The Tatler Volume Iii Part 37

[Footnote 309: See Nos. 30, 39, 138.]

No. 187. [STEELE.

From _Sat.u.r.day, June 17_, to _Tuesday, June 20, 1710_.

----Pudet haec opprobria n.o.bis Et dici potuisse et non potuisse refelli.

OVID, Met. i. 758.

_From my own Apartment, June 19._

_Pasquin of Rome to Isaac Bickerstaff of London._[310]

"His Holiness is gone to Castel Gandolpho, much discomposed at some late accounts from the missionaries in your island: for a committee of cardinals, which lately sat for the reviving the force of some obsolete doctrines, and drawing up amendments to certain points of faith, have represented the Church of Rome to be in great danger, from a treatise written by a learned Englishman, which carries spiritual power much higher than we could have dared to have attempted even here. His book is called, 'An Epistolary Discourse, proving from the Scriptures and the First Fathers, that the Soul is a Principle naturally Mortal: wherein is proved, that none have the Power of giving this Divine immortalising Spirit since the Apostles, but the Bishops.' By Henry Dodwell, A.M.[311] The a.s.sertion appeared to our _literati_ so short and effectual method of subjecting the laity, that it is feared auricular confession and absolution will not be capable of keeping the clergy of Rome in any degree of greatness, in compet.i.tion with such teachers whose flocks shall receive this opinion. What gives the greater jealousy here is, that in the catalogue of treatises which have been lately burnt within the British territories, there is no mention made of this learned work; which circ.u.mstance is a sort of implication, that the tenet is not held erroneous, but that the doctrine is received amongst you as orthodox. The youth of this place are very much divided in opinion, whether a very memorable quotation which the author repeats out of Tertullian, be not rather of the style and manner of Meursius? _In illo ipso voluptatis aestu quo genitale virus expellitur, nonne aliquid de anima quoque, sentimus exire, atque, adeo marcessimus et devigescimus c.u.m lucis detrimento?_ This piece of Latin goes no further than to tell us how our fathers got us, so that we are still at a loss how we afterwards commence eternal; for _creando infunditur, et infundendo creatur_, which is mentioned soon after, may allude only to flesh and blood as well as the former. Your readers in this city, some of whom have very much approved the warmth with which you have attacked free-thinkers, atheists, and other enemies to religion and virtue, are very much disturbed that you have given them no account of this remarkable dissertation: and I am employed by them to desire you would with all possible expedition send me over the ceremony of the creation of souls, as well as a list of all the mortal and immortal men within the dominions of Great Britain. When you have done me this favour, I must trouble you for other tokens of your kindness, and particularly I desire you would let me have the religious handkerchief,[312] which is of late so much worn in England, for I have promised to make a present of it to a courtesan of a French Minister.

"Letters from the frontiers of France inform us, that a young gentleman[313] who was to have been created a cardinal on the next promotion, has put off his design of coming to Rome so soon as was intended, having, as it is said, received letters from Great Britain, wherein several virtuosi of that island have desired him to suspend his resolutions towards a monastic life, till the British grammarians shall publish their explication of the words 'indefeasible' and 'revolution.' According as these two hard terms are made to fit the mouths of the people, this gentleman takes his measures for his journey hither.

"Your 'New Bedlam' has been read and considered by some of your countrymen among us; and one gentleman, who is now here as a traveller, says your design is impracticable, for that there can be no place large enough to contain the number of your lunatics. He advises you therefore to name the ambient sea for the boundary of your hospital. If what he says be true, I do not see how you can think of any other enclosure; for according to his discourse, the whole people are taken with a vertigo; great and popular actions are received with coldness and discontent; ill news hoped for with impatience; heroes in your service are treated with calumny, while criminals pa.s.s through your towns with acclamations.[314]

"This Englishman went on to say, you seemed at present to flag under a satiety of success, as if you wanted misfortune as a necessary vicissitude. Yet, alas! though men have but a cold relish of prosperity, quick is the anguish of the contrary fortune. He proceeded to make comparisons of times, seasons, and great incidents. After which he grew too learned for my understanding, and talked of Hanno the Carthaginian, and his irreconcilable hatred to the glorious commander Hannibal. Hannibal, said he, was able to march to Rome itself, and brought that ambitious people, which designed no less than the empire of the world, to sue for peace in the most abject and servile manner; when faction at home detracted from the glory of his actions, and after many artifices, at last prevailed with the Senate to recall him from the midst of his victories, and in the very instant when he was to reap the benefit of all his toils, by reducing the then common enemy of all nations which had liberty to reason. When Hannibal heard the message of the Carthaginian senators who were sent to recall him, he was moved with a generous and disdainful sorrow, and is reported to have said, 'Hannibal then must be conquered not by the arms of the Romans, whom he has often put to flight, but by the envy and detraction of his countrymen. Nor shall Scipio triumph so much in his fall as Hanno, who will smile to have purchased the ruin of Hannibal, though attended with the fall of Carthage.'[315]

"I am, Sir, &c.

"PASQUIN."

_Will's Coffee-house, June 19._

There is a sensible satisfaction in observing the countenance and action of the people on some occasions. To gratify myself in this pleasure, I came hither with all speed this evening with an account of the surrender of Douay. As soon as the battle-critics[316] heard it, they immediately drew some comfort, in that it must have cost us a great deal of men.

Others were so negligent of the glory of their country, that they went on in their discourse on the full house which is to be at "Oth.e.l.lo" on Thursday, and the curiosity they should go with to see Wilks play a part so very different from what he had ever before appeared in, together with the expectation that was raised in the gay part of the town on that occasion.

This universal indolence and inattention among us to things that concern the public, made me look back with the highest reverence on the glorious instances in antiquity, of a contrary behaviour in the like circ.u.mstances. Harry English, upon observing the room so little roused on the news, fell into the same way of thinking. "How unlike," said he, "Mr. Bickerstaff, are we to the old Romans! There was not a subject of their State but thought himself as much concerned in the honour of his country, as the first officer of the commonwealth. How do I admire the messenger, who ran with a thorn in his foot to tell the news of a victory to the Senate! He had not leisure for his private pain, till he had expressed his public joy; nor could he suffer as a man, till he had triumphed as a Roman."

[Footnote 310: See No. 129. In Lillie's "Letters sent to the _Tatler_ and _Spectator_" (i. 56) there is a letter from "Orontes" to Mr.

Bickerstaff, dated July 6, 1710, referring to this and to No. 190, in which the writer says: "You would do yourself a grand favour, if you would break off acquaintance with the Italian Pasquin, and not disturb yourself with principles which are as far above your thoughts as the probability of your discovering the philosopher's stone." A censor should not be among the factions.]

[Footnote 311: See No. 118.]

[Footnote 312: Handkerchiefs printed with pictures of Dr. Sacheverell.]

[Footnote 313: The Pretender.]

[Footnote 314: Dr. Sacheverell received many popular ovations while he was suspended from preaching: "Lest these brethren in iniquity [the _Observator_ and the _Review_] should not prove sufficient to poison the nation, sow sedition plentifully, and ripen rebellion to a fruitful harvest of blood and rapine, a third person [the _Tatler_] who for a considerable time hath diverted the Town with the most useful and pleasing amus.e.m.e.nts our age ever produced, hath joined in the cry with them, in hopes, no doubt, that by his additional strength they shall become such a formidable Triumvirate that all opposition must fall before them, and the Church irresistibly submit to that fate which the other two have so long endeavoured to procure by their seditious popular harangues.... Our third gentleman is pleased to tell us, '_That great and popular actions_,' &c. This is a subtle way to create jealousies and divisions amongst us, noways becoming the character of a gentleman, or an ingenuous education. Pray, sir, speak plain, and don't instil your poison secretly, and stab in the dark. What heroes in our service are treated with calumny? Who do you mean by your Hanno and Hannibal? All the nation owns and glories in the n.o.ble actions of our great Duke of Marlborough" (_Moderator_, No. 13, June 30 to July 3, 1710). The next number of the _Moderator_, No. 14, is upon the same subject, and is largely occupied with a discussion of the legal question mentioned in the _Tatler_, No. 190. The writer speaks of the brains of the common people, who are too apt to censure the actions of their superiors, as "set on work by a person who has gained their esteem by his learned Lucubrations." "They are a.s.sured that a gentleman of his bright parts and learning must be intimately acquainted with persons of the first rank and quality, from whom he learns these high and important secrets which he thus generously communicates to the world." If any one, therefore, pretends that the author's meaning is that the "Duke of Marlborough is likely to be ruined by the Lord Treasurer's converting to other uses that money which our Senate voted for our General's service, who is to be blamed for the vile aspersion?" Ministers should take care that the spreaders of such false reports shall know to their cost that the Act respecting false and slanderous news is still in force.]

[Footnote 315: The conclusion of Pasquin's letter alludes to the following allegorical piece, the publication of which was just then recent: "The History of Hannibal and Hanno, &c., collected from the best authors, by A. M., Esq." It is reprinted in "The Life and Posthumous Writings" of Arthur Maynwaring, 1715. See No. 190.]

[Footnote 316: See No. 65.]

No. 188. [STEELE.

From _Tuesday, June 20_, to _Thursday, June 22, 1710_.

Quae regio in terris nostri non plena laboris?

VIRG., aen. i. 460.

_From my own Apartment. June 21._

I was this morning looking over my letters that I have lately received from my several correspondents; some of which referring to my late papers, I have laid aside, with an intent to give my reader a sight of them. The first criticises upon my greenhouse, and is as follows:

"MR. BICKERSTAFF, "South Wales, _June 7_.

"This letter comes to you from my orangery, which I intend to reform as much as I can, according to your ingenious model, and shall only beg of you to communicate to me your secret of preserving gra.s.s-plots in a covered room;[317] for in the climate where my country-seat lies, they require rain and dews as well as sun and fresh air, and cannot live upon such fine food as your 'sifted weather.' I must likewise desire you to write over your greenhouse the following motto:

"_Hic ver perpetuum, atque alienis mensibus aestas._

instead of your

"_O! qui me gelidis sub montibus Haemi Sistat, et ingenti ramorum protegat umbra!_[318]

which, under favour, is the panting of one in summer after cool shades, and not of one in winter after a summer-house. The rest of your plan is very beautiful; and that your friend who has so well described it may enjoy it many winters, is the hearty wish of

"His and your Unknown," &c.

This oversight of a gra.s.s-plot in my friend's greenhouse, puts me in mind of a like inconsistency in a celebrated picture, where Moses is represented as striking a rock, and the Children of Israel quenching their thirst at the waters that flow from it, and run through a beautiful landscape of groves and meadows, which could not flourish in a place where water was to have been found only by a miracle.

The next letter comes to me from a Kentish yeoman, who is very angry with me for my advice to parents, occasioned by the amours of Sylvia and Philander, as related in my paper, No. 185:

"SQUIRE BICKERSTAFF,

"I don't know by what chance one of your _Tatlers_ is got into my family, and has almost turned the brains of my eldest daughter Winifred, who has been so undutiful as to fall in love of her own head, and tells me a foolish heathen story that she has read in your paper to persuade me to give my consent. I am too wise to let children have their own wills in a business like marriage. It is a matter in which neither I myself, nor any of my kindred, were ever humoured. My wife and I never pretended to love one another like your Sylvias and Philanders; and yet if you saw our fireside, you would be satisfied we are not always a-squabbling. For my part, I think that where man and woman come together by their own good liking, there is so much fondling and fooling, that it hinders young people from minding their business. I must therefore desire you to change your note, and instead of advising us old folks, who perhaps have more wit than yourself, to let Sylvia know, that she ought to act like a dutiful daughter, and marry the man that she does not care for. Our great-grandmothers were all bid to marry first, and love would come afterwards; and I don't see why their daughters should follow their own inventions. I am resolved Winifred shan't.

"Yours," &c.

This letter is a natural picture of ordinary contracts, and of the sentiments of those minds that lie under a kind of intellectual rusticity. This trifling occasion made me run over in my imagination the many scenes I have observed of the married condition, wherein the quintessence of pleasure and pain are represented as they accompany that state, and no other. It is certain, there are a thousand thousand like the above-mentioned yeoman and his wife, who are never highly pleased or distasted in their whole lives: but when we consider the more informed part of mankind, and look upon their behaviour, it then appears that very little of their time is indifferent, but generally spent in the most anxious vexation, or the highest satisfaction. Shakespeare has admirably represented both the aspects of this state in the most excellent tragedy of "Oth.e.l.lo." In the character of Desdemona, he runs through all the sentiments of a virtuous maid and a tender wife. She is captivated by his virtue, and faithful to him, as well from that motive, as regard to her own honour. Oth.e.l.lo is a great and n.o.ble spirit, misled by the villany of a false friend to suspect her innocence, and resents it accordingly. When after the many instances of pa.s.sion the wife is told her husband is jealous, her simplicity makes her incapable of believing it, and say, after such circ.u.mstances as would drive another woman into distraction,

"_I think the sun where he was born Drew all such humours from him._"[319]

This opinion of him is so just, that his n.o.ble and tender heart beats itself to pieces before he can affront her with the mention of his jealousy; and owns, this suspicion has blotted out all the sense of glory and happiness which before it was possessed with, when he laments himself in the warm allusions of a mind accustomed to entertainments so very different from the pangs of jealousy and revenge. How moving is his sorrow, when he cries out as follows: