FROM MY OWN APARTMENT, OCTOBER 16. STORMS at sea are so frequently described by the ancient poets, and copied by the moderns, that whenever I find the winds begin to rise in a new heroic poem, I generally skip a leaf or two till I come into fair weather. Virgil's tempest is a master-piece in this kind, and is indeed so naturally drawn that one who has made a voyage can scarce read it without being sea-sick. Land-showers are no less frequent among the poets than the former, but I remember none of them which have not fallen in the country; for which reason they are generally filled with the lowings of oxen and the bleatings of sheep, and very often embellished with a rainbow. Virgil's land-shower is likewise the best in its kind. It is indeed a shower of consequence, and contributes to the main design of the poem, by cutting off a tedious ceremonial, and bringing matters to a speedy conclusion between two poten tates of different sexes. My ingenious kinsman, Mr. Humphry Wagstaff, who treats of every subject after a manner that no other author has done, and better than any other can do, has sent me the description of a City-shower. I do not question but the reader remembers my cousin's description of the Morning as it breaks in town, which is printed in the ninth Tatler, and is another exquisite piece of this local poetry. Careful observers may foretel the hour, By sure prognostics, when to dread a shower; 'Twas doubtful which was rain, and which was dust. Here various kinds, by various fortunes led, The leather sounds; he trembles from within. Now from all parts the swelling kennels flow, What street they sail'd from, by their sight and smell, VOL. IV. 6 It is ridiculous for any man to criticise on the works of another, who has not distinguished himself by his own performances. A judge would make but an indifferent figure who had never been known at the bar. Cicero was reputed the greatest orator of his age and country, before he wrote a book De Oratore; and Horace the greatest poet, before he published his Art of Poetry.' The observation arises naturally in any one who casts his eye upon this lastmentioned author, where he will find the criticisms placed in the latter end of his book, that is, after the finest odes and satires in the Latin tongue. A modern, whose name I shall not mention, because I would not make a silly paper sell, was born a Critic and an Examiner, and, like one of the race of the serpent's teeth, came into the world with a sword in his hand. His works put me in mind of the story that is told of a German monk, who was taking a catalogue of a friend's library, and meeting with a Hebrew book in it, entered it under the title of A book that has the beginning where the end should be.' This author, in the last of his crudities, has amassed together a heap of quotations, to prove that Horace and Virgil were both of them modester men than myself; and if his works were to live as long as mine, they might possibly give posterity a notion, that Isaac Bickerstaff was a very conceited old fellow, and as vain a man as either Tully or Sir Francis Bacon. Had this serious writer fallen upon me only, I could have overlooked it; but to see Cicero abused is, I must confess, what I cannot bear. The censure he passes upon this great man runs thus: The itch of being very abusive is almost inseparable from vain-glory. Tully has these two faults in so high a degree, that nothing but his being the best writer in the world can make amends for them. The scurrilous wretch goes on to say, I am as bad as Tully. His words are these: And yet the Tatler, in his paper of September the twentysixth, has outdone him in both. He speaks of himself with more arrogance, and with more insolence of others.' I am afraid, by his discourse, this gentleman has no more read Plutarch than he has Tully. If he had, he would have observed a passage in that historian, wherein he has, with great delicacy, distinguished between two passions which are usually complicated in human nature, and which an ordinary writer would not have thought of separating. Not having my Greek spectacles by me, I shall quote the passage word for word as I find it translated to my hand. "Nevertheless, though he was intemperately fond of his own praise, yet he was very free from envying others, and most liberally profuse in commending both the ancients and his contemporaries, as is to be understood by his writings; and many of those sayings are still recorded, as that concerning Aristotle, that he was a river of flowing gold:' of Plato's dialogue, that if Jupiter were to speak, he would discourse as he did.' Theophrastus he was wont to call his peculiar delight: and being 6 |