vate, social life. But ease and freedom have their bounds, which must by no means be violated. A certain degree of negligence and carelessness becomes injurious and insulting, from the real or supposed inferiority of the persons; and that delightful liberty of conversation among a few friends, is soon destroyed, as liberty often has been, by being carried to licentiousness. But example explains things best, and I will put a pretty strong case: -Suppose you and me alone together; I believe you will allow that I have as good a right to unlimited freedom in your company, as either you or I can possibly have in any other; and I am apt to believe too, that you would indulge me in that freedom, as far as any body would. But, notwitstanding this, do you imagine that I should think there was no bounds to that freedom? I assure you, I should not think so; and I take myself to be as much tied down by a certain degree of good manners to you, as by other degrees of them to other people. The most familiar and intimate habitudes, connections, and friendships, require a degree of good-breeding, both to preserve and cement them. The best of us have our bad sides; and it is as imprudent as it is illbred, to exhibit them. I shall not use ceremony with you; it would be misplaced between us: but I shall certainly observe that degree of good-breeding with you, which is, in the first place, decent, and which, I am sure, is absolutely neces sary to make us like one another's company long.

Lord Chesterfield.

18. A Dialogue betwixt MERCURY, an English Duellist, and a North-American Savage.

Duellist. Mercury, Charon's boat is on the other side of the water; allow me, before it returns, to have some conversation with the North-American Savage whom you brought hither at the same time as you conducted me to the shades. I never saw one of that species before, and am curious to know what the animal is. He looks very grim.-Pray, Sir, what is your name? I understand you speak English.

Savage. Yes, I learned it in my childhood, having been bred up for some years in the town of New-York: but before I was a man I returned to my countrymen, the valiant Mohawks; and being cheated

by one of yours in the sale of some rum, I never cared to have any thing to do with them afterwards. Yet I took up the hatchet for them with the rest of my tribe in the war against France, and was killed while I was out upon a scalping party. But I died very well satisfied: for my friends were victorious, and before I was shot I had scalped seven men and five women and children. In a former war I had done still greater exploits. My name is The Bloody Bear: it was given to me to express my fierceness and valour.

Duellist. Bloody Bear, I respect you, and am much your humble servant. My name is Tom Pushwell, very well known at Arthur's. I am a gentleman by my birth, and by profession a gamester, and man of honour. I have killed men in fair fighting, in honourable single combat, but do not understand cutting the throats of women and children.

Savage. Sir, that's our way of making war. Every nation has its own customs. But by the grimuess of your countenance, and that hole in your breast, I presume you were killed, as I was myself, in some scalping party. How happened it that your enemy did not take off your scalp?

Duellist. Sir, I was killed in a duel. A friend of mine had lent me some money; after two or three years, being in great want himself, he asked me to pay him; I thought his demand an affront to my honour, and sent him a challenge. We met in Hyde-Park; the fellow could not fence: I was the adroitest swordsman in England. I gave him three or four wounds; but at last he ran upon me with such impetuosity, that he put me out of my play, and I could not prevent him from whipping me through the lungs. I died the next day as a man of honour should, without any snivelling signs of repentance: and he will follow me soon, for his surgeon has declared his wound to be mortal. It is said that his wife is dead of her fright, and that his family of seven children will be undone by his death. So I am well revenged; and that is a comfort. For my part, I had no wife.-I always hated marriage: my whore will take good care of herself, and my children are provided for at the Foundling Hospital.

Savage. Mercury, I won't go in a boat with that fellow. He has murdered his countryman; he has murdered his friend. I say I won't go in a boat with that fellow,

I will swim over the river: I can swim like a duck.

Mercury. Swim over the Styx! it must not be done; it is against the laws of Pluto's empire. You must go in the boat, and be quiet.

Savage. Do not tell me of laws: I am a Savage: I value no laws. Talk of laws to the Englishman: there are laws in his country, and yet you see he did not regard them. For they could never allow him to kill his fellow-subject in time of peace, because he asked him to pay a debt. I know that the English are a barbarous nation; but they cannot he so brutal as to make such things lawful.

Mercury. You reason well against him. But how comes it that you are so offended with murder: you who have massacred women in their sleep, and children in their cradles?

Savage. I killed none but my enemies; I never killed my own countrymen: I never killed my friend. Here, take my blanket, and let it come over in the boat; but see that the murderer does not sit upon it, or touch it; if he does I will burn it in the fire I see yonder. Farewell. I am resolved to swim over the water.

Mercury. By this touch of my wand I take all thy strength from thee.-Swim now if thou canst.

Savage. This is a very potent enchan ter. Restore me my strength, and Í

will obey thee.

Mercury. I restore it; but be orderly, and do as I bid you, otherwise worse will befall you.

Duellist. Mercury, leave him to me, I will tutor him for you. Sirrah, Savage, dost thou pretend to be ashamed of my company? Dost thou know that I have kept the best company in England?

Savage. I know thou art a scoundrel. -Not pay thy debts! kill thy friend, who lent thee money, for asking thee for it! Get out of my sight. I will drive thee into Styx.

Mercury. Stop-I command thee. No violence.--Talk to him calmly.

Savage. I must obey thee.-Well, Sir, let me know what merit you had to introduce you into good company? What could you do?

Duellist. Sir, I gamed, as I told you.— Besides, I kept a good table.-I ate as well as any man in England or France.

Savage. Eat! Did you ever eat the chine of a Frenchman, or his leg, or his

shoulder? there is fine eating! I have eat twenty. My table was always well served. My wife was the best cook for dressing of man's flesh in all North America. You will not pretend to com pare your eating with mine.

Duellist. I danced very finely.

Savage. I will dance with thee for thy ears.-I can dance all day long. I can dance the war dance with more spirit and vigour than any man of my nation: let us see thee begin it. How thou standes: like a post! Has Mercury struck thee with his enfeebling rod? or art thou ashamed to let us see how aukward thou art? If he would permit me, I would teach thee to dance in a way that thou hast not yet learnt. I would make thee caper and leap like a buck. But what else canst thou do, thou bragging rascal ì

Duellist. Oh, heavens! must I bear this? what can I do with this fellow? I have neither sword nor pistol; and his shade seems to be twice as strong as mine.

Mercury. You must answer his questions. It was your own desire to have a conversation with him. He is not wellbred; but he will tell you some truths which you must hear in this place. It would have been well for you if you had heard them above. He asked you what you could do besides eating and dancing.

Duellist. I sung very agreeably.

Savage. Let me hear you sing your death-song, or the war whoop. I challenge you to sing,-the fellow is mute.Mercury, this is a liar. He tells us nothing but lies. Let me pull out his tongue.

Duellist. The lie given me!-and, alas! I dare not resent it. Oh ! what a disgrace to the family of the Pushwells! this indeed is damnation.

Mercury. Here, Charon, take these two savages to your care. How far the barba rism of the Mohawk will excuse his horrid acts, I leave Minos to judge; but the Englishman what excuse can he plead? The custom of duelling? A bad excuse at the best! but in his case cannot avail. The spirit that made him draw his sword in this combat against his friend, is not that of honour; it is the spirit of the furies, of Alecto herself. To her he must go, for she hath long dwelt in his merciless bosom.

Savage. If he is to be punished, turn him over to me. I understand the art of tormenting. Sirrah, I begin with this kisk

୯୩

on your breech. Get you into the boat or I'll give you another. I am impatient to have you condemned. Duellist. Oh, my honour, my honour, to what infamy art thou fallen!

Dialogues of the Dead.

19. BAYES'S Rules for Composition.

Smith. How, Sir, helps for wit!

Bayes. Ay, Sir, that's my position: and I do here aver, that no man the sun e'er shone upon, has parts sufficient to furnish out a stage, except it were by the help of these my rules.

Smith. What are those rules, I pray? Bayes. Why, Sir, my first rule is the rule of transversion, or regula dupler, changing verse into prose, and prose into verse, alternately, as you please.

Smith. Well, but how is this done by rule, Sir?

Bayes. Why thus, Sir; nothing so easy, when understood. I take a book in my hand, either at home or elsewhere (for that's all one); if there be any wit in't (as there is no book but has some) I transverse it; that is, if it be prose, put it into verse (but that takes up some time); and if it be verse put it into prose.

Smith. Methinks, Mr. Bayes, that putting verse into prose, should be called transposing.

Bayes. By my troth, Sir, it is a very good notion, and hereafter it shall be so. Smith. Well, Sir, and what d'ye do with it then?

Bayes. Make it my own: 'tis so changed that no man can know it-My next rule is the rule of concord, by way of table-book. Pray observe.

Smith. I hear you, Sir: go on.

Bayes. As thus: I come into a coffeehouse, or some other place where witty men resort; I make as if I minded nothing (do ye mark?) but as soon as any one speaks-pop, I slap it down, and make that too my own.

Smith. But, Mr. Bayes, are you not sometimes in danger of their making you restore by force, what you have gotten thus by art?

Bayes. No, Sir, the world's unmindful; they never take notice of these things. Smith. But pray, Mr. Bayes, among all your other rules, have you no one rule for invention?

Bayes. Yes, Sir, that's my third rule that I have here in my pocket.

Bayes. Why, Sir, when I have any thing to invent, I never trouble my head about it, as other men do, but presently turn over my book of Drama commonplaces, and there I have, at one view, all that Persius, Montaigne, Seneca's tragedies, Horace, Juvenal, Claudian, Pliny, Plutarch's Lives, and the rest, have ever thought upon this subject; and so, in a trice, by leaving out a few words, or putting in others of my own-the business is done.

Smith. Indeed, Mr. Bayes, this is as sure and compendious a way of wit as ever I heard of.

Bayes. Sir, if you make the least scruple of the efficacy of these my rules, do but come to the play-house and you shall judge of them by the effects.--But now, pray, Sir, may I ask you how you do when you write?

Smith. Faith, Sir, for the most part, I am in pretty good health.

Bayes. Ay, but I mean, what do you do when you write!

Smith. I take pen, ink, and paper, and sit down.

Bayes. Now I write standing; that's one thing: and then another thing iswith what do you prepare yourself?

Smith. Prepare myself! What the devil does the fool mean?

Bayes. Why I'll tell you now what I do:-If I am to write familiar things, as sonnets to Armida, and the like, I make use of stew'd prunes only; but when I have a grand design in hand, I ever take physic and let blood: for when you would have pure swiftness of thought, and fiery flights of fancy, you must have a care of the pensive part.-In fine, you must purge the belly.

Smith. By my troth, Sir, this is a most admirable receipt for writing.

Bayes. Ay, 'tis my secret; and, in good earnest, I think one of the best I have.

Smith. In good faith, Sir, and that may very well be.

Bayes. May be, Sir! I'm sure on't. Experto crede Roberto. But I must give you this caution by the way-be sure you never take snuff when you write.

Smith. Why so, Sir?

Bayes. Why it spoiled me ance one of the sparkishest plays in all England. But a friend of mine, at Gresham College,

has

and save yourself without her by flight, you indeed acted nobly. It was also becoming a Roman to keep up her spirits, amidst all the horrors of that dreadful scene, by shewing yourself undismayed and courageous. But the merit and glory of this part of your conduct is sunk by the other, which gives an air of ostentation and vanity to the whole.

Pliny the Younger. That vulgar minds should suppose my attention to my studies in such a conjuncture unnatural and affected, I should not much wonder: but that you would blame it as such, I did not expect: you, who approached still nearer than I to the fiery storm, and died by the suffocating heat of the vapour.

Pliny the Elder. I died, as a good and brave man ought to die, in doing my duty. Let me recall to your memory all the particulars, and then you shall judge your self on the difference of your conduct and mine. I was the præfect of the Roman fleet, which then lay at Misenum. Upon the first account I received of the very unusual cloud that appeared in the air, I ordered a vessel to carry me out to some distance from the shore, that I might the better observe the phenomenon, and try to discover its nature and cause. This I did as a philosopher, and it was a curiosity proper and natural to a searching, inquisitive mind. I offered to take you with me, and surely you should have desired to go; for Livy might have been read at any other time, and such spectacles are not frequent; but you remained fixed and chained down to your book with a pedantic attachment. When I came out from my house I found all the people forsaking their dwellings, and flying to the sea, as the safest retreat. To assist them, and all others who dwelt on the coast, I immediately ordered the fleet to put out, and sailed with it round the whole bay of Naples, steering particularly to those parts of the shore where the danger was greatest, and from whence the inhabitants were endeavouring to escape with the most trepidation. Thus I spent the whole day, and preserved by my care some thousands of lives; noting at the same time, with a steady composure and freedom of mind, the several forms of and phenomena of the eruption. Towards night, as we approached to the foot of Vesuvius, all the gallies were covered with ashes and embers, which grew hotter and hotter; then showers of pumice-stones, and burnt and broken pyrites, began to fall on our heads;

and we were stopped by the obstacles which the ruins of the mountains had suddenly formed by falling into the sea, and almost filling it up on the part of the coast. I then commanded my pilot to steer to the villa of my friend Pomponianus, which you know was situated in the inmost recess of the bay. The wind was very favourable to carry me thither, but would not allow him to put off from the shore, as he wished to have done. We were therefore constrained to pass the night in his house. They watched, and I slept, until the heaps of pumice-stones, which fell from the clouds, that had now been impelled to that side of the bay, rose so high in the area of the apartment I lay in, that I could not have got out had I staid any longer; and the earthquakes were so violent, as to threaten every moment the fall of the house: we therefore thought it more safe to go into the open air, guarding our heads as well as we could with pillows tied upon them. The wind continuing adverse, and the sea very rough, we remained on the shore until a sulphureous and fiery vapour oppressed my weak lungs, and ended my life.--In all this I hope that I acted as the duty of my station required, and with true magnanimity. But on this occasion, and in many other parts of your life, I must say, my dear nephew, that there was a vanity mixed with your virtue, which hurt and disgraced it. Without that, you would have been one of the worthiest men that Rome has produced; for none ever excelled you in the integrity of your heart and greatness of your sentiments. Why would you lose the substance of glory by seeking the shadow? Your cloquence had the same fault as your manners: it was too affected. You professed to make Cicero your guide and your pattern: but when one reads his panegyric upon Julius Cæsar, in his oration for Marcellus, and yours upon Trajan; the first seems the language of nature and truth, raised and dignified with all the majesty of the most sublime eloquence; the latter appears the studied harangue of a florid rhetorician, more desirous to shine and set off his own wit, than to extol the great man he was praising.

Pliny the Younger. I have too high a respect for you, uncle, to question your judgment either of my life or my writings; they might both have been better, if I had not been too solicitous to render them perfect. But it is not for me to say much on that subject; permit me therefore to

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