It is impossible that a person should exert himself to advantage in an assembly, whether it be his part either to sing or speak, who lies under too great oppressions of modesty. I remember, upon talking with a friend of mine concerning the force of pronunciation, our discourse led us into the enumeration of the several organs of speech which an orator ought to have in perfection, as the tongue, the teeth, the lips, the nose, the palate, and the windpipe. Upon which, says my friend, you have omitted the most material organ of them all, and that is the forehead. art. But notwithstanding an excess of modesty obstructs the tongue, and renders it unfit for its offices, a due proportion of it is thought so requisite to an orator, that rhetoricians have recommended it to their disciples as a particular in their Cicero tells us, that he never liked an orator, who did not appear in some little confusion at the beginning of his speech, and confesses that he himself never entered upon an oration without trembling and concern. It is, indeed, a kind of deference which is due to a great assembly, and seldom fails to raise a benevolence in the audience towards the person who speaks. My correspondent has taken notice, that the bravest men often appear timorous on these occasions; as indeed we may observe that there is generally no creature more impudent than a coward. -Linguâ melior; sed frigida bello A bold tongue, and a feeble arm, are the qualifications of Drances in Virgil; as Homer, to express a man both timorous and saucy, makes use of a kind of point, which is very rarely to be met with in his writings; namely, that he had the eyes of a dog, but the heart of a deer. A just and reasonable modesty does not only recommend eloquence, but sets off every great talent which a man can be possessed of. It heightens all the virtues which it accompanies; like the shades in paintings, it raises and rounds every figure, and makes the colours more beautiful, though not so glaring as they would be without it. Modesty is not only an ornament, but also a guard to virtue. It It is a kind of quick and delicate "feeling" in the soul, which makes her shrink and withdraw herself from everything that has danger in it. It is such an exquisite sensibility, as warns her to shun the first appearance of everything which is hurtful. I cannot at present recollect either the place or time of what I am going to mention; but I have read somewhere in the history of ancient Greece, that the women of the country were seized with an unaccountable melancholy, which disposed several of them to make away with themselves. The senate, after having tried many expedients to prevent this self-murder, which was so frequent among them, published an edict, that if any woman whatever should lay violent hands upon herself, her corpse should be exposed naked in the street, and dragged about the city in the most public manner. This edict immediately put a stop to the practice which was before so common. We may see in this instance the strength of female modesty, which was able to overcome the violence even of madness and despair. The fear of shame in the fair sex was in those days more prevalent than that of death. If modesty has so great an influence over our actions, and is in many cases so impregnable a fence to virtue, what can more undermine morality than that politeness which reigns among the unthinking part of mankind, and treats as unfashionable the most ingenuous part of our behaviour; which recommends impudence as good breeding, and keeps a man always in countenance, not because he is innocent, but because he is shameless. Seneca thought modesty so great a check to vice, that he prescribes to us the practice of it in secret, and advises us to raise it in ourselves upon imaginary occasions, when such as are real do not offer themselves; for this is the meaning of his precept, that when we are by ourselves, and in our greatest solitudes, we should fancy that Cato stands before us, and sees everything we do. In short, if you banish Modesty out of the world, she carries away with her half the virtue that is in it. After these reflections on modesty, as it is a virtue, I must observe, that there is a vicious modesty, which justly deserves to be ridiculed, and which those persons very often discover, who value themselves most upon a well-bred confidence. This happens when a man is ashamed to act up to his reason, and would not upon any consideration be surprised in the practice of those duties, for the performance of which he was sent into the world. Many an impudent libertine would blush to be caught in a serious discourse, and would scarce be able to show his head, after having disclosed a religious thought. Decency of behaviour, all outward show of virtue, and abhorrence of vice, are carefully avoided by this set of shamed-faced people, as what would disparage their gaiety of temper, and infallibly bring them to dishonour. This is such a poorness of spirit, such a despicable cowardice, such a degenerate, abject state of mind, as one would think human nature incapable of, did we not meet with frequent instances of it in ordinary conversation. If a There is another kind of vicious modesty, which makes a man ashamed of his person, his birth, his profession, his poverty, or the like misfortunes, which it was not in his choice to prevent, and is not in his power to rectify. man appears ridiculous by any of the aforementioned circumstances, he becomes much more so by being out of countenance for them. They should rather give him occasion to excite a noble spirit, and to palliate those imperfections which are not in his power, by those perfections which are; or, to use a very witty allusion of an eminent author, he should imitate Cæsar, who, because his head was bald, covered that defect with laurels. No. 233. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 27. -Tanquam hæc sint nostri medicina furoris, VIRG. I SHALL, in this paper, discharge myself of the promise I have made to the public, by obliging them with a translation of the little Greek manuscript, which is said to have been a piece of those records that is preserved in the temple of Apollo upon the promontory of Leucate: it is a short history of the Lover's Leap, and is inscribed, "An account of persons, male and female, who offered up their vows in the temple of the Pythian Apollo, in the forty-sixth Olympiad, and leaped from the promontory of Leucate into the Ionian Sea, in order to cure themselves of the passion of love." This account is very dry in many parts, as only mentioning the name of the lover who leaped, the person he leaped for, and relating, in short, that he was either cured, or killed, or maimed, by the fall. It indeed gives the names of so many who died by it, that it would have looked like a bill of mortality had I translated it at full length; I have therefore made an abridgment of it, and only extracted such particular passages as have something extraordinary, either in the case, or in the cure, or in the fate of the person who is mentioned in it. After this short preface, take the account as follows. Battus, the son of Menalcas, the Sicilian, leaped for Bombyca the musician: got rid of his passion with the loss of his right leg and arm, which were broken in the fall. Melissa, in love with Daphnis, very much bruised, but escaped with life. Cynisca, the wife of Eschines, being in love with Lycus; and Eschines her husband being in love with Eurilla; (which had made this married couple very uneasy to one another for several years;) both the husband and the wife took the leap by consent; they both of them escaped, and have lived very happily together ever since. Larissa, a virgin of Thessaly deserted by Plexippus, after a courtship of three years; she stood upon the brow of the promontory for some time, and having thrown down a ring, a bracelet, and a little picture, with other presents which she had received from Plexippus, she threw herself into the sea, and was taken up alive. N. B. Larissa, before she leaped, made an offering of a silver Cupid, in the temple of Apollo. Simatha, in love with Daphnis the Myndian, perished in the fall. Charixus, the brother of Sappho, in love with Rhodope the courtesan, having spent his whole estate upon her, was advised by his sister to leap in the beginning of his amour, but would not hearken to her till he was reduced to his last talent; being forsaken by Rhodope, at length resolved to take the leap. Perished in it. Aridæus, a beautiful youth of Epirus, in love with Praxinoe, the wife of Thespis, escaped without damage, saving only that two of his foreteeth were struck out, and his nose a little flatted. Cleora, a widow of Ephesus, being inconsolable for the death of her husband, was resolved to take this leap, in order to get rid of her passion for his memory; but being arrived at the promontory, she there met with Dimmachus the Miletian, and after a short conversation with him, laid aside the thoughts of her leap, and married him in the temple of Apollo. N. B. Her widow's weeds are still to be seen hanging up in the western corner of the temple. Olphis, the fisherman, having received a box on the ear from Thestylis the day before, and being determined to have no more to do with her, leaped, and escaped with life. Atalanta, an old maid, whose cruelty had several years before driven two or three despairing lovers to this leap; being now in the fifty-fifth year of her age, and in love with an officer of Sparta, broke her neck in the fall. Hipparchus, being passionately fond of his own wife, who was enamoured of Bathyllus, leaped and died of his fall; upon which his wife married her gallant. Tettyx, the dancing-master, in love with Olympia, an Athenian matron, threw himself from the rock with great agility, but was crippled in the fall. Diagoras, the usurer, in love with his cook-maid; he peeped several times over the precipice, but his heart misgiving him, he went back, and married her that evening. Cinædus, after having entered his own name in the Pythian records, being asked the name of the person whom he leaped for, and being ashamed to discover it, he was set aside, and not suffered to leap. Eunica, a maid of Paphos, aged nineteen, in love with Eurybates. Hurt in the fall, but recovered. N. B. This was her second time of leaping. Hesperus, a young man of Tarentum, in love with his master's daughter. Drowned, the boats not coming in soon enough to his relief. Sappho the Lesbian, in love with Phaon, arrived at the temple of Apollo, habited like a bride in garments as white as snow. She wore a garland of myrtle on her head, and carried in her hand a little musical instrument of her own invention. After having sung an hymn to Apollo, she hung up her garland on one side of his altar, and her harp on the other. She then tucked up her vestments like a Spartan virgin, and amidst thousands of spectators, who were anxious for her safety, and offered up vows for her deliverance, marched directly forwards to the utmost summit of the |