appear that the virtue of the best man is by one method or other corruptible; let us look out for some expedient to turn those passions and affections on the side of truth and honour. When a man has laid it down for a position, that parting with his integrity, in the minutest circumstance, is losing so much of his very self, self-love will become a virtue. By this means good and evil will be the only objects of dislike and approbation; and he that injures any man has effectually wounded the man of this turn as much as if the harm had been to himself. This seems to be the only expedient to arrive at an impartiality; and a man who follows the dictates of truth and right reason may by artifice be led into error, but never can into guilt.

STEELE.

LAPLAND ODE, FROM SCHEFFER.

No. 406.

IT is a custom with the northern lovers to divert themselves with a song, whilst they journey through the fenny moors to pay a visit to their mistresses. This is addressed by the lover to his rein-deer, which is the creature that in that country supplies the want of horses.

I.

'Haste, my rein-deer, and let us nimbly go

Our amorous journey through this dreary waste;
Haste, my rein-deer! still still thou art too slow:
Impetuous love demands the lightning's haste.

II.

Around us far the rushy moors are spread:
Soon will the sun withdraw his cheerful ray:
Darkling and tir'd we shall the marshes tread,
No lay unsung to cheat the tedious way.

III. The

The wat❜ry length of these unjoyous moors
Does all the flow'ry meadow's pride excel;
Through these I fly to her my soul adores;
Ye flow'ry meadows, empty pride, farewell.

IV.

'Each moment from the charmer I'm confin'd,
My breast is tortur'd with impatient fires:
Fly, my rein-deer, fly swifter than the wind;
Thy tardy feet wing with my fierce desires.

V.

Our pleasing toil will then be soon o'erpaid,
And thou, in wonder lost, shalt view my fair,
Admire each feature of the lovely maid,

Her artless charms, her bloom, her sprightly air.

VI.

But lo! with graceful motion there she swims,
Gently removing each, ambitious wave;

The crowding waves transported clasp her limbs :
When, when, oh when shall I such freedoms have!

VII.

. In vain, ye envious streams, so fast ye flow,
To hide her from a lover's ardent gaze :
From every touch you more transparent grow,
And all reveal'd the beauteous wanton plays.'

STEELE.

ON ORATORICAL ACTION. No. 407.

MOST foreign writers who have given any character of the English nation, whatever vices they ascribe to it, allow in general that the people are naturally modest

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modest. It proceeds, perhaps, from this our national virtue, that our orators are observed to make use of less gesture or action than those of other countries. Our preachers stand stock still in the pulpit, and will not so much as move a finger to set off the best sermons in the world. We meet with the same speaking statues at our bars, and in all public places of debate. Our words flow from us in a smooth continued stream, without those strainings of the voice, motions of the body, and majesty of the hand, which are so much celebrated in the orators of Greece and Romic. We can talk of life and death in cold blood, and keep our temper in a discourse which turns upon every thing that is dear to us. Though our zeal breaks out in the finest tropes and figures, it is not able to stir a limb about us. I have heard it observed more than once by those who have seen Italy, that an untravelled Englishman cannot relish all the beauties of Italian pictures, because the postures which are expressed in them are often such as are peculiar to that country. One who has not seen an Italian in the pulpit, will not know what to make of that noble gesture in Raphael's picture of St. Paul preaching at Athens, where the apostle is represented as lifting up both his arms, and pouring out the thunder of his rhetoric amidst an audience of Pagan philosophers.

It is certain, that proper gestures and vehement exertions of the voice cannot be too much studied by a public orator. They are a kind of comment to what he utters, and enforce every thing he says, with weak hearers, better than the strongest argument he can make use of. They keep the audience awake, and fix their attention to what is delivered to them, at the same time that they show the speaker is in earnest, and affect

ed

ed himself with what he so passionately recommends to others. Violent gesture and vociferation naturally shake the hearts of the ignorant, and fill them with a kind of religious horror. Nothing is more frequent than to see women weep and tremble at the sight of a moving preacher, though he is placed quite out of their hearing; as in England we very frequently see people lulled asleep with solid and elaborate discourses of piety, who would be warmed and transported out of themselves by the bellowing and distortions of enthusiasm.

If nonsense, when accompanied with such an emo tion of voice and body, has such an influence on men's minds, what might we not expect from many of those admirable discourses which are printed in our tongue, were they delivered with a becoming fervour, and with the most agreeable graces of voice and gesture?

We are told that the great Latin orator very much impaired his health by the laterum contentio, the vehemence of action, with which he used to deliver himself. The Greek orator was likewise so very famous for this particular in rhetoric, that one of his antagonists, whom he had banished from Athens, reading over the oration which had procured his banishment, and seeing his friends admire it, could not forbear asking them, if they were so much affected by the bare reading of it, how much more they would have been alarmed, had they heard him actually throwing out such a storm of eloquence.

How cold and dead a figure, in comparison of these two great men, does an orator often make at the British bar, holding up his head, with the most insipid serenity, and stroking the sides of a long wig that reaches down to his middle! The truth of it is, there is often nothing more ridiculous than the gestures of an English speaker:

you see some of them running their hands into their pockets as far as ever they can thrust them, and others looking with great attention on a piece of paper that has nothing written on it; you may see many a smart rhetorician turning his hat in his hands, moulding it into several different cocks, examining sometimes the lining of it, and sometimes the button, during the whole course of his harangue. A deaf man would think he was cheapening a beaver, when perhaps he is talking of the fate of the British nation. I remember, when I was a young man, and used to frequent Westminsterhall, there was a counsellor who never pleaded without a piece of packthread in his hand, which he used to twist about a thumb or a finger all the while he was speaking the wags of those days used to call it the thread of his discourse, for he was unable to utter a word without it. One of his clients, who was more merry than wise, stole it from him one day in the midst of his pleading; but he had better have let it alone, for he lost his cause by his jest.

I have all along acknowledged myself to be a dumb man, and therefore may be thought a very improper person to give rules for oratory; but I believe every one will agree with me in this, that we ought either to lay aside all kinds of gesture, (which seems to be very suitable to the genius of our nation,) or at least to make use of such only as are graceful and expressive.,

ADDISON.

ON TASTE.

GRATIAN very often recommends fine taste, as the utmost perfection of an accomplished man.

As this word arises very often in conversation, I shall

endeavour