The Tatler Volume Iii Part 21

The gentlemen who fall under this denomination, are your men of the most fashionable education and refined breeding, who have learned a certain smoothness of discourse, and sprightliness of air, from the polite company they have kept; but at the same time they have shallow parts, weak judgments, and a short reach of understanding: a playhouse, a drawing-room, a ball, a visiting-day, or a Ring at Hyde Park, are the few notes they are masters of, which they touch upon in all conversations. The trumpet however is a necessary instrument about a Court, and a proper enlivener of a concert, though of no great harmony by itself.

Violins are the lively, forward, importunate wits that distinguish themselves by the flourishes of imagination, sharpness of repartee, glances of satire, and bear away the upper part in every concert. I cannot however but observe that, when a man is not disposed to hear music, there is not a more disagreeable sound in harmony than that of a violin.

There is another musical instrument, which is more frequent in this nation than any other; I mean your ba.s.s-viol, which grumbles in the bottom of the concert, and with a surly masculine sound strengthens the harmony, and tempers the sweetness of the several instruments that play along with it. The ba.s.s-viol is an instrument of a quite different nature to the trumpet, and may signify men of rough sense, and unpolished parts, who do not love to hear themselves talk, but sometimes break out with an agreeable bluntness, unexpected wit, and surly pleasantries, to the no small diversion of their friends and companions.

In short, I look upon every sensible true-born Briton to be naturally a ba.s.s-viol.

As for your rural wits, who talk with great eloquence and alacrity of foxes, hounds, horses, quickset hedges, and six-bar gates, double ditches, and broken necks, I am in doubt, whether I should give them a place in the conversable world. However, if they will content themselves with being raised to the dignity of hunting-horns, I shall desire for the future that they may be known by that name.

I must not here omit the bagpipe species, that will entertain you from morning to night with the repet.i.tion of the few notes, which are played over and over, with the perpetual humming of a drone running underneath them. These are your dull, heavy, tedious storytellers, the load and burden of conversations, that set up for men of importance, by knowing secret history, and giving an account of transactions, that whether they ever pa.s.sed in the world or not, does not signify a halfpenny to its instruction, or its welfare. Some have observed, that the northern parts of this island are more particularly fruitful in bagpipes.

There are so very few persons who are masters in every kind of conversation, and can talk on all subjects, that I don't know whether we should make a distinct species of them: nevertheless, that my scheme may not be defective, for the sake of those few who are endowed with such extraordinary talents, I shall allow them to be harpsichords, a kind of music which every one knows is a concert by itself.

As for your pa.s.sing-bells, who look upon mirth as criminal, and talk of nothing but what is melancholy in itself, and mortifying to human nature, I shall not mention them.

I shall likewise pa.s.s over in silence all the rabble of mankind that crowd our streets, coffee-houses, feasts, and public tables. I cannot call their discourse conversation, but rather something that is practised in imitation of it. For which reason, if I would describe them by any musical instrument, it should be by those modern inventions of the bladder and string, tongs and key, marrow-bone and cleaver.

My reader will doubtless observe, that I have only touched here upon male instruments, having reserved my female concert to another occasion.

If he has a mind to know where these several characters are to be met with, I could direct him to a whole club of drums; not to mention another of bagpipes, which I have before given some account of in my description of our nightly meetings in Sheer Lane. The lutes may often be met with in couples upon the banks of a crystal stream, or in the retreats of shady woods and flowery meadows; which for different reasons are likewise the great resort of your hunting-horns. Ba.s.s-viols are frequently to be found over a gla.s.s of stale beer and a pipe of tobacco; whereas those who set up for violins, seldom fail to make their appearance at Will's once every evening. You may meet with a trumpet anywhere on the other side of Charing Cross.

That we may draw something for our advantage in life out of the foregoing discourse, I must entreat my reader to make a narrow search into his life and conversation, and upon his leaving any company, to examine himself seriously, whether he has behaved himself in it like a drum or a trumpet, a violin or a ba.s.s-viol; and accordingly endeavour to mend his music for the future. For my own part, I must confess, I was a drum for many years; nay, and a very noisy one, till having polished myself a little in good company, I threw as much of the trumpet into my conversation as was possible for a man of an impetuous temper, by which mixture of different musics, I look upon myself, during the course of many years, to have resembled a tabor and pipe. I have since very much endeavoured at the sweetness of the lute; but in spite of all my resolutions, I must confess with great confusion, that I find myself daily degenerating into a bagpipe; whether it be the effect of my old age, or of the company I keep, I know not. All that I can do, is to keep a watch over my conversation, and to silence the drone as soon as I find it begin to hum in my discourse, being determined rather to hear the notes of others, than to play out of time, and encroach upon their parts in the concert by the noise of so tiresome an instrument.

I shall conclude this paper with a letter which I received last night from a friend of mine, who knows very well my notions upon this subject, and invites me to pa.s.s the evening at his house with a select company of friends, in the following words:

"DEAR ISAAC,

"I intend to have a concert at my house this evening, having by great chance got a harpsichord, which I am sure will entertain you very agreeably. There will be likewise two lutes and a trumpet: let me beg you to put yourself in tune, and believe me

"Your very faithful Servant, "NICHOLAS HUMDRUM."[184]

No. 154. [ADDISON.

From _Sat.u.r.day, April 1_, to _Tuesday, April 4, 1710_.

Obscuris vera involvens.--VIRG., aen. vi. 100.

_From my own Apartment, April 3._

We have already examined Homer's description of a future state, and the condition in which he has placed the souls of the deceased. I shall in this paper make some observations on the account which Virgil has given us of the same subject, who, besides a greatness of genius, had all the lights of philosophy and human learning to a.s.sist and guide him in his discoveries.

aeneas is represented as descending into the empire of death, with a prophetess by his side, who instructs him in the secrets of those lower regions.

Upon the confines of the dead, and before the very gates of this infernal world, Virgil describes[185] several inhabitants, whose natures are wonderfully suited to the situation of the place, as being either the occasions or resemblances of death. Of the first kind are the shadows[186] of Sickness, Old Age, Fear, Famine, and Poverty (apparitions very terrible to behold); with several others, as Toil, War, Contention, and Discord, which contribute all of them to people this common receptacle of human souls. As this was likewise a very proper residence for everything that resembles death, the poet tells us, that Sleep, whom he represents as a near relation to Death, has likewise his habitation in these quarters, and describes in them a huge gloomy elm-tree, which seems a very proper ornament for the place, and is possessed by an innumerable swarm of Dreams, that hang in cl.u.s.ters under every leaf of it. He then gives us a list of imaginary persons, who very naturally lie within the shadow of the dream-tree, as being of the same kind of make in themselves, and the materials or (to use Shakespeare's phrase) the stuff of which dreams are made. Such are the shades of the giant with a hundred hands, and of his brother with three bodies; of the double-shaped Centaur and Scylla; the Gorgon with snaky hair; the Harpy with a woman's face and lion's talons; the seven-headed Hydra; and the Chimaera, which breathes forth a flame, and is a compound of three animals. These several mixed natures, the creatures of imagination, are not only introduced with great art after the dreams; but as they are planted at the very entrance, and within the very gates of those regions, do probably denote the wild deliriums and extravagances of fancy, which the Soul usually falls into when she is just upon the verge of death.

Thus far aeneas travels in an allegory. The rest of the description is drawn with great exactness, according to the religion of the heathens, and the opinions of the platonic philosophy. I shall not trouble my reader with a common dull story, that gives an account why the heathens first of all supposed a ferryman in h.e.l.l, and his name to be Charon; but must not pa.s.s over in silence the point of doctrine which Virgil has very much insisted upon in this book, that the souls of those who are unburied, are not permitted to go over into their respective places of rest till they have wandered a hundred years upon the banks of Styx.

This was probably an invention of the heathen priesthood, to make the people extremely careful of performing proper rites and ceremonies to the memory of the dead. I shall not, however, with the infamous scribblers of the age, take an occasion from such a circ.u.mstance, to run into declamations against priestcraft, but rather look upon it even in this light as a religious artifice, to raise in the minds of men an esteem for the memory of their forefathers, and a desire to recommend themselves to that of posterity; as also to excite in them an ambition of imitating the virtues of the deceased, and to keep alive in their thoughts the sense of the soul's immortality. In a word, we may say in defence of the severe opinions relating to the shades of unburied persons, what has been said by some of our divines in regard to the rigid doctrines concerning the souls of such who die without being initiated into our religion, that supposing they should be erroneous, they can do no hurt to the dead, and will have a good effect upon the living, in making them cautious of neglecting such necessary solemnities.

Charon is no sooner appeased, and the triple-headed dog laid asleep, but aeneas makes his entrance into the dominions of Pluto. There are three kinds of persons described as being situated on the borders; and I can give no reason for their being stationed there in so particular a manner, but because none of them seem to have had a proper right to a place among the dead, as not having run out the whole thread of their days, and finished the term of life that had been allotted them upon earth. The first of these are the souls of infants, who are s.n.a.t.c.hed away by untimely ends: the second, are of those who are put to death wrongfully, and by an unjust sentence; and the third, of those who grew weary of their lives, and laid violent hands upon themselves. As for the second of these, Virgil adds with great beauty, that Minos, the judge of the dead, is employed in giving them a rehearing, and a.s.signing them their several quarters suitable to the parts they acted in life.

The poet, after having mentioned the souls of those unhappy men who destroyed themselves, breaks out into a fine exclamation: "Oh, how gladly," says he, "would they now endure life with all its miseries! But the Destinies forbid their return to earth, and the waters of Styx surround them with nine streams that are unpa.s.sable." It is very remarkable, that Virgil, notwithstanding self-murder was so frequent among the heathens, and had been practised by some of the greatest men in the very age before him, has here represented it as so heinous a crime. But in this particular he was guided by the doctrines of his great master Plato, who says on this subject, that a man is placed in his station of life like a soldier in his proper post, which he is not to quit whatever may happen, until he is called off by his commander who planted him in it.

There is another point in the platonic philosophy, which Virgil has made the groundwork of the greatest part in the piece we are now examining, having with wonderful art and beauty materialised, if I may so call it, a scheme of abstracted notions, and clothed the most nice refined conceptions of philosophy in sensible images and poetical representations. The Platonists tell us, that the Soul, during her residence in the body, contracts many virtuous and vicious habits, so as to become a beneficent, mild, charitable, or an angry, malicious, revengeful being: a substance inflamed with l.u.s.t, avarice, and pride; or, on the contrary, brightened with pure, generous, and humble dispositions: that these and the like habits of virtue and vice growing into the very essence of the Soul, survive and gather strength in her after her dissolution: that the torments of a vicious soul in a future state arise princ.i.p.ally from those importunate pa.s.sions which are not capable of being gratified without a body; and that on the contrary, the happiness of virtuous minds very much consists in their being employed in sublime speculations, innocent diversions, sociable affections, and all the ecstasies of pa.s.sion and rapture which are agreeable to reasonable natures, and of which they gained a relish in this life.

Upon this foundation, the poet raises that beautiful description of the secret haunts and walks which he tells us are inhabited by deceased lovers.

"Not far from hence," says he, "lies a great waste of plains, that are called, the 'fields of melancholy.' In these grows a forest of myrtle, divided into many shady retirements and covered walks, and inhabited by the souls of those who pined away with love. The pa.s.sion," says he, "continues with them after death." He then gives a list of this languishing tribe, in which his own Dido makes the princ.i.p.al figure, and is described as living in this soft romantic scene with the shade of her first husband Sichaeus.[187]

The poet in the next place mentions another plain that was peopled with the ghosts of warriors, as still delighting in each other's company, and pleased with the exercise of arms. He there represents the Grecian generals and common soldiers who perished in the siege of Troy as drawn up in squadrons, and terrified at the approach of aeneas, which renewed in them those impressions of fear they had before received in battle with the Trojans. He afterwards likewise, upon the same notion, gives a view of the Trojan heroes who lived in former ages, amidst a visionary scene of chariots and arms, flowery meadows, shining spears, and generous steeds, which he tells us were their pleasures upon earth, and now make up their happiness in Elysium. For the same reason also, he mentions others as singing paeans, and songs of triumph, amidst a beautiful grove of laurel. The chief of the concert was the poet Musaeus, who stood enclosed with a circle of admirers, and rose by the head and shoulders above the throng of shades that surrounded him. The habitations of unhappy spirits, to show the duration of their torments, and the desperate condition they are in, are represented as guarded by a fury, moated round with a lake of fire, strengthened with towers of iron, encompa.s.sed with a triple wall, and fortified with pillars of adamant, which all the G.o.ds together are not able to heave from their foundations. The noise of stripes, the clank of chains, and the groans of the tortured, strike the pious aeneas with a kind of horror. The poet afterwards divides the criminals into two cla.s.ses: the first and blackest catalogue consists of such as were guilty of outrages against the G.o.ds; and the next, of such who were convicted of injustice between man and man: the greatest number of whom, says the poet, are those who followed the dictates of avarice.

It was an opinion of the Platonists, that the souls of men having contracted in the body great stains and pollutions of vice and ignorance, there were several purgations and cleansings necessary to be pa.s.sed through both here and hereafter, in order to refine and purify them.[188]

Virgil, to give this thought likewise a clothing of poetry, describes some spirits as bleaching in the winds, others as cleansing under great falls of waters, and others as purging in fire to recover the primitive beauty and purity of their natures.

It was likewise an opinion of the same sect of philosophers, that the souls of all men exist in a separate state, long before their union with their bodies; and that upon their immersion into flesh, they forget everything which pa.s.sed in the state of pre-existence; so that what we here call knowledge, is nothing else but memory, or the recovery of those things which we knew before.

In pursuance of this scheme, Virgil gives us a view of several souls, who, to prepare themselves for living upon earth, flock about the banks of the river Lethe, and swill themselves with the waters of oblivion.

The same scheme gives him an opportunity of making a n.o.ble compliment to his countrymen, where Anchises is represented taking a survey of the long train of heroes that are to descend from him, and giving his son, aeneas an account of all the glories of his race.

I need not mention the revolution of the platonic year,[189] which is but just touched upon in this book; and as I have consulted no author's thoughts in this explication, shall be very well pleased, if it can make the n.o.blest piece of the most accomplished poet more agreeable to my female readers, when they think fit to look into Dryden's translation of it.

[Footnote 184: See No. 157.]

[Footnote 185: "Hath placed" (folio).]

[Footnote 186: "Pale shadows" (folio).]

[Footnote 187: See No. 133.]

[Footnote 188: "Purify the soul from ignorance and vice" (folio).]

[Footnote 189: The Great or Platonic Year is the time in which the fixed stars make their revolution. See Cicero, "De Natura Deorum," ii. 20.]

No. 155. [ADDISON.

From _Tuesday, April 4_, to _Thursday, April 6, 1710_.

----Aliena negotia curat, Excussus propriis.--HOR., 2 Sat. iii. 19.