FOOTNOTES:
[124] See Nos. 155, 160, and 178.
[125] Sacheverell's.
[126] The Moderator, which professed to discuss the arguments of both parties impartially, lasted from May to November 1710.
[127] No. 7 of the Examiner contained what purported to be a letter from a Swedish officer at Bender to his friend at Stockholm.
[No. 233. [Steele.]
From Tuesday, Oct. 3, to Thursday, Oct. 5, 1710.
----Sunt certa piacula, quæ te
Ter pure lecto poterunt recreare libello.
Hor., 1 Ep. i. 36.
From my own Apartment, Oct. 4.
When the mind has been perplexed with anxious cares and passions, the best method of bringing it to its usual state of tranquillity, is, as much as we possibly can, to turn our thoughts to the adversities of persons of higher consideration in virtue and merit than ourselves. By this means all the little incidents of our own lives, if they are unfortunate, seem to be the effect of justice upon our faults and indiscretions. When those whom we know to be excellent and deserving of a better fate are wretched, we cannot but resign ourselves, whom most of us know to merit a much worse state than that we are placed in. For such and many other occasions, there is one admirable relation which one might recommend for certain periods of one's life, to touch, comfort, and improve the heart of man. Tully says, somewhere, the pleasures of a husbandman are next to those of a philosopher. In like manner one may say (for methinks they bear the same proportion one to another), the pleasures of humanity are next to those of devotion. In both these latter satisfactions, there is a certain humiliation which exalts the soul above its ordinary state. At the same time that it lessens our value of ourselves, it enlarges our estimation of others. The history I am going to speak of, is that of Joseph in Holy Writ, which is related with such majestic simplicity, that all the parts of it strike us with strong touches of nature and compassion, and he must be a stranger to both who can read it with attention, and not be overwhelmed with the vicissitudes of joy and sorrow. I hope it will not be a profanation to tell it one's own way here, that they who may be unthinking enough to be more frequently readers of such papers as this than of Sacred Writ, may be advertised, that the greatest pleasures the imagination can be entertained with are to be found there, and that even the style of the Scriptures is more than human.
Joseph, a beloved child of Israel, became invidious to his elder brethren, for no other reason but his superior beauty and excellence of body and mind, insomuch that they could not bear his growing virtue, and let him live. They therefore conspire his death; but nature pleaded so strongly for him in the heart of one of them, that by his persuasion they determined rather to bury him in a pit, than be his immediate executioners with their own hands. When thus much was obtained for him, their minds still softened towards him, and they took the opportunity of some passengers to sell him into Egypt. Israel was persuaded by the artifice of his sons, that the youth was torn to pieces by wild beasts: but Joseph was sold to slavery, and still exposed to new misfortunes, from the same cause as before, his beauty and his virtue. By a false accusation he was committed to prison, but in process of time delivered from it, in consideration of his wisdom and knowledge, and made the governor of Pharaoh's house. In this elevation of his fortune, his brothers were sent into Egypt to buy necessaries of life in a famine. As soon as they are brought into his presence, he beholds, but he beholds with compassion, the men who had sold him to slavery approaching him with awe and reverence. While he was looking over his brethren, he takes a resolution to indulge himself in the pleasure of stirring their and his own affections, by keeping himself concealed, and examining into the circumstances of their family. For this end, with an air of severity, as a watchful minister to Pharaoh, he accuses them as spies, who are come into Egypt with designs against the State. This led them into the account which he wanted of them, the condition of their ancient father and little brother, whom they had left behind them. When he had learned that his brother was living, he demands the bringing him to Egypt, as a proof of their veracity.
But it would be a vain and empty endeavour to attempt laying this excellent representation of the passions of man in the same colours as they appear in the Sacred Writ in any other manner, or almost any other words, than those made use of in the page itself. I am obliged therefore to turn my designed narration rather into a comment upon the several parts of that beautiful and passionate scene. When Joseph expects to see Benjamin, how natural and how forcible is the reflection, "This affliction is come upon us in that we saw the anguish of our brother's soul without pity!" How moving must it be to Joseph to hear Reuben accuse the rest, that they would not hear what he pleaded in behalf of his innocence and distress! He turns from them and weeps, but commands his passion so far as to give orders for binding one of them in the presence of the rest, while he at leisure observed their different sentiments and concern in their gesture and countenance. When Benjamin is demanded in bondage for stealing the cup, with what force and what resignation does Judah address his brother!
"In what words shall I speak to my lord; with what confidence can I say anything? Our guilt is but too apparent; we submit to our fate. We are my lord's servants, both we and he also with whom the cup is found." When that is not accepted, how pathetically does he recapitulate the whole story! And approaching nearer to Joseph, delivers himself as follows; which, if we fix our thoughts upon the relation between the pleader and the judge, it is impossible to read without tears:
"Sir, let me intrude so far upon you, even in the high condition in which you are, and the miserable one in which you see me and my brethren, to inform you of the circumstances of us unhappy men that prostrate ourselves before you. When we were first examined by you, you inquired (for what reason my lord inquired we know not), but you inquired whether we had not a father or a brother? We then acquainted you, that we had a father, an old man, who had a child of his old age, and had buried another son whom he had by the same woman. You were pleased to command us to bring the child he had remaining down to us: we did so, and he has forfeited his liberty. But my father said to us, 'You know that my wife bore me two sons: one of them was torn in pieces: if mischief befall this also, it will bring my grey hairs with sorrow to the grave. Accept, therefore, oh my lord! me for your bondman, and let the lad return with his brethren, that I may not see the evil that shall come on my father.' Here Joseph's passion grew too great for further disguise, and he reveals himself with exclamations of transport and tenderness.
"After their recovery from their first astonishment, his brethren were seized with fear for the injuries they had done him; but how generously does he keep them in countenance, and make an apology for them: 'Be not angry with yourselves for selling me hither; call it not so, but think Providence sent me before you to preserve life.'"
It would be endless to go through all the beauties of this sacred narrative; but any who shall read it, at an hour when he is disengaged from all other regard or interests than what arise from it, will feel the alternate passion of a father, a brother, and a son, so warm in him, that they will incline him to exert himself (in such of those characters as happen to be his) much above the ordinary course of his life.
[No. 234. [Steele.]
From Thursday, Oct. 5, to Saturday, Oct. 7, 1710.
From my own Apartment, Oct. 6.
I have reason to believe that certain of my contemporaries have made use of an art I some time ago professed, of being often designedly dull;[128] and for that reason shall not exert myself when I see them lazy. He that has so much to struggle with as the man who pretends to censure others, must keep up his fire for an onset, and may be allowed to carry his arms a little carelessly upon an ordinary march. This paper therefore shall be taken up by my correspondents, two of which have sent me the two following plain, but sensible and honest letters, upon subjects no less important than those of education and devotion:
"Sir,[129]
"I am an old man, retired from all acquaintance with the town, but what I have from your papers (not the worst entertainment of my solitude); yet being still a well-wisher to my country and the commonwealth of learning (a qua, confiteor, nullam ætatis meæ partem abhorruisse), and hoping the plain phrase in writing that was current in my younger days would have lasted for my time, I was startled at the picture of modern politeness transmitted by your ingenious correspondent, and grieved to see our sterling English language fallen into the hands of clippers and coiners. That mutilated epistle, consisting of hipps, reps, and such-like enormous curtailings, was a mortifying spectacle, but with the reserve of comfort to find this, and other abuses of our mother-tongue, so pathetically complained of, and to the proper person for redressing them, the Censor of Great Britain.
"He had before represented the deplorable ignorance that for several years past has reigned amongst our English writers, the great depravity of our taste, and continual corruption of our style: but, sir, before you give yourself the trouble of prescribing remedies for these distempers (which you own will require the greatest care and application), give me leave (having long had my eye upon these mischiefs, and thoughts exercised about them) to mention what I humbly conceive to be the cause of them, and in your friend Horace's words, "Quo fonte derivata clades In patriam populumque fluxit."[130]
"I take our corrupt ways of writing to proceed from the mistakes and wrong measures in our common methods of education, which I always looked upon as one of our national grievances, and a singularity that renders us no less than our situation,
——Penitus toto divisos orbe Britannos.[131]
This puts me upon consulting the most celebrated critics on that subject, to compare our practice with their precepts, and find where it was that we came short or went wide.
"But after all, I found our case required something more than these doctors had directed, and the principal defect of our English discipline to lie in the initiatory part, which, although it needs the greatest care and skill, is usually left to the conduct of those blind guides, viz., Chance and Ignorance.
"I shall trouble you with but a single instance, pursuant to what your sagacious friend has said, that he could furnish you with a catalogue of English books, that would cost you a hundred pounds at first hand, wherein you could not find ten lines together of common grammar; which is a necessary consequence of our mismanagement in that province.
"For can anything be more absurd than our way of proceeding in this part of literature? To push tender wits into the intricate mazes of grammar, and a Latin grammar? To learn an unknown art by an unknown tongue? To carry them a dark roundabout way to let them in at a back-door? Whereas by teaching them first the grammar of their mother-tongue (so easy to be learned), their advance to the grammars of Latin and Greek would be gradual and easy; but our precipitate way of hurrying them over such a gulf, before we have built them a bridge to it, is a shock to their weak understandings, which they seldom, or very late, recover. In the meantime we wrong nature, and slander infants, who want neither capacity nor will to learn, till we put them upon service beyond their strength, and then indeed we baulk them.
"The liberal arts and sciences are all beautiful as the Graces, nor has Grammar (the severe mother of all) so frightful a face of her own; it is the vizard put upon it that scares children. She is made to speak hard words that to them sound like conjuring. Let her talk intelligibly, and they will listen to her.
"In this, I think, as on other accounts, we show ourselves true Britons, always overlooking our natural advantages. It has been the practice of wisest nations to learn their own language by stated rules, to avoid the confusion that would follow from leaving it to vulgar use. Our English tongue, says a learned man, is the most determinate in its construction, and reducible to the fewest rules: whatever language has less grammar in it, is not intelligible; and whatever has more, all that it has more is superfluous; for which reasons he would have it made the foundation of learning Latin, and all other languages.
"To speak and write without absurdity the language of one's country, is commendable in persons of all stations, and to some indispensably necessary; and to this purpose, I would recommend above all things the having a grammar of our mother-tongue first taught in our schools, which would facilitate our youths learning their Latin and Greek grammars, with spare time for arithmetic, astronomy, cosmography, history, &c., that would make them pass the spring of their life with profit and pleasure, that is now miserably spent in grammatical perplexities.
"But here, methinks, I see the reader smile, and ready to ask me (as the lawyer did sexton Diego on his bequeathing rich legacies to the poor of the parish,[132] Where are these mighty sums to be raised?), Where is there such a grammar to be had? I will not answer, as he did, Even where your Worship pleases. No, it is our good fortune to have such a grammar, with notes, now in the press, and to be published next term.
"I hear it is a chargeable work, and wish the publisher to have customers of all that have need of such a book; yet fancy that he cannot be much a sufferer, if it is only bought by all that have more need for it than they think they have.
"A certain author brought a poem to Mr. Cowley, for his perusal and judgment of the performance, which he demanded at the next visit with a poetaster's assurance; and Mr. Cowley, with his usual modesty, desired that he would be pleased to look a little to the grammar of it. 'To the grammar of it! What do you mean, sir? Would you send me to school again?' 'Why, Mr. H——, would it do you any harm?'
"This put me on considering how this voyage of literature may be made with more safety and profit, expedition and delight; and at last, for completing so good a service, to request your directions in so deplorable a case; hoping that, as you have had compassion on our overgrown coxcombs in concerns of less consequence, you will exert your charity towards innocents, and vouchsafe to be guardian to the children and youth of Great Britain in this important affair of education, wherein mistakes and wrong measures have so often occasioned their aversion to books, that had otherwise proved the chief ornament and pleasure of their life. I am with sincerest respect,
"Sir,
"Your, &c."
St. Cl[eme]nts, Oct. 5.
"Mr. Bickerstaff,
"I observe, as the season begins to grow cold, so does people's devotion; insomuch that, instead of filling the churches, that united zeal might keep one warm there, one is left to freeze in almost bare walls, by those who in hot weather are troublesome the contrary way. This, sir, needs a regulation that none but you can give to it, by causing those who absent themselves on account of weather only this winter time, to pay the apothecary's bills occasioned by coughs, catarrhs, and other distempers contracted by sitting in empty seats. Therefore to you I apply myself for redress, having gotten such a cold on Sunday was sevennight, that has brought me almost to your worship's age from sixty within less than a fortnight. I am,
"Your Worship's in all obedience,
"W. E."