Chapter II: Part 2

Alliteration very early made its appearance in English poetry. I have seen an old piece where it was intended to supply the place of rhyme: the terminations of each line were different; and there were in every one, three or four words which begun with the same letter. This I suppose was thought a beauty. Shakspeare in several places burlesques the improper use of Alliteration with great pleasantry. It was much in request in the days of Thompson——his

——Floor, faithless to the fuddled foot,

is scarce less ridiculous than Shakspeare’s

Bravely broach’d his bloody boiling breast.

I believe wherever it is _perceived_, it disgusts. There is something very ridiculous in the pains of an author when he is searching for a set of words beginning with the same letter: this surely argues a “lack of matter.” A man who has _things_ in his head, is never curious about _words_, unless it be those which express his meaning quickest and clearest. I would have given something to have seen the paper upon which _Smollet_ first sketched the titles of some of his novels. I dare say it cost him as much time to fix upon the name _Roderick Random_, as to write some of the best parts in that sprightly and entertaining performance.——_Robert_ and _Richard_ were common, _Roger_ and _Ralph_ were vulgar—there was a necessity for a sounding uncommon name, and beginning with an _R_: at last, by a lucky chance _Roderick_ occurred—and _Roderick_ it is.—Do you think me fanciful? I call upon _Peregrine Pickle_, and _Ferdinand Fathom_ to prove the contrary.

If we laugh at the hard-sought-for Alliteration of the poet and historian, may we not laugh a little louder at that of the comic dramatist? Can any language be less that of nature or common conversation, than strings of words beginning with an M or N? And yet this has been done by one who paints the “Manners living as they rise.” It is surprizing that so sprightly a genius as Foote could submit to the drudgery of consulting his spelling-book for words proper to be paired—my three _ppp’s_ put me in mind of a letter in the Student, in which _p_ is predominant—it is highly humourous and well worth your perusing.

Will you give me leave to make an abrupt transition from Alliteration to _Literation_, and pardon me also for coining?

The Germans in pronouncing English, and writing it too, if they have not studied the language, almost constantly change _b_ into _p_, _d_ into _t_, _g_ (hard) into _k_, _v_ into _f_, and the reverse. This peculiarity of theirs, I find, upon recollection, is not confined to English. In the Burletta of _La buona Figliola_, the author makes his German character to say _trompetti_ and _tampurri_—nay they serve their own language the same, as I have observed from their pronunciation of proper names of cities, &c. it seems difficult to account for this——but perhaps not more so than for the trick of the French in giving an aspirate to those English words where there is none, and omitting it where it should be used.——I once saw a French-man much surprized, (not disconcerted) at a general laugh when he was comparing our country women with his—an unlucky misplaced aspirate was all the cause—“The English ladies,” says he, “are so plain, but the French ladies are so ῞_airy_!”

=LETTER= XXVIII.

Though superstition is pretty well laughed away, yet there are some points in which we can never get the better of it. The wedding ring in coffee grounds—the coffin in the candle—the stranger in the fire, are marked by none but vulgar and foolish eyes. You see salt spilt, hear death-watches—owls hoot—dogs howl, and despise the omen—you are above it. But yet let me ask _you_, an enlightened philosopher—Whether you are above choice of seats at whist? Whether you have not really believed that your chance for winning was much bettered by your taking the fortunate chairs, and of course obliging your adversaries to sit, not in those of the scornful, but of the losers? When you quit the game on a run of ill luck, what is it but declaring your belief that the games already played have an influence upon those which are to come?

Each ticket in a lottery has an equal chance——do you think so? Number 1000 got the great prize in the last lottery—now, confess honestly that you feel something within that tells you the same number can never win the great prize again—you would prefer every other number to it—and yet reason says, that all the tickets have an equal probability of success. In these instances and many others, superstition, even in cultivated minds, will be always more than a match for truth.

A gentleman coming a passenger in a vessel from the West-Indies, finding it more inconvenient to be shaved than to wear his beard, chose the latter——but he was not suffered to have his choice long—it was the unanimous opinion of the sailors, and indeed of the Captain as well, that there was not the least probability of a wind as long as this ominous beard was suffered to grow. They petitioned—they remonstrated, and at last prepared to cut the fatal hairs by violence. Now, as there is no operation at which it is so much the patient’s interest to consent, as that of the barber——the gentleman quietly submitted—nor could the wind resist the potent spell which instantly filled all their sails, and “wafted them merrily away.”

You see we have only got rid of _general_ superstition, we still retain that which belongs to our particular profession or pursuits.

Adieu.

=LETTER= XXIX.

I have often tryed to have a proper idea of vast space—great numbers—enormous size and such subjects, and as you may suppose, without success. But though I fail in getting a competent idea, I sometimes make an approach towards it, which is better than nothing.

The solar system is one of these sublime subjects in the consideration of which I have frequently been lost. I never attempted to conceive the size of the sun, or the distance of saturn; the impossibility instantly repels the most daring imagination. No, all that I have attempted is to have a just idea of the proportion (upon any scale) that the sun and planets bear to each other in respect to size and distance. At first sight, this seems easily done—Draw some concentric circles on a sheet of paper, make the sun the centre, and place the planets round in their order.—Or if you would have an idea of their motion as well, look at an orrery. But a little examination will convince you that this is doing nothing towards having an idea of their size and distance in proportion to each other, which is the point sought. Nay, it is worse than nothing, for it imposes a falsity as a reality. Imagination by itself can do a great deal, if assisted it can do more, but if perverted, nothing. Let us try to assist the imagination then.

If the sun be only a million times bigger than the earth, (exactness is of no consequence to my argument, so that I am within the truth) it is plain that I cannot make two circles upon a sheet of paper (without considering any thing about distance) that can bear this proportion to each other; and if this cannot be done for the earth, much less can it for other planets and moons where the disproportion is greater. Let us take the floor of a large room—on this make a circle of two feet diameter for the sun—the size of the earth will be about a large pin’s head. The distance of the sun from the earth is about eighty of the sun’s diameters; if so, there must be a circle of three hundred and twenty feet diameter for the earth’s orbit, which no room, nor indeed any other building, will contain. Let us try a field——here we may put our sun and draw the earth’s orbit round. If we stand in the center (which we should do) the earth is too small to be seen. These difficulties occurring so soon, how will they increase when we take in the superior planets? The ingenious Ferguson has endeavoured to assist our imagination by supposing St. Paul’s dome, in diameter one hundred and forty-five feet, to be the sun——upon this scale, Mercury is between nine and ten inches, and placed at the Tower; Venus near eighteen, at St. James’s Palace; the Earth eighteen, at Marybone; Mars ten, at Kensington; Jupiter fifteen feet, at Hampton-Court; and Saturn eleven feet and half, at Cliffden. Let us be on the top of the dome, and look for the planets where he has placed them. Do you think we could see any thing of Jupiter and Saturn? to say nothing of their moons—or that we could conceive properly the difference between four miles and twenty, when seen on a line? the four may be two, or one mile; and the twenty may be ten, or thirty, for ought we can judge by the appearance. All that we get by this is the knowing that a sheet of paper or an orrery give us wrong ideas, and that we cannot by any contrivance put the size and distance of the planets upon a proportionable scale, so as to take in the whole with our eye or understanding.

We are as much at a loss to comprehend the slowness of their motion—I have not mistaken—I mean slowness.—A circuit which is six or twelve months or twice as many years performing, is slow almost beyond conception; and yet this motion is called whirling—as if the planets went round their orbits like a top! Though quick and slow are comparative terms, we have ideas of each arising from the medium of the two, from observation, and common application, that do not stand in need of any comparison to be understood. The motion of a flea is quick; of a snail, slow; and the common walk of a man is neither quick nor slow. Let us imagine an elephant to walk, and a flea to hop the same distance in the same time—would you hesitate to say that the motion of the one was slow, and the other quick? In short, swiftness or slowness does not depend upon the absolute quantity of ground the animal passes in a certain time, but upon the relative quantity to its own size. The earth is about eight minutes in moving the space of one diameter, therefore its absolute motion is slow—it is twenty-four hours making one revolution round its axis, which gives no idea of velocity. It is certain that if we were placed very near the earth (unaffected by its attraction) there would appear an exceeding quick change of surface—and so would the motion of a snail appear to an animalcule. The quantity of space when compared to any we can move in the same time is vast, and the motion quick, but when considered as belonging to a body of the size of a world, the motion is slow. Suppose a common globe was turned round once in twenty-four hours—imagine an animal as much inferior to it in size as we are to the earth, placed as I conceived the human spectator placed to view the earth—would the apprehension of this Being induce you to call a single revolution in twenty-four hours, whirling? Would not you say that though the surface passed quick in review before him, yet that the absolute motion of the whole was exceedingly slow. Perhaps it is our measuring this motion by miles that makes us fancy that it is quick, which is much like taking the height of a mountain in hairs-breadths. When we are told that Saturn moves in his orbit more than twenty-two thousand miles in an hour, we conceive the velocity to be great; but when we find that he is more than three hours moving his own diameter, we must then think it as it really is, slow. Bishop Wilkins is the only writer I have met with who considers the motion of the heavenly bodies as I do, and I am rather proud of having my opinion supported by so great a man.

There is another circumstance which prevents the solar system, as commonly delineated, from bearing a true resemblance to the apparent position and motion of the planets. It is always drawn in plan instead of section, whereas the _appearance_ of the orbits of the heavenly bodies is always in section and never can be in plan. This difference is not, as far as I know, noticed in any account of the solar system; and yet if it be not attended to, it is impossible to prove the truth of the system by the apparent paths of the planets. This will be best understood by considering the inferior ones. Mercury and Venus remove to a certain distance from the sun, and then, after seeming at rest, return in nearly the same line and remove to the same distance on the other side, where the same thing is repeated. This to the eye is not a revolution in plan, but a revolution in section—and this might be explained by a draught which should always accompany the common delineation of the planetary orbits.

=LETTER= XXX.

It is so long since that I sent you the first part of my observations on Quarles that perhaps you have forgot my promise for the remainder.——I will now resume the subject.

Quarles sometimes introduces personages, and makes his poem of the dramatic cast. The sixth hieroglyphic is a dialogue between _Time_ and _Death_; as usual, alluding to the print, where _Death_ is going to extinguish the taper, but is prevented by _Time_. There are a few awkward expressions in this, which are easier to be overlooked than omitted.

_Time._ _Death._

_Time._ Behold the frailty of this slender snuff;
Alas! it hath not long to last;
Without the help of either thief or puff,
Her weakness knows the way to waste:
Nature hath made her substance apt enough
To spend itself, and spend too fast:
It needs the help of none
That is so prone
To lavish out untouch’d, and languish all alone.

_Death._ _Time_, hold thy peace, and shake thy slow-pac’d sand;
Thine idle minutes make no way:
Thy glass exceeds her hour, or else doth stand,
I cannot hold, I cannot stay.
Surcease thy pleading, and enlarge my hand,
I surfeit with too long delay:
This brisk this bold-fac’d light
Doth burn too bright;
Darkness adorns my throne, my day is darkest night.

_Time._ Great Prince of darkness! hold thy needless hand,
Thy captive’s fast and cannot flee:
What arm can rescue? who can countermand?
What pow’r can set thy pris’ner free?
Or if they could; what close, what foreign land
Can hide that head that flees from thee?
But if her harmless light
Offend thy sight
What need’st thou snatch at noon, what must be thine at
night?

_Death._ I have outstaid my patience; my quick trade
Grows dull and makes too slow return:
This long-liv’d debt is due, and should been paid
When first her flame began to burn:
But I have staid too long, I have delay’d
To store my vast, my craving urn.
My patent gives me pow’r
Each day, each hour,
To strike the peasant’s thatch, and shake the princely
tow’r.

_Time._ Thou count’st too fast: thy patent gives no pow’r
Till Time shall please to say, Amen.
_Death._ Canst thou appoint my shaft?
_Time._ Or thou my hour?
_Death._ ’Tis I bid, do.
_Time._ ’Tis I bid, when;
Alas! thou canst not make the poorest flow’r
To hang the drooping head ’till then:
Thy shafts can neither kill,
Nor strike, until
My power gives them wings, and pleasure arms thy will!

There is nothing which destroys the _reality_ in a dramatic dialogue more than when the speakers ask questions and reply in an equal quantity of lines. Perhaps the most disgusting instance of this is in Milton’s Mask, where Comus and the Lady have a verse each alternately, for fourteen lines together. We are more sensible of the sameness in quantity where it is so short, and so often repeated, than here in Quarles where it is extended to a stanza, and that repeated for each speaker but once—but even here you begin to feel its bad effect, when it is finely relieved towards the end by the characters growing warmer in their dispute, and, of course, making their speeches shorter. Yet what I here condemn, others admire.——You, who are so fond of the ancients, may easily defend this practice by their example, and if you want any assistance to demolish me, may call in Mr. West and the author of the Origin and Progress of Language.—This passage of the former from his translation of the Iphigenia of Euripedes is quoted by the latter with great commendations——not indeed because the dialogue is in alternate verse, but for its being a fine imitation of the ancient trochaic measure.

_Iph._ Know’st thou what should now be ordered?
_Tho._ ’Tis thy office to prescribe.
_Iph._ Let them bind in chains the strangers.
_Tho._ Canst thou fear they should escape?
_Iph._ Trust no Greek; Greece is perfidious.
_Tho._ Slaves depart, and bind the Greeks.
_Iph._ Having bound, conduct them hither, &c.

It is true that here the reply wants one of having the same number of syllables as the question—but still the constant return of the same quantity for each speaker is disgusting to all unprejudiced ears. You will tell me that it is in the high gusto of the antique, and that the feet are trochaics—I can only reply, that hard words cannot convince me contrary to reason, and if a proper effect is not produced, it is of very little consequence to me whether the authority is brought from Greece or Siberia. Horace’s often-quoted _Pallida mors_, &c. was perhaps never better translated than at the end of the fourth stanza.

The ninth hieroglyphic will put you in mind of the poems that are squeezed or stretched into the form of axes, altars, and wings——but if you will attend to the matter, and not the form, you will find it excellent——to write this properly requires some care.

_Behold_
How short a span
Was long enough of old
To measure out the life of man;
In those well-temper’d days, his time was then
Survey’d, cast up, and found but threescore years and ten!

_Alas!_
And what is that?
They come, and slide, and pass,
Before my pen can tell thee what.
The posts of Time are swift, which having run
Their sev’n short stages o’er, their short-liv’d task is done.

_Our days_
Begun, we lend
To sleep, to antick plays
And toys, until the first stage end:
12 waining moons, twice 5 times told, we give
To unrecover’d loss: we rather breathe than live.

_We spend_
A ten years breath
Before we apprehend
What ’tis to live, or fear a Death:
Our childish dreams are fill’d with painted joys
Which please our sense awhile, and waking prove but toys!

_How vain_
How wretched is
Poor man, that doth remain
A slave to such a state as this!
His days are short, at longest; few at most;
They are but bad at best; yet lavish’d out, or lost.

_They be_
The secret springs
That make our minutes flee
On wheels more swift than eagle’s wings!
Our Life’s a clock, and ev’ry gasp of breath
Breathes forth a warning grief, till Time shall strike a Death!

_How soon_
Our new-born light
Attains to full-ag’d noon!
And this, how soon to grey-hair’d night!
We spring, we bud, we blossom and we blast
E’er we can count our days, our days they flee so fast!

_They end_
When scarce begun;
And e’er we apprehend
That we begin to live, our life is done:
Man count thy days; and if they fly too fast
For thy dull thoughts to count, count ev’ry day the last.

Methinks Quarles’s ghost is at my elbow, which will not be appeased unless I remark that the first lines of each stanza make a verse, being the text on which the poem is a comment.

_Behold, alas! our days we spend;
How vain they be, how soon they end!_

This is a kind of false wit once much in request. Jarvis, the translator of Don Quixote, calls it _glossing_—upon what authority I know not. In the first chapter of the second book of the second volume may be found a text and gloss—with this difference from Quarles’s, that the text is introduced at the end of the stanza and not at the beginning.

It is impossible to avoid smiling at the pains he must have taken to preserve the form of the stanza—in the third he is obliged to have the assistance of figures, or his line would have been too long; and after all his trouble there must be some for the reader before he has calculated how much “12 moons, twice 5 times told,” are——in the rest, to say the truth, it is not so apparent. If this pyramidical stanza prevents you from attending to the poetry, it is easily put in another—of the two first lines make one; and the false wit immediately vanishes.—I hope Quarles’s ghost vanished before I proposed the alteration.

I have, like a prudent caterer, reserved the best thing for the last. It is the twelfth emblem of the third book. The subject of the print is a figure trying to escape from the Divine vengeance which is pursuing in thunders: the motto——_O that thou wouldst hide me in the grave, that thou wouldst keep me in secret until thy wrath be past!_ Upon this hint he has produced the following excellent poem.

Ah! whither shall I fly? what path untrod
Shall I seek out to ’scape the flaming rod
Of my offended, of my angry God?

Where shall I sojourn? what kind sea will hide
My head from thunder? where shall I abide,
Until his flames be quench’d or laid aside?

What, if my feet should take their hasty flight,
And seek protection in the shades of night?
Alas! no shades can blind the God of light.

What, if my soul should take the wings of day,
And find some desert? if she spring away
The wings of vengeance clip as fast as they.

What, if some solid rock should entertain
My frighted soul? can solid rocks restrain
The stroke of Justice and not cleave in twain?

Nor sea, nor shade, nor shield, nor rock, nor cave,
Nor silent deserts, nor the sullen grave,
Where flame-ey’d fury means to smite, can save.

Tis vain to flee; ’till gentle mercy shew
Her better eye; the farther off we go,
The swing of Justice deals the mightier blow.

Th’ ingenuous child, corrected, doth not flie
His angry mother’s hand, but clings more nigh,
And quenches with his tears her flaming eye.

Great God! there is no safety here below;
Thou art my fortress, thou that seem’st my foe,
’Tis thou that strik’st the stroke, must guard the blow.

Six stanzas, which though very good, yet being of less merit than the rest are omitted. It is obvious that he had the 139th psalm in his eye, of which he has made great use. The alarm at the beginning—the searching all nature for shelter—the impossibility of being hid from the author of nature—and the acquiescing at last in what was unavoidable, are grand and natural ideas. The motion of the wings of vengeance—and the recapitulation of the places where protection was fought in vain—are instances of expression rarely met with. But what praise is sufficient for the simile in the eighth stanza? To say only that it is apposite and beautiful, comes very short of my sensations when I read it. Let me confess honestly that I think it one of the noblest instances of the sublime pathetic! As a part of a religious poem it is proper, in a high degree; the scripture frequently considering our connection with the Almighty as that of children with a parent.—As a pictoresque image it is distinct, natural, and affecting.—But to remark all the beauties of this poem would be to comment on every stanza.——You will have more pleasure in finding them out yourself.

Now what think you, is not this rather too good to be lost? Was it from never reading Quarles, or taking his character from common report, that Pope considered his productions as the very bathos of poetry? Poor Quarles! thou hast had many enemies, and art now forgotten. But thou hast at last found a friend—not equal, indeed, to the task of turning a tide that has been flowing for a hundred years against thee—not equal to his wishes for giving thee and every neglected genius his due share of reputation—but barely capable of laying the first stone of thy temple of fame, which he leaves to be compleated by abler and by stronger hands!

Farewel.

P. S. I had forgot to inform you that these emblems were imitated in Latin by one Herman Hugo, a Jesuit. The first edition of them was in 1623, soon after the appearance of Quarles; and the book was reprinted for the ninth time in 1676, which last is the date of the copy in my possession. How many more editions there have been, I know not. He makes no acknowledgement to Quarles, and speaks of his own work as original. As a specimen of his manner, take the following, which is intended as an imitation of “Ah whither shall I fly?”

Quis mihi securis dabit hospita tecta latebris?
Tecta, quibus dextræ server ab igne tuæ?
Heu! tuus ante oculos quoties furor ille recursat,
Nulla mihi toties fida sat antra reor.

Tunc ego secretas, umbracula frondea, sylvas,
Lustràque solivagis opto relicta feris.
Tunc ego vel mediis timidum caput abdere terris,
Aut maris exesâ condere rupe velim, &c.

It reads but poorly after the other, though I have given you the best of it. He afterwards by degrees quits his subject, runs into stuff about Cain and Jonah, and has entirely omitted the simile.

* * * * *

You express an inclination to publish my letters. You should consider that the date of some of them is so far back, that many allusions to passing incidents which might engage attention at the time, now must fail of their effect.——People are spoken of as living, who are dead——and many other objections might be enumerated. However, you are at liberty to do what you please with them. Those which are of a private nature, your prudence will, of course, keep to yourself: and for the others, where some conjectures are hazarded which may be thought different from received opinions; the writer wishes them to be read with the same impartiality they were written——though he is well apprized of the difficulty of dispossessing old opinions.

_=FINIS.=_

Transcriber’s Notes:

- Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
- Text enclosed by equals is in gespertt (=gespertt=).
- Blank pages have been removed.
- Silently corrected typographical errors.
- Spelling and hyphenation variations made consistent.
- Page 87, end of letter XXVII: The symbol appears to be U+1FDE
Greek Dasia (rough breathing diacritical mark for an ‘h’ sound
before a vowel) and Oxia (acute accent).
- Formatting of a dialogue in letter XXX made more consistent.