image before the hearer, if it be chosen aptly for the story. Thus, I remember Tom Lizard, after having made his sisters merry with an account of a formal old man's way of complimenting, owned very frankly that his story would not have been worth one farthing if he had made the hat of him whom he represented one inch narrower. Besides the marking distinct characters, and selecting pertinent circumstances, it is likewise necessary to leave off in time, and end smartly; so that there is a kind of drama in the forming of a story; and the manner of conducting and pointing it is the same as in an epigram. It is a miserable thing, after one hath raised the expectation of the company by humorous characters and a pretty conceit, to pursue the matter too far. There is no retreating; and how poor is it for a story-teller to end his relation by saying, 'That's all !' (From The Guardian, No. 42.) A Domestic Scene. There are several persons who have many pleasures and entertainments in their possession which they do not enjoy. It is therefore a kind and good office to acquaint them with their own happiness, and turn their attention to such instances of their good fortune which they are apt to overlook. Persons in the married state often want such a monitor, and pine away their days by looking upon the same condition in anguish and murmur, which carries with it in the opinion of others a complication of all the pleasures of life, and a retreat from its inquietudes. I am led into this thought by a visit I made an old friend, who was formerly my school-fellow. He came to town last week with his family for the winter, and yesterday morning sent me word his wife expected me to dinner. I am as it were at home at that house, and every member of it knows me for their well-wisher. I cannot indeed express the pleasure it is to be met by the children with so much joy as I am when I go thither: The boys and girls strive who shall come first, when they think it is I that am knocking at the door; and that child which loses the race to me runs back again to tell the father it is Mr Bickerstaff. This day I was led in by a pretty girl that we all thought must have forgot me; for the family has been out of town these two years. Her knowing me again was a mighty subject with us, and took up our discourse at the first entrance. After which, they began to rally me upon a thousand little stories they heard in the country, about my marriage to one of my neighbour's daughters: upon which the gentleman, my friend, said, 'Nay, if Mr Bickerstaff marries a child of any of his old companions, I hope mine shall have the preference; there is Mrs Mary is now sixteen, and would make him as fine a widow as the best of them: but I know him too well; he is so enamoured with the very memory of those who flourished in our youth, that he will not so much as look upon the modern beauties. I remember, old gentleman, how often you went home in a day to refresh your countenance and dress, when Teraminta reigned in your heart. As we came up in the coach, I repeated to my wife some of your verses on her.' With such reflections on little passages which happened long ago, we passed our time during a cheerful and elegant meal. After dinner his lady left the room, as did also the children. As soon as we were alone, he took me by the hand; Well, my good friend, says he, I am heartily glad to see thee; I was afraid you would never have seen all the company that dined with you to-day again. Do not you think the good woman of the house a little altered since you followed her from the playhouse, to find out who she was for me? I perceived a tear fall down his cheek as he spoke, which moved me not a little. But to turn the discourse, said I, she is not indeed quite that creature she was when she returned me the letter I carried from you; and told me she hoped, as I was a gentleman, I would be employed no more to trouble her, who had never offended me; but would be so much the gentleman's friend as to dissuade him from a pursuit which he could never succeed in. You may remember, I thought her in earnest; and you were forced to employ your cousin Will, who made his sister get acquainted with her for you. You cannot expect her to be for ever fifteen. Fifteen! replied my good friend: Ah! you little understand, you that have lived a bachelor, how great, how exquisite a pleasure there is in being really beloved! It is impossible that the most beauteous face in nature should raise in me such pleasing ideas as when I look upon that excellent woman. That fading in her countenance is chiefly caused by her watching with me in my fever. This was followed by a fit of sickness, which had like to have carried her off last winter. I tell you sincerely, I have so many obligations to her that I cannot with any sort of moderation think of her present state of health. But as to what you say of fifteen, she gives me every day pleasures beyond what I ever knew in the possession of her beauty, when I was in the vigour of youth. Every moment of her life brings me fresh instances of her complacency to my inclinations, and her prudence in regard to my fortune. Her face is to me much more beautiful than when I first saw it; there is no decay in any feature, which I cannot trace from the very instant it was occasioned by some anxious concern for my welfare and interests. Thus at the same time, methinks, the love I conceived towards her for what she was, is heightened by my gratitude for what she is. The love of a wife is as much above the idle passion commonly called by that name, as the loud laughter of buffoons is inferior to the elegant mirth of gentlemen. Oh she is an inestimable jewel. In her examination of her household affairs, she shews a certain fearfulness to find a fault, which makes her servants obey her like children; and the meanest we have has an ingenuous shame for an offence, not always to be seen in children in other families. I speak freely to you, my old friend; ever since her sickness, things that gave me the quickest joy before, turn now to a certain anxiety. As the children play in the next room, I know the poor things by their steps, and am considering what they must do should they lose their mother in their tender years. The pleasure I used to take in telling my boy stories of battles, and asking my girl questions about disposal of her baby [doll], and the gossiping of it, is turned into inward reflection and melancholy. He would have gone on in this tender way, when the good lady entered, and with an inexpressible sweetness in her countenance told us she had been searching her closet for something very good, to treat such an old friend as I was. Her husband's eyes sparkled with pleasure at the chearfulness of her countenance; and I saw all his fears vanish in an instant. The lady observing something in our looks which shewed we had been more serious than ordinary, and seeing her husband receive her with great concern under a forced chearfulness, immediately guessed at what we had been talking of; and applying herself to me, said, with a smile, Mr Bickerstaff, do not believe a word of what he tells you; I shall still live to have you for my second, as I have often promised you, unless he takes more care of himself than he has done since his coming to town. You must know, he tells me that he finds London is a much more healthy place than the country; for he sees several of his old acquaintance and school-fellows are here young fellows with fair full-bottomed periwigs. I could scarce keep him this morning from going out open breasted. My friend, who is always extremely delighted with her agreeable humour, made her sit down with us. She did it with that easiness which is peculiar to women of sense; and to keep up the good humour she had brought in with her, turned her raillery upon me : Mr Bickerstaff, you remember you followed me one night from the playhouse; suppose you should carry me thither to-morrow night, and lead me into the front-box. This put us into a long field of discourse about the beauties who were mothers to the present, and shined in the boxes twenty years ago. I told her I was glad she had transferred so many of her charms, and I did not question but her eldest daughter was within half a year of being a Toast. We were pleasing ourselves with this fantastical preferment of the young lady, when on a sudden we were alarmed with the noise of a drum, and immediately entered my little godson to give me a point of war. His mother, between laughing and chiding, would have put him out of the room; but I would not part with him so. I found upon conversation with him, though he was a little noisy in his mirth, that the child had excellent parts, and was a great master of all the learning on the other side eight years old. I perceived him a very great historian in Esop's Fables: but he frankly declared to me his mind, that he did not delight in that learning, because he did not believe they were true; for which reason I found he had very much turned his studies, for about a twelve-month past, into the lives and adventures of Don Bellianis of Greece, Guy of Warwick, the Seven Champions, and other historians of that age. I could not but observe the satisfaction the father took in the forwardness of his son; and that these diversions might turn to some profit, I found the boy had made remarks, which might be of service to him during the course of his whole life. He would tell you the mismanagements of John Hickathrift, find fault with the passionate temper in Bevis of Southampton, and loved Saint George for being the champion of England; and by this means had his thoughts insensibly moulded into the notions of discretion, virtue, and honour. I was extolling his accomplishments, when the mother told me that the little girl who led me in this morning was in her way a better scholar than he: Betty, says she, deals chiefly in fairies and sprights, and sometimes in a winter-night will terrify the maids with her accounts, until they are afraid to go up to bed. I sat with them until it was very late, sometimes in merry, sometimes in serious discourse, with this particular pleasure, which gives the only true relish to all conversation, a sense that every one of us liked each other. I went home, considering the different conditions of a married life and that of a bachelor: and I must confess it struck me with a secret concern, to reflect that when I was the other day amusing myself with Ligon's account of Barbadoes; and in answer to your wellwrought tale, I will give you (as it dwells upon my memory) out of that honest traveller, in his fifty-fifth page, the history of Inkle and Yarico. Mr Thomas Inkle, of London, aged twenty years, embarked in the Downs on the good ship called the Achilles, bound for the West-Indies, on the 16th of June, 1647, in order to improve his fortune by trade and merchandise. Our adventurer was the third son of an eminent citizen, who had taken particular care to instil into his mind an early love of gain, by making him a perfect master of numbers, and consequently giving him a quick view of loss and advantage, and preventing the natural impulses of his passions, by prepossession towards his interests. With a mind thus turned, young Inkle had a person every way agreeable, a ruddy vigour in his countenance, strength in his limbs, with ringlets of fair hair loosely flowing on his shoulders. It happened, in the course of the voyage, that the Achilles, in some distress, put into a creek on the main of America, in search of provisions. The youth, who is the hero of my story, among others went ashore on this occasion. From their first landing they were observed by a party of Indians, who hid themselves in the woods for that purpose. The English unadvisedly marched a great distance from the shore into the country, and were intercepted by the natives, who slew the greatest number of them. Our adventurer escaped among others, by flying into a forest. Upon his coming into a remote and pathless part of the wood, he threw himself, tired and breathless, on a little hillock, when an Indian maid rushed from a thicket behind him. After the first surprize, they appeared mutually agreeable to each other. If the European was highly charmed with the limbs, features, and wild graces of the naked American, the American was no less taken with the dress, complexion, and shape of an European, covered from head to foot. The Indian grew immediately enamoured of him, and consequently solicitous for his preservation. She therefore conveyed him to a cave, where she gave him a delicious repast of fruits, and led him to a stream to slake his thirst. In the midst of these good offices, she would sometimes play with his hair, and delight in the opposition of its colour to that of her fingers; then open his bosom, then laugh at him for covering it. She was, it seems, a person of distinction, for she every day came to him in a different dress, of the most beautiful shells, bugles, and bredes [braids]. She likewise brought him a great many spoils, which her other lovers had presented to her, so that his cave was richly adorned with all the spotted skins of beasts, and most party coloured feathers of fowls, which that world afforded. To make his confinement more tolerable, she would carry him in the dusk of the evening, or by the favour of the moon-light, to unfrequented groves and solitudes, and shew him where to lie down in safety, and sleep amidst the falls of waters and melody of nightingales. Her part was to watch and hold him awake in her arms, for fear of her countrymen, and awake him on occasions to consult his safety. In this manner did the lovers pass away their time, till they had learned a language of their own, in which the voyager communicated to his mistress how happy he should be to have her in his own country, where she should be clothed in such silks as his waistcoat was made of, and be carried in houses drawn by horses, without being exposed to wind and weather. All this he promised her the enjoyment of, without such fears and alarms as they were tormented with. In this tender correspondence these lovers lived for several months, when Yarico, instructed by her lover, discovered a vessel on the coast, to which she made signals; and in the night, with the utmost joy and satisfaction, accompanied him to a ship's crew of his countrymen, bound for Barbadoes. When a vessel from the main arrives in that island, it seems the planters come down to the shore, where there is an immediate market of the Indians and other slaves, as with us of horses and oxen. To be short, Mr Thomas Inkle, now coming into English territories, began seriously to reflect upon his loss of time, and to weigh with himself how many days interest of his money he had lost during his stay with Yarico. This thought made the young man very pensive, and careful what account he should be able to give his friends of his voyage. Upon which consideration, the prudent and frugal young man sold Yarico to a Barbadian merchant; notwithstanding the poor girl, to commiserate her condition, told him that she was with child by him; but he only made use of that information to rise in his demands upon the purchaser. (From the Spectator, No. 11.) Richard Ligon, a London Royalist merchant ruined by the Civil War, undertook at sixty to begin life anew in the West Indies, sailed to Barbadoes in 1647, and, driven home by ill-health in three years, was by his creditors clapped in prison, where he wrote his History of the Barbadoes (1657; new ed. 1673). There Steele (who had financial interests in the West Indies, through his wife) found the bones of poor Yarico's story; but the novelette is mainly Steele's own creation. Inkle (named from an old word for a kind of tape) is entirely his invention, and is unkindly made to sail by the ship Ligon was passenger on; it was Steele also, not Ligon, who discovered nightingales in Barbadoes! From the Spectator the story found its way into such compilations as Knox's Elegant Extracts and Masson's Collection, where Burns knew it ere he had the chance of seeing at Dumfries in 1794 the 'opera' or musical comedy of Inkle and Yarico, by George Colman the younger. In the Spectator form the tale attracted notice on the Continent also; was retold in German by Gellert, by Bodmer, and by Gessner; and had its share in securing a victory for the Swiss or Natural school over the Leipzig school of French sympathies and formal standards. The Quaker in the Stage-coach. Having notified to my good friend Sir Roger that I should set out for London the next day, his horses were ready at the appointed hour in the evening; and attended by one of his grooms, I arrived at the county town at twilight, in order to be ready for the stage-coach the day following. As soon as we arrived at the inn, the servant, who waited upon me, inquired of the chamberlain in my hearing what company he had for the coach? The fellow answered, Mrs Betty Arable the great fortune, and the widow her mother; a recruiting officer, who took a place because they were to go; young Squire Quickset her cousin, that her mother wished her to be married to; Ephraim the quaker, her guardian; and a gentleman that had studied himself dumb from Sir Roger de Coverley's. I observed by what he said of myself, that according to his office he dealt much in intelligence; and doubted not but there was some foundation for his reports of the rest of the company, as well as for the whimsical account he gave of me. The next morning at day-break we were all called; and I, who know my own natural shyness, and endeavour to be as little liable to be disputed with as possible, dressed immediately, that I might make no one wait. The first preparation for our setting out was, that the captain's half-pike was placed near the coachman, and a drum behind the coach. In the mean time the drummer, the captain's equipage, was very loud that none of the captain's things should be placed so as to be spoiled; upon which his cloke-bag was fixed in the seat of the coach: and the captain himself, according to a frequent though invidious behaviour of military men, ordered his man to look sharp, that none but one of the ladies should have the place he had taken fronting the coach-box. We were in some little time fixed in our seats, and sat with that dislike which people not too good-natured usually conceive of each other at first sight. The coach jumbled us insensibly into some sort of familiarity and we had not moved above two miles, when the widow asked the captain what success he had in his recruiting? The officer, with a frankness he believed very graceful, told her, 'that indeed he had but very little luck, and had suffered much by desertion, therefore should be glad to end his warfare in the service of her or her fair daughter. In a word, continued he, I am a soldier, and to be plain is my character: you see me, madam, young, sound, and impudent; take me yourself, widow, or give me to her; I will be wholly at your disposal. I am a soldier of fortune, ha!' This was followed by a vain laugh of his own, and a deep silence of all the rest of the company. I had nothing left for it but to fall fast asleep, which I did with all speed. 'Come, said he, resolve upon it, we will make a wedding at the next town: we will awake this pleasant companion who is fallen asleep, to be the bride-man,' and, giving the quaker a clap on the knee, he concluded, 'This sly saint, who, I will warrant, understands what is what as well as you or I, widow, shall give the bride as father.' The quaker, who happened to be a man of smartness, answered, "Friend, I take it in good part that thou hast given me the authority of a father over this comely and virtuous child; and I must assure thee, that if I have the giving her, I shall not bestow her on thee. Thy mirth, friend, savoureth of folly thou art a person of a light mind; thy drum is a type of thee, it soundeth because it is empty. Verily, it is not from thy fulness, but thy emptiness that thou hast spoken this day. Friend, friend, we have hired this coach in partnership with thee, to carry us to the great city; we cannot go any other way. This worthy mother must hear thee if thou wilt needs utter thy follies; we cannot help it, friend, I say: if thou wilt, we must hear thee; but if thou wert a man of understanding, thou wouldst not take advantage of thy courageous countenance to abash us children of peace. Thou art, thou sayest, a soldier ; give quarter to us, who cannot resist thee. Why didst thou fleer at our friend, who feigned himself asleep? he said nothing; but how dost thou know what he containeth? If thou speakest improper things in the hearing of this virtuous young virgin, consider it as an outrage against a distressed person that cannot get from thee: to speak indiscreetly what we are obliged to hear, by being hasped up with thee in this public vehicle, is in some degree assaulting on the high road.' : Here Ephraim paused, and the captain with an happy and uncommon impudence, which can be convicted and support itself at the same time, cries, Faith, friend, I thank thee; I should have been a little impertinent if thou hadst not reprimanded me. Come, thou art, I see, a smoky [knowing] old fellow, and I will be very orderly the ensuing part of my journey. I was going to give myself airs, but, ladies, I beg pardon.' The captain was so little out of humour, and our company was so far from being soured by this little ruffle, that Ephraim and he took a particular delight in being agreeable to each other for the future, and assumed their different provinces in the conduct of the company. Our reckonings, apartments, and accommodation fell under Ephraim; and the captain looked to all disputes on the road, as the good behaviour of our coachman, and the right we had of taking place as going to London of all vehicles coming from thence. The occurrences we met with were ordinary, and very little happened which could entertain by the relation of them; but when I considered the company we were in, I took it for no small good-fortune that the whole journey was not spent in impertinences, which to the one part of us might be an entertainment, to the other a suffering. What therefore Ephraim said when we were almost arrived at London, had to me an air not only of good understanding but good breeding. Upon the young lady's expressing her satisfaction in the journey, and declaring how delightful it had been to her, Ephraim delivered himself as follows: There is no ordinary part of human life which expresseth so much a good mind, and a right inward man, as his behaviour upon meeting with strangers, especially such as may seem the most unsuitable companions to him: such a man, when he falleth in the way with persons of simplicity and innocence, however knowing he may be in the ways of men, will not vaunt himself thereof; but will the rather hide his superiority to them, that he may not be painful unto them. My good friend, continued he, turning to the officer, thee and I are to part by and by, and peradventure we may never meet again but be advised by a plain man; modes and apparel are but trifles to the real man, therefore do not think such a man as thyself terrible for thy garb, nor such a one as me contemptible for mine. When two such as thee and I meet with affections as we ought to have towards each other, thou shouldst rejoice to see my peaceful demeanour, and I should be glad to see thy strength and ability to protect me in it.' (From The Spectator, No. 132.) There are biographies of Steele by Austin Dobson (1886) and G. A. Aitken (1889), the latter of whom has also published an edition of his plays (1893) An annotated selection from his periodical essays was issued in 1885 by the Clarendon Press. There are recent annotated editions of the Tatler, in 8 vols., by G. A. Aitken (1895), and of the Spectator, in 1 vol., by Henry Morley (1868); G. Gregory Smith, in 8 vols (1897-98); and G. A. Aitken, in 8 vols. (1898). ROBERT AITKEN. Ambrose Philips (c. 1675-1749) was one of the poets of the day whom Addison's friendship and Pope's enmity raised to temporary importance. Born in Shropshire of Leicestershire ancestry, and educated at St John's College, Cambridge, he made his appearance as a poet in the same year and in the same volume as Pope-the Pastorals of Philips being the first poem, and the Pastorals of Pope the last, in Tonson's Miscellany for 1709. Tickell praised Philips's Pastorals as the finest in the language, and Pope resented this absurd depreciation of his own poetry by an ironical paper in the Guardian. Pretending to criticise the rival Pastorals and compare them, Pope gives the preference to Philips, but quotes all his worst passages as his best, and places by the side of them his own finest lines, which he says want rusticity and deviate into downright poetry. Philips felt the satire keenly, and even vowed to take personal vengeance on his adversary by whipping him with a rod which he hung up for the purpose in Button's Coffee-House. Pope, faithful to the maxim that a man never forgives another whom he has injured, continued to pursue Philips with hatred and satire to the close of his life. The pastoral poet had the good sense not to enter the lists with his formidable assailant, and his character and talents soon procured him public employment. In 1715 he was appointed a commissioner for the Lottery; he was afterwards secretary to the Primate of Ireland, and sat for County Armagh in the Irish Parliament. In 1734 he was made registrar of the Prerogative Court. From these appointments, Philips was able to purchase an annuity of £400 per annum, with which he hoped, as Johnson says, 'to pass some years of life [in England] in plenty and tranquillity; but his hope deceived him he was struck with a palsy, and died June 18, 1749.' The Pastorals of Philips are but poor things on the whole; but Goldsmith eulogised the opening of his Epistle to the Earl of Dorset as 'incomparably fine'-a judgment Mr Gosse contradicts, while Mr Leslie Stephen thinks the genuine description of nature quite remarkable for the time. His rendering of a fragment of Sappho was voted so excellent that Addison was thought to have assisted in its composition : Fragment from Sappho. Blessed as the immortal gods is he, 'Twas this deprived my soul of rest, My bosom glowed; the subtle flame In dewy damps my limbs were chilled, I fainted, sunk, and died away. Philips, who translated also from Pindar and Anacreon, produced three tragedies, but only one -The Distressed Mother, from the Andromaque of Racine-was successful, and was praised by Addison in the Spectator; he wrote in the Whig journal The Freethinker (1718-19), which was his own venture, and he translated some Persian tales. A series of short complimentary pieces, by which Philips paid court, as Johnson says, 'to all ages and characters, from Walpole, the steerer of the realm, to Miss Pulteney in the nursery,' procured him the nickname of Namby Pamby from Harry Carey (see page 330 below), a nickname cordially adopted by Pope as suited to Philips's eminence in the infantile style.' Of Philips's own achievement in the namby-pamby rhythm, the 'Dimply damsel, sweetly smiling,' addressed to Miss Margaret Pulteney, is one good example, and this is another : To Miss Charlotte Pulteney, in her Mother's Arms. To the mother linnet's note And thou shalt in thy daughter see Epistle to the Earl of Dorset. The starving wolves along the main sea prowl, And yet but lately have I seen, even here, The frighted birds the rattling branches shun, The brittle forest into atoms flies; The crackling wood beneath the tempest bends, And journeys sad beneath the dropping trees: Like some deluded peasant Merlin leads Through fragrant bowers and through delicious meads; His wandering feet the magick paths pursue, And woods, and wilds, and thorny ways appear: A tedious road the weary wretch returns, From the First Pastoral-'Lobbin.' If we, O Dorset, quit the city throng Begin. In unluxurious times of yore, |