No. 9. On Anger. Animum rege, qui nisi paret Imperat. HOR. Ep. i. 2. 62. It is a very common expression, that such a one is very goodnatured, but very passionate. The expression, indeed, is very good-natured, to allow passionate people so much quarter: but I think a passionate man deserves the least indulgence imaginable. It is said, it is soon over; that is, all the mischief he does is quickly dispatched, which, I think, is no great recommendation to favour. I have known one of these good-natured passionate men say in a mixed company, even to his own wife or child, such things as the most inveterate enemy of his family 10 would not have spoken, even in imagination. It is certain that quick sensibility is inseparable from a ready understanding; but why should not that good understanding call to itself all its force on such occasions, to master that sudden inclination to anger? One of the greatest souls" now in the world is the most subject by nature to anger, and yet so famous, from a conquest of himself this way that he is the known example when you talk of temper and command of a man's self. To contain the spirit of anger, is the worthiest discipline we can put ourselves to. When a man has made any progress this way, a frivolous 20 fellow in a passion is to him as contemptible as a froward child. It ought to be the study of every man for his own quiet and peace. When he stands combustible and ready to flame upon every thing that touches him, life is as uneasy to himself as it is to all about him. Syncropius leads, of all men living, the most ridiculous life; he is ever offending and begging pardon. If his man enters the room without what he was sent for- That blockhead,' begins he-Gentlemen, I ask your pardon, but servants now-a-days'-. The wrong plates are laid, they are thrown into the middle of the room; his wife stands by in pain 30 for him, which he sees in her face, and answers as if he had heard all she was thinking:-'Why? what the devil! Why don't you take care to give orders in these things?' His friends sit down to a tasteless plenty of every thing, every minute expecting new insults from his impertinent passions. In a word, to eat with, or visit Syncropius, is no other than going to see him exercise his family, exercise their patience, and his own anger. It is monstrous that the shame and confusion in which this good-natured angry man must needs behold his friends, while he thus lays about him, does not give him so much reflection, as to create an amendment. This is the most scandalous disuse of reason imaginable: all the harmless part of him is no more than that of a bull-dog, they are tame no longer than 10 they are not offended. One of these good-natured angry men shall, in an instant, assemble together so many allusions to secret circumstances, as are enough to dissolve the peace of all the families and friends he is acquainted with in a quarter of an hour, and yet the next moment be the best-natured man in the whole world. If you would see passion in its purity, without mixture of reason, behold it represented in a mad hero, drawn by a mad poet. Nat. Lee" makes his Alexander say thus: 20 Away! begone! and give a whirlwind room, Eternal discord! Fury! revenge! disdain and indignation! Tear my swoll'n breast, make way for fire and tempest. My brain is burst, debate and reason quench'd; The storm is up, and my hot bleeding heart Splits with the rack; while passions, like the wind, Every passionate fellow in town talks half the day with as little consistency, and threatens things as much out of his 30 power. The next disagreeable person to the outrageous gentleman, is one of a much lower order of anger, and he is what we commonly call a peevish fellow. A peevish fellow is one who has some reason in himself for being out of humour, or has a natural incapacity for delight, and therefore disturbs all. who are happier than himself with pishes and pshaws, or other wellbred interjections, at every thing that is said or done in his presence. There should be physic mixed in the food of all which these fellows eat in good company. This degree of 40 anger passes, forsooth, for a delicacy of judgment, that will not admit of being easily pleased; but none above the character of wearing a peevish man's livery ought to bear with his ill manners. All things among men of sense and condition should pass the censure, and have the protection, of the eye of reason. No man ought to be tolerated in an habitual humour, whim, or particularity of behaviour, by any who do not wait upon him for bread. Next to the peevish fellow is the snarler. This gentleman deals mightily in what we call the irony; and as those sort of people exert themselves most against those below them, you see their humour best in their talk to their servants. 10 'This is so like you; You are a fine fellow; Thou art the quickest head-piece;' and the like. One would think the hectoring, the storming, the sullen, and all the different species and subordinations of the angry should be cured, by knowing they live only as pardoned men; and how pitiful is the condition of being only suffered! But I am interrupted by the pleasantest scene of anger and the disappointment of it that I have ever known, which happened while I was yet writing, and I overheard as I sat in the back-room at a French bookseller's. There came into the shop a very learned man with an zo erect solemn air; and though a person of great parts otherwise, slow in understanding any thing which makes against himself. The composure of the faulty man, and the whimsical perplexity of him that was justly angry, is perfectly new. After turning over many volumes, said the seller to the buyer, Sir, you know I have long asked you to send me back the first volume of French sermons I formerly lent you.'-'Sir,' said the chapman ", "I have often looked for it, but cannot find it; it is certainly lost, and I know not to whom I lent it, it is so many years ago.'-'Then, Sir, here is the other volume; 30 I'll send you home that, and please to pay for both.'-' My friend,' replied he, 'canst thou be so senseless as not to know that one volume is as imperfect in my library as in your shop?'-'Yes, Sir, but it is you have lost the first volume; and, to be short, I will be paid.'-'Sir,' answered the chapman, 'you are a young man, your book is lost; and learn by this little loss to bear much greater adversities, which you must expect to meet with.'-'Yes, Sir, but I'll bear when I must, but I have not lost now, for I say you have it, and shall pay me.'— 'Friend, you grow warm; I tell you the book is lost; and I 40 foresee, in the course even of a prosperous life, that you will meet afflictions to make you mad, if you cannot bear this trifle.' -'Sir, there is in this case no need of bearing, for you have the book.'' I say, Sir, I have not the book. But your passion will not let you hear enough to be informed that I have it not. Learn resignation of yourself to the distresses of this life: nay, do not fret and fume; it is my duty to tell you, that you are of an impatient spirit, and an impatient spirit is never without woe.'-' Was ever any thing like this?'-'Yes, Sir, there have been many things like this. The loss is but a trifle; but your 10 temper is wanton, and incapable of the least pain; therefore let me advise you, be patient, the book is lost, but do not you for that reason lose yourself.' Spectator, No. 438.] [July 23, 1712. No. 10. On Bravery. Like leaves on trees the race of man is found. POPE'S HOMER'S Iliad, Bk. 6. There is no sort of people whose conversation is so pleasant as that of military men, who derive their courage and magnanimity from thought and reflection. The many adventures which attend their way of life makes their conversation so full of incidents, and gives them so frank an air in speaking of what they have been witnesses of, that no company can be more amiable than that of men of sense who are soldiers. 20 There is a certain irregular way in their narrations or discourse, which has something more warm and pleasing than we meet with among men who are used to adjust and methodize their thoughts. I was this evening walking in the fields with my friend Captain Sentry", and I could not, from the many relations which I drew him into of what passed when he was in the service, forbear expressing my wonder, that the fear of death, which we, the rest of mankind, arm ourselves against with so much contemplation, reason, and philosophy, should appear 30 so little in camps, that common men march into open breaches, meet opposite battalions, not only without reluctance, but with alacrity. My friend answered what I said in the following manner : 'What you wonder at may very naturally be the subject of admiration to all who are not conversant in camps; but when a man has spent some time in that way of life, he observes a certain mechanic courage which the ordinary race of men become masters of from acting always in a crowd. They see indeed many drop, but then they see many more alive; they observe themselves escape very narrowly, and they do not know why they should not again. Besides which 10 general way of loose thinking, they usually spend the other part of their time in pleasures upon which their minds are so entirely bent, that short labours or dangers are but a cheap purchase of jollity, triumph, victory, fresh quarters, new scenes, and uncommon adventures. Such are the thoughts of the executive part of an army, and indeed of the gross of mankind in general; but none of these men of mechanical courage have ever made any great figure in the profession of arms. Those who are formed for command, are such as have reasoned themselves, out of a consideration of greater good than length 20 of days, into such a negligence of their being, as to make it their first position, that it is one day to be resigned ;-and since it is, in the prosecution of worthy actions and service of mankind they can put it to habitual hazard. The event of our designs, say they, as it relates to others, is uncertain; but as it relates to ourselves it must be prosperous, while we are in the pursuit of our duty, and within the terms upon which Providence has ensured our happiness, whether we die or live. All that nature has prescribed must be good; and as death is natural to us, it is absurdity to fear it. Fear loses 30 its purpose when we are sure it cannot preserve us, and we should draw resolution to meet it from the impossibility to escape it. Without a resignation to the necessity of dying, there can be no capacity in man to attempt any thing that is glorious but when they have once attained to that perfection, the pleasures of a life spent in martial adventures are as great as any of which the human mind is capable. The force of reason gives a certain beauty, mixed with the conscience of welldoing and thirst of glory to all which before was terrible and ghastly to the imagination. Add to this, that the fellowship 40 of danger, the common good of mankind, the general cause, |