pal officers, that if he died during the engagement, inseparable; and that courage, without regard to they should concezl his death from the army, and justice and humanity, was no other than the fierce

ness of a wild beast. "A good and truly bold spirit," continued he, " is ever actuated by reason, and a sense of honor and duty. The affectation of such a spirit exerts itself in an impudent aspect, an overbearing confidence, and a certain negligence of giving offense. This is visible in all the

that they should ride up to the litter in which his corpse was carried, under the pretense of receiving orders from him as usual. Before the battle began, he was carried through all the ranks of his army in an open litter, as they stood drawn up in array, encouraging them to fight valiantly in defense of their religion and country. Finding after- cocking youths you see about this town, who are ward the battle to go against him, though he was noisy in assemblies, unawed by the presence of

very near his last agonies, he threw himself out of his litter, rallied his army, and led them on to the charge; which afterward ended in a complete victory on the side of the Moors. He had no sooner brought his men to the engagement, but finding himself utterly spent, he was again replaced in his litter, where, laying his finger on his mouth, to enjoin secrecy to his officers who stood about him, he died a few moments after in that posture.-L.

wise and virtuous men; in a word, insensible of all the honors and decencies of human life. A shameless fellow takes advantage of merit clothed with modesty and magnanimity, and, in the eyes of little people, appears sprightly and agreeable: while the man of resolution and true gallantry is overlooked and disregarded, if not despised. There is a propriety in all things; and I believe what you scholars call just and sublime, in opposition to turgid and bombast expression, may give you an idea of what I mean, when I say modesty is the certain indication of a great spirit, and impudence the affectation of it. He that writes with judgment, and never rises into improper warmths, manifests the true force of genius; in like manner, he who is quiet and equal in all his behavior is supported in that deportment by what we may call true courage. Alas! it is not so easy a thing to be a brave man as the unthinking part of mankind imagine. To dare is not all that there is in it. The privateer we were just now talking of had boldness enough to attack his enemy, but not greatness of mind enough to admire the same quality exerted by that enemy in defending him self. Thus his base and little mind was wholly taken up in the sordid regard to the prize of which he failed, and the damage done to his own vessel; and therefore he used an honest man, who defended his own from him, in the manner as he would a thief that should rob him.

CAPTAIN SENTRY was last night at the club, and produced a letter from Ipswich, which his correspondent désired him to communicate to his friend the Spectator. It contained an account of an en gagement between a French privateer, commanded by one Dominick Pottiere, and a little vessel of that place laden with corn, the master whereof, as I remember was one Goodwin. The Englishman defended himself with incredible bravery, and beat off the French, after having been boarded three or four times. The enemy still came on with greater fury, and hoped by his number of men to carry the prize; till at last the Englishman, finding himself sink apace, and ready to perish, struck; but the effect which this singular gallantry had upon the captain of the privateer was no other than an unmanly desire of vengeance for the loss he had sustained in his several attacks. He told the Ips wich man in a speaking-trumpet, that he would not take him aboard, and that he stayed to see him sink. The Englishman at the same time observed a disorder in the vessel, which he rightly judged to proceed from the disdain which the ship's crew had of their captain's inhumanity. With this hope he went into his boat, and approached the enemy. He was taken in by the sailors in spite of their commander: but, though they received him against his command, they treated him, when he was in the ship, in the manner he directed. Pottiere caused his men to hold are many others which outshine it; among the

Goodwin, while he beat him with a stick, till he fainted with loss of blood and rage of heart; after which he ordered him into irons, without allow ing him any food, but such as one or two of the men stole to him under peril of the like usage: and having kept him several days overwhelmed

"He was equally disappointed, and had not spirit enough to consider, that one case would be laudable, and the other criminal. Malice, rancor, hatred, vengeance, are what tear the breasts of mean men in fight; but fame, glory, conquests, desires of opportunities to pardon and oblige their op posers, are what glow in the minds of the gallant." The captain ended his discourse with a specimen of his book-learning; and gave us to understand that he had read a French author on the subject of justness in point of gallantry. "I love," said Mr. Sentry, "a critic who mixes the rules of life with annotations upon writers. My author," added he, "in his discourse upon epic poetry, takes occasion to speak of the same quality of courage drawn in the two different characters of Turnus and Æneas. He makes courage the chief and greatest ornament of Turnus; but in Æneas

rest, that of piety. Turnus is, therefore, all along painted by the poet full of ostentation, his language haughty and vain-glorious, as placing his honor in the manifestation of his valor: Eneas speaks little, is slow to action, and shows only a sort of defensive courage. If equipage and adÆneas, conduct and success prove Æneas more valiant than Turnus."-T.

with the misery of stench, hunger, and soreness, dress make Turnus appear more courageous than

he brought him into Calais. The governor of the place was soon acquainted with all that had passed, dismissed Pottiere from his charge with ignominy, and gave Goodwin all the relief which a man of honor would bestow upon an enemy barbarously treated, to recover the imputation of cruelty upon his prince and country.

No. 351.] SATURDAY, APRIL 12, 1712.
In te omnis domus inclinata recumbit.

VIRG. EN., xii, 59.
On thee the fortunes of our house depend.

When Mr. Sentry had read his letter, full of many other circumstances which aggravate the barbarity, he fell into a sort of criticism upon magIr we look into the three great heroic poems nanimity and courage, and argued that they were which have appeared in the world, we may

observe that they are built upon very slight founda-whole Æneid, and has given offense to several tions. Homer lived near 300 years after the Tro- critics, may be accounted for the same way. jan war; and, as the writing of history was not Virgil himself, before he begins that relation, prethen in use among the Greeks, we may very well suppose that the tradition of Achilles and Ulysses had brought down but very few particulars to his knowledge; though there is no question but he has wrought into his two poems such of their remarkable adventures as were still talked of among his cotemporaries.

The story of Eneas, on which Virgil founded his poem, was likewise very bare of circumstances, and by that means afforded him an opportunity of embellishing it with fiction, and giving a full range to his own invention. We find, how ever, that he has interwoven, in the course of his fable, the principal particulars, which were generally believed among the Romans, of Æneas's vovage and settlement in Italy.

The reader may find an abridgement of the whole story, as collected out of the ancient historians, and as it was received among the Romans, in Dionysius Halicarnassus.

mises, that what he was going to tell appeared incredible, but that it was justified by tradition. What further confirms me that this change of the fleet was a celebrated circumstance in the history of Æneas, is, that Ovid has given a place to the same metamorphosis in his account of the heathen mythology.

None of the critics I have met with have considered the fable of the Æneid in this light, and taken notice how the tradition on which it was founded authorizes those parts in it which appear the most exceptionable. I hope the length of this reflection will not make it unacceptable to the curious part of my readers.

The history which was the basis of Milton's poem is still shorter than either that of the Iliad or Æneid. The poet has likewise taken care to insert every circumstance of it in the body of his fable. The ninth book, which we are here to consider, is raised upon that brief account in Scripture, wherein we are told that the serpent was more subtile than any beast of the field; that he tempted the woman to eat of the forbidden fruit; that she was overcome by this temptation, and that Adam follwed her example. From these few

Since none of the critics have considered Virgil's fable with relation to this history of Æneas, it may not, perhaps, be amiss to examine it in this light, so far as regards my present purpose. Whoever looks into the abridgement above-mentioned, will find that the character of Æneas is particulars, Milton has formed one of the most filled with piety to the gods, and a superstitious entertaining fables that invention ever produced.

Fobservation of prodigies, oracles, and predictions. Virgil has not only preserved his character in the person of Æneas, but has given a place in his poem to those particular prophesies which he found recorded of him in history and tradition. The poet took the matters of fact as they came down to him, and circumstanced them after his own manner, to make them appear the more natural, agreeable, or surprising. I believe very many readers have been shocked at that ludicrous prophesy which one of the harpies pronounces to the Trojans in the third book; namely, that before they had built their intended city they should be reduced by hunger to eat their very tables. But, when they hear that this was one of the circumstances that had been transmitted to the Romans in the history of Æneas, they will think the poet did very well in taking notice of it. The historian above-mentioned acquaints us, that a prophetess had foretold Æneas, he should take his voyage westward, till his companions should eat their tables; and that accordingly, upon his

He has disposed of these several circumstances among so many beautiful and natural fictions of his own, that his whole story looks like a comment upon sacred writ, or rather seems to be a full and complete relation of what the other is only in epitome. I have insisted the longer on this consideration, as I look upon the disposition and contrivance of the fable to be the principal beauty of the ninth book, which has more story in it, and is fuller of incidents, than any other in the whole poem. Satan's traversing the globe, and still keeping within the shadow of the night, as fearing to be discovered by the angel of the sun, who had before detected him, is one of those beautiful imaginations with which he introduces this his second series of adventures. Having examined the nature of every creature, and found out one which was the most proper for his purpose, he again returns to Paradise; and, to avoid discovery, sinks by night with a river that ran under the garden, and rises up again through a fountain that issued from it by the tree of life.

landing in Italy, as they were eating their flesh The poet, who, as we have before taken notice, upon cakes of bread for want of other conve- speaks as little as possible in his own person, niences, they afterward fed on the cakes them- and, after the example of Homer, fills every part selves; upon which one of the company said of his work with manners and characters, intromerrily, "We are eating our tables." They im- duces a soliloquy of this infernal agent, who was mediately took the hint, says the historian, and thus restless in the destruction of man. He is concluded the prophesy to be fulfilled. As Virgil then described as gliding through the garden, did not think it proper to omit so material a par- under the resemblance of a mist, in order to find tieular in the history of Æneas, it may be worth out that creature in which he designed to tempt while to consider with how much judgment he has our first parents. This description has something qualified it, and taken off everything that might in it very poetical and surprising :

have appeared improper for a passage in a heroic

poem. The prophetess who foretells it is a hungry harpy, as the person who discovers it is young

Ascanius.

So saying, through each thicket dank or dry,
Like a black mist low creeping, he held on
His midnight search, where soonest he might find
The serpent: him fast sleeping soon he found
In labyrinth of many a round self-roll'd,

His head the midst, well stor'd with subtile wiles.

The author afterward gives us a description of the morning, which is wonderfully suitable to a divine poem, and peculiar to that first season of nature. He represents the earth, before it was cursed, as a great altar breathing out its incense from all parts, and sending up a pleasant savor to the nostrils of its Creator; to which he adds a noble idea of Adam and Eve, as offering their

434

morning worship, and filling up the universal con-ance. cert of praise and adoration:

Now when a sacred light began to dawn

In Eden on the humid flowers, that breath'd
Their morning incense; when all things that breathe
From the earth's great altar send up silent praise
To the Creator, and his nostrils fill

With grateful smell; forth came the human pair,
And join'd their vocal worship to their choir

Of creatures wanting voice

These several particulars are all of them

wrought into the following similitude:

- Hope elevates, and joy
Brightens his crest; as when a wandering fire,
Compact of unctuous vapor, which the night
Condenses, and the cold environs round,
Kindled through agitation to a flame,
(Which oft, they say, some evil spirit attends)
Hovering and blazing with delusive light,
Misleads th' amazed night wanderer from his way
To bogs and mires, and oft through pond or pool,
There swallow'd up and lost, from succor far.

The dispute which follows between our two first parents is represented with great art. It proceeds The secret intoxication of pleasure, with all from a difference of judgment, not of passion, and those transient flushings of guilt and joy, which is managed with reason, not with heat. It is the poet represents in our first parents upon eatsuch a dispute as we may suppose might have ing the forbidden fruit, to those flaggings of spirit, happened in Paradise, had men continued happy damps of sorrow, and mutual accusations which and innocent. There is a great delicacy in the succeed it, are conceived with a wonderful ima moralities which are interspersed in Adam's discourse, and which the most ordinary reader cannot but take notice of. That force of love which

the father of mankind so finely describes in the
eighth book, and which is inserted in my last
Saturday's paper, shows itself here in many fine
instances; as in those fond regards he casts to
ward Eve at her parting from him;

Her long with ardent look his eye pursu'd
Delighted, but desiring more her stay.
Oft he to her his charge of quick return
Repeated; she to him as oft engaged
To be return'd by noon amid the bow'r.

In his impatience and amusement during her absence:

-Adam the while,

Waiting desirous her return, had wove
Of choicest flow'rs a garland to adorn
Her tresses, and her rural labors crown,
As reapers oft are wont their rural queen.
Great joy he promis'd to his thoughts, and new
Solace in her return, so long delay'd.

But particularly in that passionate speech, where, seeing her irrecoverably lost, he resolves to perish with her, rather than to live without her:

-Some cursed fraud

Of enemy hath beguil'd thee, yet unknown,
And me with thee hath ruin'd; for with thee
Certain my resolution is to die:

How can I live without thee? How forego
Thy sweet converse and love so dearly join'd,
To live again in these wild woods forlorn?
Should God create another Eve, and I
Another rib afford, yet loss of thee

Would never from my heart; no, no! I feel
The link of nature draw me; flesh of flesh,
Bone of my bone thou art, and from thy state
Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe!

The beginning of this speech, and the preparation to it, are animated with the same spirit as the conclusion, which I have here quoted.

The several wiles which are put in practice by the tempter, when he found Eve separated from her husband, the many pleasing images of nature which are intermixed in this part of the story, with its gradual and regular progress to the fatal catastrophe, are so very remarkable, that it would be superfluous to point out their respective beau

ties.

I have avoided mentioning any particular similitudes in my remarks on this great work, because I have given a general account of them in my paper on the first book. There is one, however, in this part of the poem, which I shall here quote, as it is not only very beautiful, but the closest of any in the whole poem; I mean that where the serpent is described as rolling forward in all his pride, animated by the evil spirit, and conducting Eve to her destruction, while Adam was at too her his assistgreat a distance from he

gination, and described in very natural senti

ments.

When Dido, in the fourth Æneid, yielded to that fatal temptation which ruined her, Virgil tells us the earth trembled, the heavens were filled with flashes of lightning, and the nymphs howled upon the mountain tops. Milton, in the same poetical spirit, has described all nature as disturbed upon Eve's eating the forbidden fruit:

So saying, her rash hand in evil hour,
Forth reaching to the fruit, she pluck'd, she ate:
Earth felt the wound, and Nature, from her seat
Sighing, through all her works gave signs of woe
That all was lost.-

Upon Adam's falling into the same guilt, the whole creation appears a second time in convul sions:

- He scrupled not to eat
Against his better knowledge; not deceiv'd,
But fondly overcome with female charm.
Earth trembled from her entrails, as again
In pangs, and nature gave a second groan;
Sky low'r'd, and muttering thunder, some sad dropea
Wept at completing of the mortal sin.

As all nature suffered by the guilt of our first parents, these symptoms of trouble and consterna tion are wonderfully imagined, not only as prodigies, but as marks of her sympathizing in the fall

of man.

Adam's converse with Eve, after having eaten of the forbidden fruit, is an exact copy of that be tween Jupiter and Juno in the fourteenth llind. Juno there approaches Jupiter with the girdle which she had received from Venus; upon which he tells her, that she appeared more charming and desirable than she had ever done before, even when their loves were at the highest. The poet afterward describes them as reposing on a summit of Mount Ida, which produced under them a bed of flowers, the lotus, the crocus, and the hyacinth; and concludes his description with their falling asleep.

Let the reader compare this with the following passage in Milton, which begins with Adam's speech to Eve:

For never did thy beauty since the day
I saw thee first and wedded thee, adorn'd
With all perfections, so infiame my sense
With ardor to enjoy thee, fairer now
Than ever, bounty of this virtuous tree.

So said he, and forbore not glance or toy
Of amorous intent, well understood
Of Eve, whose eye darted contagious fire.
Her hand he seized, and to a shady bank,
Thick overhead with verdant roof embower'd,
He led her nothing loth; flowers were the couch,
Pansies, and violets, and asphodel,
And hyacinth, Earth's freshest softest lap.
There they their fill of love and love's disport
Took largely, of their mutual guilt the seal,
The solace of their sin, till dewy sleep
Oppress'd them.-

t

L

As no poet seems to have ever studied Homer more, or to have more resembled him in the greatness of genius, than Milton, I think I should have given but a very imperfect account of his beauties, if I had not observed the most remarkable passages which look like parallels in these two great authors. I might, in the course of these criticisms, have taken notice of many particular lines and expressions which are translated from the Greek poet; but as I thought this would have appeared too minute and over curious, I have purposely omitted them. The greater incidents, however, are not only set off by being shown in the same light with several of the same nature in Homer, but by that means may be also guarded against the cavils of the tasteless or ignorant.-L.

No. 352.] MONDAY, APRIL 14, 1712.

-Si ad honestatem nati sumus, ea aut sola expetenda est, aut certe omni pondere gravior est habenda quam reliqua omnia. TULL.

If we be made for honesty, either it is solely to be sought, or certainly to be estimated much more highly than all other

things.

seem to be that which he is not, but because he thinks it good to have such a quality as he pretends to? for to counterfeit and dissemble is to put on the appearance of some real excellency. Now the best way in the world for a man to seem to be anything, is really to be what he would seem to be. Beside, that it is many times as troublesome to make good the pretense of a good quality, as to have it; and if a man have it not, it is ten to one but he is discovered to want it, and then all his pains and labor to seem to have it is lost. There is something unnatural in painting, which a skillful eye will easily discern from native beauty and complexion.

"It is hard to personate and act a part long; for where truth is not at the bottom, nature will always be endeavoring to return, and will peep out and betray herself one time or other. Therefore if any man think it convenient to seem good, let him be so indeed, and then his goodness will appear to everybody's satisfaction; so that upon all accounts sincerity is true wisdom. Particularly as to the affairs of this world, integrity has many advantages over all the fine and artificial ways of dissimulation and deceit; it is much the plainer and easier, much the safer and more secure way of dealing in the world: it has less trouble and difficulty, of entanglement and perplexity, of danger and hazard in it; it is the shortest and nearest way to our end, carrying us thither in a straight line, and will hold out and last longest. The arts of deceit and cunning do continually grow weaker and less effectual and serviceable to them that use them; whereas integrity gains strength by use, and the more and longer any man practiceth it, the greater service it does him, by confirming his reputation, and encouraging those with whom he of the last age, you find the artful men, and per- dence in him, which is an unspeakable advantage sons of intrigue, are advanced very far in years, in the business and affairs of life. and beyond the pleasures and sallies of youth; "Truth is always consistent with itself, and but now Will observes, that the young have taken needs nothing to help it out; it is always near at in the vices of the aged, and you shall have a man hand, and sits upon our lips, and is ready to drop of five-and-twenty, crafty, false and intriguing, out before we are aware; whereas a lie is trouble

WILL HONEYCOMB was complaining to me yesterday that the conversation of the town is so altered of late years, that a fine gentleman is at a loss for matter to start a discourse, as well as unable to fall in with the talk he generally meets with. Will takes notice, that there is now an evil under the sun which he supposes to be entirely new, **because not mentioned by any satirist, or mor alist, in any age. "Men," said he, "grow knaves ssooner than they ever did since the creation of the world before." If you read the tragedies hath to do to repose the greatest trust and confi

not ashamed to overreach, cozen, and beguile My friend adds, that till about the latter end of King Charles's reign there was not a rascal of any eminence under forty. In the places of resort for conversation, you now hear nothing but what relates to the improving men's fortunes, without regard to the methods toward it. This is so fashionable, that young men form themselves upon a = certain neglect of everything that is candid, simple, and worthy of true esteem; and affect

some, and sets a man's invention upon the rack, and one trick needs a great many more to make it good. It is like a building upon a false foundation, which constantly stands in need of props to shore it up, and proves at last more chargeable than to have raised a substantial building at first upon a true and solid foundation; for sincerity is firm and substantial, and there is nothing hollow and unsound in it, and, because it is plain and open, fears no discovery; of which the crafty man

being yet worse than they are, by acknowledging, is always in danger; and when he thinks he walks in their general turn of mind and discourse, that in the dark, all his pretenses are so transparent, they have not any remaining value for true honor that he that runs may read them; he is the last and honesty; preferring the capacity of being man that finds himself to be found out; and while artful to gain their ends, to the merit of despising he takes it for granted that he makes fools of those ends when they come in competiton with others, he renders himself ridiculous. their honesty. All this is due to the very silly "Add to all this, that sincerity is the most com

pride that generally prevails, of being valued for pendious wisdom, and an excellent instrument for the ability of carrying their point; in a word, from the speedy dispatch of business; it creates confithe opinion that shallow and inexperienced people dence in those we have to deal with, saves the entertain of the short-lived force of cunning. But labor of many inquiries, and brings things to an I shall, before I enter upon the various faces which issue in few words. It is like traveling in a plain

folly, covered with artifice, puts on to impose upon the unthinking, produce a great authority for asserting, that nothing but truth and ingenuity has any lasting good effect, even upon a man's fortune and interest.

"Truth and reality have all the advantages of appearance, and many more. If the show of any thing be good for anything, I am sure sincerity is better; for why does any man dissemble, or

Ingenuity seems to be here used for ingenuousness.

beaten road, which commonly brings a man sooner to his journey's end than byways, in which men often lose themselves. In a word, whatsoever convenience may be thought to be in falsehood and dissimulation, it is soon over; but the inconvenience of it is perpetual, because it brings a man under an everlasting jealousy and suspicion, so that he is not believed when he speaks truth, nor trusted when perhaps he means honestly. When a man has once forfeited the reputation of his integrity, he is set fast; and nothing will

then serve his turn, neither truth nor falsehood.

"The posts which require men of shining and uncommon parts to discharge them are so very "And I have often thought, that God hath, in few, that many a great genius goes out of the his great wisdom, hid from men of false and dis-world without ever having had an opportunity to

honest minds the wonderful advantages of truth and integrity to the prosperity even of our worldly affairs: these men are so blinded by their covetousness and ambition, that they cannot look beyond a present advantage, nor forbear to seize upon it, though by ways never so indirect; they cannot see so far as to the remote consequences of a steady integrity, and the vast benefit and advantages which it will bring a man at last. Were but this sort of men wise and clear-sighted enough to discern this, they would be honest out of very knavery, not out of any love to honesty and virtue, but with a crafty design to promote and advance more effectually their own interests; and therefore the justice of the Divine Providence has hid this truest point of wisdom from their eyes, that bad men might not be on equal terms with the just and upright, and serve their own wicked designs by honest and lawful means.

"Indeed, if a man were only to deal in the world for a day, and should never have occasion to converse more with mankind, never more need their opinion or good word, it were then no great matter (speaking as to the concernments of this world) if a man spent his reputation all at once, and ventured it at one throw: but if he be to continue in the world, and would have the advantage of conversation while he is in it, let him make use of truth and sincerity in all his words and actions; for nothing but this will last and hold out to the end: all other arts will fail, but truth and integrity will carry a man through, and bear him out to the last."-T.

Though low the subject it deserves our pains.

THE gentleman who obliges the world in general, and me in particular, with his thoughts upon education, has just sent me the following letter:"SIR,

"I take the liberty to send you a fourth letter upon the education of youth. In my last I gave you my thoughts upon some particular tasks, which I conceived it might not be amiss to mix with their usual exercises, in order to give them an early seasoning of virtue: I shall in this propose some others, which I fancy might contribute to give them a right turn for the world, and enable them to make their way in it.

"The design of learning is, as I take it, either to render a man an agreeable companion to himself, and teach him to support solitude with pleasure; or, if he is not born to an estate, to supply that defect, and furnish him with the means of acquiring one. A person who applies himself to learning with the first of these views, may be said to study for ornament; as he who proposes to him self the second, properly studies for use. The one does it to raise himself a fortune; the other, to set off that which he is already possessed of. But as far the greater part of mankind are included in the latter class, I shall only propose some methods at present for the service of such who expect to advance themselves by their learning. In order to which I shall premise, that many more estates have been acquired by little accomplishments than by extraordinary ones; those qualities which make the greatest figure in the eye of the world, not being always the most useful in themselves, or the most advantage

exert itself; whereas persons of ordinary endow ments meet with occasions fitted to their parts and capacities every day in the common occurrences of life.

"I am acquainted with two persons who were formerly school-fellows, and have been good friends ever since. One of them was not only thought an impenetrable blockhead at school, but still maintained his reputation at the university; the other was vas the pride of his master, and the most celebrated person in the college of which be was a member. The man of genius is at present buried in a country parsonage of eightscore pounds a-year; while the other, with the bare abilities of a common scrivener, has got an estate of above a hundred thousand pounds.

"I fancy, from what I have said, it will almost appear a doubtful case to many a wealthy citizen whether or no he ought to wish his son should be a great genius: but this I am sure of, that nothing is more absurd than to give a lad the education of one, whom nature has not favored with any particular marks of distinction.

"The fault, therefore, of our grammar-schools is, that every boy is pushed on to works of genius; whereas it would be far more advanta geous for the greatest part of them to be tanght such little practical arts and sciences as do not re quire any great share of parts to be master of them, and yet may come often into play during the course of a man's life.

"Such are all the parts of practical geometry I have known a man contract a friendship with a minister of state upon cutting a dial in his win dow; and remember a clergyman who got one of the best benefices in the west of England, by se ting a country gentleman's affairs in some method, and giving him an exact survey of his estate.

"While I am upon this subject, I cannot for bear mentioning a particular which is of use in every station of life, and which, methinks, every

master should teach his scholars; I mean the wri ting of English letters. To this end, instead of perplexing them with Latin epistles, themes, and verses, there might be a punctual correspondenc established between two boys, who might act in any imaginary parts of business, or be allowed sometimes to give a range to their own fancies, and communicate to each other whatever trifles they thought fit, provided neither of them ever failed at the appointed time to answer his corres pondent's letter.

"I believe I may venture to affirm, that the ge nerality of boys would find themselves more ad vantaged by this custom, when they come to be men, than by all the Greek and Latin their masters can teach them in seven or eight years.

"The want of it is very visible in many learned persons, who, while they are admiring the styles of Demosthenes or Cicero, want phrases to express themselves on the most common occasions have seen a letter from one of these Latin orator which would have been deservedly laughed at b a common attorney.

"Under this head of writing, I cannot omr counts and short-hand, which are learned w little pains, and very properly come into the nu

* Swift and Mr. Stratford, a merchant, "Stratford is worm a plum, and is now lending the government 40.000, retw were educated together at the same school and university. Swift's Works, vel. xxii, p. 10, cr., 8vo. Stratford was a