ness of thinking nothing a diminution to me, but | hands of obliging their particular friends, or those what argues a depravity of my will. It has as much surprised me as any thing in nature, to have it frequently said, that he was not a good player: but that inust be owing to a partiality for former actors in the parts in which he succeeded them, and judging by comparison of what was liked before, rather than by the nature of the thing. When a man of his wit and smartness could put on an utter absence of common sense in his face, as he did in the character of Bulfinch in the Northern Lass, and an air of insipid cunning and vivacity in the character of Pounce in the Tender Husband, it is folly to dispute his capacity and success as he was an actor. Poor Eastcourt! let the vain and proud be at rest, thou wilt no more disturb their admiration of their dear selves; and thou art no longer to drudge in raising the mirth of stupids, who know nothing of thy merit, for thy maintenance. It is natural for the generality of mankind to run into reflections upon our mortality, when disturbers of the world are laid at rest, but to take no notice when they who can please and divert are pulled from us. But for my part, I cannot but think the loss of such talents as the man of whom I am speaking was master of, a more melancholy instance of mortality than the dissolution of persons of never so high characters in the world, whose pretensions were that they were noisy and mischievous. whom they look upon as men of worth, than to procure wealth and honour for themselves. To an honest mind the best perquisites of a place are the advantages it gives a man of doing good. Those who are under the great officers of state, and are the instruments by which they act, have more frequent opportunities for the exercise of compassion and benevolence, than their superiors themselves. These men know every little case that is to come before the great man, and if they are possessed with honest minds, will consider poverty as a recommendation in the person who applies himself to them, and make the justice of his cause the most powerful solicitor in his behalf. A man of this temper, when he is in a post of business, becomes a blessing to the public. He patronises the orphan and the widow, assists the friendless, and guides the ignorant. He does not reject the person's pretensions, who does not know how to explain them, or refuse doing a good office for a man because he cannot pay the fee of it. In short, though he regulates himself in all his proceedings by justice and equity, he finds a thousand occasions for all the good-natured offices of generosity and compassion. A man is unfit for such a place of trust, who is of a sour untractable nature, or has any other passion that makes him uneasy to those who approach him. Roughness of temper is apt to discountenance the timorous or modest. The proud man dis|·courages those from approaching him, who are of a mean condition, and who most want his assistance. The impatient man will not give himself time to be informed of the matter that lies before him. An officer, with one or more of these unbe proper person to keep off impertinence and solicitation from his superior; and this is a kind of merit, that can never atone for the injustice which may very often arise from it. But I must grow more succinct, and, as a Spectator, give an account of this extraordinary man, who, in his way, never had an equal in any age before him, or in that wherein he lived. I speak of him as a companion, and a man qualified for conversation. His fortune exposed him to an ob-coming qualities, is sometimes looked upon as a sequiousness towards the worst sort of company, but his excellent qualities rendered him capable of making the best figure in the most refined. I have been present with him among men of the most delicate taste a whole night, and have known him (for he saw it was desired) keep the discourse to himself the most part of it, and maintain his good-humour with a countenance in a language so delightful, without offence to any person or thing upon earth, still preserving the distance his circumstances obliged him to; I say, I have seen him do all this in such a charming manner, that I am sure none of those I hint at will read this, without giving him some sorrow for their abundant mirth, and one gush of tears for so many bursts of laughter. I wish it were any honour to the pleasant creature's memory, that my eyes are too much suffused to let me go on STEELE T. N 469. THURSDAY, AUGUST 28, 1712. Detrahere aliquid 'alteri, et hominem hominis incommodo suum augere commodum, magis est contra naturam quam mors, quam paupertas, quam dolor, quam cætera quæ possunt aut corpori accidere, aut rebus cxternis. TULL. To detract from other men, and turn their disadvantages to our own profit, is more contrary to nature, than death, poverty, or grief, or any thing which can affect our bodies, or external circumstances. AM persuaded there are few men of generous inciples, who would seek after great places, are it not rather to have an opportunity in their There are two other vicious qualities, which reader a man very unfit for such a place of trust. The first of these is a dilatory temper, which commits innumerable cruelties without design. The maxim which several have laid down for a man's conduct in ordinary life, should be inviolable with a man in office, never to think of doing that tomorrow which may be done to-day. A man who defers doing what ought to be done, is guilty of injustice so long as he defers it. The dispatch of a good office is very often as beneficial to the solicitor as the good oflice itself. In short, if a man compared the inconveniences which another suffers by his delays, with the triting motives and advantages which he himself may reap by such a delay, he would rever be guilty of a fault which very often does an irreparable prejudice to the person who depends upon him, and which might be remedied with little trouble to himself. But in the last place there is no man so improper to be employed in business, as he who is in any degree capable of corruption; and such an one is the man who, upon any pretence whatsoever, receives more than what is the stated and unques tioned fee of his office. Gratifications, tokens of thankfulness, dispatch money, and the like specious terms, are the pretences under which corruption very frequently shelters itself. An honest man will however look on all these methods as unjustifiable, and will enjoy himself better in a moderate fortune that is gained with honour and reputation, than in an overgrown estate that is cankered with the acquisitions of rapine and exaction. Were all our offices discharged with such an inflexible integrity, we should not see men in all ages, who grow up to exorbitant wealth, with the abilities which are to be met with in an ordinary mechanic. I cannot but think that such a corruption proceeds chiefly from inen's employing the first that offer themselves, or those who have the character of shrewd worldly men, instead of searching out such as have had a liberal education, and have been trained up in the studies of knowledge and virtue. It has been observed, that men of learning who take to business, discharge it generally with greater honesty than men of the world. The chief reason for it I take to be as follows: A man that has spent his youth in reading, has been used to find virtue extolled, and vice stigmatized. A man that has passed his time in the world, has often seen vice triumphant, and virtue discountenanced. Extortion, rapine, and injustice, which are branded with infamy in books, often give a man a figure in the world; while several qualities which are celebrated in authors, as generosity, ingenuity, and good-nature, impoverish and ruin him. This cannot but have a proportionable effect on men whose tempers and principles are equally good and vicious. There would be at least this advantage in employing men of learning and parts, in business; that their prosperity would sit more gracefully on them, and that we should not see many worthless persons shot up into the greatest figures of life. I HAVE been very often disappointed of late years when, upon examining the new edition of a classic author, I have found above half the volume taken up with various readings. When I have expected to meet with a learned note upon a doubtful pas sage in a Latin poet, I have only been informed, that such or such ancient manuscripts for an et write an ac, or of some other notable discovery of the like importance. Indeed, when a different reading gives us a different sense, or a new elegance in an author, the editor does very well in taking notice of it; but when he only entertains us with the several ways of spelling the same word, and gathers together the various blunders and mistakes of twenty or thirty different transcribers, they only take up the time of the learned readers, and puzzle the minds of the ignorant. I have often fancied with myself how enraged an old Latin author would be, should he see the several absurdities in sense and grammar, which are imputed to him by some or other of these various readings. In one he speaks nonsense; in another makes use of a word that was never heard of: and indeed there is scarce a solecism in writing which the best author is not guilty of, if we may be at liberty to read him in the words of some manuscript, which the laborious editor has thought fit to examine in the prosecution of his work. I question not but the ladies and pretty fellows will be very curious to understand what it is that I have been hitherto talking of. I shall therefore give them a notion of this practice, by endeavour. ing to write after the manner of several persons who make an eminent figure in the republic of letters. To this end we will suppose that the following song is an old ode, which I present to the public in a new edition, with the several varion readings which I find of it in former editions, and in ancient manuscripts. Those who cannot reish the various readings, will perhaps find their ac count in the song, which never before appeared in print. My love was fickle once and changing, "Twas first a charming shape enslav'd me, But now a long and lasting anguish "For here the false unconstant lover, After a thousand beauties shown, Does new surprising charms discover, And finds variety in one.' Various Readings. Stanza the first, verse the first. And changing. The and in some manuscripts is written thus, &; but that in the Cotton library writes it in three distinct letters. Verse the second. Nor e'er would.] Aldus reads it ever would; but as this would hurt the metre, we have restored it to the genuine reading, by observing that synæresis which had been neglected by ignorant transcribers. Ibid. In my heart.] Scaliger and others, on my heart. Verse the fourth. I found a dart.] The Vatic manuscript for I reads it, but this inust have bers the hallucination of the transcriber, who probab's mistook the dash of the 1 for a T. Stanza the second, verse the second. The fatel stroke.] Scioppius, Salmasius, and many others, for the read a, but I have stuck to the usual reading. Verse the third. Till by her wit.] Some muascripts have it his wit, others your, others their st But as I find Corinna to be the name of a womas in other authors, I cannot doubt but it should be her. Stanza the third, verse the first. A long end lasting anguish.] The German manuscript reads lasting passion, but the rhyme will not admit it. Verse the second. For Belvidera I endure.] Dá not all the manuscripts reclaim, I should change Belvidera into Pelvidera; Pelvis being used by se veral of the ancient comic writers for a looking glass, by which means the etymology of the word is very visible, and Pelvidera will signify a lady who often looks in her glass; as indeed she had very good reason, if she had all those beacties which our poet here ascribes to her. Verse the third. Hourly I sigh, and hourlyle guish.] Some for the word hourly read daily, sad others nightly; the last has great authorities of tầ side. Verse the fourth. The wonted cure.] The elder Stevens reads wanted cure. Stanza the fourth, verse the second. Aler thousand bessuties.] In several copies we meet with a hundred beauties, by the usual error of the tra scribers, who probably omitted a cypher, and bad not taste enough to know that the word fan and tak ten times a greater compliment to the poet's mis-mour. It is a kind of vital heat in the soul, that tress than an hundred. Indeed cheers and gladdens her, when she does not attend to it. It makes pain easy, and labour pleasant. Verse the fourth. And finds variety in one.] Most of the ancient manuscripts have it in two. Beside these several advantages which rise from so many of them concur in this last reading, that hope, there is another which is none of the least, I am very much in doubt whether it ought not to and that is, its great efficacy in preserving us from take place. There are but two reasons, which in- setting too high a value on present enjoyments. cline me to the reading as I have published it: The saying of Cæsar is very well known. When first, because the rhyme; and, secondly, because he had given away all his estate in gratuities the sense is preserved by it. It might likewise amongst his friends, one of them asked what he proceed from the oscitancy of transcribers, who, had left for himself; to which that great man reto dispatch their work the sooner, use it to write all plied, Hope.' His natural magnanimity hindernumbers in cipher, and seeing the figure 1 followed him from prizing what he was certainly posed by a little dash of the pen, as is customary in sessed of, and turned all his thoughts upon someold manuscripts, they perhaps mistook the dash for thing more valuable than he had in view. I quesa second figure, and by casting up both together, tion not but every reader will draw a moral from composed out of them the figure 2. But this I shall this story, and apply it to himself without my direcleave to the learned, without determining any thing tion. in a matter of so great uncertainty. The old story of Pandora's box (which many of the learned believe was formed among the heathens upon the tradition of the fall of man) shows us how deplorable a state they thought the present life, without hope. To set forth the utmost condition of misery, they tell us, that our forefather, according to the pagan theology, had a great vessel presented him by Pandora. Upon his lifting up the lid of it, says the fable, there flew out all the calamities and distempers incident to men, from which, till that time, they had been altogether with so much bad company, instead of flying off with the rest, stuck so close to the lid of it, that it was shut down upon her. The wise with hope support the pains of life. THE time present seldom affords sufficient employ-exempt. Hope, who had been inclosed in the cup ment to the mind of man. Objects of pain or pleasure, love or admiration, do not lie thick enough together in life to keep the soul in constant action, and supply an immediate exercise to its faculties. In order, therefore, to remedy this defect, that the mind may not want business, but always have materials for thinking, she is endowed with certain powers, that can recal what is passed, and anticipate what is to come. That wonderful faculty, which we call the memory, is perpetually looking back, when we have nothing present to entertain us. It is like those repositories in several animals that are filled with stores of their former food, on which they may ruminate when their present pasture fails. As the memory relieves the mind in her vacant moments, and prevents any chasms of thought by ideas of what is past, we have other faculties that agitate and employ her upon what is to come. These are the passions of hope and fear. I shall make but two reflections upon what I have hitherto said. First, that no kind of life is so happy as that which is full of hope, especially when the hope is well grounded, and when the object of it is of an exalted kind, and in its nature proper to make the person happy who enjoys it. This proposition must be very evident to those who consider how few are the present enjoyments of the most happy man, and how insufficient to give him an entire satisfaction and acquiescence in them. My next observation is this, that a religious life is that which most abounds in a well-grounded hope, and such an one as is fixed on objects that are capable of making us entirely happy. This hope in a religious man is much more sure and certain than the hope of any temporal blessing, as it is strengthened not only by reason, but by faith. It By these two passions we reach forward into fu- has at the same time its eye perpetually fixed on that turity, and bring up to our present thoughts o5-state, which implies in the very notion of it the jects that lie hid in the remotest depths of time. most full and the most complete happiness. We suffer misery, and enjoy happiness, before they I have before shown how the influence of hope are in being; we can set the sun and stars forward, in general sweetens life, and makes our present or lose sight of them by wandering into those re- condition supportable, if not pleasing; but a relifired parts of eternity, when the heavens and earthgious hope has still greater advantages. It does shall be no more. By the way, who can imagine that the existence of a creature is to be circumscribed by time, whose thoughts are not? But I shall, in this paper, confine myself to that particular passion which goes by the name of Hope. 6 Our actual enjoyments are so few and transient, that man would be a very miserable being, were he not endowed with this passion, which gives him a taste of those good things that may possibly come into his possession. We should hope for every thing that is good,' says the old poet Linus, because there is nothing which may not be hoped for, and nothing but what the gods are able to give us.' Hope quickens all the still parts of life, and keeps the mind awake in her most remiss and indolent hours. It gives habitual serenity and good hu not only bear up the mind under her sufferings, but makes her rejoice in them, as they may be the instruments of procuring her the great and ultimate end of all her hope. Religious hope has likewise this advantage above any other kind of hope, that it is able to revive the dying man, and to till his mind not only with secret comfort and refreshment, but sometimes with rapture and transport. He triumphs in his agonies, whilst the soul springs forward with delight to the great object which she has always had in view, and leaves the body with an expectation of being re-united to her in a glorious and joyful re surrection. I shall conclude this essay with those emblematical expressions of a lively hope, which the psalmist made use of in the midst of those dangers and adversities which surrounded him; for the fol- by want and poverty, to draw upon a sick alder- Because he is at MR. BASIL PLENTY, my right hand I shall not be moved. Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth. My flesh also shall rest in hope. For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt thou suffer thine holy one to see corruption. Thou wilt show me the path of life. In thy presence is fulness of joy, at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.' I RECEIVED Some time ago a proposal, which had a preface to it, wherein the author discoursed at large of the innumerable objects of charity in a nation, and admonished the rich, who were afflicted with any distemper of body, particularly to regard the poor in the same species of affliction, and confine their tenderness to them, since it is impossible to assist all who are presented to them. The proposer had been relieved from a malady in his eyes by an operation performed by Sir William Read *, and, being a man of condition, had taken a resolution to maintain three poor blind men during their lives, in gratitude for that great blessing. This misfortune is so very great and unfrequent, that one would think an establishment for all the poor under it might be easily accomplished, with the addition of a very few others to those wealthy who are in the same calamity. However, the thought of the proposer arose from a very good motive; and the parcelling of ourselves out, as called to particular acts of beneficence, would be a pretty cement of society and virtue. It is the ordinary foundation for men's holding a commerce with each other, and becoming familiar, that they agree in the same sort of pleasure; and sure it may also be some reason for amity, that they are under one common distress. If all the rich who are lame in the gout, from a life of ease, pleasure, and luxury, would help those few who have it without a previous life of pleasure, and add a few of such laborious men, who are become lame from unhappy blows, falls, or other accidents of age or sickness: I say, would such gouty persons administer to the necessities of men disabled like themselves; the consciousness of such a behaviour would be the best julep, cordial, and anodyne, in the feverish, faint, and tormenting vicissitudes of that miserable distemper. The same may be said of all other, both bodily and intellectual evils. These classes of charity would certainly bring down blessings upon an age and people; and if men were not petrified with the love of this world against all sense of the commerce which ought to be among them, it would not be an unreasonable bill for a poor man in the agony of pain, aggravated Swift speaks contemptuously of this oculist as a mountebank; but we find him sworn-in as oculist in ordinary to King George in the beginning of 1714. He died at Rocheser, May 24, 1715. You have the gout and stone, with x thousand pounds sterling; I have gout and stone, not worth one farthing I shall pray for you, and desire y would pay the bearer twenty shilling for value received from, The reader's own imagination will suggest to k the reasonableness of such correspondences, an diversify them into a thousand forms; but I . close this, as I began, upon the subject of banness. The following letter seems to be written b a man of learning, who is returned to his sta after a suspense of an ability to do so. The ber fit he reports himself to have received, may we claim the handsomest encomium he can give t operator. 6 MR. SPECTATOR, 'RUMINATING lately on your admirable discoura on the Pleasures of the Imagination*, I began s consider to which of our senses we are obliged the greatest and most important share of the pleasures; and I soon concluded that it was to sight. That is the sovereign of the senses, and mo ther of all the arts and sciences, that have re the rudeness of the uncultivated mind to a peš. ness that distinguishes the fine spirits from the barous goût of the great vulgar and the small. Tr sight is the obliging benefactress, that bestows a us the most transporting sensations that we kar from the various and wonderful products of tu ture. To the sight we owe the amazing discovers, of the height, magnitude, and motion of the pie nets; their several revolutions about their co centre of light, beat, and motion, the sun. I sight travels yet further to the fixed stars, and f nishes the understanding with solid reasons to prev that each of them is a sun, moving on its ** axis, in the centre of its own vortex or turbei a and performing the same offices to its deperi planets, that our glorious sun do to this. Ex: the inquiries of the sight will not be stopped ber but make their progress through the immense et panse to the Milky Way, and there divider blended fires of the galaxy into infinite and èk i ferent worlds, made up of distinct suns, and be peculiar equipages of planets, till, unable to p sue this tract any further, it deputes the go for tion to go on to new discoveries, till it all the bounded space with endless worlds. The sight informs the statuary's chisel power to give breath to lifeless brass and eart and the painter's pencil to swell the flat carly with moving figures actuated by imaginary se Music indeed may plead another origina*, Jubal, by the different falls of bis hamarr se 37 anvil, discovered by the ear the first rude a that pleased the antediluvian fathers; but the a sight has not only reduced those wilder sorth artful order and harmony, but conveys het be mony to the most distant parts of the world with-able entertainment they afford) has presented me out the help of sound. To the sight we owe not only all the discoveries of philosophy, but all the divine imagery of poetry that transports the intelligent reader of Homer, Milton, and Virgil. As the sight has polished the world, so does it supply us with the most grateful and lasting pleasure. Let love, let friendship, paternal affection, filial piety, and conjugal duty, declare the joys the sight bestows on a meeting after absence. But it would be endless to enumerate all the pleasures and advantages of sight; every one that has it, every hour he makes use of it, finds them, feels them, enjoys them. Thus, as our greatest pleasures and knowledge are derived from the sight, so has Providence been more curious in the formation of its seat, the eye, than of the organs of the other senses. That stupendous machine is composed in a wonderful manner of muscles, membranes, and humours. Its motions are admirably directed by the muscles; the perspicuity of the humours transmit the rays of light; the rays are regularly refracted by their figure, the black lining of the scelerotes effectually prevents their being confounded by reflection. It is wonderful indeed to consider how many objects the eye is fitted to take in at once, and successively in an instant, and at the same time, to make a judgment of their position, figure, or colour. It watches against our dangers, guides our steps, and lets in all the visible objects, whose beauty and variety instruct and delight. 'The pleasures and advantages of sight being so great, the loss must be very grievous; of which Milton, from experience, gives the most sensible idea, both in the third book of his Paradise Lost, and in his Samson Agonistes. 'To light, in the former: "Thee I revisit safe, And feel thy sov'reign vital lamp; but thos 'And a little after: "Seasons return, but not to me returns Of nature's works, to me expung'd and raz'd, 'Again, in Samson Agonistes: But chief of all, with many and various benefits of this kind done 'I AM now in the country, and employ most of my time in reading, or thinking upon what I have read. Your paper comes constantly down to me, and it affects me so much, that I find my thoughts run into your way; and I recommend to you a subject upon which you have not yet touched, and that is, the satisfaction some men seem to take in their imperfections: I think one may call it glorying in their insufficiency. A certain great author is of opinion it is the contrary to envy, though perhaps it may proceed from it. Nothing is so common as to hear men of this sort, speaking of themselves, add to their own merit (as they think) by impairing it, in praising themselves for their defects, freely allowing they commit some few frivolous errors, in order to be esteemed persons of uncommon talents and great qualifications. They are generally professing an injudicious neglect of dancing, feucing, and riding, as also an unjust contempt for travelling, and the modern languages as for their part, they say, they never valued or troubled their heads about them. This panegyrical satire on themselves certainly is worthy of your animadversion. I have known one of these gentlemen think himself obliged to forget the day of an appointment, and sometimes even that you 'The enjoyment of sight then being so great a spoke to him; and when you see 'em, they hope blessing, and the loss of it so terrible an evil, how you'll pardon 'em, for they have the worst meexcellent and valuable is the skill of that artist mory in the world. One of 'em started up t'other which can restore the former, and redress the lat-day in some confusion, and said, "Now I think ter? My frequent perusal of the advertisements in the public newspapers (generally the most agree O loss of sight! of thee I most complain: Still as a fool, In pow'r of others, never in my own, on't, I am to meet Mr. Mortmain the attorney, about some business, but whether it is to-day, or |