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We did so from seven of the clock until eleven; and now I am come hither and, after the manner of the wise Pythagoras, begin to reflect upon the passages of the day. I remember nothing but that I am bruised to death; and as it is my way to write down all the good things I have heard in the last conversation, to furnish my paper, I can from this only tell you my sufferings and my bangs.

I named Pythagoras just now, and I protest to you, as he believed men after death entered into other species, I am now and then tempted to think other animals enter into men, and could name several on two legs that never discover any sentiments above what is common with the species of a lower kind; as we see in these bodily wits with whom I was to-night, whose parts consist in strength. and activity; but their boisterous mirth gives me great impatience for the return of such happiness as I enjoyed in a conversation last week. Among others in that company we had Florio, who never interrupted any man living when he was. speaking; or ever ceased to speak but others lamented that he had done. His discourse ever rises from the fullness of the matter before him and not from ostentation or triumph of his understanding; for though he seldom delivers what he need fear being repeated, he speaks without having that end in view; and his forbearance of calumny or bitterness is owing rather to his good nature than his discretion; for which reason he is esteemed a gentleman perfectly qualified for conversation, in whom a general good will to mankind takes off the necessity of caution and circumspection.

We had at the same time that evening the best sort of companion that can be, a good-natured old man. This person in the company of young men meets with

veneration for his benevolence; and is not only valued for the good qualities of which he is master but reaps an acceptance from the pardon he gives to other men's faults: and the ingenuous sort of men with whom he converses have so just a regard for him that he rather is an example than a check to their behavior. For this reason, as Senecio never pretends to be a man of pleasure before youth, so young men never set up for wisdom before Senecio; so that you never meet where he is those monsters of conversation who are grave or gay above their years. He never converses but with followers of nature and good sense, where all that is uttered is only the effect of a communicable temper, and not of emulation to excel their companions; all desire of superiority being a contradiction to that spirit which makes a just conversation, the very essence of which is mutual good will. Hence it is that I take it for a rule that the natural, and not the acquired man, is the companion. Learning, wit, gallantry, and good breeding are all but subordinate qualities in society, and are of no value but as they are subservient to benevolence and tend to a certain manner of being or appearing equal to the rest of the company; for conversation is composed of an assembly of men as they are men and not as they are distinguished by fortune: therefore he who brings his quality with him into conversation should always pay the reckoning; for he came to receive homage and not to meet his friends. But the din about my ears from the clamor of the people I was with this evening has carried me beyond my intended purpose, which was to explain upon the order of merry fellows; but I think I may pronounce of them, as I heard good Senecio, with a spice of the wit of the last age, say, viz.. "That a merry fellow is the saddest fellow in the world."

TRAVELERS' MOODS

from a foolish maid's calling me "the old

[Tatler, No. 192. Addison. Saturday, gentleman," I cannot tell. In short, there

July 1, 1710]

Tecum vivere amem, tecum obeam libens.1
-Horace.

From my own Apartment, June 30 Some years since, I was engaged with a coachful of friends to take a journey as far as the Land's End. We were very well pleased with one another the first day; every one endeavoring to recommend himself by his good humor and complaisance to the rest of the company. This good correspondence did not last long; one of our party was soured the very first evening by a plate of butter which had not been melted to his mind and which spoiled his temper to such a degree that he continued upon the fret to the end of our journey. A second fell off from his good humor the next morning, for no other reason that I could imagine but because I chanced to step into the /coach before him and place myself on the shady side. This, however, was but my own private guess; for he did not mention a word of it, nor indeed of any thing else for three days following. The rest of our company held out very near half the way, when, on a sudden, Mr. Sprightly fell asleep; and, instead of endeavoring to divert and oblige us, as he had hitherto done, carried himself with an unconcerned, careless, drowsy behavior, until we came to our last stage. There were three of us who still held up our heads and did all we could to make our journey agreeable; but, to my shame be it spoken, about three miles on this side Exeter, I was taken with an unaccountable fit of sullenness, that hung upon me for above threescore miles; whether it were for want of respect, or from an accidental tread upon my foot, or With thee I would gladly live, with thee gladly

meet death.

was but one who kept his good humor to the Land's End.

There was another coach that went along with us, in which I likewise observed that there were many secret jealousies, heart-burnings, and animosities: for when we joined companies at night, I could not but take notice that the passengers neglected their own company and studied how to make themselves esteemed by us, who were altogether strangers to them; until at length they grew so well acquainted with us that they liked us as little as they did one another. When I reflect upon this journey, I often fancy it to be a picture of human life, in respect to the several friendships, comtracts, and alliances that are made and dissolved in the several periods of it. The most delightful and most lasting enbetween man and woman; and yet upon gagements are generally those which pass what trifles are they weakened or entirely broken! Sometimes the parties fly asunder even in the midst of courtship, honey-month. Some separate before the and sometimes grow cool in the very first child, and some after the fifth; others continue good until thirty, others until forty; while some few, whose souls are of a happier make, and better fitted to one another, travel on together to the end of their journey in a continual intercourse of kind offices, and mutual endearments.

When we therefore choose our companions for life, if we hope to keep both them and ourselves in good humor to the last stage of it, we must be extremely careful in the choice we make, as well as in the conduct on our part. When the persons to whom we join ourselves can stand an examination and bear the scrutiny; when they mend upon our acquaintance with them and discover new

beauties the more we search into their characters; our love will naturally rise in proportion to their perfections.

But because because there are very few possessed of such accomplishments of body and mind, we ought to look after those qualifications both in ourselves and others, which are indispensably necessary towards this happy union and which are in the power of every one to acquire, or, at least, to cultivate and improve. These, in my opinion, are cheerfulness and constancy. A cheerful temper, joined with innocence, will make beauty attractive, knowledge delightful, and wit goodnatured. It will lighten sickness, poverty, and affliction; convert ignorance into an amiable simplicity; and render deformity itself agreeable.

Constancy is natural to persons of even tempers and uniform dispositions; and may be acquired by those of the greatest fickleness, violence, and passion, who consider seriously the terms of union on which they come together, the mutual interest in which they are engaged, with all the motives that ought to incite their tenderness and compassion toward those who have their dependence upon them and are embarked with them for life in the same state of happiness or misery. Constancy, when it growes in the mind upon considerations of this nature, becomes a moral virtue and a kind of goodnature that is not subject to any change of health, age, fortune, or any of those accidents which are apt to unsettle the best dispositions that are founded rather in constitution than in reason. Where such a constancy as this is wanting, the most inflamed passion may fall away into coldness and indifference, and the most melting tenderness degenerate into hatred and aversion. I shall conclude this paper with a story that is very well known in the north of England.

that had several passengers on board was cast away upon a rock and in so great danger of sinking that all who were in it endeavored to save themselves as well as they could; though only those who could swim well had a bare possibility of doing it. Among the passengers there were two women of fashion, who, seeing themselves in such a disconsolate condition, begged for their husbands not to leave them. One of them chose rather to die with his wife than to forsake her; the other, though he was moved with the utmost compassion for his wife, told her, "that for the good of their children, it was better one of them should live than both perish." By a great piece of good luck, next to a miracle, when one of our good men had taken the last and long farewell in order to save himself and the other held in his arms the person that was dearer to him than life, the ship was preserved. It is with a secret sorrow and vexation of mind that I must tell the sequel of the story and let my reader know that this faithful pair who were ready to have died in each other's arms, about three years after their escape, upon some trifling disgust, grew to a coldness at first and at length fell out to such a degree that they left one another and parted forever. The other couple lived together in an uninterrupted friendship and felicity; and, what was remarkable, the husband, whom the shipwreck had like to have separated from his wife, died a few months after her, not being able to survive the loss of her.

I must confess, there is something in the changeableness and inconstancy of human nature that very often both dejects and terrifies me. Whatever I am at present, I tremble to think what I may be. While I find this principle in me, how can I assure myself that I shall be always true to my God, my friend, or myself? In short, without constancy there is neither

About thirty years ago, a packet-boat love, friendship, or virtue, in the world.

THE SPECTATOR

DESCRIPTION OF THE WRITER

[Spectator, No. 1. Addison. Thursday, March 1, 1710-11]

Non fumum ex fulgore, sed ex fumo dare lucem Cogitat, ut speciosa dehinc miracula promat.1 -Horace.

I have observed, that a reader seldom peruses a book with pleasure, till he knows whether the writer of it be a black or a fair man, of a mild or choleric disposition, married or a bachelor, with other particulars of the like nature, that conduce very much to the right understanding of an author. To gratify this curiosity, which is so natural to a reader, I design this paper and my next, as prefatory discourses to my following writings, and shall give some account in them of the several persons that are engaged in this work. As the chief trouble of compiling, digesting, and correcting will fall to my share, I must do myself the justice to open the work with my own history.

I was born to a small hereditary estate, which, according to the tradition of the village where it lies, was bounded by the same hedges and ditches in William the Conqueror's time that it is at present, and has been delivered down from father to son, whole and entire, without the loss or acquisition of a single field or meadow, during the space of six hundred years. There runs a story in the family, that when my mother was gone with child of me absent three months, she dreamt that she was brought to bed of a judge. Whether this might proceed from a lawsuit which was then depending in the family, or my father's being a justice of the peace, I cannot determine; for I am

He thinks not how to give you smoke from light, But light from smoke, that he may draw his bright Wonders forth after.

(Tr. Ben Johnson)

not so vain as to think it presaged any dignity that I should arrive at in my future life, though that was the interpretation which the neighborhood put upon it. The gravity of my behavior at my very first appearance in the world, and all the time that I sucked, seemed to favor my mother's dream: for, as she has often told I threw away my rattle before I me, was two months old, and would not make use of my coral until they had taken away the bells from it.

As for the rest of my infancy, there being nothing in it remarkable, I shall pass it over in silence. I find, that during my nonage, I had the reputation of a very sullen youth, but was always a favorite of my school-master, who used to say, "that my parts were solid, and would wear well." I had not been long at the university, before I distinguished myself by a most profound silence; for during the space of eight years, excepting in the public exercises of the college, I scarce uttered the quantity of an hundred words; and indeed do not remember that I ever spoke three sentences together in my whole life. Whilst I was in this learned body, I applied myself with so much diligence to my studies, that there are very few celebrated books, either in the learned or the modern tongues, which I am not acquainted with.

Upon the death of my father, I was resolved to travel into foreign countries, and therefore left the university, with the character of an odd unaccountable fellow, that had a great deal of learning, if I would but show it. An insatiable thirst after knowledge carried me into all the countries of Europe, in which there was anything new or strange to be seen; nay, to such a degree was my curiosity raised, that having read the controversies of some great men concerning the antiquities of Egypt, I made a voyage to Grand Cairo, on purpose to take the measure of a

pyramid: and as soon as I had set myself right in that particular, returned to my native country with great satisfaction.

I have passed my latter years in this city, where I am frequently seen in most public places, though there are not above half a dozen of my select friends that know me; of whom my next paper shall give a more particular account. There is no place of general resort wherein I do not often make my appearance; sometimes I am seen thrusting my head into a round of politicians at Will's, and listening with great attention to the narratives that are made in those little circular audiences. Sometimes I smoke a pipe at Child's, and whilst I seem attentive to nothing but the Postman, overhear the conversation of every table in the room. I appear on Sunday nights at St. James's coffee-house, and sometimes join the little committee of politics in the inner-room, as one who comes there to hear and improve. My face is likewise very well known at the Grecian, the Cocoa-tree, and in the theaters both of Drury-lane and the Hay-market. I have been taken for a merchant upon the exchange for above these ten years, and sometimes pass for a Jew in the assembly of stock-jobbers at Jonathan's. In short, wherever I see a cluster of people, I always mix with them, though I never open my lips but in my own club.

Thus I live in the world rather as a Spectator of mankind, than as one of the species; by which means I have made myself a speculative statesman, soldier, merchant, and artisan, without ever meddling with any practical part in life. I am very well versed in the theory of a husband, or a father, and can discern the errors in the economy, business, and diversion of others, better than those who are engaged in them; as standers-by dis

1 This coffee house was the special resort of stockbrokers and business men.

cover blots, which are apt to escape those who are in the game. I never espoused any party with violence, and am resolved to observe an exact neutrality between the Whigs and Tories, unless I shall be forced to declare myself by the hostilities of either side. In short, I have acted in all the parts of my life as a looker on, which is the character I intend to preserve in this paper.

I have given the reader just so much of my history and character, as to let him see I am not altogether unqualified for the business I have undertaken. As for other particulars in my life and adventures, I shall insert them in following papers, as I shall see occasion. In the meantime, when I consider how much I have seen, read, and heard, I begin to blame my own taciturnity; and since I have neither time nor inclination to communicate the fullness of my heart in speech, I am resolved to do it in writing, and to print myself out, if possible, before I die. I have been often told by my friends, that it is pity so many useful discoveries which I have made should be in the possession of a silent man. For this reason, therefore, I shall publish a sheetful of thoughts every morning, for the benefit of my contemporaries; and if I can any way contribute to the diversion or improvement of the country in which I live, I shall leave it when I am summoned out of it, with the secret satisfaction of thinking that I have not lived in vain.

There are three very material points which I have not spoken to in this paper, and which, for several important reasons, I must keep to myself, at least for some time: I mean, an account of my name, my age, and my lodgings. I must confess, I would gratify my reader in anything that is reasonable; but as for these three particulars, though I am sensible 2 Exposed pieces in backgammon,

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