the length of a Lady's tail. I know your delight is in minute defcription; and this I am unhappily di'qualified from furnishing; yet, upon the whole, I fancy it will be no way comparable to IT the magnificence of our late Emperor Whangti's proceffion when he was married to the moon, at which Fum Hoam himself prefided in perfon. Adieu. LETTER CVI. TO THE SAME. T was formerly the custom here, when men of diftin&tion died, for their furviving acquaintance to throw each a Aight prefent into the grave. Several things of little value were made use of for that purpofe; perfumes, reliques, fpices, bitter herbs, camomile, wormwood, and veries. This cuttom, how ever, is almoft difcontinued; and nothing but veries alone are now lavished on fuch occafions; an oblation which they fuppofe may be interred with the dead without any injury to the living. Upon the death of the great, therefore, the poets and undertakers are fure of employment. While one provides the long cloak, black staff, and mourning coach; the other produces the paforal or elegy, the monody or apotheofis. The nobility need be under no apprehenfions, but die as fait as they think proper; the poet and undertaker are ready to fupply them; these can find metaphorical tears and family efcutcheons at half an hour's warning; and when the one has foberly laid the body in the grave, the other is ready to fix it figura tively among the stars. There are feveral ways of being poetically forrowful on fuch occafions. The bard is now fome penfive youth of icience, who fits deploring among the tombs; again he is Thyrlis, complaining in a circle of harmless theep. Now Britannia fits upon her own shore, and gives a loose to maternal tendernels; at another time, Parnallus, even the mountain Parnaffus, gives way to forrow, and is bathed in tears of diftrefs. But the moft ufual manner is this: Damon meets Menalcas, who has got a moft gloomy countenance. The hep herd afks his friend whence that look et diftrets? to which the other replies, that Pollio is no more. If that be the • cafe then, cries Damon, let us retire to yonder bower at fome distance off, where the cypress and the jeffamine add fragrance to the breeze; and let us weep alternately for Pollio, the friend of thepherds, and the patron of every mufe. Ah,' returns his fellow thepherd, what think you rather of that grotto by the fountain fide? the murmuring fiream will help to affit our complaints, and a nightingale, ⚫ on a neighbouring tree, will join her voice to the concert!' When the place is thus fettled, they begin: the brook stands ft to hear their lamentations; the cows forget to graze; and the very tigers fart from the foreft with fympathetic concern. By the tombs of our ances tors, my dear Fum, I am quite unaffected in all this diftrefs: the whole is liquid laudanum to my fpirits; and a tiger of common fenfibility has twenty times more tenderness than I. But though I could never weep with the complaining thepherd, yet I am fometimes induced to pity the poet, whofe trade is thus to make demi-gods and heroes for a dinner. There is not in nature a more difmal figure than a man who sits down to premeditated flattery; every ftanza be writes tacitly reproaches the meannefs of his occupation, till at last his ftupidity becomes more upid, and his dullness more diminu tive. I am amazed therefore that none have yet found out the fecret of flattering the worthless, and yet of preferving a fafe confcience. I have often wished for fome method by which a man might da himself and his deceased patron juftice, without being under the hateful reproach of felf-conviction. After long loca bration, I have hit upon fuch an expedient, and fend you the fpecimen of a poem upon the decease of a great man, in which the flattery is perfeâly fine, and yet the poet perfectly inna cent. ON bility, and then act as the conjuncture imay require. The English; however, exert a different spirit in fuch circum ftances; they first act, and, when too late, begin to examine. From a knowledge of this difpofition, there are feveral here who make it their business to frame new reports at every convenient interval, all tending to denounce ruin both on their cotemporaries and their pofterity. This denunciation is eagerly caught up by the public; away they fling to propagate the diftrefs; fell out at one place, buy in at another, grumble at their governors, fhout in mobs; and When they have thus, for fome time, behaved like fools, fit down coolly to argue and talk wifdom, to puzzle each other with fyllogifm, and prepare for the next report that prevails, which is always attended with the fame fuccefs. Thus are they ever riting above one report only to fink into another. They refemble a dog in a well, pawing to get free. When he has raifed his upper parts above water, and every spectator Imagines him difengaged, his lower parts drag him down again, and fink him to the nofe; he makes new efforts to emerge, and every effort increasing his weakness, only tends to fink him the deeper. There are fome here, who, I am told, make a tolerable fubfiftence by the credulity of their countryment as they find the public fond of blood, wounds, and death, they contrive political ruins fuited so every month in the year. This month the people are to be eaten up by next by the foldiers, defigned to beat the French back: now the people are going to jump down the gulph of luxury; and now nothing but an herring fubfcription can fish them up again. Time paffes on; the report proves false; new circumftances produce new changes; but the people never change, they are perfevering in folly. In other countries those boding politicians would be left to fret over their own fchemes alone, and grow fplenetic without hopes of infecting others: but England feems to be the very region where fpleen delights to dwell; a man not only can give an unbounded scope to the diforder in himself, but may, if he pleases, propagate it over the whole kingdom, with a certainty of fuccefs. He has only to cry out, That the govern ment, the government is all wrong; that their schemes are leading to rain; that Britons are no more: every good mem ber of the commonwealth thinks it his duty, in fuch a cafe, to deplore the univerfal decadence with fympathetic forrow, and, by fancying the conftitution in a decay, abfolutely to impair it's vigour. This people would laugh at my fimplicity, hould I advise them to be lefs fanguine in harbouring gloomy predictions, and examine coolly before they attempted to complain. I have just heard a story, which, though tranfacted in a private family, ferves very well to defcribe the behaviour of the whole nation, in cafes of threatened calamity. Z A9 KNOWING you to be very rich, and finding myself to be very poor, I think proper to inform you, that I have learned the fecret of poisoning man, woman, and child, without danger of detection. Don't be unealy, Sir; you may take your choice of being poisoned in a fortnight, or poisoned in a month, or poisoned in fix weeks; you shall have full time to fettle all your affairs, Though I'm poor, I love to do things like a gentleman. But, Sir, you must die; I have determined it within my own breast that you must die. Blood, Sir, blood is my trade; fo I could with you would this day fix weeks take leave of your friends, wife, and family, for I cannot poffibly allow you longer time, To convince you more certainly of the power of my art, by which you may know I speak truth, take this letter; when you have read it, tear off the feal, fold it up, and give it to your favourite Dutch mastiff that fits by the fire, he will fwallow it, Sir, like a butter'd toast. In three hours four minutes after he has 1 า taken it, he will attempt to bite off his own tongue, and half an hour after burst afunder in twenty pieces. Blood, blood, blood! fo no more at present from, Sir, your most obedient, most devoted humble fervant to command till death. You may eafily imagine the confternation into which this letter threw the whole good-natured family. The poor man, to whom it was addreffed, was the more furprized, as not knowing how he could merit fuch inveterate ma lice. All the friends of the family were. convened; it was miverfally agreed, that it was a molt terrible affair, and that the govrenment should be folicited to offer a reward and a pardon: a fellow of this kind would go on poisoning family after family, and it was impor fable to say where the destruction would end. In pursuance of thefe determinations the government was applied to ftrict fearch was made after the incendiary, but all in vain. At last, there fore, they recollected that the experi ment was not yet tried upon the dog: the Dutch mastiff was brought up, and placed in the midst of the friends and relations, the feal was torn off, the pac quer folded up with care, and foon they found, to the great furprize of sall that the dog would not eat the letters Adieu. ↑ som pre 14 travellers, who have penetrated any con fiderable way caliward into Afia. They have been influenced either by motives of commerce or piety; and their accounts are fuch as might reasonably be expect ed from men of very narrow or very prejudiced education, the dictates of fur perftition, or the refult of ignorance. Is it not furprizing, that in fuch a variety of adventurers not one fingle philofopher fhould be found; for as to the travels of Gemelli, the learned are long agreed that the whole is but an imposture? There is scarce any country, how rude or uncultivated foever, where the inhabitants are not poffeffed of fome peeuliar fecrets, either in nature or art, which might be transplanted with fact the natives extract a strong fpirit from milk, which is a fecret probably uns known to the chymists of Europe. In the most favage parts of India, they are poffeffed of the fecret of dying vegetable fubitanees fcarlet; and of refning lead into a metal which, for hardness and colour, is little inferior to filver; not one of which fecrets but would of En rope make a man's fortune. The power of the Afiatics in producing winds, or bringing down rain, the Europeans are apt to treat as fabolous, because they have no inftances of the like nature among themselves; but they would have treated the fecrets of gunpowder, and the mariner's compafs, in the same mannery had they been told the Chinese used fuch Of all the English philofophers I moft attempt to deceive others. The merchants tell us perhaps the price of different commodities, the methods of baling them up, and the propereft manner for an European to preferve his health in the country. The miffionary, on the other hand, informs us with what pleasure the country to which he was fent embraced Christianity, and the numbers he converted; what methods he took to keep Lent in a region where there was no fish, or the shifts he made to celebrate the rites of his religion in places where there was neither bread nor wines fuch accounts, with the usual appendage of marriages and funerals, infcriptions, rivers, and mountains, make up the whole of an European traveller's diary; but as to all the fecrets of which the inhabitants are poffeffed, thofe are univerfally attributed to magic; and when the traveller can give no other account of the wonders he fees performed, he very contentedly afcribes them to the power of the devil, -There is probably no country fo bar I never confider this fubject, without being furprized how none of those focieties, fo laudably established in Eng land for the promotion of arts and learning, have never thought of fending one of their members into the most eastern parts of Afia to make what difcoveries he was able. To be convinced of the utility of fuch an undertaking, let them but read the relations of their own travel lers. It will be there found, that they are as often deceived themfelves as they the English chymist, that if every artist would but difcover what new observations occurred to him in the exercife of his trade, philofophy would thence gain innumerable improvements. It may be obferved, with still greater juftice, that if the useful knowledge of every coun try, howsoever barbarous, was gleaned by a judicious obferver, the advantages would be inestimable. Are there not, even in Europe, many useful inventions known or practifed but in one place? The inftrument, as example, for cutting down corn in Germany, is much more handy and expeditious, in my opinion, than the fickle used in England. The cheap and expeditious manner of making vinegar, without previous fermentation, is known only in a part of France. If fuch difcoveries, therefore, remain ftill to be known at home, what funds of knowledge might not be collected in countries yet unexplored, or only paffed through by ignorant travellers in hafty caravans! run tua it The caution with which foreigners are received in Afia, may be alledged as an objection to such a defign. But how readily have feveral European merchants ́ found admiflion into regions the most fufpecting, under the character of Sanjapins, or Northern pilgrims; to fuch not even China itself denies access. To ferl out a traveller, properly qualified qualified for thefe purposes, might be an object of national concern; it would infome measure repair the breaches made by ambition, and might fhew that there were fill fore who boasted a greater naine than that of patriots, who profefied (bemfelves lovers of men. The Only difficulty would remain in chufing a proper perion, for fo arduous an en-, terprize. He should be a man of a phi-, lofophical turn, one apt to deduce con fequences of general utility from particular occurrences; neither (wollen with pride, ner hardened by prejudice, nei [29% :&W Jacq £ 28 vast g LETTER CIX. Adieu. J dar; I therefore discontinued this, mex 2 ' fifteen hundred of these moved off in a day. I take the author of this pamphlet, either for title, preface, NE of the principal talks I had proposed to myself, on my arrival here, was to become acquainted with the names and coa acters of those now living, who, as scholars or wits had acquired the greatest hare of reputation, In order to fucceed in this defign, Ifan, cied the forest method would be to be, gin my enquiry among the ignorant, judging that his fame would be greatelt, which was loud enough to be heard by the vulgar. Thus predisposed, I be gan the fearch; but only went in queft of difappointment and perplexity. found every district had a peculiar fa mous man of it's own. Here the story-plan, body, or index, to be the comtelling fhoemaker had engrafted the ad. miration on one fide of the freet, while the bellman, who excelleth at a catch, was in quiet poffeffion of the other. At: one end of a lane, the fexton was re.. garded as the greatest man alive, but I had not travelled half, it's length, till I found an enthusiast teacher had divided. his reputation, My, landlady perceive ing my defign, was kind enough to offer me ber advice in this fair. It was true, the pbferved, that he was no judge, but the knew what pleafed her felf; and if I would rest upon her judgment, hould-fet down Tom Collins, as the molt ingenious man in the world; for Tom was able to take off all mankind, and imitate, befides, a fow and pigs to perfection. I now perceived, that taking my ftandard of reputation among the vulgar would fwell my catalogue of great names above the size of a Court Calen pleated hand in England. I found it was vain to profecute my enquiry, where my inforiner, appeared fo incompetent a judge of merit; fo paying for. the Young Attorney's Guide, which good manners obliged me to buy, I walked off, n My pursuit after famous men now. brought me into a print-shop. Here thought I the painter, only reflectan the public veice. As every man who ♫ deferved it had formerly bis, ftatue placed up in the Roman forum, fo•here, probably, the pictures of norę pur fuch as me it a place in our affec tions are held up for public fale.” But guels my furprize when I came to ex amine, this depolitary, of noted faces i all diftinctions were levelled here, as in the grave; and I could not but regard it as the catacon b of real merit! The brick duft man took up as much reci as the truncheoned hero, and the judge was |
