Essays and Tales

J >> Joseph Addison >> Essays and Tales

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I would not be thought in any part of this relation to reflect upon
Signior Nicolini, who, in acting this part, only complies with the
wretched taste of his audience: he knows very well that the lion
has many more admirers than himself; as they say of the famous
equestrian statue on the Pont-Neuf at Paris, that more people go to
see the horse than the king who sits upon it. On the contrary, it
gives me a just indignation to see a person whose action gives new
majesty to kings, resolution to heroes, and softness to lovers, thus
sinking from the greatness of his behaviour, and degraded into the
character of the London Prentice. I have often wished that our
tragedians would copy after this great master in action. Could they
make the same use of their arms and legs, and inform their faces
with as significant looks and passions, how glorious would an
English tragedy appear with that action which is capable of giving a
dignity to the forced thoughts, cold conceits, and unnatural
expressions of an Italian opera! In the meantime, I have related
this combat of the lion to show what are at present the reigning
entertainments of the politer part of Great Britain.

Audiences have often been reproached by writers for the coarseness
of their taste; but our present grievance does not seem to be the
want of a good taste, but of common sense.

WOMEN AND WIVES.

Parva leves capiunt animos. -
OVID, Ars Am., i. 159.

Light minds are pleased with trifles.

When I was in France, I used to gaze with great astonishment at the
splendid equipages, and party-coloured habits of that fantastic
nation. I was one day in particular contemplating a lady that sat
in a coach adorned with gilded Cupids, and finely painted with the
Loves of Venus and Adonis. The coach was drawn by six milk-white
horses, and loaden behind with the same number of powdered footmen.
Just before the lady were a couple of beautiful pages, that were
stuck among the harness, and, by their gay dresses and smiling
features, looked like the elder brothers of the little boys that
were carved and painted in every corner of the coach.

The lady was the unfortunate Cleanthe, who afterwards gave an
occasion to a pretty melancholy novel. She had for several years
received the addresses of a gentleman, whom, after a long and
intimate acquaintance, she forsook upon the account of this shining
equipage, which had been offered to her by one of great riches but a
crazy constitution. The circumstances in which I saw her were, it
seems, the disguises only of a broken heart, and a kind of pageantry
to cover distress, for in two months after, she was carried to her
grave with the same pomp and magnificence, being sent thither partly
by the loss of one lover and partly by the possession of another.

I have often reflected with myself on this unaccountable humour in
womankind, of being smitten with everything that is showy and
superficial; and on the numberless evils that befall the sex from
this light fantastical disposition. I myself remember a young lady
that was very warmly solicited by a couple of importunate rivals,
who, for several months together, did all they could to recommend
themselves, by complacency of behaviour and agreeableness of
conversation. At length, when the competition was doubtful, and the
lady undetermined in her choice, one of the young lovers very
luckily bethought himself of adding a supernumerary lace to his
liveries, which had so good an effect that he married her the very
week after.

The usual conversation of ordinary women very much cherishes this
natural weakness of being taken with outside and appearance. Talk
of a new-married couple, and you immediately hear whether they keep
their coach and six, or eat in plate. Mention the name of an absent
lady, and it is ten to one but you learn something of her gown and
petticoat. A ball is a great help to discourse, and a birthday
furnishes conversation for a twelvemonth after. A furbelow of
precious stones, a hat buttoned with a diamond, a brocade waistcoat
or petticoat, are standing topics. In short, they consider only the
drapery of the species, and never cast away a thought on those
ornaments of the mind that make persons illustrious in themselves
and useful to others. When women are thus perpetually dazzling one
another's imaginations, and filling their heads with nothing but
colours, it is no wonder that they are more attentive to the
superficial parts of life than the solid and substantial blessings
of it. A girl who has been trained up in this kind of conversation
is in danger of every embroidered coat that comes in her way. A
pair of fringed gloves may be her ruin. In a word, lace and
ribands, silver and gold galloons, with the like glittering gewgaws,
are so many lures to women of weak minds or low educations, and,
when artificially displayed, are able to fetch down the most airy
coquette from the wildest of her flights and rambles.

True happiness is of a retired nature, and an enemy to pomp and
noise; it arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one's
self, and, in the next, from the friendship and conversation of a
few select companions; it loves shade and solitude, and naturally
haunts groves and fountains, fields and meadows; in short, it feels
everything it wants within itself, and receives no addition from
multitudes of witnesses and spectators. On the contrary, false
happiness loves to be in a crowd, and to draw the eyes of the world
upon her. She does not receive any satisfaction from the applauses
which she gives herself, but from the admiration she raises in
others. She flourishes in courts and palaces, theatres and
assemblies, and has no existence but when she is looked upon.

Aurelia, though a woman of great quality, delights in the privacy of
a country life, and passes away a great part of her time in her own
walks and gardens. Her husband, who is her bosom friend and
companion in her solitudes, has been in love with her ever since he
knew her. They both abound with good sense, consummate virtue, and
a mutual esteem; and are a perpetual entertainment to one another.
Their family is under so regular an economy, in its hours of
devotion and repast, employment and diversion, that it looks like a
little commonwealth within itself. They often go into company, that
they may return with the greater delight to one another; and
sometimes live in town, not to enjoy it so properly as to grow weary
of it, that they may renew in themselves the relish of a country
life. By this means they are happy in each other, beloved by their
children, adored by their servants, and are become the envy, or
rather the delight, of all that know them.

How different to this is the life of Fulvia! She considers her
husband as her steward, and looks upon discretion and good
housewifery as little domestic virtues unbecoming a woman of
quality. She thinks life lost in her own family, and fancies
herself out of the world when she is not in the ring, the playhouse,
or the drawing-room. She lives in a perpetual motion of body and
restlessness of thought, and is never easy in any one place when she
thinks there is more company in another. The missing of an opera
the first night would be more afflicting to her than the death of a
child. She pities all the valuable part of her own sex, and calls
every woman of a prudent, modest, retired life, a poor-spirited,
unpolished creature. What a mortification would it be to Fulvia, if
she knew that her setting herself to view is but exposing herself,
and that she grows contemptible by being conspicuous!

I cannot conclude my paper without observing that Virgil has very
finely touched upon this female passion for dress and show, in the
character of Camilla, who, though she seems to have shaken off all
the other weaknesses of her sex, is still described as a woman in
this particular. The poet tells us, that after having made a great
slaughter of the enemy, she unfortunately cast her eye on a Trojan,
who wore an embroidered tunic, a beautiful coat of mail, with a
mantle of the finest purple. "A golden bow," says he, "hung upon
his shoulder; his garment was buckled with a golden clasp, and his
head covered with a helmet of the same shining metal." The Amazon
immediately singled out this well-dressed warrior, being seized with
a woman's longing for the pretty trappings that he was adorned with:

- Totumque incauta per agmen,
Faemineo praedae et spoliorum ardebat amore.
AEn., xi. 781.

- So greedy was she bent
On golden spoils, and on her prey intent.

DRYDEN.

This heedless pursuit after these glittering trifles, the poet, by a
nice concealed moral, represents to have been the destruction of his
female hero.

THE ITALIAN OPERA.

- Equitis quoque jam migravit ab aure voluptas
Omnis ad incertos oculos, et gaudia vana.
HOR., Ep. ii. 1, 187.

But now our nobles too are fops and vain,
Neglect the sense, but love the painted scene.
CREECH.

It is my design in this paper to deliver down to posterity a
faithful account of the Italian opera, and of the gradual progress
which it has made upon the English stage; for there is no question
but our great-grandchildren will be very curious to know the reason
why their forefathers used to sit together like an audience of
foreigners in their own country, and to hear whole plays acted
before them in a tongue which they did not understand.

Arsinoe was the first opera that gave us a taste of Italian music.
The great success this opera met with produced some attempts of
forming pieces upon Italian plans, which should give a more natural
and reasonable entertainment than what can be met with in the
elaborate trifles of that nation. This alarmed the poetasters and
fiddlers of the town, who were used to deal in a more ordinary kind
of ware; and therefore laid down an established rule, which is
received as such to this day, "That nothing is capable of being well
set to music that is not nonsense."

This maxim was no sooner received, but we immediately fell to
translating the Italian operas; and as there was no great danger of
hurting the sense of those extraordinary pieces, our authors would
often make words of their own which were entirely foreign to the
meaning of the passages they pretended to translate; their chief
care being to make the numbers of the English verse answer to those
of the Italian, that both of them might go to the same tune. Thus
the famous swig in Camilla:

"Barbara sit' intendo," &c.
"Barbarous woman, yes, I know your meaning,"

which expresses the resentments of an angry lover, was translated
into that English lamentation,

"Frail are a lover's hopes," &c.

And it was pleasant enough to see the most refined persons of the
British nation dying away and languishing to notes that were filled
with a spirit of rage and indignation. It happened also very
frequently, where the sense was rightly translated, the necessary
transposition of words, which were drawn out of the phrase of one
tongue into that of another, made the music appear very absurd in
one tongue that was very natural in the other. I remember an
Italian verse that ran thus, word for word:

"And turned my rage into pity;"

which the English for rhyme's sake translated:

"And into pity turned my rage."

By this means the soft notes that were adapted to pity in the
Italian fell upon the word rage in the English; and the angry sounds
that were turned to rage in the original, were made to express pity
in the translation. It oftentimes happened, likewise, that the
finest notes in the air fell upon the most insignificant words in
the sentence. I have known the word "and" pursued through the whole
gamut; have been entertained with many a melodious "the;" and have
heard the most beautiful graces, quavers, and divisions bestowed
upon "then," "for," and "from," to the eternal honour of our English
particles.

The next step to our refinement was the introducing of Italian
actors into our opera; who sang their parts in their own language,
at the same time that our countrymen performed theirs in our native
tongue. The king or hero of the play generally spoke in Italian,
and his slaves answered him in English. The lover frequently made
his court, and gained the heart of his princess, in a language which
she did not understand. One would have thought it very difficult to
have carried on dialogues after this manner without an interpreter
between the persons that conversed together; but this was the state
of the English stage for about three years.

At length the audience grew tired of understanding half the opera;
and therefore, to ease themselves entirely of the fatigue of
thinking, have so ordered it at present, that the whole opera is
performed in an unknown tongue. We no longer understand the
language of our own stage; insomuch that I have often been afraid,
when I have seen our Italian performers chattering in the vehemence
of action, that they have been calling us names, and abusing us
among themselves; but I hope, since we put such an entire confidence
in them, they will not talk against us before our faces, though they
may do it with the same safety as if it were behind our backs. In
the meantime, I cannot forbear thinking how naturally an historian
who writes two or three hundred years hence, and does not know the
taste of his wise forefathers, will make the following reflection:
"In the beginning of the eighteenth century, the Italian tongue was
so well understood in England, that operas were acted on the public
stage in that language."

One scarce knows how to be serious in the confutation of an
absurdity that shows itself at the first sight. It does not want
any great measure of sense to see the ridicule of this monstrous
practice; but what makes it the more astonishing, it is not the
taste of the rabble, but of persons of the greatest politeness,
which has established it.

If the Italians have a genius for music above the English, the
English have a genius for other performances of a much higher
nature, and capable of giving the mind a much nobler entertainment.
Would one think it was possible, at a time when an author lived that
was able to write the Phaedra and Hippolitus, for a people to be so
stupidly fond of the Italian opera, as scarce to give a third day's
hearing to that admirable tragedy? Music is certainly a very
agreeable entertainment: but if it would take the entire possession
of our ears; if it would make us incapable of hearing sense; if it
would exclude arts that have a much greater tendency to the
refinement of human nature; I must confess I would allow it no
better quarter than Plato has done, who banishes it out of his
commonwealth.

At present our notions of music are so very uncertain, that we do
not know what it is we like; only, in general, we are transported
with anything that is not English: so it be of a foreign growth,
let it be Italian, French, or High Dutch, it is the same thing. In
short, our English music is quite rooted out, and nothing yet
planted in its stead.

When a royal palace is burnt to the ground, every man is at liberty
to present his plan for a new one; and, though it be but
indifferently put together, it may furnish several hints that may be
of use to a good architect. I shall take the same liberty in a
following paper of giving my opinion upon the subject of music;
which I shall lay down only in a problematical manner, to be
considered by those who are masters in the art.

LAMPOONS.

Saevit atrox Volscens, nec teli conspicit usquam
Auctorem, nec quo se ardens immittere possit.
VIRG., AEn. ix. 420.

Fierce Volscens foams with rage, and, gazing round,
Descry'd not him who gave the fatal wound;
Nor knew to fix revenge. DRYDEN.

There is nothing that more betrays a base, ungenerous spirit than
the giving of secret stabs to a man's reputation. Lampoons and
satires, that are written with wit and spirit, are like poisoned
darts, which not only inflict a wound, but make it incurable. For
this reason I am very much troubled when I see the talents' of
humour and ridicule in the possession of an ill-natured man. There
cannot be a greater gratification to a barbarous and inhuman wit,
than to stir up sorrow in the heart of a private person, to raise
uneasiness among near relations, and to expose whole families to
derision, at the same time that he remains unseen and undiscovered.
If, besides the accomplishments of being witty and ill-natured, a
man is vicious into the bargain, he is one of the most mischievous
creatures that can enter into a civil society. His satire will then
chiefly fall upon those who ought to be the most exempt from it.
Virtue, merit, and everything that is praiseworthy, will be made the
subject of ridicule and buffoonery. It is impossible to enumerate
the evils which arise from these arrows that fly in the dark; and I
know no other excuse that is or can be made for them, than that the
wounds they give are only imaginary, and produce nothing more than a
secret shame or sorrow in the mind of the suffering person. It must
indeed be confessed that a lampoon or a satire do not carry in them
robbery or murder; but at the same time, how many are there that
would not rather lose a considerable sum of money, or even life
itself, than be set up as a mark of infamy and derision? And in
this case a man should consider that an injury is not to be measured
by the notions of him that gives, but of him that receives it.

Those who can put the best countenance upon the outrages of this
nature which are offered them, are not without their secret anguish.
I have often observed a passage in Socrates's behaviour at his death
in a light wherein none of the critics have considered it. That
excellent man entertaining his friends a little before he drank the
bowl of poison, with a discourse on the immortality of the soul, at
his entering upon it says that he does not believe any the most
comic genius can censure him for talking upon such a subject at such
at a time. This passage, I think, evidently glances upon
Aristophanes, who writ a comedy on purpose to ridicule the
discourses of that divine philosopher. It has been observed by many
writers that Socrates was so little moved at this piece of
buffoonery, that he was several times present at its being acted
upon the stage, and never expressed the least resentment of it.
But, with submission, I think the remark I have here made shows us
that this unworthy treatment made an impression upon his mind,
though he had been too wise to discover it.

When Julius Caesar was lampooned by Catullus, he invited him to a
supper, and treated him with such a generous civility, that he made
the poet his friend ever after. Cardinal Mazarine gave the same
kind of treatment to the learned Quillet, who had reflected upon his
eminence in a famous Latin poem. The cardinal sent for him, and,
after some kind expostulations upon what he had written, assured him
of his esteem, and dismissed him with a promise of the next good
abbey that should fall, which he accordingly conferred upon him in a
few months after. This had so good an effect upon the author, that
he dedicated the second edition of his book to the cardinal, after
having expunged the passages which had given him offence.

Sextus Quintus was not of so generous and forgiving a temper. Upon
his being made Pope, the statue of Pasquin was one night dressed in
a very dirty shirt, with an excuse written under it, that he was
forced to wear foul linen because his laundress was made a princess.
This was a reflection upon the Pope's sister, who, before the
promotion of her brother, was in those mean circumstances that
Pasquin represented her. As this pasquinade made a great noise in
Rome, the Pope offered a considerable sum of money to any person
that should discover the author of it. The author, relying upon his
holiness's generosity, as also on some private overtures which he
had received from him, made the discovery himself; upon which the
Pope gave him the reward he had promised, but, at the same time, to
disable the satirist for the future, ordered his tongue to be cut
out, and both his hands to be chopped off. Aretine is too trite an
instance. Every one knows that all the kings of Europe were his
tributaries. Nay, there is a letter of his extant, in which he
makes his boast that he had laid the Sophi of Persia under
contribution.

Though in the various examples which I have here drawn together,
these several great men behaved themselves very differently towards
the wits of the age who had reproached them, they all of them
plainly showed that they were very sensible of their reproaches, and
consequently that they received them as very great injuries. For my
own part, I would never trust a man that I thought was capable of
giving these secret wounds; and cannot but think that he would hurt
the person, whose reputation he thus assaults, in his body or in his
fortune, could he do it with the same security. There is indeed
something very barbarous and inhuman in the ordinary scribblers of
lampoons. An innocent young lady shall be exposed for an unhappy
feature; a father of a family turned to ridicule for some domestic
calamity; a wife be made uneasy all her life for a misinterpreted
word or action; nay, a good, a temperate, and a just man shall be
put out of countenance by the representation of those qualities that
should do him honour; so pernicious a thing is wit when it is not
tempered with virtue and humanity.

I have indeed heard of heedless, inconsiderate writers that, without
any malice, have sacrificed the reputation of their friends and
acquaintance to a certain levity of temper, and a silly ambition of
distinguishing themselves by a spirit of raillery and satire; as if
it were not infinitely more honourable to be a good-natured man than
a wit. Where there is this little petulant humour in an author, he
is often very mischievous without designing to be so. For which
reason I always lay it down as a rule that an indiscreet man is more
hurtful than an ill-natured one; for as the one will only attack his
enemies, and those he wishes ill to, the other injures indifferently
both friends and foes. I cannot forbear, on this occasion,
transcribing a fable out of Sir Roger L'Estrange, which accidentally
lies before me. A company of waggish boys were watching of frogs at
the side of a pond, and still as any of them put up their heads,
they would be pelting them down again with stones. "Children," says
one of the frogs, "you never consider that though this be play to
you, 'tis death to us."

As this week is in a manner set apart and dedicated to serious
thoughts, I shall indulge myself in such speculations as may not be
altogether unsuitable to the season; and in the meantime, as the
settling in ourselves a charitable frame of mind is a work very
proper for the time, I have in this paper endeavoured to expose that
particular breach of charity which has been generally overlooked by
divines, because they are but few who can be guilty of it.

TRUE AND FALSE HUMOUR.

- Risu inepto res ineptior nulla est.
CATULL., Carm. 39 in Egnat.

Nothing so foolish as the laugh of fools.

Among all kinds of writing, there is none in which authors are more
apt to miscarry than in works of humour, as there is none in which
they are more ambitious to excel. It is not an imagination that
teems with monsters, a head that is filled with extravagant
conceptions, which is capable of furnishing the world with
diversions of this nature; and yet, if we look into the productions
of several writers, who set up for men of humour, what wild,
irregular fancies, what unnatural distortions of thought do we meet
with? If they speak nonsense, they believe they are talking humour;
and when they have drawn together a scheme of absurd, inconsistent
ideas, they are not able to read it over to themselves without
laughing. These poor gentlemen endeavour to gain themselves the
reputation of wits and humorists, by such monstrous conceits as
almost qualify them for Bedlam; not considering that humour should
always lie under the check of reason, and that it requires the
direction of the nicest judgment, by so much the more as it indulges
itself in the most boundless freedoms. There is a kind of nature
that is to be observed in this sort of compositions, as well as in
all other; and a certain regularity of thought which must discover
the writer to be a man of sense, at the same time that he appears
altogether given up to caprice. For my part, when I read the
delirious mirth of an unskilful author, I cannot be so barbarous as
to divert myself with it, but am rather apt to pity the man, than to
laugh at anything he writes.

The deceased Mr. Shadwell, who had himself a great deal of the
talent which I am treating of, represents an empty rake, in one of
his plays, as very much surprised to hear one say that breaking of
windows was not humour; and I question not but several English
readers will be as much startled to hear me affirm, that many of
those raving, incoherent pieces, which are often spread among us,
under odd chimerical titles, are rather the offsprings of a
distempered brain than works of humour.

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