[262] See No. 112.
[263] Tom's Coffee-house, in Russell Street, opposite Button's, was
named after the landlord, Captain Thomas West. Macky ("A Journey
through England," 1722, i. 172) says, "After the play the best company
generally go to Tom's and Will's Coffee-houses, near adjoining, where
there is playing at piquet, and the best of conversation till midnight.
Here you will see blue and green ribbons and stars sitting familiarly."
[264] Here and elsewhere Steele describes his own life.
No. 90. [STEELE.
From _Thursday, Nov. 3_, to _Saturday, Nov. 5, 1709_.
----Amoto quæramus seria ludo.--HOR., 1 Sat. i. 27.
_Will's Coffee-house, Nov. 4._
The passion of love happened to be the subject of discourse between two
or three of us at the table of the poets this evening; and among other
observations, it was remarked, that the same sentiment on this passion
had run through all languages and nations. Menmius, who has a very good
taste, fell into a little sort of dissertation on this occasion. "It
is," said he, "remarkable, that no passion has been treated by all who
have touched upon it with the same bent of design but this. The poets,
the moralists, the painters, in all their descriptions, allegories,
and pictures, have represented it as a soft torment, a bitter sweet, a
pleasing pain, or an agreeable distress, and have only expressed the
same thought in a different manner. The[267] joining of pleasure and
pain together in such devices, seems to me the only pointed thought I
ever read which is natural; and it must have proceeded from its being
the universal sense and experience of mankind, that they have all
spoken of it in the same manner. I have in my own reading remarked
a hundred and three epigrams, fifty odes, and ninety-one sentences
tending to this sole purpose. It is certain, there is no other passion
which does produce such contrary effects in so great a degree: but
this may be said for love, that if you strike it out of the soul, life
would be insipid, and our being but half animated. Human nature would
sink into deadness and lethargy, if not quickened with some active
principle; and as for all others, whether ambition, envy, or avarice,
which are apt to possess the mind in the absence of this passion, it
must be allowed that they have greater pains, without the compensation
of such exquisite pleasures as those we find in love. The great skill
is to heighten the satisfactions, and deaden the sorrows of it, which
has been the end of many of my labours, and shall continue to be so
for the service of the world in general, and in particular of the fair
sex who are always the best or the worst part of it. It is pity that
a passion which has in it a capacity of making life happy, should
not be cultivated to the utmost advantage. Reason, prudence, and
good-nature, rightly applied, can thoroughly accomplish this great end,
provided they have always a real and constant love to work upon. But
this subject I shall treat more at large in the history of my married
sister; and in the meantime, shall conclude my reflection on the
pains and pleasures which attend this passion with one of the finest
allegories which I think I have ever read. It is invented by the divine
Plato, and to show the opinion he himself had of it, ascribed by him
to his admired Socrates, whom he represents as discoursing with his
friends, and giving the history of love in the following manner:
"At the birth of Beauty," says he, "there was a great feast made, and
many guests invited: among the rest was the god Plenty, who was the son
of the goddess Prudence, and inherited many of his mother's virtues.
After a full entertainment, he retired into the garden of Jupiter,
which was hung with a great variety of ambrosial fruits, and seems
to have been a very proper retreat for such a guest. In the meantime
an unhappy female, called Poverty, having heard of this great feast,
repaired to it in hopes of finding relief. The first place she lights
upon was Jupiter's garden, which generally stands open to people of all
conditions. Poverty enters, and by chance finds the god Plenty asleep
in it. She was immediately fired with his charms, laid herself down
by his side, and managed matters so well that she conceived a child
by him. The world was very much in suspense upon the occasion, and
could not imagine to themselves what would be the nature of an infant
that was to have its original from two such parents. At the last, the
child appears; and who should it be but Love. This infant grew up, and
proved in all his behaviour what he really was, a compound of opposite
beings. As he is the son of Plenty (who was the offspring of Prudence),
he is subtle, intriguing, full of stratagems and devices; as the son
of Poverty, he is fawning, begging, serenading, delighting to lie at a
threshold or beneath a window. By the father, he is audacious, full of
hopes, conscious of merit, and therefore quick of resentment: by the
mother, he is doubtful, timorous, mean-spirited, fearful of offending,
and abject in submissions. In the same hour you may see him transported
with raptures, talking of immortal pleasures, and appearing satisfied
as a god; and immediately after, as the mortal mother prevails in his
composition, you behold him pining, languishing, despairing, dying."
I have been always wonderfully delighted with fables, allegories, and
the like inventions, which the politest and the best instructors of
mankind have always made use of: they take off from the severity of
instruction, and enforce it at the same time that they conceal it. The
supposing Love to be conceived immediately after the birth of Beauty,
the parentage of Plenty, and the inconsistency of this passion with
itself so naturally derived to it, are great master-strokes in this
fable; and if they fell into good hands, might furnish out a more
pleasing canto than any in Spenser.
_From my own Apartment, Nov. 4._
I came home this evening in a very pensive mood; and to divert me,
took up a volume of Shakespeare, where I chanced to cast my eye upon
a part in the tragedy of "Richard the Third," which filled my mind
with a very agreeable horror. It was the scene in which that bold
but wicked prince is represented as sleeping in his tent the night
before the battle in which he fell. The poet takes that occasion to set
before him in a vision a terrible assembly of apparitions, the ghosts
of all those innocent persons whom he is said to have murdered. Prince
Edward, Henry VI., the Duke of Clarence, Rivers, Gray, and Vaughan,
Lord Hastings, the two young princes, sons to Edward IV., his own wife,
and the Duke of Buckingham rise up in their blood before him, beginning
their speeches with that dreadful salutation, "Let me sit heavy on thy
soul to-morrow;" and concluding with that dismal sentence, "Despair and
die." This inspires the tyrant with a dream of his past guilt, and of
the approaching vengeance. He anticipates the fatal day of Bosworth,
fancies himself dismounted, weltering in his own blood; and in the
agonies of despair (before he is thoroughly awake), starts up with the
following speech:
_Give me another horse--Bind up my wounds!
Have mercy, Jesu--Soft, I did but dream.
O coward Conscience! How dost thou afflict me?
The lights burn blue! Is it not dead midnight?
Cold fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh;
What do I fear? Myself!_ &c.[268]
A scene written with so great strength of imagination indisposed me
from further reading, and threw me into a deep contemplation. I began
to reflect upon the different ends of good and bad kings; and as this
was the birthday of our late renowned monarch,[269] I could not forbear
thinking on the departure of that excellent prince, whose life was
crowned with glory, and his death with peace. I let my mind go so far
into this thought, as to imagine to myself, what might have been the
vision of his departing slumbers. He might have seen confederate kings
applauding him in different languages, slaves that had been bound in
fetters lifting up their hands and blessing him, and the persecuted in
their several forms of worship imploring comfort on his last moments.
The reflection upon this excellent prince's mortality had been a
very melancholy entertainment to me, had I not been relieved by the
consideration of the glorious reign which succeeds it.
We now see as great a virtue as ever was on the British throne,
surrounded with all the beauty of success. Our nation may not only
boast of a long series of great, regular, and well-laid designs, but
also of triumphs and victories; while we have the happiness to see our
sovereign exercise that true policy which tends to make a kingdom great
and happy, and at the same time enjoy the good and glorious effect of
it.