LETTER XXX. LONDON, JUNE 4th. -Nor does glory so sensibly affect the Eng lish as one might imagine. If talents or valour be requited with money, they seem little solicitous to survive their bodies. They eat parsley with their victuals. The sight of this plant, so sacred with the ancients, affects them as little as do turnips or cabbages. There is now a ballad singer under my window, chaunting the praises of Nelson. The most characteristic couplet is the following. "Like a true British tar, he sported while a shore, Successful valour is scarcely to be censured, if the present command most of its attention: trappings of honour, splendour of appearance, joyful ovations, are the principal rewards of valour. Bravery is a common virtue; mankind are naturally brave, and only become cowards when they become women. But the successful exertion of mind coextends with time, operates through every grade of society, and is felt through all ages. The man, whose fame is to be endless, ought to feel himself the first among mortals, whether, like Cleanthes, he works in a mill, or, like Anaxarchus, is pounded in a mortar. The glory of valour and of literature, with the Greeks and Romans became a passion, and melted them, sometimes to tears, and sometimes, deprived them of sleep. But I know nothing of the English, if the feelings of the present age are similar to those which influenced the great men of Greece and Rome. They seemed to be indued with a pure, etherial spirit, expansive as the light of heaven, and disinterested as the goddess of harvest. Even those who knew not how to imitate them, either paid in admiration, or detracted in envy. These feelings were, indeed, sometimes carried to excess, by the Stoics: but they had their origin in magnanimity: if a man can believe that poverty is not an evil, and that pleasure may be extracted from pain itself, he is doubtless a god among men, and may trample temptation under his feet. Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas, Atque metus ommes, et inexorabile fatum Subjecit pedibus, strepitum que Acherontis avari! Virgil Georg. Lib. 11. Can you believe it, my dear fellow, that there are characters here to whom Greece and Rome would have erected altars, who would feel themselves hon oured in being admitted among noblemen, whose chief merit, might perhaps, be traced to the herald's office? What a perversion of nature, that mere matter should thus gain the ascendant over mind! Nobler sentiments would have taught them that the immortal exertion of mind ought to inspire a slave, like Epictetus, with more magnanimity, than the worthless court of a worthless monarch* could' boast. How can you believe that, there are those in England ready to sell their names to other works! Most of the English, I suspect, like Congreve, would rather be esteemed " independent gentlemen," than authors or philosophers, and would sell their tombs in Westminster Abbey, for a pair of buckskin breeches.† I might illustrate this with numerous instances, but they are too well known to you, and disgraceful to the republic of letters. The cause of this debasement of human dignity might easily be pursued: republics and monarchies will ever discover the human mind under different aspects. Under the former, an Aristippus will be an exception: under the latter, a Wollstonecraft and a John James Rousseau will be exceptions. It might be worth the labour to pursue this * Nero, under whom Epictetus flourished. †These are in the fashion, both in summer and winter. * inquiry from the time of the philosophers, who flourished while the republics of Greece were in full vigour, to the period of the sophists, when lib. erty began to decline, thence down to the pander authors, who sprung up under the thousand petty monarchies. It would appear that the government of Greece, through all its various stages, from liberty to slavery, produced its like. Philosophers flourished with liberty, sophists, on its decline, and an abandoned set of parasites, on its catastrophe. Dignity, servility, truth, falsehood, knowledge, ignorance, virtue, vice, all flow from the spirit of government, as naturally as the stream flows from the fountain. Who could not pronounce, that Cicero wrote during the existence of the Roman republic, and that Horace wrote under a monarchy? Who could not pronounce that Lord Bacon* held the pen of a slave, while Sidney, Harrington, and Milton wrote during a respite? In short, this passion for appearance, pardonable in the glowworms of society, who shine only in the absence of light, has not only infected both city and * << There remain two posthumous felicities, which seem to attend the more noble and august passages of her life: the one is that of her successor, the other that of her memory. For she has got such a successor, who though by his masculine virtue and offspring, and late accession to the throne, he may excel and eclipse her glory; yet, &c."-Thus says Lord Bacon, in speaking of James the First, in his Essay on the Character of Queen Elizabeth. village, but has pervaded the republic of letters, has tricked out philosophy in the garb of the coxcomb, and sent her to dance attendance on the great, in the waiting rooms of their palaces. The remark must be qualified with many exceptions, but I believe it will generally obtain, That if this people could have their choice of property or happiness, they would prefer property and trust their happiness to the fashion. Adieu. |