"SIR,
"I have no more to trouble you with, than to desire you would
in your next help me to some answer to the enclosed concerning
yourself. In the meantime I congratulate you upon the increase of
your fame, which you see has extended itself beyond the bills of
mortality.
"'SIR,
"'That the country is barren of news, has been the excuse time
out of mind for dropping a correspondence with our friends in
London; as if it were impossible out of a coffee-house to write
an agreeable letter. I am too ingenuous to endeavour at the
covering of my negligence with so common an excuse. Doubtless,
amongst friends bred as we have been, to the knowledge of
books as well as men, a letter dated from a garden, a grotto, a
fountain, a wood, a meadow, or the banks of a river, may be more
entertaining than one from Tom's,[263] Will's, White's, or St.
James's. I promise therefore to be frequent for the future in my
rural dates to you: but for fear you should, from what I have
said, be induced to believe I shun the commerce of men, I must
inform you, that there is a fresh topic of discourse lately risen
amongst the ingenious in our part of the world, and is become the
more fashionable for the ladies giving into it. This we owe to
Isaac Bickerstaff, who is very much censured by some, and as much
justified by others. Some criticise his style, his humour, and
his matter; others admire the whole man: some pretend, from the
informations of their friends in town, to decipher the author; and
others confess they are lost in their guesses. For my part, I must
own myself a professed admirer of the paper, and desire you to
send me a complete set, together with your thoughts of the squire
and his lucubrations.'"
There is no pleasure like that of receiving praise from the
praiseworthy; and I own it a very solid happiness, that these my
lucubrations are approved by a person of so fine a taste as the author
of this letter, who is capable of enjoying the world in the simplicity
of its natural beauties. This pastoral letter, if I may so call it,
must be written by a man who carries his entertainment wherever he
goes, and is undoubtedly one of those happy men who appear far
otherwise to the vulgar. I daresay, he is not envied by the vicious,
the vain, the frolic, and the loud; but is continually blessed with
that strong and serious delight which flows from a well-taught and
liberal mind. With great respect to country sports, I may say, this
gentleman could pass his time agreeably if there were not a hare or a
fox in his county. That calm and elegant satisfaction which the vulgar
call melancholy, is the true and proper delight of men of knowledge
and virtue. What we take for diversion, which is a kind of forgetting
ourselves, is but a mean way of entertainment, in comparison of that
which is considering, knowing, and enjoying ourselves. The pleasures of
ordinary people are in their passions; but the seat of this delight is
in the reason and understanding. Such a frame of mind raises that sweet
enthusiasm which warms the imagination at the sight of every work of
nature, and turns all around you into picture and landscape. I shall be
ever proud of advices from this gentleman; for I profess writing news
from the learned as well as the busy world.
As for my labours, which he is pleased to inquire after, if they can
but wear one impertinence out of human life, destroy a single vice, or
give a morning's cheerfulness to an honest mind; in short, if the world
can be but one virtue the better, or in any degree less vicious, or
receive from them the smallest addition to their innocent diversions, I
shall not think my pains, or indeed my life, to have been spent in vain.
Thus far as to my studies. It will be expected I should in the next
place give some account of my life. I shall therefore, for the
satisfaction of the present age, and the benefit of posterity, present
the world with the following abridgment of it.
It is remarkable, that I was bred by hand, and ate nothing but milk
till I was a twelvemonth old; from which time, to the eighth year of
my age, I was observed to delight in pudding and potatoes; and indeed
I retain a benevolence for that sort of food to this day. I do not
remember that I distinguished myself in anything at those years, but
by my great skill at taw, for which I was so barbarously used, that
it has ever since given me an aversion to gaming. In my twelfth year,
I suffered very much for two or three false concords. At fifteen,
I was sent to the university, and stayed there for some time; but
a drum passing by (being a lover of music), I listed myself for a
soldier.[264] As years came on, I began to examine things, and grew
discontented at the times. This made me quit the sword, and take to
the study of the occult sciences, in which I was so wrapped up, that
Oliver Cromwell had been buried, and taken up again, five years before
I heard he was dead. This gave me first the reputation of a conjurer,
which has been of great disadvantage to me ever since, and kept me out
of all public employments. The greater part of my later years has been
divided between Dick's Coffee-house, the Trumpet in Sheer Lane, and my
own lodgings.
_From my own Apartment, Nov. 2._
The evil of unseasonable visits has been complained of to me with much
vehemence by persons of both sexes; and I am desired to consider this
very important circumstance, that men may know how to regulate their
conduct in an affair which concerns no less than life itself. For to a
rational creature, it is almost the same cruelty to attack his life,
by robbing him of so many moments of his time, or so many drops of his
blood. The author of the following letter has a just delicacy on this
point, and has put it into a very good light.
"MR. BICKERSTAFF,
_Oct. 29._
I am very much afflicted with the gravel, which makes me sick and
peevish. I desire to know of you, if it be reasonable that any of my
acquaintance should take advantage over me at this time, and afflict
me with long visits, because they are idle, and I am confined. Pray,
sir, reform the town in this matter. Men never consider whether the
sick person be disposed for company, but make their visits to humour
themselves. You may talk upon this topic, so as to oblige all persons
afflicted with chronic distempers, among which I reckon visits. Don't
think me a sour man, for I love conversation and my friends; but I
think one's most intimate friend may be too familiar, and that there
are such things as unseasonable wit and painful mirth."
It is with some so hard a thing to employ their time, that it is a
great good fortune when they have a friend indisposed, that they may be
punctual in perplexing him, when he is recovered enough to be in that
state which cannot be called sickness or health; when he is too well to
deny company, and too ill to receive them. It is no uncommon case, if a
man is of any figure or power in the world, to be congratulated into a
relapse.
_Will's Coffee-house, Nov. 2._
I was very well pleased this evening to hear a gentleman express a
very becoming indignation against a practice which I myself have been
very much offended at. "There is nothing," said he, "more ridiculous
than for an actor to insert words of his own in the part he is to act,
so that it is impossible to see the poet for the player: you will
have Pinkethman and Bullock helping out Beaumont and Fletcher. It puts
me in mind," continued he, "of a collection of antique statues which
I once saw in a gentleman's possession, who employed a neighbouring
stone-cutter to add noses, ears, arms, or legs, to the maimed works of
Phidias or Praxiteles. You may be sure this addition disfigured the
statues much more than time had. I remember a Venus that, by the nose
he had given her, looked like Mother Shipton; and a Mercury with a pair
of legs that seemed very much swelled with a dropsy."
I thought the gentleman's observations very proper; and he told me,
I had improved his thought, in mentioning on this occasion those
wise commentators who had filled up the hemistichs of Virgil;[265]
particularly that notable poet, who, to make the "Æneid" more perfect,
carried on the story to Lavinia's wedding.[266] If the proper officer
will not condescend to take notice of these absurdities, I shall
myself, as a censor of the people, animadvert upon such proceedings.