A HISTORY PIECE.

No. 209. SATURDAY, AUGUST 10, 1710. [STEELE.]

A NOBLE painter, who has an ambition to draw a history piece, has desired me to give him a subject, on which he may shew the utmost force of his art and genius. For this purpose, I have pitched upon that remarkable incident between Alexander the Great and his physician. This prince, in the midst of his conquests in Persia, was seized by a violent fever; and, according to the account we have of his vast mind, his thoughts were more employed about his recovery, as it regarded the war, than as it concerned his own life. He professed, a slow method was worse than death to him; because it was, what he more dreaded, an interruption of his glory. He desired a dangerous, so it might be a speedy remedy. During this impatience of the king, it is well known that Darius had offered an immense sum to any one who should take away his life. But Philippus, the most esteemed and most knowing of his physicians, promised, that within three days' time he would prepare a medicine for him, which should restore him more expeditiously than could be imagined. Immediately after this engagement, Alexander receives a letter from the most considerable of his captains, with intelligence that Darius had bribed Philippus to poison him. Every circumstance imaginable favoured this suspicion; but this monarch, who did nothing but in an extraordinary manner, concealed the letter; and, while the medicine was preparing, spent all his thoughts upon his behaviour in this important incident. From his long soliloquy, he came to this resolution : 'Alexander must not lie here alive to be oppressed by his enemy. I will not believe my physician guilty; or, I will perish rather by his guilt, than my own diffidence.'

At the appointed hour, Philippus enters with the potion. One cannot but form to one's self on this occasion the encounter of their eyes, the resolution in those of the patient,

and the benevolence in the countenance of the physician. The hero raised himself in his bed, and, holding the letter in one hand, and the potion in the other, drank the medicine. It will exercise my friend's pencil and brain to place this action in its proper beauty. A prince observing the features of a suspected traitor, after having drunk the poison he offered him, is a circumstance so full of passion, that it will require the highest strength of his imagination to conceive it, much more to express it. But as painting is eloquence and poetry in mechanism, I shall raise his ideas, by reading with him the finest draughts of the passions concerned in this circumstance, from the most excellent poets and orators. The confidence, which Alexander assumes from the air of Philippus's face as he is reading his accusation, and the generous disdain which is to rise in the features of a falsely accused man, are principally to be regarded. In this particular he must heighten his thoughts, by reflecting, that, he is not drawing only an innocent man traduced, but a man zealously affected to his person and safety, full of resentment for being thought false. How shall we contrive to express the highest admiration, mingled with disdain? How shall we in strokes of a pencil say, what Philippus did to his prince on this occasion? Sir, my life never depended on yours more than it does now. Without knowing this secret, I prepared the potion, which you have taken as what concerned Philippus no less than Alexander; and there is nothing new in this adventure, but that it makes me still more admire the generosity and confidence of my master.' Alexander took him by the hand, and said, 'Philippus, I am confident you had rather I had any other way to have manifested the faith I have in you, than a case which so nearly concerns me and in gratitude I now assure you, I am anxious for the effect of your medicine, more for your sake than my own.'

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My painter is employed by a man of sense and wealth to furnish him a gallery; and I shall join with my friend in the designing part. It is the great use of pictures, to raise in our minds either agreeable ideas of our absent friends; or high

images of eminent personages. But the latter design is, methinks, carried on in a very improper way; for to fill a room full of battle-pieces, pompous histories of sieges, and a tall hero alone in a crowd of insignificant figures about him, is of no consequence to private men. But to place before our eyes great and illustrious men in those parts and circumstances of life, wherein their behaviour may have an effect upon our minds; as being such as we partake with them merely as they were men such as these, I say, may be just and useful ornaments of an elegant apartment. In this collection therefore that we are making, we will not have the battles, but the sentiments of Alexander. The affair we were just now speaking of has circumstances of the highest nature; and yet their grandeur has little to do with his fortune. If, by observing such a piece, as that of his taking a bowl of poison with so much magnanimity, a man, the next time he has a fit of the spleen, is less froward to his friend or his servants; thus far is some improvement.

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I have frequently thought, that if we had many draughts which were historical of certain passions, and had the true figure of the great men we see transported by them, it would be of the most solid advantage imaginable. To consider this mighty man on one occasion, administering to the wants of a poor soldier benumbed with cold, with the greatest humanity; at another, barbarously stabbing a faithful officer at one time, so generously chaste and virtuous as to give his captive Statira her liberty; at another, burning a town at the instigation of Thais. These changes in the same person are what would be more beneficial lessons of morality, than the several revolutions in a great man's fortune. There are but one or two in an age, to whom the pompous incidents of his life can be exemplary; but I, or any man, may be as sick, as good-natured, as compassionate, and as angry, as Alexander the Great. My purpose in all this chat is, that so excellent a furniture may not for the future have so romantic a turn, but allude to incidents which come within the fortunes of the ordinary race of men. I do not know but it is by the force of this senseless custom, that

people are drawn in postures they would not for half they are worth be surprised in. The unparalleled fierceness of some rural esquires drawn in red, or in armour, who never dreamed to destroy any thing above a fox, is a common and ordinary offence of this kind. But I shall give an account of our whole gallery on another occasion.

DEVOTION.

No. 211. THURSDAY, AUGUST 15, 1710. [STEELE.]

Nequeo monstrare, et sentio tantum.

Juv. Sat. vii. 56.

What I can fancy, but can ne'er express.

If there were no other consequences of it, but barely that human creatures on this day assemble themselves before their Creator, without regard to their usual employments, their minds at leisure from the cares of this life, and their bodies adorned with the best attire they can bestow upon them; I say, were this mere outward celebration of the Sabbath all that is expected from men, even that were a laudable distinction, and a purpose worthy the human nature. But when there is added to it the sublime pleasure of devotion, our being is exalted above itself; and he, who spends a seventh day in the contemplation of the next life, will not easily fall into the corruptions of this in the other six. They, who never admit thoughts of this kind into their imaginations, lose higher and sweeter satisfaction than can be raised by any other entertainment. The most illiterate man who is touched with devotion, and uses frequent exercises of it, contracts a certain greatness of mind, mingled with a noble simplicity, that raises him above those of the same condition ; and there is an indelible mark of goodness in those who sincerely possess it. It is hardly possible it should be otherwise; for the fervours of a pious mind will naturally contract such an

earnestness and attention towards a better being, as will make the ordinary passages of life go off with a becoming indifference. By this a man in the lowest condition will not appear mean, or in the most splendid fortune insolent.

As to all the intricacies and vicissitudes, under which men are ordinarily entangled with the utmost sorrow and passion, one who is devoted to heaven when he falls into such difficulties, is led by a clue through a labyrinth. As to this world, he does not pretend to skill in the mazes of it; but fixes his thoughts upon one certainty, that he shall soon be out of it. And we may ask very boldly, what can be a more sure consolation than to have an hope in death? When men are arrived at thinking of their very dissolution with pleasure, how few things are there that can be terrible to them! Certainly, nothing can be dreadful to such spirits, but what would make death terrible to them, falsehood towards man, or impiety towards heaven. To such as these, as there are certainly many such, the gratifications of innocent pleasures are doubled, even with reflections upon their imperfection. The disappointments which naturally attend the great promises we make ourselves in expected enjoyments, strike no damp upon such men, but only quicken their hopes of soon knowing joys, which are too pure to admit of allay or satiety.

It is thought, among the politer sort of mankind, an imperfection to want a relish of any of those things which refine our lives. This is the foundation of the acceptance which eloquence, music, and poetry make in the world; and I know not why devotion, considered merely as an exaltation of our happiness, should not at least be so far regarded as to be considered. It is possible, the very inquiry would lead men into such thoughts and gratifications, as they did not expect to meet with in this place. Many a good acquaintance has been lost from a general prepossession in his disfavour, and a severe aspect has often hid under it a very agreeable companion.

There are no distinguishing qualities among men to which there are not false pretenders; but though none is more pretended to than that of devotion, there are, perhaps, fewer