Histoire de la Littérature Anglaise (Volume 3 de 5)

1: Voyez surtout les portraits de lady Mooreland, de lady Williams, de la comtesse d'Ossory, de la duchesse de Cleveland, de lady Price, etc.

2: Carlyle, Cromwell's speeches and letters, t. I, p. 48.

3: Le colonel Hutchinson fut un instant suspect parce qu'il portait les cheveux longs et qu'il s'habillait bien.

4: 1648, trente en un jour. Une d'elles avoua qu'elle avait été à une assemblée où étaient cinq cents sorcières.—Pictorial history, t. III, p. 489.

5: In 1652 the kirk-session of Glasgow «brot boyes and servants before them, for breaking the Sabbath and other faults. They had clandestine censors, and gave money to some for this end.» (Buckle, History of Civilisation, I, 346.)

Even yearly in the 18th century the «most popular divines» in Scotland affirmed that Satan «frequently appears clothed in a corporeal substance.» (Ibid., 367.)

«No husband shall kiss his wife, and no mother shall kiss her child on the Sabbath-day.» (Ibid., 385.)

The quhilk day the Sessioune caused mak this act, that ther sould be no pypers at brydels, etc. (Ibid., 389.)

1719. The presbytery of Edinburgh indignantly declares: «Yea, some have arrived at that height of impiety as not to be ashamed of washing in water and swimming in rivers upon the holy Sabbath.» (Ibid.)

«I think David had never so sweet a time as then, when he was pursued as a partridge by his son Absalom.» (Gray's Great and Precious Promises.)

Voir tout le chapitre où Buckle a décrit, d'après les textes, l'état de l'Écosse au dix-septième siècle.

6: Voyez, dans Richardson, Swift et Fielding, mais surtout dans Hogarth, la peinture de cette débauche brutale. Encore récemment dans un finish à Londres, les gentlemen s'amusaient à soûler de belles filles parées en robe de bal; puis quand elles tombaient inertes, à leur faire avaler du poivre, de la moutarde et du vinaigre. (Flora Tristan, 1840, Promenades dans Londres, chap. VIII.—Témoin oculaire.)

7: Le roi jouait au trictrac: arrive un coup douteux: «Ah! voici Grammont qui nous jugera; Grammont, venez nous juger.—Sire, vous avez perdu.—Comment! vous ne savez pas encore....—Eh! ne voyez-vous pas, sire, que si le coup eût été seulement douteux, ces messieurs n'auraient pas manqué de vous donner gain de cause?»

8: «Il déterrait les malheureux pour les secourir.»

9:

For as Æneas bore his sire
Upon his shoulder through the fire,
Our knight did bear no less a pack
Of his own buttocks on his back.

10: Cette barbe était taillée en bêche.

11:

His tawny beard was th'equal grace
Both of his wisdom and his face;
In cut and dye so like a tile,
A sudden view it would beguile:
The upper part whereof was whey,
The nether orange, mix'd with grey.
The hairy meteor did denounce
The fall of sceptres and of crowns:
With grisly type did represent
Declining age of government,
And tell, with hieroglyphic spade,
Its own grave and the state's were made:
Like Samson's heart-breakers, it grew
In time to make a nation rue;
Thought it contributed its own fall,
To wait upon the public downfall....—
"Twas bound to suffer persecution,
And martyrdom, with resolution;
T'oppose itself against the hate
And vengeance of th'incensed state,
In whose defiance it was worn,
Still ready to be pull'd and torn,
With red-hot irons to be tortur'd,
Revild, and spit upon, and martyr'd.
Maugre all which, 'twas to stand fast,
As long as monarchy should last;
But when the state should hap to reel,
'Twas to submit to fatal steel,
And fall, as it was consecrate,
A sacrifice to fall of state,
Whose thread of life the fatal sisters
Did twist together with his whiskers,
And twine so close, that Time should never,
In life or death, their fortunes sever:
But with his rusty sickle mow
Both down together at a blow.

12:

This sword a dagger had his page,
That was but little for his age,
And therefore waited on him so
As Dwarfs upon Knights errants do...
When it had stabb'd or broke a head,
It would scrape trenchers or chip bread.
... 'T would make clean shoes, and in the earth
Set leeks and onions, and so forth.

13:

Quoth Hudibras, I smell a rat.
Ralpho, thou dost prevaricate.
For though the thesis which thou lay'st
Be true adamussim as thou say'st.
(For that Bear-baiting should appear
Jure divino lawfuller
Than Synods are, thou dost deny,
Totidem verbis, so do I,)
Yet there is a fallacy in this;
For, if by thy Homœsis,
Tussis pro crepitu, an art
Under a Cough to slur a Fart,
Thou wouldst sophistically imply,
Both are unlawful, I deny.

14: Mémoires de Clarendon, t. II, p. 65.

15: «Mr. Evelyn tells me of several of the menial servants of the Court lacking bread, that have not received a farthing wages since the king's coming in.» (1667. Pepys.)

Mr. Povy says that to this day the king do follow the women as much as he ever did.—That the Duke of York hath come out of his wife's bed and gone to others laid in bed for him; that the family (of the duke) is in horrible debt, by spending above 60000 liv. per annum, when he hath not 40000 liv.

It is certain that, as it now is, the seamen of England, in my conscience, would, if they could, go over and serve the King of France or Holland, rather than us. (24 juin 1667. Ibid.)

16: Voir une Étude détaillée sur Rochester, par M. Forgues. (Revue des Deux-Mondes, août et septembre 1857.)

17: When she is young, she whores herself for sport:

And when she's old, she bawds for her support....
She is a snare, a shamble, a stews.
Her meat and sawce she does for lechery chuse,
And does in laziness delight the more,
Because by that she is provoked to whore.
Ungrateful, treacherous, enviously enclined,
Wild beasts are tamed, floods easier far confined,
Than is her stubborn and rebellious mind....
Her temper so extravagant we find,
She hates or is impertinently kind.
Would she be grave, she then looks like a devil,
And like a fool or whore, when she be civil....
Contentious, wicked, and not fit to trust,
And covetous to spend it on her lust.

18: Pepys.

19: «Je ne sais où ce fou de Crofts avait pris que les Moscovites avaient tous de belles femmes, et que leurs femmes avaient toutes la jambe belle. Le roi soutint qu'il n'y en avait point de si belle que celle de Mlle Stewart. Elle, pour soutenir la gageure, se mit à la montrer jusqu'au-dessus du genou.» (Grammont.)

20: «Si l'on veut respecter l'antiquité, c'est l'âge présent qui est le plus vieux.»

21: To say he hath spoken to him in a dream is no more than to say he dreamed that God spoke to him. To say he hath seen a vision or heard a voice, is to say that he has dreamed between sleeping and waking. To say he speaks by supernatural inspiration, is to say he finds an ardent desire to speak or some strong opinion of himself for which he cannot alledge no natural and sufficient reason.

22: From the principal parts of nature, reason and passion, have proceeded two kinds of learning, mathematical and dogmatical. The former is free from controversy and dispute, because it consisteth in comparing figure and motion only, in which things truth and the interest of men oppose not each other. But in the other there is nothing undisputable, because it compares men and meddles with their right and profit.

23: Ses principaux ouvrages ont été écrits entre 1646 et 1655.

24: Nemo dat nisi respiciens ad bonum sibi.

Amicitiæ bonæ, nempe utiles. Nam amicitiæ cùm ad multa alia, tum ad præsidium conferunt.

Sapientia utile. Nam præsidium in se habet nonnullum. Appetibile est per se, id est jucundum. Item pulchrum, quia acquisitio difficilis.

Non enim qui sapiens est, ut dixere stoici, dives est, sed contra qui dives est sapiens est dicendus.

Ignoscere veniam petenti pulchrum. Nam indicium fiduciæ sui.

Imitatio jucundum, revocat enim præterita. Præterita autem si bona fuerint, jucunda sunt repræsentata, quia bona. Si mala, quia præterita. Jucunda igitur musica, pictura, poesis.

25: Metus potentiarum invisibilium, sive fictæ illæ sint, sive ab historiis acceptæ sint publice, religio. Si publice acceptæ non sint, superstitio.

26: Omnis societas vel commodi causa vel gloriæ, hoc est, sui, non sociorum amore contrahitur.

Statuendum originem magnarum et diuturnarum societatum non a mutua benevolentia, sed a mutuo metu exstitisse.

Voluntas lædendi omnibus inest in statu naturæ.

Status hominum naturalis antequam in societatem coiretur, bellum. Neque hoc simpliciter, sed bellum omnium in omnes.

Bellum sua natura sempiternum.

27: Corpus et substantia idem significant, et proinde vox composita substantia incorporea est insignificans æque ac si quis diceret corpus incorporeum.

Quidquid imaginamur finitum est. Nulla ergo est idea neque conceptus qui oriri potest a voce hac, infinitum.

Recidit ratiocinatio omnis ad duas operationes animi, additionem et substractionem.

Genus et universale nominum non rerum nomina sunt.

Veritas in dicto non in re consistit.

Sensio igitur in sentiente nihil aliud esse potest præter motum partium aliquarum intus in sentiente existentium, quæ partes motæ organorum quibus sentimus partes sunt.

28: 1662.

29: Mot de Le Sage.

30: Son Wild Galant est de 1662.

31: «We love to get our mistresses, and purr over them, as cats do over mice, and then let them get a little way, and all the pleasure is to pat them back again.»

Wildblood dit à sa maîtresse: «I am none of those unreasonable lovers that propose to themselves the loving to eternity. A month is commonly my stint.»—Et Jacintha répond: «Or would not a fortnight serve our turn?» (Mock Astrologer.)

Souvent, à la barbarie de ses plaisanteries, on dirait qu'il traduit Hobbes.

32:

Is not Love love without a Priest and Altars?
The temples are inanimate, and know not
What vows are made in them; the Priest stands ready
For his hire, and cares not what hearts he couples.
Love alone is marriage....

33:

I wished the ball might be kept perpetually in our cloyster, and that half the handsome nuns in it might be turned to men, for the sake of the other.

34:

35:

For Kings and Priest are in a manner bound
For reverence sake, to be close hypocrites.

36:

Fate is what I
By virtue of omnipotence have made it.
And Power omnipotent can do no wrong.
Not to myself, because I will it so;
Not yet to men, for what they are is mine.
This night I will enjoy Amphytrion's wife:
For when I made her, I decreed her such
As I shou'd please to love.

37: Lorsque Jupiter sort, alléguant qu'il est jour, Alcmène lui dit:

But you and I will draw our curtains close,
Extinguish day-light, and put out the sun.
Come back, my lord.
You have not yet laid long enough in bed
To warm your widowed side.

Comparez la matrone romaine de Plaute et l'honnête dame française de Molière à cette personne expansive.

38:

39:

Though I cannot lie like them, I am as vain as they; I cannot but publicly give your Grace my humble acknowledgments.... This is the poet's gratitude, which in plain english is only pride and ambition.

40: Madame Bovary, par G. Flaubert.

41:

42:

43: Il faut lire cet épilogue, pour voir quelles paroles et quels détails on osait mettre dans la bouche d'une actrice.

44:

45:

46: Unfortunate lady that I am! I have left the herd on purpose to be chased. But the park affords not so much as a satyr for me; and no Burgundy man, or drunken scourer, will reel my way. The rag-women, and cinder-women, have better luck than I. (Acte IV.)

47: Dans l'Épouse campagnarde.

48: On connaît la lettre d'Agnès dans Molière: «Je veux vous écrire, et je suis bien en peine par où je m'y prendrai. J'ai des pensées que je désirerais que vous sussiez; mais je ne sais comment faire pour vous les dire, et je me défie de mes paroles, etc.» Regardez la façon dont Wycherley la traduit: «Dear, sweet M^r Horner, my husband would have me send you a base, rude, unmannerly letter: but I won 't; and would have forbid you loving me, but I won 't; and would have me say to you, I hate you, poor M^r Horner, but I won 't tell a lie for him. For I'm sure if you and I were in the country at cards together, I could not help treading on your toe under the table, or rubbing knees with you, and staring in your face, till you saw me, and then looking down and blushing for an hour together, etc.»—«Why, he put the tip of his tongue between my lips.»

49: Dans le Plain dealer.

50:

La scène est empruntée au Misanthrope et à la Critique de l'École des Femmes; jugez de la transformation.

51:

Cette dernière phrase est d'un satirique morose plutôt que d'un observateur exact.

52: Go, husband, and come up, friend; just the buckets in the well; the absence of one brings the other. But I hope, like them too, they will not meet in the way, jostle and clash together.

53:

54: Comparez au rôle d'Alceste des tirades comme celle-ci:

Such as you, like common whores and pickpockets, are only dangerous to those you embrace.

Comparez au rôle de Philinte des tirades comme celle-ci:

But, faith, could you think I was a friend to those I hugged, kissed, flattered, bowed to? When their backs were turned, did not I tell you they were rogues, villains, rascals, whom I despised and hated?

55: I shall not have again my alcove smell like a cabin, my chamber perfumed with his tarpaulin Brandenburgh, hear vollies of brandy sighs, enough to make a fog in one's room.

56: My lord, all that you have made me known by your whispering which I knew not before, is that you have a stinking breath. There is a secret for your heart.

57:

58:

59: Her love—a whore's, a witch's love!—But what, did she not kiss well, sir? I'm sure, I thought her lips.... But I must not think of them more.... But yet they are such I could still kiss, grow so,—and then tear off with my teeth, grind them into mammocks, and spit them into her cuckold's face.

60: What, you are my rival, then! And therefore you shall stay and keep the door for me, whilst I go in for you; but when I'm gone, if you dare to stir off from this very board, or breath the least murmuring accent, I'll cut her throat first; and if you love her, you will not venture her life. Nay, then I'll cut your throat too, and I know you love your own life at least.... Not a word more, lest I begin my revenge on her by killing you.

61: Here, madam, I never left yet my wench unpaid.

62:

63: Voir toutes les pièces historiques de Shakspeare.

64: 1654.

65: 1660.

66: Pepys, 1663.

67: Grammont.

68: Voyez, par exemple, dans le Beaux Stratagem (Farquhar), act. II, sc. ii, le Beau à l'Église.

69: Voir surtout An Account of the United Provinces, Memoirs of Gardening.

70: I have often wondered how such sharp and violent invectives came to be made so generally against Epicurus, by the ages that followed him, whose admirable wit, felicity of expression, excellence of nature, sweetness of conversation, temperance of life, and constancy of death, made him so beloved by his friends, admired by his scholars, and honoured by the Athenians.

71: But, where factions were once entered and rooted in a state, they thought it madness for good men to meddle with public affairs (P. 203, 206, 191, t. III.)

72: But the true service of the public is a business of so much labour and so much care, that though a good and wise man may not refuse it, if he be called to it by his prince or his country, and thinks he can be of more than vulgar use, yet he will seldom or never seek it, but leaves it commonly to men who, under the disguise of public good, pursue their own designs of wealth, power, and such bastard honours as usually attend them, not that which is the true, and only true reward of virtue.

73: Comparez cet essai à l'ouvrage de Carlyle; c'est le même titre et le même sujet, et il est curieux d'y voir la différence des deux siècles.

74: They were commonly excellent poets, and great physicians: they were so learned in natural philosophy, that they foretold not only eclipses in the heavens, but earthquakes at land, and storms at sea, great droughts, and great plagues, much plenty or much scarcity of certain sorts of fruits or grain; not to mention the magical powers attributed to several of them, to allay storms, to raise gales, to appease commotions of people, to make plagues cease.

75: What are become of the charms of music, by which men and beasts, fishes, fowls and serpents, were so frequently enchanted, and their very natures changed; by which the passions of men were raised to the greatest height and violence, and then as suddenly appeased, so as they might be justly said to be turned into lions or lambs, into wolves or into harts, by the powers and charms of this admirable art?

76: Macaulay, Essai sur William Temple.

77: It may, perhaps, be further affirmed, in favour of the ancients, that the oldest books we have are still in their kind the best. The two most ancient that I know of in prose, among those we call profane authors, are still Esop's Fables and Phalaris's Epistles, both living near the same time, which was that of Cyrus and Pythagoras. As the first has been agreed by all ages since for the greatest master in his kind, and all others of that sort have been but imitations of his original, so I think the Epistles of Phalaris to have more race, more spirit, more force of wit and genius, than any others I have ever seen, either ancient or modern. I know several learned men (or that usually pass for such, under the name of critics) have not esteemed them genuine, and Politian, with some others, have attributed them to Lucian; but I think he must have little skill in painting, that cannot find out this to be an original; such diversity of passions, upon such variety of actions and passages of life and government, such freedom of thought, such boldness of expression, such bounty to his friends, such scorn of his enemies, such honour of learned men, such esteem of good, such knowledge of life, such contempt of death, with such fierceness of nature and cruelty of revenge, could never be represented but by him that possessed them; and I esteem Lucian to have been no more capable of writing than of acting what Phalaris did. In all one writ, you find the scholar or the sophist; and in all the other, the tyrant and the commander. (Of ancient and modern learning, 469.)

78: Mistresses are like books; if you pore upon them too much, they doze you, and make you unfit for company; but if used discretly, you are the fitter for conversation by them.

A mistress should be like a little country retreat near the town; not to dwell in constantly, but only so a night, and away, to taste the town the better when a man returns.

79: There is never a man in the town lives more like a gentleman with his wife than I do. I never mind her motions; she never enquires into mine. We speak to one another civilly, hate one another heartily.

80: Pretty pouting lips, with a little moisture hanging on them, that look like the Province rose fresh on the bush, ere the morning sun has quite drawn up the dew.

81:

My passion with your beauty grew,
While Cupid at my heart,
Still as his mother favour'd you,
Threw a new flaming dart.
Each gloried in their wanton part;
To make a lover, he
Employ'd the utmost of his art—
To make a beauty, she.

82:

83:

So in those nations which the Sun adore
Some modest Persian or weak-eyed Moor
No higher dares advance his dazzled sight
Than to some gilded cloud, which near the light
Of their ascending God adorns the East,
And graced with his beam, outshines the rest.

84:

While in this park I sing, the list'ning deer
Attend my passion and forget to fear;
When to the beeches I report my flame,
They bow their heads, as if they felt the same.
To Gods appealing when I reach their bow'rs
With loud complaint, they answer me in show'rs.
To thee a wild and cruel soul is giv'n,
More deaf than trees and prouder than the heav'n.
The rock
.... That cloven rock produc'd thee.
This last complaint th'indulgent ears did pierce
Of just Apollo, president of verse,
Highly concerned that the Muse should bring
Damage to one whom he had taught to sing, etc.

85:

Then blush not, Fair! or on him frown:
How could the youth, alas! but bend
When his whole Heav'n upon him lean'd;
If ought by him amiss was done,
'Twas to let you rise so soon.

86:

Amoret! as sweet and good
As the most delicious food,
Which but tasted does impart
Life and gladness to the heart.

87:

Sacharissa's beauty's wine,
Which to madness doth incline;
Such a liquor as no brain
That is mortal can sustain.

88:

Yet, fairest blossom, do not slight
The age which you may know so soon.
The rosy morn resigns her light
And milder glory to the noon.

89:

He calls to mind his strength, and then his speed,
His winged heels, and then his armed head:
With these t' avoid, with that his fate to meet:
But fear prevails and bids him trust his feet.
So fast he flies, that his reviewing eye
Has lost the chasers, and his ear the cry.

90:

My eye, descending from the hill, surveys
Where Thames among the wanton valleys strays:
Thames, the most lov'd of all the Ocean's sons
By his old sire, to his embraces runs;
Hasting to pay his tribute to the sea,
Like mortal life to meet eternity.
Nor with a sudden and impetuous wave,
Like profuse kings, resumes the wealth he gave.
No unexpected inundations spoil
The mower's hopes, or mock the ploughman's toil,
But godlike his unweary'd bounty flows;
First loves to do, then loves the good he does.
O, could I flow like thee, and make thy stream
My great example, as it is my theme!
Though deep, yet clear; though gentle, yet not dull:
Strong without rage, without o'erflowing full....
But his proud head the airy mountain hides
Among the clouds; his shoulders and his sides
A shady mantle clothes; his curled brows
Frown on the gentle stream, which calmly flows;
While winds and storms his lofty forehead beat,
The common fate of all that's high or great.

91: Etheredge dans Sir Fopling Flutter, Wycherley dans Monsieur de Paris.

92: «I was always eminent for being bien ganté.» (Etheredge, Sir Fopling Flutter.)

93: De 1672 à 1726.

94: Ornuphre, Begears.

95: Consultations de Sganarelle dans le Médecin malgré lui.

96: Parmi les femmes, Éliante, Henriette, Élise, Uranie, Elmire.

97: Voyez l'admirable tact et le sang-froid d'Éliante, d'Henriette et d'Elmire.

98: Dryden s'en vante. Il y a toujours chez lui une comédie complète amalgamée grossièrement avec une tragédie complète.

99:

100: Lady Fidget dit:

101:

102: Farquhar, The Beaux Stratagem.

103: Vanbrugh, Provoked Wife.

104: After his man and he had rolled about the room, like sick passengers in a storm, he comes flounce in the bed, dead as a salmon into a fishmonger's basket; his feet cold as ice, his breath hot as a furnace, and his hands and his face as greasy as his flannel nightcap. O matrimony! He tosses up the clothes with a barbarous swing over his shoulders, disorders the whole economy of my bed, bares me half naked, and my whole night's comfort is the tunable serenade of that wakeful nightingale, his nose!

105: Why did I marry! I married because I had a mind to lie with her, and she would not let me....

106:

107: Let us hear no more of my wife nor your mistress. Damn them both with all my heart, and every thing else that dangles a petticoat, except four generous whores, with Betty Sands at the head of them, who are drunk with my Lord Rake and I ten times in a fortnight.

108:

109: Come to your kennel, you cuckoldy drunken sot you.

110: Ralph, go thy ways, and ask Sir Tunbelly, if he pleases to be waited upon. And dost hear? Call to nurse that she may lock up Miss Hoyden before the gate's open.

111: Till I know your name, I shall not ask you to come into my house; and when I know your name, 'tis six to four I don't ask you neither.

112: Cod's my life! I ask your Lordship's pardon ten thousand times. (To a servant.) Here, run in a-doors quickly. Get a Scotch-coal fire in the great parlour; set all the Turkey-work chairs in their places; get the great brass candlesticks out, and be sure stick the sockets full of laurel. Run! And do you hear; run away to nurse; bid her let Miss Hoyden loose again, and, if it is not shifting day, let her put on a clean tucker, quick!

113:

114: Ha! there is my wench, I' faith. Touch and take, I'll warrant her; she'll breed like a tame rabbit.

115:

116: It's well I have a husband a-coming, or, ecod, I'd marry the baker; I would so. Nobody can knock at the gate, but presently I must be locked up; and here's the young grey-hound bitch can run loose about the house all the day long, she can. 'Tis very well.

117: O Lord, I'll go put on my laced smock, though I'm whipped till the blood run down my heels for it.

118: Sir, I never disobey my father in anything but eating of green gooseberries....

119: A week! Why, I shall be an old woman by that time!

120: Ecod, with all my heart! The more the merrier, I say; ha! nurse!

121: Le caractère de la nourrice est excellent. Fashion la remercie de l'éducation qu'elle a donnée à Hoyden:

«Alas, all I can boast of is, I gave her pure good milk, and so your honour would have said, an you had seen how the poor thing sucked it! Eh! God's blessing on the sweet face on it, how it used to hang at this poor teat, and suck and squeeze, and kick, and sprawl it would, till the belly on't was so full, it would drop off like a leech!»

Cela est vrai, même après la nourrice de Juliette dans Shakspeare.

122:

123:

124: Love him! Why, do you think I love him, nurse? Ecod, I would not care if he were hanged, so I were but once married to him. No; that which pleases me is to think what work I'll make when I get to London; for when I am a wife and a lady both, nurse, ecod, I'll flaunt it with the best of 'em.

125: But, d'ye hear? Pray, take care of one thing: when the business comes to break out, be sure you get between me and my father; for you know his tricks; he will knock me down.

126: Voir aussi le caractère du jeune garçon lourdaud et bête, squire Humphrey (A Journey to London, Vanbrugh). Il n'a qu'une idée, manger toujours.

127: L'Hippolyta de Wycherley, la Silvia de Farquhar.

128: If I marry my Lord Aimwell, there will be title, place, and precedence, the park, the play, and the drawing-room, splendour, equipage, noise, and flambeaux. «Hey, my Lady Aimwell's servants there!—Light, light to the stairs—my Lady Aimwell's coach put forward—stand by, make room for her ladyship.»—Are not those things moving?

129: Were it not for your affair in the balance, I should go near to pick up some odious man of quality yet, and only take poor Heartfree for a gallant.

130: Look you here, madam, then, what Mr. Tattle has given me.—Look you here, cousin; here's a snuff-box; nay, there's snuff in 't. Here, will you have any?—Oh God, how sweet it is! Mr. Tattle is all over sweet; his peruke is sweet, and his gloves are sweet, and his handkerchief is sweet, pure sweet, sweeter than roses.—Smell him, mother, madam, I mean.—He gave me this ring for a kiss.... Smell, cousin; he says he'll give me something that will make my smocks smell this way. Is not it pure? 'Tis better than lavender, nurse.—I'm resolved I won't let nurse put any more lavender among my smocks—ha, cousin?

131:

132:

133:

134: Congreve, The Way of the World.

135:

136: Congreve, Double Dealer.

137:

138: Congreve, The Way of the World.

139: Sententious Mirabell! Prithee, don't look with that violent and inflexible wise face, like Salomon on the dividing of the child in an old tapestry-hanging.... Ha, ha, ha, pardon me, dear creature, I must laugh, though I grant you 'tis a little barbarous, ha, ha, ha!

140:

141:

Voyez encore dans Vanbrugh, A Journey to London. Rarement la laideur et la corruption de la nature brutale ou mondaine ont été étalées plus à vif. La petite Betty et son frère sont à pendre.

142:

We are as wicked as men, but our vices lie another way. They have more courage than we; so they commit more bold impudent sins. They quarrel, fight, swear, drink, blaspheme, and the like. Whereas we, being cowards, only backbite, tell lies, cheat cards, and so forth. (Vanbrugh, Provoked Wife.)

Voyez aussi dans cette pièce le caractère de Mademoiselle, femme de chambre française. Ils représentent le vice français comme plus impudent encore que le vice anglais.

143:

Catéchisme de l'amour:

144:

145: You should have just so much disgust for your husband as may be sufficient to make you relish your lover. (Congreve, The Way of the World, acte II, scene iv.)

146:

147: If the familiarity of our loves had produced that consequence of which you were apprehensive, where could you have fixed a father's name with credit, but on a husband?

148: A better man ought not to have been sacrificed to the occasion; a worse had not answered the purpose. When you are weary of him, you know your remedy.

149: Rôle du chapelain Foigard dans Farquhar (Beaux Stratagem), de Mademoiselle, et en général, de tous les Français.

150: Rôle d'Amanda dans Relapse (Vanbrugh); rôle de mistress Sullen, conversion des deux viveurs, dans The Beaux Stratagem (Farquhar).

151: Though marriage be a lottery in which there are a wondrous many blanks, yet there is one inestimable lot, in which the only heaven upon earth is written.

To be capable of loving one, doubtless, is better than to possess a thousand. (Vanbrugh.)

152: She Stoops to Conquer.

153:

154:

155:

156:

157:

158:

159:

160:

161: Stances sur la mort d'Olivier Cromwell.

162: Defence of the Epilogue to the Conquest of Grenada.—Grounds of Criticism in tragedy.

163: The language, wit, and conversation of our age are improved and refined above the last....

Let us consider in what the refinement of a language principally consists: That is either in rejecting such old words or phrases which are ill sounding or improper, or in admitting new, which are more proper, more sounding, and more significant....

Let any man who understands English, read diligently the Works of Shakspeare and Fletcher, and I dare undertake that he will find, in every page, either some solecism of speech, or some notorious flaw in sense.... Many of their plots were made up of some ridiculous or incoherent story, which in one play many times took up the business of an age. I suppose I need not name Pericles, Prince of Tyre, nor the historical plays of Shakspeare; besides many of the rest, as the Winter's Tale, Love's Labour Lost, Measure for Measure, which were either grounded on impossibilities, or at least so meanly written that the comedy neither caused your mirth nor the serious part our concernment.

.... I could easily demonstrate that our admired Fletcher neither understood correct plotting, nor what they call the decorum of the stage.... The reader will see Philaster wounding his mistress, and afterwards his boy, to save himself.... His shepherd falls twice into the former indecency of wounding women. (Defence of the Epilogue, etc.)

164: Many of his words and more of his phrases are scarce intelligible; and of those which we understand, some are ungrammatical, others coarse; and his whole style is so pestered with figurative expressions, that it is affected as it is obscure.

165: Well-placing of words for the sweetness of pronunciation was not known till Mr. Waller introduced it.

166: In the age wherein those poets lived there was less of gallantry than in ours.... Besides the want of learning and education, they wanted the happiness of converse....

If any ask me wherein it is that our conversation is so much refined, I must ascribe it to the Court.

Gentlemen will now be entertained with the follies of each other, and though they allow Cob and Tib to speak properly, yet they are not much pleased with their tankard or with their rags.

167: Préface de All for Love.

168: They are likewise to be gathered from the several virtues, vices, or passions, and many other common-places which a poet must be supposed to have learned from natural philosophy, ethicks, and history: of all which whosoever is ignorant does not deserve the name of poet.

169: Essay on Dramatic Poesy.

170: The beauties of the French poesy are the beauties of a statue, but not of a man, because not animated with the soul of poesy, which is imitation of humour and passions.... He who will look upon their plays which have been written 'till these last ten years or thereabouts, will find it an hard matter to pick out two or three passable humours amongst them. Corneille himself, their archpoet, what has he produced except the liar? And you know how it was cry'd up in France. But when it came upon the English stage, though well translated.... the most favourable to it would not put it in competition with many of Fletcher's or Ben Jonson's.... Their verses are to me the coldest I have ever read.... their speeches being so many declamations. When the French stage came to be reformed by cardinal Richelieu, those long harangues were introduced, to comply with the dignity of a churchman. Look upon the Cinna and the Pompey. They are not so properly to be called plays as long discourses of reason of state; and Polyeucte, in matters of religion, is as solemn as the long stops upon our organs. Since that time it is grown into a custom, and their actors speak by the hour-glass, like our parsons.... I deny not this may suit well enough with the French; for as we, who are a more sullen people, come to be diverted at our plays; so they, who are of an aery and gay temper, come hither to make themselves more serious. (Essay on Dramatic Poesy.)

171:

In this nicety of manners does the excellency of French poetry consist. Their heroes are the most civil people breathing; but their good breeding seldom extends to a word of sense. All their wit is in their ceremony. They want the genius which animates our stage.... Thus their Hippolytus is so scrupulous in point of decency that he will rather expose himself to death than accuse his step-mother to his father; and my criticks, I am sure, will commend him for it. But we of grosser apprehensions are apt to think that this excess of generosity is not practicable but with fools and madmen.... Take Hippolytus out of his poetic fit, and I suppose he would think it a wiser part to set the saddle on the right horse, and chuse rather to live with the reputation of a plain-spoken honest man than to die with the infamy of an incestuous villain.... The poet has chosen to give him the turn of gallantry, sent him to travel from Athens to Paris, taught him to make love, and transformed the Hippolytus of Euripides into Monsieur Hippolyte. (Préface de All for Love.)

Cette critique montre, en abrégé, tout le bon sens et toute la liberté d'esprit de Dryden, mais en même temps toute la grossièreté de son éducation et de son temps.

172:

173: A more masculine fancy and greater spirit in the writing than there is in any of the French.

174:

175:

Absent, I may her Martyrdom decree,
But one look more will make that martyr me....

Ce Maximin a la spécialité des calembours: Porphyrius, à qui il offre sa fille en mariage, répond que la distance est trop grande. Maximin là-dessus répond:

Yet Heav'n and Earth which so remote appear,
Are by the air, which flows betwixt'em, near.

176:

177:

178:

Bring me Porphyrius and my Empress dead,
I would brave Heav'n, in my each hand a head.

Il dit en mourant:

And shoving back this earth on which I sit,
I'll mount, and scatter all the gods I hit.

179:

And why this niceness to that pleasure shown,
Where Nature sums up all her joys in one....
Promiscuous love is Nature's general law;
For whosoever the first lovers were,
Brother and sister made the second pair,
And doubled by their love their piety....
You must be mine that you may learn to live.

Remarquez que cette furie, six vers plus loin, copie une réponse de Phèdre. Dryden a cru imiter Racine.

(Aurengzebe, acte IV, sc. i.)

180:

181:

182:

183:

The Moors have heaven and me to assist them....
I'll whistle thy tame fortune after me....

Il devient amoureux. Voici en quel style il parle de l'amour:

184: Voir la chanson sur laquelle on danse la Zambra dans Almanzor.

185:

186:

187:

188:

Des dames si logiciennes ont des grossièretés étranges: Lyndaxara son amant qui la supplie de le rendre «heureux».

If I make you so, you shall pay my price.

189:

He words me, girls, he words me, that I should not
By noble to myself; but hark thee, Charmion....
Now, Iras, what think'st thou?
Thou, an Egyptian puppet, shalt be shown
In Rome, as well as I. Mechanic slaves,
With greasy aprons, rules and hammers, shall
Uplift us to the view....
Saucy lictors
Will catch at us like strumpets; and scald rhymers
Ballad us out o'tune; the quick comedians
Extemporally will stage us, and present
Our Alexandrian revels; Antony
Shall be brought drunken forth, and I shall see
Some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness
I' the posture of a whore....
Husband, I come;
Now to that name my courage prove my title!
I am fire and air; my other elements
I give to baser life.—So, you have done!
Come then, and take the last warmth of my lips.
Farewell, kind Charmion—Iras, long long farewell.
Dost thou not see my baby at my breast,
That sucks the nurse asleep?

Cette gaminerie amère de courtisane et d'artiste est sublime.

190: The World well lost, acte II.

191:

Come to me, come, my soldier, to my arms.
You have been too long away from my embraces.
But when I have you fast and all my own,
With broken murmurs and amorous sighs
I'll say you were unkind and punish you
And mark you red with many an eager kiss.

192:

193: Miranda dit: «And if I can but escape with life, I had rather lie in pain nine months, as my father threatened, than lose my longing.»—Dryden donne une sœur à Miranda; elles se querellent, et sont jalouses l'une de l'autre, etc.—Voyez aussi la description qu'Ève fait de son bonheur, et les idées que ses confidences suggèrent à Satan (acte III, sc. i).

194: Cette impuissance ressemble à celle de Casimir Delavigne.

195:

196:

197:

198:

No; 'tis you dream; you sleep away your hours
In desperate sloth, miscall'd philosophy.
Up, up, for honour's sake; twelve legions wait you,
And long to call you chief. By painful journeys
I led 'em patient both of heat and hunger,
Down from the Parthian marches to the Nile.
'Twill do you good to see their sun-burnt faces,
Their scarr'd cheeks, and chopt hands; there's virtue in 'em:
They'll sell those mangled limbs at dearer rates
Than yon trim bands can buy.

199:

200:

201:

Let Cæsar walk
Alone upon it. I am weary of my part.
My torch is out, and the world stands before me
Like a black desert. At the approach of night
I'll lay me down and stray no farther on.

202:

203: Voir la mort de Pierre et de Jaffier. Pierre, une fois poignardé, éclate de rire.

204:

Il y a de la jalousie dans ce dernier mot.

205:

206: La petite Laclos disait à je ne sais plus quel duc en lui prenant son grand cordon: «Mets-toi à genoux là-dessus, vieille ducaille!» Et le duc se mettait à genoux.

207:

208:

209:

Impossible de voir ensemble plus de coquinerie morale et de correction littéraire.

210:

211: Burns disait que dans son village il était arrivé, au moyen du raisonnement et des livres, à se figurer à peu près exactement tout ce qu'il avait vu plus tard dans les salons, tout, sauf une femme du grand monde.

212: «The stage to which my genius never much inclined me.»

213: I might find in France a living Horace and a Juvenal in the person of the admirable Boileau, whose numbers are excellent, whose expressions are noble, whose thoughts are just, whose language is pure, whose satire is pointed, and whose sense is close. What he borrows from the ancient, he repays with usury of his own; in coin as good and almost as universally valuable. (Dédicace au comte de Dorcet.)

214: «Spenser wanted only to have read the rules of Bossu.» Ailleurs il cite Longin, Boileau, Rapin: «The latter of whom is alone sufficient, were all other criticks lost, to teach anew the rules of writing.»

Arioste neither designed justly, nor observed any unity of action or compass of time, or moderation in the vastness of his draught. His style is luxurious without majesty or decency, and his adventures without the compass of nature and possibility.

215: His wit is faint, and his salt almost insipid. Juvenal is of a more vigorous and masculine wit; he gives me as much pleasure as I can bear.

216: Their language is not strung with sinews like our English. It has the nimbleness of a grey-hound, but not the bulk and body of a mastiff. They have set up purity for the standard of their language, and a masculine vigour is that of ours.

217: To receive the blessings and prayers of mankind, you need only be seen together. We are ready to conclude that you are a pair of angels sent below to make virtue amiable in your persons, or to sit for poets when they would pleasantly instruct the age, by drawing goodness in the most perfect and alluring shape of nature.... No part of Europe can afford a parallel to your noble Lord in masculine beauty and in goodliness of shape. (Dédicace de la Conquête de Mexico.)

You have all the advantages of mind and body, and an illustrious birth, conspiring to render you an extraordinary person. The Achilles and the Rinaldo are present in you, even above their originals; you only want a Homer or a Tasso to make you equal to them. Youth, beauty, and courage (all which you possess in the highest of their perfection) are the most desirable gifts of Heaven. (Dédicace de la Royale Martyre, au duc de Monmouth.)

218: «All men will join with me in the adoration which I pay you.»—Au comte de Rochester, il écrit: «I find it is not for me to contend any way with your Lordship, who can write better on the meanest subject, than I can on the best.... You are above any incense I give you.»—Dans la dédicace de ses fables, il compare le duc d'Osmond à Nestor, Joseph, Ulysse, Lucullus, etc.—Un autre jour, il compare la Castlemaine à Caton.

219:

Why should a foolish marriage vow,
Which long ago was made,
Oblige us to each other now,
When passion is decay'd?
We lov'd, and we lov'd as long we cou'd,
'Till our love was lov'd out in us both.
But our marriage is dead when the pleasure is fled;
'Twas pleasure first made it an oath.

220: They are no more mine when I receive them, than the light of the moon can be allowed to be her own, who shines but by the reflection of her brother. (1693. Lettre à Dennis.)

221: Her weight made the horses travel very heavily; but to give them a breathing time, she would often stop us, and plead some necessity of nature, and tell us we were all flesh and blood.

222: This définition, though critics raised a logical objection against it—that it was only a genere et fine, and so not altogether perfect, was yet well received by the rest.

223: It is charged upon me that I make debauched persons my protagonists, or the chief persons of the drama, and that I make them happy in the conclusion of my play; against the law of comedy which is to reward virtue and punish vice. (Préface du Mock Astrologer.)

224: It is not that I would explode the use of metaphors from passion, for Longinus thinks them necessary to raise it.

225: Dissembling, though lawful in some cases, is not my talent. Yet, for your sake, I will struggle with the plain openness of my nature. In the mean time, I flatter not myself with any manner of hopes; but do my duty and suffer for God's sake.—You know the profits (of Virgil) might have been more; but neither my conscience nor my honour would suffer me to take them. But I can never repent my constancy, since I am thoroughly persuaded of the justice of the cause for which I suffer.

226: I have done something, so far to conquer my own spirit as to ask it.

227: More libels have been written against me than almost any man now living. I have seldom answered any scurrilous lampoon, and, being naturally vindictive, have suffered in silence, and possessed my soul in quiet.

228: I shall say the less of M^r Collier, because in many things he has taxed me justly; and I have pleaded guilty to all thoughts or expressions of mine, which can be truly argued of obscenity, profaneness, or immorality; and retract them.—If he be my enemy, let him triumph. If he be my friend, and I have given him no personal occasion to be otherwise, he will be glad of my repentance.»—Il y a de l'esprit dans ce qui suit: «He is too much given to horseplay in his raillery, and comes to battle, like a Dictator from the plough; I will not say: the zeal of God's house has eaten him up; but I am sure it has devoured some part of his good manners and civility. (Préface des Fables.)

229: Thoughts, such as they are, come crowding in so fast upon me, that my only difficulty is to chuse or to reject; to run them into verses or to give them the other harmony of prose. I have so long studied and practised both, that they are grown into habit and become familiar to me.

230: They who can criticise so weakly as to imagine that I have done my worst may be convinced at their own cost, that I can write severely with more ease, than I can gently.

231: Charles I^er.

232: Le duc de Monmouth.

233: Le comte de Shaftesbury.

Of these false Achitophel was first;
A name to all succeeding ages curst:
For close designs and crooked counsels fit;
Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit;
Restless, unfix'd in principles and place;
In power unpleas'd, impatient of disgrace:
A fiery soul, which, working out its way,
Fretted the pigmy body to decay,
And o'er-inform'd the tenement of clay.
A daring pilot in extremity;
Pleas'd with the danger when the waves went high,
He sought the storms; but, for a calm unfit,
Would steer too nigh the sands to boast his wit.
Great wits are sure to madness near allied,
And thin partitions do their bounds divide;
Else why should he, with wealth and honour blest,
Refuse his age the needful hours of rest?
Punish a body which he could not please,
Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease?
And all to leave what with his toil he won,
To that unfeather'd two-legg'd thing, a son;
Got, while his soul did huddled notions try,
And born a shapeless lump, like anarchy.
In friendship false, implacable in hate;
Resolv'd to ruin or to rule the state.

234: Le duc de Buckingham.

235:

In the first rank of these did Zimri stand;
A man so various that he seem'd to be
Not one, but all mankind's epitome:
Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong,
Was ev'ry thing by starts, and nothing long
But, in the course of one revolving moon,
Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon;
Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking,
Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking.
Blest madman! who could ev'ry hour employ
With something new to wish, or to enjoy.
Railing and praising were his usual themes;
And both, to show his judgment, in extremes;
So over-violent, or over-civil,
That ev'ry man with him was God or devil.
In squandering wealth was his peculiar art;
Nothing went unrewarded but desert:
Beggar'd by fools, whom still he found too late,
He had his jest, and they had his estate;
He laugh'd himself from court, then sought relief
By forming parties, but could ne'er be chief;
For, spite of him, the weight of business fell
On Absalom and wise Achitophel:
Thus, wicked but in will, of means bereft,
He left not faction, but of that was left.

236: Slingsby Bethel.

237:

Shimei, whose youth did early promise bring
Of zeal to God and hatred to his king;
Did wisely from expensive sins refrain,
And never broke the Sabbath but for gain;
Nor was he ever known an oath to vent,
Or curse unless against the Government.

238:

239: The nation is in too high a ferment for me to expect either fair war, or even so much as fair quarter, from a reader of the opposite party.

240: Mac-Fleknoë.

241:

The hoary prince in majesty appear'd,
High on a throne of his own labours rear'd.
At his right hand our young Ascanius sat,
Rome's other hope, and pillar of the state;
His brows thick fogs, instead of glories, grace,
And lambent dulness play'd around his face.
As Hannibal did to the altars come,
Sworn by his sire a mortal foe to Rome,
So Shadwell swore, nor should his vow be vain,
That he, till death, true dulness would maintain;
And, in his father's right, and realm's defence,
Ne'er to have peace with Wit, nor truce with sense.
The king himself the sacred unction made,
As king by office, and as priest by trade.
In his sinister hand, instead of ball,
He placed a mighty mug of potent ale.

242: Îles où l'on transportait les condamnés.

243:

«Heav'n bless my son, from Ireland let him reign,
To far Barbadoes on the western main;
Of his dominion may no end be known,
And greater than his father's be his throne;
Beyond Love's Kingdom let him stretch his pen!»
He paus'd; and all the people cried, Amen.
Then thus continued he: «My son, advance
Still in new impudence, new ignorance.
Success let others teach; learn thou, from me
Pangs without birth, and fruitless industry.
Let Virtuosos in five years be writ;
Yet not one thought accuse thy toil of wit.
Let 'em be all by thy own model made
Of dulness, and desire no foreign aid;
That they to future ages may be known,
Not copies drawn, but issue of thy own.
Nay, let thy men of wit, too, be the same,
All full of thee, and diff'ring but in name.»

244:

«Like mine, thy gentle numbers feebly creep;
Thy tragic muse gives smiles; thy comic, sleep.
With whate'er gall thou sett'st thyself to write,
Thy inoffensive satires never bite.
In thy felonious heart though venom lies,
It does but touch thy Irish pen, and dies.
Thy genius calls thee not to purchase fame
In keen Iambics, but mild Anagram.
Leave writing plays, and choose for thy command
Some peaceful province in Acrostic land.
There thou may'st wings display, and altars raise,
And torture one poor word ten thousand ways.
Or, if thou wouldst thy diff'rent talents suit,
Set thy own songs, and sing them to thy lute.»
He said: but his last words were scarcely heard,
For Bruce and Longvil had a trap prepared;
And down they sent the yet declaiming bard.
Sinking, he let his drugget robe behind,
Borne upwards by a subterranean wind.
The mantle fell to the young prophet's part
With double portion of his father's art.

245:

Strong were our sires, and as they fought they writ,
Conqu'ring with force of arms and dint of wit.
Theirs was the giant race, before the flood.
And thus, when Charles return'd, our empire stood.
Like James, he the stubborn soil manur'd,
With rules of husbandry the rankness cur'd,
Tam'd us to manners, when the stage was rude
And boisterous English wit with art indu'd....
But what we gain'd in skill we lost in strength,
Our builders were with want of genius curs'd,
The second temple was not like the first.

246:

247:

Why then should I, encouraging the bad,
Turn rebel, and run popularly mad?

248:

Though Huguenots contemn our ordination
Succession, ministerial vocation, etc.

Voilà les cailloux théologiques sur lesquels on trébuche dix fois par livre.

But once possess'd of what with care you save,
The wanton boys would piss upon your grave.

Telles sont les grossièretés dans lesquelles la polémique s'engage vingt fois par livre.

249: Préface de la Religio Laici.

250: I have studied him and hope the style of his Epistles is not ill imitated here.

251: Le mot d'Auguste sur Horace est charmant, mais on ne peut citer, même en latin.

252: Treizième épître.

253:

How bless'd is he who leads a country life,
Unvex'd with anxious cares, and void of strife!
With crowds attended of your ancient race,
You seek the champaign sports or sylvan chase:
With well-breath'd beagles you surround the wood,
E'en then industrious of the common good;
And often have you brought the wily fox
To suffer for the firstlings of the flocks;
Chas'd e'en amid the folds, and made to bleed,
Like felons where they did the murderous deed.
This fiery game your active youth maintain'd,
Not yet by years extinguish'd, though restrain'd....
A patriot both the king and country serves,
Prerogative and privilege preserves;
Of each our laws the certain limit show;
One must not ebb, nor t'other overflow:
Betwixt the prince and parliament we stand,
The barriers of the state on either hand
May neither overflow, for then they drown the land.
When both are full they feed our bless'd abode,
Like those that water'd once the Paradise of God.
Some overpoise of sway, by turns, they share;
In peace the people; and the prince in war:
Consuls of moderate power in calms were made;
When the Gauls came, one sole Dictator sway'd.
Patriots in peace assert the people's right,
With noble stubbornness resisting might;
No lawless mandates from the court receive,
Nor lend by force, but in a body give.

254:

Dim as the borrow'd beams of moon and stars
To lonely, weary, wand'ring travellers,
Is reason to the soul: and as on high
Those rolling fires discover but the sky,
Nor light us here; so Reason's glimm'ring ray
Was lent, not to assure our doleful way,
But guide us upward to a better day.
And as those nightly tapers disappear
When day's bright lord ascends our hemisphere;
So pale grows Reason at Religion's sight,
So dies, and so dissolves in supernatural light.

255: Religio Laici, Hind and Panther.

But, gracious God! how well dost thou provide
For erring judgments an unerring guide!
Thy throne is darkness in th' abyss of light,
A blaze of glory that forbids the sight.
O teach me to believe thee thus conceal'd,
And search no farther than thyself reveal'd;
But her alone for my director take,
Whom thou bast promised never to forsake!
My thoughtless youth was wing'd with vain desires,
My manhood, long misled by wandering fires,
Follow'd false lights, and when their glimpse was gone,
My pride struck out new sparkles of her own.
Such was I; such by nature still I am;
Be thine the glory, and be mine the shame!
Good life be now my task; my doubts are done.

256: Theodore et Honoria.

257:

New blossoms flourish and new flowers arise,
As God had been abroad, and, walking there,
Had left his footsteps and reform'd the year.
The sunny hills from far were seen to glow
With glitt'ring beams, and in the meads below
The burnish'd brooks appear'd with gold to flow,
As last they heard the foolish cuckoo sing,
Whose note proclaim'd the holyday of spring.

258:

For her the weeping heaven become serene,
For her the ground is clad in cheerful green,
For her the nightingales are taught to sing,
And nature for her has delayed the spring.

Ces vers charmants sur la duchesse d'York rappellent ceux de La Fontaine sur la princesse de Conti.

259: Par exemple dans son Chant du Cirque.

260:

The praise of Bacchus then the sweet musician sung,
Of Bacchus, ever fair and ever young.
The jolly god in triumph comes;
Sound the trumpets, beat the drums.
Flush'd with a purple grace,
He shows his honest face.
Now give the hautboys breath;nhe comes! he comes.
Bacchus! ever fair and young,
Drinking joys did first ordain;
Bacchus' blessings are a treasure,
Drinking is the soldiers's pleasure;
Rich the treasure,
Sweet the pleasure;
Sweet is pleasure after pain.

261:

Now strike the golden lyre again:
And louder yet, and yet a louder strain.
Break his bands of sleep asunder,
And rouse him, like a rattling peal of thunder.
Hark, hark, the horrid sound
Has rais'd up his head,
As awak'd from the dead,
And amaz'd, he stares around.
Revenge! revenge! Timotheus cries,
See the furies arise!
See the snakes that they bear,
How they hiss in the air!
And the sparkles that flash from their eyes!
Behold a ghastly band,
Each a torch in his hand!
These are Grecian ghosts, that in battle were slain,
And unbury'd remain
Inglorious on the plain:
Give the vengeance due
To the valiant crew:
Behold how they toss their torches on high,
How they point to the Persian abodes,
And glitt'ring temples of their hostile gods!
The princes applaud with a furious joy,
And the King seiz'd a flambeau with a zeal to destroy.
Thaïs led the way,
To light him to his prey,
And, like another Helen, fir'd another Troy.

262: On lui payait dix mille vers deux cent cinquante guinées.

263: Post-scriptum de la traduction de Virgile.

264: 1742. Rapport de lord Lonsdale.

265: "In the present inflamed temper of the people, the act could not be carried into execution without an armed force." (Discours de Walpole.)

266: Voyez le terrible discours de Walpole contre lui, 1734.

267: Notes sur son voyage en Angleterre.

268: Frédéric, mort en 1751. Mémoires de Walpole, t. I, p. 76.

269: The young men were all rakes; the young women made love instead of waiting till it was made to them.

270: Personnage de Birton, dans le Jenny de Voltaire.

271: «Les Anglais ont ordinairement vingt ans avant d'avoir parlé à quelque personne au-dessus de leur maître d'école et de leurs compagnons de collége; s'il arrive qu'ils aient du savoir, tout se termine au grec et au latin, mais pas un seul mot de l'histoire ou des langues modernes. Ainsi préparés ils se mettent à voyager; mais comme ils manquent de dextérité, qu'ils sont extrêmement honteux et timides et qu'ils n'ont point l'usage des langues étrangères, ils vivent entre eux et mangent ensemble dans les auberges.» (Lettres de lord Chesterfield.)

«Je souhaiterais que vous les priassiez de vous donner des lettres de recommandation pour les jeunes gens du bel air et pour les coquettes sur le bon ton, afin que vous pussiez être dans l'honnête débauche de Munich.» (Ibidem.)

272: Through the whole piece, you may observe such a similitude of manners in high and low life, that it is difficult to determine whether, in the fashionable vices, the fine gentlemen imitate the gentlemen of the road, or the gentlemen of the road the fine gentlemen.

273: My daughter to me should be, like a court lady to a minister of state, a key to a whole gang.

A woman knows how to be mercenary though she has never been in a court or at an assembly.

Why, foolish jade, thou wilt be as ill-used and as much neglected as if thou hadst married a Lord!

.... I did not marry him as 'tis the fashion coolly and deliberately for honour or money. But I love him.

Love him, worse and worse! I thought the girl had been better bred.

274: You see, gentlemen, I am not a mere court friend, who professes every thing and will do nothing.... But we, gentlemen, have still honour enough to break through the corruptions of the world.

275:

276:

277: Dans ces Églogues les dames expliquent en bon style que leurs amies ont pour amants des laquais:

Her favours Sylvia shares amongst mankind;
Such gen'rous Love could never be confin'd.

Ailleurs la servante dit à la dame:

Have you not fancy'd in his frequent kiss
Th'ungrateful leavings of a filthy miss?

278: I have eleven fine customers now down, under the surgeon's hand....

279:

280: Voyez par contraste dans les œuvres de Swift un fac-simile de la conversation anglaise: Essay on polite conversation.

281: Encore en 1826, Sidney Smith arrivant à Calais écrit (tome II, 274):

What pleases me is the taste and ingenuity displayed in the shops and the good manners and politeness of the people. Such is the state of manners, that you appear almost to have quitted a land of barbarians.—I have not seen a cobbler who is not better bred than an English gentleman.

282: Evelina, par miss Burney; voyez le personnage du pauvre et gentil Français, M. Dubois, qu'on fait tomber dans le ruisseau.—Ces jeunes filles si correctes vont voir jouer Love for Love de Congreve; les parents ne craignent pas de leur donner miss Prue en spectacle.—Voyez aussi par contraste le personnage du capitaine anglais, si rustre; il est l'hôte de Mme Duval, et la jette deux fois dans la boue; il dit à sa fille: «Molly, je vous conseille, si vous faites quelque cas de mes bonnes grâces, de ne plus avoir un goût à vous, en ma présence.»—Le changement est surprenant, depuis soixante ans.

283: «The consciousness of silent endurance, so dear to every Englishman, of standing out against something and not giving in.» Tom Brown's School-days.

284: Penn.

285: Dans une tournée, il coucha trois semaines sur le plancher. Un jour, à trois heures du matin, il dit à Nelson, son compagnon: «Mon frère Nelson, ayons bon courage; j'ai encore un côté sain, car la peau n'est partie que d'un côté.»

286: «A string of opinions is no more Christian faith than a string of beads is Christian holiness.... It is not assent to any opinion, or any number of opinions.»—«The justifying faith is not only the personal revelation, the internal evidence, of christianity, but likewise a sure and firm confidence, that Christ died for his sin, loved him, and gave his life for him. (Life by Southey, tome I, 176.)

By a christian, I mean one who so believes in Christ, as that sin hath no more dominion over him. (I, 151.)

Law, l'auteur du célèbre livre A Serious Call, disait de même à Wesley: «Religion is the most plain simple thing in the world; It is only: we love him, because he first loved us.»

287: The fire is kindled in the country.... He saw the white gutters made by the tears which plentifully fell down from their black cheeks, black as they came out from their coal-pits. (Life by Southey.)

288: Some shrieking, some roaring aloud.... The most general was a loud breathing, like that of people half strangled and gasping for life. And indeed almost all the cries were like those of human creatures dying in bitter anguish. Great number wept without any noise; others fell down as dead. I stood upon the pew-seat, as did a young man in the opposite pew, an able-bodied fresh and healthy countryman. But in a moment when he seemed to think of nothing else down he dropt with a violence inconceivable.... I heard the stamping of his feet, ready to break the boards, as he lay in strong convulsions at the bottom of the pew.—I saw a sturdy boy, about eight years old, who roared above his fellows.... his face was red as scarlet, and almost all those on whom God laid his hand turned either very red or almost black.

289: The Wisdom of being religious.

290: Those words consist of two propositions, which are not distinct in sense... so that they differ only as cause and effect, which by a metonymy used in all sorts of authors are frequently put one for other.

291: Having thus explained the words, I come now to consider the proposition contained in them, which is this:

That religion in the best knowledge and wisdom. This I shall endeavour to make good these three ways.

1^o By a direct proof of it.

2^o By shewing on the contrary the folly and ignorance of irreligion and wickedness.

3^o By vindicating religion from those common imputations which seem to charge it with ignorance or imprudence. I begin with the direct proof of it....

292: Firstly: I shall consider the nature of this vice and wherein it consists.

Secondly: I shall consider the due extent of this prohibition.

Thirdly: I shall show the evil of this practice both in the causes and effects of it.

Fourthly: I shall add some farther considerations to dissuade men of it.

Fifthly: I shall give some rules and directions for the prevention and cure of it.

I proceed to:

Third Place: To consider the evil of this practice, both in the causes and consequences of it.

Firstly We will consider the causes of it; and it commonly springs from one or more of these evil roots.

First: One of the deepest and most common causes of evil speaking is ill nature and cruelty of disposition.

293: Truth and reality have all the advantages of appearance, and many more. If the show of anything be good for anything, I am sure sincerity is better: for why does any man dissemble, or seem to be that which he is not, but because he thinks it good to have such a quality as he pretends to? for to counterfeit and dissemble, is to put on the appearance of some real excellency. Now, the best way in the world for a man to seem to be anything, is really to be what he would seem to be. Besides that it is many times as troublesome to make good the pretence of a good quality, as to have it; and if a man have it not, it is ten to one but he is discovered to want it, and then all his pains and labour to seem to have it are lost. There is something unnatural in painting, which a skilful eye will easily discern from native beauty and complexion.

It is hard to personate and act a part long; for where truth is not at the bottom, nature will always be endeavouring to return, and will peep out and betray herself one time or other. Therefore, if any man think it convenient to seem good, let him be so indeed, and then his goodness will appear to every body's satisfaction; so that, upon all accounts, sincerity is true wisdom.

294: 8^e Sermon: Giving thanks always for all things unto God.

These words although (as the very syntax doth immediately discover) they bear a relation to, and have a fit coherence with those that precede, may yet (especially considering St. Paul's style and manner of expression in the preceptive and exhortative parts of his Epistles) without any violence or prejudice on either hand, be severed from the context, and considered distinctly by themselves.... First then concerning the duty itself, to give thanks, or rather to be thankful for Εὐχαριστεῖν doth not only signifie gratias agere, reddere, dicere, to give, render, or declare thanks, but also gratias habere, grate affectum esse, to be thankfully disposed, to entertain a grateful affection, sense, or memory.... I say, concerning this duty itself (abstractedly considered) as it involves a respect to benefits or good things received, so, in its employment about them, it imports, requires, or supposes these following particulars.

295: Il était mathématicien du premier ordre, et avait cédé sa chaire à Newton.

296: Although no such benefit or advantage can accrue to God, which may increase his essential and indefectible happiness; no harm or damage can arrive, that may impair it (for he can be neither really more or less rich or glorious or joyfull than he is; neither have our desire or fear, our delight or our grief, our designs or our endeavours any object, any ground in those respects), yet hath he declared that there be certain interests and concernments, which, out of his abundant goodness and condescension, he doth tender and prosecute as his own; as if he did really receive advantage by the good, and prejudice by the bad success respectively belonging to them; that he earnestly desires, and is greatly delighted with some things, very much dislikes, and is grievously displeased with other things; for instance, that he bears a fatherly affection toward his creatures, and earnestly desires their welfare; and delights to see them enjoy the good he designed them; and also dislikes the contrary events; doth commiserate and condole their misery; that he is consequently well pleased, when piety and justice, peace and order (the chief means conducing to our welfare) do flourish; and displeased when impiety and injustice, dissensions and disorder (those certain sources of mischief to us) do prevail; that he is well satisfied with our rendering to him that obedience, honour and respect which are due to him; and highly offended with our injurious and disrespectful behaviour toward him, as commission of sin and violation of his most just and holy commandments: so that there wants not sufficient matter of our exercising good-will both in affection and action toward God: we are capable both of wishing and (in a manner, as he will interpret and accept it) of doing good to him by our concurrence with him in promoting those things which he approves and delights in, and in removing the contrary.

297: The middle, we may observe, and the safest and the fairest and the most conspicuous places in cities are usually deputed for the erection of statues and monuments, dedicated to the memory of worthy men, who have nobly deserved of their countries. In like manner should we in the heart and centre of our soul, in the best and highest appartments thereof, in the places most exposed to ordinary observation, and most secure from the invasions of worldly care, erect lively representations and lasting memorials unto the Divine bounty.

298: To him the excellent quality, the noble end, the most obliging manner of whose beneficence doth surpass the matter thereof, and hugely augment the benefits: who not compelled by any necessity, not obliged by any law, or previous compact, not induced by any extrinsick arguments, not inclined by our merit, not wearied by our importunities, not instigated by troublesome passions of pity, shame or fear (as we are wont to be), nor flattered with promises of recompense, nor bribed with expectation of emolument thence to accrue himself, but being absolute master of his own actions, only both lawgiver and counsellor to himself, all sufficient and incapable of admitting any accession to his perfect blissfulness, most willingly and freely, out of pure bounty and good will, is our friend and benefactor, preventing not only our desires, but our knowledge, surpassing not our deserts only, but our wishes, yea even our conceits, in the dispensation of his inestimable and irrequitable benefits, having no other drift in the collation of them, beside our real good, and welfare, our profit and advantage, our pleasure and content.

299: Suppose a man infinitely ambitious, and equally spiteful and malicious; one who poisons the ears of great men by venomous whispers, and rises by the fall of better men than himself; yet if he steps forth with a Friday look and a lenten face, with a blessed Jesu! and a mornful ditty for the vices of the times; oh! then he is a saint upon earth: an Ambrose or an Augustine (I mean not for that earthly trash of book-learning; for, alas! such are above that, or at least that's above them), but for zeal and for fasting, for a devout elevation of the eyes, and a holy rage against other men's sins. And happy those ladies and religious dames characterised in the 2d of Timothy, c. iii. 5, 6, who can have such self-denying, thriving, able men for their confessors! and thrice happy those families where they vouchsafe to take their Friday night's refreshments! thereby demonstrate to the world what Christian abstinence, and what primitive, self-mortifying vigour there is in forbearing a dinner, that they may have the better stomach to their supper. In fine, the whole world stands in admiration of them: fools are fond of them, and wise men are afraid of them; they are talked of, they are pointed out; and, as they order the matter, they draw the eyes of all men after them, and generally something else.

300: Again, there are some who have a certain ill-natured stiffness (forsooth) in their tongue, so as not to be able to applaud and keep pace with this or that self-admiring, vain-glorious Thraso, while he is pluming and praising himself, and telling fulsome stories in his own commendation for three or four hours by the clock, and at the same time reviling and throwing dirt upon all mankind besides.

There is also a sort of odd ill-natured men, whom neither hopes nor fears, frowns nor favours, can prevail upon to have any of the cast, beggarly, forlorn nieces or kinswomen of any lord or grandee, spiritual or temporal, trumped upon them.

To which we may add another sort of obstinate ill-natured persons, who are not to be brought by any one's guilt or greatness to speak or write, or to swear or lie, as they are bidden, or to give up their own consciences in a compliment to those who have none themselves.

And lastly, there are some so extremely ill-natured, as to think it very lawful and allowable for them to be sensible, when they are injured and oppressed, when they are slandered in their own good names, and wronged in their just interests; and, withal, to dare to own what they find and feel, without being such beasts of burden as to bear tamely whatsoever is cast upon them; or such spaniels as to lick the foot which kicks them, or to thank the goodly great one for doing them all these back-favours.

301: I thought it necessary to look into the Socinian pamphlets, which have swarmed so much among us within a few years.

(Stillingfleet, In vindication of the doctrine of Trinity. 1697.)

302: Il examine entre autres «le péché contre le Saint-Esprit.» On aurait bien voulu savoir en quoi consistait ce péché dont parle l'Évangile. Mais rien de plus obscur; Calvin et les autres théologiens en donnaient chacun une définition différente. Après une dissertation minutieuse, John Hales conclut ainsi: «And though negative proofs from scripture are not demonstrative, yet the general silence of the apostles may at least help to infer a probability that the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost is not committable by any Christian who lived not in the time of our Saviour (1636).»—Cela apprend à raisonner. De même, en Italie, les intrigues pour donner ou ôter des culottes aux capucins développaient l'habileté politique et diplomatique.

303: «The scripture is a book of morality and not of philosophy. Every thing there relates to practice.... It is evident from a cursory view of the Old and New Testament that they are miscellaneous books, some parts of which are history, others writ in a poetical style, and others prophetical, but the design of them all is professedly to recommend the practice of true religion and virtue.»

(John Clarke, chapelain du roi, 1721.)

304: Burke, 133, Réflexions sur la Révolution française.

305: Ray, Boyle, Barrow, Newton.

306: Bentley, Clarke, Warburton, Berkeley.

307: Locke, Addison, Swift, Johnson, Richardson.

308: Paupertina philosophia (Leibnitz).

309: After the constant conjunction of two objects, heat and flame for instance, weight and solidity, we are determined by custom alone to expect the one from the appearance of the other. All inferences from experience are effects of custom not of reasoning.... Upon the whole, there appears not, throughout all nature, any one instance of connexion which is conceivable by us. All events seem entirely loose and separate; one event follows another; but we can never observe any tie between them. They seem conjoined, but never connected.

310: Il faut lire dans sir Robert Filmer la théorie régnante, pour voir de quel bourbier de sottises on sortait. Sir Robert Filmer disait qu'Adam avait reçu en naissant un pouvoir absolu et royal sur tout l'univers; que dans toute réunion d'hommes il y en avait un qui était roi légitime, comme plus proche héritier d'Adam. "Some say it was by lot, and others that Noah sailed round the Mediterranean in ten years, and divided the world into Asia, Afric, and Europa, portions for his three sons."—Comparez Bossuet, Politique fondée sur l'Écriture. Les sciences morales se dégagent en ce moment de la théologie.

311: Those who are united in one body and have a common established law and judicature to appeal to, with authority to punish offenders, are in civil society one with another.

Every one quits his executive power of nature, and resigns it to the public.

As for the ruler, (it is said) he ought to be absolute, because he has power to do more hurt and wrong; it is right when he does it.—This is to think that men are so foolish, that they take care to avoid what mischiefs may be done them by polecats or foxes; but are content, may think it safety, to be devoured by lions.

The only way whereby any one divests himself of his natural liberty, and puts on the bonds of civil society is by agreeing with other men to join and unite into a community, for their comfortable, safe and peaceable living one amongst another, in secure enjoyment of their properties and a greater security against any that are not of it.

Nothing can make a man subject or member of a commonwealth but his actually entering into it by positive engagement and express promise and compact.

The great and chief end of men uniting into commonwealths and putting themselves under government is the preservation of their property. (Locke, of Civil Government.)

312: Discours du général Stanhope, un des managers.

313: The rights of the greatest and of the meanest subjects now stand upon the same foundation,—the security of law common to all.... When the people had lost their rights, those of the peerage would soon become insignificant. (Discours de lord Chatam, affaire de Wilkes.)

314: Évaluation de De Foe.

315: Their eating, indeed, amazes me; had I five hundred heads, and were each head furnished with brains, yet would they all be insufficient to compute the number of cows, pigs, geese, and turkies, which upon this occasion die for the good of their country!...

On the contrary, they seem to lose their temper as they lose their appetites; every morsel they swallow, and every glass they pour down, serves to increase their animosity.—Many an honest man, before as harmless as a tame rabbit, when loaded with a single election dinner, has become more dangerous than a charged culverin.

The mob meet upon the debate; fight themselves sober; and then draw off to get drunk again, and charge for another encounter. (Goldsmith.) Voyez aussi Hogarth.

316: Smollett, Peregrine Pickle, ch. 40.

317: Hogarth.

318:

319: Lord Chesterfield remarque qu'un Français d'alors n'entend point le mot de patrie; qu'il faut lui parler de son prince.

320: L'exécuteur de Charles I^er.

321: Montesquieu, liv. XIX, chap. XXVII.

322: Jugement d'Addison.

323: Junius a écrit sous l'anonyme et les critiques n'ont pu encore démêler avec certitude son véritable nom.—Pour Sheridan, voyez tome II, p. 85, et tome III, p. 408.—Pour Burke, tome III, p. 88.

324: But yesterday, and England might have stood against the world; now «none so poor to do her reverence.»

We shall be forced ultimately to retract; let us retract while we can, not when we must. I say we must necessarily undo these violent oppressive acts: they must be repealed—you will repeal them; I pledge myself for it, that you will in the end repeal them; I stake my reputation on it:—I will consent to be taken for an idiot, if they are not finally repealed.

You may swell every expence, and every effort, still more extravagantly pile and accumulate every assistance you can buy or borrow; traffic and barter with every little pitiful German prince, that sells and sends his subjects to the shambles of a foreign prince; your efforts are for ever vain and impotent—doubly so from this mercenary aid on which you rely; for it irritates, to an incurable resentment, the minds of your enemies;—to overrun them with the mercenary sons of rapine and plunder; devoting them and their possessions to the rapacity of hireling cruelty! If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms—never—never—never!

But, my Lords, who is the man, that in addition to these disgraces and mischiefs of our army, has dared to authorize and associate to our arms the tomahawk and scalping-knife of the savage? To call into civilized alliance the wild and inhuman savage of the woods; to delegate to the merciless Indian the defence of disputed rights, and to wage the horrors of barbarous war against our brethren? My Lords, these enormities cry aloud for redress and punishment; unless thoroughly done away, it will be a stain on the national character—it is a violation of the Constitution—I believe it is against law.

325: I rejoice that America has resisted; three millions of people so dead to all the feelings of liberty, as voluntarily to let themselves be made slaves, would have been fit instruments to make slaves of all the rest.

Let the sacredness of their property remain inviolate; let it be taxable only by their own consent given in their provincial assemblies; else it will cease to be property.

This glorious spirit of whiggism animate three millions in America, who prefer liberty with poverty to gilded chains and sordid affluence, and who will die in defense of their rights as men, as freemen.... The spirit which now resists your taxation in America is the same which formerly opposed loans, benevolences, and ship money in England; the same spirit that called England on its legs, and by the bill of rights vindicated the English constitution; the same spirit which established the great, fundamental essential maxim of your liberties: that no subject of England shall be taxed but by his own consent.

As an Englishman by birth and principle, I recognise to the American their supreme inalienable right in their property, a right which they are justified in the defense of, to the last extremity.

326: Probablement Junius est Philip Francis.—1769-1772.

327: My lord, you are so little accustomed to receive any marks of respect or esteem from the public, that if in the following lines a compliment, or expression of applause should escape me, I fear you would consider it as a mockery of your established character, and perhaps an insult to your understanding.

328: There is something in both your character and conduct, which distinguishes you not only from all other ministers, but from all other men. It is not that you do wrong by design, but that you should never do right by mistake. It is not that your indolence and your activity have been equally misapplied, but that the first uniform principle, or, if I may call it, the genius of your life, should have carried you through every possible change and contradiction of conduct, without the momentary imputation or colour of virtue, and that the wildest spirit of inconsistency should never even have betrayed you into a wise or honourable action.

329: You have every claim to compassion that can arise from misery and distress. The condition you are reduced to would disarm a private enemy of his resentment, and leave no consolation to the most vindictive spirit, but that such an object, as you are, would disgrace the dignity of revenge.

For my own part I do not pretend to understand those prudent forms of decorum, those gentle rules of discretion, which some men endeavour to unite with the conduct of the greatest and most hazardous affairs; I should scorn to provide for a future retreat, or to keep terms with a man, who preserves no measures with the public. Neither the abject submission of deserting his post in the hour of danger, nor even the sacred shield of cowardice should protect him. I would pursue him through life, and try the best exertion of my ability to preserve the perishable infamy of his name and make it immortal.

330: Sir—It is the misfortune of your life, and originally the cause of every reproach and distress which has attended your government, that you should never have been acquainted with the language of truth till you heard it in the complaints of your people. It is not, however, too late to correct the error of your education. We are still inclined to make an indulgent allowance for the pernicious lessons you received in your youth, and to form the most sanguine hopes from the natural benevolence of your disposition. We are far from thinking you capable of a direct deliberate purpose to invade those original rights of your subjects on which all their civil and political liberties depend. Had it been possible for us to entertain a suspicion so dishonourable to your character, we should long since have adopted a style of remonstrance very distant from the humility of complaint.

The people of England are loyal to the house of Hanover, not from a vain preference of one family to another, but from a conviction that the establishment of that family was necessary to the support of their civil and religious liberties. This, sir, is a principle of allegiance equally solid and rational; fit for Englishmen to adopt, and well worthy of your majesty's encouragement. We cannot long be deluded by nominal distinctions. The name of Stuart of itself is only contemptible: armed with the sovereign authority, their principles are formidable. The prince who imitates their conduct should be warned by their example; and while he plumes himself upon the security of his title to the crown, should remember that, as it was acquired by one revolution, it may be lost by another.

331: The whole compass of language affords no terms sufficiently strong and pointed to mark the contempt which I feel for their conduct. It is an impudent avowal of political profligacy as if that species of treachery were less infamous than any other. It is not only a degradation of a station which ought to be occupied only by the highest and most exemplary honour, but forfeits their claim to the character of gentlemen and reduces them to a level with the meanest and the basest of their species. It insults the noble, the ancient, and the characteristic independance of the English peerage and is calculated to traduce and vilify the British legislature in the eyes of all Europe, and to the latest posterity. By what magic nobility can thus charm vice into virtue, I know not nor wish to know, but in any other thing than politics, and among any other men than lords of the bedchamber, such an instance of the grossest perfidy would, as it well deserves, be branded with infamy and execration.

332: A parliament thus fettered and controlled, without spirit and without freedom, instead of limiting, extends, substantiates, and establishes beyond all precedent, latitude, or condition, the prerogatives of the crown. But though the British House of Commons were so shamefully lost to its own weight in the constitution, were so unmindful of its former struggles and triumphs in the great cause of liberty and mankind, were so indifferent to those primary objects and concerns for which it was originally instituted, I trust the characteristic spirit of this country is still equal to the trial; I trust Englishmen will be as jealous of secret influences as superior to open violence; I trust they are not more ready to defend their interest against foreign depredation and insult, than to encounter and defeat this midnight conspiracy against the constitution. (Fox's speeches, t. II, 262.)

333: Recherches sur l'origine de nos idées du beau et du sublime.

334: Every man of rank and landed fortune being long since extinguished, the remaining miserable last cultivator who grows to the soil, after having his back scored by the farmer, has it again flayed by the whip of the assignee, and is thus by a ravenous because a short-lived succession of claimants lashed from oppressor to oppressor, while a single drop of blood is left as the means of extorting a single grain of corn.

335: That debt forms the foul putrid mucus in which are engendered the whole brood of creeping ascarides, and the endless involutions, the eternal knot added to a knot of those inexpugnable tape-worms which devour the nutriment and eat up the bowels of India.

336: The grants to the house of Russel were so enormous, as not only to outrage economy, but even to stagger credibility. The Duke of Bedford is the leviathan among all the creatures of the crown. He tumbles about his unwieldy bulk; he plays and frolics in the ocean of the royal bounty. Huge as he is, and whilst 'he lies floating many a rood,' he is still a creature. His ribs, his fins, his whalebone, his blubber, the very spiracles through which he spouts a torrent of brine against his origin, and covers me all over with the spray—everything of him and about him is from the throne.

337: Lord Heathfield, the Earl of Mansfield, Major Stringer Lawrence, lord Ashburton, lord Edgecombe, etc.

338: Burke, Reflexions on the French Revolution, 1790.

Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, while thousands of great cattle reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray, do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field; that of course they are many in number; or that after all they are other that the little shrivelled, meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome insects of the hour.

339: Macaulay, Life of William Pitt.

340: I almost venture to affirm that not one in a hundred among us participates in the triumph of the Revolution Society.

341: The very idea of the fabrication of a new government is enough to fill us with disgust and horror. We wished always to derive all we possess as an inheritance from our forefathers.... (We claim) our franchises not as the rights of men, but as the rights of Englishmen.

342: Burke, Appeal from the new to the old whigs.

We have not been drawn and trussed in order that we may be filled, like stuffed birds in a museum, with chaff and rags and paltry blurred shreds of papers about the rights of men.

343: We fear God, we look up with awe to kings, with affection to parliaments, with duty to magistrates, with reverence to priests, and with respect to nobility.

344: There is not one public man in this kingdom who does not reprobate the dishonest, perfidious and cruel confiscation which the national assembly has been compelled to make.... Church and state are ideas inseparable in our minds.... Our education is in a manner wholly in the hands of ecclesiastics, and in all stages, from infancy to manhood.... They never will suffer the fixed estate of the church to be converted into a pension, to depend on the treasury.... They made their church like their nobility, independant. They can see without pain or grudging an archbishop precede a Duke. They can see a bishop of Durham or of Winchester in possession of ten thousand a year.

345: Who born within the last forty years has read a word of Collins, and Toland, and Tindal.... and that whole race who called themselves free-thinkers?

We are protestants not from indifference but from zeal.

Atheism is against not only our reason but our instincts.

We are resolved to keep an established church, an established monarchy, an established aristocracy, and an established democracy, each in the degree it exists, and in no greater.

346: The constitution of a country being once settled upon some compact, tacit or expressed, there is no power existing of force to alter it without the breach of the covenant, or the consent of all the parties.

347: A government of five hundred country attornies and obscure curates is not good for twenty four millions of men, though it were chosen by eight and forty millions.

As to the share of power, authority, direction, which each individual ought to have in the management of the state, that I must deny to be amongst the direct original rights of man in civil society.

348: A true natural aristocracy is not a separate interest in the state or separable from it.... When great multitudes act together under that discipline of nature, I recognise the people.... When you separate the common sort of men from their proper chieftains so as to form them into an adverse army, I no longer know that venerable object called the people in such a disbanded race of deserters and vagabonds.

349: A perfect democracy is the most shameless thing in the world.... and the most fearless.

By this unprincipled facility of changing the state as often, and as much and in as many ways as there are floating fancies and fashions, the whole continuity and chain of the commonwealth would be broken. No one generation could link with the other. Men would become little better than the flies of a summer.

350: The metaphysics of an undergraduate and the mathematics of an exciseman.

351: All the decent drapery of life is to be rudely torn off.... Now a queen is but a woman, and a woman is but an animal.

352: Learning with its natural protectors and guardians will be cast into the mire and trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude.

353: I am satisfied beyond a doubt that the project of turning a great empire into a vestry or into a collection of vestries, and of governing it in the spirit of a parochial administration is senseless and absurd, in any mode, or with any qualifications. I can never be convinced that the scheme of placing the highest powers of the state in church-wardens and constables and other such officers, guided by the prudence of litigious attornies and jew-brokers, and set in action by shameless women of the lowest condition, by keepers of hotels, taverns and brothels, by pert apprentices, by clerks, shop-boys, hairdressers, fiddlers and dancers of the stage (who in such a commonwealth as yours will in future overbear, as already they have overborne, the sober incapacity of dull uninstructed men, of useful but laborious occupations) can never be put into any shape, that might not be both disgraceful and destructive.

354: If monarchy should ever obtain an entire ascendancy in France, it will probably be.... the most completely arbitrary power that has ever appeared on earth.

France will be governed by the agitators in corporations, by societies in the towns formed of directors of assignats.... attornies, money-jobbers, speculators and adventurers, composing an ignoble oligarchy founded on the destruction of the crown, the church, the nobility, and the people.

355: The effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do what they please.... We ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations which may be soon turned into complaints.... Strange chaos of levity and ferocity, monstrous tragi-comic scene.... After I have read the list of the persons and descriptions elected into the Tiers-État, nothing which they afterwards did could appear astonishing. Of any practical experience in the state, not one man was to be found. The best were only men of theory. The majority was composed of practitioners in the law.... active chicaners.... obscure provincial advocates, stewards of petty local juridictions, country attornies, notaries, etc.

Ce qui choque et inquiète Burke au plus haut degré, c'est qu'on n'y voyait pas de représentants du natural landed interest.

Encore une phrase, car véritablement cette clairvoyance politique touche au génie.

Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites.... Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.

356: "The leading features of this government are the abolition of religion and the abolition of property." (Tome II, 17. Discours de Pitt, 1795.) He desired the house to look at the state of religion in France and asked them if they would willingly treat with a nation of atheists. (Ibid.)

357: Letter to a noble lord.—Letters on a regicide peace.

358: Humour.

359: À lord Halifax, 1701.

360:

Renowned in verse each shady thicket grows
And every stream in heavenly numbers flows...
Where the smooth chisel all its force has shown,
And softened into flesh the rugged stone,
Here pleasing airs my ravisht soul confound
With circling notes and labyrinths of sound.

361: I must confess it was not one of the least entertainments that I met with in travelling, to examine these several descriptions, as it were, upon the spot, and to compare the natural face of the country with the landscapes that the poets have given us of it.

362: Remarques sur l'Italie.

363: They were all three very well versed in the politer parts of learning, and had travelled into the most refined nations of Europe....

Their design was to pass away the heat of the summer among the fresh breezes that rise from the river, and the agreeable mixture of shades and fountains, in which the whole country naturally abounds.

364: Sur la victoire de Blenheim.

365:

With floods of gore ... the rivers swell ...
Mountains of dead.
Rows of hollow brass
Tube behind tube the dreadful entrance keep,
Whilst in their wombs ten thousand thunders sleep ...
... Here shattered walls, like broken rocks, from far
Rise up in hideous views, the guilt of war;
Whilst here the vine o'er hills of ruin climbs
Industrious to conceal great Bourbon's crimes.

366: There is no society or conversation to be kept up in the world without good-nature or something which must bear its appearance, and supply its place. For this reason, mankind have been forced to invent a kind of artificial humanity, which is what we express by the word good-breeding.... The greatest wits I have conversed with are men eminent for their humanity.... Good-nature is generally born with us; health, prosperity, and kind treatment from the world are great cherishers of it, where they find it.

367: Voir, par exemple, son chapitre sur la République de Saint-Marin.

368: Épitre à Halifax.

O liberty, thou Goddess heavenly bright,
Profuse of bliss, and pregnant with delight,
Eternal pleasures in thy presence reign,
And smiling plenty leads thy wanton train....
'Tis liberty that crowns Britannia's isle,
And makes her barren rocks and her bleak mountains smile.

Sur la république de Saint-Marin:

Nothing can be a greater instance of the natural love that mankind has for liberty and of their aversion to an arbitrary government, than such a savage mountain covered with people, and the Campania of Rome, which lies in the same country, almost destitute of inhabitants.

(Remarks on Italy, Ed. Hurd, tome I, 406.)

369: Par exemple, Halifax.

370: Défense du christianisme.

371: The great and only end of these speculations is to banish vice and ignorance out of the territories of Great Britain.

372: I would leave it to the consideration of those who are the patrons of this monstrous trial of skill, whether or no they are not guilty, in some measure, of an affront to their species, in treating after this manner the Human Face Divine.

(Spectator, n^o 173.)

373: Is it possible that human nature can rejoice in its disgrace, and take pleasure in seeing its own figure turned to ridicule, and distorted into forms that raise horror and aversion? There is something disingenuous and immoral in the being able to bear such a sight.

(Tatler, n^o 108.)

374: When men of rank and figure pass away their lives in these criminal pursuits and practices, they ought to consider that they render themselves more vile and despicable than any innocent man can be, whatever low station his fortune or birth have placed him in.

(Guardian, n^o 123.)

375: A salamander is a kind of heroine in chastity, that treads upon fire, and lives in the midst of flames, without being hurt. A salamander knows no distinction of sex in those she converses with, grows familiar with a stranger at first sight, and is not so narrow-spirited as to observe whether the person she talks to be in breeches or in petticoats. She admits a male visitant to her bed-side, plays with him a whole afternoon at picquette, walks with him two or three hours by moon-light.

(Spectator, n^o 198.)

376: To prevent these saucy familiar glances, I would entreat my gentle readers to sew on their tuckers again, to retrieve the modesty of their characters, and not to imitate the nakedness but the innocence of their mother Eve.

In short, modesty gives the maid greater beauty than even the bloom of youth; it bestows on the wife the dignity of the matron and reinstates the widow in her virginity.

(Guardian, n^o 100, et Spectator, n^os 204 et 224.)

377: There is nothing that exposes a woman to greater dangers than that gaiety and airiness of temper, which are natural to most of the sex. It should be therefore the concern of every wise and virtuous woman to keep this sprightliness from degenerating into levity. On the contrary the whole discourse and behaviour of the French is to make the sex more fantastical, or (as they are pleased to term it) more awakened than is consistent either with virtue or discretion. (Spectator, n^o 45.)

378: Spectator, 317 et 323.

379: Spectator, 397.

380: Ibid., 571.

381: To be easy here and happy afterwards.

382: I have rather chosen this title than another, because it is what I most glory in, and most effectually calls to my mind the happiness of that government under which I live. As a British freeholder, I should not scruple taking place of a French Marquis; and when I see one of my countrymen amusing himself in his little cabbage-garden, I naturally look upon him as a greater person than the owner of the richest vineyard in Champagne.... There is an unspeakable pleasure in calling anything one's own. A Freehold, though it be but in ice and snow, will make the owner pleased in the possession and stout in the defence of it.... I consider myself as one who give my consent to every law which passes.... A freeholder is but one remove from a legislator, and for that reason ought to stand up in the defence of those laws which are in some degree of his own making.

(Freeholder, n^o 1.)

383: Nothing is more gratifying to the mind of man than power or dominion; and this I think myself amply possessed of, as I am the father of a family. I am perpetually taken up in giving out orders, in prescribing duties, in hearing parties, in administering justice, and in distributing rewards and punishments.... I look upon my family as a patriarchal sovereignty in which I am myself both king and priest.... When I see my little troop before me, I rejoice in the additions I have made to my species, to my country, to my religion, in having produced such a number of reasonable creatures, citizens, and christians. I am pleased to see myself thus perpetuated; and as there is no production comparable to that of a human creature, I am more proud of having been the occasion of ten such glorious productions, than if I had built a hundred pyramids at my own expense, or published as many volumes of the finest wit and learning.

(Spectator, n^o 500.)

384: Upon my going into the church I entertained myself with the digging of a grave, and saw in every shovelful of it that was thrown up the fragment of a bone or skull intermixt with a kind of mouldering earth, that some time or other, had a place in the composition of a human body.... I consider that great day when we shall all of us be contemporaries and make our appearance together. (Spectator, n^os 26 et 575.)

385: Though the Deity be thus essentially present through all the immensity of space, there is one part of it in which he discovers himself in a most transcendent and visible glory.... It is here where the glorified body of our Saviour resides, and where all the celestial hierarchies and the innumerable hosts of angels are represented as perpetually surrounding the seat of God with hallelujahs and hymns of praise.... With how much skill must the throne of God be erected!... How great must be the majesty of that place, where the whole art of creation has been employed, and where God has chosen to show himself in the most magnificent manner! What must be the architecture of infinite power under the direction of infinite wisdom!

(Spectator, n^os 580 et 531.)

386: Spectator, 237, 571, 600.

387: There is doubtless a faculty in spirits by which they apprehend one another, as our senses do material objects, and there is no doubt but our souls, when they are disembodied, or placed in glorified bodies, will, by this faculty, in whatever part of space they reside, be always sensible of the Divine Presence.

(Spectator, n^os 571, 237 et 600.)

388: The business of mankind in this life is rather to act than to know.

389: Tatler, 257.

390: Such an habitual homage to the Supreme Being would in a particular manner banish from among us that prevailing impiety of using his name on the most trivial occasions.... What can we think of those who make use of so tremendous a name in the ordinary expressions of their anger, mirth, and most impertinent passions? Of those who admit it into the most familiar questions and assertions, ludicrous phrases and works of humour? Not to mention those who violate it by solemn perjuries? It would be an affront to reason, to endeavour to set forth the horror and profaneness of such a practice.

(Spectator, n^o 535.)

391: It was said of Socrates that he brought philosophy down from Heaven, to inhabit among men; and I shall be ambitious to have it said of me that I have brought philosophy out of closets and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs and assemblies, at tea-tables and in coffee-houses. I would therefore in a very particular manner recommend those my speculations to all well regulated families that set apart an hour in every morning for tea, and bread and butter; and would earnestly advise them for their good to order this paper to be punctually served up, and to be looked upon as a part of the tea equipage.

(Spectator, n^o 10.)

392: Bohea-rolls.

393: He is not obliged to attend her in the slow advances which she makes from one season to another, or to observe her conduct in the successive production of plants or flowers. He may draw into his description all the beauties of the spring and autumn, and make the whole year contribute something to render it more agreeable. His rose-trees, woodbines, and jessamines may flower together and his beds be covered at the same time with lilies, violets, and amaranths. His soil is not restrained to any particular set of plants, but is proper either for oaks or myrtles, and adapts itself to the produces of every climate. Oranges may grow wild in it; myrtles may be met with in every hedge; and if he thinks it proper to have a grove of spices, he can quickly command sun enough to raise it. If all this will not furnish out any agreeable scene, he can make several new species of flowers, with richer scents and higher colours, than any that grow in the gardens of nature. His concerts of birds may be as full and harmonious, and his woods as thick and gloomy as he pleases. He is at no more expense in a long vista than a short one, and can as easily throw his cascades from a precipice of half a mile high as from one of twenty yards. He has his choice of the winds and can turn the course of his rivers in all the variety of meanders that are most delightful to the reader's imagination.

(Spectator, n^o 148.)

394: Spectator, 423, 265.

395: Voyez la jolie et minutieuse analyse de Hurd, la décomposition de la période, la proportion des longues et des brèves, l'étude des finales.—Un musicien ne ferait pas mieux.

(Spectator, n^o 411.)

396: Constantia who knew that nothing but the report of her marriage could have driven him to such extremities, was not to be comforted; she now accused herself for having so tamely given an ear to the proposal of a husband, and looked upon the new lover as the murderer of Theodosius. In short she resolved to suffer the utmost effects of her father's displeasure rather than to comply with a marriage which appeared to her so full of guilt and horror.

(Spectator, n^o 164.)

397: Had I followed monsieur Bossu's method in my first paper on Milton, I should have dated the action of Paradise lost from the beginning of Raphael's speech in this book, etc.

(Spectator, n^o 327.)

398: Spectator, 39, 40, 58.

399: I looked with as much pleasure upon this little party-coloured assembly as upon a bed of tulips and did not know at first whether it might not be an embassy of Indian queens; but upon my going about in the pit, and taking them in front, I was immediately undeceived and saw so much beauty in every face, that I found them all to be English. Such eyes and lips, cheeks and foreheads could not be the growth of any other country. The complexion of their faces hindered me from observing any farther the colour of their hoods, though I could easily perceive by that unspeakable satisfaction which appeared in their looks, that their own thoughts were wholly taken up in those pretty ornaments they wore upon their heads.

(Spectator, n^o 265.)

400: They should first reflect on the great sufferings and persecutions to which they expose themselves by the obstinacy of their behaviour. They lose their elections in every club where they are set up for toasts. They are obliged by their principle to stick a patch on the most unbecoming side of their foreheads. They forego the advantage of the birthday suits.... They receive no benefit from the army, and are never the better for all the young fellows that wear hats and feathers. They are forced to live in the country and feed their chickens at the same time that they might show themselves at court and appear in brocade, if they behaved themselves well. In short what must go to the heart of every fine woman, they throw themselves quite out of the fashion.... A man is startled when he sees a pretty bosom heaving with such party-rage, as is disagreeable even in that sex, which is of a more coarse and rugged make.—And yet such is our misfortune, that we sometimes see a pair of stays ready to burst with sedition, and hear the most masculine passions exprest in the sweetest voices.... Where a great number of flowers grow, the ground at distance seems entirely covered with them, and we must walk into it before we can distinguish the several weeds that spring up in such a beautiful mass of colours.

(Freeholder, n^os 4 et 26.)

401: There is nothing that of late years has afforded matter of greater amusement to the town than signior Nicolini's combat with a lion in the Haymarket, which has been very often exhibited to the general satisfaction of most of the nobility and gentry in the kingdom of Great Britain.... The first lion was a candle-snuffer, who being a fellow of testy, choleric temper, overdid his part, and would not suffer himself to be killed so easily as he ought to have done.... The second lion was a taylor by trade who belonged to the play-house, and had the character of a mild and peaceable man in his profession. If the former was too furious, this was too sheepish for his part; in so much that after a short modest walk upon the stage, he would fall at the first touch of Hydaspes, without grappling with him and giving him an opportunity of showing his variety of Italian tricks. It is said indeed that he once gave him a rip in his flesh-coloured doublet. But this was only to make work for himself, in his private character of a tailor.... The acting lion at present is, as, I am informed, a country gentleman who does it for his diversion, but desires his name may be concealed. He says very handsomely in his own excuse that he does not act for gain; that he indulges an innocent pleasure in it; and that it is better to pass away an evening in this manner than in gaming and drinking.... This gentleman's temper is made out of such a happy mixture of the mild and the choleric, that he outdoes both his predecessors, and has drawn together greater audiences than have been known in the memory of man.... In the mean time, I have related this combat of the lion to show what are at present the reigning entertainments of the politer part of Great Britain.

(Spectator, n^o 13.)

402: The pineal gland, which many of our modern philosophers suppose to be the seat of the soul, smelt very strong of essence and orange-flower, and was encompassed with a kind of horny substance, cut into a thousand little faces or mirrors, which were imperceptible to the naked eye; in so much that the soul, if there had been any here, must have been always taken up in contemplating her own beauties. We observed a large antrum or cavity in the sinciput that was filled with ribbonds, lace and embroidery.... We did not find any thing very remarkable in the eye, saving only that the musculi amatorii, or as we may translate it into English, the ogling muscles, were very much worn, and decayed with use; whereas on the contrary the elevator or the muscle which turns the eye towards heaven, did not appear to have been used at all.

(Spectator, n^o 375.)

403: William Simple, smitten at the Opera, by the glance of an eye that was aimed at one that stood by him.

Sir Christopher Crazy Bart., hurt by the brush of a whalebone petticoat.

Ned Courtly, presenting Flavia with her glove (which she had dropped on purpose), she received it and took away his life with a curtesy.

John Gosselin, having received a slight hurt from a pair of blue eyes, as he was making his escape was dispatched by a smile.

(Spectator, n^o 377.)

404: Aridæus a beautiful youth of Epirus, in love with Praxinoe, the wife of Thespis, escaped without damage saving only that two of his foreteeth were struck out, and his nose a little flatted.

Hipparchus, being passionately fond of his own wife, who was enamoured of Bathyllus, leaped and died of his fall; upon which his wife married her gallant.

(Spectator, n^o 233.)

405: Voy. les trente derniers numéros du Spectator.

406: Voir les coiffures sous Élisabeth pour comprendre ces termes spéciaux.

407: The middle figure which immediately attracted the eyes of the whole company and was much bigger than the rest, was formed like a matron, dressed in the habit of an elderly woman of quality in Queen Elizabeth's days. The most remarkable parts of her dress were the beaver with the steeple crown, the scarf that was darker than sable, and the lawn apron that was whiter than hermine. Her gown was of the richest black velvet, and, just upon her heart, studded with large diamonds of an inestimable value disposed in the form of a cross. She bore an inexpressible cheerfulness and dignity in her aspect; and though she seemed in years, appeared with so much spirit and vivacity, as gave her at the same time an air of old age and immortality. I found my heart touched with so much love and reverence at the sight of her, that the tears ran down my face as I looked upon her; and still the more I looked upon her, the more my heart was melted with the sentiments of filial tenderness and duty. I discovered every moment something so charming in her figure that I could scarce take my eyes off it.—On its right hand there sat the figure of a woman so covered with ornaments, that her face, her body, and her hands were almost entirely hid under them. The little you could see of her face was painted; and what I thought very odd, had something in it like artificial wrinkles. But I was the less surprised at it, when I saw upon her forehead an old fashioned tower of gray hairs. Her hair-dress rose very high by three several stories or degrees. Her garments had a thousand colours in them and were embroidered with crosses in gold, silver, and silk; she had nothing on, so much as a glove or a slipper, which was not marked with this figure. Nay, so superstitiously fond did she appear of it, that she sat cross-legged.... The next to her was a figure which somewhat puzzled me. It was that of a man looking with horror in his eyes upon a silver bason filled with water. Observing something in his countenance that looked like lunacy, I fancied at first that he was to express that kind of distraction which the physicians call the hydrophobia. But considering what the intention of the show was, I immediately recollected myself and concluded it to be Anabaptism.

(Tatler, n^o 257.)

408: Histoire d'Abdallah, Histoire d'Hilpa.

409: On the fifth day of the moon, which according to the custom of my forefathers I always keep holy, after having washed myself, and offered up my morning devotions, I ascended the high hills of Bagdad, in order to pass the rest of the day in meditation and prayer. As I was here airing myself on the tops of the mountains, I fell into a profound contemplation on the vanity of human life; and passing from one thought to another: Surely, said I, man is but a shadow and life a dream. Whilst I was thus musing, I cast my eyes towards the summit of a rock that was not far from me, where I discovered one in the habit of a shepherd, with a little musical instrument in his hand. As I looked upon him, he applied it to his lips, and began to play upon it. The sound of it was exceeding sweet, and wrought into a variety of tunes that were inexpressibly melodious, and altogether different from any thing I had ever heard. They put me in mind of those heavenly airs that are played to the departed souls of good men upon their first arrival in paradise, to wear out the impressions of the last agonies, and qualify them for the pleasures of that happy place. My heart melted away in secret raptures....

He then led me to the highest pinnacle of the rock, and placing me on the top of it: Cast thy eyes eastward, said he, and tell me what thou seest.—I see, said I, a huge valley, and a prodigious tide of water rolling through it.—The valley that thou seest, said he, is the vale of misery, and the tide of water that thou seest is part of the great tide of eternity.—What is the reason, said I, that the tide I see rises out of a thick mist at one end, and again loses itself in a thick mist at the other?—What thou seest, said he, is that portion of eternity which is called Time, measured out by the sun, and reaching from the beginning of the world to its consummation. Examine now, said he, this sea that is thus bounded with darkness at both ends, and tell me what thou discoverest in it.—I see a bridge, said I, standing in the midst of the tide.—The bridge thou seest, said he, is human life, consider it attentively.—Upon a more leisurely survey of it, I found that it consisted of threescore and ten entire arches, with several broken arches which added to those that were entire, made up the number about an hundred. As I was counting the arches, the genius told me that this bridge consisted at first of a thousand arches; but that a great flood swept away the rest, and left the bridge in the ruinous condition I now beheld it. But tell me further, said he, what thou discoverest on it.—I see multitudes of people passing over it, said I, and a black cloud hanging on each end of it.—As I looked more attentively, I saw several of the passengers dropping through the bridge, into the great tide that flowed underneath it; and upon further examination, perceived there were innumerable trap-doors that lay concealed in the bridge, which the passengers no sooner trod upon, but they fell through them into the tide and immediately disappeared. These hidden pitfalls were set very thick at the entrance of the bridge, so that throngs of people no sooner broke through the cloud, but many of them fell into them. They grew thinner towards the middle, but multiplied and lay closer together towards the end of the arches that were entire.

There were indeed some persons, but their number was very small, that continued a kind of hobbling march on the broken arches, but fell through one after another, being quite tired and spent with so long a walk.

I passed some time in the contemplation of this wonderful structure, and the great variety of objects which it presented. My heart was filled with a deep melancholy to see several dropping unexpectedly in the midst of mirth and jollity, and catching at every thing that stood by them to save themselves. Some were looking up towards the heavens in a thoughtful posture, and in the midst of a speculation stumbled and fell out of sight. Multitudes were very busy in the pursuit of bubbles that glittered in their eyes and danced before them; but often when they thought themselves within the reach of them, their footing failed and down they sunk. In this confusion of objects, I observed some with scimetars in their hands, and others with urinals, who ran to and fro upon the bridge, thrusting several persons on trap-doors which did not seem to lie in their way, and which they might have escaped, had they not been thus forced upon them.

I here fetched a deep sigh. Alas, said I, man was made in vain! How is he given away to misery and mortality! tortured in life, and swallowed up in death!—The genius being moved with compassion towards me, bid me quit so uncomfortable a prospect: look no more, said he, on man in the first stage of his existence, in his setting out for eternity; but cast thine eye on that thick mist into which the tide bears the several generations of mortals that fall into it.—I directed my sight as I was ordered, and (whether or no the good genius strengthened it with any supernatural force, or dissipated part of the mist that was before too thick for the eye to penetrate) I saw the valley opening at the further end, and spreading forth into an immense ocean that had a huge rock of adamant running through the midst of it, and dividing it into two equal parts. The clouds still rested on one half of it, insomuch that I could discover nothing in it: But the other appeared to me a vast ocean planted with innumerable islands, that were covered with fruits and flowers, and interwoven with a thousand little shining seas that ran among them. I could see persons dressed in glorious habits with garlands upon their heads, passing among the trees, lying down by the sides of fountains, or resting on beds of flowers; and could hear a confused harmony of singing birds, falling waters, human voices, and musical instruments. Gladness grew in me upon the discovery of so delightful a scene. I wished for the wings of an eagle, that I might fly away to those happy seats; but the genius told me there was no passage to them, except through the gates of death that I saw opening every moment upon the bridge. The islands, said he, that lie so fresh and green before thee, and with which the whole face of the ocean appears spotted as far as thou canst see, are more in number than the sands on the sea shore; there are myriads of islands behind those which thou here discoverest, reaching farther than thine eye, or even thine imagination can extend itself. These are the mansions of good men after death, who according to the degree and kinds of virtue in which they excelled, are distributed among these several islands, which abound with pleasures of different kinds and degrees, suitable to the relishes and perfections of those who are settled in them; every island is a paradise accommodated to its respective inhabitants. Are not these, O Mirza, habitations worth contending for? Does life appear miserable, that gives the opportunities of earning such a reward? Is death to be feared, that will convey thee to so happy an existence? Think not man was made in vain, who has such an eternity reserved for him.—I gazed with inexpressible pleasure on these happy islands. At length, said I, show me now, I beseech thee, the secrets that lie hid under those dark clouds which cover the ocean on the other side of the rock of adamant. The genius making me no answer, I turned about to address myself to him a second time, but I found that he had left me; I then turned again to the vision which I had been so long contemplating; but instead of the rolling tide, the arched bridge, and the happy islands, I saw nothing but the long hollow valley of Bagdad, with oxen, sheep, and camels grazing upon the sides of it.