" "Twas then great Marlbro's mighty soul was prov'd, And taught the doubtful battle where to rage. The whole poem is so exquisitely noble and poetic, that I think it an honour to our nation and language.' The gentleman concluded his critique on this work, by saying that he esteemed it wholly new, and a wonderful attempt, to keep up the ordinary ideas of a march of an army, just as they happened, in so warm and great a style, and yet be at once familiar and heroic. Such a performance is a chronicle as well as a poem, and will preserve the memory of our hero, when all the edifices and statues erected to his honour are blended with common dust. STEELE AND ADDISON. " Psalm cxlviii. 8. N° 44. THURSDAY, JULY 21, 1709. -Nullis amor est medicabilis herbis. OVID. < No herb, alas! can cure the pangs of love.' THIS White's Chocolate-house, July 19. HIS day, passing through Covent-garden, I was stopped in the piazza by Pacolet, to observe what he called the triumph of love and youth. I turned to the object he pointed at, and there I saw a gay gilt chariot, drawn by fresh prancing horses; the coachman with a new cockade, and the lacqueys with insolence and plenty in their countenances. I asked immediately, what young heir or lover owned that glittering equipage; but my companion interrupted, 'Do you not see there the mourning Esculapius '?' "The mourning?' said I. Yes, Isaac,' said Pacolet, 'he is in deep mourning, and is the languishing, hopeless lover of the divine Hebe', the emblem of youth and beauty. The excellent and learned sage you behold in that furniture is the strongest instance imaginable, that love is the most powerful of all things. 'You are not so ignorant as to be a stranger to the character of Esculapius, as the patron and most successful of all who profess the art of medicine. But 1 Anallusion to a love-affair in which Dr. Radcliffe was engaged, who was at this time about 60 years of age. 2 Miss Tempest, one of the Maids of Honour to Queen Anne. as most of his operations are owing to a natural sagacity or impulse, he has very little troubled himself with the doctrine of drugs, but has always given nature more room to help herself, than any of her learned assistants; and, consequently, has done greater wonders than is in the power of art to perform: for which reason he is half deified by the people; and has ever been justly courted by all the world, as if he were a seventh son. It happened that the charming Hebe was reduced, by a long and violent fever, to the most extreme danger of death; and when all skill failed, they sent for Esculapius. The renowned artist was touched with the deepest compassion to see the faded charms and faint bloom of Hebe; and had a generous concern in beholding a struggle, not between life, but rather between youth and death. All his skill and his passion tended to the recovery of Hebe, beautiful even in sickness: but, alas! the unhappy physician knew not that in all his care he was only sharpening darts for his own destruction. In a word his fortune was the same with that of the statuary, who fell in love with the image of his own making; and the unfortunate Esculapius is become the patient of her whom he lately recovered. Long before this disaster, Esculapius was far gone in the necessary and superfluous amusements of old age, in increasing unwieldy stores, and providing, in the midst of an incapacity of enjoyment of what he had, for a supply of more wants than he had calls for in youth itself. But these low considerations are now no more, and love has taken place of avarice, or rather is become an avarice of another kind, which still urges him to pursue what he does not want. But, behold the metamorphosis; the anxious, mean cares of an usurer are turned into the languishments and complaints of a lover. “Behold,” says the aged Æsculapius, "I submit; I own, great love, thy empire: pity, Hebe, the fop which you have made. What have I to do with gilding but on pills? Yet, O fair! for thee I sit amidst a crowd of painted deities on my chariot, buttoned in gold, clasped in gold, without having any value for that beloved metal, but as it adorns the person, and laces the hat, of thy dying lover. I ask not to live, O Hebe! give me but gentle death: Ευθανασια, Ευθανασια 3, that is all I im plore." When Asculapius had finished his complaint, Pacolet went on in deep morals on the incertainty of riches, with this remarkable exclamation: 'O wealth! how impotent art thou! and how little dost thou supply us with real happiness, when the usurer himself can forget thee for the love of what is as foreign to his felicity as thou art!' Will's Coffee-house, July 19. The company here, who have all a delicate taste for theatrical representations, had made a gathering to purchase the moveables of the neighbouring playhouse, for the encouragement of one which is setting up in the Hay-market. But the proceedings at the auction, by which method the goods have been sold this evening, have been so unfair, that this generous design has been frustrated; for the imperial mantle made for Cyrus was missing, as also the chariot and two dragons: but upon examination it was found, that 3 An easy death. 4 a gentleman of Hampshire had clandestinely bought them both, and is gone down to his country-seat; and that on Saturday last he passed through Staines, attired in that robe, and drawn by the said dragons, assisted by two only of his own horses. This theatrical traveller has also left orders with Mr. Halls to send the faded rainbow to the scourer's, and when it comes home, to dispatch it after him. At the same time Christopher Rich, esquire, is invited to bring down his setting-sun himself, and be box-keeper to a theatre erected by this gentleman near Southampton. Thus there has been nothing but artifice in the management of this affair; for which reason I beg pardon of the town, that I inserted the inventory in my paper; and solemnly protest, I knew nothing of this artful design of vending these rarities: but I meant only the good of the world in that, and all other things which I divulge. And now I am upon this subject, I must do myself justice in relation to an article in a former paper', wherein I made mention of a person who keeps a puppet-show in the town of Bath; I was tender of naming names, and only just hinted, that he makes 4 Richard Norton, esq; of Southwick, in Hampshire, where he built a playhouse. Mr. Norton was author of a tragedy called "Pausanias, the Betrayer of his Country," 4to. 1696. 5 An auctioneer of those times. 6 Patentee of Drury-lane play-house, which about this time was shut up by an order from the lord chamberlain. 7 We are told, that all the papers and passages about "Powel, the puppet-show-man," relate to the controversy between Hoadlyand Offspring Blackall, bishop of Exeter on which they were intended as a banter; the wit and raillery being employed on the side of Hoadly. |