are sufficient to place their author above the reach of rivalry. The
complaint of Gallus disappointed in his love, is full of such sentiments
as disappointed love naturally produces; his wishes are wild, his
resentment is tender, and his purposes are inconstant. In the genuine
language of despair, he soothes himself awhile with the pity that shall
be paid him after his death.
_--Tamen cantabitis, Arcades, inquit,
Montibus haec vestris: soli cantare periti
Arcades. O mihi tum quam molliter ossa quiescant,
Vestra meos olim si fistula dicat amores!_ Virg. Ec. x. 31.
--Yet, O Arcadian swains,
Ye best artificers of soothing strains!
Tune your soft reeds, and teach your rocks my woes,
So shall my shade in sweeter rest repose.
O that your birth and business had been mine;
To feed the flock, and prune the spreading vine! WARTON.
Discontented with his present condition, and desirous to be any thing
but what he is, he wishes himself one of the shepherds. He then catches
the idea of rural tranquillity; but soon discovers how much happier he
should be in these happy regions, with Lycoris at his side:
_Hic gelidi fontes, hic mollia prata, Lycori:
Hic nemus, hic ipso tecum consumerer aevo.
Nunc insanus amor duri me Martis in armis
Tela inter media atque adversos detinet hostes.
Tu procul a patria (nec sit mihi credere) tantum
Alpinas, ah dura, nives, et frigora Rheni
Me sine sola vides. Ah te ne frigora laedant!
Ah tibi ne teneras glacies secet aspera plantas!_ Ec. x. 42.
Here cooling fountains roll through flow'ry meads,
Here woods, Lycoris, lift their verdant heads;
Here could I wear my careless life away,
And in thy arms insensibly decay.
Instead of that, me frantick love detains,
'Mid foes, and dreadful darts, and bloody plains:
While you--and can my soul the tale believe,
Far from your country, lonely wand'ring leave
Me, me your lover, barbarous fugitive!
Seek the rough Alps where snows eternal shine,
And joyless borders of the frozen Rhine.
Ah! may no cold e'er blast my dearest maid,
Nor pointed ice thy tender feet invade. WARTON.
He then turns his thoughts on every side, in quest of something that may
solace or amuse him: he proposes happiness to himself, first in one
scene and then in another: and at last finds that nothing will satisfy:
_Jam neque Hamadryades rursum, nec carmina nobis
Ipsa placent: ipsae rursum concedite sylvae.
Non illum nostri possunt mutare labores;
Nec si frigoribus mediis Hebrumque bibamus,
Sithoniasque nives hyemis subeamus aquosae:
Nec si, cum moriens alta liber aret in ulmo
Aethiopum versemus oves sub sidere Cancri.
Omnia vincit amor; et nos cedamns amori._ Ec. x. 62.
But now again no more the woodland maids,
Nor pastoral songs delight--Farewell, ye shades--
No toils of ours the cruel god can change,
Tho' lost in frozen deserts we should range;
Tho' we should drink where chilling Hebrus flows,
Endure bleak winter blasts, and Thracian snows:
Or on hot India's plains our flocks should feed,
Where the parch'd elm declines his sickening head,
Beneath fierce-glowing Cancer's fiery beams,
Far from cool breezes and refreshing streams.
Love over all maintains resistless sway,
And let us love's all-conquering power obey. WARTON.
But notwithstanding the excellence of the tenth pastoral, I cannot
forbear to give the preference to the first, which is equally natural
and more diversified. The complaint of the shepherd, who saw his old
companion at ease in the shade, while himself was driving his little
flock he knew not whither, is such as, with variation of circumstances,
misery always utters at the sight of prosperity:
_Nos patriae fines, et dulcia linquimus arra;
Nos patrium fugimus: Tu, Tityre, lentus in umbra
Formosam resonare doces Amaryllida sylvas._ Ec. i. 3.
We leave our country's bounds, our much-lov'd plains;
We from our country fly, unhappy swains!
You, Tit'rus, in the groves at leisure laid,
Teach Amaryllis' name to every shade. WARTON.
His account of the difficulties of his journey, gives a very tender
image of pastoral distress:
--_En ipse capellas
Protenus aeger ago: hanc etiam vix, Tityre, duco:
Hic inter densas corylos modo namque gemellos,
Spem gregis, ah! silice in nuda connixa reliquit._ Ec. i. 12.
And lo! sad partner of the general care,
Weary and faint I drive my goats afar!
While scarcely this my leading hand sustains,
Tired with the way, and recent from her pains;
For 'mid yon tangled hazels as we past,
On the bare flints her hapless twin she cast,
The hopes and promise of my ruin'd fold! WARTON.
The description of Virgil's happiness in his little farm, combines
almost all the images of rural pleasure; and he, therefore, that can
read it with indifference, has no sense of pastoral poetry:
_Fortunate senex! ergo tua rura manebunt,
Et tibi magna satis; quamvis lapis omnia nudus,
Limosoque palus obducat pascua junco:
Non insueta graves tentabunt pabula foetas,
Nec mala vicini pecoris contagia laedent.
Fortunate senex! hic inter flumina nota,
Et fontes sacros, frigus captabis opacum.
Hinc tibi, quae semper vicino ab limite sepes,
Hyblaeis apibus florem depasta salicti,
Saepe levi somnum suadebit inire susurro.
Hinc alta sub rupe canet frondator ad auras.
Nec tamen interea raucae, tua cura, palumbes,
Nec gemere aëria cessabit turtur ab ulmo._ Ec. i. 47
Happy old man! then still thy farms restored,
Enough for thee, shall bless thy frugal board.
What tho' rough stones the naked soil o'erspread,
Or marshy bulrush rear its wat'ry head,
No foreign food thy teeming ewes shall fear,
No touch contagious spread its influence here.
Happy old man! here 'mid th' accustom'd streams
And sacred springs, you'll shun the scorching beams;
While from yon willow-fence, thy picture's bound,
The bees that suck their flow'ry stores around,
Shall sweetly mingle with the whispering boughs
Their lulling murmurs, and invite repose:
While from steep rocks the pruner's song is heard;
Nor the soft-cooing dove, thy fav'rite bird,
Meanwhile shall cease to breathe her melting strain,
Nor turtles from th' aërial elm to 'plain. WARTON.
It may be observed, that these two poems were produced by events that
really happened; and may, therefore, be of use to prove, that we can
always feel more than we can imagine, and that the most artful fiction
must give way to truth.
I am, Sir,
Your humble servant,
DUBIUS.
No. 95. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 2, 1753.
--_Dulcique animos novitate tenebo_. OVID. Met. iv. 284.
And with sweet novelty your soul detain.
It is often charged upon writers, that with all their pretensions to
genius and discoveries, they do little more than copy one another; and
that compositions obtruded upon the world with the pomp of novelty,
contain only tedious repetitions of common sentiments, or at best
exhibit a transposition of known images, and give a new appearance to
truth only by some slight difference of dress and decoration.
The allegation of resemblance between authors is indisputably true; but
the charge of plagiarism, which is raised upon it, is not to be allowed
with equal readiness. A coincidence of sentiment may easily happen
without any communication, since there are many occasions in which all
reasonable men will nearly think alike. Writers of all ages have had the
same sentiments, because they have in all ages had the same objects of
speculation; the interests and passions, the virtues and vices of
mankind, have been diversified in different times, only by unessential
and casual varieties: and we must, therefore, expect in the works of all
those who attempt to describe them, such a likeness as we find in the
pictures of the same person drawn in different periods of his life.
It is necessary, therefore, that before an author be charged with
plagiarism, one of the most reproachful, though, perhaps, not the most
atrocious of literary crimes, the subject on which he treats should be
carefully considered. We do not wonder, that historians, relating the
same facts, agree in their narration; or that authors, delivering the
elements of science, advance the same theorems, and lay down the same
definitions: yet it is not wholly without use to mankind, that books are
multiplied, and that different authors lay out their labours on the same
subject; for there will always be some reason why one should on
particular occasions, or to particular persons, be preferable to
another; some will be clear where others are obscure, some will please
by their style and others by their method, some by their embellishments
and others by their simplicity, some by closeness and others by
diffusion.
The same indulgence is to be shown to the writers of morality: right and
wrong are immutable; and those, therefore, who teach us to distinguish
them, if they all teach us right, must agree with one another. The
relations of social life, and the duties resulting from them, must be
the same at all times and in all nations: some petty differences may be,
indeed, produced, by forms of government or arbitrary customs; but the
general doctrine can receive no alteration.
Yet it is not to be desired, that morality should be considered as
interdicted to all future writers: men will always be tempted to deviate
from their duty, and will, therefore, always want a monitor to recall
them; and a new book often seizes the attention of the publick, without
any other claim than that it is new. There is likewise in composition,
as in other things, a perpetual vicissitude of fashion; and truth is
recommended at one time to regard, by appearances which at another would
expose it to neglect; the author, therefore, who has judgment to discern
the taste of his contemporaries, and skill to gratify it, will have
always an opportunity to deserve well of mankind, by conveying
instruction to them in a grateful vehicle.
There are likewise many modes of composition, by which a moralist may
deserve the name of an original writer: he may familiarize his system by
dialogues after the manner of the ancients, or subtilize it into a
series of syllogistick arguments: he may enforce his doctrine by
seriousness and solemnity, or enliven it by sprightliness and gaiety: he
may deliver his sentiments in naked precepts, or illustrate them by
historical examples: he may detain the studious by the artful
concatenation of a continued discourse, or relieve the busy by short
strictures, and unconnected essays.
To excel in any of these forms of writing will require a particular
cultivation of the genius: whoever can attain to excellence, will be
certain to engage a set of readers, whom no other method would have
equally allured; and he that communicates truth with success, must be
numbered among the first benefactors to mankind.
The same observation may be extended likewise to the passions: their
influence is uniform, and their effects nearly the same in every human
breast: a man loves and hates, desires and avoids, exactly like his
neighbour; resentment and ambition, avarice and indolence, discover
themselves by the same symptoms in minds distant a thousand years from
one another.
Nothing, therefore, can be more unjust, than to charge an author with
plagiarism, merely because he assigns to every cause its natural effect;
and makes his personages act, as others in like circumstances have
always done. There are conceptions in which all men will agree, though
each derives them from his own observation: whoever has been in love,
will represent a lover impatient of every idea that interrupts his
meditations on his mistress, retiring to shades and solitude, that he
may muse without disturbance on his approaching happiness, or
associating himself with some friend that flatters his passion, and
talking away the hours of absence upon his darling subject. Whoever has
been so unhappy as to have felt the miseries of long-continued hatred,
will, without any assistance from ancient volumes, be able to relate how
the passions are kept in perpetual agitation, by the recollection of
injury and meditations of revenge; how the blood boils at the name of
the enemy, and life is worn away in contrivances of mischief.
Every other passion is alike simple and limited, if it be considered
only with regard to the breast which it inhabits; the anatomy of the
mind, as that of the body, must perpetually exhibit the same
appearances; and though by the continued industry of successive
inquirers, new movements will be from time to time discovered, they can
affect only the minuter parts, and are commonly of more curiosity than
importance.
It will now be natural to inquire, by what arts are the writers of the
present and future ages to attract the notice; and favour of mankind.
They are to observe the alterations which time is always making in the
modes of life, that they may gratify every generation with a picture of
themselves. Thus love is uniform, but courtship is perpetually varying:
the different arts of gallantry, which beauty has inspired, would of
themselves be sufficient to fill a volume; sometimes balls and
serenades, sometimes tournaments and adventures, have been employed to
melt the hearts of ladies, who in another century have been sensible of
scarce any other merit than that of riches, and listened only to
jointures and pin-money. Thus the ambitious man has at all times been
eager of wealth and power; but these hopes have been gratified in some
countries by supplicating the people, and in others by flattering the
prince: honour in some states has been only the reward of military
achievements, in others it has been gained by noisy turbulence and
popular clamour. Avarice has worn a different form, as she actuated the
usurer of Rome, and the stock-jobber of England; and idleness itself,
how little soever inclined to the trouble of invention, has been forced
from time to time to change its amusements, and contrive different
methods of wearing out the day.
Here then is the fund, from which those who study mankind may fill their
compositions with an inexhaustible variety of images and allusions: and
he must be confessed to look with little attention upon scenes thus
perpetually changing, who cannot catch some of the figures before they
are made vulgar by reiterated descriptions.
It has been discovered by Sir Isaac Newton, that the distinct and
primogenial colours are only seven; but every eye can witness, that from
various mixtures, in various proportions, infinite diversifications of
tints may be produced. In like manner, the passions of the mind, which
put the world in motion, and produce all the bustle and eagerness of the
busy crowds that swarm upon the earth; the passions, from whence arise
all the pleasures and pains that we see and hear of, if we analyze the
mind of man, are very few; but those few agitated and combined, as
external causes shall happen to operate, and modified by prevailing
opinions and accidental caprices, make such frequent alterations on the
surface of life, that the show, while we are busied in delineating it,
vanishes from the view, and a new set of objects succeed, doomed to the
same shortness of duration with the former: thus curiosity may always
find employment, and the busy part of mankind will furnish the
contemplative with the materials of speculation to the end of time.
The complaint, therefore, that all topicks are preoccupied, is nothing
more than the murmur of ignorance or idleness, by which some discourage
others, and some themselves; the mutability of mankind will always
furnish writers with new images, and the luxuriance of fancy may always
embellish them with new decorations.
No. 99. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 16, 1753.
--_Magnis tamen excidit ausis_. OVID. Met. Lib. ii. 328.
But in the glorious enterprise he died. ADDISON.
It has always been the practice of mankind, to judge of actions by the
event. The same attempts, conducted in the same manner, but terminated
by different success, produce different judgments: they who attain their
wishes, never want celebrators of their wisdom and their virtue; and
they that miscarry, are quickly discovered to have been defective not
only in mental but in moral qualities. The world will never be long
without some good reason to hate the unhappy; their real faults are
immediately detected; and if those are not sufficient to sink them into
infamy, an additional weight of calumny will be superadded: he that
fails in his endeavours after wealth or power, will not long retain
either honesty or courage.
This species of injustice has so long prevailed in universal practice,
that it seems likewise to have infected speculation: so few minds are
able to separate the ideas of greatness and prosperity, that even Sir
William Temple has determined, "that he who can deserve the name of a
hero, must not only be virtuous but fortunate."
By this unreasonable distribution of praise and blame, none have
suffered oftener than projectors, whose rapidity of imagination and
vastness of design raise such envy in their fellow mortals, that every
eye watches for their fall, and every heart exults at their distresses:
yet even a projector may gain favour by success; and the tongue that was
prepared to hiss, then endeavours to excel others in loudness of
applause.
When Coriolanus, in Shakespeare, deserted to Aufidius, the Volscian
servants at first insulted him, even while he stood under the protection
of the household gods: but when they saw that the project took effect,
and the stranger was seated at the head of the table, one of them very
judiciously observes, "that he always thought there was more in him than
he could think."
Machiavel has justly animadverted on the different notice taken by all
succeeding times, of the two great projectors, Cataline and Cæsar. Both
formed the same project, and intended to raise themselves to power, by
subverting the commonwealth: they pursued their design, perhaps, with
equal abilities, and with equal virtue; but Cataline perished in the
field, and Cæsar returned from Pharsalia with unlimited authority: and
from that time, every monarch of the earth has thought himself honoured
by a comparison with Cæsar; and Cataline has been never mentioned, but
that his name might be applied to traitors and incendiaries.
In an age more remote, Xerxes projected the conquest of Greece, and
brought down the power of Asia against it: but after the world had been
filled with expectation and terrour, his army was beaten, his fleet was
destroyed, and Xerxes has been never mentioned without contempt.
A few years afterwards, Greece likewise had her turn of giving birth to
a projector; who invading Asia with a small army, went forward in search
of adventures, and by his escape from one danger, gained only more
rashness to rush into another: he stormed city after city, over-ran
kingdom after kingdom, fought battles only for barren victory, and
invaded nations only that he might make his way through them to new
invasions: but having been fortunate in the execution of his projects,
he died with the name of Alexander the Great.
These are, indeed, events of ancient times; but human nature is always
the same, and every age will afford us instances of publick censures
influenced by events. The great business of the middle centuries, was
the holy war; which undoubtedly was a noble project, and was for a long
time prosecuted with a spirit equal to that with which it had been
contrived; but the ardour of the European heroes only hurried them to
destruction; for a long time they could not gain the territories for
which they fought, and, when at last gained, they could not keep them:
their expeditions, therefore, have been the scoff of idleness and
ignorance, their understanding and their virtue have been equally
vilified, their conduct has been ridiculed, and their cause has been
defamed.
When Columbus had engaged king Ferdinand in the discovery of the other
hemisphere, the sailors, with whom he embarked in the expedition, had so
little confidence in their commander, that after having been long at sea
looking for coasts which they expected never to find, they raised a
general mutiny, and demanded to return. He found means to sooth them
into a permission to continue the same course three days longer, and on
the evening of the third day descried land. Had the impatience of his
crew denied him a few hours of the time requested, what had been his
fate but to have come back with the infamy of a vain projector, who had
betrayed the king's credulity to useless expenses, and risked his life
in seeking countries that had no existence? how would those that had
rejected his proposals have triumphed in their acuteness! and when would
his name have been mentioned, but with the makers of potable gold and
malleable glass?
The last royal projectors with whom the world has been troubled, were
Charles of Sweden and the Czar of Muscovy. Charles, if any judgment may
be formed of his designs by his measures and his inquiries, had purposed
first to dethrone the Czar, then to lead his army through pathless
deserts into China, thence to make his way by the sword through the
whole circuit of Asia, and by the conquest of Turkey to unite Sweden
with his new dominions: but this mighty project was crushed at Pultowa;
and Charles has since been considered as a madman by those powers, who
sent their ambassadors to solicit his friendship, and their generals "to
learn under him the art of war."
The Czar found employment sufficient in his own dominions, and amused
himself in digging canals, and building cities: murdering his subjects
with insufferable fatigues, and transplanting nations from one corner of
his dominions to another, without regretting the thousands that perished
on the way: but he attained his end, he made his people formidable, and
is numbered by fame among the demi-gods.
I am far from intending to vindicate the sanguinary projects of heroes
and conquerors, and would wish rather to diminish the reputation of
their success, than the infamy of their miscarriages: for I cannot
conceive, why he that has burned cities, wasted nations, and filled the
world with horrour and desolation, should be more kindly regarded by
mankind, than he that died in the rudiments of wickedness; why he that
accomplished mischief should be glorious, and he that only endeavoured
it should be criminal. I would wish Cæsar and Catiline, Xerxes and
Alexander, Charles and Peter, huddled together in obscurity or
detestation.
But there is another species of projectors, to whom I would willingly
conciliate mankind; whose ends are generally laudable, and whose labours
are innocent; who are searching out new powers of nature, or contriving
new works of art; but who are yet persecuted with incessant obloquy, and
whom the universal contempt with which they are treated, often debars
from that success which their industry would obtain, if it were
permitted to act without opposition.
They who find themselves inclined to censure new undertakings, only
because they are new, should consider, that the folly of projection is
very seldom the folly of a fool; it is commonly the ebullition of a
capacious mind, crowded with variety of knowledge, and heated with
intenseness of thought; it proceeds often from the consciousness of
uncommon powers, from the confidence of those, who having already done
much, are easily persuaded that they can do more. When Rowley had
completed the orrery, he attempted the perpetual motion; when Boyle had
exhausted the secrets of vulgar chymistry, he turned his thoughts to the
work of transmutation[1].
A projector generally unites those qualities which have the fairest
claim to veneration, extent of knowledge and greatness of design; it was
said of Catiline, "_immoderata, incredibilia, nimis alta semper
cupiebat_." Projectors of all kinds agree in their intellects, though
they differ in their morals; they all fail by attempting things beyond
their power, by despising vulgar attainments, and aspiring to
performances to which, perhaps, nature has not proportioned the force of
man: when they fail, therefore, they fail not by idleness or timidity,
but by rash adventure and fruitless diligence.