Is but a barb'rous skill;
'Tis like the pois'ning of a dart,
Too apt before to kill.
Cowley seems to have possessed the power of writing easily beyond any
other of our poets; yet his pursuit of remote thought led him often into
harshness of expression.
Waller often attempted, but seldom attained it; for he is too frequently
driven into transpositions. The poets, from the time of Dryden, have
gradually advanced in embellishment, and consequently departed from
simplicity and ease.
To require from any author many pieces of easy poetry, would be indeed
to oppress him with too hard a task. It is less difficult to write a
volume of lines swelled with epithets, brightened by figures, and
stiffened by transpositions, than to produce a few couplets graced only
by naked elegance and simple purity, which require so much care and
skill, that I doubt whether any of our authors have yet been able, for
twenty lines together, nicely to observe the true definition of easy
poetry.
No. 78. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 13, 1759.
I have passed the summer in one of those places to which a mineral
spring gives the idle and luxurious an annual reason for resorting,
whenever they fancy themselves offended by the heat of London. What is
the true motive of this periodical assembly, I have never yet been able
to discover. The greater part of the visitants neither feel diseases nor
fear them. What pleasure can be expected more than the variety of the
journey, I know not, for the numbers are too great for privacy, and too
small for diversion. As each is known to be a spy upon the rest, they
all live in continual restraint; and having but a narrow range for
censure, they gratify its cravings by preying on one another.
But every condition has some advantages. In this confinement, a smaller
circle affords opportunities for more exact observation. The glass that
magnifies its object contracts the sight to a point; and the mind must
be fixed upon a single character to remark its minute peculiarities. The
quality or habit which passes unobserved in the tumult of successive
multitudes, becomes conspicuous when it is offered to the notice day
after day; and, perhaps, I have, without any distinct notice, seen
thousands like my late companions; for when the scene can be varied at
pleasure, a slight disgust turns us aside before a deep impression can
be made upon the mind.
There was a select set, supposed to be distinguished by superiority of
intellects, who always passed the evening together. To be admitted to
their conversation was the highest honour of the place; many youths
aspired to distinction, by pretending to occasional invitations; and the
ladies were often wishing to be men, that they might partake the
pleasures of learned society.
I know not whether by merit or destiny, I was, soon after my arrival,
admitted to this envied party, which I frequented till I had learned the
art by which each endeavoured to support his character.
Tom Steady was a vehement assertor of uncontroverted truth; and by
keeping himself out of the reach of contradiction had acquired all the
confidence which the consciousness of irresistible abilities could have
given. I was once mentioning a man of eminence, and, after having
recounted his virtues, endeavoured to represent him fully, by mentioning
his faults. "Sir," said Mr. Steady, "that he has faults I can easily
believe, for who is without them? No man, Sir, is now alive, among the
innumerable multitudes that swarm upon the earth, however wise, or
however good, who has not, in some degree, his failings and his faults.
If there be any man faultless, bring him forth into publick view, show
him openly, and let him be known; but I will venture to affirm, and,
till the contrary be plainly shown, shall always maintain, that no such
man is to be found. Tell not me, Sir, of impeccability and perfection;
such talk is for those that are strangers in the world: I have seen
several nations, and conversed with all ranks of people; I have known
the great and the mean, the learned and the ignorant, the old and the
young, the clerical and the lay; but I have never found a man without a
fault; and I suppose shall die in the opinion, that to be human is to be
frail."
To all this nothing could be opposed. I listened with a hanging head;
Mr. Steady looked round on the hearers with triumph, and saw every eye
congratulating his victory; he departed, and spent the next morning in
following those who retired from the company, and telling them, with
injunctions of secrecy, how poor Spritely began to take liberties with
men wiser than himself; but that he suppressed him by a decisive
argument, which put him totally to silence.
Dick Snug is a man of sly remark and pithy sententiousness: he never
immerges himself in the stream of conversation, but lies to catch his
companions in the eddy: he is often very successful in breaking
narratives and confounding eloquence. A gentleman, giving the history of
one of his acquaintance, made mention of a lady that had many lovers:
"Then," said Dick, "she was either handsome or rich." This observation
being well received, Dick watched the progress of the tale; and, hearing
of a man lost in a shipwreck, remarked, that "no man was ever drowned
upon dry land."
Will Startle is a man of exquisite sensibility, whose delicacy of frame
and quickness of discernment subject him to impressions from the
slightest causes; and who, therefore, passes his life between rapture
and horrour, in quiverings of delight, or convulsions of disgust. His
emotions are too violent for many words; his thoughts are always
discovered by exclamations. _Vile, odious, horrid, detestable_, and
_sweet, charming, delightful, astonishing_, compose almost his whole
vocabulary, which he utters with various contortions and gesticulations,
not easily related or described.
Jack Solid is a man of much reading, who utters nothing but quotations;
but having been, I suppose, too confident of his memory, he has for some
time neglected his books, and his stock grows every day more scanty.
Mr. Solid has found an opportunity every night to repeat, from Hudibras,
Doubtless the pleasure is as great
Of being cheated, as to cheat;
and from Waller,
Poets lose half the praise they would have got,
Were it but known what they discreetly blot.
Dick Misty is a man of deep research, and forcible penetration. Others
are content with superficial appearances; but Dick holds, that there is
no effect without a cause, and values himself upon his power of
explaining the difficult and displaying the abstruse. Upon a dispute
among us, which of two young strangers was more beautiful, "You," says
Mr. Misty, turning to me, "like Amaranthia better than Chloris. I do not
wonder at the preference, for the cause is evident: there is in man a
perception of harmony, and a sensibility of perfection, which touches
the finer fibres of the mental texture; and before reason can descend
from her throne, to pass her sentence upon the things compared, drives
us towards the object proportioned to our faculties, by an impulse
gentle, yet irresistible; for the harmonick system of the Universe, and
the reciprocal magnetism of similar natures, are always operating
towards conformity and union; nor can the powers of the soul cease from
agitation, till they find something on which they can repose." To this
nothing was opposed; and Amaranthia was acknowledged to excel Chloris.
Of the rest you may expect an account from,
Sir, yours,
ROBIN SPRITELY.
No. 79. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 20, 1759.
TO THE IDLER.
Sir,
Your acceptance of a former letter on painting gives me encouragement to
offer a few more sketches on the same subject.
Amongst the painters, and the writers on painting, there is one maxim
universally admitted and continually inculcated. _Imitate nature_ is the
invariable rule; but I know none who have explained in what manner this
rule is to be understood; the consequence of which is, that every one
takes it in the most obvious sense, that objects are represented
naturally when they have such relief that they seem real. It may appear
strange, perhaps, to hear this sense of the rule disputed; but it must
be considered, that, if the excellency of a painter consisted only in
this kind of imitation, painting must lose its rank, and be no longer
considered as a liberal art, and sister to poetry, this imitation being
merely mechanical, in which the slowest intellect is always sure to
succeed best: for the painter of genius cannot stoop to drudgery, in
which the understanding has no part; and what pretence has the art to
claim kindred with poetry, but by its powers over the imagination? To
this power the painter of genius directs his aim; in this sense he
studies nature, and often arrives at his end, even by being unnatural in
the confined sense of the word.
The grand style of painting requires this minute attention to be
carefully avoided, and must be kept as separate from it as the style of
poetry from that of history. Poetical ornaments destroy that air of
truth and plainness which ought to characterize history; but the very
being of poetry consists in departing from this plain narration, and
adopting every ornament that will warm the imagination. To desire to see
the excellencies of each style united, to mingle the Dutch with the
Italian school, is to join contrarieties which cannot subsist together,
and which destroy the efficacy of each other. The Italian attends only
to the invariable, the great and general ideas which are fixed and
inherent in universal nature; the Dutch, on the contrary, to literal
truth and a minute exactness in the detail, as I may say, of nature
modified by accident. The attention to these petty peculiarities is the
very cause of this naturalness so much admired in the Dutch pictures,
which, if we suppose it to be a beauty, is certainly of a lower order,
which ought to give place to a beauty of a superior kind, since one
cannot be obtained but by departing from the other.
If my opinion was asked concerning the works of Michael Angelo, whether
they would receive any advantage from possessing this mechanical merit,
I should not scruple to say, they would not only receive no advantage,
but would lose, in a great measure, the effect which they now have on
every mind susceptible of great and noble ideas. His works may be said
to be all genius and soul; and why should they be loaded with heavy
matter, which can only counteract his purpose by retarding the progress
of the imagination?
If this opinion should be thought one of the wild extravagancies of
enthusiasm, I shall only say, that those who censure it are not
conversant in the works of the great masters. It is very difficult to
determine the exact degree of enthusiasm that the arts of painting and
poetry may admit. There may, perhaps, be too great an indulgence, as
well as too great a restraint of imagination; and if the one produces
incoherent monsters, the other produces what is full as bad, lifeless
insipidity. An intimate knowledge of the passions, and good sense, but
not common sense, must at last determine its limits. It has been
thought, and I believe with reason, that Michael Angelo sometimes
trangressed those limits; and I think I have seen figures of him of
which it was very difficult to determine whether they were in the
highest degree sublime or extremely ridiculous. Such faults may be said
to be the ebullitions of genius; but at least he had this merit, that he
never was insipid, and whatever passion his works may excite, they will
always escape contempt.
What I have had under consideration is the sublimest style, particularly
that of Michael Angelo, the Homer of painting. Other kinds may admit of
this naturalness, which of the lowest kind is the chief merit; but in
painting, as in poetry, the highest style has the least of common
nature.
One may very safely recommend a little more enthusiasm to the modern
painters; too much is certainly not the vice of the present age. The
Italians seem to have been continually declining, in this respect, from
the time of Michael Angelo to that of Carlo Maratti, and from thence to
the very bathos of insipidity to which they are now sunk; so that there
is no need of remarking, that, where I mentioned the Italian painters in
opposition to the Dutch, I mean not the moderns, but the heads of the
old Roman and Bolognian schools; nor did I mean to include in my idea of
an Italian painter, the Venetian school, which may be said to be the
Dutch part of the Italian genius. I have only to add a word of advice to
the painters, that, however excellent they may be in painting naturally,
they would not flatter themselves very much upon it, and to the
connoisseurs, that when they see a cat or fiddle painted so finely,
that, as the phrase is, "it looks as if you could take it up," they
would not for that reason immediately compare the painter to Raffaelle
and Michael Angelo.[1]
[1] By Sir Joshua Reynolds.
No. 80. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 27, 1759.
That every day has its pains and sorrows is universally experienced, and
almost universally confessed; but let us not attend only to mournful
truths; if we look impartially about us, we shall find that every day
has likewise its pleasures and its joys.
The time is now come when the town is again beginning to be full, and
the rusticated beauty sees an end of her banishment. Those whom the
tyranny of fashion had condemned to pass the summer among shades and
brooks, are now preparing to return to plays, balls and assemblies, with
health restored by retirement, and spirits kindled by expectation.
Many a mind, which has languished some months without emotion or desire,
now feels a sudden renovation of its faculties. It was long ago observed
by Pythagoras, that ability and necessity dwell near each other. She
that wandered in the garden without sense of its fragrance, and lay day
after day stretched upon a couch behind a green curtain, unwilling to
wake, and unable to sleep, now summons her thoughts to consider which of
her last year's clothes shall be seen again, and to anticipate the
raptures of a new suit; the day and the night are now filled with
occupation; the laces, which were too fine to be worn among rusticks,
are taken from the boxes and reviewed; and the eye is no sooner closed
after its labours, than whole shops of silk busy the fancy.
But happiness is nothing, if it is not known, and very little, if it is
not envied. Before the day of departure a week is always appropriated to
the payment and reception of ceremonial visits, at which nothing can be
mentioned but the delights of London. The lady who is hastening to the
scene of action flutters her wings, displays her prospects of felicity,
tells how she grudges every moment of delay, and, in the presence of
those whom she knows condemned to stay at home, is sure to wonder by
what arts life can be made supportable through a winter in the country,
and to tell how often, amidst the ecstasies of an opera, she shall pity
those friends whom she has left behind. Her hope of giving pain is
seldom disappointed; the affected indifference of one, the faint
congratulations of another, the wishes of some openly confessed, and the
silent dejection of the rest, all exalt her opinion of her own
superiority.
But, however we may labour for our own deception, truth, though
unwelcome, will sometimes intrude upon the mind. They who have already
enjoyed the crowds and noise of the great city, know that their desire
to return is little more than the restlessness of a vacant mind, that
they are not so much led by hope as driven by disgust, and wish rather
to leave the country than to see the town. There is commonly in every
coach a passenger enwrapped in silent expectation, whose joy is more
sincere, and whose hopes are more exalted. The virgin whom the last
summer released from her governess, and who is now going between her
mother and her aunt to try the fortune of her wit and beauty, suspects
no fallacy in the gay representation. She believes herself passing into
another world, and images London as an elysian region, where every hour
has its proper pleasure, where nothing is seen but the blaze of wealth,
and nothing heard but merriment and flattery; where the morning always
rises on a show, and the evening closes on a ball; where the eyes are
used only to sparkle, and the feet only to dance.
Her aunt and her mother amuse themselves on the road, with telling her
of dangers to be dreaded, and cautions to be observed. She hears them as
they heard their predecessors, with incredulity or contempt. She sees
that they have ventured and escaped; and one of the pleasures which she
promises herself is to detect their falsehoods, and be freed from their
admonitions.
We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know, because they have
never deceived us. The fair adventurer may, perhaps, listen to the
Idler, whom she cannot suspect of rivalry or malice; yet he scarcely
expects to be credited when he tells her, that her expectations will
likewise end in disappointment.
The uniform necessities of human nature produce, in a great measure,
uniformity of life, and for part of the day make one place like another;
to dress and to undress, to eat and to sleep, are the same in London as
in the country. The supernumerary hours have, indeed, a great variety
both of pleasure and of pain. The stranger, gazed on by multitudes at
her first appearance in the Park, is, perhaps, on the highest summit of
female happiness; but how great is the anguish when the novelty of
another face draws her worshippers away! The heart may leap for a time
under a fine gown; but the sight of a gown yet finer puts an end to
rapture. In the first row at an opera, two hours may be happily passed
in listening to the musick on the stage, and watching the glances of the
company; but how will the night end in despondency when she, that
imagined herself the sovereign of the place, sees lords contending to
lead Iris to her chair! There is little pleasure in conversation, to her
whose wit is regarded but in the second place; and who can dance with
ease or spirit that sees Amaryllis led out before her? She that fancied
nothing but a succession of pleasures, will find herself engaged without
design in numberless competitions, and mortified, without provocation,
with numberless afflictions.
But I do not mean to extinguish that ardour which I wish to moderate, or
to discourage those whom I am endeavouring to restrain. To know the
world is necessary, since we were born for the help of one another; and
to know it early is convenient, if it be only that we may learn early to
despise it. She that brings to London a mind well prepared for
improvement, though she misses her hope of uninterrupted happiness, will
gain in return an opportunity of adding knowledge to vivacity, and
enlarging innocence to virtue.
No. 81. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 1759.
As the English army was passing towards Quebec along a soft savanna
between a mountain and a lake, one of the petty chiefs of the inland
regions stood upon a rock surrounded by his clan, and from behind the
shelter of the bushes contemplated the art and regularity of European
war. It was evening, the tents were pitched: he observed the security
with which the troops rested in the night, and the order with which the
march was renewed in the morning. He continued to pursue them with his
eye till they could be seen no longer, and then stood for some time
silent and pensive.
Then turning to his followers, "My children," said he, "I have often
heard from men hoary with long life, that there was a time when our
ancestors were absolute lords of the woods, the meadows and the lakes,
wherever the eye can reach or the foot can pass. They fished and hunted,
feasted and danced, and when they were weary lay down under the first
thicket, without danger and without fear. They changed their
habitations, as the seasons required, convenience prompted, or curiosity
allured them; and sometimes gathered the fruits of the mountain, and
sometimes sported in canoes along the coast.
"Many years and ages are supposed to have been thus passed in plenty and
security; when, at last, a new race of men entered our country from the
great ocean. They inclosed themselves in habitations of stone, which our
ancestors could neither enter by violence, nor destroy by fire. They
issued from those fastnesses, sometimes covered, like the armadillo,
with shells, from which the lance rebounded on the striker, and
sometimes carried by mighty beasts which had never been seen in our
vales or forests, of such strength and swiftness, that flight and
opposition were vain alike. Those invaders ranged over the continent
slaughtering, in their rage, those that resisted, and those that
submitted, in their mirth. Of those that remained, some were buried in
caverns, and condemned to dig metals for their masters; some were
employed in tilling the ground, of which foreign tyrants devour the
produce; and, when the sword and the mines have destroyed the natives,
they supply their place by human beings of another colour, brought from
some distant country to perish here under toil and torture.
"Some there are who boast their humanity, and content themselves to
seize our chases and fisheries, who drive us from every tract of ground
where fertility and pleasantness invite them to settle, and make no war
upon us except when we intrude upon our own lands.
"Others pretend to have purchased a right of residence and tyranny; but
surely the insolence of such bargains is more offensive than the avowed
and open dominion of force. What reward can induce the possessour of a
country to admit a stranger more powerful than himself? Fraud or terrour
must operate in such contracts; either they promised protection which
they never have afforded, or instruction which they never imparted. We
hoped to be secured by their favour from some other evil, or to learn
the arts of Europe, by which we might be able to secure ourselves. Their
power they never have exerted in our defence, and their arts they have
studiously concealed from us. Their treaties are only to deceive, and
their traffick only to defraud us. They have a written law among them,
of which they boast, as derived from Him who made the earth and sea, and
by which they profess to believe that man will be made happy when life
shall forsake him. Why is not this law communicated to us? It is
concealed because it is violated. For how can they preach it to an
Indian nation, when I am told that one of its first precepts forbids
them to do to others what they would not that others should do to them?
"But the time, perhaps, is now approaching, when the pride of usurpation
shall be crushed, and the cruelties of invasion shall be revenged. The
sons of rapacity have now drawn their swords upon each other, and
referred their claims to the decision of war; let us look unconcerned
upon the slaughter, and remember that the death of every European
delivers the country from a tyrant and a robber; for what is the claim
of either nation, but the claim of the vulture to the leveret, of the
tiger to the fawn? Let them then continue to dispute their title to
regions which they cannot people, to purchase by danger and blood the
empty dignity of dominion over mountains which they will never climb,
and rivers which they will never pass. Let us endeavour, in the mean
time, to learn their discipline, and to forge their weapons; and, when
they shall be weakened with mutual slaughter, let us rush down upon
them, force their remains to take shelter in their ships, and reign once
more in our native country[1]."
[1] "How far the seizing on countries already peopled, and driving out
or massacring the innocent and defenceless natives, merely because
they differed from their invaders in language, in religion, in
customs, in government or in colour; how far such a conduct was
consonant to nature, to reason or to Christianity, deserved well to
be considered by those who have rendered their names immortal by
thus civilizing mankind." Blackstone, Com. ii. 7.