I have been always wonderfully delighted with fables, allegories, and the like inventions, which the politest and the best instructors of mankind have always made use of: they take off from the severity of instruction, and enforce it at the same time that they conceal it. The supposing Love to be conceived immediately after the birth of Beauty, the parentage of Plenty, and the inconsistency of this passion with itself so naturally derived to it, are great master-strokes in this fable; and if they fell into good hands, might furnish out a more pleasing canto than any in Spenser.
From my own Apartment, Nov. 4.
I came home this evening in a very pensive mood; and to divert me, took up a volume of Shakespeare, where I chanced to cast my eye upon a part in the tragedy of "Richard the Third," which filled my mind with a very agreeable horror. It was the scene in which that bold but wicked prince is represented as sleeping in his tent the night before the battle in which he fell. The poet takes that occasion to set before him in a vision a terrible assembly of apparitions, the ghosts of all those innocent persons whom he is said to have murdered. Prince Edward, Henry VI., the Duke of Clarence, Rivers, Gray, and Vaughan, Lord Hastings, the two young princes, sons to Edward IV., his own wife, and the Duke of Buckingham rise up in their blood before him, beginning their speeches with that dreadful salutation, "Let me sit heavy on thy soul to-morrow;" and concluding with that dismal sentence, "Despair and die." This inspires the tyrant with a dream of his past guilt, and of the approaching vengeance. He anticipates the fatal day of Bosworth, fancies himself dismounted, weltering in his own blood; and in the agonies of despair (before he is thoroughly awake), starts up with the following speech:
Give me another horse—Bind up my wounds!
Have mercy, Jesu—Soft, I did but dream.
O coward Conscience! How dost thou afflict me?
The lights burn blue! Is it not dead midnight?
Cold fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh;
What do I fear? Myself! &c.[268]
A scene written with so great strength of imagination indisposed me from further reading, and threw me into a deep contemplation. I began to reflect upon the different ends of good and bad kings; and as this was the birthday of our late renowned monarch,[269] I could not forbear thinking on the departure of that excellent prince, whose life was crowned with glory, and his death with peace. I let my mind go so far into this thought, as to imagine to myself, what might have been the vision of his departing slumbers. He might have seen confederate kings applauding him in different languages, slaves that had been bound in fetters lifting up their hands and blessing him, and the persecuted in their several forms of worship imploring comfort on his last moments. The reflection upon this excellent prince's mortality had been a very melancholy entertainment to me, had I not been relieved by the consideration of the glorious reign which succeeds it.
We now see as great a virtue as ever was on the British throne, surrounded with all the beauty of success. Our nation may not only boast of a long series of great, regular, and well-laid designs, but also of triumphs and victories; while we have the happiness to see our sovereign exercise that true policy which tends to make a kingdom great and happy, and at the same time enjoy the good and glorious effect of it.
FOOTNOTES:
[265] This was done by Joannes des Peyrareda, a gentleman of Aquitaine.
[266] Mapheus Vegius, of Lodi (1407-1458), added a thirteenth book to the "Æneid," with an account of the marriage of Æneas and Lavinia.
[267] The remainder of this article from Will's is by Addison.