to reckon* my want of a swelled face among the number.* * Dr. Goldsmith inserted this introduction, with a few trifling alterations, in the volume of Essays he published in the year 1765. REMARKS ON OUR THEATRES. 9 ON A BEAUTIFUL YOUTH, STRUCK BLIND WITH LIGHTNING. IMITATED FROM THE SPANISH. Lumine Aeon dextro, capta est Leonida sinistro, Et poterat forma vineere uterque Deos. Parve puer, lumen quod habes concede puellae; Sic tu caecus Amor, sic erit ilia Venus. REMARKS ON OUR THEATRES. Our theatres are now opened, and all Grub-street is preparing its advice to the managers ; we shall undoubtedly hear learned disquisitions on the struc- ture of one actor's legs, and another's eye-brows. We shall be told much of enunciations, tones, and attitudes, and shall have our lightest pleasures com- mented upon by didactic dulness. We shall, it is feared, be told, that Garrick is a fine actor, but then, as a manager, so avaricious ! That Palmer is a most surprising genius, and Holland likely to do well in a particular cast of character. We shall have them giving Shuter instructions to amuse us by rule, and deploring over the ruins of desolated majesty at Covent-Garden. As I love to be advising too, for advice is easily given, and bears a show of wisdom and superiority, I must be permitted to offer a few observations upon our theatres and actors, b 2 10 THE BEE. without, on this trivial occasion, throwing my thoughts into the formality of method. There is something in the deportment of all our players infinitely more stiff and formal than among the actors of other nations. Their action sits uneasy upon them ; for as the English use very little ges- ture in ordinary conversation, our English-bred actors are obliged to supply stage gestures by their imagination alone. A French comedian finds pro- per models of action in every company and in every coffee-house he enters. An Englishman is obliged to take his models from the stage itself; he is obliged to imitate nature from an imitation of nature. I know of no set of men more likely to be improved by travelling than those of the theatrical profession. The inhabitants of the continent are less^reserved than here ; they may be seen through upon a first acquaintance ; such are the proper mo- dels to draw from ; they are at once striking, and are found in 'great abundance. Though it would be inexcusable in a comedian to add any thing of his own to the poet's dialogue, yet as to action he is entirely at liberty. By this he may show the fertility of his genius, the poignancy of his humour, and the exactness of his judgment ; we scarcely see a coxcomb or a fool in common life that has not some peculiar oddity in his action. These peculiarities it is not in the power of words to re- present, and depend solely upon the actor. They give a relish to the humour of the poet, and make the appearance of nature more illusive ; the Italians, it is true, mask some characters, and endeavour to preserve the peculiar humour by the make of the REMARKS ON OUR THEATRES. 11 mask ; but I have seen others still preserve a great fund of humour in the face without a mask; one actor, particularly, by a squint which he threw into some characters of low life, assumed a look of in- finite solidity. This, though upon reflection we might condemn, yet immediately upon representa- tion we could not avoid being pleased with. To illustrate what I have been saying by the plays I have of late gone to see ; in the Miser, which was played a few nights ago at Covent-Garden, Lovegold appears through the whole in circumstances of exaggerated avarice ; all the player's action, therefore, should conspire with the poet's design, and represent him as an epitome of penury. The French comedian, in this character, in the midst of one of his most violent passions, while he appears in an ungovern- able rage, feels the demon of avarice still upon him, and stoops down to pick up a pin, which he quilts into the flap of his coat-pocket with great assiduity. Two candles are lighted up for his wedding ; he flies, and turns one of them into the socket ; it is, however, lighted up ' again ; he then steals to it, . and privately crams it into his pocket. The Mock- Doctor was lately played at the other house. Here again the comedian had an opportunity of heighten- ing the ridicule by action. The French player sits in a chair with a high back, and then begins to show away by talking nonsense, which he would have thought Latin by those who he knows do not understand a syllable of the matter. At last he grows enthusiastic, enjoys the admiration of the company, tosses his legs and arms about, and in the midst of his raptures and vociferation, he and the 12 THE BEE. chair fall back together. All this appears dull enough in the recital ; but the gravity of Cato could not stand it in the representation. In short, there is hardly a character in comedy to which a player of any real humour might not add strokes of viva- city that could not fail of applause. But instead of this we too often see our fine gentlemen do nothing through a whole part, but strut, and open their snuff-box ; our pretty fellows sit indecently with their legs across, and our clowns pull up their breeches. These, if once or even twice repeated, might do well enough ; but to see them served up in every scene argues the actor almost as barren as the character he would expose. The magnificence of our theatres is far superior to any others in Europe, where plays only are acted. The great care our performers take in painting for a part, their exactness in all the minutiae of dress, and other little scenical proprieties, have been taken notice of by Ricoboni, a gentleman of Italy, who tra- velled Europe with no other design but to remark upon the stage ; but there are several improprieties still continued, or lately come into fashion. As, for instance, spreading a carpet punctually at the ' beginning of the death scene, in order to prevent our actors from spoiling their clothes ; this imme- diately apprises us of the tragedy to follow ; for laying the cloth is not a more sure indication of dinner than laying the carpet of bloody work at Drury-lane. Our little pages also with unmeaning faces, that bear up the train of a weeping princess, and our awkward lords in waiting, take off much from her distress. Mutes of every kind divide our REMARKS ON OUR THEATRES. 13 attention, and lessen our sensibility ; but here it is entirely ridiculous, as we see them seriously em- ployed in doing nothing. If we must have dirty- shirted guards upon the theatres, they should be taught to keep' their eyes fixed on the actors, and not roll them round upon the audience, as if they were ogling the boxes. Beauty methinks seems a requisite qualification in an actress. This seems scrupulously observed elsewhere, and for my part I could wish to see it observed at home. I can never conceive a hero dying for love of a lady totally destitute of beauty. I must think the part unnatural, for I cannot bear to hear him call that face angelic, when even paint cannot hide its wrinkles. I must condemn him of stupidity, and the person whom I can accuse for want of taste will seldom become the object of my affections or admiration. But if this be a defect, what must be the entire perversion of scenical de- corum, when for instance we see an actress that might act the Wapping Landlady without a bolster, pining in the character of Jane Shore, and while unwieldy with fat, endeavouring to convince the audience that she is dying with hunger ! For the future then, I could wish that the parts of the young or beautiful were given to performers of suitable figures ; for I must own, I could rather see the stage filled with agreeable objects, though they might sometimes bungle a little, than see it crowded with withered or mis-shapen figures, be their emphasis, as I think it is called, ever so pro- per. The first may have the awkward appearance of new-raised troops ; but in viewing the last I can- 14 • THE BEE. not avoid the mortification of fancying myself placed in an hospital of invalids. THE STORY OF ALCANDER AND SEPTIMIUS. TRANSLATED FROM A BYZANTINE HISTORIAN. Athens, even long after the decline of the Roman empire, still contined the seat of learning, polite- ness, and wisdom. The emperors and generals, who in these periods of approaching ignorance still felt a passion for science, from time to time added to its buildings, or increased its professorships. Theo- doric, the Ostrogoth, was of the number; he re- paired those schools which barbarity was suffering to fall into decay, and continued those pensions to men of learning, which avaricious governors had monopolized to themselves. In this city, and about this period, Alcander and Septimius were fellow students together. The one the most subtle reasoner of all the Lyceum ; the other the most eloquent speaker in the academic grove. Mutual admiration soon begot an acquaint- ance, and a similitude of disposition made them perfect friends. Their fortunes were nearly equal, their studies the same, and they were natives of the two most celebrated cities in the world ; for Alcander was of Athens, Septimius came from Rome. ALCANDER AND SEPTIMIUS. 15 In this mutual harmony they lived for some time together, when Alcander, after passing the first part of his youth in the indolence of philosophy, thought at length of entering into the busy world, and as a step previous to this, placed his affections on Hypa- tia, a lady of exquisite beauty. Hypatia showed no dislike to his addresses. The day of their intended nuptials was fixed, the previous ceremonies were performed, and nothing now remained but her be- ing conducted in triumph to the apartment of the intended bridegroom. An exultation in his own happiness, or his being unable to enjoy any satisfaction without making his friend Septimius a partner, prevailed upon him to introduce his mistress to his fellow student, which he did with all the gaiety of a man who found him- self equally hapuv in friendship and love. But this was an interview fatal to the peace of both. Septi- mius no sooner saw her, but he was smit with an involuntary passion. He used every effort, but in vain, to suppress desires at once so imprudent and unjust. He retired to his apartment in in- expressible agony ; and the emotions of his mind in a short time became so strong, that they brought on a fever, which the physicians judged incurable. During this illness Alcander watched him with all the anxiety of fondness, and brought his mis- tress to join in those amiable offices of friendship. The sagacity of the physicians, by this means, soon discovered the cause of their patient's disorder; and Alcander, being apprised of their discovery, at length extorted a confession from the reluctant dying lover. 16 THE BEE. It would but delay the narrative to describe the conflict between love and friendship in the breast of Alcander on this occasion ; it is enough to say, that the Athenians were at this time arrived to such refinement in morals, that every virtue was carried to excess. In short, forgetful of his own felicity, he gave up his intended bride, iir all her charms, to the young Roman. They were married privately by his connivance ; and this unlooked-for change of fortune wrought as unexpected a change in the constitution of the now. happy Septimius. In a few days he was perfectly recovered, and set out with his fair partner for Rome. Here, by an exertion of those talents of which he was so eminently pos- sessed, he in a few years arrived at the highest dignities of the state, and was constituted the city judge, or praetor. Meanwhile Alcander not only felt the pain of be- ing separated from his friend and mistress, but a> prosecution was also commenced against him by the relations of Hypatia, for his having basely given her up, as was suggested, for money. Neither his inno- cence of the crime laid to his charge, nor his elo- quence in his own defence, was able to withstand the influence of a powerful party. He was cast, and condemned to pay an enormous fine. Unable to raise so large a sum at the time appointed, his possessions were confiscated, him- self stripped of the habit of freedom, exposed in the market-place, and sold as a slave to the highest bidder. A merchant of Thrace becoming his purchaser, Alcander, with some other companions of distress, was carried into the region of desolation and ste- ALCANDER AND SEPTIMIUS. 17 rility. His stated employment was to follow the herds of an imperious master, and his skill in hunt- ing was all that was allowed him to supply a preca- rious subsistence. Condemned to hopeless servi- tude, every morning waked him to renewal of fa- mine or toil, and every change of season served but to aggravate his unsheltered distress. Nothing but death or flight was left him, and almost certain death was the consequence of his attempting to fly. After some years of bondage, however, an opportu- nity of escaping offered ; he embraced it with ar- dour, and travelling by night, and lodging in caverns by day, to shorten a long story, he at last arrived in Rome. The day of Alcander's arrival, Septimius sat in the forum administering justice ; and hither our wanderer came, expecting to be instantly known, and publicly acknowledged. Here he stood the whole day among the crowd, watching the eyes of the judge, and expecting to be taken notice of ; but so much was he altered by a long succession of hardships, that he passed entirely without notice ; and in the evening, when he was going up to the praetor's chair, he was brutally repulsed by the attending lictors. The attention of the poor is generally driven from one ungrateful object to another. Night coming on, he now found himself under a necessity of seeking a place to lie in, and yet knew not where to ap- ply. All emaciated and in rags- as he was, none of the citizens would harbour so much wretched- ness, and sleeping in the streets might be attended with interruption or danger : in short, he was obliged to take up his lodging in one of the tombs without the city, the usual retreat of guilt, poverty, or despair. 18 THE BEE. In this mansion of horror, laying his head upon an inverted urn, he forgot his miseries for a while in sleep ; and virtue found on this flinty couch more ease than down can supply to the guilty. It was midnight, when two robbers came to make this cave their retreat, but happening to dis- agree about the division of their plunder, one of them stabbed the other to the heart, and left him weltering in blood at the entrance. In these cir- cumstances he was found next morning, and this naturally induced a further inquiry. The alarm was spread, the cave was examined, Alcander was found sleeping, and immediately apprehended and accused of robbery and murder. The circumstances against him were strong, and the wretchedness of his appearance confirmed suspicion. Misfortune and he were now so long acquainted, that he at last became regardless of life. He detested a world where he had found only ingratitude, falsehood, and cruelty, and was determined to make no de- fence. Thus lowering with resolution, he was drag- ged, bound with cords, before the tribunal of Septi- mius. The proofs were positive against him, and he offered nothing in his own vindication ; the judge, therefore, was proceeding to doom him to a most cruel and ignominious death, when, as if illumined by a ray from Heaven, he discovered, through all his misery, the features, though dim with sorrow, of his long-lost, loved Alcander. It is impossible to describe his joy and his pain on this strange occasion ; happy in once more seeing the person he most loved on earth, distressed at finding him in such circumstances. Thus agitated by contending passions, he flew from his tribunal, and LETTER FROM A TRAVELLER. 19 falling on the neck of his dear benefactor, burst into an agony of distress. The attention of the mul- titude was soon, however, divided by another ob- ject. The robber, who had been really guilty, was apprehended selling his plunder, and, struck with a panic, confessed his crime. He was brought bound to the same tribunal, and acquitted every other per- son of any partnership in his guilt. Need the se- quel be related ? Alcander was acquitted, shared the friendship and the honours of his friend Sep- timius, lived afterwards in happiness and ease, and left it to be engraved on his tomb, " That no circumstances are so desperate which Providence may not relieve." A LETTER FROM A TRAVELLER. Cracow, Aug. 2, 1758. My dear Will, You see by the date of my letter that I am arrived in Poland. When will my wanderings be at an end ? When will my restless disposition give me leave to enjoy the present hour ? When at Lyons, I thought all happiness lay beyond the Alps ; when in Italy, I found myself still in want of something, and expect- ed to leave solicitude behind me by going into Ro- melia, and now you find me turning back, still ex- pecting ease every where but where I am. It is now seven years since I saw the face of a single creature who cared a farthing whether I was dead or alive. Secluded from all the comforts of confi- 20 THE BEE. dence, friendship, or society, I feel the solitude of an hermit, but not his ease. The prince of * * * has taken me in his train, so that I am in no danger of starving for this bout. The prince's governor is a rude ignorant pedant, and his tutor a battered rake : thus, between two such characters, you may imagine he is finely in- structed. I made some attempts to display all the little knowledge I had acquired by reading or ob- servation ; but I find myself regarded as an igno- rant intruder. The truth is, I shall never be able to acquire a power of expressing myself with ease in any language but nly own ; and out of my own countiy the highest character I can ever acquire is that of being a philosophic vagabond. - When I consider myself in the country which was once so formidable in war, and spread terror and desolation over the whole Roman empire, I can hardly account for the present wretchedness and pusillanimity of its inhabitants ; a prey to every invader ; their cities plundered without an enemy ; their magistrates seeking redress by complaints, and not by vigour. Every thing conspires to raise my compassion for their miseries, were not my thoughts too busily engaged by my own. The whole kingdom is in a strange disorder : when our equi- page, which consists of the prince and thirteen at- tendants, had arrived at some towns, there were no conveniences to be found, and we were obliged to have girls to conduct us to the next. I have seen a woman travel thus on horseback before us for thirty miles, and think herself highly paid, and make twenty reverences, upon receiving, with ec- LETTER FROM A TRAVELLER. 21 stasy, about two-pence for her trouble. In general we were better served by the women than the men on those occasions. The men seem directed by a low sordid interest alone ; they seemed mere ma- chines, and all their thoughts were employed in the care of their horses. If we gently desired them to make more speed, they took not the least notice ; kind language was what they had by no means been used to. It was proper to speak to them in the tones of anger, and sometimes it was even necessary to use blows to excite them to their duty. How different these from the common people of England, whom a blow might induce to return the affront sevenfold ! These poor people, however, from being brought up to vile usage, lose all the respect which they should have for themselves. They have contracted a habit of regarding constraint as the great rule of their duty. When they were treated with mildness, they no longer continued to perceive a superiority. They fancied themselves our equals, and a continu- ance of our humanity might probably have ren- dered them insolent ; but the imperious tone, menaces, and blows, at once changed their sensa- tions and their ideas : their ears and shoulders taught their souls to shrink back into servitude, from which they had for some moments fancied themselves disengaged. The enthusiasm of liberty an Englishman feels is never so strong as when presented by such prospects as these. I must own, in all my indigence, it is one of my comforts, (perhaps, indeed, it is my only boast,) that I am of that happy country ; though I scorn to starve there ; though I do not choose to 22 THE BEE. lead a life of wretched dependence, or be an object for my former acquaintance to point at. While you enjoy all the ease and elegance of prudence and vir- tue, your old friend wanders over the world, with- out a single anchor to hold by, or a friend except you to confide in. Yours, &c. A SHORT ACCOUNT OF THE LATE M. MAUPERTUIS. M. Maupertuis, lately deceased, was the first to , whom the English philosophers owed their being particularly admired by the rest of Europe. The romantic system of Des Cartes was adapted to the taste of the superficial and the indolent : the foreign universities had embraced it with ardour, and such are seldom convinced of their errors, till all others give up such false opinions as untenable. The phi- . losophy of Newton, and the metaphysics of Locke, appeared ; but, like all new truths, they were at once received with opposition and contempt. The English, it is true, studied, understood, and conse- quently admired them ; it was very different on the Continent. Fontenelle, who seemed to preside over the republic of letters, unwilling to acknowledge that all his life had been spent in erroneous philo- sophy, joined in the universal disapprobation, and the English philosophers seemed entirely un- known. Maupertuis, however, made them his study ; he thought he might oppose the physics of his country, SHORT ACCOUNT OF M. MAUPERTUIS. 2& and yet still be a good citizen : he defended our countrymen, wrote in their favour, and at last, as he had truth on his side, carried his cause. Almost all the learning of the English, till very lately, was conveyed in the language of France. The writings of Maupertuis spread the reputation of his master, Newton, and by a happy fortune have united his fame with that of our human prodigy. The first of his performances, openly in vindica- tion of the Newtonian system, is his treatise inti- tuled Sur la figure des Astres, if I remember right ; a work at once expressive of a deep geometrical knowledge, and the most happy manner of de- livering abstruse science with ease. This met with violent opposition from a people, though fond of novelty in every thing else, yet, however, in matters of science, attached to ancient opinions with bigotry. As the old and obstinate fell away, the youth of France embraced the new opinions, and now seem more eager to defend Newton than even his country- men. The oddity of character which great men are sometimes remarkable for, Maupertuis was not en- tirely free from. If we can believe Voltaire, he once attempted to castrate himself; but whether this be true or no, it is certain he was extremely whimsical. Though born to a large fortune, when employed in mathematical inquiries, he disregarded his person to such a degree, and loved retirement so much, that he has been more than once put on the list of modest beggars by the curates of Paris, when he retired to some private quarter of the town, in order to enjoy his meditations without interruption. 24 THE BEE. The character given of him by one of Voltaire's an- tagonists, if it can be depended upon, is much to his honour. " You," says this writer to M. Voltaire, " you were entertained by the King of Prussia as a buffoon, but Maupertuis as a philosopher." It is certain that the preference which this royal scholar gave to Maupertuis was the cause of Voltaire's dis- agreement with him. Voltaire could not bear to see a man, whose talents he had no great opinion of, preferred before him as president of the royal academy. His Micromegas was designed to ridicule Maupertuis ; and probably it has brought more dis- grace on the author than the subject. Whatever absurdities men of letters have indulged, and how fantastical soever the modes of science have been, their anger is still more subject to ridicule. 2. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 13, 1759. ON DRESS. Foreigners observe, that there are no ladies in the world more beautiful, or more ill-dressed, than those of England. Our country-women have been compared to those pictures, where the face is the work of a Raphael $ but the draperies thrown out by some empty pretender, destitute of taste, and entirely unacquainted with design. If I were a poet, I might observe, on this occa- sion, that so much beauty set off with all the advan- ON DRESS. 25 tages of dress, would be too powerful an antagonist for the opposite sex, and therefore it was wisely or- dered, that our ladies should want taste, lest their admirers should entirely want reason. But to confess a truth, I do not find they have a greater aversion to fine clothes than the women of any other country whatsoever. I cannot fancy that a shopkeeper's wife in Cheapside has a greater tenderness for the fortune of her husband than a citizen's wife in Paris : or that miss in a boarding- school is more an economist in dress than made- moiselle in a nunnery. Although Paris may be accounted the soil in which almost every fashion takes its rise, its influ- ence is never so general there as with us. They study there the happy method of uniting grace and fashion, and never excuse a woman for being awkwardly dressed, by saying her clothes are made in the mode. A French woman is a perfect architect in dress ; she never, with Gothic igno- rance, mixes the orders ; she never tricks out a squabby Doric shape with Corinthian finery ; or, to speak without metaphor, she conforms to general fashion, only, when it happens not to be repugnant to private beauty. Our ladies, on the contrary, seem to have no other standard for grace but the run of the town. If fashion gives the word, every distinction of beauty, complexion, or stature ceases. Sweeping trains, Prussian bonnets, and trollopees, as like each other as if cut from the same piece, level all to one standard. The mall, the gardens, and the playhouses are filled with ladies in uniform, and their whole appearance shows as little variety or c 26 THE BEE. taste as if their clothes were bespoke by the colonel of a marching regiment, or fancied by the same artist who dresses the three battalions of guards. But not only ladies of every shape and com- plexion, but of every age too, are possessed of this unaccountable passion of dressing in the same man- ner. A lady of no quality can be distinguished from a lady of some quality only by the redness of her hands, and a woman of sixty, masked, might easily pass for her grand- daughter. I remember, a few days ago, to have walked behind a damsel, tossed out in in all the gaiety of fifteen ; her dress was loose, unstudied, and seemed the result of con- scious beauty. I called up all my poetry on this occasion, and fancied twenty Cupids prepared for execution in every folding of her white negligee. I had prepared my imagination for an angel's face 5 but what was my mortification to find that the ima- ginary goddess was no other than my cousin Han- nah, four years older than myself, and I shall be sixty-two the twelfth of next November. After the transports of our first salute were over, I could not avoid running my eye over her whole appearance. Her gown was of cambrick, cut short before, in order to discover ah high-heeled shoe, which was buckled almost at the toe. Her cap, if cap it might be called that cap was none, consisted of a few bits of cambrick, and flowers of painted paper stuck on one side of her head. Her bosom, that had felt no hand, but the hand of time, these twenty years, rose suing, but in vain, to be pressed. I could, indeed, have wished her more than an handkerchief of Paris-net to shade her beauties ; for, as Tasso says of the rose -bed, " Quanto si mos- ON DRESS* 27 tra men tanto epiu bella," I should think hers most pleasing when least discovered. As my cousin had not put on all this finery for nothing, she was ' at that time sallying out to the park, when I had overtaken her. Perceiving, how- ever, that I had on my best wig, she offered, if I would 'squire her there, to send home the footman. Though I trembled for our reception in public, yet I could not, with any civility, refuse ; so to be as gallant as possible, I took her hand in my arm, and thus we marched on together. When we made our entry at the park, two anti- quated figures, so polite and so tender as we seemed to be, soon attracted the eyes of the company. As we made our way among crowds who were out to show their finery as well as we, wherever we came I perceived we brought good-humour in our train. The polite could not forbear smiling, and the vul- gar burst out into a horse laugh at our grotesque figures. Cousin Hannah, who was perfectly con- scious of the rectitude of her own appearance, at- tributed all this mirth to the oddity of mine, while I as cordially placed the whole to her account. Thus, from being two of the best-natured creatures alive, before we got half way up the mall we both began to grow peevish, and like two mice on a string endeavoured to revenge the impertinence of others upon ourselves. " I am amazed, cousin Jeffery," says miss, " that I can never get you to dress like a Christian. I knew we should have the eyes of the park upon us, with your great wig so frizzed, and yet so beggarly, and your monstrous muff. I hate those odious muffs." I could have patiently borne a criticism on all the rest of my equipage ; but as I had always a peculiar veneration for my muff, I could not forbear being piqued a little, and throwing my eyes with a spiteful air on her bosom," I could heartily wish, madam," re- plied I, " that, for your sake, my muff was cut into a tippet." As my cousin by this time was grown heartily ashamed of her gentleman usher, and as I was never very fond of any kind of exhibition myself, it was mutually agreed to retire for a while to one of the seats, and from that retreat remarked on others as freely as they had remarked on us. When seated, we continued silent for some time, employed in very different speculations. I regarded the whole company, now passing in review before me, as drawn out merely for my amusement. For my entertainment the beauty had all that morning been improving her charms, the beau had put on lace, and the young doctor a big wig, merely to please me. But quite different were the sentiments of cousin Hannah ; she regarded every well-dressed woman as a victorious rival, hated every face that seemed dressed in good humour, or wore the ap- pearance of greater happiness than her own. I perceived her uneasiness, and attempted to lessen it, by observing that there was no company in the park to-day. To this she readily assented ; " and yet," says she, " it is full enough of scrubs of one kind or another.'' My smiling at this observation gave her spirits to pursue the bent of her inclina- tion, and now she began to exhibit her skill in se- cret history, as she found me disposed to listen. (( Observe," says she to me, " that old woman in tawdry silk, and dressed out even beyond the ON DRESS. 29 fashion. That is miss Biddy Evergreen. Miss Biddy, it seems, has money, and as she considers that money was never so scarce as it is now, she seems resolved to keep what she has to herself. She is ugly enough you see ; yet I assure you, she has refused several offers, to my own knowledge, within this twelve- month. Let me see, three gentlemen from Ireland who study the law, two waiting captains, her doc- tor, and a Scotch preacher, who had like to have carried her off. All her time is passed between sickness and finery. Thus she spends the whole week in a close chamber, with no other company but her monkey, her apothecary, and cat, and comes dressed out to the park every Sunday, to show her airs, to get new lovers, to catch a new cold, and to make new work for the doctor. " There goes Mrs. Roundabout, I mean the fat lady in the lutestring trollopee. Between you and I, she is but a cutler's wife. See how she's dressed, as fine as hands and pins can make her, while her two marriageable daughters, like bunters, in stuif gowns, are now taking six pennyworth of tea at the White-conduit-house. Odious puss ! how she waddles along, with her train of two yards behind her ! She puts me in mind of my lord Bantam's Indian sheep, which are objiged to have their mon- strous tails trundled along in a go-cart. For all her airs, it goes to her husband's heart to see four yards of good lutestring wearing against the ground, like one of his knives on a grindstone. To speak my mind, cousin Jeffery, I never liked tails ; for, suppose a young fellow should be rude, and the lady should offer to step back in a fright, instead of retiring, she treads upon her train, and falls fairly 30 THE BEE. on her back; and then you know, cousin, — her clothes may be spoiled. " x\h ! miss Mazzard ! I knew we should not miss her in the park : she in the monstrous Prus^ sian bonnet. Miss, though so very fine, was bred a milliner, and might have had some custom if she had minded her business ; but the girl was fond of finery, and instead of dressing her customers, laid out all her goods in adorning herself. Every new gown she put on impaired her credit ; she still, how- ever, went on improving her appearance, and les- sening her little fortune, and is now, you see, be- come a belle and a bankrupt." My cousin was proceeding in her remarks, which were interrupted by the approach of the very lady . she had been so freely describing. Miss had per- ceived her at a distance, and approached to salute her. I found, by the warmth of the two ladies' protestations, that they had been long intimate esteemed friends and acquaintance. Both Avere so. pleased at this happy rencounter, that they were resolved not to part for the day. So we all crossed the park together, and I saw them into a hackney coach at the gate of St. James's. J could not, how- ever, help observing, " That they are generally most ridiculous themselves, who are apt to see most ridicule in others." CHARLES XII. 31 SOME PARTICULARS RELATIVE TO CHARLES XII. NOT COMMONLY KNOWN. Stockholm. Sir, I cannot resist your solicitations, though it is pos- sible I shall be unable to satisfy your curiosity. The polite of every country seem to have but one character. A gentleman of Sweden differs but little, except in trifles, from one of any other coun- try. It is among the vulgar we are to find those distinctions which characterize a people, and from them it is that I take my picture of the Swedes. Though the Swedes in general appear to languish under oppression, which often renders others wicked, or of malignant dispositions, it has not, however, the same influence upon them, as they are faithful, civil, and incapable of atrocious crimes. Would you believe that in Sweden highway robberies are not so much as heard of ? for my part I have not in the whole country seen a gibbet or a gallows. They pay an infinite respect to their ecclesiastics, whom they suppose to be the privy counsellors of Provi- dence, who, on their part, turn this credulity to their own advantage, and manage their parishioners as they please. In general, however, they seldom abuse their sovereign authority. Hearkened to as oracles, regarded as the dispensers of eternal re- wards and punishments, they readily influence their hearers into justice, and make them practical phi- losophers without the pains of study. 32 THE BEE. As to their persons, they are perfectly well made, and the men particularly have a very engaging air. The greatest part of the boys which I saw in the country had very white hair. They were as beauti- ful as Cupids, and there was something open and entirely happy in their little chubby faces. The girls, on the contrary, have neither such fair, nor such even complexions, and their features are much less delicate, which is a circumstance different from that of almost every other country. Besides . this, it is observed that the women are generally afflicted with the itch, for which Scania is particu- larly remarkable. I had an instance of this in one of the inns on the road. The hostess was one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen ; she had so fine a complexion, that I could not avoid admiring it. But what was my surprise, when she opened her bosom in order to suckle her child, to perceive that seat of delight all covered with this disagree- able distemper. The careless manner in which she exposed to our eyes so disgusting an object, suffi- ciently testifies that they regard it as no very extra- ordinary malady, and seem to take no pains to con- ceal it. Such are the remarks, which probably you may think trifling enough, I have made in my jour- ney to Stockholm, which, to take it altogether, is a large, beautiful, and even a populous city. The arsenal appears to me one of its greatest curiosities; it is a handsome spacious building, mn% however, scantily supplied with the implements of war. To recompense this defect, they have al- most filled it with trophies, and other marks of their former military glory. I saw there several cham- bers filled with Danish, Saxon, Polish, and Russian CHARLES XII. 33 standards. There was at least enough to suffice half a dozen armies ; but new standards are more easily made than new armies can be enlisted. I saw, besides, some very rich furniture, and some of the crown jewels of great value; but what princi- pally engaged my attention, and touched me with passing melancholy, were the bloody, yet precious spoils of the two greatest heroes the North ever produced. What I mean are the clothes in which the great Gustavus Adolphus, and the intrepid Charles XII. died, by a fate not unusual to kings. The first, if I remember, is a sort of a buff waist- coat, made antique fashion, very plain, and without the least ornaments ; the second, which was even more remarkable, consisted only of a coarse blue cloth coat, a large hat of less value, a shirt of coarse linen, large boots, and buff gloves made to cover a great part of the arm. His saddle, his pistols, and his sword, have nothing in them remarkable ; the meanest soldier was in this respect no way inferior to his gallant monarch. I shall use this opportunity to give you some particulars of the life of a man already so well known, which I had from persons who knew him when a child, and who now, by a - fate not unusual to courtiers, spend a life of poverty and retirement, and talk over in raptures all the actions of their old victorious king, companion, and master. Courage and inflexible constancy formed the basis of this monarch's character. In his tenderest years he gave instances of both. When he was yet scarcely seven years old, being at dinner with the queen his mother, intending to give a bit of bread to a great dog he was fond of, this hungry animal c2 34 THE BEE. snapped too greedily at the morsel, and bit his hand in a terrible manner. The wound bled copiously, but our young hero, without offering to cry, or ta- king the least notice of his misfortune, endeavoured to conceal what had happened, lest his dog should be brought into trouble ; and wrapped his bloody hand in the napkin. The queen perceiving that he did not eat, asked him the reason. He contented himself with replying, that he thanked her, he was not hungry. They thought he was taken ill, and so repeated their solicitations. But all was in vain, though the poor child was already grown pale with the loss of blood. An officer who attended at table at last perceived it ; for Charles would sooner have died than betrayed his dog, who he knew intended no injury. At another time, when in the small-pox, and his case appeared dangerous, he grew one day very uneasy in his bed, and a gentleman who watched him, desirous of covering him up close, received from the patient a violent box on his ear. Some hours after observing the prince more calm, he en- treated to know how he had incurred his displea- sure, or what he had done to have merited a blow. " A blow !" replied Charles, " I don't remember any thing of it ; I remember, indeed, that I thought my- self in the battle of Arbela, fighting for Darius, where I gave Alexander a blow, which brought him to the ground." What great effects might not these two qualities of courage and constancy have produced, had they at first received a just direction. Charles, with proper instructions, thus naturally disposed, would have been the delight and the glory of his CHARLES XII. 35 age. Happy those princes, who are educated by men who are at once virtuous and wise, and have been for some time in the school of affliction ; who weigh happiness against glory, and teach their royal pupils the real value of fame : who are ever showing the superior dignity of man to that of roy- alty ; that a peasant who does his duty is a nobler character than a king of even middling reputation. Happy, I say, were princes, could such men be found to instruct them ; but those to whom such an education is generally intrusted, are men who them- selves have acted in a sphere too high to know man- kind. Puffed up themselves with the ideas of false grandeur, and measuring merit by adventitious circumstances of greatness, they generally commu- nicate those fatal prejudices to their pupils, con- firm their pride by adulation, or increase their igno- rance by teaching them to despise that wisdom which is found among the poor. But not to moralize when I only intend a story ; what is related of the journeys of this prince is no less astonishing. He has sometimes been on horse- back for four and twenty hours successively, and thus traversed the greatest part of his kingdom. At last none of his officers were found capable of fol- lowing him ; he thus consequently rode the greatest part of his journeys quite alone, without taking a moment's repose, and without any other subsistence but a bit of bread. In one of these rapid courses he underwent an adventure singular enough. Riding thus post one day, all alone, he had the misfortune to have his horse fall dead under him. This might have embarrassed an ordinary man, but it gave Charles no sort of uneasiness. Sure of finding 36 THE BEE. another horse, but not equally so of meeting with a good saddle and pistols, he ungirds his horse, claps the whole equipage on his own baek~ and thus ac- coutred marches on to the next inn, which by good fortune was not far off. Entering the stable, he here found a horse entirely to his mind ; so, with- out further ceremony, he clapped on his saddle and housing with great composure, and was just going to mount, when the gentleman who owned the horse, was apprised of a stranger's going to steal his property out of the stable. Upon asking the king, whom he had never seen, bluntly, how he pre- sumed to meddle with his horse, Charles coolly re- plied, squeezing in his lips, which was his usual cus- tom, that he took the horse because he wanted one ; " for you see," continued he, " if I have none, I shall be obliged to carry the saddle myself.*' This answer did not seem at all satisfactory to the gentle- man, who instantly drew his sword. In this the king * was not much behind hand with him, and to it they were going, when the guards by this time came up, and testified that surprise which was natural to see arms in the hand of a subject against his king. Imagine whether the gentleman was less surprised than they at his unpremeditated disobedience. His astonishment, however, was soon dissipated by the king, who, taking him by the hand, assured him he was a brave fellow, and himself would take care he should be provided for. This promise was after- wards fulfilled, and I have been assured the king made him a captain. HAPPINESS DEPENDENT ON CONSTITUTION. 37 HAPPINESS, IN A GREAT MEASURE, DEPENDENT ON CON- STITUTION. When I reflect on the unambitious retirement in which I passed the earlier part of my life in the country, I cannot avoid feeling some pain in thinking that those happy days are never to return. In that retreat all nature seemed capable of afford- ing pleasure; I then made no refinements on hap- piness, but could be pleased with the most awkward efforts of rustic mirth ; thought cross-purposes the highest stretch of human wit, and questions and commands the most rational amusement for spend- ing the evening. Happy could so charming an illu- sion still continue ! I find age and knowledge only contribute to sour our dispositions. My pre- sent enjoyments may be more refined, but they are infinitely less pleasing. The pleasure Garrick gives can no way compare to that I have received from a country wag, who imitated a quaker's ser- mon. The music of Matei is dissonance to what I felt when our old dairy-maid sung me into tears with Johnny Armstrong's Last Good Night, or the cruelty of Barbara Allen. Writers of every age have endeavoured to show that pleasure is in us, and not in the objects offered for our amusement. If the soul be happily dis- posed, every thing becomes a subject of entertain- ment, and distress will almost want a name. Every occurrence passes in review like the figures of a procession ; some may be awkward, others ill- 38 THE BEE. dressed; but none but a fool is for this enraged with the master of the ceremonies. I remember to have once seen a slave in a forti- fication in Flanders, who appeared no way touched with his situation. He was maimed, deformed, and chained; obliged to toil from the appearance of day till night-fall, and condemned to this for life ; . yet, with all these circumstances of apparent wretchedness, he sung, would have danced, but that he wanted a leg, and appeared the merriest, happiest man of all the garrison. What a practi- cal philosopher was here ! a happy constitution supplied philosophy, and though seemingly destitute of wisdom, he was really wise. No reading or study had contributed to disenchant the fairy land around him. Every thing furnished him with an opportunity of mirth ; and though some thought him from his insensibility a fool, he was such an idiot as philosophers might wish in vain to imitate. They, who like him, can place themselves on that side of the world in which every thing appears in a ridiculous or pleasing light, will find something in every occurrence to excite their good humour. The most calamitous events, either to themselves or others, can bring no new affliction ; the whole world is to them a theatre, on which co- medies only are acted. All the bustle of heroism, or the rants of ambition, serve only to heighten the absurdity of the scene, and make the humour more poignant. They feel, in short, as little anguish at their own distress, or the complaints of others, as the undertaker, though dressed in black, feels sor- row at a funeral. HAPPINESS DEPENDENT ON CONSTITUTION. 39 Of all the men I ever read of, the famous Cardi- nal De Retz possessed this happiness of temper in the highest degree. As he was a man of gallantry, and despised all that wore the pedantic appearance of philosophy, wherever pleasure was to be sold, he was generally foremost to raise the auction. Being an universal admirer of the fair sex, when he found one lady cruel, he generally fell in love with another, from whom he expected a more favourable reception : if she too rejected his addresses, he never thought of retiring into deserts, or pining in hopeless distress. He persuaded himself, that in- stead of loving the lady, he only fancied he had loved her, and so all was well again. When For- tune wore her angriest look, when he at last fell into the power of his most deadly enemy, Cardinal Mazarine, and was confined a close prisoner in the castle of Valenciennes, he never attempted to sup- port his distress by wisdom or philosophy, for he pretended to neither. He laughed at himself and his persecutor, and seemed infinitely pleased at his new situation. In this mansion of distress, though secluded from his friends, though denied all the amusements, and even the conveniences of life, teased every hour by the impertinence of wretches who were employed to guard him, he still retained his good humour, laughed at all their little spite, and carried the jest so far, as to be revenged, by writing the life of his jailer. All that philosophy can teach, is to be stubborn or sullen under misfortunes. The Cardinal's exam- ple will instruct us to be merry in circumstances of the highest affliction. It matters not whether our good humour be construed by others into insensibi- 40 THE BEE. lity, or even idiotism ; it is happiness to ourselves, and none but a fool would measure his satisfaction by what the world thinks of it. Dick Wildgoose was one of the happiest silly fellows I ever knew. He was of the number of those good-natured creatures that are said to do no harm to any but themselves. Whenever Dick fell into any misery, he usually called it seeing life. If his head was broke by a chairman, or his pocket picked by a sharper, he comforted himself by imitating the Hibernian dialect of the one, or the more fashionable cant of the other. Nothing came amiss to Dick. His inattention to money matters had incensed his father to such a degree, that all the intercession of friends in his favour was fruitless. The old gentleman was on his death-bed. The whole family, and Dick among the number, gathered round him. " I leave my second son, An- drew," said the expiring miser, " my whole estate, and desire him to be frugal." Andrew, in a sorrow- ful tone, as is usual on these occasions, prayed heaven to prolong his life and health to enjoy it himself. " I recommend Simon, my third son, to the care of his elder brother, and leave him beside four thousand pounds." " Ah ! father," cried Simon, (in great affliction to be sure) " May heaven give you life and health to enjoy it yourself!" At last, turn- ing to poor Dick; (< As for you, you have always been a sad dog, you'll never come to good, you'll never be rich ; I'll leave you a shilling to buy a halter." — " Ah ! father," cries Dick, without any emotion, " May heaven give you life and health to enjoy it yourself!'' This was all the trouble the loss of fortune gave this thoughtless imprudent crea- ON OUR THEATRES. 41 ture. However, the tenderness of an uncle recom- pensed the neglect of a father; and Dick is not only excessively good-humoured, but competently rich. The world, in short, may cry out at a bankrupt who appears at a ball ; at an author who laughs at the public which pronounces him a dunce ; at a general who smiles at the reproach of the vulgar, or the lady who keeps her good-humour in spite of scandal ; but such is the wisest behaviour they can possibly assume ; it is certainly a better way to op- pose calamity by dissipation, than to take up the arms of reason or resolution to oppose it ; by the first method we forget our miseries, by the last we only conceal them from others ; by struggling with misfortunes, we are sure to receive some wounds in the conflict. The only method to come off victo- rious, is by running away. ON OUR THEATRES. Mademoiselle Clairon, a celebrated actress at Paris, seems to me the most perfect female figure I. have ever seen upon any stage. Not, perhaps, that nature has been more liberal of personal beauty to her, than some to be seen upon our theatres at home. There are actresses here who have as much of what connoisseurs call statuary grace, by which is meant elegance unconnected with motion, as she; but they all fall infinitely 42 THE BEE. short of her, when the soul comes to give expres- sion to the limbs, and animates every feature. Her first appearance is excessively engaging ; she never comes in staring round tipon the company, as if she intended to count the benefits of the house, or at least to see, as well as be seen. Her eyes are always, at first, intently fixed upon the persons of the drama, and she lifts them by degrees, with en- chanting diffidence, upon the spectators. Her first speech, or at least the first part of it, is delivered with scarcely any motion of the arm ; her hands and her tongue never set out together; but the one prepares us for the other. She sometimes begins with a mute eloquent attitude ; but never goes for- ward all at once with hands, eyes, head, and voice. This observation, though it may appear of no im- portance, should certainly be adverted to ; nor do I see any one performer (Garrick only excepted) among us, that is not in this particular apt to offend. By this simple beginning she gives herself a power of rising in the passion of the scene. As she proceeds, every gesture, every look acquires new violence, till at last, transported, she fills the whole vehemence of the part, and all the idea of the poet. Her hands are not alternately stretched out, and then drawn in again, as with the singing women at Sadler's Wells ; they are employed with graceful variety, and every moment please with new and un- expected eloquence. Add to this, that their motion is generally from the shoulder - } she never flourishes her hands while the upper part of her arm is mo- tionless, nor has she the ridiculous appearance, as if her elbows were pinned to her hips. ON OUR THEATRES. 43 But of all the cautions to be given to our rising actresses, I would particularly recommend it to them never to take notice of the audience, upon any occasion whatsoever; let the spectators ap- plaud never so loudly, their praises should pass, except at the end of the epilogue, with seeming in- attention. I can never pardon a lady on the stage, who, when she draws the admiration of the whole audience, turns about to make them a low courtesy for their applause. Such a figure no longer conti- nues Belvidera, but at once drops into Mrs. Cibber. Suppose a sober tradesman, who once a year takes his shilling's worth at ])rury-lane, in order to be delighted with the figure of a queen, the queen of Sheba for instance, or any other queen : this honest man has no other idea of the great but from their superior pride and impertinence ; suppose such a man placed among the spectators, the first figure that appears on the stage is the queen herself, courtesying and cringing to all the company ; how can he fancy her the haughty favourite of king Solomon the wise, who appears actually more sub- missive than the wife of his bosom. We are all tradesmen of a nicer relish in this respect, and such conduct must disgust every spectator who loves to have the illusion of nature strong upon him. Yet, while I recommend to our actresses a skilful attention to gesture, I would not have them study it in the looking-glass. This, without some precau- tion, will render their action formal ; by too great an intimacy with this they become stiff" and af- fected. People seldom improve, when they have no other m del but themselves to copy after. I 44 THE BEE. remember to have known a notable performer, of the other sex, who made great use of this flattering monitor, and yet was one of the stiffest figures I ever saw. I am told his apartment was hung round* with looking-glass, that he might see his person twenty times reflected upon entering the room ; and I will make bold to say, he saw twenty very ugly fellows whenever he did so. No. 3. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 20, 1759. ON THE USE OF LANGUAGE. The manner in- which most writers begin their treatises on the use of language is generally thus : " 4 ' Language has been granted to man, in order to discover his wants and necessities, so as to have them relieved by society. Whatever we desire, whatever we wish, it is but to clothe those desires or wishes in words, in order to fruition ; the prin- cipal use of language, therefore/' say they, " is to express our wants, so as to receive a speedy re- dress." Such an account as this may serve to satisfy grammarians and rhetoricians well enough, but men who know the world maintain very contrary maxims ; they hold, and I think with some show of reason, that he who best knows how to conceal his necessities and desires, is the most likely person to find redress, and that the true use of speech is not so much to express our wants as to conceal them. ON THE USE OF LANGUAGE. 45 When we reflect on the manner in which man- kind generally confer their favours, we shall find that they who seem to want them least, are the very persons who most liberally share them. There Retiring so attractive in riches, that the large generally collects from the smaller ; and the as much pleasure in increasing the enor- iss, as the miser, who owns it, sees happi- its increase. Nor is there in this any thing repugnant to the laws of true morality. Seneca himself allows, that in conferring benefits, the pre- sent should always be suited to the dignity of the receiver. Thus the rich receive large presents, and are thanked for accepting them. Men of middling stations are obliged to Lucr. The Spanish nation has, for many centuries past, been remarkable for the grossest ignorance in polite literature, especially in point of natural philosophy; a science so useful to mankind, that her neighbours have ever esteemed it a matter of the greatest im- portance, to endeavour, by repeated experiments, to strike a light out of the chaos in which truth seemed to be confounded. Their curiosity in this respect was so indifferent, that though they had dis- covered new worlds, they were at a loss to explain the phenomena of their own, and their pride so un- accountable, that they disdained to borrow from others that instruction, which their natural indo- lence permitted them not to acquire. It gives me, however, a secret satisfaction, to be- hold an extraordinary genius now existing in that nation, whose studious endeavours seem calculated to undeceive the superstitious and instruct the ig- norant : I mean the celebrated Padre Freijo. In unravelling the mysteries of nature, and explaining physical experiments, he takes an opportunity of displaying the concurrence of second causes in those very wonders, which the vulgar ascribe to super- natural influence. 62 THE BEE. An example of this kind happened a few years ago in a small town of the kingdom of Valencia. Passing through at the hour of mass, he alighted from his mule, and proceeded to the parish church, which he found extremely crowded, and there ap- peared on the faces of the faithful a more than usual alacrity. The sun, it seems, which had been for some minutes under a cloud, had begun to shine on a large crucifix, that stood on the middle of the altar, studded with several precious stones. The reflection from these, and from the diamond eyes of some silver saints, so dazzled the multitude, that they unanimously cried out, a miracle ! a miracle I whilst the priest at the altar, with seeming conster- nation, continued his heavenly conversation. Padre Freijo soon dissipated^ the charm, by tying his hand- kerchief round the head of one of the statues, for which he was arraigned by the inquisition ; whose flames,, however, he has had the good fortune hitherto to escape. No. 4. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 27, 1759. MISCELLANEOUS. Were I to measure the merit of my present under- taking by its success, or the rapidity of its sale, I might be led to form conclusions by no means fa- vourable to the pride of an author. Should I esti- mate my fame by its extent, every newspaper and MISCELLANEOUS. 63 magazine would leave me far behind. Their fame is diffused in a very wide circle, that of some as far as Islington, and some yet further still ; while mine, I sincerely believe, has hardly travelled beyond the sound of Bow bell ; and while the works of others fly like unpinioned swans, I find my own move as heavily as a new plucked goose, Still, however, I have as much pride as they who have ten times as many readers. It is impossible to repeat all the agreeable delusions, in which a dis- appointed author is apt to find comfort. I conclude, that what my reputation wants in extent, is made up by its solidity. Minus juvat gloria lata quam magna, I have great satisfaction in considering the delicacy and discernment of those readers I have, and in ascribing my want of popularity to the ig- norance or inattention of those I have not. All the world may forsake an author, but vanity will never forsake him. Yet notwithstanding so sincere a confession, I was once induced to show my indignation against the public, by discontinuing my endeavours to please, and was bravely resolved, like Raleigh, to vex them by burning my manuscript in a passion. Upon re- collection, however, I considered what set or body of people would be displeased at my rashness. The sun, after so sad an accident, might shine next morning as bright as usual; men might laugh and sing the next day, and transact business as before, and not a single creature feel any regret but myself. I reflected upon the story of a minister, who in the reign of Charles II. upon a certain occasion, re- signed all his posts, and retired into the country, in 64 THE BEE. a fit of resentment. But as he had not given the world entirely up with his ambition, he sent a mes- senger to town to see how the courtiers would bear his resignation. Upon the messenger's return, he was asked whether there appeared any commotion at court ? To which he replied, " There were very great ones." " Ay," says the minister, " I knew my friends would make a bustle ; all petitioning the king for my restoration, I presume." " No, -sir," replied the messenger, " they are only petitioning his majesty to be put in your place." In the same manner, should I retire in indignation, instead of having Apollo in mourning, or the muses in a fit of the spleen ; instead of having the learned world apostrophising at my untimely decease, perhaps all Grub-street might laugh at my fall, and self-ap- proving dignity might never be able to shield me from ridicule. In short, I am resolved to write on, if it were only to spite them. If the present gene- ration will not hear my voice, hearken, O poste- rity ! to you I call, and from you I expect redress ! What rapture will it not give to have the Scaligers, Daciers, and Warburtons of future times comment- ing with admiration upon every line I now write, working away those ignorant creatures, who offer to arraign my merit, with all the virulence of learned reproach. Ay, my friends, let them feel it ; call names, never spare them ; they deserve it all, and ten times more. I have been told of a critic, who was crucified at the command of ano- ther to the reputation of Homer. That, no doubt, was more than poetical justice ; and I shall be per- fectly content, if those who criticise me are only clapped in the pillory, kept fifteen days upon bread MISCELLANEOUS. 65 and water, and obliged to run the gantlope through Paternoster-row. The truth is, I can expect hap- piness from posterity either way. If I write ill, happy in being forgotten ; if well, happy in being remembered with respect. Yet considering things in a prudential light, per- haps I was mistaken in designing my paper as an agreeable relaxation to the studious, or a help to conversation among the gay ; instead of addressing it to such, I should have written down to the taste and apprehension of the many, and sought for repu- tation on the broad road. Literary fame 1 now find, like religious, generally begins among the vulgar. As for the polite, they are so very polite, as never to applaud upon any account. One of these, with a face screwed up into affectation, tells you, that fools may admire, but men of sense only approve. Thus, lest he should rise in rapture at any thing new, he keeps down every passion but pride and self-importance; approves with phlegm, and the poor author is damned in the taking a pinch of snuff. Another has written a book himself, and being condemned for a dunce, he turns a sort of king's evidence in criticism, and now becomes the terror of every offender. A third, possessed of full grown* reputation, shades off every beam of favour from those who endeavour to grow beneath him, and keeps down that merit, which, but for his in- fluence, might rise into equal eminence : while others, still worse, peruse old books for their amuse- ment, and new books only to condemn ; so that the public seem heartily sick of all but the business of the day, and read every thing now with as little 66 THE BEE. attention as they examine the faces of the passing crowd. From these considerations I was once determined to throw off all connections with taste, and fairly address my countrymen in the same engaging style' and manner with other periodical pamphlets, much more in vogue than probably mine shall ever be. To effect this, I had thoughts of changing the title into that of the Royal Bee, the Antigallican Bee, or the Bee's Magazine. I had laid in a proper stock of popular topics, such as encomiums on the king of Prussia, invectives against the queen of Hungary and the French, the necessity of a militia, our un- doubted sovereignty of the seas, reflections upon the present state of affairs, a dissertation upon liberty, some seasonable thoughts upon the in- tended bridge of Blackfriars, and an address to Britons ; the history of an old woman, whose teeth grew three inches long, an ode upon our victories, a rebus, an acrostic upon Miss Peggy P. and a journal of the weather. All this, to- gether with four extraordinary pages of letter press, a beautiful map of England, and two prints curiously coloured from nature, I fancied might touch their very souls. I was actually be- ginning an address to the people, when my pride at last overcame my prudence, and determined me to endeavour to please by the goodness of my en- tertainment, rather than by the magnificence of my sign. The Spectator, and many succeeding essayists, frequently inform us of the numerous compliments paid them in the course of their lucubrations ; of the MISCELLANEOUS. 67 frequent encouragements they met to inspire them with ardour, and increase their eagerness to please. I have received my letters as well as they ; hut alas ! not congratulatory ones ; not assuring me of success and favour; but pregnant with bodings that might shake even fortitude itself, One gentleman assures me, he intends to throw away no more three-pences in purchasing the Bee ; and what is still more dismal, he will not recom- mend me as a poor author wanting encouragement to his neighbourhood, which it seems is very nume- rous. Were my soul set upon three-pences, what anxiety might not such a denunciation produce ! But such does not happen to be the present motive of publication; I write partly to show my good- nature, and partly to show my vanity ; nor will I lay down the pen till I am satisfied one way or another. Others have disliked the title and the motto of my paper, point out a mistake in the one, and as- sure me the other has been consigned to dulness by anticipation. All this may be true; but what is that to me ? Titles and mottos to books are like escutcheons and dignities in the hands of a king. The wise sometimes condescend to accept of them ; but none but a fool would imagine them of any real importance. We ought to depend upon intrin- sic merit, and not the slender helps of the title. Nam quce nonfecimus ipsi, vix ea nostra voco. For my part, I am ever ready to mistrust a pro- mising title, and have, at some expense, been in- structed not to hearken to the voice of an advertise- ment, let it plead never so loudly, or never so long. A countryman coming one day to Smithfield, in 68 THE BEE. order to take a slice of Bartholomew- fair, found i perfect show before every booth. The drumme the fire-eater, the wire-walker, and the salt-b were all employed to invite him in. " Just going ; the court of the king of Prussia in all ] glory; pray, gentlemen, walk in and see." people who generously gave so much away, til clown expected a monstrous bargain for his mone when he got in. He steps up, pays his sixpence, th curtain is drawn, when, too late, he finds that I had the best part of the show for nothing at th door. A FLEMISH TRADITION. Every country has its traditions, which either t minute, or not sufficiently authentic to receive hist< rical sanction, are handed down among the vulg and serve at once to instruct and amuse them, this number the adventures of Robin Hood, hunting of Chevy Chace, and the bravery Johnny Armstrong among the English ; of Dereg among the Irish ; and Creighton among 1 Scots, are instances. Of all the traditions, howev I remember to have heard, I do not recollect ! more remarkable than one still current in ders ; a story generally the first the peasants their children, when they bid them behave HI Bidderman the Wise. It is by no means, howev a model to be set before a polite people for imit tion ; since if on the one hand we perceive in it t steady influence of patriotism $ we on the oth A FLEMISH TRADITION. 69 find as strong a desire of revenge. But, to wave introduction, let us to the story. When the Saracens over- ran Europe with their armies, and penetrated as far even as Antwerp, Bidderman was lord of a city, which time has since swept into destruction. As the inhabitants of this country were divided under separate leaders, the Saracens found an easy conquest, and the city of Bidderman among the rest became a prey to the victors. Thus dispossessed of his paternal city, our unfor- tunate governor was obliged to seek refuge from the neighbouring princes, who were as yet unsubdued, and he for some time lived in a state of wretched dependence among them. Soon, however, his love to his native country brought him back to his own city, resolved to rescue it from the enemy, or fall in the attempt : thus, in disguise, he went among the inhabitants, and endeavoured, but in vain, to excite them to a revolt. Former misfortunes lay so heavily on their minds, that they rather chose to suffer the most cruel bondage, than attempt to vindicate their for- mer freedom. As he was thus one day employed, whether by information or from suspicion is not known, he was apprehended by a Saracen soldier as a spy, and brought before the very tribunal at which he once presided. The account he gave of himself was by no means satisfactory. He could produce no friends to vindicate his character ; wherefore, as the Sara- cens knew not their prisoner, and as they had no direct proofs against him, they were content with 70 THE BEE. condemning him to be publicly whipped as a va- ? gabond. The execution of this sentence was accordingly performed with the utmost rigour. Bidderman was. bound to the post, the executioner seeming dis- posed to add to the cruelty of the sentence, as he I received no bribe for lenity. Whenever Bidder- man groaned under the scourge, the other, re- 1 doubling his blows, cried out, "Does the villain murmur?" If Bidderman entreated but a mo- - ment's respite from torture, the other only re- j peated his former exclamation, " Does the villain * murmur?" From this period, revenge as well as patriotis J took entire possession of his soul. His fury stooped ; so low as to follow the executioner with unremitting resentment. But conceiving that the best method j to attain these ends, was to acquire some eminence in the city, he laid himself out to oblige its new masters, studied every art, and practised every meanness that serve to promote the needy, or render the poor pleasing; and, by these means, in a few years he came to be of some note in the city, which justly belonged entirely to him. The executioner was therefore the first object of] his resentment, and he even practised the lowest fraud to gratify the revenge he owed him. A piece of plate, which Bidderman had previously stolen from the Saracen governor, he privately con- veyed into the executioner's house, and then gave information of the theft. They, who are any way acquainted with the rigour of the Arabian laws, know that theft is punished with immediate death. A FLEMISH TRADITION. 71 The proof was direct in this case ; the executioner had nothing to offer in his own defence, and he was therefore condemned to be beheaded upon a scaffold in the public market place. As there was no executioner in the city but the very man who was now to suffer, Bidderman himself under- took this, to him most agreeable office. The cri- minal was conducted from the judgment-seat bound with cords. The scaffold was erected, and he placed in such a manner, as he might lie most con- venient for the blow. But his death alone was not sufficient to satisfy the resentment of this extraordinary man, unless it was aggravated with every circumstance of cruelty. Wherefore, coining up the scaffold, and disposing every thing in readiness for the intended blow, with the sword in his hand he approached the criminal, and whispering in a low voice, assured him that he himself was the person that had once been used with so much cruelty ; that to his knowledge he died very innocently, for the plate had been stolen by himself, and privately conveyed into the house of the other. " O, my coantrymen," cried the criminal, " do you hear what this man says ?" — " Does the villain murmur ?" replied Bidderman, and immediately at one blow severed his head from his body. Still, however, he was not content till he had ample vengeance of the governors of the city, who condemned him. To effect this, he hired a small house adjoining to the town wall, under which he every day dug, and carried out the earth in a basket. In this unremitting labour he continued several years, every day digging a little, and carrying 72 THE BEE. the earth unsuspected away. By this means Ik at last made a secret communication from the country into the city, and only wanted the ap- pearance of an enemy, in order to betray it. This opportunity at length offered ; the French army came into the neighbourhood, but had no thoughts of sitting down before a town which they consi- dered as impregnable. Bidderman, however, soon altered their resolutions, and, upon communicating his plan to the general, he embraced it with ardour. Through the private passage above-mentioned, he introduced a large body of the most resolute soldiers, who soon opened the gates for the rest, and the whole army rushing in, put every Saracen that was found to the sword. . THE SAGACITY OF SOME INSECTS. to the author of the bee. Sir, Animals in general are sagacious in proportion as they cultivate society. The elpphant and the beaver show the greatest signs of this when united ; hut when man intrudes into their communities, they lose all their spirit of industry, and testify but a j very small share of that sagacity, for which, when j in a social state, they are so remarkable. ■ Among insects, the labours of the bee and the I ant have employed the attention and admiration of ] the naturalist ; but their whole sagacity is lost upon separation, and a single bee or ant seems destitute of every degree of industry, is the most stupid in- | SAGACITY OF SOME INSECTS. 73 sect imaginable, languishes for a time in solitude, and soon dies. Of all the solitary insects I have ever remarked, the spider is the most sagacious, and its actions, to me, who have attentively considered them, seem al- most to exceed belief. This insect is formed by nature for a state of war, not only upon other in- sects, but upon each other. For this state nature seems perfectly well to have formed it. Its head and breast are covered with a strong natural coat of mail, which is impenetrable to the attempts of every other insect, and its belly is enveloped in a soft pliant skin, which eludes the sting even of a wasp. Its legs are terminated by strong claws, not unlike those of a lobster, and their vast length, like spears, serve to keep every assailant at a di- stance. Not worse furnished for observation than for an attack or a defence, it has several eyes, large, trans- parent, and covered with a horny substance, which, however, does not impede its vision. Besides this, it is furnished with a forceps above the mouth, which serves to kill or secure the prey already caught in its claws or its net. Such are the implements of war with which the body is immediately furnished ; but its net to en- tangle the enemy seems what it chiefly trusts to, and what it takes most pains to render as com- plete as possible. Nature has furnished the body of this little creature with a glutinous liquid, which proceeding from the anus, it spins into thread coarser or finer, as it chooses to contract or dilate its sphincter. In order to fix its thread when it begins to weave, it emits a small drop of its liquid E 74 THE BEE. against the wall, which, hardening by degrees, serves to hold the thread very firmly. Then receding from the first point, as it recedes the thread lengthens ; and when the spider has come to the place where the other end of the thread should be fixed, gathering up with his claws the thread which would otherwise be too slack, it is stretched tightly, and fixed in the same manner to the wall as before. In this manner it spins and fixes several threads parallel to each other, which, so to speak, serve as the warp to the intended web. To form the woof, it spins in the same manner its thread, transversely, fixing one end to the first thread that was spun, and which is always the strongest of the whole web, and the other to the wall. All these threads, being newly spun, are glutinous, and therefore stick to each other wherever they happen to touch, and in those parts of the web most exposed to be torn, our natural artist strengthens them by doubling the threads sometimes six-fold. Thus far naturalists have gone in the description of this animal ; what follows is the result of my own observations upon that species of the insect called a house-spider. I perceived, about four years ago, a large spider in one corner of my room, making its web, and though the maid frequently le- velled her fatal broom against the labours of the little animal, I had the good fortune then to pre- vent its destruction, and I may say, it more than paid me by the entertainment it afforded. In three days the web was with incredible dili- gence completed ; nor could I avoid thinking that the insect seemed to exult in its new abode. It fre- SAGACITY OF SOME INSECTS. ?5 quently traversed it round, examined the strength of every part of it, retired into its hole, and came out very frequently. The first enemy, however, it had to encounter, was another and a much larger spider, which, having no web of its own, and having probably exhausted all its stock in former labours of this kind, came to invade the property of its neighbour. Soon then a terrible encounter ensued, in which the invader seemed to have the victory, and the laborious spider was obliged to take refuge in his hole. Upon this I perceived the victor using every art to draw the enemy from his strong hold. He seemed to go off, but quickly re- turned, and when he found all arts vain, began to demolish the new web without mercy. This brought on another battle, and, contrary to my expectations, the laborious spider became conqueror, and fairly killed his antagonist. Now then, in peaceable possession of what was justly its own, it waited three days with the utmost impatience, repairing the breaches of its web, and taking no sustenance that I could perceive. At last, however, a large blue fly fell into the snare, and struggled hard to get loose. The spider gave it leave to entangle itself as much as possible, but it seemed to be too strong for the cobweb. I must own I was greatly surprised when I saw the spider immediately sally out, and in less than a minute weave a new net around its captive, by which the motion of its wings was stopped, and when it was fairly hampered in this manner, it was seized, and dragged into the hole. In this manner it lived, in a precarious state, and nature seemed to have fitted it for such a life, for 76 THE BEE. upon a single fly it subsisted for more than a week; I once put a wasp into the nest, but when the spider came out in order to seize it as usual, upon perceiving what kind of an enemy it had to deal with, it instantly broke all the bands that held it fast, and contributed all that lay in its power to disengage so formidable an antagonist. When the wasp was at liberty, I expected the spider would have set about repairing the breaches that were made in its net, but those it seems were irreparable, wherefore the cobweb was now entirely forsaken, and a new one begun, which was completed in the usual time. I had now a mind to try how many cobwebs a single spider could furnish, wherefore I destroyed this, and the insect set about another. When I de- stroyed the other also, its whole stock seemed en- tirely exhausted, and it could spin no more. The arts it made use of to support itself, now deprived of its great means of subsistence, were indeed sur- prising. I have seen it roll up its legs like a ball, and lie motionless for hours together, but cautiously watching all the time ; when a fly happened to ap- proach sufficiently near, it would dart out all at once, and often seize its prey. Of this life, however, it soon began to grow weary, and resolved to invade the possession of some other spider, since it could not make a web of its own. It formed an attack upon a neighbouring fortification with great vigour, and at first was as vigorously repulsed. Not daunted, however, with one defeat, in this manner it continued to lay siege to another's web for three days, and at length, having killed the defendant, actually took posses- SAGACITY OF SOME INSECTS. 77 sion. When smaller flies happen to fall into the snare, the spider does not sally out at once, but very patiently waits till it is sure of them ; for, upon his immediately approaching, the terror of his appear- ance might give the captive strength sufficient to get loose : the manner then is to wait patiently till, by ineffectual and impotent struggles, the captive has wasted all its strength, and then he becomes a cer- tain and easy conquest. The insect I am now describing lived three years ; every year it changed its skin, and got a new set of legs. I have sometimes plucked off a leg, which grew again in two or three days. At first it dreaded my approach to its web ; but at last it became so familiar, as to take a fly out of my hand ; and upon my touching any part of the web, would im- mediately leave its hole, propared either for a de- fence or an attack. To complete this description, it may be observed, that the male spiders are much less than the female, and that the latter are oviparous. When they come to lay, they spread a part of their web under the eggs, and then roll them up carefully, as we roll up things in a cloth, and thus hatch them in their hole. If disturbed in their holes, they never attempt to escape without carrying this young brood in their forceps away with them, and thus frequently are sacrificed to their maternal affection. As soon as ever the young ones leave their artifi- cial covering, they begin to spin, and almost sen-* sibly seem to grow bigger. If they have the good fortune, when even but a day old, to catch a fly, they fall to with good appetites; but they live sometimes three or four days without any sort of 78 THE BEE. sustenance, and yet still continue to grow larger, so as every day to double their former size. As they grow old, however, they do not still continue to in- crease, but their legs only continue to grow longer ; and when a spider becomes entirely stiff with age, and unable to seize its prey, it dies at length of hunger. THE CHARACTERISTICS OF GREATNESS. In every duty, in every science in which we would wish to arrive at perfection, we should propose for the object of our pursuit some certain station even beyond our abilities : some imaginary excellence, w r hich may amuse and serve to animate our inquiry. In deviating from others, in following an unbeaten road, though we perhaps may never arrive at the wished- for object ; yet it is possible we may meet several discoveries by the way ; and the certainty of small advantages, even while we travel with secu- rity, is not so amusing as the hopes of great rewards, which inspire the adventurer. Evenit nonnunquam says Quintilian, ut a liquid grande inveniat qui semper qucerit quod nimium est. This enterprising spirit is, however, by no means the character of the present age ; every person who should now leave received opinions, who should attempt to be more than a commentator upon phi- losophy, or an imitator in polite learning, might be regarded as a chimerical projector. Hundreds would be ready not only to point out his errors, but THE CHARACTERISTICS OF GREATNESS. 79 to load him with reproach. Our probable opinions are now regarded as certainties ; the difficulties hi- therto undiscovered as utterly inscrutable ; and the writers of the last age inimitable, and therefore the properest models of imitation. One might be almost induced to deplore the phi- losophic spirit of the age, which in proportion as it enlightens the mind, increases its timidity, and re- presses the vigour of every undertaking. Men are now content with being prudently in the right; which, though not the way to make new acquisi- tions, it must be owned, is the best method of se- curing what we have. Yet this is certain, that the writer who never deviates, who never hazards a new thought, or a new expression, though his friends may compliment him upon his sagacity, though cri- ticism lifts her feeble voice in his praise, will sel- dom arrive at any degree of perfection. The way to acquire lasting esteem, is not by the fewness of a writer's faults, but the greatness of his beauties, and our noblest works are generally most replete with both. An author, who would be sublime, often runs his thought into burlesque ; yet I can readily pardon his mistaking ten times for once succeeding. True genius walks along a line, and perhaps our greatest pleasure is in seeing it so often near falling, without being ever actually down. Every science has its hitherto undiscovered my- steries, after which men should travel undiscouraged by the failure of former adventurers. Every new attempt serves perhaps to facilitate its future inven- tion. We may not find the philosopher's stone, but we shall probably hit upon new inventions in pur- 80 THE BEE. suing it. We shall perhaps never be able to disco- ver the longitude, yet perhaps we may arrive at new truths in the investigation. Were any of those sagacious minds among us,' J (and surely no nation, or no period, could ever-f compare with us in this particular) were any of those minds, I say, who now sit down contented with ex- 1 ploring the intricacies of another's system, bravely to shake off admiration, and, undazzled with the " splendour of another's reputation, to chalk out a path to fame for themselves, and boldly cultivate untried experiment, what might not be the result of their inquiries, should the same study that has made them wise, make them enterprising also ? What 1 could not such qualities united produce ? But such is not the character of the English ; while our neighbours of the continent launch out into the ocean of science, without proper store for the voyage, we fear shipwreck in every breeze, and consume in port those powers which might probably have wea- thered every storm. Projectors in a state are generally rewarded above their deserts ; projectors in the republic of letters, never. If wrong, every inferior dunce thinks himself entitled to laugh at their disappointment ; if right, men of superior talents think their honour engaged to oppose, since every new discovery is a tacit diminution of their own pre-eminence. To aim at excellence, our reputation, our friends, and our all must be ventured ; by aiming only at mediocrity, we run no risque, and we do little ser- 1 vice. Prudence and greatness are ever persuading us to contrary pursuits. The one instructs us to be -i content with our station, and to find happiness in j A CITY NIGHT-PIECE. &1 bounding every wish. The other impels us to su- periority, and calls nothing happiness but rapture. The one directs to follow mankind, and to act and think with the rest of the world. The other drives us from the crowd, and exposes us as a mark to all the shafts of envy or ignorance. Nee minus periculum ex magna fama quam ex mala. Tacit. The rewards of mediocrity are immediately paid, those attending excellence generally paid in rever- sion. In a word, the little mind who loves itself, will write and think with the vulgar, but the great mind will be bravely eccentric, and scorn the beaten road, from universal benevolence. A CITY NIGHT-PIECE. The clock just struck two, the expiring taper rises and sinks in the socket ; the watchman forgets the hour in slumber ; the laborious and the happy are at rest, and nothing wakes but meditation, guilt, revelry, and despair. The drunkard once more fills the destroying bowl ; the robber walks his midnight round ; and the suicide lifts his guilty arm against his own sacred person. Let me no longer waste the night over the page of antiquity, or the sallies of contemporary genius ; but pursue the solitary walk, where vanity, ever changing, but a few hours past walked before me, where she kept up the pageant, and now, like a e2 82 THE BEE. froward child, seems hushed with her own impor- tunities. What a gloom hangs all around ! the dying lamp feebly emits a yellow gleam; no sound is heard but of the chiming clock, or the distant watch-dog. All the bustle of human pride is forgotten : an hour like this may well display the emptiness of human vanity. There will come a time when this temporary so- litude may be made continual, and the city itself, like its inhabitants, fade away, and leave a desert in its room. What cities as great as this have once triumphed in existence, had their victories as great, joy as just and as unbounded, and with short-sighted presump- tion promised themselves immortality. Posterity can hardly trace the situation of some. The sor- rowful traveller wanders over the awful ruins of others ; and as he beholds he learns wisdom, and feels the transience of every sublunary possession. Here, he cries, stood their citadel, now grown over with weeds ; there their senate-house, but now the haunt of every noxious reptile ; temples and theatres stood here, now only an undistinguished heap of ruin. They are fallen, for luxury and ava- rice first made them feeble. The rewards of the state were conferred on amusing, and not on useful members of society. Their riches and opulence invited the invaders, who, though at first repulsed, returned again, conquered by perseverance, and at last swept the defendants into undistinguished de- struction. How few appear in those streets which but some few hours ago were crowded; and those who A. CITY NIGHT-PIECE. 83 appear now no longer wear their daily mask, nor attempt to hide their lewdness or their misery. But who are those who make the streets their couch, and find a short repose from wretchedness at the doors of the opulent ? These are strangers, wanderers, and orphans, whose circumstances are too humble to expect redress, and whose distresses are too great even for pity. Their wretchedness excites rather horror than pity. Some are without the covering even of rags, and others emaciated with disease; the world has disclaimed them; society turns its back upon their distress, and has given them up to nakedness and hunger. These poor shivering females have once seen happier days, and been flattered into beauty. They have been pro- stituted to the gay luxurious villain, and are now turned out to meet the severity of winter. Perhaps, now lying at the doors of their betrayers, they sue to wretches whose hearts are insensible, or de- bauchees who may curse, but will not relieve them. Why, why was I born a man, and yet see the sufferings of wretches I cannot relieve ! Poor house- less creatures ! the world will give you reproaches, but will not give you relief. The slightest misfor- tunes of the great, the most imaginary uneasiness of the rich, are aggravated with all the power of eloquence, and held up to engage our attention and sympathetic sorrow. The poor weep unheeded, persecuted by every subordinate species of tyranny ; and every law, which gives others security, becomes an enemy to them. Why was this heart of mine formed with so much sensibility! or why was not my fortune adapted to 84 THE BEE. its impulse! Tenderness, without a capacity of relieving, only makes the man who feels it more wretched than the ohject which sues for assistance. But let me turn from a scene of such distress to the sanctified hypocrite, who has been talking of vir- tue till the time of bed, and now steals out, to give a loose to his vices under the protection of midnight ; vices more atrocious, because he attempts to con- ceal them. See how he pants down the dark alley, and, with hastening steps, fears an acquaintance in every face. He has passed the whole day in com- pany he hates, and now goes to prolong the night among company that as heartily hate him. May his vices he detected ! may the morning rise upon his shame ! yet I wish to no purpose ; villany, when detected, never gives up, but boldly adds impudence to imposture. Adieu. No. 5. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 1759. UPON POLITICAL FRUGALITY. Frugality has ever been esteemed a virtue as well among Pagans as Christians : there have been even heroes who have practised it. However, we must acknowledge, that it is too modest a virtue, or, if you will, too obscure a one to be essential to heroism ; few heroes have been able to attain to such an height. Frugality agrees much better with politics j it seems to be the base, the support, and, UPON POLITICAL FRUGALITY. 35 in a word, seems to be the inseparable companion of a just administration. However this be, there is not perhaps in the world a people less fond of this virtue than the English, and of consequence there is not a nation more restless, more exposed to the uneasiness of life, or less capable of providing for particular happiness. We are taught to despise this virtue from our child- hood ; our education is improperly directed, and a man who has gone through the politest institutions, is generally the person who is least acquainted with the wholesome precepts of frugality. We every day hear the elegance of taste, the magnificence of some, and the generosity of others, made the sub- ject of our admiration and applause. All this we see represented, not as the end and recompence of labour and desert, but as the actual result of genius, as the mark of a noble and exalted mind. In the midst of these praises bestowed on luxury, for whom elegance and taste are but another name, perhaps it may be thought improper to plead the cause of frugality. It may be thought low, or vainly declamatory, to exhort our youth from the follies of dress, and of every other superfluity ; to accustom themselves, even with mechanic meanness, to the simple necessaries of life. Such sort of instructions may appear antiquated; yet, however, they seem the foundations of all our virtues, and the most effi- cacious method of making mankind useful members of society. Unhappily, however, such discourses are not fashionable among us ; and the fashion seems every day growing still more obsolete, since the press, and every other method of exhortation, seems disposed to talk of the luxuries of life as harmless 86 THE BEE. enjoyments. I remember, when a boy, to have remarked, that those who in school wore the finest clothes were pointed at as being conceited and proud. At present, our little masters are taught to consider dress betimes, and they are regarded, even at school, with contempt, who do not appear as genteel as the rest. Education should teach us to become useful, sober, disinterested, and laborious members of society; but does it not at present point out a different path ? It teaches us to multiply our wants, by which means we become more eager to possess, in order to dissipate; a greater charge to ourselves, and more useless or obnoxious to so- ciety. If a youth happens to be possessed of more genius than fortune, he is early informed that he ought to think of his advancement in the world ; that he should labour to make himself pleasing to his supe- riors ; that he should shun low company (by which is meant the company of his equals) ; that he should rather live a little above than below his fortune ; that he should think of becoming great ; but he finds none to admonish him to become frugal, to persevere in one single design, to avoid every pleasure and all flattery, which, however, seeming to conciliate the favour of his superiors, never conciliate their esteem. There are none to teach him, that the best way of becoming happy in himself, and useful to others, is to continue in the state in which fortune at first placed him, without making too hasty strides to advancement; that greatness may be attained, but should not be expected ; and that they who most impatiently expect advancement, are seldom pos- sessed of their wishes. He has few, I say, to teach UPON POLITICAL FRUGALITY. 87 him this lesson, or to moderate his youthful pas- sions ; yet, this experience may say, that a young man, who but for six years of the early part of his life could seem divested of all his passions, would certainly make, or considerably increase his fortune, and might indulge several of his favourite inclina- tions in manhood with the utmost security. The efficaciousness of these means is sufficiently known and acknowledged ; but as we are apt to connect a low idea with all our notions of. frugality, the person who would persuade us to it might be accused of preaching up avarice. Of all vices, however, against which morality dis- suades, there is not one more undetermined than this of avarice. Misers are described by some, as men divested of honour, sentiment, or humanity; but this is only an ideal picture, or the resemblance at least is found but in a few. In truth, they who are generally called misers, are some of the very best members of society. The sober, the laborious, the attentive, the frugal, are thus styled by the gay, giddy, thoughtless, and extravagant. The first set of men do society all the good, and the latter all the evil that is felt. Even the excesses of the first no way injure the commonwealth ; those of the latter are the most injurious that can be conceived. The ancient Romans, more rational than we in this particular, were very far from thus misplacing their admiration or praise ; instead of regarding the practice of parsimony as low or vicious, they made it synonymous even with probity. They esteemed those virtues so inseparable^ that the known expres- sion of virfrugi signified, at one and the same time > 88 THE BEE. a sober and managing man, an honest man, and I man of substance. The Scriptures, in a thousand places, praise eco mony; and it is every where distinguished fron avarice. But in spite of all its sacred dictates, taste for vain pleasures and foolish expense is thi. ruling passion of the present times. Passion, did ] call it ? Rather the madness which at once possesses the great and the little, the rich and the poor; even some are so intent upon acquiring the superfluitiei of life, that they sacrifice its necessaries in thi foolish pursuit. To attempt the entire abolition of luxury, M „ would be impossible, so it is not my intent. The generality of mankind are too weak, too much slaves to custom and opinion, to resist the torrent of bad example. But if it be impossible to conver the multitude; those who have received a mort extended education, who are enlightened and judi- cious, may find some hints on this subject useful. They may see some abuses, the suppression of which would by no means endanger public liberty; they may be directed to the abolition of some ne- cessary expenses, which have no tendency to pro- mote happiness or virtue, and which might be di- rected to better purposes. Our fire -works, our public feasts and entertainments, our entries of ambassadors, &c. what mummery all this ! what childish pageants ! what millions are sacrificed in paying tribute to custom ! what an unnecessary charge at times when we are pressed with real want, which cannot be satisfied without burthening the poor ! UPON POLITICAL FRUGALITY. 89 Were such suppressed entirely, not a single crea- ture in the state would have the least cause to mourn their suppression, and many might be eased of a load they now feel lying heavily upon them. If this were put in practice, it would agree with the advice of a sensible writer of Sweden, who, in the Gazette de France, 1753, thus expressed himself on that subject. " It were sincerely to be wished," says he, " that the custom were established amongst us, that in all events which cause a public joy, we made our exultations conspicuous only by acts use- ful to society. We should then quickly see many useful monuments of our reason, which would much better perpetuate the memory of things worthy of being transmitted to posterity, and would be much more glorious to humanity than all these tumultuous preparations of feasts, entertainments, and other rejoicings used upon such occasions/* The same proposal was long before confirmed by a Chinese emperor, who lived in the last century; who, upon an occasion of extraordinary joy, for- bade his subjects to make the usual illuminations, either with a design of sparing their substance, or of turning them to some more durable indication of joy, more glorious for him, and more advanta- geous for his people. After such instances of political frugality, can we then continue to blame the Dutch ambassador at a certain court, who, receiving at his departure the portrait of the king enriched with diamonds, asked what this fine thing might be worth ? Being told that it might amount to about two thousand pounds, " And why," cries he, " cannot his majesty keep the picture, and give the money ?" The sim? 90 THE BEE. plicity may be ridiculed at first ; but, when we come to examine it more closely, men of sense will at once confess that he had reason in what he said, and that a purse of two thousand guineas is much more serviceable than a picture. Should we follow the same method of state fru- gality in other respects, what numberless savings might not be the result! How many possibilities of saving in the administration of justice, which now burdens the subject, and enriches some mem- bers of society, who are useful only from its cor- ruption ! It were to be wished, that they who govern kingdoms would imitate artizans. When at Lon- don a new stuff has been invented, it is imme- diately counterfeited in France. How happy were it for society, if a first minister would be equally solicitous to transplant the useful laws of other countries into his own. We are arrived at a per- fect imitation of porcelain ; let us endeavour to imitate the good to society that our neighbours are found to practise ; and let our neighbours also imi- tate those parts of duty in which we excel. There are some men, who in their garden at- tempt to raise those fruits which nature has adapted only to the sultry climates beneath the line. We have at our very doors a thousand laws and customs infinitely useful; these are the fruits we should endeavour to transplant ; these the exotics that would speedily become naturalized to the soil. They might grow in every climate, and benefit every possessor. The best and the most useful laws I have ever seen, are generally practised in Holland. When UPON POLITICAL FRUGALITY. 91 two men are determined to go to law with each other, they are first obliged to go before the recon- ciling judges, called the peace-makers. If the par- ties come, attended with an advocate or a solicitor, they are obliged to retire, as we take fuel from the fire we are desirous of extinguishing. The peace makers then begin advising the par- ties, by assuring them that it is the height of folly to waste their substance, and make themselves mu- tually miserable, by having recourse to the tribu- nals of justice ; follow but our direction, and we will accommodate matters without any expense to either. If the rage of debate is too strong upon either party, they are remitted back for another day, in order that time may soften their tempers, and produce a reconciliation. They are thus sent for twice or thrice; if their folly happens to be incurable, they are permitted to go to law, and as we give up to amputation such members as cannot be cured by art, justice is permitted to take its course. It is unnecessary to make here long declamations, or calculate what society would save, were this law adopted. I am sensible, that the man who ad- vises any reformation, only serves to make himself ridiculous. What ! mankind will be apt to say, adopt the customs of countries that have not so much real liberty as our own ? our present customs, what are they to any man ? we are very happy un- der them ; this must be a very pleasant fellow, who attempts to make us happier than we already are ! Does he not know that abuses are the patrimony of a great part of the nation ? Why deprive us of a malady by which such numbers find their ac- .t be 92 THE BEE. count ? This, I must own, is an argument to wl I have nothing to reply. What numberless savings might there not _. made both in arts and commerce, particularly in the liberty of exercising trade, without the neces- sary pre-requisites of freedom ! Such useless ob- structions have crept into every state, from a spirit of monopoly, a narrow selfish spirit of gain, with- out the least attention to general society. Such a clog upon industry frequently drives thepoor from labour, and reduces them by degrees to a state of hopeless indigence. We have already a more than sufficient repugnance to labour; we should by no means increase the obstacles, or make excuses in a state for idleness. Such faults have ever crept into a state under wrong or needy admini- strations. Exclusive of the masters, there are numberless faulty expenses among the workmen: clubs, gar- nishes, freedoms, and such like impositions, which are not too minute even for law to take notice of, and which should be abolished without mercy*, since they are ever the inlets to excess and idle- ness, and are the parent of all those outrages which naturally fall upon the more useful part of so- ciety. In the towns and countries I have seen, I never saw a city or village yet, whose miseries were not in proportion to the number of its public houses. In Rotterdam, you may go through eight or ten streets without finding a public house. In Antwerp, almost every second house seems an ale- house. In the one city all wears the appearance of happiness and warm affluence; in the other, the young fellows walk about the streets in shabby , UPON POLITICAL FRUGALITY* 93 finery, their fathers sit at the door darning or knitting stockings, while their ports are filled with dunghills. Alehouses are ever an occasion of debauchery and excess, and, either in a religious or political light, it would be our highest interest to have the greatest part of them suppressed. They should be put under laws of not continuing open beyond a certain hour, and harbouring only proper persons. These rules, it may be said, will diminish the ne- cessary taxes ; but this is false reasoning, since what was consumed in debauchery abroad, would, if such a regulation took place, be more justly, and perhaps more equitably for the workmen's family, spent at home; and this cheaper to them, and without loss of time. On the other hand, our ale- houses, being ever open, interrupt business ; the workman is never certain who frequents them, nor can the master be sure of having what was begun finished at the convenient time. A habit of frugality among the lower orders of mankind is much more beneficial to society than the unreflecting might imagine. The pawnbroker, the attorney, and other pests of society, might, by proper management, be turned into serviceable members ; and, were their trades abolished, it is possible the same avarice that conducts the one, or the same chicanery that characterizes the other, might, by proper regulations, be converted into fru- gality and commendable prudence. But some have made the eulogium of luxury, have represented it as the natural consequence of every country that is become rich. Did we not employ our extraordinary wealth in superfluities* 94 THE BEE. say they, what other means would there be to eniJ ploy it in? To which it may be answered, if fru-. J gality were established in the state, if our expenses were laid out rather in the necessaries than the superfluities of life, there might be fewer wants, and even fewer pleasures, but infinitely more hapii piness. The rich and the great would be better able to satisfy their creditors ; they would be better ' able to marry their children ; and instead of one marriage at present, there might be two, if such regulations took place. The imaginary calls of vanity, which in realital contribute nothing to our real felicity, would not then be attended to, while the real calls of nature 1 might be always and universally supplied. The difference of employment in the subject is what, in reality, produces the good of society. If the sub- ject be engaged in providing only the luxuries, the necessaries must be deficient in proportion. If neg- j lecting the produce of our own country, our minds are set upon the productions of another, we increase J our wants, but not our means ; and every new im- ported delicacy for our tables, or ornament in our equipage, is a tax upon the poor. The true interest of every government is to culti- vate the necessaries, by which is always meant 1 every happiness our own country can produce; and suppress all the luxuries, by which is meant^ on the other hand, every happiness imported from abroad. Commerce has therefore its bounds ; and every new import, instead of receiving encourage- ment, should be first examined whether it be con- ducive to the interest of society. Among the many publications with which the UPON POLITICAL FRUGALITY. 95 press is every day burthened, I have often won- dered why we never had, as in other countries, an Economical Journal, which might at once direct to all the useful discoveries in other countries, and spread those of our own. As other journals serve to amuse the learned, or, what is more often the case, to make them quarrel, while they only serve to give us the history of the mischievous world, for so I call our warriors ; or the idle world, for so may the learned be called ; they never trouble their heads about the most useful part of man- kind, our peasants and our artizans : were such a work carried into execution, with proper manage- ment and just direction, it might serve as a repo- sitory for every useful improvement, and increase that knowledge which learning often serves to confound. Sweden seems the only country where the sci- ence of economy seems to have fixed its empire. In other countries it is cultivated only by a few admirers, or by societies which have not received sufficient sanction to become completely useful ; but here there is founded a royal academy, destined to this purpose only, composed of the most learned and powerful members of the state; an academy which declines every thing which only terminates in amusement, erudition, or curiosity ; and admits only of observations tending to illustrate husbandry, agriculture, and every real physical improvement. In this country nothing is left to private' rapacity, but every improvement is immediately diffused, and its inventor immediately recompensed by the state. Happy were it so in other countries ! by this means every impostor would be prevented from ruining or 96 THE BEE. deceiving the public with pretended discoveries or nostrums, and every real inventor would not, by this means, suffer the inconveniences of suspicion. In short, the economy, equally unknown to the prodigal and avaricious, seems to be a just mean between both extremes ; and to a transgression of this at present decried virtue it is that we are to attribute a great part of the evils which infest society. A taste for superfluity, amusement, and pleasure, bring effeminacy, idleness, and expense in their train. But a thirst of riches is always proportioned to our debauchery, and the greatest prodigal is too frequently found to be the greatest miser; so that the vices which seem the most opposite, are frequently found to produce each other; and, to avoid both, it is only necessary to be frugal. Virtus est medium vitiorum et utrimque reductum. Hor. A REVERIE. Scarcely a day passes in which we do not hear compliments paid to Dryden, Pope, and other • writers of the last age, while not a month comes forward that is not loaded with invective against the writers of this. Strange, that our critics should be fond of giving their favours to those who are in- sensible of the obligation, and their dislike to those, who of all mankind are most apt to retaliate the injury. Even though our present writers had not equal merit with their predecessors, it would be politic A REVERIE. 97 to use them with ceremony. Every -compliment paid them would be more agreeable, in proportion as they least deserved it. Tell a lady with a hand- some face that she is pretty, she only thinks it her due : it is what she has heard a thousand times be- fore from others, and disregards the compliment : but assure a lady, the cut of whose visage is some- thing more plain, that she looks killing to-day, she instantly bridles up, and feels the force of the well-timed flattery the whole day after. Compli- ments, which we think are deserved, we accept only as debts, with indifference ; but those which conscience informs us we do not merit, we receive with the same gratitude that we do favours given away. > Our gentlemen, however, who preside at the dis- tribution of literary fame, seem resolved to part with praise neither from motives of justice or ge- nerosity : one would think, when they take pen in hand, that it was only to blot reputations, and to put their seals to the packet which consigns every new-born effort to oblivion. Yet, notwithstanding the republic of letters hangs at present so feebly together ; though those friend- ships which once promoted literary fame seem now to be discontinued, though every writer who now draws the quill seems to aim at profit, as well as applause, many among them are probably laying in stores for immortality, and are provided with a sufficient stock of reputation to last the whole journey. As I was indulging these reflections, in order to eke out the present page, [ could not avoid pursu- ing the metaphor of going a journey in my imagU 98 THE BEE. nation, and formed the following- reverie, too wild for allegory, and too regular for a dream. 1 fancied myself placed in the yard of a large inn, in which there were an infinite number of waggons and stage-coaches, attended by fellows who either invited the company to take their places, or were busied in packing their baggage. Each vehicle had its inscription showing the place of its destination. On one 1 could read, The Pleasure Stage-coach; on another, The JTaggon of Industry ; on a third, The Vanity Ulihn ; and on a fourth, The Landau of , Riches. 1 had some inclination to step into each of ! these, one after another ; but 1 know not by what means, I passed them by, and at last fixed my eye upon a small carriage, Berlin fashion, which seemed the most convenient vehicle at a distance in the world ; and upon my nearer approach, found it to be The Fume Machine. I instantly made up to the coachman, whom I found to be an affable and seemingly good-natured fellow. He informed me, that he had but a few days ago returned from the Temple of Fame, to which he had been carrying Addison, Swift, Pope, Steele, Congreve, and Colley Cibber ; that they made but indifferent company by the way, and that he one or twice was going to empty his berlin of the whole cargo; " However," says he, " I got them all safe home, with no other damage than a black eye, which Colley gave Mr. Pope, and am now returned for another coachful." " If that be all, friend," said I, " and if you are in want of company, I'll make one with all my heart. Open the door ; I hope the machine rides easy." " Oh, for that, sir, extremely easy." But still keeping the door shut, and measuring A REVERIE. 99 me with his eye, " Pray, sir, have you no lug- gage ? You seem to be a good-natured sort of a gentleman; but I don't find you have got any lug- gage, and I never permit any to travel with me but such as have something valuable to pay for coach- hire." Examining my pockets, I own I was not a little disconcerted at this unexpected rebuff; but considering that I carried a number of the Bee un- der my arm, I was resolved to open it in his eyes, and dazzle him with the splendor of the page. He read the title and contents, however, without any emotion, and assured me he had never heard of it before. " In short, friend," said he, now losing all his former respect, " you must not come in. I expect better passengers ; but, as you seem a harmless creature, perhaps, if there be room left, I may let you ride awhile for charity." I now took my stand by the coachman at the door, and since I could not command a seat, w r as resolved to be as useful as possible, and earn by my assiduity what I could not by my merit. The next that presented for a place was a most whimsical figure indeed. He was hung round with papers of his own composing, not unlike those who sing ballads in the streets, and came dancing up to the door with all ihe confidence of instant admittance. The volubility of his motion and ad- dress prevented my being able to read more of his cargo than the word Inspector, which was written in great letters at the top of some of the papers. He opened the coach-door himself without any cere- mony, and was just slipping in, when the coachman, with as little ceremony, pulled him back. Our figure seemed perfectly angry at this repulse, and 100 THE BEE. demanded gentleman's satisfaction. " Lord, sir !" replied the coachman, " instead of proper luggage, by your bulk you seem loaded for a West-India voyage. You are big enough with all your papers to crack twenty stage-coaches. Excuse me, indeed, sir, for you must not enter." Our figure now be- gan to expostulate ; he assured the coachman, that though his baggage seemed so bulky, it was per- fectly light, and that he would be contented with the smallest corner of room. But Jehu was inflexible, and the carrier of the Inspectors was sent to dance back again with all his papers flutter- ing in the wind. We expected to have no more trouble from this quarter, when in a few minutes the same figure changed his appearance, like harle- quin upon the stage, and with the same confidence again made his approaches, dressed in lace, and carrying nothing but a nosegay. Upon coming near, he thrust the nosegay to the coachman's nose, grasped the brass, and seemed now resolved to enter by violence. I found the struggle soon begin to grow hot, and the coachman, who was a little old, unable to continue the contest ; so, in order to ingratiate myself, I stepped in to his assistance, and our united efforts sent our literary Proteus, though worsted, unconquered still, clear off, dancing a ri- gadoon, and smelling to his own nosegay. The person, who after him appeared as candi- date for a place in the stage, came up with an air not quite so confident, but somewhat, however, theatrical ; and, instead of entering, made the coachman a very low bow, which the other re- turned, and desired to see his baggage ; upon which he instantly produced some farces, a tragedy, and A REVERIE. 101 other miscellaneous productions. The coachman, casting his eye upon the cargo, assured him, at pre- sent he could not possibly have a place, but hoped in time he might aspire to one, as he seemed to have read in the 4)ook of nature, without a careful perusal of which none ever found entrance at the Temple of Fame. " What ! " replied the disap- pointed poet, " shall my tragedy, in which 1 have vindicated the cause of liberty and virtue" — " Fol- low nature," returned the other, " and never ex- pect to find lasting fame by topics which only please from their popularity. Had you been first in the cause of freedom, or praised in virtue more than an empty name, it is possible you might have gained admittance; but at present I beg, sir, you will stand aside for another gentleman whom I see ap- proaching," This was a very grave personage, whom at some distance I took for one of the most reserved, and even disagreeable figures I had seen ; but as he ap- proached, his appearance improved, and, when I could distinguish him thoroughly, I perceived that in spite of the severity of his brow, he had one of the most good-natured countenances that could be imagined. Upon coming to open the stage door, he lifted a parcel of folios into the seat before him, but our inquisitorial coachman at once shoved them out again. " What! not take in my dic- tionary !" exclaimed the other in a rage. " Be patient, sir," replied the coachman ; " I have drove a coach, man and boy, these two thousand years, but I do not remember to have carried above one dictionary during the whole time. That little book which I perceive peeping from one of your 102 THE BEE. pockets, may I presume to ask what it contains ?" " A mere trifle," replied the author; " it is call- ed The Rambler. " The Rambler!" says the coachman; " 1 beg, sir, you'll take your place ^ I have heard our ladies in the court of Apollo fre- quently mention it with rapture ; and Clio, who happens to be a little grave, has been heard to pre- fer it to the Spectator ; though others have obser- ved, that the reflections, by being refined, some- times become minute." This grave gentleman was scarcely seated, when another, whose appearance was something more modern, seemed willing to enter, yet afraid to ask. He carried in his hand a bundle of essays, of which the coachman was curious enough to inquire the contents. " These," replied the gentleman, " are rhapsodies against the religion of my country/ " And how can you expect to come into my coach, after thus choosing the wrong side of the question ? M " Ay, but I am right," replied the other ; " and if you give me leave, 1 shall in a few minutes state- the argument." " Right or wrong," said the coach- man, " he who disturbs religion is a blockhead, and he shall never travel in a coach of mine." " If then," said the gentleman, mustering up all his courage, " if I am not to have admittance as an essayist, I hope I shall not be repulsed as an his- torian ; the last volume of my history met with ap- plause. " " Yes," replied the coachman, " but I have heard only the first approved at the Temple of Fame ; and as I see you have it about you, enter without further ceremony." My attention was now diverted to a crowd, who were pushing forward a person that seemed more inclined to the Stage • A REVERIE. 103 Coach of Riches : but by their means he was driven forward to the same machine, which he however seemed heartily to despise. Impelled, however, by their solicitations, he steps up, flourishing a volu- minous history, and demanding admittance. " Sir, I have formerly heard your name mentioned," says the coachman, " but never as an historian. Is there no other work upon which you may claim a place?" " None," replied the other, " except a romance ; but this is a work of too trifling a nature to claim future attention." " You mistake," says the inquisitor ; " a well-written romance is no such easy task as is generally imagined. I remember formerly to have carried Cervantes and Segrais, and if you think fit, you may enter." Upon our three literary travellers coming into the same coach, I listened attentively to hear what might be the conversation that passed upon this ex- traordinary occasion ; when, instead of agreeable or entertaining dialogue, I found them grumbling at each other, and each seemed discontented with his companions. Strange ! thought I to myself, that they who are thus born to enlighten the world, should still preserve the narrow prejudices of child- hood, and by disagreeing, make even the highest merit ridiculous. Were the learned and the wise to unite against the dunces of society, instead of sometimes siding into opposite parties with them, they might throw a lustre upon each other's repu- tation, and teach every rank of subordinate merit, if not to admire, at least not to avow dislike. In the midst of these reflections, I perceived the coachman, unmindful of me, had now mounted the box. Several were approaching to be taken in, 104 THE BEE. whose pretensions I was sensible were very just ; I therefore desired him to stop, and take in more passengers ; but he replied, as he had now mounted the box, it would be improper to come down ; but that he should take them all, one after the other, when he should return. So he drove away ; and for myself, as I could not get in, I mounted behind, in order to hear the conversation on the way. (To be continued.) A WORD OR TWO ON THE LATE FARCE, CALLED HIGH LIFE BELOW STAIRS. Just as I had expected, before I saw this farce, I found it formed on too narrow a plan to afford a pleasing variety. The sameness of the humour in every scene could not but at last fail of being dis- agreeable. The poor, affecting the manners of the rich, might be carried on through one character, or two at the most, with great propriety ; but to have almost every personage on the scene almost of the same character, and reflecting the follies of each other, was unartful in the poet to the last degree. The scene was also almost a continuation of the same absurdity ; and my Lord Duke and Sir Harry (two footmen who assume these characters) have nothing else to do but to talk like their masters, and are only introduced to speak, and to show them- selves. Thus, as there is a sameness of character, HIGH LIFE BELOW STAIRS. 105 there is a barrenness of incident, which, by a very small share of address, the poet might have easily avoided. From a conformity to critic rules, which, per- haps, on the whole have done more harm than good, our author has sacrificed all the vivacity of the dialogue to nature ; and though he makes his characters talk like servants, they are seldom ab- surd enough, or lively enough to make us merry. Though he is always natural, he happens seldom to be humorous. The satire was well intended, if we regard it as being masters ourselves ; but probably a philoso- pher would rejoice in that liberty which English- men give their domestics ; and for my own part, I cannot avoid being pleased at the happiness of those poor creatures, who in some measure contribute to mine. The Athenians, the politest and best-natured people upon earth, were the kindest to their slaves ; and if a person may judge, who has seen the world, our English servants are the best treated, because the generality of our English gentlemen are the po- litest under the sun. But not to lift my voice among the pack of feeble eritics, who probably have no other occupation but that of cutting up every thing new, I must own, there are one or two scenes that are fine satire, and sufficiently humorous ; particularly the first inter- view between the two footmen, which at once ridi- cules the manners of the great, and the absurdity of their imitators. Whatever defects there might be in the composi- tion, there were none in the action ; in this the per- formers showed more humour than I had fancied f 2 106 THE BEE. them capable of. Mr. Palmer and Mr. King were entirely what they desired to represent ; and Mrs. 1 Clive (but what need I talk of her, since, without the least exaggeration, she has more true humour than any actor or actress upon the English or any other stage I have seen) ; she, I say, did the part all the justice it was capable of. And upon the whole, a farce which has only this to recommend it, that the author took his plan from the volume of nature, by the sprightly manner in which it was performed, was for one night a tolerable en- 1 tertainment. Thus much may be said in its vin- dication, that people of fashion seemed more pleased in the representation than the subordinate ranks of people. UPON UNFORTUNATE MERIT. Every age seems to have its favourite pursuits, which serve to amuse the idle, and relieve the at- tention of the industrious. Happy the man who is born excellent in the pursuit in vogue, and whose genius seems adapted to the times in which he lives. How many do we see, who might have excelled in arts or sciences, and who seem furnished with ta- lents equal to the greatest discoveries, had the road not been already beaten by their predecessors, and nothing left for them, except trifles, to discover, while others of very moderate abilities become famous, because happening to be first in the reign- ing pursuit ! Thus, at the renewal of letters in Europe, the taste was not to compose new books, but to com- UPON UNFORTUNATE MERIT. 107 merit on the old ones. It was not to be expected that new books should be written, when there were so many of the ancients either not known or not understood. It was not reasonable to attempt new conquests, while they had such an extensive region lying waste for want of cultivation. At that period criticism and erudition were the reigning studies o f the times ; and he, who had only an inventive ge- nius, might have languished in hopeless obscurity. When the writers of antiquity were sufficiently ex- plained and known, the learned set about imitating them : hence proceeded the number of Latin ora- tors, poets, and historians, in the reigns of Clement the seventh, and Alexander the sixth. This passion for antiquity lasted for many years, to the utter ex- clusion of every other pursuit ; till some began to find, that those works which were imitated from nature, were more like the writings of antiquity, than even those written in express imitation. It was then modern language began to be cultivated with assiduity, and our poets and orators poured forth their wonders upon the world. As writers become more numerous, it is natural for readers to become more indolent ; whence must necessarily arise a desire of attaining knowledge with the greatest possible ease. No science or art offers its instruction and amusement in so obvious a manner as statuary and painting. Hence we see, that a desire of cultivating those arts generally at- tends the decline of science. Thus the finest statues and the most beautiful paintings of antiquity pre- ceded but a little the absolute decay of every other science. The statues of Antoninus, Commodus, and their contemporaries, are the finest productions of 103 THE BEE. the chisel, and appeared but just before learning was destroyed by comment, criticism, and barbarous innovations. What happened in Rome may probably be the case with us at home. Our nobility are now more solicitous in patronizing painters and sculptors than those of any other polite profession ; and from the lord, who has his gallery, down to the 'prentice, who has his two-penny copper-plate, all are ad- mirers of this art. The great, by their caresses, seem insensible to all other merit hut that of the pencil ; and the vulgar buy every book rather from the excellence of the sculptor than the writer. How happy were it now, if men of real excel- lence in that profession were to arise ! Were the painters of Italy now to appear, who once wandered like beggars from one city to another, and produce their almost breathing figures, what rewards might, they not expect ! But many of them lived without rewards, and therefore rewards alone will never produce their equals. We have often found the great exert themselves, not only without promotion, but in spite of opposition. We have often found them flourishing, like medical plants, in a region of sa- vageness and barbarity, their excellence unknown, j and their virtues unheeded. They who have seen the paintings of Caravagio- 1 are sensible of the surprising impression they make; bold, swelling, terrible to the last de- gree ; all seems animated, and speaks him among the foremost of his profession ; yet this man's fortune and his fame seemed ever in opposition to each other. Unknowing how to flatter the great, he was j UPON UNFORTUNATE MERIT. 109 driven from city to city in the utmost indigence, and might truly be said to paint for his bread. Having one day insulted a person of distinction, who refused to pay him all the respect which he thought his due, he was obliged to leave Rome, and travel on foot, his usual method of going his jour- neys down into the country, without either money or friends to subsist him. After he had travelled in this manner as long as his strength would permit, faint with famine and fatigue, he at last called at an obscure inn by the way side. The host knew, by the appearance ot his guest, his indifferent circumstances, and re- fused to furnish him a dinner without previous pay- ment. As Caravagio was entirely destitute of money, he took down the innkeeper's sign, and painted it anew for his dinner. Thus refreshed, he proceeded on his journey, and left the innkeeper not quite satisfied with this me- thod of payment. Some company of distinction, however, coining soon after, and struck with the beauty of the new sign, bought it at an advanced price, and astonished the innkeeper with their generosity; he was resolved therefore to get as many signs as possible drawn by the same artist, as he found he could sell them to good advantage ; and accordingly set out after Caravagio, in order to bring him back. It was night- fall before he came up to the place, where the unfortunate Caravagio lay dead by the road side, overcome by fatigue, resentment, and despair. 110 THE BEE. No. 6. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 1759. ON EDUCATION. to the author of the bee. Sir, As few subjects are more interesting to society, so few have been more frequently written upon, than the education of youth. Yet is it not a little sur- prising, that it should have been treated almost by all in a declamatory manner ? They have insisted largely on the advantages that result from it, both to the individual and to society, and have expatiated in the praise of what none have ever been so hardy as to call in question. Instead of giving us fine but empty harangues upon this subject, instead of indulging each his par- ticular and whimsical systems, it had been much better if the writers on this subject had treated it in a more scientific manner, repressed all the sal- lies of imagination, and given us the result of their observations with didactic simplicity. Upon this subject the smallest errors are of the most danger- ous consequence ; and the author should not ven- ture the imputation of stupidity upon a topic, where his slightest deviations may tend to injure the rising generation. I shall therefore throw out a few thoughts upon this subject, which have not been attended to by ON EDUCATION. Ill others, and shall dismiss all attempts to please, while I study only instruction. The manner in which our youth of London are at present educated is, some in free schools in the city, but the far greater number in boarding schools about town. The parent justly consults the health of his child, and finds an education in the country tends to promote this much more than a continu- ance in town. Thus far they are right ; if there were a possibility of having even our free schools kept a little out of town, it would certainly conduce to the health and vigour of perhaps the mind, as well as of the body. It may be thought whim- sical, but it is truth ; I have found by experience, that they who have spent all their lives in cities, contract not only an effeminacy of habit, but even of thinking. But when I have said, that the boarding schools are preferable to free schools, as being in the coun- try, this is certainly the only advantage I can allow them ; otherwise it is impossible to conceive the ignorance of those who take upon them the impor- tant trust of education. Is any man unfit for any of the professions ; he finds his last resource in set- ting up school. Do any become bankrupts in trade, they still set up a boarding school, and drive a trade this way, when all others fail : nay, I have been told of butchers and barbers, who have turned school- masters ; and, more surprising still, made fortunes in their new profession. Could we think ourselves in a country of civilized people ; could it be conceived that we have any re- gard for posterity, when such are permitted to take the charge of the morals, genius, and health of those 112 THE BEE. dear little pledges, who may one day be the guar- dians of the liberties of Europe, and who may serve as the honour and bulwark of their aged parents ? The care of our children, is it below the state ? is it fit to indulge the caprice of the ignorant with the disposal of their children in this particular ? For the state to take the charge of all its children, as in Persia or Sparta, might at present be inconvenient ; but surely with great ease it might cast an eye to their instructors. Of all members of society, I do not know a more useful, or a more honourable one, than a schoolmaster ; at the same time that I do not see any more generally despised, or whose ta- lents are so ill rewarded. Were the salaries of schoolmasters to be aug- mented from a diminution of useless sinecures, how might it turn to the advantage of this people ; a people whom, without flattery, I may in other re- spects term the wisest and greatest upon earth ! But while I would reward the deserving, I would dismiss those utterly unqualified for their employ- ment : in short, I would make the business of a schoolmaster every way more respectable, by in- creasing their salaries, and admitting only men of proper abilities. There are already schoolmasters appointed, and they have some small salaries ; but where at pre- sent there is but one schoolmaster appointed, there should at least be two ; and wherever the salary is at present twenty pounds, it should be a hundred. Do we give immoderate benefices to those who in- struct ourselves, and shall we deny even subsistence to those who instruct our children ? Every member of society should be paid in proportion as he is ne- ON EDUCATION. 113 cessary; and I will be bold enough to say, that schoolmasters in a state are more necessary than clergymen, as children stand in more need of in- struction than their parents. But instead of this, as I have already observed, we send them to board in the country to the most ignorant set of men that can be imagined. But lest the ignorance of the master be not sufficient, the child is generally consigned to the usher. This is generally some poor needy animal, little superior to a footman either in learning or spirit, invited to his place by an advertisement, and kept there merely from his being of a complying disposition, and ma- king the children fond of him. " You give your child to be educated to a slave," says a philosopher to a rich man ; " instead of one slave, you will then have two/' It were well, however, if parents, upon fixing their children in one of these houses, would exa- mine the abilities of the usher as well as of the master ; for whatever they are told to the contrary, the usher is generally the person most employed in their education. If then a gentleman, upon putting out his son to one of these houses, sees the usher disregarded by the master, he may depend upon it, that he is equally disregarded by the boys ; the truth is, in spite of all their endeavours to please, they are generally the laughing-stock of the school. Every trick is played upon the usher ; the oddity of his manners, his dress, or his language, is a fund of eternal ridicule ; the master himself now and then cannot avoid joining in the laugh, and the poor wretch, eternally resenting this ill usage, seems to live in a state of war with all the family. This is a 114 THE BEE. very proper person, is it not, to give children a relish for learning- ? They must esteem learning very much when they see its professors used with such ceremony. If the usher be despised, the fa- i ther may be assured his child will never be properly instructed. But let me suppose, that there are some school] without these inconveniences, where the master and ushers are men of learning, reputation, and assi-1 duity. If there are to be found such, they cannot^ be prized in a state sufficiently. A boy will learn I more true wisdom in a public school in a year, than by a private education in five. It is not from mas- 1 ters, but from their equals, youth learn a knowledge of the world ; the little tricks they play each other, the punishment that frequently attends the com- mission, is a just picture of the great world; and all the ways of men are practised in a public school in miniature. It is true, a child is early made ac- quainted with some vices in a school ; but it is bet- ter to know these when a boy, than be first taught them when a man, for their novelty then may have irresistible charms. In a public education, boys early learn tempe- rance ; and if the parents and friends would give them less money upon their usual visits, it would be much to their advantage, since it may justly be said that a great part of their disorders arise from sur- feit ; plus occidit gula quam gladius. And now I am come to the article of health, it may not be amiss to observe, that Mr. Locke and some others have advised that children should be inured to cold, to fatigue, and hardship from their youth; but Mr. Locke was but an indifferent physician. ON EDUCATION. 115 Habit, I grant, has great influence over our con- stitutions, but we have not precise ideas upon this subject. We know that among savages, and even among onr peasants, there are found children born with such constitutions, that they cross rivers by swim- ming, endure cold, thirst, hunger, and want of sleep to a surprising degree ; that when they happen to fall sick, they are cured without the help of medi- cine, by nature alone. Such examples are adduced to persuade us to imitate their manner of education, and accustom ourselves betimes to support the same fatigues. But had these gentlemen considered first, that those savages and peasants are generally not so long-lived as they who have led a more indolent life ; secondly, that the more laborious the life is, the less populous is the country : had they consi- dered that what physicians call the stamina vitce, by fatigue and labour become rigid, and thus anti- cipate old age ; that the number, who survive those rude trials, bears no proportion to those who die in the experiment : had these things been properly considered, they would not have thus extolled an education begun in fatigue and hardships. Peter the Great, willing to inure the children of his sea- men to a life of hardship, ordered that they should drink only sea water, but unfortunately they all died under the experiment. But while I would exclude all unnecessary labours, yet still I would recommend temperance in the highest degree. No luxurious dishes with high seasoning, nothing given children to force au appe- tite, as little sugared or salted provisions as possi- ble, though never so pleasing ; but milk, morning 116 THE BEE. and night, should be their constant food. This diet would make them more healthy than any of those slops that are usually cooked by the mistress of a boarding school ; besides, it corrects any consump- s the habits, not uufrequently found amongst the children of city parents. As boys should be educated with temperance, so the first greatest lesson that should be taught them is, to admire frugality. It is by the exercise of this virtue alone, they can ever expect to be useful mem- bers of society. It is true, lectures continually re- peated upon this subject may make some boys, when they grow up, run into an extreme, and become misers ; but it were well had we more misers than Ave have among us. I know few characters more useful in society, for a man's having a larger or smaller share of money lying useless by him, no way injures the commonwealth ; since, should every miser now exhaust his stores, this might make gold more plenty, but it would not increase the commo- dities or pleasures of life; they would still remain as they are at present ; it matters not, therefore, whether men are misers or not, if they be only fru- gal, laborious, and fill the station they have chosen. If they deny themselves the necessaries of life, so- ciety is no way injured by their folly. Instead therefore of romances, which praise young , men of spirit, who go through a variety of adven- tures, and at last conclude a life of dissipation, folly, and extravagance in riches and matrimony, there should be some men of wit employed to compose books that might equally interest the passions of our youth, where such an one might be praised for having resisted allurements when young, and how ON EDUCATION. 117 he at last became lord mayor ; bow be was married to a lady of great sense, fortune, and beauty ; to be as explicit as possible, the old story of Whittington, were bis cat left out, might be more serviceable to the tender mind than either Tom Jones, Joseph Andrews, or a hundred others, where frugality is the only good quality the hero is not possessed of. Were our schoolmasters, if any of them had sense enough to draw up such a work, thus employed, it would be much more serviceable to their pupils, than all the grammars and dictionaries they may publish these ten years. Children should early be instructed in the arts from which they would afterwards draw the greatest advantages. When the wonders of nature are never exposed to our view, we have no great desire to be- come acquainted with those parts of learning which pretend to account for the phenomena. One of the ancients complains, that as soon as young men have left school, and are obliged to converse in the world, they fancy themselves transported into a new region. Ut cum in forum venerint existiment se in aliam terrarum orbem delatos. We should early therefore instruct them in the experiments, if I may so express it, of knowledge, and leave to maturer age the accounting for the causes. But instead of that, when boys begin natural philosophy in col- leges, they have not the least curiosity for those parts of the science which are proposed for their instruction ; they have never before seen the phe- nomena, and consequently have no curiosity to learn the reasons. Might natural philosophy there- fore be made their pastime in school, by this means it would in college become their amusement. 113 THE BEE. In several of the machines now in use there would be ample field both for instruction and amusement : the different sorts of the phosphorus, the artificial pyrites, magnetism, electricity, the experiments upon the rarefaction and weight of the air, and those upon elastic bodies, might employ their idle hours, and none should be called from play to "see such ex- periments but such as thought proper. At first then it would be sufficient if the instruments, and the effects of their combination were only shown ; the causes should he deferred to a maturer age, or to those times when natural curiosity prompts us to discover the wonders of nature. Man is placed in this world as a spectator ; when he is tired with wondering at all the novelties about him, and not till then, does he desire to be made acquainted with the causes that create those wonders. What I have observed with regard to natural philosophy, I would extend to every other science whatsoever. We should teach them as many of the facts as were possible, and defer the causes until they seemed of themselves desirous of knowing them. A mind thus leaving school, stored with all the simple experiences of science, would be the fittest in the world for the college course; and though such a youth might not appear so bright, or so talkative, as those who had learned the real principles and causes of some of the sciences, yet he would make a wiser man, and would retain a more lasting passion for letters, than he who was early burthened with the disagreeable institution of effect and cause. In history, such stories alone should be laid be- fore them as might catch the imagination; instead ON EDUCATION. 119 )f this they are too frequently obliged to toil through he four empires, as they are called, where their Memories are burthened by a number of disgusting lames, that destroy all their future relish for our >est historians, who may be termed the truest teachers of wisdom. Every species of flattery should be carefully avoided ; a boy who happens to say a sprightly thing, is generally applauded so much, that he hap- pens to continue a coxcomb sometimes all his life after. He is reputed a wit at fourteen, and becomes a blockhead at twenty. Nurses, footmen, and such should therefore be driven away as much as possi- ble. I was even going to add, that the mother her- self should stifle her pleasure, or her vanity, when little master happens to say a good or a smart thing. Those modest lubberly boys, who seem to want spi- rit, generally go through their business with more ease to themselves, and more satisfaction to their instructors. There has of late a gentleman appeared, who thinks the study of rhetoric essential to a perfect education. That bold male eloquence, which often without pleasing convinces, is generally destroyed by such institutions. Convincing eloquence, how- ever, is infinitely more serviceable to its possessor than the most florid harangue or the most pathetic tones that can be imagined ; and the man who is thoroughly convinced himself, who understands his subject, and the language he speaks in, will be more apt to silence opposition, than he who studies the force of his periods, and fills our ears with sounds, while our minds are destitute of conviction. It was reckoned the fault of the orators at the 120 THE EEE# decline of the Roman empire, when they had been long instructed by rhetoricians, that their periods were so harmonious, as that they could be sung as well as spoken. What a ridiculous figure must one of these gentlemen cut, thus measuring syllables^ and weighing words, when he should plead the cause of his client ! Two architects were once. candidates for the building a certain temple at Athens ; the first harangued the crowd very learn- edly upon the different orders of architecture, and showed them in what manner the temple should be built; the other, who got up to speak after him,, only observed, that what his brother had spoken he could do ; and thus he at once gained his cause. To teach men to be orators is little less than to] teach them to be poets; and, for my part, I should have too great a regard for my child, to wish him a manor only in a bookseller's shop. Another passion, which the present age is apt tJ run into, is to make children learn all things; the languages, the sciences, music, the exercises, and painting. Thus the child soon becomes a talker] in all, but a master in none. He thus acquires a superficial fondness for every thing, and only; shows his ignorance when he attempts to exhibit his skill. As I deliver my thoughts without method or con J nexion, so the reader must not be surprised to find me once more addressing schoolmasters on the pre- sent method of teaching the learned languages, which is commonly by literal translations. I would, ask such if they were to travel a journey, whether j those parts of the road in which they'found the 1 greatest difficulties would not be most strongly re- ] ON EDUCATION. 121 membered? Boys who, if I may continue the allusion, gallop through one of the ancients with the assistance of a translation, can have but very slight acquaintance either with the author or his language. It is by the exercise of the mind alone that a lan- guage is learned ; but a literal translation on the opposite page leaves no exercise for the memory at all. The boy will not be at the fatigue of remem- bering, when his doubts are at once satisfied by a glance of the eye ; whereas were every word to be sought from a dictionary, the learner would at- tempt to "remember in order to save him the trou- ble of looking out for it for the future. To continue in the same pedantic strain, though no schoolmaster, of all the various grammars now taught in the schools about town, I would recom- mend only the old common one ; I have forgot whether Lilly's, or an emendation of him. The others may be improvements; but such improve- ments seem to me only mere grammatical niceties, no way influencing the learner, but perhaps loading him with trifling subtilties, which at a proper age he must be at some pains to forget. Whatever pains a master may take to make the learning of the languages agreeable to his pupil, he may depend upon it, it will be at first extremely unpleasant. The rudiments of every language, therefore, must be given as a task, not as an amuse- ment. Attempting to deceive children into instruc- tion of this kind, is only deceiving ourselves; and I know no passion capable of conquering a child's natural laziness but fear. Solomon has said it be- fore me : nor is there any more certain, though perhaps more disagreeable truth, than the proverb G 122 THE BEE. in verse, too well known to repeat on the present occasion. It is very probable that parents are told of some masters who never use the rod, and conse- quently are thought the properest instructors for their children ; but though tenderness is a requisite quality in an instructor, yet there is too often the truest tenderness in well-timed correction. Some have justly observed, that all passion should be banished on this terrible occasion ; but I know not how : there is a frailty attending human nature that few masters are able to keep their temper whilst they correct. I knew a good-natured man who was sensible of his own weakness in this re- spect, and consequently had recourse to the follow- ing expedient to prevent his passions from being engaged, yet at the same time administer justice with impartiality. Whenever any of his pupils committed a fault, he summoned a jury of his peers, I mean of the boys of his own or the next classes to him ; his accusers stood forth ; he had a liberty of pleading in his own defence, and one or two more had a liberty of pleading against him • when found guilty by the pannel, he was consigned to the footman, who attended in the house, who had previous orders to punish, but with lenity. By this means the master took off the odium of punishment from himself; and the footman, be- tween whom and the boys there could not be even the slightest intimacy, was placed in such a light as to be shunned by every boy in the school.* * This dissertation was thus far introduced into the vo- lume of Essays, afterwards published by Dr. Goldsmith, with the following observation : This treatise was published before Rousseau's Emilius : if THE INSTABILITY OF WORLDLY GRANDEUR. 123 And now I have gone thus far, perhaps you will think me some pedagogue, willing by a well-timed puff to increase the reputation of his own school ; but such is not the case. The regard I have for society, for those tender minds who are the objects of the present essay, is the only motive I have for offering those thoughts, calculated not to surprise by their novelty, or the elegance of composition, but merely to remedy some defects which have crept into the present system of school education. If this letter should be inserted, perhaps I may trou- ble you in my next with some thoughts upon an university education, not with an intent to ex- haust the subject, but to amend some few abuses. I am, &c. ON THE INSTABILITY OF WORLDLY GRANDEUR. An alehouse-keeper near Islington, who had long lived at the sign of the French king, upon the com- mencement of the last war with France, pulled down his old sign, and put up the queen of Hun- gary. Under the influence of her red face and golden sceptre, he continued to sell ale till she was no longer the favourite of his customers ; he changed her therefore some time ago for the king of •Prussia, who may probably be changed in turn there be a similitude in any one instance, it is hoped the au- thor of the present Essay will not be termed a plagiarist. 124 THE BEE. for the *next great man that should be set up for vulgar admiration. Our publican in this imitates the great exactly, who deal out their figures one after the other to the gazing crowd beneath them. When we have sufficiently wondered at one, that is taken in, and another exhibited in its room, which seldom holds its station long ; for the mob are ever pleased with variety. I must own I have such an indifferent opinion of the vulgar, that I am ever led to suspect that merit which raises their shout ; at least I am certain to find those great and sometimes good men, who find satisfaction in such acclamations, made worse by it; and history has too frequently taught me, that the head which has grown this day giddy with the roar of the million, has the very next been fixed upon a pole. As Alexander VI. was entering a little town in the neighbourhood of Rome, which had been just evacuated by the enemy, he perceived the towns- men busy in the market-place in pulling down from a gibbet a figure, which had been designed to re- present himself. There were also some -knocking down a neighbouring statue of one of the Orsini family, with whom he was at war, in order to put Alexander's effigy, when taken down, in its place. It is possible a man who knew less of the world would have condemned the adulation of those bare- faced flatterers : but Alexander seemed pleased at their zeal, and, turning to Borgia his son, said with a smile, " Vides, mi fili, quam leve discrimen pati- bulum inter et statuam :" " You see, my son, the small difference between a gibbet and a statue." If THE INSTABILITY OF WORLDLY GRANDEUR. 125 the great could be taught any lesson, this might serve to teach them upon how weak a foundation their glory stands, which is built upon popular ap- plause ; for, as such praise what seems like merit, they as quickly condemn what has only the ap- pearance of guilt. Popular glory is a perfect coquet ; her lovers must toil, feel every inquietude, indulge every caprice, and perhaps at last be jilted into the bargain. True glory, on the other hand, resembles a woman of sense ; her admirers must play no tricks ; they feel no great anxiety, for they are sure in the end of being rewarded in proportion to their merit. When Swift used to appear in public, he generally had the mob shouting in his train. " Pox take these fools," he would say, " how much joy might all this bawl- ing give my lord mayor 1" We have seen those virtues, which have while living retired from the public eye, generally trans- mitted to posterity, as the truest objects of admira- tion and praise. Perhaps the character of the late duke of Marlborough may one day be set up, even above that of his more talked-of predecessor ; since an assemblage of all the mild and amiable virtues is far superior to those vulgarly called the great ones. I must be pardoned for this short tribute to the memory of a man, who while living would as much detest to receive any thing that wore the ap- pearance of flattery, as I should to offer it. I know not how to turn so trite a subject out of the beaten road of common place, except by illus- trating it, rather by the assistance of my memory than my judgment, and instead of making reflec- tions, by telling a story. W THE BEE. A Chinese, who long had studied the works of Confucius, who knew the characters of fourteen thousand words, and could read a great part of every book that came in his way, once took it into his head to travel into Europe, and observe the cus- toms of a people whom he thought not very much inferior even to his own countrymen, in the arts of refining upon every pleasure. Upon his arrival at Amsterdam his passion for letters naturally led him to a bookseller's shop ; and, as he could speak a little Dutch, he civilly asked the bookseller for the works of the immortal Ilixofou. The bookseller assured him, he had never heard the book men- tioned before. " What ! have you never heard of that immortal poet/' returned the other, much sur- prised, " that light of the eyes, that favourite of kings, that rose of perfection ? I suppose you know nothing of the immortal Fipsihihi, second cousin to the moon ?° " Nothing at all, indeed, sir," returned the other. " Alas !" cries our traveller, " to what purpose then has one of these fasted to death, and the other offered himself up as a sacrifice to the Tartarean enemy, to gain a renown which has never travelled beyond the precincts of China !" There is scarcely a village in Europe, and not one university, that is not thus furnished with its little great men. The head of a petty corporation, who opposes the designs of a prince, who would tyrannically force his subjects to save their best clothes for Sundays; the puny pedant, who finds one undiscovered property in the polype, describes an unheeded process in the skeleton of a mole, and whose mind like his microscope perceives nature only in detail ; the rhymer, who makes smooth THE INSTABILITY OF WORLDLY GRANDEUR. 127 verses, and paints to our imagination when he should only speak to our hearts ; all equally fancy themselves walking forward to immortality, and desire the crowd behind them to look on. The crowd takes them at their word. Patriot, philo- sopher, and poet, are shouted in their train. Where was there ever so much merit seen ; no times so important as our own ; ages yet unborn shall gaze with wonder and applause ! to such music the im- portant pigmy moves forward, bustling and swell- ing, and aptly compared to spuddle in a storm. 1 have lived to see generals, who once had crowds hallooing after them wherever they went, who were bepraised by newspapers and magazines, those echoes of the voice of the vulgar, and yet they have long sunk into merited obscurity, with scarcely even an epitaph left to natter. A few years ago the herring fishery employed all Grub-street; it was the topic in every coffee-house, and the bur- then of every ballad. We were to drag up oceans of gold from the bottom of the sea ; we were to supply all Europe with herrings upon our own terms. At present we hear no more of all this. We have fished up very little gold that I can learn ; nor do we furnish the world with herrings as was expected. Let us wait but a few years longer, and we shall find all our expectations a herring fishery. 128 THE BEE. SOME ACCOUNT OF THE ACADEMIES OF ITALY. There is not perhaps a country in Europe, in which learning is so fast upon the decline as in Italy; yet not one in which there are such a num- ber of academies instituted for its support. There is scarcely a considerable town in the whole coun- try, which has not one or two institutions of this nature, where the learned, as they are pleased to call themselves, meet to harangue, to compli- ment each other, and praise the utility of their institution. Jarchius has taken the trouble to give us a list of those clubs, or academies, which amount to five hundred and fifty, each distinguished by somewhat whimsical in the name. The academies of Bologna, for instance, are divided into the Abbandonati, the Ausiosi, Ociosio, Arcadi, Confusi, Dubbiosi, &c. There are few of these who have not published their transactions, and scarcely a member who is not looked upon as the most famous man in the world, at home. Of all those societies, I know of none whose works are worth being known out of the precincts of the city in which they were written, except the Cicelata-Academica (or, as we might express it, the tickling society) of Florence. I have just now be- fore me a manuscript oration, spoken by the late Tomaso Crudeli at that society, which will at once ACCOUNT OF THE ACADEMIES OF ITALY. 129 serve to give a better picture of the manner in which men of wit amuse themselves in that coun- try, than any thing I could say upon the occasion. The oration is this : tf The younger the nymph, my dear companions, the more happy the lover. From fourteen to seven- teen, you are sure of rinding love for love; from seventeen to twenty-one, there is always a mixture of interest and affection. But when that period is past, no longer expect to receive, but to buy. No longer expect a nymph who gives, but who sells her favours. At this age every glance is taught its duty ; not a look, not a sigh, without design ; the lady, like a skilful warrior, aims at the heart of another, while she shields her own from danger. " On the contrary, at fifteen you may expect nothing but simplicity, innocence, and nature. ,The passions are then sincere ; the soul seems seated in the lips ; the dear object feels present happiness, without being anxious for the future ; her eyes brighten if her lover approaches ; her smiles are borrowed from the graces, and her very mistakes seem to complete her desires. " Lucretia was just sixteen. The rose and lily took possession of her face, and her bosom, by its hue and its coldness, seemed covered with snow, So much beauty and so much virtue seldom want admirers. Orlandino, a youth of sense and merit, was among the number. He had long languished for an opportunity of declaring his passion, when Cupid, as if willing to indulge his happiness, brought the charming young couple by mere accident to an arbour, where every prying eye but love was ab- sent. Orlandino talked of the sincerity of his pas- g2 130 THE BEE. sion, and mixed flattery with his address ; but it was all in vain. The nymph was pre-engaged, and had long devoted to Heaven those charms for which he sued. c My dear Orlandino/ said she, ' you know T I have long been dedicated to St. Catharine, and to her belongs all that lies below my girdle ; all that is above you may freely possess, but fur- ther I cannot, must not, comply. The vow passed ; I wish it were undone, but now it is im- possible.' You may conceive, my companions, the embarrassment our young lovers felt upon this occa- sion. They kneeled to St. Catharine, and, though both despaired, both implored her assistance. Their tutelar saint was entreated to show some expedient by which both might continue to love, and yet both be happy. Their petition was sincere. St. Catharine was touched with compassion : for lo, a miracle ! Lucretia's girdle unloosed, as if without hands ; and, though before bound round her middle, fell spontaneously down to her feet, and gave Or- landino the possession of all those beauties which lay above it." No. 7. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER J 7, 1759. OF ELOQUENCE. Of all kinds of success, that of an orator is the most pleasing. Upon other occasions the applause we deserve is conferred in our absence, and we are insensible of the pleasure we have given; but in eloquence the victory and the triumph are insepa- OF ELOQUENCE. 131 rable. We read our own glory in the face of every spectator ; the audience is moved, the antagonist is defeated, and the whole circle bursts into unsoli- cited applause. The rewards which attend excellence in this way are so pleasing, that numbers have written professed treatises to teach us the art; schools have been established with no other intent ; rhetoric has taken place among the institutions, . and pedants have ranged under proper heads, and distinguished with long learned names, some of the strokes of nature, or of passion, which orators have used. I say only some; for a folio volume could not contain all the figures which have been used by the truly eloquent, and scarcely a good speaker or writer, but makes use of some that are peculiar or new. Eloquence has preceded the rules of rhetoric, as languages have been formed before grammar. Na- ture renders men eloquent in great interests, or great passions. He that is sensibly touched, sees things with a very different eye from the rest of mankind. All nature to him becomes an object of comparison and metaphor, without attending to it ; he throws life into all, and inspires his audience with a part of his own enthusiasm. It has been remarked, that the lower parts of mankind generally express themselves most figura- tively^ and that tropes are found in the most ordi- nary forms of conversation. Thus in every language the heart burns ; the courage is roused ; the eyes sparkle ;,the spirits are cast down ; passion inflames, pride swells, and pity sinks the soul. Nature every 132 THE BEE. where speaks in those strong images, which from their frequency pass unnoticed. # Nature it is which inspires those rapturous enthu- siasms, those irresistible turns ; a strong passion, a pressing danger, calls up all the imagination, and gives the orator irresistible force. Thus a captain of the first caliph, seeing his soldiers fly, cried out, " Whither do you run ? the enemy are not there ! Ion have been told that the caliph is dead; but God is still living. He regards the brave, and will reward the courageous. Advance !" A man therefore may be called eloquent, who transfers the passion or sentiment with which he h moved himself into the breast of another ; and this definition appears the more just, as it comprehends* the graces of silence, and of action. An intimate persuasion of the truth to be proved is the senti- ment and passion to be transferred; and who effects this is truly possessed of the talent of elo-' quence. I have called eloquence a talent, and not an art, as so many rhetoricians have done, as art is ac- quired by exercise and study, and eloquence is the gift of nature. Rules will never make either a work or a discourse eloquent; they only serve to prevent faults, but not to introduce beauties ; to prevent those passages, which are truly eloquent and dic- tated by nature, from being blended with others, which might disgust, or at least abate our passion. What we clearly conceive, says Boileau, we can clearly express. I may add, that what is felt with emotion is expressed also with the same movements ; the words arise as readily to paint our emotions, as' Or ELOQUENCE. 133 to express our thoughts Avith perspicuity. The cool care an orator takes to express passions which he does not feel, only prevents his rising into that passion he would seem to feel. In a word, to feel your subject thoroughly, and to speak without fear, are the only rules of eloquence, properly so called, w T hich I can offer. Examine a writer of genius on the most beautiful parts of his work, and he will always assure you that such passages are generally ■ those which have given him the least trouble, for they came as if by inspiration. To pretend that cold and didactic precepts will make a man elo- quent, is only to prove that he is incapable of eloquence. But, as in being perspicuous, it is necessary to have a full idea of the subject, so in being eloquent- it is not sufficient, if I may so express it, to feel by- halves. The orator should be strongly impressed, which is generally the effect of a tine and exquisite sensibility, and not that transient and superficial emotion which he excites in the greatest part of his audience. It is even impossible to affect the hearers in any great degree without being affected ourselves. In vain it will be objected, that many writers have had the art to inspire their readers with a passion for virtue, without being virtuous themselves ; since it may be answered, that sen- timents of virtue filled their minds at the time they were writing. They felt the inspiration strongly, while they praised justice, generosity, or good- nature; but unhappily for them, these passions might have been discontinued, when they laid down the pen. In vain wall it be objected again a that we can move without being moved 5 as we 134 THE BEE. can convince without being convinced. It is much easier to deceive our reason than ourselves ; a trifling defect in reasoning may be overseen, and lead a man astray ; for it requires reason and time to detect the falsehood ; but our passions are not easily imposed upon ; our eyes, our ears, and every sense, are watchful to detect the imposture. No discourse can be eloquent that does not ele- vate the mind. Pathetic eloquence, it is true, has for its only object to affect ; but I appeal to men of sensibility, whether their pathetic feelings are not accompanied with some degree of elevation. We may then call eloquence and sublimity the same thing, since it is impossible to be one without feeling the other. Hence it follows, that we may be eloquent in any language, since no language refuses to paint those sentiments with which we are thoroughly impressed. What is usually called sublimity of style seems to be only an error. Elo- 1 quence is not in the words, but in the subject; and in great concerns, the more simply any thing is ex- pressed, it is generally the more sublime. True eloquence does not consist, as the rhetoricians as- sure us, in saying great things in a sublime style, but in a simple style ; for there is, properly speak- ing, no such thing as a sublime style, the sublimity lies only in the things ; and when they are not so, the language may be turgid, affected, metaphorical,, but not affecting. What can be more simply expressed than the following extract from a celebrated preacher, and yet what was ever more sublime ? Speaking of the small number of the elect, he breaks out thus among his audience : "Let me suppose that this OF ELOQUENCE. 135 was the last hour of us all ; that the heavens were opening over our heads ; that time was passed, and eternity begun : that Jesus Christ in all his glory, that man of sorrows in all his glory, appeared on the tribunal, and that we were assembled here to receive our final decree of life or death eternal. Let me ask, impressed with terror like you, and not separating my lot from yours, but putting my- self in the same situation in which we must all one day appear before God, our Judge : let me ask, if Jesus Christ should now appear to make the terrible separation of the just from the unjust, do you think the greatest number would be saved ? Do you think the number of the elect would even be equal to that of the sinners ? Do you think, if all our works were examined with justice, would he find ten just persons in this great assembly ? Monsters of ingratitude ! would he find one ?" Such passages as these are sublime in every language. The expression may be less striking, or more in- distinct, but the greatness of the idea still remains. In a word, we may be eloquent in every language and in every style, since elocution is only an as- sistant, but not a constitutor of eloquence. Of what use then, will it be said, are all the precepts given us upon this head both by the an- cients and moderns ? I answer, that they cannot make us eloquent, but they will certainly prevent us from becoming ridiculous. They can seldom procure a single beauty, but they may banish a thousand faults. The true method of an orator is not to attempt always to move, always to affect, to be continually sublime, but at proper intervals to give rest both to his own and the passions of his 136 THE BEE. audience. In these periods of relaxation, or of preparation rather, rules may teach him to avoid any thing low, trivial, or disgusting. Thus criti- cism, properly speaking, is intended not to assist those parts which are sublime, but those which are naturally mean and humble, which are com- posed with coolness and caution, and where the orator rather endeavours not to offend, than at- tempts to please. - I have hitherto insisted more strenuously on that eloquence which speaks to the passions, as it is a species of oratory almost unknown in England. At the bar it is quite discontinued, and I think with justice. In the senate it is used but sparingly, as the orator speaks to enlightened judges. But in the pulpit, in which the orator should chiefly address the vulgar, it seems strange that it should be entirely laid aside. The vulgar of England are, without exception, the most barbarous and the most unknowing of any in Europe. A great part of their ignorance may be chiefly ascribed to their teachers, who with the most pretty gentlemen-like serenity deliver their cool discourses, and address the reason of men, who have never reasoned in all their lives. They are told of cause and effect, of beings self existent, and the universal scale of beings. They are informed of the excellence of the Bango- rian controversy, and the absurdity of an inter- mediate state. The spruce preacher reads his lu- cubration without lifting his nose from the text, and never ventures, to earn the shame of an en- thusiast. By this means, though his audience feel not one OF ELOQUENCE. 137 word of all he says, he earns however among his acquaintance the character of a man of sense ; among his acquaintance only, did I say ? nay, even with his bishop. The polite of every country have several motives to induce them to a rectitude of action ; the love of virtue for its own sake, the shame of offending, and the desire of pleasing. The vulgar have but one, the enforcements of religion ; and yet those who should push this motive home to their hearts, are basely found to desert their post. They speak to the 'squire, the philosopher, and the pedant ; but the poor, those who really want instruction, are left uninstructed. I have attended most of our pulpit orators, who, it must be owned, write extremely well upon the text they assume. To give them their due also, they read their sermons with elegance and propriety; but this goes but a very short way in true eloquence. The speaker must be moved. In this, in this alone, our English divines are deficient. Were they to speak to a few calm dispassionate hearers, they certainly use the properest methods of address ; but their audience is chiefly composed of the poor, who must be influenced by motives of reward and pu- nishment, and whose only virtues lie in self-interest or fear. How then are such to be addressed ? not by stu- died periods or cold disquisitions : not by the la- bours of the head, but the honest spontaneous dic- tates of the heart. Neither writing a sermon with regular periods, and all the harmony of elegant ex- pression ; neither reading it with emphasis, pro- priety, and deliberation ; neither pleasing with me- 138 THE BEE. taphor, simile, or rhetorical fustian ; neither argu- ing coolly, and untying consequences united in a priori, nor bundling up inductions a posteriori: neither pedantic jargon, nor academical trifling, can persuade the poor ; writing a discourse coolly in the closet, then getting it by memory, and deliver- ing it on Sundays, even that will not do. What then is to be done ? I know of no expedient to speak at once intelligibly and feelingly, except to under- stand the language. To be convinced of the truth of the object, to be perfectly acquainted with the subject in view, to prepossess yourself with a low opinion of your audience, and to do the rest extem- pore ; by this means strong expressions, new thoughts, rising passions, and the true declamatory style, will naturally ensue. Fine declamation does not consist in flowery pe- riods, delicate allusions, or musical cadences ; but in a plain, open, loose style, where the periods are long and obvious ; where the same thought is often exhibited in several points of view ; all this, strong sense, a good memory, and a small share of expe- rience, will furnish to every orator ; and without these, a clergyman may be called a fine preacher. judicious preacher, and a man of good sense : may make his hearers admire his understanding, but will seldom enlighten theirs. When I think of the Methodist preachers among us, how seldom they are endued with common sense, and yet how often and how justly they affect their hearers, I cannot avoid saying within myself : Had these been bred gentlemen, and been endued with even the meanest share of understanding, what might they not effect ! Did our bishops, who can en >ng J 3e- j )llt 1 OF ELOQUENCE. , 139 add dignity to their expostulations, testify the same fervour, and entreat their hearers, as well as argue, what might not be the consequence ! The vulgar, by which I mean the bulk of mankind, would then have a double motive to love religion, first from seeing its professors honoured here, and next from the consequences hereafter. At present the enthu- siasms of the poor are opposed to law ; did law conspire with their enthusiasms, we should not only be the happiest nation upon earth, but the wisest also. Enthusiasm in religion, which prevails only among the vulgar, should be the chief object of po- litics. A society of enthusiasts, governed by reason among the great, is the most indissoluble, the most virtuous, and the most efficient of its own decrees that can be imagined. Every country, possessed of any degree of strength, have had their enthusiasms, which ever serve as laws among the people. The Greeks had their Kalokagathia, the Romans their Amor Patrice, and we the truer and firmer bond of the Protestant religion. The principle is the same in all : how much then is it the duty of those, whom the law has appointed teachers of this reli- gion, to enforce its obligations, and to raise those enthusiasms among people, by which alone political society can subsist. From eloquence therefore the morals of our peo- ple are to expect emendation ; but how little can they be improved by men, who get into the pulpit rather to show their parts than convince us of the truth of what they deliver, who are painfully cor- rect in their style, musical in their tones, where every sentiment, every expression, seems the result of meditation and deep study ? 140 THE BEE. Tillotson has been commended as the model of pulpit eloquence : thus far he should be imitated ; where he generally strives to convince rather than I to please ; but to adopt his long, dry, and some- times tedious discussions, which serve to amuse only divines, and are utterly neglected by the generality of mankind ; to praise the intricacy of his periods, which are too long to be spoken, to continue his cool phlegmatic manner of enforcing every truth, is- j certainly erroneous. As I said before, the good preacher should adopt no model, write no sermons, I study no periods ; let him but understand his sub- ject, the language he speaks, and be convinced of the truths he delivers. It is amazing to what heights eloquence of this kind may reach ! This is that eloquence the ancients represented as lightning, bearing down every opposer ; this the power which has turned whole assemblies into astonish- , ment, admiration, and awe, that is described by the torrent, the flame, and every other instance of irre- sistible impetuosity. But to attempt such noble heights belongs only to the truly great, or the truly good. To discard the lazy manner of reading sermons, or speaking ser- J mons by rote ; to set up singly against the opposi- tion of men, who are attached to their own errors, and to endeavour to be great instead of being pru- dent, are qualities we seldom see united. A minis- ter of the church of England, who may be pos- sessed of good sense and some hopes of preferment, will seldom give up such substantial advantages for the empty pleasure of improving society. By his ' present method he is liked by his friends, admired by his dependants, not displeasing to his bishop ; he CUSTOM AND LAWS COMPARED. 141 lives as well, eats and sleeps as well, as if a real orator, and an eager assertor of his mission ; he will hardly therefore venture all this to be called per- haps an enthusiast ; nor will he depart from cus- toms established by the brotherhood, when, by such a conduct he only singles himself out for their con- tempt. CUSTOM AND LAWS COMPARED. What, say some, can give us a more contemptible idea of a large state than to find it mostly governed by custom ; to have few written laws, and no boun- daries to mark the jurisdiction between the senate and people ? Among the number who speak in this manner is the great Montesquieu, who asserts that every nation is free in proportion to the number of its written laws ; and seems to hint at a despotic and arbitrary conduct in the present king of Prussia, who has abridged the laws of his country into a very short compass. As Tacitus and Montesquieu happen to differ in sentiment upon a subject of so much importance, (for the Roman expressly asserts, that the state is generally vicious in proportion to the number of its laws) ; it will not be amiss to examine it a lit- tle more minutely, and see whether a state which, like England, is burthened with a multiplicity of written laws, or which, like Switzerland, Geneva, and some other republics, is governed by custom and the determination of the judge, is best. And to prove the superiority of custom to writ- ten law, we shall at least find history conspiring. 142 THE BEE. Custom, or the traditional observance of the prac- tice of their forefathers, was what directed the Ro- mans as well in their public as private determina- tions. Custom was appealed to in pronouncing, sentence against a criminal, where part of the for- mulary was more majorum. So Sallust, speaking of the expulsion of Tarquin, says, mutato more,m& not lege mutatd; and Virgil, pacisque imponere morem. So that in those times of the empire in which the people retained their liberty, they were governed by custom ; when they sunk into op-" pression and tyranny, they were restrained by new laws, and the laws of tradition abolished. As getting the ancients on our side is half a vic- tory, it will not be amiss to fortify the argument with an observation of Chrysostom's : "That the enslaved are the fittest to be governed by laws, and free men by custom." Custom partakes of the na- ture of parental injunction ; it is kept by the peo- ple themselves, and observed with a willing obe-- dience. The observance of it must therefore be a mark of freedom, and coming originally to a state from the reverenced founders of its liberty, will be an encouragement and assistance to it in the de- fence of that blessing ; but a conquered people, a nation of slaves, must pretend to none of this free- dom, or these happy distinctions ; having, by dege- neracy, lost all right to their brave forefathers' free institutions, their masters will, in a policy, take the forfeiture ; and the fixing a conquest must be done by giving laws, which may every moment serve to remind the people enslaved, of their conquerors, nothing being more dangerous than to trust a late- subdued people with old customs, that presently CUSTOM AND LAWS COMPARED. 143 upbraid their degeneracy, and provoke them to re- volt. The wisdom of the Roman republic, in their ve- neration for custom, and backwardness to intro- duce a new law, was perhaps the cause of their long continuance, and of the virtues of which they have set the world so many examples. But to show in what that wisdom consists, it may be pro- per to observe, that the benefit of new- written laws is merely confined to the consequences of their ob- servance ; but customary laws, keeping up a gene- ration for the founders, engage men in the imita- tion of their virtues as well as policy. To this may be ascribed the religious regard the Romans paid to their forefathers' memory, and their adhering for so many ages to the practice of the same vir- tues, which nothing contributed more to efface than the introduction of a voluminous body of new laws over the neck of venerable custom. The simplicity, conciseness, and antiquity of cus- tom, gives an air of majesty and immutability that inspires awe and veneration ; but new laws are too apt to be voluminous, perplexed, and indetermi- nate ; whence must necessarily arise neglect, con- tempt, and ignorance. As every human institution is subject to gross im- perfections, so laws must necessarily be liable to the same inconveniences, and their defects soon discovered. Thus, through the weakness of one part, all the rest are liable to be brought into con- tempt. But such weaknesses in a custom, for very obvious reasons, evade an examination^ besides, a friendly prejudice always stands up in their fa- 144 THE BEE. But let us suppose a new law to be perfectly equitable and necessary; yet, if the procurers of it have betrayed a conduct that confesses by-ends and private motives, the disgust to the circum- stances disposes us, unreasonably indeed, to an ir- reverence of the law itself; but we are indulgently blind to the most visible imperfections of an old custom. Though we perceive the defects ourselves, yet we remain persuaded, that our wise forefathers had good reason for what they did; and though such motives no longer continue, the benefit will still go along with the observance, though we don't know how. It is thus the Roman lawyers speak : " Non omnium, quae a majoribus constituta sunt, ratio reddi potest, et ideo rationes eorum quae con- stituuntur inquiri non oportet ; alioquin multa ex his quae certa sunt subvertuntur." Those laws which preserve to themselves the greatest love and observance, must needs be best j but custom, as it executes itself, must be necessa- rily superior to written laws in this respect, which are to be executed by another. Thus nothing can be more certain, than that numerous written laws are a sign of a degenerate community, and are fre- quently not the consequences of vicious morals in a state, but the causes. Hence we see how much greater benefit it would be to the state rather to abridge than increase its laws. We every day find them increasing ; acts and reports, which may be termed the acts of judges, are every day becoming more voluminous, and loading the subject with new penalties. Laws ever increase in number and severity, until they at length are strained so tight as to break THE MIDDLING CLASS OF PEOPLE. 145 themselves. Such was the case of the latter em- pire, whose laws were at length become so strict, that the barbarous invaders did not bring servitude but liberty. OF THE PRIDE AND LUXURY OF THE MIDDLING CLASS OF PEOPLE. Of all the follies and absurdities, under which this great metropolis labours, there is not one, I be- lieve, that at present appears in a more glaring and ridiculous light, than the pride and luxury of the middling class of people ; their eager desire of be- ing seen in a sphere far above their capacities and circumstances, is daily, nay hourly, instanced by the prodigious numbers of mechanics, who flock to the races, and gaming-tables, brothels, and all public diversions this fashionable town affords. You shall see a grocer, or a tallow-chandler, sneak from behind the counter, clap on a laced coat and a bag, fly to the E. O. table, throw away fifty pieces with some sharping man of quality ; while his industrious wife is selling a penny-worth of su- gar, or a pound of candles, to support her fashion- able spouse in his extravagances. I was led into this reflection by an odd adven- ture, which happened to me the other day at Ep- som races, whither I went, not through any desire I do assure you of laying betts or winning thou- sands, but at the earnest request of a friend, who H 146 THE BEE. had long indulged the curiosity of seeing the sport, very natural for an Englishman. When we had arrived at the course, and had taken several turns to observe the different objects that made up this whimsical group, a figure suddenly darted by us, mounted and dressed in all the elegance of those polite gentry, who come to show you they have a little money, and rather than pay their just debts at home, generously come abroad to bestow it on gamblers and pickpockets. As I had not an op. portunity of viewing his face till his return, I gently walked after him, and met him as he came back ; when, to my no small surprise, I beheld in this gay Narcissus the visage of Jack Varnish, an humble vender of prints. Disgusted at the sight, I pulled my friend by the sleeve, pressed him to return home, telling him all the way, that I was so en- raged at the fellow's impudence, I was resolved ne- ver to lay out another penny with him. And now, pray, sir, let me beg of you to give this a place in your paper, that Mr. Varnish may- understand he mistakes the thing quite, if he ima- gines horse-racing recommendable in a tradesman ; and that he, who is revelling every night in the arms of a common strumpet (though blessed with an indulgent wife) when he ought to be minding his business, will never thrive in this world. He will find himself soon mistaken, his finances de- crease, his friends shun him, customers fall off, and himself thrown into a gaol. I would earnestly recom- mend this adage to every mechanic in London, " Keep your shop, and your shop will keep you." A strict observance of these words will, I am sure, in time gain them estates. Industry is the road to SABINUS AND OLINDA. 147 wealth, and honesty to happiness ; and he, who strenuously endeavours to pursue them both, may never fear the critic's lash, or the sharp cries of pe- nury and want. SABINUS AND OLINDA. In a fair, rich, and flourishing country, whose clifts are washed by the German ocean, lived Sabinus, a youth formed by nature to make a conquest where- ever he thought proper; but the constancy of his disposition fixed him only with Olinda. He was indeed superior to her in fortune, but that defect on her side was so amply supplied by her merit, that none was thought more worthy of his regards than she. He loved her, he was beloved by her ; and in a short time, by joining hands publicly, they avowed the union of their hearts. But alas ! none, however fortunate, however happy, are exempt from the shafts of envy, and the malignant effects of ungo- verned appetite. How unsafe, how detestable are they who have this fury for their guide ! How cer- tainly will it lead them from themselves, and plunge them in errors they would have shuddered at, even in apprehension ! Ariana, a lady of many amiable qualities, very nearly allied to Sabinus, and highly esteemed by him, imagined herself slighted, and in- juriously treated, since his marriage with Olinda. By incautiously suffering this jealousy to corrode in her breast, she began to give a loose to passion ; she forgot those many virtues, for which she had been so long and so justly applauded. Causeless suspicion and mistaken resentment betrayed her 148 THE BEE. into all the gloom of discontent ; she sighed without ceasing ; the happiness of others gave her intolerable pain ; she thought of nothing but revenge. How unlike what she was, the cheerful, the prudent, the compassionate Ariana ! She continually laboured to disturb an union so firmly, so affectionately founded, and planned every scheme which she thought most likely to disturb it. Fortune seemed willing to promote her unjust in- tentions; the circumstances of Sabinus had been long embarrassed by a tedious law-suit, and the court determining the cause unexpectedly in favour of his opponent, it sunk his fortune to the lowest pitch of penury from the highest affluence. From the nearness of relationship, Sabinus expected from Ariana those assistances his present situation re- quired ; but she was insensible to all his entreaties, and the justice of every remonstrance, unless he first separated from Olinda, whom she regarded with detestation. Upon a compliance with her de- sires in this respect, she promised that her fortune, her interest, and her all, should be at his command. Sabinus was shocked at the proposal ; he loved his wife with inexpressible tenderness, and refused those offers with indignation, which were to be pur- chased at so high a price. Ariana was no less dis- pleased to find her offers rejected, and gave a loose to all that warmth, which she had long endeavoured to suppress. Reproach generally produces recrimi- nation; the quarrel rose to such a height, that Sabinus was marked for destruction; and the very next day, upon the strength of an old family debt, he was sent to gaol, with none but Olinda to com- fort him in his miseries, In this mansion of distress SABINUS AND OLINDA. 149 they lived together with resignation and even with comfort. She provided the frugal meal; and he read to her while employed in the little offices of domestic concern. Their fellow prisoners admired their contentment, and whenever they had a desire of relaxing into mirth, and enjoying those little comforts that a prison affords, Sabinus and Olinda were sure to be of the party. Instead of reproach- ing each other for their mutual wretchedness, they both lightened it, by bearing each a share of the load imposed by Providence. Whenever Sabinus showed the least concern on his dear partner's ac- count, she conjured him by the love he bore her, by those tender ties which now united them for ever, not to discompose himself ; that so long as his af- fection lasted, she defied all the ills of fortune, and every loss of fame or friendship ; that nothing could make her miserable but his seeming to want happi- ness, nothing pleased but his sympathising with her pleasure. A continuance in prison soon robbed them of the little they had left, and famine began to make its horrid appearance ; yet still was neither found to murmur : they both looked upon their lit- tle boy, who, insensible of their or his own distress, was playing about the room, with inexpressible yet silent anguish, when a messenger came to inform them that Ariana was dead, and that her will in fa- vour of a very distant relation, who was now in an- other country, might easily be procured and burnt, in which case all her large fortune would revert to him, as being the next heir at law. A proposal of so base a nature filled our unhappy couple with horror; they ordered the messenger immediately out of the room, and falling upon each 150 THE BEE. other's neck indulged an agony of sorrow ; for now even all hopes of relief were banished. The mes- senger who made the proposal, however, was only a spy sent by Ariana to sound the dispositions of a man she loved at once and persecuted. This lady, though warped by wrong passions, was naturally kind, judicious, and friendly. She found that all ■ her attempts to shake the constancy or the integrity of Sabinus were ineffectual ; she had therefore be- gun to reflect, and to wonder how she could so long and so unprovoked injure such uncommon fortitude and affection. She had from the next room herself heard the re- ception given to the messenger, and could not avoid feeling all the force of superior virtue ; she there- fore re-assumed her former goodness of heart ; she came into the room with tears in her eyes, and ac- knowledged the severity of her former treatment. She bestowed her first care in providing them all the necessary supplies, and acknowledged them as the most deserving heirs of her fortune. From this moment Sabinus enjoyed an uninterrupted happi- ness with Olinda, and both were happy in the friendship and assistance of Ariana, who, dying soon after, left them in possession of a large estate ; and in her last moments confessed that virtue was the only path to true glory; and that, however innocence may for a time be depressed, a steady perseverance will in time lead it to a certain vic- tory, ON THE TEMPER OF THE ENGLISH. 151 THE SENTIMENTS OF A FRENCHMAN ON THE TEMPER OF THE ENGLISH. Nothing is so uncommon among the English as that easy affability, that instant method of acquaint- ance, or that cheerfulness of disposition, which make in France the charm of everj" society. Yet in this gloomy reserve they seem to pride them- selves, and think themselves less happy, if obliged to be more social. One may assert, without wrong- ing them, that they do not study the method of going through life with pleasure and tranquillity like the French. Might not this be a proof that they are not so much philosophers as they imagine ? Philosophy is no more than the art of making our- selves happy ; that is, of seeking pleasure in regu- larity, and reconciling what we owe to society with what is due to ourselves. This cheerfulness, which is the characteristic of our nation, in the eye of an Englishman passes al- most for folly. But is their gloominess a greater mark of their wisdom ? and folly against folly, is not the most cheerful sort the best ? If our gaiety makes them sad, they ought not to find it strange, if their seriousness makes us laugh. As this disposition to levity is not familiar to them, and as they look on every thing as a fault which they do not find at home, the English who live among us are hurt by it. Several of their au- thors reproach us with it as a vice, or at least as a ridicule. 152 THE BEE. Mr. Addison styles us a comic nation. In my opinion it is not acting the philosopher on this point, to regard as a fault that quality, which con- tributes most to the pleasure of society and happi- ness of life. Plato, convinced that whatever makes men happier, makes them better, advises to neglect nothing that may excite and convert to an early ha- bit this sense of joy in children. Seneca places it in thej first rank of good things. Certain it is, at least, that gaiety may be a concomitant of all sorts of virtue, but that there are some vices with which it is incompatible. As to him who laughs at every thing, and him who laughs at nothing, neither of them has sound judgment. All the difference I find between them is, that the last is constantly the most unhappy. Those who speak against cheerfulness prove nothing else but that they were born melancholic, and that in their hearts they rather envy than condemn that levity they affect to despise. The Spectator, whose constant object was the good of mankind in general, and of his own nation in particular, should, according to his own princi- ples, place cheerfulness among the most desirable qualities ; and probably, whenever he contradicts himself in this particular, it is only to conform to the tempers of the people whom he addresses. He asserts that gaiety is one great obstacle to the pru- dent conduct of women. But are those of a melan- cholic temper, as the English women generally are, less subject to the foibles of love ? I am acquainted with some doctors in this science, to whose judg- ment I would more willingly refer than to his. And perhaps, in reality, persons naturally of a gay tern-. ON THE TEMPER OF THE ENGLISH. J 53 per are too easily taken off by different objects, to give themselves up to all the excesses of this pas- sion. Mr. Hobbes, a celebrated philosopher of his na- tion, maintains that laughing proceeds from our pride alone. This is only a paradox, if asserted of laughing in general, and only argues that misan- thropical disposition for which he was remarkable. To bring the causes he assigns for laughing under suspicion, it is sufficient to remark that proud peo- ple are commonly those who laugh least. Gravity is the inseparable companion of pride. To say that a man is vain, because the humour of a writer, or the buffooneries of a harlequin excite his laughter, would be advancing a great absurdity. We should distinguish between laughter inspired by joy, and that which arises from mockery. The malicious sneer is improperly called laughter. It must be owned that pride is the parent of such laughter as this ; but this is in itself vicious ; whereas, the other sort has nothing in its principles or effects that deserves condemnation. We find this amiable in others, and is it unhappiness to feel a disposition towards it in ourselves ? When I see an Englishman laugh, I fancy I rather see him hunting after joy than having caught it ; and this is more particularly remarkable in their women, whose tempers are inclined to melancholy. A laugh leaves no more traces on their countenance than a flash of lightning on the face of the heavens. The most laughing air is instantly succeeded by the most gloomy. One would be apt to think that their souls open with difficulty to joy, or at least that joy is not pleased with its habitation there. h 2 154 THE BEE. In regard to fine raillery, it must be allowed that it is not natural to the English, and therefore those who endeavour at it make but an ill figure. Some of their authors have candidly confessed, that plea- santry is quite foreign to their character ; but, ac- cording to the reason they give, they lose nothing by this confession. Bishop Sprat gives the follow- ing one : " The English,'* says he, " have too much bravery to be derided, and too much virtue and ho- nour to mock others. ,, No. 8. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 1759. ON DECEIT AND FALSEHOOD. The following account is so judiciously conceived^ that I am convinced the reader will be more pleased with it than with any thing of mine , so I shall mak< no apology for this new publication. TO THE AUTHOR OF THE BEE. ■. Sir, Deceit and falsehood have ever been an over-match . for truth, and followed and admired by the majority of mankind. If we inquire after the reason of this, we shall find it in our own imaginations, which are amused and entertained with the perpetual novelty and variety that fiction affords, but find no manner of delight in the uniform simplicity of homely truth, which still sues them under the same appearance. ON DECEIT AND FALSEHOOD. 155 He therefore that would gain our hearts must make his court to our fancy, which being sovereign controller of the passions, lets them loose, and inflames them more or less, in proportion to the force and efficacy of the first cause, which is ever the more powerful the more new it is. Thus in mathematical demonstrations themselves, thougli they seem to aim at pure truth and instruction, and to be addressed to our reason alone, yet I think it is pretty plain, that our understanding is only made a drudge to gratify our invention and curiosity, and we are pleased not so much because our discoveries are certain, $s because they are new. I do not deny but the world is still pleased with things that pleased it many ages ago ; but it should at the same time be considered, that man is natu- rally so much of a logician, as to distinguish be- tween matters that are plain and easy, and others that are hard and inconceivable. What we under- stand we overlook and despise, and what we know nothing of we hug and delight in. Thus there are such things as perpetual novelties ; for we are pleased no longer than we are amazed, and nothing so much contents us as that which confounds us. This weakness in human nature gave occasion to a party of men to make such gainful markets as they have done of our credulity. All objects and facts whatever now ceased to be what they had been for ever before, and received what make and mean- ing it was found convenient to put upon them : what people ate, and drank, and saw, was not what they ate, and drank, and saw, but something fur- ther which they were fond of, because they were ignorant of it. In short, nothing was itself, but 156 THE BEE. something beyond itself ; and by these artifices and amusements the heads of the world were so turned and intoxicated, that at last there was scarcely a sound set of brains left in it. In this state of giddiness and infatuation, it was no very hard task to persuade the already deluded, that there was an actual society and communion between human creatures and spiritual daemons. And when they had thus put people into the power and clutches of the devil, none but they alone could have either skill or strength to bring the prisoners back again. But so far did they carry this dreadful drollery, and so fond were they of it, that to maintain it and themselves in profitable repute, they literally sacri- ficed for it, and made impious victims of number- less old women and other miserable persons, who either through ignorance could not say what they were bid to say, or through madness said what they should not have said. Fear and stupidity made them incapable of defending themselves, and frenzy and infatuation made them confess guilty impossi- bilities, which produced cruel sentences, and then inhuman executions. Some of these wretched mortals finding them- selves either hateful or terrible to all, and befriend- ed by none, and perhaps wanting the common ne- cessaries of life, came at last to abhor themselves as much as they were abhorred by others, and grew willing to be burnt or hanged out of a world, which was no other to them than a scene of persecution and anguish. Others of strong imaginations, and little under- standings, were by positive and repeated charges ON DECEIT AND FALSEHOOD. 157 against them, of committing mischievous and super- natural facts and villanies, deluded to judge of them- selves by the judgment of their enemies, whose weakness or malice prompted them to be accusers. And many have been condemned as witches and dealers with the devil, for no other reason but their knowing more than those who accused, tried, and passed sentence upon them. In these cases credulity is a much greater error than infidelity, and it is safer to believe nothing than too much. A man, that believes little or no- thing of witchcraft, will destroy nobody for being under the imputation of it ; and so far he certainly acts with humanity to others, and safety to himself ; but he that credits all, or too much upon that ar- ticle, is obliged, if he acts consistently with his per- suasion, to kill all those whom he takes to be the killers of mankind ; and such are witches. It would be a jest and a contradiction to say, that he is for sparing them who are harmless of that tribe, since the received notion of their supposed contract with the devil implies that they are engaged by covenant and inclination to do all the mischief they possibly can. I have heard many stories of witches, and read many accusations against them ; but I do not re- member any that would have induced me to have consigned over to the halter or the flame any of those deplorable wretches, who, as they share our likeness and nature, ought to share our compassion, as persons cruelly accused of impossibilities. But we love to delude ourselves, and often fancy or forge an effect, and then set ourselves as gravely as ridiculously to find out the cause. Thus, for ex- ample, when a dream or the hyp has given us false 158 THE BEE, terrors, or imaginary pains, we immediately con- clude that the infernal tyrant owes us a spite, and inflicts his wrath and stripes upon us by the hands of some of his sworn servants amongst us. For this end an old woman is promoted to a seat in Satan's privy council, and appointed his executioner in chief within her district. So ready and civil are we to allow the devil the dominion over us, and even to provide him with butchers and hangmen of our own make and nature. ^ I have often wondered why we did not, in choo- sing our proper officers for Beelzebub, lay the lot ra- ther upon men than women, the former being more bold and robust, and more equal to that bloody ser- vice ; but upon inquiry I find it has been so ordered for two reasons ; first, the men, having the whole direction of this affair, are wise enough to slip their own necks out of the collar ; and, secondly, an old woman is grown by custom the most avoided and most unpitied creature under the sun, the very name carrying contempt and satire in it. And so far in- deed we pay but an uncourtly sort of respect to Satan, in sacrificing to him nothing but the dry sticks of humau nature. We have a wondering quality within us, which finds huge gratification when we see strange feats done, and cannot at the same time see the doer, or the cause. Such actions are sure to be attributed to some witch or demon ; for if we come to find they are slily performed by artists of our own species, and by causes purely natural, our delight dies with our amazement. It is therefore one of the most unthankful offices in the world to go about to expose the mistaken ON DECEIT AND FALSEHOOD. 159 notions of witchcraft and spirits ; it is robbing man- kind of a valuable imagination, and of the privilege of being deceived. Those, who at any time under- took the task, have always met with rough treat- ment and ill language for their pains, and seldom escaped the imputation of atheism, because they would not allow the devil to be too powerful for the Almighty. For my part, I am so much a heretic as to believe, that God Almighty, and not the devil, governs the world. If we inquire what are the common marks and symptoms by which witches are discovered to be such, we shall see how reasonably and mercifully those poor creatures were burnt and hanged, who unhappily fell under that name. In the first place, the old woman must be pro- digiously ugiy : her eyes hollow and red, her face shrivelled ; she goes double, and her voice trembles . It frequently happens, that this rueful figure fright- ens a child into the palpitation of the heart ■ home he runs, and tells his mamma that goody such a one looked at him, and he is very ill. The good woman ' cries but, her dear baby is bewitched, and sends for the parson and the constable. It is, moreover, necessary, that she be very poor. It is true, her master Satan has mines and hidden treasures in his gift ; but no matter, she is for all that very poor, and lives on alms. She goes to Sisly the cook-maid for a dish of broth, or the heel of a loaf, and Sisly denies them to her. The old woman goes away muttering, and perhaps in less than a month's time Sisly hears the voice of a cat, and strains her ancles, which are certain signs that she is bewitched. 160 THE BEE. A farmer sees his cattle die of the murrain, and the sheep of the rot, and poor goody is forced to be the cause of their death, because she was seen talk- ing to herself the evening before such an ewe depart- ed, and had been gathering sticks at the side of the wood where such a cow ran mad. The old woman has always for her companion an old gray cat, which is a disguised devil too, and confederate with goody in works of darkness. They frequently go journeys into Egypt upon a broom- staff in half an hour's time, and now aud then goody and her cat change shapes. The neighbours often overhear them in deep and solemn discourse together, plotting some dreadful mischief you may be sure. There is a famous way of trying witches, recom- mended by King James I. The old woman is tied hand and foot, and thrown into the river, and if she swims she is guilty, and taken out and burnt ; but if she is innocent, she sinks, and is only drowned. The witches are said to meet their master fre- quently in churches and church-yards. I wonder at the boldness of Satan and his congregation, in revelling and playing mounteback farces on conse- crated ground ; and I have as often wondered at the oversight and ill policy of some people in allow- ing it possible. It would have been both dangerous and impious to have treated this subject at one certain time in this ludicrous manner. It used w be managed with all possible gravity, and even terror ; and indeed it was made a tragedy in all its parts, and thousands were sacrificed, or rather murdered, by such evi- THE AUGUSTAN AGE OF ENGLAND. 161 dence and colours, as, God be thanked, we are at this day ashamed of. An old woman may be mi- serable now, and not be hanged for it. AN ACCOUNT OF THE AUGUSTAN AGE OF ENGLAND. The history of the rise of language and learning is calculated to gratify curiosity rather than to satisfy the understanding. An account of that period only, when language and learning arrived at its highest perfection, is the most conducive to real improve- ment, since it at once raises emulation, and directs to the proper objects. The age of Leo X. in Italy is confessed to be the Augustan age with them. The French writers seem agreed to give the same appel- lation to that of Louis XIV. but the English are yet undetermined with respect to themselves. Some have looked upon the writers in the times of Queen Elizabeth as the true standard for future imitation; others have descended to the reign of James I. and others still lower, to that of Charles II. Were I to be permitted to offer an opinion upon this subject, I should readily give my vote for the reign of Queen Anne, or some years before that period. It was then that taste was united to genius ; and, as before, our writers charmed with their strength of thinking, so then they pleased with strength and grace united. In that period of British glory, though no writer attracts our attention singly, yet, like stars lost in each other's bright- ness, they have cast such a lustre upon the age 162 THE BEE. in which they lived, that their minutest transac- tions will be attended to by posterity with a greater eagerness than the most important occurrences of even empires, which have been transacted in greater obscurity. At that period there seemed to be a just balance between patronage and the press. Before it, men were little esteemed whose only merit was genius; and since, men who can prudently be content to catch the public, are certain of living without de- pendence. But the writers of the period of which I am speaking were sufficiently esteemed by the great, and not rewarded enough by booksellers, to set them above independence. Fame consequently then was the truest road to happiness ; a sedulous attention to the mechanical business of the day makes the present never-failing resource. The age of Charles II. which our countrymen term the age of wit and immorality, produced some writers that at once served to improve our language and corrupt our hearts. The king himself had a large share of knowledge, and some wit, and his courtiers were generally men, who had be*en brought up in the school of affliction and experience. For this reason, when the sunshine of their fortune re- turned, they gave too great a loose to pleasure, and language was by them cultivated only as a mode of elegance. Hence it became more enervated, and was dashed with quaintnesses, which gave the pub- lic writings of those times a very illiberal air. L'Estrange, who was by no means so bad a writer as some have represented him, was sunk in party faction, and having generally the worst side of the argument, often had recourse to scolding, pertness, THE AXfGUSTAN AGE OF ENGLAND. 163 and consequently a vulgarity, that discovers itself even in his more liberal compositions. He was the first writer who regularly enlisted himself under the banners of a party for pay, and fought for it through right and wrong for upwards of forty literary cam- paigns. This intrepidity gained him the esteem of Cromwell himself, and the papers he wrote even just before the revolution, almost with the rope about his neck, have his usual characters of impu- dence and perseverance. That he was a standard- writer cannot be disowned, because a great many very eminent authors formed their style by his. But his standard was far from being a just one ; though, when party considerations are set aside, he certainly was possessed of elegance, ease, and per- spicuity. Dryden, though a great and undisputed genius, had the same cast as L' Estrange. Even his plays discover him to be a party man, and the same prin- ciple infects his style in subjects of the lightest na- ture ; but the English tongue, as it stands at pre- sent, is greatly his debtor. He first gave it regular harmony, and discovered its latent powers. It was his pen that formed the Congreves, the Priors, and the Addisons, who succeeded him ; and had it not been for Dryden, we never should have known a Pope, at least in the meridian lustre he now dis- plays. But Dryden's excellences as a writer were not confined to poetry alone. There is in his prose writings an ease and elegance that have never yet been so well united in works of taste or criticism. The English language owes very little to Otway, though, next to Shakspeare, the greatest genius 164 THE BEE. England ever produced in tragedy. His excellences lay in painting directly from nature, in catching every motion just as it rises from the soul, and in all the powers of the moving and pathetic. He ap- j pears to have had no learning, no critical know- ledge, and to have lived in great distress. When he died (which he did in an obscure house near the Minories) he had about him the copy of a tragedy, which it seems he had sold for a trifle to Bentley the bookseller. I have seen an advertisement at ] the end of one of L'Estrange's political papers, of- fering a reward to any one who should bring it to his shop. What an invaluable treasure was there * irretrievably lost, by the ignorance and neglect of j the age he lived in ! Lee had a great command of language, and vast j force of expression, both which the best of our suc- ceeding dramatic poets thought proper to take for ] their models. Rowe in particular seems to have caught that manner, though in all other respects inferior. The other poets of that reign contributed but little towards improving the English tongue, and ; it is not certain whether they did not injure rather than improve it. Immorality has its cant as well as I party, and many shocking expressions now crept into the language, and became the transient fashion of the day. The upper galleries, by the prevalence of party-spirit, were courted with great assiduity, and a horse-laugh following ribaldry was the highest instance of applause, the chastity as well as energy of diction being overlooked or neglected. Virtuous sentiment was recovered, but energy of \ style never was. This, though disregarded in plays ! and party writings, still prevailed amongst men of THE AUGUSTAN AGE OF ENGLAND. 165 character and business. The dispatches of sir Richard Fanshaw, sir William Godolphin, lord Arlington, and many other ministers of state, are all of them, with respect to diction, manly, bold, and nervous. Sir William Temple, though a man of no learning, had great knowledge and experience. He wrote always like a man of sense and a gentle- man, and his style is the model by which the best prose writers in the reign of queen Anne formed theirs. The beauties of Mr. Locke's style, though not so much celebrated, are as striking as that of his understanding. He never says more nor less than he ought, and never makes use of a word that he could have changed for a better. The same ob- servation holds good of Dr. Samuel Clarke. Mr. Locke was a philosopher ; his antagonist Stillingfleet, bishop of Worcester, was a man of learning, and therefore the contest between them was unequal. The clearness of Mr. Locke's head renders his language perspicuous, the learning of Stillingfleet's clouds his. This is an instance of the superiority of good sense over learning towards the improvement of every language. There is nothing peculiar to the language of Archbishop Tillotson, but his manner of writing is inimitable ; for one who reads him, wonders why he himself did not think and speak in that very man- ner. The turn of his periods is agreeable, though artless, and every thing he says seems to flow spon- taneously from inward conviction. Barrow, though greatly hrs superior in learning, falls short of him in other respects. The time seems to be at hand, when justice will be done to Mr. Cowley's prose, as well as poetical 166 THE BEE. writings ; and though his friend doctor Sprat, bishop (rf Rochester, in his diction falls far short of the abilities for which he has been celebrated, yet there is sometimes a happy flow in his periods, some- thing that looks like eloquence. The style of his successor, Atterbury, has been much commended by his friends, which always happens when a man distinguishes himself in party, but there is in it nothing extraordinary. Even the speech which he made for himself at the bar of the House of Lords, before he was sent into exile, is void of eloquence, though it has been cried up by his friends to such a degree, that his enemies have suffered it to pass uncensured. The philosophical manner of lord Shaftesbury's, writing is nearer to that of Cicero than any En* hsh author has yet arrived at, but perhaps, had Cicero written in English, his composition would have greatly exceeded that of our countryman. The diction of the latter is beautiful, but such beauty, as upon nearer inspection carries with it evident symptoms of affectation. This has been attended with very disagreeable consequences. No- thing is so easy to copy as affectation, and his lord- ship s rank and fame have procured him more imi- ' tators in Britain than any other writer I know all j faithfully preserving his blemishes, but unhappily not one of his beauties. Mr. Trenchard and Dr. Davenant were political writers of great abilities in diction, and their pam- phlets are now standards in that way of writing They were followed by Dean Swift, who, though m^ other respects far their superior, never could arise to that manliness and clearness of dicti6n THE AUGUSTAN AGE OF ENGLAND. 167 in political writing for which they were so justly famous. They were all of them exceeded by the late lord Bolingbroke, whose strength lay in that pro- vince ; for as a philosopher and a critic he was ill qualified, being destitute of virtue for the one, and of learning for the other. His writings against sir Robert Walpole are incomparably the best part of his works. The personal and perpetual antipathy he had for that family, to whose places he thought his own abilities had a right, gave a glow to his style, and an edge to his manner, that never yet have been equalled in political writing. His mis- fortunes and disappointments gave his mind a turn, which his friends mistook for philosophy, and at one time of life he had the art to impose the same be- lief upon some of his enemies. His idea of a patriot king, which I reckon (as indeed it was) amongst his writings against sir Robert Walpole, is a masterpiece of diction. Even in his other works his style is excellent ; but where a man either does not, or will not understand the subject he writes on, there must always be a deficiency. In politics he was generally master of what he undertook, in morals never. Mr. Addison, for a happy and natural style, will be always an honour to British literature. His dic- tion indeed wants strength, but it is equal to all the subjects he undertakes to handle, as he never (at least in his finished works) attempts any thing either in the argumentative or demonstrative way. Though sir Richard Steele's reputation as a public writer was owing to his connexions with Mr. Ad- dison, yet, after their intimacy was formed, Steele 168 THE BEE. sunk in his merit as an author. This was not owing so much to the evident superiority on the part of Addison, as to the unnatural efforts which Steele made to equal or eclipse him. This emulation de- stroyed that genuine flow of diction which is dis- coverable in all his former compositions. Whilst their writings engaged attention and the favour of the public, reiterated but unsuccessful endeavours were made towards forming a grammar of the English language. The authors of those ef- forts went upon wrong principles. Instead of en- deavouring to retrench the^absurdities of our lan- guage, and bringing it to a certain criterion, their grammars were no other than a collection of rules attempting to naturalize those absurdities, and bring them under a regular system. Somewhat effectual, however, might have been done towards fixing the standard of the English language, had it not been for the spirit of party. For both Whigs and Tories being ambitious to stand at the head of so great a design, the queen's death happened before any plan of an academy could be resolved on. Meanwhile the necessity of such an institution became every day more apparent. The periodical and political writers, who then swarmed, adopted the very worst manner of L'Estrange, till not only all decency, but all propriety of language, was lost in the nation. Leslie, a pert writer, with some wit and learning, insulted the government every week with the grossest abuse. His style and manner, both of which were illiberal, were imitated by Ridpath, De Foe, Duntan, and others of the oppo- site party, and Toland pleaded the cause of atheism THE AUGUSTAN AGE OF ENGLAND. 169 and immorality in much the same strain ; his sub- ject seemed to debase his diction, and he ever failed most in one, when he grew most licentious in the other. Towards the end of queen Anne's reign, some of the greatest men in England devoted their time to party, and then a much better manner obtained in political writing. Mr. Walpole, Mr. Addison, Mr. Mainwaring, Mr. Steele, and many members of both houses of parliament, drew their pens for the Whigs; but they seem to have been over- matched, though not in argument, yet in writing, by Bolingbroke, Prior, Swift, Arbuthnot, and the other friends of the opposite party. They who op- pose a ministry have always a better field for ridi- cule and reproof than those who defend it. Since that period our writers have either been encouraged above their merits or below them. Some who were possessed of the meanest abilities ac- quired the highest preferments, while others, who seemed born to reflect a lustre upon their age, pe- rished by want and neglect. More, Savage, and Amherst, were possessed of great abilities, yet they were suffered to feel all the miseries that usually attend the ingenious and the imprudent, that attend men of strong passions, and no phlegmatic reserve in their command. At present, were a man to attempt to improve his fortune or increase his friendship by poetry, he would soon feel the anxiety of disappointment. The press lies open, and is a benefactor to every sort of literature but that alone. I am at a loss whether to ascribe this falling off 170 THE BEE. of the public to a vicious taste in the poet, or in them. Perhaps both are to be reprehended. The poe either drily didactive gives us rules, which might appear abstruse even in a system of ethics, triflingly volatile, writes upon the most unworthy ' subjects ; content, if he can give music instead < sense ; content, if he can paint to the imagination without any desires or endeavours to affect; public therefore with justice discard such emptr sound, which has nothing but a jingle, or, what is worse, the unmusical flow of blank verse to recon mend it. The late method also, into which oil newspapers have fallen, of giving an epitome every new publication, must greatly damp th writer's genius. He finds himself in this case at th mercy of men who have neither abilities nor lea ing to distinguish his merit. He finds his own con position mixed with the sordid trash of every da scribbler. There is a sufficient specimen given his work to abate curiosity, and yet so mutilated i to render him contemptible. His first, and perhap his second work, by these means sink, among th crudities of the age, into oblivion. Fame he find begins to turn her back ; he therefore flies to Profi which invites him ; and he enrols himself in th lists of Dulness and of Avarice for life. Yet there are still among us men of the greace abilities, and who in some parts of learning hav surpassed their predecessors : justice and friendsh might here impel me to speak of names which \ shine out to all posterity, but prudence restrains me from what I should otherwise eagerly embrace. Envy might rise against every honoured name I OF THE OPERA IN ENGLAND. 171 should mention, since scarcely one of them has not those who are his enemies, or those who despise him, &c. OF THE OPERA IN ENGLAND. The rise and fall of our amusements pretty much resemble that of empire. They this day flourish without any visible cause for such vigour ; the next they decay, without any reason that can be assigned for their downfall. Some years ago the Italian opera was the only fashionable amusement among our nobility. The managers of the playhouses dreaded it as a mortal enemy, and our very poets listed themselves in the opposition ; at present the house seems deserted, the castrati sing to empty benches, even prince Vologese himself, a youth of great expectations, sings himself out of breath, and rattles his chain to no purpose. To say the truth, the opera, as it is conducted among us, is but a very humdrum amusement ; in other countries the decorations are entirely mag- nificent, the singers all excellent, and the burlettas or interludes quite entertaining ; the best poets com- pose the words, and the best masters the music : but wiVh us it is otherwise; the decorations are but trifling and cheap; the singers, Matei only ex- cepted, but indifferent. Instead of interlude, we have those sorts of skipping dances which are cal- culated for the galleries of the theatre. Every per- former sings his favourite song, and the music is only a medley of old^Italian airs, or some meager modern Capricio, i2 172 THE BEE. When such is the case, it is not much to be won- dered at if the opera is pretty much neglected : the lower orders of people have neither taste nor for- tune to relish such an entertainment ; they would find more satisfaction in the Roast Beef of Old England than in the finest closes of an eunuch ; they sleep amidst all the agony of recitative : on the other hand, people of fortune or taste can hardly be pleased, where there is a visible poverty in the decorations, and an entire want of taste in the composition. Would it not surprise one, that when Metastasio is so well known in England, and so universally admired, the manager or the composer should have recourse to any other operas than those written by him ? I might venture to say, that written by Me- tastasio, put up in the bills of the day, would alone be sufficient to fill a house, since thus the admirers of sense as well as sound might find entertainment. The performers also should be entreated to sing only their parts, without clapping in any of their own favourite airs. I must own, that such songs are generally to me the most disagreeable in the world. Every singer generally chooses a favourite air, not from the excellency of the music, but from the dif- ficulty ; such songs are generally chosen to surprise rather than please, where the performer may show his compass, his breath, and his volubility. Hence proceed those unnatural startings, those unmusical closings, and shakes lengthened out to a painful continuance; such indeed may show a voice, but it must give a truly delicate ear the utmost un- easiness. Such tricks are not music ; neither Corelli nor Pergolesi ever permitted them, and they begin- OF THE OPERA IN ENGLAND. 173 even to be discontinued in Italy, where they first had their rise. And now I am upon the subject, our composers also should affect greater simplicity ; let their bass cliff have all the variety they can give it ; let the body of the music (if I may so express it) be as va- rious as they please, but let them avoid ornament- ing a barren ground-work; let them not attempt by flourishing to cheat us of solid harmony. The works of Mr. Rameau are never heard with- out a surprising effect. I can attribute it only to this simplicity he every where observes, insomuch that some of his finest harmonies are often only octave and unison. This simple manner has greater powers than is generally imagined ; and were not such a demonstration misplaced, I think from the principles of music it might be proved to be most agreeable. But to leave general reflection. With the pre- sent set of performers, the operas, if the conductor thinks proper, may be carried on with some success, since they have all some merit ; if not as actors, at least as singers. Signora Matei is at once both a perfect actress and a very fine singer. She is pos- sessed of a fine sensibility in her manner, and sel- dom indulges those extravagant and unmusical flights of voice complained of before. Cornacini, on the other hand, is a very indifferent actor, has a most unmeaning face, seems not to feel his part, is infected with a passion of showing his compass ; but to recompense all these defects, his voice is melo- dious, he has vast compass and great volubility, his swell and shake are perfectly fine, unless that he continues the latter too long. In short, whatever 174 THE BEE. the defects of his action may be, they are amply re- compensed by his excellency as a singer ; nor can I avoid fancying that he might make a much greater figure in an oratorio than upon the stage. However, upon the whole, I know not whether ever operas can be kept up in England ; they seem to be entirely exotic, and require the nicest manage- ment and care. Instead of this, the care of them is assigned to men unacquainted with the genius and disposition of the people they would amuse, and whose only motives are immediate gain. Whe- ther a discontinuance of such entertainments would be more to the loss or the advantage of the nation^ I will not take upon me to determine, since it is as much our interest to induce foreigners of taste among us on the one hand, as it is to discourage those tri- fling members of society who generally compose the operatical dramatis personce on the other. INDEX. \ No. Page J Introduction 3 Remarks on our Theatres 9 Story of Alcander and Septimius ....... 1 4 Letter from a Traveller 19 Short Account of M. Maupertuis ....... 22 2 On Dress . 24 Particulars relative to Charles XII 31 Happiness dependent on Constitution 37 On our Theatres 41" 3 On the. Use of Language 44 The History of Hypasia 51 On Justice and Generosity 5f) Some Particulars relating to Father Freijo . . . .61 4 Miscellaneous 62 A Flemish Tradition 68 Sagacity of some Insects 72 f Characteristics of Greatness 78 A City Night-Piece 81 5 Upon Political Frugality 84 A Reverie 96 A word or two on High Life Below Stairs . • . 104 Upon unfortunate Merit 1C6 6 On Education 110 The Instability of Worldly Grandeur .... 123 Some Account of the Academies of Italy . . .128 7 Of Eloquence . . • 1 30 Custom and Laws compared . 141 176 INDEX. No. Page Of the Pride and Luxury of the Middling Class of People 145 Sabinus and Olinda 147 Sentiments of a Frenchman on the Temper of the English 151 8 On Deceit and Falsehood 154 Account of the Augustan Age of England . . . . l6l i Of the Opera in England 1 71 T. Davison, Printer, Whitefriars. wmmm mmm mmmmmmmmrngm^ LATELY PUBLISHED, Beautifully printed uniformly with this Volume, Cowper's Task, .... price 2s. 6d. Cowper's Table Talk, . . price 2s. 6d. Cowper's Minor Poems, . price 2s. 6d. {£§> The Volumes may be purchased separately. Orders should be given for Sharpens Editions. ^mmmmmMMmmmm:S^^Mmmmmi -> * ^ *, ^ ^ ^ Deacidified using the Bookkeeper proces Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxidej Treatment Date: March 2009 PreservationTechnolog| A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESEI 111 Thomson Park Drive Cranberry Township, PA 16 (724)779-2111 l*° - ^ 7 < --/- ,0o. -y. y- 4v V 4, * ■> ' o*' A* v ^ <*'■ LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 014 159 256 7