Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

NO. 3. SATURDAY, MARCH 3.

Quoi quisque fere studio devinctus adhæret:
Aut Quibus in rebus multùm sumus ante morati :
Atque in quâ ratione fuit contenta magis mens;
In somnis eadem plerumque videmur obire.

LUCR. L. 4. 959.

-What studies please, what most delight,
And fill men's thoughts, they dream them o'er at night.

СВЕЕСН.

In one of my late rambles, or rather speculations, I looked into the great hall where the Bank is kept, and was not a little pleased to see the directors, secretaries, and clerks, with all the other members of that wealthy corporation, ranged in their several stations, according to the parts they act in that just and regular æconomy. This revived in my memory the many discourses which I had both read and heard concerning the decay of public credit, with the methods of restoring it, and which, in my opinion, have always been defective, because they have always been made with an eye to separate interests, and party principles.

The thoughts of the day gave my mind employment for the whole night, so that I fell insensibly into a kind of methodical dream, which disposed all my contemplations into a vision or allegory, or what else the reader shall please to call it.

Methoughts I returned to the great hall, where I had been the morning before, but, to my surprise, instead of the company that I left there, I saw towards the upper end of the hall a beautiful virgin, seated on a throne of gold. told me) was Public Credit. The walls, instead of being adorned with pictures and maps, were hung with many Acts of Parliament written in golden letters. At the upper end of the

Her name (as they

Methoughts. Rather Methought, for Methinks (though the composition seems strange) is a verb, of which methought is the preterperfect.-H.

hall was the Magna Charta, with the Act of Uniformity on the right hand, and the Act of Toleration on the left. At the lower end of the hall was the Act of Settlement, which was placed full in the eye of the virgin that sat upon the throne. Both the sides of the hall were covered with such Acts of Parliament as had been made for the establishment of public funds. The lady seemed to set an unspeakable value upon these several pieces of furniture, insomuch that she often refreshed her eye with them, and often smiled with a secret pleasure, as she looked upon them; but, at the same time, shewed a very particular uneasiness, if she saw any thing" approaching that might hurt them. She appeared, indeed, infinitely timorous in all her behaviour; and, whether it was from the delicacy of her constitution, or that she was troubled with vapours, as I was afterwards told by one who I found was none of her well-wishers, she changed colour, and startled at every thing she heard. She was likewise (as I afterwards found) a greater valetudinarian than any I had ever met with, even in her own sex, and subject to such momentary consumptions, that, in the twinkling of an eye, she would fall away from the most florid complexion, and the most healthful state of body, and wither into a skeleton. Her recoveries were often as sudden as her decays, insomuch that she would revive in a moment out of a wasting distemper, into a habit of the highest health and vigour.

I had very soon an opportunity of observing these quick turns and changes in her constitution. There sate at her feet a couple of secretaries, who received every hour letters from all parts of the world, which the one or the other of them was perpetually reading to her; and, according to the news she heard, to which

[ocr errors]

Any thing. It should be something.-H.

This note of Hurd applies to the reading of Tickell's edition as if she saw, which has been corrected by Chalmers and other editors.-G.

she was exceedingly attentive, she changed colour, and discov ered many symptoms of health or sickness.

Behind the throne was a prodigious heap of bags of money, which were piled upon one another so high, that they touched the ceiling. The floor, on her right hand and on her left, was covered with vast sums of gold that rose up in pyramids on either side of her but this I did not so much wonder at, when I heard, upon inquiry, that she had the same virtue in her touch, which the poets tell us a Lydian king was formerly possessed of; and that she could convert whatever she pleased into that precious metal.

After a little dizziness, and confused hurry of thought, which a man often meets with in a dream, methoughts the hall was alarmed, the doors flew open, and there entered a half a dozen of the most hideous phantoms that I had ever seen (even in a dream) before that time. They came in two by two, though matched in the most dissociable manner, and mingled together in a kind of dance. It would be tedious to describe their habits and persons, for which reason I shall only inform my reader, that the first couple were Tyranny and Anarchy; the second were Bigotry and Atheism; the third, the genius of a commonwealth and a young man of about twenty-two years of age,' whose name I could not learn. He had a sword in his right hand, which in the dance he often brandished at the Act of Settlement; and a citizen who stood by me, whispered in my ear, that he saw a spunge in his left hand. The dance of so many jarring natures put me in mind of the sun, moon, and earth, in the Rehearsal,' that danced together for no other end but to eclipse one another.

The reader will easily suppose, by what has been before said,

1 James Stuart; born June 10, 1688, brother of Queen Anne and claimant of the throne, from which he was excluded by the act of settlement. V. also Tatler 187.-G.

To wipe out the national debt.-C.
Rehearsal-Act v. sc. 1.-C.

that the lady on the throne would have been almost frightened to distraction, had she seen but any one of these spectres; what then must have been her condition when she saw them all in a body? She fainted and died away at the sight..

Et neque jam color est misto candore rubori;
Nec vigor, et vires, et quæ modò visa placebant;

Nec corpus remanet

Ov. MET. MET. 3. 491.

-Her spirits faint,

Her blooming cheeks assume a pallid teint,

And scarce her form remains.

There was a great change in the hill of money bags, and the heaps of money; the former shrinking, and falling into so many empty bags, that I now found not above a tenth part of them had been filled with money. The rest that took up the same space, and made the same figure as the bags that were really filled with money, had been blown up with air, and called into my memory the bags full of wind, which Homer tells us his hero received as a present from Eolus. The great heaps of gold, on either side the throne, now appeared to be only heaps of paper, or little piles of notched sticks, bound up together in bundles, like Bath faggots.

Whilst I was lamenting this sudden desolation that had been made before me, the whole scene vanished: in the room of the frightful spectres, there now entered a second dance of apparitions very agreeably matched together, and made up of very amiable phantoms. The first pair was Liberty, with Monarchy at her right hand; the second was Moderation leading in Religion; and the third, a person whom I had never seen,' with the genius of Great Britain. At the first entrance the lady revived; the bags swelled to their former bulk; the pile of faggots, and heaps of The Elector of Hanover-afterwards George I-C. V. Freeholder, No. 2.-G.

paper, changed into pyramids of guineas: and, for my own part, I was so transported with joy, that I awaked; though, I must confess, I would fain have fallen asleep again to have closed my vision, if I could have done it.' C.

No. 5. TUESDAY, MARCH 6.

Spectatum admissi risum teneatis?

HOE. Ars. Poet. V. 5.

Admitted to the sight, would you not laugh?

AN opera may be allowed to be extravagantly lavish in its decorations, as its only design is to gratify the senses, and keep up an indolent attention in the audience. Common sense, however, requires, that there should be nothing in the scenes and machines which may appear childish and absurd. How would the wits of King Charles's time have laughed to have seen Nicolini exposed to a tempest in robes of ermine, and sailing in an open boat upon a sea of pasteboard? What a field of raillery would they have been let into, had they been entertained with painted dragons spitting wildfire, enchanted chariots drawn by Flanders mares, and real cascades in artificial landscapes! A little skill in criticism would inform us, that shadows and realities ought not to be mixed together in the same piece; and that the scenes which are designed as the representations of nature, should be filled with resemblances, and not with the things themselves. If one would represent a wild champain country filled with herds and flocks, it

1 Though Addison professes to avoid party topics in the Spectator, this number was a direct appeal to the partizans of the House of Hanover; against which some of the leading Tories were supposed to be plotting with the connivance of the Queen herself.-G.

« ZurückWeiter »