If both the first should from their duty swerve,
There's one behind the wainscot in reserve.
In his next play, if I would take this trouble,
He promis'd me to make the number double:
In troth 'twas spoke like an obliging creature,
For though 'tis simple, yet it shows good-nature.
My help thus ask'd, I could not choose but grant it,
And really I thought the play would want it,
Void as it is of all the usual arts

To warm your fancies, and to steal your hearts:
No court-intrigue, nor city cuckoldom,

No song, no dance, no music-but a drum-
No smutty thought in doubtful phrase express'd;
And, gentlemen, if so, pray, where's the jest?
When we would raise your mirth, you hardly know
Whether, in strictness, you should laugh or no,
But turn upon the ladies in the pit,

And if they redden, you are sure 'tis wit.

Protect him then, ye fair ones; for the fair
Of all conditions are his equal care.

He draws a widow, who of blameless carriage,
True to her jointure, hates a second marriage;
And, to improve a virtuous wife's delights,
Out of one man contrives two wedding nights;
Nay, to oblige the sex in every state,
A nymph of five and forty finds her mate.
Too long has marriage, in this tasteless age,
With ill-bred raillery supplied the stage;
No little scribbler is of wit so bare,
But has his fling at the poor wedded pair.
Our author deals not in conceits so stale:
For should th' examples of his play prevail,
No man need blush, though true to marriage-vows,
Nor be a jest, though he should love his spouse.
Thus has he done you British consorts right,
Whose husbands, should they pry like mine to-night,
Would never find you in your conduct slipping,
Though they turn'd conjurers to take you tripping.

A DISCOURSE

ON

ANCIENT AND MODERN LEARNING.1

THE present age seems to have a very true taste of polite learning, and perhaps takes the beauties of an ancient author, as much as 'tis possible for it at so great a distance of time. It may, therefore, be some entertainment to us to consider what pleasure the cotemporaries and countrymen of our old writers found in their works, which we at present are not capable of; and whether, at the same time, the moderns may not have some advantages peculiar to themselves, and discover several graces that arise merely from the antiquity of an author.

And here the first and most general advantage the ancients had over us, was, that they knew all the secret history of a composure: what was the occasion of such a discourse or poem, whom such a sentence aimed at, what person lay disguised in such a character: for by this means they could see their author in a variety of lights, and receive several different entertainments from the same passage. We, on the contrary, can only please ourselves with the wit or good sense of a writer, as it stands stripped of all those accidental circumstances that at first helped to set it off: we have him but in a single view, and only discover such essential standing beauties as no time or years can possibly deface.

I do not question but Homer, who in the diversity of his characters has far excelled all other heroic poets, had an eye

1 There can be no doubt of the genuineness of this piece. The internal marks of its author are many and unequivocal; as must, I think, appear to every attentive reader who has any acquaintance with Mr. Addison's style and manner. But I should guess that it was drawn up by him in his younger days, and that it was not retouched, or at least finished by him. The reason might be, that he had afterwards worked up the principal observations of this piece into his critical papers on Milton.

on some real persons who were then living, in most of them. The description of Thersites is so spiteful and particular, that I cannot but think it one of his own, or his country's enemies in disguise, as, on the contrary, his Nestor looks like the figure of some ancient and venerable patriot: an effeminate fop, perhaps, of those times lies hid in Paris, and a crafty statesman in Ulysses: Patroclus may be a compliment on a celebrated friend, and Agamemnon the description of a majestic prince. Ajax, Hector, and Achilles are all of them. valiant, but in so different a manner, as perhaps has characterized the different kinds of heroism that Homer had ob

served in some of his great cotemporaries. Thus far we learn from the poet's life, that he endeavoured to gain favour and patronage by his verse; and it is very probable he thought of this method of ingratiating himself with particular persons, as he has made the drift of the whole poem a compliment on his country in general.

And to show us that this is not a bare conjecture only, we are told in the account that is left us of Homer, that he inserted the very names of some of his cotemporaries. Tychius and Mentor in particular are very neatly celebrated in him. The first of these was an honest cobler, who had been very kind and serviceable to the poet, and is therefore advanced in his poem, to be Ajax's shield-maker. The other was a great man in Ithaca, who for his patronage and wisdom has gained a very honourable post in the Odysses, where he accompanies his great countryman in his travels, and gains. such a reputation for his prudence, that Minerva took his shape upon her when she made herself visible. Themius. was the name of Homer's schoolmaster, but the poet has certainly drawn his own character under, when he sets him forth as a favourite of Apollo, that was deprived of his sight, and used to sing the noble exploits of the Grecians.

Virgil too may well be supposed to give several hints in his poem, which we are not able to take, and to have lain1 many by-designs and under-plots, which are too remote for us to look into distinctly at so great a distance: but as for the characters of such as lived in his own time, I have not

To have lain.] The perfect participle of lay is laid, not lain, which is the perfect participle of the verb lie. The same blunder occurs in his notes on Ovid, "—till he had lain aside the circle of rays"-speaking of Phoebus in the story of Phaeton. But see the note on that place.

so much to say of him as Homer. He is indeed very barren in this part of his poem, and has but little varied the manners of the principal persons in it. His Æneas is a compound of valour and piety; Achates calls himself his friend, but takes no occasion of showing himself so; Mnesteus, Sergestus, Gyas, and Cloanthus, are all of them men of the same stamp and character.

-Fortemque Gyan, fortemque Cloanthum.

Besides, Virgil was so very nice and delicate a writer, that probably he might not think his compliment to Augustus so great, or so artfully concealed, if he had scattered his praises more promiscuously, and made his court to others in the same poem. Had he entertained any such design, Agrippa must in justice have challenged the second place, and if Agrippa's representative had been admitted, Æneas would have had very little to do; which would not have redounded much to the honour of his emperor. If, therefore, Virgil has shadowed any great persons besides Augustus in his characters, they are to be found only in the meaner actors of his poem, among the disputers for a petty victory in the fifth book, and perhaps in some few other places. I shall only mention Iopas, the philosophical musician at Dido's banquet, where I cannot but fancy some celebrated master complimented, for methinks the epithet Crinitus is so wholly foreign to the purpose, that it perfectly points at some particular person; who, perhaps, (to pursue a wandering guess,) was one of the Grecian performers, then in Rome, for besides that they were the best musicians and philosophers, the termination of the name belongs to their language, and the epithet is the same [KaρηкоμówνTES] that Homer gives to his countrymen in general.

Now that we may have a right notion of the pleasure we have lost on this account, let us only consider the different entertainment we of the present age meet with in Mr. Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel, from what an English reader will find a hundred years hence, when the figures of the persons concerned are not so lively and fresh in the minds of posterity. Nothing can be more delightful than to see two characters facing each other all along, and running parallel through the whole piece, to compare feature with feature, to find out the nice resemblance in every touch, and

to see where the copy fails, and where it comes up to the original. The reader cannot but be pleased to have an acquaintance thus rising by degrees in his imagination, for whilst the mind is busy in applying every particular, and adjusting the several parts of the description, it is not a little delighted with its discoveries, and feels something like the satisfaction of an author from his own composure.

What is here said of Homer and Virgil holds very strong in the ancient satirists and authors of dialogues, but especially of comedies. What could we have made of Aristophanes's Clouds, had he not told us on whom the ridicule turned; and we have good reason to believe we should have relished it more than we do, had we known the design of each character, and the secret intimations in every line. Histories themselves often come down to us defective on this account, where the writers are not full enough to give us a perfect notion of occurrences, for the tradition, which at first was a comment on the story, is now quite lost, and the writing only preserved for the information of posterity.

I might be very tedious on this head, but I shall only mention another author who, I believe, received no small advantage from this consideration, and that is Theophrastus, who probably has shown us several of his cotemporaries in the representation of his passions and vices; for we may observe in most of his characters, something foreign to his subject, and some other folly or infirmity mixing itself with the principal argument of his discourse. His eye seems to have been so attentively fixed on the person in whom the vanity reigned, that other circumstances of his behaviour besides those he was to describe insinuated themselves unawares, and crept insensibly into the character. It was hard for him to extract a single folly out of the whole mass without leaving a little mixture in the separation: so that his particular vice appears something discoloured in the description, and his discourse, like a glass set to catch the image of any single object, gives us a lively resemblance of what we look for; but at the same time returns a little shadowy landscape of the parts that lie about it.

And, as the ancients enjoyed no small privilege above us, in knowing the persons hinted at in several of their authors; so they received a great advantage, in seeing often the pictures and images that are frequently described in many of