hold any natural consequence of candour when we speak of ourselves. The Spectator writes often in an elegant, often in an argumentative, and often in a sublime style, with equal success; but how would it hurt the reputed author of that paper to own, that of the most beautiful pieces under his title he is barely the publisher? There is nothing but what a man really performs can be an honour to him; what he takes more than he ought in the eye of the world, he loses in the conviction of his own heart; and a man must lose his consciousness, that is, his very self, before he can rejoice in any falsehood without inward mortification. thinking on a subject for my next Spectator, I heard two or three irregular bounces at my landlady's door, and upon the opening of it, a loud cheerful voice inquiring whether the philosopher was at home. The child who went to the door answered very innocently, that he did not lodge there. I immediately recollected that it was my good friend sir Roger's voice; and that I had promised to go with him on the water to Spring-garden,* in case it proved a good evening. The knight put me in mind of my promise from the bottom of the staircase, but told me, that if I was speculating, he would stay below till I had done. Upon my coming down, I found all the children of the family got about my old friend; and my landlady herself, who is a notable prating gossip engaged in a conference with him; being mightily pleased with his stroking her little boy on the head, and bidding him to be a good child and mind his book. We were no sooner come to the Templestairs, but we were surrounded with a crowd of watermen, offering us their respective services. Sir Roger, after having looked about him very attentively, spied one with a wooden leg, and immediately gave him orders to get his boat ready. As we were walking towards it, 'You must know,' says Sir Roger, 'I never make use of any body to row me, that has not lost either a leg or an arm. I would rather bate him a few strokes of his oar than not employ an honest man that has been wounded in the queen's service. If I was a lord or a bishop, and kept a barge, I would not put a fellow in my livery that had not a wooden leg.' Who has not seen a very criminal at the bar, when his counsel and friends have done all that they could for him in vain, prevail on the whole assembly to pity him, and his judge to recommend his case to the mercy of the throne, without offering any thing new in his defence, but that he whom before we wished convicted, became so out of his own mouth, and took upon himself all the shame and sorrow we were just before preparing for him? The great opposition to this kind of candour arises from the unjust idea people ordinarily have of what we call a high spirit. It is far from greatness of spirit to persist in the wrong in any thing; nor is it a diminution of greatness of spirit to have been in the wrong. Perfection is not the attribute of man, therefore he is not degraded by the acknowledgment of an imperfection; but it is the work of little minds to imitate the fortitude of great spirits on worthy occasions, by obstinacy in the wrong. This obstinacy prevails so far upon them, that they make it extend to the My old friend, after having seated himdefence of faults in their very servants. It self, and trimmed the boat with his coachwould swell this paper to too great a length man, who, being a very sober man, always should I insert all the quarrels and debates serves for ballast on these occasions, we which are now on foot in this town; where made the best of our way for Vauxhall. one party, and in some cases both, is sensi- Sir Roger obliged the waterman to give us ble of being on the faulty side, and have not the history of his right leg; and, hearing spirit enough to acknowledge it. Among that he had left it at La Hogue, with many the ladies the case is very common; for particulars which passed in that glorious there are very few of them who know that action, the knight, in the triumph of his it is to maintain a true and high spirit, to heart, made several reflections on the throw away from it all which itself disap-greatness of the British nation; as that one proves, and to scorn so pitiful a shame, as Englishman could beat three Frenchmen; that which disables the heart from acquir- that we could never be in danger of popery ing a liberality of affections and sentiments. so long as we took care of our fleet; that The candid mind, by acknowledging and the Thames was the noblest river in discharging its faults, has reason and truth Europe; that London bridge was a greater for the foundations of all its passions and de- piece of work than any of the seven wonsires, and consequently is happy and sim-ders of the world; with many other honest ple; the disingenuous spirit, by indulgence prejudices which naturally cleave to the of one unacknowledged error, is entangled heart of a true Englishman. with an after-life of guilt, sorrow, plexity. and per- No. 383.] Tuesday, May 20, 1712. Criminibus debent hortos. Juv. Sat. i. 75. After some short pause, the old knight turning about his head twice or thrice, to take a survey of this great metropolis, bid me observe how thick the city was set with churches, and that there was scarce a single steeple on this side Temple-bar. A most heathenish sight!' says sir Roger: *Or Vauxhall. there is no religion at this end of the town. | ratified the knight's commands with a peThe fifty new churches will very much remptory look. mend the prospect; but church-work is slow, church-work is slow.' As we were going out of the garden, my old friend thinking himself obliged, as a member of the quorum, to animadvert upon the morals of the place, told the mistress of the house, who sat at the bar, that he should be a better customer to her garden, if there were more nightingales and fewer I. strumpets. I do not remember I have any where mentioned in Sir Roger's character, his custom of saluting every body that passes by him with a good-morrow, or a goodnight. This the old man does out of the overflowings of his humanity; though, at the same time, it renders him so popular among all his country neighbours, that it is thought to have gone a good way in making No. 384.] Wednesday, May 21, 1712. him once or twice knight of the shire. He cannot forbear this exercise of benevolence 'Hague, May 24, N. S. The same republican hands, even in town, when he meets with any one who have so often since the chevalier de St. George's in his morning or evening walk. It broke recovery killed him in our public prints, have now reduced the young dauphin of France to that desperate from him to several boats that passed by us condition of weakness, and death itself, that it is hard on the water; but, to the knight's great to conjecture what method they will take to bring him to life again. Meantime we are assured, by a very good surprise, as he gave the good-night to two hand from Paris, that on the 20th instant this young or three young fellows a little before our prince was as well as ever he was known to be since landing, one of them, instead of returning the day of his birth. As for the other, they are now sending his ghost, we suppose (for they never had the the civility, asked us, what queer old put modesty to contradict their assertion of his death,) to we had in the boat, and whether he was Commerci in Lorrain, attended only by four gentlemen, not ashamed to go a wenching at his years? and a few domestics of little consideration. The Baron de Bothmar* having delivered in his credentials to with a great deal of the like Thames-qualify him as an ambassador to this state (an office to ribaldry. Sir Roger seemed a little shocked which his greatest enemies will acknowledge him to be at first, but at length assuming a face of equal,) is gone to Utrecht, whence he will proceed to magistracy, told us, that if he were a Mid- Hanover, but not stay long at that court, for fear the peace should be made during his lamentable absence.'dlesex justice, he would make such va- Post-Boy, May 20. grants know that her majesty's subjects were no more to be abused by water than by land. I SHOULD be thought not able to read should I overlook some excellent pieces lately come out. My lord bishop of St. We were now arrived at Spring-garden, which is exquisitely pleasant at this time of Asaph has just now published some sermons, the preface to which seems to me to the year. When I considered the fragrancy determine a great point. He has, like a of the walks and bowers, with the choirs of birds, that sung upon the trees, and the good man, and a good Christian, in opposition to all the flattery and base submission loose tribe of people that walked under of false friends to princes, asserted, that their shades, I could not but look upon the Christianity left us where it found us as to place as a kind of Mahometan Paradise. our civil rights. The present entertainment Sir Roger told me it put him in mind of a shall consist only of a sentence out of the little coppice by his house in the country; Post-Boy, and the said preface of the lord which his chaplain used to call an aviary of of St. Asaph. I should think it a little odd nightingales. You must understand,' says if the author of the Post-Boy should with the knight, that there is nothing in the world that pleases a man in love so much impunity call men republicans for a gladness on the report of the death of the preas your nightingale. Ah, Mr. Spectator, tender; and treat baron Bothmar, the mithe many moonlight nights that I have nister of Hanover, in such a manner as you walked by myself, and thought on the see in my motto. I must own, I think every widow by the music of the nightingale!' Here he fetched a deep sigh, and was fall-man in England concerned to support the ing into a fit of musing, when a mask, who came behind him, gave him a gentle tap upon the shoulder, and asked him if he would drink a bottle of mead with her? But the knight being startled at so unexpected a familiarity, and displeased to be interrupted in his thoughts of the widow, told her she was a wanton baggage; and bid her go about her business. We concluded our walk with a glass of Burton ale, and a slice of hung beef. When we had done eating ourselves, the knight called a waiter to him, and bid him carry the remainder to the waterman that had but one leg. I perceived the fellow stared upon him at the oddness of the message, and was going to be saucy; upon which I succession of that family. 'The publishing a few sermons, whilst I live, the latest of which was preached about eight years since, and the first above seventeen, will make it very natural for people to inquire into the occasion of doing so; and to such I do very willingly assign these following reasons: 'First, from the observations I have been able to make for these many years last past upon our public affairs, and from the natural tendency of several principles and practices, that have of late been studiously revived, and from what has followed there * Ambassador from Hanover, and afterwards agent here for the Hanoverian family. † Dr. William Fleetwood, upon, I could not help both fearing and presaging, that these nations should some time or other, if ever we should have an enterprising prince upon the throne, of more ambition than virtue, justice, and true honour, fall into the way of all other nations, and lose their liberty. sonable and well-grounded, that I believe I can never have any other. 'Another reason of my publishing these sermons at this time is, that I have a mind to do myself some honour by doing what honour I could to the memory of two most excellent princes, and who have very highly deserved at the hands of all the people of these dominions, who have any true value for the Protestant religion, and the constitution of the English government of which they were the great deliverers and defenders. I have lived to see their illustrious names very rudely handled, and the great benefits they did this nation treated slightly and contemptuously. I have lived to see our deliverance from arbitrary power and popery traduced and vilified by some who formerly thought it was their greatest merit, and made it part of their boast and glory to have had a little hand and share in bringing it about; and others who, without it, must have lived in exile, poverty, and misery, meanly disclaiming it, and using ill the expect such a requital of such merit? I have, I own it, an ambition of exempting myself from the number of unthankful people: and as I loved and honoured those great princes living, and lamented over them when dead, so I would gladly raise them up a monument of praise as lasting as any thing of mine can be; and I choose to do it at this time, when it is so unfashionable a thing to speak honourably of them. 'Nor could I help foreseeing to whose charge a great deal of this dreadful mischief, whenever it should happen, would be laid; whether justly or unjustly, was not my business to determine; but I resolved, for my own particular part, to deliver myself, as well as I could, from the reproaches and the curses of posterity, by publicly declaring to all the world, that, although in the constant course of my ministry I have never failed, on proper occasions, to recommend, urge, and insist upon the loving, honouring, and reverencing the prince's person, and holding it, according to the laws, inviolable and sacred; and paying all obedience and submission to the laws, though never so hard and inconvenient to private people: yet did I never think my-glorious instruments thereof. Who could self at liberty, or authorized to tell the people, that either Christ, St. Peter, or St. Paul, or any other holy writer, had, by any doctrine delivered by them, subverted the laws and constitutions of the country in which they lived, or put them in a worse condition, with respect to their civil liberties, than they would have been had they not been Christians. I ever thought it a most impious blasphemy against that holy religion, to father`any thing upon it that might encourage tyranny, oppression, or injustice in a prince, or that easily tended to make a free and happy people slaves and miserable. No: people may make themselves as wretched as they will, but let not God be called into that wicked party. When force and violence, and hard necessity, have brought the yoke of servitude upon a people's neck, religion will supply them with a patient and submissive spirit under it till they can innocently shake it off: but certainly religion never puts it on. This always was, and this at present is, my judgment of these matters: and I would be transmitted to posterity (for the little share of time such names as mine can live) under the character of one who loved his country, and would be thought a good Englishman, as well as a good clergyman. 'The sermon that was preached upon the duke of Gloucester's death was printed quickly after, and is now, because the subject was so suitable, joined to the others. The loss of that most promising and hopeful prince was at that time, I saw, unspeakably great; and many accidents since have convinced us that it could not have been overvalued. That precious life, had it pleased God to have prolonged it the usual space, had saved us many fears and jealousies, and dark distrusts, and prevented many alarms, that have long kept us, and will keep us still, waking and uneasy. Nothing remained to comfort and support us under this heavy stroke, but the necessity it brought the king and nation under of settling the succession in the house of Hanover, and giving it a hereditary right by act of parliament, as long as it continues Pro"This character I thought would be trans-testant. So much good did God, in his mitted by the following sermons, which were made for and preached in a private audience, when I could think of nothing else but doing my duty on the occasions that were then offered by God's providence, without any manner of design of making them public; and for that reason I give them now as they were then delivered; by which I hope to satisfy those people who have objected a change of principles to me, as if I were not now the same man I formerly was. I never had but one opinion of these matters; and that I think is so reaVOL. II. 14 merciful providence, produce from a misfortune, which we could never otherwise have sufficiently deplored! "The fourth sermon was preached upon the queen's accession to the throne, and the first year in which that day was solemnly observed (for by some accident or other it had been overlooked the year before;) and every one will see, without the date of it, that it was preached very early in this reign, since I was able only to promise and presage its future glories and successes, from the good appearances of things, and Every man is ready to give in a long catalogue of those virtues and good qualities he expects to find in the person of a friend, but very few of us are careful to cultivate them in ourselves. Love and esteem are the first principles of friendship, which always is imperfect where either of these two is wanting. As, on the one hand, we are soon ashamed of loving a man whom we cannot esteem; so, on the other, though we are truly sensible of a man's abilities, we can never raise ourselves to the warmth of friendship, without an affectionate good-will towards his person. the happy turn our affairs began to take; Friendship is a strong and habitual inand could not then count up the victories clination in two persons to promote the good and triumphs that, for seven years after, and happiness of one another. Though the made it, in the prophet's language, a name pleasures and advantages of friendship have and a praise among all the people of the been largely celebrated by the best ̄moral earth. Never did seven such years to- writers, and are considered by all as great gether pass over the head of any English ingredients of human happiness, we very monarch, nor cover it with so much honour. rarely meet with the practice of this virtue The crown and sceptre seemed to be the in the world. queen's least ornaments; those, other princes wore in common with her, and her great personal virtues were the same before and since; but such was the fame of her administration of affairs at home, such was the reputation of her wisdom and felicity in choosing ministers, and such was then esteemed their faithfulness and zeal, their diligence and great abilities in executing her commands; to such a height of military glory did her great general and her armies carry the British name abroad; such was the harmony and concord betwixt her and her allies; and such was the blessing of God upon all her councils and undertakings, that I am as sure as history can make me, no prince of ours ever was so prosperous and successful, so beloved, esteemed, and honoured by their subjects and their friends, nor near so formidable to their enemies. We were, as all the world imagined then, just entering on the ways that promised to lead to such a peace as would have answered all the prayers of our religious queen, the care and vigilance of a most able ministry, the payments of a willing and most obedient people, as well as all the glorious toils and hazards of the soldiery; when God, for our sins, permitted the spirit of discord to go forth, and by troubling sore the camp, the city and the country, (and oh that it had altogether spared the places sacred to his worship!) to spoil, for a time, this beautiful and pleasing prospect, and give us in its stead, I know not what Friendship immediately banishes envy under all its disguises. A man who can once doubt whether he should rejoice in his friend's being happier than himself, may depend upon it that he is an utter stranger to this virtue. There is something in friendship so very great and noble, that in those fictitious stories which are invented to the honour of any particular person, the authors have thought it as necessary to make their hero a friend as a lover. Achilles has his Patroclus, and Æneas his Achates. In the first of these instances we may observe, for the reputation of the subject I am treating of, that Greece was almost ruined by the hero's love, but was preserved by his friendship. The character of Achates suggests to us an observation we may often make on the -Our ene-intimacies of great men, who frequently choose their companions rather for the qualities of the heart than those of the head, and prefer fidelity in an easy, inoffensive, complying temper, to those endowments which make a much greater figure among mankind. I do not remember that Achates, who is represented as the first favourite, either gives his advice, or strikes a blow, through the whole Æneid. mies will tell the rest with pleasure. It will become me better to pray to God to restore us to the power of obtaining such a peace as will be to his glory, the safety, honour, and welfare of the queen and her dominions, and the general satisfaction of all her high and mighty allies.* 'May 2, 1712.' No. 385.] Thursday, May 22, 1712. -Thesea pectora juncta fide. Ovid. Trist. iii. Lib. 1. 66. Breasts that with sympathizing ardour glow'd, And holy friendship, such as Theseus vow'd. I INTEND the paper for this day as a loose essay upon friendship, in which I shall throw my observations together without any set form, that I may avoid repeating what has been often said on this subject. * This Preface was seized on by the Tory ministry, and condemned, by a motion of the House of Commons, to be burned by the common hangman.-See Biographia Britannica, vol. iii. p. 1974. A friendship which makes the least noise is very often most useful: for which reason I should prefer a prudent friend to a zealous one. Atticus, one of the best men of ancient Rome, was a very remarkable instance of what I am here speaking. This extraor dinary person, amidst the civil wars of his country, when he saw the designs of all liberty, by constantly preserving the esteem parties equally tended to the subversion of and affection of both the competitors, found means to serve his friends on either side: and, while he sent money to young Marius, whose father was declared an enemy to the commonwealth, he was himself one of Sylla's chief favourites, and always near No. 386.] Friday, May 23, 1712. that general. Cum tristibus severe, cum remissis jucunde, cum senibus graviter, cum juventute comiter vivere. Tully. During the war between Cæsar and Pompey, he still maintained the same conduct. After the death of Cæsar, he sent money to Brutus in his troubles, and did a thousand THE piece of Latin on the head of this good offices to Antony's wife and friends paper is part of a character extremely viwhen that party seemed ruined. Lastly, cious, but I have set down no more than even in that bloody war between Antony may fall in with the rules of justice and and Augustus, Atticus still kept his place honour. Cicero spoke it of Catiline, who, in both their friendships: insomuch that the he said, 'lived with the sad severely, with first, says Cornelius Nepos, whenever he the cheerful agreeably, with the old gravewas absent from Rome in any part of the ly, with the young pleasantly;' he added, empire, writ punctually to him what he with the wicked boldly, with the wanton was doing, what he read, and whither he lasciviously.' The two last instances of his intended to go; and the latter gave him complaisance I forbear to consider, having constantly an exact account of all his affairs. it in my thoughts at present only to speak A likeness of inclinations in every parti- of obsequious behaviour as it sits upon a cular is so far from being requisite to form companion in pleasure, not a man of design a benevolence in two minds towards each and intrigue. To vary with every humour other, as it is generally imagined, that I in this manner cannot be agreeable, except believe we shall find some of the firmest it comes from a man's own temper and nafriendships to have been contracted be-tural complexion; to do it out of an ambitween persons of different humours; the tion to excel that way, is the most fruitless mind being often pleased with those per- and unbecoming prostitution imaginable. fections which are new to it, and which it To put on an artful part to obtain no other does not find among its own accomplish-end but an unjust praise from the undiscernments. Besides that a man in some measure supplies his own defects, and fancies himself at second-hand possessed of those good qualities and endowments, which are in the possession of him who in the eye of the world is looked upon as his other self. The most difficult province in friendship is the letting a man see his faults and errors, which should, if possible, be so contrived, that he may perceive our advice is given him not so much to please ourselves as for his own advantage. The reproaches therefore of a friend should always be strictly just, and not too frequent. The violent desire of pleasing in the person reproved may otherwise change into a despair of doing it, while he finds himself censured for faults he is not conscious of. A mind that is softened and humanized by friendship cannot bear frequent reproaches; either it must quite sink under the oppression, or abate considerably of the value and esteem it had for him who bestows them. The proper business of friendship is to inspire life and courage: and a soul thus supported outdoes itself: whereas, if it be unexpectedly deprived of these succours, it droops and languishes. ing, is of all endeavours the most despicable. A man must be sincerely pleased to become pleasure, or not to interrupt that of others; for this reason it is a most calamitous circumstance, that many people who want to be alone, or should be so, will come into conversation. It is certain that all men, who are the least given to reflection, are seized with an inclination that way, when, perhaps, they had rather be inclined to company; but indeed they had better go home and be tired with themselves, than force themselves upon others to recover their good humour. In all this, the case of communicating to a friend a sad thought or difficulty, in order to relieve a heavy heart, stands excepted; but what is here meant is, that a man should always go with inclination to the turn of the company he is going into, or not pretend to be of the party. It is certainly a very happy temper to be able to live with all kinds of dispositions, because it argues a mind that lies open to receive what is pleasing to others, and not obstinately bent on any particularity of his own. This is it which makes me pleased with the character of my good acquaintance We are in some measure more inexcusa-Acasto. You meet him at the tables and ble if we violate our duties to a friend than conversations of the wise, the impertinent, to a relation; since the former arise from the grave, the frolic, and the witty; and a voluntary choice, the latter from a ne-yet his own character has nothing in it that cessity to which we could not give our own can make him particularly agreeable to any one sect of men; but Acasto has natural good sense, good-nature, and discretion, so that every man enjoys himself in his company; and though Acasto contributes nothing to the entertainment, he never was at a place where he was not welcome a second time. Without the subordinate good qualities of Acasto, a man of wit and learning would be painful to the generality of man |