The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 by George A. Aitken (easy books to read in english .txt) 📖

most accomplished and virtuous characters of the age in which she lived, was the daughter of Theophilus Hastings, the 7th Earl of Huntingdon, and of Elizabeth, eldest daughter and co-heiress to John Lewes, of Ledstone, in Yorkshire, Knt. and Bart. Her father succeeded to the honours and estate of the family, Feb. 13, 1655, and was in 1687 Lord Chief Justice, and Justice in Eyre of all the King's forests, &c., beyond Trent; Lord Lieutenant of the counties of Leicester and Derby; Captain of the Band of Gentlemen Pensioners, and of the Privy Council to King James II. He died suddenly at his lodgings in Charles Street, St. James's, May 13, 1701, and was succeeded in his honours and estate by his son, and her brother, Charles, who died unmarried, Feb. 22, 1704. Lady Elizabeth Hastings was born April 19, 1682, and died Dec. 22, 1739. It is said, with great probability, that since the commencement of the Christian era, scarce any age has produced a lady of such high birth and superior accomplishments, that was a greater blessing to many, or a brighter pattern to all. There is an admirable sketch of this illustrious lady's character, drawn soon after her death, in the tenth volume of the
Gentleman's Magazine , p. 36, probably by Samuel Johnson. See also "An historical Character relating to the holy and exemplary Life of the Right Honourable the Lady Elisabeth Hastings, &c. By Thomas Barnard, A.M. Printed at Leeds, in 1742, 12mo" (Nichols).--Lady Elizabeth Hastings, who came into a fortune upon the death of her brother George, Earl of Huntingdon, settled at Ledstone House, where she was the Lady Bountiful of the neighbourhood. Her whole estate, however, is said to have been less than £3000 a year. The best of the clergy of the day were among her friends. She helped Berkeley in his Bermuda Mission scheme, and she befriended Miss Mary Astell. Ralph Thoresby, who visited her, was "extremely pleased with the most agreeable conversation of the pious and excellent Lady Elizabeth Hastings." ("Diary," ii. 82). She was one of the numerous eligible ladies that the friends of Lord Raby, afterwards Earl of Strafford, suggested to him as a suitable wife ("Wentworth Papers," pp. 29, 56). The character of Aspasia in this paper has been attributed to Congreve, on the ground, apparently, that he knew Lady Elizabeth Hastings' half-brother, Theophilus, afterwards Earl of Huntingdon. See No. 49, note.]

[Footnote 408: The remainder of this paper is by Addison; see Steele's Preface. Drury Lane Theatre was closed by an order of the Lord Chamberlain, as mentioned in No. 30.]

[Footnote 409: Christopher Rich.]

[Footnote 410: A bargain.]

[Footnote 411: Valentini Urbani sang in Italian in the opera of "Camilla," in 1707. His acting seems to have been better than his voice (Burney's "History of Music," iv. 208).]

[Footnote 412: See No. 20.]

[Footnote 413: John Dennis's unsuccessful tragedy of "Appius and Virginia" was produced in 1709. On that occasion he introduced a new method of making thunder (see "Dunciad," ii. 226), which was found useful by managers. Afterwards, when Dennis found his invention being used in "Macbeth," he exclaimed, "'Sdeath! that's my thunder. See how the fellows use me, they have silenced my tragedy, and they roar out my thunder" (Oldys, MS. notes on Langbaine).]

[Footnote 414: "Baby" was often used for "doll."]

[Footnote 415: See No. 18.]


No. 43. [STEELE.

From Saturday, July 16 , to Tuesday, July 19 , 1709.

Bene nummatum decorat suadela Venusque,
HOR. 1 Ep. vi. 38.

* * * * *


White's Chocolate-house, July 18.

I write from hence at present to complain, that wit and merit are so little encouraged by people of rank and quality, that the wits of the age are obliged to run within Temple Bar for patronage. There is a deplorable instance of this in the case of Mr. D----y,[416] who has dedicated his inimitable comedy, called, "The Modern Prophets," to a worthy knight,[417] to whom, it seems, he had before communicated his plan, which was, to ridicule the ridiculous of our established doctrine. I have elsewhere celebrated the contrivance of this excellent drama; but was not, till I read the dedication, wholly let into the religious design of it. I am afraid it has suffered discontinuance at this gay end of the town, for no other reason but the piety of the purpose. There is however in this epistle the true life of panegyrical performance; and I do not doubt but, if the patron would part with it, I can help him to others with good pretensions to it; viz., of uncommon understanding, who would give him as much as he gave for it. I know perfectly well a noble person to whom these words (which are the body of the panegyric) would fit to a hair.

"Your easiness of humour, or rather your harmonious disposition, is so admirably mixed with your composure, that the rugged cares and disturbance that public affairs brings with it, which does so vexatiously affect the heads of other great men of business, &c. does scarce ever ruffle your unclouded brow so much as with a frown. And what above all is praiseworthy, you are so far from thinking yourself better than others, that a flourishing and opulent fortune, which by a certain natural corruption in its quality, seldom fails to infect other possessors with pride, seems in this case as if only providentially disposed to enlarge your humility.

"But I find, sir, I am now got into a very large field, where though I could with great ease raise a number of plants in relation to your merit of this plauditory nature; yet for fear of an author's general vice, and that the plain justice I have done you should, by my proceeding and others' mistaken judgment, be imagined flattery, a thing the bluntness of my nature does not care to be concerned with, and which I also know you abominate."

It is wonderful to see how many judges of these fine things spring up every day by the rise of stocks, and other elegant methods of abridging the way to learning and criticism. But I do hereby forbid all dedications to any persons within the city of London, except Sir Francis, Sir Stephen,[418] and the Bank, will take epigrams and epistles as value received for their notes; and the East India Companies accept of heroic poems for their sealed bonds. Upon which bottom, our publishers have full power to treat with the city in behalf of us authors, to enable traders to become patrons and Fellows of the Royal Society, as well as receive certain degrees of skill in the Latin and Greek tongues, according to the quantity of the commodities which they take off our hands.


Grecian Coffee-house, July 18.

The learned have so long laboured under the imputation of dryness and dulness in their accounts of their phenomena, that an ingenious gentleman of our society has resolved to write a system of philosophy in a more lively method, both as to the matter and language, than has been hitherto attempted. He read to us the plan upon which he intends to proceed. I thought his account, by way of fable of the worlds about us, had so much vivacity in it, that I could not forbear transcribing his hypothesis, to give the reader a taste of my friend's treatise, which is now in the press.[419]

"The inferior deities having designed on a day to play a game at football, knead together a numberless collection of dancing atoms into the form of seven rolling globes: and that nature might be kept from a dull inactivity, each separate particle is endued with a principle of motion, or a power of attraction, whereby all the several parcels of matter draw each other proportionately to their magnitudes and distances, into such a remarkable variety of different forms, as to produce all the wonderful appearances we now observe in empire, philosophy, and religion. To proceed; at the beginning of the game, each of the globes being struck forward with a vast violence, ran out of sight, and wandered in a straight line through the infinite spaces. The nimble deities pursue, breathless almost, and spent in the eager chase; each of them caught hold of one, and stamped it with his name; as, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, and so of the rest. To prevent this inconvenience for the future, the seven are condemned to a precipitation, which in our inferior style we call 'gravity.' Thus the tangential and centripetal forces, by their counter-struggle, make the celestial bodies describe an exact ellipsis."

There will be added to this an appendix, in defence of the first day of the term according to the Oxford Almanac,[420] by a learned knight of this realm, with an apology for the said knight's manner of dress; proving, that his habit, according to this hypothesis, is the true modern and fashionable; and that buckles are not to be worn, by this system, till the 10th of March, in the year 1714, which, according to the computation of some of our greatest divines, is to be the first year of the Millennium[421]; in which blessed age, all habits will be reduced to a primitive simplicity; and whoever shall be found to have persevered in a constancy of dress, in spite of all the allurements of profane and heathen habits, shall be rewarded with a never-fading doublet of a thousand years. All points in the system which are doubted, shall be attested by the knight's extemporary oath, for the satisfaction of his readers.


Will's Coffee-house, July 18.

We were upon the heroic strain this evening, and the question was, What is the True Sublime? Many very good discourses happened thereupon; after which a gentleman at the table, who is, it seems, writing on that subject, assumed the argument; and though he ran through many instances of sublimity from the ancient writers, said, he had hardly known an occasion wherein the true greatness of soul, which animates a general in action, is so well represented, with regard to the person of whom it was spoken, and the time in which it was writ, as in a few lines in a modern poem: "there is," continued he, "nothing so forced and constrained, as what we frequently meet with in tragedies; to make a man under the weight of a great sorrow, or full of meditation upon what he is soon to execute, cast about for a simile to what he himself is, or the thing which he is going to act: but there is nothing more proper and natural than for a poet, whose business is to describe, and who is spectator of one in that circumstance when his mind is working upon a great image, and that the ideas hurry upon his imagination--I say, there is nothing so natural, as for a poet to relieve and clear himself from the burthen of thought at that time, by uttering his conception in simile and metaphor. The highest act of the mind of man, is to possess itself with tranquillity in imminent danger, and to have its thoughts so free, as to act at that time without perplexity. The ancient poets have compared this sedate courage to a rock that remains immovable amidst