The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 by George A. Aitken (best e reader for android txt) 📕

the rage of winds and waves; but that is too stupid and inanimate a similitude, and could do no credit to the hero. At other times they are all of them wonderfully obliged to a Lybian lion, which may give indeed very agreeable terrors to a description; but is no compliment to the person to whom it is applied: eagles, tigers, and wolves, are made use of on the same occasion, and very often with much beauty; but this is still an honour done to the brute, rather than the hero. Mars, Pallas, Bacchus, and Hercules, have each of them furnished very good similes in their time, and made, doubtless, a greater impression on the mind of a heathen, than they have on that of a modern reader. But the sublime image that I am talking of, and which I really think as great as ever entered into the thought of man, is in the poem called, 'The Campaign';[422] where the simile of a ministering angel sets forth the most sedate and the most active courage, engaged in an uproar of nature, a confusion of elements, and a scene of divine vengeance. Add to all, that these lines compliment the General and his Queen at the same time, and have all the natural horrors, heightened by the image that was still fresh in the mind of every reader.[423]

" 'Twas then great Marlborough's mighty soul was proved,
That, in the shock of charging hosts unmoved,
Amidst confusion, horror, and despair,
Examined all the dreadful scenes of war;
In peaceful thought the field of death surveyed,
To fainting squadrons sent the timely aid,
Inspired repulsed battalions to engage,
And taught the doubtful battle where to rage.
So when an angel by divine command,
With rising tempests shakes a guilty land,
Such as of late o'er pale Britannia past,
Calm and serene he drives the furious blast;
And, pleased the Almighty's orders to perform,
Rides in the whirlwind, and directs the storm.

"The whole poem is so exquisitely noble and poetic, that I think it an honour to our nation and language." The gentleman concluded his critique on this work, by saying, that he esteemed it wholly new, and a wonderful attempt to keep up the ordinary ideas of a march of an army, just as they happened in so warm and great a style, and yet be at once familiar and heroic. Such a performance is a chronicle as well as a poem, and will preserve the memory of our hero, when all the edifices and statues erected to his honour are blended with common dust.


St. James's Coffee-house, July 18.

Letters from the Hague of the 23rd instant, N.S., say, that the Allies were so forward in the siege of Tournay, that they were preparing for a general assault, which, it was supposed, would be made within a few days. Deserters from the town gave an account, that the garrison was carrying their ammunition and provisions into the citadel, which occasioned a tumult among the inhabitants of the town. The French army had laid bridges over the Scarp, and made a motion as if they intended to pass that river; but though they are joined by the reinforcement expected from Germany, it was not believed they should make any attempt towards relieving Tournay. Letters from Brabant say, there has been a discovery made of a design to deliver up Antwerp to the enemy. The States of Holland have agreed to a general naturalisation of all Protestants who shall fly into their dominions; to which purpose, a proclamation was to be issued within few days.

They write from France, that the great misery and want under which that nation has so long laboured, has ended in a pestilence, which began to appear in Burgundy and Dauphiné. They add, that in the town of Mazon, three hundred persons had died in the space of ten days. Letters from Lille of the 24th instant advise, that great numbers of deserters came daily into that city, the most part of whom are dragoons. We are advised from France, that the Loire having overflowed its banks, hath laid the country under water for three hundred miles together.


[Footnote 416: See Nos. 1 and 11. In No. 29 of the Guardian Steele accused the world of ingratitude in not properly "rewarding the jocose labours of my friend, Mr. Durfey"; and in No. 67 Addison urged the town to go to a performance at the theatre given for Durfey's benefit. "He has made the town merry, and I hope they will make him easy, so long as he stays among us."]

[Footnote 417: Sir William Scawen, a merchant who was knighted in 1692.]

[Footnote 418: Probably Sir Francis Child and Sir Stephen Evance, the bankers. The latter was ruined at the time of the South Sea mania. The following advertisement appeared in the Postman for Jan. 1, 1709: "Lost or mislaid, some time the last summer, at Winchester House, in Chelsea, a gold snuff-box, a cypher graved on the cover, with trophies round it, and over the cypher these words, 'DD. Illust. Princ. Jac. Duci Ormond.' Whoever brings it to Sir Stephen Evance, at the Black Boy in Lombard Street, shall have ten guineas reward, and be asked no questions."]

[Footnote 419: This seems to be a banter upon Mr. Whiston's book intituled, "Prælectiones Physicæ Mathematicæ; sive Philosophia clarissimi Newtoni Mathematica illustrata, 1710"; wherein he explained the Newtonian philosophy, which now began to grow into vogue. Both Addison and Steele, however, very much befriended Whiston; and after his banishment from Cambridge, promoted a subscription for his astronomical lectures at Button's Coffee-house (Nichols).--See No. 251.]

[Footnote 420: See No. 39.]

[Footnote 421: Whiston had fixed that day for the destruction of Anti-Christ and the beginning of the Millennium.]

[Footnote 422: Written by Addison in 1705, in celebration of the victory at Blenheim.]

[Footnote 423: The great storm of November 1703 formed the subject of a volume published by Defoe in 1704.]


No. 44. [STEELE.

From Tuesday, July 19 , to Thursday, July 21 , 1709.

--Nullis amor est medicabilis herbis.
OVID, Met. i. 523.

* * * * *


White's Chocolate-house, July 19.

This day, passing through Covent Garden, I was stopped in the Piazza by Pacolet, to observe what he called the "triumph of love and youth." I turned to the object he pointed at; and there I saw a gay gilt chariot drawn by fresh prancing horses; the coachman with a new cockade, and the lackeys with insolence and plenty in their countenances. I asked immediately, what young heir or lover owned that glittering equipage? But my companion interrupted: "Do not you see there the mourning Æsculapius?"[424] "The mourning!" said I. "Yes, Isaac," said Pacolet, "he is in deep mourning, and is the languishing hopeless lover of the divine Hebe, the emblem of youth and beauty. The excellent and learned sage you behold in that furniture, is the strongest instance imaginable, that love is the most powerful of all things. You are not so ignorant as to be a stranger to the character of Æsculapius, as the patron and most successful of all who profess the art of medicine. But as most of his operations are owing to a natural sagacity or impulse, he has very little troubled himself with the doctrine of drugs; but has always given Nature more room to help herself, than any of her learned assistants; and consequently has done greater wonders than is in the power of art to perform;[425] for which reason, he is half deified by the people; and has ever been justly courted by all the world, as if he were a seventh son. It happened, that the charming Hebe was reduced, by a long and violent fever, to the most extreme danger of death; and when all skill failed, they sent for Æsculapius. The renowned artist was touched with the deepest compassion to see the faded charms and faint bloom of Hebe; and had a generous concern in beholding a struggle, not between life, but rather between youth, and death. All his skill and his passion tended to the recovery of Hebe, beautiful even in sickness: but, alas! the unhappy physician knew not, that in all his care he was only sharpening darts for his own destruction. In a word, his fortune was the same with that of the statuary, who fell in love with the image of his own making; and the unfortunate Æsculapius is become the patient of her whom he lately recovered. Long before this disaster, Æsculapius was far gone in the unnecessary and superfluous amusements of old age, in increasing unwieldy stores, and providing, in the midst of an incapacity of enjoyment of what he had, for a supply of more wants than he had calls for in youth itself. But these low considerations are now no more, and love has taken place of avarice, or rather has become an avarice of another kind, which still urges him to pursue what he does not want. But behold the metamorphosis; the anxious mean cares of an usurer are turned into the languishments and complaints of a lover. 'Behold,' says the aged Æsculapius, 'I submit, I own, great Love, thy empire: pity, Hebe, the fop you have made: what have I to do with gilding but on pills? Yet, O fair! For thee I sit amidst a crowd of painted deities on my chariot, buttoned in gold, clasped in gold, without having any value for that beloved metal, but as it adorns the person, and laces the hat of thy dying lover. I ask not to live, O Hebe! Give me but gentle death: euthanasia, euthanasia, that is all I implore.'" When Æsculapius had finished his complaint, Pacolet went on in deep morals on the uncertainty of riches, with this remarkable exclamation; "O wealth! How impotent art thou! And how little dost thou supply us with real happiness, when the usurer himself can forget thee for the love of what is as foreign to his felicity as thou art?"


Will's Coffee-house, July 19.

The company here, who have all a delicate taste of theatrical representations, had made a gathering to purchase the movables of the neighbouring playhouse,[426] for the encouragement of one which is setting up in the Haymarket. But the proceedings at the auction (by which method the goods have been sold this evening) have been so unfair, that this generous design has been frustrated; for the Imperial Mantle made for Cyrus was missing, as also the Chariot and Two Dragons: but upon examination it was found, that a gentleman of Hampshire[427] had clandestinely bought them both, and is gone down to his country seat; and that on Saturday last he passed through Staines attired in that robe, and drawn by the said Dragons, assisted by two only of his own horses. This theatrical traveller has also left orders with Mr. Hall[428] to send the faded rainbow