were driven out of Paris, for playing a comedy | St. Lewis. When they arrive to an age to be called La Fausse Prude, which was supposed able to choose a state of life for themselves, to reflect upon madam Maintenon in particular. they may either be placed as nuns in some convent at the king's expense, or be married to some gentleman, whom madam Maintenon takes care, upon that condition, to provide for, either in the army or in the finances; and the lady receives besides, a portion of four hundred pistoles. Most of these marriages have proved very successful; and several gen tlemen have by them made great fortunes, and been advanced to very considerable employments. I must conclude this short account of madam Maintenon with advertising my readers, that I do not pretend to vouch for the several particulars that I have related. All I can say is, that a great many of them are attested by several writers; and that I thought this sketch of a woman so remarkable all over Europe, would be no ill entertainment to the curious, till such a time as some pen, more fully instructed in her whole life and character, sball undertake to give it to the public. Thursday, May 7, 1713. quæ possit facere et servare beatum. Ilor. Lib. 1. Ep. vi. %. To make men happy and to keep them so. Creech. It is something very extraordinary, that she has been able to keep entire the affections of the king so many years, after her youth and beauty were gone, and never fall into the least disgrace; notwithstanding the number of enemies she has had, and the intrigues that have been formed against her from time to time. This brings into my memory a saying of king William's, that I have heard on this occasion; That the king of France was in his conduct quite opposite to other princes; since he made choice of young ministers, and an old mistress.' But this lady's charms have not lain so much in her person, as in her wit and good sense. She has always had the address to flatter the vanity of the king, and to mix always something solid and useful with the more agreeable parts of her conversation. She has known how to introduce the most serious affairs of state into their hours of pleasure; by telling his majesty, that a monarch should not love, nor do any thing, like other men; and that he, of all men living, knew best how to be always No. 49.] a king, and always like himself, even in the midst of his diversions. The king now converses with her as a friend, and advises with her upon his most secret affairs. He has a true love and esteem for her; and has taken care, in case he should die before her, that she may pass the remainder of her life with honour, in the abbey of St. Cyr. There are apartments ready fitted up for her in this place; she and all her domestics are to be maintained out of the rents of the house, and she is to receive all the honours due to a foundress. This abbey stands in the park of Versailles; it is a fine piece of building, and the king has endowed it with large revenues. The design of it, (as I have mentioned before) is to maintain and educate young ladies, whose fortunes do not answer to their birth. None are accounted duly qualified for this place but such as can give sufficient proofs of the nobility of their family on the father's side for a hundred and forty years; besides which, they must bave a certificate of their poverty under the hand of their bishop. The age at which per-perience can be a rule only to my own actions, sons are capable of being admitted here is from seven years old till twelve. Lastly, it is required, that they should have no defect or blemish of body or mind; and for this reason there are persons appointed to visit and examine them before they are received into the college. When these young ladies are once admitted, their parents and relations have no need to put themselves to any farther expense or trouble about them. They are provided with all necessaries for maintenance and edueation. They style themselves of the order of It is of great use to consider the pleasures which constitute human happiness, as they are distinguished into natural and fantastical. Natural pleasures I call those, which, not depending on the fashion and caprice of any particular age or nation, are suited to human nature in general, and were intended by Providence as rewards for the using our faculties agreeably to the ends for which they were given us. Fantastical pleasures are those which, having no natural fitness to delight our minds, pre-suppose some particular whim or taste accidentally prevailing in a set of people, to which it is owing that they please. Now I take it, that the tranquillity and cheerfulness with which I have passed my life, are the effect of having, ever since I came to years of discretion, continued my inclinations to the former sort of pleasures. But as my ex it may probably be a stronger motive to induce others to the same scheme of life, if they would consider that we are prompted to natural pleasures by an instinct impressed on our minds by the Author of our nature, who best understands our frames, and consequently best knows what those pleasures are which will give us the least uneasiness in the pursuit, and the greatest satisfaction in the enjoyment of them. Hence it follows, that the objects of our natu ral desires are cheap, or easy to be obtained, it being a maxim that holds throughout the the eye of the law belong to certain of my ac quaintance, who being men of business choose to live near the court. whole system of created beings,' that nothing | dozen of the finest seats in England, which in is made in vain,' much less the instincts and appetites of animals, which the benevolence as well as wisdom of the Deity, is concerned to provide for. Nor is the fruition of those objects less pleasing than the acquisition is easy; and the pleasure is heightened by the sense of having answered some natural end, and the consciousness of acting in concert with the Supreme Governor of the universe. Under natural pleasures 1 comprehend those which are universally suited, as well to the rational as the sensual part of our nature. And of the pleasures which affect our senses, those only are to be esteemed natural that are contained within the rules of reason, which is allowed to be as necessary an ingredient of human nature as sense. And, indeed, excesses of any kind are hardly to be esteemed pleasures, much less natural pleasures. It is evident, that a desire terminated in money is fantastical; so is the desire of outward distinctions, which bring no delight of sense, nor recommend us as useful to mankind; and the desire of things merely because they are new or foreign. Men who are indisposed to a due exertion of their higher parts are driven to such pursuits as these from the restlessness of the mind, and the sensitive appetites being easily satisfied. It is, in some sort, owing to the bounty of Providence, that disdaining a cheap and vulgar happiness, they frame to themselves imaginary goods, in which there is nothing can raise desire, but the difficulty of obtaining them. Thus men become the contrivers of their own misery, as a punishment on themselves for departing from the measures of nature. Having by an habitual reflection on these truths made them familiar, the effect is, that I, among a number of persons who have debauched their natural taste, see things in a peculiar light, which I have arrived at, not by any uncommon force of genius, or acquired knowledge, but only by unlearning the false notions instilled by custom and education. The various objects that compose the world were by nature formed to delight our senses, and as it is this alone that makes them desirable to an uncorrupted taste, a man may be said naturally to possess them, when he possesseth those enjoyments which they are fitted by nature to yield. Hence it is usual with me to consider myself as having a natural property in every object that administers pleasure to me. When I am in the country, all the fine seats near the place of my residence, and to which I have access, I regard as mine. The same I think of the groves and fields where I walk, and muse on the folly of the civil landlord in London, who has the fantastical pleasure of draining dry rent into his coffers, but is a stranger to fresh air and rural enjoyments, By these principles I am possessed of half a In some great families, where I choose to pass my time, a stranger would be apt to rank me with the other domestics; but in my own thoughts, and natural judgment, I am master of the house, and he who goes by that name is my steward, who eases me of the care of providing for myself the conveniences and pleasures of life. When I walk the streets, I use the foregoing natural maxim (viz. That he is the true possessor of a thing who enjoys it, and not he that owns it without the enjoyment of it,) to 'convince myself that I have a property in the gay part of all the gilt chariots that I meet, which I regard as amusements designed to delight my eyes, and the imagination of those kind people who sit in them gaily attired only to please me. I have a real, and they only an imaginary pleasure from their exterior embellishments. Upon the same principle, I have discovered that I am the natural proprietor of all the diamond necklaces, the crosses, stars, brocades, and embroidered clothes, which I see at a play or birth-night, as giving more natural delight to the spectator than to those that wear them. And I look on the beaus ana ladies as so many paroquets in an aviary, or tulips in a garden, designed purely for my diversion. A gallery of pictures, a cabinet, or library, that I have free access to, I think my own. In a word, all that I desire is the use of things, let who will have the keeping of them. By which maxim I am grown one of the richest men in Great Britain; with this difference, that I am not a prey to my own cares, or the envy of others. The same principles I find of great use in my private economy. As I cannot go to the price of history-painting, I have purchased at easy rates several beautifully designed pieces of landscape and perspective, which are much more pleasing to a natural taste than unknown faces or Dutch gambols, though done by the best masters; my couches, beds, and windowcurtains are of Irish stuff, which those of that nation work very fine, and with a delightful mixture of colours. There is not a piece of china in my house; but I have glasses of all sorts, and some tinged with the finest colours, which are not the less pleasing, because they are domestic, and cheaper than foreign toys Every thing is neat, entire, and clean, and fitted to the taste of one who had rather be happy than be thought rich. Every day, numberless innocent and natura gratifications occur to me, while I behold my fellow-creatures labouring in a toilsome and absurd pursuit of trifles; one that he may be called by a particular appellation; another, that he may wear a particular ornament, which I regard | naturally create a desire of seeing that piace, as a bit of riband that has an agreeable effect on where only I have met with them. As to my my sight, but is so far from supplying the place passage I shall make no other mention, than of merit where it is not, that it serves only to of the pompous pleasure of being whirled along make the want of it more conspicuous. Fair with six horses, the easy grandeur of lolling in weather is the joy of my soul; about noon I a handsome chariot, the reciprocal satisfaction behold a blue sky with rapture, and receive the inhabitants of all towns and villages regreat consolation from the rosy dashes of light ceived from, and returned to, passengers of which adorn the clouds of the morning and such distinction. The gentleman's seat (with evening. When I am lost among green trees whom, among others, I had the honour to go I do not envy a great man with a great crowd down) is the remains of an ancient castle which at his levée. And I often lay aside thoughts has suffered very much for the loyalty of its of going to an opera, that I may enjoy the inhabitants. The ruins of the several turrets silent pleasure of walking by moonlight, or and strong holds gave my imagination more viewing the stars sparkle in their azure ground; pleasant exercise than the most magnificent which I look upon as part of my possessions, structure could, as I look upon the honourable not without a secret indignation at the taste- wounds of a defaced soldier with more veneralessness of mortal men, who in their race tion than the most exact proportion of a beauthrough life overlook the real enjoyments of it. tiful woman. As this desolation renewed in But the pleasure which naturally affects a me a general remembrance of the calamities buman mind with the most lively and trans- of the late civil wars, I began to grow desirous porting touches, I take to be the sense that to know the history of the particular scene of we act in the eye of infinite wisdom, power, action in this place of my abode.. I here must and goodness, that will crown our virtuous beseech you not to think me tedious in menendeavours here, with a happiness hereafter, tioning a certain barber, who, for his general large as our desires, and lasting as our immor- knowledge of things and persons, may be had tal souls. This is a perpetual spring of glad in equal estimation with any of that order ness in the mind. This lessens our calamities, among the Romans. This person was allowed and doubles our joys. Without this the highest to be the best historian upon the spot; and state of life is insipid, and with it the lowest the sequel of my tale will discover that I did is a paradise. What unnatural wretches then not choose him so much for the soft touch of are those who can be so stupid as to imagine his hand, as his abilities to entertain me with a merit, in endeavouring to rob virtue of her an account of the Leaguer Time, as he calls support, and a man of his present as well as it, the most authentic relations of which, future bliss? But as I have frequently taken through all parts of the town are derived from occasion to animadvert on that species of mor- this person. I found him, indeed, extremely tals, so I propose to repeat my animadversions loquacious, but withal a man of as much veraon them till I see some symptoms of amend- city as an impetuous speaker could be. The first time he came to shave me, before he applied his weapon to my chin, he gave a flourish with it, very like the salutation the prizefighters give the company with theirs, which made me apprehend incision would as certainly ensue. The dexterity of this overture consists in playing the razor, with a nimble wrist, mighty near the nose without touching it: convincing him, therefore, of the dangerous consequence of such an unnecessary agility, with much persuasion I suppressed it. During the perusal of my face he gives me such accounts of the families in the neighbourhood, as tradition and his own observation have furnished him with. Whenever the precipitation of his account makes him blunder, his cruel The time of going into the country draw-right-hand corresponds, and the razor discovers ing near, I am extremely enlivened with the agreeable memorial of every thing that contributed to my happiness when I was last there. In the recounting of which, I shall not dwell so much upon the verdure of the fields, the shade of woods, the trilling of rivulets, or melody of birds, as upou some particular satisfactions, which, though not merely rural, must ment. No. 50.] Friday, May 8, 1713. O rus, quando ego te aspiciam ?- Hor. Lib. 2. Sat. vi. 60. Creech. THE perplexities and diversions, recounted in the following letter, are represented with some pleasantry; I shall, therefore, make this epistle the entertainment of the day. 'To Nestor Ironside, Esquire. SIR, on my face, at what part of it be was in the peaceable, and at what part in the bloody incidents of his narrative. But I had long before learned to expose my person to any difficulties that might tend to the improvement of my mind. His breath, I found, was very pestilential, and being obliged to utter a great deal of it, for the carrying on his narrations, I beseeched him, before he came into my room, to go into the kitchen and mollify it with a breakfast. When he had taken off my beard, with part of my face, and dressed my wounds in the capacity of a barber-surgeon, we traversed the outworks about the castle, where I received particular information in what places any of note among the besiegers, or the besieged, received any wound, and I was carried always to the very spot where the fact was done, howsoever dangerous (scaling part of the walls, or stumbling over loose stones) my approach to such a place might be; it being conceived impossible to arrive at a true knowledge of those matters without this hazardous explanation upon them; insomuch that I received more contusions from these speculations, than I probably could have done, had I been the most bold adventurer at the demolition of this castle. This, as all other his informations, the barber so lengthened and husbanded with digressions, that he had always something new to offer, wisely concluding that when he had finished the part of a historian, I should have no occasion for him as a barber. Whenever I looked at this ancient pile of building, I thought it perfectly resembled any of those castles, which in my infancy I had met with in romances, where several unfortunate knights and ladies, were, by certain giants, made prisoners irrecoverably, till "the knight of the burning pestle," or any other of equal hardiness, should deliver them from a long captivity. There is a park adjoining, pleasant beyond the most poetical description, one part of which is particularly private by being inaccessible to those that have not great resolution. This I have made sacred to love and poetry, and after having regularly invoked the goddess I adore, I here compose a tender couplet or two, which, when I come home, I venture to show my particular friends, who love me so well as to conceal my follies. After my poetry sinks upon me, I relieve the labour of my brain by a little manuscript with my pen-knife; while, with Rochester, "Here on a beech, like amorous sot, I sometime carve a true-love's knot; 'I confess once whilst I was engraving one of my most curious conceits upon a delicate smooth bark, my feet, in the tree which I had gained with much skill, deserted me; and the lover, with much amazement, came plump into the river; I did not recover the true spirit of amour under a week, and not without applying myself to some of the softest passages in Cassandra and Cleopatra. These are the pleasures I met without doors; those within were as follow. I had the happiness to lie in a room that had a large hole opening from it, which, by unquestionable tradition, had been formerly continued to an abbey two miles from the castle, for a communication betwixt the austere creatures of that place, with others not altogether so contemplative. And the keeper's brother assures me that when he formerly lay in this room, he had seen some of the spirits of this departed brotherhood, enter from the hole into this chamber, where they continued with the utmost civility to flesh and blood till they were oppressed by the morning air. And if I do not receive his account with a very serious and believing countenance, he ventures to laugh at me as a most ridiculous infidel. The most unaccountable pleasure I take is with a fine white young owl, which strayed one night in at my window, and which I was resolved to make a prisoner, but withal to give all the indulgence that its confinement could possibly admit of. I so far insinuated myself into his favour, by presents of fresh provisions, that we could be very good company together. There is something in the eye of that creature, of such merry lustre, something of such human cunning in the turn of his visage, that I found vast delight in the survey of it. One objection indeed I at first saw, that this bird being the bird of Pallas, the choice of this favourite might afford curious matter of raillery to the ingenious, especially when it shall be known, that I am as much delighted with a cat as ever Montaigne was. But, notwithstanding this, I am so far from being ashamed of this particular humour, that I esteem myself very happy in having my odd taste of pleasure provided for upon such reasonable terms. What heightened all the pleasures I have spoke of, was the agreeable freedom with which the gentleman of the house entertained us; and every one of us came into, or left the company as he thought fit; dined in his chamber, or the parlour, as a fit of spleen or study directed him; nay, sometimes every man rode or walked a different way, so that we never were together but when we were perfectly pleased with ourselves and each other. 'I am, Sir, 'Your most obedient humble servant, 'R. B.' P.S. I had just given my orders for the press, when my friend Mrs. Bicknell made me a visit. She came to desire I would show her the wardrobe of the Lizards, (where the various habits of the ancestors of that illustrious family are preserved) in order to furnish her with a proper dress for the Wife of Bath. Upon sight of the little ruffs, she snatched one of them from the pin, clapt it round her neck, and turning briskly towards me repeated a speech out of her part in the comedy of that name. If the rest of the actors enter into their several parts with the same spirit, the humorous cha- | from other lays, an awe and reverence that racters of this play cannot but appear excellent on the theatre: for very good judges have informed me, that the author has drawn them with great propriety, and an exact observation of the manners. NESTOR IRONSIDE. No. 51.] Saturday, May 9, 1713. Res antiquæ laudis et artis Of arts disclos'd in ancient days, I sing, IT is probable the first poets were found at the altar, that they employed their talents in adorning and animating the worship of their gods: the spirit of poetry and religion reciprocally warmed each other, devotion inspired poetry, and poetry exalted devotion; the most sublime capacities were put to the most noble use; purity of will, and fineness of understanding, were not such strangers as they have been in latter ages, but were most frequently lodged in the same breast, and went, as it were, hand in hand to the glory of the world's great Ruler, and the benefit of mankind. To reclaim our modern poetry, and turn it into its due and primitive channel, is an endeavour altogether worthy a far greater character than the Guardian of a private family. Kingdoms might be the better for the conversion of the muses from sensuality to natural religion, and princes on their thrones might be obliged and protected by its power. Were it modest, I should profess myself a great admirer of poesy, but that profession is in effect telling the world that I have a heart tender and generous, a heart that can swell with the joys, or be depressed with the misfortunes of others, nay more, even of imaginary persons; a heart large enough to receive the greatest ideas nature can suggest, and delicate enough to relish the most beautiful; it is desiring mankind to believe that I am capable of entering into all those subtle graces, and all that divine elegance, the enjoyment of which is to be felt only, and not expressed. All kinds of poesy are amiable; but sacred poesy should be our most especial delight. Other poetry leads us through flowery meadows or beautiful gardens, refreshes us with cooling breezes or delicious fruits, sooths us with the murmur of waters or the melody of birds, or else conveys us to the court or camp; dazzles our imagination with crowns and sceptres, embattled hosts, or heroes shining in burnished steel; but sacred numbers seem to admit us into a solemn and magnificent temple, they encircle us with every thing that is holy and divine, they superadd an agreeable awe and reverence to all those pleasing emotions we feel exalts, while it chastises: its sweet authority restrains each undue liberty of thought, word, and action: it makes us think better and more nobly of ourselves, from a consciousness of the great presence we are in, where saints surround us, and angels are our fellow worshippers: O let me glory, glory in my choice! 1 dare launch out, and shew the muses more receive from sacred poesy, it has another vast But besides the greater pleasure which we advantage above all other: when it has placed us in that imaginary temple (of which I just now spoke) methinks the mighty genius of the place covers us with an invisible hand, find a kind of refuge in our pleasure, and our secures us in the enjoyments we possess. We diversion becomes our safety. Why then shou'd not every heart that is addicted to the muses, that ever lived, 'I will magnify thee, O Lord, cry out in the holy warmth of the best poet my king, and I will praise thy name for ever, and ever.' That greater benefit may be reaped from ble; but is it capable of yielding such exquisacred poesy than from any other, is indisputaof the serious and aged? Is it only to be read site delight? Has it a title only to the regard on Sundays, and to be bound in black? Or does it put in for the good esteem of the gay, the fortunate, the young? Can it rival a ball or a theatre, or give pleasure to those who are conversant with beauty, and have their palates of human wit ? set high with all the delicacies and poignancy which affects us most, and that affects us most That poetry gives us the greatest pleasure deepest concern; for this reason it is a rule in which is on a subject in which we have the epic poetry that the tale should be taken from the history of that country to which it is written, or at farthest from their distant ancestors. Thus Homer sung Achilles to the descendants of Achilles; and Virgil to Augustus that hero's voyage, Genus ande Latinum En. 1. 6. • Dr. Young's Last Day Book II. 7, &c. |