Kitabı oku: «The Tatler (Vol 4)», sayfa 20
No. 252. [Steele.
From Thursday, Nov. 16 to Saturday, Nov. 18, 1710
Narratur et prisci Catonis
Sæpe mero caluisse virtus.
Hor., 3 Od. xxi. 11.
From my own Apartment, Nov. 17
The following letter, and several others to the same purpose, accuse me of a rigour of which I am far from being guilty, to wit, the disallowing the cheerful use of wine.
"From my Country-house,Oct. 25.
"Mr. Bickerstaff,
"Your discourse against drinking, in Tuesday's Tatler,194 I like well enough in the main; but in my humble opinion, you are become too rigid where you say to this effect: 'Were there only this single consideration, that we are the less masters of ourselves if we drink the least proportion beyond the exigence of thirst.' I hope no one drinks wine to allay this appetite. This seems to be designed for a loftier indulgence of Nature; for it were hard to suppose, that the Author of Nature, who imposed upon her her necessities and pains, does not allow her her pleasures, and we may reckon among the latter the moderate use of the grape: and though I am as much against excess, or whatever approaches it, as yourself, yet I conceive one may safely go further than the bounds you there prescribe, not only without forfeiting the title of being one's own master, but also to possess it in a much greater degree. If a man's expressing himself upon any subject with more life and vivacity, more variety of ideas, more copiously, more fluently, and more to the purpose, argues it, he thinks clearer, speaks more ready, and with greater choice of comprehensive and significant terms. I have the good fortune now to be intimate with a gentleman remarkable for this temper, who has an inexhaustible source of wit to entertain the curious, the grave, the humorous, and the frolic. He can transform himself into different shapes, and adapt himself to every company; yet in a coffee-house, or in the ordinary course of affairs, appears rather dull than sprightly. You can seldom get him to the tavern, but when once he is arrived to his pint, and begins to look about and like his company, you admire a thousand things in him, which before lay buried. Then you discover the brightness of his mind and the strength of his judgment, accompanied with the most graceful mirth. In a word, by this enlivening aid, he is whatever is polite, instructive, and diverting. What makes him still more agreeable is, that he tells a story, serious or comical, with as much delicacy of humour as Cervantes himself. And for all this, at other times, even after a long knowledge of him, you shall scarce discern in this incomparable person a whit more than what might be expected from one of a common capacity. Doubtless there are men of great parts that are guilty of downright bashfulness, that by a strange hesitation and reluctance to speak, murder the finest and most elegant thoughts, and render the most lively conceptions flat and heavy.
"In this case, a certain quantity of my white or red cordial, which you will, is an easy, but an infallible remedy. It awakens the judgment, quickens memory, ripens understanding, disperses melancholy, cheers the heart; in a word, restores the whole man to himself and his friends without the least pain or indisposition to the patient. To be taken only in the evening in a reasonable quantity before going to bed. Note.– My bottles are sealed with three fleurs-de-lis and a bunch of grapes. Beware of counterfeits. I am,
"Your most humble Servant, &c."
Whatever has been said against the use of wine, upon the supposition that it enfeebles the mind, and renders it unfit for the duties of life, bears forcibly to the advantage of that delicious juice, in cases where it only heightens conversation, and brings to light agreeable talents, which otherwise would have lain concealed under the oppression of an unjust modesty. I must acknowledge I have seen many of the temper mentioned by this correspondent, and own, wine may very allowably be used in a degree above the supply of mere necessity by such as labour under melancholy, or are tongue-tied by modesty. It is certainly a very agreeable change, when we see a glass raise a lifeless conversation into all the pleasures of wit and good-humour. But when Caska adds to his natural impudence the fluster of a bottle, that which fools called fire when he was sober, all men abhor as outrage when he is drunk. Thus he that in the morning was only saucy, is in the evening tumultuous. It makes one sick to hear one of these fellows say, they love a friend and a bottle. Noisy mirth has something too rustic in it to be considered without terror by men of politeness: but while the discourse improves in a well-chosen company, from the addition of spirits which flow from moderate cups, it must be acknowledged, that leisure time cannot be more agreeably, or perhaps more usefully employed than at such meetings: but there is a certain prudence in this and all other circumstances which makes right or wrong in the conduct of ordinary life. Sir Geoffrey Wildacre has nothing so much at heart as that his son should know the world betimes: for this end he introduces him among the sots of his own age, where the boy learns to laugh at his father from the familiarity with which he sees him treated by his equals. This the old fellow calls living well with his heir, and teaching him to be too much his friend to be impatient for his estate. But for the more exact regulation of society in this and other matters, I shall publish tables of the characters and relations among men, and by them instruct the town in making sets and companies for a bottle. This humour of Sir Geoffrey shall be taken notice of in the first place; for there is, methinks, a sort of incest in drunkenness, and sons are not to behold fathers stripped of all reverence.
It is shocking in nature for the young to see those whom they should have an awe for in circumstances of contempt. I shall therefore utterly forbid, that those in whom nature should admonish to avoid too gross familiarities, shall be received in parties of pleasure where there is the least danger of excess. I should run through the whole doctrine of drinking, but that my thoughts are at present too much employed in the modelling my Court of Honour; and altering the seats, benches, bar, and canopy from that of the court wherein I last winter sat upon causes of less moment. By the way, I shall take an opportunity to examine, what method is to be taken to make joiners and other artificers get out of a house they have once entered, not forgetting to tie them under proper regulations. It is for want of such rules, that I have a day or two longer than I expected been tormented and deafened with hammers, insomuch that I neither can pursue this discourse, or answer the following and many other letters of the highest importance.
"Mr. Bickerstaff,
"We are man and wife, and have a boy and a girl: the lad seventeen, the maiden sixteen. We are quarrelling about some parts of their education. I, Ralph, cannot bear that I must pay for the girl's learning on the spinnet, when I know she has no ear. I, Bridget, have not patience to have my son whipped because he cannot make verses, when I know he is a blockhead. Pray, sir, inform us, is it absolutely necessary that all who wear breeches must be taught to rhyme, all in petticoats to touch an instrument? Please to interpose in this and the like cases, to end much solid distress which arises from trifling causes, as it is common in wedlock, and you will very much oblige us and ours.
"Ralph }} Yokefellow.""Bridget }
No. 253. [Addison and Steele. 195
From Saturday, Nov. 18, to Tuesday, Nov. 21, 1710
-Pietate gravem ac meritis si forte virum quem
Conspexere, silent, arrectisque auribus adstant.
Virg., Æn. i. 151.
From my own Apartment, Nov. 20
Extract of the Journal of the Court of Honour, 1710.196
Die lunae vicesimo Novembris, hora nona ante-meridiana
The court being sat, an oath prepared by the censor was administered to the assistants on his right hand, who were all sworn upon their honour. The women on his left hand took the same oath upon their reputation. Twelve gentlemen of the Horse Guards were empanelled, having unanimously chosen Mr. Alexander Truncheon, who is their right-hand man in the troop, for their foreman in the jury. Mr. Truncheon immediately drew his sword, and holding it with the point towards his own body, presented it to the censor. Mr. Bickerstaff received it, and after having surveyed the breadth of the blade, and sharpness of the point, with more than ordinary attention, returned it to the foreman in a very graceful manner. The rest of the jury, upon the delivery of the sword to their foreman, drew all of them together as one man, and saluted the bench with such an air, as signified the most resigned submission to those who commanded them, and the greatest magnanimity to execute what they should command.
Mr. Bickerstaff, after having received the compliments on his right hand, cast his eye upon the left, where the whole female jury paid their respects by a low courtesy, and by laying their hands upon their mouths. Their forewoman was a professed Platonist,197 that had spent much of her time in exhorting the sex to set a just value upon their persons, and to make the men know themselves.
There followed a profound silence, when at length, after some recollection, the censor, who continued hitherto uncovered, put on his hat with great dignity; and after having composed the brims of it in a manner suitable to the gravity of his character, he gave the following charge, which was received with silence and attention, that being the only applause which he admits of, or is ever given in his presence:
"The nature of my office, and the solemnity of this occasion, requiring that I should open my first session with a speech, I shall cast what I have to say under two principal heads.
"Under the first, I shall endeavour to show the necessity and usefulness of this new-erected court; and under the second, I shall give a word of advice and instruction to every constituent part of it.
"As for the first, it is well observed by Phædrus, a heathen poet:
Which is the same, ladies, as if I should say, It would be of no reputation for me to be president of a court which is of no benefit to the public. Now the advantages that may arise to the weal-public from this institution will more plainly appear, if we consider what it suffers for the want of it. Are not our streets daily filled with wild pieces of justice and random penalties? Are not crimes undetermined, and reparations disproportioned? How often have we seen the lie punished by death, and the liar himself deciding his own cause? nay, not only acting the judge, but the executioner? Have we not known a box on the ear more severely accounted for than manslaughter? In these extra-judicial proceedings of mankind, an unmannerly jest is frequently as capital as a premeditated murder.
"But the most pernicious circumstance in this case is, that the man who suffers the injury must put himself upon the same foot of danger with him that gave it, before he can have his just revenge; so that the punishment is altogether accidental, and may fall as well upon the innocent as the guilty.
"I shall only mention a case which happens frequently among the more polite nations of the world, and which I the rather mention, because both sexes are concerned in it, and which therefore you gentlemen and you ladies of the jury will the rather take notice of; I mean that great and known case of cuckoldom. Supposing the person who has suffered insults in his dearer and better half; supposing, I say, this person should resent the injuries done to his tender wife, what is the reparation he may expect? Why, to be used worse than his poor lady, run through the body, and left breathless upon the bed of honour. What then will you on my right hand say must the man do that is affronted? Must our sides be elbowed, our shins broken? Must the wall, or perhaps our mistress, be taken from us? May a man knit his forehead into a frown, toss up his arm, or pish at what we say, and must the villain live after it? Is there no redress for injured honour? Yes, gentlemen, that is the design of the judicature we have here established.
"A Court of Conscience, we very well know, was first instituted for the determining of several points of property that were too little and trivial for the cognisance of higher courts of justice. In the same manner, our Court of Honour is appointed for the examination of several niceties and punctilios that do not pass for wrongs in the eye of our common laws. But notwithstanding no legislators of any nation have taken into consideration these little circumstances, they are such as often lead to crimes big enough for their inspection, though they come before them too late for their redress.
"Besides, I appeal to you, ladies [here Mr. Bickerstaff turned to his left hand], if these are not the little stings and thorns in life that make it more uneasy than its most substantial evils? Confess ingenuously, did you never lose a morning's devotions because you could not offer them up from the highest place of the pew? Have you not been in pain, even at a ball, because another has been taken out to dance before you? Do you love any of your friends so much as those that are below you? Or have you any favourites that walk on your right hand? You have answered me in your looks, I ask no more.
"I come now to the second part of my discourse, which obliges me to address myself in particular to the respective members of the court, in which I shall be very brief.
"As for you, gentlemen and ladies, my assistants and grand juries, I have made choice of you on my right hand, because I know you very jealous of your honour; and you on my left, because I know you very much concerned for the reputation of others; for which reason I expect great exactness and impartiality in your verdicts and judgments.
"I must in the next place address myself to you, gentlemen of the council: you all know, that I have not chosen you for your knowledge in the litigious parts of the law, but because you have all of you formerly fought duels, of which I have reason to think you have repented, as being now settled in the peaceable state of benchers. My advice to you is, only that in your pleadings you are short and expressive: to which end you are to banish out of your discourses all synonymous terms, and unnecessary multiplications of verbs and nouns. I do moreover forbid you the use of the words 'also' and 'likewise'; and must further declare, that if I catch any one among you, upon any pretence whatsoever, using the particle 'or,' I shall incessantly order him to be stripped of his gown, and thrown over the bar."
"This is a true copy. – Charles Lillie."
N.B.– The sequel of the proceedings of this day will be published on Tuesday next.199
No. 254. [Addison and Steele. 200
Splendidè mendax. —
Hor., 3 Od. xi. 35.
From Tuesday, Nov. 21, to Thursday, Nov. 23, 1710
From my own Apartment, Nov. 22
There are no books which I more delight in than in travels, especially those that describe remote countries, and give the writer an opportunity of showing his parts without incurring any danger of being examined or contradicted. Among all the authors of this kind, our renowned countryman Sir John Mandeville201 has distinguished himself, by the copiousness of his invention, and greatness of his genius. The second to Sir John I take to have been Ferdinand Mendez Pinto,202 a person of infinite adventure and unbounded imagination. One reads the voyages of these two great wits with as much astonishment as the travels of Ulysses in Homer, or of the Red-Cross Knight in Spenser. All is enchanted ground and fairy-land.
I have got into my hands by great chance several manuscripts of these two eminent authors, which are filled with greater wonders than any of those they have communicated to the public; and indeed, were they not so well attested, would appear altogether improbable. I am apt to think, the ingenious authors did not publish them with the rest of their works, lest they should pass for fictions and fables: a caution not unnecessary, when the reputation of their veracity was not yet established in the world. But as this reason has now no further weight, I shall make the public a present of these curious pieces at such times as I shall find myself unprovided with other subjects.
The present paper I intend to fill with an extract of Sir John's journal, in which that learned and worthy knight gives an account of the freezing and thawing of several short speeches which he made in the territories of Nova Zembla.203 I need not inform my reader, that the author of "Hudibras" alludes to this strange quality in that cold climate, when, speaking of abstracted notions clothed in a visible shape, he adds that apt simile:
Like words congealed in Northern air. 204
Not to keep my reader any longer in suspense, the relation put into modern language is as follows:
"We were separated by a storm in the latitude of 73, insomuch that only the ship which I was in, with a Dutch and a French vessel, got safe into a creek of Nova Zembla. We landed, in order to refit our vessels, and store ourselves with provisions. The crew of each vessel made themselves a cabin of turf and wood, at some distance from each other, to fence themselves against the inclemencies of the weather, which was severe beyond imagination. We soon observed, that in talking to one another we lost several of our words, and could not hear one another at above two yards' distance, and that too when we sat very near the fire. After much perplexity, I found that our words froze in the air before they could reach the ears of the person to whom they were spoken. I was soon confirmed in this conjecture, when, upon the increase of the cold, the whole company grew dumb, or rather deaf; for every man was sensible, as we afterwards found, that he spoke as well as ever; but the sounds no sooner took air than they were condensed and lost. It was now a miserable spectacle to see us nodding and gaping at one another, every man talking, and no man heard. One might observe a seaman that could hail a ship at a league distance, beckoning with his hands, straining his lungs, and tearing his throat, but all in vain.
– Nec vox, nec verba, sequuntur. 205
"We continued here three weeks in this dismal plight. At length, upon a turn of wind, the air about us began to thaw. Our cabin was immediately filled with a dry clattering sound, which I afterwards found to be the crackling of consonants that broke above our heads, and were often mixed with a gentle hissing, which I imputed to the letter S, that occurs so frequently in the English tongue. I soon after felt a breeze of whispers rushing by my ear; for those being of a soft and gentle substance, immediately liquefied in the warm wind that blew across our cabin. These were soon followed by syllables and short words, and at length by entire sentences, that melted sooner or later, as they were more or less congealed; so that we now heard everything that had been spoken during the whole three weeks that we had been silent, if I may use that expression. It was now very early in the morning, and yet, to my surprise, I heard somebody say, 'Sir John, it is midnight, and time for the ship's crew to go to bed.' This I knew to be the pilot's voice, and upon recollecting myself, I concluded that he had spoken these words to me some days before, though I could not hear them before the present thaw. My reader will easily imagine how the whole crew was amazed, to hear every man talking, and see no man opening his mouth. In the midst of this great surprise we were all in, we heard a volley of oaths and curses, lasting for a long while, and uttered in a hoarse voice, which I knew belonged to the boatswain, who was a very choleric fellow, and had taken his opportunity of cursing and swearing at me when he thought I could not hear him; for I had several times given him the strappado on that account, as I did not fail to repeat it for these his pious soliloquies when I got him on shipboard.
"I must not omit the names of several beauties in Wapping, which were heard every now and then, in the midst of a long sigh that accompanied them; as, 'Dear Kate!' 'Pretty Mrs. Peggy!' 'When shall I see my Sue again?' This betrayed several amours which had been concealed till that time, and furnished us with a great deal of mirth in our return to England.
"When this confusion of voices was pretty well over, though I was afraid to offer at speaking, as fearing I should not be heard, I proposed a visit to the Dutch cabin, which lay about a mile farther up into the country. My crew were extremely rejoiced to find they had again recovered their hearing, though every man uttered his voice with the same apprehensions that I had done.
– Et timide verba intermissa retentat. 206
"At about half a mile's distance from our cabin, we heard the groanings of a bear, which at first startled us; but upon inquiry we were informed by some of our company, that he was dead, and now lay in salt, having been killed upon that very spot about a fortnight before, in the time of the frost. Not far from the same place we were likewise entertained with some posthumous snarls and barkings of a fox.
"We at length arrived at the little Dutch settlement, and upon entering the room, found it filled with sighs that smelt of brandy, and several other unsavoury sounds that were altogether inarticulate. My valet, who was an Irishman, fell into so great a rage at what he heard, that he drew his sword; but not knowing where to lay the blame, he put it up again. We were stunned with these confused noises, but did not hear a single word till about half-an-hour after; which I ascribed to the harsh and obdurate sounds of that language, which wanted more time than ours to melt and become audible.
"After having here met with a very hearty welcome, we went to the French cabin, who, to make amends for their three weeks' silence, were talking and disputing with greater rapidity and confusion than ever I heard in an assembly even of that nation. Their language as I found, upon the first giving of the weather, fell asunder and dissolved. I was here convinced of an error into which I had before fallen; for I fancied, that for the freezing of the sound, it was necessary for it to be wrapped up, and, as it were, preserved in breath; but I found my mistake, when I heard the sound of a kit playing a minuet over our heads. I asked the occasion of it; upon which one of the company told me, that it would play there above a week longer if the thaw continued; 'for,' says he, 'finding ourselves bereft of speech, we prevailed upon one of the company, who had this musical instrument about him, to play to us from morning to night; all which time we employed in dancing, in order to dissipate our chagrin, et tuer le temps.'"
Here Sir John gives very good philosophical reasons why the kit could be heard during the frost; but as they are something prolix, I pass them over in silence, and shall only observe, that the honourable author seems, by his quotations, to have been well versed in the ancient poets, which perhaps raised his fancy above the ordinary pitch of historians, and very much contributed to the embellishment of his writings.
