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regret how much might have been learned,, aside from one object but by¡assing to anor how much might have been invented by a other. The gloomy and the resentful are alrational and vigorous application of time, use-ways found among those who have nothing to lessly or painfully passed in the revocation of do, or who do nothing. We must be busy events which have left neither good nor evil about good or evil, and he to whom the present behind them, in grief for misfortunes either re-offers nothing will often be looking backward paired or irreparable, in resentment of injuries on the past. known only to ourselves, of which death has put the authors beyond our power.

Philosophy has accumulated precept upon precept, to warn us against the anticipation of future calamities. All useless misery is certainly folly, and he that feels evils before they come may be deservedly censured; yet surely to dread the future is more reasonable than to lament the past. The business of life is to go forwards he who sees evil in prospect meets it in his way; but he who catches it by retrospection turns back to find it. That which is feared may sometimes be avoided, but that which is regretted to-day, may be regretted again to

morrow.

No. 73.] SATURDAY, SEPT. 8, 1759.

THAT every man would be rich if a wish could obtain riches, is a position which I believe few will contest, at least in a nation like ours, in which commerce has kindled a universal emulation of wealth, and in which money receives all the honours which are the proper right of knowledge and of virtue.

Yet though we are all labouring for gold, as for the chief good, and, by the natural effort of unwearied diligence, have found many expeditious methods of obtaining it, we have not been able to improve the art of using it, or to make it produce more happiness than it afforded in former times, when every declaimer expatiated on its mischiefs, and every philosopher taught his followers to despise it.

Regret is indeed useful and virtuous, and not only allowable but necessary, when it tends to the amendment of life, or to admonition of error which we may be again in danger of committing. But a very small part of the moments spent in meditation on the past, pro- Many of the dangers imputed of old to exduce any reasonable caution or salutary sor-orbitant wealth are now at an end. The rich row. Most of the mortification that we have suffered, arose from the concurrence of local and temporary circumstances, which can never meet again; and most of our disappointments have succeeded those expectations, which life allows not.be formed a second time.

are neither way-laid by robbers nor watched by informers; there is nothing to be dreaded from proscriptions, or seizures. The necessity of concealing treasure has long ceased; no man now needs counterfeit mediocrity, and condemn his plate and jewels to caverns and darkness, or feast his mind with the consciousness of clouded splendour, of finery which is useless till it is shown, and which he dares not show.

It would add much to human happiness, if an art could be taught of forgetting all of which the remembrance is at once useless and afflictive, if that pain which never can end in pleasure could be driven totally away, that the In our time the poor are strongly tempted to mind might perform its functions without in-assume the appearance of wealth, but the cumbrance, and the past might no longer en- wealthy very rarely desire to be thought poor; croach upon the present. for we are at full liberty to display riches by Little can be done well to which the whole every mode of ostentation. We fill our houses mind is not applied; the business of every day with useless ornaments, only to show that we calls for the day to which it is assigned; and can buy them; we cover our coaches with gold, he will have no leisure to regret yesterday's and employ artists in the discovery of new fash vexations who resolves not to have a new sub-ions of expense; and yet it cannot be found that ject of regret to-morrow. riches produce happiness.

But to forget or to remember at pleasure, are equally beyond the power of man. Yet as memory may be assisted by method, and the decays of knowledge repaired by stated times of recollection, so the power of forgetting is capable of improvement. Reason will, by a resolute contest, prevail over imagination, and the power may be obtained of transferring the attention as judgment shall direct.

The incursions of troublesome thoughts are often violent and importunate; and it is not easy to a mind accustomed to their inroads to expel them immediately by putting better images into motion; but this enemy of quiet is above all others weakened by every defeat; the reflection which has been once overpowered and ejected, seldom returns with any formi

Of riches, as of every thing else, the hope is more than the enjoyment; while we consider them as the means to be used, at some future time, for the attainment of felicity, we press on our pursuit ardently and vigorously, and that ardour secures us from weariness of ourselves; but no sooner do we sit down to enjoy our acquisitions, than we find than in sufficient to fill up the vacuities of life.

One cause which is not always observed of the insufficiency of riches is, that they very seldom make their owner rich. To be rich is to have more than is desired, and more than is wanted; to have something which may be spent without reluctance, and scattered without care, with which the sudden demands of desire may be gratified, the casual freaks of fancy indulged, or the unexpected opportunities of benevolence Employment is the great instrument of intel-improved. lectual dominion. The mind cannot retire Avarice is always poor, but poor by her own from its enemy into total vacancy, or turn fault. There is another poverty to which the

dable vehemence.

can afford nothing higher than pleasing sound, and fiction is of no other use than to display the treasures of memory.

rich are exposed with less guilt by the officiousness of others. Every man, eminent for exuberance of fortune, is surrounded from morning to evening, and from evening to midnight, by The necessity of memory to the acquisition flatterers, whose art of adulation consists in ex- of knowledge is inevitably felt and universalciting artificial wants, and in forming newly allowed, so that scarcely any other of the chemes of profusion. mental faculties are commonly considered as necessary to a student: he that admires the proficiency of another, always attributes it to the happiness of this memory; and he that laments his own defects, concludes with a wish that his memory was better.

Tom Tranquil, when he came to age, found mself in possession of a fortune of which the wentieth part might, perhaps, have made him rich. His temper is easy, and his affections soft; he receives every man with kindness, and hears him with credulity. His friends took care to settle him by giving him a wife, whom, having no particular inclination, he rather accepted than chose, because he was told that she was proper for him.

It is evident that when the power of retention is weak, all the attempts at eminence of knowledge must be vain; and as few are willing to be doomed to perpetual ignorance, I may, perhaps, afford consolation to some that have fallen too easily into despondence, by observing that such weakness, is in my opinion, very rare, and that few have reason to complain of nature as unkindly sparing of the gifts of memory.

forgetfulness, but culpable inattention; but in literary inquiries, failure is imputed rather to want of memory than of diligence.

We consider ourselves as defective in memory, either because we remember less than we desire, or less than we suppose others to remember.

He was now to live with dignity proportionate to his fortune. What his fortune requires or admits Tom does not know, for he has little skill in computation, and none of his friends think it their interest to improve it. If he was suffered to live by his own choice, he would In the common business of life, we find the leave every thing as he finds it, and pass memory of one like that of another, and hothrough the world distinguished only by inof-nestly impute omissions not to involuntary fensive gentleness. But the ministers of luxury have marked him out as one at whose expense they may exercise their arts. A companion, who had just learned the names of the Italian masters, runs from sale to sale, and buys pictures, for which Mr. Tranquil pays, without inquiring where they shall be hung. Another fills his garden with statues, which Tranquil wishes away but dares not remove. One of his friends is learning architecture, by building him a house, which he passed by and inquired to whom it belonged; another has been for three years digging canals, and raising mounts; cutting trees down in one place, and planting them in another, on which Tranquil looks a with serene indifference, without asking what will be the cost. Another projector tells him that a waterwork, like that of Versailles, will complete the beauties of his seat, and lays his draughts before him; Tranquil turns his eyes upon them, and the artist begins his explanations; Tranquil raises no objections but orders him to begin the work, that he may escape from talk which he does not understand.

Thus a thousand hands are busy at his expense without adding to his pleasures. He pays and receives visits, and has loitered in public or in solitude, talking in summer of the town, and in winter of the country, without knowing that his fortune is impaired, till his steward told him this morning that he could pay the workmen no longer but by mortgaging a manor.

No. 74.] SATurday, Sept. 15, 1759.

In the mythological pedigree of learning, memory is made the mother of the muses, by which the masters of ancient wisdom, perhaps, meant to show the necessity of storing the mind copiously with true notions, before the imagination should be suffered to form fictions or collect embellishments; for the works of an ignorant poet

Memory is like all other human powers, with which no man can be satisfied who measures them by what he can conceive, or by what he can desire. He whose mind is most capacious, finds it much too narrow for his wishes; he that remembers most, remembers little compared with what he forgets. He, therefore, that, after the perusal of a book, finds few ideas remaining in his mind, is not to consider the disappointment as pecu liar to himself, or to resign all hopes of improvement, because he does not retain what even the auther has, perhaps, forgotten.

He who compares his memory with that of others, is often too hasty to lament the inequality. Nature has sometimes, indeed, afforded examples of enormous, wonderful, and gigantic memory. Scaliger reports of himself, that, in his youth, he could repeat above a hundred verses having once read them; and Barthicus declares that he wrote his "Comment upon Cladian" without consulting the text. But not to have such degrees of memory is no more to be lamented than not to have the strength of Hercules, or the swiftness of Achilles. He that, in the distribution of good, has an equal share with common men, may justly be contented. Where there is no striking disparity, it is difficult to know of two which remembers most, and still more difficult to discover which reads with greater attention, which has renewed the first impression by more frequent repetitions, or by what acci dental combination of ideas either mind might have united any particular narrative or argu ment to its former stock.

But memory, however impartially distributed so often deceives our trust, that almost

every man attempts, by some artifice or other, to secure its fidelity.

It is the practice of many readers to note, in the margin of their books, the most important passages, the strongest arguments, or the brightest sentiments. Thus they load their minds with superfluous attention, repress the vehemence of curiosity by useless deliberation, and by frequent interruption break the current of narration or the chain of reasoning, and at last close the volume, and forget the passages and marks together.

which, before he considered it, he resolved to comply; and next morning retired to a garden planted for the recreation of the students, and entering a solitary walk began to meditate upon his future life.

"If I am thus eminent," said he, “in the regions of literature, I shall be yet more conspicuous in any other place; if I should now devote myself to study and retirement, I must pass my life in silence, unacquainted with the delights of wealth, the influence of power, the pomp of greatness and the charms of elegance, Others I have found unalterably persuaded with all that man envies and desires, with alí that nothing is certainly remembered but what that keeps the world in motion, by the hope is transcribed; and they have, therefore, passed of gaining or the fear of losing it. I will weeks and months in transferring large quota- therefore, depart to Tauris, where the Pertions to a common-place book. Yet why any sian monarch resides in all the splendour of part of a book, which can be consulted at plea- absolute dominion: my reputation will fly be sure, should be copied, I was never able to dis-fore me, my arrival will be congratulated by cover. The hand has no closer correspondence my kinsmen and friends; I shall see the eyes with the memory than the eye. The act of of those who predicted my greatness, sparkling writing itself distracts the thoughts, and what with exultation, and the faces of those that is read twice, is commonly better remember- once despised me clouded with envy, or couned than what is transcribed. The method, terfeiting kindness by artificial smiles. I will therefore, consumes time without assisting show my wisdom by my discourse, and my moderation by my silence; I will instruct the modest with easy gentleness, and repress the ostentatious by seasonable superciliousness. My apartments will be crowded by the inquisitive, and the vain, by those that honour and those that rival me; my name will soon reach the court; I shall stand before the throne of the emperor; the judges of the law will confess my wisdom, and the nobles will contend to heap gifts upon me. If I shall find that my merit, like that of others, excites malignity, or feel myself tottering on the seat of elevation, I may at last retire to academical obscurity, and become, in my lowest state, a professor of Bassora."

memory.

The true art of memory is the art of attention. No man will read with much advantage who is not able, at pleasure, to evacuate his mind, or who brings not to his author, an intellect defecated and pure, neither turbid with care, nor agitated by pleasure. If the repositories of thought are already full, what can they receive; if the mind is employed on the past or future, the book will be held before the eyes in vain. What is read with delight is commonly retained, because pleasure always secures attention; but the books which are consulted by occasional necessity, and perused with impatience, seldom leave any traces on the mind.

No. 75.] SATURDAY, SEPT. 22, 1759.

In the time when Bassora was considered as the school of Asia, and flourished by the reputation of its professors, and the confluence of its students, among the pupils that listened round the chair of Albamazar was Gelaleddin, a native of Tauris, in Persia, a young man, amiable in his manners and beautiful in his form, of boundless curiosity, incessant diligence, and irresistible genius, of quick apprehension, and tenacious memory, accurate without narrowness, and eager for novelty without inconstancy.

Having thus settled his determination, he declared to his friends his design of visiting Tauris, and saw with more pleasure than he ventured to express, the regret with which he was dismissed. He could not bear to delay the honours to which he was designed, and therefore hastened away, and in a short time entered the capital of Persia. He was immediately immersed in the crowd, and passed unobserved to his father's house. He entered, and was received, though not unkindly, yet without any excess of fondness, or exclamations of rapture. His father had, in his absence, suffered many losses, and Gelaleddin was considered as an additional burden to a falling family.

When he recovered from his surprise, he beNo sooner did Gelaleddin appear at Bassora, gan to display his acquisitions and practised all than his virtues and abilities raised him to dis- the arts of narration and disposition: but the tinction. He passed from class to class rather poor have no leisure to be pleased with eloadmired than envied by those whom the rapidi-quence; they heard his arguments without rety of his progress left behind: he was consulted by his fellow-students as an oraculous guide, and admitted as a competent auditor to the conferences of the sages.

After a few years, having passed through all the exercises of probation, Gelaleddin was invited to a professor's seat, and intreated to increase the splendour of Bassora. Gelaleddin affected to deliberate on the proposal, with

flection, and his pleasantries without a smile. He then applied himself singly to his brothers and sisters, but found them all chained down by invariable attention to their own fortunes, and insensible of any other excellence than that which could bring some remedy for indigence.

It was now known in the neighbourhood that Gelaleddin was returned, and he sat for some

days in expectation that the learned would visit him for consultation, or the great for entertainment. But who would be pleased or instructed in the mansions of poverty? He then frequented places of public resort, and endeavoured to attract notice by the copiousness of his talk. The sprightly were silenced and went away to censure in some other place, his arrogance and his pedantry; and the dull listened quietly for a while, and then wondered why any man should take pains to obtain so much knowledge which would never do him good.

He next solicited the viziers for employrent, not doubting but his service would be eagerly accepted. He was told by one that there was no vacancy in his office; by another, that his merit was above any patronage but that of the emperor; by a third that he would not forget him; and by the chief vizier, that he did not think literature of any great use in public business. He was sometimes admitted to their tables, where he exerted his wit and diffused his knowledge; but he observed, that where, by endeavour or accident, he had remarkably excelled, he was seldom invited a second time.

He now returned to Bassora, wearied and disgusted, but confident of resuming his former rank, and revelling again in satiety of praise. But he who had been neglected at Tauris, was not much regarded at Bassora; he was considered as a fugitive, who returned only because he could live in no other place; his companions found that they had formerly over-rated his abilities, and he lived long without notice or esteem.

No. 76.] SATURDAY, SEPT. 29, 1759.

SIR,

TO THE IDLER.

tion for the study of criticism is, that critics, so far as I have observed, debar themselves from receiving any pleasure from the polite arts, at the same time that they profess to love and admire them: for these rules being always uppermost, give them such a propensity to criticise, that instead of giving up the reins of their imagination into their author's hands, their frigid minds are employed in examining whether the performance be according to the rules of art.

To those who are resolved to be critics in spite of nature and at the same time have no great disposition to much reading and study, I would recommend to them to assume the character of connoisseur, which may be purchased at a much cheaper rate than that of a critic in poetry. The remembrance of a few names of painters, with their general characters, with a few rules of the academy, which they may pick up among the painters, will go a great way towards making a very notable connoisseur.

With a gentleman of this cast, I visited last week the Cartoons at Hampton-court; he was just returned from Italy, a connoisseur of course, and of course his mouth full of nothing, but the grace of Raffaelle, the purity of Dominichino, the learning of Poussin, and the air of Guido, the greatness of taste of the Carrachis, and the sublimity and grand contorno of Michael Angelo; with all the rest of the cant of criticism, which he emitted with that volubility which generally those orators have who annex no ideas to their words.

66

As we were passing through the rooms, in our way to the gallery, I made him observe a whole length of Charles the First, by Vandyke, as a perfect representation of the character as well as the figure of the man. He agreed it was very fine, but it wanted spirit and contrast, and had not the flowing line, without which a figure could not possibly be graceful. When we entered the gallery, I thought I could perceive him recollecting his rules by which he I WAS much pleased with your ridicule of was to criticise Raffaelle. I shall pass over his those shallow critics, whose judgment, though observation of the boots being too little, and often right as far as it goes, yet reaches only other criticisms of that kind, till we arrived at to inferior beauties, and who unable to compre- St. Paul preaching. This," says he, “is, hend the whole, judge only by parts, and from esteemed the most excellent of all the cartoons; thence determine the merit of extensive works. what nobleness, what dignity there is in that But there is another kind of critic still worse, figure of St. Paul! and yet what an addition who judges by narrow rules, and those too to that nobleness could Raffaelle have given, often false, and which, though they should be had the art of contrast been known in his time! true, and founded on nature, will lead but a but, above all, the flowing line, which constivery little way toward the just estimation of tutes grace and beauty! You would not have the sublime beauties in works of genius; for then seen an upright figure standing equally on whatever part of an art can be executed or both legs, and both hands stretched forward in criticised by rules, that part is no longer the the same direction, and his drapery, to all apwork of genius, which implies excellence out pearance, without the least art of disposition." of the reach of rules. For my own part I pro- The following picture is the Charge to Peter. fess myself an Idler, and love to give my judg-"Here," says he, "are twelve upright figures; ment, such as it is, from my immediate perceptions without much fatigue of thinking: and I am of opinion, that if a man has not those perceptions right, it will be in vain for him to endeavour to supply their place by rules, which may enable him to talk more learnedly but not to distinguish more acutely. Another reason which has lessened my affec

what a pity it is that Raffaelle was not acquainted with the pyramidal principle! He would then have contrived the figures in the middle to have been on higher ground, or the figures at the extremities stooping or lying, which would not only have formed the group into the shape of a pyramid, but likewise contrasted the standing figures. Indeed," added

he, "I have often lamented that so great a genius as Raffaelle had not lived in this enlight ened age, since the art has been reduced to principles, and had had his education in one of the modern academies; what glorious works might we then have expected from his divine pencil !”

I shall trouble you no longer with my friend's observation, which, I suppose, you are now able to continue by yourself. It is curious to observe, that, at the same time that great admiration is pretended for a name of fixed reputation, objections are raised against those very qualities by which that great name was acquired.

Those critics are continually lamenting that Raffaelle had not the colouring and harmony of Rubens, or the light and shadow of Rembrant, without considering how much the gay harmony of the former, and affectation of the latter, would take from the dignity of Raffaelle; and yet Rubens had great harmony, and Rembrant understood light and shadow; but what may be an excellence in a lower class of painting, becomes a blemish in a higher; as the quick, sprightly turn, which is the life and beauty of epigrammatic compositions, would but ill suit with the majesty of heroic poetry.

To conclude; I would not be thought to infer from any thing that has been said, that rules are absolutely unnecessary; but to censure scrupulosity, a servile attention to minute exactness, which is sometimes inconsistent with higher excellency, and is lost in the blaze of expanded genius.

I do not know whether you will think painting a general subject. By inserting this letter, perhaps, you will incur the censure a man would deserve, whose business being to entertain a whole room, should turn his back to the company, and talk to a particular person. I am, Sir, &c.

No 77.] SATURDAY, OCT. 6, 1759.

EASY poetry is universally admired; but I know not whether any rule has yet been fixed, by which it may be decided when poetry can be properly called casy. Horace has told us, that it is such as "every reader hopes to equal, but after long labour finds unattainable." This is a very loose description, in which only the effect is noted; the qualities which produce this effect remain to be investigated.

Easy poetry is that in which natural thoughts are expressed without violence to the language. The discriminating character of ease consists principally in the diction; for all true poetry requires that the sentiments be natural. Language suffers violence by harsh or by daring figures, by transposition, by unusual acceptations of words, and by any license which would be avoided by a writer of prose. Where any artifice appears in the construction of the verse, that verse is no longer easy. Any epithet which can be ejected without diminution of the sense, any curious iteration of the same word, and all unusual, though not ungrammatical structure of speech, destroy the grace of easy poetry.

The first lines of Pope's Iliad afford examples of many licenses which an easy writer must decline :

Achilles' wrath to Greece the direful spring
Of woes unnumber'd heavenly goddess sing,
The wrath which hurl'd to Pluto's gloomy reign
The souls of mighty chiefs untimely slain.

In the first couplet the language is distorted by inversions, clogged with superfluities, and clouded by a harsh metaphor; and in the second there are two words used in an uncommon sense, two epithets inserted only to lengthen the line; all these practises may in a long work easily be pardoned, but they always produce some degree of obscurity and ruggedness.

Easy poetry has been so long excluded by ambition of ornament, and luxuriance of imagery, that its nature seems now to be forgotten. Affectation, however opposite to ease, is sometimes mistaken for it: and those who aspire to gentle elegance, collect female phrases and fashionable barbarisms, and imagine that style to be easy which custom has made familiar. Such was the idea of the poet who wrote the following verses to a countess cutting paper :

Pallas grew vap'rish once and odd,

She would not do the least right thing Either for goddess or for god,

Nor work, nor play, nor paint, nor sing

Jove frowned, and "Use," he cried, "those eyes
So skilful, and those hands so taper;
Do something exquisite and wise."-
She bow'd, obey'd him, and cut paper

This vexing him who gave her birth,
Thought by all heaven a burning shame,
What does she next, but bids of earth
Her Burlington do just the same;

Pallas, you give yourself strange airs, But sure you'll find it hard to spoil The sense and taste of one that bears The name of Saville and of Boyle

Alas! one bad example shown,

How quickly all the sex pursue! See, Madam! see the arts o'erthrown Between John Overton and you.

It is the prerogative of easy poetry to be understood as long as the language lasts; but modes of speech, which owe their prevalence only to modish folly, or to the eminence of those that use them, die away with their inventors, and their meaning, in a few years, is no longer known.

Easy poetry is commonly sought in petty compositions upon minute subjects; but ease, though it excludes pomp, will admit greatness. Many lines in Cato's soliloquy are at once easy and sublime:—

The divinity that stirs within us;

'Tis heaven itself that points out an hereafter,
And intimates eternity to man.

-If there is a power above us,
And that there is all nature cries aloud
Thro' all her works, he must deiight in virtue,
And that which he delights in must be happy.

Noris ease more contrary to wit than to sublimity the celebrated stanza of Cowley, on a

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