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C.

This letter puts me in mind of an Italian | fields, as he thought the nature of the soil epitaph, written on the monument of a va- required. At the end of the year, when letudinarian: Stavo ben, ma per star meg- he expected to see a more than ordinary lio, sto qui:' which it is impossible to crop, his harvest fell infinitely short of that translate. The fear of death often proves of his neighbours. Upon which (says the mortal, and sets people on methods to save fable) he desired Jupiter to take the their lives, which infallibly destroy them. weather again into his own hands, or This is a reflection made by some histo-that otherwise he should utterly ruin himrians, upon observing that there are many self. more thousands killed in a flight, than in a battle; and may be applied to those multitudes of imaginary sick persons that No. 26.] Friday, March 30, 1711. break their constitutions by physic, and throw themselves into the arms of death, Pallida mors æquo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas, Regumque turres. O beate Sexti, by endeavouring to escape it. This me- Vitæ summa brevis spem nos vetat inchoare longam, thod is not only dangerous, but below the Jam te premet nox, fabulæque manes, practice of a reasonable creature. To conEt domus exilis Plutonia.--Hor. Lib. 1. Od. iv. 13. sult the preservation of life, as the only Knocks at the cottage, and the palace gate: With equal foot, rich friend, impartial fate end of it, to make our health our business, Life's span forbids thee to extend thy cares, to engage in no action that is not part of a And stretch thy hopes beyond thy years: regimen, or course of physic; are pur-To story'd ghosts, and Pluto's house below. Creech. Night soon will seize, and you must quickly go poses so abject, so mean, so unworthy human nature, that a generous soul would WHEN I am in a serious humour, I very rather die than submit to them. Besides that a continual anxiety for life vitiates all the relishes of it, and casts a gloom over the whole face of nature; as it is impossible we should take delight in any thing that we are every moment afraid of losing.

often walk by myself in Westminster Abbey; where the gloominess of the place, and the use to which it is applied, with the solemnity of the building, and the condition of the people who lie in it, are apt to fill the mind with a kind of melancholy, or I do not mean, by what I have here said, rather thoughtfulness, that is not disagreethat I think any one to blame for taking due able. I yesterday passed a whole aftercare of their health. On the contrary, as noon in the church-yard, the cloisters, and cheerfulness of mind, and capacity for busi- the church, amusing myself with the tombness, are in a great measure the effects of a stones and inscriptions that I met with in well-tempered constitution, a man cannot those several regions of the dead. Most of be at too much pains to cultivate and pre-them recorded nothing else of the buried serve it. But this care, which we are person, but that he was born upon one prompted to, not only by common sense, day, and died upon another; the whole but by duty and instinct, should never en-history of his life being comprehended in gage us in groundless fears, melancholy those two circumstances that are common apprehensions, and imaginary distempers, to all mankind. I could not but look upon which are natural to every man who is these registers of existence, whether of more anxious to live, than how to die. In brass or marble, as a kind of satire upon short, the preservation of life should be the departed persons; who had left no only a secondary concern, and the direction other memorial of them but that they were of it our principal. If we have this frame born, and that they died. They put me in of mind, we shall take the best means to mind of several persons mentioned in the preserve life, without being over solicitous battles of heroic poems, who have soundabout the event; and shall arrive at that ing names given them, for no other reason point of felicity which Martial has men-but that they may be killed, and are celetioned as the perfection of happiness, of brated for nothing but being knocked on neither fearing nor wishing for death. the head.

Γλαυκον τι, Μέδοντα τε, Θερσίλοχον τε.—Hom. Glaucumque, Medontaque, Thersilochumque.'—Virg. 'Glaucus, and Mcdon, and Thersilochus.'

In answer to the gentleman, who tempers his health by ounces and by scruples, and instead of complying with those natural solicitations of hunger and thirst, drowsiness The life of these men is finely described or love of exercise, governs himself by the in holy writ by the path of an arrow, prescriptions of his chair, I shall tell him a which is immediately closed up and lost. short fable. Jupiter, says the mythologist, Upon my going into the church, I entero reward the piety of a certain country-tained myself with the digging of a grave; nan, pronised to give him whatever he and saw in every shovel-full of it that was would ask. The countryman desired that thrown up, the fragment of a bone or skull he might have the management of the wea-intermixt with a kind of fresh mouldering ther in his own estate. He obtained his request, and immediately distributed rain, snow, and sunshine among his several

The following translation, however, may give an English reader some idea of the Italian epitaph: I was well, but striving to be better, I am here.'

earth that some time or other had a place in the composition of an human body. Upon this I began to consider with myself, confused together under the pavement what innumerable multitudes of people lay of that ancient cathedral; how men and

women, friends and enemies, priests and soldiers, monks and prebendaries, were crumbled amongst one another, and blended together in the same common mass; how beauty, strength, and youth, with old age, weakness, and deformity, lay undistinguished, in the same promiscuous heap of

matter.

After having thus surveyed this great magazine of mortality, as it were in the lump, I examined it more particularly by the accounts which I found on several of the monuments which are raised in every quarter of that ancient fabric. Some of them were covered with such extravagant epitaphs, that if it were possible for the dead person to be acquainted with them, he would blush at the praises which his friends have bestowed upon him. There are others so excessively modest, that they deliver the character of the person departed in Greek or Hebrew, and by that means are not understood once in a twelvemonth. In the poetical quarter, I found there were poets who had no monuments, and monuments which had no poets. I observed, indeed, that the present war had filled the church with many of these uninhabited monuments, which had been erected to the memory of persons whose bodies were perhaps buried in the plains of Blenheim, or in the bosom of the ocean.

the repository of our English kings for the contemplation of another day, when I shall find my mind disposed for so serious an amusement. I know that entertainments of this nature are apt to raise dark and dismal thoughts in timorous minds, and gloomy imaginations; but for my own part, though I am always serious, I do not know what it is to be melancholy; and can therefore take a view of nature, in her deep and solemn scenes, with the same pleasure as in her most gay and delightful ones. By this means I can improve myself with those objects, which others consider with terror. When I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of envy dies in me; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tomb of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for those whom we must quickly follow. When I see kings lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the holy men that divided the world with their contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the little competitions, factions, and debates of mankind. When I read the several dates of the tombs, of some that died yesterday, and some six hundred years ago, I consider that great day when we shall all of us be contemporaries, and make our appearance together.

C.

Ut nox longa, quibus mentitur amica, diesque
Longa videtur opus debentibus; ut piger annus
Pupillis, quos dura premit custodia matrum:
Sic mihi tarda fluunt ingrataque tempora, quæ spem
Consilium que morantur agendi gnaviter id, quod
Æque pauperibus prodest, locupletibus æque ;
Æque neglectum pueris senibusque nocebit.
Hor. Lib. 1. Ep. i. 23.

IMITATED.

I could not but be very much delighted with several modern epitaphs, which are written with great elegance of expression and justness of thought, and therefore do honour to the living as well as to the dead. As a foreigner is very apt to conceive an No. 27.] Saturday, March 31, 1711. idea of the ignorance or politeness of a nation from the turn of their public monuments and inscriptions, they should be submitted to the perusal of men of learning and genius before they are put in execution. Sir Cloudesly Shovel's monument has very often given me great offence. Instead of the brave rough English admiral, which was the distinguishing character of that plain, gallant man, he is represented on his tomb by the figure of a beau, dressed in a long periwig, and reposing himself upon velvet cushions, under a canopy of state. The inscription is answerable to the monument: for instead of celebrating the many remarkable actions he had performed in the service of his country, it acquaints us only with the manner of his death, in which it was impossible for him to reap any honour. The Dutch, whom we are apt to despise for want of genius, show an infinitely greater taste of antiquity and politeness in their buildings and works of this nature, than what we meet with in those of our own country. The monuments of their admirals, which have been erected at the public expense, represent them like themselves, and are adorned with rostral crowns and naval ornaments, with beautiful festoons of sea-weed, shells, and coral. But to return to our subject. I have left

Long as to him, who works for debt, the day;
Long as the night to her, whose love 'saway;
Long as the year's dull circle seems to run,
When the brisk minor pants for twenty-one;
So slow th' unprofitable moments roll,
That lock up all the functions of my soul;
That keep me from myself, and still delay
Life's instant business to a future day:
That task, which as we follow, or despise,
The eldest is a fool, the youngest wise:
Which done, the poorest can no wants endure;
And which not done, the richest must be poor.

Pope.

THERE is scarce a thinking man in the world, who is involved in the business of it, but lives under a secret impatience of the hurry and fatigue he suffers, and has formed a resolution to fix himself, one time or other, in such a state as is suitable to the end of his being. You hear men every day, in conversation, profess, that all the honour, power, and riches, which they propose to themselves, cannot, give satisfaction enough to reward them for half the anxiety they undergo in the pursuit or possession of

them. While men are in this temper | live. The station I am in furnishes me with (which happens very frequently) how inconsistent are they with themselves? They are wearied with the toil they bear, but cannot find in their hearts to relinquish it; retirement is what they want, but they cannot betake themselves to it. While they pant after shade and covert, they still affect to appear in the most glittering scenes of life. Sure this is but just as reasonable as if a man should call for more lights, when he has a mind to go to sleep.

Since then it is certain that our own hearts deceive us in the love of the world, and that we cannot command ourselves enough to resign it, though we every day wish ourselves disengaged from its allurements, let us not stand upon a formal taking of leave, but wean ourselves from them while we are in the midst of them.

daily opportunities of this kind; and the
noble principle with which you have in-
spired me, of benevolence to all I have to
deal with, quickens my application in every
thing I undertake. When I relieve merít
from discountenance, when I assist a friend-
less person, when I produce concealed worth,
I am displeased with myself, for having de-
signed to leave the world in order to be vir-
tuous. I am sorry you decline the occasions
which the condition I am in might afford
me of enlarging your fortunes; but I know
I contribute more to your satisfaction, when
I acknowledge I am the better man, from
the influence and authority you have over,
sir, your most obliged and most humble
servant,
R. O.'

'SIR,-I am entirely convinced of the It is certainly the general intention of the truth of what you were pleased to say to greater part of mankind to accomplish this told me then of the silly way I was in; but me, when I was last with you alone. You work, and live according to their own approbation, as soon as they possibly can. But you told me so, as I saw you loved me, since the duration of life is so uncertain, and otherwise I could not obey your commands that has been a common topic of discourse in letting you know my thoughts so sinever since there was such a thing as life it-cerely as I do at present. I know "the self, how is it possible that we should defer a moment the beginning to live according to the rules of reason?

The man of business has ever some one point to carry, and then he tells himself he will bid adieu to all the vanity of ambition. The man of pleasure resolves to take his leave at least, and part civilly with his mistress; but the ambitious man is entangled every moment in a fresh pursuit, and the lover sees new charms in the object he fancied he could abandon. It is therefore a fantastical way of thinking, when we promise ourselves an alteration in our conduct from change of place, and difference of circumstances; the same passions will attend us wherever we are, till they are conquered, and we can never live to our satisfaction in the deepest retirement, unless we are capable of living so, in some measure, amidst the noise and business of the world.

creature, for whom I resign so much of my
then the trifler has something in her so un-
character," is all that you said of her; but
designing and harmless, that her guilt in
one kind disappears by the comparison of
her innocence in another. Will you, vir-
Must dear Chloe be called by the hard
tuous man, allow no alteration of offences?
men? I keep the solemn promise I made
name you pious people give to common wo
you in writing to you the state of my mind,
deavour to get the better of this fondness,
after your kind admonition; and will en-
which makes me so much her humble ser-
vant, that I am almost ashamed to sub-
scribe myself yours,
T. D.'

'SIR,-There is no state of life so anxious as that of a man who does not live according to the dictates of his own reason. It will seem odd to you, when I assure you that my love of retirement first of all brought I have ever thought men were better me to court; but this will be no riddle, when known by what could be observed of them I acquaint you that I placed myself here from a perusal of their private letters, than with a design of getting so much money as any other way, My friend the clergyman, might enable me to purchase a handsome the other day, upon serious discourse with retreat in the country. At present my cirhim concerning the danger of procrastina- cumstances enable me, and my duty prompts tion, gave me the following letters from me to pass away the remaining part of my persons with whom he lives in great friend-life in such a retirement as I at first proship and intimacy, according to the good breeding and good sense of his character. The first is from a man of business, who is his convert: the second from one of whom he conceives good hopes: the third from one who is in no state at all, but carried one way and another by starts.

'SIR, I know not with what words to express to you the sense I have of the high obligation you have laid upon me, in the penance you enjoined me of doing some good or other to a person of worth every day I

posed to myself; but to my great misfortune I have entirely lost the relish of it, and should now return to the country with greater reluctance than I at first came to court. I am so unhappy, as to know that what I am fond of are trifles, and that what I neglect is of the greatest importance; in short, I find a contest in my own mind be tween reason and fashion, I remember you once told me, that I might live in the world and out of it, at the same time. Let me beg of you to explain this paradox more at large to me, that I may conform my life, if

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Tendit Apollo.

-Neque semper arcum

Hor. Lib. 2. Od. x. 19. Nor does Apollo always bend his bow.

I SHALL here present my reader with a letter from a projector, concerning a new office, which he thinks may very much contribute to the embellishment of the city, and to the driving barbarity out of our streets. I consider it as a satire upon projectors in general, and a lively picture of the whole art of modern criticism.

SIR,-Observing that you have thoughts of creating certain officers under you, for the inspection of several petty enormities which you yourself cannot attend to; and finding daily absurdities hung out upon the sign-posts of this city, to the great scandal of foreigners, as well as those of our own country, who are curious spectators of the same; I do humbly propose that you will be pleased to make me your superintendant of all such figures and devices, as are or shall be made use of on this occasion; with full powers to rectify or expunge whatever I shall find irregular or defective. want of such an officer, there is nothing like sound literature and good sense to be met with in those objects that are every where thrusting themselves out to the eye, and endeavouring to become visible. Our streets are filled with blue boars, black swans, and red lions; not to mention flying pigs, and hogs in armour, with many other creatures more extraordinary than any in the deserts of Africa. Strange! that one who has all the birds and beasts in nature to choose out of, should live at the sign of

an Ens Rationis!

For

nuns and a hare, which we see so frequently joined together. I would therefore establish certain rules, for the determining how far one tradesman may give the sign of another, and in what cases he may be allowed to quarter it with his own.

In the third place, I would enjoin every shop to make use of a sign which bears some affinity to the wares in which it deals. What can be more inconsistent, than to see a bawd at the sign of the angel, or a tailor at the lion? A cook should not live at the boot, nor a shoemaker at the roasted pig; and yet, for want of this regulation, I have seen a goat set up before the door of a perfumer, and the French king's head at a sword-cutler's.

veral of those gentlemen who value them'An ingenious foreigner observes, that sesuch as are bred to trade, bear the tools of selves upon their families, and overlook their forefathers in their coats of arms. I will not examine how true this is in fact. But though it may not be necessary for posterity thus to set up the sign of their forefathers, I think it highly proper for those who actually profess the trade to show some such marks of it before their doors.

As

ingenious sign-post, I would likewise advise 'When the name gives an occasion for an the owner to take that opportunity of lethave been ridiculous for the ingenious Mrs. ting the world know who he is. It would Salmon to have lived at the sign of the trout; for which reason she has erected before her house the figure of the fish that is her namesake. Mr. Bell has likewise distinguished himself by a device of the same nature: and here, sír, I must beg leave to observe to you, that this particular figure of a bell has given occasion to several pieces of wit in this kind. A man of your reading must know, that Abel Drugger gained great applause by it in the time of Ben Jonson. 'My first task therefore should be, like Our apocryphal heathen god* is also rethat of Hercules, to clear the city from presented by this figure; which, in conjuncmonsters. In the second place, I would some picture in several of our streets. tion with the dragon, makes a very handforbid that creatures of jarring and incon- for the bell-savage, which is the sign of a gruous natures should be joined together in the same sign; such as the bell and the savage man standing by a bell, I was forneat's tongue, the dog and the gridiron. of it, till I accidentally fell into the reading merly very much puzzled upon the conceit The fox and the goose may be supposed to of an old romance translated out of the have met, but what has the fox and the se- French; which gives an account of a very ven stars to do together? And when did beautiful woman who was found in a wilthe lamb and dolphin ever meet, except derness, and is called in the French La upon a sign post? As for the cat and fiddle, belle Sauvage; and is every where transthere is a conceit in it; and therefore I do lated by our countrymen the bell-savage. not intend that any thing I have here said This piece of philosophy will, I hope, conshould affect it. I must however observe vince you that I have made sign-posts my to you upon this subject, that it is usual for study, and consequently qualified myself for a young tradesman, at his first setting up, the employment which I solicit at your to add to his own sign that of the master hands. But before I conclude my letter, I whom he served; as the husband, after marriage, gives a place to his mistress's which I have made upon the subject with must communicate to you another remark, arms in his own coat. This I take to have which I am now entertaining you, namely, given rise to many of those absurdities that I can give a shrewd guess at the huwhich are committed over our heads; and,

as I am informed, first occasioned the three

* St. George.

mour of the inhabitant by the sign that
hangs before his door. A surly choleric
fellow generally makes choice of a bear; as
men of milder dispositions frequently live
at the lamb. Seeing a punch-bowl painted
upon a sign near Charing-cross, and very
curiously garnished, with a couple of angels,
hovering over it, and squeezing a lemon into
it, I had the curiosity to ask after the mas-
ter of the house, and found, upon inquiry,
as I had guessed by the little agremens
upon his sign, that he was a Frenchman.
I know, sir, it is not requisite for me to en-
large upon these hints to a gentleman of
your great abilities; so humbly recommend-
ing myself to your favour and patronage,
'I remain, &c.'

surdity, when it was impossible for a hero in a desert, or a princess in her closet, to speak any thing unaccompanied with musical instruments.

But however this Italian method of acting in recitativo might appear at first hearing, I cannot but think it much more just than that which prevailed in our English opera before this innovation: the transition from an air to recitative music being more natural, than the passing from a song to plain and ordinary speaking, which was the common method in Purcell's operas,

The only fault I find in our present practice, is the making use of the Italian reci tativo with English words.

To go to the bottom of this matter, I must observe, that the tone, or (as the French call it) the accent of every nation in their that of any other people; as we may see ordinary speech, is altogether different from so near upon us. By the tone or accent, I even in the Welch and Scotch, who border do not mean the pronunciation of each particular word, but the sound of the whole sentence. Thus it is very common for an English gentleman, when he hears a French tragedy, to complain that the actors all of them speak in a tone; and therefore he very sidering that a foreigner complains of the wisely prefers his own countrymen, not con same tone in an English actor,

I shall add to the foregoing letter another, which came to me by the same penny-post. From my own apartment HONOURED SIR, near Charing-cross. Having heard that this nation is a great encourager of ingenuity, I have brought with me a rope-dancer that was caught in one of the woods belonging to the great Mogul. He is by birth a monkey; but swings upon a rope, takes a pipe of tobacco, and drinks a glass of ale, like any reasonable creature. He gives great satisfaction to the quality; and if they will make a subscription for him, I will send for a brother of his out of Holland, that is a very For this reason, the recitative music, in good tumbler; and also for another of the same family whom I design for my merry; the tone or accent of each language; for every language, should be as different as Andrew, as being an excellent mimic, and the greatest droll in the country where he passion in one language will not do it in otherwise, what may properly express a now is. I hope to have this entertainment another, Every one who has been long in in readiness for the next winter; and doubt Italy knows very well, that the cadences not but it will please more than the opera, in the recitativo bear a remote affinity to or puppet-show. I will not say that a the tone of their voices in ordinary conver monkey is a better man than some of the sation, or, to speak more properly, are only opera heroes; but certainly he is a better the accents of their language made more representative of a man, than the most ar-musical and tuneful. tificial composition of wood and wire. If you will be pleased to give me a good word in your paper, you shall be every night a spectator at my show for nothing. C. I am, &c.'

No. 29.] Tuesday, April 3, 1711.

-Sermo lingua concinnus utraque Suavior: ut Chio nota si commista Falerni est. Hor. Lib. 1. Sat. x. 23. Both tongues united sweeter sounds produce, Like Chian mix'd with the Falernian juice. THERE is nothing that has more startled our English audience, than the Italian recitativo at its first entrance upon the stage, People were wonderfully surprised to hear generals singing the word of command, and ladies delivering messages in music. Our countrymen could not forbear laughing when they heard a lover chanting out a billet-doux, and even the superscription of a letter set to a tune. The famous blunder in an old play of Enter a king and two fiddlers solus,' was now no longer an ab

Thus the notes of interrogation, or admiration, in the Italian music (if one may so call them) which resemble their accents in discourse on such occasions, are not unlike the ordinary tones of an English voice when we are angry; insomuch that I have often seen our audiences extremely mistaken, as to what has been doing upon the stage, and expecting to see the hero knock down his messenger, when he has been asking him a question; or fancying that he quarrels with his friend, when he only bids him good

morrow.

For this reason the Italian artists cannot agree with our English musicians in admiring Purcell's compositions, and thinking his tunes so wonderfully adapted to his words; because both nations do not always express the same passions by the same sounds.

I am therefore humbly of opinion, that an English composer should not follow the Italian recitative too servilely, but make use of many gentle deviations from it, in compliance with his own native language, He inay copy out of it all the lulling soft

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