The ladies may be always sure of commanding that, answers I, but pray explain yourselves more particularly. For my part, says Thalestris, having formerly been happy in the embraces of Alexander the great, I could never fancy anything but a soldier ever since. Why our military men, says I, have been always famous for attacking and carrying all places before them, but pray tell me the happy person’s name, whom you have singled from the rest of his sex to honour with your affection? With the malicious world, continues she, he passes for a bully, but I call him my lovely charming Capt. Dawson; ’tis true, I am not altogether disagreeable to this cruel insensible; he likes the majesty of my person, my humour and wit well enough; but t’other morning he told me, over a porringer of burnt brandy, when people are apt to unbosom themselves, that he had an unconquerable aversion to red hair, and so I am come to see whether you have any relief for this misfortune, as you promise in your bills. This is no business of mine, says I to her, but my wife’s who’ll soon redress your grievances, and furnish you with a leaden comb and my Anti-Erythræan unguent, which after two or three applications will make you as fair or as brown as you desire. And having said so, address’d myself to her companion, and enquir’d of her what she came for? I am up to the ears in love, says Christiana, with a jolly smock-fac’d duchess’s chaplain lately arriv’d in these parts; I have already signify’d my passion to him, both after the antient and modern way, persecuted him with Latin and French billet-deux, for which I was always famous: but this stubborn Theologue tells me my face is too masculine for him, and particularly quarrels with the irregularity of my forehead and eyebrows. Those will easily be recftify’d by my wife, says I: and now, Madam, will you give me leave to ask you a civil question or two? a hundred, my dear seignior, answers she very obligingly. To be short then, says I, a certain French author, who has writ the memoirs of your life, has been pleas’d positively to assert, that your majesty went thro’ at least one half of the college of cardinals, and that two or three popes were suspected of being familiar with you. I wanted, answers she, no sort of consolation from those noble personages, while I liv’d at Rome; and to convince you how well I am satisfied in their abilities, by my good will, I would have to do with none but ecclesiasticks; for besides that they eat and drink plentifully, and by consequence want no vigour, they possess another no less commendable quality, and that is taciturnity. I applaud your judgment, replies I, for your churchmen are true feeders and thundering performers. No body knows that better than myself, says Christiana, and take my word for it, one robust well-chined priest is worth a hundred of your lean half starv’d captains. I’ll never hear the soldiery blasphem’d, says Thalestris, in a mighty passion, I tell thee, thou insignificant north country trollop, thou foolish affected grammarian-ridden she-pedant, that one soldier is better than a thousand of your stiff-rump’d parsons; and immediately saluted her with a discourteous reprimand a cross the mazzard. The blood of Gustavus Adolphus began to be rous’d in Christiana, and my glasses, globes, and crocodile and all, were infallibly going to rack between these two furious heroines, when my wife luckily stept in to put an end to the fray. In short the matter was amicable made up, and so they follow’d my spouse into her closet, where I’ll leave them.
Thus, gentlemen, you may perceive what sort of customers resort to me, I could tell you a hundred more stories to the same purpose, but why should I pretend to entertain persons of your worth with so mean and unworthy a subject as my self? therefore to diversify the scene, I will endeavour to divert you with some occurences of a more publick importance, which have happen’d in our Acherontic dominions since I writ to you last.
But before I proceed any farther I am to inform you, that we have a spacious noble room in the middle of Brandinopolis, where the virtuosos of former ages as well as of the present, use to resort and entertain one another with learned or facetious conversation, according as it happens. Of late we have had the same controversy debated among us, which so long employ’d monsieur Perault and the famous wits of France, I mean, whether the antients are preferable to the moderns in the learned arts and sciences. The question had been discuss’d one afternoon with a great deal of heat on both sides, when an honest merry gentleman and a new comer among us, whose name I have unluckily forgot, interpos’d in the dispute, and express’d himself to this effect. Gentlemen, says he, I think you may e’en drop this controversy, for I can make it appear, that little England alone affords a set of men at present, that much out-do any of the antients in whatever they pretend to. There’s honest Mr. Edmund Whiteaker, late of the admiralty office, that in the mystery of making up accounts out-does Archimedes; and my lord Puzzlechalk, who told his master’s money over a gridiron, understands numbers better than Archytas or Euclid. Mr. Burgess of Covent-Garden, and indeed most of the dissenting parsons, go infinitely beyond Tully and Demosthenes in point of eloquence; for those old fashion’d orators could only raise joy and sadness successively, whereas the latter so manage matters, that they can make their congregations laugh and weep both at once. The antients were forc’d to drudge and take pains to make themselves masters of any tongue before they pretended to write in it; but here’s your old friend Dr. Case by Ludgate, writ a system of anatomy in Latin, and does not understand a syllable of the language. As for musick you may talk till your heart akes of your Amphions and your Orpheus’s, that drew trees and stones after them by the irresistible force of their harmony; this is so far from being a miracle among us, that the vilest thrummers in England and Wales do it every wake and fair they go to: then as for the various perturbations of mind caus’d by the antient musick, we saw something more wonderful happen upon our own theatre since the late revolution, than antiquity can boast of; for when Harry Purcel’s famous winter song at the Opera of king Arthur, was sung at the play-house, half the gentlemen and ladies in the side boxes and pit got an ague by it, tho’ it was sung in the midst of the dog-days. Lastly, to conclude, for I am afraid I have trespass’d too much upon your patience, we infinitely exceed the antients in quickening of parts: Virgil, one of the topping wits of antiquity, was forc’d to retire out of the noise and hurry of Rome to his country Villa, and bestow’d some ten or twelve years in composing his Æneis: whereas Sir Richard Blackmore, who passes but for a sixth rate versifier among us, was able to write both his Arthurs in two or three years time, and that in the tumult and smoak of Coffee-houses, or in his coach as he was jolting it from one patient to another, amidst the vast multiplicity of his business too, which as the city bard frankly confesses, was never greater than then.
The gentleman delivered his ironies with so good a grace that he set all the company a laughing, and for that time put an end to the dispute. And now since I am upon the chapter of Sir Richard, you must know, that the young wits, inhabiting upon the banks of Phlegethon, have lately pelted his Arthurs with distichs; but I can only call to mind at present three of them. The two first reflect upon the poem’s genealogy, which was partly begot in a coffee-house, and partly in a coach.
Editus in plaustri strepitu, fumoque tabernæ,
Non aliter nasci debuit iste liber.
Qui potuit matrem Arthuri dixisse tabernam
e potest currum dicere, Rufe, patrem.
Sæpius in libro memoratur Garthius uno,
Quam levis Arthuro Maurus utroque tumens.
I do not wonder now at prince Arthur’s wonderful loquacity, says another, (for as I remember, when he and king Hoel met upon the road, he welcomes him with a simile of forty lines perpendicular) since he was born at a coffee house; nor at the rumbling of the verse, since one half of the book was written in a leathern vehicle; for we find, continues he, that what is bred in the bone, will never out of the flesh; and thus, ’tis no wonder, that according to the observation of a modern virtuoso, the Severn is so mischievous and cholerick a river, and so often ruins the country with sudden inundations, since it rises in Wales, and consequently participates sometimes of the nature of that hasty, iracund people among whom ’tis born. However, cries surly Ben, I must needs commend Sir Richard’s sagacity and politicks in taking care that his muse should be so openly deliver’d; for Epic poems, like the children of sovereign princes, ought to be born in publick.
The other day, as I was taking a solitary turn by myself, ’twas my fortune to meet with a leash of old-fashion’d thread-bare mortals, with very dejected looks, and in the best equipage of those worthy gentlemen, whom you may see every day between the hours of twelve and one, walking in the Middle-Temple and Grays-Inn walks, to get ’em a stomach to their no-dinners. At first I took them for a parcel of fiddlers, when the oldest of them undeceiv’d me, by addressing himself to me as follows. Sir, says he, my name is J. Hopkins, my two companions are the fam’d Sternhold and Wisdom, and understanding that you are lately arrived from England, I have presum’d to ask you a question: we have been inform’d some time ago, that two Hibernian bards, finding fault with our version and language, have endeavour’d to depose myself and my two brethren here out of all parish-churches, where we have reign’d most melodiously so long, and to substitute their own translation in the room of it; I must confess it vexes me to the heart to think that I must be ejected after an hundred years quiet possession and better, which, by the Common as well as Civil law, gives a man a just title, and resign my ecclesiastical dominions to two new fangled usurpers, whom I never injur’d in my days. Now, Sir, pray tell me how my affairs go in your world, and whether I have reputation enough still left me with the people, to make head against those unrighteous innovators? Why truly, Mr. Hopkins, says I to him, when these adversaries first appeared in the world, I was in some pain about you, the conspiracy against your crown and dignity being so speciously laid, that nothing less than an universal defection seem’d to threaten you. ’Tis true indeed, some few churches in and about London, where the people you know are govern’d by a spirit of novelty, have thrown you out, but by what advices I can receive, excepting some few revolters, the generality of the people seem to be heartily engaged in your interests, and as it always happens to other monarchs when they are able to surmount an insurrection form’d against them, I look upon your throne, since you have so happily broke the neck of this rebellion, to be settled upon a surer basis than ever. The Parish-clerks, sextons, and old women, all over the kingdom are in a particular manner devoted to your service, preserving a most entire and unshaken allegiance to you, and on my conscience would sooner part with all magna charta than one syllable of yours. You wonderfully revive my spirits, replies old Hopkins, to tell me such comfortable news, but pray, Sir, one word more with you; This new translation that has made such a noise in the world, is it so much superior to mine, as my enemies here would make me believe? Mr. Hopkins, says I, I flatter no man, ’tis not my way, therefore you must not take amiss what I am going to say to you. For my part I am of opinion, that king David is not oblig’d to any of you, but ought to cudgel you all round; for I can find no other difference between the Jewish monarch in his ancient collar of ekes and ayes, which you and your brethren there have bestow’d upon him, and in his new-fashion’d Irish dress, than there is between an old man of threescore with a long beard hanging down to his waste, and the same individual old man newly come out of a barber’s shop nicely shav’d and powder’d. ’Tis true, he looks somewhat gayer and youth-fuller, but has not a jot more vigour and ability.
I know you gentlemen of Will’s coffee-house, will be glad to hear some news of Mr. Dryden, I must tell you then, that we had the devil all of combustions and quarrels here in hell since that famous bard’s arrival among us. The Grecians, the Romans, the Italians, the Spaniards, the French, but especially the Dutch authors, have been upon his back; Homer was the first that attack’d him for justifying Almanzor’s idle rants and monstrous actions by the precedent of Achilles. The two poets, after a little squabbling, were without much difficulty perswaded to let their two heroes fight out the quarrel for them, but the nimble-heel’d Græcian soon got the whip-hand of the furious Almanzor, and made him beg pardon. Horace too grumbled a little in his gizzard at him for affirming Juvenal to be a better satirist than himself; but upon second thoughts thought it not worth his while to contest the point with him. Once it happen’d, that Mr. Bays came into our room when Petronius Arbiter was diverting us with a very fine nouvelle. Mons. Fontaine, Sir Philip Sidney, Mr. Waller, my late lord Rochester, with Sir Charles Sidley, compos’d part of this illustrious audience; when Mr. Dryden unluckily spoil’d all by asking the latter, what the facetious gentleman’s name was, that talk’d so agreeably? How, says Sir Charles Sidley, hadst thou the impudence, in the preface before thy English Juvenal, to say, that so soon as the pretended Belgrade supplement of Petronius’s fragments came into England, thou couldst tell upon reading but two lines of that edition, whether it was genuine or no; and here hast thou heard the noble author himself talk above an hour by the clock, and could not find him out? Upon this the old bard retired in some disorder; but what happened to him a day or two after was more mortifying.