Essays and Tales

J >> Joseph Addison >> Essays and Tales

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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.

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. Moliere, 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 "AEneid" 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., AEn. 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 videre.
VIRG., AEn. 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 AEneas's behaviour towards Lausus, whom he himself
had slain as he came to the rescue of his aged father:

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

NEXT ESSAY

- Pendent opera interrupta.
VIRG., AEn. iv. 88.

The works unfinished and neglected lie.

In my last Monday's paper I gave some general instances of those
beautiful strokes which please the reader in the old song of "Chevy-
Chase;" I shall here, according to my promise, be more particular,
and show that the sentiments in that ballad are extremely natural
and poetical, and full of the majestic simplicity which we admire in
the greatest of the ancient poets: for which reason I shall quote
several passages of it, in which the thought is altogether the same
with what we meet in several passages of the "AEneid;" not that I
would infer from thence that the poet, whoever he was, proposed to
himself any imitation of those passages, but that he was directed to
them in general by the same kind of poetical genius, and by the same
copyings after nature.

Had this old song been filled with epigrammatical turns and points
of wit, it might perhaps have pleased the wrong taste of some
readers; but it would never have become the delight of the common
people, nor have warmed the heart of Sir Philip Sidney like the
sound of a trumpet; it is only nature that can have this effect, and
please those tastes which are the most unprejudiced, or the most
refined. I must, however, beg leave to dissent from so great an
authority as that of Sir Philip Sidney, in the judgment which he has
passed as to the rude style and evil apparel of this antiquated
song; for there are several parts in it where not only the thought
but the language is majestic, and the numbers sonorous; at least the
apparel is much more gorgeous than many of the poets made use of in
Queen Elizabeth's time, as the reader will see in several of the
following quotations.

What can be greater than either the thought or the expression in
that stanza,

To drive the deer with hound and horn
Earl Percy took his way;
The child may rue that is unborn
The hunting of that day!

This way of considering the misfortunes which this battle would
bring upon posterity, not only on those who were born immediately
after the battle, and lost their fathers in it, but on those also
who perished in future battles which took their rise from this
quarrel of the two earls, is wonderfully beautiful and conformable
to the way of thinking among the ancient poets.

Audiet pugnas vitio parentum.
Rara juventus.
HOR., Od. i. 2, 23.

Posterity, thinn'd by their fathers' crimes,
Shall read, with grief, the story of their times.

What can be more sounding and poetical, or resemble more the
majestic simplicity of the ancients, than the following stanzas?--

The stout Earl of Northumberland
A vow to God did make,
His pleasure in the Scottish woods
Three summer's days to take.

With fifteen hundred bowmen bold,
All chosen men of might,
Who knew full well, in time of need,
To aim their shafts aright.

The hounds ran swiftly through the woods
The nimble deer to take,
And with their cries the hills and dales
An echo shrill did make.

- Vocat ingenti clamore Cithaeron,
Taygetique canes, domitrixque Epidaurus equorum:
Et vox assensu memorum ingeminata remugit.
VIRG., Georg. iii. 43.

Cithaeron loudly calls me to my way:
Thy hounds, Taygetus, open, and pursue their prey:
High Epidaurus urges on my speed,
Famed for his hills, and for his horses' breed:
From hills and dales the cheerful cries rebound:
For Echo hunts along, and propagates the sound.
DRYDEN.

Lo, yonder doth Earl Douglas come,
His men in armour bright;
Full twenty hundred Scottish spears,
All marching in our sight.

All men of pleasant Tividale,
Fast by the river Tweed, &c.

The country of the Scotch warrior, described in these two last
verses, has a fine romantic situation, and affords a couple of
smooth words for verse. If the reader compares the foregoing six
lines of the song with the following Latin verses, he will see how
much they are written in the spirit of Virgil:

Adversi campo apparent: hastasque reductis
Protendunt longe dextris, et spicula vibrant:-
Quique altum Praeneste viri, quique arva Gabinae
Junonis, gelidumque Anienem, et roscida rivis
Hernica saxa colunt:- qui rosea rura Velini;
Qui Tetricae horrentes rupes, montemq ue Severum,
Casperiamque colunt, porulosque et flumen Himellae:
Qui Tyberim Fabarimque bibunt.
AEn. xi. 605, vii. 682, 712.

Advancing in a line they couch their spears--
- Praeneste sends a chosen band,
With those who plough Saturnia's Gabine land:
Besides the succours which cold Anien yields:
The rocks of Hernicus--besides a band
That followed from Velinum's dewy land -
And mountaineers that from Severus came:
And from the craggy cliffs of Tetrica;
And those where yellow Tiber takes his way,
And where Himella's wanton waters play:
Casperia sends her arms, with those that lie
By Fabaris, and fruitful Foruli.
DRYDEN.

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