ourselves miscarried in attempting; and yet can hardly allow to be difficult; nor can we forbear to wonder afresh at every new failure, or to promise certainty of success to our next essay; but when we try, the same hindrances recur, the same inability is perceived, and the vexation of disappointment must again be suffered.

Of the various kinds of speaking or writing, which serve necessity, or promote pleasure, none appear so artless or easy as simple narration; for what should make him that knows the whole order and progress of an affair unable to relate it? Yet we hourly find such an endeavour to entertain or instruct us by recitals, clouding the facts which they intend to illustrate, and losing themselves and their auditors in wilds and mazes, in digression and confusion. When we have congratulated ourselves upon a new opportunity of inquiry, and new means of information, it often happens that without designing either deceit or concealment, without ignorance of the fact, or unwillingness to disclose it, the relator fills the ear with empty sounds, harasses the attention with fruitless impatience and disturbs the imagination by a tumult of events, without order of time, or train of consequence.

They who can believe that nature has so capriciously distributed understanding have surely no claim to the honour of serious confutation. The inhabitants of the same country have opposite characters in different ages; the prevalence or neglect of any particular study can proceed only from the accidental influence of some temporary cause; and if we have failed in history, we can have failed only because history has not hitherto been diligently cultivated.

But how is it evident, that we have not historians among us, whom we may venture to place in comparison with any that the neighbouring nations can produce? The attempt of Raleigh is deservedly celebrated for the labour of his researches, and the elegance of his style; but he has endeavoured to exert his judgment more than his genius, to select facts rather than adorn them; and has produced a historical dissertation, but seldom risen to the majesty of history.

perhaps sufficiently rapid, being stopped too frequently by particularities, which, though they might strike the author who was present at the transactions, will not equally detain the attention of posterity. But his ignorance or carelessness of the art of writing is amply compensated by his knowledge of nature and of policy; the wisdom of his maxims, the justness of his reasonings, and the variety, distinctness, and strength of his characters.

The works of Clarendon deserve more regard. His diction is indeed neither exact in itself, nor suited to the purpose of history. It is the effusion of a mind crowded with ideas, and desirous of imparting them; and therefore always accumulating words and involving one clause and senIt is natural to believe, upon the same princi- tence in another. But there is in his negligence ple, that no writer has a more easy task than the a rude, inartificial majesty, which, without the historian. The philosopher has the works of nicety of laboured elegance swells the mind by its omniscience to examine; and is therefore en-plenitude and diffusion. His narration is not gaged in disquisitions, to which finite intellects are utterly unequal. The poet trusts to his inventions, and is not only in danger of those inconsistencies to which every one is exposed by departure from truth; but may be censured as well for deficiencies of matter, as for irregularity of disposition, or impropriety of ornament. But the happy historian has no other labour than of gathering what tradition pours down before him, or records treasure for his use. He has only the actions and designs of men like himself to conceive and to relate; he is not to form, but copy characters, and therefore is not blamed for the inconsistency of statesmen, the injustice of tyrants, or the cowardice of commanders. The difficulty of making variety inconsistent, or uniting probability with surprise, needs not to disturb him; the manners and actions of his personages are already fixed; his materials are provided and put into his hands, and he is at leisure to employ all his powers in arranging and dis playing them.

Yet, even with these advantages, very few in any age have been able to raise themselves to reputation by writing histories; and among the innumerable authors, who fill every nation with accounts of their ancestors, or undertake to transmit to futurity the events of their own time, the greater part, when fashion and novelty have ceased to recommend them, are of no other use than chronological memorials, which necessity may sometimes require to be consulted, but which fright away curiosity and disgust delicacy.

It is observed, that our nation, which has produced so many authors eminent for almost every other species of literary excellence, has been hitherto remarkably barren of historical genius; and, so far has this defect raised prejudices against us, that some have doubted whe ther an Englishman can stop at that mediocrity of style, or confine his mind to that even tenor of imagiration which narrative requires.

But none of our writers can, in my opinion, justly contest the superiority of Knolles, who, in his history of the Turks, has displayed all the excellences that narration can admit. His style, though somewhat obscured by time, and sometimes vitiated by false wit, is pure, nervous, elevated, and clear. A wonderful multiplicity of events is so artfully arranged, and so distinctly explained, that each facilitates the knowledge of the next. Whenever a new personage is introduced, the reader is prepared by his character for his actions; when a nation is first attacked, or city besieged, he is made acquainted with its his tory, or situation; so that a great part of the world is brought into view. The descriptions of this author are without minuteness, and the digressions without ostentation. Collateral events are so artfully woven into the contexture of his principal story, that they cannot be disjoined without leaving it lacerated and broken. There is nothing turgid in his dignity, nor superfluous in his copiousness. His orations only, which he feigns, like the ancient historians, to have been pronounced on remarkable occasions, are tedious and languid; and since they are merely the voluntary sports of imagination, prove how much the most judicious and skilful may be mistaken, in the estimate of their own powers.

Nothing could have sunk this author in obscu rity but the remoteness and barbarity of the people whose story he relates. It seldom happens, that all circumstances concur to happiness or

When the death of my brother had dismissed me from the duties of a shop, I considered my-some complaint of my covetousness, or some reself as restored to the rights of my birth, and entitled to the rank and reception which my ancestors obtained. I was, however, embarrassed with many difficulties at my first re-entrance into the world; for my haste to be a gentleman inclined me to precipitate measures; and every accident that forced me back towards my old station, was considered by me as an obstruction of my happiness.

trasts, and action, and pronunciation, that I was | saken; the regions of luxury are for awhile unoften desired to lead the hiss and clap, and was peopled, and pleasure leads out her votaries to feared and hated by the players and the poets. groves and gardens, to still scenes and erratic Many a sentence have I hissed, which I did not gratifications. Those who have passed many understand, and many a groan have I uttered, months in a continual tumult of diversion; who when the ladies were weeping in the boxes. At have never opened their eyes in the morning, last a malignant author, whose performance I but upon some new appointment; nor slept at had persecuted through the nine nights, wrote an night without a dream of dances, music, and good epigram upon Tape the critic, which drove me hands, or of soft sighs and humble supplications; from the pit for ever. must now retire to distant provinces, where the syrens of flattery are scarcely to be heard, where beauty sparkles without praise or envy, and wit is repeated only by the echo.

My desire to be a fine gentleman still continued: I therefore, after a short suspense, chose a new set of friends at the gaming-table, and was for some time pleased with the civility and open- As I think it one of the most important duties ness with which I found myself treated. I was of social benevolence to give warning of the ap indeed obliged to play; but being naturally timo-proach of calamity, when by timely prevention it rous and vigilant, was never surprised into large may be turned aside, or by preparatory measures sums. What might have been the consequence be more easily endured, I cannot feel the inof long familiarity with these plunderers I had not an opportunity of knowing; for one night the constables entered and seized us, and I was once more compelled to sink into my former condition, by sending for my old master to attest my character.

creasing warmth, or observe the lengthening days, without considering the condition of my fair readers, who are now preparing to leave all that has so long filled up their hours, all from which they have been accustomed to hope for delight; and who, till fashion proclaims the liberty of returning to the seats of mirth and elegance, must endure the rugged 'squire, the sober housewife, the loud huntsman, or the formal parson, the roar of obstreperous jollity, or the dulness of prudential instruction; without any retreat but to the gloom of solitude, where they will yet find greater inconveniences, and must learn, however unwillingly, to endure themselves.

When I was deliberating to what new qualifications I should aspire, I was summoned into the country, by an account of my father's death. Here I had hopes of being able to distinguish myself, and to support the honour of my family. I therefore bought guns and horses, and, contrary to the expectation of the tenants, increased the salary of the huntsman. But when I entered the field, it was soon discovered that I was not destined to the glories of the chase. I was afraid of thorns in the thicket, and of dirt in the marsh; I shivered on the brink of a river while the sportsmen crossed it, and trembled at the sight of a five-bar gate. When the sport and danger were over, I was still equally disconcert-themselves in progression, and careless whither ed; for I was effeminate, though not delicate, and could only join a feebly-whispering voice in the clamours of their triumph.

In winter the life of the polite and gay may be said to roll on with a strong and rapid current; they float along from pleasure to pleasure, without the trouble of regulating their own motions, and pursue the course of the stream in all the felicity of inattention; content that they find

they are going. But the months of summer are a kind of sleeping stagnation without wind or tide, where they are left to force themselves forA fall, by which my ribs were broken, soon ward by their own labour, and to direct their recalled me to domestic pleasures, and I exerted passage by their own skill; and where, if they all my art to obtain the favour of the neighbour- have not some internal principle of activity, they ing ladies; but, wherever I came, there was al-must be stranded upon shallows, or lie torpid in ways some unlucky conversation upon ribands, a perpetual calm. fillets, pins, or thread, which drove all my stock of compliments out of my memory, and overwhelmed me with shame and dejection.

Thus I passed the ten first years after the death of my brother, in which I have learned at last to repress that ambition, which I could never gratify; and, instead of wasting more of my life in vain endeavours after accomplishments, which if not early acquired, no endeavours can obtain, I shall confine my care to those higher exceltences which are in every man's power, and though I cannot enchant affection by elegance and ease, hope to secure esteem by honesty and truth. I am, &c. MISOCAPELUS.

There are, indeed, some to whom this universal dissolution of gay societies affords a welcome opportunity of quitting, without disgrace, the post which they have found themselves unable to maintain; and of seeming to retreat only at the call of nature, from assemblies where, after a short triumph of uncontested superiority, they are overpowered by some new intruder of softer elegance or sprightlier vivacity. By these, hopeless of victory, and yet ashamed to confess a con quest, the summer is regarded as a release from the fatiguing service of celebrity, a dismission to more certain joys and a safer empire. They now solace themselves with the influence which they shall obtain, where they have no rival to fear; and with the lustre which they shall effuse, when nothing can be seen of brighter splendour. They imagine, while they are preparing for their journey, the admiration with which the rustics will crowd about them; plan the laws of a new assembly; or contrive to delude provincial igno rance with a fictitious mode. A thousand pleas ing expectations swarm in the fancy; and ali the approaching weeks are filled with distinc tions, honours, and authority.

But others, who have lately entered the world, or have yet had no proofs of its inconstancy and desertion, are cut off, by this cruel interruption, from the enjoyment of their prerogatives, and doomed to lose four months in unactive obscurity. Many complaints do vexation and desire extort from those exiled tyrants of the town, against the inexorable sun, who pursues his course without any regard to love or beauty; and visits either tropic at the stated time, whether shunned or courted, deprecated or implored.

To them who leave the places of public resort in the full bloom of reputation, and withdraw from admiration, courtship, submission, and applause, a rural triumph can give nothing equivalent. The praise of ignorance, and the subjection of weakness, are little regarded by beauties who have been accustomed to more important conquests, and more valuable panegyrics. Nor indeed should the powers which have made havoc in the theatres, or borne down rivalry in courts, be degraded to a mean attack upon the untravelled heir, or ignoble contest with the ruddy milkmaid,

How then must four long months be worn away? Four months, in which there will be no routs, no shows, no ridottos; in which visits

inattention. Novelty is indeed necessary to preserve eagerness and alacrity; but art and nature have stores inexhaustible by human intellects; and every moment produces something new to him, who has quickened his faculties by diligent observation.

Some studies, for which the country and the summer afford peculiar opportunities, I shall perhaps endeavour to recommend in a future essay; but if there be any apprehension not apt to admit unaccustomed ideas, or any attention so stubborn and inflexible, as not easily to comply with new directions, even these obstructions cannot exclude the pleasure of application; for there is a higher and nobler employment, to which all faculties are adapted by him who gave them. The duties of religion, sincerely and regularly performed, will always be sufficient to exalt the meanest, and to exercise the highest understanding. That mind will never be vacant, which is frequently recalled by stated du ties to meditations on eternal interests; nor can any hour be long, which is spent in obtaining some new qualification for celestial happiness.

must be regulated by the weather, and assem- No. 125.] TUESDAY, MAY 28, 1751.

blies will depend upon the moon? The Platonists imagine, that the future punishment of those who have in this life debased their reason by subjection to their senses, and have preferred the gross gratifications of lewdness and luxury, to the pure and sublime felicity of virtue and contemplation, will arise from the predominance and solicitations of the same appetites, in a state which can furnish no means of appeasing them. I cannot but suspect that this month, bright with sunshine, and fragrant with perfumes; this month, which covers the meadow with verdure, and decks the gardens with all the mixtures of colorific radiance; this month, from which the man of fancy expects new infusions of imagery, and the naturalist new scenes of observation; this month will chain down multitudes to the Platonic penance of desire without enjoyment, and hurry them from the highest satisfactions, which they have yet learned to conceive, into a state of hopeless wishes and pining recollection, where the eye of vanity will look round for admiration to no purpose, and the hand of avarice shuffle cards in a bower with ineffectual dexterity.

From the tediousness of this melancholy suspension of life, I would willingly preserve those who are exposed to it only by inexperience; who want not inclination to wisdom or virtue, though they have been dissipated by negligence, or misled by example; and who would gladly find the way to rational happiness, though it should be necessary to struggle with habit, and abandon fashion. To these many arts of spending time might be recommended, which would neither sadden the present hour with weariness, nor the future with repentance.

It would seem impossible to a solitary speculatist, that a human being can want employment. To be born in ignorance with a capacity of knowledge, and to be placed in the midst of a world filled with variety, perpetually pressing upon the senses and irritating curiosity, is surely a sufficient security against the languishment of

Descriptas servare vices, operumque colores,
Cur ego, si nequeo ignoroque poeta salutor.

But if, through weakness, or my want of art,
I can't to every different style impart
The proper strokes and colours it may claim,
Why am I honour'd with a poet's name?

HOR.

FRANCIS.

IT is one of the maxims of the civil law, that definitions are hazardous. Things modified by hu man understandings, subject to varieties of complication, and changeable as experience advances knowledge, or accident influences caprice, are scarcely to be included in any standing form of expression, because they are always suffering some alteration of their state. Definition is, indeed, not the province of man; every thing is set above or below our faculties. The works and operations of nature are too great in their extent, or too much diffused in their relations, and the performances of art are too inconsistent and uncertain, to be reduced to any determinate idea. It is impossible to impress upon our minds an adequate and just representation of an object so great, that we can never take it into our view, or so mutable, that it is always changing under our eye, and has already lost its form while we are labouring to conceive it.

Definitions have been no less difficult or uncertain in criticisms than in law. Imagination, a licentious and vagrant faculty, unsusceptible of limitations, and impatient of restraint, has always endeavoured to baffle the logician, to perplex the confines of distinction, and burst the enclosures of regularity. There is, therefore, scarcely any species of writing, of which we can tell what is its essence, and what are its constituents; every new genius produces some innovation, which, when invented and improved, subverts the rules which the practice of foregoing authors had established.

Comedy has been particularly unpropitious to definers; though perhaps they might properly have contented themselves with declaring it to be such a dramatic representation of human life, as

general to the emperor, who, enforcing his orders for the death of Sebastian, vents his impatience in this abrupt threat.

-No more replies,

But see thou dost it; Or--

may excite mirth, they have embarrassed their de-
finition with the means by which the comic writ-
ers attain their end, without considering that the
various methods of exhilarating their audience,
not being limited by nature, cannot be comprised
in precept. Thus, some make comedy a repre- To which Dorax answers,
sentation of mean, and others of bad men ; some
think that its essence consists in the unimport-
ance, others in the fictitiousness of the transac-
tion. But any man's reflections will inform him,
that every dramatic composition which raises
mirth is comic: and that, to raise mirth, it is by
no means universally necessary, that the person-
ages should be either mean or corrupt, nor al-
ways requisite that the action should be trivial,
nor ever, that it should be fictitious.

If the two kinds of dramatic poetry had been defined only by their effects upon the mind, some absurdities might have been prevented, with which the compositions of our greatest poets are disgraced, who, for want of some settled ideas and accurate distinctions, have unhappily confounded tragic with comic sentiments. They seem to have thought, that as the meanness of personages constituted comedy, their greatness was sufficient to form a tragedy; and that nothing was necessary but that they should crowd the scene with monarchs, and generals, and guards; and make them talk, at certain intervals, of the downfall of kingdoms, and the route of armies. They have not considered, that thoughts or incidents, in themselves ridiculous, grow still more grotesque by the solemnity of such characters; that reason and nature are uniform and inflexible; and that what is despicable and absurd, will not, by any association with splendid titles, become rational or great; that the most important affairs, by an intermixture of an unseasonable levity, may be made contemptible; and that the robes of royalty can give no dignity to nonsense or to folly.

"Comedy," says Horace, "sometimes raises her voice; and Tragedy may likewise on proper occasions abate her dignity;" but as the comic personages can only depart from her familiarity of style, when the more violent passions are put in motion, the heroes and queens of tragedy should never descend to trifle, but in the hours of ease, and intermissions of danger. Yet in the tragedy of Don Sebastian, when the King of Portugal is in the hands of his enemy, and having just drawn the lot, by which he is condemned to die, breaks out into a wild boast that his dust shall take possession of Afric, the dialogue proceeds thus between the captive and his conqueror :

Muley Moloch. What shall I do to conquer thee!
Seb. Impossible!

Souls know no conquerors.

Choke in that threat: I can say Or as loud.
A thousand instances of such impropriety
might be produced, were not one scene in Au-
reng-Zebe sufficient to exemplify it. Indamora,
a captive queen, having Aureng-Zebe for her
lover, employs Arimant, to whose charge she
had been entrusted, and whom she had made
sensible of her charms, to carry her message to
his rival. #

ARIMANT, with a letter in his hand; INDAMORA
Arim. And I the messenger to him from you?
Your empire you to tyranny pursue:
You lay commands both cruel and unjust,
To serve my rival, and betray my trust.
Ind. You first betray'd your trust in loving me:
And should not I my own advantage see?
Serving my love, you may my friendship gain ●
You know the rest of your pretences vain.
You must, my Arimant, you must be kind:
'Tis in your nature, and your noble mind.

Arim. I'll to the king, and straight my trust resign.
Ind. His trust you may, but you shall never mine
Heaven made you love me for no other end,
But to become my confidant and friend:
As such, I keep no secret from your sight,
And therefore make you judge how ill I write
Read it, and tell me freely then your mind,
If 'tis indited, as I meant it, kind.

[Reading

Arim. I ask not Heaven my freedom to restore.
But only for your sake————I'll read no more.
And yet I must-

Less for my own, than for your sorrow sad-
Another line like this, would make me mad.

[Reading

Heaven! she goes on-yet more-and yet more kind!
[As reading
Each sentence is a dagger to my mind.
See me this night-

[Reading

Thank fortune, who did such a friend provide ;
For faithful Arimant shall be your guide.
Not only to be made an instrument,
But pre-engaged without my own consent!
Ind. Unknown t' engage you still augments my score,
And gives you scope of meriting the more.

Arim. The best of men

Some interest in their actions must confess;
None merit, but in hope they may possess:
The fatal paper rather let me tear,
Than, like Bellerophon, my own sentence bear.

Ind. You may; but 'twill not be your best advice ·
Twill only give me pains of writing twice.
You know you must obey me, soon or late:
Why should you vainly struggle with your fate?
Arim. I thank thee, Heaven! thou hast been wondrous
kind!

Why am I thus to slavery design'd,
And yet am cheated with a free born mind,
Or make thy orders with my reason suit,
Or let me live by sense, a glorious brute.
You frown, and I obey with speed, before

[She frowns.

M. Mol. I'll show thee for a monster through my Afric. That dreadful sentence comes, See me no more. 6

Seb. No, thou canst only show me for a man:

Afric is stor❜d with monsters; man's a prodigy

Thy subjects have not seen.

M. Mol. Thou talk'st as if

Still at the head of battle.
Seb. Thou mistak'st,

For there 1 would not talk,

In this scene, every circumstance concurs to turn tragedy to farce. The wild absurdity of the expedient; the contemptible subjection of the lover; the folly of obliging him to read the letter only because it ought to have been concealed Benducar, the Minister. Sure, he would sleep. from him; the frequent interruptions of amorous This conversation, with the sly remark of the impatience; the faint expostulations of a volunminister, can only be found not to be comic, be-tary slave; the imperious haughtiness of a tyrant cause it wants the probability necessary to representations of common life, and degenerates too much towards buffoonery and farce.

The same play affords a smart return of the

without power; the deep reflection of the yielding rebel upon fate and free-will; and his wise wish to lose his reason as soon as he finds himself about to do what he cannot persuade his rea