book that I have ever seen; and is a true instance of the English genius, which, though it does not come the first into any art, generally carries it to greater heights than any other country in the world. I am particularly glad that this author comes from a British printing-house in so great a magnificence, as he is the first who has given us any tolerable ac-opened an artery instead of a vein. It is as imposcount of our country.

My illiterate readers, if any such there are, will be surprised to hear me talk of learning as the glory of a nation, and of printing as an art that gains a reputation to a people among whom it flourishes. When men's thoughts are taken up with avarice and ambition, they cannot look upon any thing as great or valuable which does not bring with it an extraordinary power or interest to the person who is concerned in it. But as I shall never sink this paper so far as to engage with Goths and Vandals, I shall only regard such kind of reasoners with that pity which is due to so deplorable a degree of stu-surgeons, of whom poor Festeau was one, go on in pidity and ignorance.-L.

practice of all that is praiseworthy, which made her capable of beholding death, not as the dissolution, but consummation of her life.-T.

No. 369.]

SATURDAY, MAY 3, 1712.

Segnius irritant animos demissa per aures,
Quam quæ sunt oculis subjecta fidelibus-

seeing the patriarch actually travelling towards the
land of promise, which gives a particular liveliness
to this part of the narration:

I see him, but thou canst not, with what faith
He leaves his gods, his friends, and native soil,
Ur of Chaldea, passing now the fora
To Haran; after him a cumbrous train
Of herds, and flocks, and num`roas servitude:
Not wand'ring poor, but trusting all his wealth
With God, who call'd him in a land unknown.
Canaan he now attains; I see his tents
Pitch'd about Schechem, and the neighbouring plain
Of Moreh; there by promise he receives.
Gift to his progeny of all that land;

From Hamath northward to the desert south:
(Things by their names I call, though yet unn m'd.)

gave Milton the hint of this episode, the last line
As Virgil's vision in the sixth Eneid probably
is a translation of that verse where Anchises men-
tions the names of places, which they were to bear
hereafter:

HOR. Ars. Poet. 180. What we hear moves less than what we see.-RoscoMMON. MILTON, after having represented in vision the history of mankind to the first great period of nature, dispatches the remaining part of it in narration. He has devised a very handsome reason for the angel's proceeding with Adam after this manner; though doubtless the true reason was the difficulty which the poet would have found to have shadowed out so mixed and complicated a story in visible objects. I could wish, however, that the author had done it, whatever pains it might have Hæc tum nomina erunt, nunc sunt sine nomine terræ. cost him. To give my opinion freely, I think that The poet has very finely represented the joy and the exhibiting part of the history of mankind in gladness of heart which rises in Adam upon his disvision, and part in narrative, is as if a history-covery of the Messiah. As he sees his day at a painter should put in colours one-half of his subject, distance through types and shadows, he rejoices in and write down the remaining part of it. If Mil-it: but when he finds the redemption of man comton's poem flags any where, it is in this narration, pleted, and Paradise again renewed, he breaks forth where in some places the author has been so atten- in rapture and transport: tive to his divinity that he has neglected his poetry. The narration, however, rises very happily on several occasions, where the subject is capable of poetical ornaments, as particularly in the confusion which he describes among the builders of Babel, and in his short sketch of the plagues of Egypt. The storm of hail and fire, with the darkness that overspread the land for three days, are described with great strength. The beautiful passage which follows is raised upon noble hints in Scripture:

Thus with ten wounds,

The river dragon, tam'd, at length submits
To let his sojourners depart; and oft
Humbles his stubborn heart; but still, as ice,
More harden'd after thaw: till in his rage
Pursuing whom he late dismiss'd, the sea
Swallows him with his host; but them lets pass
As on dry land between two crystal walls,
Aw'd by the rod of Moses so to stand
Divided-

The river-dragon is an allusion to the crocodile, which inhabits the Nile, from whence Egypt derives her plenty. This allusion is taken from that sublime passage in Ezekiel: "Thus saith the Lord God, Behold I am against thee, Pharaoh, king of Egypt, the great dragon that lieth in the midst of his rivers, which hath said, My river is mine own, and I have made it for myself." Milton has given us another very noble and poetical image in the same description, which is copied almost word for word out of the history of Moses:

All night he will pursue, but his approach
Darkness defends between till morning watch:
Then through the fiery pillar and the cloud
God looking forth will trouble all his host,

And craze their chariot wheels: when, by command,
Moses once more his potent rod extends
Over the sea: the sea his rod obeys:

On their embattell'd ranks the waves return,
And overwhelm their war

As the principal design of this episode was to give Adam an idea of the holy person who was to reinstate human nature in that happiness and perfection from which it had fallen, the poet confines himself to the line of Abraham, from whence the Messiah was to descend. The angel is described as

O goodness infinite, goodness immense!

That all this good of evil shall produce, &c.

an heroic poem, according to the opinion of the I have hinted in my sixth paper on Milton, that best critics, ought to end happily, and leave the mind of the reader, after having conducted it through many doubts and fears, sorrows and disquietudes, in a state of tranquillity and satisfaction. Milton's fable, which had so many other qualifica tions to recommend it, was deficient in this particular. It is here therefore that the poet has shown a most exquisite judgment, as well as the finest invention, by finding out a method to supply this natural defect in his subject. Accordingly he leaves the adversary of mankind, in the last view which he gives us of him, under the lowest state of mortification and disappointment. We see him chewing ashes, grovelling in the dust, and loaded with suour two first parents are comforted by dreams and pernumerary pains and torments. On the contrary, visions, cheered with promises of salvation, and in a manner raised to a greater happiness than that which they had forfeited. In short, Satan is repre sented miserable in the height of his triumphs, and Adam triumphant in the height of misery.

of Adam and the archangel are full of moral and
Milton's poem ends very nobly. The last speeches
instructive sentiments. The sleep that fell upon
Eve, and the effects it had in quieting the disorders
of her mind, produces the same kind of consolation
in the reader, who cannot peruse the last beautiful
speech, which is ascribed to the mother of mankind,
without a secret pleasure and satisfaction:

Whence thou return'st, and whither went'st, I know;
For God is also in sleep. and dreams advise.
Which he hath sent propitious, some great good
Presaging, since, with sorrow and heart's distress
Wearied, I fell asleep; but now led on;

In me is no delay; with thee to go,
Is to stay here; without thee here to stay.
Is to go hence unwilling: thou to me
Art all things under heav'n, all places thoiz,
Who for my wilful crime art banish'd hence.
This farther consolation yet secure

I carry hence; though all by me is lost,
Such favour I unworthy am vouchsafd,
By me the promis'd seed shall all restore.

The following lines, which conclude the poem, rise in a most glorious blaze of poetical images and expressions.

Heliodorus in his Ethiopics acquaints us, that the motion of the gods differs from that of mortals, as the former do not stir their feet, nor proceed step by step, but slide over the surface of the earth by a uniform swimming of the whole body. The reader may observe with how poetical a description Milton has attributed the same kind of motion to the angels who were to take possession of Paradise:

So spake our mother Eve; and Adam heard
Well pleas'd, but answer'd not; for now too nigh
Th' archangel stood; and from the other hill
To their fix'd station, all in bright array
The cherubim descended; on the ground
Gliding meteorous, as evening mist
Ris'u from a river, o'er the marish glides,
And gathers ground fast at the lab'rers heel
Homeward returning. High in front advanc'd.
The brandish'd sword of God before them blaz'd
Fierce as a comet-

The author helped his invention in the following passage, by reflecting on the behaviour of the angel who in holy writ has the conduct of Lot and his family. The circumstances drawn from that relation are very gracefully made use of on this occasion:

In either hand the hast'ning angel caught
Our King ring parents, and to the eastern gate
Led them direct; and down the cliff as fast
To the subjected plain; then disappear'd,
They looking back, &c.

The scene which our first parents are surprised with, upon their looking back on Paradise, wonderfully strikes the reader's imagination, as nothing can be more natural than the tears they shed on that occasion:

They, looking back, all th' castern side beheld,
Of Paradise, so late their happy seat,
Way'd over by that flaming brand, the gate
With dreadful faces throng'd and fiery arms:
Some natural tears they dropp'd, but wip'd them soon;
The world was all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide.
If I might presume to offer at the smallest altera-
tion in this divine work, I should think the poem
would end better with the passage here quoted, than
the two verses which follow:

They hand in hand, with wand'ring steps and slow,
Through Eden took their solitary way.

These two verses, though they have their beauty, fall very much below the foregoing passage, and renew in the mind of the reader that anguish which was pretty well laid by that consideration:

upon a certain moral, as the ground-work and foundation of his poem, and afterward finds out a story to it; I am however of opinion, that no just hercic poem ever was or can be made, from whence one great moral may not be deduced. That which reigns in Milton is the most universal and most useful that can be imagined. It is in short this, that obedien.e to the will of God makes men happy, and that disobedience makes them miserable. This is visibly the moral of the principal fable, which turns upon Adam and Eve, who continued in Paradise while they kept the command that was given them, and were driven out of it as soon as they had trans gressed. This is likewise the moral of the principal episode, which shows us how an innumerable niultitude of angels fell from their state of bliss, and were cast into hell upon their disobedience. Besides this great moral, which may be looked upon as the soul of the fable, there are an affinity of under morals which are to be drawn from the several parts of the

poem, and which make this work more useful and instructive than any other poem in any language.

Those who have criticized on the Odyssey, the Iliad, and Æneid, have taken a great deal of pains to fix the number of months or days contained in the action of each of those poems. If any one thinks it worth his while to examine this particular in Milton, he will find, that from Adam's first appearance in the fourth book, to his expulsion from Paradise in the twelfth, the author reckons ten days. the three first books, as it does not pass within the As for that part of the action which is described in regions of nature, I have before observed that it is not subject to any calculations of time.

I have now finished my observations on a work which does an honour to the English nation. I have taken a general view of it under these four headsthe fable, the characters, the sentiments, and the language, and made each of them the subject of a particular paper. I have in the next place spoken of the censures which our author may incur under each of these heads, which I have confined to two papers, though I might have enlarged the number if I had been disposed to dwell on so ungrateful a subject; I believe, however, that the severest reader will not find any little fault in heroic poetry, which this author has fallen into, that does not come under one of those heads among which I have distributed large of Paradise Lost, I could not think it sufficient his several blemishes. After having thus treated at to have celebrated this poem in the whole without descending to particulars. I have therefore bestowed a paper upon each book, and endeavoured not only to prove that the poem is beautiful in general, but to point out its particular beauties: and, to determine wherein they consist. I have endeavoured to show how some passages are beautiful by being sub

The world was all before them, where to choose Their place of rest, and Providence their guide. The number of books in Paradise Lost is equal to those of the Æneid. Our author in his first edition had divided his poem into ten books, but after-lime, others by being soft, others by being natural; ward broke the seventh and the eleventh each of them into two different books, by the help of some small additions. This second division was made with great judgment, as any one may see who will be at the pains of examining it. It was not done for the sake of such a chimerical beauty as that of resembling Virgil in this particular, but for the more just and regular disposition of this great work.

Those who have read Bossu, and many of the critics who have written since his time, will not pardon me if I do not find out the particular moral which is inculcated in Paradise Lost Though I ean by no means think, with the last-mentioned French author, that an epic writer first of all pitches

which of them are recommended by the passion, which by the moral, which by the sentiment, and which by the expression. I have likewise endeavoured to show how the genius of the poet shines by a happy invention, a distant allusion, or a judicious imitation; how he has copied or improved Homer or Virgil, and raised his own imaginations by the use which he has made of several poetical passages in Scripture. I might have inserted also several passages in Tasso, which our author has imitated: but, as I do not look upon Tassó to be a sufficient voucher, I would not perplex my reader with such quotations as might do more honour to the Italian than to the English poet. In short, I have endea

voured to particularize those innumerable kinds of beauty which it would be tedious to recapitulate, but which are essential to poetry, and which may be met with in the works of this great author. Had I thought; at my first engaging in this design, that it would have led me to so great a length, I believe I should never have entered upon it; but the kind reception which it has met with among those whose judgment I have a value for, as well as the uncom mon demands which my bookseller tells me have been made for these particular discourses, give me no reason to repent of the pains I have been at in composing them.-L.

Totus mundus agit histrionem.

All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players.-SHAKSPEARE MANY of my fair readers, as well as very gay and well-received persons of the other sex, are extremely perplexed at the Latin sentences at the head of my speculations. I do not know whether I ought not to indulge them with translations of each of them: however, I have to-day taken down from the top of the stage in Drury-lane a bit of Latin which often stands in their view, and signifies, that "The whole world acts the player." It is certain that if we look all round us, and behold the different employments of mankind, you hardly see one who is not, as the player is, in an assumed character. The lawyer who is vehement and loud in the cause wherein he knows he has not the truth of the question on his side, is a player as to the personated part, but incomparably meaner than he as to the prostitution of himself for hire: because the pleader's falsehood introduces injustice; the player feigns for no other end but to divert or instruct you. The divine, whose passions transport him to say any thing with any view but promoting the interests of true piety and religion, is a player with a still greater imputation of guilt, in proportion to his depreciating a character more sacred. Consider all the different pursuits and employments of men, and you will find half their actions tend to nothing else but disguise and imposture; and all that is done which proceeds not from a man's very self, is the action of a player. For this reason it is that I make so frequent mention of the stage. It is with me a matter of the highest consideration, what parts are well or ill performed, what passions or sentiments are indulged or cultivated, and consequently what manners and customs are transfused from the stage to the world, which reciprocally imitate each other. As the writers of epic poems introduce shadowy persons, and represent vices and virtues under the characters of men and women; so I, who am a Spectator in the world, may perhaps sometimes make use of the names of the actors ca the stage, to represent or admonish those who transact affairs in the world. When I am commending Wilks for representing the tenderness of a husband and a father in Macbeth, the contrition of a reformed prodigal in Harry the Fourth, the winning emptiness of a young man of good-nature and wealth in The Trip to the Jubilee, the officiousness of an artful servant in the For; when thus I celebrate Wilks, I talk to all the world who are engaged in any of those circumstances. If I were to speak of merit neglected, misapplied, or misunderstood, might I not say Estcourt has a great capacity? But it is not the interest of others who

bear a figure on the stage, that his talents were understood; it is their business to impose upon him what cannot become him, or keep out of his bands any thing in which he would shine. Were one to raise a suspicion of himself in a man who passes upon the world for a fine thing, in order to alarm him, one might say, If Lord Foppington was not on the stage (Cibber acts the false pretensions to a genteel behaviour so very justly), he would have in the generality of mankind more that would admire than deride him. When we come to characters directly comical, it is not to be imagined what effect a well-regulated stage would have upon men's manners. The craft of a usurer, the absurdity of a rich fool, the awkward roughness of a fellow of half courage, the ungraceful mirth of a creature of half wit, might for ever be put out of countenance by proper parts for Dogget. Johnson, by acting Corbacchio the other night, must have given all who saw him, a thorough detestation of aged avarice. The petulancy of a peevish old feHow, who loves and hates he knows not why, is very excellently performed by the ingenious Mr. William Penkethman in the Fop's Fortune; where, in the character of Don Choleric Snap Shorto de Testy, he answers no questions but to those whom he likes, and wants no account of any thing from those he approves. Mr. Penkethman is also master of as many faces in the dumb scene as can be expected from a man in the circumstances of being ready to perish out of fear and hunger. He wonders throughout the whole scene very masterly, without neglecting his victuals. If it be, as I have heard it sometimes mentioned, a great qualification for the world to follow business and pleasure too, what is it in the ingenious Mr. Penkethman to represent a sense of pleasure and pain at the same time-as you may see him do this evening?

As it is certain that a stage ought to be wholly suppressed, or judiciously encouraged, while there is one in the nation, men turned for regular pleasure cannot employ their thoughts more usefully, for the diversion of mankind, than by convincing them that it is in themselves to raise this entertainment to the greatest height. It would be a great improvement, as well as embellishment to the theatre, if dancing were more regarded, and taught to all the actors. One who has the advantage of such an agreeable girlish person as Mrs. Bicknell, joined with her capacity of imitation, could in proper gesture and motion represent all the decent characters of female life. An amiable modesty in one aspect of a dancer, and assumed confidence in another, a sudden joy in another, a falling-off with an impatience of being beheld, a return towards the audience with an unsteady resolution to approach them, and a well-acted solicitude to please, would revive in the company all the fine touches of mind raised in observing all the objects of affection or passion they had before beheld. Such elegant entertainments as these would polish the town into judgment in their gratifications; and delicacy in pleasure is the first step people of condition take, in reformation from vice. Mrs. Bicknell has the only capacity for this sort of dancing of any on the stage; and I dare say all who see her performance to-morrow night, when sure the romp will do her best for her own benefit, will be of my mind.-T.

No. 371.1 TUESDAY, MAY 6, 1712.
Jamne igitur laudas quod de sapientibus unus
Hidebat?
Juv. Sat. x. 28.
And shall the sage* your approbation win.
Whose laughing features wore a constant grín?

I SHALL Communicate to my readers the following letter for the entertainment of this day:

"SIR,

"You know very well that our nation is more famous for that sort of men who are called 'whims' and humorists, than any other country in the world: for which reason it is observed, that our English comedy excels that of all other nations in the novelty and variety of its characters.

guests being a brave man, and fuller of resentment than he knew how to express, went out of the room, and sent the facetious inviter a challenge in writing, which, though it was afterward dropped by the interposition of friends, put a stop to these ludicrous entertainments.

"Now, sir, I dare say you will agree with me, that as there is no moral in these jests, they ought to be discouraged, and looked upon rather as pieces of unluckiness than wit. However, as it is natural for one man to refine upon the thought of another; and impossible for any single person, how great soever his parts may be, to invent an art, and bring it to its utmost perfection; I shall here give you an account of an honest gentleman of my acquaintance, Among those innumerable sets of whims which who, upon hearing the character of the wit above sar country produces, there are none whom I have mentioned, has himself assumed it, and endeavoured regarded with more curiosity than those who have to convert it to the benefit of mankind. He invited invented any particular kind of diversion for the en- half a dozen of his friends one day to dinner, who tertainment of themselves and their friends. My were each of them famous for inserting several reletter shall single out those who take delight in dundant phrases in their discourse, as 'D'ye hear sorting a company that has something of burlesque me ?-D'ye see?—That is,-And so, Sir. Each and ridicule in its appearance. I shall make my- of his guests making frequent use of his particular self understood by the following example. One of elegance, appeared so ridiculous to his neighbour, the wits of the last age, who was a man of a good that he could not but reflect upon himself as apestate, thought he never laid out his money better pearing equally ridiculous to the rest of the comthan in a jest. As he was one year at the Bath, pany. By this means before they had sat long to observing that, in the great confluence of fine peo-gether, every one, talking with the greatest circumple, there were several among them with long chins, a part of the visage by which he himself was very much distinguished, he invited to dinner half a score of these remarkable persons, who had their mouths in the middle of their faces. They had no sooner placed themselves about the table but they began to stare upon one another, not being able to imagine what had brought them together. Our English pro

verb says,

Tis merry in the hall,
When beards wag all.

It proved so in the assembly I am now speaking of, who seeing so many peaks of faces agitated with eating, drinking, and discourse, and observing all the chins that were present meeting together very often over the centre of the table, every one grew sensible of the jest, and came into it with so much good humour, that they lived in strict friendship and alliance from that day forward.

His

spection, and carefully avoiding his favourite expletive, the conversation was cleared of its redundancies, and had a greater quantity of sense though less of sound in it.

2

"The same well-meaning gentleman took occasion, at another time, to bring together such of his friends as were addicted to a foolish habitual custom of swearing. In order to show them the absurdity of the practice, he had recourse to the invention above mentioned, having placed an amanuensis in a private part of the room. After the second bottle, honest friend began to take notice of the many so when men open their minds without reserve, my norous but unnecessary words that had passed in his much good conversation they had lost by giving house since their sitting down at table, and how way to such superfluous phrases. What a tax, says he, would they have raised for the poor, had we put the laws in execution upon one another!" Every one of them took this gentle reproof in good part; upon which he told them, that, knowing their

The same gentleman some time after packed together a set of eglers as he called them, consisting of such as had an unlucky cast in their eyes. diversion on this occasion was to see the cross bows, mistaken signs, and wrong connivances, that passed amidst so many broken and refracted rays of sight. The third feast which this merry gentleman ex-reduced to two, had there not been those abominable hibited was to the stammerers, whom he got together interpolations I have before mentioned. Upon the in a sufficient body to fill his table. He had ordered reading of it in cold blood, it looked rather like a one of his servants, who was placed behind a screen, conference of fiends than of men. In short, every to write down their table talk, which was very easy he had pronounced amidst the heat and inadvertency one trembled at himself upon hearing calmly what to be done without the help of short-hand. It appears by the notes which were taken, that though their conversation never fell, there were not above twenty words spoken during the first course; that upon serving up the second, one of the company was a quarter of an hour in telling them that the ducklings and asparagus were very good; and that another took up the same time in declaring himself of the same opinion. This jest did not, however, go off so well as either of the former; for one of the

conversation would have no secrets in it, he had ordered it to be taken down in writing, and for the There were ten sheets of it, which might have been humour-sake, would read it to them, if they pleased.

• Democritus.

of discourse.

"I shall only mention another occasion wherein he made use of the same intention to cure a different kind of men, who are the pests of all polite conversation, and murder time as much as either of the two former, though they do it more innocently—I mean, that dull generation of story-tellers, My friend got together about half a dozen of his acquaintance, who were infected with this strange malady. The first day one of them sitting down entered upon the siege of Namur, which lasted till

Villars, the last Duke of Buckingham, and father of the four o'clock, their time of parting The second day a North Briton took possession of the discourse,

Jale Lady Mary Wortley Montague.
SPECTATOR Nos. 55 & 56.