No. 239. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 19,1710. I tedw evitado tam I ei bezudь о1951 99

36972 aida go zorreq'9 239 siT sed to god adı vez quid Mecum certasse feretur

4. ni se natuul ow‡ 92adt From my own Apartment, October 18ud Ire is ridiculous for any man to criticise on the works of another, who has not distinguished himself by his own performances. A judge would make but an indifferent figure who had never been known at the bar. Cicero was reputed the greatest orator of his age and country before he wrote a book De Oratore; and Horace the greatest poet before he published his Art of Poetry. The observation arises naturally in any one who casts his eye upon this last mentioned author, where he will find the criticisms placed in the latter end of his book, that is, after the finest odes and satires in the Latin tongue.

A modern, whose name I shall not mention, be cause I would not make a silly paper sell, was born a critic and an examiner, and, like one of the race of the serpent's teeth, came into the world with a sword in his hand. His works put me in mind of the story that is told of a German monk, who was taking a catalogue of a friend's library, and meeting with a Hebrew book in it, entered it under the title of, "A book that has the beginning where the end should be." This author, in the last of his crudities, has amassed together a heap of quotations, to prove that Ho race and Virgil were both of them modester, men than myself; and if hisworks were to live as long as mine, they might possibly give, posterity a notion, that Isaac Bickerstaffe was a very conceited

old fellow, and as vain a man as either Tully or Sir Francis Bacon. Had this serious writer fallen upon me only, I could have overlooked it; but to see Cicero abused, is, I must confess, what I cannot bear. The censure he passes on this great man runs thus: "The itch of being very abusive, is almost inseparable from vain-glory. Tully has these two faults in so high a degree, that nothing but his being the best writer in the world can make amends for them." The scurrilous wretch goes on to say I am as bad as Tully. His words are these;

And yet the Tatler, in his paper of September 26, has outdone him in both. He speaks of hims self with more arrogance, and with more insolence of others." I am afraid, by his discourse, this gentleman has no more read Plutarch than he has Tully. If he had, he would have observed a pas! sage in that historian, wherein he has with great delicacy distinguished between two passions which are usually complicated in human nature, and which an ordinary writer would not have thought of separating. Not having my Greek spectacles by me, I shall quote the passage word for word as I find it translated to my hand. "Nevertheless, though he was intemperately fond of his own praise, yet he was very free from envying others, and most liberally profuse in commending both the ancients and his contemporaries, as is to be understood by his writings; and many of those sayings are still recorded, as that concerning Aristotle, That he was a river of flowing gold.' Of Plato's dialogue, That if Jupiter were to speak, he would discourse as he did. Theophrastus he was wont to call his peculiar delight; and being asked, which of Demosthenes his orations he liked best? He answered, The longest.'

v get

-And as for eminent men of his own time, either for eloquence or philosophy, there was not

oue

ing favourably of, render more bas

of them whom he did not, by writing or speak

Thus the critic tells us, that Cicero was excessively vain-glorious and abusive. Plutarch, that he was vain, but not abusive. Let the reader be lieve which of them he pleases. 10 20 100 90 *** After this he complains to the world, that I call him names; and that in my passion, I said, he was a flea, a louse, an owl, a bat, a small wit, a scribbler, and a nibbler. When he has thus be spoken his reader's pity, he falls into that admirable vein of mirth, which I shall set down at length, it being an exquisite piece of railery, and written in great gaiety of heart. After this list

of names, (viz. flea, louse, owl, bat, &c.) I was surprised to hear him say, that he has hitherto kept his temper pretty well; I wonder how he will write when he has lost his temper! I suppose, as he now is very angry and unmannerly, he will then be exceeding courteous and good-humoured." If I can outlive this railery, I shall be able to bear any thing.

There is a method of criticism made use of by this author, (for I shall take care how I call him a

scribbler again,) which may turn into ridicul?

any

work that was ever written, wherein there is a variety of thoughts: this the reader will observe in the following words: He (meaning me) is so intent upon being something extraordinary, that he scarce knows what he would be; and is as fruitful in his similes, as a brother of his whom I lately took notice of In the compass of a few lines, he compares himself to a fox to Daniel Burgess, to the knight of the red cross, to an oak with ivy about it, and to a great man with an equipage." I think myself as much honoured by being joined in this part of his paper with the gentleman whom he here calls my brother, as I am in the be

ginning of it, by being mentioned with Horace and Virgilotelli 919m Tabast

It is very hard that a man cannot publish ten papers without stealing from himself; but to shew you that this is only a knack of writing, and that the author is got into a certain road of criticism, I shall set down his remarks on the works of the gentleman whom he here he here glances upon, as they stand in his 6th paper, and desire the reader, to compare them with the foregoing passage upon mine. dotai,ellst.ad

66

In thirty lines his patron is a river, the Pri mum Mobile, a Pilot, a Victim, the Sun, any Thing, and Nothing. He bestows increase, conceals his source, makes the machine move, teaches to steer, expiates our offences, raises vapours, and looks larger as he sets."

What poem can be safe from this sort of criticism? I think I was never in my life so much of fended as at a wag whom I once met with in a coffee-house: he had in his hand one of the Mis cellanies, and was reading the following short copy of verses, which, without flattery to the author, is (I think) as beautiful in its kind as any one in the English tongue.

Flavia the least and slightest toy

Can with resistless art employ.

- 02 21 This fan in meaner hands would prover volict sit dAn engine of small force in lovegno

coqu toat Iuftiut But she with such an air and mien, word 901602 Not to be told,

or

seen,

vel Directs its wantons So,

That it wounds piore than Cupid's bow; piton loot 02-991 Gives.coolness to the matchless dame, di zourquod yvi driw To ev'ry other breast a flame.dlo ilgiad sɗt oppqiups, pe die mam jeg12,6 of bap di tpods When this coxcomb had done reading them “Hey-day! (says he,) what instrument is this that Flavia employs in such a manner as is not to

be told, or safely seen? In ten lines it is a toy, a Cupid's bow, a fan, and an engine in love. It has wanton motions, it wounds, it cools, and i Linflames."

Such criticisms make a man of sense sick, and a fool merry.

The next paragraph of the paper we are talking of, falls upon somebody whom I am at a loss to guess at: but I find the whole invective turns upon a man who (it seems) has been imprisoned for debt. Whoever he was, I most heartily pity him; but at the same time must put the Examiner in mind, that, notwithstanding he is a critic, he still ought to remember he is a Christian. Poverty was never thought a proper subject for ridicule; and I do not remember that I ever met with a satire upon a beggar.

As for those little retortings of my own expressions, of being dull by design, witty in October, shining, excelling, and so forth; they are the common cavils of every witling, who has no other method of showing his parts, but by little variations and repetitions of the man's words whom he attacks.

But the truth of it is, the paper before me, not only in this particular, but in its very essence, is like Ovid's echo:

Quæ nec reticere loquentii,

Nec prior ipsa loqui didicit.

I should not have deserved the character of an Censor, had I not animadverted upon the abovementioned author by a gentle chastisement: but I know my reader will not pardon me, unless I declare, that nothing of this nature, for the future,! (unless it be written with some wit,) shall divert me from my care of the public.