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vast and numerous people, master of an endless territory, absolute commander of the lives and fortunes of his subjects, in the midst of this unbounded power and greatness, turned his thoughts upon himself and people with sorrow. Sordid ignorance, and a brute manner of life, this generous prince beheld and contemned, from the light of his own genius. His judgment suggested this to him, and his courage prompted him to amend it. In order to this he did not send to the nation from whence the rest of the world has borrowed its politeness, but himself left his diadem to learn the true way to glory and honour, and application to useful arts, wherein to employ the laborious, the simple, the honest part of his people. Mechanic employments and operations were very justly the first objects of his favour and observation. With this glorious intention he travelled into foreign nations in an obscure manner, above receiving little honours where he sojourned, but prying into what was of more consequence, their arts of peace and of war. By this means has this great prince laid the foundation of a great and lasting fame, by personal labour, personal knowledge, personal valour. It would be injury to any of antiquity to name them with him. Who, but himself, ever left a throne to learn to sit in it with more grace? Who ever thought himself mean in absolute power, till he had learned to use it?

If we consider this wonderful person, it is perplexity to know where to begin his encomium. Others may in a metaphorical or philosophic sense be said to command themselves, but this emperor is also literally under his own command. How generous and how good was his entering his own name as a private man in the army he raised, that none in it might expect to outrun the steps with which he himself advanced! By such measures this godlike

prince learned to conquer, learned to use his conquests. How terrible has he appeared in battle, how gentle in victory! Shall then the base arts of the Frenchman be held polite, and the honest labours of the Russian barbarous ? No: barbarity is the ignorance of true honour, or placing any thing instead of it. The unjust prince is ignoble and barbarous, the good prince only renowned and glorious.

Though men may impose upon themselves what they please by their corrupt imaginations, truth will ever keep its station; and as glory is nothing else but the shadow of virtue, it will certainly disappear at the departure of virtue. But how carefully ought the true notions of it to be preserved, and how industrious should we be to encourage any impulses towards it! The Westminster school-boy that said the other day he could not sleep or play for the colours in the hall*, ought to be free from receiving a blow for ever.

But let us consider what is truly glorious according to the author I have to-day quoted in the front of my paper.

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The perfection of glory, says Tully, consists in these three particulars: That the people love us; that they have confidence in us; that being affected with a certain admiration towards us, they think we deserve honour.' This was spoken of greatness in the commonwealth. But if one were to form a notion of consummate glory under our constitution, one must add to the above-mentioned felicities a certain necessary inexistence, and disrelish of all

The colours taken at Blenheim, in 1704, were fixed up in Westminster-hall, after having been carried in procession through the city.

the rest, without the prince's favour*. He should, methinks, have riches, power, honour, command, glory; but riches, power, honour, command, and glory should have no charms, but as accompanied with the affection of his prince. He should, methinks, be popular because a favourite, and a favourite because popular. Were it not to make the character too imaginary, I would give him sovereignty over some foreign territory, and make him esteem that an empty addition without the kind regards of his own prince. One may merely have an idea of a man thus composed and circumstantiated, and if he were so made for power without an incapacity + of giving jealousy, he would be also glorious without possibility of receiving disgrace. This humility and this importance must make his glory immortal.

These thoughts are apt to draw me beyond the usual length of this paper; but if I could suppose such rhapsodies could outlive the common fate of ordinary things, I would say these sketches and faint images of glory were drawn in August, 1711, when John Duke of Marlborough made that memorable march wherein he took the French lines without bloodshed.

T.

*He means, that all the other felicities should not be relished, or even perceived to exist, without the prince's favour.

+ The sense seems to require without a capacity,' but all the copies read as here.

N° 140. FRIDAY, AUGUST 10, 1711.

- Animum curis nunc huc, nunc dividit illuc.

VIRG. Æn. iv. 285.

This way and that the anxious mind is torn. WHEN I acquaint my reader, that I have many other letters not yet acknowledged, I believe he will own, what I have a mind he should believe, that I have no small charge upon me, but am a person of some consequence in this world. I shall therefore employ the present hour only in reading petitions in the order as follows.

'MR. SPECTATOR,

'I HAVE lost so much time already, that I desire, upon the receipt hereof, you will sit down immediately, and give me your answer. And I would know of you whether a pretender of mine really loves me. As well as I can I will describe his manners. When he sees me he is always talking of constancy, but vouchsafes to visit me but once a fortnight, and then is always in haste to be gone. When I am sick, I hear he says he is mightily concerned, but neither comes nor sends, because, as he tells his acquaintance with a sigh, he does not care to let me know all the power I have over him, and how impossible it is for him to live without me. When he

leaves the town, he writes once in six weeks, desires to hear from me, complains of the torment of absence, speaks of flames, tortures, languishings, and ecstasies. He has the cant of an impatient lover, but keeps the pace of a lukewarm one. You know I must not go faster than he does, and to move at

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this rate is as tedious as counting a great clock. But are to know he is rich, and my mother says, you is slow he is sure; he will love me long, if he love me little but I appeal to you whether he loves at all. Your neglected humble servant,

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LYDIA NOVELL.

All these fellows who have money are extremely saucy and cold; pray, sir, tell them of it.'

· MR. SPECTATOR,

I HAVE been delighted with nothing more through the whole course of your writings than the substantial account you lately gave of wit, and I could wish you would take some other opportunity to express further the corrupt taste the age is run into; which I am chiefly apt to attribute to the prevalency of a few popular authors, whose merit in some respects has given a sanction to their faults in others. Thus the imitators of Milton seem to place all the excellency of that sort of writing either in the uncouth or antique words, or something else which was highly vicious, though pardonable, in that great man*. The admirers of what we call point, or turn, look upon it as the particular happiness to which Cowley, Ovid, and athers, owe their reputation, and therefore endeavour to imitate them only in such instances. What is just, proper, and natural does not seem to be the question with them, but by what means a quaint antithesis may be brought about, how one word may be made to look two ways, and what will be the consequence of a forced allusion. Now though such authors appear to me to resemble those who make themselves fine, in

* So Philips in his Cyder is careful to mis-spell the words orchat, sovran, after Milton, &c.

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