Oldalképek
PDF
ePub

Our souls will be proof against the dangers of both these states: and having explored our strength, we shall be sure of it; for in the midst of felicity, we shall have tried how we can bear misfortune.

Her evils disarmed by patience. Banishment, with all its train of evils, is so far from being the cause of contempt, that he who bears up with an undaunted spirit against them, while so many are dejected by them, erects on his very misfortune a trophy to his honour: for such is the frame and temper of our minds, that nothing strikes us with greater admiration than a man intrepid in the midst of misfortunes. Of all ignominies, an ignominious death must be allowed to be the greatest; and yet where is the blasphemer who will presume to defame the death of Socrates! This saint entered the prison with the same countenance with which he reduced thirty tyrants, and he took off ignominy from the place; for how could it be deemed a prison when Socrates was there? Aristides was led to execution in the same city; all those who met the sad procession, cast their eyes to the ground, and with throbbing hearts bewailed, not the innocent man, but Justice herself, who was in him condemned. Yet there was a wretch found, for monsters are sometimes produced in contradiction to the ordinary rules of nature, who spit in his face as he passed along. Aristides wiped his cheek, smiled, turned to the magistrate, and said, "Admonish this man not to be so nasty "for the future."

Ignominy then can take no hold on virtue; for virtue is in every condition the same, and challenges the same respect. We applaud the world when she prospers; and when she falls into adversity we applaud her. Like the temples of the gods, she is venerable even in her ruins. After this, must it not appear a degree of madness to defer one moment acquiring the only arms capable of defending us against attacks, which at every moment we are exposed to? Our being miserable, or not miserable, when we fall into misfortunes, depends on the manner in which we have enjoyed prosperity. Bolingbroke.

§ 53. Delicacy constitutional, and often dangerous.

Some people are subject to a certain delicacy of passion, which makes them extremely sensible to all the accidents of life,

and gives them a lively jog upon every prosperous event, as well as a piercing grief when they meet with crosses and adversity. Favours and good offices casily engage their friendship, while the smallest injury provokes their resentment. Any honour or mark of distinction elevates them above measure; but they are as sensibly touched with contempt. People of this character have, no doubt, much more lively enjoyments, as well as more pungent sorrows than men of cool and sedate tempers: but I believe, when every thing is balanced, there is no one who would not rather chuse to be of the latter character, were he entirely master of his own disp sition. Good or ill fortune is very little at our own disposal: and when a person who has this sensibility of temper meets with any misfortune, his sorrow or resent ment takes entire possession of him, and deprives him of all relish in the common occurrences of life; the right enjoyment of which forms the greatest part of our happiness. Great pleasures are much less frequent than great pains; so that a sensible temper cannot meet with fewer trials in the former way than in the latter: not to mention, that men of such lively passions are apt to be transported beyond all bounds of prudence and discretion, and to take false steps in the conduct of life, which are often irretrievable.

Delicacy of taste desirable.

There is a delicacy of taste observable in some men, which very much resembles this delicacy of passion, and produces the same sensibility to beauty and deformity of every kind, as that does to prosperity and adversity, obligations and injuries. When you present a poem or a picture to a man possessed of this talent, the delicacy of his feelings make him to be touched very sen sibly with every part of it; nor are the masterly strokes perceived with more exquisite relish and satisfaction, than the neg ligences or absurdities with disgust and uneasiness. A polite and judicious conver sation affords him the highest entertain ment: rudeness or impertinence is as great a punishment to him. In short, delicacy of taste has the same effect as delicacy of happiness and misery, and makes us sense passion: it enlarges the sphere both of our ble to pains as well as pleasures which es cape the rest of mankind.

I believe, however, there is no one who will not agree with me, that, notwithstand

ing this resemblance, a delicacy of taste is as much to be desired and cultivated as a delicacy of passion is to be lamented, and to be remedied if possible. The good or ill accidents of life are very little at our disposal; but we are pretty much masters of what books we shall read, what diversions we shall partake of, and what company we shall keep. Philosophers have endeavoured to render happiness entirely independent of every thing external that is impossible to be attained: but every wise man will endeavour to place his happiness on such objects as depend most upon himself; and that is not to be attained so much by any other means, as by this delicacy of sentiment. When a man is possessed of that talent, he is more happy by what pleases his taste, than by what gratifies his appetites; and receives more enjoyment from a poem or a piece of reasoning, than the most expensive luxury can afford.

That it teaches us to select our Company. Delicacy of taste is favourable to love and friendship, by confining our choice to few people, and making us indifferent to the company and conversation of the great est part of men. You will very seldom find that mere men of the world, whatever strong sense they may be endowed with, are very nice in distinguishing of characters, or in marking those insensible differences and gradations which make one man preferable to another. Any one that has competent senses, is sufficient for their entertainment: they talk to him of their pleasures and affairs with the same frankness as they would to any other; and finding many who are fit to supply his place, they never feel any vacancy or want in his absence. But, to make use of the allusion of afamous French author, the judgment may be compared to a clock or watch, where the most ordinary machine is sufficient to tell the hours; but the most elaborate and artificial can only point the minutes and seconds, and distinguish the smallest differences of time. One who has well digested his knowledge both of books and men, has little enjoyment but in the company of a few select companions. He feels too sensibly how much all the rest of mankind fall short of the notions which he has entertained; and his affections being thus confined within a narrow circle, no wonder he carries them further than if they were more general and undistinguished. The gaiety and frolic of a bottle companion improves

with him into a solid friendship; and the ardours of a youthful appetite into an clegant passion. Hume's Essays.

§ 54. Detraction a detestable Vice. It has been remarked, that men are ge nerally kind in proportion as they are hap py; and it is said, even of the devil, that he is good-humoured when he is pleased. Every act, therefore, by which another is injured, from whatever motive, contracts more guilt and expresses greater malignity, if it is committed in those seasons which are set apart to pleasantry and good-humour, and brightened with enjoyments peculiar to rational and social beings.

Detraction is among those vices which the most languid virtue has sufficient force to prevent; because by detraction that is not gained which is taken away. "He who filches from me my good name," says Shakespear," enriches not himself, but makes me poor indeed." As nothing therefore degrades human nature more than detraction, nothing more disgraces conversation. The detractor, as he is the lowest moral character, reflects greater dishonour upon his company, than the hangman; and he whose disposition is a scandal to his species, should be more diligently avoided, than he who is scandalous only by his office.

But for this practice, however vile, some have dared to apologize, by contending the report by which they injured an absent, character, was true: this, however, amounts to no more than that they have not complicated malice with falsehood, and that there is some difference between detrac tion and slander. To relate all the ill that is true of the best man in the world, would probably render him the object of suspicion and distrust; and was this practice universal, mutual confidence and esteem, the comforts of society, and the endearments of friendship would be at an end.

There is something unspeakably more hateful in those species of villainy by which the law is evaded, than those by which it is violated and defiled. Courage has sometimes preserved rapacity from abhorrence, as beauty has been thought to apologize for prostitution; but the injustice of cowardice is universally abhorred, and, like the lewdness of deformity, has no advocate. Thus hateful are the wretches who detract with caution, and while they perpetrate the wrong, are solicitous to avoid the reproach: they do not say, that Chloe forfeited her

honour

honour to Lysander; but they say, that such a report has been spread, they know not how true. Those who propagate these reports frequently invent them; and it is no breach of charity to suppose this to be always the case: because no man who spreads detraction would have scrupled to produce it: and he who should diffuse poison in a brook, would scarce be acquitted of a malicious design, though he should alledge that he received it of another who is doing the same elsewhere.

Whatever is incompatible with the highest dignity of our nature, should indeed be excluded from our conversation: as companions, not only that which we owe to ourselves but to others, is required of us; and they who can indulge any vice in the presence of each other, are become obdurate in guilt, and insensible to infamy. Rambler.

$55. Learning should be sometimes applied

to cultivate our Morals.

Envy, curiosity, and our sense of the imperfection of our present state, inclines us always to estimate the advantages which are in the possession of others above their real value. Every one must have remarked what powers and prerogatives the vulgarimagine to be conferred by learning. A man of science is expected to excel the unlettered and unenlightened, even on occasions where literature is of no use, and among weak minds loses part of his reverence by discovering no superiority in those parts of life, in which all are unavoidably equal; as when a monarch makes a progress to the remoter provinces, the rustics are said sometimes to wonder that they find him of the same size with themselves. These demands of prejudice and folly can never be satisfied, and therefore many of the imputations which learning suffers from disappointed ignorance, are without reproach. Yet it cannot be denied, that there are some failures to which men of study are peculiarly exposed. Every condition has its disadvantages. The circle of knowledge is too wide for the most active and diligent intellect, and while science is pursued with ardour, other accomplishments of equal use are necessarily neglected; as a small garrison must leave one part of an extensive fortress naked, when an

alarm calls them to another.

The learned, however, might generally support their dignity with more success, if they suffered not themselves to be misled

by superfluous attainments of qualification which few can understand or value, and by skill which they may sink into the grave without any conspicuous opportunities of exerting. Raphael, in return to Adam's inquiries into the courses of the stars and the revolutions of heaven, counsels him to withdraw his mind from idle speculations, and instead of watching motions which be has no power to regulate, to employ his faculties upon nearer and more interesting objects, the survey of his own life, the subjection of his passions, the knowledge of duties which must daily be performed, and the detection of dangers which must daily be incurred.

This angelic counsel every man of letters should always have before him. He that devotes himself wholly to retired study, naturally sinks from omission to forgetfulness of social duties, and from which he

must be sometimes awakened, and recalled to the general condition of mankind. Ibid, Its Progress.

It hath been observed by the ancients, That all the arts and sciences arose among free nations; and that the Persians and Egyptians, notwithstanding all their ease, opulence, and luxury, made but faint c forts towards those finer pleasures, which were carried to such perfection by the Greeks, amidst continual wars, attende à with poverty, and the greatest simplicity of life and manners. It had also been ob served, that as soon as the Greeks lost their liberty, though they increased mightily in riches, by the means of the conquests of Alexander; yet the arts from that mome declined among them, and have never since been able to raise their head in that climate. Learning was transplanted to Rome, the only free nation at that time in the universe. and having met with so favourable asoil,a made prodigious shoots for above a cent ry, till the decay of liberty produced also a decay of letters, and spread a total barbarism over the world. From these tag experiments, of which each was double its kind, and shewed the fall of learning despotic governments, as well as its rise i popular ones, Longinus thought himse sufficiently justified in asserting, that the arts and sciences could never flourish batma free government; and in this opinion he had been followed by several eminent writers i our country, who either confined their ve merely to ancient facts, or entertained t great a partiality in favour of that form of

government

government which is established amongst

us.

But what would these writers have said to the instances of modern Rome and Florence? Of which the former carried to perfection all the finer arts of sculpture, painting, music, as well as poetry, though they groaned under slavery, and under the slavery of priests: while the latter made the greatest progress in the arts and sciences after they began to lose their liberty by the usurpations of the family of Medicis. Ariosto, Tasso, Galilæo, no more than Raphael and Michael Angelo, were not born in republics. And though the Lombard school was famous as well as the Roman, yet the Venetians have had the smallest share in its honour, and seem rather inferior to the Italians in their genius

for the arts and sciences. Rubens esta

blished his school at Antwerp, not at Amat sterdam; Dresden, not Hamburgh, is the centre of politeness in Germany.

But the most eminent instance of the flourishing state of learning in despotic governments, is that of France, which scaree ever enjoyed an established liberty, and yet ever enjoyed an established liberty, and yet has carried the arts and sciences as near

perfection as any other nation. The English are, perhaps, better philosophers; and Italians better painters and musicians; the Romans were better orators; but the French are the only people, except the Greeks, who have been at once philosophers, pocts, orators, historians, painters, architects, sculptors, and musicians. With regard to the stage, they have excelled even the Greeks, who have far excelled the English and in common life they have in a great measure perfected that art, the most useful and agreeable of any, l'art de vivre, the art of society and conversation.

If we consider the state of sciences and polite arts in our country, Horace's observation with regard to the Romans, may, in a great measure, be applied to the British,

po

Sed in longum tamen ævum Manserunt, hodieque manent vestigia ruris. The elegance and propriety of style have been very much neglected among us. We have no dictionary of our language, and scarce a tolerable grammar. The first lite prose we have, was wrote by a man who is still alive. As to Sprat, Locke, and even Temple, they knew too little of the rules of art to be esteemed very elegant writers. The prose of Bacon, Harrington, and Milton, is altogether stiff and pedantic; though their sense be excellent. Men in this coun

try have been so much occupied in the great disputes of religion, politics, and philosophy, that they had no relish for the minute observations of grammar and criticism. And though this turn of thinking must have considerably improved our sense and our talent of reasoning beyond those of other nations, it must be confest, that even in those sciences above-mentioned, we have not any standard book which we can transmit to posterity; and the utmost we have to boast of, are a few essays towards a more just philosophy: which, indeed, promise very much, but have not, as yet, reached any degree of perfection.

Useless without Taste.

and ellipses of the Copernican system, and A man may know exactly all the circles all the irregular spirals of the Ptolemaic, beautiful than the latter. Euclid has very without perceiving that the former is more but has not, in any proposition, said a word fully explained every quality of the circle, of its beauty. The reason is evident. Beauty is not a quality of the circle. It lies not in any part of the line, whose parts are all is only the effect which that figure operates equally distant from a common centre. It upon the mind, whose particular fabric or structure renders it susceptible of such sentiments. In vain would you look for it in the circle, or seek it, either by your all the properties of that figure. senses, or by mathematical reasonings, in

The mathematician, who took no other amining Encas's voyage by the map, might pleasure in reading Virgil but that of exunderstand perfectly the meaning of every Latin word employed by that divine author, and consequently might have a distinct idea of the whole narration; he would even have a more distinct idea of it, than

they could have who had not studied so exactly the geography of the poem. He knew, therefore, every thing in the poem. But he was ignorant of its beauty; because the beauty, properly speaking, lies not in the poem, but the sentiment or taste of the reader. And where a man has no such delicacy of temper as to make him feel this sentiment, he must be ignorant of the beauty, though possessed of the science and understanding of an angel. Hume's Essays,

Its Obstructions,

So many hindrances may obstruct the acquisition of knowledge, that there is little reason for wondering that it is in a

hands. To the greater part of mankind the duties of life are inconsistent with much study, and the hours which they would spend upon letters must be stolen from their Occupations and their families. Many suffer themselves to be lured by more sprightly and luxurious pleasures from the shades of contemplation, where they find seldom more than a calm delight, such as, though greater than all others, if its certainty and its duration be reckoned with its power of gratification, is yet easily quitted for some extemporary joy, which the present moment offers, and another perhaps will put out of reach.

It is the great excellence of learning, that it borrows very little from time or place; it is not confined to season or to climate, to cities or to the country, but may be cultivated and enjoyed where no other pleasure can be obtained. But this quality, which constitutes much of its value,is one occasion of neglect; what may be done at all times with equal propriety, is deferred from day to day, till the mind is gradually reconciled to the omission,and the attention is turned to other objects. Thus habitual idleness gains too much power to be conquered, and the soul shrinks from the idea of intellectual labour and intenseness of meditation.

That those who profess to advance learning sometimes obstruct it, cannot be denied; the continual multiplication of books not only distracts choice, but disappoints in quiry. To him that has moderately stored his mind with images, few writers afford any novelty; or what little they have to add to the common stock of learning is so buried in the mass of general notions, that, like silver mingled with the ore of lead, it is too little to pay for the labour of separation; and he that has often been deceived by the promise of a title, at last grows weary of examining, and is tempted to consider all as equally fallacious. Idler.

[blocks in formation]

Look out of your door,-take notice of that man; see what disquieting, intrigu ing, and shifting, he is content to go through, merely to be thought a man of plain-dealing;-three grains of honesty would save him all this trouble :---aias! he has them not.

Behold, a second, under a show of piety hiding the impurities of a debauched life, --he is just entering the house of God:

would he was more pure-or less pious!-but then he could not gain his point.

Observe a third going almost in the same track, with what an inflexible sanctity of deportment he sustains himself as he advances!-every line in his face writes absti nence;―――every stride looks like a check upon his desires: see, I beseech you, how he is cloak'd up with sermons, prayers, and sacraments; and so bemuffied with the externals of religion, that he has not a hand to spare for a worldly purpose ;— he has armour at least-Why does he put it on? Is there no serving God without all this? Must the garb of religion be ex tended so wide to the danger of its rending? Yes, truly, or it will not hide the se cretand, What is that?

at all.

That the saint has no religion

But here comes GENEROSITY; giving-not to a decayed artist- but to the arts and sciences themselves.—Sec,―he builds not a chamber in the wall apart for the prophets, but whole schools and colleges for those who come after. LORD! how they will magnify his name!-'tis in capitals already; the first--the highest, in the gilded rent roll of every hospital and asylum—

One honest tear shed in private over the unfortunate, is worth it all.

What a problematic set of creatures does simulation make us! Who would divine that all the anxiety and concern so visible in the airs of one half of that great assem bly should arise from nothing else, but that the other half of it may think them to be men of consequence, penetration, parts, and conduct?—What a noise amongst the claimants about it? Behold humility, out of mere pride--and honesty, almost out of knavery:-Chastity never once in harm's way; and courage, like a Spanish soldier upon an Italian stage-a bladder full of wind.

——Hark! at the sound of that trumpet-let not my soldier run'us some good Christian giving alms. O

« ElőzőTovább »