Chapter 15

—Enjoy thy plainnessIt nothing ill becomes thee.—

Since the above was written the old man has been gathered to his fathers.Requiescat in pace!

The Doctor would have approved of Jacob Abbott's extension of his own plan, and adaptation of it to a moral and religious purpose. Jacob Abbott, without any view to the physical importance of such documents, advises that domestic journals should be kept, “Let three or four of the older brothers and sisters of a family agree to write a history of the family, any father would procure a book for this purpose, and if the writers are young, the articles intended for insertion in it might be written first on separate paper, and then corrected and transcribed. The subjects suitable to be recorded in such a book will suggest themselves to every one; a description of the place of residence at the time of commencing the book, with similar descriptions of other places from time to time, in case of removals; the journies or absences of the head of the family or its members; the sad scenes of sickness or death which may be witnessed, and the joyous ones of weddings, or festivities, or holydays; the manner in which the members are from time to time employed; and pictures of the scenes which the fire-side group exhibits in the long winter evening, or the conversation which is heard, and the plans formed at the supper table or in the morning walk.

“If a family, where it is first established, should commence with such a record of their own efforts and plans, and the various dealings of Providence towards them, the father and the mother carrying it on jointly until the children are old enough to take the pen, they would find the work a source of great improvement and pleasure. It would tend to keep distinctly in view the great objects for which they ought to live; and repeatedly recognizing, as they doubtless would do, the hand of God, they would feel more sensibly and more constantly their dependence upon him.”

THE DOCTOR'S UTOPIA DENOMINATED COLUMBIA.—HIS SCHEME ENTERED UPON—BUT ‘LEFT HALF TOLD’ LIKE ‘THE STORY OF CAMBUSCAN BOLD.’

I will to satisfy and please myself, make an Utopia of mine own, a new Atlantis, a poetical commonwealth of mine own, in which I will freely domineer, build cities, make laws, statutes, as I list myself. And why may I not?

BURTON.

The Doctor's plan would have provided materials for a moral and physiological Cadastre, or Domesday Book. This indeed is the place for stating what the reader, knowing as much as he knows of our Philosopher, will not be surprised to hear, that Dr. Dove had conceived an Utopia of his own. He fixed it an island, thinking the sea to be the best of all neighbours, and he called it Columbia, not as pretending that it had been discovered by his “famous namesake,” but for a reason which the sagacious may divine.

The scheme of his government had undergone many changes, although from the beginning it was established upon the eternal and immutable principles of truth and justice. Every alteration was intended to be final; yet it so happened that, notwithstanding the proposed perpetuity of the structure, and the immutability of the materials, he frequently found cause to exercise the imperscriptible and inalienable right of altering and improving his own work. He justified this, as being himself sole legislator, and moreover the only person in existence whose acceptance of the new constitution was necessary for its full establishment; and no just objection, he said, could be advanced against any of these changes, if they were demonstrably for the better, not merely innovations, but improvements also; for no possible revolution however great, or however suddenly effected, could occasion the slightest evil to his Commonwealth. Governmentsin nubibusbeing mended as easily as they are made, for which, as for many other reasons, they are so much better than any that are now actually existing, have existed, or ever will exist.

At first he denominated his Commonwealth an Iatrarchy, and made the Archiatros, or Chief Physician, head of the state. But upon after consideration he became convinced that the cares of general government, after all the divisions and subdivisions which could be made, were quite enough for any one head, however capacious and however strong, and however ably assisted. Columbia therefore was made an absolute monarchy, hereditary in the male line, according to the Salic law.

How did he hold sweet dalliance with his crown,And wanton with dominion, how lay down,Without the sanction of a precedent,Rules of most large and absolute extent,Rules which from sense of public virtue spring,And all at once commence a Patriot King!1

O Simon Bolivar, once called the Liberator, if thou couldst have followed the example of this less practical but more philosophical statesman, and made and maintained thyself as absolute monarch of thy Columbia, well had it been for thy Columbians and for thee! better still for thyself, it may be feared, if thou hadst never been born.

1CHURCHILL.

There was an order of hereditary nobles in the Doctor's Columbia; men were raised to that rank as a just reward for any signal service which they had rendered to the state; but on the other hand an individual might be degraded for any such course of conduct as evinced depravity in himself, or was considered as bringing disgrace upon his order. The chiefs of the Hierarchy, the Iatrarchy, the Nomarchy and the Hoplarchy (under which title both sciences, naval and military, were comprised) were like our Bishops, Peers of the realm by virtue of their station, and for life only.

I do not remember what was the scheme of representation upon which his House of Commons was elected, farther than it commenced with universal suffrage and ascended through several stages, the lowest assembly chusing electors for the next above it, so that the choice ultimately rested with those who from their education and station of life might be presumed to exercise it with due discretion. Such schemes are easily drawn up; making and mending constitutions, to the entire satisfaction of the person so employed, being in truth among the easiest things in the world. But like most Utopianizers the legislator of this Columbia had placed his Absolute King and his free People under such strict laws, and given such functions to the local authorities, and established such complete and precise order in every tything, that the duties of the legislative body were easy indeed; this its very name imported; for he called it the Conservative Assembly.

Nor is Crown-wisdom any quintessenceOf abstract truth, or art of Government,More than sweet sympathy, or counterpeaseOf humours, temper'd happily to please.2

2LORDBROOKE.

The legislator of Columbia considered good policy as a very simple thing. He said to his King, his Three Estates and his collective nation, with the inspired lawgiver “and now Israel what doth the Lord thy God require of thee, but to fear the Lord thy God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul: to keep the commandments of the Lord and his statutes, which I command thee, this day, for thy good?” And he added with St. Paul, “now the end of the commandment is charity, out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned.”

Take care of the pennies, says the frugal old Proverb, and the pounds will take care of themselves. “Les petites choses,” says M. de Custine,sont tout ce qu'onsentde l'existence; les grandes sesavent,ce qui est très-différent.Take care of little things, was the Doctor's maxim as a legislator, and great ones will then proceed regularly and well. He was not ignorant that legislators as well as individuals might be penny-wise and pound foolish; proofs enough he had seen in the conduct of the English Government, and many more and more glaring ones he would have seen if he had lived to behold the progress of œconomical reform and liberal legislation. He also knew that an over-attention to trifles was one sure indication of a little mind; but in legislation as in experimental philosophy, he argued, that circumstances which appeared trifling to the ignorant, were sometimes in reality of essential importance, that those things are not trifles upon which the comfort of domestic life, the peace of a neighbourhood, and the stability of a state depend, and yet all these depend mainly upon things apparently so trifling as common schools and parochial government.

“I have ever observed it,” says Ben Jonson, “to have been the office of a wise patriot, among the greatest affairs of the state, to take care of the commonwealth of learning. For schools they are the seminaries of state; and nothing is worthier the study of a statesman, than that part of the republic which we call the advancement of letters.”

FARTHER REMARKS UPON THE EFFECTS OF SCHISM, AND THE ADVANTAGES WHICH IT AFFORDS TO THE ROMISH CHURCH AND TO INFIDELITY.

—Io non ci ho interressoNessun, nè vi fui mai, ne manco chieggoPer quel ch'io ne vò dir, d'esservi messo.Vò dir, che senza passion eleggo,E non forzato, e senza pigliar parte;Di dirne tutto quel, ch'intendo e veggo.BRONZINOPITTORE.

One cause why infidelity gained ground among the middle and the lower classes was, that owing to the increase of population, the growth of the metropolis, and the defects of our Church Establishment, no provision had been made for their religious instruction. Every one belonged to a parish, but in populous parishes a small part only of the parishioners belonged to the Clergyman's flock; his fold in very many places would not have contained half, and in some, not a tenth of them; they were left therefore as stray sheep, for false shepherds and for the wolf. This was the main cause of the increase of dissenters among us, and their increase occasioned an increase of infidelity. Many of their ministers and more of their students, revolting against the monstrous doctrines of Calvinism, past from one extreme to the other, more gradually indeed than their brethren have done in Germany, in Geneva and in New England, for they halted awhile on Arian ground, before they pitched their tents in the debateable land of Socinianism, where not a few of them afterwards crossed the border. The principle of Nonconformity itself led naturally to this consequence; it scornfully rejected that reasonable and well-defined submission to authority required by the Church of England, which is the true Catholic Church; and thus it encouraged and indeed invited tutors and pupils at their Academies to make their own immature and ill-instructed reason the test of all truths. A good and wise man has well remarked that “what men take for, or at least assert to be, the dictates of their conscience, may often in fact, be only the dictates of their pride.” With equal truth also he has said that he who “decides for himself in rejecting what almost all others receive, has not shewn himself at least in one instance to be a ‘wise man;’—he does not ‘know that he is a fool.’”

This cause was continually operating upon their students and younger ministers during the latter half of the last century. It was suspended first by the missionary spirit, which called forth a high degree of enthusiasm, and gave that feeling its most useful direction, and secondly by the revival of political Puritanism, as soon as the successors of the Parliamentary Divines thought themselves strong enough to act as a party in the state, and declare war against the Establishment. But as in that time, so in a greater degree at present, the floating population who by no fault of their own are extra-parochial as to all purposes of church-worship and religious instruction, are as much endangered by facility of change, as the students used to be by their boasted liberty of choice. Sectarian history might supply numerous examples; one may be related here for the extraordinary way in which it terminated. I know not from what community of Christians the hero of the tale strayed over to the Methodists, but he enjoyed for awhile the dream of perfection, and the privilege of assurance as one of their members. When this excitement had spent itself, he sought for quietness among the Quakers,thee'dhis neighbour, wore drab, and would not have pulled off his hat to the king. After awhile, from considering, with them, that baptism was a beggarly element, he passed to the opposite extreme; it was not enough for him to have been sprinkled in his infancy, he must be dipt over head and ears in the water, and up he rose, rejoicing as he shook his dripping locks, that he was now a Baptist. His zeal then took another direction; he had a strong desire to convert the lost sheep of Israel; and off he set from a remote part of the country to engage in single controversy with a learned Rabbi in one of the Midland counties. Tell it not in Duke's-Place! Publish it not in the Magazine of the Society for converting the Jews!—The Rabbi converted him: and if the victor in the dispute had thought proper to take thespolia opimawhich were fairly lost, the vanquished would have paid the penalty, as he conceived himself in honour and in conscience bound. He returned home glorying in his defeat, a Jew in every thing but parentage and the outward and visible sign. The sons of the synagogue are not ambitious of making converts, and they did not chuse to adopt him by performing the initiating rites. He obtained it however from a Christian surgeon, who after many refusals, was induced at length in humanity to oblige him, lest, as he solemnly declared he would, he should perform it upon himself.

They who begin in enthusiasm, passing in its heat and giddiness from one sect to another, and cooling at every transition, generally settle in formalism where they find some substantial worldly motives for becoming fixed; but where the worldly motives are wanting, it depends upon temperament and accident whether they run headlong into infidelity, or take refuge from it in the Roman Catholic church. The papal clergy in England have always known how to fish in troubled waters; and when the waters are still, there are few among them who have not been well instructed in the art of catching gudgeons. Our clergy have never been in the same sense, fishers of men.

In an epigram written under the portrait of Gibbon, as unquotable at length, as it is unjust in part of the lines which may be quoted, the face is said to be

—the likeness of oneWho through every religion in Europe has runAnd ended at last in believing in none.

It was a base epigram which traduced the historian's political character for no other reason than that he was not a Whig; and it reproached him for that part of his conduct which was truly honourable,—the sincerity with which, when ill-instructed, he became a Roman Catholic, and the propriety with which, after full and patient investigation, he gave up the tenets of the Romish church as untenable. That he proceeded farther, and yielded that which can be maintained against the Gates of Hell, is to be lamented deeply for his own sake, and for those in whom he has sown the seeds of infidelity. But the process from change to change is a common one, and the cases are few wherein there is so much to extenuate the culpability of the individual. It was not in the self-sufficiency of empty ignorance that Gibbon and Bayle went astray; generally the danger is in proportion to the want of knowledge; there are more shipwrecks among the shallows than in the deep sea.

During the great Rebellion, when the wild beasts had trampled down the fences, broken into the vineyard and laid it waste, it is curious to observe the course taken by men who felt for various causes, according to their different characters, the necessity of attaching themselves to some religious communion. Cottington, being in Spain, found it convenient to be reconciled to the Romish church; the dominant religion being to him, as a politician, the best. Weak and plodding men like Father Cressey took the same turn in dull sincerity: Davenant because he could not bear the misery of a state of doubt, and was glad to rest his head upon the pillow of authority; Goring from remorse; Digby (a little later) from ambition, and Lambert, because he was sick of the freaks and follies of the sectaries.

Their “opinions and contests,” says Sir Philip Warwick, “flung all into chaos, and this gave the great advantages to the Romanists, who want not their differences among themselves, but better manage them; for they having retained a great part of primitive truths, and having to plead some antiquity for their many doctrinal errors and their ambitious and lucrative encroachments, and having the policy of flinging coloquintida into our pot, by our dissentions and follies, they have with the motion of the circle of the wheel, brought themselves who were at the Nadir, to be almost at the Zenith of our globe.”

In no other age (except in our own and now from a totally different cause) did the Papists increase their numbers so greatly in this kingdom. And infidelity in all its grades kept pace with popery. “Look but upon many of our Gentry,” says Sanderson, (writing under the Commonwealth,) “what they are already grown to from what they were, within the compass of a few years: and thenex pede Herculem;by that, guess what a few years more may do. Do we not see some, and those not a few, that have strong natural parts, but little sense of religion turned (little better than professed) Atheists. And other some, nor those a few, that have good affections, but weak and unsettled judgements, or (which is still but the same weakness) an overweening opinion of their own understandings, either quite turned, or upon the point of turning Papists? These be sad things, God knoweth, and we all know, not visibly imputable to any thing so much, as to those distractions, confusions and uncertainties that in point of religion have broken in upon us, since the late changes that have happened among us in church affairs.”

The Revolution by which the civil and religious liberties of the British nation were, at great cost, preserved, stopt the growth of popery among us for nearly an hundred years: but infidelity meanwhile was little impeded in its progress by the occasional condemnation of a worthless book; and the excellent works which were written to expose the sophistry, the ignorance, and the misrepresentations of the infidel authors seldom found readers among the persons to whom they might have been most useful. It may be questioned whether any of Jeremy Bentham's misbelieving disciples has ever read Berkeley's Minute Philosopher, or the kindred work of Skelton which a London bookseller published upon Hume'simprimatur.

BREVITY BEING THE SOUL OF WIT THE AUTHOR STUDIES CONCISENESS.

You need not fear a surfeit, here is but little, and that light of digestion.

QUARLES.

Who was Pompey?

“The Dog will have his day,” says Shakespeare. And the Dog must have his Chapter say I. But I will defer writing that Chapter till the Dog-days.

THE AUTHOR VENTURES TO SPEAK A WORD ON CHRISTIAN CHEERFULNESS:—QUOTES BEN SIRACH,—SOLOMON,—BISHOP HACKET,—WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR,—BISHOP REYNOLDS,—MILTON,—&C.

—Αλλὰ σὺ ταῦτα μαθὼν, βιότου ποτί τέρμαψυχῇ τῶν ἀγαθῶν τλῆθι χαριζόμενος.SIMONIDES.

In the thirtieth chapter of the Book called Ecclesiasticus, and at the twenty-fifth verse, are these words

“A cheerful and a good heart will have a care of his meat and diet.”

This is not the text to a sermon, but the beginning of a Chapter. There is no reason why a Chapter as well as a sermon, should not be thus impressively introduced: and if this Chapter should neither be so long as a sermon, nor so dull as those discourses which perchance and (I fear) per-likelihood, it may be thy fortune to hear, O Reader, at thy parish church, or in phrase nonconformist, to sit under at the conventicle, it will be well for thee: for having began to read it, I dare say thou wilt peruse it orally, or ocularly to the end.

A cheerful and a good heart, the Doctor had; aye as cheerful and good a one as ever man was blest with. He held with Bishop Hacket, that melancholy was of all humours the fittest to make a bath for the Devil, and that cheerfulness and innocent pleasure preserve the mind from rust, and the body from putrifying with dulness and distempers; wherefore that Bishop of good and merry memory would sometimes say, he did not like to look upon a sour man at dinner, and if his guests were pleased within, would bid them hang out the white flag in their countenance.

Udite, udite amici, un cor giocondoE Rey del Mondo.

And if the poet says true (which I will be sworn he does) our Doctor might be more truly King of the World, than Kehama after he had performed his sacrifice.

His cheerfulness he would not have exchanged for all the bank-bills which ever bore the signature of Abraham Newland, or his successor Henry Hase; he thanked his Maker for it; and that it had been kept from corruption and made so far good as (with all Christian humility) to be self approved; he thanked his heavenly Father also for the free grace vouchsafed him, and his earthly one for having trained him in the way that he should go.

Cheerful and grateful takers the Gods loveAnd such as wait their pleasures with full hopes;The doubtful and distrustful man Heaven frowns at.1

1BEAUMONT ANDFLETCHER.

Being thus cheerful and good, he had that care of his meat and diet which the son of Sirach commends in the text, and notices as an indication of cheerfulness and goodness.

Understand me, Reader: and understand the author of the Wisdom. It was not such a care of his meat and diet as Apicius has been infamed for in ancient, and Darteneuf in modern times; not such as Lucullus was noted for, or Sir William Curtis, with whom Lucullus had he been an English East Indian Governor, instead of a Roman Prætor, might have been well pleased to dine. Read Landor's conversation between Lucullus and Cæsar, if thou art a scholar Reader, and if any thing can make thee think with respect and admiration of Lucullus, it will be the beautiful strain of feeling and philosophy that thou wilt find there. Wouldst thou see another work of first-rate genius, not less masterly in its kind, go and see Chantrey's bust of Sir William Curtis: and when thou shalt have seen what he hath made of that countenance, thou wilt begin to think it not impossible that a silk purse may be made of a sow's ear. Shame on me that in speaking of those who have gained glory by giving good dinners, I should have omitted the name of Michael Angelo Taylor, he having been made immortal for this his great and singular merit!

Long before the son of Sirach, Solomon had spoken to the same effect: “there is nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in its labour. This also I saw that it was from the hand of God.” “Go thy way said the wisest of monarchs and of men, in his old age, when he took a more serious view of his past life; the honours, pleasures, wealth, wisdom he had so abundantly enjoyed; the errors and miscarriages which he had fallen into; the large experience and many observations he had made, of things natural, moral, domestical: civil, sensual, divine: the curious and critical inquiry he had made after true happiness, and what contribution all things under the sun could afford thereunto:”—“Go thy way,” he said, “eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart!”

“Inasmuch,” says Bishop Reynolds in his commentary upon this passage, “as the dead neither know, nor enjoy any of these worldly blessings; and inasmuch as God gives them to his servants in love, and as comfortable refreshments unto them in the days of their vanity, therefore he exhorteth unto a cheerful fruition of them, while we have time and liberty so to do; that so the many other sorrows and bitterness which they shall meet with in this life, may be mitigated and sweetened unto them. He speaketh not of sensual, epicurean and brutish excess; but of an honest, decent, and cheerful enjoyment of blessings, with thankfulness, and in the fear of God.” “Amerryheart” the Bishop tells us might in this text have been rendered agoodone; as in other parts of scripture asadheart is called anevilheart. “It is pleasing unto God,” says the Bishop, “that when thou hast in the fear of his name, and in obedience to his ordinance, laboured, and by his blessing gotten thee thine appointed portion, then thou shouldst, after an honest, cheerful, decent and liberal manner, without further anxiety or solicitousness, enjoy the same. This is the principal boundary of our outward pleasures and delights, still to keep ourselves within such rules of piety and moderation, as that our ways may be pleasing unto God. And this shows us the true way to find sweetness in the creature, and to feel joy in the fruition thereof; namely, when our persons and our ways are pleasing unto God: for piety doth not exclude, but only moderate earthly delights; and so moderate them, that though they be not so excessive as the luxurious and sensual pleasures of foolish epicures, yet they are far more pure, sweet and satisfactory, as having no guilt, no gall, no curse, nor inward sorrow and terrors attending on them.”

Farther the Bishop observes, that food and raiment being the substantiall of outward blessings, Solomon has directed unto cheerfulness in the one, and unto decency and comeliness in the other. He hath advised us also to let the head lack no ointment, such perfumes being an expression of joy used in feasts; “the meaning is,” says the Bishop, “that we should lead our lives with as much freeness, cheerfulness and sweet delight, in the liberal use of the good blessings of God, as the quality of our degree, the decency of our condition, and the rules of religious wisdom, and the fear of God do allow us; not sordidly or frowardly denying ourselves the benefit of those good things which the bounty of God hath bestowed upon us.”

It is the etiquette of the Chinese Court for the Emperor's physicians to apply the same epithet to his disease as to himself—so they talk of his most high and mighty diarrhœa.

At such a point of etiquette the Doctor would laugh—but he was all earnestness when one like Bishop Hacket said, “Do not disgrace the dignity of a Preacher, when every petty vain occasion doth challenge the honour of a sermon before it. If ever there wereτὸ δέον οὐκ ἐν τῶ δεόντι,—a good work marred for being done unreasonably,”—(in the Doctor's own words,Grace before a sluttish meal, a dirty table cloth)—“now it is when grace before meat will not serve the turn, but every luxurious feast must have the benediction of a preacher's pains before it.Quis te ferat cœnantem ut Lucullus, concionantem ut Cato?Much less is it to be endured, that some body must make a sermon, before Lucullus hath made a supper. It is such a flout upon our calling methinks, as the Chaldeans put upon the Jews in their captivity,—they in the height of their jollity must haveone of the Songs of Sion.”

The Doctor agreed in the main with Lord Chesterfield in his opinion upon political dieteticks.

“The Egyptians who were a wise nation,” says that noble author, “thought so much depended upon diet, that they dieted their kings, and prescribed by law both the quality and quantity of their food. It is much to be lamented, that those bills of fare are not preserved to this time, since they might have been of singular use in all monarchical governments. But it is reasonably to be conjectured, from the wisdom of that people, that they allowed their kings no aliments of a bilious or a choleric nature, and only such as sweetened their juices, cooled their blood, and enlivened their faculties,—if they had any.”

He then shews that what was deemed necessary for an Egyptian King is not less so for a British Parliament. For, “suppose,” he says, “a number of persons, not over-lively at best, should meet of an evening to concert and deliberate upon public measures of the utmost consequence, grunting under the load and repletion of the strongest meats, panting almost in vain for breath, but quite in vain for thought, and reminded only of their existence by the unsavoury returns of an olio; what good could be expected from such a consultation? The best one could hope for would be, that they were only assembled for shew, and not for use; not to propose or advise, but silently to submit to the orders of some one man there, who, feeding like a rational creature, might have the use of his understanding.

“I would therefore recommend it to the consideration of the legislature, whether it may not be necessary to pass an act, to restrain the licentiousness of eating, and assign certain diets to certain ranks and stations, I would humbly suggest the strict vegetable as the properest ministerial diet, being exceedingly tender of those faculties in which the public is so highly interested, and very unwilling they should be clogged, or incumbered.”

“The Earl of Carlisle,” says Osborne, in his Traditional Memorials, “brought in the vanity of ante-suppers, not heard of in our forefathers' time, and for ought I have read, or at least remember, unpractised by the most luxurious tyrants. The manner of which was, to have the board covered at the first entrance of the guests, with dishes, as high as a tall man could well reach, filled with the choicest viands sea or land could afford: and all this once seen, and having feasted the eyes of the invited, was in a manner thrown away, and fresh set on to the same height, having only this advantage of the other, that it was hot.

“I cannot forget one of the attendants of the King, that at a feast made by this monster in excess, eats to his single share a whole pye, reckoned to my Lord at ten pounds, being composed of ambergreece, magisteriall of pearl, musk, &c., yet was so far, (as he told me) from being sweet in the morning, that he almost poisoned his whole family, flying himself, like the Satyr, from his own stink. And after such suppers huge banquets no less profuse, a waiter returning his servant home with a cloak-bag full of dried sweetmeats and confects, valued to his Lordship at more than ten shillings the pound.”

But, gentle and much esteemed Reader, and therefore esteemed because gentle, instead of surfeiting thy body, let me recreate thy mind, with the annexed two Sonnets of Milton, which tell of innocent mirth, and the festive but moderate enjoyment of the rational creature.

TO MR. LAWRENCE.

LAWRENCE, of virtuous father virtuous son,Now that the fields are dank, and ways are mire,Where shall we sometimes meet, and by the fireHelp waste a sullen day, what may be wonFrom the hard season, gaining? time will runOn smoother, till Favonius re-inspireThe frozen earth, and clothe in fresh attireThe lily and rose, that neither sow'd nor spun.What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice,Of Attic taste, with wine, whence we may riseTo hear the lute well touch'd, or artful voiceWarble immortal notes of Tuscan air?He who of these delights can judge, and spareTo interpose them oft, is not unwise.

TO SYRIAC SKINNER.

CYRIAC, whose grandsire on the royal benchOf British Themis, with no mean applausePronounc'd, and in his volumes taught our laws,Which others at their bar so often wrench;To day deep thoughts resolve with me to drenchIn mirth, that after no repenting draws:Let Euclid rest, and Archimedes pause,And what the Swede intends, and what the French.To measure life learn thou betimes, and knowToward solid good what leads the nearest way;For other things mild Heav'n a time ordains,And disapproves that care, though wise in show,That with superfluous burden loads the dayAnd when God sends a cheerful hour refrains.

Thou canst cure the body and the mind,Rare Doctor, with thy two-fold soundest art;Hippocrates hath taught thee the one kind,Apollo and the Muse the other part;And both so well that thou well both dost please,The mind with pleasure, and the corpse with ease.DAVIES OFHEREFORD.

A LOVE FRAGMENT FOR THE LADIES,—INTRODUCED BY A CURIOUS INCIDENT WHICH THE AUTHOR BEGS THEY WILL EXCUSE.

Now will ye list a little space,And I shall send you to solace;You to solace and be blyth,Hearken! ye shall hear belyveA tale that is of verity.ROSWALL ANDLILLIAN.

A story was told me with an assurance that it was literally true, of a Gentleman who being in want of a wife, advertised for one, and at the place and time appointed was met by a Lady. Their stations in life entitled them to be so called, and the Gentleman as well as the Lady was in earnest. He however unluckily seemed to be of the same opinion as King Pedro was with regard to his wife Queen Mary of Aragon, that she was not so handsome as she might be good, so the meeting ended in their mutual disappointment. Cœlebs advertised a second time, appointing a different Square for the place of meeting, and varying the words of the advertisement. He met the same Lady,—they recognized each other, could not chuse but smile at the recognition, and perhaps neither of them could chuse but sigh. You will anticipate the event. The persevering Batchelor tried his lot a third time in the newspapers, and at the third place of appointment he met the equally persevering Spinster. At this meeting neither could help laughing. They began to converse in good humour, and the conversation became so agreeable on both sides, and the circumstance appeared so remarkable, that this third interview led to a marriage, and the marriage proved a happy one.

When Don Argentes Prince of Galdasse had been entrapped into the hands of a revengeful woman whose husband he had slain in fair combat, he said to two handsome widows who were charged every day to punish him with stripes,que par raison là on se se voit une grande beauté n'a pas lieu la cruauté ou autre vice—and the Chronicler of this generation of the house of Amadis, observes that this assertionfut bien verifié en ces deux jeunes veufues douées de grande beauté, lesquelles considerans la beauté et disposition de ce jeune chevalier et la vertu de sa personne, presterent l'oreille aux raisons qu'il alleguoit pour son excuse, et aux louanges qu'il leur donnoit de rare et singuliere beauté, de maniere qu'elles eurent pitié de luy.

“I can hardly forbear fancying,” says Lord Shaftesbury, “that if we had a sort of Inquisition, or formal Court of Judicature, with grave Officers and Judges, erected to restrain poetical licence, and in general to suppress that fancy and humour of versification, but in particular that most extravagant passion of Love, as it is set out by Poets, in its heathenish dress of Venus's and Cupids; if the Poets, as ringleaders and teachers of this heresy, were under grievous penalties forbid to enchant the people by their vein of rhyming; and if the People, on the other side, were under proportionable penalties, forbid to hearken to any such charm, or lend their attention to any love-tale, so much as in a play, a novel, or a ballad; we might perhaps see a new Arcadia arising out of this heavy persecution. Old people and young would be seized with a versifying spirit; we should have field conventicles of Lovers and Poets; forests would be filled with romantic Shepherds and Shepherdesses; and rocks resound with echoes of hymns and praises offered to the powers of Love. We might indeed have a fair chance, by this management, to bring back the whole train of Heathen Gods, and set our cold Northern Island burning with as many altars to Venus and Apollo, as were formerly in Cyprus, Delos, or any of those warmer Grecian climates.”

But I promised you, dear Ladies, more upon that subject which of all subjects is and ought to be the most interesting to you, because it is the most important. You have not forgotten that promise, and the time has now come for fulfilling it.

Venus, unto thee for help, good Lady, I do call,For thou wert wont to grant request unto thy servants all;Even as thou didst help always Æneas thine own child,Appeasing the God Jupiter with countenance so mildThat though that Juno to torment him on Jupiter did preace,Yet for the love he bare to thee, did cause the winds to cease;I pray thee pray the Muses all to help my memory,That I may have ensamples good in defence of feminye.1

Something has been said upon various ways which lead to love and matrimony; but what I have to say concerning imaginative love was deferred till we should arrive at the proper place for entering upon it.

1EDWARDMORE.

More or less, imagination enters into all loves and friendships, except those which have grown with our growth, and which therefore are likely to be the happiest because there can be no delusion in them. Cases of this kind would not be so frequent in old romances, if they did not occur more frequently in real life than unimaginative persons could be induced to believe, or made to understand.

Sir John Sinclair has related a remarkable instance in his Reminiscences. He was once invited by Adam Smith to meet Burke and Mr. Windham, who had arrived at Edinburgh with the intention of making a short tour in the Highlands. Sir John was consulted concerning their route; in the course of his directions he dwelt on the beauty of the road between Dunkeld and Blair;—and added, that instead of being cooped up in a post-chaise, they would do well to get out and walk through the woods and beautiful scenes through which the road passes, especially some miles beyond Dunkeld.

Some three years afterwards Mr. Windham came up to Sir John in the House of Commons and requested to speak to him for a few moments behind the Speaker's chair. “Do you recollect,” said he, “our meeting together at Adam Smith's at dinner?” “Most certainly I do.”

“Do you remember having given us directions for our Highland tour, and more especially to stroll through the woods between Dunkeld and Blair?” “I do.”

Mr. Windham then said, “In consequence of our adopting that advice, an event took place of which I must now inform you. Burke and I were strolling through the woods about ten miles from Dunkeld, when we saw a young female sitting under a tree, with a book in her hand. Burke immediately exclaimed, ‘Let us have a little conversation with this solitary damsel, and see what she is about.’ We accosted her accordingly and found that she was reading a recent novel from the London press. We asked her how she came to read novels, and how she got such books at so great a distance from the metropolis, and more especially one so recently published. She answered that she had been educated at a boarding-school at Perth, where novels might be had from the circulating library, and that she still procured them through the same channel. We carried on the conversation for some time, in the course of which she displayed a great deal of smartness and talent; and at last we were obliged, very reluctantly, to leave her, and proceed on our journey. We afterwards found that she was the daughter of a proprietor of that neighbourhood who was known under the name of the Baron Maclaren. I have never been able,” continued Mr. Windham, “to get this beautiful mountain nymph out of my head; and I wish you to ascertain whether she is married or single.” And he begged Sir John Sinclair to clear up this point as soon as possible, for much of his future happiness depended upon the result of the inquiry.

If not the most important communication that ever took place behind the Speaker's chair, this was probably the most curious one. Sir John lost no time in making the desired inquiry. He wrote to a most respectable clergyman in the neighbourhood where Miss Maclaren lived, the Rev. Dr. Stewart, minister of Moulin; and was informed in reply, that she was married to a medical gentleman in the East Indies of the name of Dick. “Upon communicating this to Mr. Windham,” says Sir John, “he seemed very much agitated. He was soon afterwards married to the daughter of a half-pay officer. I have no doubt, however, that had Miss Maclaren continued single, he would have paid her his addresses.”

This is an example of purely imaginative love. But before we proceed with that subject, the remainder of Sir John Sinclair's story must be given. Some years afterward he passed some days at Duneira in Perthshire, with the late Lord Melville, and in the course of conversation told him this anecdote of Mr. Windham. Upon which Lord Melville said, “I am more interested in that matter than you imagine. You must know that I was riding down from Blair to Dunkeld in company with some friend, and we called at Baron Maclaren's, where a most beautiful young woman desired to speak with me. We went accordingly to the bank of a river near her father's house, when she said, ‘Mr. Dundas, I hear that you are a very great man, and what is much better, a very good man, I will venture therefore to tell you a secret. There is a young man in this neighbourhood who has a strong attachment to me, and to confess the truth, I have a great regard for him. His name is William Dick; he has been bred to the medical profession; and he says, that if he could get to be a surgeon in the East Indies, he could soon make his fortune there, and would send for me to marry him. Now I apply to you, Mr. Dundas, as a great and good man, in hopes that you can do something for us: and be assured that we shall be for ever grateful, if you will procure him an appointment.’”

Mr. Dundas was so much struck with the impressive manner of her address, that he took her by the hand and said, “my good girl, be assured that if an opportunity offers, I shall not forget your application.” The promise was not forgotten. It was not long before an East India Director with whom he was dining, told him that he had then at his disposal an appointment of surgeon in the East India Company's service, and offered it to him for any one whom he would wish to serve in that line. Dundas immediately related his adventure, much to the amusement of the Director. Mr. Dick obtained the appointment, and was soon able to send for his betrothed. She had several offers in the course of the voyage and after her arrival, but she refused to listen to any one. Her husband attained to great eminence in his profession, made a handsome fortune, came home and purchased an estate in the neighbourhood where he was born.

There is no man among those who in that generation figured in public life, of whom a story like this could be so readily believed as of Windham. He was one whose endowments and accomplishments would have recommended him at the Court of Elizabeth,—and whose speeches, when he did not abase himself to the level of his hearers, might have commanded attention in the days of Charles I.

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