Essays and Tales

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But to proceed:

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

Turnus, ut antevolans tardum praecesserat agmen, &c.
Vidisti, quo Turnus equo, quibus ibat in armis
Aurcus--AEn. ix. 47, 269.

Our English archers bent their bows,
Their hearts were good and true;
At the first flight of arrows sent,
Full threescore Scots they slew.

They closed full fast on ev'ry side,
No slackness there was found;
And many a gallant gentleman
Lay gasping on the ground.

With that there came an arrow keen
Out of an English bow,
Which struck Earl Douglas to the heart,
A deep and deadly blow.

AEneas was wounded after the same manner by an unknown hand in the
midst of a parley.

Has inter voces, media inter talia verba,
Ecce viro stridens alis allapsa sagitta est,
Incertum qua pulsa manu--AEn. xii. 318.

Thus, while he spake, unmindful of defence,
A winged arrow struck the pious prince;
But whether from a human hand it came,
Or hostile god, is left unknown by fame.
DRYDEN.

But of all the descriptive parts of this song, there are none more
beautiful than the four following stanzas, which have a great force
and spirit in them, and are filled with very natural circumstances.
The thought in the third stanza was never touched by any other poet,
and is such a one as would have shone in Homer or in Virgil:

So thus did both these nobles die,
Whose courage none could stain;
An English archer then perceived
The noble Earl was slain.

He had a bow bent in his hand,
Made of a trusty tree,
An arrow of a cloth-yard long
Unto the head drew he.

Against Sir Hugh Montgomery
So right his shaft he set,
The gray-goose wing that was thereon
In his heart-blood was wet.

This fight did last from break of day
Till setting of the sun;
For when they rung the ev'ning bell
The battle scarce was done.

One may observe, likewise, that in the catalogue of the slain, the
author has followed the example of the greatest ancient poets, not
only in giving a long list of the dead, but by diversifying it with
little characters of particular persons.

And with Earl Douglas there was slain
Sir Hugh Montgomery,
Sir Charles Carrel, that from the field
One foot would never fly.

Sir Charles Murrel of Ratcliff too,
His sister's son was he;
Sir David Lamb so well esteem'd,
Yet saved could not be.

The familiar sound in these names destroys the majesty of the
description; for this reason I do not mention this part of the poem
but to show the natural cast of thought which appears in it, as the
two last verses look almost like a translation of Virgil.

- Cadit et Ripheus justissimus unus
Qui fuit in Teucris et servantissimus aequi.
Diis aliter visum.
AEn. ii. 426.

Then Ripheus fell in the unequal fight,
Just of his word, observant of the right:
Heav'n thought not so.
DRYDEN.

In the catalogue of the English who fell, Witherington's behaviour
is in the same manner particularised very artfully, as the reader is
prepared for it by that account which is given of him in the
beginning of the battle; though I am satisfied your little buffoon
readers, who have seen that passage ridiculed in "Hudibras," will
not be able to take the beauty of it: for which reason I dare not
so much as quote it.

Then stept a gallant 'squire forth,
Witherington was his name,
Who said, "I would not have it told
To Henry our king for shame,

"That e'er my captain fought on foot,
And I stood looking on."

We meet with the same heroic sentiment in Virgil:

Non pudet, O Rutuli, cunctis pro talibus unam
Objectare animam? numerone an viribus aequi
Non sumus?
AEn. xii. 229

For shame, Rutilians, can you hear the sight
Of one exposed for all, in single fight?
Can we before the face of heav'n confess
Our courage colder, or our numbers less?
DRYDEN.

What can be more natural, or more moving, than the circumstances in
which he describes the behaviour of those women who had lost their
husbands on this fatal day?

Next day did many widows come
Their husbands to bewail;
They wash'd their wounds in brinish tears,
But all would not prevail.

Their bodies bathed in purple blood,
They bore with them away;
They kiss'd them dead a thousand times,
When they were clad in clay.

Thus we see how the thoughts of this poem, which naturally arise
from the subject, are always simple, and sometimes exquisitely
noble; that the language is often very sounding, and that the whole
is written with a true poetical spirit.

If this song had been written in the Gothic manner which is the
delight of all our little wits, whether writers or readers, it would
not have hit the taste of so many ages, and have pleased the readers
of all ranks and conditions. I shall only beg pardon for such a
profusion of Latin quotations; which I should not have made use of,
but that I feared my own judgment would have looked too singular on
such a subject, had not I supported it by the practice and authority
of Virgil.

A DREAM OF THE PAINTERS.

- Animum pictura pascit inani.
VIRG., AEn. i. 464.

And with the shadowy picture feeds his mind.

When the weather hinders me from taking my diversions without-doors,
I frequently make a little party, with two or three select friends,
to visit anything curious that may be seen under cover. My
principal entertainments of this nature are pictures, insomuch that
when I have found the weather set in to be very bad, I have taken a
whole day's journey to see a gallery that is furnished by the hands
of great masters. By this means, when the heavens are filled with
clouds, when the earth swims in rain, and all nature wears a
lowering countenance, I withdraw myself from these uncomfortable
scenes, into the visionary worlds of art; where I meet with shining
landscapes, gilded triumphs, beautiful faces, and all those other
objects that fill the mind with gay ideas, and disperse that
gloominess which is apt to hang upon it in those dark disconsolate
seasons.

I was some weeks ago in a course of these diversions, which had
taken such an entire possession of my imagination that they formed
in it a short morning's dream, which I shall communicate to my
reader, rather as the first sketch and outlines of a vision, than as
a finished piece.

I dreamt that I was admitted into a long, spacious gallery, which
had one side covered with pieces of all the famous painters who are
now living, and the other with the works of the greatest masters
that are dead.

On the side of the living, I saw several persons busy in drawing,
colouring, and designing. On the side of the dead painters, I could
not discover more than one person at work, who was exceeding slow in
his motions, and wonderfully nice in his touches.

I was resolved to examine the several artists that stood before me,
and accordingly applied myself to the side of the living. The first
I observed at work in this part of the gallery was Vanity, with his
hair tied behind him in a riband, and dressed like a Frenchman. All
the faces he drew were very remarkable for their smiles, and a
certain smirking air which he bestowed indifferently on every age
and degree of either sex. The toujours gai appeared even in his
judges, bishops, and Privy Councillors. In a word, all his men were
petits maitres, and all his women coquettes. The drapery of his
figures was extremely well suited to his faces, and was made up of
all the glaring colours that could be mixed together; every part of
the dress was in a flutter, and endeavoured to distinguish itself
above the rest.

On the left hand of Vanity stood a laborious workman, who I found
was his humble admirer, and copied after him. He was dressed like a
German, and had a very hard name that sounded something like
Stupidity.

The third artist that I looked over was Fantasque, dressed like a
Venetian scaramouch. He had an excellent hand at chimera, and dealt
very much in distortions and grimaces. He would sometimes affright
himself with the phantoms that flowed from his pencil. In short,
the most elaborate of his pieces was at best but a terrifying dream:
and one could say nothing more of his finest figures than that they
were agreeable monsters.

The fourth person I examined was very remarkable for his hasty hand,
which left his pictures so unfinished that the beauty in the
picture, which was designed to continue as a monument of it to
posterity, faded sooner than in the person after whom it was drawn.
He made so much haste to despatch his business that he neither gave
himself time to clean his pencils nor mix his colours. The name of
this expeditious workman was Avarice.

Not far from this artist I saw another of a quite different nature,
who was dressed in the habit of a Dutchman, and known by the name of
Industry. His figures were wonderfully laboured. If he drew the
portraiture of a man, he did not omit a single hair in his face; if
the figure of a ship, there was not a rope among the tackle that
escaped him. He had likewise hung a great part of the wall with
night-pieces, that seemed to show themselves by the candles which
were lighted up in several parts of them; and were so inflamed by
the sunshine which accidentally fell upon them, that at first sight
I could scarce forbear crying out "Fire!"

The five foregoing artists were the most considerable on this side
the gallery; there were indeed several others whom I had not time to
look into. One of them, however, I could not forbear observing, who
was very busy in retouching the finest pieces, though he produced no
originals of his own. His pencil aggravated every feature that was
before overcharged, loaded every defect, and poisoned every colour
it touched. Though this workman did so much mischief on the side of
the living, he never turned his eye towards that of the dead. His
name was Envy.

Having taken a cursory view of one side of the gallery, I turned
myself to that which was filled by the works of those great masters
that were dead; when immediately I fancied myself standing before a
multitude of spectators, and thousands of eyes looking upon me at
once: for all before me appeared so like men and women, that I
almost forgot they were pictures. Raphael's pictures stood in one
row, Titian's in another, Guido Rheni's in a third. One part of the
wall was peopled by Hannabal Carrache, another by Correggio, and
another by Rubens. To be short, there was not a great master among
the dead who had not contributed to the embellishment of this side
of the gallery. The persons that owed their being to these several
masters appeared all of them to be real and alive, and differed
among one another only in the variety of their shapes, complexions,
and clothes; so that they looked like different nations of the same
species.

Observing an old man, who was the same person I before mentioned, as
the only artist that was at work on this side of the gallery,
creeping up and down from one picture to another, and retouching all
the fine pieces that stood before me, I could not but be very
attentive to all his motions. I found his pencil was so very light
that it worked imperceptibly, and after a thousand touches scarce
produced any visible effect in the picture on which he was employed.
However, as he busied himself incessantly, and repeated touch after
touch without rest or intermission, he wore off insensibly every
little disagreeable gloss that hung upon a figure. He also added
such a beautiful brown to the shades, and mellowness to the colours,
that he made every picture appear more perfect than when it came
fresh from the master's pencil. I could not forbear looking upon
the face of this ancient workman, and immediately by the long lock
of hair upon his forehead, discovered him to be Time.

Whether it were because the thread of my dream was at an end I
cannot tell, but, upon my taking a survey of this imaginary old man,
my sleep left me.

SPARE TIME.

- Spatio brevi
Spem longam reseces: dum loquimur, fugerit invida
AEtas: carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.
HOR., Od. i. 11, 6.

Thy lengthen'd hope with prudence bound,
Proportion'd to the flying hour:
While thus we talk in careless ease,
Our envious minutes wing their flight;
Then swift the fleeting pleasure seize,
Nor trust to-morrow's doubtful light.
FRANCIS.

We all of us complain of the shortness of time, saith Seneca, and
yet have much more than we know what to do with. Our lives, says
he, are spent either in doing nothing at all, or in doing nothing to
the purpose, or in doing nothing that we ought to do. We are always
complaining our days are few, and acting as though there would be no
end of them. That noble philosopher described our inconsistency
with ourselves in this particular, by all those various turns of
expression and thoughts which are peculiar to his writings.

I often consider mankind as wholly inconsistent with itself in a
point that bears some affinity to the former. Though we seem
grieved at the shortness of life in general, we are wishing every
period of it at an end. The minor longs to be of age, then to be a
man of business, then to make up an estate, then to arrive at
honours, then to retire. Thus, although the whole of life is
allowed by every one to be short, the several divisions of it appear
long and tedious. We are for lengthening our span in general, but
would fain contract the parts of which it is composed. The usurer
would be very well satisfied to have all the time annihilated that
lies between the present moment and next quarter-day. The
politician would be contented to lose three years in his life, could
he place things in the posture which he fancies they will stand in
after such a revolution of time. The lover would be glad to strike
out of his existence all the moments that are to pass away before
the happy meeting. Thus, as fast as our time runs, we should be
very glad, in most part of our lives, that it ran much faster than
it does. Several hours of the day hang upon our hands, nay, we wish
away whole years; and travel through time as through a country
filled with many wild and empty wastes, which we would fain hurry
over, that we may arrive at those several little settlements or
imaginary points of rest which are dispersed up and down in it.

If we divide the life of most men into twenty parts, we shall find
that at least nineteen of them are mere gaps and chasms, which are
neither filled with pleasure nor business. I do not, however,
include in this calculation the life of those men who are in a
perpetual hurry of affairs, but of those only who are not always
engaged in scenes of action; and I hope I shall not do an
unacceptable piece of service to these persons, if I point out to
them certain methods for the filling up their empty spaces of life.
The methods I shall propose to them are as follow.

The first is the exercise of virtue, in the most general acceptation
of the word. That particular scheme which comprehends the social
virtues may give employment to the most industrious temper, and find
a man in business more than the most active station of life. To
advise the ignorant, relieve the needy, comfort the afflicted, are
duties that fall in our way almost every day of our lives. A man
has frequent opportunities of mitigating the fierceness of a party;
of doing justice to the character of a deserving man; of softening
the envious, quieting the angry, and rectifying the prejudiced;
which are all of them employments suited to a reasonable nature, and
bring great satisfaction to the person who can busy himself in them
with discretion.

There is another kind of virtue that may find employment for those
retired hours in which we are altogether left to ourselves, and
destitute of company and conversation; I mean that intercourse and
communication which every reasonable creature ought to maintain with
the great Author of his being. The man who lives under an habitual
sense of the Divine presence, keeps up a perpetual cheerfulness of
temper, and enjoys every moment the satisfaction of thinking himself
in company with his dearest and best of friends. The time never
lies heavy upon him: it is impossible for him to be alone. His
thoughts and passions are the most busied at such hours when those
of other men are the most inactive. He no sooner steps out of the
world but his heart burns with devotion, swells with hope, and
triumphs in the consciousness of that Presence which everywhere
surrounds him; or, on the contrary, pours out its fears, its
sorrows, its apprehensions, to the great Supporter of its existence.

I have here only considered the necessity of a man's being virtuous,
that he may have something to do; but if we consider further that
the exercise of virtue is not only an amusement for the time it
lasts, but that its influence extends to those parts of our
existence which lie beyond the grave, and that our whole eternity is
to take its colour from those hours which we here employ in virtue
or in vice, the argument redoubles upon us for putting in practice
this method of passing away our time.

When a man has but a little stock to improve, and has opportunities
of turning it all to good account, what shall we think of him if he
suffers nineteen parts of it to lie dead, and perhaps employs even
the twentieth to his ruin or disadvantage? But, because the mind
cannot be always in its fervours, nor strained up to a pitch of
virtue, it is necessary to find out proper employments for it in its
relaxations.

The next method, therefore, that I would propose to fill up our
time, should be useful and innocent diversions. I must confess I
think it is below reasonable creatures to be altogether conversant
in such diversions as are merely innocent, and have nothing else to
recommend them but that there is no hurt in them. Whether any kind
of gaming has even thus much to say for itself, I shall not
determine; but I think it is very wonderful to see persons of the
best sense passing away a dozen hours together in shuffling and
dividing a pack of cards, with no other conversation but what is
made up of a few game phrases, and no other ideas but those of black
or red spots ranged together in different figures. Would not a man
laugh to hear any one of this species complaining that life is
short?

The stage might be made a perpetual source of the most noble and
useful entertainments, were it under proper regulations.

But the mind never unbends itself so agreeably as in the
conversation of a well-chosen friend. There is indeed no blessing
of life that is any way comparable to the enjoyment of a discreet
and virtuous friend. It eases and unloads the mind, clears and
improves the understanding, engenders thoughts and knowledge,
animates virtue and good resolutions, soothes and allays the
passions, and finds employment for most of the vacant hours of life.

Next to such an intimacy with a particular person, one would
endeavour after a more general conversation with such as are able to
entertain and improve those with whom they converse, which are
qualifications that seldom go asunder.

There are many other useful amusements of life which one would
endeavour to multiply, that one might on all occasions have recourse
to something rather than suffer the mind to lie idle, or run adrift
with any passion that chances to rise in it.

A man that has a taste of music, painting, or architecture, is like
one that has another sense, when compared with such as have no
relish of those arts. The florist, the planter, the gardener, the
husbandman, when they are only as accomplishments to the man of
fortune, are great reliefs to a country life, and many ways useful
to those who are possessed of them.

But of all the diversions of life, there is none so proper to fill
up its empty spaces as the reading of useful and entertaining
authors. But this I shall only touch upon, because it in some
measure interferes with the third method, which I shall propose in
another paper, for the employment of our dead, inactive hours, and
which I shall only mention in general to be the pursuit of
knowledge.

NEXT ESSAY

- Hoc est
Vivere bis, vita posse priore frui.
MART., Ep. x. 23.

The present joys of life we doubly taste,
By looking back with pleasure to the past.

The last method which I proposed in my Saturday's paper, for filing
up those empty spaces of life which are so tedious and burthensome
to idle people, is the employing ourselves in the pursuit of
knowledge. I remember Mr. Boyle, speaking of a certain mineral,
tells us that a man may consume his whole life in the study of it
without arriving at the knowledge of all its qualities. The truth
of it is, there is not a single science, or any branch of it, that
might not furnish a man with business for life, though it were much
longer than it is.

I shall not here engage on those beaten subjects of the usefulness
of knowledge, nor of the pleasure and perfection it gives the mind,
nor on the methods of attaining it, nor recommend any particular
branch of it; all which have been the topics of many other writers;
but shall indulge myself in a speculation that is more uncommon, and
may therefore, perhaps, be more entertaining.

I have before shown how the unemployed parts of life appear long and
tedious, and shall here endeavour to show how those parts of life
which are exercised in study, reading, and the pursuits of
knowledge, are long, but not tedious, and by that means discover a
method of lengthening our lives, and at the same time of turning all
the parts of them to our advantage.

Mr. Locke observes, "That we get the idea of time or duration, by
reflecting on that train of ideas which succeed one another in our
minds: that, for this reason, when we sleep soundly without
dreaming, we have no perception of time, or the length of it whilst
we sleep; and that the moment wherein we leave off to think, till
the moment we begin to think again, seems to have no distance." To
which the author adds, "and so I doubt not but it would be to a
waking man, if it were possible for him to keep only one idea in his
mind, without variation and the succession of others; and we see
that one who fixes his thoughts very intently on one thing, so as to
take but little notice of the succession of ideas that pass in his
mind whilst he is taken up with that earnest contemplation, lets
slip out of his account a good part of that duration, and thinks
that time shorter than it is."

We might carry this thought further, and consider a man as on one
side, shortening his time by thinking on nothing, or but a few
things; so, on the other, as lengthening it, by employing his
thoughts on many subjects, or by entertaining a quick and constant
succession of ideas. Accordingly, Monsieur Malebranche, in his
"Inquiry after Truth," which was published several years before Mr.
Locke's Essay on "Human Understanding," tells us, "that it is
possible some creatures may think half an hour as long as we do a
thousand years; or look upon that space of duration which we call a
minute, as an hour, a week, a month, or a whole age."

This notion of Monsieur Malebranche is capable of some little
explanation from what I have quoted out of Mr. Locke; for if our
notion of time is produced by our reflecting on the succession of
ideas in our mind, and this succession may be infinitely accelerated
or retarded, it will follow that different beings may have different
notions of the same parts of duration, according as their ideas,
which we suppose are equally distinct in each of them, follow one
another in a greater or less degree of rapidity.

There is a famous passage in the Alcoran, which looks as if Mahomet
had been possessed of the notion we are now speaking of. It is
there said that the Angel Gabriel took Mahomet out of his bed one
morning to give him a sight of all things in the seven heavens, in
paradise, and in hell, which the prophet took a distinct view of;
and, after having held ninety thousand conferences with God, was
brought back again to his bed. All this, says the Alcoran, was
transacted in so small a space of time, that Mahomet at his return
found his bed still warm, and took up an earthen pitcher, which was
thrown down at the very instant that the Angel Gabriel carried him
away, before the water was all spilt.

There is a very pretty story in the Turkish Tales, which relates to
this passage of that famous impostor, and bears some affinity to the
subject we are now upon. A sultan of Egypt, who was an infidel,
used to laugh at this circumstance in Mahomet's life, as what was
altogether impossible and absurd: but conversing one day with a
great doctor in the law, who had the gift of working miracles, the
doctor told him he would quickly convince him of the truth of this
passage in the history of Mahomet, if he would consent to do what he
should desire of him. Upon this the sultan was directed to place
himself by a huge tub of water, which he did accordingly; and as he
stood by the tub amidst a circle of his great men, the holy man bade
him plunge his head into the water and draw it up again. The king
accordingly thrust his head into the water, and at the same time
found himself at the foot of a mountain on the sea-shore. The king
immediately began to rage against his doctor for this piece of
treachery and witchcraft; but at length, knowing it was in vain to
be angry, he set himself to think on proper methods for getting a
livelihood in this strange country. Accordingly he applied himself
to some people whom he saw at work in a neighbouring wood: these
people conducted him to a town that stood at a little distance from
the wood, where, after some adventures, he married a woman of great
beauty and fortune. He lived with this woman so long that he had by
her seven sons and seven daughters. He was afterwards reduced to
great want, and forced to think of plying in the streets as a porter
for his livelihood. One day as he was walking alone by the sea-
side, being seized with many melancholy reflections upon his former
and his present state of life, which had raised a fit of devotion in
him, he threw off his clothes with a design to wash himself,
according to the custom of the Mahometans, before he said his
prayers.

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