the Guardian's fine gentlemen.' If my recom- | for it is the last time my black coat will bear mendations appear just, I will not doubt but scouring, or my long wig buckling. I am, sir, some of the present fine gentlemen will see the the fair ladies', and your humble servant, necessity of retirement, till they can come 'WILL BAREFACE.' abroad with approbation. I have indeed already given out orders in this behalf, and have directed searchers to attend at the inns where the Oxford and Cambridge coaches stand, and commanded them to bring any young fellow, of any hopes in the world, directly to my lodgings as soon as he lands, for I will take him though I know I can only make him much of a gentleman:' for, when I have gone thus far, one would think it should be easy to make him a 'gentleman-like man.' As the world now goes, we have no adequate idea of what is meant by gentlemanly,' 'gentleman-like,' or, much of a gentleman;' you cannot be cheated at play, but it is certainly done by a very gentleman-like man; you cannot be deceived in your affairs, but it was done in some gentlemanly manner; you cannot be wronged in your bed, but all the world will say of him that did the injury, it must be allowed 'he is very much of a gentleman.' Here is a very pleasant fellow a correspondent of mine, that puts in for that appellation even to highway. men. I must confess the gentleman he person ates is very apparently such, though I did not look upon that sort of fellow in that light, till he favoured me with his letter, which is as follows: 6 The Those on the highway, who make a stand with a pistol at your breast (compelled perhaps by necessity, misfortune, or driven out of an honest way of life, to answer the wants of a craving family,) are much more excusable than those of their fraternity, who join the conversations of gentlemen, and get into a share of their fortunes without one good art about them. What a crowd of these gentleman-like men are about this town! For, from an unjust modesty, and incapacity for common life, the ordinary failings of men of letters and industry in our nation, it happens that impudence suppresses all virtue, and assumes the reward and esteem which are due to it. Hence it is that worthless rogues have the smiles of the fair, and the favours of the great: to be well dressed and in health, and very impudent, in this licentious undistinguish ing age, is enough to constitute a person very much of a gentleman; and to this pass are we come, by the prostitution of wit in the cause of vice, which has made the most unreasonable and unnatural things prevail against all the suggestions of common sense. Nobody denies that we live in a Christian country, and yet he who should decline, upon respective opportunities, to commit adultery or murder, would be thought very little of a gentleman.' · No. 39.] Ægri somnia. Saturday, April 25, 1713. A sick man's dreams. Hor. Ars Poet. ver. 7. My correspondent who has acquired the faculty of entering into other men's thoughts, having, in pursuance to a former letter, sent me an account of certain useful discoveries he has made by the help of that invention, I shall communicate the same to the public in this paper. 'MR. IRONSIDE, I have been upon the highway these six years, in the Park, at the Play, at Bath, Tunbridge, Epsom, and at every other place where I could have any prospect of stealing a fortune; but have met with no success, being disappointed either by some of your damned Ironside race, or by old cursed curs, who put more bolts on their doors and bars in their windows than are in Newgate. All that see me own I am a gentleman-like man ;' and, whatever rascally things the grave folks say I am guilty of, they themselves acknowledge I am a gentlemanly kind of man,' and in every respect accomplished for running away with a lady. I have been bred up to no business, am illiterate, have spent the small fortune I had in purchasing favours from the fair sex. bounty of their purses I have received, as well as the endearments of their persons, but I have gratefully disposed of it among themselves, for I always was a keeper when I was kept. I am fearless in my behaviour, and never fail of putting your bookish sort of fellows, your men of merit, forsooth, out of countenance. I triumph when I see a modest young woman blush at an assembly, or a virgin betrayed into tears at a well-wrought scene in a tragedy. I have long forgot shame, for it proceeds from a conscious. ness of some defect; and I am, as I told you, a gentlemanly man. I never knew any but you musty philosophers applaud blushes, and 'This obliged me to descend a story lower, you yourselves will allow that they are caused into the imagination, which I found larger, ineither by some real imperfection, or the appre-deed, but cold and comfortless. I discovered hension of defect where there is not any; but Prejudice in the figure of a woman, standing for my part I hate mistakes, and shall not sus-in a corner, with her eyes close shut, and her pect myself wrongfully. Such as I am, if you approve of my person, estate, and character, I desire you would admit me as a suitor to one of the Lizards, and beg your speedy answer to this; 'MR. IRONSIDE,-On the eleventh day of October, in the year 1712, having left my body locked up safe in my study, I repaired to the Grecian coffee-house, where, entering into the pineal gland of a certain eminent free-thinker, I made directly to the highest part of it, which is the seat of the understanding, expecting to find there a comprehensive knowledge of all things, human and divine; but to my no small astonishment, I found the place narrower than ordinary, insomuch that there was not any room for a miracle, prophecy, or separate spirit. fore-fingers stuck in her ears; many words in a confused order, but spoken with great emphasis, issued from her mouth. These being condensed by the coldness of the place, formed 'ULYSSES COSMOPOLITA.' 'N. B. I went round the table, but could not find a wit, or mathematician among them. a sort of mist, through which methought I saw | I met with the representatives of all those noa great castle with a fortification cast round it, tions drawn up in the same confused order upon and a tower adjoining to it, that through the paper. Sage Nestor, I am your most obedient windows appeared to be filled with racks and humble servant, halters. Beneath the castle I could discern vast dungeons, and all about it lay scattered the bones of men. It seemed to be garrisoned by certain men in black, of a gigantic size, and most terrible forms. But as I drew near, the terror of the appearance vanished; and the castle I found to be only a church, whose steeple with its clock and bell-ropes was mistaken for a tower filled with racks and halters. The terrible giants in black shrunk into a few innocent clergymen. The dungeons were turned into vaults designed only for the habitation of the dead; and the fortifications proved to be a church-yard, with some scattered bones in it, and a plain stone wall round it. Va 'Away posted Vanity, and I after her, to the storehouse of Ideas; where I beheld a great number of lifeless notions confusedly thrown together, but upon the approach of Vanity they began to crawl. Here were to be seen, among other odd things, sleeping deities, corporeal spirits, and worlds formed by chance; with an endless variety of heathen notions, the most irregular and grotesque imaginable; and with these were jumbled several of Christian extraction; but such was the dress and light they were put in, and their features were so distorted, that they looked little better than heathens. There was likewise assembled no small number of phantoms in strange habits, who proved to be idolatrous priests of different nations. nity gave the word, and straightway the Talopoins, Faquirs, Bramins, and Bonzes, drew up in a body. The right wing consisted of ancient heathen notions, and the left, of Christians naturalized. All these together, for numbers, composed a very formidable army; but the precipitation of Vanity was so great, and such was their own inbred aversion to the tyranny of rules and discipline, that they seemed rather a confused rabble than a regular army. I could, nevertheless, observe, that they all agreed in a squinting look, or cast of their eye towards a certain person in a mask, who was placed in the centre, and whom, by sure signs and tokens, I discovered to be Atheism. 'Vanity had no sooner led her forces into the imagination, but she resolved upon storming the castle, and giving no quarter. They began the assault with a loud outcry and great confusion. I, for my part, made the best of my way, and re-entered my own lodging. Some time after, inquiring at a bookseller's for a Discourse on Free-thinking, which had made some noise, H I imagine the account here given may be useful in directing to the proper cure of a freethinker. In the first place, it is plain his understanding wants to be opened and enlarged, and he should be taught the way to order and methodise his ideas; to which end the study of the mathematics may be useful. I am farther of opinion, that as his imagination is filled with amusements arising from prejudice, and the obscure or false lights in which he sees things, it will be necessary to bring him into good company, and now and then carry him to church; by which means he may in time come to a right sense of religion, and wear off the ill impressions he has received. Lastly, I advise whoever undertakes the reformation of a modern free-thinker, that above all things he be careful to subdue his vanity; that being the principal motive which prompts a little genius to distinguish itself by singularities that are hurtful to mankind. Or, if the passion of vanity, as it is for the most part very strong in your free-thinkers cannot be subdued, let it be won over to the interest of religion, by giving them to understand that the greatest genii of the age have a respect for things sacred; that their rhapsodies find no admirers, and that the name Free-thinker has, like Tyrant of old, degenerated from its original signification, and is now supposed to denote something contrary to wit and reason. In fine. let them know that whatever temptations a few men of parts might formerly have had, from the novelty of the thing, to oppose the received opinions of Christians, yet that now the humour is worn out, and blasphemy and irreligion are distinctions which have long since descended down to lackeys and drawers. But it must be my business to prevent all pretenders in this kind from hurting the ignorant and unwary. In order to this, I communicated an intelligence which I received of a gentleman's appearing very sorry that he was not well during a late fit of sickness, contrary to his own doctrine, which obliged him to be merry upon that occasion, except he was sure of recovering. Upon this advice to the world, the following advertisement got a place in the Post-boy: 'Whereas, in the paper called the Guardian of Saturday, the eleventh of April, instant, a corollary reflection was made on Monsieur a member of the royal academy of sciences in Paris, author of a book lately published, entitled, D A Philological Essay, or Reflections on the death of Free-thinkers, with the characters of the most eminent persons of both sexes, ancient and modern, that died pleasantly and unconcerned, &c. Sold by J. Baker in Paternoster-row: Suggesting, as if that gentleman, now in Lon don, "was very much out of humour, in a late fit of sickness, till he was in a fair way of recovery" This is to assure the public, that the said gentleman never expressed the least concern at the approach of death, but expected the fatal minute with a most heroical and philosophical resignation; of which a copy of verses he writ, in the serene intervals of his distemper, is an invincible proof.' All that I contend for, is, that this gentleman was out of humour when he was sick; and the advertiser, to confute me, says, that in the serene intervals of his distemper,' that is, when he was not sick, he writ verses. I shall not retract my advertisement till I see those verses, and I will choose what to believe then, except | they are underwritten by his nurse, nor then neither except she is a housekeeper. I must tie this gentleman close to the argument; for if he had not actually his fit upon him, there is nothing courageous in the thing, nor does it make for his purpose, nor are they heroic verses. The point of being merry at the hour of death is a matter that ought to be settled by divines; but the publisher of the Philological Essay produces his chief authorities from Lucretius, the earl of Rochester, and Mr. John Dryden, who were gentlemen that did not think themselves obliged to prove all they said, or else proved their assertions by saying or swearing they were all fools that believed to the contrary. If it be absolutely necessary that a man should be facetious at his death, it would be very well if these gentlemen, Monsieur Dand Mr. B- would repent betimes, and not trust to a death-bed ingenuity; by what has appeared hitherto they have only raised our longing to see their posthumous works. fore plain that any deviations from that design degrade a poem from being true pastoral. In this view it will appear that Virgil can only have two of his eclogues allowed to be such. His first and ninth must be rejected, because they describe the ravages of armies, and oppressions of the innocent; Corydon's criminal passion for Alexis throws out the second; the calumny and railing in the third are not proper to that state of concord; the eighth represents unlawful ways of procuring love by enchantments, and introduces a shepherd whom an inviting precipice tempts to self-murder. As to the fourth, sixth, and tenth, they are given up by Heinsius, Salmasius, Rapin, and the critics in general.* They likewise observe that but eleven of all the Idyllia of Theocritus are to be admitted as pastorals; and even out of that number the greater part will be excluded, for one or other of the reasons above-mentioned. So that when I remarked in a former paper, that Virgil's eclogues, taken altogether, are rather select poems than pastorals, I might have said the same thing, with no less truth, of Theocritus. The reason of this I take to be yet unobserved by the critics, viz. They never meant them all for pastorals; which it is plain Philips hath done, and in that particular excelled both Theocritus and Virgil. 6 As simplicity is the distinguishing characteristic of pastoral, Virgil has been thought guilty of too courtly a style: his language is perfectly pure, and he often forgets he is among peasants. I have frequently wondered that since he was so conversant in the writings of Ennius, he had not imitated the rusticity of the Doric, as well, by the help of the old obsolete Roman language, as Philips hath by the antiquated English. For example, might he not have said 'quoi' instead of 'cui;''quoijum' for 'cujum ;' volt' for ' vult,' &c. as well as our modern hath 'welladay' for The author of Poeta Rusticantis literatumalas,' whilome' for 'of old,' 'make mock' for Otium is but a mere phraseologist, the philo-deride,' and 'witless younglings' for 'simple logical publisher is but a translator; but I ex- lambs,' &c. by which means he had attained as pected better usage from Mr. Abel Roper, who much of the air of Theocritus, as Philips hath is an original. of Spenser? No. 40.] Monday, April 27, 1713. Compulerantque greges Corydon et Thyrsis in unum : Ex illo Corydon, Corydon est tempore nobis. Virg. Ecl. vii. 2. Their sheep and goats together graz'd the plainsSince when? 'tis Corydon among the swains, Young Corydon without a rival reigns. Dryden. I DESIGNED to have troubled the reader with no farther discourses of pastorals; but being informed that I am taxed of partiality in not mentioning an author, whose eclogues are published in the same volume with Mr. Philips's, I shall employ this paper in observations upon him, written in the free spirit of criticism, and without apprehension of offending the gentleman, whose character it is, that he takes the greatest care of his works before they are published, and has the least concern for them afterwards. I have laid it down as the first rule of pastoral, that its idea should be taken from the manners of the golden age, and the moral formed upon the representation of innocence; it is there Mr. Pope hath fallen into the same error with Virgil. His clowns do not converse in all the simplicity proper to the country. His names are borrowed from Theocritus and Virgil, which are improper to the scene of his pastorals. He introduces Daphnis, Alexis, and Thyrsis on British plains, as Virgil had done before him on the Mantuan: whereas Philips, who hath the strictest regard to propriety, makes choice of names peculiar to the country, and more agree. able to a reader of delicacy; such as Hobbinol, Lobbin, Cuddy, and Colin Clout. So easy as pastoral writing may seem (in the simplicity we have described it), yet it requires great reading, both of the ancients and moderns, to be a master of it. Philips hath given us manifest proofs of his knowledge of books; it must be confessed his competitor hath imitated some single thoughts of the ancients well enough, if we consider he had not the happiness of a university education; but he hath dispersed them here and there, without that order and method which Mr. Philips observes, whose whole third * See Rapin de Carm. Past. pars 3. pastoral is an instance how well he hath studied | etry are fonder of, than descriptions of pastoral the fifth of Virgil, and how judiciously reduced presents. Philips says thus of a sheep-hook : Virgil's thoughts to the standard of pastoral; as his contention of Colin Clout and the Nightingale, shows with what exactness he hath imitated Strada. When I remarked it as a principal fault to introduce fruits and flowers of a foreign growth, in descriptions where the scene lies in our country, I did not design that observation should extend also to animals, or the sensitive life; for Philips hath with great judgment described wolves in England, in his first pastoral. Nor would I have a poet slavishly confine himself (as Mr. Pope hath done) to one particular season of the year, one certain time of the day, and one unbroken scene in each eclogue. It is plain Spenser neglected this pedantry, who, in his pastoral of November, mentions the mournful song of the nightingale. 'Sad Philomel her song in tears doth steep.' And Mr. Philips, by a poetical creation, hath raised up finer beds of flowers than the most industrious gardener; his roses, lilies, and daffodils, blow in the same season. Of season'd elm; where studs of brass appear, The other of a bowl embossed with figures: -where wanton ivy twines; And swelling clusters bend the curling vines; Four figures rising from the work appear, The various seasons of the rolling year; And what is that which binds the radiant sky, Where twelve bright signs in beauteous order lie? The simplicity of the swain in this place, who forgets the name of the Zodiac, is no ill imitation of Virgil; but how much more plainly and unaffectedly would Philips have dressed this thought in his Doric ? And what that hight, which girds the Welkin sheen, Where twelve gay signs in meet array are seen? If the reader would indulge his curiosity any farther in the comparison of particulars, he may read the first pastoral of Philips with the second of his contemporary, and the fourth and sixth of the former with the fourth and first of the But the better to discover the merits of our latter; where several parallel places will occur two contemporary pastoral writers, I shall endeavour to draw a parallel of them, by settingHaving now shown some parts, in which these to every one. several of their particular thoughts in the same two writers may be compared, it is a justice I light, whereby it will be obvious how much Phiowe to Mr. Philips, to discover those in which hips hath the advantage. With what simplicity he introduces two shepherds singing alternately: tiful rusticity, of which I shall only produce two no man can compare with him. First that beauinstances, out of a hundred not yet quoted: Hobb. Come, Rosalind, O come, for without thee What pleasure can the country have for me. Come, Rosalind, O come: My brinded kine, My snowy sheep, my farm, and all, is thine. Lang. Come, Rosalind, O come; here shady bowers, Here are cool fountains, and here springing Come, Rosalind; here ever let us stay, [flow'rs. And sweetly waste our live-long time away. Dur other pastoral writer, in expressing the same thought, deviates into downright poetry. Streph. In spring the fields, in autumn hills I love, At morn the plains, at noon the shady grove, More bright than noon, yet fresh as early day; In the first of these authors, two shepherds thus innocently describe the behaviour of their mis tresses. Hobbe As Marian bath'd, by chance I passed by; She blush'd, and at me cast a side-long eye: Then swift beneath the crystal wave she try'd Her beauteous form, but all in vain to hide. Lang. As I to cool me bath'd one sultry day, Fond Lydia lurking in the sedges lay; The wanton laugh'd, and seem'd in haste to fly; Yet often stopp'd, and often turn'd her eye. The other modern (who it must be confessed hath a knack of versifying) hath it as follows: Streph. Me gentle Delia beckons from the plain, Then, hid in shades, eludes her eager swain; But feigns a laugh, to see me search around, And by that laugh the willing fair is found. Daph. The sprightly Sylvia trips along the green; She runs, but hopes she does not run unseen; While a kind glance at her pursuer flies, How much at variance are her feet and eyes! There is nothing the writers of this kind of po O woful day! O day of woe, quoth he. That simplicity of diction, the melancholy flowing of the numbers, the solemnity of the sound, and the easy turn of the words, in this dirge (to make use of our author's expression) are extremely elegant. In another of his pastorals a shepherd utters a dirge not much inferior to the former, in the following lines: Ah me the while! ah me, the luckless day! How he still charms the ear with these artful repetitions of the epithets; and how significant is the last verse! I defy the most common reader to repeat them without feeling some motions of compassion. In the next place I shall rank his proverbs, in which I formerly observed he excels. For example, A rolling stone is ever bare of moss; -Nor fear, from upright sentence, wrong. Lastly, his elegant dialect, which alone might prove him the eldest-born of Spenser, and our only true Arcadian; I should think it proper for the several writers of pastoral, to confine themselves to their several counties: Spenser seems to have been of this opinion; for he hath laid the scene of one of his pastorals in Wales, where, with all the simplicity natural to that part of our island, one shepherd bids the other good-morrow in an unusual and elegant manner. Diggon Davey, I bid hur God-day; Diggon answers, Hur was hur while it was day light: But now hur is a most wretched wight, &c. But the most beautiful example of this kind that I ever met with, is a very valuable piece which I chanced to find among some old manuscripts, entitled, A Pastoral Ballad; which I think, for its nature and simplicity, may (notwithstanding the modesty of the title) be allowed a perfect pastoral. It is composed in the Somersetshire dialect, and the names such as are proper to the country people. It may be observed, as a farther beauty of this pastoral, the words Nymph, Dryad, Naiad, Faun, Cupid, or Satyr, are not once mentioned through the whole. I shall make no apology for inserting some few lines of this excellent piece. Cicily breaks thus into the subject, as she is going a milking: Cicily. Rager go vetch tha kee,* or else tha zun Will quite be go, beuore c'have half a don. THE following letter has so much truth and reason in it, that I believe every man of sense and honour in England, will have a just indig nation against the person who could commit so great a violence, as that of which my corres pondent complains. 'To the Author of the Guardian. 'SIR,-I claim a place in your paper for what I now write to you, from the declaration which you made at your first appearance, and the very title you assume to yourself. If the circumstance which I am going to mention is overlooked by one who calls himself Guardian, I am sure honour and integrity, innocence and virtue, are not the objects of his care.-The Examiner ends his discourse of Friday, the twenty-fourth instant, with these words: "No sooner was D-* among the whigs, and confirmed past retrieving, but lady Char-tet is taken knotting in St. James's chapel during divine service, in the immediate presence both of God and her majesty, who were affronted to Roger. Thou should'st not ax ma tweece, but I've a begether, that the family might appear to be en To dreave our bull to bull tha parson's kee. It is to be observed that this whole dialogue s formed upon the passion of jealousy; and nis mentioning the parson's kine naturally revives the jealousy of the shepherdess Cicily, which she expresses as follows: Cicily. Ah Rager, Rager, chez was zore avraid When in yond vield you kiss'd tha parson's maid: Is this the love that once to me you zed [bread? When from tha wake thou brought'st me gingerRoger. Cicily thou charg'st me false-I'll zwear to thee, Tha parson's maid is still a maid for me. In which answer of his are expressed at once that 'spirit of religion,' and that innocence of the golden age,' so necessary to be observed by all writers of pastoral. At the conclusion of this piece the author reconciles the lovers, and ends the eclogue the most simply in the world: So Rager parted vor to vetch tha kee, I am loth to show my fondness for antiquity so far as to prefer this ancient British author to our present English writers of pastoral; but I cannot avoid making this obvious remark, that both Spenser and Philips have hit into the same road with this old west country bard of ours. After all that hath been said I hope none can think it any injustice to Mr. Pope, that I forbore to mention him as a pastoral writer; since upon the whole he is of the same class with Moschus and Bion, whom we have excluded that rank; and of whose eclogues, as well as some of Virgil's, it may be said, that according to the description we have given of this sort of poetry, they are by no means pastorals, but something better.' * That is, kine or cows. ་ tirely come over. I spare the beauty for the sake of her birth; but certainly there was no occasion for so public a proof, that her fingers are more dexterous in tying a knot, than her fa ther's brains in perplexing the government." 'It is apparent that the person here intended is by her birth a lady, and daughter of an earl of Great Britain; and the treatment this author is pleased to give her, he makes no scruple to own she is exposed to by being his daughter. Since he has assumed a licence to talk of this nobleman in print to his disadvantage, I hope his lordship will pardon me, that out of the interest which I, and all true Englishmen have in his character, I take the liberty to defend him. 'I am willing on this occasion, to allow the claim and pretension to merit to be such, as the same author describes in his preceding paper. "By active merit (says the Examiner of the twenty-first) I understand, not only the power and ability to serve, but the actual exercise of any one or more virtues, for promoting the good of real endeavours to appear useful in a govern. of one's country, and a long and steady course ment; or where a person eminently qualified for public affairs, distinguishes himself in some critical juncture, and at the expense of his ease and fortune, or with the hazard of his person exposes himself to the malice of a designing fac tion, by thwarting their wicked purposes, and contributing to the safety, repose, and welfare of a people." 'Let us examine the conduct of this nople ear by this description. Upon the late glorious re volution, when it was in debate in what manner the people of England should express their gra titude to their deliverer, this lord, from the ut most tenderness and loyalty to his unhappy |