and perfidiousness. All our merit is to be less guilty one than another under one of these heads. Dissertations for the conduct of life are as gravely composed upon these topics, as if they were as infallible as mathematical truths. It cost me a great deal of pains to. study by what means I should refute such scandalous intimations against my very nature. But the more I reflected upon those abuses, I grew the less concerned to answer them, and finally resolved upon this. They are perhaps in the right who speak this of mere women; and it is the business of ingenious debauch'd men, who regard us only as such, to give us those ideas of ourselves, that we may become their more easy prey. I believed it therefore the safest and surest method of gainsaying such light accounts of our sex to think them a truth, till I had arrived by the perusal of more solid authors, to a constancy of mind and settled opinion of persons and things, which should place me above being pleased or dissatisfied with praise or dispraise, upon account of beauty or deformity, or any other advantages or disadvantages, but what flowed from the habits and dispositions of my soul. I resolve therefore to confine my little studies, which are to lead to the conduct of my life, to the writings of the most eminent of our divines, and from thence, as I have heard young students do in the study of a science, make for my own private use a common place, that may direct me in all the relations of life, that do now, or possibly may, concern have others do to us, if we were in their case and circumstances and they in ours. case, You that are parents, and have to deal with the world, ought to be just and equal in all your dealings; in the first place, for the sake of your own souls, and next for the sake of your children. Not only that you may entail no curse upon the estate you leave them, but likewise that you may teach them no injustice by the example you set before them, which in this particular they will be as apt to imitate as in any one thing, because of the present worldly advantages which it seems to bring, and because justice is in truth a manly virtue, and least understood by children. Wherefore, injustice is a vice which they will soonest practise, and with the least reluctancy, because they have least knowledge of it in many particular cases, and because also they have so little sense of the great virtue of honesty. They should not be allowed to cheat, no, not in play and sport, even when they play for little or nothing; for if they practise it in that and be unjust in a little, they will be much more tempted to be so when they can gain a great deal by it. Xenophon, in his Institution of Cyrus, which he designed for the idea of a well-educated prince, tells us this little but very instructive story concerning young Cyrus; that his governor, the better to make him understand the nature of justice, put this case to him:-" You see there," said he to Cyrus, " two boys playing, of different stature; the lesser of them has a very long coat, and the taller a very short one. Now, if you were a judge, how would you dispose of these two garments ?" Cyrus immediately, and with very good reason, as he thought, passes this sudden sentence: "The taller boy should have the longer garment, and he that was of the lower stature the shorter," because this certainly was fittest for them both. Upon which his governor rebukes him to this purpose, telling him that if he were to make two coats for them he said well; but he did not put this case to him as a tailor, but as a judge, and as such he had given a very wrong sentence, for a judge ought not to consider what is most fit, but what is just; not who could make best use of a thing, but who has the most right to it. By these familiar ways may the principles of virtue be instilled into children, and there is nothing wherein they may be more easily misled than in justice, in matter of right and wrong. They should therefore be taught the general rules of both, because if we would teach them to do justice, and to avoid doing injustice, we must teach them to know what is justice and what injustice; for many are unjust merely out of ignorance, and for want of knowing better, and cannot help it. As simplicity is the distinguishing characteristick of pastoral, Virgil has been thought guilty of too courtly a stile His language is perfectly pure, and he often forgets he is among peasants. I have frequently wondered that since he was so conversant in the writings of Ennius, he had not imitated the rusticity of the Doric, as well, by the help of the old obsolete Roman language, as Philips hath by the antiquated English: For example, might he not have said Quoi instead of Cui; Quoijum for Cujum; volt for vult, &c., as well as our modern hath Welladay for Alas, Whilome for of old, make mock for deride, and witless younglings for simple lambs, &c., by which means he had attained as much of the air of Theocritus, as Philips hath of Spenser. Mr. Pope hath fallen into the same error with Virgil. His clowns do not converse in all the simplicity proper to the country: His names are borrowed fron Theocritus and Virgil, which are improper to the scene of his pastorals. He introduces Daphnis, Alexis and Thyrsis on British plains, as Virgil had done before him on the Mantuan: whereas Philips, who hath the strictest regard to propriety, makes choice of names peculiar to the country, and more agreeable to a reader of delicacy; such as Hobbinol, Lobbin, Cuddy, and Colin Clout. So easy as pastoral writing may seem (in the simplicity we have described it), yet it requires great reading, both of the ancients and moderns, to be a master of it. Philips hath given us manifest proofs of his knowledge of books; it must be confessed his competitor hath imitated some single thoughts of the ancients well enough, if we consider he had not the happiness of an university education; but he hath dispersed them here and there, without that order and method which Mr. Philips observes, whose whole third pastoral is an instance how well he hath studied the fifth of Virgil, and how judiciously reduced Virgil's thoughts to the standard of pastoral; as his contention of Colin Clout and the Nightingale, shows with what exactness he hath imitated Strada. When I remarked it as a principal fault to introduce fruits and flowers of a foreign growth in descriptions where the scene lies in our country, I did not design that observation should extend also to animals, or the sensitive life; for Philips hath with great judgment described wolves in England in his first pastoral. Nor would I have a poet slavishly confine himself (as Mr. Pope hath done) to one particular season of the year, one certain time of the day, and one unbroken scene in each eclogue. 'Tis plain Spenser neglected this pedantry, who in his pastoral of November mentions the mournful song of the nightingale. Sad Philomel her song in tears doth steep. And Mr. Philips, by a poetical creation, hath raised up finer beds of flowers than the most industrious gardener; his roses, lilies, and daffodils blow in the same season. But the better to discover the merits of our two contemporary pastoral writers, I shall endeavour to draw a parallel of them, by setting several of their particular thoughts in the same light, whereby it will be obvious how much Philips hath the advantage. With what simplicity he introduces two shepherds singing alternately: Hobb. Come, Rosalind, O come, for without thee Lanq. Come, Rosalind, O come; here shady bowers, Our other pastoral writer, in expressing the same thought, deviates into downright poetry. Streph. In spring the fields, in autumn hills I love, In the first of these authors, two shepherds thus innocently describe the behaviour of their mistresses. Hobb. As Marian bath'd, by chance I passed by; The other modern (who it must be confessed hath a knack of versifying) hath it as follows. Streph. Me gentle Delia beckons from the plain, Daph. The sprightly Sylvia trips along the green; How much at variance are her feet and eyes! There is nothing the writers of this kind of poetry are fonder of, than descriptions of pastoral presents. Philips says thus of a sheephook. Of season'd elm; where studs of brass appear, The other of a bowl embossed with figures, -where wanton ivy twines, And swelling clusters bend the curling vines; The simplicity of the swain in this place, who forgets the name of the Zodiack, is no ill imitation of Virgil; but how much more plainly and unaffectedly would Philips have dressed his thought in his Doric ? And what that height, which girds the Welkin sheen, If the reader would indulge his curiosity any farther in the comparison of particulars, he may read the first pastoral of Philips with the second of his contemporary, and the fourth and sixth of the former, with the fourth and first of the latter; where several parallel places will occur to every one. Having now shown some parts, in which these two writers may be compared, it is a justice I owe to Mr. Philips, to discover those in which no man can compare with him. First, that beautiful rusticity, of which I shall only produce two instances, out of a hundred not yet quoted. O woful day! O day of woe, quoth he, That simplicity of diction, the melancholy flowing of the numbers, the solemnity of the sound, and the easy turn of the words, in this Dirge (to make use of our author's expression) are extremely elegant. In another of his pastorals a shepherd utters a Dirge not much inferior to the former, in the following lines, Ah me the while! ah me, the luckless day! Ah luckless lad, the rather might I say; Which on the flow'ry plains I once did keep. How he still charms the ear with these artful repetitions of the epithets; and how significant is the last verse! I defy the most common reader to repeat them without feeling some motions of compassion. In the next place I shall rank his Proverbs, in which I formerly observed he excels: For example, A rolling stone is ever bare of moss; And, to their cost, green years old proverbs cross. -Nor fear, from upright sentence, wrong. Lastly his elegant dialect, which alone might prove him the eldest born of Spenser, and our only true Arcadian, I should think it proper for the several writers of pastoral, to confine themselves to their several counties: Spenser seems to have been of this opinion; for he hath laid the scene of one of his pastorals in Wales, where, with all the simplicity natural to that part of our island, one shepherd bids the other Goodmorrow in an unusual and elegant manner. Diggon Davy, I bid hur God-day: Or Diggon hur is, or I mis-say. Diggon answers, Hur was hur while it was day-light; But now hur is a most wretched wight, &c. But the most beautiful example of this kind that I ever met with, is a very valuable piece which I chanced to find among some old manuscripts, entitled, “A Pastoral Ballad; which I think, for its nature and simplicity, may (notwithstanding the modesty of the title) be allowed a perfect pastoral: It is composed in the Somersetshire dialect, and the names such as are proper to the country people. It may be observed, as a farther beauty of this pastoral, the words Nymph, Dryad, Naiad, Fawn, Cupid, or Satyr, are not once mentioned through the whole. I shall make no apology for inserting some few lines of this excellent piece. Cicily breaks thus into the subject, as she is going a milking; Cicily. Rager go vetch tha kee, or else tha zun Roger. Thou shouldst not ax ma tweece, but I've a be It is to be observed, that this whole dialogue is formed upon the passion of jealousy; and his mentioning the parson's kine naturally revives the jealousy of the shepherdess Cicily, which she expresses as follows: Cicily. Ah Rager, Rager, chez was zore avraid Is this the love that once to me you zed In which answer of his are express'd at once that "Spirit of Religion," and that "Innocence of the Golden Age," so necessary to be observed by all writers of pastoral. At the conclusion of this piece, the author reconciles the lovers, and ends the eclogue the most simply in the world. So Rager parted vor to vetch tha kee, And vor her bucket in went Cicily. 1 That is the kine or cows. I am loth to shew my fondness for antiquity so far as to prefer this ancient British author to our present English writers of pastoral; but I cannot avoid making this obvious remark, that both Spenser and Philips have hit into the same road with this old West Country Bard of ours. After all that hath been said, I hope none can think it any injustice to Mr. Pope, that I forebore to mention him as a pastoral writer; since upon the whole he is of the same class with Moschus and Bion, whom we have excluded that rank; and of whose eclogues, as well as some of Virgil's, it may be said, that according to the description we have given of this sort of Poetry, they are by no means Pastorals, but something better." Steele's Guardian appeared for the last time on the 1st of October, 1713, when danger of a reaction towards absolutism, which was by no means imaginary, pressed so much upon Steele's mind that he gave himself entirely to the momentous questions of the day. On the 6th of October he began The Englishman, which lasted until the 15th of February, 1714. In that month he entered Parliament as member for Stockbridge, in Dorset, and published a pamphlet called "The Crisis," which endeavoured to defend the settlement of the Crown by the Revolution. He did this, not by attack upon those who would be glad to see the Stuarts back, but by a very clear and temperate setting forth of what was gained by the Revolution, with recital at large of the Acts of Settlement of the respective Crowns of England and Scotland, and of the Act of the 12th and 13th years of William III. "for the further Limitation of the Crown, and better securing the Rights and Liberties of the Subjects," of other Acts bearing on the settlement of the English Crown, and of the articles of the Act for a union of the two kingdoms of England and Scotland, which received Royal Assent in the fifth year of the reign of Anne. This pamphlet was suggested by a lawyer, who supplied its materials. It was submitted before publication to Addison and to Whig statesmen for revision, pains being taken to make it simply a full and exact statement of facts to the people who might be misled through ignorance. But party-spirit then was passionate. There was a Tory majority in the House of Commons, and for the writing of "The Crisis" it expelled Steele from the House on the 18th of March, 1714, by a majority of 245 to 152. It is difficult to say how far reaction might have gone if there had been no men bold as Steele to challenge it, or to what issue dealings with the Pretender might ultimately have been brought had there been time for those who sought it to work on towards the re-establishment of Stuart rule. But the Queen died somewhat suddenly on the 1st of August, 1714. His interest in a struggle on which so much of the future of England seemed to depend did not prevent Steele from issuing in this year a "Ladies' Library," designed to aid in deepening the characters of women and lifting them out of the frivolity that came of their misdirected or neglected education. In Tatler, Spectator, and Guardian, he had sought, and Addison had joined in his endeavour, to discredit fashionable affectations among men that had come down out of the days of Charles II., and were inconsistent with our English reverence for home. The steady genial labour in aid of the establishment of woman as man's equal companion in life, the playful kindliness of satire that discouraged vanities and follies, and the noble believed from their general and undistinguished aspersions that many of these men had any such relations as mothers, wives or sisters; one of them makes a lover say in a tragedy, Thou art woman, a true copy of the first, And you are, sure, the stars that with him fell. Another says, FRONTISPIECE TO THE FIRST VOLUME OF STEFLE'S "LADIES' LIBRARY (1714. warmth of his appreciation of the dignity and beauty of true womanhood and of its guiding strength in a true home, went side by side in Steele with a fearless patriotism. This is his INTRODUCTION TO THE LADIES' LIBRARY. Being by nature more inclined to such enquiries as by general custom my sex is debarr'd from. I could not resist a strong propensity to reading: and having flattered myself that what I read dwelt with improvement upon my mind. I could not but conclude that a due regard being had to different circumstances of life, it is a great injustice to shut boks of knowlod from the eyes of women. Musing one dar in this tract of thought, I turned over some bocks of F and Fish, written by the most polite writers of the age, and began to consider what a vont they are of our composure, diffrent from that of the other set. But indeed, when I dipped into these writings were it possible to conceive otherwise, I cenld not have 1 Ah traitress! Ah ingrate; Ah faithless mind! Adorn'd without, unfinish'd left within : Hence by no judgment you your love direct; Talk much, ne'er think, and still the wrong affect. So much self-love in your composure's mix'd, That love to others still remains unfix'd; Greatness, and noise, and shew are your delight. Yet wise men love you in their own despight: And, finding in their native wit no ease, Are fore'd to put your folly on to please. DRYDEN'S "Aurengzebe." I shall conclude poetical testimonies to our disadvantage with one quotation more, Intolerable vanity! Your sex Was never in the right: you're always false. OTWAY'S "Orphan." It may be said for these writings, that there is something perhaps in the character of those that speak, which wo circumstantiate the thing so as not to make it a reproa upon women as such. But to this it may be easily and justly answer'd, that if the author had right sentiments of woman in general, he might more emphatically aggrav an ill character, by comparison of an ill to an innocent an! virtuous one, than by general calumnies without exception. But I leave authors, who are so mean as to desire to please by falling in with corrupt imaginations, rather th affect a just tho' less extensive esteem by labouring rectifie our affections by reason; of which number are th greater part of those who have succeeded in poetry, either a verse or prose on the stage. When I apply mys 'f to my French reading, I f. women are still worse in proportion to the greater warmth of the climate; and according to the descriptions of us 1 the wits of that nation, tho' they write in cool thought, and in prose, by way of plain opinion, we are made up of affe tion, coquettry, falsehood, disguise, treachery, wantonness and perfidiousness. All our merit is to be less guilty one than another under one of these heads. Dissertations for the conduct of life are as gravely composed upon these topics, as if they were as infallible as mathematical truths. It cost me a great deal of pains to study by what means I should refute such scandalous intimations against my very nature. But the more I reflected upon those abuses, I grew the less concerned to answer them, and finally resolved upon this. They are perhaps in the right who speak this of mere women; and it is the business of ingenious debauch'd men, who regard us only as such, to give us those ideas of ourselves, that we may become their more easy prey. I believed it therefore the safest and surest method of gainsaying such light accounts of our sex to think them a truth, till I had arrived by the perusal of more solid authors, to a constancy of mind and settled opinion of persons and things, which should place me above being pleased or dissatisfied with praise or dispraise, upon account of beauty or deformity, or any other advantages or disadvantages, but what flowed from the habits and dispositions of my soul. I resolve therefore to confine my little studies, which are to lead to the conduct of my life, to the writings of the most eminent of our divines, and from thence, as I have heard young students do in the study of a science, make for my own private use a common place, that may direct me in all the relations of life, that do now, or possibly may, concern have others do to us, if we were in their case and circumstances and they in ours. You that are parents, and have to deal with the world, ought to be just and equal in all your dealings; in the first place, for the sake of your own souls, and next for the sake of your children. Not only that you may entail no curse upon the estate you leave them, but likewise that you may teach them no injustice by the example you set before them, which in this particular they will be as apt to imitate as in any one thing, because of the present worldly advantages which it seems to bring, and because justice is in truth a manly virtue, and least understood by children. Wherefore, injustice is a vice which they will soonest practise, and with the least reluctancy, because they have least knowledge of it in many particular cases, and because also they have so little sense of the great virtue of honesty. They should not be allowed to cheat, no, not in play and sport, even when they play for little or nothing; for if they practise it in that case, and be unjust in a little, they will be much more tempted to be so when they can gain a great deal by it. Xenophon, in his Institution of Cyrus, which he designed for the idea of a well-educated prince, tells us this little but very instructive story concerning young Cyrus; that his governor, the better to make him understand the nature of justice, put this case to him :-" You see there," said he to Cyrus, " two boys playing, of different stature; the lesser of them has a very long coat, and the taller a very short one. Now, if you were a judge, how would you dispose of these two garments ?" Cyrus immediately, and with very good reason, as he thought, passes this sudden sentence: "The taller boy should have the longer garment, and he that was of the lower stature the shorter," because this certainly was fittest for them both. Upon which his governor rebukes him to this purpose, telling him that if he were to make two coats for them he said well; but he did not put this case to him as a tailor, but as a judge, and as such he had given a very wrong sentence, for a judge ought not to consider what is most fit, but what is just; not who could make best use of a thing, but who has the most right to it. By these familiar ways may the principles of virtue be instilled into children, and there is nothing wherein they may be more easily misled than in justice, in matter of right and wrong. They should therefore be taught the general rules of both, because if we would teach them to do justice, and to avoid doing injustice, we must teach them to know what is justice and what injustice; for many are unjust merely out of ignorance, and for want of knowing better, and cannot help it. |