Essays and Tales

Part Two

 
—Pendent opera interrupta.
 

Virg., Æn. iv. 88.

 
The works unfinished and neglected lie.
 

In my last Monday’s paper I gave some general instances of those beautiful strokes which please the reader in the old song of “Chevy-Chase;” I shall here, according to my promise, be more particular, and show that the sentiments in that ballad are extremely natural and poetical, and full of the majestic simplicity which we admire in the greatest of the ancient poets: for which reason I shall quote several passages of it, in which the thought is altogether the same with what we meet in several passages of the “Æneid;” not that I would infer from thence that the poet, whoever he was, proposed to himself any imitation of those passages, but that he was directed to them in general by the same kind of poetical genius, and by the same copyings after nature.

Had this old song been filled with epigrammatical turns and points of wit, it might perhaps have pleased the wrong taste of some readers; but it would never have become the delight of the common people, nor have warmed the heart of Sir Philip Sidney like the sound of a trumpet; it is only nature that can have this effect, and please those tastes which are the most unprejudiced, or the most refined.  I must, however, beg leave to dissent from so great an authority as that of Sir Philip Sidney, in the judgment which he has passed as to the rude style and evil apparel of this antiquated song; for there are several parts in it where not only the thought but the language is majestic, and the numbers sonorous; at least the apparel is much more gorgeous than many of the poets made use of in Queen Elizabeth’s time, as the reader will see in several of the following quotations.

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

 
To drive the deer with hound and horn
   Earl Percy took his way;
The child may rue that is unborn
   The hunting of that day!
 

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

 
Audiet pugnas vitio parentum.
   Rara juventus.
 

Hor., Od. i. 2, 23.

 
Posterity, thinn’d by their fathers’ crimes,
Shall read, with grief, the story of their times.
 

What can be more sounding and poetical, or resemble more the majestic simplicity of the ancients, than the following stanzas?—

 
The stout Earl of Northumberland
   A vow to God did make,
His pleasure in the Scottish woods
   Three summer’s days to take.
 
 
With fifteen hundred bowmen bold,
   All chosen men of might,
Who knew full well, in time of need,
   To aim their shafts aright.
 
 
The hounds ran swiftly through the woods
   The nimble deer to take,
And with their cries the hills and dales
   An echo shrill did make.
 
 
      —Vocat ingenti clamore Cithæron,
Taygetique canes, domitrixque Epidaurus equorum:
Et vox assensu memorum ingeminata remugit.
 

Virg., Georg. iii. 43.

 
Cithæron loudly calls me to my way:
Thy hounds, Taygetus, open, and pursue their prey:
High Epidaurus urges on my speed,
Famed for his hills, and for his horses’ breed:
From hills and dales the cheerful cries rebound:
For Echo hunts along, and propagates the sound.
 

Dryden.

 
Lo, yonder doth Earl Douglas come,
   His men in armour bright;
Full twenty hundred Scottish spears,
   All marching in our sight.
 
 
All men of pleasant Tividale,
   Fast by the river Tweed, &c.
 

The country of the Scotch warrior, described in these two last verses, has a fine romantic situation, and affords a couple of smooth words for verse.  If the reader compares the foregoing six lines of the song with the following Latin verses, he will see how much they are written in the spirit of Virgil:

 
Adversi campo apparent: hastasque reductis
Protendunt longè dextris, et spicula vibrant:—
Quique altum Præneste viri, quique arva Gabinæ
Junonis, gelidumque Anienem, et roscida rivis
Hernica saxa colunt:—qui rosea rura Velini;
Qui Tetricæ horrentes rupes, montemq ue Severum,
Casperiamque colunt, porulosque et flumen Himellæ:
Qui Tyberim Fabarimque bibunt.
 

Æn. xi. 605, vii. 682, 712.

 
Advancing in a line they couch their spears—
—Præneste sends a chosen band,
With those who plough Saturnia’s Gabine land:
Besides the succours which cold Anien yields:
The rocks of Hernicus—besides a band
That followed from Velinum’s dewy land—
And mountaineers that from Severus came:
And from the craggy cliffs of Tetrica;
And those where yellow Tiber takes his way,
And where Himella’s wanton waters play:
Casperia sends her arms, with those that lie
By Fabaris, and fruitful Foruli.
 

Dryden.

But to proceed:

 
Earl Douglas on a milk-white steed,
   Most like a baron bold,
Rode foremost of the company,
   Whose armour shone like gold.
 
 
Turnus, ut antevolans tardum præcesserat agmen, &c.
Vidisti, quo Turnus equo, quibus ibat in armis
Aurcus—
 

Æn. ix. 47, 269.

 
Our English archers bent their bows,
   Their hearts were good and true;
At the first flight of arrows sent,
   Full threescore Scots they slew.
 
 
They closed full fast on ev’ry side,
   No slackness there was found;
And many a gallant gentleman
   Lay gasping on the ground.
 
 
With that there came an arrow keen
   Out of an English bow,
Which struck Earl Douglas to the heart,
   A deep and deadly blow.
 

Æneas was wounded after the same manner by an unknown hand in the midst of a parley.

 
Has inter voces, media inter talia verba,
Ecce viro stridens alis allapsa sagitta est,
Incertum quâ pulsa manu—
 

Æn. xii. 318.

 
Thus, while he spake, unmindful of defence,
A winged arrow struck the pious prince;
But whether from a human hand it came,
Or hostile god, is left unknown by fame.
 

Dryden.

But of all the descriptive parts of this song, there are none more beautiful than the four following stanzas, which have a great force and spirit in them, and are filled with very natural circumstances.  The thought in the third stanza was never touched by any other poet, and is such a one as would have shone in Homer or in Virgil:

 
So thus did both these nobles die,
   Whose courage none could stain;
An English archer then perceived
   The noble Earl was slain.
 
 
He had a bow bent in his hand,
   Made of a trusty tree,
An arrow of a cloth-yard long
   Unto the head drew he.
 
 
Against Sir Hugh Montgomery
   So right his shaft he set,
The gray-goose wing that was thereon
   In his heart-blood was wet.
 
 
This fight did last from break of day
   Till setting of the sun;
For when they rung the ev’ning bell
   The battle scarce was done.
 

One may observe, likewise, that in the catalogue of the slain, the author has followed the example of the greatest ancient poets, not only in giving a long list of the dead, but by diversifying it with little characters of particular persons.

 
And with Earl Douglas there was slain
   Sir Hugh Montgomery,
Sir Charles Carrel, that from the field
   One foot would never fly.
 
 
Sir Charles Murrel of Ratcliff too,
   His sister’s son was he;
Sir David Lamb so well esteem’d,
   Yet saved could not be.
 

The familiar sound in these names destroys the majesty of the description; for this reason I do not mention this part of the poem but to show the natural cast of thought which appears in it, as the two last verses look almost like a translation of Virgil.

 
—Cadit et Ripheus justissimus unus
Qui fuit in Teucris et servantissimus æqui.
Diis aliter visum.
 

Æn. ii. 426.

 
Then Ripheus fell in the unequal fight,
Just of his word, observant of the right:
Heav’n thought not so.
 

Dryden.

In the catalogue of the English who fell, Witherington’s behaviour is in the same manner particularised very artfully, as the reader is prepared for it by that account which is given of him in the beginning of the battle; though I am satisfied your little buffoon readers, who have seen that passage ridiculed in “Hudibras,” will not be able to take the beauty of it: for which reason I dare not so much as quote it.

 
Then stept a gallant ’squire forth,
   Witherington was his name,
Who said, “I would not have it told
   To Henry our king for shame,
 
 
“That e’er my captain fought on foot,
   And I stood looking on.”
 

We meet with the same heroic sentiment in Virgil:

 
Non pudet, O Rutuli, cunctis pro talibus unam
Objectare animam? numerone an viribus æqui
Non sumus?
 

Æn. xii. 229

 
For shame, Rutilians, can you hear the sight
Of one exposed for all, in single fight?
Can we before the face of heav’n confess
Our courage colder, or our numbers less?
 

Dryden.

What can be more natural, or more moving, than the circumstances in which he describes the behaviour of those women who had lost their husbands on this fatal day?

 
Next day did many widows come
   Their husbands to bewail;
They wash’d their wounds in brinish tears,
   But all would not prevail.
 
 
Their bodies bathed in purple blood,
   They bore with them away;
They kiss’d them dead a thousand times,
   When they were clad in clay.
 

Thus we see how the thoughts of this poem, which naturally arise from the subject, are always simple, and sometimes exquisitely noble; that the language is often very sounding, and that the whole is written with a true poetical spirit.

If this song had been written in the Gothic manner which is the delight of all our little wits, whether writers or readers, it would not have hit the taste of so many ages, and have pleased the readers of all ranks and conditions.  I shall only beg pardon for such a profusion of Latin quotations; which I should not have made use of, but that I feared my own judgment would have looked too singular on such a subject, had not I supported it by the practice and authority of Virgil.

A DREAM OF THE PAINTERS

 
—Animum picturâ pascit inani.
 

Virg., Æn. i. 464.

 
And with the shadowy picture feeds his mind.
 

When the weather hinders me from taking my diversions without-doors, I frequently make a little party, with two or three select friends, to visit anything curious that may be seen under cover.  My principal entertainments of this nature are pictures, insomuch that when I have found the weather set in to be very bad, I have taken a whole day’s journey to see a gallery that is furnished by the hands of great masters.  By this means, when the heavens are filled with clouds, when the earth swims in rain, and all nature wears a lowering countenance, I withdraw myself from these uncomfortable scenes, into the visionary worlds of art; where I meet with shining landscapes, gilded triumphs, beautiful faces, and all those other objects that fill the mind with gay ideas, and disperse that gloominess which is apt to hang upon it in those dark disconsolate seasons.

I was some weeks ago in a course of these diversions, which had taken such an entire possession of my imagination that they formed in it a short morning’s dream, which I shall communicate to my reader, rather as the first sketch and outlines of a vision, than as a finished piece.

I dreamt that I was admitted into a long, spacious gallery, which had one side covered with pieces of all the famous painters who are now living, and the other with the works of the greatest masters that are dead.

On the side of the living, I saw several persons busy in drawing, colouring, and designing.  On the side of the dead painters, I could not discover more than one person at work, who was exceeding slow in his motions, and wonderfully nice in his touches.

I was resolved to examine the several artists that stood before me, and accordingly applied myself to the side of the living.  The first I observed at work in this part of the gallery was Vanity, with his hair tied behind him in a riband, and dressed like a Frenchman.  All the faces he drew were very remarkable for their smiles, and a certain smirking air which he bestowed indifferently on every age and degree of either sex.  The toujours gai appeared even in his judges, bishops, and Privy Councillors.  In a word, all his men were petits maïtres, and all his women coquettes.  The drapery of his figures was extremely well suited to his faces, and was made up of all the glaring colours that could be mixed together; every part of the dress was in a flutter, and endeavoured to distinguish itself above the rest.

On the left hand of Vanity stood a laborious workman, who I found was his humble admirer, and copied after him.  He was dressed like a German, and had a very hard name that sounded something like Stupidity.

The third artist that I looked over was Fantasque, dressed like a Venetian scaramouch.  He had an excellent hand at chimera, and dealt very much in distortions and grimaces.  He would sometimes affright himself with the phantoms that flowed from his pencil.  In short, the most elaborate of his pieces was at best but a terrifying dream: and one could say nothing more of his finest figures than that they were agreeable monsters.

The fourth person I examined was very remarkable for his hasty hand, which left his pictures so unfinished that the beauty in the picture, which was designed to continue as a monument of it to posterity, faded sooner than in the person after whom it was drawn.  He made so much haste to despatch his business that he neither gave himself time to clean his pencils nor mix his colours.  The name of this expeditious workman was Avarice.

Not far from this artist I saw another of a quite different nature, who was dressed in the habit of a Dutchman, and known by the name of Industry.  His figures were wonderfully laboured.  If he drew the portraiture of a man, he did not omit a single hair in his face; if the figure of a ship, there was not a rope among the tackle that escaped him.  He had likewise hung a great part of the wall with night-pieces, that seemed to show themselves by the candles which were lighted up in several parts of them; and were so inflamed by the sunshine which accidentally fell upon them, that at first sight I could scarce forbear crying out “Fire!”

The five foregoing artists were the most considerable on this side the gallery; there were indeed several others whom I had not time to look into.  One of them, however, I could not forbear observing, who was very busy in retouching the finest pieces, though he produced no originals of his own.  His pencil aggravated every feature that was before overcharged, loaded every defect, and poisoned every colour it touched.  Though this workman did so much mischief on the side of the living, he never turned his eye towards that of the dead.  His name was Envy.

Having taken a cursory view of one side of the gallery, I turned myself to that which was filled by the works of those great masters that were dead; when immediately I fancied myself standing before a multitude of spectators, and thousands of eyes looking upon me at once: for all before me appeared so like men and women, that I almost forgot they were pictures.  Raphael’s pictures stood in one row, Titian’s in another, Guido Rheni’s in a third.  One part of the wall was peopled by Hannabal Carrache, another by Correggio, and another by Rubens.  To be short, there was not a great master among the dead who had not contributed to the embellishment of this side of the gallery.  The persons that owed their being to these several masters appeared all of them to be real and alive, and differed among one another only in the variety of their shapes, complexions, and clothes; so that they looked like different nations of the same species.

Observing an old man, who was the same person I before mentioned, as the only artist that was at work on this side of the gallery, creeping up and down from one picture to another, and retouching all the fine pieces that stood before me, I could not but be very attentive to all his motions.  I found his pencil was so very light that it worked imperceptibly, and after a thousand touches scarce produced any visible effect in the picture on which he was employed.  However, as he busied himself incessantly, and repeated touch after touch without rest or intermission, he wore off insensibly every little disagreeable gloss that hung upon a figure.  He also added such a beautiful brown to the shades, and mellowness to the colours, that he made every picture appear more perfect than when it came fresh from the master’s pencil.  I could not forbear looking upon the face of this ancient workman, and immediately by the long lock of hair upon his forehead, discovered him to be Time.

Whether it were because the thread of my dream was at an end I cannot tell, but, upon my taking a survey of this imaginary old man, my sleep left me.

SPARE TIME

Part One

 
         —Spatio brevi
Spem longam reseces: dum loquimur, fugerit invida
Ætas: carpe diem, quâm minimum credula postero.
 

Hor., Od. i. 11, 6.

 
Thy lengthen’d hope with prudence bound,
   Proportion’d to the flying hour:
While thus we talk in careless ease,
   Our envious minutes wing their flight;
Then swift the fleeting pleasure seize,
   Nor trust to-morrow’s doubtful light.
 

Francis.

We all of us complain of the shortness of time, saith Seneca, and yet have much more than we know what to do with.  Our lives, says he, are spent either in doing nothing at all, or in doing nothing to the purpose, or in doing nothing that we ought to do.  We are always complaining our days are few, and acting as though there would be no end of them.  That noble philosopher described our inconsistency with ourselves in this particular, by all those various turns of expression and thoughts which are peculiar to his writings.

I often consider mankind as wholly inconsistent with itself in a point that bears some affinity to the former.  Though we seem grieved at the shortness of life in general, we are wishing every period of it at an end.  The minor longs to be of age, then to be a man of business, then to make up an estate, then to arrive at honours, then to retire.  Thus, although the whole of life is allowed by every one to be short, the several divisions of it appear long and tedious.  We are for lengthening our span in general, but would fain contract the parts of which it is composed.  The usurer would be very well satisfied to have all the time annihilated that lies between the present moment and next quarter-day.  The politician would be contented to lose three years in his life, could he place things in the posture which he fancies they will stand in after such a revolution of time.  The lover would be glad to strike out of his existence all the moments that are to pass away before the happy meeting.  Thus, as fast as our time runs, we should be very glad, in most part of our lives, that it ran much faster than it does.  Several hours of the day hang upon our hands, nay, we wish away whole years; and travel through time as through a country filled with many wild and empty wastes, which we would fain hurry over, that we may arrive at those several little settlements or imaginary points of rest which are dispersed up and down in it.

If we divide the life of most men into twenty parts, we shall find that at least nineteen of them are mere gaps and chasms, which are neither filled with pleasure nor business.  I do not, however, include in this calculation the life of those men who are in a perpetual hurry of affairs, but of those only who are not always engaged in scenes of action; and I hope I shall not do an unacceptable piece of service to these persons, if I point out to them certain methods for the filling up their empty spaces of life.  The methods I shall propose to them are as follow.

The first is the exercise of virtue, in the most general acceptation of the word.  That particular scheme which comprehends the social virtues may give employment to the most industrious temper, and find a man in business more than the most active station of life.  To advise the ignorant, relieve the needy, comfort the afflicted, are duties that fall in our way almost every day of our lives.  A man has frequent opportunities of mitigating the fierceness of a party; of doing justice to the character of a deserving man; of softening the envious, quieting the angry, and rectifying the prejudiced; which are all of them employments suited to a reasonable nature, and bring great satisfaction to the person who can busy himself in them with discretion.

There is another kind of virtue that may find employment for those retired hours in which we are altogether left to ourselves, and destitute of company and conversation; I mean that intercourse and communication which every reasonable creature ought to maintain with the great Author of his being.  The man who lives under an habitual sense of the Divine presence, keeps up a perpetual cheerfulness of temper, and enjoys every moment the satisfaction of thinking himself in company with his dearest and best of friends.  The time never lies heavy upon him: it is impossible for him to be alone.  His thoughts and passions are the most busied at such hours when those of other men are the most inactive.  He no sooner steps out of the world but his heart burns with devotion, swells with hope, and triumphs in the consciousness of that Presence which everywhere surrounds him; or, on the contrary, pours out its fears, its sorrows, its apprehensions, to the great Supporter of its existence.

I have here only considered the necessity of a man’s being virtuous, that he may have something to do; but if we consider further that the exercise of virtue is not only an amusement for the time it lasts, but that its influence extends to those parts of our existence which lie beyond the grave, and that our whole eternity is to take its colour from those hours which we here employ in virtue or in vice, the argument redoubles upon us for putting in practice this method of passing away our time.

When a man has but a little stock to improve, and has opportunities of turning it all to good account, what shall we think of him if he suffers nineteen parts of it to lie dead, and perhaps employs even the twentieth to his ruin or disadvantage?  But, because the mind cannot be always in its fervours, nor strained up to a pitch of virtue, it is necessary to find out proper employments for it in its relaxations.

The next method, therefore, that I would propose to fill up our time, should be useful and innocent diversions.  I must confess I think it is below reasonable creatures to be altogether conversant in such diversions as are merely innocent, and have nothing else to recommend them but that there is no hurt in them.  Whether any kind of gaming has even thus much to say for itself, I shall not determine; but I think it is very wonderful to see persons of the best sense passing away a dozen hours together in shuffling and dividing a pack of cards, with no other conversation but what is made up of a few game phrases, and no other ideas but those of black or red spots ranged together in different figures.  Would not a man laugh to hear any one of this species complaining that life is short?

The stage might be made a perpetual source of the most noble and useful entertainments, were it under proper regulations.

But the mind never unbends itself so agreeably as in the conversation of a well-chosen friend.  There is indeed no blessing of life that is any way comparable to the enjoyment of a discreet and virtuous friend.  It eases and unloads the mind, clears and improves the understanding, engenders thoughts and knowledge, animates virtue and good resolutions, soothes and allays the passions, and finds employment for most of the vacant hours of life.

Next to such an intimacy with a particular person, one would endeavour after a more general conversation with such as are able to entertain and improve those with whom they converse, which are qualifications that seldom go asunder.

There are many other useful amusements of life which one would endeavour to multiply, that one might on all occasions have recourse to something rather than suffer the mind to lie idle, or run adrift with any passion that chances to rise in it.

A man that has a taste of music, painting, or architecture, is like one that has another sense, when compared with such as have no relish of those arts.  The florist, the planter, the gardener, the husbandman, when they are only as accomplishments to the man of fortune, are great reliefs to a country life, and many ways useful to those who are possessed of them.

But of all the diversions of life, there is none so proper to fill up its empty spaces as the reading of useful and entertaining authors.  But this I shall only touch upon, because it in some measure interferes with the third method, which I shall propose in another paper, for the employment of our dead, inactive hours, and which I shall only mention in general to be the pursuit of knowledge.