and where a vast concourse, out of the most polite nations could not but furnish the young gentleman with a multitude of great examples and accidents that might insensibly have instructed him in his designed studies. He placed him under the care of Cratippus, who was one of the greatest philosophers of the age, and, as if all the books which were at that time written had not been sufficient for his use, he composed others on purpose for him: notwithstanding all this, history informs us that Marcus proved a mere blockhead, and that nature, (who it seems was even with the son for her prodigality to the father) rendered him incapable of improving by all the rules of eloquence, the precepts of philosophy, his own endeavours, and the most refined conversation in Athens. This author, therefore, proposes, that there should be certain triers or examiners appointed by the state, to inspect the genius of every particular boy, and to allot him the part that is most suitable to his natural talents. 'Plato in one of his dialogues tells us that Socrates, who was the son of a midwife, used to say, that as his mother, though she was very skilful in her profession, could not deliver a woman unless she was first with child, so neither could he himself raise knowledge out of a mind where nature had not planted it. Accordingly the method this philosopher took, of instructing his scholars by several interrogatories or questions, was only helping the birth, and bringing their own thoughts to light. The Spanish doctor above-mentioned, as his speculations grew more refined, asserts that every kind of wit has a particular science, corresponding to it, and in which alone it can be truly excellent. As to those geniuses, which may seem to have an equal aptitude for several things, he regards them as so many unfinished pieces of nature wrought off in haste. 'How different from this manner of education is that which prevails in our own country! where nothing is more usual than to see forty or fifty boys of several ages, tempers, and inclinations, ranged together in the same class, employed upon the same authors, and enjoined the same tasks! Whatever their natural genius may be, they are all to be made poets, historians, and orators alike. They are all obliged to have the same capacity, to bring in the same tale of verse, and to furnish out the same portion of prose. Every boy is bound to have as good a memory as the captain of the form. To be brief, instead of adapting studies to the particular genius of a youth, we expect from the young man, that he should adapt his genius to his studies. This, I must confess, is not so much to be imputed to the instructor, as to the parent, who will never be brought to believe, that his son is not capable of performing as much as his neighbour's, and that he may not make him whatever he has a mind to. "If the present age is more laudable than those which have gone before it in any single particular, it is in that generous care which several well-disposed persons have taken in the education of poor children; and as in these charity-schools there is no place left for the overweaning fondness of a parent, the directors of them would make them beneficial to the public, if they considered the precept which I have been thus long inculcating. They might easily, by well examining the parts of those under their inspection, make a just distribution of them into proper classes and divisions, and allot to them this or that particular study, as their genius qualifies them for professions, trades, handicrafts, or service by sea or land. · How is this kind of regulation wanting in the three great professions! In like manner many a lawyer, who makes but an indifferent figure at the bar, might have made a very elegant waterman, and have shined at the Temple stairs, though he can get no business in the house. 'Dr. South, complaining of persons who "There are indeed but very few to whom took upon them holy orders, though altonature has been so unkind, that they are gether unqualified for the sacred function, not capable of shining in some science or says somewhere, that many a man runs his other. There is a certain bias towards know-head against a pulpit, who might have done ledge in every mind, which may be strength- his country excellent service at the ploughened and improved by proper applications. tail. The story of Clavius is very well known. He was entered in a college of Jesuits, and after having been tried at several parts of learning, was upon the point of being dismissed, as a hopeless blockhead, until one of the fathers took it into his head to make an essay of his parts in geometry, which it seems hit his genius so luckily, that he after-lent physician. wards became one of the greatest mathematicians of the age. It is commonly thought that the sagacity of these fathers in discovering the talent of a young student, has not a little contributed to the figure which their order has made in the world. 'I have known a corn-cutter, who with a right education would have been an excel To descend lower, are not our streets filled with sagacious draymen, and politicians in liveries? We have several tailors of six foot high, and meet with many a broad pair of shoulders that are thrown away upon a barber, when perhaps at the same time we see a pigmy porter reeling *Clavius died at Rome in 1612. aged 75; his works under a burden, who might have managed are comprised in five volumes in folio. a needle with much dexterity, or have snapped his fingers with great ease to him- | for I am an ugly fellow, of great wit and self, and advantage to the public. sagacity. My father was a hale country The Spartans, though they acted with 'squire, my mother a witty beauty of no the spirit which I am here speaking of, fortune. The match was made by consent carried it much farther than what I pro- of my mother's parents against her own, pose. Among them it was not lawful for and I am the child of the rape on the wedthe father himself to bring up his children ding night; so that I am as healthy and as after his own fancy. As soon as they were homely as my father, but as sprightly and seven years old, they were all listed in se- agreeable as my mother. It would be of veral companies, and disciplined by the great ease to you, if you would use me unpublic. The old men were spectators of der you, that matches might be better their performances, who often raised quar-regulated for the future, and we might rels among them, and set them at strife with one another, that by those early discoveries they might see how their several talents lay, and, without any regard to their quality, disposed of them accordingly, for the service of the commonwealth. By this means Sparta soon became the mistress of Greece, and famous through the whole world for her civil and military discipline. If you think this letter deserves a place among your speculations, I may perhaps trouble you with some other thoughts on the same subject. I am, &c.' X. have no more children of squabbles. I shall 'MR. SPECTATOR,-I am one of those unfortunate men within the city-walls, who am married to a woman of quality, but her temper is something different from that of thoughts are spent in keeping up to the Lady Anvil. My lady's whole time and mode both in apparel and furniture. All the goods in my house have been changed three times in seven years. I have had seven children by her: and by our marriage-articles she was to have her apart No. 308.] Friday, February 22, 1711-12. ment new furnished as often as she lay-in. -Jam proterva Fronte petet Lalage maritum. Hor. Od. 5. Lib. ii. ver. 15. -Lalage will soon proclaim Her love, nor blush to own her flame.-Creech. stood up above that time. My dear is of opinion that an old-fashioned grate consumes coals, but gives no heat. If she drinks out of glasses of the last year she cannot distinguish wine from small beer. Oh, dear sir, you may guess all the rest. 'Yours. 'P. S. I could bear even all this, if I were not obliged also to eat fashionably. I have a plain stomach, and have a constant loathing of whatever comes to my own table; for which reason I dine at the chophouse three days in a week; where the good company wonders they never see you of late. I am sure, by your unprejudiced discourses, you love broth better than soup.' Nothing in our house is useful but that which is fashionable; my pewter holds out generally half a year, my plate a full twelve-month; chairs are not fit to sit in that were made two years since, nor beds 'MR. SPECTATOR,-I give you this trou-fit for any thing but to sleep in, that have ble in order to propose myself to you as an assistant in the weighty cares which you have thought fit to undergo for the public good. I am a very great lover of women, that is to say, honestly; and as it is natural to study what one likes, I have industriously applied myself to understand them. The present circumstance relating to them is, that I think there wants under you, as Spectator, a person to be distinguished and vested in the power and quality of a censor on marriages. I lodge at the Temple, and know, by seeing women come hither, and afterwards observing them conducted by their counsel to judges' chambers, that there is a custom, in case of making convevance of a wife's estate, that she is carried to a judge's apartment, and left alone with him, to be examined in private, whether she has not been frightened or sweetened by her spouse into the act she is going to do, or whether it is of her own freewill. Now if this be a method founded upon reason and equity, why should there not be also a proper officer for examining such as are entered into the state of matrimony, whether they are forced by parents on one side, or moved by interest only on the other, to come together, and bring forth such awkward heirs as are the product of half love and constrained compliances? There is nobody, though I say it myself, would be fitter for this office than I am: 'Will's, Feb. 19. 'MR. SPECTATOR,-You may believe you are a person as much talked of as any man in town. I am one of your best friends in this house, and have laid a wager you are so candid a man, and so honest a fellow, that you will print this letter, though it is in recommendation of a new paper called The Historian. I have read it carefully, and find it written with skill, good sense, modesty, and fire. You must allow the town is kinder to you than you deserve; and I doubt not but you have so much sense of the world's change of humour, and instability of all human things, as to understand, that the only way to preserve favour is to communicate it to others with good 'READER GENTLE.' I was very much surprised this morning that any one should find out my lodging, and know it so well, as to come directly to my closet door, and knock at it, to give me the following letter. When I came out I opened it, and saw, by a very strong pair of shoes, and a warm coat the bearer had on, that he walked all the way to bring it me, though dated from York. My misfortune is that I cannot talk, and I found the messenger had so much of me, that he could think better than speak. He had, I observed, a polite discerning, hid under a shrewd rusticity. He delivered the paper with a Yorkshire tone and a town leer. I HAVE before observed in general, that the persons whom Milton introduces into his poem always discover such sentiments and behaviour as are in a peculiar manner conformable to their respective characters. Every circumstance in their speeches and actions is with great justice and delicacy adapted to the persons who speak and act. As the poet very much excels in this consistency of his characters, I shall beg leave book in this light. That superior greatto consider several passages of the second ness and mock-majesty, which is ascribed to the prince of the fallen angels, is admirably preserved in the beginning of this book. His opening and closing the debate; his taking on himself that great enterprise, at the thought of which, the whole infernal assembly trembled; his encountering the hideous phantom who guarded the gates of hell, and appeared to him in all his terrors; are instances of that proud and daring mind which could not brook submission, even to Omnipotence! Satan was now at hand, and from his seat 'MR. SPECTATOR.-The privilege you have indulged John Trot has proved of very bad consequence to our illustrious assembly, which besides the many excellent maxims it is founded upon, is remarkable for the extraordinary decorum always observed in it. One instance of which is that the carders (who are always of the first quality) never begin to play until the French dances are finished, and the country dances begin: but John Trot, having now got your commission in his pocket, (which every one here has a profound respect for) has the assurance to set up for a minuetdancer. Not only so, but he has brought. The same boldness and intrepidity of bedown upon us the whole body of the Trots, haviour discovers itself in the several adwhich are very numerous, with their aux-ventures which he meets with, during his iliaries the hobblers and the skippers, by passage through the regions of unformed which means the time is so much wasted, matter, and particularly in his address to that, unless we break all rules of govern- those tremendous powers who are described ment, it must redound to the utter subver- as presiding over it. sion of the brag-table, the discreet members of which value time as Fribble's wife does her pin-money. We are pretty well assured that your indulgence to Trot was only in relation to country-dances; however, we have deferred issuing an order of council upon the premises, hoping to get you to join with us, that Trot, nor any of his clan, presume for the future to dance any but country dances, unless a hornpipe upon a festival day. If you will do this you will oblige a great many ladies, and particularly your most humble servant, 'ELIZ. SWEEPSTAKES. York, Feb. 16.' 'I never meant any other than that Mr. Trot should confine himself to country dances. And I further direct that he shall take out none but his own relations according to their nearness of blood, but any gentlewoman may take out him. THE SPECTATOR. 'London, Feb. 21.' The part of Moloch is likewise, in all its circumstances, full of that fire and fury which distinguish this spirit from the rest of the fallen angels. He is described in the first book as besmeared with the blood of human sacrifices, and delighted with the tears of parents, and the cries of children. In the second book he is marked out as the fiercest spirit that fought in heaven: and if we consider the figure which he makes in the sixth book, where the battle of the angels is described, we find it every way answerable to the same furious, enraged character: -Where the might of Gabriel fought, It may be worth while to observe, that cipitate passions, as the first that rises in | that assembly to give his opinion upon their present posture of affairs. Accordingly, he declares himself abruptly for war, and appears incensed at his companions for losing so much time as even to deliberate upon it. All his sentiments are rash, audacious, and desperate. Such is that of arming themselves with their tortures, and turning their punishments upon him who inflicted them: -No, let us rather choose, Arm'd with hell flames and fury, all at once And with the majesty of darkness round Beelzebub, who is reckoned the secondin dignity that fell, and is, in the first book, the second that awakens out of the trance, and confers with Satan upon the situation of their affairs, maintains his rank in the book now before us. There is a wonderful majesty described in his rising up to speak. He acts as a kind of moderator between the two opposite parties, and proposes a third undertaking, which the whole assembly gives into. The motion he makes of detaching one of their body in search of a new world is grounded upon a project deHis preferring annihilation to shame or vised by Satan, and cursorily proposed by misery is also highly suitable to his charac-him in the following lines of the first book: ter; as the comfort he draws from their disturbing the peace of heaven, that if it be not victory it is revenge, is a sentiment truly diabolical, and becoming the bitterness of this implacable spirit. Infernal thunder, and for lightning see Belial is described in the first book as the idol of the lewd and luxurious. He is in the second book, pursuant to that description, characterized as timorous and slothful; and if we look into the sixth book, we find him celebrated in the battle of angels for nothing but that scoffing speech which he makes to Satan, on their supposed advantage over the enemy. As his appearance is uniform, and of a piece in these three several views, we find his sentiments in the infernal assembly every way conformable to his character. Such are his apprehensions of a second battle, his horrors of annihilation, his preferring to be miserable, rather than not to be.' I need not observe, that the contrast of thought in this speech, and that which precedes it, gives an agreeable variety to the debate. Mammon's character is so fully drawn in the first book, that the poet adds nothing to it in the second. We were before told, that he was the first who taught mankind to ransack the earth for gold and silver, and that he was the architect of Pandemonium, or the infernal palace, where the evil spirits were to meet in council. His speech in this book is every way suitable to so depraved a character. How proper is that reflection of their being unable to taste the happiness of heaven, were they actually there, in the mouth of one, who, while he was in heaven, is said to have had his mind dazzled with the outward pomps and glories of the place, and to have been more intent on the riches of the pavement than on the beatific vision. I shall also leave the reader to judge how agreeable the following senti ments are to the same character: Space may produce new worlds, whereof so rife It is on this project that Beelzebub grounds his proposal: -What if we find Some easier enterprise? There is a place, The reader may observe how just it was, not to omit in the first book the project upon which the whole poem turns; as also that the prince of the fallen angels was the the next to him in dignity was the fittest to only proper person to give it birth, and that second and support it. There is besides, I think, something wonderfully beautiful, and very apt to affect the reader's imagination, in this ancient prophecy or report in heaven, concerning the creation of man. Nothing could more show the dignity of the species, than this tradition which ran of them before their existence. They are represented to have been the talk of heaven before they were created. Virgil, in compliment to the Roman commonwealth, makes the heroes of it appear in their state of pre-existence; but Milton does a far greater honour to mankind in general, as he gives us a glimpse of them even before they are in being. The rising of this great assembly is described in a very sublime and poetical manner: Their rising all at once was as the sound mon interest to enter into a confederacy together, and how properly Sin is made the portress of hell, and the only being that can open the gates to that world of tortures. The diversions of the fallen angels, with this quotation. He will likewise observe the particular account of their place of how naturally the three persons concerned habitation, are described with great preg-in this allegory are tempted by one comnancy of thought, and copiousness of invention. The diversions are every way suitable to beings who had nothing left them but strength and knowledge misapplied. Such are their contentions at the race and in feats of arms, with their entertainment in the following lines: Others with vast Typhæan rage more fell Their music is employed in celebrating their own criminal exploits, and their discourse in sounding the unfathomable depths of fate, free-will, and foreknowledge. The several circumstances in the description of hell are finely imagined; as the four rivers which disgorge themselves into the sea of fire, the extremes of cold and heat, and the river of oblivion. The monstrous animals produced in that infernal world are represented by a single line, which gives us a more horrid idea of them than a much longer description would have done: -Nature breeds, Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things, Than fables yet have feign'd, or fear conceiv'd, This episode of the fallen spirits and their place of habitation, comes in very happily to unbend the mind of the reader from its attention to the debate. An ordinary poet would indeed have spun out so many circumstances to a great length, and by that means have weakened, instead of illustrated the principal fable. The flight of Satan to the gates of hell is finely imaged. I have already declared my opinion of the allegory concerning Sin and Death, which is, however, a very finished piece in its kind, when it is not considered as a part of an epic poem. The genealogy of the several persons is contrived with great delicacy. Sin is the daughter of Satan, and Death the offspring of Sin. The incestuous mixture between Sin and Death produces those monsters and hell-hounds which from time to time enter into their mother, and tear the bowels of her who gave them birth. These are the terrors of an evil conscience, and the proper fruits of Sin, which naturally rise from the apprehensions of Death. This last beautiful moral is, I think, clearly intimated in the speech of Sin, where, complaining of this her dreadful issue, she adds: Before mine eyes in opposition sits Grim Death, my son and foe, who sets them on, I need not mention to the reader the beautiful circumstance in the last part of The descriptive part of this allegory is likewise very strong, and full of sublime ideas. The figure of Death, the regal crown upon his head, his menace of Satan, his advancing to the combat, the outcry at his birth, are circumstances too noble to be to this king of terrors. I need not mention past over in silence, and extremely suitable the justness of thought which is observed in the generation of these several symbo lical the first revolt of Satan, that Death appersons; that Sin was produced upon peared soon after he was cast into hell, ceived at the gate of this place of torments. The description of the gates is very poetical, as the opening of them is full of Milton's spirit: and that the terrors of conscience were con -On a sudden open fly With impetuous recoil and jarring sound In Satan's voyage through the chaos there are several imaginary persons described, as residing in that immense waste of matter. This may perhaps be conformable to the taste of those critics who are pleased with nothing in a poet which has not life and manners ascribed to it; but for my own part, am pleased most with those passages in this description which carry in them a greater measure of probability, and are such as might possibly have happened. Of this kind is his first mounting in the smoke that rises from the infernal pit, his falling into a cloud of nitre, and the like combustible materials, that by their explosion still hurried him forward in his voyage; his springing upward like a pyramid of fire, with his laborious passage through that confusion of elements which the poet calls The womb of nature, and perhaps her grave. chaos from the utmost verge of the creaThe glimmering light which shot into the that hung close by the moon, are wondertion, with the distant discovery of the earth fully beautiful and poetical. L. |