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been under this discipline. He tells me he |
had the honour to dance before the emperor
himself, not without the applause and ac-
clamations both of his imperial majesty and
the whole ring; though I dare say, neither
I, nor any of his acquaintance, ever dreamt
he would have merited any reputation by
his activity.

being in a great doubt about the orthography of the word bagnio. I consulted several dictionaries, but found no relief: at last having recourse both to the bagnio in Newgate street, and to that in Chancery-lane, and finding the original manuscripts upon the sign-posts of each to agree literally with my own spelling, I returned home full of satisfaction in order to despatch this epistle.'

'I can assure you, Mr. Spectator, I was very near being qualified to have given you a faithful and painful account of this 'MR. SPECTATOR-AS you have taken walking bagnio, if I may so call it, myself. most of the circumstances of human life into Going the other night along Fleet-street, your consideration, we the underwritten and having, out of curiosity, just entered thought it not improper for us also to reinto discourse with a wandering female who present to you our condition. We are three was travelling the same way, a couple of ladies who live in the country, and the fellows advanced towards us, drew their greatest improvement we make is by readswords, and cried out to each other, "Aing. We have taken a small journal of our sweat! a sweat!" Whereon, suspecting lives, and find it extremely opposite to your they were some of the ring-leaders of the last Tuesday's speculation. We rise by bagnio, I also drew my sword, and demand- seven, and pass the beginning of each day ed a parley; but finding none would be in devotion, and looking into those affairs granted me, and perceiving others behind that fall within the occurrences of a retired them filing off with great diligence to take life; in the afternoon we sometimes enjoy me in flank, I began to sweat for fear of being forced to it: but very luckily betaking myself to a pair of heels, which I had good reason to believe would do me justice, I in

tire to our chambers, and take leave of each

from, sir, your courteous readers,

the good company of some friend or neighbour, or else work or read: at night we reother for the whole night at ten o'clock. We take particular care never to be sick of a stantly got possession of a very snug corner in a neighbouring alley that lay in my rear maids, but ambitious of characters which Sunday. Mr. Spectator, we are all very good which post I maintained for above half an hour with great firmness and resolution, we think more laudable, that of being very though not letting this success so far over- good wives. If any of your correspondents come me as to make me unmindful of the inquire for a spouse for an honest country circumspection that was necessary to be gentleman, whose estate is not dipped, and observed upon my advancing again towards wants a wife that can save half his revenue, the street; by which prudence and good neighbours of the same estate, with finer and yet make a better figure than any of his management I made a handsome and or-bred women, you shall have further notice derly retreat, having suffered no other damage in this action than the loss of my baggage, and the dislocation of one of my shoe heels, which last I am just now informed is in a fair way of recovery. These sweaters, by what I can learn from my friend, and by as near a view as I was able to take of them myself, seem to me to have at present but a rude kind of discipline among them. It is probable, if you would take a little pains with them, they might be brought into better order. But I'll leave this to your own discretion; and will only add, that if you think it worth while to insert this by way of caution to those who have a mind to preserve their skins whole from this sort of cupping, and tell them at the same time the hazard of treating with night-walkers, you will perhaps oblige others, as well as your very humble servant,

'JACK LIGHTFOOT. 'P. S. My friend will have me acquaint you, that though he would not willingly detract from the merit of that extraordinary strokesman Mr. Sprightly, yet it is his real opinion, that some of those fellows who are employed as rubbers to this new-fashioned bagnio, have struck as bold strokes as ever he did in his life.

'I had sent this four-and-twenty hours sooner, if I had not had the misfortune of

T.

'MARTHA BUSIE,
'DEBORAH THRIFTY,
ALICE EARLY.'

No. 333.] Saturday, March 22, 1711-12.
-vocat in certamina divos.-Virg.
He calls embattled deities to arms.

WE are now entering upon the sixth book of Paradise Lost, in which the poet describes the battle of the angels; having raised his reader's expectation, and prepared him for it by several passages in the preceding books. I omitted quoting these passages in my observations on the former books, having purposely reserved them for the opening of this, the subject of which gave occasion to them. The author's imagination was so inflamed with this great scene of action, that wherever he speaks of it, he rises, if possible, above himself. Thus, where he mentions Satan in the beginning of his poem,

-Him the almighty Power

Hurl'd headlong flaming from th' ethereal sky,
With hideous ruin and combustion, down
To bottomless perdition, there to dwell
In adamantine chains and penal fire,
Who durst defy th' Omnipotent to arms.

We have likewise several noble hints of it | days' engagement, which does not appear

in the infernal conference:

O prince! O chief of many throned powers, That led the embattled seraphim to war,

Too well I see and rue the dire event,

That with sad overthrow and foul defeat

Hath lost us heav'n; and all this mighty host

In horrible destruction laid thus low.

But see! the angry victor has recall'd

His ministers of vengeance and pursuit

Back to the gates of heav'n. The sulphurous hail
Shot after us in storm, o'erblown, hath laid
The fiery surge, that from the precipice
Of heav'n received us falling; and the thunder,
Wing'd with red lightning and impetuous rage,
Perhaps has spent his shafts, and ceases now
To bellow through the vast and boundless deep.
There are several other very sublime
images on the same subject in the first book,
as also in the second:

'What when we fled amain, pursued and struck
With heav'n's afflicting thunder, and besought
The deep to shelter us; this hell then seem'd
A refuge from those wounds-

In short, the poet never mentions any thing of this battle, but in such images of greatness and terror as are suitable to the subject. Among several others I cannot forbear quoting that passage where the Power, who is described as presiding over the chaos, speaks in the second book:

Thus Satan; and him thus the Anarch old,
With fault'ring speech and visage incompos'd,
Answer'd: "I know thee, stranger, who thou art,
That mighty leading angel, who of late
Made head against heav'n's King, though overthrown

I saw and heard; for such a numerous host
Fled not in silence through the frighted deep
With ruin upon ruin, rout on rout,
Confusion worse confounded; and heaven's gates
Pour'd out by millions her victorious bands
Pursuing-

natural, and agreeable enough to the ideas most readers would conceive of a fight between two armies of angels.

The second day's engagement is apt to startle an imagination which has not been raised and qualified for such a description by the reading of the ancient poets, and of Homer in particular. It was certainly a very bold thought in our author, to ascribe the first use of artillery to the rebel angels. But as such a pernicious invention may be well supposed to have proceeded from such authors, so it enters very properly into the thoughts of that being, who is all along deMaker. Such engines were the only instruscribed as aspiring to the majesty of his

ments he could have made use of to imitate those thunders, that in all poetry, both sacred and profane, are represented as the arms of the Almighty. The tearing up the hills was not altogether so daring a thought as the former. We are, in some measure, prepared for such an incident by the description of the giants' war, which we meet with among the ancient poets. What still made this circumstance the more proper for the poet's use, is the opinion of many learned men, that the fable of the giants' war, which makes as great a noise in antiquity, and gave birth to the sublimest description in Hesiod's works, was an allegory founded upon this very tradition of a fight between the good and bad angels.

It may, perhaps, be worth while to con sider with what judgment Milton, in this narration, has avoided every thing that is mean and trivial in the description of the It required great pregnancy of invention, Latin and Greek poets; and at the same and strength of imagination, to fill this bat-time improved every great hint which he tle with such circumstances as should raise and astonish the mind of the reader; and at the same time an exactness of judgment, to avoid every thing that might appear light or trivial. Those who look into Homer are surprised to find his battles still rising one above another, and improving in horror to the conclusion of the Iliad. Milton's fight of angels is wrought up with the same beauty. It is ushered in with such signs of wrath as are suitable to Omnipotence incensed. The first engagement is carried on under a cope of fire, occasioned by the flights of innumerable burning darts and arrows which are discharged from either host. The second onset is still more terrible, as it is filled with those artificial thunders, which seem to make the victory doubtful, and produce a kind of consternation even in the good angels. This is followed by the tearing up of mountains and promontories; till in the last place Messiah comes forth in the fulness of majesty and terror. The pomp of his appearance, amidst the roarings of his thunders, the flashes of his lightnings, and the noise of his chariot wheels, is described with the utmost flights of human imagination.

There is nothing in the first and last

met with in their works upon this subject. Homer, in that passage which Longinus has celebrated for its sublimeness, and which Virgil and Ovid have copied after him, tells us, that the giants threw Ossa upon Olympus, and Pelion upon Ossa. He adds an epithet to Pelion (v) which very much swells the idea, by bringing up to the reader's imagination all the woods that grew upon it. There is further a greater beauty in his singling out by names these three remarkable mountains so well known to the Greeks. This last is such a beauty, as the scene of Milton's war could not possibly furnish him with. Claudian, in his fragment upon the giants' war, has given full scope to that wildness of imagination which was natural to him. He tells us that the giants tore up whole islands by the roots, and threw them at the gods. He describes one of them in particular taking up Lemnos in his arms, and whirling it to the skies, with all Vulcan's shop in the midst of it. Another tears up mount Ida, with the river Enipeus, which ran down the sides of it; but the poet, not content to describe him with this mountain upon his shoulders, tells us that the river flowed down his back as he held it up in that posture. It is visible

to every judicious reader, that such ideas |
savour more of the burlesque than of the
sublime. They proceed from a wanton-
ness of imagination, and rather divert the
mind than astonish it. Milton has taken
every thing that is sublime in these several
passages, and composes out of them the fol-
lowing great image:

From their foundations loos'ning to and fro,
They pluck'd the seated hills, with all their load,
Rocks, waters, woods, and by the shaggy tops
Uplifting bore them in their hands.

Not long divisible; and from the gash

A stream of nectarous humour issuing flow'd
Sanguine, (such as celestial spirits may bleed)
And all his armour stain'd-

Homer tells us in the same manner, that upon Diomede's wounding the gods, there flowed from the wound an ichor, or purc kind of blood, which was not bred from mortal viands; and that though the pain was exquisitely great, the wound soon closed up and healed in those beings who are vested with immortality.

We have the full majesty of Homer in this I question not but Milton, in his descripshort description, improved by the imagi- tion of his furious Moloch flying from the nation of Claudian, without its puerilities. battle, and bellowing with the wound he I need not point out the description of the had received, had his eye on Mars in the fallen angels seeing the promontories hang- Iliad; who, upon his being wounded, is reing over their heads in such a dreadful presented as retiring out of the fight, and manner, with the other numberless beau-making an outcry louder than that of a ties in this book, which are so conspicuous, Homer adds, that the Greeks and Trojans whole army when it begins the charge. that they cannot escape the notice of the most ordinary reader. who were engaged in a general battle, were terrified on each side with the bellowing of this wounded deity. The reader will easily observe how Milton has kept all the horror of this image without running into the ridicule of it:

There are indeed so many wonderful strokes of poetry in this book, and such a variety of sublime ideas, that it would have been impossible to have given them a place within the bounds of this paper. Besides that I find it in a great measure done to my hand at the end of my lord Roscommon's Essay on Translated Poetry. I shall refer my reader thither for some of the masterstrokes of the sixth book of Paradise Lost, though at the same time there are many others which that noble author has not taken notice of.

Milton, notwithstanding the sublime genius he was master of, has in this book drawn to his assistance all the helps he could meet with among the ancient poets. The sword of Michael, which makes so great a havoc among the bad angels, was given him, we are told, out of the armoury of God:

-But the sword

Of Michael from the armoury of God

Was given him, temper'd so, that neither keen
Nor solid might resist that edge: it met
The sword of Satan, with steep force to smite
Descending, and in half cut sheer-

This passage is a copy of that in Virgil, wherein the poet tells us, that the sword of Eneas, which was given him by a deity, broke into pieces the sword of Turnus, which came from a mortal forge. As the moral in this place is divine, so by the way we may observe, that the bestowing on a man who is favoured by heaven such an allegorical weapon is very conformable to the old eastern way of thinking. Not only Homer has made use of it, but we find the Jewish hero in the book of Maccabees, who had fought the battles of the chosen people with so much glory and success, receiving in his dream a sword from the hand of the prophet Jeremiah. The following passage, wherein Satan is described as wounded by the sword of Michael, is in imitation of Homer:

The griding sword with discontinuous wound

Pass'd through him; but th' ethereal substance clos'd,
VOL. II.

5

-Where the might of Gabriel fought,
And with fierce ensigns pierc'd the deep array
Of Moloch, furious king! who him defy'd,
And at hus chariot-wheels to drag him bound
Threaten'd, nor from the Holy One of heav'n
Refrain'd his tongue blasphemous: but anon
Down cloven to the waist, with shatter'd arms
And uncouth pain, fled bellowing-

Milton has likewise raised his description in this book with many images taken out of the poetical parts of scripture. The Messiah's chariot, as I have before taken notice, is formed upon a vision of Ezekiel, who, as Grotius observes, has very much in him of Homer's spirit in the poetical parts of his prophecy.

The following lines, in that glorious commission which is given the Messiah to extirpate the host of rebel angels, is drawn from a sublime passage in the psalms:

Go then, thou mightiest, in thy Father's might!
Ascend my chariot, guide the rapid wheels
That take heav'n's basis; bring forth all my war,
My bow, my thunder, my almighty arms
Gird on, and sword on thy puissant thigh.
The reader will easily discover many
other strokes of the same nature.

There is no question but Milton had heated his imagination with the fight of the gods in Homer, before he entered into this engagement of the angels. Homer there gives us a scene of men, heroes, and gods, mixed together in battle. Mars animates the contending armies, and lifts up his voice in such a manner, that it is heard distinctly amidst all the shouts and confusion of the fight. Jupiter at the same time thunders over their heads; while Neptune raises such a tempest, that the whole field of battle, and all the tops of the mountains, shake about them. The poet tells, that Pluto himself, whose habitation was in the very centre of the earth, was so affrighted at the shock, that he leapt from his throne.

As Homer has introduced into his battle of the gods every thing that is great and terrible in nature, Milton has filled his fight of good and bad angels with all the like circumstances of horror. The shout of armies, the rattling of brazen chariots, the hurling of rocks and mountains, the earthquake, the fire, the thunder, are all of them employed to lift up the reader's imagination, and give him a suitable idea of so great an action. With what art has the poet represented the whole body of the earth trembling, even before it was created!

All heav'n resounded; and had earth been then,
All earth had to its centre shook-

In how sublime and just a manner does he afterwards describe the whole heaven shaking under the wheels of the Messiah's chariot, with that exception to the throne

of God!

-Under his burning wheels

The steadfast empyrean shook throughout,
All but the throne itself of God-

Notwithstanding the Messiah appears clothed with so much terror and majesty, the poet has still found means to make his readers conceive an idea of him beyond what he himself is able to describe:

Homer afterwards describes Vulcan as pour-stance) shows the ill consequence of such ing down a storm of fire upon the river prepossessions. What I mean is the art, Xanthus, and Minerva as throwing a rock skill, accomplishment, or whatever you will at Mars; who, he tells us, covered seven call it, of dancing. I knew a gentleman of acres in his fall. great abilities, who bewailed the want of this part of his education to the end of a very honourable life. He observed that there was not occasion for the common use of great talents; that they are but seldom in demand; and that these very great talents were often rendered useless to a man for want of small attainments. A good mien (a becoming motion, gesture, and aspect) is natural to some men; but even these would be highly more graceful in their carriage, if what they do from the force of nature were confirmed and heightened from the force of reason. To one who has not at all considered it, to mention the force of reason on such a subject will appear fantastical; but when you have a little attended to it, an assembly of men will have quite another view; and they will tell you, it is evident from plain and infallible rules, why this man, with those beautiful features, and a well-fashioned person, is not so agreeable as he who sits by him without any of those advantages. When we read, we do it without the shape of the letters; but habit makes us any exerted act of memory that presents do it mechanically, without staying, like A man who has not had the regard of his children, to recollect and join those letters. gesture in any part of his education, will find himself unable to act with freedom before new company, as a child that is but now It is for the advancement of the pleasure learning would be to read without hesitation. we receive in being agreeable to each other in ordinary life, that one would wish dancing it really is, to a proper deportment in matwere generally understood, as conducive, as A man of learning and sense is distinguished ters that appear the most remote from it. from others as he is such, though he never runs upon points too difficult for the rest of of the arm, and the most ordinary motion, the world; in like manner the reaching out discovers whether a man ever learnt to know what is the true harmony and composure of his limbs and countenance. ever has seen Booth in the character of Pyrrhus, march to his throne to receive Orestes, is convinced that majestic and great conceptions are expressed in the very step; but, perhaps, though no other man could perform that incident as well as he does, he himself would do it with a yet greater elevation were he a dancer. This is so dangerous a subject to treat with gravity, that I shall not at present enter into it any further: but the Ir is very natural to take for our whole author of the following letter has treated it lives a light impression of a thing, which at in the essay he speaks of in such a manner, first fell into contempt with us for want of that I am beholden to him for a resolution, consideration. The real use of a certain that I will never hereafter think meanly of qualification (which the wiser part of man- any thing, till I have heard what they who kind look upon as at the best an indifferent have another opinion of it have to say in its thing, and generally a frivolous circum-defence.

Yet half his strength he put not forth, but check'd
His thunder in mid volley; for he meant
Not to destroy, but root them out of heaven.

In a word, Milton's genius, which was so
great in itself, and so strengthened by all
the helps of learning, appears in this book
every way equal to his subject, which was
the most sublime that could enter into the
thoughts of a poet. As he knew all the arts
of affecting the mind, he has given it cer-
tain resting-places and opportunities of re-
covering itself from time to time; several
speeches, reflections, similitudes, and the
like reliefs, being interspersed to diversify
his narration, and ease the attention of the
reader.
L.

No. 334.] Monday, March 24, 1711-12.

-Voluisti, in suo genere, unumquemque nostrum quæ recta essent probari, quam quæ prava sunt fastidiis

quasi quendam esse Roscium, dixistique non tam ea

adhærescere.

Cic. de Gestu.

You would have each of us be a kind of Roscius in his way; and you have said, that fastidious men are not so much pleased with what is right, as disgusted at what

is wrong.

Who

'MR. SPECTATOR-Since there are scarce | some observations on modern dancing, both any of the arts and sciences that have not as to the stage, and that part of it so absolutebeen recommended to the world by the pens ly necessary for the qualification of gentleof some of the professors, masters, or lovers men and ladies; and have concluded with of them, whereby the usefulness, excel- some short remarks on the origin and prolence, and benefit arising from them, both as gress of the character by which dances are to the speculative and practical part, have writ down, and communicated to one masbeen made public, to the great advantage ter from another. If some great genius afand improvement of such arts and sciences; ter this would arise, and advance this art to why should dancing, an art celebrated by that perfection it seems capable of receiving, the ancients in so extraordinary a manner, what might not be expected from it? For, be totally neglected by the moderns, and if we consider the origin of arts and sciences, left destitute of any pen to recommend its we shall find that some of them took rise various excellencies and substantial merit to from beginnings so mean and unpromising, mankind? that it is very wonderful to think that ever such surprising structures should have been raised upon such ordinary foundations. But what cannot a great genius effect? Who would have thought that the clangorous noise of smiths' hammers should have given the first rise to music? Yet Macrobius in his second book relates, that Pythagoras, in passing by a smith's shop, found that the sounds proceeding from the hammers were either more grave or acute, according to the different weights of the hammers. The philosopher, to improve this hint, suspends different weights by strings of the same bigness, and found in like manner that the sounds answered to the weights. This being discovered, he finds out those numbers which produced sounds that were consonant: as that two strings of the same substance and tension, the one being double the length of the other, gave that interval which is call

The low ebb to which dancing is now fallen, is altogether owing to this silence. The art is esteemed only as an amusing trifle; it lies altogether uncultivated, and is unhappily fallen under the imputation of illiterate and mechanic. As Terence, in one of his prologues, complains of the ropedancers drawing all the spectators from his play, so we may well say, that capering and tumbling is now preferred to, and supplies the place of, just and regular dancing on our theatres. It is, therefore, in my opinion, high time that some one should come to its assistance, and relieve it from the many gross and growing errors that have crept into it, and overcast its real beauties; and to set dancing in its true light, would show the usefulness and elegance of it, with the pleasure and instruction produced from it; and also lay down some fundamental rules, that might so tend to the improvement of its pro-ed diapason, or an eighth; the same was also fessors, and information of the spectators, that the first might be the better enabled to perform, and the latter rendered more capable of judging what is (if there be any thing) valuable in this art.

effected from two strings of the same length and size, the one having four times the tension of the other. By these steps, from so mean a beginning, did this great man reduce, what was only before noise to one of To encourage, therefore, some ingenious the most delightful sciences, by marrying pen capable of so generous an undertaking, it to the mathematics; and by that means and in some measure to relieve dancing from caused it to be one of the most abstract and the disadvantages it at present lies under, 1, demonstrative of sciences. Who knows, who teach to dance, have attempted a therefore, but motion, whether decorous or small treatise as an Essay towards a History representative, may not (as it seems highly of Dancing: in which I have inquired into probable it may,) be taken into consideraits antiquity, origin, and use, and shown tion by some person capable of reducing it what esteem the ancients had for it. I have into a regular science, though not so demonlikewise considered the nature and perfec- strative as that proceeding from sounds, yet tion of all its several parts, and how benefi-sufficient to entitle it to a place among the cial and delightful it is, both as a qualifica- magnified arts?

tion and an exercise; and endeavoured to Now, Mr. Spectator, as you have declaranswer all objections that have been mali-ed yourself visitor of dancing-schools, and ciously raised against it. I have proceeded this being an undertaking which more imto give an account of the particular dances of the Greeks and Romans, whether religious, warlike, or civil: and taken particufar notice of that part of dancing relating to the ancient stage, in which the pantomimes had so great a share. Nor have I been wanting in giving an historical account of some particular masters excellent in that surprising art; after which I have advanced

* An Essay towards the History of Dancing, &c. By John Weaver, 12mo. 1712.

mediately respects them, I think myself indispensably obliged, before I proceed to the publication of this my essay, to ask your advice; and hold it absolutely necessary to have your approbation, in order to recommend my treatise to the perusal of the parents of such as learn to dance, as well as to the young ladies, to whom as visitor you ought to be a guardian.

'I am, sir,

Your most humble servant. 'Salop, March 10, 1711-12.'

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