negligence, and repressed my sallies with super-sack vacuity; who is obliged to continue his talk cilious gravity; yet having natural good-humour when his meaning is spent, to raise merriment lurking in his heart, he could not long hold out without images, to harass his imagination in against the power of hilarity, but after a few quest of thoughts which he cannot start, and months began to relax the muscles of disciplina- his memory in pursuit of narratives which he rian moroseness, received me with smiles after cannot overtake; observe the effort with which an elopement, and that he might not betray his he strains to conceal despondency by a smile, trust to his fondness, was content to spare my and the distress in which he sits while the eyes diligence by increasing his own. of the company are fixed upon him as their last refuge from silence and dejection. Thus I continued to dissipate the gloom of collegiate austerity, to waste my own life in idleness, and lure others from their studies, till the happy hour arrived when I was sent to London. I soon discovered the town to be the proper element of youth and gavety, and was quickly distinguished as a wit by the ladies, a species of beings only heard of at the university, whom I had no sooner the happiness of approaching than I devoted all my faculties to the ambition of pleasing them. A wit, Mr. Rambler, in the dialect of ladies, is not always a man who by the action of a vigorous fancy upon comprehensive knowledge brings distant ideas unexpectedly together, who by some peculiar acuteness discovers resemblances in objects dissimilar to common eyes, or, by mixing heterogeneous notions, dazzles the attention with sudden scintillations of conceit, A lady's wit is a man who can make ladies laugh, to which, however easy it may seem, many gifts of nature and attainments of art must commonly concur. He that hopes to be received as a wit in female assemblies should have a form neither so amiable as to strike with admiration, nor so coarse as to raise disgust, with an understanding too feeble to be dreaded, and too forcible to be despised. | The other parts of the character are more subject to variation: it was formerly essential to a wit, that half his back should be covered with a snowy fleece; and at a time vet more remote, no man was a wit without his boots. In the days of the "Spectator" a snuff box seems to be indispensable; but in my time an embroidered coat was sufficient, without any precise regulation of the rest of his dress. But wigs and boots and snuff boxes are vain, without a perpetual resolution to be merry, and who can always find supplies of mirth? Juvenal, indeed, in his comparison of the two opposite philosophers, wonders only whence an unexhausted fountain of tears could be discharged; but had Juvenal, with all his spirit, undertaken my province, he would have found constant gavety equally difficult to be supported. Consider, Mr. Rambler, and compassionate the condition of a man who has taught every company to expect from him a continual feast of laughter, an uninter.nitted stream of jocularity. The task of every other slave has an end. The rower in time reaches the port; the lexicographer at last finds the conclusion of his alphabet; only the hapless wit has his labour always to begin; the call for novelty is never satisfied, and one jest only raises expectation of another. It were endless to recount the shifts to which I have been reduced, or to enumerate the different species of artificial wit. I regularly frequented coffee-houses, and have often lived a week upon an expression, of which he who dropped it did not know the value. When fortune did not favour my erratic industry, I gleaned jests at home from obsolete farces. To collect wit was indeed safe, for I consorted with none that looked much into books, but to disperse it was the difficulty. A seeming negligence was often useful, and I have very successfully made a reply not to what the lady had said, but to what it was convenient for me to hear; for very few were so perverse as to rectify a mistake which had given occasion to a burst of merriment. Sometimes I drew the conversation up by degrees to a proper point, and produced a conceit which I had treasured up, like sportsmen who boast of killing the foxes which they lodge in the covert. Eminence is however, in some happy moments, gained at less expense; I have delighted a whole circle at one time with a series of quibbles, and made myself good company at another by scalding my fingers, or mistaking a lady's lap for my own chair. These are artful deceits and useful expedients; but expedients are at length exhausted, and deceits detected. Time itself, among other injuries, diminishes the power of pleasing, and I now find, in my forty-fifth year, many pranks and pleasantries very coldly received, which had formerly filled a whole room with jollity and accla mation. I am under the melancholy necessity of supporting that character by study, which I gained by levity, having learned too late that gayety must be recommended by higher qualities, and that mirth can never please long but as the efflorescence of a mind loved for its luxu riance, but esteemed for its usefulness. I am, &c. PAPILIUS. No. 142.] SATURDAY, JULY 27, 1751. Ενθα δ' ἀνὴρ ἐνίαυε πελώριος—οὐδὲ, μέτ' ἄλλουν A giant shepherd here his flock maintains, SIR, HOMER. POFE. I know that among men of learning and asperity the retainers to the female world are not much regarded: yet I cannot but hope that, if you knew at how dear a rate our honours are purchased, you would look with some gratula- HAVING been accustomed to retire annually tion on our success, and with some pity on our from the town, I lately accepted the invitation miscarriages. Think on the misery of him who of Eugenio, who has an estate and seat in a disis condemned to cultivate barrenness and ran-tant county. As we were unwilling to travel this newly-discovered prodigy. I was soon informed that the fine house and spacious gardens were haunted by squire Bluster, of whom it was very easy to learn the character, since nobody had regard for him sufficient to hinder them from telling whatever they could discover. without improvement, we turned often from the direct road to please ourselves with the view of nature or of art; we examined every wild mountain and medicinal spring, criticised every edifice, contemplated every ruin, and compared every scene of action with the narratives of historians. By this succession of amusements we enjoyed the exercise of a journey without suffering the fatigue, and had nothing to regret but that by a progress so leisurely and gentle we missed the adventures of a post-chaise, and the pleasure of alarming villages with the tumult of our passage, and of disguising our insignificancy by the dig-time frequently represented the shire in parlianity of hurry. The first week after our arrival at Eugenio's house, was passed in receiving visits from his neighbours, who crowded about him with all the eagerness of benevolence; some impatient to learn the news of the court in town, that they might be qualified by authentic information to dictate to the rural politicians on the next bowling day; others desirous of his interest to accommodate disputes, or of his advice in the settlement of their fortunes and the marriage of their children. The civilities which he had received were soon to be returned; and I passed some time with great satisfaction in roving through the country, and viewing the seats, gardens, and plantations which are scattered over it. My pleasure would indeed have been greater had I been sometimes allowed to wander in a park or wilderness alone; but to appear as the friend of Eugenio was an honour not to be enjoyed without some inconveniences; so much was every one solicitous for my regard, that I could seldom escape to solitude, or steal a moment from the emulation of complaisance, and the vigilance of officiousness. In these rambles of good neighbourhood, we frequently passed by a house of unusual magnificence. When I had my curiosity yet distracted among many novelties, it did not much attract my observation; but in a short time I could not forbear surveying it with particular notice; for the length of the wall which inclosed the gardens, the disposition of the shades that waved over it, and the canals of which I could obtain some glimpses through the trees from our own windows, gave me reason to expect more grandeur and beauty than I had yet seen in that province. I therefore inquired as we rode by it, why we never, amongst our excursions, spent an hour where there was such an appearance of splendour and affluence? Eugenio told me that the seat which I so much admired was commonly called in the country the haunted house, and that no visits were paid there by any of the gentlemen whom I had yet seen. As the haunts of incorporeal beings are generally ruinous, neglected and desolate, I easily conceived that there was something to be explained, and told him that I supposed it only fairy ground, on which we might venture by daylight without danger. The danger, says he, is indeed only that of appearing to solicit the acquaintance of a man, with whom it is not possible to converse without infamy, and who has driven from him, by his insolence or malignity, every human being who ean live without him. Our conversation was then accidentally interrupted, but my inquisitive humour being now in motion, could not rest without a full account of Squire Bluster is descended of an ancient family. The estate which his ancestors had immemorially possessed was much augmented by Captain Bluster, who served under Drake in the reign of Elizabeth; and the Blusters, who were before only petty gentlemen, have from that ment, been chosen to present addresses, and given laws at hunting-matches and races. They were eminently hospitable and popular, till the father of this gentleman died of an election. His lady went to the grave soon after him, and left the heir, then only ten years old, to the care of his grandmother, who would not suffer him to be controlled, because she could not bear to hear him cry; and never sent him to school, because she was not able to live without his company. She taught him however very early to inspect the steward's accounts, to dog the butler from the cellar, and to catch the servants at a junket; so that he was at the age of eighteen a complete master of all the lower arts of domestic policy, had often on the road detected combinations be tween the coachman and the ostler, and procured the discharge of nineteen maids for illicit correspondence with cottagers and char-women. By the opportunities of parsimony which minority affords, and which the probity of his guardians had diligently improved, a very large sum of money was accumulated, and he found himself when he took his affairs into his own hands the richest man in the county. It has been long the custom of this family to celebrate the heir's completion of his twenty-first year by an entertainment, at which the house is thrown open to all that are inclined to enter it, and the whole province flocks together as to a general festivity. On this occasion young Bluster exhibited the first tokens of his future eminence, by shaking his purse at an old gentleman who had been the intimate friend of his father, and offering to wager a greater sum than he could afford to venture; a practice with which he has at one time or other insulted every freeholder within ten miles round him. His next acts of offence were committed in a contentious and spiteful vindication of the privileges of his manors, and a rigorous and relentless prosecution of every man that presumed to violate his game. As he happens to have no estate adjoining equal to his own, his oppressions are often borne without resistance for fear of a long suit, of which he delights to count the expenses without the least solicitude about the event; for he knows that where nothing but an honorary right is contested, the poorer antagonist must always suffer, whatever shall be the last decision of the law. By the success of some of these disputes he has so elated his insolence, and by reflection upon the general hatred which they have brought upon him so irritated his virulence, that his whole life is spent in meditating or executing mischief. It is his common practice to procure his hedges to be broken in the night, and then to demand satisfaction for damages which his grounds have suf fered from his neighbour's cattle. An old widow was yesterday soliciting Eugenio to enable her to replevin her only cow, then in the pound by squire Bluster's order, who had sent one of his agents to take advantage of her calamity, and persuade her to sell the cow at an under-rate. He has driven a day-labourer from his cottage for gathering blackberries in a hedge for his children, and has now an old woman in the county-jail for a trespass which she committed, by coming into his ground to pick up acorns for her hog. of plagiarism. When the excellence of a new composition can no longer be contested, and malice is compelled to give way to the unanimity of applause, there is yet this one expedient to be tried, by which the author may be de graded, though his work be reverenced; and the excellence which we cannot obscure, may be set at such a distance as not to overpower our fainter lustre. This accusation is dangerous, because, even when it is false, it may be sometimes urged with Money, in whatever hands, will confer power. probability. Bruyere declares that we are come Distress will fly to immediate refuge without into the world too late to produce any thing new, much consideration of remote consequences. that nature and life are preoccupied, and that Bluster has therefore a despotic authority in description and sentiment have been long ex many families, whom he has assisted, on press-hausted. It is indeed certain, that whoever ating occasions, with larger sums than they can tempts any common topic, will find unexpected easily repay. The only visits that he makes are coincidences of his thoughts with those of other to these houses of misfortune, where he enters writers; nor can the nicest judgment always diswith the insolence of absolute command, enjoys tinguish accidental similitude from artful imitathe terrors of the family, exacts their obedience, tion. There is likewise a common stock of imariots at their charge, and in the height of his joyges, a settled mode of arrangement, and a beaten insults the father with menaces, and the daugh- track of transition, which all authors suppose ters with obscenity. themselves at liberty to use, and which produce the resemblance generally observable among contemporaries. So that in books which best deserve the name of originals, there is little new beyond the disposition of materials already provided; the same ideas and combinations of ideas have been long in the possession of other hands; and, by restoring to every man his own, as the Romans must have returned to their cots from the possession of the world, so the most inventive and fertile genius would reduce his folios to a few pages. Yet the author who imitates his predecessors only by furnishing himself with thoughts and elegances out of the same general magazine of literature, can with little more propriety be reproached as a plagiary, than the architect can be censured as a mean copier of Angelo or Wren, because he digs his marble from the same quarry, squares his stones by the same art, and unites them in columns of the same orders. He is of late somewhat less offensive; for one of his debtors, after gentle expostulations, by which he was only irritated to grosser outrage, seized him by the sleeve, led him trembling into the court-yard, and closed the door upon him in a stormy night. He took his usual revenge next morning by a writ; but the debt was discharged by the assistance of Eugenio. It is his rule to suffer his tenants to owe him rent, because by this indulgence he secures to himself the power of seizure whenever he has an inclination to amuse himself with calamity, and feast his ears with entreaties and lamentations. Yet as he is sometimes capriciously liberal to those whom he happens to adopt as favourites, and lets his lands at a cheap rate, his farms are never long unoccupied; and when one is ruined by oppression, the possibility of better fortune quickly lures another to supply his place. Many subjects fall under the consideration of Such is the life of Squire Bluster; a man in an author, which being limited by nature, can whose power fortune has liberally placed the admit only of slight and accidental diversities. means of happiness, but who has defeated all her All definitions of the same thing must be nearly gifts of their end by the depravity of his mind. the same; and descriptions, which are defini He is wealthy without followers; he is magnifi- tions of a more lax and fanciful kind, must al cent without witnesses; he has birth without always have in some degree that resemblance to liance, and influence without dignity. His neighbours scorn him as a brute; his dependants dread him as an oppressor; and he has only the gloomy comfort of reflecting, that if he is hated he is likewise feared. each other which they all have to their object. Different poets describing the spring or the sea would mention the zephyrs and the flowers, the billows and the rocks; reflecting on human life, they would, without any communication of opinions, lament the deceitfulness of hope, the fu gacity of pleasure, the fragility of beauty, and the frequency of calamity: and for palliatives of these incurable miseries, they would concur in recommending kindness, temperance, caution, and fortitude. When therefore there are found in Virgil and Horace two similar passages: Let Cæsar spread his conquests far. Less pleased to triumph than to spare. it is surely not necessary to suppose with a late critic, that one is copied from the other, since neither Virgil nor Horace can be supposed ignorant of the common duties of humanity, and the virtue of moderation in success. Cicero and Ovid have on very different occasions remarked how little of the honour of a victory belongs to the general, when his soldiers and his fortune have made their deductions; yet why should Ovid be suspected to have owed to Tully an observation which perhaps occurs to every man that sees or hears of military glories? Tully observes of Achilles, that had not Homer written, his valour had been without praise. Nisi Ilias illa extitisset, idem tumulus qui corpus ejus contezerat, nomen ejus obruisset. Unless the Iliad had been published, his name had been lost in the tomb that covered his body. Horace tells us with more energy that there were brave men before the wars of Troy, but they were lost in oblivion for want of a poet: Vizere fortes ante Agamemnona Nocte, carent quia vate sacro. Before great Agamemnon reign'd, Reign'd kings as great as he, and brave, Whose huge ambition's now contain'd In the small compass of a grave; In endless night they sleep, unwept, unknown, No bard had they to make all time their own. FRANCIS. Tully inquires, in the same oration, why, but for fame, we disturb a short life with so many fatigues? But soon, too soon, the lover turns his eyes; No writer can be fully convicted of imitation, except there is a concurrence of more resem Quid est quod in hoc tam exiguo vita curriculo et tam blance than can be imagined to have happened brevi, tantis nos in laboribus exerceamus? when our life is of so short duration, why we form such numerous designs? But Horace, as well as Tully, might discover that records are needful to preserve the memory of actions, and that no records were so durable as poems; either of them might find out that life is short, and that we consume it in unnecessary labour. There are other flowers of fiction so widely scattered and so easily cropped, that it is scarcely just to tax the use of them as an act by which any particular writer is despoiled of his garland; for they may be said to have been planted by the ancients in the open road of poetry for the accommodation of their successors, and to be the right of every one that has art to pluck them without injuring their colours or their fragrance. The passage of Orpheus to hell, with the recovery and second loss of Eurydice, have been described af by chance; as where the same ideas are conjoined without any natural series or necessary coherence, or where not only the thought but the words are copied. Thus it can scarcely be doubted, that in the first of the following passages Pope remembered Ovid, and that in the second he copied Crashaw : Sape pater dixit, studium quid inutile tentas? Τὴ Παφίῃ τὸ κάτοπτρον· ἔπει τοίη μὲν ὁρᾶσθαι Venus take my votive glass, As not every instance of similitude can be considered as a proof of imitation, so not every imitation ought to be stigmatized as plagiarism. The adoption of a noble sentiment, or the insertion of a borrowed ornament, may sometimes display so much judgment as will almost compensate for invention: and an inferior genius may, without any imputation of servility, pursue the path of the ancients, provided he declines to tread in their footsteps. The strength and unanimity of this alliance 18 not easily conceived. It might be expected that no man should suffer his heart to be inflamed with malice, but by injuries; that none should busy himself in contesting the pretensions of another, but when some right of his own was involved in the question; that at least hostilities commenced without cause, should quickly cease; that the armies of malignity should soon dis perse, when no common interest could be found to hold them together; and that the attack upon a rising character should be left to those who had something to hope or fear from the event. The hazards of those that aspire to eminence, would be much diminished if they had none but acknowledged rivals to encounter. Their enemies would then be few, and what is of yet greater importance, would be known. But what caution is sufficient to ward off the blows of invisible assailants, or what force can stand against unremitted attacks, and a continual succession of enemies? Yet such is the state of the world, that no sooner can any man emerge from the crowd, and fix the eyes of the public upon him, than he stands as a mark to the arrows of lurking calumny, and receives in the tumult of hostility, from distant and from nameless hands, wounds not always easy to be cured. It is probable that the onset against the candidates for renown is originally incited by those who imagine themselves in danger of suffering by their success; but, when war is once declared, volunteers flock to the standard, multitudes follow the camp only for want of employment, and flying squadrons are dispersed to every part, so pleased with an opportunity of mischief, that they toil without prospect of praise, and pillage without hope of profit. When any man has endeavoured to deserve distinction, he will be surprised to hear himself censured where he could not expect to have been named; he will find the utmost acrimony of malice among those whom he never could have offended. As there are to be found in the service of envy men of every diversity of temper and degree of understanding, calumny is diffused by all arts and methods of propagation. Nothing is too gross or too refined, too cruel or too trifling to be practised; very little regard is had to the rules of honourable hostility, but every weapon is accounted lawful, and those that cannot make a thrust at life are content to keep themselves in play with petty malevolence, to teaze with feeble blows and impotent disturbance. But as the industry of observation has divided the most miscellaneous and confused assemblages into proper classes, and ranged the insects of the summer, that torment us with their drones or stings, by their several tribes; the persecutors of merit, notwithstanding their numbers may be likewise commodiously distinguished into Roarers, Whisperers, and Moderators. The Roarer is an enemy rather terrible than dangerous. He has no other qualification for a champion of controversy than a hardened front and strong voice. Having seldom so much desire to confute as to silence, he depends rather upon vociferation than argument, and has very little care to adjust one part of his accusation to another, to preserve decency in his language, or probability in his narratives. He has always a |