truth and reason, with what address to administer, and with what vehicles to disguise the cathartics of the soul.

But, notwithstanding this specious expedient, we find the world yet in the same state: advice is still given, but still received with disgust; nor has it appeared that the bitterness of the medicine has been yet abated, or its power increased, by any methods of preparing it.

If we consider the manner in which those who assume the office of directing the conduct of others execute their undertaking, it will not be very wonderful that their labours, however zeal ous or affectionate, are frequently useless. For what is the advice that is commonly given? A few general maxims, enforced with veherence and inculcated with importunity, but failing for want of particular reference and immediate application.

It is not often that any man can have so much knowledge of another, as is necessary to make instruction useful. We are sometimes not ourselves conscious of the original motives of our actions, and when we know them, our first care is to hide them from the sight of others, and often from those most diligently, whose superiority either of power or understanding may entitle them to inspect our lives; it is therefore very probable that he who endeavours the cure of our intellectual maladies, mistakes their cause; and that his prescriptions avail nothing, because he knows not which of the passions or desires is vitiated.

Advice, as it always gives a temporary appearance of superiority, can never be very grateful, even when it is most necessary or most judicious. But for the same reason every one is eager to instruct his neighbours. To be wise or to be virtuous, is to buy dignity and importance at a high price; but when nothing is necessary to elevation but detection of the follies or the faults of others, no man is so insensible to the voice of fame as to linger on the ground.

Vanity is so frequently the apparent motive of advice, that we, for the most part, summon our powers to oppose it without any very accurate inquiry whether it is right. It is sufficient that another is growing great in his own eyes, at our expense, and assumes authority over us without our permission; for many would contentedly suffer the consequences of their own mistakes, rather than the insolence of him who triumphs as their deliverer.

It is, indeed, seldom found that any advantages are enjoyed with that moderation which the uncertainty of all human good so powerfully enforces; and therefore the adviser may justly suspect, that he has inflamed the opposition which he laments by arrogance and superciliousness. He may suspect, but needs not hastily to condemn himself, for he can rarely be certain that the softest language or most humble diffidence would have escaped resentment; since scarcely any degree of circumspection can prevent or ob

viate the rage with which the slothful, the impotent, and the unsuccessful, vent their discontent upon those that excel them. Modesty itself, if it is praised, will be envied; and there are minds so impatient of inferiority, that their gratitude is a species of revenge, and they return benefits, not because recompense is a pleasure, but because obligation is a pain.

The number of those whom the love of themselves has thus far corrupted, is perhaps not great; but there are few so free from vanity, as not to dictate to those who will hear their instructions with a visible sense of their own beneficence: and few to whom it is not unpleasing to receive documents, however tenderly and cautiously delivered, or who are not willing to raise themselves from pupilage, by disputing the propositions of their teacher.

It was the maxim, I think, of Alphonsus of Arragon, that dead counsellors are safest. The grave puts an end to flattery and artifice, and the information that we receive from books is pure from interest, fear, or ambition. Dead counsellors are likewise most instructive; because they are heard with patience and with reverence. We are not unwilling to believe that man wiser than ourselves, from whose abilities we may receive advantage, without any danger of rivalry or opposition, and who affords us the light of his experience, without hurting our eyes by flashes of insolence.

By the consultation of books, whether of dead or living authors, many temptations to petulance) and opposition, which occur in oral conferences, are avoided. An author cannot obtrude his service unasked, nor can be often suspected of any malignant intention to insult his readers with his knowledge or his wit. Yet so prevalent is the habit of comparing ourselves with others, while they remain within the reach of our passions, that books are seldom read with complete impartiality, but by those from whom the writer is placed at such a distance that his life or death is indifferent.

We see that volumes may be perused, and perused with attention, to little effect; and that maxims of prudence, or principles of virtue, may be treasured in the memory without influencing the conduct. Of the numbers that pass their lives among books, very few read to be made wiser or better, apply any general reproof of vice to themselves, or try their own manners by ax ioms of justice. They purpose either to con sume those hours for which they can find no other amusement, to gain or preserve that respect which learning has always obtained; or to gratify their curiosity with knowledge, which, like treasures buried and forgotten, is of no use to others or themselves.

"The preacher (says a French author) may spend an hour in explaining and enforcing a precept of religion, without feeling any impression from his own performance, because he may have no further design than to fill up his hour." A student may easily exhaust his life in comparing divines and moralists, without any practical regard to morality or religion; he may be learning not to live, but to reason; he may regard only the elegance of style, justness of argument, and accuracy of method; and may enable himself to criticise with judgment, and dispute with subtility, while the chief use of his volumes is unthought

of, his mind is unaffected, and his life is unre- monosyllables is almost always harsh. This, formed. with regard to our language, is evidently true, not because monosyllables cannot compose harmony, but because our monosyllables being of Teutonic original, or formed by contraction, commonly begin and end with consonants, as, -Every lower faculty

Lost" have, without much deliberation, commend-| ed Milton for continuing it. But one language cannot communicate its rules to another. We have already tried and rejected the hexameter of the ancients, the double close of the Italians, and the alexandrine of the French; and the elision of vowels, however graceful it may seem to other nations, may be very unsuitable to the genius of the English tongue.

Milton frequently uses in his poems the hypermetrical or redundant line of eleven syllables

-Thus it shall befall
Him whom to worth in woman over-trusting
Lets her will rule.

I also err'd in over-much admiring.

Verses of this kind occur almost in every

There is reason to believe that we have negli-page; but, though they are not unpleasing or gently lost part of our vowels, and that the silent dissonant, they ought to be admitted into heroic poetry, since the narrow limits of our language e, which our ancestors added to the most of our allow us no other distinction of epic and tragic monosyllables, was once vocal. By this detrunmeasures, than is afforded by the liberty of changcation of our syllables, our language is overstocked with consonants, and it is more necessa-ing at will the terminations of the dramatic lines, ry, to add vowels to the beginning of words, than and bringing them by that relaxation of metrical to cut them off from the end.

rigour nearer to prose.

TUESDAY, JAN. 22, 1751.
Dulce est desipere in loco.

Milton therefore seems to have somewhat mis-
taken the nature of our language, of which the
chief defect is ruggedness and asperity, and has No. 89.]
left our harsh cadences yet harsher. But his cli-
sions are not all equally to be censured; in some
syllables they may be allowed, and perhaps in a
few may be safely imitated. The abscission of
a vowel is undoubtedly vicious when it is strong-
ly sounded, and makes, with its associate conso-
nant, a full and audible syllable.

What he gives,
Spiritual, may to purest spirits be found,
No ingrateful food, and food alike these pure
Intelligential substances require.

Fruits,-Hesperian fables true,

If true, here only, and of delicious taste.

-Evening now approach'd,

For we have also our evening and our morn.

Of guests he makes them slaves, Inhospitably, and kills their infant males.

And vital Virtue infused, and vital warmth, Throughout the fluid mass.

God made thee of choice his own, and of his own To serve him.

I believe every reader will agree, that in all those passages, though not equally in all, the music is injured, and in some the meaning ob

scured. There are other lines in which the vow

el is cut off, but it is so faintly pronounced in common speech, that the loss of it in poetry is scarcely perceived; and therefore such compliance with the measure may be allowed.

-Nature breeds

Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things,
Abominable, inutterable; and worse
Than fables yet have feign’d—

-From the shore

They view'd the vast immeasurable abyss,
Impenetrable, impal'd with circling fire.

To none communicable in earth or heaven.

Wisdom at proper times is well forgotten.

HOR.

LOCKE, whom there is no reason to suspect of being a favourer of idleness or libertinism, has advanced, that whoever hopes to employ any part of his time with efficacy and vigour, must allow some of it to pass in trifles. It is beyond the powers of humanity to spend a whole life in profound study and intense meditation, and the most rigorous exacters of industry and seriousness have appointed hours for relaxation and amuse.

ment.

It is certain, that, with or without our consent, many of the few moments allotted us will slide imperceptibly away, and that the mind will break, from confinement to its stated task, into sudden excursions. Severe and connected attention is preserved but for a short time; and when a man shuts himself up in his closet, and bends his thoughts to the discussion of any abstruse question, he will find his faculties continually stealing away to more pleasing entertainments. He often perceives himself transported, he knows not his first object as from a dream, without knowing how, to distant tracts of thought, and returns to when he forsook it, or how long he has been ab

stracted from it.

It has been observed that the most studious are not always the most learned. There is, indeed, no great difficulty in discovering that this difference of proficiency may arise from the difference of intellectual powers, of the choice of books, or the convenience of information. But I believe it likewise frequently happens that the most recluse are not the most vigorous prosecutors of study. Many impose upon the world, and many upon themselves by an appearance of severe and exemplary diligence, when they, in reality, give themselves up to the luxury of fancy, please their minds with regulating the past, or planning out the future; place themselves at will in varied situations of happiness, and slumber. away their days in voluntary visions. In the journey of life some are left behind because they are naturally feeble and slow: some because they *In the original Rambler, in folio, our author's opinion miss the way, and many because they leave it by appears different, and is thus expressed:-"This license, choice, and, instead of pressing onward with a though an innovation in English poetry, is yet allowed in many other languages ancient and modern, and therefore steady pace, delight themselves with momentary the critics on 'Paradise Lost' have, without much delibera- deviations, turn aside to pluck every flower, and tion, commended Milton for introducing it."

Yet even these contractions increase the roughness of a language too rough already; and though in long poems they may be sometimes suffered, never can be faulty to forbear them.

repose in every shade.

beginning to seize him, should turn his whole attention against it, and check it at the first discovery by proper counteraction.

There is nothing more fatal to a man whose business is to think, than to have learned the art of regaling his mind with those airy gratifications, Other vices or follies are restrained by fear, re- The great resolution to be formed, when hapformed by admonition, or rejected by the convic-piness and virtue are thus formidably invaded, tion which the comparison of our conduct with is, that no part of life be spent in a state of neu that of others may in time produce. But this in- trality or indifference; but that some pleasure visible riot of the mind, this secret prodigality of be found for every moment that is not devoted to being, is secure from detection, and fearless of labour; and that, whenever the necessary busireproach. The dreamer retires to his apart- ness of life grows irksome or disgusting, an imments, shuts out the cares and interruptions of mediate transition be made to diversion and mankind, and abandons himself to his own fancy; gayety. new worlds rise up before him, one image is followed by another, and a long succession of delights dances round him. He is at last called back to life by nature, or by custom, and enters peevish into society, because he cannot model it to his own will. He returns from his idle excursions with the asperity, though not with the knowledge, of a student, and hastens again to the same felicity with the eagerness of a man bent upon the advancement of some favourite science. The infatuation strengthens by degrees, and, like the poison of opiates, weakens his There must be a time in which every man tripowers, without any external symptom of malig-fles; and the only choice that nature offers us, is, nity.

It happens, indeed, that these hypocrites of learning are in time detected, and convinced by disgrace and disappointment of the difference between the labour of thought, and the sport of musing. But this discovery is often not made till it is too late to recover the time that has been fooled away. A thousand accidents may indeed, awaken drones to a more early sense of their danger and their shame. But they who are convinced of the necessity of breaking from this habitual drowsiness, too often relapse in spite of their resolution; for these ideal seducers are always near, and neither any particularity of time nor place is necessary to their influence; they invade the soul without warning, and have often charmed down resistance before their approach is perceived or suspected.

This captivity, however, it is necessary for every man to break, who has any desire to be wise or useful, to pass his life with the esteem of others, or to look back with satisfaction from his old age upon his earlier years. In order to regain liberty, he must find the means of flying from himself; he must, in opposition to the stoic precept, teach his desires to fix upon eternal things; he must adopt the joys and the pains of others, and excite in his mind the want of social pleasures and amicable communication.

It is, perhaps, not impossible to promote the cure of this mental malady, by close application to some new study, which may pour in fresh ideas, and keep curiosity in perpetual motion. But study requires solitude, and solitude is a state dangerous to those who are too much accustomed to sink into themselves. Active employment or public pleasure is generally a necessary part of this intellectual regimen, without which, though some remission may be obtained, a complete cure will scarcely be effected.

This is a formidable and obstinate disease of the intellect, of which, when it has once become radicated by time, the remedy is one of the hardest tasks of reason and of virtue. Its slightest attacks therefore, should be watchfully opposed; and he that finds the frigid and narcotic infection

After the exercises which the health of the body requires, and which have themselves a natural tendency to actuate and invigorate the mind, the most eligible amusement of a rational being seems to be that interchange of thoughts which is practised in free and easy conversation; where suspicion is banished by experience, and emulation by benevolence; where every man speaks with no other restraint than unwillingness to offend, and hears with no other disposition than desire to be pleased.

to trifle in company or alone. To join profit with pleasure, has been an old precept among men who have had very different conceptions of profit. All have agreed that our amusements should not terminate wholly in the present moment, but contribute more or less to future advantage. He that amuses himself among well chosen companions, can scarcely fail to receive, from the most careless and obstreperous merriment which virtue can allow, some useful hints; nor can converse on the most familiar topics, without some casual information. The loose sparkles of thoughtless wit may give new light to the mind, and the gay contention for paradoxical positions rectify the opinions.

This is the time in which those friendships that give happiness or consolation, relief or security, are generally formed. A wise and good man is never so amiable as in his unbended and familiar intervals. Heroic generosity, or philosophical discoveries, may compel veneration and respect, but love always implies some kind of natural or voluntary equality, and is only to be excited by that levity and cheerfulness which disencumber all minds from awe and solitude, invite the mo dest to freedom, and exalt the timorous to confi dence. This easy gayety is certain to please, whatever be the character of him that exerts it; if our superiors descend from their elevation, we love them for lessening the distance at which we are placed below them; and inferiors, from whom we can receive no lasting advantage, will always keep our affections while their sprightliness and mirth contribute to our pleasure.

Every man finds himself differently affected by the sight of fortresses of war, and palaces of pleasure; we look on the height and strength of the bulwarks with a kind of gloomy satisfaction, for we cannot think of defence without admitting images of danger; but we range delighted and jocund through the gay apartments of the palace, because nothing is impressed by them on the mind but joy and festivity. Such is the difference between great and amiable characters; with protectors we are safe, with companions we are happy.

hexameter might be easily observed, but in English will very frequently be in danger of violation; for the order and regularity of accents cannot well be perceived in a succession of fewer than three syllables, which will confine the English poet to only five pauses; it being supposed that when he connects one line with another, he should never make a full pause at less distance than that of three syllables from the beginning or end of a verse.

It is very difficult to write on the minuter parts of literature without failing either to please or instruct. Too much nicety of detail disgusts the greatest part of readers, and to throw a multitude of particulars under general heads, and lay down rules of extensive comprehension, is to common That this rule should be universally and inunderstandings of little use. They who under-dispensably established, perhaps cannot be take these subjects are therefore always in dan- granted; something may be allowed to variety, ger, as one or other inconvenience arises to their and something to the adaptation of the numbers imagination, of frighting us with rugged science, to the subject; but it will be found generally or amusing us with empty sound. necessary, and the ear will seldom fail to suffer by its neglect.

In criticising the work of Milton, there is, indeed, opportunity to intersperse passages that can hardly fail to relieve the languors of attention; and since, in examining the variety and choice of the pauses with which he has diversified his numbers, it will be necessary to exhibit the lines in which they are to be found, perhaps the remarks may be well compensated by the examples, and the irksomeness of grammatical disquisitions somewhat alleviated. Milton formed his scheme of versification by the poets of Greece and Rome, whom he proposed to himself for his models, so far as the difference of his language from theirs would permit the imitation. There are indeed many inconveniences inseparable from our heroic measure compared with that of Homer and Virgil; inconveniences, which it is no reproach to Milton not to have overcome, because they are in their own nature insuperable; but against which he has struggled with so much art and diligence, that he may at least be said to have deserved success.

The hexameter of the ancients may be considered as consisting of fifteen syllables, so melodiously disposed, that, as every one knows who has examined the poetical authors, very pleasing and sonorous lyric measures are formed from the fragments of the heroic. It is, indeed, scarce possible to break them in such a manner, but that invenias etiam disjecta membra poeta, some harmony will still remain, and the due proportions of sound will always be discovered. This measure therefore allowed great variety of pauses, and great liberties of connecting one verse with another, because wherever the line was interrupted, either part singly was musical. But the ancients seem to have confined this privilege to hexameters; for in their other measures, though longer than the English heroic, those who wrote after the refinements of versifi

cation, venture so seldom to change their pauses, that every variation may be supposed rather a compliance with necessity than the choice of judgment.

Milton was constrained within the narrow limits of a measure not very harmonious in the utmost perfection; the single parts, therefore, into which it was to be sometimes broken by pauses, were in danger of losing the very form of verse. This has, perhaps, notwithstanding all his care, sometimes happened.

As harmony is the end of poetical measures, no part of a verse ought to be so separated from the rest as not to remain still more harmonious than prose, or to show, by the disposition of the tones, that it is part of a verse. This rule in the old

Thus when a single syllable is cut off from the rest, it must either be united to the line with which the sense connects it, or be sounded alone. If it be united to the other line, it corrupts its harmony; if disjoined, it must stand alone, and with regard to music be superfluous; for there is no harmony in a single sound, because it has no proportion to another.

-Hypocrites austerely talk;
Defaming as impure what God declares

Pure; and commands to some, leaves free to all.

When two syllables likewise are abscinded from the rest, they evidently want some associ ate sounds to make them harmonious.

-Eyes

-more wakeful than to drowse,
Charm'd with Arcadian pipe, the past'ral reed
Of Hermes, or his opiate rod. Meanwhile
To re-salute the world with sacred light
Leucothea waked.

He ended, and the Son gave signal high
To the bright minister that watch'd: he blew
His trumpet.

First in the cast his glorious lamp was seen,
Regent of day; and all th' horizon round
Invested with bright rays, jocund to run
His longitude through heaven's high road; the gray
Dawn, and the Pleiades, before him danced,
Shedding sweet influence.

The same defect is perceived in the following line, where the pause is at the second syllable from the beginning