No. 523. THURSDAY, OCT. 30, 1712. Nunc augur Apollo, Nunc Lycia sortes, nunc et Jove missus ab ipso Scilicet is superis labor VIRG. En. iv. 376. Now Lycian lots, and now the Delian god, I AM always highly delighted with the discovery of any rising genius among my countrymen. For this reason I have read over, with great pleasure, the late miscellany published by Mr. Pope, in which there are many excellent compositions of that ingenious gentleman. I have had a pleasure of the same kind in perusing a poem that is just published On the Prospect of Peace *; and which, I hope, will meet with such a reward from its patrons as so noble a performance deserves. I was particularly well pleased to find that the author had not amused himself with fables out of the pagan theology, and that when he hints at any thing of this nature he alludes to it only as to a fable. Many of our modern authors, whose learning very often extends no farther than Ovid's Metamorphoses, do not know how to celebrate a great man, without mixing a parcel of school-boy tales with the recital of his actions. If you read a poem on a fine woman among the authors of this class, you shall see that it turns more upon Venus or Helen than on the party By Mr. Thomas Tickell. VOL. VII. * U concerned. I have known a copy of verses on a great hero highly commended; but, upon asking to hear some of the beautiful passages, the admirer of it has repeated to me a speech of Apollo, or a description of Polypheme. At other times, when I have searched for the actions of a great man, who gave a subject to the writer, I have been entertained with the exploits of a river god, or have been forced to attend a Fury in her mischievous progress, from one end of the poem to the other. When we are at school, it is necessary for us to be acquainted with the system of pagan theology; and we may be allowed to enliven a theme, or point an epigram, with a heathen god; but when we would write a manly panegyric, that should carry in it all the colours of truth, nothing can be more ridiculous than to have recourse to our Jupiters and Junos. No thought is beautiful which is not just; and no thought can be just which is not founded in truth, or at least in that which passes for such. In mock heroic poems, the use of the heathen mythology is not only excusable, but graceful, because it is the design of such compositions to divert, by adapting the fabulous machines of the ancients to low subjects, and at the same time by ridiculing such kinds of machinery in modern writers. If any are of opinion that there is a necessity of admitting these classical legends into our serious compositions, in order to give them a more poetical turn, I would recommend to their consideration the pastorals of Mr. Philips. One would have thought it impossible for this kind of poetry to have subsisted without fawns and satyrs, wood-nymphs and water-nymphs, with all the tribe of rural deities. But we see he has given a new life and a more natural beauty to this way of writing, by substituting in the place of these antiquated fables, the superstitious mythology which prevails among the shepherds of our own country. Virgil and Homer might compliment their heroes, by interweaving the actions of deities with their achievements; but for a Christian author to write in the pagan creed, to make prince Eugene a favourite of Mars, or to carry on a correspondence between Bellona and the marshal de Villars, would be downright puerility, and unpardonable in a poet that is past sixteen. It is want of sufficient elevation in a genius to describe realities, and place them in a shining light, that makes him have recourse to such trifling antiquated fables; as a man may write a fine description of Bacchus or Apollo, that does not know how to draw the character of any of his contemporaries. In order therefore to put a stop to this absurd practice, I shall publish the following edict, by virtue of that spectatorial authority with which I stand invested. 'WHEREAS the time of a general peace is, in all appearance, drawing near, being informed that there are several ingenious persons who intend to show their talents on so happy an occasion; and being willing, as much as in me lies, to prevent that effusion of nonsense which we have good cause to apprehend; I do hereby strictly require every person who shall write on this subject, to remember that he is a Christian, and not to sacrifice his catechism to his poetry. In order to it, I do expect of qim in the first place to make his own poem, without depending upon Phoebus for any part of it, or calling out for aid upon any one of the Muses by name. I do likewise positively forbid the sending of Mercury with any particular message or despatch relating to the peace, and shall by no means suffer Minerva to take upon her the shape of any plenipotentiary concerned in this great work. I do further declare, that I shall not allow the Destinies to have had a hand in the deaths of the several thousands who have been slain in the late war, being of opinion that all such deaths may be very well accounted for by the Christian system of powder and ball. I do therefore strictly forbid the Fates to cut the thread of man's life upon any pretence whatsoever, unless it be for the sake of the rhyme. And whereas I have good reason to fear that Neptune will have a great deal of business on his hands, in several poems which we may now suppose are upon the anvil, I do also prohibit his appearance, unless it be done in metaphor, simile, or any very short allusion; and that even here he be not permitted to enter but with great caution and circumspection. I desire that the same rule may be extended to his whole fraternity of heathen gods; it being my design to condemn every poem to the flames in which Jupiter thunders, or exercises any other act of authority which does not belong to him: in short, I expect that no pagan agent shall be introduced, or any fact related, which a man cannot give credit to with a good conscience. Provided always, that nothing herein contained shall extend, or be construed to extend, to several of the female poets in this nation, who shall be still left in full possession of their gods and goddesses, in the same manner as if this paper had never been written.' No. 524. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 31, 1712. Nos populo damus· As the world leads, we follow. SEN. WHEN I first of all took it into my head to write dreams and visions, I determined to print nothing of that nature which was not of my own invention. But several laborious dreamers have of late communicated to me works of this nature, which, for their reputations and my own, I have hitherto suppressed. Had I printed every one that came to my hands, my book of speculations would have been little else but a book of visions. Some of my correspondents have indeed been so very modest as to offer at an excuse for their not being in a capacity to dream better. I have by me, for example, the dream of a young gentleman not past fifteen; I have likewise by me the dream of a person of quality, and another called The Lady's Dream. In these, and other pieces of the same nature, it is supposed the usual allowances will be made to the age, condition, and sex, of the dreamer. To prevent this inundation of dreams, which daily flows in upon me, I shall apply to all dreamers of dreams the advice which Epictetus has couched, after his manner, in a very simple and concise precept. Never tell thy dream,' says that philosopher; for though thou thyself mayest take a pleasure in telling thy dream, another will take no pleasure in hearing it.' After this short preface, I must do justice to two or three visions which I have lately published, and which I have owned to have been written by other hands. I shall add a dream |