Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

to take some occasion of growing jealous of him, and to follow the example he himself hath set you. This counterfeited jealousy will bring him a great deal of pleasure, if he thinks it real; for he known experimentally how much love goes along with this passion, and will besides feel something like the satisfaction of a revenge, in seeing you undergo all his own tortures. But this, indeed, is an artifice so difficult, and at the same time so disingenuous, that it ought never to be put in practice, but by such as have skill enough to cover the deceit, and innocence to render it excusable.

I shall conclude this essay with the story of Herod and Mariamne, as I have collected it out of Josephus, which may serve almost as an example to whatever can be said on this subject. 1

Mariamne had all the charms that beauty, birth, wit, and youth, could give a woman; and Herod all the love that such charms are able to raise in a warm and amorous disposition. In the midst of this his fondness for Mariamne, he put her brother to death, as he did her father not many years after. The barbarity of the action was represented to Mark Antony, who immediately summoned Herod into Egypt, to answer for the crime that was there laid to his charge. Herod attributed the summons to Antony's desire of Mariamne, whom therefore, before his departure, he gave into the custody of his uncle Joseph, with private orders to put her to death, if any such violence was offered to himself. This Joseph was much delighted with Mariamne's conversation, and endeavoured with all his art and rhetoric to set out the excess of Herod's passion for her; but when he still found her cold and incredulous, he inconsiderately told her, as a certain instance of her lord's affection, the private orders he had left behind him, which plainly shewed, according to 'Antiquities of the Jews, 6, xv. ch. 3. sec. 5, 6, 9. chap. 7. sec. 1, 2,

&c.-C.

Joseph's interpretation, that he could neither live nor die without her. This barbarous instance of a wild unreasonable passion, quite put out, for a time, those little remains of affection she still had for her lord: for now her thoughts were so wholly taken up with the cruelty of his orders, that she could not consider the kindness that produced them, and therefore represented him in her imagination, rather under the frightful idea of a murderer than a lover. Herod was at length acquitted, and dismissed by Mark Antony, when his soul was all in flames for his Mariamne; but before their meeting, he was not a little alarmed at the report he had heard of his uncle's conversation and familiarity with her in his absence. This, therefore, was the first discourse he entertained her with, in which she found it no easy matter to quiet his suspicions. But at last he appeared so well satisfied of her innocence, that, from reproaches and wranglings, he fell to tears and embraces. Both of them wept very tenderly at their reconciliation, and Herod poured out his whole soul to her in the warmest protestations of love and constancy; when, amidst all his sighs and languishings, she asked him, whether the private orders he left with his uncle Joseph were an instance of such an inflamed affection. The jealous king was immediately roused at so unexpected a question, and concluded his uncle must have been too familiar with her, before he would have discovered such a secret. In short, he put his uncle to death, and very difficultly prevailed upon himself to spare Mariamne.

After this he was forced on a second journey into Egypt, when he committed his lady to the care of Sohemus, with the same private orders he had before given his uncle, if any mischief befel himself. In the mean while Mariamne so won upon Sohemus by her presents and obliging conversation, that she drew all the secret from him, with which Herod had intrusted him; so that after his return, when he flew to her with all the

transports of joy and love, she received him coldly with sighs and tears, and all the marks of indifference and aversion. This reception so stirred up his indignation, that he had certainly slain her with his own hands, had not he feared he himself should have become the greater sufferer by it. It was not long after this, when he had another violent return of love upon him Mariamne was therefore sent for to him, whom he endeavoured to soften and reconcile with all possible conjugal caresses and endearments; but she declined his embraces, and answered all his fondness with bitter invectives for the death of her father and her brother. This behaviour so incensed Herod, that he very hardly refrained from striking her; when, in the heat of their quarrel, there came in a witness, suborned by some of Mariamne's enemies, who accused her to the king of a design to poison him. Herod was now prepared to hear any thing in her prejudice, and immediately ordered her servant to be stretched upon the rack; who, in the extremity of his tortures, confest, that his mistress's aversion to the king arose from something Sohemus had told her; but as for any design of poisoning, he utterly disowned the least knowledge of it. This confession quickly proved fatal to Sohemus, who now lay under the same suspicions and sentence that Joseph had before him on the like occasion. Nor would Herod rest here, but accused her with great vehemence, of a design upon his life, and by his authority with the judges, had her publicly condemned and executed. Herod soon after her death grew melancholy and dejected, retiring from the public administration of affairs into a solitary forest, and there abandoning himself to all the black considerations which naturally arise from a passion made up of love, remorse, pity, and despair. He used to rave for his Mariamne, and to call upon her in his distracted fits; and in all probability would soon have followed her, had not his thoughts been seasonably called off from so sad an object by public storms, which at that time very nearly threatened him.

L.

No. 173. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 18.

Remove fera monstra, tuæque

Saxificos vultus, quæcunque ea, tolle Medusa.

Remove that horrid monster, and take hence
Medusa's petrifying countenance.

OVID. Met. v. 216.

In a late paper I mentioned the project of an ingenious author for the erecting of several handicraft prizes to be contended for by our British artizans, and the influence they might have towards the improvement of our several manufactures. I have since that been very much surprised by the following advertisement which I find in the Post-Boy of the 11th instant, and again repeated in the Post-Boy of the 15th.

"ON the 9th of October next will be run for upon ColeshillHeath, in Warwickshire, a plate of six guineas value, 3 heats, by any horse, mare, or gelding, that hath not won above the value of 51. the winning horse to be sold for 101. to carry 10 stone weight, if 14 hands high; if above or under, to carry or be allowed weight for inches, and to be entered Friday the 15th at the Swan in the Coleshill, before 6 in the evening. Also a plate of less value to be run for by asses. The same day a gold ring to be grinned for by men."1

The first of these diversions that is to be exhibited by the 101. race-horses, may probably have its use; but the two last, in which the asses and men are concerned, seem to me altogether extraordinary and unaccountable. Why they should keep running asses at Coleshill, or how making mouths turns to account

'This is the first of the papers mentioned as a cure for the hypochondriac melancholy; the others are Nos. 184, 191, 203, 209, 221, 223, 235, 239, 245, 247, and 251. See Spect. No. 547.-C.

in Warwickshire, more than in any other parts of England, I cannot comprehend. I have looked over all the Olympic games, and do not find any thing in them like an ass-race, or a match at grinning. However it be, I am informed, that several asses are now kept in body-clothes, and sweated every morning upon the heath; and that all the country-fellows within ten miles of the Swan grin an hour or two in their glasses every morning, in order to qualify themselves for the 9th of October. The prize which is proposed to be grinned for, has raised such an ambition among the common people of out-grinning one another, that many very discerning persons are afraid it should spoil most of the faces in the county; and that a Warwickshire man will be known by his grin, as Roman Catholics imagine a Kentish man is by his tail. The gold ring which is made the prize of deformity, is just the reverse of the golden apple that was formerly made the prize of beauty, and should carry for its poise the old motto inverted,

Detur tetriori.

Or to accommodate it to the capacity of the combatants,

The frightfull'st grinner,

Be the winner.

In the mean while I would advise a Dutch painter to be present at this great controversy of faces, in order to make a collection of the most remarkable grins that shall be there exhibited.

I must not here omit an account which I lately received of one of these grinning matches from a gentleman, who upon reading the above-mentioned advertisement, entertained a coffee-house with the following narrative. Upon the taking of Namur,' among other public rejoicings made on that occasion, there was a gold ring given by a Whig justice of the peace to be grinned for. The

1 V. vol. i, pp. 150 and 153. Notes.-G.

« ZurückWeiter »