whole town; and it is your duty to remind them of the obligation. I am, SIR, Your humble Servant, TOM POTTLE.' 'Mr. SPECTATOR, I AM a person who was long immured in a college, read much, saw little; so that I knew no more of the world than what a lecture or a view of the map taught me. By this means I improved in my study, but became unpleasant in conversation. By conversing generally with the dead, I grew almost unfit for the society of the living; so by a long confinement I contracted an ungainly aversion to conversation, and ever discoursed with pain to myself, and little entertainment to others. At last I was in some measure made sensible of my failing, and the mortification of never being spoke to, or speaking, unless the discourse ran upon books, put me upon forcing myself amongst men. I immediately affected the politest company, by the frequent use of which I hoped to wear off the rust I had contracted; but by an uncouth imitation of men used to act in public, I got no further than to discover I had a mind to appear a finer thing than I really was. 'Such I was, and such was my condition, when I became an ardent lover and passionate admirer of the beauteous Belinda: then it was that I really began to improve. This passion changed all my fears and diffidences in my general behaviour to the sole concern of pleasing her. I had not now to study the action of a gentleman, but love possessing all my thoughts, made me truly be the thing I had a mind to appear. My thoughts grew free and generous, and the ambition to be agreeable to her I admired, produced in my carriage a faint similitude of that disengaged manner of my Belinda. The way we are in at present is that she sees my passion, and sees I at present forbear speaking of it through prudential regards. This respect to her she returns with much civility, and makes my value for her as little a misfortune to me as is consistent with discretion. She sings very charmingly, and is readier to do so at my request, because she knows I love her she will dance with me rather than another for the same reason. My fortune must alter from what it is before I can speak my heart to her, and her circumstances are not considerable enough to make up for the narrowness of mine. But I write to you now only to give you the character of Belinda as a woman that has address enough to demonstrate a gratitude to her lover, without giving him hopes of success in his passion. Belinda has from a great wit, governed by as great prudence, and both adorned with innocence, the happiness of always being ready to discover her real thoughts. She has many of us, who now are her admirers; but her treatment of us is so just and proportioned to our merit towards her, and what we are in ourselves, that I protest to you I have neither jealousy nor hatred toward my rivals. Such is her goodness, and the acknowledgment of every man who admires her, that he thinks he ought to believe she will take him who best deserves her. I will not say that this peace among us is not owing to self-love, which prompts each to think himself the best deserver: I think there is something uncommon and worthy of imitation in this lady's character. If you will please to print my letter, you will oblige the little fraternity of happy rivals, and in a more particular manner, SIR, Your most humble Servant, T. No. 363. WILL. CYMON.' Saturday, April 26, 1712 -Crudelis ubique [ADDISON. Luctus, ubique pavor, et plurima mortis imago. MILT -VIRG., Æn. ii. 368. ILTON has shown a wonderful art in describing that variety of passions which arise in our first parents upon the breach of the commandment that had been given them. We see them gradually passing from the triumph of their guilt through remorse, shame, despair, contrition, prayer, and hope, to a perfect and complete repentAt the end of the tenth book they are represented as prostrating themselves upon the ground, and watering the earth with their tears: to which the poet joins this beautiful circumstance, that they offered up their penitential prayers on the very place where their Judge appeared to them when He pronounced their sentence: ance. -They, forthwith to the place Repairing where He judged them, prostrate fell Humbly their faults, and pardon begged, with tears 1 There is a beauty of the same kind in a tragedy 1 Paradise Lost,' x. 1098-1102. 2 This paragraph was added in the 1713 collected edition. of Sophocles,' where Edipus, after having put out his own eyes, instead of breaking his neck from the palace battlements (which furnishes so elegant an entertainment for our English audience), desires that he may be conducted to Mount Citharon, in order to end his life in that very place where he was exposed in his infancy, and where he should then have died, had the will of his parents been executed. As the author never fails to give a poetical turn to his sentiments, he describes in the beginning of this book the acceptance which these their prayers met with, in a short allegory formed upon that beautiful passage in Holy Writ, 'And another angel came and stood at the altar, having a golden censer; and there was given unto him much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne. And the smoke of the incense, which came with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before God.'2 -To heaven their prayers Flew up, nor missed the way, by envious winds We have the same thought expressed a second time in the intercession of the Messiah, which is conceived in very emphatic sentiments and expressions.* Among the poetical parts of Scripture which Milton has so finely wrought into this part of his narration, I must not omit that wherein Ezekiel, speaking of the angels who appeared to him in a 2 Revelation viii. 3, 4. 1 Edipus,' 1451-1455. 4 Ibid., xi. 22–25. vision, adds that 'every one had four faces,' and that 'their whole bodies, and their backs, and their hands, and their wings were full of eyes round about.'1 -The cohort bright Of watchful cherubim; four faces each The assembling of all the angels of heaven to hear the solemn decree passed upon man, is represented in very lively ideas. The Almighty is here described as remembering mercy in the midst of judgment, and commanding Michael to deliver his message in the mildest terms, lest the spirit of man, which was already broken with the sense of his guilt and misery, should fail before him. -Yet, lest they faint At the sad sentence rigorously urged (For I behold them softened, and with tears 5 The conference of Adam and Eve is full of moving sentiments. Upon their going abroad after the melancholy night which they had passed together, they discover the lion and the eagle pursuing each of them their prey towards the eastern gates of Paradise. There is a double beauty in this incident, not only as it presents great and just omens, which are always agreeable in poetry, but as it expresses that enmity which was now produced in the animal creation. The poet, to show the like changes in nature, as well as to grace his fable with a noble prodigy, represents the sun in an eclipse. This 1 Ezekiel i. 6; x. 12. 2 Paradise Lost,' xi. 127-130. 4 Ibid., xi. 108–111. 6 Ibid., xi. 184–190. |