fiddlers could play at one time, without putting one another out."
While the fellow was lighting the upper candles, he cried out to Mrs.
Miller, "Look, look, madam, the very picture of the man in the end of
the common prayer book before the gunpowder-treason service." Nor
could he help observing with a sigh, when all the candles were
lighted, "That here were candles enough burned in one night to keep an
honest poor family for a whole twelvemonth."

As soon as the play, which was "Hamlet, Prince of Denmark," began,
Partridge was all attention, nor did he break silence till the
entrance of the ghost; upon which he asked Jones, "What man that was
in the strange dress; something," said he, "like what I have seen in
the picture. Sure it is not armor, is it?" Jones answered, "That is
the ghost." To which Partridge replied with a smile, "Persuade me to
that, sir, if you can. Tho I can't say I ever actually saw a ghost in
my life, yet I am certain I should know one, if I saw him, better than
that comes to. No, no, sir; ghosts don't appear in such dresses as
that, neither." In this mistake, which caused much laughter in the
neighborhood of Partridge, he was suffered to continue, till the scene
between the ghost and Hamlet, when Partridge gave that credit to Mr.
Garrick, which he had denied to Jones, and fell into so violent a
trembling that his knees knocked against each other. Jones asked him
what was the matter, and whether he was afraid of the warrior upon the
stage? "O la! sir," said he, "I perceive now it is what you told me. I
am not afraid of anything; for I know it is but a play. And if it was
really a ghost, it could do one no harm at such a distance, and in so
much company; and yet if I was frightened, I am not the only person."
"Why, who," cries Jones, "dost thou take to be such a coward here
besides thyself?" "Nay, you may call me a coward if you will; but if
that little man there upon the stage is not frightened, I never saw
any man frightened in my life. Ay, ay: go along with you! Ay, to be
sure! Who's fool then? Will you? lud have mercy upon such
foolhardiness? Whatever happens, it is good enough for you. Follow
you? I'd follow the devil as soon. Nay, perhaps it is the devil--for
they say he can put on what likeness he pleases. Oh! here he is again.
No farther! No, you have gone far enough already; farther than I'd
have gone for all the king's dominions." Jones offered to speak, but
Partridge cried, "Hush! hush! dear sir, don't you hear him?" And
during the whole speech of the ghost, he sat with his eyes fixt partly
on the ghost and partly on Hamlet, and with his mouth open; the same
passions which succeeded each other in Hamlet, succeeding likewise in
him.

When the scene was over Jones said, "Why, Mr. Partridge, you exceed my
expectations. You enjoy the play more than I conceived possible."
"Nay, sir," answered Partridge, "if you are not afraid of the devil, I
can't help it; but to be sure, it is natural to be surprized at such
things, tho I know there is nothing in them: not that it was the ghost
that surprized me, neither; for I should have known that to have been
only a man in a strange dress; but when I saw the little man so
frightened himself, it was that which took hold of me." "And dost thou
imagine, then, Partridge," cries Jones, "that he was really
frightened?" "Nay, sir," said Partridge, "did not you yourself
observe afterward, when he found it was his own father's spirit and
how he was murdered in the garden, how his fear forsook him by
degrees, and he was struck dumb with sorrow, as it were, just as I
should have been, had it been my own case? But hush! O la! what noise
is that! There he is again. Well, to be certain, tho I know there is
nothing at all in it, I am glad I am not down yonder, where those men
are." Then turning his eyes again upon Hamlet, "Ay, you may draw your
sword; what signifies a sword against the power of the devil?"

During the second act Partridge made very few remarks. He greatly
admired the fineness of the dresses; nor could he help observing upon
the king's countenance. "Well," said he, "how people may be deceived
by faces? _Nulla fides fronti_ is, I find, a true saying. Who would
think, by looking in the king's face, that he had ever committed a
murder?" He then inquired after the ghost; but Jones, who intended he
should be surprized, gave him no other satisfaction than, "that he
might possibly see him again soon, and in a flash of fire."

Partridge sat in fearful expectation of this; and now, when the ghost
made his next appearance, Partridge cried out, "There sir, now; what
say you now? is he frightened now or no? As much frightened as you
think me, and, to be sure, nobody can help some fears. I would not be
in so bad a condition as what's his name, Squire Hamlet, is there, for
all the world. Bless me! what's become of the spirit? As I am a living
soul, I thought I saw him sink into the earth." "Indeed, you saw
right," answered Jones. "Well, well," cries Partridge, "I know it is
only a play; and besides, if there was anything in all this, Madam
Miller would not laugh so; for as to you, sir, you would not be
afraid, I believe, if the devil was here in person. There, there--ay,
no wonder you are in such a passion; shake the vile wicked wretch to
pieces. If she was my own mother, I would serve her so. To be sure all
duty to a mother is forfeited by such wicked doings.--Ay, go about
your business; I hate the sight of you."

Our critic was now pretty silent till the play which Hamlet introduces
before the king. This he did not at first understand, till Jones
explained it to him; but he no sooner entered into the spirit of it,
than he began to bless himself that he had never committed murder.
Then turning to Mrs. Miller, he asked her, "If she did not imagine the
king looked as if he was touched; tho he is," said he, "a good actor,
and doth all he can to hide it. Well, I would not have so much to
answer for, as that wicked man there hath, to sit upon a much higher
chair than he sits upon. No wonder he run away; for your sake I'll
never trust an innocent face again."

The grave-digging scene next engaged the attention of Partridge, who
exprest much surprize at the number of skulls thrown upon the stage.
To which Jones answered, "That it was one of the most famous
burial-places about town." "No wonder then," cries Partridge, "that
the place is haunted. But I never saw in my life a worse grave-digger.
I had a sexton, when I was clerk, that should have dug three graves
while he is digging one. The fellow handles a spade as if it was the
first time he had ever had one in his hand. Ay, ay, you may sing. You
had rather sing than work, I believe." Upon Hamlet's taking up the
skull, he cried out, "Well! it is strange to see how fearless some men
are: I never could bring myself to touch anything belonging to a dead
man, on any account. He seemed frightened enough too at the ghost, I
thought. _Nemo omnibus horis sapit._"

Little more worth remembering occurred during the play, at the end of
which Jones asked him, "Which of the players he had liked best?" To
this he answered, with some appearance of indignation at the question,
"The king, without doubt." "Indeed, Mr. Partridge," says Mrs. Miller,
"you are not of the same opinion with the town; for they are all
agreed that Hamlet is acted by the best player who ever was on the
stage." "He the best player!" cries Partridge, with a contemptuous
sneer, "why, I could act as well as he himself. I am sure, if I had
seen a ghost, I should have looked in the very same manner, and done
just as he did. And then, to be sure, in that scene, as you called it,
between him and his mother, where you told me he acted so fine, why,
Lord help me, any man, that is, any good man, that had such a mother,
would have done exactly the same. I know you are only joking with me;
but indeed, madam, tho I was never to a play in London, yet I have
seen acting before in the country; and the king for my money; he
speaks all his words distinctly, half as loud again as the other.
Anybody may see he is an actor."

MR. ADAMS IN A POLITICAL LIGHT[21]

"I do assure you, sir," says he, taking the gentleman by the hand, "I
am heartily glad to meet with a man of your kidney; for, tho I am a
poor parson, I will be bold to say I am an honest man, and would not
do an ill thing to be made a bishop; nay, tho it hath not fallen in my
way to offer so noble a sacrifice, I have not been without
opportunities of suffering for the sake of my conscience, I thank
heaven for them; for I have had relations, tho I say it, who made some
figure in the world, particularly a nephew, who was a shopkeeper and
an alderman of a corporation. He was a good lad, and was under my care
when a boy, and I believe would do what I bade him to his dying day.

"Indeed, it looks like extreme vanity in me to affect being a man of
such consequence as to have so great an interest in an alderman; but
others have thought so too, as manifestly appeared by the rector whose
curate I formerly was sending for me on the approach of an election,
and telling me if I expected to continue in his cure that I must bring
my nephew to vote for one Colonel Courtly, a gentleman whom I had
never heard tidings of till that instant. I told the rector I had no
power over my nephew's vote (God forgive me for such prevarication!);
that I supposed he would give it according to his conscience; that I
would by no means endeavor to influence him to give it otherwise. He
told me it was in vain to equivocate; that he knew I had already spoke
to him in favor of Squire Fickle, my neighbor; and indeed it was true
I had; for it was at a season when the church was in danger, and when
all good men expected they knew not what would happen to us all. I
then answered boldly, if he thought I had given my promise he
affronted me in proposing any breach of it.

"Not to be too prolix, I persevered, and so did my nephew, in the
esquire's interest, who was chose chiefly through his means; and so I
lost my curacy. Well, sir, but do you think the esquire ever mentioned
a word of the church? _ne verbum quidem, ut ita dicam_; within two
years he got a place, and hath ever since lived in London, where I
have been informed (but God forbid I should believe that) that he
never so much as goeth to church. I remained, sir, a considerable time
without any cure, and lived a full month on one funeral sermon, which
I preached on the indisposition of a clergyman; but this by the bye.

"At last, when Mr. Fickle got his place, Colonel Courtly stood again;
and who should make interest for him but Mr. Fickle himself! that very
identical Mr. Fickle, who had formerly told me the colonel was an
enemy to both the church and state, had the confidence to solicit my
nephew for him; and the colonel himself offered me to make me chaplain
to his regiment, which I refused in favor of Sir Oliver Hearty, who
told us he would sacrifice everything to his country; and I believe
he would, except his hunting, which he stuck so close to that in five
years together he went but twice up to Parliament; and one of those
times, I have been told, never was within sight of the House. However,
he was a worthy man, and the best friend I ever had; for, by his
interest with a bishop, he got me replaced into my curacy, and gave me
eight pounds out of his own pocket to buy me a gown and cassock and
furnish my house. He had our interest while he lived, which was not
many years.

"On his death I had fresh applications made to me; for all the world
knew the interest I had in my good nephew, who now was a leading man
in the corporation; and Sir Thomas Booby, buying the estate which had
been Sir Oliver's, proposed himself a candidate. He was then a young
gentleman just come from his travels; and it did me good to hear him
discourse on affairs, which, for my part, I knew nothing of. If I had
been master of a thousand votes he should have had them all.

"I engaged my nephew in his interest, and he was elected; and a very
fine Parliament-man he was. They tell me he made speeches of an hour
long, and, I have been told, very fine ones; but he could never
persuade the Parliament to be of his opinion. _Non omnia possumus
omnes._ He promised me a living, poor man! and I believe I should have
had it, but an accident happened, which was that my lady had promised
it before, unknown to him. This indeed I never heard till afterward;
for my nephew, who died about a month before the incumbent, always
told me I might be assured of it.

"Since that time, Sir Thomas, poor man! had always so much business
that he never could find leisure to see me. I believe it was partly my
lady's fault, too, who did not think my dress good enough for the
gentry at her table. However, I must do him the justice to say he
never was ungrateful; and I have always found his kitchen, and his
cellar too, open to me: many a time, after service on a Sunday--for I
preached at four churches--have I recruited my spirits with a glass of
his ale. Since my nephew's death, the corporation is in other hands;
and I am not a man of that consequence I was formerly. I have now no
longer any talents to lay out in service of my country; and to whom
nothing is given, of him can nothing be required.

"However, on all proper seasons, such as the approach of an election,
I throw a suitable dash or two into my sermons, which I have the
pleasure to hear is not disagreeable to Sir Thomas and the other
honest gentlemen my neighbors, who have all promised me these five
years to procure an ordination for a son of mine, who is now near
thirty, hath an infinite stock of learning, and is, I thank Heaven, of
an unexceptionable life; tho, as he was never at a university, the
bishop refuses to ordain him. Too much care can not indeed be taken in
admitting any to the sacred office; tho I hope he will never act so as
to be a disgrace to any order, but will serve his God and his country
to the utmost of his power, as I have endeavored to do before him;
nay, and will lay down his life whenever called to that purpose. I am
sure I have educated him in those principles; so that I have acquitted
my duty, and shall have nothing to answer for on that account. But I
do not distrust him, for he is a good boy; and if Providence should
throw it in his way to be of as much consequence in a public light as
his father once was, I can answer for him he will use his talents as
honestly as I have done."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 18: From "Tom Jones, a Foundling," Book 3, Chapter 2.]

[Footnote 19: From Book 16, Chapter 5, of "The History of Tom Jones, a
Foundling."]

[Footnote 20: This was a letter from Sophia Weston, hoping "that
Fortune may be sometime kinder to us than at present."]

[Footnote 21: From Book 2, Chapter 8, of "The Adventures of Joseph
Andrews."]

SAMUEL JOHNSON

     Born in 1709, died in 1784; son of a bookseller; educated at
     Oxford, where he made a translation into Latin of Pope's
     "Messiah"; established a school near Lichfield in 1736,
     which soon failed; among its pupils David Garrick, with whom
     he went to London in 1737; issued the plan of his
     "Dictionary" in 1747, and published it in two volumes in
     1755; published "The Vanity of Human Wishes" in 1749;
     started _The Rambler_, a periodical, in 1750; writing nearly
     the whole of it; wrote "Rasselas" in 1759; went to Scotland
     with Boswell in 1773; published an edition of Shakespeare in
     1765.

ON PUBLISHING HIS "DICTIONARY"[22]

It is the fate of those who toil at the lower employments of life to
be rather driven by the fear of evil than attracted by the prospect of
good; to be exposed to censure without hope of praise; to be disgraced
by miscarriage, or punished for neglect, where success would have been
without applause, and diligence without reward.

Among these unhappy mortals is the writer of dictionaries; whom
mankind have considered, not as the pupil, but the slave of science,
the pioneer of literature, doomed only to remove rubbish and clear
obstructions from the paths through which learning and genius press
forward to conquest and glory, without bestowing a smile on the humble
drudge that facilitates their progress. Every other author may aspire
to praise; the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach, and
even this negative recompense has been yet granted to very few....

In hope of giving longevity to that which its own nature forbids to be
immortal, I have devoted this book, the labor of years, to the honor
of my country, that we may no longer yield the palm of philology
without a contest to the nations of the continent. The chief glory of
every people arises from its authors: whether I shall add anything by
my own writings to the reputation of English literature, must be left
to time; much of my life has been lost under the pressures of disease;
much has been trifled away; and much has always been spent in
provision for the day that was passing over me; but I shall not think
my employment useless or ignoble if, by my assistance, foreign nations
and distant ages gain access to the propagators of knowledge, and
understand the teachers of truth; if my labors afford light to the
repositories of science, and add celebrity to Bacon, to Hooker, to
Milton, and to Boyle.

When I am animated by this wish, I look with pleasure on my book,
however defective, and deliver it to the world with the spirit of a
man that has endeavored well. That it will immediately become popular,
I have not promised to myself; a few wild blunders and risible
absurdities, from which no work of such multiplicity was ever free,
may for a time furnish folly with laughter, and harden ignorance into
contempt; but useful diligence will at last prevail, and there never
can be wanting some who distinguish desert, who will consider that no
dictionary of a living tongue ever can be perfect, since, while it is
hastening to publication, some words are budding and some falling
away; that a whole life can not be spent upon syntax and etymology,
and that even a whole life would not be sufficient; that he whose
design includes whatever language can express, must often speak of
what he does not understand; that a writer will sometimes be hurried
by eagerness to the end, and sometimes faint with weariness under a
task which Scaliger compares to the labors of the anvil and the mine;
that what is obvious is not always known, and what is known is not
always present; that sudden fits of inadvertency will surprize
vigilance, slight avocations will seduce attention, and casual
eclipses of the mind will darken learning; and that the writer shall
often in vain trace his memory at the moment of need for that which
yesterday he knew with intuitive readiness, and which will come
uncalled into his thoughts tomorrow.

In this work, when it shall be found that much is omitted, let it not
be forgotten that much likewise is performed; and tho no book was ever
spared out of tenderness to the author, and the world is little
solicitous to know whence proceeded the faults of that which it
condemns, yet it may gratify curiosity to inform it, that the English
Dictionary was written with little assistance of the learned, and
without any patronage of the great; not in the soft obscurities of
retirement, or under the shelter of academic bowers, but amid
inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and in sorrow. It may
repress the triumph of malignant criticism to observe, that if our
language is not here fully displayed, I have only failed in an attempt
which no human powers have hitherto completed. If the lexicons of
ancient tongues, now immutably fixt, and comprized in a few volumes,
be yet, after the toil of successive ages, inadequate and delusive; if
the aggregated knowledge and cooperating diligence of the Italian
academicians did not secure them from the censure of Beni;[23] if the
embodied critics of France, when fifty years had been spent upon their
work, were obliged to change its economy, and give their second
edition another form, I may surely be contented without the praise of
perfection, which if I could obtain in this gloom of solitude, what
would it avail me? I have protracted my work till most of those whom I
wished to please have sunk into the grave, and success and miscarriage
are empty sounds. I therefore dismiss it with frigid tranquillity,
having little to fear or hope from censure or from praise.

II

POPE AND DRYDEN COMPARED[24]

Pope profest to have learned his poetry from Dryden, whom, whenever an
opportunity was presented, he praised through his whole life with
unvaried liberality; and perhaps his character may receive some
illustration, if he be compared with his master.

Integrity of understanding and nicety of discernment were not allotted
in a less proportion to Dryden than to Pope. The rectitude of Dryden's
mind was sufficiently shown by the dismission of his poetical
prejudices, and the rejection of unnatural thoughts and rugged
numbers. But Dryden never desired to apply all the judgment that he
had. He wrote, and profest to write, merely for the people; and when
he pleased others he contented himself. He spent no time in struggles
to rouse latent powers; he never attempted to make that better which
was already good, not often to mend what he must have known to be
faulty. He wrote, as he tells us, with very little consideration; when
occasion or necessity called upon him, he poured out what the present
moment happened to supply, and, when once it had passed the press,
ejected it from his mind; for when he had no pecuniary interest, he
had no further solicitude.

Pope was not content to satisfy: he desired to excel, and therefore
always endeavored to do his best: he did not court the candor, but
dared the judgment of his reader, and expecting no indulgence from
others, he showed none to himself. He examined lines and words with
minute and punctilious observation, and retouched every part with
indefatigable diligence, till he had left nothing to be forgiven.

For this reason he kept his pieces very long in his hands, while he
considered and reconsidered them. The only poems which can be
supposed to have been written with such regard to the times as might
hasten their publication, were the two satires of "Thirty-eight," of
which Dodsley[25] told me that they were brought to him by the author
that they might be fairly copied. "Almost every line," he said, "was
then written twice over. I gave him a clean transcript, which he sent
some time afterward to me for the press with almost every line written
twice over a second time."

His declaration, that his care for his works ceased at their
publication, was not strictly true. His parental attention never
abandoned them; what he found amiss in the first edition, he silently
corrected in those that followed. He appears to have revised the
"Iliad," and freed it from some of its imperfections; and the "Essay
on Criticism" received many improvements after its first appearance.
It will seldom be found that he altered without adding clearness,
elegance, or vigor.

Pope had perhaps the judgment of Dryden, but Dryden certainly wanted
the diligence of Pope.

In acquired knowledge the superiority must be allowed to Dryden, whose
education was more scholastic, and who, before he became an author,
had been allowed more time for study, with better means of
information. His mind has a larger range, and he collects his images
and illustrations from a more extensive circumference of science.
Dryden knew more of man in his general nature, and Pope in his local
manners. The notions of Dryden were formed by comprehensive
speculation, and those of Pope by minute attention. There is more
dignity in the knowledge of Dryden, and more certainty in that of
Pope.

Poetry was not the sole praise of either; for both excelled likewise
in prose; but Pope did not borrow his prose from his predecessor. The
style of Dryden is capricious and varied, that of Pope is cautious and
uniform. Dryden obeys the motions of his own mind, Pope constrains his
mind to his own rules of composition. Dryden is sometimes vehement and
rapid, Pope is always smooth, uniform, and gentle. Dryden's page is a
natural field, rising into inequalities, and diversified by the varied
exuberance of abundant vegetation; Pope's is a velvet lawn, shaven by
the scythe, and leveled by the roller.

Of genius, that power which constitutes a poet, that quality without
which judgment is cold and knowledge is inert, that energy which
collects, combines, amplifies, and animates, the superiority must,
with some hesitation, be allowed to Dryden. It is not to be inferred,
that of this poetical vigor Pope had only a little because Dryden had
more; for every other writer since Milton must give place to Pope; and
even of Dryden it must be said, that if he has brighter paragraphs, he
has not better poems. Dryden's performances were always hasty, either
excited by some external occasion, or extorted by domestic necessity;
he composed without consideration, and published without correction.
What his mind could supply at call, or gather in one excursion, was
all that he sought, and all that he gave. The dilatory caution of Pope
enabled him to condense his sentiments, to multiply his images, and
to accumulate all that study might produce or chance might supply. If
the flights of Dryden, therefore, are higher, Pope continues longer on
the wing. If of Dryden's fire the blaze is brighter, of Pope's the
heat is more regular and constant. Dryden often surpasses expectation,
and Pope never falls below it. Dryden is read with frequent
astonishment, and Pope with perpetual delight.

LETTER TO CHESTERFIELD ON THE COMPLETION OF THE "DICTIONARY"[26]

My Lord: I have been lately informed by the proprietor of the _World_
that two papers, in which my Dictionary is recommended to the public,
were written by your Lordship. To be so distinguished is an honor,
which, being very little accustomed to favors from the great, I know
not well how to receive, or in what terms to acknowledge.

When, upon some slight encouragement, I first visited your Lordship, I
was overpowered, like the rest of mankind, by the enchantment of your
address, and could not forbear to wish that I might boast myself _le
vainqueur du vainqueur de la terre_--that I might obtain that regard
for which I saw the world contending; but I found my attendance so
little encouraged, that neither pride nor modesty would suffer me to
continue it. When I had once addrest your Lordship in public, I had
exhausted all the art of pleasing which a retired and uncourtly
scholar can possess. I had done all that I could; and no man is well
pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little.

Seven years, my lord, have now passed since I waited in your outward
rooms, or was repulsed from your door; during which time I have been
pushing on my work through difficulties of which it is useless to
complain, and have brought it at last to the verge of publication,
without one act of assistance, one word of encouragement, or one smile
of favor. Such treatment I did not expect, for I never had a patron
before.

The shepherd in Virgil grew at last acquainted with Love, and found
him a native of the rocks.

Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man
struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached ground,
encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to
take of my labors, had it been early had been kind: but it has been
delayed till I am indifferent, and can not enjoy it; till I am
solitary, and can not impart it; till I am known, and do not want it.
I hope it is no very cynical asperity not to confess obligations where
no benefit has been received, or to be unwilling that the public
should consider me as owing that to a patron which Providence has
enabled me to do for myself.

Having carried on my work thus far with so little obligation to any
favorer of learning, I shall not be disappointed tho I should conclude
it, if less be possible, with less; for I have been long wakened from
that dream of hope in which I once boasted myself with so much
exultation, my lord,

Your Lordship's most humble, most obedient servant,

SAM. JOHNSON.

IV

ON THE ADVANTAGES OF LIVING IN A GARRET[27]

Nothing has more retarded the advancement of learning than the
disposition of vulgar minds to ridicule and vilify what they can not
comprehend. All industry must be excited by hope; and as the student
often proposes no other reward to himself than praise, he is easily
discouraged by contempt and insult. He who brings with him into a
clamorous multitude the timidity of recluse speculation, and has never
hardened his front in public life, or accustomed his passions to the
vicissitudes and accidents, the triumphs and defeats of mixt
conversation, will blush at the stare of petulant incredulity, and
suffer himself to be driven, by a burst of laughter, from the
fortresses of demonstration. The mechanist will be afraid to assert
before hardy contradictions the possibility of tearing down bulwarks
with a silkworm's thread; and the astronomer of relating the rapidity
of light, the distance of the fixt stars, and the height of the lunar
mountains.

If I could by any efforts have shaken off this cowardice, I had not
sheltered myself under a borrowed name, nor applied to you for the
means of communicating to the public the theory of a garret; a subject
which, except some slight and transient strictures, has been hitherto
neglected by those who were best qualified to adorn it, either for
want of leisure to prosecute the various researches in which a nice
discussion must engage them, or because it requires such diversity of
knowledge, and such extent of curiosity, as is scarcely to be found in
any single intellect; or perhaps others foresaw the tumults which
would be raised against them, and confined their knowledge to their
own breasts, and abandoned prejudice and folly to the direction of
chance.

That the professors of literature generally reside in the highest
stories has been immemorially observed. The wisdom of the ancients was
well acquainted with the intellectual advantages of an elevated
situation; why else were the Muses stationed on Olympus, or Parnassus,
by those who could with equal right have raised them bowers in the
vale of Tempe, or erected their altars among the flexures of Meander?
Why was Jove himself nursed upon a mountain? or why did the goddesses,
when the prize of beauty was contested, try the cause upon the top of
Ida? Such were the fictions by which the great masters of the earlier
ages endeavored to inculcate to posterity the importance of a garret,
which, tho they had been long obscured by the negligence and ignorance
of succeeding times, were well enforced by the celebrated symbol of
Pythagoras, "when the wind blows, worship its echo." This could not
but be understood by his disciples as an inviolable injunction to live
in a garret, which I have found frequently visited by the echo and the
wind. Nor was the tradition wholly obliterated in the age of Augustus,
for Tibullus evidently congratulates himself upon his garret, not
without some allusion to the Pythagorean precept:

    How sweet in sleep to pass the careless hours,
    Lull'd by the beating winds and dashing showers!

And it is impossible not to discover the fondness of Lucretius, an
early writer, for a garret, in his description of the lofty towers of
serene learning, and of the pleasure with which a wise man looks down
upon the confused and erratic state of the world moving below him:

    ... 'Tis sweet thy laboring steps to guide
    To virtue's heights, with wisdom well supplied,
    And all the magazines of learning fortified:
    From thence to look below on human kind,
    Bewilder'd in the maze of life, and blind.[28]

The institution has, indeed, continued to our own time; the garret is
still the usual receptacle of the philosopher and poet; but this, like
many ancient customs, is perpetuated only by an accidental imitation,
without knowledge of the original reason for which it was established:

     The cause is secret, but th' effect is known.

Conjectures have, indeed, been advanced concerning these habitations
of literature, but without much satisfaction to the judicious
inquirer. Some have imagined that the garret is generally chosen by
the wits as most easily rented; and concluded that no man rejoices in
his aerial abode, but on the days of payment. Others suspect that a
garret is chiefly convenient, as it is remoter than any other part of
the house from the outer door, which is often observed to be infested
by visitants, who talk incessantly of beer, or linen, or a coat, and
repeat the same sounds every morning, and sometimes again in the
afternoon, without any variation, except that they grow daily more
importunate and clamorous, and raise their voices in time from
mournful murmurs to raging vociferations. This eternal monotony is
always detestable to a man whose chief pleasure is to enlarge his
knowledge, and vary his ideas. Others talk of freedom from noise, and
abstraction from common business or amusements; and some, yet more
visionary, tell us that the faculties are enlarged by open prospects,
and that the fancy is more at liberty when the eye ranges without
confinement.

These conveniences may perhaps all be found in a well-chosen garret;
but surely they can not be supposed sufficiently important to have
operated invariably upon different climates, distant ages, and
separate nations. Of a universal practise, there must still be
presumed a universal cause, which, however recondite and abstruse, may
be perhaps reserved to make me illustrious by its discovery, and you
by its promulgation.

It is universally known that the faculties of the mind are invigorated
or weakened by the state of the body, and that the body is in a great
measure regulated by the various compressions of the ambient element.
The effects of the air in the production or cure of corporeal
maladies have been acknowledged from the time of Hippocrates; but no
man has yet sufficiently considered how far it may influence the
operations of the genius, tho every day affords instances of local
understanding, of wits and reasoners, whose faculties are adapted to
some single spot, and who, when they are removed to any other place,
sink at once into silence and stupidity. I have discovered by a long
series of observations that invention and elocution suffer great
impediments from dense and impure vapors, and that the tenuity of a
defecated air at a proper distance from the surface of the earth
accelerates the fancy and sets at liberty those intellectual powers
which were before shackled by too strong attraction, and unable to
expand themselves under the pressure of a gross atmosphere. I have
found dulness to quicken into sentiment in a thin ether, as water, tho
not very hot, boils in a receiver partly exhausted; and heads, in
appearance empty, have teemed with notions upon rising ground, as the
flaccid sides of a football would have swelled out into stiffness and
extension.

For this reason I never think myself qualified to judge decisively of
any man's faculties, whom I have only known in one degree of
elevation; but take some opportunity of attending him from the cellar
to the garret, and try upon him all the various degrees of rarefaction
and condensation, tension and laxity. If he is neither vivacious
aloft, nor serious below, I then consider him as hopeless; but as it
seldom happens that I do not find the temper to which the texture of
his brain is fitted, I accommodate him in time with a tube of mercury,
first marking the point most favorable to his intellects, according
to rules which I have long studied, and which I may perhaps reveal to
mankind in a complete treatise of barometrical pneumatology.

Another cause of the gaiety and sprightliness of the dwellers in
garrets is probably the increase of that vertiginous motion, with
which we are carried round by the diurnal revolution of the earth. The
power of agitation upon the spirits is well known; every man has felt
his heart lightened in a rapid vehicle, or on a galloping horse; and
nothing is plainer than that he who towers to the fifth story is
whirled through more space by every circumrotation, than another that
grovels upon the ground floor. The nations between the tropics are
known to be fiery, inconstant, inventive, and fanciful, because,
living at the utmost length of the earth's diameter, they are carried
about with more swiftness than those whom nature has placed nearer to
the poles; and, therefore, as it becomes a wise man to struggle with
the inconveniences of his country, whenever celerity and acuteness are
requisite, we must actuate our languor by taking a few turns round the
center in a garret.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 22: From the Preface to the "Dictionary."]

[Footnote 23: Paul Beni was an Italian literary critic, who was born
in 1552, and died in 1625. He was a professor of theology, philosophy
and belles-lettres. The severity of his criticisms created many
enemies. He supported Tasso as against the Della Cruscans.]

[Footnote 24: From the "Lives of the Poets."]

[Footnote 25: Robert Dodsley, publisher, bookseller and author, was
born about 1703 and died in 1764.]

[Footnote 26: The date of this famous letter--perhaps now the most
famous of all Johnson's writings--is February 7, 1755. Leslie Stephen
has probably said the most definite word as to the circumstances in
which it was written, and in its justification. Johnson and
Chesterfield at one time were friendly. The first offense on
Chesterfield's part is said to have been caused by a reception
accorded to Colley Cibber, while Johnson was kept waiting in an
anteroom: this, however, has been denied by Boswell on the authority
of Johnson himself. There seems to be no doubt that Chesterfield
neglected Johnson while he was struggling with the "Dictionary." The
articles which he wrote for the _World_, to which the first sentence
in the letter refers, are believed to have been written with a view to
securing from Johnson a dedication of the "Dictionary" to himself. Mr.
Stephen remarks on the "singular dignity and energy" of Johnson's
letter. Johnson did not make it public in his own lifetime, but
ultimately gave copies of it to two of his friends, one of whom was
Boswell. Boswell published it in his "Life of Johnson," and deposited
the original in the British Museum. Chesterfield made no reply to the
letter, but, in conversation with Dodsley, the bookseller, a friend of
both men, said he had always been ready to receive Johnson, and blamed
Johnson's pride and shyness for the outcome of the acquaintance.
Chesterfield was long thought to have referred to Johnson as a
"respectable Hottentot," this being on the authority of Boswell, but
Dr. Birkbeck Hill has shown that this was not true. Mr. Stephen
declares that Johnson's letter "justifies itself," and that no author
can fail to sympathize with his declaration of literary
independence.]

[Footnote 27: From No. 117 of _The Rambler._]

[Footnote 28: This translation of the passage from Lucretius is
Dryden's.]

DAVID HUME

     Born in 1711, died in 1776; educated at Edinburgh; lived in
     France from 1734 to 1737; accompanied Gen. St. Clair on an
     embassy to Vienna and Turin as judge-advocate; appointed
     keeper of the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh in 1752;
     visited France again in 1763; Under-secretary of State in
     1767; published his treatise on "Human Nature" in 1739; his
     "Essays" in 1741; his "Human Understanding" in 1748; his
     "History of England" in 1754-61.

THE CHARACTER OF QUEEN ELIZABETH[29]

So dark a cloud overcast the evening of that day, which had shone out
with a mighty luster in the eyes of all Europe! There are few great
personages in history who have been more exposed to the calumny of
enemies and the adulation of friends than Queen Elizabeth; and yet
there is scarcely any whose reputation has been more certainly
determined by the unanimous consent of posterity. The unusual length
of her administration, and the strong features of her character, were
able to overcome all prejudices; and obliging her detractors to abate
much of their invectives, and her admirers somewhat of their
panegyrics, have at last, in spite of political factions, and what is
more, of religious animosities, produced a uniform judgment with
regard to her conduct. Her vigor, her constancy, her magnanimity, her
penetration, vigilance, and address are allowed to merit the highest
praises, and appear not to have been surpassed by any person that ever
filled a throne: a conduct less rigorous, less imperious, more
sincere, more indulgent to her people, would have been requisite to
form a perfect character. By the force of her mind she controlled all
her more active and stronger qualities, and prevented them from
running into excess: her heroism was exempt from temerity, her
frugality from avarice, her friendship from partiality, her active
temper from turbulency and a vain ambition: she guarded not herself
with equal care or equal success from lesser infirmities--the
rivalship of beauty, the desire of admiration, the jealousy of love,
and the sallies of anger.

Her singular talents for government were founded equally on her temper
and on her capacity. Endowed with a great command over herself, she
soon obtained an uncontrolled ascendent over her people; and while she
merited all their esteem by her real virtues, she also engaged their
affections by her pretended ones. Few sovereigns of England succeeded
to the throne in more difficult circumstances; and none ever conducted
the government with such uniform success and felicity. Tho
unacquainted with the practise of toleration--the true secret for
managing religious factions--she preserved her people, by her superior
prudence, from those confusions in which theological controversy had
involved all the neighboring nations: and tho her enemies were the
most powerful princes of Europe, the most active, the most
enterprising, the least scrupulous, she was able by her vigor to make
deep impressions on their states; her own greatness meanwhile remained
untouched and unimpaired.

The wise ministers and brave warriors who flourished under her reign,
share the praise of her success; but instead of lessening the applause
due to her, they make great addition to it. They owed, all of them,
their advancement to her choice; they were supported by her constancy,
and with all their abilities they were never able to acquire any undue
ascendant over her. In her family, in her court, in her kingdom, she
remained equally mistress: the force of the tender passions was great
over her, but the force of her mind was still superior; and the combat
which her victory visibly cost her, serves only to display the
firmness of her resolution, and the loftiness of her ambitious
sentiments.

The fame of this princess, tho it has surmounted the prejudices both
of faction and bigotry, yet lies still exposed to another prejudice,
which is more durable because more natural, and which, according to
the different views in which we survey her, is capable either of
exalting beyond measure or diminishing the luster of her character.
This prejudice is founded on the consideration of her sex. When we
contemplate her as a woman, we are apt to be struck with the highest
admiration of her great qualities and extensive capacity; but we are
also apt to require some more softness of disposition, some greater
lenity of temper, some of those amiable weaknesses by which her sex is
distinguished. But the true method of estimating her merit is to lay
aside all these considerations, and consider her merely as a rational
being placed in authority, and intrusted with the government of
mankind. We may find it difficult to reconcile our fancy to her as a
wife or a mistress; but her qualities as a sovereign, tho with some
considerable exceptions, are the object of undisputed applause and
approbation.

II

THE DEFEAT OF THE ARMADA[30]

The Lizard was the first land made by the Armada, about sunset; and as
the Spaniards took it for the Ramhead near Plymouth, they bore out to
sea with an intention of returning next day, and attacking the English
navy. They were descried by Fleming, a Scottish pirate, who was roving
in those seas, and who immediately set sail to inform the English
admiral of their approach, another fortunate event which contributed
extremely to the safety of the fleet. Effingham[31] had just time to
get out of port, when he saw the Spanish Armada coming full sail
toward him, disposed in the form of a crescent, and stretching the
distance of seven miles from the extremity of one division to that of
the other.

The writers of that age raise their style by a pompous description of
this spectacle; the most magnificent that had ever appeared upon the
ocean, infusing equal terror and admiration into the minds of all
beholders. The lofty masts, the swelling sails, and the towering prows
of the Spanish galleons seem impossible to be justly painted, but by
assuming the colors of poetry; and an eloquent historian of Italy, in
imitation of Camden, has asserted that the Armada, tho the ships bore
every sail, yet advanced with a slow motion; as if the ocean groaned
with supporting, and the winds were tired with impelling, so enormous
a weight. The truth, however, is, that the largest of the Spanish
vessels would scarcely pass for third rates in the present navy of
England; yet were they so ill framed or so ill governed, that they
were quite unwieldy, and could not sail upon a wind, nor tack on
occasion, nor be managed in stormy weather, by the seamen. Neither the
mechanics of shipbuilding, nor the experience of mariners, had
attained so great perfection as could serve for the security and
government of such bulky vessels; and the English, who had already had
experience how unserviceable they commonly were, beheld without dismay
their tremendous appearance.

Effingham gave orders not to come to close fight with the Spaniards;
where the size of the ships, he inspected, and the numbers of the
soldiers, would be a disadvantage to the English; but to cannonade
them at a distance, and to wait the opportunity which winds, currents,
or various accidents, must afford him, of intercepting some scattered
vessels of the enemy. Nor was it long before the event answered
expectation. A great ship of Biscay, on board of which was a
considerable part of the Spanish money, took fire by accident; and
while all hands were employed in extinguishing the flames, she fell
behind the rest of the Armada. The great galleon of Andalusia was
detained by the springing of her mast, and both these vessels were
taken, after some resistance, by Sir Francis Drake. As the Armada
advanced up the channel, the English hung upon its rear, and still
infested it with skirmishes. Each trial abated the confidence of the
Spaniards, and added courage to the English; and the latter soon
found, that even in close fight the size of the Spanish ships was no
advantage to them. Their bulk exposed them the more to the fire of the
enemy; while their cannon, placed too high, shot over the heads of the
English. The alarm having now reached the coast of England, the
nobility and gentry hastened out with their vessels from every harbor,
and reenforced the admiral. The Earls of Oxford, Northumberland, and
Cumberland, Sir Thomas Cecil, Sir Robert Cecil, Sir Walter Raleigh,
Sir Thomas Vavasor, Sir Thomas Gerrard, Sir Charles Blount, with many
others, distinguished themselves by this generous and disinterested
service of their country. The English fleet, after the conjunction of
those ships, amounted to a hundred and forty sail.

The Armada had now reached Calais, and cast anchor before that place
in expectation that the Duke of Parma, who had gotten intelligence of
their approach, would put to sea and join his forces to them. The
English admiral practised here a successful stratagem upon the
Spaniards. He took eight of his smaller ships, and filling them with
all combustible materials, sent them one after another into the midst
of the enemy. The Spaniards fancied that they were fireships of the
same contrivance with a famous vessel which had lately done so much
execution in the Schelde near Antwerp; and they immediately cut their
cables, and took to flight with the greatest disorder and
precipitation. The English fell upon them next morning while in
confusion; and besides doing great damage to other ships, they took or
destroyed about twelve of the enemy.

By this time it was become apparent, that the intention for which
these preparations were made by the Spaniards was entirely frustrated.
The vessels provided by the Duke of Parma were made for transporting
soldiers, not for fighting; and that general, when urged to leave the
harbor, positively refused to expose his flourishing army to such
apparent hazard; while the English not only were able to keep the sea,
but seemed even to triumph over their enemy. The Spanish admiral
found, in many recounters, that while he lost so considerable a part
of his own navy, he had destroyed only one small vessel of the
English; and he foresaw that by continuing so unequal a combat, he
must draw inevitable destruction on all the remainder. He prepared
therefore to return homeward; but as the wind was contrary to his
passage through the channel, he resolved to sail northward, and making
the tour of the island, reach the Spanish harbors by the ocean. The
English fleet followed him during some time; and had not their
ammunition fallen short, by the negligence of the officers in
supplying them, they had obliged the whole Armada to surrender at
discretion. The Duke of Medina[32] had once taken that resolution; but
was diverted from it by the advice of his confessor. This conclusion
of the enterprise would have been more glorious to the English; but
the event proved almost equally fatal to the Spaniards. A violent
tempest overtook the Armada after it passed the Orkneys. The ships had
already lost their anchors, and were obliged to keep to sea. The
mariners, unaccustomed to such hardships, and not able to govern such
unwieldy vessels, yielded to the fury of the storm, and allowed their
ships to drive either on the western isles of Scotland, or on the
coast of Ireland, where they were miserably wrecked. Not a half of the
navy returned to Spain; and the seamen as well as soldiers who
remained were so overcome with hardships and fatigue, and so
dispirited by their discomfiture, that they filled all Spain with
accounts of the desperate valor of the English, and of the tempestuous
violence of that ocean which surrounds them.

THE FIRST PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT

Nothing appears more surprizing to those who consider human affairs
with a philosophical eye than the easiness with which the many are
governed by the few; and the implicit submission with which men resign
their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers. When we
inquire by what means this wonder is effected, we shall find that as
Force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have
nothing to support them but opinion. It is, therefore, on opinion only
that government is founded; and this maxim extends to the most
despotic and most military governments, as well as to the most free
and most popular. The soldan of Egypt, or the emperor of Rome, might
drive his harmless subjects, like brute beasts, against their
sentiments and inclination; but he must, at least, have led his
mamelukes, or prætorian bands, like men, by their opinions.

Opinion is of two kinds, to wit, opinion of interest, and opinion of
right. By opinion of interest, I chiefly understand the sense of the
general advantage which is reaped from government, together with the
persuasion that the particular government, which is established, is
equally advantageous with any other that could easily be settled. When
this opinion prevails among the generality of a state, or among those
who have the force in their hands, it will give great security to any
government.

Right is of two kinds, right to Power and right to Property. What
prevalence opinion of the first kind has over mankind may easily be
understood by observing the attachment which all nations have to their
ancient government, and even to those names which have had the
sanction of antiquity. Antiquity always begets the opinion of right;
and whatever disadvantageous sentiments we may entertain of mankind,
they are always found to be prodigal both of blood and treasure in the
maintenance of public justice. There is, indeed, no particular in
which, at first sight, there may appear a greater contradiction in the
frame of the human mind than the present. When men act in a faction,
they are apt, without shame or remorse, to neglect all the ties of
honor and morality, in order to serve their party; and yet when a
faction is formed upon a point of right or principle, there is no
occasion where men discover a greater obstinacy, and a more determined
sense of justice and equity. The same social disposition of mankind is
the cause of these contradictory appearances.

It is sufficiently understood that the opinion of right to property is
of moment in all matters of government. A noted author has made
property the foundation of all government; and most of our political
writers seem inclined to follow him in that particular. This is
carrying the matter too far; but still it must be owned that the
opinion of right to property has a great influence in this subject.

Upon these three opinions, therefore, of public interest, of right to
power, and of right to property, are all governments founded, and all
authority of the few over the many. There are, indeed, other
principles, which add force to these, and determine, limit, or alter
their operation--such as self-interest, fear, and affection; but still
we may assert that these other principles can have no influence alone,
but suppose the antecedent influence of those opinions above
mentioned. They are, therefore, to be esteemed the secondary, not the
original principles of government.

For, first, as to self-interest, by which I mean the expectation of
particular rewards, distinct from the general protection which we
receive from government, it is evident that the magistrate's authority
must be antecedently established, at least be hoped for, in order to
produce this expectation. The prospect of reward may augment his
authority with regard to some particular persons; but can never give
birth to it, with regard to the public. Men naturally look for the
greatest favors from their friends and acquaintance; and, therefore,
the hopes of any considerable number of the state would never center
in any particular set of men, if these men had no other title to
magistracy, and had no separate influence over the opinions of
mankind. The same observation may be extended to the other two
principles of fear and affection. No man would have any reason to fear
the fury of a tyrant, if he had no authority over any but from fear;
since, as a single man, his bodily force can reach but a small way,
and all the further power he possesses must be founded either on our
own opinion, or on the presumed opinion of others. And tho affection
to wisdom and virtue in a sovereign extends very far, and has great
influence, yet he must antecedently be supposed invested with a public
character, otherwise the public esteem will serve him in no stead, nor
will his virtue have any influence beyond a narrow sphere.

A government may endure for several ages, tho the balance of power and
the balance of property do not coincide. This chiefly happens where
any rank or order of the state has acquired a large share in the
property; but, from the original constitution of the government, has
no share in the power. Under what pretense would any individual of
that order assume authority in public affairs? As men are commonly
much attached to their ancient government, it is not to be expected
that the public would ever favor such usurpations. But where the
original constitution allows any share of power, tho small, to an
order of men, who possess a large share of the property, it is easy
for them gradually to stretch their authority, and bring the balance
of power to coincide with that of property. This has been the case
with the House of Commons in England.

Most writers that have treated of the British Government have supposed
that, as the Lower House represents all the commons of Great Britain,
its weight in the scale is proportioned to the property and power of
all whom it represents. But this principle must not be received as
absolutely true. For tho the people are apt to attach themselves more
to the House of Commons than to any other member of the constitution,
the House being chosen by them as their representatives, and as the
public guardians of their liberty, yet are there instances where the
House, even when in opposition to the crown, has not been followed by
the people; as we may particularly observe of the Tory House of
Commons in the reign of King William. Were the members obliged to
receive instructions from their constituents, like the Dutch deputies,
this would entirely alter the case; and if such immense power and
riches, as those of all the commons of Great Britain, were brought
into the scale, it is not easy to conceive that the crown could either
influence that multitude of people, or withstand that balance of
property. It is true the crown has great influence over the collective
body in the elections of members; but were this influence, which at
present is only exerted once in seven years, to be employed in
bringing over the people to every vote, it would soon be wasted, and
no skill, popularity, or revenue could support it. I must, therefore,
be of opinion that an alteration in this particular would introduce a
total alteration in our government, and would soon reduce it to a pure
republic--and, perhaps, to a republic of no inconvenient form. For tho
the people, collected in a body like the Roman tribes, be quite unfit
for government, yet, when dispersed in small bodies, they are more
susceptible both of reason and order; the force of popular currents
and tides is, in a great measure, broken; and the public interest may
be pursued with some method and constancy. But it is needless to
reason any further concerning a form of government which is never
likely to have place.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 29: From Chapter 44 of the "History of England."]

[Footnote 30: From Chapter 42 of the "History of England."]

[Footnote 31: Lord Howard, of Effingham, admiral of the English
fleet.]

[Footnote 32: The Duke of Medina-Sidonia commanded the Armada, as
successor to Santa Cruz, "the ablest seaman of Spain," who had died
just as the ships were ready to sail. Medina-Sidonia is understood to
have taken the command reluctantly, as if aware of his unfitness for
so great a task, as indeed was proved by the event.]

LAURENCE STERNE

     Born in 1713, died in 1768; his father an officer in one of
     Marlborough's regiments; educated at Cambridge, admitted to
     holy orders in 1738; became Prebendary of York, published
     "Tristram Shandy" in 1760; visited France in 1762 and Italy
     in 1765; published "The Sentimental Journey" in 1768, and
     died the same year.

THE STARLING IN CAPTIVITY[33]

And as for the Bastile, the terror is in the word. Make the most of it
you can, said I to myself, the Bastile is but another word for a
tower, and a tower is but another word for a house you can't get out
of. Mercy on the gouty! for they are in it twice a year; but with nine
livres a day, and pen, and ink, and paper, and patience, albeit a man
can't get out, he may do very well within, at least for a month or six
weeks; at the end of which, if he is a harmless fellow, his innocence
appears, and he comes out a better and wiser man than he went in.

I had some occasion--I forget what--to step into the courtyard as I
settled this account; and remember I walked down-stairs in no small
triumph with the conceit of my reasoning. Beshrew the somber pencil,
said I vauntingly, for I envy not its powers, which paints the evils
of life with so hard and deadly a coloring. The mind sits terrified
at the objects she has magnified herself and blackened: reduce them to
their proper size and hue, she overlooks them. "'Tis true," said I,
correcting the proposition, "the Bastile is not an evil to be
despised; but strip it of its towers, fill up the fosse, unbarricade
the doors, call it simply a confinement, and suppose 'tis some tyrant
of a distemper and not of a man which holds you in it, the evil
vanishes, and you bear the other half without complaint." I was
interrupted in the heyday of this soliloquy with a voice which I took
to be of a child, which complained "it could not get out." I looked up
and down the passage, and seeing neither man, woman nor child, I went
out without further attention.

In my return back through the passage, I heard the same words repeated
twice over; and looking up I saw it was a starling hung in a little
cage; "I can't get out, I can't get out," said the starling. I stood
looking at the bird; and to every person who came through the passage,
it ran fluttering to the side toward which they approached it, with
the same lamentation of its captivity: "I can't get out," said the
starling. "God help thee!" said I, "but I'll let thee out, cost what
it will"; so I turned about the cage to get the door. It was twisted
and double-twisted so fast with wire, there was no getting it open
without pulling the cage to pieces. I took both hands to it. The bird
flew to the place where I was attempting his deliverance, and
thrusting his head through the trellis, prest his breast against it as
if impatient. "I fear, poor creature," said I, "I can not set thee at
liberty." "No," said the starling, "I can't get out; I can't get
out," said the starling. I vow I never had my affections more
tenderly awakened; or do I remember an incident in my life where the
dissipated spirits, to which my reason had been a bubble, were so
suddenly called home. Mechanical as the notes were, yet so true in
tune to nature were they chanted, that in one moment they overthrew
all my systematic reasonings upon the Bastile; and I heavily walked
up-stairs, unsaying every word I had said in going down them.

"Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still, Slavery," said I, "still thou
art a bitter draft; and tho thousands in all ages have been made to
drink of thee, thou art no less bitter on that account. 'Tis thou,
thrice sweet and gracious goddess," addressing myself to liberty,
"whom all in public or in private worship, whose taste is grateful,
and ever will be so, till Nature herself shall change; no tint of
words can spot thy snowy mantle, or chemic power turn thy scepter into
iron; with thee to smile upon him as he eats his crust, the swain is
happier than his monarch, from whose court thou art exiled. Gracious
Heaven!" cried I, kneeling down upon the last step but one in my
ascent, "grant me but health, thou great bestower of it, and give me
but this fair goddess as my companion, and shower down thy miters, if
it seem good unto thy divine providence, upon those heads which are
aching for them."

The bird in his cage pursued me into my room. I sat down close to my
table, and leaning my head upon my hand, I began to figure to myself
the miseries of confinement. I was in a right frame for it, and so I
gave full scope to my imagination. I was going to begin with the
millions of my fellow creatures born to no inheritance but slavery;
but finding, however affecting the picture was, that I could not bring
it near me, and that the multitude of sad groups in it did but
distract me, I took a single captive, and having first shut him up in
his dungeon, I then looked through the twilight of his grated door to
take his picture. I beheld his body half-wasted away with long
expectation and confinement, and felt what kind of sickness of the
heart it was which arises from hope deferred. Upon looking nearer I
saw him pale and feverish; in thirty years the western breeze had not
once fanned his blood; he had seen no sun, no moon, in all that time,
nor had the voice of friend or kinsman breathed through his lattice;
his children--but here my heart began to bleed, and I was forced to go
on with another part of the portrait. He was sitting upon the ground
upon a little straw, in the furthest corner of his dungeon, which was
alternately his chair and bed; a little calendar of small sticks lay
at the head, notched all over with the dismal days and nights he had
passed there; he had one of these little sticks in his hand, and with
a rusty nail he was etching another day of misery to add to the heap.
As I darkened the little light he had, he lifted up a hopeless eye
toward the door, then cast it down, shook his head, and went on with
his work of affliction. I heard his chains upon his legs, as he turned
his body to lay his little stick upon the bundle. He gave a deep sigh:
I saw the iron enter into his soul. I burst into tears: I could not
sustain the picture of confinement which my fancy had drawn.

II

TO MOULINES WITH MARIA[34]

When Maria had come a little to herself, I asked her if she remembered
a pale thin person of a man who had sat down betwixt her and her goat
about two years before? She said she was unsettled much at that time,
but remembered it upon two accounts; that, ill as she was, she saw the
person pitied her: and next, that her goat had stolen his
handkerchief, and that she had beat him for the theft. "She had washed
it," she said, "in the brook, and kept it ever since in her pocket to
restore it to him in case she should ever see him again, which," she
added, "he had half promised her."

As she told me this, she took the handkerchief out of her pocket to
let me see it: she had folded it up neatly in a couple of vine-leaves,
tied around with a tendril: on opening it, I saw an S. marked in one
of the corners.

She had since that, she told me, strayed as far as Rome, and walked
around St. Peter's once, and returned back: that she found her way
alone across the Apennines, had traveled over all Lombardy without
money, and through the flinty roads of Savoy without shoes: how she
had borne it, and how she had got supported she could not tell: "But,
'God tempers the wind,'" said Maria, "'to the shorn lamb.'"

"Shorn, indeed, and to the quick," said I: "and wast thou in my own
land, where I have a cottage, I would take thee to it, and shelter
thee; thou shouldst eat of my own bread, and drink of my own cup: I
would be kind to thy Sylvio; in all thy weaknesses and wanderings I
would seek after thee, and bring thee back; when the sun went down, I
would say my prayers; and when I had done, thou shouldst play thy
evening song upon thy pipe, nor would the incense of my sacrifice be
worse accepted for entering heaven along with that of a broken heart!"

Nature melted within me as I uttered this: and Maria observing, as I
took out my handkerchief, that it was steeped too much already to be
of use, would needs go wash it in the stream. "And where will you dry
it, Maria?" said I.

"I'll dry it in my bosom," said she: "'twill do me good."

"And is your heart still so warm, Maria?" said I.

I touched upon a string on which hung all her sorrows: she looked with
wistful disorder for some time in my face; and then, without saying
anything, took her pipe, and played her service to the Virgin. The
string I had touched ceased to vibrate; in a moment or two, Maria
returned to herself, let her pipe fall, and rose up.

"And where are you going, Maria?" said I.

She said, "To Moulines."

"Let us go," said I, "together."

Maria put her arm within mine, and lengthening the string to let the
dog follow, in that order we entered Moulines.

THE DEATH OF LE FEVRE[35]

"In a fortnight or three weeks," added my uncle Toby, smiling, "he
might march."

"He will never march, an' please your Honor, in this world," said the
Corporal.

"He will march," said my uncle Toby, rising up from the side of the
bed with one shoe off.

"An' please your Honor," said the Corporal, "he will never march but
to his grave."

"He shall march," cried my uncle Toby, marching the foot which had a
shoe on, tho without advancing an inch--"he shall march to his
regiment."

"He can not stand it," said the Corporal.

"He shall be supported," said my uncle Toby.

"He'll drop at last," said the Corporal, "and what will become of his
body?"

"He shall not drop," said my uncle Toby firmly.

"Ah, well--a--day!--do what we can for him," said Trim, maintaining
his point, "the poor soul will die."

"He shall not die, by G--," cried my uncle Toby.

The accusing spirit, which flew up to heaven's chancery with the oath,
blushed as he gave it in; and the recording angel, as he wrote it
down, dropt a tear upon the word, and blotted it out forever.

My uncle Toby went to his bureau, put his purse into his
breeches-pocket, and, having ordered the Corporal to go early in the
morning for a physician, he went to bed and fell asleep. The sun
looked bright the morning after to every eye in the village but to Le
Fevre's and his afflicted son's; the hand of death prest heavy upon
his eyelids; and hardly could the wheel at the cistern turn round its
circle, when my uncle Toby, who had rose up an hour before his wonted
time, entered the Lieutenant's room, and without preface or apology,
sat himself down upon the chair by the bedside, and independently of
all modes and customs, opened the curtain in the manner an old friend
and brother-officer would have done it, and asked him how he did, how
he had rested in the night, what was his complaint, where was his
pain, and what he could do to help him; and without giving him time to
answer any one of these inquiries, went on, and told him of the little
plan which he had been concerting with Corporal the night before for
him.

"You shall go home directly, Le Fevre," said my uncle Toby, "to my
house, and we'll send for a doctor to see what's the matter: and we'll
have an apothecary; and the Corporal shall be your nurse; and I'll be
your servant, Le Fevre."

There was a frankness in my uncle Toby, not the effect of familiarity,
but the cause of it, which let you at once into his soul, and showed
you the goodness of his nature. To this, there was something in his
looks, and voice, and manner, super-added, which eternally beckoned to
the unfortunate to come and take shelter under him; so that, before my
uncle Toby had half finished the kind offers he was making to the
father, had the son insensibly prest up close to his knees, and had
taken hold of the breast of his coat, and was pulling it toward him.
The blood and spirits of Le Fevre, which were waxing cold and slow
within him, and were retreating to their last citadel, the heart,
rallied back, the film forsook his eyes for a moment; he looked up
wishfully in my uncle Toby's face; then cast a look upon his boy; and
that ligament, fine as it was, was never broken.

Nature instantly ebbed again; the film returned to its place; the
pulse fluttered, stopt, went on, throbbed, stopt again, moved, stopt.
Shall I go on? No.

IV

PASSAGES FROM THE ROMANCE OF MY UNCLE TOBY AND THE WIDOW[36]

Now, as Widow Wadman did love my uncle Toby, and my uncle Toby did not
love Widow Wadman, there was nothing for Widow Wadman to do, but to go
on and love my uncle Toby--or let it alone.

Widow Wadman would do neither the one nor the other....

As soon as the Corporal had finished the story of his amour--or rather
my uncle Toby for him--Mrs. Wadman silently sallied forth from her
arbor, replaced the pin in her mob, passed the wicker-gate, and
advanced slowly toward my uncle Toby's sentry-box; the disposition
which Trim had made in my uncle Toby's mind was too favorable a
crisis to be let slipt.

The attack was determined upon: it was facilitated still more by my
uncle Toby's having ordered the Corporal to wheel off the pioneer's
shovel, the spade, the pickax, the piquets, and other military stores
which lay scattered upon the ground where Dunkirk stood. The Corporal
had marched; the field was clear.

Now, consider, sir, what nonsense it is, either in fighting or
writing, or anything else (whether in rime to it or not) which a man
has occasion to do, to act by plan: for if ever Plan, independent of
all circumstances, deserved registering in letters of gold (I mean in
the archives of Gotham) it was certainly the Plan of Mrs. Wadman's
attack of my uncle Toby in his sentry-box, by Plan. Now, the plan
hanging up in it at this juncture, being the Plan of Dunkirk, and the
tale of Dunkirk a tale of relaxation, it opposed every impression she
could make: and, besides, could she have gone upon it, the maneuver of
fingers and hands in the attack of the sentry-box was so outdone by
that of the fair Beguine's, in Trim's story, that just then, that
particular attack, however successful before, became the most
heartless attack that could be made.

Oh! let woman alone for this. Mrs. Wadman had scarce opened the
wicker-gate, when her genius sported with the change of circumstances.

She formed a new attack in a moment.

"I am half distracted, Captain Shandy," said Mrs. Wadman, holding up
her cambric handkerchief to her left eye, as she approached the door
of my uncle Toby's sentry-box; "a mote, or sand, or something I know
not what, has got into this eye of mine; do look into it; it is not in
the white."

In saying which, Mrs. Wadman edged herself close in beside my uncle
Toby, and squeezing herself down upon the corner of his bench, she
gave him an opportunity of doing it without rising up. "Do look into
it," said she.

Honest soul! thou didst look into it with as much innocency of heart
as ever child looked into a raree show-box; and 'twere as much a sin
to have hurt thee.

If a man will be peeping of his own accord into things of that nature,
I've nothing to say to it.

My uncle Toby never did: and I will answer for him, that he would have
sat quietly upon a sofa from June to January (which, you know, takes
in both the hot and cold months) with an eye as fine as the Thracian
Rhodope's beside him, without being able to tell whether it was a
black or a blue one.

The difficulty was, to get my uncle Toby to look at one at all.

'Tis surmounted. And--

I see him yonder, with his pipe pendulous in his hand, and the ashes
falling out of it, looking and looking, then rubbing his eyes, and
looking again, with twice the good nature that ever Galileo looked for
a spot in the sun.

In vain! for, by all the powers which animate the organ, Widow
Wadman's left eye shines this moment as lucid as her right; there is
neither mote, nor sand, nor dust, nor chaff, nor speck, nor particle
of opaque matter floating in it. There is nothing, my dear paternal
uncle! but one lambent delicious fire, furtively shooting out from
every part of it, in all directions into thine.

If thou lookest, Uncle Toby, in search of this mote one moment longer,
thou art undone.

An eye is, for all the world, exactly like a cannon, in this respect,
that it is not so much the eye or the cannon, in themselves, as it is
the carriage of the eye and the carriage of the cannon; by which both
the one and the other are enabled to do so much execution. I don't
think the comparison a bad one; however, as 'tis made and placed at
the head of the chapter, as much for use as ornament, all I desire in
return is, that whenever I speak of Mrs. Wadman's eyes (except once in
the next period) that you keep it in your fancy.

"I protest, madam," said my uncle Toby, "I can see nothing whatever in
your eye."

"It is not in the white," said Mrs. Wadman. My uncle Toby looked with
might and main into the pupil.

Now, of all the eyes which ever were created, from your own, madam, up
to those of Venus herself, which certainly were as venereal a pair of
eyes as ever stood in a head, there never was an eye of them all so
fitted to rob my uncle Toby of his repose as the very eye at which he
was looking; it was not, madam, a rolling eye, a romping, or a wanton
one; nor was it an eye sparkling, petulant, or imperious, of high
claims and terrifying expectations, which would have curdled at once
that milk of human nature, of which my uncle Toby was made up; but
'twas an eye full of gentle salutations and soft responses, speaking,
not like the trumpet-stop of some ill-made organ, in which many an
eye I talk to holds coarse converse, but whispering soft, like that
last low accent of an expiring saint, "How can you live comfortless,
Captain Shandy, and alone, without a bosom to lean your head on--or
trust your cares to?"

It was an eye--

But I shall be in love with it myself, if I say another word about it.

It did my uncle Toby's business....

The world is ashamed of being virtuous. My uncle Toby knew little of
the world; and therefore, when he felt he was in love with Widow
Wadman, he had no conception that the thing was any more to be made a
mystery of than if Mrs. Wadman had given him a cut with a gap'd knife
across his finger. Had it been otherwise--yet, as he ever looked upon
Trim as a humbler friend, and saw fresh reasons every day of his life
to treat him as such--it would have made no variation in the manner in
which he informed him of the affair.

"I am in love, Corporal!" quoth my uncle Toby....

Tho the Corporal had been as good as his word in putting my uncle
Toby's great Ramillies wig into pipes, yet the time was too short to
produce any great effects from it; it had lain many years squeezed up
in the corner of his old campaign-trunk; and as bad forms are not so
easy to be got the better of, and the use of candle-ends not so well
understood, it was not so pliable a business as one would have wished.
The Corporal, with cheery eye and both arms extended, had fallen back
perpendicular from it a score times, to inspire it, if possible, with
a better air:--had Spleen given a look at it, 'twould have cost her
ladyship a smile; it curled everywhere but where the Corporal would
have it; and where a buckle or two, in his opinion, would have done it
honor, he could as soon have raised the dead.

Such it was, or rather, such would it have seemed upon any other brow;
but the sweet look of goodness which sat upon my uncle Toby's
assimilated everything around it so sovereignly to itself, and Nature
had, moreover, wrote gentleman with so fair a hand in every line of
his countenance, that even his tarnished gold-laced hat and huge
cockade of flimsy taffeta became him; and, tho not worth a button in
themselves, yet the moment my uncle Toby put them on, they became
serious objects, and, altogether, seemed to have been picked up by the
hand of Science to set him off to advantage.

Nothing, in this world could have cooperated more powerfully toward
this than my uncle Toby's blue and gold, had not Quantity, in some
measure, been necessary to grace. In a period of fifteen or sixteen
years since they had been made, by a total inactivity in my uncle
Toby's life (for he seldom went further than the bowling green), his
blue and gold had become so miserably too straight for him that it was
with the utmost difficulty the Corporal was able to get him into them;
the taking up at the sleeves was of no advantage; they were laced,
however, down the back, and at the seams of the sides, etc., in the
mode of King William's reign; and to shorten all description, they
shone so bright against the sun that morning, and had so metallic and
doughty an air with them, that, had my uncle Toby thought of attacking
in armor, nothing could have so well imposed upon his imagination.

As for the thin scarlet breeches, they had been unripped by the tailor
between the legs, and left at sixes and sevens.

Yes, madam; but let us govern our fancies. It is enough they were held
impracticable the night before; and, as there was no alternative in my
uncle Toby's wardrobe, he sallied forth in the red plush.

The Corporal had arrayed himself in poor Le Fevre's regimental coat;
and with his hair tucked up under his Montero-cap, which he had
furbished up for the occasion, marched three paces distant from his
master; a whiff of military pride had puffed out his shirt at the
wrist; and upon that, in a black leather thong clipt into a tassel
beyond the knot, hung the Corporal's stick. My uncle Toby carried his
cane like a pike.

"It looks well, at least," quoth my father to himself....

When my uncle Toby and the Corporal had marched down to the bottom of
the avenue, they recollected their business lay the other way; so they
faced about, and marched up straight to Mrs. Wadman's door.

"I warrant your Honor," said the Corporal, touching his Montero-cap
with his hand as he passed him in order to give a knock at the door.
My uncle Toby, contrary to his invariable way of treating his faithful
servant, said nothing good or bad; the truth was, he had not
altogether marshaled his ideas; he wished for another conference, and,
as the Corporal was mounting up the three steps before the door, he
hem'd twice; a portion of my uncle Toby's most modest spirits fled, at
each expulsion, toward the Corporal; he stood with the rapper of the
door suspended for a full minute in his hand, he scarce knew why.
Bridget stood perdue within, with her finger and her thumb upon the
latch, benumbed with expectation; and Mrs. Wadman, with an eye ready
to be deflowered again, sat breathless behind the window-curtain of
her bed-chamber, watching their approach.

"Trim!" said my uncle Toby; but, as he articulated the word, the
minute expired, and Trim let fall the rapper.

My uncle Toby, perceiving that all hopes of a conference were knocked
on the head by it, whistled Lillabullero.

As Mrs. Bridget opened the door before the Corporal had well given the
rap, the interval betwixt that and my uncle Toby's introduction into
the parlor was so short that Mrs. Wadman had but just time to get from
behind the curtain, lay a Bible upon the table, and advance a step or
two toward the door to receive him.

My uncle Toby saluted Mrs. Wadman, after the manner in which women
were saluted by men in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred
and thirteen; then facing about, he marched up abreast with her to the
sofa, and in three plain words, tho not before he was sat down, nor
after he was sat down, but as he was sitting down, told her, "he was
in love"; so that my uncle Toby strained himself more in the
declaration than he needed.

Mrs. Wadman naturally looked down upon a slit she had been darning up
in her apron, in expectation every moment that my uncle Toby would go
on; but having no talents for amplification, and Love, moreover, of
all others, being a subject of which he was the least a master, when
he had told Mrs. Wadman once that he loved her, he let it alone, and
left the matter to work after its own way.

My father was always in raptures with this system of my uncle Toby's,
as he falsely called it, and would often say, That could his brother
Toby to his process have added but a pipe of tobacco, he had
wherewithal to have his way, if there was faith in a Spanish proverb,
toward the hearts of half the women upon the globe.

My uncle Toby never understood what my father meant; nor will I
presume to extract more from it than a condemnation of an error which
the bulk of the world lie under; but the French, every one of them to
a man, who believe in it almost as much as the Real Presence, "That
talking of love is making it."

I would as soon set about making a black pudding by the same receipt.

Let us go on: Mrs. Wadman sat in expectation my uncle Toby would do
so, to almost the first pulsation of that minute, wherein silence on
one side or the other generally becomes indecent; so edging herself a
little more toward him, and raising up her eyes, sub-blushing as she
did it, she took up the gantlet, or the discourse (if you like it
better), and communed with my uncle Toby thus:

"The cares and disquietudes of the marriage-state," quoth Mrs. Wadman,
"are very great."

"I suppose so," said my uncle Toby.

"And therefore when a person," continued Mrs. Wadman, "is so much at
his ease as you are, so happy, Captain Shandy, in yourself, your
friends, and your amusements, I wonder what reasons can incline you to
the state?"

"They are written," quoth my uncle Toby, "in the Common Prayer-Book."

Thus far my uncle Toby went on warily, and kept within his depth,
leaving Mrs. Wadman to sail upon the gulf as she pleased.

"As for children," said Mrs. Wadman, "tho a principal end, perhaps, of
the institution, and the natural wish, I suppose, of every parent, yet
do not we all find that they are certain sorrows, and very uncertain
comforts? and what is there, dear sir, to pay one for the heart-aches,
what compensation for the many tender and disquieting apprehensions of
a suffering and defenseless mother who brings them into life?"

"I declare," said my uncle Toby, smitten with pity, "I know of none:
unless it be the pleasure which it has pleased God ..."

"A fiddlestick!" quoth she....

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 33: From the "Sentimental Journey."]

[Footnote 34: From the "Sentimental Journey."]

[Footnote 35: From "Tristram Shandy."]

[Footnote 36: From "Tristram Shandy."]

THOMAS GRAY

     Born in 1716, died in 1771; educated at Eton, where he began
     a lifelong friendship with Horace Walpole; traveled on the
     Continent with Walpole in 1739; settled in Cambridge in
     1741, where in 1768 he was made professor of Modern History;
     refused the laureateship in 1757; published his "Elegy
     Written in a Country Churchyard" in 1751; his poems and
     letters collected by Mason in 1775.

WARWICK CASTLE[37]

I have been at Warwick, which is a place worth seeing. The town is on
an eminence surrounded every way with a fine cultivated valley,
through which the Avon winds, and at the distance of five or six
miles, a circle of hills, well wooded, and with various objects
crowning them, that close the prospect. Out of the town on one side of
it, rises a rock that might remind one of your rocks at Durham, but
that it is not so savage, or so lofty, and that the river, which,
washes its foot, is perfectly clear, and so gentle, that its current
is hardly visible. Upon it stands the castle, the noble old residence
of the Beauchamps and Nevilles, and now of Earl Brooke. He has sash'd
the great apartment that's to be sure (I can't help these things), and
being since told, that square sash-windows were not Gothic, he has put
certain whim-whams within side the glass, which appearing through are
to look like fret-work. Then he has scooped out a little burrow in the
massy walls of the place for his little self and his children, which
is hung with paper and printed linen, and carved chimney-pieces, in
the exact manner of Berkley Square or Argyle buildings. What in short
can a lord do nowadays, that is lost in a great old solitary castle,
but skulk about, and get into the first hole he finds, as a rat would
do in like case.

A pretty long old stone bridge leads you into the town with a mill at
the end of it, over which the rock rises with the castle upon it with
all its battlements and queer ruined towers, and on your left hand the
Avon strays through the park, whose ancient elms seem to remember Sir
Philip Sidney, who often walk'd under them, and talk of him to this
day. The Beauchamp Earls of Warwick lie under stately monuments in the
choir of the great church, and in our lady's chapel adjoining to it.
There also lie Ambrose Dudley, Earl of Warwick; and his brother, the
famous Lord Leicester, with Lettice, his countess. This chapel is
preserved entire, tho the body of the church was burned down sixty
years ago, and rebuilt by Sir C. Wren.

I had heard often of Guy-Cliff, two miles from the town; so I walked
to see it, and of all improvers commend me to Mr. Greathead, its
present owner. He shew'd it me himself, and is literally a fat young
man with a head and face much bigger than they are usually worn. It
was naturally a very agreeable rock, whose cliffs cover'd with large
trees hung beetling over the Avon, which twists twenty ways in sight
of it. There was the cell of Guy, Earl of Warwick, cut in the living
stone, where he died a hermit (as you may see in a penny history, that
hangs upon the rails in Moorfields). There were his fountains bubbling
out of the cliff; there was a chantry founded to his memory in Henry
the Sixth's time. But behold the trees are cut down to make room for
flowering shrubs; the rock is cut up, till it is as smooth and as
sleek as satin; the river has a gravel-walk by its side; the cell is a
grotto with cockle-shells and looking glass; the fountains have an
iron gate before them, and the chantry is a barn, or a little house.
Even the poorest bite of nature that remain are daily threatened, for
he says (and I am sure, when the Greatheads are once set upon a thing,
they will do it) he is determined it shall be all new. These were his
words, and they are fate.

II

TO HIS FRIEND MASON ON THE DEATH OF MASON'S MOTHER[38]

I break in upon you at a moment when we least of all are permitted to
disturb our friends, only to say that you are daily and hourly present
to my thoughts. If the worst be not yet passed, you will neglect and
pardon me; but if the last struggle be over, if the poor object of
your long anxieties be no longer sensible to your kindness, or to her
own sufferings, allow me (at least in idea, for what could I do were I
present more than this), to sit by you in silence, and pity from my
heart, not her who is at rest, but you who lose her. May He who made
us, the Master of our pleasures and of our pains, preserve and support
you. Adieu.

I have long understood how little you had to hope.

ON HIS OWN WRITINGS[39]

To your friendly accusation I am glad I can plead not guilty with a
safe conscience. Dodsley told me in the Spring that the plates from
Mr. Bentley's designs were worn out, and he wanted to have them copied
and reduced to a smaller scale for a new edition. I dissuaded him from
so silly an expense, and desired he would put in no ornaments at all.
The "Long Story" was to be totally omitted, as its only use (that of
explaining the prints) was gone: but to supply the place of it in
bulk, lest my works should be mistaken for the works of a flea, or a
pismire, I promised to send him an equal weight of poetry or prose:
so, since my return hither, I put up about two ounces of stuff, viz.,
the "Fatal Sisters," the "Descent of Odin" (of both which you have
copies), a bit of something from the Welch, and certain little Notes,
partly from justice (to acknowledge the debt where I had borrowed
anything), partly from ill temper, just to tell the gentle reader that
Edward I was not Oliver Cromwell, nor Queen Elizabeth the Witch of
Endor. This is literally all; and with all this, I shall be but a
shrimp of an author. I gave leave also to print the same thing at
Glasgow; but I doubt my packet has miscarried, for I hear nothing of
its arrival as yet.

To what you say to me so civilly, that I ought to write more, I reply
in your own words (like the Pamphleteer, who is going to confute you
out of your own mouth), What has one to do when turned of fifty, but
really to think of finishing? However, I will be candid (for you seem
to be so with me), and avow to you, that till four-score-and-ten,
whenever the humor takes me, I will write, because I like it; and
because I like myself better when I do so. If I do not write much, it
is because I can not. As you have not this last plea, I see no reason
why you should not continue as long as it is agreeable to yourself,
and to all such as have any curiosity or judgment in the subject you
choose to treat. By the way let me tell you (while it is fresh) that
Lord Sandwich, who was lately dining at Cambridge, speaking (as I am
told) handsomely of your book, said, it was pity you did not know that
his cousin Manchester had a genealogy of Kings, which came down no
lower than to Richard III, and at the end of it were two portraits of
Richard and his son, in which that king appeared to be a handsome man.
I tell you it as I heard it; perhaps you may think it worth inquiring
into....

Mr. Boswell's book[40] I was going to recommend to you, when I
received your letter: it has pleased and moved me strangely, all (I
mean) that relates to Paoli. He is a man born two thousand years after
his time! The pamphlet proves what I have always maintained, that any
fool may write a most valuable book by chance, if he will only tell us
what he heard and saw with veracity. Of Mr. Boswell's truth I have not
the least suspicion, because I am sure he could invent nothing of this
kind. The true title of this part of his work is, a Dialogue between a
Green-Goose and a Hero.

IV

HIS FRIENDSHIP FOR BONSTETTEN[41]

Never did I feel, my dear Bonstetten, to what a tedious length the few
short moments of our life may be extended by impatience and
expectation, till you had left me; nor ever knew before with so strong
a conviction how much this frail body sympathizes with the inquietude
of the mind. I am grown old in the compass of less than three weeks,
like the Sultan in the Turkish tales, that did but plunge his head
into a vessel of water and take it out again, as the standers by
affirmed, at the command of a Dervish, and found he had passed many
years in captivity, and begot a large family of children.

The strength and spirits that now enable me to write to you, are only
owing to your last letter a temporary gleam of sunshine. Heaven knows
when it may shine again! I did not conceive till now, I own, what it
was to lose you, nor felt the solitude and insipidity of my own
condition before I possest the happiness of your friendship. I must
cite another Greek writer to you, because it is much to my purpose; he
is describing the character of a genius truly inclined to philosophy.
"It includes," he says, "qualifications rarely united in one single
mind, quickness of apprehension and a retentive memory, vivacity and
application, gentleness and magnanimity"; to these he adds an
invincible love of truth, and consequently of probity and justice.
"Such a soul," continues he, "will be little inclined to sensual
pleasures, and consequently temperate; a stranger to illiberality and
avarice; being accustomed to the most extensive views of things, and
sublimest contemplations, it will contract an habitual greatness, will
look down with a kind of disregard on human life and on death;
consequently, will possess the truest fortitude. Such," says he, "is
the mind born to govern the rest of mankind."

But these very endowments, so necessary to a soul formed for
philosophy, are often its ruin, especially when joined to the external
advantages of wealth, nobility, strength, and beauty; that is, if it
light on a bad soil, and want its proper nurture, which nothing but an
excellent education can bestow. In this case he is depraved by the
public example, the assemblies of the people, the courts of justice,
the theaters, that inspire it with false opinions, terrify it with
false infamy, or elevate it with false applause; and remember, that
extraordinary vices and extraordinary virtues are equally the produce
of a vigorous mind: little souls are alike incapable of the one and
the other.

If you have ever met with the portrait sketched out by Plato, you will
know it again: for my part, to my sorrow I have had that happiness. I
see the principal features, and I foresee the dangers with a trembling
anxiety. But enough of this, I return to your letter. It proves at
least, that in the midst of your new gaieties I still hold some place
in your memory, and, what pleases me above all, it had an air of
undissembled sincerity. Go on, my best and amiable friend, to shew me
your heart simply and without the shadow of disguise, and leave me to
weep over it, as I now do, no matter whether from joy or sorrow.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 37: From a letter to Thomas Wharton, dated "Stoke Pogis,
September 18, 1754."]

[Footnote 38: Written on March 28, 1767. The tenderness of this brief
letter of condolence will recall the inscription which Gray placed on
the tomb of his own mother in Stoke Pogis church-yard--the tomb in
which he himself was afterward buried "She was the careful, tender
mother of many children," says the inscription, "only one of whom had
the misfortune to survive her."]

[Footnote 39: From a letter to Horace Walpole, dated "Pembroke
College, February 25, 1768."]

[Footnote 40: This refers to Boswell's visit to Corsica in 1766. The
book he wrote was his "Journal of a Tour to Corsica, with Memoirs of
Pascal Paoli."]

[Footnote 41: From a letter to Bonstetten, dated "Cambridge, April 12,
1770." Bonstetten was a Swiss philosopher and essayist who had formed
a close friendship with Gray and many other eminent English men of
culture. Bonstetten left England in March of the year in which this
letter was written, Gray going with him as far as London, where he
pointed out in the street the "great bear," Samuel Johnson, and saw
Bonstetten safely into a coach bound for Dover.]

HORACE WALPOLE

     Born in 1717, died in 1797; third son of Sir Robert Walpole,
     the Prime Minister; educated at Eton and Cambridge; traveled
     with Thomas Gray in 1739-41; entered Parliament in 1741;
     settled at Strawberry Hill in 1747; made fourth Earl of
     Orford in 1791; author of many books, but best known now for
     his letters.

HOGARTH[42]

Hogarth was born in the parish of St. Bartholomew, London, the son of
a low tradesman, who bound him to a mean engraver of arms on plate;
but before his time was expired he felt the impulse of genius, and
felt it directed him to painting, tho little apprized at that time of
the mode nature had intended he should pursue. His apprenticeship was
no sooner expired than he entered into the academy in St. Martin's
Lane, and studied drawing from the life, in which he never attained to
great excellence. It was character, the passions, the soul, that his
genius was given him to copy. In coloring he proved no greater a
master; his force lay in expression, not in tints and chiaroscuro. At
first he worked for booksellers, and designed and engraved plates for
several books; and, which is extraordinary, no symptom of genius
dawned in those plates. His "Hudibras" was the first of his works that
marked him as a man above the common; yet what made him then noticed
now surprizes us, to find so little humor in an undertaking so
congenial to his talents. On the success, however, of those plates, he
commenced painter, a painter of portraits: the most ill-suited
employment imaginable to a man whose turn certainly was not flattery,
nor his talent adapted to look on vanity without a sneer. Yet his
facility in catching a likeness, and the methods he chose of painting
families and conversations in small, then a novelty, drew him
prodigious business for some time. It did not last: either from his
applying to the real bent of his disposition, or from his customers
apprehending that a satirist was too formidable a confessor for the
devotees of self-love. He had already dropt a few of his smaller
prints on some reigning follies; but as the dates are wanting on most
of them, I can not ascertain which, tho those on the South Sea and
"Rabbit Woman" prove that he had early discovered his talent for
ridicule, tho he did not then think of building his reputation or
fortune on its powers.

His "Midnight Modern Conversation" was the first work that showed his
command of character; but it was "The Harlot's Progress," published in
1729 or 1730, that established his fame. The pictures were scarce
finished, and no sooner exhibited to the public, and the subscription
opened, than above twelve hundred names were entered on his book. The
familiarity of the subject and the propriety of the execution made it
tasted by all ranks of people. Every engraver set himself to copy it,
and thousands of imitations were dispersed all over the kingdom. It
was made into a pantomime, and performed on the stage. The "Rake's
Progress," perhaps superior, had not so much success, from want of
novelty; nor, indeed, is the print of "The Arrest" equal in merit to
the others.

The curtain was now drawn aside, and his genius stood displayed in its
full luster. From time to time he continued to give those works that
should be immortal, if the nature of his art will allow it. Even the
receipts for his subscriptions had wit in them. Many of his plates he
engraved himself, and often expunged faces etched by his assistants
when they had not done justice to his ideas.

Not content with shining in a path untrodden before, he was ambitious
of distinguishing himself as a painter of history. But not only his
coloring and drawing rendered him unequal to the task; the genius that
had entered so feelingly into the calamities and crimes of familiar
life deserted him in a walk that called for dignity and grace. The
burlesque turn of his mind mixt itself with the most serious subjects.
In his "Danaë," the old nurse tries a coin of the golden shower with
her teeth to see if it is true gold; in the "Pool of Bethesda," a
servant of a rich ulcerated lady beats back a poor man that sought the
same celestial remedy. Both circumstances are justly thought, but
rather too ludicrous. It is a much more capital fault that "Danaë"
herself is a mere nymph of Drury. He seems to have conceived no higher
idea of beauty.

So little had he eyes to his own deficiencies, that he believed he had
discovered the principle of grace. With the enthusiasm of a
discoverer he cried, "Eureka!" This was his famous line of beauty,
the groundwork of his "Analysis," a book that has many sensible hints
and observations, but that did not carry the conviction nor meet the
universal acquiescence he expected. As he treated his contemporaries
with scorn, they triumphed over this publication, and imitated him to
expose him. Many wretched burlesque prints came out to ridicule his
system. There was a better answer to it in one of the two prints that
he gave to illustrate his hypothesis. In "The Ball," had he confined
himself to such outlines as compose awkwardness and deformity, he
would have proved half his assertion; but he has added two samples of
grace in a young lord and lady that are strikingly stiff and affected.
They are a Bath beau and a country beauty.

But this was the failing of a visionary. He fell afterward into a
grosser mistake. From a contempt of the ignorant virtuosi of the age,
and from indignation at the impudent tricks of picture-dealers, whom
he saw continually recommending and vending vile copies to bubble
collectors, and from having never studied, indeed having seen, few
good pictures of the great Italian masters, he persuaded himself that
the praises bestowed on those glorious works were nothing but the
effects of prejudice. He talked this language till he believed it; and
having heard it often asserted, as is true, that time gives a
mellowness to colors and improves them, he not only denied the
proposition, but maintained that pictures only grew black and worse by
age, not distinguishing between the degrees in which the proposition
might be true or false. He went further; he determined to rival the
ancients, and unfortunately chose one of the finest pictures in
England as the object of his compensation. This was the celebrated
"Sigismonda" of Sir Luke Schaub, now in the possession of the Duke of
Newcastle, said to be painted by Correggio, probably by Furino, but no
matter by whom. It is impossible to see the picture, or read Dryden's
inimitable tale, and not feel that the same soul animated both. After
many essays Hogarth at last produced his "Sigismonda," but no more
like "Sigismonda" than I to Hercules. Hogarth's performance was more
ridiculous than anything he had ever ridiculed. He set the price of
£400 on it, and had it returned on his hands by the person for whom it
was painted. He took subscriptions for a plate of it, but had the
sense at last to suppress it. I make no more apology for this account
than for the encomiums I have bestowed on him. Both are dictated by
truth, and are the history of a great man's excellences and errors.
Milton, it is said, preferred his "Paradise Regained" to his immortal
poem.

The last memorable event of our artist's life was his quarrel with Mr.
Wilkes; in which, if Mr. Hogarth did not commence direct hostilities
on the latter, he at least obliquely gave the first offense by an
attack on the friends and party of that gentleman. This conduct was
the more surprizing, as he had all his life avoided dipping his pencil
in political contests, and had early refused a very lucrative offer
that was made to engage him in a set of prints against the head of a
court party. Without entering into the merits of the cause, I shall
only state the fact. In September, 1762, Mr. Hogarth published his
print of _The Times_. It was answered by Mr. Wilkes in a severe _North
Briton_. On this the painter exhibited the caricature of the writer.
Mr. Churchill, the poet, then engaged in the war, and wrote his
epistle to Hogarth, not the brightest of his works, and in which the
severest strokes fell on a defect that the painter had neither caused
nor could amend--his age; and which, however, was neither remarkable
nor decrepit, much less had it impaired his talents, as appeared by
his having composed but six months before one of his most capital
works, the satire on the Methodists. In revenge for this epistle,
Hogarth caricatured Churchill under the form of a canonical bear, with
a club and a pot of porter--_Et vitulâ tu dignus et hic_. Never did
two angry men of their abilities throw mud with less dexterity.

Mr. Hogarth, in the year 1730, married the only daughter of Sir James
Thornhill, by whom he had no children. He died of a dropsy in his
breast at his house in Leicester Fields, October 26, 1764.

II

THE WAR IN AMERICA[43]

In spite of all my modesty, I can not help thinking I have a little
something of the prophet about me. At least we have not conquered
America yet. I did not send you immediate word of our victory at
Boston, because the success not only seemed very equivocal, but
because the conquerors lost three to one more than the vanquished. The
last do not pique themselves upon modern good breeding, but level only
at the officers, of whom they have slain a vast number. We are a
little disappointed, indeed, at their fighting at all, which was not
in our calculation. We knew we could conquer America in Germany, and I
doubt had better have gone thither now for that purpose, as it does
not appear hitherto to be quite so feasible in America itself.
However, we are determined to know the worst, and are sending away all
the men and ammunition we can muster. The Congress, not asleep,
neither, have appointed a generalissimo, Washington, allowed a very
able officer, who distinguished himself in the last war. Well, we had
better have gone on robbing the Indies! it was a more lucrative trade.

THE DEATH OF GEORGE II[44]

The deaths of kings travel so much faster than any post, that I can
not expect to tell you news, when I say your old master is dead. But I
can pretty well tell you what I like best to be able to say to you on
this occasion, that you are in no danger. Change will scarce reach to
Florence when its hand is checked even in the capital. But I will
move a little regularly, and then you will form your judgment more
easily.

This is Tuesday; on Friday night the King went to bed in perfect
health, and rose so the next morning at his usual hour of six; he
called for and drank his chocolate. At seven, his _valet de chambre_
heard a groan. He ran in, and in a small room between the closet and
bed-chamber he found the King on the floor, who had cut the right side
of his face against the edge of a bureau, and who after a gasp
expired. Lady Yarmouth was called, and sent for Princess Amelia; but
they only told the latter that the King was ill and wanted her. She
had been confined some days with a rheumatism, but hurried down, ran
into the room without further notice, and saw her father extended on
the bed. She is very purblind, and more than a little deaf. They had
not closed his eyes; she bent down close to his face, and concluded he
spoke to her, tho she could not hear him--guess what a shock when she
found the truth.

She wrote to the Prince of Wales--but so had one of the _valets de
chambre_ first. He came to town, and saw the Duke [of Cumberland] and
the Privy Council. He was extremely kind to the first--and in general
has behaved with the greatest propriety, dignity, and decency. He read
his speech to the Council with much grace, and dismissed the guards on
himself to wait on his grandfather's body. It is intimated, that he
means to employ the same ministers, but with reserve to himself of
more authority than has lately been in fashion. The Duke of York and
Lord Bute are named of the Cabinet Council. The late King's will is
not yet opened. To-day everybody kissed hands at Leicester House, and
this week, I believe, the King will go to St. James's. The body has
been opened; the great ventricle of the heart had burst. What an
enviable death! In the greatest period of the glory of this country,
and of his reign, in perfect tranquillity at home, at seventy-seven,
growing blind and deaf, to die without a pang, before any reverse of
fortune, or any distasted peace, nay, but two days before a ship-load
of bad news: could he have chosen such another moment?

The news is bad indeed! Berlin taken by capitulation, and yet the
Austrians behaved so savagely that even Russians felt delicacy, were
shocked, and checked them! Nearer home, the hereditary prince has been
much beaten by Monsieur de Castries, and forced to raise the siege of
Wesel, whither Prince Ferdinand had sent him most unadvisedly: we have
scarce an officer unwounded. The secret expedition will now, I
conclude, sail, to give an _éclat_ to the new reign. Lord Albemarle
does not command it, as I told you, nor Mr. Conway, tho both applied.

Nothing is settled about the Parliament; not even the necessary
changes in the Household. Committees of council are regulating the
mourning and the funeral. The town, which between armies, militia, and
approaching elections, was likely to be a desert all the winter, is
filled in a minute, but everything is in the deepest tranquillity.
People stare; the only expression. The moment anything is declared,
one shall not perceive the novelty of the reign. A nation without
parties is soon a nation without curiosity.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 42: From the "Anecdotes of Painting in England."]

[Footnote 43: Letter dated "Strawberry Hill, August 3, 1775."]

[Footnote 44: Letter to Sir Horace Mann, dated "Arlington Street,
October 28, 1760."]

GILBERT WHITE

     Born in 1720, died in 1793; educated at Oxford and became a
     fellow of Oriel; later made curate at Selborne; his "Natural
     History of Selborne," published in 1789.

THE CHIMNEY-SWALLOW[45]

The house-swallow, or chimney-swallow, is undoubtedly the first comer
of all the British _hirundines_; and appears in general on or about
the 13th of April, as I have remarked from many years' observation.
Not but now and then a straggler is seen much earlier: and in
particular, when I was a boy I observed a swallow for a whole day
together on a sunny warm Shrove Tuesday; which day could not fall out
later than the middle of March, and often happened early in February.

It is worth remarking that these birds are seen first about lakes and
mill-ponds; and it is also very particular, that if these early
visitors happen to find frost and snow, as was the case in the two
dreadful springs of 1770 and 1771, they immediately withdraw for a
time. A circumstance this, much more in favor of hiding than
migration; since it is much more probable that a bird should retire to
its hybernaculum just at hand, than return for a week or two to warmer
latitudes.

The swallow, tho called the chimney-swallow, by no means builds
altogether in chimneys, but often within barns and outhouses against
the rafters; and so she did in Virgil's time: "Garrula quam tignis
nidos suspendat hirundo" (the twittering swallow hangs its nest from
the beams).

In Sweden she builds in barns, and is called _Ladu swala_, the
barn-swallow. Besides, in the warmer parts of Europe, there are no
chimneys to houses, except they are English built: in these countries
she constructs her nest in porches, and gateways, and galleries, and
open halls.

Here and there a bird may affect some odd peculiar place; as we have
known a swallow build down a shaft of an old well through which chalk
had been formerly drawn up for the purpose of manure: but in general
with us this _hirundo_ breeds in chimneys, and loves to haunt those
stacks where there is a constant fire--no doubt for the sake of
warmth. Not that it can subsist in the immediate shaft where there is
a fire; but prefers one adjoining to that of the kitchen, and
disregards the perpetual smoke of the funnel, as I have often observed
with some degree of wonder.

Five or six feet more down the chimney does this little bird begin to
form her nest, about the middle of May: which consists, like that of
the house-martin, of a crust or shell composed of dirt or mud, mixt
with short pieces of straw to render it tough and permanent; with this
difference, that whereas the shell of the martin is nearly
hemispheric, that of the swallow is open at the top, and like half a
deep ditch; this nest is lined with fine grasses, and feathers which
are often collected as they float in the air.

Wonderful is the address which this adroit bird shows all day long, in
ascending and descending with security through so narrow a pass. When
hovering over the mouth of the funnel, the vibration of her wings,
acting on the confined air, occasions a rumbling like thunder. It is
not improbable that the dam submits to this inconvenient situation so
low in the shaft, in order to secure her broods from rapacious birds;
and particularly from owls, which frequently fall down chimneys,
perhaps in attempting to get at these nestlings.

The swallow lays from four to six white eggs, dotted with red specks;
and brings out her first brood about the last week in June, or the
first week in July. The progressive method by which the young are
introduced into life is very amusing: first they emerge from the shaft
with difficulty enough, and often fall down into the rooms below; for
a day or so they are fed on the chimney-top, and then are conducted to
the dead leafless bough of some tree, where, sitting in a row, they
are attended with great assiduity, and may then be called perchers. In
a day or two more they become fliers, but are still unable to take
their own food; therefore they play about near the place where the
dams are hawking for flies: and when a mouthful is collected, at a
certain signal given, the dam and the nestling advance, rising toward
each other, and meeting at an angle; the young one all the while
uttering such a little quick note of gratitude and complacency, that a
person must have paid very little regard for the wonders of nature
that has not often remarked this feat.

The dam betakes herself immediately to the business of a second brood
as soon as she is disengaged from her first, which at once associates
with the first broods of house-martins, and with them congregates,
clustering on sunny roofs, towers and trees. This _hirundo_ brings out
her second brood toward the middle and end of August.

All summer long, the swallow is a most instructive pattern of
unwearied industry and affection: for from morning to night, while
there is a family to be supported, she spends the whole day in
skimming close to the ground, and exerting the most sudden turns and
quick evolutions. Avenues, and long walks under the hedges, and
pasture-fields, and mown meadows where cattle graze, are her delight,
especially if there are trees interspersed; because in such spots
insects most abound. When a fly is taken, a smart snap from her bill
is heard, resembling the noise at the shutting of a watch-case; but
the motion of the mandibles is too quick for the eye.

The swallow, probably the male bird, is the _excubitor_ to
house-martins and other little birds; announcing the approach of birds
of prey. For as soon as a hawk appears, with a shrill alarming note he
calls all the swallows and martins about him; who pursue in a body,
and buffet and strike their enemy till they have driven him from the
village; darting down from above on his back, and rising in a
perpendicular line in perfect security. This bird will also sound the
alarm, and strike at cats when they climb on the roofs of houses, or
otherwise approach the nest. Each species of _hirundo_ drinks as it
flies along, sipping the surface of the water; but the swallow alone
in general washes on the wing, by dropping into a pool for many times
together: in very hot weather house-martins and bank-martins also dip
and wash a little.

The swallow is a delicate songster, and in soft sunny weather sings
both perching and flying; on trees in a kind of concert, and on
chimney-tops: it is also a bold flier, ranging to distant downs and
commons even in windy weather, which the other species seems much to
dislike; nay, even frequenting exposed seaport towns, and making
little excursions over the salt water. Horsemen on the wide downs are
often closely attended by a little party of swallows for miles
together, which plays before and behind them, sweeping around and
collecting all the skulking insects that are roused by the trampling
of the horses' feet: when the wind blows hard, without this expedient,
they are often forced to settle to pick up their lurking prey....

A certain swallow built for two years together on the handles of a
pair of garden shears that were stuck up against the boards in an
outhouse, and therefore must have her nest spoiled whenever that
implement was wanted; and what is stranger still, another bird of the
same species built its nest on the wings and body of an owl that
happened by accident to hang dead and dry from the rafter of a barn.
This owl, with the nest on its wings, and with eggs in the nest, was
brought as a curiosity worthy of the most elegant private museum in
Great Britain.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 45: From "The Natural History of Selborne," being a letter
to the Hon. Daines Barrington.]

ADAM SMITH

     Born in 1723, died in 1790; educated at Glasgow and Oxford;
     lecturer in Edinburgh in 1748; professor in Glasgow in 1751;
     became tutor to the Duke of Buccleuch in 1763; traveled on
     the Continent in 1764-66; lived afterwards in retirement at
     Kirkcaldy; became Commissioner of Customs in Edinburgh in
     1778; elected Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow in
     1787; his "Moral Sentiments" published in 1759; his "Wealth
     of Nations" in 1776.

OF AMBITION MISDIRECTED[46]

To attain to this envied situation, the candidates for fortune too
frequently abandon the paths of virtue; for unhappily, the road which
leads to the one, and that which leads to the other, lie sometimes in
very opposite directions. But the ambitious man flatters himself that,
in the splendid situation to which he advances, he will have so many
means of commanding the respect and admiration of mankind, and will be
enabled to act with such superior propriety and grace, that the luster
of his future conduct will entirely cover or efface the foulness of
the steps by which he arrived at that elevation. In many governments
the candidates for the highest stations are above the law, and if they
can attain the object of their ambition, they have no fear of being
called to account for the means by which they acquired it. They often
endeavor, therefore, not only by fraud and falsehood, the ordinary and
vulgar arts of intrigue and cabal, but sometimes by the perpetration
of the most enormous crimes, by murder and assassination, by rebellion
and civil war, to supplant and destroy those who oppose or stand in
the way of their greatness. They more frequently miscarry than
succeed, and commonly gain nothing but the disgraceful punishment
which is due to their crimes.

But tho they should be so lucky as to attain that wished-for
greatness, they are always most miserably disappointed in the
happiness which they expect to enjoy in it. It is not ease or
pleasure, but always honor, of one kind or another, tho frequently an
honor very ill understood, that the ambitious man really pursues. But
the honor of his exalted station appears, both in his own eyes and in
those of other people, polluted and defiled by the baseness of the
means through which he rose to it. Tho by the profusion of every
liberal expense; tho by excessive indulgence in every profligate
pleasure--the wretched but usual resource of ruined characters; tho by
the hurry of public business, or by the prouder and more dazzling
tumult of war, he may endeavor to efface, both from his own memory and
from that of other people, the remembrance of what he has done, that
remembrance never fails to pursue him. He invokes in vain the dark and
dismal powers of forgetfulness and oblivion. He remembers himself what
he has done, and that remembrance tells him that other people must
likewise remember it. Amidst all the gaudy pomp of the most
ostentatious greatness, amidst the venal and vile adulation of the
great and of the learned, amidst the more innocent tho more foolish
acclamations of the common people, amidst all the pride of conquest
and the triumph of successful war, he is still secretly pursued by the
avenging furies of shame and remorse; and while glory seems to
surround him on all sides, he himself, in his own imagination, sees
black and foul infamy fast pursuing him, and every moment ready to
overtake him from behind.

Even the great Cæsar, tho he had the magnanimity to dismiss his
guards, could not dismiss his suspicions. The remembrance of Pharsalia
still haunted and pursued him. When, at the request of the senate, he
had the generosity to pardon Marcellus, he told that assembly that he
was not unaware of the designs which were carrying on against his
life; but that, as he had lived long enough both for nature and for
glory, he was contented to die, and therefore despised all
conspiracies. He had, perhaps, lived long enough for nature; but the
man who felt himself the object of such deadly resentment, from those
whose favor he wished to gain, and whom he still wished to consider as
his friends, had certainly lived too long for real glory, or for all
the happiness which he could ever hope to enjoy in the love and esteem
of his equals.

II

THE ADVANTAGES OF A DIVISION OF LABOR[47]

Observe the accommodation of the most common artificer or day-laborer
in a civilized and thriving country, and you will perceive that the
number of people, of whose industry a part, tho but a small part, has
been employed in procuring him this accommodation, exceeds all
computation. The woolen coat, for example, which covers the
day-laborer, as coarse and rough as it may appear, is the product of
the joint labor of a great multitude of workmen. The shepherd, the
sorter of the wool, the wool-comber or carder, the dyer, the
scribbler, the spinner, the weaver, the fuller, the dresser, with many
others, must all join their different arts in order to complete even
this homely production.

How many merchants and carriers, besides, must have been employed in
transporting the materials from some of those workmen to others, who
often live in a very distant part of the country! How much commerce
and navigation in particular, how many ship-builders, sailors,
sail-makers, rope-makers, must have been employed in order to bring
together the different drugs made use of by the dyer, which often come
from the remotest corners of the world! What a variety of labor, too,
is necessary in order to produce the tools of the meanest of those
workmen!

To say nothing of such complicated machines as the ship of the sailor,
the mill of the fuller, or even the loom of the weaver, let us
consider only what a variety of labor is requisite in order to form
that very simple machine, the shears with which the shepherd clips the
wool. The miner, the builder of the furnace for smelting the ore, the
feller of the timber, the burner of the charcoal to be made use of in
the smelting-house, the brick-maker, the bricklayer, the workmen who
attend the furnace, the millwright, the forger, the smith, must all of
them join their different arts in order to produce them.

Were we to examine in the same manner all the different parts of his
dress and household furniture, the coarse linen shirt which he wears
next his skin, the shoes which cover his feet, the bed which he lies
on, and all the different parts which compose it, the kitchen-grate at
which he prepares his victuals, the coals which he makes use of for
that purpose, dug from the bowels of the earth, and brought to him,
perhaps, by a long sea and a long land carriage, all the other
utensils of his kitchen, all the furniture of his table, the knives
and forks, the earthen or pewter plates upon which he serves up and
divides his victuals, the different hands employed in preparing his
bread and his beer, the glass window which lets in the heat and the
light, and keeps out the wind and the rain, with all the knowledge and
art requisite for preparing that beautiful and happy invention,
without which these northern parts of the world could scarce have
afforded a very comfortable habitation, together with the tools of all
the different workmen employed in producing those different
conveniences; if we examine, I say, all these things, and consider
what a variety of labor is employed about each of them, we shall be
sensible that, without the assistance and cooperation of many
thousands, the very meanest person in a civilized country could not be
provided, even according to what we very falsely imagine the easy and
simple manner in which he is commonly accommodated. Compared, indeed,
with the more extravagant luxury of the great, his accommodation must
no doubt appear extremely simple and easy; and yet it may be true,
perhaps, that the accommodation of a European prince does not always
so much exceed that of an industrious and frugal peasant, as the
accommodation of the latter exceeds that of many an African king, the
absolute masters of the lives and liberties of ten thousand naked
savages.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 46: From the "Theory of Moral Sentiments."]

[Footnote 47: From "The Wealth of Nations."]

SIR WILLIAM BLACKSTONE

     Born in 1723, died in 1780; professor of Common Law at
     Oxford in 1758; justice in the Court of Common Pleas in
     1770; published his "Commentaries" in 1765-68, eight
     editions appearing in his own lifetime, and innumerable ones
     since.

PROFESSIONAL SOLDIERS IN FREE COUNTRIES[48]

In a land of liberty it is extremely dangerous to make a distinct
order of the profession of arms. In absolute monarchies this is
necessary for the safety of the prince, and arises from the main
principle of their constitution, which is that of governing by fear;
but in free states the profession of a soldier, taken singly and