matter. women, friends and enemies, priests and sol- | the repository of our English kings for the diers, monks and prebendaries, were crum- contemplation of another day, when I shall bled amongst one another, and blended find my mind disposed for so serious an together in the same common mass; how amusement. I know that entertainments beauty, strength, and youth, with old age, of this nature are apt to raise dark and disweakness, and deformity, lay undistin-mal thoughts in timorous minds, and gloomy guished, in the same promiscuous heap of imaginations; but for my own part, though I am always serious, I do not know what it After having thus surveyed this great is to be melancholy; and can therefore take magazine of mortality, as it were in the a view of nature, in her deep and solemn lump, I examined it more particularly by scenes, with the same pleasure as in her the accounts which I found on several of most gay and delightful ones. By this the monuments which are raised in every means I can improve myself with those obquarter of that ancient fabric. Some of jects, which others consider with terror. them were covered with such extravagant When I look upon the tombs of the great, epitaphs, that if it were possible for the every emotion of envy dies in me; when dead person to be acquainted with them, read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every he would blush at the praises which his inordinate desire goes out; when I meet friends have bestowed upon him. There with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, are others so excessively modest, that they my heart melts with compassion; when I deliver the character of the person depart-see the tomb of the parents themselves, I ed in Greek or Hebrew, and by that means consider the vanity of grieving for those are not understood once in a twelvemonth. whom we must quickly follow. When I In the poetical quarter, I found there were see kings lying by those who deposed them, poets who had no monuments, and monu- when I consider rival wits placed side by ments which had no poets. I observed, in- side, or the holy men that divided the world deed, that the present war had filled the with their contests and disputes, I reflect church with many of these uninhabited with sorrow and astonishment on the little monuments, which had been erected to the competitions, factions, and debates of manmemory of persons whose bodies were per- kind. When I read the several dates of haps buried in the plains of Blenheim, or the tombs, of some that died yesterday, and in the bosom of the ocean. some six hundred years ago, I consider that great day when we shall all of us be contemporaries, and make our appearance together. C. Ut nox longa, quibus mentitur amica, diesque I could not but be very much delighted with several modern epitaphs, which are written with great elegance of expression and justness of thought, and therefore do honour to the living as well as to the dead. As a foreigner is very apt to conceive an No. 27.] Saturday, March 31, 1711. idea of the ignorance or politeness of a nation from the turn of their public monuments and inscriptions, they should be submitted to the perusal of men of learning and genius before they are put in execution. Sir Cloudesly Shovel's monument has very often given me great offence. Instead of the brave rough English admiral, which was the distinguishing character of that plain, gallant man, he is represented on his tomb by the figure of a beau, dressed in a long periwig, and reposing himself upon velvet cushions, under a canopy of state. The inscription is answerable to the monument: for instead of celebrating the many remarkable actions he had performed in the service of his country, it acquaints us only with the manner of his death, in which it was impossible for him to reap any honour. The Dutch, whom we are apt to despise for want of genius, show an infinitely greater taste of antiquity and politeness in their buildings and works of this nature, than what we meet with in those of our own country. The monuments of their admirals, which have been erected at the public expense, represent them like themselves, and are adorned with rostral crowns and naval ornaments, with beautiful festoons of sea-weed, shells, and coral. But to return to our subject. I have left IMITATED. Pope. THERE is scarce a thinking man in the world, who is involved in the business of it, but lives under a secret impatience of the hurry and fatigue he suffers, and has formed a resolution to fix himself, one time or other, in such a state as is suitable to the end of his being. You hear men every day, in conversation, profess, that all the honour, power, and riches, which they propose to themselves, cannot give satisfaction enough to reward them for half the anxiety they undergo in the pursuit or possession of them. While men are in this temper (which happens very frequently) how inconsistent are they with themselves? They are wearied with the toil they bear, but cannot find in their hearts to relinquish it; retirement is what they want, but they cannot betake themselves to it. While they pant after shade and covert, they still affect to appear in the most glittering scenes of life. Sure this is but just as reasonable as if a man should call for more lights, when he has a mind to go to sleep. Since then it is certain that our own hearts deceive us in the love of the world, and that we cannot command ourselves enough to resign it, though we every day wish ourselves disengaged from its allurements, let us not stand upon a formal taking of leave, but wean ourselves from them while we are in the midst of them. live. The station I am in furnishes me with daily opportunities of this kind; and the noble principle with which you have inspired me, of benevolence to all I have to deal with, quickens my application in every thing I undertake. When I relieve merit from discountenance, when I assist a friendless person, when I produce concealed worth, I am displeased with myself, for having designed to leave the world in order to be virtuous. I am sorry you decline the occasions which the condition I am in might afford me of enlarging your fortunes; but I know I contribute more to your satisfaction, when I acknowledge I am the better man, from the influence and authority you have over, sir, your most obliged and most humble servant, R. O." 'SIR,-I am entirely convinced of the truth of what you were pleased to say to told me then of the silly way I was in; but me, when I was last with you alone. You you told me so, as I saw you loved me, otherwise I could not obey your commands in letting you know my thoughts so sin It is certainly the general intention of the greater part of mankind to accomplish this work, and live according to their own approbation, as soon as they possibly can. But since the duration of life is so uncertain, and that has been a common topic of discourse ever since there was such a thing as life it-cerely as I do at present. I know the self, how is it possible that we should defer a moment the beginning to live according to the rules of reason? The man of business has ever some one point to carry, and then he tells himself he will bid adieu to all the vanity of ambition. The man of pleasure resolves to take his leave at least, and part civilly with his mistress; but the ambitious man is entangled every moment in a fresh pursuit, and the lover sees new charms in the object he fancied he could abandon. It is therefore a fancied he could abandon. It is therefore a fantastical way of thinking, when we promise ourselves an alteration in our conduct from change of place, and difference of circumstances; the same passions will attend us wherever we are, till they are conquered, and we can never live to our satisfaction in the deepest retirement, unless we are capable of living so, in some measure, amidst the noise and business of the world. I have ever thought men were better known by what could be observed of them from a perusal of their private letters, than any other way. My friend the clergyman, the other day, upon serious discourse with him concerning the danger of procrastination, gave me the following letters from persons with whom he lives in great friendship and intimacy, according to the good breeding and good sense of his character. The first is from a man of business, who is his convert: the second from one of whom he conceives good hopes: the third from one who is in no state at all, but carried one way and another by starts. 'SIR,-I know not with what words to express to you the sense I have of the high obligation you have laid upon me, in the penance you enjoined me of doing some good or other to a person of worth every day I creature, for whom I resign so much of my then the trifler has something in her so uncharacter," is all that you said of her; but designing and harmless, that her guilt in one kind disappears by the comparison of her innocence in another. Will you, vir Must dear Chloe be called by the hard tuous man, allow no alteration of offences? men? I keep the solemn promise I made name you pious people give to common wo¬ you in writing to you the state of my mind, deavour to get the better of this fondness, after your kind admonition; and will enwhich makes me so much her humble serwhich makes me so much her humble servant, that I am almost ashamed to subscribe myself yours, T. D." 'SIR,-There is no state of life so anxious as that of a man who does not live according to the dictates of his own reason. It will seem odd to you, when I assure you that my love of retirement first of all brought me to court; but this will be no riddle, when I acquaint you that I placed myself here with a design of getting so much money as might enable me to purchase a handsome retreat in the country. At present my circumstances enable me, and my duty prompts me to pass away the remaining part of my life in such a retirement as I at first proposed to myself; but to my great misfortune I have entirely lost the relish of it, and should now return to the country with greater reluctance than I at first came to court. I am so unhappy, as to know that what I am fond of are trifles, and that what I neglect is of the greatest importance; in short, I find a contest in my own mind between reason and fashion. I remember you once told me, that I might live in the world and out of it, at the same time. Let me beg of you to explain this paradox more at large to me, that I may conform my life, if possible, both to my duty and my inclina- No. 28.] Monday, April 2, 1711. -Neque semper arcum I SHALL here present my reader with a letter from a projector, concerning a new office, which he thinks may very much contribute to the embellishment of the city, and to the driving barbarity out of our streets. I consider it as a satire upon projectors in general, and a lively picture of the whole art of modern criticism. 'SIR,—Observing that you have thoughts of creating certain officers under you, for the inspection of several petty enormities which you yourself cannot attend to; and finding daily absurdities hung out upon the sign-posts of this city, to the great scandal of foreigners, as well as those of our own country, who are curious spectators of the same; I do humbly propose that you will be pleased to make me your superintendant of all such figures and devices, as are or shall be made use of on this occasion; with full powers to rectify or expunge whatever I shall find irregular or defective. want of such an officer, there is nothing like sound literature and good sense to be met with in those objects that are every where thrusting themselves out to the eye, and endeavouring to become visible. Our streets are filled with blue boars, black swans, and red lions; not to mention flying pigs, and hogs in armour, with many other creatures more extraordinary than any in the deserts of Africa. Strange! that one who has all the birds and beasts in nature to choose out of, should live at the sign of an Ens Rationis! For nuns and a hare, which we see so frequently joined together. I would therefore establish certain rules, for the determining how far one tradesman may give the sign of another, and in what cases he may be allowed to quarter it with his own. In the third place, I would enjoin every shop to make use of a sign which bears some affinity to the wares in which it deals. What can be more inconsistent, than to see a bawd at the sign of the angel, or a tailor at the lion? A cook should not live at the boot, nor a shoemaker at the roasted pig; and yet, for want of this regulation, I have seen a goat set up before the door of a perfumer, and the French king's head at a sword-cutler's. veral of those gentlemen who value them'An ingenious foreigner observes, that seselves upon their families, and overlook such as are bred to trade, bear the tools of their forefathers in their coats of arms. I will not examine how true this is in fact. But though it may not be necessary for posterity thus to set up the sign of their forefathers, I think it highly proper for those who actually profess the trade to show some such marks of it before their doors. As ingenious sign-post, I would likewise advise 'When the name gives an occasion for an the owner to take that opportunity of let have been ridiculous for the ingenious Mrs. ting the world know who he is. It would Salmon to have lived at the sign of the trout; for which reason she has erected before her house the figure of the fish that is her namesake. Mr. Bell has likewise distinguished himself by a device of the same nature: and here, sir, I must beg leave to observe to you, that this particular figure of a bell has given occasion to several pieces of wit in this kind. A man of your reading must know, that Abel Drugger gained great applause by it in the time of Ben Jonson. Our apocryphal heathen god is also re'My first task therefore should be, like that of Hercules, to clear the city from presented by this figure; which, in conjunc tion with the dragon, makes a very handmonsters. In the second place, I would some picture in several of our streets. forbid that creatures of jarring and incon- for the bell-savage, which is the sign of a gruous natures should be joined together in the same sign; such as the bell and the merly very much puzzled upon the conceit the same sign; such as the bell and the savage man standing by a bell, I was forneat's tongue, the dog and the gridiron. of it, till I accidentally fell into the reading The fox and the goose may be supposed to of an old romance translated out of the have met, but what has the fox and the se- French; which gives an account of a very ven stars to do together?. And when did beautiful woman who was found in a wilthe lamb and dolphin ever meet, except derness, and is called in the French La upon a sign post? As for the cat and fiddle, belle Sauvage; and is every where transthere is a conceit in it; and therefore I do lated by our countrymen the bell-savage. not intend that any thing I have here said This piece of philosophy will, I hope, con should affect it. I must however observe vince you that I have made sign-posts my to you upon this subject, that it is usual for study, and consequently qualified myself for a young tradesman, at his first setting up, the employment which I solicit at your to add to his own sign that of the master hands. But before I conclude my letter, I whom he served; as the husband, after must communicate to you another remark, marriage, gives a place to his mistress's which I have made upon the subject with arms in his own coat. This I take to have which I am now entertaining you, namely, given rise to many of those absurdities that I can give a shrewd guess at the huwhich are committed over our heads; and, as I am informed, first occasioned the three * St. George. • mour of the inhabitant by the sign that I shall add to the foregoing letter another, which came to me by the same penny-post. From my own apartment 'HONOURED SIR, near Charing-cross. Having heard that this nation is a great encourager of ingenuity, I have brought with me a rope-dancer that was caught in one of the woods belonging to the great Mogul. He is by birth a monkey; but swings upon a rope, takes a pipe of tobacco, and drinks a glass of ale, like any reasonable creature. He gives great satisfaction to the quality; and if they will make a subscription for him, I will send for a brother of his out of Holland, that is a very good tumbler; and also for another of the same family whom I design for my merry Andrew, as being an excellent mimic, and the greatest droll in the country where he now is. I hope to have this entertainment in readiness for the next winter; and doubt not but it will please more than the opera, or puppet-show. I will not say that a monkey is a better man than some of the opera heroes; but certainly he is a better representative of a man, than the most artificial composition of wood and wire. If you will be pleased to give me a good word in your paper, you shall be every night spectator at my show for nothing. C. I am, &c.' No. 29.] Tuesday, April 3, 1711. a Sermo lingua concinnus utraque Suavior: ut Chio nota si commista Falerni est. Hor. Lib. 1. Sat. x. 23. Both tongues united sweeter sounds produce, Like Chian mix'd with the Falernian juice. THERE is nothing that has more startled ur English audience, than the Italian recitativo at its first entrance upon the stage. People were wonderfully surprised to hear generals singing the word of command, and ladies delivering messages in music. Our countrymen could not forbear laughing when they heard a lover chanting out a billet-doux, and even the superscription of a letter set to a tune. The famous blunder in an old play of 'Enter a king and two fiddlers solus,' was now no longer an ab surdity, when it was impossible for a hero in a desert, or a princess in her closet, to speak any thing unaccompanied with musical instruments. But however this Italian method of acting in recitativo might appear at first hearing, I cannot but think it much more just than that which prevailed in our English opera before this innovation: the transition from an air to recitative music being more natural, than the passing from a song to plain and ordinary speaking, which was the common method in Purcell's operas. The only fault I find in our present practice, is the making use of the Italian recitativo with English words. To go to the bottom of this matter, I must observe, that the tone, or (as the French call it) the accent of every nation in their that of any other people; as we may see ordinary speech, is altogether different from so near upon us. By the tone or accent, I even in the Welch and Scotch, who border do not mean the pronunciation of each particular word, but the sound of the whole sentence. Thus it is very common for an English gentleman, when he hears a French tragedy, to complain that the actors all of them speak in a tone: and therefore he very wisely prefers his own countrymen, not considering that a foreigner complains of the same tone in an English actor. every language, should be as different as For this reason, the recitative music, in the tone or accent of each language; for otherwise, what may properly express a passion in one language will not do it in another. Every one who has been long in Italy knows very well, that the cadences in the recitativo bear a remote affinity to the tone of their voices in ordinary conversation, or, to speak more properly, are only the accents of their language made more musical and tuneful. Thus the notes of interrogation, or admiration, in the Italian music (if one may so call them) which resemble their accents in discourse on such occasions, are not unlike the ordinary tones of an English voice when we are angry; insomuch that I have often seen our audiences extremely mistaken, as to what has been doing upon the stage, and expecting to see the hero knock down his messenger, when he has been asking him a question; or fancying that he quarrels with his friend, when he only bids him good morrow. For this reason the Italian artists cannot agree with our English musicians in admiring Purcell's compositions, and thinking his tunes so wonderfully adapted to his words; because both nations do not always express the same passions by the same sounds. I am therefore humbly of opinion, that an English composer should not follow the Italian recitative too servilely, but make use of many gentle deviations from it, in compliance with his own native language, He may copy out of it all the lulling soft covered with sedge and bull-rushes, making love in a full-bottomed periwig and a plume of feathers; but with a voice so full of shakes and quavers, that I should have thought the murmurs of a country brook the much more agreeable music. ness and 'dying falls' (as Shakspeare calls | and Alpheus, instead of having his head them,) but should still remember that he ought to accommodate himself to an English audience: and by humouring the tone of our voices in ordinary conversation, have the same regard to the accent of his own language, as those persons had to theirs whom he professes to imitate. It is observed, that several of the singing birds of our own country learn to sweeten their voices, and mellow the harshness of their natural notes, by practising under those that come from warmer climates. In the same manner, I would allow the Italian opera to lend our English music as much as may grace and softén it, but never entirely to annihilate and destroy it. Let the infusion be as strong as you please, but still let the subject-matter of it be English. A composer should fit his music to the genius of the people, and consider that the delicacy of hearing, and taste of harmony, has been formed upon those sounds which every country abounds with. In short, that music is of a relative nature, and what is harmony to one ear, may be dissonance to another. I remember the last opera I saw in that merry nation was the Rape of Proserpine, where Pluto, to make the more tempting figure, puts himself in a French equipage, and brings Ascalaphus along with him as his valet de chambre. This is what we call folly and impertinence: but what the French look upon as gay and polite. I shall add no more to what I have here offered, than that music, architecture, and painting, as well as poetry and oratory, are to deduce their laws and rules from the general sense and taste of mankind, and not from the principles of those arts themselves; or, in other words, the taste is not to conform to the art, but the art to the taste. Music is not designed to please only chromatic ears, but all that is capable of distinguishing harsh from disagreeable notes. A man of an ordinary ear is a judge whether a passion is expressed in proper sounds, and whether the melody of those sounds be more C, or less pleasing. · 4 Si Mimnermus uti censet, sine amore jocisque If nothing, as Mimnermus strives to prove, Creech. The same observation which I have made upon the recitative part of music may be applied to all our songs and airs in general. Signior Baptist Lully acted like a man of sense in this particular. He found the French music extremely defective, and No. 30.] Wednesday, April 4, 1711. very often barbarous. However, knowing the genius of the people, the humour of their language, and the prejudiced ears he had to deal with, he did not pretend to extirpate the French music, and plant the Italian in its stead; but only to cultivate and civilize it with innumerable graces and modulations which he borrowed from the ONE common calamity makes men ex Italians. By this means the French music tremely affect each other, though they difis now perfect in its kind; and when you fer in every other particular. The passion say it is not so good as the Italian, you only of love is the most general concern among mean that it does not please you so well; men; and I am glad to hear by my last adfor there is scarce a Frenchman who would vices from Oxford, that there are a set of not wonder to hear you give the Italian such sighers in that university, who have erecta preference, The music of the French is ed themselves into a society in honour of indeed very properly adapted to their pro- that tender passion. These gentlemen are nunciation and accent, as their whole opera of that sort of inamoratos, who are not so wonderfully favours the genius of such a very much lost to common sense, but that gay airy people. The chorus in which that they understand the folly they are guilty opera abounds, gives the parterre frequent of; and for that reason separate themselves opportunities of joining in concert with the from all other company, because they will stage. This inclination of the audience to enjoy the pleasure of talking incoherently, sing along with the actors, so prevails with without being ridiculous to any but each them, that I have sometimes known the other. When a man comes into the club, performer on the stage to do no more in a he is not obliged to make any introduction celebrated song, than the clerk of a parish to his discourse, but at once, as he is seatchurch, who serves only to raise the psalm, ing himself in his chair, speaks in the and is afterwards drowned in the music of thread of his own thoughts, She gave me the congregation. Every actor that comes a very obliging glance, she never looked so on the stage is a beau. The queens and well in her life as this evening;' or the like heroines are so painted, that they appear as reflection without regard to any other ruddy and cherry-cheeked as milk-maids. member of the society; for in this assembly The shepherds are all embroidered, and they do not meet to talk to each other; but acquit themselves in a ball better than our every man claims the full liberty of talking English dancing-masters. I have seen a to himself. Instead of snuff-boxes and couple of rivers appear in red stockings; canes, which are the usual helps to dis |