No. 186
[Steele.
Thursday, June 15, to Saturday, June 17, 1710
Emitur sola virtute potestas.
Claudian, De Tertio Consulatu Honorii, 188.
Sheer Lane, June 16
As it has been the endeavour of these our labours to extirpate from among the polite or busy part of mankind, all such as are either prejudicial or insignificant to society; so it ought to be no less our study to supply the havoc we have made by an exact care of the growing generation. But when we begin to inculcate proper precepts to the children of this island, except we could take them out of their nurses' arms, we see an amendment is almost impracticable; for we find the whole species of our youth and grown men is incorrigibly prepossessed with vanity, pride, or ambition, according to the respective pursuits to which they turn themselves: by which means the world is infatuated with the love of appearances instead of things. Thus the vain man takes praise for honour, the proud man ceremony for respect, the ambitious man power for glory. These three characters are, indeed, of very near resemblance, but differently received by mankind. Vanity makes men ridiculous; pride, odious; and ambition, terrible. The foundation of all which is, that they are grounded upon falsehood: for if men, instead of studying to appear considerable, were in their own hearts possessors of the requisites for esteem, the acceptance they otherwise unfortunately aim at would be as inseparable from them, as approbation is from truth itself. By this means they would have some rule to walk by; and they may ever be assured, that a good cause of action will certainly receive a suitable effect. It may be a useful hint in such cases for a man to ask of himself, whether he really is what he has a mind to be thought?310 If he is, he need not give himself much further anxiety. "What will the world say?" is the common question in matters of difficulty; as if the terror lay wholly in the sense which others, and not we ourselves, shall have of our actions. From this one source arise all the impostors in every art and profession, in all places, among all persons in conversation, as well as in business. Hence it is, that a vain fellow takes twice as much pains to be ridiculous, as would make him sincerely agreeable.
Can any one be better fashioned, better bred, or has any one more good nature, than Damasippus? But the whole scope of his looks and actions tends so immediately to gain the good opinion of all he converses with, that he loses it for that only reason. As it is the nature of vanity to impose false shows for truths, so does it also turn real possessions into imaginary ones. Damasippus, by assuming to himself what he has not, robs himself of what he has.
There is nothing more necessary to establish reputation, than to suspend the enjoyment of it. He that cannot bear the sense of merit with silence, must of necessity destroy it: for fame being the general mistress of mankind, whoever gives it to himself, insults all to whom he relates any circumstances to his own advantage. He is considered as an open ravisher of that beauty, for whom all others pine in silence. But some minds are so incapable of any temperance in this particular, that on every second in their discourse you may observe an earnestness in their eyes, which shows they wait for your approbation, and perhaps the next instant cast an eye on a glass to see how they like themselves. Walking the other day in a neighbouring Inn of Court, I saw a more happy and more graceful orator than I ever before had heard or read of. A youth, of about nineteen years of age, was in an Indian nightgown and laced cap pleading a cause before a glass: the young fellow had a very good air, and seemed to hold his brief in his hand rather to help his action, than that he wanted notes for his further information. When I first began to observe him, I feared he would soon be alarmed; but he was so zealous for his client, and so favourably received by the court, that he went on with great fluency to inform the bench, that he humbly hoped they would not let the merit of the cause suffer by the youth and inexperience of the pleader; that in all things he submitted to their candour; and modestly desired they would not conclude, but that strength of argument and force of reason may be consistent with grace of action and comeliness of person.
To me, who see people every day in the midst of crowds (whomsoever they seem to address to) talk only to themselves and of themselves, this orator was not so extravagant a man as perhaps another would have thought him; but I took part in his success, and was very glad to find he had in his favour judgment and costs without any manner of opposition.
The effects of pride and vanity are of consequence only to the proud and the vain, and tend to no further ill than what is personal to themselves, in preventing their progress in anything that is worthy and laudable, and creating envy instead of emulation of superior virtue. These ill qualities are to be found only in such as have so little minds, as to circumscribe their thoughts and designs within what properly relates to the value which they think due to their dear and amiable selves: but ambition, which is the third great impediment to honour and virtue, is a fault of such as think themselves born for moving in a higher orb, and prefer being powerful and mischievous to being virtuous and obscure. The parent of this mischief in life, so far as to regulate it into schemes, and make it possess a man's whole heart, without his believing himself a demon, was Machiavelli. He first taught, that a man must necessarily appear weak to be honest. Hence it gains upon the imagination, that a great is not so despicable as a little villain; and men are insensibly led to a belief, that the aggravation of crimes is the diminution of them. Hence the impiety of thinking one thing and speaking another. In pursuance of this empty and unsatisfying dream, to betray, to undermine, to kill in themselves all natural sentiments of love to friends or country, is the willing practice of such as are thirsty of power, for any other reason than that of being useful and acceptable to mankind.
ADVERTISEMENT
Whereas Mr. Bickerstaff has lately received a letter out of Ireland, dated June 9, importing that he is grown very dull, for the postage of which Mr. Morphew charges one shilling; and another without date of place or time, for which he the said Morphew charges twopence: it is desired, that for the future his courteous and uncourteous readers will go a little further in expressing their good and ill-will, and pay for the carriage of their letters, otherwise the intended pleasure or pain which is designed for Mr. Bickerstaff will be wholly disappointed.
No. 187
[Steele.
Saturday, June 17, to Tuesday, June 20, 1710
——Pudet hæc opprobria nobis
Et dici potuisse et non potuisse refelli.
Ovid, Met. i. 758.
From my own Apartment, June 19
Pasquin of Rome to Isaac Bickerstaff of London. 311
"His Holiness is gone to Castel Gandolpho, much discomposed at some late accounts from the missionaries in your island: for a committee of cardinals, which lately sat for the reviving the force of some obsolete doctrines, and drawing up amendments to certain points of faith, have represented the Church of Rome to be in great danger, from a treatise written by a learned Englishman, which carries spiritual power much higher than we could have dared to have attempted even here. His book is called, 'An Epistolary Discourse, proving from the Scriptures and the First Fathers, that the Soul is a Principle naturally Mortal: wherein is proved, that none have the Power of giving this Divine immortalising Spirit since the Apostles, but the Bishops.' By Henry Dodwell, A.M.312 The assertion appeared to our literati so short and effectual method of subjecting the laity, that it is feared auricular confession and absolution will not be capable of keeping the clergy of Rome in any degree of greatness, in competition with such teachers whose flocks shall receive this opinion. What gives the greater jealousy here is, that in the catalogue of treatises which have been lately burnt within the British territories, there is no mention made of this learned work; which circumstance is a sort of implication, that the tenet is not held erroneous, but that the doctrine is received amongst you as orthodox. The youth of this place are very much divided in opinion, whether a very memorable quotation which the author repeats out of Tertullian, be not rather of the style and manner of Meursius? In illo ipso voluptatis æstu quo genitale virus expellitur, nonne aliquid de anima quoque, sentimus exire, atque, adeo marcessimus et devigescimus cum lucis detrimento? This piece of Latin goes no further than to tell us how our fathers got us, so that we are still at a loss how we afterwards commence eternal; for creando infunditur, et infundendo creatur, which is mentioned soon after, may allude only to flesh and blood as well as the former. Your readers in this city, some of whom have very much approved the warmth with which you have attacked free-thinkers, atheists, and other enemies to religion and virtue, are very much disturbed that you have given them no account of this remarkable dissertation: and I am employed by them to desire you would with all possible expedition send me over the ceremony of the creation of souls, as well as a list of all the mortal and immortal men within the dominions of Great Britain. When you have done me this favour, I must trouble you for other tokens of your kindness, and particularly I desire you would let me have the religious handkerchief,313 which is of late so much worn in England, for I have promised to make a present of it to a courtesan of a French Minister.
"Letters from the frontiers of France inform us, that a young gentleman314 who was to have been created a cardinal on the next promotion, has put off his design of coming to Rome so soon as was intended, having, as it is said, received letters from Great Britain, wherein several virtuosi of that island have desired him to suspend his resolutions towards a monastic life, till the British grammarians shall publish their explication of the words 'indefeasible' and 'revolution.' According as these two hard terms are made to fit the mouths of the people, this gentleman takes his measures for his journey hither.
"Your 'New Bedlam' has been read and considered by some of your countrymen among us; and one gentleman, who is now here as a traveller, says your design is impracticable, for that there can be no place large enough to contain the number of your lunatics. He advises you therefore to name the ambient sea for the boundary of your hospital. If what he says be true, I do not see how you can think of any other enclosure; for according to his discourse, the whole people are taken with a vertigo; great and popular actions are received with coldness and discontent; ill news hoped for with impatience; heroes in your service are treated with calumny, while criminals pass through your towns with acclamations.315
"This Englishman went on to say, you seemed at present to flag under a satiety of success, as if you wanted misfortune as a necessary vicissitude. Yet, alas! though men have but a cold relish of prosperity, quick is the anguish of the contrary fortune. He proceeded to make comparisons of times, seasons, and great incidents. After which he grew too learned for my understanding, and talked of Hanno the Carthaginian, and his irreconcilable hatred to the glorious commander Hannibal. Hannibal, said he, was able to march to Rome itself, and brought that ambitious people, which designed no less than the empire of the world, to sue for peace in the most abject and servile manner; when faction at home detracted from the glory of his actions, and after many artifices, at last prevailed with the Senate to recall him from the midst of his victories, and in the very instant when he was to reap the benefit of all his toils, by reducing the then common enemy of all nations which had liberty to reason. When Hannibal heard the message of the Carthaginian senators who were sent to recall him, he was moved with a generous and disdainful sorrow, and is reported to have said, 'Hannibal then must be conquered not by the arms of the Romans, whom he has often put to flight, but by the envy and detraction of his countrymen. Nor shall Scipio triumph so much in his fall as Hanno, who will smile to have purchased the ruin of Hannibal, though attended with the fall of Carthage.'316
"I am, Sir, &c."Pasquin."
Will's Coffee-house, June 19
There is a sensible satisfaction in observing the countenance and action of the people on some occasions. To gratify myself in this pleasure, I came hither with all speed this evening with an account of the surrender of Douay. As soon as the battle-critics317 heard it, they immediately drew some comfort, in that it must have cost us a great deal of men. Others were so negligent of the glory of their country, that they went on in their discourse on the full house which is to be at "Othello" on Thursday, and the curiosity they should go with to see Wilks play a part so very different from what he had ever before appeared in, together with the expectation that was raised in the gay part of the town on that occasion.
This universal indolence and inattention among us to things that concern the public, made me look back with the highest reverence on the glorious instances in antiquity, of a contrary behaviour in the like circumstances. Harry English, upon observing the room so little roused on the news, fell into the same way of thinking. "How unlike," said he, "Mr. Bickerstaff, are we to the old Romans! There was not a subject of their State but thought himself as much concerned in the honour of his country, as the first officer of the commonwealth. How do I admire the messenger, who ran with a thorn in his foot to tell the news of a victory to the Senate! He had not leisure for his private pain, till he had expressed his public joy; nor could he suffer as a man, till he had triumphed as a Roman."
No. 188
[Steele.
Tuesday, June 20, to Thursday, June 22, 1710
Quæ regio in terris nostri non plena laboris?
Virg., Æn. i. 460.
From my own Apartment. June 21
I was this morning looking over my letters that I have lately received from my several correspondents; some of which referring to my late papers, I have laid aside, with an intent to give my reader a sight of them. The first criticises upon my greenhouse, and is as follows:
"Mr. Bickerstaff, "South Wales, June 7.
"This letter comes to you from my orangery, which I intend to reform as much as I can, according to your ingenious model, and shall only beg of you to communicate to me your secret of preserving grass-plots in a covered room;318 for in the climate where my country-seat lies, they require rain and dews as well as sun and fresh air, and cannot live upon such fine food as your 'sifted weather.' I must likewise desire you to write over your greenhouse the following motto:
"Hic ver perpetuum, atque alienis mensibus æstas.
instead of your
"O! qui me gelidis sub montibus Hæmi
Sistat, et ingenti ramorum protegat umbrâ! 319
which, under favour, is the panting of one in summer after cool shades, and not of one in winter after a summer-house. The rest of your plan is very beautiful; and that your friend who has so well described it may enjoy it many winters, is the hearty wish of
"His and your Unknown," &c.
This oversight of a grass-plot in my friend's greenhouse, puts me in mind of a like inconsistency in a celebrated picture, where Moses is represented as striking a rock, and the Children of Israel quenching their thirst at the waters that flow from it, and run through a beautiful landscape of groves and meadows, which could not flourish in a place where water was to have been found only by a miracle.
The next letter comes to me from a Kentish yeoman, who is very angry with me for my advice to parents, occasioned by the amours of Sylvia and Philander, as related in my paper, No. 185:
"Squire Bickerstaff,
"I don't know by what chance one of your Tatlers is got into my family, and has almost turned the brains of my eldest daughter Winifred, who has been so undutiful as to fall in love of her own head, and tells me a foolish heathen story that she has read in your paper to persuade me to give my consent. I am too wise to let children have their own wills in a business like marriage. It is a matter in which neither I myself, nor any of my kindred, were ever humoured. My wife and I never pretended to love one another like your Sylvias and Philanders; and yet if you saw our fireside, you would be satisfied we are not always a-squabbling. For my part, I think that where man and woman come together by their own good liking, there is so much fondling and fooling, that it hinders young people from minding their business. I must therefore desire you to change your note, and instead of advising us old folks, who perhaps have more wit than yourself, to let Sylvia know, that she ought to act like a dutiful daughter, and marry the man that she does not care for. Our great-grandmothers were all bid to marry first, and love would come afterwards; and I don't see why their daughters should follow their own inventions. I am resolved Winifred shan't.
"Yours," &c.
This letter is a natural picture of ordinary contracts, and of the sentiments of those minds that lie under a kind of intellectual rusticity. This trifling occasion made me run over in my imagination the many scenes I have observed of the married condition, wherein the quintessence of pleasure and pain are represented as they accompany that state, and no other. It is certain, there are a thousand thousand like the above-mentioned yeoman and his wife, who are never highly pleased or distasted in their whole lives: but when we consider the more informed part of mankind, and look upon their behaviour, it then appears that very little of their time is indifferent, but generally spent in the most anxious vexation, or the highest satisfaction. Shakespeare has admirably represented both the aspects of this state in the most excellent tragedy of "Othello." In the character of Desdemona, he runs through all the sentiments of a virtuous maid and a tender wife. She is captivated by his virtue, and faithful to him, as well from that motive, as regard to her own honour. Othello is a great and noble spirit, misled by the villany of a false friend to suspect her innocence, and resents it accordingly. When after the many instances of passion the wife is told her husband is jealous, her simplicity makes her incapable of believing it, and say, after such circumstances as would drive another woman into distraction,
"I think the sun where he was born
Drew all such humours from him."320
This opinion of him is so just, that his noble and tender heart beats itself to pieces before he can affront her with the mention of his jealousy; and owns, this suspicion has blotted out all the sense of glory and happiness which before it was possessed with, when he laments himself in the warm allusions of a mind accustomed to entertainments so very different from the pangs of jealousy and revenge. How moving is his sorrow, when he cries out as follows:
"I had been happy, if the general camp,
Pioneers and all, had tasted her sweet body,
So I had nothing known. Oh now! for ever
Farewell the tranquil mind! Farewell content,
Farewell the plumèd troops, and the big wars,
That make ambition virtue! Oh farewell!
Farewell the neighing steed and the shrill trump,
The spirit-stirring drum, th' ear-piercing fife,
The royal banner, and all quality,
Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war!
And oh ye mortal engines! whose rude throats
The immortal Jove's dread clamours counterfeit,
Farewell! Othello's occupation's gone. 321"
I believe I may venture to say, there is not in any other part of Shakespeare's works more strong and lively pictures of nature than in this. I shall therefore steal incog. to see it, out of curiosity to observe how Wilks and Cibber touch those places where Betterton322 and Sandford323 so very highly excelled. But now I am got into a discourse of acting, with which I am so professedly pleased, I shall conclude this paper with a note I have just received from the two ingenious friends, Mr. Penkethman324 and Mr. Bullock:325
"Sir,
"Finding by your paper, No. 182, that you are drawing parallels between the greatest actors of the age; as you have already begun with Mr. Wilks and Mr. Cibber, we desire you would do the same justice to your humble Servants,
"William Bullock, and"William Penkethman."
For the information of posterity, I shall comply with this letter, and set these two great men in such a light as Sallust has placed his Cato and Cæsar.
Mr. William Bullock and Mr. William Penkethman are of the same age, profession, and sex. They both distinguish themselves in a very particular manner under the discipline of the crabtree, with this only difference, that Mr. Bullock has the most agreeable squawl, and Mr. Penkethman the more graceful shrug. Penkethman devours a cold chicken with great applause; Bullock's talent lies chiefly in asparagus. Penkethman is very dexterous at conveying himself under a table; Bullock is no less active at jumping over a stick. Mr. Penkethman has a great deal of money, but Mr. Bullock is the taller man.
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