"Let the toast pass,
Drink to the lass,
I warrant she'll prove an excuse for the glass!"
[287] A strain of martial music. "Turning your books to greaves, your ink to blood, your pens to lances; and your tongue divine to a loud trumpet, and a point of war" ("2 Henry IV.," act iv. sc. I).
The term was still current in Steele's day, as appears from the following extract, quoted by Mr. Dobson from Mackinnon's "History of the Coldstream Guards," ii. 332: "1717.—A party of drummers of the Guards were committed to the Marshalsea for beating a point of war before the Earl of Wexford's house on his acquittal of charges brought against him."
[288] "The children then reappear to complete a domestic interior which, at a time when wit had no higher employment than to laugh at the affections and moralities of home, could have arisen only to a fancy as pure as the heart that prompted it was loving and true" (Forster, "Historical and Biographical Essays," ii.: Steele).
[289] Generally styled "Thomas." But Sterne also calls him "Jack" in "Tristram Shandy," vol. i. chap. xiv. His tomb is still shown in Tilney churchyard, Norfolk. [Dobson.]
[No. 96. [Addison.][290]
From Thursday, Nov. 17, to Saturday, Nov. 19, 1709.
Is demum mihi vivere atque frui animâ videtur, qui aliquo negotio intentus, præclari facinoris, aut artis bonæ famam quærit.—Sallust, Bel. Cat. 2.
From my own Apartment, Nov. 17.
It has cost me very much care and thought to marshal and fix the people under their proper denominations, and to range them according to their respective characters. These my endeavours have been received with unexpected success in one kind, but neglected in another; for though I have many readers, I have but few converts. This must certainly proceed from a false opinion, that what I write is designed rather to amuse and entertain than convince and instruct. I entered upon my essays with a declaration, that I should consider mankind in quite another manner than they had hitherto been represented to the ordinary world; and asserted, that none but a useful life should be with me any life at all. But lest this doctrine should have made this small progress towards the conviction of mankind because it may appear to the unlearned light and whimsical, I must take leave to unfold the wisdom and antiquity of my first proposition in these my essays, to wit, that every worthless man is a dead man. This notion is as old as Pythagoras, in whose school it was a point of discipline, that if among the ἀκουστικοί, or probationers, there were any who grew weary of studying to be useful, and returned to an idle life, the rest were to regard them as dead; and upon their departing, to perform their obsequies, and raise them tombs, with inscriptions, to warn others of the like mortality, and quicken them to resolutions of refining their souls above that wretched state. It is upon a like supposition that young ladies at this very time in Roman Catholic countries are received into some nunneries with their coffins, and with the pomp of a formal funeral, to signify, that henceforth they are to be of no further use, and consequently dead. Nor was Pythagoras himself the first author of this symbol, with whom, and with the Hebrews, it was generally received. Much more might be offered in illustration of this doctrine from sacred authority, which I recommend to my reader's own reflection; who will easily recollect, from places which I do not think fit to quote here, the forcible manner of applying the words dead and living to men as they are good or bad.