Essays and Tales

Sixth Paper

 
Humano capiti cervicem pictor equinam
Jungere si velit, et varias inducere plumas,
Undique collatis membris, ut turpiter atrum
Desinat in piscem mulier formosa superne;
Spectatum admissi risum teneatis, amici?
Credite, Pisones, isti tabulæ, fore librum
Persimilem, cujus, velut ægri somnia, vanæ
Fingentur species.
 

Hor., Ars Poet. 1.

 
If in a picture, Piso, you should see
A handsome woman with a fish’s tail,
Or a man’s head upon a horse’s neck,
Or limbs of beasts, of the most different kinds,
Cover’d with feathers of all sorts of birds,—
Would you not laugh, and think the painter mad?
Trust me, that book is as ridiculous
Whose incoherent style, like sick men’s dreams,
Varies all shapes, and mixes all extremes.
 

Roscommon.

It is very hard for the mind to disengage itself from a subject in which it has been long employed.  The thoughts will be rising of themselves from time to time, though we give them no encouragement: as the tossings and fluctuations of the sea continue several hours after the winds are laid.

It is to this that I impute my last night’s dream or vision, which formed into one continued allegory the several schemes of wit, whether false, mixed, or true, that have been the subject of my late papers.

Methought I was transported into a country that was filled with prodigies and enchantments, governed by the goddess of Falsehood, and entitled the Region of False Wit.  There was nothing in the fields, the woods, and the rivers, that appeared natural.  Several of the trees blossomed in leaf-gold, some of them produced bone-lace, and some of them precious stones.  The fountains bubbled in an opera tune, and were filled with stags, wild bears, and mermaids, that lived among the waters; at the same time that dolphins and several kinds of fish played upon the banks, or took their pastime in the meadows.  The birds had many of them golden beaks, and human voices.  The flowers perfumed the air with smells of incense, ambergris, and pulvillios; and were so interwoven with one another, that they grew up in pieces of embroidery.  The winds were filled with sighs and messages of distant lovers.  As I was walking to and fro in this enchanted wilderness, I could not forbear breaking out into soliloquies upon the several wonders which lay before me, when, to my great surprise, I found there were artificial echoes in every walk, that, by repetitions of certain words which I spoke, agreed with me or contradicted me in everything I said.  In the midst of my conversation with these invisible companions, I discovered in the centre of a very dark grove a monstrous fabric built after the Gothic manner, and covered with innumerable devices in that barbarous kind of sculpture.  I immediately went up to it, and found it to be a kind of heathen temple consecrated to the god of Dulness.  Upon my entrance I saw the deity of the place, dressed in the habit of a monk, with a book in one hand and a rattle in the other.  Upon his right hand was Industry, with a lamp burning before her; and on his left, Caprice, with a monkey sitting on her shoulder.  Before his feet there stood an altar of a very odd make, which, as I afterwards found, was shaped in that manner to comply with the inscription that surrounded it.  Upon the altar there lay several offerings of axes, wings, and eggs, cut in paper, and inscribed with verses.  The temple was filled with votaries, who applied themselves to different diversions, as their fancies directed them.  In one part of it I saw a regiment of anagrams, who were continually in motion, turning to the right or to the left, facing about, doubling their ranks, shifting their stations, and throwing themselves into all the figures and counter-marches of the most changeable and perplexed exercise.

Not far from these was the body of acrostics, made up of very disproportioned persons.  It was disposed into three columns, the officers planting themselves in a line on the left hand of each column.  The officers were all of them at least six feet high, and made three rows of very proper men; but the common soldiers, who filled up the spaces between the officers, were such dwarfs, cripples, and scarecrows, that one could hardly look upon them without laughing.  There were behind the acrostics two or three files of chronograms, which differed only from the former as their officers were equipped, like the figure of Time, with an hour-glass in one hand, and a scythe in the other, and took their posts promiscuously among the private men whom they commanded.

In the body of the temple, and before the very face of the deity, methought I saw the phantom of Tryphiodorus, the lipogrammatist, engaged in a ball with four-and-twenty persons, who pursued him by turns through all the intricacies and labyrinths of a country dance, without being able to overtake him.

Observing several to be very busy at the western end of the temple, I inquired into what they were doing, and found there was in that quarter the great magazine of rebuses.  These were several things of the most different natures tied up in bundles, and thrown upon one another in heaps like fagots.  You might behold an anchor, a night-rail, and a hobby-horse bound up together.  One of the workmen, seeing me very much surprised, told me there was an infinite deal of wit in several of those bundles, and that he would explain them to me if I pleased; I thanked him for his civility, but told him I was in very great haste at that time.  As I was going out of the temple, I observed in one corner of it a cluster of men and women laughing very heartily, and diverting themselves at a game of crambo.  I heard several double rhymes as I passed by them, which raised a great deal of mirth.

Not far from these was another set of merry people engaged at a diversion, in which the whole jest was to mistake one person for another.  To give occasion for these ludicrous mistakes, they were divided into pairs, every pair being covered from head to foot with the same kind of dress, though perhaps there was not the least resemblance in their faces.  By this means an old man was sometimes mistaken for a boy, a woman for a man, and a blackamoor for an European, which very often produced great peals of laughter.  These I guessed to be a party of puns.  But being very desirous to get out of this world of magic, which had almost turned my brain, I left the temple and crossed over the fields that lay about it with all the speed I could make.  I was not gone far before I heard the sound of trumpets and alarms, which seemed to proclaim the march of an enemy: and, as I afterwards found, was in reality what I apprehended it.  There appeared at a great distance a very shining light, and in the midst of it a person of a most beautiful aspect; her name was Truth.  On her right hand there marched a male deity, who bore several quivers on his shoulders, and grasped several arrows in his hand; his name was Wit.  The approach of these two enemies filled all the territories of False Wit with an unspeakable consternation, insomuch that the goddess of those regions appeared in person upon her frontiers, with the several inferior deities and the different bodies of forces which I had before seen in the temple, who were now drawn up in array, and prepared to give their foes a warm reception.  As the march of the enemy was very slow, it gave time to the several inhabitants who bordered upon the regions of Falsehood to draw their forces into a body, with a design to stand upon their guard as neuters, and attend the issue of the combat.

I must here inform my reader that the frontiers of the enchanted region, which I have before described, were inhabited by the species of Mixed Wit, who made a very odd appearance when they were mustered together in an army.  There were men whose bodies were stuck full of darts, and women whose eyes were burning-glasses; men that had hearts of fire, and women that had breasts of snow.  It would be endless to describe several monsters of the like nature that composed this great army, which immediately fell asunder, and divided itself into two parts, the one half throwing themselves behind the banners of Truth, and the others behind those of Falsehood.

The goddess of Falsehood was of a gigantic stature, and advanced some paces before the front of the army; but as the dazzling light which flowed from Truth began to shine upon her, she faded insensibly; insomuch that in a little space she looked rather like a huge phantom than a real substance.  At length, as the goddess of Truth approached still nearer to her, she fell away entirely, and vanished amidst the brightness of her presence; so that there did not remain the least trace or impression of her figure in the place where she had been seen.

As at the rising of the sun the constellations grow thin, and the stars go out one after another, till the whole hemisphere is extinguished; such was the vanishing of the goddess, and not only of the goddess herself, but of the whole army that attended her, which sympathised with their leader, and shrunk into nothing, in proportion as the goddess disappeared.  At the same time the whole temple sunk, the fish betook themselves to the streams, and the wild beasts to the woods, the fountains recovered their murmurs, the birds their voices, the trees their leaves, the flowers their scents, and the whole face of nature its true and genuine appearance.  Though I still continued asleep, I fancied myself, as it were, awakened out of a dream, when I saw this region of prodigies restored to woods and rivers, fields and meadows.

Upon the removal of that wild scene of wonders, which had very much disturbed my imagination, I took a full survey of the persons of Wit and Truth; for indeed it was impossible to look upon the first without seeing the other at the same time.  There was behind them a strong compact body of figures.  The genius of Heroic Poetry appeared with a sword in her hand, and a laurel on her head.  Tragedy was crowned with cypress, and covered with robes dipped in blood.   Satire had smiles in her look, and a dagger under her garment.  Rhetoric was known by her thunderbolt, and Comedy by her mask.  After several other figures, Epigram marched up in the rear, who had been posted there at the beginning of the expedition, that he might not revolt to the enemy, whom he was suspected to favour in his heart.  I was very much awed and delighted with the appearance of the god of Wit; there was something so amiable, and yet so piercing in his looks, as inspired me at once with love and terror.  As I was gazing on him, to my unspeakable joy, he took a quiver of arrows from his shoulder, in order to make me a present of it; but as I was reaching out my hand to receive it of him, I knocked it against a chair, and by that means awaked.

FRIENDSHIP

 
Nos duo turba sumus.
 

Ovid, Met. i. 355.

 
We two are a multitude.
 

One would think that the larger the company is, in which we are engaged, the greater variety of thoughts and subjects would be started in discourse; but instead of this, we find that conversation is never so much straitened and confined as in numerous assemblies.  When a multitude meet together upon any subject of discourse, their debates are taken up chiefly with forms and general positions; nay, if we come into a more contracted assembly of men and women, the talk generally runs upon the weather, fashions, news, and the like public topics.  In proportion as conversation gets into clubs and knots of friends, it descends into particulars, and grows more free and communicative: but the most open, instructive, and unreserved discourse is that which passes between two persons who are familiar and intimate friends.  On these occasions, a man gives a loose to every passion and every thought that is uppermost, discovers his most retired opinions of persons and things, tries the beauty and strength of his sentiments, and exposes his whole soul to the examination of his friend.

Tully was the first who observed that friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and dividing of our grief; a thought in which he hath been followed by all the essayists upon friendship that have written since his time.  Sir Francis Bacon has finely described other advantages, or, as he calls them, fruits of friendship; and, indeed, there is no subject of morality which has been better handled and more exhausted than this.  Among the several fine things which have been spoken of it, I shall beg leave to quote some out of a very ancient author, whose book would be regarded by our modern wits as one of the most shining tracts of morality that is extant, if it appeared under the name of a Confucius, or of any celebrated Grecian philosopher; I mean the little apocryphal treatise entitled The Wisdom of the Son of Sirach.  How finely has he described the art of making friends by an obliging and affable behaviour; and laid down that precept, which a late excellent author has delivered as his own, That we should have many well-wishers, but few friends.  “Sweet language will multiply friends; and a fair-speaking tongue will increase kind greetings.  Be in peace with many, nevertheless have but one counsellor of a thousand.”  With what prudence does he caution us in the choice of our friends!  And with what strokes of nature, I could almost say of humour, has he described the behaviour of a treacherous and self-interested friend!  “If thou wouldest get a friend, prove him first, and be not hasty to credit him: for some man is a friend for his own occasion, and will not abide in the day of thy trouble.  And there is a friend who, being turned to enmity and strife, will discover thy reproach.”  Again, “Some friend is a companion at the table, and will not continue in the day of thy affliction: but in thy prosperity he will be as thyself, and will be bold over thy servants.  If thou be brought low, he will be against thee, and hide himself from thy face.”  What can be more strong and pointed than the following verse?—“Separate thyself from thine enemies, and take heed of thy friends.”  In the next words he particularises one of those fruits of friendship which is described at length by the two famous authors above-mentioned, and falls into a general eulogium of friendship, which is very just as well as very sublime.  “A faithful friend is a strong defence; and he that hath found such an one hath found a treasure.  Nothing doth countervail a faithful friend, and his excellency is unvaluable.  A faithful friend is the medicine of life; and they that fear the Lord shall find him.  Whose feareth the Lord shall direct his friendship aright; for as he is, so shall his neighbour, that is his friend, be also.”  I do not remember to have met with any saying that has pleased me more than that of a friend’s being the medicine of life, to express the efficacy of friendship in healing the pains and anguish which naturally cleave to our existence in this world; and am wonderfully pleased with the turn in the last sentence, that a virtuous man shall as a blessing meet with a friend who is as virtuous as himself.  There is another saying in the same author, which would have been very much admired in a heathen writer: “Forsake not an old friend, for the new is not comparable to him: a new friend is as new wine; when it is old thou shalt drink it with pleasure.”  With what strength of allusion and force of thought has he described the breaches and violations of friendship!—“Whoso casteth a stone at the birds, frayeth them away; and he that upbraideth his friend, breaketh friendship.  Though thou drawest a sword at a friend, yet despair not, for there may be a returning to favour.  If thou hast opened thy mouth against thy friend, fear not, for there may be a reconciliation: except for upbraiding, or pride, or disclosing of secrets, or a treacherous wound; for, for these things every friend will depart.”  We may observe in this, and several other precepts in this author, those little familiar instances and illustrations which are so much admired in the moral writings of Horace and Epictetus.  There are very beautiful instances of this nature in the following passages, which are likewise written upon the same subject: “Whose discovereth secrets, loseth his credit, and shall never find a friend to his mind.  Love thy friend, and be faithful unto him; but if thou bewrayeth his secrets, follow no more after him: for as a man hath destroyed his enemy, so hast thou lost the love of thy friend; as one that letteth a bird go out of his hand, so hast thou let thy friend go, and shall not get him again: follow after him no more, for he is too far off; he is as a roe escaped out of the snare.  As for a wound it may be bound up, and after reviling there may be reconciliation; but he that bewrayeth secrets, is without hope.”

Among the several qualifications of a good friend, this wise man has very justly singled out constancy and faithfulness as the principal: to these, others have added virtue, knowledge, discretion, equality in age and fortune, and, as Cicero calls it, Morum comitas, “a pleasantness of temper.”  If I were to give my opinion upon such an exhausted subject, I should join to these other qualifications a certain equability or evenness of behaviour.  A man often contracts a friendship with one whom perhaps he does not find out till after a year’s conversation; when on a sudden some latent ill-humour breaks out upon him, which he never discovered or suspected at his first entering into an intimacy with him.  There are several persons who in some certain periods of their lives are inexpressibly agreeable, and in others as odious and detestable.  Martial has given us a very pretty picture of one of this species, in the following epigram:

 
Difficilis, facilis, jucundus, acerbus es idem,
Nec tecum possum vivere, nec sine te.
 
 
Ep. xii. 47.
 
 
In all thy humours, whether grave or mellow,
Thou’rt such a touchy, testy, pleasant fellow;
Hast so much wit, and mirth, and spleen about thee,
There is no living with thee, nor without thee.
 

It is very unlucky for a man to be entangled in a friendship with one who, by these changes and vicissitudes of humour, is sometimes amiable and sometimes odious: and as most men are at some times in admirable frame and disposition of mind, it should be one of the greatest tasks of wisdom to keep ourselves well when we are so, and never to go out of that which is the agreeable part of our character.

CHEVY-CHASE

Part One

 
Interdum vulgus rectum videt.
 

Hor., Ep. ii. 1, 63.

Sometimes the vulgar see and judge aright.  When I travelled I took a particular delight in hearing the songs and fables that are come from father to son, and are most in vogue among the common people of the countries through which I passed; for it is impossible that anything should be universally tasted and approved by a multitude, though they are only the rabble of a nation, which hath not in it some peculiar aptness to please and gratify the mind of man.  Human nature is the same in all reasonable creatures; and whatever falls in with it will meet with admirers amongst readers of all qualities and conditions.  Molière, as we are told by Monsieur Boileau, used to read all his comedies to an old woman who was his housekeeper as she sat with him at her work by the chimney-corner, and could foretell the success of his play in the theatre from the reception it met at his fireside; for he tells us the audience always followed the old woman, and never failed to laugh in the same place.

I know nothing which more shows the essential and inherent perfection of simplicity of thought, above that which I call the Gothic manner in writing, than this, that the first pleases all kinds of palates, and the latter only such as have formed to themselves a wrong artificial taste upon little fanciful authors and writers of epigram.  Homer, Virgil, or Milton, so far as the language of their poems is understood, will please a reader of plain common sense, who would neither relish nor comprehend an epigram of Martial, or a poem of Cowley; so, on the contrary, an ordinary song or ballad that is the delight of the common people cannot fail to please all such readers as are not unqualified for the entertainment by their affectation of ignorance; and the reason is plain, because the same paintings of nature which recommend it to the most ordinary reader will appear beautiful to the most refined.

The old song of “Chevy-Chase” is the favourite ballad of the common people of England, and Ben Jonson used to say he had rather have been the author of it than of all his works.  Sir Philip Sidney, in his discourse of Poetry, speaks of it in the following words: “I never heard the old song of Percy and Douglas that I found not my heart more moved than with a trumpet; and yet it is sung by some blind crowder with no rougher voice than rude style, which being so evil apparelled in the dust and cobweb of that uncivil age, what would it work trimmed in the gorgeous eloquence of Pindar?”  For my own part, I am so professed an admirer of this antiquated song, that I shall give my reader a critique upon it without any further apology for so doing.

The greatest modern critics have laid it down as a rule that an heroic poem should be founded upon some important precept of morality adapted to the constitution of the country in which the poet writes.  Homer and Virgil have formed their plans in this view.  As Greece was a collection of many governments, who suffered very much among themselves, and gave the Persian emperor, who was their common enemy, many advantages over them by their mutual jealousies and animosities, Homer, in order to establish among them an union which was so necessary for their safety, grounds his poem upon the discords of the several Grecian princes who were engaged in a confederacy against an Asiatic prince, and the several advantages which the enemy gained by such discords.  At the time the poem we are now treating of was written, the dissensions of the barons, who were then so many petty princes, ran very high, whether they quarrelled among themselves or with their neighbours, and produced unspeakable calamities to the country.  The poet, to deter men from such unnatural contentions, describes a bloody battle and dreadful scene of death, occasioned by the mutual feuds which reigned in the families of an English and Scotch nobleman.  That he designed this for the instruction of his poem we may learn from his four last lines, in which, after the example of the modern tragedians, he draws from it a precept for the benefit of his readers:

 
God save the king, and bless the land
   In plenty, joy, and peace;
And grant henceforth that foul debate
   ’Twixt noblemen may cease.
 

The next point observed by the greatest heroic poets hath been to celebrate persons and actions which do honour to their country: thus Virgil’s hero was the founder of Rome; Homer’s a prince of Greece; and for this reason Valerius Flaccus and Statius, who were both Romans, might be justly derided for having chosen the expedition of the Golden Fleece and the Wars of Thebes for the subjects of their epic writings.

The poet before us has not only found out a hero in his own country, but raises the reputation of it by several beautiful incidents.  The English are the first who take the field and the last who quit it.  The English bring only fifteen hundred to the battle, the Scotch two thousand.  The English keep the field with fifty-three, the Scotch retire with fifty-five; all the rest on each side being slain in battle.  But the most remarkable circumstance of this kind is the different manner in which the Scotch and English kings receive the news of this fight, and of the great men’s deaths who commanded in it:

 
This news was brought to Edinburgh,
   Where Scotland’s king did reign,
That brave Earl Douglas suddenly
   Was with an arrow slain.
 
 
“O heavy news!” King James did say,
   “Scotland can witness be,
I have not any captain more
   Of such account as he.”
 
 
Like tidings to King Henry came,
   Within as short a space,
That Percy of Northumberland
   Was slain in Chevy-Chase.
 
 
“Now God be with him,” said our king,
   “Sith ’twill no better be,
I trust I have within my realm
   Five hundred as good as he.
 
 
“Yet shall not Scot nor Scotland say
   But I will vengeance take,
And be revenged on them all
   For brave Lord Percy’s sake.”
 
 
This vow full well the king performed
   After on Humble-down,
In one day fifty knights were slain,
   With lords of great renown.
 
 
And of the rest of small account
   Did many thousands die, &c.
 

At the same time that our poet shows a laudable partiality to his countrymen, he represents the Scots after a manner not unbecoming so bold and brave a people:

 
Earl Douglas on a milk-white steed,
   Most like a baron bold,
Rode foremost of the company,
   Whose armour shone like gold.
 

His sentiments and actions are every way suitable to a hero.  “One of us two,” says he, “must die: I am an earl as well as yourself, so that you can have no pretence for refusing the combat; however,” says he, “it is pity, and indeed would be a sin, that so many innocent men should perish for our sakes: rather let you and I end our quarrel in single fight:”

 
“Ere thus I will out-braved be,
   One of us two shall die;
I know thee well, an earl thou art,
   Lord Percy, so am I.
 
 
“But trust me, Percy, pity it were
   And great offence to kill
Any of these our harmless men,
   For they have done no ill.
 
 
“Let thou and I the battle try,
   And set our men aside.”
“Accurst be he,” Lord Percy said,
   “By whom this is deny’d.”
 

When these brave men had distinguished themselves in the battle and in single combat with each other, in the midst of a generous parley, full of heroic sentiments, the Scotch earl falls, and with his dying words encourages his men to revenge his death, representing to them, as the most bitter circumstance of it, that his rival saw him fall:

 
With that there came an arrow keen
   Out of an English bow,
Which struck Earl Douglas to the heart
   A deep and deadly blow.
 
 
Who never spoke more words than these,
   “Fight on, my merry men all,
For why, my life is at an end,
   Lord Percy sees my fall.”
 

Merry men, in the language of those times, is no more than a cheerful word for companions and fellow-soldiers.  A passage in the eleventh book of Virgil’s “Æneid” is very much to be admired, where Camilla, in her last agonies, instead of weeping over the wound she had received, as one might have expected from a warrior of her sex, considers only, like the hero of whom we are now speaking, how the battle should be continued after her death:

 
Tum sic exspirans, &c.
 

Virg., Æn. xi. 820.

 
A gath’ring mist o’erclouds her cheerful eyes;
And from her cheeks the rosy colour flies,
Then turns to her, whom of her female train
She trusted most, and thus she speaks with pain:
“Acca, ’tis past! he swims before my sight,
Inexorable Death, and claims his right.
Bear my last words to Turnus; fly with speed
And bid him timely to my charge succeed;
Repel the Trojans, and the town relieve:
Farewell.”
 

Dryden.

Turnus did not die in so heroic a manner, though our poet seems to have had his eye upon Turnus’s speech in the last verse:

 
Lord Percy sees my fall.
 
 
—Vicisti, et victum tendere palmas
Ausonii vidêre.
 

Virg., Æn. xii. 936.

 
The Latin chiefs have seen me beg my life.
 

Dryden.

Earl Percy’s lamentation over his enemy is generous, beautiful, and passionate.  I must only caution the reader not to let the simplicity of the style, which one may well pardon in so old a poet, prejudice him against the greatness of the thought:

 
Then leaving life, Earl Percy took
   The dead man by the hand,
And said, “Earl Douglas, for thy life
   Would I had lost my land.
 
 
“O Christ! my very heart doth bleed
   With sorrow for thy sake;
For sure a more renowned knight
   Mischance did never take.”
 

That beautiful line, “Taking the dead man by the hand,” will put the reader in mind of Æneas’s behaviour towards Lausus, whom he himself had slain as he came to the rescue of his aged father:

 
At verò ut vultum vidit morientis et ora,
Ora modis Anchisiades pallentia miris;
Ingemuit, miserans graviter, dextramqne tetendit.
 

Virg., Æn. x. 821.

 
The pious prince beheld young Lausus dead;
He grieved, he wept, then grasped his hand and said,
“Poor hapless youth! what praises can be paid
To worth so great?”
 

Dryden.

I shall take another opportunity to consider the other parts of this old song.