Page images
PDF
EPUB

out so eagerly, and what he had farther to confess.

"Father,' replied the convict, this is the very man, the very Chaubert of whom I was speaking; he was the best of friends to me, and I repaid his kindness with the blackest treachery; I seduced the woman of his affections from him, I married her, and, because we dreaded his resentment, we conspired in an attempt upon his life by poison.'-He now turned to me, and proceeded as follows:- You may remember, Chaubert, as we were supping together on the very evening of Louisa's elopement, she handed to you a glass of wine to drink to your approaching nuptials; as you were lifting it to your lips, your favourite spaniel leaped upon your arm, and dashed it on the floor; in a sudden transport of passion, which you were addicted to, you struck the creature with violence, and laid it dead at your feet. It was the saving moment of your life-the wine was poisoned, inevitable death was in the draught, and the animal you killed was God's instrument for preserving you; reflect upon the event, subdue your passions, and practise resignation. Father, I have no more to confess! I die repentant. Let the executioner

do his office.'"

CUMBERLAND.

JUPITER AND THE DESTINIES.

AMONG the various sets of correspondents who apply to me for advice, and send up their cases from all parts of Great Britain, there are none who are more importunate with me, and whom I am more inclined to answer, than the complainers. One of them dates his letter to me from the banks of a purling stream, where he used to ruminate in solitude on the divine Clarissa, and where he is now looking about for a convenient leap, which he tells me he is resolved to take, unless I support him under the loss of that charming perjured woman. Poor Lavinia presses as much for consolation on the other side, and is reduced to such an extremity of despair by the inconstancy of Philander, that she tells me she writes her letter with her pen in one hand, and her garter in the other. A gentleman of an ancient family in Norfolk is almost out of his wits upon the account of a greyhound, that, after having been his inseparable companion for ten years, is at last run mad. Another, who I believe is serious, complains to me, in a very moving manner, of a loss of a wife; and another, in terms still more moving, of a purse of money that was taken from him on Bagshot Heath; and which, he tells me, would not have troubled him if he had given it to the poor. In short, there is scarce a calamity in human life that has not produced me a letter.

It is indeed wonderful to consider how men,

are able to raise afflictions to themselves out of every thing. Lands and houses, sheep and oxen, can convey happiness and misery into the hearts of reasonable creatures. Nay, I have known a muff, a scarf, a tippet, become a solid blessing or misfortune. A lapdog has broken the hearts of thousands. Flavia, who had buried five children and two husbands, was never able to get over the loss of her parrot. How often has a divine creature been thrown into a fit by a neglect at a ball or an assembly! Mopsa has kept her chamber ever since the last masquerade, and is in greater danger of her life upon being left out of it, than Clarissa from the violent cold which she caught at it. Nor are these dear creatures the only sufferers by such imaginary calamities. Many an author has been dejected at the censure of one whom he ever looked upon as an idiot; and many a hero cast into a fit of melancholy, because the rabble have not hooted at him as he passed through the streets. Theron places all his happiness in a running horse, Suffenus in a gilded chariot, Fulvius in a blue string, and Florio in a tulip root. It would be endless to enumerate the many fantastical afflictions that disturb mankind; but as a misery is not to be measured from the nature of the evil, but from the temper of the sufferer, I shall present my readers, who are unhappy either in reality or imagination, with an allegory, for which I am indebted to the great father and prince of poets.

As I was sitting after dinner in my elbow chair, I took up Homer, and dipped into that

famous speech of Achilles to Priam *, in which he tells him that Jupiter has by him two great vessels, the one filled with blessings, and the other with misfortunes; out of which he mingles a composition for every man that comes into the world. This passage so exceedingly pleased me, that, as I fell insensibly into my afternoon's slumber, it wrought my imagination into the following dream.*

When Jupiter took into his hands the government of the world, the several parts of nature, with the presiding deities, did homage to him. One presented him with a mountain of winds, another with a magazine of hail, and a third with a pile of thunderbolts. The Stars offered up their influences; Ocean gave in his trident, Earth her fruits, and the Sun his seasons. Among the several deities who came to make their court on this occasion, the Destinies advanced with two great tuns carried before them; one of which they fixed on the right hand of Jupiter, as he sat on his throne, and the other on his left. The first was filled with all the blessings, and the other with all the calamities of human life. Jupiter, in the beginning of his reign, finding the

* Two urns by Jove's high throne have ever stood,
The source of evil one, and one of good;
From thence the cup of mortal man he fills,
Blessings to these, to those distributes ills:
To most he mingles both: the wretch decreed
To taste the bad, unmix'd, is cursed indeed;
Pursued by wrongs, by meagre famine driven,
He wanders, outcast both of earth and heaven.'
Pope's Hom. Il. xiv. 863.

world much more innocent than it is in this iron age, poured very plentifully out of the tun that stood at his right hand; but as mankind degenerated, and became unworthy of his blessings, he set abroach the other vessel, that filled the world with pain and poverty, battles and distempers, jealousy and falsehood, intoxicating pleasures and untimely deaths.

He was at length so very much incensed at the great depravation of human nature, and the repeated provocations which he received from all parts of the earth, that, having resolved to destroy the whole species, except Deucalion and Pyrrha, he commanded the Destinies to gather up the blessings which he had thrown away upon the sons of men, and lay them up until the world should be inhabited by a more virtuous and deserving race of mortals.

The Three Sisters immediately repaired to the earth in search of the several blessings that had been scattered on it; but found the task which was enjoined them to be much more difficult than they imagined. The first places they resorted to, as the most likely to succeed in, were cities, palaces, and courts; but, instead of meeting with what they looked for here, they found nothing but envy, repining, uneasiness, and the like bitter ingredients of the left hand vessel whereas, to their great surprise, they discovered content, cheerfulness, health, innocence, and other the most substantial blessings in life, in cottages, shades, and solitudes.

There was another circumstance no less unexVOL. I.

[ocr errors]
« PreviousContinue »