present state of the town, and found that I had been absent too long to
obtain the triumph which had flattered my expectation. Of the friends
whose compliments I expected, some had long ago moved to distant
provinces, some had lost in the maladies of age all sense of another's
prosperity, and some had forgotten our former intimacy amidst care and
distresses. Of three whom I had resolved to punish for their former
offences by a longer continuance of neglect, one was, by his own
industry, raised above my scorn, and two were sheltered from it in the
grave. All those whom I loved, feared, or hated, all whose envy or whose
kindness I had hopes of contemplating with pleasure, were swept away,
and their place was filled by a new generation with other views and
other competitions; and among many proofs of the impotence of wealth, I
found that it conferred upon me very few distinctions in my native
place.
I am, Sir, &c.
SEROTINUS.
No. 166. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 19, 1751.
_Semper, eris pauper si pauper es, Aemiliane:
Dantur opes nullis nunc nisi divitibus_. MART. Lib. v. Ep. xxxi.
Once poor, my friend, still poor you must remain,
The rich alone have all the means of gain. EDW. CAVF.
[Transcriber's note: Difficult to make out in original--possibly CAVE?]
No complaint has been more frequently repeated in all ages than that of
the neglect of merit associated with poverty, and the difficulty with
which valuable or pleasing qualities force themselves into view, when
they are obscured by indigence. It has been long observed, that native
beauty has little power to charm without the ornaments which fortune
bestows, and that to want the favour of others is often sufficient to
hinder us from obtaining it.
Every day discovers that mankind are not yet convinced of their errour,
or that their conviction is without power to influence their conduct;
for poverty still continues to produce contempt, and still obstructs the
claims of kindred and of virtue. The eye of wealth is elevated towards
higher stations, and seldom descends to examine the actions of those who
are placed below the level of its notice, and who in distant regions and
lower situations are struggling with distress, or toiling for bread.
Among the multitudes overwhelmed with insuperable calamity, it is common
to find those whom a very little assistance would enable to support
themselves with decency, and who yet cannot obtain from near relations,
what they see hourly lavished in ostentation, luxury, or frolick.
There are natural reasons why poverty does not easily conciliate
affection. He that has been confined from his infancy to the
conversation of the lowest classes of mankind, must necessarily want
those accomplishments which are the usual means of attracting favour;
and though truth, fortitude, and probity, give an indisputable right to
reverence and kindness, they will not be distinguished by common eyes,
unless they are brightened by elegance of manners, but are cast aside
like unpolished gems, of which none but the artist knows the intrinsick
value, till their asperities are smoothed, and their incrustations
rubbed away.
The grossness of vulgar habits obstructs the efficacy of virtue, as
impurity and harshness of style impair the force of reason, and rugged
numbers turn off the mind from artifice of disposition, and fertility of
invention. Few have strength of reason to over-rule the perceptions of
sense; and yet fewer have curiosity or benevolence to struggle long
against the first impression; he therefore who fails to please in his
salutation and address, is at once rejected, and never obtains an
opportunity of shewing his latent excellencies, or essential qualities.
It is, indeed, not easy to prescribe a successful manner of approach to
the distressed or necessitous, whose condition subjects every kind of
behaviour equally to miscarriage. He whose confidence of merit incites
him to meet, without any apparent sense of inferiority, the eyes of
those who flattered themselves with their own dignity, is considered as
an insolent leveller, impatient of the just prerogatives of rank and
wealth, eager to usurp the station to which he has no right, and to
confound the subordinations of society; and who would contribute to the
exaltation of that spirit which even want and calamity are not able to
restrain from rudeness and rebellion?
But no better success will commonly be found to attend servility and
dejection, which often give pride the confidence to treat them with
contempt. A request made with diffidence and timidity is easily denied,
because the petitioner himself seems to doubt its fitness.
Kindness is generally reciprocal; we are desirous of pleasing others,
because we receive pleasure from them; but by what means can the man
please, whose attention is engrossed by his distresses, and who has no
leisure to be officious; whose will is restrained by his necessities,
and who has no power to confer benefits; whose temper is perhaps
vitiated by misery, and whose understanding is impeded by ignorance?
It is yet a more offensive discouragement, that the same actions
performed by different hands produce different effects, and, instead of
rating the man by his performances, we rate too frequently the
performance by the man. It sometimes happens in the combinations of
life, that important services are performed by inferiors; but though
their zeal and activity may be paid by pecuniary rewards, they seldom
excite that flow of gratitude, or obtain that accumulation of
recompense, with which all think it their duty to acknowledge the favour
of those who descend to their assistance from a higher elevation. To be
obliged, is to be in some respect inferior to another[h]; and few
willingly indulge the memory of an action which raises one whom they
have always been accustomed to think below them, but satisfy themselves
with faint praise and penurious payment, and then drive it from their
own minds, and endeavour to conceal it from the knowledge of others.
It may be always objected to the services of those who can be supposed
to want a reward, that they were produced not by kindness but interest;
they are, therefore, when they are no longer wanted, easily disregarded
as arts of insinuation, or stratagems of selfishness. Benefits which are
received as gifts from wealth, are exacted as debts from indigence; and
he that in a high station is celebrated for superfluous goodness, would
in a meaner condition have barely been confessed to have done his duty.
It is scarcely possible for the utmost benevolence to oblige, when
exerted under the disadvantages of great inferiority; for, by the
habitual arrogance of wealth, such expectations are commonly formed as
no zeal or industry can satisfy; and what regard can he hope, who has
done less than was demanded from him?
There are indeed kindnesses conferred which were never purchased by
precedent favours, and there is an affection not arising from gratitude
or gross interest, by which similar natures, are attracted to each
other, without prospect of any other advantage than the pleasure of
exchanging sentiments, and the hope of confirming their esteem of
themselves by the approbation of each other. But this spontaneous
fondness seldom rises at the sight of poverty, which every one regards
with habitual contempt, and of which the applause is no more courted by
vanity, than the countenance is solicited by ambition. The most generous
and disinterested friendship must be resolved at last into the love of
ourselves; he therefore whose reputation or dignity inclines us to
consider his esteem as a testimonial of desert, will always find our
hearts open to his endearments. We every day see men of eminence
followed with all the obsequiousness of dependance, and courted with all
the blandishments of flattery, by those who want nothing from them but
professions of regard, and who think themselves liberally rewarded by a
bow, a smile, or an embrace.
But those prejudices which every mind feels more or less in favour of
riches, ought, like other opinions, which only custom and example have
impressed upon us, to be in time subjected to reason. We must learn how
to separate the real character from extraneous adhesions and casual
circumstances, to consider closely him whom we are about to adopt or to
reject; to regard his inclinations as well as his actions; to trace out
those virtues which lie torpid in the heart for want of opportunity, and
those vices that lurk unseen by the absence of temptation; that when we
find worth faintly shooting in the shades of obscurity, we may let in
light and sunshine upon it, and ripen barren volition into efficacy and
power.
[Footnote h: Sir Joshua Reynolds evinced great reach of mind and
intimate acquaintance with humanity, when he observed, on overhearing a
person condoling with some ladies on the death of one who had conferred
the greatest favours upon them, that at all events they were relieved
from the burden of gratitude.]
No. 167. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1751.
Candida perpetuo reside, Concordia, lecto,
Tamque pari semper sit Venus æqua jugo.
Diligat illa senem quondam: sed et ipsa marito,
Tum quoque cum fuerit, non videatur, anus. MART. Lib, w. xii. 7.
Their nuptial bed may smiling concord dress,
And Venus still the happy union bless!
Wrinkled with age, may mutual love and truth
To their dim eyes recal the bloom of youth. F. LEWIS.
TO THE RAMBLER.
SIR,
It is not common to envy those with whom we cannot easily be placed in
comparison. Every man sees without malevolence the progress of another
in the tracks of life, which he has himself no desire to tread, and
hears, without inclination to cavils or contradiction, the renown of
those whose distance will not suffer them to draw the attention of
mankind from his own merit. The sailor never thinks it necessary to
contest the lawyer's abilities; nor would the Rambler, however jealous
of his reputation, be much disturbed by the success of rival wits at
Agra or Ispahan.
We do not therefore ascribe to you any superlative degree of virtue,
when we believe that we may inform you of our change of condition
without danger of malignant fascination; and that when you read of the
marriage of your correspondents Hymenæus and Tranquilla, you will join
your wishes to those of their other friends for the happy event of an
union in which caprice and selfishness had so little part.
There is at least this reason why we should be less deceived in our
connubial hopes than many who enter into the same state, that we have
allowed our minds to form no unreasonable expectations, nor vitiated our
fancies in the soft hours of courtship, with visions of felicity which
human power cannot bestow, or of perfection which human virtue cannot
attain. That impartiality with which we endeavour to inspect the manners
of all whom we have known was never so much overpowered by our passion,
but that we discovered some faults and weaknesses in each other; and
joined our hands in conviction, that as there are advantages to be
enjoyed in marriage, there are inconveniencies likewise to be endured;
and that, together with confederate intellects and auxiliar virtues, we
must find different opinions and opposite inclinations.
We however flatter ourselves, for who is not flattered by himself as
well as by others on the day of marriage? that we are eminently
qualified to give mutual pleasure. Our birth is without any such
remarkable disparity as can give either an opportunity of insulting the
other with pompous names and splendid alliances, or of calling in, upon
any domestick controversy, the overbearing assistance of powerful
relations. Our fortune was equally suitable, so that we meet without any
of those obligations, which always produce reproach or suspicion of
reproach, which, though they may be forgotten in the gaities of the
first month, no delicacy will always suppress, or of which the
suppression must be considered as a new favour, to be repaid by tameness
and submission, till gratitude takes the place of love, and the desire
of pleasing degenerates by degrees into the fear of offending.
The settlements caused no delay; for we did not trust our affairs to the
negociation of wretches, who would have paid their court by multiplying
stipulations. Tranquilla scorned to detain any part of her fortune from
him into whose hands she delivered up her person; and Hymenæus thought
no act of baseness more criminal than his who enslaves his wife by her
own generosity, who by marrying without a jointure, condemns her to all
the dangers of accident and caprice, and at last boasts his liberality,
by granting what only the indiscretion of her kindness enabled him to
withhold. He therefore received on the common terms the portion which
any other woman might have brought him, and reserved all the exuberance
of acknowledgment for those excellencies which he has yet been able to
discover only in Tranquilla.
We did not pass the weeks of courtship like those who consider
themselves as taking the last draught of pleasure, and resolve not to
quit the bowl without a surfeit, or who know themselves about to set
happiness to hazard, and endeavour to lose their sense of danger in the
ebriety of perpetual amusement, and whirl round the gulph before they
sink. Hymenæus often repeated a medical axiom, that _the succours of
sickness ought not to be wasted in health_. We know that however our
eyes may yet sparkle, and our hearts bound at the presence of each
other, the time of listlessness and satiety, of peevishness and
discontent, must come at last, in which we shall be driven for relief to
shows and recreations; that the uniformity of life must be sometimes
diversified, and the vacuities of conversation sometimes supplied. We
rejoice in the reflection that we have stores of novelty yet
unexhausted, which may be opened when repletion shall call for change,
and gratifications yet untasted, by which life, when it shall become
vapid or bitter, may be restored to its former sweetness and
sprightliness, and again irritate the appetite, and again sparkle in the
cup.
Our time will probably be less tasteless than that of those whom the
authority and avarice of parents unite almost without their consent in
their early years, before they have accumulated any fund of reflection,
or collected materials for mutual entertainment. Such we have often seen
rising in the morning to cards, and retiring in the afternoon to doze,
whose happiness was celebrated by their neighbours, because they
happened to grow rich by parsimony, and to be kept quiet in
insensibility, and agreed to eat and to sleep together.
We have both mingled with the world, and are therefore no strangers to
the faults and virtues, the designs and competitions, the hopes and
fears of our contemporaries. We have both amused our leisure with books,
and can therefore recount the events of former times, or cite the
dictates of ancient wisdom. Every occurrence furnishes us with some hint
which one or the other can improve, and if it should happen that memory
or imagination fail us, we can retire to no idle or unimproving
solitude.
Though our characters, beheld at a distance, exhibit this general
resemblance, yet a nearer inspection discovers such a dissimilitude of
our habitudes and sentiments, as leaves each some peculiar advantages,
and affords that _concordia discors_, that suitable disagreement which
is always necessary to intellectual harmony. There may be a total
diversity of ideas which admits no participation of the same delight,
and there may likewise be such a conformity of notions as leaves neither
any thing to add to the decisions of the other. With such contrariety
there can be no peace, with such similarity there can be no pleasure.
Our reasonings, though often formed upon different views, terminate
generally in the same conclusion. Our thoughts, like rivulets issuing
from distant springs, are each impregnated in its course with various
mixtures, and tinged by infusions unknown to the other, yet, at last,
easily unite into one stream, and purify themselves by the gentle
effervescence of contrary qualities.
These benefits we receive in a greater degree as we converse without
reserve, because we have nothing to conceal. We have no debts to be paid
by imperceptible deductions from avowed expenses, no habits to be
indulged by the private subserviency of a favoured servant, no private
interviews with needy relations, no intelligence with spies placed upon
each other. We considered marriage as the most solemn league of
perpetual friendship, a state from which artifice and concealment are to
be banished for ever, and in which every act of dissimulation is a
breach of faith.
The impetuous vivacity of youth, and that ardour of desire, which the
first sight of pleasure naturally produces, have long ceased to hurry us
into irregularity and vehemence; and experience has shewn us that few
gratifications are too valuable to be sacrificed to complaisance.
We have thought it convenient to rest from the fatigue of pleasure, and
now only continue that course of life into which we had before entered,
confirmed in our choice by mutual approbation, supported in our
resolution by mutual encouragement, and assisted in our efforts by
mutual exhortation.
Such, Mr. Rambler, is our prospect of life, a prospect which, as it is
beheld with more attention, seems to open more extensive happiness, and
spreads, by degrees, into the boundless regions of eternity. But if all
our prudence has been vain, and we are doomed to give one instance more
of the uncertainty of human discernment, we shall comfort ourselves
amidst our disappointments, that we were not betrayed but by such
delusions as caution could not escape, since we sought happiness only in
the arms of virtue.
We are, Sir,
Your humble Servants,
HYMENÆUS.
TRANQUILLA.
No. 168. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 26, 1751.
_--Decipit
Frons prima multos: rara mens intelligit,
Quod interiore condidit cura angulo_. PHÆDRUS, Lib. iv. Fab. i. 5.
The tinsel glitter, and the specious mien,
Delude the most; few pry behind the scene.
It has been observed by Boileau, that "a mean or common thought
expressed in pompous diction, generally pleases more than a new or noble
sentiment delivered in low and vulgar language; because the number is
greater of those whom custom has enabled to judge of words, than whom
study has qualified to examine things." This solution might satisfy, if
such only were offended with meanness of expression as are unable to
distinguish propriety of thought, and to separate propositions or images
from the vehicles by which they are conveyed to the understanding. But
this kind of disgust is by no means confined to the ignorant or
superficial; it operates uniformly and universally upon readers of all
classes; every man, however profound or abstracted, perceives himself
irresistibly alienated by low terms; they who profess the most zealous
adherence to truth are forced to admit that she owes part of her charms
to her ornaments; and loses much of her power over the soul, when she
appears disgraced by a dress uncouth or ill-adjusted.
We are all offended by low terms, but are not disgusted alike by the
same compositions, because we do not all agree to censure the same terms
as low. No word is naturally or intrinsically meaner than another; our
opinion therefore of words, as of other things arbitrarily and
capriciously established, depends wholly upon accident and custom. The
cottager thinks those apartments splendid and spacious, which an
inhabitant of palaces will despise for their inelegance; and to him who
has passed most of his hours with the delicate and polite, many
expressions will seem sordid, which another, equally acute, may hear
without offence; but a mean term never fails to displease him to whom it
appears mean, as poverty is certainly and invariably despised, though he
who is poor in the eyes of some, may, by others, be envied for his
wealth.
Words become low by the occasions to which they are applied, or the
general character of them who use them; and the disgust which they
produce, arises from the revival of those images with which they are
commonly united. Thus if, in the most solemn discourse, a phrase happens
to occur which has been successfully employed in some ludicrous
narrative, the gravest auditor finds it difficult to refrain from
laughter, when they who are not prepossessed by the same accidental
association, are utterly unable to guess the reason of his merriment.
Words which convey ideas of dignity in one age, are banished from
elegant writing or conversation in another, because they are in time
debased by vulgar mouths, and can be no longer heard without the
involuntary recollection of unpleasing images.
When Macbeth is confirming himself in the horrid purpose of stabbing his
king, he breaks out amidst his emotions into a wish natural to a
murderer:
--Come, thick night!
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes;
Nor heav'n peep through the blanket of the dark,
To cry, Hold! hold!--
In this passage is exerted all the force of poetry; that force which
calls new powers into being, which embodies sentiment, and animates
matter: yet, perhaps, scarce any man now peruses it without some
disturbance of his attention from the counteraction of the words to the
ideas. What can be more dreadful than to implore the presence of night,
invested, not in common obscurity, but in the smoke of hell? Yet the
efficacy of this invocation is destroyed by the insertion of an epithet
now seldom heard but in the stable, and _dun_ night may come or go
without any other notice than contempt.
If we start into raptures when some hero of the Iliad tells us that
[Greek: doru mainetai], his lance rages with eagerness to destroy; if we
are alarmed at the terrour of the soldiers commanded by Caesar to hew
down the sacred grove, who dreaded, says Lucan, lest the axe aimed at
the oak should fly back upon the striker:
--_Si robora sacra ferirent,
In sua credebaut redituras membra secures_;
None dares with impious steel the grove to rend,
Lest on himself the destin'd stroke descend;
we cannot surely but sympathise with the horrours of a wretch about to
murder his master, his friend, his benefactor, who suspects that the
weapon will refuse its office, and start back from the breast which he
is preparing to violate. Yet this sentiment is weakened by the name of
an instrument used by butchers and cooks in the meanest employments: we
do not immediately conceive that any crime of importance is to be
committed with a _knife_; or who does not, at last, from the long habit
of connecting a knife with sordid offices, feel aversion rather than
terrour?
Macbeth proceeds to wish, in the madness of guilt, that the inspection
of heaven may be intercepted, and that he may, in the involutions of
infernal darkness, escape the eye of Providence. This is the utmost
extravagance of determined wickedness; yet this is so debased by two
unfortunate words, that while I endeavour to impress on my reader the
energy of the sentiment, I can scarce check my risibility, when the
expression forces itself upon my mind; for who, without some relaxation
of his gravity, can hear of the avengers of guilt _peeping through a
blanket_?
These imperfections of diction are less obvious to the reader, as he is
less acquainted with common usages; they are therefore wholly
imperceptible to a foreigner, who learns our language from books, and
will strike a solitary academick less forcibly than a modish lady.
Among the numerous requisites that must concur to complete an author,
few are of more importance than an early entrance into the living world.
The seeds of knowledge may be planted in solitude, but must be
cultivated in publick. Argumentation may be taught in colleges, and
theories formed in retirement; but the artifice of embellishment, and
the powers of attraction, can be gained only by general converse.