curiosity of wealth; it brings many things no party; but hears and speaks of public to notice that would be neglected, and, by affairs with the same coldness as of the adfixing the thoughts upon intellectual plea-ministration of some ancient republic. If any sures, resists the natural encroachments of flagrant act of fraud or oppression is mentionsensuality, and maintains the mind in her law-ed, he hopes "that all is not true that is ful superiority. No. 57.] SATURDAY, MAY 19, 1759. PRUDENCE is of more frequent use than any other intellectual quality; it is exerted on slight occasions, and called into act by the cursory business of common life. Whatever is universally necessary, has been granted to mankind on easy terms. Prudence, as it is always wanted, is without great difficulty obtained. It requires neither extensive view nor profound search, but forces itself by spontaneous impulse upon a mind neither great nor busy, neither engrossed by vast designs, nor distracted by multiplicity of attention. told;" if misconduct or corruption puts the nation in a flame, he hopes that "every man means well." At elections he leaves his dependents to their own choice, and declines to vote himself, for every candidate is a good man, whom he is unwilling to oppose or offend. If disputes happen among his neighbours he observes an invariable and cold neutrality. His punctuality has gained him the reputation of honesty, and his caution that of wisdom; and few would refuse to refer their claims to his award. He might have prevented many expensive law-suits, and quenched many a feud in its first smoke; but always refuses the office of arbitration, because he must decide against one or the other. With the affairs of other families he is alPrudence operates on life in the same man- ways unacquainted. He sees estates bought ner as rules on composition: it produces vigi- and sold, squandered and increased, without lance rather than elevation; rather prevents praising the economist, or censuring the loss than procures advantage; and often es- spendthrift. He never courts the rising lest capes miscarriages, but seldom reaches either they should fall; nor insults the fallen lest power or honour. It quenches that ardour of they should rise again. His caution has the enterprise by which every thing is done that appearance of virtue, and all who do not want can claim praise or admiration; and represses his help praise his benevolence; but if any that generous temerity which often fails and man solicits his assistance, he has just sent often succeeds. Rules may obviate faults away all his money; and, when the petitioner but can never confer beauties; and prudence is gone, declares to his family that he is sorry keeps life safe but does not often make it for his misfortunes, has always looked upon happy. The world is not amazed with prodi-him with particular kindness, and therefore gies of excellence, but when wit tramples upon rules, and magnanimity breaks the chains of prudence. One of the most prudent of all that have fallen within my observation, is my old companion Sophron, who has passed through the world in quiet, by perpetual adherence to a few plain maxims, and wonders how contention and distress can so often happen. could not lend him money, lest he should destroy their friendship by the necessity of enforcing payment. Of domestic misfortunes he has never heard. When he is told the hundredth time of a gentleman's daughter who has married the coachman, he lifts up his hands with astonishment, for he always thought her a very sober girl. When nuptial quarrels, after having filled the country with talk and laughter, at last end in separation, he never can conceive how it happened, for he looked upon them as a happy couple. but he takes the consulter tenderly by the hand, tells him he makes his case his own, and advises him not to act rashly, but to weigh the reasons on both sides; observes that a man may be as easily too hasty as too slow, and that as many fail by doing too much as too little; that "a wise man has two ears and one The first principle of Sophron is to run no hazards. Though he loves money, he is of opinion that frugality is a more certain source of riches than industry. it is to no purpos that any prospect of large profit is set before If his advice is asked, he never gives any him; he believes little about futurity, and does particular direction, because events are uncernot love to trust his money out of his sight, fortain, and he will bring no blame upon himself, nobody knows what may happen. He has a small estate, which he lets at the old rent, because "it is better to have a little than nothing;" but he rigorously demands payment on the stated day, for he that cannot pay one quarter, cannot pay two." If he is told of any improvements in agriculture, he likes the old way, has observed that changes very sel-tongue ;" and "that little said is spon mend dom answer expectation; is of opinion that our forefathers knew how to till the ground as well as we; and concludes with an argument that nothing can overpower, that the expense of planting and fencing is immediate, and the advantage distant, and that "he is no wise man who will quit a certainty for an uncertainty." Another of Sophron's rules is "to mind no business but his own." In the state he is of ed;" that he could tell him this and that, but that after all every man is the best judge of his. own affairs. With this some are satisfied, and go home with great reverence of Sophron's wisdom; and none are offended, because every one is left in full possession of his own opinion. Sophron gives no characters. It is equally vain to tell him of vice and virtue; for he has remarked, that no man likes to be censured, and that very few are delighted with the praises of another. He has a few terms which he uses to all alike. With respect to fortune, he believes every family to be in good circumstances; he never exalts any understand ing by lavish praise, yet he meets with none but very sensible people. Every man is honest and hearty; and every woman is a good crea ture. Thus Sophron creeps along, neither loved nor hated, neither favoured nor opposed; he has never attempted to grow rich, for fear of growing poor: and has raised no friends, for fear of making enemies. No. 58.] SATURDAY, MAY 26, 1759. PLEASURE is very seldom found where it is sought. Our bright blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks. The flowers which scatter their odours from time to time in the paths of life, grow up without culture from seed scattered by chance. Nothing is more hopeless than a scheme of merriment. Wits and humourists are brought together from distant quarters by preconcerted invitations; they come attended by their admirers, prepared to laugh and to applaud; they gaze a while on each other, ashamed to be silent, and afraid to speak; every man is discontented with himself, grows angry with those that give him pain, and resolves that he will contribute nothing to the merriment of such worthless company. Wine inflames the general malignity, and changes sullenness to petulance, till at last none can bear any longer the presence of the rest. They retire to vent their indignation in safer places, where they are heard with attention; their importance is restored, they recover their good humour, and gladden the night with wit and jocularity. but that he devour in haste what the cook has spoiled, and drive on in quest of better enter, tainment. He finds at night a more commodious house, but the best is always worse than he expected. He at last enters his native province, and resolves to feast his mind with the conversation of his old friends and the recollection of juvenile frolics. He stops at the house of his friend, whom he designs to overpower with pleasure by the unexpected interview. He is not known till he tells his name, and revives the memory of himself by a gradual explanation. He is then coldly received and ceremoniously feasted. He hastes away to another, whom his affairs have called to a distant place, and having seen the empty house, goes away disgusted, by a disappointment which could not be intended because it could be foreseen. At the next house he finds every face clouded with misfortune, and is regarded with malevolence as an unreasonable intruder, who comes not to visit but to insult them. It is seldom that we find either men or places such as we expect them. He that has pictured a prospect upon his fancy, will receive little pleasure from his eyes; he that has anticipated the conversation of a wit, will wonder to what prejudice he owes his reputation. Yet it is necessary to hope, though hope should always be deluded; for hope itself is happiness, and its frustrations, however frequent, are yet less dreadful than its extinction. No. 59.] SATURDAY, JUNE 2, 1759. What In the common enjoyments of life, we cannot very liberally indulge the present hour, but by anticipating part of the pleasure which might have relieved the tediousness of another day; and any uncommon exertion of strength, or Merriment is always the effect of a sudden perseverance in labour, is succeeded by a long impression. The jest which is expected is al-interval of languor and weariness. ready destroyed. The most active imagination ever advantage we snatch beyond the certain will be sometimes torpid under the frigid influ- portion allotted us by nature, is like money ence of melancholy, and sometimes occasions spent before it is due, which at the time of rewill be wanting to tempt the mind, however vo-gular payment will be missed and regretted. latile, to sallies and excursions. Nothing was ever said with uncommon felicity, but by the co-operation of chance, and therefore, wit as well as valour must be content to share its honours with fortune. All other pleasures are equally uncertain; the general remedy of uneasiness is change of place; almost every one has some journey of pleasure in his mind, with which he flatters his expectation. He that travels in theory has no inconvenience; he has shade and sunshine at his disposal, and wherever he alights finds tables of plenty and looks of gaiety. These ideas are indulged till the day of departure arrives, the chaise is called, and the progress of happiness begins. A few miles teach him the fallacies of imagination. The road is dusty, the air is sultry, the horses are sluggish, and the postillion brutal. He longs for the time of dinner, that he may eat and rest. The inn is crowded, his orders are neglected, and nothing remains Fame, like all other things which are supposed to give or to increase happiness, is dispensed with the same equality of distribution, He that is loudly praised will be clamorously censured; he that rises hastly into fame will be in danger of sinking suddenly into oblivion. Of many writers who filled their age with wonder, and whose names we find celebrated in the books of their contemporaries, the works are now no longer to be seen, or are seen only amidst the lumber of libraries which are seldom visited, where they lie only to show the deceit fulness of hope, and the uncertainty of ho nour. Of the decline of reputation many causes may be assigned. It is commonly lost because it never was deserved; and was conferred at first, not by the suffrage of criticism, but by the fondness of friendship, or servility of flattery. The great and popular are very freely applauded; but all soon grow weary of echo ing to each other a name which has no other claim to notice, but that many mouths are pronouncing it at once. But many have lost the final reward of their labours because they were too hasty to enjoy it. They have laid hold on recent occurrences, and eminent names, and delighted their readers with allusions and remarks, in which all were interested, and to which all therefore were attentive. But the effect ceased with its cause; the time quickly came when new events drove the former from memory, when the vicissitudes of the world brought new hopes and fears, transferred the love and hatred of the public to other agents, and the writer, whose works were no longer assisted by gratitude, or resentment, was left to the cold regard of idle curiosity. He that writes upon general principles, or delivers universal truths, may hope to be often read, because his work will be equally useful at all times, and in every country; but he cannot expect it to be received with eagerness, or to spread with rapidity, because desire can have no particular stimulation; that which is to be loved long must be loved with reason rather than with passion. He that lays out his labours upon temporary subjects, easily finds readers, and quickly loses them; for, what should make the book valued when its subject is no more? These observations will show the reason why the poem of Hudibras is almost forgotten, however embellished with sentiments and diversified with allusions, however bright with wit, and however solid with truth. The hypocrisy which it detected, and the folly which it ridiculed, have long vanished from public notice. Those who had felt the mischief of discord, and the tyranny of usurpation, read it with rapture, for every line brought back to memory something known, and to gratified resentment by the just censure of something nated. But the book which was once quoted by princes, and which supplied conversation to all the assemblies of the gay and witty, is now seldom mentioned, and even by those that affect to mention it is seldom read. So vainly is wit lavished upon fugitive topics, so little can architecture secure duration when the ground is false, No. 60.] SATURDAY, JUNE 9, 1759. CRITICISM is a study by which men grow important and formidable at a very small expense. The power of invention has been conferred by nature upon few, and the labour of learning those sciences which may by mere labour be obtained is too great to be willingly endured; but every man can exert such judgment as he has upon the works of others; and he whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of a Critic. I hope it will give comfort to great numbers who are passing through the world in obscurity, when I inform them how easily distinction may be obtained. All the other powers of lite rature are coy and haughty, they must be long courted, and at last are not always gained; but Criticism is a goddess easy of access and forward of advance; who will meet the slow, and encourage the timorous; the want of meaning she supplies with words, and the want of spirit she recompenses with malignity. This profession has one recommendation peculiar to itself, that it gives vent to malignity without real mischief. No genius was ever blasted by the breath of critics. The poison which, if confined, would have burst the heart, fumes away in empty hisses, and malice is set at ease with very little danger to merit. The critic is the only man whose triumph is without another's pain, and whose greatness does not rise upon another's ruin. To a study at once so easy and so reputable, so malicious and so harmless, it cannot be necessary to invite my readers by a long or laboured exhortation; it is sufficient, since all would be critics if they could, to show by one eminent example that all can be critics if they will. Dick Minim, after the common course of puerile studies, in which he was no great proficient, was put an apprentice to a brewer, with whom he had lived two years, when his uncle died in the city, and left him a large fortune in the stocks. Dick had for six months before used the company of the lower players, of whom he had learned to scorn a trade, and, being now at liberty to follow his genius, he resolved to be a man of wit and humour. That he might be properly initiated in his new character, he frequented the coffee-louses near the theatres, where he listened very diligently, day after day to those who talked of language and sentiments, and unities and catastrophes, till by slow degrees he began to think that he understood something of the stage, and hoped in time to talk himself. But he did not trust so much to natural sagacity as wholly to neglect the help of books. When the theatres were shut, he retired to Richmond with a few select writers, whose opinions he impressed upon his memory by unwearied diligence; and, when he returned with other wits to the town, was able to tell, in very proper phrases, that the chief business of art is to follow nature; that a perfect writer is not to be expected, because genius decays as judgment increases; that the great art is the art of blotting; and that, according to the rule of Horace, every piece should be kept nine years. Of the great authors he now began to display the characters, laying down as a universal position, that all had beauties and defects. His opinion was, that Shakespeare, committing himself wholly to the impulse of nature, wanted that correctness which learning would have given him; and that Jonson, trusting to learning, did not sufficiently cast his eye on nature. He blamed the stanza of Spenser, and could not bear the hexameters of Sidney. Denham and Waller he held the first reformers of English numbers; and thought that if Waller could have obtained the strength of Denham, or Denham the sweetness of Waller, sent poets are indebted to him for their happiest thoughts; by his contrivance the bell was rung twice in Barbarossa, and by his persuasion the author of Cleone concluded his play with a couplet; for what can be more absurd, said Minim, than that part of a play should be rhymed, and part written in blank verse; and by what acquisition of faculties is the speaker, who never could find rhymes before, enabled to rhyme at the conclusion of an act? pineness with which their works have been hitherto perused, so that no man has found the sound of a drum in this distich. there had been nothing wanting to complete | many of his frienas are of opinion, that our prea poet. He often expressed his commiseration of Dryden's poverty, and his indignation at the age which suffered him to write for bread; he repeated with rapture the first lines of All for Love, but wondered at the corruption of taste which could bear any thing so unnatural as rhyming tragedies. In Otway he found uncommon powers of moving the passions, but was disgusted by his general negligence, and blamed him for making a conspirator his hero; and never concluded his disquisi- He is the great investigator of hidden beantion without remarking how happily the sound ties, and is particularly delighted when he finds of the clock is made to alarm the audience. the sound an echo to the sense. He has read all Southern would have been his favourite, but our poets with particular attention to this delithat he mixes comic with tragic scenes, inter-cacy of versification, and wonders at the sucepts the natural course of the passions, and fills the mind with a wild confusion of mirth a melancholy. The versification of Rowe he thought too melodious for the stage, and too little varied in different passions. He made it the great fault of Congreve, that all his persons were wits, and that he always wrote with more art than nature. He considered Cato rather as a poem than a play, and allowed Addison to be the complete master of allegory and grave humour, but paid no great deference to him as a critic. He thought the chief merit of Prior was in his easy tales and lighter poems, though he allowed that his Solomon had many noble sentiments elegantly expressed. In Swift he discovered an inimitable vein In these verses, says Minim, we have two of irony, and an easiness which all would striking accommodations of the sound to the hope and few would attain. Pope he was in-sense. It is impossible to utter the two lines clined to degrade from a poet to a versifier, and thought his numbers rather luscious than sweet. He often lamented the neglect of Phadra and Hippolitus, and wished to see the stage under better regulation. "When pulpit, drum ecclesiastic, and that the wonderful lines upon honour "Honour is like the glassy bubble, emphatically without an act like that which they describe; bubble and trouble causing a momentary inflation of the cheeks by the retention of the breath, which is afterwards forcibly emitted, as in the practice of blowing bubbles.. These assertions passed commonly uncon- But the greatest excellence is in the third line, tradicted; and if now and then an opponent which is cracked in the middle to express a started up, he was quickly repressed by the suf-crack, and then shivers into monosyllables. frages of the company, and Minim went away from every dispute with elation of heart and increase of confidence. He now grew conscious of his abilities, and began to talk of the present state of dramatic poetry; wondered what was become of the comic genius which supplied our ancestors with wit and pleasantry, and why no writer could be found that durst now venture beyond a farce. He saw no reason for thinking that the vein of humour was exhausted, since we live in a country where liberty suffers every character to spread itself to its utmost bulk, and which, therefore, produces more originals than all the rest of the world together. Of tragedy he concluded business to be the soul, and yet often hinted that love predominates too much upon the modern stage. Yet hath this diamond lain neglected with common stones, and among the innumerable admirers of Hudibras the observation of this superlative passage has been reserved for the sagacity of Minim. MR. MINIM had now advanced himself to the zenith of critical reputation; when he was in the pit, every eye in the boxes was fixed upon him; when he entered his coffee-house, he was surrounded by circles of candidates, who passed their noviciate of literature under his tuition: his opinion was asked by all who had no opinion of their own, and yet loved to debate and decide; and no composition was supposed to pass in safety to posterity till it had been secur He was now an acknowledged critic, and had his own seat in a coffee-house, and headed aed by Minim's approbation. party in the pit. Minim has more vanity than ill nature, and seldom desires to do much mischief; he will perhaps murmur a little in the ear of him that sits next him, but endeavours to influence the audience to favour, by clapping when an actor exclaims, "Ye gods!" or laments the misery of his country. By degrees he was admitted to rehearsals; and Minim professes great admiration of the wisdom and munificence by which the academies of the continent were raised; and often wishes for some standard of taste, for some tribunal, to which merit may appeal from caprice, prejudice, and malignity. He has formed a plan for an academy of criticism, where every work of imagination may be read before it is printed, and which shall authoritively direct the theatres | has, he know not how, something that strikes what pieces to receive or reject, to exclude or him with an obscure sensation like that which to revive. he fancies would be felt from the sound of darkness. Such an institution would, in Dick's opinion, spread the fame of English literature over Eu- Minim is not so confident of his rules of rope, and make London the metropolis of ele-judgment as not very eagerly to catch new gance and politeness, the place to which the light from the name of the author. He is learned and ingenious of all countries would commonly so prudent as to spare those whom repair for instruction and improvement, and he cannot resist, unless, as will sometimes hapwhere nothing would any longer be applauded | pen, he finds the public combined against or endured that was not conformed to the ni- them. But a fresh pretender to fame he is cest rules, and finished with the highest ele-strongly inclined to censure, till his own hogance. Till some happy conjunction of the planets shall dispose our princes or ministers to make themselves immortal by such an academy, Minim contents himself to preside four nights in a week in a critical society selected by himself, where he is heard without contradiction, and whence his judgment is disseminated through the great vulgar and the small. When he is placed in the chair of criticism, he declares loudly for the noble simplicity of our ancestors, in opposition to the petty refinements, and ornamental luxuriance. Sometimes he is sunk in despair, and perceives false delicacy daily gaining ground, and sometimes brightens his countenance with a gleam of hope, and predicts the revival of the true sublime. He then fulminates his loudest censures against the monkish barbarity of rhyme; wonders how beings that pretend to reason can be pleased with one line always ending like another; tells how unjustly and unnaturally sense is sacrificed to sound; how often the best thoughts are mangled by the necessity of confining or extending them to the dimensions of a couplet; and rejoices that genius has, in our days, shaken of the shackles which had encumbered it so long. Yet he allows that rhyme may sometimes be borne if the lines be often broken, and the pauses judiciously diversified. nour requires that he commend him. Till he knows the success of a composition he intrenches himself in general terms; there are some new thoughts and beautiful passages, but there is likewise much which he would have advised the author to expunge. He has several favourite epithets, of which he has never settled the eaning, but which are very commey applied to books which he has not read, or cannot understand. One is manly, another is dry, another stiff, and another flimsy: sometimes he discovers delicacy of style, and sometimes meets with strange expressions. He is never so great nor so happy, as when a youth of promising parts is brought to receive his directions for the prosecution of his studies. He then puts on a very serious air; he advises the pupil to read none but the best authors, and, when he finds one congenial to his own mind, to study his beauties, but avoid his faults, and, when he sits down to write, to consider how his favourite author would think at the present time on the present occasion. He exhorts him to catch those moments when he finds his thoughts expanded and his genius exalted, but to take care lest imagination hurry him beyond the bounds of nature. He holds diligence the mother of success; yet enjoins him with great earnestness, not to read more than he can digest, and not to confuse his From blank verse he makes an easy transi- mind, by pursuing studies of contrary tention to Milton, whom he produces as an exam- dencies. He tells hin, that every man has ple of the slow advance of lasting reputation. his genius, and that Cicero could never be a Milton is the only writer in whose books poet. The boy retires illuminated, resolves to Minim can read for ever without weariness. follow his genius, and to think how Milton What cause is it that exempts this pleasure would have thought: and Minim feasts upon from satiety he has long and diligently inquir-his own beneficence till another day brings ed, and believes it to consist in the perpetual another pupil. variation of the numbers, by which the ear is gratified and the attention awakened. The lines that are commonly thought rugged and and unmusical he conceives to have been No. 62.] SATURDAY, JUNE 23, 1759. written to temper the melodious luxury of the rest, or to express things by & proper cadence: for he scarcely finds a verse that has not this favourite beauty; he declares that he could shiver in a hot-house when he reads that SIR, TO THE IDLER. AN opinion prevails almost universally in the world, that he who has money has every thing. This is not a modern paradox, or the tenet of a small and obscure sect, but a persuasion which appears to have operated upon most minds in all ages, and which is supported by authorities so numerous and so cogent, that and that when Milton bewails his blindness, nothing but long experience could have given the verse, "So thick a drop serene has quench'd these orbs," me confidence to question its truth. But experience is the test by which all the philosophers of the present age agree, that speculation must be tried; and i may therefore |