The Tatlers, whose pliable pipes are as intelligibly as the natives jabber their admirably adapted to the "soft parts of Low-Dutch. However this may be, we conversation," and sweetly "prattling out may consider those whose tongues hardly of fashion," make very pretty music from seem to be under the influence of reason, a beautiful face and a female tongue; but and do not keep up the proper converfrom a rough manly voice and coarse fea- sation of human creatures, as imitating the tures, mere nonsense is as harsh and disso- language of different animals. Thus, for mant as a jig from a hurdy-gurdy. The instance, the affinity between Chatterers Swearers I have spoken of in a former pa- and monkeys, and Praters and parrots, is per; but the Half-swearers, who split, and too obvious not to occur at once: Gruntmince, and fritter their oaths into gad's ers and Growlers may justly be compared bud, ad's fish, and demme; the Gothic to hogs: Suarlers are curs, that continually humbuggers, and those who "nick-name shew their teeth, but never bite: and the God's creatures," and call a man a cab- spitfire Passionate are a sort of wild cats, bage, a crab, a queer cub, an odd fish, that will not bear stroking, but will purr and an unaccountable muskin, should ne- when they are pleased. Complainers are ver come into company without an inter- screech-owls; and Story-tellers, always preter. But I will not tire my reader's repeating the same dull note, are cuckoos. patience by pointing out all the pests of con- Poets that prick up their ears at their own versation: nor dwell particularly on the hideous braying, are no better than asses: Sensibles, who pronounce dogmatically on Critics in general are venemous serpents, the most trivial points, and speak in sen- that delight in hissing; and some of them tences; the Wonderers, who are always who have got by heart a few technical wondering what o'clock it is, or wonder- terms without knowing their meaning, ing whether it will rain or no, or wonder- are no other than magpies. Connoisseur. ing when the moon changes; the Phrase-97. A Citizen's Country House deologists, who explain a thing by all that, 97. A Citizen's Country House deor enter into particulars with this and that and t'other; and lastly, the Silent men, who seem afraid of opening their mouths, lest they should catch cold, and literally observe the precept of the gospel, by letting their conversation be only "yea yea, and nay nay." The rational intercourse kept up by conversation, is one of our principal distinctions from brutes. We should therefore endeavour to turn this peculiar talent to our advantage, and consider the organs of speech as the instruments of understanding: we should be very careful not to use them as the weapons of vice or tools of folly; and do our utmost to unlearn any trivial or ridiculous habits, which tend to lessen the value of such an inestimable prerogative. It is, indeed, imagined by some philosophers, that even birds and beasts (though without the power of articulation) perfectly understand one another by the sounds they utter; and that dogs, cats, &c. have each a particular language to themselves, like different nations. Thus it may be supposed, that the nightingales of Italy have as fine an ear to their own native woodnotes, as any signor or signora for an Italian air; that the boars of Westphalia gruntle as expressively through the nose as the inhabitants in High-German; and that the frogs in the dykes of Holland croak SIR, scribed. I remember to have seen a little French novel, giving an account of a citizen of Paris making an excursion into the country. He imagines himself about to undertake a long voyage to some strange re. gion, where the natives were as different from the inhabitants of his own city as the most distant nations. He accordingly takes boat, and is landed at a village about a league from the capital. When he is set on shore, he is amazed to see the people speak the same language, wear the same dress, and use the same customs with himself. He who had spent all his life within the sight of Pont Neuf, looked upon every one that lived out of Paris as a foreigner; and though the utmost extent of his travels was not three miles, he was as much surprised, as he would have been to meet with a colony of Frenchmen on the Terra Incognita. In your late paper on the amusements of Sunday, you have set forth in what manner our citizens pass that day, which most of them devote to the country; but I wish you had been more particular in your descriptions of those elegant rural mansions, which at once shew the opulence and the taste of our principal merchants, mechanics, and artificers. I went last Sunday, in compliance with a most pressing invitation from a friend, to spend the whole day with him at one of these little seats, which he had fitted out for his retirement once a week from business. It is pleasantly situated about three miles from London, on the side of a public road, from which it is separated by a dry ditch, over which is a little bridge, consisting of two narrow planks, leading to the house. From the lower part of the house there is no prospect; but from the garrets, indeed, you may see two men hanging in chains on Kennington common, with a distant view of St. Paul's cupola enveloped in a cloud of smoke. I set out in the morning with my friend's book-keeper, who was my guide. When I came to the house, I found my friend in a black velvet cap sitting at the door smoking; he welcomed me into the country, and after having made me observe the turnpike on my left, and the Golden Sheaf on my right, he conducted me into his house, where I was received by his lady, who made a thousand apologies for being catched in such a dishabille. The hall, (for so I was taught to call it) had its white walls almost hid by a curious collection of prints and paintings. On one side was a large map of London, a plan and elevation of the Mansionhouse, with several lesser views of the public buildings and halls: on the other was the Death of the Stag, finely coloured by Mr. Overton: close by the parlour door there hung a pair of stag's horns; over which there was laid across a red roquelo, and an amber-headed cane. Over the chimney-piece was my friend's picture, who was drawn bolt upright in a full-bottomed perriwig, a laced cravat with the fringed ends appearing through a button-hole, a snuff-coloured velvet coat with gold buttons, a red velvet waistcoat trimmed with gold, one hand stuck in the bosom of his shirt, and the other holding out a letter with this superscription: "To Mr. —, common council-man of Farringdon-ward without." My eyes were then directed to another figure in a scarlet gown, who I was informed was my friend's wife's great great uncle, and had been sheriff, and knighted in the reign of king James the First. Madam herself filled up a pannel on the opposite side, in the habit of a shepherdess, smelling to a nosegay, and stroking a ram with gilt horns. I was then invited by my friend to see what he was pleased to call his garden, which was nothing more than a yard about thirty feet in length, and contained about a dozen little pots ranged on each side with lilies and coxcombs, supported by some old laths painted green, with bowls of tobacco-pipes on their tops. At the end of this garden he bade me take notice of a little square building surrounded with filleroy, which he told me an alderman of great taste had turned into a temple, by erecting some battlements and spires of painted wood on the front of it: but concluded with a hint, that I might retire to it upon occasion. As the riches of the country are visible in the number of its inhabitants, and the elegance of their dwellings, we may venture to say that the present state of England is very flourishing and prosperous: and if our taste for building increases with our opulence for the next century, we shall be able to boast of finer coun.. try-seats belonging to our shop-keepers, artificers, and other plebeians, than the most pompous descriptions of Italy or Greece have ever recorded. We read, it is true, of country-seats belonging to Pliny, Hortensius, Lucullus, and other Romans. They were patricians of great rank and fortune; there can therefore be no doubt of the excellence of their villas. But who has ever read of a Chinese bridge belonging to an Attic tallowchandler, or a Roman pastry-cook? Or, could any of their shoemakers or tailors boast a villa with his tin cascades, paper statues, and Gothic root-houses? Upon the above principles we may expect, that posterity will perhaps see a cheesemonger's apiarium at Brentford, a poulterer's theriotrophium at Chiswick, and an ornithon in a fishmonger's garden at Putney. Connoisseur. § 98. the Humorous Scene between DEnnis Critic (satirically represented by SWIFT as mad) and the Doctor. Scene, DENNIS's Garrel. DENNIS, DOCTOR, NURSE, LINTOT the his words slowly and formally.] Beware, Doctor, that it fare not with you, as it did with your predecessor, the famous Hippocrates, whom the mistaken citizens of Abdera sent for, in this very 2 S tus. manner, to cure the philosopher DemocriHe returned full of admiration at the wisdom of the person whom he had supposed a lunatic. Behold, Doctor, it was thus that Aristotle himself, and all the great ancients, spent their days and nights wrapt up in criticism, and beset all round with their own writings. As for me, be assured, I have no disease besides a swelling in my legs, of which I say nothing, since your art may farther certify you. Doctor. Pray, Sir, how did you contract this swelling? Dennis. By criticism. Doctor. By criticism! that's a distemper I have never heard nor read of. Dennis. Death, Sir, a distemper! it is no distemper; but a noble art. I have sat fourteen hours a day at it: and are you a doctor and don't know that there is a communication between the brain and the legs? Doctor. What made you sit so many hours, Sir? Dennis. Cato, Sir. Doctor. Sir, I speak of your distemper. What gave you this tumour? Dennis. Cato, Cato, Cato*. Nurse. For God's sake, Doctor, name not this evil spirit; it is the whole cause of his madness. Alas! poor master will have his fits again. [almost crying. Lintot. Fits! with a pox! a man may well have fits and swelled legs, that sits writing fourteen hours in a day. The Remarks, the Remarks, have brought all his complaints upon him. Doctor. The Remarks! what are they? Dennis. Death! have you never read my Remarks? I'll be hang'd if this niggardly bookseller has advertised the book as it should have been. Lintot. Not advertise it, quoth'a! pox! I have laid out pounds after pounds in advertising. There has been as much done for the book as could be done for any book in Christendom. Doctor. We had better not talk of books, Sir, I am afraid they are the fuel that feed his delirium. Mention books no more. -I desire a word in private with this gentleman.-I suppose, Sir, you are his apothecary. der your care? You remember, I suppose, the passage in Celsus, which says, "If "the patient on the third day have an in"terval, suspend the medicines at night." Let fumigations be used to corroborate the brain. I hope you have, upon no account, promoted sternutation by hellebore. Gent. Sir, you mistake the matter quite. Doctor. What! an apothecary tell a physician he mistakes! you pretend to dispute my prescription! Pharmacopola componant. Medicus solus præscribat. Fumigate him, I say, this very evening, while he is relieved by an interval. Dennis. Death, Sir, do you take my friend for an apothecary! a man of genius and learning for an apothecary! Know, Sir, that this gentleman professes, like myself, the two noblest sciences in the universe, criticism and poetry. By the immortals, he himself is author of three whole paragraphs in my Remarks, had a hand in my public Spirit, and assisted me in my description of the furies and infernal regions in my Appius. Lintot. He is an author. You mistake the gentleman, Doctor. He has been an author these twenty years, to his bookseller's knowledge, if to no one's else. Dennis. Is all the town in a combination? shall poetry fall to the ground? must our reputation in foreign countries be quite lost? O destruction! perdition! cursed opera! confounded opera!* as poetry once raised critics, so, when poetry fails, critics are overturned, and the world is no more. Doctor. He raves, he raves. He must be pinioned, he must be straight-waistcoated, that he may do no mischief. Dennis. O I am sick! I am sick to death! Doctor. That is a good symptom, a very good symptom. To be sick to death (says the modern theory) is Symptoma præclarum. When a patient is sensible of his pain he is half-cured. Pray, Sir, of what are you sick? Dennis. Of every thing. Of every thing. I am sick of the sentiments, of the diction, of the protasis, of the epitasis, and the catastrophe.-Alas! for the lost drama! the drama is no more! Nurse. If you want a dram, Sir, I will bring you a couple of penn'orths of gin in a minute. Mr. Lintot has drank the last of the noggin. Gent. Sir, I am his friend. Doctor. I doubt it not. What regimen have you observed since he has been un*He published Remarks on Cato, in the year 1712. He wrote a treatise to prove, that the decay of public spirit proceeds from the Italian opera. Dennis. O scandalous want! O shameful omission! By all the immortals, here is not the shadow of a paripatia! no change of fortune in the tragedy! Nurse. Pray, Sir, don't be uneasy about change. Give me the sixpence, and I'll get you change immediately at the gin shop next door. Doctor. Hold your peace, good wo-, man. His fit increases. We must call for help. Mr. Lintot, a—hold him, pray. [Doctor gets behind Lintot.] Lintot. Plague on the man! I am afraid he is really mad. And if he be, who the devil will buy the Remarks? I wish [scratching his head] he had been besh-t, rather than I had meddled with lis Remarks. 66 66 Doctor. He must use the cold bath, and be cupped on the head. The symptoms seem desperate. Avicen says, "If learning be mixed with a brain that is not of a contexture fit to receive it, the brain "ferments till it be totally exhausted." We must endeavour to eradicate these indigested ideas out of the pericranium, and to restore the patient to a competent knowledge of himself. Dennis. Caitiffs, stand off! unhand me, miscreants! [The Doctor, the Nurse, and Lintot, run out of the room in a hurry, and tumble down the garret stairs all together.] Is the man, whose labours are calculated to bring the town to reason, mad? Is the man, who settles poetry on the basis of antiquity, mad? See Longinus in my right hand, and Aristotle in my left! [Calls after the Doctor, Bookseller, and the Nurse, from the top of the stairs.] I am the only man among the moderns, that supports the venerable ancients. And am I to be assassinated? shall a bookseller, who has lived upon my labours, take away that life to which he owes his support? [Goes into his garret, and shuts the door.]. revelling in sweets, without regard to any thing but his present gratification. At length they found a wide-mouthed phial, that hung beneath the bough of a peachtree, filled with honey ready-tempered, and exposed to their taste in the most alluring manner. The thoughtless epicure, spite of all his friend's remonstrances, plunged headlong into the vessel, resolving to indulge himself in all the pleasures of sensuality. The philosopher on the other hand, sipped a little with caution: but being suspicious of danger, flew off to fruits and flowers: where, by the moderation of his meals, he improved his relish for the true enjoyment of them. In the evening, however, he called upon his friend, to inquire whether he would return to the hive; but found him surfeited in sweets, which he was as unable to leave, as to enjoy. Clogged in his wings, enfeebled in his feet, and his whole frame totally enervated, he was but just able to bid his friend adieu, and to lament with his latest breath, that, though a taste of pleasure might quicken the relish of life, an unrestrained indulgence is inevitable destruction. $100. Pleasant Scene of Anger, and the Disappointment of it. There came into a bookseller's shop a very learned man, with an erect solemn air: who, though a person of great parts otherwise, is slow in understanding any thing which makes against himself. After he had turned over many volumes, said the seller to him,-Sir, you know I have long asked you to send me back the first volume of French Sermons I formerly lent you. Sir, said the chapman, I have often looked for it but cannot find it: it is certainly lost; and I know not to whom I lent it, it is so many years ago. Then, Sir, here is the other volume; I'll send you home that, and please to pay for both. My friend, replied he, can'st thou be so senseless, as not to know, that one volume is as imperfect in my library, as in your shop? Yes, Sir, but it is you have lost the first volume; and, to be short, I will be paid. Sir, answered the chapman, you are a young man; your book is lost; and learn, by this little loss, to bear much greater adversities; which you must expect to meet with. Yes, Sir, I'll bear when I must; but I have not lost now, for I say you have it, and shall pay me. Friend, you grow warm; I tell you, the book is lost; and I foresee, in the course even of a prosperous life, that you will meet afflictions to make you mad, if you cannot bear this trifle. Sir, there is, in this case, no need of bearing, for you have the book. I say, Sir, I have not the book; but your passion will not let you hear enough to be informed that I have it not. Learn resignation betimes to the distresses of this life: nay, do not fret and fume; it it is my duty to tell you that you are of an impatient spirit; and an impatient spirit is never without wo. Was ever any thing like this?-Yes, Sir, there have been many things like this. The loss is but a trifle; but your temper is wanton, and incapable of the least pain; therefore, let me advise you, be patient: the book is lost, but do not you, for that reason, lose Spectator. yourself. § 101. Falstaff's Encomiums on Sack. A good sherris-sack bath a two-fold operation in it-It ascends me into the brain dries me, there all the foolish, dull, and erudy vapours which environ it: makes it apprehensive, quick, inventive; full of nimbly, fiery, and delectable shapes, which delivered over to the voice, the tongue, which is the birth, becomes excellent wit. The second property of your excellent sherris is, the warming of the blood; which before, cold and settled, left the liver white and pale, which is the badge of pusillanimity and cowardice. But the sherris warms it, and makes its course from the inwards to the parts extreme. It illuminateth the face, which, as a beacon, gives warning to all the rest of this little kingdom, man, to arm; and, then, the vital commoners, and inland petty spirits, muster me all to their captain, the heart; who, great, and puffed up with this retinue, doth any deed of courage, and this valour comes of sherris. So that skill in the weapon is nothing without sack, for that sets it a work; and learning a mere hoard of gold kept by a devil, till sack commences it, and sets it in act and use. Hereof comes it that Prince Harry is valiant: for the cold blood he did naturally inherit of his father he hath, like lean, sterile, and bare land, manured, husbanded, and tilled, with drinking good, and good store of fertile sherris. If I had a thousand sons, the first human principle I would teach them, should be-To forswear thin potations, and to addict themselves to sack. Shakspeare. § 102. Hotspur reading a letter. "But, for mine own part, my lord, I "could be well contented to be there, in respect of the love I bear your house.' -He could be contented to be there! -Why is he not then?-In respect of the love he bears our house! He shews in this, he loves his own barn better than he loves our house. Let me see some more. "The purpose you undertake is danger"ous."-Why, that's certain; 'tis dangerous to take a cold, to sleep, to drink; but I tell you my lord fool, out of this nettle danger, we pluck this flower safety. "The purpose you undertake is danger ous; the friends you have named, un"certain; and time itself, unsorted; and "your whole plot too light for the coun"terpoise of so great an opposition."Say you so, say you so? I say unto you again, you are a shallow cowardly hind, and you lie. What a lackbrain is this! Our plot is a good plot as ever was laid: our friends true and constant; a good plot, good friends, and full of expectation; an excellent plot, very good friends. What a frosty-spirited rogue this is! Why, my lord of York commends the plot, and the general course of the action. By this hand, if I were now by this rascal, I could brain him with his lady's fan. Is there not my father, my uncle, and myself; lord Edmund Mortimer, my lord of York, and Owen Glendower? Is there not, besides, the Douglas? Have I not all their letters, to meet me in arms by the ninth of the next month? and are there not some of them set forward already? What a Pagan rascal is this! an infidel!-Ha! you shall see now, in very sincerity of fear and cold heart, will he to the king, and lay open all our proceedings. O! I could divide myself, and go to buffets, for moving such a dish of skimmed milk with so honourable an action.-Hang him! let him tell the king. We are prepared. I will set forward to-night. Ibid. § 103. Falstaff's Soliloquy on Honour. Owe heaven a death! "Tis not due yet; and I would be loth to pay him before his day. What need I be so forward with him that calls not on me ?— Well, |