The Tatler (Vol 4)

The very foundation of poetry is good sense, if we may allow Horace to be a judge of the art:

Scribendi recte sapere est et principium et fons.[150 - Ars Poet. 309]

And if so, we have reason to believe that the same man who writes well can prescribe well, if he has applied himself to the study of both. Besides, when we see a man making profession of two different sciences, it is natural for us to believe he is no pretender in that which we are not judges of when we find him skilful in that which we understand.

Ordinary quacks and charlatans are thoroughly sensible how necessary it is to support themselves by these collateral assistances, and therefore always lay their claim to some supernumerary accomplishments which are wholly foreign to their profession.

About twenty years ago it was impossible to walk the streets without having an advertisement thrust into your hand of a doctor who was arrived at the knowledge of the green and red dragon, and had discovered the female fern seed. Nobody ever knew what this meant; but the green and red dragon so amused the people, that the doctor lived very comfortably upon them. About the same time there was pasted a very hard word upon every corner of the streets. This, to the best of my remembrance, was which drew great shoals of spectators about it, who read the bill that it introduced with unspeakable curiosity; and when they were sick, would have nobody but this learned man for their physician.

TETRACHYMAGOGON,

I once received an advertisement of one who had studied thirty years by candle-light for the good of his countrymen. He might have studied twice as long by daylight, and never have been taken notice of: but lucubrations cannot be overvalued. There are some who have gained themselves great reputation for physic by their birth, as the seventh son of a seventh son; and others by not being born at all, as the Unborn Doctor,[151 - Kirleus (see No. 14).] who, I hear, is lately gone the way of his patients, having died worth five hundred pounds per annum, though he was not born to a halfpenny.

My ingenious friend Dr. Saffold[152 - Saffold (see No. 20, note) is said to have been originally a weaver. Afterwards he told fortunes, and practised as a quack doctor. A satirical "Elegy on the Death of Thomas Saffold, who departed this life, May 12, 1691," was published after his death.] succeeded my old contemporary Dr. Lilly[153 - William Lilly, astrologer, died in 1681, aged seventy-nine. He published thirty-six almanacs, and a large number of pamphlets about his predictions. In 1715 appeared the "History of Lilly's Life and Times," written by himself.] in the studies both of physic and astrology, to which he added that of poetry, as was to be seen both upon the sign where he lived, and in the bills which he distributed. He was succeeded by Dr. Case,[154 - See No. 20.] who erased the verses of his predecessor out of the sign-post, and substituted in their stead two of his own, which were as follows:

Within this place

Lives Doctor Case.

He is said to have got more by this distich than Mr. Dryden did by all his works. There would be no end of enumerating the several imaginary perfections and unaccountable artifices by which this tribe of men ensnare the minds of the vulgar, and gain crowds of admirers. I have seen the whole front of a mountebank's stage from one end to the other faced with patents, certificates, medals, and great seals, by which the several princes of Europe have testified their particular respect and esteem for the doctor. Every great man with a sounding title has been his patient. I believe I have seen twenty mountebanks that have given physic to the Czar of Muscovy. The great Duke of Tuscany escapes no better. The Elector of Brandenburg was likewise a very good patient.

This great condescension of the doctor draws upon him much good-will from his audience; and it is ten to one, but if any of them be troubled with an aching tooth, his ambition will prompt him to get it drawn by a person who has had so many princes, kings, and emperors under his hands.

I must not leave this subject without observing, that as physicians are apt to deal in poetry, apothecaries endeavour to recommend themselves by oratory, and are therefore without controversy the most eloquent persons in the whole British nation. I would not willingly discourage any of the arts, especially that of which I am a humble professor; but I must confess, for the good of my native country, I could wish there might be a suspension of physic for some years, that our kingdom, which has been so much exhausted by the wars, might have leave to recruit itself.

As for myself, the only physic which has brought me safe to almost the age of man, and which I prescribe to all my friends, is abstinence. This is certainly the best physic for prevention, and very often the most effectual against a present distemper. In short, my recipe is, Take nothing.

Were the body politic to be physicked like particular persons, I should venture to prescribe to it after the same manner. I remember when our whole island was shaken with an earthquake some years ago, there was an impudent mountebank who sold pills which (as he told the country people) were very good against an earthquake. It may perhaps be thought as absurd to prescribe a diet for the allaying popular commotions, and national ferments. But I am verily persuaded, that if in such a case a whole people were to enter into a course of abstinence, and eat nothing but water-gruel for a fortnight, it would abate the rage and animosity of parties, and not a little contribute to the cure of a distracted nation. Such a fast would have a natural tendency to the procuring of those ends for which a fast is usually proclaimed. If any man has a mind to enter on such a voluntary abstinence, it might not be improper to give him the caution of Pythagoras in particular:[155 - See Cicero, Div. i. 30, 62; ii. 58, 119; and Horace, 2 Sat. vi. 63.]

Abstine a fabis.

"Abstain from beans."

That is, say the interpreters, meddle not with elections, beans having been made use of by the voters among the Athenians in the choice of magistrates.

No. 241. [Steele.

From Saturday, Oct. 21, to Tuesday, Oct. 24, 1710

From my own Apartment, Oct. 23

A method of spending one's time agreeably is a thing so little studied, that the common amusement of our young gentlemen (especially of such as are at a distance from those of the first breeding) is drinking. This way of entertainment has custom of its side; but as much as it has prevailed, I believe there have been very few companies that have been guilty of excess this way, where there have not happened more accidents which make against than for the continuance of it. It is very common that events arise from a debauch which are fatal, and always such as are disagreeable. With all a man's reason and good sense about him, his tongue is apt to utter things out of mere gaiety of heart which may displease his best friends. Who then would trust himself to the power of wine, without saying more against it, than that it raises the imagination, and depresses the judgment. Were there only this single consideration, that we are less masters of ourselves when we drink in the least proportion above the exigencies of thirst; I say, were this all that could be objected, it were sufficient to make us abhor this vice. But we may go on to say, that as he who drinks but a little is not master of himself, so he who drinks much is a slave to himself. As for my part, I ever esteemed a drunkard of all vicious persons the most vicious: for if our actions are to be weighed and considered according to the intention of them, what can we think of him who puts himself into a circumstance wherein he can have no intention at all, but incapacitates himself for the duties and offices of life, by a suspension of all his faculties. If a man considered, that he cannot under the oppression of drink be a friend, a gentleman, a master, or a subject; that he has so long banished himself from all that is dear, and given up all that is sacred to him, he would even then think of a debauch with horror: but when he looks still further, and acknowledges, that he is not only expelled out of all the relations of life, but also liable to offend against them all, what words can express the terror and detestation he would have of such a condition? And yet he owns all this of himself who says he was drunk last night.

As I have all along persisted in it, that all the vicious in general are in a state of death, so I think I may add to the non-existence of drunkards, that they died by their own hands. He is certainly as guilty of suicide who perishes by a slow, as he that is despatched by an immediate poison. In my last Lucubration I proposed the general use of water-gruel, and hinted that it might not be amiss at this very season: but as there are some whose cases, in regard to their families, will not admit of delay, I have used my interest in several wards of the city, that the wholesome restorative above mentioned may be given in tavern kitchens to all the morning's draught-men within the walls when they call for wine before noon. For a further restraint and mark upon such persons, I have given orders, that in all the offices where policies are drawn upon lives, it shall be added to the article which prohibits that the nominee should cross the sea, the words, "Provided also, that the above-mentioned A. B. shall not drink before dinner during the term mentioned in this indenture."

I am not without hopes but by this method I shall bring some unsizable friends of mine into shape and breath, as well as others who are languid and consumptive into health and vigour. Most of the self-murderers whom I yet hinted at, are such as preserve a certain regularity in taking their poison, and make it mix pretty well with their food: but the most conspicuous of those who destroy themselves, are such as in their youth fall into this sort of debauchery, and contract a certain uneasiness of spirit, which is not to be diverted but by tippling as often as they can fall into company in the day, and conclude with downright drunkenness at night. These gentlemen never know the satisfaction of youth, but skip the years of manhood, and are decrepid soon after they are of age. I was god-father to one of these old fellows. He is now three-and-thirty, which is the grand climacteric of a young drunkard. I went to visit the crazy wretch this morning, with no other purpose but to rally him under the pain and uneasiness of being sober.

But as our faults are double when they affect others besides ourselves, so this vice is still more odious in a married than a single man. He that is the husband of a woman of honour, and comes home overloaded with wine, is still more contemptible in proportion to the regard we have to the unhappy consort of his bestiality. The imagination cannot shape to itself anything more monstrous and unnatural than the familiarities between drunkenness and chastity. The wretched Astrea, who is the perfection of beauty and innocence, has long been thus condemned for life. The romantic tales of virgins devoted to the jaws of monsters, have nothing in them so terrible as the gift of Astrea to that bacchanal.

The reflection of such a match as spotless innocence with abandoned lewdness, is what puts this vice in the worst figure it can bear with regard to others; but when it is looked upon with respect only to the drunkard himself, it has deformities enough to make it disagreeable, which may be summed up in a word, by allowing, that he who resigns his reason, is actually guilty of all that he is liable to from the want of reason.

P.S.– Among many other enormities, there are two in the following letters which I think should be suddenly amended; but since they are sins of omission only, I shall not make remarks upon them till I find the delinquents persist in their errors; and the inserting the letters themselves shall be all their present admonition.

    October 16.

"Mr. Bickerstaff,

"Several that frequent divine service at St. Paul's, as well as myself, having with great satisfaction observed the good effect which your animadversion had on an excess in performance there;[156 - See Nos. 56, 61, 67, and 70.] it is requested, that you will take notice of a contrary fault, which is the unconcerned silence and the motionless postures of others who come thither. If this custom prevails, the congregation will resemble an audience at a play-house, or rather a dumb meeting of Quakers. Your censuring such church-mutes in the manner you think fit, may make these dissenters join with us, out of fear lest you should further animadvert upon their non-conformity. According as this succeeds, you shall hear from,

    "Sir,
    "Your most humble Servant,
    "B. B."

"Mr. Bickerstaff,

"I was the other day in company with a gentleman, who, in reciting his own qualifications, concluded every period with these words, 'the best of any man in England.' Thus for example: he kept the best house of any man in England; he understood this, and that, and the other, the best of any man in England. How harsh and ungrateful soever this expression might sound to one of my nation, yet the gentleman was one whom it no ways became me to interrupt; but perhaps a new term put into his by-words (as they call a sentence a man particularly affects) may cure him. I therefore took a resolution to apply to you, who, I dare say, can easily persuade this gentleman (whom I cannot believe an enemy to the Union) to mend his phrase, and be hereafter the wisest of any man in Great Britain. I am,

    "Sir,
    "Your most humble Servant,
    "Scoto-Britannus."

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Whereas Mr. Humphrey Trelooby, wearing his own hair, a pair of buck-skin breeches, a hunting-whip, with a new pair of spurs, has complained to the Censor, that on Thursday last he was defrauded of half-a-crown, under pretence of a duty to the sexton for seeing the Cathedral of St. Paul, London: it is hereby ordered, that none hereafter require above sixpence of any country gentleman under the age of twenty-five for that liberty; and that all which shall be received above the said sum of any person for beholding the inside of that sacred edifice, be forthwith paid to Mr. John Morphew for the use of Mr. Bickerstaff, under pain of further censure on the above-mentioned extortion.

No. 242. [Steele.

From Tuesday, Oct. 24, to Thursday, Oct. 26, 1710

– Quis iniquæ
Tam patiens urbis, tam ferreus, ut teneat se?

    Juv., Sat. i. 30.

From my own Apartment, Oct. 25

It was with very great displeasure I heard this day a man say of a companion of his with an air of approbation, "You know Tom never fails of saying a spiteful thing. He has a great deal of wit, but satire is his particular talent. Did you mind how he put the young fellow out of countenance that pretended to talk to him?" Such impertinent applauses, which one meets with every day, put me upon considering what true raillery and satire were in themselves; and this, methought, occurred to me from reflection upon the great and excellent persons that were admired for talents this way. When I had run over several such in my thoughts, I concluded (however unaccountable the assertion might appear at first sight) that good-nature was an essential quality in a satirist, and that all the sentiments which are beautiful in this way of writing must proceed from that quality in the author. Good-nature produces a disdain of all baseness, vice, and folly, which prompts them to express themselves with smartness against the errors of men, without bitterness towards their persons. This quality keeps the mind in equanimity, and never lets an offence unseasonably throw a man out of his character. When Virgil said, he that did not hate Bavius might love Mævius,[157 - Virgil, "Eclog." iii. 90.] he was in perfect good-humour, and was not so much moved at their absurdities as passionately to call them sots or blockheads in a direct invective, but laughed at them with a delicacy of scorn, without any mixture of anger.

The best good man, with the worst-natured muse, was the character among us of a gentleman as famous for his humanity as his wit.[158 - This was said of Lord Buckhurst, afterwards Earl of Dorset, by the Earl of Rochester.]

The ordinary subjects for satire are such as incite the greatest indignation in the best tempers, and consequently men of such a make are the best qualified for speaking of the offences in human life. These men can behold vice and folly when they injure persons to whom they are wholly unacquainted, with the same severity as others resent the ills they do themselves. A good-natured man cannot see an overbearing fellow put a bashful man of merit out of countenance, or outstrip him in the pursuit of any advantage; but he is on fire to succour the oppressed, to produce the merit of the one, and confront the impudence of the other.

The men of the greatest character in this kind were Horace and Juvenal. There is not, that I remember, one ill-natured expression in all their writings, not one sentence of severity which does not apparently proceed from the contrary disposition. Whoever reads them, will, I believe, be of this mind; and if they were read with this view, it may possibly persuade our young fellows, that they may be very witty men without speaking ill of any but those who deserve it: but in the perusal of these writers it may not be unnecessary to consider, that they lived in very different times. Horace was intimate with a prince of the greatest goodness and humanity imaginable, and his court was formed after his example; therefore the faults that poet falls upon were little inconsistencies in behaviour, false pretences to politeness, or impertinent affectations of what men were not fit for. Vices of a coarser sort could not come under his consideration, or enter the palace of Augustus. Juvenal, on the other hand, lived under Domitian, in whose reign everything that was great and noble was banished the habitations of the men in power. Therefore he attacks vice as it passes by in triumph, not as it breaks into conversation. The fall of empire, contempt of glory, and a general degeneracy of manners, are before his eyes in all his writings. In the days of Augustus, to have talked like Juvenal had been madness, or in those of Domitian like Horace. Morality and virtue are everywhere recommended in Horace, as became a man in a polite court, from the beauty, the propriety, the convenience, of pursuing them. Vice and corruption are attacked by Juvenal in a style which denotes, he fears he shall not be heard without he calls to them in their own language, with a bare-faced mention of the villanies and obscenities of his contemporaries.

This accidental talk of these two great men runs me from my design, which was to tell some coxcombs that run about this town with the name of smart satirical fellows, that they are by no means qualified for the characters they pretend to, of being severe upon other men, for they want good-nature. There is no foundation in them for arriving at what they aim at; and they may as well pretend to flatter, as rail agreeably without being good-natured.

There is a certain impartiality necessary to make what a man says bear any weight with those he speaks to. This quality, with respect to men's errors and vices, is never seen but in good-natured men. They have ever such a frankness of mind, and benevolence to all men, that they cannot receive impressions of unkindness without mature deliberation; and writing or speaking ill of a man upon personal considerations, is so irreparable and mean an injury, that no one possessed of this quality is capable of doing it: but in all ages there have been interpreters to authors when living, of the same genius with the commentators, into whose hands they fall when dead. I dare say, it is impossible for any man of more wit than one of these to take any of the four-and-twenty letters, and form out of them a name to describe the character of a vicious man with greater life, but one of these would immediately cry, Mr. Such-a-one is meant in that place. But the truth of it is, satirists describe the age, and backbiters assign their descriptions to private men.