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Friday, May 18, 1711.

Nos duo turba sumus
We two are a multitude.

man some assurance, and makes him easy | No. 68.]
in all companies. For want of this, I have
seen a professor of a liberal science at a
loss to salute a lady; and a most excel-
lent mathematician not able to determine
whether he should stand or sit while my
lord drank to him.

It is the proper business of a dancingmaster to regulate these matters; though I take it to be a just observation, that unless you add something of your own to what these fine gentlemen teach you, and which they are wholly ignorant of themselves, you will much sooner get the character of an affected fop, than of a well-bred man.

As for country dancing, it must indeed be confessed that the great familiarities between the two sexes on this occasion may sometimes produce very dangerous consequences; and I have often thought that few ladies' hearts are so obdurate as not to be melted by the charms of music, the force of motion, and a handsome young fellow who is continually playing before their eyes, and convincing them that he has the perfect use of all his limbs.

But as this kind of dance is the particular invention of our own country, and as every one is more or less a proficient in it, I would not discountenance it: but rather suppose it may be practised innocently by others, as well as myself, who am often partner to my landlady's eldest daughter.

POSTSCRIPT.

Having heard a good character of the collection of pictures which is to be exposed to sale on Friday next; and concluding from the following letter, that the person who collected them is a man of no unelegant taste, I will be so much his friend as to publish it, provided the reader will only look upon it as filling up the place of an advertisement:

From the Three Chairs, in the Piazzas,
Covent Garden.

'May 16, 1711.
'SIR,-As you are a Spectator, I think
we who make it our business to exhibit any
thing to public view, ought to apply our
selves to you for your approbation. I have
travelled Europe to furnish out a show for
you, and have brought with me what has
been admired in every country through
which I passed. You have declared in
many papers, that your greatest delights
are those of the eye, which I do not doubt
but I shall gratify with as beautiful objects
as yours ever beheld. If castles, forests,
ruins, fine women, and graceful men, can
please you, I dare promise you much satis-
faction, if you will appear at my auction
on Friday next. A sight is, I suppose, as
grateful to a Spectator as a treat to another
person, and therefore I hope you will par-
don this invitation from, sir,

Your most obedient humble servant, X. 'J. GRAHAM.'|

Ovid, Met. i. 355.

ONE would think that the larger the company is in which we are engaged, the greater variety of thoughts and subjects would be started in discourse; but instead of this, we find that conversation is never so much straitened and confined as in numerous assemblies. When a multitude meet together on any subject of discourse, their debates are taken up chiefly with forms and general positions; nay, if we come into a more contracted assembly of men and women, the talk generally runs upon the weather, fashions, news, and the like public topics. In proportion as conversation gets into clubs and knots of friends, it descends into particulars, and grows more free and communicative; but the most open, instructive, and unreserved discourse, is that which passes between two persons who are familiar and intimate friends. On these occasions a man gives a loose to every passion and every thought that is uppermost, discovers his most retired opinions of persons and things, tries the beauty and strength of his sentiments, and exposes his whole soul to the examination of his friend.

Tully was the first who observed, that friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy, and dividing of our grief; a thought in which he hath been followed by all the essayers upon Sir Francis Bacon has finely described friendship, that have written since his time. other advantages, or, as he calls them, fruits of friendship; and, indeed, there is no subject of morality which has been better handled and more exhausted than this Among the several fine things which have been spoken of it, I shall beg leave to quote some out of a very ancient author, whose book would be regarded by our modern wits as one of the most shining tracts of morality that is extant, if it appeared under the name of a Confucius, or of any celebrated Grecian philosopher: I mean the little apocryphal treatise, entitled The Wisdom of the Son of Sirach. How finely has he described the art of making friends, by an obliging and affable behaviour! and laid down that precept which a late excellent author has delivered as his own, That we should have many well-wishers, but few friends. Sweet language will multiply friends; and a fair speaking tongue will increase kind greetings. Be in peace with many, nevertheless, have but one counsellor of a thousand. With what prudence does he caution us in the choice of our friends! And with what strokes of nature (I could almost say of humour) has he described the behavicur of a treacherous and self interested friend! If thou wouldest get a friend, prove him first, and be not

* Ecclus. vi. 5, 6.

hasty to credit him: for some man is a friend for his own occasion, and will not abide in the day of thy trouble. And there is a friend who being turned to enmity and strife, will discover thy reproach.' Again, 'Some friend is a companion at the table, and will not continue in the day of thy affiction: but in thy prosperity he will be as thyself, and will be bold over thy servants. If thou be brought low he will be against thee, and hide himself from thy face.'* What can be more strong and pointed than the following verse? Separate thyself from thine enemies, and take heed of thy friends.' In the next words he particularizes one of those fruits of friendship which is described at length by the two famous authors above-mentioned, and falls into a general eulogium of friendship, which is very just as well as very sublime. A faithful friend is a strong defence; and he that hath found such a one hath found a treasure. Nothing doth countervail a faithful friend, and his excellency is invaluable. A faithful friend is the medicine of life; and they that fear the Lord shall find him. Whoso feareth the Lord shall direct his friendship aright; for as he is, so shall his neighbour (that is, his friend) be also.'t I do not remember to have met with any saying that has pleased me more than that of a friend's being the medicine of life, to express the efficacy of friendship in healing the pains and anguish which naturally cleave to our existence in this world; and am wonderfully pleased with the turn in the last sentence, that a virtuous man shall as a blessing meet with a friend who is as virtuous as himself. There is another saying in the same author, which would have been very much admired in a heathen writer: Forsake not an old friend, for the new is not comparable to him: a new friend is as new wine; when it is old thou shalt drink

loseth his credit, and shall never find a friend to his mind. Love thy friend, and be faithful unto him; but if thou bewrayeth his secrets, follow no more after him; for as a man hath destroyed his enemy, so hast thou lost the love of thy friend; as one that letteth a bird go out of his hand, so hast thou let thy friend go, and shall not get him again: follow after him no more, for he is too far off; he is as a roe escaped out of the snare. As for a wound it may be bound up, and after reviling there may be a reconciliation; but he that bewrayeth secrets, is without hope.'

Among the several qualifications of a good friend, this wise man has very justly singled out constancy and faithfulness as the principal: to these, others have added virtue, knowledge, discretion, equality in age and fortune, and as Cicero calls it, Morum comitas, a pleasantness of temper.' If I were to give my opinion upon such an exhausted subject, I should join to these other qualifications, a certain equability or evenness of behaviour. A man often contracts a friendship with one whom perhaps he does not find out till after a year's conversation; when on a sudden some latent ill-humour breaks out upon him, which he never discovered or suspected at his first entering into an intimacy with him. There are several persons who in some certain periods of their lives are inexpressibly agreeable, and in others as odious and detestable. Martial has given us a very pretty picture of one of this species in the following epigram:

Difficilis, facilis, jucundus, acerbus es idem,
Nec tecum possum vivere, nec sine te.-Epig. xii. 47.
In all thy humours, whether grave or mellow,
Thou'rt such a touchy, testy, pleasant fellow;
Hast so much wit, and mirth, and spleen about thee,
There is no living with thee, nor without thee.

C.

It is very unlucky for a man to be entanit with pleasure.' With what strength of gled in a friendship with one, who, by these allusion, and force of thought has he de- changes and vicissitudes of humour, is somescribed the breaches and violations of times amiable, and sometimes odious; and friendship? Whoso casteth a stone at as most men are at sometimes in an admithe birds frayeth them away; and he that rable frame and disposition of mind, it should upbraideth his friend, breaketh friendship. be one of the greatest tasks of wisdom to Though thou drawest a sword at a friend, keep ourselves well when we are so, and yet despair not, for there may be a return-never to go out of that which is the agreeing to favour. If thou hast opened thy able part of our character. mouth against thy friend, fear not, for there may be a reconciliation; except for upbraiding, or pride, or disclosing of secrets, or a treacherous wound; for, for these things every friend will depart.'s We may observe in this and several other precepts in this author, those little familiar instances and illustrations which are so much admired in the moral writings of Horace and Epictetus. There are very beautiful instances of this nature in the following passages, which are likewise written upon the same subject: Whoso discovereth secrets

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• Ecclus. vi. 7, et seqq. † Ibid. vi. 15-18. ‡ Ibid. ix 10. § Ibid. xxii. 20, 21, 22.

No. 69.] Saturday, May 19, 1711.

Hic segetes, illic veniunt felicius uvæ;
Arborei foetus alibi, atque injussa virescunt
Gramina. Nonne vides, croceos ut Tmolus odores,
India mittit ebur, molles sua thura Sabei?
At Chalybes nudi ferrum, virosaque Pontus
Castorea, Eliadum palmas Epirus equarum?
Continuo has leges, æternaque fœdera certis
Imposuit natura locis-

Virg. Georg. i. 54.
This ground with Bacchus, that with Ceres suits;
The other loads the trees with happy fruits;
A fourth with grass, unbidden, decks the ground;
Thus Tmolus is with yellow saffron crown'd:
India black ebon and white iv'ry bears;
And soft Idume weeps her od❜rous tears:

Ecclus. xxvii. 16. et seqq.

Thus Pontus sends her beaver stones from far;
And nakei Spaniards temper steel for war.
Epirus for th Elean chariot breeds
(In hopes of palms a race of running steeds.
This is th' original contract; these the laws

Nature seems to have taken a particular care to disseminate her blessings among the different regions of the world, with an eye to this mutual intercourse and traffic ainong mankind, that the natives of the several parts of the globe might have a kind of dependence upon one another, and be united together by their common interest. Almost every degree produces something peculiar to it. The food often grows in one country, and the sauce in another. The fruits of Portugal are corrected by the products of Barbadoes, and the infusion of a China plant is sweetened with the pith of an Indian cane. The Philippine islands give a flavour to the European bowls. The single dress of a woman of quality is often the products of a hundred climates. The muff and the fan come together from the different ends of the earth. The scarf is sent from the torrid zone, and the tippet from beneath the pole. The brocade petticoat rises out of the mines of Peru, and the diamond necklace out of the bowels of Indostan.

Impos'd by nature, and by nature's cause.-Dryden. THERE is no place in the town which I so much love to frequent as the Royal Exchange. It gives me a secret satisfaction, and in some measure gratifies my vanity, as I am an Englishman, to see so rich an assembly of countrymen and foreigners, consulting together upon the private business of mankind, and making this metropolis a kind of emporium for the whole earth. I must confess I look upon high Change to be a great council, in which all considerable nations have their representatives. Factors in the trading world are what ambassadors are in the politic world; they negotiate affairs, conclude treaties, and maintain a good correspondence between those wealthy societies of men that are divided from one another by seas and oceans, or live on the different extremities of a continent. I have often been pleased to hear disputes adjusted If we consider our own country in its nabetween an inhabitant of Japan and an al-tural prospect, without any of the benefits derman of London, or to see a subject of the and advantages of commerce, what a barGreat Mogul entering into a league with ren uncomfortable spot of earth falls to our one of the Czar of Muscovy. I am infinitely share! Natural historians tell us, that no delighted in mixing with these several mi-fruit grows originally among us, besides nisters of commerce, as they are distin- hips and haws, acorns and pig-nuts, with guished by their different walks and differ-other delicacies of the like nature; that our ent languages. Sometimes I am jostled climate of itself, and without the assistance among a body of Armenians; sometimes I am lost in a crowd of Jews; and sometimes make one in a group of Dutchmen. I am a Dane, Swede, or Frenchman, at different times; or rather fancy myself like the old philosopher, who upon being asked what Countryman he was, replied, that he was a citizen of the world.

Though I very frequently visit this busy multitude of people, I am known to nobody there but my friend Sir Andrew, who often smiles upon me as he sees me bustling in the crowd, but at the same time connives at my presence without taking further notice of me. There is indeed a merchant of Egypt, who just knows me by sight, having formerly remitted me some money to Grand Cairo: but as I am not versed in the modern Coptic, our conferences go no further than a bow and a grimace.

of art, can make no farther advances towards a plum, than to a sloe, and carries an apple to no greater perfection than a crab; that our melons, our peaches, our figs, our apricots, and cherries, are strangers among us, imported in different ages, and naturalized in our English gardens; and that they would all degenerate and fall away into the trash of our own country, if they were wholly neglected by the planter, and left to the mercy of our sun and soil. Nor has traffic more enriched our vegetable world, than it has improved the whole face of nature among us. Our ships are laden with the harvest of every climate. Our tables are stored with spices, and oils, and wines. Our rooms are filled with pyramids of China, and adorned with the workmanship of Japan. Our morning's draught comes to us from the remotest corners of This grand scene of business gives me an the earth. We repair our bodies by the infinite variety of solid and substantial en-drugs of America, and repose ourselves untertainments. As I am a great lover of mankind, my heart naturally overflows with pleasure at the sight of a prosperous and happy multitude, insomuch that at many public solemnities I cannot forbear expressing my joy with tears that have stolen down my cheeks. For this reason I am wonderfully delighted to see such a body of men thriving in their own private fortunes, and at the same time promoting the public stock; or, in other words, raising estates for their own families, by bringing into their country whatever is wanting, and carrying out of it whatever is superfluous.

der Indian canopies. My friend Sir Andrew, calls the vineyards of France our gardens; the spice-islands, our hot-beds; the Persians, our silk-weavers, and the Chinese, our potters. Nature indeed furnishes us with the bare necessaries of life, but traffic gives us a great variety of what is useful, and at the same time supplies us with every thing that is convenient and or|namental. Nor is it the least part of this our happiness, that whilst we enjoy the remotest products of the north and south, we are free from those extremities of weather which give them birth; that our eyes are

refreshed with the green fields of Britain, | plicity of thought, above that which I call

at the same time that our palates are feasted with fruits that rise between the tropics. For these reasons there are not more useful members in a commonwealth than merchants. They knit mankind together in a mutual intercourse of good offices, distribute the gifts of nature, find work for the poor, add wealth to the rich, and magnificence to the great. Our English merchant converts the tin of his own country into gold, and exchanges its wool for rubies. The Mahometans are clothed in our British manufacture, and the inhabitants of the frozen zone warmed with the fleeces of our sheep.

When I have been upon the Change, I have often fancied one of our old kings standing in person, where is represented in effigy, and looking down upon the wealthy concourse of people with which that place is every day filled. In this case, how would he be surprised to hear all the languages of Europe spoken in this little spot of his former dominions, and to see so many private men, who in bis time would have been the vassals of some powerful baron, negotiating like princes for greater sums of money than were formerly to be met with in the royal treasury! Trade, without enlarging the British territories, has given us a kind of additional empire. It has multiplied the number of the rich, made our landed estates infinitely more valuable than they were formerly, and added to them an accession of other estates as valuable as the lands themselves. C.

No 70.] Monday, May 21, 1711.
Interdum vulgus rectum videt-
Hor. Lib. ii. Ep. i. 63.
Sometimes the vulgar see and judge aright.

the Gothic manner of writing, than thisthat the first pleases all kinds of palates, and the latter only such as have formed to themselves a wrong artificial taste upon little fanciful authors and writers of epigrams. Homer, Virgil, or Milton, so far as the language of their poems is understood, will please a reader of plain common sense, who would neither relish nor comprehend an epigram of Martial, or a poem of Cowley; so, on the contrary, an ordinary song or ballad, that is the delight of the common people, cannot fail to please all such readers as are not unqualified for the entertainment by their affectation or ignorance; and the reason is plain, because the same paintings of nature, which recommend it to the most ordinary reader, will appear beautiful to the most refined.

The old song of Chevy-Chase is the favourite ballad of the common people of England, and Ben Jonson used to say, he had rather have been the author of it than of all his works. Sir Philip Sidney, in his discourse of poetry, speaks of it in the following words: 'I never heard the old song of Percy and Douglas, that I found not my heart more moved than with a trumpet; and yet it is sung by some blind crowder with no rougher voice than rude style, which being so evil apparelled in the dust and cobweb of that uncivil age, what would it work trimmed in the gorgeous eloquence of Pindar? For my own part, I am so professed an admirer of this antiquated song, that I shall give my reader a critique upon it, without any further apology for so doing.*

The greatest modern critics have laid it down as a rule, that an heroic poem should be founded upon some important precept of morality, adapted to the constitution of the country in which the poet writes. WHEN I travelled, I took a particular Homer and Virgil have formed their plans delight in hearing the songs and fables that in this view. As Greece was a collection are come from father to son, and are most of many governments, who suffered very in vogue among the common people of the much among themselves, and gave the countries through which I passed; for it is Persian emperor, who was their common impossible that any thing should be univer- enemy, many advantages over them by sally tasted and approved by a multitude, their mutual jealousies and animosities, though they are only the rabble of a nation, Homer, in order to establish among them which hath not in it some peculiar aptness a union which was so necessary for their to please and gratify the mind of man. safety, grounds his poem upon the discords Human nature is the same in all reasona- of the several Grecian princes who were ble creatures; and whatever falls in with engaged in a confederacy against an Asiatic it, will meet with admirers amongst rea- prince, and the several advantages which ders of all qualities and conditions. Mo- the enemy gained by such discords. At the liere, as we are told by Monsieur Boileau, time the poem we are now treating of was used to read all his comedies to an old wo-written, the dissensions of the barons, man who was his house-keeper, as she sat with him at her work by the chimney-corner; and could foretel the success of his play in the theatre, from the reception it met with at his fire-side: for he tells us the audience always followed the old woman, and never failed to laugh in the same place. I know nothing which more shows the essential and inherent perfection of sim-consequence of it.

who were then so many petty princes, ran very high, whether they quarrelled among themselves, or with their neighbours, and

much admired by Sir Philip Sidney and Ben Jonson, *Mr. Addison was not aware that the old song so was not the same as that which he here so elegantly criticises, and which, in Dr. Percy's opinion, cannot be written after the eulogium of Sir Philip Sidney, or in older than the time of Elizabeth; and was probably

produced_unspeakable calamities to the
country. The poet, to deter men from such
unnatural contentions, describes a bloody
battle and dreadful scene of death, occa-
sioned by the mutual feuds which reigned
in the families of an English and Scotch
nobleman. That he designed this for the
instruction of his poem, we may learn
from his four last lines, in which, after the
example of the modern tragedians, he
draws from it a precept for the benefit of
his readers:

'God save the king, and bless the land
In plenty, joy, and peace:
And grant henceforth that foul debate

"Twixt noblemen may cease.'

The next point observed by the greatest heroic poets, hath been to celebrate persons and actions which do honour to their Country: thus Virgil's hero was the founder of Rome, Homer's a prince of Greece; and for this reason Valerius Flaccus and Statius, who were both Romans, might be justly derided for having chosen the expe dition of the Golden Fleece, and the wars of Thebes, for the subjects of their epic writings.

The poet before us has not only found out an hero in his own country, but raises the reputation of it by several beautiful incidents. The English are the first who take the field, and the last who quit it. The English bring only fifteen hundred to the battle, the Scotch two thousand. The English keep the field with fifty-three; the Scotch retire with fifty-five: all the rest on each side being slain in battle. But the most remarkable circumstance of this kind is the different manner in which the Scotch

and English kings receive the news of this
fight, and of the great men's deaths who
commanded in it:

This news was brought to Edinburgh,
Where Scotland's king did reign,
That brave Earl Douglas suddenly,
Was with an arrow slain.

O heavy news, king James did say,
Scotland can witness be,

I have not any captain more
Of such account as he.

Like tidings to King Henry came
Within as short a space,
That Percy of Northumberland
Was slain at Chevy Chase.

Now God be with him, said our king,
Sith 'twill no better be,

I trust I have within my realm
Five hundred good as he.

Yet shall not Scot nor Scotland say,
But I will vengeance take,
And be revenged on them all

For brave Lord Percy's sake.

This vow full well the king perform'd
After on Humble-down,

In one day fifty knights were slain,
With lords of great renown.

And of the rest of small account
Did many thousands die,' &c.

At the same time that our poet shows a
laudable partiality to his countrymen, he
represents the Scots after a manner not un-
becoming so bold and brave a people.

Earl Douglas on a milk-white steed,
Most like a baron bold.
Rode foremost of the company.
His sentiments and actions are every way
Whose armour shone like gold."
suitable to an hero. One of us two, says
he, must die. I am an earl as well as
yourself, so that you can have no pretence
for refusing the combat: however, says he,
it is pity, and indeed would be a sin, that
sakes; rather let you and I end our quarrel
so many innocent men should perish for our
in single fight:

Ere thus I will out-braved be,
One of us two shall die;

I know thee well, an earl thou art,
Lord Percy, so am I.

But trust me. Percy, pity it were,
And great offence, to kill
Any of these our harmless men,
For they have done no ill.
'Let thou and I the battle try,
And set our men aside;
Accursed be he. Lord Percy said,

By whom it is deny`d.'

ed themselves in the battle, and in single
When these brave men had distinguish-
combat with each other, in the midst of a
the Scotch earl falls; and with his dying
generous parley, full of heroic sentiments,
words encourages his men to revenge his
death, representing to them, as the most
bitter circumstance of it, that his rival saw
him fall:

With that there came an arrow keen
Out of an English bow.

Which struck Earl Douglas to the heart
A deep and deadly blow.

'Who never spoke more words than these,
Fight on my merry-men all,
For why, my life is at an end,

Lord Percy sees my fall.'

Merry-men in the language of those times,
is no more than a cheerful word for com-
panions and fellow-soldiers. A passage in
the eleventh book of Virgil's Æneid is very
much to be admired, where Camilla, in
her last agonies, instead of weeping over
the wound she had received, as one might
have expected from a warrior of her sex,
considers only (like the hero of whom we
are now speaking) how the battle should
be continued after her death:

Tum sic expirans Accam ex æqualibus unam
Alloquitur: fida ante alias que sola Cammille.
Quicum partiri curas; atque hæc ita fatur:
Hactenus, Acca soror, potui: nunc vulnus acerbum
Conficit, et tenebris nigrescunt omnia circum:
Effuge, et hæc Turno mandata novissima perfer;
Succedat pugnæ; Trojanosque arceat urbe:
Jamque vale.-
Ex. xi. 820

A gathering mist o'erclouds her cheerful eyes;
And from her cheeks the rosy colour flies,
Then turns to her, whom of her female train,
She trusted most, and thus she speaks with pain:
Acca, 'tis past! he swims before my sight,
Inexorable death; and claims his right.
Bear my last words to Turnus: fly with speed,
And bid him timely to my charge succeed,
Repel the Trojans, and the town relieve
Farewell-

Dryden.

Turnus did not die in so heroic a manner; though our poet seems to have had his eye upon Turnus's speech in the last

verse:

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