atrocious or destructive kind. I never betrayed an heir to gamesters, or
a girl to bebauchees; [Transcriber's note: sic] never intercepted the
kindness of a patron, or sported away the reputation of innocence. My
delight was only in petty mischief, and momentary vexations, and my
acuteness was employed not upon fraud and oppression, which it had been
meritorious to detect, but upon harmless ignorance or absurdity,
prejudice or mistake.
This inquiry I pursued with so much diligence and sagacity, that I was
able to relate, of every man whom I knew, some blunder or miscarriage;
to betray the most circumspect of my friends into follies, by a
judicious flattery of his predominant passion; or expose him to
contempt, by placing him in circumstances which put his prejudices into
action, brought to view his natural defects, or drew the attention of
the company on his airs of affectation.
The power had been possessed in vain if it had never been exerted; and
it was not my custom to let any arts of jocularity remain unemployed. My
impatience of applause brought me always early to the place of
entertainment; and I seldom failed to lay a scheme with the small knot
that first gathered round me, by which some of those whom we expected
might be made subservient to our sport. Every man has some favourite
topick of conversation, on which, by a feigned seriousness of attention,
he may be drawn to expatiate without end. Every man has some habitual
contortion of body, or established mode of expression, which never fails
to raise mirth if it be pointed out to notice. By premonitions of these
particularities I secured our pleasantry. Our companion entered with his
usual gaiety, and began to partake of our noisy cheerfulness, when the
conversation was imperceptibly diverted to a subject which pressed upon
his tender part, and extorted the expected shrug, the customary
exclamation, or the predicted remark. A general clamour of joy then
burst from all that were admitted to the stratagem. Our mirth was often
increased by the triumph of him that occasioned it; for as we do not
hastily form conclusions against ourselves, seldom any one suspected,
that he had exhilarated us otherwise than by wit.
You will hear, I believe, with very little surprise, that by this
conduct I had in a short time united mankind against me, and that every
tongue was diligent in prevention or revenge. I soon perceived myself
regarded with malevolence or distrust, but wondered what had been
discovered in me either terrible or hateful. I had invaded no man's
property; I had rivalled no man's claims: nor had ever engaged in any of
those attempts which provoke the jealousy of ambition or the rage of
faction. I had lived but to laugh, and make others laugh; and believed
that I was loved by all who caressed, and favoured by all who applauded
me. I never imagined, that he who, in the mirth of a nocturnal revel,
concurred in ridiculing his friend, would consider, in a cooler hour,
that the same trick might be played against himself; or that even where
there is no sense of danger, the natural pride of human nature rises
against him, who, by general censures, lays claim to general
superiority.
I was convinced, by a total desertion, of the impropriety of my conduct;
every man avoided, and cautioned others to avoid me. Wherever I came, I
found silence and dejection, coldness and terrour. No one would venture
to speak, lest he should lay himself open to unfavourable
representations; the company, however numerous, dropped off at my
entrance upon various pretences; and, if I retired to avoid the shame of
being left, I heard confidence and mirth revive at my departure.
If those whom I had thus offended could have contented themselves with
repaying one insult for another, and kept up the war only by a
reciprocation of sarcasms, they might have perhaps vexed, but would
never have much hurt me; for no man heartily hates him at whom he can
laugh. But these wounds which they give me as they fly, are without
cure; this alarm which they spread by their solicitude to escape me,
excludes me from all friendship and from all pleasure. I am condemned to
pass a long interval of my life in solitude, as a man suspected of
infection is refused admission into cities; and must linger in
obscurity, till my conduct shall convince the world, that I may be
approached without hazard.
I am, &c.
DICACULUS.
No. 175. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 1751.
_Rari quippe boni: numerus vix est totidem quot
Thebarum portae, vel divitis ostia Nili_. Juv. Sat. xiii. 26.
Good men are scarce; the just are thinly sown:
They thrive but ill, nor can they last when grown;
And should we count them, and our store compile,
Yet Thebes more gates could show, more mouths the Nile. CREECH.
None of the axioms of wisdom which recommend the ancient sages to
veneration, seem to have required less extent of knowledge or
perspicacity of penetration, than the remarks of Bias, that [Greek: oi
pleones kakoi], "the majority are wicked."
The depravity of mankind is so easily discoverable, that nothing but the
desert or the cell can exclude it from notice. The knowledge of crimes
intrudes uncalled and undesired. They whom their abstraction from common
occurrences hinders from seeing iniquity, will quickly have their
attention awakened by feeling it. Even he who ventures not into the
world, may learn its corruption in his closet. For what are treatises of
morality, but persuasives to the practice of duties, for which no
arguments would be necessary, but that we are continually tempted to
violate or neglect them? What are all the records of history, but
narratives of successive villanies, of treasons and usurpations,
massacres and wars?
But, perhaps, the excellence of aphorisms consists not so much in the
expression of some rare and abstruse sentiment, as in the comprehension
of some obvious and useful truths in a few words. We frequently fall
into errour and folly, not because the true principles of action are not
known, but because, for a time, they are not remembered; and he may,
therefore, be justly numbered among the benefactors of mankind, who
contracts the great rules of life into short sentences, that may be
easily impressed on the memory, and taught by frequent recollection to
recur habitually to the mind.
However those who have passed through half the life of man, may now
wonder that any should require to be cautioned against corruption, they
will find that they have themselves purchased their conviction by many
disappointments and vexations which an earlier knowledge would have
spared them; and may see, on every side, some entangling themselves in
perplexities, and some sinking into ruin, by ignorance or neglect of the
maxim of Bias.
Every day sends out, in quest of pleasure and distinction, some heir
fondled in ignorance, and flattered into pride. He comes forth with all
the confidence of a spirit unacquainted with superiors, and all the
benevolence of a mind not yet irritated by opposition, alarmed by fraud,
or embittered by cruelty. He loves all, because he imagines himself the
universal favourite. Every exchange of salutation produces new
acquaintance, and every acquaintance kindles into friendship.
Every season brings a new flight of beauties into the world, who have
hitherto heard only of their own charms, and imagine that the heart
feels no passion but that of love. They are soon surrounded by admirers
whom they credit, because they tell them only what is heard with
delight. Whoever gazes upon them is a lover; and whoever forces a sigh,
is pining in despair.
He surely is a useful monitor, who inculcates to these thoughtless
strangers, that the _majority are wicked_; who informs them, that the
train which wealth and beauty draw after them, is lured only by the
scent of prey; and that, perhaps, among all those who crowd about them
with professions and flatteries, there is not one who does not hope for
some opportunity to devour or betray them, to glut himself by their
destruction, or to share their spoils with a stronger savage.
Virtue presented singly to the imagination or the reason, is so well
recommended by its own graces, and so strongly supported by arguments,
that a good man wonders how any can be bad; and they who are ignorant of
the force of passion and interest, who never observed the arts of
seduction, the contagion of example, the gradual descent from one crime
to another, or the insensible depravation of the principles by loose
conversation, naturally expect to find integrity in every bosom, and
veracity on every tongue.
It is, indeed, impossible not to hear from those who have lived longer,
of wrongs and falsehoods, of violence and circumvention; but such
narratives are commonly regarded by the young, the heady, and the
confident, as nothing more than the murmurs of peevishness, or the
dreams of dotage; and, notwithstanding all the documents of hoary
wisdom, we commonly plunge into the world fearless and credulous,
without any foresight of danger, or apprehension of deceit.
I have remarked, in a former paper, that credulity is the common failing
of unexperienced virtue; and that he who is spontaneously suspicious,
may be justly charged with radical corruption; for, if he has not known
the prevalence of dishonesty by information, nor had time to observe it
with his own eyes, whence can he take his measures of judgment but from
himself?
They who best deserve to escape the snares of artifice, are most likely
to be entangled. He that endeavours to live for the good of others, must
always be exposed to the arts of them who live only for themselves,
unless he is taught by timely precepts the caution required in common
transactions, and shewn at a distance the pitfalls of treachery.
To youth, therefore, it should be carefully inculcated, that, to enter
the road of life without caution or reserve, in expectation of general
fidelity and justice, is to launch on the wide ocean without the
instruments of steerage, and to hope that every wind will be prosperous,
and that every coast will afford a harbour.
To enumerate the various motives to deceit and injury, would be to count
all the desires that prevail among the sons of men; since there is no
ambition however petty, no wish however absurd, that by indulgence will
not be enabled to overpower the influence of virtue. Many there are, who
openly and almost professedly regulate all their conduct by their love
of money; who have no other reason for action or forbearance, for
compliance or refusal, than that they hope to gain more by one than by
the other. These are indeed the meanest and cruellest of human beings, a
race with whom, as with some pestiferous animals, the whole creation
seems to be at war; but who, however detested or scorned, long continue
to add heap to heap, and when they have reduced one to beggary, are
still permitted to fasten on another.
Others, yet less rationally wicked, pass their lives in mischief,
because they cannot bear the sight of success, and mark out every man
for hatred, whose fame or fortune they believe increasing.
Many who have not advanced to these degrees of guilt are yet wholly
unqualified for friendship, and unable to maintain any constant or
regular course of kindness. Happiness may be destroyed not only by union
with the man who is apparently the slave of interest, but with him whom
a wild opinion of the dignity of perseverance, in whatever cause,
disposes to pursue every injury with unwearied and perpetual resentment;
with him whose vanity inclines him to consider every man as a rival in
every pretension; with him whose airy negligence puts his friend's
affairs or secrets in continual hazard, and who thinks his forgetfulness
of others excused by his inattention to himself; and with him whose
inconstancy ranges without any settled rule of choice through varieties
of friendship, and who adopts and dismisses favourites by the sudden
impulse of caprice.
Thus numerous are the dangers to which the converse of mankind exposes
us, and which can be avoided only by prudent distrust. He therefore
that, remembering this salutary maxim, learns early to withhold his
fondness from fair appearances, will have reason to pay some honours to
Bias of Priene, who enabled him to become wise without the cost of
experience.
No. 176. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1751
--_Naso suspendis adunco_. HOR. Lib. i. Sat. vi. 5.
On me you turn the nose.--
There are many vexatious accidents and uneasy situations which raise
little compassion for the sufferer, and which no man but those whom they
immediately distress can regard with seriousness. Petty mischiefs, that
have no influence on futurity, nor extend their effects to the rest of
life, are always seen with a kind of malicious pleasure. A mistake or
embarrassment, which for the present moment fills the face with blushes,
and the mind with confusion, will have no other effect upon those who
observe it, than that of convulsing them with irresistible laughter.
Some circumstances of misery are so powerfully ridiculous, that neither
kindness nor duty can withstand them; they bear down love, interest, and
reverence, and force the friend, the dependent, or the child, to give
way to, instantaneous motions of merriment.
Among the principal of comick calamities, may be reckoned the pain which
an author, not yet hardened into insensibility, feels at the onset of a
furious critick, whose age, rank, or fortune, gives him confidence to
speak without reserve; who heaps one objection upon another, and
obtrudes his remarks, and enforces his corrections, without tenderness
or awe.
The author, full of the importance of his work, and anxious for the
justification of every syllable, starts and kindles at the slightest
attack; the critick, eager to establish his superiority, triumphing in
every discovery of failure, and zealous to impress the cogency of his
arguments, pursues him from line to line without cessation or remorse.
The critick, who hazards little, proceeds with vehemence, impetuosity,
and fearlessness; the author, whose quiet and fame, and life and
immortality, are involved in the controversy, tries every art of
subterfuge and defence; maintains modestly what he resolves never to
yield, and yields unwillingly what cannot be maintained. The critick's
purpose is to conquer, the author only hopes to escape; the critick
therefore knits his brow, and raises his voice, and rejoices whenever he
perceives any tokens of pain excited by the pressure of his assertions,
or the point of his sarcasms. The author, whose endeavour is at once to
mollify and elude his persecutor, composes his features and softens his
accent, breaks the force of assault by retreat, and rather steps aside
than flies or advances.
As it very seldom happens that the rage of extemporary criticism
inflicts fatal or lasting wounds, I know not that the laws of
benevolence entitle this distress to much sympathy. The diversion of
baiting an author has the sanction of all ages and nations, and is more
lawful than the sport of teasing other animals, because, for the most
part, he comes voluntarily to the stake, furnished, as he imagines, by
the patron powers of literature, with resistless weapons, and
impenetrable armour, with the mail of the boar of Erymanth, and the paws
of the lion of Nemea.
But the works of genius are sometimes produced by other motives than
vanity; and he whom necessity or duty enforces to write, is not always
so well satisfied with himself, as not to be discouraged by censorious
impudence. It may therefore be necessary to consider, how they whom
publication lays open to the insults of such as their obscurity secures
against reprisals, may extricate themselves from unexpected encounters.
Vida, a man of considerable skill in the politicks of literature,
directs his pupil wholly to abandon his defence, and even when he can
irrefragably refute all objections, to suffer tamely the exultations of
his antagonist.
This rule may perhaps be just, when advice is asked, and severity
solicited, because no man tells his opinion so freely as when he
imagines it received with implicit veneration; and criticks ought never
to be consulted, but while errours may yet be rectified or insipidity
suppressed. But when the book has once been dismissed into the world,
and can be no more retouched, I know not whether a very different
conduct should not be prescribed, and whether firmness and spirit may
not sometimes be of use to overpower arrogance and repel brutality.
Softness, diffidence, and moderation, will often be mistaken for
imbecility and dejection; they hire cowardice to the attack by the hopes
of easy victory, and it will soon be found that he whom every man thinks
he can conquer, shall never be at peace.
The animadversions of criticks are commonly such as may easily provoke
the sedatest writer to some quickness of resentment and asperity of
reply. A man, who by long consideration has familiarized a subject to
his own mind, carefully surveyed the series of his thoughts, and planned
all the parts of his composition into a regular dependance on each
other, will often start at the sinistrous interpretations or absurd
remarks of haste and ignorance, and wonder by what infatuation they have
been led away from the obvious sense, and upon what peculiar principles
of judgment they decide against him.
The eye of the intellect, like that of the body, is not equally perfect
in all, nor equally adapted in any to all objects; the end of criticism
is to supply its defects; rules are the instruments of mental vision,
which may indeed assist our faculties when properly used, but produce
confusion and obscurity by unskilful application.
Some seem always to read with the microscope of criticism, and employ
their whole attention upon minute elegance, or faults scarcely visible
to common observation. The dissonance of a syllable, the recurrence of
the same sound, the repetition of a particle, the smallest deviation
from propriety, the slightest defect in construction or arrangement,
swell before their eyes into enormities. As they discern with great
exactness, they comprehend but a narrow compass, and know nothing of the
justness of the design, the general spirit of the performance, the
artifice of connection, or the harmony of the parts; they never,
conceive how small a proportion that which they are busy in
contemplating bears to the whole, or how the petty inaccuracies, with
which they are offended, are absorbed and lost in general excellence.
Others are furnished by criticism with a telescope. They see with great
clearness whatever is too remote to be discovered by the rest of
mankind, but are totally blind to all that lies immediately before them.
They discover in every passage some secret meaning, some remote
allusion, some artful allegory, or some occult imitation, which no other
reader ever suspected; but they have no perception of the cogency of
arguments, the force of pathetick sentiments, the various colours of
diction, or the flowery embellishments of fancy; of all that engages the
attention of others they are totally insensible, while they pry into
worlds of conjecture, and amuse themselves with phantoms in the clouds.
In criticism, as in every other art, we fail sometimes by our weakness,
but more frequently by our fault. We are sometimes bewildered by
ignorance, and sometimes by prejudice, but we seldom deviate far from
the right, but when we deliver ourselves up to the direction of vanity.
No. 177. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 1751.
_Turpe est difficiles habere nugas_. MART. Lib. ii. Ep. lxxxvi. 9.
Those things which now seem frivolous and slight,
Will be of serious consequence to you,
When they have made you once ridiculous. ROSCOMMON.
TO THE RAMBLER.
SIR,
When I was, at the usual time, about to enter upon the profession to
which my friends had destined me, being summoned, by the death of my
father, into the country, I found myself master of an unexpected sum of
money, and of an estate, which, though not large, was, in my opinion,
sufficient to support me in a condition far preferable to the fatigue,
dependance, and uncertainty of any gainful occupation. I therefore
resolved to devote the rest of my life wholly to curiosity, and without
any confinement of my excursions, or termination of my views, to wander
over the boundless regions of general knowledge.
This scheme of life seemed pregnant with inexhaustible variety, and
therefore I could not forbear to congratulate myself upon the wisdom of
my choice. I furnished a large room with all conveniences for study;
collected books of every kind; quitted every science at the first
perception of disgust; returned to it again as soon as my former ardour
happened to revive; and having no rival to depress me by comparison, nor
any critick to alarm me with objections, I spent day after day in
profound tranquillity, with only so much complaisance in my own
improvements, as served to excite and animate my application.
Thus I lived for some years with complete acquiescence in my own plan of
conduct, rising early to read, and dividing the latter part of the day
between economy, exercise, and reflection. But, in time, I began to find
my mind contracted and stiffened by solitude. My ease and elegance were
sensibly impaired; I was no longer able to accommodate myself with
readiness to the accidental current of conversation; my notions grew
particular and paradoxical, and my phraseology formal and unfashionable;
I spoke, on common occasions, the language of books. My quickness of
apprehension, and celerity of reply, had entirely deserted me; when I
delivered my opinion, or detailed my knowledge, I was bewildered by an
unseasonable interrogatory, disconcerted by any slight opposition, and
overwhelmed and lost in dejection, when the smallest advantage was
gained against me in dispute. I became decisive and dogmatical,
impatient of contradiction, perpetually jealous of my character,
insolent to such as acknowledged my superiority, and sullen and
malignant to all who refused to receive my dictates.
This I soon discovered to be one of those intellectual diseases which a
wise man should make haste to cure. I therefore resolved for a time to
shut my books, and learn again the art of conversation; to defecate and
clear my mind by brisker motions, and stronger impulses; and to unite
myself once more to the living generation.
For this purpose I hasted to London, and entreated one of my academical
acquaintances to introduce me into some of the little societies of
literature which are formed in taverns and coffee-houses. He was pleased
with an opportunity of shewing me to his friends, and soon obtained me
admission among a select company of curious men, who met once a week to
exhilarate their studies, and compare their acquisitions.
The eldest and most venerable of this society was Hirsutus, who, after
the first civilities of my reception, found means to introduce the
mention of his favourite studies, by a severe censure of those who want
the due regard for their native country. He informed me, that he had
early withdrawn his attention from foreign trifles, and that since he
began to addict his mind to serious and manly studies, he had very
carefully amassed all the English books that were printed in the black
character. This search he had pursued so diligently, that he was able to
shew the deficiencies of the best catalogues. He had long since
completed his Caxton, had three sheets of Treveris unknown to the
antiquaries, and wanted to a perfect Pynson but two volumes, of which
one was promised him as a legacy by its present possessor, and the other
he was resolved to buy, at whatever price, when Quisquilius's library
should be sold. Hirsutus had no other reason for the valuing or
slighting a book, than that it was printed in the Roman or the Gothic
letter, nor any ideas but such as his favourite volumes had supplied;
when he was serious he expatiated on the narratives "of Johan de
Trevisa," and when he was merry, regaled us with a quotation from the
"Shippe of Foles."