as to the society at the Trumpet, of which I am a member, did not I in some part of my writings give an account of the persons among whom I have passed almost a sixth part of my time for these last forty years. Our club consisted originally of fifteen; but, partly by the severity of the law in arbitrary times, and partly by the natural effects of old age, we are at present reduced to a third part of that number; in which, however, we have this consolation, that the best company is said to consist of five persons. I must confess, besides the aforementioned benefit which I meet with in the conversation of this select society, I am not the less pleased with the company, in that I find myself the greatest wit among them, and am heard as their oracle in all points of learning and difficulty. Sir Jeoffery Notch, who is the oldest of the club, has been in possession of the right-hand chair time out of mind, and is the only man among us that has the liberty of stirring the fire. This, our foreman, is a gentleman of an ancient family, that came to a great estate some years before he had discretion, and run it out in hounds, horses, and cock-fighting; for which reason he looks upon himself as an honest, worthy gentleman, who has had misfortunes in the world, and calls every thriving man a pitiful upstart. Major Matchlock is the next senior, who serv ed in the last civil wars, and has all the battles by heart. He does not think any action in Europe worth talking of since the fight of Mars. ton Moor; and every night tells us of his having been knocked off his horse at the rising of the London apprentices; for which he is in great esteem among us. Honest old Dick Reptile is the third of our society. He is a good-natured indolent man, who speaks little himself, but laughs at our jokes; and brings his young nephew along with him, a youth of eighteen years old, to show him good company, and give him a taste of the world. This young fellow sits generally silent; but whenever he opens his mouth, or laughs at any thing that passes, he is constantly told by his uncle, after a jocular manner, Ay, ay, Jack, you young men think us fools; but we old men know you are.' 6 The greatest wit of our company, next to my. self, is a bencher of the neighbouring inn, who in his youth frequented the ordinaries about Charing-cross, and pretends to have been intimate with Jack Ogle. He has about ten distichs of Hudibras without book, and never leaves the club until he has applied them all. If any modern wit be mentioned, or any town-frolic spoken of, he shakes his head at the dullness of the present age, and tells us a story of Jack Ogle. For my own part, I am esteemed among them because they see I am something respected by others; though at the same time I understand A public house in Sheer-lane. The battle of Marston-Moor happened on July 2, 1644. 1 July 14, 1647, the London apprentices presented a petition signed by above 10,000 hands; and on the 26th. they forced their way into the house, menacing, until votes had passed desirable to their demands. See the Parliamentary History, vol. xvi. p. 180, 181. Our club meets precisely at six o'clock in the evening; but I did not come last night until half an hour after seven, by which means I escaped the battle of Naseby, which the major usually begins at about three quarters after six: I found also, that my good friend the bencher had already spent three of his distichis; and only waited an opportunity to hear a sermon spoken of, that he might introduce the couplet where a stick' rhymes to 'ecclesiastic.' At my entrance into the room, they were naming a red petticoat and a cloak, by which I found that the bencher had been diverting them with a story of Jack Ogle.* I had no sooner taken my seat, but Sir Jeof. fery, to show his good will towards me, gave me a pipe of his own tobacco, and stirred up the fire. I look upon it as a point of morality, to be obliged by those who endeavor to oblige me; and therefore, in requital for his kindness, and to set the conversation a-going, I took the best occasion I could to put him upon telling us the story of old Gantlett, which he always does with very particular concern. He traced up his descent on both sides for several generations, describing his diet and manner of life, with his several battles, and particularly that in which he fell. This Gantlett was a game cock, upon whose head the knight, in his youth, had won five hundred pounds, and lost two thousand. This naturally set the major upon the account of Edge-hill fight,t and ended in a duel of Jack Ogle's. Old Reptile was extremely attentive to all that was said, though it was the same he had heard every night for these twenty years, and, upon all occasions, winked upon his nephew to mind what passed. This may suffice to give the world a taste of our innocent conversation, which we spun out until about ten of the clock, when my maid came with a lantern to light me home. I could not but reflect with myself, as I was going out, upon the talkative humour of old men, and the little figure which that part of life makes in ono who cannot employ his natural propensity in discourses which would make him venerable. I must own, it makes me very melancholy in company, when I hear a young man begin a story; and have often observed, that one of a quarter of an hour long in a man of five-and-twenty, gathers circumstances every time he tells it, until it grows into a long Canterbury tale of two hours by that time he is threescore. The only way of avoiding such a trifling and frivolous old age is, to lay up in our way to it Jack Ogle, said to have been descended from a decent family in Devonshire, was a man of some genius and great extravagance, but rather artful than witty. †The battle of Edge-hill was fought on Sunday, Oct. 23, 1642. such stores of knowledge and observation, as may make us useful and agreeable in our declining years. The mind of man in a long life will become a magazine of wisdom or folly, and will consequently discharge itself in something impertinent or improving. For which reason, as there is nothing more ridiculous than an old trifling story-teller, so there is nothing more venerable, than one who has turned his experience to the entertainment and advantage of mankind. In short, we, who are in the last stage of life, and are apt to indulge ourselves in talk, ought to consider, if what we speak be worth being heard, and endeavour to make our discourse like that of Nestor, which Homer compares to the flowing of honey for its sweetness. I am afraid I shall be thought guilty of this excess I am speaking of, when I cannot conclude without observing, that Milton certainly thought of this passage in Homer, when, in his description of an eloquent spirit, he says, His tongue dropped manna.' in the eleventh book of the Odyssey. Ulysses, who had been the rival of this great man in his life, as well as the occasion of his death, upon meeting his shade in the region of departed heroes, makes his submission to him with a humility next to adoration, which the other passes over with dumb, sullen majesty, and such a silence, as, to use the words of Longinus, had more greatness in it than any thing he could have spoken. The next instance I shall mention is in Virgil, where the poet doubtless imitates this silence of Ajax in that of Dido; though I do not know that any of his commentators have taken notice of it. Eneas, finding among the shades of despairing lovers the ghost of her who had lately died for him, with the wound still fresh upon her, addresses himself to her with expanded arms, floods of tears, and the most passionate professions of his own innocence, as to what had happened; all which Dido receives with the dignity and disdain of a resenting lover, and an injured queen; and is so far from vouchsafing him an answer, that she does not give him a single look. The poet represents her as turning away her face from him while he spoke to her; and, after having kept her eyes some time upon the ground, as one that heard and contemned his protestations, flying from him into the grove of myrtle, and into the arms of another, whose fidelity had deserved her love.* SILENCE is sometimes more significant and I have often thought our writers of tragedy sublime, than the most noble and most expres- have been very defective in this particular, and sive eloquence, and is on many occasions the that they might have given great beauty to indication of a great mind. Several authors their works, by certain stops and pauses in the have treated of silence, as a part of duty and representation of such passions as it is not in discretion; but none of them have considered it the power of language to express. There is in this light. Homer compares the noise and something like this in the last act of Venice clamour of the Trojans advancing towards the Preserved,' where Pierre is brought to an infaenemy, to the cackling of cranes, when they mous execution, and begs of his friend, as a invade an army of pigmies. On the contrary, reparation for past injuries, and the only favour he makes his countrymen and favourites, the he could do him, to rescue him from the ignoGreeks, move forward in a regular and deter-miny of the wheel by stabbing him. As he is mined march, and in the depth of silence. I find in the accounts, which are given us of some of the more eastern nations, where the inhabitants are disposed by their constitutions and climates to higher strains of thought, and more elevated raptures than what we feel in the northern regions of the world, that silence is a religious exercise among them. For when their public devotions are in the greatest fervour, and their hearts lifted up as high as words can raise them, there are certain suspensions of sound and motion for a time, in which the mind is left to itself, and supposed to swell with such secret conceptions as are too big for utterance. I have myself been wonderfully delighted with a master-piece of music, when, in the very tumult and ferment of their harmony, all the voices and instruments have stopped short on a sudden; and, after a little pause, recovered themselves again, as it were, and renewed the concert in all its parts. This short interval of silence has had more music in it, than any the same space of time before or after it. There are two instances of silence in the two greatest poets that ever wrote, which have something in them as sublime as any of their speeches in their whole works. The first is that of Ajax, going to make this dreadful request, he is not able to communicate it; but withdraws his face from his friend's ear, and bursts into tears. The melancholy silence that follows hereupon, and continues until he has recovered himself enough to reveal his mind to his friend, raises in the spectators a grief that is inexpressible, and an idea of such a complicated distress in the actor, as words cannot utter. It would look as ridiculous to many readers, to give rules and directions for proper silences, as for 'penning a whisper: but it is certain, that in the extremity of most passions, particularly surprise, admiration, astonishment, nay, rage itself, there is nothing more graceful than to see the play stand still for a few moments, and the audience fixed in an agreeable suspense, during the silence of a skilful actor. But silence never shows itself to so great an advantage, as when it is made the reply to ca lumny and defamation, provided that we give no just occasion for them. We might produce an example of it in the behaviour of one, in whom it appeared in all its majesty, and one, whose silence, as well as his person, was alto. * Sich.pus. gether divine. When one considers this subject only in its sublimity, this great instance could not but occur to me; and since I only make use of it to show the highest example of it, I hope I do not offend in it. To forbear replying to an unjust reproach, and overlook it with a generous, or, if possible, with an entire neglect of it, is one of the most heroic acts of a great mind: and I must confess, when I reflect upon the behaviour of some of the greatest men in antiquity, I do not so much admire them, that they deserved the praise of the whole age they lived in, as because they contemned the envy and detraction of it. All that is incumbent on a man of worth, who suffers under so ill a treatment, is to lie by for some time in silence and obscurity, until the prejudice of the time be over, and his reputation cleared. I have often read, with a great deal of pleasure, a legacy of the famous lord Bacon, one of the greatest geniuses that our own or any country has produced. After having bequeathed his soul, body, and estate, in the usual form, he adds, My name and memory I leave to foreign nations, and to my countrymen after some time be passed over.' At the same time, that I recommend this philosophy to others, I must confess, I am so poor a proficient in it myself, that if in the course of my lucubrations it happens, as it has done more than once, that my paper is duller than in conscience it ought to be, I think the time an age until I have an opportunity of put. ting out another, and growing famous again for two days. I must not close my discourse upon silence without informing my reader, that I have by me an elaborate treatise on the aposiopesis called an et cætera; it being a figure much used by some learned authors, and particularly by the great Littleton, who, as my lord chief justice Coke observes, had a most admirable talent at an &c. ADVERTISEMENT. To oblige the pretty fellows, and my fair readers, I have thought fit to insert the whole passage above-mentioned relating to Dido, as it is translated by Mr. Dryden.* Not far from thence, the mournful fields appear; So called from lovers that inhabit there. The sonts, whom that unhappy flame invades, In secret solitude, and myrtle shades, Make endless moans; and, pining with desire, Lament too late their unextinguished fire. Here Procris, Eriphyle here, he found Baring her breast, yet bleeding with the wound Made by her son. He saw Pasiphae there, With Phedra's ghost, a foul incestuous pair: There Laodamia with Evadne moves: Unhappy both; but loyal in their loves. Coeneus, a woman once, and once a man; But ending in the sex she first began. Not far from these Phenician Dido stood; Fresh from her wound, her bosom bathed in blood: Whom, when the Trojan hero hardly knew, Obscure in shades, and with a doubtful view, (Doubtful as he who runs through dusky night, Or thinks he sees the moon's uncertain light,) With tears he first approached the sullen shade And, as his love inspired him, thus he said: Unhappy queen! then is the common breath Of rumour true, in your reported death? *Eneid, book vi. 46. And I, alas, the cause! by heaven I vow, Sheer-lane, February 15. I was awakened very early this morning by the distant crowing of a cock, which I thought had the finest pipe I ever heard. He seemed to me to strain his voice more than ordinary, as if he designed to make himself heard to the remotest corner of this lane. Having entertained myself a little before I went to bed with a discourse on the transmigration of men into other animals, I could not but fancy that this was the soul of some drowsy bell-man who used to sleep upon his post, for which he was condemned to do penance in feathers, and distinguish the several watches of the night under the outside of a cock. While I was thinking of the condition of this poor bell-man in masquerade, I heard a great knocking at my door, and was soon after told by my maid, that my worthy friend, the tall black gentleman, who frequents the coffec-houses hereabouts, desired to speak with me. This ancient Pythagorean, who has as much honesty as any man living, but good nature to an excess, brought me the following petition; which I am apt to believe he penned himself, the petitioner not being able to express his mind on paper under his present form, how. ever famous he might have been for writing verses when he was in his original shape. 'To Isaac Bickerstaff, Esquire, Censor of Great Britain. The humble petition of Job Chanticleer, in behalf of himself, and many other poor sufferers in the same condition; from my Coop in Clare-market, Feb. 13, 1709, sheweth : "That whereas your petitioner is truly descended of the ancient family of the Chanticleers, at Cock-hall near Rumford in Essex, it has been his misfortune to come into the mercenary hands of a certain ill-disposed person, commonly called a higgler, who, under the close confinement of a pannier, has conveyed him and many others up to London; but hear. [ ing by chance of your worship's great humanity towards robin-red-breasts and tom-tits, he is emboldened to beseech you to take his deplorable condition into your tender consideration, who otherwise must suffer, with many thousands more as innocent as himself, that inhuman barbarity of a Shrove Tuesday persecu tion. We humbly hope, that our courage and vigilance may plead for us on this occasion. Your poor petitioner most earnestly implores your immediate protection from the insolence of the rabble, the batteries of cat-sticks, and a painful lingering death, And your petitioner, &c.' Upon delivery of this petition, the worthy gentleman, who presented it, told me the customs of many wise nations of the east, through which he had travelled; that nothing was more frequent than to see a dervise lay out a whole year's income in the redemption of larks or linnets that had unhappily fallen into the hands of bird-catchers; that it was also usual to run between a dog and a bull to keep them from hurting one another, or to lose the use of a limb in parting a couple of furious mastiffs. He then insisted upon the ingratitude and disin. genuity of treating in this manner a necessary and domestic animal, that has made the whole house keep good hours, and called up the cookmaid for five years together. What would a Turkt say,' continued he, should he hear, that it is a common entertainment in a nation, which pretends to be one of the most civilized of Europe, to tie an innocent animal to a stake, and put him to an ignominious death, who has perhaps been the guardian and proveditor of a a poor family, as long as he was able to get eggs for his mistress?' much delights in bloodshed, which he likewise represents as an indication of our tempers. I must own, there is something very horrid in the public executions of an English tragedy. Stabbing and poisoning, which are performed behind the scenes in other nations, must be done openly among us, to gratify the audience. When poor Sandford was upon the stage, I have seen him groaning upon a wheel, stuck with daggers, impaled alive, calling his executioners, with a dying voice, cruel dogs and villains!' and all this to please his judicious spectators, who were wonderfully delighted with seeing a man in torment so well acted. The truth of it is, the politeness of our English stage, in regard to decorum, is very extraordinary. We act murders, to show our intrepidity; and adulteries, to show our gallantry: both of them are frequent in our most taking plays, with this difference only, that the former are done in the sight of the audience, and the latter wrought up to such a height upon the stage, that they are almost put in execution before the actors can get behind the scenes. I would not have it thought, that there is just ground for those consequences which our enemies draw against us from these practices; but methinks one would be sorry for any manner of occasion for such misrepresentations of us. The virtues of tenderness, compassion, and humanity, are those by which men are distinguished from brutes, as much as by reason itself; and it would be the greatest reproach to a nation, to distinguish itself from all others by any defect in these particular virtues. For which reasons, I hope that my dear country. men will no longer expose themselves by an effusion of blood, whether it be of theatrical heroes, cocks, or any other innocent animals, which we are not obliged to slaughter for our safety, convenience, or nourishment. When any of these ends are not served in the destruction of a living creature, I cannot but pronounce it a great piece of cruelty, if not a kind of murder. No. 135.] Saturday, February 18, 1709-10. Quod si in hoc erro, quod animos hominum immortales esse credam, libenter erro; nec mihi hunc errorem, I thought what this gentleman said was very reasonable; and have often wondered, that we do not lay aside a custom, which makes us appear barbarous to nations much more rude and unpolished than ourselves. Some French writers have represented this diversion of the common people much to our disadvantage, and imputed it to natural fierceness and cruelty of temper; as they do some other entertainments peculiar to our nation: I mean those elegant diversions of bull-bating and prize-fighting, with the like ingenious recreations of the Bear-ga-irrideant.Cicero, De Senect. cap. ult. Ed. Verburgii, den. I wish I knew how to answer this reproach which is cast upon us, and excuse the death of so many innocent cocks, bulls, dogs, and bears, as have been set together by the cars, or died untimely deaths, only to make us sport. after death I shall feel nothing, as some minute phiIt will be said, that these are the entertain-losophers think, I am not afraid lest dead philosophers ments of common people. It is true; but they should laugh at me for the error. are the entertainments of no other common people. Besides, I am afraid, there is a tinc. ture of the same savage spirit in the diversions of those of higher rank, and more refined relish. Rapin observes, that the English theatre very The original date of this paper is From Tuesday Feb. 14, to Thursday Feb. 16, 1709.' † Disingenuousness. 1 The word Turk, is used here to signify a savage, or a barbarian; but in the language of Turkey it means a shepherd or herdsman. quo delector, dum vivo, extorqueri volo: sin mortuus, ut quidam minuti philosophi censent, nihil sentiam; non vereor, ne hunc errorem meum mortui philosophi Vol. x. p. 3758. mortal, I willingly err; nor while I live would I wish to But if I err in believing that the souls of men are im have this delightful error extorted from me: and if Sheer-lane, February 17. SEVERAL letters, which I have lately received, give me information, that some well-disposed persons have taken offence at my using the word Free-thinker, as a term of reproach. To set, *Sandford was an excellent actor in disagreeable characters; he had a low and crooked person, and such bodily defects as were too strong to be admitted into great or amiable characters, so that he was the stage. villain, not by choice, but from necessity. therefore, this matter in a clear light, I must sophical free-thinkers, that hath neither pasdeclare, that no one can have a greater venera- sions nor appetites to gratify, no heats of blood, tion than myself for the Free-thinkers of anti-nor vigour of constitution, that can turn his quity; who acted the same part in those times, systems of infidelity to his advantage, or raise as the great men of the reformation did in seve-pleasures out of them which are inconsistent ral nations of Europe, by exerting themselves with the belief of a hereafter. One that has against the idolatry and superstition of the times neither wit, gallantry, mirth, or youth, to inin which they lived. It was by this noble im- dulge by these notions, but only a poor, joyless, pulse that Socrates and his disciples, as well as uncomfortable vanity of distinguishing himself all the philsophers of note in Greece, and Cicero, from the rest of mankind, is rather to be reSeneca, with all the learned men of Rome, en-garded as a mischievous lunatic, than a misdeavoured to enlighten their contemporaries amidst the darkness and ignorance in which the world was then sunk and buried. The great points which these free-thinkers endeavoured to establish and inculcate into the minds of men, were, the formation of the universe, the superintendency of providence, the perfection of the Divine Nature, the immortality of the soul, and the future state of rewards and punishments. They all complied with the religion of their country, as much as possible, in such particulars as did not contradict and pervert these great and fundamental doctrines of mankind. On the contrary, the persons who now set up for free-thinkers, are such as endeavour, by a little trash of words and sophistry, to weaken and destroy those very principles, for the vindication of which, freedom of thought at first became laudable and heroic. These apostates from reason and good sense, can look at the glorious frame of nature, without paying an adoration to Him that raised it; can consider the great revolutions in the universe, without lifting up their minds to that superior power which hath the direction of it; can presume to censure the Deity in his ways towards men; can level mankind with the beasts that perish; can extinguish in their own minds all the pleasing hopes of a future state, and lull themselves into a stupid security against the terrors of it. If one were to take the word priesteraft out of the mouths of these shallow monsters, they would be immediately struck dumb. It is by the help of this single term that they endeavour to disappoint the good works of the most learned and venerable order of men, and harden the hearts of the ignorant against the very light of nature, and the common received notions of mankind. We ought not to treat such miscreants as these upon the foot of fair disputants; but to pour out contempt upon them, and speak of them with scorn and infamy, as the pests of society, the revilers of human nature, and the blasphemers of a Being, whom a good man would rather die than hear dishonoured. Cicero, after having mentioned the great heroes of knowledge that recommended this divine doctrine of the immortality of the soul, calls those small pretenders to wisdom, who declared against it, certain minute philosophers, using a diminutive even of the word little, to express the despicable opinion he had of them. The contempt he throws upon them in another passage is yet more remarkable; where, to show the mean thoughts he entertains of them, he declares he would rather be in the wrong with Plato, than in the right with such company.' There is, indeed, nothing in the world so ridiculous as one of these grave philo taken philosopher. A chaste infidel, a speculative libertine, is an animal that I should not believe to be in nature, did I not sometimes meet with this species of men, that plead for the indulgence of their passions in the midst of a severe studious life, and talk against the immortality of the soul over a dish of coffee. I would fain ask a minute philosopher, what good he proposes to mankind by the publishing of his doctrines? Will they make a man a better citizen, or father of a family; a more endearing husband, friend, or son? will they enlarge his public or private virtues, or correct any of his frailties or vices? What is there either joyful or glorious in such opinions? do they either refresh or enlarge our thoughts? do they contribute to the happiness, or raise the dignity, of human nature? The only good that I have ever heard pretended to, is, that they banish terrors, and set the mind at ease. But whose terrors do they banish? It is certain, if there were any strength in their arguments, they would give greater disturbance to minds that are influenced by virtue, honour, and morality, and take from us the only comforts and supports of affliction, sickness, and old age. The minds, therefore, which they set at ease, are only those of impenitent criminals and male. factors, and which, not the good of mankind, should be in perpetual terror and alarmn. I must confess, nothing is more usual than for a free-thinker, in proportion as the insolence of scepticism is abated in him by years and knowledge, or humbled and beaten down by sorrow or sickness, to reconcile himself to the general conceptions of reasonable creatures; so that we frequently see the apostates turning from their revolt towards the end of their lives, and employing the refuse of their parts in promoting those truths which they had before endeavoured to invalidate. The history of a gentleman in France is very well known, who was so zealous a promoter of infidelity, that he had got together a select company of disciples, and travelled into all parts of the kingdom to make converts. In the midst of his fantastical success he fell sick, and was reclaimed to such a sense of his condition, that after he had passed some time in great agonies and horrors of mind, he begged those who had the care of burying him, to dress his body in the habit of a capuchin, that the devil might not run away with it; and to do further justice upon himself, desired them to tie a halter about his neck, as a mark of that ignominious punishment, which, in his own thoughts, he had so justly deserved. I would not have perfecution so far disgraced; as to wish these vermin might be animadverted |