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He is the great investigator of hidden beauties, and is particularly delighted when he finds the sound an echo to the sense. He has read all our poets with particular attention to this delicacy of versification, and wonders at the supineness with which their works have been hitherto perused, so that no man has found the sound of a drum in this distich.

there had been nothing wanting to complete | many of his frienas are of opinion, that our prea poet. He often expressed his commisera- sent poets are indebted to him for their happition of Dryden's poverty, and his indignation est thoughts; by his contrivance the bell was at the age which suffered him to write for rung twice in Barbarossa, and by his persuasion bread; he repeated with rapture the first lines the author of Cleone concluded his play with of All for Love, but wondered at the corrup- a couplet; for what can be more absurd, said tion of taste which could bear any thing so un- Minim, than that part of a play should be natural as rhyming tragedies. In Otway he rhymed, and part written in blank verse; and found uncommon powers of moving the pas- by what acquisition of faculties is the speaker, sions, but was disgusted by his general negli- who never could find rhymes before, enabled gence, and blamed him for making a conspira- to rhyme at the conclusion of an act? tor his hero; and never concluded his disquisition without remarking how happily the sound of the clock is made to alarm the audience. Southern would have been his favourite, but that he mixes comic with tragic scenes, intercepts the natural course of the passions, and fills the mind with a wild confusion of mirth a melancholy. The versification of Rowe he thought too melodious for the stage, and too little varied in different passions. He made it the great fault of Congreve, that all his persons were wits, and that he always wrote with more art than nature. He considered Cato rather as a poem than a play, and allowed Addison to be the complete master of allegory and grave humour, but paid no great deference to him as a critic. He thought the chief merit of Prior was in his easy tales and lighter poems, though he allowed that his Solomon had many noble sentiments elegantly expressed. In Swift he discovered an inimitable vein of irony, and an easiness which all would hope and few would attain. Pope he was inclined to degrade from a poet to a versifier, and thought his numbers rather luscious than sweet. He often lamented the neglect of Phadra and Hippolitus, and wished to see the stage under better regulation.

These assertions passed commonly uncontradicted; and if now and then an opponent started up, he was quickly repressed by the suffrages of the company, and Minim went away from every dispute with elation of heart and increase of confidence.

He now grew conscious of his abilities, and began to talk of the present state of dramatic poetry; wondered what was become of the comic genius which supplied our ancestors with wit and pleasantry, and why no writer could be found that durst now venture beyond a farce. He saw no reason for thinking that the vein of humour was exhausted, since we live in a country where liberty suffers every character to spread itself to its utmost bulk, and which, therefore, produces more originals than all the rest of the world together. Of tragedy he concluded business to be the soul, and yet often hinted that love predominates too much upon the modern stage.

He was now an acknowledged critic, and had his own seat in a coffee-house, and headed a party in the pit. Minim has more vanity than ill nature, and seldom desires to do much mischief; he will perhaps murmur a little in the ear of him that sits next him, but endeavours to influence the audience to favour, by clapping when an actor exclaims, "Ye gods!" or laments the misery of his country.

By degrees he was admitted to rehearsals; and

"When pulpit, drum ecclesiastic,
Was beat with fist instead of a stick ;"

and that the wonderful lines upon honour
and a bubble, have hitherto passed without
notice:

"Honour is like the glassy bubble,
Which costs philosophers such trouble:
Where, one part crack'd, the whole does fly,
And wits are crack'd to find out why.

In these verses, says Minim, we have two striking accommodations of the sound to the It is impossible to utter the two lines sense. emphatically without an act like that which they describe; bubble and trouble causing a momentary inflation of the cheeks by the retention of the breath, which is afterwards forcibly emitted, as in the practice of blowing bubbles. But the greatest excellence is in the third line, which is cracked in the middle to express a crack, and then shivers into monosyllables. Yet hath this diamond lain neglected with common stones, and among the innumerable admirers of Hudibras the observation of this superlative passage has been reserved for the sagacity of Minim.

No. 61.] SATURDay, June 16, 1759.

MR. MINIM had now advanced himself to the zenith of critical reputation; when he was in the pit, every eye in the boxes was fixed upon him; when he entered his coffee-house, he was surrounded by circles of candidates, who passed their noviciate of literature under his tuition: his opinion was asked by all who had no opinion of their own, and yet loved to debate and decide; and no composition was supposed to pass in safety to posterity till it had been secured by Minim's approbation.

Minim professes great admiration of the wisdom and munificence by which the academies of the continent were raised; and often wishes for some standard of taste, for some tribunal, to which merit may appeal from caprice, prejudice, and malignity. He has formed a plan for an academy of criticism, where every work of imagination may be read before it is printed, and

which shall authoritively direct the theatres | has, he knows not how, something that strikes what pieces to receive or reject, to exclude or him with an obscure sensation like that which to revive. he fancies would be felt from the sound of darkness.

Such an institution would, in Dick's opinion, spread the fame of English literature over Europe, and make London the metropolis of ele gance and politeness, the place to which the learned and ingenious of all countries would repair for instruction and improvement, and where nothing would any longer be applauded or endured that was not conformed to the nicest rules, and finished with the highest elegance.

Minim is not so confident of his rules of judgment as not very eagerly to catch new light from the name of the author. He is commonly so prudent as to spare those whom he cannot resist, unless, as will sometimes bappen, he finds the public combined against them. But a fresh pretender to fame he is strongly inclined to censure, till his own honour requires that he commend him. Till he knows the success of a composition he intrenches himself in general terms; there are some new thoughts and beautiful passages, but there is likewise much which he would have advised the author to expunge. He has

never settled the Leaning, but which are very commey applied to books which he has not read, or cannot understand. One is manly, another is dry, another stiff, and another flimsy: sometimes he discovers delicacy of style, and sometimes meets with strange expressions.

Till some happy conjunction of the planets shall dispose our princes or ministers to make themselves immortal by such an academy, Minim contents himself to preside four nights in a week in a critical society selected by himself, where he is heard without contradic-several favourite epithets, of which he has tion, and whence his judgment is disseminated through the great vulgar and the small. When he is placed in the chair of criticism, he declares loudly for the noble simplicity of our ancestors, in opposition to the petty refinements, and ornamental luxuriance. Sometimes he is sunk in despair, and perceives false delicacy daily gaining ground, and sometimes brightens his countenance with a gleam of hope, and predicts the revival of the true sublime. He then fulminates his loudest censures against the monkish barbarity of rhyme; wonders how beings that pretend to reason can be pleased with one line always ending like another; tells how unjustly and unnaturally sense is sacrificed to sound; how often the best thoughts are mangled by the necessity of confining or extending them to the dimensions of a couplet; and rejoices that genius has, in our days, shaken of the shackles which had encumbered it so long. Yet he allows that rhyme may sometimes be borne if the lines be often broken, and the pauses judiciously diversified.

He is never so great nor so happy, as when a youth of promising parts is brought to receive his directions for the prosecution of his studies. He then puts on a very serious air; he advises the pupil to read none but the best authors, and, when he finds one congenial to his own mind, to study his beauties, but avoid his faults, and, when he sits down to write, to consider how his favourite author would think at the present time on the present occasion. He exhorts him to catch those moments when he finds his thoughts expanded and his genius exalted, but to take care lest imagination hurry him beyond the bounds of nature. He holds diligence the mother of success; yet enjoins him with great earnestness, not to read more than he can digest, and not to confuse his mind, by pursuing studies of contrary tendencies. He tells him, that every man has his genius, and that Cicero could never be a poet. The boy retires illuminated, resolves to follow his genius, and to think how Milton would have thought: and Minim feasts upon his own beneficence till another day brings another pupil.

From blank verse he makes an easy transition to Milton, whom he produces as an example of the slow advance of lasting reputation. Milton is the only writer in whose books Minim can read for ever without weariness. What cause is it that exempts this pleasure from satiety he has long and diligently inquired, and believes it to consist in the perpetual variation of the numbers, by which the ear is gratified and the attention awakened. The lines that are commonly thought rugged and and unmusical he conceives to have been No. 62.] SATURDAY, June 23, 1759. written to temper the melodious luxury of the rest, or to express things by & proper cadence: for he scarcely finds a verse that has not this favourite beauty; he declares that he could shiver in a hot-house when he reads

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SIR,

TO THE IDLER.

AN opinion prevails almost universally in the world, that he who has money has every thing. This is not a modern paradox, or the tenet of a small and obscure sect, but a persuasion which appears to have operated upon most minds in all ages, and which is supported by authorities so numerous and so cogent, that

and that when Milton bewails his blindness, nothing but long experience could have given the verse,

"So thick a drop serene has quenched these orbs,"

me confidence to question its truth.

But experience is the test by which all the philosophers of the present age agree, that speculation must be tried; and I may therefore

be allowed to doubt the power of money, since I have been a long time rich, and I have not yet found that niches can make me happy. My father was a farmer neither wealthy nor indigent, who gave me a better education than was suitable to my birth, because my uncle in the city designed me for his heir and desired that I might be bred a gentleman. My uncle's wealth was the perpetual subject of conversation in the house; and when any little misfortune befel us, or any mortification dejected us, my father always exhorted me to hold up my head, for my uncle would never marry. My uncle, indeed, kept his promise. Having his mind completely busied between his warehouse and the Change, he felt no tediousness of life, nor any want of domestic amusements. When my father died, he received me kindly; but after a few months finding no great pleasure in the conversation of each other, we parted; and he remitted me a small annuity, on which I lived a quiet and studious life, without any wish to grow great by the death of my benefactor.

But though I never suffered any malignant impatience to take holds on my mind, I could not forbear sometimes to imagine to myself the pleasure of being rich; and when I read of diversions and magnificence, resolved to try, when time should put the trial in my power, what pleasure they could afford.

My uncle, in the latter spring of his life, when his ruddy cheek and his firm nerves promised him a long and healthy age, died of an apoplexy. His death gave me neither joy nor sorrow. He did me good, and I regarded him with gratitude; but I could not please him, and therefore could not love him.

He had the policy of little minds who love to surprise and having always represented his fortune as less than it was, had, I suppose, often gratified himself with thinking, how I should be delighted to find myself twice as rich as I expected. My wealth was such as exceeded all the schemes of expense which I had formed; and I soon began to expand my thoughts and look round me for some purchase of felicity.

The most striking effect of riches is the splendour of dress, which every man has observed to enforce respect, and facilitate reception; and my first desire was to be fine. I sent for a tailor who was employed by the nobility, and ordered such a suit of clothes as I had often looked on with involuntary submission, and am ashamed to remember with what flutters of expectation I waited for the hour when I should issue forth in all the splendour of embroidery. The clothes were brought and for three days I observed many eyes turned towards me as I passed; but I felt myself obstructed in the common intercourse of civility, by an uneasy consciousness of my new appearance; as I thought myself more observed, I was more anxious about my mien and behaviour; and the mien which is formed by care is commonly ridiculous. A short time accustomed me to myself, and my dress was without pain and without pleasure.

For a little while I tried to be a rake, but I

began too late; and having by nature no turn for a frolic, was in great danger of ending in a drunkard. A fever, in which not one of my companions paid me a visit, gave me time for reflection. I found that there was no great pleasure in breaking windows and lying in the round-house; and resolved to associate no longer with those whom, though I had treated and bailed them, I could not make friends.

I then changed my measures kept running horses, and had the comfort of seeing my name very often in the news. I had a chesnut horse, the grandson of Childers, who won four plates, and ten by-matches; and a bay filly who carried off the five-years-old plate, and was expected to perform much greater exploits, when my groom broke her wind because I happened to catch him selling oats for beer. This happiness was soon at an end; there was no pleasure when I lost, and when I won I could not much exalt myself by the virtues of my horse. I grew ashamed of the company of jockey-lords, and resolved to spend no more of my time in the stable.

It was now known that I had money, and would spend it, and I passed four months in the company of architects, whose whole business was, to persuade me to build a house. I told them that I had more room than I wanted, but could not get rid of their importunities. A new plan was brought me every morning; till at last my constancy was overpowered, and I began to build. The happiness of building lasted but a little while, for though I love to spend, hate to be cheated; and I soon found, that to build is to be robbed.

I

How I proceed in the pursuit of happiness, you shall hear when I find myself disposed to write. I am, Sir,

TIM. RANGER.

No. 63.] SATURDAY, June 30, 1759.

THE natural progress of the works of men is from rudeness to convenience, from convenience to elegance, and from elegance to nicety.

The first labour is enforced by necessity. The savage finds himself incommoded by heat and cold, by rain and wind; he shelters himself in the hollow of a rock and learns to dig a cave where there was none before. He finds the sun and the wind excluded by the thicket, and when the accidents of the chase, or the convenience of pasturage, lead him into more open places, he forms a thicket for himself, by planting stakes at proper distances, and laying branches from one to another.

The next gradation of skill and industry produces a house closed with doors, and divided by partitions; and apartments are multiplied and disposed according to the various degrees of power or invention; improvement succeeds improvement, as he that is freed from a greater evil grows impatient of a less, till ease in time is advanced to pleasure.

The mind set free from the importunities of

natural want, gains leisure to go in search of superfluous gratifications, and adds to the uses of habitation the delights of prospect. Then begins the reign of symmetry; orders of architecture are invented, and one part of the edifice is conformed to another, without any other reason, than that the eye may not be of fended.

The passage is very short from elegance to luxury. Ionic and Corinthian columns are soon succeeded by gilt cornices, inlaid floors, and petty ornaments, which show rather the wealth than the taste of the possessor.

honour which has hitherto been denied him, of showing his countrymen that something more was to be desired, and that English verse might be exalted into poetry.

From the time of Gower and Chaucer, the English writers have studied elegance, and advanced their language, by successive improvements, to as much harmony as it can easily receive, and as much copiousness as human knowledge has hitherto required. These advances have not been made at all times with the same diligence or the same success. Negligence has suspended the course of improvement, or affectation turned it aside; time has elapsed with little change, or change has been made without amendment. But elegance has been long kept in view with attention as near to constancy as life permits, till every man now endeavours to excel others in accuracy or outshine them in splendour of style, and the danger is, lest care should too soon pass to affectation.

Language proceeds, like every thing else, through improvement to degeneracy. The rovers who first take possession of a country, having not many ideas, and those not nicely modified or discriminated, were contented, if by general terms and abrupt sentences they could make their thoughts known to one another; as life begins to be more regulated, and property to become limited, disputes must be decided, and claims adjusted; the differences of things are noted, and distinctness and propriety of expression become necessary. In time, No 64.] SATURDAY, JULY 7, 1759. happiness and plenty give rise to curiosity, and the sciences are cultivated for ease and pleasure; to the arts, which are now to be taught, emulation soon adds the art of teaching; and the studious and ambitious contend not only who shall think best, but who shall tell their thoughts in the most pleasing man

ner.

Then begin the arts of rhetoric and poetry, the regulation of figures, the selection of words, the modulation of periods, the graces of transition, the complication of clauses, and all the delicacies of style and subtilities of composition, useful while they advance perspicuity, and laudable while they increase pleasure, but easily to be refined by needless scrupulosity till they shall more embarrass the writer than assist the reader or delight him.

The first state is commonly antecedent to the practice of writing; the ignorant essays of imperfect diction pass away with the savage generation that uttered them. No nation can trace their language beyond the second period, and even of that it does not often happen that many monuments remain.

The fate of the English tongue is like that of others. We know nothing of the scanty jargon of our barbarous ancestors; but we have specimens of our language when it began to be adapted to civil and religious purposes, and find it such as might naturally be expected, artless and simple, unconnected and concise. The writers seem to have desired little more than to be understood, and perhaps seldom aspired to the praise of pleasing. Their verses were considered chiefly as memorial, and therefore did not differ from prose but by the measure or the rhyme.

In this state, varied a little according to the different purposes or abilities of writers, our language may be said to have continued to the time of Gower, whom Chaucer calls his master, and who, however obscured by his scholar's popularity, seems justly to claim the

SIR,

TO THE IDLER.

As nature has made every man desirous of happiness, I flatter myself, that you and your readers cannot but feel some curiosity to know the sequel of my story; for though, by trying the different schemes of pleasure, I have yet found nothing in which I could finally acquiesce; yet the narrative of my attempts will not be wholly without use, since we always approach nearer to truth as we detect more and more varieties of error.

When I had sold my racers, and put the orders of architecture out of my head, my next resolution was to be a fine gentleman. I frequented the polite coffee-houses, grew acquainted with all the men of humour, and gained the right of bowing familiarly to half the nobility. In this new scene of life my great labour was to learn to laugh. I had been used to consider laughter as the effect of merriment; but I soon learned that it is one of the arts of adulation, and, from laughing only to show that I was pleased, I now began to laugh when I wished to please. This was at first very difficult. I sometimes heard the story with dull indifference; and, not exalting myself to merriment by due gradations, burst out suddenly into an awkward noise. which was not always favourably interpreted. Sometimes I was behind the rest of the company, and lost the grace of laughing by delay, and sometimes when I began at the night time was deficient in loudness or in length. But, by diligent imitation of the best models, I attained at last such flexibility of muscles, that I was always a welcome auditor of a story, and got the reputation of a good-natured fe.low.

This was something; but much more was to be done, that I might be universally allowed to be a fine gentleman. I appeared at court on all public days; betted at gamingtables, and plaved at all the routs of eminence.

I went every night to the opera, took a fiddler] plain meat, and was therefore soon weary of of disputed merit under my protection, be- spreading a table of which I could not partake. came the head of a musical faction, and had I found that my guests, when they went sometimes concerts at my own house. I once away, criticised their entertainment and centhought to have attained the highest rank of sured my profusion; my cook thought him elegance, by taking a foreign singer into self necessary, and took upon him the dikeeping. But my favourite fiddler contrived rection of the house; and I could not rid my to be arrested on the night of a concert, for a self of flatterers, or break from slavery, but finer suit of clothes than I had ever presumed by shutting up my house, and declaring my reto wear, and I lost all the fame of patronage solution to live in lodgings. by refusing to bail him.

My next ambition was to sit for my picture. I spent a whole winter in going from painter to painter, to bespeak a whole length of one, and a half length of another, I talked of nothing but attitudes, draperies, and proper lights; took my friends to see the pictures after every sitting; heard every day of a wonderful performer in crayons and miniature, and sent my pictures to be copied; was told by the judges that they were not like, and was recommended to other artists. At length being not able to please my friends, I grew less pleased myself, and at last resolved to think no more about it.

After all this, tell me, dear Idler, what I
must do next; I have health, I have money,
and I hope that I have understanding; yet,
with all these, I have never been able to pass
a single day which I did not wish at an end
before sunset. Tell me, dear Idler, what I
shall do.
I am,

Your humble servant,
TIM. RANGER.

No. 65.] SATURDAY, JULY 14, 1759.

THE sequel of Clarendon's history, at last It was impossible to live in total idleness: happily published, is an accession to English and wandering about in search of something literature equally agreeable to the admirers of to do I was invited to a weekly meeting of elegance and the lovers of truth; many virtuosos, and felt myself instantaneously doubtful facts may now be ascertained, and seized with an unextinguishahle ardour for all many questions, after long debate, may be denatural curiosities. I ran from auction to auc-termined by decisive authority. He that retion, became a critic in shells and fossils, cords transactions in which himself was enbought a Hortus siccus of inestimable value, gaged has not only an opportunity of knowand purchased a secret art of preserving in- ing innumerable particulars which escape sects, which made my collection the envy of spectators, but has his natural powers exalted the other philosophers. I found this pleasure by that ardour which always rises at the remingled with much vexation. All the faults membrance of our own importance, and by of my life were for nine months circulated which every man is enabled to relate his own through the town with the most active malig- actions better than another's. nity, because I happened to catch a moth of peculiar variegation; and because I once outbid all the lovers of shells, and carried off a nautilus, it was hinted that the validity of my uncle's will ought to be disputed. I will not deny that I was very proud both of the moth and of the shell, and gratified myself with the envy of my companions, and perhaps more than became a benevolent being. But in time I grew weary of being hated for that which produced no advantage, gave my shells to children that wanted play-things, and suppressed the art of drying butterflies, because I would not tempt idleness and cruelty to kill

them.

The difficulties through which this work has struggled into light, and the delays with which our hopes have been long mocked, naturally lead the mind to the consideration of the common fate of posthumous compositions.

He who sees himself surrounded by admirers, and whose vanity is hourly feasted with all the luxuries of studied praise, is easily persuaded that his influence will be extended beyond his life; that they who cringe in his presence will reverence his memory, and that those who are proud to be numbered among his friends, will endeavour to vindicate his choice by zeal for his reputation.

from all mankind as most likely to publish them; and the history had likewise perished, had not a straggling transcript fallen into busy hands.

With hopes like these, to the executors of I now began to feel life tedious, and wished Swift was committed the history of the last to store myself with friends, with whom I years of Queen Anne, and to those of Pope, might grow old in the interchange of benevo- the works which remained unprinted in his lence. I had observed that popularity was most closet. The performances of Pope were easily gained by an open table, and therefore burnt by those whom he had perhaps selected hired a French cook, furnished my sideboard with great magnificence, filled my cellar with wines of pompous appellations, bought every thing that was dear before it was good, and invited all those who were most famous for judging of a dinner. In three weeks my cook gave me warning, and, upon inquiry told me that Lord Queasy, who dined with me the day before, had sent him an offer of double wages. My pride prevailed: I raised his wages, and invited his lordship to another feast. I love

The papers left in the closet of Pieresc, sup plied his heirs with a whole winter's fuel; and many of the labours of the learned bishop Lloyd were consumed in the kitchen of his descendants.

Some works, indeed, have escaped total destruction, but yet have had reason to lament

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