COURTSHIP.-COVETOUSNESS.-CREATION. The advantages, as I was going to say, of sense, beauty, and riches, are what are certainly the chief motives to a prudent young woman of fortune for changing her condition; but as she is to have her eye upon each of these, she is to ask herself whether the man who has most of these recommendations in the lump is not the most desirable. He that has excellent talents, with a moderate estate, and an agreeable person, is preferable to him who is only rich, if it were only that good faculties may purchase riches; but riches cannot purchase worthy endowments. I do not mean that wit, and a capacity to enter tain, is what should be highly valued, except it is founded on good nature and humanity. There are many ingenious men whose abilities do little else but make themselves and those about them uneasy. SIR R. STEELE: Spectator, No. 522. Courtship consists in a number of quiet attentions, not so pointed as to alarm, nor so vague as not to be understood. STERNE. 145 consider that they are only trustees for what they The desire of more and more rises by a natural gradation to most, and after that to all. L'ESTRANGE. The character of covetousness is what a man generally acquires more through some niggard- Thoughts on Various Subjects. man. The covetous man heaps up riches, not to enjoy them, but to have them; and starves himself in the midst of plenty, and most unnaturally cheats and robs himself of that which is his own; and makes a hard shift to be as poor and miserable with a great estate as any man can be without it. TILLOTSON. The man who enslaves himself to his money is proclaimed in our very language to be a miser, or a miserable man. R. C. TRENCH. CREATION. These duplicates in those parts of the body, without which a man might have very well sub The covetous man is a downright servant, a man condemned to work in mines, which is the lowest and hardest condition of servitude; and, to increase his misery, a worker there for hesisted, though not so well as with them, are a knows not whom: "He heapeth up riches, and knows not who shall enjoy them :" it is only sure that he himself neither shall nor can enjoy them. He is an indigent, needy slave; he will hardly allow himself clothes and board-wages; he defrauds not only other men, but his own genius; he cheats himself for money. But the servile and miserable condition of this wretch is so Let not the covetous design of growing rich induce you to ruin your reputation, but rather satisfy yourself with a moderate fortune; and let your thoughts be wholly taken up with acquiring to yourself a glorious name. DRYDEN. I have just occasion to complain of them who, because they understand not Chaucer, would hoard him up as misers do their grandam gold, only to look on it themselves, and hinder others DRYDEN. from making use of it. Rich people who are covetous are like the cypress-tree: they may appear well, but are fruitless; so rich persons have the means to be generous, yet some are not so: but they should plain demonstration of an all-wise Contriver, as those more numerous copyings which are found among the vessels of the same body are the work of chance. This argument receives evident demonstrations that they could not be mal and insect within our knowledge, as well additional strength if we apply it to every anias to those numberless living creatures that are consider how the several species in this whole objects too minute for a human eye and if we world of life resemble one another in very many particulars, so far as is convenient for their respective states of existence, it is much more probable that a hundred millions of dice should be casually thrown a hundred millions of times in the same number than that the body of any single animal should be produced by the fortuitous concourse of matter. And that the We like chance should arise in innumerable in- ADDISON: Spectator, No. 543. pecially of ourselves, that we feel no hesitation in concluding that if we knew the whole scheme of Providence, every part would appear to be in harmony with a plan of absolute benevolence. Independently, however, of this most consoling inference, the delight is inexpressible of being able to follow the marvellous works of the Great Author of nature, and to trace the unbounded If there were beings who lived in the depths of the earth, in dwellings adorned with statues and paintings, and everything which is possessed in rich abundance by those whom men esteem fortunate; and if these beings could receive tidings of the might and majesty of the gods, and could then emerge from their hidden dwellings through the open fissures of the earth to the places which we inhabit; if they could sud-power and exquisite skill which are exhibited by denly behold the earth and the sea and the the most minute as well as the mightiest parts vault of heaven; could recognize the expanse of His system. LORD BROUGHAM. of the cloudy firmament, and the might of the winds of heaven, and admire the sun in his majesty, beauty, and radiant effulgence; and lastly, when night veiled the earth in darkness, they could behold the starry heavens, the changing moon, and the stars rising and setting in the unvarying course ordained from eternity, they would surely exclaim, "There are gods! and such great things must be the work of their hands." ARISTOTLE: Nothing can act before it will be. The first man was not, and therefore could not make him self to be. For anything to produce itself is to act; if it acted before it was, it was then something and nothing at the same time; it then had a being before it had a being; it acted when it brought itself into being. How could it act without a being, without it was? So that if it were the cause of itself, it must be before itself as well as after itself; it was before it was; it was as a cause before it was as an effect. CHARNOCK: Attributes. Let us carry ourselves back in spirit to the mysterious week, to the teeming work-days of the Creator, as they rose in vision before the eye of the inspired historian of the generations of the heavens and the earth, in the days that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens. And who that hath watched their ways with an under- Aids to Reflection, App. xxxvi. That divers limners at a distance, without either copy or design, should draw the same picture to an undistinguishable exactness, is more conceivable than that matter, which is so diversified, should frame itself so unerringly, according to the idea of its kind. GLANVILL. contriver diminished by this imaginary succession; but rather increased, by being repeated at every step of the series. Besides, an eternal succession of finite beings involves in it a contradiction, and is therefore plainly impossible. As the supposition is made to get rid of the idea of any one having existed from eternity, each of the beings in succession must have begun in time: but the succession itself is eternal. We have then the succession of beings infinitely earlier than any being in the succession; or, in other words, a series of beings running on ad infinitum before it reached any particular being, which is absurd. From these considerations it is manifest there must be some eternal Being, or nothing could ever have existed; and since the beings which we behold bear in their whole structure evident marks of wisdom and design, it is equally certain that he who formed them is a wise and intelligent agent. ROBERT HALL: Modern Infidelity, Preface. Whoever considers the study of anatomy I believe will never be an atheist; the frame of man's body and coherence of his parts being so strange and paradoxical that I hold it to be the greatest miracle of nature. LORD HERBERT OF CHERBURY. Is it possible that a promiscuous jumble of printing letter should often fall into a method which should stamp on paper a coherent discourse? LOCKE. We cannot look around us without being struck by the surprising variety and multiplicity of the sources of Beauty of Creation, produced by form, or by colour, or by both united. It is scarcely too much to say, that every object in nature, animate or inanimate, is in some manner beautiful so largely has the Creator provided for our pleasures through the sense of sight. It is rare to see anything which is in itself distasteful, or disagreeable to the eye, or repulsive: while on this, however, they are alone entitled to pronounce who have cultivated the faculty in question; since, like every other quality of mind as of body, it is left to ourselves to improve that of which the basis has been given to us, as the means of cultivating it have been placed in our power. May I not also say, that this beauty has been conferred in wisdom, as in beneficence? It is one of the revelations which the Creator has made of Himself to man. He was to be admired and loved: it was through the demonstrations of His character that we could alone see Him and judge of Him: and in thus inducing or compelling us to admire and love the visible works of His hand, He has taught us to love and adore Himself. This is the great lesson which the beauty of Creation teaches, in addition to the pleasure which it affords; but, for this, we must cultivate that simple and surely amiable piety which learns to view the Father of the Universe in all the works of that universe. Such is the lesson taught by that certainly rea sonable philosophy which desires to unite what men have too much laboured to dissever; a state of mind which is easily attainable, demands no effort of feeling beyond that of a simple and good heart, and needs not diverge into a weak and censurable enthusiasm. Much therefore is he to be pitied or condemned who has not cultivated this faculty in this manner; who is not forever looking round on creation in feeling and in search of those beauties; that he may thus bend in gratitude and love before the Author of all Beauty. DR. J. MACCULLOCH. Could necessity infallibly produce quarries of stone, which are the materials of all magnificent structures? SIR T. MORE. Let us then consider the works of God, and observe the operations of his hands: let us take notice of and admire his infinite wisdom and goodness in the formation of them. No creature in this sublunary world is capable of so doing beside man; yet we are deficient herein: we content ourselves with the knowledge of the tongues, and a little skill in philology, or history perhaps, and antiquity, and neglect that which to me seems more material,-I mean natural history and the works of the creation. JOHN RAY: The Wisdom of God Manifested in the There is no greater, at least no more palpable and convincing, argument of the existence of a Deity than the admirable art and wisdom that discovers itself in the make and constitution, the order and disposition, the ends and uses, of all the parts and members of this stately fabric of heaven and earth. For if in the works of art, as for example a curious edifice or machine, counsel, design, and direction to an end, appearing in the whole frame, and in all the several pieces of it, do necessarily infer the being and operation of some intelligent architect or engineer, why shall not also in the works of nature, that grandeur and magnificence, that excellent contrivance for beauty, order, use, etc., which is observable in them, wherein they do as CRIMES. much transcend the effects of human art as infinite power and wisdom exceeds finite, infer the existence and efficiency of an Omnipotent and capable of being forgers are capable of being All-wise Creator? RAY. God, surveying the works of creation, leaves us this general impress or character upon them, that they were exceeding good. SOUTH. That the universe was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, I will no more believe than that the accidental jumbling of the alphabet would fall into a most ingenious treatise of philosophy. SWIFT. How often might a man after he had jumbled a set of letters in a bag fling them out upon the ground before they would fall into an exact poem, yea, or so much as make a good discourse in prose! And may not a little book be as easily made by chance as this great volume of the world? How long might a man be in sprinkling colours upon a canvas with a careless hand before they could happen to make the exact picture of a man? And is a man easier made by chance than his picture? How long might twenty thousand blind men, which should be sent out from the several remote parts of England, wander up and down before they would all meet in Salisbury Plains, and fall into rank and file in the exact order of an army? And yet this is much more easy to be imagined than how the innumerable blind parts of matter should rendezvous themselves into a world. TILLOTSON: Sermons. Researches into the springs of natural bodies and their motions should awaken us to admiration at the wondrous wisdom of our Creator in all the works of nature. DR. I. WATTS. Crimes lead into one another. They who are incendiaries. BURKE: Crimes are the actions of physical beings with an evil intention abusing their physical powers against justice and to the detriment of society. BURKE: Imp. of W. Hastings; Report on the Lords Thank God, my Lords, men that are greatly guilty are never wise. I repeat it-men that are greatly guilty are never wise. In their defence of one crime they are sure to meet the ghost of some former defence, which, like the spectre in Virgil, drives them back. BURKE: Imp. of W. Hastings. Great crimes are commonly produced either out of a cold intensity of selfishness, or out of a hot intensity of passion. It is not difficult for any one to say which will lead to the more detestable results. The visible ferocity, the glare of envy or wild hatred in the criminal who slays his enemy-foul and detestable as it must ever be-is not so loathsome as the tranquil good humour of the wretch utterly lost in self-content, ready without a particle of malice or compunction to pluck neighbours' lives, as fruit, for his material refreshment. Household Words. CRITICISM. Of this shallow species there is not a more unfortunate, empty, and conceited animal than that which is generally known by the name of a Critic. This, in the common acceptation of the word, is one that, without entering into the sense and soul of an author, has a few general rules, which, like mechanical instruments, he applies to the works of every writer; and as they quadrate with them, pronounces the author perfect or defective. He is master of a certain set of words, as Unity, Style, Fire, Phlegm, Easy, Natural, Turn, Sentiment, and the like; which he varies, compounds, divides, and throws together, in every part of his discourse, without any thought or meaning. The marks you may know him by are, an elevated eye, and dogmatical brow, a positive voice, and a contempt for everything that comes out, whether he has read it or not. ADDISON: Tatler, No. 165. For this reason I think there is nothing in the world so tiresome as the works of those critics who write in a positive dogmatic way, without either language, genius, or imagination. If the reader would see how the best of the Latin critics wrote, he may find their manner very beautifully described in the characters of Horace, Petronius, Quintilian, and Longinus, as they are drawn in the essay of which I am now speaking. ADDISON: Spectator, No. 253. Above all, I would have them well versed in the Greek and Latin poets, without which a man very often fancies that he understands a critic, when in reality he does not comprehend his meaning. It is in criticism as in all other sciences and speculations; one who brings with him any implicit notions and observations, which he has made in his reading of the poets, will find his own reflections methodized and explained, and perhaps several little hints that had passed in his mind, perfected and improved in the works of a good critic; whereas one who has not these previous lights is very often an utter stranger to what he reads, and apt to put a wrong interpretation upon it. cealed beauties of a writer, and communicate to the world such things as are worth their observation. The most exquisite words, and finest strokes of an author, are those which very often appear the most doubtful and exceptionable to a man who wants a relish for polite learning; and they are those which a sour undistinguishing critic generally attacks with the greatest violence. ADDISON: Spectator, No. 291. Besides, a man who has the gift of ridicule is apt to find fault with anything that gives him an opportunity of exerting his beloved talent, and very often censures a passage, not because there is any fault in it, but because he can be merry Such kinds of pleasantry are very unupon it. for fair and disingenuous in works of criticism, in which the greatest masters, both ancient and modern, have always appeared with a serious and instructive air. ADDISON: Spectator, No. 291. Nor is it sufficient that a man, who sets up a judge in criticism, should have perused the authors above-mentioned, unless he has also a clear and logical head. Without this talent he is perpetually puzzled and perplexed amidst his own blunders, mistakes the sense of those he would confute, or, if he chances to think right, does not know how to convey his thoughts to another with clearness and perspicuity. Aristotle, who was the best critic, was also one of the best logicians that ever appeared in the world. ADDISON: Spectator, No. 291. I might farther observe that there is not a Greek or Latin critic, who has not shown, even in the style of his criticisms, that he was a master of all the elegance and delicacy of his native tongue. The truth of it is, there is nothing more absurd than for a man to set up for a critic, without a good insight into ali the parts of learning; whereas many of those, who have endeavoured to signalize themselves by works of this nature, among our English writers, are not only defective in the above-mentioned particulars, but plainly discover, by the phrases which they make use of, and by their confused way of thinking, that they are not acquainted with the most common and ordinary systems of arts and sciences. A few general rules extracted out of the French authors, with a certain cant of words, has sometimes set up an illiterate heavy writer for a most judicious and formidable critic. ADDISON: Spectator, No. 291. One great mark by which you may discover a critic who has neither taste nor learning, is this: that he seldom ventures to praise any passage in an author which has not been before received and applauded by the public, and that his criticism turns wholly upon little faults and errors. This part of a critic is so very easy to succeed in, that we find every ordinary reader, upon the publishing of a new poem, has wit and ill nature enough to turn several passages of it into ridicule, and very often in the right place. This Mr. Dryden has very agreeably remarked in these two celebrated lines: "Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow; He who would search for pearls must dive below." A true critic ought to dwell rather upon excellences than imperfections, to discover the con It is likewise necessary for a man who would form to himself a finished taste of good writing to be well versed in the works of the best critics, both ancient and modern. I must confess that I could wish there were authors of this kind, who, besides the mechanical rules, which a man of very little taste may discourse upon, would enter into the very spirit and soul of fine writing, and show us the several sources of that pleasure which rises in the mind upon the perusal of a noble work. ADDISON: Spectator, No. 409. I have a great esteem for a true critic, such as Aristotle and Longinus among the Greeks; Boileau and Dacier among the French. But it Horace and Quintilian among the Romans; is our misfortune that some who set up for professed critics among us are so stupid that they do not know how to put ten words together with elegance or common propriety; and withal so illiterate that they have no taste of the learned languages, and therefore criticise upon old authors only at second-hand. They judge of them by what others have written, and not by any notions they have of the authors themselves. The words unity, action, sentiment, and diction, pronounced with an air of authority, give them a figure among unlearned readers, who are apt to believe they are very deep because they are unintelligible. ADDISON: Spectator, No. 592. The candour which Horace shows is that which distinguishes a critic from a caviller; he declares that he is not offended at little faults, which may be imputed to inadvertency. ADDISON: Guardian. When I read rules of criticism I inquire after the works of the author, and by that means discover what he likes in a composition. ADDISON: Guardian. I never knew a critic who made it his business to lash the faults of other writers that was not guilty of greater himself; as the hangman is generally a worse malefactor than the criminal that suffers by his hand. ADDISON. |