nostic. They told me, that, just before uncle died, Towzer howled so for several nights together, that they could not quiet him; and my aunt heard the dead-watch tick as plainly as if there had been a clock in the room; the maid too, who sat up with him, heard a bell toll at the top of the stairs, the very moment the breath went out of his body. During this discourse I overheard one of my cousins whisper the other, that she was afraid their mamma would not live long; for she smelt an ugly smell, like a dead carcass. They had a dairy-maid, who died the very week after an hearse had stopt at their door on its way to church: and the eldest miss, when she was but thirteen, saw her own brother's ghost (who was gone to the West Indies), walking in the garden; and to be sure, nine months after, they had an account, that he died on board the ship, the very same day, and hour of the day, that miss saw his apparition.

I need not mention to you the common incidents, which were accounted by them no less prophetic. If a cinder popped from the fire, they were in haste to examine whether it was a purse or a coffin. They were aware of my coming long before I arrived, because they had seen a stranger on the grate. The youngest miss will let nobody use the poker but herself; because, when she stirs the fire, it always burns bright, which is a sign she will have a brisk husband; and she is no less sure of a good one, because she generally has ill luck at cards. Nor is the candle less oracular than the fire: for the squire of the parish came one night to pay them a visit, when the tallow winding-sheet pointed towards him; and he broke his neck soon after in a fox-chase. My aunt one night observed with great pleasure a letter in the candle; and the very next day one came from her son in London. We knew when a spirit was in the room, by the candle burning blue: but poor cousin Nancy was ready to cry one time, when she snuff ed it out, and could not blow it in again, though her sister did it at a whiff, and consequently triumphed in her superior virtue. We had no occasion for an almanack or the weather glass, to let us know whether it would rain or shine. One evening I proposed to ride out with my cousins the next day to see a gentleman's house in the neighbourhood; but my aunt assured us would be wet, she knew very well, from ting of her corn. Besides, there

was a great spider crawling up the chim ney, and the blackbird in the kitchen be gan to sing; which were both of them as certain forerunners of rain. But the most to be depended on in these cases is a tabby cat, which usually lies basking on the parlour hearth. If the cat turned her tail to the fire, we were to have an hard frost; if the cat licked her tail, rain would certainly ensue. They wondered what stranger they should sce, because puss washed her face over her left ear The old lady complained of a cold, and her eldest daughter remarked it would go through the family; for she observed that poor Tab had sneezed several times. Poor Tab, however, once flew at one of my cousins; for which she had like to have been destroyed, as the whole family began to think she was no other than a witch.

It is impossible to tell you the several tokens by which they know whether good or ill luck will happen to them. Spilling the salt, or laying knives across, are every where accounted ill omens; but a pin with the head turned towards you, or to be fol lowed by a strange dog, I found were very lucky. I heard one of my cousins tell the cook-maid, that she boiled away all her sweethearts, because she had let her dishwater boil over. The same young lady one morning came down to breakfast with her cap the wrong side out; which the mother observing, charged her not to alter it all day, for fear she should turn luck.

But, above all, I could not help remark ing the various prognostics which the old lady and her daughters used to collect from almost every part of the body. A white speck upon the nails made them as sure of a gift as if they had it already in their pockets. The elder sister is to have one husband more than the youngest, be cause she has one wrinkle more in her forehead; but the other will have the advantage of her in the number of children, as was plainly proved by snapping their finger-joints. It would take up too much room to set down every circumstance which I observed of this sort during my stay with them: I shall therefore conclude my letter with the several remarks on other parts of the body, as far as I could learn them from this prophetic family; for as I was a relation, you know, they had less reserve.

If

a stranger.

a stranger. If your right eye itches, you will cry; if your left, you will laugh: but left or right is good at night. If your nose itches you will shake hands with or kiss a fool, drink a glass of wine, run against a cuckold's door, or miss them all four. If your right ear or cheek burns, your left friends are talking of you; if your left, your right friends are talking of you. If your elbow itches, you will change your bedfellow. If your right hand itches, you will pay away money; if your left, you will receive. If your stomach itches, you will eat pudding. If your back itches, but ter will be cheap when grass grows there. your side itches, somebody is wishing for you. If your gartering-place itches, you will go to a strange place. If your foot itches, you will tread upon strange ground. Lastly, if you shiver, somebody is walking over your grave. Connoisseur.

$89. Swearing an indelicate as well as

a wicked Practice.

As there are some vices which the vulgar have presumed to copy from the great, so there are others which the great have condescended to borrow from the vulgar. Among these, I cannot but set down the shocking practice of cursing and swearing; a practice, which (to say nothing at present of its impiety and profaneness) is low and indelicate, and places the man of quality on the same level with the chairman at his door. A gentleman would forfeit all pretensions to that title, who should chuse to embellish his discourse with the oratory of Billingsgate, and converse in the style of an oyster-woman; but it is accounted no disgrace to him to use the same coarse expressions of cursing and swearing with the meanest of the mob. For my own part, I cannot see the difference between a By-gad or a Gad-dem-me, minced and softened by a genteel pronunciation from well-bred lips, and the same expression bluntly bolted out from the broad mouth of a porter or hackney coachman.

I shall purposely wave making any reflections on the impiety of this practice, as I am satisfied they would have but little weight either with the beau-monde or the canaille. The swearer of either station, devotes himself piecemeal, as it were, to destruction; pours out anathemas against his eyes, his heart, his soul, and every part of his body: nor does he scruple to extend the same good wishes to the limbs and joints of his friends and acquaintance.

This they both do with the same fearless unconcern; but with this only difference, that the gentleman swearer damns him. self and others with the greatest civility and good-breeding imaginable

My predecessor the Tatler gives us an account of a certain humourist, who got together a party of noted swearers to dinner with him, and ordered their discourses to be taken down in short-hand; which being afterwards repeated to them, they were extremely startled and surprized at their own common talk. A dialogue of this nature would be no improper supplement to Swift's polite conversation; though, indeed, it would appear too shocking to be set down in print. But I cannot help wishing, that it were possible to draw out a catalogue of the fashionable oaths and curses in present use at Arthur's, or at any other polite assembly: by which means the company themselves would be led to imagine, that their conversation had been carried on between the lowest of the mob; and they would blush to find, that they had gleaned the choicest phrases from lanes and alleys, and enriched their discourse with the elegant dialect of Wapping and Broad St. Giles's.

The legislature has indeed provided against this offence, by affixing a penalty on every delinquent according to his station: but this law, like those made against gaming, is of no effect; while the gen teeler sort of swearers put forth the same execrations at the hazard-table or in the tennis-courts, which the more ordinary gamesters repeat, with the same impunity over the shuffle-board or in the skittle ally. Indeed, were this law to be rigorously put in execution, there would appear to be little or no proportion in the punishment : since the gentleman would escape by depositing his crown; while the poor wretch, who cannot raise a shilling, must be clapt into the stocks, or sent to Bridewell. But as the offence is exactly the same, I would also have no distinction made in the treatment of the offenders: and it would be a most ridiculous but adue mortification to a man of quality, to be obliged to thrust his leg through the same stocks with a carman or a coal-heaver; since he first degraded himself, and qualified himself for their company by talking in the same mean dialect.

I am aware that it will be pleaded in excuse for this practice, that oaths and curses are intended only as mere expletives, which serve to round a period, and give a grace and spirit to conversation. But there are

still some old-fashioned creatures, who adhere to their common acceptation, and can not help thinking it a very serious matter, that a man should devote his body to the devil, or call down damnation on his soul. Nay, the swearer himself, like the old man in the fable calling upon death, would be exceeding loath to be taken at his word; and while he wishes destruction to every part of his body, would be highly concerned to have a limb rot away, his nose fall off, or an eye drop out of the socket. It would therefore be adviseable to substitute some other terms equally unmeaning, and at the same time remote from the vulgar cursing and swearing.

It is recorded to the honour of the famous Dean Stanhope, that in his younger days, when he was chaplain to a regiment, he reclaimed the officers, who were much addicted to this vulgar practice, by the following method of reproof: One evening, as they were all in company together, after they had been very eloquent in this kind of rhetoric, so natural to the gentlemen of the army, the worthy dean took occasion to tell a story in his turn; in which he frequently repeated the words bottle and glass, instead of the usual expletives of God, devil and damn, which he did not think quite so becoming for one of his cloth to make free with. I would recommend it to our people of fashion to make use of the like innocent phrases whenever they are obliged to have recourse to these substitutes for thought and expression. "Bottle and glass" might be introduced with great energy in the tabletalk at the King's Arms or St. Alban's taverns. The gamester might be indulged, without offence, in swearing by the "knave of clubs," or "the curse of Scotland;" or he might with some propriety retain the old execration of "the deuce take it." The beau should be allowed to swear by his gracious self," which is the god of his idolatry; and the common expletives should consist only of " upon my word and upon my honour" which terms, whatever sense they might formerly bear, are at present understood only as words of course, with out meaning.

66

Connoisseur.

$90. Sympathy a Source of the Sublime. It is by the passion of sympathy that we enter into the concerns of others; that we are moved as they are moved, and are never suffered to be indifferent spectators of almost any thing which men can do or suffer. For sympathy must be considered as a sort of

substitution, by which we are put into the place of another man, and affected in a good measure as he is affected; so that this passion may either partake of the nature of those which regard self-preservation, and turning upon pain may be a source of the sublime; or it may turn upon ideas of pleasure, and then, whatever has been said of the social affections, whether they regard society in general, or only some particular modes of it, may be applicable here.

It is by this principle chiefly that poetry, painting, and other affecting arts, transfuse their passions from one breast to another, and are often capable of grafting a delight on wretchedness, misery, and death itselt. It is a common observation, that objects, which in the reality would shock, are, in tragical and such like representations, the source of a very high species of pleasure. This, taken as a fact, has been the cause of much reasoning. This satisfaction has been commonly attributed, first, to the combin we receive in considering that so melancholy a story is no more than a fiction; and next, the contemplation of our own freedom from the evils we see represented. I am afraid it is a practice much too common in inquiries of this nature, to attribute the cause of feelings which merely arise from the mechanical structure of our bodies, or from the natural frame and constitution e our minds, to certain conclusions of the reasoning faculty on the objects presented to us; for I have some reason to apprehend, that the influence of reason in producingour passions is nothing near so extensive as is commonly believed. Burke on the Sublime.

$91. Effects of Sympathy in the Distresses of others.

To examine this point concerning the effect of tragedy in a proper manner, must previously consider, how we are af feeted by the feelings of our fellow-creatures in circumstances of real distress. Iam convinced we have a degree of delight, and that no small one, in the real misfortunes and pains of others; for, let the affection be what it will in appearance, if it does not make us shun such objects, if, on the contrary, it induces us to approach them, if g makes us dwell upon them, in this case i conceive we must have a delight or plea sure, of some species or other, in contem plating objects of this kind. Do we notrese the authentic histories of scenes of this ma ture with as much pleasure as romances as poems where the incidents are fictions

The prosperity of no empire, nor the grandeur of no king, can so agreeably affect in the reading, as the ruin of the state of Macedon and the distress of its unhappy prince. Such a catastrophe touches us in history, as much as the destruction of Troy does in fable. Our delight in cases of this kind is very greatly heightened, if the sufferer be some excellent person who sinks under an unworthy fortune. Scipio and Cato are both virtuous characters; but we are more deeply affected by the violent death of the one, and the ruin of the great cause he adhered to, than with the deserved triumphs and uninterrupted prosperity of the other; for terror is a passion which always produces delight when it does not press too close, and pity is a passion accompanied with pleasure, because it arises from love and social affection. Whenever we are formed by nature to any active purpose, the passion which animates us to it is attended with delight, or a pleasure of some kind, let the subject matter be what it will; and as our Creator has designed we should be united together by so strong a bond as that of sympathy, he has therefore twisted along with it a proportionable quantity of this ingredient; and always in the greatest proportion where our sympathy is most wanted, in the distresses of others. If this passion was simply painful, we should shun, with the greatest care, all persons and places that could excite such a passion, as some, who are so far gone in ndolence as not to endure any strong impression, actually do. But the case is widely lifferent with the greater part of mankind; here is no spectacle we so eagerly pursue, is that of some uncommon and grievous caamity; so that whether the misfortune is before our eyes, or whether they are turned jack to it in history, it always touches with lelight; but it is not an unmixed delight, outblended with no small uneasiness. The lelight we have in such things, hinders us rom shunning scenes of misery; and the ain we feel, prompts us to relieve ourselves a relieving those who suffer; and all this ntecedent to any reasoning, by an instinct hat works us to its own purposes, without ur concurrence. Burke on the Sublime. $92. Tears not unworthy of an Hero. If tears are arguments of cowardice, hat shall I say of Homer's hero? Shall Achilles pass for timorous because he wept, and wept on less occasions than Æneas? Herein Virgil must be granted to have excelled his master. For once both heroes

are described lamenting their lost loves; Briseis was taken away by force from the Grecian; Creusa was lost for ever to her husband. But Achilles went roaring along the salt sea-shore, and like a booby was complaining to his mother, when he should have revenged his injury by his arms. Eneas took a nobler course; for, having secured his father and son, he repeated all his former dangers to have found his wife, if she had been above ground.

And here your lordship may observe the address of Virgil; it was not for nothing that this passage was related with all these tender circumstances. Eneas told it; Dido heard it. That he had been so affectionate a husband, was no ill argument to the coming dowager, that he might prove as kind to her. Virgil has a thousand secret beauties, though I have not leisure to remark them.

Segrais, on the subject of a hero shedding tears, observes, that historians commend Alexander for weeping when he read the mighty actions of Achilles ; and Julius Cæsar is likewise praised, when, out of the same noble envy, he wept at the victories of Alexander. But if we observe more closely, we shall find that the tears of Æneas were always on a laudable occasion. Thus he weeps out of compassion and tenderness of nature, when in the temple of Carthage he beholds the picture of his friends, who, sacrificed their lives in defence of their country. He deplores the lamentable end. of his pilot Palinurus; the untimely deathof young Pallas his confederate; and the rest, which I omit. Yet even for these tears, his wretched critics dare condemn him. They make Æneas little better than a kind of St. Swithin's hero, always raining. One of these censors is bold enough to arraign him of cowardice, when, in the beginning of the first book, he not only weeps but trembles at an approaching storm :

Extemplo Encæ solvuntur frigore meinbra: Ingemit, et duplices tendens ad sidera prima, &c.

But to this I have answered forinerly, that his fear was not for himself, but his people. And what can give a sovereign a better commendation, or recommend a hero more to the affection of the reader? They were threatened with a tempest, and he wept: he was promised Italy, and therefore he prayed for the accomplishment of that promise. All this in the beginning of a storm; therefore he shewed the more early piety, and the quicker sense of com

pas

passion. Thus much I have urged else where in the defence of Virgil; and since I have been informed by Mr. Moyl, a young gentleman whom I can never sufficiently commend, that the ancients accounted drowning an accursed death. So that if we grant him to have been afraid, he had just occasion for that fear, both in relation to himself and to his subjects.

Dryden.

§ 93. Terror a Source of the Sublime. No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear; for fear being an apprehension of pain or death, it operates in a manner that resembles actual pain. Whatever therefore is terrible with regard to sight, is sublime too, whether this cause of terror be endued with greatness of dimensions or not; for it is impossible to look on any thing as trifling or contemptible, that may be dangerous. There are many animals, who, though far from being large, are yet capable of raising ideas of the sublime, because they are considered as objects of terror; as serpents and poisonous animals of almost all kinds. Even to things of great dimensions, if we annex any adventitious idea of terror, they become without comparison greater. An even plain of a vast extent on land, is certainly no mean idea; the prospect of such a plain may be as extensive as a prospect of the ocean; but can it ever fill the mind with any thing so great as the ocean itself? This is owing to several causes, but it is owing to none more than to this, that the ocean is an object of no small terror.

Burke on the Sublime.

$94. Tragedy compared with Epic Poetry. To raise, and afterwards to calm the passions; to purge the soul from pride, by the examples of human miseries which befal the greatest; in few words, to expel arrogance and introduce compassion, are the greatest effects of tragedy. Great, I must confess, if they were altogether as lasting as they are pompous. But are habits to be introduced at three hours warning? are radical diseases so suddenly removed? A mountebank may promise such a cure, but a skilful physician will not undertake it. An epic poem is not so much in haste; it works leisurely; the changes which it makes are slow; but the cure is likely to be more perfect. The effects of tragedy, as I said, are too violent to be

lasting. If it be answered, that for this reason tragedies are often to be seen. and the dose to be repeated; this is ta citly to confess, that there is more virtue in one heroic poem, than in many trage dies. A man is humbled one day, and his pride returns the next. Chemical medi cines are observed to relicve oftener than to cure; for it is the nature of spirits to make swift impressions, but not deep. Galenical decoctions, to which I may properly compare an epic poem, have more of body in them; they work by their substance and their weight. It is one reason of Aristotle's to prove that tragedy is the more noble, because it turns in a shorter compass; the whole action being circumscribed within the space of four-and-twenty hours. He might prove as well that a mushroom is to be preferred before a peach, because it shoots up in the compass of a night. A chariot may be driven round the pillar in less space than a large machine, because the bulk is not so great. Is the moon a more noble planet than Saturn, because shemakes her revolution in less than thirty days; and he in little less than thirty years? Both their orbs are in proportion to their several magnitudes; and, consequently, the quickness or slowness of their motion, and the time of their circumvolutions, is no argu ment of the greater or less perfection. And besides, what virtue is there in a tragedy, which is not contained in an epic poen? where pride is humbled, virtue rewarded, and vice punished; and those more amply treated than the narrowness of the drama can admit? the shining quality of an epic hero, his magnanimity, his constancy, his patience, his piety, or whatever characteris tical virtue his poet gives him, raises first our admiration: we are naturally prone to imitate what we admire; and frequent acts produce a habit. If the hero's chief qua lity be vicious, as, for example, the choler and obstinate desire of vengeance in Achiiles, yct the moral is instructive: and be sides, we are informed in the very propo sition of the Iliad, that this anger was per nicious: that it brought a thousand ills the Grecian camp. The courage of Achil les is proposed to imitation, not his pride and disobedience to his general, nor his brutal cruelty to his dead enemy, nor the selling his body to his father: we abbor those actions while we read them, and what we abhor we never imitate: the poet only shews them, like rocks or quicksands, to be shunned.

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