Читать книгу The Tatler (Vol 4) - Джозеф Аддисон, Addison Joseph - Страница 17

From my own Apartment, Aug. 9

A noble painter, who has an ambition to draw a history-piece, has desired of me to give him a subject on which he may show the utmost force of his art and genius. For this purpose I have pitched upon that remarkable incident between Alexander the Great and his physician. This Prince, in the midst of his conquests in Persia, was seized by a violent fever; and according to the account we have of his vast mind, his thoughts were more employed about his recovery as it regarded the war, than as it concerned his own life. He professed, a slow method was worse than death to him, because it was what he more dreaded, an interruption of his glory. He desired a dangerous, so it might be a speedy remedy. During this impatience of the King, it is well known that Darius had offered an immense sum to any who should take away his life. But Philippus, the most esteemed and most knowing of his physicians, promised, that within three days' time he would prepare a medicine for him which should restore him more expeditiously than could be imagined. Immediately after this engagement, Alexander receives a letter from the most considerable of his captains, with intelligence, that Darius had bribed Philippus to poison him. Every circumstance imaginable favoured this suspicion; but this monarch, who did nothing but in an extraordinary manner, concealed the letter; and while the medicine was preparing, spent all his thoughts upon his behaviour in this important incident. From his long soliloquy he came to this resolution: "Alexander must not lie here alive to be oppressed by his enemy. I will not believe my physician guilty; or, I will perish rather by his guilt than my own diffidence."

At the appointed hour, Philippus enters with the potion. One cannot but form to one's self on occasion the encounter of their eyes, the resolution in those of the patient, and the benevolence in the countenance of the physician. The hero raised himself in his bed, and holding the letter in one hand, and the potion in the other, drank the medicine. It will exercise my friend's pencil and brain to place this action in its proper beauty. A prince observing the features of a suspected traitor after having drank the poison he offered him, is a circumstance so full of passion, that it will require the highest strength of his imagination to conceive it, much more to express it. But as painting is eloquence and poetry in mechanism, I shall raise his ideas, by reading with him the finest draughts of the passions concerned in this circumstance from the most excellent poets and orators. The confidence which Alexander assumes from the air of Philippus's face as he is reading his accusation, and the generous disdain which is to rise in the features of a falsely accused man, are principally to be regarded. In this particular he must heighten his thoughts, by reflecting, that he is not drawing only an innocent man traduced, but a man zealously affected to his person and safety, full of resentment for being thought false. How shall we contrive to express the highest admiration mingled with disdain? How shall we in strokes of a pencil say what Philippus did to his Prince on this occasion? "Sir, my life never depended on yours more than it does now. Without knowing this secret, I prepared the potion, which you have taken as what concerned Philippus no less than Alexander; and there is nothing new in this adventure, but that it makes me still more admire the generosity and confidence of my master." Alexander took him by the hand, and said, "Philippus, I am confident you had rather I had any other way to have manifested the faith I have in you, than a case which so nearly concerns me: and in gratitude I now assure you, I am anxious for the effect of your medicine, more for your sake than my own."38

My painter is employed by a man of sense and wealth to furnish him a gallery, and I shall join with my friend in the designing part. It is the great use of pictures to raise in our minds either agreeable ideas of our absent friends, or high images of eminent personages. But the latter design is, methinks, carried on in a very improper way; for to fill a room full of battle-pieces, pompous histories of sieges, and a tall hero alone in a crowd of insignificant figures about him, is of no consequence to private men. But to place before our eyes great and illustrious men in those parts and circumstances of life wherein their behaviour may have an effect upon our minds, as being such as we partake with them merely as they were men: such as these, I say, may be just and useful ornaments of an elegant apartment. In this collection therefore that we are making, we will not have the battles, but the sentiments of Alexander. The affair we were just now talking of, has circumstances of the highest nature, and yet their grandeur has little to do with his fortune. If by observing such a piece as that of his taking a bowl of poison with so much magnanimity, a man, the next time he has a fit of the spleen, is less froward to his friend or his servants; thus far is some improvement.

I have frequently thought, that if we had many draughts which were historical of certain passions, and had the true figure of the great men we see transported by them, it would be of the most solid advantage imaginable. To consider this mighty man on one occasion administer to the wants of a poor soldier, benumbed with cold, with the greatest humanity; at another, barbarously stabbing a faithful officer: at one time, so generously chaste and virtuous as to give his captive Statira her liberty; at another, burning a town at the instigation of Thais – this sort of changes in the same person are what would be more beneficial lessons of morality than the several revolutions in a great man's fortune. There are but one or two in an age to whom the pompous incidents of his life can be exemplary; but I or any man may be as sick, as good-natured, as compassionate, and as angry as Alexander the Great. My purpose in all this chat is, that so excellent a furniture may not for the future have so romantic a turn, but allude to incidents which come within the fortunes of the ordinary race of men. I do not know but it is by the force of this senseless custom that people are drawn in postures they would not for half they are worth be surprised in. The unparalleled fierceness of some rural squires drawn in red, or in armour, who never dreamed to destroy anything above a fox, is a common and ordinary offence of this kind. But I shall give an account of our whole gallery on another occasion.