Winter Evenings

The illustrious character of Pierre de Corneille, the popular dramatic poet of France, induced those who approached him t oexpect something in his manners, address, and conversation above the common level. They were disappointed; and, in a thousand similar instances, a similar disappointment has taken place.

The friends of Corneille, as was natural enough, were uneasy at finding people express their disappointment after an interview with him. They wished him to appear as respectable when near as when at a distance; in a personal intimacy, as in the regions of fame. They took the liberty of mentioning to him his defects, his awkward address, his ungentlemanlike behaviour. Corneille heard the enumeration of his faults with great patience; and, when it was concluded, said, with a smile, and with a just confidence in himself: All this may be very true; but, notwithstanding all this, I am still Pierre de Corneille.

The numberless defects, infirmities, faults, and disagreeable qualities, which the friends of Dr. Johnson have brought to public light, were chiefly what, in less conspicuous men, would be passed over as foibles, or excused as mere peccadilloes; and, however his enemies may triumph in the exposure, I think he might, if he were alive, imitate Corneille and say: Notwithstanding all this, I am still Samuel Johnson.

Few men could stand so fiery a trial as he has done. His gold has been put into the furnace; and, considering the violence of the fire, and the frequent repetition of the process, the quantity of dross and alloy is inconsiderable. Let him be considered not absolutely but comparatively; and let those who are disgusted with him, ask themselves, whether their own characters, or those they most admire, would not exhibit some deformity, if they were to be analysed with a minute and anxious curiosity. The private conversation of Johnson, the caprice of momentary ill-humour, the weakness of disease, the common infirmities of human nature, have been presented to the public, without those alleviating circumstances which probably attended them. And where is the man that has not foibles, weaknesses, follies, and defects of some kind? And where is the man that has greater virtues, greater abilities, more useful labours, to put into the opposite scale against his defects than Dr. Johnson?

Biography is every day descending from its dignity. Instead of an instructive recital, it is becoming an instrument to the mere gratification of an impertinent, not to say a malignant, curiosity. There are certain foibles and weaknesses, which should be shut up in the coffin with the poor reliques of fallen humanity. Wherever the greater part of a character is shining, the few blemishes should be covered with the pall.

I am apprehensive that the custom of exposing the nakedness of eminent men to every eye, will have an unfavourable influence on virtue. It may teach men to fear celebrity; and, by extinguishing the desire of fame and posthumous glory, destroy one powerful motive to excellence.

I think there is reason to fear lest the moral writings of Johnson should lose something of their effect by this unfortunate degradation. To prevent so mischievous a consequence of his friend’s communications, I wish his readers to consider the old saying, that no man is wise at all times; and to reflect that reason and argument do not lose any thing of their value from the errors and foibles of a writer’s conduct. Let them also remember the old complaint, that many see and approve the better part, while from the violence of passion they pursue the worse.

Is it to be believed that the greatest men in all history, would have appeared almost uniformly great, if the taste of their age, and the communicative disposition of their intimate friends, had published their private conversation, the secrets of their closets and of their chambers?

It was usual to write the lives of great men con amore, with affection for them, and there ran a vein of panegyric with the narrative. Writer and reader agreed in loving the character, and the reader’s love was increased and confirmed by the writer’s representation. An ardour of imitation was thus excited, and the hero of the story placed, without one dissenting voice, in some honourable niche in the temple of Fame. But this biographical anatomy, in minutely dissecting parts, destroys the beauty of the whole; just as in cutting up the most comely body, many loathsome objects are presented to the eye, and the beautiful form is utterly disfigured.

It is said indeed that not only truth, but the whole truth, should be published and left naked for the contemplation of mankind; for as the anatomy of the body contributes to the benefit of human nature, by promoting medical and chirurgical knowledge; so the dissection of characters tends to the development of error, which, by being thus exposed, may be avoided.

From such an exposure some advantage may be derived to the philosopher; but, I fear, little to the multitude. I am rather induced to believe, that the abasement of great characters, and the exposure of defect, prevents the salutary operation of their good example, and of their writings. The common reader seldom makes refined and philosophical observation. But he says, if such men, so learned, so great, so celebrated, were guilty of this failing, or remarkable for that misconduct, how can I attempt, with hope of success, to avoid it? He gives up the contest, and shelters his surrender under the name and authority of the defunct philosopher, whom he once admired, and, while he admired, endeavoured to imitate.

I think it was Egypt in which a tribunal was established to sit in judgement on the departed. Johnson has been tried with as accurate an investigation of circumstances as if he had been judicially arraigned on the banks of the Nile.

It does not appear that the witnesses were partial. The sentence of the public, according to their testimony, has rather lowered him; but time will replace him where he was, and where he ought to be, notwithstanding all his errors and infirmities, high in the ranks of Fame. Posterity will forgive his roughness of manner, his apparent superstition, his mistakes in making his will, his prejudices against Whigs and the Scotch, and will remember his Dictionary, his moral writings, his biography, his manly vigour of thought, his piety and his charity. They will make allowances for morbid melancholy: for a life, a great part of which was spent in extreme indigence and labour, and the rest, by a sudden transition, in the midst of affluence, flattery, obsequiousness, submission, and universal renown.

The number of writers who have discussed the life, character, and writings of Johnson, is alone sufficient to evince that the public feels him to be a great man, and it will not be easy to write him down through mistaken friendship or declared enmity. He was indeed a great man; but mortal man, however well he may deserve the epithet Great, comparatively, is, absolutely, but a little being; and the example of Johnson is an additional proof of this obvious but humiliating conclusion. I wish, nevertheless, that his life had been written in the manner of the French Eloges, and with the affection and reverence due to supereminent merit.

Many of his apparent friends, one may suppose, were of those who forced themselves into his company and acquaintance in order to gain credit, and gratify their own vanity. They seem to have had little cordiality for him, and no objection to lower his fame, if they could raise their own names to eminence on the ruins. Many of them had, perhaps, been hurt by his freedom of rebuke, and were glad to gratify revenge when retaliation was out of his power. If he were alive, he would crush the swarms of insects that have attacked his character, and with one sarcastic blow, flap them into non-existence.

Gorgon, Icon, et Amazon!
Propria quæ Maribus.

The Spectator interfered very much in the (mundus muliebris) woman’s world. I do not know whether he did not condescend too far, in meddling with the affairs of the toilette, considering that he was capable of enlarging on subjects of a kind so much sublimer and more important. But, trifling as dress is, he recollected what Horace says concerning a tendency of trifles to lead to serious evils, and gave it a very considerable share of his attention.

The ladies in his day were not so great readers as in the present; and I always consider his making them and their dress so frequently the subject of his lucubrations, an innocent stratagem to draw their attention to his book, and thus to allure them to the noblest speculations on subjects moral and divine.

But if he really thought the dress of the ladies of great importance, and had lived in the present age, a great part of his papers must have been devoted to the subject.

I think it is easy to collect, from what he has written, that he would have highly disapproved the masculine dress for which the ladies in our times have displayed a singular predilection.

There is something so lovely in feminine softness and delicacy, when free from affectation, and not caused by sickness or infirmity, that they who endeavour to hide those attractive qualities, by assuming the air and dress of a man, must be considered as ignorantly defeating their own intentions to please. Taste requires a congruity between the internal character and external appearance. The imagination will involuntarily form to itself an idea of such a correspondence; and the lady who appears in a manly dress will at first sight suggest the apprehension of a deficiency of female gentleness and grace. This first idea may be superseded by any one who takes time to consider, that the dress is not, perhaps, the consequence of choice, but merely an innocent compliance with a temporary fashion. Yet as first ideas are in general of great consequence, and not always corrected by second, I should think it wise in the female world to take care that their dress, which they evidently study with an intention to render themselves agreeable, should not convey a forbidding idea to the most superficial observer.

Silks, linens, cottons, gauzes, and all the stock of the milliner and the haberdasher, which I forbear to name, lest I should only display my ignorance, have a beauty, a delicacy, and a softness, characteristic of those whom they were designed to embellish. But broad cloth displays a strength and roughness, which is of a piece with the manly character. Notwithstanding this evident truth, nothing is more common in the present age, than to behold ladies of the utmost elegance dressed in broad cloth externally from top to toe. I do not censure the riding-dress, which pleads convenience in palliation of its masculine appearance: but the riding-dress is lately become both the walking-dress and the domestic dress. The habit has introduced the great coat, the surtout, in which a lady, buttoned up with broad metal buttons, appears much like the footman behind her carriage; and, indeed, when she drives her husband or her lover in his phaeton, she might very easily be mistaken at a distance for his coachman.

But it is a charming, warm, and comfortable dress; and if the lady, and her husband, or lover, like it, pray what right has any body to object to it?

I believe it may admit of a doubt whether the men, in general, are pleased with it, any otherwise than as it is the fashion; and they wish their ladies to be in the fashion, like their coats and carriages, their houses and their chattels. There may indeed be a sort of men who have given up their own manly character, and who yet think there should be a certain quantity of it somewhere in the family, and so are not displeased to see it in their partners; but the generality of men, whatever they may assert in polite submission to their ladies, are naturally attached to them for female graces, and must disapprove in their hearts the least assumption of the masculine character.

However, let the broad cloth be confined to the use of travelling or going out of doors; I will only contend that it should not be worn at the fire-side. God and nature have made the sexes distinct for wise purposes, and let not the tailor confound their appearance. Convenience and warmth may plead for the masculine dress on the journey, but that plea loses its force in the domestic circle.

Is there not reason to apprehend that the habitual dress has an influence on the manners? Is it not likely that she who constantly assumes a manly appearance, and a roughness of garb, should likewise display something similar in her behaviour? And may not her behaviour gradually injure her disposition; so that in time she will not only appear less amiable, but may be so? I express myself interrogatively and dubiously, leaving the answers to be made by those who, when they seriously consider, are the best able to decide on points like these.

After all, I am far from certain that dress is of so much consequence as the Spectator seems to consider it. It is indubitable that there are excellent and most amiable women, who follow the fashion in dress wherever she leads, without any apparent evil. Good sense, perhaps, may prevent conseqences which would otherwise arise; but a mere aping folly, in lower ranks and with lower understandings, may suffer from things which in themselves appear innocent or indifferent.

Much of the severity on singular dress or new fashions, to which our eyes have never been accustomed, arises from narrowness of thinking, and from prejudice. So long as dress answers to the purpose of a decent covering, and a warm clothing, the ornament of it may be safely left, I think, to the discretion of the female wearer.

Persons in high life, urged by the impulse of that pride which is as strong in low life as in high, will be continually endeavouring to distinguish themselves by external appearance. Those on the next step, quite down to the bottom of the ladder, will always be assuming the appearance of those above them. Fancy and invention are put to the rack to find out new marks unattainable, if possible, by the subordinate classes; and nothing keeps them so long distinguished as something very outré, and apparently ugly and absurd. This accounts for very strange deviations from beautiful simplicity.

The deviations, however, encourage trade, and amuse those who have little to do. Let not the satirist, therefore, vent his spleen on the ladies’ dress, provided they do not confound the different distinctions of sex by assuming the dress of men. I would forbid, by censorial authority, if I had it, all beaver hats and broad cloth, except to such venerable matrons as time has honored with a beard.

How much is continually said on the subject of head-dresses! It is unfair in men, except friseurs, to interfere in that province. The most elegant women, in the most classical times, adorned their heads with ornaments, which raised them so high as to leave it a matter of doubt whether the head was a part of the body, or the body a part of the head. The dressing of the hair is called by a Roman poet, the Building of a Head; and the English ladies have scarcely yet equalled the Roman edifices, though the painters of caricature have been outrageously severe upon them.

Moralists may certainly find better employment than that of censuring modes of ornament, which are the natural effects of female instinct if the old Grecian’s definition of a woman, of which the Spectator is so fond, be a just one, that she is an animal delighting in finery.

——Cui non sit publica vena,
Qui nihil expositum soleat deducere, nec qui
Communi feriat carmen triviale monetá.

Juv.

Stale hackneyed jokes shall be no longer borne,
Like worthless half-pence by the vulgar worn.

The common coin which is constantly in circulation among the lowest of the people, usually contracts a degree of filth, which renders it contemptible to the genteeler and richer orders, many of whom never touch it with their hands, or suffer it to enter their pockets, from a fear of defilement.

There is also a common sort of wit, which, from constant use in the mouths of the vulgar, is become polluted. It is indeed, in its trite state, fit for none but the vulgar, and ought, like dirty half-pence and farthings, to be chiefly confined to their intercourse.

The wit I mean, I distinguish by the name of Common-place Wit. It might have been sheer wit in the days of our grandfathers; but it is now, from an alteration in manners and customs, either no longer founded on truth and real life, or has quite lost the grace of novelty. It is as obsolete as fardingales, ruffs, and square-toed shoes. It is worn out, quite threadbare, and ought to be consigned to Monmouth-street and Rosemary-lane.

One of the most common topics of common-place wit, is a jocularity on the lord-mayor and aldermen of London, as great eaters, particularly of custard. It might be true formerly that they were addicted to gluttony, and it may be true now that some among them, like other men, have set up an idol in their belly. But gluttony is not now sufficiently confined to them, to justify the perpetual and exclusive jokes on their gourmandizing, as if it were their peculiar and inseparable characteristic. Gentlemen of education and patrimonial fortune have often been elected into the court of aldermen; and there is no more reason to suppose them fonder of eating when become magistrates, than when they continued in a private station. In general, there is a refinement in the present age, which does not allow men of rank and fortune to place their enjoyment in feeding to excess, though it may teach them to indulge the more agreeable luxury of eating with an elegance of palate.

I have known aldermen of singular abstemiousness, who would sit at tables covered with every dainty, and eat moderately of the plainest food; while hungry would-be wits, who were accidentally invited, indulged in excessive gluttony. Yet the would-be wits used to laugh with a grin of self-complacency at their entertainers (as soon as they were recovered of their own cropsickness) for giving what they were pleased to call an aldermanic feast.

The common council and the city companies are standing topics of jocularity, on account of their achievements with the knife and fork. As it unavoidably happens that some among them are of low and vulgar habits, and of mean minds, as well as of mean origin, a few may be observed to compensate the poorness of their own tables, by gourmandizing at a public feast, where dainties are presented which they never tasted before, or where the flavour of every dish is heightened by that fine seasoner to their palates, a consciousness that it comes free of cost. This, I say, may be the case in a few instances; but they are not striking enough to justify an everlasting repetition of jokes on the worthy liverymen and common council of the city of London.

Even if the jokes are well founded, we have now had enough of them, and let not us be overfed in one way, while we are ridiculing excess of food in another.

But not only the lord-mayor, aldermen, common-council, and livery, but all the natives, and all the inhabitants of London, supply the witlings with a perennial fountain of jocularity, under the appellation of Cockneys. Your true Cockney, one who was never out of the sound of Bow bell, is uncommon in the present age. No persons ramble more than the citizens, to Bath, Tunbridge, Brighthelmstone, Margate, and all other places of fashionable resort. Perhaps it would be better if there were more real Cockneys. Trade would be better minded, there would be less folly, extravagance, and ruin, and the Gazette would not be so crowded with advertisements. But the Cockney was selected as an object of ridicule some hundred years ago; and so he must continue, or else the haberdashers of small wit, and retailers of old jokes, must become bankrupts for want of stock in trade.

The professions, indeed, will supply them with many articles in their way, ready cut and dried.

The clergyman, in the ideas of these humourists, is no less fond of good eating and drinking than the alderman; and why should he be? since both of them are only on a level with the rest of mankind in this species of enjoyment, which is natural and necessary, and which, with respect to guilt or innocence, may be deemed a matter of indifference. I imagine that the idea of clergymen’s eating to excess might arise from the ancient custom of keeping chaplains at the table of great men, where they fared sumptuously every day, and, perhaps, seemed highly delighted, though even then it was expected of them, that they should retire as soon as the dessert appeared.

But if the joke on the parsons was once a good one, it has now lost all its goodness, because it is stale. The parsons, after all, may console themselves, if the jokers can say no worse of them than that they love pudding. A piece of solid pudding, it must be owned, is in itself a far better thing than such witticism, such salt as has lost its savour.

Those jokes on the clerical profession which relate to formal dress, great wigs, grave faces, and long sermons, are now totally unsupported by the manners and fashions which prevail at present in the ecclesiastical world. The race of formal Spintexts and solemn Saygraces is nearly extinct.

The lawyers afford an abundance of ready-made jokes for little wits: but the jokes are so old that they cease to please, except among the witty fraternity, or among the vulgar.

The profession of physic is, perhaps, the richest mine of wit which the writings are able to find. Tye-wigs and gold-headed canes are inexhaustible; but the physicians of the present day wear neither. There is the misfortune. The barren joker procures all his stock from the old stores of deceased witlings of the last century; mere rubbish and lumber, which would be thrown away, if it were not bought up and retailed by these second-hand dealers in cast-off trumpery.

The sects, as well as the professions, suggest a great deal of common-place jocularity. Presbyterians and Quakers supply a delectable sort of wit, which comes at an easy rate, being attended with no expense of thought nor labour of invention. But the Presbyterian and Quaker of the last century resembled those of the present but little; and the shaft of ridicule, which might have adhered to some of them, would now, in most cases, recoil on the assailant.

National prejudices are another copious fountain of petty wit. A Welshman is no sooner mentioned in the society of jokers, than goats, leeks, and red herrings occur to his polite imagination. A Scotchman brings to mind the Scotch fiddle, famine, oatmeal, whiskey, barren land, and want of trees; an Irishman, potatoes, blunders, bulls; a Frenchman, soup meagre, wooden shoes, ruffles withous shirts, cowardice; an Englishman, roast beef, honour, honesty, courage, riches, every thing glorious and desirable under the sun.

Many of these vulgar characteristics might originally have some foundation in truth; but when the same dish is served up with the same sauce from age to age, who can wonder if the appetite for it should fail?

And now I mention dishes, what a feast of ready-dressed wit does a dinner supply! Suppose it a calf’s head; then, Pray, do you want brains? You have tongue enough already. A hare suggests the witty idea of being harebrained; a goose is as full of jokes as of sage and onion. The land of Ham abounds with salt, and I wish there were a grain of the true Attic in it. If you want sauce, you are informed that you are saucy enough already^[*].

In harmless converse, many levities and follies which arise from an ebullition of good spirits, and are accompanied with good humour, are not only pardonable, but useful, as they contribute to pass a vacant hour with a charming gaiety of heart. But in composition, all common-place wit is insufferable; and yet he who is acquainted with the dramatic writings of the age will recollect, that many comedies, and more farces, depend upon nothing else for their power of affording entertainment. The drollery of comic actors causes them to keep their place on the stage; otherwise it would be impossible to sit at them without yawning or hissing. It would not be difficult to mention both poems and prosaic pieces of a sort of humour, founded entirely on ridicule of the citizen, the clergyman, the lawyer, the doctor, the Presbyterian, the Quaker, the Welshman, the Scotchman, the Irishman, the Frenchman, and not displaying one idea which is not to be numbered in the list of common-places. The humour, in its day, was perhaps good; but it is time to relinquish it when it is grown thread-bare; and I advise all would-be wits, who have no other stock in hand but such as I have described, to get rid of their lumber immediately, and set up with as good a capital as they can raise, of common sense; recollecting the proverb, that an ounce of good sense is worth a pound of wit. I will add, that common sense will not only be a more useful but a more agreeable qualification; for, to people of judgment, nothing is more disgusting than the importunate and impertinent vivacity of a petulant retailer of stale, threadbare, old-fashioned wit and humour.

Ornes ea vehementius quam fortassè sentis. Amori nostro plusculum etiam quin concedat veritas, largiare.

Cic. Epist. I. Lucceius.

Add a little more embellishment than you perhaps think strictly due. Bestow a little more upon your friendship for me than rigid truth would allow.

Quicquid Græcia mendax
Audet in historia.

Hor.

Her bold untruths in History’s page
Romancing Greece unfolds.

If you have been an ocular witness to an affray, a fire, or any occurrence in the street, and you see an account of it in all the newspapers next morning, though they should all pretend to accuracy and minuteness, you would find them all vary in some particulars from each other, and from the truth, yet without the least design to contradict or to deceive: but different reporters of the same facts saw them at different times, or in different lights, with various degrees of attention, and reported them with various degrees of fidelity, according to the variety in their powers of memory, or their talents for description.

In explaining the customs and describing places, which they have never seen, there is every reason to believe that most of the historians are unintentionally deceitful. It is seldom that neighbouring nations can know with accuracy each other’s most familiar actions, sports, diversions, and places of resort, by written accounts or oral description. Nothing but ocular observation can secure exactness. I was greatly much diverted with an article from the great French Encyclopedie, quoted in the notes to Mr. Mason’s English Garden. The word to be explained is bowling-green, spelt by the lexicographers Boulingrin. Boulingrin is a species of parterre, say they, composed of pieces of divided turf, with borders sloping (en glacis), and evergreens at the corners and other parts of it. It is mowed four times a-year to make the turf finer. The invention of this kind of parterre comes from England, as also its name, which is derived from boule round, and grin, fine grass or turf. Boulingrins are either simple or compound; the simple are all turf without ornament; the compound are cut into compartments of turf, embroidered with knots, mixt with little paths, borders of flowers, yew-trees, and flowering shrubs. Sand also of different colours contributes greatly to their value.

Such is the French description of a Bowling-green sanctioned by the great Encyclopedie.

The celebrated Mr. Sorbiere furnishes the following materials for an ecclesiastical historian of England, in his famous book of travels among us. He says, that our chief clergymen, who have pluralities of benefices, make their grooms their curates; that our bishops horribly abuse their jurisdiction in their excommunications and impositions; that they are so haughty, that none of the inferior priests dare to speak to them; that they rob the church, by letting its leases for thirty years, getting all the money into their own pockets, and leaving only a small revenue to their successors; and that England is a country where no man is afraid of committing simony.

It would be difficult to obtain an exact history of the events of yesterday; how much more of those which happened a hundred or a thousand years ago, and in times when the art of manual writing was not common, and men were prone to transmit to posterity by tradition, the dreams of the night, and the imaginations of their idle hours, as real and authentic history.

Those who wrote in the earlier periods, finding a death of materials, from the deficiency of written documents, sought in the powers of invention what they could not find in the archives of their country. A book was to be made, and it was to be entertaining. The terra incognita was therefore supplied with woods and mountains according to the will of the geographer. Hence the stories of Pygmies and Cranes, Gynocephali, Astromori, Hippopodes, Phanisii, and Trogolodytæ.

Herodotus, one of the earliest historians, writes a romance under the name of history, almost as fictitious as Don Quixote de la Mancha, but not nearly so ingenious and entertaining; yet he is called the Father of History. He might as justly be called the Father of Lies. The Chaldæan history of Berosus, and the Ægyptian history of Manetho, are deemed but the forgeries of Annius and Viterbo. Sanchoniathon’s Phœnician history is equally destitute of credit, if there is any confidence to be placed in the opinions of Scaliger and Dodwell.

Thus the very foundations, on which the splendid fabric of history is to be erected, are destitute of solidity. But they are usually strong enough to support the superstructure; which is too often but a paper building, a house of cards, pretty and diverting to look at, but of little use and value, when he entertainment it affords is deducted.

It would be a just description of the greater part of histories, to say of them, that they are historical romances, founded sometimes on fact, but capriciously related according to the historian’s prejudices, party, or misrepresentation, and fantastically embellished by the false colours of poetry and rhetoric.

Writers of history are often in a dependent state, and are ready to conceal, or palliate, or exaggerate any circumstance or transaction, according to the wishes of a party, a powerful nobleman, or a king. The learned pate ducks to the wealthy fool, and the pen of history is often guided by an illiterate despot.

The histories written by different persons of different parties are known to represent the very same things and persons as laudable and execrable, godlike and diabolical, at the same time.

There is a well-known historical instance of partiality recorded by Polybius, who was himself also extremely partial. Fabius and Philinus wrote the history of the Punic war; Fabius a Roman, and Philinus a Carthaginian. The Roman extolled his countrymen, and blamed the Carthaginians in every thing. The Carthaginian threw all the errors and defects on the Romans, and triumphed in the superiority of Punic valour, wisdom, and generosity. To whom was credit due? Certainly to neither; and have we no modern Fabii and Philini? Let us read the gazettes of different nations in a state of war.

When I am desirous of knowing real facts stript of fallacy, I look for them in some chronological table: but I read not a popular history. I peruse a popular history, only when I am desirous of being entertained by composition, by the charms of style, eloquence, and poetical painting; or of being amused with observing the influence of party, or religious prejudice, on the mind of the writer and his admirers. The real facts are the clay which the popular historian, like a modeller, forms into various shapes, according to his own taste and inclination, some to honour and some to dishonour. To some of it he gives great beauty not its own; some he throws away wantonly or artfully, and the rest he shapes into vulgar utensils; or models them into the deformity of caricature. It is a pleasing pastime to view his work; and men of taste and imagination are much delighted with his ingenuity. Weak and inexperienced persons believe him implicitly; others find real truth in him nearly in the same proportion as silver is found in a great mass of lead, or pearls in oyster-shells.

So little credit is to be given to historians, even in the recital of facts of public notoriety! how much less to their delineation of characters, and descriptions of motives for actions, secret counsels and designs, to which none was a witness but the bosom which entertained them! Yet many historians kindly communicate all. You would think them of the privy-council of all nations; that they possessed the attribute of omniscience, though their intelligence never came from a higher source than an old woman’s tale.

Your true, classical historian never finds any difficulties for want of matter. When he finds it not, he makes it. He is a poet in prose. I scarcely need mention those fine speeches in the very best ancient historians, not one syllable of which, except in a very few instances, was ever uttered by the personage to whom it is attributed. Truth gives a faint outline; the historian adds shades and colours, drapery, action, and expression. He lays on the red, the orange, the yellow, the blue, the purple, the violet, the black, and the white.

Some writers, in their attack on Christianity, have relied greatly on the representations of historians whose characters were remarkably bad both as men and as writers; who also laboured under the general imputation of misrepresenting truth, like every other historiographer. Whatever such writers find against the Christian cause in the most contemptible historians, they bring in triumph, and are ready to sing the song of victory, or cry out Eureka with Archimedes. But with all their pretensions to philosophy, they act most unphilosophically in giving implicit credit to wretched annalists, paltry tools of paltry princes, who are known to have fabricated a great part of their stories; and who, when they spoke against Christianity, saw it with the eyes of prejudiced heathens, or envious sophists, too proud to behold with patience a sect flourishing on the ruins of their own fame and dominion.

But it will be asked, whether what I have said against the credibility of history in general, may not be applied to the evangelical history. I answer that perhaps it might, if the credibility of that history did not chiefly depend on its internal evidence. I never yet saw any external evidence of it which might not admit of controversy; but the internal proofs have a counterpart in every man’s bosom, who will faithfully search for it, which gives it incontestable confirmation. The Evangelists and the Apostles were fallible men like other historians; but the Spirit of God, which operated on them, and now operates on all true Christians, teaches the humble inquirer to find truth there, and there only, in a state of perfect purity. We may amuse ourselves with tinsel and paste in mere human compositions; but gold and jewels are to be dug for in that mine; and happy they who know how to value them.

I will cite one strong internal evidence of the Gospel History from the preliminary observations to Macknight’s Harmony.

It is remarkable, that through the whole of their histories, the Evangelists have not passed one encomium upon Jesus, or upon any of his friends, nor thrown out one reflection against his enemies; although much of both kinds might have been, and no doubt would have been done by them, had they been governed by a spirit of imposture or enthusiasm. Christ’s life is not praised in the gospel, his death is not lamented, his friends are not commended, his enemies are not reproached, nor even blamed; but every thing is told naked and unadorned, just as it happened; and all who read are left to judge, and make reflections for themselves; a manner of writing which the historians never would have fallen into, had not their minds been under the guidance of the most sober reason, and deeply impressed with the dignity, importance, and truth of their subject.

There is, then, no history in the world so artless as the evangelical, and none which, from its manner, has so great an appearance of veracity.

But though this is not admitted for a moment by the sceptical writer; yet, at the same time, every passage against Christianity in ancient historians, however suspicious its character, is triumphantly cited by him as a full, a strong, and unanswerable evidence in favour of infidelity.

Every scholar knows that Bishop Lowth, in a solemn introduction to his Lectures on Sacred Poetry, has inserted, in the very first place, and as one of the most striking instances of the power of poetry, a Greek political ballad, which used to be sung by the Athenian liberty-boys at their festive symposia, and by the mob and the ballad-singers in the streets and alleys of that celebrated city. The bishop, after citing it at full length, suggests, that if, after the memorable ides of March, such a song had been given by the Tyrannicides of Rome to the common people to be sung in the Suburra and the Forum, it would have been all over with the party and the tyranny of the Cæsars. This ballad (Harmodion Melos) would, in the opinion of the Prelate, have done more than all the Philippics of Cicero; and yet, though in Greek, it is not better than many an one sung in Cheapside in praise of Wilkes and Liberty. It bears a considerable resemblance to several popular songs written by such poets as Tom D’Urfey and George Alexander Stevens, whom some future lecturer in poetry may call (as the bishop does Callistratus, the author of his favourite song) ingenious poets and excellent members of the state

That the bishop thought proper to select a trivial ballad to show the force of poetry, when he was to treat of heaven inspired poetry, evinces that he deemed ballads capable of producing wonderful effects on the human heart, and therefore of great consequence and worthy to be ranked with the sublimest strains and even with sacred poetry.

I imagine there must have been a favourite tune to these words, which is now lost past recovery; for among us a popular tune and popular words are generally united: at least the words will seldom be long popular without a favourite tune. Words scarcely above nonsense have had a fine effect when recommended by favourite sounds; Lillabullero is an obvious instance, and many others might be enumerated. Lord Wharton boasted that he rhymed the King out of the kingdom by it. Hearts of Oak are our Ships, Hearts of Oak are our Men, is as good a composition as that of the old Grecian with the hard name, and I dare say has contributed to animate many a poor creature, whose unhappy lot it was to be food for powder.——Hosier’s Ghost, the Vicar of Bray, and Joy to great Cæsar, had great weight in the times in which they first appeared.

But if political songs produce consequences so important, it is but reasonable to conclude, that bacchanalian and amorous songs have, in their way, an influence similar and no less powerful.

Music and poetry are wonderfully efficacious on the mind when they act separately; but, when united, their power is more than doubled. They are, of necessity, united in songs, and the effect is usually increased by wine, cheerful conversation, and every species of convivial joy.

I argue, then, that, if political songs have had such wonderful power as to lead on armies to conquest, and to dethrone kings; those songs in which the joys of love and wine are celebrated, must have done great execution in private life. It is fair, I think, to draw such an inference.

I proceed to infer, that it is of great consequence to the cause of temperance, and all other virtues, that the poetry of popular songs should be of good tendency. For as songs may do great harm, so may they do great good, under proper regulation.

Perhaps we have not improved in song-writing so much as in other species of poetry; for the old songs are still the best, if we judge by that infallible criterion, Popularity.

But such is the love of novelty, that with a new tune there must be a new song; and, unhappily, the composers of the poetry are less excellent in their art, than the composers of the music. The music is often delightful, while the verse is merely rhyme, not only unaccompanied with reason, but destitute of fancy, harmony, and elegance.

But they who can write neither good sense nor good poetry, can write licentiously, and give to their insipid jingle the high seasoning of indelicate double meanings, or even gross obscenity.

If they descend not to this degradation, they yet represent the passion of love in language, which, though mere common-place, renders it very difficult for ladies of delicacy to sing their songs without the blush of confusion. Nothing is, indeed, more common to hear young ladies say, The tune is delightful, but the words are nonsensical. We never mind the words, we only make use of them to sing the tune, without giving them a moment’s attention.

The effects of a song ought to arise conjunctly from the music and the poetry. If the words are considered as of no consequence and unworthy of attention, it is evident that much of the pleasure, perhaps half of it, is entirely lost to the singer and the hearer. But though the young lady may apologise for singing nonsense, or warm descriptions of passions which her delicacy must conceal, by saying she does not mind the words; it may be doubted whether it is possible to learn a song by memory, and sing it frequently in company, without giving the words a very considerable degree of attention. The ear often corrupts the heart by the intervention of the lyre.

And I think it probable that indelicate songs have done almost as much harm by inflaming the imagination, as novels and sentimental letters. I do not speak of songs grossly indecent; for such are certainly never permitted to lie on the young lady’s harpsichord; but I speak of those which come out every season at the celebrated places of public amusement. The music is charming, and the words are usually well adapted to the mixed audience of those places, but not always so well to the parlour, the drawing-room, and ladies’ library.

I propose to the musical ladies, or rather to the music-masters, that whenever a foolish or improper song is set to a pleasing and excellent tune, they would seek some poetical composition of similar metre, and of established reputation, which may be sung to the same tune, without any inconvenience, but on the contrary with great advantage, to the tune, to the morals, to the taste; and with an addition to the pleasure of all young persons who are educated with care and delicacy.

Where young ladies have poetical talent, which is common in this age, I should think they could not employ it more agreeably and usefully, than in writing new words to tunes which are accompanied with such as they cannot but disapprove. It would be an additional pleasure to the hearers to have, at the same time, a specimen of the fair performer’s skill both in music and in poetry.

I cannot dismiss the subject without expressing a wish, that the composers of fashionable songs would take care, for their own sake, that the poetry should be at least inoffensive; for there are many most pleasing pieces of music rejected by respectable families, and consequently soon lost in obscurity, because the words are such as cannot be sung without causing some degree of pain or exciting a blush. This is not indeed a licentious age in theatrical amusements, nor in song-writing, compared with the reign of the second Charles: but still there is a disguised indecency which prevails in both, and which is probably the more injurious, as the poisoned pill is gilded, and as the dagger is braided with a wreath of myrtle.

But, exclusively of moral considerations, every man of taste must wish to see good poetry united with good music.

The best poets of antiquity wrote the most popular songs. Most of the odes of Horace are love or drinking songs. Anacreon has gained immortality by songs alone. Sappho was a song writer. Even great statesmen as, for instance, Solon, wrote songs for political purposes with great success.

Many of our best poets also who have obtained the rank of English classics, wrote songs; but who writes for Vauxhall? The best writers of the age need not think it a degrading condescension, when they consider the dignity of music and poetry, and how widely their effects are diffused in this musical age and country.

Mr. Pope has introduced a harmony of verse which, however difficult to invent, is imitated with ease. The close of the sense in couplets, and the frequent antitheses in the second line, are features so prominent, that an artist of inferior skill, a mere faber imus, is able to copy them, and to preserve a very near resemblance.

His translation of Homer is a treasury of splendid language; and he who has studied it will not find himself at a loss for shining epithets adapted to every occasion. I detract not from his merit; for as the improver of English versification, as the introducer of a brilliant diction unknown before, he has justly obtained universal fame.

But that which is laudable in him as the inventor, cannot entitle his mere imitators to any great applause. They may be called good versifiers and pretty poetasters, but they cannot rank with their master as a poet, or an original improver of versification.

While they exercised ther imitative skill on subjects not at all injurious, they might obtain approbation for their excellence, and would certainly escape censure; but the candid, the moderate, and impartial part of mankind have lamented that they have stolen the graces of Pope’s versification, to decorate and recommend a kind of satire, abounding in virulent and personal invective, of which the Dunciad afforded but too striking an example.

Some works of this kind have been extolled in the highest terms; but the extravagant applause was, in great measure, the ebullition of that unhappy propensity of the human mind which prompts it to rejoice in seeing elevated merit degraded by defamation. Divest such poems of their personality, their local and temporary allusions, and how small a portion will remain of real genius to recommend them! they would not be read, notwithstanding their glare of epithet, and their sonorous numbers. The wit is not substantial enough to support itself without personal invective.

It is usual with these works to rise to universal fame immediately on publication; to bask, like the ephemera, in the sunshine for a day, and then to fall into irretrievable obscurity. Sudden popularity is like a land flood, which rages for a short time, and then returns into its narrow channel lost in its original insignificance.

One of the principal arts of their writers is to secure attention by seizing the topic of the hour, by filling their poems with the names of persons who are the subject of conversation at the moment, and by boldly surprising their readers with attacks on characters the most respectable, or at least on persons who, from their important offices, provided they are tolerably decent, ought to be externally respected, or exempted from virulent abuse and public obloquy. It is the interest of the community that persons in high stations, whose example is powerful, and whose authority ought to carry weight among all the lower ranks, should not be held out to the vulgar as objects of derision, unless they are flagrantly enormous. If they have common failings, or have been guilty of errors merely human a veil should be thrown over them, for the sake of decorum, and of that beautiful order in society, which conduces to a thousand beneficial purposes.

But a spirit of levelling high characters and rank is one of the distinguishing marks of the present times. Unfortunately for all that is decent, and honourable, and right, it has been found expedient that government, or the ministers of government, should be constantly embarassed, whether right or wrong, by a public censure. The tools employed by the leaders of indiscriminate and irrational attacks are often such as are only fit for dirty work. Unable to effect any more laudable purpose, they have sometimes been incited to aspere all the temporary possessors of office, and its consequent power, and emoluments, though confessedly meritorious. Not satisfied with attacking the political persons, they have dared to go further; to enter into the privacies of family retirement for the sake of degrading honest men, and to spare neither age nor sex in divulging whatever envy and malice may have suggested. The poetical satirist has been called upon as a powerful auxiliary in conducting the levelling engine. Some read and are pleased with verse, who would have overlooked the invective of humble prose. Good versifiers have been found ready to engage in this service and the most exalted persons in the kingdom have been cruelly hitched in a rhyme, and thrown out to the vulgar to be tossed about by the tongue of infamy.

Every loyal subject, every gentleman, every considerate father of a family, every man of common humanity, is hurt at the cruel and opprobious treatment which the King, justly deemed the very fountain of honour, has experienced from the hands of rhyming satirists. Exclusively of all personal considerations, while this constitution is still monarchical, the King should be honoured for the sake of his office, and for the sake of the constitution.

Great pretensions to good humour, mirth, and gaiety, are made by personal satirists; but the pretensions are a veil of gauze. It is easy to see, through the pellucid disguise, the snakes of envy, the horrid features of malice, the yellow tinge of jealousy, and the distortions of disappointment grinning with a Sardonic smile.

But as a veil is used, as diversions and pleasantry are promised, and as detraction from illustrious merit is but too agreeable to most men, personal and satirical poems are read, and, like wasps, do much mischief in the short period of their existence.

The pain they give to individuals who are thus burned with a caustic, yet are conscious of having given no provocation, is enough to render the practice odious in the eyes of all who consider duly how much a feeling mind suffers on such occasions, and how little right a dark assassin can have to inflict a punishment without an offense; and to bring a public accusation without coming forward to the public as the accuser.

The practice is injurious to society, as it tends to discourage the growth of virtue, and all honest attempts to be distinguished by merit. Such attempts of necessity render a man conspicuous; and he no sooner becomes so, than he is considered a proper mark for scorn to shoot at, and for envy to asperse. A man may be afraid to exert himself, when every step he advances, he is the more in danger of attracting notice, and, consequently, of becoming the mark at which the malevolent may bend their bows, and shoot out their arrows, even bitter words.

What a triumph to villany, profligacy, and ignorance, when virtuous, innocent, and inoffensive characters are thus singled out for that satire which themselves only can deserve?

This is a grievance which requires the interference of the Legislature. Expostulation is in vain; and even laws, which might redress it, will not be duly executed, in a country where some degree of licentiousness is unfortunately considered as essential to the existence of civil liberty.

The laborious writers of the last century presented most of their works to the public in bulky folios, with a small letter, a large page, a narrow margin, and a great abundance of notes and citations. It was the literary fashion of the time; but the fashion is so much altered, that though the margins are now usually large enough to admit a greater quantity in notes and quotations than the text itself amounts to, yet you may read works consisting of many volumes without stumbling on a single quotation, or finding the uniformity of the beautiful page violated by one marginal comment. Formerly, as you journeyed through a book, elucidations in the margin attended your progress like lamps by the road side; but now, it may be presumed, books shine like phosphorous, or the glow-worm, with inherent lustre, and require not the assistance of extrinsic illumination.

That I approve of quotations myself, is evident from my practice; though I have not been without hints, that books would be more saleable without Latin and Greek; the very sight of which, I am told, is apt to disgust those who have forgotten the attainments of grammar school. But if a passage which I have read occurs to my mind while I am writing, down it goes; and I have the consolation, that if it displeases some, it may possibly please others. Of one good effect I am secure: it has pleased myself; and I have honestly confessed, that my own amuseent has ever formed a very considerable part of my motives both to write and to transcribe.

But, seriously, there appear to be some just objections to the old fashion which crowded the page with passages from various authors, and interrupted the context by references continually occurring even to satiety.

The reader, it may be said, either attends to them, or he does not; if he attends to them, not perhaps being able sufficiently to regard two things at once, he neglects the context for the notes, or, at least, loses that ardour, which he may have contracted in continued uninterrupted reading, and which probably would have contributed more to his improvement than any side lights derived from the commentary. If he resolves not to attend to them at all, in consequence of his opinion that they may be an impediment to his purpose, they might, so far as he is concenred, have been entirely omitted, and the book would have been a less evil by being of less magnitude.

Notes and quotations are often in languages unknown to the English reader, and then they conduce to no other end but to offend and mortify him. I have no doubt but that many English books have been injured in their sale and circulation by the Latin and Greek notes with which they abounded. Many persons of good sense, and well informed understanding, do not choose to be reminded, on every page, of their ignorance of ancient languages, and are a little afraid of being asked by their children or others, the meaning of passages which they cannot explain, whatever sense and judgment they possess.

Notes and quotations are often inserted ostentatiously and improperly. Many authors seem to be more anxious in the display of their own attainments, than in convincing or entertaining their readers. A few Greek words, and a little Hebrew, conduce very much to raise the admiration of the ignorant or half learned, who know not with what ease pompous quotations are made by means of Indexes, Dictionaries, Florilegia, Spicilegia, Eclogæ, and Synopses.

It is, I believe, by no means uncandid to suppose, that quotations have been thus easily and craftily multipled to swell a volume, and to increase its price. The artifice in this case deserves the indignation of the reader, as it resembles the fraud of the huckster, who, in vending his fruit, makes use of a measure half filled with extraneous matter, or with a false bottom placed in the middle of it. If the context of such writers may be compared to the kernel of the nut, the notes and quotations may be said to resemble the husk; yet, by a preposterous disproportion, the husk often contains a much greater quantity than the kernel. Who can wonder if, in such a case, the disgusted reader throws away both the kernel and the shell?

But though something may be said against notes, quotations, and mottoes; yet more, I believe, may be advanced in their favour. If a reader thinks them of little use, or does not understand htem, it is easy to neglect them. It is true that they occupy a space on the page, and increase the size of the volume; but these are inconveniences of little consequence, compared with the pleasure and information which they afford to scholars and attentive readers.

A reader is often referred in the margin to another author who has treated the same subject better or more fully, or in a different style, so as to afford additional information or new amusement.

If the passage be transcribed and inserted in the volume before him, the reader is able to consider it, without the trouble of recurring to his library; a pleasant circumstance, which saves both time and trouble, and which, I should think, cannot fail of being agreeable to the indolent student of modern times, who only reads on his sopha over his chocolate, or as he lolls in a carriage, or sits under the hands of the hair-dresser.

It often happens that the quotations constitute the most valuable part of a book, and the reader may then rejoice, that he has not spent his money and time in vain; which, peradventure, he might have done, had the author inserted nothing but his own productions.

Though notes, quotations, and mottoes may be very easily selected and multiplied by means of indexes and dictionaries; yet there is reason to conclude, that a writer who applies them properly, must have read, or be capable of reading, the authors from whom they are borrowed; and, in these times of universal authorship, it is some comfort to a reader to know that his author is a little acquainted with ancient learning, and able to drink at the fountains of philosophy. Ignorance may sometimes wear the mask of learning, but not constantly. A shrewd observer will discover it from the awkwardness of the wearer.

The more numerous the ideas which a volume furnishes, the more valuable it is to be considered; as that garden or orchard is the best which abounds in the greatest plenty and variety of fruits and flowers. Some of the fruits and flowers are indeed exotic; but if the flowers are beautiful, sweet-scented, and curious, and the fruit rich and high-flavoured, who can complain but the peevish and discontented? You entered the garden in the expectation of the common productions of this climate, and you are agreeably surprised with the magnolia and the pine-apple.

The art of cookery has often been used to illustrate the art of criticism; and though many may prefer plain food, and say,

Pane egeo, jam pontificum potiore placentis,

Hor.

Plain bread I want; than daintiest cakes
To me more acceptable;

yet the majority will approve a rich cake, heightened and improved with ingredients not necessary to constitute the substance of a cake, because, as the logicians say, they might be present or absent without the loss of the subject (adesse vel abesse sine subjecti interitu); but yet, who could with justice blame the cook for adding plums and sweetmeats? Many have not a taste for such sweet things, it may be said; but while the majority have, and while it is natural, the cook must remain without censure. Let those who like it not, refuse it; but let them not condemn the composition, when their own want of taste is to blame.

While mottoes and quotations are added with judgment, and in a limited length and number, they must be considered as valuable additions or pleasant ornaments; neither would I censure an author for inserting in his works curious and valuable passages which he has met with in his reading, any more than the traveller who adorns his house, his staircase, or his parlour, with the productions which he has collected in his voyages; they might indeed be spared; they are not necessary, like the bed, the chairs, and the tables; but, like paintings, they are ornamental and amusing to the fancy, instructive to the understanding, and, in some measure, prove the traveller’s authenticity.

But while I approve of judicious mottoes and quotations, I must join in reprobating artful and pedantic writers, who crowd their pages with Greek and Latin, merely to exalt themselves in the eyes of the ignorant, and to gratify their vanity. The affectation and crafty accumulation of second-hand sentences on one side, is no less contemptible than the pride of many superficial authors on the other, who call themselves philosophers, but who scorn to light their tapers at the torches of the ancients; who therefore write volumes without a single Latin or Greek word, confidently relying on the solidity and copiousness of their own doctrines. Heroic souls in their own estimation! Some, however, with a detracting voice, will whisper, that the true reason of their totally declining to quote Greek and Latin is, that they understand only their mother tongue.

Quotations have been often misapplied by sceptical and infidel writers for the most dishonourable purposes, to give weight and authority to falsehood in the attack of the received religion. An historian, who has spoiled his book by endeavouring to explode Christianity, has been found guilty, by several ingenious answerers, of misquoting, misrepresenting, and mistranslating passages from ancient authors, whom he endeavoured to compel into his service as auxiliaries. But nothing is to be wondered at in one who admires Nero for generosity and humanity.

Quotations can then only be objected to with reason, when they exceed in length and number, when they mislead the reader by misapplication, when they are neither illustrative nor ornamental, but inserted solely from the motive of pedantic ostentation, or some other sinister inducement. Objections to them arising from idleness, ignorance, or caprice, deserve no notice. They are justified by reason, and by the example of the greatest authors.

The English reader is usually desirous to see Latin and Greek quotations translated. They often disappoint him: because much of their beauty and force arises from the original language. Queen Caroline commanded Dr. John Clarke to translate the numerous and fine quotations in Wallaston’s Religion of Nature; he obeyed the queen, and the quotations were murdered by royal authority.

Sir William Jones, whose early acquaintance with Oriental learning and premature accomplishments in all polite letters, promised an uncommon eminence in the maturer periods of his life, laments, in one of his last publications, that the profession of letters, though laborious, leads to little pecuniary benefit; and that it seldom contributes to elevate, in the ranks of civil life, either the professor or his family. He therefore takes a tender leave of the beloved region of the Muses, and,

——Desertis Aganippes
Vallibus,

Juv.

The Muses’ vale forsaken,

offers himself a votary of wealth and honour in the profession of the law. He relinquishes the barren hill of Parnassus, and seems to be cultivating with success a richer field.

The first love is not easily forgotten; and Sir William, amidst his severer studies, still pays great attention to his old friends the Muses, and the public will probably be gratified with many flowers of Asiatic growth selected by his elegant taste.

But what he so feelingly lamented is certainly true.

The finest compositions, the most laborious works of mere literature, would never have made him a judge, or raised him one step on the ladder of ambition. As children admire the peacock’s plumage, and wish to pluck a feather from his tail; so the great, who have sense enough, admire fine writing, and derive a pleasure which costs them little from the perusal of it. They read, are pleased; they praise, and forget the author. Their interest must be exerted, not to patronize letters, but to pay the tutor of their children at the public expense; or to secure parliamentary votes by bartering for them the cure of souls, or the dignified cushion of some rich cathedral. Such an one, say they, is an excellent poet, and I hear the poor man is in narrow circumstances; but really every thing in my gift has been engaged to the members for two or three burroughs, and the minister’s list for prebendaries has been for some time filled with the travelling companions and domestic tutors of several young lords who will have great weight in both houses. I wish I could do something for so ingenious a man; but there is nothing to be done for ourselves in parliament without these sugar-plums to give away. The church indeed furnishes plenty of them, but still they are all engaged, and the hungry mouths seem to multiply faster than the douceurs can be supplied. I most heartily wish Mr. Bayes well, and, if he publishes by subscription, he may set my name down for a copy which he need not send me; but any thing more at present it is out of my power to do for him.

Thus the writer who perhaps has more ability, and who has certainly been more industrious, than many in a lucrative or high political employment, is considered in the light of a mendicant, and even then dismissed to his cell, without reward, to mourn over the ingratitude and venality of the world.

To seek learning and virtue is one thing, and to seek preferment and patronage another. The pursuits are often incompatible; and let not him repine at the want of patronage, who has been in his study and among his books when he should have been, consistently with the pursuit of patronage and preferment, at a levee or a parliamentary election. If he were to write successfully in politics, or to manage a newspaper full of falsehood and virulent calumny, he might get something, when his party should prevail in the grand contest for power and profit. But poetry, history, science, morality, divinity, make no votes in a borough, and add no strength to a party; are every body’s business, and for that reason, according to a vulgar remark, to reward them is the care of nobody.

If he had employed his time in engrossing deeds as an attorney, or in posting books as a merchant or banker, or in driving a quill in the East Indies, he might have been by this time a member of parliament by purchase; and then, by voting for a number of years for himself, and talking two or three hours plausibly on the right side for his own interest, have sat down at last with a coronet on his head. As a writer on general literature only, in which all men are concerned, he would still have continued in his garret, though the whole nation should have been improved and entertained by his labours, and future generations may receive from them equal pleasure and advantage.

The lucre of literary works falls chiefly to the lot of the venders of them; and the most eminent writers who have nothing but what their works bring them, would be likely to starve. There are instances, indeed, of literary drudges, who, undertaking mere compilations and low works of little ingenuity and invention, have gained a livelihood; but a man of genius can never stoop to such employment, unless through mere necessity; and then being in a state of servitude, and unable to choose his own subjects, and the manner of treating them, his spirit evaporates, his fire is damped, and he becomes a mere hireling, seeking gain and disregarding reputation.

Publishing by subscription, in the present state of things, is a species of beggary. A man of that independent spirit which marks great abilities, had rather engage himself in a handicraft employment than crave the subscriptions of those who pretend to despise his book, however valuable, and though they cannot understand it, merely because it has solicited their reluctant contribution. Poverty and a starving family may urge a man to ask subscriptions in this age, for it is certainly rather less ignominous than house-breaking, and attended with much less hazard to the person.

But would not his time, his ability, and his industry, exerted in a counting-house or in a shop, have obtained a better reward for him, with less contumely? All I contend to establish is, that they who study letters, as mere literati, without a profession, will usually derive from them little to gratify their avarice or ambition. Sir William Jones’s doctrine and conduct, in relinquishing a life of letters for a life of business, are founded on actual observations of the living world, and the state of things in the present age.

Many contend that there should be certain public rewards appropriated by Government to literary merit. I fear they would be bestowed by interest and party either on very moderate, or on no merit; like some of the professorships in the universities; like the Gresham professorships in London; like doctors’ degrees; like many sinecures, for which the qualification consists solely in the ability to procure them.

Who in such a case should be the judge and the awarder of the prize? Contemporaries often behold living merit through the false medium either of envy or national prejudice. If a writer were rewarded by one party, another would from that moment exert itself to depreciate his character, his abilities, and his works; so that a man of real modesty and merit who valued his fame or his peace, would often wish to decline the emolument, which would then fall to some bold and empty pretender. How much envy and detraction have been occasioned by the pensions bestowed upon a few in the present reign! A man who gains an income equal to the best of them in a low trade, thanks nobody but God, and his own industry, for it; but the pensioned or patronized author has an everlasting debt of gratitude to pay, is frequently doomed to unmanly submission, and surrounded by enviers who leave nothing, unattempted to lessen his happiness and lower his fame.

then welcome a competant mediocrity, with liberty and peace! Let the man of genius love his muse, and his muse shall reward him with sweet sensations; with pictures and images of beautiful nature, and with a noble generosity of spirit, which can look down with pity, contempt, or total indifference, on patrons who have often as little sense to understand, as liberality to reward him.

Milton was poor and unpatronized, and so was Shakespeare. A miserable pittance bought that poem which is one of the first honours, not only of this nation, but of human nature. But is it not credible, that Milton and Shakespeare had internal delights, a luxury of soul, which is unknown to the dull tribe who are often rewarded with pensions and promotion, and which many persons, with all their pomp and power, would envy, if they were capable of conceiving the exquisite pleasure?

Let the republic of letters be ever free; and let no bribery and corruption prevail in it. Where patronage interferes, independence is too often destroyed. I except the noble instance of Mr. Dyson’s patronage of the poet Akenside.

Writing, it may be said, made Addison a minister of state. It raised Prior to public employment from abject obscurity. Burnet, Somers, Locke, Davenant, Steele, and others in former days, owed their wealth and elevation to their pen. Their success occasioned such numerous competitors, that they injured each other. The public was often glutted. Patriots or courtiers found other ways to effect their purposes than persuasion and argument, invective or panegyric. The prevalence of corruption rendered the assistance of argument less necessary; but still politics are the best field for writers who mean only to serve their own interest, and to improve their worldly condition.

But no kind of writing in the present age is peculiarly fit for making a fortune. Auctioneers, dancing-masters, quack doctors, dentists, balloonists, actresses, opera dancers, equestrian performers, perfumers, these are they whom the British nation either honours with fame, or rewards with affluence. He that can tell his money hath arithmetic enough, says an old writer; he is a geometrician that can measure out a good fortune to himself; a perfect astrologer, that can cast the rise and fall of others, and mark their errant motion to his own use. The best optics are to reflect the beams of some great man’s favour to shine upon him.

With respect indeed to employing abilities on general subjects of morals and literature, in which no particular party or sect is interested, one must say, with an ingenious writer,

Whoever is resolved to employ his hours and his labour in this manner, should consider himself as one who lays out his fortune in mending the high-ways. Many are benefited, and few are obliged. If he escapes obloquy, it is very well.

Triumpho, si licit, latere tecto, abscedere.

To escape with safety is a triumph.

And yet such labours alone usually descend to posterity, and such chiefly produce permanent advantage to the public. Who regards the petty controversies of little sectaries, or even the violent struggles of public statesmen and politicians, after the lapse of half a century?

Happy then are they who, free from sordid motives, seek excellence without regard to its recompense. They will not be without their reward in the final result of things; and, indeed, their internal satisfaction is more than a recompense for the want of secular emolument and honour.

The physicians call a medicine which contains efficient ingredients in a small volume, and of a pleasant or tolerable taste, an elegant medicine. Moralists, who are the physicians of the mind, have usually been endeavouring to render their prescriptions palatable by the form of administering them, and to present their readers with an elegant medicine, a moral cathartic, gilded to please the eye, and sweetened to soothe the taste.

He who writes on morality usually gives advice; a free gift, which is the least acceptable of all bounties, as, while it adds to our wisdom, it derogates from what we value a great deal more, our pride or self-consequence. The draught is nauseous, though salubrious; hence the writer endeavours to borrow something from art, to render it an elegant medicine. He infuses into the phial a little syrup of sugar, or a comfortable cordial, that the patient may not make wry faces, or throw it out of the window.

No form in England has been more frequently chosen for this purpose, than that of diurnal or periodical papers. Doctor Addison, and a few others, eminent in the faculty, made them very agreeable; but repetatur haustus has been so frequently put on the labels by succeeding practitioners, that the salutary cordial, the confectio cardiaca, though rendered as sweet as syrup, operates at last like a dose of ipecacuanha.

Yet every mode of introducing an air of novelty has been tried by the periodical writers. Allegories, Diaries, Eastern Tales, Little Novels, Letters from Correspondents, Humour, Irony, Argument, and Declamation, have been used to vary the form of conveying periodical instruction. These contrivances were successful, till the repetition of the same modes of diversification caused a nausea.

The Spectator himself talked so much about the dress of the fair sex, that, as tradition informs us, his readers began to be weary, and wished him to take his leave. What his animadversions on tuckers, petticoats, and fans, might effect among our grandmothers, I do not know; but at present all such papers, though they may raise a smile, seem to produce little attention, and no reformation.

But though the modes of conveying instruction may lose their estimation by continual recurrence, yet instruction itself can never be depreciated, if it is founded on the solid basis of experience and sound reason; and perhaps the best method of conveying it, is that which is plainly addressed to the understanding, without any quaint contrivance, or laborious attempt at novelty of form, which too often terminates in a disgusting affectation. In an Eastern tale, for instance, one may be pleased with the language, with the imagery, with the ingenuity of the invention; but as to the moral instruction to be derived from it, it would at present be more agreeable and efficacious, if delivered in plain terms, without those visible and palpable artifices which are now become trite and trivial.

Allegories also are now, from their frequency, more valuable for the diction and splendid figures which the fancy of the writer paints, than for their moral efficacy; which I believe in a lettered age might be better accomplished in a manner less indistinct and operose.

Evident imitation, if unsuccessful, becomes contemptible; and even if it resembles its original, it is still considered, like a good copy of a fine picture, as of very subordinate value, and seldom continues to please long after its first appearance. Diaries of belles and beaus, extraordinary intelligence, cross readings of newspapers, are now worn thread-bare. Indeed, every mode of humour, which the Spectator adopted, has been imitated so often as to have lost something of its grace.

But the plain and unaffected manner of uttering ideas and sentiments can never be out of fashion; because it is the very manner which nature requires and common sense adopts. Apparel can never be out of fashion, though the cut of a coat, and the shape of a shoe-buckle, may very every month. It is the great advantage of adhering to nature in the works of art, that what was once excellent will always be so; what once gave a rational pleasure will continue to give it, like a natural spring, which, though it may not throw its waters into so great a variety of forms as the artificial fountain of the engineer, will continue to supply an exuberant stream, when the scanty canal is exhausted or the machinery destroyed.

Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis ævum.

Hor.

It flows and will for ever flow.

Good sense, expressed in good language, interesting subjects of learning, familiarized to the curious, or rendered agreeable to the idle, cannot fail of being acceptable in general, though they should appear in the unadorned dress of a direct appeal to the reason; while, in the imitative garb of preceding writers, they are in danger of becoming ridiculous or irksome.

The compound names signed by pretended correspondents to supposititious letters in periodical works become nauseous by continual imitation. The Spectator has a great number of them, and they were entertaining enough for once: but who can bear, without exclaiming Ohe jam satis est! the never-ceasing iteration of such as Kitty Termagent, Susanna Frost, Ralph Crotchet, Abraham Spy, Mary Meanwell, Rebecca Nettletop, Eve Afterday, which occur to me in a moment on casually opening a volume of the Spectator? Imitation of things so easily imitable produces only the flat and the vapid. It is better to communicate the sentiments intended to be conveyed by these characters and names without a veil, than with one so transparent and so antiquated, as neither to serve the purpose of covering nor of an ornament.

The portraying of characters in Greek and Latin names, such as Curio, Glasimus, Belinda, Opsinous, though a very convenient mode of conveying instruction, begins, from its everlasting use, to be rather dull. It was at first a lively way of speaking an author’s thoughts in an imaginary character. But the method is so common, that the natural way of addressing the reader is now more agreeable and effectual. When fictitious names were first used, the reader was sometimes, usefully for himself, deceived into an opinion, that the real character was concealed under the mask; but he now knows, as well as the author, that it is only an obvious imitative trick, used when invention is at a loss to diversify the discourse.

It is the imitation, for ever repeated, of mere modes of conveying ideas, which renders periodical papers of great merit rather distasteful. Good thoughts delivered in this miscellaneous manner cannot fail of being agreeable, when the reader is not palled with attempts to please him by mere tricks, which he has been so much accustomed to already, as not to be in the least pleased by them, but rather to consider them as impediments to the main business, the discovery of the doctrine, the main scope and opinions of the author.

The insertion of letters from pretended correspondents in miscellaneous papers is a convenient mode of expressing some ideas and characters, which an author could not so well or so probably express in his own person. It may be allowed for its convenience; but, when unnecessary, it ceases at present to please, because the artifice is visible, and no longer leaves the reader in doubt whether the letter comes from a real correspondent, which was originally an useful deception. The reader knows, that he who sends, and he who receives and comments on the letter, is for the most part the same person; and if he looks at the signature, he may give a shrewd guess what is the subject, as the name is commonly a compound of the epithets or words which describe the character. But I must take care here (for Cynthius aurem vellit) not to lay down a law which will operate against myself; for, in the course of these Winter Evenings, I shall sometimes have occasion for a country or a London correspondent, and must solicit the reader’s indulgence.

Indeed the whole plan of diurnal essays has been so frequently pursued, as to be in danger of causing that effect which a satiety, even of excellence, is too apt to produce on human nature, one of whose strongest appetites is a desire of novelty.

But if affectation, and too servile an imitation, are avoided, there can be no rational objection to communicating ideas on any subject of morality, learning, science, arts, or taste, in short miscellaneous treatises. Modes may be disgustful; but truth and reason must continue to give satisfaction, whether communicated in the form and under the title of diurnal or periodical essays, or of long, just, and legitimate dissertations.

Dissertations and systems are properly addressed to one kind of readers; but not to all. They are improving and delightful to professed students; while to the general reader they appear heavy and tedious. Laudant illa, sed ista legunt. They praise and admire learned and grave writings, but they read those which are more familiar.

Readers may indeed be subdivided into a thousand different classes; but in a comprehensive division they may be separated into the professional, philosophical, and miscellaneous.

Professional readers, those who read either to qualify for the assumption of a profession, or to regulate the conduct and exercise of one already assumed, require regular and complete treatises, according to Aristotle’s description, with a beginning, a middle, and an end. However tedious and dull, they must go through such books as furnish, in any way, stores of professional knowledge. Their reading is a duty. They must proceed in the appointed road, like the stage coach, whether the sky be clear or clouded, and whether the country, and prospects around it, be pleasant or dreary. They must drink at the fountain head, whether the water flow copiously in spontaneous streams, or whether it must be drawn from the well by preserving and painful labour.

Philosophical readers, those whose abilities, opportunities, and ambition, lead them to attempt improvements in science, must also penetrate to the interiora rerum, and cut through rocks and mountains, like Hannibal, in ascending the eminences to which they aspire. They are not to be diverted in their progress, by listening, like the shepherd, to the purling of the streamlet and the song of the nightingale, nor by culling the cowslip of the meadows. Their very toil is a delight to them; and they come forth at last Bacons, Boyles, Lockes, and Newtons.

But the Miscellaneous readers are certainly the most numerous; and, as they form not only a majority, but a very respectable part of mankind, their literary wants are worthy of supply. They consist of all conditions, of the young and the old, the gentleman and the merchant, the soldier, the mariner, the subordinate practitioner in medicine and law, of those who hold places in public offices, even of the philosopher and professor, in their leisure hours; and lastly, though not the least numerous or important, of the ladies. A beard was once the mark of a philosopher; but in the present age it is not uncommon to see wisdom and taste united with a fine assemblage of features in the most delicate female face. Such students are not to be sent to dull libraries, to strain their fine eyes over worm-eaten folios larger than their band-boxes.

This being a commercial country, let us suppose the case of a merchant, whose education has been liberal, and whose turn of mind gives him a taste for the pleasure of polite letters. His time is much occupied by the necessary employment of his counting-house. He must write letters, attend the Exchange, and see company; yet he has a love for books, and wishes to spend some time every day in his book-room. He goes to his villa in the evening, and remains there a day or two; when some weighty concern calls for all his attention. In a life of business, with little leisure, and with that little liable to interruption, shall he read folios and dry treatises, in the Aristotelian style and regularity? He wishes he could, perhaps; but he reads for amusement chiefly, and he requires something which he can read, comprehend in a short time, and reliniquish without weariness. What so well adapted as an elegant miscellany? and hence it is that the Spectator, one of the first books calculated for universal use, was universally read in the mercantile classes, and still continues in high estimation.

The philosopher teacheth, says Sir Philip Sydney, but he teacheth obscurely, so as the learned only can understand him; that is to say, he teacheth them that are already taught.–For the people, there must be a popular philosopher; and he must address them, not like a professor in the dreary schools of an antiquated university, but like Socrates, walking among the people, and familiarizing his doctrines to the understanding and taste of those who are found in the ship, the warehouse, the Exchange, the office, and even the manufactory. Life, at all times, in every part, under every passion and every action, admits of moral philosophy. It is not necessary that there should always be a professor’s chair, a pulpit, a school, a formal lecture; since at the table, in the parlour, in the garden, in the fields, there is occasion and opportunity for familiar instruction. A pocket volume, an Enchiridion, or a Manual, accompanies the reader in his walks, in his chariot, in the coffee-house, and in all the haunts of busy men.

Miscellanies indeed of this sort, if any thing but their own utility is necessary to recommend them, are not without the sanction of ancient examples. All works which bear the title of Saturæ, are miscellaneous. What are Seneca’s Epistles but moral miscellanies? What are Plutarch’s Opuscula? What Horace’s Sermones? None of them systematical treatises, but popular essays, highly pleasing and improving to the people at large, for whom they were designed. I could enlarge the list by the Deipnosophists of Athenæus, the Saturnalia of Macrobius, and many works of the grammarians, or professed literati of early ages. Nor let the grave and austere despise them as trifling amusements only; for the mind is nourished by variety of food, the farrago libelli, like the body by a commixture of fish, flesh, fowl, and vegetables.

If a writer is happy enough to present his reader with good sense, with sound and just reasoning well expressed, his work can never be entirely antiquated; because reason, the internal man, like the external, must always continue the same. Men may be disgusted with the tricks of cookery, and sick of made dishes fancifully seasoned and constantly served up; but substantial food will always be relished by guests whose palates are not vitiated by disease.

That form in which the ideas of a miscellaneous writer can be most clearly and agreeably exhibited, is certainly to be preferred; but every proper ornament of style and method may be judiciously applied, without having recourse to little arts which have lost their grace and power by being so frequently used already, as to be anticipated and even loathed by the reader, who is apt to yawn over them, and exclaim

Tædet harum quotidianarum formarum.

Ter.

I’m sick of this dull dose of daily trash.

That ancient grammarian, Aulus Gellius, with a delicacy which may be deemed a little too scrupulous, is fearful lest the title of his book, Attic Evenings, should be considered as arrogant or affected, and therefore anxiously takes care to inform his reader, that his lucubrations were so called, solely because they were written in Attica during a winter’s residence in that country. He is unwilling to let it be supposed, that he intended to assume the merit of Attic elegance or wit, or to allure readers by the artifice of an inviting and ostentatious title.

After making his own apology, he proceeds to censure the affectation of titles assumed in ancient times by writers of miscellanies; and though his strictures on them are generally just, yet he too severely condemns some, which are not deficient either in a decent humility, or in the propriety of their application.

I think it may afford amusement to the English reader to view some of the inventions of classical authorship in that important part of a work, the fabrication of a Title Page. Many of them have been borrowed and greatly embellished by the moderns, in the hope of attracting notice by the first page; asthe inkeeper invites the traveller by a gilded Bacchus, a Tun and a Bunch of Grapes, and the tempting inscription, Good Entertainment for Man and Horse.

The title of The Muses, as Aulus Gellius informs us, was sometimes given to poetical miscellanies, by which the poet rather arrogantly insinuated that his work was peculiarly favoured by the inspiring Nine. But it was by no means confined to poetry. I believe, indeed, it more frequently occurred in history, where Herodotus had set the example of it, by distinguishing each of his books by the name of a Muse. Some critics acquit Herodotus of the apparent arrogance, and suppose that these elegant appelations were bestowed on his books by his sanguine admirers, in ages long after the writer was no more.

The Graces were the names bestowed on three orations of Æschines, to which the beauty of their language is said to have given them a just claim; but this title must not be imputed to the author’s vanity, as it is reasonable to believe that it was the voluntary reward of the reader’s approbation.

Sylvæ is one of the most elegant, as well as commonest titles prefixed to the miscellanies of the ancients. The origin of it is the Greek Hyle; and the authors who first assumed it modestly intimated by it, that they had collected a store of timber or materials, which themselves, or others, might hereafter use in erecting a regular structure. The Sylvæ of Statius are said by the critics to be more valuable than his finished compositions. In imitation of him many modern writers of Latin poetry have entitled the miscellaneous parts of their books, Sylvæ; and our own Ben Jonson, alluding to the ancient title of Sylvæ, denominates some of his smaller works, Underwoods. He entitles his observations on men and things, Timber; which must appear unaccountably singular to the unlearned reader, and is in truth not a little pedantic. He adds in Latin, the following marginal explanation: The book is called (says he) Timber, Sylva, Hyle, from the multiplicity and variety of matter which it contains; for as we commonly call an indefinite number of trees growing together indiscriminately, a wood; so the ancients called those of their books, in which little miscellaneous pieces were irregularly arranged, Sylvas, or Timber-trees.

Quintilian describes the works distinguished by the name of Sylvæ, as struck out with the impulse of a sudden calenture, subito excussa calore, and assigns causes for the appellation similar to those which have been already mentioned.

If the name should be differently interpreted, and understood to suggest the pleasantness and variety of a wood, abounding with every diversity of foliage, and displaying many a sweet flowret in all the beautiful wildness of Nature: Sylva, the Wood, the Grove, or the Forest, would not be improper titles for a miscellany, provided it were of merit enough to answer the expectations of beauty and diversity which such titles might justly raise.

Peplon, or Peplos, the Mantle, was prefixed to works consisting of detached pieces on various subjects. The Peplon, according to the description of Potter, was a white garment without sleeves, embroidered with gold, and representing the exploits of Minerva, particularly in the battles of the Giants against Jupiter; but though this was originally the only subject, it was not retained so exclusively as not to admit the embroidery of other figures which had no relation to it. In process of time the heroes of Athens, after an important victory, were delineated upon it with sumptuous elegance, to be exhibited at the grand festival of Minerva, as an honorary reward of past merit, and an incitement to future. Hence arose the idea of distinguishing with the name Peplon such books or poems as described the achievements of great warriors. Aristotle wrote a poem of this kind, and called it The Peplon. It comprised the lives and death of the most illustrious of his countrymen. Every history concluded with an epitaph of two lines. The loss of the Stagirite’s Peplon is an irreparable injury to the Grecian history, and to polite letters. It may not be improper to add, that when the Greeks expressed their highest approbation of a hero, it was a proverbial saying among them, He is worthy of the Peplon.

But the word was not applied only to the Peplon of Minerva. It signified the external vestment of any dignified lady; and, from the description of it, may be imagined to resemble the modern or Oriental shawl. The ladies of Greece displayed their singular ingenuity in decorating it with the richest and most picturesque delineations which their manual ingenuity could produce; and the art of the weaver, the dyer, and the engraver, had not then superseded the fine operations of the needle.

The poet therefore, who assumed this title, promised his readers every variety of the most vivid colouring and picturesque imagery. He called them to view a richly figured tissue, a mantle embroidered with gold and purple. I should think the title more properly appropriated to the works of the Sapphos than of the Aristotles, though Aristotle adopted it. We have, I believe, many ladies in our own country who could with equal ease and elegance produce a Peplon in its literal or its figurative sense.

A miscellaneous auhor of antiquity, who wished to convey the idea of great exuberance and inexhaustible variety, denominated his work Keras Amaltheias, or the Horn of Amalthea, which will be more generally understood if I render it The Cornucopia. The pretty fable of Jupiter’s rewarding Amalthea, the nurse who fed him with goat’s milk in his infancy, by giving her a horn of the goat, from which she should be able to take whatever she wanted, gave rise to this title, and to the idea of the Cornucopia, which is now familiar to the illiterate. As a title it was too ostentatious, and savoured something of the vain pretensions of empiricism.

A Hive and a Honeycomb conveyed at once the idea of industry and taste in the collector, and of sweetness in the collection. It is obvious to conclude, therefore, that the Greek word Kerion would become the title of miscellaneous books; and if the books were merely compilations from the works of others, I can see in it no impropriety. But that a man should compare his own works to honey, and invite the reader by his title to taste the luscious store, is a degree of self-conceit which may perhaps justify the censure and the contempt of Gellius.

Limon, or the Meadow, was a pleasing title given by the ancients to works variegated with all the colours of a fertile imagination. It affords the reader cause to expect flowers richly interspersed; cowslips, violets, blue-belles; verdure, softness, fragrance, and plenty. I imagine it to have been chiefly applied to poetry. I remember to have seen a small collection of juvenile poems by that polite scholar, Sir William Jones, to which he has given the title of Limon, in imitation of those ancients whom he admires with warmth, and imitates with peculiar taste.

To mark their miscellaneous compositions, every title which could express a collection of flowers has been adopted both by ancients and moderns: hence Anthera, Florilegium, Anthologia, Polyanthæa; hence also the Nosegay, the Garland, the Wreath, the Chaplet, and the Festoon.

Lychnus, or the Torch, another title mentioned by Gellius, sufficiently pointed out a book which was to diffuse light; but it falls under the imputation of arrogance, and like Euremata, Discoveries (which Ben Jonson has adopted), raises our expectations to a dangerous eminence.

Stromateus, or the Carpet, resembles the Peplon. Pinax or Pinakidion, the Picture, conveyed an obvious yet pleasing idea. Pendecte, though chiefly applied to collections of law, extended also to miscellaneous books of polite literature, and seems intended to signify something like the monthly magazines, as the word might be rendered in the modern style, the Universal Repository or General Receptacle.

Enchiridion, the Manual, or rather the Little Dagger, was a common title to works of small magnitude comprehending things of great moment. In its proper sense it was the small sword, which soldiers wore constantly at their sides for personal defence against any sudden assault. Applied to a book, it signified a little treatise always at hand, comprehending arguments for occasional defence and constant security. The Enchiridion of Epictetus was a compendium of his philosophy, in a pocket volume, as a pocket companion, no less convenient to refute the gainsayers, than a pocket pistol, to repel a thief or assassin, or than a pocket cordial, to exhilarate the spirits upon any occasional depression.

But enough of ancient titles. If Aulus Gellius had lived in modern times, I believe he would have considered the titles which he has stigmatized with the appellation of Festivitates Inscriptionum, diverting and absurd titles, modest and unassuming in comparison with some which it would be easy, though rather invidious, to enumerate in the English language. Popular theology, in the days of the Puritans, exhibited some titular curiosities; such as, Crumbs of Comfort, a Shove, Looking-glasses, Pathways, Ladders, Doors, Cordials, Jewels, and many others, which excite a smile, or would offend modern delicacy. Though most incongruous to the seriousness of rational divinity, they are chiefly prefixed to religious books. I believe the authors were truly sincere in the doctrines they taught; but, if they had intended to ridicule what they reverenced, they could not have devised a more successful expedient than the drollery of a quaint and ludicrous title-page.

That works addressed to the illiterate should be recommended by a pompous title-page, is not wonderful. Their sagacious editors know that vulgar minds are captivated by bold pretensions and warm professions in literature as in medicine. Since the artifice is an innocent one, and succeeds in recommending useful books among those by whom instruction is greatly wanted; while, at the same time, it is too apparent to deceive the well educated and