Volume Iii Part 30 (1/2)

C.

[Footnote 1: Translation of the fragment on Hope.]

[Footnote 2: Psal. xvi. 8--ii.]

No. 472. Monday, September 1, 1712. Steele.

'--Voluptas Solamenque mali--'

Virg.

I received some time ago a Proposal, which had a Preface to it, wherein the Author discoursed at large of the innumerable Objects of Charity in a Nation, and admonished the Rich, who were afflicted with any Distemper of Body, particularly to regard the Poor in the same Species of Affliction, and confine their Tenderness to them, since it is impossible to a.s.sist all who are presented to them. The Proposer had been relieved from a Malady in his Eyes by an Operation performed by Sir _William Read_, and being a Man of Condition, had taken a Resolution to maintain three poor blind Men during their Lives, in Grat.i.tude for that great Blessing. This Misfortune is so very great and unfrequent, that one would think, an Establishment for all the Poor under it might be easily accomplished, with the Addition of a very few others to those Wealthy who are in the same Calamity. However, the Thought of the Proposer arose from a very good Motive, and the parcelling of our selves out, as called to particular Acts of Beneficence, would be a pretty Cement of Society and Virtue. It is the ordinary Foundation for Mens holding a Commerce with each other, and becoming familiar, that they agree in the same sort of Pleasure; and sure it may also be some Reason for Amity, that they are under one common Distress. If all the Rich who are lame in the Gout, from a Life of Ease, Pleasure, and Luxury, would help those few who have it without a previous Life of Pleasure, and add a few of such laborious Men, who are become lame from unhappy Blows, Falls, or other Accidents of Age or Sickness; I say, would such gouty Persons administer to the Necessities of Men disabled like themselves, the Consciousness of such a Behaviour would be the best Julep, Cordial, and Anodine in the feverish, faint and tormenting Vicissitudes of that miserable Distemper. The same may be said of all other, both bodily and intellectual Evils. These Cla.s.ses of Charity would certainly bring down Blessings upon an Age and People; and if Men were not petrifyed with the Love of this World, against all Sense of the Commerce which ought to be among them, it would not be an unreasonable Bill for a poor Man in the Agony of Pain, aggravated by Want and Poverty, to draw upon a sick Alderman after this Form;

_Mr_. Basil Plenty,

_SIR_,

_You have the Gout and Stone, with Sixty thousand Pound Sterling; I have the Gout and Stone, not worth one Farthing; I shall pray for you, and desire you would pay the Bearer Twenty s.h.i.+llings for Value received from_,

SIR, Your humble Servant, _Lazarus Hopeful_.

Cripple-Gate, Aug. 29, 1712.

The Reader's own Imagination will suggest to him the Reasonableness of such Correspondence; and diversify them into a thousand Forms; but I shall close this as I began upon the Subject of Blindness. The following Letter seems to be written by a Man of Learning, who is returned to his Study after a Suspence of an Ability to do so. The Benefit he reports himself to have received, may well claim the handsomest Encomium he can give the Operator.

_Mr_. SPECTATOR,

'Ruminating lately on your admirable Discourses on the _Pleasures of the Imagination_, I began to consider to which of our Senses we are obliged for the greatest and most important Share of those Pleasures; and I soon concluded that it was to the _Sight:_ That is the Sovereign of the Senses, and Mother of all the Arts and Sciences, that have refined the Rudeness of the uncultivated Mind to a Politeness that distinguishes the fine Spirits from the barbarous _Got_ of the _great_ Vulgar and the _small_. The Sight is the obliging Benefactress, that bestows on us the most transporting Sensations that we have from the various and wonderful Products of Nature. To the Sight we owe the amazing Discoveries of the Height, Magnitude, and Motion of the Planets; their several Revolutions about their common Centre of Light, Heat, and Motion, the _Sun_. The _Sight_ travels yet farther to the fixed Stars, and furnishes the Understanding with solid Reasons to prove, that each of them is a _Sun_ moving on its own Axis in the Centre of its own Vortex or Turbillion, and performing the same Offices to its dependant Planets, that our glorious Sun does to this.

But the Enquiries of the _Sight_ will not be stopped here, but make their Progress through the immense Expanse to the _Milky Way_, and there divide the blended Fires of the _Galaxy_ into infinite and different Worlds, made up of distinct Suns, and their peculiar Equipages of Planets, till unable to pursue this Track any farther, it deputes the Imagination to go on to new Discoveries, till it fill the unbounded s.p.a.ce with endless Worlds.

The _Sight_ informs the Statuary's Chizel with Power to give Breath to lifeless Bra.s.s and Marble, and the Painter's Pencil to swell the flat Canvas with moving Figures actuated by imaginary Souls. Musick indeed may plead another Original, since _Jubal_, by the different Falls of his Hammer on the Anvil, discovered by the Ear the first rude Musick that pleasd the Antediluvian Fathers; but then the _Sight_ has not only reduced those wilder Sounds into artful Order and Harmony, but conveys that Harmony to the most distant Parts of the World without the Help of Sound. To the _Sight_ we owe not only all the Discoveries of Philosophy, but all the Divine Imagery of Poetry that transports the intelligent Reader of _Homer_, _Milton_, and _Virgil_.