This humour, I find, went very far in Erasmus's time. For that author tells us, that upon the revival of Greek letters, most of the universities in Europe were divided into Greeks and Trojans. The latter were those who bore a mortal enmity to the language of the Grecians, insomuch that if they met with any who understood it, they did not fail to treat him as a foe. Erasmus himself had, it seems, the misfortune to fall into the hands of a party of Trojans, who laid him on with so many blows and buffets that he 10 never forgot their hostilities to his dying day.

There is a way of managing an argument not much unlike the former, which is made use of by states and communities, when they draw up a hundred thousand disputants on each side, and convince one another by dint of sword. A certain grand monarch was so sensible of his strength in this way of reasoning, that he wrote upon his great guns-Ratio ultima Regum, The Logic of Kings; but, God be thanked, he is now pretty well baffled at his own weapons. When one has to do with a philosopher of this kind, one should remember the old 20 gentleman's saying, who had been engaged in an argument with one of the Roman Emperors. Upon his friends telling him, that he wondered he would give up the question, when he had visibly the better of the dispute; "I am never ashamed," says he, "to be confuted by one who is master of fifty legions."

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I shall but just mention another kind of reasoning, which may be called arguing by poll; and another which is of equal force, in which wagers are made use of as arguments, according to the celebrated line in Hudibras.

But the most notable way of managing a controversy, is that which we may call Arguing by Torture. This is a method of reasoning which has been made use of with the poor refugees, and which was so fashionable in our country during the reign of Queen Mary, that in a passage of an author quoted by Monsieur Bayle, it is said that the price of wood was raised in England, by reason of the executions that were

made in Smithfield. These disputants convince their adversaries with a Sorites, commonly called a pile of faggots. The rack is also a kind of syllogism which has been used with good effect, and has made multitudes of converts. Men were formerly disputed out of their doubts, reconciled to truth by force of reason, and won over to opinions by the candour, sense, and ingenuity of those who had the right on their side; but this method of conviction operated too slowly. Pain was found to be much more enlightening than reason. Every scruple was looked upon as obstinacy, and not to be 10 removed but by several engines invented for that purpose. In a word, the application of whips, racks, gibbets, gallies, dungeons, fire and faggot, in a dispute, may be looked upon as popish refinements upon the old heathen logic.

There is another way of reasoning which seldom fails, though it be of a quite different nature to that I have last mentioned. I mean, convincing a man by ready money, or, as it is ordinarily called, bribing a man to an opinion. This method has often proved successful, when all the others have been made use of to no purpose. A man who is furnished 20 with arguments from the mint will convince his antagonist much sooner than one who draws them from reason and philosophy. Gold is a wonderful clearer of the understanding; it dissipates every doubt and scruple in an instant; accommodates itself to the meanest capacities; silences the loud and clamorous, and brings over the most obstinate and inflexible. Philip of Macedon was a man of most invincible reason this way. He refuted by it all the wisdom of Athens, confounded their statesmen, struck their orators dumb, and at length argued them out of all their liberties.

Having here touched upon the several methods of disputing, as they have prevailed in different ages of the world, I shall very suddenly give my reader an account of the whole art of cavilling; which shall be a full and satisfactory answer to all such papers and pamphlets as have yet appeared against the Spectator.

C.

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XXIV. LONDON CRIES.

No. 251.]

Tuesday, December 18, 1711.

[Addison.

Linguæ centum sunt, oraque centum,

Ferrea vox.-Virg. Æn. vi. 625.

A hundred mouths, a hundred tongues,

And throats of brass inspired with iron lungs.-Dryden.

THERE is nothing which more astonishes a foreigner and frights a country squire, than the Cries of London. My good friend Sir Roger often declares, that he cannot get them out of his head, or go to sleep for them, the first week that he is in town. On the contrary, Will. Honeycomb calls them 10 the Ramage de la Ville, and prefers them to the sounds of

larks and nightingales, with all the music of the fields and woods. I have lately received a letter from some very odd fellow upon this subject, which I shall leave with my reader, without saying anything further of it.

"SIR,

"I am a man out of all business, and would willingly turn my head to anything for an honest livelihood. I have invented several projects for raising many millions of money without burthening the subject, but I cannot get the parlia20 ment to listen to me, who look upon me, forsooth, as a crack and a projector; so that, despairing to enrich either myself or my country by this public-spiritedness, I would make some proposals to you relating to a design which I have very much at heart, and which may procure me an handsome subsistence, if you will be pleased to recommend it to the cities of London and Westminster.

"The post I would aim at is to be Comptroller-general of the London Cries, which are at present under no manner of rules or discipline. I think I am pretty well qualified for 30 this place, as being a man of very strong lungs, of great in

sight into all the branches of our British trades and manufactures, and of a competent skill in music.

"The Cries of London may be divided into vocal and instrumental. As for the latter, they are at present under a very great disorder. A freeman of London has the privilege of disturbing a whole street, for an hour together, with the twanking of a brass-kettle or a frying-pan. The watchman's thump at midnight startles us in our beds as much as the breaking in of a thief. The sow-gelder's horn has indeed something musical in it, but this is seldom heard within the 10 liberties. I would therefore propose, that no instrument of this nature should be made use of, which I have not tuned and licensed, after having carefully examined in what manner it may affect the ears of her Majesty's liege subjects.

"Vocal cries are of a much larger extent, and, indeed, so full of incongruities and barbarisms, that we appear a distracted city to foreigners, who do not comprehend the meaning of such enormous outcries. Milk is generally sold in a note above cla, and it sounds so exceedingly shrill, that it often sets our teeth on edge. The chimney-sweeper is 20 confined to no certain pitch; he sometimes utters himself in the deepest bass, and sometimes in the sharpest treble; sometimes in the highest, and sometimes in the lowest note of the gamut. The same observation might be made on the retailers of small coal, not to mention broken glasses or brick-dust. In these, therefore, and the like cases, it should be my care to sweeten and mellow the voices of these itinerant tradesmen, before they make their appearance in our streets, as also to accommodate their cries to their respective wares ; and to take care in particular that those may not make the 30 most noise who have the least to sell, which is very observable in the vendors of card-matches, to whom I cannot but apply that old proverb of 'Much cry, but little wool.'

"Some of these last-mentioned musicians are so very loud in the sale of these trifling manufactures, that an honest splenetic gentleman of my acquaintance bargained with one

of them never to come into the street where he lived: but what was the effect of this contract? why, the whole tribe of card-match-makers which frequent the quarter, passed by his door the very next day, in hopes of being bought off after the

same manner.

"It is another great imperfection in our London cries, that there is no just time nor measure observed in them. Our news should, indeed, be published in a very quick time, because it is a commodity that will not keep cold. It should 10 not, however, be cried with the same precipitation as 'fire': yet this is generally the case. A bloody battle alarms the town from one end to another in an instant. Every motion of the French is published in so great a hurry, that one would think the enemy were at our gates. This likewise I would take upon me to regulate in such a manner, that there should be some distinction made between the spreading of a victory, a march, or an encampment, a Dutch, a Portugal, or a Spanish mail. Nor must I omit under this head, those excessive alarms with which several boisterous rustics infest 20 our streets in turnip season; and which are more inexcusable, because these are wares which are in no danger of cooling upon their hands.

"There are others who affect a very slow time, and are, in my opinion, much more tuneable than the former; the cooper, in particular, swells his last note in an hollow voice, that is not without its harmony: nor can I forbear being inspired with a most agreeable melancholy, when I hear that sad and solemn air with which the public is very often asked, if they have any chairs to mend? Your own memory may sug30 gest to you many other lamentable ditties of the same nature, in which the music is wonderfully languishing and melodious.

"I am always pleased with that particular time of the year which is proper for the pickling of dill and cucumbers; but, alas, this cry, like the song of the nightingale, is not heard above two months. It would, therefore, be worth while to