DIVERSITY OF COLORURO HAMARIEe

en under this discipline. He tells me he the honour to dance before the emperor mself, not without the applause and acmations both of his imperial majesty and whole ring; though I dare say, neither nor any of his acquaintance, ever dreamt would have merited any reputation by = activity.

being in a great doubt about the orthogra-
phy of the word bagnio. I consulted seve-
ral dictionaries, but found no relief: at last
having recourse both to the bagnio in New-
gate street, and to that in Chancery-lane,
and finding the original manuscripts upon
the sign-posts of each to agree literally with
my own spelling, I returned home full of
satisfaction in order to despatch this epistle.'

'MR. SPECTATOR-As you have taken

I can assure you, Mr. Spectator, I was
ry near being qualified to have given
a faithful and painful account of this
lking bagnio, if I may so call it, myself. most of the circumstances of human life into
ing the other night along Fleet-street, your consideration, we the underwritten
having, out of curiosity, just entered thought it not improper for us also to re-
o discourse with a wandering female who present to you our condition. We are three
s travelling the same way, a couple of ladies who live in the country, and the
lows advanced towards us, drew their greatest improvement we make is by read-
ords, and cried out to each other, "Aing. We have taken a small journal of our
eat! a sweat!" Whereon, suspecting last Tuesday's speculation. We rise by
lives, and find it extremely opposite to your
ey were some of the ring-leaders of the
gnio, I also drew my sword, and demand-seven, and pass the beginning of each day
a parley; but finding none would be in devotion, and looking into those affairs
anted me, and perceiving others behind that fall within the occurrences of a retired
em filing off with great diligence to take life; in the afternoon we sometimes enjoy
in flank, I began to sweat for fear of be- the good company of some friend or neigh-
forced to it: but very luckily betaking bour, or else work or read: at night we re-
self to a pair of heels, which I had good other for the whole night at ten o'clock. We
tire to our chambers, and take leave of each
ason to believe would do me justice, I in- take particular care never to be sick of a
ntly got possession of a very snug corner Sunday. Mr. Spectator, we are all very good
a neighbouring alley that lay in my rear; maids, but ambitious of characters which
nich post I maintained for above half an
we think more laudable, that of being very
ur with great firmness and resolution,
ough not letting this success so far over- good wives. If any of your correspondents
me me as to make me unmindful of the inquire for a spouse for an honest country
cumspection that was necessary to be gentleman, whose estate is not dipped, and
served upon my advancing again towards wants a wife that can save half his revenue,
e street; by which prudence and good neighbours of the same estate, with finer
and yet make a better figure than any of his
anagement I made a handsome and or-
rly retreat, having suffered no other bred women, you shall have further notice
image in this action than the loss of my
from, sir, your courteous readers,
ggage, and the dislocation of one of my
oe heels, which last I am just now inform-
is in a fair way of recovery. These
eaters, by what I can learn from my friend,
d by as near a view as I was able to take

T.

MARTHA BUSIE,
'DEBORAH THRIFTY,
ALICE EARLY.'

-vocat in certamina divos.-Virg. He calls embattled deities to arms.

them myself, seem to me to have at pre- No. 333.] Saturday, March 22, 1711-12.
nt but a rude kind of discipline among
em. It is probable, if you would take a
tle pains with them, they might be brought
to better order. But I'll leave this to your
vn discretion; and will only add, that if
u think it worth while to insert this by
ay of caution to those who have a mind to
eserve their skins whole from this sort of
pping, and tell them at the same time the
zard of treating with night-walkers, you
ill perhaps oblige others, as well as your
ery humble servant,

JACK LIGHTFOOT. 'P. S. My friend will have me acquaint , that though he would not willingly dect from the merit of that extraordinary rokesman Mr. Sprightly, yet it is his real inion, that some of those fellows who are ployed as rubbers to this new-fashioned gnio, have struck as bold strokes as ever did in his life.

'I had sent this four-and-twenty hours oner, if I had not had the misfortune of

WE are now entering upon the sixth book of Paradise Lost, in which the poet describes the battle of the angels; having raised his reader's expectation, and prepared him for it by several passages in the preceding books. I omitted quoting these passages in my observations on the former books, having purposely reserved them for the opening of this, the subject of which gave occasion to them. The author's imagination was so inflamed with this great scene of action, that wherever he speaks of it, he rises, if possible, above himself. Thus, where he mentions Satan in the beginning of his poem,

-Him the almighty Power

Hurl'd headlong flaming from th ethereal sky,
With hideous ruin and combustion, down
To bottomless perdition, there to dwell
In adamantine chains and penal fire,
Who durst defy th' Omnipotent to arms.

We have likewise several noble hints of it | days' engagement, which does not appear

in the infernal conference:

'O prince! O chief of many throned powers,

That led the embattled seraphim to war,

Too well I see and rue the dire event,

That with sad overthrow and foul defeat
Hath lost us heav'n; and all this mighty host
In horrible destruction laid thus low.
But see! the angry victor has recall'd
His ministers of vengeance and pursuit
Back to the gates of heav'n. The sulphurous hail
Shot after us in storm. o'erblown, hath laid
The fiery surge, that from the precipice
Of heav'n received us falling; and the thunder,
Wing'd with red lightning and impetuous rage,
Perhaps has spent his shafts, and ceases now
To bellow through the vast and boundless deep.

There are several other very sublime
images on the same subject in the first book,

as also in the second:

'What when we fled amain, pursued and struck
With heav'n's afflicting thunder, and besought
The deep to shelter us; this hell then seem'd
A refuge from those wounds-

In short, the poet never mentions any
thing of this battle, but in such images of
greatness and terror as are suitable to the
subject. Among several others I cannot
forbear quoting that passage where the
Power, who is described as presiding over
the chaos, speaks in the second book:

Thus Satan; and him thus the Anarch old,
With fault'ring speech and visage incompos'd,
Answer'd: "I know thee, stranger, who thou art,
That mighty leading angel, who of late
Made head against heav'n's King, though overthrown
I saw and heard; for such a numerous host
Fled not in silence through the frighted deep
With ruin upon ruin, rout on rout,
Confusion worse confounded; and heaven's gates
Pour'd out by millions her victorious bands
Pursuing

or trivial.

natural, and agreeable enough to the ideas most readers would conceive of a fight be tween two armies of angels.

The second day's engagement is apt to startle an imagination which has not been raised and qualified for such a description by the reading of the ancient poets, and of Homer in particular. It was certainly a very bold thought in our author, to ascribe the first use of artillery to the rebel angels. But as such a pernicious invention may be well supposed to have proceeded from such authors, so it enters very properly into the thoughts of that being, who is all along deMaker. Such engines were the only instru scribed as aspiring to the majesty of his

ments he could have made use of to imitate those thunders, that in all poetry, both sacred and profane, are represented as the arms of the Almighty. The tearing up the hills was not altogether so daring a thought as the former. We are, in some measure, prepared for such an incident by the de with among the ancient poets. What still scription of the giants' war, which we meet made this circumstance the more proper for the poet's use, is the opinion of many learned men, that the fable of the giants' war, which makes as great a noise in antiquity, and gave birth to the sublimest description in Hesiod's works, was an allegory founded upon this very tradition of a fight between the good and bad angels.

It may, perhaps, be worth while to con sider with what judgment Milton, in this narration, has avoided every thing that is mean and trivial in the description of the It required great pregnancy of invention, Latin and Greek poets; and at the same and strength of imagination, to fill this bat-time improved every great hint which he tle with such circumstances as should raise met with in their works upon this subject. and astonish the mind of the reader; and at Homer, in that passage which Longinus has the same time an exactness of judgment, to celebrated for its sublimeness, and which avoid every thing that might appear light Virgil and Ovid have copied after him, tells Those who look into Homer us, that the giants threw Ossa upon Olym are surprised to find his battles still rising pus, and Pelion upon Ossa. He adds an one above another, and improving in horror epithet to Pelion (AoV) which very to the conclusion of the Iliad. Milton's fight much swells the idea, by bringing up to the of angels is wrought up with the same beau- reader's imagination all the woods that grew ty. It is ushered in with such signs of wrath upon it. There is further a greater beauty as are suitable to Omnipotence incensed. in his singling out by names these three re The first engagement is carried on under a markable mountains so well known to the cope of fire, occasioned by the flights of in- Greeks. This last is such a beauty, as the numerable burning darts and arrows which scene of Milton's war could not possibly are discharged from either host. The se- furnish him with. Claudian, in his frag cond onset is still more terrible, as it is filled ment upon the giants' war, has given full with those artificial thunders, which seem scope to that wildness of imagination which to make the victory doubtful, and produce was natural to him. He tells us that the a kind of consternation even in the good an- giants tore up whole islands by the roots, gels. This is followed by the tearing up of and threw them at the gods. He describes mountains and promontories; till in the last one of them in particular taking up Lemnos place Messiah comes forth in the fulness of in his arms, and whirling it to the skies, majesty and terror. The pomp of his ap- with all Vulcan's shop in the midst of it pearance, amidst the roarings of his thun- Another tears up mount Ida, with the river ders, the flashes of his lightnings, and the Enipeus, which ran down the sides of it; noise of his chariot wheels, is described but the poet, not content to describe him with the utmost flights of human imagina- with this mountain upon his shoulders, tells us that the river flowed down his back as There is nothing in the first and last he held it up in that posture. It is visible

tion.

RA

to every judicious reader, that such ideas
savour more of the burlesque than of the
sublime. They proceed from a wanton-
ness of imagination, and rather divert the
mind than astonish it. Milton has taken
Every thing that is sublime in these several
passages, and composes out of them the fol-
lowing great image:

From their foundations loos'ning to and fro,
They pluck'd the seated hills, with all their load,
Rocks, waters, woods, and by the shaggy tops
Uplifting bore them in their hands.

We have the full majesty of Homer in this
short description, improved by the imagi-
nation of Claudian, without its puerilities.
I need not point out the description of the
fallen angels seeing the promontories hang-
ng over their heads in such a dreadful
manner, with the other numberless beau-
ties in this book, which are so conspicuous,
hat they cannot escape the notice of the
most ordinary reader.

There are indeed so many wonderful strokes of poetry in this book, and such a variety of sublime ideas, that it would have been impossible to have given them a place within the bounds of this paper. Besides that I find it in a great measure done to my hand at the end of my lord Roscommon's Essay on Translated Poetry. I shall refer my reader thither for some of the masterstrokes of the sixth book of Paradise Lost, though at the same time there are many others which that noble author has not taken notice of.

Milton, notwithstanding the sublime geaius he was master of, has in this book drawn to his assistance all the helps he could meet with among the ancient poets. The sword of Michael, which makes so great a havoc among the bad angels, was given him, we are told, out of the armoury of God:

But the sword

Of Michael from the armoury of God
Was giv'n him, temper'd so, that neither keen
Nor solid might resist that edge: it met
The sword of Satan, with steep force to smite
Descending, and in half cut sheer-

This passage is a copy of that in Virgil, wherein the poet tells us, that the sword of Eneas, which was given him by a deity, broke into pieces the sword of Turnus, which came from a mortal forge. As the moral in this place is divine, so by the way we may observe, that the bestowing on a man who is favoured by heaven such an allegorical weapon is very conformable to the old eastern way of thinking. Not only Homer has made use of it, but we find the lewish hero in the book of Maccabees, who had fought the battles of the chosen people with so much glory and success, receiving n his dream a sword from the hand of the rophet Jeremiah. The following passage, wherein Satan is described as wounded the sword of Michael, is in imitation of

Homer:

Not long divisible; and from the gash
A stream of nectarous humour issuing flow'd
Sanguine, (such as celestial spirits may bleed)
And all his armour stain'd-

Homer tells us in the same manner, that flowed from the wound an ichor, or pure upon Diomede's wounding the gods, there kind of blood, which was not bred from, mortal viands; and that though the pain was exquisitely great, the wound soon closed up and healed in those beings who are vested with immortality.

I question not but Milton, in his description of his furious Moloch flying from the battle, and bellowing with the wound he had received, had his eye on Mars in the Iliad; who, upon his being wounded, is represented as retiring out of the fight, and making an outcry louder than that of a whole army when it begins the charge. Homer adds, that the Greeks and Trojans who were engaged in a general battle, were terrified on each side with the bellowing of this wounded deity. The reader will easily observe how Milton has kept all the horror of this image without running into the ridicule of it:

-Where the might of Gabriel fought,
And with fierce ensigns pierc'd the deep array
Of Moloch, furious king! who him defy'd,
And at lus chariot-wheels to drag him bound
Threaten'd, nor from the Holy One of heav'n
Refrain'd his tongue blasphemous: but anon
Down cloven to the waist with shatter'd arms
And uncouth pain, fled bellowing-

Milton has likewise raised his description in this book with many images taken out of

the poetical parts of scripture. The Messiah's chariot, as I have before taken notice, is formed upon a vision of Ezekiel, who, as Grotius observes, has very much in him of Homer's spirit in the poetical parts of his prophecy.

The following lines, in that glorious commission which is given the Messiah to extirpate the host of rebel angels, is drawn from a sublime passage in the psalms:

Go then, thou mightiest, in thy Father's might!
Ascend my chariot, guide the rapid wheels
That take heav'n's basis; bring forth all my war,
My bow, my thunder, my almighty arms
Gird on,
and sword on thy puissant thigh.
The reader will easily discover many
other strokes of the same nature.

There is no question but Milton had heated his imagination with the fight of the gods in Homer, before he entered into this engagement of the angels. Homer there gives us a scene of men, heroes, and gods, mixed together in battle. Mars animates the contending armies, and lifts up his voice in such a manner, that it is heard distinctly amidst all the shouts and confusion of the fight. Jupiter at the same time thunders over their heads; while Neptune raises such a tempest, that the whole field of battle, and all the tops of the mountains, shake about them. The poet tells, that Pluto himself, whose habitation was in the very centre of the earth, was so affrighted at the shock, that he leapt from his throne.

Homer afterwards describes Vulcan as pour- | stance) shows the ill consequence of suc ing down a storm of fire upon the river prepossessions. What I mean is the ar Xanthus, and Minerva as throwing a rock skill, accomplishment, or whatever you wi at Mars; who, he tells us, covered seven call it, of dancing. I knew a gentleman o acres in his fall.

great abilities, who bewailed the want o this part of his education to the end of very honourable life. He observed tha there was not occasion for the common us of great talents; that they are but seldom i demand; and that these very great talent were often rendered useless to a man for want of small attainments. A good mier (a becoming motion, gesture, and aspect) is natural to some men; but even these would be highly more graceful in their car riage, if what they do from the force of na

As Homer has introduced into his battle of the gods every thing that is great and terrible in nature, Milton has filled his fight cf good and bad angels with all the like circumstances of horror. The shout of armies, the rattling of brazen chariots, the hurling of rocks and mountains, the earthquake, the fire, the thunder, are all of them employed to lift up the reader's imagination, and give him a suitable idea of so great an action. With what art has the poet represented the whole body of the earth trem-ture were confirmed and heightened from bling, even before it was created!

All heav'n resounded; and had earth been then,
All earth had to its centre shook-

In how sublime and just a manner does he afterwards describe the whole heaven shaking under the wheels of the Messiah's chariot, with that exception to the throne of God!

-Under his burning wheels
The steadfast empyrean shook throughout,
All but the throne itself of God-

Notwithstanding the Messiah appears clothed with so much terror and majesty, the poet has still found means to make his readers conceive an idea of him beyond

what he himself is able to describe:

Yet half his strength he put not forth, but check'd
His thunder in mid volley; for he meant
Not to destroy, but root them out of heaven.

In a word, Milton's genius, which was so great in itself, and so strengthened by all the helps of learning, appears in this book every way equal to his subject, which was the most sublime that could enter into the thoughts of a poet. As he knew all the arts of affecting the mind, he has given it certain resting-places and opportunities of recovering itself from time to time; several like reliefs, being interspersed to diversify speeches, reflections, similitudes, and the his narration, and ease the attention of the

reader.

No. 334.]

L.

Monday, March 24, 1711-12.
-Voluisti, in suo genere, unumquemque nostrum

quasi quendam esse Roscium, dixistique non tam ea
adhærescere.

que recta essent probari, quam quæ prava sunt fastidiis

Cic. de Gestu.

the force of reason. To one who has not at all considered it, to mention the force of reason on such a subject will appear fantastical; but when you have a little attended to it, an assembly of men will have quite another view; and they will tell you, it is evident from plain and infallible rules, why this man, with those beautiful features, and a well-fashioned person, is not so agreeable as he who sits by him without any of those advantages. When we read, we do it without the shape of the letters; but habit makes us any exerted act of memory that presents do it mechanically, without staying, like A man who has not had the regard of his children, to recollect and join those letters. gesture in any part of his education, will find himself unable to act with freedom before new company, as a child that is but now It is for the advancement of the pleasure learning would be to read without hesitation. we receive in being agreeable to each other in ordinary life, that one would wish dancing were generally understood, as conducive, as ters that appear the most remote from it it really is, to a proper deportment in mat A man of learning and sense is distinguished from others as he is such, though he never

of the arm, and the most ordinary motion, runs upon points too difficult for the rest of the world; in like manner the reaching out discovers whether a man ever learnt to know what is the true harmony and compo sure of his limbs and countenance. Whoever has seen Booth in the character d Pyrrhus, march to his throne to receive conceptions are expressed in the very step Orestes, is convinced that majestic and great but, perhaps, though no other man could perform that incident as well as he does, he himself would do it with a yet greater eleva tion were he a dancer. This is so dangerousa subject to treat with gravity, that I shall not at present enter into it any further: but the It is very natural to take for our whole author of the following letter has treated it lives a light impression of a thing, which at in the essay he speaks of in such a manner, first fell into contempt with us for want of that I am beholden to him for a resolution, consideration. The real use of a certain that I will never hereafter think meanly of qualification (which the wiser part of man- any thing, till I have heard what they who kind look upon as at the best an indifferent have another opinion of it have to say in it thing, and generally a frivolous circum-defence.

You would have each of us be a kind of Roscius in his way; and you have said, that fastidious men are not so much pleased with what is right, as disgusted at what

is wrong.

'MR. SPECTATOR-Since there are scarce | some observations on modern dancing, both ny of the arts and sciences that have not as to the stage, and that part of it so absoluteeen recommended to the world by the pens ly necessary for the qualification of gentlesome of the professors, masters, or lovers men and ladies; and have concluded with them, whereby the usefulness, excel-some short remarks on the origin and proence, and benefit arising from them, both as gress of the character by which dances are the speculative and practical part, have writ down, and communicated to one maseen made public, to the great advantage ter from another. If some great genius afnd improvement of such arts and sciences; ter this would arise, and advance this art to hy should dancing, an art celebrated by that perfection it seems capable of receiving, me ancients in so extraordinary a manner, what might not be expected from it? For, e totally neglected by the moderns, and if we consider the origin of arts and sciences, ft destitute of any pen to recommend its we shall find that some of them took rise arious excellencies and substantial merit to from beginnings so mean and unpromising, ankind? that it is very wonderful to think that ever such surprising structures should have been raised upon such ordinary foundations. But what cannot a great genius effect? Who would have thought that the clangorous

The low, ebb to which dancing is now allen, is altogether owing to this silence. The art is esteemed only as an amusing ifle; it lies altogether uncultivated, and is nhappily fallen under the imputation of il-noise of smiths' hammers should have given terate and mechanic. As Terence, in one fhis prologues, complains of the ropeancers drawing all the spectators from his lay, so we may well say, that capering and ambling is now preferred to, and supplies e place of, just and regular dancing on our heatres. It is, therefore, in my opinion, igh time that some one should come to its ssistance, and relieve it from the many ross and growing errors that have crept into and overcast its real beauties; and to set ancing in its true light, would show the sefulness and elegance of it, with the pleaure and instruction produced from it; and lso lay down some fundamental rules, that might so tend to the improvement of its proEssors, and information of the spectators, hat the first might be the better enabled to erform, and the latter rendered more caable of judging what is (if there be any hing) valuable in this art.

the first rise to music? Yet Macrobius in his second book relates, that Pythagoras, in passing by a smith's shop, found that the sounds proceeding from the hammers were either more grave or acute, according to the different weights of the hammers. The philosopher, to improve this hint, suspends different weights by strings of the same bigness, and found in like manner that the sounds answered to the weights. This being discovered, he finds out those numbers which produced sounds that were consonant: as that two strings of the same substance and tension, the one being double the length of the other, gave that interval which is called diapason, or an eighth; the same was also effected from two strings of the same length and size, the one having four times the tension of the other. By these steps, from so mean a beginning, did this great man reduce, what was only before noise to one of Toencourage, therefore, some ingenious the most delightful sciences, by marrying en capable of so generous an undertaking, it to the mathematics; and by that means nd in some measure to relieve dancing from caused it to be one of the most abstract and he disadvantages it at present lies under, 1, demonstrative of sciences. Who knows, who teach to dance, have attempted a therefore, but motion, whether decorous or mall treatise as an Essay towards a History representative, may not (as it seems highly f Dancing: in which I have inquired into probable it may,) be taken into consideraEs antiquity, origin, and use, and shown tion by some person capable of reducing it hat esteem the ancients had for it. I have into a regular science, though not so demonkewise considered the nature and perfec-strative as that proceeding from sounds, yet on of all its several parts, and how benefi-sufficient to entitle it to a place among the al and delightful it is, both as a qualifica- magnified arts?

on and an exercise; and endeavoured to Now, Mr. Spectator, as you have declarnswer all objections that have been mali-ed yourself visitor of dancing-schools, and iously raised against it. I have proceeded this being an undertaking which more imgive an account of the particular dances mediately respects them, I think myself inthe Greeks and Romans, whether reli- dispensably obliged, before I proceed to the ious, warlike, or civil: and taken particu- publication of this my essay, to ask your ar notice of that part of dancing relating to advice; and hold it absolutely necessary to he ancient stage, in which the pantomimes have your approbation, in order to recomad so great a share. Nor have I been mend my treatise to the perusal of the paanting in giving an historical account of rents of such as learn to dance, as well as to me particular masters excellent in that the young ladies, to whom as visitor you urprising art; after which I have advanced ought to be a guardian.

'I am, sir,

Your most humble servant. 'Salop, March 10, 1711-12.’