tulant incredulity, and suffer himself to be driven by a burst of laughter, from the fortresses of demonstration. The mechanist will be afraid to as sert before hardy contradiction, the possibility of tearing down bulwarks with a silkworm's thread; and the astronomer of relating the rapidity of light, the distance of the fixed stars, and the height of the lunar mountains.

If I could by any efforts have shaken off this cowardice, I had not sheltered myself under a borrowed name, nor applied to you for the means of communicating to the public the theory of a garret; a subject which, except some slight and transient strictures, has been hitherto neglected by those who were best qualified to adorn it, either for want of leisure to prosecute the various researches in which a nice discussion must engage them, or because it requires such diversity of knowledge, and such extent of curiosity, as is scarcely to be found in any single intellect; or perhaps others foresaw the tumult which would be raised against them, and confined their knowledge to their own breasts, and abandoned prejudice and folly to the direction of chance.

The institution has, indeed, continued to our own time; the garret is still the usual receptacle of the philosopher and poet; but this, like many ancient customs, is perpetuated only by an acci dental imitation, without knowledge of the original reason for which it was established;

Causa latet: res est notissima.

The cause is secret, but th' effect is known

ADDISON.

Conjectures have, indeed, been advanced concerning these habitations of literature, but without much satisfaction to the judicious inquirer. Some have imagined that the garret is generally chosen by the wits as most easily rented; and concluded that no man rejoices in his aërial abode, but on the days of payment. Others suspect that a garret is chiefly convenient, as it is remoter than any other part of the house from the outer door, which is often observed to be infested by visitants, who talk incessantly of beer, or linen, or a coat, and repeat the same sounds every morning, and sometimes again in the afternoon, without any variation, except that they grow daily more importunate and clamorous, and raise their voices in time from mournful murmurs to raging vociferations. This eternal monotony is always detestable to a man whose chief pleasure is to enlarge his knowledge and vary his ideas. Others talk of freedom from noise, and abstraction from common business or amusements; and some, yet more visionary, tell us, that the faculties are enlarged by open prospects, and that the fancy is more at liberty, when the eye ranges without confinement.

That the professors of literature generally reside in the highest stories, has been immemorially observed. The wisdom of the ancients was well acquainted with the intellectual advantages of an elevated situation: why else were the Muses stationed on Olympus, or Parnassus, by those who could with equal right have raised them bowers in the vale of Tempe, or erected their altars among the flexures of Meander? Why was Jove himself nursed upon a mountain? or why did the goddesses, when the prize of beauty was contested, try the cause upon the top of Ida? Such were the fictions by which the great mas- These conveniences may perhaps all be found ters of the earlier ages endeavoured to inculcate in a well-chosen garret; but surely they cannot to posterity the importance of a garret, which, be supposed sufficiently important to have opethough they had been long obscured by the negli-rated invariably upon different climates, distant gence and ignorance of succeeding times, were well enforced by the celebrated symbol of Pythagoras, ἀνεμῶν πνεόντων τὴν ηχὼ προσκύνει ; "when the wind blows, worship its echo." This could not but be understood by his disciples as an inviolable injunction to live in a garret, which I have found frequently visited by the echo and the wind. Nor was the tradition wholly obliterated in the age of Augustus, for Tibullus evidently congratulates himself upon his garret, not without some allusion to the Pythagorean precept:

Quam juvat immites ventos audire cubantem-
Aut, gelidas hybernus aquas cum fuderit auster,
Securum somnos, imbre juvante, sequi!
How sweet in sleep to pass the careless hours,
Lull'd by the beating winds and dashing showers!
And it is impossible not to discover the fond-
ness of Lucretius, as an early writer, for a garret,
in his description of the lofty towers of serene
learning, and of the pleasure with which a wise
man looks down upon the confused and erratic
state of the world moving below him.

Sed nil dulcius est, bene quam munita tenere
Edita doctrina sapientum templa serena;
Despicere unde queas alios, passimque videre
Errare, atque viam palanteis quærere vitæ.

"Tis sweet thy labouring steps to guide
To virtue's heights, with wisdom well supplied,
And all the magazines of learning fortified;
From thence to look below on human kind,
Bewilder'd in the maze of life, and blind.

DRYDEN.

ages, and separate nations. Of a universal practice, there must still be presumed a universal cause, which, however recondite and abstruse, may be perhaps reserved to make me illustrious by its discovery, and you by its promulgation.

It is universally known that the faculties of the mind are invigorated or weakened by the state of the body, and that the body is in a great measure regulated by the various compressions of the ambient element. The effects of the air in the production or cure of corporal maladies have been acknowledged from the time of Hippocrates; but no man has yet sufficiently considered how far it may influence the operations of the genius, though every day affords instances of local understanding, of wits and reasoners, whose faculties are adapted to some single spot, and who, when they are removed to any other place, sink at once into silence and stupidity. I have discovered, by a long series of observations, that invention and elocution suffer great impediments from dense and impure vapours, and that the tenuity of a defecated air at a proper distance from the surface of the earth, accelerates the fancy, and sets at liberty those intellectual powers which were before shackled by too strong attraction, and unable to expand themselves under the pres sure of a gross atmosphere. I have found dul ness to quicken into sentiment in a thin ether, as water, though not very hot, boils in a receiver partly exhausted; and heads, in appearance empty, have teemed with notions upon rising

ground stagnates in silence, or creeps in narrative, might at the height of half a mile, ferment into merriment, sparkle with repartee, and froth with declamation.

ground, as the flaccid sides of a football would have swelled out into stiffness and extension. For this reason I never think myself qualified to judge decisively of any man's faculties, whom I have only known in one degree of elevation; Addison observes, that we may find the heat but take some opportunity of attending him from of Virgil's climate in some lines of his Georgic: the cellar to the garret, and try upon him all the so when I read a composition, I immediately devarious degrees of rarefaction and condensation, termine the height of the author's habitation. As tension and laxity. If he is neither vivacious, an elaborate performance is commonly said to aloft, nor serious below, I then consider him as smell of the lamp, my commendation of a noble hopeless; but as it seldom happens, that I do thought, a sprightly sally, or a bold figure, is to not find the temper to which the texture of his pronounce it fresh from the garret; an expres-· brain is fitted, I accommodate him in time with a sion which would break from me upon the petube of mercury, first marking the point most fa-rusal of most of your papers, did I not believe vourable to his intellects, according to rules that you sometimes quit the garret, and ascend which I have long studied, and which I may, per- into the cock-loft. HYPERTATUS. haps, reveal to mankind in a complete treatise of barometrical pneumatology.

Omnes illacrymabiles
Urgentur, ignotique longa
Nocte.

In endless night they sleep, unwept, unknown.

HOR.

FRANCIS.

Another cause of the gayety and sprightliness No. 118.] SATURDAY, May 4, 1751. of the dwellers in garrets is probably the increase of that vertiginous motion, with which we are carried round by the diurnal revolution of the earth. The power of agitation upon the spirits is well known; every man has felt his heart lightened in a rapid vehicle, or on a galloping horse; and nothing is plainer than that he who towers to the fifth story is whirled through more space by every circumrotation, than another that grovels upon the ground-floor. The nations between the tropics are known to be fiery, inconstant, inventive, and fanciful; because, living at the utmost length of the earth's diameter, they are carried about with more swiftness than those whom nature has placed nearer to the poles; and, therefore, as it becomes a wise man to struggle with the inconveniences of his country, whenever celerity and acuteness are requisite, we must actuate our languor by taking a few turns round the centre in a garret.

CICERO has, with his usual elegance and magnificence of language, attempted, in his relation of the dream of Scipio, to depreciate those honours for which he himself appears to have panted with restless solicitude, by showing within what narrow limits all that fame and celebrity which man can hope for from men is circumscribed.

If you imagine that I ascribe to air and motion effects which they cannot produce, I desire you to consult your own memory, and consider whether you have never known a man acquire reputation in his garret, which, when fortune or a patron had placed him upon the first floor, he was unable to maintain; and who never recovered his former vigour of understanding, till he was restored to his original situation. That a garret will make every man a wit, I am very far from supposing; I know there are some who would continue blockheads even on the summit of the Andes, or on the peak of Teneriffe. But let not any man be considered as unimprovable till this potent remedy has been tried; for perhaps he was formed to be great only in a garret, as the joiner of Aretæus was rational in no other place but in his own shop.

I think a frequent removal to various distances from the centre, so necessary to a just estimate of intellectual abilities, and consequently of so great use in education, that if I hoped that the public could be persuaded to so expensive an experiment, I would propose, that there should be a cavern dug, and a tower erected, like those which Bacon describes in Solomon's house, for the expansion and concentration of understanding, according to the exigence of different employments, or constitutions. Perhaps some that fume away in meditations upon time and space in the tower, might compose tables of interest at a certain depth: and he that upon level Y

"You see," says Africanus, pointing at the earth, from the celestial regions, "that the globe assigned to the residence and habitation of human beings, is of small dimensions: how then can you obtain from the praise of men, any glory worthy of a wish? Of this little world the inhabited parts are neither numerous nor wide; even the spots where men are to be found are broken by intervening deserts, and the nations are so separated as that nothing can be transmitted from one to another. With the people of the south, by whom the opposite part of the earth is pos sessed, you have no intercourse; and by how small a tract do you communicate with the countries of the north? The territory which you inhabit is no more than a scanty Island, inclosed by a small body of water, to which you give the name of the great sea and the Atlantic ocean. And even in this known and frequented continent, what hope can you entertain, that your renown will pass the stream of Ganges, or the cliffs of Caucasus? or by whom will your name be uttered in the extremities of the north or south, towards the rising or the setting sun? So narrow is the space to which your fame can be propagated, and even there how long will it remain ?"

He then proceeds to assign natural causes, why fame is not only narrow in its extent, but short in its duration; he observes the difference between the computation of time in earth and heaven, and declares that, according to the celestial chronology, no human honours can last a single year.

Such are the objections by which Tully has made a show of discouraging the pursuit of fame; objections which sufficiently discover his tenderness and regard for his darling phantom. Homer, when the plan of his poem made the death of Patroclus necessary resolved, at least, that he

upon narrative or characters; and among those
to whom fortune has given the liberty of living
more by their own choice, many create to them-
selves engagements, by the indulgence of some
petty ambition, the admission of some insatiable
desire, or the toleration of some predominant
passion. The man whose whole wish is to ac-
cumulate money, has no other care than to col-
lect interest, to estimate securities, and to engage
for mortgages: the lover disdains to turn his ear
to any other name than that of Corinna; and
the courtier thinks the hour lost, which is not
spent in promoting his interest, and facilitating
his advancement. The adventurers of valour,
and the discoveries of science, will find a cold
reception, when they are obtruded upon an at-
tention thus busy with its favourite amusement,
and impatient of interruption or disturbance.
But not only such employments as seduce at-
tention by appearances of dignity, or promises of
happiness, may restrain the mind from excur
sion and inquiry: curiosity may be equally de-
stroyed by less formidable enemies; it may be
dissipated in trifles, or congealed by indolence.
The sportsmen and the men of dress have their
heads filled with a fox or a horse-race, a feather
or a ball; and live in ignorance of every thing
beside, with as much content as he that heaps up

should die with honour; and therefore brought down against him the patron god of Troy, and left to Hector only the mean task of giving the last blow to an enemy whom a Divine hand had disabled from resistance. Thus Tully ennobles fame, which he professes to degrade, by opposing it to celestial happiness; he confines not its extent but by the boundaries of nature, nor contracts its duration but by representing it small in the estimation of superior beings. He still admits it the highest and noblest of terrestrial objects, and alleges little more against it, than that it is neither without end, nor without limits. What might be the effect of these observations conveyed in Ciceronian eloquence to Roman understandings, cannot be determined; but few of those who shall in the present age read my humble version, will find themselves much depressed in their hopes, or retarded in their designs; for I am not inclined to believe, that they who among us pass their lives in the cultivation of knowledge, or acquisition of power, have very anxiously inquired what opinions prevail on the further banks of the Ganges, or invigorated any effort by the desire of spreading their renown among the clans of Caucasus. The hopes and fears of modern minds are content to range in a narrower compass; a single nation, and a few years, have generally sufficient amplitude to fill our imagina-gold, or solicits preferment, digs the field, or tions.

A little consideration will indeed teach us, that fame has other limits than mountains and oceans; and that he who places happiness in the frequent repetition of his name, may spend his life in propagating it, without any danger of weeping for new worlds, or necessity of passing the Atlantic

sea.

The numbers to whom any real and perceptible good or evil can be derived by the greatest power, or most active diligence, are inconsiderable; and where neither benefit nor mischief operate, the only motive to the mention or remembrance of others is curiosity; a passion, which, though in some degree universally associated to reason, is easily confined, overborne, or diverted from any particular object.

beats the anvil; and some yet lower in the ranks of intellect, dream out their days without pleasure or business, without joy or sorrow, nor ever rouse from their lethargy to hear or think.

Even of those who have dedicated themselves to knowledge, the far greater part have confined their curiosity to a few objects, and have very little inclination to promote any fame, but that which their own studies entitle them to partake. The naturalist has no desire to know the opinions or conjectures of the philologer: the botanist looks upon the astronomer as a being unworthy of his regard; the lawyer scarcely hears the name of a physician without contempt; and he that is growing great and happy by electrifying a bottle, wonders how the world can be engaged by trifling prattle about war or peace.

the valleys of life no voice but that of necessity; all those who imagine themselves too important to regard him, and consider the mention of his name as a usurpation of their time; all who are too much or too little pleased with themselves, to attend to any thing external; all who are attracted by pleasure, or chained down by pain, to unvaried ideas; all who are withheld from attending his triumph by different pursuits; and all who slumber in universal negligence; he will find his renown straitened by nearer bounds than the rocks of Caucasus, and perceive that no man can be venerable or formidable, but to a small part of his fellow-creatures.

Among the lower classes of mankind, there If, therefore, he that imagines the world filled will be found very little desire of any other know- with his actions and praises, shall subduct from ledge, than what may contribute immediately to the number of his encomiast, all those who are the relief of some pressing uneasiness, or the at-placed below the flight of fame, and who hear in tainment of some near advantage. The Turks are said to hear with wonder a proposal to walk out, only that they may walk back; and inquire why any man should labour for nothing? So those whose condition has always restrained them to the contemplation of their own necessities, and who have been accustomed to look forward only to a small distance, will scarcely understand, why nights and days should be spent in studies, which end in new studies, and which, according to Malherbe's observation, do not tend to lessen the price of bread; nor will the trader or manufacturer easily be persuaded, that much pleasure can arise from the mere knowledge of actions, performed in remote regions, or in distant times; or that any thing can deserve their inquiry, of which κλέος οἷον ἀκούομεν, οὐδέ τι ἴδμεν, we can only hear the report, but which cannot influence our lives by any consequences.

That we may not languish in our endeavours after excellence, it is necessary that, as Africanus counsels his descendant, “ we raise our eyes to higher prospects, and contemplate our future and eternal state, without giving up our hearts to the The truth is, that very few have leisure from praise of crowds, or fixing our hopes on such reindispensable business, to employ their thoughts | wards as human power can bestow."

No. 119.]

SIR,

TUESDAY, MAY 7, 1751.

As, notwithstanding all that wit, or malice, or pride, or prudence, will be able to suggest, men and women must at last pass their lives together, I have never therefore thought those writers friends to human happiness, who endeavour to excite in either sex a general contempt or suspicion of the other. To persuade them who are entering the world, and looking abroad for a suitable associate, that all are equally vicious, or equally ridiculous; that they who trust are certainly betrayed, and they who esteem are always disappointed; is not to awaken judgment, but to inflame temerity. Without hope there can be no caution. Those who are convinced, that no reason for preference can be found, will never harass their thoughts with doubt and deliberation; they will resolve, since they are doomed to misery, that no needless anxiety shall disturb their quiet; they will plunge at hazard into the crowd, and snatch the first hand that shall be held toward them.

That the world is over-run with vice cannot be denied; but vice, however predominant, has not yet gained an unlimited dominion. Simple and unmingled good is not in our power, but we may generally escape a greater evil by suffering a less; and therefore, those who undertake to initiate the young and ignorant in the knowledge of life, should be careful to inculcate the possibility of virtue and happiness, and to encourage endeavours by prospects of success.

hearts in which it is infixed. I was not condemned in my youth to solitude, either by indigence or deformity, nor passed the earlier part of life without the flattery of courtship, and the joys of triumph. I have danced the round of gayety amidst the murmurs of envy, and gratulations of applause; been attended from pleasure to pleasure by the great, the sprightly, and the vain; and seen my regard solicited by the obsequious ness of gallantry, the gayety of wit, and the timidity of love. If, therefore, I am yet a stranger to nuptial happiness, I suffer only the consequences of my own resolves, and can look back upon the succession of lovers, whose addresses I have rejected, without grief, and without malice.

When my name first began to be inscribed upon glasses, I was honoured with the amorous professions of the gay Venustulus, a gentleman, who, being the only son of a wealthy family, had been educated in all the wantonness of expense, and softness of effeminacy. He was beautiful in in his person, and easy in his address; and, therefore, soon gained upon my eye at an age when the sight is very little over-ruled by the understanding. He had not any power in himself of gladdening or amusing: but supplied his want of conversation by treats and diversions: and his chief art of courtship was to fill the mind of his mistress with parties, rambles, music, and shows. We were often engaged in short excursions to gardens and seats, and I was for a while pleased with the care which Venustulus discov ered in securing me from any appearance of danger, or possibility of mischance. He never failed to recommend caution to his coachman, or to promise the waterman a reward if he landed us safe; and always contrived to return by daylight for fear of robbers. This extraordinary solicitude was represented for a time as the effect of his tenderness for me; but fear is too strong for continued hypocrisy. I soon discovered, that Venustulus had the cowardice as well as ele

You, perhaps, do not suspect, that these are the sentiments of one who has been subject for many years to all the hardships of antiquated virginity; has been long accustomed to the cold-gance of a female. His imagination was perness of neglect, and the petulance of insult; has petually clouded with terrors, and he could been mortified in full assemblies by inquiries scarcely refrain from screams and outcries at after forgotten fashions, games long disused, and any accidental surprise. He durst not enter a wits and beauties of ancient renown; has been room if a rat was heard behind the wainscot, nor invited, with malicious importunity, to the second cross a field where the cattle were frisking in the wedding of many acquaintances; has been ridi- sunshine; the least breeze that waved upon the culed by two generations of coquettes in whis- river was a storm, and every clamour in the pers intended to be heard: and been long con- street was a cry of fire. I have seen him lose sidered by the airy and gay, as too venerable for his colour when my squirrel had broke his chain; familiarity, and too wise for pleasure. It is in- and was forced to throw water in his face on the deed natural for injury to provoke anger, and by sudden entrance of a black cat. Compassion continual repetition to produce an habitual as- once obliged me to drive away with my fan a perity; yet I have hitherto struggled with so beetle that kept him in distress, and chide off a much vigilance against my pride and my resent-dog that yelped at his heels, to which he would ment, that I have preserved my temper uncorrupted. I have not yet made it any part of my employment to collect sentences against marriage; nor am inclined to lessen the number of the few friends whom time has left me, by obstructing that happiness which I cannot partake, and venting my vexation in censures of the forwardness and indiscretion of girls, or the inconstancy, tastelessness, and perfidy of men.

It is, indeed, not very difficult to bear that condition to which we are not condemned by necessity, but induced by observation and choice; and therefore I, perhaps, have never yet felt all the malignity with which a reproach, edged with the appellation of old maid, swells some of those

gladly have given up me to facilitate his own escape. Women naturally expect defence and protection from a lover or a husband, and therefore you will not think me culpable in refusing a wretch, who would have burdened life with unnecessary fears, and flown to me for that succour which it was his duty to have given.

My next lover was Fungosa, the son of a stockjobber, whose visits my friends, by the importunity of persuasion, prevailed upon me to allow. Fungosa was no very suitable companion; for having been bred in a counting-house, he spoke a language unintelligible in any other place. He had no desire of any reputation but that of an acute prognosticator of the changes in the funds;

nor had any means of raising merriment, but by | likewise their follies and their vices. I do not telling how somebody was over-reached in a yet believe happiness unattainable in marriage, bargain by his father. He was, however, a though I have never yet been able to find a man, youth of great sobriety and prudence, and fre- with whom I could prudently venture an insepaquently informed us how carefully he would im-rable union. It is necessary to expose faults, prove my fortune. I was not in haste to conclude that their deformity may be seen; but the rethe match, but was so much awed by my pa-proach ought not to be extended beyond the rents, that I durst not dismiss him, and might crime, nor either sex to be condemned because perhaps have been doomed for ever to the gross- some women, or men, are indelicate or dishonest. ness of pedlary, and the jargon of usury, had not a fraud been discovered in the settlement, which set me free from the persecution of grovelling pride, and pecuniary impudence.

At length, having passed the night in tedious languor, he called to him Almamoulin, his only son, and, dismissing his attendants, "My son," says he, "behold here the weakness and fragility of man; look backward a few days, thy father was great and happy, fresh as the vernal rose, I have now sent you a narrative, which the and strong as the cedar of the mountain; the ladies may oppose to the tale of Hymenæus. I nations of Asia drank his dews, and art and commean not to depreciate the sex which has pro- merce delighted in his shade. Malevolence be duced poets and philosophers, heroes and mar- held me, and sighed : His root, she cried, is fixed tyrs; but will not suffer the rising generation of in the depths; it is watered by the fountains of beauties to be dejected by partial satire; or to Oxus; it sends out branches afar, and bids defi imagine that those who censured them have notance to the blast; prudence reclines against his