Thirdly, That whatever exists after the manner of created beings, or according to any notions which we have of existence, could not have existed from eternity. 'I know that several of the schoolmen, who would not be thought ignorant of any thing, have pretended to explain the manner of God's existence, by telling us that he comprehends infinite duration in every moment: that eternity is with him a punetum stans, a fixed point; or, which is as good sense, an infinite instant; that nothing, with reference to his existence, is either past or to come: to which the ingenious Mr. Cowley alludes in his description of heaven: 'If we go to the bottom of this matter, we shall find that the difficulties we meet with in our conceptions of eternity proceed from this single reason, that we can have no other idea of any kind of duration, than Fourthly, That this Eternal Being must that by which we ourselves, and all other therefore be the great Author of nature, created beings, do exist; which is, a suc- the Ancient of Days," who, being at an cessive duration made up of past, present, infinite distance in his perfections from all and to come. There is nothing which ex- finite and created beings, exists in a quite ists after this manner, all the parts of whose different manner from them, and in a manexistence were not once actually present, ner of which they can have no idea. and consequently may be reached by a certain number of years applied to it. We may ascend as high as we please, and employ our being to that eternity which is to come, in adding millions of years to millions of years, and we can never come up to any fountain-head of duration, to any beginning in eternity: but at the same time we are sure, that whatever was once present does lie within the reach of numbers, though perhaps we can never be able to put enough of them together for that purpose. We may as well say, that any thing may be actually present in any part of infinite space, which does not lie at a certain distance from us, as that any part of infinite duration was once actually pre-propositions as words that have no ideas sent, and does not also lie at some determined distance from us. The distance in both cases may be immeasurable and indefinite as to our faculties, but our reason tells us that it cannot be so in itself. Here therefore is that difficulty which human understanding is not capable of surmounting. We are sure that something must have existed from eternity, and are at the same time unable to conceive, that any thing which exists, according to our notion of existence, can have existed from eternity. 'Nothing is there to come, and nothing past, But an eternal now does always last." For my own part, I look upon these annexed to them; and think men had better own their ignorance than advance doctrines by which they mean nothing, and which, indeed, are self-contradictory. We cannot be too modest in our disquisitions when we meditate on Him, who is environed with so much glory and perfection, whe is the source of being, the fountain of all that existence which we and his whole creation derive from him. Let us therefore, with the utmost humility, acknowledge, that, as some being must necessarily have existed from eternity, so this being does exist It is hard for a reader, who has not after an incomprehensible manner, since it rolled this thought in his own mind, to fol- is impossible for a being to have existed low in such an abstracted speculation; but from eternity after our manner or notions I have been the longer on it, because I of existence. Revelation confirms these think it is a demonstrative argument of the natural dictates of reason in the accounts being and eternity of God: and, though which it gives us of the divine existence, there are many other demonstrations which where it tells us, that he is the same yeslead us to this great truth, I do not think terday, to-day, and for ever; that he is the we ought to lay aside any proofs in this Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the matter, which the light of reason has sug-ending; that a thousand years are with him gested to us, especially when it is such a as one day, and one day as a thousand one as has been urged by men famous for years: by which, and the like expressions, their penetration and force of understand- we are taught that his existence, with reing, and which appears altogether conclu-lation to time or duration, is infinitely dif sive to those who will be at the pains to examine it. Having thus considered that eternity which is past, according to the best idea we can frame of it, shall now draw up those several articles on this subject, which are dictated to us by the light of reason, and which may be looked upon as the creed of a philosopher in this great point. First, it is certain that no being could have made itself; for, if so, it must have acted before it was, which is a contradiction. Secondly, That therefore some being must have existed from all eternity. ferent from the existence of any of his creatures, and consequently that it is impossible for us to frame any adequate conceptions of it. In the first revelation which he makes of his own being, he entitles himself, "I Am that I Am;" and when Moses desires to know what name he shall give him in his embassy to Pharaoh, he bids him say that "I Am hath sent you." Our great Creator, by this revelation of himself, does in a manner exclude every thing else from real existence, and distinguishes himself from his creatures as the only being which He assures me, with an air of confidence, which I hope proceeds from his real abilities, that he does not doubt of giving judgment to the satisfaction of the parties concerned on the most nice and intricate cases which can happen in an amour; as, truly and really exists. The ancient Pla- | appearances, from the fifteenth to the tonic notion, which was drawn from specu- forty-fifth year of his age. lations of eternity wonderfully agrees with this revelation which God has made of himself. There is nothing, say they, which in reality exists, whose existence, as we call it, is pieced up of past, present, and to come. Such a flitting and successive existence is rather a shadow of existence, and something which is like it, than existence itself. He only properly exists whose existence is entirely present; that is, in other words, who exists in the most perfect manner, and in such a manner as we have no idea of. How great the contraction of the fingers must be before it amounts to a squeeze by the hand. What can be properly termed an absolute denial from a maid, and what from a widow. What advances a lover may presume to make, after having received a pat upon his shoulder from his mistress's fan. Whether a lady, at the first interview, may allow an humble servant to kiss her hand. How far it may be permitted to caress the maid in order to succeed with the misWhat constructions a man may put upon a smile, and in what cases a frown goes for nothing. On what occasions a sheepish look may do service, &c. 'I shall conclude this speculation with one useful inference. How can we sufficiently prostrate ourselves and fall down before our Maker, when we consider that ineffable goodness and wisdom which contrived this existence for finite natures? What must be the overflowings of that good-will, which prompted our Creator to adapt ex-tress. istence to beings in whom it is not necessary? especially when we consider that he himself was before in the complete possession of existence and of happiness, and in the full enjoyment of eternity. What man can think of himself as called out and separated from nothing, of his being made a conscious, a reasonable, and a happy creature; in short, in being taken in as a sharer of existence, and a kind of partner in eternity, without being swallowed up in wonder, in praise, in adoration! It is indeed a thought too big for the mind of man, and rather to be entertained in the secresy of devotion, and in the silence of his soul, than to be expressed by words. The Supreme Being has not given us powers or faculties sufficient to extol and magnify such unutterable goodness. "It is however some comfort to us, that we shall be always doing what we shall be never able to do, and that a work which cannot be finished, will however be the work of an eternity.' As a farther proof of his skill, he also sent me several maxims in love, which he assures me are the result of a long and profound reflection, some of which I think myself obliged to communicate to the public, not remembering to have seen them before in any author. 'There are more calamities in the world arising from love than from hatred. 'Love is the daughter of idleness, but the mother of disquietude. 'Men of grave natures, says Sir Francis Bacon, are the most constant; for the same reason men should be more constant than women. The gay part of mankind is most amorous, the serious most loving. 'A coquette often loses her reputation while she preserves her virtue. A prude often preserves her reputation when she has lost her virtue. 'Love refines a man's behaviour, but No. 591.] Wednesday, September 8, 1714. makes a woman's ridiculous. -Tenerorum lusor amorum. Ovid, Trist. 3. El. iii. Lib. 3. 73. Love, the soft subject of his sportive muse. I HAVE just received a letter from a gentleman, who tells me he has observed with no small concern, that my papers have of late been very barren in relation to love; a subject which, when agreeably handled, can scarcely fail of being well received by both sexes. 'Love is generally accompanied with good-will in the young, interest in the middle-aged, and a passion too gross to name in the old. 'The endeavours to revive a decaying passion generally extinguish the remains of it. 'A woman who from being a slattern becomes over-neat, or from being over-neat becomes a slattern, is most certainly in love.' If my invention therefore should be al- I shall make use of this gentleman's skill most exhausted on this head, he offers to as I see occasion; and since I am got upon serve under me in the quality of a love-the subject of love, shall conclude this pacasuist; for which place he conceives him- per with a copy of verses which were self to be thoroughly qualified, having lately sent me by an unknown hand, as I made this passion his principal study, and look upon them to be above the ordinary observed it in all its different shapes and run of sonnetteers. The author tells me they were written in one of his despairing fits; and I find entertains some hope that his mistress may pity such a passion as he has described, before she knows that she herself is Corinna. 'Conceal, fond man, conceal thy mighty smart, No. 592.] Friday, September 10, 1714. --Studium sine divite vena. Hor. Ars Poet. 409. Art without a vein.-Roscommon. I LOOK upon the playhouse as a world within itself. They have lately furnished the middle region of it with a new set of meteors in order to give the sublime to many modern tragedies. I was there last winter at the first rehearsal of the new thunder, which is much more deep and sonorous than any hitherto made use of They have a Salmoneus behind the scenes who plays it off with great success. Their lightnings are made to flash more briskly than heretofore, their clouds are also better furbelowed, and more voluminous; not to mention a violent storm locked up in a great chest, that is designed for the Tempest. They are also provided with above a dozen showers of snow, which, as I am informed, are the plays of many unsuccessful poets artificially cut and shredded for Mr. Ryner's Edgar is to fall in snow at the next acting of King Lear, in order to heighten, or rather to alleviate, the distress of that unfortunate prince; and to serve by way of decoration to a piece which that great critic has written against. that use. *These verses were written by Gilbert, the second brother of Eustace Budgel, esq. This is an allusion to Mr. Dennis's new and im proved method of making thunder. Dennis had contrived this thunder for the advantage of his tragedy of Appius and Virginia; the players highly approved of it, and it is the same that is used at the present day. Not withstanding the effect of this thunder, however, the play was coldly received, and laid aside. Some nights after, Dennis being in the pit at the representation of Macbeth, and hearing the thunder made use of, arose from his seat in a violent passion, exclaiming with an oath, that that was his thunder. See (said he) how these rascals use me: they will not let my play run, and yet they steal my thunder.' I do not indeed wonder that the actors should be such professed enemies to those among our nation who are commonly known by the name of critics, since it is a rule among these gentlemen to fall upon a play, not because it is ill written, but because it takes. Several of them lay it down as a maxim, that whatever dramatic performance has a long run, must of necessity be good for nothing; as though the first precept in poetry were not to please.' Whether this rule holds good or not, I shall leave to the determination of those who are better judges than myself: if it does, I am sure it tends very much to the honour of those gentlemen who have established it; few of their pieces have been disgraced by a run of three days, and most of them being so exquisitely written, that the town would never give them more than one night's hearing. I have a great esteem for a true critic, such as Aristotle and Longinus among the Greeks: Horace and Quintilian among the Romans; Boileau and Dacier among the French. But it is our misfortune that some, who set up for professed critics among us, are so stupid that they do not know how to put ten words together with elegance or common propriety; and withal so illiterate, that they have no taste of the learned languages, and therefore criticise upon old authors only at second-hand. They judge of them by what others have written, and not by any notions they have of the authors themselves. The words unity, action, senof authority, give them a figure among untiment, and diction, pronounced with an air learned readers, who are apt to believe they are very deep, because they are unintelligible. The ancient critics are full of discover beauties which escaped the obthe praises of their contemporaries; they out reasons palliating and excusing such servation of the vulgar, and very often find little slips and oversights as were committed in the writings of eminent authors. On the contrary, most of the smatterers in criticism, who appear among us, make it their business to vilify and depreciate every new production that gains applause, to decry imaginary blemishes, and to prove, for beauties in any celebrated piece are by far-fetched arguments, that what pass these critics, compared with those of the In short, the writings of ancients, are like the works of the sophists compared with those of the old philosophers. faults and errors. Envy and cavil are the natural fruits of laziness and ignorance: which was probably the reason that in the heathen mythology Momus is said to be the son of Nox and Somnus, of darkness and sleep. Idle men, who have not been at the pains to accomplish or distinguish themselves, are very apt to detract from others; as ignorant men are very subject to decry those beauties in a celebrated work which they Quale per incertam lunam sub luce maligna Virg. En. vi. 270. Thus wander travellers in woods by night, Dryden. have not eyes to discover. Many of our No. 593.] Monday, September 13, 1714. sons of Momus, who dignify themselves by the name of critics, are the genuine descendants of these two illustrious ancestors. They are often led into those numerous absurdities, in which they daily instruct the people, by not considering that, first, there is sometimes a greater judgment shown in dow, has sent me a second letter, with My dreaming correspondent, Mr. Shadeviating from the rules of art than in ad- several curious observations on dreams in hering to them; and, secondly, that there general, and the method to render sleep is more beauty in the works of a great ge-improving: an extract of his letter will not, nius, who is ignorant of all the rules of art, I presume, be disagreeable to my readers. than in the works of a little genius, who not only knows but scrupulously observes them. 'Since we have so little time to spare, that none of it may be lost, I see no reason why we should neglect to examine those imaginary scenes we are presented with in sleep, only because they have less reality in them than our waking meditations. A traveller would bring his judgment in question, who would despise the directions of his map for want of real roads in it, because here stands a dot instead of a town, or a cypher instead of a city; and it must be a long day's journey to travel through two or three inches. Fancy in dreams gives us much such another landscape of life as that does of countries: and, though its appearance may seem strangely jum First, We may often take notice of men who are perfectly acquainted with all the rules of good writing, and, notwithstanding, choose to depart from them on extraordinary occasions. I could give instances out of all the tragic writers of antiquity who have shown their judgment in this particular; and purposely receded from an established rule of the drama, when it has made way for a much higher beauty than the observation of such a rule would have been. Those who have surveyed the noblest pieces of architecture and statuary, both ancient and modern, know very well that there are frequent deviations from_artbled together, we may often observe such in the works of the greatest masters, which have produced a much nobler effect than a more accurate and exact way of proceeding could have done. This often arises from what the Italians call the gusto grande in these arts, which is what we call the sublime in writing. In the next place, our critics do not seem sensible that there is more beauty in the works of a great genius, who is ignorant of the rules of art, than in those of a little genius who knows and observes them. It is of these men of genius that Terence speaks, in opposition to the little artificial cavillers of his time: 'Quorum æmulari exoptat negligentiam Potius quam istorum obscuram diligentiam.' Whose negligence he would rather imitate than these men's obscure diligence.' traces and footsteps of noble thoughts, as, if carefully pursued, might lead us into a proper path of action. There is so much rapture and ecstacy in our fancied bliss, and something so dismal and shocking in our fancied misery, that, though the inactivity of the body has given occasion for calling sleep the image of death, the briskness of the fancy affords us a strong intimation of something within us that can never die. 'I have wondered that Alexander the Great, who came into the world sufficiently dreamed of by his parents, and had himself a tolerable knack of dreaming, should often say, that sleep was one thing which made him sensible he was mortal. I, who have not such fields of action in the daytime to divert my attention from this matter, plainly perceive that in those A critic may have the same consolation operations of the mind, while the body is in the ill success of his play as Dr. South at rest, there is a certain vastness of contells us a physician has at the death of a ception very suitable to the capacity, and patient, that he was killed secundum artem. demonstrative of the force of that divine Our inimitable Shakspeare is a stumbling-part in our composition which will last for block to the whole tribe of these rigid ever. Neither do I much doubt but, had critics. Who would not rather read one we a true account of the wonders the hero of his plays, where there is not a single last-mentioned performed in his sleep, his rule of the stage observed, than any pro- conquering this little globe would hardly duction of a modern critic, where there is not one of them violated! Shakspeare was indeed born with all the seeds of poetry, and may be compared to the stone in Pyrrhus's ring, which, as Pliny tells us, had the figure of Apollo and the nine muses in the veins of it, produced by the spontaneous hand of nature, without any help from art. VOL. II. 49 be worth mentioning. I may affirm, without vanity, that, when I compare several actions in Quintus Curtius with some others in my own noctuary, I appear the greater hero of the two.' I shall close this subject with observing, that while we are awake we are at liberty to fix our thoughts on what we please, but in sleep we have not the command of them. The ideas which strike the fancy arise in us without our choice, either from the occurrences of the day past, the temper we lie down in, or it may be the direction of some superior being. It is certain the imagination may be so differently affected in sleep, that our actions of the day might be either rewarded or punished with a little age of happiness or misery. Saint Austin was of opinion that, if in Paradise there was the same vicissitude of sleeping and waking, as in the present world, the dreams of its inhabitants would be very happy. And so far at present are our dreams in our power, that they are generally conformable to our waking thoughts, so that it is not impossible to convey ourselves to a concert of music, the conversation of distant friends, or any other entertainment which has been before lodged in the mind. My readers, by applying these hints, will find the necessity of making a good day of it, if they heartily wish themselves a good night. I have often considered Marcia's prayer, and Lucia's account of Cato, in this light. Marc. O ye mortal powers, that guard the just, Mr. Shadow acquaints me in a postscript, that he has no manner of title to the vision which succeeded his first letter; but adds, that, as the gentleman who wrote it dreams very sensibly, he shall be glad to meet him some night or other under the great elmtree, by which Virgil has given us a fine metaphorical image of sleep, in order to turn over a few of the leaves together, and oblige the public with an account of the dreams that lie under them. not, in some degree, guilty of this offence; though at the same time, however, we treat one another, it must be confessed, that we all consent in speaking ill of the persons who are notorious for this practice. It generally takes its rise either from an ill-will to mankind, a private inclination to make ourselves esteemed, an ostentation of wit, a vanity of being thought in the secrets of the world, or from a desire of gratifying any of these dispositions of mind in those persons with whom we converse. The publisher of scandal is more or less odious to mankind, and criminal in himself, as he is influenced by any one or more of the foregoing motives. But, whatever may be the occasion of spreading these false reports, he ought to consider that the effect of them is equally prejudicial and pernicious to the person at whom they are aimed. The injury is the same, though the principle from which it proceeds may be different. As every one looks upon himself with too much indulgence, when he passes a judgment on his own thoughts or actions, and as very few would be thought guilty of this abominable proceeding, which is so universally practised, and at the same time so universally blamed, I shall lay down three rules, by which I would have a man examine and search into his own heart before he stands acquitted to himself of that evil disposition of mind which I am here mentioning. First of all, Let him consider whether he does not take delight in hearing the faults of others. Secondly, Whether he is not too apt to believe such little blackening accounts, and more inclined to be credulous on the uncharitable than on the good-natured side. Thirdly, Whether he is not ready to spread and propagate such reports as tend to the disreputation of another. These are the several steps by which this vice proceeds and grows up into slander and defamation. In the first place, a man who takes delight in hearing the faults of others, shows sufficiently that he has a true relish of scandal, and consequently the seeds of this vice No. 594.] Wednesday, September 15, 1714. within him. If his mind is gratified with Absentem qui rodit amicum; Qui non defendit alio culpante; solutos Hor. Sat. iv. Lib. 1. 81. He that shall rail against his absent friends, Creech. WERE all the vexations of life put together, we should find that a great part of them proceeds from those calumnies and reproaches which we spread abroad concerning one another. There is scarce a man living, who is hearing the reproaches which are cast on others, he will find the same pleasure in relating them, and be the more apt to do it, as he will naturally imagine every one he converses with is delighted in the same manner with himself. A man should endeavour, therefore, to wear out of his mind this criminal curiosity, which is perpetually heightened and inflamed by listening to such stories as tend to the disreputation of others. In the second place, a man should consult his own heart, whether he be not apt to believe such little blackening accounts, and more inclined to be credulous on the uncharitable than on the good-natured side. Such a credulity is very vicious in itself, and generally arises from a man's conscious |