very good effects, not only as it restrains him from doing any thing which is mean and contemptible, but as it pushes him to actions which are great and glorious. The principle may be defective or faulty; but the consequences it produces are so good, that, for the benefit of mankind, it ought not to be extinguished. It is observed by Cicero, that men of the greatest and the most shining parts are the most actuated by ambition; and if we look into the two fexes, I believe we shall find this principle of action stronger in women than in men. The paffion for praise, which is so very vehement in the fair fex, produces excellent effects in women of sense, who defire to be admired for that only which deferves admiration: and I think we may observe, without a compliment to them, that many of them do not only live in a more uniform course of virtue, but with an infinitely greater regard to their honour, than what we find in, the generality of our own sex. How many instances have we of chastity, fidelity, devotion? How many ladies diftinguish themselves by the education of their children, care of their families, and love of their hufsbands which are the great qualities and atchievements of woman-kind: as the making of war, the carrying on of traffic, the administration of justice, are those by which men grow famous, and get themselves a name? But as this paffion for admiration, when it works according to reason, improves the beautiful part of our fpecies in every thing that is laudable; so nothing is more destructive to them when it is governed by vanity and folly. What I have therefore here to fay, only regards the vain part of the fex, whom for certain reasons, which the reader hereafter will fee at large, I shall diftinguifh by the name of Idols. An Idol is wholly taken up in the adorning of her person. You see in every posture of her body, air of her face, and motion of her head, that it is her business and employment to gain adorers. For this reason your Idols appear in all public places and affcmblies, in order to seduce men to their worship. The play-house is very frequently filled with Idols; several of them are carried in procession every evening about the Ring, and several of them fet up their worship even in churches. They are to be accosted in the language proper to the Deity. Life and death are in their power: joys of heaven and pains of hell are at their difpofal : paradife is in their arms; and eternity in every moment that you are present with them. Raptures, transports, and écstasies, are the rewards which they confer: fighs and tears, prayers and broken hearts, are the offerings which are paid to them. Their smiles make men happy; their frowns drive them to despair. I shall only add under this head, that Ovid's book of the Art of Love is a kind of heathen ritual, which contains all the forms of worship which are made use of to an idol. It would be as difficult a task to reckon up these different kinds of Idols, as Milton's was to number those that were known in Canaan, and the lands adjoining. Most of them are worthipped, like Moloch, in fire and flames. Some of them, like Baal, love to fee their voraries cut and fslashed, and, shedding their blood for them like the Idol in the Apocrypha, muft have treats and collations prepared for them every night. It has indeed been known, that fome of them have been used by their incenfed worshipers like the Chinese Idols, who are whipped and scourged when they refuse to comply with the prayers that are offered to them. I must here observe, that those idolaters, who devote themselves to the Idols I am here speaking of, differ very much from all other kinds of idolaters. For as others fall out because they worship different Idols, these idolaters quarrel because they worship the fame. The intention therefore of the Idol is quite contrary to the wishes of the idolater: as the one defires to confine the idol to himself, the whole business and ambition of the other is to multiply adorers. This humour of an Idol is prettily defcribed in a tale of Chaucer: he reprefents one of them fitting at a table with three of her votaries about her, who are all of them courting her favour, and paying their adorations: she smiled upon one, drank to another, and trod upon the other's foot which was under the table. Now which of those three, says the old bard, 1 bard, do you think was the favourite? In troth, says he, not one of all the three, The behaviour of this old Idol in Chaucer, puts me in mind of the beautiful Clarinda, one of the greatest Idols among the moderns. She is worshipped once a week by candlelight, in the midst of a large congregation, generally called an affembly. Some of the gayest youths in the nation endeavour to plant themselves in her eye, while she fits in form with multitudes of tapers burning about her. To encourage the zeal of idolaters, she bestows a mark of her favour upon every one of them, before they go out of her prefence. She asks a question of one, tells a story to another, glances an ogle upon a third, takes a pinch of fnuff from the fourth, lets her fan drop by accident to give the fifth an occafion of taking it up. In short, every one goes away fatisfied with his success, and encouraged to renew his devotions on the fame canonical hour that day sevennight. An Idol may be undeified by many accidental causes. Marriage in particular is a kind of Counter-Apotheofis, or a deification inverted. When a man becomes familiar with his goddess, the quickly finks into a woman. Old age is likewife a great decayer of your idol. The truth of it is, there is not a more unhappy being than a fuperannuated Idol, especially when she has contracted such airs and behaviour as are only graceful when her worshippers are about her. Confidering therefore that in these and many other cafes the Woman generally outlives the Idol; I must return to the moral of this paper, and defire my fair readers to give a proper direction to their paffion for being admired; in order to which, they must endeavour to make themselves the objects of a reasonable and lasting admiration. This is not to be hoped for from beauty, or dress, or fashion, but from those inward ornaments which are not to be defaced by time or fickness, and which appear moft amiable to those who are most acquainted with them. No. LXXIV. No. LXXIV. FRIDAY, MAY 25. Pendent opera interrupta The works unfinish'd and neglected lie. VIRG. IN my last Monday's paper I gave fome general instances of those beautiful strokes which please the reader in the old fong of Chevy-Cafe: I shall here, according to my promife, be more particular, and shew that the fentiments in that ballad are extremely natural and poetical, and full of the majestic fimplicity which we admire in the greatest of the ancient poets: for which reason I shall quote feveral passages of it, in which the thought is altogether the fame with what we meet in several passages of the Æneid; not that I would infer from thence, that the poet, whoever he was, proposed to himself any imitation of those passages, but that he was directed to them in general by the fame kind of poetical genius, and by the fame copyings after nature. Had this old fong been filled with epigrammatical turns and points of wit, it might perhaps have pleased the wrong taste of some readers; but it would never have become the delight of the common people, nor have warmed the heart of Sir Philip Sydney like the found of a trumpet; it is only nature that can have this effect, and please those tastes which are the most unprejudiced or the most refined. I must however beg leave to diffent from so great an authority as that of Sir Philip Sydney, in the judgment which he has paffed as to the rude stile and evil apparel of this antiquated fong; for there are several parts in it where, not only the thought but the language is majestic, and the numbers fonorous; at least, the apparel is much more gorgeous than many of the poets made ufe of in Queen Elizabeth's time, as the reader will fee in feveral of the following quotations. What can be greater than either the thought or the expreffion in that stanza, To drive the deer with hound and horn • The child may rue that was unborn This way of confidering the misfortunes which this battle would bring upon pofterity, not only on those who were born immediately after the battle, and loft their fathers in it, but on those also who perished in future battles which took their rife from this quarrel of the two earls, is wonderfully beautiful, and conformable to the way of thinking among the ancient poets. Audiet pugnas, vitia parentum Pofterity, thinn'd by their fathers crimes, HOR. What can be more founding and poetical, or resemble more the majestic fimplicity of the ancients, than the following stanzas ? The ftout earl of Northumberland • His pleasure in the Scottish woods • With fifteen hundred bowmen bold, The hounds ran swiftly through the woods, The nimble deer to take, And with their cries the hills and dales An echo shrill did make." -Vocat ingenti clamore Cithæron GEORG. Cithæron loudly calls me to my way; The hounds, Taygetus, open, and purfue the prey: • High |