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I am confident that no boy, who will not | thing as killing a man to cure him of a disbe allured to letters without blows, will temper; when he comes to suffer punishever be brought to any thing with them.ment in that one circumstance, he is brought A great or good mind must necessarily be below the existence of a rational creature, the worse for such indignities; and it is a and is in the state of a brute that moves sad change, to lose of its virtue for the im- only by the admonition of stripes. But since provement of its knowledge. No one who this custom of educating youth by the lash has gone through what they call a great is suffered by the gentry of Great Britain, school, but must remember to have seen I would prevail only that honest heavy lads children of excellent and ingenuous natures, may be dismissed from slavery sooner than (as has afterwards appeared in their man- they are at present, and not whipped on to hood;) I say no man has passed through their fourteenth or fifteenth year, whether this way of education, but must have seen they expect any progress from them or an ingenuous creature expiring with shame, not. Let the child's capacity be forthwith with pale looks, beseeching sorrow, and examined, and he sent to some mechanic silent tears, throw up its honest eyes, and way of life, without respect to his birth, if kneel on its tender knees to an inexorable nature designed him for nothing higher: let blockhead, to be forgiven the false quantity him go before he has innocently suffered, of a word in making a Latin verse. The and is debased into a dereliction of mind child is punished, and the next day he for being what it is no guilt to be, a plain commits a like crime, and so a third with man. I would not here be supposed to the same consequence. I would fain ask have said, that our learned men of either any reasonable man, whether this lad, in robe, who have been whipped at school, the simplicity of his native innocence, full are not still men of noble and liberal minds; of shame, and capable of any impression but I am sure they had been much more from that grace of soul, was not fitter for so than they are, had they never suffered any purpose in this life, than after that that infamy. spark of virtue is extinguished in him, though he is able to write twenty verses in an evening?

Seneca says, after his exalted way of talking, 'As the immortal gods never learnt any virtue, though they are endued with all that is good; so there are some men who have so natural a propensity to what they should follow, that they learn it almost as soon as they hear it. Plants and vegetables are cultivated into the production of finer fruits than they would yield without that care; and yet we cannot entertain hopes of producing a tender conscious spirit into acts of virtue, without the same methods as are used to cut timber, or give new shape to a piece of stone.

It is wholly to this dreadful practice that we may attribute a certain hardiness and ferocity which some men, though liberally educated, carry about them in all their behaviour. To be bred like a gentleman, and punished like a malefactor, must, as we see it does, produce that illiberal sauciness which we see sometimes in men of letters.

The Spartan boy who suffered the fox (which he had stolen and hid under his coat,) to eat into his bowels, I dare say had not half the wit or petulance which we learn at great schools among us: but the glorious sense of honour, or rather fear of shame, which he demonstrated in that action, was worth all the learning in the world without it.

It is, methinks, a very melancholy consideration, that a little negligence can spoil us, but great industry is necessary to improve us; the most excellent natures are soon depreciated, but evil tempers are long before they are exalted into good habits. To help this by punishments, is the same

But though there is so little care, as I have observed, taken, or observation made of the natural strain of men, it is no small comfort to me, as a Spectator, that there is any right value set upon the bona indoles of other animals: as appears by the following advertisement handed about the county of Lincoln, and subscribed by Enos Thomas, a person whom I have not the honour to know, but suppose to be profoundly learned in horseflesh:

'A chesnut horse called Cæsar, bred by James Darcy, esquire, at Sedbury, near Richmond, in the county of York; his granddam was his old royal mare, and got by Blunderbuss, which was got by HemslyTurk, and he got by Mr. Courant's Arabian, which got Mr. Minshul's Jew's-Trump. Mr. Cæsar sold him to a nobleman (coming five years old, when he had but one sweat,) for three hundred guineas. A guinea a leap and trial, and a shilling the man. T.

'ENOS THOMAS.'

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reign of Charles the Second. We then had, | solitude is an unnatural being to us. If the I humbly presume, as good understandings men of good understanding would forget a among us as any now can pretend to. As little of their severity, they would find their for yourself, Mr. Spectator, you seem with account in it: and their wisdom would have the utmost arrogance to undermine the a pleasure in it, to which they are now very fundamentals upon which we con- strangers. It is natural among us when ducted ourselves. It is monstrous to set up men have a true relish of our company and for a man of wit, and yet deny that honour our value, to say every thing with a better in a woman is any thing else but peevish-grace: and there is, without designing it, ness, that inclination is not'* the best rule something ornamental in what men utter of life, or virtue and vice any thing else but before women, which is lost or neglected in health and disease. We had no more to do conversations of men only. Give me leave but to put a lady in a good humour, and all to tell you, sir, it would do you no great we could wish followed of course. Then, harm if you yourself came a little more into again, your Tully, and your discourses of our company: it would certainly cure you another life, are the very bane of mirth and of a certain positive and determining mangood-humour. Pr'ythee do not value thy-ner in which you talk sometimes. In hopes self on thy reason at that exorbitant rate, of your amendment, I am, sir, your gentle and the dignity of human nature; take my reader.' word for it, a setting-dog has as good rea- 'MR. SPECTATOR,-Your professed reson as any man in England. Had you (as gard to the fair sex, may perhaps make by your diurnals one would think you do,) them value your admonitions when they set up for being in vogue in town, you should will not those of other men. I desire you, have fallen in with the bent of passion and sir, to repeat some lectures upon subjects appetite; your songs had then been in every you have now and then in a cursory manpretty mouth in England, and your little distichs had been the maxims of the fair Spectator wholly write upon good-breeding: ner only just touched. I would have a and the witty to walk by: but, alas, sir, and after you have asserted that time and what can you hope for, from entertaining place are to be very much considered in all people with what must needs make them our actions, it will be proper to dwell upon like themselves worse than they did before behaviour at church. On Sunday last a they read you? Had you made it your grave and reverend man preached at our business to describe Corinna charming, church. There was something particular though inconstant, to find something in human nature itself to make Zoilus excuse himself for being fond of her; and to make every man in good commerce with his own reflections, you had done something worthy our applause; but indeed, sir, we shall not commend you for disapproving us. I have a great deal more to say to you, but I shall sum it all up in this one remark. In short, sir, you do not write like a gentleman. I am, sir, your most humble servant.'

in his accent; but without any manner of affectation. This particularity a set of gigglers thought the most necessary thing to be taken notice of in his whole discourse, and made it an occasion of mirth during the whole time of sermon. You should see one of them ready to burst behind a fan, another pointing to a companion in another seat, and a third with an arch composure, as if she would if possible stifle her laughter. There were many gentlemen who looked at them steadfastly, but this they took for ogling and admiring them. There was one of the merry ones in particular, that found out but just then that she had but five fingers, for she fell a reckoning the pretty pieces of ivory over and over again, to find herself employment and not laugh out. Would it not be expedient, Mr. Spectator, that the church-warden should hold up his wand on these occasions, and keep the decency of the place, as a magistrate does the peace in a tumult elsewhere?'

'MR. SPECTATOR,-The other day we were several of us at a tea-table, and according to custom and your own advice had the Spectator read among us. It was that paper wherein you are pleased to treat with great freedom that character which you call a woman's man. We gave up all the kinds you have mentioned, except those who, you say, are our constant visitants. I was upon the occasion commissioned by the company to write to you and tell you, "that we shall not part with the men we have at present, until the men of sense think fit to 'MR. SPECTATOR,-I am a woman's relieve them, and give us their company in man, and read with a very fine lady your their stead. You cannot imagine but that paper, wherein you fall upon us whom you we love to hear reason and good sense bet-envy: what do you think I did? You must ter than the ribaldry we are at present entertained with; but we must have company, and among us very inconsiderable is better than none at all. We are made for the cements of society, and came into the world to create relations amongst mankind; and

* Spect. in folio. In the 8vo. edition of 1712, 'not' was left out.

know she was dressing, and I read the
Spectator to her, and she laughed at the
places where she thought I was touched; I
threw away your moral, and taking up her
girdle, cried out,

'Give me but what this riband bound,
Take all the rest the sun goes round."*

* Waller's verses on a lady's girdle.

She smiled, sir, and said you were a | and affability that familiarized him to my pedant; so say of me what you please, read imagination, and at once dispelled all the Seneca, and quote him against me if you think fit. I am, sir, your humble servant.' T.

No. 159.] Saturday, September 1, 1711.
-Omnem, quæ nunc obducta tuenti
Mortales hebetat visus tibi, et humida circum
Caligat, nubem eripiam.- Virg. Æn. ii. 604.
The cloud, which, intercepting the clear light,
Hangs o'er thy eyes, and blunts thy mortal sight,
I will remove.-

fears and apprehensions with which I approached him. He lifted me from the ground, and taking me by the hand, "Mirza," said he, "I have heard thee in thy soliloquies; follow me.

He then led me to the highest pinnacle of the rock, and placing me on the top of it, "Cast thy eyes eastward," said he, "and tell me what thou seest.""I see," said I, "a huge valley, and a prodigious tide of water rolling through it."- The valley that thou seest," said he, "is the Vale of WHEN I was at Grand Cairo, I picked Misery, and the tide of water that thou up several oriental manuscripts which I seest, is part of the great tide of eternity.' have still by me. Among others, I met with "What is the reason," said I, "that the one entitled, The Visions of Mirza, which tide I see rises out of a thick mist at one I have read over with great pleasure. I end, and again loses itself in a thick mist at intend to give it to the public when I have the other?""What thou seest," said he, no other entertainment for them; and shall" is that portion of eternity which is called begin with the first vision, which I have time, measured out by the sun, and reachtranslated word for word as follows: ing from the beginning of the world to its

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'On the fifth day of the moon, which, consummation."-"Examine now,' said according to the custom of my forefathers, he, "this sea that is bounded with darkness I always keep holy, after having washed at both ends, and tell me what thou discomyself, and offered up my morning devo-verest in it."-"I see a bridge," said I, tions, I ascended the high hills of Bagdat, "standing in the midst of the tide."-"The in order to pass the rest of the day in medi- bridge thou seest," said he, "is human tation and prayer. As I was here airing life, consider it attentively." Upon a more myself on the tops of the mountains, I fell leisurely survey of it, I found that it coninto a profound contemplation on the vanity sisted of three-score and ten entire arches, of human life; and passing from one thought with several broken arches, which added to another, "Surely," said I, "man is but to those that were entire, made up the a shadow, and life a dream." Whilst I number about an hundred. As I was countwas thus musing, I cast my eyes towards ing the arches, the genius told me that this the summit of a rock that was not far from bridge consisted at first of a thousand arches: me, where I discovered one in the habit of but that a great flood swept away the rest, a shepherd, with a little musical instrument and left the bridge in the ruinous condition in his hand. As I looked upon him he ap- I now beheld it. "But tell me farther,' plied it to his lips, and began to play upon said he, "what thou discoverest on it." it. The sound of it was exceeding sweet, "I see multitudes of people passing over and wrought into a variety of tunes that it," said I, "and a black cloud hanging on were inexpressibly melodious, and alto- each end of it." As I looked more attengether different from any thing I had ever tively, I saw several of the passengers heard. They put me in mind of those dropping through the bridge into the great heavenly airs that are played to the de- tide that flowed underneath it; and upon parted souls of good men upon their first farther examination, perceived there were arrival in Paradise, to wear out the im- innumerable trap-doors that lay concealed pressions of the last agonies, and qualify in the bridge, which the passengers no them for the pleasures of that happy place. sooner trod upon, but they fell through My heart melted away in secret raptures. them into the tide, and immediately disap'I had often been told that the rock be- peared. These hidden pit-falls were set fore me was the haunt of a Genius; and that very thick at the entrance of the bridge, so several had been entertained with music that throngs of people no sooner broke who had passed by it, but never heard that through the cloud, but many of them fell the musician had before made himself visi-into them. They grew thinner towards ble. When he had raised my thoughts by the middle, but multiplied and lay closer those transporting airs which he played, to together towards the end of the arches that taste the pleasures of his conversation, as I were entire. looked upon him like one astonished, he beckoned to me, and by the waving of his hand directed me to approach the place where he sat. I drew near with that reverence which is due to a superior nature; and as my heart was entirely subdued by the captivating strains I had heard, I fell down at his feet and wept. The genius smiled upon me with a look of compassion

"There were indeed some persons, but their number was very small, that continued a kind of hobbling march on the broken arches, but fell through one after another, being quite tired and spent with so long a walk.

'I passed some time in the contemplation of this wonderful structure, and the great variety of objects which it presented. "My

heart was filled with a deep melancholy to see several dropping unexpectedly in the midst of mirth and jollity, and catching at every thing that stood by them to save themselves. Some were looking up towards the heavens in a thoughtful posture, and in the midst of a speculation stumbled and fell out of sight. Multitudes were very busy in the pursuit of bubbles that glittered in their eyes and danced before them; but often when they thought themselves within the reach of them, their footing failed and down they sunk. In this confusion of objects, I observed some with scimitars in their hands, and others with urinals, who ran to and fro upon the bridge, thrusting several persons on trap-doors which did not seem to lie in their way, and which they might have escaped had they not been thus forced upon

them.

The genius seeing me indulge myself on this melancholy prospect, told me I had dwelt long enough upon it. "Take thine eyes off the bridge," said he, "and tell me if thou yet seest any thing thou dost not comprehend." Upon looking up, "What mean," said I, "those great flights of birds that are perpetually hovering about the bridge, and settling upon it from time to time? I see vultures, harpies, ravens, cormorants, and among many other feathered creatures several little winged boys, that perch in great numbers upon the middle arches.""These," said the genius," are Envy, Avarice, Superstition, Despair, Love, with the like cares and passions that infest human life."

singing birds, falling waters, human voices, and musical instruments. Gladness grew in me upon the discovery of so delightful a scene. I wished for the wings of an eagle, that I might fly away to those happy seats; but the genius told me there was no passage to them except through the gates of death that I saw opening every moment upon the bridge.

The islands," said he, "that lie so fresh and green before thee, and with which the whole face of the ocean appears spotted as far as thou canst see, are more in number than the sands on the sea-shore; there are myriads of islands behind those which thou here discoverest, reaching farther than thine eye, or even thine imagination can extend itself. These are the mansions of good men after death, who according to the degree and kinds of virtue in which they excelled, are distributed among these several islands, which abound with pleasures of different kinds and degrees, suitable to the relishes and perfections of those who are settled in them; every island is a Paradise accommodated to its respective inhabitants. Are not these, O Mirza, habitations worth contending for? Does life appear miserable, that gives thee opportunities of earning such a reward? Is death to be feared, that will convey thee to so happy an existence? Think not man was made in vain who has such an eternity reserved for him." I gazed with inexpressible pleasure on these happy islands. At length, said I, "Show me now, I beseech thee, the secrets that lie hid under those dark clouds which cover the ocean on the other side of the rock of adamant." The genius making me no answer, I turned me about to address myself to him a second time, but found that he had left me; I then turned again to the vision which I had been so long contemplating: but, instead of the rolling tide, the arched bridge, and the happy islands, I saw nothing but the long, hollow valley of Bagdat, with oxen, sheep, and camels, grazing upon the sides of it. The end of the First Vision of Mirza.

'I here fetched a deep sigh. "Alas," said I, "man was made in vain! how is he given away to misery and mortality! tortured in life, and swallowed up in death!" The genius being moved with compassion towards me, bid me quit so uncomfortable a prospect. "Look no more," said he, "on man in the first stage of his existence, in his setting out for eternity; but cast thine eye on that thick mist into which the tide bears the several generations of mortals that fall into it." I directed my sight as I was ordered, and (whether or no the good genius strengthened it with any supernatural force, or dissipated part of the mist No. that was before too thick for the eye to penetrate,) I saw the valley opening at the farther end, and spreading forth into an immense ocean, that had a huge rock of adamant running through the midst of it, and dividing it into two equal parts. The clouds still rested on one half of it, insomuch that I could discover nothing in it: but the other appeared to me a vast ocean planted with innumerable islands, that were covered with fruits and flowers, and interwoven with a thousand little shining seas that ran among them. I could see persons dressed in glorious habits with garlands upon their heads, passing among the trees, lying down by the sides of fountains, or resting on beds of flowers; and could hear a confused harmony of

160.]

C.

Monday, September 3, 1711.

-Cui mens divinior, atque os
Magna sonaturum, des nominis hujus honorem.
Hor. Lib. 1. Sat. iv. 43.

On him confer the Poet's sacred name,
Whose lofty voice declares the heav'nly flame.

THERE is no character more frequently given to a writer, than that of being a ge nius. I have heard many a little sonneteer called a fine genius. There is not an heroic scribbler in the nation, that has not his admirers who think him a great genius; and as for your smatterers in tragedy, there is scarce a man among them who is not cried up by one or other for a prodigious genius.

My design in this paper is to consider what is properly a great genius, and to

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throw some thoughts together on so un- [ exactness in our compositions. Our councommon a subject.

Among great geniuses those few draw the admiration of all the world upon them, and stand up as the prodigies of mankind, who by the mere strength of natural parts, and without any assistance of art or learning, have produced works that were the delight of their own times, and the wonder of posterity. There appears something nobly wild and extravagant in these great natural geniuses that is infinitely more beautiful than all the turn and polishing of what the French call a bel esprit, by which they would express a genius refined by conversation, reflection, and the reading of the most polite authors. The greatest genius which runs through the arts and sciences, takes a kind of tincture from them, and falls unavoidably into imitation.

Many of these great natural geniuses that were never disciplined and broken by rules of art, are to be found among the ancients, and in particular among those of the more eastern parts of the world. Homer has innumerable flights that Virgil was not able to reach, and in the Old Testament we find several passages more elevated and sublime than any in Homer. At the same time that we allow a greater and more daring genius to the ancients, we must own that the greatest of them very much failed in, or, if you will, that they were much above the nicety and correctness of the moderns. In their similitudes and allusions, provided there was a likeness, they did not much trouble themselves about the decency of the comparison: thus Solomon resembles the nose of his beloved to the tower of Lebanon which looketh towards Damascus; as the coming of a thief in the night, is a similitude of the same kind in the New Testament. It would be endless to make collections of this nature; Homer illustrates one of his heroes encompassed with the enemy, by an ass in a field of corn that has his sides belaboured by all the boys of the village without stirring a foot for it; and another of them tossing to and fro in his bed and burning with resentment, to a piece of flesh broiled on the coals. This particular failure in the ancients, opens a large field of raillery to the little wits, who can laugh at an indecency, but not relish the sublime in these sorts of writings. The present emperor of Persia, conformable to this eastern way of thinking, amidst a great many pompous titles, denominates himself the sun of glory,' and 'the nutmeg of delight.' In short, to cut off all cavilling against the ancients, and particularly those of the warmer climates, who had most heat and life in their imagination, we are to consider that the rule of observing what the French call the bienseance in an allusion, has been found out of later years, and in the colder regions of the world; where we would make some amends for our want of force and spirit, by a scrupulous nicety and

tryman Shakspeare was a remarkable in-
stance of this first kind of great geniuses.
I cannot quit this head without observing
that Pindar was a great genius of the first
class, who was hurried on by a natural fire
and impetuosity to vast conceptions of
things and noble sallies of imagination. At
the same time, can any thing be more ridi-
culous than for men of a sober and mode-
rate fancy to imitate this poet's way of
writing in those monstrous compositions
which go among us under the name of Pin-
darics? When I see people copying works,
which, as Horace has represented them,
are singular in their kind, and inimitable:
when I see men following irregularities by
rule, and by the little tricks of art straining
after the most unbounded flights of nature,
I cannot but apply to them that passage in
Terence:

-Incerta hæc si tu postules
Ratione certa facere, nihilo plus agas,
Quam si des operam, ut cum ratione insanias.
Eun. Act 1. Sc. 1.
You may as well pretend to be mad and in your

senses at the same time, as to think of reducing these
uncertain things to any certainty by reason.

In short, a modern Pindaric writer compared with Pindar, is like a sister among the Camisars* compared with Virgil's Sibyl: there is the distortion, grimace, and outward figure, but nothing of that divine impulse which raises the mind above itself, and makes the sounds more than human.

There is another kind of great geniuses which I shall place in a second class, not as I think them inferior to the first, but only for distinction's sake, as they are of a different kind. This second class of great geniuses are those that have formed themselves by rules, and submitted the greatness of their natural talents to the corrections and restraints of art. Such among the Greeks were Plato and Aristotle; among the Romans Virgil and Tully; among the English Milton and Sir Francis Bacon.

* A particular account of these people and the strange fortune of their leader, is to be found in Voltaire's "Siecle de Louis XIV." A few of them made their appearance in this country, in the year 1707, of whom Smollet gives the following account:

"Three Camisars, or protestants, from the Cevennois,

having made their escape, and repaired to London, ac quired about this time the appellation of French prophets, from their enthusiastic gesticulations, effusions, and convulsions; and even formed a sect of their countrymen. The French refugees, scandalized at their behaviour, and authorized by the bishop of London, as superior of the French congregations, resolved to inquire into the mission of these pretended prophets, whose names were Elias Marion, John Cavalier, and Durand Eage. They were declared impostors and counterfeits. Notwithstanding this decision, which was confirmed by the bishops, they continued their assemblies in Soho, under the countenance of Sir Richard Bulkeley and John Lacy. They reviled the ministers of the established church: they denounced judgments against the city of London, and the whole British nation; and published their predictions composed of unintelligible jargon. Then they were prosecuted at the expense of the French churches, as disturbers of the public peace and false prophets. They were sentenced to pay a fine of twenty marks each, and stand twice on a scaffold, with papers on their breasts, denoting their offence: a sentence which was executed accordingly at Charing Cross and the Royal-Exchange."

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