and every art of recommending our sentiments, we are frequently betrayed to the use of such as are not in themselves strictly defensible: a man heated in talk, and eager of victory, takes advantage of the mistakes or ignorance of his adversary, lays hold of concessions to which he knows he has no right, and urges proofs likely to prevail on his opponent, though he knows himself that they have no force: thus the severity of reason is relaxed, many topics are accumulated, but without just arrangement or distinction; we learn to satisfy ourselves with such ratiocination as silences others; and seldom recall to a close examination, that discourse which has gratified our vanity with victory and applause. ciently inform us; and we may conjecture, with great probability, that it was sometimes the devotion, and sometimes the entertainment, of the first generations of mankind. Theocritus united elegance with simplicity; and taught his shepherds to sing with so much ease and harmony, that his countrymen, despairing to excel, for bore to imitate him; and the Greeks, however vain or ambitious, left him in quiet possession of the garlands which the wood nymphs had be stowed upon him. Virgil, however, taking advantage of another language, ventured to copy or to rival the Sicilian bard: he has written with greater splendour of diction, and elevation of sentiment: but as Some caution, therefore, must be used lest co- the magnificence of his performances was more, piousness and facility be made less valuable by the simplicity was less; and perhaps, where he inaccuracy and confusion. To fix the thoughts excels Theocritus, he sometimes obtains his su. by writing, and subject them to frequent exaini-periority by deviating from the pastoral charac nations and reviews, is the best method of ena- ter, and performing what Theocritus never atbling the mind to detect its own sophisms, and tempted. keep it on guard against the fallacies which it practises on others; in conversation we naturally diffuse our thoughts, and in writing we contract them; method is the excellence of writing, and unconstraint the grace of conversation. Yet, though I would willingly pay to Theocritus the honour which is always due to an ori ginal author, I am far from intending to depreciate Virgil: of whom Horace justly declares, that the rural muses have appropriated to him To read, write, and converse in due propor- their elegance and sweetness, and who, as he cotions, is, therefore, the business of a man of let-pied Theocritus in his design, has resembled him ters. For all these there is not often equal op- likewise in his success; for, if we except Cal portunity; excellence, therefore, is not often phurnius, an obscure author of the lower ages, I attainable; and most men fail in one or other of know not that a single pastoral was written after the ends proposed, and are full without readi-him by any poet, till the revival of literature. ness, or ready without exactness. Some defi But though his general merit has been univerciency must be forgiven all, because all are men; sally acknowledged, I am far from thinking all the and more must be allowed to pass uncensured in productions of his rural Thalia equally excellent; the greater part of the world, because none can there is, indeed, in all his pastorals a strain of confer upon himself abilities, and few have the versification which it is vain to seek in any choice of situations proper for the improvement other poet; but if we except the first and the of those which nature has bestowed: it is, how-tenth, they seem liable either wholly or in part to ever, reasonable to have perfection in our eye; considerable objections. that we may always advance towards it, though we know it never can be reached. No. 92.] SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 22, 1753. Cum tabulis animum censoris sumet honesti. SIR, TO THE ADVENTURER. HOR. The second, though we should forget the great charge against it, which I am afraid can never be refuted, might, I think, have perished without any diminution of the praise of its author; for I know not that it contains one affecting sentiment or pleasing description, or one passage that strikes the imagination or awakens the passions. The third contains a contest between two shepherds, begun with a quarrel of which some particulars might well be spared, carried on with sprightliness and elegance, and terminated at last in a reconciliation: but, surely, whether the In the papers of criticism which you have given invectives with which they attack each other be to the public, I have remarked a spirit of candour true or false, they are too much degraded from and love of truth, equally remote from bigotry the dignity of pastoral innocence; and instead and captiousness: a just distribution of praise of rejoicing that they are both victorious, I should amongst the ancients and the moderns: a sober not have grieved could they have been both de deference to reputation long established, with-feated. out a blind adoration of antiquity; and a willingness to favour later performances without a light or puerile fondness for novelty. I shall, therefore, venture to lay before you, such observations as have risen to my mind in the consideration of Virgil's pastorals, without any inquiry how far my sentiments deviate from established rules or common opinions. If we survey the ten pastorals in a general view, it will be found that Virgil can derive from them very little claim to the praise of an inventor. To search into the antiquity of this kind of poetry, is not my present purpose; that it has long subsisted in the east, the Sacred Writings suffi The Poem to Pollio is indeed of another kind: it is filled with images at once splendid and pleas ing, and it is elevated with grandeur of language worthy of the first of Roman poets, but I am not able to reconcile myself to the disproportion be tween the performance and the occasion that produced it: that the golden age should return because Pollio had a son, appears so wild a fic. tion, that I am ready to suspect the poet of hav ing written for some other purpose, what he took this opportunity of producing to the public. The fifth contains a celebration of Daphnis, which has stood to all succeeding ages as the model of pastoral elegies. To deny praise to 1 performance which so many thousands have laboured to imitate, would be to judge with too little deference for the opinion of mankind: yet whoever shall read it with impartiality, will find that most of the images are of the mythological kind, and therefore easily invented; and that there are few sentiments of rational praise or natural lamentation. In the Silenus he again rises to the dignity of philosophic sentiments, and heroic poetry. The address to Varus is eminently beautiful; but since the compliment paid to Gallus fixes the transaction to his own time, the fiction of Silenus seems injudicious: nor has any sufficient reason yet been found, to justify his choice of those fables that make the subject of the song. The seventh exhibits another contest of the tuneful shepherds: and, surely, it is not without some reproach to his inventive power, that of ten pastorals, Virgil has written two upon the same plan. One of the shepherds now gains an acknowledged victory, but without any apparent superiority, and the reader when he sees the prize adjudged, is not able to discover how it was deserved. Of the eighth pastoral, so little is properly the work of Virgil, that he has no claim to other praise or blame than that of a translator. Of the ninth it is scarce possible to discover the design or tendency: it is said, I know not upon what authority, to have been composed from fragments of other poems: and except a few lines in which the author touches upon his own misfortunes, there is nothing that seems appropriated to any time or place, or of which any other use can be discovered than to fill up the poem. The first and the tenth pastorals, whatever be determined of the rest, are sufficient to place their author above the reach of rivalry. The complaint of Gallus disappointed in his love, is full of such sentiments as disappointed 'ove naturally produces his wishes are wild, his resentment is tender; and his purposes are inconstant. In the genuine language of despair, he soothes himself awhile with the pity that shall be paid him after his death. Discontented with his present condition, and desirous to be any thing but what he is, he wishes himself one of the shepherds. He then catches the idea of rural tranquillity, but soon discovers how much happier he should be in these happy regions, with Lycoris at his side: Hic gelidi fontes, hic mollia, prata Lycori : Here cooling fountains roll through flowery meads, WARTON. He then turns his thoughts on every side, in quest of something that may solace or amuse him; he proposes happiness to himself, first in one scene and then in another: and at last finds that nothing will satisfy: Jam neque Hamaaryades rursum, nec carmina nobis But now again no more the woodland maids, WARTON. But notwithstanding the excellence of the tenth pastoral, I cannot forbear to give the preference to the first, which is equally natural and more diversified. The complaint of the shepherd, who saw his old companion at ease in the shade, while himself was driving his little flock he knew not whither, is such as, with variation of circumstances, misery always utters at the sight of prosperity: And, lo! sad partner of the general care, The description of Virgil's happiness in his little farm, combines almost all the images of rural pleasure; and he, therefore, that can read it with indifference, has no sense of pastoral poetry: Fortunate senex, ergo tua rura manebunt, Happy old man! then still thy farms restored, It may be observed, that these two poems were produced by events that really happened; and may, therefore, be of use to prove, that we can always feel more than we can imagine and that the most artful fiction must give way to truth. 1 am, Sir, your humble servant, DUBIUS. Ovid. agree in their narration; or that authors, delivering the elements of science, advance the same theorems, and lay down the same definitions: yet it is not wholly without use to mankind, that books are multiplied, and that different authors lay out their labours on the same subject; for there will always be some reason why one should on particular occasions, or to particular persons, be preferable to another; some will be clear where others are obscure, some will please by their style and others by their method, some by their embellishments and others by their simplicity, some by closeness and others by diffusion. The same indulgence is to be shown to the writers of morality: right and wrong are immutable; and those, therefore, who teach us to distinguish them, if they all teach us right, must agree with one another. The relations of social life, and the duties resulting from them, must be the same at all times and in all nations: some petty differences, may be, indeed, produced by forms of government or arbitrary customs; but the general doctrine can receive no alteration. Yet it is not to be desired, that morality should be considered as interdicted to all future writers; men will always be tempted to deviate from their duty, and will, therefore, always want a monitor to recall them; and a new book often seizes the attention of the public without any other claim than that it is new. There is like wise in composition, as in other things, a perpe tual vicissitude of fashion; and truth is recommended at one time to regard, by appearances which at another would expose it to neglect; the author, therefore, who has judgment to discern the taste of his contemporaries, and skill to gratify it, will have always an opportunity to deserve well of mankind, by conveying instruction to them in a grateful vehicle. No. 95. TUESDAY, OCTOBER 2, 1753. Dulcique animos novitate tenebo. And with sweet novelty your soul detain. There are likewise many modes of composi Ir is often charged upon writers, that with all tion, by which a moralist may deserve the name their pretensions to genius and discoveries, they of an original writer: he may familiarize his sysdo little more than copy one another, and that tem by dialogues after the manner of the an compositions obtruded upon the world with the cients, or subtilize it into a series of syllogystic pomp of novelty, contain only tedious repetitions arguments: he may enforce his doctrine by seof common sentiments, or at best exhibit a trans- riousness and solemnity, or enliven it by sprightposition of known images, and give a new ap-liness and gayety: he may deliver his sentiments pearance to truth only by some slight difference of dress and decoration. The allegation of resemblance between authors is indisputably true; but the charge of plagiarism, which is raised upon it, is not to be allowed with equal readiness. A coincidence of sentiment may easily happen without any communication, since there are many occasions in which all reasonable men will nearly think alike. Writers of all ages have had the same sentiments, because they have in all ages had the same objects of speculation; the interests and passions, the virtues and vices of mankind, have been diversified in different times, only by unessential and casual varieties: and we must, therefore, expect in the works of all those who attempt to describe them, such a likeness as we find in the pictures of the same person drawn in different periods of his life. It is necessary, therefore, that before an author be charged with plagiarism, one of the most reproachful, though perhaps not the most atrocious, of literary crimes, the subject on which he treats should be carefully considered. We do not wonder, that historians, relating the same facts, in naked precepts, or illustrate them by historical examples: he may detain the studious by the artful concatenation of a continued discourse, or relieve the busy by short strictures, and unconnected essays. To excel in any of these forms of writing will require a particular cultivation of the genius: whoever can attain to excellence, will be certain to engage a set of readers, whom no other method would have equally allured; and he that communicates truth with success, must be numbered among the first benefactors to mankind. The same observation may be extended likewise to the passions: their influence is uniform, and their effects nearly the same in every human breast, a man loves and hates, desires and avoids, exactly like his neighbour; resentment and ambition, avarice and indolence, discover them selves by the same symptoms in minds distant s thousand years from one another. Nothing, therefore, can be more unjust, thar to charge an author with plagiarism, merely be cause he assigns to every cause its natural ef fect; and makes his personages act, as others ir like circumstances have always done. There are but those few agitated and combined, as external causes shall happen to operate, and modified by prevailing opinions and accidental caprices, make such frequent alterations on the surface of life, that the show, while we are busied in delineating it, vanishes from the view, and a new set of objects succeed, doomed to the same shortness of duration with the former: thus curiosity may always find employment, and the busy part of mankind will furnish the contemplative with the materials of speculation, to the end of time. conceptions in which all men will agree, though if we analyze the mind of man, are very few: each derives them from his own observation: whoever has been in love, will represent a lover impatient of every idea that interrupts his meditations on his mistress, retiring to shades and solitude, that he may muse without disturbance on his approaching happiness, or associating himself with some friend that flatters his passion, and talking away the hours of absence upon his darling subject. Whoever has been so unhappy as to have felt the miseries of long-continued hatred, will, without any assistance from ancient volumes, be able to relate how the passions are kept in perpetual agitation, by the recollection of injury, and meditations of revenge; how the blood boils at the name of the enemy, and life is worn away in contrivances of mischief. The complaint, therefore, that all topics are pre-occupied, is nothing more than the murmur of ignorance or idleness, by which some discou rage others, and some themselves; the mutability of mankind will always furnish writers with new images, and the luxuriance of fancy may always embellish them with new decorations. Every other passion is alike simple and limited, if it be considered only with regard to the breast which it inhabits; the anatomy of the mind, as that of the body, must perpetually exhibit the same appearances; and though by the No. 99.] continued industry of successive inquirers, new movements will be from time to time discovered, they can affect only the minuter parts, and are commonly of more curiosity than importance. TUESDAY, OCT. 16, 1753. -Magnis tamen excidit ausis. OVID. ADDISON. out some good reason to hate the unhappy: their real faults are immediately detected; and if those are not sufficient to sink them into infamy, an additional weight of calumny will be superadded: he that fails in his endeavours after wealth or power, will not long retain either honesty or courage. It will now be natural to inquire, by what arts IT has always been the practice of manking, to The same atare the writers of the present and future ages to judge of actions by the event. attract the notice and favour of mankind. They tempts, conducted in the same manner, but terare to observe the alterations which time is al- minated by different success, produce different ways making in the modes of life, that they may judgments: they who attain their wishes, never gratify every generation with a picture of them- want celebrators of their wisdom and their virtue; selves. Thus love is uniform, but courtship is and they that miscarry, are quickly discovered to perpetually varying: the different arts of gallant- have been defective not only in mental but in mory, which beauty has inspired, would of them-ral qualities. The world will never be long with selves be sufficient to fill a volume; sometimes balls and serenades; sometimes tournaments and adventures, have been employed to melt the hearts of ladies, who in another century have been sensible of scarce any other merit than that of riches, and listened only to jointures and pinmoney. Thus the ambitious man has at all times been eager of wealth and power; but these hopes have been gratified in some countries by supplicating the people, and in others, by flattering the prince: honour in some states has been only the reward of military achievements, in others, it has been gained by noisy turbulence, and popular clamours. Avarice has worn a different form, as she actuated the usurer of Rome, and the stockjobber of England; and idleness itself, how little soever inclined to the trouble of invention, has been forced from time to time to change its amusements, and contrive different methods of wearing out the day. Here then is the fund, from which those who study mankind may fill their compositions with an inexhaustible variety of images and allusions; and he must be confessed to look with little attention upon scenes thus perpetually changing, who cannot catch some of the figures before they are made vulgar by reiterated descriptions. It has been discovered by Sir Isaac Newton, that the distinct and primogenial colours are only seven; but every eye can witness, that from various mixtures, in various proportions, infinite diversification of tints may be produced. In like manner, the passions of the mind, which put the world in motion, and produce all the bustle and eagerness of the busy crowds that swarm upon the earth; the passions, from whence arise all the pleasures and pains that we see and hear of, This species of injustice has so long prevailed in universal practice, that it seems likewise to have infected speculation: so few minds are able to separate the ideas of greatness and prosperity, that even Sir William Temple has determined, "that he who can deserve the name of a hero, must not only be virtuous but fortunate." By this unreasonable distribution of praise and blame, none have suffered oftener than projectors, whose rapidity of imagination, and vastness of design, raise such envy in their fellow mortals, that every eye watches for their fall, and every heart exults at their distresses: yet even a projector may gain favour by success; and the tongue that was prepared to hiss, then endeavours to excel others in loudness of applause. When Coriolanus, in Shakspeare, deserted to Aufidius, the Volscian servants at first insulted him, even while he stood under the protection of the household gods: but when they saw that the project took effect, and the stranger was seated at the head of the table, one of them very judiciously observes, "that he always thought there was more in him than he could think." Machiavel has justly animadverted on the different notice taken by all succeeding times, of the two great projectors, Catiline and Cæsar. Both formed the same project, and intended to raise themselves to power, by subverting the commonwealth: they pursued their design, per haps, with equal abilities and with equal virtue; But Catiline perished in the field, and Cæsar returned from Pharsalia with unlimited authority: and from that time, every monarch of the earth has thought himself honoured by a comparison with Cæsar; and Catiline has been never mentioned, but that his name might be applied to traitors and incendiaries. In an age more remote, Xerxes projected the conquest of Greece, and brought down the power of Asia against it: but after the world had been filled with expectation and terror, his army was beaten, his fleet was destroyed, and Xerxes has never been mentioned without contempt. circuit of Asia, and by the conquest of Turkey to unite Sweden with his new dominions: but this mighty project was crushed at Pultowa; and Charles has since been considered as a madman by those powers, who sent their ambassadors to solicit his friendship, and their generals " to learn under him the art of war." The Czar found employment sufficient in his own dominions, and amused himself in digging canals, and building cities; murdering his subjects with insufferable fatigues, and transplanting nations from one corner of his dominions to another, without regretting the thousands that perished on the way: but he attained his end, he made his people formidable, and is numbered by fame among the demi-gods. I am far from intending to vindicate the sanguinary projects of heroes and conquerors, and would wish rather to diminish the reputation of their success, than the infamy of their miscar A few years afterwards Greece likewise had her turn of giving birth to a projector; who, invading Asia with a small army, went forward in search of adventures, and by his escape from one danger, gained only more rashness to rush into another; he stormed city after city, overran kingdom after kingdom, fought battles only for bar-riages: for I cannot conceive, why he that has ren victory, and invaded nations only that he might make his way through them to new invasions; but having been fortunate in the execution of his projects, he died with the name of Alexander the Great. These are, indeed, events of ancient times; but human nature is always the same, and every age will afford us instances of public censures influenced by events. The great business of the middle centuries, was the holy war; which undoubtedly was a noble project, and was for a long time prosecuted with a spirit equal to that with which it had been contrived; but the ardour of the European heroes only hurried them to destruction; for a long time they could not gain the territories for which they fought, and, when at last gained, they could not keep them: their expeditions, therefore, have been the scoff of idleness and ignorance, their understanding and their virtue have been equally vilified, their con duct has been ridiculed, and their cause has been defamed. When Columbus had engaged king Ferdinand in the discovery of the other hemisphere, the sailors with whom he embarked in the expedition had so little confidence in their commander, that after having been long at sea looking for coasts which they expected never to find, they raised a general mutiny, and demanded to return. He found means to soothe them into a permission to continue the same course three days longer, and on the evening of the third day descried land. Had the impatience of his crew denied him a few hours of the time requested, what had been his fate but to have come back with the infamy of a vain projector, who had betrayed the king's credulity to useless expenses, and risked his life in seeking countries that had no existence? how would those that had rejected his proposals, have triumphed in their acuteness! and when would his name have been mentioned, but with the makers of potable gold and maleable glass? burned cities, wasted nations, and filled the world with horror and desolation, should be more kindly regarded by mankind, than he who died in the rudiments of wickedness; why he that accomplished wickedness should be glorious, and he that only endeavoured it should be criminal. I would wish Cæsar and Catiline, Xerxes and Alexander, Charles and Peter, huddled together in obscurity or detestation. But there is another species of projectors, to whom I would willingly conciliate mankind; whose ends are generally laudable, and whose labours are innocent; who are searching out new powers of nature, or contriving new works of art; but who are yet persecuted with incessant obloquy, and whom the universal contempt with which they are treated, often debars from that success which their industry would obtain, if it were permitted to act without opposition. They who find themselves inclined to censure new undertakings, only because they are new, should consider, that the folly of projection is very seldom the folly of a fool; it is commonly the ebullition of a capacious mind, crowded with variety of knowledge, and heated with intenseness of thought; it proceeds often from the consciousness of uncommon powers, from the con fidence of those, who, having already done much, are easily persuaded that they can do more. When Rowley had completed the orrery, he attempted the perpetual motion; when Boyle had exhausted the secrets of vulgar chymistry, he turned his thoughts to the work of transmutation. A projector generally unites those qualities which have the fairest claim to veneration, extent of knowledge, and greatness of design; it was said of Catiline, "immoderata, incredibilia, nimis alta semper cupiebat." Projectors of all kinds agree in their intellects, though they differ in their morals; they all fail by attempting things beyond their power, by despising vulgar attainments, and aspiring to performances to which The last royal projectors with whom the perhaps nature has not proportioned the force of world has been troubled, were Charles of Swe-man; when they fail, therefore, they fail not by den, and the Czar of Muscovy. Charles, if any idleness or timidity, but by rash adventure and judgment may be formed of his designs by his fruitless diligence. measures and his inquiries, had purposed first to dethrone the Czar, then to lead his army through pathless deserts into China, thence to make his way by the sword through the whole That the attempts of such men will often miscarry, we may reasonably expect; yet from such men, and such only, are we to hope for the culti vation of those parts of nature which lie yet |