related to the theatre, they have, in imitation of these epilogues, introduced in their farewell voluntaries a sort of music quite foreign to the design of Church services, to the great prejudice of welldisposed people. Those fingering gentlemen should be informed, that they ought to suit their airs to the place and business; and that the musician is obliged to keep to the text as much as the preacher. For want of this, I have found by experience a great deal of mischief: for when the preacher has often, with great piety and art enough, handled his subject, and the judicious clerk has with utmost diligence culled out two staves proper to the discourse, and I have found in myself, and in the rest of the pew, good thoughts and dispositions, they have been all in a moment dissipated by a merry jig from the organ-loft. One knows not what further ill effects the epilogues I have been speaking of may in time produce. But this I am credibly informed of, that Paul Lorrain has resolved upon a very sudden reformation in his tragical dramas; and that at the next monthly performance, he designs, instead of a penitential psalm, to dismiss his audience with an excellent new ballad of his own composing. Pray, sir, do what you can to put a stop to these growing evils, and you will very much oblige Your humble Servant, PHYSIBULUS.' 2 1 The ordinary of Newgate. Lorrain, who died in 1719, compiled accounts of the dying speeches of criminals, and commonly represented them as dying penitents; whence they were called Lorrain's Saints' in No. 63 of the Tatler. In a letter from Pope and Bolingbroke to Swift (1725) Lorrain is described ironically as the great historiographer.' 2 See Budgell's reply in No. 341. No. 339. Saturday, March 29, 1712 L [ADDISON. Ut his exordia primis Omnia, et ipse tener mundi concreverit orbis. 2 ONGINUS has observed that there may be a loftiness in sentiments where there is no passion, and brings instances out of ancient authors to support this his opinion. The pathetic, as that great critic observes, may animate and inflame the sublime, but is not essential to it. Accordingly, as he further remarks, we very often find that those who excel most in stirring up the passions very often want the talent of writing in the great and sublime manner; and so on the contrary. Milton has shown himself a master in both these ways of writing. The seventh book, which we are now entering upon, is an instance of that sublime which is not mixed and worked up with passion. The author appears in a kind of composed and sedate majesty; and though the sentiments do not give so great an emotion as those in the former book, they abound with as magnificent ideas. The sixth book, like a troubled ocean, represents greatness in confusion; the seventh affects the imagination like the ocean in a calm, and fills the mind of the reader, without producing in it anything like tumult or agitation. 1 The original editions give a wrong reference to Ovid. 2 On the Sublime,' sec. 8. 3 Ibid., sects. 13, 14. 4 In the Review for March 29, 1712, Defoe wrote: anything could heighten the imagination or move the passions • If 1 The critic above mentioned, among the rules which he lays down for succeeding in the sublime way of writing, proposes to his reader that he should imitate the most celebrated authors who have gone before him, and have been engaged in works of the same nature; as in particular that if he writes on a poetical subject, he should consider how Homer would have spoken on such an occasion. By this means one great genius often catches the flame from another, and writes in his spirit without copying servilely after him. There are a thousand shining passages in Virgil, which have been lighted up by Homer. Milton, though his own natural strength of genius was capable of furnishing out a perfect work, has doubtless very much raised and ennobled his conceptions, by such an imitation as that which Longinus has recommended. In this book, which gives us an account of the six days' works, the poet received but very few assistances from heathen writers, who were strangers to the wonders of Creation. But as there are many glorious strokes of poetry upon this subject in Holy Writ, the author has numberless allusions to them through the whole course of this book. The great critic I have before mentioned, though an heathen, has taken notice of the sublime manner in which the lawgiver of the Jews has described the Creation. in the first chapter of Genesis; and there are many and affections in the subject which Milton wrote upon, more than reading Milton himself, I should think the world beholden to the Spectator for his extraordinary notes upon that sublime work.' 1 On the Sublime,' sec. 14. 2 Ibid., sec. 9. other passages in Scripture, which rise up to the same majesty, where this subject is touched upon. Milton has shown his judgment very remarkably, in making use of such of these as were proper for his poem, and in duly qualifying those high strains of Eastern poetry which were suited to readers whose imaginations were set to an higher pitch than those of colder climates. Adam's speech to the angel, wherein he desires an account of what had passed within the regions of nature before the Creation, is very great and solemn.2 The following lines, in which he tells him, that the day is not too far spent for him to enter upon such a subject, are exquisite in their kind: And the great light of day yet wants to run Much of his race, though steep; suspense in heaven, The angel's encouraging our first parents in a modest pursuit after knowledge, with the causes which he assigns for the creation of the world, are very just and beautiful. The Messiah, by whom, as we are told in Scripture, the heavens were made, comes forth in the power of His Father, surrounded with an host of angels, and clothed with such a majesty as becomes His entering upon a work which, according to our conceptions, appears the utmost exertion of Omnipotence. What a beautiful description has our author raised upon that hint in one of the prophets: And behold there came four 1 His' (folio). 3 Ibid., vii. 98-102. 2 Paradise Lost,' vii. 70 seq. 4 Looks like' (folio). chariots out from between two mountains, and the mountains were mountains of brass.'1 About His chariot numberless were poured I have before taken notice of these chariots of God, and of these gates of heaven,3 and shall here only add that Homer gives us the same idea of the latter as opening of themselves, though he afterwards takes off from it by telling us that the hours first of all removed those prodigious heaps of clouds which lay as a barrier before them. I do not know anything in the whole poem more sublime than the description which follows, where the Messiah is represented at the head of His angels as looking down into the chaos, calming its confusion, riding into the midst of it, and drawing the first outline of the Creation. On heavenly ground they stood; and from the shore Heaven's height, and with the centre mix the pole. Silence, ye troubled waves, and thou deep, peace,' Said then the omnific Word: 'your discord end!' 1 Zech. vi. I. 2Paradise Lost,' vii. 197-207. 3 Nos. 327, 333. |