of education, and tells us with great vehemence, that we are learning words when we should learn things. He is of opinion that we suck in errors at the nurse's breast, and thinks it extremely ridiculous that children should be taught to use the right hand rather than the left.

Bob Sturdy considers it as a point of honour to say again what he has once said, and wonders how any man that has been known to alter his opinion can look his neighbours in the face. Bob is the most formidable disputant of the whole company; for without troubling himself to search for reasons he tires his antagonist with repeated affirmations. When Bob has been attacked for an hour with all the powers of eloquence and reason, and his position appears to all but himself utterly untenable, he always closes the debate with his first declaration, introduced by a stout preface of contemptuous civility, "All this is very judicious; you may "talk, Sir, as you please; but I will still say what "I said at first." Bob deals much in universals which he has now obliged us to let pass without exceptions. He lives on an annuity, and holds that there are as many thieves as traders; he is of loyalty unshaken, and always maintains, that he who sees a Jacobite sees a rascal.

Phil Gentle is an enemy to the rudeness of contradiction and the turbulence of debate. Phil has no notions of his own, and therefore willingly catches from the last speaker such as he shall drop. This inflexibility of ignorance is easily accommodated to any tenet; his only difficulty is, when the disputants grow zealous, how to be of two

contrary opinions at once. If no appeal is made to his judgment, he has the art of distributing his attention and his smiles in such a manner, that each thinks him of his own party; but if he is obliged to speak, he then observes that the ques tion is difficult; that he never received so much pleasure from a debate before; that neither of the controvertists could have found his match in any other company; that Mr. Wormwood's assertion is very well supported, and yet there is great force in what Mr. Scruple advanced against it. By this indefinite declaration both are commonly satisfied; for he that has prevailed is in good humour; and he that has felt his own weakness is very glad to have escaped so well.

No. 84. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 24,

B

1759.

IOGRAPHY is, of the various kinds of narrative writing, that which is most eagerly read, and most easily applied to the purpose of life.1

In romances, when the wild field of possibility lies open to invention, the incidents may easily be made more numerous, the vicissitudes more sudden, and the events more wonderful; but from the time of life when fancy begins to be overruled by reason and corrected by experience, the most artful tale raises little curiosity when it is known to be false2; but though it may, perhaps, be sometimes read as a model of a neat or elegant style, not for the sake of knowing what it contains, but how it is written; or those that are weary of themselves, may have recourse to it as a pleasing dream, of which, when they awake, they voluntarily dismiss the images from their minds.

The examples and events of history press, indeed, upon the mind with the weight of truth, 1 See ante, Rambler, No. 60.

2 "It is somewhere recorded of a retired citizen that he was in the habit of again and again perusing Robinson Crusoe without a suspicion of its authenticity. At length a friend assured him of its being a work of fiction. 'What you say,

replied the old man mournfully, 'may be true, but your information has taken away the only comfort of my age."-Johnson's Works, iv. 398, note by the Editor.

but when they are reposited in the memory, they are oftener employed for shew than use, and rather diversify conversation1 than regulate life. Few are engaged in such scenes as give them opportunities of growing wiser by the downfall of statesmen or the defeat of generals. The stratagems of war, and the intrigues of courts, are read by far the greater part of mankind with the same indifference as the adventures of fabled heroes, or the revolutions of a fairy region. Between falsehood and useless truth there is little difference. As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which he cannot apply will

make no man wise.

The mischievous consequences of vice and folly, of irregular desires and predominant passions, are best discovered by those relations which are levelled with the general surface of life, which tell not how any man became great, but how he was made happy; not how he lost the favour of his prince, but how he became discontented with himself.

Those relations are therefore commonly of most value in which the writer tells his own story.2 He that recounts the life of another, commonly dwells most upon conspicuous events, lessens the familiarity of his tale to increase its dignity, shews his

1 Johnson in practice did not admit that it diversified conversation. "Sooner than hear of the Punic War he would be rude to the person that introduced the subject."-Boswell's Johnson, iii., 206, note 1.

2 Boswell refers to this passage in the beginning of his Life of Johnson.

favourite at a distance, decorated and magnified like the ancient actors in their tragic dress, and endeavours to hide the man that he may produce a hero.

But if it be true, which was said by a French prince, That no man was a hero to the servants of his chamber,' it is equally true, that every man is yet less a hero to himself. He that is most elevated above the crowd by the importance of his employments, or the reputation of his genius, feels himself affected by fame or business but as they influence his domestic life. The high and low, as they have the same faculties and the same senses, have no less similitude in their pains and plea. sures. The sensations are the same in all, though produced by very different occasions. The prince feels the same pain when an invader seizes a province, as the farmer when a thief drives away his Men thus equal in themselves will appear equal in honest and impartial biography;

cow.

1 "This phrase is commonly attributed to Mme. de Sévigné, but on the authority of Mme. Aisse belongs to Mme. Cornuel. Few men are admired by their servants.'-Montaigne, Essays, Bk. iii., chap. 11." Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, ed. 1888, p. 630. Carlyle remarks on this saying: -"It is not the Hero's blame, but the Valet's; that his soul, namely, is a mean valet-soul. He expects his Hero to advance in royal stage-trappings, with measured step, trains borne behind him, trumpets sounding before him. It should stand rather, No man can be a Grand-Monarque to his valet-de-chambre."-Lectures on Heroes, ed. 1858, p. 322.

2 "Shakespeare added drunkenness to the other qualities of the Danish usurper, knowing that kings love wine like other men, and that wine exerts its natural power upon kings."-Johnson's Works, v. 109.