may console ourselves under its pressures, by remembering, that they are no particular marks of divine displeasure; since all the distresses of persecution have been suffered by those, "of whom the world was not worthy ;" and the Redeemer of Mankind himself was 66 a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief."2 No. 131. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 1754. Misce Ergo aliquid nostris de moribus.-JUVENAL.8 -DRYDEN, jun.4 ONTENELLE, in his panegyric on Sir Isaac Newton, closes a long enumeration of that great philosopher's virtues and attainments, with an observation, that "he was not distinguished from other men by any singularity either natural or affected." It is an eminent instance of Newton's superiority to the rest of mankind, that he was able to separate knowledge from those weaknesses by which knowledge is generally disgraced; that he was 1 Hebrews xi. 38. 2 Isaiah liii. 3. 8 Satires xiv. 322. 4 Dryden's sons "in 1693 appeared among the translators of Juvenal."-Johnson's Works, vii. 290. 5 "Il était simple, affable, toujours de niveau avec tout le monde. Les génies du premier ordre ne méprisent point ce qui est au-dessous d'eux, tandis que les autres méprisent même ce qui est au-dessus. Il ne se croyait dispensé, ni par son mérite, ni par sa réputation, d'aucun des devoirs du able to excel in science and wisdom, without purchasing them by the neglect of little things, and that he stood alone merely because he had left the rest of mankind behind him, not because he deviated from the beaten track. Whoever, after the example of Plutarch, should compare the lives of illustrious men, might set this part of Newton's character to view with great advantage, by opposing it to that of Bacon, perhaps the only man of later ages, who has any pretensions to dispute with him the palm of genius or science. Bacon, after he had added to a long and careful contemplation of almost every other object of knowledge a curious inspection into common life, and after having surveyed nature as a philosopher, had examined "men's business and bosoms a statesman; yet failed so much in the conduct " ניי as commerce ordinaire de la vie ; nulle singularité, ni naturelle ni affectée; il savait n'être, dès qu'il le fallait, qu'un homme du commun." Euvres de Fontenelle, ed. 1818, i. 402. "There is in human nature (said Johnson) a general inclination to make people stare; and every wise man has himself to cure of it, and does cure himself."-Boswell's Johnson, ii. 74. Writing of Swift, he says:-"Whatever he did, he seemed willing to do in a manner peculiar to himself, without sufficiently considering that singularity, as it implies a contempt of the general practice, is a kind of defiance which justly provokes the hostility of ridicule."—Johnson's Works, viii. 223. 1 "I do now publish my Essays, which of all my other works have been most current: for that, as it seems, they come home to men's business and bosoms."-Bacon's Essays, Dedication to the edition of 1625. Johnson had quoted this passage earlier in the Rambler, No. 106. "He told me," writes Boswell, "that Bacon was a favourite author with him, but he had of domestic affairs, that, in the most lucrative post to which a great and wealthy kingdom could advance him, he felt all the miseries of distressful poverty, and committed all the crimes to which poverty incites. Such were at once his negligence and rapacity, that as it is said, he would gain by unworthy practices that money, which, when so acquired, his servants might steal from one end of the table, while he sat studious and abstracted at the other. As scarcely any man has reached the excellence, very few have sunk to the weakness of Bacon ; but almost all the studious tribe, as they obtain any participation of his knowledge, feel likewise some contagion of his defects; and obstruct the veneration which learning would procure, by follies greater or less, to which only learning could betray them. It has been formerly remarked by The Guardian, that the world punishes with too great severity the error of those, who imagine that the ignorance of little things may be compensated by the knowledge of great; for so it is, that as more can detect petty failings than can distinguish or esteem great qualifications, and as mankind is in general never read his works till he was compiling the English Dic tionary, in which, he said, I might see Bacon very often quoted."-Boswell's Johnson, iii. 194. According to Sir Joshua Reynolds, "Mr. Burke, speaking of Bacon's Essays, said he thought them the best of his works. Dr. Johnson was of opinion that their excellence and their value consisted in being the observations of a strong mind operating upon life, and in consequence you find there what you seldom find in other books."-Northcote's Life of Reynolds, ii. 281. more easily disposed to censure than to admiration, contempt is often incurred by slight mistakes which real virtue or usefulness cannot counterbalance.1 Yet such mistakes and inadvertencies, it is not easy for a man deeply immersed in study to avoid; no man can become qualified for the common intercourses of life, by private meditation; the manners of the world are not a regular system, planned by philosophers upon settled principles, in which every cause has a congruous effect, and one part has a just reference to another. Of the fashions prevalent in every country, a few have arisen, perhaps, from particular temperatures of the climate; a few more from the constitution of the government; but the greater part have grown up by chance; been started by caprice, been contrived by affectation, or borrowed without any just motives of choice from other countries. Of all these, the savage that hunts his prey upon the mountains, and the sage that speculates in his closet, must necessarily live in equal ignorance; yet by the observation of these trifles it is, that the ranks of mankind are kept in order, that the address of one to another is regulated, and the general business of the world carried on with facility and method. 1 "The indiscretion of believing that great qualities make up for the want of things less considerable is punished too severely in those who are guilty of it. Every day's experience shows us, among variety of people with whom we are not acquainted, that we take impressions too favourable and too disadvantageous of men at first sight from their habit."Guardian, No. 10, by Steele. These things, therefore, though small in themselves, become great by their frequency; and he very much mistakes his own interest, who, to the unavoidable unskilfulness of abstraction and retirement, adds a voluntary neglect of common forms, and increases the disadvantages of a studious course of life by an arrogant contempt of those practices, by which others endeavour to gain favour and multiply friendships.1 A real and interior disdain of fashion and ceremony, is, indeed, not very often to be found: much the greater part of those who pretend to laugh at foppery and formality, secretly wish to have possessed those qualifications which they pretend to despise and because they find it difficult to wash away the tincture which they have so deeply imbibed, endeavour to harden themselves in a sullen approbation of their own colour. Neutrality is a state, into which the busy passions of man cannot easily subside; and he who is in danger of the pangs of envy, is generally forced to recreate his imagination with an effort of comfort. 1 "Mr. Johnson," writes Mrs. Piozzi, I was indeed unjustly supposed to be a lover of singularity. Few people had a more settled reverence for the world than he, or was less captivated by new modes of behaviour introduced, or innovations on the long-received customs of common life."-Piozzi's Anecdotes, p. 108. Addison in the Tatler, No. 103, had attacked singularity. "However slightly," he writes, ": men may regard these particularities and little follies in dress and behaviour, they lead to greater evils. The bearing to be laughed at for such singularities teaches us insensibly an impertinent fortitude, and enables us to bear public censure for things which more substantially deserve it." |