slaved. The lady whom the same kindness had | whom chance had brought her into company. brought without her own concurrence into the In Nitella I promised myself an easy friend, with lists of love, seemed to think me at least worthy whom I might loiter away the day without disof the honour of captivity; and exerted the turbance or altercation. I therefore soon repower, both of her eyes and wit, with so much solved to address her, but was discouraged from art and spirit, that though I had been too often prosecuting my courtship, by observing that her deceived by appearances to devote myself irre- apartments were superstitiously regular; and vocably at the first interview, yet I could not that, unless she had notice of my visit, she was suppress some raptures of admiration, and flut- never to be seen. There is a kind of anxious ters of desire. I was easily persuaded to make cleanliness which I have always noted as the nearer approaches; but soon discovered that a characteristic of a slattern; it is the superfluous union with Camilla was not much to be wished. scrupulosity of guilt, dreading discovery, and Camilla professed a boundless contempt for the shunning suspicion; it is the violence of an effolly, levity, ignorance, and impertinence of her fort against habit, which being impelled by exterown sex; and very frequently expressed her nal motives, cannot stop at the middle point. wonder that men of learning or experience could Nitella was always tricked out rather with submit to trifle away life with beings incapable nicety than elegance; and seldom could forbear of solid thought. In mixed companies she always to discover by her uneasiness and constraint, associated with the men, and declared her satis- that her attention was burdened, and her imafaction when the ladies retired. If any short ex-gination engrossed: I therefore concluded, that cursion into the country was proposed, she commonly insisted upon the exclusion of women from the party; because, where they were admitted, the time was wasted in frothy compliments, weak indulgences, and idle ceremonies. To show the greatness of her mind, she avoided all compliance with the fashion; and to boast the profundity of her knowledge, mistook the various textures of silk, confounded tabbies with damasks, and sent for ribands by wrong names. She despised the commerce of stated visits, a farce of empty form without instruction; and congratulated herself, that she never learned to write message cards. She often applauded the noble sentiment of Plato, who rejoiced that he was born a man rather than a woman; proclaimed her approbation of Swift's opinion, that women are only a higher species of monkeys; and confessed, that when she considered the behaviour, or heard the conversation of her sex, she could not but forgive the Turks for suspecting them to want souls. It was the joy and pride of Camilla to have provoked, by this insolence, all the rage of hatred, and all the persecutions of calumny; nor was she ever more elevated with her own superiority, than when she talked of female anger and female cunning. Well, said she, has nature provided that such virulence should be disabled by folly, and such cruelty be restrained by impotence. being only occasionally and ambitiously dressed, she was not familiarized to her own ornaments. There are so many competitors for the fame of cleanliness, that it is not hard to gain informa tion of those that fail, from those that desire to excel; I quickly found, that Nitella passed her time between finery and dirt; and was always in a wrapper, nightcap, and slippers, when she was not decorated for immediate show. I was then led by my evil destiny to Charyb. dis, who never neglected an opportunity of seizing a new prey when it came within her reach. I thought myself quickly made happy by permission to attend her to public places, and pleased my own vanity with imagining the envy which I should raise in a thousand hearts, by appearing as the acknowledged favourite of Charybdis. She soon after hinted her intention to take a ramble for a fortnight, into a part of the kingdom which she had never seen. I solicited the hap piness of accompanying her, which, after a short reluctance, was indulged me. She had no other curiosity on her journey, than after all possible means of expense; and was every moment taking occasion to mention some delicacy, which knew it my duty upon such notices to procure. After our return, being now more familiar, she told me, whenever we met, of some new diver sion; at night she had notice of a charming company that would breakfast in the gardens; and in the morning had been informed of some Camilla doubtless expected, that what she lost new song in the opera, some new dress at the on one side, she should gain on the other; and playhouse, or some performer at a concert whom imagined that every male heart would be open to she longed to hear. Her intelligence was such, a lady, who made such generous advances to the that there never was a show, to which she did borders of virility. But man, ungrateful man, not summon me on the second day; and as she instead of springing forward to meet her, shrunk hated a crowd, and could not go alone, I was back at her approach. She was persecuted by obliged to attend at some intermediate hour, and the ladies as a deserter, and at best received by pay the price of a whole company. When we the men only as a fugitive. I, for my part, passed the streets, she was often charmed with amused myself a while with her fopperies, but some trinket in the toyshops; and, from modenovelty soon gave way to detestation, for no-rate desires of seals and snuff-boxes, rose, by dething out of the common order of nature can be long borne. I had no inclination to a wife who had the ruggedness of a man without his force, and the ignorance of a woman without her softness; nor could I think my quiet and honour to be intrusted to such audacious virtue as was hourly courting danger, and soliciting assault. My next mistress was Nitella, a lady of gentle inien, and soft voice, always speaking to approve, and ready to receive direction from those with grees, to gold and diamonds. I now began to find the smile of Charybdis too costly for a private purse, and added one more to six-and-forty lovers, whose fortune and patience her rapacity had exhausted. Imperia then took possession of my affections, but kept them only for a short time. She had newly inherited a large fortune, and having spent the earlier part of her life in the perusal of romances, brought with her into the gay world a the pride of Cleopatra; expected nothing less because I kept my coat clean, and my com than vows, altars, and sacrifices; and thought plexion free from freckles; and did not come her charms dishonoured, and her power in-home, like my brother, mired and tanned, nor fringed, by the softest opposition to her senti- carry corn in my hat to the horse, nor bring dirty ments, or the smallest transgression of her com- curs into the parlour. mands. Time might indeed cure this species of pride in a mind not naturally undiscerning, and vitiated only by false representations; but the operations of time are slow; and I therefore left her to grow wise at leisure, or to continue in error at her own expense. Thus I have hitherto, in spite of myself, passed my life in frozen celibacy. My friends, indeed, often tell me, that I flatter my imagination with higher hopes than human nature can gratify; that I dress up an ideal charmer in all the radiance of perfection, and then enter the world to look for the same excellence in corporeal beauty. But surely, Mr. RAMBLER, it is not madness to hope for some terrestrial lady unstained with the spots which I have been describing; at least, I am resolved to pursue my search; for I am so far from thinking meanly of marriage, that I believe it able to afford the highest happiness decreed to our present state; and if, after all these miscarriages, I find a woman that fills up my expectation, you shall hear once more from Yours, &c. No. 116.] HYMENEUS. SATURDAY, APRIL 27, 1751. Optat ephippia bos piger; optat arare caballus. SIR, I WAS the second son of a country gentleman by the daughter of a wealthy citizen of London. My father having by his marriage freed the estate from a heavy mortgage, and paid his sisters their portions, thought himself discharged from all obligation to further thought, and entitled to spend the rest of his life in rural pleasures. He therefore spared nothing that might contribute to the completion of his felicity; he procured the best guns and horses that the kingdom could supply, paid large salaries to his groom and huntsman, and became the envy of the country for the discipline of his hounds. But, above all his other attainments, he was eminent for a breed of pointers and setting-dogs, which by long and vigilant cultivation he had so much improved, that not a partridge or heathcock could rest in security; and game of whatever species, that dared to light upon his manor, was beaten down by his shot, or covered with his nets. My elder brother was very early initiated in the chace, and, at an age when other boys are creeping like snails unwillingly to school, he could wind the horn, beat the bushes, bound over hedges, and swim rivers. When the huntsman one day broke his leg, he supplied his place with equal abilities, and came home with the scut in his hat, amidst the acclamations of the whole village. I being either delicate or timorous, less desirous of honour, or less capable of sylvan heroism, was always the favourite of my mother; My mother had not been taught to amuse her self with books, and being much inclined to despise the ignorance and barbarity of the country ladies, disdained to learn their sentiments or conversation, and had made no addition to the notions which she had brought from the precincts of Cornhill. She was, therefore, always recounting the glories of the city; enumerating the suc cession of mayors; celebrating the magnificence of the banquets at Guildhall; and relating the civilities paid her at the companies' feasts by men, of whom some are now made aldermen, some have fined for sheriffs, and none are worth less than forty thousand pounds. She frequently displayed her father's greatness; told of the large bills which he had paid at sight; of the sums for which his word would pass upon the Exchange; the heaps of gold which he used on Saturday night to toss about with a shovel; the extent of his warehouse, and the strength of his doors; and when she relaxed her imagination with lower subjects, described the furniture of their country-house, or repeated the wit of the clerks and porters. By these narratives I was fired with the splendour and dignity of London, and of trade. I therefore devoted myself to a shop, and warmed my imagination from year to year with inquiries about the privileges of a freeman, the power of the common council, the dignity of a wholesale dealer, and the grandeur of mayoralty, to which my mother assured me that many had arrived who began the world with less than myself. I was very impatient to enter into a path, which led to such honour and felicity; but was forced for a time to endure some repression of my eagerness, for it was my grandfather's maxim, that a young man seldom makes much money, who is out of his time before two-and-twenty. They thought it necessary, therefore, to keep me at home till the proper age, without any other employment than that of learning merchants' accounts, and the art of regulating books; but at length the tedious days elapsed, I was transplanted to town, and, with great satisfaction to myself, bound to a haberdasher. My master, who had no conception of any virtue, merit, or dignity, but that of being rich, had all the good qualities which naturally arise from a close and unwearied attention to the main chance; his desire to gain wealth was so well tempered by the vanity of showing it, that, without any other principle of action, he lived in the esteem of the whole commercial world; and was always treated with respect by the only men, whose good opinion he valued or solicited, those who were universally allowed to be richer than himself. By his instructions I learned in a few weeks to handle a yard with great dexterity, to wind tape neatly upon the ends of my fingers, and to make up parcels with exact frugality of paper and pack thread; and soon caught from my fellowapprentices the true grace of a counter-bow, the careless air with which a small pair of scales is to be held between the fingers, and the vigour and sprightliness with which the box, after the riband has been cut, is returned into its place. [ of my purse; and that it is fine, when a man can Having no desire of any higher employment, and set his hands to his sides, and say he is worth therefore applying all my powers to the know- forty thousand pounds every day of the year ledge of my trade, I was quickly master of all These and many more such consolations and that could be known, became a critic in small encouragements I received from my good mowares, contrived new variations of figures, and ther, which, however, did not much allay my unnew mixtures of colours, and was sometimes easiness; for having by some accident heard, consulted by the weavers, when they projected that the country ladies despised her as a cit, fashions for the ensuing spring. had therefore no longer much reverence for her opinions, but considered her as one whose ignorance and prejudice had hurried me, though without ill intentions, into a state of meanness and ignominy, from which I could not find any possibility of rising to the rank which my ancestors had always held. without my former cheerfulness and alacrity. I had now no longer any felicity in contemplating the exact disposition of my powdered curls, the equal plaits of my ruffles, or the glossy blackness of my shoes; nor heard with my former elevation those compliments which ladies sometimes condescended to pay me upon my readiness in twisting a paper, or counting out the change. The term of Young Man, with which I was sometimes honoured, as I carried a parcel to the door of a coach, tortured my imagination; I grew negligent of my person, and sullen in my temper; often mistook the demands of the customers, treated their caprices and objections with contempt, and received and dismissed them with surly silence. With all these accomplishments, in the fourth year of my apprenticeship I paid a visit to my friends in the country, where I expected to be received as a new ornament of the family, and consulted by the neighbouring gentlemen as a master of pecuniary knowledge, and by the ladies as an oracle of the mode. But unhappily, at the I returned, however, to my master, and busied first public table, to which I was invited, ap-myself among thread, and silks, and laces, but peared a student of the Temple, and an officer of the guards, who looked upon me with a smile of contempt, which destroyed at once all my hopes of distinction, so that I durst hardly raise my eyes for fear of encountering their superiority of mien. Nor was my courage revived by any opportunities of displaying my knowledge; for the templar entertained the company for part of the day with historical narratives and political observations; and the colonel afterwards detailed the adventures of a birth-night, told the claims and expectations of the courtiers, and gave an account of assemblies, gardens, and diversions. I, indeed, essayed to fill up a pause in a parliamentary debate with a faint mention of trade and Spaniards; and once attempted, with some warmth, to correct a gross mistake about a silver breast-knot; but neither of my antagonists seemed to think a reply necessary; they resumed their discourse without emotion, and again engrossed the attention of the company; nor did one of the ladies appear desirous to know my opinion of her dress, or to hear how long the carnation shot with white, that was then new amongst them, had been antiquated in town. As I knew that neither of these gentlemen had more money than myself, I could not discover what had depressed me in their presence; nor why they were considered by others as more worthy of attention and respect; and therefore resolved, when we met again, to rouse my spirit, and force myself into notice. I went very early to the next weekly meeting, and was entertaining a small circle very successfully with a minute representation of my lord mayor's show, when the colonel entered careless and gay, sat down with a kind of unceremonious civility, and without appearing to intend any interruption, drew my audience away to the other part of the room, to which I had not the courage to follow them. Soon after came in the lawyer, not indeed with the same attraction of mien, but with greater powers of language: and by one or other the company was so happily amused, that I was neither heard nor seen, nor was able to give any other proof of my existence than that I put round the glass, and was in my turn permitted to name My master was afraid lest the shop should suffer by this change of my behaviour; and, therefore, after some expostulation, posted me in the warehouse, and preserved me from the danger and reproach of desertion, to which my discontent would certainly have urged me, had I continued any longer behind the counter. In the sixth year of my servitude my brother died of drunken joy, for having run down a fox that had baffled all the packs in the province. I was now heir, and with the hearty consent of my master commenced gentleman. The adventures in which my new character engaged me shall be communicated in another letter, by Sir, Yours, &c. MISOCAPELUS. SIR, NOTHING has more retarded the advancement of learning than the disposition of vulgar minds to ridicule and vilify what they cannot comprehend. All industry must be excited by hope; and as the student often proposes no other reward to himself than praise, he is easily discouraged by contempt and insult. He who brings with him into a clamorous multitude the timidity of recluse speculation, and has never hardened his front in pub lic life, or accustomed his passions to the vicissi tudes and accidents, the triumphs and defeats of mixed conversation, will blush at the stare of pe tulant incredulity, and suffer himself to be driven by a burst of laughter, from the fortresses of demonstration. The mechanist will be afraid to as sert before hardy contradiction, the possibility of tearing down bulwarks with a silkworm's thread; and the astronomer of relating the rapidity of light, the distance of the fixed stars, and the height of the lunar mountains. If I could by any efforts have shaken off this cowardice, I had not sheltered myself under a borrowed nante, nor applied to you for the means of communicating to the public the theory of a garret; a subject which, except some slight and transient strictures, has been hitherto neglected by those who were best qualified to adorn it, either for want of leisure to prosecute the various researches in which a nice discussion must engage them, or because it requires such diversity of knowledge, and such extent of curiosity, as is scarcely to be found in any single intellect; or perhaps others foresaw the tumult which would be raised against them, and confined their knowledge to their own breasts, and abandoned prejudice and folly to the direction of chance. The institution has, indeed, continued to our own time; the garret is still the usual receptacle of the philosopher and poet; but this, like many ancient customs, is perpetuated only by an acci dental imitation, without knowledge of the original reason for which it was established; Causa latet: res est notissima. The cause is secret, but th' effect is known ADDISON. Conjectures have, indeed, been advanced concerning these habitations of literature, but without much satisfaction to the judicious inquirer. Some have imagined that the garret is generally chosen by the wits as most easily rented; and concluded that no man rejoices in his aërial abode, but on the days of payment. Others suspect that a garret is chiefly convenient, as it is remoter than any other part of the house from the outer door, which is often observed to be infested by visitants, who talk incessantly of beer, or linen, or a coat, and repeat the same sounds every morning, and sometimes again in the afternoon, without any variation, except that they grow daily more. importunate and clamorous, and raise their voices in time from mournful murmurs to raging vociferations. This eternal monotony is always detestable to a man whose chief pleasure is to enlarge his knowledge and vary his ideas. Others talk of freedom from noise, and abstraction from common business or amusements; and some, yet more visionary, tell us, that the faculties are enlarged by open prospects, and that the fancy is more at liberty, when the eye ranges without confinement. That the professors of literature generally reside in the highest stories, has been immemorially observed. The wisdom of the ancients was well acquainted with the intellectual advantages of an elevated situation: why else were the Muses stationed on Olympus, or Parnassus, by those who could with equal right have raised them bowers in the vale of Tempe, or erected their altars among the flexures of Meander? Why was Jove himself nursed upon a mountain? or why did the goddesses, when the prize of beauty was contested, try the cause upon the top of Ida? Such were the fictions by which the great mas- These conveniences may perhaps all be found ters of the earlier ages endeavoured to inculcate in a well-chosen garret; but surely they cannot to posterity the importance of a garret, which, be supposed sufficiently important to have opethough they had been long obscured by the negli-rated invariably upon different climates, distant gence and ignorance of succeeding times, were ages, and separate nations. Of a universal prac well enforced by the celebrated symbol of Pytha- tice, there must still be presumed a universal goras, ἀνεμῶν πνεόντων τὴν ηχὼ προσκύνει; "when cause, which, however recondite and abstruse, the wind blows, worship its echo." This could may be perhaps reserved to make me illustrious not but be understood by his disciples as an invio- by its discovery, and you by its promulgation. lable injunction to live in a garret, which I have found frequently visited by the echo and the wind. Nor was the tradition wholly obliterated in the age of Augustus, for Tibullus evidently congratulates himself upon his garret, not without some allusion to the Pythagorean precept: Quam juvat immites ventos audire cubantem- Sed nil dulcius est, bene quam munita tenere Tis sweet thy labouring steps to guide DRYDEN. It is universally known that the faculties of the mind are invigorated or weakened by the state of the body, and that the body is in a great measure regulated by the various compressions of the ambient element. The effects of the air in the production or cure of corporal maladies have been acknowledged from the time of Hippocrates; but no man has yet sufficiently considered how far it may influence the operations of the genius, though every day affords instances of local understanding, of wits and reasoners, whose faculties are adapted to some single spot, and who, when they are removed to any other place, sink at once into silence and stupidity. I have discovered, by a long series of observations, that invention and elocution suffer great impediments from dense and impure vapours, and that the tenuity of a defecated air at a proper distance from the surface of the earth, accelerates the fancy, and sets at liberty those intellectual powers which were before shackled by too strong attraction and unable to expand themselves under the pres sure of a gross atmosphere. I have found dul ness to quicken into sentiment in a thin ether, as water, though not very hot, boils in a receiver partly exhausted; and heads, in appearance empty, have teemed with notions upon rising ground, as the flaccid sides of a football would | ground stagnates in silence, or creeps in narrahave swelled out into stiffness and extension. tive, might at the height of half a mile, ferment For this reason I never think myself qualified into merriment, sparkle with repartee, and froth to judge decisively of any man's faculties, whom with declamation. I have only known in one degree of elevation; but take some opportunity of attending him from the cellar to the garret, and try upon him all the various degrees of rarefaction and condensation, tension and laxity. If he is neither vivacious, aloft, nor serious below, I then consider him as hopeless; but as it seldom happens, that I do not find the temper to which the texture of his brain is fitted, I accommodate him in time with a tube of mercury, first marking the point most favourable to his intellects, according to rules which I have long studied, and which I may, perhaps, reveal to mankind in a complete treatise of barometrical pneumatology. Addison observes, that we may find the heat of Virgil's climate in some lines of his Georgic: so when I read a composition, I immediately determine the height of the author's habitation. As an elaborate performance is commonly said to smell of the lamp, my commendation of a noble thought, a sprightly sally, or a bold figure, is to pronounce it fresh from the garret; an expres sion which would break from me upon the pe rusal of most of your papers, did I not believe that you sometimes quit the garret, and ascend into the cock-loft. HYPERTATUS. -Omnes illacrymabiles In endless night they sleep, unwept, unknown. Another cause of the gayety and sprightliness No. 118.] SATURDAY, May 4, 1751. of the dwellers in garrets is probably the increase of that vertiginous motion, with which we are carried round by the diurnal revolution of the earth. The power of agitation upon the spirits is well known; every man has felt his heart lightened in a rapid vehicle, or on a galloping horse; and nothing is plainer than that he who towers to the fifth story is whirled through more space by every circumrotation, than another that grovels upon the ground-floor. The nations between the tropics are known to be fiery, inconstant, inventive, and fanciful; because, living at the utmost length of the earth's diameter, they are carried about with more swiftness than those whom nature has placed nearer to the poles; and, therefore, as it becomes a wise man to struggle with the inconveniences of his country, whenever celerity and acuteness are requisite, we must actuate our languor by taking a few turns round the centre in a garret. If you imagine that I ascribe to air and motion effects which they cannot produce, I desire you to consult your own memory, and consider whether you have never known a man acquire reputation in his garret, which, when fortune or a patron had placed him upon the first floor, he was unable to maintain; and who never recovered his former vigour of understanding, till he was restored to his original situation. That a garret will make every man a wit, I am very far from supposing; I know there are some who would continue blockheads even on the summit of the Andes, or on the peak of Teneriffe. But let not any man be considered as unimprovable till this potent remedy has been tried; for perhaps he was formed to be great only in a garret, as the joiner of Aretæus was rational in no other place but in his own shop. I think a frequent removal to various distances from the centre, so necessary to a just estimate of intellectual abilities, and consequently of so great use in education, that if I hoped that the public could be persuaded to so expensive an experiment, I would propose, that there should be a cavern dug, and a tower erected, like those which Bacon describes in Solomon's house, for the expansion and concentration of understanding, according to the exigence of different employments, or constitutions. Perhaps some that fume away in meditations upon time and space in the tower, might compose tables of interest at a certain depth: and he that upon level Y HOR. FRANCIS. CICERO has, with his usual elegance and magnificence of language, attempted, in his relation of the dream of Scipio, to depreciate those honours for which he himself appears to have panted with restless solicitude, by showing within what narrow limits all that fame and celebrity which man can hope for from men is circumscribed. "You see," says Africanus, pointing at the earth, from the celestial regions," that the globe assigned to the residence and habitation of human beings, is of small dimensions: how then can you obtain from the praise of men, any glory worthy of a wish? Of this little world the inha bited parts are neither numerous nor wide; even the spots where men are to be found are broken by intervening deserts, and the nations are so separated as that nothing can be transmitted from one to another. With the people of the south, by whom the opposite part of the earth is possessed, you have no intercourse; and by how small a tract do you communicate with the countries of the north? The territory which you inhabit is no more than a scanty Island, inclosed by a small body of water, to which you give the name of the great sea and the Atlantic ocean. And even in this known and frequented continent, what hope can you entertain, that your renown will pass the stream of Ganges, or the cliffs of Caucasus? or by whom will your name be uttered in the extremities of the north or south, towards the rising or the setting sun? So narrow is the space to which your fame can be propagated, and even there how long will it remain?" He then proceeds to assign natural causes, why fame is not only narrow in its extent, but short in its duration; he observes the difference between the computation of time in earth and heaven, and declares that, according to the celestial chronology, no human honours can last a single year. Such are the objections by which Tully has made a show of discouraging the pursuit of fame; objections which sufficiently discover his tenderness and regard for his darling phantom. Homer, when the plan of his poem made the death of Patroclus necessary' resolved, at least, that he |