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his master in explaining. But there is no mercy even toward a wrong interpretation of his meaning the sufferings of the scholar's body are to rectify the mistakes of his mind.

fore he has innocently suffered, and is debased into a dereliction of mind for being what it is no guilt. to be, a plain man. I would not here be supposed! to have said, that our learned men of either robe who have been whipped at school, are not still. men of noble and liberal minds; but I am sure they would have been much more so than they are, had they never suffered that infamy.

I am confident that no boy, who will not be allured to letters without blows, will ever be brought to anything with them. A great or good mind must necessarily be the worse for such indignities; and it is a sad change, to lose of its virtue But though there is so little care, as I have obfor the improvement of its knowledge. No one served, taken, or observation made of the natural who has gone through what they call a great strain of men, it is no small comfort to me, as a school, but must remember to have seen children Spectator, that there is any right value set upon of excellent and ingenuous natures (as has after-the bona indoles of other animals; as appears by ward appeared in their manhood): I say no man the following advertisement handed about the has passed through this way of education but county of Lincoln, and subscribed by Enos Thomust have seen an ingenuous creature, expiring mas, a person whom I have not the honor to know, with shame-with pale looks, beseeching sorrow, but suppose to be profoundly learned in horseand silent tears, throw up its honest eyes, and flesh:kneel on its tender knees to an inexorable blockhead to be forgiven the false quantity of a word in making a Latin verse. The child is punished, and the next day he commits a like crime, and so a third with the same consequence. I would fain ask any reasonable man, whether this lad, in the simplicity of his native innocence, full of shame and capable of any impression from that grace of soul, was not fitter for any purpose in this life, than after that spark of virtue is extinguished in him, though he is able to write twenty verses in an evening.

Seneca says, after his exalted way of talking, "As the immortal gods never learnt any virtue, though they are indued with all that is good; so there are some men who have so natural a propensity to what they should follow, that they learn it almost as soon as they hear it." Plants and vegetables are cultivated into the production of finer fruits than they would yield without that care; and yet we cannot entertain hopes of producing a tender, conscious spirit into acts of virtue, without the same methods as are used to cut timber, or give new shape to a piece of stone.

It is wholly to this dreadful practice, that we may attribute a certain hardiness and ferocity which some men, though liberally educated, carry about them in all their behavior. To be bred like a gentleman, and punished like a malefactor, must, as we see it does, produce that illiberal sauciness which we see sometimes in men of letters.

"A chesnut horse called Caesar, bred by James Darcy, Esquire, at Sedbury, near Richmond, in the county of York; his grandam was his old royal mare, and got by Blunderbuss, which was got by Helmsley Turk, and he got by Mr. Courant's Arabian, which got Mr. Minshul's Jew'sTrump. Mr. Cæsar sold him to a nobleman (coming five years old, when he had but one sweat) for three hundred guineas. A guinea a leap and trial, and a shilling the man. "ENOS 'HOMAS." T..

No. 158.] FRIDAY, AUGUST 31, 1711. -Nos hæc novimus esse nihil.-MARTIAL, Xiii, 2. We know these things to be mere trifles. Our of a firm regard to impartiality, I print these: letters, let them make for me or not. "MR. SPECTATOR,

"I have observed through the whole course of your rhapsodies (as you once very well called them) you are very industrious to overthrow all that many your superiors, who have gone before you, have made their rule of writing. I am now between fifty and sixty, and had the honor to be well with the first men of taste and gallantry in the joyous reign of Charles the Second. We then had, I humbly presume, as good understandings among us as any now can pretend to. As for yourself, Mr. Spectator, you seem with the utmost arrogance to undermine the very fundamentals

The Spartan boy who suffered the fox (which he had stolen and hid under his coat) to eat into his bowels, I dare say had not half the wit or pet-upon which we conducted ourselves. It is monulance which we learn at great schools among us: but the glorious sense of honor, or rather fear of shame, which he demonstrated in that action, was worth all the learning in the world without it.

It is, methinks, a very melanchol consideration, that a little negligence can soil us, but great industry is necessary to imp ove us; the most excellent natures are soon depreciated, but evil tempers are long before they ar: exalted into good habits. To help this by punishments, is the same thing as killing a man to cure him of a distemper; when he comes to suffer punishment in that one circumstance, he is bro ight below the existence of a rational creature, anc is in the state of a brute that moves only by the admonition of stripes. But since this custom of educating by the lash is suffered by the gentry of Great Britain, I would prevail only that honest heavy lads may be dismissed from slavery sooner than they are at present, and not whipped on to their fourteenth or fifteenth year, whether they expect any progress from them or not. Let the child's capacity be forthwith examined, and he sent to some mechanic way of life, without respect to his birth, if nature designed him for nothing higher: let him go be

strous to set up for a man of wit, and yet deny that honor in a woman is anything else but peevishness, that inclination is "not" the best rule of life, or virtue and vice anything else but health and disease. We had no more to do but to put a lady into a good humor, and all we could wish followed of course. Then, again, your Tully, and your discourses of another life, are the very bane of mirth and good humor. Prithee do not value thyself on thy reason at that exorbitant rate, and the dignity of human nature; take my word for it, a setting-dog has as good reason as any man in England. Had you (as by your diurnals one would think you do) set up for being in vogue in town, you should have fallen in with the bent of passion and appetite; your songs had then been in every pretty mouth in England, and your little distiches had been the maxims of the fair and the witty to walk by: but, alas, Sir, what can you hope for from entertaining people with what must needs make them like themselves worse than they did before they read you? Had you made it your

*Spect. in folio. Altered in the 8vo. of 1712, when "not" was left out.

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"I am a woman's man, and read with a very fine lady your paper, wherein you fall upon us whom you envy: what do you think I did? You must know she was dressing: I read the Spectator to her, and she laughed at the places where she thought I was touched; I threw away your moral, and taking up her girdle, cried out,

so

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Give me but what this ribbon bound,
Take all the rest the "sun

goes round.

She smiled, Sir, and said you were a pedant; say of ree what you please, read Seneca and quote him against me if you think fit,

T.

"I am, Sir, your humble servant."

-Omnem, quæ nunc obducta tuenti
Mortales hebetat visus tibi, et humida circum
Caligat, nubem eripiam-
VIRG. Æn., ii, 004.

The cloud, which intercepting the clear light,
Hangs o'er thy eyes, and biunts thy mortal sight,
I will remove

"The other day as we were several of us at a tea-table, and according to custom and your own advice had the Spectator read among us. It was that paper wherein you are pleased to treat with great freedom that character which you call a woman's man. We gave up all the kinds you have mentioned, except those who, you say, are our constant visitants. I was upon the occasion commissioned by the company to write to you and tell you, that we shall not part with the men we have at present, until the men of sense think fit to relieve them, and give us their company in their No. 159.] SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 1711. stead.' You cannot imagine but that we love to hear reason and good sense better than the ribaldry we are at present entertained with, but we must have company, and among us very inconsiderable is better than none at all. We are made for the cements of society, and came into the world to create relations among mankind; and solitude is an unnatural being to us. If the men of good understanding would forget a little of their severity, they would find their account in it; and their wisdom would have a pleasure in it, to which they are now strangers. It is natural among us, when men have a true relish of our company and our value, to say everything with a better grace;ted word for word as follows: and there is without designing it something ornamental in what men utter before women, which is lost or neglected in conversations of men only. Give me leave to tell you, Sir, it would do you no great harm if you yourself came a little more into our company it would certainly cure you of a certain positive and determining manner in which you talk sometimes. In hopes of your amend-profound contemplation on the vanity of human ment,

"I am, Sir, your gentle reader"

66 MR. SPECTATOR,

WHEN I was at Grand Cairo, I picked up several oriental manuscripts, which I have still by me. Among others I met with one entitled, The Visions of Mirza, which I have read over with great pleasure. I intend to give it to the public when I have no other entertainment for them; and shall begin with the first vision, which I have transla

"On the fifth day of the moon, which according to the custom of my forefathers I always keep holy, after having washed myself, and offered up my morning devotions, I ascended the high hills of Bagdad, in order to pass the rest of the day in meditation and prayer. As I was here airing my self on the tops of the mountains, I fell into a

riety of tunes that were inexpressibly melodious, and altogether different from anything I had ever heard. They put me in mind of those heavenly airs that are played to the departed souls of good men upon their first arrival in Paradise, to wear out the impressions of the last agonies, and qualify them for the pleasures of that happy place. My heart melted away in secret raptures.

life; and passing from one thought to another, Surely,' said I, man is but a shadow, and life a dream. While I was thus musing, I cast my eyes toward the summit of a rock that was not "Your professed regard to the fair sex may, per- far from me, where I discovered one in the habit haps, make them value your admonitions when of a shepherd, with a little musical instrument in they will not those of other men. I desire you, his hand. As I looked upon him he applied it to Sir, to repeat some lectures upon subjects which his lips, and began to play upon it. The sound you have now and then in a cursory manner only of it was exceeding sweet, and wrought into a vajust touched. I would have a Spectator wholly written upon good breeding; and after you have asserted that time and place are to be very much considered in all our actions, it will be proper to dwell upon behavior at church. On Sunday last, a grave and reverend man preached at our church. There was something particular in his accent, but without any manner of affectation. This particularity a set of gigglers thought the most necessary thing to be taken notice of in his whole discourse, and made it an occasion of mirth during the whole time of sermon. You should see one of them ready to burst behind a fan, another pointing to a companion in another seat, and a fourth with an arch composure, as if she would if possible stifle her laughter. There were many gentlemen who looked at them steadfastly, but this they took for ogling and admiring them. There was one of the merry ones in particular, that found out but just then that she had but five fingers, for she fell a reckoning the pretty pieces of ivory over and

"I had been often told that the rock before me was the haunt of genius; and that several had been entertained with music who had passed by it, but never heard that the musician had before made himself visible. When he had raised my thoughts by those transporting airs which he played, to taste the pleasures of his conversation, as I looked upon him like one astonished, he beckoned to me, and by the waving of his hand directed me to approach the place where he sat. I drew near with that reverence which is due to a

* World.

From Waller's verses on a lady's girdle.

superior nature; and as my heart was entirely subdued by the captivating strains I had heard, I fell down at his feet and wept. The genius smiled upon me with a look of compassion and affability that familiarized him to my imagination, and at once dispelled all the fears and apprehensions with which I approached him. He lifted me from the ground, and taking me by the hand, Mirza,' said he, 'I have heard thee in thy soliloquíes;

follow me.'

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not seem to lie in their way, and which they might have escaped had they not been thus forced upon them.

"The genius seeing me indulge myself on this melancholy prospect, told me I had dwelt long enough upon it. Take thine eyes off the bridge, said he, and tell me if thou yet seest anything thou dost not comprehend.' Upon looking up, What mean,' said I, those great flights of birds that are perpetually hovering about the bridge, and settling upon it from time to time? I see vultures, harpies, ravens, cormorants, and among many other feathered creatures several little winged boys, that perch in great numbers upon the middle arches.' These,' said the genius, are Envy, Avarice, Superstition, Despair, Love, with the like cares and passions that infest human life.'

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"He then led me to the highest pinnacle of the rock, and placing me on the top of it-Cast thy eyes eastward,' said he, and tell me what thou seest.' 'I see,' said I, a huge valley, and a prodigious tide of water rolling through it. The valley that thou seest,' said he, is the Vale of Misery, and the tide of water that thou seest is part of the great tide of eternity. What is the "I here fetched a deep sigh. Alas,' said I, reason,' said I, that the tide I see rises out of a 'man was made in vain! how is he given away thick mist at one end, and again loses itself in a to misery and mortality! tortured in life, and swalthick mist at the other? What thou seest,' said lowed up in death!' The genius, being moved he, is that portion of eternity which is called with compassion toward me, bid me quit so untime, measured out by the sun, and reaching from comfortable a prospect. Look no more,' said he, the beginning of the world to its consummation.' on man in the first stage of his existence, in his 'Examine now,' said he, this sea that is bounded setting out for eternity; but cast thine eye on that with darkness at both ends, and tell me what thou thick mist into which the tide bears the several discoverest in it.' I see a bridge,' said I, 'stand-generations of mortals that fall into it.' I directed ing in the midst of the tide.'-The bridge thou my sight as I was ordered, and (whether or no the seest,' said he, 'is human life; consider it atten- good genius strengthened it with any supernatutively. Upon a more leisurely survey of it, Iral force, or dissipated part of the mist that was found that it consisted of threescore and ten entire arches, with several broken arches, which, added to those that were entire, made up the number about a hundred. As I was counting the arches, the genius told me that this bridge consisted at first of a thousand arches: but that a great flood swept away the rest, and left the bridge in the ruinous condition I now beheld it. But tell me farther,' said he, what thou discoverest on it.'-'I see multitudes of people passing over it,' said I, and a black cloud hanging on each end of it.' As I looked more attentively, I saw several of the passengers dropping through the bridge into the great tide that flowed underneath it: and, upon farther examination, perceived there were innumerable trap-doors that lay concealed in the bridge, which the passengers no sooner trod upon, but they fell through them into the tide, and immediately disappeared. These hidden pitfalls were set very thick at the entrance of the bridge, so that throngs of people no sooner broke through the cloud, but many of them fell into them. They grew thinner toward the middle, but multiplied and lay closer together toward the end of the arches that were entire.

"There were indeed some persons, but their number was very small, that continued a kind of hobbling march on the broken arches, but fell through one after another, being quite tired and spent with so long a walk.

"I passed some time in the contemplation of this wonderful structure, and the great variety of objects which it presented. My heart was filled with a deep melancholy to see several dropping unexpectedly in the midst of mirth and jollity, and catching at everything that stood by them to save themselves. Some were looking up toward heaven in a thoughtful posture, and in the midst of a speculation stumbled and fell out of sight. Multitudes were very busy in the pursuit of bubbles that glittered in their eyes and danced before them; but often when they thought themselves within the reach of them, their footing failed, and down they sank. In this confusion of objects, I observed some with scimitars in their hands, and others with urinals, who ran to and fro upon the bridge, thrusting several persons on trap-doors which did

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before too thick for the eye to penetrate) I saw the valley opening at the farther end, and spreading forth into an immense ocean, that had a huge rock of adamant running through the midst of it, and dividing it into two equal parts. The clouds still rested on one half of it, insomuch that I could discover nothing in it: but the other appeared to me a vast ocean planted with innumerable islands, that were covered with fruits and flowers, and interwoven with a thousand little shining seas that ran among them. I could see persons dressed in glorious habits with garlands upon their heads, passing among the trees, lying down by the sides of fountains, or resting on beds of flowers; and could hear a confused harmony of singing-birds, falling waters, human voices, and musical instruments. Gladness grew in me upon the discovery of so delightful a scene. I wished for the wings of an eagle, that I might fly away to those happy seats: but the genius told me there was no passage to them, except through the gates of death that I saw opening every moment upon the bridge. The islands,' said he, that lie so fresh and green before thee, and with which the whole face of the ocean appears spotted as far as thou canst see, are more in number than the sands on the sea-shore; there are myriads of islands behind those which thou here discoverest, reaching farther than thine eye, or even thine imagination can extend itself. These are the mansions of good men after death, who, according to the degree and kinds of virtue in which they excelled, are distributed among these several islands; which abound with pleasures of different kinds and degrees, suitable to the relishes and perfections of those who are settled in them; every island is a paradise accommodated to its respective inhabitants. Are not these, O Mirza, habitations worth contending for? Does life appear miserable, that gives thee opportunities of earning such a reward? Is death to be feared, that will convey thee to so happy an exist ence? Think not man was made in vain, who has such an eternity reserved for him.' I gazed with inexpressible pleasure on these happy islands. At length, said I, show me now, I beseech thee, the secrets that lie hid under those dark clouds which cover the ocean on the other side of the

rock of adamant. The genius making me no answer, I turned about to address myself to him a second time, but I found that he had left me: I then turned again to the vision which I had been so long contemplating; but instead of the rolling tide, the arched bridge, and the happy islands, I saw nothing but the long hollow valley of Bagdad, with oxen, sheep, and camels, grazing upon the sides of it." C.

The End of the First Vision of Mirza.

No. 160.] MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 1711.
-Cui mens divinior, atque os
Magna sonaturum des nominis hujus honorem.
HOR. 1 Sat. iv, 43.

On him confer the Poet's Sacred name, Whose lofty voice proclaims the heavenly flame. THERE is no character more frequently given to a writer, than that of being a genius. I have heard many a little sonnetteer called a fine genius. There is not a heroic scribbler in the nation, that has not his admirers who think him a great genius; and as for your smatterers in tragedy, there is scarce a man among them who is not cried up by one or other for a prodigious genius.

My design in this paper is to consider what is properly a great genius, and throw some thoughts together on so uncommon a subject.

Among great geniuses, those few draw the admiration of all the world upon them, and stand up as the prodigies of mankind, who by the mere strength of natural parts, and without any assist ance of art or learning, have produced works that were the delight of their own times, and the wonder of posterity. There appears something nobly wild and extravagant in these great natural geniuses, that is infinitely more beautiful than all turn and polishing of what the French call a bel esprit, by which they would express a genius re⚫fined by conversation, reflection, and the reading of the most polite authors. The greatest genius which runs through the arts and sciences, takes a kind of tincture from them, and falls unavoidably

into imitation.

Many of these great natural geniuses that were never disciplined and broken by rules of art, are to be found among the ancients, and in particular among those of the more eastern parts of the world. Homer has innumerable flights that Virgil was not able to reach; and in the Old Testament we find several passages more elevated and sublime than any in Homer. At the same time that we allow a greater and more daring genius to the ancients, we must own that the greatest of them very much failed in, or, if you will, that they were much above, the nicety and correctness of the moderns. In their similitudes and allusions, provided there was a likeness, they did not much trouble themselves about the decency of the comparison: thus Solomon resembles the nose of his beloved to the tower of Lebanon, which looketh toward Damascns; as the coming of a thief in the night, is a similitude of the same kind in the New Testament. It would be endless to make collections of this nature; Homer illustrates one of his heroes encompassed with the enemy, by an ass in a field of corn that has his sides bélabored by all the boys of the village without stirring a foot for it; and another of them tossing to and fro in his bed and burning with resentment, to a piece of flesh broiled on the coals. This particular failure in the ancients opens a large field of raillery to the little wits, who can laugh at an indecency, but not relish the sublime in these sorts of writing. The present emperor of Persia, conformably to

this eastern way of thinking, amidst a great many pompous titles, denominates himself "the sun of glory," and "the nutmeg of delight." In short, to cut off all caviling against the ancients, and particularly those of the warmer climates, who had most heat and life in their imaginations, we are to consider that the rule of observing what the French call the bienséance in an allusion, has been found out of later years, and in the colder regions of the world; where we could make some amends' for our want of force and spirit, by a scrupulous nicety and exactness in our compositions. Our countryman, Shakspeare, was a remarkable instance of this first kind of great geniuses.

I cannot quit this head without observing that Pindar was a great genius of the first class, who was hurried on by a natural fire and impetuosity to vast conceptions of things and noble sallies of imagination. At the same time, can anything be more ridiculous than for men of a sober and moderate fancy to imitate this poet's way of writing, in those monstrous compositions which go among us under the name of Pindarics? When I see people copying works, which, as Horace has represented them, are singular in their kind, and inimitable; when I see men following irregularities by rule, and by the little tricks of art straining after the most unbounded flights of nature, I cannot but apply to them that passage in Terence:

-Incerta hæc si tu postules

Ratione certa facere, nihilo plus agas,
Quam si des operam, ut cum ratione insanias.
EUN., act 1, sc. 1.

the same time, as to think of reducing these uncertain things You may as well pretend to be mad and in your senses at to any certainty by reason.

In short, a modern Pindaric writer, compared with Pindar, is like a sister among the Camisars* compared with Virgil's Sibyl: there is the distortion, grimace, and outward figure, but nothing of that divine impulse which raises the mind above itself, and makes the sounds more than human.

There is another kind of great geniuses which I shall place in a second class, not as I think them inferior to the first, but only for distinction's sake, as they are of a different kind. The second class of great geniuses are those that have formed themselves by rules, and submitted the greatness of their natural talents to the corrections and restraints of art. Such among the Greeks were Plato and Aristotle; among the Romans, Virgil and Tully; among the English, Milton and Sir Francis Bacon.

The genius in both these classes of authors may be equally great, but shows itself after a different manner. In the first, it is like a rich soil in a happy climate, that produces a whole wilderness of noble plants rising in a thousand beautiful landscapes without any certain order or regularity. In the other it is the same rich soil under the same happy climate, that has been laid out in walks and parterres, and cut into shape and beauty by the skill of the gardener.

The great danger in the latter kind of geniuses is, lest they cramp their own abilities too much by imitation, and form themselves altogether upon models, without giving the full play to their own

More commonly known by the name of the French Prophets, a set of enthusiasts originally of the Cevennes in France, who came into England about the year 1707, and had

at first a considerable number of votaries. A fuller account of the rise and progress of this strange sect may be gained from two pamphlets: one in French, entitled "Le Theatre sacre de Cevennes, ou Recit de diverses Merveilles nouvelle

ment operées dans cette Partie de la Province de Languedoc. plucked from the Burning; exemplified in the unparalleled

Lond., 1707, 12mo." The other in English, viz. "A Brand

case of Samuel Keimer, etc., London, 1718, 12mo.”

natural parts. An imitation of the best authors is not to compare with a good original; and I believe we may observe that very few writers make au extraordinary figure in the world, who have not something in their way of thinking or expressing themselves, that is peculiar to them, and entirely

their own.

It is odd, to consider what great geniuses are sometimes thrown away upon trifles.

"I once saw a shepherd," says a famous Italian author, "who used to divert himself in his solitudes with tossing up eggs and catching them again without breaking them: in which he had arrived to so great a degree of perfection, that he would keep up four at a time for several minutes together playing in the air, and falling into his hauds by turns. I think," says the author, "I never saw a greater severity than in the man's face; for by his wonderful perseverance and application, he had contracted the seriousness and gravity of a privy-counselor; and I could not but reflect with myself, that the same assiduity and attention, had they been rightly applied, might have made him a greater mathematician than Archimedes."

No. 161.]

breaking one another's heads in order to make some impression on their mistress' hearts. I observed a lusty young fellow, who had the misfortune of a broken pate; but what considerably added to the anguish of the wound, was his overhearing an old man who shook his head, and said, That he questioned now if Black Kate would marry him these three years.' I was diverted from a farther observation of these combatants by a foot-ball match, which was on the other side of the green: where Tom Short behaved himself so well, that most people seemed to agree, it was impossible that he should remain a bachelor until the next wake.' Having played many a match myself, I could have looked longer on this sport, had I not observed a country girl, who was posted on an eminence at some distance from me, and was making so many odd grimaces, and writhing and distorting her whole body in so strange a manner, as made me very desirous to know the meaning of it. Upon my coming up to her, I found that she was overlooking a ring of wrestlers, and that her sweetheart, a person of small stature, was contending with a huge brawny fellow, who twirled him about, and shook the little man so violently, that by a secret sympathy of hearts it produced all those agitations in the person of his mistress,

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 1711. who, I dare say, like Celia in Shakspeare on the

Ipse dies agitat festos, fususque per herbam,
Ignis ubi in medio et socii cratera coronant,
Te libans, Lenæe, vocat; pecorisque magistris
Velocis jaculi certamina ponit in ulmo,
Corporaque agresti nudat prædura palæstra.
Hanc olim veteres vitam coluere Sabini,
Hanc Remus et frater. Sic fortis Etruria crevit,
Scilicet et rerum facta est pulcherrima Roma.

VIRG. Georg., ii, 527.

Himself, in rustic pomp, on holydays,
To rural pow'rs a just oblation pays;
And on the green his careless limbs displays:
The hearth is in the midst: the herdsmen, round

The cheerful fire, provoke his health in goblets crown'd.
He calls on Bacchus, and propounds the prize,
The groom his fellow-groom at buts defics,
And bends his bow, and levels with his eyes:
Or, stript for wrestling, smears his limbs with oil,
And watches with a trip his foe to foil.
Such was the life the frugal Sabines led;
So Remus and his brother king were bred:
From whom th' austere Etrurian virtue rose;
And this rude life our homely fathers chose;
Old Rome from such a race deriv'd her birth,
The seat of empire, and the conquer'd earth.-DRYDEN.

I AM glad that my late going into the country
has increased the number of my correspondents,
one of whom sends me the following letter:
"SIR,

same occasion, could have wished herself invisible to catch the strong fellow by the leg.'* The 'squire of the parish treats the whole company every year with a hogshead of ale; and proposes a beaver hat as a recompense to him who gives most falls. This has raised such a spirit of emulation in the youth of the place, that some of them have rendered themselves very expert at this exercise! and I was often surprised to see a fellow's heels fly up, by a trip which was given him so smartly that I could scarcely discern it. I found that the old wrestlers seldom entered the ring until some one was grown formidable by having thrown two or three of his opponents; but kept themselves as it were a reserved body to defend the hat, which is always hung up by the person who gets it in one of the most conspicuous parts of the house, and looked upon by the whole family as redounding much more to their honor than a coat of arms. There was a fellow who was so busy in regulating all the ceremonies, and seemed to carry such an air of importance in his looks, that I could not help inquiring who he was, and was immediately answered, That he did not value himself upon nothing, for that he and his ancestors had won so "Though you are pleased to retire from us so many hats, that his parlor looked like a habersoon into the city, I hope you will not think the dasher's shop.' However, this thirst of glory in affairs of the country altogether unworthy of your them all was the reason that no one man stood inspection for the future. I had the honor of see-lord of the ring' for above three falls while I was ing your short face at Sir Roger de Coverley's, and have ever since thought your person aud writings both extraordinary. Had you stayed there a few days longer, you would have seen a country wake, which you know in most parts of England is the eve-feast of the dedication of our churches. I was last week at one of these assemblies which was held in a neighboring parish; where I found their green covered with a promiscuous multitude of all ages and both sexes, who esteem one another more or less the following part of the year, according as they distinguish them selves at this time. The whole company were in their holiday clothes, and divided into several parties, all of them endeavoring to show themselves in those exercises wherein the excelled, and to gain the approbation of the lookers-on.

"I found a ring of cudgel players, who were

* "Would," Spect, in folio.

among them.

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The young maids who were not lookers-on at these exercises, were themselves engaged in some diversion; and upon my asking a farmer's son of my own parish what he was gazing at with so much attention, he told me, That he was seeing Betty Welch,' whom I knew to be his sweetheart, pitch a bar.'

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In short, I found the men endeavored to show the women they were no cowards, and that the whole company strove to recommend themselves to each other, by making it appear that they were all in a perfect state of health, and fit to undergo any fatigues of bodily labor.

66

Your judgment upon this method of love and gallantry, as it is at present practiced among us in the country, will very much oblige, Sir, yours," etc.

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"As You Like it," act i, sc. 6.

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