son accused makes his innocence plainly to appear upon his trial, the accuser is immediately put to an ignominious death; and out of his goods or lands the innocent person is quadruply recompensed for the loss of his time, for the danger he underwent, for the hardship of his imprisonment, and for all the charges he has been at in making his defence; or, if that fund be deficient, it is largely supplied by the crown. The emperor also confers on him some public mark of his favour, and proclamation is made of his innocence through the whole city. They look upon fraud as a greater crime than theft, and therefore seldom fail to punish it with death; for they allege, that care and vigilance, with a very common understanding, may preserve a man's goods from thieves, but honesty has no fence against superior cunning; and since it is necessary that there should be a perpetual intercourse of buying and selling, and dealing upon credit; where fraud is permitted and connived at, or has no law to punish it, the honest dealer is always undone, and the knave gets the advantage. I remember, when I was once interceding with the king for a criminal who had wronged his master of a great sum of money, which he had received by order, and ran away with; and happening to tell his majesty, by way of extenuation, that it was only a breach of trust, the emperor thought it monstrous in me to offer as a defence the greatest aggravation of the crime; and truly I had little to say in return, farther than the common answer, that different nations had different customs; for I confess, I was heartily ashamed. In choosing persons for all employments, they have more regard to good morals than to great abilities; for, since government is necessary to mankind, they believe that the common size of human understanding is fitted to some station or other; and that Providence never intended to make the management of public affairs a mystery to be comprehended only by a few persons of sublime genius, of which there seldom are three born in an age but they suppose truth, justice, temperance, and the like, to be in every man's power; the practice of which virtues, assisted by experience and a good intention, would qualify any man for the service of his country, except where a course of study is required. But they thought the want of moral virtues was so far from being supplied by superior endowments of the mind, that employments could never be put into such dangerous hands as those of persons so qualified; and at least, that the mistakes committed by ignorance, in a virtuous disposition, would never be of such fatal consequence to the public weal, as the practices of man, whose inclinations led him to be corrupt, and who had great abilities to manage, to multiply, and defend his corruptions. And here it may, perhaps, divert the curious reader, to give some account of my domestics, and my manner of living in this country, during a residence of nine months and thirteen days. Having a head mechanically turned, and being likewise forced by necessity, I had made for myself a table and chair convenient enough, out of the largest trees in the royal park. Two hundred sempstresses were employed to make me shirts, and linen for my bed and table, all of the strongest and coarsest kind they could get; which, however, they were forced to quilt together in several folds, for the thickest was some degrees finer than lawn. Their linen is usually three inches wide, and three feet make a piece. The sempstresses took my measure as I lay on the ground, one standing at my neck, and another at my mid-leg, with a strong cord extended, that each held by the end, while a third measured the length of the cord with a rule of an inch long. Then they measured my right thumb, and desired no more; for by a mathematical computation, that twice round the thumb is once round the wrist, and so on to the neck and the waist, and by the help of my old shirt, which I displayed on the ground before them for a pattern, they fitted me exactly. Three hundred tailors were employed in the same manner to make me clothes; but they had another contrivance for taking my measure, I kneeled down, and they raised a ladder from the ground to my neck; upon this ladder one of them mounted, and let fall a plumb-line from my collar to the floor, which just answered the length of my coat; but my waist and arms I measured myself. When my clothes were finished, which was done in my house (for the largest of theirs would not have been able to hold them), they looked like the patch-work made by the ladies in England, only that mine were all of a colour. I had three hundred cooks to dress my victuals, in little convenient huts built about my house, where they and their families lived, and prepared me two dishes apiece. I took up twenty waiters in my hand, and placed them on the table: a hundred more attended below on the ground, some with dishes of meat, and some with barrels of wine and other liquors slung on their shoulders; all which the waiters above drew up, as I wanted, in a very ingenious manner by certain cords, as we draw the bucket up a well in Europe. A dish of their meat was a good mouthful, and a barrel of their liquor a reasonable draught. Their mutton yields to ours, but their beef is excellent. I have had a sirloin so large, that I have been forced to make three bits of it; but this is rare. My servants were astonished to see me eat it, bones and all, as in our country we do the leg of a lark. Their geese and turkeys I usually ate at a mouthful, and I confess they far exceed Of their smaller fowl I could take up twenty or thirty at the end of my knife. ours. One day his imperial majesty, being informed of my way of living, desired 'that himself and his royal consort, with the young princes of the blood of both sexes, might have the happiness', as he was pleased to call it,' of dining with me.' They came accordingly, and I placed them in chairs of state, upon my table, just over against me, with their guards about them. Flimnap, the lord high treasurer, attended there likewise with the white staff; and I observed he often looked on me with a sour countenance, which I would not seem to regard, but ate more than usual, in honour to my dear country, as well as to fill the court with admiration. I have some private reasons to believe, that this visit from his majesty gave Flimnap an opportunity of doing me ill offices to his master. That minister had always been my secret enemy, though he outwardly caressed me more than was usual to the moroseness of his nature. He represented to the emperor' the low condition of his treasury; that he was forced to take up money at a great discount; that exchequer bills would not circulate under nine per cent. below par; that I had cost his majesty above a million and a half of sprugs (their greatest gold coin, about the bigness of a spangle); and, upon the whole, that it would be advisable in the emperor to take the first fair occasion of dismissing me.' MATTHEW PRIOR (1664-1721), poet and diplomatist, was educated at Westminster, under the famous Dr. Busby. In 1686 he and Charles Montague (later Earl of Halifax) published an answer to Dryden's Hind and Panther, entitled The Hind and the Panther transvers'd to the Story of the Country-Mouse and the City-Mouse. He became secretary to Lord Dursley, who was ambassador at the Hague, and spent several years in Holland. During this time he wrote several short poems, including a Hymn to the Sun (1694), and some memorial verses on the death of Queen Mary. In 1697 he was employed as secretary in the negotiations concerning the Peace of Ryswick, and in 1698 he became secretary to the embassy at Paris. In 1699 appeared his Carmen Seculare for the year 1700, in honour of 'the Nassovian'. After the retirement of Locke he became commissioner of trade and plantations, and later entered Parliament as member for East Grinstead. In 1702 he joined the Tories, and came into close relationship with Harley, Bolingbroke, and Swift. He was concerned in the negotiations which preceded the Peace of Utrecht, and on his return was imprisoned by a blundering official as a French spy. After the death of Anne (1714) Prior was impeached by Sir Robert Walpole, and was kept in custody. He amused himself during his enforced idleness by writing Alma; or the Progress of the Mind, a discursive poem in the metre of Butler's Hudibras. He was set at liberty two years later. In 1718 appeared a folio edition of his poems, including Alma, and an heroic poem in three books called Solomon on the Vanity of the World. He now settled in the country, and bought an estate in Essex. Hall he describes his experiences when he first came to take possession of it. He died in 1721, and was buried as he desired, at the feet of Spenser.' In his ballad of Down CHLOE AND EUPHELIA THE merchant, to secure his treasure, My softest verse, my darling lyre, Upon Euphelia's toilet lay; When Chloe noted her desire That I should sing! that I should play! |