Читать книгу The Tatler (Vol. 1-4) - Joseph Addison - Страница 75

This day a mail arrived from Holland, by which there are advices from Paris, that the kingdom of France is in the utmost misery and distraction. The merchants of Lyons have been at Court, to remonstrate their great sufferings by the failure of their public credit; but have received no other satisfaction, than promises of a sudden peace; and that their debts will be made good by funds out of the revenue, which will not answer, but in case of the peace which is promised. In the meantime, the cries of the common people are loud for want of bread, the gentry have lost all spirit and zeal for their country, and the king himself seems to languish under the anxiety of the pressing calamities of the nation, and retires from hearing those grievances which he hath not power to redress. Instead of preparations for war, and the defence of their country, there is nothing to be seen but evident marks of a general despair. Processions, fastings, public mournings, and humiliations, are become the sole employments of a people, who were lately the most vain and gay of any in the universe.

The Pope has written to the French king on the subject of a peace, and his Majesty has answered in the lowliest terms, that he entirely submits his affairs to divine providence, and shall soon show the world, that he prefers the tranquillity of his people to the glory of his arms, and extent of his conquests.

Letters from the Hague of the 24th say, that his Excellency the Lord Townshend delivered his credentials on that day to the States-General, as plenipotentiary from the Queen of Great Britain; as did also Count Zinzendorf, who bears the same character from the Emperor.

Prince Eugene intended to set out the next day for Brussels, and his Grace the Duke of Marlborough on the Tuesday following. The Marquis de Torcy talks daily of going, but still continues here. The army of the Allies is to assemble on the 7th of the next month at Helchin; though it is generally believed, that the preliminaries to a treaty are fully adjusted.

The approach of a peace²²² strikes a panic through our armies, though that of a battle could never do it, and they almost repent of their bravery, that made such haste to humble themselves and the French king. The Duke of Marlborough, though otherwise the greatest general of the age, has plainly shown himself unacquainted with the arts of husbanding a war. He might have grown as old as the Duke of Alva, or Prince Waldeck, in the Low Countries, and yet have got reputation enough every year for any reasonable man: for the command of general in Flanders hath been ever looked upon as a provision for life. For my part, I can't see how his grace can answer it to the world, for the great eagerness he hath shown to send a hundred thousand of the bravest fellows in Europe a begging. But the private gentlemen of the infantry will be able to shift for themselves; a brave man can never starve in a country stocked with hen-roosts. "There is not a yard of linen," says my honoured progenitor, Sir John Falstaff, "in my whole company; but as for that," says this worthy knight, "I am in no great pain, we shall find shirts on every hedge."²²³ There is another sort of gentlemen whom I am much more concerned for, and that is, the ingenious fraternity of which I have the honour to be an unworthy member; I mean the news-writers of Great Britain, whether Postmen or Postboys,²²⁴ or by what other name or title soever dignified or distinguished. The case of these gentlemen is, I think, more hard than that of the soldiers, considering that they have taken more towns, and fought more battles. They have been upon parties and skirmishes, when our armies have lain still; and given the general assault to many a place, when the besiegers were quiet in their trenches. They have made us masters of several strong towns many weeks before our generals could do it; and completed victories, when our greatest captains have been glad to come off with a drawn battle. Where Prince Eugene has slain his thousands, Boyer²²⁵ has slain his ten thousands. This, gentleman can indeed be never enough commended for his courage and intrepidity during this whole war: he has laid about him with an inexpressible fury, and like the offended Marius of ancient Rome, made such havoc among his countrymen, as must be the work of two or three ages to repair. It must be confessed, the redoubted Mr. Buckley²²⁶ has shed as much blood as the former; but I cannot forbear saying (and I hope it will not look like envy) that we regard our brother Buckley as a Drawcansir,²²⁷ who spares neither friend nor foe, but generally kills as many of his own side as the enemy's. It is impossible for this ingenious sort of men to subsist after a peace: every one remembers the shifts they were driven to in the reign of King Charles II., when they could not furnish out a single paper of news, without lighting up a comet in Germany, or a fire in Moscow. There scarce appeared a letter without a paragraph on an earthquake. Prodigies were grown so familiar, that they had lost their name, as a great poet of that age has it. I remember Mr. Dyer,²²⁸ who is justly looked upon by all the fox-hunters in the nation as the greatest statesman our country has produced, was particularly famous for dealing in whales; insomuch that in five months' time (for I had the curiosity to examine his letters on that occasion) he brought three into the mouth of the river Thames, besides two porpoises and a sturgeon. The judicious and wary Mr. I. Dawks²²⁹ hath all along been the rival of this great writer, and got himself a reputation from plagues and famines, by which, in those days, he destroyed as great multitudes as he has lately done by the sword. In every dearth of news, Grand Cairo was sure to be unpeopled.

It being therefore visible, that our society will be greater sufferers by the peace than the soldiery itself; insomuch that the Daily Courant²³⁰ is in danger of being broken, my friend Dyer of being reformed, and the very best of the whole band of being reduced to half-pay; might I presume to offer anything in the behalf of my distressed brethren, I would humbly move, that an appendix of proper apartments furnished with pen, ink, and paper, and other necessaries of life should be added to the Hospital of Chelsea,²³¹ for the relief of such decayed news-writers as have served their country in the wars; and that for their exercise, they should compile the annals of their brother-veterans, who have been engaged in the same service, and are still obliged to do duty after the same manner.

I cannot be thought to speak this out of an eye to any private interest; for, as my chief scenes of action are coffee-houses, play-houses, and my own apartment, I am in no need of camps, fortifications, and fields of battle, to support me; I don't call out for heroes and generals to my assistance. Though the officers are broken, and the armies disbanded, I shall still be safe as long as there are men or women, or politicians, or lovers, or poets, or nymphs, or swains, or cits, or courtiers in being.

218. It is very possible that the first article in this number (see the allusion to medals) is by Addison, as well as the account of the Distress of the News-writers.

219. There is much about medals in Addison's "Remarks on several Parts of Italy," 1705. His "Dialogues on Medals" was published posthumously by Tickell.

220. Stocks Market was so named from a pair of stocks which were erected there as early as the 13th century. The two statues referred to were really very unlike. The one was of white marble; the other, of brass, was originally intended for John Sobieski, King of Poland, but being bought by Sir Robert Viner in 1672, it was altered and erected in honour of King Charles II. The Turk underneath the horse was metamorphosed into Oliver Cromwell; but his turban escaped unnoticed or unaltered, to testify the truth. The statue in Stocks Market, with the conduit and all its ornaments, was removed to make way for the Mansion House in 1739. Marvell refers to these statues in his "Satires."

221. Heidegger. See No. 12.

222. The remainder of this paper is by Addison. See Steele's Preface, and his Dedication of "The Drummer" to Congreve.

223. "There's but a shirt and a half in all my company; and the half-shirt is two napkins, tacked together, and thrown over the shoulders like a herald's coat without sleeves; and the shirt, to say the truth, stolen from my host of St. Alban, or the red-nosed innkeeper of Daintry. But that's all one, they'll find linen enough on every hedge." (1 Henry IV., act iii. sc. 2).

224. The Tory Postboy was published by Abel Roper; and the Whig Flying Post by George Ridpath:

"There Ridpath, Roper, cudgelled might ye view,

The very worsted still looked black and blue."

("Dunciad," ii. 149.) It is remarkable that both Roper and Ridpath died on the same day, Feb. 5, 1726. Swift and others sometimes contributed to Roper's paper for party purposes.

225. Abel Boyer (1667–1729), author of "The Political State of Great Britain," was a Whig journalist towards whom Swift felt bitterly. "The Secretary promises me to swinge him," he wrote in 1711; "I must make that rogue an example for a warning to others." Boyer compiled a valuable French and English dictionary.

226. Samuel Buckley was printer of the London Gazette, Daily Courant, and Spectator. He died in 1741.

227. Drawcansir, in "The Rehearsal," is described by another character as "a great hero, who frights his mistress, snubs up kings, baffles armies, and does what he will, without regard to number, good sense, or justice."

228. John Dyer was a Jacobite journalist who issued a news-letter to country subscribers, among whom was Sir Roger de Coverley (Spectator, No. 127), by whom he was held in high esteem. Defoe (Review, vi. 132) says that Dyer "did not so much write what his readers should believe, as what they would believe." Vellum, in Addison's "The Drummer" (act ii. sc. i), cannot but believe his master is living, "because the news of his death was first published in Dyer's Letter." See also Spectator, Nos. 43 and 457. At the trial of John Tutchin for seditious libel (Howell's "State Trials," xiv. 1150), on complaint being made by counsel that Dyer had charged him with broaching seditious principles, Lord Chief Justice Holt said, "Dyer is very familiar with me too sometimes; but you need not fear such a little scandalous paper of such a scandalous author."

229. Ichabod Dawks was another "epistolary historian" (see Spectator, No. 457, and Tatler, No. 178). Dawks and Dyer are both introduced by Edmund Smith, author of "Phædra and Hippolitus," in his poem, "Charlettus Percivallo suo":

"Scribe securus, quid agit Senatus,

Quid caput stertit grave Lambethanum,

Quid comes Guilford, quid habent novorum.

"Dawksque Dyerque."

230. The Daily Courant, our first daily newspaper, was begun in 1702.

231. Chelsea Hospital, for old soldiers, was founded in 1682.