diligence of contemporary students, and the gradual discoveries of one
age improving on another. Sometimes unexpected flashes of instruction
were struck out by the fortuitous collision of happy incidents, or an
involuntary concurrence of ideas, in which the philosopher to whom they
happened had no other merit than that of knowing their value, and
transmitting, unclouded, to posterity, that light which had been kindled
by causes out of his power. The happiness of these casual illuminations
no man can promise to himself, because no endeavours can procure them;
and therefore whatever be our abilities or application, we must submit
to learn from others what perhaps would have lain hid for ever from
human penetration, had not some remote inquiry brought it to view; as
treasures are thrown up by the ploughman and the digger in the rude
exercise of their common occupations. The man whose genius qualifies him
for great undertakings, must at least be content to learn from books the
present state of human knowledge; that he may not ascribe to himself the
invention of arts generally known; weary his attention with experiments
of which the event has been long registered; and waste, in attempts
which have already succeeded or miscarried, that time which might have
been spent with usefulness and honour upon new undertakings.
But, though the study of books is necessary, it is not sufficient to
constitute literary eminence. He that wishes to be counted among the
benefactors of posterity, must add by his own toil to the acquisitions
of his ancestors, and secure his memory from neglect by some valuable
improvement. This can only be effected by looking out upon the wastes of
the intellectual world, and extending the power of learning over regions
yet undisciplined and barbarous; or by surveying more exactly our
ancient dominions, and driving ignorance from the fortresses and
retreats where she skulks undetected and undisturbed. Every science has
its difficulties, which yet call for solution before we attempt new
systems of knowledge; as every country has its forests and marshes,
which it would be wise to cultivate and drain, before distant colonies
are projected as a necessary discharge of the exuberance of inhabitants.
No man ever yet became great by imitation. Whatever hopes for the
veneration of mankind must have invention in the design or the
execution; either the effect must itself be new, or the means by which
it is produced. Either truths hitherto unknown must be discovered, or
those which are already known enforced by stronger evidence, facilitated
by clearer method, or elucidated by brighter illustrations.
Fame cannot spread wide or endure long that is not rooted in nature, and
matured by art. That which hopes to resist the blast of malignity, and
stand firm against the attacks of time, must contain in itself some
original principle of growth. The reputation which arises from the
detail or transposition of borrowed sentiments, may spread for awhile,
like ivy on the rind of antiquity, but will be torn away by accident or
contempt, and suffered to rot unheeded on the ground.
No. 155. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 1751.
_--Steriles transmisimus annos,
Haec aevi mihi prima dies, haec limina vitae_. STAT. i. 362.
--Our barren years are past;
Be this of life the first, of sloth the last. ELPHINSTON.
No weakness of the human mind has more frequently incurred
animadversion, than the negligence with which men overlook their own
faults, however flagrant, and the easiness with which they pardon them,
however frequently repeated.
It seems generally believed, that as the eye cannot see itself, the mind
has no faculties by which it can contemplate its own state, and that
therefore we have not means of becoming acquainted with our real
characters; an opinion which, like innumerable other postulates, an
inquirer finds himself inclined to admit upon very little evidence,
because it affords a ready solution of many difficulties. It will
explain why the greatest abilities frequently fail to promote the
happiness of those who possess them; why those who can distinguish with
the utmost nicety the boundaries of vice and virtue, suffer them to be
confounded in their own conduct; why the active and vigilant resign
their affairs implicitly to the management of others; and why the
cautious and fearful make hourly approaches towards ruin, without one
sigh of solicitude or struggle for escape.
When a position teems thus with commodious consequences, who can without
regret confess it to be false? Yet it is certain that declaimers have
indulged a disposition to describe the dominion of the passions as
extended beyond the limits that nature assigned. Self-love is often
rather arrogant than blind; it does not hide our faults from ourselves,
but persuades us that they escape the notice of others, and disposes us
to resent censures lest we should confess them to be just. We are
secretly conscious of defects and vices, which we hope to conceal from
the publick eye, and please ourselves with innumerable impostures, by
which, in reality, nobody is deceived.
In proof of the dimness of our internal sight, or the general inability
of man to determine rightly concerning his own character, it is common
to urge the success of the most absurd and incredible flattery, and the
resentment always raised by advice, however soft, benevolent, and
reasonable. But flattery, if its operation be nearly examined, will be
found to owe its acceptance, not to our ignorance, but knowledge of our
failures, and to delight us rather as it consoles our wants than
displays our possessions. He that shall solicit the favour of his patron
by praising him for qualities which he can find in himself, will be
defeated by the more daring panegyrist who enriches him with
adscititious excellence. Just praise is only a debt, but flattery is a
present. The acknowledgment of those virtues on which conscience
congratulates us, is a tribute that we can at any time exact with
confidence; but the celebration of those which we only feign, or desire
without any vigorous endeavours to attain them, is received as a
confession of sovereignty over regions never conquered, as a favourable
decision of disputable claims, and is more welcome as it is more
gratuitous.
Advice is offensive, not because it lays us open to unexpected regret,
or convicts us of any fault which had escaped our notice, but because it
shews us that we are known to others as well as to ourselves; and the
officious monitor is persecuted with hatred, not because his accusation
is false, but because he assumes that superiority which we are not
willing to grant him, and has dared to detect what we desired to
conceal.
For this reason advice is commonly ineffectual. If those who follow the
call of their desires, without inquiry whither they are going, had
deviated ignorantly from the paths of wisdom, and were rushing upon
dangers unforeseen, they would readily listen to information that recals
them from their errours, and catch the first alarm by which destruction
or infamy is denounced. Few that wander in the wrong way mistake it for
the right, they only find it more smooth and flowery, and indulge their
own choice rather than approve it: therefore few are persuaded to quit
it by admonition or reproof, since it impresses no new conviction, nor
confers any powers of action or resistance. He that is gravely informed
how soon profusion will annihilate his fortune, hears with little
advantage what he knew before, and catches at the next occasion of
expense, because advice has no force to suppress his vanity. He that is
told how certainly intemperance will hurry him to the grave, runs with
his usual speed to a new course of luxury, because his reason is not
invigorated, nor his appetite weakened.
The mischief of flattery is, not that it persuades any man that he is
what he is not, but that it suppresses the influence of honest ambition,
by raising an opinion that honour may be gained without the toil of
merit; and the benefit of advice arises commonly not from any new light
imparted to the mind, but from the discovery which it affords of the
publick suffrages. He that could withstand conscience is frighted at
infamy, and shame prevails when reason is defeated.
As we all know our own faults, and know them commonly with many
aggravations which human perspicacity cannot discover, there is,
perhaps, no man, however hardened by impudence or dissipated by levity,
sheltered by hypocrisy or blasted by disgrace, who does not intend some
time to review his conduct, and to regulate the remainder of his life by
the laws of virtue. New temptations indeed attack him, new invitations
are offered by pleasure and interest, and the hour of reformation is
always delayed; every delay gives vice another opportunity of fortifying
itself by habit; and the change of manners, though sincerely intended
and rationally planned, is referred to the time when some craving
passion shall be fully gratified, or some powerful allurement cease its
importunity.
Thus procrastination is accumulated on procrastination, and one
impediment succeeds another, till age shatters our resolution, or death
intercepts the project of amendment. Such is often the end of salutary
purposes, after they have long delighted the imagination, and appeased
that disquiet which every mind feels from known misconduct, when the
attention is not diverted by business or by pleasure.
Nothing surely can be more unworthy of a reasonable nature, than to
continue in a state so opposite to real happiness, as that all the peace
of solitude, and felicity of meditation, must arise from resolutions of
forsaking it. Yet the world will often afford examples of men, who pass
months and years in a continual war with their own convictions, and are
daily dragged by habit, or betrayed by passion, into practices which
they closed and opened their eyes with purposes to avoid; purposes
which, though settled on conviction, the first impulse of momentary
desire totally overthrows.
The influence of custom is indeed such, that to conquer it will require
the utmost efforts of fortitude and virtue; nor can I think any man more
worthy of veneration and renown, than those who have burst the shackles
of habitual vice. This victory, however, has different degrees of glory
as of difficulty; it is more, heroick as the objects of guilty
gratification are more familiar, and the recurrence of solicitation more
frequent. He that, from experience of the folly of ambition, resigns his
offices, may set himself free at once from temptation to squander his
life in courts, because he cannot regain his former station. He who is
enslaved by an amorous passion, may quit his tyrant in disgust, and
absence will, without the help of reason, overcome by degrees the desire
of returning. But those appetites to which every place affords their
proper object, and which require no preparatory measures or gradual
advances, are more tenaciously adhesive; the wish is so near the
enjoyment, that compliance often precedes consideration, and, before the
powers of reason can be summoned, the time for employing them is past.
Indolence is therefore one of the vices from which those whom it once
infects are seldom reformed. Every other species of luxury operates upon
some appetite that is quickly satiated, and requires some concurrence of
art or accident which every place will not supply; but the desire of
ease acts equally at all hours, and the longer it is indulged is the
more increased. To do nothing is in every man's power; we can never want
an opportunity of omitting duties. The lapse to indolence is soft and
imperceptible, because it is only a mere cessation of activity; but the
return to diligence is difficult, because it implies a change from rest
to motion, from privation to reality:
--_Facilis descensus Averni:
Noctes atque dies patet atri junua ditis;
Sed revocare gradum, saperasque evadere ad auras,
Hoc opus, hic labor est_.--VIR. Aen. Lib. vi. 126.
The gates of Hell are open night and day;
Smooth the descent, and easy is the way;
But to return, and view the cheerful skies,
In this the task and mighty labour lies. DRYDEN.
Of this vice, as of all others, every man who indulges it is conscious:
we all know our own state, if we could be induced to consider it, and it
might perhaps be useful to the conquest of all these ensnarers of the
mind, if, at certain stated days, life was reviewed. Many things
necessary are omitted, because we vainly imagine that they may be always
performed; and what cannot be done without pain will for ever be
delayed, if the time of doing it be left unsettled. No corruption is
great but by long negligence, which can scarcely prevail in a mind
regularly and frequently awakened by periodical remorse. He that thus
breaks his life into parts, will find in himself a desire to distinguish
every stage of his existence by some improvement, and delight himself
with the approach of the day of recollection, as of the time which is to
begin a new series of virtue and felicity.
No. 156. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 1751.
_Nunquam aliud Natura, aliud Sapientia dicit_. Juv. Sat. xiv. 321.
For Wisdom ever echoes Nature's voice.
Every government, say the politicians, is perpetually degenerating
towards corruption, from which it must be rescued at certain periods by
the resuscitation of its first principles, and the re-establishment of
its original constitution. Every animal body, according to the methodick
physicians, is, by the predominance of some exuberant quality,
continually declining towards disease and death, which must be obviated
by a seasonable reduction of the peccant humour to the just equipoise
which health requires.
In the same manner the studies of mankind, all at least which, not being
subject to rigorous demonstration, admit the influence of fancy and
caprice, are perpetually tending to errour and confusion. Of the great
principles of truth which the first speculatists discovered, the
simplicity is embarrassed by ambitious additions, or the evidence
obscured by inaccurate argumentation; and as they descend from one
succession of writers to another, like light transmitted from room to
room, they lose their strength and splendour, and fade at last in total
evanescence.
The systems of learning therefore must be sometimes reviewed,
complications analyzed into principles, and knowledge disentangled from
opinion. It is not always possible, without a close inspection, to
separate the genuine shoots of consequential reasoning, which grow out
of some radical postulate, from the branches which art has ingrafted on
it. The accidental prescriptions of authority, when time has procured
them veneration, are often confounded with the laws of nature, and those
rules are supposed coëval with reason, of which the first rise cannot be
discovered.
Criticism has sometimes permitted fancy to dictate the laws by which
fancy ought to be restrained, and fallacy to perplex the principles by
which fallacy is to be detected; her superintendence of others has
betrayed her to negligence of herself; and, like the ancient Scythians,
by extending her conquests over distant regions, she has left her throne
vacant to her slaves.
Among the laws of which the desire of extending authority, or ardour of
promoting knowledge, has prompted the prescription, all which writers
have received, had not the same original right to our regard. Some are
to be considered as fundamental and indispensable, others only as useful
and convenient; some as dictated by reason and necessity, others as
enacted by despotick antiquity; some as invincibly supported by their
conformity to the order of nature and operations of the intellect;
others as formed by accident, or instituted by example, and therefore
always liable to dispute and alteration.
That many rules have been advanced without consulting nature or reason,
we cannot but suspect, when we find it peremptorily decreed by the
ancient masters, that only three speaking personages should appear at
once upon the stage; a law, which, as the variety and intricacy of
modern plays has made it impossible to be observed, we now violate
without scruple, and, as experience proves, without inconvenience.
The original of this precept was merely accidental. Tragedy was a
monody, or solitary song in honour of Bacchus, improved afterwards into
a dialogue by the addition of another speaker; but the ancients,
remembering that the tragedy was at first pronounced only by one, durst
not for some time venture beyond two; at last, when custom and impunity
had made them daring, they extended their liberty to the admission of
three, but restrained themselves by a critical edict from further
exorbitance.
By what accident the number of acts was limited to five, I know not that
any author has informed us; but certainly it is not determined by any
necessity arising either from the nature of action, or propriety of
exhibition. An act is only the representation of such a part of the
business of the play as proceeds in an unbroken tenour, or without any
intermediate pause. Nothing is more evident than that of every real, and
by consequence of every dramatick action, the intervals may be more or
fewer than five; and indeed the rule is upon the English stage every day
broken in effect, without any other mischief than that which arises from
an absurd endeavour to observe it in appearance. Whenever the scene is
shifted the act ceases, since some time is necessarily supposed to
elapse while the personages of the drama change their place.
With no greater right to our obedience have the criticks confined the
dramatick action to a certain number of hours. Probability requires that
the time of action should approach somewhat nearly to that of
exhibition, and those plays will always be thought most happily
conducted which crowd the greatest, variety into the least space. But
since it will frequently happen that some delusion must be admitted, I
know not where the limits of imagination can be fixed. It is rarely
observed that minds, not prepossessed by mechanical criticism, feel any
offence from the extension of the intervals between the acts; nor can I
conceive it absurd or impossible, that he who can multiply three hours
into twelve or twenty-four, might imagine with equal ease a greater
number.
I know not whether he that professes to regard no other laws than those
of nature, will not be inclined to receive tragi-comedy to his
protection, whom, however generally condemned, her own laurels have
hitherto shaded from the fulminations of criticism. For what is there in
the mingled drama which impartial reason can condemn? The connexion of
important with trivial incidents, since it is not only common but
perpetual in the world, may surely be allowed upon the stage, which
pretends only to be the mirror of life. The impropriety of suppressing
passions before we have raised them to the intended agitation, and of
diverting the expectation from an event which we keep suspended only to
raise it, may be speciously urged. But will not experience shew this
objection to be rather subtle than just? Is it not certain that the
tragick and comick affections have been moved alternately with equal
force, and that no plays have oftener filled the eye with tears, and the
breast with palpitation, than those which are variegated with interludes
of mirth?
I do not however think it safe to judge of works of genius merely by the
event. The resistless vicissitudes of the heart, this alternate
prevalence of merriment and solemnity, may sometimes be more properly
ascribed to the vigour of the writer than the justness of the design:
and, instead of vindicating tragi-comedy by the success of Shakspeare,
we ought, perhaps, to pay new honours to that transcendent and unbounded
genius that could preside over the passions in sport; who, to actuate
the affections, needed not the slow gradation of common means, but could
fill the heart with instantaneous jollity or sorrow, and vary our
disposition as he changed his scenes. Perhaps the effects even of
Shakspeare's poetry might have been yet greater, had he not counteracted
himself; and we might have been more interested in the distresses of his
heroes, had we not been so frequently diverted by the jokes of his
buffoons.
There are other rules more fixed and obligatory. It is necessary that of
every play the chief action should be single; for since a play
represents some transaction, through its regular maturation to its final
event, two actions equally important must evidently constitute two
plays.
As the design of tragedy is to instruct by moving the passions, it must
always have a hero, a personage apparently and incontestably superior to
the rest, upon whom the attention may be fixed, and the anxiety
suspended. For though, of two persons opposing each other with equal
abilities and equal virtue, the auditor will inevitably, in time, choose
his favourite, yet as that choice must be without any cogency of
conviction, the hopes or fears which it raises will be faint and
languid. Of two heroes acting in confederacy against a common enemy, the
virtues or dangers will give little emotion, because each claims our
concern with the same right, and the heart lies at rest between equal
motives.
It ought to be the first endeavour of a writer to distinguish nature
from custom; or that which is established because it is right, from that
which is right only because it is established; that he may neither
violate essential principles by a desire of novelty, nor debar himself
from the attainment of beauties within his view, by a needless fear of
breaking rules which no literary dictator had authority to enact.
No. 157. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 1751.
[Greek:--Oi aidos
Ginetai ae t' andras mega sinetai aed' oninaesi.]
HOM. Il. [Greek: O.] 44.
Shame greatly hurts or greatly helps mankind. ELPHINSTON.
TO THE RAMBLER.
SIR,
Though one of your correspondents has presumed to mention with some
contempt that presence of attention and easiness of address, which the
polite have long agreed to celebrate and esteem, yet I cannot be
persuaded to think them unworthy of regard or cultivation; but am
inclined to believe that, as we seldom value rightly what we have never
known the misery of wanting, his judgment has been vitiated by his
happiness; and that a natural exuberance of assurance has hindered him
from discovering its excellence and use.
This felicity, whether bestowed by constitution, or obtained by early
habitudes, I can scarcely contemplate without envy. I was bred under a
man of learning in the country, who inculcated nothing but the dignity
of knowledge, and the happiness of virtue. By frequency of admonition,
and confidence of assertion, he prevailed upon me to believe, that the
splendour of literature would always attract reverence, if not darkened
by corruption. I therefore pursued my studies with incessant industry,
and avoided every thing which I had been taught to consider either as
vicious or tending to vice, because I regarded guilt and reproach as
inseparably united, and thought a tainted reputation the greatest
calamity.
At the university, I found no reason for changing my opinion; for though
many among my fellow-students took the opportunity of a more remiss
discipline to gratify their passions; yet virtue preserved her natural
superiority, and those who ventured to neglect, were not suffered to
insult her. The ambition of petty accomplishments found its way into the
receptacles of learning, but was observed to seize commonly on those who
either neglected the sciences or could not attain them; and I was
therefore confirmed in the doctrines of my old master, and thought
nothing worthy of my care but the means of gaining or imparting
knowledge.
This purity of manners, and intenseness of application, soon extended my
renown, and I was applauded by those, whose opinion I then thought
unlikely to deceive me, as a young man that gave uncommon hopes of
future eminence. My performances in time reached my native province, and
my relations congratulated themselves upon the new honours that were
added to their family.