DANIEL DEFOE 1660-1731
CAPTAIN SINGLETON IN CHINA
In the meantime, we came to an anchor under a little island in the
latitude of 23 degrees 28 minutes, being just under the northern
tropic, and about twenty leagues from the island. Here we lay thirteen
days, and began to be very uneasy for my friend William, for they had
promised to be back again in four days, which they might very easily
have done. However, at the end of thirteen days, we saw three sail
coming directly to us, which a little surprised us all at first, not
knowing what might be the case; and we began to put ourselves in a
posture of defence: but as they came nearer us, we were soon satisfied,
for the first vessel was that which William went in, who carried a flag
of truce; and in a few hours they all came to an anchor, and William
came on board us with a little boat, with the Chinese merchant in his
company, and two other merchants, who seemed to be a kind of brokers
for the rest.
{47} Here he gave us an account how civilly he had been used; how they
had treated him with all imaginable frankness and openness; that they
had not only given him the full value of his spices and other goods
which he carried, in gold, by good weight, but had loaded the vessel
again with such goods as he knew we were willing to trade for; and that
afterwards they had resolved to bring the great ship out of the
harbour, to lie where we were, that so we might make what bargain we
thought fit; only William said he had promised, in our name, that we
should use no violence with them, nor detain any of the vessels after
we had done trading with them. I told him we would strive to outdo
them in civility, and that we would make good every part of his
agreement; in token whereof, I caused a white flag likewise to be
spread at the poop of our great ship, which was the signal agreed on.
As to the third vessel which came with them, it was a kind of bark of
the country, who, having intelligence of our design to traffic, came
off to deal with us, bringing a good deal of gold and some provisions,
which at that time we were very glad of.
In short, we traded upon the high seas with these men, and indeed we
made a very good market, and yet sold thieves' pennyworths too. We
sold here about sixty ton of spice, chiefly cloves and nutmegs, and
above two hundred bales of European goods, such as linen and woollen
manufactures. We considered we should have occasion for some such
things ourselves, and so we kept a good quantity of English stuns,
cloth, baize, &c., for ourselves. I shall not take up any of the
little {48} room I have left here with the further particulars of our
trade; it is enough to mention, that, except a parcel of tea, and
twelve bales of fine China wrought silks, we took nothing in exchange
for our goods but gold; so that the sum we took here in that glittering
commodity amounted to above fifty thousand ounces good weight.
When we had finished our barter, we restored the hostages, and gave the
three merchants about the quantity of twelve hundredweight of nutmegs,
and as many of cloves, with a handsome present of European linen and
stuff for themselves, as a recompense for what we had taken from them;
so we sent them away exceedingly well satisfied.
Here it was that William gave me an account, that while he was on board
the Japanese vessel, he met with a kind of religious, or Japan priest,
who spoke some words of English to him; and, being very inquisitive to
know how he came to learn any of those words, he told him that there
was in his country thirteen Englishmen; he called them Englishmen very
articulately and distinctly, for he had conversed with them very
frequently and freely. He said that they were all that were left of
two-and-thirty men, who came on shore on the north side of Japan, being
driven upon a great rock in a stormy night, where they lost their ship,
and the rest of their men were drowned; that he had persuaded the king
of his country to send boats off to the rock or island where the ship
was lost, to save the rest of the men, and to bring them on shore,
which was done, and they were used very kindly, and had houses {49}
built for them, and land given them to plant for provision; and that
they lived by themselves.
He said he went frequently among them, to persuade them to worship
their god (an idol, I suppose, of their own making), which, he said,
they ungratefully refused; and that therefore the king had once or
twice ordered them all to be put to death; but that, as he said, he had
prevailed upon the king to spare them, and let them live their own way,
as long as they were quiet and peaceable, and did not go about to
withdraw others from the worship of the country.
I asked William why he did not inquire from whence they came. "I did,"
said William; "for how could I but think it strange," said he, "to hear
him talk of Englishmen on the north side of Japan?" "Well," said I,
"what account did he give of it?" "An account," said William, "that
will surprise thee, and all the world after thee, that shall hear of
it, and which makes me wish thou wouldst go up to Japan and find them
out." "What do you mean?" said I. "Whence could they come?" "Why,"
says William, "he pulled out a little book, and in it a piece of paper,
where it was written, in an Englishman's hand, and in plain English
words, thus; and," says William, "I read it myself:--'We come from
Greenland, and from the North Pole.'" This indeed, was amazing to us
all, and more so to those seamen among us who knew anything of the
infinite attempts which had been made from Europe, as well by the
English as the Dutch, to discover a passage that way into those parts
of the world; and as William pressed as earnestly to go on to the north
to rescue those poor men, so the ship's {50} company began to incline
to it; and, in a word, we all come to this, that we would stand in to
the shore of Formosa, to find this priest again, and have a further
account of it all from him. Accordingly the sloop went over; but when
they came there, the vessels were very unhappily sailed, and this put
an end to our inquiry after them, and perhaps may have disappointed
mankind of one of the most noble discoveries that ever was made, or
will again be made, in the world, for the good of mankind in general;
but so much for that.
William was so uneasy at losing this opportunity, that he pressed us
earnestly to go up to Japan to find out these men. He told us that if
it was nothing but to recover thirteen honest poor men from a kind of
captivity, which they would otherwise never be redeemed from, and
where, perhaps, they might, some time or other, be murdered by the
barbarous people, in defence of their idolatry, it were very well worth
our while, and it would be, in some measure, making amends for the
mischiefs we had done in the world; but we, that had no concern upon us
for the mischiefs we had done, had much less about any satisfactions to
be made for it, so he found that kind of discourse would weigh very
little with us. Then he pressed us very earnestly to let him have the
sloop to go by himself, and I told him I would not oppose it; but when
he came to the sloop none of the men would go with him; for the case
was plain, they had all a share in the cargo of the great ship, as well
as in that of the sloop, and the richness of the cargo was such that
they would not leave it by any means; so poor William, much to {51} his
mortification, was obliged to give it over. What became of those
thirteen men, or whether they are not there still, I can give no
account of.
(_Captain Singleton_.)
JONATHAN SWIFT 1667-1745
THE ART OF CONVERSATION
I have observed few obvious subjects to have been so seldom, or, at
least, so slightly handled as this; and, indeed, I know few so
difficult to be treated as it ought, nor yet upon which there seemeth
so much to be said.
Most things, pursued by men for the happiness of public or private
life, our wit or folly have so refined; that they seldom subsist but in
idea; a true friend, a good marriage, a perfect form of government,
with some others, require so many ingredients, so good in their several
kinds, and so much niceness in mixing them, that for some thousands of
years men have despaired of reducing their schemes to perfection. But,
in conversation, it is, or might be otherwise; for here we are only to
avoid a multitude of errors, which, although a matter of some
difficulty, may be in every man's power, for want of which it remaineth
as mere an idea as the other. Therefore it seemeth to me, that the
truest way to understand conversation, is to know the faults and errors
to which it is subject, and from thence every man to form maxims to
himself whereby it may be regulated, because it requireth few talents
to which most men are {52} not born, or at least may not acquire
without any great genius or study. For nature hath left every man a
capacity of being agreeable, though not of shining in company; and
there are an hundred men sufficiently qualified for both, who, by a
very few faults, that they might correct in half an hour, are not so
much as tolerable.
I was prompted to write my thoughts upon this subject by mere
indignation, to reflect that so useful and innocent a pleasure, so
fitted for every period and condition of life, and so much in all men's
power, should be so much neglected and abused.
And in this discourse it will be necessary to note those errors that
are obvious, as well as others which are seldomer observed, since there
are few so obvious, or acknowledged, into which most men, some time or
other, are not apt to run.
For instance: Nothing is more generally exploded than the folly of
talking too much; yet I rarely remember to have seen five people
together, where some one among them hath not been predominant in that
kind, to the great constraint and disgust of all the rest. But among
such as deal in multitudes of words, none are comparable to the sober
deliberate talker, who proceedeth with much thought and caution, maketh
his preface, brancheth out into several digressions, findeth a hint
that putteth him in mind of another story which he promiseth to tell
you when this is done; cometh back regularly to his subject, cannot
readily call to mind some person's name, holding his head, complaineth
of his memory; the whole company all this while in {53} suspense; at
length says, it is no matter, and so goes on. And, to crown the
business, it perhaps proveth at last a story the company hath heard
fifty times before; or, at best, some insipid adventure of the relater.
Another general fault in conversation is, that of those who affect to
talk of themselves: Some, without any ceremony, will run over the
history of their lives; will relate the annals of their diseases, with
the several symptoms and circumstances of them; will enumerate the
hardships and injustice they have suffered in court, in parliament, in
love, or in law. Others are more dexterous, and with great art will
lie on the watch to hook in their own praise: They will call a witness
to remember, they always foretold what would happen in such a case, but
none would believe them; they advised such a man from the beginning,
and told him the consequences, just as they happened; but he would have
his own way. Others make a vanity of telling their faults; they are
the strangest men in the world; they cannot dissemble; they own it is a
folly; they have lost abundance of advantages by it; but, if you would
give them the world, they cannot help it; there is something in their
nature that abhors insincerity and constraint; with many other
insufferable topics of the same altitude.
Of such mighty importance every man is to himself, and ready to think
he is so to others; without once making this easy and obvious
reflection, that his affairs can have no more weight with other men,
than theirs have with him; and how little that is, he is sensible
enough.
Where company hath met, I often have observed {54} two persons
discover, by some accident, that they were bred together at the same
school or university, after which the rest are condemned to silence,
and to listen while these two are refreshing each other's memory with
the arch tricks and passages of themselves and their comrades.
I know a great officer of the army, who will sit for some time with a
supercilious and impatient silence, full of anger and contempt for
those who are talking; at length of a sudden demand audience, decide
the matter in a short dogmatical way; then withdraw within himself
again, and vouchsafe to talk no more, until his spirits circulate again
to the same point.
There are some faults in conversation, which none are so subject to as
the men of wit, nor ever so much as when they are with each other. If
they have opened their mouths, without endeavouring to say a witty
thing, they think it is so many words lost: It is a torment to the
hearers, as much as to themselves, to see them upon the rack for
invention, and in perpetual constraint, with so little success. They
must do something extraordinary, in order to acquit themselves, and
answer their character, else the standers-by may be disappointed and be
apt to think them only like the rest of mortals. I have known two men
of wit industriously brought together, in order to entertain the
company, where they have made a very ridiculous figure, and provided
all the mirth at their own expense.
I know a man of wit, who is never easy but where he can be allowed to
dictate and preside: he neither expecteth to be informed or
entertained, but to display {55} his own talents. His business is to
be good company, and not good conversation; and, therefore, he chooseth
to frequent those who are content to listen, and profess themselves his
admirers. And, indeed, the worst conversation I ever remember to have
heard in my life was that at Will's coffeehouse, where the wits (as
they were called) used formerly to assemble; that is to say, five or
six men, who had writ plays, or at least prologues, or had share in a
miscellany, came thither, and entertained one another with their
trifling composures, in so important an air, as if they had been the
noblest efforts of human nature, or that the fate of kingdoms depended
on them; and they were usually attended with an humble audience of
young students from the inns of court, or the universities, who, at due
distance, listened to these oracles, and returned home with great
contempt for their law and philosophy, their heads filled with trash,
under the name of politeness, criticism and _belles lettres_.
By these means the poets, for many years past, were all overrun with
pedantry. For, as I take it, the word is not properly used; because
pedantry is the too frequent or unreasonable obtruding our own
knowledge in common discourse, and placing too great a value upon it;
by which definition, men of the court or the army may be as guilty of
pedantry as a philosopher or a divine; and, it is the same vice in
women, when they are over copious upon the subject of their petticoats,
or their fans, or their china. For which reason, although it be a
piece of prudence, as well as good manners, to put men upon talking on
subjects they are best versed in, yet that is a liberty a wise man
could hardly take; {56} because, beside the imputation of pedantry, it
is what he would never improve by.
(_Polite Conversation_.)
JOSEPH ADDISON 1672-1719
THE ROYAL EXCHANGE
There is no place in the town which I so much love to frequent as the
Royal Exchange. It gives me a secret satisfaction, and in some measure
gratifies my vanity, as I am an Englishman, to see so rich an assembly
of countrymen and foreigners, consulting together upon the private
business of mankind, and making this metropolis a kind of _emporium_
for the whole earth. I must confess I look upon high-change to be a
great council, in which all considerable nations have their
representatives. Factors in the trading world are what ambassadors are
in the politic world; they negotiate affairs, conclude treaties, and
maintain a good correspondence between those wealthy societies of men
that are divided from one another by seas and oceans, or live on the
different extremities of a continent. I have often been pleased to
hear disputes adjusted between an inhabitant of Japan, and an alderman
of London, or to see a subject of the Great Mogul entering into a
league with one of the Czar of Muscovy. I am infinitely delighted in
mixing with these several ministers of commerce, as they are
distinguished by their different walks and different languages.
Sometimes I am jostled {57} among a body of Armenians; sometimes I am
lost in a crowd of Jews; and sometimes make one in a group of Dutchmen.
I am a Dane, Swede, or Frenchman at different times; or rather fancy
myself like the old philosopher, who upon being asked what countryman
he was, replied that he was a citizen of the world. . . .
Nature seems to have taken a particular care to disseminate her
blessings among the different regions of the world, with an eye to this
mutual intercourse and traffic among mankind, that the natives of the
several parts of the globe might have a kind of dependence upon one
another, and be united together by their common interest. Almost every
degree produces something peculiar to it. The food often grows in one
country, and the sauce in another. The fruits of Portugal are
corrected by the products of Barbadoes, and the infusion of a China
plant is sweetened with the pith of an Indian cane. The Philippic
islands give a flavour to our European bowls. The single dress of a
woman of quality is often the product of an hundred climates. The muff
and the fan come together from the different ends of the earth. The
scarf is sent from the torrid zone, and the tippet from beneath the
pole. The brocade petticoat rises out of the mines of Peru, and the
diamond necklace out of the bowels of Indostan.
If we consider our own country in its natural prospect, without any of
the benefits and advantages of commerce, what a barren and
uncomfortable spot of earth falls to our share! Natural historians
tell us, that no fruit grows originally among us, besides hips and
haws, acorns and pig-nuts, with other delicacies of the {58} like
nature; that our climate of itself, and without the assistance of art,
can make no further advances towards a plum than to a sloe, and carries
an apple to no greater a perfection than a crab; that our melons, our
peaches, our figs, our apricots and cherries, are strangers among us,
imported in different ages, and naturalised in our English gardens; and
that they would all degenerate and fall away into the trash of our own
country, if they were wholly neglected by the planter, and left to the
mercy of our sun and soil. Nor has traffic more enriched our vegetable
world, than it has improved the whole face of nature among us. Our
ships are laden with the harvest of every climate. Our tables are
stored with spices and oils and wines. Our rooms are filled with
pyramids of China, and adorned with the workmanship of Japan. Our
morning's draught comes to us from the remotest corners of the earth.
We repair our bodies by the drugs of America, and repose ourselves
under Indian canopies. My friend Sir Andrew calls the vineyards of
France our gardens; the spice-islands, our hot-beds; the Persians our
silk-weavers, and the Chinese our potters. Nature indeed furnishes us
with the bare necessaries of life, but traffic gives us a great variety
of what is useful, and at the same time supplies us with everything
that is convenient and ornamental. Nor is it the least part of this
our happiness, that whilst we enjoy the remotest products of the north
and south, we are free from those extremities of weather which give
them birth; that our eyes are refreshed with the green fields of
Britain, at the same time that our palates are feasted with fruits that
rise between the tropics.
{59} For these reasons there are not more useful members in a
commonwealth than merchants. They knit mankind together in a mutual
intercourse of good offices, distribute the gifts of nature, find work
for the poor, add wealth to the rich, and magnificence to the great.
Our English merchant converts the tin of his own country into gold, and
exchanges its wool for rubies. The Mahometans are clothed in our
British manufacture, and the inhabitants of the frozen zone warmed with
the fleeces of our sheep.
When I have been upon the change, I have often fancied one of our old
kings standing in person, where he is represented in effigy, and
looking down upon the wealthy concourse of people with which that place
is every day filled. In this case, how would he be surprised to hear
all the languages of Europe spoken in this little spot of his former
dominions, and to see so many private men, who in his time would have
been the vassals of some powerful baron, negotiating like princes for
greater sums of money than were formerly to be met with in the royal
treasury! Trade, without enlarging the British territories, has given
us a kind of additional empire. It has multiplied the number of the
rich, made our landed estates infinitely more valuable than they were
formerly, and added to them an accession of other estates as valuable
as the lands themselves.
(_The Spectator_, No. 69.)
{60}
RICHARD STEELE 1672-1729
SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY'S ANCESTORS
I was this morning walking in the gallery, when Sir Roger entered at
the end opposite to me, and advancing towards me, said he was glad to
meet me among his relations, the De Coverleys, and hoped I liked the
conversation of so much good company, who were as silent as myself. I
knew he alluded to the pictures, and as he is a gentleman who does not
a little value himself upon his ancient descent, I expected he would
give me some account of them. We were now arrived at the upper end of
the gallery, when the knight faced towards one of the pictures, and as
we stood before it he entered into the matter, after his blunt way of
saying things as they occur to his imagination, without regular
introduction, or care to preserve the appearance of chain of thought.
"It is," said he, "worth while to consider the force of dress; and how
the persons of one age differ from those of another, merely by that
only. One may observe also that the general fashion of one age has
been followed by one particular set of people in another, and by them
preserved from one generation to another. Thus the vast jetting coat
and small bonnet, which was the habit in Harry the Seventh's time, is
kept on in the Yeomen of the Guard; not without a good and politic
view, because they look a foot taller, and a foot and a half {61}
broader: besides, that the cap leaves the face expanded, and
consequently more terrible, and fitter to stand at the entrance of
palaces.
"This predecessor of ours, you see, is dressed after this manner, and
his cheeks would be no larger than mine were he in a hat as I am. He
was the last man that won a prize in the Tilt-Yard (which is now a
common street before Whitehall). You see the broken lance that lies
there by his right foot; he shivered that lance of his adversary all to
pieces; and bearing himself, look you, sir, in this manner, at the same
time he came within the target of the gentleman who rode against him,
and taking him with incredible force before him on the pommel of his
saddle, he in that manner rid the tournament over, with an air that
showed he did it rather to perform the rule of the lists, than expose
his enemy; however, it appeared he knew how to make use of a victory,
and with a gentle trot he marched up to a gallery where their mistress
sat (for they were rivals) and let him down with laudable courtesy and
pardonable insolence. I don't know but it might be exactly where the
coffee-house is now.